The Town Council of Aberdeen had occasion to consider an abuse which had lately crept into their burgh, in the form of ‘costly banqueting at the baptising of bairns,’ and the ‘convocating of great numbers of people thereto.’ It is mentioned that, on these occasions, there were ‘all sorts of succours [sugars], confections, spiceries, and dessert, brought from foreign parts, beside great superfluity of venison, and wild meat of all sorts ... and withal, extraordinary drinking and scolling [health-drinking] ... to the slander of the town, in sic a calamitous time, when God is visiting the whole land with dearth and famine, and mony poor anes [are] dying and starving at dykes and under stairs for cauld and hunger.’
The Council ordained that hereafter no person of whatever degree should have ‘mae than four gossips and four cummers at the maist’ at their baptisms, that not more than six women be invited ‘to convoy the bairn to and frae the kirk,’ and that twelve should be the utmost amount of company present ‘at the dinner, supper, or afternoon’s drink.’ All extravagances at table were at the same time strictly forbidden.
May 25.
The wappinshaw was a periodical muster of the irregular armed force of the country; it got its name from the more immediate purpose of the assembly—namely, an exhibition of weapons. At Dunfermline, on this day, while a wappinshaw was going on, ‘William Anderson, son till John Anderson, bailiff of the said town, and Charles Richeson, his servant, being shooting a shot with some of their friends in a certain place of the town, [412]], and did flie from house to house, and sometimes wald flie over ane house without doing it any harm, but wald burn the next house, till the great admiration of all men; so that this fire burnt so meikle of the town, that, excepted the abbey and the kirk thereof, the tenth part were not free of it. This, by the judgment of all the beholders, was thought till have been some divinity, or some witchcraft, rather nor this foresaid accidental fire.’—Jo. H.
‘The fire began at twelve hours, and burnt the whole town, some few sclate houses excepted, before four afternoon; goods and geir within houses, malt and victual in kilns and barns, were consumed.’—Cal.
The town of Dunfermline consisted at this time of 120 houses, containing 287 families.—Bal.
There was a collection in the parish churches for ‘the support of the town of Dunfermline, burnt with fire’ (R. P. L.); and, in June 1625, King Charles I. ordered £500 sterling to be added to the fund for the relief of the poorer class of sufferers.—P. C. R.
May.