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Containing the description
of a capital town in that northern country: with an account of many
uncommon customs of the inhabitants: likewise an account of the
Highlands, with the customs and manners of the Highlanders: to which is
added, a letter relating to the military ways among the mountains, began
in the year 1726: the whole interspersed with facts and circumstances
entirely new to the generality of people in England, and little known in
the southern parts of Scotland in 2 volumes (1754)
The Editor to the Reader
I am apt to imagine you may be curious to to know by what means the
following Letters came to my hands, after the space of between twenty
and thirty Years.
The Gentleman in whose Possession they were, died some Time ago, and
through Losses, unsuccessful Law-Suits, and other Disappointments, left
his Family in none of the best of Circumstances; and, therefore you will
believe I could obtain them no otherwise than by a mineral Interest.
The Person who writ them, has not set his Name to any one of them, and,
it is very probable, he made Use of that Caution for Reasons given in
his introductory Letter; but this is not very material, because, if I
had known the Name, in all Likelihood I might have thought myself under
an Obligation to conceal it.
I cannot but think the Writer has kept this Promise he made his Friend,
of Writing without Prejudice or Partiality; and this I rather believe,
because, at my first Perusal of these Letters, I met with several Facts
and Descriptions, pretty nearly resembling others I had heard from
Officers of the Army, and Revenue, who had been in that Part of the
Country; but their Stories would have been the same, or very near it, if
they had been free from the ludicrous and satirical Manner in which they
were delivered.
Ill-nature will excite in its unhappy Vassals, a malignant Satisfaction
to find the Truth (especially relating to Mankind) disguised in an
antick Dress; and there is nothing more easy than to furnish out the
Masquerade with ridiculous outward Appearances. But neither of our
Correspondents seems to have been inclined that Way; for if the Person,
to whom these Epistles were addressed, had been of that Tranpe, there is
no Doubt but the Writer, who took so much Pains for his Information,
would likewise have gratified him in that Particular.
It must be owned, there are some few Strokes that savour a little of the
Satyrical, but they are very few, yet just enough to shew, that if
Inclination had prompted, Humour would not have been wanting; and even
those few are only relating to such Vices and Vanities as might easily
be reformed; and, as they are now made publick, they may serve as
Admonitions to such as apply them to themselves.
What shameful Portraits have been drawn for a Highlander! I shall only
mention one, and that is, in the True-born Englishman.
His Description is much more shocking than entertaining to any one who
has the least Humanity. But the owner of a chast Mind might have been
well pleased to see the unknown Face divested of the odious Vizor.
It may be said--That Poem is a profest Satyr, but I even deny it to be
one; for a true Satyrist is too delicate to Lash with a Flail.
There be some who have made a Reproach of unavoidable Poverty, and of
Customs and Methods of acting, which, (I now find) according to the
Nature of the Country, and Circumstances of the Inhabitants, could not
be changed for others to be more reasonable and commodious. But, far
otherwise, the Writer of these Letters. He seems to have catched at all
Opportunities for Excuse, and even Commendation, and has not spared his
own Country, or Countrymen, when the one deserved his Animadversion, or
the other required an Acknowledgment; so far has he been from invidious
Comparisons.
I must own he has likewise kept his Word in observing little Order or
Method, for it plainly appears he took no Pains about either; But then
that very Neglect has been the Cause of more sudden Variety, (to use his
Correspondent’s Phrase) and the little Stories that are scattered here
and there, (I think not much known in England) serve now and then to
break, as the Painter says, a too long-continued Line of Description.
I shall say no more in Relation to his Style, than that a Nicety is
seldom much regarded in familiar Epistles from Friend to Friend,
especially in long Relations of Facts, or other Narrations; besides, he
says himself, it would have taken up too much of his Time to smooth his
Periods; and we all know that Words and Phrases will not dance into
elegant order at the Sound of a Fiddle.
It may possibly be said, by some of the Northern People, that the Writer
has borne too hard upon a Part of the then Inhabitants of Inverness. Of
that I cannot pretend to make myself a Judge, only that, as a Reader, it
does not seem to me to be so by the Tenor of his other Letters, and
particularly by his Appeal to the Officers of the Army who had been in
those Quarters; and surely this he would not have done (when he might
have been so easily disproved) if he was conscious of Untruths, and had
the least Regard to his Friend’s Opinion of his Veracity.
To conclude: If the Facts, Circumstances, and Descriptions, contained in
the following Letters, are allowed to be just and genuine (as I really
believe they are) may they not be given in Evidence, against such as are
fond of shewing the Wantonness of Invention and Drollery, upon Objects
altogether improper for that Purpose! and might not any one reasonably
conclude, that such Jokers believe all Mankind to be ridiculous, who
have not an Affluence of Fortune, or that entertain a Garb; or Customs
different from their own, and were not born in the same Parish? And, if
so, I think they themselves are the fittest Subjects of Ridicule.
I am,
The impartial Reader’s
Obedient humble Servant,
THE EDITOR.
THE author of the
following letters (the genuineness of which has never been questioned in
the country where the accuracy of his delineations may best be
appreciated) is commonly understood to have been Captain Burt, an
officer of engineers, who, about 1730, was sent into Scotland as a
contractor, &c. The character of the work is long since decided by the
general approbation of those who are most masters of the subject; so
that it will be here only necessary to add such notices and remarks as
may tend to illustrate the subject in general, as well as to prepare the
reader for what is to follow.
Introduction
And first, it may be
expected that somewhat should be said of the antiquity of the
Highlanders, and the unmixed purity of their Celtic blood and language,
of which they are more proud than of other more valuable distinctions to
which they have a less questionable claim.
Whence the first inhabitants of our mountains came, or who they were, it
would now be idle to inquire. They have no written annals of their own;
and the few scattered notices respecting them that remain, are to be
gathered from strangers, who cannot be supposed to have had any accurate
knowledge of their traditions concerning themselves. That a large
portion of their population once was Celtic. cannot be doubted ; but of
this distinction, there seems to be less understood than the learned
have commonly supposed. The traditions, superstitions, and earliest
impressions of all the nations of the west, of whom in a less cultivated
state, we have any knowledge, seem to point to the cast, “the great
cradle of mankind,” as the la?id of their fathers; and we consider the
Goths and Celts as deriving their origin as well as their language from
the same source; the Celts having been the earlier, and the Goths the
later wanderers westward. Although their complexion, language, religion,
and habits, formed under different skies, and in different
circumstances, exhibited in the end different appearances; yet the
further back that we are able to trace them, the stronger the marks of
identity are found to be; and presumptive evidence must be admitted,
where positive proof is not to be expected. Of this kind of evidence, a
very curious example is to be found in the end of the seventh book of
Temora, where the following striking apostrophe occurs:-
0 Ullin, Carruil, and Rouno,
Voices of the time that has given way of old,
Let me hear you in the darkness of Selma,
And awaken the spirit of songs.
1 hear you not, children of melody:
[In] what hall of clouds is your \resf\ slumber?
Strike ye the harp that is not heavy.
In the gloomy robes of the mist of the morning,
Where the sun rises very sonorous
From the grey-headed waves?
Now, we know that all nations, having no light but that of nature to
guide them, especially when in difficult circumstances, look with fond
aspirations towards the land of their fathers, to which they believe and
hope that their souls after death will return. This was the belief of
the Goths in their state of probation in Scandinavia, and the hall
ofOdin was in Asgard and here we find the Caledonian bard, in the true
spirit of the ancient and original belief of his countrymen, supposing
the hall of the rest of his departed friends to be in the east^ where
the sufi rises.
But whoever the first settlers were, their state was so precarious, that
the same districts were continually changing their masters, sometimes in
possession of one tribe, sometimes of another, sometimes of Goths,
sometimes of Celts, and finally, of a mixed race composed of both. In
the earliest periods of which history or tradition have preserved any
memorials, the characters and habits of life of the inhabitants of the
Scottish Highlands and Isles, and of the Northern Men, with whom they
had constant intercourse, so nearly resembled each other, that what is
said of one, may be with equal justice applied to the other; and even
their languages bear the nearer resemblance to each other, the further
back that they are traced. Almost all the great Highland clans know not
only whence they came to their present settlements, whether from
Ireland, Norway, or the Scottish Lowlands, but many of them know the
precise time of their emigration. Of those who came from Ireland, the
Celtic origin may well be doubted. We know that the Goths had
established themselves in that island as early as the third century, and
that Cork, Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, &c., were built by them. As the
descendants of these colonists were mariners and pirates, like their
fathers, they kept to the sea-coast, and were therefore more likely than
uplanders to remove in the case of distress, discontent, or want of room
at home, to the Scottish Highlands and Isles. That many of these isles
were inhabited by Goths from Scandinavia, at a very early period, is
evident from the traditions, poetry, and tales, of the Highlanders.
Indeed with respect to some of them, no traces remain of their having
ever had any other permanent inhabitants. With the history of the more
recent arrival of the Northern Men in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness,
Sutherland, &c., we are better acquainted from the Icelandic historians;
and of the Hebridians and Highlanders, properly so called, the great
clans of M‘Leod, M‘Lean, M‘Neil, Sutherland, Iver, Graham (Gram), Bruce
(Bris), &c., are confessedly from the same quarter; if the M-Donalds and
M‘Kenzies (to the latter of whom we attach the M‘Rras) came immediately
from Ireland their designations nevertheless show that they were not
originally Celtic ; the Frazers {de Tresale'), and the Chisholms (whose
real name is Cecil) went from the Lowlands, as did the Gordons, and the
Stewarts of Appin and Athol ; the Kennedies (one of the last reclaimed
of all the clans) were from Carrick and its neighbourhood; the Campbells
{de campo hello) are allowed to be Normans; the Murrays, as well as the
Mdntoshes, M‘Phersons, and other branches of the Clan Chattan are
generally understood to have come from the interior of Germany; and, in
short, with the exception of the Macgregors, their descendants the
Macnabs, the [Irish?] Macarthurs, and a few others of inferior note,
there seem to be none of the ancient Celtic race remaining.
How the men were thus changed, while the language continued, is easily
accounted for. The frequent appeals made to the king by chiefs at war
among themselves, sometimes drew upon them the chastisement of the
Scotish government, which was fond enough of seizing such opportunities
of extending its own influence. Expeditions were fitted out,
encouragement was given to the neighbours of the devoted party to join
their array, and wherever the army went, submission and order were
produced for the time; but the state of the country remained the same as
before. The possessions of the parties against whom the vengeance of the
invaders was directed, were given, partly to new settlers from the
Lowlands, and partly to their more powerful or more politic neighbours,
as a bribe to ensure their favour to the new arrangements. These
colonists, being mostly young male adventurers consulted their own
interest and security by marrying women of the country, and the children
of such marriages, being left in childhood entirely to the care of their
mothers, grew up perfect Highlanders in language, habits, and ideas, and
were no wise to be distinguished from their neighbours, except that,
perhaps, they were less civilized, being strangers to the cultivation
peculiar to the country of their fathers, without having acquired in its
full virtue that of the country in which they were born. The
Scandinavians, who over-ran a great part of the isles and adjacent
districts of the main-land, brought few women from their own country,
and their descendants were naturalized in the same manner; and the best
dialect of the Gaelic is now spoken by those clans whose Gothic
extraction has iiever been disputed. Their tales, poetry, and
traditions, continued with the language in which they had always been
delivered down from one generation to another.
From the accounts to be found in various parts of this work,
particularly in the Gartmore MS. it will be seen that, from the manner
in which the lands, the superiority of which belonged to the chief of a
clan, were portioned out by division and subdivision, according to
proximity of blood, to the cadets of great families, the aboriginal
inhabitants of the country must in the end have been actually shouldered
out of existence, because no means were left for their support, and
consequently they could not marry and be productive. These men, attached
by habit, language, and prejudice, to their native country, upon which
they had little claim but for benevolence, became sorners and sturdy
beggars, and were tolerated, and supported, as the Lazzaroni were in
Naples, and as Abraham-men., and sturdy beggars of all sorts, were in
England, after the suppression of the monasteries, and before there was
any regular parochial provision for the poor. From this system it arose,
that each Highland clan at last actually became what they boasted
themselves to be one family., descended from the same founder, and all
related to their chief, and to each other. If the chiefs of so many such
clans were Goths, how is it possible that the pure Celtic blood should
have continued its current, unpolluted, among them, till the present
day? The Celtic form of their language has been sufficiently accounted
for; and its identity with the Irish proves nothing more than what we
know to have been the case, that both dialects, having passed through
nearly the same alembic, have come out of nearly the same form, with
much more purity than could well have been expected, and much less than
their admirers have generally claimed for them.
For the illustration of the characters and manners of our mountaineers,
such as they were in the days of our author, it will not be necessary to
go further back in time than the period when their condition began to
differ from that of their neighbours, and submission and tribute were
required of them by the kings of Scotland, to whom they owed no homage,
and whose general enmity was less to be feared than their partial
protection. Their liberty, their arms, and the barren fastnesses of
their country, were almost all that they could call their own; a warlike
race of men, under such circumstances, are not likely to give up their
all with good will; and those who had not enough for themselves, must
have been little disposed to contribute anything for the support of a
power which it was certainly not their interest to strengthen.
Emigrants from Ireland, or from Scandinavia (most of whom had withdrawn
from
the usurpations of a sovereignty in their own country, to which their
proud spirits could not submit), whether they obtained their settlements
by conquest or by compact, as they had been accustomed to consider their
swords as the sole arbiters of their rights, were not likely to put
their acquisitions at the mercy of a king to whom they owed no
allegiance, so long as they had the means of asserting their
independence. Of the state of our own mountaineers when these strangers
first arrived among them, we know very little; but the Irish, with whom
they had constant intercourse, and who inhabited a much finer country,
must have been in a very rude state indeed, when they suffered
themselves to be conquered by a handful of Englishmen. But whatever the
previous state of the country was, such an accession of ambitious and
adventurous pirates and freebooters to their population, was not likely
to contribute to the tranquillity of the neighbourhood; and after the
establishment of the English in Ireland the constant intercourse between
the Highlanders and Irish afforded the English an opportunity of making
alliances with the Highland chiefs, whom they engaged to make diversions
in their favour by attacking the Scots, as the French stirred up the
Scots against the English.
The attempts made from time to time to civilize the country, by partial
colonization from the Lowlands, had very little effect, as the colonists
uniformly adopted the spirit and habits of the natives, it being more
agreeable and easy to lay aside the restraints imposed by an artificial
state of society, than to adopt them; but some better results attended
the policy of obliging the refractory chiefs to attend the court, or
surrender themselves to some man of rank, under whose surveillance they
were to remain till pardoned; after which they were to present
themselves annually, either in Edinburgh or elsewhere, to renew their
assurances of “good behaviour.” This produced at least a more intimate
acquaintance, and consequent connection, between the gentry of the
Highlands and Lowlands, and made the former ambitious of acquiring those
accomplishments, which might justify their pretensions to a distinction
and consideration, which they had no other means of supporting, beyond
the range of their own mountains. Limited as the diffusion of book
learning certainly was among them, one thing is nevertheless
unquestionable, that history poetry, and music, were the favourite
recreations of their leisure, among the lowest vulgar; and their clergy
and physicians, who were all gentlemen, read and wrote, both in their
mother tongue, and in Latin. From the Privy Council record, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, it appears that the gentlemen of
note, although they understood English, commonly signed their names in a
bold distinct Irish Character (as it is called), which shows that they
were accustomed to writing in their own language, and probably were,
partly at least, educated in Ireland, to which country all who adopted
either poetry or music as a profession, were uniformly sent to finish
their education, till within the memory of persons still living.
The disturbances in the reign of Charles the First, opened a new term in
the history of the Highlanders; but it is much to be regretted, that,
for a long period after, having no historians of their own, their
friends durst not speak the truth of them, and their characters have
therefore been entirely at the mercy of their bitterest enemies, who
knew them only to hate them, in proportion as they feared them. Of all
their virtues, courage was the only respectable quality conceded to
them, and this out of compliment to the best disciplined troops of the
day, whom, with less than equal numbers, they had so often routed; but
even their courage was disparaged, being represented as mere ferocity
arising from ignorance, and a blind and slavish submission to their
chiefs. To speak of them otherwise, beyond the precincts of their own
glens, was so unsafe, that in 1744 and 5, all the measures adopted and
recommended by President Forbes, were near being frustrated, and he
himself persecuted as a Jacobite, because he spoke and wrote of them
like a gentleman and a man of discernment, being almost the only man of
his party that had the liberal spirit and good sense to do so.
In one great and radical mistake, all our historians agree. They
represent the attachment of the clans to the house of Stewart, as
cherishing the ferocious habits, and retarding the civilization of the
Highlanders; whereas the very reverse of this was the case. The real
friends of the house of Stewart, in England, and more particularly in
Scotland, were distinguished by a refined education, high breeding,
elevated sentiments, a chivalrous love of fame, a noble and
disinterested devotion to a cause which they believed to be good, and a
social, warm-hearted, conviviality and frankness of character, totally
different from the sour, intolerant, and acrimonious spirit of
Presbyterian bigotry in the north, and the heartless and selfish saving
knowledge of the south—
“When the very dogs at the English court
“Did bark, and howl in German.”!
From the state of their country, the political bias of the Highlanders,
and the eclat which they had acquired under Montrose and Dundee, the
eyes of all Europe were turned towards them as the only hope of the
house of Stewart. Their chiefs were courted by, and had frequent
personal intercourse with the friends of that family who were of most
note, both in Scotland, England, and Ireland, and on the continent.
Studying to accomplish themselves for the part they had to act, and
always received -w'ith the greatest distinction in the best society,
they became statesmen, warriors, and fine gentlemen. Their sons, after
passing through the usual routine in the schools and universities of
Scotland, were sent to France to finish their education. As the policy
of the whig governments was to crush and destroy, not to conciliate, and
they found neither countenance nor employment at home, they entered into
the French or Spanish service, and in those countries were, from
political views, treated with a distinction suitable, not to their
pecuniary circumstances, but to their importance in their own country.
Great numbers of the more promising of the youth of their clans joined
them; and, in order that the luxurious indulgencies of a more favoured
climate might not render them unfit or unwilling to settle in their own
country, at the end of two or three years they returned for a time to
their relations, with all their accomplishments in knowledge and
manners, and, with their relish for early habits still unimpaired,
resumed the quilted plaid and bonnet, and were replaced in their
regiments abroad by another set of young adventurers of the same
description. Thus among the gentry, the urbanity and knowledge of the
most polished countries in Europe were added to a certain moral and
mental civilization, good in its kind, and peculiar to themselves. At
home, they conversed with the lower classes, in the most kindly and
cordial manner, on all occasions, and gratified their laudable and
active curiosity, in communicating all they knew. This advantage of
conversing freely with their superiors, the peasantry of no other
country in Europe enjoyed, and the consequence was, that in 1745 the
Scottish Highlanders, of all descriptions, had more of that polish of
ind and sentiment, which constitutes real civilization, than in general
the inhabitants of any other country we know of, not even excepting
Iceland. This a stranger, who, not understanding their language, could
see only the outside of things, could never be sensible of
Book-learning.^ it is true, was confined to the gentry, because in a
country so thinly peopled, schools would have been useless; they were
too poor to have private instructors; and they had good reasons for
looking with no favourable eye upon any thing that was Saxon. But most
of the gentlemen spoke Gaelic, English, Latin, and French, and many of-
them Spanish, having access to all the information of which these
languages were the vehicles. The lower classes were, each ac- cording to
his gift of natural intellect, well acquainted with the topography of
their own country, and with its history, particular as well as general,
for at least three centuries back; they repeated and listened to, with
all the enthusiastic delight of a thorough feeling and perfect
intelligence, many thousand lines of poetry of the very highest kind
(for such they really had among them in abundance, notwithstanding the
doubts which the dishonesty of MacPherson and his associates has raised
on that subject); and their music (which, as it speaks the language of
nature, not of nations, is more intelligible to a stranger) is allowed,
when performed can amore to be the production of a people among whom the
better sympathies of our nature must have been cultivated to a great
extent. These facts indicate a very high degree of intellectual
refinement, entirely independent of the fashion of their lower
garments,* from the sight of which, and the sound of a language which
they did not understand, their neighbours were fully satisfied of their
barbarity and inquired no further.
In justification of this account of their character in 1745, in addition
to the information procured in the country, as well as in the Lowlands
and in England, we can with confidence appeal to the letters of their
chiefs, and to the public documents and periodical publications of the
time, although these last were written by their bitterest enemies, with
a view to influence the public against them. From all the information we
have been able to collect, it appears that in their whole progress to
and from Derby, their conduct, all circumstances considered, was not
only orderly and proper, but, in innumerable instances, in the highest
degree humane and magnanimous. In England, the courtly elegance, in
manners and conversation, of the Highland gentleman, their dignified
deportment, the discipline they preserved among their men, but, above
all, the kind-hearted, sensible, and considerate good-nature and
indulgence which they everywhere manifested towards women and children
(a strong feature in the Highland character, and the best proof of true
civilization), which was so different from what the English had been led
to expect, made so favourable an impression, and formed such a contrast
to the insolent brutality of the king’s troops, officers and men, who
marched down after them, that in many instances, which we know from the
parties concerned, the women (for the men durst not speak out) could not
help telling the latter, “when the rebels, as they are called, were
here, they behaved very differently—they behaved like gentlemen—quite
like gentlemen—God help them!” Such reproaches, so justly provoked, and
so often repeated, produced only aggravation of insult and abuse, and
(such was the spirit of the time) ladies of the greatest respectability
were, by officers of rank, damned for Jacobite b*****s, and told that
they were all rebels together, if they durst avow it, and deserved to
have their houses burnt over their heads!
With the exception of Mrs Grant’s admirable Essays, and those of the
Rev. Dr
Graham of Aberfoyl, almost all the accounts of the Highlanders have been
written either by enemies, with all the virulence of party spirit, or by
strangers, from partial information; and, consequently, hardly any thing
has been said of them but to their disadvantage. Hence the vague and
idle declamations about deadly feuds between clan and clan, bloody
conflicts, desperate encounters, depredations, robberies, murders,
assassinations, and all manner of sentiousness. In answer to all which,
we shall only observe, that every clan was a little community by itself,
under circumstances by no means favourable to quiet life among a poor,
free, bold, and hardy race of men; and ask the impassionate reader, what
all the great and polished nations of the earth were doing, while the
mountaineers of Scotland were thus murdering one another? Amid the proud
triumphs of that civilization under which we are now supposed to live,
it is mortifying to reflect, that in the course of twenty years, during
the last war, there was twice as much Highland blood split [upwards of
13,000 have been enlisted into one single regiment!] as was shed by
Highlanders on their own account, in any way whatsoever during the three
centuries that preceded the abolition of the feudal system among them in
1748!
That they lifted cattle is true, — and this was so common, that the poor
beasts, like their fellow-denizens of the wilderness, the deer and roe,
seldom knew to what glen they belonged;—but these things were managed in
a way peculiar to themselves, and so seldom occasioned bloodshed, that
with all their berships riefs, hot-trods., and rescues, we may venture
to affirm, that ten Yorkshiremen lost their lives for horse-stealing,
for one Highlander that died in a case of cattle lifting.
Private robbery, murder, and petty theft were hardly known among them.
It has been said that “there was nothing to steal;” but there was
comparative wealth and poverty in their country, as well as elsewhere;
and the poorer the people were, the stronger was the temptation, and the
stronger must the principle have been that enabled them to resist it.
And here, for the sake of illustration, it may not be out of place to
say somewhat of the heavy accusations brought against the Clangregor,
particularly in Graham of Gartmore’s MS. As there is no end to the
clamours which have been echoed from one generation to another, against
this disorderly tribe, vve shall state a few simple facts, to show the
nature of their irregularities, They had long been deprived of their
lands, their name, their political existence, and the protection of the
Laws, and left to provide for, and protect themselves as best they
might. Their lands had been appropriated by their more powerful and
politic neighbours, particularly the predecessors of the duke of
Montrose. This, and that nobleman’s new-fangled whig politics, had
exposed him particularly to their indignation, which he shared with
Graham of Gartmore, and other gentlemen of the clan, who, having adopted
the same principles, were regarded as recreant Grahams. When they lifted
the duke’s cattle, took his rents from his steward, or emptied his
girnel of the farm meal after it had been paid in, they considered
themselves as only taking what ought to have been their own.
The manner in which this was commonly done, shows how unjustly they were
accused of general cruelty and oppression to their neighbours. On one
occasion, Rob Roy, ith only one attendant.^ went to the house in which
the duke’s tenants had been convened to pay their rents; took the money
from the steward in their presence; gave them certificates that all had
been duly paid before he seized it, which exonerated them from all
further claim; treated them liberally with whiskey; made them swear upon
his dirk^ that not one of them would stir out of the house, till three
hours after he was gone; took a good-humoured leave of them; and
deliberately returned to the Braes. Those who know the spirit of the
Grahams of that day, will be satisfied that this could never have taken
place had the tenants not been very well pleased to see their money come
into Rob’s hands. When called out by the duke to hunt down Rob and his
followers, they always contrived to give him timely warning, or to
mislead the scent, so that the expedition came to nothing. When the duke
once armed them for defence, they sent notice to Rob’s nephew, Glengyle,
to come round with such a force as would be a decent excuse for their
submission, and collect the arms, which they considered as a
disagreeable and dangerous deposit; and when the M‘Gregors took the
field in 1715, the cavalier spirit of the Grahams rose, and many of the
duke’s dependants, scorning their superior and his politics, followed
their standard. This showed that they did not consider the Braes of
Balquhidder as a bad neighbourhood.
In all the thinly-peopled districts by which the M‘Gregors were
surrounded, the whole property of the tenants was constantly at the
mercy of thieves, if there had been such in the country. The doors of
their houses were closed by a latch, or wooden bolt; and a man with a
clasp-knife might in a few minutes have cut open the door, or even the
wicker walls of the house. Detached from the dwelling-house, from fear
of fire, was a small wicker barn, or store-house, still less carefully
secured, in which they kept their whole stock of hams, butter, cheese
(for they then had such things) corn, meal, blankets, webs, yarn, wool,
&c. These houses and barns were often left unprotected for days
together, when the people were abroad cutting and winning turf, making
hay or reaping for their superior, or tending their cattle in distant
pastures. This was the case all over the Highlands; yet nothing was ever
stolen or disturbed! Of what civilised country, in the best of times,
can as much be said?
A spirit of revenge has too often been attributed to them, as a
distinguishing feature of character; and the ancient prejudice on this
subject remains, long after the habits in which it originated have
disappeared. In a certain state of society, in all countries, revenge
has been not only accounted manly and honourable, but has been
bequeathed as a sacred trust, from father to son, through ages, to be
wreaked as an indispensable duty of piety. This was particularly the
case among the Scandinavians, from whom many of the Highlanders are
descended; and as they remained longer than their neighbours in a state
in which they had no laws to appeal to, there can be no doubt that many
things were done in the way of retaliation, which would now be
considered as lawless and violent; but, as the sum of infliction from
wilful resentment among them bore no proportion to the sum of infliction
from outraged laws in other countries, the balance in favour of humanity
and forbearance, even in the most turbulent times we are acquainted
with, will be found to be considerably in their favour. A man killed at
his own fire-side by him whom he had injured, was talked of for ages,
while five hundred such persons hanged at Tyburn were forgotten as soon
as cut down!
Men of strong and lively feelings are generally earnest in their likings
and dislikings; but notwithstanding the constant provocations they have
been receiving, during the last thirty years, from their landlords,
landstewards, (generally English or Lowland attornies) Lowland tacksmen,
farm-appraisers, and farm-jobbers, who live among them, or occasionally
visit them, like the pestilence, with oppression, insult, and misery in
their train,
“Destruction before them, and sorrow behind;”
in the midst of these grievous and daily wrongs, wilful fire-raising,
houghing of cattle, and assassination, so common among their neighbours,
are unheard of among them!
On the subject of drunkenness, of which they have been so often accused,
we refer the reader with confidence to Mrs. Grant’s Essays, which are
Written in the true spirit of candour and of truth, and from an intimate
and thorough knowledge of her subject. Donald is a lively, warmhearted,
companionable fellow: likes whiskey when he wants it, as others learn to
do who visit his country; and is no enemy to a hearty jollification upon
occasion; but we never knew in the Highlands an habitual drunkard, who
had learnt that vice in his own country, if we except such, about
Fort-William and Fort-Augustus, as had been corrupted by the foreign
soldiers resident among them. This was the case about thirty years ago,
but a melancholy change has since taken place.
At that time, the privilege of distilling at Farrintosh had not been
withdrawn from the Culloden family, and good whiskey was so cheap (about
tenpence an English quart), that there was no temptation to illicit
distillation. At present, the poor distressed and degraded peasants (who
would still do well if they could, and cling to their native glens, the
land of their fathers, to the last) are compelled, by hard necessity, to
have recourse to smuggling, in order to raise money to gratify the
insane avarice of their misguided and degenerate landlords, who, with a
view to immediate gain, connive at their proceedings, without
considering that their own ruin must be the consequence of the
demoralization of their tenants. Illicit stills are to be found
everywhere: encouraging drunkenness is encouraging trade; and the result
is such as might be expected. But that the Highlander, when he has fair
means of showing himself, is still averse to such profligacy, is proved
by the conduct of the Highland regiments,* which, amid the contagion of
bad examples, and all the licences peculiar to camps and a military
life, have always been distinguished above all others wherever they have
been stationed, for their sobriety, honesty, and kindly good nature and
good humour. It is almost peculiar to this people, that the greatest
beauties in their character have commonly been considered as blemishes.
Among these, the most prominent are family pride, the love of kindred,
even to the exclusion of justice, and attachment to a country which
seems to have so few charms to the inhabitants of more favoured regions.
A family consisting of four or live thousand souls, all known to,
connected with, and depending upon, each other, is certainly something
that a man may be justified in considering as of some importance; and if
a Highlander could neither be induced by threats nor promises to appear
in a criminal court against a kinsman, or give him up to the vengeance
of the law, as is so common elsewhere, we may admire and pity, but can
hardly in our hearts blame him. Who that has done such things ever did
any good afterwards?
The Highlander loves his country, because he loves heartily well every
thing that has ever been interesting to him, and this his own country
was before he knew any other. Wherever he goes, he finds the external
face of nature, or the institutions, language, and manners of the
people, so different from what was dear to him in his youth, that he is
everywhere else a stranger, and naturally sighs for home, with all its
disadvantages, which, however formidable they may appear to others, are
with him connected with such habits and recollections, that he would not
remove them, if a wish could do it. Some of the usages mentioned in the
following work, may give rise to misapprehension.
To strangers, the children of the gentry appeared to be totally
neglected, till they were of an age to go to school; and this, in some
measure, continued even to our own times; but it was the wisdom and
affection of their parents that put them in such situations. Aware of
the sacredness of their trust, those with whom they were placed never
lost sight of their future destiny; and as they were better acquainted
with the condition of their superiors than persons of the same rank in
life had means of being in other countries, no habits of meanness or
vulgarity were contracted from such an education. Delicacy, with respect
to food, clothing, and accommodation, would have been the greatest curse
that could be entailed upon them: from early association, they learnt to
feel an interest in all that concerned those among whom they had spent
those years to which all look back with fond regret; and this intimate
practical acquaintance with the condition, habits, and feelings of their
dependants, produced afterwards a bond of union and endearment in the
highest degree beneficial to all parties; at the same time that they
could, with less inconvenience, encounter such difficulties and
privations as the future vicissitudes of life might expose them to.
The ostentatiousness of the public, and beggarliness of the private
economy of their chiefs, has been ridiculed.—If they stinted themselves,
in order to entertain their guests the better, they surely deserved a
more grateful return. They lived in a poor country, where good fare
could not be found for every day; and after half a dozen servants had
waited at table, while the chief and his family were making a private
meal of hasty-pudding and milk, crowdy (graddenmeal and whipt cream),
curds and cream, bread and cheese, fish, or what they might chance to
have, those servants retired to the kitchen, cheerful and contented to
their homely dinner, without any of those heart-burnings produced by the
sight of luxuries in which they could have no share. Their fare might be
hard, but their superiors were contented with it, and so were they. Such
self-denial in the chiefs reconciled their dependants to disadvantages
which they had no means of surmounting, and was equally humane and
considerate.
Their submission to their chiefs has been called slavish; and too many
of the chiefs of the present day are willing enough to have this
believed, because they wish to impute their own want of influence to any
cause rather than the true one; but the lowest clansman felt his own
individual importance as much as his chief, whom he considered as such
only “ad vitam aut ad culpam;” and although there was certainly a strong
feeling in favour of the lineal descendant of the steam-father of their
race, which prevented them from being rash, harsh, or unjust to him,
there was also a strong feeling of honour and independence, which
prevented them from being unjust to themselves. When a chief proved
unworthy of his rank, he was degraded from it, and (to avoid jealousy
and strife) the next in order was constituted in his room—but never a
low-born man or a stranger; as it was a salutary rule among them, as in
other military establishments, not to put one officer over the head of
another. But it was not with a Highland chief as with other rulers;
"when he fell, he fell like Lucifer, never to rise again", his
degradation was complete, because he owed it to a common feeling of
reprobation, not to the caprice, malice, or ambition of a faction; for
every one was thoroughly acquainted with the merits of the cause, and
while there was any thing to be said in his favour, his people had too
much respect for themselves to show public disrespect to him. The same
dignified feeling prevented their resentment from being bloody; he was
still their kinsman, however unworthy ; and having none among them to
take his part, was no longer dangerous.
Their affectation of gentry (if such a term may be allowed) has been
treated with endless ridicule, because it did not (much to the credit of
their liberality) include the idea of wealth; but we believe few
gentlemen in the Highlands, however poor, would have been flattered by
being classed, as to civilization., with the gentleman, our author’s
friend, who attempted to ride into the rainbow.
The humane, indulgent, and delicate attention of people of fortune in
the Highlands to their poor relations was one of the finest features in
their character, and might furnish a very edifying example to the
inhabitants of more favoured region; and, to an honourable mind, there
are surely considerations of higher importance than fine clothes and
good eating. It has been imputed to their pride and stupidity, that they
did not flee from the poverty of their own country, and try their
fortunes, as labourers and mechanics, among strangers, where they might,
in time, have obtained better food and accommodation; but to give up
their rank in society, with all the endearing offices and sympathies of
friendship and affection to which they had been accustomed at home, and
which were so soothing and so flattering to their feelings, and to go
where they were sure to be degraded beneath the lowest of the low, and
continually exposed to contempt, ridicule, and insult, for their
ignorance of the arts and habitudes of those among whom/ they lived in
short, to sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage— would have
argued a beggarliness of soul and spirit, which, happily, their worst
enemies do not accuse them of.
The foregoing remarks, which seemed necessary for illustrating the
characters of a very singular and interesting people, have already
extended this preface to a much greater length than was at first
intended, which will be the less regretted, if the honest wish by which
these details were prompted has been in any degree fulfilled. Of undue
partiality, it is hoped the writer will not be rashly accused, for he is
not a Highlander; and, having gone to the mountains, at the age of
fifteen, from the Laigh of Murray (“whence every man had a right to
drive a prey and where, of course, the character of their neighbours was
not very popular), he carried among them prejudices which nothing but
the conviction arising from observation and experience could have re-
moved. Of what he then heard, saw, and felt, he has since had sufficient
leisure to form a cool and dispassionate estimate, during a residence of
many years in various parts of England, Wales, the north of Europe, and
the Lowlands of Scotland. As he had no Celtic enthusiasm to struggle
with, and his deductions have all been made from facts, it is hoped they
may be received by strangers with suitable confidence.To what good
purpose he has availed himself of the advantages he enjoyed, in fitting
himself for his present task, every reader will judge for himself; but
when he makes it known that it was first recommended to him by Mr. Scott
(to whom both he and this publication, as well as the world in general,
are so much indebted), his vanity will readily be pardoned, as, even if
it should be found that that gentleman’s kindness for the man has
over-stepped his discretion as to the writer, the general conclusion
will not be dishonourable to either party.
As a close affinity in manners, habits, and character, between the
ancient as well as present mountaineers of Norway and Scotland has
frequently been alluded to, these prolusions may be closed, not unaptly,
with a fragment of Highland biography, which may be regarded as a great
curiosity, particularly by such as are acquainted with the Icelandic and
Norse Sagas, which it so strongly resembles. Of Hammer Donald.) we shall
only observe, that although the circumstances of his early life made him
(like Viga Gluni) and other celebrated kemps and homicides of the North)
a very unmanageable and dangerous neighbour, there were then varieties
of character in the Highlands as well as elsewhere. Donald’s clan had
been but lately introduced into the country; his father although a brave
man, was denominated “the Peaceful;” and his son narrowly escaped being
murdered in the very act of teaching his servants how to cultivate the
ground.
In volume 1 you can also
read an account of...
The History of Donald The
Hammer
From an authentic Account of the Family of Invernahyle.
[MS. communicated by Walter Scott, Esq.]
Alexander, the first
Invernahyle, commonly called Saoileach, or “the Peaceful,” was son of
Allan Stewart, third laird of Appin. He married Margaret M‘Donald,
daughter of Donald M‘Donald of Moidart, commonly called Donald an Lochan
or Donald of the Lakes; but a deadly feud arose between Invernahyle and
the family of Dunstaffnage, which, in the first instance, caused the
overthrow of both.
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