Enters Humphray Clinker, hearing a’ that past, perswades his aunt Maggy that no man would marry such as her, for she looked like a picture of death riding upon hunger’s back, a rickle of banes row’d up in a runkly skin, had wasted her body with water lythocks into a scrufe of skin and bane for want of teeth to chow bread for the nourishment of her body, and that he was com’d on purpose to write her testament or latter will, that it was a lightness in her brain before death; therefore she ought to go to bed and die directly,[136] which she accordingly did[137] by taking thought of what was said to her, the priest being sent for came and discoursed with her, but still she keeping her purse in her hand, which he observed, desired she would give it to her friends or she died, to which she would answer by her sooth that she wad not, for she wad tak it wi’ her, for she had heard every body say they were the better o’ the penny wi’ them, gang whare they like, and so died supposed to be an hundred and six years old.
Humphray’s aunt Janet is yet alive an has made an oration in praise of the old women, and on the pride of the young.
[_Janet Clinker’s Oration_ is commonly found printed along with _The History of Haverel Wives_, and in the chap-book from which the text in the following pages are taken, this is the case. The full title in this case is:--‘An Oration on the Virtues of the Old Women, and the Pride of the Young: with a Direction for Young Men, what sort of Women to take, and for Women what sort of Men to Marry. Dictated by Janet Clinker, and written by Humphrey Clinker, the Clashing Wives’ Clerk. Glasgow: Printed by J. & M. Robertson, Saltmarket, 1807.’ It has been collated with the editions mentioned in the Introduction to these volumes: together with the reprint published in 1820 by Webster & Son, Edinburgh, referred to in the prefatory note to the _History of the Haverel Wives_.]
AN ORATION ON THE VIRTUES OF THE OLD WOMEN, AND THE PRIDE OF THE YOUNG.
The madness of this unmuzzled age has driven me to mountains of thoughts, and a continual meditation: It is enough to make an auld wife rin red-wood, and drive a body beyond the halter’s-end of ill-nature, to see what I see, and here what I hear: Therefore the hinges of my anger are broke, and the bands of my good and mild nature are burst in two, the door of civility is laid quite open, plain speech and mild admonition is of none effect; nothing must be used now but thunder-bolts of reproach tartly trimm’d up in a tantalizing stile, roughly redd up and manufactured thro’ an auld Matron’s mouth, who is indeed but frail in the teeth, but will squeeze surprizingly with her auld gums, until her very chaft-blades crack in the crushing of your vice.