"Old men shook their heads and departed, saying, 'We have seen the fiend
sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray': but one young
and wilful man said, 'Fiend! I'll warrant it's nae fiend, but douce
Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a carouse with some of her
Cumberland cummers, and mickle red wine will be spilt atween them. Dod
I would gladly have a toothfu'! I'll warrant it's nane o' your cauld,
sour slae-water, like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie's port, but right
drap-o'-my-heart's-blood stuff, that would waken a body out of their
last linen. I wonder where the cummers will anchor their craft?'--'And
I'll vow,' said another rustic, 'the wine they quaff is none of your
visionary drink, such as a drouthie body has dished out to his lips
in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial, like the vessels they
sail in, which are made out of a cockleshell or a cast-off slipper,
or the paring of a seaman's right thumb-nail. I once got a hansel out
of a witch's quaigh myself,--auld Marion Mathers, of Dustiefoot, whom
they tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore, but the cummer raise
as fast as they laid her down, and naewhere else would she lie but in
the bonnie green kirkyard of Kier, among douce and sponsible fowk.
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