[15] The Church rule on the point here brought out by Mess John may be illustrated by an enactment passed by the Kirk Session of Glasgow in 1591, which bore that those desirous of entering the conjugal state had to repeat the ten commandments, the articles of faith, and the Lord’s prayer. If the candidates could not pass the examination they were declared unworthy of being joined in marriage, and were liable to censure. A few days after this decree had been issued, the Session prohibited a marriage until the bridegroom had learned his task. The Presbytery of Glasgow, in 1594, prohibited a marriage because the bridegroom was ‘in greit debt.’
[16] Suspension from church privileges for a time, until they showed signs of repentance.
[17] The beginning of the New Year, or Yule, festivities.
[18] The ordinary mode of travelling long distances. Country women were then good horse-women.
[19] A superstition long prevalent, and scarcely yet eradicated in some parts of Scotland. The mother was not safe from the power of fairies until she had been ‘kirk’t,’ and the child, until baptised, was in danger of being carried away by them, a changeling being substituted in its stead. Jockey’s mother seems to have had a touch of the same superstition when she spoke of the difference between a child and a dog—‘A dog is a brute beast, an’ a wean is a christen’d creature.’
[20] The custom in Scotland was to have a number of the neighbours along with the members of the family.
[21] Young women, besides providing their bridal clothes before their marriage, frequently spun their winding sheet immediately after that event. Flora Macdonald carried about with her, throughout all her wanderings after her liberation in 1747, the sheet in which Prince Charles had lain at Kingsburgh’s house in Skye, with the intention that it should be her shroud. And so it was.
[22] These were not the days of hearses. The common people never thought of a carriage, and, indeed, it was only at the funerals of the nobility that hearses were to be seen. Usually the coffin was taken to the grave on wooden bars, called ‘spaiks,’ borne by the mourners, who, if the journey were long, relieved each other.
[23] The eating and drinking long prevalent at funerals was something marvellous, and on more than one occasion it is recorded that mourners separated in confusion and ill-feeling. At the funeral of Sir Hugh Campbell of Calder, in March, 1716, nearly £70 sterling were spent in meat and drink alone, and when the difference in the value of money is taken into consideration the sum must appear large. In 1704, Lord Whitelaw, a Senator of the College of Justice, was buried at the expense of £5189 Scots, or £432 8s. 4d. sterling, which meant more than two years’ salary as a judge.
[24] At births it was customary—and still is under a modified form—to hand round ‘blythe-meat’ to all visitors.