the astonished loon, and went a full round of the floor with him, ending with a fling that surprised every one. The fiddle had been found in the neighborhood of Arndilly, whither it had merrily floated on the bosom of the waves. But what was infinitely more extraordinary, small bag, suspended by a nail to the post of her bed, was found,— watch, bag, post, and all,-near Fochabers, eight or ten miles below, and was safely restored to its overjoyed owner." or tenderly pathetic tales, turn to the following humorous scene :"The haugh above the bridge of Lower Craigellachie was very much cut up; and the house and nursery at the south end of the arch are gone. The widow of James Shanks, amidst the loss of her furniture, house, and her son's garden-ground, the watch, which had hung in a lamented nothing so much as her deceased husband's watch, and his fiddle, on the strings of which hung many a tender recollection. That fiddle, the dulcet strains of which had come over her 'like the sweet south breathing upon a bed of violets,' stealing the tender affections of her virgin heart, till they all centred on her Orpheus Mr. James Shanks; that fiddle, to the sprightly notes of which she had so often jerked out her youthful limbs, and whirled round in the wild pirouette of the Highland fling, to the animating tune of Bogan-Lochan; that fiddle, in fine, which had been the fiddle of her fancy, from the heyday of her youth upwards, 'was gone with the water, and was now, for aught she knew to the contrar, in Norrawa or Denmark!' The grief of Mrs. Shanks for the loss of this valued violin was more than I shall attempt to paint. Great artists often envelope the heads of their chief mourners in drapery, from a conscious inability to do justice to the passion, and so must I hide the lachrymose head of Mrs. Shanks. And how indeed shall I describe her joy, some days afterwards, when an idle loon, who had been wandering about the banks of the river 'findin' things,' as he said himself, appeared before her astonished and delighted eyes, with the identical fiddle in his hands? The yell of Mrs. Shanks was said, by those who heard it, to resemble the wild shriek with which her husband was wont to inspire additional fury into the heels of the dancers, already excited by the power of his wonderful hand. She kissed and hugged the fiddle, and, as if its very contact had music in it, she laid hands on We have now, by quotations, abstracts, and abridgements of Sir Thomas's volume, and by occasional description or remark of our own, given our readers, we presume, some conception of the might and majesty, the pride and peril, of the Great Moray Floods. A thousand humorous incidents, affecting or striking illustrations of general nature, and of individual character, are scattered over the work, which it is impossible for us to collect. The love of property in poor people is, from the necessities of their condition, strong as that of life; and, in people not absolutely poor, passionate, from the endearing thoughts and feelings that cling to objects in themselves valueless, but, from associations stretching deep and far into the soul, above all price. Many facts proving this truth are related by Sir Thomas in a philosophical spirit, but simply and without parade. One old gentleman of the name of M'Intosh, after getting hold "o' something he wad hae done ill wantin'," risked his life to save his "specs." "Trouth," said he to Sir Thomas, "I cou'dna see to read my Bible without them-and mair than that, they were silver specs, sent me hame in a present frae my son, the Yepiscopal minister in Canada." One of the sufferers in the Streens, the morning after the flood, had his heart nearly broken by the fate of his great store-chest. He saw it settled on an opposite bank. while looking at it with longing eyes, But a remorseless eddy swept it away; and after having run the perilous gauntlet of rocks that lined its way thither, it was found afterwards, with only an inch in thickness of the outer part of the meal moistened, about twenty-seven miles below, at the mouth of the Findhorn. But it fell into the hands of the Philistines -the only instance of theft recorded-and crowdy from that chest never cheered the hearts of its former owner's family more. Francis Gibb, from whose farm fifteen acres were swept, observing that the flood was making rapid encroachments on a hill, on the brow of which he had some bee-hives, determined to attempt removing them; an attempt most perilous, from the falling precipices. The ground cracked beneath his feet-but he seized on one hive, and with one bound cleared the chasm, just as the whole mass was quenching its smoking fragments in the flood below. A woman, who, with her husband and family, narrowly escaped from their falling house, was chiefly distressed by the loss of a tubful of clothes. "It just sailed out o' the door," said she, with a melancholy face, "and was whamled afore my very twa een!" A worthy blacksmith, named Maclean, was nearly drowned, by remaining to attend to a favorite sow, that was about lying in. The flood had so inundated. the sty, that her loving master was obliged to carry the lady up stairs to his own bed, where, at the very height of the Great Moray Flood, she presented him with a beautiful litter of promising young pigs, squeaking in the storm. These, with the mother, who was doing as well as could be expected, he found it necessary again to remove, and they were conveyed to the garret. But had it not been for the timely interruption of James Edwards, shoemaker, Neptune would have been too much for Vulcan. A poor woman, an industrious little shop-keeper, in telling the story of her woes, pathetically said, "We had eneuch to do It took to escape to the braeside. eight o' the stoutest men in the haill country, with the risk o' their lives, to get oot my kist. We syne saw the waters rise ower the eaves o' our thatch, an' that was the way that a' things was till ten o'clock neist mornin', when we came back, an' fund that a' the sma' kinkind o' articles had been floated out o' the back wundo. But waur than a' that, the haill o' Tam's goods, tea, sugar, an' siclike, war a' gane, and the sugar a' melted!" One curious couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Yates, amused Sir Thomas by a specimen of conjugal branglement, as he asked them to narrate their misfortunes. When a question was put, the woman opened her mouth to reply, like an impatient turkey, but before she could get out half-a-dozen words, she was silenced by the sharp "Haud yere tongue, woman!" of her husband, who proceeded to deliver the response himself with the gravity of an oracle. He told of a small lake in his farm, which, he assured Sir Thomas, contains ploughman, his plough, and a yoke of oxen. a The man was ploughing in the very field where Mr. and Mrs. Yates were then reaping, when, scared by a thunder-storm, the animals galloped off with plough and man into the loch. As the oxen are always heard bellowing in bad weather, their tremendous routings on the 3d and 4th of August, quoth the Baronet slyly, may be imagined. A cowherd-boy who slept in a house that was swept away, being asked if he had lost anything, "Ay," replied he, "I lost twa sarks, and ane o' them was clean too !” In one scene of imminent danger, where peats in black masses, firewood, poultry, and pigs, were all tumbling along, every now and then the young fellows were dashing in, and hauling out. huge pigs by the hind legs, or plunging up to the neck after some other live or dead objects. One strapping hizzie who had leapt out of bed up to the hips in water, mistaking the matter entirely, bawled out, "The water 's bilin'!" In the midst of a terrified group of grown daughters, who were hanging around her, in a house at Ballater, a place of some resort and fashion, one lady clung to her worthy husband, and their dear papa, till the good man, who was rather corpulent, had been nearly pressed down into the water, by the weight of their united embraces. "Call you this a watering place?" exclaimed he, as he shook himself free from them on reaching a dry spot; "if you catch me coming a-watering again this gait, I'll alloo ye to mak a water-kelpie o' me." In one house, when all the inmates were expecting nothing but death, the water being several feet deep in the room, auld Jean Stronoch, fourscore years of age, sat the whole night, "amid a' the jostling, wi' a clockin' hen and a wheen chuckens in her apron. Some ane said till her, that she might hae ither things in her mind than a hen and chuckens, when she was on the brink of yeternity. Poor things!' quo' Jean, 'I cudna think o' letting them be drooned !'" Another of the doleful party "clam up the chimney, an' pat her head oot at the tap, wi' her face as black as a suttyman's. Oh! Jamie Mill, Jamie Mill,' cried she, 'ye're the blythest sight that ever I saw !'-Keep us a', is that you, Maggy?' quo' Jamie Mill," who had come to rescue the family; "weel, I've seen blyther sights than you are at this precious moment; but, black though ye be, I maun hae ye oot o' that.' Poor Jeanie Stronach lost five o' her chuckens, as she was dragged from the water into the boat." The loss of human life was not great. Besides the deaths already mentioned, one of the most afflicting was that of Mr. William Williamson, butcher, of George Street, Aberdeen. He was riding between Kenmay and Monymusk, when his horse started at some wreck that was floating on the road, near a bridge then completely flooded over, by the Bank of Don. The animal leaped over the end of the bridge, and disappeared with his rider in the stream, then raving along 10 feet deep. His companion was Mr. George Williamson. With a bravery not often paralleled, he stripped and leaped into the furious flood, diving for his friend in all directions. He got hold of the rein and dragged out the horse; but his rider was irrecoverably lost. This, says Sir Thomas, is perhaps the most gallant action I have to notice; and Mr. George Williamson would indeed richly merit some distinguished mark of the approbation of his fellow men. Mr. Alexander Don, assistant schoolmaster of Strathdon, on his return from a visit to his relatives at Drumblade, reached the Bank of the Don, about a quarter of a mile below the church. Within a few yards of the ford there was a wooden bridge, along which he might have passed with perfect safety, for it remained uninjured throughout the whole flood. But a strange infatuation seems to have come over him, and pushing his horse into the water without a moment's pause, both were engulfed. His body, found about an hour afterwards, was carried to the house of a poor old woman, but she resolutely resisted its passing her threshold. The poor creature was overwhelmed by the superstitious dread, by no means uncommon, that the admission of a drowned person into her house was certain to be followed by some fearful calamity. At last she consented to admit it, on condition of its being carried three times round her dwelling. But the charm was but half effectual; for during the night the flood swept off her cottage, though the poor old crone escaped with life. Another life was lost in the Don, in a yet more foolish manner than that of the schoolmaster. A blacksmith undertook, for a bet, to swim across the flooded river, near the Masonlodge of Glenkindy; but had his strength been that of Hercules, it would have availed him nothing in such a stream. He was whelmed beneath the raging billows, and sunk to rise no more. If he who tempted him to so awful a provocation of Providence, says Sir Thomas, has any human feeling in his bosom, I should say with Douglas, that "happy in my mind was he who died." Of animals the destruction must have been great. The horses we read of displayed wonderful strength and sagacity in securing their own preservation under the most desperate circumstances-so, we do not doubt, after their own instincts, did the clumsy cows and the silly sheep. Yet the rivers were bloated with carcasses. We read, indeed, of the death but of a single cow- "John Geddes's cow"-and "the thrawsome brute," as he said himself, "was droon'd by her ain obstinacy, for she wad gang nae gait but what she liket." After the flood of the Lossie, a hillock was found covered with the dead and mutilated bodies of an immense number of moles, mice, rabbits, partridges, and hares, which had been trodden into the mire by the hoofs of some affrighted and restless colts driven there for shelter. Many thousands of hares, and rabbits too, were drowned among the furzy patches of ground overflowed by the Spey-and singular enough, and to us a fact new in the natural history of these animals, on the subsiding of the flood, numbers of rabbits were, on different river sides, found alive high up among the branches of trees. Of our strange nature's quivering happiness. But, oh! sweet Friend! we dream not of love's might Till death has robed with soft and solemn light The image we enshrine!-Before that hour, We have but glimpses of the o'ermastering power Within us laid!-then doth the spirit-flame With sword-like lightning rend its mortal frame; The wings of that which pants to follow fast Shake their clay-bars, as with a prison'd blast, The sea is in our souls! He died, he died, On whom my lone devotedness was cast! I might not keep one vigil by his side, whose wrung heart watch'd with him to I, the last! |