Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/172

168 "The prudent mother, however, advanced, saying, 'Bless me, lassie, this is a fearful night to have love-trystes and wooester-daffin in. I have trysted on mony a queer night myself, but on none that equalled this; yet I think nae the waur of the lad who keeps his faith on a night that makes the wide world tremble.' The daughter still waved her hand, but the dame was not to be daunted; and thus she persisted: 'But Jenny, my bonny bairn, when will ye put an end to these dallyings; no that I would have ye to make your election rashly, in the calf-love, as the rude proverb says, for ye're young and no at the end of your teens till the bud be on the bush; but when will ye quit these dallyings, I say, and single out a discreet husband and a devout? Ye have rich lovers, more than one or two, yet set not thy heart on the siller, lass, though I would hardly counsel ye to wed without it. A loving lad in lily-white linen looks weel enough in a fule sang, but give me the lad with bills and bonds, and good set siller, who can fill and fetch mair. Yet make not gowd a god in the choice of thy heart; though to give ye mair for a bridal-tocher than three hundred pounds, and put ye into a fu' farm, is what I wadnae counsel thy father to do.' The daughter still waved her mother to be gone; but the covering of my face excited the good dame's suspicions, and she resolved to see me face to face, though it might diminish the amount of Jenny's admirers.

"No resolution was ever carried more quickly into execution. 'But Jenny, woman, what ails the lad that he hides his face? If he has nae a face worth looking at, he's no a lad for thee. And I ken not a lad in the parish who might wish to hide his head, except that daft chield, Jock Ochiltree; Jock Gomeral would suit him better. His grand-dame was burnt for a witch at the West-bow port of Edinburgh, and if the grandson was burnt for a fool there would be no waste of fuel on the family.' And, removing a handful of her daughter's hair as she spoke, she saw me, and shouted, till her voice fairly exceeded the tempest that still raged without: 'Nay, but the Lord preserve me! His presence be near! Here's that gaping goose, Jock Gowk himself; for my lips I wadnae defile with his name, much less my arms with his person. Oh, to think that ever thy mother's daughter thought of lending credit to such a race, or bearing a bonnie bairntime to a born gomeral. Out of my house, I say, out of my