Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [24]
Oh! hasten translation, and come redurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air I
Halfway down the hill, a crowd is gathering; Nithsdale men and women, gawking up at the freaks. What matter, Hugh tells himself; no one can hold back the Buchanites now.
Oh! hasten translation, and come resurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air!
Here it comes, the first yellow ray, sliding over the dark hill.
Oh! hasten translation, and come resurrection!
Their singing mounts to an ecstatic shriek.
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air!
Friend Mother is on her feet, her arms out, her hair shining. She has never looked so beautiful. The crop-headed Buchanites all throw up their arms.
Oh! hasten Oh! hasten Oh! hasten translation!
Hugh feels a gust of sweet breeze from the east; surely this is the beginning. Friend Mother dances on tiptoe, as if Christ's arms are around her already; her hair dances. Hugh strains to kick off gravity; under his canonical robes he is hardening, rigid with glory. The breeze scoops the air up, circles, gathers to a blast of wind ... and the platform, with one long groan, topples down.
Friend Mother is on the ground, on her knees, clutching her left ankle. She rubs it like any ordinary woman. There are smashed pallets scattered around her. Hugh stands still in his shock.
Silence; the chants have all died away. The sun is up, but clouds have slid in from the north, and it looks like a gray day. The Bucnanites avoid each other's eyes; some weep into their hands. Below them on the slope, the people of Nithsdale are laughing like crows.
Friend Mother lurches to her feet. "Christ has been pleased to afflict us with disappointment," she says hoarsely. "And do ye know why? Because ye are not yet worthy," she shrieks, putting out her finger, pointing at each of her followers in turn. "Ye are lukewarm, unfit for translation. Ye have faltered in faith. Ye have failed me."
Hugh waits for her gaze to reach him; waits to be singled out as the one follower who has loved Friend Mother truly, who has offered his whole life in her service. He needs to know that he will be with her in heaven. But her eye skims over him as if she does not recognise his face.
She stumbles down the hill. A little later, he follows her.
Note
Elspeth "Luckie" Buchan, née Simpson (c. 1738–91), a potter's wife from Glasgow, was one of several women prophets in the late eighteenth century who founded personal cults based on the Book of Revelations. My sources for "Revelations" include Robbie Burns's letter to James Burness of 3 August 1784; Anon, The Western Delusion (1784); Els pet h Buchan and Hugh White, The Divine Dictionary (1785) and Eight Letters (1785); Joseph Train, The Buchanites, From First to Last (1846); and John Cameron, History of the Buchanite Delusion (1904).
After the Great Fast, the community was thrown out of Nithsdale by legal means, and settled in Kirkcudbrightshire, where Luckie Buchan died in 1791, promising to rise again in six days, or ten years, or fifty. Hugh White led the remnants of the group to America.
Night Vision
The other day in the woods I wandered away from the others and kept walking. The ground was soft as porridge. I held one hand out in front of my face and whenever I stubbed my fingers on a tree I felt my way around it. Whenever I stood on an acorn I picked it up for our pigs. I stood still, and there was no sound at all but the wind shuddering in the branches.
I don't think I have ever been alone in my life before, and I am nine years old.
It was Ned and John who found me; I heard them thudding along from a long way off, calling "Franny! Franny!" Did I not know that I might have caught my foot in a weasel