on till three next morning, with the result that of the gentlemen three were barbarously drunk, three more in a tipsy maudlin state, and two, of whom the writer professed to be one, moderately sober. They were carried to sleep on the floor of the barn, and the ladies, more than half a dozen, slept upon the floor of the room where this heavy carousal had been going on for eleven hours on end. of the elders to keep the Sabbath a day of serious behavior, the people, in spite of fines, mulcts, juggs, canvas sheets, and pointed reproofs from the pulpit, held by their wild drinking habits. Even great religious occasions or excitement and in those days great waves cf religious excitement or revival passed over the land. only stimulated the craving of the people for strong drink. In one of the local records I got an account of a great com- I find traces of another singular drinkmunion season which sprang out of one of ing custom lingering after the Union.. these revivals, and which lasted altogether When leagues of friendship were formed five days. The messengers who went to between families or between neighboring the nearest town for the elements, i.c. the septs, the treaty was ratified by the conbread and wine, took two days in crossing tracting parties drinking a drop of each a narrow ferry, and had to sleep away the other's blood drawn from the little finger. effects of deep intoxication at both sides To drink blood warm from the animal or of it. On the Monday after the com- after it had coagulated was not considered munion two of the hearers were picked nauseous. In times of famine the cattle, up dead drunk near the preaching-tent, poor and lean as they were, were largely where they had fallen down on the previ- bled, and their blood made an article of ous Lord's day. No Highland parish is food by the starving natives. Phlebot better known to the general reader than omy was considered a cure for all ailthat now ruled over by the high priest of ments, physical and mental. Man and Morven, around which the robust imagi- beast were regularly bled on the Sundays nation of successive generations of gigan- at the little roadside shebeens. Even as tic McLeods has cast a veil of charming late as the time of Pennant the Duke of romance. I have before me an unpub. Hamilton employed a doctor to go round lished letter, written nearly two centuries the island of Arran and bleed the people ago, which gives rather a ghastly picture of each duchan twice a year into pits dug of the state of the parish-the poorly in the ground. tilled soil, the squalid huts that had no walls, the lean features of the peasantry, and the drunken habits of the lairds. The writer was well educated, the head of one of the proudest families in the Western Isles, and one with the oldest and most genuine pedigree. He and his party started from Oban in a skiff to pay some visits in Morven and Mull. The first landing-place was Kinlochalim, then a place of some note, for it had not yet become a cave of Adullam for the outcast of the neighboring clans. As the party had mounted with the intention of riding up the country, they were greeted with tremendous bellowing from a neighboring whiskey-shop, out of which four gentlemen of good position in the district came gloriously full at one o'clock in the afternoon. The gentlemen were cursing and swearing at their hardest; they saluted their friends with great heartiness, and kicked a poor "Lazarus of a smith " on to the nearest refuse heap to show their native contempt for indoor artisans. A few days after they came to a laird's house, where a kind of house-heating was to take place, and where consequently extra hospitality was shown. They sat down at four o'clock in the afternoon, and drank Some of the Hebridean customs two centuries ago were very picturesque. Chief among these was the ceremony of marriage. Some of the proceedings that heralded the event cannot now be quoted. The wedding itself was a very great af fair, as it always has been in mountainous countries. It was marked by a prodigality of expense, and was the occasion of much genuine joy. All the oldest ballads give a wedding feast of at least some days. All the relatives down to the fourteenth cousin, and the neighbors, with at least three hamlets or glens, were invited; the wild Highland dances, inspired by mirth and strong spirits, went round; all the pipers within reach assisted; the young couple were disposed of, and merrymaking went on until many of the festive party vanished in utter powerlessness. The oldest Session records abundantly prove that these festivals and days of rejoicing were frequently the occasion of various excesses. The marriage tie was not always held sacred, and purity of life was rather the exception. The old laws of divorce were singular enough. To the church of Kilkivan there is a tradition attached which illustrates a phase of the practice. The patron saint gave all ill-assorted couples yearly the chance of upon himself. A French officer, travelling through Iuverness-shire on a recruiting expedition, met one of these mighty gentlemen marching in a lordly manner, in a good pair of brogues, whilst his wife was trudging barefoot some distance beMartin, when giving an account of the hind him. The irate Frenchman, in his small outer isles belonging to McNeill of gallantry, leaped off his horse, and comBarra, states that when a tenant's wife pelled the man of long descent to take off died, either on Barra or on any of the ad- his brogues, and his wife to put them on. jacent isles, the tenant addressed himself The poverty was very great. Along to the McNeill, representing his loss, and with poverty there was much coarseness at the same time desiring that he would in living and rampant immorality, in spite be pleased to recommend a wife to him to of the persistent displeasure of the Kirk. manage his affairs. The chief found a Children were fearfully neglected in all suitable partner for his clansman, and as ranks of society from their birth upwards, soon as the widower got her name he and the law of the survival of the fittest proceeded to her residence, carrying a was allowed to have full and free scope. bottle of strong whiskey with him, and the When a small tenant's wife had twins in marriage was consummated without much the outer Hebrides, the laird took one of further delay or ceremony. So, also, the them to be brought up in his family, disconsolate widow hurried to her chief, and I have found traces of as many as McNeill of Barra, and he speedily found sixteen or twenty of these twins living a suitable successor to the departed. under the same roof at the same time. McNeill, however, was more than usually Servant-girls slept in the byre with the patriarchal, and appears to have done cows. Some of them took off their everything for everybody on his vast clothes only when they went into rags, estates. Another incident related by though frequently, as Burt significantly Martin illustrates a very curious phase states, a change of dress occasionally of social life. An islander, who was look would be a gain in the public interest. ing out for a wife, happened to receive Plebeian girls of every grade, though in a shilling, which he supposed was a coin some respects thoroughly moral, rose in of extraordinary value, from a ship- general esteem and in the public opinion wrecked seaman. He went straightway of their social circle if they were fortuwith his precious treasure to Mr. Mor-nate enough in having attracted the illicit rison, the parish minister, and requested him on his next visit to Lewis to buy a wife with the money, and bring her home to him. The idea of wife-purchase has long since died out amongst the Hebrideans, but that of the inferiority of woman still survives. She is still in several islands the ordinary beast of burden, and the general slave of her lord and master. Captain Burt, who wrote in the blunt style of the English soldier, gives a pic ture of the state of Highland society that agrees in all essentials with the above sketches. According to him in the inland parts of the north women did nearly all the hard work, and were the common carriers of the day. A person who was a gentleman by birth and descent in other words, who could claim something like a fortieth cousinship with a chief of the clan would not condescend to turn his hand to anything, or do any kind of manual labor. His idea of aristocratic life was total abstinence from toil. But all the while he allowed his wife and daughters to toil away like slaves, and felt their slaving to reflect no discredit attentions of the laird or a gentleman, as that gave them a sort of relationship with the local aristocracy. Such was one of the distortions of custom. Even the lairds and their wives were so poor that frequently the latter had to go barefoot, and that the former, in spite of their lofty hereditary notions, had to make a very sorry appearance in public. Comfort was seldom studied. In some of the isles it was customary to cook the mutton in the skin for want of a more suitable cooking vessel. Towards the end of spring, the season of direst hardship, when often the lean cattle were so weak that they could not rise or stand upright, the emaciated people were known to live upon a little oatmeal mixed with blood drawn from those exhausted beasts; and though there was plenty of fish in the sea and trout in the lakes, the inhabitants were so poor and so thriftless that they had not proper tackle or sufficient energy to catch them. Potatoes were scarce. Crops of all kinds were thin and poor, and the landlords very often took their rents in kind because they could get it in no other way. Field laborers suffered most. Owing to the want of skill in husbandry, the poverty of the soil, or the coldness of the season, the crops frequently did not ripen, and the barley had to be cut down green and grainless. Sometimes money was refused by the starving poor because they could do nothing with it. It is hard to say whether the picture given in books of travel or that taken from the local records was the more dreadful. The huts or dwellings of the common people were so small and so illbuilt, that the worst Connemara cabins are palaces compared to them. Few of them had glass windows; and as a hole in the low roof was the only chimney, the smoke could not find egress. In winter, in the absence of amusements, the poorer cottiers crouched over the fire till their legs were scorched and they themselves were as black as sweeps. When a flock of bottle-nosed whales were driven ashore on one of the long, sandy bays of Tiree, the peasantry took them and devoured them speedily. Famine and starvation thinned the population periodically. When fever or smallpox came over the islands, it swept away whole villages. The people, in their ignorance, were either in mortal dread of epidemics or indifferent. Hence out of sheer physical weakness, or in absolute despair, they took to drink whenever drink could be obtained. Their dwellings and the squalor of their surroundings depressed them. Burt, who had an English charger, when travelling on duty, frequently found the stable door too small to admit his steed; and then a part of the roof was removed and the animal put under shelter. At a little roadside inn he tried to make his quarters more comfortable by stuffing handfuls of straw in the holes to keep out the snow; but no sooner did the cows, which were taking shelter around the house, see the straw than they pulled it out and consumed it. The state of the tillage was very primitive. It must be remembered that there were no roads and no bridges in the Isles at the period under review. A rough sledge, or a couple of reeds slung across the horse's back, was the most advanced kind of carriage; horse harness was made of straw, and the best ropes of heather or horsehair; men did the ploughing, and the harrow, whenever used, was attached to the horse's tail. In fact, the ploughing, then done by a bent implement called the lascrow, which a man pushed with his foot, was a mere scratching of the surface of the field. The corn was dried on a homely kiln, and ground by an old woman generally between two stones called a quern. A great part of the population in several parishes were virtually paupers; vagrants wandered over the land; and in the districts near the borderland there was a regular stream at certain times of the year going or returning from the rich begging ground of the south. The Kirk Sessions and the presbyteries tried hard to stop this vagrancy and to encourage all the able-bodied to work, but with no great success. In the densely peopled parish of Kilmun and Dunoon the authorities found that, with a decreasing population and decreasing finances, the number of paupers on their hands was so large that they could not afford a coffin to each, on however cheap a scale the coffin was made. The church-door collections were very small, and the number of paupers that came upon the parish for burial was very great. Therefore the Session got a local carpenter to make a strong wooden coffin for the use of the parish, and in this the remains of many a wretch were sent to their last resting-place. With such poverty overrunning the land, and amidst so great ignorance, we might expect that pestilence would periodically carry away multitudes of the people. The Isles in those days were practically beyond the sway of the government; and it was only during last cen. tury that the imperial Parliament went to the aid of the starving people. The fact is, that the country was over-peopled as well as under-tilled, and that misery of many kinds was chronic. Disease was often at the door, and the Hebrideans had a regular system of home-grown medical treatment. For small-pox, there a dreadful scourge, they had really no cure. The general treatment was blood-letting. For a troublesome brochan, a kind of thin gruel, taken in large quantities, and as hot as it could be rendered, was the common remedy. Roots of nettles, boiled down, gave a kind of medicine that was used as a tonic. If the uvula became enlarged, or fell down, they cut it dexterously with a horsehair, which was twisted round it. For the jaundice, they had several remedies, of which one was this: the patient was made to lie flat on the ground, then the tongs or a bar of iron was made red-hot and gently applied upwards to the patient's back, till he got into a great fright and rushed furiously out of doors under the impression that 1 he was being burnt. The shock often by burning on the ordinary gallows-hill. sometimes they were handed over to the civil magistrate to be fined; and in every case they were rebuked from the pulpit. But in the remote parishes there was little law and scarcely any authority except what centred in the laird, or chief, and he did not really care much for the newfangled stringency of the Presbyterian clergy. more We can easily understand how a people crushed down for centuries, and facing The professional bards are nowhere perpetual poverty as the peasantry of the highly esteemed. Before the time of the Hebrides were, would become the prey of Union they had come down very much in all sorts of quacks, and would have to public opinion, if, indeed, they ever did pay the penalty due to their credulity. hold a high place, through their insolence Bone-setters were numerous amongst and overbearing pride, their laziness and them, and appear to have had a good lofty pretensions. The bard, in fact, was practice. Herbalists flourished, and were the laird's tutor or genealogist, who sang trusted. Many of them, no doubt, per- fulsome lyrics as an opiate to send the formed their cures, though they resorted great man to sleep, or who was expected to mysterious proceedings, through their to keep up his credit through the exercise. superior knowledge of roots and herbs. of liberal poetic license, or even Frequently, as in the case of the famous reprehensible means. He claimed, and Neil Beaton, they were supposed to effect as a rule received, considerable attention their cures through a compact with the and honor; but when insulted by his devil, rather than from the virtues of their chief he could very well pocket his dig simples, when in reality they derived nity, as happened once in the presence of their medical knowledge from their fore- Captain Burt, when the man of song was fathers. Sometimes a knowledge of med-requested by the chief to sit down below içine was hereditary, like the gift of poesy or of second sight. But the people believed in the personality and power of the devil notwithstanding, and when all lawful or recognized means failed, to the devil they were prepared to go for cure, help, or deliverance. Hence all the oldest records reveal an extraordinary contest between the Kirk on the one hand and the various emissaries of Satan on the other. We are dealing with a period when belief in witchcraft was quite common, and when those suspected of trafficking with the devil were put to death VOL. XXXVII. 1915 LIVING AGE. the salt amongst a parcel of dirty retainers over a cup of ale; and when, instead of resenting the insult, he sang readily several hoarse stanzas so favorable to his chief, that the latter exclaimed that there was nothing so good in Virgil or Homer. However pressing the poverty around might have been, and however hard up the chiefs were, they liked to keep the semblance of power after the reality had passed away from their hands, and to make a great display both at home and abroad. Hence they kept an inordinate number of idle attendants, who were very had a ludicrous idea of their own grandeur and importance. Their followers frequently magnified this, as when McDonald of Keppoch was thought to have become effeminate when he took a snowball for his pillow on a night when he could do very well without one. insolent towards the poorer section of the peasantry. When the chief went a journey, he marched in ridiculous state, attended by such officers, as his henchmen, who fought his quarrels, and were always near him as a trusty support and guide; the bard, who sung his personal valor and the purity of his long descent; his spokes- Though the power of the chiefs was man, who expressed his sentiments, some- very great, a ninny or a fool had little times when they did not exist; his sword chance of succeeding, even when the bearer, his gillie-casfluie, who carried office had something of a hereditary charhim across streams and over marshes; acter. For every heir was required to the gillie-coushaine, who led his horse give proof of his valor before succeeding, over rugged or dangerous ground; the or before he was allowed to lead the clan. piper, who was always a gentleman by This proof was generally given in a raid birth, and who in his turn required a gil- upon some hostile clan, or upon the Lowlie to carry his pipes; as well as by a non- lands. Such a raid was never regarded descript multitude of lazy rascals who as pure robbery. Indeed, at the date unsomehow contrived to form part of the der review, several clans, as the Camerons train, and to partake of the good cheer and the MacDonalds and the MacGregors, that awaited him wherever he paid vis- lived by theft or by levying blackmail its. And as the chiefs and the leading upon the Lowlands, whilst within their men of the Isles were fond of paying own borders the individual members of each other visits, the poor resources of a the clan were scrupulously honest. It is country which prized hospitality above all surprising how very slightly theft figures the Hebrew commandments were pretty in the local parish records. Breaches of well eaten up; and the retainers, who al- the seventh commandment bristle in evways assumed the airs of spoiled menials, ery page, and offences of this class were were seldom very welcome to the peas- severely punished. People are up before antry. The piper, especially, with his up- the Sessions for fighting, brawling, cursright attitude, his tinsel pomp, his haughty ing and swearing, speaking evil of digairs, and his majestic step, was regarded nities, rioting and drunkenness, idleness as a most objectionable personage, far and vagrancy. The laws relating to Sabmore difficult to please than the genuine bath observances were so strict that in head of the tribe. He looked upon him- one parish in 1702, or five years before the self as the most talented of musicians, Union, a poor woman was cited and punand he was never very gracious to the ished for leading home one of her sheep, claims of rivals or more youthful aspi- a man who gave a bundle of shorn hay to rants. This narrow conceit was not con- his cattle was heavily fined, a weaver who fined to the piper. An account of the had inadvertently left out his work on the country by one of its natives was, it is Sabbath was made to do penance pubsaid, even then like a Gascon's picture of licly, a farmer was punished because he himself, strongly and highly colored, but was overheard speaking of some secular not historically accurate. In spite of the business, and a number of boys were prevailing poverty, and the misery conse- flogged because they were discovered quent on the semi-feudal system, which "hawking a bushie byke," or digging up kept the poor down almost in slavery and a bees' nest on the Sabbath. But of theft neglected the resources of the land, all and the penalties attached to it we hear classes, and most of all the peasantry, very little. The explanation is either paid blind obedience to the chiefs, who that the inhabitants were remarkably honwere treated as idols, and whose blood re- est, or that theft was regarded as scarcely lations, of whatever degree and however worthy to be designated a punishable ofdepraved, were treated with peculiar re- fence. In reality, according to the narrow spect. Then, as now, it was usual to puff and defective standard of the Isles and Gaelic as the most expressive and the Highland glens in those days, a very submost copious of all languages, the sweet- tle distinction was drawn between approest and the most poetical, as well as un-priating what belonged to one's kinsman, questionably the oldest, to boast over friend, or countrymen, and what belonged length of pedigree and the unparallelled to one's natural or national enemy. With virtues of the race, which was seriously in the clan theft was severely punished, believed in the islands to be the first in and was exceedingly rare; beyond the the arts of peace and war. The chieftains borders of the clan it was a very merito |