however, prepared for the attack, and sturdily defended his property, boldly asserting, “Na, na, laird, thae are no Tod-brae banes; they are Inch-byre banes, and nane o’ your honour’s”—­meaning that he had received these bones at the house of a neighbour of a more liberal character.  The beggar’s professional discrimination between the merits of the bones of the two mansions, and his pertinacious defence of his own property, would have been most amusing to a bystander.

I have, however, a reverse story, in which the beggar is quietly silenced by the proprietor.  A noble lord, some generations back, well known for his frugal habits, had just picked up a small copper coin in his own avenue, and had been observed by one of the itinerating mendicant race, who, grudging the transfer of the piece into the peer’s pocket, exclaimed, “O, gie’t to me, my lord;” to which the quiet answer was, “Na, na; fin’ a fardin’ for yersell, puir body.”

There are always pointed anecdotes against houses wanting in a liberal and hospitable expenditure in Scotland.  Thus, we have heard of a master leaving such a mansion, and taxing his servant with being drunk, which he had too often been after other country visits.  On this occasion, however, he was innocent of the charge, for he had not the opportunity to transgress.  So, when his master asserted, “Jemmy, you are drunk!” Jemmy very quietly answered, “Indeed, sir, I wish I wur.”  At another mansion, notorious for scanty fare, a gentleman was inquiring of the gardener about a dog which some time ago he had given to the laird.  The gardener showed him a lank greyhound, on which the gentleman said, “No, no; the dog I gave your master was a mastiff, not a greyhound;” to which the gardener quietly answered, “Indeed, ony dog micht sune become a greyhound by stopping here.”

From a friend and relative, a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, I used to hear many characteristic stories.  He had a curious vein of this sort of humour in himself, besides what he brought out from others.  One of his peculiarities was a mortal antipathy to the whole French nation, whom he frequently abused in no measured terms.  At the same time he had great relish of a glass of claret, which he considered the prince of all social beverages.  So he usually finished off his antigallican tirades, with the reservation, “But the bodies brew the braw drink.”  He lived amongst his own people, and knew well the habits and peculiarities of a race gone by.  He had many stories connected with the pastoral relation between minister and people, and all such stories are curious, not merely for their amusement, but from the illustration they afford us of that peculiar Scottish humour which we are now describing.  He had himself, when a very young boy, before he came up to the Edinburgh High School, been at the parochial school where he resided, and which, like many others, at that period, had a considerable reputation for the skill and scholarship of the master.