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Updated: June 5, 2025
A few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home again as fast as we can go.
In many cases, of course, there are a mother's tears, a father's blessing, and suchlike substitutes for the stirrup-cup. And, withal, in every single case, how absolutely alone the young voyager really is, and must be! Circumstances differ vastly, of course; but the central facts are the same in every case; the traveller must always be alone.
"Weel, weel, laddy, you're o'er long in mounting your nag!" shouted Master Sanderson. "I am ready for you now, at all events," answered Jack, as he threw himself into his saddle, and once more shook hands with Brinsmead. "Stop, stop, Mr Sanderson, you be off without your stirrup-cup!" exclaimed the landlord, who at that moment appeared at the door with a tankard in his hand.
The appointed night came, and ere they started in the uncertain light of a misty moon the keeper of Redesdale supped at Girsonfield. "Ye're loaded, are ye, Parcy?" asked the genial host in the burring Northumbrian voice we know so well even to-day. "I'll give a look to our primings while ye drink a stirrup-cup." More than a look he gave.
Hilo, a village upon the coast, was their place of resort; and thither flocked roving whites from all the islands of the group. As pupils of the dashing Spaniards, many of these dissipated fellows, quaffing too freely of the stirrup-cup, and riding headlong after the herds, when they reeled in the saddle, were unhorsed and killed.
Each guest was obliged to empty this at his departure. If the guest's name was Scott, the necessity was doubly imperative. When the landlord of an inn presented his guests with deoch an doruis, that is, the drink at the door, or the stirrup-cup, the draught was not charged in the reckoning. On this point a learned bailie of the town of Forfar pronounced a very sound judgment.
We drained the normal stirrup-cup and embarked in the usual heavy surf-boat, manned by a dozen leathery-lunged 'Elmina boys' with paddles, and a helmsman with an oar. There are smaller surf-canoes, that have weather-boards at the bow to fend off the waves. Our anchorage-place lies at least two miles south-west-and-by-south of the landing-place.
Each guest was obliged to empty this at his departure. If the guest's name was Scott, the necessity was doubly imperative. When the landlord of an inn presented his guests with deoch an doruis, that is, the drink at the door, or the stirrup-cup, the draught was not charged in the reckoning. On this point a learned bailie of the town of Forfar pronounced a very sound judgment.
When Bessie was most unreasonable one only wanted to kiss her. Guy's privileges in that line had passed with the days when he used to pick up bodily his lithe little playfellow to cross a creek or rain-puddled road. But to-day seemed pleasantly momentous; it called for the unusual. "I say, Bibi, when a knight went off to fight, you know, his lady used to give him a stirrup-cup at good-by.
Ye'll hardly get accommodation at Bessie's," said Niel, whose regard for his deceased wife's relative by no means extended to sending company from his own house to hers. "There is a friend," answered Morton, "whom I am to meet with there, and I only called here to take a stirrup-cup and inquire the way."
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