130 Notes and Sketches. 



English broadcloth, a vest and breeches of Manchester 

 cotton, a high-crowned hat, and watch in his pocket. 

 The servant maids are dressed in poplins, muslins, lawns, 

 and ribbons. And both sexes have little else than finery 

 to enter the world with, which occasions marriage to be 

 delayed longer than formerly, and often brings distress 

 along with it." 



Of the usual dietary of the common people during 

 last century, a writer of the time gives a concise and 

 comprehensive account in the interrogatory form. If 

 one wished to know how they lived, it might, he says, 

 be indicated thus : " Have you got your pottage 1 

 that is, your breakfast. Have you got your sowens ? 

 i.e., your dinner. Have you got your brose ? i.e., your 

 supper." The use of tea had become pretty common in 

 the upper ranks from about 1720. It was gradually 

 creeping in amongst the "commonality," but was strongly 

 denounced by many as not only extravagant, but also 

 calculated to make the people effeminate and weakly. 

 Even the good Lord President Forbes of Culloden had 

 his doubts, and wished for a law to restrain people 

 under a certain income in the use of the leaf. During 

 1744 there was a sort of general movement over Scot- 

 land to put it down, and towns and parishes passed re- 

 solutions to that effect. The tenants of one Ayrshire 

 laird, whose findings were put upon record, declared, 

 with an air of high superiority, that it was needless for 

 them to enter into any formal bond against the use of 

 tea, which, say they, " would be but an improper diet 

 to qualify us for the more robust and manly parts of 

 our business ; and therefore we shall only give our tes- 

 timony against it, and leave the enjoyment of it alto- 

 gether to those who can afford to be weak, indolent, 

 and useless." 



So, with only their porridge, their sowens, and their 

 kail (whether common greens or the not too delicate 

 " red kail," which had latterly become the exclusive 

 perquisite of the bovine race, and seem now to be much 



