WILLIE WASTLE'S ACCOUNT OF HIS WIFE.
"Sic a wife as Willie had!
I wadna gie a button for her."
Burns.[4]
"It was a very cruel dune thing in my neebor, Robert Burns, to mak a sang aboot my wife and me," said Mr William Wastle, as he sat with a friend over a jug of reeking toddy, in a tavern near the Bridge-end in Dumfries where he had been attending the cattle market; "I didna think it was neebor-like," he added; "indeed it was a rank libel upon baith her and me; and I took it the worse, inasmuch as I always had a very high respect for Maister Burns. Though he said that I 'dwalt on Tweed,' and that I 'was a wabster,' yet everybody kenned wha the sang was aimed at. Neither did my wife merit the description that has been drawn o' her; for, though she was nae beauty, and hadna a face like a wax-doll, yet there were thousands
o' waur looking women to be met wi' than my Kirsty; and to say that her mither was a 'tinkler,' was very unjustifiable, for her parents were as decent and respectable people, in their sphere o' life, as ye would hae found in a' Nithsdale. Her faither had a small farm which joined on with one that I took a lease o', when I was about one-and-twenty. Kirsty was about three years aulder; and, though not a bonny woman, she was, in many respects, as ye shall hear in the coorse o' my story, a very extraordinary one. I was in the habit o' seeing her every day, and as I sometimes was working in a field next to her, I had every opportunity o' observing her industry, and that, frae mornin' till nicht, she was aye eident. This gave me a far higher opinion o' her than if I had seen her gaun about wi' a buskit head; and often, at meal-times, I used to stand and speak to her owre the dyke. But, after we had been acquainted in this manner for some months, when the cheerfu' summer weather came in, and the grass by the dyke-sides was warm and green, and the bonny gowans blossomed among it, I louped owre the dyke, and we sat doun and took our dinners together. I couldna have believed it possible that a bit bare bannock and a drap skim milk wad gang doun sae deliciously, but never before had I partaken o' onything that was sae pleasant to the palate. One day I was quite surprised, when I found that my arm had slipped unconsciously round her waist, and, drawing her closer to my side, I seighed, and said—'O Kirsty, woman!'
"She pulled away my hand from her waist, and looking me in the face, said—'Weel, Willie, man, what is't?'
"'Kirsty,' said I, 'I like ye.'"
"'I thocht as meikle,' quoth she, 'but could ye no hae said sae at ance.'"