HIGHLAND PASTORS AND THEIR FLOCKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3018, 17 January 1912, Page 99

HIGHLAND PASTORS AND THEIR FLOCKS.

OLD-TIME STORIES

That the Highlander is religious goes ■without saying. His religion has of late years given a good deal of trouble to his neighbours, ana not a few are of opinion that he would be quite as interesting a man, and perhaps a more useful citizen, if he had less of it. That may be very true, though it must not be forgotten that at one time he had none at all. and then he gave more trouble to his neighbours, nor did obligations and ideals of citizenship concern him in the least. Be that, however, as it may. His religion—and this Ls the point before us—brought him into contact, and sometimes into very active collision, with his pastor ; it was never of a kind to restrain either of them from expressing very freely his opinion of the other as circumstances demanded, and much of the Highland wit and humour may be expected to spring from the relation, close and friendly at times, -on occasions strained enough between the two. Brawn and Gaelic. —

There were two qualifications that the Highlander thought very desirable in his minister. One was, naturally enough, a good knowledge of Gaelic. He could never get above the suspicion that the minister who blundered in Gaelic was essentially a stupid man who might he counted on to blunder in most other things entrusted to him. The other, .strange as it may appear, was a tall, athletic figure. Given' two men nearly equal so far as character and pleaching ability are concerned, the well-knit, stalwart man had a bi<r advantage over a physically lessfavoured opponent. Nor is the reason for this somewhat curious predilection far to seek. . . . . It is not so long ago since physical stature and strength were the chief avenue to leadership among a race that lived chieflv by preying on its neighbours, and though the days of clan fights and cattlelifting are over, and the Celt has broken with his chief, the old instinct is still strong within him. He dearly loves height combined with physical vigour in a man, and this very mundane endowment has often helped him to make up his mind in weighing the merits of a batch of clerical competitors. Both the qualifications mentioned, together with a third, which most men deem essential—a good voice,—were absent in the case of the Rev. Mr Rainy, sometime parish minister of Creich, in Sutherland, and grandfather of the late famous Principal of the New College. Such, at least, was the. allegation made by the spokesman of a deputation of the Creich parishioners who came to lay their objections to him before the Presbytery : " When he enters the pulpit we cannot see him ;~~ when we see him we cannot hear him ; when we hear him we cannot understand him." The Havoc of Mispronunciation.—

The Highlander, as we have seen, lias always been suspicious of the minister who is weak in Gaelic—that is to say, if he pretends to know it at all or makes an effort to preach it. We may picture to ourselves, therefore, the consternation of the people of S»ay when a probationer, who had been sent to the island from the southern border of Perthshire, read from Leviticus. " On the first day of the month ye shall have a fight." The young man's mistake rose from pronouncing an "a" short instead of long, thereby transforming "Sabbath" into "fight." It was a small enough error in a way, but :t put an end.to that probationer's career so far a.s Soay was concerned. The terror of the Soay folk, however, was small compared to that of the worshippers in a Mull church, who were listening to a sermon based on Elijah's words to the

Israelites on Mount Garmel, " How long ihalt ye between two opinions?" The poor .minister's defective knowledge of the language made him pack the discourse with constant repetition of the text, which, to the horror of the hearers, was always given as " How long halt ye between two barrels," the Gaelic words for " opinion " and- "barrel" being somewhat similar. "Oh!"' exclaimed an old elder, when he found himself outside the church door, "may the Lord have mercy on the man who sent him to college." The late Dr Blair, when minister of the Gaelic congregation of St. Columba, in Glasgow, found himself one Sunday unable to preach, and at the eleventh hour managed to procure a substitute who, to say the least, knew English better than Gaelic. The Gaelio people, as usual, turned out in hundreds, but instead of the eloquent discourse to which they were accustomed from their own minister, they were kept hot and cold by turns throughout the service by the desperate attempts of an unknown man to make himself understood in what was to him practically a foreign tongue. The crowning touch was piven at the end, when most of the hearers imagined the danger was past. "We shall now close our worship," said the preacher, "by singing 60 calves." What he wished the congregation to sing was the 60th Paraphrase, but the language in which he expressed himself was most unfortunate. "An tri fichead lavidh " may not be very unlike "Tri fichead laogh" in appearance; but when the latter was given out from the pulpit instead of the former it made the hair of the St. Columba folk stand on end. An experience of that kind has its amusing side, and is bearable once in a while, but to be subjected to it Sunday after Sunday would be intolerable. That, however, was the fate at one time of the people of Dunvegan, in Skye. Their laird, Macleod of Macleod, appointed about 1810 as their parish minister a native of one of the Border counties, who had been tutor in his own family. Mr James Soutar, of course, knew no Gaelic, but_ when he got the parish he tried to learn it. He also attempted to preach it on Sunday, as 99 per cent., of the people knew no English" From 'all accounts, Mr Soutar's service was a unique one. For a generation the church of Dunvegan was a place of Borrow to the serious and of merriment to the careless. The bulk of t"he people lapsed during Mr Soutar's incumbency, and those who "attended had to shade their faces with their hands to hide from him the laughter or anger which they could not suppress. He wa.s lampooned mercilessly by a famous Skye fool of the period, Archie Matheson, between whom and Soutar there was an inveterate feud. Archies description of the minister's prayer we have attempted to translate :

And -when you offer your prayer, Your words are dreadful to heax. A hash of English «W*d Gaelic Makes good men shiver for fear. You gasp and mutter and etnmr&eir, lou cholto and splutter and shriek; The pert that you mouth and mumble They -say is Latin and Greek. But when you want to express it In tongues outlandish and new, And rise above the unlettered, Gesto laughs in hia pew.

Mr Soutar was eventually accused of tippling- and, much to the relief of the parish and Archie's delight, an assistant— Glass bv name—undertook the clerical duties of the parish. Both Soutar and Archie came to hear him preach his first sermon, and after service met each other at the door. " Well, Archie, how did you like the new minister?" asked Soutar. '•lt is Ion" since I warned you, Mr Soutar." replied Archie, "that the glass would do for you." ' The Highlander's opinion of hie own language and of the loss incurred by those who have the misfortune to be ignorant of it may be gauged from the following incident. " Dr Macleod of Morven, in company with a clerical friend from the Lowlands, called to see one of his parishioners who was ill. "My friend will pray with you in English."'said the doctor to him, "as he does not know Gaelic." "He cannot help that, poor man. replied the invalid, "the Almighty has not bestowed the' same talente upon everybody." Bodily stature and strength were the second qualification which the Highlander considered almost essential in his minister. There was, indeed, a time when-the minister found it more useful to him than his theological learning. It appealed to men in whom the fighting instinct was strong. ft created fear and won respect where more Christian qualities could make no impression. Stories have come down to us, many of them no doubt apocryphal, of an age when every minister was a second Samson, who kept his people in order not by Christian teaching but by physical terror. Whatever suspicion must cling to these there are enough authentic ones, some coming well within living memory which show how useful the Highland pastor found personal strength and courage in ruling his flock. Mr Pope, of Reay. who died about 1800, is still known for his antiquarian researches. When a young man he rode from Reay to Twickenham to visit his namesake the poet. The latter must have betn very favourablv impressed with the enthusiasm of the Caithness student, for he presented him on leaving with a snuffbox and a complete edition of his work. What his parishioners remembered about Mr Pope, however, was not hifi scholarship or his visit to Twickenham but his abnormal bodily strength, and bis free use among themselves of a short, stout cudgel, which he always carried about with him. and which in time became known as the "bailie." —The Bailie.— Bv an exemplary Hie. earnest preaching, and the help of the "bailie." Mr Pope in time brought his parish into some sort of shape and order. ' One man alone defied him. After every method of persuasion short of physical force was tried in vain, Mr Pope at last took extreme measures.

On a Sunday morning he sent three of his elders—men evidently after his own heart —to deal with the offender. These did their duty as becarne them. Binding him hand and foot, they carried him to the church, and tied him to the seat nearest the pulpit, where he was hailed by the triumphant minister in terms quite in keeping with the treatment already meted out to him. "Ho"! Ho! bragging son of a beggar, where are you now?" That was bad enough, but to crown all, the stinging epithet comprised in three Gaelic words clung to the man during his lifetime and to hie descendants for generations. Mr Sage, of Lochcarron, a vounger contemporary of Mr Pope, secured for himself the esteem of his parishioners and their punctual attendance at church by putting the innkeeper of the parish, hitherto its bully, after a desperate struggl flat on his back on the doorstep of a barn in which the minister had purposed holding a religious service and the innkeeper a ball. Under the weight of the minister's knee planted on his chest and pressing the breath out of him the innkeeper gave a promise which he faithfullv kept, never to interfere with Mr Sage "or his work again. —The Laird's Terror.— That old life of six score years ago was bound to pass. It took, however, some time to do it. There are many still alive who remember a time when a minister here and there had to keep the peace and assert his authoritv among some of his people by methods that are now for the most part relegated to the constable and the sheriff. A few Sundays after the secession of 1843 Mr John Mackinnon, minister of Strath, in Skye, set off to preach in the village of- Elgoll, near the well-known Loch Cbruisk. He was accosted on the way by a small laird who because of a feud between the minister and himself had become a red hot Nonlntiusunist. The lairdcaught hold of the horses bridle and attempted to turn the minister and horse round on the path. The land was his, he said, and so lonsr as he had the power ho Mackinnon would set foot in it. Remonstrance had no effect; the horse was getting restive; the minis ter's blood was up, and for the moment he forgot day and errand. "Let go the horse's bridle," he said, "or if I come down to the ground you will never eat a mouthful more." The words struck terror into the laird, and he made a rush for the house, nor did he feel himself secure till the door closed and bolted stood between him and danger.— Weeklv Scotsman.