REMINISCENCES

OF

SCOTTISH LIFE & CHARACTER

BY THE LATE E. B. RAMSAY, LL.D., F.R.S.E.

DEAN OF EDINBURGH

TWENTY-SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED,
WITH THE AUTHOR'S LATEST CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS

AND A MEMOIR OF DEAN RAMSAY BY COSMO INNES

1874

CONTENTS.

MEMOIR OF DEAN RAMSAY.

I.

The friends of Dean Ramsay desiring a memorial of his life, his friendly publishers, and his nearest relatives, have asked me to undertake the work, and placed in my hands some materials giving authentic facts and dates, and illustrating the Dean's own views on the leading events of his life.

I feel myself excluded from dealing with one important part of such a life, for I could not take upon me to speak with confidence or authority upon church doctrines or church government. On the other hand, for the man I have that full sympathy which I suppose ought to exist between the writer and the subject of the biography.

We were very old friends, natives of the same district, bred among a people peculiar in manners and language, a people abounding in a racy humour, differing from what prevails in most parts of Scotland--a peculiarity which it was the joy of the Dean to bring before his countrymen in his Reminiscences; and although he and I were not kindred of blood, his relatives and friends were very much mine, and my uncles and aunts were also his.

Edward Bannerman Burnett, known in after life as Edward Ramsay, and Dean of Edinburgh, was born at Aberdeen on the last day of January 1793. His father, Alexander, second son of Sir Thomas Burnett, Baronet, of Leys, was an advocate, and sheriff of Kincardineshire, where the family estates lay. The sheriff was of delicate constitution, and travelled in the south of Europe for his health, until obliged to fly from the French Revolution; and at Aberdeen, the first place where he and his wife stopped, Edward was born. The Dean's mother was Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Sir Alexander Bannerman of Elsick, and she and her sister Mary, afterwards Mrs. Russell, were co-heirs of his estates in the pretty valley of the Feugh, including the whole parish of Strachan, of which the southern part, looking over into the How of the Mearns, was Mrs. Burnett's portion; the northern, with the beautiful bank of Dee where Blackhall stands, falling to Mrs. Russell. Both sisters were eminently handsome. I have a tradition of the young ladies, when they first came from their York school to Edinburgh, being followed and gazed at by passengers in the streets, for their beauty; and there are many still living in Edinburgh who long after gazed with admiration on the fine old lady, the Dean's mother, bending over her embroidery frame in her window in Darnaway Street.

Alexander Burnett and his wife Elizabeth Bannerman had a large family. Edward, the fourth son, when very young, was taken by his grand-uncle, Sir Alexander Ramsay, and sent to school near his own house at Harlsey in Yorkshire. Edward's first school, to which he was sent in 1801, made a remarkable impression upon the Dean's memory. "I believe," he says, "at that period (the very beginning of the century) it was about the most retired village in England not of a mountainous district. No turnpike road went through the parish. It lay in the line of no thoroughfare. The only inhabitants of education were the clergyman, a man of great simplicity of character, who had never been at the University, and my great-uncle, of above fourscore, and a recluse. The people were uneducated to an extent now unusual. Nearly all the letters of the village were written by my uncle's gardener, a Scotchman, who, having the degree of education usual with his countrymen of the profession, and who being very good natured, had abundant occupation for his evenings, and being, moreover, a prudent man, and safe, became the depository of nine-tenths of the family secrets of the inhabitants. Being thus ignorant generally, and few of them ever having been twenty miles from the place, I may consider the parish fifty years behind the rest of the world when I went there, so that it now furnishes recollection of rural people, of manners and intelligence, dating back a hundred years from the present time. It was indeed a very primitive race; and it is curious to recall the many indications afforded in that obscure village of unmitigated ignorance. With all this were found in full exercise also the more violent and vindictive passions of our nature. They might have the simplicity, but not the virtues, of Arcadia.... There were some old English customs of an interesting nature which lingered in the parish. For example, the old habit of bowing to the altar was retained by the rustics on entering church, and bowing respectfully to the clergyman in his place. A copy of the Scriptures was in the vestry chained to the desk on which it lay, and where it had evidently been since that mode of introducing the Bible was practised in the time of Edward VI. The passing bell was always sounded on notice of the death of a parishioner, and sounded at any hour, night or day, immediately on the event happening. One striking custom prevailed at funerals. The coffin was borne through the village to the churchyard by six or eight bearers of the same age and sex as the deceased. Thus young maidens in white carried