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THE old system of farming was yet making a
stiff
fight with the new one, although flocks of blackfaced
sheep were on all the brae shealings and on all the
hills connected with arable land in the lower end of
the Glen. One large shealing called Rialt was,
till after 1840, held by Breadalbane tenants whose
winter-towns were a good distance away, and the
Roro tenants had a shealing in the shadow of Ben-
lawers on their own hill, and so had the four tenants
of the Eight Merkland of Kerrumore and Craigelig,
of whom my father was one, in their own Conaglen.
The population was thrice as numerous as it is now.
The people were industrious, well clothed, comfortably housed, and sufficiently supplied with simple
frugal and healthy food, such as meal, butcher meat,
milk, butter, cheese, and potatoes. Up till 1845,
potatoes were at their best and so abundant that,
with fish on the Islands and the West Coast, and
with mutton, braxy, pork, and milk, butter, and
cheese on the mainland, they formed the chief item
in the dietary of the humbler classes; oatcakes,
barley scones, and porridge taking secondary rank,
especially after the short crop of 1826. As much
land as their little middens would manure was given
to cottars freely by the farmers, who also bestowed
gifts of potatoes on the poor and helpless out of
charity. There was a wonderful amount of charity,
mutual help and sympathy, among the Glenlyon inhabitants of my early years.
No doubt it was so throughout the Highlands generally, as the conditions and connections were so much alike everywhere. According to their surnames, our Glen
people were descended from twelve or more different
clans. But by centuries of inter-marriage they had
all become a kind of one clan through affinity and
consanguinity. They did not approve of the
marriage of first cousins, but unless a man, as
happened pretty often, brought a bride from another
parish, he could not marry a Glen girl with whom
he was not related more distantly than first cousinhood. While kinship near or far made it the duty
of the comfortably off to help those that were badly
off, usually through no fault of their own, it likewise
filled the strugglers with such pride of independence
that, however hardly tried, none of them took the
road as beggars going with meal-pokes from door to
door. What a lonely woman did was, at clipping
time, to go round the fanks "air faoigh ollatnh"; in
other words, to ask for puckles of wool, which she
took home and spun and so turned into money.
Men who drifted into helplessness often quartered
themselves for the end of their days on well-to-do
relations who did not grudge them their keep.
In our Glen a clannish community through
inter-marriage was thus formed by people of many surnames. It was much the
same in the neighbouring glens and districts. There never existed on the
south side of the Grampians a parish or barony or estate of many farms that
was inhabited by people of one surname. I question whether the ideal of
one-clan or one-descent ever existed any- where on the Highland mainland, or
in the larger islands, whatever might be the case in the smaller islands.
The one-stock clan idea came out of a precedent Celtic system which was
superseded by the feudal system. When the clans in the fourteenth century began to raise their heads, they had,
in order to succeed, to graft their idea on feudalism,
and to accept the mixed population that had
gathered themselves under it. On the other hand
holders of feudal charters like the Seton-Gordons,
the Frasers, Menzieses, Chisholms, etc., had to act
like Celtic chiefs to make their charters good.
The abolition of the large brae shealings,
and
the consolidation of some of the lower farms, almost
put an end to the summer life romance so dearly
remembered by my seniors, and cramped a growing
population on the part of the Glen which had
most of the arable land. The coming necessity for
voluntary emigration or landlord eviction of people
for whom there was no room or opening in the Glen
was plainly foreshadowed, and understood by the
people themselves, who, besides the chronic drifting
southward, had sent off swarms of emigrants to
Canada before 1820. But until the abolition of the
club-farms, which was completed in or about 1850,
the old industrial order struggled to hold its ground.
It was, however, for the last ten years of that
struggle, being pressed to death between the two
millstones of sheep rule and the lost value of the
"calanas" or spinning industry of the women. The
manufacturing inventions of the preceding century
led to the putting up of water-mills for wool and
cotton; but until steam power was introduced the coalless parts of the country did not realise that
they were doomed to lose their domestic industries,
nor did they lose them at once, although gradually
they began to be less and less profitable. Flax-
growing, followed by its spinning and weaving, was
a great and very ancient industry in Glenlyon, and
indeed in all parts of the Highlands where good
flax could be grown in suitable soil, which was as
carefully prepared, manured, and weeded as garden
beds. Splendid flax was grown in Glenlyon, and
fine yarn and linen were produced therefrom, by
following the processes of cultivation, steeping,
scutching, heckling, and spinning, which had come
down from the days of old, and which were carried
out by simple means, without any innovation, until
towards the end of the eighteenth century, scutching mills relieved the home workers of part of the
initiative drudgery. The lassies, who went with
their mothers and the milch cows to the shealirigs,
were early taught to spin on the hillsides while
they were tending calves, by distaff and spindle,
while their elders were busy at their wheels within
the huts, between milking times. The cheapness of
Manchester cotton goods never so wholly destroyed
the value of the Highland flax-spinning and weaving
that it should have been abandoned. In spite of
the discouragement caused by the cheap cotton
industry, Ulster kept its linen industry and made it
pay all through. It never was more flourishing
than it is at present. But it is an industry which
can only thrive in a well-populated rural district ;
and Ulster was never depopulated by a sheep-
regime invasion and a craze for large farms like the
Highlands. Should the central Highlands ever go
back to farms of moderately small size something
much larger than crofts the linen industry might
be revived with much advantage.
To return to the old order in Glenlyon,
all the
hard field and hill work was done by the men, while
dairy-work, house-work, and the important "calanas"
by which all were clothed, and chests were filled
with blankets and webs of linen, and revenue secured
by the export sale of linen and woolen yarns, fell
within the special domain of the women. As long
as the large far off shealings remained, the women
had a smaller share than they had afterwards in
harvest work or field work of any kind. But before
and afterwards there was plenty of work for both
sexes although the remuneration was not in proportion to the care and labour
bestowed on the work. It fell as a heavy task to the men in addition to the
legitimate farm work, that they had to thatch, repair, and rebuild homes,
byres, barns, and stables, proprietors giving nothing but the timber as it stood
uncut in the woods. The cutting and winning of
peats formed part of the ordinary farm labour. The
manifold calls on their ingenuity and forethought
made both sexes very diligent and resourceful. They
formed, as it were, a self-contained, self-sustained,
self-sufficing community. Whether they went as
small feuars to dig out Flanders Moss, or emigrated
to the Canadian forests, they took with them a
hundred self-helping arts and qualities which in most
cases ensured success. They were not, as a class, so
well fitted to prosper in manufacturing towns,
although some of them did prosper there both as
merchants and manufacturers. I do not think that
there could possibly be better nurseries for soldiers
and pioneers of empire, or better training schools for
agricultural emigrants to the colonies, than were
the Highland mainland communities that remained
substantially under the old order for a century after
the reign of law was established on Culloden Moor
and the Church of Scotland covered the country
with schools. Soldiers, Hudson Bay Company
servants, adventurers and emigrants, took with
them everywhere self-helpful resources of many
kinds, and a standard of morals which even the
wastrels among them could never forget nor violate
without prickings of remorse. That standard of
morals had Shorter Catechism teaching for its back-
bone, but that steel-like backbone was invested in
the warm flesh, skin and blood of Highland chivalry
and undying love of native land. |
