Note 21 — I. HUMOROUS.

The subject of Sabbath observance and regular attendance at worship has long received the attention of the Scottish Church. In every part of the kingdom the Sabbath-breaker was found. The evil was to a certain extent a local one, arising from local causes, and consequently each Kirk Session framed enactments to suit its own needs. Occasionally—as Leper the Taylor sets forth—the Church called in the assistance of the civic authorities. In the records of the Guildry and Trade Incorporations of Dundee there are various references to church attendance and Sabbath observance. The Bonnetmaker Craft considered the question of the keeping of the Lord’s Day in 1665. Finding that it was not observed as it ought to have been, they passed an act rendering the brethren liable in a penalty of forty shillings for transgression of the Sabbath in any manner of way, but especially if the transgression took the form of drinking in a tavern, or of abstention from divine service. This enactment was deemed sufficient to meet the cases of brethren in ordinary, as they were called, but if the defaulter was a member of the Trade Council his sin was punishable by deposition from office. Despite these penalties, the evil continued, and eighteen years later, the same Corporation was forced to pass more stringent acts. At that time—1683—they declared it an offence to hang out bonnets, clothes, or fish to dry. Each of these articles had its own penalty. In the case of bonnets, the fine was 6/8; clothes, 4/-; and fish, 3/-. Here again attendance at church is introduced, although in an indirect way. Certain practices are declared to be punishable if they are indulged in “in time of sermon.” If water was carried from a well in time of sermon, the penalty was 8/-; gathering kail during the same period was apparently less offensive, as the fine was only 5/-. The kindly call of one neighbour on another was censured by the Craft if the visit were made “in time of sermon;” and, unless there was a good excuse, such as illness, a penalty was imposed. A first offender was mulct in a sum of 12/-; if the offence were repeated, the amount was doubled and a “rebuke before the Craft” added to it; and if the practice were indulged in a third time, the delinquent was haled before the Kirk Session, and thereafter rebuked in presence of the congregation. The civic and church authorities in Aberdeen fought the evil of Sabbath journeying by means which would appear strangely ludicrous if adopted in these days. Watchers were stationed at the various places by which citizens could pass out of the town, to take the names of those who sought to escape the sermon. Apparently the enquiries of these watchers were sometimes met with the excuse that the persons were journeying to a neighbouring church to attend service there, for we find the Session circumventing this by ordaining “that na inhabitant within the burgh sall ... go to sermons in Futtie Kirk on the Sabbath,” but resort to “their ain parish kirks” within the burgh, and hear sermons there “both before and after noone.” If they bowed to this order, it cost them the usual collection; if they preferred Futtie, they had to contribute a collection plus 6/8 of a fine, “for the use of the poor.” The penalties imposed at Stirling were more severe. In 1649 the Kirk Session of that place took into consideration the case of a citizen who bore the honourable name of “Johne Smythe.” They found him guilty of “vaiging through the fields unnecessarlie in time of sermon.” On a previous occasion Smythe had been admonished, and as the admonition had not proved a sufficient deterrent, the Session ordained him to make public repentance before the congregation for his fault, “and to stand before the pulpit all the tyme of sermon.” The Rev. George S. Tyack, B.A., in his article entitled “Discipline in the Kirk,” which appears in Mr. William Andrew’s work on By-gone Church Life in Scotland, mentions several instances of Sabbath breaking in different parts of the country. “In 1627,” he writes, “nine millers at Stow, in Midlothian, had to do public penance and pay forty shillings for that ‘their milnes did gang on the Sabbath;’ and in 1644, another miller, in Fifeshire, was sentenced to a fine of thirty shillings, with the same addition, for a similar offence. The uncertainty of the weather was not admitted as any excuse for Sunday harvesting, as is shown by a fine inflicted (together with the usual penance) upon one Alexander Russell and his servant, for ‘leading corn on the Sabbath evening,’ at Wester Balrymont. There are records of the stool of repentance being called into use for the correction of fishermen who mended their nets, of sundry people who gathered nuts, of a woman who ‘watered her kail,’ and of another who ‘seethed bark’ on a Sunday. The last named had to stand in the jagg for three Sundays as well.” An interesting case, and one with a deal of humanity in it, came before the Fraserburgh Kirk Session. A woman, the wife of one William Whyte, was accused of breaking the Sabbath by grinding corn. She admitted the charge, but pleaded that having got the “roche corn giffen her the same morning,” she ground it to satisfy the “hunger of herself and her young anes.” Even in those days of rigid observance and drastic punishment of offences, this particular Session was not wholly unfeeling. They found her guilty of the charge, but overlooked her “repentance upon ye alledgit necessitie.” Had Mrs. Whyte lived further south, she might have fared worse. The Kirk Session of Stow have an inglorious immortality in a record which states that they compelled one, William Howatson, to do public penance on account of his having walked on a Sunday “a short distance to see his seik mother.” These are but a few instances, but they show the rigour with which Sabbath observance was enforced, and prove that Graham’s statements are not exaggerated.