[Footnote 10: Take a candle and go alone to a looking-glass; eat an apple before it, and some traditions say you should comb your hair all the time; the face of your conjungal companion, to be, will be seen in the glass, as if peeping over your shoulder.—R.B.] “Ye little skelpie-limmer’s face! I daur you try sic sportin, As seek the foul thief ony place, For him to spae your fortune: Nae doubt but ye may get a sight! Great cause ye hae to fear it; For mony a ane has gotten a fright, An’ liv’d an’ died deleerit, On sic a night. “Ae hairst afore the Sherra-moor, I mind’t as weel’s yestreen— I was a gilpey then, I’m sure I was na past fyfteen: The simmer had been cauld an’ wat, An’ stuff was unco green; An’ eye a rantin kirn we gat, An’ just on Halloween It fell that night. “Our stibble-rig was Rab M’Graen, A clever, sturdy fallow; His sin gat Eppie Sim wi’ wean, That lived in Achmacalla: He gat hemp-seed,^11 I mind it weel, An’he made unco light o’t; But mony a day was by himsel’, He was sae sairly frighted That vera night.” [Footnote 11: Steal out, unperceived, and sow a handful of hemp-seed, harrowing it with anything you can conveniently draw after you. Repeat now and then: “Hemp-seed, I saw thee, hemp-seed, I saw thee; and him (or her) that is to be my true love, come after me and pou thee.” Look over your left shoulder, and you will see the appearance of the person invoked, in the attitude of pulling hemp. Some traditions say, “Come after me and shaw thee,” that is, show thyself; in which case, it simply appears. Others omit the harrowing, and say: “Come after me and harrow thee.”—R.B.] Then up gat fechtin Jamie Fleck, An’ he swoor by his conscience, That he could saw hemp-seed a peck; For it was a’ but nonsense: The auld guidman raught down the pock, An’ out a handfu’ gied him; Syne bad him slip frae’ mang the folk, Sometime when nae ane see’d him, An’ try’t that night. He marches thro’ amang the stacks, Tho’ he was something sturtin; The graip he for a harrow taks, An’ haurls at his curpin: And ev’ry now an’ then, he says, “Hemp-seed I saw thee, An’ her that is to be my lass Come after me, an’ draw thee As fast this night.” He wistl’d up Lord Lennox’ March To keep his courage cherry; Altho’ his hair began to arch, He was sae fley’d an’ eerie: Till presently he hears a squeak, An’ then a grane an’ gruntle; He by his shouther gae a keek, An’ tumbled wi’ a wintle Out-owre that night.