an event which the Doctor
accepted with much good-nature, and he was asking her one day if she did
not intend to be confirmed. "Well," she said, "I don't know. I
understand Mr. Craig always kisses the candidates whom he prepares, and
I could not stand that." "Indeed, Jeanie," said the Doctor slily, "gin
Edward Craig _were_ to gie ye a kiss, I dinna think ye would be muckle
the waur."

Many anecdotes characteristic of the Scottish peasant often turn upon
words and ideas connected with Holy Scripture. This is not to be
considered as in any sense profane or irreverent; but it arises from the
Bible being to the peasantry of an older generation their library--their
only book. We have constant indications of this almost exclusive
familiarity with Scripture ideas. At the late ceremonial in the north,
when the Archbishop of Canterbury laid the foundation of a Bishop's
Church at Inverness, a number of persons, amid the general interest and
kindly feeling displayed by the inhabitants, were viewing the procession
from a hill as it passed along. When the clergy, to the number of sixty,
came on, an old woman, who was watching the whole scene with some
jealousy, exclaimed, at sight of the surplices, "There they go, the
_whited_ sepulchres!" I received another anecdote illustrative of the
same remark from an esteemed minister of the Free Church: I mean of the
hold which Scripture expressions have upon the minds of our Scottish
peasantry. One of his flock was a sick nervous woman, who hardly ever
left the house. But one fine afternoon, when she was left alone, she
fancied she would like to get a little air in the field adjoining the
house. Accordingly she put on a bonnet and wrapped herself in a huge
red shawl. Creeping along the dyke-side, some cattle were attracted
towards her, and first one and then another gathered round, and she took
shelter in the ditch till she was relieved by some one coming up to her
rescue. She afterwards described her feelings to her minister in strong
language, adding, "And eh, sir! when I lay by the dyke, and the beasts
round a' glowerin' at me, I thocht what Dauvid maun hae felt when he
said--'Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset
me round.'"

With the plainness and pungency of the old-fashioned Scottish language
there was sometimes a coarseness of expression, which, although commonly
repeated in the Scottish drawing-room of last century, could not now be
tolerated. An example