My lovely Bett,
The beauty of old age, thy hoary head and loutching shoulders inclines to mortality, yet I’ll compare thee to an eagle that has renewed her youth, or a leek with a white head and a green tail, this comes to thee with my kind compliments, for the kisses of thy lips, and the kindness I had to thy late bed-fellow fiddler Pate my brother pensioner, ah! how we drank other’s healths with the broe of the brewket[157] ewes, we brought from boughts of the German Boors, but its nonesence, to blow the dead when in the dust, yet a better violer never scrided on a silken cord, or kittled a cat’s tryps with his finger-ends, his elbow was souple as a eel, and his fingers dabbed at the jigging end like a hungry hen picking barley: I seldom or ever saw him drunk, if keep him from whisky and whisky from him; except that night, he trysted the pair of free stone breeches from Joseph the mason, and now my dear Bessy he’s got them he’s got them, for a free stone covers his body, holds him down and will do, and now, now, my dainty thing, my bonny thing, my best match for matrimony come take me now, or tell me now, I am in anger,[158] I’ll wait nae langer, I say be clever, either now or never, its a rapture of love, that does me move, I’ll have a wife or by my life, if she should be blind and criple, I’ll sell my win, for her meat and fun, the like ne’er gade down her thraple; so now Bessy I love you and my love lies upon you, and if ye love not me again some ill chance come upon you, as am flyting free and flitting free am both in love and banter; or may your rumple rust for me, I’ve sworn it by my chanter.
From John Kirk’s Wind-mill at Corky Crown.
Finis.
THE SCOTS PIPER’S QUERIES:
OR
JOHN FALKIRK’S CARICHES.
[Reprinted from an undated edition published by C. Randall, Stirling, and collated with one by J. Morren, Edinburgh, and the modern Glasgow undated edition. The full title is:—‘The Scots Piper’s Queries: or John Falkirk’s Cariches, made Both Plain and Easy.