Oddly enough, while
as a child I hypostasized so many abstractions, I left out the Calvinistic Devil. He never worried me, for I could not take him seriously. The fatal influence of Robert Burns made me
regard him as a rather humorous and jovial figure; nay more, as something of a sportsman, dashing and
debonair. I agreed with the old Scots lady who
complained that “if we
were a’ eident
in the pursuit o’our
callings as the Deil, puir
man, it would be better for us. “
I would not have been afraid
if he had risen suddenly out of the cabbage-garden
at Hallowe’en. Sin was a horrid thing,
but not the Arch-Sinner.
From: John
Buchan, Memory
Hold-The-Door (“Wood, Water and Hill”), London, Hodder & Stoughton,
Ltd., 1940.
SCOTTISH Note: "eident" -- diligent and conscientious; "puir" -- poor; "deil" -- devil.
Upper: Glenshee near Devil’s Corner, Scotland
Lower: Devil
with kneeling couple, Rosslyn Chapel, Scotland
