Vulgar words in The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself (Page 1)

This book at a glance

blockhead x 1
cocky x 1
jackass x 1
spunk x 3
            

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~   ~   ~   Sentence 23   ~   ~   ~

Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the auncientness of their families, which they can count back on their fingers almost to the days of Noah's ark, and King Fergus the First; but whatever may spunk out after on this point, I am free to confess, with a safe conscience, in the mean time, that it is not in my power to come up within sight of them; having never seen or heard tell of any body in our connexion, further back than auld granfaither, that I mind of when a laddie; and who it behoves to have belonged by birthright to some parish or other; but where-away, gude kens.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 45   ~   ~   ~

Some of her companions, howsoever, chancing to come by, took her out to the back of the house to have a game at the pallall; and, in the interim, Donald Bogie, the tinkler from Yetholm, came and left his little jackass in the byre, while he was selling about his crockery of cups and saucers, and brown plates, on the old one, through the town, in two creels.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 320   ~   ~   ~

At first I thought I was sitting by the fireside, where the cat and the kittling were playing with a mouse they had catched in the meal-kit, cracking with James Batter on check-reels for yarn, and the cleverest way of winding pirns, when, all at once, I thought myself transplanted back to the auld world--forgetting the tailoring trade; broad and narrow cloth; worsted boots and Kilmarnock cowls; pleasant Dalkeith; our late yearly ploy; my kith and kindred; the friends of the people; the Duke's parks; and so on--and found myself walking beneath beautiful trees, from the branches of which hung apples, and oranges, and cocky-nuts, and figs, and raisins, and plumdamases, and corry-danders, and more than the tongue of man can tell, while all the birds and beasts seemed as tame as our bantings; in fact, just as they were in the days of Adam and Eve--Bengal tigers passing by on this hand, and Russian bears on that, rowing themselves on the grass, out of fun; while peacocks, and magpies, and parrots, and cockytoos, and yorlins, and grey-linties, and all birds of sweet voice and fair feather, sported among the woods, as if they had nothing to do but sit and sing in the sweet sunshine, having dread neither of the net of the fowler, the double-barrelled gun of the gamekeeper, nor the laddies' girn set with moolings of bread.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,119   ~   ~   ~

Give this lad a dram; and, as it rather looks like a shower, I'll e'en no go out the night.--I'll easily manage to find another driver, though half a hundred o' the blockheads should get their brains knocked out.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,535   ~   ~   ~

The reward offered by tuck of drum failed, nobody making application to the crier; but the search succeeded; as, after turning every thing topsy- turvy, the feathers were found in a bag, in the house of an old woman of vile character, who contrived to make out a way of living by hiring beds at twopence a-night to Eirish travellers--South-country packmen--sturdy beggars, men and women, and weans of them--Yetholm tinklers--wooden-legged sailors without Chelsea pensions--dumb spaewomen--keepers of wild-beast shows--dancing-dog folk--spunk-makers, and suchlike pickpockets.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,637   ~   ~   ~

I had seen the friends of the people,--and the scarce years,--and the bloody gulleteening over-bye among the French blackguards,--and the business of Watt and Downie nearer home, at our own doors almost, in Edinburgh like,--and the calling out of the volunteers,--and divers sea-fights at Camperdown and elsewhere,--and land battles countless,--and the American war, part o't,--and awful murders,--and mock fights in the Duke's Parks,--and highway robberies,--and breakings of all the Ten Commandments, from the first to the last; so that, allowing me to have had but a common spunk of reflection, I must, like others, have cast a wistful eye on the ongoings of men: and, if I had not strength to pour out my inward lamentations, I could not help thinking, with fear and trembling, at the rebellion of such a worm as man, against a Power whose smallest word could extinguish his existence, and blot him out in a twinkling from the roll of living things.

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