Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie

by Donald McCaig

  “Below the Great Gates, on a vast plain, wait those who have special interest in the day’s arrivals, as well as the idly curious. Many a time, in the years after Master Hogg arrived, he and I would wait there to greet old friends as they passed through the portals, but afore long, no more came whom he had known; costume became subtly altered, even speech. It is unusual for us to attend the Great Gates today. Master Hogg resides in Edinburgh and I, here.” He took a draught of cold air, “On the Hill.”

  He left off his pacing and faced me directly. “Last spring, I was on an errand near the Great Gates and thought to see what manner of curiosities were coming through that day. Perhaps there’d been a war. What appeared, in a steady stream were thousands of short-haired brown-and-black dogs, long-eared feckless creatures, no brains at all, but sensitive noses and singing voices I envied. They were named “Blue Tick” and “Red Tick” and “Walker”—these were dogs that had hunted raccoons. Their arrival en masse, was prompted by a religious revival in the American district of Tennessee, where hundreds of men had been Saved [you call it ‘Born Again’] and had forsworn all beer, ale and spirits and dispatched these dogs who’d been bred for entertainment these new Christians now thought dissolute.”

  Though he awaited my explanation politely, I didn’t have one ready. I said I’d had neighbors who found Jesus, quit drinking Old Milwaukee Beer, sent their coon dogs to the pound, and washed their cars. In America, I said, there’s a direct correlation between the strength of religious belief and how frequently you wash your car. But for my purposes, this was a digression. I asked what had happened when Sirrah’s old Master, the drover, had come through the gates.

  “Oh, aye. Him. I waited near the Great Gates, in the place allotted to those who’ve come to testify. I’d begged Master Hogg to shun the proceedings, since I had no desire to remind him of the sufferings I’d undergone. I had taken care with my grooming, and my black coat shone. Two of the drover’s children had preceded me to the place, and there were other dogs waiting, too. One, a gray Dalesman, named Alf, I befriended at once, and we had good crack about roads we’d traveled, market dogs we’d known. Three of the drover’s horses were there, too, though they were quite frightened and required repeated reassurance from the Archangel that nothing ill would befall them by virtue of their testimony. From what all said, there were many other animals who might have wished to testify today, but hadn’t been given souls and so, on their death, had been recombined. Standing apart from our group was a small white mongrel terrier with a black head and saddle. “Sonsie” announced she was a King Charles Spaniel of regal descent and she’d come to greet her beloved Master. Though she was no more spaniel than I, she spoke so winsomely and gave herself such silly airs that we were more amused than annoyed. ‘Aren’t I the pretty bitch?’ she asked. ‘Oh, when I grew frail and elderly, I was no bonny then, but when I first arrived here’ (she clapped paws together) ‘do you know what they asked me, first thing? They asked me what age I wished to be, and I said, “My heart is young!” Those were my very words and, oh! My dreams came true.’

  “The gray Dalesman and I concealed our smiles.

  “We are not allowed to remember our passages: Our birth and death are forever blank. The drover was taken suddenly, kicked by a horse, in the course of his ordinary business. Though the drover’s hair was white as the January snows, he was no frail, elderly gentleman, but vigorous, still harsh: a man with leather fists and boots for those unwary enough to lie in his path. The very moment he saw me, he launched a vicious kick that, had it landed, would have discommoded me for weeks. I am gratified to say he missed, clean, and more gratified to recall the prompt revenge I took on his ankle and thigh.” Sirrah permitted himself a reminiscent smile.

  “Then we testified. The issue is grave, and whenever any creature’s fate is weighed in the balance, the poor soul waits at the Gates while those who knew him best testify as to character and habits. Sonsie, the wee white bitch, lavished praise. From her evidence, she had found the one soft recess in the drover’s obdurate heart and insinuated herself there. Even as she spoke of his kindnesses to her, a smile flickered over the man’s face—a smile that on any other face would be called gentle. It had been the drover who told Sonsie of her royal forebears, and I don’t doubt they both believed the lie. As she babbled, she set herself beside his fierce boots, protecting him from all the world’s opinions.

  “The Archangel listened as we told our tales. The children spoke of neglect, blows, desperate filthiness. The boy had lost his life to the brute. The horses related sufferings that brought tears to the flintiest eye. And while we made the case against him, Sonsie bared her wee teeth and growled her wee growl.”

  Sirrah’s expression was solemn as a magistrate’s. “Our testimony was credited,” Sirrah said shortly. “The abused carried the day.”

  “And so?”

  “He went to a place where he can drink all he wishes.” Sirrah paused. “The white dog chose to accompany him.” He looked about for distraction and he attended to the thistles in his tail. His teeth clicked and clattered, and he soon had a thistle ball, intertwined with such of his own fur as he’d been unable to separate. Delicate as a Greek spitting pistachio hulls, he spat this ball aside.

  Far below, Sirrah’s apprentice, the younger dog, was pressing a stream of sheep across a broad headland that quit abruptly in a near vertical incline. Although a shepherd’s instructions were urgent and audible to us, much farther above, the young dog was heedless. Sirrah cocked his head critically, “If Hector takes them that way, the ewes will balk.”

  And an instant later, as if sensible of the danger, the sheep began to swirl. Sirrah went to his vantage place and stretched to his full height. “We are each allowed only so much wisdom,” he said. “And that whelp’s allowed less than most. He has fetched the sheep off this hill so often I could not count the times; yet, each time, he tries to bring them where sensible sheep will not go.” Realizing his mistake, the younger dog came around and gathered his charges to a less precipitous decline which, mollified, they entered gladly enough.

  He wasn’t taking the shepherd’s commands, I noted.

  “I misdoubt we have a shepherd today,” Sirrah replied. Apparently he wished to be away after the sheep himself, and his clumsy tail twitched. “Master Hogg prefers pretty Edinburgh to the Hill and we oft must make do with his ferlie.”

  At the base of Broad Law, not far from where I’d begun my own ascent, I made out a man’s figure, crook in hand, uttering sharp whistles, gruff commands. “A ferlie shepherd?”

  “Aye. He looks like Master Hogg, whistles the Master’s whistles, sleeps in the Master’s loft in the byre.” Angrily, he bit at his tail and at this time, spat out more hair than thistle. Although I itched to help him, and have extracted countless burrs from the tails of numerous dogs, I knew my attentions would be unwelcome.

  Sirrah sighed. “Heaven would not be heaven for Master Hogg if he couldn’t be in town with Walter Scott and the writing gentlemen, and heaven would be no heaven for me if I couldn’t be on the hills working yon sheep. So, when needs be, Hector and I are supplied a ferlie shepherd. Naught, even heaven, is perfect.”

  “If they look the same and act the same, how do you know it’s a ferlie?”

  The look Sirrah gave me was too cold. “The Lord God is the God of Light,” he said. “Not the God of Scent.”

  I had hoped to meet James Hogg, I said. He was a writer I much admired. Viv Billingham, I said, was another fan, and she was a very fine dog handler. I told Sirrah about Holly.

  Sirrah lifted a single black forepaw and inspected it critically. “Master Hogg was a dab hand as a shepherd,” he said. “He was hard pressed to earn stale oatcakes for me when I had need of such nourishment, and when he tenanted his own farm, things grew worse. In April, when agriculturalists are sowing their crops, Master Hogg would be crowded against the peat fire, scribbling verses. When the lambs were dropping on the hill, sometimes he’d be assisting,
but more often he’d be away with the literary gentlemen. Oh, the gentlemen greatly admired Master Hogg’s tales of the shepherding he should have been attending to whilst he was describing it so particularly, snug in their admiration, a pint in his paw. He did some rare shepherding in Edinburgh town.”

  The ferlie shepherd blew sharp, insistent commands and Hector, the young dog stopped in his tracks, looked back up the hill he’d so recently quitted and clambered a second time to gather a band of sheep that had been concealed by the uneven terrain.

  A cloud interposed itself between us and the sun. A deep chill attended its shadow’s passage across the face of the hill. I tugged my jacket across my chest. “I suppose a ferlie shepherd is better than none,” I said.

  “None of us have all the heaven we want. Only poor deluded creatures are perfectly happy, and the Lord permits no delusions in His Home.” Sadness overtook his countenance. “When I first came, I auditioned for the heavenly choirs. I’ve always loved the grand Covenanter hymns, and it was my hope to sing daily, praising His works, lauding His works and ways. The chora masters heard me courteously, but advanced the suggestion that my singing might, perhaps, be more appropriate to a more rural setting. Although my songs were acceptable to the Lord, other singers found them infelicitous. They replaced me with a Blue Tick hound and two Welshmen.

  I shivered. “It feels like snow.”

  He brightened, lifted his snout into the wind. “I have seen snow on these heights in August,” he said.

  I was surprised there’d be such weather here. “I thought it would be more comfortable.”

  He grinned his doggy grin. “It can get bitter on these heights, and the winds, how they blow. And a February storm on Broad Law can try the mettle of dog and shepherd alike. There’s been many a roaring night Hector and I have thought we would perish on this Hill, but, of course, how could we?” He barked a laugh. “What comfort is the hearth fire without raw weather howling outside the door, and what pleasure is there in rest unless the day’s toil was almost more than you could bear? Oh, we are often wet, frozen, miserable, and the ice rimes our fur, but we are given strength to bear it. …”

  After a pause, I inquired, “So you work these hills, year round, with a ferlie shepherd?”

  When he stretched himself, the strong muscles corded his back.

  “James Hogg wrote well about you,” I tried another tack.

  “I suppose that’s sufficient? He sold me! Aye, selling a dog like myself; that’s an ill thing. But to write about it, to publish your regrets for the world to read and to sell those regrets to put a crust of bread on your table, Christ!” He ripped again at his tail and deposited a clot of nasty material on the earth beside him. When he heard the scratching of my writing instrument, he winced and corrected himself scrupulously. “If Master Hogg had not feared for his own employment (for such were his circumstances when he sold me), he would have kept me at his side.” He paused. “He does come back, you know. To Broad Law. In the spring, with Edinburgh friends. Oh, I am devilish excited then. Sometimes I sing like a pup. The literary gentlemen take short walks along the softer paths, admire the vistas and flowers, and soon retire to the cottage with their pipes and whiskey, where they discuss the proper uses of the Scottish language and those poems presently fashionable in the French salons. They will have new stories—every spring, a dozen new stories they recite to one another. And Hector and I lie at James Hogg’s feet, and the literary talk falls across our backs like crumbs from the table. …” He rose to his feet and paced restlessly. “Once, oh it was three or four seasons past, Master Hogg returned to the Hill. It was September—just this time of year. He told me he’d tired of town life, that the town was false and malicious. He’d had work rejected by his publisher, and, I gather, a tale of his caused offense to personages he daren’t offend. He remained here for three weeks and a day. It was grand.”

  Below us, the clouds lay in a thick woolly mat, and I fancied I could sense bad weather en route. “You say you’ve had blizzards in August?”

  The shepherd had vanished and mists concealed the summits of Black Law and Dollar Law. I stood to stamp circulation into my feet. I rubbed my hands together and yearned for dry socks. “So, Edinburgh’s heaven for poets, and the hill is heaven for you. ‘In my Father’s house there are many mansions’, I suppose.”

  He eyed me strangely. I was out of order, like a sheep that wanders off the track without reason.

  “And there are other heavens than this hill, I persisted. “Tropical heavens, monastic heavens, heavens where the Born Again can wash their cars …”

  Sirrah’s tongue lolled out. “They’ll be dipping the sheep afore noon,” he said. “Hector is no use at the pens. …”

  “And where is your mother?”

  “I am told Matilda is in the Outback of Australia. I fear for the security of the sheep flocks there.”

  “With Ossian MacDowell?”

  “Just so.” The cold sun lit up hair on his spine, and I fancied I saw glints of dark, dark red. I sat again, tucking my knees to my chest. He’d been anticipating the interview’s end and mocked me by sitting himself, with an ancient’s groan. The cloud ocean was climbing our slope. “Which were your greatest storms?” I asked.

  He furrowed his brow. “We’ve had so many,” he spoke slowly, “and each comes upon us afresh, as if it never had a predecessor.” More happily, he said, “When the sheep are buried in the drifts, it’s Hector who digs them out. I’ve never known a better dog for it. When I ask him how he locates them, sometimes under yards of crusted snow, he tells me ‘You could do it, too, auld man, if you had a lighter spirit.’ Daft!” His doggy brow wrinkled, and in a bit, he said, “It is a curious truth that I cannot remember the snows here in any particular. When I am in my straw bed at night, it is not these storms that I dream about, but always, springtimes and storms below. In my dreams, I forget my century in heaven and recall only my few springtimes on earth.” Rousing himself from revery, he started and glared at me. “You write down that I have the greatest appreciation of Master Hogg’s merits,” he said. And he watched as my instrument inscribed his dictation. “I don’t know that I have been happier since I met Master Hogg, but it was he who gave me my soul.”

  I coughed. “Just so.”

  “Do you think he wished to do it? Do any of you? Must we beasts pray for your mercies?” He was suddenly angry, and I pulled my feet close until he calmed. “I suppose you cannot help yourselves, it is how you are made. You men boast of your works, machines, poems, warrior skills: ape chatter. Why do you think the tenderest of God’s sweet creatures love you? Poor babies, you give us souls.” Sirrah’s left ear flicked upright. “Do you hear that, Man?”

  I looked up from my scribblings, rather dazed. Hear what?

  He strained. He poured his whole self into his hearing, in vain. Nervously, he went on. “I was born a sheepdog. Had I been born a singer, I would praise God with my songs. If I were a thoroughbred hunter, I would soar over hedges and fences for Him. Somewhere, here, coon dogs are praising God with their marvelous tongues, though I’m afraid their hunters will all be ferlie ones—Hark to that, Man! I know that whistle!”

  If I’d known it was going to get this cold, I would have worn a thicker jersey. It had taken me the better part of two hours to climb here. I prayed going down would be quicker. I didn’t care for the look of those clouds. A wet, fat, snowflake smacked into my cheek.

  “Oh Man, can you not hear it? That wee flourish at the tail of the whistle, that pretty trill?”

  Rather stuffily I said, “Sorry, no. Your ears are so much better than mine.” I worried that flying snow would soon make my notebook as useless as my recorder had proved to be. Though Sirrah was extremely agitated, raising up on his hind legs to hear better, he did respond to my questions as quickly as I asked them. Where was he born?

  “Biggar. Horse stable beside the high road.”

  Place of death?

  “Ettrick. They were kind to me.
The old man cushioned my head in his lap.” Sirrah’s body began to shake. “That’s Master Hogg’s whistle. I cannot mistake it. Oh, James loves Broad Law in the fall, when the heather is blooming. He’ll take a wee sprig of white heather and fix it to his lapel and walk the footpaths, dreaming his poetry.”

  “Not the ferlie shepherd’s whistles?”

  “Ach, man! The ferlie but mocks Master Hogg! Nay, it is him. I’d know James Hogg’s whistles anywhere!”

  “You’ve said you praise God by your work. How does that differ from what you did on Earth?”

  “Master Hogg is home!” he cried and hurled himself off the heights toward that, to me, inaudible summons, at a breakneck pace, bounding from ledge to ledge like a mountain goat. In seconds, his dark muscular shape was swallowed up by the rolling clouds.

  A snowflake splashed my page, and that smudge is the only proof of Sirrah I retain today.

  Without the dog’s guidance, mine was a cold, cautious, nasty descent. All the universe beyond what lay beneath my feet was blanked out by the mists. I don’t recall how I found my way down, and, safe on the earth again, when I looked up at the underside of the clouds, I saw nothing I hadn’t seen before.

  6

  The Bonny Wee Bitch

  On Eye Exam Tuesday, I wore gray work pants and a flannel shirt. I had a collar for the wee bitch and a lead. I’d bought a dog bowl and some dog food. I dearly hoped Gael wasn’t cow hocked or parrot mouthed or cross-eyed useless. I prayed I’d seen what I thought I’d seen. Tuesday was bright, quite nice. I had difficulty finding Tom Reid’s turnoff, though I’d found it before, at night, half drunk, without the slightest difficulty. I was delaying, afraid of what I might find there.

  A chipper Tom Reid meets me at the door and says, “I would offer ye a wee dram, but I canna. Some of the lads came by last night.”