Читать книгу Scottish Reminiscences онлайн

62 страница из 80

A SERMON BELOW BEN NEVIS

The English sermon in Highland churches was often a curious performance. As already mentioned, there were, and still generally are, two sermons—one in Gaelic as part of the earlier service, and one in English in the second part. Those of the congregation who thought they understood both languages might stay from the beginning to the end, but the purely Gaelic-speaking population generally thinned away after the Gaelic service. In some cases, the preacher’s command of English being rather limited, his evident earnestness could hardly prevent a smile at his solecisms in grammar and the oddity of his expressions. Many years ago an acquaintance told me he had been yachting in Loch Eil, and on a Sunday of dreary rain and storm went ashore not far from the roots of Ben Nevis to attend the English service, when he heard the following passage from the lips of the preacher:

‘Ah, my friends, what causes have we for gratitude; O yes, for the deepest gratitude! Look at the place of our habitation. How grateful should we be that we do not leeve in the far north! O no; amid the frost and the snaw, and the cauld and the weet, O no; where there’s a lang day tae half o’ the year, O yes; and a lang, lang nicht the tither, ah yes; that we do not depend upon the auroary boreawlis, O no; that we do not gang shivering about in skins, O no; snoking amang the snaw like mowdiwarts, O no, no!