Note 79 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
Footnote 79: Mr. Andrew Shortreed (one of a family often mentioned in these Memoirs) says, in a letter of November, 1838: "The joke of the one pair of boots to three pair of legs was so unpalatable to the honest burghers of Jedburgh, that they have suffered the ancient privilege of 'riding the Fair,' as it was called (during which ceremony the inhabitants of Kelso were compelled to shut up their shops as on a holiday), to fall into disuse. Huoy, the runaway forger, a native of Kelso, availed himself of the calumny in a clever squib on the subject:—