Their cure for faintness of spirits cannot be better described than in Martin's own words. It was performed by a blacksmith in the parish of Kilmartin as follows :-" The patient being laid on the anvil with his face uppermost, the smith takes a big hammer in both his hands, and making his face all grimace, he approaches his patient; and then drawing his hammer from the ground, as if he intended to hit him with his full strength on the forehead, he ends in a feint, else he would be sure to cure the patient of all diseases; but the smith being accustomed to the performance, has a dexterity of managing his hammer with discretion, though at the same time he must do it so as to strike terror in the patient; and this, they say, has always the designed effect."

For costiveness there were a number of remedies, one of the most common being to boil a quantity of dulse in water, and drink the infusion with a good-sized piece of butter in it. Some of the Skye people took an infusion of spearwort in melted butter, but as this was rather a violent remedy it was not generally used. Wood mercury and horehound were often found effectual. In St Kilda the natives drank the oil which the fulmar, a species of petrel, spouted from its bill when alarmed, and which contained valuable laxative properties.

For bloodshot and inflamed eyes, the Skye people applied a poultice of yellow fern and white of egg laid upon coarse flax. An infusion in milk of the plant called eyebright, applied with a feather, was also used with success, and dulse eaten in liberal quantities was thought to improve the eyesight.

In cases of toothache, spearwort was applied to the temples, another remedy being to heat a turf and place it to the side of the head affected as hot as it could be borne. In Folk-Medicine it is stated that "to go between the sun and the sky to a place where the dead and the living cross (a ford), and lift a stone from it with the teeth, is thought in the North-East of Scotland a cure for toothache."

The iliac passion was treated by giving the sufferer a drink of cold water and oatmeal, and then suspending the patient by the heels for some time, poultices of hot dulse being applied to the abdomen, until relief was obtained.

To ripen a tumour or boil they used a warm poultice of

female jacobea, cut small, and mixed with fresh butter on a hot stone, and this was also applied to hard and swollen breasts.

Benumbed feet were scarified with a lancet, and when swollen and blistered with walking long distances they were bathed in a decoction of alder leaves. Rheumatic pains were relieved by rubbing the affected parts with fulmar oil, and the juice of the crab-apple was considered good for sprains and cramps. For flatulency the people ate the roots of knaphard and lovage, taking nothing else, however, the same day.

In Colonsay, the people had a curious custom of fanning the sick with the leaves of the Bible. Martin states that while he was there the loan of his "book" was thrice requested and given for that purpose, and he was informed next day that the patient had benefited considerably by the use of it.

The remedies for the ills which afflict man have hitherto been entirely dealt with. We shall now give a few of those used for the diseases of cattle, sheep, and horses.

In Harris, the sheep which fed upon sandy ground became afflicted with a film which grew over their eyes and caused blindness, and to cure this the eyes were rubbed with chalk or powdered cuttle-fish bone. Lovage was a sovereign remedy for sheep troubled with cough.

To cure cramp in cows, the part affected was bathed in water in which a curious kind of stone found in clay banks had been steeped for some hours. These stones were called crampstones. For blindness, chewed wild sage was put into the animal's ears. Costiveness was cured by giving the sea-plant slake, boiled with some butter.

Horses troubled with bots were washed with water in which a peculiar stone, called by the Skye people bot-stones, had been steeped. Wild sage chopped small, or an infusion of it, were given to horses to kill worms, the animal being kept from drinking for at least ten hours after the dose.

These are some of the most curious remedies given in Martin's work, which contains a valuable store of information regarding the life, manners, and customs of the Western Islesmen two hundred years ago.

H. R.'M.

JOSEPH ANDERSON, LL.D., ON EARLY CELTIC ART.—THE Ettles Lecture Trustees have this year devoted the funds at their disposal to a very patriotic purpose, and our only regret is that the treat which they provided for all who care to know the early history of their race, by inducing Dr Anderson, the Custodian of the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh, to deliver three lectures on Ancient Celtic Art, was not more fully appreciated and more widely taken advantage of. The lectures were delivered in the Fraser Street Hall on the 28th and 30th April and the 2nd May, to an audience which, if not large, was thoroughly appreciative, and the interest of the lectures was greatly enhanced by the numerous beautiful coloured representations of the various relics of Art described in the lectures. In the first lecture Dr Anderson treated of the pre-Christian times, describing the various relics of Art workmanship belonging to those times, which have come down to us, and demonstrating that those objects exhibit a peculiar style and development of Art and Art workmanship, displaying not only the possession of great technical skill and boldness of conception and design, but also a style and development of Art, no example of which has been found outside the Celtic area, which exhibits no trace of any foreign influence, and which must, therefore, have been of native origin. This, as the lecturer pointed out, clearly shows that our ancestors at the time of the Roman Invasion of Britain were not the rude savages we have been led to think by the descriptions of classical writers, who classed all the world except the Romans as barbarians, but were a people who had attained at least that amount of culture which is implied in the love of beautiful objects of Art, in the faculty to design these, and in the technical skill to make them. In the last two lectures Dr Anderson proceeded to treat of early Christian times, and showed that in Ireland and the part of Scotland which had not been conquered by Rome, there continued a peculiar style of Art, exhibited in churches and their attendant round towers, in bells, in sculptured stone monuments, in crosses, reliquaries, and in the ornamentation of manuscripts, which was a continuation and development of the style of Art of the pre-Christian period, and continued until comparatively recent times to be entirely independent of external influence of any kindand which by its association with Celtic writing is shown to be Celtic, and to have been Celtic in its origin, as in its continuous development. In the report of the Crofters' Commission, the Commissioners, in noticing the rudeness of the houses of the class about whom they were inquiring, remark significantly that they are not as a rule discontented with their dwellings, and that the rudeness of these has not prevented them being more moral and of more polite and gentle manners than the same class in other parts of the country. In like manner Dr Anderson remarks of our remote ancestors—“The men who produced this school of Art, though they may have lived in beehive houses built of unhewn and uncemented stones, and worshipped in churches scarcely more ornate in appearance or more architectural in construction, were not men who were destitute of that variety of culture which is literary and artistic in its character. On the contrary, we now see that they were men of such acquirements and tastes, that they multiplied their books laboriously, and counted it a virtue to be diligent in doing so; that the skill they thus acquired enabled them to produce manuscript volumes written with a faultless regularity and precision of character, rivalling the best caligraphy of the most literary nations, which they adorned with illuminations of exquisite beauty and intricacy of design, and enclosed in cases rich with the costliest workmanship in gold and silver, in filigree work or embossed work, or covered with gilded and engraved designs and precious stones." It is pleasing to all who take a pride in their race to have such a picture of our ancestors from the hand of 90 high an authority as Dr Anderson.

REPORT OF THE

ROYAL COMMISSION

(HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS)

AN ANALYSIS.

THE long-looked for Report of the Royal Commission appointed last year to inquire into the grievances of the Highland crofters has at last been issued. On the 17th of October 1877, the Editor of the Celtic Magazine asked Mr Charles Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P., in the Music Hall, Inverness, the following question :

Keeping in view that the Government has graciously considered the reputed scarcity of crabs and lobsters, and of herrings and garvies, on our Highland coast, of sufficient importance to justify them in granting two separate Royal Commissions of Inquiry-will you, in your place in Parliament, next session, move that a similar Commission be granted to inquire into the present impoverished and wretched condition and, in some places, the scarcity of men and women in the Highlands; the cause of this state of things; and the most effectual remedy for ameliorating the condition of the Highland Crofters generally ?"

The subsequent history of the movement originated by that question is already well known to the reader. It will, we think, be readily admitted that, from our early association with the proceedings which resulted in the granting of the Commission, and from several other facts connected with its history and progress, we have a very special interest in the result of its labours, embodied in the Report before us. The Commission was sanctioned by her Majesty on the 17th of March 1883, "to inquire into the condition of the crofters and cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and all matters affecting the same or relating thereto," terms identical in meaning with those used in the question addressed, as above, to Mr Fraser-Mackintosh, in 1877. The proceedings having wisely been carried on in public, the manner in which they were conducted under the able, impartial, and sympathetic guidance of the noble Chairman, Lord Napier and Ettrick, has been so fully recognised and appreciated by all, and, on a previous occasion, gladly admitted by our