Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23
General
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Fiction
"But you see it's all in the liver," continued the cook. "Aditi came to
me one day, and said, 'De 'Gyptians in India tink body divided into
sixteen parts, with God to each part! he! he! Janette!' and the black
creature laughed. Then I say, the liver of an Englishman, after he comes
from India, is the devil's part; and so it was with Mr. Fletcher. He
began first to interfere with Kalee's religion. 'Oh, terrible, Janette!'
cried Ady, on another day; 'master cut off head of Kartekeya's peacock,
and smashed de tail of Garoora.' On another day, 'Right eye of elephant
head of Ganeso knocked into de skull.' Another day, this time in tears,
weeping awfully, 'Oh, Janette! tail of holy cow clean snapt over de
rump!'"
"All right," said Aminadab of the first Secession. "'And I will cause
their images to cease out of Noph.'"
"Ay, but I am 'wide,'" continued the cook.
"Three feet and a half across the bosom," said Aminadab, who was still
in his reverie, with the secret idea still exercising a power over him,
even after the tankard of ale.
"Wide in my mind and charities, ye fool, man," continued she, not
disinclined this time to laugh; for she was proud of being jolly in the
person. "I felt for poor Kalee. She wept incessantly at the loss of the
cow's tail, and asked me if I had seen it, nay, implored me like a
worshipper to try to recover it for her. I said, God forgive me, that I
had seen it in the dung-pit, and that George had carted it away. 'And
didn't know de value!' cried Ady. 'Worth de necklace of diamonds;' and
both she and Kalee broke out into such a yell as made the house ring.
Yet with all this, Kalee still loved the gloomy man. She would throw her
jewelled arms about his neck, and hang upon him, with her feet off the
ground, so little, light, and lithe. She was so like a sapling, you
could have bent her any way. And when the love was in her heart, and it
was never absent, she was really bonny. Our eyes hereaway are mere
cinders to these glowing churley bits of flaming sulphur; and then that
strange look of the shining face, just as if she yearned to enter into
his very soul,--ay, as the souls of these black creatures go up and form
a part of Brahma's spirit, that's all over the earth."
"All art," cried Aminadab, getting impatient of Janet's
eloquence--eloquence, I say; for Janet was a superior woman, and, though
a cook, a natural genius. "All art. 'And he made her to use
enchantments, and deal with familiar spirits and wizards,'"
"No, no, man, it was all real nature. But it wasna real nature made him
throw the poor black soul away, whose gold and jewels he had bartered
his white, I should say yellow, rotten-livered body for. Ay, if she had
been a man, I would have liked her better than him; for, as I hate the
skin of an old hen when the fat becomes rancid and golden, so do I hate
a yellow-faced man, with the devil sitting gnawing at his liver."
"The reason the devil's so bitter," said Aminadab.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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