While he was a student in Glasgow, he had often heard that the most productive root of immorality in the rural districts was the Bothy System. Everyone seemed to condemn it, and not one word had been said in its defence. It was clearly his duty, therefore, to strike it down without delay. Accordingly, one Sunday not long after his settlement, he wound up his afternoon sermon with a most merciless attack upon the farmers.
"The farmers," he said, "are a most respectable class of men, and I am deeply grieved to be compelled to say anything to wound their feelings; but I am here to tell them that they are responsible for what I call the running sore, which is draining the life-blood of morality and religion in the rural districts. I refer to the Bothy System. You, my brethren, are really treating your fellow-men like your cattle. You lodge them in a dirty and uncomfortable outhouse, and leave them there to corrupt each other. Did I say that you treated them like your cattle? I should have said worse than your cattle. For you do not prepare food for them, you do not tie them up, you do not lock them in and prevent them from roaming abroad at night and falling into mischief. I am sorry that I am obliged to use strong language, but in the faithful discharge of my duty I am called upon to say that these bothies are nurseries of the infernal pit, and that you who keep them up are, though you may not know it, really serving the devil."
It would be impossible to describe the volcano of feeling which this onslaught roused within the souls of the farming population. They could scarcely keep their seats till the service was over; then, when they went out of church and took their way homewards in the grey winter dusk, the turmoil within them was almost too strong for expression; and for a time they could only vent it in such explosive epithets, as "nurseries o' the infernal pit!" "servants o' the deevil!" "ill-tongued cratur!" "empty-headed puppy!" "set him up!" "my certie!" But by the time they reached the foot of the Long Dykes, where the road divided into three, a group of them, both men and women, stood still to compare notes.
"Sic a desecration o' the poopit!" said Mrs Dowie of Seggie Den; "instead o' preachin' the gospel, misca'in honest folk."
"Eh, woman!" exclaimed Mrs Caw of Blawearie, "ye may say that. Him to turn up his nose at bothies, that was brocht up, they tell me, in a one-roomed hoose in the wynds o' Glesky. My word, it doesna set a soo to wear a saddle."
"Low-born smaik," said Mrs Proud of the Hill, "to scandaleese his betters!"
"I dinna ken," said Tam Bluff of Cuddiesknowes, "what they teach them at college, but it's evidently no' mainners."
"Settin' servants against their maisters," said Stables, the horse doctor, a Tory of the old school.
"What could ye expect," asked Ure, the innkeeper at Blawearie Yetts, "from a teetotaller? Did ye hear hoo he blackguarded onybody that had onything to dae wi' makin' or sellin' an honest drap o' drink. Haith! it's my opinion that when the Maister comes to the warld a second time, they'll steek in His face the door o' His ain kirk, because He ance turned water into wine."
Then Manson of the Hole, who had been standing by, red with rage, now began to splutter forth his resentment. He was a cantankerous old bachelor, greedy, miserly, and wealthy. If any bothy in the neighbourhood deserved to be tabooed, it was his. That was the reason for his feeling the most aggrieved. "By the Lord Hairy," he said, "I'll astonish the dirty cratur. I'll hae a ring in his nose before he's a week aulder. I'll ceet him before the Presbytery, and if that wunna dae, before the Synod and the General Assembly; and if I canna get Justice there, I'll gang to the Law. Don't ye think I'm richt, Gilbert Strang?"