CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Book of Scottish Anecdote: Humorous, Social, Legendary, and Historical. Collected and edited by Alexander Hislop. (The Edinburgh Publishing Company.)—There is a fascination about books of anecdotes. Nobody over opens one with an intention of reading it all through, or oven of reading much of it, and yet one goes on and on, as one does with a gazetteer or an encycloptedia. This book of Scottish anecdotes is peculiarly tempting, its contents are so various, so interesting, and so amusing. Choice little bits of biography and history turn up among the quaintest stories. Dr. Robert Chambers's inexhaustible pocket-book has been extensively drawn upon by the compiler, whose industry is admirable, and there is a plentiful sprinkling of curious epitaphs. Here is one, new to us, and which seems to indicate that the notion of "happy hunting-grounds" is not exclusively that of the Indian's paradise. It is taken from the gravestone of David Forrest, a fowler, in Cupar Fife Cburehyard t- " Here David Forrest's corpse asleep cloth lye,
His soul with Christ enjoys tranquillity.
A famous fowler on the earth was he, And for the Mile 'Mall last his memory.
His years were sixty-ilve,—now be cloth sing Glore in those heavens, where rowth of game doth spring." -
Several anecdotes in this collection relate to the superstitions still
existing among the peasantry. Two, in particular, are very strange. One is that a new-born infant is in fairy spells until it sneezes ; then all danger is past. Mr. Hislop says that he has beard educated people in Scotland maintain stoutly that no idiot over sneezed or could sneeze. The other refers to marriage customs. " The sister of an old servant married a sailor. I asked Katie if the bridal party had gone down the water for a pleasure-sail ? She answered me at once, looking quite flurried, 'Loth, no, sir ! that world na be canny, ye ken ; we geed up the water.' She could give me no reasons, but abundant examples of couples who had impiously disregarded the custom, and had, in Katie's phraseology, gene a' wrang' in consequence. In some instances, the bride had come to her death, and in one, both bride, bridegroom, and two bridesmaids were drowned."
Previous page
