“Ay,” replied Johnnie, “four o’ them.”
“And all Conservatives, too, I believe?” remarked the traveller.
“Na,” said Johnnie: “they’re Leeberals.”
“Liberals! you told me a fortnight ago they were Conservatives,” interposed the master.
“Ou, ay; of course,” returned Johnnie, with the utmost gravity. “They were Conservatives yon time, but they’re seein’ noo!”
Just one more here. There is a cobbler in a little town in the North—a worthy old soul, as it would appear, whose custom has been for many years to hammer and whistle from morn to night in his little shop, and to discharge both functions so lustily as to be easily heard by the passers-by in the street. One day not long since the minister, happening to pass, missed the whistling accompaniment to the measured click on the lapstone, and looked in to ascertain the cause. “Is all well with you, Saunders?” he asked. “Na, na, sir; it’s far frae bein’ a’ weel wi’ me. The sweep’s gane an’ ta’en the shop ower my head.” “Oh, that’s bad news, indeed,” responded the minister, “but I think you might see your way out of the difficulty soon if, as I always urge in cases of emergency, you would make the matter a subject of earnest prayer.” Saunders promised to do this, and the preacher departed. In less than a week he returned, and found the old cobbler hammering and whistling away in his old familiar “might and main” fashion. “Well, Saunders, how is it now?” “Oh, it’s a’ richt, minister,” was the reply. “I did as ye tell’d me, an’—the sweep’s deid.”
CHAPTER III
HUMOUR OF OLD SCOTCH DIVINES
The late Lord Neaves, himself a man of a genial, humorous nature, was wont to complain pleasantly of his friend Dean Ramsay for having drawn so many specimens of Scottish humour from the sayings and doings of the native clergy. But the worthy Dean, to employ a figure of his own recording, simply “biggit’s dyke wi’ the feal at fit o’t;” in other words, he gathered most grain from the field which had produced the most abundant crop—the field of clerical life and work. Your typical pastor, it is true, has not to any extent been remarkable as a humourist—the reverse may with more truth be said of him. At the same time the Scottish pulpit has contained many earnest, good men, who were also genuine humourists. Yea, than the good old Scotch divines, certainly no other class or section of the community has laid up to its credit so many witty and humorous sayings that are destined to live with the language in which they are uttered. Every parish in the land has stories to tell of such pastors. It is only necessary to mention such prominent names as the Revs. Robert Shirra, of Kirkcaldy; Walter Dunlop, of Dumfries; John Skinner, of Longside, the author of “Tullochgorum”; Mr. Thom, of Govan; and the late Drs. Norman Macleod and William Anderson, of Glasgow, to suggest many other bright and shining lights. There have been many ministers of the Gospel, of course, who, not at all witty themselves, yet, by reason of certain idiosyncrasies of nature and eccentricities of character, have been the cause of wit in others. These, however, do not come within the scope of the present paper. Here we shall deal not with negative but with positive clerical humorists only.
Much of the old clerical humour of Scotland came direct from the pulpit, and was part and parcel of the pastoral matter and method of the time. The preaching of to-day gives but the faintest idea of the preaching of a hundred years ago. The sermon of the old divine was very much in the style of an easy conversation, interspersed with occasional parentheses applicable to individual characters or to the circumstances which arose before his eyes in church.