Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/177

Rh this mention of early joy the bridegroom endeavoured to inflict the penance of a kiss on the lips which uttered it. 'Haud off,' said the damsel, 'filthy body, ye stink of tar. Bide off till the blessing's said, till the meat be consecrated; go home, and nurse your breath, for it's wondrous feeble.'

"I now rose to depart; the bride conducted me to the door, and endeavoured to console me in a departing whisper: 'This is Monday—I'm to be wed on Saturday. Let me see—my father and mother will be frae hame on Thursday, so come owre here in the braw moonlight, and let us have an hour's running round the haystacks, and daffin in the darksome nooks. Auld Worldsworm—Auld Simon Setsiller—him there with the twa tap-coats and the plaid on, wha has not as much breath as would bless his breakfast, he'll ne'er be the wiser on't: what he disnae ken will give him no manner of trouble.' We parted, but we met no more.

"After this unsuccessful inroad on the moorlands, I resolved to push my fortune no farther without some more sensible assurance of success. I was, therefore, on the look out for the young and the handsome: I frequented fairs with the fidelity of a horse dealer, attended all the merry-makings round with the punctuality of a fiddler, and went devoutly to the kirk with the regularity of an ancient maiden whose thoughts had been weaned, by the counsel of aching bones and the eloquence of wrinkles, from free love to religion. But I was doomed to every species of mortification and repulse, and had actually in despair procured a copy of the register of maidens' baptisms in the parish, with the serious resolution of courting them regularly forward according to their seniority of claim, when the wheel of fortune turned up one of her brightest spokes.

"As I sat pondering on my luckless lot, a slender fair-haired girl of fourteen, the daughter of a respectable and opulent farmer, came gliding like a sylph to my side, and, with a manner conscious and sly, said that her father and her mother were gone to a bridal, and that her elder sister, Bess, desired my company to curds and cream, and to help her to while away the fore-night. Now her sister was one of the merriest and rosiest girls in the district; had a dancing foot and a fine ankle, and a voice which lent a grace to old songs which the best of your theatrical quaverers fail to impart. I need not say that her invitation charmed me: