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WHIPPETY
STOURIE
There was once a gentleman that lived in
a very
grand house, and he married a young lady that had been delicately
brought up. In her husband’s house she found
everything
that was fine—fine tables and chairs, fine looking-glasses,
and
fine curtains; but then her husband expected her to be able to spin
twelve hanks o’ thread every day, besides attending to her
house;
and, to tell the even-down truth, the lady could not spin a
bit.
This made her husband glunchy with her, and, before a month had passed,
she found hersel’ very unhappy.
One day the husband gaed away upon a journey, after telling her that he
expected her, before his return, to have not only learned to spin, but
to have spun a hundred hanks o’ thread. Quite
downcast, she
took a walk along the hillside, till she cam’ to a big flat
stane, and there she sat down and grat. By and by she heard a
strain o’ fine sma’ music, coming as it were frae
aneath
the stane, and, on turning it up, she saw a cave below, where there
were sitting p. 44six wee ladies in green gowns, ilk ane o’
them
spinning on a little wheel, and singing,
“Little kens my dame at hame
That Whippety Stourie is my name.”
The lady walked into the cave, and was kindly asked by the wee bodies
to take a chair and sit down, while they still continued their
spinning. She observed that ilk ane’s mouth was
thrawn away
to ae side, but she didna venture to speer the reason. They
asked
why she looked so unhappy, and she telt them that it was she was
expected by her husband to be a good spinner, when the plain truth was
that she could not spin at all, and found herself quite unable for it,
having been so delicately brought up; neither was there any need for
it, as her husband was a rich man.
“Oh, is that a’?” said the little wifies,
speaking out of their cheeks alike.
“Yes, and is it not a very good a’ too?”
said the lady, her heart like to burst wi’ distress.
“We could easily quit ye o’ that
trouble,” said the
wee women. “Just ask us a’ to dinner for
the day when
your husband is to come back. We’ll then let you
see how
we’ll manage him.”
So the lady asked them all to dine with herself and her husband, on the
day when he was to come back.
When the gudeman came hame, he found the p. 45house so occupied with
preparations for dinner, that he had nae time to ask his wife about her
thread; and, before ever he had ance spoken to her on the subject, the
company was announced at the hall door. The six ladies all
came
in a coach-and-six, and were as fine as princesses, but still wore
their gowns of green. The gentleman was very polite, and
showed
them up the stair with a pair of wax candles in his hand. And
so
they all sat down to dinner, and conversation went on very pleasantly,
till at length the husband, becoming familiar with them, said—
“Ladies, if it be not an uncivil question, I should like to
know
how it happens that all your mouths are turned away to one
side?”
“Oh,” said ilk ane at ance,
“it’s with our constant
spin-spin-spinning.”
“Is that the case?” cried the gentleman;
“then, John,
Tam, and Dick, fie, go haste and burn every rock, and reel, and
spinning-wheel in the house, for I’ll not have my wife to
spoil
her bonnie face with spin-spin-spinning.”
And so the lady lived happily with her gudeman all the rest of her days.
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