THE OLD HIGHLANDS AND THEIR INHABITANTS
The Highlands, geologically speaking, is an island of crystalline
rock set in a great sea of younger formations. The great glen which
forms the trough of the Caledonian Canal is a mighty earth rift. When
once across this line of rock and water, we were in the Highlands. In
one summer visit, we spent a part of our vacation at Crieff, which
lies at the base of the Grampian Hills and at the entrance to the
Highlands. Here the beauty, fashion, and intelligence of the United
Kingdom in August gather together. What was once a “hydro,” but is now
a fine hotel, was crowded to its utmost capacity. In the evenings,
entertainments of music, with dancing and recitations by the young
people, were enjoyed. In the mornings, we took horses and carriages and
drove through many leagues of the lovely scenery. At another time, in a
later year, the automobile served us while glancing at a hundred linear
and many more square miles of Scotland’s glory.
Yet every time we were in the Highlands and in whatever shire, the old
song, learned in childhood, came to mind--“O where, tell me where, has
my Highland laddie gone?” Ross and Cromarty, now united in one and the
largest of all the counties in Scotland, is the most thinly populated
of all. In fact this great area has been “improved” by its landed
proprietors promoting the emigration of its former inhabitants. There
is only a fraction left of the Highlanders. The Celtic element is but a
survival, a remnant, and the Gaelic tongue is like a flickering flame,
almost ready to die out.
What is the reason? Is it, in part at least, because nature is so
niggardly? Again, is it not true that “those who take up the sword
shall perish by the sword”? Did the traditional Highlands and
Highlanders exist, or gain their place in romance and history, chiefly
through the human imagination?
Scottish history and poetry show that originally, even as a swordsman
and fighter, the Highlander possessed no special superiority over the
Lowlander, but in the seventeenth century, as in the modern days, which
we of ’61, as well as of 1915, remember, and have seen demonstrated,
the best prepared people, to whom arms are habitual, and to whom
military training is a personal accomplishment, will, at the first
beginning of war, at least, be pretty sure to get the advantage. In a
prolonged struggle, it is resources that tell. Wars are not ended by
battle, but by manifest reserves, with power to follow up victory.
It was western Scotland, of azoic rock, a far-off corner of Europe,
that had the singular fortune of sheltering the last vestiges of the
Celts--that early race of people who, once placed upon the centre of
the ancient continent, were gradually driven to its western extremities.
A notion, held tenaciously by the Highlanders, was that the Lowlands
had originally been their birthright. Many of them practised a regular
system of reprisal upon the frontier of that civilized region, with
as good a conscience as a Levant pirate crossed himself and vowed to
burn candles of gratitude before the Virgin’s picture, if successful
in robbery. To maintain this philosophy and practice, the use of arms
was habitual and necessary among the Highlanders. While among the
Lowlanders cattle-lifting and other methods of rapine were considered
as the business of thieves and scoundrels, it was usually reckoned by
the Highlanders to be an eminently honorable occupation, partaking of
the prestige of a profession. How finely does Sir Walter Scott bring
out this sentiment, when Roderick Dhu answers Fitz-James, who charges
the Highland chieftain with leading a robber life.
Moreover, what still tended to induce military habits among the
Gaelic mountain folk, and what still maintains most wars, in the same
spirit, though on a larger scale,--national instead of private,--was
the hereditary enmity against each other, systematically maintained,
purposely cultivated and instilled in their children. In what respect
were the clan feuds and fights of the Celtic Scots any nobler
than those which so long distracted China, Japan, and Iroquois and
Algonquin America? With such philosophy dominant as still in our day
creates armies and navies, while being no more ethically worthy, it
was required that every man capable of bearing arms should be in
perpetual readiness to foment war, or to seize or repel opportunities
of vengeance. In fact, the hideous brutality of Confucian, Japanese,
Iroquois, Scottish, and Albanian codes of vengeance alike befitted the
common savagery that runs counter to the teachings of the Universal Man
of Nazareth.
The Celtic Highlanders were nominally subjugated by the iron hand of
Cromwell. Of this mighty man, Dr. Johnson says, “No faction in Scotland
loved the name of Cromwell or continued his fame. Cromwell introduced,
by useful violence, the arts of peace. People learned to make shoes and
plant kail.” Shoes were not common in this part of Scotland until as
late as 1773.
At the Restoration of the Stuarts, in the person of Charles II, the
Highlanders, with no illustrious and stimulating example before them,
rebounded into all their former privileges and vigor. They were kept
in arms during the reign of the last two monarchs, who fomented those
unhappy struggles, on account of religion, which have made the Stuart
name so detested. The patriarchal system of laws, upon which Highland
society was constituted, disposed these mountaineers to look upon
these unhappy princes, Charles I and James II, and upon the Pretenders,
who came after them, as the general fathers or chiefs of the nation,
whose natural and unquestionable power had been wickedly disputed
by their rebellious children. Hence at Killiecrankie, Prestonpans,
Falkirk, and Culloden, they fought with the same ardor that would
induce a man of humanity to ward off the blow which an unnatural son
had aimed at a parent. In a word, as to political education, they had
only the ideas of feudalism in which they were steeped.
Having myself lived under feudal institutions, and seen the daily
workings of a society, graded from lowest to highest, although with
many variations, and fixed in customs which seemed to me to be tedious,
absurd, and ridiculous, as well as interesting and fascinating, and
living meanwhile under the shadow of castle walls and towers, crossing
daily the drawbridge and often visiting the towers of the citadel, I
could understand the mediæval processes of thought, so long surviving
in western Scotland. I was able to appreciate also these Scottish
castles, whether still maintained as of old, intact and modernized, or
in ruins, and easily re-create in imagination the mental atmosphere
and customs of the old feudal days, when swords were an article of
daily dress and frequent use, and the steel blade the chief bond and
instrument of social order. The border ruffianism of “bleeding Kansas”
in the West and much of the old social situation down South, in
cotton land,--the pride and contempt on the one side and the hatred,
with occasional cattle-lifting propensities, on the other, especially
in the Southern Highlands,--of which in my boyhood I heard so much,
helped me to enjoy not only Scottish history, but Sir Walter Scott’s
inimitable word pictures in prose and verse. One can describe most of
the spectacular phenomena of Japanese as well as Scottish feudalism in
Scott’s verse and prose. His writings make illuminating commentary.
It was hard for the Lowlanders, after their discipline under the
feudal system had passed with the institution, to understand or
get along peaceably with the Highlanders, who hated industrialism,
shop-keeping, and money-making. Highland poverty and rawness are in
the main the immediate inheritances, even as the old semi-civilized
life was the direct result, of feudalism. The reason why the dwellings
of the plain people in the rocky regions were, even in our day, so
wretchedly poor and bare, is revealed in the book of Mair, entitled “De
Gestis,” published in Latin in 1518, concerning land tenure. He says:
“In Scotland the houses of the peasants are mere small thatched huts,
and the cause is, that they do not hold their land in perpetuity, but
only rent on a lease of four or five years at the will of the lord;
therefore, though there are plenty of stones, they will not build neat
houses, nor will they plant trees, or hedges to the woods, nor will
they enrich the soil; and this is to the no small loss and disgrace of
the whole realm. If the lords would give them their land in perpetuity,
they would get double or triple the money they now have, because the
peasants would cultivate the land incomparably better.”
This system of land tenure, which in theory and practice made the laird
the landowner and the tenant, or worker of the soil, a virtual serf
or semi-slave, sufficiently indicates the grounds and nature of the
Highland chief’s power and the degradation of the average or common
man. In almost every clan, there were subordinate chiefs, cadets of the
principal family, that had acquired a territory and founded separate
septs. In this community, the majority of commoners were distinct
from the “gentlemen,” who were persons who could clearly trace their
derivation from the chiefs of former times and assert their kinsmanship
to the present one. Below this clan aristocracy were the mass of plain
fellows (“kerns”) who could not tell how or why they came to belong to
the clan and who were always distinctly inferiors.
There were several distinctions, based on ability, of status and
condition. The commoners were little better than serfs, having no
certain idea of a noble ancestry to nerve their exertions or to purify
their conduct. It was not to these, but to the gentry, that the chief
looked for active service and upon whom he depended in time of war.
These upper grades of men did most of the fighting, while the larger
body of common retainers (“kerns”) were left behind, during a raid,
to perform the humbler duties of driving the cows or tilling the
fields. Or, if they accompanied the foray, they were put in the rear
ranks and given poor arms, sometimes being provided only with dirks.
To illustrate these facts there were and are many stories told and
traditions handed down. Note the incident in “The Lady of the Lake”:
“Because a wretched kern ye slew,
Homage to name to Roderick Dhu?”
In a word, in Scotland and in Japan, of which we can bear witness from
personal experience, social evolution among clansmen and arms-bearing
men had begun and continued, though separation had early taken place
between the fighters and the field laborers. In both countries the
process and result were much the same. Moreover, after the Reformation,
the proud Highlanders, clinging to the old faith and traditions, looked
down, with even greater contempt than before, upon the commercial
Presbyterians of the Low Countries. They regarded with absolute horror
the newer social and political order, which in their eyes was but a
dark system of Parliamentary corruption. They were only too ready to
believe the stories of luxury, extravagance, and predatory dishonesty,
which were supposed to be rife and chronic in London. Here, too, human
nature, Japanese and Scotch, was as much alike as in a pair of twins,
born of the same mother, and throughout history running in parallel
lines of action.
Moreover, in both Scotland and Japan, it was the bayonet against the
sword. The men of mediæval mind in both countries wore and wielded
blades and looked upon the use of firearms as something mean and
cowardly. Believing, to the last, in the rush against uniformed men
in ranks and in slashing with two-handed sword strokes (the Japanese
swordsmen using a mat shield, where the Highlander employed a target),
both Scot and Nipponese met failure against the triangular stabbing
tools that ended feudalism. In Tokio, the bayonet monument on Kudan
Hill tells a story. Here, history is told in steel.
What did more than anything else to open the Highlands and break up
the very idea of a “hermit nation” was a system of roads which was
carried out mainly during the sixteen years between 1726 and 1742, by
the British field marshal, George Wade. Though born in Ireland (whence
also came the great soldier and diplomatist, Wade, of China), he knew
well the Gaels of both the island and the mainland. He spent two years
studying the problems of the Highlands, economic and social. He had had
long service with the army in the Belgic Netherlands, Portugal, Spain,
and the Mediterranean Islands. During the Jacobite outbreak of 1715,
he acted effectively as military governor. Having later again made a
thorough study of the Highlands and their inhabitants, he was made
commander-in-chief, in order to give effect to his own recommendations.
He cut roads through the most important strategic places and lines
of country. In the course of this engineering work he superintended
the construction of no fewer than forty stone bridges. It is this
road-making which constitutes his chief title to fame, as the old
distich intimates:--
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”
In a word, he made possible the pacification of the Highlands, by a
system of hard-faced or “metalled” roads. Dr. Johnson, who saw the
results of Wade’s peaceful campaign, when the work was fresh and the
results novel, is unstinted in praise of Wade. In fact, it is quite
probable that, except for these new highways, the great man’s “Journey
to the Western Islands of Scotland,” in 1773, would not, perhaps could
not, have been taken.
The houses the Highlanders of a century ago lived in are described
by Dr. Johnson. The construction of a hut, he tells us, is of loose
stones, arranged for the most part with some tendency to circularity
and placed where the wind cannot act upon it with violence, and where
the water would run easily away, because it has no floor but the naked
ground. The wall, which is commonly about six feet high, declines from
the perpendicular a little inward. Some rafters are raised for a roof,
which makes a strong and warm thatch, kept from flying off by ropes of
twisted heather, of which the ends, reaching from the centre of the
thatch to the top of the wall, are held firm by the weight of a large
stone. No light is admitted, but at the entrance and through a hole in
the thatch, which gives vent to the smoke. The hole is not directly
over the fire, lest the rain should extinguish it, and the smoke
therefore fills the place before it escapes.
[Illustration: THE SCOTCH BRIGADE MEMORIAL]
Entering one of this better class of huts, Dr. Johnson found an old
woman whose husband was eighty years old. She knew little English,
but he had interpreters at hand. She had five children still at home
and others who had gone away. One youth had gone to Inverness to buy
meal--by which oatmeal is always meant. She was mistress of sixty
goats and many kids were in the enclosure. She had also some poultry,
a potato garden, and four shucks containing each twelve sheaves of
barley. Huts in building and equipment are not more uniform than are
palaces, and hers was divided into several apartments. She was boiling
goat’s flesh in the kettle for the next meal. With true pastoral
hospitality, she invited her guest to sit down and drink whiskey.
Sweetening was obtained from honey. Probably the reason why marmalade
is so much used by the modern Scots is because of old their
ancestors used a great deal of honey, of which marmalade, usually made
from oranges imported from Spain, takes the place.
Though the old lady’s kirk was four miles off--probably eight English
miles--she went to worship every Sunday. She was glad to get some
snuff, which is the luxury of a Highland cottage. In one village of
three huts, Dr. Johnson found a chimney and a pane of glass.
Beside his road-making, with stone and concrete, General Wade had
notable success in dealing with the peculiar variety of human nature
that was so marked in the Celtic Highlanders. He so won his way into
their hearts that, with the tact that came of thorough acquaintance
with his subject, he slowly but surely disarmed the clans. Turbulence
and habitual brawls ceased, for the most part, and there came an era of
civilization and peaceful life, contrasting amazingly with the state of
affairs in Scotland before 1745. To the Irish General Wade the world
awards the title promised of God by the prophet Isaiah, “The restorer
of paths to dwell in.”
It was in 1745 that the road-builder in the Highlands, Wade, then
a field marshal, but in poor health and seventy years of age, when
attempting to deal with the insurrection of the Jacobites, was utterly
baffled by the perplexing rapidity of Prince Charles’s marches. He,
therefore, most patriotically, resigned in favor of the Duke of
Cumberland, the “Bluff Billie” of fame and story.
Though Wade won great victories in war, his greatest renown was gained
not on the field of blood, but in this peaceful triumph over the
Highlanders. In this, he gave an inspiring precedent to those of our
own American officers of the army and navy, who have done such noble
work in preventing riot and other outbreaks of violence among the races
in our composite nation, or who, by persuasion, instead of bloodshed,
have induced Indians to submit to law. In digging canals, in achieving
hygienic mastery over disease, in surmounting natural obstacles, in
ministering to the needy, sick, and hungry upon the frontiers, and in
time of pestilence, calamity, and devastation, by storm and earthquake,
they have shown their heroism. May the time soon come when society
and the world at large will honor the heroes of peace and mark their
bloodless triumphs, no less renowned in peace than in war. Admirable in
the highest degree is now the Scottish _camaraderie_ of Highlander and
Lowlander, but none, to gain it, would in these more enlightened days,
pay again the awful price at which it was won.