Memorials of John Geddes

memorials of 3otm 0edd«.
least." This rejoinder reminds of the Irish beggar's reply
to Sir Walter when he gave him a shilling, intending only
a sixpence, but remarking, " Pat, you owe me a six-
pence." " Ach, your Riverence, may your Honour live till
I pay you." So much for the Eponymus author of fireside
Glass sayings who was known as Willie Birnie.
There were, however, other proverbs floating about,
bearing a different mark of locality, and not credited to
Willie Birnie. One of these was from Glass itself. At the
farm of Waterside, close to what is now Blairmore House,
there lived, in the generation preceding that to which my
father belonged, a farmer who was given to card-playing,
and, in his zeal for victory, was not very scrupulous as to
the means. He sometimes, it was alleged, secreted at the
game of " Loo " a spare " Monsey," as the people called it
— that is, a Knave or Monsieur — hidden up his sleeve, but
on one occasion his memory betrayed him and he produced
the secreted Monsey, while the other or real Monsey of
the pack was already in the field. In such a complication
there was naturally a scene and an explosion, and it became
a proverb as to any awkward combination or collision that
it was a case of " ' ramcounterin' ' ane anither, like Water-
side's twa Monseys."*
* The perfection of dry humour, racy of the soil, comes out in the follow-
ing story which my father used to tell, located in a neighbouring parish, that