The Annals of the Parish | Page 8

Chelsea Hospital, he happened
to speak to some of the invalids, who found out from his tongue that he
was a Scotchman; and speaking to the invalids, one of them, a very old
man, with a grey head and a leg of timber, inquired what part of
Scotland he was come from; and when he mentioned my parish, the
invalid gave a great shout, and said he was from the same place himself;
and who should this old man be, but the very identical Rab Rickerton,
that was art and part in Meg Glaiks' disowned bairn. Then they had a
long converse together, and he had come through many hardships, but
had turned out a good soldier; and so, in his old days, was an indoor
pensioner, and very comfortable; and he said that he had, to be sure,
spent his youth in the devil's service, and his manhood in the king's, but

his old age was given to that of his Maker, which I was blithe and
thankful to hear; and he enquired about many a one in the parish, the
blooming and the green of his time, but they were all dead and buried;
and he had a contrite and penitent spirit, and read his Bible every day,
delighting most in the Book of Joshua, the Chronicles, and the Kings.
Before this year, the drinking of tea was little known in the parish,
saving among a few of the heritors' houses on a Sabbath evening; but
now it became very rife: yet the commoner sort did not like to let it be
known that they were taking to the new luxury, especially the elderly
women, who, for that reason, had their ploys in out-houses and
by-places, just as the witches lang syne had their sinful possets and
galravitchings; and they made their tea for common in the pint-stoup,
and drank it out of caps and luggies, for there were but few among
them that had cups and saucers. Well do I remember one night in
harvest, in this very year, as I was taking my twilight dauner aneath the
hedge along the back side of Thomas Thorl's yard, meditating on the
goodness of Providence, and looking at the sheaves of victual on the
field, that I heard his wife, and two three other carlins, with their Bohea
in the inside of the hedge, and no doubt but it had a lacing of the conek,
{3} for they were all cracking like pen-guns. But I gave them a sign, by
a loud host, that Providence sees all, and it skailed the bike; for I heard
them, like guilty creatures, whispering, and gathering up their
truck-pots and trenchers, and cowering away home.
It was in this year that Patrick Dilworth (he had been schoolmaster of
the parish from the time, as his wife said, of Anna Regina, and before
the Rexes came to the crown), was disabled by a paralytic, and the
heritors, grudging the cost of another schoolmaster as long as he lived,
would not allow the session to get his place supplied, which was a
wrong thing, I must say, of them; for the children of the parishioners
were obliged, therefore, to go to the neighbouring towns for their
schooling, and the custom was to take a piece of bread and cheese in
their pockets for dinner, and to return in the evening always voracious
for more, the long walk helping the natural crave of their young
appetites. In this way Mrs Malcolm's two eldest laddies, Charlie and
Robert, were wont to go to Irville, and it was soon seen that they kept

themselves aloof from the other callans in the clachan, and had a
genteeler turn than the grulshy bairns of the cottars. Her bit lassies,
Kate and Effie, were better off; for some years before, Nanse Banks
had taken up a teaching in a garret-room of a house, at the corner where
John Bayne has biggit the sclate-house for his grocery-shop. Nanse
learnt them reading and working stockings, and how to sew the semplar,
for twal-pennies a-week. She was a patient creature, well cut out for her
calling, with blear een, a pale face, and a long neck, but meek and
contented withal, tholing the dule of this world with a Christian
submission of the spirit; and her garret-room was a cordial of
cleanliness, for she made the scholars set the house in order, time and
time about, every morning; and it was a common remark for many a
day, that the lassies, who had been at Nanse Banks's school, were
always well spoken of, both for their civility, and the trigness of their
houses when they were afterwards married. In short, I do not know, that
in all the long epoch of my ministry, any individual body