THIS STONE WAS ERECTED
1621
IN MEMORY OF THE
REVD. GEORGE WALKER
WHO WAS PASTOR OF THIS PARISH.
REPAIRED BY OLD MORTALITY
IN HIS DAY
AND RENEWED AND PLACED HERE IN
1855.
“Auchinleck,” said the landlady of my inn, “is the very heart of the Covenanters’ district.” Hard by, at Airdsmoss, the founder of the Cameronians, with seven or eight of his followers, was slain in July, 1681. In the churchyard lies buried a man of a very different type of character—William Murdoch, the inventor of gas. Two of Boswell’s tenants were James and William Murdoch. They and their forefathers had possessed their farms for many generations.[814] Perhaps not only the Life of Boswell, but illumination by gas takes its rise from Auchinleck.
The village consists mainly of one long street of solidly-built stone houses; the older ones thatched and often white-washed, the modern ones slated. At the back are good gardens well stocked with fruit trees. Bare feet are far more common here than in the Highlands or Hebrides. All the children, with scarcely an exception, and many of the women, go bare-footed. As I passed down the street a “roup,” or sale by auction, was going on before the house of a deceased “baker, violin-maker, clock-mender, blood-letter, dentist, geologist, and collector of coins.” The auctioneer, standing on the doorstep of this departed worthy, who at one and the same time had played many parts, dispersed his motley goods to the four quarters of heaven. The best of his violins, for he had had some of considerable value, had been sent for sale to Glasgow. I stayed in the Railway Hotel, a curious old house, which boasted of two sitting-rooms and one bed-room. It was clean and comfortable, and in my courteous landlady I found a woman of sense and education. She quoted Sartor Resartus, and spoke with anger of Mr. Froude’s Life of Carlyle. In Scotland the traveller finds book-learning far more generally diffused than in England.
In Boswell’s time Auchinleck, he tells us, was pronounced Affléck. His grand-daughter, who died in 1836, informed Mr. Croker that in her time it had come to be pronounced as it is written. I learnt however from Dr. Chrystal that “the name Affléck is still quite common as applied to the parish, and even Auchinleck House is as often called Place Affléck as otherwise.” A lad whom I questioned on the subject told me that the old people call it Affléck but the young Auchinleck. The old pronunciation will no doubt soon disappear.
BOSWELL AS A LANDLORD.
Boswell had been a kind landlord. Johnson, in the early days of their acquaintance, “had recommended to him a liberal kindness to his tenantry, as people over whom the proprietor was placed by Providence.” The advice was congenial to his natural disposition. In his will, which he made ten years before his death, he says: “As there are upon the estate of Auchinleck several tenants whose families have possessed their farms for many generations, I do by these presents grant leases for nineteen years and their respective lives to”—here follow the names of eight tenants. He continues:—“And I do beseech all the succeeding heirs of entail to be kind to the tenants, and not to turn out old possessors to get a little more rent.” We may venture to express a hope that his descendants, if they have slighted him as an author, have always honoured and followed him as a landlord.
NEW HAILES.
[Hamilton, Edinburgh, New Hailes, Ballencrieff, and Cranston, November 8-22.]
FROM AUCHINLECK TO EDINBURGH.