hin
reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to
the man of office. He made choice of one with a nod of acknowledgment,
filled his pipe, lighted it with the assistance of his pistol-flint,
and smoked with infinite composure during the whole time of the
sermon. When the discourse was finished, he knocked the ashes out of
his pipe, replaced it in his sporran, returned the tobacco-pouch or
spleuchan to its owner, and joined in the prayers with decency and
attention." David Deans, however, did not at all approve this
irreverence. "It didna become a wild Indian," he said, "much less a
Christian and a gentleman, to sit in the kirk puffing tobacco-reek, as
if he were in a change-house." The date of the incident was 1737; but
whether Sir Walter had any authority in fact for this characteristic
performance of Knockdunder, or not, it is certain that any such
occurrence in a Scottish kirk must have been extremely rare.

Knockdunder's pipe, according to Scott, was made of iron. This was an
infrequent material for tobacco-pipes, but there are a few examples
in museums. In the Belfast Museum there is a cast iron tobacco-pipe
about eighteen inches long. With it are shown another, very short,
also of cast iron, the bowl of a brass pipe, and a pipe, about six
inches in length, made of sheet iron.

Another eighteenth-century instance of smoking in church, taken from
historical fact and not from fiction, is associated with the church of
Hayes, in Middlesex. The parish registers of that village bear witness
to repeated disputes between the parson and bell-ringers and the
parishioners generally in 1748-1754. In 1752 it was noted that a
sermon had been preached after a funeral "to a noisy congregation." On
another occasion, says the register, "the ringers and other
inhabitants disturbed the service from the beginning of prayers to the
end of the sermon, by ringing the bells, and going into the gallery to
spit below"; while at yet another time "a fellow came into church with
a pot of beer and a pipe," and remained "smoking in his own pew until
the end of the sermon." Going to church at Hayes in those days must
have been quite an exciting experience. No one knew what might happen
next.

In remote English and Welsh parishes men seem occasionally to have
smoked in churches without any intention of being irreverent, and
without any consciousness that they were doing anything unusual. Canon
Atkinson, in his delightful b