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And then what wad a' the country about do for want o' auld Edie Ochiltree, that brings news and country cracks frae ae farm-steading to anither, and gingerbread to the lasses, and helps the lads to mend their fiddles, and the gudewives to clout their pans, and plaits rush-swords and grenadier caps for the weans, and busks the laird's flees, and has skill o' cow-ills and horse-ills, and kens mair auld sangs and tales than a' the barony besides, and gars ilka body laugh wherever he comes?

As for the gudewives' household necessaries, they were got by the carrier who passed once a fortnight on their road; and for the rest, if aught was wanting more than that which they had, they did without, and, according to the local saying, "want was t' master." Society of a cultured kind there was none. The clergyman was an old man little if it all superior to the flock to which he ministered.

"Me no muckle to fight for, sir? isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o'the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward town? Deil!" he continued, grasping his pike-staff with great emphasis, "an I had as gude pith as I hae gude-will, and a gude cause, I should gie some o' them a day's kemping."

Ailie Sim's public was on the road-side about a mile before him, but there would be a parcel of young fellows there on the Saturday night, and that was a bar to civil conversation. Other "gudemen and gudewives," as the farmers and their dames are termed in Scotland, successively presented themselves to his imagination.

"Me no muckle to fight for, sir? isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o'the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward town? Deil!" he continued, grasping his pike-staff with great emphasis, "an I had as gude pith as I hae gude-will, and a gude cause, I should gie some o' them a day's kemping."

And then what wad a' the country about do for want o' auld Edie Ochiltree, that brings news and country cracks frae ae farm-steading to anither, and gingerbread to the lasses, and helps the lads to mend their fiddles, and the gudewives to clout their pans, and plaits rush-swords and grenadier caps for the weans, and busks the laird's flees, and has skill o' cow-ills and horse-ills, and kens mair auld sangs and tales than a' the barony besides, and gars ilka body laugh wherever he comes?

Ailie Sim's public was on the road-side about a mile before him, but there would be a parcel of young fellows there on the Saturday night, and that was a bar to civil conversation. Other "gudemen and gudewives," as the farmers and their dames are termed in Scotland, successively presented themselves to his imagination.