Highland Scots

“ Towards the end of the eighth century, a fresh colony of Scots from Ireland settled in Galloway among the Britons and Saxons, and having overspread the whole of that country, were afterwards joined by detachments of the Scots of Kintyre and Argyle, in connection with whom they peopled that [57] peninsula. Besides these three races, who made permanent settlements in Scotland, the Scandinavians colonized the Orkney and Shetland islands, and also established themselves on the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, and in the eastern part of the country north of the Frith of Tay. ”

“ I shall only tell yow, that if you heasten not to land your men, I am of opinion yow will have litle occasion to do the king great service; for if he land in the west of Scotland, yow will come too late, as I believe yow will thinck yourself by the news I have to tell yow. The Prince of Orange hath wreaten to the Scots councell not to fatig his troops any more by following us in the hills, but to draw them together in a body to the west ”

“ That the kilt is a pure outgrowth of Scottish life there is no gainsaying. It could have been imported from Ireland only, and that it was not is proved by the two facts, that the colony of Irish Scots who settled in Argyllshire never overran Scotland, and that the checkered plaid was worn in Scotland at dates earlier than it can be proved to have been worn in Ireland.
The complete outfit of a Highland chief in the middle of the eighteenth century makes rather a formidable list. Here it is ”

“ Celtic, they certainly appear not to have been the first settlers in Ireland, and at the time at which they first appear in authentic history occupied a district in Ireland corresponding to Connaught, Leinster, and part of Munster. They were also one of the most powerful of the Irish tribes, seeing that for many centuries Ireland was, after them, called Scotia or Scotland. It is usually said that a particular corner in the north-east of Ireland, about 30 miles in extent, corresponding to the modern county of Antrim, was the kingdom of the particular band of Scots who migrated to Scotland ”

“ We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable and everlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan—Scotland but here and there; look on England from any point in any place, and you see she is rich, from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you feel that comparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long been beautifying themselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our Highlands, though many changes have been going on there too, and most we believe for good, they are in their great features, and in their spirit unalterable by art, stamped and inspired by enduring Nature. ”

“ Scotland has become cosmopolitan, and the fastnesses of the Highlands are no longer the retreats of wild cateran clans, whose peculiar habits and primitive ideas of social life helped to bind them together with ties of family strength, and at the same time to keep them unspotted from the Lowland and outside world that knew not the Gaelic and the tartan and the pipes. ”

“ Take the single kingdom of Scotland alone. Englishmen are carelessly wont to suppose there is such a thing as a Scotch temperament. Scotchmen know better. Even if we omit from the reckoning such remoter and more doubtful elements as Black Celts, and so forth, we may say, roughly speaking, that Scotland consists of six distinct nationalities—the English of the Lothians, the Welsh of Strathclyde, the Irish Scots of Argyllshire, the true Gaels of the Highlands, the Picts of the east coast, and the Scandinavians of Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland. ”

“ We have now arrived at an era in our history, when the line of demarcation between the inhabitants of the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland begins to appear, and when, by the influx of a Gothic race into the former, the language of that part of North Britain is completely revolutionized, when a new dynasty or race of sovereigns ascends the throne, and when a great change takes places in the laws and constitution of the kingdom. ”

“ If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but through the subtle influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish Lowlands came to be English in speech and in civilization, if the farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to English influences, we should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediæval Scotland. ”

“ It is a pretty thing, when all the Highlands of Scotland are now rising upon their king and country’s account, as I have accounts from them since they were with me, and the gentlemen of our neighbouring lowlands expecting us down to join them, that my men should be only refractory. ”

“ We have already seen the opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century Scottish historian and theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his native country from an ab extra stand-point, that the Highlanders speak Irish and are less respectable than the other Scots ”

“ The Highlands have undergone considerable change during the last century and a half, and the alteration, in a social point of view, has been on the whole for the better. The Highlands now are generally as accessible as the lowlands; the manners, speech, and occupations of the inhabitants are becoming more and more assimilated to those of their lowland neighbours, and to all appearance, [299] in a very short time, there will remain little or nothing to distinguish the Scottish Celt from the Saxon. ”

“ Scottish emigrants are admitted upon all hands to have given its backbone of moral and religious strength to the Province, and to those brought over from the Highlands in this vessel is due the honour of being in the forefront—the pioneers and vanguard. ”

“ During this time the history of the Highlands is still to a great extent the history of Scotland, and it was not till about the 12th century that the Highlanders became, strictly speaking, a peculiar people, confined to the territory whose boundaries were indicated in the first chapter, having for their neighbours on the east and south a population of undoubtedly Teutonic origin. The Norse invasions not only kept Scotland in continual commotion at the time, but must have exercised an important influence on its whole history, and contributed a new and vigorous element to its population. ”

“ Allow us, my Lord, to please ourselves with this agreeable persuasion, that his majesty’s royal and kindly influence shall reach to us, who are the most remote, as well as to others of his subjects in this island. We are not ignorant that there are some people forward to misrepresent us, from particular private views of their own, and who, to reach their own ends against us, on all occasions, endeavour to make us, in the Highlands of Scotland, pass for disaffected persons. ”

“ The dream of him who loved Scotland best would lie not so much in the direction of antiquarian revival, as in the hope that his country might be pointed out as one that in spite of rocks, and rigor, and poverty, could yet teach the world by precept and example, could lead the van and point the moral, where greater nations and fairer states had failed. Those who believe the Scots to be so eminently vain a race, will say that already we are in our opinion the tenth legion of civilization. ”

“ Those who inhabit Scotland to the south of the Grampian chain, are tolerably civilized and obedient to the laws, and speak the English language; but those who inhabit [12] the north are more rude, homely, and unruly, and for this reason are called savages [or Wild Scots.] They wear, like the Irish, a large and full shirt, coloured with saffron, and over this a garment hanging to the knee, of thick wool, after the manner of a cassock. ”

“ The chief scene of Scottish history, with its art, architecture, commercial prosperity, and general likeness to Christendom, is in the Lowlands. Here are almost all her great cities, industries, and monuments. In this region, and not in the Highlands, Scotland’s two greatest, or at least most famous, men were born and reared, and here are the cities, which are “the hope of democracy.” In fact, the Celtic Scots never produced a distinct civilization of their own. The Celts, with all their charming traits and bold achievements, have nowhere brought to perfection this composite flower of history. ”

“ In the best Scottish houses, even the king’s palaces, the windows are not glazed throughout, but the upper part only, the lower have two wooden shuts or folds to open at pleasure and admit the fresh air. The Scots cannot endure to hear their country or countrymen spoken against. They have neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. ”

“ For the cheer, my lord, a mess of white broth, a fat capon well larded, a dish of beef collops for auld Scotland's sake, and it may be a cup of right old wine, that was barrelled before Scotland and England were one nation—Then for company, one or two of our own loving countrymen—and maybe my housewife may find out a bonny Scots lass or so. ”

“ They were gradually driven back into the Highlands by Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Danish invaders, and are now represented by the Highlanders (q.v.) or Gaels. (2) The modern Scots, or Lowland Scots, are mainly of Anglo-Saxon race, modified by Norman, Danish, and Flemish elements. They are one of the finest and most hardy and industrious races in the world, equally successful in the arts of war and peace.
Scythians. An ancient nomadic and warlike race, found in the seventh century B.C. on the vast plains of South-eastern Europe, where they lived by cattle-breeding and raiding. ”

“ He says—‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech, for two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic, the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The people of the coast are of domestic and civilised habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful, devout in divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hands of their enemies. ”

“ Could you ever mistake a Scot for an un-Scot? No! Our wide-apart eyes and our dreamy yet practical expression, our high cheekbones, our sensitive, clear-cut nostrils, and the something mysterious in our gaze which no one can explain or understand, not even ourselves, is all our own. I have just found this out since crossing the border. And am I not a MacDonald of Dhrum?
I can't say that the first Scots I met—men, women, or children—looked like descendants of the robber hordes who used to make the Borderland their home ”

“ The Kingdom of Scotland was then, in nearly all but political rights, an independent nation. A very large part of its population was of different blood from that of the southern portion of the British Island. The Highland clans were as distinct in manners, disposition, and race from their English neighbors as are the Indian tribes remaining in our midst from the men of Massachusetts and New York. ”

“ Those Highlanders that can speak English, commonly speak it well, with few of the words, and little of the tone by which a Scotchman is distinguished. Their language seems to have been learned in the army or the navy, or by some communication with those who could give them good examples of accent and pronunciation. By their Lowland neighbours they would not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and degenerate race. ”

“ Yet no literature excels that of the Scots, in the perfect frankness with which the sons of the soil confess their recent emergence from barbarism into the admired civilization of to-day.
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Thus the initial spell of the Scottish landscape lay first of all upon us who had known Scotland only through books or by word of mouth. Yet to such the human appeal is immense. Who can look upon this egg-shaped island of Arran, with its jagged peaks and its singularly grand scenery, without emotion? ”

“ The Scottish Highlanders will ere long disappear from the face of the earth; the mountains are daily depopulating; the great estates have ruined the land of the Gael, as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere long exist only in the romances of Walter Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edinburgh ”

“ Of seventeenth century writings one of the earliest to provide a notice of the Highland dress is Camden’s Britannia, printed in 1607, which mentions that:-
This country is inhabited by a rough, warlike, and very mischievous sort of people, commonly called Highlandmen, who are the true offspring of the ancient Scotch, speak Irish, call themselves Albinnich, are set and tight moulded, of great strength and swiftness, high spirited, bred up in war or rather robbery, and extremely prone to revenge and deep resentment. ”

“ People flocked from all quarters to see the novelty of a court which had not been held in Scotland for sixty years, and from its splendour, and the air of satisfaction which appeared in every person’s countenance, one would have thought the king was already restored, and in peaceable possession of all the dominions of his ancestors, and that the prince had only made a trip to Scotland to show himself to the people, and receive their homage. ”

“ So a spirit of independence and jealous pride of ancestry was cultivated, and in tradition, song, and music, the exploits of their forbears were celebrated. All this went to make Celtic Scotland a nation by itself, and its people a peculiar people. There is nothing in the political history of any country so remarkable as the succession of the Highland chiefs and the long and uninterrupted sway they held over their followers. ”