“I couldna tell ye jist exactly on the spur o’ the meenit,” said John, scratching his head, “but there’s an auld beuk lyin’ i’ the hoose yonder, gin I had it here I could sune answer yer question.”
“John,” said the minister, “I am afraid you are not in a fit state to hold up your child for baptism.”
“No fit to haud him up?” echoed the ploughman, starting to his feet, and posing in the attitude best calculated to display his great muscular form. “Me? Man, I could haud him up gin he were a bull stirk!”
And ludicrous incidents have occurred even in the supreme moment occupied by the ceremony of the baptism of a child, and when no one was very seriously to blame. In Paisley, some time ago, the father of a child was from home at the time of its birth, and was not expected to return for two or three months. The mother, desiring that the baptism of the child should not be delayed so long, was consequently obliged to present the infant herself, the ordinance being administered in private. The officiating clergyman was an old man, who, when in the act of dispensing the sacrament, asked the name by which the child was to be called. The mother, who had a thickness in her speech, politely said, “Lucy, sir.”
“Lucifer!” exclaimed the old and irritable divine, in exasperated horror, “I shall baptise no child by the name of the Prince of Darkness, madam. The child’s name is John.”
But perhaps the very best specimen story on record is the well-known one which is associated with the name of Ralph Erskine, the father of the Scottish Secession Kirk, and which the late Robert Leighton, the poet, rendered so happily into rhyme under the title of “The Bapteezement o’ the Bairn.” Mr. Erskine was a most proficient performer on the violin, and so often beguiled his leisure hours with this instrument that the people of Dunfermline believed he composed his sermons to its tones, as a poet writes a song to a particular air. But to the story:—A poor man in one of the neighbouring parishes having a child to baptise resolved not to employ his own clergyman, with whom he was at issue on certain points of doctrine, but to have the office performed by some minister of whose tenets fame gave a better report. With the child in his arms, therefore, and attended by the full complement of old and young women who usually minister on such occasions, he proceeded to the manse of ⸺, some miles off (not that of Mr. Erskine), where he inquired if the clergyman was at home.
“Na; he’s no at hame the noo,” answered the servant lass; “he’s doon the burn fishing; but I can sune cry him in.”
“Ye needna gie yersel’ the trouble,” replied the man, quite shocked at this account of the minister’s habits, “nane o’ yer fishin’ ministers shall bapteeze my bairn.”
Off he then trudged, followed by his whole train, to the residence of another parochial clergyman, at the distance of some miles. Here, on his inquiring if the minister was at home, the lass answered:
“Deed, he’s no at hame the day; he’s been oot since sax i’ the mornin’ at the shooting. Ye needna wait, neither; for he’ll be sae dune oot when he comes back, that he’ll no be able to say boo to a goose, lat-a-be kirsten a wean.”