CHAPTER XXV. 



THE KIRK-SESSION AND ITS DUTIES A GHOST LAID 

 TIBBIE MORTIMER AND GEORDIE WATT. 



THE oversight exercised by the Kirk- Session, and the 

 extent to which it felt bound to interfere for the regu- 

 lation of morals and promotion of the material interests 

 of the parishioners, were not a little remarkable. If 

 the Session might not still go the length of " dealing " 

 with women of rank and position, as had been done a 

 century earlier, worrying them effectually because they 

 failed to appear duly at church, and were " suspect" 

 of being " obstinate papists " and the like, they had, 

 at any rate, little difficulty in getting an ordinary laird 

 to submit to discipline ; to pay the wonted fine for his 

 incontinence, and probably a good round sum in addi- 

 tion for behoof of the poor if on that footing he 

 might obtain the privilege of taking his rebuke in 

 private, and not in presence of the congregation, a con- 

 cession not very infrequently made latterly. There 

 were not wanting instances, moreover, of persons of 

 the Episcopal persuasion coming voluntarily forward, 

 and, for the quieting of their own consciences, pre- 

 sumably, entreating discipline to be exercised upon 

 them. And while the sway of the Session received 

 something like universal acknowledgment, the variety 

 of things in which it intermeddled was great. Censure 

 would be threatened, or, if need were, passed upon " dis- 

 haunters of ordinances," upon women who indulged in 

 idle "claik" about the kirk door on Sunday, or used 

 their tongues in vulgar and scandalous u fly ting " at 



