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Keeping the registers

Let us start with a quotation from the Psalms:

'The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people that this man was born there.' (Psalm 87, verse 6)

However he hadn't reckoned on the vagaries of the Session Clerk:

'Any person that wants a child's name in any of the three preceding pages may scarcely expect to find it in the proper place. They being wrote by Mr King, late schoolmaster depute here without any regularity or order.'

And, in different handwriting and ink:

'The above ill natured ungentlemanlike observation was written by Mr James Whyte and stands as one mark of his own distinguished Idiotism.'
(Dunning, 1764; OPR 350/1, Fr 119)

'N.B. Let not Posterity be surprised that this register is not complete. It is and has been the custom of the Revd. Mr Peter Campbell ever since the Incumbency of the present Clerk to baptise Children: without a certificate of their names being registered. In consequence of which, it may safely be averred that one third if not one Half were given in.' (Glassary, 1768; OPR 511/1, Fr 5)

End of 1773

Totalling up of Births Total 37 - " ym 20 years Total 640 or 32 each at an average".

(In beautiful script) "Mr Wylie's remarks in our volumes in an abominable hand - writing".
(Dumfries 1773 OPR 821/5 Fr 83)

14th May 1797

The Schoolmaster having resigned His charge of this date, the Register is continued by J. Anderson minr.
(Kingussie and Insh, 1797, OPR 102/2, Fr 70)

Sept. 2nd 1797

'Having found many Inconveniences resulting to the poor owing to the names of their Children not being regularly inserted; & having been put to a great Deal of Trouble in Consequence of this Neglect, at the Time of raising The Militia; I have resolved in future to keep the Register myself; & to allow the Schoolmaster a Yearly Salary for officiating at Session Clerk meetings.'
(Kingussie and Insh, 1797 OPR 102/2, Fr 70)

From Dundonald Kirk Session:

A committee appointed to examine the Register of Baptisms 1836 - 1839. Comment - "a mass of confusion". A very slight inspection of this record convinced the Committee that the entries had not been made with a degree of care proportional to its importance ... The faults observed in these entries may for the sake of brevity be reduced to the following heads.
1st Interlineations of which there are 16
2nd Corrections of which there are 15
3rd Imperfect of which there are 4
4th Wrong name of place and person of which there are 3
5th Wrong dates of which there are 2
'In one of these cases a child is represented to have been baptised about a week before birth, a circumstance not likely to have occurred.'
(Dundonald, 1839) [Kirk session records held at National Archives of Scotland]

1744 Febry. 4th

'By an unlucky Accident the Session Clerk's House was burnt; By which the Records of Marriages and Baptisms were lost.'
(Stoneykirk,1744 OPR 898/1, Fr 214)

Some, of course, were less understanding...

'Forgetfulness is no Excuse' - 'Amen' [in different writing]

[Written sideways in margin beside a squeezed-in entry for the previous year]
(Duffus, 1755; OPR 131/3, Fr 88)