[IN this Column we shall, from month to month, notice the most
important business coming before our Highland Representative
Institutions--such as the local Parliament of the Highland
Capital, Gaelic and other Celtic Societies, and passing
incidents likely to prove interesting to our Celtic readers. We
make no pretence to give news; simply comments on incidents,
information regarding which will be obtained through the usual
channels.]
WE make no apology for referring to the doings of the Town Council of
the Capital of the Highlands. Anything calculated to interest the
Highlander is included in our published programme; and surely the
composition, conduct, dignity, and patriotism of the local Parliament of
the HIGHLAND CAPITAL, and the general ability, eloquence, intelligence,
and independence of spirit displayed by its members is of more than mere
local interest. We take it that the Scottish Gael, wherever located, is
interested in the Capital of his native Highlands, and will naturally
concern himself with the history and conduct of those whose duty it is
as its leading men to shine forth as an example to places of lesser
importance.
Last year a Gas and Water Bill was carried through Parliament, involving
an expenditure of something like L80,000, and at least double taxation.
We have no doubt whatever very good and satisfactory reasons will be
given for this large expenditure, but hitherto not the slightest
explanation has been vouchsafed to the public, and we are, in common
with five-sixths of the community, at present quite ignorant of the
reasons given for this enormous expenditure: that there must be
unanswerable reasons we have no doubt whatever, for have not the Council
been unanimous to a man throughout. Not a single protest was entered.
Not a single speech was publicly made against it. But more wonderful
still, not a single speech was made publicly in the Council in its
favour. This did not arise from want of debating power on the part of
the members. It must have arisen from the unanswerable nature of the
arguments delivered in private committees, where, practically, no one
heard them, or of them, except the members themselves. The only
objection which can be raised to this theory is, that if the matter is
so very clear and simple, and the expenditure so imperatively called
for, it is most wonderful that some ingenuous simple-minded member had
not thought of making himself popular at one bound, by giving a little
information to the public as the matter proceeded, and so silence all
the grumbling and general dissatisfaction felt outside.
* * * * *
THE Gaelic Society of Inverness entered on its fifth session last month.
The Society has of late shown considerable signs of popularity and
progress; for close upon fifty members have been added to the roll
during the first eight months of the Society's year, while only eighteen
were added during the whole of the previous one. In 1873, seventy new
members were elected. The following five Clans are the best
represented--Mackenzies, 23 members; Frasers, 22; Mackays, 19;
Macdonalds, 18; Mackintoshes, 14. This is not as it should be; for while
the Mackays only occupy a little over a page of the Inverness Directory,
the Mackintoshes two, and the Mackenzies about three and a-half; the
Macdonalds occupy over four, and the Frasers seven pages. We would like
to see the Clans taking their proper places, by the "levelling-up"
process of course.
* * * * *
WE regret to announce the sudden death, on the 19th of August, of Dr
Hermann Ebel, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of
Berlin. He superintended the new edition of Zeuss's _Grammatica
Celtica_, and was one of the four or five leading Celtic scholars of the
age.
* * * * *
IT will be seen that Logan's "Scottish Gael"--a book now getting very
scarce, and which was never, in consequence of its high price, within
the reach of a wide circle of readers--is to be issued by Mr Hugh
Mackenzie, Bank Lane, in 12 monthly parts at 2s each, Edited, with
Memoir and Notes, by the Rev. Mr Stewart, "Nether-Lochaber." In this way
the work will be much easier to get. It only requires to be known to
secure the demand such an authority on the Celt--his language,
literature, music, and ancient costume--deserves.
* * * * *
WE take the following from the late Dr Norman Macleod's "Reminiscences
of a Highland Parish" on Highlanders ashamed of their country. We
believe the number to whom the paragraph is now applicable is more
limited than when it first saw the light, but we could yet point to a
few of this contemptible tribe, of whom better things might be expected.
We wish the reader to emphasize every line and accept it as our own
views regarding these treacle-beer would-be-genteel excrescences of our
noble race. A wart or tumour sometimes disfigures the finest oak of the
forest, and these so-called Highlanders are just the warts and tumours
of the Celtic races--they have their uses, no doubt:--"One class
sometimes found in society we would especially beseech to depart; we
mean Highlanders ashamed of their country. Cockneys are bad enough, but
they are sincere and honest in their idolatry of the Great Babylon.
Young Oxonians or young barristers, even when they become slashing
London critics, are more harmless than they themselves imagine, and
after all inspire less awe than Ben-Nevis, or than the celebrated
agriculturist who proposed to decompose that mountain with acids, and to
scatter the debris as a fertiliser over the Lochaber moss. But a
Highlander born, who has been nurtured on oatmeal porridge and oatmeal
cakes; who in his youth wore home-spun cloth, and was innocent of shoes
and stockings; who blushed in his attempts to speak the English
language; who never saw a nobler building for years than the little kirk
in the glen, and who owes all that makes him tolerable in society to the
Celtic blood which flows in spite of him through his veins;--for this
man to be proud of his English accent, to sneer at the everlasting
hills, the old kirk and its simple worship, and despise the race which
has never disgraced him--faugh! Peat reek is frankincense in comparison
with him; let him not be distracted by any of our reminiscences of the
old country; leave us, we beseech of thee!"