A country clergyman, who was not on the most friendly terms with one of his heritors who resided in Stirling, and who had annoyed the minister by delay in paying him his teinds (or tithe), found it necessary to make the laird understand that his proportion of stipend must be paid so soon as it became due.  The payment came next term punctual to the time.  When the messenger was introduced to the minister, he asked who he was, remarking that he thought he had seen him before.  “I am the hangman of Stirling, sir.”  “Oh, just so, take a seat till I write you a receipt.”  It was evident that the laird had chosen this medium of communication with the minister as an affront, and to show his spite.  The minister, however, turned the tables upon him, sending back an acknowledgment for the payment in these terms:—­“Received from Mr. ——­, by the hands of the hangman of Stirling, his doer[188], the sum of,” etc. etc.

The following story of pulpit criticism by a beadle used to be told, I am assured, by the late Rev. Dr. Andrew Thomson:—­

A clergyman in the country had a stranger preaching for him one day, and meeting his beadle, he said to him, “Well, Saunders, how did you like the sermon to-day?” “I watna, sir; it was rather ower plain and simple for me.  I like thae sermons best that jumbles the joodgment and confoonds the sense.  Od, sir, I never saw ane that could come up to yoursell at that.”

The epithet “canny” has frequently been applied to our countrymen, not in a severe or invidious spirit, but as indicating a due regard to personal interest and safety.  In the larger edition of Jamieson (see edition of 1840) I find there are no fewer than eighteen meanings given of this word.  The following extract from a provincial paper, which has been sent me, will furnish a good illustration.  It is headed, the “PROPERTY QUALIFICATION,” and goes on—­“Give a chartist a large estate, and a copious supply of ready money, and you make a Conservative of him.  He can then see the other side of the moon, which he could never see before.  Once, a determined Radical in Scotland, named Davy Armstrong, left his native village; and many years afterwards, an old fellow grumbler met him, and commenced the old song.  Davy shook his head.  His friend was astonished, and soon perceived that Davy was no longer a grumbler, but a rank Tory.  Wondering at the change, he was desirous of knowing the reason.  Davy quietly and laconically replied—­’I’ve a coo (cow) noo.’”

But even still more “canny” was the eye to the main chance in an Aberdonian fellow-countryman, communicated in the following pleasant terms from a Nairn correspondent:—­“I have just been reading your delightful ‘Reminiscences,’ which has brought to my recollection a story I used to hear my father tell.  It was thus:—­A countryman in a remote part of Aberdeenshire having got a newly-coined sovereign in the days when such a thing was seldom seen in his part of the country,