EDIE OCHILTREE.
From the New Edition of "The Antiquary."
Of the "blue gowns," or king's bedesmen, from whom the character of Edie Ochiltree was drawn, after giving an account from Martin's "Reliquiae Divi Sancti Andrae," of an order of beggars in Scotland, supposed to have descended from the ancient bards, and existing in Scotland in the seventeenth century, but now extinct, Sir Walter Scott says:—
"The old remembered beggar, even in my own time, like the Baccoch, or travelling cripple of Ireland, was expected to merit his quarters by something beyond an exposition of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. To be a gude crack, that is, to possess talents for conversation, was essential to the trade of a 'puir body' of the more esteemed class; and Burns, who delighted in the amusement their discourse afforded, seems to have looked forward with gloomy firmness to the possibility of himself becoming one day or other a member of their itinerant society. In his poetical works, it is alluded to so often, as perhaps to indicate that he considered the consummation as not utterly impossible. Thus, in the fine dedication of his works to Gavin Hamilton, he says—
"And when I downa yoke a naig,
Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg."
Again, in his Epistle to Davie, a brother poet, he states, that in their closing career—
"The last o't, the warst o't,
Is only just to beg."
And after having remarked, that