Sir Gibbie original version by George McDonald

Sir Gibbie original version by George McDonald
Sir Gibble is almost done. I cheated and snuck to the end with about forty pages to go. So sue me. I guess I suspected how it would end. Sort of. The girl who is the most liked by the author wins our hero despite his best efforts to push her into the arms of his best friend. Nevermind that they are cousins. Maybe not first cousins, the book never says about that. Did the author forget about that? No I suspect not. He may have thought it was an added plus, keep the marriage (and the money) in the clan so speak. Remember this is Scotland.

Sir Gibbie is the original volume. These books have been "translated". And the translated books have been renamed. I cannot remember the modern name. In the original book dialogue that is carried on in "broad Scotch" is spelled out some of phonetically. It is often pretty hard to get the exact meaning but you can get the gist. In a translation there is a little missed as when the man speaks in his this native tongue when being informal and speaks in good English to put down his hearer. I guess this is explained in the authors comments. So there may be no reason not to go for the translation except that I am reading out of a library full of older books. This library does not have the newer versions.

Gibble has qualities of Pollyanna. Anyone remember Pollyanna? She too was a happy child in the face of circumstances. She too took it upon herself to see to it that people's lives turned out well, happily we might say. Except McDonald is also very interested in people's souls, their salvation as well as their earthly well being. So Gibble works to set people along the right path to God as well as to make them successful and comfortable.

I wonder if it works like that. Not as much as McDonald's romance makes it out. Of course this is a romance, one must never forget that. A romance is as much about what they author would like to see reality be as anything else. McDonald would like an almost Christlike figure like Gibbie be able to influence people to faith.

Do we think God is like that, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit? Do they influence people towards faith? Is it as active as Gibbie is or is it more passive? Now Gibbie works behind the scenes so to speak. Often people do not know he is setting up situations. For myself I think it retrospect I can see I helped to set up situations a few times. But I was certainly not smart enough to do it myself. God arranged things not me. I only had it revealed to me later. There may be other times that God used me that I certainly will never be aware of, this side of the grave anyway.

There is another character in this book a Donald (Donal) Grant. He is the young man who did not get the girl. McDonald was very interested in him too. We are told inside this book that the author might write about Donald in another book. It seems he did, three volumes full. I will tackle that one soon, if God allows me to.

A lot can be said about Sir Gibbie. According to something I looked at while working on this entry, Gibbie was a favorite character of C. S. Lewis and that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn was influenced or inspired by Gibbie.