By way of a complement to the foregoing article, here is a contemporary report of an amusing incident from the harvest fields of East Lothian
“An Anecdote"

In the Autumn of 1755, soon after the marriage of the Marquis[of Tweeddale] and [Lady Francis Carterey], being then at Yester House his lordship's chief seat, they walked out of a fine evening, into one of the adjacent fields, where his Lordship had a large band of reapers at work with the sickle. Being their last reaping day, they were attended, as is usual in that part of the country, by a Scotch bagpipe. The Marquis and marchioness found them all very merry and happy

‘Stooping and swelling the lusty sheaves,
Each by the lass he lov’d;
To bear the rougher pact and mitigate 
By nameless gentle offices, her toil’

The Noble Couple having surveyed the scene for some time with much complacency, the Marchioness was desirous of seeing some of the Lads and Lasses dance to the Bagpipe. In this she was immediately gratified, to her no small contentment. The dance over, the Marquis, after ordering his Land Steward, who superintended them, to entertain the reapers at the neighbouring village, gave half a guinea to the Piper, who, with his bonnet in hand touching the ground, made his Lordship many scrapes and reverences, wishing him repeatedly the Beggar’s Benison. To her Ladyship this was a phrase quite new. Observing that her Lord was much pleased with the gratitude of the honest Piper, and particularly with his wish, they had no sooner turned to go homeward than the Lady asked the Marquis what the Beggar’s Benison meant? He fell a-laughing and was in no haste to answer her. His hesitation, as well as the language of his looks only served the more to whet her curiosity. In short, she teized him into an explanation, which was no sooner given her than she put her hand into her pocket, pulled out her purse and walking quickly back to the Piper, presented him with a guinea, excusing herself for having almost forgot him. He received her ladyship’s bounty with due acknowledgements and in return gave her the Benison also. The whole field was instantly in a titter; and the Marquis himself seemed to enjoy the comicality of the scene with peculiar relish.”

The Star, October, 1794

[Many thanks to Keith Sanger for supplying this story. For details of the Beggar’s Benison see David Stevenson’s ‘The Beggar’s Benison; Sex Clubs of Enlightenment Scotland’.]