MEMORIALS OF CRAM.*
IT is a good portly book that is before us, and a corpulent, such as the kindly and patriotic son of a not-too-famous locality loves to write concerning his own town. Nothing but praise can be given to the manner in which it has been got up, the paper and print are beyond reproof, and the photo- graphs which illustrate it, excellent. So much may be said perhaps of the great majority of the topographical works which overwhelm the shelves of the country without adding -very much to its literature. But Mr. Beveridge's elaborate study is worthy of some more consideration than may be usually conferred on the "Chronicles of Little Peddlington " with which one is accustomed to meet. He approaches his subject with modesty and reverence, professing only to give an account of the " Churchyard Memorials of Crail," though his researches really go a great deal further.
The Royal burgh of Crail is in so far happy that it appears to have had little history. To be a Royal burgh is no great distinction in the Kingdom of Fife, where Royal burghs abound, but it is something to have a charter granted by Malcolm Canmore. There was also once a castle where St. David, that " sair Benet to the crown" occasionally lodged when he wished to unbend his mind by the pleasures of the chase. In later days Queen Mary of Guise landed there—or
• Tbs Churehrwd Memorials of Craii. By Erskine Beveridge. Edinburgh: • T. and A. Constable.
at the East Neuk of Fife, a mile or two to the east—on her way to meet her future husband at St. Andrews; regarding which interesting episode we can only say that it would have been better for Scotland if that lady had remained at home. Beyond this, even Mr. Beveridge's researches would find little to say were it not for the great church of Oran., which was till the beginning of this century one of the most interesting ecclesiastical monuments of East Fife. This important foundation, which is variously said to date from the times of St. David himself, or perhaps William the Lion, belonged at an earlyperiod to the Cistercian Order of Haddington, and was made a collegiate church in 1517, with a charter of incorpora- tion from James V. According to Sir David Lyndsay, it would seem to have been a place for pilgrimages, where- " Some in hope to get their haill (health) Rinnis to the Auld Rood of Kerraill ; " —possibly referring, as our author remarks, though himself apparently incredulous, to the very remarkable sculptured cross still remaining outside the church. So formidable was this holy institution in the eyes of the powers of evil that ex- traordinary measures were taken for its destruction, and Satan himself, according to unimpeachable local tradition, threw, or more strictly speaking, "putted," a huge boulder at the original edifice, taking his stand on the Isle of May for that purpose. He had chosen his stone badly, for it split in the air and only one piece of it came near the church, the other falling some way off, near the house of Balcomie ; but it must have been a very fair shot, at a distance which Donald Dinnie himself would not have attempted. The two pieces of rock still lie where they fell, and that nearest to the church still has the mark of the devil's thumb on it, so that the most in- credulous of critics cannot pretend to doubt the accuracy of this history. It would have been a happy thing if all ill- wishers of the venerable edifice had shared the sportsmanlike instinct of the Enemy, and only assailed it from a sufficient distance ; but the nineteenth-century restorers laid violent hands on the building itself, with such effects as may be gathered from a comparison of the two photographs given together by Mr. Beveridge of the church as it was—before 1815—and as it is, the former being taken from a sketch by General Sir John Bell, said to have been done from memory.
Few records of the church exist before the incorporation of 1517; and indeed Mr. Beveridge has little to tell us of the pre-Reformation times. The people of Crail seem to have been good pious folk in the main ; though, according to an old custom which had existed from the times of the Bruce, their market was held on Sunday. Under the strict rule of the Lords of the Congregation, they were speedily brought to book for this, and the market-day was changed to Saturday, though many persons, "mostly fleshers " (which in the de- based Southron idiom is " butchers "), kept to the old regime as long as they could. On the other hand, Crail seems to have shown the greatest ardour in following out the Old Testament precept about not suffering a witch to live. Occasionally, however, the burgh, or its minister, appears to have been visited with some strange touches of humanity. In the end of the sixteenth century, Mr. Andrew Duncan, minister of C rail, protests against the excessive severity of a neighbouring proprietor, saying that "according to the ordi- nance of the Presbytrie, he had tune Geillis Gray, suspect of witchcraft, whom the Laird of Lathocker tuick from him, and carreit hir to his place of Lathocker and their torturit hir, whairby now seho is become impotent and may not labour for hir living as scho wes wont." Another unhappy woman, Agnes Wallace, was brought, perhaps by some such gentle means as those employed by the Laird of Lathocker, to con- fess, and being asked "how long sine ache entrit the Devillis service, she answerit that, as sche thoucht, about thrie or four and for tie years."
The good people of Crail experienced a serious shock to their religious feelings when the town was in the hands of the Highlanders in 1715. We do not know whether they, like other good folk on the northern coast of the Firth of Forth, were deprived of their shoes, which seem usually to have been what Lord Mar's Highland soldiers stole first; but they were certainly not allowed to enjoy the preaching that delighted their souls to a full extent. There was a Jacobite bailie then in Crail,—a worthy person named Crawford, of large views and open to conviction, who was knighted by King James and pensioned by King George,—by whose order
there was frequently no sermon on the Sabbath day. "The minister forbidden to preach in the church," so run the Kirk- session Records, "unless he read the Earle of Harr his edict, and pray for King James. A young man, Mr. Nivens, by order of Baillie Crafurd, preached in the church after the old Episcopall fashion." Some weeks later Mr. Nivens is said to have again "possessed the kirk," and "had the English service." The word " English " is worth noting, as the Scotch Episcopalians of the last century would generally have been furious at such a word being applied to their service. The minister held to his post throughout, and preached in his own house when the church was closed to him. Perhaps there was an especial demand for preaching at Crail, as we find, in 1566, a minister named Kynneir stipulating that he should only preach once a week, on which condition he would undertake to look after the school. The other thing he stipulated for—honest man !- was that he should have " ane honest stipend." The system of choosing schoolmasters at Crail seems to have been somewhat eccentric, judging from the story of the two equally balanced candidates, on whose merits the examiners agreed to decide according to which of them ate most breakfast, "upon the principle that he who could teach well, ought to eat well." The old All Souls system of gauging a candidate's gentility—and consequent fitness for a fellowship—by his manner of eating cherry-pie, pales into nothing before this truly practical method.
Of course, the most important portion of Mr. Beveridge's work consists in his elaborate account of all the various tombs, monuments, and inscriptions in Crail churchyard, the record of which is his chief object. We have been led so far afield in dwelling on his pleasant record of the town and church, that we have little space left to speak of this. The genealogical and biographical studies suggested by the different monuments will be found of considerable value and interest, including short accounts of such neighbouring families of importance as the Spenses and Lindsays of Wormiston—it has been suggested that Sir Patrick Spens might have been a member of the former family—the Lums- dens of Airdrie, the Braces of Symbister, &c. Among other curious details concerning the churchyard, a strange ceremony is described, on the authority of Mr. Conolly's Fifiana, which was called "burying the plague." It appears that during the visitation of the plague, "large wheaten loaves were first exposed, raised high upon poles, and after a time carefully buried in a place where they would not be disturbed ; it being supposed that the pestilence entered the loaves and was thus diverted from its human victims." The collection of epitaphs is of no great interest to the outside reader.
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