“Three lawyers’ tongues turned inside out,
Wi’ lees seemed like a beggar’s clout,”
remarked that he thought the witches’ orgies obscure.
“Obscure, sir,” exclaimed the poet; “ye know not the language of the great master of your own art; the devil! If you get a witch for your client, you will not be able to manage her defence.”
Burns lived five months in a house which was occupied by an old man named David Cully, or Kelly. The poet sometimes read books not usually seen in people’s hands on the Sabbath. His landlord checked him for this, when the bard laughingly replied—
“You’ll not think me so good a man as Nancy Kelly is a woman, I suppose?”
“Indeed, no.”
“Then I’ll tell you what happened this morning. When I took a walk by the banks o’ the Nith, I heard Nancy Kelly praying long before I came to her. I walked on, and before I returned I saw her helping herself to an armful of my fitches.” The parties kept a cow.
On one occasion Nance and the bard were sitting in the “spence,” when the former turned the conversation on her favourite topic—religion. Burns sympathised with the matron, and quoted so much Scripture that she was fairly astonished. By and by she said to her husband, “Oh, Dauvit, how they have wranged that man; for I think he has mair o’ the Bible on his tongue than Mr. Inglis himsel’.” Mr. Inglis was the Anti-burgher minister. Burns enjoyed that compliment, and almost the first thing he communicated to his wife on her arrival was the lift he had got from old Nance.
Than “the glorious ploughman,” no one was kinder to such helpless creatures as were weak in mind, and who sauntered harmlessly about. A poor half-witted creature—the Madge Wildfire, it is said, of Scott—always found a mouthful ready for her at the bard’s fireside. He was equally kind, Allan Cuningham tells, to a crazy and tippling prodigal named Quin.