Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters

by John Galt

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  Shortly after my grandfather had returned with his wife to their quietdwelling at Quharist on the Garnock side, he began, in the course of thewinter following, to suffer an occasional pang in that part of his bodywhich was damaged by the fall he got in rugging down the Virgin Mary outof her niche in the idolatrous abbeykirk of Kilwinning, and the anguishof his suffering grew to such an head by Candlemas that he was obligatedto send for his old acquaintance, Dominick Callender, who had, after hismarriage with the regenerate nun, settled as a doctor of physic in thegodly town of Irvine. But for many a day all the skill and medicamentingof Doctor Callender did him little good, till Nature had, of her ownaccord, worked out the root of the evil in the shape of a sklinter ofbone. Still, though the wound then closed, it never was a sound part,and he continued in consequence a lamiter for life. Yet were his daysgreatly prolonged beyond the common lot of man; for he lived till he wasninety-one years, seven months, and four days old, and his end at lastwas but a pleasant translation from the bodily to the spiritual life.

  For some days before the close he was calm and cheerful, rehearsing tothe neighbours that came to speer for him, many things like those ofwhich I have spoken herein. Towards the evening a serene drowsiness fellupon him, like the snow that falleth in silence, and froze all histemporal faculties in so gentle a manner, that it could not be said heknew what it was to die; being, as it were, carried in the downy arms ofsleep to the portal door of Death, where all the pains and terrors thatguard the same were hushed, and stood mute around, as he was softlyreceived in.

  No doubt there was something of a providential design in the singularprolongation of such a pious and a blameless life; for through it thepossessor became a blessed mean of sowing, in the hearts of his childrenand neighbours, the seeds of those sacred principles, which afterwardsmade them stand firm in their religious integrity when they were sogrievously tried. For myself I was too young, being scant of eight yearswhen he departed, to know the worth of those precious things which hehad treasured in the garnel of his spirit for seed-corn unto the Lord;and therefore, though I often heard him speak of the riddling wherewiththat mighty husbandman of the Reformation, John Knox, riddled the truthsof the gospel from the errors of papistry, I am bound to say that hisown exceeding venerable appearance, and the visions of past events,which the eloquence of his traditions called up to my young fancy,worked deeper and more thoroughly into my nature than the reasons andmotives which guided and governed many of his other disciples. But,before proceeding with my own story, it is meet that I should still tellthe courteous reader some few things wherein my father bore a part--aman of very austere character, and of a most godly, though, as somesaid, rather of a stubbornly affection for the forms of worship whichhad been established by John Knox and the pious worthies of his times;he was withal a single-minded Christian, albeit more ready for a raidthan subtle in argument. He had, like all who knew the old people hisparents, a by-common reverence for them; and spoke of the patriarchswith whom of old the Lord was wont to hold communion, as more favouredof Him than David or Solomon, or any other princes or kings.

  When he was very young, not passing, as I have heard him often tell,more than six or seven years of age, he was taken, along with hisbrethren, by my grandfather, to see the signing at Irvine of theCovenant, with which, in the lowering time of the Spanish armada, KingJames, the son of Mary, together with all the Reformed, bound themselvesin solemn compact to uphold the protestant religion. Afterwards, when hesaw the country rise in arms, and heard of the ward and watch, and thebeacons ready on the hills, his imagination was kindled with somedreadful conceit of the armada, and he thought it could be nothing lessthan some awful and horrible creature sent from the shores of perditionto devour the whole land. The image he had thus framed in his fearshaunted him continually; and night after night he could not sleep forthinking of its talons of brass, and wings of thunder, and nostrilsflaming fire, and the iron teeth with which it was to grind and gnashthe bodies and bones of all protestants, in so much that his parentswere concerned for the health of his mind, and wist not what to do toappease the terrors of his visions.

  At last, however, the great Judith of the protestant cause, QueenElizabeth of England, being enabled to drive a nail into the head ofthat Holofernes of the idolaters, and many of the host of ships havingbeen plunged, by the right arm of the tempest, into the depths of theseas, and scattered by the breath of the storm, like froth over theocean, it happened that, one morning about the end of July, a cry arosethat a huge galley of the armada was driven on the rocks at Pencorse;and all the shire of Ayr hastened to the spot to behold and witness hershipwreck and overthrow. Among others my grandfather, with his threeeldest sons, went, leaving my father at home; but his horrors grew tosuch a passion of fear that his mother, the calm and pious Elspa Ruet,resolved to take him thither likewise, and to give him the evidence ofhis eyes, that the dreadful armada was but a navy of vessels like theship which was cast upon the shore. By this prudent thought of her, whenhe arrived at the spot his apprehensions were soothed; but his mind hadever after a strange habitude of forming wild and wonderful images ofevery danger, whereof the scope and nature was not very clearlydiscerned, and which continued with him till the end of his days.

  Soon after the death of my grandfather, he had occasion to go intoEdinburgh anent some matter of legacy that had fallen to us through thedecease of an uncle of my mother, a bonnet-maker in the Canongate; and,on his arrival there, he found men's minds in a sore fever concerningthe rash councils wherewith King Charles the First, then reigning, wasmindit to interfere with the pure worship of God, and to enact a part inthe kirk of Scotland little short of the papistical domination of theRoman Antichrist. To all men this was startling tidings; but to myfather it was an enormity that fired his blood and spirit with thefierceness of a furnace. And it happened that he lodged with a friend ofours, one Janet Geddes, a most pious woman, who had suffered greatmolestation in her worldly substance, from certain endeavours for therestorations of the horns of the mitre, and the prelatic buskings withwhich that meddling and fantastical bodie, King James the Sixth, wouldfain have buskit and disguised the sober simplicity of gospelordinances.

  No two persons could be more heartily in unison upon any point ofcontroversy than was my worthy father and Janet Geddes, concerning theenormities that would of a necessity ensue from the papisticalpretensions and unrighteous usurpation of King Charles; and they satcrooning and lamenting together all the Saturday afternoon and nightabout the woes of idolatry that were darkening again over Scotland.

  No doubt there was both reason and piety in their fears; but in themethod of their sorrow, from what I have known of my father's earnestand simple character, I redde there might be some lack of the decorum ofwisdom. But be this as it may, they heated the zeal of one another to apitch of great fervour, and next morning, the Sabbath, they wenttogether to the high Kirk of St Giles to see what the power of aninfatuated government would dare to do.

  The kirk was filled to its uttermost bunkers; my father, however, gotfor Janet Geddes, she being an aged woman, a stool near the skirts ofthe pulpit; but nothing happened to cause any disturbance till the godlyMr Patrick Henderson had made an end of the morning prayer, when hesaid, with tears in his eyes, with reference to the liturgy, which wasthen to be promulgated, "Adieu, good people, for I think this is thelast time of my saying prayers in this kirk;" and the congregation beingmuch moved thereat, many wept.

  No sooner had Mr Henderson retired, than Master Ramsay, that horn of theBeast, which was called the Dean of Edinburgh, appeared in the pulpit inthe pomp of his abominations, and began to read the liturgy. At thefirst words of which Janet Geddes was so transported with indignationthat, starting from her stool, she made it fly whirring at his head, asshe cried, "Villain, dost thou say the mass at my lug?" Then such anuproar began as had not been witnessed since the destruction of theidols; the women screaming, and clapping their hands in terrification asif the legions of t
he Evil One had been let loose upon them; and the mencrying aloud, "Antichrist! Antichrist! down wi' the Pope!" and allexhortation to quiet them was drowned in the din.

  Such was the beginning of those troubles in the church and state sowantonly provoked by the weak and wicked policy of the first KingCharles, and which in the end brought himself to an ignominious death;and such the cause of that Solemn League and Covenant, to which, in mygreen years, my father, soon after his return home, took me to be aparty, and to which I have been enabled to adhere, with unerringconstancy, till the glorious purpose of it has all been fulfilled andaccomplished.