John Galt - Annals of the Parish 1821

John Galt  1779-1839

Annals of the Parish; or the Chronicle of Dalmailing; during the Ministry of The Rev. Micah Balwhidder. Written by himself. (William Blackwood, 1821)

In the same year (1760), and on the same day of the same month, that his Sacred Majesty King George, the third of that name, came to his crown and kingdom, I was placed and settled as the minister of Dalmailing.

First edition - April 1821

Rev. Micah Balwhidder says his task is to note the changes of time and habitudes, not to make reflections. He does voice his opinions: For with wealth come wants, like a troop of clamorous beggars at the heels of a generous man, and it's hard to tell wherein the benefit of improvement in a country parish especially to those who live by the sweat of their brow. He feels that the regular course of nature is calm and orderly, and tempests and troubles are but lapses from the accustomed sobriety with which Providence works out the destined end of all things. He maintains that he had no motive to seek fame in foreign pulpits, but was left to walk in the paths of simplicity within my own parish. However, in 1779, Micah is named to go to the Edinburgh General Assembly and he actually preaches before his Grace the Commissioner, to mixed effect. He has no truck with Romanism: when Irish priest, Father O'Grady, comes to minister to the flock in Cayenneville, there are but five communicants; unable to make a living there, [he] packed up his Virgin Mary's, saints, and painted Agnuses in a portmanteau, and went off in an Ayr Fly one morning to Glasgow, where I hear he has since met with all the encouragement that might be expected from the ignorant and idolatrous inhabitants of that great city.

He records the laying down of the toll or trust-road and its positive results; commentates regularly on the American War and the near press-ganging of local men; discourses on the effects of smuggling - that wicked mother of many mischiefs - in the area; reads the Scots Magazine and weekly newspapers from Edinburgh; he comments on the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and the French Revolution's excesses - it was clear to me that we should not judge of the rest of the world by what we see going on around ourselves, but walk abroad into other parts, and thereby enlarge our sphere of observation, as well as ripen our judgement of things. He comments on the Cayenneville cottonmill workers and muslin-weavers being affected with the itch of jacobinism, whereas the village is staunch and true to King and Country. As a result of his Sermon, a Volunteer Corps is set up in 1803 against the menace of Bonaparte, a perfect limb of Satan, and he becomes their Chaplain. Micah details the setting up of a Savings Bank and the start of a 3 times a week stage coach through the locality. He tries turtle-fish with limepunch from the West Indies and is ill the next morning.

Galt provides us with a wonderful cast of characters:

Micah's first wife, Betty Lanshaw, was an active thoroughgoing woman... who was removed from mine to Abraham's bosom on Christmas Day AD 1763 and who had a long epitaph written by her grieving husband inscribed on her tomb-stone; Micah soon remarries - Miss Lizzy Kibbock - on 29 April 1765. The second Mrs Balwhidder found the Manse rookit (bare) and herrit (??) and set about improving matters. Micah thought her greatest fault was an over-earnestness to gather geer (goods /wealth). When she died in February 1796, of an internal abcess, he swiftly married for a third time (realising that the servant girls well kens the mouse when the cat's out) - to Mrs Nugent, relict of a Professor of Glasgow University. His children are Gilbert, born in 1768 (that is now a corpulent man and a Glasgow merchant), who nearly died of small-pox in 1774; and Janet, who was educated at a boarding-school in Ayr and married Dr. Kittlewood, Minister of Swappington.

Old schoolmistress, Nanse Banks, who learnt (girls) reading and working stockings and how to sew the semplar, for twal-pennies a-week in her garret room - gives way to Miss Sabrina Hookie, who lived in the parish for thirty years but was more uppish in her carriage than befitted the decorum of her vocation and who failed to trap a visiting minister. The Earl of Eglesham, who becomes a generous patron to the area, thanks to Micah, but is murdered on one visit; Major Gilchrist, a nabob from India, and his sister Miss Grizie, who locals called Lady Skim-milk (and who was burnt to death in their house fire, which claught her like a fiery Belzebub, and bore her into perdition); the Malcolm family: widowed Mrs Malcolm with her family who do well at sea (Charlie in the American War and Robert in the merchant marine, who becomes a prosperous ship-owner in London); William, who became a tutor & preacher and published 'Moral Essays'; daughters Kate, budding into a very rose of beauty, and Effie who married Captain Howard; Lady Macadam, a woman with jocose humours and a vivid temper, who never could think a serious thought all her days, with a son in the Royal Scots regiment who marries Kate, against his mother's wishes, and ends up a General.

Amongst the more mundane descriptions of the passing of time can be found plenty of humour. Old Nanse Birrel, a distiller of herbs, is found with her feet uppermost in the well...her feet sticking up to the evil one; there is the aptly named Mr Heckletext, who fills in for Micah at the pulpit when he is ill, who was accused of immorality; the story of a Muscovy duck given to Lady Macadam, who found a hole in a bean-stack and overate so her crop bellied out like the kyte (stomach) of a Glasgow magistrate; and Mr Howard, who knew nothing of sound doctrine, being educated, as he told me, at Eton school, a prelatic establishment; the Pawkie sisters from Ayr, the eldest of whom was of a manly stature, and had a long beard, which made her have a coarse look, who were involved in smuggling tea and hid their produce in their chaff-bed. Important in the later years is Mr Cayenne, a Loyalist who had to depart America with his family. Viewed as an etter-cap (malignant) with a perfect spunkie (fiery)  of passion, he is for many years a thorn (serpent plague)  in Micah and the Session's side. Setting up a successful cotton-mill, the new town of Cayenneville grows up around it, with an influx of the ungodly! To Micah he had a very imperfect sense of religion, which I attributed to his being born in America, where even as yet, I am told, they have but a scanty sprinkling of grace. Cayenne has a blackamoor servant, Sambo, who was an affectionate creature.

Micah ends his 50-year Ministry: ...indeed, really I have no more to say, saving only to wish a blessing on all people from on High, where I soon hope to be, and to meet there all the old and long-departed sheep of my flock, especially the first and second Mrs Balwidders.

Ian Campbell in his Kailyard: A New Assessment (1981) has very useful comments on Galt, including [his] contribution in Annals of the Parish...is to show the inevitability of change, but the adaptability of human nature to change.

 A few Scottish words to ponder:
galravitchings - riotous feastings; skailed the bike - broke up the group; grulshy - clumsy; the wind blew with such a pith (substance) and birr (force); bachle - old shoe; tozy - tipsy; latheron - slut; warsled - struggled; lown - serene; gowans - buttercups; pock-nook - resources; clecking - litter (of sow); a tap of tow - irascible person; haverals - half-wits; betheral - sexton; wally wallying - lamentation; eydent - industrious; aiblins - perhaps; rabiator bully; littlegude - devil; draigie - funeral feast; semple lowly birth; smeddum - sagacity; black-neb - person disaffected towards the government