Page:Life of Mansie Wauch tailor in Dalkeith (1).pdf/19

19 first the ae arm, and then the ither, to see if they were broken—syne my head—and syne baith o’ my legs; but a’, as weel as I could discover, was skinhale and scart free. On perceiving which, my joy was without bounds, having a great notion that I had been killed on the spot. So I reached round my hand, very thankfully, to tak out my pocket-napkin, to gie my brow a wipe, when lo and behold the tail of my Sunday’s coat was fairly aff and away, doekit by the haunch buttons.

It was about the month of Match, in the year of grace anno domini eighteen hunder, that the haill country trummelled, like a man ill of the interminable fiver, under the consternation of Bonapartie, and all the French vagabonds emigrating ower, and landing in the firth. Keep us a’! the folk, dydit bodies, patless confidence than became them in what our volunteer regiments were able and willing to do; though we had a remnant amang us of the true bluid, that with loud lauchter launched the creatures to scorn, and I for ane, keepit up my pluck, like a true Hielander. Does ony leeving soul believe that Scotland could be conquered, and the like o’ us sold, like Egyptian slaves, into captivity? Fie, fie,—I could spit on siccan haevers. Are we no descended, faither and son, frae Robert Bruce and Sir William Wallace, having the bright bluid of freemen in our veins and the Pentland hills, as weel as our