Annals of the Parish is another book that I've waited far too long to read. Purporting to be the reminiscences of Mr Micah Balwhidder, minister of Dalmailing in Ayreshire, Scotland between the years 1760 and 1810, it's the most charming and friendly novel that I've encountered in many a day. The industrial revolution, with all its good and evil, has found its way to rural Scotland. In Balwhidder's succinct retrospective summation: "there was at home a great augmentation of prosperity and everything had thriven in a surprising manner; somewhat, however, to the detriment of our country simplicity." The "country simplicity" seems more than half medieval; the "augmentation of prosperity" brings with it such benefits as literacy, London newspapers, commerce, regular transportation to Glasgow, a cotton mill (not a dark Satanic one, but a place where a decent livelihood may be earned) but also such debits as bankruptcies, American and continental wars, and social fissuring. Annals of the Parish traces the end of world we have lost and the inception of the world in which we now dwell. Galt is good solid Age of Reason optimist, but he knows enough to mourn the very changes that he appreciates.
The novel is written in Scots; it's not particularly difficult to understand, but sometimes Galt lays it on with a trowel. Mr. Balwhidder tries to persuade the church elders to repair his "manse": "I made a report of the infirmities both of doors and windows, as well as of the rotten state of the floors, which were constantly in want of cobbling. Over and above all, I told them of the sarking of the roof, which was a frush as a puddock stool." "Frush" means scratched or crushed; a "puddock stool" is a toadstool or mushroom. My unabridged dictionary does not have an entry for "sarking," but it's not difficult to guess that a sarking roof is not in perfect repair. The rich dialect, reported with affection and without condescension, intensifies the regional flavor.
Galt's Dalmailing was in state of constant flux, while the various villages of Galt's great contemporary, Jane Austen, are, in social terms, static and immobile. Who was more the observant novelist?
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