‘Scotland, thy weather’s like a modish wife,
Thy winds and rains for ever are at strife;
So Termagant awhile her bluster tries,
And when she can no longer scold—she cries!’
The engineer could not but wonder at Hill taking leave of the country in this strain, ‘after he had been so exceedingly |1728.| complaisant to it, when here, as to compare its subterranean riches with those of Mexico and Peru.’
Aug.
We must again return to Mr Wodrow for an account of the continued progress of gaiety in Scotland. It appears that part of Anthony Aston’s company of comedians migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and were there favoured by Bailie Murdoch, ‘who is too easy,’ with permission to perform the Beggars’ Opera in the Weigh-house. They had a good audience the first night, but on the few other nights of performance ‘got not so much as to pay their music.’ On the magistrates being blamed for the permission they had given, they recriminated on the ministers, who should have interfered in time. Mr Wodrow considered the ministers as here in fault; yet he could not exonerate the magistrates. ‘Considering the noise made at Edinburgh by these strollers, and the brisk opposition made by the magistrates of Edinburgh, they [the magistrates of Glasgow] should have considered better before they allowed them.’
‘Sabbath after, the ministers preached against going to these interludes and plays.... Mr Rob, of Kilsyth, went through all that was agoing about meeting-houses, plays, errors, and profaneness; and spared none, as I hear.’
This classing of the Episcopal meeting-houses with the ungodly theatre, reminds us of the ranging of popery and adultery together by the reformers. It would appear that in the summer of 1728 there was another histrionic company in Scotland, under a Mr Phipps, who announced that on the 29th October he would, ‘at the desire of severals of the nobility and gentry of East Lothian,’ act the Beggars’ Opera at Haddington.
In March 1729, the Edinburgh Courant informs us that ‘the Scots Company of Comedians, as they call themselves, have all of a sudden eloped, without counting with their creditors.’