“Every man praying…ought not to cover his head.” I Corinthians II
The Kirk, it was silent and holy,
that Sunday the seventh of May,
and we all bowed our heads most devoutly
when the Minister asked us to pray.
We sat there and waited and waited
for the Reverend McLintock to speak,
but all that we got was a silence
that seemed to go on for a week.
And all of a sudden he bolted!
he ran like a man who is sure
he has heard the last trumpet a-sounding,
heading straight for the Vestry door.
Then all we could hear was him greetin’
and it seemed from the terrible din
that the Lord had appeared to the Reverend
and convicted the man of his sin.
We tried very hard to keep praying,
though I’m thinking that none of us were,
except for one young Charismatic
who still had his hands in the air.
Then one of the Elders, Auld Archie,
discreetly slipped out of his pew
and tiptoed away to the Vestry
in case there were aught he could do.
We could hear the soft murmur of voices,
then would you believe it, once more
there emerged all these uncanny noises
floating out through the Vestry door.
There were mutterings now in the Sanctum,
well, the whole thing seemed terribly odd,
for the sounds were of mirth, not of sadness,
could it be t’was the laughter of God?
Then up stood the next of the Elders,
Professor Carmichael from Fife,
he went to the Vestry like Archie
and I think he fair feart for his life.
Like before came the murmur of voices,
then they all burst out laughing again
and we sat there in shocked consternation
and somebody whispered “Amen!”
It was after the service they told us
just what had transpired on that day,
why three upright men o’ the Parish
had all got so carried away.
T’was a visitor, up in the balcony,
a bloke wi’ a brand new toupee,
who had bowed down his head like a Christian
and felt the thing slipping away.
The man was unable to catch it
and it fell like a leaf in the fall,
till it landed, with pin-point precision,
on the knee of Edwina McCall.
She opened her eyes in amazement
and saw this toupee in her lap;
looking round to see where it had come from
she noticed an elderly chap
who was sitting there, dozing beside her
and his head was as bald as an egg,
so she naturally assumed that the hairpiece
had fallen from there to her leg.
Not wanting to cause a commotion
and seeing no reason to wait,
she picked up the wig like a poultice
and slapped the thing back on his pate.
The Minister, who had been watching,
could feel himself starting to swell
and rather than wail like a banshee
he thought he had best run like hell.
The moral is that, in the Bible
we are told, when commencing to pray,
that A MAN SHOULD NOT HAVE HIS HEAD COVERED!
if he does, well, there’ll be hell-to-pay.