One woman remarked that it had an unearthly, rank smell; to which he said, "No, no--ye do not ken your blessings, friend,--that's the smell of venison, for the beast was brought up along with the deers in the Duke's parks." And to another wife, that, after smell-smelling at it, thought it was a wee humphed, he replied, "Faith, that's all the thanks folk gets for letting their sheep crop heather among the Cheviot-Hills;" and such like lies.

But as for the head, that had been the doure business.

Six times had it been sold and away, and six times had it been brought back again.

One bairn said, that her "mother didna like a sheep's head with horns like these, and wanted it changed for another one." A second one said, that "it had tup's een, and her father liked wether mutton." A third customer found mortal fault with the colours, which, she said, "were not canny, or in the course of nature." What the fourth one said, and the fifth one took leave to observe, I have stupidly forgotten, though, I am sure, I heard both; but I mind one remarked, quite off-hand, as she sought back her money, that, "unless sheep could do without beards, like their neighbours, she would keep the pot boiling with a piece beef, in the mean time." After all this, would any mortal man believe it, Deacon Paunch, the greasy Daniel Lambert that he is, had taken the wager, as I before took opportunity to remark, that our family would swallow the bait?
But, aha, he was off his eggs there! James and me were so tickled with Cursecowl's wild, outrageous, off-hand, humoursome way of telling his crack, that, though sore with neighering, none of the two of us ever thought of rising; Cursecowl chapping in first one stoup, and then another, and birling the tankard round the table, as if we had been drinking dub-water.

I dare say I would never have got away, had I not slipped out behind Lucky Thamson's back--for she was a broad fat body, with a round-eared mutch, and a full-plaited check apron--when she was drawing the sixth bottle of small beer, with her corkscrew between her knees; Cursecowl lecturing away, at the dividual moment, like a Glasgow professor, to James Batter, whose een were gathering straws, on a pliskie he had once, in the course of trade, played on a conceited body of a French sicknurse, by selling her a lump of fat pork to make beef-tea of to her mistress, who was dwining in the blue Beelzebubs.
Ohone, and woes me, for old Father Adam and the fall of man! Poor, sober, good, honest James Batter was not, by a thousand miles, a match for such company.