Dougal Graham

“ Pady. O my dear shoy, Tom, you know nothing of the matter; for, when I die, they will bury my body, flesh, blood, dirt and bones, only my skin will be blown up full of wind and spirit, my dear shoul I mean; and then I will be blown over to the other world, on the wings of the wind; and after that I shall never be kill’d hang’d nor drowned, nor yet die [202] in my bed, for when any hits me a blow, my new body will play buff upon it like a bladder. ”

“ I dang the de’il out o’ them, and dadded them like a wet dish-clout till they did my bidding: But now the bairns are brought up to spit fire in their mither’s face, and cast dirt at their auld daddies: How can they be good who never saw a sample of it; or reverence old age, who practised no precepts in their youth? How can they love their parents, who gave them black poison instead of good principles? Who shewed them no good, nor taught them no duties! No marvel such children despise old age, and reverence their parents as an old horse does his father. ”

“ Tom one night sets himself next to his master, and as they were all about to fall on, Tom puts his spoon into the midst of the dish where the crowdie was the hottest, and claps a spoonful into his masters mouth: a pox upon you for a rogue, cried his master, for my mouth is all burnt; a pox upon you for a master, says Tom, for you keep a house as dark as Purgatory, for I was going to my own mouth with that sup and mist the way it being so dark: don’t think master that I am such a big fool as to feed you, while I have a mouth of my own. ”

“ To kill a man for rumple groans.
I’m clean of rapine, blood, and thefts,
Could I convert my farts to rifts;
Since I, the first, for farting die,
Close up the place from whence they fly;
To commit my crime, I think ye’ll scarce,
If once you do cork up your arse.
And now since women stones do carry,
Men need not in the world tarry.
Judge if such women be chaste complete,
With forty stones between their feet.
But since ’tis so, ye will come on,
The greatest whore throw the first stone. ”

“ Pady. Arra, dear shoy, I am a mountain sailor, and my supplication is as follows,
PADY’S HUMBLE PETITION, OR SUPPLICATION. Good Christian people behold me a man! who has com’d thro’ a world of wonders, a hell full of hardships, dangers by sea, and dangers by land, and yet I am alive, you may see my hand crooked like a fowl’s foot, and that is no wonder at all, considering my sufferings and sorrows: Oh! oh! oh! good people I was a man in my time who had plenty of the gold, plenty of the silver, plenty of the clothes, plenty of the butter, the beer, beef, and bisket. ”

“ Why, says George, I know one town where there is a hundred bone bridges in it; another town where there are fifty draw-bridges in it; another town where, tho’ a man commits murder, treason, or owes never so much money, he runs to that town, and gets in below a stair, no laws nor justice can harm him. The nobleman offered immediately to stake a hundred pounds, that there was no such towns in Europe, besides in Scotland. ”

“ John Cheap the chapman, was a very comical short thick fellow, with a broad face and a long nose; both lame and lazy, and something leacherous among the lasses: he chused rather to sit idle than work at any time, as he was a hater of hard labour. No man needed to offer him cheese and bread after he curst he would not have it; for he would blush at bread and milk, when hungry, as a beggar doth at a babee. He got the name of John Cheap the chapman, by his selling 20 needles for a penny, and twa leather laces for a farthing. ”

“ Tom. Ho, poor Pady, I suppose you would not stay long there.
Teag. Arra, dear honey, I could have staid there long enough, but when a man is poor his friends think little of him: I told him I was going to see my brother Harry: Harry, said he, is dead: dead said I, and who killed him? Why said he, death: Allelieu, dear honey, and where did he kill him? said I. In his bed, said he; O what for a cowardly action was that, said I, to kill a man in his bed: and what is this fellow death? said I. What is he, He is one that kills more than the head butcher in all Cork does. ”

“ Is it not come to pass, the taverns roar like Ætna’s mouth; children follow their gaming, and old sinners their stroling about, nothing stopt but coal-carts and common carriers, the Sabbath lasts no longer than the sermon, and the sermon is measured by a little sand in a glass; many, too many frequent the church, seemingly only to show their antic dress, with heads of a monstruous form, more surprizing than those described by Aristotle, as for length exceeding that of an asses’s head, ears and all ”

“ Then said my Lord, turn your face to Maggy Millheads, and your arse to the sea; this they did in all haste. And what will we do now? said Willy; no more, said my Lord, but gang away home Willy; O my bows, O my blessings come o’er your bonny face, my Lord, I wish you may never die, nor yet grow sick, nor naebody kill you: ye’re the best Lord I ken on earth, for we thought a’ to be made dead men and sogers, ye’re wiser than a’ the witches in Fife. ”

“ He gave the poor Woman more courage than any she had spoken with in London; for every one told her, that all the attornies in the World could not free her. So accordingly at the day appointed, George dressed himself like an attorney with his gown, and every thing as he had been really so. The court being fenced, and the process read over, expences and the value of the pack, having amounted to above seven hundred pounds, was ordered to be put in decreet against the poor Widow, which every one was bemoaning, but could give her no relief. ”

“ As I was an able bodied man in the face, I thought to be made a brigadeer, a grandedeer, or a fuzeleer, or even one of them blew gowns that holds the fiery stick to the bung-hole of the big cannons, when they let them off, to fright away the French; I was as sure as no man alive ere I came from Cork, the least preferment I could get, was to be riding-master to a regiment of marines, or one of the black horse itself.
[197]
Tom. Well Pady, you seem to be a very clever man, to be all in one body, what height are you?
Teag. Arra, dear shoy, I am five foot nothing, all but one inch. ”

“ Tom. What, had you no meat nor money along with you?
Teag. Arra, dear shoy, I gave all the money to the captain of the house or gudeman of the ship, to carry me into the sea, or over to England, and when I was like to eat my old brogues for want of victuals, I drew my hanger and cut their leather sack thinkin’ to get a lick of their meal; but allelieu, dear shoy, I found nothing, meal nor seeds, but a parcel of papers and letters, a poor morsel indeed for a hungry man. ”

“ All the time Tom lay in his bed, and his father much vexed at his laziness, and told him that he would never have the benefit of more schooling as his master had so many grievious complaints against him; at which Tom rejoiced within himself as he did not value learning, nor put it in balance with his designed tricks; Tom then scampered away, and meeting with an egg cadger coming to Edinburgh, desired him to alight from his horse, and he would give him a dram at the Fallow kirk, at which, the poor man was glad, and went in with him. ”

“ Then says the bishop, I always thought the Scots lived well till now; I would not be a Scotsman for the world. O said George, if a Scotsman live but twenty years, and get but nineteen years meat, he cannot be badly off. What, not badly off, and want a year’s victuals? said the bishop; upon my word of honour, if I wanted one days victuals, I’d be sure to die the next. O, says George, we drink water when we cannot do better, and that puts us in remembrance of wealth; for a dish of contentment is good cheer. Then, said the bishop, I’ll drink water too if it be good for the memory. Ay do ”

“ Pady. Because they have a liberty to eat flesh in lent, and every thing that’s fit for the belly.
Tom. What, Pady, are you such a lover of flesh that you would change your profession for it?
Pady. O yes, that’s what I did, I love flesh of all kinds, sheep’s beef, swine’s mutton, hare’s flesh, and hen’s venison; but our religion is one of the hungriest in all the world, ah! but it makes my teeth to weep, and my belly to water, when I see the Scotch Presbyterians and English churchmen, in time of lent, feeding upon bull’s bastards, and sheep’s young children. ”

“ The beauty of old age, thy hoary head and loutching shoulders inclines to mortality, yet I’ll compare thee to an eagle that has renewed her youth, or a leek with a white head and a green tail, this comes to thee with my kind compliments, for the kisses of thy lips, and the kindness I had to thy late bed-fellow fiddler Pate my brother pensioner, ah! ”

“ A. The married women turn their backsides to the goodman’s belly; virgins and those going mad for marriage the heat of their maidenhead keeps them warm, old matrons, whirl’d o’er maidens, widow and widows bewitch’d hold up their coldest parts to the fire. ”

“ Arra, dear shoy, his head was cutted off before I engaged him, else I had not done it.
Tom. O then Pady, you acted like a fool; but you are not such a big fool as many take you to be, you might pass for a philosopher.
Teag. A fulusifair, my father was a fulusifair, besides he was a man under great authority by law, condemning the just and clearing the guilty: do you know how they call the horse’s mother?
Tom. Why they call her a mare.
Teag. A mare, ay very well minded, by shaint Patrick, my father was a mare in Cork. ”

“ Work now or want, and do not say that the world has war’d you; but Lofty-Nodle, your giddy-headed-mother has led you astray, by learning you to be a lady, before ye was fit to be a servant-lass, by teaching you laziness instead of hard labour, by giving you such a high conceit of yourself, that no body thinks any thing of you now, and you may judge yourself to be one of those, that wise people call Littleworth ”

“ Home they came again, and she was exceedingly distressed as a woman could be, and cry’d out, ‘It was a horrid thing to take her out of a house.’ The taylor seeing her so bad, thought she would have died, and ran as fast as he could and brought her a dram, but she in her hypocrisy pretended she could not take it, and called him to help her to bed. Into her bed he lays her, and he was not well gone until she fell to her bottle, taking two or three hearty gluts, then she roars out murder, for she was poisoned, she was poisoned. ”

“ The poor coachman drove on till he came to the foresaid inn, where he alighted and opened the door to let out his passenger; but seeing the coach empty, and a great hole in the backside of it, he cried out, he believed he had had the devil in the coach, and that he had taken away the backside of it with him. The people of the inn came all flocking about to see what was done, and then perceiving the lines on the inside of the coach, which the bishop came and read himself, they all concluded it to be done by George, but could make nothing of it ”

“ The rest of this paragraph in the 1824 edition reads:—‘I mean the flyers, who have got more silver than sense, more haughtiness than gold, and value themselves as treasure incomprehensible, their whole body as if set about with precious stones, and the solemnity, or their marriage, is like a peace after a bloody war.’
[150] There has always been in Scotland a tendency to make the celebration of a marriage the occasion of great festivity. The Church for a time tried to keep this within proper bounds, and generally allowed an expense of six shillings Scots (six pence sterling) for each guest. ”

“ But a poor cadger had the misfortune to be coming on the road at the time, and his horse taking fright at this unusual sight, threw off the creels which broke the poor man’s eggs all to smash. Which so enraged him, that he lashed her buttocks with his whip in so unmerciful a manner, that with the smart and shame together, she had not the least inclination to sleep for the remaining part of the day. [56]
Tom being grown up to the years and age of a man, thought himself more wiser and slyer than his father ”

“ Then, cries the other, I’ll swim none with him, if he takes his sword. Ay, but, says the master, you shall, or lose the wager; take you another sword with you. No, says the fellow, I never did swim with a sword, nor any man else, that ever I saw or heard of; I know not but that wild man will kill me in the deep water; I would not for the whole world venture myself with him and a sword. The captain seeing his servant afraid to venture, or if he did, he would never see him again alive; therefore, he desired an agreement with the drover, who at first seemed unwilling ”