CHAPTER IV.

SCOTTISH USAGES CONTINUED.

Attempts at Reformation made abortive by the Usages-IdleMonday-Launch Bowl, description of-Abrogation of, in some cases-Customs among Women-Domestic Servants-Drunkenness of Women-Presbyterial Drink Usages-Usages during Sitting of General Assembly-Clergyman's Servant-Kirk Officers-Ministers-Gown Sealing-Usages of Masons-Foundation and Roofing Pints-Joist-money.

THERE is, at times, no man who is more alive to the evils of his situation and future prospects, than the inebriate himself: often has he been heard with tears, and with a qualm at his heart, to wish accursed whisky were banished from Scotland; and he would be still farther sighted did he wish the execrable drinking usages expatriated too. In the moment of sobriety and reason, no eye can survey with an emotion like his, the bare walls of his black and gloomy hovel; the limping table only left; the bedstead—a hard board, eked by the lair of wood-shavings-in the dirty wet corner; the fire extinguished, and the cold chink admitting mournful light from beyond; the children idle, vagrant, guilty-long since taken from schoolwandering on the borders of juvenile delinquency

and crime; the wife sullen and steeled, or brokenhearted, and herself on the brink of the irretrievable gulf. Such a one has been known to form the most desperate resolves against intoxication; but alas! his own countrymen and countrywomen, his neighbours, relatives, and friends, have combined, as if with the powers of darkness, to prevent any good result from such indefinite, general intentions; too general, and too indefinite, for producing consequences, as we have elsewhere shown.* Total abstinence is his only hope,-distance, continuous separation throughout life from the sight, smell, yea, if possible, from the mental conception of the destructive bottle. But some usage intervenes, which is considered imperative; if he refuse, it is to offend, as it were, all mankind—at least all his own circle; he would thereby be convicted of unsociableness, want of common manners, wish to break rules, to follow divisive courses; he would be found guilty of meanness, if he did not, on proper occasion, give his glass. The point of honour is unredressed by all the remonstrances of all the Temperance and Teetotal Societies, on their present foundation. He goes forth, it may be, some morning, sober and resolved; perhaps he madly swears upon the Evangelists, in his own feeble strength, against general inebriation; his wife's settled and faded features relax into something like a smile; the children once more come round their father and mother; he pledges himself by a strong rude

*

Extent and Remedy of National Intemperance, pp. 30, 31,

D

grasp of the hand, and is indubitably, for the moment, determined and conscientious; when lo! before nightfall some benevolent patron, it may be, some well-meaning customer, some bosom friend, lets out the stream of death afresh, in something like a paroxysm of courtesy, good-will, etiquette, and kindness; and he comes back, not to gladden his family with the day's wages unspent, and to bless them with returning plenty and peace, but trailed on the shoulders of men to his calamitous home, he is fitted by despair, in the ruin of his first attempt at reform, to descend into yet lower depths. Such are the specific, experienced, and ascertained effects of those perilous usages, which it seems the perverse and peculiar delight of our peasantry, of our gentlemen, of our ladies, of our ministers of religion, to rivet and perpetuate upon the land.

Colliers, shoemakers, hatters, and others, sometimes do not work at all on Mondays, and great damage is done to the cause of morality among individuals of those professions on these leisure days.

The launching bowl is a bonus of drink, varying from two to ten pounds, according to the size of the ship, bestowed by the owners on the apprentices of a ship-building yard, at the launch of a vessel. The graving bowl is given to the journeymen after a vessel is payed with tar. Sums are also given for the purpose of drinking at taking in and out of the dry dock. The operatives of the sugar-refining business expect a yearly gratuity in the same beverage, from all tradesmen and others by whom the

sugar-house is supplied with necessaries and repair. The Luggage Steam-boat Companies are assailed about New-year's-day with demands, not from their own workmen, but from those of their customers. One of these establishments paid lately from thirty to forty pounds for this item per

annum.

The launch bowl, not being a weekly or daily usage, is comparatively innocent; yet its universal abrogation, as far as drinking is concerned, would be a happy event for the apprentices in the shipbuilding yards; reserving the gift of money bestowed by the owners upon occasions of a launch, to be disposed of in a more expedient manner. The effects of this usage may be thus described:After a dance, and severe debauch all night, forty or fifty strong young men may be seen roaming about the country next day, in a formidable band, provided with two large stone-ware bottles of ardent spirits. They seem scarcely actuated by any particular motive in their line of march. Sometimes they sit down among the rocks on the sea shore, and out of their vessels add fuel to the flame: they are eyed all this time with jealousy and fear by passengers. Sometimes they start up, and move away quickly, and are next found occupying the walls of the highway for a considerable space in the manner of crows, using force in their mad folly to those inadvertent travellers whom they can lay hands upon, obliging them to drink whisky; and sometimes employing the most ferocious and obscene language to females of every rank and station

:

that pass sometimes they are seen running at the top of their speed in one group, yelling and blaspheming. Mothers call in their children all around, and bar the doors of the house; farmers and others pass, if possible, another way; the country seems as if in the hands of a foreign enemy; they perhaps suddenly stop, quarrel among themselves, and vociferate what nobody can understand; in a few seconds a number of strong men strip themselves, fight, bleed, and welter among the mud of the road. This may continue for hours, for there is no principle of order among them; discord rules triumphant. Individual acts of aggression cannot be discovered among so many, to form any subject of public prosecution; and if their friends are complained to, the answer may be ready-" Hoot! puir chiels, it was only the launch bowl; they would na' hurt a flee if they had na' got a glass;" and yet the very parents who return this hypocritical answer, may have been trembling for weeks at what might eventually be the results of this particular frolic. The whisky vessels, however, run dry; the drunken excitement flags; depression and collapse commence; the party stop their hostility, turn cold and sleepy, and tumble in masses behind the hedges, and sleep off their drink, it may be in. some cases at the expense of a rheumatic fever, or incipient consumption; and are perfectly unable to give any account of their proceedings at a future day. Indeed, the greater part may be respectable lads, who on no account would commit any such breach of the peace in their sober moments; never