One day the judge, whilst rummaging in an old book shop, discovered some penny treasure, but he found himself without the penny! He looked up and there was the clerk of court staring at him through the window. “Lend me a bawbee,” he screamed eagerly. He got the loan, and in the midst of a judgment of the full court he recollected his debt; he scrambled across the intervening senators, and pushed the coin over: “There’s your bawbee, Maister M., with many thanks.”
At one time the possession of the correct “burr” was a positive hold on the nation. Lord Melville, the friend and colleague of Pitt, ruled Scotland under what was called the Dundas despotism for thirty years. He filled all the places from his own side, for such is the method of party government, and he can scarce be blamed, yet his rule was protracted and endured, because he had something more than brute force behind him. For one thing, he spoke a broad dialect, and so came home to the very hearts of his countrymen. When he visited Scotland he went climbing the interminable High Street stairs, visiting poor old ladies that he had known in the days of his youth. Those returns of famous Scotsmen have furnished a host of anecdotes. I will only give one for its dramatic contrasts. Wedderburn was not thought a tender-hearted or high-principled man, yet when he returned old, ill and famous he was carried in a sedan chair to a dingy nook in old Edinburgh, the haunt of early years, and there he picked out some holes in the paved court that he had used in his childish sports, and was moved well-nigh to tears. He first left Edinburgh in quite a different mood. He began as a Scots advocate, and one day was reproved by Lockhart (afterwards Lord Covington), the leader of the bar, for some pert remark. A terrible row ensued, at which the President confessed “he felt his flesh creep on his bones.” It was Wedderburn’s Sturm und Drang period. He had all the presumption of eager and gifted youth, he tore the gown from his back declaring he would never wear it again in that court. We know that he was presently off by the mail coach for London, where he began to climb, climb, climb, till he became the first Scots Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.
And now a word as to modern times. One or two names call for notice. A. S. Logan, Sheriff Logan, as he was popularly called, died early in 1862, and with him, it was said, disappeared the only man able in wit and laughter to rival the giants of an earlier epoch. He still remains the centre of a mass of anecdote, much of it apocryphal. His enemies sneered at him as a laboured wit, and averred a single joke cost him a solitary walk round the Queen’s Drive. Once when pleading for a widow he spoke eloquently of the cruelty of the relative whom she was suing. The judge suggested a compromise. “Feel the pulse of the other side, Mr. Logan,” said he, humorously. “Oh, my Lord,” was the answer, “there can be no pulse where there is no heart.” This seems to me an example of the best form of legal witticism, it is an argument conveyed as a jest. Of his contemporary Robert Thomson (1790-1857), Sheriff of Caithness, there are some droll memories. Here is one. He was a constant though a bad rider, and as a bad rider will, he fell from his horse. Even in falling practice makes perfect. The worthy sheriff did not fall on his head—very much the opposite, in fact. As he remained sitting on the ground, a witness of the scene asked if he had sustained any injury. “Injury!” was the answer; “no injury at all I assure you! Indeed, sir, quite the reverse, quite the reverse.” Inglis, like Blair, impressed his contemporaries as a great judge; how far the reputation will subsist one need not discuss, nor need we complain that the stories about him are rather tame. This may be given. Once he ridiculed with evident sincerity the argument of an opposite counsel, when that one retorted by producing an opinion which Inglis had written in that very case, and which the other had in fact paraphrased. Inglis looked at it. “I see, my lord, that this opinion is dated from Blair Athol, and anybody that chooses to follow me to Blair Athol for an opinion deserves what he gets.” The moral apparently is, don’t disturb a lawyer in his vacation, when he is away from his books and is “off the fang,” as the Scots phrase has it. But this is a confession of weakness, and is only passable as a way of escaping from a rather awkward position. In the same case counsel proceeded to read a letter, and probably had not the presence of mind to stop where he ought. It was from the country to the town agent, and discussed the merits of various pleaders with the utmost frankness, and then, “You may get old —— for half the money, but for God’s sake don’t take him at any price.” In a limited society like the Parliament House, such a letter has an effect like the bursting of a bombshell, and I note the incident, though the humour be accidental. This other has a truer tang of the place. No prisoner goes undefended at the High Court; young counsel perform the duty without fee or reward. The system has called forth the admiration of the greedier Southern, though an English judge has declared that the worst service you can do your criminal is to assign him an inexperienced counsel. One Scots convict, at least, agreed. He had been accused and thus defended and convicted. As he was being removed, he shook his fist in the face of his advocate: “Its a’ through you, you d—d ass.” The epithet was never forgotten. The unfortunate orator was known ever afterwards as the “d—d ass.” Sir George Deas was the last judge who talked anything like broad Scots on the bench. Once he and Inglis took different sides on a point of law which was being argued before them. Counsel urged that Inglis’s opinion was contrary to a previous decision of his own. “I did not mean,” said the President, “that the words should be taken in the sense in which you are now taking them.” “Ah,” said Lord Deas, “your lordship sails vera near the wind there.” This is quite in the early manner; Kames might have said it to Monboddo.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CHURCH
There are many picturesque incidents in the history of the old Scots Church in Edinburgh; chief of them are the legends that cling round the memory of St. Margaret. Her husband, Malcolm Canmore, could not himself read, but he took up the pious missals in which his wife delighted and kissed them in a passion of homage and devotion. There is the dramatic account of her last days, when the news was brought her of the defeat and death of her husband and son at Alnwick, and she expired holding the black rood of Scotland in her hand, whilst the wild yells of Donald Bane’s kerns rent the air, as they pressed round the castle to destroy her and hers. Then follows the story of the removal of her body to Dunfermline in that miraculous mist in which modern criticism has seen nothing but an easterly haar. Then we have her son King David’s hunting in wild Drumsheugh forest on Holy-rood day, and the beast that nearly killed him, his miraculous preservation, and the legend of the foundation of Holyrood. In the dim centuries that slipped away there was much else of quaint and homely and amusing and interesting in mediæval church life in Edinburgh, but the monkish chroniclers never thought it worth the telling, and it has long vanished beyond recall. This one story is a gem of its kind. Scott, who never allowed such fruit to go ungathered, has made it well known. It is one of the incidents in the fight between the Douglases and the Hamiltons at Edinburgh on 30th April 1520, known to all time as Cleanse the Causeway, because the Hamiltons were swept from the streets. Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, was a supporter of Arran and the Hamiltons, who proposed to attack the Douglases and seize Angus, their leader. Angus sent his uncle, Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, whose “meek and thoughtful eye” Scott has commemorated in one of his best known lines, to remonstrate with his fellow-prelate. He found him sitting in episcopal state, and who was to tell that this was but the husk of a coat of mail? His words were honied, but Gawin let it be seen that he was far from convinced; whereat the other in a fit of righteous indignation protested on his conscience that he was innocent of evil intent, and for emphasis he lustily smote his reverend breast, too lustily, alas! for the armour rang under the blow. “I perceive, my lord, your conscience clatters,” was Gawin’s quick comment, to appreciate which you must remember that “clatter” signifies in Scots to tell tales as well as to rattle. Old Scotland was chary of its speech, being given rather to deeds than words, but it had a few like gems. Was it not another Douglas who said that he loved better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep? Or one might quote that delightful “I’ll mak’ siccar” of Kirkpatrick in the matter of the slaughter of the Red Comyn at Dumfries in 1306; but this is a little away from our subject.
At the Reformation, for good or for ill, the womb of time brought forth a form of faith distinctively Scots. Here, at any rate, we have Knox’s History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realme of Scotland to borrow from. It is usually the writer, not the reader, who consults such books, yet Knox was a master of the picturesque and the graphic. He was great in scornful humour; now and again he has almost a Rabelaisian touch. Take, for instance, his account of the riot on St. Giles’ Day, the 1st September 1558. For centuries an image of St. Giles was carried through the streets of Edinburgh and adored by succeeding generations of the faithful, but when the fierce Edinburgh mob had the vigour of the new faith to direct and stimulate their old-time recklessness, trouble speedily ensued. The huge idol was raped from the hands of its keepers and ducked in the Nor’ Loch. This was a punishment peculiarly reserved for evil livers, and the crowd found a bitter pleasure in the insult. Then there was a bonfire in the High Street in which the great image vanished for ever amid a general saturnalia of good and evil passions.
The old church fell swiftly and surely, but some stubborn Scots were also on that side, and Mary of Guise, widow of James V. and Queen Regent, was a foe to be reckoned with. She had the preachers up before her (Knox reproduces her broken Scots with quite comic effect), but nothing came of the matter. The procession did not cease at once with the destruction of the image. In 1558 a “marmouset idole was borrowed fra the Greyfreires,” so Knox tells us, and he adds with a genuine satirical touch, “A silver peise of James Carmichaell was laid in pledge”—evidently the priests could not trust one another, so he suggests. The image was nailed down upon a litter and the procession began. “Thare assembled Preastis, Frearis, Channonis and rottin Papistes with tabornes and trumpettis, banneris, and bage-pypes, and who was thare to led the ring but the Queen Regent hir self with all hir schavelings for honor of that feast.” The thing went orderly enough as long as Mary was present, but she had an appointment to dinner, in a burgher’s house betwixt “the Bowes,” and when she left the fun began. Shouts of “Down with the idol! Down with it!” rent the air, and down it went. “Some brag maid the Preastis patrons at the first, but when thei saw the febilness of thare god (for one took him by the heillis, and dadding his head to the calsey, left Dagon without head or hands, and said: ‘Fie upon thee, thow young Sanct Geile, thy father wold haif taryad four such’) this considered (we say) the Preastis and Freiris fled faster than thei did at Pynckey Clewcht. Thare might have bein sein so suddane a fray as seildome has been sein amonges that sorte of men within this realme, for down goes the croses, of goes the surpleise, round cappes cornar with the crounes. The Gray Freiris gapped, the Black Freiris blew, the Preastis panted and fled, and happy was he that first gate the house, for such ane suddan fray came never amonges the generation of Antichrist within this realme befoir. By chance thare lay upoun a stare a meary Englissman, and seeing the discomfiture to be without blood, thought he wold add some mearynes to the mater, and so cryed he ower a stayr and said: ‘Fy upoun you, hoorsones, why have ye brokin ordour? Down the street ye passed in array and with great myrthe, why flie ye, vilanes, now without ordour? Turne and stryk everie one a strok for the honour of his God. Fy, cowardis, fy, ye shall never be judged worthy of your wages agane!’ But exhortations war then unprofitable, for after that Bell had brokin his neck thare was no comfort to his confused army.” I pass over Knox’s interviews with Mary, well known and for ever memorable, for they express the collision of the deepest passions of human nature set in romantic and exciting surroundings; but one little incident is here within my scope. It was the fourth interview, when Mary fairly broke down. She wept so that Knox, with what seems to us at any rate ungenerous and cruel glee, notes, “skarslie could Marnock, hir secreat chalmerboy gett neapkynes to hold hys eyes dry for the tearis: and the owling besydes womanlie weaping, stayed hir speiche.” Then he is bidden to withdraw to the outer chamber and wait her Majesty’s pleasure. No one will speak to him, except the Lord Ochiltree, and he is there an hour. The Queen’s Maries and the other court ladies are sitting in all their gorgeous apparel talking, laughing, singing, flirting, what not? and all at once a strange stern figure, the representative of everything that was new and hostile, addresses them, nay, unbends as he does so, for he merrily said: “O fayre Ladyes, how pleasing war this lyeff of youris yf it should ever abyd, and then in the end that we myght passe to heavin with all this gay gear. But fye upoun that knave Death, that will come whither we will or not! And when he hes laid on his ariest, the foull worms wil be busye with this flesche, be it never so fayr and so tender; and the seally soull, I fear, shal be so feable that it can neather cary with it gold, garnassing, targatting, pearle, nor pretious stanes.”
Were they awed, frightened, angry, scornful, contemptuous? Who can tell? Knox takes care that nobody has the say but himself. You may believe him honest—but impartial! We have no account on the other side. Mary did not write memoirs; if she had, it is just possible that Knox had therein occupied the smallest possible place, and the beautiful Queen’s Maries vanished even as smoke. There were writers on the other side, but they mostly invented or retailed stupid vulgar calumnies. We have one picture by Nicol Burne—not without point—of Knox and his second wife, Margaret Stuart, the daughter of Lord Ochiltree and of the royal blood, whom he married when he was sixty and she was sixteen. It tells how he went a-wooing “with ane great court on ane trim gelding nocht lyke ane prophet or ane auld decrepit priest as he was, bot lyke as he had bene ane of the blud royal with his bendis of taffetie feschnit with golden ringis and precious stanes.”
All that Knox did was characteristic. This, however, is amusing. On Sunday 19th August 1565, a month after his marriage to Mary, Darnley attended church at St. Giles’. Knox was, as usual, the preacher. He made pointed references to Ahab and Jezebel, and indulged in a piquant commentary upon passing events. The situation must have had in it, for him, something fascinating. There was the unwilling and enraged Darnley, and the excited and gratified congregation. Knox improved the occasion to the very utmost. He preached an hour beyond the ordinary time. Perhaps that additional hour was his chief offence in Darnley’s eyes. He “was so moved at this sermon and being troubled with great fury he passed in the afternoon to the Hawking.” You excuse the poor foolish boy!