The Life of Mansie Wauch tailor in Dalkeith. D. M. Moir
for one of a clear head and a stout heart to go through with.
Notwithstanding, however, these plain and evident conclusions, even after writing the whole out, I thought I felt a kind of a qualm of conscience about submitting an account of my actions and transactions to the world during my lifetime; and I had almost determined, for decency’s sake, not to let the papers be printed till after I had been gathered to my fathers; but I took into consideration the duty that one man owes to another; and that my keeping back, and withholding these curious documents, would be in a great measure hindering the improvement of society, so far as I was myself personally concerned. Now this is a business, which James Batter agrees with me in thinking is carried on, furthered, and brought about, by every one furnishing his share of experience to the general stock. Let-a-be this plain truth, another point of argument for my bringing out my bit book at the present time is, that I am here to the fore bodily, with the use of my seven senses, to give day and date to all such as venture to put on the misbelieving front of Sadducees, with regard to any of the accidents, mischances, marvellous escapes, and extraordinary businesses therein related; and to show them, as plain as the bool of a pint stoup, that each and everything set down by me within its boards is just as true, as that a blind man needs not spectacles, or that my name is Mansie Wauch.
Perhaps as a person willing and anxious to give every man his due, it is necessary for me explicitly to mention, that, in the course of this book, I am indebted to my friend James Batter, for his able help in assisting me to spell the kittle words, and in rummaging out scraps of poem-books for headpieces to my different chapters which appear in the table of contents.
LIST OF CONTENTS
Preliminaries
I. Our Old Grandfather,
II. My Own Father,
The weaver he gied up the stair,
Dancing and singing;
A bunch o’ bobbins at his back,
Rattling and ringing.
Old Song.
III. Coming Into The World,
—At first the babe
Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass
Across the midwife’s cheek, when, holding up
The feeble wretch, she to the father said,
“A fine man-child!” What else could they expect?
The father being, as I said before,
A weaver.
Hogg’s Poetic Mirror.
IV. Calf-Love,
Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?
Burns.
For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.
Popular Heroic Song.
V. Cursecowl,
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 sheep’s lives.
Odoherty’s Miscellanea Classica.
VI. Pushing my Fortune,
Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness,
It winna let a puir bodie
Gang about their business.
James Hogg.
VII. The Forewarning,
I had a dream which was not all a dream.
Byron.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
Campbell.
VIII. Letting Lodgings,
Then first he ate the white puddings,
And syne he ate the black, O;
Though muckle thought the Gudewife to hersell,
Yet ne’er a word she spak, O.
But up then started our Gudeman,
And an angry man was he, O.
Old Song.
IX. Benjie’s Christening,
We’ll hap and row, hap and row,
We’ll hap and row the feetie o’t.
It is a wee bit weary thing,
I dinnie bide the greetie o’t.
Provost Creech.
An honest man, close button’d to the chin,
Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within.
Cowper.
This great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.
Shakespeare.
X. The Resurrection Men,
How then was the Devil drest!
He was in his Sunday’s best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind where his tail came thro’.
Over the hill, and over the dale,
And he went over the plain:
And backward and forward he switch’d his tail,
As a gentleman switches his cane.
Coleridge.
XI. Taffy with the Pigtail,
Song,
Song of the South,
School Recollections,
Elegiac Stanzas,
Dirge,
In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man;
I’ve heard he once was tall.
A long blue livery-coat has he,
That’s fair behind and fair before;
Yet, meet him where you will, you see
At once that he is poor.
Wordsworth.
XII. Volunteering,
Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow:
Many a banner spread
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the King, and our old Scottish glory.
Sir