“Were you at the meeting of the traitors at Lanark on the 12th of January?”
“I never was amang traitors that I was certain of till this day—Let them take that! bloody fruesome beasts.”
“Were you at Lanark on that day?”
“If you had been there you would have seen.”
“D‑‑n the old b‑‑! Burn her with matches—squeeze her with pincers as long as there’s a whole piece of her together—then throw her into prison, and let her lie till she rot—the old wrinkled hag of h‑‑! Good woman, I pity you; you shall yet go free if you will tell us where you last saw Hamilton and your own goodman.”
“Ye sall hing me up by the tongue first, and cut me a’ in collops while I’m hingin.”
“Burn her in the cheek, cut baith her lugs out, and let her gae to h‑‑ her own way.”
After this strange soliloquy, the speaker sobbed aloud, spoke in a suppressed voice for some time, and then began a strain so sweet and melancholy, that it thrilled the hearer, and made her tremble where she stood. The tune was something like the Broom of Cowdenknows, the sweetest and most plaintive of the ancient Scottish airs; but it was sung so slow, as to bear with it a kind of solemnity.
“The kye are rowting in the lone,
The ewes bleat on the brae,
O, what can ail my auld gudeman,
He bides sae lang away!