The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

to rue the day, lang or this time, that e’er she suld hae
shook a limb on sic an errand. Better for her to hae been
born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld
Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king’s
daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae
often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for
the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to
fyke and fling at piper’s wind and fiddler’s squealing.
And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter Walker
the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in
my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat,
dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant
swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and hunger,
wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my
head, and the wantonness of my feet.
And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as
name dancing, or think there’s sic a thing in this warld
as flinging to fiddler’s sounds, and piper’s springs, as
The Heart of Mid-Lothian
gang in, then, hinnies,” he added, in a softer tone, for
the tears of both daughters, but especially those of Effie,
began to flow very fast,— “Gang in, dears, and we’ll
seek grace to preserve us frae all, manner of profane
folly, whilk causeth to sin, and promoteth the kingdom
of darkness, warring with the kingdom of light.”
The objurgation of David Deans, however well meant,
was unhappily timed. It created a division of feelings in
Effie’s bosom, and deterred her from her intended confidence
in her sister. “She wad hand me nae better than
the dirt below her feet,” said Effie to herself, “were I to
confess I hae danced wi’ him four times on the green
down by, and ance at Maggie Macqueens’s; and she’ll
maybe hing it ower my head that she’ll tell my father,
and then she wad be mistress and mair. But I’ll no gang
back there again. I’m resolved I’ll no gang back. I’ll lay
in a leaf of my Bible,* and that’s very near as if I had
made an aith, that I winna gang back.”
sure as my father’s spirit is with the just, ye shall be no
* This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the
more either charge or concern of mine! Gang in, then—
party’s Bible, when a solemn resolution is formed, is still held
to be, in some sense, an appeal to Heaven for his or her sin-
* Note F. Peter Walker.
cerity.
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