Dance The Laird of Dumbiedykes' Favourite 3656

(See also “Madge Wildfire’s Strathspey”)

In 1818 Sir Walter Scott finished perhaps the greatest of his novels, The Heart of Midlothian. Set in the year 1737, at the time of the harsh imposition of the English will upon the Scottish people between the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, The Heart of Midlothian gives a vivid picture of life in Edinburgh and its country suburbs. However, the enduring value of Scott’s novel does not lie in its highly convoluted plot, but in the masterful creation of its characters. The Laird of Dumbiedikes was one of the most unforgettable.

Actually, Scott created two Lairds of Dumbiedikes, father and son, equally memorable. The father, the landlord of the Deans family, the story’s central characters, is a hypocritical old skinflint and the description of his death is one of Scott’s strokes of literary genius. After excoriating both minister and doctor – Did ye come here for naething but to tell me that ye canna help me at the pinch?” – and delivering pithy advice to his son – “But, Jock, lad, ye see how the warld warstles wi’ me on my death bed – be kind to the puir creatures the Deanses and the Butlers – be kind to them, Jock. Dinna let the warld get a grip on ye, Jock – but keep the gear thegither!” – Dumbiedikes prepares himself for death. So much at ease was he by then that he drank three bumpers of brandy and expired in an attempt to sing “The Deil Stick the Minister”.

Jock, the young laird, “wanting the grasping spirit” of his father, was an amiable nit-wit, in love with Jeanie Deans, his tenant’s elder daughter. “Day after day, week after week, year after year”, the laird appeard at the Deans’ house in the course of his daily walk about his property. “Being himself a man of slow ideas and confused utterance, Dumbiedikes used to sit or stand for half an hour with an old laced hat of his father’s upon his head, and an empty tobacco-pipe in his mouth, with his eyes following Jeanie Deans, or ‘the lassie’, as he called her, through the course of her daily domestic labour; while her father, after exhausting the subject of bestial, of ploughs, and of harrows, often took an opportunity of going full sail into controversial subjects, to which discussions the dignitary listened with much seeming patience, but without making any reply, or, indeed, as most people thought, without understanding a single word of what the orator was saying.”

Jeanie Deans, the object of the laird’s unspoken affection, the “rustic heroine”, was no beauty, being rather short and stout, but the slow pace of the courtship drove Jeanie’s stepmother to distraction untill she realised that “your dull ass will not mend his pace for beating”.

When the terrible news reaches the Deans that young Effie has been seduced and stands accused of child-murder, Dumbiedikes, with laced hat and tobacco-pipe, is making his daily visit. “Even Dumbiedikes was moved from his wonted apathy, and groping for his purse as he spoke, ejaculated, ‘Jeanie, woman! – Jeanie, woman! – dinna greet – it’s sad wark, but siller wil help it”; and he drew out his purse as he spoke.” One can well imagine the old laird turning in his grave at such rash behaviour.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the silent devotion of the laird, Jeanie Deans at the end of her adventures, married the young minister, Reuben Butler, and not the Laird of Dumbiedikes.

In Edinburgh, on St. Leonard’s Hill at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, is Dumbiedykes Road. There, at No. 93 and 95, Mr Thomas Braidwell conducted his academy for the deaf and dumb, an institution visited, and approved, by Dr Samuel Johnson in November, 1773.