Series 5 > Miscellany [of the Scottish History Society] XIII

MISTRESS RUTHERFORD’S CONVERSION NARRATIVE 151
undoubtedly gives the general setting for her essay, but we do not
know its exact occasion, whether at the request of one of her pastors,
for the sake of her own family, or just a memorial of her own
experience, however unstable, of God’s mercy. Nor do we know when
it was written—it might have been on paper by 1630; it might not
have been reduced to writing until 1670 or even later, if she lived to
old age. One hint about time of composition may be located in her use
of the Authorized Version (1611) of the Bible. Frequently her
citations are of passages which are identical in the AV and in the
Geneva Bible; when the two diverge, the former is followed, hence in
the notes the AV is regularly cited. Through the early decades of the
century the Geneva Bible was the more common in Scotland;1 the
most likely circumstance is not that Mistress Rutherford contradicted
the tendency of the 1630s, but rather that by the time of writing she
had become familiar with the AV as it infiltrated the country.
Editorial Method
The narrative exists in Robert Wodrow’s hand, finely written, on
sixteen octavo pages. It is generally readily decipherable, though there
are a few exceptions, and these are identified in the notes. Punctuation
and capitalisation have been modernised; additional paragraph breaks
have been introduced. Original spelling has for the most part been
retained, but abbreviations and contractions have been expanded; e.g.
yt to that, wt to with; yr to there or the, thir to these, tho to though,
thot to thought, brot and brot to brought, & to and, etc. Page divisions
in the manuscript are indicated in square brackets, i.e. [4], Other
bracketed materials in the text supply additional letters and words for
the sake of clarity.
The manuscript is in the University of Edinburgh Library, Laing
MSS, La.III.263: Wodrow Octavo 33, no. 6. It is published here with
the kind permission of the Edinburgh University Library.
D.G.M.
D. Anderson, The Bible in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Life and Literature
(London, 1936), 11-12.