“He's gone, Johnny; ay, man, he is so.”
“Death must come to all,” some one would waken up to murmur.
“Ay,” Lang Tammas would reply, putting on the coping-stone, “in the morning we are strong and in the evening we are cut down.”
“We are so, Tammas; ou ay, we are so; we're here the wan day an' gone the neist.”
“Little Rathie wasna a crittur I took till; no, I canna say he was,” said Bowie Haggart, so called because his legs described a parabola, “but be maks a vary creeditable corp [corpse]. I will say that for him. It's wonderfu' hoo death improves a body. Ye cudna hae said as Little Rathie was a weel-faured man when he was i' the flesh.”
Bowie was the wright, and attended burials in his official capacity. He had the gift of words to an uncommon degree, and I do not forget his crushing blow at the reputation of the poet Burns, as delivered under the auspices of the Thrums Literary Society. “I am of opeenion,” said Bowie, “that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion.”
“He was a queer stock, Little Rathie, michty queer,” said Tammas Haggart, Bowie's brother, who was a queer stock himself, but was not aware of it; “but, ou, I'm thinkin' the wife had something to do wi't. She was ill to manage, an' Little Rathie hadna the way o' the women. He hadna the knack o' managin' them's yo micht say—no, Little Rathie hadna the knack.”
“They're kittle cattle, the women,” said the farmer of Craigiebuckle—son of the Craigiebuckle mentioned elsewhere—a little gloomily. “I've often thocht maiterimony is no onlike the lucky bags th' auld wifies has at the muckly. There's prizes an' blanks baith inside, but, losh, ye're far frae sure what ye'll draw oot when ye put in yer han'.”
“Ou, weel,” said Tammas complacently, “there's truth in what ye say, but the women can be managed if ye have the knack.”
“Some o' them,” said Cragiebuckle woefully.