THIS volume is issued in response to numerous enquiries regarding manuscripts of reminiscences which it was known the late Mr. Sage, minister of Resolis in Ross-shire, had left, to but unpublished. The author's modest and retiring character had made him shrink, as is seen in his own preface, from bringing his Memorabilia before the public eye. Repeated requests for its perusal, and the knowledge that the information here recorded was derived from original and authentic sources, are the editor's apology for its present appearance in print. What has weighed with him also is, that these pages delineate Christian life and social manners, as they existed in northern Scotland, during a period of which hitherto little has been known except by tradition.
The graphic sketches of prominent people, and of manners and customs prevailing in various localities, are drawn from personal observation, which the author had the best opportunities of exercising. The many-sided characters of persons of all ranks and professions are here vividly portrayed; picturesque districts of country, hitherto comparatively unvisited and unknown, are minutely described; changes, which have altered the face of the Highlands, are pointed out and traced to their original causes; the state of religion and morals, as connected with the persons who mainly influenced the people for good or evil, is brought under review; and all these are woven into a connected narrative, held together by the continuous thread of the author's autobiography. While thus portraying what passed around him, the author at same time supplies sufficient material to enable thoughtful readers to form a correct estimate of his personal character and ministerial qualifications.
Warm-hearted and lovable; endowed with a, well-furnished and cultivated mind; keenly interested in the public events of his time; and having great conversational powers, he was regarded by his friends as a most fascinating and instructive companion. His theological attainments were extensive, accurate, and profound. As a preacher he displayed a personality peculiarly his own; all classes of hearers felt and acknowledged his originality in exposition and illustration; while the more distinguished and discerning Christians agreed that he was worthy of a place in their regard alongside of his many eminent contemporaries in the north. His taste for literature continued with him through life, and many of his leisure hours were devoted to study and research.
During the sittings of the first Disruption Assembly he passed much of the time at home alone in prayer. Followed by his large and attached congregation, he joined the Free Church of Scotland, in connection with which he continued to labour with the same zeal, ability, and success for which he had been always distinguished. For a few years, however, before his death, owing to bodily infirmity, he was unable to preach. On the 31st of March, 1869, in the 80th year of his age and 53rd of his ministry, he fell asleep, longing to be with Christ, that he might see his face. He left a widow, who has since passed away, and a large family of sons and daughters, to mourn his loss.
The MSS., in their original proportions, were too voluminous to be printed in full. The work of the editor has been to eliminate repetitions and irrelevant matter, and here and there to condense the narrative. He hopes that, by the division into chapters, and the addition of notes derived from various authorities, most of them acknowledged, and by a table of contents, he has contributed what will facilitate the use of the book for reference, and make it more interesting for general reading.
DONALD FRASER SAGE.
FREE MANSE OF KEISS,
CAITHNESS, July 1889.
When a man sits down to write his own life with the view ofgiving it to the public, however well known to the public he may be, or however highly recommended by rank, or station, or mental abilities, he can after all scarcely, we think, escape from the rather ugly charges of egotism or self-conceit.
Hume and Gibbon were unquestionably great men. So the learned of this world pronounced them to be. But The Author's Memoirs of Himself by the one, and My Own Life by the other, evince, particularly the former, a degree of self-complacency and arrogance which all the literary merit of their works can scarcely, if at all, redeem. How much more then, and heavily, does the charge fasten upon one who, to the public, is nothing, and who has notwithstanding taken up the doughty resolution of filling this volume with memorabilia of his grandfather, his father, and himself. Ajax had to present in battle against the sword's point of his adversary a shield of seven folds. Against the charge above mentioned the writer of these memoirs has to present a shield only of two folds, which he thinks will be fully sufficient to defend him. The first is, that he writes, not with the most distant intention to publish these memoirs himself, or not with the slightest desire or expectation that they should be published when the hand that now writes them shall be stiff in death-when the mind that indices them shall be a disembodied spirit in eternity. Then another fold in his shield is, that he records these family reminiscences, not to tell the public what he or his were, but to tell it to himself. There is something peculiarly solemn and edifying - something which betters a man's spirit - in the truly believing consciousness, not only that we ourselves are but pilgrims on earth, but that we are so even as all our fathers also have been. Their race is run; their course involving the every-day duties, occurrences, crosses, businesses, joys, arid sorrows, in short, all the lights and shadows of an earthly existence-is finished, never again to be begun. They are gone, never to return - and "where am I?" Unceasingly following them; like them, now conscious of things earthly; like them, at last to know eternity! To look back on the years they spent on earth, to recoruit the incidents of their humble, but I trust in some measure useful, lives, to connect them with my own, and to view the whole in the spirit and temper of a pilgrim, are to me sufficiently good reasons why I should write those memoirs.
DOND. SAGE.
Manse of Resolis
25th May, 1840.
This file, "Memorabilia Domestica" Copyright (C) 2006 Iain MacKillop
As the author Rev. Donald Fraser Sage died in 1890 and copyright extends to for 70 years (from 31st December of the year of death), the text of this work is no longer in copyright.
However, there is a copyright attached to the typographical layout which lasts for 25 years after the publication of the edition. The copyright thus claimed therefore extends only to the layout of this website.
Iain Sutherland iain_sutherland@totalise.co.uk has had "Memorabilia Domestica or Parish Life in the North Of Scotland" digitised to CD. IN 2002, copies of this CD were made available through POSH. I have never seen it.
A CD rom version of "Memorabilia Domestica or Parish Life in the North Of Scotland" book, as a viewable PDF format book is available, along with a PC version of Acrobat Reader, from globalgenealogy.com CAT no 225d605 Price 19.95 Canadian Dollars. I have never seen this CD either.