The Queer Folk of Fife:
Tales from the Kingdom
BY
DAVID PRYDE, M.A., LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "PLEASANT MEMORIES OF A BUSY LIFE"
"THE HIGHWAYS OF LITERATURE"
"GREAT MEN IN EUROPEAN HISTORY," ETC.
GLASGOW
MORISON BROTHERS
52 RENFIELD STREET
1897
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Fifty years ago, the little burgh-town of Sandyriggs was a sleepyplace. The inhabitants led, what they themselves called, "an easy-osylife." So little stir was there in the life of the small shopkeeperor tradesman, that he might be said to "vegetate." He grew andflourished where he had been born, and among his own schoolmates andhis parents' cronies, who still called him by the fond familiar nameof his boyhood, "Johnny," or "Jamie," or "Robby," as the case mightbe. His place of business was part of his home; and during the day heoscillated comfortably between the front shop and the back parlour.There was little competition, and very little anxiety about his trade.His customers were his friends, and he could rely implicitly on theirsupport. It happened, therefore, that even in what he called hisbusiest time, he had many intervals of leisure during which he was at aloss what to do.
Of a similar complexion was the life of the small farmers who aboundedin the neighbourhood. The farmer, or "gudeman," as he was called,toiled, it is true, in the fields by the side[Pg 6] of his own servants; buthe had little of the endless anxiety of the husbandmen of the presenttime. In those halcyon days of Protection, he was the especial careof the Lords and Commons of Great Britain and Ireland. They were hisguardian angels. What did it matter to him though the drought burned uphis turnips, and the drenching rains blackened his barley? The pricesrose at once to guard him agains