Oh than bespaik her dochter dear:
She was baith jimp and sma', etc.
Here it might be said that the evident youth of the girl, who was dropped over the wall and fell on the point of the cruel Gordon's spear, accounts for her being "jimp and sma'." The explanation will not apply to "The Cruel Sister," as given by Sir Walter Scott:
She took her by the middle sma',
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
So fascinated was the rhymer by that special feature of her beauty that he returns to it after recounting how the elder sister drowned the younger:
You could not see her middle sma',
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
Her gouden girdle was so bra,
By the bonny milldams of Binnorie.
Another instance is in the opening verse of Sir Walter Scott's version of "The Lass of Lochroyan:"
Oh wha will shoe my bonny foot?
And wha will glove my hand?
And wha will lace my middle jimp
Wi' a lang, lang linen band?
The last line appears to indicate the use of a linen band, as the Roman ladies used the strophium, a broad ribbon tied round the breast as a support. From this it may be inferred that the "Lass of Lochroyan" did not owe her "middle jimp" to any very deadly artificial means of compression.
One of the most remarkable instances that can be adduced is in the original version of "Annie Laurie," by William Douglas, a Scottish poet of the seventeenth century. It has been so completely displaced by a later version that few are probably acquainted with the song as written by Douglas:
She's backit like a peacock,
She's breisted like a swan,
She's jimp about the middle,
Her waist ye weel micht span;
Her waist ye weel micht span,
And she has a rolling ee, etc.