ted town was no other than our modern Leslie; and, though we cannot
say that that once favoured haunt of the satyrs of merrymaking has escaped
the dull blight that comes from the sleepy eye of the owl of modern wisdom,
we have good authority for asserting that long after James celebrated the
place for its unrivalled festivities, the character of the inhabitants was
kept for many an after-day; and Hogmanay was a choice outlet for the
exuberant spirits of the votaries of Momus.

The day we find chronicled as remarkable for an exhibition of the true
spirit of the Leslieans, went off as all days that precede a glorious
jubilee at night generally do. The ordinary work of the "yape" expectants
was, no doubt, apparently going on; but the looking of "twa ways" for
gloaming was, necessarily, exclusive of much interest in the work of the
day. The sober matrons, as they sat at the door on the "stane settle,"
little inclined to work, considered themselves entitled to a _feast_ of
gossip; and even the guidman did not feel himself entitled to curb the glib
tongue of his dame, or close up her ears with prudential maxims against the
bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day
there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought
or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the
tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the
forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the
array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed
state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every
part of the body languid and lazy except the tongue. Around them the
younkers, "hasty hensures" and "wanton winklots," were busy preparing the
habiliments of the guysers--whose modes of masking and disguising were
often regulated by the characters they were to assume, or the songs they
had learned to chant for the occasion. Nor were these mimes limited to the
urchin caste; for, in these days, wisdom had not got so conceited as to be
ashamed of innocent mirth; and gaucy queens and stalwarth chiels exhibited
their superiority only in acting a higher mask, and singing a loftier
strain. The gossips did not hesitate to suspend the honeyed topic, to give
sage counsel on the subject of the masking "bulziements;" and anon they
turned a side look at the minor actors, the imps of devilry, who passed
along