Drumtochty was accustomed to break every law of health, except wholesome
food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the psalmist's furthest limit to an average
life-rate. Our men made no difference in their clothes for summer or winter,
Drumsheugh and one or two of the larger farmers condescending to a top-coat
on Sabbath, as a penalty of their position, and without regard to temperature.
They wore their blacks at a funeral, refusing to cover them with anything, out of
respect to the deceased, and standing longest in the kirkyard when the north
wind was blowing across a hundred miles of snow. If the rain was pouring at the
junction, then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer through sheer native
dourness till each man had a cascade from the tail of his coat, and hazarded the
suggestion, half-way to Kildrummie, that it had been "a bit scrowie," and
"scrowie" being as far short of a "shoor" as a "shoor" fell below "weet."
This sustained defiance of the elements provoked occasional judgments in the
shape of a "hoast" (cough), and the head of the house was then exhorted by his
women folk to "change his feet" if he had happened to walk through a burn on his
way home, and was pestered generally with sanitary precautions. It is right to
add that the gudeman treated such advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable
for the effeminacy of towns, but not seriously intended for Drumtochty. Sandy
Stewart "napped" stones on the road in his shirt-sleeves, wet or fair, summer and
winter, till he was persuaded to retire from active duty at eighty-five, and he spent
ten years more in regretting his hastiness and criticising his successor. The
ordinary course of life, with fine air and contented minds, was to do a full share of
work till seventy, and then to look after "orra" jobs well into the eighties, and to
"slip awa'" within sight of ninety. Persons above ninety were understood to be
acquitting themselves with credit, and assumed airs of authority, brushing aside
the opinions of seventy as immature, and confirming their conclusions with
illustrations drawn from the end of last century.
When Hillocks's brother so far forgot himself as to "slip awa'" at sixty, that worthy
man was scandalised, and offered laboured explanations at the "beerial."
"It's an awfu' business ony wy ye look at it, an' a sair trial tae us a'. A' never
heard tell of sic a thing in oor family afore, an' it 's no easy accoontin' for 't.
"The gudewife was sayin' he wes never the same sin' a weet nicht he lost himsel'
on the muir and slept below a bush; but that's neither here nor there. A' 'm
thinkin' he sappit his constitution thae twa years he wes grieve aboot England.
That wes thirty years syne, but ye're never the same after thae foreign climates."
Drumtochty listened patiently to Hillocks's apologia, but was not satisfied.
