[71] Dogs and chapmen were proverbial enemies. The tradition regarding the feud will be found in the answer to the question—‘What is the reason that dogs are worse on chapmen, than on other strange people?’—in [The Scots Piper’s Queries].
[72] Chapmen were looked upon by the common people as characters whose disinclination to work led them into a lazy life. Their services to the community were acknowledged, but only under a protest that had they not been ‘haters of hard work’ they could not have gone into the business. This feeling, however, arose chiefly from the popular idea, which still finds expression, that nothing can be called work except manual labour.
[73] A most effectual weapon of defence against the physical as well as the spiritual assaults of Satan. Sinclair, in his work entitled Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, tells a most extraordinary story of the means taken to ‘lay’ the ‘devil of Glenluce.’
[74] The words, ‘very sick,’ are here added in Morren’s edition.
[75] The common people had strange notions about foreigners, as this passage shows. A somewhat similar idea is given expression to in [The History of the Haverel Wives], where Janet speaks of Italy as the country ‘where the auld Pape their [the priests’] father, the de’il, the witches, brownies and fairies dwal.’
[76] There are some unimportant verbal differences between the text here and what is to be found in Morren’s edition. At the asterisk there is inserted:—‘thrawing my face terrible at her.’
[77] Morren has here:—‘And thou, O monsieur Lucifer, Satan Diable,’ etc.
[78] A very fair indication of the unnecessary ceremonies gone through by wizards and witches. Lothian Tom used some ‘enchantment’ under equally interesting circumstances. See vol. ii. [p. 81].
[79] Before the introduction of the present complex Poor Law system, each parish in Scotland, through its kirk session, gave relief to its own poor. The strictness of the authorities passed into a proverb. Many parishes had barrows on which the infirm poor not belonging to them were wheeled outside the boundaries and left to do for themselves as best they could. We have read of a case in which relief was refused to a sickly stranger, and the village joiner was employed to make a barrow for the person’s removal. Before the work was done the poor unfortunate had died.
[80] In Morren’s edition there is here added:—‘and give us a proper drubbing.’