Show WAKEMANS wanderings sept some english tramps were singing for their breakfasts before the doors of the grave scottish villagers of eccle bechan when I 1 tramped into the hamlet behind them there were five of thern them great hulking fellows and their hoarse haars and aggressive bellowing was the only sound indicative of human life in the village even at that late hour of the morning they stood beside a melodious burn which dashed from under a covered way and coursed on through the village street at one side of the stream was an ancient wall on the other were ing houses and the one before which the vagabonds lifted up their har harrowing hardowin rowin voices was one of the plainest ana and quaintest quain test in ecclefechan from its appearance pe arance it might have been an olden stable a n abandoned lodge at the entrance to some gent lemans establishment formerly located behind it or the ancient jail of the village abw now smartly whitewashed and transformed into a lowly habitation it was a mite of a thing with an archway through it occupying one third of the lower story at each side was a narrow oaken door and nearer each end a tiny window in the second story another little window above each lower one on looked into the street and over the centre of the archway were two still more diminutive windows side by side it was a double house of the dwarf variety and the one at the north end where the strong lunged corners sang was the birthplace birth place of thomas carlyle the bellowing had brought mutch capped guid wives to various windows and alley entrances at safe distances I 1 loitered near enough to hear them discuss the matin song of the tramps as well as the house and its former occupants they deedna fash trouble their sels tae sing there croaked one old dame with a gentle swaying of her head betokening tok ening a reminiscent al vein of remark like becht roar their sels black il i the face afore they eer blaid frae that neep tur turnip gurnig nig oh aye croone crooned astill a still older old woman its weel kent nae cuir body iver saw syne or soon the recht side 0 carlyles sil siller lerl how carlyles hosts of adorers would have groaned to hear these his old neighbors go on one hinted at their pride with they their sels nae sheep shanks another of their thrift with they neer selle their hens on a rainy day another of miserliness with they gae their banes to nae do dogs s another of their austerity with g they warna guid to wi and another bent old body summed up the feeling of many of the testy villagers with the crisp is epitome they were ill to thole amat that is it was hard to get along with the carlyles and it is hi historic s that others besides these dim old souls some who lived in the same houses with them found it just that way the tramps got nothing for their offertory and after a few vigorous kicks at the door departed fouse iving giving me opportunity to reach the house just as the huge form and red face of mrs john gourley caretaker appeared at the door shaking a fine bludgeon after the vanishing vagrants she relieved her nation with hoots its a I 1 indignation n 4 di weary d day y lor tor auld scotland whan theres nae body t fend d a hoose like this frae tha low english beggars beggar sl and then in radiant expectancy of low english sax bade me enter pences I 1 doubt if there ever lived a writer about whom more has been written by little and great writers than has been penned in criticism crit cism or praise of thomas carlyle cargyle Cari yle and I 1 am just as much in doubt whether any one or all of these from passing essayist to stately biographer ever really visited the birthplace ot this rare and royally rampant genius yet that should have been every serious biographers first duty interesting as may be every little detail in the career of the roan man of genius when we have learned each one by heart and abc have been given standards by whick which to find his place measure his personality sona lity and weigh his influence we are still unsatisfied what made this man what he was what were the potent forces which sent him on his way or which were overcome in his up building out of what manner of mold did he come what was the actual environment of the babe the child the youth we wish to be shown the ultimate perspective it is not to be found in any C biography of carlyle and so I 1 think there is an unusual fascination in coming to this hard little hamlet and seeing with your own eyes pretty nearly the same sort of tolk folk and precisely the same scenes as those the boy carlyle knew hard as it is to believe from his biographers he ever was a boy and in sympathy and feeling getting as far as possible into the same framing and setting as those through which his eyes had their earliest outlook upon the close material and spiritual horizon about him no truer hint of all this could be given than in that morning incident of the grim old dames and their tongue wagging about the singing beggars and the house before which they sung it was in itself simply a bit out of ca carlyles rayles fam ilys time I 1 almost felt the C carlyle arye folk were glowering glo th door it is but two years less than one hundred since thomas carlyle was born in that little stone cottage there is no place in britain where less change has come in that period than in stern stem and tiny ecclefechan indeed the changelessness of all these ancient border towns and hamlets is one of their most impressive characteristics from yetholm to dumfries along the scottish border and from berwick to carlyle along the english border it is just the same they are all as they were only a little more asleep the railway stations are about all the structures in them that have large windows or smell of paint they remain chiefly as they stood when the border raids were ended they are gray battle scarred ancient they were built in fighting times and they have their records in their hard boldfaces old races faces towan to wander among them is like being whisked back two or three centuries and set act down face to face with the trimness grimness and cruelties cruel ties of dedual times and I 1 sometimes think that the nature of the lowly folk beaten to savage hardness in those sorry times is in this borderland of both kingdoms a long time taking on the gentler touch of our time scotland is richest in these weird old border relics of a sorry age a e the scotch crowded close to the border forder built more and stronger places of sally sady even the tiniest of hamlets having likeness in sturdiness and strength to the larger towns and then being the liveliest on their legs harried the english in such a brisk and occupying occupy occupying in way that they had little time on their bands hands after chasing the raiders home for building important border towns the quaint hamlet stands in a little hollow of the champaign champaign land oi of southeastern annandale T the e same old post road which leads north from england through carlisle and grew some gretna green passes through it forming its principal and almost its only street from rom the south this highway lead through a pleasant country well watered and wooded and charmingly broken by clumps of ancient trees or newer plantations and small well tilled fields beyond the hamlet the road winds upward for a mile or more to as bleak suggestively dreary and hopeless a horizon as you will often come upon in in normandy or as are seen in the peasant pictures of brittany by the master hand of millet to the northeast there are dim outlines of the hartcell Hart fell and other mountain ranges away to the southwest are the misty vales of lovely annandale and to the northwest but four miles distant the legend haunted hill of Brun where the boy carlisle often wandered lifts its roman capped head into the fleecy vagrant clouds ecclefechan has great age but little history aside from having produced this one famous man at about the centre of the village where a highway leaves the old carlisle and glasgow post road to wander through the he valley of annan to the solway side town of that name a little cross street formed by this road runs a few rods with it and stops short by an ancient graveyard grave yard in this lies carlyle his father and mother and other members of the family it has also hundreds of unnamed graves for half a thousand years before the carlyle line had crossed the border into scotland from carlisle with the adherents of returning king david 11 II it was the site of a then ancient church called eccles Ec clesie S fichani Fo chani or the church of st bechan bechan was an irish abbot of the seventh century from lona iona who was canonized his day being the aoth of january hence the curious name of ecclefechan border war brought the ancient churche to ruin the spi spirit of the covenant ers time effaced what remained but the churchyard of a thousand years ago is is graveyard grave yard ot of today and all the stem descendants of those who swore to endeavour the extirpation of popery prelacy superstition heresy schism profaneness etc who have departed life in little ecclefechan are lying lyn here in consecrated ground in carlyles boyhood time there were many hand loom weavers here there stone cottages stood along the highway interspersed with a few shops and inns the cottages remain housing folk of the same ocial vocial order comfortable laborers among the surrounding farms at least three of the inns inna are still standing two have been transformed into humble habitations one the bush hotel a little long low rambling structure jutting out into the highway invitingly and presided over by a brisk bonnie landlady mistress kilgour who is not afraid to tell you that she has no love for yankee pilgrims and their seeerin sneering ways contains most of the life of t the me sleepy hamlett hamlet and with ministering nae t to 0 cycless on their northern toi tours ars mo modern M coaching parties and occasional pilgrims to carlyles birthplace and grave is al most as breezy and bustling as in tha times of the packers and carters when the olden post coaches changed their steaming horses after the dash fromn from gretna before its hospitable door so this was the spot and these the physical surroundings of thomas carie lyle Rhy physical from his birth in 1795 until his f stonemason stone mason fath erjames father tames carlyle who hammered on at ecclefechan making in his best year choo aioo removed to the bleak farmstead of mainvill Main hill near cock erbie about ten miles north of his native hamlet and still alongside the old od carlisle carlis le and glasgow post road this comprised the first fourteen years of his life during this time all the boyhood boyhood home and home surroundings he ever knew were his for he had already felt the terrors of schoolboy life at annan and just after the family removal to mainvill Main hill he was sent away to edinburgh to the university walking the whole distance through moffat in company with a senior student in the university named tom smail there are none living here or hereabout now who knew thomas carlyle as a boy but I 1 found very many old old folk whose parents were his youthful companions or his parents ne ebors and who on account of carlyles subsequent n t fame left clear testimony with tu t their air children from their standpoint of view on his home surroundings and boyhood life it is all a grim gray picture 1 1 set in forbidding shadows with 91 but 1 t one bright clear ray streaming arnin through it a brave loyal mothers en endless y care and love of a home so little and mean that no room in it permitted the family meals to be eaten by all its members at once which forced young carlyle to carry forth his food of bread crumbs boiled in milk to be eaten on the coping of the wall while the lad ad gazed at the distant mountains mountains of a father irascible as honest unreasonable as sturdy miserly as pious in the dim old steely way of a mother with all her great virtue a pestilence of fire and sword against a I 1 intellectual intellect nal rial unfolding not in accord with her own almost savagely exacting creed and of social and intellectual environment environment in which there were more melancholy hopeless serious ness petty caviling downright hatred and far less brightness and sentiment than about the olden campfires camp fires of the american chippeway Chipp ewas of sioux it is plain that the carlyles were not only not beloved but that they were dis liked with that brutal sort of rancor common in ignorant neighborhoods the father was the best workman of the community had he not possessed a furious temper and a hard fist he would have been driven from the hamlet he was feared rather than liked or respected the mother was held by her guid wife neighbors to be oer saintly and ver oer esperant or pompous in in manner and language as well as auld moud or sagacious and crafty in discourse the imperious obstinacy of the father so marked a characteristic of the son rather than just pride in in intelligence for its own sake determined him on making the boy a scholar and this again widened the breach between the stone masons family and the carping villagers the latter stood in awe of his fists but stung the brave cifes spirit woefully with their crafty gossip and raillery the hurt was double upon the boys defenseless head the parents in their prayers illustrated to the lad what a debt of gratitude tim latitude rati tude was being piled up against him by the almighty that he was permitted perth to live and by themselves th that a ri they had sustained contumely and fice to give him those mighty mighty advant ages while through his playfellows play fellows on account of the disposition of t their air parents he was made the victim of every conceivable species of savagery and coti contempt tempt from these old tales it is easy to learn that as a babe thomas carlyle drew in the vea very milk of unhappiness and ran cor from his mothers breast he was a thin uncanny bairn sniffle sn aming ling in infancy mournful moaning and and laddering had dering through the cutty gear period not into kilts before he had learned the unspeakable terrors of an where every other child about him showed only the face of har bar rassing bassing ogre in childhood a lamentable bairn set upon and scourged urged by bullying brats and all his youth auth tide the quarry of every ill natura natured little human beast of the ecclefechan gutters or by lane cabins wh why it seems to me that right here is bouny found the true key to his whole aftertime nature the royal protests the often almost imbecile cavi lings the titanic outbursts that rui fable and grumble and thunder throughout his mighty work were after all largely an endless if unconscious cry of the mans heart against the barbarities of his own childhood in the little stone cottage where they lived there is but one room below stairs in the upper there is a room the same size as that on the first floor this is retained as a sort of showroom and is well enough filled to be interesting te with carlyle relics including his famous coffee pot in which he was wont to brew his own coffee and his equally famous tobacco cutter hand maids of the cheyne row chelsea inspiration and inseparable companions of his irascibility and dyspepsia off this little chamber and sitting room in in which there is set a quaint old fireplace fire place is a little long bedroom over the archway and in this thomas carlyle was born altogether the place is uninviting meager hard austere Dis associating the man thomas carlyle from the heroism of his lofty work you cannot come to one spot made warm tender and glowing for his having been a part of it even the dreary old kirk yard where he lies but a few steps from where he was born intensifies the feeling that something of the human and humane was lacking or was denied his whole line there does not seem deem to be one soul |