Early sowing recommended--Vitality of
Superstitions--Capnomancy--Hazel Nuts: Frequent References to
in Gaelic Poetry--How best to get at the full flavour of a ripe
Hazel Nut.
A fortnight's incessant rain [September 1872]--rain descending
at times in solid sheets--not only wets the ground and puddles
the roads, but makes one's very brains feel soft and sloppy
and mashed-turnip-wise. You take up a book only to lay it down
again. You fill your pipe and set it alight, but with less than
half a dozen whiffs you are more than satiated. The weed has lost
its flavour. You sit down to write "doggedly," as Johnson says,
but with all your doggedness the pen totters over the sheet with
pace uncertain and listless, as if even he felt disinclined for the
task, and the sentences, like a squad of raw recruits, refuse to
fall gracefully into their places, and stumble against each other in
ludicrous confusion, to the consternation and grief of the most patient
of drill-sergeants. You will not, perhaps, believe it, but it is true,
nevertheless, that so persistent, penetrating, and inter-penetrating
has been the last fortnight's rain, that in nineteen cases out of
twenty a lucifer match, "vesuvian," or fusee will obstinately refuse
to ignite by any other process than putting it into actual contact
with fire, and in that case, why, a slip of paper is just as easily
dealt with, as well as more efficacious for your purpose. Hay and corn
luckily stand a good deal of rain without being completely spoiled,
but we are afraid to estimate the amount of damage that another week's
wet weather will cause over the West Highlands. All our own hay and
corn has been snugly housed more than three weeks ago. Why shouldn't
everybody sow in February or early March as we do, and have their
ingathering in August, generally our best and driest month? In a
climate so treacherous and inconstant as ours is, it is the greatest
folly in the world to run the smallest risk that you can possibly
avoid. We have been preaching this particular doctrine for a dozen
years past, and it has had some effect in our immediate neighbourhood;
but it is sad to see the country at large at this moment--corn and
hay rotting in the fields, that might, with ordinary prudence and a
little effort, be long ere now snug and safe under "thack and rape."
The more one inquires the truer does he find the dictum of a
philosopher of the last century to be, that "the superstitions,
as well as the languages, of all lands and ages are linked together
by mysterious bonds, which neither time nor distance seem able to
destroy." In our immediate neighbourhood an instance of a very old
superstition was brought under our notice a few days ago, such as,
with all our knowledge of such matters, we had hitherto never dreamt
of as existing in the Western Highlands. A man went to market at a
considerable distance to sell a good strong two-year-old colt. He did
not return on the day his wife expected him, and she became uneasy,
not so much for the well-being of her laggard liege lord and master--he
had often gone the same errand before, and had always returned safe
and sound, even if a little later than his better half had a right to
expect--but as to whether he had sold the colt, and if for anything
like the price settled between the twain as being his fair price
before he left home. She put on a large fire on her hearth, placing,
when it had reached a certain stage of ignition, a bundle of green
alder boughs atop. When the whole was fully ablaze, she went outside
and watched the direction of the smoke issuing from her chimney. The
smoke was carried in an easterly direction, a lucky quarter, and she
returned to the house and told her daughter that, whatever had come
over the father--and she threatened to tell him a bit of her mind
as to his doings on his return--the colt at least had been sold, and
well sold, for the alder smoke had gone in the best and luckiest of
all directions, towards the east, in the direction of the rising sun;
and she had never known the omen fail. The curious thing is that within
an hour or so on that very evening the man returned, and counted into
his wife's lap two pounds and four shillings sterling over and above
the expected price of the colt, as agreed upon at home. The only other
curious thing that we could gather in connection with the superstition
is that the alder branches must be cut specially for the occasion, and
by a virgin. It was so in this case; and we are gravely assured that,
if it had been otherwise, the ascending smoke would either have drifted
hither and thither without a purpose, unsteadily, or have uselessly
intermingled with that of the neighbouring cottages. The superstition,
you must know, is a very old one; the Greeks and Romans practised
it, and from them it spread widely over the European Continent. In
books on magic and divination it is called Capnomancy, derived, as
our friend Professor Blackie could tell you better than anybody else,
from the Greek Capnos, smoke, and manteia, divination, witchcraft. The
ancients paid attention principally to the smoke of sacrifices, as well
as to the briskness with which the fire burned. If the smoke ascended
in a straight columnar body zenithwards, it was a favourable omen;
if it was violently blown aside, or fell back over the altar and the
sacrificers, it was of evil augury. Our Highland dame's notion of its
taking an easterly course, towards the direction of the breaking day,
of the dawn, and the morning sun, seems to us full of a rough and rude
poetry such as you frequently meet with in carefully examining into the
details of even the grossest superstitions. Having had occasion to be
of some little service to the priestess in this rare act of divination,
we had the whole from her own lips, though she was averse at first,
as is generally the case when a clergyman is the inquirer, to entering
upon the subject at all. How these practices root themselves among
a people, defying eradication, is very extraordinary.
Did you ever, reader, crack a nut? Not the aristocratic walnut or
filbert over your wine, but the far superior, rich, ripe hazel nut
in its season from off the hazel bough, when the bright autumnal sun
was overhead, and the autumnal breeze stirred the leaves around you,
their multitudinous murmur resembling the far-heard music of the
restless sea. A ripe hazel nut is good anywhere, but best of all when
gathered by your own hand in its native wild wood from the overhanging
branch, whence the beautiful cluster nods at you as if soliciting
your attention, now and again, as you approach to pull it, seeming
to delight in playing a game of bo-peep with you among the leaves,
like as you have seen the Pleiades at times when, though the night
be clear, many blanket-like clouds are chasing each other in wild
career athwart the starry blue. Throughout the whole range of poetry,
the hazel nut, though often mentioned, has never perhaps had so much
justice done to it as by the Gaelic bard Duncan Bàn Macintyre. In
his Coire-Cheathaich, one of his finest poems, he says:--
Bha cus ra' fhaotainn de chnothan caoine,
'S cha b' iad na cacohagan aotrom gann,
Ach bagailt mhaola, bu taine plaoisge,
'Toirt brigh á laoghan na' maoth-shlat fann:
'S rath nan caochan 'na dhosaibh caorainn,
'S na phreasaibh caola, làn chraobh a's mhearg;
Na gallain ùra, 's na faillein dhlùtha,
'S am barrach dùinte mu chùl nan crann.
Ewen Maclachlan, commonly styled "of Aberdeen," because he taught the
Grammar School there, and there died, but who was, in truth, a Lochaber
man--nay, a Nether Lochaber man, born and bred, and whose ashes rest
in Killevaodain of Ardgour, without, we are ashamed to confess it,
"One gray stone to mark his grave;" he, born at Tarrachalltuinn--the
Height of Hazel Trees--in our parish, knew something of hazel nuts,
and thus happily describes them in their season:--
'S glan fàile nan cno gaganach,
Air ard-Shlios nan cròc bad-dhuilleach;
'S trom fàsor am por bagailteach,
Air bharr nam fad-gheug sòlasach;
Theid brìgh nam fiuran slat-mheurach,
'An cridhe nam ùr-chnap blasadach;
Gur brisg-gheal sùgh a chagannaich,
Do neach a chaguas dòrlach dhin.
'S clann bheag a ghnà le'm pocannan,
A streup ri h-ard nan dos-chrannabh,
A bhuain nan cluaran mog-mheurach,
Gu lùgh'or, docoir, luath-lamhach;
'Nuair dh'fhaoisgear as na mogail iad,
'S a bhristear plaoisg nan cochall diu,
Gur caoin am maoth-bhlas fortanach
Bhios air an fhros neo-bhruaileanach.
Our nuts are unusually plentiful this year, and of a size and flavour
that we do not recollect ever to have seen equalled. They are now
at that stage of ripeness when they are most delicious to the taste,
and one may indulge in any amount of them with perfect safety. Most
people are fond of nuts, but if the reader wants to enjoy the full
flavour, to get out of a nut all that is in it, let him take the
following recipe:--"First of all, let the nut be cracked, if possible,
between your own molars, for these are, after all, the first and
most natural and best of all nut-crackers, better quoad hoc than
an instrument of the purest silver or steel; and there is besides,
remember, something pleasant to the palate in the feel and flavour
even of an uncracked nut. Having cracked your nut, then--and fairly
placed between the grinders, a really good nut is not difficult to
crack, the worst nuts being always the most difficult to deal with,
for the more insignificant the kernel the thicker and dourer the
shell--having cracked your nut and extracted the kernel, whole if
possible, introduce it into your mouth, not per se, by itself, as
is commonly done, but with a small fragment of the shell,--a bit
of pin's head size will do. Proceed now to masticate the delicious
morsel, and confess that there is a delicacy and flavour about a hazel
nut that you knew not how to extract in full, although in your day
you had cracked your bushels of them, until you were taught it from
Nether Lochaber. The philosophy of the thing is that the particle of
shell introduced with the kernel causes the act of mastication to be
performed more thoroughly than it otherwise would be, setting free
the full flavour and aroma--all, in short, that a nut has to give.