'Yesterday (December 31, 1825) being Hogmanay,' says Basil Hall's 'Journal'--the clearest, cleverest, most picturesque sketch of the Abbotsford life from an outsider's point of view--'there was a constant succession of guizards--boys dressed up in fantastic caps, with their shirts over their jackets, and with wooden swords in their hands. These players acted a sort of scene before us, of which the hero was one Goloshin, who gets killed in a battle for love, but is presently brought to life again by a doctor of the party. As may be imagined, the taste of our host is to keep up these old ceremonies. Thus, in the morning, I observed crowds of boys and girls coming to the back-door, where each got a penny and an oaten-cake. No less than seventy pennies were thus distributed--and very happy the little bodies looked with their well-stored bags.' Guizarding--that is, masquerading, guising--has lost practically all the scope and popularity it once had in the South of Scotland. The present writer well remembers how, as a boy, he took part scores of times during Christmas and New Year weeks in the grotesque but picturesque play referred to. The words and form of the drama exist in various versions in every part of the Border Country, almost every parish possessing its own rendering. The _dramatis personæ_, three or four in number, sometimes five, arrayed in the fashion described above, proceeded from house to house, generally contenting themselves with the kitchen for an arena, where the performance was carried through in presence of the entire household. Galations (not Goloshin) is the title of the play. Some account of it will be found in Chambers' 'Popular Rhymes of Scotland' and in Maidment's scarce pamphlet on the subject (1835).