The Annals Of The Parish Or The Chronicle Of Dalmailing During

THIS year well deserved the name of the monumental year in our parish; for the young laird of the Breadland, that had been my pupil, being learning to be an advocate among the f...

THE Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and sixty, was remarkable for three things in the parish of Dalmailing.—First and foremost, there was my placing; then the coming of M...

THIS may well be called the year of the heavy heart, for we had sad tidings of the lads that went away as soldiers to America. First, there was a boding in the minds of all thei...

IT was in this Ann. Dom. that the great calamity happened, the which took place on a Sabbath evening in the month of February. Mrs. Balwhidder had just infused or masket the tea...

I WAS named in this year for the General Assembly, and Mrs. Balwhidder, by her continual thrift, having made our purse able to stand a shake against the wind, we resolved to go...

THIS year was as the shadow of the bygane: there was less actual suffering, but what we came through cast a gloom among us, and we did not get up our spirits till the spring was...

IT was in this year that my troubles with Lady Macadam’s affair began. She was a woman, as I have by hint here and there intimated, of a prelatic disposition, seeking all things...

ALL things in our parish were now beginning to shoot up into a great prosperity. The spirit of farming began to get the upper hand of the spirit of smuggling, and the coal-heugh...

IT was in this year that the great smuggling trade corrupted all the west coast, especially the laigh lands about the Troon and the Loans. The tea was going like the chaff, the...

IT belongs to the chroniclers of the realm to describe the damage and detriment which fell on the power and prosperity of the kingdom, by reason of the rebellion, that was fired...

THE third year of my ministry was long held in remembrance for several very memorable things. William Byres of the Loanhead had a cow that calved two calves at one calving; Mrs....

IT’S a surprising thing how time flieth away, carrying off our youth and strength, and leaving us nothing but wrinkles and the ails of old age. Gilbert, my son, that is now a co...

I HAVE my doubts whether it was in the beginning of this year, or in the end of the last, that a very extraordinary thing came to light in the parish; but, howsoever that may be...

THROUGH all the wars that have raged from the time of the King’s accession to the throne, there has been a gradually coming nearer and nearer to our gates, which is a very alarm...

MR. CAYENNE of Wheatrig having for several years been in a declining way, partly brought on by the consuming fire of his furious passion, and partly by the decay of old age, sen...

THE regular course of nature is calm and orderly, and tempests and troubles are but lapses from the accustomed sobriety with which Providence works out the destined end of all t...

WHEN I look back on this year, and compare what happened therein with the things that had gone before, I am grieved to the heart, and pressed down with an afflicted spirit. We h...

THE An. Dom. 1763, was, in many a respect, a memorable year, both in public and in private. The King granted peace to the French, and Charlie Malcolm, that went to sea in the To...

THIS was one of the heaviest years in the whole course of my ministry. The spring was slow of coming, and cold and wet when it did come; the dibs were full, the roads foul, and...

IF the two last years passed o’er the heads of me and my people without any manifest dolour, which is a great thing to say for so long a period in this world, we had our own tri...

IN conformity with the altered fashions of the age, in this year the session came to an understanding with me, that we should not inflict the common church censures for such as...

In the month of February my second wife was gathered to the Lord. She had been very ill for some time with an income in her side, which no medicine could remove. I had the best...

THERE are but two things to make me remember this year; the first was the marriage of my daughter Janet with the reverend Dr. Kittlewood of Swappington, a match in every way com...

FROM the day of my settlement, I had resolved, in order to win the affections of my people, and to promote unison among the heritors, to be of as little expense to the parish as...

DURING the tempestuous times that ensued, from the death of the King of France by the hands of the executioner in 1793, there had been a political schism among my people that of...

THE present Ann. Dom. was ushered in with an event that I had never dreaded to see in my day, in our once sober and religious country parish. The number of lads that had gone ov...

ON New-Year’s night, this year, a thing happened, which, in its own nature, was a trifle; but it turned out as a mustard-seed that grows into a great tree. One of the elders, wh...

AS there was little in the last year that concerned the parish, but only myself, so in this the like fortune continued; and saving a rise in the price of barley, occasioned, as...

WELL may we say, in the pious words of my old friend and neighbour, the Reverend Mr. Keekie of Loupinton, that the world is such a wheel-carriage, that it might very properly be...

“EXPERIENCE teaches fools,” was the first moral apothegm that I wrote in small text, when learning to write at the school, and I have ever since thought it was a very sensible r...

IN this Ann. Dom. there was something like a plea getting to a head, between the session and some of the heritors, about a new school-house; the thatch having been torn from the...

WHEN I have seen in my walks the irrational creatures of God, the birds and the beasts, governed by a kindly instinct in attendance on their young, often has it come into my hea...

THERE had been, as I have frequently observed, a visible improvement going on in the parish. From the time of the making of the toll-road, every new house that was built in the...

ON the first night of this year I dreamt a very remarkable dream, which, when I now recall to mind at this distance of time, I cannot but think that there was a case of prophecy...

IT had been often remarked by ingenious men, that the Brawl burn, which ran through the parish, though a small, was yet a rapid stream, and had a wonderful capability for dammin...

ALTHOUGH I have not been particular in noticing it, from time to time, there had been an occasional going off, at fairs and on market-days, of the lads of the parish as soldiers...

MY tasks are all near a close; and in writing this final record of my ministry, the very sound of my pen admonishes me that my life is a burden on the back of flying Time, that...

IT is often to me very curious food for meditation, that as the parish increased in population, there should have been less cause for matter to record. Things that in former day...

THIS year had opened into all the leafiness of midsummer before anything memorable happened in the parish, further than that the sad division of my people into government-men an...

THE features of this Ann. Dom. partook of the character of its predecessor. Several new houses were added to the clachan; Cayenneville was spreading out with weavers’ shops, and...

IN the spring of this year, I took my son Gilbert into Glasgow, to place him in a counting-house. As he had no inclination for any of the learned professions, and not having bee...

WHEN the spring in this year began to brighten on the brae, the cloud of dulness that had darkened and oppressed me all the winter somewhat melted away, and I could now and then...

THE same quietude and regularity that marked the progress of the last year, continued throughout the whole of this. We sowed and reaped in tranquillity, though the sough of dist...

THIS was another Sabbath year of my ministry. It has left me nothing to record but a silent increase of prosperity in the parish. I myself had now in the bank more than a thousa...

THIS was, among ourselves, another year of few events. A sound, it is true, came among us of a design, on the part of the government in London, to bring back the old harlotry of...

THIS I have always reflected upon as one of our blessed years. It was not remarkable for any extraordinary occurrence; but there was a hopefulness in the minds of men, and a pla...

FOR some time I had meditated a reformation in the parish, and this year I carried the same into effect. I had often noticed with concern, that, out of a mistaken notion of payi...

AS I come towards the events of these latter days, I am surprised to find myself not at all so distinct in my recollection of them as in those of the first of my ministry; being...

THIS was a year to me of satisfaction in many points; for a greater number of my younger flock married in it, than had done for any one of ten years prior. They were chiefly the...

THIS blessed Ann. Dom. was one of the Sabbaths of my ministry. When I look back upon it, all is quiet and good order: the darkest cloud of the smuggling had passed over, at leas...

I HAVE ever thought that this was a bright year, truly an Ann. Dom., for in it many of the lads came home that had listed to be soldiers; and Mr. Howard, that was the midshipman...