He used to describe school scenes rather different, I suspect, from school scenes in our day.  One boy, on coming late, explained that the cause had been a regular pitched battle between his parents, with the details of which he amused his school-fellows; and he described the battle in vivid and Scottish Homeric terms:  “And eh, as they faucht, and they faucht,” adding, however, with much complacency, “but my minnie dang, she did tho’.”

There was a style of conversation and quaint modes of expression between ministers and their people at that time, which, I suppose, would seem strange to the present generation; as, for example, I recollect a conversation between this relative and one of his parishioners of this description.—­It had been a very wet and unpromising autumn.  The minister met a certain Janet of his flock, and accosted her very kindly.  He remarked, “Bad prospect for the har’st (harvest), Janet, this wet.” Janet—­“Indeed, sir, I’ve seen as muckle as that there’ll be nae har’st the year.” Minister—­“Na, Janet, deil as muckle as that’t ever you saw.”

As I have said, he was a clergyman of the Established Church, and had many stories about ministers and people, arising out of his own pastoral experience, or the experience of friends and neighbours.  He was much delighted with the not very refined rebuke which one of his own farmers had given to a young minister who had for some Sundays occupied his pulpit.  The young man had dined with the farmer in the afternoon when services were over, and his appetite was so sharp, that he thought it necessary to apologise to his host for eating so substantial a dinner.—­“You see,” he said, “I am always very hungry after preaching.”  The old gentleman, not much admiring the youth’s pulpit ministrations, having heard this apology two or three times, at last replied sarcastically, “Indeed, sir, I’m no surprised at it, considering the trash that comes aff your stamach in the morning.”

What I wish to keep in view is, to distinguish anecdotes which are amusing on account merely of the expressions used, from those which have real wit and humour combined, with the purely Scottish vehicle in which they are conveyed.

Of this class I could not have a better specimen to commence with than the defence of the liturgy of his church, by John Skinner of Langside, of whom previous mention has been made.  It is witty and clever.

Being present at a party (I think at Lord Forbes’s), where were also several ministers of the Establishment, the conversation over their wine turned, among other things, on the Prayer Book.  Skinner took no part in it, till one minister remarked to him, “The great faut I hae to your prayer-book is that ye use the Lord’s Prayer sae aften,—­ye juist mak a dishclout o’t.”  Skinner’s rejoinder was, “Verra true!  Ay, man, we mak a dishclout o’t, an’ we wring’t, an’ we wring’t, an’ we wring’t, an’ the bree[163] o’t washes a’ the lave o’ our prayers.”