Drink and worship when we choose

Richard West

In Dumfries, once a stronghold of puri- tan Sabbath observance, you can now visit the shops and the pubs from morning till night on Sunday, as on a weekday. On the first three Sundays in December, almost every establishment in the town is open for Christmas shoppers, many of them from over the border in England, where Sunday observance is still in force. The Dumfries travel agents are open on Sunday in Janu- ary, which is the time for booking a summer holiday. Even in spring, the off season for shopping, Woolworths and one or two of the supermarkets are open a few hours on Sunday, as well as the open markets beside the River Nith. Most the pubs in Dumfries can open on Sunday from noon till eleven at night but I found only two open all afternoon, though this could change during the summer tourist season. It may seem strange that Scotland, where only recently no shops or pubs were °Pen on a Sunday at all, should now be more relaxed than England, with no tradi- tion of Sabbatarian feeling, and where one could always do some shopping, and drink five hours in the pubs, on Sunday. APparently when the politicians framed the Shops Act in 1950, they excluded Scotland, presuming that laws intended for Pagan England had no application for `Presbyterian Scotland. At that time only a he fide' traveller could obtain a drink, if he was lucky, and Presbyterian ministers u, sed to threaten their flock with the etairnity of hell' if they went for a walk or Played ping-pong on a Sunday. Today a supermarket stands on the site of the Greyfriars Church where Robert Bruce plunged a dagger into the Red Comyn, an act that led to the war with England, and Bannockburn. A plaque on the shop front reminds those ignorant of their history how, after the stabbing, Roger Kirkpatrick went back to make sure that Comyn was dead by adding a few more thrusts, giving Scotland the gruesome motto `I'll mak siccar.' The pub, the Globe Inn, where Robert Burns was wont to enjoy what he called 'a squeeze', is still going strong, and it is now open on Sundays as well as the rest of the week. This development would have horrified but not surprised John Knox, who found Dumfries swarming with papists. Puritan- ism in 16th-century Scotland, as in 19th- century England, was what we would now call a 'backlash' against the depravity of the times. The court at Edinburgh by the end of the 15th century had acquired the licentiousness as well as the cultural aspira- tions of Renaissance France and Italy. Mediaeval chivalry had given way to lechery, which affected the Church as well. It is estimated by scholars that up to a third of the priests were living in concubinage, and the last Scottish cardinal, Beaton, had eight children. When Knox and other Calvinist preachers denounced the 'harlot- ry' of the Church of Rome, it was not merely a figure of speech.

The Scottish puritans at first came down hardest on those who broke the Seventh Commandment. In Dumfries in the 17th century, an adulterous couple had to attend church on seven consecutive Sun- days wearing nothing but sackcloth. On the first and last of these occasions they had to stand barefoot beside the door of the kirk as the congregation passed. The sexual behaviour of Mary Queen of Scots, a Roman Catholic, further inflamed the Cal- vinist wrath against adultery and fornica- tion. These ranked as crimes with breach of the Sabbath. Scottish parliaments in the 16th century passed laws against drinking alcohol on a Sunday, bodily recreation, dancing, profane music, carrying water, emptying ashes and sweeping the home. Some kirk sessions forbade children to play on Sunday. From 14 March 1664 it became an offence in Dumfries to be found 'walk- ing idly from house to house gossiping out of doors on the Sabbath day'.

However by this time the militant Pres- byterians, known as the Covenanters, were themselves suffering persecution from Charles II, who wanted to introduce epis- copacy and a form of worship similar to that of the Church of England. Seventeen out of the 19 ministers in the Dumfries area were driven out of their parishes to preach at secret services or conventicles on the moors and wooded hillsides. The circling curlews and lapwings often betrayed these conventicles to the troopers, so that even today, according to one historian, Gallo:. way people will sometimes destroy the nests of these birds. The Covenanters'

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harshest enemy in Dumfries was Sir James Turner, nicknamed 'Bloody Byte-the- sheep', who drove out the family of the Revd John Blackadder. As the fugitives crossed over the Nith, a small voice cried from a creel or basket slung from one of the horses, `I'm banisht!' I'm banisht!' To the question 'Who has banisht ye?' there came the piping reply: 'Byte-the-sheep has banisht me.'

The Covenanter terrorists murdered the Archbishop of St Andrews, then rose in rebellion in 1679, throughout south-west Scotland. As a popular broadsheet told the tale:

Some had halberts, some had dirks, Some had crooked swords like Turks; Some had slings and some had flails, Knit with eel and oxen tails.

The Tory episcopalian Walter Scott did not approve of the Covenanters but he admired their courage, and wrote his finest novel Old Mortality about the rebellion and its repression. The Duke of York, soon to be James II of England (and James VII of Scotland), presided over the torture of prisoners with the iron 'boot' that crushed the knee and ankle.

Galloway, which comprises the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Wigtown, stood out as a stronghold of the rebellious Covenanters, as it had been the refuge of Robert Bruce. The man charged with destroying the second wave of dissent was Sir Robert Grierson, or Grier of Lag, who lived in Dumfries with his only friend, a pet monkey named 'Major Weir'. The church- yards are rich in monuments to those like `John Bell of Whyteside, who was bar- barously shot to death in the paroch of Tongland, at the command of Grier of Lag. Anno 1685'. Grier of Lag ordered that two women recusants in Wigtownshire be led down to the Solway shore and tied to stakes in Blednoch Bay to be drowned by the rising tide. The younger woman, Margaret Wil- son, was staked down nearer the shore, in the hope that the death of her friend might induce repentance. She prayed, sang hymns and recited the Bible, refusing all help from the soldier who wanted to hold her head above the tide. She drowned, aged 18, one of the martyrs whose fate was soon to be revenged by the victory of the Ulster Presbyterians over the hated James II, at Londonderry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.

The Covenanters did not denounce whis- ky except when drunk on the Sabbath; the Revd Peter Poundtext in Old Mortality would smoke a pipe and drink ale while reading his Calvin; the Globe at Dumfries has been a pub since 1610. The temperance movement during the 18th century was brought up from England by Wesley and other social reformers, shocked by the effect of cheap gin on the poor of the cities. Teetotalism grew in strength during the 19th century, and became an industry in the second half of the 20th, spawning alcoholism clinics and quangos, employing battalions of well-paid meddlers.

The greatest resident of Dumfries, Robert Burns, described a drinking bout at which he was present:

Six bottles a-piece had well worn out the night, When gallant Sir Robert, to final the fight, Turned o'er in one bumper a bottle of red, And swore 'twas the way that their ancestors did.

On one night in January, Burns fell asleep in the snow on the short way home from the Globe, doing his health some damage; but David Daiches, a modern Scots poet, says that Burns was a moderate drinker compared to the Dumfriesshire squires; and at least one medical expert suggests that if he had not taken alcohol, Burns would have died even earlier from his rheumatic endocarditis.

Drink was not Burns's only weakness. Although an exciseman, the equivalent of a modern customs or Inland Revenue man, Burns supported first the Jacobites and then the French Revolution, refusing to stand for 'God Save the King' at the theatre in Dumfries. 'Shame, Burns!' shouted the members of the audience, who took the traditional view that a civil servant should not meddle in politics, as happens alas, today. The Inland Revenue Staff Federation is swarming with Trotskyists and traditional Moscow Communists. In spite of his 'left-wing', in fact Anglophobe, sentiments, Buits accepted the title of burgess and used it to get a free place for some of his children in Dumfries Academy. The town was tolerant of his sexual behaviour. He had nine children by his devoted wife who also took on his child by one of the barmaids at the Globe, saying 'Our Rab should have two wives'. There was one debauch at a country house, when Burns and his drunken friends pre- tended to act the rape of the Sabine women, and Burns actually did rape the wife or sister of his host; the unseemly affair was kept as quiet as possible. Burns made fun of the Presbyterian elders with

Their sighin', cantin' grace-proud faces, Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces.

He touched on incidents that in our own day would be chronicled by the Sunday newspapers:

And the minister kissed the fiddler's wife And could no preach for thinking o't.

However Burns led family prayers and on Sundays catechised the domestics. Burns was buried at St Michael's, the grim sandstone kirk on a hilltop, sur- rounded by huge tombstone slabs, silhouetted against the sky. The Sunday service at St Michael's today lasts only an hour, and is free of those `cantin', grace- proud faces' that Burns condemned. The congregation chat before the service be- gins; the minister cracks jokes, and far from denouncing adulterers in his flock, he tells homely news of engagements, mar- riages and births. At St Mary's Church LIP by the railway station, the nearby housing estate provides a congregation of hun- dreds, such as you see in the Church of England only when Songs of Praise Is televising the service. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland now appears to an English visitor cosy rather than stern. The music is excellent; the congregation sit rather than kneel to prayer; in neither sermon I heard at Dumfries was there any mention of sin, let alone hell-fire.

The minister at St Mary's, the Revd Ian Knox, told me that Sunday trading had net affected his congregation: 'I think some of them go shopping after they come here,' he added, with none of the wrath that would have been shown by his 16th-century namesake. His colleague at St Michael's the Revd John Pagan told me: 'I can't say that Sunday trading has affected attend- ance, which has gone up.' In fact the various Presbyterian elders with whom I spoke seemed to oppose Sunday trading not from the point of view of the Old Testament prophets but of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. `I don't object to the stunt' traders but soon there'll be all the chain

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stores opening . . . . It's the multinationals I'm frightened of . . . . The shop workers will have to be toiling every day of the week, and all the hours God gave . . It'll be like putting the lads up chimneys in the 19th century.' The concern with 'multi- nationals' (Tesco? Woolworths? Marks & Spencer?) seems to go with the Church of Scotland's newly developed concern with liberation theology, the anti-apartheid movement and Nicaragua. A church that condones abortion can hardly object on moral grounds to Sunday trading. The objection is political. In the same way, the Church of Scotland looks upon Sunday drinking not as a sin but a social problem. In Scotland, as in England and even in Wales (once famed for religious crusades against drink), the opposition to alcohol comes from the new puritan elders of the social services indus- try. A progressive clergyman like Bishop Montefiore can say from the pulpit that alcoholism is now the major problem facing the world today; not a sin, of course, but a problem. The most stringent laws against alcohol, outside Islam, are found in .atheist, kill-joy Sweden. The town of Dumfries shows that scrap- Ping the laws on Sunday trading and drinking does not lead to the evils pre- dicted by Usdaw and by the anti- alcoholism lobby. Very few shops and only a handful of pubs take advantage of the relaxed laws because there are not enough customers. Those shop assistants I met who were working on Sundays said they welcomed the job for the money and, in one case, because 'there's nothing else to do at the weekend'. Of course it means that shop assistants work on the three Sundays preceding Christmas but, as one has to remind the Presbyterian elders, their church in the old days banned the celebra- tion of Christmas. It is only recently that the Scots started to take a Christmas as well as a New Year holiday, with disastrous results for what remains of Scottish indus- try. The trouble with Scotland is not that some of them now work on a Sunday but that some of them will not work on the other six days of the week. The pubs in Dumfries, on Sunday as during the week, are much more peaceful and cheerful than Scottish pubs in the days When the customers rushed to get drunk before closing time, and then went off in the car to drink in the countryside. Twenty Years ago on the island of Lewis, the roads crossing the moorland were lined on either side with thousands of empty beer and whisky bottles. In Galloway until recent t! ime$, people took to the moors to drink in the same search for freedom as their ancestors in the 17th century went to religious coventicles. The easing of licencing laws would annoy the big brewers just as the easing of trading laws would have annoyed the Usdaw officials. Both groups see a chal- lenge to their monopoly power. The changes would bring nothing but benefit to the independent publicans and shopkeep- ers; to people looking for work as shop assistants and barmen; above all to the public at large. Sunday night at the Globe Inn proves the wisdom of its most famous customer that 'freedom and whisky gang tegither'. The most famous pub in the world is oddly free of tourists, at least during the winter months when I have been in Dumfries. The snug bar, with its Burns memorabilia, has none of the atmosphere of a shrine or museum, and is patronised only by locals. After a day or two, they will open out to a stranger, even a Sassenach, though here, as elsewhere in Scotland, you have to endure the joke: 'You canna be English. You're white.' On this visit I listened to interesting stories about old Angus 'who started drinking malt whisky at nine years old, and drank a bottle a day until he was 80'; also about a five-year-old prodigy 'who can read the Daily Telegraph from cover to cover'.

The Globe Inn today lives up to the great tradition described by Robert Cham- bers in his Life and Works of Burns, published in 1851:

As for Burns, he will just have a single glass, and a half-hour chat beside John Hyslop's fire, and then go quietly home. So he is quietly absorbed in the little narrow close where that vintner maintains his state. There, however, one or two friends have already established themselves, all with pre- cisely the same virtuous intent. They heartily greet the bard. Meg or John bustles about to give him his accustomed place, which no one ever disputes. And somehow the debate on the news of the evening leads on to other chat of an interesting kind. Then Burns becomes brilliant, and his friends give him the applause of their laughter. One jug succeeds another — mirth abounds — and it is not till Mrs Hyslop has declared that they are going beyond all bounds, and she posi- tively will not give them another drop of hot water, that our bard at length bethinks himself of returning home, where Bonnie Jean has been lost in peaceful slumber for three hours, after vainly wondering `what can be keeping Robert out so late the nicht'. Burns gets to bed a little excited and worn out but not in a state to provoke much remark from his amiable partner . . . .

If we substitute 'just a one' for 'just the single glass', and 'tired and emotional' for `excited and worn out', that passage could describe the evening out of a modern customer of The Globe — or Jeffrey Bernard's Coach and Horses, for that matter. After the laxity of mediaeval times and the long puritan centuries that fol- lowed, Scotland has now come back to a common sense attitude to morality.

There's some are fou o' love divine There's some are fou o' brandy,

Burns wrote. But most of us, for most of the time, are full of neither; preferring to worship or drink when we choose.