Davie Malloch says nay.’
1618.
It was rather a bitter jest for David. This person, from the locality, may be presumed to have been an ancestor, or near collateral relation, of David Malloch, subsequently called Mallet, the poet.
June.
The king’s declaration regarding sports on the Sunday and other holidays came to Edinburgh. It commenced with a judicious allusion to the abundance of papists in Lancashire. He had there found, too, the people complaining that they were prevented from indulging in their ancient sports. One effect of this must be that they would think papistry a better religion, since it allowed of sports. Another inconvenience is, ‘that this prohibition barreth the common and meaner people from using such exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them, and, in place thereof, sets up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their ale-houses; for when shall the common people have leave to exercise, if not upon the Sundays and holidays, seeing they must apply their labour, and win their living in other days,’ The king therefore willed that no lawful recreation be barred to the people—‘such as dancing, either men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting ... nor from having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles;’ seeing, however, that no one was allowed so to indulge who had not previously attended service in church.
1618.
When James Somerville of Drum was at school at the village of Dalserf in Lanarkshire, about 1608, it was customary ‘to solemnise the first Sunday of May with dancing about a May-pole, firing of pieces, and all manner of revelling then in use.’ His grandson tells an anecdote apropos: ‘There being at that time few or no merchants in this petty village, to furnish necessaries for the scholars’ sports, this youth resolves to furnish himself elsewhere, that so he may appear with the bravest. In order to this, by break of day, he rises and goes to Hamilton, and there bestows all the money that for a long time before he had gotten from his friends, or had otherwise purchased, upon ribbons of divers colours, a new hat and gloves. But in nothing he bestowed his money more liberally than upon gunpowder, a great quantity whereof he buys for his own use, and to supply the wants of his comrades. Thus furnished with these commodities, but with ane empty purse, he returns to Dalserf by seven o’clock (having travelled that Sabbath morning above eight miles), puts on his ... clothes and new hat, flying with ribbons of all colours; in this equipage, with his little fusee upon his shoulder, he marches to the churchyard where the May-pole was set up, and the solemnity of that day was to be kept. There first at the foot-ball he equalled any that played; but for handling of his piece in charging and discharging, he was so ready, that he far surpassed all his fellow-scholars, and became a teacher of that art to them before the thirteenth year of his own age.... The day’s sport being over, he had the applause of all the spectators, the kindness of his condisciples, and the favour of the whole inhabitants of that little village.’—Mem. Som.
In June 1625, the presbytery of Lanark exercised discipline upon John Baillie, William Baillie, John Hirshaw, John and Thomas Prentices, and Robert Watt, a piper, ‘profaners of the Sabbath in fetching hame a May-pole, and dancing about the same, on Pasch Sunday.’—R. P. L.
It is manifest from the church-registers of that time, that the universal external observance of the Sunday as a Sabbath, for which Scotland has long been remarkable, was not yet established. In August 1628, the minister of Carstairs regretted to the presbytery of Lanark the breach of the Sabbath ‘by the insolent behaviour of men and women in foot-balling, dancing, and barley-breaks.’ About the same time, two tailors were libelled before the same court for working on Sunday. Such things could not have happened a few years later, or at any time since.