I remember being much struck the first time I heard the application of that pretty Scottish saying regarding a fair bride. I was walking in Montrose, a day or two before her marriage, with a young lady, a connection of mine, who merited this description, when she was kindly accosted by an old friend, an honest fish-wife of the town, "Weel, Miss Elizabeth, hae ye gotten a' yer claes ready?" to which the young lady modestly answered, "Oh, Janet, my claes are soon got ready;" and Janet replied, in the old Scotch proverb, "Ay, weel, _a bonnie bride's sune buskit_[130]." In the old collection, an addition less sentimental is made to this proverb, _A short horse is sune wispit_[131]. To encourage strenuous exertions to meet difficult circumstances, is well expressed by _Setting a stout heart to a stey brae_. The mode of expressing that the worth of a handsome woman outweighs even her beauty, has a very Scottish character--_She's better than she's bonnie_. The opposite of this was expressed by a Highlander of his own wife, when he somewhat ungrammatically said of her, "_She's bonnier than she's better_." The frequent evil to harvest operations from autumnal rains and fogs in Scotland is well told in the saying, _A dry summer ne'er made a dear peck_. There can be no question as to country in the following, which seems to express generally that persons may have the name and appearance of greatness without the reality--_A' Stuarts are na sib[132] to the king_. There is an excellent Scottish version of the common proverb, "He that's born to be hanged will never be drowned."--_The water will never warr[133], the widdie, i.e._ never cheat the gallows. This saying received a very naive practical application during the anxiety and alarm of a storm. One of the passengers, a good simple-minded minister, was sharing the alarm that was felt around him, until spying one of his parishioners, of whose ignominious end he had long felt persuaded, he exclaimed to himself, "Oh, we are all safe now," and accordingly accosted the poor man with strong assurances of the great pleasure he had in seeing him on board. _It's ill getting the breeks aff the Highlandman_ is a proverb that savours very strong of a Lowland Scotch origin. Having suffered loss at the hands of their neighbours from the hills, this was a mode of expressing the painful truth that there was little hope of obtaining redress from those who had no _means_ at their disposal. Proverbs connected with the bagpipes I set down as legitimate Scotch, as thus--_Ye are as lang in tuning your pipes as anither wad play a spring_[134]. You are as long of setting about a thing as another would be in doing it.