Page:History of John Cheap the comical chapman.pdf/4



Y chance, at some certain time, doubtless against my will I was born at Hottam, near Habertoy mill; my father was a Scots Highlandman, and my mother a Yorkshire wench, but honest, which caused me to be of a mongral breed. I made myself a chapman when very young, in great hopes of being very rich when I became old, but fortune was fickle, and so was I; for I had not been a chapman above twa days, until I began to consider the dangers of deep ditches, midden-dubs, biting dogs, and bogles in barns, bangster wives and weet sacks: and what comfort is it, says I to myself, to lye in a cow’s oxter the length of a cold winter night, or to sit behind backs till the kail be cutted up, and I obliged to lick the colley’s leavings.

My first journey was through old Killpatrick. All the day long I got no meat nor money, until in the evening, when I began to ask for lodging, then every wife, to get me away, would either give me a cog full of kail, or a piece of cake; well, says I to myself, if this be the way, I shall begin to ask for lodging in the morning, or any time when I am hungry; this I continued, going from house to house, until my belly was like to burst, and my pockets would hold no more ; at last I came to a farmer’s house but thinking it not time enough to prevail for lodging, 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 one end of the stone, I being at the other, she began to make her water with force, which I bore very modestly till near the end, then she made the