Besides
these two chief rooms, the initiated will be able to point out sundry
little hidden closets and cupboards, fitted up as sleeping apartments,
and reminding one of the contrivances on board ship. The two rooms
each contain a more demonstrative bed, as a rule: but in some cases the
bed is shut up with panelled doors like a cupboard.
All that I learned from Bell about the Ardmuirland of bygone days was
gathered from her lips at intervals, and in the course of many repeated
visits; for it would have been fatal to my purpose had I allowed her to
imagine that I intended to make public use of her communications.
Though I have retained the substance, I have often altered the form;
for it would be useless to expect the reader to translate (if it were
even possible to do so without the help of a glossary) Bell's broad
Scots dialect. Yet the temptation has been too great to be resisted
from time to time to quote her exact words--so quaint her diction and,
to me at least, so attractive withal.
A description of the original chapel of the district will serve as a
fitting introduction to these memoirs. According to Bell, it must have
been simple even to destitution. No smoothly hewn stones, no carved
windows, no decoration of any kind distinguished it from the houses of
the people. It was a small, low building of rough stone, unplastered,
even inside, and roofed by a heather thatch.
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