THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS-THEIR SOCIAL AND LITERARY HISTORY-1775-1832.

[BY PROVOST MACANDREW.]

THERE was a common idea in the Lowlands and in England at this time that our ancestors were a rude and barbarous, and even savage people, but no idea could be more mistaken. The better classes lived in great comfort; they had, as a rule, houses of two stories, and if they wanted some of the appliances and conveniences of life which were to be obtained in cities and more populous places, their mode of life was neither rude nor inelegant, while in culture and refinement of manners the Highland gentleman was certainly the equal of his southern neighbour. The domestic economy was of course suited to the outward circumstances; the farm supplied, as Mrs. Grant of Laggan says, all that was absolutely necessary for life. For the table it gave beef and mutton, meal and milk. It gave wool and flax, which were spun in the household, and woven into cloth, blankets, and linen by country weavers; the females made their own clothes, and those of the men were made by itinerant tailors, who went about from house to house, remaining at each place as long as there was work, and acting as the news-carriers and sometimes as the bards and story-tellers of the district. The life, too, was social. Hospitality was unbounded; every house was open to every comer, and intercourse was enjoyed, in the most agreeable of all ways, by long visits at each other's houses; and in hall, bothie, and kitchen the song, and dance, and story were the nightly amusement of rich and poor. Boswell was puzzled as to how the numbers which assembled in the houses, where he and his great friend visited, could be accommodated. He guessed that it was managed by separating husband and wife, and accommodating a number of ladies in one room, and a number of gentlemen in another; he had not apparently been initiated into the mystery of the shakedown, or learned that Highland gentlemen in a pinch did not despise the shelter of a barn.

In the matter of culture and education, the Highland gentlemen of this time certainly stood as well as men of the same rank in any other part of the country. They had generally received a classical education, and there were many who had served in foreign armies. In the pages of Boswell we have abundant evidence that, wherever he went, he and Dr. Johnson found intelligent ladies and gentlemen to converse with, and the great Doctor himself tells us that he was in no house where he did not find books, and generally in more than one language. The first night which he and Boswell passed in the Wilds was at an inn at Aonach, in Glenmoriston, and here they found several books of a class which would not now be found in a country inn. The landlord was an intelligent man, who was annoyed at their expressions of surprise at their finding him in possession of books, and who had learned his grammar, and, as the Doctor remarked, a man is the better of that as long as he lives. His daughter, who made tea for the Doctor, was a well-bred, well-dressed, young lady, who had been a year in Inverness at school, and had learned reading, writing, sewing, knitting, working lace, and making pastry.

The Highland clergy of this time seem to have been in an eminent degree learned and cultivated gentlemen, and in these respects much the superiors of many of their successors at the present time. Pennant, in his tour in 1774, bears the highest testimony to their worth.

Boswell and Dr. Johnson repeatedly remark on this; and we find in the Island of Coll a venerable old gentleman, of 77, who lived in a cottage, or, as Dr. Johnson calls it, a hut, not inelegantly furnished, who, for want of other accommodation, kept a valuable library in chests, and was able to hold his own in controversy with the Doctor about Leibnitz and Newton. Dr. Johnson describes him as a man with a look of venerable dignity, which he had not seen in any other, and a conversation not unsuited to his appearance. I fear, however, that these learned and venerable gentlemen were of the dignified old moderate school of Dr. Blair, Dr. Robertson, and Dr. Carlyle, of Inveresk; for the evangelical party, who ultimately secured so great an influence and ascendency in the Highlands, were at this time only beginning to appear in

this part of the country, and were as yet only to be found on the eastern sea-board.

The condition of the poorer classes at this time is a matter of much controversy. Were they better or worse off? Were they happier or more miserable than their representatives of the present day? The testimony of all foreign observers is almost uniform, and represents them as living in a state of degrading poverty and misery. Dr. Johnson, Pennant, Knox, Buchanan, Loch, and others all speak in this way. But if we examine their evidence a little, I think we will be led to doubt their competency as witnesses. They came into the country as strangers, they could not speak the language or learn the thoughts of these people, and they drew the conclusions of poverty and wretchedness because they saw the people living in a social and economic condition, which was new to them, and which, it appeared to them, could only co-exist with these conditions. But poverty is a relative term, and even where poverty exists, wretchedness or a feeling of degradation are not its necessary consequence. It is all a matter of the idea of the man and of the society in which he lives. These foreign witnesses, if I may so call them, tell us that the poorer classes among the Highlanders lived in miserable huts built of stones without cement, thatched with turf or heather, with the fire in the middle of the floor, and without window or chimney, except a hole in the roof, which admitted light, and allowed the smoke to escape, and that their food consisted mainly of oatmeal and milk. That their cattle were housed in one end of the hut, and that the other end was common to the family and the poultry. But these are conditions which we can examine for ourselves. Meal and milk and potatoes are yet the common food of our agricultural labourers, of our shepherds, and of our country tradesmen, and yet we do not attach the idea either of poverty or of misery or degradation to any of these occupations. Bothies, no doubt, are fast disappearing in our immediate neighbourhood, and hereabout the cattle have long been excluded, and the fire placed against a wall, and covered by a hanging chimney. But still one need not go a very long journey from Inverness to see a veritable black house, with its smoke and its clay floor, with poultry walking about in it—but still

and the occupants will be found to be well clad, looking well fed on their meal, and milk, and potatoes, the children going to school, the lasses, if not helping at home, out in service, and the lads probably in shops and offices in Inverness, or mayhap one of them at College. And, if we go to the West, we can still find the fire in the middle of the room, the cattle in one end of the house, but the same conditions in other respects as I have described. The premises of these foreign witnesses do not, therefore, warrant their conclusions, and they are confuted, not only by what we may observe any day for ourselves, but by the whole history of the country. Because a man lives in a bothy, and on oatmeal and milk as the principal articles of his diet, although he may be called poor, he is not necessarily either rude or wretched, and, in fact, is generally neither. The early Scottish and Irish monks, who filled Europe with the fame of their learning, lived in wattled huts or bothies of the meanest description. The Covenanting army, which marched into England, was composed of men who lived in bothies, and whose commissariat consisted of oatmeal, of which each soldier carried a sack; and, yet, there was hardly a man in that army who could not discuss theology and pound texts with the best. George Buchanan came from a bothy on Loch Lomond side, and was reared on oatmeal, and the same may be said of thousands of Scotsmen, who, since his time, have distinguished themselves in every walk of life. We will admit then, with these foreign observers, that the majority of the people, at this time, lived in black bothies, and on what may be considered poor food, but we will admit no more. On the other hand, these observers bear ample testimony to the courteous bearing of the poorest of Highland peasants, and when we have any evidence from those who lived among the people at this time, it is all to the effect that they certainly did not look on their poorer neighbours as in any degree wretched or as labouring under the sense of poverty or of degradation. Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had better opportunities of judging, and was in a better position for forming a sound and just opinion of those about her than any person of her time, inasmuch as, although born of Highland

parents, she resided in America until she was grown up, gives us the idea rather that a Highland glen was an arcadia than an abode of wretchedness, and she is never tired of expressing her admiration of the intelligence, courtesy, and self-respecting independence of her poorer neighbours.

It is true the lower orders at this time were sometimes exposed to actual famine, but that is the lot of all communities dependent entirely on agriculture and pasture, and without the means of easy communication with other countries. Famines were periodic all over England and Scotland some time earlier, and when hard times did come they were looked on as one of the necessary incidents of life, and the laird and the tacksman still felt that it was his duty to help his poorer neighbours, and the help which was given carried with it none of the degradation of charity.

It is true also that these people rendered services to the chief and tacksman which would now be, indeed-where they still subsist even now-considered irksome, if not degrading; but in the old times of which I am treating, the old feelings of mutual inter-dependence still subsisted, and these services were looked on as the natural right of those to whom they were rendered, and the duty of those who rendered them. They were rendered without any feeling of wrong or oppression, and consequently without any feeling of degradation.

It must be borne in mind, too, that in these times social rank depended on pedigree alone, and poverty did not carry with it the loss of social position. The younger sons of the laird and chief became tacksmen; the younger sons of the tacksmen were provided with small holdings, and the sons of these again were often forced to earn a living by very humble occupations, but still they had the blood of the chief in their veins, and they did not cease to be gentlemen. There are many anecdotes which show the perplexity which this state of things created in the mind of Southern visitors. Burt tells us that on one occasion he was riding into Inverness with a nobleman, and, much to his surprise, his companion dismounted from his horse in Petty Street, and embraced cordially a man who kept a little drinking shop there. Burt afterwards expressed his surprise at this conduct, but his lordship replied that there was nothing to be surprised at, for the