Traces of Paganism in Scotland. Relics of the Celtic Church;
‘Deserts.’ Survival of Roman Catholicism in West Highlands and
Islands. Influence of the Protestant clergy. Highland ministers.
Lowland ministers. Diets of catechising. Street preachers.
The social history of Scotland has been intimately linked with the
successive ecclesiastical polities which have held sway in the country.
Nowhere can the external and visible records of these polities be more
clearly seen than among the Western Isles, for there the political
revolutions have been less violent, though not less complete, than in
other parts of the country, and the effacement of the memorials of
the past has been brought about, more perhaps by the quiet influence
of time, than by the ruthless hand of man. First of all we meet with
various lingering relics of Paganism; then with abundant and often
well-preserved records of the primitive Celtic Church; next with
evidence of the spread of the Roman Catholic faith; further with the
establishment of Protestantism, but without the complete eradication of
the older religion; and lastly with the doings of the various religious
sects into which the inhabitants are now unhappily divided.
[Sidenote: RELICS OF PAGANISM]
Various memorials of Paganism may be recognised, to some of which
further reference will be made in a later chapter. Of these memorials,
the numerous standing stones are the most conspicuous, whether as
single monoliths, marking the grave of some forgotten hero or dedicated
to some unknown divinity, or as groups erected doubtless for religious
purposes, like the great assemblage at Callernish in the Lewis. Besides
these stones, many burial mounds, resting-places of the pagan dead,
have yielded relics of the Stone and Bronze Ages. In some respects more
impressive even than these relics, are the superstitious customs which
still survive amongst us, and have probably descended uninterruptedly
from pagan times; such, for instance, as the practice of walking
around wells and other places three times from east to west, as the
sun moves, and the practice of leaving offerings at the springs which
are resorted to for curative purposes. Some of these customs were
continued by the early Celtic Church, persisted afterwards through the
Roman Catholic period, and even now, in spite of all the efforts of
Protestant zeal, they have not been wholly extirpated.
[Sidenote: DESERTS OF THE CELTIC SAINTS]
The vestiges of the early Celtic Church, by which Paganism was
superseded, are specially abundant in the Highlands. Even where all
visible memorials have long since vanished, the name of many a devoted
saint and missionary still clings to the place where he or she had a
chapel or hermitage, or where some cell was dedicated to their memory.
The names of Columba, Bridget, Oran, Donan, Fillan, Ronan, and others
are as familiar on the lips of modern Highlanders as they were on those
of their forefathers, although the historical meaning and interest of
these names may be unknown to those who use them now. When, besides
the name attached to the place, the actual building remains with which
the name was first associated in the sixth or some later century, the
interest deepens, especially where the relic stands, as so many of them
do, on some small desolate islet, placed far amid the melancholy main,
and often for weeks together difficult or impossible of approach,
even now, with the stouter boats of the present day. Such places, like
those off the west coast of Ireland, were sought for retirement from
the work and worry of the world, where the missionary devoted himself
to meditation and prayer. The numerous Deserts, Diserts, Dysarts,
and Dyserts in Ireland and Scotland are all forms of the Gaelic word
_Disert_, derived from the Latin _Desertum_, a desert or sequestered
place, and mark retreats of the early propagandists of Christianity.
It fills one with amazement and admiration to contemplate the heroism
and self-devotion which could lead these men in their frail coracles
to such sea-washed rocks, where there is often no soil to produce any
vegetation, and where, except by impounding rain, there can be no
supply of fresh water.
Perhaps the most striking of these ‘deserts’ in Scotland is to be
found on the uninhabited rock known as Sùla Sgeir, which rises out of
the Atlantic, about forty miles to the north of the Butt of Lewis.
Though much less imposing in height and size than the Skellig off the
coast of Kerry, it is at least four times further from the land, and
must consequently have been still more difficult to reach in primitive
times. I had a few years ago an opportunity of landing on this rock,
during a yachting cruise to the Faroe Islands. With some little
difficulty, on account of the heavy swell, I succeeded in scrambling
ashore, and found the rock to consist of gneiss, like that of the Long
Island. My arrival disturbed a numerous colony of sea-fowl. The puffins
emerged from their holes, and sat gazing at me with their whimsical
wistful look. Flocks of razo-bills and guillemots circled overhead,
filling the air with their screams, while the gannets, angry that
their mates should be disturbed from their nests, wheeled to and fro
still higher, with mocking shouts of ha! ha! ha! A dank grey sea-fog
hung over the summit of the islet. Everything was damp with mist and
clammy with birds’ droppings, which in a dry climate would gather as a
deposit of guano. Loathsome pools of rain-water and sea-spray, putrid
with excrement, filled the hollows of the naked rock, while the air
was heavy with the odours of living and dead birds. The only things of
beauty in the place were the tufts of sea-pink that grew luxuriantly in
the crannies. Some traces of recent human occupation could be seen in
the form of a few rude stone-huts erected as shelters by the men who
now and then come to take off the gannets and their eggs, and who when
there lately had left some heaps of unused peat behind them.
[Sidenote: THE SAINT OF SULA SGEIR]
Yet this desolate, bird-haunted rock, with the heavy surf breaking
all round it and resounding from its chasms and caves, was the place
chosen by one of the Celtic saints as his ‘desert.’ His little rude
chapel yet remains, built of rough stones and still retaining its roof
of large flags. It measures inside about fourteen feet in length by
from six to eight in breadth, with an entrance doorway and one small
window-opening, beneath which the altar-stone still lies in place.
There could hardly ever have been a community here; one is puzzled to
understand how even the saint himself succeeded in reaching this barren
rock, and how he supported himself on it during his stay. He came, no
doubt, in one of the light skin-covered coracles, which could contain
but a slender stock of provisions. When these were exhausted, if the
weather forbade his return to Lewis or to the mainland, he had no fuel
on the rock to fall back upon, with which to cook any of the eggs or
birds of the islet, and there was no edible vegetation, save the dulse
or other sea-weeds growing between tide-marks.
With the decay and dissolution of the Celtic Church, probably many
of the chapels erected by that community were forsaken and allowed to
fall into ruin. But some continued to be used, and were even enlarged
or rebuilt, when the Church of Rome established its rule over the whole
country. Architecture had meanwhile made an onward step. The buildings
erected by the emissaries of Rome presented a strong contrast to those
which they replaced, for they were solidly built with lime, in a much
more ornate style, with a freer use of sculpture and on a much larger
scale. The old church of Rodil, in Harris, for example, belonging
perhaps to the thirteenth century, is full of sculptured figures; while
the Cathedral of Iona would hold some dozens of the primitive cells.
In various parts of the country evidence may be seen that the Celtic
sculptured stones had ceased to be respected, either as religious
monuments or as works of art, when the Roman Catholic churches were
erected. At St. Andrews, for example, the old chapel of St. Regulus,
probably built between the tenth and twelfth centuries, was allowed
to remain, and it still stands, roofless indeed, but in wonderful
preservation as regards the masonry of its walls. But of the crosses
that rose above the sward around it, many of them delicately carved
with interlaced work in the true Celtic style, some were broken up and
actually used as building material for the great Cathedral which was
begun in the year 1160. Again, at St. Vigeans, in Forfarshire, a large
quantity of similar sculptured stones of the Celtic period was built
into the masonry of the twelfth-century church erected there under the
Latin hierarchy.
[Sidenote: ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN HEBRIDES]
The Roman Catholic faith, which once prevailed universally over the
country, still maintains its place on some of the islands, particularly
Barra, Benbecula, and South Uist, and in certain districts of the
mainland. In Eigg, about half of the population is still Catholic, the
other half being divided between the Established and Free Churches. The
three clergymen, Protestant and Roman Catholic, when I first visited
the island, were excellent friends, and used to have pleasant evenings
together over their toddy and talk. The Catholic memorial chapel to
the memory of Lord Howard of Glossop was determined ‘to be erected in
one of the Catholic islands,’ and Canna was chosen as its site. The
building has been placed there, and with its high Norman tower now
forms a conspicuous landmark for leagues to east and west. But the
crofter population is gone, and with it Catholicism has disappeared
from Canna, though some five crofter families still live on the
contiguous island of Sanday.
In my peregrinations through the Catholic districts of the west of
Scotland I have often been struck with some interesting contrasts
between them and similar regions in Ireland, where Catholic and
Protestant live together. The Scottish priests have always seemed to me
a better educated class and more men of the world than their brethren
in Ireland. Students who have been trained abroad have their ideas
widened and their manners polished, as is hardly possible in the case
of those who leave their villages to be trained at Maynooth, whence
they are sent to recommence village life as parish priests. Again,
there has always appeared to me to be in the West Highlands far less of
the antagonism which in Ireland separates Catholics and Protestants.
They live together as good neighbours, and, unless you actually make
enquiry, you cannot easily discriminate between them.
[Sidenote: SCOTTISH PROTESTANT CLERGY]
No feature in the social changes which Scotland has undergone stands
out more conspicuously than the part played in these changes by the
clergy since the Reformation. This clerical influence has been both
beneficial and baneful. On the one hand, the clergy have unquestionably
taken a large share in the intellectual development of the people,
and in giving to the national character some of its most distinctive
qualities. For many generations, in face of a lukewarm or even hostile
nobility and government, they bore the burden of the parish schools,
elaborating and improving a system of instruction which made their
country for a long time the best educated community in Europe. They
have held up the example of a high moral standard, and have laboured
with the most unremitting care to train their flocks in the paths of
righteousness.
On the other hand, the clergy, having from the very beginning of
Protestantism obtained control over the minds and consciences of
the people, have naturally used this powerful influence to make
their theological tenets prevail throughout the length and breadth
of the land. They early developed a spirit of intolerance and
fanaticism, and with this same spirit they succeeded in imbuing their
people, repressing the natural and joyous impulses of humanity,
and establishing an artificial and exacting code of conduct, the
enforcement of which led to an altogether hurtful clerical domination.
While waging war against older forms of superstition, they introduced
new forms which added to the terrors and the gloom of life. These
transformations were longest in reaching their climax among the
Highlands and Islands, but have there attained their most complete
development, as will be further pointed out in a later chapter.
Happily, in the Lowlands for the last two hundred years, their
effects have been slowly passing away. The growth of tolerance and
enlightenment is increasingly marked both among the clergy and the
laity. But the old leaven is not even yet wholly eradicated, though it
now works within a comparatively narrow and continually contracting
sphere.
[Sidenote: SCOTTISH MINISTERS]
Nevertheless, even those who have least sympathy with the theological
tenets and ecclesiastical system of the Scottish clergy must needs
acknowledge that, as earnest and indefatigable workers for the
spiritual and temporal good of their flocks, as leaders in every
movement for the benefit of the community, and as fathers of families,
these men deserve the ample commendation which they have received.
Their limited stipends have allowed them but a slender share of the
material comforts and luxuries of life, and comparatively few of them
have enjoyed opportunities to ‘augment their small peculiar,’ yet they
have, as a whole, set a noble example of self-denial, thrift, and
benevolence. Secure at least of their manses, they have contrived ‘to
live on little with a cheerful heart,’ respected and esteemed of men.
While supplying the material wants of their people, as far as their
means would allow, they have yet been able to provide a good education
for their families, and to
Put forth their sons to seek preferment out;
Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;
Some to discover islands far away;
Some to the studious universities.
The ‘sons of the manse’ are found filling positions of eminence in
every walk of life.
With all this excellence of character and achievement, the clergy of
Scotland have maintained an individuality which has strongly marked
them as a class among the other professions of the country. This
peculiarity is well exemplified in the innumerable anecdotes which,
either directly or indirectly connected with clergymen, form so large
a proportion of what are known as ‘Scotch Stories.’ If we seek for
the cause of the prominence of the clerical element in the accepted
illustrations of Scottish humour, we shall hardly find it in any
exceptional exuberance of that quality among the reverend gentlemen
themselves, taken as a body, though many of their number have been
among the most humorous and witty of their countrymen. As they were
long drawn from almost every grade in the social scale of the kingdom,
they have undoubtedly presented an admirable average type of the
national idiosyncrasies, though they are now recruited in diminishing
measure from the landed and cultured ranks of society. Their number,
their general dispersion over the whole land, their prominence in their
parishes, the influence wielded by many of them in the church-courts
and on public platforms, and the free intercourse between them and the
people, have all helped to draw attention to them and to their sayings
and doings. Moreover, since dissent from the National Church began, the
clergy have been greatly multiplied. In each parish, where there was
once only one minister, there are now two or even more.
[Sidenote: CLERICAL CHARACTERISTICS]
A Scots proverb avers that ‘A minister’s legs should never be seen,’
meaning that he should not be met with out of the pulpit. So long as
he remains there, he stands invested with ‘such divinity as doth hedge
a king’: unassailable, uncontradictable, and wielding the authority of
a messenger from God to man. The very isolation and eminence of this
position call attention to any merely human qualities or frailties
which he may disclose in ordinary life. His parishioners, though
inwardly glad if he can shed upon them ‘the gracious dew of pulpit
eloquence,’ at the same time delight to find him, when divested of
his gown and bands, after all, one of themselves; and while they
enjoy his humour, when he possesses that saving grace, they are not
unwilling sometimes to take his little peculiarities as subjects for
their own mirthful but not ill-natured remarks. He may thus be like
Falstaff, ‘not only witty himself, but the cause that wit is in other
men.’ Hence the clerical stories may be divided into two kinds: those
in which the humour is that of the ministers, and those in which it
is that of the people, with the ministers as its object. In the first
series, there is perhaps no particular flavour different from that
characteristic of the ordinary middle-class Scot, though of course the
many anecdotes of a professional nature take their colour from the
calling of those to whom they relate. In the second division, however,
a greater individuality may be recognised. Whether it be from a sort of
good-humoured revenge for his incontestible superiority in the pulpit,
there seems to be a proneness to make the most of any oddities in the
minister’s manners or character. The contrast between the preacher
on Sunday and the same man during the week--it may be absent-minded,
or irascible, or making mistakes, or getting into ludicrous
situations--appeals powerfully to the Scotsman’s sense of humour. He
seizes the oddity of this contrast, expresses it in some pithy words,
and thus, often unconsciously, launches another ‘story’ into the world.
His humour, as in Swift’s definition,
Is odd, grotesque, and wild,
Only by affectation spoiled;
’Tis never by invention got;
Men have it when they know it not.
It is in the country, and more particularly in the remoter and less
frequented parishes, that the older type of minister has to some
extent survived. We meet with him rather in the Highlands than in the
Lowlands. He cultivates his glebe, and sometimes has also a farm on his
hands. He has thus some practical knowledge of agriculture, is often a
good judge of cattle, and breeds his own stock.
[Sidenote: A HIGHLAND MINISTER]
The best example of a Highland clergyman I ever knew was the Rev. John
Mackinnon, minister of the parish of Strath, Skye, to whose hospitable
house of Kilbride I have already referred as my first home in the
island. He succeeded to the parish after his father, who had been
its minister for fifty-two years, and he was followed in turn by his
eldest son, the late Dr. Donald, so that for three generations, or
more than a hundred years, the care of the parish remained in the same
family. Tall, erect, and wiry, he might have been taken for a retired
military man. A gentleman by birth and breeding, he mingled on easy
terms with the best society in the island, while at the same time his
active discharge of his ministerial duties brought him into familiar
relations with the parishioners all over the district. So entirely had
he gained their respect and affections that, when the great Disruption
of 1843 rent the Establishment over so much of the Highlands, he kept
his flock in the old Church. He used to boast that Strath was thus the
Sebastopol of that Church in Skye.
The old manse at Kilchrist, having become ruinous, was abandoned; and,
as none was built to replace it, Mr. Mackinnon rented the farm and
house of Kilbride. There had once been a chapel there, dedicated to
St. Bridget, and her name still clings to the spot. Behind rises the
group of the Red Hills; further over, the black serrated crests of
Blaven, the most striking of all the Skye mountains, tower up into the
north-western sky, while to the south the eye looks away down the inlet
of Loch Slapin to the open sea, out of which rise the ridges of Rum and
the Scuir of Eigg. The farm lay around the house and stretched into the
low uplands on the southern side of the valley. The farming operations
at Kilbride will be noticed in a later chapter.
[Sidenote: A HIGHLAND MINISTER’S WIFE]
In the wide Highland parishes, where roads are few and communications
must largely be kept up on foot, the minister’s wife is sometimes
hardly less important a personage than her husband, and it is to her
that the social wants of the people are generally made known. Mrs.
Mackinnon belonged to another family of the same clan as the minister,
and was in every way worthy of him. Tall and massive in build, with
strength of character traced on every feature of her face, and a
dignity of manner like that of a Highland chieftainess, she was born
to rule in any sphere to which she might be called. Her habitual look
was perhaps somewhat stern, with a touch of sadness, as if she had
deeply realised the trials and transitoriness of life, and had braced
herself to do her duty through it all to the end. But no Highland heart
beat more warmly than hers. She was the mother of the whole parish,
and seemed to have her eye on every cottage and cabin throughout its
wide extent. To her every poor crofter looked for sympathy and help,
and never looked in vain. Her clear blue eyes would at one moment fill
with tears over the recital of some tale of suffering in the district,
at another they would sparkle with glee as she listened to some of the
droll narratives of her family or her visitors. She belonged to the
family of Corriehatachan, and among her prized relics was the coverlet
under which Samuel Johnson slept when he stayed in her grandfather’s
house. That house at the foot of the huge Beinn na Cailleach has long
ago disappeared; some fields of brighter green and some low walls mark
where it and its garden stood.
The younger generation at Kilbride consisted of a large family of
stalwart sons and daughters, whose careers have furnished a good
illustration of the way in which the children of the manses of Scotland
have succeeded in the world. The eldest son, as above stated, followed
his father as minister of Strath; another became proprietor of the
_Melbourne Argus_; a third joined the army, served in the Crimea, and
in the later years of his life was widely known and respected as Sir
William Mackinnon, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, who
left his fortune to the Royal Society for the furtherance of scientific
research.[5] Most of the family now lie with their parents under the
green turf of the old burial-ground of Kilchrist. Miss Flora, the
youngest daughter, was gathered to her rest not many months ago. The
later years of her life had been spent by her at her beautiful home
of Duisdale in Sleat, looking across the Kyle to the heights of Ben
Screel and the recesses of Loch Hourn. She was a skilled gardener and
had transformed a bare hillside into a paradise of flowers and fruit.
She lent a helping hand to every good work in the parish, managed the
property with skill and success, and knew the pedigree and history of
every family in the West Highlands. When I paid her my last visit,
feeling sure it would be the last, it was sad to see her once tall
muscular frame bowed down with illness and pain, and to find her alone,
the last of her family left in Skye.
[Sidenote: HIGHLAND MANSES]
In former days, before inns had multiplied in the Highlands, and
especially before the advent of the crowds of tourists, and the
inevitable modern ‘hotels,’ the manses were often the only houses,
other than those of the lairds, where travellers could find decent
accommodation. Their hospitality was often sought, and it became in
the end proverbial. Kilbride was an excellent example of this type of
manse. Not only did it receive every summer a succession of guests who
made it their home for weeks at a time, but every visitor of note was
sure of a kindly welcome, even if he were unexpected. Astonishing is
the capacity of these plain-looking Highland houses. When the company
assembles at dinner it may seem impossible that they can all find
sleeping quarters under the same roof. Yet they are all stowed away not
uncomfortably, sleep well, and come down next morning with appetites
prepared to do full justice to a Highland breakfast.
In those Highland parishes where Gaelic is still commonly spoken, two
services are held in the churches on Sunday, the first in that language
and the second, after a brief interval, in English. This practice
was followed in Strath. In the days of the Celtic Church, a chapel
dedicated to Christ stood in the middle of the parish and was known
as Kilchrist. On the same site, the Protestant Church was afterwards
erected, and continued to be used until towards the middle of last
century. But, like the adjacent manse, it fell into disrepair and was
ultimately allowed to become the roofless ruin which stands in the
midst of the old graveyard of Kilchrist. Instead of rebuilding it,
the heritors, about the year 1840, resolved to erect a new church at
Broadford, nearer to the chief centre of population. For two Sundays
in succession the services are held at Broadford; on the third Sunday
they take place at a little chapel in Strathaird, on the western side
of the parish, for the benefit of a mixed crofter and fishing community.
[Sidenote: SUNDAY SERVICES IN SKYE]
At the Gaelic service in the Broadford church, a prominent feature
used to be the row of picturesque red-cloaked or tartan-shawled old
women, who, sitting in front immediately below the pulpit, followed the
prayers and the sermon with the deepest attention, frequently uttering
a running commentary of sighs and groans, while now and then one could
even see tears coursing down the wrinkles into which age and peat-reek
had shrivelled their cheeks.
The Sundays at Strathaird were peculiarly impressive. The house party
from the manse--family, guests and servants--walked to the shore of the
sea-inlet of Loch Slapin, embarked there in rowing boats, and pulled
across the fjord and along the base of the cliffs on the opposite side.
No finer landscape could be found even amidst the famous scenery of
Skye,--the pink and russet-coloured cones and domes of the Red Hills,
and the dark pinnacles and crags of Blaven behind us, and the blue
islands that closed in the far distance in front.
During the long incumbency of the minister’s father, no built place of
worship existed in Strathaird. The little chapel of the early Celtic
Church, of which the memory is preserved in the name Kilmaree, had long
disappeared, and the clergyman used to preach from a recess in the
basalt crags, with a grassy slope in front on which his congregation
sat to hear him. My host, however, in the early years of his tenancy
of the parish, had succeeded in getting a small church erected wherein
his people could be sheltered in bad weather. I can recollect one of
these Sundays when the weather was absolutely perfect--a cloudless
blue sky, the sea smooth as a mirror, and the air suffused with the
calm peacefulness which seems so appropriate to a Sabbath. We were a
large but singularly quiet party, as we steered for the little bay of
Kilmaree, each wrapped up in the thoughts which the day or the scene
suggested. As we approached our landing place, we were startled by two
gun-shots in rapid succession on the hillside above us. The sound would
under any circumstances have intruded somewhat harshly into the quiet
of the landscape. But it was Sunday, and such a thing as shooting on
the Lord’s day had never been heard of in Strath. An Englishman had
rented the ground for the season, and he and his wife were now out with
their guns. The surprise and horror with which this conduct was viewed
by the minister and his family soon found an echo through the length
and breadth of the parish.
[Sidenote: THE MINISTER OF GLENELG]
The sacramental season brought together to Kilbride some of the other
clergymen of Skye, whom it was always a pleasure to meet. They were a
race of earnest, hardworking, and intelligent men,[6] though, having
remained in the Establishment, they would have been stigmatised by
the seceding party as ‘Moderates’ who had clung to their loaves and
fishes, in spite of the example of the Free Kirk. I remember being
especially struck by Mr. Macrae of Glenelg and Mr. Martin of Snizort.
With Mr. Macrae I had afterwards more intercourse. Over and above his
ministerial duties, to which he conscientiously devoted himself, his
great delight in life was to be on the sea. He had a little yacht
or cutter, on which he lived as much as he could, and which, as it
passed up and down the lochs and kyles, was as familiar as Hutcheson’s
steamers. He was never happier than when, with his two daughters, he
could entertain some friend on a cruise in these waters, and tell
what he knew about the ruins and legends of the district--the Pictish
towers, the mouldering Barracks, the traditions of 1715 and 1745, the
Spanish invasion, the battle of Glen Shiel, the naval pursuit and
the battering down of Eilean Donan Castle. Once when I was staying
at Inverinate, the minister landed there from his little vessel, and
hearing that I wished to examine a piece of the Skye shore south of
Kyle Rhea, was delighted to offer to convey me there and back next
day. My host jocularly remarked that the visit would be sooner made
by land and crossing the Kyle at the ferry, than by trusting to the
minister. The little cruise, however, was arranged, according to Mr.
Macrae’s desire, and he duly dropped anchor in front of Inverinate next
morning. We started early, and, with a gentle south-easterly breeze and
unclouded sky, made good progress down Loch Duich. But the wind soon
fell, and we crept more and more slowly past the ruined Eilean Donan
into Loch Alsh. There could not have been a more glorious day for a
lazy excursion, or a nobler landscape to gaze upon, as hour slipped
after hour. Behind us rose the great range of the Seven Sisters of
Kintail, in front were the hills of Sleat with the Cuillins peering up
behind them, all suffused with the varying tints of the atmosphere.
It was a source of keen interest to watch how the hues of peak and
crag which one had actually climbed, were transformed in this aerial
alembic, and one felt the truth of Dyer’s beautiful lines:
Mark yon summits, soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear.
[Sidenote: A NAUTICAL MINISTER]
The worthy minister, in his capacity of experienced yachtsman,
playfully indulged in the usual whistling incantations that are
supposed by the nautical imagination to propitiate Æolus, but without
success. The air became so nearly motionless as to be able to give only
an occasional sleepy flap to the sail. But we continued to move almost
imperceptibly towards our destination, borne onward by the last efforts
of the ebbing tide. By the time we had reached the open part of Loch
Alsh, however, and had come well in sight of the coast I intended to
traverse, the tide turned and began to flow. Gradually the yacht was
turned round with her prow directed up the loch, and to our disgust
we saw ourselves being gradually carried back again. Helpless on a
perfectly smooth sea, and without a breath of wind, we had to resign
ourselves to fate, and got back opposite to Inverinate just in time for
dinner.
[Sidenote: A BACHELOR MINISTER]
Another Highland minister of a very different type lived on the shores
of Loch Striven--a long inlet of the sea which runs far up among the
mountains of Cowal, and opens out into the Firth of Clyde opposite
to Rothesay. He was a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, with many
eccentricities which formed the basis of sundry anecdotes among his
colleagues. One of these reverend brethren told me that the erection
of a volunteer battery on the shore of Bute, where it looks up Loch
Striven, greatly perturbed the old minister, for the reverberation of
the firing rolled loud and long among the mountains. One morning before
he was awake, the chimney-sweeps, by arrangement with his housekeeper,
came to clean the chimneys. Part of their apparatus consisted of a
perforated iron ball through which a rope was passed, and which by
its weight dragged the rope down to the fireplace. By some mistake
this ball was dropped down the chimney of the minister’s bedroom,
where, striking the grate with a loud noise, it rebounded on the
floor. The rattle awoke the reverend gentleman, who, on opening his
eyes and seeing, as he thought, a cannon-ball dancing across the room,
exclaimed, ‘Really, this is beyond my patience; it is bad enough to
be deaved with the firing, but to have the shot actually sent into my
house is more than I can stand. I’ll get up and write to the commanding
officer.’
As he had a comfortable manse and a fair stipend, various efforts
were made by the matrons of the neighbourhood to induce the minister
to take a wife, and he used innocently to recount these interviews to
his co-presbyters, who took care that they should not lose anything
by repetition to the world outside. One of these interviews was thus
related to me. A lady in his parish called on him, and after praising
the manse and the garden and the glebe, expressed a fear that he must
find it a great trouble to manage his house as well as his parish.
He explained that he had an excellent housekeeper, who took great
care of him, and managed the household to his entire satisfaction.
‘Ah, yes,’ said the visitor, ‘I’m sure Mrs. Campbell is very careful,
but she canna be the same as a wife to you. You must often be very
lonely here, all by yourself. But if you had a wife she would keep
you from wearying, and would take all the management of the house off
your hands, besides helping you with the work of the parish. Now Mr.
----there’s my Isabella, if you would but take her for your wife, she
would be a perfect Abishag to you.’ This direct and powerful appeal,
however, met with no better success than others that had gone before
it. The incorrigible old divine lived, and, I believe, died in single
blessedness.
[Sidenote: AN AYRSHIRE MINISTER]
In the Lowlands the younger ministers, educated in Edinburgh or
Glasgow, and accustomed to the modernised service of the churches, and
the more distinctive ecclesiastical garb of the officiating clergy,
have lost the angularity of manner which marked older generations. I
can remember, however, a number of parish ministers who belonged to an
earlier and perhaps now extinct type. Though thoroughly earnest and
devoted men, they would be regarded at the present day as at least
irreverent, and their sayings and doings would no doubt scandalise
modern eyes and ears. One of these clergymen had a large Ayrshire
parish. He was apt to forget things, and on remembering them, to blurt
them out at the most inappropriate times. On one occasion he had begun
the benediction at the close of the service, when he suddenly stopped,
exclaiming: ‘We’ve forgot the psalm,’ which he thereupon proceeded to
read out. Another time, in the midst of one of his extempore prayers,
he was asking for a blessing on the clergyman who was to address the
people in the afternoon, when he interrupted himself to interject:
‘It’s in the laigh Kirk, ye ken.’
One evening the same clergyman was dining with a pleasant party at a
laird’s house about a mile from the village, when it flashed across his
mind that he ought to have been at that moment performing a baptism in
the house of one of the villagers. Hastily asking to be excused for a
little, as he had forgotten an engagement, and with the assurance that
he would soon be back, he started off. It was past nine o’clock before
he reached the village and knocked at the door of his parishioner.
There was no answer for a time, and after a second and more vigorous
knock, the window overhead was opened, and a voice demanded who was
there. ‘It’s me, Mrs. Maclellan. I’m very sorry, indeed, to have
forgotten about the baptism. But it’s not too late yet’ ‘O minister,
we’re in bed, and a’ the fowk are awa’. We canna hae the baptism noo.’
‘Never mind the folk, Mrs. Maclellan; is the bairn here?’ ‘Ow ay, the
bairn’s here, sure eneuch.’ ‘Weel, that will do, and so you maun let
me in, and we’ll hae the baptism after all.’ The husband had meanwhile
pulled some clothes on, and with his wife came downstairs to let in
their minister. The ‘tea-things,’ which the good woman had prepared
with great care for her little festival, had been carried back to the
kitchen, whither the husband had gone for a lamp. The woman appeared
with the child, and begged that they would come into her parlour. But
the minister, assuring her that the room made no difference, proceeded
with the ceremony in the kitchen. When the moment came for sprinkling
the baby, he dipped his hand into the first basin he saw. ‘O stop, stop
Mr----that’s the water I washed up the tea-cups and saucers in.’ ‘It
will do as well as any other,’ he said, and continued his prayer to
the end of the short service. As soon as it was over, he started back
to the laird’s, and rejoined the party after an absence of about an
hour.
[Sidenote: A RIVERSIDE BAPTISM]
To this baptismal experience another may be added, where the rite was
celebrated in the face of great natural obstacles. Dr. Hanna relates
that a Highland minister once went to baptise a child in the house of
one of his parishioners, near which ran a small burn or river. When
he came to the stream it was so swollen with recent rains that he
could not ford it in order to reach the house. In these circumstances
he told the father, who was awaiting him on the opposite bank, to
bring the child down to the burn-side. Furnished with a wooden scoop,
the clergyman stood on the one side of the water, and the father,
holding the infant as far out in his arms as he could, placed himself
on the other. With the foaming torrent between the participants, the
service went on, until the time came for sprinkling the babe, when the
minister, dipping the scoop into the water, flung its contents across
at the baby’s face. His aim, however, was not good, for he failed more
than once, calling out to the father after each new trial: ‘Weel, has’t
gotten ony yet?’ When he did succeed, the whole contents of the scoop
fell on the child’s face, whereupon the disgusted parent ejaculated,
‘Ach, Got pless me, sir, but ye’ve trownt ta child.’ Dr. Chalmers, in
telling this story, used to express his wonder as to what the great
sticklers for form and ceremony in the sacraments would think of such a
baptism by a burn-side, performed with a wooden scoop.[7]
A certain parish church in Carrick, like many ecclesiastical edifices
of the time in Scotland, was not kept with scrupulous care. The windows
seemed never to be cleaned, or indeed opened, for cobwebs hung across
them,
And half-starv’d spiders prey’d on half-starv’d flies.
There was an air of dusty neglect about the interior, and likewise a
musty smell. One Sunday an elderly clergyman from another part of the
country was preaching. In the midst of his sermon a spider, suspended
from the roof at the end of its long thread, swung to and fro in front
of his face. It came against his lips and was blown vigorously away.
Again it swung back to his mouth, when, with an indignant motion of his
hands, he broke the thread and exclaimed, ‘My friends, this is the
dirtiest kirk I ever preached in. I’m like to be pusioned wi’ speeders.’
It is recorded of an old minister in the west of Ross-shire that he
prayed for Queen Victoria, ‘that God would bless her and that as now
she had grown to be an old woman, He would be pleased to make her a new
man.’
The same worthy divine is said to have once prayed ‘that we may
be saved from the horrors of war, as depicted in the pages of the
_Illustrated London News_ and the _Graphic_.’
[Sidenote: A DIET OF CATECHISING]
One of the most serious functions which the Presbyterian clergymen of
Scotland had formerly to discharge was that of publicly examining their
congregation in their knowledge of the Christian faith. Provided with
a list of the congregation, the officiating minister in the pulpit
proceeded to call up the members to answer questions out of the Shorter
Catechism, or such other interrogatories as it might seem desirable to
ask. Nobody knew when his turn would come, or what questions would be
put to him, so that it was a time of trial and trepidation for old and
young. The custom appears to be now obsolete, but reminiscences of its
operation are still preserved.
[Sidenote: ‘WHAT IS A SACRAMENT?’]
An elderly minister was asked to take the catechising of the
congregation in a parish in the pastoral uplands of the South of
Scotland. He was warned against the danger of putting questions to a
certain shepherd, who had made himself master of more divinity than
some of his clerical contemporaries could boast, and who enjoyed
nothing better than, out of the question put to him, to engage in an
argument with the minister on some of the deepest problems of theology.
The day of the ordeal at last came, the old doctor ascended the pulpit,
and after the preliminary service put on his spectacles and unfolded
the roll of the congregation. To the utter amazement of everybody, he
began with the theological shepherd, John Scott. Up started the man,
a tall, gaunt, sunburnt figure, with his maud over his shoulder, his
broad blue bonnet on the board in front of him, and such a look of grim
determination on his face as showed how sure he felt of the issue of
the logical encounter to which he believed he had been challenged from
the pulpit. The minister, who had clearly made up his mind as to the
line of examination to be followed with this pugnacious theologian,
looked at him calmly for a few moments, and then in a gentle voice
asked, ‘Wha made you, John?’ The shepherd, prepared for questions on
some of the most difficult points of our faith, was taken aback by
being asked what every child in the parish could answer. He replied
in a loud and astonished tone, ‘Wha made _me_?’ ‘It was the Lord God
that made you, John,’ quietly interposed the minister. ‘Wha redeemed
you, John?’ Anger now mingled with indignation as the man shouted, ‘Wha
redeemed _me_?’ The old divine, still in the same mild way, reminded
him ‘It was the Lord Jesus Christ that redeemed you, John,’ and then
asked further, ‘Wha sanctified you, John?’ Scott, now thoroughly
aroused, roared out, ‘Wha sanctified ME?’ The clergyman paused, looked
at him calmly, and said, ‘It was the Holy Ghost that sanctified you,
John Scott, if, indeed, ye be sanctified. Sit ye doon, my man, and
learn your questions better the next time you come to the catechising.’
The shepherd was never able to hold his head up in the parish
thereafter.
An old woman who had got sadly rusty in her Catechism was asked,
‘What is a sacrament?’ to which she gave the following rather mixed
answer, ‘A sacrament is--an act of saving grace, whereby--a sinner
out of a true knowledge of his sins--doth rest in his grave till the
resurrection.’
Dr. Hanna used to tell of a shoemaker who lamented to his minister that
he was spiritually in a bad way because he was not very sure of his
title to the kingdom of heaven, and that he was physically bad because
‘that sweep, his landlord, had given him notice to quit and he would
have nowhere to lay his head.’ The minister could only advise him to
lay his case before the Lord. A week later the minister returned and
found the shoemaker busy and merry. ‘That was gran’ advice ye gied me,
minister,’ said the man, ‘I laid my case before the Lord, as ye tell’t
me--an’ noo the sweep’s deid.’
[Sidenote: BOBBIE FLOCKHART]
In connection with the regular clergy, reference may be made to the
free-lances who, as street-preachers, have long taken their place among
the influences at work for rousing the lower classes in our large
towns to a sense of their duties. These men have often displayed a
single-hearted devotion and persistence, in spite of the most callous
indifference or even active hostility on the part of their auditors.
The very homeliness of their language, which repels most educated
people, gives them a hold on those who come to listen to them, while
now and then their vehement enthusiasm rises into true eloquence.
The most remarkable of these men I have ever listened to was a noted
character in Edinburgh during the later years of the first half of last
century, named Bobbie Flockhart. He was diminutive in stature, but for
this disadvantage he endeavoured to compensate by taking care that
The apparel on his back,
Though coarse, was reverend, and though bare, was black.
Eccentric in manner and speech, he long continued to be an
indefatigable worker for the good of his fellow townsmen. He used to
spend the forenoon and afternoon of every Sunday in flitting from
church to church, listening to the sermons, of each of which he
remained to hear only a small portion. Then in the evening, not only of
Sundays but of week days, he would hold forth from a chair or barrel
outside the west gate of St. Giles, and gather round him a crowd of
loafers from the High Street, who, it is to be feared, were attracted
to him rather by the expectation of some new drollery of language,
than from any interest in the substance of his discourses. They would
interrupt him now and then with ribald remarks, but they often met
with such a rebuke as turned the laugh against them, and increased
the popularity of the preacher. He was discoursing one evening on
the wickedness of the town, especially of the district in which his
audience lived, when in his enthusiasm he pointed up in the direction
of the Castle, where stands the huge historic cannon, and exclaimed: ‘O
that I could load Mons Meg wi’ Bibles, and fire it doon every close in
the High Street!’ On another occasion he was depicting to the people
the terrors of the day of judgment. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘some of you that
mock me the day will be comin’ up to me then and sayin’, “Bobbie, ye’ll
mind us, we aye cam’ to hear ye.” But I’ll no’ help ye. Maybe ye’ll
think to cling on to my coat-tails, but I’ll cheat ye there, for I’ll
put on a jacket.’ He was fond of similes that could bring home to the
rough characters around him the truths he sought to impress on them.
He was once denouncing the careless ingratitude of man for all the
benefits conferred on him by Providence. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘look
at the hens when they drink. There’s not ane o’ them but lifts its heid
in thankfulness, even for the water that is sae common. O that we were
a’ hens.’