"Aha, now would I lay a gold crown thou hast had a quarrel with
some Edinburgh 'burn the wind' upon that very ground?"

["Burn the wind," an old cant term for blacksmith, appears in Burns:

Then burnewin came on like death,
At every chaup, etc.]


"A quarrel! no, father," replied the Perth armourer, "but a measuring
of swords with such a one upon St. Leonard's Crags, for the honour
of my bonny city, I confess. Surely you do not think I would quarrel
with a brother craftsman?"

"Ah, to a surety, no. But how did your brother craftman come off?"

"Why, as one with a sheet of paper on his bosom might come off from
the stroke of a lance; or rather, indeed, he came not off at all,
for, when I left him, he was lying in the Hermit's Lodge daily
expecting death, for which Father Gervis said he was in heavenly
preparation."

"Well, any more measuring of weapons?" said the glover.

"Why, truly, I fought an Englishman at Berwick besides, on the old
question of the supremacy, as they call it--I am sure you would
not have me slack at that debate?--and I had the luck to hurt
him on the left knee."