I have myself witnessed again and again the sort of funeral scene portrayed by Sir Walter Scott, who no doubt took his description from what was common in his day:--"The funeral pomp set forth--saulies with their batons and gumphions of tarnished white crape.

Six starved horses, themselves the very emblems of mortality, well cloaked and plumed, lugging along the hearse with its dismal emblazonry, crept in slow pace towards the place of interment, preceded by Jamie Duff, an idiot, who, with weepers and cravat made of white paper, _attended on every funeral_, and followed by six mourning coaches filled with the company."-- _Guy Mannering_.
The following anecdote, supplied by Mr.Blair, is an amusing illustration both of the funeral propensity, and of the working of a defective brain, in a half-witted carle, who used to range the province of Galloway armed with a huge pike-staff, and who one day met a funeral procession a few miles from Wigtown.

A long train of carriages, and farmers riding on horse-back, suggested the propriety of his bestriding his staff, and following after the funeral.

The procession marched at a brisk pace, and on reaching the kirk-yard style, as each rider dismounted, "Daft Jock" descended from his wooden steed, besmeared with mire and perspiration, exclaiming, "Hech, sirs, had it no been for the fashion o' the thing, I micht as weel hae been on my ain feet." The withdrawal of these characters from public view, and the loss of importance which they once enjoyed in Scottish society, seem to me inexplicable.

Have they ceased to exist, or are they removed from our sight to different scenes?
The fool was, in early times, a very important personage in most Scottish households of any distinction.
Indeed this had been so common as to be a public nuisance.
It seemed that persons _assumed_ the character, for we find a Scottish Act of Parliament, dated 19th January 1449, with this title:--"Act for the way-putting of _Fenyent_ Fules," etc.