tion that the very circumstance
of wearing them would shorten the days of their living. They likewise
carefully watch the corpse by night and day till the time of interment,
and conceive that "the deil tinkles at the lyke-wake" of those who felt
in their dead-thraw the agonies and terrors of remorse.'

These notions are not peculiar to the gipsies; but, having been once
generally entertained among the Scottish common people, are now only
found among those who are the most rude in their habits and most devoid
of instruction. The popular idea, that the protracted struggle between
life and death is painfully prolonged by keeping the door of the
apartment shut, was received as certain by the superstitious eld of
Scotland. But neither was it to be thrown wide open. To leave the door
ajar was the plan adopted by the old crones who understood the mysteries
of deathbeds and lykewakes. In that case there was room for the
imprisoned spirit to escape; and yet an obstacle, we have been assured,
was offered to the entrance of any frightful form which might otherwise
intrude itself. The threshold of a habitation was in some sort a sacred
limit, and the subject of much superstition. A bride, even to this day,
is always lifted over it, a rule derived apparently from the Romans.

NOTES TO VOLUME 2

NOTE 1, p. 93

The roads of Liddesdale, in Dandie Dinmont's days, could not be said to
exist, and the district was only accessible through a succession of
tremendous morasses. About thirty years ago the author himself was the
first person who ever drove a little open carriage into these wilds, the
excellent roads by which they are now traversed being then in some
progress. The people stared with no small wonder at a sight which many of
them had never witnessed in their lives before.

NOTE 2, p. 102

The Tappit Hen contained three quarts of claret--
Weel she loed a Hawick gill,
And leugh to see a tappit hen.
I have seen one of these formidable stoups at Provost Haswell's, at
Jedburgh, in the days of yore It was a pewter measure, the claret being
in ancient days served from the tap, and had the figure of a hen upon the
lid. In later times the name was given to a glass bottle of the same
dimensions. These are rare apparitions among the degenerate topers of
modern days.

NOTE 3, p. 102

The account given by Mr. Pleydell of his sitting down in the midst of a
revel to draw an appeal case was taken fr