



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive









ERCHIE

My Droll Friend

By Hugh Foulis

(Neil Munro)

(The Looker-On)

William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London


MCMIV


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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.




ERCHIE




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,