Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
think, by a few dried prunes, an innovation which my 
Scottish cook regards with surprise. “Cocky Leeky,” the 
apotheosis of an old cock, with Leeks (and prunes), &c., is 
almost a world-famed dish. It would seem to have been 
thought a very hardy plant, since in the account of the 
great frost in 1608 it is recorded that “the Leek, whose 
courage hath ever been so undaunted that he hath borne up 
his lusty head in all storms, and could never be compelled to 
shrink from hail, snow, frost or showers, is now by the violence 
and cruelty of this weather beaten unto the earth, being 
rotted, dead, disgraced, and trod upon.” I asked Gardener 
if the Leek was indeed very hardy, and whether it minded 
snow and frost, and he said he thought not, only it was not 
possible to get any out of the ground in hard weather, and 
if there was deep snow it could not be picked for fear of 
the leaves breaking off. The Jacobites sang of the Kail- 
yard, of the wee wee German lairdie delving in his Kail- 
yairdie, streughing kail and laying leeks, whose thumbs the 
Scots thristle was to jag. There used to be an old rhyme 
popular with Border Bairns : 
Sunny shower, come on for half an hour, 
Gar a’ the hens cour, 
Gar a’ the hares clap, 
Gar ilka wife o’ Lammermuir 
Put on her kail pat. 
Kail, though applied indifferently, I think, now to any- 
thing of cabbagekind, properly belongs as a name to the 
Colewort. Curiously enough, in modern Swedish a Cabbage- 
stock is termed Kaalstok. I rather like the Scots name 
for Catterpillar — Kailworm. Sproutkale the Saxons called 
February, while it was the old Dutch, I believe, who 
called it the Thawing month, Sprokkel maand. Barefoot 
Kail is rather an amusing term for a poor Scots starveling’s 
broth made without meat. The far-famed Jenny Geddes was 
a greenwife or kailwyfe at the Tron Church in Edinburgh ; in 
other words, a greengrocer with a stall. The pillar is still 
pointed out in St. Giles’ Cathedral by which she sat on her 
creepiestool. 
i54 
