“Weel it may,” answered Tammie, “or the story’s lost in the telling; for the collyers that fand him shook as if they had been seized wi’ the ague. The dumb animal, ye observe, had far mair sense than him; for, when his fitting gaed way, instead of following it had plunged back; and the bit o’ the bridle, that had broken, was still in his grup, when they spied him wi’ their lanterns.”
“It was an awful like way to leave the world,” said I.
“’Deed it was, and nae less,” answered Tammie, “to gang to his lang account in the middle of his mad thochtlessness, without a moment’s warning. But see, yonder’s Cousland lying right forrit to the east hand.”
At this very nick of time Benjie was seized with a severe kink; so Tammie stopped his cart, and I held his head over the side of it till the cough went by. I thought his inside would have jumped out; but he fell sound asleep in two or three minutes; and we jogged on till we came to the yill-house door, where, after louping out, we got a pickle pease-strae to Tammie’s horse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN—MANSIE AND TAMMIE AT MY LORD’S RACES
It happened curiously that, of all the days of the year, this should have been the one on which the Carters’-play was held; and, by good luck, we were just in time to see that grand sight. The whole regiment of carters were paraded up at my Lord’s door, for so they call their box-master; and a beautiful thing it was, I can assure ye. What a sight of ribands was on the horses! Many a crame must have been emptied ere such a number of manes and long tails could have been busked out. The beasts themselves, poor things, I dare say, wondered much at their bravery, and no less I am sure did the riders. They looked for all the world like living haberdashery shops. Great bunches of wallflower, thyme, spearmint, batchelor buttons, gardeners’ gartens, peony roses, gillyflower, and southernwood, were stuck in their button holes; and broad belts of stripped silk, of every colour in the rainbow, were flung across their shoulders. As to their hats, the man would have had a clear e’e that could have kent what was their shape or colour. They were all rowed round with ribands, and puffed about the rim with long green or white feathers; and cockades were stuck on the off side, to say nothing of long strips fleeing behind them in the wind like streamers. Save us! to see men so proud of finery; if they had been peacocks one would have thought less; but in decent sober men, the heads of
small families, and with no great wages, the thing was crazy-like. Was it not?
At long and last we saw them all set in motion, like a regiment of dragoons, two and two, with a drum and fife at their head, as if they had been marching to the field of battle. By-the-bye, it was two of our own volunteer lads that were playing that day before them, Rory Skirl the snab, and Geordie Thump the dyer; so this, ye see, verified the old proverb, that travel where ye like, to the world’s end, ye’ll aye meet with kent faces; Tammie and me coming out to the yill-house door to see them pass by.
Behind the drum and fife came a big, half-crazy looking chield, with a broad blue bonnet on his head, and a red worsted cherry sticking in the crown of it. He was carrying a new car-saddle over his shoulder on a well-cleaned pitchfork. Syne came three abreast, one on each side of my lord, being the key-keepers; he keeping the box, and they keeping the keys, in case like he should take any thing out. And syne came the auld my lord—him that was my lord last year, ye observe; and syne came the colours, as bright and bonny as mostly any thing ye ever saw. On one of them was painted a plough and harrows, and a man sowing wheat; over the top of which were gilded letters, the which I was able to read when I put on my specs, being, if I mind well, “Speed the Plough.” On the other one, which was a mazarine blue with
yellow fringes, was the picture of two carters, with flat bonnets on their heads, the tane with a whip in his hand, and the tither a rake, making hay like. Then came they all passing by two and two, looking as if each one of them had been the Duke of Buccleuch himself, every one rigged out in his best; the young callants, such like as had just entered the box, coming hindmost, and thinking themselves, I daresay, no small drink, and the day a great one when they were first allowed to be art and part in such a grand procession.