tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have
been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that
Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the
Covenanters themselves called "the language of Canaan," which is put into
their mouths, "a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of
Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in
ecclesiastical politics." But what other language did many of them speak?
"Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord's people to try, by mourning
and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for
we fear, he will depart from it." This is the theology of a savage, in
the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander
Peden's.' Mr. John Menzie's "Testimony" (1670) is all about "hardened
men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb,
yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks
in your eyes and thorns in your sides." Manse Headrigg scarcely
caricatures this eloquence, or Peden's "many and long seventy-eight years
left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;" while
"Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom's
children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!" Dr. McCrie is reduced to
supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported.
Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the
people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott
made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the
admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, "repeatedly banns and
minces oaths in her conversation." This outrageous conduct of Bessie's
consists in saying "Gude protect us!" and "In Heaven's name, who are ye?"
Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. "Oh, le
grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire." Scott is later accused of not
making his peasants sufficiently intelligent. Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny
Dennison suffice as answers to this censure.