Page:Comical tricks of Lothian Tom (6).pdf/2

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COMICAL TRICKS

Thomas Black, vulgarly called Lothian Tom, because he was of that country, was born about four miles from Edinburgh; his father being a wealthy farmer, gave him a good education, which he was very awkward in receiving, being a very wild mischievous boy.

When he was about ten years of age, he was almost killed by the stroke of a horse's foot, which his father had who had a trick of kicking at every person that came behind him. But when Tom got whole of the dreadful wound, whereof many thought he would have died, to be even with the horse, he gets a cleg, or piece of tree which was full of wooden pins, such a thing as the shoemakers use to soften their leather on, and with a rope he tied it to the couplebauk in the stable directly opposite to the horse's tail, then gets on the bauk, and gives it a swing, so that the pikes in the end of it, came with full drive against the horse's backside, which made him fling,