The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 5

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay ravin’ in his bed; an’ frae that hour to this he was the man ye ken the day.

END OF VOL. V

1

Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions. Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon the English people to remember with more gratitude the services of the police; to what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward, either in fame or money: matter, it has appeared to the translators, too serious for this place.

2

In this name the accent falls upon the e; the s is sibilant.

3

The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader. We subjoin a specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse: “Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a never-resting fightard“; and he goes on (if we correctly gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-filchard (clearly justified by the parallel – pilchard), and opera-dançard. “Dynamitist,” he adds, “I could understand.”

4

The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch which our translation usually prætermits, here registers a somewhat interesting detail. Zero pronounced the word “boom“; and the reader, if but for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow him.

5

“To come forrit“ – to offer oneself as a communicant.

6

It was a common belief in Scotland that the devil appeared as a black man. This appears in several witch trials, and I think in Law’s “Memorials,” that delightful storehouse of the quaint and grisly.