[Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character by Edward Bannerman Ramsay]@TWC D-Link bookReminiscences of Scottish Life and Character CHAPTER THE SEVENTH 112/196
In the course of conversation, he told her he was acting as assistant minister of the parish, and he explained how far he had travelled in pursuit of game, how weary he was, and how completely knocked up he was.
"Weel, sir, I dinna doubt ye maun be sair travelled and tired wi' your walk." And then she added, with sly reference to his profession, "'Deed, sir, I'm thinkin' ye micht hae travelled frae Genesis to Revelation and no been sae forfauchten[182]." Scotch people in general are, like this old woman, very jealous, as might be expected, of ministers joining the sportsman to their pastoral character.
A proposal for the appointment of a minister to a particular parish, who was known in the country as a capital shot, called forth a rather neat Scottish _pun_, from an old woman of the parish, who significantly observed, "'Deed, _Kilpaatrick_ would hae been a mair appropriate place for him." _Paatrick_ is Scotch for partridge. I cannot do better in regard to the three following anecdotes of the late Professor Gillespie of St.Andrews, than give them to my readers in the words with which Dr.Lindsay Alexander kindly communicated them to me. "In the _Cornhill Magazine_ for March 1860, in an article on Student Life in Scotland, there is an anecdote of the late Professor Gillespie of St.Andrews, which is told in such a way as to miss the point and humour of the story.
The correct version, as I have heard it from the professor himself, is this: Having employed the village carpenter to put a frame round a dial at the manse of Cults, where he was a minister, he received from the man a bill to the following effect:--'To fencing the _deil_, 5s.
6d.' 'When I paid him,' said the professor, 'I could not help saying, John, this is rather more than I counted on; but I haven't a word to say.
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