I DO not suppose that one out of every ten Scotsmen has ever heard of Drumscondie, seeing that it is only a little bit of a place (I call it a village; but the inhabitants thereof dignify it with the appellation of “town”), occupying an obscure corner of what many regard as the most obscure county on the east coast of Scotland. At the present time, it has little about it to attract notice from the busy world around, but this was not always the case. In the days when the stern and masterful Douglases were lords paramount of that part of the country, when——

Drumscondie was a Burgh of Barony, owning allegiance to them; its Baron Baillie, who was their appointee, held his courts there, and executed summary judgment, when the need arose; its chapelry, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, was an appanage of the parish church of St. Michael of Glendouglas, the rector of which held a prebendal stall in the Cathedral of St. Andrews.

In the eighteenth, and in the early days of the nineteenth century, the village was a centre of the domestic hand-loom industry, and boasted of a population of five hundred souls.

By the time that I became its rector, the weaving trade was little more than a memory; but there were still not a few roofless cottages that were pointed out as the weaving shops of worthies whose names were quoted with unction by the fathers of the village. They must have been a lively lot—these old weavers!

I can recall vividly, as if it were yesterday, a night I spent by the bedside of old David Grant, who soon afterwards passed over to the great majority. My wife had stayed with him during the first watch, and had gone home, leaving her patient sleeping peacefully. I was sitting by the peatfire reading, when a sound from the boxbed caused me to spring to my feet. The old man had got out of bed, and was making his way to the outer door, a stout oaken cudgel in his hand. I sprang forward to intercept him, as I could see he was in a state of delirium; and, should he get outside, it might mean sudden death from exposure. I managed to get in front of him, and was about to push him backwards towards the bed, when he raised the stick, and aimed a blow which would have felled me had it fallen on my head. Closing in upon him I managed, after a struggle, to get him back among the blankets where he lay panting.

“Where were you going, David?” I said.

“Could ye not leave me alane, man? I was gaun doon to Lucky Begg’s to redd the row; there’s a fecht on among the weyvers, and they’ll kill wee Johnnie Chisholm. He can haud his ain, if he gets fair play but there’s aboot half a dizzen o’ them at him. What’ll folk think if I’m no there when there’s sic ongauns?”

When David was well, and able to hold a conversation, he beguiled many an evening for me with his reminiscences of bygone days. It was from him that I got the bulk of my information regarding my own church when I first settled down there.

“Wha can tell you better than me, Maister Gray? I was born here, an’ brocht up here, and, although I’ve been a bit of a rovin’ blade, I’ve spent the maist o’ my days here. There’s the remains o’ ither three Episcopal kirks here. Ye ken that auld dyke o’ stanes an’ clay; weel, that was the back wa’ o’ the hoose that was used for a kirk when Maister Petrie was the minister in the ’45; but when the Bluidy Cumberland cam’ by on his road to fecht Prince Charlie, he set fire to the auld biggin’, and took Maister Petrie doon to Stanehyve, whaur he put him into the jail, doon aside the harbor. There was ither twa ministers in the jail wi’ him; and what do ye think the Episcopalians did when they wantit to get their bairns baptized? They stood outside the jail window on a bit o’ rock; and ane o’ the men that was a gey strong chield, held up a fisher’s creel wi’ the bairnie in ’t, an’ the minister bapteezed it throw the bars o’ the jail window.

“Weel, efter the awfu’ defeat at Culloden, the Episcopalians had to keep very quiet, for you see their religion wis proscribed. Noo and then Bishop Watson wad come roon’ in his auld gig, and haud a service in some o’ the hooses. But he was watched sae closely by the government folk, that he couldna even cairry his communion vessels except in a secret box below the seat o’ the gig. Ye ken that pewter cup and plate in the press in your vestry; that belanged to Bishop Skinner, the son o’ auld ‘Tullochgorum.’ Mony’s the time that he’s used it here when he would be veesitin’ some o’ his freens.

“Aboot 1790 things were a wee bit quaieter, and they got anither kirk—that’s it biggit on to the gable o’ The Home. I can mind my auld mither takin’ me there to a service when I was a bairn. It had an ootside stane stair that led up to the gallery. We were sittin’ in the gallery, an’ I was putten oot ’cause I let my ball row doon on the heids o’ the folk below.

“Syne, in the year efter Waterloo they biggit the auld kirk that is noo a pairt o’ your parsonage. I helpit to dig the foondation o’t. Oh, man, but the Episcopalians were prood when it was biggit! The maist o’ the weyvers cam’ there to worship, aye, an’ they cam’ frae a’ the fishin’ toons alang the coast. Mony a time have I been sent by John Duncan, the beadle, to see if the fishers were near at hand afore he would begin to ring the last bell for the mornin’ service.

“Yer present kirk—oh! it was biggit about twenty years ago. Aye, it’s a rael bonnie kirk; but, for me, I aye likit the auld ane best.”

You can easily understand how deeply interested I was in all this local church history, and how I valued the honor of serving in such historic ground.

Sometimes David’s reminiscences took a distinctly secular turn. He would tell me of the old coaching days, when the four-in-hand, tooled by Archie Hepburn, in scarlet coat and topboots, passed through the village twice a week, and was the only regular event of importance in their quiet lives; how, as soon as the toot of the guard’s horn was heard, every weaver flung down his shuttle and hurried to the Douglas Arms to get the newspapers and hear the news; and how, in Lucky Begg’s bar-parlor, there was keen competition for the honor of entertaining the coachman and guard.

“There was aye plenty o’ hame-brewed ale on coach days,” David would say, “and yet ye hardly ever saw onybody the waur o’t. An’ sic a collyshangie there would be, ilka ane tryin’ to get the news that maist interested him. Peter Wyllie—man, what a cratur he was, aye arguin’ aboot politics;—he was terrible taen up aboot the Reform Bill, and bude to ken the latest news aboot it. Syne there was Jamie Polson—Jamie was an elder, and wis awfu’ keen on the Patronage question, that brocht on the disruption o’ the free kirk in 1843. Mony a wordy war did Archie and him hae aboot that.

“I tell you, Maister Gray, there was some stir in the toon on coach days; and, even when the coach set oot doon the south road to Embro, there was little mair work dune that day.”

Most of the weavers were also crofters, and farmed a few acres of land, enough to provide them with oatmeal for the year, and a winter’s feed for the cows that supplied the family with milk. There was a piece of common land, called the “bogs,” and every crofter had a right to pasture his cow there. A boy collected the cattle by the blasts of a well-battered horn, and, driving them before him to the pastureland, herded them there till noon. The whole band re-formed in procession and retraced their steps to their respective byres, where buxom matrons in “soo-backit mutches,” relieved them of their burden of milk. In the afternoon, the same programme was gone through; and so it went on, through the long sunny days of summer and autumn, and was only discontinued when the snows and frosts of winter made grazing out of the question.

To one who had spent a number of years amid the din and dust, the sins and sorrows of city life, this return to Arcadian simplicity was very welcome.

Seven very happy years I spent there, and many a valuable lesson did I learn from the descendants of the loyal churchmen who had stood by their lawful prince in his hour of need, and had given loving and devoted heed to the godly teaching of their faithful though persecuted pastors. It was in these days I began to realize the full import of Tertullian’s words: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and the more we are mowed down the more we grow.” The older generation of churchfolks were churchfolks from stern conviction; they would let nothing stand between them and the Apostolic Faith. I had not been long settled in Drumscondie when I had an opportunity of noting the soundness of the early training that had been given to those old folks by my predecessors of long ago. Old Sandy Barras, who had been the treasurer of the congregation for over half a century, was nearing his end, and I called to see him. After reading the service for the visitation of the sick, I talked to him for a little, and in the course of conversation, I received this bit of advice:

“Whatever ye do, Mr. Gray, teach the bairns the Collects and the Psalms. When I was young and strong, I thocht that a’ this learnin’ by rote wis juist nonsense—a parrot could do that. But, sir, since God has laid me doon on a bed o’ sickness, and often I’m no able to get a bit o’ sleep the hale nicht through, I’m mair than thankful that I can say the Psalms an’ the Church’s prayers without a book; they’ve been a great comfort to me.”

It was not many days before I was sent for to administer the Holy Communion for the last time to this faithful old Churchman. I shall never forget the scene that greeted me when I entered the room. It was on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, and there had been a celebration in church. We used the old Scotch Communion Office at Drumscondie, which provides for Reservation for the Sick; and so I wended my way through the village, carrying the Communion vessels. All who saw me knew whither I was going, and no one spoke. When I entered the sick chamber I felt as if I were entering a sacred place. Everything was so spotlessly neat and clean; the dying man was slightly raised in bed, and his eager look betokened anticipated joy and peace. A small table, covered with an immaculately white cloth, had on it a bowl of beautiful winter flowers. None in that household knew anything of what is now known as “Catholic” ritual; but they had a grip of the Christian verities that made them instinctively do everything “in decency and order”; aye, more, they recognized the special presence of the Divine, and no trouble was too great to give expression to the honor which was to be theirs.

Sandy Barras was my first friend in Drumscondie; no one respected my office more than he; and when he gave me his counsel, as he often did, it was never in a dictatorial way, but as an aged servant of God would advise a young brother and seek to keep him from falling into such mistakes as are liable to spring from inexperience.

He was my first, but by no means my only staunch friend in my new charge; of some of the others I may speak another day.