Again, these people are said to have descended from one Tom and his two sons, who were fishers on the coast of Norway, who, in a violent storm, were blown over, and got a-shore at Buck-harbour, where they settled; and the whole of his children were called Thomsons, and soon became a little town by themselves, as few of any other name dwelt among them. This is a traditional story handed down from one generation to another.--They kept but little communication with the country people about them, for a farmer, in those days, thought his daughter cast away, if she married one of the other hand; Witty Eppie the ale-wife, wad a sworn Bugo, laddie, I wad rather see my boat and a’ my three sons daded against the Bass or I saw ony ane o’ them married to a muck-a-byre’s daughter; a wheen useless tawpies, it can do naething but rive at a tow-rock and cut corn, they can neither bait a hook nor redd a line, hook sand-eels, nor gather pirriwinkles. Now, Wise Willie and Witty Eppie the ale-wife, lived there about a hundred years ago. Eppie’s chamber was their College and Court-House where they decided controversies, and explained their wonders; for the house was like a little kirk, had four windows and a gavle door: the wives got leave to flyte their fill, but fighting was prohibited, as Eppie said, up-hands was fair play. Their fines was a pint o’ ale, and Eppie sold it at a plack the pint. They had neither minister nor magistrate, nor yet a burly bailie, to brag them wi’ his tol-booth. The Lord o’ the manor decided all disputable points, and Wise Willie and Witty Eppie were the rulers of the town. [Illustration] Now Eppie had a daughter, she ca’d Lingle-tail’d Nancy, because of her feckless growth; her waist was like a twitter, had nae curpen for a creel, being Edinburgh bred, and brought up wi’ her Louden aunty, was learned to read and sew, make coarse claiths and calicoe mancoes; there was nae scholar in the town but hersel, she read the bible, and the book of kirk sangs that was newly come in fashion. Willie and Eppie tell’d them aye what he meant, and said a’ the letters in it was litted by my Lord, for they saw him hae a feather that he dipt in black water, and made crooked scores, just like the same; and then he spake o’er again, and it tell’d him what to say.