Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry/Placing a Scottish Minister
PLACING A SCOTTISH MINISTER.
Lang patronage, wi' rod o' airn,
Has shored the Kirk's undoin',
As lately Fenwick, sair forfairn,
Has proven to its ruin;
Our patron, honest man! Glencairn,
He saw mischief was brewin';
And, like a godly elect bairn,
He's waled us oot a true ane,
And soun', this day.
Burns.
The pleasantest hour, perhaps, of human life, is when a man, becoming master of his own actions, and with his first-earned money in his hand, gazes along the opening vista of existence, and sees, in silent speculation, the objects of his ambition appearing before him in their shadowy succession of peace, and enjoyment, and glory. Out of a few hard-won shillings the peasant frames visions of rustic wealth, whitens the mountains with his flocks, and covers the plain with clover and corn. The seaman casts his future anchor on a coast of silver, and gold, and precious stones; and sees his going and returning sails wafting luxury and riches. The poet, in his first verse, feels a thrill of unbounded joy he is never to experience again; he hears Fame sounding her trumpet at his approach, and imagines his songs descending through the most delightful of all modes of publication—the sweet lips of millions of fair maidens—now and for evermore. It was with feelings of this kind that I arranged the purchases my first wealth made, in a handsome pack secured with bolt and lock, and proceeded to follow the gainful and healthful calling of a packman among the dales of Dumfriesshire and the green hills of Galloway. On the first morning of my trade I halted in every green lane, spread out the motley contents of my box in orderly array before me, surveyed them with silent and growing joy, then placed them again in the box, and recommenced my march, amid busy calculation of the probable proceeds of my industry.
A little before noon, on a sweet morning of summer, I had seated myself on the summit of a little green fairy hill which overlooks the ancient Abbey of Bleeding Heart; and spreading out before me all the articles I had to offer for sale, I indulged, unconsciously, in the following audible speculation: "A pleasant story and a merry look will do much among the young; and a sedate face and a grave tale will win me a lodging from the staid and devout. For the bonnie lass and the merry lad have I not the choicest ballads and songs? For the wise and the grave do I lack works of solemn import, from the 'Prophecies of Peden,' and the 'Crumb of Comfort,' up to 'Salvation's Vantage-Ground,' or a 'Louping-on-Stone for Heavy Believers'? Then, for those who are neither lax on the one hand nor devout on the other, but stand as a stone in the wall, neither in the kirk nor out of it, have I not books of as motley a nature as they? And look at these golden laces, these silken snoods, and these ivory bosom-busks, though I will not deny that a well-faured lass has a chance to wheedle me out of a lace or a ribbon with no other money than a current kiss, and reduce my profit, yet I must even lay it the heavier on new-married wives, rosy young widows, and lasses with fee and bounty in their laps. It would be a sad thing if love for a sonsie lass should make me a loser."
An old dame in a grey linsey-woolsey gown, a black silk riding-hood pinned beneath her chin, with a large calf skin-covered Bible under her arm, had approached me unseen. She fell upon me like a whirlwind: "Oh! thou beardless trickster, thou seventeen-year-old scant-o'-grace, wilt thou sit planning among God's daylight how to overreach thy neighbour? My sooth, lad, but thou art a gleg one. I question if William Mackfen himself, who has cheated my goodman and me these twenty-seven summers, is half such a wily loon as thyself. A night's lodging ye need never ask at Airnaumrie. And yet it would be a sore matter to my conscience to turn out a face so young and so well-faured to the bensel of the midnight blast." And away the old lady walked, and left me to arrange the treasures of my pack at my leisure.
Her words were still ringing in my ears when an old man, dressed in the antique Scottish fashion—a grey plaid wound about his bosom, a broad westland bonnet on his head, which shaded, but did not conceal, a few shining white hairs, and with a long white staff in his hand, came up and addressed me: "Gather up thy books and thy baubles, young man; this is not the time to spread out these worldly toys to the eyes of human infirmity. Gather them together, and cast them into that brook, and follow me. Alas!" said he, touching my treasures with the end of his staff, "here are gauds for our young and our rosy madams—bosom-busks, brow-snoods, and shining brooches for ensnaring the eyes of youth. I tell thee, young man, woman will fall soon enough from her bright station by her own infirmities without thy helping hand to pluck her down. Much do I fear thou hast been disposing of sundry of thy snares to the vain old dame of Airnaumrie. She is half-saint and half-sinner; and the thoughts of her giddy youth are still too strong for her grey hairs: seest thou not that she carries the book of redemption in her hand, when she should bear it in her head? But she gleaned her scanty knowledge on an Erastian field among the Egyptian stubble. Ah! had she been tightly targed by a sound professor on the Proof Catechism, she had not needed that printed auxiliary under her arm. But I waste precious time on an unprofiting youth. I hasten whither I am called—for patronage, with its armed hand, will give the kirk of Galloway a sad stroke to-day, if there be no blessed interposition." And my male followed my female monitor, leaving me to wonder what all this religious bustle and preparation might mean.
I was about to follow, when loud talk and louder laughter came towards me through the green avenue of a neighbouring wood. A bevy of lads and lasses in holiday clothes, with books of devotion in their hands, soon appeared; and they were not slack in indulging themselves in week-day merriment. "A pretty Whig, indeed!" said a handsome girl with brown locks, and coats kilted half-way up a pair of very white legs; "a pretty Whig, indeed! I'll tell thee, lad, thou'lt never be the shining star in the firmament thy aunt speaks of when she prays. I have seen a lad with as much grace in his eye as thyself endure a sore sermon by himself when the kirk should have scaled." "And I have seen," retorted the swain, "as great a marvel as a pair of white legs, rosy lips, and mischievous eyes, making as wise a man as myself pay dear for an hour's daffin'." "Daffin'," said the maiden, laughing till the woods rang again; "daffin' will be scant when a lass seeks for't with such a world's wonder as thee. It sets thy mother's oldest son well to speak of daffin'." "I have climbed a higher tree and harried a richer nest," murmured the ploughman; "but what, in the name of patronage, have we here? Here's an abstract personification, as somebody called John Goudie the Cameronian, of old Willie Mackfen the pedlar—in the days of his youth." So saying, a crowd of lads and lasses surrounded my pack and me, and proceeded to examine and comment on my commodities with an absence of ceremony which would have vexed even a veteran traveller.
"As I shall answer for it," said one youth, "here's the very snood Jenny Birkwhistle lost amang Andrew Lorrance's broom." "And I protest," retorted the maiden, justly offended at this allusion to the emblem of maidenhood, "I protest, here's the wisest of all printed things—even 'A Groat's Worth of Wit for a Penny,' which thy mother longed to read ere she was lightened of thee. Thy father has much to answer for." A loud laugh told that truth was mingled with the wit of the maiden. Utter ruin seemed to wait on my affairs, when a woman, with a sour, sharp visage and a tongue that rang like a steel hammer on a smith's anvil, came up, and interposed. "Ye utterly castaway and graceless creatures, are ye making godless mirth on a green hillside?" said she, stretching forth her hands, garnished with long finger-nails, over the crowd—like a hawk over a brood of chickens; "is not this the day when patronage seeks to be mighty, and will prevail? Put yourselves, therefore, in array. The preaching man of Belial, with his red dragons, even now approaches the afflicted kirk of Bleeding Heart. Have ye not heard how they threaten to cast the cope-stone of the kirk into the deep sink, where our forefathers of yore threw the lady of Babylon and her painted and mitred minions? But it is ever this way. Ye would barter the soul's welfare for the body's folly. Ah!" said she to a young peasant, "what would Hezekiah Graneaway, thy devout grandfather, say, were he to see his descendant, on a day of trial like this, standing making mouths at a poor packman-lad, with a bevy of petticoated temptresses around him? Get along, I say, lest I tear those curled love-locks from thy temples. And as for thee, thou young money changer—thou dealer in maiden trickery and idle gauds—knowest thou not that this is Ordination Day? So buckle up thy merchandise, and follow. Verily, none can tell from whose hand the blow shall come this day, that will save us from the sinful compliance with that offspring of old Mahoun, even patronage." I was glad of any pretext for withdrawing my goods from the hands of my unwelcome visitors; so I huddled them together, secured them with the lock, and followed the zealous dame, who with a proud look walked down the hill, to unite herself to a multitude of all ranks and sexes which the placing of the parish minister had collected together.
The place where this multitude of motley beliefs and feelings had assembled was one of singular beauty. At the bottom of a woody glen, the margin of a beautiful lake, and the foot of a high green mountain, with the sea of Solway seen rolling and sparkling in the distance, stood a populous and straggling village, through which a clear stream and a paved road winded side by side. Each house had its garden behind, and a bare-headed progeny running wild about the banks of the rivulet; beside which many old men and matrons, seated according to their convenience, enjoyed the light of the sun and the sweetness of the summer air. At the eastern extremity of the village, a noble religious ruin, in the purest style of the Saxons, raised its shattered towers and minarets far above all other buildings; while the wall flowers, shooting forth in the spring at every joint and crevice, perfumed the air for several roods around. The buttresses and exterior auxiliary walls were covered with a thick tapestry of ivy, which, with its close-clinging and smooth shining leaf, resembled a covering of velvet. One bell, which tradition declares to be of pure silver, remained on the top of one of the highest turrets, beyond the reach of man. It is never rung save by a violent storm, and its ringing is reckoned ominous—deaths at land and drownings at sea follow the sound of the silver bell of Bleeding Heart Abbey. Innumerable swarms of pigeons and daws shared the upper region of the ruin among them, and built and brought forth their young in the deserted niches of saints, and the holes from which corbels of carved wood had supported the painted ceiling. At the very foot of this majestic edifice stood the parish kirk, built in utter contempt of the beautiful proportions of its ancient neighbour, and for the purpose perhaps of proving in how mean a sanctuary the pure and stern devotion of the Presbyterians could humble itself. Men thrash their grain, stall their horses, feed their cattle, and even lodge themselves, in houses dry and comfortable; but for religion they erect edifices which resemble the grave: the moist clay of the floor, the dampness and frequent droppings of water from the walls, are prime matters of satisfaction to the parish grave-digger, and preserve his spade from rust.
Into this ancient abbey, and the beautiful region around it, the whole population of the parish appeared to have poured itself, for the purpose of witnessing, and perhaps resisting, the ordination of a new and obnoxious pastor, whom patronage had provided for their instruction. Youths, more eager for a pleasant sight than religious controversy, had ascended into the abbey towers—the thick-piled grave stones of the kirkyard, each ruined buttress, the broken altar-stone, and the tops of the trees were filled with aged or with youthful spectators. Presbyterians of the Established Kirk, Burghers, Antiburghers, Cameronians, and seceders of all denominations paraded the long crooked street of the village, and whiled away the heavy time, and amused their fancy and soothed their conscience, by splitting anew the straws scattered about by the idle wind of controversy. Something like an attempt to obstruct the entrance to the kirk appeared to have been made. The spirit of opposition had hewn down some stately trees which shaded the kirkyard, and these, with broken ploughs and carts, were cast into the road: the kirk-door itself had been nailed up, and the bell silenced by the removal of the rope. The silver bell on the abbey alone, swept by a sudden wind, gave one gentle toll, and at that moment a loud outcry, from end to end of the village, announced the approach of the future pastor. The peasants thickened round on all sides, and some proceeded to wall up the door of the kirk with a rampart of loose stones. "Let Dagon defend Dagon," said one rustic, misapplying the Scripture he quoted, while he threw the remains of the abbey altar-stone into the path. "And here is the through-stone of the last abbot, Willie Bell: it makes a capital copestone to the defences—I kenned it by the drinking-cup aside the death's head. He liked to do penance with a stoup of wine at his elbow," said another boor, adding the broken stone to the other incumbrances. "A drinking-cup! ye coof," said an old man, pressing through the crowd: "it is a sand-glass—and cut, too, on the headstone of thy own grandfather. Black will be thy end for this." The boor turned away with a shudder; while the dame of Airnaumrie, with the black hood and large Bible, exclaimed: "Take away that foul memorial of old Gomorrha Gunson. The cause can never prosper that borrows defence from that never-do-good's grave. Remove the stone, I say, else I shall brain thee with this precious book." And she shook the religious missile at the descendant of old Gomorrha, who carried off the stone; and no further attempt was made, after this ominous circumstance, to augment the rampart.
Amid all this stir and preparation I had obtained but an indistinct knowledge of the cause which called into action all the grave, impatient, and turbulent spirits of the district. This was partly divulged in a conversation between two persons, to which there were many auditors. One was the male broad-bonneted disciplinarian who rebuked me for displaying the contents of my pack; and the other was the sour-visaged, shrilled-tongued dame who rescued my pack from the peril of pillage on the road, and with the true antique spirit of the Reformed Church lent her voice to swell the clamour of controversy. Their faces were inflamed and their voices exalted by the rancour of mutual contradiction; and it was thus I heard the male stickler for the kirk's freedom of election express himself: "I tell thee once, woman, and I tell thee again, that the kirk of Bleeding Heart there, where it stands so proud and so bonnie, by the side of that auld carcase of the woman of Rome—I tell thee it shall stand empty and deserted, shall send forth on Sunday a dumb silence, and the harmony of her voice be heard no more in the land—rather than she shall take, like a bridegroom, to her bosom that sapless slip of the soul-misleading and Latin-quoting university. Instead of drinking from the pure and fresh well-head, we shall have to drink from the muddy ditch which men have dug for themselves with the spades and shovels of learning. Instead of the downpouring of the frank and heaven-communicated spirit, we shall have the earthly spirit—the gross invention and fancy of man; a long, dull, downcome of a read sermon, which falls as seed on the ocean and chaff on the furrowed land. Besides all this, is not this youth, this Joel Kirkpatrick, a slip or scion from the poisonous tree of patronage, that last legacy from the scarlet lady of Rome?" "I say no to that—the back of my hand to that," interrupted the woman, in red and visible wrath; "I have heard him preach, and I have profited by his prayers; he is a precious youth, and has a happy gift at unravelling the puzzled skein of controversy. He will be a fixed and a splendid star, and that ye will soon see. And here he comes, blessings upon his head; ye shall hear a sermon soon such as has not been heard in the land since that chosen youth, John Rutherford, preached on the text, 'I shall kiss thee with kisses of my mouth.'" "Woman, woman," said her antagonist, "thou art the slipperiest of thy kind; and opposition and controversy turn thee round, even as the bush bends to the blast. To-day hast thou stood for the Kirk in its ancient purity; and lo! now thou wilt take her defiled by patronage, because of that goodly youth Joel Kirkpatrick." "Silence, ye fule-fowk," said a young ploughman at their side; "ye'll no let me hear the sound of the soldiers' bugle; they are coming to plant the gospel with spear and with sword. I have seen many a priest placed, some with pith of the tongue, and some with the pith of malt: Black Ned of the parish of Slokendrouth, was placed in his pulpit by the aid of the brown spirit of malt; and there the same spirit supports him still. But, on my conscience, I never saw a parson guarded to the pulpit with cold steel before. It's a sight worth seeing."
A stir and a movement was now observed at the extremity of the village; and presently the helmets, and plumes, and drawn swords of two hundred horsemen appeared, shining and waving above the crowd. This unusual accompaniment of the ministerial functions was greeted with hissings and hootings; and the scorn and anger of the multitude burst at once into one loud yell. The women and the children, gathering the summer dust in their hands, showered it as thick and as blinding as winter-drift on the persons of the troopers. The anger of the people did not rest here; pebbles were thrown, and symptoms of fiercer hostility began to manifest themselves; for many of the peasants were armed, and seemed to threaten to dispute the entrance to the kirk. In the midst of all this tumult, mounted on a little white horse and dressed in black, rode a young man, around whom the dust ascended and descended as if agitated by a whirlwind. This was the minister. He passed on, nor looked to the right or left, but with singular meekness, and a look of sorrow and resignation, endured the tumultuous scorn of the crowd. Long before he reached the limit of the village he seemed more a pillar of dust than a human being. "Is the Kirk a dog, that thou comest against her with staves?" said one; "Or is she a besieged city, that thou bringest against her thy horsemen and thy chariots?" cried a second; "Or comest thou to slay, whom thou canst not convince?" shouted a third; "Or dost thou come to wash thy garments in the blood of saints?" bawled a fourth; "Or to teach thy flock the exercise of the sword rather than the exercise of devotion?" yelled a fifth; "Or come ye," exclaimed a sixth, at the very limit of the human voice, "to mix the voice of the psalm with that of the trumpet, and to hear how divinity and slaughter will sound together?" Others expressed their anger in hissings and hootings; while an old mendicant ballad-singer paraded, step by step with the minister, through the crowd, and sung to a licentious tune the following rustic lampoon:
PLACING THE PARSON.
Come hasten and see, for the Kirk, like a bride,
Is arrayed for her spouse in sedateness and pride.
Comes he in meek mood, with his hands clasped and sighing
For the godless and doomed, with his hopes set on Zion?
Comes he with the grave, the austere, and the sage—
A warfare with those who scoff Scripture to wage?
He comes—hark! the reins of his war-steeds are ringing;
His trumpet—but 'tis not God's trumpet—is singing.
Clap your hands, all ye graceless; sing loud and rejoice,
Ye young men of Rimmon; and lift up your voice
All ye who love wantonness, wassail, and sinning
With the dame decked in scarlet and fine twined linen.
Scoff louder thou scoffer; scorn on, thou proud scorner;
Satan comes to build kirks, and has laid the first corner.
The Babylon dame, from Perdition's deep pool,
Sings and cradles her babes in the Kirk's cuttie-stool.
He comes! of all parsons the swatch and the pattern,
Shaped out to save souls by the shears of his patron.
He comes steeped in Learning's dark puddle, and chatters
Greek words, and tears all Calvin's creed into tatters,
And vows the hot pit shall shut up its grim portals,
Nor devour to a tithe the sum-total of mortals;
Talks of works, and Morality's Will-o'-wisp glimmer,
And showers Reason's frost on our spiritual simmer.
He comes! Lo! behind on their war-horses ranking,
Ride his bands of the faithful, their steel weapons clanking;
Proud hour for Religion, when God's chosen word
Is proclaimed by the trump, and confirmed by the sword.
Proud hour, when with bayonet, and banner, and brand,
The Kirk spreads her sway o'er old Galloway's land,
Where of yore Sandie Peden looked down on the vales,
Over this minstrel discordance a far louder din now prevailed, though the mendicant raised his voice to its loftiest pitch, and all those who purchased his ballad swelled the noise with their utmost strength. A grove of elm and oak, old and stately, whose broad green branches had shaded the splendid processions of the hierarchy of the Church of Rome when in the height of its glory, presented a short avenue from the end of the village to the door of the parish kirk. Here the peasantry posted themselves in great numbers, and here the horsemen halted to form for the charge which they expected to make before they could obtain access to the church. Nor did this promise to be an easy task. Many of the peasants were well armed; and boat-poles, pitchforks, fish-spears, and hedging-bills—all excellent weapons for resistance and annoyance—began to thicken near the bosoms of the horses; while behind, fowling-pieces, and pistols, and swords, appeared prepared in hands that knew well how to use them. In a remoter line still, the women, their aprons charged with pebbles and staves, stood ready to succour, with hand and with voice, the maintainers of Kirk purity.
The casting of dust, the showering of gravel and stones, and the loud outcry of the multitude, every moment augmented. John Cargill, a gifted Cameronian weaver, from one of the wildest Galloway mountains, brandished an oaken treddle, with which he had armed himself, like a quarter-staff, and cried, "Down with the men of Moab!" Tom-Gunson, a smuggler, shouted till he was heard a mile distant, "Down with them, my handy chaps, and we'll drink the auld Kirk's health out of the troopers' helmets;" and, to crown their audacity, Ill-will Tennan, the poacher, halloed, "I'se shoot the whole troop at a grey groat the pair, and give ye the raven priest to the mends." Open hostility seemed almost unavoidable, when an old farmer, throwing his hat aside, advanced suddenly from the crowd to the side of the minister and said, "Did I ever think I should behold the son of my soothfast friend, Hebron Kirkpatrick, going to glorify God's name at the head of a band of daily brawlers and paid stabbers? His horse's feet shall pass over this frail body first." And he bent himself down at the feet of the minister's horse, with his grey locks nearly touching the dust.
At this unexpected address and remarkable action, Joel Kirkpatrick wakened as from a reverie of despondency, and lighting from his horse, took the old man in his arms with looks of concern and affection. The multitude was hushed while the minister said, "May my head be borne by the scoffer to the grave, and my name serve for a proverb of shame and reproach, if I step another step this day other than thou willest. Thou hast long been an exemplar and a guide to me, John Halberson; and, though God's appointed preacher, and called to the tending of His flock, be assured I will have thy sanction, else my ministry may be barren of fruit." The venerable old man gazed on the young preacher with the light of gladness in his eyes, and taking his hand, said: "Joel Kirkpatrick, heed my words. I question not the authority of the voice permitted by Him whom we serve to call thee to His ministry. The word of the multitude is not always with the wisest, nor the cry of the people with the sound divine and the gifted preacher. I push thee not forward, neither do I pluck thee back; but surely, surely, young man of God, He never ordained the glory of His blessed Kirk to be sustained by the sword, and that he whom He called should come blowing the trumpet against it. Much do I fear for the honour of that ministry which is entered upon with banner and brand." As John Halberson spoke, a sudden light seemed to break upon the preacher: he motioned the soldiers back, and taking off his hat, advanced firmly and meekly down the avenue towards the kirk-door, one time busied in silent prayer, another time endeavouring to address the multitude.
"Hear him not," said one matron; "for he comes schooled from the university of guile and deceit; and his words, sweet as honey in the mouth, may prove bitter in the belly, even as wormwood." "I say, hear him, hear him!" said another matron, shaking her Bible at her neighbour's head, to enforce submission. "Ye think him bitterer than the gourd, but he will be sweeter than the honey-comb." "Absolve thee," said one old man, the garrulity of age making a speech out of what he meant for an exclamation; "absolve thee of the foul guilt, the burning sin, and the black shame of that bane and wormwood of God's Kirk, even patronage; and come unto us—not with the array of horsemen and the affeir of war; but come with the humility of tears and the contrition of sighs, and we will put thee in the pulpit; for we know thou art a gifted youth." Another old man, with a bonnet and plaid, and bearing a staff to reinforce his lack of argument, answered the enemy of patronage: "Who wishes for the choice of the foolish many in preference to the election of the One-wise? The choice of our pastor will be as foolishness for our hearts and a stumbling-block to our feet. When did ignorance lift up its voice as a judge, and the sick heart become its own physician? We are as men who know nothing—each expounding Scripture as seemeth wise in vain eyes; and yet shall we go to say this man, and no other, hath the wisdom to teach and instruct us?" "Well spoken and wisely, Laird of Birkenloan," shouted a ploughman from the summit of the old abbey; "more by token, our nearest neighbours, in their love for the lad who could preach a sappy spiritual sermon, elected to the ministry a sworn and ordained bender of the bicker, whose pulpit, instead of the odour of sanctity, sends forth the odour of smuggled gin." A loud burst of laughter from the multitude acknowledged the truth of the ploughman's sarcasm; while Jock Gillock, one of the most noted smugglers of the coast of Solway, shook his hand in defiance at the rustic advocate of patronage, and said: "If I don't make ye the best thrashed Robson ever stept in black leather shoon, may I be foundered in half a fathom of fresh water." "And if ye fail to know and fear the smell of a ploughman's hand from this day forthwith, compared to that of all meaner men's," cried the undaunted agriculturist, "I will give ye leave to chop me into ballast for your smuggling cutter." And he descended to the ground with the agility of a cat, while the mariner hastened to encounter him; and all the impetuous and intractable spirits on both sides followed to witness the battle.
"So now," said an old peasant, "doth not the wicked slacken their array? Doth not the demon of secession, who hath so long laid waste our Kirk, draw off his forces of his own free will? Let us fight the fight of righteousness, while the workers of wickedness fight their own battles. Let us open the kirk portals, blocked up and barricaded by the Shimeis of the land." Several times the young preacher attempted to address the crowd, who had conceived a sudden affection for him since the salutary dismissal of the dragoons; but his flock were far too clamorous, impatient, and elated to heed what he had to say. They were unaccustomed to be addressed, save from the pulpit; and the wisest speech from a minister without the imposing accompaniments of pulpits and pews, and ranks of douce unbonneted listeners, is sure to fail in making a forcible impression. It was wise, perhaps, in the minister to follow the counsel of grave John Halberson, and let the multitude work their own way. They lifted him from the ground; and, borne along by a crowd of old and young, he approached the kirk. The obstacles which impeded the way vanished before the activity of a thousand willing hands. The kirk-door, fastened with iron spikes by a band of smugglers on the preceding evening, was next assailed, and burst against the wall with a clang that made the old ruin ring again, and in rushed a multitude of heads, filling every seat, as water fills a vessel, from one end of the building to the other. The preacher was borne aloft by this living tide to the door of the pulpit; while the divine to whom was deputed the honour of ordaining and placing him in his ministry was welcomed by a free passage, though he had to listen to many admonitions as he passed. "Oh, admonish him to preach in the ancient spirit of the Reformed Kirk—in a spirit that was wonderful to hear and awful to understand!" said one old man, shaking a head of grey hair as he spoke. "And oh," said another peasant, as the divine turned his head, unwilling thus to be schooled in his calling, "targe him tightly anent chambering and wantonness, the glory of youth and the pride of life; for the follies of the land multiply exceedingly." From him the divine turned away in displeasure; but received in the other ear the cross-fire of an old woman, whose nose and chin could have held a hazel-nut, and almost cracked it between their extremities; and whose upper lip was garnished with a beard matching in length and strength the whiskers of a cat. "And, oh, sir! he's in a state of single innocence and sore temptation even now—warn him, I beseech thee; warn him of the pit into which that singular and pious man fell in the hour of evil—even him whom the scoffers call Sleepy Samuel. Bid him beware of painted flesh and languishing eyes, of which there be enough in this wicked parish. Tell him to beware of one whose love-locks and whose lures will soon pluck him down from his high calling, even the fair daughter of the old dour trunk of the tree of Papistry, bonnie Bess Glendinning." Here her words were drowned in the more audible counsel of another of the burning and shining lights of the parish, from whose lips escaped, in a tone resembling a voice from a cavern, the alarming words, "Socinians, Arminians, Dioclesians, Erastians, Arians, and Episcopalians "Episcopalians!" ejaculated an old woman in dismay and astonishment, who mistook, perhaps, this curtailed catalogue of schismatics for some tremendous anathema or exorcism—" Episcopalians! God protect me! what's that?"
I have no wish to attempt to describe the effects which a very happy, pithy, and fervent inauguration sermon had on the multitude. The topics of election, redemption, predestination, and the duties which he called his brother to perform, with a judicious mind, a Christian feeling, and an ardent but temperate spirit, were handled, perilous as the topics were, with singular tact, and discrimination, and delicacy. The happy mixture of active morality and spiritual belief, of work-day-world practice and elegant theory, which this address contained, deserves a lasting remembrance.
The summary of the preacher's duties, and the description of the impetuous and distempered spirits of the parish, and the contradictory creeds which he had to soothe and to solder, form still a traditionary treasure to the parish. To minds young and giddy as mine, these healthy and solacing things were not so attractive as the follies and outrages of a disappointed crowd; and let not an old man, without reflecting that he too was once eighteen, condemn me for forsaking the presence and precepts of the preacher for the less spiritual and less moral, but no less instructive drama which was acting in the open air.
The dragoons were still in their saddles, but had retired to the extremity of the village, where they emptied bottles of ale and sung English ballads with a gaiety and a life which obtained the notice of sundry of the young maidens, who are observed to feel a regard for scarlet and lace, which I leave to those who love not their pleasant company to explain. As they began to gather round, not unobserved by the sons of Mars, some of the village matrons proceeded to remonstrate. "Wherefore gaze ye on the men with whiskers, pruned and landered, and with coats of scarlet, and with lace laid on the skirts thereof?" said one old woman, pulling at the same time her reluctant niece by the hand, while her eyes, notwithstanding her retrograde motion, were fixed on a brawny trooper. "And, Deborah," said a mother to her daughter, whose white hand and whiter neck, shaded with tresses of glossy auburn, the hands of another trooper had invaded, "what wouldst thou do with him who wears the helmet of brass upon his head? He is an able-bodied man, but a great covenant-breaker, and he putteth trust in the spear and in the sword." The maiden struggled with that earnestness with which a virgin of eighteen strives to escape from the kindness of a handsome man; and kiss succeeding kiss told what penalty she incurred in delaying to follow her mother.
Of the dissenting portion of the multitude, some disposed of themselves in the readiest ale-houses, where the themes of patronage, free-will, and predestination, emptied many barrels, and the clouds of mystery and doubt darkened down with the progress of the tankard. Others, of a more flexible system of morality, went to arrange, far from the tumult of tongues and opinions in which the district gauger figured, a midnight importation of choice Geneva, the rapid consumption of which was hastened by the burning spark of controversy which raged unquenchably in their throats. Many retired sullenly homeward, lamenting that a concourse of men of hostile opinions could collect, controvert, and quarrel, and then coolly separate without blows and bloodshed, cursing the monotony of human existence now, compared with the stirring times of Border forays and Covenant raids. A moiety nearly of the seceding crowd remained in clumps on the village green. They were men chiefly of that glowing zeal to whom mere charity and the silent operations of religious feeling seem cold and unfruitful; those pure and fortunate beings who find nothing praiseworthy, or meriting the hope of salvation, in the actions of mere men; who discover new interpretations of Scripture, and rend anew the party-coloured and patched garments of sect and schism every time they meet, when the liquor is abundant. Their hope of the complete reform in the discipline of the parish kirk, or the creation of a new meeting-house to enjoy the eloquence of a preacher, the choice of their own wisdom, seemed now nearly blasted; and they uttered their discontent at the result, while they praised the dexterity or cunning with which they opposed the ordination of that protégé of patronage, Joel Kirkpatrick. "The kirk-session may buy a new bell-rope," said a Cameronian weaver, "for I cut away the tow from their tinkling brass yestreen; more by token, it now tethers my hummel cow on the unmowed side of John Allan's park; he had no business to set himself up against the will of the parish and the word of God." Gilbert Glass, the village glazier, found a topic of worldly consolation amid the spiritual misfortunes of the day: "The kirk windows will cost them a fine penny to repair: some one, whom I'll not name, left not a single pane whole, and each pane will cost the heritors a silver sixpence; that's work my way. It is an evil wind, Saunders Brazely, that blows nobody good; a profitable proverb to you." "All that I know of the proverb," replied Saunders the slater, "is, that it will be the sweet licking of a creamy finger to thee; but alake! what shall I get out of the pain of riding stride-legs over the clouted roof of the old kirk patching a few broken slates? I have heard of many a wind blowing for one's good, but I never heard of a wind that uncovered a kirk yet." To all this answered Micah Meen, a sectarian mason: "Plague on't! I wish there were not a slate on its roof, or one stone of its wall above another. This old kirk, built out of the spare stones of the old abbey, is but a bastard-bairn of the old lady of Rome, and deserves no good to come on't. Look ye to the upshot of my words. Seventeen year have I been kirk-mason, and am still as poor as one of its mice. But bide ye, let us lay our heads together, and build a brent new meeting-house. I will build the walls, and no be too hard about the siller, if I have the letting of the seats. And we will have a preacher to our own liking, one who shall not preach a word save sound doctrine, else let me never bed a stone in mortar more." "Eh, man, but ye speak soundly," said Charlie Goudge, the village carpenter, "in all save the article of kirk-seats, which, being of timber, pertain more to my calling. Howsomever, I would put a roof of red Norway fir over your heads, and erect ye such seats as no man sits in who lends his ears to a read sermon." "And as for us two," said the slater and the glazier, clubbing their callings together, for the sake of making a more serious impression, "we would counsel ye to cover your kirk with blue Lancashire slate, instead of that spongy stone from Locherbrig Hill, which, besides coming from a hill of witch and devil trysting, is fit for nought save laying above a dead man's dwelling, who never complains of a bad roof; and farther, put none of your dull green glass in the windows, but clear pure glass, through which a half-blind body might see to expound the Word." "And I would counsel ye to begin a subscription incontinent," said the keeper of a neighbouring ale-house; "and if ye will come into my home, we can commence the business with moistened throats; and," continued mine host in an undertone, "I can kittle up your spirits with some rare Geneva from the bosom of my sloop, the Bonnie Nelly Lawson, there, where she lies cosy among Cairnhowrie Birks, and the gauger never the wiser."
A flood of sectarians inundated the parlour of the Thistle and Hand-Hammer, and a noise, rivalling the descent of a Galloway stream down one of its wildest glens, issued, ringing far and wide, from the change-house. "Subscribe!" said Gilpin Johnstone, a farmer of Annandale descent; "I would not give seven placks—and these are but small coins—for the fairest kirk that ever bore a roof above the walls. There's the goodman of Hoshenfoot, a full farmer, who hopes to be saved in his own way—he may subscribe. No but that I am willing to come and listen if the pew-rates be moderate." "Me subscribe!" said he of the Hoshenfoot, buttoning his pockets as he spoke, to fortify his resolution; "where in the wide world, think ye, have I got gold to build into kirk-walls? Besides, I have been a follower of that ancient poetical mode of worship, preaching on the mountain-side; and if ye will give me a day or two's reaping in the throng of harvest, I will lend ye the green hill of Knockhoolie to preach an hour's sound doctrine on any time—save, I should have said, when the peas are in the pod; and then deil have me if I would trust a hungry congregation near them." Similar evasions came from the lips of several more of the wealthy seceders; and, one by one, they dissented and dispersed: not without a severe contest with the landlord whether they were responsible for all the liquor they had consumed, seeing it was for the spiritual welfare of the parish.
If the entry of the minister into his ministry was stormy and troubled, ample reparation was made by the mass of the parishioners, who, after the ordination, escorted him home to the manse, giving frequent testimony of that sedate joy and tranquil satisfaction which the people of Scotland are remarkable for expressing. "Reverend sir, you have had but a cold and a wintry welcome to your ministry," said an old and substantial dame, "and if ye will oblige me by accepting of such a hansel, I will send ye what will make a gallant house-heating." "And ye mauna have all the joy of giving gifts to yourself, goodwife," said an old man with a broad bonnet, and stooping over a staff, "for I shall send our ain Joel Kirkpatrick such a present as no minister o' Bleeding Heart ever received since Mirk Monday, and all too little to atone for the din that my old and graceless tongue raised against God's gifted servant this blessed morning." "And talking of atonements," interrupted an old woman, whose hands were yet unwashed from the dust which she had lately thrown on the minister, "I have an atoning offering to make for having wickedly testified against a minister of God's kirk this morning. I shall send him a stone weight of ewe-milk cheese to-morrow." But no one of the multitude seemed more delighted, or stood higher in general favour, than John Halberson, the wise and venerable man who had given the first check to the fiery spirit that blazed so fiercely in the morning. He walked by the minister's side, his head uncovered, and his remaining white hairs glittering in the descending sun. His words were not many, but they were laid up in the heart and practised in the futurelife of the excellent person to whom they were addressed. "Young man and reverend, thy lot is cast in a stormy season and in a stony land. There be days for sowing, and days for reaping, and days for gathering into the garner. Thou hast a mind gifted with natural wisdom and stored with written knowledge; a tongue fluent and sweet in utterance, and thou hast drunk of the word at the well-head. But trust not thy gifts alone for working deliverance among the people. Thou must know each man and woman by face and by name—pass into their abodes, acquaint thyself with their feelings and their failings, and move them and win them to the paths of holiness, as a young man woos his bride. Thou must dandle their young ones on thy knees, for thy Master loved little children, and it is a seemly thing to be beloved of babes. Should youth go astray in the way in which youth is prone, take it gently and tenderly to task; severity maketh the kirk rancorous enemies, and persecution turneth love into deadly hate; humanity and kindness are the leading-strings of the human heart. One counsel more, and I have done: take unto thee a wife. Ministers are not too good for such a sweet company as woman's, neither are they too steadfast not to fear a fall. Wed, saith the Scripture, and replenish the earth; and I wish not the good, the brave, and ancient name of Kirkpatrick to pass from among us. Peace be with thee, and many days." By following the wise counsel of his venerable parishioner, Joel Kirkpatrick became one of the most popular pastors of the Presbytery, and one of the chief luminaries of the ancient province of Galloway. His eloquence, his kindliness of heart, and the active charity of his nature will be proverbial in parish tradition while eloquence, and kindness, and charity are reverenced on earth.