INVERNESS: THE CAPITAL OF THE HIGHLANDS
One of the first things we noticed in this summer capital of the
Highlands was a male being, whom Thackeray would have liked to cage for
his “Book of Snobs.” From the monocle, or window in his eye, and from
certain physical peculiarities, and even pronunciation in his speech,
which he was helpless to conceal, I should imagine that he was really
a London cockney masquerading in a Highlander’s costume. According to
the fad or fashion of vacation time, and appropriate for hot weather,
he was encased in the complete pavonine dress of the old days of clans
and claymores, but the motor within hardly suited the machine. With his
buckled shoes, checkered leggings,--in the side of one of which was
stuck a long dirk, having a silver handle holding a Cairngorm stone
set in the top,--with considerable public exposure of the cuticle
around and above his skinny knees, with gay kilts, decorated pouch,
shoulder-brooch of silver, coat, plaid, bonnet, and feather, the
pageant of costume seemed vastly more imposing than the man within.
This creature seemed a walking museum of Scottish antiquities. All his
unwonted paraphernalia, however, did not cure his gawkiness or prevent
impending disaster to his pride. In trying to pass by some baskets
belonging to a huckster, and full, if I remember aright, of turnips,
his dirk-handle caught in the end of a loose hoop. “Oh, what a fall
was there, my countrymen!” In a moment one would have taken him for a
measuring-rod. At least six feet of the gawk, more or less, lay on the
soil of what may have been his beloved native land. Nevertheless, in
all Christian charity, we tried our best to appear blind, and resisted
the temptation to laugh.
I am bound to say, however, that I saw some solid-looking citizens of
Inverness wear the kilt and Highland coat most gracefully. Moreover,
in the evening, when some of the Gordon Highlanders,--I believe they
were,--whose barracks were not far away, rambled through the streets,
they certainly showed that the man and the clothes had grown together.
One could easily see how well adapted was such a dress to a rough
campaign in a mountainous country. One scarcely wondered why, when
fighting in hilly regions, the Highlander was usually the superior
of the average infantryman. Nevertheless, some comical chapters in
eighteenth-century American history come into mind. When we remembered
that modern footgear was strange to men who had been used to the
ancient brogues and to whom the proverb “as easy as an old shoe” was
a novelty, the story is quite credible that, in the repulse by the
French of the attack made by the British army under Abercrombie at
Ticonderoga, in 1758, when the Highlanders were forced to retreat from
Fort Carillon, there were thousands of shoes left stuck in the mud when
the British ran to their boats.
We could see at a glance that Inverness was the centre of traffic and
travel during the summer months, when tourists made the northeast and
west of cool Scotland very lively for a few weeks. We looked in at the
Town Hall, near which stands the old town cross. At the foot of this is
the lozenge-shaped stone, called the “Stone of the Tubs,” reverenced
as the palladium of Inverness. It was anciently useful from its having
served as a resting-place for women carrying water from the river.
It is a sight for a stranger in the Highlands to see the washerwomen
in their fullest muscular activity on summer days, when they renovate
the linen of the tourists. Why men should want to pay money to see the
Salome and other dances popular in Christian countries is a mystery
to some of us, when among the laundry-women the limits of cuticular
exposure are reached. They leap in frenzy upon the masses of linen in
the suds which fill the deep tubs, but the results justify the use of
these primitive washing-machines.
Curiously enough, this part of Scotland is not wholly free from
earthquakes, for which the geologists give reasons. In the seismic
disturbances of 1816, the spire of the old jail, one hundred and fifty
feet high, was curiously twisted. Now this spire serves as a belfry for
the town clock. Westward from the Ness is the higher ground, called the
“Hill of the Fairies,” where lies the beautiful city of the dead--one
of the most attractively situated cemeteries in the whole of Britain.
On the athletic grounds near the town, at the end of September, are
held the Scottish games and athletic contests, the most important in
the country. Four bridges span the river. Altogether, our impressions
of the town were very pleasing.
But Inverness has a history also. It is believed to have been one of
those primitive strongholds--in this case, of the Picts--which were
so often to be found at the junction of waters. To this place came
St. Columba, in the year 565. Here, too, was the castle of Macbeth,
in which he murdered Duncan, which stood until it was demolished by
Malcolm Canmore, who built on its site a larger one. William the Lion,
in 1214, granted the town a charter, by which it became a royal burgh.
Of the Dominican abbey, founded in 1233, nothing remains. The town
was burned in 1411, by Donald of the Isles, and when fifteen years
later, James I held a parliament in the castle, Scottish statecraft
was still in a primitive stage of evolution, for three of the northern
chieftains summoned to the council were executed for daring to assert
their independence. In 1652, Queen Mary was denied admittance into the
castle, but she remembered the slight and caused the governor to be
hanged afterwards. Cromwell came hither also and built a great fort.
In Inverness gathered the Jacobites who followed both the Old and the
Young Pretender. Inverness has had its ups and downs, and, as a Western
orator once declared of his district, has, besides raising much ham,
raised also much more of what General Sherman named as the synonym for
war.
To come to Inverness without visiting Culloden would be like going
to Rome without seeing St. Peters; for at Culloden, where was fought
one of the decisive battles of the world, the death-blow was given to
Scottish feudalism. There the clan system was knocked to pieces. Then,
also, for the benefit and blessing of the whole world, the Highlanders
were scattered over the earth, to do what they certainly have done
well--a goodly share of the world’s work.
Now for Culloden! We--that is, four men of us--hired a horse, driver,
and carriage, and rode out to the desolate moor, which is usually
called “Culloden” by strangers and “Drummossie Moor” by the natives. It
is a tableland lying six miles northeast of Inverness and not far from
the Moray Firth. As we approached it, we could discern the sunken lines
of the trenches, in which about eighteen hundred of the clansmen,
killed in battle, were buried. In 1881, these trenches of the different
clans were marked by rough memorial stones giving the clan names. At
one part of the field was a stream of water, to which the poor wounded
wretches crawled to slake that horrible thirst which comes so quickly
to a soldier who has lost blood and whose veins are drying up.
On one side was a cairn of stones about twenty feet high, reared
to mark the battle, in the front of which is set a tablet giving
the historical facts and date. But what touched us most deeply, as
Americans, was a colossal wreath of flowers and greenery hung near the
top. This token, though faded and its purple ribbons stained by three
months of summer rain and storm, told of “hands beyond sea” and hearts
that were saddened at the name of Culloden. I asked who had hung that
wreath upon the cairn and was told that it had been sent by Scotsmen
in America, whose ancestors had fallen in that awful battle of April
16, 1746, in which the hopes of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” were shattered
and those of the House of Stuart to reattain power came to an end. I
understood that such a floral tribute was offered annually.
[Illustration: THE CAIRN AT CULLODEN]
Some distance away was the place where the English cavalry were held
in reserve, to charge upon the fugitives and slaughter them after they
had broken and fled. Near the field also was a large flat rock,
which the Pretender had mounted to see the action and scan its results.
From this point of vantage, he fled, to suffer untold hardships, while
wandering for weeks, disguised as a woman, under the care of the heroic
Flora Macdonald. He was finally able to reach the French ships, then
lying off the coast for him, by which he was able to get back to the
Continent, there to end his days as a drunkard.
Cumberland, the British general, knew that a failure to win on this
field, or a drawn battle, would mean a long-continued guerilla
warfare in the Highlands. So he gave orders to put to the sword all
the clansmen known to have been on the field. As we rode back to
Inverness, over which the English cavalry had thundered after the
battle, the intelligent driver pointed out more than one place, such as
blacksmith’s shops, rocks, and hollows, where fugitives had hidden and
whence they had been dragged out to be killed.
Culloden enables us to see what war was to the Highlanders, what they
meant by a campaign, and how far these men of the claymore, broadsword,
and target had advanced in military science. The idea of these stalwart
warriors, trained in clan feuds and inheriting the prejudices and
traditions handed down to them from ancestors, was to go out in summer
time, without special equipment, commissary train, or _dépôt_ of
supplies. They would make a foray, fight a battle or two, burn the
enemy’s houses, drive off some cattle, and then come home to divide
the spoil--a system hardly higher in dignity than that of the North
American Indian highlanders, the Iroquois.
The men of the glens cared little for firearms, whether musket or
cannon. Their favorite weapons from of old were the dirk and the
claymore. The latter was a long-handled, double-edged sword weighing
from five to seven pounds, with a handle often a foot long and with
one cross-bar for a hilt. This claymore, in which they gloried, was a
weapon quite different from the later single-edged and basket-hilted
sword, which did not come into use until well into the eighteenth
century. Their one idea of fighting was to make an onset and come to
close quarters. On their left arm they carried the target, or round
shield, made of light, tough wood, covered with bull’s hide, stretched
in one or more thicknesses and with boss or studs, and sometimes
furnished with a rim of metal, or armed with a sharp point in the
middle. With this defence, protecting more or less their faces and
body, they rushed upon the foe, in order to be free at once to use, in
older times, their claymores, or double-handed blades, or, in later
days, the broadsword in close combat. When fighting with infantry
armed with smooth-bore muskets and bayonets, they could, after the
first volley, fired at more or less close range, dash into the files.
Before the soldiers could reload, the Highlanders would be upon them,
dashing aside the bayonet thrust. Then, with stabbing or cutting blow,
the clansmen slaughtered their foes and thus made firearms of little
account.
It is true that when large levies were made, as in the earlier
centuries, the Scottish spearmen were massed together and made a
formidable front, though as a rule, the English archers, with their
long-range missiles, were able to work havoc among the Scots, and thus
prevent them from getting into close hand-to-hand action. Thus, the
Southrons more than once ruined the chances and hopes of their northern
foes. In archery, the Scots never were able to compete with the English.
Even when, later, some of the Highlanders possessed cannon, they were
apt to look with contempt upon anything which did not permit them to
charge in a rush and come to close quarters. In fact, it was this
unintelligent tenacity in holding on to a war equipment which, even
to the claymore, to say nothing of the target and ordinary spear, had
been discarded in other countries, that brought the clans to final
destruction at Culloden. On the Continent improvements were made,
first in favor of the pike and then of the musket, with the dropping
of anything like a shield, or defence, which required the use of one
hand and which could not resist a bullet. It was a thorough knowledge
of the Highlander’s conceit and conservatism, which had become his
weakness and was ultimately to be his ruin, as well as the perception
of the change in battle tactics and the relative merits of bayonet and
broadsword fighting, that enabled the Duke of Cumberland, then only
twenty-four years of age, to win a decisive victory, such as older men
of experience had repeatedly tried to gain, but to no purpose.
Chambers wrote, in 1830, “The field of Culloden yet bears witness to
the carnage of which it was the scene. In the midst of its black and
blasted heath, various little eminences are to be seen displaying a
lively verdure, but too unequivocally expressive of the dreadful chaos.
They are so distinct and well defined that the eye may almost, by their
means, trace the position of the armies, or at least discover where the
fight was most warmly contested.”
The way toward Inverness, otherwise an unimproved, secondary road, is
fringed with many doleful memorials. There the daisy and bluebell of
Scotland have selected their abode, he tells us, as if resolved to
sentinel forever the last resting-place of their country’s heroes. Not
infrequently modern curiosity hunters have violated the graves in order
to secure some relic of the ill-fated warriors, to show as a wonder
in the halls of the Sassenach. The Gaels, with nobler sentiments,
have come more frequently to translate the bones of their friends to
consecrated ground afar, in their own dear glens of the west. “But
enough and more than enough yet remains to show where Scotland fought
her last battle and the latest examples of her ancient chivalry fell to
feed the eagles and to redeem the desert.”
Inverness in 1745, as Chambers describes it, was a royal burgh in
the vicinity of a half-civilized territory not yet emancipated from
feudal dominion. Though a seaport, it had only a slight local commerce.
The town bore every external mark of wretchedness. Its people, even
its shopkeepers, wore the Highland dress, in all its squalor and
scantiness; for the Highland plaids which we see to-day, in silk and
wool, and sold in shops of luxurious appointment, are vastly different
from the home-made fabrics of a century or more ago. The Inverness
people generally spoke Gaelic. A wheeled vehicle had never yet been
seen within the town, nor was there a turnpike road within forty miles
of its walls. Some contact by sea with France and the dwelling in
winter time of the Highland gentry in the town shed some gleams of
intelligence over the minds of the kilted burghers. Yet when the Young
Chevalier took up his residence at the house of Lady Drummuir, hers was
the only dwelling that had even one room without a bed in it.
It was from Inverness that “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” in 1745, marched
out with his Highlanders to the gage of battle at Culloden, of which we
tell in another chapter. At neither of our two visits to the Capital
of the Highlands had we hosts or hostesses to invite us to drink with
them the inevitable cup of afternoon tea, without which a Britisher
does not feel that the island is safe, or that Britannia rules the
waves. So we must needs be satisfied with hotel service for our Bohea
and cups, though we are bound to say that the decoction was excellent
and the white-capped and snowy-aproned maid’s voice was low and sweet.
As we chatted over our excursion to Drummossie Moor, we recalled that
the victor of Culloden, on arriving at Inverness, found not only a
considerable quantity of provisions, which had been prepared for the
poor Highlanders, but many of the Jacobite ladies, who had attended
their husbands during the campaign. They had just enjoyed their
afternoon tea-drinking and were preparing for an evening ball, at which
the Prince and his officers were to be entertained, after his expected
victory. It was the entrance of the fugitives, who informed them of the
fatal reverse their friends had met with, which caused an abrupt change
of plans.
Yet the lovers of the lost cause cease not their celebrations. “Come
o’er the stream, Charlie!” To this day, in the Highland glens, one can
hear old women singing to the tune of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” inviting
him to “come over the border,” and feast himself on “the red deer and
the black steer,” promising, also, that his loyal followers will “range
on the heather, with bonnet and feather.” The remnant of English
Jacobites still drink to the health of the Stuarts and hold an annual
celebration _in memoriam_, in London and in Philadelphia.