XIV HOLIDAYS
Well, Erchie; not away on the Fair holidays?” I asked the old man one July day on meeting him as he came out of a little grocer’s shop in the New City Road. The dignity of his profession is ever dear to Erchie; he kept his purchase behind his back, but I saw later it was kindling material for the morning fire.
“Not me!” said he. “There’s nae Fair holidays for puir auld Erchie, no’ even on the Sunday, or I might hae ta’en the skoosh car doon the wye o’ Yoker, noo that a hurl on Sunday’s no’ that awfu’ sair looked doon on, or the ‘Mornin’ Star’ ‘bus to Paisley. But Jinnet went awa’ on Settur-day wi’ her guid-sister to Dunoon, and I’m my lee-lane in the hoose till the morn’s mornin’. It’s nae divert, I’m tellin’ ye; there’s a lot o’ things to mind forbye the windin’ o’ the nock on Setturday and watering the fuchsia. I can wait a municeepal banquet wi’ ony man in my tred, but I’m no’ great hand at cookin’ for mysel’.
“Did I ever tell ye aboot the time the wife was awa’ afore at a Fair, and I took a notion o’ a seedcake Duffy’s first wife had to the tea she trated me to on the Sawbath?
“‘It’s as easy to mak’ as boilin’ an egg,’ says Mrs Duffy, and gied me the receipt for’t on con-deetion that when I made it I was to bring her a sample. Something went wrang, and I brought her the sample next day in a bottle. It was a gey damp seedcake thon!
“I havena been awa’ at a Fair mysel’ since aboot the time Wullie was in the Foondry Boys, and used to gang to the Hielan’s. I mind o’t fine. Nooadays, in oor hoose, ye wad never jalouse it was the Fair at a’ if it wasna for the nae parridge in the mornin’s.
“Ye’ll hae noticed, maybe, that though we’re a’ fearfu’ fond o’ oor parridge in Scotland, and some men mak’ a brag o’ takin’ them every mornin’ just as if they were a cauld bath, we’re gey gled to skip them at a holiday, and just be daein’ wi’ ham and eggs.
“But in thae days, as I was sayin’, the Fair was something like the thing. There was Mumford’s and Glenroy’s shows, and if ye hadna the money to get in, ye could aye pap eggs at the musicianers playing on the ootside, and the thing was as broad as it was lang. Forbye ye didna get the name o’ bein’ keen on the theatricals if your faither was parteecular.