[151] This paragraph ends as follows in the 1824 edition:--‘as the skimings of a pot of green kail, and the poor husband has to return at ten o’clock to his fore-noon’s wark, without his breakfast, hanging his head like a brewer’s horse at the ale-house door.’
[152] The 1824 edition ends here, with the sentence:--‘That such a wife may be the lot of every young lad, is the earnest prayer of Grannie M‘Nab.’
[153] In Morren’s edition the order of the first three stories is different. In it the second story as above is first, the third second, and the first third.
[154] This ‘joke’ is left out in Morren’s edition; and the story about the drover, to be found at p. 161, is inserted before the one of the three merry companions.
[155] Perhaps other three miles. The Scottish ‘bittock’ is rather an elastic expression.
[156] Although the Scots have always been more or less of a military nation, the common people have generally had a sort of pitying contempt for mercenary soldiery, as opposed to the old feudal system of raising an army. It would be difficult to account for this feeling, but it is still the fact that even now service in the army is regarded as the last resource of a respectable tradesman or countryman.
[159] This biographical preface was, according to Motherwell, given in an edition published in Glasgow in 1779, probably after Graham’s death.
[160] In Morren’s edition the following lines precede the title:--
‘This Catechism deserves no Creed, It’s only for boys who will not read On wiser books them to instruct! Let droll John their fancy cook.’
[161] Properly Milngavie, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The common pronunciation of the word is phonetically given as ‘Milguy’ in Morren’s edition. In the modern Glasgow copies the spelling is ‘Mullgay.’
[162] ‘Or the Hottentot gibberish,’ is added in the modern Glasgow editions.
[163] Randall’s and Morren’s editions end here, the former with the lines quoted in p. 168 as preceding the title of Morren’s edition. What follows in the text appears in undated editions published in Glasgow within the last fifty years.
[164] Suggested, apparently, by Proverbs, vi. 26.
[166] ‘In his teeth,’ according to a modern undated edition.
[168] A custom which has not yet fallen into disuetude in Irish communities. The popular idea of the use of these articles is simply that the brogues are for the accommodation of the dead man on his journey heaven-wards; the candle to light him on the way; the ‘good hard-headed old hammer’ to raise St. Peter, the venerable porter at the celestial gate; and the money is to pay for tolls. To many persons this explanation may smack somewhat of irreverence, but we are not aware of any more satisfactory explanation of the custom. Divested of its ‘bulls,’ the narrative of Teague is a fair outline of the proceedings at an Irish funeral.