The Kirl-Session and its Duties. 203 



building of bridges, which, properly enough, it re- 

 cognised as " a pious work," and would readily order 

 a collection to be made to help on an undertaking of 

 that kind. And if a farmer got his " steading " burnt 

 down, not only the Session of his own parish, but those 

 of other surrounding parishes would agree to render 

 him aid in the same way. But indeed there was no 

 interest, temporal or spiritual, in which the Session 

 might not intermeddle. An illustration of this of 

 a rather peculiar sort is found in the records of 

 the Kirk-Session of Chapel of Garioch. It was in 

 the autumn of 1737, about the time when John 

 Skinner, as a youthful tutor at Monymusk House, in 

 the neighbouring parish of that name, was inditing 

 his " Christmas Ba'in." The well-to-do tenant in the 

 pleasant farm of Bridgend, on the banks of the Ury, 

 who had been among the first to build a pew for him- 

 self in the parish kirk in 1718, had died leaving a 

 family of seven sons, still alive, for two of whom he 

 had been able to provide separate farms, leaving the 

 rest together in family at Bridgend. His widow had 

 followed him to the grave in the bygone spring, and 

 now it was noised through the parish that her ghost 

 had been seen ; and indeed was causing no little terror 

 about Bridgend. The Session being convened on a 

 certain date, the minister, Mr. Gilbert Gerard, reported 

 that he had something to lay before them concerning 

 the " said pretended spirit." His statement, in sub- 

 stance, was that he, as minister of the parish, had 

 been asked by George Watt from Bridgend, to come 

 and "converse with the spirit, who, ever since about 

 three or four weeks after the death of his mother in 

 the preceding February, had frequently appeared and 

 spoken to him and his brothers without the windows 

 of the rooms where they lay, to their great terror and 

 amazement." On being " posed" as to its identity by 

 George Watt and his brothers, the ghost, with a super- 

 abundance of sanctions, "solemnly averred and swore" 



