Old Mortality | Page 4

was a great deal of the old
Adam. That such a man should so resent the insolence of a soldier is far
from improbable, and our sympathies are with Burley on this occasion.
Mause Headrigg is next criticised. Scott never asserted that she was a
representative of sober Presbyterianism. She had long conducted
herself prudently, but, when she gave way to her indignation, she only
used such language as we find on many pages of Wodrow, in the
mouths of many Covenanters. Indeed, though Manse is undeniably
comic, she also commands as much respect as the Spartan mother when
she bids her only son bear himself boldly in the face of torture. If Scott
makes her grotesque, he also makes her heroic. But Dr. McCrie could
not endure the ridiculous element, which surely no fair critic can fail to
observe in the speeches of the gallant and courageous, but not
philosophical, members of the Covenant's Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie
talks of "the creeping loyalty of the Cavaliers." "Staggering" were a
more appropriate epithet. Both sides were loyal to principle, both
courageous; but the inappropriate and promiscuous scriptural language
of many Covenanters was, and remains, ridiculous. Let us admit that
the Covenanters were not averse to all games. In one or two sermons
they illustrate religion by phrases derived from golf!
When Dr. McCrie exclaims, in a rich anger, "Your Fathers!" as if

Scott's must either have been Presbyterians or Cavaliers, the retort is
cleverly put by Sir Walter in the mouth of Jedediah. His ancestors of
these days had been Quakers, and persecuted by both parties.
Throughout the novel Scott keeps insisting that the Presbyterians had
been goaded into rebellion, and even into revenge, by cruelty of
persecution, and that excesses and bloodthirstiness were confined to the
"High Flyers," as the milder Covenanters called them. Morton
represents the ideal of a good Scot in the circumstances. He comes to
be ashamed of his passive attitude in the face of oppression. He stands
up for "that freedom from stripes and bondage" which was claimed, as
you may read in Scripture, by the Apostle Paul, and which every man
who is free-born is called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of
his countrymen. The terms demanded by Morton from Monmouth
before the battle of Bothwell Bridge are such as Scott recognises to be
fair. Freedom of worship, and a free Parliament, are included.
Dr. McCrie's chief charges are that Scott does not insist enough on the
hardships and brutalities of the persecution, and that the ferocity of the
Covenanters is overstated. He does not admit that the picture drawn of
"the more rigid Presbyterians" is just. But it is almost impossible to
overstate the ferocity of the High Flyers' conduct and creed. Thus
Wodrow, a witness not quite unfriendly to the rigid Presbyterians,
though not high-flying enough for Patrick Walker, writes "Mr. Tate
informs me that he had this account front Mr. Antony Shau, and others
of the Indulged; that at some time, under the Indulgence, there was a
meeting of some people, when they resolved in one night . . . to go to
every house of the Indulged Ministers and kill them, and all in one
night." This anecdote was confirmed by Mr. John Millar, to whose
father's house one of these High Flyers came, on this errand. This
massacre was not aimed at the persecutors, but at the Poundtexts. As to
their creed, Wodrow has an anecdote of one of his own elders, who told
a poor woman with many children that "it would be an uncouth mercy"
if they were all saved.
A pleasant evangel was this, and peacefully was it to have been
propagated!
Scott was writing a novel, not history. In "The Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border" (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the
persecutions. "Had the system of coercion been continued until our day,

Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only
discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along
a deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted
became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious." He did not, in his romance,
draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by
that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish
blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie's mind,
is "a mere farce," because it is enlivened by Manse's declamations.
Scott displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as
literature may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because
Macbriar, the tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent
person should have been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He
never remarks that Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his