“That is a very long walk.”
“Oh, ay, it’s a bit gude walk; but ye see I think a deal o’ your precentor.”
It was the minister here:—In a rural parish the old preacher felt out of sorts one Sabbath, and to provide a rest for himself before delivering the sermon, he gave out a long psalm to be sung, not taking into account the precentor’s bad cold, which was a chronic complaint. The first four verses were finished not so badly, but at the fifth Tammas stuck, and no amount of tuning could get him started again. At last the minister had to get to his feet, and in no very pleasant mood. Accordingly, leaning over the pulpit, he addressed the precentor thus:—“Tammas, if ye mak’ sic a wark about skirlin’ out four verses o’ a psalm noo, hoo do ye expect ye’re to manage to sing through a’ the ages o’ eternity?”
The story of “The Foxes’ Tails,” so admirably elaborated to the dimensions of a public “reading” by Dr. Moxey of Edinburgh, I was accustomed to hear, more than twenty years ago, as having transpired between a country minister and his precentor, Sandy Johnston; and in this way. In the course of a twa-handed crack one day, the minister had ventured on some friendly criticism of Sandy’s singing, whereupon Sandy retaliated by remarking that he thought the singing would compare favourably with the preaching any day.
“Don’t let us quarrel, Sandy,” said the minister; “we may each benefit by the other’s criticism. Now, tell me candidly, what the chief faults of my preaching are?”
“Ou, I’m no sayin’ I ha’e ony fauts till’t, but just this, that I’ve noticed ye—weel—that is to say—ye exaggerate a wee.”
“Well, Sandy, if I exaggerate the truth in the pulpit, I am certainly not aware of it.”
“Ye do’t a’ the same, though,” insisted the precentor.
“Sandy, I respect your opinion,” said the minister, “but I am so satisfied that I am innocent of the charge you have preferred against me, that I now call upon you, if ever on any future occasion you shall hear me exaggerate in the pulpit, you will pull me up there and then, just by emitting a low, thin whistle.”