United States or American Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The tidings and the bickerings to which he was a hearkener in the smiddy, he was in the practice of relating to his companions, by which it came to pass that, it might in a manner be said, all the boys in the town were leagued in spirit with the reformers, and the consequences were not long of ripening.
His posters, in big blue letters, were on the smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to door. The folk could talk of nothing else. "Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure here!
But they had not long crossed the Cupar road and travelled the one leading to the ferry when they heard the whirlwind sound of horsemen coming after them, at which the honest man of Crail darted aside and lay flat on his grouff ayont a bramble bush, while my grandfather began to lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the closer that the horsemen came he was strengthened to sing the louder and the clearer.
"It's a long story," said Dan, "but maybe ye'll have noticed a hole in a smiddy wall, where they will be throwing out the ashes. Well, in this lonely place here, there werena many to trouble, and it cam' to be known that a man could get a dram if he paid for it, and as much as he liked to be payin' for.
Have ye fairly settled to tak' to Uncle Andrew's trade?" "Yes. Last night he and I arranged it while you were asleep. I must work, you know, to earn my living, and there is no situation so likely to afford such effectual concealment. Bruce offered to take me on again, but the smiddy is too public, and too much frequented by soldiers. Ah, Jean!
"There's hell to pay," broke out Smiddy breathlessly. "You know Gus Evans and the little black-haired guy goes 'round with him? They been picked up. I seen 'em myself with some M. P.'s at Place de la Bastille.
His eyes met Andrews's eyes with a flash of fear. "They're all sorts of officers, like they're all sorts of us," Al was insisting. "But you damn fools, quit arguing," cried Smiddy. "What the hell are we goin' to do? It ain't safe here no more, that's how I look at it." They were silent. At last Chrisfield said: "What you goin' to do, Andy?" "I hardly know. I think I'll go out to St.
Their great place of congregating is still some country smiddy, which is also their frequent meeting-place when bent on black-fishing. The flare of the black-fisher's torch still attracts salmon to their death in the rivers near Thrums; and you may hear in the glens on a dark night the rattle of the spears on the wet stones. Twenty or thirty years ago, however, the sport was much more common.
The song was sung and recited in the streets, at the smiddy, in bothies, and by firesides, to the shaking of fists and the grinding of teeth. It began: "Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside, Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside, She poisoned her maid for to keep up her pride, Ye'll a' hae hear tell o' the wife o' Deeside."
This Tobit being much resorted to by the courtiers going to and coming from Falkland, and well known to their serving-men, who were wont to speak of him in the smiddy at Lithgow as a zealous reformer chiefly, as the prodigals among them used to jeer and say, because the priests and friars in their journeyings atween St Andrews and Edinburgh took the use of his beasts without paying for them, giving him only their feckless benisons instead of white money.
Word Of The Day