PART I.
The following Relation is taken from his own mouth Verbatim.
I JOHN CHEAP, by chance, at some certain time doubtless against my will, was born at the Hottom, near Habertehoy mill. My father was a Scots Highlandman, and my mother a Yorkshire wench, but honest, which causes me to be of a mongrel kind. I made myself a chapman when very young, in great hopes of being rich when I became old; but fortune was fickle and so was I; for I had not been a chapman above two days, until I began to consider the danger of deep ditches, midden-dubs, biting dogs, and boggles in barns, bangster wives and wet sacks. And what comfort is it, says I, to lie in the cow's oxter, the length of a cold winter night; to sit behind backs, till the kail be a' cuttied up and then to lick colley's leavings?
My first journey was through old Kilpatrick. All the day long I got no meat nor money, until the evening, I began to ask for lodging, then every wife, to get me away, would either give me a cogful of kail, or a piece of cake. Well, says I to myself, if this be the way, I shall begin in the morning to ask for lodging, or at any time when I am hungry. Thus I continued going from house to house, until my belly was like to burst, and my pockets could hold no more; at last I came to a farmer's house, but thinking it not dark enough to prevail for lodging, I sat down upon a stone at the end of the house, till day-light would go away out of the west; and as I was getting up to go into the house, out comes the goodwife, as I supposed her to be, and sat down at
