CHAPTER XII
I was crackin' yin or twa the noo aboot them that touch ye for a bawbee noo and then. I ken fine the way folks talk o' me and say I'm close fisted. Maybe I am a' that. I'm a Scot, ye ken, and the Scots are a close fisted people. I'm no sayin' yet whether yon's a fault or a virtue. I'd fain be talkin' a wee bit wi' ye aboot it first.
There's aye ither things they're fond o' saying aboot a Scot. Oh, aye, I've heard folk say that there was but the ane way to mak' a Scot see a joke, an' that was to bore a hole in his head first. They're sayin' the Scots are a folk wi'oot a sense o' humor. It may be so, but ye'll no be makin' me think so—not after all these years when they've been laughin' at me. Conceited, is that? Weel, ha' it yer ane way.
We Scots ha' aye lived in a bonny land, but a land that made us work hard for what it gie'd us. It was no smiling, easy going southern country like some. It was no land where it was easy to mak' a living, wi' bread growing on one tree, and milk in a cocoanut on another, and fruits and berries enow on all sides to keep life in the body of ye, whether ye worked or no.
There's no great wealth in Scotland. Her greatest riches are her braw sons and daughters, the Scots folk who've gone o'er a' the world. The land is full o' rocks and hills. The man who'd win a crop o' rye or oats maun e'en work for the same. And what a man works hard for he's like to value more than what comes easy to his hand. Sae it's aye been with the Scots, I'm thinking. We've had little, we Scottish folk, that's no cost us sweat and labor, o' one sort or anither. We've had to help ourselves, syne there was no one else had the time to gie us help.
Noo, tak' this close fisted Scot they're a' sae fond o' pokin' fun at. Let's consider ane o' the breed. Let's see what sort o' life has he been like to ha' led. Maybe so it wull mak' us see hoo it came aboot that he grew mean, as the English are like to be fond o' calling him.
Many and many the canny Scot who's made a great place for himsel' in the world was born and brocht up in a wee village in a glen. He'd see poverty all aboot him frae the day his een were opened. It's a hard life that's lived in many a Scottish village. A grand life, aye—ne'er think I'm not meaning that. I lived hard masel', when I was a bit laddie, but I'd no gie up those memories for ought I could ha' had as a rich man's son. But a hard life.
A laddie like the one I ha' in mind would be seein' the auld folk countin' every bawbee because they must. He'd see, when he was big enow, hoo the gude wife wad be shakin' her head when his faither wanted, maybe, an extra ounce or twa o' thick black.
"We maun think o' the bairn, Jock," she'd be saying. "Put the price of it in the kist, Jock—ye'll no be really needin' that."
He'd see the auld folk makin' auld clothes do; his mither patching and mending; his faither getting up when there was just licht to see by in the morn and working aboot the place to mak' it fit to stand the storms and snows and winds o' winter, before he went off to his long day's work. And he'd see all aboot him a hard working folk, winning from a barren soil that they loved because they had been born upon it.