Chapter 5

O weel may the boatie row
And better may she speed,
And weel may the boatie row
That earns the bairnies' bread!
The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows fu' weel,
And lightsome be their life that bear
The merlin and the creel!
Old Ballad.

We must now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher's cottage
mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could
say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably
clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion,--
there was dilapidation,--there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this,
there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and her family, an
appearance of ease, plenty, and comfort, that seemed to warrant their old
sluttish proverb, "The clartier the cosier." A huge fire, though the
season was summer, occupied the hearth, and served at once for affording
light, heat, and the means of preparing food. The fishing had been
successful, and the family, with customary improvidence, had, since
unlading the cargo, continued an unremitting operation of broiling and
frying that part of the produce reserved for home consumption, and the
bones and fragments lay on the wooden trenchers, mingled with morsels of
broken bannocks and shattered mugs of half-drunk beer. The stout and
athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of
half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here
and another now there, with an exclamation of "Get out o' the gate, ye
little sorrow!" was strongly contrasted with the passive and
half-stupified look and manner of her husband's mother, a woman advanced
to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair close
by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed to be
sensible of--now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the
children as they pulled the strings of her _toy_ or close cap, or
twitched her blue checked apron. With her distaff in her bosom, and her
spindle in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned
Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner. The
younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the
progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured to
interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those vagaries
which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally
superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam
through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a
spindle, and dying of the wound. Late as the hour was (and it was long
past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from