ff-box which was given to my grandmother
as a marriage present. Licensed beggars, called "gaberlunzie men," were
still common. They wore a blue coat, with a tin badge, and wandered
about the country, knew all that was going on, and were always welcome
at the farm-houses, where the gude wife liked to have a crack (gossip)
with the blue coat, and, in return for his news, gave him dinner or
supper, as might be. Edie Ochiltree is a perfect specimen of this
extinct race. There was another species of beggar, of yet higher
antiquity. If a man were a cripple, and poor, his relations put him in a
hand-barrow, and wheeled him to their next neighbour's door, and left
him there. Some one came out, gave him oat-cake or peasemeal bannock,
and then wheeled him to the next door; and in this way, going from house
to house, he obtained a fair livelihood.

My brother Sam lived with our grandfather in Edinburgh, and attended the
High School, which was in the old town, and, like other boys, he was
given pennies to buy bread; but the boys preferred oysters, which they
bought from the fishwives, the bargain being, a dozen oysters for a
halfpenny, and a kiss for the thirteenth. These fishwives and their
husbands were industrious, hard-working people, forming a community of
their own in the village of Newhaven, close to the sea, and about two
miles from Edinburgh. The men were exposed to cold, and often to danger,
in their small boats, not always well-built nor fitted for our stormy
Firth. The women helped to land and prepare the fish when the boats came
in, carried it to town for sale in the early morning, kept the purse,
managed the house, brought up the children, and provided food and
clothing for all. Many were rich, lived well, and sometimes had dances.
Many of the young women were pretty, and all wore--and, I am told, still
wear--a bright-coloured, picturesque costume. Some young men, amongst
others a cousin of my own, who attempted to intrude into one of these
balls, got pelted with fish offal by the women. The village smelt
strongly of fish, certainly; yet the people were very clean personally.
I recollect their keeping tame gulls, which they fed with fish offal.

Although there was no individual enmity between the boys of the old and
of the new or aristocratic part of Edinburgh, there were frequent
battles, called "bickers," between them, in which they pelted each other
with stones. Sometimes they were joined by bigger lads, and then t