" In mechanical contrivances, anything taking a close adherence
was called having a gude _grip_. I recollect in boyish days, when on
Deeside taking wasp-nests, an old man looking on was sharply stung by
one, and his description was, "Ane o' them's grippit me fine." The
following had an indescribable piquancy, which arose from the
_Scotticism_ of the terms and the manners. Many years ago, when
accompanying a shooting party on the Grampians, not with a gun like the
rest, but with a botanical box for collecting specimens of mountain
plants, the party had got very hot, and very tired, and very cross. On
the way home, whilst sitting down to rest, a gamekeeper sort of
attendant, and a character in his way, said, "I wish I was in the
dining-room of Fasque." Our good cousin the Rev. Mr. Wilson, minister
of Farnel, who liked well a quiet shot at the grouse, rather testily
replied, "Ye'd soon be _kickit_ out o' that;" to which the other
replied, not at all daunted, "Weel, weel, then I wadna be far frae the
kitchen." A quaint and characteristic reply I recollect from another
farm-servant. My eldest brother had just been constructing a piece of
machinery which was driven by a stream of water running through the home
farmyard. There was a thrashing machine, a winnowing machine, and
circular saw for splitting trees into paling, and other contrivances of
a like kind. Observing an old man, who had long been about the place,
looking very attentively at all that was going on, he said, "Wonderful
things people can do now, Robby!" "Ay," said Robby; "indeed, Sir
Alexander, I'm thinking gin Solomon were alive noo he'd be thocht
naething o'!"
The two following derive their force entirely from the Scottish turn of
the expressions.
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