Page:History of John Cheap the chapman (3).pdf/2



JOHN CHEAP by chance, at some certain time doubtless against my will, was born at the Hottom near habertehoy mill: My father was a Scots highland man, and my mother a Yorkshire Wench, but honest, which causes me to be of a mongrel kind. I made myself a chapman when very young, in great hopes of being rich when I became old but fortune was fickle and so was I; for I had not been a chapman above two days, until I began to consider the danger of deep ditches, midden dubs, biting dogs and bogles in barns, bangster wives and wiet sacks; And what comfort is it, to ly in a cows ouxter, the length of a cold winter night; to sit behind backs, till the kail be a cuttied up, then to lick colley's leavings.

My first journey was thro' Old Kilpatrick, all the day long I got no meat nor money until the evening I began to ask for lodging, then every wife to get me away, would either give me a cogful of kail, or a piece of cake. Well, says I to myself, If this be the way, I shall begin in the morning to ask for lodging or any time when I am hungry. Thus I continued going from house to house, until my belly, was like to burst, and my pockets could hold no more at last I came to a farmer's house, but thinking it not dark enough to prevail for lodging, I sat down upon a stone at the end of the house, till day-light would go away out of the west; and as I was going to get up to go into the house, out comes the goodwife, as I supposed her to be, and sat down at the end of the stone, I being at the other, there she begun to make off her