Let it not he thought that Tammas had asked me to Little Rathie's funeral on his own responsibility. Burials were among the few events to break the monotony of an Auld Licht winter, and invitations were as much sought after as cards to my lady's dances in the south. This had been a fair average season for Tammas, though of his four burials one had been a bairn's--a mere bagatelle; but had it not been for the death of Little Rathie I would probably not have been out that year at all.
The small farm of Little Rathie lies two miles from Thrums, and Tammas and I trudged manfully through the snow, adding to our numbers as we went. The dress of none differed materially from the precentor's, and the general effect was of septuagenarians in each other's best clothes, though living in low-roofed houses had bent most of them before their time. By a rearrangement of garments, such as making Tammas change coat, hat, and trousers with Cragiebuckle, Silva McQueen, and Sam'l Wilkie respectively, a dexterous tailor might perhaps have supplied each with a "fit." The talk was chiefly of Little Rathie, and sometimes threatened to become animated, when another mourner would fall in and restore the more fitting gloom.
"Ay, ay," the new-comer would say, by way of responding to the sober salutation, "Ay, Johnny." Then there was silence, but for the "gluck" with which we lifted our feet from the slush.
"So Little Rathie's been ta'en awa'," Johnny would venture to say by and by.
"He's gone, Johnny; ay, man, he is so."
"Death must come to all," some one would waken up to murmur.
"Ay," Lang Tammas would reply, putting on the coping-stone, "in the morning we are strong and in the evening we are cut down."
"We are so, Tammas; ou ay, we are so; we're here the wan day an' gone the neist."
"Little Rathie wasna a crittur I took till; no, I canna say he was," said Bowie Haggart, so called because his legs described a parabola, "but be maks a vary creeditable corp [corpse]. I will say that for him. It's wonderfu' hoo death improves a body. Ye cudna hae said as Little Rathie was a weel-faured man when he was i' the flesh."
Bowie was the wright, and attended burials in his official capacity. He had the gift of words to an uncommon degree, and I do not forget his crushing blow at the reputation of the poet Burns, as delivered under the auspices of the Thrums Literary Society. "I am of opeenion," said Bowie, "that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion."
"He was a queer stock, Little Rathie, michty queer," said Tammas Haggart, Bowie's brother, who was a queer stock himself, but was not aware of it; "but, ou, I'm thinkin' the wife had something to do wi't. She was ill to manage, an' Little Rathie hadna the way o' the women. He hadna the knack o' managin' them's yo micht say--no, Little Rathie hadna the knack."
"They're kittle cattle, the women," said the farmer of Craigiebuckle--son of the Craigiebuckle mentioned elsewhere--a little gloomily. "I've often thocht maiterimony is no onlike the lucky bags th' auld wifies has at the muckly. There's prizes an' blanks baith inside, but, losh, ye're far frae sure what ye'll draw oot when ye put in yer han'."
"Ou, weel," said Tammas complacently, "there's truth in what ye say, but the women can be managed if ye have the knack."
"Some o' them," said Cragiebuckle woefully.
"Ye had yer wark wi' the wife yersel, Tammas, so ye had," observed Lang Tammas, unbending to suit his company.
"Ye're speakin' aboot the bit wife's bural," said Tammas Haggart, with a chuckle; "ay, ay, that brocht her to reason."
Without much pressure Haggart retold a story known to the majority of his hearers. He had not the "knack" of managing women apparently when he married, for he and his gypsy wife "agreed ill thegither" at first. Once Chirsty left him and took up her abode in a house just across the wynd. Instead of routing her out, Tammas, without taking any one into his confidence, determined to treat Chirsty as dead, and celebrate her decease in a "lyke wake"--a last wake.