United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Still, even his parents maun tak tent o' jeedgin specially ane o' the Lord's ministers maybe ane o' the Lord's ain elec'!" "It's awfu' to think I daurna say 't I daurna maist think the words o' 't, Peter, but it wull cry oot i' my vera hert! Steik the door, Peter and ticht, that no a stray stirk may hear me!
"I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days I tell ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden I wotna whan it was; but it was in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the back of the Kirk of Scotland I heard him tell his hearers, gude and waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o' anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the fireside!
'No; he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cotter, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon. 'But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?
However, at that moment there was a break overhead, and the moon, rheumy-eyed, shook her head clear of cloud, whereby I saw plain enough 'twas a tall, burly man kneeling beside some object or other, and a mighty big horse standing a bit to the rearward of him. I drew nigher without being perceived, and the light still holding, saw that 'twas a young stirk or heifer the man was disembowelling.
It's a wonder the marriage hasna been turned into a burial, and all because o' that Highland stirk, Lauchlan Campbell. Waster Lunny was a man who had to retrace his steps in telling a story if he tried short cuts, and so my custom was to wait patiently while he delved through the ploughed fields that always lay between him and his destination.
"Twice to Carlisle fair," says I, for I am a man wha loves the truth; and besides I kenned that the factor would mind my gaeing there, for I bargained fur twa steers and a stirk that he wanted for the stockin' o' the Drumleugh Fairm. "I learn frae Maister McNeil," says General Heatherstone for him it was and nane ither "that ye canna write." "Na," says I. "Nor read?" "Na," says I.
"To steal a stirk, or wear a score o' sheep hamewards," he used to say, "was naething; but to steal a lord was the highest flicht o' a man's genius, and ought never to be lippened to a hand less than an Armstrong's;" and, certainly, if the success with which he executed one scheme of that high kind will guarantee Will's boasted abilities, he did not transcend the truth in limiting lord-stealing to the Armstrongs.
Word Of The Day