A Scots Quair

A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon Page B

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Authors: Lewis Grassic Gibbon
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mannie, I’ll do the driving. And though Will muttered at that he gave in all the same, for every harvest there came something queer and terrible on father, you couldn’t handle the thing with a name, it was as if he grew stronger and crueller then, ripe and strong with the strength of the corn, he’d be fleeter than ever and his face filled out, and they’d hear him come up from the parks, astride the broad back of Bess, singing hymns, these were the only things that he ever sang, singing with a queer, keen shrillness that brought the sweat in the palms of your hands.
    Now in the park below Blawearie, steading and house, the best crop, and that was the ley, was the first they cut, a great swither of a crop with straw you could hardly break and twist into bands for sheaves. Sore work Chris found it to keep her stretch of each bout cleared for the reaper’s coming, the weather cool and grey though it was. But a sun was behind the greyness and sometimes when you raised your head from the sheaves you’d see a beam of light on the travel far over the parks of Upperhill or lazing across the moor or dancing a-top the Cuddiestoun stooks, a beam from the hot, grey haze of that sky that watched and waited above the sweat of the harvesting Howe.
    First ere the cutting in the ley began there’d been roads to clear all round the corn, wide bouts that father scythed himself, he swore that the scythe would yet come back to its own when the binders and reapers rotted in rust and folk bred the old breed again. But it’s time was past or was yet to come, the scythe’s, out the reaper was driven and yoked, Chris followed down at the tail of it. The best of weather for harvest, folk said, it was ill to cut in a swither of heat; and so still was the air by morn and noon it reminded you of the days in Spring, you’d hear the skirl of the blades ring down the Howe for mile on mile, the singing of Long Rob of the Mill, the Cuddiestoun creatures swearing at Tony as he stood and gowked at the stooks. Then Blawearie’s reaper clanged in through the gates with Bess and Clyde at the pole, and the blades flashed and brightened like the teeth of a beast and snarled in a famished freedom. And then John Guthrie cried Get up! and swung the horses down the bout, and the hungry snarl changed to a deep, clogged growling as the corn was driven on the teeth by the swinging reaper flails; and down the bout, steady and fine, sped the reaper, clean- cutting from top to bottom, with never a straggling straw as on other farms, John Guthrie saw to that.
    But feint the time had you for glowering at rig or reaper, soon as the horses were off and the flail drove the first sheaf from the tail-board Chris had pounced on that sheaf and gathered and bound it and flung it aside before you could say Glenbervie! and had run to the next and twisted its band, and gathered and bound and bound and gathered with her hands like a mist below her eyes, so quick they were. Midway the bout Will met with her, working up from the foot, and flicking the sweat from his face. And just as they straightened and stretched and looked up to the head of the park the clong, clong of the empty reaper would change to the snarling engaging whirr as father guided the horses to the cutting again. Still the sun smouldered behind its mists and out by Kinneff the fog-horn moaned all hours, you felt like moaning like that yourself long ere the day was out and your back near cracked and broke with the strain of the bending.
    But in three days time the ley was cut, the yavil glowed yellow across the dykes and they moved to that without stop. And then suddenly the mists cleared up and the fog-horn stopped from its droning, it came on real blistering weather of heat, but hardly you’d bear to touch on the wood of the reaper shaft when you loosed the horses, so hot it grew. Kinraddie gasped and then bent to its chaving again, this heat wouldn’t last, the rain was

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