1 6 2 Silk and Scarlet 



most brilliant vein. At home, when Bob was a good 

 deal elated with winning, it did not require much per- 

 suasion to get him to sing ; and if left to himself, he 

 invariably struck up the old Cumberland ditty : — 



** If ye ax wheer oi comes fra, 

 I'll say the Fell side ; 

 Where feyther and mither, 

 And honest folk bide ; 

 My sweetheart, God bless her. 

 She thowt nin like me ; 

 For when we shuk hands. 

 The tear gushed fra her ee." 



He threw such expression into his song, as he pro- 

 ceeded (wringing his hands, and pressing them drama- 

 tically on his stomach), to describe how Margery 

 Jackson, the old miser- woman of the Warwick Bridge 

 road, hired him, and almost starved him to death ; 

 and how the Carlisle fellows hung and skinned 

 " CwoUy," the companion of his fortunes — 



** For shoon to their feet," 



— that he was offered a very considerable sum to sing 

 it on the stage in character. 



Jack Spigot and Beeswing's dam was a lame mare by 

 the Ardrossans. Ardrossan, who was an immense horse, 

 with a crest almost equal to the Godolphin's himself, 

 and grandsire to St. Giles and Bloomsbury through 

 Arcot Lass. Bob Johnson won his maiden race on 

 her at Doncaster, and she never ran again, as she 

 slipped her stifle-joint coming home, and became a 

 cripple for life. Her half-brother. Jack Spigot, came 

 there the next year, and won the St. Leger ; but he 

 took such a dislike to Bill Scott, that never after that 

 would he suffer him to come into the stable, and he 

 was quite furious, if he even heard his voice. He was 

 a very beautiful foal, but his dam, a sister to Bourbon, 

 for whom Mr. Powlett gave a small sum, after she had 

 been blind and barren for years, took such a perpetual 

 galloping fit in the paddock, that she almost knocked 



