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The main thing here is the effect the Freeman anecdote had on me, which was that when I went back to continue my insect-watching and rested at noon at Dead Man's Plack, the old legend would keep intruding itself on my mind, until, wishing to have done with it, I said and I swore that it was true that the tradition preserved in the neighbourhood, that on this very spot Athelwold was slain by the king, was better than any document or history.
"There is some cousin-red between us, doubtless," said the Bailie reluctantly; "but we hae seen little o' ilk other since Rob gae tip the cattle-line o' dealing, poor fallow! he was hardly guided by them might hae used him better and they haena made their plack a bawbee o't neither.
From this day all is changit; Oscar shall hae neither plack nor bawbee of mine; all goes to my wife's nephew, Stanley Mitchell, as is set down in due form in the bit testament that is waiting without; bating only some few sma' bequests for old kindness.
"I trust he has done you no wrong, that you should be so hot against him." "Wrong, quotha?" cried the other, jumping out of the heather. "Wrong! why he hath stolen every plack of clothing off my back, if that be a wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of white falding, so that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest she think that I have donned her old kirtle.
I wad hae thought better o' it had thou made it when it took the last plack i' thy pouch. Out o' thy great wealth, a few hun'red pounds is nae matter to speak aboot." But people did speak of it. In spite of our chronic abuse of human nature it is, after all, a kindly nature, and rejoices in good more than in evil.
In short, as Duncan boasted, the entertainment did not cost MacCallummore a plack out of his sporran, and was nevertheless not only liberal, but overflowing. The Duke's health was solemnised in a bona fide bumper, and David Deans himself added perhaps the first huzza that his lungs had ever uttered, to swell the shout with which the pledge was received.
'I wad by no means, said Peter Peebles, 'do any substantial harm to the poor lad Fairford, who has had mony a gowd guinea of mine, as weel as his father before him; but I wad hae him brought back to the minding of my business and his ain; and maybe I wadna insist further in my action of damages against him, than for refunding the fees, and for some annual rent on the principal sum due frae the day on which he should have recovered it for me, plack and bawbee, at the great advising; for ye are aware, that is the least that I can ask NOMINE DAMNI; and I have nae thought to break down the lad bodily a'thegither we maun live and let live forgie and forget.
If they put a penny in my purse it might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking, and I'm not a plack the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, John Splendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I would drown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn."
Whan Andrew frae Strathbogie gaed, The lift was lowerin' dreary; The sun he wadna lift his heid; The win' blew laich and eerie. In's pouch he had a plack or twa, I vow he hadna mony; Yet Andrew like a lintie sang, For Lizzie was sae bonny! O Lizzie, Lizzie, bonnie lassie! Bonnie, saucy hizzie! What richt had ye to luik at me, And drive me daft and dizzy?
I say, I uplift my voice and tell you, that before the play is played out ay, before this very sun gaes down, ye sall learn that neither a desperate Judas, like your prelate Sharpe that's gane to his place; nor a sanctuary-breaking Holofernes, like bloody-minded Claverhouse; nor an ambitious Diotrephes, like the lad Evandale; nor a covetous and warld-following Demas, like him they ca' Sergeant Bothwell, that makes every wife's plack and her meal-ark his ain; neither your carabines, nor your pistols, nor your broadswords, nor your horses, nor your saddles, bridles, surcingles, nose-bags, nor martingales, shall resist the arrows that are whetted and the bow that is bent against you!"
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