“Aboot 1790 things were a wee bit quaieter, and they got anither kirk—that’s it biggit on to the gable o’ The Home. I can mind my auld mither takin’ me there to a service when I was a bairn. It had an ootside stane stair that led up to the gallery. We were sittin’ in the gallery, an’ I was putten oot ’cause I let my ball row doon on the heids o’ the folk below.
“Syne, in the year efter Waterloo they biggit the auld kirk that is noo a pairt o’ your parsonage. I helpit to dig the foondation o’t. Oh, man, but the Episcopalians were prood when it was biggit! The maist o’ the weyvers cam’ there to worship, aye, an’ they cam’ frae a’ the fishin’ toons alang the coast. Mony a time have I been sent by John Duncan, the beadle, to see if the fishers were near at hand afore he would begin to ring the last bell for the mornin’ service.
“Yer present kirk—oh! it was biggit about twenty years ago. Aye, it’s a rael bonnie kirk; but, for me, I aye likit the auld ane best.”
You can easily understand how deeply interested I was in all this local church history, and how I valued the honor of serving in such historic ground.
Sometimes David’s reminiscences took a distinctly secular turn. He would tell me of the old coaching days, when the four-in-hand, tooled by Archie Hepburn, in scarlet coat and topboots, passed through the village twice a week, and was the only regular event of importance in their quiet lives; how, as soon as the toot of the guard’s horn was heard, every weaver flung down his shuttle and hurried to the Douglas Arms to get the newspapers and hear the news; and how, in Lucky Begg’s bar-parlor, there was keen competition for the honor of entertaining the coachman and guard.
“There was aye plenty o’ hame-brewed ale on coach days,” David would say, “and yet ye hardly ever saw onybody the waur o’t. An’ sic a collyshangie there would be, ilka ane tryin’ to get the news that maist interested him. Peter Wyllie—man, what a cratur he was, aye arguin’ aboot politics;—he was terrible taen up aboot the Reform Bill, and bude to ken the latest news aboot it. Syne there was Jamie Polson—Jamie was an elder, and wis awfu’ keen on the Patronage question, that brocht on the disruption o’ the free kirk in 1843. Mony a wordy war did Archie and him hae aboot that.
“I tell you, Maister Gray, there was some stir in the toon on coach days; and, even when the coach set oot doon the south road to Embro, there was little mair work dune that day.”
Most of the weavers were also crofters, and farmed a few acres of land, enough to provide them with oatmeal for the year, and a winter’s feed for the cows that supplied the family with milk. There was a piece of common land, called the “bogs,” and every crofter had a right to pasture his cow there. A boy collected the cattle by the blasts of a well-battered horn, and, driving them before him to the pastureland, herded them there till noon. The whole band re-formed in procession and retraced their steps to their respective byres, where buxom matrons in “soo-backit mutches,” relieved them of their burden of milk. In the afternoon, the same programme was gone through; and so it went on, through the long sunny days of summer and autumn, and was only discontinued when the snows and frosts of winter made grazing out of the question.
To one who had spent a number of years amid the din and dust, the sins and sorrows of city life, this return to Arcadian simplicity was very welcome.
Seven very happy years I spent there, and many a valuable lesson did I learn from the descendants of the loyal churchmen who had stood by their lawful prince in his hour of need, and had given loving and devoted heed to the godly teaching of their faithful though persecuted pastors. It was in these days I began to realize the full import of Tertullian’s words: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and the more we are mowed down the more we grow.” The older generation of churchfolks were churchfolks from stern conviction; they would let nothing stand between them and the Apostolic Faith. I had not been long settled in Drumscondie when I had an opportunity of noting the soundness of the early training that had been given to those old folks by my predecessors of long ago. Old Sandy Barras, who had been the treasurer of the congregation for over half a century, was nearing his end, and I called to see him. After reading the service for the visitation of the sick, I talked to him for a little, and in the course of conversation, I received this bit of advice: