So home they came to the dinner, where his mother presented to them a piping het haggies, made of the creish of the black boul horn’d Ewe, boil’d in the meikle bag, mixt with bear meal, onions, spice and mint: this haggis being supt warm, the foaming swats and spice in the liquor set John’s belly a bizin like a working fat, and he playing het fit to the fidler, was suddenly seized with a bocking and rebounding, gave his dinner such a backward ca that he lost a’ but the grit bits scythed through his teeth; his mother cried to spence him, and bed him wi’ the bride, his breeks being fill’d, they washed both his hips, laid him in his bed, pale and ghostly was his face, and closed were baith his een, ah, cries his mither, a dismal day indeed, his brithal and his burial may baith be on ae day: some cuist water in his face, and jagg’d him wi’ a needle; till he began to rouze himself up, and rap out broken words, mither, mither, whar am I now? Whar are ye my bairn says his mither, ye’re beddet, and I’ll bring the bride to you. Beddet, and is my brithel done ells? Ay, said she, here’s the bride come to ly down wi’ you: na, na, said he, I’ll no ly wi that unco woman indeed, if it binna heeds and thraws, the way that I lay wi’ my mither; O fy dinna affront yoursel. The bride faus a crying. O mither, mither, was this the way my father guided you the first night? Na, na, thy father was a man o’ manners and better mettle, poor thing Meg, thou’s caud thy hogs to a bonny market. A bonny market, says his mither, a shame fa you and her baith, he’s worthy o’ her tho’ she were better nor what she is, or e’er will be. His friends an her friends being a mixt multitude, some took his part some took her’s, there a battle began in the clap of a hand, being a very fierce tumult which ended in blood, they struck so hard with stones, sticks, beetles, and barrow trams, pigs, pots, stoups, trunchers, were flying like bombs and granades.
The crook, bouls and tongs were all employed as weapons of war: till down came the bed with a great mou of peats. So this disturbed the treading.[4]
Now though all the ceremonies of Jockey and Maggy’s wedding were ended, when they were fairly bedded before a wheen rattling unruly witnesses, who dang down the bed aboon them; the battle still encreased, and John’s works turned out to be very wonderful; for he made Janet, that was his mither’s lass the last year, grow like an Elshin shaft, and got his Maggy wi’ bairn forby.