Can "the Scotch minister" mean the Presbyterian Church of Scotland?

In Mark Twain's "A Dog's Tale" there is a sentence which I feels a little tricky,“...a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.” According to dictionaries, "minister" only refers to priests or other high rank religious officials; in other words, it refers to people. Yet this was the first time "Scotch minister" appeared in the work, and therefore the word "the" sounds a little strange, and an "a" might sound more natural. I wonder if the expression is an allusion to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which is the national church there. Is it possible that "the Scotch Minister" could refer to the Scotch Church instead of a mere person, or it is just that the narrator of the story took for granted the priest was known to the intended audience in the context?

Solution 1:

I think you are overthinking it. Whether or not the minister is of the Church of Scotland, or of some other church and merely Scottish in extraction, is entirely irrelevant; you may infer it if you prefer that interpretation or deny it otherwise.

The story is told from the dog's first-person perspective; it opens with

My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian.

Later, the dog relates

… other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs—for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.

These happen to be the only two lines in the story which make any explicit mention of religion (or for that matter, national origin); religion is not a theme of the story. Belonged to is almost certainly in the sense of possession, not affiliation, i.e. the Scotch minister owns Robin Adair, the Scotch minister is Robin Adair's master.

The conceit of stories like this, and the source of their entertainment value, is that the character has both human and animal qualities. Brian Griffin reads Dostoyevsky and smokes marijuana but leaves dead birds on the porch and is terrified of the vacuum cleaner. And so it is that our Presbyterian narrator can relate her autobiography and long for her mother, but lacks an understanding of life and death. And she and her peers have masters.

Scotch in the modern day is used only to describe products, not people, and some Scottish people may take offense to being called Scotch. It is the older adjective for anything related to Scotland, however, and was in widespread use until the twentieth century. In the United States (and Twain was nothing if not American), it has no negative connotations, and many people have Scotch-Irish ancestry (i.e. of the Ulster Scots).

Solution 2:

Please forgive me, Scotsmen and Scotswomen out there, if I have got this wrong. (I am one-eighth Scots myself).

Beginning in the early 19th century, it started to become seen as derogatory to refer to people as Scotch. In the last 70 years, ( since the second world war) it has been regarded as quite offensive. According to the Wiki article, 'Scotch' is still widely used in England as well as America to refer to Scots. Whether that be the case or not, you can rest assured that among the educated and politically correct classes in England 'Scotch' is nowadays not used for people. It would be a bit like calling Chinese, 'chinks'. But it will have been different in the days of Mark Twain.

The salmon, the whisky, the wonderful Aberdeen Angus beef, can all be referred to as 'Scotch'. (I have noticed that it is no longer used by manufacturers for porridge. It is called 'Scots Porridge Oats' on the packet we buy, which sadly no longer contains the picture of the muscular kilted athlete tossing the caber!)

The verb 'to scotch' meaning 'to put an abrupt end to' has nothing whatever to do with Scotland or the Scots. It derives from the French word 'escocher'.

Wiki says: Scotch is an adjective meaning "of Scotland". In Scotland the modern usage in Scotland is Scottish or Scots, and the word "Scotch" is only applied to specific products, mostly food or drink, such as Scotch whisky, Scotch pie, Scotch broth, and Scotch eggs. "Scotch" applied to people is widely considered pejorative, reflecting old Anglo-Scottish antagonisms. However, "Scotch" is still widely used in England and Ireland, and is in common use in North America.