Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
There were many folk coming and going these days, and Ronny McKinnon and McGilp would be sitting with Bryde, and they would have the great tales of ships and the sea, and whiles Ronny would have his fiddle and play, and whiles it would be the old stories they would be telling.
Ronny McKinnon had been aye about the cove, concealed in the daytime and busy in the night, for McGilp trusted him much, and McKelvie's skiff had made a run with only the innkeeper and swart Robin on board, except for a keg or two concealed beneath a sail and a tangled long line.
He was much exercised by the morals of the place, and very religious, except when in drink, which would be mostly every night. On such a night, with Ronald and myself at the table and McGilp opposite, the door opened, and in came Bryde and Hugh with a cold swirl of sleet, and sat down beside us, and Robin McKelvie brought their drink, and old McKelvie came ben to be doing the honours.
"Eat ye your pease-brose and keep clear o' the weemen, and ye'll be as great a man as him, but never say a word tae Dan. Says you, when ye go home and see him wi' nobody aboot, says you: 'Jock McGilp was saying the turf's in and the gull's a bonny bird. Mind it noo; 'The turfs in' and 'the gull's a bonny bird."
It will be very sedate in our house this day, and McGilp, that was master of the Gull, waling the Bible for stories of sailing craft; and my father reading about Jacob, and yon droll tricks he would be doing with the cattle o' his mother's brother yon was sailin' near the win'. "A herd?" "A herd ay, kye in legions.
"Ye'll ken fine, Hamish, for what lass's sake," and sent him into France with a Scotch soldier he kent, returning there, with directions to wait at the little town on the coast where McGilp would whiles be, and "bring you this word o' me and a wheen things for Belle." He was asking me to see McGilp too. The last of it was like Dan.
And as I made my way home, I thought of that little whimpering wean in the crook of Scaurdale's arm, and wondered how she would fare on board the Gull, for by Dan's word I kent McGilp had shone the flare away seaward. Scaurdale, it seemed, would be hiding the wean in fair earnest now, and McGilp I kent would whiles be on the French coast.
"If I had run to my house and the door shut, I would just be fallin' dead on the doorstep." "There's McGilp," says Dan. "He aye carries a sail needle in his kep lining, and he'll say it's just to be handy, but it's aye been in the same place. An' what will it be for, Neil Crubach?" Neil looked up, his blue eyes hazy with dreaming things out of the past.
But I felt fine and warm inside for all that. Captain McGilp, as tough a looking seaman as ever shook out a reef, hoisted himself beside Dan. He had not mind of me, I think. "We did yon business o' Scaurdale's," he whispered, "and got the len' of a cow to keep the wean in milk, and I'll no' say but I forget where the beast came frae, for it's in the barrel now, what's left o't.
"There's just the two roads, you see, the shore road and the hill road, and a strange foot carries far, and there's aye a lad on the watch when the 'turf's in." So that was Wee Neil's message; McGilp and his crew would be ashore, as many as could be spared from the schooner, and we were making for the Turf Inn, and as we travelled I asked why it came to be called that.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking