“Any man may know that, who is in your company,” the father went on speaking.
“And how, good father?” I asked him; “sure I have caught none of her saintliness.”
“A saint I do not call you, but I scarce call you a Scot. For you are a clerk.”
“The Maid taught me none of my clergy, father, nor have I taught her any of mine.”
“She needs it not. But you are peaceful and gentle; you brawl not, nor drink, nor curse . . . ”
“Nay, father, with whom am I to brawl, or how should I curse in your good company? Find you Scots so froward?”
“But now, pretending to be our friends, a band of them is harrying the Sologne country . . . ”
“They will be Johnstons and Jardines, and wild wood folk of Galloway,” I said. “These we scarce reckon Scots, but rather Picts, and half heathen. And the Johnstons and Jardines are here belike, because they have made Scotland over hot to hold them. We are a poor folk, but honest, let by the clans of the Land Debatable and of Ettrick Forest, and the Border freebooters, and the Galloway Picts, and Maxwells, and Glendinnings, and the red-shanked, jabbering Highlanders and Islesmen, and some certain of the Angus folk, and, maybe, a wild crew in Strathclyde.”
“Yours, then, is a very large country?”
“About the bigness of France, or, may be, not so big. And the main part of it, and the most lawful and learned, is by itself, in a sort, a separate kingdom, namely Fife, whence I come myself. The Lothians, too, and the shire of Ayr, if you except Carrick, are well known for the lands of peaceful and sober men.”