The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 2

by Walter Scott

  NOTE F.--PETER WALKER.

  This personage, whom it would be base ingratitude in the author to passover without some notice, was by far the most zealous and faithfulcollector and recorder of the actions and opinions of the Cameronians. Heresided, while stationary, at the Bristo Port of Edinburgh, but was bytrade an itinerant merchant, or pedlar, which profession he seems to haveexercised in Ireland as well as Britain. He composed biographical noticesof Alexander Peden, John Semple, John Welwood, and Richard Cameron, allministers of the Cameronian persuasion, to which the last mentionedmember gave the name.

  It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, andspirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a laterperiod, that the real character of the persecuted class is to begathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into theburlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but alwaysexpressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed andsentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turnfor the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is littleroom to doubt his veracity concerning whatever he quotes on his ownknowledge. His small tracts now bring a very high price, especially theearlier and authentic editions. The tirade against dancing, pronounced byDavid Deans, is, as intimated in the text, partly borrowed from PeterWalker. He notices, as a foul reproach upon the name of Richard Cameron,that his memory was vituperated, "by pipers and fiddlers playing theCameronian march--carnal vain springs, which too many professors ofreligion dance to; a practice unbecoming the professors of Christianityto dance to any spring, but somewhat more to this. Whatever," heproceeds, "be the many foul blots recorded of the saints in Scripture,none of them is charged with this regular fit of distraction. We find ithas been practised by the wicked and profane, as the dancing at thatbrutish, base action of the calf-making; and it had been good for thatunhappy lass, who danced off the head of John the Baptist, that she hadbeen born a cripple, and never drawn a limb to her. Historians say, thather sin was written upon her judgment, who some time thereafter wasdancing upon the ice, and it broke, and snapt the head off her; her headdanced above, and her feet beneath. There is ground to think andconclude, that when the world's wickedness was great, dancing at theirmarriages was practised; but when the heavens above, and the earthbeneath, were let loose upon them with that overflowing flood, theirmirth was soon staid; and when the Lord in holy justice rained fire andbrimstone from heaven upon that wicked people and city Sodom, enjoyingfulness of bread and idleness, their fiddle-strings and hands went all ina flame; and the whole people in thirty miles of length, and ten ofbreadth, as historians say, were all made to fry in their skins and atthe end, whoever are giving in marriages and dancing when all will go ina flame, they will quickly change their note.

  "I have often wondered thorow my life, how any that ever knew what it wasto bow a knee in earnest to pray, durst crook a hough to fyke and flingat a piper's and fiddler's springs. I bless the Lord that ordered my lotso in my dancing days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bulletsto my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumikens, and irons, cold andhunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head, and thewantonness of my feet. What the never-to-be-forgotten Man of God, JohnKnox, said to Queen Mary, when she gave him that sharp challenge, whichwould strike our mean-spirited, tongue-tacked ministers dumb, for hisgiving public faithful warning of the danger of the church and nation,through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubblingand greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries werefyking and dancing, he said, 'O brave ladies, a brave world, if it wouldlast, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, thatwill seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddlingand flinging be then?' Dancing being such a common evil, especiallyamongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate,has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish springthe Cameronian march!"--_Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies,_ etc.,collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727, 12mo, p. 59.

  It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameroniansmade a distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowedof it as a healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and womenmingled in sport, it was then called _promiscuous dancing,_ andconsidered as a scandalous enormity.