Memorials of John Geddes

memorials of Jobn Geddes.
form rather above than below his means, and perhaps above
the real requirements of the farm, originally little more
than a single horse-pair farm. The outlook from the little
windows, over the blackberry bushes in the garden, toward
the West, was interesting, though not inviting. It was, in
brief, a panorama of brown heathery hills, with scattered
green patches, denoting where springs were more abundant,
and with serrated ridges in the far distance, breaking into
occasional crags, among which soared conspicuous the
curious cocks comb, with its triple notch, of Craigdornie,
confronted upon the other side of the strath by the tower-
ing and inhospitable Craigs of the Succoch,* both localities
* These Craigs, projected on the sky line, resembled the teeth of some
capsized antediluvian animal gnashing against the sky, and formed to the
Strath the visible symbol of steadfast immobility. The story goes that the
Minister had on one occasion been led to expatiate on the heavenly bodies and
the motion of the earth round the sun, whereupon on the way home a farmer
of the district, innocent of the Newtonian astronomy, denounced the doctrine
as a rousing whid — " Na ! Na ! I'll nae believe the like o' yon, fae the minister
himsel', sae lang as my houss stan's in sicht o' the Craigs o' the Succoth." It
was perhaps this farmer who, in the Kirk of Glass, blurted out to himself the
audible remonstrance with the minister who had given out a text, that baffled
the farmer to find, in one of the minor prophets — "Haggai, Haggai, fat the
sorra gars him gang hol-lin for a text in Haggai ! " Not less primitive were
the notions prevalent in the glen as to chronology. A favourite story of my
father's related to an old black letter Bible, known to have been a marvel in
Tam Lobban's Cottage by the waterside. One day two of the parishioners
were talking of the great age of the book, and one of them ventured to say,
"Ow, man, it's nae surely sae auld as our Sauviour." "Bless ye, man," was
the unabashed reply, " it existit lang afore there was ony word o' a Sauviour."