A
HISTORY
OF THE
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

HIGHLAND CLANS
AND
HIGHLAND REGIMENTS

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF
THE GAELIC LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND MUSIC
By the Rev. THOMAS MACLAUCHLAN, LL.D., F.S.A. Scot.

AND AN ESSAY ON HIGHLAND SCENERY
By the late Professor JOHN WILSON

EDITED BY
JOHN S. KELTIE, F.S.A. Scot.

Illustrated

WITH A SERIES OF PORTRAITS, VIEWS, MAPS, ETC., ENGRAVED ON STEEL,
CLAN TARTANS, AND UPWARDS OF TWO HUNDRED WOODCUTS,
INCLUDING ARMORIAL BEARINGS

VOL. II.

A. FULLARTON & CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
1875

[Pg iii]

[iv]

[v]

VOLUME II.

[Pg 1]

As we have already (see ch. xviii.) given a somewhat minute description of the clan-system, it is unnecessary to enter again in detail upon that subject here. We have, perhaps, in the chapter referred to, given the most brilliant side of the picture, still the reader may gather, from what is said there, some notion of what had to be done, what immense barriers had to be overcome, ere the Highlander could be modernised. Any further details on this point will be learned from the Introduction to the History of the Clans.

As might have been expected, for some time after the allaying of the rebellion, and the passing of the various measures already referred to, the Highlands, especially those parts which bordered on the Lowlands, were to a certain extent infested by what were known as cattle-lifters—Anglicé, cattle-stealers. Those who took part in such expeditions were generally “broken” men, or men who belonged to no particular clan, owned no chief, and who were regarded generally as outlaws. In a paper said to have been written in 1747, a very gloomy and lamentable picture of the state of the country in this respect is given, although we suspect it refers rather to the period preceding the rebellion than to that succeeding it. However, we shall quote what the writer says on the matter in question, in order to give the reader an idea of the nature and extent of this system of pillage or “requisition:”—

“Although the poverty of the people principally produces these practices so ruinous to society, yet the nature of the country, which is thinnely inhabitate, by reason of the extensive moors and mountains, and which is so well fitted for conceallments by the many glens, dens, and cavitys in it, does not a little contribute. In such a country cattle are privately transported from one place to another, and securely hid, and in such a country it is not easy to get informations, nor to apprehend the criminalls. People lye so open to their resentment, either for giving intelligence, or prosecuting them, that they decline either, rather than risk their cattle being stoln, or their houses burnt. And then, in the pursuit of a rogue, though he was almost in hands, the grounds are so hilly and unequall, and so much covered with wood or brush, and so full of dens and hollows, that the sight of him is almost as soon lost as he is discovered.

“It is not easy to determine the number of persons employed in this way; but it may be safely affirmed that the horses, cows, sheep, and goats yearly stoln in that country are in value equall to £5,000; that the expences lost in the fruitless endeavours to recover them will not be less than £2,000; that the extraordinary expences of keeping herds and servants to look more narrowly after cattle on account of[2] stealling, otherways not necessary, is £10,000. There is paid in blackmail or watch-money, openly and privately, £5,000; and there is a yearly loss by understocking the grounds, by reason of theifts, of at least £15,000; which is, altogether, a loss to landlords and farmers in the Highlands of £37,000 sterling a year. But, besides, if we consider that at least one-half of these stollen effects quite perish, by reason that a part of them is buried under ground, the rest is rather devoured than eat, and so what would serve ten men in the ordinary way of living, swallowed up by two or three to put it soon out of the way, and that some part of it is destroyed in concealed parts when a discovery is suspected, we must allow that there is £2,500 as the value of the half of the stollen cattle, and £15,000 for the article of understock quite lost of the stock of the kingdom.

“These last mischiefs occasions another, which is still worse, although intended as a remedy for them—that is, the engaging companys of men, and keeping them in pay to prevent these thiefts and depredations. As the government neglect the country, and don’t protect the subjects in the possession of their property, they have been forced into this method for their own security, though at a charge little less than the land-tax. The person chosen to command this watch, as it is called, is commonly one deeply concerned in the theifts himself, or at least that hath been in correspondence with the thieves, and frequently who hath occasioned thiefts, in order to make this watch, by which he gains considerably, necessary. The people employed travell through the country armed, night and day, under pretence of enquiring after stollen cattle, and by this means know the situation and circumstances of the whole country. And as the people thus employed are the very rogues that do these mischiefs, so one-half of them are continued in their former bussiness of stealling that the busieness of the other half may be necessary in recovering.”[1]

This is probably a somewhat exaggerated account of the extent to which this species of robbery was carried on, especially after the suppression of the rebellion; if written by one of the Gartmore family, it can scarcely be regarded as a disinterested account, seeing that the Gartmore estate lies just on the southern skirt of the Highland parish of Aberfoyle, formerly notorious as a haunt of the Macgregors, affording every facility for lifters getting rapidly out of reach with their “ill-gotten gear.” Still, no doubt, curbed and dispirited as the Highlanders were after the treatment they got from Cumberland, from old habit, and the assumed necessity of living, they would attempt to resume their ancient practices in this and other respects. But if they were carried on to any extent immediately after the rebellion, when the Gartmore paper is said to have been written, it could not have been for long; the law had at last reached the Highlands, and this practice ere long became rarer than highway robbery in England, gradually dwindling down until it was carried on here and there by one or two “desperate outlawed” men. Long before the end of the century it seems to have been entirely given up. “There is not an instance of any country having made so sudden a change in its morals as that of the Highlands; security and civilization now possess every part; yet 30 years have not elapsed since the whole was a den of thieves of the most extraordinary kind.”[2]

As we have said above, after the suppression of the rebellion of 1745–6, there are no stirring narratives of outward strife or inward broil to be narrated in connection with the Highlands. Indeed, the history of the Highlands from this time onwards belongs strictly to the history of Scotland, or rather of Britain. Still, before concluding this division of the work, it may be well to give a brief sketch of the progress of the Highlands from the time of the suppression of the jurisdictions down to the present day. Not that after their disarmament the Highlanders ceased to take part in the world’s strife; but the important part they have taken during the last century or more in settling the destinies of nations, falls to be narrated in another section of this work. What we shall concern ourselves with at present is the consequences of the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions (and with them the importance and power of the chiefs), on the[3] internal state of the Highlands; we shall endeavour to show the alteration which took place in the social condition of the people, their mode of life, their relation to the chiefs (now only landlords), their mode of farming, their religion, education, and other points.

From the nature of clanship—of the relationship between chief and people, as well as from the state of the law and the state of the Highlands generally—it will be perceived that, previous to the measure which followed Culloden, it was the interest of every chief to surround himself with as many followers as he could muster; his importance and power of injury and defence were reckoned by government and his neighbours not according to his yearly income, but according to the number of men he could bring into the field to fight his own or his country’s battles. It is told of a chief that, when asked as to the rent of his estate, he replied that he could raise 500 men. Previous to ’45, money was of so little use in the Highlands, the chiefs were so jealous of each other and so ready to take advantage of each other’s weakness, the law was so utterly powerless to repress crime and redress wrong, and life and property were so insecure, that almost the only security which a chief could have was the possession of a small army of followers, who would protect himself and his property; and the chief safety and means of livelihood that lay in the power of the ordinary clansman was to place himself under the protection and among the followers of some powerful chief. “Before that period (1745) the authority of law was too feeble to afford protection.[3] The obstructions to the execution of any legal warrant were such that it was only for objects of great public concern that an extraordinary effort was sometimes made to overcome them. In any ordinary case of private injury, an individual could have little expectation of redress unless he could avenge his own cause; and the only hope of safety from any attack was in meeting force by force. In this state of things, every person above the common rank depended for his safety and his consequence on the number and attachment of his servants and dependants; without people ready to defend him, he could not expect to sleep in safety, to preserve his house from pillage or his family from murder; he must have submitted to the insolence of every neighbouring robber, unless he had maintained a numerous train of followers to go with him into the field, and to fight his battles. To this essential object every inferior consideration was sacrificed; and the principal advantage of landed property consisted in the means it afforded to the proprietor of multiplying his dependants.”[4]

Of course, the chief had to maintain his followers in some way, had to find some means by which he would be able to attach them to himself, keep them near him, and command their services when he required them. There can be no doubt, however chimerical it may appear at the present day, that the attachment and reverence of the Highlander to his chief were quite independent of any benefits the latter might be able to confer. The evidence is indubitable that the clan regarded the chief as the father of his people, and themselves as his children; he, they believed, was bound to protect and maintain them, while they were bound to regard his will as law, and to lay down their lives at his command. Of these statements there can be[4] no doubt. “This power of the chiefs is not supported by interest, as they are landlords, but as lineally descended from the old patriarchs or fathers of the families, for they hold the same authority when they have lost their estates, as may appear from several, and particularly one who commands in his clan, though, at the same time, they maintain him, having nothing left of his own.”[5] Still it was assuredly the interest, and was universally regarded as the duty of the chief, to strengthen that attachment and his own authority and influence, by bestowing upon his followers what material benefits he could command, and thus show himself to be, not a thankless tyrant, but a kind and grateful leader, and an affectionate father of his people. Theoretically, in the eye of the law, the tenure and distribution of land in the Highlands was on the same footing as in the rest of the kingdom; the chiefs, like the lowland barons, were supposed to hold their lands from the monarch, the nominal proprietor of all landed property, and these again in the same way distributed portions of this territory among their followers, who thus bore the same relation to the chief as the latter did to his superior, the king. In the eye of the law, we say, this was the case, and so those of the chiefs who were engaged in the rebellion of 1715–45 were subjected to forfeiture in the same way as any lowland rebel. But, practically, the great body of the Highlanders knew nothing of such a tenure, and even if it had been possible to make them understand it, they would probably have repudiated it with contempt. The great principle which seems to have ruled all the relations that subsisted between the chief and his clan, including the mode of distributing and holding land, was, previous to 1746, that of the family. The land was regarded not so much as belonging absolutely to the chief, but as the property of the clan of which the chief was head and representative. Not only was the clan bound to render obedience and reverence to their head, to whom each member supposed himself related, and whose name was the common name of all his people; he also was regarded as bound to maintain and protect his people, and distribute among them a fair share of the lands which he held as their representative. “The chief, even against the laws, is bound to protect his followers, as they are sometimes called, be they never so criminal. He is their leader in clan quarrels, must free the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who, by accidents, are fallen into decay. If, by increase of the tribe, any small farms are wanting, for the support of such addition he splits others into lesser portions, because all must be somehow provided for; and as the meanest among them pretend to be his relatives by consanguinity, they insist upon the privilege of taking him by the hand wherever they meet him.”[6] Thus it was considered the duty, as it was in those turbulent times undoubtedly the interest, of the chief to see to it that every one of those who looked upon him as their chief was provided for; while, on the other hand, it was the interest of the people, as they no doubt felt it to be their duty, to do all in their power to gain the favour of their chiefs, whose will was law, who could make or unmake them, on whom their very existence was dependent. Latterly, at least, this utter dependence of the people on their chiefs, their being compelled for very life’s sake to do his bidding, appears to have been regarded by the former as a great hardship; for, as we have already said, it is well known that in both of the rebellions of last century, many of the poor clansmen pled in justification of their conduct, that they were compelled, sorely against their inclination, to join the rebel army. This only proves how strong must have been the power of the chiefs, and how completely at their mercy the people felt themselves to be.

To understand adequately the social life of the Highlanders previous to 1746, the distribution of the land among, the nature of their tenures, their mode of farming, and similar matters, the facts above stated must be borne in mind. Indeed, not only did the above influences affect these matters previous to the suppression of the last rebellion, but also for long after, if, indeed, they are not in active operation in some remote corners of the Highlands[5] even at the present day; moreover, they afford a key to much of the confusion, misunderstanding, and misery that followed upon the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions.

Next in importance and dignity to the chief or laird were the cadets of his family, the gentlemen of the clan, who in reference to the mode in which they held the land allotted to them, were denominated tacksmen. To these tacksmen were let farms, of a larger or smaller size according to their importance, and often at a rent merely nominal; indeed, they in general seem to have considered that they had as much right to the land as the chief himself, and when, after 1746, many of them were deprived of their farms, they, and the Highlanders generally, regarded it as a piece of gross and unfeeling injustice. As sons were born to the chief, they also had to be provided for, which seems to have been done either by cutting down the possessions of those tacksmen further removed from the family of the laird, appropriating those which became vacant by the death of the tenant or otherwise, and by the chief himself cutting off a portion of the land immediately in his possession. In this way the descendants of tacksmen might ultimately become part of the commonalty of the clan. Next to the tacksmen were tenants, who held their farms either directly from the laird, or as was more generally the case, from the tacksmen. The tenants again frequently let out part of their holdings to sub-tenants or cottars, who paid their rent by devoting most of their time to the cultivation of the tenant’s farm, and the tending of his cattle. The following extract from the Gartmore paper written in 1747, and published in the appendix to Burt’s Letters, gives a good idea of the manner generally followed in distributing the land among the various branches of the clan:—

“The property of these Highlands belongs to a great many different persons, who are more or less considerable in proportion to the extent of their estates, and to the command of men that live upon them, or follow them on account of their clanship, out of the estates of others. These lands are set by the landlord during pleasure, or a short tack, to people whom they call good-men, and who are of a superior station to the commonality. These are generally the sons, brothers, cousins, or nearest relations of the landlord. The younger sons of famillys are not bred to any business or employments, but are sent to the French or Spanish armies, or marry as soon as they are of age. Those are left to their own good fortune and conduct abroad, and these are preferred to some advantageous farm at home. This, by the means of a small portion, and the liberality of their relations, they are able to stock, and which they, their children, and grandchildren, possess at an easy rent, till a nearer descendant be again preferred to it. As the propinquity removes, they become less considered, till at last they degenerate to be of the common people; unless some accidental acquisition of wealth supports them above their station. As this hath been an ancient custom, most of the farmers and cottars are of the name and clan of the proprietor; and, if they are not really so, the proprietor either obliges them to assume it, or they are glaid to do so, to procure his protection and favour.

“Some of these tacksmen or good-men possess these farms themselves; but in that case they keep in them a great number of cottars, to each of whom they give a house, grass for a cow or two, and as much ground as will sow about a boll of oats, in places which their own plough cannot labour, by reason of brush or rock, and which they are obliged in many places to delve with spades. This is the only visible subject which these poor people possess for supporting themselves and their famillys, and the only wages of their whole labour and service.

“Others of them lett out parts of their farms to many of these cottars or subtennants; and as they are generally poor, and not allways in a capacity to stock these small tenements, the tacksmen frequently enter them on the ground laboured and sown, and sometimes too stocks it with cattle; all which he is obliged to redeliver in the same condition at his removal, which is at the goodman’s pleasure, as he is usually himself tennent at pleasure, and for which during his possession he pays an extravagantly high rent to the tacksman.

“By this practice, farms, which one family and four horses are sufficient to labour, will[6] have from four to sixteen famillys living upon them.”[7]

“In the case of very great families, or when the domains of a chief became very extensive, it was usual for the head of the clan occasionally to grant large territories to the younger branches of his family in return for a trifling quit-rent. These persons were called chieftains, to whom the lower classes looked up as their immediate leader. These chieftains were in later times called tacksmen; but at all periods they were considered nearly in the same light as proprietors, and acted on the same principles. They were the officers who, under the chief, commanded in the military expeditions of the clans. This was their employment; and neither their own dispositions, nor the situation of the country, inclined them to engage in the drudgery of agriculture any farther than to supply the necessaries of life for their own families. A part of their land was usually sufficient for this purpose, and the remainder was let off in small portions to cottagers, who differed but little from the small occupiers who held their lands immediately from the chief; excepting that, in lieu of rent, they were bound to a certain amount of labour for the advantage of their immediate superior. The more of these people any gentleman could collect around his habitation, with the greater facility could he carry on the work of his own farm; the greater, too, was his personal safety. Besides this, the tacksmen, holding their lands from the chief at a mere quit-rent, were naturally solicitous to merit his favour by the number of their immediate dependants whom they could bring to join his standard.”[8]

Thus it will be seen that in those times every one was, to a more or less extent, a cultivator or renter of land. As to rent, there was very little of actual money paid either by the tacksmen or by those beneath them in position and importance. The return expected by the laird or chief from the tacksmen for the farms he allowed them to hold, was that they should be ready when required to produce as many fighting men as possible, and give him a certain share of the produce of the land they held from him. It was thus the interest of the tacksman to parcel out their land into as small lots as possible, for the more it was subdivided, the greater would be the number of men he could have at his command. This liability on the part of the subtenants to be called upon at any time to do service for the laird, no doubt counted for part of the rent of the pendicles allotted to them. These pendicles were often very small, and evidently of themselves totally insufficient to afford the means of subsistence even to the smallest family. Besides this liability to do service for the chief, a very small sum of money was taken as part of the rent, the remainder being paid in kind, and in assisting the tacksmen to farm whatever land he may have retained in his own hands. In the same way the cottars, who were subtenants to the tacksmen’s tenants, had to devote most of their time to the service of those from whom they immediately held their lands. Thus it will be seen that, although nominally the various tenants held their land from their immediate superiors at a merely nominal rent, in reality what was actually given in return for the use of the land would, in the end, probably turn out to be far more than its value. From the laird to the cottar there was an incessant series of exactions and services, grievous to be borne, and fatal to every kind of improvement.

Besides the rent and services due by each class to its immediate superiors, there were numerous other exactions and services, to which all had to submit for the benefit of their chief. The most grievous perhaps of these was thirlage or multure, a due exacted from each tenant for the use of the mill of the district to convert their grain into meal. All the tenants of each district or parish were thirled or bound to take their grain to a particular mill to be ground, the miller being allowed to appropriate a certain proportion as payment for the use of the mill, and as a tax payable to the laird or chief. In this way a tenant was often deprived of a considerable quantity of his grain, varying from one-sixteenth to one-eighth, and even more. In the same way many parishes were thirled to a particular smith. By these and similar exactions and contributions did the proprietors[7] and chief men of the clan manage to support themselves off the produce of their land, keep a numerous band of retainers around them, have plenty for their own use, and for all who had any claim to their hospitality. This seems especially to have been the case when the Highlanders were in their palmiest days of independence, when they were but little molested from without, and when their chief occupations were clan-feuds and cattle raids. But latterly, and long before the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, this state of matters had for the most part departed, and although the chiefs still valued themselves by the number of men they could produce, they kept themselves much more to themselves, and showed less consideration for the inferior members of the clan, whose condition, even at its best, must appear to have been very wretched. “Of old, the chieftain was not so much considered the master as the father of his numerous clan. Every degree of these followers loved him with an enthusiasm, which made them cheerfully undergo any fatigue or danger. Upon the other hand, it was his interest, his pride, and his chief glory, to requite such animated friendship to the utmost of his power. The rent paid him was chiefly consumed in feasts given at the habitations of his tenants. What he was to spend, and the time of his residence at each village, was known and provided for accordingly. The men who provided these entertainments partook of them; they all lived friends together; and the departure of the chief and his retinue never fails to occasion regret. In more polished times, the cattle and corn consumed at these feasts of hospitality, were ordered up to the landlord’s habitation. What was friendship at the first became very oppressive in modern times. Till very lately in this neighbourhood, Campbell of Auchinbreck had a right to carry off the best cow he could find upon several properties at each Martinmas by way of mart. The Island of Islay paid 500 such cows yearly, and so did Kintyre to the Macdonalds.”[9] Still, there can be no doubt, that previous to 1746 it was the interest of the laird and chief tacksmen to keep the body of the people as contented as possible, and do all in their power to attach them to their interest. Money was of but little use in the Highlands then; there was scarcely anything in which it could be spent; and so long as his tenants furnished him with the means of maintaining a substantial and extensive hospitality, the laird was not likely in general to complain. “The poverty of the tenants rendered it customary for the chief, or laird, to free some of them every year, from all arrears of rent; this was supposed, upon an average, to be about one year in five of the whole estate.”[10]

In the same letter from which the last sentence is quoted, Captain Burt gives an extract from a Highland rent-roll, of date probably about 1730; we shall reproduce it here, as it will give the reader a better notion as to how those matters were managed in these old times, than any description can. “You will, it is likely,” the letter begins, “think it strange that many of the Highland tenants are to maintain a family upon a farm of twelve merks Scots per annum, which is thirteen shillings and fourpence sterling, with perhaps a cow or two, or a very few sheep or goats; but often the rent is less, and the cattle are wanting.

“In some rentals you may see seven or eight columns of various species of rent, or more, viz., money, barley, oatmeal, sheep, lambs, butter, cheese, capons, &c.; but every tenant does not pay all these kinds, though many of them the greatest part. What follows is a specimen taken out of a Highland rent-roll, and I do assure you it is genuine, and not the least by many:—

I shall here give you a computation of the first article, besides which there are seven more of the same farm and rent, as you may perceive by the fraction of a sheep in the last column:—

[8]

It is plain that in the majority of cases the farms must have been of very small extent, almost equal to those of Goldsmith’s Golden Age, “when every rood maintained its man.” “In the head of the parish of Buchanan in Stirlingshire, as well as in several other places, there are to be found 150 families living upon grounds which do not pay above £90 sterling of yearly rent, that is, each family at a medium rents lands at twelve shillings of yearly rent.”[11] This certainly seems to indicate a very wretched state of matters, and would almost lead one to expect to hear that a famine occurred every year. But it must be remembered that for the reasons above given, along with others, farms were let at a very small rent, far below the real value, and generally merely nominal; that besides money, rent at that time was all but universally paid in kind, and in services to the laird or other superior; and that many of the people, especially on the border lands, had other means of existence, as for example, cattle-lifting. Nevertheless, making all these allowances, the condition of the great mass of the Highlanders must have been extremely wretched, although they themselves might not have felt it to be so, they had been so long accustomed to it.

In such a state of matters, with the land so much subdivided, with no leases, and with tenures so uncertain, with so many oppressive exactions, with no incitements to industry or improvement, but with every encouragement to idleness and inglorious self-contentment, it is not to be supposed that agriculture or any other industry would make any great progress. For centuries previous to 1745, and indeed for long after it, agriculture appears to have remained at a stand-still. The implements in use were rude and inefficient, the time devoted to the necessary farming operations, generally a few weeks in spring and autumn, was totally insufficient to produce results of any importance, and consequently the crops raised, seldom anything else but oats and barley, were scanty, wretched in quality, and seldom sufficient to support the cultivator’s family for the half of the year. In general, in the Highlands, as the reader will already have seen, each farm was let to a number of tenants, who, as a rule, cultivated the arable ground on the system of run-rig, i.e., the ground was divided into ridges which were so distributed among the tenants that no one tenant possessed two contiguous ridges. Moreover, no tenant could have the same ridge for two years running, the ridges having a new cultivator every year. Such a system of allocating arable land, it is very evident, must have been attended with the worst results so far as good farming is concerned. The only recommendation that it is possible to urge in its favour is that, there being no inclosures, it would be the interest of the tenants to join together in protecting the land they thus held in common against the ravages of the cattle which were allowed to roam about the hills, and the depredations of hostile clans. As we have just said, there were no inclosures in the Highlands previous to 1745, nor were there for very many years after that. While the crops were standing in the ground, and liable to be destroyed by the cattle, the latter were kept, for a few weeks in summer and autumn, upon the hills; but after the crops were gathered in, they were allowed to roam unheeded through the whole of a district or parish, thus affording facilities for the cattle-raids that formed so important an item in the means of obtaining a livelihood among the ancient Highlanders.

As a rule, the only crops attempted to be raised were oats and barley, and sometimes a little flax; green crops were almost totally unknown or despised, till many years after 1745; even potatoes do not seem to have been at all common till after 1750, although latterly they became the staple food of the[9] Highlanders. Rotation of crops, or indeed any approach to scientific agriculture, was totally unknown. The ground was divided into infield and outfield. The infield was constantly cropped, either with oats or bear; one ridge being oats, the other bear alternately. There was no other crop except a ridge of flax where the ground was thought proper for it. The outfield was ploughed three years for oats, and then pastured for six years with horses, black cattle, and sheep. In order to dung it, folds of sod were made for the cattle, and what were called flakes or rails of wood, removable at pleasure, for folding the sheep. A farmer who rented 60, 80, or 100 acres, was sometimes under the necessity of buying meal for his family in the summer season.[12]

Their agricultural implements, it may easily be surmised, were as rude as their system of farming. The chief of these were the old Scotch plough and the caschroim or crooked spade, which latter, though primitive enough, seems to have been not badly suited to the turning over of the land in many parts of the Highlands. The length of the Highland plough was about four feet and a half, and had only one stilt or handle, by which the ploughman directed it. A slight mould-board was fastened to it with two leather straps, and the sock and coulter were bound together at the point with a ring of iron. To this plough there were yoked abreast four, six, and even more horses or cattle, or both mixed, in traces made of thongs of leather. To manage this unwieldy machine it required three or four men. The ploughman walked by the side of the plough, holding the stilt with one hand; the driver walked backwards in front of the horses or cattle, having the reins fixed on a cross stick, which he appears to have held in his hands.[13] Behind the ploughman came one and sometimes two men, whose business it was to lay down with a spade the turf that[10] was torn off. In the Hebrides and some other places of the Highlands, a curious instrument called a Reestle or Restle, was used in conjunction with this plough. Its coulter was shaped somewhat like a sickle, the instrument itself being otherwise like the plough just described. It was drawn by one horse, which was led by a man, another man holding and directing it by the stilt. It was drawn before the plough in order to remove obstructions, such as roots, tough grass, &c., which would have been apt to obstruct the progress of a weak plough like the above. In this way, it will be seen, five or six men, and an equal number if not more horses or cattle, were occupied in this single agricultural operation, performed now much more effectively by one man and two horses.[14]

The Caschroim, i.e., the crooked foot or spade, was an instrument peculiarly suited to the cultivation of certain parts of the Highlands, totally inaccessible to a plough, on account of the broken and rocky nature of the ground. Moreover, the land turned over with the caschroim was considerably more productive than that to which the above plough had been used. It consists of a strong piece of wood, about six feet long, bent near the lower end, and having a thick flat wooden head, shod at the extremity with a sharp piece of iron. A piece of wood projected about eight inches from the right side of the blade, and on this the foot was placed to force the instrument diagonally into the ground. “With this instrument a Highlander will open up more ground in a day, and render it fit for the sowing of grain, than could be done by two or three men with any other spades that are commonly used. He will dig as much ground in a day as will sow more than a peck of oats. If he works assiduously from about Christmas to near the end of April, he will prepare land sufficient to sow five bolls. After this he will dig as much land in a day as will sow two pecks of bere; and in the course of the season will cultivate as much land with his spade as is sufficient to supply a family of seven or eight persons, the year round, with meal and potatoes.... It appears, in general, that a field laboured with the caschroim affords usually one-third more crop than if laboured with the plough. Poor land will afford near one-half more. But then it must be noticed that this tillage with the plough is very imperfect, and the soil scarcely half laboured.”[15] No doubt this mode of cultivation was suitable enough in a country overstocked with population, as the Highlands were in the early part of last century, and where time and labour were of very little value. There were plenty of men to spare for such work, and there was little else to do but provide themselves with food. Still it is calculated that this spade labour was three times more expensive than that of the above clumsy plough. The caschroim was frequently used where there would have been no difficulty in working a plough, the reason apparently being that the horses and cattle were in such a wretched condition that the early farming operations in spring completely exhausted them, and therefore much of the ploughing left undone by them had to be performed with the crooked spade.

As to harrows, where they were used at all, they appear to have been of about as little use as a hand-rake. Some of them, which resembled hay-rakes, were managed by the hand; others, drawn by horses, were light and feeble, with wooden teeth, which might scratch the surface and cover the seed, but could have no effect in breaking the soil.[16] In some parts of the Highlands it was the custom to fasten the harrow to the horse’s tail, and when it became too short, it was lengthened with twisted sticks.

To quote further from Dr Walker’s work, which describes matters as they existed about 1760, and the statements in which will apply with still greater force to the earlier half of the century:—“The want of proper carriages in the Highlands is one of the great obstacles to the progress of agriculture, and of every improvement. Having no carts, their corn, straw, manures, fuel, stone, timber, sea-weed, and kelp, the articles necessary in the fisheries, and every other bulky commodity, must be transported from one place to another on horseback or on sledges. This must triple or quadruple the expense of their carriage. It must prevent particularly the use of the natural manures with which the country abounds, as, without[11] cheap carriage, they cannot be rendered profitable. The roads in most places are so bad as to render the use of wheel-carriages impossible; but they are not brought into use even where the natural roads would admit them.”[17]

As we have said already, farming operations in the Highlands lasted only for a few weeks in spring and autumn. Ploughing in general did not commence till March, and was concluded in May; there was no autumn or winter ploughing; the ground was left untouched and unoccupied but by some cattle from harvest to spring-time. It was only after the introduction of potatoes that the Highlanders felt themselves compelled to begin operations about January. As to the modus operandi of the Highland farmer in the olden time, we quote the following from the old Statistical Account of the parish of Dunkeld and Dowally, which may be taken as a very fair representative of all the other Highland parishes; indeed, as being on the border of the lowlands, it may be regarded as having been, with regard to agriculture and other matters, in a more advanced state than the generality of the more remote parishes:—“The farmer, whatever the state of the weather was, obstinately adhered to the immemorial practice of beginning to plough on Old Candlemas Day, and to sow on the 20th of March. Summer fallow, turnip crops, and sown grass were unknown; so were compost dunghills and the purchasing of lime. Clumps of brushwood and heaps of stones everywhere interrupted and deformed the fields. The customary rotation of their general crops was—1. Barley; 2. Oats; 3. Oats; 4. Barley; and each year they had a part of the farm employed in raising flax. The operations respecting these took place in the following succession. They began on the day already mentioned to rib the ground, on which they intended to sow barley, that is, to draw a wide furrow, so as merely to make the land, as they termed it, red. In that state this ground remained till the fields assigned to oats were ploughed and sown. This was in general accomplished by the end of April. The farmer next proceeded to prepare for his flax crop, and to sow it, which occupied him till the middle of May, when he began to harrow, and dung, and sow the ribbed barley land. This last was sometimes not finished till the month of June.”[18] As to draining, fallowing, methodical manuring and nourishing the soil, or any of the modern operations for making the best of the arable land of the country, of these the Highlander never even dreamed; and long after[19] they had become common in the low country, it was with the utmost difficulty that his rooted aversion to innovations could be overcome. They literally seem to have taken no thought for the morrow, and the tradition and usage of ages had given them an almost insuperable aversion to manual labour of any kind. This prejudice against work was not the result of inherent laziness, for the Highlander, both in ancient and modern times, has clearly shown that his capacity for work and willingness to exert himself are as strong and active as those of the most industrious lowlander or Englishman. The humblest Highlander believed himself a gentleman, having blood as rich and old as his chief, and he shared in the belief, far from being obsolete even at the present day, that for a gentleman to soil his hands with labour is as degrading as slavery.[20] This belief was undoubtedly one[12] of the strongest principles of action which guided the ancient Highlanders, and accounts, we think, to a great extent for his apparent laziness, and for the slovenly and laggard way in which farming operations were conducted.

There were, however, no doubt other reasons for the wretched state of agriculture in the Highlands previous to, and for long after, 1745. The Highlanders had much to struggle against, and much calculated to dishearten them, in the nature of the soil and climate, on which, to a great extent, the success of agricultural operations is dependent. In many parts of the Highlands, especially in the west, rain falls for the greater part of the year, thus frequently preventing the completion of the necessary processes, as well as destroying the crops when put into the ground. As to the soil, no unprejudiced man who is competent to judge will for one moment deny that a great part of it is totally unsuited to agriculture, but fitted only for the pasturage of sheep, cattle, and deer. In the Old Statistical Account of Scotland, this assertion is being constantly repeated by the various Highland ministers who report upon the state of their parishes. In the case of many Highland districts, one could conceive of nothing more hopeless and discouraging than the attempt to force from them a crop of grain. That there are spots in the Highlands as susceptible of high culture as some of the best in the lowlands cannot be denied; but these bear but a small proportion to the great quantity of ground that is fitted only to yield a sustenance to cattle and sheep. Now all reports seem to justify the conclusion that, previous to, and for long after 1745, the Highlands were enormously overstocked with inhabitants, considering the utter want of manufactures and the few other outlets there were for labour. Thus, we think, the Highlander would be apt to feel that any extraordinary exertion was absolutely useless, as there was not the smallest chance of his ever being able to improve his position, or to make himself, by means of agriculture, better than his neighbour. All he seems to have sought for was to raise as much grain as would keep himself and family in bread during the miserable winter months, and meet the demands of the laird.

The small amount of arable land was no doubt also the reason of the incessant cropping which prevails, and which ultimately left the land in a state of complete exhaustion. “To this sort of management, bad as it is, the inhabitants are in some degree constrained, from the small proportion of arable land upon their farms. From necessity they are forced to raise what little grain they can, though at a great expense of labour, the produce being so inconsiderable. A crop of oats on outfield ground, without manure, they find more beneficial than the pasture. But if they must manure for a crop of oats, they reckon the crop of natural grass rather more profitable. But the scarcity of bread corn—or rather, indeed, the want of bread—obliges them to pursue the less profitable practice. Oats and bear being necessary for their subsistence, they must prefer them to every other produce. The land at present in tillage, and fit to produce them, is very limited, and inadequate to the consumption of the inhabitants. They are, therefore, obliged to make it yield as much of these grains as possible, by scourging crops.”[21]

Another great discouragement to good farming was the multitude and grievous nature of the services demanded from the tenant by the landlord as part payment of rent. So multifarious were these, and so much of the farmer’s time did they occupy, that frequently his own farming affairs got little or none of his personal attention, but had to be entrusted to his wife and family, or to the cottars whom he housed on his farm, and who, for an acre or so of ground and liberty to pasture an ox or two and a few sheep, performed to the farmer services similar to those rendered by the latter to his laird. Often a farmer had only one day in[13] the week to himself, so undefined and so unlimited in extent were these services. Even in some parishes, so late as 1790, the tenant for his laird (or master, as he was often called) had to plough, harrow, and manure his land in spring; cut corn, cut, winnow, lead, and stack his hay in summer, as well as thatch office-houses with his own (the tenant’s) turf and straw; in harvest assist to cut down the master’s crop whenever called upon, to the latter’s neglect of his own, and help to store it in the cornyard; in winter frequently a tenant had to thrash his master’s crop, winter his cattle, and find ropes for the ploughs and for binding the cattle. Moreover, a tenant had to take his master’s grain from him, see that it was properly put through all the processes necessary to convert it into meal, and return it ready for use; place his time and his horses at the laird’s disposal, to buy in fuel for the latter, run a message whenever summoned to do so; in short, the condition of a tenant in the Highlands during the early part of last century, and even down to the end of it in some places, was little better than a slave.[22]

Not that, previous to 1745, this state of matters was universally felt to be a grievance by tenants and farmers in the Highlands, although it had to a large extent been abolished both in England and the lowlands of Scotland. On the contrary, the people themselves appear to have accepted this as the natural and inevitable state of things, the only system consistent with the spirit of clanship with the supremacy of the chiefs. That this was not, however, universally the case, may be seen from the fact that, so early as 1729, Brigadier Macintosh of Borlum (famous in the affair of 1715) published a book, or rather essay, on Ways and Means for Enclosing, Fallowing, Planting, &c., Scotland, which he prefaced by a strongly-worded exhortation to the gentlemen of Scotland to abolish this degrading and suicidal system, which was as much against their own interests as it was oppressive to the tenants. Still, after 1745, there seems to be no doubt that, as a rule, the ordinary Highlander acquiesced contentedly in the established state of things, and generally, so far as his immediate wants were concerned, suffered little or nothing from the system. It was only after the abolition of the jurisdictions that the grievous oppressive hardship, injustice, and obstructiveness of the system became evident. Previous to that, it was, of course, the laird’s or chief’s interest to keep his tenants attached to him and contented, and to see that they did not want; not only so, but previous to that epoch, what was deficient in the supply of food produced by any parish or district, was generally amply compensated for by the levies of cattle and other gear made by the clans upon each other when hostile, or upon their lawful prey, the Lowlanders. But even with all this, it would seem that, not unfrequently, the Highlanders, either universally or in certain districts, were reduced to sore straits, and even sometimes devastated by famine. Their crops and other supplies were so exactly squared to their wants, that, whenever the least failure took place in the expected quantity, scarcity or cruel famine was the result. According to Dr Walker, the inhabitants of some of the Western Isles look for a failure once in every four years. Maston, in his Description of the Western Islands, complained that many died from famine arising from years of scarcity, and about 1742, many over all the Highlands appear to have shared the same fate from the same cause.[23] So that, even under the old system, when the clansmen were faithful and obedient, and the chief was kind and liberal, and many cattle and other productions were imported free of all cost, the majority of the people lived from hand to mouth, and frequently suffered from scarcity and want. Infinitely more so was this the case when it ceased to be the interest of the laird to keep around him numerous tenants.

All these things being taken into consideration, it is not to be wondered at that agriculture in the Highlands was for so long in such a wretched condition.

They set much store, however, by their small black cattle and diminutive sheep, and appear in many districts to have put more dependence upon them for furnishing the means of existence, than upon what the soil could yield.

The live-stock of a Highland farm consisted mainly of horses, sheep, and cattle, all of them[14] of a peculiarly small breed, and capable of yielding but little profit. The number of horses generally kept by a farmer was out of all proportion to the size of his farm and the number of other cattle belonging to him. The proportion of horses to cattle often ranged from one in eight to one in four. For example, Dr Webster mentions a farm in Kintail, upon which there were forty milk cows, which with the young stock made one hundred and twenty head of cattle, about two hundred and fifty goats and ewes, young and old, and ten horses. The reason that so great a proportion of horses was kept, was evidently the great number that were necessary for the operation of ploughing, and the fact that in the greater part of the Highlands carts were unknown, and fuel, grain, manure, and many other things generally carried in machines, had to be conveyed on the backs of the horses, which were of a very small breed, although of wonderful strength considering their rough treatment and scanty fare. They were frequently plump, active, and endurable, though they had neither size nor strength for laborious cultivation. They were generally from nine to twelve hands high, short-necked, chubby-headed, and thick and flat at the withers.[24] “They are so small that a middle-sized man must keep his legs almost in lines parallel to their sides when carried over the stony ways; and it is almost incredible to those who have not seen it how nimbly they skip with a heavy rider among the rocks and large moor-stones, turning zig-zag to such places as are passable.”[25] Walker believes that scarcely any horses could go through so much labour and fatigue upon so little sustenance.[26] They were generally called garrons, and seem in many respects to have resembled the modern Shetland pony. These horses for the greater part of the year were allowed to run wild among the hills, each having a mark indicating its owner; during the severest part of winter they were sometimes brought down and fed as well as their owners could afford. They seem frequently to have been bred for exportation.

Sheep, latterly so intimately associated with the Highlands, bore but a very small proportion to the number of black cattle. Indeed, before sheep-farming began to take place upon so large a scale, and to receive encouragement from the proprietors, the latter were generally in the habit of restricting their tenants to a limited number of sheep, seldom more than one sheep for one cow. This restriction appears to have arisen from the real or supposed interest of the landlord, who looked for the money part of his rent solely from the produce of sale of the tenants’ cattle. Sheep were thus considered not as an article of profit, but merely as part of the means by which the farmer’s family was clothed and fed, and therefore the landlord was anxious that the number should not be more than was absolutely necessary. In a very few years after 1745, a complete revolution took place in this respect.

The old native sheep of the Highlands, now rare, though common in some parts of Shetland, is thus described by Dr Walker. “It is the smallest animal of its kind. It is of a thin lank shape, and has short straight horns. The face and legs are white, the tail extremely short, and the wool of various colours; for, beside black and white, it is sometimes of a bluish grey colour, at other times brown, and sometimes of a deep russet, and frequently an individual is blotched with two or three of these different colours. In some of the low islands, where the pasture answers, the wool of this small sheep is of the finest kind, and the same with that of Shetland. In the mountainous islands, the animal is found of the smallest size, with coarser wool, and with this[15] very remarkable character, that it has often four, and sometimes even six horns.

“Such is the original breed of sheep over all the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It varies much indeed in its properties, according to the climate and pasture of different districts; but, in general, it is so diminutive in size, and of so bad a form, that it is requisite it should be given up, wherever sheep-farming is to be followed to any considerable extent. From this there is only one exception: in some places the wool is of such a superior quality, and so valuable, that the breed perhaps may, on that account, be with advantage retained.”

The small, shaggy black cattle, so well known even at the present day in connection with the Highlands, was the principal live-stock cultivated previous to the alterations which followed 1745. This breed appears to have been excellent in its kind, and the best adapted for the country, and was quite capable of being brought to admirable perfection by proper care, feeding, and management. But little care, however, was bestowed on the rearing of these animals, and in general they were allowed to forage for themselves as best they could. As we have said already, the Highland farmer of those days regarded his cattle as the only money-producing article with which his farm was stocked, all the other products being necessary for the subsistence of himself and his family. It was mainly the cattle that paid the rent. It was therefore very natural that the farmer should endeavour to have as large a stock of this commodity as possible, the result being that, blind to his own real interests, he generally to a large extent overstocked his farm. According to Dr Walker,[27] over all the farms in the north, there was kept above one-third more of cattle than what under the then prevailing system of management could be properly supported. The consequence of course was, that the cattle were generally in a half-fed and lean condition, and, during winter especially, they died in great numbers.

As a rule, the arable land in the Highlands bore, and still bears, but a very small proportion to that devoted to pasture. The arable land is as a rule by the sea-shore, on the side of a river or lake, or in a valley; while the rest of the farm, devoted to pasturage, stretches often for many miles away among the hills. The old mode of valuing or dividing lands in Scotland was into shilling, sixpenny, and threepenny lands of Scotch money. Latterly the English denomination of money was used, and these divisions were termed penny,[28] halfpenny, and farthing lands. A tacksman generally rented a large number of these penny lands, and either farmed them himself, or, as was very often done, sublet them to a number of tenants, none of whom as a rule held more than a penny land, and many, having less than a farthing land, paying from a few shillings to a few pounds of rent. Where a number of tenants thus rented land from a tacksman or proprietor, they generally laboured the arable land in common, and each received a portion of the produce proportioned to his share in the general holding. The pasturage, which formed by far the largest part of the farm, they had in common for the use of their cattle, each tenant being allowed to pasture a certain number of cattle and sheep, soumed or proportioned[29] to the quantity of land he held. “The tenant of a penny land often keeps four or five cows, with what are called their followers, six or eight horses, and some sheep. The followers are the calf, a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a three-year-old, making in all with the cow five head of black cattle. By frequent deaths among them, the number is seldom complete, yet this penny land has or may have upon it about twenty or twenty-five head of black cattle, besides horses and sheep.” The halfpenny and farthing lands seem to have been allowed a larger proportion of live stock than the penny lands, considering their size.[30] It was seldom, however, that a tenant confined himself strictly to the number for which he was soumed, the desire to have as much as possible of the most profitable commodity frequently inducing to overstock, and thus defeat his main purpose.

During summer and autumn, the cattle and other live stock were confined to the hills to prevent them doing injury to the crops, for[16] the lands were totally unprotected by enclosures. After the ground was cleared of the crops, the animals were allowed to roam promiscuously over the whole farm, if not over the farms of a whole district, having little or nothing to eat in the winter and spring but what they could pick up in the fields. It seems to have been a common but very absurd notion in the Highlands that the housing of cattle tended to enfeeble them; thus many cattle died of cold and starvation every winter, those who survived were mere skeletons, and, moreover, the farmer lost all their dung which could have been turned to good use as manure. Many of the cows, from poverty and disease, brought a calf only once in two years, and it was often a month or six weeks before the cow could give sufficient milk to nourish her offspring. Thus many of the Highland cattle were starved to death in their calf’s skin.

A custom prevailed among the Highlanders of old, common to them with other mountainous pastoral countries, e.g., Switzerland. During winter the tenants of a farm with their families, cottars, and servants, lived in the Bailte Geamhre, or winter town, in the midst of the arable land; but in summer, after all the sowing was done, about the middle of June, a general migration was made to the hills along with the cattle, the arable ground with all its appurtenances being allowed to take care of itself. The following passage, quoted from the old Statistical Account of Boleskine and Abertarff, Inverness-shire, will give a notion of the working of this practice:—

“The whole country, with two exceptions, consists of a variety of half davoch-lands, each of which was let or disponed by the Lovat family or their chamberlain to a wadsetter or principal tacksman, and had no concern with the sub-tenantry; each sub-tenant had again a variety of cottars, equally unconnected with the principal tacksman; and each of these had a number of cattle of all denominations, proportional to their respective holdings, with the produce whereof he fed and clad himself and whole family. As there were extensive sheallings or grasings attached to this country, in the neighbourhood of the lordship of Badenoch, the inhabitants in the beginning of summer removed to these sheallings with their whole cattle, man, woman, and child; and it was no uncommon thing to observe an infant in one creel, and a stone on the other side of the horse, to keep up an equilibrium; and when the grass became scarce in the sheallings, they returned again to their principal farms, where they remained while they had sufficiency of pasture, and then, in the same manner, went back to their sheallings, and observed this ambulatory course during the seasons of vegetation; and the only operations attended to during the summer season was their peats or fuel, and repairing their rustic habitations. When their small crops were fit for it, all hands descended from the hills, and continued on the farms till the same was cut and secured in barns, the walls of which were generally made of dry stone, or wreathed with branches or boughs of trees; and it was no singular custom, after harvest, for the whole inhabitants to return to their sheallings, and to abide there till driven from thence by the snow. During the winter and spring, the whole pasturage of the country was a common, and a poind-fold was a thing totally unknown. The cultivation of the country was all performed in spring, the inhabitants having no taste for following green crops or other modern improvements.”

The milk produced by the small Highland cows was, and indeed is, small in quantity, but in quality it resembles what in the Lowlands is known as cream. Of course, the butter and cheese made from such milk is unusually rich.

About the end of August or beginning of September, the cattle had generally been got into good condition by their summer feeding, the beef then, according to Captain Burt, being “extremely sweet and succulent.” It was at this time that the drovers collected their herds, and drove them to the fairs and markets on the borders of the lowlands, and sometimes so far south as the north of England. As from the want of good roads and any means of rapid conveyance, the drovers took a considerable time to reach their destination, and had in the meantime to be fed, a certain sum per head had to be paid to the owners of the territories through which they passed, for the liberty of being allowed grazing for the cattle. Burt gives the following graphic account of a scene[17] he himself witnessed on the march south of one of these herds of cattle. “I have several times seen them driving great numbers of cattle along the sides of the mountains at a great distance, but never, except once, was near them. This was in a time of rain, by a wide river, where there was a boat to ferry over the drovers. The cows were about fifty in number, and took the water like spaniels; and when they were in, their drivers made a hideous cry to urge them forwards: this, they told me, they did to keep the foremost of them from turning about; for, in that case, the rest would do the like, and then they would be in danger, especially the weakest of them, to be driven away and drowned by the torrent. I thought it a very odd sight to see so many noses and eyes just above water, and nothing of them more to be seen, for they had no horns, and upon the land they appeared like so many large Lincolnshire calves.” These drovers do not seem as a rule to have been the owners of cattle, but a class of men whose business it was to collect into one herd or drove the saleable cattle of a number of farmers, take them south to the markets and bring back the money, receiving a small commission for their trouble. As a rule they seem to have been men who, when their integrity was relied on, made it a point of honour to be able to render a satisfactory account of every animal and every farthing; although probably no one would be more ready to join in a creach or cattle-lifting expedition, which in those days was considered as honourable as warfare. The drovers “conducted the cattle by easy stages across the country in trackways, which, whilst they were less circuitous than public roads, were softer for the feet of the animals, and he often rested at night in the open fields with his herds.”[31] A good idea of the character of this class of Highlanders may be obtained from Sir Walter Scott’s Chronicles of the Canongate.[32]

All the other operations connected with or arising out of agriculture were conducted in as rude and ineffective a manner as those above mentioned. The harvest was always an anxious season with the Highlander, as from the wetness of the climate and the early period at which rain set in, their crops might never come to useful perfection, or might be swept away by floods or heavy rains before they could be gathered in.[33] Dr Walker declares that in the Hebrides and Western Highlands the people made up their minds to lose one harvest in four on account of the wetness of the climate. If the crops, however, escaped destruction from the elements, the farmers were glad to get them reaped as quickly as possible. As a rule, the common sickle seems to have been used for cutting down the grain, although it appears to have been not uncommon to tear it from the[18] earth by the roots.[34] The harvest work seems to have been generally performed by women, as is indeed the case still in some parts of Scotland. This, Burt thinks, tended much to retard the harvest, as it sometimes took a woman and a girl a fortnight to do what with the aid of a man might have been done in a couple of days.[35] So short-lived was the supply of grain, and so ill-off were the people sometimes, that it was not uncommon for them to pluck the ears as they ripened, like fruit, and even scorch the grain when green and squeeze it into an unwholesome pulp.[36]

The flail appears to have been the only article used to separate the grain from its husk, and the only winnowing it got was from the draught that passed through the rude barn, which had two doors opposite each other for the purpose.

The quern or hand-mill is the oldest machine used for grinding grain. It consisted of two stones, one above the other, the former turned round by a handle and having an opening in the top to admit the grain. This primitive kind of mill, even for long after 1745, was used all over the Highlands to convert the scanty supply of grain into meal. The quern was generally driven by two women sitting opposite each other, but it was also adapted to a rude water-wheel, the axle of which was fixed in the upper stone. This rude water-mill is still used in Shetland, and is of the very simplest construction.

A common method of preparing the grain for the quern was called graddaning, which consisted in taking a handful of corn in the stalk, setting fire to it, and when it had burnt long enough, knocking the grain from the head by means of a stick; thus both thrashing and drying it at the same time. This of course was a wretched and most extravagant mode of procedure, blackening and otherwise spoiling the grain, and wasting the straw. This process was common in the Western Islands, where also there was a kind of very rude kiln, on the bare ribs of which were put the heads of the grain, which, when dried, were pulled down on the floor and immediately thrashed and winnowed, and stored up hot in plates, ready for the quern. Thus could a man have cut the sheaves, dry and thrash the barley, clean it for the quern, and make his breakfast thereof after it was ground.[37] Another method common in Badenoch and the central Highlands was to switch the corn out of the ear with a stick, separate it from the chaff, and put it in a pot on the fire, while a person kept stirring it[19] with a wooden spatula. “I have seen,” says a gentleman from Laggan, “the corn cut, dried, ground, baked, and eaten in less than two hours.”[38]

There must, however, have been a mill on a somewhat larger scale than either the hand or water-quern, situated in a great many of the Highland districts, as it is well known that in the Highlands as well as the Lowlands, multure and thirlage were common exactions by which the tenants were oppressed. The tenants would be no doubt glad in many cases to escape the heavy mill-dues by grinding their grain for themselves, as well as their rude contrivances would allow them. But the convenience of a well-constructed mill in a district is evident, and of course it is but fair that those who take advantage of the mill should pay for it. Moreover, in early times, when large mills were first introduced into a district by the laird or proprietor, it was natural enough that he should endeavour, either by bargain or force, to get his tenants to take their grain to the district-mill to be ground, as only by this means could the expense of building and keeping up of the mill be defrayed and a miller induced to rent it. As money was scarce in those days, and as rent and other dues were paid in kind, it was natural and fair enough that the landlord should exact a small portion of the grain taken to his mill as due to him for keeping the mill up, and also for the miller to take payment for his trouble and time by keeping to himself a certain proportion of the meal into which he had converted the grain. But like every other custom, this was liable to abuse, and did in the end turn out to be a most grievous exaction and a great hindrance to agricultural improvement. Every farmer was thirled to a particular mill, thirlage being a due payable to the landlord; and the miller, besides having a croft or small farm attached to the mill, was allowed to exact multure, or a proportion of meal, to pay himself for his trouble. Besides these there appears to have been other exactions which could be made by the miller on various pretexts, and the amount of which depended pretty much upon his own caprice. Altogether they not unfrequently amounted to an eighth or a tenth of the meal produced by the grain. Yet for long after 1745, even into the present century, did these exactions continue to be in force in many parts of the country; and an almost universal complaint by the writers of the articles on the Highland parishes in the Old Statistical Account, is the grievous nature of these and other exactions.

Almost the only fuel used by the Highlanders, not only in the early part but during the whole of last century, was peat, still used in many Highland districts, and the only fuel used in a great part of Orkney and Shetland. The cutting and preparing of the fuel, composed mainly of decayed roots of various plants, consumed a serious part of the Highlander’s time, as it was often to be found only at a great distance from his habitation; and he had to cut not only for himself but for his laird, the process itself being long and troublesome, extending from the time the sods were first cut till they were formed in a stack at the side of the farmer’s or cottar’s door, over five or six months; and after all, they frequently turned out but a wretched substitute for either wood or coal; often they were little else than a mass of red earth. It generally took five people to cut peats out of one spot. One cut the peats, which were placed by another on the edge of the trench from which they were cut; a third spread them on the field, while a fourth trimmed them, a fifth resting in the meantime ready to relieve the man that was cutting.

As would naturally be expected, the houses and other buildings of the Highlanders were quite in keeping with their agricultural implements and general mode of life. Even the tacksmen or gentlemen of the clan, the relations of the chief, lived in huts or hovels, that the poorest farmer in most parts of Scotland at the present day, would shudder to house his cattle in. In most cases they appear to have been pretty much the same as those of the small farmers or cottars, only perhaps a little larger. Burt mentions such a house belonging to a gentleman of the clan, which he visited in one of his peregrinations round Inverness. He says[39] it consisted of one long apartment without any partition, “where the family was at one end, and some cattle at the other.” The owner of this rude habitation must have been somewhat shrewd and sensible, as he[20] could not only perceive the disadvantages of this mode of life to which he was doomed, but had insight and candour enough to be able to account for his submission to them. “The truth is,” Captain Burt reports him to have said, “we are insensibly inured to it by degrees; for, when very young, we know no better; being grown up, we are inclined, or persuaded by our near relations, to marry—thence come children, and fondness for them: but above all,” says he, “is the love of our chief, so strongly is it inculcated to us in our infancy; and if it were not for that, I think the Highlands would be much thinner of people than they now are.” How much truth there is in that last statement is clearly evidenced by the history of the country after the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions, which was the means of breaking up the old intimate relation between, and mutual dependence of, chief and people. Burt says elsewhere, that near to Inverness, there were a few gentlemen’s houses built of stone and lime, but that in the inner part of the mountains there were no stone-buildings except the barracks, and that one might have gone a hundred miles without seeing any other dwellings but huts of turf. By the beginning of last century the houses of most of the chiefs, though comparatively small, seem to have been substantially built of stone and lime, although their food and manner of life would seem to have been pretty much the same as those of the tacksmen. The children of chiefs and gentlemen seem to have been allowed to run about in much the same apparently uncared for condition as those of the tenants, it having been a common saying, according to Burt, “that a gentleman’s bairns are to be distinguished by their speaking English.” To illustrate this he tells us that once when dining with a laird not very far from Inverness—possibly Lord Lovat—he met an English soldier at the house who was catching birds for the laird to exercise his hawks on. This soldier told Burt that for three or four days after his first coming, he had observed in the kitchen (“an out-house hovel”) a parcel of dirty children half naked, whom he took to belong to some poor tenant, but at last discovered they were part of the family. “But,” says the fastidious English Captain, “although these were so little regarded, the young laird, about the age of fourteen, was going to the university; and the eldest daughter, about sixteen, sat with us at table, clean and genteelly dressed.”[40]

There is no reason to doubt Burt’s statement when he speaks of what he saw or heard, but it must be remembered he was an Englishman, with all an Englishman’s prejudices in favour of the manners and customs, the good living, and general fastidiousness which characterise his own half of the kingdom, and many of an Englishman’s prejudices against the Scotch generally and the turbulent Highlanders in particular. His letters are, however, of the utmost value in giving us a clear and interesting glimpse into the mode of life of the Highlanders shortly before 1745, and most Scotchmen at least will be able to sift what is fact from what is exaggeration and English colouring. Much, no doubt, of what Burt tells of the Highlanders when he was there is true, but it is true also of people then living in the same station in other parts of Scotland, where however among the better classes, and even among the farmers, even then, there was generally a rough abundance combined with a sort of affectation of rudeness of manner. It is not so very long ago since the son of the laird, and he might have been a duke, and the son of the hind were educated at the same parish school; and even at the present day it is no uncommon sight to see the sons of the highest Scottish nobility sitting side by side on the same college-benches with the sons of day-labourers, ploughmen, mechanics, farmers, and small shop-keepers. Such a sight is rare in the English universities; where there are low-born intruders, it will in most cases be found that they belong to Scotland. We do not make these remarks to prejudice the reader in any way against the statements of Burt or to depreciate the value of his letters; all we wish the reader to understand is that he was an Englishman, rather fond of gossip, and perhaps of adding point to a story at the expense of truth, with all the prejudices and want of enlightenment and cosmopolitanism of even educated Englishmen of 150 years ago. He states facts correctly, but from a peculiar and very un-Scottish point of view. His evidence, even when stripped of its slight colouring, is invaluable, and, even to the[21] modern Highlander, must prove that his ancestors lived in a very miserable way, although they themselves might not have realised its discomfort and wretchedness, but on the contrary, may have been as contented as the most well-to-do English squire or prosperous English farmer.

Even among the higher members of the clans, the tacksmen and most extensive farmers, the fare does not seem to have been by any means abundant, and generally was of the commonest kind. For a few months in the end of the year, when the cattle and sheep were in condition to be killed, animal food appears to have been plentiful enough, as it must also have been after any successful cattle-foray. But for the rest of the year, the food of even the gentlemen in many places must have been such as any modern farmer would have turned up his nose at. In other districts again, where the chief was well-off and liberal, he appears to have been willing enough to share what he had with his relations the higher tenants, who again would do their best to keep from want the under tenants and cottars. Still it will be seen, the living of all was very precarious. “It is impossible for me,” says Burt,[41] “from my own knowledge, to give you an account of the ordinary way of living of these gentlemen; because, when any of us (the English) are invited to their houses there is always an appearance of plenty to excess; and it has been often said they will ransack all their tenants rather than we should think meanly of their housekeeping: but I have heard it from many whom they have employed, and perhaps had little regard to their observations as inferior people, that, although they have been attended at dinner by five or six servants, yet, with all that state, they have often dined upon oat meal varied several ways, pickled herrings, or other such cheap and indifferent diet.” Burt complains much of their want of hospitality; but at this he need not have been surprised. He and every other soldier stationed in the Highlands would be regarded with suspicion and even dislike by the natives, who were by no means likely to give them any encouragement to frequent their houses, and pry into their secrets and mode of life. The Highlanders were well-known for their hospitality, and are so in many places even at the present day, resembling in this respect most people living in a wild and not much frequented country. As to the everyday fare above mentioned, those who partook of it would consider it no hardship, if indeed Burt had not been mistaken or been deceived as to details. Oatmeal, in the form of porridge and brose, is common even at the present day among the lower classes in the country, and even among substantial farmers. As for the other part of it, there must have been plenty of salmon and trout about the rivers and lochs of Inverness-shire, and abundance of grain of various kinds on the hills, so that the gentlemen to whom the inquisitive Captain refers, must have taken to porridge and pickled herring from choice: and it is well known, that in Scotland at least, when a guest is expected, the host endeavours to provide something better than common for his entertainment. Burt also declares that he has often seen a laird’s lady coming to church with a maid behind her carrying her shoes and stockings, which she put on at a little distance from the church. Indeed, from what he says, it would seem to have been quite common for those in the position of ladies and gentlemen to go about in this free and easy fashion. Their motives for doing so were no doubt those of economy and comfort—not because they had neither shoes nor stockings to put on. The practice is quite common at the present day in Scotland, for both respectable men and women when travelling on a dusty road on a broiling summer-day, to do so on their bare feet, as being so much more comfortable and less tiresome than travelling in heavy boots and thick worsted stockings. No one thinks the worse of them for it, nor infers that they must be wretchedly ill off. The practice has evidently at one time been much more common even among the higher classes, but, like many other customs, lingers now only among the common people.

From all we can learn, however, the chiefs and their more immediate dependants and relations appear by no means to have been ill-off, so far as the necessaries of life went, previous to the rebellion of 1745. They certainly had not a superfluity of money, but many of the chiefs were profuse in their hospitality, and had always abundance if not variety to eat and drink.[22] Indeed it is well known, that about 200 years before the rebellion, an enactment had to be made by parliament limiting the amount of wine and brandy to be used by the various chiefs. Claret, in Captain Burt’s time, was as common in and around Inverness as it was in Edinburgh; the English soldiers are said to have found it selling at sixpence a quart, and left it at three or four times that price. In their habits and mode of life, their houses and other surroundings, these Highland gentlemen were no doubt rough and rude and devoid of luxuries, and not over particular as to cleanliness either of body or utensils, but still always dignified and courteous, respectful to their superiors and affable to their inferiors. Highland pride is still proverbial, and while often very amusing and even pitiable, has often been of considerable service to those who possess it, stimulating them to keep up their self-respect and to do their best in whatever situation they may be placed. It was this pride that made the poorest and most tattered of the tacksmen tenants with whom Burt came in contact, conduct himself as if he had been lord of all he surveyed, and look with suspicion and perhaps with contempt upon the unknown English red-coat.

As a kind of set-off to Burt’s disparaging account of the condition of Highland gentlemen, and yet to some extent corroborating it, we quote the following from the Old Statistical Account of the parish of Boleskine and Abertarf in Inverness-shire. The district to which this account refers was at least no worse than most other Highland parishes, and in some respects must have been better than those that were further out of the reach of civilisation.[42] “Till the beginning of this century, the whole heritors and wadsetters in this parish lived in houses composed of cupple trees, and the walls and thatch made up of sod and divot; but in every wadsetter’s house there was a spacious hall, containing a large table, where he and his family and dependants eat their two[23] meals a-day with this single distinction, that he and his family sat at the one end of the table, and his dependants at the other; and it was reckoned no disparagement for the gentlemen to sit with commoners in the inns, such as the country then afforded, where one cap, and afterwards a single glass, went round the whole company. As the inhabitants experienced no want, and generally lived on the produce of their farms, they were hospitable to strangers, providing they did not attempt a settlement among them. But it was thought then disgraceful for any of the younger sons of these wadsetters to follow any other profession than that of arms and agriculture; and it is in the remembrance of many now living, when the meanest tenant would think it disparaging to sit at the same table with a manufacturer.”

The following quotation from the Statistical Account of Rannoch, in Perthshire, will give an idea of another phase of the life of Highland gentlemen in those days, as well as enable the reader to see how it was, considering the general poverty of the country, the low rent, the unproductiveness of the soil, and the low price of cattle, they were still able to keep open table and maintain more retainers than the land could support. “Before the year 1745 Rannoch was in an uncivilized barbarous state, under no check, or restraint of laws. As an evidence of this, one of the principal proprietors never could be compelled to pay his debts. Two messengers were sent from Perth, to give him a charge of horning. He ordered a dozen of his retainers to bind them across two hand-barrows, and carry them, in this state, to the bridge of Cainachan, at nine miles distance. His property in particular was a nest of thieves. They laid the whole country, from Stirling to Coupar of Angus, under contribution, obliging the inhabitants to pay them Black Meal, as it is called, to save their property from being plundered. This was the centre of this kind of traffic. In the months of September and October they gathered to the number of about 300, built temporary huts, drank whisky all the time, settled accounts for stolen cattle, and received balances. Every man then bore arms. It would have required a regiment to have brought a thief from that country.”

As to the education of the Highland gentry, in this respect they seem not to have been so far behind the rest of the country, although latterly they appear to have degenerated in this as in other respects; for, as will be seen in the Chapter on Gaelic Literature, there must have been at one time many learned men in the Highlands, and a taste for literature seems not to have been uncommon. Indeed, from various authorities quoted in the Introduction to Stuart’s Costume of the Clans, it was no uncommon accomplishment in the 16th and 17th centuries for a Highland gentleman to be able to use both Gaelic and Latin, even when he could scarcely manage English. “If, in some instances,” says Mrs Grant,[43] “a chief had some taste for literature, the Latin poets engaged his attention more forcibly than the English, which he possibly spoke and wrote, but inwardly despised, and in fact did not understand well enough to relish its delicacies, or taste its poetry.” “Till of late years,” says the same writer on[24] the same page, “letters were unknown in the Highlands except among the highest rank of gentry and the clergy. The first were but partially enlightened at best. Their minds had been early imbued with the stores of knowledge peculiar to their country, and having no view beyond that of passing their lives among their tenants and dependants, they were not much anxious for any other.... In some instances, the younger brothers of patrician families were sent early out to lowland seminaries, and immediately engaged in some active pursuit for the advancement of their fortune.” In short, so far as education went, the majority of the Highland lairds and tacksmen appear to have been pretty much on the same footing with those in a similar station in other parts of the kingdom.

From what has been said then as to the condition of the chiefs or lairds and their more immediate dependants the tacksmen, previous to 1745, it may be inferred that they were by no means ill-off so far as the necessaries and even a few of the luxuries of life went. Their houses were certainly not such as a gentleman or even a well-to-do farmer would care to inhabit now-a-days, neither in build nor in furnishing; but the chief and principal tenants as a rule had always plenty to eat and drink, lived in a rough way, were hospitable to their friends, and, as far as they were able, kind and lenient to their tenants.

It was the sub-tenants and cottars, the common people or peasantry of the Highlands, whose condition called for the utmost commiseration. It was they who suffered most from the poverty of the land, the leanness of the cattle, the want of trades and manufactures, the want, in short, of any reliable and systematic means of subsistence. If the crops failed, or disease or a severe winter killed the half of the cattle, it was they who suffered, it was they who were the victims of famine, a thing of not rare occurrence in the Highlands.[44] It seems indeed impossible that any one now living could imagine anything more seemingly wretched and miserable than the state of the Highland subtenants and cottars as described in various contemporary accounts. The dingiest hovel in the dirtiest narrowest “close” of Edinburgh may be taken as a fair representative of the house inhabited formerly in the Highlands by the great mass of the farmers and cottars. And yet they do not by any means appear to have regarded themselves as the most miserable of beings, but on the contrary to have been light-hearted and well content if they could manage to get the year over without absolute starvation. No doubt this was because they knew no better state of things, and because love for the chief would make them endure any thing with patience. Generally the houses of the subtenants and cottars who occupied a farm were built in one spot, “all irregularly placed, some one way, some another, and at any distance, look like so many heaps of dirt.” They were generally built in some small valley or strath by the side of a stream or loch, and the collection of houses on one farm was known as the “toon” or town, a term still used in Shetland in the very same sense, and in many parts of Scotland applied to the building occupied by even a single farmer. The cottages were generally built of round stones without any cement, thatched with sods, and sometimes heath; sometimes they were divided into two apartments by a slender partition, but frequently no such division was made. In the larger half resided the family, this serving for kitchen, eating, and sleeping-room to all. In the middle of this room, on the floor, was the peat fire, above which was a gaping hole to allow the escape of the smoke, very little however of this finding its way out, the surplus, after every corner of the room was filled, escaping by the door. The other half of the cottage was devoted to the use of the live-stock when “they did not choose to mess and lodge with the family.”[45] Sometimes these cottages were built of turf or mud, and sometimes of wattle-work like baskets, a common system of fencing even yet in many parts of the Highlands where young wood is abundant. As a rule these huts had to be thatched and otherwise repaired every year to keep them habitable; indeed, in many places it was quite customary every spring to remove the thatch and use it as manure.

[25]

Buchanan, even in the latter half of the 18th century, thus speaks of the dwellings of tenants in the Western Isles; and, in this respect at least, it is not likely they were in worse plight than those who lived in the early part of the century. “The huts of the oppressed tenants are remarkably naked and open; quite destitute of furniture, except logs of timbers collected from the wrecks of the sea, to sit on about the fire, which is placed in the middle of the house, or upon seats made of straw, like foot hassacks, stuffed with straw or stubble. Many of them must rest satisfied with large stones placed around the fire in order. As all persons must have their own blankets to sleep in, they make their beds in whatever corner suits their fancy, and in the mornings they fold them up into a small compass, with all their gowns, cloaks, coats, and petticoats, that are not in use. The cows, goats, and sheep, with the ducks, hens, and dogs, must have the common benefit of the fire, and particularly the young and tenderest are admitted next to it. This filthy sty is never cleaned but once a-year, when they place the dung on the fields as manure for barley crops. Thus, from the necessity of laying litter below these cattle to keep them dry, the dung naturally increases in height almost mid-wall high, so that the men sit low about the fire, while the cattle look down from above upon the company.” We learn from the same authority that in the Hebrides every tenant must have had his own beams and side timbers, the walls generally belonging to the tacksman or laird, and these were six feet thick with a hollow wall of rough stones, packed with moss or earth in the centre. A tenant in removing carried his timbers with him to his new location, and speedily mounted them on the top of four rude walls. But indeed the condition of many of the Western Isles both before and after 1745 and even at the present day, was frequently much more wretched than the Highlands in the mainland generally. Especially was this the case after 1745, although even before that their condition can by no means be taken as typical of the Highlands generally. The following, however, from the Statistical Account of the island of Tiree, might have applied at the time (about 1745), to almost any part of the Highlands. “About 40 years ago, a great part of the lands in this parish lay in their natural[26] uncultivated state, and such of them as were in culture produced poor starved crops. The tenants were in poor circumstances, the rents low, the farm houses contemptible. The communication from place to place was along paths which were to be known by the footsteps of beasts that passed through them. No turnips, potatoes, or cabbages, unless a few of the latter in some gardens; and a great degree of poverty, indolence, and meanness of spirit, among the great body of the people. The appearance of the people, and their mode of thinking and acting, were but mean and indelicate; their peats were brought home in creels; the few things the farmer had to sell were carried to market upon the backs of horses; and their dunghills were hard by their doors.” We have reliable testimony, however, to prove, that even the common Highland tenants on the mainland were but little better off than those in the islands; their houses were almost equally rude and dirty, and their furniture nearly as scanty. The Statistical Account of the parish of Fortingal, in Perthshire, already quoted, gives a miserable account of the country and inhabitants previous to 1745, as does also the letters of Captain Burt in reference to the district which came under his observation; and neither of these districts was likely to be in worse condition than other parts of the Highlands, further removed from intercourse with the Lowlands. “At the above period (1745), the bulk of the tenants in Rannoch had no such thing as beds. They lay on the ground, with a little heather, or fern, under them. One single blanket was all their bed-cloaths, excepting their body-cloaths. Now they have standing-up beds, and abundance of blankets. At that time the houses in Rannoch were huts of, what they called, ‘Stake and Rife.’ One could not enter but on all fours; and after entering, it was impossible to stand upright. Now there are comfortable houses built of stone. Then the people were miserably dirty, and foul-skinned. Now they are as cleanly, and are clothed as well as their circumstances will admit of. The rents of the parish, at that period, were not much above £1500, and the people were starving. Now they pay £4660 per annum, and upwards, and the people have fulness of bread. It is hardly possible to believe, on how little the Highlanders formerly lived. They bled their cows several times in the year, boiled the blood, eat a little of it like bread, and a most lasting meal it was. The present incumbent has known a poor man, who had a small farm hard by him, by this means, with a boll of meal for every mouth in his family, pass the whole year.” This bleeding of the cattle to eke out the small supply of oatmeal is testified to by many other witnesses. Captain Burt refers to it;[46] and Knox, in his View of the British Empire,[47] thus speaks of it:—“In winter, when the grounds are covered with snow, and when the naked wilds afford them neither shelter nor subsistence, the few cows, small, lean, and ready to drop down through want of pasture, are brought into the hut where the family resides, and frequently share with them their little stock of meal, which had been purchased or raised for the family only, while the cattle thus sustained are bled occasionally to afford nourishment for the children, after it has been boiled or made into cakes.”

It must be borne in mind that at that time potatoes were all but unknown in the Highlands, and even in the Lowlands had scarcely got beyond the stage of a garden root. The staple food of the common Highlander was the various preparations of oats and barley; even fish seems to have been a rarity, but why it is difficult to say, as there were plenty both in the sea and in freshwater rivers and lochs. For a month or two after Michaelmas, the luxury of fresh meat seems to have been not uncommon, as at that time the cattle were in condition for being slaughtered; and the more provident or less needy might even go the length of salting a quantity for winter, but even this practice does not seem to have been common except among the tacksmen. “Nothing is more deplorable than the state of this people in time of winter.” Then they were completely confined to their narrow glens, and very frequently night and day to their houses, on account of the severe snow and rain storms. “They have no diversions to amuse them, but sit brooding in the smoke over the fire till[27] their legs and thighs are scorched to an extraordinary degree, and many have sore eyes and some are quite blind. This long continuance in the smoke makes them almost as black as chimney-sweepers; and when the huts are not water-tight, which is often the case, the rain that comes through the roof and mixes with the sootiness of the inside, where all the sticks look like charcoal, falls in drops like ink. But, in this circumstance, the Highlanders are not very solicitous about their outward appearance.”[48] We need not wonder under these circumstances at the prevalence of a loathsome distemper, almost peculiar to the Highlands, and the universality of various kinds of vermin; and indeed, had it not been that the people spent so much of their time in the open air, and that the pure air of the mountains, and been on the whole temperate in drinking and correct in morals, their condition must have been much more miserable than it really was. The misery seems to have been apparent only to onlookers, not to those whose lot it was to endure it. No doubt they were most mercilessly oppressed sometimes, but even this oppression they do not seem to have regarded as any hardship, as calling for complaint on their part:—they were willing to endure anything at the hands of the chief, who, they believed, could do no wrong.

As a rule the chiefs and gentlemen of the clan appear to have treated their inferiors with kindness and consideration, although, at the same time, it was their interest and the practice of most of them to encourage the notions the people entertained of their duty to their chiefs, and to keep them in ignorance of everything that would tend to diminish this profitable belief. No doubt many of the chiefs themselves believed as firmly in the doctrine of clanship as their people; but there is good reason to believe, that many of them encouraged the old system from purely interested and selfish motives. Burt tells us that when a chief wanted to get rid of any troublesome fellow, he compelled him, under threat of perpetual imprisonment or the gallows, to sign a contract for his own banishment, when he was shipped off from the nearest port by the first vessel bound for the West Indies. Referring no doubt to Lord Lovat,[49] he informs us that this versatile and long-headed chief acted on the maxim that to render his clan poor would double the tie of their obedience; and accordingly he made use of all oppressive means to that end. “To prevent any diminution of the number of those who do not offend him, he dissuades from their purpose all such as show an inclination to traffic, or to put their children out to trades, as knowing they would, by such an alienation shake off at least good part of their slavish attachment to him and his family. This he does, when downright authority fails, by telling them how their ancestors chose to live sparingly, and be accounted a martial people, rather than submit themselves to low and mercenary employments like the Lowlanders, whom their forefathers always despised for the want of that warlike temper which they (his vassals) still retained, &c.” This cunning chief was in the habit, according to Dr Chambers’s Domestic Annals, of sending from Inverness and paying for the insertion in the Edinburgh Courant and Mercury of glaring accounts of feasts and rejoicings given by himself or held in his honour.[50] And it is well known that this same lord during his lifetime erected a handsome tombstone for himself inscribed with a glowing account of his heroic exploits, intended solely for the use of his clansmen. By these and similar means would crafty selfish lairds keep their tenants and cottars in ignorance of their rights, and make them resigned to all the oppressive impositions laid upon them. No doubt Lovat’s was an extreme case, and there must have been many gradations of oppressions, and many chiefs who really cared for their people, and did their best to make them happy and comfortable, although, considering their circumstances and general surroundings, it is difficult to see how they could succeed. Yet notwithstanding their miserable and filthy huts, their scanty and poor food, their tattered and insufficient clothes, their lean cattle and meagre crops, their country wet above and below, their apparent want of all amusements and of anything to lighten their cheerless condition, and the oppressive[28] exactions of their chiefs, the Highlanders as a body certainly do not seem to have been an unhappy or discontented people, or to have had any feeling of the discomfort attending their lot.[51] There seems to have been little or no grumbling, and it is a most remarkable fact that suicide was and probably is all but unknown among the Highlanders. Your genuine Highlander was never what could strictly be called a merry man; he never had any of the effervescence of the French Celt, nor of the inimitable never failing light-hearted humour of his Irish brother; but, on the other hand, under the old system, at heart he showed little or no discontent, but on the contrary seems to have been possessed of a self-satisfied, contented cheerfulness, a quiet resignation to fate, and a belief in the power and goodness of his chief, together with an ignorance and contempt for all outside his own narrow sphere, that made him feel as happy and contented as the most comfortable peasant farmer in France. They only became discontented and sorely cut up when their chiefs,—it being no longer the interest of the latter to multiply and support their retainers,—began to look after their own interests solely, and show little or no consideration for those who regarded them with reverence alone, and who thought their chief as much bound to support and care for them and share his land and his bread with them, as a father is to maintain his children. After the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, of course everything was changed; but before that there is every reason to believe that the Highland tenants and cottars were as contented and happy, though by no means so well off, as the majority of those in the same condition throughout the United Kingdom. Indeed the evils which prevailed formerly in the Highlands, like all other evils, look far worse in prospect (in this case retrospect) than they do in reality. Misery in general is least perceived by those who are in its midst, and no doubt many poor and apparently miserable people wonder what charitable associations for their relief make so much fuss about, for they themselves see nothing to relieve. Not that this misery is any the less real and fruitful of evil consequences, and demanding relief; it is simply that those who are in the midst of it can’t, very naturally, see it in its true light. As to the Highlands, the tradition remained for a long time, and we believe does so still in many parts, that under the old regime, chiefs were always kind as fathers, and the people faithful and loving as children; the men were tall and brave, and the women fair and pure; the cattle were fat and plentiful, and the land produced abundance for man and beast; the summers were always warm, and the winters mild; the sun was brighter than ever it has been since, and rain came only when wanted. In short everybody had plenty with a minimum of work and abundance of time for dancing and singing and other amusements; every one was as happy as the day was long. It was almost literally “a land flowing with milk and honey,” as will be seen from the following tradition:[52]—“It is now indeed idle, and appears fabulous, to relate the crops raised here 30 or 40 years ago. The seasons were formerly so warm, that the people behoved to unyoke their ploughs as soon as the sun rose, when sowing barley; and persons yet living, tell, that in traveling through the meadows in the loan of Fearn, in some places drops of honey were seen as the dew in the long grass and plantain, sticking to their shoes as they passed along in a May morning; and also in other parts, their shoes were oiled as with cream, going through such meadows. Honey and bee hives were then very plenty.... Cattle, butter, and cheese, were then very plenty and cheap.” This glowing tradition, we fear, must melt away before the authentic and too sober accounts of contemporaries and eye-witnesses.

As for wages to day-labourers and mechanics, in many cases no money whatever was given; every service being frequently paid for in kind;[29] where money was given, a copper or two a day was deemed an ample remuneration, and was probably sufficient to provide those who earned it with a maintenance satisfactory to themselves, the price of all necessary provisions being excessively low. A pound of beef or mutton, or a fowl could be obtained for about a penny, a cow cost about 30 shillings, and a boll of barley or oatmeal less than 10 shillings; butter was about twopence a pound, a stone (21 lbs.) of cheese was to be got for about two shillings. The following extract, from the Old Statistical Account of Caputh, will give the reader an idea of the rate of wages, where servants were employed, of the price of provisions, and how really little need there was for actual cash, every man being able to do many things for himself which would now require perhaps a dozen workmen to perform. This parish being strictly in the lowlands, but on the border of the Highlands, may be regarded as having been, in many respects, further advanced than the majority of Highland parishes.[53] “The ploughs and carts were usually made by the farmer himself; with little iron about the plough, except the colter and share; none upon the cart or harrows; no shoes upon the horses; no hempen ropes. In short, every instrument of farming was procured at small expense, wood being at a very low price. Salt was a shilling the bushel: little soap was used: they had no candles, instead of which they split the roots of fir trees, which, though brought 50 or 60 miles from the Highlands, were purchased for a trifle. Their clothes were of their own manufacturing. The average price of weaving ten yards of such cloth was a shilling, which was paid partly in meal and partly in money. The tailor worked for a quantity of meal, suppose 3 pecks or a firlot a-year, according to the number of the farmer’s family. In the year 1735, the best ploughman was to be had for L.8 Scots (13s. 4d.) a year, and what was termed a bounty, which consisted of some articles of clothing, and might be estimated at 11s. 6d.; in all L.1, 4s. 10d. sterling. Four years after, his wages rose to L.24 Scots, (L.2) and the bounty. Female servants received L.2 Scots, (3s. 4d.) and a bounty of a similar kind; the whole not exceeding 6s. or 7s. Some years after their wages rose to 15s. Men received for harvest work L.6 Scots, (10s.); women, L.5 Scots, (8s. 4d.). Poultry was sold at 40 pennies Scots, (3⅓d.) Oat-meal, bear and oats, at L.4 or L.5 Scots the boll. A horse that then cost 100 merks Scots, (L.5 : 11 : 1¾) would now cost L.25. An ox that cost L.20 Scots, (L.1 : 13 : 4) would now be worth L.8 or L.9. Beef and mutton were sold, not by weight, but by the piece; about 3s. 4d. for a leg of beef of 3½ stones; and so in proportion. No tea nor sugar was used: little whisky was drunk, and less of other spirits: but they had plenty of good ale; there being usually one malt barn (perhaps two) on each farm.”[54]

When a Highlander was in need of anything which he could not produce or make himself, it was by no means easy for him to obtain it, as by far the greater part of the Highlands was utterly destitute of towns and manufactures; there was little or no commerce of any kind. The only considerable Highland town was Inverness, and, if we can believe Captain Burt, but little business was done there; the only other places, which made any pretensions to be towns were Stornoway and Campbeltown, and these at the time we are writing of, were little better than fishing villages. There were no manufactures strictly speaking, for although the people[30] spun their own wool and made their own cloth, exportation, except perhaps in the case of stockings, seems to have been unknown. In many cases a system of merchandise somewhat similar to the ruinous, oppressive, and obstructive system still common in Shetland, seems to have been in vogue in many parts of the Highlands. By this system, some of the more substantial tacksmen would lay in a stock of goods such as would be likely to be needed by their tenants, but which these could not procure for themselves, such as iron, corn, wine, brandy, sugar, tobacco, &c. These goods the tacksman would supply to his tenants as they needed them, charging nothing for them at the time; but, about the month of May, the tenant would hand over to his tacksman-merchant as many cattle as the latter considered an equivalent for the goods supplied. As the people would seldom have any idea of the real value of the goods, of course there was ample room for a dishonest tacksman to realise an enormous profit, which, we fear, was too often done. “By which traffic the poor wretched people were cheated out of their effects, for one half of their value; and so are kept in eternal poverty.”[55]

As to roads, with the exception of those made for military purposes by General Wade, there seems to have been none whatever, only tracts here and there in the most frequented routes, frequently impassable, and at all time unsafe without a guide. Captain Burt could not move a mile or two out of Inverness without a guide. Bridges seem to have been even rarer than slated houses or carriages.

We have thus endeavoured to give the reader a correct idea of the state of the country and people of the Highlands previous to the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions. Our only aim has been to find out the truth, and we have done so by appealing to the evidence of contemporaries, or of those whose witness is almost as good. We have endeavoured to exhibit both the good and bad side of the picture, and we are only sorry that space will not permit of giving further details. However, from what has been said above, the reader must see how much had to be accomplished by the Highlanders to bring them up to the level of the rest of the country, and will be able to understand the nature of the changes which from time to time took place, the difficulties which had to be overcome, the prejudices which had to be swept away, the hardships which had to be encountered, in assimilating the Highlands with the rest of the country.

Having thus, as far as space permits, shown the condition of the Highlands previous to 1745, we shall now, as briefly as possible, trace the history down to the present day, showing the march of change, and we hope, of progress after the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions. In doing so we must necessarily come across topics concerning which there has been much rancorous and unprofitable controversy; but, as we have done in the case of other disputed matters, we shall do our best to lay facts before the reader, and allow him to form his opinions for himself. The history of the Highlands since 1745 is no doubt in some respects a sad one; much misery and cruel disappointment come under the notice of the investigator. But in many respects, and, we have no doubt in its ultimate results, the history is a bright one, showing as it does the progress of a people from semi-barbarism and slavery and ignorance towards high civilisation, freedom of action with the world before them, and enlightenment and knowledge, and vigorous and successful enterprise. Formerly the Highlanders were a nuisance to their neighbours, and a drag upon the progress of the country; now they are not surpassed by any section of her Majesty’s subjects for character, enterprise, education, loyalty, and self-respect. Considering the condition of the country in 1745, what could we expect to take place on the passing and enforcing of an act such as that which abolished the heritable jurisdictions? Was it not natural, unavoidable that a fermentation should take place, that there should be a war of apparently conflicting interests, that, in short, as in the achievement of all great results by nations and men, there should be much experimenting, much groping to find out the best way, much shuffling about by the people to fit themselves to their new circumstances, before matters could again fall into something like a settled condition, before each man would find his place in the[31] new adjustment of society? Moreover, the Highlanders had to learn an inevitable and a salutary lesson, that in this or in any country under one government, where prosperity and harmony are desired, no particular section of the people is to consider itself as having a right to one particular part of the country. The Highlands for the Highlanders is a barbarous, selfish, obstructive cry in a united and progressive nation. It seems to be the law of nature, as it is the law of progress, that those who can make the best use of any district ought to have it. This has been the case with the world at large, and it has turned out, and is still turning out to be the case with this country. The Highlands now contain a considerable lowland population, and the Highlanders are scattered over the length and breadth of the land, and indeed of the world, honourably fulfilling the noble part they have to play in the world’s history. Ere long there will be neither Highlander nor Lowlander; we shall all be one people, having the best qualities of the blood of the formerly two antagonistic races running in our veins. It is, we have no doubt, with men as with other animals, the best breeds are got by judicious crossings.

Of course it is seldom the case that any great changes take place in the social or political policy of a country without much individual suffering: this was the case at all events in the Highlands. Many of the poor people and tacksmen had to undergo great hardships during the process of this new adjustment of affairs; but that the lairds or chiefs were to blame for this, it would be rash to assert. Some of these were no doubt unnecessarily harsh and unfeeling, but even where they were kindest and most considerate with their tenants, there was much misery prevailing among the latter. In the general scramble for places under the new arrangements, every one, chief, tacksman, tenant, and cottar, had to look out for himself or go to the wall, and it was therefore the most natural thing in the world that the instinct of self-preservation and self-advancement, which is stronger by far than that of universal benevolence, should urge the chiefs to look to their own interests in preference to those of the people, who unfortunately, from the habit of centuries, looked to their superiors alone for that help which they should have been able to give themselves. It appears to us that the results which have followed from the abolition of the jurisdictions and the obliteration of the power of the chiefs, were inevitable; that they might have been brought about in a much gentler way, with much less suffering and bitterness and recrimination, there is no doubt; but while the process was going on, who had time to think of these things, or look at the matter in a calm and rational light? Certainly not those who were the chief actors in bringing about the results. With such stubbornness, bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance on one side, and such power and poverty and necessity for immediate and decided action on the other, and with selfishness on both sides, it was all but inevitable that results should have been as they turned out to be. We shall do what we can to state plainly, briefly, and fairly the real facts of the case.

As we have said already, the Highlanders, chiefs and people, were so confounded, and prostrated by the cruel proceedings and stringent measures which followed Culloden, that it was some time ere they could realise the new position of affairs. Little alteration appears to have, for some years, been effected[32] in the relationship subsisting between people and chiefs, the latter being now simply landlords. The gentlemen and common people of the clans continued to regard their chief in the same light as they did previous to the abolition of the jurisdictions, for they did not consider that their obedience to the head of the clan was in the least dependent upon any legislative enactments. They still considered it their duty to do what they could to support their chief, and were still as ready as ever to make any sacrifice for his sake. At the same time, their notions of the chief’s duty to his people remained unaltered; he, they thought, was bound as much as ever to see to it that they did not want, to share with them the land which belonged to the chief not so much as a proprietor, but as the head and representative of his people. The gentlemen, especially, of the clan, the tacksmen or large farmers, most firmly and sincerely believed that they had as much right to a share of the lands as the chief himself, their relation; he was as much bound to provide for them as a father is bound to make provision for his children. There is no doubt also that many of the chiefs themselves, especially the older ones, held the same belief on this matter as their subordinates, so that in many instances it was not till the old laird had passed away, and a new one had filled his place, that the full effect of the measures already described began to be felt. Of course, many of the chiefs and gentlemen who had taken part in the rebellion had been compelled to leave the country in order to save their lives, and many of the estates had been forfeited to government, which entrusted the management of them to commissioners. It was probably these estates upon which changes began to be first effected.

All the accounts we have of the Highlands from travellers and others down to the end of the 18th century, show the country in a state of commotion and confusion, resulting from the changes consequent on the rebellion, the breaking up of old relationships, and the gradual encroachment of lowland civilisation, lowland modes of life, and lowland methods of agriculture. Up to the end of the century, the positive changes do not appear to have been great or extensive, they seem more to have been of a tentative experimental kind, attempts to find out the most suitable or profitable way of working under the new regime. The result of these experiments of this unsettling of many-century-old customs and ideas, and of the consequent shifting and disturbing of the people, was for a long time much discontent and misery. The progress of change, both with regard to place and in respect of the nature of the innovations, was gradual, beginning, as a rule, with those districts of the Highlands which bordered on the lowlands, and proceeding in a direction somewhat north-west. It was these border districts which got first settled down and assimilated in all respects to the lowlands, and, although in some instances the commotion was felt in the Western Islands and Highlands a few years after 1746, yet these localities, as a rule, were longest in adjusting themselves to the new state of things; indeed, in many western districts, the commotion has not yet subsided, and consequently misery and discontent still frequently prevail. In the same way it was only little by little that changes were effected, first one old custom giving way and then another, their places being filled by others which had prevailed in the lowlands for many years before. Indeed, we think the progress made by the Highlands during the last century has been much greater than that of the lowlands during the same period; for when, in the case of the Highlands, the march of progress commenced, they were in many respects centuries behind the rest of the country, whereas at the present day, with the exception of some outlying districts above mentioned, they are in almost every respect as far forward and as eager to advance farther as the most progressive districts of the south. This is no doubt owing to the extra pressure which was brought to bear upon them in the shape of the measures which followed Culloden, without which they no doubt must have progressed, but at a much slower rate. Perhaps this is the reason why certain outlying districts have lagged behind and are still in a state of unsettlement and discontent, the people, and often the lairds, refusing to acknowledge and give way to the necessity for change, but even yet attempting to live and act in accordance with the old-fashioned clannish mode of managing men and land.

[33]

The unsettled state of the Highlands, and the fact that many Highlanders were leaving the country, attracted attention so early as about 1750. For in 1752, a pamphlet was published by a Mr John Campbell, pretending to give “A Full and Particular Description of the Highlands,” and propounding a scheme which, in the author’s estimation, would “prove effectual in bringing in the most disaffected among them.” There is little said in this book of the actual condition of the Highlanders at that time, only a few details as to their manners, funeral-customs, marriages, &c., and a lamentation, ever since repeated, that so many should be compelled to leave their native land and settle among foreigners. The author does not mention emigration to America; what he chiefly deplores is the fact that so many Highlanders, from the unkindness of their superiors at home, should have taken service in various capacities, civil and military, in other European countries, frequently fighting in foreign armies against their fellow-countrymen. However, from the general tone of his remarks, it may be gathered that he refers mainly to those who were compelled to leave the country on account of the part they took in the late rebellion, and not on account of any alterations which had yet taken place in the internal affairs of the Highlands. Still it is plainly to be inferred that already much misery and discontent prevailed in the country.

Pennant made his two tours in Scotland in the years 1769 and 1772. His travels in the Highlands were confined mainly to the Western Islands and the districts on the west coast, and his account is little else than a tale of famine and wretchedness from beginning to end. What little agriculture there was, was as bad as ever, the country rarely producing enough of grain to supply the inhabitants, and in many places he fears “the isles annually experience a temporary famine.” In the island of Islay a thousand pounds worth of meal was annually imported, and at the time of Pennant’s visit “a famine threatened.” Indeed, the normal state of the Western Highlands at least appears for long to have been one bordering on famine, or what would have been considered so in any less wretched country; and periodically many seem to have died from absolute want of food. Here is a sad picture of misery; Pennant is speaking more particularly of Skye, but his remarks might have been applied to most of the Western Islands. “The poor are left to Providence’s care; they prowl like other animals along the shores to pick up limpets and other shell-fish, the casual repasts of hundreds during part of the year in these unhappy islands. Hundreds thus annually drag through the season a wretched life; and numbers, unknown, in all parts of the Western Highlands, fall beneath the pressure, some of hunger, more of the putrid fever, the epidemic of the coasts, originating from unwholesome food, the dire effects of necessity.”[56] No change for the better to record in agriculture, the farms still overstocked with horses, black cattle and men, the fishing still all but neglected, hovels wretched as ever, and clothes as tattered and scanty—nothing in short to be seen but want and wretchedness, with apparently no inclination in the people to better their condition. Johnson, who visited the Western Islands in the autumn of 1773, has a very similar report to make. Everything seemed to be in a state of transition; old relationships were being broken up, and a spirit of general discontent and feeling of insecurity were abroad. As to the poor condition of the people generally, Johnson essentially confirms the statements of Pennant, although he hints that they did by no means appear to be unhappy, or able to realise their wretched condition.

At the time of Pennant’s and Johnson’s visits to the Highlands, the new leaven of change had fairly begun to work. Already had depopulation and emigration begun, and to some extent sheep-farming on a large scale had been introduced.

Emigration from the Highlands to America seems to have fairly commenced shortly after 1760, as, in a pamphlet[57] published in 1784, it is stated that between the years 1763 and 1775 above 20,000 Highlanders left their homes to settle on the other side of the Atlantic. The first apparently to suffer from the altered state of things in the Highlands, the decreasing value of men and the increasing value of money, were the tacksmen, or large farmers,[34] the relations of the old chiefs, who had held their farms from generation to generation, who regarded themselves as having about as much right to the land as the lairds, and who had hitherto been but little troubled about rent. After a time, when the chiefs, now merely lairds, began to realise their new position and to feel the necessity of making their land yield them as large an income as possible, they very naturally sought to get a higher rent for the farms let to these tacksmen, who, in most cases, were the only immediate holders of land from the proprietor. These tacksmen, in many cases, appear to have resented this procedure as they would a personal injury from their dearest friends. It was not that the addition to the rents was excessive, or that the rents were already as high as the land could bear, for generally the additions seem to have been trifling, and it is well known that the proprietors received nothing like the rents their lands should have yielded under a proper system of management. What seems to have hurt these gentlemen was the idea that the laird, the father of his people, should ever think of anything so mercenary as rent, or should ever by any exercise of his authority indicate that he had it in his power to give or let his farms to the highest bidders. It was bad enough, they thought, that an alien government should interfere with their old ways of doing; but that their chiefs, the heads of their race, for whom they were ready to lay down their lives and the lives of all over whom they had any power, should turn against them, was more than they could bear. The consequence was that many of them, especially in the west, threw up their farms, no doubt thinking that the lairds would at once ask them to remain on the old terms. This, however, was but seldom done, and the consequence was that many of these tacksmen emigrated to America, taking with them, no doubt, servants and sub-tenants, and enticing out more by the glowing accounts they sent home of their good fortune in that far-off land.

In some cases, the farms thus vacated were let to other tacksmen or large tenants, but in most instances, the new system was introduced of letting the land directly to what were formerly the sub-tenants, those who had held the land immediately from the ousted tacksmen. A number of these sub-tenants would take a large farm among them, sub-dividing it as they chose, and each becoming liable for his proportion of the rent. The farms thus let were generally cultivated on the run-rig system already referred to, the pasture being common to all the tenants alike.

That certain advantages followed these changes there is no doubt. Every account we have of the Highlands during the earlier part of the 18th century, agrees in the fact that the Highlands were over-peopled and over-stocked, that it was impossible for the land to yield sufficient to support the men and beasts who lived upon it. Hence, this drafting off of a considerable portion of the population gave that which remained breathing-room; fewer people were left to support, and it is to be supposed that the condition of these would be improved. Moreover, they would probably have their farms at a cheaper rent than under the old system, when the demands of both tacksmen and laird had to be satisfied, the former, of course, having let the land at a much higher rate than that at which they held it from their superior. Now, it was possible enough for the laird to get a higher rent than before, and at the same time the people might have their farms at a lower rent than they had previously given to the tacksmen. There would also be fewer oppressive services demanded of these small tenants than under the old system, for now they had only the laird to satisfy, whereas previously they had both him and the tacksman. There would still, of course, be services required by the laird from these tenants, still would part of the rent be paid in kind, still would they be thirled to particular mills, and have to submit to many similar exactions, of the oppressiveness of which, however, it was long before they became conscious; but, on the whole, the condition of those districts from which emigrations took place must to some extent have been the better for the consequent thinning of the population. Still no alteration appears to have taken place in the mode of farming, the nature of tenures, mode of paying rent, houses, clothes, food of the people. In some parts of the Highlands and islands, no alteration whatever appears[35] to have been made on the old system; the tacksmen were allowed to remain undisturbed, and the people lived and held land as formerly. But even in those districts from which emigrations were largely made, little or no improvement seems to have been the consequence, if we may trust the reports of those who saw how things stood with their own eyes. Pennant, Johnson, Buchanan,[58] Newte,[59] the Old Statistical Account, all agree that but little improvement was noticeable over the greater part of the Highlands from 1745 down till near the end of the 18th century.

One reason why perhaps emigration made so little odds in the way of improvement on the condition of those who remained in the country was, that no check was put upon the over-stocking of the farms with men and animals. In spite of emigration, the population in many districts increased instead of diminished. A common practice among those tenants who conjointly held a large farm was for a father, on the marriage of a son or daughter, to divide his share of the farm with the young couple, who either lived in the old man’s house or built a hut for themselves and tried to make a living out of the share of the pendicle allotted to them. To such an extent was this practice carried, that often a portion of land of a few acres, originally let to and sufficient to maintain one family, might in a few years be divided among six or eight families, and which, even if cultivated in the best manner possible, could not support its occupants for more than two or three months a year. On account of this ruinous practice, Skye, which in 1750 had 15,000 inhabitants, most of whom were in a condition of misery and want, in 1857, in spite of large and repeated emigrations, had a population of about 23,000. This custom was common in many Highland (chiefly western) districts down to only a few years ago, and was fruitful of many pernicious consequences—of frequent famines, the constant impoverishing of the soil, the over-stocking of pasture-land, and continual wretchedness.

In some cases, the farms vacated by the old tacksmen, instead of being let to the old subtenants, were let to whatever stranger would give the highest offer. On farms so let, the condition of the sub-tenants who were continued on the old footing, appears often to have been miserable in the extreme. These newcome tacksmen or middlemen cared nothing either for chiefs or people; they paid their rent and were determined to squeeze from those under them as large a return as possible for their outlay. In confirmation of these statements, and to show the sad condition of many parts of the Highlands in their state of transition, we quote the following passage from Buchanan’s Travels in the Hebrides, referring to about 1780. Even allowing for exaggeration, although there is no reason to believe the writer goes beyond the truth, the picture is almost incredibly deplorable:—

“At present they are obliged to be much more submissive to their tacksmen than ever they were in former times to their lairds or lords. There is a great difference between that mild treatment which is shown to sub-tenants and even scallags, by the old lessees, descended of ancient and honourable families, and the outrageous rapacity of those necessitous strangers who have obtained leases from absent proprietors, who treat the natives as if they were a conquered and inferior race of mortals. In short, they treat them like beasts of burthen; and in all respects like slaves attached to the soil, as they cannot obtain new habitations, on account of the combinations already mentioned, and are entirely at the mercy of the laird or tacksman. Formerly, the personal service of the tenant did not usually exceed eight or ten days in the year. There lives at present at Scalpa, in the Isle of Harris, a tacksman of a large district, who instead of six days’ work paid by the sub-tenants to his predecessor in the lease, has raised the predial service, called in that and in other parts of Scotland, manerial bondage, to fifty-two days in the year at once; besides many other services to be performed at different though regular and stated times: as tanning leather for brogues, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs; for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and[36] several days for going on distant errands; so many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen occurrence whenever they are called on. The constant service of two months at once is performed at the proper season in the making of kelp. On the whole, this gentleman’s subtenants may be computed to devote to his service full three days in the week. But this is not all: they have to pay besides yearly a certain number of cocks, hens, butter, and cheese, called Caorigh-Ferrin, the Wife’s Portion! This, it must be owned, is one of the most severe and rigorous tacksmen descended from the old inhabitants, in all the Western Hebrides: but the situation of his sub-tenants exhibits but too faithful a picture of the sub-tenants of those places in general, and the exact counterpart of such enormous oppression is to be found at Luskintire.”

Another cause of emigration and of depopulation generally, was the introduction of sheep on a large scale, involving the junction into one of several small farms, each of which might before have been occupied by a number of tenants. These subjects of the introduction of sheep, engrossing of farms, and consequent depopulation, have occupied, and still to some extent do occupy, the attention of all those who take an interest in the Highlands, and of social economists in general. Various opinions have been passed on the matters in question, some advocating the retention of the people at all costs, while others declare that the greatest part of the Highlands is fit only for pasture, and it would be sheer madness, and shutting our eyes wilfully to the sad lessons of experience, to stock a land with people that is fit only to sustain sheep, and which at its very best contains mere specks of arable ground, which, even when cultivated to the utmost, can yield but a poor and unprofitable return.

Whatever opinion may be passed upon the general question, there can be no doubt that at first the introduction of sheep was fruitful of misery and discontent to those who had to vacate their old home and leave their native glens to find shelter they knew not well where. Many of those thus displaced by sheep and by one or two lowland shepherds, emigrated like the discontented tacksmen to America, those who remained looking with ill-will and an evil eye on the lowland intruders. Although often the intruder came from the South country, and brought his sheep and his shepherds with him, still this was not always the case; for many of the old tacksmen and even subtenants, after they saw how immensely more profitable the new system was over the old, wisely took a lesson in time, and following the example of the new lowland tenant, took large farms and stocked them with sheep and cattle, and reduced the arable land to a minimum. But, generally speaking, in cases where farms formerly subdivided among a number of tenants were converted into sheep farms, the smaller tenant had to quit and find a means of living elsewhere. The landlords in general attempted to prevent the ousted tenants from leaving the country by setting apart some particular spot either by the sea-shore or on waste land which had never been touched by plough, on which they might build houses and have an acre or two of land for their support. Those who were removed to the coast were encouraged to prosecute the fishing along with their agricultural labours, while those who were settled on waste land were stimulated to bring it into a state of cultivation. It was mainly by a number of such ousted Highlanders that the great and arduous undertaking was accomplished of bringing into a state of cultivation Kincardine Moss, in Perthshire. At the time the task was undertaken, about 1767, it was one of stupendous magnitude; but so successfully was it carried out, that in a few years upwards of 2000 acres of fine clay-soil, which for centuries had been covered to the depth of seven feet with heath and decayed vegetable matter, were bearing luxuriant crops of all kinds. In a similar way, many spots throughout the Highlands, formerly yielding nothing but heath and moss, were, by the exertions of those who were deprived of their farms, brought into a state of cultivation. Those who occupied ground of this kind were known as mailers, and, as a rule, they paid no rent for the first few years, after which they generally paid the proprietor a shilling or two per acre, which was gradually increased as the land improved[37] and its cultivation extended. For the first season or two the proprietor usually either lent or presented them with seed and implements. In the parish of Urray, in the south-east of Ross-shire, about the year 1790, there were 248 families of this kind, most of whom had settled there within the previous forty years. Still the greater number of these, both tacksmen and sub-tenants, who were deprived of their farms, either on account of the raising of the rents or because of their conversion into large sheep-walks, emigrated to America. The old Statistical Account of North Uist says that between the years 1771 and 1775, a space of only four years, several thousands emigrated from the Western Highlands and Islands alone. At first few of the islands appear to have been put under sheep; where any alteration on the state of things took place at all, it was generally in the way of raising rents, thus causing the tacksmen to leave, who were succeeded either by strangers who leased the farms, or by the old sub-tenants, among whom the lands were divided, and who held immediately from the laird. It was long, however, as we have already indicated, before the innovations took thorough hold upon the Hebrides, as even down almost to the present time many of the old proprietors, either from attachment to their people, or from a love of feudal show, struggle to keep up the old system, leaving the tacksmen undisturbed, and doing all they can to maintain and keep on their property a large number of subtenants and cottars. Almost invariably, those proprietors who thus obstinately refused to succumb to the changes going on around them, suffered for their unwise conduct. Many of them impoverished their families for generations, and many of the estates were disposed of for behoof of their creditors, and they themselves had to sink to the level of landless gentlemen, and seek their living in commerce or otherwise.

Gradually, however, most of the proprietors, especially those whose estates were on the mainland Highlands, yielded, in general no doubt willingly, to change, raised their rents, abolished small tenancies, and gave their lands up to the sheep farmers. The temptation was, no doubt, often very great, on account of the large rents offered by the lowland graziers. One proprietor in Argyleshire, who had some miles of pasture let to a number of small tenants for a few shillings yearly, on being offered by a lowlander who saw the place £300 a year, could not resist, but, however ruefully, cleared it of his old tenants, and gave it up to the money-making lowlander. It was this engrossing of farms and the turning of immense tracts of country into sheep-walks, part of which was formerly cultivated and inhabited by hundreds of people, that was the great grievance of the Highlanders during the latter part of last century. Not that it could aggravate their wretchedness to any great extent, for that was bad enough already even before 1745; it seems to have been rather the fact that their formerly much-loved chiefs should treat them worse than they could strangers, prefer a big income to a large band of faithful followers, and eject those who believed themselves to have as great a right to the occupancy of the land as the chiefs themselves. “The great and growing grievance of the Highlands is not the letting of the land to tacksmen, but the making of so many sheep-walks, which sweep off both tacksmen and sub-tenants all in a body.”[60] The tacksmen especially felt naturally cut to the quick by what they deemed the selfish and unjust policy of the chiefs. These tacksmen and their ancestors in most cases had occupied their farms for many generations; their birth was as good and their genealogy as old as those of the chief himself, to whom they were all blood relations, and to whom they were attached with the most unshaken loyalty. True, they had no writing, no document, no paltry “sheep-skin,” as they called it, to show as a proof that they had as much right to their farms as the laird himself. But what of that? Who would ever have thought that their chiefs would turn against them, and try to wrest from them that which had been gifted by a former chief to their fathers, who would have bitten out their tongue before they would ask a bond? The gift, they thought, was none the less real because there was no written proof of it. These parchments were quite a modern innovation, not even then universally[38] acknowledged among the Highlanders, to whom the only satisfactory proof of proprietorship and chiefship was possession from time immemorial. Occasionally a chief, who could produce no title-deed to his estate, was by law deprived of it, and his place filled by another. But the clan would have none of this; they invariably turned their backs upon the intruder, and acknowledged only the ousted chief as their head and the real proprietor, whom they were bound to support, and whom they frequently did support, by paying to him the rents which were legally due to the other. In some cases, it would seem,[61] the original granters of the land to the tacksmen conveyed it to them by a regular title-deed, by which, of course, they became proprietors. And we think there can be no doubt, that originally when a chief bestowed a share of his property upon his son or other near relation, he intended that the latter should keep it for himself and his descendants; he was not regarded merely as a tenant who had to pay a yearly rent, but as a sub-proprietor, who, from a sense of love and duty would contribute what he could to support the chief of his race and clan. In many cases, we say, this was the light in which chief, tacksmen, and people regarded these farms tenanted by the gentlemen of the clan; and it only seems to have been after the value of men decreased and of property increased, that most of the lairds began to look at the matter in a more commercial, legal, and less romantic light. According to Newte—and what he says is supported to a considerable extent by facts—“in the southern parts of Argyleshire, in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, Moray, and Ross, grants of land were made in writing, while in Inverness-shire, Sutherlandshire, the northern parts of Argyleshire, and the Western Islands, the old mode was continued of verbal or emblematical transference. In Ross-shire, particularly, it would appear that letters and the use of letters in civil affairs had been early introduced and widely spread; for property is more equally divided in that country than in most other counties in Scotland, and than in any other of the Highlands. Agreeably to these observations, it is from the great estates on the northern and western sides of Scotland that the descendants of the original tacksmen of the land, with their families, have been obliged to migrate by the positive and unrelenting demands of rent beyond what it was in their power to give, and, indeed, in violation of those conditions that were understood and observed between the original granter and original tenant and their posterity for centuries.”[62] These statements are exceedingly plausible, and we believe to a certain extent true; but it is unnecessary here to enter upon the discussion of the question. What we have to do with is the unquestionable fact that the Highland proprietors did in many instances take advantage of the legal power, which they undoubtedly possessed, to do with their land as they pleased, and, regardless of the feelings of the old tacksmen and sub-tenants, let it to the highest bidders. The consequence was that these tacksmen, who to a certain extent were demoralised and knew not how to use the land to best advantage, had to leave the homes of their ancestors; and many of the small farmers and cottars, in the face of the new system of large sheep-farms, becoming cumberers of the ground, were swept from the face of the country, and either located in little lots by the sea-side, where they became useful as fishers and kelp-burners, or settled on some waste moor, which they occupied themselves in reclaiming from its native barrenness, or, as was frequently the case, followed the tacksmen, and sought a home in the far west, where many of them became lairds in their own right.

These then are the great results of the measures which followed the rebellion of 1745–6, and the consequent breaking up of the old clan system—extensive sheep-farming, accompanied with a great rise in the rent of land, depopulation, and emigration. As to the legality of the proceedings of the proprietors, there can be no doubt; as little doubt is there that the immediate consequence to many of the Highlanders was great suffering, accompanied by much bitterness and discontent. As to the morality or justice of the laird’s conduct, various opinions have been, and no doubt for[39] long will be, expressed. One side maintains that it was the duty of these chiefs upon whom the people depended, whom they revered, and for whom they were ready to die, at all events, to see to it that their people were provided for, and that ultimately it would have been for the interest of the proprietors and the country at large to do everything to prevent from emigrating in such numbers as they did, such a splendid race of men, for whose services to the country no money equivalent could be found. It is maintained that the system of large farms is pernicious in every respect, and that only by the system of moderate sized farms can a country be made the best of, an adequate rural population be kept up, and self-respect and a high moral tone be nourished and spread throughout the land. Those who adopt this side of the question pooh-pooh the common maxims of political economy, and declare that laws whose immediate consequences are wide-spread suffering, and the unpeopling of a country, cannot be founded on any valid basis; that proprietors hold their lands only in trust, and it is therefore their duty not merely to consider their own narrow interests, but also to consult the welfare and consult the feelings of their people. In short, it is maintained by this party, that the Highland lairds, in acting as they did, showed themselves to be unjust, selfish, heartless, unpatriotic, mercenary, and blind to their own true interests and those of their country.

On the other hand, it is maintained that what occurred in the Highlands subsequent to 1745 was a step in the right direction, and that it was only a pity that the innovations had not been more thorough and systematic. For long previous to 1745, it is asserted the Highlands were much over-peopled, and the people, as a consequence of the vicious system under which they had lived for generations, were incurably lazy, and could be roused from this sad lethargy only by some such radical measures as were adopted. The whole system of Highland life and manners and habits were almost barbarous, the method of farming was thoroughly pernicious and unproductive, the stock of cattle worthless and excessive, and so badly managed that about one half perished every winter. On account of the excessive population, the land was by far too much subdivided, the majority of so-called farmers occupying farms of so small a size that they could furnish the necessaries of life for no more than six months, and consequently the people were continually on the verge of starvation. The Highlands, it is said, are almost totally unsuited for agriculture, and fit only for pasturage, and that consequently this subdivision into small farms could be nothing else than pernicious; that the only method by which the land could be made the most of was that of large sheep-farms, and that the proprietors, while no doubt studying their own interests, adopted the wisest policy when they let out their land on this system. In short, it is maintained by the advocates of innovations, the whole body of the Highlanders were thoroughly demoralised, their number was greater by far than the land could support even if managed to the best advantage, and was increasing every year; the whole system of renting land, of tenure, and of farming was ruinous to the people and the land, and that nothing but a radical change could cure the many evils with which the country was afflicted.

There has been much rather bitter discussion between the advocates of the two sides of the Highland question; often more recrimination and calling of names than telling argument. This question, we think, is no exception to the general rule which governs most disputed matters; there is truth, we believe, on both sides. We fear the facts already adduced in this part of the book comprise many of the assertions made by the advocates of change. As to the wretched social condition of the Highlanders, for long before and after 1745, there can be no doubt, if we can place any reliance on the evidence of contemporaries, and we have already said enough to show that the common system of farming, if worthy of the name, was ruinous and inefficient; while their small lean cattle were so badly managed that about one half died yearly. That the population was very much greater than the land, even if used to the best advantage, could support, is testified to by every candid writer from the Gartmore paper[63] down almost to the[40] present day. The author of the Gartmore paper, written about 1747, estimated that the population of the Highlands at that time amounted to about 230,000; “but,” he says, “according to the present economy of the Highlands, there is not business for more than one half of that number of people.... The other half, then, must be idle and beggars while in the country.” “The produce of the crops,” says Pennant,[64] “very rarely are in any degree proportioned to the wants of the inhabitants; golden seasons have happened, when they have had superfluity, but the years of famine are as ten to one.” It is probable, from a comparison with the statistics of Dr Webster, taken in 1755,[65] that the estimate of the author of the Gartmore paper was not far from being correct; indeed, if anything, it must have been under the mark, as in 1755 the population of the Highlands and Islands amounted, according to Webster, to about 290,000, which, in 1795, had increased to 325,566,[66] in spite of the many thousands who had emigrated. This great increase in the population during the latter part of the 18th century is amply confirmed by the writers of the Statistical Accounts of the various Highland parishes, and none had better opportunities of knowing the real state of matters than they. The great majority of these writers likewise assert that the population was far too large in proportion to the produce of the land and means of employment, and that some such outlet as emigration was absolutely necessary. Those who condemn emigration and depopulation, generally do so for some merely sentimental reason, and seldom seek to show that it is quite possible to maintain the large population without disastrous results. It is a pity, they say, that the Highlander, possessing so many noble qualities, and so strongly attached to his native soil, should be compelled to seek a home in a foreign land, and bestow upon it the services which might be profitably employed by his mother country. By permitting, they say, these loyal and brave Highlanders to leave the country, Britain is throwing away some of the finest recruiting material in the world, for—and it is quite true—the Highland soldier has not his match for bravery, moral character, and patriotism.

These statements are no doubt true; it certainly is a pity that an inoffensive, brave, and moral people should be compelled to leave their native land, and devote to the cultivation of a foreign soil those energies which might be used to the benefit of their own country. It would also be very bad policy in government to lose the chance of filling up the ranks of the army with some of the best men obtainable anywhere. But then, if there was nothing for the people to do in the country, if their condition was one of chronic famine, as was undoubtedly the case with the Highlanders, if the whole productions of the country were insufficient even to keep them in bare life, if every few years the country had to contribute thousands of pounds to keep these people alive, if, in short, the majority of them were little else than miserable beggars, an encumbrance on the progress of their country, a continual source of sadness to all feeling men, gradually becoming more and more demoralised by the increasingly wretched condition in which they lived, and by the ever-recurring necessity of bestowing upon them charity to keep them alive,—if such were the case, the advocates for a thinning of the population urge, whom would it profit to keep such a rabble of half-starved creatures huddled together in a corner of the country, reaping for themselves nothing but misery and degradation, and worse than useless to everybody else. Moreover, as to the military argument, it is an almost universal statement made by the writers of the Old Statistical Account (about 1790), that, at that time, in almost all the Highland parishes it was scarcely possible to get a single recruit, so great was the aversion of the people both to a naval and military life. Besides, though the whole of the surplus population had been willing to volunteer into the army, of what value would it have been if the country had no use for them; and surely it would be very questionable policy to keep thousands of men in idleness on the bare chance that they might be required as soldiers.

The sentimental and military arguments are no doubt very touching and very convincing to[41] men in whom impulse and imagination predominate over reason and clearness of vision, and are fitting subjects for a certain kind of poetry, which has made much of them; but they cannot for one moment stand the test of facts, and become selfishly cruel, impracticable, and disastrous, when contrasted with the teachings of genuine humanity and the best interests of the Highlanders. On this subject, the writer of the Old Statistical Account of the parish of Lochgoilhead makes some remarks so sensible, and so much to the point, that we are tempted to quote them here. “It is frequent,” he says, “with people who wish well to their country, to inveigh against the practice of turning several small farms into one extensive grazing, and dispossessing the former tenants. If the strength of a country depends upon the number of its inhabitants, it appears a pernicious measure to drive away the people by depriving them of their possessions. This complaint is very just with regard to some places in Scotland; for it must be greatly against the interest of the nation to turn rich arable land, which is capable at the same time of supporting a number of people, and of producing much grain, into pasture ground. But the complaint does not seem to apply to this country. The strength of a nation cannot surely consist in the number of idle people which it maintains; that the inhabitants of this part of the country were formerly sunk in indolence, and contributed very little to the wealth, or to the support of the state, cannot be denied. The produce of this parish, since sheep have become the principal commodity, is at least double the intrinsic value of what it was formerly, so that half the number of hands produce more than double the quantity of provisions, for the support of our large towns, and the supply of our tradesmen and manufacturers; and the system by which land returns the most valuable produce, and in the greatest abundance, seems to be the most beneficial for the country at large. Still, however, if the people who are dispossessed of this land emigrated into other nations, the present system might be justly condemned, as diminishing the strength of the country. But this is far from being the case; of the great number of people who have been deprived of their farms in this parish, for thirty years past, few or none have settled out of the kingdom; they generally went to sea, or to the populous towns upon the Clyde. In these places, they have an easy opportunity, which they generally embrace, of training up their children to useful and profitable employments, and of rendering them valuable members of society. So that the former inhabitants of this country have been taken from a situation in which they contributed nothing to the wealth, and very little to the support of the state, to a situation in which their labour is of the greatest public utility. Nor has the present system contributed to make the condition of the inhabitants of the country worse than it was before; on the contrary, the change is greatly in their favour. The partiality in favour of former times, and the attachment to the place of their nativity, which is natural to old people, together with the indolence in which they indulged themselves in this country, mislead them in drawing a comparison between their past and their present situations. But indolence was almost the only comfort which they enjoyed. There was scarcely any variety of wretchedness with which they were not obliged to struggle, or rather to which they were not obliged to submit. They often felt what it was to want food; the scanty crops which they raised were consumed by their cattle in winter and spring; for a great part of the year they lived wholly on milk, and even that in the end of spring and beginning of winter was very scarce. To such extremity were they frequently reduced, that they were obliged to bleed their cattle in order to subsist for some time upon the blood; and even the inhabitants of the glens and valleys repaired in crowds to the shore, at the distance of three or four miles, to pick up the scanty provision which the shell-fish afforded them. They were miserably ill clothed, and the huts in which they lived were dirty and mean beyond expression. How different from their present situation? They now enjoy the necessaries, and many of the comforts of life in abundance: even those who are supported by the charity of the parish feel no real want. Much of the wretchedness which formerly prevailed in this and in other parishes in the Highlands, was owing to the indolence of the[42] people, and to their want of management; but a country which is neither adapted for agriculture nor for rearing black cattle, can never maintain any great number of people comfortably.”

No doubt the very men who deplore what they call the depopulation of the Highlands would advocate the advisability of emigration in the case of the unemployed surplus population of any other part of the country. If their arguments against the emigration of the Highlanders to another country, and in favour of their being retained in their own district were logically carried out, to what absurd and disastrous consequences would they lead? Supposing that all the people who have emigrated from this country to America, Australia, and elsewhere, had been kept at home, where would this country have been? There would scarcely have been standing room for the population, the great majority of whom must have been in a state of indescribable misery. The country would have been ruined. The same arguments might also be used against the emigration of the natives of other countries, many of whom are no doubt as attached to their native soil as the Highlanders; and if the principle had been rigidly carried out, what direful consequences to the world at large would have been the result. In fact, there would have been little else but universal barbarism. It seems to be admitted by all thoughtful men that the best outlet for a redundant or idle population is emigration; it is beneficial to the mother country, beneficial to the emigrants, and beneficial to the new country in which they take up their abode. Only thus can the earth be subdued, and made the most of.

Why then should there be any lamentation over the Highlanders leaving their country more than over any other class of respectable willing men? Anything more hopelessly wretched than their position at various times from 1745 down to the present day it would be impossible to imagine. If one, however, trusted the descriptions of some poets and sentimentalists, a happier or more comfortably situated people than the Highlanders at one time were could not be found on the face of the globe. They were always clean, and tidy, and well dressed, lived in model cottages, surrounded by model gardens, had always abundance of plain wholesome food and drink, were exuberant in their hospitality, doated on their chiefs, carefully cultivated their lands and tended their flocks, but had plenty of time to dance and sing, and narrate round the cheerful winter hearth the legends of their people, and above all, feared God and honoured the king. Now, these statements have no foundation in fact, at least within the historical period; but generally the writers on this side of the question refer generally to the period previous to 1745, and often, in some cases, to a time subsequent to that. Every writer who pretends to record facts, the result of observation, and not to draw imaginary Arcadian pictures, concurs in describing the country as being sunk in the lowest state of wretchedness. The description we have already given of the condition of the people before 1745, applies with intensified force to the greater part of the Highlands for long after that year. Instead of improving, and often there were favourable opportunities for improvement, the people seemed to be retrograding, getting more and more demoralised, more and more miserable, more and more numerous, and more and more famine-struck. In proof of what we say, we refer to all the writers on and travellers in the Highlands of last century, to Pennant, Boswell, Johnson, Newte, Buchanan,[67] and especially the Old Statistical Account. To let the reader judge for himself as to the value of the statements we make as to the condition of the Highlands during the latter part of last century, we quote below a longish extract from a pamphlet written by one who had visited and enquired into the state of the Highlands about the year 1780.[68] It is written[43] by one who deplores the extensive emigration which was going on, but yet who, we are inclined to believe, has slightly exaggerated the misery of the Highlanders in order to make the sin of absentee chiefs, who engross farms, and raise enormously the rents, as great as possible. Still, when compared with the statements made by other contemporary authorities, the exaggeration seems by no means great, and making allowances, the picture presented is a mocking, weird contrast to the fancies of the sentimentalist. That such a woful state of things required radical and uncompromising measures of relief, no one can possibly deny. Yet this same writer laments most pitiably that 20,000 of these wretched people had to leave their wretched homes and famine-struck condition, and the oppression of their lairds, for lands and houses of their own in a fairer and more fertile land, where independence and affluence were at the command of all who cared to bend their backs to labour. What good purpose, divine or human, could be served by keeping an increasing population in a land that cannot produce enough to keep the life in one-half of its people? Nothing but misery, and degradation, and oppression here; happiness, advancement, riches, and freedom on the other side of the water. Is there more than one conclusion?

In spite of all the emigration that has taken place from this country, no one has, we daresay, any real dread of depopulation; the population is increasing over all the land every year, not excepting the Highlands. As for soldiers, no[44] doubt plenty will be forthcoming when wanted; if not so, it is not for want of men well enough fitted for the occupation. As every one knows, there is seldom a want of willing workers in this country, but far more frequently a great want of work to do.

That by far the larger part of the surface of the Highland districts is suited only for the pasturage of sheep, is the testimony of every one who knows anything about the subject. Those who speak otherwise must either ignore facts or speak of what they do not know, urged merely by impulse and sentimentalism. True, there are many spots consisting of excellent soil suited for arable purposes, but generally where such do occur the climate is so unfavourable to successful agriculture that no expenditure will ever produce an adequate return.[69] Other patches again, not, however, of frequent occurrence, have everything in their favour, and are as capable of producing luxuriant crops as the most fertile district of the lowlands. But nearly all these arable spots, say those who advocate the laying of the whole country under sheep, it is absolutely necessary to retain as winter pasturage, if sheep-farming is to be carried on successfully. The mountainous districts, comprising nearly the whole of the Highlands, are admirably suited for sheep pasturage when the weather is mild; but in winter are so bleak and cold, and exposed to destructive storms, that unless the sheep during winter can be brought down to the low and sheltered grounds, the loss of a great part of the flocks would inevitably be the consequence. Hence, it is maintained, unless nearly the whole of the country is allowed to lie waste, or unless a sheep farmer makes up his mind to carry on an unprofitable business, the arable spots in the valleys and elsewhere must, as a rule, be retained as pasture. And this seems to be the case in most districts. It must not be imagined, however, that the surface of the Highlands is one universal expanse of green and brown fragrant heather; every tourist knows that in almost every glen, by the side of many lochs, streams, and bogs, patches of cultivated land are to be met with, bearing good crops of oats, barley, potatoes, and turnips. These productions chiefly belong to the large sheep farmers, and are intended for the use of themselves, their servants, and cattle, and but seldom have they any to dispose of. Others of these arable spots belong to small farmers, the race of whom is happily not yet extinct. But, on the whole, it would seem that so far as agricultural products are concerned, the Highlands seldom, if ever, produce sufficient to supply the wants of the inhabitants, importation being thus necessary.

A curious and interesting point connected with the introduction of sheep into the Highlands may be mentioned here:—By means of this innovation, the whole aspect of the country seems to have been changed. Previous to that, the whole country seems to have borne a universal aspect of blackness, rarely relieved by a spot of green, arising from the fact that almost the only product of the mountains was dark-brown heath. Captain Burt and others who visited the Highlands previous to the extensive introduction of sheep, indulge in none of the raptures over Highland scenery, that the most common-place and prosy tourist thinks it his duty to get into at the present day. They speak of the country almost with horror, as a black howling wilderness, full of bogs and big boulders, and almost unfit for human habitation. They could see no beauty in the country that it should be desired; it was a place to get out of as soon as possible. How far these sentiments may have been justified by facts it is impossible now to say; but it is the almost universal assertion by the writers in the Old Statistical Account, that the appearance of the Highland hills was rapidly changing, and that instead of the universal dark-brown heath which previously covered them, there was springing up the light-brown heath and short green bent or strong grass so well known to all modern tourists. If the Highland hills formerly bore anything like the aspect presented at the present day by the dreary black wet hills of Shetland, the remarks of Burt and others need not cause astonishment. But as the great outlines and peculiar features of the country must have been the same then as now, we suspect that these early English adventurers into the Highlands[45] wanted training in scenery or were determined to see nothing to admire. But, indeed, admiration of and hunting for fine scenery seem to be quite a modern fashion, and were quite unknown to our ancestors in the beginning of last century, or were confined to a few crazy poets. Men require to be trained to use their eyes in this as in many other respects. There can be no doubt that the first impulse to the admiration of the Highlands and Highlanders was given by the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott; it was he who set the sheepish stream of tourists agoing, and indirectly to him many a Highland hotel-keeper owes a handsome fortune. The fact at all events seems unquestionable, that the extensive introduction of sheep has to a large extent changed the external aspect of the Highlands.

It must not be imagined that, previous to the changes we are speaking of, there were no sheep in the Highlands; there were always a few of a very small native breed, but the staple stock of the Highland farmer was, as we previously mentioned, black cattle. The sheep, however, have also to a very large extent superseded them, a fact which is deplored by those who lament the many innovations which have been introduced since 1745. But by all accounts much of the country is unsuited to the pasturage of black cattle, and as cattle and sheep do not thrive well together, the only alternative seems to be the introduction of sheep alone into those districts unsuited for cattle. “More than one-third of the country consists of mountains and declivities too steep and abrupt for black cattle, and the grass they produce too short and fine to afford them a tolerable pasture except in the height of summer. The greater part of the pasture is therefore lost, though it might all be beneficially consumed with sheep. A flock of sheep will thrive where cows and oxen would starve, and will go at all seasons of the year to such heights as are inaccessible to black cattle.... In a situation of this kind the very wool of a flock would amount to more than the whole profit to be obtained by black cattle.”[70] The only conclusion to be drawn from these statements is, that the wisest thing that could be done was to introduce sheep into those districts which were being wasted on black cattle.

Along with the introduction of sheep, indeed, to a great extent caused by that, was the enlargement of farms, which with the raising of rents led to the depopulation of many districts. The old system of letting farms in the Highlands has already been sufficiently explained, and the introduction of sheep seems to have rendered it necessary that this old system should be abolished, and that a large extent of country should be taken by one man. The question between large and small farms does not appear to us to be the same as between the old and new system of letting land. Under the old system, a farm of no great extent was often let to a large number of tenants, who frequently subdivided it still more, by either sub-letting part, or by sharing their respective portions with their newly-married sons and daughters. The testimony as to the perniciousness of this old system is universal; it was, and until recently continued to be, the chief source of all the misfortunes that have afflicted the Highlands. As to whether, however, this old system should have been entirely abolished, or whether some modification of it might not have been retained, has been a matter of dispute. Some maintain that the Highlands can be profitably managed only on the large farm system, and only thus can sheep be made to pay, while others assert that, though many districts are suitable for large farms, still there are others that might with great profit be divided into small holdings. By this latter method, it is said, a fair proportion of all classes would be maintained in the Highlands, noblemen, gentlemen, farmers large and small, cottars, labourers, and that only when there is such a mixture can a country be said to be prosperous. Moreover, it is held a proprietor, who in this country should be considered as a steward rather than the absolute owner of his estate, has no right to exclude the small farmer from having a chance of making a respectable living by the occupation for which he is suited; that he stands in the way of his own and his country’s interests when he discourages the[46] small farmer, for only by a mixture of the two systems can the land be made the most of; and that, to say the least of it, it is selfish and wrong in proprietors not to consider the case of the poor as well as the rich.

On the question as to the expediency of large or small farms we cannot pretend to be able to judge; we know too little of its real merits. However, it appears to us that there is no reason why both systems cannot be very well combined in many parts of the Highlands, although there are many districts, we believe, totally unsuited for anything else but sheep-farms of the largest dimensions. Were the small farms made large enough to sufficiently support the farmer and his family, and remunerate him for his outlay and labour, were precautions taken against the subdivision of these moderate-sized holdings, and were leases of sufficient duration granted to all, it seems to us that there is nothing in the nature of things why there should not be farms of a small size in the Highlands as well as farms covering many miles in extent. We certainly do think it too bad to cut out the small respectable class of farmers entirely, and put the land of the country in the hands of a sort of farmer aristocracy; it is unfair and prejudicial to the best interests of the country. But the small farmers must first show that they deserve to be considered; certainly the small farmers under the old Highland system, which we believe is not yet quite extinct in some remote districts, deserved only to have the land they so mismanaged taken from them and given to others who could make a better use of it. Some consideration, we think, ought to be had towards the natives of the country, those whose ancestors have occupied the land for centuries, and if they are able to pay as good a rent as others, and show themselves willing to manage the land as well, in all humanity they ought to have the preference. But these are matters which we think ought to be left to adjust themselves according to the inevitable laws which regulate all human affairs. Interference in any way between landlord and tenant by way of denunciation, vituperation, or legislation, seems to us only to make matters worse. It seems to us that the simplest commercial maxims—the laws of profit and loss, if they have fair play—will ultimately lead to the best system of managing the land of the Highlands and of every other district, both in the interests of the proprietors and those of the tenants. If proprietors find it most profitable to let their lands in large lots, either for agriculture, for cattle, for sheep, or for deer, there is no reason why they should not do so, and there is no doubt that in the end what is most advantageous to the proprietor is so to the tenant, and vice versa, as also to the country at large. If, on the other hand, it be found that letting land in small lots is more profitable than the other practice, few proprietors, we daresay, would hesitate to cut up their land into suitable lots. But all this, we think, must be left to experiment, and it cannot be said that the Highlands as a whole have as yet got beyond the stage of probation; changes from small to large and from large to small farms—mostly the former—and changes from sheep to deer and deer to sheep are still going on; but, no doubt, ere long both proprietors and tenants of land will find out what their real common interest is, and adjust themselves in their proper relations to each other. It is best to leave them alone and allow them to fight the battle out between themselves. Interference was attempted at the end of last century to stop emigration and to settle the ousted tenants on small lots by the sea-shore, where both fishing and farming could be carried on, but the interference did no good. Emigration was not diminished, although curiously it was the proprietors themselves, who subsequently did their best to promote emigration, that at this time attempted to stop it. The people seem generally until lately to have been quite willing and even anxious to emigrate at least those of most intelligence; not that they cared not for their country, but that, however much they loved it, there was no good in staying at home when nothing but misery and starvation stared them in the face. We say that the landlords and others, including the Highland Society, interfered, and endeavoured to get government to interfere, to prevent the great emigrations which were going on, and which they feared would ere long leave the country utterly peopleless. But the interference was of no use, and was quite[47] uncalled for. Emigration still went on, and will go on so long as there is a necessity for it; and the country will always have plenty of inhabitants so long as it can afford a decent subsistence. When men know better the laws of sociology—the laws which govern human affairs—interference of this kind will be simply laughed at.

The scheme of the landlords—who, while they raised the rents and extended their farms, were still loath to lose their numerous tenants and retainers—of settling those on the coast where they could combine farming and fishing, failed also, for the simple reason that, as it has been fairly proved, one man cannot unite successfully the two occupations in his own person. In this sense “no man can serve two masters.” “No two occupations can be more incompatible than farming and fishing, as the seasons which require undivided exertion in fishing are precisely those in which the greatest attention should be devoted to agriculture. Grazing, which is less incompatible with fishing than agriculture, is even found to distract the attention and prevent success in either occupation. This is demonstrated by the very different success of those who unite both occupations from those who devote themselves exclusively to fishing. Indeed, the industrious fisher finds the whole season barely sufficient for the labours of his proper occupation.”[71] It seems clear, then, that the Highland proprietors should be left alone and allowed to dispose of their land as they think fit, just as the owner of any other commercial commodity takes it to whatever market he chooses, and no harm accrues from it. If the Highland peasantry and farmers see it to be to their advantage to leave their native land and settle in a far-off soil where they will have some good return for hard work, we do not see that there is any call for interference or lamentation. Give all help and counsel to those who require and deserve them by all means either to stay at home or go abroad; but to those who are able to think and free to act for themselves nothing is necessary but to be left alone.

As we have already said, another cause of emigration besides sheep-farming, though to some extent associated with it, was the raising of rents. Naturally enough, when the number of tenants upon a laird’s estate ceased to make him of importance and give him power, he sought by raising his rents to give himself the importance derived from a large income. There can be no doubt that, previous to this, farms were let far below their real value, and often at a merely nominal rent; and thus one of the greatest incitements to industry was wanting in the case of the Highland tenants, for when a man knows that his landlord will not trouble him about his rent, but would rather let him go scot-free than lose him, it is too much to expect of human nature in general that it will bestir itself to do what it feels there is no absolute necessity for. Thus habits of idleness were engendered in the Highlanders, and the land, for want of industrious cultivation, was allowed to run comparatively waste. That the thinning of the population gave those who remained a better chance of improving their condition, is testified to by many writers in the Old Statistical Account, and by other contemporary authorities, including even Dr Walker, who was no friend to emigration. He says,[72] “these measures in the management of property, and this emigration, were by no means unfriendly to the population of the country. The sub-tenants, who form the bulk of the people, were not only retained but raised in their situation, and rendered more useful and independent.” It is amusing now to read Dr Walker’s remarks on the consequences of emigration from the Highlands; had his fears been substantiated,—and had they been well grounded, they ought to have been by this time, for sheep-farming, rent-raising, depopulation, and emigration have been going on rapidly ever since his time—the Highlands must now have been “a waste howling wilderness.” “If the [Highlanders],” he says,[73] “are expelled, the Highlands never can be reclaimed or improved by any other set of men, but must remain a mere grazing-field for England and the South of Scotland. By this alteration, indeed, the present rents may, no doubt, be augmented, but they must become[48] immediately stationary, without any prospect of further advancement, and will in time from obvious causes be liable to great diminution. All improvement of the country must cease when the people to improve it are gone. The soil must remain unsubdued for ever, and the progress of the Highlands must be finally stopt, while all the cultivated wastes of the kingdom are advancing in population and wealth.” How these predictions have been belied by facts, all who know anything of the progress of the Highlands during the present century must perceive. All these changes and even grievances have taken place, and yet the Highlands are far enough from anything approximating to depopulation or unproductiveness, and rents, we believe, have not yet ceased to rise.

Notwithstanding the large emigration which has been going on, the population of the Highlands at the census of 1861 was at least 70,000 greater than it was in the time of Dr Walker.[74] The emigration, especially from the west, does not seem to have been large enough, for periodically, up even to the present day, a rueful call for help to save from famine comes from that quarter. “This very year (1863) the cry of destitution in Skye has been loud as ever, and yet from no part of the Highlands has there been a more extensive emigration. From the very earliest period in the history of emigration down to this date, Skye has been largely drawn upon, and yet the body of the people in Skye were never more wretched than at this moment.”[75] Dr Walker himself states that, in spite of an emigration of about 6000 between the years 1771 and 1794 from the Hebrides and Western Highlands, the population had increased by about 40,000 during the forty years subsequent to 1750.[76] Yet though he knew of the wretched condition of the country from an over-crowded population, practical man as he was, he gives way to the vague and unjustifiable fears expressed above. It is no doubt sad to see the people of a country, and these possessing many high qualities, compelled to leave it in order to get room to breathe; but to tirade against emigration as Dr Walker and others do in the face of such woful facts as are known concerning the condition of the Highlands is mere selfish and wicked sentimentalism.

Another fact, stated by the same author, and which might have taught him better doctrines in connection with some of the border parishes, is worth introducing here. The population of seventeen parishes in Dumbartonshire, Perthshire, and Argyllshire, bordering on the low country, decreased in population between 1755 and 1795, from 30,525 to 26,748, i.e., by 3,787; these parishes having been during that time to a great extent laid out in cattle and sheep. Now, according to the Old Statistical Account (about 1795), these very parishes were on the whole among the most prosperous in the Highlands, those in which improvements were taking place most rapidly, and in which the condition of the people was growing more and more comfortable. It appears to us clear that the population of the Highlands did require a very considerable thinning; that depopulation to a certain extent was, and in some places still is, a necessary condition to improvement.

The main question is, we think, how to get these districts which are in a state of wretchedness and retrogression from over-population rid of the surplus. Unless some sudden check be put upon the rate of increase of the general population, there never will be a lack of hands to bring in the waste places when wanted, and to supply all other demands for men. No doubt, it is a pity, if it be the case, that any extensive districts which could be brought to a high style of cultivation, and would then be better employed than in pasture should be allowed to lie waste, when there is every necessity for the land being made to yield as much as possible. And if the Highlanders are willing, it certainly does seem to be better to keep them at home and employ them for such purposes rather than let them go abroad and give their services to strangers. We should fancy the larger a population there is in a country where there is room enough for them, and which can give them enough to eat and drink, the better for that country. All we maintain is, that it being proved that the population in many parts of the Highlands having been redundant,[49] so much so as to lead to misery and degradation, it was far better that the surplus should emigrate than that they should be kept at home to increase the misery and be an obstruction to the progress of the country. Keep them at home if possible; if not, permit them without any weak sentimental lamentation to go abroad. It has been said that if the Highlander is compelled to leave his native glen, he would as soon remove to a distance of 4000 as to a distance of 40 miles; and that indeed many of them, since they must move, prefer to leave the country altogether rather than settle in any part of it out of sight of their native hills. There is no doubt much truth in this, so that the outcry about keeping the Highlanders at home is to a great extent uncalled for; they don’t wish to stay at home. Still many of them have been willing to settle in the lowlands or in other parts of the Highlands. We have already referred to the great services rendered by the ousted tenants on the borders of the Perthshire and Dumbartonshire Highlands who settled in the neighbourhood of Stirling and reclaimed many thousand acres of Kincardine moss, now a fertile strath. Similar services have been rendered to other barren parts of the country by many Highlanders, who formerly spent their time in lolling idleness, but who, when thus given the opportunity, showed themselves to be as capable of active and profitable exertion as any lowland peasant or farmer. Many Highlanders also, when deprived of their farms, removed to some of our large towns, and by their exertions raised themselves and their families to an honourable and comfortable position, such as they could never have hoped to reach had they never left their native hills. By all means keep the Highlanders at home if they are willing to stay and there is work for them to do; but what purpose can be served in urging them to stay at home if the consequence be to increase the already enormous sort of pauperism?

That the landlords, the representatives of the old chiefs, were not accountable for much of the evil that flowed from the changes of which we have been speaking, no one who knows the history of the Highlands during the last century will venture to assert. Had they all uniformly acted towards their old tenants with humanity, judiciousness, and unselfishness, much misery, misunderstanding, and bitter ill-will might have been avoided. It is, we venture to believe, quite against the spirit of the British constitution as it now exists, and quite out of accordance with enlightened reason and justice, not to say humanity, that these or any other landed proprietors should be allowed to dispose of their land as they choose without any consideration for the people whose fathers have been on it for centuries, or without regard to the interests of the country to which the land belongs. Many of the Highland proprietors, in their haste to get rich, or at least to get money to spend in the fashionable world, either mercilessly, and without warning, cleared their estates of the tenants, or most unseasonably oppressed them in the matter of rent. The great fault of many of the landlords—for they were not all alike—was in bringing about too suddenly changes, in themselves, perhaps, desirable enough. Rents seem to have been too suddenly raised to such a rate as tended to inspire the tenant with despair of being able to meet it. Some also, in their desire to introduce the large farm system, swept the tenants off the ground without warning, and left them to provide for themselves; while others made a show of providing for them by settling them in hamlets by the sea-side, where, in general, they were worse off than ever. It was in their utter want of consideration for these old tenants that many of the Highland landlords were to blame. Had they raised the rents gradually, extended the size of their farms slowly, giving the old tenants a chance under the new system, and doing their best to put these necessarily ejected in a way of making a living for themselves, tried to educate their people up to the age in the matter of agriculture, social habits, and other matters; lived among them, and shown them a good example;—in short, as proprietors, rigidly done their duty to their tenants, as descendants of the old chiefs treated with some tender consideration the sons of those who worshipped and bled for the fathers of their clan, and as men, shown some charity and kindness to their poorer brethren, the improvement of the Highlands might have been brought[50] about at a much less expense of misery and rancour. That these old Highlanders were open to improvement, enlightenment, and education, when judiciously managed, is proved by what took place in some of the border and other districts, where many improvements were effected without great personal inconvenience to any one, and without any great or sudden diminution of the population. Especially in the Western and Northern Highlands and the Islands, the landlords went to extremes in both directions. Some of them acted as we have just indicated, while others again, moved by a laudable consideration for, and tenderness towards the old tenants, retained the old system of small holdings, which they allowed to be now and then still more subdivided, endeavouring, often unsuccessfully, to obtain a rise of rent. In most cases the latter course was as fatal and as productive of misery and ruin as the former. Indeed, in some cases it was more so; for not only was the lot of the tenant not improved, but the laird had ultimately to sell his estate for behoof of his creditors, and himself emigrate to the lowlands or to a foreign country. This arose from the fact that, as the number of tenants increased, the farms were diminished in size more and more, until they could neither support the tenant nor yield the landlord a rent adequate to his support. In this way have many of the old hospitable chiefs with small estates dropped out of sight; and their places filled by some rich lowland merchants, who would show little tenderness to the helpless tenantry.

But it is an easy matter now to look calmly back on these commotions and changes among the Highlanders, and allot praise or blame to chiefs and people for the parts they played, forgetting all the time how difficult these parts were. Something decisive had to be done to prevent the Highlands from sinking into inconceivable misery and barbarism; and had the lairds sat still and done nothing but allowed their estates to be managed on the old footing, ruin to themselves and their tenants would have been the consequence, as indeed was the case with most of those who did so. It was very natural, then, that they should deem it better to save themselves at the expense of their tenants, than that both land and tenants should be involved in a common ruin. They were not the persons to find out the best mode of managing their estates, so that they themselves might be saved, and the welfare of their tenants only considered. In some cases, no doubt, the lairds were animated by utter indifference as to the fate of their tenants; but we are inclined to think these were few, and that most of them would willingly have done much for the welfare of their people, and many of them did what they could; but their first and most natural instinct was that of self-preservation, and in order to save themselves, they were frequently compelled to resort to measures which brought considerable suffering upon their poor tenants. We have no doubt most did their best, according to their knowledge and light, to act well their parts, and deal fairly with their people; but the parts were so difficult, and the actors were so unaccustomed to their new situation, that they are not to be too severely blamed if they sometimes blundered. No matter how gently changes might have been brought about, suffering and bitterness would necessarily to a certain extent have followed; and however much we may deplore the great amount of unnecessary suffering that actually occurred, still we think the lasting benefits which have accrued to the Highlands from the changes which were made, far more than counterbalance this temporary evil.

What we have been saying, while it applies to many recent changes in the Highlands, refers chiefly to the period between 1750 and 1800, during which the Highlands were in a state of universal fermentation, and chiefs and people were only beginning to realise their position and perceive what were their true interests. We shall very briefly notice one or two other matters of interest connected with that period.

The only manufacture of any consequence that has ever been introduced into the Highlands is that of kelp, which is the ashes of various kinds of sea-weed containing some of the salts, potash, and chiefly soda, used in some of the manufactures, as soap, alum, glass, &c. It is used as a substitute for barilla, imported from Spain, America, and other places, during the latter part of last century, on[51] account of the American and continental wars, as well as of the high duties imposed on the importation of salt and similar commodities. The weeds are cut from the rocks with a hook or collected on the shore, and dried to a certain degree on the beach. They are afterwards burnt in a kiln, in which they are constantly stirred with an iron rake until they reach a fluid state; and when they cool, the ashes become condensed into a dark blue or whitish-coloured mass, nearly of the hardness and solidity of rock. The manufacture is carried on during June, July, and August; and even at the present day, in some parts of the Islands and Highlands, affords occupation to considerable numbers of both sexes.[77] This manufacture seems to have been introduced into some of the lowland parts of the Scottish coast early in the eighteenth century, but was not thoroughly established in the Highlands till about the year 1750. At first it was of little importance, but gradually the manufacture spread until it became universal over all the western islands and coasts, and the value of the article, from the causes above-mentioned, rose rapidly from about £1 per ton, when first introduced, to from £12 to £20 per ton[78] about the beginning of the present century. While the great value of the article lasted, rents rose enormously, and the income of proprietors of kelp-shore rose in proportion. As an example, it may be stated that the rent of the estate of Clanranald in South Uist previous to 1790 was £2200, which, as kelp increased in value, rapidly rose to £15,000.[79] While the kelp season lasted, the whole time of the people was occupied in its manufacture, and the wages they received, while it added somewhat to their scanty income, and increased their comfort, were small in proportion to the time and labour they gave, and to the prices received by those to whom the kelp belonged. Moreover, while the kelp-fever lasted, the cultivation of the ground and other agricultural matters seem to have been to a great extent neglected, extravagant habits were contracted by the proprietors, whose incomes were thus so considerably increased,—and the permanent improvement of their estates were neglected in their eagerness to make the most of an article whose value, they did not perceive, was entirely factitious, and could not be lasting. Instead of either laying past their surplus income or expending it on the permanent improvement of their estates, they very foolishly lived up to it, or borrowed heavily in the belief that kelp would never decrease in value. The consequence was that when the duties were taken off the articles for which kelp was used as a substitute in the earlier part of the 19th century, the price of that article gradually diminished till it could fetch, about 1830–40, only from £2 to £4 a ton. With this the incomes of the proprietors of kelp-shores also rapidly decreased, landing not a few of them in ruin and bankruptcy, and leading in some instances to the sale of the estates. The income above mentioned, after the value of kelp decreased, fell rapidly from £15,000 to £5000. The manufacture of this article is still carried on in the West Highlands and Islands, and to a greater extent in Orkney, but although it occupies a considerable number of hands, it is now of comparatively little importance, much more of the sea-weed being employed as manure. While it was at its best, however, the manufacture of this article undoubtedly increased to a very large extent the revenue of the West Highlands, and gave employment to and kept at home a considerable number of people who otherwise might have emigrated. Indeed, it was partly on account of the need of many hands for kelp-making that proprietors did all they could to prevent the emigration of those removed from the smaller farms, and tried to induce them to settle on the coast. On the whole, it would seem that this sudden source of large income ultimately did more harm than good to the people and to the land. While this manufacture flourished, the land was to a certain extent neglected, and the people somewhat unfitted for agricultural labour; instead of looking upon this as a temporary source of income, and living accordingly, both they and the proprietors lived as if it should never fail, so that when the value of kelp rapidly decreased, ruin and absolute poverty stared both proprietors and people in the face. Moreover, by preventing the small tenants from leaving[52] the country, and accumulating them on the coasts, the country became enormously over-peopled, so that when the importance of this source of employment waned, multitudes were left with little or no means of livelihood, and the temporary benefits which accrued to the Highlanders from the adventitious value of kelp, indirectly entailed upon them ultimately hardships and misfortunes greater than ever they experienced before, and retarded considerably their progress towards permanent improvement.

By all accounts the potato, introduced from Chili into Spain about the middle of the sixteenth century, was first introduced into Ireland by or through the instrumentality of Sir Walter Raleigh about the end of that century. From Ireland it seems shortly after to have been introduced into England, although its cultivation did not become anything like common till more than a century afterwards, and its use seems to have been restricted to the upper classes.[80] Its value as a staple article of food for the poorer classes remained for long unappreciated. According to the Old Statistical Account of Scotland, potatoes were first cultivated in the fields there in the county of Stirling, in the year 1739, although for long after that, in many parts of the country, they were planted only as a garden vegetable. According to Dr Walker, potatoes were first introduced into the Hebrides from Ireland in the year 1743, the island of South Uist being the first to welcome the strange root, although the welcome from the inhabitants seems to have been anything but hearty. The story of its introduction, as told by Dr Walker,[81] is amusing, though somewhat ominous when read in the light of subsequent melancholy facts. “In the spring of that year, old Clanronald was in Ireland, upon a visit to his relation, Macdonnel of Antrim; he saw with surprise and approbation the practice of the country, and having a vessel of his own along with him, brought home a large cargo of potatoes. On his arrival, the tenants in the island were convened, and directed how to plant them, but they all refused. On this they were all committed to prison. After a little confinement, they agreed, at last, to plant these unknown roots, of which they had a very unfavourable opinion. When they were raised in autumn, they were laid down at the chieftain’s gate, by some of the tenants, who said, the Laird indeed might order them to plant these foolish roots, but they would not be forced to eat them. In a very little time, however, the inhabitants of South Uist came to know better, when every man of them would have gone to prison rather than not plant potatoes.”

By the year 1760 potatoes appear to have become a common crop all over the country; and by 1770 they seem to have attained to that importance as a staple article of food for the common people which they have ever since maintained.[82] The importance of the introduction of this valuable article of food, in respect both of the weal and the woe of the Highlands, cannot be over-estimated. As an addition to the former scanty means of existence it was invaluable; had it been used only as an addition the Highlanders might have been spared much suffering. Instead of this, however, it ere long came to be regarded as so all-important, to be cultivated to such a large extent, and to the exclusion of other valuable productions, and to be depended upon by the great majority of the Highlanders as almost their sole food, that one failure in the crop by disease or otherwise must inevitably have entailed famine and misery. For so large a share of their food did the common Highlanders look to potatoes, that, according to the Old Statistical Account, in many places they fed on little else for nine months in the year.

The first remarkable scarcity subsequent to 1745 appears to have been in the year 1770,[83] arising apparently from the unusual severity of the weather, causing the destruction of most of the crops, and many of the cattle. That, however, of 1782–83 seems to have been still more terrible, and universal over all the Highlands, according to the Old Statistical Account. It was only the interference of government and the charity of private individuals that prevented multitudes from dying of starvation. Neither of these famines, however, seem to have been[53] caused by any failure in the potato crop from disease, but simply by the inclemency of seasons. But when to this latter danger there came subsequently to be added the liability of the staple article of food to fail from disease, the chances of frequently recurring famines came to be enormously increased. About 1838 potatoes constituted four-fifths of the food of the common Highlanders.[84] However, we are anticipating. It is sufficient to note here as a matter of great importance in connection with the later social history of the Highlands, the universal cultivation of the potato sometime after the middle of the eighteenth century. Even during the latter part of last century, potato-disease was by no means unknown, though it appears to have been neither so destructive nor so wide-spread as some of the forms of disease developed at a later period. New forms of disease attacked the root during the early part of the present century, working at times considerable havoc, but never apparently inducing anything approaching a famine. But about 1840, the potato disease par excellence seems to have made its first appearance, and after visiting various parts of the world, including the Highlands, it broke out generally in 1845, and in 1846 entailed upon the Highlands indescribable suffering and hardship. Of this, however, more shortly. One effect attributed frequently in the Old Statistical Account to the introduction and immoderate use of the potato is the appearance of diseases before unknown or very rare. One of the principal of these was dropsy, which, whether owing to the potato or not, became certainly more prevalent after it came into common use, if we may trust the testimony of the writers of the Statistical Account.

In looking back, then, by the aid of the authority just mentioned, along with others, on the progress made by the Highlands during the latter half of the eighteenth century, while there is much to sadden, still there is much that is cheering. The people generally appear in a state of ferment and discontent with themselves, and doing their best blindly to grope their way to a better position. While still there remain many traces of the old thraldom, there are many indications that freedom and a desire after true progress were slowly spreading among the people. Many of the old grievous services were still retained; still were there many districts thirled to particular mills; still were leases rare and tenures uncertain, and rents frequently paid in kind; in many districts the houses were still unsightly and uncomfortable huts, the clothing scanty, and the food wretched and insufficient. In most Highland districts, we fear, the old Scotch plough, with its four or five men, and its six or ten cattle, was still the principal instrument of tillage; drainage was all but unknown; the land was overstocked in many places with people and cattle; the ground was scourged with incessant cropping, and much of the produce wasted in the gathering and in the preparing it for food. Education in many places was entirely neglected, schools few and far between, and teachers paid worse than ploughmen! The picture has certainly a black enough background, but it is not unrelieved by a few bright and hopeful streaks.

On many parts of the border-Highlands improvements had been introduced which placed them in every respect on a level with the lowlands. Many of the old services had been abolished, leases introduced, the old and inefficient agricultural instrument replaced by others made on the most approved system. Houses, food, and clothing were all improved; indeed, in the case of the last article, there is frequent complaint made that too much attention and money were expended on mere ornamentation. The old method of constant cropping had in not a few districts been abolished, and a proper system of rotation established; more attention was paid to proper manuring and ingathering, and instead of restricting the crops, as of old, to oats and barley, many other new cereals, and a variety of green crops and grasses had been introduced. Not only in the districts bordering on the Lowlands, but in many other parts of the Highlands, the breed of sheep, and cattle, and horses had been improved, and a much more profitable system of management introduced. By means of merciful emigration, the by far too redundant population of the Highlands had been considerably reduced, the position[54] of those who left the country vastly improved, and more room and more means of living afforded to those who remained. A more rational system of dividing the land prevailed in many places, and sheep-farming—for which alone, according to all unprejudiced testimony, the greater part of the surface of the Highlands is fitted—had been extensively introduced. The want of education was beginning to be felt, and in many districts means were being taken to spread its advantages, while the moral and religious character of the people, as a whole, stood considerably above the average of most other districts of Scotland. In short, the Highlanders, left to themselves, were advancing gradually towards that stage of improvement which the rest of the country had reached, and the natural laws which govern society had only not to be thwarted and impertinently interfered with, to enable the Highlanders ere long to be as far forward as the rest of their countrymen. From the beginning of this century down to the present time they have had much to struggle with, many trials to undergo, and much unnecessary interference to put up with, but their progress has been sure and steady, and even comparatively rapid. We must glance very briefly at the state of the Highlands during the present century; great detail is uncalled for, as much that has been said concerning the previous period applies with equal force to the present.

The same causes have been at work and the same processes going on since 1800, as there were during the latter half of last century.

Taking stand at the date, about 1840, of the New Statistical Account, and looking back, the conclusion which, we think, any unprejudiced inquirer must come to is, that the Highlands as a whole had improved immensely. With the exception of some of the Western Islands, agriculture and sheep-farming at the above date were generally abreast of the most improved lowland system, and the social condition of the people was but little, if any, behind that of the inhabitants of any other part of the country. In most places the old Scotch plough was abolished, and the improved two-horse one introduced; manuring was properly attended to, and a system of rotation of crops introduced; runrig was all but abolished, and the land properly inclosed; in short, during the early half of the present century the most approved agricultural methods had been generally adopted, where agriculture was of any importance. Thirlage, multures, services, payment in kind, and other oppressions and obstructions to improvement, were fast dying out, and over a great part of the country the houses, food, clothing, and social condition of the people generally were vastly improved from what they were half a century before. Education, moreover, was spreading, and schools were multiplied, especially after the disruption of the Established Church in 1843, the Free Church laudably planting schools in many places where they had never been before. In short, one side of the picture is bright and cheering enough, although the other is calculated to fill a humane observer with sadness.

Depopulation and emigration went on even more vigorously than before. Nearly all the old lairds and those imbued with the ancient spirit of the chiefs had died out, and a young and new race had now the disposal of the Highland lands, a race who had little sympathy with the feelings and prejudices of the people, and who were, naturally, mainly anxious to increase as largely as possible their rent-roll. In the earlier part of the century at least, as in the latter half of the previous one, few of the proprietors wished, strictly speaking, to depopulate their estates, and compel the inhabitants to emigrate, but simply to clear the interior of the small farms into which many properties[55] were divided, convert the whole ground into sheep pasture, let it out in very large farms, and remove the ejected population to the coasts, there to carry on the manufacture of kelp, or engage in fishing. It was only when the value of kelp decreased, and the fishing proved unprofitable, that compulsory emigration was resorted to.

It is unnecessary to say more here on the question of depopulation and emigration, the question between Highland landlords and Highland tenants, the dispute as to whether large or small farms are to be preferred, and whether the Highlands are best suited for sheep and cattle or for men and agriculture. Most that has been written on the subject has been in advocacy of either the one side or the other; one party, looking at the question exclusively from the tenant’s point of view, while the other writes solely in the interests of the landlords. The question has scarcely yet been dispassionately looked at, and perhaps cannot be for a generation or two yet, when the bitter feelings engendered on both sides shall have died out, when both landlords and tenants will have found out what is best for themselves and for the country at large, and when the Highlands will be as settled and prosperous as the Lothians and the Carse of Gowrie. There can be no doubt, however, that very frequently landlords and their agents acted with little or no consideration for the most cherished old feelings, prejudices, and even rights, of the tenants, whom they often treated with less clemency than they would have done sheep and cattle. It ought to have been remembered that the Highland farmers and cottars were in a condition quite different from those in the lowlands. Most of them rented farms which had been handed down to them from untold generations, and which they had come to regard as much belonging to them as did the castle to the chief. They had no idea of lowland law and lowland notions of property, so that very often, when told to leave their farms and their houses, they could not realise the order, and could scarcely believe that it came from the laird, the descendant of the old chiefs, for whom their fathers fought and died. Hence the sad necessity often, of laying waste their farms, driving off their cattle, and burning their houses about their ears, before the legal officers could get the old tenants to quit the glens and hill-sides where their fathers had for centuries dwelt. It was not sheer pig-headed obstinacy or a wish to defy the law which induced them to act thus; only once, we think, in Sutherland, was there anything like a disturbance, when the people gathered together and proceeded to drive out the sheep which were gradually displacing themselves. The mere sight of a soldier dispersed the mob, and not a drop of blood was spilt. When forced to submit and leave their homes they did so quietly, having no spirit to utter even a word of remonstrance. They seemed like a people amazed, bewildered, taken by surprise, as much so often as a family would be did a father turn them out of his house to make room for strangers. In the great majority of instances, the people seem quietly to have done what they were told, and removed from their glens to the coast, while those who could afford it seem generally to have emigrated. Actual violence seems to have been resorted to in very few cases.

Still the hardships which had to be endured by many of the ousted tenants, and the unfeeling rigour with which many of them were treated is sad indeed to read of. Many of them had to sleep in caves, or shelter themselves, parents and children, under the lee of a rock or a dyke, keeping as near as they could to the ruins of their burnt or fallen cottage, and living on what shell-fish they could gather on the shore, wild roots dug with their fingers, or on the scanty charity of their neighbours; for all who could had emigrated. Many of the proprietors, of course, did what they could to provide for the ousted tenants, believing that the driving of them out was a sad necessity. Houses, and a small piece of ground for each family, were provided by the shore, on some convenient spot, help was given to start the fishing, or employment in the manufacture of kelp, and as far as possible their new condition was made as bearable as possible. Indeed, we are inclined to believe, that but few of the landlords acted from mere wantonness, or were entirely dead to the interests of the old tenants; but that, their own interests naturally being of the greatest importance to them, and some[56] radical change being necessary in the management of lands in the Highlands, the lairds thoughtlessly acted as many of them did. It was the natural rebound from the old system when the importance and wealth of a chief were rated at the number of men on his estate; and although the consequent suffering is to be deplored, still, perhaps, it was scarcely to be avoided. It is easy to say that had the chiefs done this or the government done the other thing, much suffering might have been spared, and much benefit accrued to the Highlanders; but all the suffering in the world might be spared did people know exactly when and how to interfere. It would be curious, indeed, if in the case of the Highlands the faults were all on one side. We believe that the proprietors acted frequently with harshness and selfishness, and did not seek to realise the misery they were causing. They were bound, more strongly bound perhaps than the proprietors of any other district, to show some consideration for the people on their estates, and not to act as if proprietors had the sole right to benefit by the land of a country, and that the people had no right whatever. Had they been more gentle, introduced the changes gradually and judiciously, and given the native Highlanders a chance to retrieve themselves, much permanent good might have been done, and much suffering and bitterness spared. But so long as the world is merely learning how to live, groping after what is best, so long as men act on blind unreasoning impulse, until all men learn to act according to the immutable laws of Nature, so long will scenes such as we have been referring to occur. The blame, however, should be laid rather to ignorance than to wanton intention.

Of all the Highland counties, perhaps Sutherland is better known than any other in connection with the commotions which agitated the Highlands during the early part of this century, and, according to all accounts, the depopulation is more marked there than anywhere else. The clearance of that county of the old tenants, their removal to the coast, and the conversion of the country into large sheep-farms commenced about 1810, under the Marquis of Stafford, who had married the heiress of the Sutherland estate. The clearing was, of course, carried out by Mr Sellar, the factor, who, on account of some of the proceedings to which he was a party, was tried before a Court of Justiciary, held at Inverness in 1816, for culpable homicide and oppression. Many witnesses were examined on both sides, and, after a long trial, the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” in which the judge, Lord Pitmilly, completely concurred. This, we think, was the only verdict that could legally be given, not only in the case of the Sutherland clearings, but also in the case of most of the other estates where such measures were carried on. The tenants were all duly warned to remove a considerable number of weeks before the term, and as few of them had many chattels to take with them, this could easily have been done. Most of them generally obeyed the warning, although a few, generally the very poor and very old, refused to budge from the spot of their birth. The factor and his officers, acting quite according to law, compelled them, sometimes by force, to quit the houses, which were then either burnt or pulled to the ground. As a rule, these officers of the law seem to have done their duty as gently as law officers are accustomed to do; but however mildly such a duty had been performed, it could not but entail suffering to some extent, especially on such a people as many of the Highlanders were who knew not how to make a living beyond the bounds of their native glen. The pictures of suffering drawn, some of them we fear too true, are sometimes very harrowing, and any one who has been brought up among the hills, or has dwelt for a summer in a sweet Highland glen, can easily fancy with how sad a heart the Highlander must have taken his last long lingering look of the little cottage, however rude, where he passed his happiest years, nestled at the foot of a sunny brae, or guarded by some towering crag, and surrounded with the multitudinous beauties of wood and vale, heather and ferns, soft knoll and rugged mountain. The same result as has followed in the Highlands has likewise taken place in other parts of the country, without the same outcry about depopulation, suffering, emigration, &c., simply because it has been brought about gradually. The process commenced in the[57] Highlands only about a hundred years since, was commenced in the lowlands and elsewhere centuries ago; the Highlanders have had improvements thrust upon them, while the lowlanders were allowed to develope themselves.

After the decline in the price of kelp (about 1820), when it ceased to be the interest of the proprietors to accumulate people on the shore, they did their best to induce them to emigrate, many proprietors helping to provide ships for those whom they had dispossessed of their lands and farms. Indeed, until well on in the present century, the Highlanders generally seem to have had no objections to emigrate, but, on the contrary, were eager to do so whenever they could, often going against the will of the lairds and of those who dreaded the utter depopulation of the country and a dearth of recruits for the army. But about 1840 and after, compulsion seems often to have been used to make the people go on board the ships provided for them by the lairds, who refused to give them shelter on any part of their property. But little compulsion, however, in the ordinary sense of the term, seems to have been necessary, as the Highlanders, besides having a hereditary tendency to obey their superiors, were dazed, bewildered, and dispirited by what seemed to them the cruel, heartless, and unjust proceedings of their lairds.

The earliest extensive clearing probably took place on the estate of Glengarry, the traditional cause of it being that the laird’s lady had taken umbrage at the clan. “Summonses of ejection were served over the whole property, even on families most closely connected with the chief.”[85] From that time down to the present day, the clearing off of the inhabitants of many parts of the Highlands has been steadily going on. We have already spoken of the Sutherland clearings, which were continued down to a comparatively recent time. All the Highland counties to a greater or less extent have been subjected to the same kind of thinning, and have contributed their share of emigrants to America, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It would serve no purpose to enter into details concerning the clearing of the several estates in the various Highland counties; much, as we have said, has been written on both sides, and if faith can be put in the host of pamphlets that have been issued during the present century on the side of the ejected Highlanders, some of the evictions were conducted with great cruelty;[86] much greater cruelty and disregard for the people’s feelings than we think there was any need for, however justifiable and necessary the evictions and clearings were.

We have already referred to the frequent occurrence of famines during the past and present centuries in the Highlands, arising from the failure of the crops, principally, latterly, through the failure of the potatoes. These frequent famines gave a stimulus to emigration, as, of course, the people were anxious to escape from their misery, and the proprietors were glad to get quit of the poor they would otherwise have had to support. Besides the failure of the crops, other causes operated, according to Mr Tregelles, in the pamphlet already referred to, to produce the frequent occurrence of distress in the Highlands; such as the relation of landlord and tenant, the defective character of the poor-law, the excessive division and subdivision of the land, the imprudence and ignorance of some of the peasantry, inertness, also consequent on chronic poverty, want of capital. Every few years, up even to the present time, a cry of distress comes from the Highlands. Besides the famines already referred to in 1837 and 1846, a still more severe and distressing one occurred in 1850, and seems, according to the many reports and pamphlets issued, to have continued for some years after. In the one of 1837, many Highland proprietors and private gentlemen, forming themselves into an association, did what they could to assist the Highlanders, mainly by way of emigration. Not only was it for the advantage of Highland proprietors, in respect of being able to let their[58] lands at a better rent, to do what they could to enable the people to emigrate, but by doing so, and thus diminishing the number of poor on their estates, they considerably decreased the large tax they had to pay under the recent Scotch Poor-law Act. “Formerly the poor widows and orphans and destitute persons were relieved by the parish minister from the poors’ box, by voluntary subscriptions, which enabled the extremely needy to receive four or five shillings the quarter; and this small pittance was felt on all hands to be a liberal bounty. The landlord added his five or ten pound gift at the beginning of the year, and a laudatory announcement appeared in the newspaper. But the Act for the relief of the poor of Scotland now provides that a rate shall be levied on the tenant or occupier, and some of those who formerly paid £10 per annum, and were deemed worthy of much commendation, have now to pay £400 per annum without note or comment! Can we be surprised, then, that some of the landlords, with increased claims on their resources, and perhaps with diminished ability to meet such claims, should look round promptly and earnestly for a remedy? One of the most obvious and speedy remedies was emigration; hence the efforts to clear the ground of those who, with the lapse of time, might become heavy encumbrances. It need not be matter of surprise that the landlord should clear his ground of tenants who, for a series of years, had paid no rent; although perhaps a wiser and better course would have been to have sought for and found some good means of continued lucrative employment.... The lands are divided and subdivided until a family is found existing on a plot which is totally inadequate for their support; and here we see their imprudence and ignorance. Families are reared up in misery, struggling with impossibilities, producing at last that inertness and dimness of vision which result from a sick heart.”[87] Most of those who write, like Mr Tregelles, of the distress of the Highlands in 1850 and succeeding years, do so in the same strain. They declare there is no need for emigration, that the land and sea, if properly worked, are quite sufficient to support all the inhabitants that were ever on it at any time, and that the people only need to be helped on, encouraged and taught, to make them as prosperous and the land as productive as the people and land of any other part of the kingdom. While this may be true of many parts, we fear it will not hold with regard to most of the Western Islands, where until recently, in most places, especially in Skye, the land was so subdivided and the population so excessive, that under the most productive system of agriculture the people could not be kept in food for more than half the year. Even in some of the best off of the islands, it was the custom for one or more members of a family to go to the south during summer and harvest, and earn as much as would pay the rent and eke out the scanty income. “The fact is, that the working classes of Skye, for many years anterior to 1846, derived a considerable part of their means from the wages of labour in the south. Even before the manufacture of kelp had been abandoned, the crofters of some parts at least of Skye appear to have paid their rents chiefly in money earned by labour in other parts of the kingdom. When that manufacture ceased, the local employment was reduced to a small amount, and the number who went elsewhere for wages increased. The decline of the herring-fishery, which for several years had yielded little or no profit in Skye, had a similar effect. The failure of the potato crop in 1846 still further reduced the local means of subsistence and of employing labour, and forced a still greater number to work for wages in different parts of the country. From the Pentland Firth to the Tweed, from the Lewis to the Isle of Man, the Skye men sought the employment they could not find at home; and there are few families of cottars, or of crofters at rents not exceeding £10, from which at least one individual did not set out to earn by labour elsewhere the means of paying rent and buying meal for those who remained at home. Before 1846, only the younger members of the family left the district for that purpose; since that year, the crofter himself has often found it necessary to go. But young and old, crofters and cottars, to whatever distance they may have gone, return home for the winter, with[59] rare exceptions, and remain there nearly altogether idle, consuming the produce of the croft, and the proceeds of their own labour, till the return of summer and the failure of their supplies warn them that it is time to set out again. Those whose means are insufficient to maintain them till the winter is past, and who cannot find employment at that season at home, are of course in distress, and, having exhausted their own means, are driven to various shifts, and forced to seek charitable aid.”

The above extract is from the Report by Sir John M’Neill, on the distress in Highlands and Islands in 1850–51, caused by the failure of the crops. He went through most of the western island and western mainland parishes examining into the condition of the people, and the conclusion he came to was, that the population was excessive, that no matter how the land might be divided, it could not support the inhabitants without extraneous aid, and that the only remedy was the removal of the surplus population by means of emigration. Whether the population was excessive or not, it appears to us, that when the sudden, deep, and extensive distresses occurred in the Highlands, it was merciful to help those who had no means of making a living, and who were half starving, to remove to a land where there was plenty of well-paid work. Sir John believes that even although no pressure had been used by landlords, and no distresses had occurred, the changes which have been rapidly introduced into the Highlands, extending farms and diminishing population, would have happened all the same, but would have been brought about more gradually and with less inconvenience and suffering to the population. “The change which then (end of last century) affected only the parishes bordering on the Lowlands, has now extended to the remotest parts of the Highlands, and, whether for good or for evil, is steadily advancing. Every movement is in that direction, because the tendency must necessarily be to assimilate the more remote districts to the rest of the country, and to carry into them, along with the instruction, industry, and capital, the agricultural and commercial economy of the wealthier, more intelligent, and influential majority of the nation. If it were desirable to resist this progress, it would probably be found impracticable. Every facility afforded to communication and intercourse must tend to hasten its march, and it is not to be conceived that any local organisation could resist, or even materially retard it. If nothing had occurred to disturb the ordinary course of events, this inevitable transition would probably have been effected without such an amount of suffering as to call for special intervention, though no such change is accomplished without suffering. The crofter would have yielded to the same power that has elsewhere converted the holdings of small tenants into farms for capitalists; but increased facilities of communication, and increased intercourse, might previously have done more to assimilate his language, habits, and modes of living and of thinking to those of men in that part of the country to which he is now a stranger, and in which he is a foreigner.

“There would thus have been opened up to him the same means of providing for his subsistence that were found by those of his class, who, during the last century, have ceased to cultivate land occupied by themselves. But the calamity that suddenly disabled him from producing his food by his own labour on his croft, has found him generally unprepared to provide by either means for his maintenance. All the various attempts that have yet been made in so many parishes to extricate the working classes from the difficulties against which they are unsuccessfully contending, have not only failed to accomplish that object, but have failed even to arrest the deterioration in their circumstances and condition that has been in progress for the last four years. In every parish, with one or two exceptions, men of all classes and denominations concur unanimously in declaring it to be impossible, by any application of the existing resources, or by any remunerative application of extraneous resources, to provide for the permanent subsistence of the whole of the present inhabitants; and state their conviction that the population cannot be made self-sustaining, unless a portion removes from the parish.... The working classes in many parishes are convinced that the emigration of a part of their number affords the only prospect of escape from a[60] position otherwise hopeless; and in many cases individuals have earnestly prayed for aid to emigrate. Petitions numerously signed by persons desirous to go to the North American colonies, and praying for assistance to enable them to do so, have been transmitted for presentation to Parliament. In some of the parishes where no desire for emigration had been publicly expressed, or was supposed to exist, that desire began to be announced as soon as the expectation of extraneous aid was abandoned. It has rarely happened that so many persons, between whom there was or could have been no previous concert or intercourse, and whose opinions on many important subjects are so much at variance, have concurred in considering any one measure indispensable to the welfare of the community; and there does not appear to be any good reason for supposing that this almost unanimous opinion is not well founded.”[88]

These are the opinions of one who thoroughly examined into the matter, and are corroborated by nearly all the articles on the Highland parishes in the New Statistical Account. That it was and is still needful to take some plan to prevent the ever-recurring distress of the Western Highlands, and especially Islands, no one can doubt; that emigration is to some extent necessary, especially from the islands, we believe, but that it is the only remedy, we are inclined to doubt. There is no doubt that many proprietors, whose tenants though in possession of farms of no great size were yet very comfortable, have cleared their estate, and let it out in two or three large farms solely for sheep. Let emigration by all means be brought into play where it is necessary, but it is surely not necessary in all cases to go from one extreme to another, and replace thousands of men, women, and children by half-a-dozen shepherds and their dogs. Many districts may be suitable only for large farms, but many others, we think, could be divided into farms of moderate size, large enough to keep a farmer and his family comfortably after paying a fair rent. This system, we believe, has been pursued with success in some Highland districts, especially in that part of Inverness-shire occupied by the Grants.

In Sir John M’Neill’s report there are some interesting and curious statements which, we think, tend to show that when the Highlanders are allowed to have moderate-sized farms, and are left alone to make what they can of them, they can maintain themselves in tolerable comfort. In the island of Lewis, where the average rent of the farms was £2, 12s., the farmer was able to obtain from his farm only so much produce as kept himself and family for six months in the year; his living for the rest of the year, his rent and other necessary expenses, requiring to be obtained from other sources, such as fishing, labour in the south, &c. So long as things went well, the people generally managed to struggle through the year without any great hardship; but in 1846, and after, when the potato crops failed, but for the interference of the proprietor and others, many must have perished for want of food. In six years after 1846, the proprietor expended upwards of £100,000 in providing work and in charity, to enable the people to live. Various experiments were tried to provide work for the inhabitants, and more money expended than there was rent received, with apparently no good result whatever. In 1850, besides regular paupers, there were above 11,000 inhabitants receiving charitable relief. Yet, notwithstanding every encouragement from the proprietor, who offered to cancel all arrears, provide a ship, furnish them with all necessaries, few of the people cared to emigrate. In the same way in Harris, immense sums were expended to help the people to live, with as little success as in Lewis; the number of those seeking relief seemed only to increase. As this plan seemed to lead to no good results, an attempt was made to improve the condition of the people by increasing the size of their farms, which in the best seasons sufficed to keep them in provisions for only six months. The following is the account of the experiment given by Mr Macdonald, the resident factor:—“At Whitsunday 1848 forty crofters were removed from the island of Bernera, then occupied by eighty-one; and the lands thus vacated were divided among the forty-one who remained. Those[61] who were removed, with two or three exceptions, were placed in crofts upon lands previously occupied by tacksmen. Six of the number who, with one exception, had occupied crofts of about five acres in Bernera, were settled in the Borves on crofts of ten acres of arable, and hill-grazing for four cows, and their followers till two years old, with forty sheep and a horse,—about double the amount of stock which, with one exception, they had in Bernera. The exceptional case referred to was that of a man who had a ten-acre croft in Bernera, with an amount of black cattle stock equal to that for which he got grazing in the Borves, but who had no sheep. They are all in arrear of rent, and, on an average, for upwards of two years. These six tenants were selected as the best in Bernera, in respect to their circumstances. I attribute their want of success to the depreciation in the price of black cattle, and to their not having sufficient capital to put upon their lands a full stock when they entered. Their stipulated rent in the Borves was, on an average, £12. Of the forty-one who remained, with enlarged crofts, in Bernera, the whole are now largely in arrear, and have increased their arrears since their holdings were enlarged. I attribute their want of success to the same causes as that of the people in the Borves. The result of his attempt to improve the condition of these crofters, by enlarging their crofts, while it has failed to accomplish that object, has at the same time entailed a considerable pecuniary loss upon the proprietor.

“An attempt was made, at the same time, to establish some unsuccessful agricultural crofters, practised in fishing, as fishermen, on lands previously occupied by tacksmen, where each fisherman got a croft of about two acres of arable land, with grazing for one or two cows, and from four to six sheep, at a rent of from £1 to £2 sterling. This experiment was equally unsuccessful. It is doubtful whether they were all adequately provided with suitable boats and tackle, or ‘gear;’ but many of them were; and some of those who were not originally well provided were supplied with what was wanted by the destitution fund. Of these fishermen Mr Macdonald says:—‘Not one of them, since entering on the fishing croft, has paid an amount equal to his rent. The attempt to improve the condition of those men, who had previously been unsuccessful as agricultural crofters, by placing them in a position favourable for fishing, has also failed; and this experiment also has entailed a considerable pecuniary loss upon the proprietor, who is not now receiving from these fishermen one-fourth of the rent he formerly received from tacksmen for the same lands. I therefore state confidently, that in Harris the proprietor cannot convert lands held by tacksmen into small holdings, either for the purposes of agriculture or fishing, without a great pecuniary sacrifice; and that this will continue to be the case, unless potatoes should again be successfully cultivated. I cannot estimate the loss that would be entailed upon the proprietor by such a change at less than two-thirds of the rental paid by the tacksmen. The results of the experiments that have been made on this property would, in every case, fully bear out this estimate. It is my conscientious belief and firm conviction, that if this property were all divided into small holdings amongst the present occupants of land, the result would be, that in a few years the rent recoverable would not be sufficient to pay the public burdens, if the potatoes continue to fail, and the price of black cattle does not materially improve.’”[89]

Yet not one family in Harris would accept the proprietor’s offer to bear all the expense of their emigration.

The condition of Lewis and Harris, as above shown, may be taken as a fair specimen of the Western Islands at the time of Sir John M’Neill’s inquiry in 1851.

An experiment, which if properly managed, might have succeeded, was tried in 1850 and the two following years; it also proved a failure. The following is the account given in the Edinburgh Review for October 1857. The reader must remember, however, that the article is written by an advocate of all the modern Highland innovations:—A number of people in the district of Sollas in North Uist had agreed to emigrate, but “a committee in the town of Perth, which had on hand £3000 collected for the Highland Destitution Relief Fund of 1847, resolved to form these people[62] into a ‘settlement,’ Lord Macdonald assenting, and giving them the choice of any land in the island not under lease. The tenants, about sixty in number, removed to the selected place in autumn 1850, provided by the committee with an agricultural overseer. In the following spring a large crop of oats and potatoes was laid down. The oats never advanced above a few inches in height, and ultimately withered and died, and the potatoes gave little or no return. A great part of the land so dealt with has never since been touched, and it is now even of less value than before, having ceased to produce even heather. This result, however, we are bound to mention, was at the time, and perhaps still, popularly ascribed, like all Highland failures, to the fault of those in authority. A new overseer was therefore sent, and remained about a year and a half; but in 1852 a third of the people, becoming painfully impressed with the truth of the matter, went off to Australia. In 1853 a third manager was sent ‘to teach and encourage;’ but as the money was now running short, he had little to give but advice, and as the people could not subsist on that any more than on the produce of their lots, they went off to seek employment elsewhere—and so ended what was called ‘this interesting experiment,’ but of which it seems to be now thought inexpedient to say anything at all. The results were to spend £3000 in making worse a piece of the worst possible land, and in prolonging the delusions and sufferings of the local population, but also in supplying one more proof of the extreme difficulty or impossibility of accomplishing, and the great mischief of attempting, what so many paper authorities in Highland matters assume as alike easy and beneficial.”

It would almost seem, from the failure of the above and many other experiments which have been tried to improve the condition of the Highlanders, that any extraneous positive interference by way of assistance, experiments, charity, and such like, leading the people to depend more on others than on themselves, leads to nothing but disastrous results. This habit of depending on others, a habit many centuries old, was one which, instead of being encouraged, ought to have been by every possible means discouraged, as it was at the bottom of all the evils which followed the abolition of the jurisdictions. They had been accustomed to look to their chiefs for generations to see that they were provided with houses, food, and clothing; and it could only be when they were thoroughly emancipated from this slavish and degrading habit that they could find scope for all their latent energies, have fair play, and feel the necessity for strenuous exertion.

As a contrast to the above accounts, and as showing that it is perfectly possible to carry out the small or moderate farm system, even on the old principle of runrig, both with comfort to the tenants and with profit to the proprietors; and also as showing what the Highlanders are capable of when left entirely to themselves, we give the following extract from Sir J. M’Neill’s Report, in reference to the prosperity of Applecross in Ross-shire:—

“The people have been left to depend on their own exertions, under a kind proprietor, who was always ready to assist individuals making proper efforts to improve their condition, but who attempted no new or specific measure for the general advancement of the people. Their rents are moderate, all feel secure of their tenure so long as they are not guilty of any delinquency, and a large proportion of those who hold land at rents of £6 and upwards, have leases renewable every seven years. During the fifteen years ending at Whitsunday 1850, they have paid an amount equal to fifteen years’ rent. Many of the small crofters are owners, or part owners, of decked vessels, of which there are forty-five, owned by the crofters on the property; and a considerable number have deposits of money in the banks. The great majority of these men have not relied on agriculture, and no attempt has been made to direct their efforts to that occupation. Left to seek their livelihood in the manner in which they could best find it, and emancipated from tutelage and dependence on the aid and guidance of the proprietor, they have prospered more than their neighbours, apparently because they have relied less upon the crops they could raise on their lands, and have pursued other occupations with more energy and perseverance.

“Of the crofters or small tenants on this property who are not fishermen, and who are[63] dependent solely on the occupation of land, the most prosperous are those who have relied upon grazing, and who are still cultivating their arable land in ‘runrig.’ These club-farmers, as they are called, hold a farm in common, each having an equal share. They habitually purchase part of their food. They have paid their rents regularly, and several of them have deposits of money in bank. Mr Mackinnon, who has for more than fifteen years been the factor on the property, gives the following account of the club-farmers of Lochcarron:—

“‘Of the lotters or crofters paying £6 and upwards, a large proportion have long had leases for seven years, which have been renewed from time to time. Those paying smaller rents have not leases. The lots which are occupied by tenants-at-will are much better cultivated than those which are held on leases. I don’t, of course, attribute the better cultivation to the want of leases; all I infer from this fact is, that granting leases to the present occupants of lots has not made them better cultivators of their lots. The most successful of the small tenants are those who have taken farms in common, in which the grazings are chiefly stocked with sheep, and in which there happens to be a sufficient extent of arable land connected with a moderate extent of grazing to enable them to raise crops for their own subsistence. Since the failure of the potatoes, however, all the tenants of this class have been obliged to buy meal. On those farms which are held on lease, the land is still cultivated on the ‘runrig’ system. There are five such farms on Mr Mackenzie’s property in the parish of Lochcarron. One of these is let at £48, to six persons paying £8 each; another for £56, to seven men at £8 each; another for £72, to eight men at £9 each; another to eight men at £13, 10s., equal to £108; another to eight men at £15 each, equal to £120. The cultivation on all of these farms is on the ‘runrig’ system. Their sales of stock and wool are made in common,—that is, in one lot. Their stock, though not common property (each man having his own with a distinctive mark), are managed in common by a person employed for that purpose. The tenants of this class have paid their rents with great punctuality, and have never been in arrear to any amount worth mentioning. A considerable number of them have money in bank. They have their lands at a moderate rent, which is no doubt one cause of their prosperity. Another cause is, that no one of the tenants can subdivide his share without the consent of his co-tenants and of the proprietor. The co-tenants are all opposed to such subdivision of a share by one of their number, and practically no sub-division has taken place. Their families, therefore, as they grow up, are sent out to shift for themselves. Some of the children find employment at home,—some emigrate to the colonies.’”[90]

Of course it is not maintained that this is the most profitable way for the proprietor to let his lands; it is not at all improbable that by adopting the large-farm system, his rent might be considerably increased; only it shows, that when the Highlanders are left to themselves, and have fair play and good opportunities, they are quite capable of looking after their own interests with success.

A comparatively recent Highland grievance is the clearance off of sheep, and the conversion of large districts, in one case extending for about 100 miles, into deer forests. Great complaint has been made that this was a wanton abuse of proprietorship, as it not only displaced large numbers of people, but substituted for such a useful animal as the sheep, an animal like the deer, maintained for mere sport. No doubt the proprietors find it more profitable to lay their lands under deer than under sheep, else they would not do it, and by all accounts[91] it requires the same number of men to look after a tract of country covered with deer, as it would do if the same district were under sheep. But it certainly does seem a harsh, unjust, and very un-British proceeding to depopulate a whole district, as has sometimes been done, of poor but respectable and happy people, for the mere sake of providing sport for a few gentlemen. It is mere sophistry to justify the substitution of deer for sheep, by saying that one as well as the other is killed and eaten as food. For thousands whose daily food is mutton, there is not more than one who regards venison as anything else than[64] a rarity; and by many it is considered unpalatable. Landlords at present can no doubt do what they like with their lands; but it seems to us that in the long-run it is profitable neither to them nor to the nation at large, that large tracts of ground, capable of maintaining such a universally useful animal as the sheep, or of being divided into farms of a moderate size, should be thrown away on deer, an animal of little value but for sport.

As we have more than once said already, the Highlands are in a state of transition, though, we think, near the end of it; and we have no doubt that ere long both proprietors and tenants will find out the way to manage the land most profitable for both, and life there will be as comfortable, and quiet, and undisturbed by agitations of any kind, as it is in any other part of the country.

Since the date of the New Statistical Account and of Sir J. M’Neill’s Report, the same processes have been going on in the Highlands with the same results as during the previous half century. The old population have in many places been removed from their small crofts to make way for large sheep-farmers, sheep having in some districts been giving place to deer, and a large emigration has been going on. Much discontent and bitter writing have of course been caused by these proceedings, but there is no doubt that, as a whole, the Highlands are rapidly improving, although improvement has doubtless come through much tribulation. Except, perhaps, a few of the remoter districts, the Highlands generally are as far forward as the rest of the country. Agriculture is as good, the Highland sheep and cattle are famous, the people are about as comfortable as lowlanders in the same circumstances; education is well diffused; churches of all sects are plentiful, and ere long, doubtless, so far as outward circumstances are concerned, there will be no difference between the Highlands and Lowlands. How the universal improvement of the Highlands is mainly to be accomplished, we shall state in the words of Sir John M’Neill. What he says refers to the state of the country during the distress of 1851, but they apply equally well at the present day.

“It is evident that, were the population reduced to the number that can live in tolerable comfort, that change alone would not secure the future prosperity and independence of those who remain. It may be doubted whether any specific measures calculated to have a material influence on the result, could now be suggested that have not repeatedly been proposed. Increased and improved means of education would tend to enlighten the people, and to fit them for seeking their livelihood in distant places, as well as tend to break the bonds that now confine them to their native localities. But, to accomplish these objects, education must not be confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic. The object of all education is not less to excite the desire for knowledge, than to furnish the means of acquiring it; and in this respect, education in the Highlands is greatly deficient. Instruction in agriculture and the management of stock would facilitate the production of the means of subsistence. A more secure tenure of the lands they occupy would tend to make industrious and respectable crofters more diligent and successful cultivators. But the effects of all such measures depends on the spirit and manner in which they are carried out, as well as on the general management with which they are connected throughout a series of years. It is, no doubt, in the power of every proprietor to promote or retard advancement, and he is justly responsible for the manner in which he uses that power; but its extent appears to have been much overrated. The circumstances that determine the progress of such a people as the inhabitants of those districts, in the vicinity, and forming a part of a great nation far advanced in knowledge and in wealth, appear to be chiefly those which determine the amount of intercourse between them. Where that intercourse is easy and constant, the process of assimilation proceeds rapidly, and the result is as certain as that of opening the sluices in the ascending lock of a canal. Where that intercourse is impeded, or has not been established, it may perhaps be possible to institute a separate local civilization, an isolated social progress; but an instance of its successful accomplishment is not to be found in those districts.

“Whatever tends to facilitate and promote intercourse between the distressed districts[65] and the more advanced parts of the country, tends to assimilate the habits and modes of life of their inhabitants, and, therefore, to promote education, industry, good management, and everything in which the great body excels the small portion that is to be assimilated to it.”[92]

Notwithstanding the immense number of people who have emigrated from the Highlands during the last 100 years, the population of the six chief Highland counties, including the Islands, was in 1861 upwards of 100,000 more than it was in 1755. In the latter year the number of inhabitants in Argyll, Inverness, Caithness, Perth, Ross, and Sutherland, was 332,332; in 1790–98 it was 392,263, which, by 1821, had increased to 447,307; in 1861 it had reached 449,875. Thus, although latterly, happily, the rate of increase has been small compared with what it was during last century, any fear of the depopulation of the Highlands is totally unfounded.

Until lately, the great majority of Highland emigrants preferred British America to any other colony, and at the present day Cape Breton, Prince Edward’s Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and many other districts of British North America, contain a large Highland population, proud of their origin, and in many instances still maintaining their original Gaelic. One of the earliest Highland settlements was, however, in Georgia, where in 1738, a Captain Mackintosh settled along with a considerable number of followers from Inverness-shire. Hence the settlement was called New Inverness.[93] The favourite destination, however, of the earlier Highland emigrants was North Carolina, to which, from about 1760 till the breaking out of the American war, many hundreds removed from Skye and other of the Western Islands. During that war these colonists almost to a man adhered to the British Government, and formed themselves into the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, which did good service, as will be seen in the account of the Highland Regiments. At the conclusion of the war, many settled in Carolina, while others removed to Canada, where land was allotted to them by Government. That the descendants of these early settlers still cherish the old Highland spirit, is testified to by all travellers; some interesting notices of their present condition maybe seen in Mr David Macrae’s American Sketches (1869). Till quite lately, Gaelic sermons were preached to them, and the language of their forefathers we believe has not yet fallen into disuse in the district, being spoken even by some of the negroes. Those who emigrated to this region seem mostly to have been tacksmen, while many of the farmers and cottars settled in British America. Although their fortunes do not seem to have come up to the expectations of themselves and those who sent them out, still there is no doubt that their condition after emigration was in almost every respect far better than it was before, and many of their descendants now occupy responsible and prominent positions in the colony, while all seem to be as comfortable as the most well-to-do Scottish farmers having the advantage of the latter in being proprietors of their own farms. According to the Earl of Selkirk, who himself took out and settled several bands of colonists, “the settlers had every incitement to vigorous exertion from the nature of their tenure. They were allowed to purchase in fee-simple, and to a certain extent on credit. From 50 to 100 acres were allotted to each family at a very moderate price, but none was given gratuitously. To accommodate those who had no superfluity of capital, they were not required to pay the price in full, till the third or fourth year of their possession; and in that time an industrious man may have it in his power to discharge his debt out of the produce of the land itself.”[94] Those who went out without capital at all, could, such was the high rate of wages, soon save as much as would enable them to undertake the management of land of their own. That the Highlanders were as capable of hand and good labour as the lowlanders, is proved by the way they set to work in these colonies, when they were entirely freed from oppression, and dependence, and charity, and had to depend entirely on their own exertions.

[66]

Besides the above settlements, the mass of the population in Caledonia County, State of New York, are of Highland extraction, and there are large settlements in the State of Ohio, besides numerous families and individual settlers in other parts of the United States. Highland names were numerous among the generals of the United States army on both sides in the late civil war.[95]

The fondness of these settlers for the old country, and all that is characteristic of it, is well shown by an anecdote told in Campbell’s Travels in North America (1793). The spirit manifested here is, we believe, as strong even at the present day when hundreds will flock from many miles around to hear a Gaelic sermon by a Scotch minister. Campbell, in his travels in British America, mainly undertaken with the purpose of seeing how the new Highland colonists were succeeding, called at the house of a Mr Angus Mackintosh on the Nashwack. He was from Inverness-shire, and his wife told Campbell they had every necessary of life in abundance on their own property, but there was one thing which she wished much to have—that was heather. “And as she had heard there was an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence, opposite to the mouth of the Merimashee river, where it grew, and as she understood I was going that way, she earnestly entreated I would bring her two or three stalks, or cows as she called it, which she would plant on a barren brae behind her house where she supposed it would grow; that she made the same request to several going that way, but had not got any of it, which she knew would greatly beautify the place; for, said she, ‘This is an ugly country that has no heather; I never yet saw any good or pleasant place without it.’” Latterly, very large numbers of Highlanders have settled in Australia and New Zealand, where, by all accounts, they are in every respect as successful as the most industrious lowland emigrants.

No doubt much immediate suffering and bitterness was caused when the Highlanders were compelled to leave their native land, which by no means treated them kindly; but whether emigration has been disastrous to the Highlands or not, there can be no doubt of its ultimate unspeakable benefit to the Highland emigrants themselves, and to the colonies in which they have settled. Few, we believe, however tempting the offer, would care to quit their adopted home, and return to the bleak hills and rugged shores of their native land.

GAELIC LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, AND MUSIC.

BY THE REV. THOMAS MACLAUCHLAN, LL.D., F.S.A.S.

The literature of the Highlands, although not extensive, is varied, and has excited not a little interest in the world of letters. The existing remains are of various ages, carrying us back, in the estimation of some writers, to the second century, while contributions are making to it still, and are likely to be made for several generations.

It has been often said that the literature of the Celts of Ireland was much more extensive than that of the Celts of Scotland—that the former were in fact a more literary people—that the ecclesiastics, and medical men, and historians (seanachies) of Scotland had less culture than those of the sister island, and that they must be held thus to have been a stage behind them in civilisation and progress. Judging by the remains which exist, there seems to be considerable ground for such[67] a conclusion. Scotland can produce nothing like the MS. collections in possession of Trinity College Dublin, or the Royal Irish Academy. There are numerous fragments of considerable value in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and in the hands of private parties throughout Scotland, but there is nothing to compare with the Book of Lecan, Leabhar na h-uidhre, and the other remains of the ancient literary culture of Ireland, which exist among the collections now brought together in Dublin; nor with such remains of what is called Irish scholarship as are to be found in Milan, Brussels, and other places on the continent of Europe.

At the same time there is room for questioning how far the claims of Ireland to the whole of that literature are good. Irish scholars are not backward in pressing the claims of their own country to everything of any interest that may be called Celtic. If we acquiesce in these claims, Scotland will be left without a shred of aught which she can call her own in the way of Celtic literature; and there is a class of Scottish scholars who, somewhat more generous than discriminating, have been disposed to acquiesce but too readily in those claims. We have our doubts as to Ireland having furnished Scotland with its Gaelic population, and we have still stronger doubts as to Ireland having been the source of all the Celtic literature which she claims. A certain class of writers are at once prepared to allow that the Bobbio MSS. and those other continental Gaelic MSS. of which Zeuss has made such admirable use in his Grammatica Celtica, are all Irish, and they are taken as illustrative alike of the zeal and culture of the early Irish Church. And yet there is no evidence of such being the case. The language certainly is not Irish, nor are the names of such of the writers as are usually associated with the writings. Columbanus, the founder of the Bobbio Institution, may have been an Irishman, but he may have been a Scotchman. He may have gone from Durrow, but he may have gone from Iona. The latter was no less famous than the former, and had a staff of men quite as remarkable. We have authentic information regarding its ancient history. It sent out Aidan to Northumberland, and numerous successors after him, and there is much presumptive evidence that many of these early missionaries took their departure from Scotland, and carried with them their Scottish literature to the Continent of Europe. And the language of the writers is no evidence to the contrary. In so far as the Gaelic was written at this early period, the dialect used was common to Ireland and Scotland. To say that a work is Irish because written in what is called the Irish dialect is absurd. There was no such thing as an Irish dialect. The written language of the whole Gaelic race was long the same throughout, and it would have been impossible for any man to have said to which of the sections into which that race was divided any piece of writing belonged. This has long been evident to men who have made a study of the question, but recent relics of Scottish Gaelic which have come to light, and have been published, put the matter beyond a doubt. Mr Whitley Stokes, than whom there is no better authority, has said of a passage in the “Book of Deer” that the language of it is identical with that of the MSS. which form the basis of the learned grammar of Zeuss: and there can be no doubt that the “Book of Deer” is of Scottish authorship. It is difficult to convince Irish scholars of this, but it is no less true on that account. Indeed, what is called the Irish dialect has been employed for literary purposes in Scotland down to a recent period, the first book in the vernacular of the Scottish Highlands having been printed so lately as the middle of last century. And it is important to observe that this literary dialect, said to be Irish, is nearly as far apart from the ordinary Gaelic vernacular of Ireland as it is from that of Scotland.

But besides this possibility of having writings that are really Scottish counted as Irish from their being written in the same dialect, the Gaelic literature of Scotland has suffered from other causes. Among these were the changes in the ecclesiastical condition of the country which took place from time to time. First of all there was the change which took place under the government of Malcolm III. (Ceann-mor) and his sons, which led to the downfall of the ancient Scottish Church, and the supplanting of it by the Roman Hierarchy. Any literature existing in the 12th century would have been of the older church, and[68] would have little interest for the institution which took its place. That there was such a literature is obvious from the “Book of Deer,” and that it existed among all the institutions of a like kind in Scotland is a fair and reasonable inference from the existence and character of that book. Why this is the only fragment of such a literature remaining is a question of much interest, which may perhaps be solved by the fact that the clergy of the later church could have felt little interest in preserving the memorials of a period which they must have been glad to have seen passed away. Then the Scottish Reformation and the rise of the Protestant Church, however favourable to literature, would not have been favourable to the preservation of such literature. The old receptacles of such writings were broken up, and their contents probably destroyed or dispersed, as associated with what was now felt to be a superstitious worship. There is reason to believe that the Kilbride collection of MSS. now in the Advocates’ Library, and obtained from the family of Maclachlan of Kilbride, was to some extent a portion of the old library of Iona, one of the last Abbots of which was a Ferquhard M’Lachlan.

Besides these influences, unfavourable to the preservation of the ancient literature of the Scottish Highlands, we have the fierce raid of Edward I. of England into the country, and the carrying away of all the national muniments. Some of these were in all probability Gaelic. A Gaelic king and a Gaelic kingdom were then things not long past in Scotland; and seeing they are found elsewhere, is there not reason to believe that among them were lists of Scottish and Pictish kings, and other documents of historical importance, such as formed the basis of those Bardic addresses made by the royal bards to the kings on the occasion of their coronation? These might have been among the records afterwards intended to be returned to Scotland, and which perished in the miserable shipwreck of the vessel that bore them. These causes may account for the want of a more extensive ancient Celtic literature in Scotland, and for the more advantageous position occupied in this respect by Ireland. Ireland neither suffered from the popular feeling evoked at the Reformation, nor from the spoliations of an Edward of England, as Scotland did. And hence the abundant remains still existing of a past literature there.

And yet Scotland does not altogether want an ancient Celtic literature, and the past few years have done much to bring it to light. It is not impossible that among our public libraries and private repositories relics may be still lying of high interest and historical value, and which more careful research may yet bring into view. The Dean of Lismore’s book has only been given to the world within the last six years, and more recently still we have the “Book of Deer,” a relic of the 11th or 12th century.

On taking a survey of this literature, it might be thought most natural to commence with the Ossianic remains, both on account of the prominence which they have received and the interest and controversy they have excited, and also because they are held by many to have a claim to the highest antiquity,—to be the offspring of an age not later than the 2d or 3d century. But it is usual to associate literature with writing, and as the Gaelic language has been a written one from a very early period, we think it best to keep up this association, and to take up the written remains of the language as nearly as may be in their chronological order. The first of these to which reference may be made is

This poem is found in a MS. given to the Highland Society by Lord Bannatyne, and now in the archives of the Advocates’ Library. The date of the MS. is 1208, but there is every reason to believe that the poem is of much higher antiquity. The preserved copy bears to have been written at Glenmasan, a mountain valley in the parish of Dunoon, in Cowal. The MS. contains other fragments of tales in prose, but we shall refer only to the poetical story of Deirdre, or, as it is usually called in Gaelic, “Dàn Chloinn Uisneachain.” The tale is a famous one in the Highlands, and the heroes of it, the sons of Usnoth, have given name to Dun Mhac Uisneachain, or Dun Mac Sniochain, said to be the Roman Beregonium,[69] in the parish of Ardchattan in Argyleshire. We give the following version of the poem as it appears in the Report of the Highland Society on the Poems of Ossian (p. 298).

There is some change in the translation as compared with that given in the Highland Society’s Report, the meaning, however, being nearly identical in both. The tale to which this mournful lyric is attached,—the story of the children of Usnoth and their sad fate, bears that Conor was king of Ulster. Visiting on one occasion the house of Feilim, his seanachie, Feilim’s wife, was delivered of a daughter while the king was in the house. Cathbad the Druid, who was present, prophesied that many disasters should befall Ulster on account of the child then born. The king resolved to bring her up as his own future wife, and for this end enclosed her in a tower where she was excluded from all intercourse with men, except her tutor, her nurse, and an attendant called Lavarcam. It happened that in the course of time, by means of this Lavarcam, she came to see Naos, the son of Usnoth. She at once formed a warm affection for him; the affection was reciprocated, and Naos and Deirdre, by which name the young woman was called, fled to Scotland, accompanied by Ainle and Ardan, the brothers of Naos. Here they were kindly received by the king, and had lands given them for their support. It is not unlikely that these lands were in the neighbourhood of Dun Mhac Uisneachain in Lorn. Here they lived long and happily. At length Conor desired their return, and sent a messenger to Scotland, promising them welcome and security in Ireland if they would but return. Deirdre strongly objected, fearing the treachery of Conor, but she was overruled by the urgency of her husband and his brothers. They left Scotland, Deirdre composing and singing the above mournful lay. In Ireland they were at first received with apparent kindness, but soon after the house in which they dwelt was surrounded by Conor and his men, and after deeds of matchless valour the three brothers were put[70] to death, in defiance of Conor’s pledge. The broken hearted Deirdre cast herself on the grave of Naos and died, having first composed and sung a lament for his death. This is one of the most touching in the catalogue of Celtic tales; and it is interesting to observe the influence it exerted over the Celtic mind by its effect upon the topographical nomenclature of the country. There are several Dun Deirdres to be found still. One is prominent in the vale of the Nevis, near Fortwilliam, and another occupies the summit of a magnificent rock overhanging Loch Ness, in Stratherrick. Naos, too, has given his name to rocks, and woods, and lakes ranging from Ayrshire to Inverness-shire, but the most signal of all is the great lake which fills the eastern portion of the Caledonian valley, Loch Ness. The old Statistical Account of Inverness states that the name of this lake was understood to be derived from some mythical person among the old Celts; and there can be little doubt that the person was Naos. The lake of Naos (Naise in the genitive), lies below, and overhanging it is the Tower of Deirdre. The propinquity is natural, and the fact is evidence of the great antiquity of the tale.

There are other MSS. of high antiquity in existence said to be Scotch; but it is sufficient to refer for an account of these to the Appendix to the Report of the Highland Society on the Poems of Ossian, an account written by an admirable Celtic scholar, Dr Donald Smith, the brother of Dr John Smith of Campbeltown, so distinguished in the same field.

The next relic of Celtic literature to which we refer is

This is a vellum MS. of eighty-six folios, about six inches long by three broad, discovered in the University Library of Cambridge, by Mr Bradshaw, the librarian of the University. It had belonged to a distinguished collector of books, Bishop Moore of Norwich, and afterwards of Ely, whose library was presented to the University more than a century ago. The chief portion of the book is in Latin, and is said to be as old as the 9th century. This portion contains the Gospel of St John, and portions of the other three Gospels. The MS. also contains part of an Office for the visitation of the sick, and the Apostles’ Creed. There is much interest in this portion of the book as indicative of the state of learning in the Celtic Church at the time. It shows that the ecclesiastics of that Church kept pace with the age in which they lived, that they knew their Bible, and could both write and read in Latin. The MS. belonged to a Culdee establishment, and is therefore a memorial of the ancient Celtic Church. It is a pity that we possess so few memorials of that Church, convinced as we are that, did we know the truth, many of the statements made regarding it by men of a different age, and belonging to a differently constituted ecclesiastical system, would be found to be unsupported by the evidence. It is strange that if the Culdee establishments were what many modern writers make them to have been, they should have had so many tokens of their popularity as this volume exhibits; and we know well that that Church did not fall before the assaults of a hostile population, but before those of a hostile king.

But the more interesting portion of the Book of Deer, in connection with our inquiry, will be found in the Gaelic entries on the margin and in the vacant spaces of the volume. These have all been given to the world in the recent publication of portions of the book by the Spalding Club, under the editorship of Dr John Stuart. Celtic scholars are deeply indebted to the Spalding Club for this admirable publication, and although many of them will differ from the editor in some of the views which he gives in his accompanying disquisitions, and even in some of the readings of the Gaelic, they cannot but feel indebted to him for the style in which he has furnished them with the original, for it is really so, in the plates which the volume contains. On these every man can comment for himself and form his own inferences. We have given ours in this MS.

[71]

Such is the legend of the foundation of the old monastery of Deer, as preserved in this book, and written probably in the twelfth century. It was in all probability handed down from the close of the sixth or from a later period, but it must not be forgotten that a period of six hundred years had elapsed between the events here recorded and the record itself as it appears. It is hard to say whether Columba ever made this expedition to Buchan, or whether Drostan, whose name is in all likelihood British, lived in the time of Columba. The Aberdeen Breviary makes him nephew of the saint, but there is no mention of him in this or any other connection by early ecclesiastical writers, and there is every reason to believe that he belonged to a later period. It was of some consequence at this time to connect any such establishment as that at Deer with the name of Columba. There is nothing improbable in its having been founded by Drostan.

It is interesting to observe several things which are brought to light by this legend of the twelfth century. It teaches us what the men of the period believed regarding the sixth. The ecclesiastics of Deer believed that their own institution had been founded so early as the sixth century, and clearly that they were the successors of the founders. If this be true, gospel light shone among the Picts of Buchan almost as soon as among the people of Iona. It has been maintained that previous to Columba’s coming to Scotland the country had felt powerfully the influence of Christianity,[96] and the legend of Deer would seem to corroborate the statement. From the palace of Brude the king, in the neighbourhood of Inverness, on to the dwelling of the Mormaor, or Governor of Buchan, Christianity occupied the country so early as the age of Columba. But this is a legend, and must not be made more of than it is worth. Then this legend gives us some view of the civil policy of the sixth century, as the men of the twelfth viewed it. The chief governor of Buchan was Bede, the same name with that of the venerable Northumbrian historian of the eighth century. He is simply designated as Cruthnec (Cruithneach) or the Pict. Was this because there were other inhabitants in the country besides Picts at the time, or because they were Picts in contrast with the people of that day? The probability is, that these writers of the twelfth century designated Bede as a Pict, in contradistinction to themselves, who were probably of Scotic origin. Then the names in this document are of interest. Besides that of Bede, we have Drostan and Cosgreg, his father, and Garnaid. Bede, Drostan, Cosgreg, and Garnaid, are names not known in the Gaelic nomenclature of Scotland or Ireland. And there are names of places, Aberdobhoir, known as Aberdour to this day, Buchan also in daily use, Cloch in tiprat not known now, and Pit mac garnaid also[72] become obsolete. Aberdobhoir (Aberdwfr) is purely a British name; Buchan, derived from the British Bwch, a cow, is also British; Pit mac garnaid, with the exception of the Mac, is not Gaelic, so that the only Gaelic name in the legend is Cloch in tiprat, a merely descriptive term. This goes far to show what the character of the early topography of Scotland really is.

Then there is light thrown upon the civil arrangements of the Celtic state. We read nothing of chiefs and clans, but we have Mormaors (great officers), and Toiseachs (leaders), the next officer in point of rank, understood to be connected with the military arrangements of the country, the one being the head of the civil and the other of the military organisation. At this time there was a Celtic kingdom in Scotland, with a well established and well organised government, entirely different from what appears afterwards under the feudal system of the Anglo-Saxons, when the people became divided into clans, each under their separate chiefs, waging perpetual war with each other. Of all this the Book of Deer cannot and does not speak authoritatively, but it indicates the belief of the twelfth century with regard to the state of the sixth.

The farther Gaelic contents of the Book of Deer are notices of grants of land conferred by the friends of the institution. None of these are real charters, but the age of charters had come, and it was important that persons holding lands should have some formal title to them. Hence the notices of grants inscribed on the margin of this book, all without date, save that there is a copy of a Latin charter of David I., who began his reign in the year 1124.

The memoranda of grants to the monastery are in one case headed with the following blessing—Acus bennact inchomded arcecmormar acusarcectosech chomallfas acusdansil daneis. “And the blessing of the one God on every governor and every leader who keeps this, and to their seed afterwards.” The first grant recorded follows immediately after the legend given above. It narrates that Comgeall mac eda gave from Orti to Furene to Columba and to Drostan; that Moridach M’Morcunn gave Pit mac Garnait and Achad toche temni, the former being Mormaor and the latter Toiseach. Matain M’Caerill gave a Mormaor’s share in Altin (not Altere, as in the Spalding Club’s edition), and Culn (not Culii) M’Batin gave the share of a Toiseach. Domnall M’Giric and Maelbrigte M’Cathail gave Pett in muilenn to Drostan. Cathal M’Morcunt gave Achad naglerech to Drostan. Domnall M’Ruadri and Malcolum M’Culeon gave Bidbin to God and to Drostan. Malcolum M’Cinatha (Malcolm the Second) gave a king’s share in Bidbin and in Pett M’Gobroig, and two davachs above Rosabard. Malcolum M’Mailbrigte gave the Delerc. Malsnecte M’Luloig gave Pett Malduib to Drostan. Domnall M’Meic Dubhacin sacrificed every offering to Drostan. Cathal sacrificed in the same manner his Toiseach’s share, and gave the food of a hundred every Christmas, and every Pasch to God and to Drostan. Kenneth Mac meic Dobarcon and Cathal gave Alterin alla from Te (Tigh) na Camon as far as the birch tree between the two Alterins. Domnall and Cathal gave Etdanin to God and to Drostan. Cainneach and Domnall and Cathal sacrificed all these offerings to God and to Drostan from beginning to end free, from Mormaors and from Toiseachs to the day of judgment.

It will be observed that some of the words in this translation are different from those given in the edition of the Spalding Club. Some of the readings in that edition, notwithstanding its general accuracy, are doubtful. In the case of uethe na camone, unless the ue is understood as standing for from, there is no starting point at all in the passage describing the grant. Besides, we read Altin allend, as the name of Altin or Alterin in another grant. This seems to have escaped the notice of the learned translator.

These grants are of interest for various reasons. We have first of all the names of the grantees and others, as the names common during the twelfth and previous centuries, for these grants go back to a period earlier than the reign of Malcolm the Second, when the first change began to take place in the old Celtic system of polity. We have such names as Comgeall Mac Eda, probably Mac Aoidh, or, as spelt now in English, Mackay; Moridach M’Morcunn[73] (Morgan), or, as now spelt, M’Morran; Matain M’Caerill, Matthew M’Kerroll; Culn M’Batin, Colin M’Bean; Domhnall M’Girig, Donald M’Erig (Gregor or Eric?); Malbrigte M’Cathail, Gilbert M’Kail; Cathal M’Morcunt, Cathal M’Morran; Domhnall M’Ruadri, Donald M’Rory; Malcolum M’Culeon, Malcolm M’Colin; Malcolum M’Cinnatha, Malcolm M’Kenneth, now M’Kenzie. This was king Malcolm the Second, whose Celtic designation is of the same character with that of the other parties in the notice. Malcolum M’Mailbrigte, Malcolm M’Malbride; the nearest approach to the latter name in present use is Gilbert. Malsnecte M’Luloig, Malsnechta M’Lulaich. The former of these names is obsolete, but M’Lullich is known as a surname to this day. Domnall M’Meic Dubhacin (not Dubbacin), the latter name not known now. The name Dobharcon is the genitive of Dobharcu, an otter. The names of animals were frequently applied to men at the time among the Celts. The father of King Brude was Mialchu, a greyhound. Loilgheach (Lulach), a man’s name, is in reality a milch cow.

The next set of grants entered on the margin of this remarkable record are as follows:—Donchad M’Meic Bead mec Hidid (probably the same with Eda, and therefore Aoidh), gave Acchad Madchor to Christ and to Drostan and to Columcille; Malechi and Comgell and Gillecriosd M’Fingun witnesses, and Malcoluim M’Molini. Cormac M’Cennedig gave as far as Scali merlec. Comgell M’Caennaig, the Toiseach of Clan Canan, gave to Christ and to Drostan and to Columcille as far as the Gortlie mor, at the part nearest to Aldin Alenn, from Dubuci to Lurchara, both hill and field free from Toiseachs for ever, and a blessing on those who observe, and a curse on those who oppose this.

The names here are different from those in the former entry, with few exceptions. They are Duncan, son of Macbeth, son of Hugh or Ay, Malachi, Comgall, Gilchrist M’Kinnon, and Malcolm M’Millan, Comgall M’Caennaig (M’Coinnich or M’Kenzie?) In this entry we have the place which is read Altere and Alterin by Mr Whitley Stokes. It is here entered as Aldin Alenn, as it is in a former grant entered as Altin. In no case is the er written in full, so that Alterin is a guess. But there is no doubt that Aldin Alenn and Alterin alla are the same place. If it be Alterin the Alla may mean rough, stony, as opposed to a more level and smooth place of the same name. It will be observed that in this entry the name of a clan appears Clande Canan (Clann Chanain). There was such a clan in Argyleshire who were treasurers of the Argyle family, and derived their name from the Gaelic Càin, a Tax. It is not improbable that the name in Buchan might have been applied to a family of hereditary tax-gatherers.

The next series of grants entered on the margin of the “Book of Deer” are as follows:—Colbain Mormaor of Buchan, and Eva, daughter of Gartnait, his wife, and Donnalic M’Sithig, the Toiseach of Clenni Morgainn, sacrificed all the offerings to God and to Drostan, and to Columcille, and to Peter the Apostle, from all the exactions made on a portion of four davachs, from the high monasteries of Scotland generally and the high churches. The witnesses are Brocein and Cormac, Abbot of Turbruaid, and Morgann M’Donnchaid, and Gilli Petair M’Donnchaid, and Malæchin, and the two M’Matni, and the chief men of Buchan, all as witnesses in Elain (Ellon).

The names in this entry are Colban, the mormaor, a name obsolete now—although it would seem to appear in M’Cubbin—Eva, and Gartnait. The former seems to have been the Gaelic form of Eve, and the latter, the name of Eva’s father, is gone out of use, unless it appear in M’Carthy—Donnalic (it is Donnachac, as transcribed in the edition of the Spalding Club), M’Sithig or Donnalic M’Keich, the surname well known still in the Highlands—Brocein, the little badger, Cormac, Morgan, Gillepedair, Malæchin, the servant of Eachainn or Hector, and M’Matni or M’Mahon, the English Matheson. There is another instance here of a clan, the clan Morgan.

The most of these names must be understood merely as patronymic, the son called, according to the Celtic custom, after the name of his father. There is no reason to think that these were clan names in the usual sense. King Malcolm II. is called Malcolum M’Cinnatha,[74] or Malcolm the son of Kenneth, but it would be sufficiently absurd to conclude that Malcolm was a Mackenzie. And yet there are two clans referred to in these remarkable records, the clan Canan and the clan Morgan. There is no reason to believe that either the Buchanans of Stirlingshire or of Argyleshire had any connection with the tribe of Canan mentioned here; but it is possible that the Mackays of the Reay country, whose ancient name was Clan Morgan, may have derived their origin from Buchan. It is interesting to observe that the Toiseachs are associated with these clans, Comgell Mac Caennaig being called the Toiseach of Clan Canan, and Donnalic M’Sithig the Toiseach of Clan Morgan, although neither of the men are designated by the clan name. It would seem that under the Mormaors the family system existed and was acknowledged, the Mormaor being the representative of the king, and the Toiseach the head of the sept, who led his followers to battle when called upon to do so. At the same time the clan system would seem to have been in an entirely different condition from that to which it attained after the introduction of the feudal system, when the chiefs for the first time got feudal titles to their lands.

Many other inferences might be made from these interesting records. It is enough, however, to say that they prove beyond a question the existence of a literary culture and a social organisation among the ancient Celts for which they do not always get credit; and if such a book existed at Deer, what reason is there to doubt that similar books were numerously dispersed over the other ecclesiastical institutions of the country?

There is one curious entry towards the close of the MS.—“Forchubus caichduini imbia arrath in lebran colli. aratardda bendacht foranmain in truagan rodscribai ... 7,” which is thus translated by Mr Whitley Stokes:—“Be it on the conscience of every one in whom shall be for grace the booklet with splendour: that he give a blessing on the soul of the wretchock who wrote it.”

This is probably the true meaning of the Gaelic. But the original might be rendered in English by the following translation:—“Let it be on the conscience of each man in whom shall be for good fortune the booklet with colour, that he give a blessing on the soul of the poor one who wrote it.” Rath is good fortune, and li is colour, referring probably to the coloured portions of the writing, and Truaghan is the Gaelic synonym of the “miserus” or “miserimus” of the old Celtic church. Mr Whitley Stokes, as quoted by Dr Stuart, says (p. lx), “In point of language this is identical with the oldest Irish glosses in Zeuss’ Grammatica Celtica.”

This relic of Celtic literature might have been taken as chronologically preceding the Book of Deer, but while portions of the latter are looked upon as having been written previous to the ninth century, the former, so far as we know, is of the age of Malcolm III. It is said to have been sung by the Gaelic bard of the royal house at the coronation of Malcolm. It is transcribed here as it appears in the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, where it is given as copied from the M’Firbis MS. in the Royal Irish Academy:—

Although this poem is given in Gaelic as it appears in the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots,[97] the English translation differs in some places. At p. 60 Tri bliadhna fo cuig[98] is translated by Mr Skene “three years five times,” while in the same page dech m-bliadhna fo seacht is translated “ten years and seven.” There is no apparent ground for such a distinction. So in p. 61 ceathar ficheat, eighty, is translated “four and twenty,” which is at variance with the usus of the Gaelic language. The above translation seems the true one.

This poem is manifestly of great antiquity and of deep historical interest. Of the authorship little is known. It has been suggested that it is of Irish origin.[99] This is possible, for judging by the synchronisms of Flann Mainistreach, the Irish seanachies were well informed on Scottish matters. But whether Irish or not, the whole poem refers to Scotland, and is entitled to a place among the Celtic remains of the country. It is our oldest and most authentic record of the Scottish kings, and in this respect commended itself to the regard of Pinkerton, who was no friend of anything that was creditable to the Celts or helped to establish their claims.

The name of Muireadhach Albannach is well known among the literary traditions of Celtic Scotland. In a curious genealogy by Lachlan Mac Mhuireadhaich or Vuirich, usually called Lachlan M’Pherson, given in the Report of the Highland Society of Scotland on Ossian,[100] the said Lachlan traces his own genealogy back through eighteen generations to this Muireadhach or Murdoch of Scotland, and states that his ancestors were bards to M’Donald of Clanronald during the period. The original Murdoch was an ecclesiastic, and has probably given their name to the whole M’Pherson clan. There is a curious poetical dialogue given in the Dean of Lismore’s Book between him and Cathal Cròdhearg, King of Connaught, who flourished in the close of the 12th century, upon their entering at the same time on a monastic life. The poem would seem to show Murdoch to have been a man of[77] high birth, while his own compositions are evidence both of his religious earnestness and his poetical talent. Until the publication of the Dean of Lismore’s book, it was not known that there were any remains of his compositions in existence, but that collection contains several, all on religious subjects. The following is a specimen of his composition, and of the Gaelic poetry of the 12th or 13th century:—

It is not necessary to give farther specimens of Murdoch of Scotland’s poetry here, as those existing are very similar to the above; but several specimens will be found in the Dean of Lismore’s Book, from which the above is taken. The original has been difficult to read, and in consequence to render accurately, but there is little doubt that the real meaning of the poem is given. If the Book of Deer be a specimen of the Gaelic at the close of the 12th century in the east of Scotland, the above is a specimen of the same language from the west, probably from the Hebrides.

In 1408, Donald, Lord of the Isles, the hero of Harlaw, made a grant of lands in Islay to Brian Vicar Mackay, one of the old Mackays of the island. The charter conveying these lands still exists, and is written in the Gaelic language. As it is now published by the Record Commission, it is not necessary to give it here, but it is a document of much interest, written by Fergus M’Beth or Beaton, one of the famous Beatons who were physicians to the Lord of the Isles, and signed with the holograph of the great island chief himself. The lands conveyed are in the eastern part of the island, north of the Mull of Oa, and embrace such well-known places as Baile-Vicar, Cornabus, Tocamol, Cracobus, &c. The style of the charter is that of the usual feudal charters written in Latin, but the remarkable thing is to find a document of the kind written in Gaelic at a time when such a thing was almost unknown in the Saxon dialects of either Scotland or England.

The Highlands seem to have had a large number of men of letters during the 15th century, and most of our existing manuscript materials seem to be of that age. These materials are of various kinds. They consist of short theological treatises, with traditional anecdotes of saints and others which seem to[78] have been prevalent in the church at the time. One of the theological treatises now in the library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, has reference to the Sacrament of the Supper, and maintains the purely Protestant doctrine that the sacrament can only profit those who receive it in faith. There are anecdotes of priests, often called by the Gaelic name of maighistir, which would indicate that the priests of the period had wives, and that the doctrine of celibacy had not then entered the Scottish church.

Some of the manuscripts are genealogical, and as such are of much value to the Scottish historian. They show what the ideas of the seanachies of the thirteenth century were regarding the origin of the Highland clans. Some of these genealogical records have been published by the Iona Club, and are in this way accessible to the general reader. They are indicative of the care taken at the period to preserve memorials of family history, and were of value not only as conducing to the gratification of family pride, but to the preservation of family property, inasmuch as these were the only means in accordance with which succession to property could be determined. The consequence is, that they are not always very reliable, favour being apt to bias the recorder on one side, just as enmity and ill-will were apt to bias him on the other. It is remarkable how ready the seanachy of a hostile clan was to proclaim the line of the rival race illegitimate. This affects the value of these records, but they are valuable notwithstanding, and are to a considerable extent reliable, especially within the period where authentic information could be obtained by the writer.

A portion of these manuscripts deals with medical and metaphysical subjects, the two being often combined. We are hardly prepared to learn to how great an extent these subjects were studied at an early period in the Highlands. We are apt to think that the region was a barbarous one without either art or science. A sight of the sculptures which distinguished the 14th and 15th centuries is prone to remove this impression. We find a style of sculpture still remaining in ancient crosses and gravestones that is characteristic of the Highlands; elaborate ornaments of a distinct character, rich and well executed tracery, figures well designed and finished. Such sculptures, following upon those of the prehistoric period found still within the ancient Pictish territory, exist chiefly throughout the West Highlands, and indicate that one art, at least, of native growth, distinguished the Gaelic Celts of the Middle Ages.

The medical manuscripts existing are chiefly the productions of the famous Macbeths or Beatons, the hereditary physicians of the Lords of the Isles for a long series of years. The charter of lands in Islay, already referred to, drawn out by Fergus Beaton, is of a date as early as 1408, and three hundred years after, men of the same race are found occupying the same position. Hereditary physicians might seem to offer but poor prospects to their patients, and that especially at a time when schools of medicine were almost if not altogether unknown in the country; but the fact is, that this was the only mode in which medical knowledge could be maintained at all. If such knowledge were not transmitted from father to son, the probability was that it would perish, just as was the case with the genealogical knowledge of the seanachies. This transmission, however, was provided for in the Celtic system, and while there was no doubt a considerable difference between individuals in the succession in point of mental endowments, they would all possess a certain measure of skill and acquirement as the result of family experience. These men were students of their science as it existed at the time. The Moors were then the chief writers on medicine. Averroes and Avicenna were men whose names were distinguished, and whose works, although little known now, extended to folios. Along with their real and substantial scientific acquirements, they dived deep into the secrets of Astrology, and our Celtic students, while ready disciples of them in the former study, followed them most faithfully and zealously in the latter likewise. There are numerous medical and astrological treatises still existing written in the Gaelic language, and taken chiefly from the works of Moorish and Arabian writers. How these works reached the Scottish Highlands it is hard to say, nor is it easier to understand how the ingredients of the medical prescriptions of these practitioners could be[79] obtained in a region so inaccessible at the time. The following specimen of the written Gaelic of medical manuscripts, is taken from Dr O’Donovan’s grammar:—[102]

This extract is taken from an Irish manuscript, but the language is identical with that in use in the writings of the Beatons. Celtic Scotland and Celtic Ireland followed the same system in medicine as in theology and poetry.

The metaphysical discussions, if they may be so called, are very curious, being characterised by the features which distinguished the science of metaphysics at the time. The most remarkable thing is that there are Gaelic terms to express the most abstract ideas in metaphysics;—terms which are now obsolete, and would not be understood by any ordinary Gaelic speaker. A perusal of these ancient writings shows how much the language has declined, and to what an extent it was cultivated at an early period. So with astrology, its terms are translated and the science is fully set forth. Tables are furnished of the position of the stars by means of which to foretell the character of future events. Whatever literature existed in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, extended its influence to the Scottish Highlands. The nation was by no means in such a state of barbarism as some writers would lead us to expect. They had legal forms, for we have a formal legal charter of lands written in Gaelic; they had medical men of skill and acquirement; they had writers on law and theology, and they had men skilled in architecture and sculpture.

When the Highland Society of Scotland were engaged in preparing their report on the poems of Ossian, they thought it important to search with all possible diligence after such sources of ancient Gaelic poetry as might have been open to Macpherson, and especially for such written remains as might still be found in the country. Among others they applied to the Highland Society of London, whose secretary at the time, Mr John Mackenzie, was an enthusiastic Highlander, and an excellent Gaelic scholar. The Society furnished several interesting manuscripts which they had succeeded in collecting, and among these an ancient paper book which has since been called the “Book of the Dean of Lismore.” This book, which now lies in the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh, is a small quarto very much defaced, of about seven inches square, and one inch and a quarter in thickness. It is bound in a piece of coarse sheepskin, and seems to have been much tossed about. The manuscript is written in what may be called phonetic Gaelic, the words being spelled on the same principle as the Welsh and Manx, although the application of the principle is very different. “Athair,” father, is “Ayr;” “Saor,” free, is “Seyr;” “Fhuair,” found, is “Hoar;” “Leodhas,” Lewis, is “Looyss;” “iuchair,” a key, is “ewthir;” “ghràdh,” love, is “Zrau.” This principle of phonetic spelling, with a partial admission of the Irish eclipsis and the Irish dot in aspiration, distinguishes the whole manuscript, and has made it very difficult to interpret. The letter used is the English letter of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the MS. was transcribed by the late Mr Ewen M’Lachlan of Aberdeen, an admirable Gaelic scholar. But no attempt was made to transfer its contents into modern Gaelic, or to interpret them, save in the case of a few fragments which[80] were transferred and interpreted by Dr Smith for the Highland Society. Recently, however, the whole manuscript, with few exceptions, has been transcribed, presented in a modern Gaelic dress, translated and annotated, by the writer; and a historical introduction and additional notes have been furnished by Dr W. F. Skene.

The volume is full of interest, as presenting a view of the native literature of the Highlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, while it contains productions of a much earlier age. The fragments which it contains are both Scottish and Irish, showing how familiar the bardic schools were with the productions of both countries. Much of the contents consists of fragments of what is usually called Ossianic poetry—compositions by Ossian, by Fergus filidh his brother, by Conall MacEdirsceoil, by Caoilte M’Ronan, and by poets of a later age, who imitated these ancient bards, such as Allan MacRorie, Gilliecallum Mac an Olla, and others. The collection bears on one of its pages the name “Jacobus M’Gregor decanus Lismorensis,” James M’Gregor, Dean of Lismore, and it has been conjectured from this fact and the resemblance of the writing in the signature to that of the body of the manuscript, that this was the compiler of the work. That the manuscript was the work of a M’Gregor is pretty evident. It contains a series of obits of important men, most of them chiefs and other men of note of the clan Gregor, and there are among the poetical pieces of a date later than the Ossianic, numerous songs in praise of that clan. It seems, however, that M’Gregor had a brother called Dougal, who designates himself daoroglach, or “apprentice,” who had some share in making the compilation. These M’Gregors belonged to Fortingall in Perthshire, although James held office in the diocese of Argyll. He was vicar of the parish of Fortingall, and it is presumed usually resided there.

In giving specimens from M’Gregor’s collection, it may be desirable to treat of the whole of what is called the Ossianic poetry. It is in this collection that we find the earliest written specimens of it, and although Macpherson’s Ossian did not appear for two centuries later, it seems better to group the whole together in this portion of our notice. The word “ursgeul” was applied by the Highlanders to these poetical tales. This word has been translated “a new tale,” as if the ùr here meant “new” in contradistinction to older tales. But the word ùr meant “noble” or “great,” as well as “new,” and the word as so used must be understood as meaning a “noble tale” in contradistinction to the sgeulachd, or other tale of less note. From what source M’Gregor derived his materials is not said, but the probability is that he was indebted both to manuscripts and to oral tradition for them. We shall here give a specimen of the Dean’s collection as it appears in the original, with a version in regular Gaelic spelling, and an English translation. It is the poem usually called “Bàs Dhiarmaid,” or the Death of Diarmad.