YEAR 1805
FOR some time I had meditated a reformation in the parish, and this year
I carried the same into effect. I had often noticed with concern, that,
out of a mistaken notion of paying respect to the dead, my people were
wont to go to great lengths at their burials, and dealt round short-bread
and sugar-biscuit, with wine and other confections, as if there had been
no ha’d in their hands; which straitened many a poor family, making the
dispensation of the Lord a heavier temporal calamity than it should
naturally have been. Accordingly, on consulting with Mrs. Balwhidder,
who has a most judicious judgment, it was thought that my interference
would go a great way to lighten the evil. I therefore advised with those
whose friends were taken from them, not to make that amplitude of
preparation which used to be the fashion, nor to continue handing about
as long as the folk would take, but only at the very most to go no more
than three times round with the service. Objections were made to this,
as if it would be thought mean; but I put on a stern visage, and told
them, that if they did more I would rise up, and rebuke and forbid the
extravagance. So three services became the uttermost modicum at all
burials. This was doing much, but it was not all that I wished to do.
I considered that the best reformations are those which proceed step by
step, and stop at that point where the consent to what has been
established becomes general; and so I governed myself, and therefore
interfered no farther; but I was determined to set an example.
Accordingly, at the very next dregy, after I partook of one service, I
made a bow to the servitors and they passed on, but all before me had
partaken of the second service; some, however, of those after me did as I
did, so I foresaw that in a quiet canny way I would bring in the fashion
of being satisfied with one service. I therefore, from that time, always
took my place as near as possible to the door, where the chief mourner
sat, and made a point of nodding away the second service, which has now
grown into a custom, to the great advantage of surviving relations.
But in this reforming business I was not altogether pleased with our
poet; for he took a pawkie view of my endeavours, and indited a ballad on
the subject, in the which he makes a clattering carlin describe what took
place, so as to turn a very solemn matter into a kind of derision. When
he brought his verse and read it to me, I told him that I thought it was
overly natural; for I could not find another term to designate the cause
of the dissatisfaction that I had with it; but Mrs. Balwhidder said that
it might help my plan if it were made public; so upon her advice we got
some of Mr. Lorimore’s best writers to make copies of it for
distribution, which was not without fruit and influence. But a sore
thing happened at the very next burial. As soon as the nodding away of
the second service began, I could see that the gravity of the whole
meeting was discomposed; and some of the irreverent young chiels almost
broke out into even-down laughter, which vexed me exceedingly. Mrs.
Balwhidder, howsoever, comforted me by saying, that custom in time would
make it familiar, and by-and-by the thing would pass as a matter of
course, until one service would be all that folk would offer; and truly
the thing is coming to that, for only two services are now handed round,
and the second is regularly nodded by.