Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/282

 260 Scarcely crediting her good fortune, our heroine went home, where she found her mother had been busy making sausters, or black puddings, and hanging them up in the lum to dry, and then, tired out, had retired to rest. Finding herself very hungry after her long day on the knoll, the girl took down pudding after pudding, fried and ate them, and at last went to bed too. The mother was up first the next morning, and when she came into the kitchen and found her sausters all gone, and the seven hanks of yarn lying beautifully smooth and bright upon the table, her mingled feelings of vexation and delight were too much for her. She ran out of the house wildly crying out—

A laird, who chanced to be riding by, heard the exclamation but could not understand it; so he rode up and asked the gudewife what was the matter, on which she broke out again—

before daylight; and, if ye dinna believe me, why come in and see it.” The laird’s curiosity was roused; he alighted and went into the cottage, where he saw the yarn, and admired it so much, he begged to see the spinner.

The mother dragged in the blushing girl. Her rustic grace soon won his heart, and he avowed he was lonely without a wife, and had long been in search of one who was a good spinner. So their troth was plighted, and the wedding took place soon afterwards, the bride stifling her apprehensions that she should not prove so deft at her spinning-wheel as her lover expected. And once more old Habetrot came to her aid. Whether the good dame, herself so notable, was as indulgent to all idle damsels does not appear—certainly she did not fail this little pet of hers. “Bring your bonnie bridegroom to my cell,” said she to the young bride soon after her marriage; “he shall see what comes o’ spinning, and never will he tie you to the spinning wheel.”