It expresses generally misfortune or confusion, but I am not quite sure of the _exact_ meaning, or who is represented by "Jock Wabster." It was a great favourite with Sir Walter Scott, who quotes it twice in _Rob Roy_.

Allan Ramsay introduces it in the _Gentle Shepherd_ to express the misery of married life when the first dream of love has passed away:-- "The 'Deil gaes ower Jock Wabster,' hame grows hell, When Pate misca's ye waur than tongue can tell." There are two very pithy Scottish proverbial expressions for describing the case of young women losing their chance of good marriages by setting their aims too high.

Thus an old lady, speaking of her granddaughter having made what she considered a poor match, described her as having "_lookit at the moon, and lichtit[136] in the midden_." It is recorded again of a celebrated beauty, Becky Monteith, that being asked how she had not made a good marriage, she replied, "_Ye see, I wadna hae the walkers, and the riders gaed by._" _It's ill to wauken sleeping dogs._ It is a bad policy to rouse dangerous and mischievous people, who are for the present quiet.
_It is nae mair ferly[137] to see a woman greit than to see a goose go barefit._ A harsh and ungallant reference to the facility with which the softer sex can avail themselves of tears to carry a point.
_A Scots mist will weet an Englishman to the skin._ A proverb, evidently of Caledonian origin, arising from the frequent complaints made by English visitors of the heavy mists which hang about our hills, and which are found to annoy the southern traveller as it were downright rain.
_Keep your ain fish-guts to your ain sea-maws._ This was a favourite proverb with Sir Walter Scott, when he meant to express the policy of first considering the interests that are nearest home.

The saying savours of the fishing population of the east cost.
_A Yule feast may be done at Pasch_.

Festivities, although usually practised at Christmas, need not, on suitable occasions, be confined to any season.
_It's better to sup wi' a cutty than want a spune._ Cutty means anything short, stumpy, and not of full growth; frequently applied to a short-handled horn spoon.