MADE RICH THROUGH A DREAM

The Black Year of The Grain Famine did not just hurt the people up around Shandwick. Oh no, the people all around the North were hard hit, and the folk of the Black Isle as bad as any. The black rust came on the crop, and any folk that harvested what was left and tried to bake it found that eating of the bread afflicted them with a crazed kind of dancing that made them twist and twirl till they fell down exhausted. So all the fields were burnt, and the people scratched to find money for seed corn for the next year.

There was one man that lived near here, just across the burn and up the hill at Abrondale where the great house called The Chief Constable's House is now, though to begin there was only him living there as a cottar. As you'll know a cottar has no land and usually little chance to own any, but this man had worked and scrimped, tight-fisted to all and never asking any neighbour, "Cullie, will you taste?"

The only man he opened his wallet to was the local laird, who had grand ideas and few pence, so borrowed wherever he could. The cottar lent what he could to the laird, then scratched and lent a little more. When term day for repayment came, the laird had naught to repay with. The cottar offered a bargain. Sell him the land his cothoose stood upon, and the next field that was called Pitpark, and he would forego the debt.

Now, the bargain was all on the side of the cottar, and both knew that the Pitpark field was worth well more than the laird owed, but he was embarrassed to have borrowed from a cottar to begin with, and would rather have his pride than his land. While the cottar much preferred land to pride. The bargain was made, and the cottar in turn borrowed all that he could from here and there to get tools, and from the grain merchant to get his grain seed. That was the year of the Famine, and he got hardly a blade of crop. He was one of those who harvested the blackened seed, and against all advice winnowed and ground and baked and ate.

And like all the others he was caught by the mad reeling and jigging, and danced up and down the rigs in his field for a day and a night without ever stopping. At last he fell, with his limbs still thrashing about, and fell into a dwam. In his dwam a voice came to him, and the voice said, "Your fortune awaits for you in Edinburgh. Go and find it."

He was so bemused in his head that he attended to the voice, and set off at once on the many long hard weary miles that take you round by the side of the great mountains, through farmland so lush he could not believe that he saw it, and eventually down into the low country. He begged for his porridge as he went, for the black rust had not hurt the fields down there as it had in the north. As he went his head became clearer, and he began to doubt the voice, but he had set his foot upon the road and he was a hard man that would never turn back from a course once he had taken upon it. He travelled slower, and often stopped to do a day's work at a farm in exchange for food and board, and in the evening listened close to each farmer's account of how the fields were made to yield so well and disease kept down.

So the cottar came down through Inverness and Huntly, Banchory and Brechin, Forfar and Perth, Auchterarder and Stirling and Linlithgow into Edinburgh. It was late evening when he arrived, and he searched for somewhere to sleep for the nights were growing colder. All he found was a warm vent behind a bakery just off Edinburgh's High Street, and next to the shop of a jeweller. He lay down exhausted and slept well, for he was pleased to have at last reached to his goal.

While he slept so sound a gang of ruffians broke into the shop of the jeweller and took all that they could find as they forced open mortsafe and locked drawer. The noise woke the neighbours, who sent and woke the Town Watch, but by the time these stout constables arrived the ruffianly band were well away, and all they found was the cottar asleep. They arrested him, beat him severely for being where they could find and catch him, then flung him into the Tolbooth. Next morning the chief of the constables examined him, to consider if he should be brought before the town's magistrates.

Quickly he realised that this Highland teuchtar had not the brawn nor the daring to assail an Edinburgh merchant's dwelling. "What was it brought you down here?" The cottar told him of the voice he had heard saying, "Your fortune awaits for you in Edinburgh. Go and find it." Yet all he had found was a hard prison bed.

"All you Hielan Shonnies are the same," said the chief of the constables. "Ye think the cobbles of the High Street are diamonds. Are you truly so daft as to believe in voices and dreams? More fool you. If I were a foolish as you I would be on long fruitless journeys too, for the past three nights I have dreamed a dream, and a voice said to me, 'Get up and go north till you come to a place called Abrondale, and dig in the west corner of a field called Pitpark, and you will find gold and silver in plenty.' Am I such a fool that I would go? Am I just?"

The cottar said nothing in answer to that question, but begged pardon of the chief of the constables for giving him such bother, and said that he was so filled with remorse he was tobasyt. He wished he could just leave Edinburgh immediately and go home. The chief of the constables was so impressed at this that he opened the Poors Box and gave the cottar enough in bawbees as would see him safe home, on condition he never came again within the confines of the city. The cottar agreed and left.

Home again, he dug in the west corner of his field, and found a metal-girt chest buried deep. Within, wrapped in silks and brocades, were gold ornaments and stacks of coins. He sold them quietly in Inverness, bought up all the debts of the laird of Abrondale and forced him to exchange the bills against a good parcel of land. On that land the cottar made as fine a farm as any in the Black Isle, and improved it more by the use of the new ways of farming he had learned about during his long journey to the south. In the west corner of the field called Pitpark the cottar built a fine house, better than the laird of Abrondale's own mansion, and the cottar called his house The Chief Constable's House, although no-one knew why.