Page:History of John Cheap the comical chapman.pdf/9

 them, unto the byre I rushes throwing them on the cows stakes, saying ’ thy days shall not be long’. The wife followed earnestly, praying for herself and her’s wringing her hands. I then came out at the door, lifted up a stone, running three times round the house, and threw it over, then turned three times about thrawing my face terrible at her, though I knew not myself what I was saying, concluded with these words : “ And thou, O monsieur Lucifer, “ Satan Diable, Brother Beelzebub god of Ekron, " take this wife’s kirn, butter, milk, sap, substance, “ without and within, so that she may die in misery, as she would have other fouk to live.”

The wife hearing this awful sentence, clapt her hands, and called out another old woman as foolish as herself, who came crying after us to come back again, and on our return, fire made us eat heartily of butter and cheese; then she earnestly entreated me to lift up my cantrips again, which I did, upon her promising again never to deny a poor traveller meat and drink, whether he had money for it or not, and never to serve the poor with the auld proverb, Go home to your own parish, but give them more or less as she sees them stand in need. This she faithfully promis’ed to do while she lived, and with milk we drank toward the cows good health and her own, not forgetting her husband’s and the bull’s, as the one was goodman of the house, and the other of the byre; so away, we came in all haste, lest some of more understanding should follow us and give us a proper drubbing.

In a few days thereafter we came to an ale-house in a moor, far distant from any others, it being a sore day of wind and rain, we could not travel, and was obliged to stay there, the house being so thrang we could get not bed but the servant lasses's which we were to have for a penny-worth of pins and needles, and she was to lye with her master and