Upon a consideration of many things, it appears to me very strange, that
almost the whole tot of our improvements became, in a manner, the parents
of new plagues and troubles to the magistrates. It might reasonably have
been thought that the lamps in the streets would have been a terror to
evil-doers, and the plainstone side-pavements paths of pleasantness to
them that do well; but, so far from this being the case, the very reverse
was the consequence. The servant lasses went freely out (on their
errands) at night, and at late hours, for their mistresses, without the
protection of lanterns, by which they were enabled to gallant in a way
that never could have before happened: for lanterns are kenspeckle
commodities, and of course a check on every kind of gavaulling. Thus,
out of the lamps sprung no little irregularity in the conduct of
servants, and much bitterness of spirit on that account to mistresses,
especially to those who were of a particular turn, and who did not choose
that their maidens should spend their hours a-field, when they could be
profitably employed at home.
Of the plagues that were from the plainstones, I have given an exemplary
specimen in the plea between old perjink Miss Peggy Dainty, and the widow
Fenton, that was commonly called the Tappit-hen. For the present, I
shall therefore confine myself in this _nota bena_ to an accident that
happened to Mrs Girdwood, the deacon of the coopers' wife--a most
managing, industrious, and indefatigable woman, that allowed no grass to
grow in her path.
Mrs Girdwood had fee'd one Jeanie Tirlet, and soon after she came home,
the mistress had her big summer washing at the public washing-house on
the green--all the best of her sheets and napery--both what had been used
in the course of the winter, and what was only washed to keep clear in
the colour, were in the boyne. It was one of the greatest doings of the
kind that the mistress had in the whole course of the year, and the value
of things intrusted to Jeanie's care was not to be told, at least so said
Mrs Girdwood herself.
Jeanie and Marion Sapples, the washerwoman, with a pickle tea and sugar
tied in the corners of a napkin, and two measured glasses of whisky in an
old doctor's bottle, had been sent with the foul clothes the night before
to the washing-house, and by break of day they were up and at their work;
nothing particular, as Marion said, was observed about Jeanie till after
they had taken their breakfast, when, in spreading out the clothes on the
green, some of the ne'er-do-weel young clerks of the town were seen
gaffawing and haverelling with Jeanie, the consequence of which was, that
all the rest of the day she was light-headed; indeed, as Mrs Girdwood
told me herself, when Jeanie came in from the green for Marion's dinner,
she couldna help remarking to her goodman, that there was something fey
about the lassie, or, to use her own words, there was a storm in her
tail, light where it might. But little did she think it was to bring the
dule it did to her.
Jeanie having gotten the pig with the wonted allowance of broth and beef
in it for Marion, returned to the green, and while Marion was eating the
same, she disappeared. Once away, aye away; hilt or hair of Jeanie was
not seen that night. Honest Marion Sapples worked like a Trojan to the
gloaming, but the light latheron never came back; at last, seeing no
other help for it, she got one of the other women at the washing-house to
go to Mrs Girdwood and to let her know what had happened, and how the
best part of the washing would, unless help was sent, be obliged to lie
out all night.
The deacon's wife well knew the great stake she had on that occasion in
the boyne, and was for a season demented with the thought; but at last
summoning her three daughters, and borrowing our lass, and Mr Smeddum the
tobacconist's niece, she went to the green, and got everything safely
housed, yet still Jeanie Tirlet never made her appearance.
Mrs Girdwood and her daughters having returned home, in a most uneasy
state of mind on the lassie's account, the deacon himself came over to
me, to consult what he ought to do as the head of a family. But I
advised him to wait till Jeanie cast up, which was the next morning.
Where she had been, and who she was with, could never be delved out of
her; but the deacon brought her to the clerk's chamber, before Bailie
Kittlewit, who was that day acting magistrate, and he sentenced her to be
dismissed from her servitude with no more than the wage she had actually
earned. The lassie was conscious of the ill turn she had played, and
would have submitted in modesty; but one of the writers' clerks, an
impudent whipper-snapper, that had more to say with her than I need to
say, bade her protest and appeal against the interlocutor, which the
daring gipsy, so egged on, actually did, and the appeal next court day
came before me. Whereupon, I, knowing the outs and ins of the case,
decerned that she should be fined five shillings to the poor of the
parish, and ordained to go back to Mrs Girdwood's, and there stay out the
term of her servitude, or failing by refusal so to do, to be sent to
prison, and put to hard labour for the remainder of the term.
Every body present, on hearing the circumstances, thought this a most
judicious and lenient sentence; but so thought not the other servant
lasses of the town; for in the evening, as I was going home, thinking no
harm, on passing the Cross-well, where a vast congregation of them were
assembled with their stoups discoursing the news of the day, they opened
on me like a pack of hounds at a tod, and I verily believed they would
have mobbed me had I not made the best of my way home. My wife had been
at the window when the hobleshow began, and was just like to die of
diversion at seeing me so set upon by the tinklers; and when I entered
the dining-room she said, "Really, Mr Pawkie, ye're a gallant man, to be
so weel in the good graces of the ladies." But although I have often
since had many a good laugh at the sport, I was not overly pleased with
Mrs Pawkie at the time--particularly as the matter between the deacon's
wife and Jeanie did not end with my interlocutor. For the latheron's
friend in the court having discovered that I had not decerned she was to
do any work to Mrs Girdwood, but only to stay out her term, advised her
to do nothing when she went back but go to her bed, which she was bardy
enough to do, until my poor friend, the deacon, in order to get a quiet
riddance of her, was glad to pay her full fee, and board wages for the
remainder of her time. This was the same Jeanie Tirlet that was
transported for some misdemeanour, after making both Glasgow and
Edinburgh owre het to hold her.