[The edition reprinted from here is ‘the tenth edition,’ as the title page bears. The full title is:—‘The Young Coal-Man’s Courtship to a Creel-Wife’s Daughter, or, a Dialogue between an Old Woman and her Son: wherein she instructs him in the Real Art of Courtship. Very beneficial for blate Wooers or young Beginners. The Tenth Edition. Containing all its Three Parts. Glasgow: Printed and sold by J. & J. Robertson, MDCCLXXXII.’ It is a 16 pp. 12mo.]
THE YOUNG COALMAN’S COURTSHIP TO A CREEL-WIFE’S DAUGHTER.
All you that’s curious of Courtship, give attention to this History of Mary and her son Sawny, a young Coalman, who lived in the country a few miles from Edinburgh.
Mary, his mither, was a gay hearty wife, had mair wantonness nor wealth; was twelve years a married wife, nine years a widow, and was very chaste in her behaviour, wi’ her ain tale (for want of charging:) for a’ this time of her widowhood, there was never a man got a kiss o’ her lips, or laid a foul hand on her hind quarters.
Sawny her son was a stout young raw lown, full faced, wi’ flabby cheeks, duddy breeks, and a ragged doublet, gade always wi’ his bosom bare, sometimes had ae gartan, a lingle or rash-rape was good enough for Sawny: his very belly was a’ sun burnt and brown like a piper’s bag, or the head of an auld drum; and yet his beard began to sprout out like herring banes: he took thick brose to his breakfast, and baps and ale through the day, and when the coals sell’d dear, when the wind was cauld, bought an oven farl and twa Dunbar weathers,[27] or a Glasgow magistrate,[28] which fish-wives ca’s a waslen herrin.
His mither, auld Mary plagued him ay in the morning, got up when the hens keckled, reinged the ribs, blew her snotter-box, primed her nose, kindled her tobacco pipe, and at every puff breathed out fretting against her hard fortune, and lanely single life. O but a widow be a poor name, but I live in a wilderness in this lang-lonen; mony a man gaes by my door, but few looks in to poor auld Mary: Hoch hey, will I never win out o’ this weery’d life.—Wa’ Sawny man, wa’ Sawny man; wilt thou na rise the day; the sun’s up, an a’ the nibours round about; Willie and Charlie is to the hill an hour syne, an’ haf-gate hame again. Wilt thou rise and gi’ the beasts a bite; thou minds na’ them, I wat man.