Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/4

4 flowers up the posts at each end;—and then what a collection of luggies! the whole meal in the market sacks on a Thursday did not seem able to fill them; and horn spoons, green and black freckled, with shanks clear as amber,—and timber caups,—and ivory egg-cups of every pattern. Have a care of us! all the eggs in Smeaton dairy might have found resting places for their doups in a row. As for the gingerbread, I shall not attempt a discription. Sixpenny and shilling cakes, in paper, tied with skinie; and roundabouts, and snaps, brown and white quality, and parliaments, on stands covered with calendered linen, clean from the fold. To pass it was just impossible; it set my teeth a-watering, and I skirled like mad, until I had a gilded lady thurst into my little nieve; the which after admiring for a minute, I applied my teeth to and of the head I made no bones: so that in less than no time, she had vanished, petticoats and all, no trace of her being to the fore, save and except long treacly daubs, extending east and west from ear to ear, and north and south from cape neb of the nose to the extremity of beardyland.

But what, of all things, attracted my attention on that memorable day, was the show of cows, sheep and horses, mooing, baaing, and neighering; and the race—that was best! Od, what a sight!—we were jammed in the crowd of auld wives, with their toys and shining ribbons; and carter lads, with their blue bonnets; and young wenches, carrying home their fairings in napkins, as muckle as would hold their teeth going for a month;—there scarcely could be muckle for love, when there was so much for the stomach;—and men with wooden legs, and brass virls at the end of them, playing on the fiddle,—and a bear that roared, and danced on its hind feet, with a muzzled month,—and Punch and Polly,— and puppie-shows; and mair than I can