sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the Covenanters themselves called “the language of Canaan,” which is put into their mouths, “a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in ecclesiastical politics.” But what other language did many of them speak? “Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord’s people to try, by mourning and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for we fear, he will depart from it.” This is the theology of a savage, in the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander Peden’s.’ Mr. John Menzie’s “Testimony” (1670) is all about “hardened men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb, yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides.” Manse Headrigg scarcely caricatures this eloquence, or Peden’s “many and long seventy-eight years left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;” while “Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom’s children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!” Dr. McCrie is reduced to supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported. Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, “repeatedly banns and minces oaths in her conversation.” This outrageous conduct of Bessie’s consists in saying “Gude protect us!” and “In Heaven’s name, who are ye?” Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. “Oh, le grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire.” Scott is later accused of not making his peasants sufficiently intelligent. Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny Dennison suffice as answers to this censure.
Probably the best points made by Dr. McCrie are his proof that biblical names were not common among the Covenanteers and that Episcopal eloquence and Episcopal superstition were often as tardy and as dark as the eloquence and superstition of the Presbyterians. He carries the war into the opposite camp, with considerable success. His best answer to “Old Mortality” would have been a novel, as good and on the whole as fair, written from the Covenanting side. Hogg attempted this reply, not to Scott’s pleasure according to the Shepherd, in “The Brownie of Bodsbeck.”
Prev.
Back
Top