Quite near our lodgings was the house where this famous African
traveller lived and practised blood-letting as a surgeon, and where
dreams of the tent in which he was once a prisoner and of dark faces
came to him at night, while the door at which his horse was tethered as
he went to see Sir Walter Scott, and the window out of which he put his
head when knocked up in the night, were all shown as objects of interest
to visitors. Mungo had at least one strange patient, and that was the
Black Dwarf, David Ritchie, who lies buried close to the gate in the old
churchyard. This was a horrid-looking creature, who paraded the country
as a privileged beggar. He affected to be a judge of female beauty, and
there was a hole in the wall of his cottage through which the fair
maidens had to look, a rose being passed through if his fantastic
fancies were pleased; but if not, the tiny window was closed in their
faces. He was known to Sir Walter Scott, who adopted his name in one of
his novels, _The Bowed Davie of the Windus_. His cottage, which was
practically in the same state as at the period of David Ritchie's death,
bore a tablet showing that it had been restored by the great Edinburgh
publishers W.
Pages:
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349