Reminiscences of Scottish Life & Character: And a Memoir of Dean Ramsay by Cosmo InnesRamsay, Edward Bannerman
History
Reminiscences of Scottish Life & Character: And a Memoir of Dean Ramsay by Cosmo Innes
Ramsay, Edward Bannerman
National characteristics, Scottish; Scotland -- Social life and customs
An old clerical friend upon Speyside, a confirmed bachelor, on going up
to the pulpit one Sunday to preach, found, after giving out the psalm,
that he had forgotten his sermon. I do not know what his objections were
to his leaving the pulpit, and going to the manse for his sermon, but he
preferred sending his old confidential housekeeper for it. He
accordingly stood up in the pulpit, stopped the singing which had
commenced, and thus accosted his faithful domestic:--"Annie; I say,
Annie, _we've_ committed a mistak the day. Ye maun jist gang your waa's
hame, and ye'll get my sermon oot o' my breek-pouch, an' we'll sing to
the praise o' the Lord till ye come back again." Annie, of course, at
once executed her important mission, and brought the sermon out of "the
breek-pouch," and the service, so far as we heard, was completed without
further interruption.
My dear friend, the late Rev. Dr. John Hunter, told me an anecdote very
characteristic of the unimaginative matter-of-fact Scottish view of
matters. One of the ministers of Edinburgh, a man of dry humour, had a
daughter who had for some time passed the period of youth and of
beauty. She had become an Episcopalian, an event which the Doctor
accepted with much good-nature, and he was asking her one day if she did
not intend to be confirmed. "Well," she said, "I don't know. I
understand Mr. Craig always kisses the candidates whom he prepares, and
I could not stand that." "Indeed, Jeanie," said the Doctor slily, "gin
Edward Craig _were_ to gie ye a kiss, I dinna think ye would be muckle
the waur."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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