Part 19 (1/2)

=A Highland Servant Girl and the Kitchen Bell=

Some years ago a lady engaged a domestic servant from the Highlands. In the evening the lady wanted supper brought in, so she rang the bell.

Not getting any answer, she repeated the summons, but with the same effect. She then proceeded to the kitchen, where to her amazement she found the servant almost convulsed with laughter. She pointed to the bell and exclaimed: ”As sure's I leeve I never touched it, an' its waggin' yet!”

=Not Necessarily Out of His Depth=

In Scotland the topic of a sermon, or discourse is called by old-fas.h.i.+oned folk ”its ground,” or, as they would say, ”its grund.” An old woman, bustling into kirk rather late, found the preacher had commenced, and opening her Bible, nudged her next neighbor, with the inquiry: ”What's the grund?”

”Oh,” rejoined the other, who happened to be a brother minister, and therefore a privileged critic, ”he's lost his grund long since, and he's just swimming.”

=Scotch Literalness=

”You must beware,” says Charles Lamb, ”of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. I have a print, a graceful female, after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. ----. After he had examined it, I asked him how he liked 'my beauty' (a name it goes by among my friends), when he very gravely a.s.sured me that he 'had very considerable respect for my character and talents'--so he was pleased to say--'but had not given himself much thought for the degree of my personal pretensions.'”

=A Scotch ”Native”=

”Are you a native of this parish?” asked a Scotch sheriff of a witness who was summoned to testify in a case of illicit distilling.

”Maistly, yer honor,” was the reply.

”I mean, were you born in this parish?”

”Na, yer honor; I wasna born in this parish, but I'm maist a native for a' that.”

”You come here when you were a child, I suppose you mean?” said the sheriff.

”Na, sir, I'm just here about sax year, noo.”

”Then how do you come to be nearly a native of this parish?”

”Weel, ye see, whan I cam' here, sax year sin', I jist weighed eight stane, an' I'm fully seventeen stane noo; sae ye see that about nine stane a' me belangs to this parish an' the ither eight comes frae Camlachie.”

=”A Call to a Wider Sphere”=

An old Highland clergyman, who had received several calls to parishes, asked his servant where he should go. His servant said: ”Go where there is most sin, sir.”

The preacher concluded that good advice, and went where there was most money.

=Why Janet Slept During Her Pastor's Sermon=

Dean Ramsay tells the following quaint story of Scotch life:

There was a worthy old woman at Cults, whose place in church was what is commonly called the lateran--a kind of senate gallery at the top of the pulpit stairs. She was a most regular attendant, but as regularly fell asleep during the sermon, of which fault the preacher had sometimes audible intimation.

It was observed, however, that though Janet slept during her own pastor's discourse, she could be attentive enough when she pleased, and especially was she alert when some young preacher occupied the pulpit. A little piqued at this, Mr. Gillespie said to her one day: ”Janet, I think you hardly behave respectfully to your own minister in one matter.”