Nuggets from the Kirk Session

[Rena]

Still sounds like rather an excess of zeal!

lol, I agree.

The boys did have some fun such as the time their mother organised for her two youngest sons to go behind the church organ and manually pump the bellows for air to enter the organ pipes.   My father was the youngest and he and his brother had a good game of intermittently stopping pumping the bellows so that the poor organist had a hard time getting smooth sounds out of his pipes.   The boys soon stopped silently giggling when they recognised the pair of shoes that appeared in front of their eyes.    Their mother was a large imposing woman and one look from her soon stopped  their shenanigans.   

[GR2]

Re the kirk collection. In the 18th century it was quite common to find that the collection contained a fair number of obsolete copper coins. The session saved these up until they had enough to send to a coppersmith in the nearest town and get the scrap value.

It was common to have a forenoon and an afternoon sermon on a Sunday in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a break in the middle.