One Of These Occasions Is The
Celebration Of The Lord's Supper; And In This The Ancient Highland
Traditions Are Preserved.
The rite is celebrated not oftener than
once a year by any church.
It then invites the neighboring churches
to partake with it, - the celebration being usually in the summer and
early fall months. It has some of the characteristics of a
"camp-meeting." People come from long distances, and as many as two
thousand and three thousand assemble together. They quarter
themselves without special invitation upon the members of the
inviting church. Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer,
overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about his
premises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family,
and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out of
house and home. Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of these
religious raids, - at least he is left with a debt of hundreds of
dollars. The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains over
Sunday. There is preaching every day, but there is something
besides. Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, the
four days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, of
drinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he would
not particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St.
Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses. The evil has
become so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacred
rite will have to be reformed altogether.
Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fast
driving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowded
full of men, women, and children, - released from their long sanctuary
privileges, and going home, - was a sort of profanation of the day;
and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.
Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadful
prison-house. It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stone
and substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with a
square of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for the
residence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings at
the lower windows. A more inviting place to spend the summer in, a
vicious person could not have. The Scotch keeper of it is an old,
garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan. I think
that if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take him
with him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod. If the
prisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape,
the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardly
approve the prisoner's conduct.
The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us to
enter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our own
country (officially), we were interested in inspecting this.
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