.

Many yet living, among whom James Batter, who was the best-man, and
Duncan Imrie, the heelcutter in the Flesh-Market Close, are still above
board to bear solemn testimony to the grandness of the occasion, and the
uncountable numerousness of the company, with such a display of
mutton-broth, swimming thick with raisins,--and roasted jiggets of
lamb,--to say nothing of mashed turnips and champed potatoes,--as had not
been seen in the wide parish of Dalkeith in the memory of man. It was
not only my father's bridal day, but it brought many a lad and lass
together by way of partners at foursome reels and Hieland jigs, whose
courtship did not end in smoke, couple above couple dating the day of
their happiness from that famous forgathering. There were no less than
three fiddlers, two of them blind with the small-pox, and one naturally;
and a piper with his drone and chanter, playing as many pibrochs as would
have deaved a mill-happer,--all skirling, scraping, and bumming away
throughither, the whole afternoon and night, and keeping half the
countryside dancing, capering, and cutting, in strathspey step and quick
time, as if they were without a weary, or had not a bone in their bodies.
In the days of darkness, the whole concern would have been imputed to
magic and glamour; and douce folk, finding how they were transgressing
over their usual bounds, would have looked about them for the wooden pin
that auld Michael Scott the warlock drave in behind the door, leaving the
family to dance themselves to death at their leisure.

Had the business ended in dancing, so far well, for a sound sleep would
have brought a blithe wakening, and all be tight and right again; but,
alas and alackaday! the violent heat and fume of foment they were all
thrown into, caused the emptying of so many ale-tankers, and the
swallowing of so muckle toddy, by way of cooling and refreshing the
company, that they all got as fou as the Baltic; and many ploys, that
shall be nameless, were the result of a sober ceremony, whereby two douce
and decent people, Mansie Wauch, my honoured father, and Marion Laverock,
my respected mother, were linked thegither, for better for worse, in the
lawful bonds of honest wedlock.

It seems as if Providence, reserving every thing famous and remarkable
for me, allowed little or nothing of consequence to happen to my father,
who had few cruiks in his lot; at least I never learned, either from him
or any other body, of any adve