Such are the words, which are somewhat altered and amplified in the text. The play was acted in presence of Charles II, then Prince of Wales, in 1641. The catch in the text has been happily set to music.
22
Blind Rorie, a famous musician according to tradition.
23
It is certain that in many cases the blind have, by constant exercise of their other organs, learned to overcome a defect which one would think incapable of being supplied. Every reader must remember the celebrated Blind Jack of Knaresborough, who lived by laying out roads.
24
A precipitous side of a mountain in Moffatdale.
25
The caution and moderation of King William III, and his principles of unlimited toleration, deprived the Cameronians of the opportunity they ardently desired, to retaliate the injuries which they had received during the reign of prelacy, and purify the land, as they called it, from the pollution of blood. They esteemed the Revolution, therefore, only a half measure, which neither comprehended the rebuilding the Kirk in its full splendour, nor the revenge of the death of the Saints on their persecutors.
26
A celebrated wizard, executed at Edinburgh for sorcery and other crimes.
27
The reader is referred for particulars to Pitscottie's HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.
28
Formerly, a lawyer, supposed to be under the peculiar patronage of any particular judge, was invidiously termed his PEAT or PET.
29
Process-bags.
30
Multiplepoinding is, I believe, equivalent to what is called in England a case of Double Distress.
31
OLD-FASHIONED SCOTTISH CIVILITY.—Such were literally the points of politeness observed in general society during the author's youth, where it was by no means unusual in a company assembled by chance, to find individuals who had borne arms on one side or other in the civil broils of 1745. Nothing, according to my recollection, could be more gentle and decorous than the respect these old enemies paid to each other's prejudices. But in this I speak generally. I have witnessed one or two explosions.
32
The simile is obvious, from the old manufacture of Scotland, when the gudewife's thrift, as the yarn wrought in the winter was called, when laid down to bleach by the burn-side, was peculiarly exposed to the inroads of pigs, seldom well regulated about a Scottish farm-house.
33
Said of an adventurous gipsy, who resolves at all risks to convert a sheep's horn into a spoon.
