bane, the Highland whisky.
In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott had
many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. It
was soon after this time that he first began those raids into
Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the
sketches--embodied subsequently in _Guy Mannering_--of Dandie Dinmont,
his pony Dumple, and the various Peppers and Mustards from whose breed
there were afterwards introduced into Scott's own family, generations
of terriers, always named, as Sir Walter expressed it, after "the
cruet." I must quote the now classic record of those youthful
escapades:--

"Eh me," said Mr. Shortreed, his companion in all these
Liddesdale raids, "sic an endless fund of humour and
drollery as he had then wi' him. Never ten yards but we were
either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped,
how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as
the lave did; never made himsel' the great man or took ony
airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these
jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and
drunk--(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but
rare)--but drunk or sober he was aye the gentleman. He
looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was _fou_, but
he was never out o' gude humour."

One of the stories of that time will illustrate better the wilder days
of Scott's youth than any comment:--

"On reaching one evening," says Mr. Lockhart, "some
Charlieshope or other (I forget the name) among those
wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual: but to
their agreeable surprise, after some days of hard living, a
measured and orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon
after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine alone had
been produced, a young student of divinity who happened to
be in the house was called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,'
in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some
progress had been already made in the service, when the good
man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says,
'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by
starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with
a stentorian exclamation of 'By ----! here's the keg at
last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of
sturdy herdsmen, whom,