Page:Important passages in the life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith.pdf/5

5 tell,— when up came the horses to the starting-post. I shall never forget the bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin tied round his head. with the flaps fleeing behind him; and his coat tails were curled up into a big bump behind; it was so tight buttoned ye wadna thought he could have breathed. His corduroy trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were tied round his ankles with a string! and he had a rusty spur on one shoe, which I saw a man take off to lend him Save us! how he pulled the beast's head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he tried a canter! The second one had on a black velvet huntingcap, and his coat stripped. I wonder be was not feared of cauld, his shirt being like a riddle, and his nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he was brave lad; and sorrow were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking ower sharp a turn, by which auld Pullen, the bell ringer wha was holding the post, was made to coup the creels and got a bloody nose.—Aud-but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he went: and up and down gaed the beast on its hind-legs and its fore legs, funking like mad; yet tho he was not aboon thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the back of the saddle with the other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the stables claught hold of the beast by the head, and off they set. The young birkie had neither hat nor shoon but he did not spare the stick; round and round they flew like dart. Ye would have thought their een would have loupen out and loudly all the crowd were hurraing, when young hatless came up foremost, standing in the stirrups, the long stick between his teeth, and his white hair fleeing behind him in the wind like streamers on a frosty night.