Scotty shook hands without demur and swiftly departed, fearful lest Geordie might regret the arrangement.
Geordie leant back in his chair and heaved a sigh of relief as he offered up a silent thanksgiving to Providence for having softened Scotty’s heart.
‘It’s aal right noo,’ he murmured. ‘Wi’ the help I’ve had from above I’ve catched him at the finish, an’ chapel will do the rest.’
Thus for some time he reflected devoutly. Then of a sudden a smile broke upon his lips and he clapped his hand vigorously upon his thigh. ‘By!’ he exclaimed aloud, ‘but I’s a proper Jesu-yte efter aal!’
‘GEORDIE RIDE-THE-STANG’
The custom of ‘riding the stang’ is now obsolete, so that the date of this story must be put back a number of years, though Mr. Brockett,[19] writing in his glossary of Northumbrian words, in the early part of this century, says, ‘I have myself been witness to processions of this kind. Offenders of this description are mounted a-straddle on a long pole, or stang, supported upon the shoulders of their companions. On this painful and fickle seat they are borne about the neighbourhood backwards, attended by a swarm of children huzzaing and throwing all manner of filth. It is considered a mark of the highest reproach, and the person who has been thus treated seldom recovers his character in the opinion of his neighbours.’ The method of divination by the puddings has been practised within living memory, and even yet may be resorted to by way of a jest upon occasion.
Since writing the above the author has come across in Mr. R. Blakeborough’s interesting book, ‘Yorkshire Wit, Character and Customs,’ a different version of ‘riding the stang,’ to which he is indebted for the first four lines of the ‘furrinor’s’ song. In a footnote Mr. Blakeborough adds that the ‘stang’ was ridden at Thoralby, Wensleydale, as recently as October, 1896.
There was French blood in Geordie Robertson’s wife, Mary, and it may perhaps have been owing to her origin that she was so eager for revenge when she found herself deceived by her husband.
She had begun to suspect him of infidelity even before a neighbour had given her a hint that he had a ‘fancy’ wife away in Bridgeton, for her husband brought home less and less with his ‘pack’ after his weekly tramp was over, and when she asked for explanations he ‘called’ her with most abusive virulence.