Page:History of John Cheap the chapman (2).pdf/17

 had given the blessing. I then came home to my lodging house, and went to dinner with the goodmen, and it being the custom of that place to eat pease bread to their broth, and corn cakes to their flesh, the goodwife laid down a corn cake and a pease scone to the goodman, and the same to me, the pease one for the broth and the corn one for the beef; and as the goodman and I sat together, when he brake off a piece of the pease bread to his broth, I was sure to break as much of the oat cake below, and when we came to cut the flesh I did the same, so he eat the coarse and I the fine.

PART III.

TRAVELLED then west by Falkirk, by the foot of the great hills; and one night after I got lodgings in a farmer's house, there happened a contest between the goodman and his mother, he being a young man unmarried, as I understood, and formerly their sowens had been too thin; so the goodman, being a sworn birly-man of that barony, came to survey the sowens before they went on the fire, and actually swore they were o'er thin; and she swore by her conscience they would be thick enough if ill hands and ill een baed awa frae them. A sweet be here mither, said he, do ye think that I'm a witch? Witch here or witch there, said the wife, swearing by her saul, and that was nae banning, she said, they'll be good substantial meat, a what say ye chapman? Indeed, goodwife, said I, sowens is but saft meat at the best, but if ye make them thick enough, and put a good lump of butter in them,