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The great Highland family now represented by the Marquis of Breadalbane
had at this time for its head Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenurchy,
ordinarily called _Donacha Dhu nan Curich_ (Black Duncan of the Cowl),
a man of considerable force of character, and, for his time, large
means, who died at an advanced age in 1631. He was distinguished for
building, planting, and _improving_; had the taste to hire artists to
decorate his house; and, some years after this time, was one of the
most prominent patrons of the Scottish Vandyke, George Jameson.
[Sidenote: 1590.]
The household books of this great Celtic chief exhibit his style of
life about the time here noted. His rents were principally paid in
kind, and the corn, cattle, and poultry thus supplied by the tenantry
went directly to the support of the laird and his household. ‘In 1590,
the family spent their time between Balloch and Finlarig. The oatmeal
consumed was 364 bolls; the malt, 207 bolls (deducting a small quantity
of _struck_ barley used in the kitchen). They used 90 beeves (“neats,”
“stirks,” or “fed oxen”), more than two-thirds consumed fresh; 20
swine; 200 sheep; 424 salmon, far the greater portion being from the
western rivers; 15,000 herrings; 30 dozen of hard fish; 1805 “heads” of
cheese, new and old, weighing 325 stone; 49 stones of butter; 26 dozen
loaves of wheaten bread; of wheat flour, 3-1/4 bolls. The wine brought
from Dundee was claret and white wine, old and new, in no very large
quantities. [The malt furnished abundance of ale of three kinds--ostler
ale, household ale, and best ale, serving, doubtless, for the different
grades of persons in the family.] Of spices and sweetmeats, we find
only notice on one occasion of small quantities of saffron, mace,
ginger, pepper, “raises of cure,” plumdamas, and _one_ sugar-loaf.’[177]
While the Laird of Glenurchy thus kept house in Strathtay, Lord Lovat
supported a _ménage_ not greatly different in Inverness-shire. The
weekly expenditure of provisions in his house included seven bolls of
malt, seven bolls of meal, and one of flour. Each year seventy beeves
were consumed, besides venison, fish, poultry, kid, lamb, veal, and
all sorts of feathered game in profusion. His lordship imported wines,
sugars, and spices from France, in return for the salmon produced by
his rivers. He was celebrated for a liberal hospitality; and when he
died in 1631, five thousand armed followers and friends attended his
funeral, for all of whom there would be entertainment provided.[178]
The rude abundance shewn in these two establishments, taken in
connection with the account presently to be given of the outward state
of the Marquis of Huntly,[179] the reports afforded by the Water Poet
of the hospitalities he experienced in the braes of Aberdeenshire and
Morayshire,[180] and other particulars involved in our chronicle,
ought somewhat to modify the prevalent notions as to the poverty
of the Celtic part of Scotland in this age. There was, indeed, no
manufacturing industry worth speaking of; but the natural wealth of
the country, the cattle, the wild animals, and the grain, seem to have
furnished the people with no inconsiderable share of the comforts
of life. It will be found, too, that the mansions of Glenurchy and
Huntly, a few years after this date, exhibited elegant architecture and
decoration.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1590.