Scots Highlanders

“ 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 ”

“ John Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513) , mentions the differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most of us spoke Irish a short time ago." [16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live on the borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English, being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the Highlanders remain just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began to adopt English manners." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no indication of any racial division in the attitude of the Scots. Some Highlanders, from various personal causes, are found on the English side at the beginning of the War of Independence; but Mr. Lang has shown that of the descendants of Somerled of Argyll, the ancestor of the Lords of the Isles, only one fought against Wallace, while the Celts of Moray and Badenach and the Highland districts of Aberdeenshire, joined his standard. The behaviour of the Highland chiefs is similar to that of the Lowland barons. If there is any racial feeling at all, it is not Celtic v. ”

“ Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should expect to find references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the effect that the Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish language and literature, while the Lowlanders have adopted English customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from other inhabitants of Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue. ”

“ Late in the sixteenth century, John Lesley, the defender of Queen Mary, who had been bishop of Ross, and came of a northern family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major and Boece. "Foreign nations look on the Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild barbarians because they maintain the customs and the language of their ancestors; but we call them Highlanders." [19]
Even in connexion with the battle of Harlaw, we find that Scottish historians do not use such terms in speaking of the Highland forces as Mr. ”

“ Eleven years{37} later, in 1738, we find it described much as if it were some lately discovered island in the South Seas.
“The people in general,” we read, “are naturally inclined to civility, especially to strangers. They are divided into Highlanders who call themselves the antient Scots, and into Lowlanders who are a mixture of antient Scots, Picts, Britons, French, English, Danes, Germans, Hungarians, and others. Buchanan describes the customs of the Highlanders graphically thus:—‘In their diet, apparel, and household furniture they follow the parsimony of the antients ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is scarcely now necessary to allude to these errors at that time prevalent regarding the valour of the Scottish host. Tributes from every known country have long elevated this brave and oppressed people into a proud and honourable position. Instead, however, of the undisciplined savages who were supposed to be traversing the country, it was sooner found than acknowledged, that the intrepidity of the Highlanders was united to humanity, and to upright principles. ”

“ The long stay of the Highland army in Scotland had enabled the government to concentrate a considerable force in the north of England, already far superior, in point of numbers, to the prince’s troops, and this force was about to receive large additions from the south and from the continent. Nothing but a dread of the Highlanders and ignorance of their real strength kept the English army, already concentrated in the north, from entering Scotland ”

“ The Stewarts from England, the Campbells from Ireland, was it? the Drummonds from Hungary or where? among other names of chivalrous antecedents, bloomed out as clans, with new tartans, feuds, and legends, to complicate the native pattern of flesh and blood; and in no long time they became more Highland than the Highlanders themselves. Most remarkable is the adoption of what has come to be called the Scottish national dress, which, according to some modern critics, ought rather to be the mackintosh. ”

“ It is a pity, they say, that the Highlander, possessing so many noble qualities, and so strongly attached to his native soil, should be compelled to seek a home in a foreign land, and bestow upon it the services which might be profitably employed by his mother country. By permitting, they say, these loyal and brave Highlanders to leave the country, Britain is throwing away some of the finest recruiting material in the world, for—and it is quite true—the Highland soldier has not his match for bravery, moral character, and patriotism. ”

“ Defoe, in his Memoirs of a Cavalier, written about 1721, and obviously composed from authentic materials, thus describes the Highland part of the Scottish army which invaded England in 1639, at the commencement of the great civil war. The Cavalier having paid a visit to the Scottish camp to satisfy his curiosity, thus proceeds:—
I confess the soldiers made a very uncouth figure, especially the Highlanders: the oddness and barbarity of their garb and arms seemed to have something in it remarkable. They were generally tall swinging fellows ”

“ In common with the English they looked upon the Highlanders as savages; but their ignorance went farther, for the people of Germany actually believed that the Highlanders were still strangers to Christianity. “The Scotch Highlanders,” says an article which appeared in the Vienna Gazette of 1762, “are a people totally different in their dress, manners, and temper from the other inhabitants of Britain. They are caught in the mountains when young, and still run with a surprising degree of swiftness. As they are strangers to fear, they make very good soldiers when disciplined. ”

“ Such was the composition of the corps, now first embodied among that remarkable people, the Scottish Highlanders—"a people," says the Historian of Great Britain, "untouched by the Roman or Saxon invasions on the south, and by those of the Danes on the east and west skirts of their country—the unmixed remains of that vast Celtic empire, which once stretched from the Pillars of Hercules to Archangel." ”

“ After what manner may his Grace the Duke of Sutherland be most effectually met in this matter, so that the case of toleration and freedom of conscience may be maintained in the extensive district which God, in his providence, has consigned to his stewardship? We are not unacquainted with the Celtic character as developed in the Highlands of Scotland. Highlanders, up to a certain point, are the most docile, patient, enduring of men ”

“ But then it is to be considered, that, as the Highlands are circumstanced at present, it is, at least it seems to me to be, an utter impossibility, without the advantage of this dress, for the inhabitants to tend their cattle, and to go through the other parts of their business, without which they could not subsist; not to speak of paying rents to their landlords. Now, because too many of the Highlanders have offended, to punish all the rest who have not, and who, I will venture to say, are the greatest number, in so severe a manner, seems to be unreasonable ”

“ The politics of the Highland clans bore little relation to the general politics of the nation. The Highlanders were as yet a half savage race, devoted to their patriarchal form of society, and with political attachments which seldom went beyond the head of their tribe. It mattered but little to them whether James or William were upon the Scottish throne. They were equally ready to oppose by violence any Government which interfered with their wild freedom. ”

“ Fordun, who concludes his Chronicle immediately before the first appearance of a Highland clan beyond the Highland Line, gives the following description of the inhabitants of the Highlands:—‘The Highlanders and people of the Islands are,’ he says, ‘a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to the Anglic people and language, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. ”

“ Scotch Highlanders have faults in plenty, but they have the bravery of Nature's own gentlemen, the delicate natural tact which discovers, and the good taste which avoids, all that would hurt or offend a guest. ”

“ Ross and Cromarty,165 now united in one and the largest of all the counties in Scotland, is the most thinly populated of all. In fact this great area has been “improved” by its landed proprietors promoting the emigration of its former inhabitants. There is only a fraction left of the Highlanders. The Celtic element is but a survival, a remnant, and the Gaelic tongue is like a flickering flame, almost ready to die out.
What is the reason? Is it, in part at least, because nature is so niggardly? Again, is it not true that “those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword”? ”

“ The honourable bearing of the Royal Highlanders throughout the war had been so conspicuous as to win for them the hearty esteem of their countrymen. Hence their return was welcomed by all classes, and their progress northward was little else than a triumphal march. At Glasgow, the joy of the people was unbounded.
Whilst stationed in Scotland, the regiment was called to fulfil a most painful duty, in the suppression of the riots which had arisen in the Highlands from the expulsion of the poorer peasantry from the haunts and homes of “auld langsyne.” ”

“ They listen to the charming of the sentimentalist, but they go on their own practical way rejoicing. Hundreds of Highlanders in our large towns never enter a Gaelic church. English-speaking mothers and children do not find the arrangement of services convenient and, consulting the general good of all the members of the family, they take their seats elsewhere. In this they cannot be deeply blamed. In Scotland we are quite familiar with the stereotyped arguments and phraseology which are applied to depopulation and other matters. ”

“ In the time long passed away, when Scotland was still contesting with England, the statesmen of the latter country showed no small knowledge of human nature when they forbade the use of the Highland dress, and forced the Highlanders to abandon the picturesque costume which seems to harmonize so well with the wild hills of their native land. ”

“ Renewed or recruited thrice from the Highland clans, the old 77th covered themselves with glory, and of all the Scottish corps in the King's service, there was none from which the soldiers more nobly and rigidly transmitted to their aged parents in Scotland the savings of their poor pay or the prize money gained by their blood in the Havannah. ”

“ Indeed Jacobitism, as an active principle, is as much a thing of the past as clan-feuds, cattle-lifting, and active religious intolerance.
Her present Majesty has done more to win the hearts and command the loyalty of the Highlanders than ever did any of her predecessors, by taking up her residence yearly in their midst, and in many other ways showing her trust in and love for them, and her unbounded admiration for all that is Highland. As is well known, before her widowhood, her favourite plaid was one of Stuart tartan of a special pattern. ”

“ In the same way many parishes were thirled to a particular smith. By these and similar exactions and contributions did the proprietors [7] and chief men of the clan manage to support themselves off the produce of their land, keep a numerous band of retainers around them, have plenty for their own use, and for all who had any claim to their hospitality. This seems especially to have been the case when the Highlanders were in their palmiest days of independence, when they were but little molested from without, and when their chief occupations were clan-feuds and cattle raids. ”

“ The term clan, now applied almost exclusively to the tribes into which the Scottish Highlanders were formerly, and still to some extent are divided, was also applied to those large and powerful septs into which the Irish people were at one time divided, as well as to the communities of freebooters that inhabited the Scottish borders, each of which, like the Highland clans, had a common surname. ”