Observing an old man, who had long been about the place, looking very attentively at all that was going on, he said, "Wonderful things people can do now, Robby!" "Ay," said Robby; "indeed, Sir Alexander, I'm thinking gin Solomon were alive noo he'd be thocht naething o'!" The two following derive their force entirely from the Scottish turn of the expressions.

Translated into English, they would lose all point--at least, much of the point which they now have:-- At the sale of an antiquarian gentleman's effects in Roxburghshire, which Sir Walter Scott happened to attend, there was one little article, a Roman _patina_, which occasioned a good deal of competition, and was eventually knocked down to the distinguished baronet at a high price.
Sir Walter was excessively amused during the time of bidding to observe how much it excited the astonishment of an old woman, who had evidently come there to buy culinary utensils on a more economical principle.

"If the parritch-pan," she at last burst out--"If the parritch-pan gangs at that, what will the kail-pat gang for ?" An ancestor of Sir Walter Scott joined the Stuart Prince in 1715, and, with his brother, was engaged in that unfortunate adventure which ended in a skirmish and captivity at Preston.

It was the fashion of those times for all persons of the rank of gentlemen to wear scarlet waistcoats.

A ball had struck one of the brothers, and carried part of this dress into his body, and in this condition he was taken prisoner with a number of his companions, and stripped, as was too often the practice in those remorseless wars.