Chapter IV
Legends
The character of a place is often most perfectly1 expressed in its associations. An event strikes root and grows into a legend, when it has happened amongst congenial surroundings. Ugly actions, above all in ugly places, have the true romantic quality, and become an undying property of their scene. To a man like Scott, the different appearances of nature seemed each to contain its own legend ready made, which it was his to call forth2: in such or such a place, only such or such events ought with propriety3 to happen; and in this spirit he made the Lady of the Lake for Ben Venue4, the Heart of Midlothian for Edinburgh, and the Pirate, so indifferently written but so romantically conceived, for the desolate5 islands and roaring tideways of the North. The common run of mankind have, from generation to generation, an instinct almost as delicate as that of Scott; but where he created new things, they only forget what is unsuitable among the old; and by survival of the fittest, a body of tradition becomes a work of art. So, in the low dens6 and high-flying garrets of Edinburgh, people may go back upon dark passages in the town’s adventures, and chill their marrow7 with winter’s tales about the fire: tales that are singularly apposite and characteristic, not only of the old life, but of the very constitution of built nature in that part, and singularly well qualified8 to add horror to horror, when the wind pipes around the tall Lands, and hoots9 adown arched passages, and the far-spread wilderness10 of city lamps keeps quavering and flaring11 in the gusts12.
Here, it is the tale of Begbie the bank-porter, stricken to the heart at a blow and left in his blood within a step or two of the crowded High Street. There, people hush14 their voices over Burke and Hare; over drugs and violated graves, and the resurrection-men smothering15 their victims with their knees. Here, again, the fame of Deacon Brodie is kept piously16 fresh. A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society, crafty17 with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him with regret at a timeous hour, who would have been vastly disconcerted had he known how soon, and in what guise18, his visitor returned. Many stories are told of this redoubtable19 Edinburgh burglar, but the one I have in my mind most vividly20 gives the key of all the rest. A friend of Brodie’s, nested some way towards heaven in one of these great Lands, had told him of a projected visit to the country, and afterwards, detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the night in town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was far on in the small hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a creak, a jar, a faint light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false window which looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer21 of a thieves’ lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a mask. It is characteristic of the town and the town’s manners that this little episode should have been quietly tided over, and quite a good time elapsed before a great robbery, an escape, a Bow Street runner, a cock-fight, an apprehension22 in a cupboard in Amsterdam, and a last step into the air off his own greatly-improved gallows23 drop, brought the career of Deacon William Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind’s eye, he may be seen, a man harassed24 below a mountain of duplicity, slinking from a magistrate’s supper-room to a thieves’ ken13, and pickeering among the closes by the flicker25 of a dark lamp.
Or where the Deacon is out of favour, perhaps some memory lingers of the great plagues, and of fatal houses still unsafe to enter within the memory of man. For in time of pestilence26 the discipline had been sharp and sudden, and what we now call ‘stamping out contagion’ was carried on with deadly rigour. The officials, in their gowns of grey, with a white St. Andrew’s cross on back and breast, and a white cloth carried before them on a staff, perambulated the city, adding the terror of man’s justice to the fear of God’s visitation. The dead they buried on the Borough27 Muir; the living who had concealed28 the sickness were drowned, if they were women, in the Quarry29 Holes, and if they were men, were hanged and gibbeted at their own doors; and wherever the evil had passed, furniture was destroyed and houses closed. And the most bogeyish part of the story is about such houses. Two generations back they still stood dark and empty; people avoided them as they passed by; the boldest schoolboy only shouted through the keyhole and made off; for within, it was supposed, the plague lay ambushed30 like a basilisk, ready to flow forth and spread blain and pustule through the city. What a terrible next-door neighbour for superstitious31 citizens! A rat scampering32 within would send a shudder33 through the stoutest34 heart. Here, if you like, was a sanitary35 parable36, addressed by our uncleanly forefathers37 to their own neglect.
And then we have Major Weir38; for although even his house is now demolished39, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy memory. He and his sister lived together in an odour of sour piety40. She was a marvellous spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication41, and was known among devout42 admirers by the name of Angelical Thomas. ‘He was a tall, black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance43, and a big nose. His garb44 was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff.’ How it came about that Angelical Thomas was burned in company with his staff, and his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether these two were simply religious maniacs45 of the more furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our intention. At least, it is suitable enough that out of this superstitious city some such example should have been put forth: the outcome and fine flower of dark and vehement46 religion. And at least the facts struck the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable47 family of myths. It would appear that the Major’s staff went upon his errands, and even ran before him with a lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females, ‘stentoriously laughing and gaping48 with tehees of laughter’ at unseasonable hours of night and morning, haunted the purlieus of his abode49. His house fell under such a load of infamy50 that no one dared to sleep in it, until municipal improvement levelled the structure to the ground. And my father has often been told in the nursery how the devil’s coach, drawn51 by six coal-black horses with fiery52 eyes, would drive at night into the West Bow, and belated people might see the dead Major through the glasses.
Another legend is that of the two maiden53 sisters. A legend I am afraid it may be, in the most discreditable meaning of the term; or perhaps something worse — a mere54 yesterday’s fiction. But it is a story of some vitality55, and is worthy56 of a place in the Edinburgh kalendar. This pair inhabited a single room; from the facts, it must have been double-bedded; and it may have been of some dimensions: but when all is said, it was a single room. Here our two spinsters fell out — on some point of controversial divinity belike: but fell out so bitterly that there was never a word spoken between them, black or white, from that day forward. You would have thought they would separate: but no; whether from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal, they continued to keep house together where they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated their two domains58; it bisected the doorway59 and the fireplace, so that each could go out and in, and do her cooking, without violating the territory of the other. So, for years, they coexisted in a hateful silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny60; and at night, in the dark watches, each could hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters rivalling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture — he had a Puritanic vein61, which would have fitted him to treat this Puritanic horror; he could have shown them to us in their sicknesses and at their hideous62 twin devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles, or praying aloud for each other’s penitence63 with marrowy64 emphasis; now each, with kilted petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous65 evening; now sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer landscape sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grew upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary be overstepped for ever.
Alas66! to those who know the ecclesiastical history of the race — the most perverse67 and melancholy68 in man’s annals — this will seem only a figure of much that is typical of Scotland and her high-seated capital above the Forth — a figure so grimly realistic that it may pass with strangers for a caricature. We are wonderful patient haters for conscience sake up here in the North. I spoke57, in the first of these papers, of the Parliaments of the Established and Free Churches, and how they can hear each other singing psalms69 across the street. There is but a street between them in space, but a shadow between them in principle; and yet there they sit, enchanted70, and in damnatory accents pray for each other’s growth in grace. It would be well if there were no more than two; but the sects71 in Scotland form a large family of sisters, and the chalk lines are thickly drawn, and run through the midst of many private homes. Edinburgh is a city of churches, as though it were a place of pilgrimage. You will see four within a stone-cast at the head of the West Bow. Some are crowded to the doors; some are empty like monuments; and yet you will ever find new ones in the building. Hence that surprising clamour of church bells that suddenly breaks out upon the Sabbath morning from Trinity and the sea-skirts to Morningside on the borders of the hills. I have heard the chimes of Oxford72 playing their symphony in a golden autumn morning, and beautiful it was to hear. But in Edinburgh all manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one swelling73, brutal74 babblement75 of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and make together a dismal76 chord of discord77; and now for a second all seem to have conspired78 to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars79 in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin; the outcry of incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate conventicler to put up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against ‘right-hand extremes and left-hand defections.’ And surely there are few worse extremes than this extremity80 of zeal81; and few more deplorable defections than this disloyalty to Christian82 love. Shakespeare wrote a comedy of ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’ The Scottish nation made a fantastic tragedy on the same subject. And it is for the success of this remarkable piece that these bells are sounded every Sabbath morning on the hills above the Forth. How many of them might rest silent in the steeple, how many of these ugly churches might be demolished and turned once more into useful building material, if people who think almost exactly the same thoughts about religion would condescend83 to worship God under the same roof! But there are the chalk lines. And which is to pocket pride, and speak the foremost word?
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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venue
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| n.犯罪地点，审判地，管辖地，发生地点，集合地点 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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dens
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| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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hoots
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| 咄，啐 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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smothering
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的现在分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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piously
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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redoubtable
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| adj.可敬的；可怕的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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ambushed
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| v.埋伏( ambush的过去式和过去分词 )；埋伏着 | |
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superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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scampering
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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stoutest
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| 粗壮的( stout的最高级 )； 结实的； 坚固的； 坚定的 | |
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sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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maniacs
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| n.疯子（maniac的复数形式） | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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domains
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| n.范围( domain的名词复数 )；领域；版图；地产 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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penitence
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| n.忏悔，赎罪；悔过 | |
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marrowy
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| adj.多髓的，有力的 | |
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tempestuous
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| adj.狂暴的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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psalms
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| n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 )；圣诗；圣歌；(中的) | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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babblement
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| 模糊不清的言语，胡说，潺潺声 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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uproars
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| 吵闹，喧嚣，骚乱( uproar的名词复数 ) | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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condescend
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| v.俯就，屈尊；堕落，丢丑 | |
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