Читать книгу Scottish Reminiscences онлайн

70 страница из 80

A precentor is naturally jealous of any more practised and clearer voice than his own, which, he rightly thinks, ought to predominate. In the little Free Church of Raasay Island, the precentor had it all his own way until the minister’s sister came. She sat at the far end of the church, and, having some knowledge of music and a good voice, she made herself well heard as she sang in much quicker time than the slow drawl to which the people had been accustomed. Before the precentor had done a line she was ready to begin the next, and the half of the congregation nearest to her followed her excellent lead. This was too much for the precentor. He raised his voice till it almost cracked with the strain, and for a few notes drowned the rival performer at the other end. But he could not keep it up, and as his notes dropped, the clear sweet voice of the lady came out as before. Sitting about the middle of the church, I was able to appreciate the strange see-saw in the psalmody.

The most remarkable change which has taken place within living memory in the services of the Scottish Church is unquestionably the introduction of instrumental music. In most of the large congregations of the chief towns, the precentor has given way to an organ, which leads the choir, as the choir leads the congregation. Had any one in the earlier half of last century been audacious enough to predict that in a couple of generations the ‘kist o’ whistles,’ which had been long banished as a sign and symbol of black popery, would be reintroduced and welcomed before the end of the century, he would have been laughed to scorn, or branded as himself a limb of the prelatic Satan. Of course, there has been much searching of heart over this innovation, and many have been the head-shakings and even open denunciations of such manifest backsliding. But the cause of enlightenment has steadily gained ground in the Lowlands, and a few generations hence it may not improbably prevail even over the Highlands. Meanwhile in most Highland parishes, the first notes of an organ in the church would probably drive the majority of the congregation out of doors, and lead to years of angry controversy.