Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear.
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.
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.
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.