“For aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee
’S to pree the barrel.”
In houses of quality, as late as the end of last century, it was the custom to keep a household officer, whose duty it was to prevent the drunk guests from choking. Old Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling, Lord Cockburn tells, was once at a festival at Kilravock Castle, towards the close of which the exhausted topers sank gradually back and down on their chairs, till little of them was seen above the table but their noses; at last they disappeared altogether and fell on the floor. Those who were too far gone lay still there from necessity; while those who, like the Man of Feeling, were glad of a pretence for escaping, fell into a dose from policy. While Mackenzie was in this state he was alarmed by feeling a hand working about his throat, and called out, when a voice answered, “Dinna be fear’d, sir; its me.” “And who are you?” “I’m the lad that lowses the graavats.”
It was employed, I have said, as the cure for all diseases, and the “saw for a’ sairs;” and the practice finds apt illustration in the story of a schoolmaster who had been appointed to “teach the young idea” in a sparsely populated country district. Sallying forth one day soon after his settlement in the neighbourhood to spy out the land, and discover whether or not he was within a day’s march of any person of intelligence, he came up, after walking about two miles, to a man breaking stones by the roadside. Interrogating the workman as to the amenities of the locality in general, the dominie proceeded to make enquiries in particular, and said—
“How far distant is the nearest minister?”
“Ou, about four mile,” said the roadman.
“Indeed. And how far are we from a doctor?”
“Ten mile an’ a bittock, e’en as the craw flees,” replied the roadman.
“Dear me, that’s very awkward. How do you do when anyone turns suddenly ill?”
“Ou, just gi’e him a gless o’ whisky.”