A' the Lads

"Nane, they say, ha'e I," lamented Robert Burns's lonely lassie. But, if statistics meant anything, every lassie could have her laddie this happy leap year. "Scotland," announced Registrar General J. G. Kyd last week, "is now the only European country where a maldistribution of sexes at marriageable age places women in a favorable position for finding husbands." The romantic ratio: 162,000 nubile Scotswomen, between the ages of 25 and 29, to match 176,000 unmarried men in the same age group.

What caused Scotland's idyllic male surplus? 1) Many a Scots lass, drafted into English factories during the war, never went home--which had provoked loud protests from Scotsmen at the time. 2) Many another lass had married a Polish, Canadian or U.S. soldier stationed in Scotland. South of the border, the girls had a far grimmer time of it; England had a surplus of 166,000 marriageable women.

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