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A certain parish church in Carrick, like many ecclesiastical edifices of the time in Scotland, was not kept with scrupulous care. The windows seemed never to be cleaned, or indeed opened, for cobwebs hung across them,

And half-starv’d spiders prey’d on half-starv’d flies.

There was an air of dusty neglect about the interior, and likewise a musty smell. One Sunday an elderly clergyman from another part of the country was preaching. In the midst of his sermon a spider, suspended from the roof at the end of its long thread, swung to and fro in front of his face. It came against his lips and was blown vigorously away. Again it swung back to his mouth, when, with an indignant motion of his hands, he broke the thread and exclaimed, ‘My friends, this is the dirtiest kirk I ever preached in. I’m like to be pusioned wi’ speeders.’

It is recorded of an old minister in the west of Ross-shire that he prayed for Queen Victoria, ‘that God would bless her and that as now she had grown to be an old woman, He would be pleased to make her a new man.’