“I ken them a’. Jock’s a doctor aboot London. Tam’s a harem-scarem kind o’ chiel’, an’ wreats books, an’ that. But Jamie—yon’s his farm ye see ower yonder—Jamie’s the man o’ that family, an’ I’m proud to say I ken him. Jamie Carlyle, sir, feeds the best swine that come into Dumfries market.”—[Page 335.]
He was a country boy—the son of the village blacksmith—who, when he joined the evening singing class at the schoolhouse, and the precentor asked him if he had an ear for music, replied, “I dinna ken, but ye can tak’ a cawnil an’ look.”
Love has been described in rural phraseology as “a yeukieness o’ the heart that the hand canna claw.”
It was a country lass who defined it as “just an unco fykieness i’ the mind.” It is very often, alas! nothing more. Another declared that unsalted porridge—“wersh parritch”—“just tasted like a kiss frae a body ye dinna like.” It was a country wife who said to Dr. Chalmers, in answer to the question if she knew what was meant by believing, “Ou, ay; it’s just to lippen, sir.”
Any apt illustrations and choice examples of the humours of Scottish rural life might be multiplied to almost any extent. Only one or two more here, however, and first, one of Sir Walter Scott’s, which should convey a lesson to those who cater for cheap compliments. A jolly dame, says Scott, who, not “sixty years since,” kept the principal caravansary at Greenlaw, in Berwickshire, had the honour to receive under her roof a very worthy clergyman, with three sons of the same profession, each having a cure of souls. Be it said, in passing, none of this reverend party were reckoned very powerful in the pulpit. After dinner was over, the worthy senior, in the pride of his heart, asked Mrs. Buchan, the landlady, whether she ever had had such a party in her house before.
“Here sit I,” said he, “a placed minister in the Kirk of Scotland, and here sit my three sons, each a placed minister of the same Kirk. Confess, Lucky Buchan, you never had such a party in your house before.”
“Indeed, sir,” replied Lucky Buchan, “I canna just say that I ever had such a party in my house before, except ance in the forty-five, when I had a Highland piper here and his three sons, a’ Highland pipers, and the deil a spring could they play amang them!”
The simplicity of rural love-making, to unsuccessful as well as successful issues, has found illustration in many a humorous tale of Scottish life and character, but seldom with truer naivete than in the subjoined narrative of Betty’s courtship and marriage, from the pen of an unknown author. It first appeared in an Edinburgh newspaper many years ago, and afforded the ground plan of the late Alexander M’Laggan’s popular and really clever song, “Tibby and the Laird.”
“Come noo, Betty,” said an acquaintance, “an’ gie me a sketch, an’ tell me a’ about your courtship an’ marriage, for we dinna ken what’s afore us, an’ I may have a chance mysel’ yet.”