Mrs Wastle

Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, 
The spot they ca'd it Linkumdoddie; 
Willie was a wabster gude, 
Cou'd stown a clue wi' ony bodie; 
He had a wife was dour and din, 
O Tinkler Madgie was her mither; 
Sic a wife as Willie had,    
I wadna gie a button for her.        R.Burns


For those understandably challenged by Lowland Scots, a wabster was a weaver.   Willie had a wife lacking in so many charms that the poet wouldn't give a button for her.


The place where the singularly unprepossessing Mrs Wastle lived was five and a half miles from Broughton on the road to Tweedsmuir and Moffat. On the opposite bank of the Tweed, where Logan Water joins the river, there once stood a thatched cottage called Linkumdoddie. At the end of the 18th Century, a weaver called Gideon Thomson lived there, but local history is silent about his wife. Burns stayed more than once at the Crook Inn, a few miles away when travelling between Dumfries and Edinburgh.