ngs." (Speech of
King James VI, to the Central Assembly of the Church of Scotland, at
Edinburgh, August 1590. Calderwood's Hist. of the Ch. of Scot. p.
206.) What is called the birch or "birk in Yule even'" was probably
the _Yule clog_. On Christmas eve at no very remote period, the
_Yule clog_, which was a large shapeless piece of wood, selected for
the purpose, was dragged by a number of persons bearing in their
hand large candles, and placed by them on the fire where it was to
be burned in compliance with an ancient superstitious custom. Our
author may refer to this practice or perhaps he had simply in view
the old proverb, "He's as bare as the birk at Yule."--Henderson's
Scottish Proverbs, p. 47. Edin. 1832.--_Ed._]

311 [The records of the kirk session of the parish of Govan, during the
incumbency of the author, after having been lost for many years,
were fortunately recovered not long ago. These show the great
strictness of the ecclesiastical discipline of those days. There
were not fewer than twenty-two elders in the kirk session. Each of
these had a ward or district assigned to him, of which it was his
duty to take a particular superintendence. It was hardly possible,
therefore, that any irregularity of which a parishioner was guilty
could be concealed, and consequently, what is recorded in the
register is to be regarded, not as a specimen, but as the gross
amount of the immorality of the parish. Some may affect to ridicule
the severe notice that was taken of particular instances of
misconduct. But the cognizance that was taken of such things is a
proof of the high tone of moral and religious feeling that prevailed
at that time among the office bearers of the church. Individuals, we
find, were brought before the kirk session, on account of family and
domestic feuds, for quarrelling with their neighbours, for solitary
instances of drunkenness, and of the use of profane language, for
carrying water on the Lord's day, for sleeping in church, for
resorting to taverns on the Sabbath, for calumny, and for neglecting
the education of their children, &c. They who were convicted of such
offences, were sometimes rebuked in private by an elder, and at
other times by the minister in the presence of the eldership. It was
on