A YANKEE ON OATMEAL AND BAGPIPES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2038, 30 July 1885, Page 4

A YANKEE ON OATMEAL AND BAGPIPES.

It appears that it is all a mistake to assume that oatmeal is the cause ot the national Scotch dyspepsia. The natural interpretation of the facts that the Scotch eat oatmeal and suffer from dyspepsia is that oatmeal pioduces dyspepsea. When The Times expressed this opinion it did so in perfect good faith, but now that a real Scotchman, who is an expert in dyspepsia, not only denies that oatmeal is indigestible, but explains in a perfectly satisfactoiy way the true cause of Scotch dyspepsia, it would be dishonest not to proclaim the innocence of oatmeal. Dyspepsia among Scotchmen is the result of listening to the bagpipes, and the moment this assertion is made its truth becomes almost self-evident, It may be urged by ignorant persons that the impression of a sound received ou the tympanum of the ear cannot affect the stomach. This is, of course, entirely untrue. It is a well-established fact that certain songs u ill produce nausea on the part of certain hearers. Excursionists on their way to Rockaway by sea have often been made violently sick by hearing the steamer's band play " Whoa, Emma," and a physician of this city has frequently prescribed " Dites lvi " as an emetic in cases of poisoning. It is a wellattested fact that the bagpipes, when heard by persons w ho are not accustomed to them, give rise to violent griping pains in the stomach which closely lesemble the pains of Asiatic cholera. During the Sepoy mutiny the Scotch regiments more than once placed large bodies of sepoys hort dt> combat by the use of the bagyipes alone. Had not Havelock's little army included a strong corps of pipers it could never have made its way into Lucknow through the vast besieging force. Mr Whittier speaks of the pipes at Lucknow as " stinging all the plain to life." Tho sepoys would hardly have described in that way the effect of pipp playing. As a matter of fact, thousands of the rebels as soon as they heaid the bagpipes clasped their hands to their abdominal legions and rolled on the plain in agony. Even those whose stomachs withstood the sound imagined that the sepoy camp had suddenly been smitten with cholera, and become so demoralised that Havelock forced his way through the midst of them almoit unmolested, and reached the Residence without other casualties than the death of two wounded Englishmen, who were officially reported to have died with joy at seeing the relieving force, but who were realy too weak to withstand the bagpipes. Scottish children suffer severly from the bagpipe colic, and no careful mother will allow a Laby in arms to hear the pipes. When the Scotch children reach the age of three or four years they arc gradually hardened to the sound of the bagpipis, and though at first they are fairly doubled up with pain —for which whisky seems to be the only antidote— they are able in time to listen to " The Wild Mfiregor Clancall " without betraying any signs of uneasiness. The bagpipe colic is never fatal except to infants and persons in & very weak condition, and Scotch physicians occasionally prescribe a cotir«e of pipes to patients suffering from obesity. Her Majesty the Queen had tried this remedy with apparently good results, though it is difficult to believe that its permanent effect upon her health can be beneficial. No man, not even a Scotchman, can suffer for years from colic without baring hisdigeitiv* organs impaired. When a young Scotchman has accustomed hii stomach to bear bagpipes without pain, it may be safely assumed that his stomach is so weakened as to be totally unfit to digest ordinary food. In these circumstances it in impossiblo that oatmeal is well adapted to the abnormal state of his digestive organs. At any rate, oatmeal can no longer be held to be the cause of Scotch dyspepsia, and there is good reason to believe that Carlyle owed hit dypepiia to hii early exposure to bagpipes.—New York Timea.

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Two Irishmen were walking along one of the main thoioughfares in Glasgow, when they noticed a large placard in the window of a shop w ith the words "Butter ! Butter ! ! Butter IJutti-r ! ! !" in giwt type punted on it. "Pat," siys Mick, " whnt'b the meaning of them big shtrokes after the wouls ? " Orb, ye ignoramus," snjs Pat, " shurc they're meant for shillelaghs, to show its Irish butter." Pkok Richard A. Pkoctor says the moon is the most interesting of all the heavenly bodies. It has been particularly serviceable in the proof it affords of the law of giavitation. It proves, too, what the world has been in remote ages of the past, and what it will be in remote ages to come. Its most significant service to man has been as a measurement of time. The only peiceptible effect which the earth has upon the moon's course is that of attraction, by which its route in space is slightly de\ iated. From the moon's present condition we may inform ourselves of the course of all planetary life. There is every leason to suppose that our present condition was at one time hera ; that j she possessed an atmosphere, water, animal and vegetable life. That has now passed away. Her suiface is a sterile, locky mass The atmosphere has gone 01 nearly so, and the seas are dried up. This same process ia going on with our earth, and a similar result will eventually ensue, but by reason of the greater bulk of our planet, effects produced in ten millions of years in the moon will re•iiiire sixty millions with us,- Now York Tribune. Orhjin of the Saxons.—The Saxoni dwelt beyond the Franks (on the German coast), and consisted of tho Chauci-Frisii, and the remnant of the tribe collected on the coasts of the Northern Ocean and the Baltic. Their name has been variously deiived from the ancient Sacie (probably the Sikhs) on the Indus, from Sachs, race, or Sassen, freeholders. According to tradition, they came by sea (from the army of Alexander the Great) to Hodel, where they landed, and buying from the Thuringi, who at that period •tretched far down towards the Northern Ocean, a gownful of earth, spread it over a large territory, to which they laid claim, and then inviting the Thurmgian chiefs to meet them unarmed for the purpose of negotiating the affair, murdered them during the banquet with knives worn for that puipose concealed beneath their dresses. Accoiding to a legend somawhat similar to that of the Edda, the Savons and then fiist king Ascan sprang from the rocks of the Hartz mountains ; and the proverb, "Theie are Saxona wherever pretty girls glow out of trees," is still in use. The ancient account of tins people is \ery obscure. Odin went from Saxony to Scandinavia, and hia descendants at a later period from that country to England. It is interesting to note that almost similar traditions are extant relative to the establishment of the Saxons and their cognate tribes and allies in Britain. The gownful of earth story is paralleled by the bullosk's hide tradition, tho !oc<il( being the modem Yorkshiie—but Hcngist and Horsa, the chiefs of the Saxons called in by the British King Yoitigein, may have been the .shaip practitioners A .Sa\on chief 01 chiefs, so the lc{.'t nd runs, uaved of the Britons as much land as could be coveied with a bullock's hide. This seemingly modest lequest was instantly gianted. The Saxons cut the hide into thin strips, and enclosed a con wdtn able plot of land, on which they built a fort and established themselves. And theie \$ another paiallel (leaving out the incident ot the beauteous Rowena, the daughter of Hengibt) in the treacheious murder of 300 Biitisli nobles, and the impmonment of Vortigern, at a feast by the treacherous Saxon chiefs, Hcngist and Horsa. The massacre is said, by some British wnteis, to have occuired on Salisbury Plain, at or near Stonehenge. Whether or not the ancient British annalists have told the truth, it is singular that incidents which aie assumed to have occurred on the first appearance of the Saxons in Europe should have their parallels in connection with the first airival of the Saxons iv Bntaih.

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