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Erchie, My Droll Friend
Erchie, My Droll Friend
PREFACE
The majority of the following chapters are selections from “Erchie” articles contributed to the pages of the ‘Glasgow Evening News’ during the past three years. A number of the sketches are now published for the first time.
I INTRODUCTORY TO AN ODD CHARACTER
On Sundays he is the beadle of our church; at other times he Waits. In his ecclesiastical character there is a solemn dignity about his deportment that compels most of us to call him Mr MacPherson; in his secular hours, when passing the fruit at a city banquet, or when at the close of the repast he sweeps away the fragments of the dinner-rolls, and whisperingly expresses in your left ear a fervent hope that “ye’ve enjoyed your dinner,” he is simply Erchie.
Once I forgot, deluded a moment into a Sunday train of thought by his reverent way of laying down a bottle of Pommery, and called him Mr MacPherson. He reproved me with a glance of his eye.
“There’s nae Mr MacPhersons here,” said he afterwards; “at whit ye might call the social board I’m jist Erchie, or whiles Easy-gaun Erchie wi’ them that kens me langest. There’s sae mony folks in this world don’t like to hurt your feelings that if I was kent as Mr MacPherson on this kind o’ job I wadna mak’ enough to pay for starchin’ my shirts.”
I suppose Mr MacPherson has been snibbing-in preachers in St Kentigern’s Kirk pulpit and then going for twenty minutes’ sleep in the vestry since the Disruption; and the more privileged citizens of Glasgow during two or three generations of public dinners have experienced the kindly ministrations of Erchie, whose proud motto is “A flet fit but a warm hert.” I think, however, I was the first to discover his long pent-up and precious strain of philosophy.
On Saturday nights, in his office as beadle of St Kentigern’s, he lights the furnaces that take the chill off the Sunday devotions. I found him stoking the kirk fires one Saturday, not very much like a beadle in appearance, and much less like a waiter. It was what, in England, they call the festive season.
“There’s mair nor guid preachin’ wanted to keep a kirk gaun,” said he; “if I was puttin’ as muckle dross on my fires as the Doctor whiles puts in his sermons, efter a Setturday at the gowf, ye wad see a bonny difference on the plate. But it’s nae odds-a beadle gets sma’ credit, though it’s him that keeps the kirk tosh and warm, and jist at that nice easy-osy temperature whaur even a gey cauldrife member o’ the congregation can tak’ his nap and no’ let his lozenge slip doon his throat for chitterin wi’ the cauld.”
There was a remarkably small congregation at St Kentigern’s on the following day, and when the worthy beadle had locked the door after dismissal and joined me on the pavement, “Man,” he said, “it was a puir turn-oot yon – hardly worth puttin’ on fires for. It’s aye the wye; when I mak’ the kirk a wee bit fancy, and jalouse there’s shair to be twa pound ten in the plate, on comes a blash o’ rain, and there’s hardly whit wid pay for the starchin’ o’ the Doctor’s bands.
“Christmas! They ca’t Christmas, but I could gie anither name for’t. I looked it up in the penny almanac, and it said, ‘Keen frost; probably snow,’ and I declare-to if I hadna nearly to soom frae the hoose.
“The almanacs is no’ whit they used to be; the auld chaps that used to mak’ them maun be deid.
“They used to could do’t wi’ the least wee bit touch, and tell ye in January whit kind o’ day it wad be at Halloween, besides lettin’ ye ken the places whaur the Fair days and the ‘ool-markets was, and when they were to tak’ place-a’ kind o’ information that maist o’ us that bocht the almanacs couldna sleep at nicht wantin’. I’ve seen me get up at three on a cauld winter’s mornin’ and strikin’ a licht to turn up Orr’s Penny Commercial and see whit day was the Fair at Dunse. I never was at Dunse in a’ my days, and hae nae intention o’ gaun, but it’s a grand thing knowledge, and it’s no’ ill to cairry. It’s like poetry-’The Star o’ Rabbie Burns’ and that kind o’ thing-ye can aye be givin’ it a ca’ roond in your mind when ye hae naething better to dae.