When the deil has the dean
the kirk will be the better._
_The deil's gane ower Jock Wabster_ is a saying which I have been
accustomed to in my part of the country from early years. It expresses
generally misfortune or confusion, but I am not quite sure of the
_exact_ meaning, or who is represented by "Jock Wabster." It was a great
favourite with Sir Walter Scott, who quotes it twice in _Rob Roy_. Allan
Ramsay introduces it in the _Gentle Shepherd_ to express the misery of
married life when the first dream of love has passed away:--
"The 'Deil gaes ower Jock Wabster,' hame grows hell,
When Pate misca's ye waur than tongue can tell."
There are two very pithy Scottish proverbial expressions for describing
the case of young women losing their chance of good marriages by setting
their aims too high. Thus an old lady, speaking of her granddaughter
having made what she considered a poor match, described her as having
"_lookit at the moon, and lichtit[136] in the midden_."
It is recorded again of a celebrated beauty, Becky Monteith, that being
asked how she had not made a good marriage, she replied, "_Ye see, I
wadna hae the walkers, and the riders gaed by._"
_It's ill to wauken sleeping dogs._ It is a bad policy to rouse
dangerous and mischievous people, who are for the present quiet.
_It is nae mair ferly[137] to see a woman greit than to see a goose go
barefit.
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