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THE original roles of
Saxon and Celt in Scottish history cannot now be exactly determined. The
annals of these early centuries are meagre, and perplex more than they
enlighten. At first the Celt had probably the advantage of a superior
civilisation, but it was apparently incapable of expansion and
development. His romantic and rigid attachment to ancestral habits made
him unfit in the long run to cope with the prosaic but practical Tenton.
How far he held his own in the Lowland regions as regards the mere
possession of the soil is one of the puzzles of history; but here at
least his individuality, alike as regards language, customs, and
institutions finally succumbed to the influence of alien races. South
and east of the Grampians the Celtic civilisation became extinct ; but
the wild and savage region behind—difficult of access and presenting no
temptation to colonist or raider—remained the inviolate home of a race
which retained its purity of descent and its primitive civility for
ages. Scenery,
climate, and the rigour of his surroundings no doubt in the long rim
stamped their impress on the character and habits of the Colt as on his
physical frame; but if they affected his barbaric peculiarities it was
chiefly to accentuate and confirm. In the world beyond his mountains he
had nor lot nor part. Dim echoes of its movemens, of its wars and
revolutions, may have reached his reclusion, but they were soon
forgotten as "a tale that is told"; the seas brought him neither
braveries nor emasculating comforts; the busy industries, the material
wealth of the Sassenach, he held in scorn ; his faint con- tact with the
arts of modern civilisation only caused him to cling more fondly to his
pristine usages. But his mode of life had at least the merit of
untainted simplicity. In diet, habit, and house he—as Buchanan, Leslie,
and Lindsay of Pitscottie testify—observed "the ancient parsimony."
True, in some districts the rule of the nobles had partially broken up
the clan system when these authors wrote, but even then there were
regions under nominal rule of the nobles where it flourished in as full
vitality as ever. Wild herbs eaten raw, oatcakes baked on the immemorial
"Graedeal," game or fish cooked in savage fashion in the ashes, were the
customary diet. In Commissioner Tucker's report in 1656 the district
north and west of Dumbarton Fyrth (the Firth of Clyde) is described as
still inhabited by the " Old Scotts or Wyld Irish and speakeing theyr
language, which live by feeding cattle up and downe the hills or else
fishing and fowleing, and formerly, till that they have been of late
restrayned " (by the energetic rule of Oliver), "by plaine downright
robbing and stealeing." Over this wild region the Commissioner found the
collecting of excise duties practically impossible. But in truth, so far
as liquor was concerned, the proceeds of the excise would have been
insignificant enough. Unlike the Lowlander, the Celt was not a drinker
of ale. His chief liquor was water from the running brook, milk being
something of a luxury, while usquebagh was reserved chiefly for
occasions of ceremony and rejoicing.
To eke out the supplies from his native
hills the Highlander, as above recorded, had recourse to "creaghds," or
cattle-raids. In the case of certain of the wilder clans cattle-raiding
was in truth almost the only industry. Herein the fierce delights of
feud or battle being intermitted, the warrior instinct of the cateran
discovered a certain mild excitement. To spoil the Sassenach was also an
unalloyed pleasure in itself, and afforded some solace for the loss of
the Lowland straths and the fair and fertile lands beyond Clyde and Tay.
But the habit of raiding did not contaminate or lower his general
morality. Apart from this inveterate eccentricity his honesty, except
perhaps in degenerate modern times, was proof against well-nigh any
possible temptation. Of personal robbery he was incapable; and a
stranger was probably as safe from violence or wrong in his domains as
in a Quaker settlement. The chief Sassenach movables which found favour
in his eyes were sheep and cattle; but he limited his raiding to the
latter. In his code of honour the lifting of sheep was a despicable
crime; for sheep were held in peculiar, in almost sacred, estimation on
account of their wool, and even in appropriating kine it was incumbent
on strictly to observe the ancient methods. The larceny was permissible
only oil order of the chief. And while lifting was a noble and
highly-respected vocation, the cateran could not condescend to the
meanness of purloining merely one head of cattle singly : this would
have made him kin to the common thief, and such kinship he rejected with
scorn. "Common tief! common tief! steal one cow, twa cow, dat ie common
tief! Lift hundred cow, dat pe shentleman's drovers."
Like the Redskin brave, the cateran
contemned all toil but that associated with war or the chase; he held in
honour no craftsman save the maker of anus : all other arts were
appropriate to women or Sassenachs or slaves. Yet he could scarce be
charged with listlessness or sloth; he spared no pains to develop his
muscular strength and to acquire true cunning in the use of his several
weapons—bow, broadsword, dirk, and poleaxe. As he avoided servile toil,
his apparel and his domestic arrangements were severely primitive. The
belted plaid, originally his only garment (trews were an effeminate
surrender to climate) was practically a savage mode; for the tailor was
such an anomaly in old Celtic life that the latter-day Highlander could
never allude to him but with stereo- typed apology. And the plaid, as it
was the cateran's chief raiment by day, was also his covering by night.
his bed was the heather, and even in wild weather the sky was often his
sole canopy. When the stern colds of winter forced him to seek the
shelter of his turfs he arranged the heather brush uppermost, so as to
make him a soft and warm couch. The hut, with its beds of heather and
its hearth in the centre surrounded by circular stones, was primarily
the abode of wife, family, and domestic animals; himself was accustomed
to dine in the great hail of his chief, and here he commonly spent his
evenings listening to the stories and songs of the bard or sharing reels
to the music of the pipes.
The government of the clan was strictly
patriarchal, and to this must be ascribed the strong and sacred
character of the clan sentiment. The bard (who was also the genealogist
and historian) was held in peculiar honour. Originally, as in Ireland
and Wales, he recited to the strains of the harp—In use in the Scottish
Highlands as late as the sixteenth century. But gradually bard and harp
succumbed to the bagpipes, proficiency whereon was held of such
importance that special colleges were established for instruction in
pipe-music under famous masters. Yet the bagpipe, it need scarce be
said, is not exclusively a Celtic instrument. Possibly it may have been
a legacy of the ancient Britons, and at any rate the suspension of its
use in the Lowlands can be clearly traced to the interference of the
Kirk-sessions on account of its association with dancing. In the
Highlands its triumph over the harp appears to have indicated the decay
of the clan sentiment. The tales and songs of the bard were of the past,
and to the cateran the past had been much greater than the present was
or the future could be. Disguise it as he might, he was subject to the
Sassenach : the glories of his race had vanished; the old victories
could be no more. In all likelihood the recitals were saddening rather
than joyous in effect; and it may well be that the dance was gradually
preferred because it helped the cateran to forget his griefs. At any
rate, while the harp is now mute in every Highland hall the shrill music
of the pipes has gained rather than lost in power to animate and
enrapture time descendants of the clansmen. |
