The story is this:--At a prolonged drinking bout, one of
the party remarked, "What gars the laird of Garskadden look sae
gash[39]?" "Ou," says his neighbour, the laird of Kilmardinny, "deil
meane him! Garskadden's been wi' his Maker these twa hours; I saw him
step awa, but I didna like to disturb gude company[40]!"
Before closing this subject of excess in _drinking_, I may refer to
another indulgence in which our countrymen are generally supposed to
partake more largely than their neighbours:--I mean snuff-taking. The
popular southern ideas of a Scotchman and his snuff-box are inseparable.
Smoking does not appear to have been practised more in Scotland than in
England, and if Scotchmen are sometimes intemperate in the use of snuff,
it is certainly a more innocent excess than intemperance in whisky. I
recollect, amongst the common people in the north, a mode of taking
snuff which showed a determination to make the _most_ of it, and which
indicated somewhat of intemperance in the enjoyment; this was to receive
it not through a pinch between the fingers, but through a quill or
little bone ladle, which forced it up the nose. But, besides smoking and
snuffing, I have a reminiscence of a _third_ use of tobacco, which I
apprehend is now quite obsolete. Some of my readers will be surprised
when I name this forgotten luxury. It was called _plugging_, and
consisted _(horresco referens_) in poking a piece of pigtail tobacco
right into the nostril.
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