Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/99

Rh The return journey to the house was more boisterous, for it was entered amid the fusillade of rusty guns, only brought out at the Hansel Monday sports. I saw only once this old-fashioned rural wedding. The guns were fired at the door of the village inn where the bridal party dined. The lamp over the door was smashed under fire. The groom was often unequal to the greatness thrust upon him. Like Hendry in the "Window in Thrums," he failed to see what a man body had to do wi' mainers. Chalmers used to tell of a wedding in the fishing village of Buckhaven (Buckhine) at which the groom quite forgot the responses, when a more experienced friend's stage whisper was heard, "Ye eediwat, can ye no boo!" This Chalmers called "the heavings of incipient civilisation."

Small was the share of the minister in these socialities. A big voice had early betrayed his destiny. Though so many of the leaders of thought were college bred, academic terms have taken little or no hold of the people. One who had been to the college was looked up to with respect, but only he himself knew that he began as a bejant, and finished graduand. At Aberdeen, according to Beattie, an undergraduate was known in last century as a libertine (Lat. libertus, a freedman). A learned alumnus whom I have consulted on this point says, "Obviously you have struck a dodo." If he ettled at the Kirk he went through the Divinity Hall, where the great object was to acquire extempore gifts, for reading the discourse was the unpardonable sin. Great was the labour then of committing sermons to memory—manding (Lat. mandare) as it was long called in the U.P. Church. And if success followed he issued from the Presbytery examination a licentiate, and thereafter a probationer, and finally, an ordained or placed minister, with the privilege of wearing bands. I have a vision, as a little boy, of standing in the dimly lit street before a house, fascinated by the sight of a figure, casting a darkened shadow on the window as it passed and re-passed. It was a son of the house, qualifying for the pulpit by manding his discourse. In later days I saw, high up on a rock by Loch Lomond side, a similar exercise. Pleased faces of kindly neighbours were looking out the while from the doors of the paternal homestead not far off. In this case I could but see the elocutionary gestures,