Neil Munro - Erchie, My Droll Friend

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.

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.

“Oh, ay! A puir turn-oot the day for Kenti-gern’s; that’s the drawback o’ a genteel congregation like oors-mair nor half o’ them’s sufferin’ frae Christmas turkey and puttin’ the blame on the weather.”

“The bubbly-jock is the symbol o’ Scotland’s decline and fa’; we maybe bate the English at Bannockburn, but noo they’re haein’ their revenge and underminin’ oor constitution wi’ the aid o’ a bird that has neither a braw plumage nor a bonny sang, and costs mair nor the price o’ three or four ducks. England gave us her bubbly-jock and took oor barley-bree.

“But it’s a’ richt; Ne’erday’s comin’; it’s begun this year gey early, for I saw Duffy gaun up his close last nicht wi’ his nose peeled.

“‘Am I gaun hame, or am I comin’ frae’t, can ye tell me?’ says he, and he was carryin’ something roond-shaped in his pocket-naipkin.

“‘Whit’s wrang wi’ ye, puir cratur?’ I says to him.

“‘I was struck wi’ a sheet o’ lichtnin’,’ says he, and by that I ken’t he had been doon drinkin’ at the Mull o’ Kintyre Vaults, and that the season o’ peace on earth, guid-will to men was fairly started.

“‘MacPherson,’ he says, wi’ the tear at his e’e, ‘I canna help it, but I’m a guid man.’

“‘Ye are that, Duffy,’ I says, ‘when ye’re in your bed sleepin’; at ither times ye’re like the rest o’ us, and that’s gey middlin’. Whit hae’ye in the naipkin?’

“He gied a dazed look at it, and says, ‘I’m no shair, but I think it’s a curlin’-stane, and me maybe gaun to a bonspiel at Carsbreck.’

“He opened it oot, and found it was a wee, roond, red cheese.

“‘That’s me, a’ ower,’ says he – ‘a Christmas for the wife,’ and I declare there was as much drink jaupin’ in him as wad hae done for a water-’shute.’

“Scotland’s last stand in the way o’ national customs is bein’ made at the Mull o’ Kintyre Vaults, whaur the flet half-mutchkin, wrapped up in magenta tissue paper so that it’ll look tidy, is retreatin’ doggedly, and fechtin’ every fit o’ the way, before the invadin’ English Christmas caird. Ten years ago the like o’ you and me couldna’ prove to a freen’ that we liked him fine unless we took him at this time o’ the year into five or six public-hooses, leaned him up against the coonter, and grat on his dickie. Whit dae we dae noo? We send wee Jennie oot for a shilling box o’ the year afore last’s patterns in Christmas cairds, and show oor continued affection and esteem at the ha’penny postage rate.

“Instead o’, takin’ Duffy roon’ the toon on Ne’erday, and hurtin’ my heid wi’ tryin’ to be jolly, I send him a Christmas caird, wi’ the picture o’ a hayfield on the ootside and ‘Wishin’ you the Old, Old Wish, Dear,’ on the inside, and stay in the hoose till the thing blaws bye.

“The shilling box o’ Christmas cairds is the great peace-maker; a gross or twa should hae been sent oot to Russia and Japan, and it wad hae stopped the war.’ Ye may hae thocht for a twelvemonth the MacTurks were a disgrace to the tenement, wi’ their lassie learnin’ the mandolin’, and them haein’ their gas cut aff at the meter for no’ payin’ the last quarter; but let them send a comic caird to your lassie – ‘Wee Wullie to Wee Jennie,’ and they wad get the len’ o’ your wife’s best jeely-pan.

“No’ but whit there’s trouble wi’ the Christmas caird. It’s only when ye buy a shillin’ box and sit doon wi’ the wife and weans to consider wha ye’ll send them to that ye fin’ oot whit an awfu’ lot o’ freen’s ye hae. A score o’ shillin’ boxes wadna gae ower half the kizzens I hae, wi’ my grandfaither belangin’ to the Hielan’s, so Jinnet an’ me jist let’s on to some o’ them we’re no’ sendin’ ony cairds oot this year because it’s no’ the kin’ o’ society go ony langer. And ye have aye to keep pairt o’ the box till Ne’erday to send to some o’ the mair parteeclar anes ye forgot a’ thegither were freen’s o’ yours till they sent ye a caird.