A whole volume might be filled with the published anecdotes recording in more or less ludicrous form the effects of whisky. I will only give one or two, which I have never seen in print. A man who was wending his way homeward very unsteadily from a lengthened carouse was heard to address the whisky inside of him, ‘I could ha’ carryit ye easier in a jar.’ The quantity of liquor he had consumed may be imagined from the size of the vessel he required to contain it.
Sir Charles Lyell used to tell with great glee a story from his own county of Forfar, belonging to the days of deep potations, when it was the belief that ‘drinking largely sobers us again.’ A party had met at a country-house, and continued their debauch so long that the laird, Powrie by name, had fallen below the table, while most of the other guests had gone to sleep. Two or three of them, however, who had managed to evade the deepest potations, resolved to play off a trick on the laird. One accordingly climbed up to the roof of the old mansion and, at the risk of his neck, reached the chimney of the dining-room, down which he roared in his loudest voice, ‘Powrie, Powrie, it’s the Day o’ Judgment’; whereupon the laird was heard, by those outside the door, to raise himself on his elbow and hiccup out, ‘Eh, Lord forgie me, and me fou’.’
A drunken fellow was found lying at the side of the road by a policeman, who asked him for his name. The answer was, ‘“My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills,”——but Hicks is on the door.’
AN OLD SCOTTISH TOAST
With the heavy drinking of those days various connected customs have nearly or wholly disappeared. One still meets with old-fashioned gentlemen, especially at public dinners, who ‘take wine with you.’ But the rounds of toasts and sentiments, that must have been such an insufferable burden to our grandfathers and grandmothers, have happily vanished. One of the oddest survivals of these toasts was one I heard proposed by the old landlady of a little inn not far from the scene of the Battle of Drumclog. Belonging to the type of landlord
Who takes his chirping pint and cracks his jokes,
she welcomed her chance guests into her roomy and clean kitchen, with its bright coal-fire flanked on either side by an empty arm-chair. Having to spend a night in her house, I was invited to one of these chairs, while she took that on the opposite side of the hearth, and her family attended to the household work. Honoured thus far, I knew my duty would be to call for something ‘for the good of the house,’ and soon found that my worthy hostess was not unwilling to partake of my ‘brew.’ Accordingly I made her a glass of toddy of the strength and sweetness she preferred, which she accepted, with the following preface: ‘Here’s to a’ your fouk an’ a’ oor fouk, an’ a’ the fouk that’s been kind to your fouk an’ oor fouk; an’ if a’ fouk had aye been as kind to fouk as your fouk’s been to oor fouk, there wad aye hae been guid fouk i’ the warld, sin’ fouk’s been fouk.’
The change of dinner customs, however, has led to whimsical incidents of another kind from those of the old days of hard drinking. A story is told in Forfarshire of an inexperienced lad who was improvised to do duty at a dinner party, and was instructed by the lady of the house as to what he was to do with the different wines, particularly as to the claret, of which one kind was to be served with the dinner, and the other, of better quality, with the dessert. When the dessert came, she was dismayed to hear him begin at the far end of the table and ask each guest in a loud voice: ‘Port, sherry, or inferior clāret.’