Lady Macneil supplies an excellent pendant to Miss Stewart’s story about the jack going on the Sunday.  Her henwife had got some Dorking fowls, and on Lady M. asking if they were laying many eggs, she replied, with great earnestness, “Indeed my leddy, they lay every day, no’ excepting the blessed Sabbath.”

There were, however, old persons at that time who were not quite so orthodox on the point of Sabbath observance; and of these a lady residing in Dumfries was known often to employ her wet Sundays in arranging her wardrobe.  “Preserve us!” she said on one occasion, “anither gude Sunday!  I dinna ken whan I’ll get thae drawers redd up.”

In connection with the awful subject of death and all its concomitants, it has been often remarked that the older generation of Scottish people used to view the circumstances belonging to the decease of their nearest and dearest friends with a coolness which does not at first sight seem consistent with their deep and sincere religious impressions.  Amongst the peasantry this was sometimes manifested in an extraordinary and startling manner.  I do not believe that those persons had less affection for their friends than a corresponding class in England, but they had less awe of the concomitants of death, and approached them with more familiarity.  For example, I remember long ago at Fasque, my sister-in-law visiting a worthy and attached old couple, of whom the husband, Charles Duncan, who had been gardener at Fasque for above thirty years was evidently dying.  He was sitting on a common deal chair, and on my sister proposing to send down for his use an old arm-chair which she recollected was laid up in a garret, his wife exclaimed against such a needless trouble:  “Hout, my leddy, what would he be duin’ wi’ an arm-chair? he’s just deein’ fast awa.”  I have two anecdotes, illustrative of the same state of feeling, from a lady of ancient Scottish family accustomed to visit her poor dependants on the property, and to notice their ways.  She was calling at a decent cottage, and found the occupant busy carefully ironing out some linens.  The lady remarked, “Those are fine linens you have got there, Janet.”  “Troth, mem,” was the reply, “they’re just the gudeman’s deed claes, and there are nane better i’ the parish.”  On another occasion, when visiting an excellent woman, to condole with her on the death of her nephew, with whom she had lived, and whose loss must have been severely felt by her, she remarked, “What a nice white cap you have got, Margaret.”  “Indeed, mem, ay, sae it is; for ye see the gude lad’s winding sheet was ower lang, and I cut aff as muckle as made twa bonny mutches” (caps).

There certainly was a quaint and familiar manner in which sacred and solemn subjects were referred to by the older Scottish race, who did not mean to be irreverent, but who no doubt appeared so to a more refined but not really a more religious generation.