Part 15 (1/2)
”'Tis true, 'tis _peaty_, 'tis _peaty_ 'tis, 'tis true.”
On all sides in the country you see acre after acre of bog, dripping with moisture and exuding black runnels whenever the spade of the peat-cutter begins to slice its fibrous bulk. Should a wayfarer leave the road by mishap after nightfall, he would soon be plunging in the treacherous mora.s.ses. It is well for him to have a lantern swinging at his girdle when the sun has gone down.
Such are the reflections suggested by a view of the country between Lerwick and the little clachan of Quarff.
QUARFF.
Quarff is the headquarters of a minister who is said to be the only extempore preacher in Shetland, if the word can be appropriately applied to one who, being blind, has to prepare his sermons in ”the quick forge and working-house of thought” without the succour of books. This gentleman spent long years in the little islets called _Skerries_, and, like a miniature Augustine or Columba, claims to have been the first to preach the sublime truths of Christianity on these limestone formations.
Though blind, he enjoys his pipe, and I had a smoke with him at the fireside. Between the puffs, he indulged in a furious onslaught on the Lord Chancellor and the Wee Frees. Lord Halsbury he considered a poor, benighted creature, who didn't know the difference between a Trades Union and a body of Christians. ”_If he ever comes to Shetland_,” said the minister, ”_he had better bring his woolsack with him, for I won't let him down soft!_” After Lord Halsbury had been adequately trounced, the talk turned on notable things that had happened in the district within the last decade or two. One of the tales (which was very divertingly told) had to do with the trite subject of intemperance, but as it contains one or two novel touches, I here briefly rehea.r.s.e it.
An elder of the place, who, with his trap, had come to grief one market night on the way back from Lerwick, told his session a strange tale to account for the catastrophe. ”When I got to Lerwick in the forenoon, I said to the driver: 'Young man, if I mistake not, you have had no tip from me for a long time.' 'That's very true, sir,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'there's half-a-crown; go and spend it judiciously.' During the day I transacted business with various friends, omitting none of the usual rites. About five o'clock my driver returned, and harnessed the horse for the return journey. At first I thought he had brought his brother with him, but, on rubbing my eyes, I found it was an optical delusion.
As I watched him narrowly, I saw the outlines of a bottle bulging out from his b.u.t.toned coat, and distinctly heard, as he moved to and fro, the gurgling sound of liquid in agitation. He was smiling in self-approval, and when I reproved him for his slowness, he quoted Habakkuk v. 5, 'Hurry no man's cattle,' adding that his authority was the Revised Version. As we went rattling along the road, his tricks were fantastic in the extreme. At a point about two miles from Lerwick, I saw, a little in front of us, a tall individual enveloped in a long waterproof, of which the collar was turned up to cover his ears. The eyes of this person glowed like live coal as he peremptorily demanded a lift. Not waiting for permission, he, with a sudden spring, vaulted on the trap and squeezed himself between the driver and myself. The air grew hot and close. The driver became ten times friskier than before. I determined to unmask the unceremonious stranger, and, putting down my hand, grasped him by the foot. He had no boots on, and what I seized was a cloven hoof. I asked him there and then if he was Beelzebub. 'I am,'
said he, 'and clever and all as you are, it will take all your talents to slip out of my clutches this night.' At this point there is a blank in my souvenirs. I only remember sparks flying and the sensation of falling down from my seat on to a steep embankment. On recovering consciousness, I found myself lying on a crofter's bed, with aching limbs. I told him the story of my escape, and he said, after hearing it: 'We live in troublous times, John, and the Arch-deceiver seems to be off the chain. Watch and pray, or you may fall further next time.'”
”THAT HOLY MAN, NOAH.”
Particular stories are suggested by the place where one first heard them. This profound remark is worked out in detail by Sir William Hamilton and Professor Sully. As I look at the map of the road I traversed that day, I am reminded of certain anecdotes retailed by my genial and reverend guide.
”After leaving college,” said he, ”I was appointed a.s.sistant to a worthy D.D. who regarded the higher critics as a species of vermin. h.e.l.l with him was not a mere unpleasant state pa.s.sed in _this_ world, but an actual raging bonfire specially prepared for everyone who could not repeat the Shorter Catechism. The paris.h.i.+oners of this worthy man were, in consequence, devoutly orthodox, and had, one and all, a keen nose for bad doctrine. They did not like to be fobbed off with a sermon of the spineless order; they liked bones, blood, and fire--not a mosaic of cheery quotations from Tennyson about the larger hope and about worms not being cloven in vain. They had also a great liking for the patriarchs, especially Noah. By ill luck, I spoke one Sunday on the patriarchs, and handled them pretty roughly. I felt that sacred enthusiasm which every man feels in denouncing the sins of others. I gave the Captain of the Ark a special lick of tar. This sermon caused a mighty commotion in the district. I might as well have a.s.serted that the paraphrases were inspired, or that Sankey's hymns were canonical. I could see that the elders began to look coldly upon me. In barn and byre little groups discussed my preaching, and there was much wagging of the head and shooting out of the lip. A deputation came out of a potato-field to me one day as I was walking along the road, and the leader, an old theological crofter, said bluntly: 'Your sermons are not pleasing us, if you please, sir.' 'Is the doctrine bad?' I asked. 'Not exactly that, but the folk say it's very unseemly.' 'What special sermon do they object to?' 'They think you're not sound on that holy man, Noah.' 'Do they go the length of saying Noah was perfect?' 'They don't just go that length; but, while admitting Noah was human, they desire'
(here the old man raised his head, shut his eyes, and shouted) 'to hear no more from a young inexperienced lad like you, a single word about the patriarch's shortcomings. The man was a patriarch, and therefore a saint. Talk about his virtues as much as you like, but don't fash about his trespa.s.ses, there's a good boy, I speak as your friend.'”
FLADIBISTER.
When my friend had delivered himself of this story, he pointed with his pipe to a little confused collection of low, thatched cottages which we were rapidly approaching on the left, and, oblivious of Noah, went thus musing on: ”You are now in the charmed domain of Fladibisteria, of which the core or citadel, as it were, is this village of Fladibister. This is no settlement of Nors.e.m.e.n: no, this is a Celtic nook where second sight and such witchcraft flourished not so many years ago. Did not the minister once rebuke them for their spells and mystic whims by aptly applying to them the words of St. Paul to the Galatians: '_Oh, foolish Fladibisterians, who hath bewitched you?_' There is an atmosphere of tranquillity and Arcadian peace swimming over Fladibister such as is nowhere else to be found in Shetland. The young men of the place roam far over the sea, as mariners and fishers; but like the exiled Jacobite--
'Who sighed at Arno for his lovelier Tees,'
they never feel happy till they are back home here under the roofs of thatch. And what a work their women folks make with them when they return! What feasting and merrymaking! What s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g of fiddle-pegs, nimble motion of elbows and long-sustained dancing and skipping. I don't deny that there is clink of gla.s.ses, too, at times, to aid the pa.s.sage of the hours far past the noon of night.”
CUNNINGSBURGH.
Cunningsburgh, the journey to which was shortened by these tales, is one of those places you might pa.s.s through without being aware of it; that is to say, there is no feature about it so startling or abrupt as to impress itself at once on the attention. The district all round is well tilled, and the houses bien and comfortable.
The minister of the place arrests the attention instantly. His genial face and hearty handshake have a more Christianising effect on the soul than a ton of sermons. I have never heard a more kindly voice or seen a face in which tenderness, merriment, and intellectual keenness, were all so harmoniously blended. He does not smoke himself, but has that wise and wide perception of things which leads him to press those who are anxious to smoke, but say they are not, to take out their pipes in his drawing-room. It was easy to see the man he was, by a hasty look at his book-shelves. All the philosophers were represented there, from Plato to the present-day mystical Germans. Lang's _Odyssey_ was side by side with the Icelandic sagas and the Song of the Niebelungs. I did not see many books of Systematic Theology; but the Greek tragedians, the Sacred Books of the East, German and French novels, had all a place in the bookcase of this cosmopolitan clergyman of a remote Shetlandic parish.
”KEEPING OFF.”
In secluded towns.h.i.+ps like Cunningsburgh where life's round has much of the monotony of fas.h.i.+onable society, and involves a still recurring succession of similar duties, the minister is indeed a power. If he is a man of broad and enlightened mind, his influence for good is incalculable. The Kirk-Session is a permanent Court of Justice, taking cognisance of minor matters of morality, and enforcing its decisions by religious sanctions. To be barred from partic.i.p.ating in the communion rites might not seem a very alarming punishment to the easy-going Lowlander; but to a Shetland peasant, being _keepit off_, as it is technically called, is a terrible and humiliating penalty. A crofter came to the manse to complain about his wife's unruly and satirical tongue. ”But what can I do to her?” said the minister, ”she's your wife, and you must a.s.sert your authority.” ”I've tried everything,” said the man, ”but she still continues to be a troubler in Israel.” The minister professed his inability to interfere. ”I can do nothing at all,” he said. ”Yes you can,” said the crofter, with a wink and a fearful whisper, ”_You can keep her off!_”
THE INDIGNANT ELDER.
Since the Reformation the people have lived and thriven under the jurisdiction of the Session. In the records of the Session one finds a chronicle of the sins, eccentricities, and merriments of the people for the last two or three centuries. Several incidents based on these minutes will make what I say abundantly clear. The Quarrel of the Elder and the Minister's Housekeeper, for example, convulsed a still remoter parish in much the same overmastering way as the Dreyfus Trial agitated Paris. Herodotus is the only author I can think of who could have done justice to this northern _affaire_. Let me briefly summarise it. Between the minister's garden and that of one of his elders ran what was termed a hedge. The shrubs which formed the base of this hedge were so ill-grown that the minister's fowls could easily go, clucking and sc.r.a.ping, from one garden into the other. Evidence was given to prove that the cabbages and pot-herbs in the elder's plot were torn and spoiled in parts. Every morning he stood at a gap in the hedge and sang aloud like a skipper in a storm or Achilles at the trench of the Greeks: ”I am being ruined and brought to poverty by the minister's hens.” This cry grated upon the ears of the manse housekeeper, who by and by thought it her duty to go out and reason with the elder. ”It's no' the minister's hens ava that's to blame, it's the craws o' the firmament.”
”It's the hens.” ”No, the craws.” ”Hens I declare!” ”You're a _deceitful impostor_!” said the housekeeper. Now, no self-respecting elder could stand that. Boiling with wrath as he was, he remembered his ecclesiastical status, merely remarking that there was work for the Session at last. By nightfall he had been in every croft within the Session's jurisdiction, laying off his tale in each, and as he got practice and more vehemence with constant repet.i.tion, he attained extreme fluency and impressiveness before the day was done. An unspeakable joy came over the community at the prospect of a delicious scandal. To avoid the breach being healed by an apology, many of the crofters sought to envenom the quarrel by refusing to believe that the elder was altogether right. ”Crows,” they said, ”had been known to play havoc with cabbage. Elders were but human, and so, hasty in laying charges on insufficient evidence. The case was certainly one for the Church courts. The housekeeper must have a good defence to make, and would no doubt make it at the proper time and in the proper place. We must hear both sides.” One may see by this that the spirit which animates a great nation (the desire, namely, to divert itself with the contentions of those who come before the public eye), animates also the smallest communities in the realm. The great pa.s.sion-stirring process, _Hens versus Crows_, lasted for some seven months. Over and over again the hedge was examined. Now the elder thought he had the best of it, only to be damped by a revulsion of feeling in favour of the housekeeper. The finding of the Session was adverse to the lady. The fact that she had practically called the elder a son of Belial could not be got over. The minister, holding the scales of justice, was forced, in spite of himself, to declare against her. Considering her position, some mildness was shown in p.r.o.nouncing her condemnation and the penalty.
Having regard to the dignity of the offended man, nothing less than the sentence of _keeping off_ could meet the ends of ecclesiastical law. But one ”keeping off” was deemed adequate. The elder was avenged. At the ensuing communion, he was seen to smile and rub his hands diabolically, as he glanced towards the back of the church, where sat, outside the pale of the privileged elect, the unhappy and vanquished housekeeper, who had called him an impostor.