himself after the first tuilzie, stand the carters, the gypsies, and the
Irishmen, opposed to Bob Howie, the butcher, the smith, the tailor, the
weaver, the haymakers, and the boys from the manse--the latter drawn up
cautiously, but not cowardly, in the rear. What a twinkling of fists and
shillelas! what bashed and bloody noses! cut blubber lips--cheekbones
out of all proportion to the rest of the face, and, through sudden black
and blue tumefactions, men's changed into pigs' eyes! And now there is
also rugging of caps and mutches and hair, "femineo ululatu," for the
Egyptian Amazons bear down like furies on the glee'd widow that keeps
the change-house, half-witted Shoosy that sells yellow sand, and Davie
Donald's dun daughter, commonly called Spunkie. What shrieking and
tossing of arms, round the whole length and breadth of the village!
Where is Simon Andrew the constable? Where is auld Robert Maxwell the
ruling elder? What can have become of Laird Warnock, whose word is law?
And what can the Minister be about, can anybody tell, that he does not
come flying from the manse to save the lives of his parishioners from
cannibals, and gypsies, and Eerish, murdering their way to the gallows?

How--why--or when--that bloody battle ceased to be, was never distinctly
known either then or since; but, like everything else, it had an
end--and even now we have a confused dream of the spot at its
termination--naked men lying on their backs in the mire, all drenched in
blood--with women, some old and ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag
breasts, others young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly beautiful, with
budding or new-blown bosoms unkerchiefed in the collyshangie--perilous
to see--leaning over them: and these were the Egyptians! Men in brown
shirts, gore-spotted, with green bandages round their broken heads,
laughing, and joking, and jeering, and singing, and shouting, though
desperately mauled and mangled--while Scottish wives, and widows, and
maids, could not help crying out in sympathy, "Oh! but they're bonny
men--what a pity they should aye be sae fond o' fechting, and a' manner
o' mischief!"--and these were the Irishmen! Retired and apart, hangs the
weaver, with his head over a wall, dog-sick, and bocking in strong
convulsions; some haymakers are washing their cut faces in the well; the
butcher, bloody as a bit of his own beef, walks silent into the
shambles; the smith, whose grimy face hides its pummelling, goes off
grinning