hesp

“Ay, Steenie, ” quoth the Laird, sighing deeply and putting his napkin to his een, “his was a sudden call, and he will be missed in the country; no time to set his house in order—weel prepared Godward, no doubt, which is the root of the matter—but left us behind a tangled hesp to wind, Steenie.

Wandering Willie’s Tale 1921

“Aye, Steenie, ” quoth the laird, sighing deeply, and putting his napkin to his een, “his was a sudden call, and he will be missed in the country; no time to set his house in order—weel prepared Godward, no doubt, which is the root of the matter; but left us behind a tangled hesp to wind, Steenie.

Wandering Willie’s Tale 1907

When the hesp is ravelled the pirn is badly filled, and then the shuttle is choked and arrested in the middle of its flight, the web is broken and knotted and uneven, and the weaver is dismissed, or, at best, he is fined in half his wages.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

They do not need to turn to Dr. Bonar's Glossary or to Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary to find out what a ravelled hesp is.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

Young Edinburgh gentlemen who have been born with the silver spoon in their mouth will not understand what a ravelled hesp is.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

And so, said Rutherford, is it with the weaver and the web of life, when a man's life-hesp is ravelled in the morning of his days.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

Rutherford told young Earlston how terribly he had 'ravelled his own hesp' in the days of his youth, and he tells another of his correspondents that after eighteen years he was not sure he had even yet got his ravelled hesp put wholly right.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

Young men whose hesp still runs even, and whose web is not yet torn, as Rutherford says to Earlston, 'Make conscience of your thoughts and study in everything to mortify your lusts.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

And then when your friends met around your grave, instead of hiding you and your ravelled hesp away in shame and silence, they would stand, a worshipping crowd, saying over you: 'Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

Then you would choose a new friend and a new lover, or else you would get God to do for them what He has been so good as to do for you, give them a new heart with which to weave their hesp and shoot their arrow.

Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894