SKETCHES FROM
FROM IRVINESIDE.

BY JOHN MUIR, F.S.A. SCOT.

"Irvineside! Irvineside!"--Burns.

III.

HE seven ages of the ordinary man, as acted on the little stage of this village, are hardly what one would term Shakespearean. Not because the ordinary man does not sufficiently violate the unities, which Shakespeare, dramatically, knew so well how to set at naught; but because the factors that go to make up the striking features of the ordinary man's existence do not lend themselves to dramatic representation-at least, not on paper, which is the only medium. we can command here. The ordinary man, in some instances as I have known him, could violate more unities in the space of a single day than Aristotle and his learned successors at Alexandria could invent in a month. The life of this type of ordinary men is one long drawn discord grating on the ear of everybody within hearing of it, and intolerable to live with even for an hour, unless you are able, as some appear to be, to pretend not to hear the discord, or in reality to be so dull as actually not to hear it. Of ordinary men like this, there are, unfortunately, too many. He sings the Psalm of Life to the wrong tune pitched on the wrong key; and with his wife and children singing the same wrong tune on the same wrong key, with the additional disadvantage of being out of harmony with each other, the result is a combination of screeches and unmelodious noises and wailings enough to enkindle the rage of gods and men alike.

The transplanting and dibbling of leeks, for example, is not a very tragical occupation, even for a man whose nervous system is more susceptible of the subtle influences of life than the ordinary man's. Neither is coal digging anything of a comedy as the miners would be glad to tell us, could we spare the time, which, unfortunately, we cannot, to listen to their plaint. We need not unnecessarily open the flood-gates of centuries of pent-up feelings, grievances unheard of in the annals of industrial history; and some things perhaps calculated to disturb one's vanity, of which

most people now-a-days have enough and to spare. Weaving, again, is perhaps as little conducive to poetry as building dry dykes, although Shakespeare thought differently, when he wished to be a weaver that so he might sing. But then Shakespeare never was a weaver; and that, believe me, makes all the difference. Johu 'Wright, the Galston Spencer, as I like to think of him, was a weaver; but neither his weaving nor his singing brought him much. good, although his contemporaries have told me that his abilities as a wabster were unquestionable; and his Retrospect gives evidence of more faculty, in the musical way, than the half-dozen volumes produced by his townsmen and successors. But, alas! for the anacreontic flavour of his lyrics. The goblet may have been of gold, but there was death in the liquor for poor Wright.

On many a winter evening by the fire, the red flames dancing fantastically and repeating their capers on the dark walls of the kitchen, have I heard McSpurkle remarking that "Weavin's din, man; clean din."

"Aye, an' dyke biggin's no muckle better, if no waur," has McCroudie answered, emphasizing his observation by taking the pipe out of his mouth, which was never otherwise removed, not even to expectorate, except when it required to be replenished. On these occasions I was an attentive listener. It is worth while hearing what a man has to tell who has been travelling along the path of life, say, forty years in advance of you, and who has laboured during the best part of his life at an occupation entirely foreign to you, and in a part of the world with surroundings wholly unfamiliar to you. It is like exchanging experiences in a mountaineering party with one of the number who is a long way ahead, and on a different part of the hill. For there is not a man living who has not some knowledge to communicate if he or we could only get at it. But this is precisely the ticklish point. We are so little interested in each other, and so wholly absorbed in our own concerns, that we cannot afford the time to give our fellows a fair hearing. Before we have done more than merely exchanged the usual civilities, we have to separate; and brief as the interview has been, we have probably succeeded in giving mutual offence and are consequently further from understanding each other than if we had never met. One man wished to thrust on you an obligation, which you refused. Hence your pride, which it was predicted would bring you to the dust. Another would have liked

to do the cheap patron. Him you repelled, as Johnson did Chesterfield. Therefore you are a saucy fellow, whom it is no use trying to push forward. A third invited you to his table, but the invitation took away your appetite, and you stayed at home. It is evident that you are too big for your boots, and that these are wearing out rapidly. A fourth may have thought his table a great attraction, and the chief reason for your visits, and that any little thing you could do would help to keep the debt within reasonable bounds. Him you cut off as unworthy of your friendship; but you have not starved since, which we shall be very glad if you will kindly explain.

In the battle of life you are bound to give and to take blows. You cannot escape, even if you would. Were you but the most insignificant drummer-boy your duty compels you to protect your person and your instrument; and your life is as precious to you and as dear to your kindred as the General's to his Duchess-mother. You want to meet natural men, but you will not find them. They are simply not to be found outside the region of Sunday School literature, search as you may. Every man is cased in armour, so that you cannot feel his heart beat, even were you sure that its action denoted anything but the propulsion of the blood.

Under ordinary circumstances a miner's calling is the least engaging of all the occupations followed by men. Dangerous and unhealthy in the extreme, and not without a demoralising tendency, his whole life is spent in grim wrestlings with a black, treacherous monster, which he hardly sees through the thick atmosphere of smoke and dust pregnant with pollution and disease, faintly illuminated by a tiny lamp which he carries hooked on to the front of his cap. A dull grey and olive haze encircles him for days, until he is forced to retreat from the struggle with a pneumonial complaint, if not previously laid aside with rheumatic cramp, brought on by working daily in several inches of water, with the same element raining down on him from the roof, and spouting out from the sides of the coal seam.

Many thousands of tons of coal the miners have wrung from the niggardly grasp of Nature; but these bear a small proportion to the ship loads lying unclaimed in the back parlour of the Sparrowhawk Inn, Penny Wheep's public. I never tasted Penny Wheep's beverages, but I have heard them described as "unco guid" by one whose judgment I would not care to put to a practical test. Penny

Wheep, as becomes his profession, is a considerate man, and so long as his customers respect his plaster he is indifferent about the quantity of coal dug, so long as it is moderately well moistened, "jist to lay the stour a wee." Inspired by bold John Barleycorn, the miner for the time forgets all about black and choke damp, and the other fiery and throttling giants, the dread of his work-a-day life. Throwing every consideration to the winds, he will produce during the consumption of a little liquor sufficient coal to outlast most strikes; and it is not until the following morning that the muddled condition of his head reminds him that he dug and dipped not wisely but too well, and that the dust and smoke he created sufficiently account for his empty pockets and parched tongue.

Most of my readers have heard of Tam Glen. Ask any schoolboy the question and he will answer with a ready affirmative. He will tell you that Tam Glen is the hero of one of Burns's best songs bearing that title. This is true enough, but my Tam Glen was a more substantial man than any of the shadowy heroes that flit intermittently across the Elysian fields of poesy and romance, for he was none other than Thomas Glen, pit-headman at No. 6 pit, belonging to the Coalgum and Riddlings Colliery Company, Ltd., and lived in a little house near the banks of the Irvine. His duties as pit-headman occupied that portion of his time not spent in his small garden, or in wrangling with his guidwife, a woman with whom it was almost impossible to live in harmony, unless you had infinite good humour, or could frustrate her erratic movements when these threatened to come into collision with your own mode of existence. Unluckily, Tam was woefully deficient in these qualities. Hence he was driven to adopt what he fondly hoped would prove to be remedial measures, but which, ochon! proved quite the

reverse.

Mrs. Glen was perhaps twenty years younger than her husband, to whom she had been married for about five years at the time the incident took place which I shall relate. She was a good enough woman, according to her lights, only that these were, like the willo-the-wisp, zig here, zag there; leading her into all sorts of bogs and marshes, ending in trouble to herself and annoyance to everybody concerned. The good woman, in short, was afflicted with a mania for practical joking. Not that she was inattentive to the duties of her home or its head. By no means. But her time not being fully occupied, and being of a sprightly nature, she contrived

to leven the staleness of existence with a spice of humour, which took a turn that only can be pleasing to one party-that is, the humorist. Her jokes, when successfully perpetrated on some unsuspecting neighbour, were much appreciated by Tam; and he and his spouse often chuckled in secret over the success which attended her canards, and the discomfiture of her victims. But when Tam himself was victimised by his spouse his wrath knew no bounds.

Matters had gone on in their course for five years: Tam attending to his work, and filling up his spare time by attending to his garden. Mrs. Glen looked after her domestic affairs, but found time to develop the faculty which was the sole cause of all their strife and bickerings. Tam grew daily less and less inclined to relish her jokes. In short, with the aid of a neighbour to whom Tam related his grievances over a tappit-hen in the Sparrow-hawk, our hero had conceived a plan against the approaching first of April which he fondly hoped would be the means of curing his spouse of her eccentricities.

"Man, Tam," said this neighbour, Baldy Bane, as they sat smoking their pipes in the back parlour of the Sparrow-hawk,— "Man Tam, I wud droon mysel in the big watter afore I wud alloo ony wife to cairy on at sick a rate. My certy, if she had me to dale wi' she would fin' a michty difference. But I'll tell ye whit," continued Baldy, who took the little black cutty he was sucking out of his mouth to spit, at the same time emptying the beer-pot-"gif ye tak my advice, I wud say: pay her back in her ain coin, and that 'ill sort her." Here Baldy very sturdily rapped the table with his horny fists; in response to which the landlady's niece, Christy Swagger, having replenished the source of inspiration, the rustic oracle continued: "Try this plan, Tam. The nicht afore Hunt the Gowk gang tae yer bed at yer usual time, merely saying, in a kin' o' indifferent way, 'I dinna jist feel athegither weel the night.' Keep waking till its Tuesday mornin, and then let on that yer unco din, aud groan like a bear wi' a burnt fit, and cry out for the doctor. When the mistress gets up and gaes awa for the doctor, rise and bar the door and keep her out a' nicht, and see hoo that 'ill dae." Here Baldy burst into a loud laugh, as he finished the recital of his rudely concocted plan.

"I'll dae't, Baldy! I'll dae't! sure as death I'll dae't, man!" cries Tam, whose eyes gleamed with the certain triumph he anticipated. Monday evening the 31st of March came, and with it Tam's