This personage, whom it would be base ingratitude in the author to pass
over without some notice, was by far the most zealous and faithful
collector and recorder of the actions and opinions of the Cameronians. He
resided, while stationary, at the Bristo Port of Edinburgh, but was by
trade an itinerant merchant, or pedlar, which profession he seems to have
exercised in Ireland as well as Britain. He composed biographical notices
of Alexander Peden, John Semple, John Welwood, and Richard Cameron, all
ministers of the Cameronian persuasion, to which the last mentioned
member gave the name.
It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and
spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later
period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be
gathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into the
burlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but always
expressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed and
sentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turn
for the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is little
room to doubt his veracity concerning whatever he quotes on his own
knowledge. His small tracts now bring a very high price, especially the
earlier and authentic editions. The tirade against dancing, pronounced by
David Deans, is, as intimated in the text, partly borrowed from Peter
Walker. He notices, as a foul reproach upon the name of Richard Cameron,
that his memory was vituperated, "by pipers and fiddlers playing the
Cameronian march--carnal vain springs, which too many professors of
religion dance to; a practice unbecoming the professors of Christianity
to dance to any spring, but somewhat more to this. Whatever," he
proceeds, "be the many foul blots recorded of the saints in Scripture,
none of them is charged with this regular fit of distraction. We find it
has been practised by the wicked and profane, as the dancing at that
brutish, base action of the calf-making; and it had been good for that
unhappy lass, who danced off the head of John the Baptist, that she had
been born a cripple, and never drawn a limb to her. Historians say, that
her sin was written upon her judgment, who some time thereafter was
dancing upon the ice, and it broke, and snapt the head off her; her head
danced above, and her feet beneath. There is ground to think and
conclude, that when the world's wickedness was great, dancing at their
marriages was practised; but when the heavens above, and the earth
beneath, were let loose upon them with that overflowing flood, their
mirth was soon staid; and when the Lord in holy justice rained fire and
brimstone from heaven upon that wicked people and city Sodom, enjoying
fulness of bread and idleness, their fiddle-strings and hands went all in
a flame; and the whole people in thirty miles of length, and ten of
breadth, as historians say, were all made to fry in their skins and at
the end, whoever are giving in marriages and dancing when all will go in
a flame, they will quickly change their note.
"I have often wondered thorow my life, how any that ever knew what it was
to bow a knee in earnest to pray, durst crook a hough to fyke and fling
at a piper's and fiddler's springs. I bless the Lord that ordered my lot
so in my dancing days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bullets
to my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumikens, and irons, cold and
hunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head, and the
wantonness of my feet. What the never-to-be-forgotten Man of God, John
Knox, said to Queen Mary, when she gave him that sharp challenge, which
would strike our mean-spirited, tongue-tacked ministers dumb, for his
giving public faithful warning of the danger of the church and nation,
through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubbling
and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were
fyking and dancing, he said, 'O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would
last, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that
will seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling
and flinging be then?' Dancing being such a common evil, especially
amongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate,
has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish spring
the Cameronian march!"--_Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies,_ etc.,
collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727, 12mo, p. 59.
It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameronians
made a distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowed
of it as a healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and women
mingled in sport, it was then called _promiscuous dancing,_ and
considered as a scandalous enormity.