He has, however, another most remarkable gift, which the author of “Waverley” has entirely rejected in conceiving the revised and enlarged edition of his character,—a wonderful turn for mimicry. His powers in this art are far, far indeed, from contemptible, though it unfortunately happens that, like almost all rustic Scottish humorists, he makes ministers and sacred things his chief and favourite objects. He attends the preachings of all the ministers that fall within the scope of his peregrinations, and sometimes brings away whole tenthlies of their several sermons, which he lays off to any person that desires him, with a faithfulness of imitation, in tone and gesture, which never fails to convulse his audience with laughter. He has made himself master of all the twangs, soughs, wheezes, coughs, snirtles, and bleatings, peculiar to the various parish ministers twenty miles round; and being himself of no particular sect, he feels not the least delicacy or compunction for any single class of divines—all are indiscriminately familiar to the powers of the universal Jock!
It is remarkable, that though the Scottish peasantry are almost without exception pious, they never express, so far as we have been able to discover, the least demur respecting the profanity and irreverence of this exhibition. The character of the nation may appear anomalous on this account. But we believe the mystery may be solved by supposing them so sincerely and unaffectedly devout, in all that concerns the sentiment of piety, that they do not suspect themselves of any remissness, when they make the outward circumstances, and even the ordinances of religion, the subject of wit. It is on this account, that in no country, even the most lax in religious feeling, have the matters of the church been discussed so freely as in Scotland; and nowhere are there so many jokes and good things about ministers and priests. In this case the very ministers themselves have been known to listen to Daft Jock’s mimicries of their neighbours with unqualmed delight,—never thinking, good souls, that the impartial rascal has just as little mercy on themselves at the next manse he visits. It is also to be remarked, that, in thus quizzing the worthy ministers, he does not forget to practise what the country-people consider a piece of exquisite satire on the habits of such as read their sermons. Whenever he imitates any of these degenerate divines, who, by their unpopularity, form quite a sect by themselves in the country, and are not nearly so much respected as extempore preachers,[3] he must have either a book or a piece of paper open before him, from which he gravely affects to read the subject of discourse; and his audience are always trebly delighted with this species of exhibition. He was once amusing Mrs. C——, the minister’s wife of Selkirk, with some imitations of the neighbouring clergymen, when she at last requested him to give her a few words in the manner of Dr. C——, who being a notorious reader, “Ou, Mem,” says Jock, “ye maun bring me the Doctor’s Bible, then, and I’ll gie ye him in style.” She brought the Bible, little suspecting the purpose for which the wag intended it, when, with the greatest effrontery, he proceeded to burlesque this unhappy peculiarity of the worthy doctor in the presence of his own wife.
Jock was always a privileged character in attending all sorts of kirks, though many ministers, who dreaded a future sufferance under his relentless caricaturing powers, would have been glad to exclude him. He never seems to pay any attention to the sermon, or even deigns to sit down, like other decent Christians, but wanders constantly about from gallery to gallery, upstairs and downstairs. His erratic habit is not altogether without its use. When he observes any person sleeping during the sermon, he reaches over to the place, and taps him gently on the head with his kent till he awake; should he in any of his future rounds (for he parades as regularly about as a policeman in a large city) observe the drowsy person repeating the offence, he gives him a tremendous thwack over the pate; and he increases the punishment so much at every subsequent offence, that, like the military punishment for desertion, the third infliction almost amounts to death itself. A most laughable incident once occurred in —— church, on a drowsy summer afternoon, when the windows were let down, admitting and emitting a thousand flies, whose monotonous buzz, joined to the somniferous snuffle of Dr. ——, would have been fit music for the bedchamber of Morpheus, even though that honest god was lying ill of the toothache, the gout, or any other equally woukrife disorder. A bailie, who had dined, as is usual in most country towns, between sermons, could not resist the propensity of his nature, and, fairly overpowered, at last was under the necessity of affronting the preacher to his very face, by laying down his head upon the book-board; when his capacious, bald round crown might have been mistaken, at first sight, for the face of the clock placed in the front of the gallery immediately below. Jock was soon at him with his stick, and, with great difficulty, succeeded in rousing him. But the indulgence was too great to be long resisted, and down again went the bailie’s head. This was not to be borne. Jock considered his authority sacred, and feared not either the frowns of elders, nor the more threatening scowls of kirk-officers, when his duty was to be done. So his arm went forth, and the kent descended a second time with little reverence upon the offending sconce; upon which the magistrate started up with an astonished stare, in which the sentiment of surprise was as completely concentrated as in the face of the inimitable Mackay, when he cries out, “Hang a magistrate! My conscience!” The contrast between the bailie’s stupid and drowsy face, smarting and writhing from the blow, which Jock had laid on pretty soundly, and the aspect of the natural himself, who still stood at the head of the pew, shaking his stick, and looking at the magistrate with an air in which authority, admonition, and a threat of further punishment, were strangely mingled, altogether formed a scene of striking and irresistible burlesque; and while the Doctor’s customary snuffle was increased to a perfect whimper of distress, the whole congregation showed in their faces evident symptoms of everything but the demureness proper to a place of worship.
Sometimes, when in a sitting mood, Jock takes a modest seat on the pulpit stairs, where there likewise usually roost a number of deaf old women, who cannot hear in any other part of the church. These old ladies, whom the reader will remember as the unfortunate persons that Dominie Sampson sprawled over, in his premature descent from the pulpit, when he stickit his first preaching, our waggish friend would endeavour to torment by every means which his knavish humour could invent. He would tread upon their corns, lean amorously upon their laps, purloin their specks (spectacles), set them on a false scent after the psalm, and, sometimes getting behind them, plant his longest and most serious face over their black cathedral-looking bonnets, like an owl looking over an ivied wall, while few of the audience could contain their gravity at the extreme humour of the scene. The fun was sometimes, as we ourselves have witnessed, not a little enhanced by the old lady upon whom Jock was practising, turning round, in holy dudgeon, and dealing the unlucky wag a vengeful thwack across the face with her heavy octavo Bible. We have also seen a very ludicrous scene take place, when, on the occasion of a baptism, he refused to come down from his citadel, and defied all the efforts which James Kerr, the kirk-officer, made to dislodge him; while the father of the child, waiting below to present it, stood in the most awkward predicament imaginable, not daring to venture upon the stairs while Jock kept possession of them. It is not probable, however, that he would have been so obstinate on that occasion, if he had not had an ill-will at the preserver of the peace, for his interrupting him that day in his laudable endeavours to break the slumbers of certain persons, whose peace (or rest) it was the peculiar interest of that official to preserve.
We will conclude this sketch of Daft Jock Gray with a stupendous anecdote, which we fear, however, is not strictly canonical. Jock once received an affront from his mother, who refused to gratify him with an extra allowance of bannocks, at a time when he meditated a long journey to a New Year’s Day junketing. Whereupon he seems to have felt the yearnings of a hermit and a misanthrope within his breast, and longed to testify to the world how much he both detested and despised it. He withdrew himself from the society of the cottage,—was seen to reject the addresses of his old companion and friend the cat,—and finally, next morning, after tossing an offered cogue of Scotia’s halesome food into the fire, and breaking two of his mother’s best and blackest cutty pipes, articles which she held almost in the esteem of penates or household gods,—off he went, and ascended to the top of the highest Eildon Hill, at that time covered with deep snow. There he wreaked out his vengeance in a tremendous and truly astonishing exploit. He rolled a huge snow-ball, till, in its accumulation, it became too large for his strength, and then taking it to the edge of the declivity,
“From Eildon’s proud vermilioned brow
He dashed upon the plains below”[4]
the ponderous mass; which, increasing rapidly in its descent, became a perfect avalanche before it reached the plain, and, when there, seemed like a younger brother of the three Eildons, so that people thought Michael Scott had resumed his old pranks, and added another hill to that which he formerly “split in three.” This enormous conglomeration of snow was found, when it fully melted away through the course of next summer, to have licked up with its mountain tongue thirty-five clumps of withered whin bushes, nineteen hares, three ruined cottages, and a whole encampment of peat-stacks!
The Naturals, or Idiots, of Scotland, of whom the Davie Gellatley of fictitious, and the Daft Jock Gray of real life, may be considered as good specimens, form a class of our countrymen which it is our anxious desire should be kept in remembrance. Many of the anecdotes told of them are extremely laughable, and we are inclined to prize such things, on account of the just exhibitions they sometimes afford of genuine human nature. The sketch we have given, and the anecdotes which we are about to give, may perhaps be considered valuable on this account, and also from their connection, moreover, with the manners of rustic life in the Lowlands of Scotland.
Daft Willie Law[5] of Kirkaldy was a regular attendant on tent-preachings, and would scour the country thirty miles round in order to be present at “an occasion.”[6] One warm summer day he was attending the preaching at Abbots Hall, when, being very near-sighted, and having a very short neck, he stood quite close to “the tent” gaping in the minister’s face, who, greatly irritated at a number of his hearers being fast asleep, bawled out, “For shame, Christians, to lie sleeping there, while the glad tidings of the gospel are sounding in your ears; and here is Willie Law, a poor idiot, hearing me with great attention!” “Eh go! sir, that’s true,” says Willie; “but if I hadna been a puir idiot, I would have been sleeping too!”