"I bought my wife a stane o' lint, And a' that she has made o' that, The weary pund, the weary pund, I think my wife will end her life There sat a bottle in a hole, Beyont the ingle lowe ; An aye she took the tither souk, Quoth I, 'For shame, ye dirty dame, She took the rock, and wi' a knock, At last her feet-I sang to see't— I'll wallop in a tow." Weaving must now be noticed very briefly. After the thread -linen out of lint, and yarn out of sheep's wool-had been spun it had to be woven into cloth, and this work was performed by the peasantry in their own homes, where the commonest sound was the clack of the loom. Latterly the weaving of the cloth was left to the customer weaver or 66 wabster," "who wove for a local clientèle. Up to a recent date, in some districts of Ayrshire, the farmers sent their wool to a spinning mill, where it was made into cloth, called "home-spun." The more ancient custom is illustrated in "Willie Wastle" from which it may be inferred that "cabbaging" of customers property was not confined to tailors. The introduction of powerloom weaving and the erection of huge factories destroyed this simple employment of the people, and by the end of the eighteenth century hand-loom weaving was doomed. Every grown person of any intelligence knows this, but the rising genera *Stolen a ball of yarn. tion may not be aware of it, and the understanding of some of the songs of Burns depends on this knowledge. For instance, here are several verses from the song "To the Weavers gin ye go" : "My mither sent me to the town To warp a plaiden wab; But the weary, weary warpin' o't A bonnie westlan' weaver lad I sat beside my warpin' wheel, A similar hint is conveyed in "Robin shure in hairst" :— "As I gaed up to Dunse To warp a wab o' plaidin'." This consideration of spinning and weaving may be followed by some explanations regarding the clothing of the people, and a number of lines of Burns in this respect require to be elucidated. Thus, in "The Ronalds of the Bennals," describing his own gay attire, he says :— The Poet is not here enumerating, as one puzzled reader supposes he was, the number of his shirts, but only informing us of the quality of the material. "Twal' hundred " was the term used to denote a coarse linen woven in a reed of 1200 divisions. The finer stuff had 500 extra divisions, and was "the snaw-white seventeen hundred linen" referred to in "Tam o' Shanter." Though the Poet, who must have been regarded as something of a "masher" by his neighbours, wore "a ten shillings hat" the common head-gear was a bonnet, which was worn not only by peasants, but also by those well-to-do farmers who owned the land which they cultivated, and were consequently known as "bonnet lairds." It did duty on Sunday as well as on the other days of the week, and in the "Holy Fair" we have a picture of the elder at the plate, his head covered not with a "lum hat" but a black bonnet : "A greedy glower Black Bonnet throws, And we maun draw our tippence." This allusion to the collection does not mean that two pennies sterling were put into the plate instead of the popular bawbee; the contribution was much smaller than that, as will appear from the explanations to be found further on of the currency of the day. That the head of the minister was protected like that of a humble member of his flock we learn from this line : "Gown, and ban', and douce black bonnet." The bodies of the peasantry were commonly clothed with hodden grey, a rough home-spun wool, and, of course, they did not wear trousers, which were not invented till after the days of Burns, but knee-breeches, which are the breeks referred to in "Tam Glen": 66 "Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush o' guid blue hair." Stockings were worn with the breeks, and it was this garb which made possible the happy custom referred to in "Hallowe'en." Lads who went courting indicated their intentions by a bab of ribbons attached to their garters. Thus : "The lads, sae trig, wi' wooer babs Weel knotted on their garten." One eighteenth century custom alluded to by Burns, and now a thing of the past, lingered so far into the nineteenth century that middle-aged people will have some recollection of it, though it must be quite unknown to the rising generation. This was the use of weepers -linen bands round the sleeves at the wrist as the sign of deep mourning :— "Auld cantie Kyle may weepers wear, And stain them wi' the saut, saut tear." The outward show of mourning was greater then than it is now. Great bobs of crape were worn at funerals, and "Robin's bonnet waved wi' crape for Mailie dead." Burns has very little to say regarding the dress of the gentler sex; it was their personal charms, and not the way they were decked out that attracted him. Yet there are one or two allusions which will be obscure to those unfamiliar with the fashions of the eighteenth century. In the poem, "To a Louse," he says:- "I wadna been surpris'd to spy You on an auld wife's flainen toy; But Miss's fine Lunardi, fye! How daur ye d'ot ?" A toy was an old-fashioned cap made of flannel, and it hung down the back of the neck like the caps of British soldiers in tropical countries. As a rule, however, women went about with their heads bare. The "Lunardi" is a reminder that the problem of aerial flight is not one the solution of which belongs only to the early years of the twentieth century. Even in the days of Burns men were engaged in the conquest of the air, and some, he says:— "Are mind't in things they ca' balloons To tak' a flight, An' stay ae month among the moons, One of the first, if not the first, to make a balloon ascent in Scotland was Vincenzo Lunardi, a young man who was Secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador in London; and his voyages in the air creating no small sensation, the leaders of feminine fashion, anxious then as now to introduce some new style, appeared in balloon-shaped bonnets, which were known by his name. Another explanation regarding the feminine mode of dressing may be made here. The young women of the eighteenth century were as fond of finery as those who have come after them; but they were not so well off, and in the care of their clothing they had to exercise a degree of economy which is not now practised. *Flannel vest. Country girls going to the kirk left home barefooted, carrying their shoes and stockings in their hands until they neared the place of worship, when they sat down by the side of a stream, washed their feet, and put on their footwear. Thus the Poet on being conducted to "The Holy Fair at Mauchline saw :— "The lassies, skelpin' barefit, thrang, In silks and scarlet glitter." On the way home the shoes were taken off again at the first opportunity :— "At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon." The people obtained some of their clothing from chapmen— that is, packmen-who are still to be found plying their trade in the more remote parts of the country. In those days they met their customers in the market, as well as called upon them in their homes : "When chapmen billies leave the street, As market days are wearin' late." Superior kind of packmen were called "troggers" or "trokers," and the goods which they sold were known by the general name of "troggin": “Wha will buy my troggin?" The cloth that the country people bought was made into wearing apparel by tailors who travelled from house to house, measuring and cutting and sewing until the needs of the family were supplied. The tailor's visit, which was arranged weeks in advance, was naturally an event of great importance, and during his short stay "the knight of the needle" lived on the best which his employers had to give, while he more than repaid their attention by retailing the latest gossip and liberally drawing on his fund of entertaining stories. "The itinerant tailor," as Hugh Haliburton says, was the theme of many a rustic song, composed at his expense, and sung in his absence. Amatory escapades, to which 66 he was rather prone, from a nature peculiarly susceptible of female |