Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T11:08:21.321Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Profane Pastimes and the Reformed Community: The Persistence of Popular Festivities in Early Modern Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Margo Todd
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Reformed Kirk of Scotland has a reputation for vigorous repression of festivity hardly to be surpassed by any other Protestant church. From 1560 on, the authorities of the kirk from local session to General Assembly waged a stern and unremitting campaign against the celebration of Yule, Easter, May Day, Midsummer, and saints' days; against feasting, whether at marriages or wakes; against Sunday sports and dancing and guising—in short, against anything that might distract newly Reformed laity from the central Protestant focus on the sermon, the Bible, and the godly life of moral discipline and prayer. Their goals were both negative and positive. They were intent on quashing popish superstition in part because they were convinced that its persistence helped to explain the recurrence of plague, famine, and other divine judgments on the land. In a more positive sense, they were trying to clear the way for construction of a new vision of the good life—one that exalted word over image and discipline over ritual, and in which community cohesion was achieved by a shared Protestant identity and the common goal of a devout and orderly society. Modern observers generally credit their campaign with remarkable success; certainly the popular image of Scotland after the Reformation is grim and joyless—and with some reason. Days of fasting and humiliation under presbyterian rule came close to outnumbering the old saints' days, and they vastly outnumbered new days of thanksgiving. Official policy on the matter of festivity was exemplary for a Reformed nation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2000 , pp. 123 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cameron, James, ed., The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1972), pp. 88–89Google Scholar; The Booke of the Universall Kirk of Scotland: Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies (Edinburgh, 1839–1845)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as BUK), 1:332, 334, 339, 388, and 2: 407, 410. In all quotes from primary documents, manuscript or printed, excepting poetry and titles of published works, I have anglicized and modernized the Scots for the convenience of modern readers, though with apologies to linguists and those who would revive the Scots language.

2 Hutton, Ronald, in The Rise and Fall of Merry England (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The English Reformation and the Evidence of Folklore,” Past and Present, no. 148 (1995), pp. 89–116Google Scholar, and now The Stations of the Sun (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar, has demonstrated attempts by some English bishops, magistrates, and ministers to abolish seasonal celebration other than Christmas and Easter, but there was no national ecclesiastical legislation or proclamation to compare with the Scots' until 1643, when abolition of Christmas in England was the price of Scots' aid against the king. The Scots in 1566 approved all of the Second Helvetic Confession except its allowance of “the festivities of our Lord's nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, ascension” and Pentecost; see Robinson, H., ed., Zurich Letters (Cambridge, 1942–1945), pp. 362 ff.Google ScholarHutton, , Stations, p. 419Google Scholar, notes the lack of research on ritual in Reformed Scotland.

3 Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, Conn., 1992)Google Scholar; Collinson, Patrick, Birthpangs of Protestant England (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Building a Godly Realm (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Collinson, Patrick and Craig, John, eds., The Reformation in English Towns (New York, 1998)Google Scholar. Hutton uses parish churchwardens' accounts, but there is no parochial equivalent for England of diocesan and archidiaconal court records where illicit revelry (by England's more limited definition) would be prosecuted. Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar, provides a useful introduction to English church courts and Reformation.

4 For example, Gifford, George, Country Divinitie (London, 1582)Google Scholar; Stubbes, Philip, The Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1583)Google Scholar; Dent, Arthur, The Plaine Man's Path-Way to Heaven (London, 1601), quote from p. 286Google Scholar; Woodward, Ezekial, Christmas Day, the Old Heathen's Feasting Day (London, 1656), quote from p. 18Google Scholar. My “Reformation in England after 1558,” in The Reformation World, ed. Pettegree, Andrew (London, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in press, expands this argument. Tyacke, Nicholas, ed., England's Long Reformation (London, 1998)Google Scholar, takes the Reformation story to 1800; cf. Durston, C. and Eales, J., eds., The Culture of English Puritanism (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. Puritan concerns about the profane festivities of surviving traditional culture found resonance in Alexander Hume of Logie's 1609 remark, “True it is that in England there is a begun Reformation, … but as yet there remain some vestiges of idolatry and superstition, … [like] their observing of feasts”; Laing, D., ed., The Miscellany of the Wodrow Society (Edinburgh, 1844), pp. 581–82Google Scholar.

5 Against Lynch's, Michael pessimistic view, “A Nation Born Again?” in Image and Identity, ed. Broun, Dauvit, Finlay, R. J., and Lynch, M. (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 82–104Google Scholar, set Kirk, James T., Patterns of Reform (Edinburgh, 1989)Google Scholar, or Graham, Michael, The Uses of Reform (Leiden, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 BUK, 1:332, 389, and 2:440; emphasis mine. The response was that they ought to be debarred from the sacraments until they had satisfied the discipline of the kirk “in special elders and deacons.”

7 BUK, 3:809, 874; Thomson, Thomas and Innes, Cosmo, eds., Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, 12 vols. (Edinburgh, 1814–1875), 3:542Google Scholar (hereafter cited as APS).

8 Stuart, John, ed., Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1398–1625 (Aberdeen, 1844), 1:343–44, 459–60Google Scholar; Scottish Record Office MSS (SRO), CH2/448/1, pp. 30, 107; SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 58, 85–86. The first volume of the MS session register has entries for 1562–63, 1568, and 1572–78; the second volume begins October 1602. The session appears not to have been well established until 1572.

9 Spalding, John, The History of the Troubles … in Scotland, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1829), 2:176Google Scholar; cf. pp. 107, 288.

10 White, Alan, “The Impact of the Reformation on a Burgh Community: The Case of Aberdeen,” in The Early Modern Town in Scotland, ed. Lynch, Michael (London, 1987), p. 97Google Scholar.

11 SRO, CH2/448/1, p. 35; Spalding, , History of the Troubles, 2:107–8Google Scholar. The pupils had petitioned unsuccessfully for Christmas holidays in 1569; the session's action in 1574 suggests that parents had continued to ignore the authorities on this issue. See White, Alan, “Religion, Politics and Society in Aberdeen, 1543–1593” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1985), p. 277Google Scholar.

12 At the King's insistence, though over strong clerical and parliamentary objections (APS, 4:596–97), the Five Articles of Perth had in 1618 restored religious observance of Christmas but not associated profane festivities. Many Scottish ministers declined to preach on Christmas anyway, and legislation after 1637 again abolished all observance of the day until 1661. Christmas was again banned in 1690 when William and Mary gave the Scottish Parliament its own way and did not again become an official holiday until 1958, but the secular Scottish New Year's Eve, Hogmanay, remains the greater holiday.

13 SRO, CH2/448/1, pp. 58–59 (1574, one man also offending); SRO, CH2/448/3, p. 90; £5 Scots was 8 shillings, 4 pence sterling.

14 Banks, Mary McLeod, British Calendar Customs: Scotland, 3 vols. (London, 1937–1941), 2:45 ff.Google Scholar, includes several versions of this carol. Hogmanays were biscuits especially made for New Year's.

15 SRO, CH2/448/1, p. 108; SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 76–78.

16 Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978)Google Scholar, and The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 183–90Google Scholar; Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons (Oxford, 1997), pp. 16–21Google Scholar; Hutton, , Stations, p. 12Google Scholar. In Scotland in 1508 a man was hanged for theft “under guise of mumming”; see Mill, A.J., Medieval Plays in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1927), p. 30Google Scholar. Yet in pre-Reformation Aberdeen the king's court had paid Epiphany guisers; see Banks, , British Calendar, 2:126Google Scholar.

17 Cressy, David, “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 35 (October 1996): 438–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sensibly argues against any particularly deep meaning in festive cross-dressing and its prosecution in England. Literary scholars, he argues, have gone too far in reading into theatrical transvestism “a sex-gender system in crisis” (p. 464).

18 BUK, 2:431.

19 SRO, CH2/448/2, p. 72; SRO, CH2/448/3, p. 262—both prosecutions of artists for painting crucifixes to be carried in funeral processions, though in neither case was the painter punished. SRO, CH2/448/1, p. 87; SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 151–52. The provincial assembly that received the 1605 case ruled that cross-dressers of either sex “disguised in such a wanton and unchaste form” must pay a fine set by the session and make public repentance in the kirk; for a second offense, the repentance must be made in sackcloth.

20 SRO, CH2/448/1, p. 116. Saint Peter's Eve is 28 June; fires were also often lit on the eve of Saint John the Baptist's feast day, 24 June. For England, see Hutton, , Rise and Fall, pp. 37–38, 44, 51Google Scholar; Hutton, , Stations, pp. 25, 317Google Scholar.

21 Hutton, , Rise and Fall, pp. 38, 72Google Scholar. McNeill, F.Marian, The Silver Bough, 3 vols. (Glasgow, 1959), 2:89–90Google Scholar, notes an Aberdeen cleric setting a fire and offering a feast at his gate in 1745, although it is unclear whether this was a case of survival or revival.

22 SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 300–302; SRO, CH2/1/1, Aberdeen Presbytery, 24 February 1609, n.f. Yetts were iron gates placed just inside the front door for security; a sixteenth-century yett can be seen at the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Proximity of bonfires to the householders' principal entrances would have reinforced the Midsummer message of hospitality.

23 SRO, CH2/1/1, n.f. (24 February and 2 March 1609). Menzies continued to trouble both session and presbytery for suspect popery until May 1620 (SRO, CH2/448/4), when after long excommunication, he signed the Reformed Articles of Faith.

24 SRO, CH2/448/2, p. 301; cf. pp. 341–42. Mortimer was a kinsman of the Marquis of Huntly.

25 Records of Old Aberdeen, 1498–1903, 3 vols. (Aberdeen, 1909), 2:285, 314, 344Google Scholar: 1647–50 prohibitions of “fires set on within the parish at Midsummer.”

26 The music and dancing associated with maying find expression in Dunbar's, William 1490 poem, “The Golden Targe,” in The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. Mackenzie, W. Mackay (Edinburgh, 1932), pp. 112–19Google Scholar; and in its post-Reformation (1568) echo, Scott's, Alexander “Of May,” in The Poems of Alexander Scott, ed. Cranstoun, James (Edinburgh, 1896), pp. 23–25Google Scholar.

27 SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 25, 72, 134, 199–201, 357. The 1606 groups included the skippers of Futtie and their families, three tailors, and a bookbinder.

28 Brand, John, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 2 vols. (London, 1849), 2:376Google Scholar. For more on May pilgrimages to holy wells, see below.

29 White, , “Religion, Politics and Society,” chap. 4 (pp. 141–86)Google Scholar, and “Impact of the Reformation,” pp. 87, 94–96, notes that of four members of the Menzies family on the session in the 1570s, three were accused of Catholicism. Graham, , Uses of Reform, p. 115Google Scholar, finds five Catholics among the thirteen elders in 1573. The town bailies were also traditionalists: the regent reprimanded them in 1574 for failure to enforce laws against festivals, plays, feasting, images, organs, and altars; SRO, CH2/448/1, pp. 58–59.

30 White, , “Religion, Politics and Society,” pp. 178, 305, 317, 345Google Scholar; cf. Graham, , Uses of Reform, p. 125Google Scholar.

31 Verschuur, Mary, “Merchants and Craftsmen in Sixteenth-Century Perth,” in The Early Modern Town in Scotland, ed. Lynch, Michael (London, 1987), pp. 36–54Google Scholar; Lawson, John Parker, The Book of Perth (Edinburgh, 1847), pp. ix, xi, 82Google Scholar. Perth's many religious houses, including Blackfriars, Whitefriars, Charterhouse, and Greyfriars, along with nearby Scone Abbey and the forty-one altars and chapels of the town kirk of Saint John the Baptist, were all destroyed by the mob.

32 Lawson, , Book of Perth, p. 84Google Scholar; SRO, CH2/521/3, pp. 2, 25; SRO, CH2/521/3, p. 177; SRO, CH2/521/4, p. 170; SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 276; Lynch, Michael, “Scottish Towns, 1500–1700,” in Lynch, , ed., Early Modern Town, p. 19Google Scholar. Detailed sessions minutes survive for 1577–1637 with only the 1624–30 volume missing. Some CH2/521 volumes are foliated; others are paginated.

33 SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 237.

34 Banks, , British Calendar, 3:194–95Google Scholar. Obert is the French Saint Aubert, whose day is actually 13 December.

35 SRO, CH2/521/1, fols. 5, 15v, 68v–69. Offenders who could not afford the 20 shillings were to stand in irons on the Cross Head for two hours on market day.

36 SRO, CH2/521/2, fol. 59.

37 SRO, CH2/521/2, fol. 114v.

38 SRO, CH2/299/1, Perth Presbytery Minutes, p. 81; SRO, CH2/521/6, fol. 6—John Malcolm, minister of Perth, dissenting from Easter sermons, although he seems in the end to have complied.

39 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 207–8, 209–10, 214.

40 SRO, CH2/521/4, pp. 182–84. A fornicator incarcerated in 1633 complained of “such a multitude of rodents that he feared to have been destroyed by them.” The session replied that he deserved what he got for his “sinful life and … disobedience to the session,” SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fol. 99v.

41 SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fols. 80, 83v, 124; SRO, CH2/299/1, p. 321.

42 SRO, CH2/521/1, fols. 37v–38, 56, 57v; SRO, CH2/521/2, fol. 49.

43 SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 49, 86–86v; SRO, CH 2/521/3, pp. 143, 150–51, 226–27, 233 (a 1602 May masque), 274.

44 SRO, CH2/521/3, pp. 318–21.

45 SRO, CH2/521/6, fols. 83–83v, 91, 137v, 138v; SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 40, 50; APS, 3:138 (1579)Google Scholar. Huntingtower is on the River Almond about 3 km from Perth—a pleasant spring afternoon walk.

46 Hutton, Rise and Fall, notes no such phenomenon in his exhaustive study of English pastimes. In Scotland, occurrences are rare in Anglian Lothian parishes, but abound in Celtic areas and those in the web north of the Forth more recently (although by the later sixteenth century no longer) Celtic.

47 Banks, , British Calendar, 1:125–43, 161Google Scholar. The antiquity of these Christian wishing wells is suggested by the discovery in the 1880s of a gold piece dating from James VI's reign by a workman digging a drain at the back of a well near Culsalmond (1:145). Hutton, , Stations, p. 225Google Scholar, notes also that in English pastoral areas, cattle were let out of their folds to pasture at the beginning of May, so that rituals to protect them against evil would have been especially appropriate at Beltane.

48 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 40, 50, 421, 430, and the depositions against three witches inserted into the back of the volume; SRO, CH2/299/1, pp. 87–88; Lawson, , Book of Perth, pp. 413, 421Google Scholar. Belief in bringing spring water back to an ailing bairn in silence for more effectual healing was common: Banks, , British Calendar, 1:125Google Scholar. The minutes covering 1624–31 are missing, so additional Perth well cases are untraceable until the 1630s; however, the cases of 1632–36, discussed below, hint at continuity in the pastime.

49 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 489–93; cf. pp. 432–39 for Skinner's background. The youth of four of the girls is suggested by the fact that they were identified not by their own names but as “William Stone's two daughters, John Clayster's daughter, … and John Lamb's youngest sister.”

50 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 489–93; APS, 3:212. The statute includes well visiting with “divers other papistical rites” like saints' days, bonfires, and seasonal caroling; the penalty for a second offense was death as an idolater.

51 SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fols. 55v, 96v, 137v–138; SRO, CH2/521/8/2, fols. 206–206v. The 1632 couple's claim to have returned in time for both sermons is unlikely, since the session generally targeted absentees.

52 SRO, CH2/521/2, fol. 78; cf. admonition for fishing and other country pastimes when Midsummer 1599 fell on the Sabbath (fol. 10). The 1616 session took fiscal advantage of fair visitors by ordering a collection for kirk repairs on the Sunday before Midsummer Day: SRO, CH2/521/6, fol. 40v.

53 SRO, CH2/521/4, pp. 44–45.

54 SRO, CH2/521/4, p. 44; SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 330–36.

55 For “festive excess” at weddings and processions, “doles and dinners” after funerals in England, see Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death (Oxford, 1997), pp. 350–55, 446–48, 435–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 SRO, CH2/521/5, fol. 14. It is not clear why the child was being baptized in Methven. The revelers were punished by the civil magistrate for their disorder and by the session according to the parliamentary act for Sabbath observance. Out-of-town baptisms that drew witnesses away from their own parish churches on the Sabbath were a frequent annoyance to the session (e.g., SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 105).

57 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 198, 222.

58 SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fol. 75v; SRO, CH 2/299/1, p. 308; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, chaps. 4, 7.

59 SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fols. 139v, 140v. A “caution” was a sort of bondsman who promised to pay the penalty if his client failed to perform an assigned act, behave in a prescribed manner, or pay a lesser fine. If one who “acted himself” failed to do as he had promised, he would be liable for the set penalty.

60 SRO, CH2/521/1, fols. 64, 98v, 111. The General Assembly had ordered in 1562 that solemnization of marriage be made by the simple Geneva order without excessive and popish celebration; BUK, 1:30.

61 SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 55, 1; SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 451; cf. Thomson and Innes, eds., APS, 3:221, and 4:625.

62 SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fol. 16v; National Library of Scotland (NLS) MS Advocates 31.1.1A, fol. 189; cf. Thomson and Innes, eds., APS, 4:625–26 (1621).

63 St. Andrews University Library MS, CH2/276/1, p. 2; SRO, CH2/636/34, fols. 9, 47.

64 SRO, RH2/1/35 (Edinburgh), fols. 13v, 15v, 38v, 46; fol. 40v reports the 1575 General Assembly investigation of the minister of St. Andrews. Paton, Henry, ed., The Session Book of Dundonald, 1602–1731 (n.p., 1936)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Dundonald), pp. 28, 236.

65 SRO, CH2/21/5, Auchterderran (1620s), fol. 11; SRO, CH2/383/1, Liberton, see, e.g., fols. 18, 19; Kirk, James, ed., Stirling Presbytery Records, 1581–1587 (Edinburgh, 1981), p. 192Google Scholar.

66 Laing, David, ed., Miscellany of the Wodrow Society (Edinburgh, 1844), p. 293Google Scholar; Paton, , ed., Dundonald, pp. 274–75Google Scholar.

67 SRO, CH2/636/34, Kirkcaldy, see, e.g., fols. 24, 36; SRO, CH2/326/1, Scoonie, p. 4; Cramond, W., ed., Records of Elgin, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1903), 2:69, 177Google Scholar.

68 Mill, , Medieval Plays in Scotland, p. 162Google Scholar; Fergusson, R.Menzies, Logie (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 2, 81Google Scholar (June 1596, March 1608).

69 SRO, CH2/4/1, Aberlady, fols. 24v–25, 30v. For Culross, see Cramond, W., The Church and Priory of Urquhart (Edinburgh, 1899), p. 26Google Scholar, and “Culross Kirk Session Records,” in Northern Notes and Queries 3 (1889): 36Google Scholar, and Northern Notes and Queries 4 (1890): 26Google Scholar. For Elgin, see Banks, , British Calendar, 3:226Google Scholar, citing Wodrow's early eighteenth-century account of Murdoch McKenzie. One has the sense from all of these records that only the tip of the iceberg is showing.

70 Cramond, , ed., Records of Elgin, 2:76, 158, 198, 212, 222, 247Google Scholar. The Dundonald session prosecuted a Yuletide piper in 1612; Paton, ed., Dundonald, p. 229. In St. Andrews a 1575 fast was troubled when the magistrates declined to ban children and servants performing Robin Hood plays and Yuletide games; SRO, RH2/1/35, fols. 40–41.

71 St. Andrews University Library MS, CH2/624/2, pp. 107, 119, 129 (1610–12); cf. Paton, , ed., Dundonald, p. 248Google Scholar.

72 SRO, CH2/424/1, Dalkeith Presbytery Minutes, p. 170; Cramond, , ed., Records of Elgin, 2:195, 170, 204, 235, 238Google Scholar; Paton, , ed., Dundonald, p. 15Google Scholar (9 May 1602 summons of Marion Or for “professing herself to ride with the fair folk and to have skill”) and pp. 35, 51 (13 May 1604 prosecution of Jonat Hunter, who also claimed to be “one that gaid [went] out with the fair folk” in May and thereby acquired healing powers).

73 Banks, , British Calendar, 2:239Google Scholar; Records of the Burgh of Peebles (Edinburgh, 1872), p. 326Google Scholar; SRO, CH2/295/1, Peebles Presbytery, fol. 39v; Kirk, James, ed., Stirling Presbytery Records, pp. 4–5, 115–16, 120, 135, 140, 147, 150Google Scholar; SRO, CHI/121/1 (1586), fol. 9; Kirk, James, Visitation of the Diocese of Dunblane, 1586–1589 (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 12Google Scholar; Banks, , British Calendar, 1:147, 127, 158, 165Google Scholar, and 3:41; Nimmo, William, The History of Stirlingshire (London, 1880), 1:281–82Google Scholar.

74 SRO, RH2/1/35, fols. 14–14v; SRO, CH2/121/1, fols. 42v, 43v, 44v–45.

75 Paton, , ed., Dundonald, pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

76 MacKay, William, ed., Records of the Presbytery of Inverness and Dingwall, 1643–1688 (Edinburgh, 1896), pp. 268, 323Google Scholar.

77 NLS MS Adv. 31.1.1a, fol. 258. Cowper, who preached five sermons weekly as second minister of Perth, 1595–1614, had signed the Protestation of 1606 against bishops. Within weeks of Malcolm's 1591 arrival in Perth, he had introduced weekly visitation of the sick by elders and minister, doctrinal vetting of couples before marriage contracts were made, regular visitation of every household “for their reformation and information in godliness,” Saturday morning prayers, and a twice-annual review of every officeholder in the kirk. SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 55, 57v, 58v, 70, 126v, 158.

78 SRO, CH2/521/1, fols. 42, 72, 100v, 116v; SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 4, 79, 91v, 101–101v, 117v, 119, 126v;SRO, CH2/521/3, pp. 144, 273, 316, pass., in all the volumes of CH2/521. Edinburgh's two Sunday communions were typical in starting early, following 5:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M. sermons and were preceded by Saturday sermons of preparation; SRO, RH2/1/35, fols. 30, 55–55v. Communion was offered twice on each designated Sunday, once for each quarter of the congregation. For the festive outworking of this in later Scotland and America, see Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Holy Fairs (Princeton, N.J., 1989)Google Scholar.

79 For example, SRO, CH2/521/1, fol. 72; SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 79, 91v; SRO, CH2/521/6, fol. 135; SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 22, 136; SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fols. 90, 204. Edinburgh examinations were on Fridays before each communion (SRO, RH2/1/35, fols. 28v, 55–55v), and each of the four town ministers catechized every Sunday, examined children weekly, and made sure that heads of households could repeat the “sum and substance of the Gospel and heads of religion” (NLS MS Adv 29.2.8, fols. 154–56).

80 Examples of fasts proclaimed by the session include SRO, CH2/521/2, fols. 12v, 56v; SRO, CH2/521/3, p. 334; SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 250; SRO, CH2/521/8/1, p. 147; by the presbytery, SRO, CH2/299/1, pp. 70 (a fast designated surprisingly in 1622 for the “second Sunday in Lent”), 76, 86, 298, 317, 343, 362, 365, 366—all January or late summer, for storm, drought, crop and cattle disease, flood, and plague. For mandated fast sermons, see SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 250–52; SRO, CH2/299/2, p. 113. Perth's long fasts were probably like Edinburgh's in allowing consumption of bread and drink: SRO, RH2/1/35, fol. 30. One Aberdeen winter fast lasted from 10 November 1608 to 15 January 1609: SRO, CH2/448/2, pp. 100–113.

81 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 331, 349, 430; SRO, CH2/521/8/1, fol. 25v; SRO, CH2/521/6, fol. 105. For much heavier parliamentary penalties for Sabbath breach, see Thomson and Innes, eds., APS, 3:38, 138, 430, and 4:63.

82 SRO, CH2/521/7, p. 484; SRO, CH2/299/1, p. 62.

83 SRO, CH2/521/7, pp. 432–41.

84 BUK, 1:322–23; SRO, CH2/521/2, fol. 27.

85 NLS MS Adv. 31.1.1a, fols. 242–43; cf. Chronicle of Perth, p. 33. The great flood of 1621 had reduced the townspeople to using a ferry to cross the river.

86 Chronicle of Perth, pp. 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 24, 28; NLS MS Wod. Qu 20, fol. 303v; Thomson and Innes, eds., APS, 4:213. These festivities surely aided construction of a national identity combining the religious factor of providentialism with political and dynastic elements (cf. Broun, Finlay, and Lynch, eds., Image and Identity). For English parallels to replacement of religious with political holidays in the same era, see Cressy, David, Bonfires and Bells (Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar.

87 NLS MS Wod. Qu 20, fol. 299v.

88 Burke, , Historical Anthropology, pp. 223–38Google Scholar; Muir, Edward, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 76, 140, 151Google Scholar (describing “that breakneck destructuring rush called the protestant Reformation”). Hutton reckons that English authorities in the interregnum had nearly extinguished the ritual year as well, though elements of it revived after the Restoration.

89 Muir, , Ritual in Early Modern Europe, p. 140Google Scholar. Indeed, work on Huguenot rites of violence and ritual in the early German Reformation sets the stage for a broader treatment: Davis, Natalie Zemon, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” Past and Present, no. 90 (1981): 40–70Google Scholar; Diefendorf, Barbara, Beneath the Cross (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; Scribner, Robert, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), chap. 5Google Scholar.