YEAR 1762
THE third year of my ministry was long held in remembrance for several
very memorable things. William Byres of the Loanhead had a cow that
calved two calves at one calving; Mrs. Byres, the same year, had twins,
male and female; and there was such a crop on his fields, testifying that
the Lord never sends a mouth into the world without providing meat for
it. But what was thought a very daunting sign of something, happened on
the Sacrament Sabbath at the conclusion of the action sermon, when I had
made a very suitable discourse. The day was tempestuous, and the wind
blew with such a pith and birr, that I thought it would have twirled the
trees in the kirkyard out by the roots, and, blowing in this manner, it
tirled the thack from the rigging of the manse stable; and the same blast
that did that, took down the lead that was on the kirk-roof, which hurled
off, as I was saying, at the conclusion of the action sermon, with such a
dreadful sound, as the like was never heard, and all the congregation
thought that it betokened a mutation to me. However, nothing particular
happened to me; but the smallpox came in among the weans of the parish,
and the smashing that it made of the poor bits o’ bairns was indeed
woeful.
One Sabbath, when the pestilence was raging, I preached a sermon about
Rachel weeping for her children, which Thomas Thorl, who was surely a
great judge of good preaching, said, “was a monument of divinity whilk
searched the heart of many a parent that day;” a thing I was well pleased
to hear, for Thomas, as I have related at length, was the most zealous
champion against my getting the parish; but, from this time, I set him
down in my mind for the next vacancy among the elders. Worthy man! it
was not permitted him to arrive at that honour. In the fall of that year
he took an income in his legs, and couldna go about, and was laid up for
the remainder of his days, a perfect Lazarus, by the fire-side. But he
was well supported in his affliction. In due season, when it pleased Him
that alone can give and take, to pluck him from this life, as the fruit
ripened and ready for the gathering, his death, to all that knew him, was
a gentle dispensation, for truly he had been in sore trouble.
It was in this year that Charlie Malcolm, Mrs. Malcolm’s eldest son, was
sent to be a cabin-boy in the Tobacco trader, a three-masted ship, that
sailed between Port-Glasgow and Virginia in America. She was commanded
by Captain Dickie, an Irville man; for at that time the Clyde was
supplied with the best sailors from our coast, the coal-trade with
Ireland being a better trade for bringing up good mariners than the long
voyages in the open sea; which was the reason, as I often heard said, why
the Clyde shipping got so many of their men from our country side. The
going to sea of Charlie Malcolm was, on divers accounts, a very
remarkable thing to us all; for he was the first that ever went from our
parish, in the memory of man, to be a sailor, and everybody was concerned
at it, and some thought it was a great venture of his mother to let him,
his father having been lost at sea. But what could the forlorn widow do?
She had five weans, and little to give them; and, as she herself said, he
was aye in the hand of his Maker, go where he might; and the will of God
would be done, in spite of all earthly wiles and devices to the contrary.
[Picture: Preparing for the Kirk]
On the Monday morning, when Charlie was to go away to meet the Irville
carrier on the road, we were all up, and I walked by myself from the
manse into the clachan to bid him farewell, and I met him just coming
from his mother’s door, as blithe as a bee, in his sailor’s dress, with a
stick, and a bundle tied in a Barcelona silk handkerchief hanging o’er
his shoulder, and his two little brothers were with him, and his sisters,
Kate and Effie, looking out from the door all begreeten; but his mother
was in the house, praying to the Lord to protect her orphan, as she
afterwards told me. All the weans of the clachan were gathered at the
kirkyard yett to see him pass, and they gave him three great shouts as he
was going by; and everybody was at their doors, and said something
encouraging to him; but there was a great laugh when auld Mizy Spaewell
came hirpling with her bauchle in her hand, and flung it after him for
good-luck. Mizy had a wonderful faith in freats, and was just an oracle
of sagacity at expounding dreams, and bodes of every sort and
description—besides, she was reckoned one of the best howdies in her day;
but by this time she was grown frail and feckless, and she died the same
year on Hallowe’en, which made everybody wonder that it should have so
fallen out for her to die on Hallowe’en.
Shortly after the departure of Charlie Malcolm, the Lady of Breadland,
with her three daughters, removed to Edinburgh, where the young laird,
that had been my pupil, was learning to be an advocate, and the
Breadland-house was set to Major Gilchrist, a nabob from India; but he
was a narrow ailing man, and his maiden-sister, Miss Girzie, was the
scrimpetest creature that could be; so that, in their hands, all the
pretty policy of the Breadlands, that had cost a power of money to the
old laird that was my patron, fell into decay and disorder; and the bonny
yew-trees that were cut into the shape of peacocks, soon grew out of all
shape, and are now doleful monuments of the major’s tack, and that of
Lady Skimmilk, as Miss Girzie Gilchrist, his sister, was nick-named by
every ane that kent her.
But it was not so much on account of the neglect of the Breadland, that
the incoming of Major Gilchrist was to be deplored. The old men that had
a light labour in keeping the policy in order, were thrown out of bread,
and could do little; and the poor women that whiles got a bit and a drap
from the kitchen of the family, soon felt the change, so that by little
and little we were obligated to give help from the session; insomuch
that, before the end of the year, I was necessitated to preach a
discourse on almsgiving, specially for the benefit of our own poor, a
thing never before known in the parish.
But one good thing came from the Gilchrists to Mrs. Malcolm. Miss
Girzie, whom they called Lady Skimmilk, had been in a very penurious way
as a seamstress, in the Gorbals of Glasgow, while her brother was making
the fortune in India, and she was a clever needle-woman—none better, as
it was said; and she, having some things to make, took Kate Malcolm to
help her in the coarse work; and Kate, being a nimble and birky thing,
was so useful to the lady, and the complaining man the major, that they
invited her to stay with them at the Breadland for the winter, where,
although she was holden to her seam from morning to night, her food
lightened the hand of her mother, who, for the first time since her
coming into the parish, found the penny for the day’s darg more than was
needed for the meal-basin; and the tea-drinking was beginning to spread
more openly, insomuch that, by the advice of the first Mrs. Balwhidder,
Mrs. Malcolm took in tea to sell, and in this way was enabled to eke
something to the small profits of her wheel. Thus the tide that had been
so long ebbing to her, began to turn; and here I am bound in truth to
say, that although I never could abide the smuggling, both on its own
account, and the evils that grew therefrom to the country side, I lost
some of my dislike to the tea after Mrs. Malcolm began to traffic in it,
and we then had it for our breakfast in the morning at the manse, as well
as in the afternoon. But what I thought most of it for was, that it did
no harm to the head of the drinkers, which was not always the case with
the possets that were in fashion before. There is no meeting now in the
summer evenings, as I remember often happened in my younger days, with
decent ladies coming home with red faces, tosy and cosh, from a
posset-masking; so, both for its temperance and on account of Mrs.
Malcolm’s sale, I refrained from the November in this year to preach
against tea; but I never lifted the weight of my displeasure from off the
smuggling trade, until it was utterly put down by the strong hand of
government.
There was no other thing of note in this year, saving only that I planted
in the garden the big pear-tree, which had the two great branches that we
call the Adam and Eve. I got the plant, then a sapling, from Mr. Graft,
that was Lord Eaglesham’s head-gardener; and he said it was, as indeed
all the parish now knows well, a most juicy sweet pear, such as was not
known in Scotland till my lord brought down the father plant from the
king’s garden in London, in the forty-five when he went up to testify his
loyalty to the House of Hanover.