Translated into English, they would lose all point--at
least, much of the point which they now have:--
At the sale of an antiquarian gentleman's effects in Roxburghshire,
which Sir Walter Scott happened to attend, there was one little article,
a Roman _patina_, which occasioned a good deal of competition, and was
eventually knocked down to the distinguished baronet at a high price.
Sir Walter was excessively amused during the time of bidding to observe
how much it excited the astonishment of an old woman, who had evidently
come there to buy culinary utensils on a more economical principle. "If
the parritch-pan," she at last burst out--"If the parritch-pan gangs at
that, what will the kail-pat gang for?"
An ancestor of Sir Walter Scott joined the Stuart Prince in 1715, and,
with his brother, was engaged in that unfortunate adventure which ended
in a skirmish and captivity at Preston. It was the fashion of those
times for all persons of the rank of gentlemen to wear scarlet
waistcoats. A ball had struck one of the brothers, and carried part of
this dress into his body, and in this condition he was taken prisoner
with a number of his companions, and stripped, as was too often the
practice in those remorseless wars. Thus wounded, and nearly naked,
having only a shirt on, and an old sack about him, the ancestor of the
great poet was sitting, along with his brother and a hundred and fifty
unfortunate gentlemen, in a granary at Preston.
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