Page:Whole proceedings of Jocky & Maggy's courtship (2).pdf/20

 wyte of a' the bystarts round about the country.

Up gets Maggy wi' a roar, and rives her hair and cries, O her back, her belly! and baith her sides! The weed and gut gaes through my flesh like lang needles, nails, or elshin irons! Wae be to the day that e'er I saw his face. I had better married a tinkler, or a followed the sodgers, as mony an honest man's dochter has done, and liv'd a better life than I do.

Up gets Jockey and rins o'er the rigs for John Bodger's wife, auld Katty and howdy; but or he wan back, she parted wi' Patrick through perfect spite, then lay twa-fauld o,er a stood in a swon.

Jock. A-weel, a-weel, sirs, though my first born is e'en dead without seeing the light of the warld, ye's a' get bread and cheese to the blythe meat, the thing we should a waured on the bauket will sair the burial, and that will aye be some advantage; and should Maggy die, I maun een tak Jenny, the taen is as far a length as the tither; I'se be furnished wi' a wife between the twa.

But Maggy grew better the next day, and was able to muck the byre; yet there gaed sic a tittle tattlin through the town every auld wife tell'd anither o't, and a' the light-hippet hissies that rins between towns at e'en tugging at their tow rocks,