The sermon in Scottish
Kirks. Intruding animals in country churches. The ‘ collection.’ Church
psalmody. Precentors and organs. Small congregations in the Highlands.
Parish visitation. Survival of the influence of clerical teaching.
Religious mania.
From the time of the
Reformation onwards the sermon has taken a foremost place in the service
of the Church of Scotland. There was a time when a preacher would
continue his discourse for five or six hours, and when sometimes a
succession of preachers would give sermon after sermon and keep the
congregation continuously sitting for ten hours. These days of perfervid
oratory are past. But a sermon of an hour’s duration or even more may
still be heard, and, when the preacher is eloquent, will be listened to
with deep interest. This part of the service maintains its early
prominence. It is from his capacity to preach that a man’s
qualifications for the ministry are mainly judged, not merely by the
church which licences him, but by the congregation which chooses him as
its pastor. The half-yearly celebration of the sacrament, which included
a fast-day, services on two or three week days, and a long ‘diet’ on
Sunday, was appropriately known as ‘The Preachings.’ The Fast-Day, when
the shops were closed and there were at least two services in the
churches, forenoon and afternoon, became in the end a kind of public
holiday in the large towns. Attracted to the country, rather than to the
sermons, the people used to escape from town, and railways carried an
ever-increasing number of excursionists away from the services of the
Church. The ecclesiastical authorities at last, some years ago, put a
stop to this scandal, and the Fast-Day no longer ranks as one of the
public holidays of the year.
Scottish sermons have always had a prevalent doctrinal character and a
markedly logical treatment of their subject. It has never been the habit
north of the Tweed to think that ‘dulness is sacred in a sound divine.’
The clergy have appealed as much to the head as to the heart. In bygone
generations the doctrines evolved from the text were divided into
numerous heads, and these into subordinate sections and subsections, so
that the attention of those listeners who remained awake was kept up as
at a kind of intellectual exercise. If anyone wishes to realise the
extent to which this practice of subdivision could be carried by an
eminent and successful preacher, let him turn to the posthumous sermons
of Boston of Ettrick.1 Thus, in a ' sermon on ‘ Fear and Hope, objects
of the Divine Complacency,’ from the text, Psalms cxlvii. In this famous
divine, after an introduction in four sections, deduced six doctrines,
each subdivided into from three to eight heads; but the last doctrine
required another sermon, which contained ‘a practical improvement of the
whole,’ arranged under 86 heads. A sermon on Matthew xi. 28 was
subdivided into 76 heads. If it is not quite easy to follow the printed
sermon through this maze of sub-division, it must have been much more
difficult to do so in the spoken discourse. All the enthusiasm and fire
of the preacher must have been needed to rivet the attention and affect
the hearts of his congregation. It is still usual to treat the subject
of a text under different heads, but happily their number has been
reduced to more reasonable proportions.
It was not given to every occupant of a pulpit to rival the fecundity
and ingenuity of Boston of Ettrick in the elucidation of his text. A
subdivision of a simpler type was made by the worthy old Highland divine
who preached from the verse, ‘The devil, as a roaring lion, walketh
about, seeking whom he may devour.’ Following a Highland habit of
inserting an unnecessary pronoun after the noun to which it refers, he
began his discourse thus : ‘ Let us consider this passage, my brethren,
under four heads. Firstly, who the Devil, he is; secondly, what the
Devil, he is like; thirdly, what the Devil, he doth; and fourthly, who
the Devil, he devoureth.’
In many instances the sermons prepared during the first few years of a
ministry served for all its subsequent continuance, with perhaps some
modifications or additions suggested by the altered circumstances of the
time. It used to be said of some clergymen that they kept their sermons
in a barrel, which when emptied was refilled again with the old MSS.
Hanna, the biographer of Chalmers, used to tell of one such minister who
had preached the same short round of sermons for so many years that at
last the beadle was deputed by one or two members of the congregation to
ask whether, if he could not prepare a new sermon, he would at least
give them a fresh text. Next Sunday, to the astonishment of the
audience, the minister gave out a text from which he had never before
preached:
‘Genesis, first chapter, first verse, and first clause of the verse.’
Every Bible was opened at the place, and the listeners, nearly all of
whom were ignorant of the suggested arrangement, leant back in their
pews in eager anticipation of the new sermon. With great deliberation
the preacher began: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.” Who this Nicodemus was, my brethren, commentators are not
agreed.’ And the old story of Nicodemus was repeated, as it had been so
often before.
Sometimes the manuscript of a sermon was by mistake left behind at the
manse, and the minister or the beadle had to set off to procure it. On
one of these occasions, the manse being at some little distance from the
church, the minister, who had to go and find the document himself, gave
out the 119th Psalm, that the congregation might engage in singing
during his absence. When he returned with his MS. he asked his man, who
was waiting for him anxiously at the door, how the congregation was
getting on. ‘ O sir,’ said he, ‘ they’ve got to the end of the 84th
verse, and they’re jist cheepin’ like mice.’
To interrupt the service by requesting the congregation to sing a psalm
or hymn is an expedient which sometimes relieves a clergyman when, from
faintness or other cause, he finds a difficulty in performing his duty
in the pulpit. Some years ago a young minister had recourse to this mode
of extrication. On the conclusion of the service, one or two of his
friends came to him in the vestry to ascertain what had ailed him. He
told them that he could with difficulty refrain from laughing, and his
only resource was to leave the pulpit.
‘Did you see,’ he asked, ‘a man with an extraordinarily red head sitting
in the front of the gallery?’ ‘Yes, we noticed him, but he appeared to
be a quiet attentive listener.’ ‘So he was, so he was; but did you see a
small boy sitting behind him? That young rascal so fascinated me that,
though I tried hard to look elsewhere, I could not keep my eyes from
sometimes turning to watch him. He was holding up the forefinger of his
left hand behind the red head, as if he were heating an iron bolt in a
furnace, and he would then thump it on the desk in front of him, as if
he were hammering the iron into shape. This went on until I had to leave
the pulpit, and send the beadle up to the gallery to have the young
sinner cautioned or removed.’
The English sermon in Highland churches was often a curious performance.
As already mentioned, there were, and still generally are, two
sermons—one in Gaelic as part of the earlier service, and one in English
in the second part. Those of the congregation who thought they
understood both languages might stay from the beginning to the end, but
the purely Gaelic-speaking population generally thinned away after the
Gaelic service. In some cases, the preacher’s command of English being
rather limited, his evident earnestness could hardly prevent a smile at
his solecisms in grammar and the oddity of his expressions. Many years
ago an acquaintance told me he had been yachting in Loch Eil, and on a
Sunday of dreary rain and storm went ashore not far from the roots of
Ben Nevis to attend the English service, when he heard the following
passage from the lips of the preacher :
‘Ah, my friends, what causes have we for gratitude; O yes, for the
deepest gratitude! Look at the place of our habitation. How grateful
should we be that we do not leeve in the far north! O no ; amid the
frost and the snaw, and the cauld and the weet, O no ; where there’s a
lang day tae half o’ the year, O yes; and a lang, lang nicht the tither,
ah yes; that we do not depend upon the auroary boreawlis, O no; that we
do not gang shivering about in skins, O no; snoking amang the snaw like
mowdiwarts, O no, no!
‘And how grateful should we be too that we do not leeve in the far
south, beneath the equawtor and a sun aye burnin’, burnin’; where the
sky’s het, ah yes; and the earth’s het, and the water’s het, and ye’re
burnt black as a smiddy, ah yes! where there’s teegers, O yes; and
lions, O yes; and crocodiles, O yes; and fearsome beasts growlin’ and
girnin’ at ye amang the woods; where the very air is a fever, like the
burnin’ breath o’ a fiery draigon. That we do not leeve in these places,
O no! no!! NO!!!
‘But that we leeve in this blessed island o’ ours, called Great Britain,
O yes! yes! and in that pairt o’ it named Scotland, and in that bit o’
auld Scotland that looks up at Ben Naivis, O yes\ yes!! YES!!! where
there’s neither frost nor cauld, nor wind nor weet, nor hail, nor rain,
nor teegers, nor lions, nor burnin’ suns, nor hurricanes, nor’ At this
part of the discourse a fearful gust from Ben Nevis aforesaid drove in
the upper sash of the window at the right hand of the pulpit, and rudely
interrupted the torrent of eloquence.
When we remember the length and technicality of the sermons, the bad
ventilation of the kirks, and the effects of six days of toil on a large
number of each congregation, we can hardly wonder that somnolence should
be prevalent in Scotland. Many anecdotes on this subject have long been
in circulation. The same tale may be recognized under various guises,
the preacher or sleeper being altered according to local circumstances.
Perhaps no series illustrates better how such stories continue to float
down through generation after generation, and are always reappearing as
new, when they receive a fresh personal application. Sleeping in church
is such a natural failing, and the reproof of it from the pulpit is so
obvious a consequence, that even if no memory of the old incidents
should survive, the recurrence of similar circumstances could hardly
fail to give birth to similar anecdotes. For example, a story is at
present in circulation to the effect that in a country church one Sunday
the preacher after service walked through the kirkyard with one of the
neighbouring farmers, and took occasion to remark to him, ‘Wasn’t it
dreadful to hear the Laird of Todholes snoring so loud through the
sermon?’ ‘Perfectly fearful,’ was the answer, ‘he waukened us a’.’ Two
or three generations ago a similar incident was said to have occurred at
Govan, under the ministration of the well-known Mr. Thom, who in the
midst of his sermon stopped and called out, ‘Bailie Brown, ye mauna
snore sae loud, for ye’ll wauken the Provost.’ But more than two
centuries ago the following epigram appeared:
Old South, a witty
Churchman reckoned,
Was preaching once to Charles the Second,
But much too serious for a court,
Who at all preaching made a sport:
He soon perceived his audience nod,
Deaf to the zealous man of God.
The Doctor stopp’d; began to call,
‘Pray wake the Earl of Lauderdale:
My Lord! why, ’tis a monstrous thing,
You snore so loud—you’ll wake the King.’
Though this scene took
place in the south of England, it is interesting to note that the snorer
specially singled out for rebuke was a Scottish nobleman.
Now and then a reproof from the pulpit has drawn down on the minister a
sarcastic reply from the unfortunate sleeper, as in the case of the
somnolent farmer who was awakened by the minister calling on him to
rouse himself by taking a pinch of snuff, and who blurted out ‘Put the
snuff in the sermon, sir,’—an advice which found not a little sympathy
in the congregation. .
In a parish church about the middle of Ayrshire the central passage
leading from the entrance to the pulpit is paved with large stone-flags.
On the right side a worthy matron had her family pew, wherein, overcome
with drowsiness, she used to fall asleep, with her head resting on her
large brass-clasped Bible. She was an admirable housekeeper and farmer,
looking after all the details of management herself. In her dreams in
church her thoughts would sometimes wander back to her domestic concerns
and show that she was not ‘mistress of herself, though china falls.’ One
Sunday, in the course of her slumbers, she succeeded in pushing her
massive Bible over the edge of the pew. As it fell on the stone-floor,
its brass mountings made a loud noise, at which she started up.with the
exclamation, ‘Hoot, ye stupid jaud, there’s anither bowl broken.’
The genial Principal of Glasgow University, in the course of a public
speech a year or two ago, told a story of an opposite kind. An old
couple in his country parish had taken with them to church their
stirring little grandson, who behaved all through the service with
preternatural gravity. So much was the preacher struck with the good
conduct of so young a' listener, that, meeting the grandfather at the
close of the service, he congratulated him upon the remarkably quiet
composure of the boy. ‘Ay,’ said the old man with a twinkle in his eye,
‘Duncan’s weel threetened afore he gangs in.’ .
When an afternoon service is held, the attendance is sometimes apt to be
scanty. A minister who was annoyed at a lukewarmness of this kind on the
part of his congregation, remonstrated with them on the subject. ‘I
canna tell,’ he said, ‘how it may look to the Almichtie that sae few o’
ye come to the second diet o’ worship, but I maun say that it’s showin’
unco little respect to mysel’.’
In summer weather, when the doors and windows of churches are sometimes
kept open for air, occasional unwelcome intruders distract the people
and disturb the preacher. Butterflies and small birds are the most
frequent; dogs are not uncommon, and in some districts these calls are
varied by the occasional appearance of a goat. A dog is amenable to the
sight of the minister’s man approaching with a stick, and bolts off
without needing any audible word of command, but a goat is a much more
refractory visitor. One of these creatures entered a country church one
Sunday in the midst of the service and deliberately marched down the
central passage. Of course every eye in the congregation was turned upon
it, and the luckless preacher found much difficulty in proceeding with
his discourse. The beadle at last sprang from his seat and proceeded to
meet the intruder. He had no stick, however, and the goat showed fight
by charging him with its horns and making him beat a retreat. A friendly
umbrella was thereupon passed out to him from one of the pews, and he
returned to the combat. By spreading his arms and wielding the umbrella,
he prevented the animal from reaching the pulpit stairs and succeeded in
turning it. But once or twice it wheeled round again, as if to renew the
fight. He contrived, however, to press it onwards as far as the church
porch, when, lifting up his foot and dealing the goat a kick which
considerably quickened its retreat, he gave vent to his feelings of
anger and indignation in an imprecation, distinctly audible through half
the church, ‘Out o’ the house o’ God, ye brute.’
A characteristic feature of many churches in Scotland is the
‘collection,’ that is, the gathering of the contributions of the
congregation for the poor of the parish or other purpose. In the
Highlands where there are services both in Gaelic and English, the
performance is repeated at the end of each. One or more of the elders,
attired in Sunday garb, and looking as sad and solemn as if they were at
a funeral, take the ‘ladle’ or wooden box at the end of a pole, and push
it into each pew. The alms as they are dropped into the receptacle make
a noise so distinctly audible over the building that a practised ear can
make a shrewd guess as to the value of the coin deposited. Nearly the
whole contribution is in coppers, only the larger farmers and the lairds
families furnishing anything of higher value. Hence such congregations
have been profanely valued at threepence a dozen. An amusing incident in
one of these collections took place at a parish church in the west of
Cowal. A family whom I used to visit there had come to their seat in the
gallery while the earlier service was still going on, • and when the
Gaelic ladle came round they put into it their contributions. After the
ladle had traversed the church at the end of the second service and was
being brought back to the foot of the pulpit, the minister, who noticed
that it had not been taken up to the laird’s seat, beckoned vigorously
to the man who was approaching with the money and pointed to the
gallery. In response he received only a knowing shake of the head from
the collector, who at last, impatient at the ministerial gesticulations,
exclaimed aloud, ‘ Na, na, sir, its a’ richt, I wass takin’ the laird’s
money at the Gaelic,’ In this same kirk on another occasion, after the
whole contributions of the congregation had been collected, the box came
up to the gallery, but unluckily was carried violently against the
corner of a pew, the bottom came out, and the accumulated coppers
rattled noisily to the floor.
Another part of the church service which cannot but strike a stranger,
especially in the Highlands, is the singing. In the more remote and
primitive parishes the precentor, standing in a lower desk directly
under the minister, reads out one, now more usually two lines of the
psalm, and then strikes up the tune. At the end of the first two lines,
he reads out the second two, which he proceeds to sing as before. The
congregation usually joins heartily in the music, which is the only part
of the service wherein it can actively participate.
It is not always easy to secure a precentor. He must, in the first
place, be a man of tried good character, and in the second place, he
must of course be able to distinguish the metres of the psalms, and have
voice and ear enough to raise at least three or four psalm-tunes. His
repertoire is seldom much more extensive. Occasionally he begins a tune
that will not suit the metre of the psalm, or he loses himself
altogether. A precentor in the north Highlands to whom this happened,
suddenly stopped and exclaimed, ‘Och, bless me, I’m aff the tune again.’
Another more sedate worthy struck up the tune three times, but always
lost it at the second line. He paused, looked round the congregation,
and after solemnly saying ‘Hoots, toots, toots,’ went at it the fourth
time successfully. When the precentor at Peebles had failed twice in his
efforts, the old minister looked over the pulpit and said aloud to him,
‘ Archie, try it again, and if ye canna manage it, tak’ anither tune.’
A precentor is naturally jealous of any more practised and clearer voice
than his own, which, he rightly thinks, ought to predominate. In the
little Free Church of Raasay Island, the precentor had it all his own
way until the minister’s sister came. She sat at the far end of the
church, and. having some knowledge of music and a good voice, she made
herself well heard as she sang in much quicker time than the slow drawl
to which the people had been accustomed. Before the precentor had done a
line she was ready to begin the next, and the half of the congregation
nearest to her followed her excellent lead. This was too much for the
precentor. He raised his voice till it almost cracked with the strain,
and for a few notes drowned the rival performer at the other end. But he
could not keep it up, and as his notes dropped, the clear sweet voice of
the lady came out as before. Sitting about the middle of the church, I
was able to appreciate the strange see-saw in the psalmody.
The most remarkable change which has taken place within living memory in
the services of the Scottish Church is unquestionably the introduction
of instrumental music. In most of the large congregations of the chief
towns, the precentor has given way to an organ, which leads the choir,
as the choir leads the congregation. Had any one in the earlier half of
last century been audacious enough to predict that in a couple of
generations the ‘kist o’ whistles,’ which had been long banished as a
sign and symbol of black popery, would be reintroduced and welcomed
before the end of the century, he would have been laughed to scorn, or
branded as himself a limb of the prelatic Satan. Of course, there has
been much searching of heart over this innovation, and many have been
the head-shakings and even open denunciations of such manifest
backsliding. But the cause of enlightenment has steadily gained ground
in the Lowlands, and a few generations hence it may not improbably
prevail even over the Highlands. Meanwhile in most Highland parishes,
the first notes of an organ in the church would probably drive the
majority of the congregation out of doors, and lead to years of angry
controversy.
The horror of anything savouring of what is thought to be popery shows
itself sometimes in determined opposition to even the most innocent and
useful changes. Sir Lauder Brunton has told me that in a Roxburghshire
parish with which he is well acquainted, the church being excessively
cold in winter, a proposal was mooted to introduce a stove for the
purpose of heating it. This innovation, however, met with a strong
resistance, especially from one member of the congregation, who said
that a stove had a pipe like an organ, and he would have nothing
savouring of popery in the Kirk of Scotland. He actually delayed the
reform for a time.
In the same county, where it had been the custom from time immemorial to
winnow the corn with the help of the wind, a farmer, alive to the value
of modern improvements, procured and began to use a machine which
created an artificial and always available current of air. He was at
once rebuked for an impious defiance of the ways of Providence.
A proposal to put a stove into a Fifeshire parish met with the
opposition of one of the heritors, who, when the minister came to him
for 'a subscription towards the warming of the kirk, indignantly
refused, asking, ‘ D’ye think John Knox asked for a stove, even for the
cauldest kirk he ever preached in? Na, na, sir, warm the folk wi’ your
preachin’, and they’ll never think about the cauld.’
At the time of the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 the
congregations were apt to side with their minister, if he were an able
and efficient pastor to whom they were attached. Thus in Skye, as I have
above mentioned, so powerful was the influence of John Mackinnon among
his people that he kept them with him in the pale of the Establishment.
But in most Highland parishes the Free Church early took ground, and in
a large number it has been so predominant that the congregation of the
Parish Church sometimes consists of little more than the clergyman and
his family. In such cases the position of the adherents of the ‘Auld
Kirk ’ may sometimes be rather trying. More especially is it felt by the
‘ minister’s man,’ who is sometimes placed in sad straits in his
endeavour to put the best face on the situation and conceal the
feebleness of his flock. Without knowing his official position, or to
which of the churches he belonged, I once met one of these worthies in
the west of Ross-shire, and, with a friend who accompanied me, had some
talk with him about the parish.
‘How does the Established Church get on here?’ we asked.
‘O fine, fine, sirs.’
‘Has the minister been here a long time?’
‘Ow ay, it’ll be a long time noo, I’m sure.’
‘And has he a large congregation?’
‘Ow ay, it’s a fery goot congregation, what-efer.’
‘Is it as big as the Free Kirk?’
‘Weel, I’ll no say that it will be just as big as the Free Kirk.’
‘How many do you think there may be in church on Sunday?’
‘Weel, ye see, there’ll be sometimes more and sometimes fewer.’
'But have you no idea how many they may be?’
‘Weel, sir, I dinna think I wass ever counting them.’
‘You go to the parish church yourself, I think?’
‘O, to be sure, I do: where wad ye think I wad be goin’ else?’
It was quite clear that our interlocutor must be a staunch adherent of
the Auld Kirk, and probably had some scantiness of the congregation to
conceal; but we had no idea then - of what we learnt soon afterwards,
that he was no less a personage than the ‘ minister’s man,’ and that,
saving the family from the manse and an occasional stranger, he was
himself the whole congregation.
It has been made a matter of reproach to the clergy of the Scottish
Church that, though they spend more time over the preparation of their
sermons and place these on a higher intellectual level than is common in
the English communion, they fall short of their brethren south of the
Tweed in the assiduity of their visitation of their people. Where a
parish extends over an area of many square miles, it must obviously be
difficult for the minister to move freely and constantly among his
parishioners, so as to be in close touch with all of them in their
mundane as well as their spiritual affairs. In such cases, he finds it
necessary to arrange the times of his visits, which are thus apt to
become somewhat formal ceremonies, announced beforehand, and prepared
for by those to whom notice is given. An example of this kind is related
of a minister who had recently been appointed to the parish of
Lesmahagow, and who made known from the pulpit one Sunday that he would
visit next day a certain hilly district of the parish. Accordingly, on
Monday morning he set out, and, after a walk of some seven or eight
miles, arrived at a farm-house, where he meant to begin. After knocking
for some time and getting no reply, he hailed a boy outside, when the
following conversation ensued:
‘Is Mr. Smith at home?’
‘Na.’
‘Is Mrs. Smith here?’
‘Na.'
‘Are you their son?’
‘Ay.’
‘Weil, I have walked a long way, and I would like to sit and rest for a
little. May I go in?’ (answering the question by entering). ‘And did
your father and mother not expect me?’
‘Na, they didna think ye wad begin up here; sae they’re awa’ doon to the
roup o’ Ritchie’s farm.’
‘Well, now, my man, are these all the books that your father has in the
house?’
‘Ay.’
‘Now tell me which of them does he use oftenest?’
‘That ane,’ pointing to a large leather-covered family Bible.
‘O, the Bible; that’s right: I am pleased to know that; and when does he
use it?’
‘On Sabbath mornin’s.’
‘Only once a week! Well, how does he do? Does he read it aloud to you
all?’
‘Na, he shairps his raazors on’t.’
I once had quarters at South Queensferry in a house through the centre
of which ran the boundary between that burgh and the adjacent parish of
Dalmeny. I asked my landlady how she arranged about the claims of the
clergy. ‘Well, ye see, I go to the Burgh Kirk, and my minister comes to
see me frae time to time. And Mr Muir of Dalmeny, he visits me too, but
I try to be quite fair to them both. The parlour here is in the burgh,
so I take my ain minister in there, and, as the other half of the house
is in Dalmeny, I put the other minister in the kitchen, which belongs to
his parish.’
In the striking, delineation which Wordsworth has given of the early
surroundings of his ‘Wanderer,’ and the circumstances that moulded his
character, special stress is laid on the clerical influence which from
infancy had guarded this son of the Braes of Athol.
The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood
he grew up, had held The strong hand of her purity; and still Had
watched him with an unrelenting eye.
It is to be feared, however, that the result of such continual
guardianship is to be recognised rather in the theological bent of the
people than in their moral behaviour. The high standard of conduct held
up in the pulpit, and generally followed by the clergy themselves, has
not prevented the statistics of drunkenness and illegitimacy from
attaining an unenviable notoriety. Yet no one can turn over the pages of
the records of kirk-sessions and presbyteries without obtaining a deep
impression of the untiring earnestness and devotion with which the
Church has struggled against these two great national sins. If in the
heyday of her power she could not eradicate the evils, her task must now
be tenfold more onerous, when the 'strong hand ’ can no longer reach
large masses of the population, and when the ‘unrelenting eye' though as
keenly watchful as ever, can only note the decadence which the hand is
powerless to reclaim. Unhappily a spirit of heathen ignorance, or of
pagan indifference, has largely replaced the unquestioning faith of an
older time, especially among the artisans of the large towns and the
miners in the great coal-fields. It is mainly in the country districts,
where social changes advance more slowly, that the religious instruction
given at school and in church still continues to colour the outlook of
the people on life here and hereafter.
If indeed we could judge from expressions that have survived from older
generations, we might infer that many of the articles of the Christian
faith retain a firm hold on minds which, if questioned on the subject,
would probably express doubt or denial of them, such as the doctrine of
a material heaven and hell, of a system of future rewards and
punishments, of a personal devil intent on man’s ruin, and of the
sinfulness of Sunday work.
The way in which the acceptance of a material heaven and hell shows
itself in ordinary conversation, might be illustrated by many anecdotes.
One or two examples may here suffice. About forty years ago a well-known
wealthy iron-master gave a dinner-party at his country house. Among his
guests was an old friend of mine, from whom he had purchased a portion
of his estate. The conversation turned on the great changes that had
taken place in the district within the memory of those present, —the
dying out of old families and the incoming of new, the making of
railways, the laying out of roads, the growth of villages, and so
forth,— when my friend remarked, ‘ Ah, me ! I dare say I would see just
as much change again if I were to come down sixty years hence.’
Whereupon the host instantly ejaculated from the other end of the room,
‘What’s that ye say? Come down! Tak’ care ye haena to come up.’
Of similar character is another Ayrshire story which has been told of a
man who built a large and ostentatious tomb for himself and family, of
which he was so proud that he boasted to the gravedigger that it would
last till the day of judgment, when they might have some trouble to get
up out of it. As the man’s reputation was none of the highest, the
gravedigger replied, 'I’m thinkin’ ye needna be wonderin’ how ye’re to
come up, for if they knock the bottom out o’t ye’ll aiblins gang doun.’
A country doctor, who was attending a laird, had instructed the butler
of the house in the art of taking and recording his master’s temperature
with a thermometer. On repairing to the house one morning he was met by
the butler, to whom he said: ‘Well, John, I hope the laird’s temperature
is not any higher to-day?’ The man looked puzzled for a moment, and then
replied: ‘Weel, I was just wonderin’ that mysell. Ye see he deed at twal’
o’clock.’
A clergyman’s son had taken to drink, and had given great trouble and
pain to his worthy father. On one occasion, after a debauch of several
days, he returned to the manse in the evening, and found that there had
been a presbytery dinner in the house, and that the reverend fathers who
had dined were now engaged over their toddy and talk in the study. He
made for the room, and was immediately welcomed by his father, who tried
to put the best face he could on the situation. He asked the young man
where he had been. ‘In hell,’ was the answer. ‘Ah, and what did you find
.there?’ ‘Much the same as I find here: I couldna see the fire for
ministers.’
In a country parish in the West of Scotland the minister’s man was a
noted pessimist, whose only consolation to his friends in any calamity
consisted in the remark, ‘ It micht hae been waur.’ One morning he was
met by the minister, who told him he had had such a terrible dream that
he had not yet been able to shake off the effects of it. ‘I dreamt I was
in hell, and experienced the torments of the lost. I never suffered such
agony in my life, and even now I shudder when I think of it.’ The
beadle’s usual consolatory remark came out, ‘It micht hae been waur.’ ‘O
John, John, I tell you it was the greatest mental distress I ever
suffered in my life. How could it have been worse?’ ‘ It micht hae been
true,’ was the reply.
Cases of religious mania have been common enough in Scotland, where
questions of theology have for centuries been keenly debated among all
classes of the community. It has been said that ‘ the worst of madmen is
a saint run mad.’ Whether this dictum be true or not there would appear
to have been always cases where brooding upon some one doctrine of the
Christian faith has led to mental aberration more or less serious. An
instance of this kind occurred in the north of Ayrshire, where a man,
who had lost his wits over theological speculation, would sometimes
accost a stranger on a quiet country road, and taking him by the
button-hole would abruptly ask him, ‘ What do you think of effectual
calling? Isn’t it a damned shame ? Good day to you.’ And off the poor
fellow marched, ready to propound the same or some similar problem to
the next passenger he would meet.
A less pronounced case of the same tendency was that of a countryman who
felt much aggrieved by the story of the fall of man as told in the Book
of Genesis. ‘And it comes specially hard on me,’ he would complain, ‘for
I never could byde apples raw or cooked a my days.’ |
