Thou seemed a lily new cut i’ the bud,
And fading at its place.
Thy lips were ruddy and calm, my lassie,—
Thy lips were ruddy and calm;
But gane was the holy breath o’ heaven,
To sing the evening psalm.—Allan Cunningham.
Andrew Jamieson was a thorough-paced Cameronian. He held hats in abomination, as they savoured of Erastianism; abhorred boots, because the troopers of 1685 wore them while galloping over the wilds of Dumfriesshire in quest of the persecuted remnant; testified against the use of “fanners” in the process of separating the chaff from the wheat, as a tacit renunciation of the doctrine of a superintending Providence. He judged of the excellences or defects of a sermon by its length; and on that of prayer by the colloquial familiarity which the clergyman held with the Deity; pronounced on his orthodoxy by the complexion of his text; and lifted up his voice against gowns, bands, and white pocket-handkerchiefs, as frippery belonging to the scarlet lady. Academical honours were his loathing, as he knew that, like plenary indulgences, they are, and were, to be had for money; nor would his prejudice allow him to distinguish between the man who received a D.D.-ship as the honourable reward of a life devoted to sacred literature, and him who carried it by lodging a professor’s wife and daughter during the race week.
Sermons in MS., though they had been the composition of a Chalmers, and read with the classic elocution of a Thomson, appeared to him as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; or, in his own vernacular phrase, “in at the tae lug, and out at the tither.” ’Twas the pride of his heart to travel twenty or thirty miles on foot to hear a favourite preacher; or to attend sacramental occasions in the air, in unfrequented districts, in imitation of the heroes of the covenant, who scorned to square their creed to the mandates of a tyrannical government; and I verily believe that a slight touch of persecution would have added to his enjoyments in this sublunary sphere; but this, as he frequently hinted, was too great a privilege to hope for from a government “neither cold nor hot.”
Andrew was a small farmer in the uplands of Nithsdale, had been prudent to a proverb in worldly matters, and consequently was rich, not only in his hopes of futurity, but in the more tangible currency of this sinful world. Frugality had been one of his most prominent characteristics; and while many less wealthy neighbours sported broad cloth at fairs and preachings, according to his inimitable countryman—
His garb was gude gray hodden,—