Scottish Lowlands

“ 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. ”

“ Gilderoy was a celebrated and most daring highwayman, who roamed far, and was well-known all over Scotland and indeed in London. His death inspired a very striking ballad, but this is hardly a Border Lowland ballad, but refers chiefly to another Border district, namely, that between the Lowlands and Highlands. Just as the Scottish Lowlanders thought the English their legitimate quarry, so the Highlanders in turn looked upon the Lowlanders as created to supply them with all they lacked. ”

“ Their work had been the building up of the Scottish realm, its change from a medley of warring nobles into an ordered kingdom. Never had freedom been bought at a dearer price than it was bought by Scotland in its long War of Independence. Wealth and public order alike disappeared. The material prosperity of the country was brought to a standstill. The work of civilization was violently interrupted. The work of national unity was all but undone. The Highlanders were parted by a sharp line of division from the Lowlanders, while within the Lowlands themselves feudalism overmastered the Crown. ”

“ The essential differences between these remain markedly distinguishable after centuries of peaceful intercourse, and a common interchange of rights and privileges. The Scottish Gael, though by no means to be now regarded as sprung from a pure Celtic stock, scarcely differs more widely in language than in moral and intellectual characteristics from the race that peoples the fertile Lowlands. Yet the names of the most remarkable Lowland localities prove their possession by a Celtic race, whom therefore we cannot doubt to have been the prior, if not the aboriginal, occupants of the soil. ”

“ And, lastly, they have an adherence to one another as Highlanders in opposition to the people of the low country, whom they despise as inferior to them in courage, and believe they have a right to plunder them whenever it is in their power. This last arises from a tradition that the Lowlands, in old times, were the possessions of their ancestors. ”

“ Caithness offers415 one of the most singular pieces of topography in Scotland. Looking at the map, one would naturally regard it as a continuation of the highlands of Sutherland, and expect its population to be also Gaelic. But in actual fact, it belongs not to the mountains, but to the lowlands, and has been for many centuries in possession of the Scandinavian stock. It consists of a flat platform or tableland, in places not more than 100 feet above the sea, into which it descends in an almost continuous line of abrupt precipices. ”

“ This was not a cause in which the whole of Scotland was concerned. Although it was well known that many leading families in the Lowlands entertained Jacobite opinions, and although a large proportion of the common people had not yet become reconciled to, or satisfied of, the advantages of the Union, by which they considered themselves dishonoured and betrayed, it was hardly to be expected that, without some fair guarantee for success, the bulk of the Scottish nation would actively bestir themselves on the side of the exiled family. ”

“ For, whilst they were spreading themselves over the rich plains of the north of England, a foreign, though nearly related, Celtic people, the Scots from Ireland, had taken possession of their south-western frontier districts. Hence they spread themselves to such a degree over the Lowlands that both these and the Highlands, though the latter were almost entirely independent of the Scottish sovereigns, were called by one name, Scotland. After many battles the older Pictish inhabitants were, about the year 900, entirely amalgamated with the Scots in the Lowlands. ”

“ A much less force in former times, nay, even in the preceding reign, would have been sufficient to have secured the Lowlands against a more formidable descent of Highlanders, than those united under Montrose; but times had changed strangely within the last half century. Before that period, the Lowlanders were as constantly engaged in war as the mountaineers, and were incomparably better disciplined and armed. The favourite Scottish order of battle somewhat resembled the Macedonian phalanx. ”

“ Agriculture is as good, the Highland sheep and cattle are famous, the people are about as comfortable as lowlanders in the same circumstances; education is well diffused; churches of all sects are plentiful, and ere long, doubtless, so far as outward circumstances are concerned, there will be no difference between the Highlands and Lowlands. How the universal improvement of the Highlands is mainly to be accomplished, we shall state in the words of Sir John M’Neill. ”

“ In the Old Statistical Account of Scotland, this assertion is being constantly repeated by the various Highland ministers who report upon the state of their parishes. In the case of many Highland districts, one could conceive of nothing more hopeless and discouraging than the attempt to force from them a crop of grain. That there are spots in the Highlands as susceptible of high culture as some of the best in the lowlands cannot be denied; but these bear but a small proportion to the great quantity of ground that is fitted only to yield a sustenance to cattle and sheep. ”

“ The art of imitating ancient writing has got to a considerable perfection, and it has been the bane of Scottish literature and disgrace of her antiquities that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves. The general proposition that the Lowlanders ever wore plaids is difficult to swallow. They were of twenty different races, and almost all distinctly different from the Scoto-Irish, who are the proper Scots, from which the Royal Family are descended. ”

“ In our days the various tribes of the Highland and Lowland populations live in peaceful union under one and the same government. But during several centuries Scotland was the theatre of the most sanguinary contests between the Celtic Highlanders and the Teutonic Lowlanders. The former, who were animated with an inveterate hatred of the Lowlanders, continually made hostile incursions into the Lowlands, and, after burning and ravaging the country, retired with cattle and other booty to their mountains, whither they knew well the Lowlanders durst not follow them. ”

“ All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for Portree possesses a jail." The Highlands and islands have been the last portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that their racial complexion is different. The incident of which we have now to speak has frequently been quoted as a crowning proof of the difference between the Lowlanders and the "true Scots". ”

“ The language of the Highlands, the Gaelic, was totally different from that of the Lowlands, which resembled English. The dress of the mountaineers also differed from that of the Lowlanders. They wore a plaid or mantle of frieze, or of a striped stuff called tartan, one end of which, being wrapped around the waist, formed a short petticoat, which descended to the knee, while the rest they folded around them like a sort of cloak. Their feet were covered with buskins made of rawhide; and the usual head covering was a cap called a “bonnet.” They went always armed. ”

“ The Highlanders were continually at war with the Lowlanders. They did not regard their plundering raids upon the richer grounds of the Lowlands as robbery, but as rightful recovery of possessions which had been wrongfully wrested from their ancestors. The Lowlanders, equal in courage and superior in discipline, could not be easily overcome, and thus there was almost constant war or discord between them.
Some of the more powerful Highland chiefs set themselves up as independent sovereigns, and even made alliances with the English in their own name. ”

“ Dark, tumultuous, stained with blood, and rendered foul by treason, are the pages of early Scottish history. A wild and warlike people inhabited its mountainous districts, whose occupation was strife, whose religion was power and revenge. The Lowlanders, a wealthier race, were hardly more cultivated or less savage. One course of rebellion against the sovereign, and discord among themselves, flows, a sanguinary stream from the hidden sources of things, threading a long track of years, or overflowing it with its pernicious waves. Discord, hate, and murder were the animating spirits of the scene. ”

“ Indeed, they enact at the present day that extinct phase of Scottish life when the inhabitants of the Highlands stole the cattle of the Lowlanders, and euphemistically described the operation as “lifting;” themselves not being by any means thieves, but “gentleman drovers,” very punctilious in point of honor, and thinking themselves as good gentlemen as any in the land. ”

“ The wine is all imported; the horses are mostly small ambling nags, only a few being preserved entire for propagation; and neither curry-combs nor reins are used. From Scotland are imported into Flanders hides, wool, salt, fish, and pearls. Nothing gives the Scots more pleasure than to hear the English dispraised. The country is divided into two parts, the cultivated lowlands, and the region where agriculture is not used. The wild Scots have a different language, and sometimes eat the bark of trees. There are no wolves. ”

“ THERE was once a time when it was considered the height of fashionable conduct for the Scotch who lived upon the border, to dash into the Northern Counties of England, put the men they met with to the sword, burn their homesteads and stores, and carry off the women and cattle. It is quite true that the English, on their part, considered it fit and proper to cross the Scottish border, to raid the lands, and carry off women and cattle from the lower shires of “Bonnie Scotland;” ”

“ The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the Highlands as the region of lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond. Wordsworth has said, that “in Scotland, the proportion of diffused water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and in most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flatters the imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water so many leagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may be delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amid the rapidly shifting scenery. ”

“ I have, somewhere else, expressed how greatly the landlords of Scotland are indebted to Scott. It is to him that thousands of them owe not merely subsistence, but ample fortunes. In every part of the country where he has touched the earth with his magic wand, roads have run along the heretofore impassable morass, rocks have given way for men, and houses have sprung up full of the necessary "entertainment for man and horse." Steamers convey troops of summer tourists to the farthest west and north of the Scottish coast; and every lake and mountain swarms with them. ”

“ But the whole of the country is not of the same nature. The northern part is so nearly cut off from the rest of Britain by the two great Firths of Forth and Clyde as to form almost a separate island, and this peninsula is again divided into Highlands and Lowlands. Speaking roughly, we may say that all the west is Highland and the east Lowland. A range of mountains sweeping in a semicircle from the Firth of Clyde to the mouth of the Dee, known as Drumalbyn or the Mount, may be taken as the line of separation, though the Lowlands extend still further north along the eastern coast. ”

“ By Sir Walter they certainly are not! One tiny hint of Scots originality is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men “win their hay” at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be Northumbrian, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional) , then Lammastide for hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.
The Scots version (Herd’s) insists on Douglas’s burial “by the bracken bush,” to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender. ”

“ The normal relation of the Highlanders and Lowlanders to each other is graphically put by one of the greatest of modern writers, who was thoroughly acquainted with the subject, when he says, ‘The inhabitants of the Lowlands were indeed aware that there existed, in the extremity of the island, amid wilder mountains and broader lakes than their own, tribes of men called clans, living each under the rule of their own chief, wearing a peculiar dress, speaking an unknown language, and going armed even in the most ordinary and peaceable vocations. ”