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And there were houses, too; and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there, and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood and comely white curch, would come out to gang to kirk or chapel on the Lord's day, and little bairns toddling after.
But I may not stay here, where I came not to moralize with your wisdom, but simply to cool my resentment against that unwise Lady Fleming, which I think hath now somewhat abated, so that I shall endure her presence without any desire to damage either her curch or vasquine.
All the lasses of the west, he goes on to tell us, were up at cockcrow, and no men might rest for the chatter and the noise of their preparations. One cried that her curch was not starched enough, another that a hood was best, another bewailed herself as "so evil sunburnt" that she was not fit to be seen.
Jeanie's fancy, though not the most powerful of her faculties, was lively enough to transport her to a wild farm in Northumberland, well stocked with milk-cows, yeald beasts, and sheep; a meeting-house, hard by, frequented by serious Presbyterians, who had united in a harmonious call to Reuben Butler to be their spiritual guide Effie restored, not to gaiety, but to cheerfulness at least their father, with his grey hairs smoothed down, and spectacles on his nose herself, with the maiden snood exchanged for a matron's curch all arranged in a pew in the said meeting-house, listening to words of devotion, rendered sweeter and more powerful by the affectionate ties which combined them with the preacher.
Hereat my daughter was beyond measure angered, and answered, "Ah! thou old witch, and who has told thee that I wish to go into service to get a curch on my head? Go thy ways, and never enter the house again, for I have nought to do with thee." Whereupon she walked away again, muttering between her teeth.
She rose composedly from the chair into which the effect of Henney's exclamation had thrown her, went to the blue chest which contained her holiday suit, took out, one after another, the chintz gown, the mankie petticoat, the curch, the red plaid; and, after washing from her face the perspiration drops, she began to put on her humble finery all the operation having been gone through with that quiet action which belongs to strong minds where resolution has settled the quivering chords of doubt.
And she repeated the splendid, ringing words of Buccleugh's indignant outcry: "Oh! is my basnet a widow's curch, Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree, Or my arm a lady's lily hand, That an English lord should lightly me? "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Against the truce of Border tide, And forgotten that the bauld Buccleugh Is warden here o' the Scottish side?
"Through the help of the Lord I have luppen ower a wall," cried poor Mause, as her horse was, by her rude attendants, brought up to leap the turf enclosure of a deserted fold, in which feat her curch flew off, leaving her grey hairs uncovered.
Beside him sat his sister Janet, a little neat old woman, with a Highland curch and tartan plaid, watching the very looks of her brother, to her the greatest man upon earth, and actively looking out for him, in his silver-clasped Bible, the texts which the minister quoted or expounded.
Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen, was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded, stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of Lochaber.
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