grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its
fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never
beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones,
and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away at
them with pleasure, even although not hungry--and yet it was impossible
of them to eat too much--Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter
yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount
Pleasant--such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture--was coloured like
the crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in the
honey-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn.
Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is too
luscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey,
like dew shaken from clover, but now _querny_ after winter keep; and oh!
over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, on
such a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to be
described by such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!
It was of gooseberries--the small black hairy ones--gathered to a very
minute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannock
studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a
corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The
question, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was
not--"My dear laddie, which will ye hae--hinny or jam?" but, "Which will
ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs,
or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderate
dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was
withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity
fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming
Sycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy as
ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold,
happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;
for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave
forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of
Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that
ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire
in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.

Never had Mary Morrison heard the old