'There is some news,' said mine host of the Candlestick,
pushing his lantern-jawed visage and bare-boned nag rudely forward into
the crowd--'there is some news; and if it please my Creator, I will
forthwith obtain speirings thereof.'
Waverley, with better regulated curiosity than his attendant's,
dismounted, and gave his horse to a boy who stood idling near. It arose,
perhaps, from the shyness of his character in early youth, that he felt
dislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, without
previously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he looked
about in order to select the person with whom he would most willingly
hold communication, the buzz around saved him in some degree the trouble
of interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, and
other distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr was
repeatedly mentioned, were as familiar in men's mouths as household
words; and from the alarm generally expressed, he easily conceived that
their descent into the Lowlands, at the head of their armed tribes, had
either already taken place, or was instantly apprehended.
Ere Waverley could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned, hard-featured
woman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had been flung on with
a pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet red where they were
not smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostled through the crowd, and,
brandishing high a child of two years old, which she danced in her
arms, without regard to its screams of terror, sang forth, with all her
might,--
'Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling,
Charlie is my darling,
The young Chevalier!
'D'ye hear what's come ower ye now,' continued the virago, 'ye whingeing
Whig carles? D'ye hear wha's coming to cow yer cracks?
Little wot ye wha's coming,
Little wot ye wha's coming,
A' the wild Macraws are coming.
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