102 Transactions. 
abnormal eggs and with shells from the seashore. A black cat, 
a brindled cat, and a muscovy were generally crossing each other 
or demanding a seat on your knee. You would ‘eel something 
cold touching your hand, and presently observe it was the nose 
of a collie dog, generally named after a Scotch river, such as 
Yarrow, Tweed, or Clyde. At the door of the poultry house was 
a little hole or Junky which admitted the cats when shut out from 
the family domicile. On Sundays waggon loads of children, 
carefully packed in straw, presided over by the maternal or 
paternal owner, or both, would pass my house on the road to 
church ; wives and maidens who could not command such a 
conveyance walked past, their shoes and stockings in a napkin, 
ready to be put on at the rivulet’s side nearest the church. At 
that time the greater portion of the families in my district were 
Cameronian or Reformed Presbyterian. At the present time the 
Parish Church has the greater number of adherents, and it being 
a much nearer place of worship, these modes of travelling are 
wearing out. 
Ever since I came to Tynron, the child enters the Christian 
Church on a secular day. Neighbours are invited, and the table 
groans with every kind of food. Butter (salt, fresh, or powdered), 
bacon and eggs, sweet milk and skimmed milk cheese, potato 
scones, soda scones, drop scones, treacle scones, tea, and a dram 
are part of the fare. The shepherds have a very restricted 
number of baptismal names. At one time the fourth of my school- 
boys were ‘‘ Williams.” 
' Weddings are celebrated in the same hospitable and jovial 
style. I have sat in a barn or cheese-room, the walls of which 
were lined with sheeting to protect our clothes; the floor saw 
dusted for dancing. The built-in boiler was transposed into a 
platform for the fiddlers. The tea was taken in relays; the 
minister, schoolmaster, and small gentry occupied seats at the first 
table, which, along with the forms for sitting on, was improvised 
from slabs for the occasion. The commoner folk and young herds 
were next regaled at a second spread, while the elders smoked 
tobacco outside. The dances did not consist of walking, simper- 
ing, and circling round each other with planetary regularity, but 
were like those that took place in Alloway Church, as far as 
noise, life, and motion were concerned. Towards morning came 
that awful ordeal, the pillow dance, or “‘ Bob at the bolster,” an 
ingenious method of picking out the bonny and weel-liked, and 
