We have now to consider stories where words and expressions, which are peculiarly Scotch, impart the humour and the point.  Sometimes they are altogether incapable of being rendered in other language.  As, for example, a parishioner in an Ayrshire village, meeting his pastor, who had just returned after a considerable absence on account of ill health, congratulated him on his convalescence, and added, anticipatory of the pleasure he would have in hearing him again, “I’m unco yuckie to hear a blaud o’ your gab.”  This is an untranslatable form of saying how glad he should be to hear his minister’s voice again speaking to him the words of salvation and of peace from the pulpit.

The two following are good examples of that Scottish style of expression which has its own character.  They are kindly sent by Sir Archibald Dunbar.  The first illustrates Scottish acute discernment.  A certain titled lady, well known around her country town for her long-continued and extensive charities, which are not withheld from those who least deserve them, had a few years since, by the unexpected death of her brother and of his only son, become possessor of a fine estate.  The news soon spread in the neighbourhood, and a group of old women were overheard in the streets of Elgin discussing the fact.  One of them said, “Ay, she may prosper, for she has baith the prayers of the good and of the bad.”

The second anecdote is a delightful illustration of Mrs. Hamilton’s Cottagers of Glenburnie, and of the old-fashioned Scottish pride in the midden.  About twenty years ago, under the apprehension of cholera, committees of the most influential inhabitants of the county of Moray were formed to enforce a more complete cleansing of its towns and villages, and to induce the cottagers to remove their dunghills or dung-pits from too close a proximity to their doors or windows.  One determined woman, on the outskirts of the town of Forres, no doubt with her future potato crop in view, met the M.P. who headed one of these committees, thus, “Noo, Major, ye may tak our lives, but ye’ll no tak our middens.”

The truth is, many of the peculiarities which marked Scottish society departed with the disuse of the Scottish dialect in the upper ranks.  I recollect a familiar example of this, which I may well term a Reminiscence.  At a party assembled in a county house, the Earl of Elgin (grandfather of the present Earl) came up to the tea-table, where Mrs. Forbes of Medwyn, one of the finest examples of the past Scottish lady, was sitting, evidently much engaged with her occupation.  “You are fond of your tea, Mrs. Forbes?” The reply was quite a characteristic one, and a pure reminiscence of such a place and such interlocutors; “’Deed, my Lord, I wadna gie my tea for your yerldom.”