IT has occurred to me that a
chronicle of domestic matters in Scotland from the Reformation
downwards—the period during which we see a progress towards the present
state of things in our country—would be an interesting and instructive
book. History has in a great measure confined itself to political
transactions and personages, and usually says little of the people, their
daily concerns, and the external accidents which immediately affect their
comfort. This I have always thought was much to be regretted, and a
general tendency to the same view has been manifested of late years. I
have therefore resolved to make an effort, in regard to my own country, to
detail her DOMESTIC ANNALS—the series of occurrences beneath the region of
history, the effects of passion, superstition, and ignorance in the
people, the extraordinary natural events which disturbed their
tranquillity, the calamities which affected their wellbeing, the traits of
false political economy by which that wellbeing was checked, and generally
those things which enable us to see how our forefathers thought, felt, and
suffered, and how, on the whole, ordinary life looked in their days.
Nor are these details, broken up and
disjointed as they often are, without a useful bearing on certain
generalisations of importance, or devoid of instruction for our own
comparatively enlightened age. A good end is obviously served by
enumerating, for example, all the famines and all the pestilences that
have beset the country; for when this is done, it becomes evident that
famine and pestilence have been connected in the way of cause and effect.
For the astronomer, the meteorologist, and the naturalist, many of the
accounts of comets, meteors, and extraordinary natural productions here
given, must have some value. ['A man of
science as well as of philosophic mind would employ himself well in
examining those accounts of prodigies in the early annalists and
chroniclers, which of late years have been regarded as only worthy of
contempt.’—.Southey—-Omniana, i. 266.] To the
political economist, it may be of service to see the accounts here drawn
from contemporary records of the productiveness and failure of many
seasons, and of the varying proportions of bad seasons to good throughout
considerable spaces of time. As for the numberless narratives and
anecdotes illustrative of the mistaken zeal, the irregular passions, the
deplorable superstitions, and erroneous ideas and ways in general, of our
ancestors, they furnish beyond doubt a rich pabulum for the student of
human nature; nor may they be without some practical utility amongst us,
since many of the same errors continue in a reduced style to exist, and it
may help to extinguish them all the sooner, that we are enabled here to
look upon them in their most exaggerated and startling form, and as
essentially the products and accompaniments of ignorance and barbarism.
It will probably be matter of regret
that this work consists of a series of articles generally brief and but
little connected with each other, producing on the whole a desultory
effect. Might not the materials have been fused into one continuous
narration? I am very sensible how desirable this was for literary effect;
but I am at the same time assured that, in such a mode of presenting the
series of occurrences, there would have been a constant temptation to
generalize on narrow and insufficient grounds—to make singular and
exceptional incidents pass as characteristic beyond the just degree in
which they really are so—namely, as matters just possible in the course of
the national life of the period to which they refer. It seemed to me the
most honest plan, to present them detachedly under their respective dates,
thus allowing each to tell its own story, and have its own proper weight
with the reader, and no more, in completing the general picture.
As one means of conveying ‘the body
of each age, its form and pressure,’ the language of the original
contemporary narrators is given, wherever it was sufficiently intelligible
and concise. Thus each age in a manner tells its own story. It has not
been deemed necessary, however, to retain antiquated modes of orthography,
beyond what is required to indicate the old pronunciation, nor have I
scrupled occasionally to emit useless clauses of sentences, when that
seemed conducive to making the narration more readable. This procedure
will not be quite approved of by the rigid antiquary; but it will be for
the benefit of the bulk of ordinary readers.
In general, the events of political
history are presented here in only a brief narrative, such as seemed
necessary for connection. But I have introduced a few notices of these
events where there was a contemporary narration either characteristic in
its style, or involving particulars which might be deemed illustrative of
the general feeling of the time.