It has occurred to me that a chronicle of domestic matters in Scotland
from the Reformation downwards--the period during which we see a
progress towards the present state of things in our country--would be
an interesting and instructive book. History has in a great measure
confined itself to political transactions and personages, and usually
says little of the people, their daily concerns, and the external
accidents which immediately affect their comfort. This I have always
thought was much to be regretted, and a general tendency to the same
view has been manifested of late years. I have therefore resolved to
make an effort, in regard to my own country, to detail her DOMESTIC
ANNALS--the series of occurrences beneath the region of history, the
effects of passion, superstition, and ignorance in the people, the
extraordinary natural events which disturbed their tranquillity,
the calamities which affected their wellbeing, the traits of false
political economy by which that wellbeing was checked, and generally
those things which enable us to see how our forefathers thought, felt,
and suffered, and how, on the whole, ordinary life looked in their days.
Nor are these details, broken up and disjointed as they often are,
without a useful bearing on certain generalisations of importance, or
devoid of instruction for our own comparatively enlightened age. A good
end is obviously served by enumerating, for example, all the famines
and all the pestilences that have beset the country; for when this is
done, it becomes evident that famine and pestilence have been connected
in the way of cause and effect. For the astronomer, the meteorologist,
and the naturalist, many of the accounts of comets, meteors, and
extraordinary natural productions here given, must have some value.[1]
To the political economist, it may be of service to see the accounts
here drawn from contemporary records of the productiveness and failure
of many seasons, and of the varying proportions of bad seasons to
good throughout considerable spaces of time. As for the numberless
narratives and anecdotes illustrative of the mistaken zeal, the
irregular passions, the deplorable superstitions, and erroneous ideas
and ways in general, of our ancestors, they furnish beyond doubt a rich
pabulum for the student of human nature; nor may they be without some
practical utility amongst us, since many of the same errors continue
in a reduced style to exist, and it may help to extinguish them all
the sooner, that we are enabled here to look upon them in their most
exaggerated and startling form, and as essentially the products and
accompaniments of ignorance and barbarism.
It will probably be matter of regret that this work consists of a
series of articles generally brief and but little connected with
each other, producing on the whole a desultory effect. Might not the
materials have been fused into one continuous narration? I am very
sensible how desirable this was for literary effect; but I am at the
same time assured that, in such a mode of presenting the series of
occurrences, there would have been a constant temptation to generalise
on narrow and insufficient grounds--to make singular and exceptional
incidents pass as characteristic beyond the just degree in which they
really are so--namely, as matters just possible in the course of the
national life of the period to which they refer. It seemed to me the
most honest plan, to present them detachedly under their respective
dates, thus allowing each to tell its own story, and have its own
proper weight with the reader, and no more, in completing the general
picture.
As one means of conveying ‘the body of each age, its form and
pressure,’ the language of the original contemporary narrators is
given, wherever it was sufficiently intelligible and concise. Thus
each age in a manner tells its own story. It has not been deemed
necessary, however, to retain antiquated modes of orthography, beyond
what is required to indicate the old pronunciation, nor have I scrupled
occasionally to omit useless clauses of sentences, when that seemed
conducive to making the narration more readable. This procedure will
not be quite approved of by the rigid antiquary; but it will be for the
benefit of the bulk of ordinary readers.
In general, the events of political history are presented here in only
a brief narrative, such as seemed necessary for connection. But I have
introduced a few notices of these events where there was a contemporary
narration either characteristic in its style, or involving particulars
which might be deemed illustrative of the general feeling of the time.
EDINBURGH, _January 25, 1858_.