he forsook for conscience' sake a life of dignity and comfort to identify himself with a Church which had not even a bare subsistence to offer to the majority of its clergy, a Church, moreover, which since the abortive Jacobite rising of 1715 had been under the continuous ban of the Government. His sufferings would have broken the spirit and soured the mind of a lesser man ; but John Skinner was -Tullochgorum. He had the capacity, as an old Peterhead worthy once said, of "adapting himsel' to the suitabeelity o' the consequences"; and though he was never the man to take dunts and forget to return them, his philosophy of life was too broadly human, too genially tolerant, to let the canker of bitterness eat into his soul. At Longside he took to farming to eke out the scanty emoluments of his office; but the experiment was a ghastly failure, and in the end he was glad to- "Sell corn and cattle off; pay every man ; Get rid of debts and duns as fast's I can ; It was about this period that his two great songs were written; and, like nearly every line that came from his pen, they were dashed off and put into circulation without any thought of futurity. Skinner indeed, as a poet, never took himself seriously. He wrote chiefly for friendship's sake or to gratify the girls at Linshart-those lassies of his who teased him for words to fit old tunes, and being a good father, with an eye in his head and knowledge of marriageable daughters' ways, he did his best on occasion to provide them with material for the entertainment of the village swains. This explained the inequality of his published writings; and the speaker felt bound to say that in his humble judgment those amiable persons who in the past had been at pains to retrieve the disjecta membra of his fugitive poems and publish them under his name, had done his reputation a signal disservice. Give me, continued Canon Wilkinson, "Tullochgorum," "The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn," "John of Badenyon," and "The Old Man's Song," and who will may have the rest, with the possible exception of two verses of "Lizzie Liberty.' Among his non-lyrical pieces I give the place of honour to "The Monymusk Christmas Ba'ing," not because it is finished poetry, but for two very different reasons-first, because it is a wonderfully vivid description of village customs, village philosophy, and village character in the early years of the eighteenth century; and second, because it preserves inviolate those ancient forms of speech which were once the pride and are now rapidly becoming a mere reminiscence of the Scottish people :— What Scottish poet except Charles Murray could write to-day of "bumbees bizzing frae a bike," or describe so inimitably what happened when— The poem was a descriptive masterpiece in the pure vernacular, and reminded them of what they had lost, not only in forms of speech that were racy of the soil and steeped in the memories of an interesting historic past, but in the characteristics of life and thought which once they incarnated, are now only dimly and bemusedly expressed. They had lost more than they could ever hope fully to recover; but at least, by the intelligent and loving. study of such vernacular literature as had survived the undiscerning passion for "gentility," and the Anglicising influences in politics, letters, religion, and education that were steadily converting the sons of the sturdy North into base imitations of the West-end Edinburghian Scots -by such study, faithfully directed and zealously pursued, they might at least save for their children and their children's children something of the glamour, the romance, the beauty, the soft witcheries and the vivid directness of the ancient speech of an ancient people, the mither-tongue of the brave folk, the dear folk, the kind folk o' aul' lang syne. In that goodly company the venerable and venerated figure of John Skinner took an honoured place. They saluted his memory-the memory of a great Scot, a true poet, and a man whose name was still a synonym in the North for honour and integrity, for loyalty to kith and kin, and for brave, buoyant, large-hearted humanity. The other toasts included "Skinner's County," proposed by Colonel Sir James Cantlie, K.B.E., and responded to by Sir Edward Troup, K.C.B., K.C.V.O.; and and "The Vernacular Circle," proposed by Sir William Noble, and replied to by Mr John Douglas, F.S.A.(Scot.). The artistes were Mr Tom Kinniburgh, Miss Christine Gordon, Miss Muriel Macgregor, and Miss Maud Cooper. COMMEMORATION AT LONGSIDE. Longside, for the greater part of his lifetime the home of John Skinner, was fittingly chosen as the headquarters of the Tullochgorum Club, with his successor in office, the Rev. Canon Mackay, as the first President, Dr Wood as Vice-president, and Mr George Martin Gray as Secretary and Treasurer. Monday, 3rd October, 1921, was the two hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth; and the inaugural dinner of the Club was held in S. John's Hall. There was a large attendance of members. The President occupied the chair, and after the toast of "The King," proposed "The Memory of John Skinner." He said that Lord Rosebery in his Miscellanies, published the other day, speaks of the tropical tangle of centenaries that has grown up in recent years, but Lord Rosebery would be the last man to admit that any excuse was needed for the commemoration of the poet-parson of Linshart. Two hundred years ago on this date, John Skinner first saw the light of day among the hills of Birse. It has been said that every great man is the son of his mother, but Skinner's case was a notable exception. "A Mother! Ah! The venerable name which my young lips were never taught to frame" are the words in which he refers to the loss which he sustained when only two years of age. He therefore owed little or nothing to maternal guidance beyond the moulding process of his pre-natal training, but he was born to one great privilege, that of having as his father one of the class of old parochial schoolmasters of Scotland-a class that more than any other has made Scotland and Scotsmen what they are. His mother's death served to make him all the more the object of paternal care and affection, and as the bud of early life began to open and expand, his father was not slow to observe the latent spark of genius that was kindling within, and which was destined to burn so brightly in the coming man. Entering Marischal College as a bursar at the early age of thirteen, he passed with distinction through all the stages of the Arts curriculum graduated with honours when seventeen, and then, without a shilling in his pocket, went out into the world to make his living. Eighteen months of schoolmastering at Kemnay and Monymusk, a year's tutoring in the far-off Shetlands, then back to his native shire to study theology with a view to entering the Ministry of the Church, his ordination by Bishop Dunbar at Peterhead in 1742, and then a few months later his institution to the pastoral charge of the congregation of Longside, where in a position of genteel poverty he ministered for the long period of sixty-five years "A man to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year." Such, in brief, are the leading landmarks in the life history of the man to the outstanding gifts and graces of which posterity will always do homage. 66 AN IMPRESSIVE PERSONALITY. 66 When we regard Skinner in his character as a man, there rises up before us a personality massive and impressive in its rich blend of indomitable courage, loyalty to conscience, indifference to worldly rewards and advantages, buoyant optimism and cheerfulness, and a fascinating genius for friendship. It required no small courage on the part of the young schoolmaster at Monymusk to give up the prospect of entering the pulpit and adorning the ministry of a rich Established Church, and to throw in his lot with a disestablished, impoverished, and persecuted religious body. With his eyes open," as Bishop Mitchell remarks, Skinner gave up the career as a parish minister to which his schoolmastering was meant to lead, and embraced a life of genteel poverty in which his great talents never received adequate scope or recognition." Not less, though of a different complexion, was the courage-which some people would regard as a tempting of Providence, but in his case the outcome of a buoyant optimism and trust-which led him while yet a stripling without a home or means of sustenance, to enter the bonds of matrimony, and then, leaving his young wife in the care of her father, returning to Aberdeenshire to settle down with a firlot of meal for his food and a barrowful of peats for fuel to prepare himself for the ministry. When, after the Battle of Culloden, the storm of persecution burst upon his Church, and when (although he himself was no Jacobite) his house was pillaged and his chapel burnt, Skinner went calmly on, and even his six months' imprisonment in the jail of Aberdeen failed to crush his noble spirit or impair the vigour of his activities. It was this buoyant spirit animating him no less in adversity |