AHI it’s a brave kirk—nane o’ your whigmaleeries and
curliewurlies and open steek hems aboot it—a’ solid, weel-jointed
mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld keep hands and
gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a douncome lang syne at the
Reformation, when they pu’d down the kirks of St Andrews and Perth, and
thereawa’, to clense them o’ Papery, and idolatry, and image-worship,
and surplices, and sic rags o’ the muckle hure that sitteth on
seven hills as if ane wisna braid enough for her
hinder end. Sae the commons o’ Renfrew and o’ the
Barony, and the Gorbals, and a’ about, they behoved to come into Glasgow
ae fine morning, to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o’ Popish
nicknackets.
But the townsmen o’ Glasgow they were feared their
auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through sicean rough physic,
and they rang the common bell, and asseinbled the train-bands wi’ took
o’ drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o’ Guild that
year (1 579)—and a guid mason he was himsel’, which made
him the keener to keep up the auld biggin’ ;—and the trades assembled,
and offered downright battle to the commons, rather than their kirk
should coup the crans, as others had done elsewhere.
it wisna for love o’ Paperie—ria, na !—nane could ever say that o’ the
trades o’ Giasgow—sae they came to an
agreement to take a’
the idolatrous statues of sants (sorrow be on them) out o’ their neuks.
An sae the bits o’ stane idols were broken
iii pieces by Scripture warrant,
and flung into the Molendiner bunt, and the auld kirk stood as erouse as
a eat when the fleas are kamed afi’ her, and a’ body was alike pleased.
And I ha’e heard wise folk say tint if the same had been done in
illca kirk in Scotland, the Reform wad just have been as
pure as it is e’en now, and we wad hae mair
Christian-like kirks; for I hae been sac lang in
England that naething will drived out o’ my head, that the dog-kennel at
Osbaldistone Hall is better than xnony a house o’ God in Scotland.
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