rowed from the facetiæ of every age and country, there still remain their setting, their language, and their tone, which are distinctly and intensely original and local. Were they merely a rehash of the old fables, with which Gower, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare, and, in our own day, Mr. Furnival, Dr. Halliwell-Phillips, and others, have familiarised the public, they would not deserve more than a passing glance. But they are not this; for, while in many cases, the outlines are borrowed, the whole filling up, the customs narrated, the dialogue, and many of the incidents, are so essentially and characteristically Scotch, that they could not possibly have been grown on foreign soil. These rough, broad histories are saturated with an intensely local colouring, as indeed they must have been to have appealed so forcibly to the sympathies of their patrons. The incidents, though plundered from many foreign sources, have still about them a wonderful freshness and flavour, the result mainly of the manner in which they are wrought out, and the racy vernacular in which they are told.

Another and more valuable class of humorous chap-books is that in which there is a certain definite plot, accompanied by a large proportion of dialogue, and elaborated to a legitimate conclusion. Of this class, the most popular are: In prose-Jockie and Maggie's Courtship, and The History of the Haverel Wives, or Janet Clinker's Orations; and, in verse-The Wife of Beath, Watty and Meg, The Monk and the Miller's Wife, Thrummy Cap, and, in verse and prose-Habby Simpson. These furnish the choicest specimens of national humour and customs, and are replete with graphic descriptions of persons and manHere are three portraits of Sawny the Coalman, representing Sawny sober, Sawny dressed, and Sawny drunk.

ners.

§1. SAWNY SOBER.-"He was a stout young raw loun, full-faced, wi' flabby cheeks, duddy breeks, and a ragged doublet; gade always wi' his bosom bare, sometimes had ae gartan, a lingle or rash-rape was good enough for Sawny. His very belly was a' sun-burnt, and brown like a piper's bag, or the head of an old drum; and yet he was a ruddy loun in the face, and swallowed brose for his breakfast, and baps and ale through the day, and when the wind was cauld, bought an oven farl and twa Dunbar

weathers, or a Glasgow-Magistrate, which fishwives ca's a Weslin-herrin.

§ 2. SAWNY DRESSED.-Up got Sawny in the morning, and swallowed his sodden meat, slag by slag; and aff he goes to the coals and courting, lilting and singing like a lav'rock in a May morning, "O to be married if this be the way." The colliers all wondered to see him sae weal busket, with a pair of wally side auld-fashioned breeks o' his father's, and a lang gravat like a minister, or Bailie Duff at a burial, clean face and hands, and no less than a gun-sleeved linen sark on him, which made his cheeks to shine like a sherney weight, and the colliers swore he was as braw as a horse gaun to a cow's dredgy.

§ 3. SAWNY DRUNK.-When Sawny came out he stoited and staggered as a sturdy stot: molash was chief commander, for he thought everybody had twa heads and four een, and more noses than they needed; being sometime in the dark house, thought it was the morning of a new day. Off he goes, steering about like a ship against the wind, as if he would make holes in the wa's and windows with his elbows: he looked as fierce as a lion; wi’ a red face like a trumpeter, and his nose was like a bublie-cock's neb, as blue as blawirt; but or he ran half way, his head turned heavier than his heels, and mony a filthy fa' he got; thro' thick and thin he plashed, till hame he gets at last grunting and graping by the wa's, that auld Mary, his mither, thought it was their neighbour's sow, he was sae bedaubed wi' dirt."

The hand-to-hand fight that accompanied the bedding of Jockie and Maggie is also vigorously painted :

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For the hamsheughs were very great, until auld uncle Rabby came in to redd them; and a sturdy auld fallow he was. He stood stively with a stiff rumple, and by strength of his arms rave them sindry, flinging the tane east and the tither wast, until they stood a' round about like as many breathless forfoughten cocks, and no ane durst steer anither for him; Jockie's mither was driven o'er a kist, and brogit a' her hips on a round heckle. Up she gat, and rinning to fell Maggie's mither wi' the ladle, sweared she was the mither of a' the mischief that happened. Uncle Rabby ran in between them; he having a long nose, like a trumpet, she recklessly came o'er his lobster neb a drive wi' the ladle till the blood sprang out, an' ran down his auld grey beard and hang like bubles at it; O! then he gaed wood, and looked as woefu' like as he had been a tod-lowrie come frae worrying the lambs, wi' his bloody mouth. Wi' that he gets an auld flail, and rives awa' the supple, then drives them a' to the back o' the door, but yet nane wan out. Then wi' chirten' an' chappen', down comes the clayhallen and the hen bawk wi' Rab Reid, the fiddler, who had crept up aside the hens for the preservation o' his fiddle."

Few things could be more dramatic or humorous than the account of Jockie's interview, first with the justice, and afterwards

with the minister; or Sawny's description of how he made love to old Be-go's daughter, and the exit of the little tailor 'body' with his tail between his feet, like a halfworried colly dog. Or take Janet Clinker's philippic against the minister's family :

"Indeed I think he (the minister) is a gay gabby body, but he ha' twa fau'ts and his wife has three; he's unco greedy o' siller, and preaching down pride and up charity, and yet he's that fu' o' pride himsel' that he has gotten a glass winnock on ilka side of his nose, and his een is as clear as twa clocks to luk' to; he has twa gilly gawkies o' dochters, wha come to the Kirk wi' their coblethow mutches frizled up as braid as their hips, and clear things like stars about their necks, and at ilka lug a wallopin white thing hanging, syne about their necks a bit thin claith like a mouse web, and their twa bits o' paps ay playing nidity nod, shining thro' like twa yearning bags. Shame fa' them and their fligmagaeries baith, for I get nae gude o' the preaching looking at them, and a' the shairney hought hizzies in the parish maun ha'e the like or lang gae. But an' I were to preach, sic pride sudna ha'e baith peace and prosperity in my parish : I wa'd point my finger at them in the Kirk and name them, baith name and surname, and say there sits shairney Meg o' the mill; stumpy May o' the Moss; sniveling Kate, with her bodle mak-easter coat; they come into the Kirk, bobbing their hint quarters like water wagtails, shaking their heads like a hunder