The Annals of the Parish
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John Galt >> The Annals of the Parish
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14 ANNALS OF THE PARISH
Or The Chronicle of Dalmailing during the ministry of the Rev. Micah
Balwhidder. Written by himself and arranged and edited by John Galt
INTRODUCTION
In the same year, and on the same day of the same month, that his
Sacred Majesty King George, the third of the name, came to his crown
and kingdom, I was placed and settled as the minister of Dalmailing.
{1} When about a week thereafter this was known in the parish, it
was thought a wonderful thing, and everybody spoke of me and the new
king as united in our trusts and temporalities, marvelling how the
same should come to pass, and thinking the hand of Providence was in
it, and that surely we were preordained to fade and flourish in
fellowship together; which has really been the case: for in the
same season that his Most Excellent Majesty, as he was very properly
styled in the proclamations for the general fasts and thanksgivings,
was set by as a precious vessel which had received a crack or a
flaw, and could only be serviceable in the way of an ornament, I was
obliged, by reason of age and the growing infirmities of my
recollection, to consent to the earnest entreaties of the Session,
and to accept of Mr Amos to be my helper. I was long reluctant to
do so; but the great respect that my people had for me, and the love
that I bore towards them, over and above the sign that was given to
me in the removal of the royal candle-stick from its place, worked
upon my heart and understanding, and I could not stand out. So, on
the last Sabbath of the year 1810, I preached my last sermon, and it
was a moving discourse. There were few dry eyes in the kirk that
day; for I had been with the aged from the beginning--the young
considered me as their natural pastor--and my bidding them all
farewell was, as when of old among the heathen, an idol was taken
away by the hands of the enemy.
At the close of the worship, and before the blessing, I addressed
them in a fatherly manner; and, although the kirk was fuller than
ever I saw it before, the fall of a pin might have been heard--at
the conclusion there was a sobbing and much sorrow. I said,
"My dear friends, I have now finished my work among you for ever. I
have often spoken to you from this place the words of truth and
holiness; and, had it been in poor frail human nature to practise
the advice and counselling that I have given in this pulpit to you,
there would not need to be any cause for sorrow on this occasion--
the close and latter end of my ministry. But, nevertheless, I have
no reason to complain; and it will be my duty to testify, in that
place where I hope we are all one day to meet again, that I found
you a docile and a tractable flock, far more than at first I could
have expected. There are among you still a few, but with grey heads
and feeble hands now, that can remember the great opposition that
was made to my placing, and the stout part they themselves took in
the burly, because I was appointed by the patron; but they have
lived to see the error of their way, and to know that preaching is
the smallest portion of the duties of a faithful minister. I may
not, my dear friends, have applied my talent in the pulpit so
effectually as perhaps I might have done, considering the gifts that
it pleased God to give me in that way, and the education that I had
in the Orthodox University of Glasgow, as it was in the time of my
youth; nor can I say that, in the works of peace-making and charity,
I have done all that I should have done. But I have done my best,
studying no interest but the good that was to rise according to the
faith in Christ Jesus.
"To my young friends I would, as a parting word, say, look to the
lives and conversation of your parents--they were plain, honest, and
devout Christians, fearing God and honouring the King. They
believed the Bible was the word of God; and, when they practised its
precepts, they found, by the good that came from them, that it was
truly so. They bore in mind the tribulation and persecution of
their forefathers for righteousness' sake, and were thankful for the
quiet and protection of the government in their day and generation.
Their land was tilled with industry, and they ate the bread of
carefulness with a contented spirit, and, verily, they had the
reward of well-doing even in this world; for they beheld on all
sides the blessing of God upon the nation, and the tree growing, and
the plough going where the banner of the oppressor was planted of
old, and the war-horse trampled in the blood of martyrs. Reflect on
this, my young friends, and know, that the best part of a
Christian's duty in this world of much evil, is to thole and suffer
with resignation, as lang as it is possible for human nature to do.
I do not counsel passive obedience: that is a doctrine that the
Church of Scotland can never abide; but the divine right of
resistance, which, in the days of her trouble, she so bravely
asserted against popish and prelatic usurpations, was never resorted
to till the attempt was made to remove the ark of the tabernacle
from her. I therefore counsel you, my young friends, not to lend
your ears to those that trumpet forth their hypothetical politics;
but to believe that the laws of the land are administered with a
good intent, till in your own homes and dwellings ye feel the
presence of the oppressor--then, and not till then, are ye free to
gird your loins for battle--and woe to him, and woe to the land
where that is come to, if the sword be sheathed till the wrong be
redressed.
"As for you, my old companions, many changes have we seen in our
day; but the change that we ourselves are soon to undergo will be
the greatest of all. We have seen our bairns grow to manhood--we
have seen the beauty of youth pass away--we have felt our backs
become unable for the burthen, and our right hand forget its
cunning.--Our eyes have become dim, and our heads grey--we are now
tottering with short and feckless steps towards the grave; and some,
that should have been here this day, are bed-rid, lying, as it were,
at the gates of death, like Lazarus at the threshold of the rich
man's door, full of ails and sores, and having no enjoyment but in
the hope that is in hereafter. What can I say to you but farewell!
Our work is done--we are weary and worn out, and in need of rest--
may the rest of the blessed be our portion!--and in the sleep that
all must sleep, beneath the cold blanket of the kirkyard grass, and
on that clay pillow where we must shortly lay our heads, may we have
pleasant dreams, till we are awakened to partake of the everlasting
banquet of the saints in glory!"
When I had finished, there was for some time a great solemnity
throughout the kirk; and, before giving the blessing, I sat down to
compose myself, for my heart was big, and my spirit oppressed with
sadness.
As I left the pulpit, all the elders stood on the steps to hand me
down, and the tear was in every eye, and they helped me into the
session-house; but I could not speak to them, nor them to me. Then
Mr Dalziel, who was always a composed and sedate man, said a few
words of prayer, and I was comforted therewith, and rose to go home
to the manse; but in the churchyard all the congregation was
assembled, young and old, and they made a lane for me to the back-
yett that opened into the manse-garden--Some of them put out their
hands and touched me as I passed, followed by the elders, and some
of them wept. It was as if I was passing away, and to be no more--
verily, it was the reward of my ministry--a faithful account of
which, year by year, I now sit down, in the evening of my days, to
make up, to the end that I may bear witness to the work of a
beneficent Providence, even in the narrow sphere of my parish, and
the concerns of that flock of which it was His most gracious
pleasure to make me the unworthy shepherd.
CHAPTER I YEAR 1760
The Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and sixty, was remarkable
for three things in the parish of Dalmailing.--First and foremost,
there was my placing; then the coming of Mrs Malcolm with her five
children to settle among us; and next, my marriage upon my own
cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw, by which the account of this year
naturally divides itself into three heads or portions.
First, of the placing.--It was a great affair; for I was put in by
the patron, and the people knew nothing whatsoever of me, and their
hearts were stirred into strife on the occasion, and they did all
that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch,
that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the
presbytery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I
heard the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the
kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon
us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of
scorn at me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit,
compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr
Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of glar on the side of his
face, that his eye was almost extinguished.
When we got to the kirk door, it was found to be nailed up, so as by
no possibility to be opened. The sergeant of the soldiers wanted to
break it, but I was afraid that the heritors would grudge and
complain of the expense of a new door, and I supplicated him to let
it be as it was: we were, therefore, obligated to go in by a
window, and the crowd followed us in the most unreverent manner,
making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair day, with their
grievous yellyhooing. During the time of the psalm and the sermon,
they behaved themselves better, but when the induction came on,
their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious
zealot in that time, he got up and protested, and said, "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the
sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a
robber." And I thought I would have a hard and sore time of it with
such an outstrapolous people. Mr Given, that was then the minister
of Lugton, was a jocose man, and would have his joke even at a
solemnity. When the laying of the hands upon me was adoing, he
could not get near enough to put on his, but he stretched out his
staff and touched my head, and said, to the great diversion of the
rest, "This will do well enough, timber to timber;" but it was an
unfriendly saying of Mr Given, considering the time and the place,
and the temper of my people.
After the ceremony, we then got out at the window, and it was a
heavy day to me; but we went to the manse, and there we had an
excellent dinner, which Mrs Watts of the new inns of Irville {2}
prepared at my request, and sent her chaise-driver to serve, for he
was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that no
often called for.
But, although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was
resolved to cultivate civility among them, and therefore, the very
next morning I began a round of visitations; but, oh! it was a steep
brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart. For I found
the doors in some places barred against me; in others, the bairns,
when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers, "Here's the
feckless Mess-John!" and then, when I went into the houses, their
parents wouldna ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way, said,
"Honest man, what's your pleasure here?" Nevertheless, I walked
about from door to door like a dejected beggar, till I got the
almous deed of a civil reception--and who would have thought it?--
from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter
against me in the kirk on the foregoing day.
Thomas was standing at the door with his green duffle apron, and his
red Kilmarnock nightcap--I mind him as well as if it was but
yesterday--and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what
manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me
in a kind manner, "Come in, sir, and ease yoursel': this will never
do, the clergy are God's gorbies, and for their Master's sake it
behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish
mair against you than mysel'; but this early visitation is a symptom
of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out the nest of
patronage." I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some
solid conversation together, and I told him that it was not so much
the pastor's duty to feed the flock, as to herd them well; and that,
although there might be some abler with the head than me, there
wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the
fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair
sound observe for some time, and that, if I held to that doctrine in
the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change.--"I was
mindit," quoth he, "never to set my foot within the kirk door while
you were there; but to testify, and no to condemn without a trial,
I'll be there next Lord's day, and egg my neighbours to be likewise,
so ye'll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird's
family."
I have now to speak of the coming of Mrs Malcolm.--She was the widow
of a Clyde shipmaster, that was lost at sea with his vessel. She
was a genty body, calm and methodical. From morning to night she
sat at her wheel, spinning the finest lint, which suited well with
her pale hands. She never changed her widow's weeds, and she was
aye as if she had just been ta'en out of a bandbox. The tear was
aften in her e'e when the bairns were at the school; but when they
came home, her spirit was lighted up with gladness, although, poor
woman, she had many a time very little to give them. They were,
however, wonderful well-bred things, and took with thankfulness
whatever she set before them; for they knew that their father, the
breadwinner, was away, and that she had to work sore for their bit
and drap. I dare say, the only vexation that ever she had from any
of them, on their own account, was when Charlie, the eldest laddie,
had won fourpence at pitch-and-toss at the school, which he brought
home with a proud heart to his mother. I happened to be daunrin' by
at the time, and just looked in at the door to say gude-night: it
was a sad sight. There was she sitting with the silent tear on her
cheek, and Charlie greeting as if he had done a great fault, and the
other four looking on with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did
Charlie Malcolm gamble after that night.
I often wondered what brought Mrs Malcolm to our clachan, instead of
going to a populous town, where she might have taken up a huxtry-
shop, as she was but of a silly constitution, the which would have
been better for her than spinning from morning to far in the night,
as if she was in verity drawing the thread of life. But it was, no
doubt, from an honest pride to hide her poverty; for when her
daughter Effie was ill with the measles--the poor lassie was very
ill--nobody thought she could come through, and when she did get the
turn, she was for many a day a heavy handful;--our session being
rich, and nobody on it but cripple Tammy Daidles, that was at that
time known through all the country side for begging on a horse, I
thought it my duty to call upon Mrs Malcolm in a sympathising way,
and offer her some assistance, but she refused it.
"No, sir," said she, "I canna take help from the poor's-box,
although it's very true that I am in great need; for it might
hereafter be cast up to my bairns, whom it may please God to restore
to better circumstances when I am no to see't; but I would fain
borrow five pounds, and if, sir, you will write to Mr Maitland, that
is now the Lord Provost of Glasgow, and tell him that Marion Shaw
would be obliged to him for the lend of that soom, I think he will
not fail to send it."
I wrote the letter that night to Provost Maitland, and, by the
retour of the post, I got an answer, with twenty pounds for Mrs
Malcolm, saying, "That it was with sorrow he heard so small a trifle
could be serviceable." When I took the letter and the money, which
was in a bank-bill, she said, "This is just like himsel'." She then
told me that Mr Maitland had been a gentleman's son of the east
country, but driven out of his father's house, when a laddie, by his
stepmother; and that he had served as a servant lad with her father,
who was the Laird of Yillcogie, but ran through his estate, and left
her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary with her
auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her husband that was.
Provost Maitland in his servitude had ta'en a notion of her; and
when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great Glasgow
merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he offered to
marry her, but she had promised herself to her cousin the captain,
whose widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and in time grew,
as he was, Lord Provost of the city; but his letter with the twenty
pounds to me, showed that he had not forgotten his first love. It
was a short, but a well-written letter, in a fair hand of write,
containing much of the true gentleman; and Mrs Malcolm said, "Who
knows but out of the regard he once had for their mother, he may do
something for my five helpless orphans."
Thirdly, Upon the subject of taking my cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw,
for my first wife, I have little to say.--It was more out of a
compassionate habitual affection, than the passion of love. We were
brought up by our grandmother in the same house, and it was a thing
spoken of from the beginning, that Betty and me were to be married.
So, when she heard that the Laird of Breadland had given me the
presentation of Dalmailing, she began to prepare for the wedding;
and as soon as the placing was well over, and the manse in order, I
gaed to Ayr, where she was, and we were quietly married, and came
home in a chaise, bringing with us her little brother Andrew, that
died in the East Indies, and he lived and was brought up by us.
Now, this is all, I think, that happened in that year worthy of
being mentioned, except that at the sacrament, when old Mr Kilfuddy
was preaching in the tent, it came on such a thunder-plump, that
there was not a single soul stayed in the kirkyard to hear him; for
the which he was greatly mortified, and never after came to our
preachings.
CHAPTER II YEAR 1761
It was in this year that the great smuggling trade corrupted all the
west coast, especially the laigh lands about the Troon and the
Loans. The tea was going like the chaff, the brandy like well-
water, and the wastrie of all things was terrible. There was
nothing minded but the riding of cadgers by day, and excisemen by
night--and battles between the smugglers and the king's men, both by
sea and land. There was a continual drunkenness and debauchery; and
our session, that was but on the lip of this whirlpool of iniquity,
had an awful time o't. I did all that was in the power of nature to
keep my people from the contagion: I preached sixteen times from
the text, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." I
visited, and I exhorted; I warned, and I prophesied; I told them
that, although the money came in like sclate stones, it would go
like the snow off the dyke. But for all I could do, the evil got in
among us, and we had no less than three contested bastard bairns
upon our hands at one time, which was a thing never heard of in a
parish of the shire of Ayr since the Reformation. Two of the
bairns, after no small sifting and searching, we got fathered at
last; but the third, that was by Meg Glaiks, and given to one Rab
Rickerton, was utterly refused, though the fact was not denied; but
he was a termagant fellow, and snappit his fingers at the elders.
The next day he listed in the Scotch Greys, who were then quartered
at Ayr, and we never heard more of him, but thought he had been
slain in battle, till one of the parish, about three years since,
went up to London to lift a legacy from a cousin that died among the
Hindoos. When he was walking about, seeing the curiosities, and
among others Chelsea Hospital, he happened to speak to some of the
invalids, who found out from his tongue that he was a Scotchman; and
speaking to the invalids, one of them, a very old man, with a grey
head and a leg of timber, inquired what part of Scotland he was come
from; and when he mentioned my parish, the invalid gave a great
shout, and said he was from the same place himself; and who should
this old man be, but the very identical Rab Rickerton, that was art
and part in Meg Glaiks' disowned bairn. Then they had a long
converse together, and he had come through many hardships, but had
turned out a good soldier; and so, in his old days, was an indoor
pensioner, and very comfortable; and he said that he had, to be
sure, spent his youth in the devil's service, and his manhood in the
king's, but his old age was given to that of his Maker, which I was
blithe and thankful to hear; and he enquired about many a one in the
parish, the blooming and the green of his time, but they were all
dead and buried; and he had a contrite and penitent spirit, and read
his Bible every day, delighting most in the Book of Joshua, the
Chronicles, and the Kings.
Before this year, the drinking of tea was little known in the
parish, saving among a few of the heritors' houses on a Sabbath
evening; but now it became very rife: yet the commoner sort did not
like to let it be known that they were taking to the new luxury,
especially the elderly women, who, for that reason, had their ploys
in out-houses and by-places, just as the witches lang syne had their
sinful possets and galravitchings; and they made their tea for
common in the pint-stoup, and drank it out of caps and luggies, for
there were but few among them that had cups and saucers. Well do I
remember one night in harvest, in this very year, as I was taking my
twilight dauner aneath the hedge along the back side of Thomas
Thorl's yard, meditating on the goodness of Providence, and looking
at the sheaves of victual on the field, that I heard his wife, and
two three other carlins, with their Bohea in the inside of the
hedge, and no doubt but it had a lacing of the conek, {3} for they
were all cracking like pen-guns. But I gave them a sign, by a loud
host, that Providence sees all, and it skailed the bike; for I heard
them, like guilty creatures, whispering, and gathering up their
truck-pots and trenchers, and cowering away home.
It was in this year that Patrick Dilworth (he had been schoolmaster
of the parish from the time, as his wife said, of Anna Regina, and
before the Rexes came to the crown), was disabled by a paralytic,
and the heritors, grudging the cost of another schoolmaster as long
as he lived, would not allow the session to get his place supplied,
which was a wrong thing, I must say, of them; for the children of
the parishioners were obliged, therefore, to go to the neighbouring
towns for their schooling, and the custom was to take a piece of
bread and cheese in their pockets for dinner, and to return in the
evening always voracious for more, the long walk helping the natural
crave of their young appetites. In this way Mrs Malcolm's two
eldest laddies, Charlie and Robert, were wont to go to Irville, and
it was soon seen that they kept themselves aloof from the other
callans in the clachan, and had a genteeler turn than the grulshy
bairns of the cottars. Her bit lassies, Kate and Effie, were better
off; for some years before, Nanse Banks had taken up a teaching in a
garret-room of a house, at the corner where John Bayne has biggit
the sclate-house for his grocery-shop. Nanse learnt them reading
and working stockings, and how to sew the semplar, for twal-pennies
a-week. She was a patient creature, well cut out for her calling,
with blear een, a pale face, and a long neck, but meek and contented
withal, tholing the dule of this world with a Christian submission
of the spirit; and her garret-room was a cordial of cleanliness, for
she made the scholars set the house in order, time and time about,
every morning; and it was a common remark for many a day, that the
lassies, who had been at Nanse Banks's school, were always well
spoken of, both for their civility, and the trigness of their houses
when they were afterwards married. In short, I do not know, that in
all the long epoch of my ministry, any individual body did more to
improve the ways of the parishioners, in their domestic concerns,
than did that worthy and innocent creature, Nanse Banks, the
schoolmistress; and she was a great loss when she was removed, as it
is to be hoped, to a better world; but anent this I shall have to
speak more at large hereafter.
It was in this year that my patron, the Laird of Breadland, departed
this life, and I preached his funeral sermon; but he was non-beloved
in the parish; for my people never forgave him for putting me upon
them, although they began to be more on a familiar footing with
myself. This was partly owing to my first wife, Betty Lanshaw, who
was an active throughgoing woman, and wonderfu' useful to many of
the cottars' wives at their lying-in; and when a death happened
among them, her helping hand, and any thing we had at the manse, was
never wanting; and I went about myself to the bedsides of the frail,
leaving no stone unturned to win the affections of my people, which,
by the blessing of the Lord, in process of time, was brought to a
bearing.
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