reading—­“Ou, just steek your een.”  On the question, What was the “pestilence that walketh in darkness”? being put to a class, a little boy answered, after consideration—­“Ou, it’s just bugs.”  I did not anticipate when in a former edition I introduced this answer, which I received from my nephew Sir Alexander Ramsay, that it would call forth a comment so interesting as one which I have received from Dr. Barber of Ulverston.  He sends me an extract from Matthew’s Translation of the Bible, which he received from Rev. L.R.  Ayre, who possesses a copy of date 1553, from which it appears that Psalm xci. 5 was thus translated by Matthew, who adopted his translation from Coverdale and Tyndale:—­“So that thou shalt not need to be afrayed for any bugge by nyght, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day[16].”  Dr. Barber ingeniously remarks—­“Is it possible the little boy’s mother had one of these old Bibles, or is it merely a coincidence?”

The innocent and unsophisticated answers of children on serious subjects are often very amusing.  Many examples are recorded, and one I have received seems much to the point, and derives a good deal of its point from the Scottish turn of the expressions.  An elder of the kirk having found a little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, put his reproof in this form, not a judicious one for a child:—­“Boy, do ye know where children go to who play marbles on Sabbath-day?” “Ay,” said the boy, “they gang doun’ to the field by the water below the brig.”  “No,” roared out the elder, “they go to hell, and are burned.”  The little fellow, really shocked, called to his sister, “Come awa’, Jeanie, here’s a man swearing awfully.”

A Scotch story like that of the little boy, of which the humour consisted in the dry application of the terms in a sense different from what was intended by the speaker, was sent to me, but has got spoilt by passing through the press.  It must be Scotch, or at least, is composed of Scottish materials—­the Shorter Catechism and the bagpipes.  A piper was plying his trade in the streets, and a strict elder of the kirk, desirous to remind him that it was a somewhat idle and profitless occupation, went up to him and proposed solemnly the first question of the Shorter Catechism, “What is the chief end of man?” The good piper, thinking only of his own business, and supposing that the question had reference to some pipe melody, innocently answered, “Na, I dinna ken the tune, but if ye’ll whistle it I’ll try and play it for ye.”

I have said before, and I would repeat the remark again and again, that the object of this work is not to string together mere funny stories, or to collect amusing anecdotes.  We have seen such collections, in which many of the anecdotes are mere Joe Millers translated into Scotch.  The purport of these pages has been throughout to illustrate Scottish life and character, by bringing forward those modes and forms of expression by which alone our national peculiarities