In the rural districts of the country it is altogether different. Books are scarce, daily newspapers rarely appear, there are no courses of scientific or other lectures, and so the individual mind has largely to form its own idea of every particular subject; and as very much of what is most enjoyable in humorous Scottish stories and anecdotes arises from “simple and matter-of-fact references made to circumstances which are unusual,” thus it is that the best as well as the most of our Scottish humour is bred of rural life. Every book of native anecdotes—every bout of story-telling—reveals this fact. And in the present chapter I shall recount, irrespective of consecutive order and design, the choicest illustrations of the humours of Scottish rural life which have not already appeared in these pages, and with which my memory shall serve me, committing them to paper simply as they rise in my mind. And, just to set the ball a-rolling, let the first story relate to the first day of the week, and be one that to some extent contrasts the town with the country notion as to the proper observance of the day of rest. It is a story which Mr. Henry Irving told, and did not tell well, some years ago, in the course of an after-dinner speech in (I think) New York, and which, with questionable propriety, he related as having happened in his own experience whilst, shortly before, he had been journeying in the vicinity of Balmoral, although it had been told in pithier form in select circles in Scotland for ten years and more. The story is to this effect:—A well-known and esteemed city Established Kirk minister, in the course of a summer vacation in the North, was prevailed upon by a brother clergyman a little distance off to occupy his pulpit for a day, during his, the local preacher’s, peremptory call from home. The service consisted of a “single yokin’,” which ended a little after mid-day, and the weather being fine, the D.D., for he was such, when he had “cuisten the goon” and refreshed the inner man, took his familiar staff in his hand and emerged from the manse to enjoy a stroll along the quiet country road. A few hundred yards distant from the manse gate he passed a little farm steading on the roadside, the abode of the ruling elder of the congregation, and one of the sternest Calvinists and strictest Sabbatarians in the whole parish, but had hardly done so when he heard footsteps behind him, and the next moment an arresting hand was laid on his shoulder.
“Ye’ll excuse me, sir,” said the farmer and elder, “but ye’re the Edinborough minister that was preachin’ to us the day, an’ I would like to ken if ye’re walkin’ oot the gate for mere pleasure on the blessed day, or if ye’re on a mission o’ mercy?”
“Oh, it’s a delightful afternoon,” replied the divine, “and I am just enjoying a meditative walk amid the beauties of Nature, so rich and——”
“I just suspectit as muckle,” broke in the elder; “but you that’s a minister o’ the Gospel sud ken that this is no a day for ony sic thing.”
“Well,” returned the Doctor, “we find good precedent for walking on the Sabbath. You remember that even the Master himself walked in the fields with His disciples on the Sabbath day.”
“Ou, I ken a’ aboot that brawly,” snorted the elder; “but I dinna think ony mair o’ Him for’t either!” and immediately turning on his heel, he strode sulkily towards the steading.
But, of course, the ministers are more commonly the accusers than the accused in the matter of supposed or actual Sabbath desecration—both in town and country.
“Wherefore did you go and shoot the hare on the Sabbath day, John?” asked a reverend gentleman once of a parishioner who was “before the Session” for the misdeed in question.
“Weel, ye see,” replied John, not unphilosophically, “I had a strong dreed that the beastie michtna sit till Monday, say just dressed his drodrum when I had the chance.”
But a certain minister and elder in Perthshire once combined to transact dubious business, even “between the preachin’s.”