From his red poll a redder cowl hung down;
His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown;
A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old;
Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd;
While at his side horn-handled steels and knives
Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps' lives.
ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_.
But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a
wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few
things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what
I am going to relate.
It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock-
fighting on Fastern's E'en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the
other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that
business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound
duckings--but this was none of these.
Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large
stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest;
so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the
street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone,
(I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged
with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that
one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose:
and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the
workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at
my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung
to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went
my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before
you could say Jack Robison, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes;
his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives
buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him,
but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive
his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me
hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to
loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the
key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight;
and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I
landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf's skin. I thought I would have
gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked
round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and
there was a garden behind; but how was I to get out? I danced round and
round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten
face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the
darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and
calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit
throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on
pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in
the bloody chamber!
And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and
all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a
grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their
holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I
thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more;
for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and
feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and
more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the sheep-
heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At last
I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as wet
as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the wooden
spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they were
like to come off--but no, it would not do. At length, when I had greeted
myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie, I saw
auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I reeled
and screamed till she heard me.--It was like being transported into
heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her eyes,
was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his hat,
had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her foot,
(I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was a
douce woman,) and gave him such a kick and a push, that he played bleach
over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we
ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a
devil incarnate.