Chapter 9

WINTER AND NEW YEAR.

THE Scotch dialect is singularly rich in terms of
reproach against the winter wind. SNELL, BLAE, NIRLY,
and SCOWTHERING, are four of these significant vocables;
they are all words that carry a shiver with them; and for
my part, as I see them aligned before me on the page, I
am persuaded that a big wind comes tearing over the Firth
from Burntisland and the northern hills; I think I can
hear it howl in the chimney, and as I set my face
northwards, feel its smarting kisses on my cheek. Even
in the names of places there is often a desolate,
inhospitable sound; and I remember two from the near
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame and Blaw-weary,
that would promise but starving comfort to their
inhabitants. The inclemency of heaven, which has thus
endowed the language of Scotland with words, has also
largely modified the spirit of its poetry. Both poverty
and a northern climate teach men the love of the hearth
and the sentiment of the family; and the latter, in its
own right, inclines a poet to the praise of strong
waters. In Scotland, all our singers have a stave or two
for blazing fires and stout potations:- to get indoors
out of the wind and to swallow something hot to the
stomach, are benefits so easily appreciated where they
dwelt!

And this is not only so in country districts where
the shepherd must wade in the snow all day after his
flock, but in Edinburgh itself, and nowhere more
apparently stated than in the works of our Edinburgh
poet, Fergusson. He was a delicate youth, I take it, and
willingly slunk from the robustious winter to an inn
fire-side. Love was absent from his life, or only
present, if you prefer, in such a form that even the
least serious of Burns's amourettes was ennobling by
comparison; and so there is nothing to temper the
sentiment of indoor revelry which pervades the poor boy's
verses. Although it is characteristic of his native
town, and the manners of its youth to the present day,
this spirit has perhaps done something to restrict his
popularity. He recalls a supper-party pleasantry with
something akin to tenderness; and sounds the praises of
the act of drinking as if it were virtuous, or at least
witty, in itself. The kindly jar, the warm atmosphere of
tavern parlours, and the revelry of lawyers' clerks, do
not offer by themselves the materials of a rich
existence. It was not choice, so much as an external
fate, that kept Fergusson in this round of sordid
pleasures. A Scot of poetic temperament, and without
religious exaltation, drops as if by nature into the
public-house. The picture may not be pleasing; but what
else is a man to do in this dog's weather?

To none but those who have