Neil Munro eBooks

Jaunty jock. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Neil Munro   -  Publisher S11838, 2015  - 

THE last of the West Bow balls before Lady Charlotte ran away with her dancing-master was on a dirty evening in November. Edinburgh was all day wrapped in haar, and now came rain that made the gutters run like mountain burns and overflow into the closes, to fall in shallow cataracts to the plain below. There was a lively trade in the taverns. “Lord! there’s a sneezer for ye!” said the customers ordering in their ale, not really minding the weather much, for it was usual and gave a good excuse for more assiduous scourging of the nine-gallon tree; but their wives, spanging awkwardly on pattens through the mud on their way to the fishwife at the Luckenbooths for the supper haddocks, had such a breeze in their petticoats and plaids they were in a terror that they should be blown away upon the blasts that came up the gulleys between the towering “lands,” and daring slates and chimney-pots, and the hazards of emptied vessels from the flats above, kept close to the wall as luggers scrape the shore of Fife when the gale’s nor’-west.

The daft days. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Neil Munro   -  Publisher S11838, 2015  - 

THE town’s bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer little jolts and pauses, as if Wanton Wully Oliver, the ringer, had been jovial the night before. A blithe New-Year-time bell; a droll, daft, scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarums, no solemn reminders that commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think upon things undone, the brevity of days and years, the parting of good company, but a cheery ditty—“boom, boom, ding-a-dong boom, boom ding, hic, ding-dong,” infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish gaiety. The burgh town turned on its pillows, drew up its feet from the bed-bottles, last night hot, now turned to chilly stone, rubbed its eyes, and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come. It cast a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosy beds. “Wanton Wully’s on the ran-dan!” said the folk, and rose quickly, and ran to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on window-ledges cushioned deep in snow. The children hugged themselves under the blankets, and told each other in whispers it was not a porridge morning, no, nor Sunday, but a breakfast of shortbread, ham and eggs; and behold! A beautiful loud drum, careless as ’twere a reveille of hot wild youths, began to beat in a distant lane. Behind the house of Dyce the lawyer, a cock that must have been young and hearty crew like to burst; and at the stables of the post-office the man who housed his horses after bringing the morning mail through night and storm from a distant railway station sang a song,—“A damsel possessed of great beauty Stood near by her own father’s gate:The gallant hussars were on duty; To view them this maiden did wait.Their horses were capering and prancing, Their accoutrements shone like a star;From the plains they were quickly advancing,— She espied her own gallant hussar.”