THE WHISKY SMUGGLERS
A MODERN form of smuggling little suspected by the average Englishman is
found in the illicit whisky-distilling yet carried on in the Highlands of
Scotland and the wilds of Ireland, as the records of Inland Revenue
prosecutions still annually prove. The sportsman, or the more
adventurous among those tourists who roam far from the beaten track, are
still likely to discover in rugged and remote situations the ruins of
rough stone and turf huts of no antiquity, situated in lonely rifts in
the mountain-sides, always with a stream running by. If the stranger is
at all inquisitive on the subject of these solitary ruins, he will easily
discover that not only are they not old, but that they have, in many
cases, only recently been vacated. They are, in fact, the temporary
bothies built from the abundant materials of those wild spots by the
ingenious crofters and other peasantry, for the purpose of distilling
whisky that shall not, between its manufacture and its almost immediate
consumption, pay duty to the revenue authorities.
This illegal production of what is now thought to be the “national drink”
of Scotland and Ireland, is not of any considerable antiquity, for whisky
itself did not grow popular until comparatively recent times. Robert
Burns, who may not unfairly be considered the poet-laureate of whisky,
and styles it “whisky, drink divine,” would have had neither the
possibility of that inspiration, nor have filled the official post of
exciseman, had he flourished but a few generations earlier; but he was
born in that era when whisky-smuggling and dram-drinking were at their
height, and he took an active part in both the drinking of whisky and the
hunting down of smugglers of it.
One of the most stirring incidents of his career was that which occurred
in 1792, when, foremost of a little band of revenue officers, aided by
dragoons, he waded into the waters of Solway, reckless of the quicksands
of that treacherous estuary, and, sword in hand, was the first to board a
smuggling brig, placing the crew under arrest and conveying the vessel to
Dumfries, where it was sold. It was this incident that inspired him with
the poem, if indeed, we may at all fitly claim inspiration for such an
inferior Burns product:
THE DE’IL’S AWA’ WI’ THE EXCISEMAN
The De’il cam’ fiddling thro’ the town,
And danc’d awa’ wi’ the exciseman;
And ilka wife cry’d, “Auld Mahoun,
I wish you luck o’ your prize, man.”
We’ll mak’ our maut and brew our drink,
We’ll dance, and sing, and rejoice, man;
And monie thanks to the muckle black De’il,
That danced awa’ wi’ the exciseman.
There’s threesome reels, and foursome reels,
There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man;
But the ae best dance e’er cam’ to our lan’,
Was—the De’il’s awa’ wi’ the exciseman.
Whisky, _i.e. usquebaugh_, signifying in Gaelic “water of life,”
originated, we are told, in the monasteries, where so many other
comforting cordials were discovered, somewhere about the eleventh or
twelfth century. It was for a very long period regarded only as a
medicine, and its composition remained unknown to the generality of
people; and thus we find among the earliest accounts of whisky, outside
monastic walls, an item in the household expenses of James the Fourth of
Scotland, at the close of the fifteenth century. There it is styled
“aqua vitæ.”
A sample of this then new drink was apparently introduced to the notice
of the King or his Court, and seems to have been so greatly appreciated
that eight bolls of malt figure among the household items as delivered to
“Friar James Cor,” for the purpose of manufacturing more, as per sample.
But for generations to come the nobles and gentry of Scotland continued
to drink wine, and the peasantry to drink ale, and it was only with the
closing years of another century that whisky became at all commonly
manufactured. We read that in 1579 distillers were for the first time
taxed in Scotland, and private stills forbidden; and the rural population
did not altogether forsake their beer for the spirit until about the
beginning of the eighteenth century. Parliament, however, soon
discovered a tempting source of revenue in it, and imposed constantly
increasing taxation. In 1736 the distillers’ tax was raised to 20_s._ a
gallon, and there were, in addition, imposts upon the retailers.
It might have been foreseen that the very natural result of these
extortionate taxes would be to elevate illegal distilling, formerly
practised here and there, into an enormously increased industry,
flourishing in every glen. Only a very small proportion of the output
paid the duties imposed. Every clachan had its still, or stills.
This state of things was met by another Act which prohibited the making
of whisky from stills of a smaller capacity than five hundred gallons;
but this enactment merely brought about the removal of the more or less
openly defiant stills from the villages to the solitary places in the
hills and mountains, and necessitated a large increase in the number of
excisemen.
Seven years of these extravagant super-taxes sufficed to convince the
Government of the folly of so overweighting an article with taxation that
successful smuggling of it would easily bring fortunes to bold and
energetic men. To do so was thus abundantly proved to be a direct
provocation to men of enterprise; and the net result the Government found
to be a vastly increased and highly expensive excise establishment, whose
cost was by no means met by the revenue derived from the heavy duties.
Failure thus becoming evident, the taxes were heavily reduced, until they
totalled but ten shillings and sixpence a gallon.
But the spice of adventure introduced by illegal distilling under the old
heavy taxation had aroused a reckless frame of mind among the
Highlanders, who, once become used to defy the authorities, were not
readily persuaded to give up their illegal practices. The glens
continued to be filled with private stills. Glenlivet was, in especial,
famed for its whisky-smugglers; and the peat-reek arose in every
surrounding fold in the hills from hundreds of “sma’ stills.” Many of
these private undertakings did business in a large way, and openly sold
their products to customers in the south, sending their tubs of spirits
under strong escort, for great distances. They had customers in England
also, and exciting incidents arose at the Border, for not only the
question of excise then arose, but that of customs duty as well; for the
customs rates on spirits were then higher in England than in Scotland.
The border counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, Berwick, Roxburgh,
and Dumfriesshire were infested with smugglers of this double-dyed type,
to whom must be added the foreign contrabandists, such as the Dutchman,
Yawkins, who haunted the coasts of Dumfriesshire and Galloway with his
smuggling lugger, the _Black Prince_, and is supposed to be the original
of Dirk Hatteraick, in Scott’s romance, “Guy Mannering.”
The very name of this bold fellow was a terror to those whose duty it was
to uphold law and order in those parts; and it was, naturally, to his
interest to maintain that feeling of dread, by every means in his power.
Scott tells us how, on one particular night, happening to be ashore with
a considerable quantity of goods in his sole custody, a strong party of
excisemen came down upon him. Far from shunning the attack, Yawkins
sprang forward, shouting, “Come on, my lads, Yawkins is before you.”
The revenue officers were intimidated, and relinquished their prize,
though defended only by the courage and address of one man. On his
proper element, Yawkins was equally successful. On one occasion he was
landing his cargo at the Manxman’s Lake, near Kirkcudbright, when two
revenue cutters, the _Pigmy_ and the _Dwarf_, hove in sight at once, on
different tacks, the one coming round by the Isles of Fleet, the other
between the point of Rueberry and the Muckle Ron. The dauntless
free-trader instantly weighed anchor and bore down right between the
luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his
wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his
occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvas,
without receiving injury.
So, at any rate, the fantastic legends tell us, although it is but fair
to remark, in this place, that no practical yachtsman, or indeed any
other navigator, would for a moment believe in the possibility of such a
feat.
To account for these and other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition
freely alleged that Yawkins insured his celebrated lugger by compounding
with the Devil for one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged
the separation of the stock and tithes is left to our conjecture. The
lugger was perhaps called the _Black Prince_ in honour of the formidable
insurer. Her owner’s favourite landing-places were at the entrance of
the Dee and the Cree, near the old castle of Rueberry, about six miles
below Kirkcudbright. There is a cave of large dimensions in the vicinity
of Rueberry, which, from its being frequently used by Yawkins and his
supposed connection with the smugglers on the shore, is now called “Dirk
Hatteraick’s Cave.” Strangers who visit this place, the scenery of which
is highly romantic, are also shown, under the name of the “Gauger’s
Leap,” a tremendous precipice.
“In those halcyon days of the free trade,” says Scott, “the fixed price
for carrying a box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway
to Edinburgh was fifteen shillings, and a man with two horses carried
four such packages.”
This condition of affairs prevailed until peace had come, after the final
defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Government then, as always, sadly in
need of new sources of revenue, was impressed with the idea that a fine
sum might annually be obtained by placing these shy Highland distillers
under contribution. But there were great difficulties in the way. The
existing laws were a mere dead letter in those regions, and it was scarce
likely that any new measures, unless backed up by a display of military
force, would secure obedience. The Duke of Gordon, at that period a
personage of exceptionally commanding influence with the clansmen, was
appealed to by the Government to use his authority for the purpose of
discouraging these practices; but he declared, from his place in the
House of Lords, that the Highlanders were hereditary distillers of
whisky: it had from time immemorial been their drink, and they would, in
spite of every discouragement, continue to make it and to consume it.
They would sell it, too, he said, when given the opportunity of doing so
by the extravagantly high duty on spirits. The only way out of the
difficulty with which the Government was confronted was, he pointed out,
the passing of an Act permitting the distilling of whisky on reasonable
terms.
The result of this straightforward speech was the passing of an Act in
1823 which placed the moderate excise duty of 2_s._ 3_d._ a gallon on the
production of spirits, with a £10 annual license for every still of a
capacity of forty gallons: smaller stills being altogether illegal.
These provisions were reasonable enough, but failed to satisfy the
peasantry, and the people were altogether so opposed to the regulation of
distilling that they destroyed the licensed distilleries. It was scarce
worth the while of retailers, under those circumstances, to take out
licenses, and so it presently came to pass that for every one duly
licensed dealer there would be, according to the district, from fifty to
one hundred unlicensed.
And so things remained until by degrees the gradually perfected system of
excise patrols wore down this resistance.
In the meanwhile, the licensed distillers had a sorry time of it.
Archibald Forbes, many years ago, in the course of some observations upon
whisky-smugglers, gave reminiscences of George Smith, who, from having in
his early days been himself a smuggler, became manager of the Glenlivet
Distillery. This famous manufactory of whisky, in these days producing
about two thousand gallons a week, had an output in 1824 of but one
hundred gallons in the same time; and its very existence was for years
threatened by the revengeful peasantry and proprietors of the “sma’
stills.” Smith was a man of fine physical proportions and great courage
and tenacity of purpose, or he could never have withstood the
persecutions and dangers he had long to face. “The outlook,” he said,
“was an ugly one. I was warned, before I began, by my neighbours that
they meant to burn the new distillery to the ground, and me in the heart
of it. The Laird of Aberlour presented me with a pair of hair-trigger
pistols, and they were never out of my belt for years. I got together
three or four stout fellows for servants, armed them with pistols, and
let it be known everywhere that I would fight for my place till the last
shot. I had a pretty good character as a man of my word, and through
watching, by turns, every night for years, we contrived to save the
distillery from the fate so freely predicted for it. But I often, both
at kirk and market, had rough times of it among the glen people, and if
it had not been for the Laird of Aberlour’s pistols I don’t think I
should have been telling you this story now.”
In ’25 and ’26 three more small distilleries were started in the glen;
but the smugglers succeeded very soon in frightening away their
occupants, none of whom ventured to hang on a second year in the face of
the threats uttered against them. Threats were not the only weapons
used. In 1825 a distillery which had just been started at the head of
Aberdeenshire, near the banks o’ Dee, was burnt to the ground with all
its outbuildings and appliances, and the distiller had a very narrow
escape of being roasted in his own kiln. The country was in a
desperately lawless state at this time. The riding-officers of the
Revenue were the mere sport of the smugglers, and nothing was more common
than for them to be shown a still at work, and then coolly defied to make
a seizure.
Prominent among these active and resourceful men was one Shaw, proprietor
of a shebeen on the Shea Water, in the wilds of Mar. Smugglers were free
of his shy tavern, which, as a general rule, the gaugers little cared to
visit singly. Shaw was alike a man of gigantic size, great strength, and
of unscrupulous character, and stuck at little in the furtherance of his
illegal projects. But if Shaw was a terror to the average exciseman,
George Smith, for his part, was above the average, and feared no man; and
so, when overtaken by a storm on one occasion, had little hesitation in
seeking the shelter of this ill-omened house. Shaw happened to be away
from home at the time, and Smith was received by the hostess, who, some
years earlier, before she had married her husband, had been a sweetheart
of the man who now sought shelter. The accommodation afforded by the
house was scanty, but a bedroom was found for the unexpected guest, and
he in due course retired to it. Mrs. Shaw had promised that his natural
enemies, the smugglers, should not disturb him, if they returned in the
night; but when they did return, later on, Shaw determined that he would
at least give the distillery man a fright. Most of them were drunk, and
ready for any mischief, and would probably have been prepared even to
murder him. Shaw was, however, with all his faults, no little of a
humorist, and only wanted his joke at the enemy’s expense.
The band marched upstairs solemnly, in spite of some little hiccoughing,
and swung into the bedroom, a torch carried by the foremost man throwing
a fitful glare around. The door was locked when they had entered, and
all gathered in silence round the bed. Shaw then, drawing a great
butcher’s knife from the recesses of his clothes, brandished it over the
affrighted occupant of the bed. “This gully, mon, iss for your powels,”
said he.
But Smith had not entered this House of Dread without being properly
armed, and he had, moreover, taken his pistols to bed with him, and was
at that moment holding one in either hand, under the clothes. As Shaw
flourished his knife and uttered his alarming threats, he whipped out the
one and presented it at Shaw’s head, promising him he would shoot him if
the whole party did not immediately quit the room; while with the other
(the bed lying beside the fireplace) he fired slyly up the chimney,
creating a thunderous report and a choking downfall of soot, in midst of
which all the smugglers fled except Shaw, who remained, laughing.
Shaw had many smart encounters with the excise, in which he generally
managed to get the best of it. The most dramatic of these was probably
the exploit that befell when he was captaining a party of smugglers
conveying two hundred kegs of whisky from the mountains down to Perth.
The time was winter, and snow lay thick on field and fell; but the
journey was made in daytime, for they were a numerous band and well
armed, and feared no one. But the local Supervisor of Excise had by some
means obtained early news of this expedition, and had secured the aid of
a detachment of six troopers of the Scots Greys at Coupar-Angus, part of
a squadron stationed at Perth. At the head of this little force rode the
supervisor. They came in touch with the smugglers at Cairnwell, in the
Spittal of Glenshee.
“Gang aff awa’ wi’ ye, quietly back up the Spittal,” exclaimed the
supervisor, “and leave the seizure to us.”
“Na, faith,” replied Shaw; “ye’ll get jist what we care to gie!”
“Say ye so?” returned the excise officer hotly. “I’ll hae the whole or
nane!”
The blood rose in Shaw’s head, and swelled out the veins of his temples.
“By God,” he swore, “I’ll shoot every gauger here before ye’ll get a
drap!”
The supervisor was a small man with a bold spirit. He turned to his
cavalry escort with the order “Fire!” and at the same time reached for
Shaw’s collar, with the exclamation, “Ye’ve given me the slip often
enough, Shaw! Yield now, I’ve a pistol in each pocket of my breeches.”
“Have ye so?” coolly returned the immense and statuesque Shaw, “it’s no’
lang they’ll be there, then!” and with that he laid violent hands upon
each pocket and so picked the exciseman bodily out of his saddle, tore
out both pistols and pockets, and then pitched him, as easily as an
ordinary man could have done a baby, head over heels into a snow-drift.
Meanwhile, the soldiers had not fired; rightly considering that, as they
were so greatly outnumbered, to do so would be only the signal for an
affray in which they would surely be worsted. A wordy wrangle then
followed, in which the exciseman and the soldiers pointed out that they
could not possibly go back empty-handed; and in the end, Shaw and his
brother smugglers went their way, leaving four kegs behind, “just out o’
ceeveelity,” and as some sort of salve for the wounded honour of the law
and its armed coadjutors.
Not many gaugers were so lion-hearted as this; but one, at least, was
even more so. This rash hero one day met two smugglers in a solitary
situation. They had a cart loaded up with whisky-kegs, and when the
official, unaided, and with no human help near, proposed single-handed to
seize their consignment and to arrest them, they must have been as
genuinely astonished as ever men have been. The daring man stood there,
purposeful of doing his duty, and really in grave danger of his life; but
these two smugglers, relishing the humour of the thing, merely descended
from their cart, and, seizing him and binding him hand and foot, sat him
down in the middle of the road with wrists tied over his knees and a
stick through the crook of his legs, in the “trussed fowl” fashion.
There, in the middle of the highway, they proposed to leave him; but when
he pitifully entreated not to be left there, as he might be run over and
killed in the dark, they considerately carried him to the roadside; with
saturnine humour remarking that he would probably be starved there
instead, before he would be noticed.
[Picture: Smugglers hiding goods in a tomb]
The flood-tide of Government prosecutions of the “sma’ stills” was
reached in 1823–5, when an average of one thousand four hundred cases
annually was reached. These were variously for actual distilling, or for
the illegal possession of malt, for which offence very heavy penalties
were exacted.
Preventive men were stationed thickly over the face of the Highlands, the
system then employed being the establishment of “Preventive Stations” in
important districts, and “Preventive Rides” in less important
neighbourhoods. The stations consisted of an officer and one or two men,
who were expected by the regulations not to sleep at the station more
than six nights in the fortnight. During the other eight days and nights
they were to be on outside duty. A ride was a solitary affair, of one
exciseman. Placed in authority over the stations were “supervisors,” who
had each five stations under his charge, which he was bound to visit once
a week.
George Smith, of Glenlivet, already quoted, early found his position
desperate. He was a legalised distiller, and paid his covenanted duty to
Government, and he rightly considered himself entitled, in return for the
tribute he rendered, to some measure of protection. He therefore
petitioned the Lords of the Treasury to that effect; and my lords duly
replied, after the manner of such, that the Government would prosecute
any who dared molest him. This, however, was not altogether satisfactory
from Smith’s point of view. He desired rather to be protected from
molestation than to be left open to attack and the aggressors to be
punished. A dead man derives no satisfaction from the execution of his
assassin. Moreover, even the prosecution was uncertain. In Smith’s own
words, “I cannot say the assurance gave me much ease, for I could see no
one in Glenlivet who dared institute such proceedings.”
It was necessary for a revenue officer to be almost killed in the
execution of his duty before the Government resorted to the force
requisite for the support of the civil power. A revenue cutter was
stationed in the Moray Firth, with a crew of fifty men, designed to be
under the orders of the excise officers in cases of emergency.
But the smugglers were not greatly impressed with this display, and when
the excisemen, accompanied with perhaps five-and-twenty sailors, made
raids up-country, frequently met them in great gangs of perhaps a hundred
and fifty, and recaptured any seizures they had made and adopted so
threatening an attitude that the sailors were not infrequently compelled
to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. One of these expeditions was
into Glenlivet itself, where the smugglers were all Roman Catholics. The
excisemen, with this in mind, considered that the best time for a raid
would be Monday morning, after the debauch of the Sunday afternoon and
night in which the Roman Catholics were wont to indulge; and accordingly,
marching out of Elgin town on the Sunday, arrived at Glenlivet at
daybreak. At the time of their arrival the glen was, to all appearance,
deserted, and their coming unnoticed, and the sight of the peat-reek
rising in the still air from some forty or fifty “sma’ stills” rejoiced
their hearts.
But they presently discovered that their arrival had not only been
observed but foreseen, for the whole country-side was up, and several
hundred men, women, and children were assembled on the hill-sides to bid
active defiance to them. The excisemen keenly desired to bring the
affair to a decisive issue, but the thirty seamen who accompanied them
had a due amount of discretion, and refused to match their pistols and
cutlasses against the muskets that the smugglers ostentatiously
displayed. The party accordingly marched ingloriously back, except
indeed those sailors who, having responded too freely to the smugglers’
invitation to partake of a “wee drappie,” returned gloriously drunk. The
excisemen, so unexpectedly baulked of what they had thought their certain
prey, ungraciously refused a taste.
This formed the limit of the sorely tried Government’s patience, and in
1829 a detachment of regulars was ordered up to Braemar, with the result
that smuggling was gradually reduced to less formidable proportions.
The Celtic nature perceives no reason why Governments should confer upon
themselves the rights of taxing and inspecting the manufacture of
spirits, any more than any other commodity. The matter appears to
resolve itself merely into expediency: and the doctrine of expediency we
all know to be immoral. The situation was—and is, whether you apply it
to spirits or to other articles in general demand—the Government wants
revenue, and, seeking it, naturally taxes the most popular articles of
public consumption. The producers and the consumers of the articles
selected for these imposts just as naturally seek to evade the taxes.
This, to the Celtic mind, impatient of control, is the simplest of
equations.
About 1886 was the dullest time in the illicit whisky-distilling industry
of Scotland, and prosecutions fell to an average of about twenty a year.
Since then there has been, as official reports tell us, in the language
of officialdom, a “marked recrudescence” of the practice. As Mr.
Micawber might explain, in plainer English, “there is—ah—in fact, more
whisky made now.” Several contributory causes are responsible for this
state of things. Firstly, an economical Government reduced the excise
establishment; then the price of barley, the raw material, fell; and the
veiled rebellion of the crofters in the north induced a more daring and
lawless spirit than had been known for generations past. Also,
restrictions upon the making of malt—another of the essential
constituents from which the spirit is distilled—were at this time
removed, and any one who cared might make it freely and without license.
Your true Highlander will not relinquish his “mountain-dew” without a
struggle. His forefathers made as much of it as they liked, out of
inexpensive materials, and drank it fresh and raw. No one bought whisky;
and a whole clachan would be roaring drunk for a week without a coin
having changed hands. Naturally, the descendants of these men—“it wass
the fine time they had, whateffer”—dislike the notion of buying their
whisky from the grocer and drinking stuff made in up-to-date
distilleries. They prefer the heady stuff of the old brae-side
pot-still, with a rasp on it like sulphuric acid and a consequent feeling
as though one had swallowed lighted petroleum: stuff with a headache for
the Southerner in every drop, not like the tamed and subdued creature
that whisky-merchants assure their customers has not got a headache in a
hogshead.
The time-honoured brae-side manner of brewing whisky is not very
abstruse. First find your lonely situation, the lonelier and the more
difficult of access, obviously the better. If it is at once lonely and
difficult of approach, and at the same time commands good views of such
approaches as there are, by so much it is the better. But one very
cardinal fact must not be forgotten: the site of the proposed still and
its sheltering shieling, or bothy, must have a water-supply, either from
a mountain-stream naturally passing, or by an artfully constructed rude
system of pipes.
A copper still, just large enough to be carried on a man’s back, and a
small assortment of mash-tubs, and some pitchers and pannikins, fully
furnish such a rustic undertaking.
The first step is to convert your barley into malt; but this is to-day a
needless delay and trouble, now that malt can be made entirely without
let or hindrance. This was done by steeping the sacks of barley in
running water for some forty-eight hours, and then storing the grain
underground for a period, until it germinated. The malt thus made was
then dried over a rude kiln fired with peats, whose smoke gave the
characteristic smoky taste possessed by all this bothy-made stuff.
It was not necessary for the malt to be made on the site of the still,
and it was, and is, generally carried to the spot, ready-made for the
mash-tubs. The removal of the duty upon malt by Mr. Gladstone, in 1880,
was one of that grossly overrated and really amateur statesman’s many
errors. His career was full of false steps and incompetent bunglings,
and the removal of the Malt Tax was but a small example among many
Imperial tragedies on a grand scale of disaster. It put new and vigorous
life into whisky-smuggling, as any expert could have foretold; for it was
precisely the long operation of converting the barley into malt that
formed the illegal distiller’s chief difficulty. The time taken, and the
process of crushing or bruising the grains, offered some obstacles not
easily overcome. The crushing, in particular, was a dangerous process
when the possession of unlicensed malt was an offence; for that operation
resulted in a very strong and unmistakable odour being given forth, so
that no one who happened to be in the neighbourhood when the process was
going on could be ignorant of it, while he retained his sense of smell.
Brought ready-made from the clachan to the bothy, the malt was emptied
into the mash-tubs to ferment; the tubs placed in charge of a boy or
girl, who stirs up the mess with a willow-wand or birch-twig; while the
men themselves are out and about at work on their usual avocations.
Having sufficiently fermented, the next process was to place the malt in
the still, over a brisk heat. From the still a crooked spout descends
into a tub. This spout has to be constantly cooled by running water, to
produce condensation of the vaporised alcohol. Thus we have a second,
and even more important, necessity for a neighbouring stream, which
often, in conjunction with the indispensable fire, serves the excisemen
to locate these stills. If a bothy is so artfully concealed by rocks and
turves that it escapes notice, even by the most vigilant eye, amid the
rugged hill-sides, the smoke arising from the peat-fire will almost
certainly betray it.
The crude spirit thus distilled into the tub is then emptied again into
the still, which has been in the meanwhile cleared of the exhausted malt
and cleansed, and subjected to a second distilling, over a milder fire,
and with a small piece of soap dropped into the liquor to clarify it.
The question of maturing the whisky never enters into the minds of these
rustic distillers, who drink it, generally, as soon as made. Very little
is now made for sale; but when sold the profit is very large, a capital
of twenty-three shillings bringing a return of nine or ten pounds.
But the typical secret whisky-distiller has no commercial instincts. It
cannot fairly be said that he has a soul above them, for he is just a
shiftless fellow, whose soul is not very apparent in manner or
conversation, and whose only ambition is to procure a sufficiency of
“whusky” for self and friends; and a “sufficiency” in his case means a
great deal. He has not enough money to buy taxed whisky; and if he had,
he would prefer to make his own, for he loves the peat-reek in it, and he
thinks “jist naething at a’” of the “puir stuff” that comes from the
great distilleries.
He is generally ostensibly by trade a hanger-on to the agricultural or
sheep-farming industries, but between his spells of five days at the
bothy (for it takes five days to the making of whisky) he is usually to
be seen loafing about, aimlessly. Experienced folk can generally tell
where such an one has been, and what he has been doing, after his
periodical absences, for his eyelids are red with the peat-smoke and his
clothes reek with it.
[Picture: Dragoons dispersing smugglers]
Perhaps the busiest centre of Highland illicit whisky-distilling is now
to be located in the Gairloch, but anything in the shape of exact
information on so shy a subject is necessarily not obtainable. Between
this district and the Outer Hebrides, islands where no stills are to be
found, a large secret trade is still believed to exist. Seizures are
occasionally made but the policy of the Inland Revenue authorities is now
a broad one, in which the existence of small stills in inconsiderable
numbers, although actually known, is officially ignored: the argument
being that undue official activity, with the resultant publicity, would
defeat itself by advertising the fact of it being so easy to manufacture
whisky, leading eventually to the establishment of more stills.
The illegal production of spirits does, in fact, proceed all over Great
Britain and Ireland to a far greater extent than generally suspected; and
such remote places as the Highlands are nowadays by no means the most
favourable situations for the manufacture. Indeed, crowded towns form in
these times the most ideal situations. No one in the great cities is in
the least interested in what his neighbour is doing, unless what he does
constitutes a nuisance: and it is the secret distiller’s last thought to
obtrude his personality or his doings upon the notice of the neighbours.
Secrecy, personal comfort, and conveniences of every kind are better
obtained in towns than on inclement brae-sides; and the manufacture and
repair of the utensils necessary to the business are effected more
quickly, less expensively, and without the prying curiosity of a Highland
clachan.
It follows from this long-continued course of illegal distilling that the
Highlands are full of tales of how the gaugers were outwitted, and of
hairbreadth escapes and curious incidents. Among these is the story of
the revengeful postmaster of Kingussie, who, on his return from a journey
to Aberlour on a dark and stormy night, called at Dalnashaugh inn, where
he proposed to stay an hour or two. The pretty maid of the inn attended
diligently to him for awhile, until a posse of some half-dozen gaugers
entered, to rest there on their way to Badenoch, where they were due, to
make a raid on a number of illicit stills. The sun of the postmaster
suddenly set with the arrival of these strangers. They were given the
parlour, and treated with the best hospitality the house could afford,
while he was banished to the kitchen. He was wrathful, for was he not a
Government official, equally with these upstarts? But he dissembled his
anger, and, as the evening wore on and the maid grew tired, he suggested
she had better go to bed, and he would be off by time the moon rose. No
sooner had she retired than he took the excisemen’s boots, lying in the
inglenook to dry, and pitched them into a great pot of water, boiling
over the blaze.
When the moon had risen, he duly mounted his pony and set out for
Badenoch, where he gave out the news that the gaugers were coming.
The excisemen could not stir from the inn for a considerable time, for
their boiled boots refused to be drawn on; and by the time they had been
enabled to stretch them and to set out once more on their way, the
Badenoch smugglers had made off with all their gear, leaving nothing but
empty bothies for inspection. The local historian is silent as to what
happened afterwards to the postmaster, the only possible author of this
outrage.
A smuggler of Strathdearn was unfortunate in having the excise pouncing
suddenly upon him in his bothy, and taking away his only cask of whisky.
The hated myrmidons of a Sassenach Government went off with the cask, and
were so jealous of their prize that they took it with them to the inn
where they were to pass the night. All that evening they sang songs and
were merry with a numerous company in an upper room; but even at their
merriest they did not forget their capture, and one of their number sat
upon it all the time.
It chanced, however, that among these merry fellows were some of the
smuggler’s friends, who were careful to note exactly the position of the
cask. They procured an auger and bored a hole from the room below,
through the flooring and into the cask, draining all the whisky away.
When the excisemen had come to the end of their jollification, they had
only the empty cask for their trouble.
One of the brae-side distillers of Fortingal brought a cart laden with
kegs of whisky into Perth, by arrangement with an innkeeper of that town;
but the innkeeper refused to pay a fair price.
“Wha will her sell it till, then?” asked the would-be vendor.
The innkeeper, a person of a saturnine humour, mentioned a name and a
house, and the man went thither with his cart.
“What is it, my man?” asked the occupier, coming to the door.
“Well, yer honour, ’tis some o’ the finest whusky that iver was made up
yon, and niver paid the bawbee’s worth o’ duty.”
“D’ye know who I am?” returned the householder. “I’m an officer of
excise, and I demand to know who sent you to me.”
The smuggler told him.
“Now,” said the exciseman, “go back to him and sell him your whisky at
his own price, and then begone.”
The man did as he was bidden; sold his consignment, and left the town.
It was but a few hours afterwards that the innkeeper’s premises were
raided by the excise, who seized the whisky and procured a conviction at
the next Assizes, where he was heavily fined.
One of the last incidents along the Border, in connection with
whisky-smuggling between Scotland and England, occurred after the duty
had been considerably lowered. This was a desperate affray which took
place on the night of Sunday, January 16th, 1825, at Rockcliffe Cross,
five miles from Carlisle on the Wigton road. One Edward Forster, officer
of excise, was on duty when he observed a man, whose name, it afterwards
appeared, was Charles Gillespie, a labourer, carrying a suspicious
object, and challenged him. This resulted in an encounter in which the
excise officer’s head was badly cut open. Calling aid of another
labourer, who afterwards gave evidence, he remarked that he thought the
smuggler had almost done for him, but pursued the man and fired upon him
in the dark, with so good an aim that he was mortally wounded, and
presently died. It was a dangerous thing in those times for an excise
officer to do his duty, and at the inquest held the coroner’s jury
returned a verdict of “Murder”; the men who formed the jury being
doubtless drawn from a class entirely in sympathy with smuggling, and
possibly engaged in it themselves. Forster, evidently expectant of that
verdict, did not present himself, and was probably transferred by his
superiors to some post far distant. There the affair ends.
About the same time, on the Carlisle and Wigton road, two preventive men
at three o’clock in the morning met a man carrying a load, which, when
examined, proved to be a keg of spirits. Two other men then came up and
bludgeoned the officers, one of whom dropped his cutlass; whereupon a
smuggler picked it up, and, attacking him vigorously, cut him over the
head. The smugglers then all escaped, leaving behind them two bladders
containing eight gallons of whisky.