HEATHER JOCK 



THERE scarcely exists a locality in Scotland with- 

 out its "Heather Jock." The individual bearing 

 this significant sobriquet whom I remember was 

 a tough-looking tyke, who eked out a livelihood making 

 Heather besoms and "reenges," acting as a whilom 

 chiropodist, spearing eels in their season, and spending 

 the few bawbees he earned on Scotch whiskey. 



But Heather Jock finds a place in the literature 

 and the songs of Scotland. R. B. Cunningham 

 Grahame, in the "Saturday Review," thus pictures him 

 as he was known to that writer in the person of Wil- 

 liam Brodie, bred a weaver at the Bridge of Weir, 

 Renfrewshire, who turned peddler, and afterward 

 transmigrated himself into a wandering singer and 

 buffoon under the name of Heather Jock. "No one 

 asked his reasons, but accepted him as he was, with 

 headdress like an Inca of Peru, stuck all around with 

 pheasants' and peacocks' feathers, bits of looking-glass, 

 adorned with Heather, and fastened underneath his 

 jaws with a black ribbon; with moleskin waistcoat, bee 

 in his bonnet, humor in his brain; with short plaid 

 trousers, duffel coat, and in his hand a rude Caduceus 

 made of a hazel stick, in the centre a flat tin heart, set 

 round with jingling bells, and terminating a tuft of 

 Heather. In figure not unlike a stunted oak of the 

 kind depicted in the arms of Glasgow, or such as those 

 which grow in Cadzow Forest, and under which the 



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