Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

106 HOSPITALITY.
was in such a shower, which stung as if it had been small
shot, that I lost all sense of sight and hearing, and found
myself by a kettle of potatoes boiling over a good peat
fire, attended by a draggled cock and two dirty hens
having tumbled down through the unfinished roof, like
Jupiter in the pantomine, and looking very like one of
the River Gods in Tooke's Pantheon. Shortly however
came in the owner and his little girl, not a bit drier than
the chickens which formed his whole domestic establish-
ment. Man wants but little here below, and our Hysker
friend seemed to want nothing but the other half of his
roof. But perhaps he had not had time to finish it, or he
did not expect it would rain, or else he did not care for
rain, or he thought half a roof enough for himself, his
child, and the three chickens. He was a fine, handsome,
good-natured fellow, however; so we ate his potatoes
and made him as happy as possible.
This is the true Highland hospitality, never boasted
of, yet never failing. In all the wilds I ever visited, I
never yet entered the blackest hut without having what
Avas to be given, the best place by the fire, the milk-tub,
the oat-cake, the potatoes, the eggs, if it was possible to
persuade the hens to do such a deed, and a glass of
whisky if it was to be found. All this too seems quite
matter of right, not of favour. But my Hysker friend,
like many others, had never heard of hospitality : when
once the term has crept in, the virtue is too apt to creep
out, as happens in the case of many other virtues where
this sort of paper currency has found a footing. It was
once the universal character of the country.
Wi routh o' kin and routh o' reek
My daddy's door it would na steek
But bread and cheese were his door-cheek
And girdle-cakes the rigging o't.
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