Scotch Sabbath Morality

1914

Even in Scotland up to the middle of the eighteenth, century Sabbath morality was geographical. Sabbath, according to a contemporary writer, never "got aboon the pass of Killiecrankie." For generations after the reformation the highlander on Sunday drove his cattle to market, brought home his fuel, baked his bread, fished, played shinty and put the stone." Sunday christenings and penny weddings were common, and the presbytery books merely sent warnings against piping, fiddling and dancing at them.

But in the lowlands the church, took a sterner view. The assembly forbade shippers and sailors to begin any voyage on the Lord's day or to "loose any ships, barks or boats." Aberdonians were fined if they failed to attend worship, the good man and good wife of the house contravening paid 6s, 8d, and "ilk servant 2s, Scots," a sore burden to be borne in the seventeenth century. The record of absentees is scanty. — London Chronicle.