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marking in Gaelic, "'S e guailleachan as fhearr leam a gheibh mi gu h-oiche," meaning that he considered the boy the safest tunic he could have got all day. The faithful nurse was very much alarmed, but she was told to follow quietly: and when they passed out of the wood above Giusachan the boy was restored quite safely to her.

It is also related that one of the enemy was lying mortally wounded on the field of battle, and crying loudly for some one to give him a drink of water for the love of God. A Strathglass man who heard him answered, "As you ask for it in that Name you shall certainly have it," and so saying he went to the burn which runs through the field, took off his bonnet, filled it with water, and hastily returned to the bleeding man. He stooped down and held the water to the lips of the sufferer. Whilst in this position, performing an urgent act of mercy, the ungrateful wretch whom he was assisting pulled out from his pocket a "madadh achlais," or stilletto, and thrust it into the heart of his benefactor. The charitable man who lost his life whilst thus acting the part of the good Samaritan was of the family of Chisholms known as Clann 'ic Alastair Bhuidhe. I heard it said that he was a great-grand-uncle of John Buidhe Chisholm, who died about fifty years ago, at a very advanced age, and was for part of his life tenant of Glassburn.

At the same battle another Strathglass man was killed, if possible, in a still more treacherous manner. He was attacked by two of the enemy's swordsmen, both of whom he kept at bay with his good blade for a while, but at last, being hard pressed, he placed his back against a mud hut which stood near him. Here he parried every stroke and thrust aimed at him. Whether the length of his sword or his own superiority in wielding the weapon enabled him to defend himself against the sanguinary efforts of his two deadly enemies I know not. It is, however, certain that they saw no fair chance of vanquishing him. So one of them conceived the idea of killing the brave hero by the foulest means. To accomplish this he slipped round and entered the bothy quietly by the door, and by raising a sod made an aperture from within, whereby he obtained a view of the two accomplished swordsmen eager as tigers for each other's life blood. In an instant he saw the Strathglass man within reach of his sword, whereupon he thrust it through his body from behind. Thus the gallant swordsman fell without a single wound or scar except the fatal one from the weapon of the cowardly assassin in the bothy.

Such are the traditions current in the district about the battle of Aridhuian. I state them exactly as I heard them related over and over again by truthful and trustworthy men. It is said that the two deaths above described were the only casualties among the Strathglass men when defending their rights at the point of the sword.

It is a source of pleasure for me to conclude this paper with the statement of an old Seanachie, named Cameron, whom I heard saying"Some of the best families and best soldiers in Lochaber positively refused to take any part whatever in the reckless enterprise which brought such a crushing defeat on a section of their countrymen at the battle of Aridhuian."

(To be Continued.)

Literature.

THE PAST IN THE PRESENT*; By Arthur Mitchell, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, &c.

We have been perusing one of the most instructive, interesting, and suggestive books which it has been our lot to read for many a day. The work displays an originality of mind on the part of its author, and an ability to teach important lessons from the commonest things, of a very high order. The merest trifle in his hands becomes the starting point of a profound philosophy. A whorl in the form of a bored stone, or a dried potato on the end of a small bit of stick, is the text from which we are taught lessons of the very highest import. The craggans manufactured, in the present day, in the Island of Lewis, than which there is nothing more rude in the history of pottery, are made to tell a moral and teach us a valuable lesson. "The rudest pottery ever discovered among the relics of the stone-age is not ruder than this, and no savages now in the world are known to make pottery of a coarser character." Yet the author says, and says truly, that this art is "practised by people not inferior in mental capacity to the people of Scotland generally -by people who sent their sons into the centre of progress, to occupy there as good a place as any, either as artisans, seamen, merchants, or professional men." Describing one house which he visited, where this manufacture was carried on, and specimens made to show him the process, it is stated that though the house was miserable and squalid enough, still alongside this rude industry there were cottons from Manchester, crockery from Staffordshire, cutlery from Sheffield, sugar from the West Indies, tea from China, and tobacco from Virginia. And this is how Dr Mitchell moralises on this strange mixture of civilisation and barbarism: Here, then, was a woman, living in a wretched hut, built, without cement, of unquarried and unshaped stones, busily manufacturing just such pottery as was made by the early pre-historic inhabitants of Scotland-just such pottery as is now made by some of the most degraded savages in the world; yet her comforts and wants were ministered to not only by the great towns of England, but by the Indies, China, and America. If we buried her-house and all-what might a digging on the spot disclose a century hence ?-her bones, her whorl, her quern, and her craggans. That Sheffield, Manchester, India, China, and America had sent her of their products and manufactures there would remain no evidence. There might be a puzzle, however, about the contribution from Staffordshire-the broken crockery, and perhaps, as the consequence, an ingenious speculation about an early and a late occupation of the ruined hut by successive people at long intervals and in different stages of progress and culture." The specimens of her art, made in presence of the visitor,-a cup, a sugar-basin, and a model of a cow-were of the rudest and coarsest description, " equally unlike the objects of which they were

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* Being ten of the Rhind Lectures on Archæology delivered in 1876 and 1878, and published by David Douglas, Edinburgh, 1880.

understood to be copies." "Nothing worse was done by the Cave-men. Yet the old woman who fashioned the cow and the craggans was full of shrewdness, a theologian in her way, well versed in church quarrels, and in the obligations of the Poor Law, and quite able to become well versed in a score of other things if the need and opportunity had arisen. Have we any sufficient reason for believing that the Cave people were inferior to her, or, for that matter, inferior to any of us in capacity for culture?" From what he had seen the author draws the inferences-that the very rudest known form of art may co-exist in a nation with the highest-the Wedgewoods of Etruria with the Macleods of Barvas; that it would be wrong and stupid to conclude from this that the nation must be composed partly of savages and partly of a highly cultured and civilised people ; that persons capable of immediately receiving the very highest culture may practise an art just as it is practised by the most degraded savages of whom we possess any knowledge.

The author next proceeds to describe the use of querns for grinding meal, as he has seen them in use in Shetland and the North West Highlands and Islands of Scotland. His observations and reflections on this primitive contrivance exhibit a philosophical mind. The quern

does its work, in the circumstances, better than anything else could do it, and the conclusions at which the writer arrives are-That a simple and seemingly rude method of accomplishing work-practised both by the historic and pre-historic savage-may long continue in extensive use among certain sections of a people who are in a high state of civilisation, for reasons which are both assignable and sufficient, and which have nothing to do with inferiority either of capacity, or culture, or civilisation; that a seemingly simple and rude contrivance may be found to have not inconsiderable merits as an effort of mechanical ingenuity, when it is carefully and fairly studied; and that mere rudeness of workmanship, that is, of execution, apart from the mechanical idea, cannot be safely used as an evidence of great age.

A most interesting description of the Norse mill, still common in Shetland, follows, after which the "Knockin' Stane," used for making pot barley, is described in an interesting manner. Dr Mitchell says that anything ruder than this way of making pot barley could not easily be found. Yet it "does work of fair quality." We have seen even a more primitive appliance than the one described. The leg of an old stocking, filled with barley first dried in a pot over the fire, and then soaked over night in water, the stocking firmly tied at both ends, laid on a flat stone, and well belaboured with a sturdy stick. By this process the barley was knocked out of the husk, and the result, though not so agreeable to the eye as the product of the modern mill, was equally effective, if not, indeed, more so, in the primary object of separating the husk from the barley, while it was at the same time much less wasteful.

The description given of the primitive bee-hive houses, and of the old black houses, still occupied in the Lewis and other parts of the West Highlands, are full and curious, and in a way sad. It is really lamentable that a noble and chivalrous race should have to live under such conditions. Few of the bee-hive type of houses are now inhabited, but the black houses can yet be met with in thousands, though we are glad to know that few, if any, so primitive as Dr Mitchell describes as common

in the Lewis can now be met with on the mainland. We cannot at present quote the author's description of these wretched hovels at length, but must give his conclusions--" It is difficult," he says, "to think of a community living in houses like those I have pictured, as being in any other state than one of great degradation. Such a conclusion, however, would be incorrect. The Lewis people, as a whole, are well-conditioned physically, mentally, and morally; and there is certainly much more intelligence, culture, happiness, and virtue in those black houses than in the comparatively well and skilfully built houses which go to make the closes of the Cannongate and Cowgate of Edinburgh, or the closes of any similar great city."

We We are glad to find the author in his text paying a high and deserved compliment to the rude agricultural implement called the caschrom, or crooked spade, but the woodcut intended to give the reader an idea of this primitive instrument is simply a gross libel upon our old friend. Dr Mitchell must have chosen one of the very worst specimens procurable. The driving pin is far too low to admit of good work being done, and the caibe, or iron stock, is reversed-turned upside down-while the whole instrument is extremely rude in material and workmanship. When properly handled, the description that, when driven into the soil, "if the handle is depressed, the part of the implement forced into the soil rises through it, and breaks up the ground as it does so," is far from accurate. In any soil, except a very sandy one, an ordinary expert operator will turn the soil over like the common plough. Dr Mitchell is quite correct when he says "the work the caschrom does is neither contemptible in quantity nor quality, and there has gone brain to its contrivance. When we remember the littleness of the patches of land, which in the Hebrides are, and can only be brought under cultivation, and the peaty character of the soil, we begin to see the cleverness of the invention. Certainly no plough, whether one or two stilted, could take its place and do its work. If it is right for the people to go on cultivating these little patches of peaty land, then the best instrument with which they can do it is probably the one they use." We have seen the day when few, even on the mainland, could beat us in the quantity or quality of the work produced with the caschrom; and the mainlanders are far superior to the islanders in its use. Three good, stalwart men, given a fairly level or slightly inclined field, will turn over an acre a day with the caschrom, and produce excellent work, though not so deep as the ordinary plough.

We are quite at one with the author in the remark, that 66 we often fail to see in what we call rude implements that suitability for their purpose, in the circumstances of their actual use," which he has described so correctly in the case of the caschrom. The same applies to his contention that the use of carts without wheels in certain circumstances and localities is no evidence of the backward and degraded state of the Highlanders in 1745, as maintained in Burt's Letters. When Dr Mitchell saw what these carts were employed in doing-" transporting peats, ferns, and hay from high grounds down very steep hills entirely without roads, I saw," he says, "that the contrivance was admirably adapted for its purpose, and that wheeled carts would have been useless for that work. But I saw more than this: I saw that these carts were used in doing the exact analogue of what is done every day in the advanced South-even

where the hand-plough has yielded to the steam plough and the sickle to the reaping machine. When boulders are to be removed, and trees are to be taken from high to low levels, or when a heavily-laden lorry puts on the drag coming down a steep hill, we see carts without wheels preferred to carts with wheels when the circumstances makes the want of wheels an advantage. It is not always an evidence of capacity or skill to use elaborate or fine machinery. A rough, rude tool may for certain purposes be the most efficient, and may show wisdom both in its contriver and its employer. It would certainly show a want of wisdom in the Kintail Highlanders if they used wheeled carts to do the work they required of their wheel-less carts. Indeed they could not so use them, except by putting the drag on, hard and fast-being first at the trouble of getting wheels and then at the trouble of preventing them from turning."

To the Stone Sinkers described, another may be added. We have seen a youth who on a certain occasion found himself minus any description of sinker for one end of his small lines, taking off his tacketty shoe and fixing it on to the end of his line, which was also without a buoy. A stiff breeze sprung up, and when the boat arrived at the first end shot, which had been fastened and buoyed in the usual way, the buoy was found to have broken loose from the Sinker, and the ingenious youth had to find his way home minus lines and one of his only pair of shoes in the circumstances, to him, a very serious loss, They were, however, both picked up a week hence, after the storm had abated, with grappling lines, and the new invention was further dispensed with by that crew.

The work is mainly composed of ten lectures, being the Rhind Lectures on Archæology, delivered in 1876 and 1878. Six of these are devoted to such subjects as those we have here indicated, in addition to cairns, stone coffins, crusies, tinder boxes, the Bismar, the stone, bronze, and iron ages, and all manner of superstitions; while the last four are devoted to answering the question, "What is civilization ?" The manner in which the latter subject is dealt with, and the question answered, is peculiarly interesting and original, but the extent to which this notice has already extended prevents us from dealing with that part of the work. In addition there is a valuable appendix illustrative of the subjects dealt with in the lectures, and including long quotations from Alfred R. Wallace "On the Origin of Human Races;" from Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Sociology;" Bancroft's "Native Races of the Pacific States of North America ;" and from other distinguished writers in the same field. We have never seen it put so clearly that culture and civilization are two separate and distinct things; even if the whole of the cultured classes were removed in a body out of the country in which civilization had advanced, the latter would still remain. On the other hand, civilization is known and its effects felt where culture is as yet undreamt of. This is exhibited by the use of gunpowder and other products of civilization by the Red Indian and the Australian natives.

The volume is illustrated throughout by woodcuts, most of which are really excellent, mainly from sketches taken of the various articles described by the author on the spot. This greatly enhances the value of a work which is, independently of this, a perfect storehouse of information regarding the questions of which it treats. It is indispensible to the student

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