Auld Licht Idylls | Page 7

Auld Lichts had reason to
be proud. Pete was an every-day man at ordinary times, and was even
said, when his wife, who had been long ill, died, to have clapped his
hands and exclaimed, "Hip, hip, hurrah!" adding only as an
afterthought, "The Lord's will be done." But midsummer was his great
opportunity. Then took place the rouping of the seats in the parish
church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the seats being put up to
auction were knocked down to the highest bidder. This sometimes led
to the breaking of the peace. Every person was present who was at all
particular as to where he sat, and an auctioneer was engaged for the day.
He rouped the kirk-seats like potato-drills, beginning by asking for a

bid. Every seat was put up to auction separately; for some were much
more run after than others, and the men were instructed by their wives
what to bid for. Often the women joined in, and as they bid excitedly
against each other the church rang with opprobrious epithets. A man
would come to the roup late, and learn that the seat he wanted had been
knocked down. He maintained that he had been unfairly treated, or
denounced the local laird to whom the seat-rents went. If he did not get
the seat he would leave the kirk. Then the woman who had forestalled
him wanted to know what he meant by glaring at her so, and the
auction was interrupted. Another member would "thrip down the
throat" of the auctioneer that he had a right to his former seat if he
continued to pay the same price for it. The auctioneer was screamed at
for favouring his friends, and at times the roup became so noisy that
men and women had to be forcibly ejected. Then was Pete's chance.
Hovering at the gate, he caught the angry people on their way home
and took them into his workshop by an outside stair. There he assisted
them in denouncing the parish kirk, with the view of getting them to
forswear it. Pete made a good many Auld Lichts in his time out of
unpromising material.
Sights were to be witnessed in the parish church at times that could not
have been made more impressive by the Auld Lichts themselves. Here
sinful women were grimly taken to task by the minister, who, having
thundered for a time against adultery in general, called upon one sinner
in particular to stand forth. She had to step forward into a pew near the
pulpit, where, alone and friendless, and stared at by the congregation,
she cowered in tears beneath his denunciations. In that seat she had to
remain during the forenoon service. She returned home alone, and had
to come back alone to her solitary seat in the afternoon. All day no one
dared speak to her. She was as much an object of contumely as the
thieves and smugglers whom, in the end of last century, it was the
privilege of Feudal Bailie Wood (as he was called) to whip round the
square.
It is nearly twenty years since the gardeners had their last "walk" in
Thrums, and they survived all the other benefit societies that walked
once every summer. There was a "weavers' walk" and five or six others,

the "women's walk" being the most picturesque. These were
processions of the members of benefit societies through the square and
wynds, and all the women walked in white, to the number of a hundred
or more, behind the Tilliedrum band, Thrums having in those days no
band of its own.
From the north-west corner of the square a narrow street sets off,
jerking this way and that as if uncertain what point to make for. Here
lurks the post-office, which had once the reputation of being as crooked
in its ways as the street itself.
A railway line runs into Thrums now. The sensational days of the
post-office were when the letters were conveyed officially in a creaking
old cart from Tilliedrum. The "pony" had seen better days than the cart,
and always looked as if he were just on the point of succeeding in
running away from it. Hooky Crewe was driver; so-called because an
iron hook was his substitute for a right arm: Robbie Proctor, the
blacksmith, made the hook and fixed it in. Crewe suffered from
rheumatism, and when he felt it coming on he stayed at home.
Sometimes his cart came undone in a snowdrift; when Hooky,
extricated from the fragments by some chance wayfarer, was deposited
with his mail-bag (of which he always kept a grip by the hook) in a
farm-house. It was his boast that his letters always reached their
destination eventually. They might be a long time about