REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS
OF AN
OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS
OF AN
OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER.
By DUNCAN CAMPBELL,
Who was for over a6 years Editor of the "Northern Chronicle," Inverness.
485581
Inverness :
THE NORTHERN COUNTIES NEWSPAPER AND PRINTING AND
PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.
1910.
-DP)
8'fc
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
List of Subscribers ........ xi.
PART l.TUE FARM HFK I'ERlOD.
CHAPTER I.
Early Days 1
CHAPTER II.
Luchd-Siubliail : or Uangrel Bodies . . . . . -Jl
CHAPTER HI.
Big Duncan the Kool . 34
CHAPTER IV.
Tempora Mutantur ........ 45
CHAPTER V.
Education and the Church of Scotland . . 50
CHAPTER VI.
Scoti Vagi ........ 52
CHAPTER VII.
Glenlyou and its Neighbourhood ..... 56
CHAPTER VIII.
Some Parish History ....... 62
CHAPTER IX.
Cursory Remarks on the Ossianie Controversy . . .72
CHAPTER X.
The Unwieldy Parish Divided into Three .... 74
CHAPTER XI.
Religious Revival ........ 76
CHAPTER XII.
Social Life and Morals . . . . . . .81
CHAPTER XIII.
The Highland Landlords 88
CHAPTER XIV.
Francie Mor Mac an Aba ....... 98
VI. CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XV.
Disappearance of Old Landed Families Much Regretted
PAOS.
. 106
CHAPTER XVI.
Patriotism and Politics ......
. 110
CHAPTER XVII.
The Brcadalbane Evictions .....
. 117
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Purling of the Ways ......
. 121
CHAPTER XIX.
The Church Controversy in Glenlyon
. 125
CHAPTER XX.
The Outside Discussions ......
. 130
CHAPTER XXI.
The Veto Act
. 133
CHAPTER XX11.
The Coming of the yueen ....
. 136
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Parish Vacancy
137
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Presentee
. 139
CHAPTER XXV.
On the Edge of the Precipice
. 143
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Disruption
150
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Glenlyon Free Church
. 155
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Broken Walls of the National Zion
. 163
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Eccentric Minister ....
169
CHAPTER XXX.
Eviction ....
174
CHAPTER XXXI.
Farewell to the Old industrial System . . , ..
. 186
CHAPTER XXXII.
Emigration
. 195
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A Scramble for Higher Education ....
208
CONTENTS. Vll.
PART II. THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD.
CHAPTER XXXIV. PAGE.
Kerrumore School . ...... 223
CHAPTER XXXV.
Cargill 226
CHAPTER XXXVI.
An Unexpected Event 232
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Fortingall ... 238
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A Population of many Surnames ..... 247
CHAPTER XXXIX.
FeillCeit 251
CHAPTER XL.
Remarks on Parish of Fortingall Church and Affairs . . 256
CHAPTER XLI.
A Disputed Settlement Lord Aberdeen's Act . . . 263
CHAPTER XLII.
A Remove .... . 272
CHAPTER XLIII.
Balquhidder ... .274
CHAPTER XLIV.
Civil History Notes .... . 276
CHAPTER XLV.
The Patron Saint .... .284
CHAPTER XLVI.
Two Notable Balquhidder Ministers . . . 287
CHAPTER XLVII.
Balquhidder in 1857-60 ... .298
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Proprietors .....
CHAPTER XLIX.
Conditions of Parish and People . . .311
CHAPTER L.
Another Remove . . .
CHAPTER LI.
Off to England . . . ... -320
Vlll. CONTENTS.
PART III. JOURNALISTIC.
CHAPTER LII. PAOK.
In Bradford . . . 325
CHAPTER L1H.
Rumbling Ethnological Remarks ..... 328
CHAPTER LIV.
The (Iroat Change and some of its Causes .... 331
CHAPTER LV.
Strangers within the (iates ...... 334
CHAPTER LVi.
The Native regulation .... . 341
CHAPTER LVII.
Religion .......... 345
CHAI'TER LVlll.
Education . 360
CHAI'TER LIX.
Musing* without Method ....... 368
CHAI'TER LX.
The Lauded Gentry ... ... 381
CHAPTER IAI.
('lasses and Masses ...... . 390
CHAPTER IAII.
Political Currents and Eddies ... . 409
CHAPTER LXII1.
London . . ..... 4iy
CHAPTER LX1V.
Off to South Africa . ... . 425
CHAPTER LXV,
At Cape Town . .... 428
CHAPTER LXVI.
Visitors of many Nations and Races . . 430
CHAPTER LXV1I.
The Position of the Ruling Race . 435
The Boers ...... 440
CHAPTER LXIX.
The Britons . . ... 447
CHAPTER LXX.
Afloat again
CONTENTS. IX.
CHAPTER LXXI. PAGE.
Breakdown . 470
CHAPTER LXXII.
At Thwaites House .... 473
CHAPTER LXXII I.
Neighbours and Incidents . . 483
CHAPTER LXXIV.
The Anti-Vaccinnation Agitation . 495
CHAPTER LXXV.
Keighley Parties and Politics . . 498
CHAPTER LXXVI.
Farewell to England . . .513
CHAPTER LXXV1I.
Back to Scotland . . .521
CHAPTER LXXVIll.
" The Northern Chronicle " ... 529
CHAPTER LXX1X.
The Procession of Changes . 531
CHAPTER LXXX.
Land and People 5 36
CHAPTER LXXXI.
The Latter Days' Invasions of the Highlands . . 538
CHAPTER LXXXI I.
Deer Forests and Sheep Farms . .540
CHAPTER LXXXI1L
The Crofters . . 556
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
The Cry of " Back to the Land " . 577
CHAPTER LXXXV.
The Restlessness of the Present Age . . 583
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
The Urban Invasion of the Country . . 589
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
Presbyterian Divisions . . 596
CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
Some Pleas on behalf of the National Union of Scotch
Presbyterians . . . . .619
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REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS
BY
AN OCTOGENARIAN HIGHLANDER.
PART FIRST. THE FARM LIFE PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY DAYS.
I WAS born at Kerrumore in Glenlyon, where my
father was a farmer, on the morning of the ninth of
February, 1828, when a snowstorm was raging so
fiercely that Dr Macarthur and my uncle Archibald,
who had been sent for him, had, with their horses,
some difficulty in crossing Larig-an-Lochain from
Killin. My memory of local occurrences and of
self-mental impressions becomes continuous and
tenacious at five years of age, when I could read
the Gospel narrative fluently in English, which to
us Glen children was much like a foreign language,
and more haltingly in the Gaelic vernacular because
of its system of spelling and the many dead letters
thereby entailed. At six I could pass, after sunset
and in the darkness of night, St Bran's old church-
yard near our house, without, as I often did before,
using the Lord's Prayer or bits of psalms and
hymns as a protection against ghosts. I had
also long before this ceased to speculate on the
2 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
possibility of reaching a hand to the stars when
they seemed to crowd down on the sharp ridge
of the opposite hill and to hide themselves
behind it. Having been once taken up the side-
glen to the shealings and allowed to remain
there for some time, I widened my knowledge and
got rid of much infantile awe of the wonders of my
expanding world, by wandering away to a mountain
top from which I had a wide view, and where I
found the sky was as far above my head as it was
down on the banks of the Lyon. Out of the dim
mists of childish recollection an event which took
place when I was about three years of age flashes
out in vivid light. At Moar farm house some miles
further up the glen, died, at an advanced age, my
grandmother's aunt. The farm house was on one
side of the river and the highroad on the other.
It was intended to take the coffin across the river
to the highroad, and so to get to the Bridge of
Balgie, which was then the only bridge on the
thirty miles course of the Lyon, and was quite near
to the church-yard. But this could not be done as
the river was in flood and a great storm was still
raging. So the funeral had to come by a rough and
scarcely perceptible footpath, through one of the
best marked self-sown remnants of the primitive
Caledonian forest that still remain. My grand-
mother and I were on a bench at the end of the
house waiting for it we were generally a league of
two against the world and when the funeral came
in sight a flash of lightning seemed to dance on the
wet mort-cloth and to envelope the whole procession.
The thunder peal which followed caused the echoes
of the many rocks and hills to reverberate like
the firing-off of a succession of big gun batteries.
EARLY DAYS. 3
No doubt it was the lightning and thunder which
permanently stamped the memory of this funeral
on my mind.
As late as about 1780, a Glenlyon woman, Elgin
Menzies, wife of Duncan Macnaughton, Cashlie,
who died with her infant in childbed, Avas supposed
to have been taken away by the fairies, and the
story ran that she had been seen in dreams and
heard to moan in hope of rescue from the three fairy
mounds Tom-a-churain, Tom-a-chorain, and Tom-
na-glaice-moire, among which she was shifted about
and kept imprisoned. But before my birth, religious
teaching had banished the poor fairies from their
mounds, although many stories concerning them and
mountain hags, kelpies and brownies, were still told
round firesides and smearing tubs. Witchcraft was
not much spoken of, nor much thought of, although
it had not been so outrightly denounced from the
pulpit as the fairies. Belief in ghosts was very
general, and deemed, from the religious point of
view, as orthodox as belief in good and evil spirits,
and their intervention in human affairs. Nature
with manifold mystic influences keeps her hold on
the rural population everywhere, but this hold is
particularly strong in mountain lands, lonely isles,
and countries which have wide deserts. Nature
and God himself can be disregarded by urban masses
of people ; but it is otherwise in rural districts. Even
on the plains of East Anglia and the flats of Holland,
people are influenced by forces and sensations which
cannot be accounted for by visible and material
causes. Whatever be the reason, Highlanders are
deeply laid under this spell of nature influences and
scenery environment. This fact is apparent enough
in their poetry and traditional stories. It takes a
4 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
pathetic form in their undying love for the place
where they were born, or where in former days their
ancestors lived, which is cherished by emigrants in
the colonies and foreign lands, and by their children
and children's children for "Caledonia stern and
wild." But it is just in the stern and wild countries
in which man, through contact and combat with
nature in her various moods, lets his imagination fly
on wings of poetry and romance, and is inspired by
a patriotism that does not take a worldly account
of the material advantages enjoyed by the inhabi-
tants of more fertile if more prosaic lauds.
To revert to this Highland belief in ghosts in the
days of my youth, it is to be noted that although it
was orthodox and very general, it was by no means
universal. The sceptics were very numerous. 1 was
one of them myself when I came to anything like
years of discretion. The childish fear which made
me resort for protection against danger when passing
the churchyard alone after sunset, or in the night,
was largely due to two things which deeply im-
pressed me. The scare caused by the Burke and
Hare case sent such an after-fear into the Highlands
that, among others, our churchyard was watched
for weeks after every funeral because of the body-
snatchers. The key of the churchyard was always
kept in our house, and the watcher, with loaded
gun, used to come for it. So I heard many resur-
rectionist stories which frightened me much worse
than the usual run of ghost stories. The other
frightening thing was the burial outside the church-
yard of a poor woman of very good character, who,
in middle-age melancholic madness, had hanged her-
self to a beam behind the barred door of her cottage.
The Glen people followed Niven, or Macniven, their
EARLY DAYS. 5
priest, who joined the Knoxian Reformation at its
early stage, and took to himself a wife. Since 1688
they had been, with few exceptions, staunch Presby-
terians, and when this poor woman committed
suicide, they had ultra- Protestant religious views.
Yet when startled by this most unusual event of a
suicide, they agreed, in council hastily assembled,
to fall back upon the traditional Roman Catholic
practice of burial of suicides by night outside con-
secrated ground. This was the chief but not the
only thing in which they unconsciously retained
remnants of the superseded faith. In speaking of
dead people they generally added, " Math gu 'n robh
aige." " Sith gu 'n d' fhuair anam," that is to say,
they prayed that all should be well with the dead
man, and that his soul should have peace.
When twelve or thirteen years of age, I passed,
one wintry night, through an experience which
much increased my want of belief in the general
rank and file of ghost stories. On that night when
I went to bed, my grandmother seemed to be in her
usual state of health, which was a good one for a
person of her advanced years. I was roused out of
sleep some hours later by my father, who came to
my bedside with a lighted candle in hand, to tell
me that my grandmother had been seized with a
bleeding of the nose, which the means commonly
used in such cases failed to stop. He bade me rise
at once to go for her married daughters, who lived a
mile away. I had to pass the churchyard, and was
full of death-apprehension. The moon was shining
dimly through a hoar-frost haze. In passing the
churchyard gate I had no thought of ghosts, but I
shuddered at the idea that it was only too likely
my grandmother would have to be buried in
6 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
kindred dust in that dreadfully cold weather. The
cold added to my horror, although it could not be
anything to the dead. I had not gone out of sight
of the churchyard before I thought I was haunted
by the ghosf ly head of an old woman which was not
attached to any appearance of body. The horrid
thing kept quite close to the right side of my face,
always holding the same position whether I ran,
turned, or stopped. The cold sweat of fear broke -
out on me from head to foot. In sheer desperation
I put up my hand, and lo ! I caught my ghost. The
ribbon of my Glengarry bonnet had happened to get
pinched forward behind my ear, and the indented
end of it, covered by my breath, had frozen white,
and seen close at hand from the tail of one eye, had
assumed the appearance of this ghostly head of an
old woman with a weird gap between a big nose
and a prominent chin.
Many years after I had caught this ghost of
mine, I gathered a large batch of stories of the
supernatural then current in the Highlands of
Perthshire, and found, when they were classified,
that most of them were stories of wraiths and
second sight, and the few which purported to
concern returned spirits of the dead were not nearly
so well vouched for as the others. There was one
Balquidder story which did not seem to belong to
either class. It made much local stir in its day,
and the unexplainable manifestations were, I was
told, witnessed in open daylight by many astonished
observers, who gathered from various parts of the
district to see articles of furniture thrown about
without any visible agency, potatoes thrown out
of a creel at the burnside without hands, rhyme,
or reason, thatch from the roof tossed off' without a
-.EARLY DAYS. 7
breath of wind, and other singular performances
which could only be ascribed to a tricksy Puck,
full of mischievous fun spiced with a generous dose
of malice. "Riochdan," or wraiths, which meant
visible semblances of living persons where their
bodies were not, had some similarity to Marconi's
wireless telegraphy, but went a long step beyond it.
The theory was that when a person strongly wished
to be in another place he could throw a visible
semblance of himself there. Concentration of a
strong will under the impulse of an overmastering
desire was required to effect the miracle of pro-
jection. Such a wonder-working concentration of
will was held to be uncanny, and unholy even when
the impulse under which it took place was blameless
or even genuinely good. So double-gangers were
held in some suspicion. But the second-sight people
saw the wraiths of people who had no wish what-
ever to be elsewhere than where they were, and
who had not the faintest sub-conscious idea that
their semblances were stravaging.
This leads me to speak of Mairi Mhor, who had
been for nearly all her life a fixture in our house,
and who was the last of the Glenlyon second-sighters.
A very sorrowful lad of eleven or twelve I was on
the stormy wintry day on which Mairi's head was
laid in the grave. The custom was that clansmen
should have the first and last " togail," or lifting of
the dead, and that the coffin should be brought
" sunwise " up to the grave. At Mairi's funeral my
father held the coffin's head-string as chief mourner
and I held the foot one, while four of our clansmen
had the first and last liftings. When the strings
were thrown in on the coffin and the first spadefuls
of mould fell on it, making a hollow sound, I should
8 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
have liked to have a good cry. But as I thought
crying unmanly, I restrained, with an effort, the
choking sensation in my throat. Hundreds of times
had I made Mairi sing the milking song of " Crodh
Chailein," " Macgregor from Roro," and other
favourite pieces of Gaelic poetry, some of which
survive in printed books, and some of which have
undeservedly perished because not collected in due
time. The musical gift, which Mairi most liberally
possessed, was not bestowed upon me, but for all
that I was ardently fond of Gaelic poetry and tales
of ancient days. It was my great-grandfather who
brought Mairi into our family. A niece of his who
was married to a distant kinsman died, leaving four
or five young children. The bereaved father of these
children was then in much worse circumstances than
he was later on when he went down to Callander
and married, for his second wife, a Stewart lass from
Glenbuckie. In a way common in the Highlands
the kinsfolk came to the poor widower's aid and
relieved him of some of his children. My great-
grandfather took Mairi, then seven years old, to our
house, and there she remained until she died more
than fifty years afterwards. She had her first vision
in the hill near a reputed fairy mound, and she
always thought it was a vision of the fairies,
although the shapes she saw were of grey-clothed
men and not of green-robed beautiful little ladies.
She was willing enough to be persuaded that she
had on that occasion slept and dreamed, for she
looked on second-sight as a frightful affliction which
she was afraid of having inherited from her grand-
father, Iain Dubh, the Laird of Culdare's caretaker
of woods and castle-lands. My great-grandfather,
who was this Dark John's elder brother, besides
EAKLY DAYS. 9
being a farmer, was the " Maor," or land-steward.
So was his father, Finlay, before him, and so was
my grandfather in succession to him, until long after
the division of the barony. I do not know how long
the maorship had passed from father to son, but I
believe the passing was continuous for at least two
centuries, although ownership had in that period
twice changed. The Finlay above mentioned and
his cousin, Finlay Macnaughton, were soldiers for a
period of years during the reign of Queen Anne, and
when in garrison at Fort- William, they became
acquainted with twin sisters, Anne and Janet,
daughters of Dark John Maciver, in the Braes of
Lochaber, whom they afterwards married. Dark
John Campbell was named after his Lochaber grand-
father, and perhaps it was from that quarter his
seership came to him. He was the only one of his
father's family who had that troublesome gift. Dark
John knew all the secrets of his cunning laird, James
Menzies of Culdares, and guarded them with grim
fidelity. Culdares was out in 1715, and he arid his
Glenlyon followers were captured at Preston. His
men were sent as seven years' bondsmen to Maryland,
but by virtue of powerful influence and looks which
were much more youthful than his years, he himself
got off with a short exile on the Continent, whence
he returned to the Highlands with larch plants in his
valise the first ever seen or planted in this country.
As an estate improver, planter of trees, and promoter
of good farming, high credit is due to James Menzies,
who, after his son and heir grew up, came to be
commonly called Old Culdares. He and his hench-
man, Dark John, remained at home during the
rebellion of 1745. But he sent a gift horse to
Prince Charlie by John Macnaughton, who was
10 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
afterwards tried and executed at Carlisle for killing
Colonel Gardiner, when he was lying wounded at
Prestonpans. The report of the trial does not
support the popular surmise that John Macnaughton
could have saved his life by informing against the
sender of the gift-horse. But no doubt Old Culdares
had a bad time of it while the case was pending.
He was too artful to commit any act of overt rebel-
lion after his narrow escape thirty years before.
But he was quite content that Cluny and his men
should force out the men on his estate, as they had
forced out Sir Robert Menzies' men down the water.
The Glenlyon men refused to rise unless their laird
put himself at their head. The laird declined to
lead them, but he used underhand methods to get
them to follow a youth of eighteen, Archibald,
youngest son of John Campbell, styled of Glenlyon,
who did not, at this time, possess a foot of land in
Glenlyon, although he owned Fortingall. With this
youth was joined an older man, Duncan Campbell,
son of Duneaves, who then had the farm of Milton-
Eonan on Culdares' estate. But it was to the youth
and the old rebel, his father, that the men of the
Glen looked as their " duchas," or natural hereditary
leaders. Those among the men of the Glen who
did not sympathise with the rebellion joined Lord
Glenorchy's regiment on the other side.
Old Culdares anticipated the Disarming Act, on
hearing of the Culloden defeat, by at once causing
all the fire-arms of his men to be gathered and
secretly buried in a place near Meggernie Castle, so
that they might be available in case of another
rising, for which, probably, he never ceased to hope
till the day of his death in 1775. There is now
plenty of evidence to prove that he was engaged in
EARLY DAYS. 11
Jacobite plottings after the death of the Old Pre-
tender. Pending a Stuart Restoration he did not,
however, fail to avail himself of interim chances.
He managed to get his heir, Archibald, appointed
Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh, and to
obtain for his younger son John a commission in the
army of King George. While a perfect double-
dealer in his relations with the established Govern-
ment, he was, to his honour, as true as steel to the
disinherited dynasty and all members of the Jacobite
party. In the summer of 1746 it was pretty well
known in Glenlyon by persons who were used as
scouts to guard against surprise, that an important
fugitive from Culloden was lurking about the dens
and gullies of Gallin Burn, which has cut a deep
ravine down the face of Gallin Hill, but it was only
known to Dark John and his master who that
important fugitive was, and they took precious care
to keep their secret to themselves. Great care was
needed, for King George's soldiers had stations at
Weem, Fortingall, and the head of Loch Lyon,
whence they were constantly patrolling up and
down, and often visiting Meggernie Castle, where
Old Culdares, as a matter of policy, received them
with a show of loyal welcome and Highland hospi-
tality. It was noted that he had arranged a system
of signals by showing lights from turret windows,
which would tell Dark John when it was safe for the
fugitive to come down to sleep in his cottage, and
when he should tell him to keep away. One night
in haymaking time, matters must have been thought
very critical, for Dark John went down to Inner-
wick, and without further explanation than the vain
allegation of his being afraid of ghosts, forced an
ex-rebel to walk up with him to Gallin. But when
12 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
they got near Dark John's cottage what sounded
like the cry of an unknown bird was heard, and the
rebel, Iain Dubh Chuilfhodair, who lived to be
nearly a hundred, and happened to be my mother's
grandfather, was kept from entering the cottage,
and curtly told to go home. The seer traded on
his uncanny repute at this time to put his cottage
under taboo, and used his caretaker's authority to
the utmost for keeping prying eyes away from the
hill lurking-place of the fugitive. But who could
this important fugitive have been ? I can only hint
at a probable answer by asking another question,
Where did Lord George Murray conceal himself in
the long interval between the disbanding of the
Jacobite forces assembled at Ruthven and the visit
to his wife at Tullibardine ?
Although Dark John could use the awe with
which his uncanny gift inspired other people for
protecting a fugitive from Culloden, and perhaps
other purposes, he always lamented his possession of
that gift. No wonder, when his unbidden visions
were usually forecasts of the deaths of persons
whose deaths were then to be least expected. Old
Culdares, to whom John had been grimly faithful
for upwards of forty years, died in 1775. To his
son and successor, the Commissioner, John had been
devotedly attached from that fine fellow's cradle
days. When the Commissioner and his recently
married wife came to Meggernie to take possession,
John was jubilant, although somewhat weak and
shaken by a late illness. When at his departing
for Edinburgh, the Commissioner shook hands with
him and said he hoped to find him in better health
when he came back again, John shook from head to
foot, and wailed out the words, "We will never meet
EARLY DAYS. 13
again." The Commissioner drove off, believing that
John expected no recovery for himself. But no
sooner was the carriage out of sight than John,
amid sobs and tears, blurted out the explanation,
" I may live for years, but his days are numbered.
When he shook hands with me I saw the shroud
drawn up to his very throat." He immediately
repented of having spoken out, and as he could not
recall his words, implored those who heard them to
keep silent about what he had said till the bad
news came, which in a short time was sure to come
from Edinburgh. The silence was kept but badly, for
all the people of the Glen were aware of what John
had said before the news came of the death of the
Commissioner, who shortly after his return to Edin-
burgh was seized by a malignant fever, to which he
quickly succumbed in the summer of his years and
the fulness of his strength. Dark John survived
his beloved master for some years, but was never
his old self again. The prophecy of the Commis-
sioner's death, of which the Commissioner himself
had no knowledge or suspicion, was much talked
about at gatherings of gentry in Edinburgh, as well
as by people in Glerilyon and the neighbouring
districts of the Highlands. The gift or affliction of
second-sight did not descend to any of his three
children. His son, the schoolmaster of Ardeonaig,
lived, worked, and died as, in his sphere, a man of
light, reading, and piety, on the south side of Loch
Tay. His two daughters, who married in Glenlyon,
were quite as normal as their neighbours, and so
were their children, with the solitary exception of
Mairi Mhor.
Mairi and her grandfather would probably have
been remarkable mediums had they happened to
14 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
live in this age. Their visions came upon them like
unwelcome surprises, but if they had willed them
instead of willing against them, the case might have
been different. Mairi Mhor had not, like Dark
John, gruesome visions of shrouds on living persons.
Her warnings of deaths came by seeing, in open
day, wraiths of persons who were not to die. but to
come for the churchyard key, or to officiate pro-
minently at other people's funerals. She more than
once mistook the appearances for the real persons,
and under that idea revealed what she would other-
wise try to suppress, because my father disliked as
much to hear about her abnormal visitations as
she disliked to endure them herself. Mairi was an
industrious, humbly pious, thoroughly good woman,
who recoiled with horror from her uncanny gift of
seeing what was invisible to others. The strangest
of all Main's glimpses of the future was her vision
of the mill-stone, the announcement of which I
heard, and the fulfilment of which I witnessed my-
self. I remember very distinctly both the announce-
ment and the fulfilment, but being then only seven
or eight years old, I rely upon the report of my
seniors for the fuller form of this story as accepted
by the people of the Glen.
I think it must have been the time of peat-
cutting, when, after an early breakfast, masters and
servants went off to their work up the hill, taking
with them bottles of milk and oatcakes for their
midday meal, and ceming home before nightfall to a
supper of broth, meat, and potatoes. Such a meal
was in preparation when the smoke of the kitchen
sent Mairi, who was asthmatic, to take refuge on
the bench at the end of the house, where she
stopped till the peat-cutters were sitting down to
EARLY DAYS. 15
their food, by evening daylight. Then Mairi rushed
in with blazing eyes, and, under strong excitement,
told her wonder tale before my father could suppress
her. As Mairi's visions were generally forecasts of
funerals, he was always anxious to suppress the
revelation of them, not so much from the unbelief in
them which he pretended to hold, as because of the
effect they would have on his wife, servants, and
children. On this occasion her vision was such a
wonder to herself that she refused to be suppressed.
She said she had seen a great gathering of the men
of the neighbourhood, pulling by ropes tied to a
pole which was stuck through a hole in its middle,
a big round thing which they made to roll along
over the burn and on past the hillock near the burn.
Then my father took her in hand and accused her of
falling asleep and dreaming. It was an argument
he often used to silence her, and which she knew
had some foundation of fact, since it was undeniable
that when busy at work, carding or spinning wool,
she occasionally dropped off into dream trances.
But this time she was sure she was wide awake
when the wonder thing passed, and she ended by
saying to my father " I saw you there among the
rest." A short time passed, and as nothing hap-
pened, the dream theory appeared to be justified.
But lo ! one hot day the miller, in a huge hurry, and
with his coat over his shoulder, came to tell the
farmers who had much grain waiting to be ground
for the next four months' provision, that the upper
mill-stone had splintered that morning, and that
the mill would, of course, have to stand idle until
the broken stone was replaced by a new one. When
Mairi heard of the accident, and listened to a talk
about the methods to be used in bringing a new one
16 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
to the mill, she said at once, " That is what I saw."
But at first it looked as if her vision would prove
false to a large degree, for it was up the Glen that a
rock was chosen out of which to carve the mill-
stone. When some cutting out had been done, a
flaw was discovered, and that place was abandoned.
Down the Glen, on the Ben Lawers hills, the next
cutting out took place, and a good mill-stone was
the result, which, with a hole in its middle and
roughly dressed, had then to be taken down from
its high position and piloted and dragged up to the
mill. Through the hole made in the middle of it
for suiting its permanent mill work, a young larch
tree, stripped and rounded, was driven and used as
a rudder, lever, and holdfast for the ropes by which
the men pulled it on and kept it back when a drag
was required. They thus managed to take it down
from a rough and high mountain, and by a con-
venient ford to get it across the river to the high
road which they intended to follow to Balgie Bridge,
or a ford opposite Milton if the bridge did not give
scope for the free working of their long pole. Had
this intention been carried out, the procession would
not have passed where Mairi had seen the wraith
form. But at a narrow and dangerous turn of the
road, within sight of Balgie Bridge, they found
they could not get past. So they had to turn back
to the ford below the manse, and having crossed
there, they had no option but to follow the route of
Mairi's vision, since the level fields were barred to
them by the rising crops. The vision, therefore,
was literally fulfilled without accident or mishap to
men or mill-stone.
As already said, I met with comparatively few
stories about the spirits of the dead returning to
EARLY DAYS. 17
trouble the living, in the Perthshire Highlands, and
of those few scarcely any was so well vouched for
as most of the wraith and second-sight stories.
Although in Queen Anne's reign Meggernie Castle
won the repute of being haunted, until a bold
schoolmaster, with Bible and pistol, undertook to
lay the troubled spirit with his mail-armour and
clanking chains and did it the Glenlyon dead
gave so little trouble to the living that there was no
other story about them in my early days. But in
those early days of mine, what was called " Spiorad
na Comhsheilg," caused commotion in Breadalbane,
and was much talked about in our Glen and in other
neighbouring districts. The story was told before
the Killin Kirk-Session, and the session clerk scrolled
in writing the complaint of the Spiorad's family,
and the tale in defence told by the man who said
he saw the ghost and got from it a message to
deliver to its family. I found afterwards that the
complaint and the defence were not, although
written down, entered in the Kirk-Session minute-
book, and was told that the matter had been as far
as possible hushed up later on, and that threatened
proceedings in the civil court for slandering the
dead had been given up because the Spiorad sent
through the medium a further message to the family
which convinced them, by certain revelation of
secrets, that it was wiser to let proceedings drop
and do what the Spiorad desired. As far as I can
recollect, the following was the story, which I found
many years afterwards still in semi-whispered circu-
lation.
Donald Donn, a farmer in good circumstances
and of honest reputation, was lying ill when the
heir and widow of another farmer, with whom he had
2
18 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
cross-transactions in former years, claimed payment
for a mare Donald had bought from the dead man,
and which they, the dead man's representatives,
said in the settling of accounts had not been paid
for. Donald, on the other hand, declared that the
animal had been paid for, and so did his wife in far
more decisive words than he used. It seemed indeed
at the last that he relied on his wife's certainty of
conviction, and not on his own failing memory. As
he was clearly drawing very near his end, the
claimants said they would let the question be settled
by his oath of verity. So a neighbouring Justice of
the Peace was called in, and Donald swore in pre-
sence of the claimants that the mare had been paid
for. In taking the oath, he was so weak that his
wife had to help him to hold up his hand. Within
twenty-four hours Donald was dead, and, to use the
phrase regarding people of blameless records, " was
honourably buried before God and man." Time
passed, and the dispute faded away from public
memory, till the report spread that Donald's spirit
had come back to redress the mistake he had made
regarding the matter of the mare. A weaver, who
had a house and a small croft in an upland glade of
a wood near Donald's farm, when coming home
through the wood from the Killin clachan one night
was met by a dog, which, on being threatened with
an iron-shod staff, changed into a foal, and then into
the form of Donald Donn. In its final shape the
spirit fought with the weaver, who found that, while
he was grasping what seemed to be only an air-
blown bladder, he received electric shocks or, as he
phrased it, shocks from " cuibhle nan goimheanan,"
or the electric wheel, which was then in repute for
curing rheumatic pains and mitigating creeping
EARLY DAYS. 19
paralysis. The weaver, despairing of his life, at last
cried out, " Donald, why are you so hard with me ?"
" Why," said the spirit, letting the man go, " did
you not speak to me before ?" Then they entered
into pacific conversation, and the spirit explained
that he was suffering much from the oath he had
taken, when memory and mind were failing him, in
regard to the claim about the mare, and that he
wanted his family to settle this claim. To shew
how much he suffered he opened his long cloak, and
his bare body looked like a glass case filled with
liquid flame. He gave the weaver some tokens to
convince his family that the message sent to them
was genuinely from himself. The tokens were in-
sufficient. The wife and children of the dead man
were not convinced, but so highly indignant that
they hauled the weaver before the Session and
threatened to bring him before the Sheriff or Court
of Session. Before the Session the weaver told his
story as he had told it to the family, and unflinch-
ingly maintained that it was the truth and nothing
but the truth. But for all his assertions he would
have been in serious trouble if the spirit, at a second
interview, had not furnished him with further
credentials which silenced the dead man's family,
and made them anxious to hush the matter up. The
hushing up was so well done that the general public
never learned whether or not the claim about the
mare had been satisfied, but the belief of the country
was that it had been quietly settled under a promise
to say nothing about it. At the second interview
the weaver asked the spirit if he could tell when he,
the weaver, would die ? The spirit answered that
he could only tell him that when he was at the
funeral of a man who lived down the Lochside his
20 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
own funeral would be the next one to the clachan
church-yard. The man designated was in good
health and much younger than the weaver. The
latter determined to take good care to keep away
from this man's funeral if he chanced unexpectedly
to die before him. Neither kinship nor close personal
friendship would make his presence obligatory. But,
as usually happened in such cases of forewarning,
his " dan," or weird, was too strong for him. News
in stormy, wintry weather did not then travel fast,
and the weaver's croft and cottage were in a lonely
nook off the road. Business one day made it neces-
sary for him to go to the clachan. As he came to
the junction of his side-glen road with the lochside
main road, a funeral overtook him, which, as it was
going the same way as himself, he could not help
joining. On asking whose funeral it was, he found
it was that of the very man whose death was to be
the forecast of his own. He took the doom involved
very philosophically ; went to the clachan, settled
his business there, visited a married daughter and
other friends there, calmly told them his story,
solemnly bade them farewell, walked back home,
took to bed and died within the week. So his
funeral came next to that of the other man.
LtJCHD-SIUBHAIL. 21
CHAPTER II.
LUCHD-SIUBHAIL : OR GANGREL BODIES.
THE people who travelled about in these far off
days were all newscarriers, who helped to keep
widely-apart Highland districts in living touch with
one another. They could be roughly divided into
two classes traders and beggars. But drivers of
cattle to Falkirk trysts and harvesters formed
another class, and so also did the drovers and
cattle dealers. In our district John Macdonald
from Badenoch, called the " Marsan Mor," or big
merchant, was seventy years ago at the head of
the traders. John travelled about with a cart
of drapery goods from Inverness to Callander on
the Lowland border. His twice a year visit was
something like an event in every glen between the
two places. He had been trained to the business,
for his father, Alasdair Baideanach, had been long on
the road before him. John might have prospered
Jike others to the west of his district, who, starting
in the same way, developed into Glasgow merchant
princes, landowners, and the fathers of sons who took
high positions in State and Church affairs. But
John gave long credits, and finally failed to gather
in the gear once within his reach. At a long distance
behind this honest, and too jolly and careless
" Marsan Mor," came the eident and also honest
Irish packman, Peter Bryceland, from Glasgow, and
the worthy northern packman, Iain Friseil. The
pedlars who came carrying boxes containing reels,
22 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
cotton balls, scissors, needles, thimbles, watches,
chains, and Birmingham jewellery were a less
individually marked because a more variable class.
Some of them came out as pedlars on commission for
the benefit of their health, or from love of scenery
and travelling, and they were sure of finding food and
lodging without money and without price, except
perhaps a trinket to a child or a thimble to the good-
wife wherever they went.
I rather think our gipsies, although they had a
sprinkling of Romany blood, and a knowledge of
the Romany lingo, should properly be called tinkers,
or travelling artisans. It seems to me that -the
tinkers had been a feature in the life of the High-
lands long before any " Lord of Little Egypt" with
his followers came to Scotland and imposed on
James V. and his Parliament, and that afterwards
gipsies and tinkers got to some extent intermingled
in the Highlands, but to an infinitely less degree
than they did on the Borders. In my young days
tinkers mended pots and pans, and made spoons out
of the horns of rams and cattle. In the time of my
grandfather, and even later, they still retained their
old repute for being capable silversmiths to whom
people brought silver and gold to be melted down
and to be converted into brooches, rings, and clasps
for girdles, or to decorate hilts of swords and dag-
gers. The " Ceard Ross," whose grandson, Donald
Ross, I knew in Balquhidder, was famous over a
large district for the highly finished articles with old
Celtic designs which he turned out, specimens of
which were to be found in many households as long
as the old social order lasted. The tinkers of my
early days mended old ornaments but made few or
no new ones. With the end of plaid, girdle, and
LUCSD-SIUBHAIL. 23
buckled-shoe fashion among the Highland men and
women came the end of the demand for the neatly
finished and artistically designed ornaments the
tinkers had been making for untold generations, and
when the demand ceased, the art was soon lost. In
1800 there were four corn mills in Glenlvon where
/
there is none now. The sheep regime extinguished
the little one in the Braes soon after that date, and
when I was about ten, a spate from Ben Lawers
destroyed the Roro one, which was not rebuilt, but
St Eonan and Invervar mills were kept at work
many years later on. Of the two, the oldest, named
after St Adamnan or Eonan, and said to have been
built by him in the seventh century, was the last to
give up the ghost. It continued to grind on till
1880, or perhaps some years after that date. The
successive disappearance of the mills shows how the
sheep regime and large farms operated to restrict
the arable cultivation of the former times. This
digression about the corn mills is not so irrelevant
as it looks. The grain was dried for grinding in
kilns on the farmsteads, and these kilns provided
better lodgings for tinkers than tents, which few of
them carried about with them. The kiln which my
father and the neighbouring farmer had in common
was a fairly spacious and well-thatched building,
in which thirty or forty old and young tinkers could
lodge in what they called luxurious comfort. As it
was situated near the middle of the Glen, and at
the only bridge over the river, it suited them better
than any other "ath" except that at Innerwick,
which ranked second in their estimation. In child-
hood I looked on the coming of the tinkers as a
great and welcome event. They usually had a
donkey or two with them, and I got liberty to ride
24 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
these animals. Peter Ruadh was a good piper, and
set people dancing. I liked to sit on the steps
leading down to the fire-place and watch them at
their work, men roasting horns and shaping spoons
out of them ; women scraping and polishing the
moulded and sliced spoons, the better sort of which
were not without embellishment ; other men making
tin lanterns and cans, and old cunning hands mend-
ing pots, pans, or rings and brooches. When trade
abounded, they were quite industrious. But when
money for work came in, they were apt to indulge
in a spree and be noisy. Still the quarrelling within
a band seldom went beyond words. The serious
fighting took place when one band trespassed on the
province of another. A ferocious fight took place
on one occasion between our kiln band, who were
old and usual visitors, and a band of new-comers in
the Innerwick kiln, and I think we were all glad
when the trespassers were well bruised and beaten
off the ground. The tinkers could well have saved
some of the money they earned at their trade if
prudence had ruled their lives, for their living cost
them nothing. They lived on the country where-
ever they settled for a time. Their old women
and young children were persuasive and scientific
beggars. Their honesty was curiously crooked and
depended on locality. Our kiln band would not
touch a hen roost or steal anything within a pretty
wide limit of their dwelling-place. But beyond that
limit, say two miles on either side, let people be on
the watch against small tinker foraging.
Here may be related an exception which goes to
prove the rule of limited and crooked tinker honesty.
Elijah was a lanky, delicate boy, who, both his
parents being dead, became attached to our kiln's
LtfCHD-SIUBHAIL. 25
hereditary band, through his grandmother, a widow
with her two sons in the army, who properly
belonged to them. My grandmother had great pity
for Elijah, who, besides being then physically a
weakling, was supposed to be mentally wanting a
penny or two in the shilling. Elijah was therefore
invited to come up night after night to get a more
substantial supper than he was likely to get in the
kiln, where he was a sort of encumbrance, although
not ill-treated, but, as my grandmother thought, was
carelessly neglected. One winter night, when it was
snowing hard, Elijah came and had his supper before
the family sat down to table. Our farm servant,
Peter, had given the horses and cows their fodder,
and was passing the door with four bundles of straw
for stirks which were in another place, when he was
called in to supper just as Elijah had finished his and
was rising to depart. Our "scalag" had left the
straw at the door when he was called, and Elijah on
going out found it there, thought it would be nicer
than dry fern to sleep on, and forthwith lifted it and
took it with him. The " scalag" did not hurry over
his supper. On going out he was astonished to find
the straw missing. It was clear enough who had
been the thief, and he wished to go at once to re-
claim it. My father said that by that time tinkers
would be sleeping on it, and that it was not worth
while to rouse the kiln at that hour of the night. My
grandmother wanted the kiln to be raided at once,
but other straw bundles were given to the stirks and
the kiln was allowed to sleep in peace, much to her
vexation. As she had specially patronised Elijah,
she was burning with indignation at his treachery
and ingratitude. Next day when an old crone
from the kiln came to beg a drop of milk for her tea
26 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
she was angrily refused, with the biting explanation
" Gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah " " Take
that for Elijah's theft ! " The crone protested, when
she was told how Elijah had taken the straw, that
she had gone to sleep early, and till that minute had
known nothing about the theft, which was probably
true. The crone's report of our old dame's rage
about Elijah's little lapse from honesty must have
caused commotion and discussion in the kiln, for
without delay two younger women came as a
deputation to say that Elijah had misled the kiln
people by saying the straw had been given to him.
The excuse only added to the flames. " And if the
scamp said so, do you pretend to have believed his
falsehood ?.,"," In a hard winter, when food for beasts
threatens to be scarce, was it likely that, without your
even asking it, freshly-threshed straw should be sent
to you when you had already as much dried fern and
rushes as should content you ? Be off with you, and
never come here again begging for anything ! What
you deserve is to^find on your next visit the door of
the kiln barred and locked against you." " Gabhadh
sibhse sin airson braid Elijah" " Take you that for
Elijah's theft." The men of the band then took the
matter Jn hand. ^They_ came to her with abject
apologies, pleading for "mathanas" (forgiveness),
urging that she knew well that no such lapse from
localised honesty had occurred for forty years before,
and promising that nothing of the- kind would
happen again. So peace was made at last, but
" gabh thusa sin airson braid Elijah " became a
proverbial phrase when a favour was refused to
anyone who had given previous offence.
Elijah grew out of his early delicacy, and in time
got a wife and family. He lived to a patriarchal
LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 27
age, with a very good name and character. In the
latter part of his life he was a sort of high priest
among his people. He married the young ones who
entered into wedlock with religious solemnity, for
he had learned to read the Bible and had a strong
turn for religion. The register might be the legal
glue in these unions, but they were not thought
complete without Elijah's religious seal and blessing.
" The craftsman of the kiln " which is " ceard na
h-atha," literally interpreted was no respecter of
the game laws, but, as he had no fire-arms, his
poaching did not go beyond snaring hares and
snaring or digging out rabbits. He was an expert
angler both by day and night. He added the deft
busking of hooks and making of horse-hair lines to
his tinker industry. He fished sometimes for pearls
in the Lyon, and to the indignation of our old bell-
man, who looked on that fishing as his own monoply,
seldom failed to get some. It was assumed that
the kiln craftsman restricted himself to trout
fishing, which was pretty free to all at the time of
which I write, but I suspect that early in the season
salmon fresh from the sea was consumed in the
kiln when owners of streams and lochs could not
get that luxury for love or money. Whatever they
might do elsewhere, the tinker women did not dare
to spae fortunes in our district, because they feared
church denunciations. As herbalists they had a
knowledge which was frequently useful to sick
persons and beasts. Their eolasan or charms, spells
and incantations, had, if spoken at all, to be
muttered in dark corners and under promise of
secrecy. They were old heathen things to which
Christian labels had been incongruously attached
many centuries before the Reformation.
28 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
The tinkers that travelled back and forward,
plying their vocations, called themselves by High-
land clan surnames Maclarens, Macarthurs, Mac-
alpines, Camerons, Toiseach or Mackintoshes, Rosses,
Mackays, Gunns, etc. If they were, as I think
they mostly were, the descendants of native travel-
ling guilds of artisans who, late in their history,
became very slightly mixed up with the outlandish
Romany gipsies, their right to clan surnames may,
in many instances, have been genuine although the
clans were unwilling to admit it. At anyrate they
went by the same surnames during successive
generations. But those of them who called them-
selves by the royal name were too numerous for
credibility in their Stuart descent. Perhaps it was
in consequence of James the Sixth's legislation
against " broken men " that so many tinkers put
themselves under the protection of the kingly
surname. The tinkers took their clannish pretension
seriously, and were hotly loyal to the surnames they
had inherited or long ago assumed. My grand-
mother, Catherine Macarthur who flared up about
poor Elijah's theft had, because of her surname,
and because she knew much about their past history,
the controlling influence of a patroness over the
band of Macarthurs that once or twice a year visited
our kiln, as long as they stayed there. She spoke
with respect, and so did others, of Duncan Mac-
arthur, the former patriarch of the band who were
nearly all his children and grandchildren and their
marriage relations. Duncan, it seems, read his
Bible, went to church in handsome clothes wherever
he stayed, managed in some way to get a little
education for his folk, and kept them under such
strong moral discipline that they behaved well
LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 29
during all his days. Duncan's influence survived
his death, and sons and grandsons of his, I am
informed, took to farming and boating in Argyllshire,
where they levelled themselves up to honourable
positions among the population of that county.
About 1800, JohnMor Macarthur, my grandmother's
brother, who was fifteen years younger than she
was, took a turn at buying and selling cattle. At
Dalnacardach Inn, then a great station, he and an
Atholl man got into a fierce dispute with half-a-
dozen men from the other side of the Grampians
who were boasting about their own districts and
pretending to run down the southern Highlands.
The local patriotism which Tacitus describes as
existing among the Caledonians, continued to be the
source of many a quarrel over drink down to modern
days. In the fight John and the Atholl man would
eventually have got the worst of it, if tinker Duncan
and his band, who happened to be crossing from
north to south, had not unexpectedly appeared on the
scene and threateningly intervened. When Duncan
declared that he and his would not allow Robert
Macarthur's son to be ill-used by any set of men in
their presence, peace had to be made on the spot,
for Duncan was master of the greater force, and
although not a quarrelsome, he was a resolute man
who would carry a warning to deeds. However
welcome it might have been at the time, John did
not at all like to be teased afterwards about the way in
which he had been rescued by "his tinker clansmen."
He had a high and noble traditional origin for the
Macarthurs of Breadalbane and Glenlyon, and
refused to entertain the idea that through that
traditional origin they might also have some far-off
tinker clansmen.
30 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Dr John Stewart of Fyndynate was by no means
so squeamish about admitting tinker claims for clan
ranking according to their surnames. He had been
a navy surgeon for many years, and when he came
home to reside on his small ancestral property in
Strath tay, and to establish for himself a medical
practice over a large district, he was found still to
be a Highlander of the Highlanders in language
and sympathies. He was one of the small lairds of
long descent who helped much to link all classes
together and to sweeten the social life of their
locality and their age. He gave the tinkers a
camping-place on his property, where they took care
to comport themselves so well that no fault could be
justly found with them by Justices of the Peace
of which body he was himself a member nor by
ministers, kirk sessions, or the country people. When
they encamped on his ground he looked to it that
they should send their children to school well cleaned,
and as decently clothed as circumstances allowed.
The camping ground was open to bands of all
surnames, but if two bands came at the same time
they had to keep the peace among themselves, or
woe to the offenders. The tinkers who used the
royal surname of Stewart and they were numerous
looked up to Fyndynate as their special or almost
heaven-born chief, and those of other surnames
were not much behind them in their devotion and
obedience to him. When the country had no rural
police, and kilns were numerous, and there was a
large and steady demand for horn spoons and tin-
smith's work, the tinkers had a tolerably good time
of it, although their old silversmith work had come
to an end with the eighteenth century in most
places. As his part of the country was as orderly
LUCHD-SIUBHAIL. 31
and as law-abiding as could be wished, Fyndynate
did not see the necessity for Sir Robert Peel's blue-
coated police. He soon came into collision with
the one who was stationed at Aberfeldy. He was
driving in his dogcart one day to visit a patient
whose house was some twenty miles up the country,
and when he reached the Weem toll-bar he met the
new policeman with a little tinker widow woman in
tow. She was a daughter of old Duncan, and her
proper name was Jean Macarthur, but she was
known on both sides of the Grampians by the
nickname of " Co-leaic," whatever that strange com-
pound word might mean. Amazed at seeing the
harmless Co-leaic interfered with, Fyndynate pulled
up his horse, and in fiery wrath for his just
indignation at anything which looked to him like
oppression of the weak flared up like kindled tow-
shouted to the policeman, " Let that woman go.
Why have you dared to stop her ? " "I have
stopped her," replied the policeman, " because she
is a vagrant." " She is," was the stern retort, " what
she was born to be. She was at school with me.
She has brave sons in the British army. I know
her history, and will be her warrant that she has
always been a decent, harmless body. Let her go
at once if you do not want to get into trouble for
being over-officious." Then turning to the Co-leaic,
he asked her, " Where were you going when this
man stopped you ? " She mentioned a farm some
miles further up the water. " I'll be driving past
it," said he, " so get up on the back seat and I'll
take you there." In this manner demure little Jean
was carried off triumphantly, and the over- zealous
policeman was left discomfited.
32 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Politically a Tory of the Tories, our worthy doctor
was practically a democratic feudalist with a
sympathetic heart, unpaid services, an open hand,
a voice loud in denunciation of oppression, and
persuasive in pleading for the poor and afflicted.
To take the tinker class as the lowest, I verily
believe he did more good among them by blending
kindness with scoldings and quarter-deck discipline
than any of the agencies for redeeming them which
have been since then set on foot. And they repaid
him with reverential devotion and worshipful loyalty.
I had in later years, when schoolmaster and registrar
at Fortingall, a singularly touching proof of the
feelings his tinker people entertained towards him.
On a winter day, when the roads were slushy after
a heavy fall of snow, and showers were still falling,
a young sprightly tinker girl of twenty or there-
abouts, who, if well washed and dressed, would have
been called a pretty girl anywhere, came to ray
house. She had a newly-born, well-wrapt babe
clasped to her bosom, and her errand was to get it
registered. She sat by the kitchen fire crooning in
the pride of young motherhood to the pink morsel of
humanity while I went for the register, and my
sister made tea for her. When questioned as to the
date of birth and other usual particulars, the story,
in all respects a true one, which she had to tell was
an amazing one. The child was not yet forty-eight
hours old, and yet she had, through the slushy roads
and snow showers, walked with it that day four
long Scotch miles to get it registered. She made
quite light of that feat of hardihood, but shuddered
a little when telling what preceded the child's birth.
She and her young husband were with the band to
which they belonged in Bunrannoch when she began
LUCHD-SItTBHAIL. 33
to think that it was nearly her time, and insisted on
going away with her man at once, that their child
might be born on Fyndynate's Land, where she had
been born herself. " When more than half way
over the hill the snowstorm," she said, " burst
suddenly upon us, and after struggling for a while
with the storm, I became weary-worn, and my
trouble began. Happily the hill barn above the
Garth farmhouses was near, and my lad, the dear
fellow, carried me and laid me therein. He ran
himself panting ' le anail na uchd ' to the farm-
houses for help. And good women, with blankets
and lights, for it was now mirk night, came to me,
and could not have been kinder if they had been
angels from heaven. My bairn was born in the barn,
but they soon carried us both to a comfortable bed
and warm fireside. It is a pity that the bairn was
not born at Fyndynate, but it is a mercy he is a
boy, and that he is to be baptised John Stewart."
" But," I hinted, " your husband does not call him-
self a Stewart ?" " Well," she replied, " I am a
Stewart, and my first-born is to be baptised John
Stewart." When the entry was completed, she was
getting to her second cup of tea, and I asked her if
she would like an ember in it. " Oh," she said, " I
want to be a strictly sober woman all my life, but
to-day a drop of spirits would go down deas-taobh
mo chleibh the right side of my heart." So the
second cup was laced with whisky, and having
merrily thanked us and drunk it up, she went on
her way rejoicing. I hope John Stewart grew up
to be a hardy soldier ; but I never afterwards came
across him or his parents, probably because when I
went to Balquidder I was outside their travelling
ground.
3
34 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER III.
BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL.
BIG DUNCAN the Fool was called "Garth's Fool"
in Edinburgh, and in the Highland glens and straths
and Isles beyond his own district, " Big Duncan the
Piper." His home district was the land between
Logierait and Drumalbane, watered by the Tay and
its tributaries the Dochart, the Lochay, the Lyon,
the Tummel, and the Garry. Duncan and his sister
were twins and both of them were born naturals.
Their misfortune could not be attributed to any
hereditary cause. Their father and mother were
not even distantly related, and were healthy people.
The two sons born to them after the unfortunate
twins were two as bright lads as could be found
anywhere. The father of this family of four was a
tailor and crofter who prospered by his industry in
a humbly comfortable and most respectable way,
until he was struck down by fever and died, when
the youngest was still a babe on the knee. His
young widow was left heavily handicapped by the
twins, and with little means beyond her own
spinning industry and general resourcefulness. She
had her reward for bearing with courage and hope a
burden under which many in her position would
have helplessly sunk, for she lived long after she saw
the elder of her two younger sons a well-placed and
deservedly popular minister of the Church of Scot-
land, and the other a worthy parish schoolmaster.
The boys were clever, ambitious, and persevering.
The parish school of Fortingall was taught, when
BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 35
they entered it, by crippled Neil Macintyre, who,
if peppery and a strict disciplinarian, was quick to
discern merit, and to give instruction out of school
hours to pupils who wanted to go to the University,
and shared his own enthusiasm for classical learning.
"When Neil died his successor found the widow's two
clever boys at the top, or nearly at the top of the
school. This successor was Archibald Menzies, a
probationer of the Church of Scotland, who some
years later, by the influence of his Chief of Weem,
was appointed to the parish of Dull. The widow-
mother of the boys was a Menzies also, and that fact
made, I suspect, a clannish connection which helped
them on. They certainly could and did make a good
fight on their own hand, but when the parish school
of Dull became vacant, there can be no doubt the
minister of Dull and the Chief of the Menzies clan
helped to appoint Robert, the elder of the brothers,
schoolmaster of that parish. As Robert wanted to
make the school a stepping-stone to the Church,
and his junior, Alexander, nourished a similar
ambition, the notable expedient was hit upon of
making them colleague schoolmasters, so that they
could in alternate sessions be at St Andrews
University. Robert compassed his ambition, but
Alexander, after a session or two at college, married
and settled down as schoolmaster of Dull, which
position he most honourably held for nearly half a
century. Both these Macgregor brothers were good
Gaelic poets and very ardent patriots.
" When Napoleon's banners at Boulogne
Armed in our islands every freeman,"
they jointly composed a warlike appeal to the High-
land clans, which had no small rousing and recruiting
effect throughout the Highlands. It begins :
36 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Eiribh suas anns an am so,
Gach ceannard tha fo'n chrun ;
Cumaibh thall na Frangaich,
Na leigibh 'm feasd a nail iad ;
Ged robh sibh arm an teanndachd,
Na tionndaibh 'ur cul
Gus an coisinn sibh Ian bhuaidh,
'S am faigh sibh duals is cliu.
Glcidhibh taobh na fairge,
Is earbaibh ris na suil ;
Bibh trie gu clis gar dearbhadh fein,
Nach tig iad ann an anamoch oirbh
Gus an ruig na sealgairean
O gharbh-bhcannan nan stuc ;
'S iad na Cinnich as gach ionad
A philleas iad gu dluth.
After that rattling general call on Highland
patriotism, each clan is separately invoked to come
forth in force for the national defence.
When children, Duncan and his sister were
both obedient to their mother. Duncan always
remained so, but Margaret when she grew up was a
handful to the poor widow. She took violent fits of
lunatic disobedience, and on more than one occasion
assaulted her mother, who had to be rescued by the
villagers. The rescuers had no compunction about
binding Margaret in tethers until she recovered
what portion of sense she possessed. Duncan, who
adored his mother, and was never violent to any-
body, strongly, if silently, resented Margaret's
assaults on their mother. When Margaret died and
was buried, he went to the churchyard to see where
they had put her, for he never went to any funeral
and always kept away from wakes, and when the
bell-man showed him his sister's grave he danced on
it with joy, and shouted exultingly, " Feuch an
gabh thu air do mhathair a nise !" (" See if you can
now beat your mother!").
BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 37
In childhood, Duncan and Margaret peram-
bulated Fortingall together. As long as Dr David
Campbell of Glenlyon, on whose land they were
born and their mother had her cottage, was alive
they were constant visitors to the Glenlyon House
kitchen, with excursions also to that of Kobert
Stewart of Garth. When the last Campbell Laird
of Glenlyon died, and his property passed to his
grand-nephew, Francis Gardyn Campbell of Troup,
who was a non-resident, the Garth House kitchen
became their objective. The Laird of Garth had a
lawyer relative, another Robert Stewart, in Edin-
burgh, whom his children, and the whole local popu-
lation in imitation of them, called " Robbie Uncle."
One evening the twins came rushing through the field
to the house with the announcement that Robbie
Uncle was coming in a coach, and that they had
cut through the field to bring the news before he
could get round and go up the drive. They were
believed, although the visit was not expected.
Robbie Uncle and his coach, however, were never
seen by anybody else. The twins were truthful,
but this story of theirs was thought to be a con-
coction or strange joint hallucination, until soon
news came from Edinburgh that Robbie Uncle had
died there on the very day on which the twins said
they saw him and his coach.
Duncan's early and lasting desire was to be
ranked among pipers. It was said that he could detect
the mistakes and shortcomings of trained fiddlers
and pipers. If so, he must have had a good ear for
music, although he could never play anything
through himself. He played bits of laments and
marches and reels all mixed up in comical disorder
and disharmony. But he admired his own perfor-
38 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
mances, and this made him proud and happy,
especially when at weddings he could, apart from
the general company, get a lot of children on a
green mound to dance and shout about him in an
ecstacy of mad fun and frolic. In his early teens he
somehow managed to get old pipes. He then began
to widen the circuit of his roamings, and to expect a
piper's welcome and even fees. From a gentleman he
expected a silver coin, but from a common person a
copper farthing, halfpenny, or penny, would quite
content him if the coin given him had a king's head
on it, his motto being, " Is bonn nach fhiach bonn
gun dealbh," (" A coin without an image is a worth-
less coin "). He never consorted with tinkers, meal-
poke beggars, or any other gangrel bodies, for in his
own estimation was he not a strolling piper and
gentleman ? He never paid for anything, and never
spent a penny in purchases or gifts. But as long as his
mother lived he allowed her, under whining protests
to turn out his pockets and take his money. He
had the gathering and hiding instincts of a raven or
a magpie, and after his mother's death took to the
habit of concealing his coins in holes in trees and
walls, and never took them out again. Several of
his hoards have since been discovered, and more of
them yet may be found, for although small in value
they were numerous.
When George IV. visited Scotland, Duncan went
to Edinburgh to see him, and on coming home
reported that the King was a " duine reamhar
tlachmhor " (a fat handsome man). He was in the
habit of going annually to the Caledonian meeting
in Edinburgh, and on the road and in the Capital
was treated generously as " Garth's Fool," while in
his own opinion he was Garth's piper. At Queens-
BIG DUNCAN THE POOL. 39
ferry a change of ferryman had taken place. A
Pharaoh had arisen there who knew not our innocent
Joseph. The old ferryman passed Duncan back and
forward without ever asking him to pay for the
passage. The new ferryman turned him off the
boat because he would not pay, although probably
he could easily have done so had not paying for
anything been totally contrary to his fixed principle.
On being turned off, Duncan went down to the
beach beside the boat, and having looked at the
sea, shouted out in a defiant tone, " Ged tha e
leathann cha'n eil e domhain ; togaidh mi m' fheile,
's theid mi troimhe ! " (" Though it is broad it is not
deep ; I'll lift my kilt and go through it !"). There
were Highlanders on board who put his words into
English, while Duncan was making visible prepara-
tions for carrying out his declared intentions.
Several offered to pay Duncan's fare, but when
matters were explained to the new ferryman, he took
Duncan on board, and made him the free passenger
he had been in the time of his predecessor.
After having officiated a time at Braemar,
Duncan's minister brother was appointed to the
parish of Kilmuir, in Skye. Duncan used to visit
the minister when he was at Braemar, but Skye lay
outside the circuit of his roamings and the bounds
of his topographical and social knowledge. The
people there, with the exception of the minister and
his wife, would be all strangers to him, and he
would be a stranger to them. So he let some years
elapse before he set his face towards Skye. But
one midwinter, such a longing to see his brother
came over him, that he went forth with his pipes on
that pilgrimage without telling anyone at home.
He must have had some share of the instinct of the
40 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
birds of passage, for he managed to make his way to
Portree through districts hitherto unknown to him,
and to obtain free ferry passage. Between Portree
and Kilmuir, he was overtaken by a wild snow and
wind storm. Stranger as he was, he always kept
his face the right way, although he finally strayed a
little from the proper road. He did not know it,
but he was pretty near the manse when his half-
frozen legs failed him, and he sat down to die. He
had some breath left yet, and he used it to blow the
pipes for his own coronach. His brother heard the
skirling between the gusts of wind, and said at
once : " That is Duncan if he is alive, and if he is
not it is his ghost. I feel he is in extreme peril.
Let us go and search for him." They marched
rapidly in the direction of the sound, but as that
was soon hushed, they lost some time in rinding the
place where poor Duncan had laid himself down to
die. When discovered he was speechless and help-
less. They carried him to the manse, where on
being thawed and regaining power of utterance, he
said, as if in apology for his unwonted break-
down : " Mar bhitheadh a ghaoth cha d' thoirinn
baol air a chathamh " (" Were it not for the wind I
would not care the skin of a bean for the drifting.")
General David Stewart, the historian of the
Highland regiments, who, on the deaths of his
father and his elder brother, succeeded to the Garth
estate, was Duncan's hero of heroes and earthly
providence and deity. Duncan often carried messages
and letters between lairds' houses, and always carried
out his instructions with the greatest promptitude
and fidelity. General Stewart, in conversation with
Sir Neil Menzies, declared his belief that it was
impossible by any temptations to make Duncan
BIG DUNCAN THE POOL. 41
break a promise or cause him to deviate from the
literal performance of his instnictioris. Sir Neil
said, " Let us put him to a hard test. Send him
down to me next week with a note and an empty
basket, tied and sealed. Tell him that I will send
something else back in the basket, and make him
promise that he will deliver it to you as I gave it to him
without opening it by the way." The proposed test
was carried out. Duncan gave his promise to the
General, and delivered note and basket to Sir Neil,
who sent him to the Castle kitchen to be well fed
there, while he put the mysterious something in the
basket, and tied and sealed it very carefully. He
solemnly gave Duncan a note to the General and the
sealed basket, and made him promise again that
nothing should tempt him to open the basket by the
way. The day was hot and Duncan was well fed,
and very likely had been on one of his restless
roamings the previous night. So when he reached
Callwood he went over the wall to have a nice sleep
in the shade of the bushes among the ferns, keeping
a hand still on the basket. But his repose was in
a short time disturbed by movements and noises in
the basket. Between sleep and wakefulness
curiosity made Duncan forget his double promise.
He opened the basket, and out jumped a hare, which
in a moment got out of his sight among the bushes.
At Garth House he delivered an open basket and
the accompanying letter to the General. The latter,
having looked at the empty basket, read the note
and said, " Duncan, in this letter there is a hare ."
He was not allowed to finish his sentence by the
word " mentioned," for Duncan, cutting a caper,
cried in huge delight, " Dilliman ! Dilliman ! she
has got iuto the letter though she jumped out and
ran away when I opened the basket in Callwood ! "
42 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
At the General Election which followed the
passing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs of Perthshire
brought out Lord Ormelie, the son and heir of the
very popular first Marquis of Breadalbane, to oppose
the farmer Tory member, and they had a meeting to
promote his candidature at Fortingall, which all the
local Whig gentlemen attended. Among these was
Boreland, who not long before had been tried for
manslaughter. In a dark night Boreland fired with
small shot at a man who had broken into his house,
and when challenged and threatened, neither stopped
nor spoke. Some of the pellets intended for his legs
hit him in vital parts ; and although he was not
killed on the spot, he subsequently died of the
injuries. Duncan of course was present at the
gathering, and, in the pauses of the oratory, inter-
jected some skirls of his pipes. At the close he
went round, hat in hand, for his piper's fee, and
made a great haul of sixpences and shillings. Bore-
land, having no smaller coin, threw a half-crown
into the hat. Amazed at getting such a big silver
coin, Duncan inspected it on both sides, and on
finding that its "dealbhan" or "images" were all
that could be desired, looked up at Boreland and
said in a loud voice, " Dhia ! 's math nach do chroch
iad sibh" (" O God! it's well they did not hang
you !")
Duncan's ideas of what should be his full dress
as a piper were peculiar. In one thing he never
varied. He always wore on his head no Highland
bonnet but an old chimney-pot hat. He got their
discarded ones from gentlemen and ministers. His
jackets were well bedizzened with buttons. He
wore a girdle and shabby sporran. His kilt was
less like a kilt than a woman's short petticoat.
BIG DUNCAN THE FOOL. 43
Brogues and either hose or stockings, as necessity
decreed, completed his attire. Very often he was
restless at night, and would sleep outside in the
daytime. It was lucky for himself and others that
he was strictly honest, for had he not been so he
might have been very troublesome, since when the
night-roaming fit was on him it was his habit to go
to bed in one place at the usual hour, and ere
morning to be found scaring sleepers at another
house miles away, and reassuring the scared ones
by saying it was only himself, " 'S mi fhein a th'
aim." These house-breaking night surprises were,
it is said, made easier for him by the fact that dogs
took him for a friend and would not bark at
him. He seems to have had a brotherhood relation-
ship and mysterious influence over most animals.
Although it is well vouched for, the following story
about that mysterious influence of his is hardly
credible. But it gained local belief in the district
of which it was the scene, and even was pictorially
represented. Here it is as far as I can recollect
it:-
The Laird of Duntanlich had a fine young bull,
for which he got summer-grazing in the Duke of
Atholl's deer forest. The animal became rampagious
in the forest, attacked dogs and men, and nearly
killed a forester. Word was sent to the Laird that
the bull would be shot if he did not instantly take
him away. Taking him away alive and safe was too
risky a task to be readily undertaken by ordinary
men. Knowing of Duncan's reputation for having
a mysterious influence over animals, the Laird sent
for him, told him his difficulty, and asked him if he
would go for the wild beast. Duncan said he would
on these conditions, that a horse and some lengths
44 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
of cord should be given to him, and that he should
be let into the forest to spend a night there, and
that the foresters should not interfere with him.
Having before night-fall been let into the forest,
and the place where the bull was to be found having
been pointed out to him, the foresters left him to
his own devices. Next morning, when people were
rising and lighting their fires, they saw Duncan,
with tall hat and pipes, riding down the highway
on the back of a quietly marching bull, with the
horse, its halter tied to the bull's tail, placidly fol-
lowing. Whether or not the tale received orna-
mental touches of fiction in the popular version of
it, there is, I believe, no doubt as to the fact that
Duncan safely brought home a dangerous animal,
which was ever afterwards as tame as any of its
kind.
Had Duncan, like persons of his sort in the
present day, been shut up in a workhouse or an
asylum, he would soon have died of a broken heart,
and the places of his perambulations would have
been deprived of a long, lasting source of amuse-
ment. He had such a horror of death that it kept
him away from wakes and funerals. He loved
wedding festivities, and, invited or uninvited, con-
trived to be present at most of those which took
place within two or three parishes. He lived and
roamed about till between seventy and eighty years of
age. His legs at last suddenly failed him, and he was
taken to his brother the schoolmaster's house, where
some months later he died. The parish minister
used to visit him and speak to him about the present
life and the after-death life. Duncan did not much
care about either life. The word " aiseirigh," the
" re-arising," which is the Gaelic for resurrection,
TEMPORA MUTANTUR. 45
aroused his keen attention. "Do we all rise again ?"
he eagerly asked. " The Bible, which is the word
of God, says so," replied the minister. Duncan
raised his head, clapped his hands, and cried out,
" Dilliman ! Dilliman ! I'll see my General again ! "
meaning General Stewart of Garth, who died at
St. Lucia, of which he was Governor, many years
before. To poor Duncan, seeing his General meant
heavenly bliss and the fulfilment of his highest
desire.
CHAPTER IV.
TEMPORA MUTANTUR.
IF, during the twenty years between 1828 and
1848, with which I am now discursively dealing as
memories serve and thoughts arise in my mind, a
stranger like Dr Johnson in 1772, and Leyden the
border poet in 1800, passed through the glens, hills,
and straths from Stirling to Caithness, he would
naturally conclude that except in orderliness and
means of education, the Highlands still remained
essentially unaltered. And that conclusion would
not be without justifying facts. Within the old
Highland Lines Gaelic was still the language of the
people, and the people themselves, as their sur-
names, and the traditions, customs, and superstitions
which had come down to them on the wings of
untold centuries plainly indicated, were, taken as a
whole, of genuine Celtic descent. But the old and
the new were already beginning to hustle and jostle
one another, and the observer who looked below the
surface could see that a great change was in
progress, although he might not foresee the revol-
46 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
utionising effect of the railways which were to open
the Highlands up in after years. Before the High-
lands were penetrated by railways, the changing
forces at work were economic, educational, and
religious. From the unrecorded days of antiquity,
Highland farming proceeded unintermittingly on
simple lines the cultivation of every bit of soil on
which crops could be raised, and the keeping of
large stocks of cattle, horses, goats, and small flocks
of little sheep, which produced sweet mutton and
fine wool. Cows, goats, and sheep were all milked,
for next to stock increase, crops, and on the sea-
coast fishing, dairy industry took its place in -the
family reckoning, although domestic spinning, dye-
ing, and weaving, besides providing clothing and
linen, also supplied the money needed for purchasing
what could not be made at home, and much more.
Under the ancestral farming dispensation, Highland
tenants had in township companies two holdings
namely, winter towns and shealings or summer
grazings. The shealings might be adjacent to the
winter-towns, or ten or twenty miles away. But
whether near at hand or far off, the young and yeld
animals were sent to them in the spring, and women,
children, and the main stock migrated to them early
in May, and remained there till fairly on in the
autumn. I saw the last of the shealing life
and shared in its romance, and also in its
weirdness, when we herd-boys slept in the
lonely huts before the spinning milkmaids came up
with the cows and the dairy utensils. The ruined
mills on many streams dumbly testify, and the
records, in which rents in kind are enumerated, bear
written evidence to the fact that under the old
husbandry the scanty arable lands of the Highlands
TEMPOBA MUTANTUE. 47
produced heavier crops than they produce at the
present time. The old farmers had plenty of farm-
yard manure, and, speaking in particular for my
native district, the tenants used far back a good
system of rotation, burned much lime, and so
planned that every field that would be the better of
the lime application got a dose of it every eight or
ten years. Farming implements were simple and
rude compared to what they are now, most of them
being made at home, but in result cultivation was
much better than it is now, and much more land
was under crops.
Although Jacobites might still hope and plot
for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, within
twenty-five years after Culloden the Highlands, by
garrisons, military roads, and, immediately after the
battle, by Cumberland atrocities, were brought into
the firm grip of law and order. "Creachs" and clan
feuds were put an end to for ever more. No room
was left for even another Bob Hoy. The Church of
Scotland, which had all along stood firmly for the
Revolution Settlement, and had in many a district
of Gaeldom to encounter the hostility of Jacobite
chiefs and potentates, was now able to assert a
dominating position in regard to matters of faith,
morals, and education. Clannishness retained much
of its pristine vigour, and still survives as a senti-
ment of kinship and brotherhood from far off times.
The feudal power of nobles and landowners had,
however, its tap-root cut by the abolition of herit-
able jurisdiction. Therefore proprietors turned their
attentions to the management and improvement of
their estates. It was not till well on in the next
century that they realised the letting value of their
fishing and shooting rights, which they were far
48 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
from enforcing strictly as long as they kept them in
their own hands. But they were easily persuaded
by Lowland advisers that they could get higher
farm rents by abolishing the shealings, as far as
they were separable from winter-towns, and by
stocking them with blackfaced sheep from the
Borders, which were much bigger and hardier then,
whatever they may be now, than the small native
breed, which in hard winters had to be housed and
hand-fed. Economically, or from the higher rent
point of view, the advice was good, and it held good
for the subsequent hundred years, until colonial
and foreign wools reduced the value of the home
product, and the cost of wintering the home sheep
had run up to almost the equivalent of a second
rent. Pacification of the Highlands next turned
the attention of the Lowlanders to the chances
opened to the Lowland sheep-farmers and shepherds,
who, acting as proprietors' grieves and instructors of
native tenants in Border sheep-farming, gathered
gear and courage to take shealing farms themselves.
The Lowland invasion of estate-managers, grieves,
shepherds, and blackfaced sheep began in 1770. On
the part of most proprietors who were continuously
resident on their land, excepting for winter visits to
Edinburgh, and who had kindly sympathies and
relations with their people, the social revolution
involved in the abandonment of the old system was
fully realised and dreaded. Noblemen who, like the
Earl of Breadalbane, had wide stretches of old deer
forest lands, turned them into sheep-farms, and on
them the blackfaced sheep from the Borders, under
the care of Lowland managers and shepherds, were
placed and found to be profitable. But tenants'
shealings were in most cases left undisturbed for
TEMPORA MUTANTUK. 49
the next thirty years. Old Culdares, who was an
agriculturalist beyond his age, put blackfaced sheep
on his home farm of Gallin and its far away Ben-
vannoch shealing, but did not disturb the tenants'
double-holdings. In bringing into the Glen Walter
Grieve from Huntly, Selkirkshire, and Walter Scott
from Wester Buccleuch, Roxburghshire, his avowed
object was the teaching of native tenants how to
manage club-stocks of southern sheep for them-
selves. That object was fully attained, although he
did not live to see it. In 1779 a temporary back-
set was given to the new sheep regime by the price
of wool falling from 5s to 2s 2d per stone ; but the
blackfaced once introduced very soon superseded
the small native breed. The native farmers formed
club-stocks of them, while their other animals, like
the arable land, remained as before in individual
ownership. Old Culdares was pressed by debt.
His chief adviser, Mr Anderson, afterwards minister
of Old Deer, proposed to divide the barony into a
few large separate farms, but however pressed for
money and tempted by what Mr Anderson assured
him was a certainty of gain, Culdares was too
much of a Highlander to adopt a plan so radically
revolutionary and so harsh to his native tenants.
The Lowlanders who came with the blackfaced, and
later on with the Cheviots, remained in most cases
in the Highlands and drew others after them ; but
the conquering Lowland invasion only began with
the railway era.
50 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER V.
EDUCATION AND THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
IN the eighteenth century the Highlands became
fully equipped with parish schools, and well
sprinkled with side-schools of more kinds than one,
but all of which were under the superintendence of
the Church of Scotland. As a rule Whig and Pres-
byterian landlords co-operated with the Church, but
it is to the ceaseless efforts and constant pressure of
the Church that the remarkable spread of education
in the Highlands between the Revolution and 1800
must be attributed. Jacobite landowners as a class,
with many exceptions, looked upon the schools as
weapons put into the hands of enemies (already too
formidable) both to the Stuart dynasty and the
feudal power of landlords. Yet before the third
part of the eighteenth century had passed into
history, a strong conservative element had tempered
the doctrinal and disciplinary intolerance inherited
from the Covenanters. The Erskine Secessionists
and other subsequent bands of sectaries testified
loudly against the unfaithfulness of the Moderate
rulers of the Church of Scotland, who preached, they
complained, cold morality sermons, did not excom-
municate obstinate offenders, and did not ask the
civil powers to burn witches and execute atheists.
From the specimens of the decried sermons which
have come down, I think the allegation that they
were sound, and often excellently composed moral
essays rather than purely doctrinal discourses must
EDUCATION AND THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 51
be accepted. But the question arises, were the
ministers within the Highland line as moderate and
cauldrife in matters of doctrine as the Lowland
rulers of their Church ? That question as regards
many of them must be answered in the negative.
In the Highland parishes watered by the Tay and
its affluents, the parish ministers of the eighteenth
century, from George the First's reign till the
beginning of the next century, when a few slack
ones appeared among them, were evangelical in
their preaching, stern reprovers of the vicious,
excellent guardians of the poor, and vigorous pro-
moters of popular education. Mr Archibald Camp-
bell, minister of Weem, who died in 1740, mortified
six thousand merks, at that time a large sum, which
could not have been saved from his small stipend,
for endowing side-schools in three outlying parts of
his extraordinarily divided parish. Mr Duncan
Macara, for half a century, from 1753 downwards,
minister of Fortingall, saw to it that Glenlyon and
Rannoch had side-schools, in which reading, writing,
and arithmetic, and the Bible and Shorter Catechism
were efficiently taught. Mr James Stewart, min-
ister of Killin, who first translated the New
Testament into Highland Gaelic the Irish version
having been used before was a zealous evangelical
preacher. A similar tale had to be told of the large
majority of the Highland ministers of the eighteenth
century, both north and south of the Grampians. The
hymns of Dugald Buchanan, who was Mr Macara's
missionary-schoolmaster at Kinloch-Rannoch, may,
I think, be taken to represent fairly the kind of
theology then prevalent in the Highlands. High-
land theology was in strong contrast to that of the
cold morality discourses which evaded the enforce-
52 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ment of positive doctrines, and seemed to verge on
philosophical deism. That fact explains how readily
the religious revival which took place in the south
in the early years of the nineteenth century received
a hearty response in the Highlands, and how hotly
afterwards the Highlanders went into the anti-
Patronage movement.
CHAPTER VI.
SCOTI VAGI.
HIGHLANDERS followed with hearty goodwill the
leadership of ministers and elders in educational
matters. They were passionately attached to their
own language, and thought that the Highlands,
without Gaelic to wake the echoes of its rocks and
fairy -haunted corries, would lose all romance and
charm, although scenery, grouse, deer, and fishing
waters still remained. But they always desired to
be bi-lingual, so that they might through their
surplus youth invade the Lowlands and the wide
world. They had always in peace and war been
carrying on that invasion, and they little dreamed a
time would come when the Lowlands and England
and Ireland and foreign countries would invade
their mountain lands, or when Gaelic would either
be extinguished or verge upon extinction before
their descendants understood that with its disap-
pearance Gaeldom would be deprived of a soul-
element and make a belated rally to try to arrest
that peril. Before they had many schools at home,
they used to send their children to serve as herds in
the Lowlands in order that they might Jearn the
SCOTI VAGI. 53
"Beurla," and it was the custom for large numbers
of their grown men and women to go to the Low-
lands yearly to earn wages as harvesters, and at the
same time to enlarge their knowledge of the sort of
English spoken there. When they got schools of
their own where pure book English was taught,
there was no further cause for going to the Lowlands
to learn "Beurla." Englishmen, who as sportsmen,
or visitors on other accounts, came to the Highlands
from the date of Dr Johnson's journey downwards,
found Highlanders who spoke English at all, speak-
ing pure book English with some of the mountain
tongue's accents clinging to it in a way frequently
pleasing to their ears, while they found the "Beurla"
of the neighbouring Lowlands in some districts
horribly harsh and hardly intelligible to them. But
from time immemorial there had been a permanent
necessity for the surplus population, bred and
brought up in the Highlands and Isles, to seek
outlets and means of existence in the Lowlands or
the wide, wide world. " Scoti Vagi" the ancestors
of the Highlanders had been of old, and "Wandering
Scots" the surplus population of Highlands and Isles
had to be for all ages while the old conditions
lasted ; and while the abler wanderers sought scope
for ambition, and the less aspiring better means of
subsistence, in the Lowlands and in far countries,
the old love of adventure and self-reliance inspired
the race as a whole. Swarms of Highlanders went
to the last Crusade under the two Celtic Earls
Atholl and Galloway. In succeeding ages swarms
of them served and fought in France and Germany.
As soon as King James ascended the throne of
Queen Elizabeth, adventurous Highlanders found
their way to India and the Colonies or plantations
54 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
as they were then called. And wherever High-
landers went they drew more of their race after
them. Banishment of Highlanders who were
rebellious or unruly at home strengthened the
British possessions abroad. The Highlanders cap-
tured at Preston were sent to Maryland, and were
sold as bondsmen for seven years to the planters.
When their term expired some of these ex-bondsmen
ctune home, and some remained in the land of their
exile and called out friends from home to join them
there. Upwards of fifty years ago. Mr Shiels,
R.S.JL. who before 1SC6 spent many vears in the
south of the United States painting portraits,- told
me that when he was in Maryland he was informed
that in a corner of that State there was a community
of several thousands who still spoke Gaelic in their
homes a lid retained many Highland customs. Those
who were banished to Barbadoes. Jamaica, and other
West Indian Islands were not founders of Gaelic-
speaking communities like those banished to Mary land,
or General Oglethorpe s Carolina emigrants, or the
later emigrants to Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, hot
they undoubtedly drew many other Highlanders
after them.
In his description of James the Fourth to his
sovereign Ferdinand, the Spanish ambassador, DOB
Pedro de Ayala. enumerates the many learned and
foreign languages which that charming, chivalrous,
and rash King of Scots could speak, and says:
* His own Scotch language is as different from
English as Arragonese is from Castilian. The King
speaks besides, the language of the savages who lire
in some parts of Scotland and in the Islands. It is
i different from Sootab m Binayan b from Castikn."
Doit Pedro accepted without investigation the epi-
SCOTI VAGI. 55
thets applied to the Highlanders by the Lowlanders,
who had some justification in raids, spoliations and
clan feuds, and civil war commotion, for calling the
Highlanders " savages." In Hill Burton's " History
of Scotland " the old race rancour between Lowlands
and Highlands manifests itself without much abate-
ment. But Hill Burton and other Lowland and
general historians overlook the fact that a long-
continued pacific Highland invasion, meeting there
with the primitive survivals of the Britons of
Strathclyde, and the Picts of Galloway, celticised
Lowland Scotland itself to an extraordinary degree.
Let anyone look at the present day names in assess-
ment rolls, at the shop signs, the office and firm
names, and count up those which are unmistakeably
Gaelic pushing the semi-disguised forms aside and
he will be driven to the conclusion that the Celtic
element in the present day population of Scotland
is stronger than any other one.
The adoption of Chatham's scheme for enlisting
Highland valour in defence of the British Empire,
by raising Highland regiments commanded by High-
land gentlemen whom the men were ready to follow
anywhere, and with them to do whatever mortal
courage, obedience, and endurance could achieve in
war, laid the foundation for broad Imperial patriot-
ism in the Highlands, and brought such a new glory
and strength to the British Army that, all down
from the capture of Quebec to Waterloo, the
Government looked upon Gaeldom as a nursery of
soldiers, and in various ways discouraged emigration
especially to the United States. Proprietors who
by raising quotas of men got commissions for them-
selves or their sons and relations, and who moreover
cherished kindly sympathies and frequently com-
56 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
munity of hereditary ties with their tenants, like-
wise discouraged emigration. And although the
steady old migration to the Lowlands, and since
the Union of the Crowns to England, went on in
a stronger stream from year to year, and a large
number of the young men went into the Army and
Navy, the population of the Highlands became more
and more crowded than it ever had been before,
between 1760 and the end of the century. Mean-
while the sheep regime, by absorbing the great
upland shealings and leading to the consolidation of
the winter-town holdings, was aggravating the
crowding, and by degrees the profits of domestic
industries were departing. But during the long
war with France prices for wool, sheep, cattle,
horses, and surplus of crops, had so much gone up
that while old leases lasted the tenants prospered.
Whenever the leases expired rents went up, and on
the heels of higher rents, prices went down as the
time of inflation was followed by depression.
CHAPTER VII.
GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.
THE old system of farming was yet making a stiff
fight with the new one, although flocks of blackfaced
sheep were on all the brae shealings and on all the
hills connected with arable land in the lower end of
the Glen. One large shealing called Rialt was,
till after 1840, held by Breadalbane tenants whose
winter-towns were a good distance away, and the
Roro tenants had a shealing in the shadow of Ben-
lawers on their own hill, and so had the four tenants
GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOUEHOOD. 57
of the Eight Merkland of Kerrumore and Craigelig,
of whom my father was one, in their own Conaglen.
The population was thrice as numerous as it is now.
The people were industrious, well clothed, comfort-
ably housed, and sufficiently supplied with simple
frugal and healthy food, such as meal, butcher meat,
milk, butter, cheese, and potatoes. Up till 1845,
potatoes were at their best and so abundant that,
with fish on the Islands and the West Coast, and
with mutton, braxy, pork, and milk, butter, and
cheese on the mainland, they formed the chief item
in the dietary of the humbler classes ; oatcakes,
barley scones, and porridge taking secondary rank,
especially after the short crop of 1826. As much
land as their little middens would manure was given
to cottars freely by the farmers, who also bestowed
gifts of potatoes on the poor and helpless out of
charity. There was a wonderful amount of charity,
mutual help and sympathy, among the Glenlyon
inhabitants of my early years. No doubt it was so
throughout the Highlands generally, as the con-
ditions and connections were so much alike every-
where. According to their surnames, our Glen
people were descended from twelve or more different
clans. But by centuries of inter-marriage they had
all become a kind of one clan through affinity and
consanguinity. They did not approve of the
marriage of first cousins, but unless a man, as
happened pretty often, brought a bride from another
parish, he could not marry a Glen girl with whom
he was not related more distantly than first cousin-
hood. While kinship near or far made it the duty
of the comfortably -off to help those that were badly -
off, usually through no fault of their own, it likewise
filled the strugglers with such pride of independence
58 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
that, however hardly tried, none of them took the
road as beggars going with meal-pokes from door to
door. What a lonely woman did was, at clipping
time, to go round the fanks "air faoigh ollatnh" ; in
other words, to ask for puckles of wool, which she
took home and spun and so turned into money.
Men who drifted into helplessness often quartered
themselves for the end of their days on well-to-do
relations who did not grudge them their keep.
In our Glen a clannish community through
inter-marriage was thus formed by people of many
surnames. It was much the same in the neigh-
bouring glens and districts. There never existed
on the south side of the Grampians a parish or
barony or estate of many farms that was inhabited
by people of one surname. I question whether the
ideal of one-clan or one-descent ever existed any-
where on the Highland mainland, or in the larger
islands, whatever might be the case in the smaller
islands. The one-stock clan idea came out of a
precedent Celtic system which was superseded by
the feudal system. When the clans in the four-
teenth century began to raise their heads, they had,
in order to succeed, to graft their idea on feudalism,
and to accept the mixed population that had
gathered themselves under it. On the other hand
holders of feudal charters like the Seton- Gordons,
the Frasers, Menzieses, Chisholms, etc., had to act
like Celtic chiefs to make their charters good.
The abolition of the large brae shealings, and
the consolidation of some of the lower farms, almost
put an end to the summer life romance so dearly
remembered by my seniors, and cramped a growing
population on the part of the Glen which had
most of the arable land. The coming necessity for
GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 59
voluntary emigration or landlord eviction of people
for whom there was no room or opening in the Glen
was plainly foreshadowed, and understood by the
people themselves, who, besides the chronic drifting
southward, had sent off swarms of emigrants to
Canada before 1820. But until the abolition of the
club-farms, which was completed in or about 1850,
the old industrial order struggled to hold its ground.
It was, however, for the last ten years of that
struggle, being pressed to death between the two
millstones of sheep rule and the lost value of the
" calanas " or spinning industry of the women. The
manufacturing inventions of the preceding century
led to the putting up of water-mills for wool and
cotton ; but until steam power was introduced the
coalless parts of the country did not realise that
they were doomed to lose their domestic industries,
nor did they lose them at once, although gradually
they began to be less and less profitable. Flax-
growing, followed by its spinning and weaving, was
a great and very ancient industry in Glenlyon, and
indeed in all parts of the Highlands where good
flax could be grown in suitable soil, which was as
carefully prepared, manured, and weeded as garden
beds. Splendid flax was grown in Glenlyon, and
fine yarn and linen were produced therefrom, by
following the processes of cultivation, steeping,
scutching, heckling, and spinning, which had come
down from the days of old, and which were carried
out by simple means, without any innovation, until
towards the end of the eighteenth century, scutch-
ing mills relieved the home workers of part of the
initiative drudgery. The lassies, who went with
their mothers and the milch cows to the shealirigs,
were early taught to spin on the hillsides while
60 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
they were tending calves, by distaff and spindle,
while their elders were busy at their wheels within
the huts, between milking times. The cheapness of
Manchester cotton goods never so wholly destroyed
the value of the Highland flax-spinning and weaving
that it should have been abandoned. In spite of
the discouragement caused by the cheap cotton
industry, Ulster kept its linen industry and made it
pay all through. It never was more flourishing
than it is at present. But it is an industry which
can only thrive in a well-populated rural district ;
and Ulster was never depopulated by a sheep-
regime invasion and a craze for large farms like the
Highlands. Should the central Highlands ever go
back to farms of moderately small size something
much larger than crofts the linen industry might
be revived with much advantage.
To return to the old order in Glenlyon, all the
hard field and hill work was done by the men, while
dairy-work, house-work, and the important " calanas"
by which all were clothed, and chests were filled
with blankets and webs of linen, and revenue secured
by the export sale of linen and woolen yarns, fell
within the special domain of the women. As long
as the large far off shealings remained, the women
had a smaller share than they had afterwards in
harvest work or field work of any kind. But before
and afterwards there was plenty of work for both
sexes although the remuneration was not in propor-
tion to the care and labour bestowed on the work.
It fell as a heavy task to the men in addition to the
legitimate farm work, that they had to thatch, repair,
and rebuild homes, byres, barns, and stables, pro-
prietors giving nothing but the timber as it stood
uncut in the woods. The cutting and winning of
GLENLYON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 61
peats formed part of the ordinary farm labour. The
manifold calls on their ingenuity and forethought
made both sexes very diligent and resourceful. They
formed, as it were, a self-contained, self-sustained,
self-sufficing community. Whether they went as
small feuars to dig out Flanders Moss, or emigrated
to the Canadian forests, they took with them a
hundred self-helping arts and qualities which in most
cases ensured success. They were not, as a class, so
well fitted to prosper in manufacturing towns,
although some of them did prosper there both as
merchants and manufacturers. I do not think that
there could possibly be better nurseries for soldiers
and pioneers of empire, or better training schools for
agricultural emigrants to the colonies, than were
the Highland mainland communities that remained
substantially under the old order for a century after
the reign of law was established on Culloden Moor
and the Church of Scotland covered the country
with schools. Soldiers, Hudson Bay Company
servants, adventurers and emigrants, took with
them everywhere self-helpful resources of many
kinds, and a standard of morals which even the
wastrels among them could never forget nor violate
without prickings of remorse. That standard of
morals had Shorter Catechism teaching for its back-
bone, but that steel-like backbone was invested in
the warm flesh, skin and blood of Highland chivalry
and undying love of native land.
62 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOME PARISH HISTORY.
THE parish of Fortingall was in area less like a
parish than a small county. The Reformation sup-
plied it with one parish minister and one parish
school-master, who lived close to each other at
Fortingall village. It was a long time before
Glenlyon and Rannoch were each provided with
side-schools, the latter with one at the upper end
and another at the lower end of Loch Rannoch. It
was in the latter that Dugald Buchanan taught
during the early part of Mr Macara's long ministry.
The earliest of the Glenlyon schools was set up at
Innerwick, and the second at Roro. Mr Ferguson,
minister of Fortingall parish from 1719 to 1752, was
an uncompromising upholder of the Revolution
Settlement and Presbyterian doctrines and discipline.
He made himself a sort of terror to the Jacobite
lairds of the parish, and was accordingly much
detested by them. He succeeded, in 1719, Mr
Alexander Robertson, who had been deposed for
having read treasonable papers from the pulpit at
the time of the 1715 rising. Mr Ferguson during
the '45 rising acted with the full courage of his con-
victions, and when Prince Charlie was at Castle
Menzies, within a few miles of his church and manse,
increased rather than diminished the emphasis of his
denunciations. In 1752 he died from a cold which
he caught through having fallen into the river from
an upset boat. For over thirty years his ministry
SOME PARISH HISTORY. 63
was a long fight with ignorance, immorality, dis-
orderliness, and adverse heritors, who, I believe,
with the sole exception of Sir Robert Menzies, were
Jacobites, and, as long as he lived, adherents to the
deposed minister, Mr Robertson, who became an
Episcopalian. It was said that at first Mr Ferguson
tried conciliation, but if he did he found it of no use,
and he soon went on the war-path, which he never
afterwards left. About 1726 he forced an augmen-
tation of stipend on his heritors. Immediately
before his death he compelled them to renovate his
manse, which, in spite of remonstrances, they had
long refused to do. While this work of renovation
was going on, he went to lodge with his wife's
relatives at Laggan on the other side of the river
hence the river crossing and the boat accident, about
which there was a whispered suspicion that it was
less accident than a malicious Jacobite trick to give
the strong-handed minister a ducking. Be that
as it may, Mr Ferguson died of the cold he got by
the immersion. He died, was buried, and then the
groundless story arose, from a light having been
seen in the vacant manse, that after death he walked
and found no rest until he had an interview with his
successor. His successor was as much a Church
militant warrior as himself. His lot fell on happier
times, and he was able to carry much further the
work of reform which Mr Ferguson had begun. In
1715 the men of the parish of Fortingall, gentry and
commons, rose spontaneously on behalf of the Stuart
dynasty. They thought it disgraceful that a " wee,
wee German lairdie " should succeed Queen Anne in
the place of her brother. They had not bothered
their heads much so far about the religious and con-
stitutional questions which came home so acutely to
64 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hearts and minds in other parts of the country.
They had no persecution during the Restoration
period. With two or three exceptions the ministers
of the then big Presbytery of Dunkeld, if half of
them Vicars of Bray by compliance, were worthy
men who kept on the old order of worship arid forms
of discipline without innovation. The only novelty
was the re-introduction of a bishop, who was not
personally objectionable. It was remembered how
before the Restoration, Monk and his Cromwellian
troops ruled the Perthshire Highlands from Finlarig,
and how humiliating the rule was to Scotland
although it produced unwonted order, stopped the
cattle-raiders, was justly administered, and, outside
national sentiment, had little of the bitterness of
conquest. But, good or bad, they would not
tolerate Saxon rule again if they could help it, and
whatever evils Whig Statesmen and Lowlanders
might predict, they would fight for placing the right
heir on the British throne. So they fought and
were much disappointed in many ways. Mar was
an incompetent commander who by delay allowed
the Duke of Argyll to scrape together a small
army, which won the results of victory at Sheriffmuir
although the battle itself was indecisive. When at
at last the " right heir " presented himself to his
discomfited and angry army at Perth, his gloomy
countenance chilled their returning ardour. But
worst of all for Jacobitism in the parish of Fortingall
was the different treatment received by followers
and leaders after the suppression of the Rebellion.
Old Culdares then a young man whose supposed
minority was used as a plea in his favour John
Campbell of Glenlyon, and Struan, the poet chief of
the Robertsons, after a short exile in France, were
SOME PARISH HISTORY. 65
pardoned and restored to their estates, while the
common men were sent to be sold as seven years'
bondsmen to the plantations. Popular resentment
arising from this difference of treatment was
not lessened by the stories returned bondsmen
had to relate. And in the thirty years between
the two risings education had been spreading,
and the power of the Church had grown into
a real check on the old undivided sway of feudal
proprietors. Between one thing and another the
'45 rising on the south of the Grampians, and in
most places on the north side likewise, was far less
spontaneous than had been the ' 1 5 rising. In the
parish of Fortingall, Old Culdares, John Campbell
of Glenlyon, and Alexander Robertson of Struan,
who had been in the former rebellion, were still to
the fore. Culdares was still in the prime of life, but
although steeped to the neck in Jacobite intrigues,
was far too prudent to endanger that neck a second
time. He sent a gift horse to Prince Charles, and
remained at home. His second son held a com-
mission in King George's army, and he was trying
to get civil service employment for his elder son.
He wanted to be safe whatever happened. He
thought that Cluny would succeed in getting the
Glenlyon men out while he himself kept aloof ;
especially as Cluny and his Badenoch warriors had
just, under threats of fire and sword, forced out Sir
Robert Menzies's tenants, little to their own liking
and far less to the liking of their chief. The Glen-
lyon men flatly refused to come out at Cluny's call,
and wanted to know why he did not begin by
getting Culdares to rise with him. Culdares plotted
and would not rise. But Glenlyon and Struan, who
were now too old to fight or even to ride, were
5
66 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
as full of enthusiasm as they were in the former
rebellion. Glenlyon, whose eldest son was in King
George's army, and had earned praise and the right
to promotion at Fontenoy, sent his youngest son,
Archibald, a mere youth, along with a son of
Duneaves, to call out the men on the Culdares
estate, and about thirty of them responded at once
to what was to them a sort of hereditary call ; for
although Glenlyon had nothing then of the old glen
barony but the empty name, he was the repre-
sentative of those who in peace and war had led
the Glen men for two centuries. Struan fired the
heather in Rannoch, although stricken by age and
infirmities. The two all-daring veteran rebels did
another thing, in conjunction with a younger
Sheriffmuir comrade of theirs, Menzies of Shian,
which was both romantic and clever. They carried
the fiery cross round Breadalbane to raise recruits
for Prince Charles, and the device did succeed
in raising a few. The Earl of Breadalbane was
spending the closing years of a rather useless life
at Bath, while his capable and energetic son, Lord
Gleuorchy, was from Taymouth ruling Breadalbane
and striving with might and main to hold it for the
Government. The three Sheriffmuir veterans got
in with their fiery cross under his guard, and wiled
away some of his men, but he kept the bulk of them
in his regiment, and also as many of the Glenlyon
men as had not gone to fight and fall or fly at
Culloden. Mr Ferguson volleyed and thundered
against rebellion from the pulpit of Fortingall
Church, and the ministers of the neighbouring
parishes were working on the same side, if in a
less belligerent strain, while Lord Glenorchy was
gathering up into a fighting host the Highlanders
SOME PARISH HISTORY. 67
who had imbibed Church of Scotland political
views, and had got the keys of knowledge, reading,
writing, and arithmetic, in parish schools and
side schools. The '45 rising, which was far more
disastrous than the '15 to the propertied rebels,
possesses a dazzling amount of meteoric splendour.
Unlike his gloomy father, Prince Charles had the gift
of fascinating his Highland followers, who, through
the accounts they gave of him to their children
and children's children, exercised a reflected mes-
meric influence on succeeding generations of people
who detested the principles of his dynasty, and
who knew about the inglorious latter years of
his own life.
Long and stoutly as Mr Ferguson fought for the
Presbyterian conquest of the whole of the unwieldily
large parish of Fortingall, by the combined forces of
religion and education, he had to leave to Mr
Macara the hard task of bringing all Rannoch to the
same orderly condition as Fortingall, Glenlyon, and
Bolfracks. The lower half of Rannoch, although
Jacobite and anti-Presbyterian, was not particularly
unruly. The unruly elements gathered in the braes
and woods belonging to Struan. In the cattle-
lifting days Lochaber and Rannoch raiders were
usually co-workers. These days were now over, but
thieves of both districts were still at work in a small
way. When Mr Macara was inducted as minister
of the parish, I believe that rebel and thief, the
Sergeant Mor, was still at large and living on the
country. His refuge cave was in Troscraig, between
Rannoch and Glenlyon. An incident in his early
life prejudiced Mr Macara against Rannoch evil-
doers, and an incident in his early ministerial career
confirmed that early unfavourable impression. Mr
68 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Macara's father was a saw -miller, carpenter, and
timber merchant, at Crieff, who bought a quantity
of fir timber from Struan. Mr Macara, then a big
lad, wearing a new pair of stout Lowland boots,
came with his father's men and horses to fell and
fetch away the purchased timber. As the lad was
one day at work out of his comrades' sight and
hearing, a big thief jumped on his back, and, having
thrown him, stripped off his boots. The incident in
his early ministerial career was of a different and,
from his point of view, of a far more heinous descrip-
tion. He had been up to the head of the loch,
preaching and catechising, where his duties detained
him to a late hour. He was making his way to
Kinloch through the pine-wood, when he was stopped
by armed men, who pulled him off his horse, dragged
him into the wood, where were an old man, an old
woman, and a younger one with an ailing infant
child. He was ordered on pain of death to baptise
the child there and then. He knew his leading
assailant to be a married man, and had heard during
his perambulations that a servant maid had lately
born a child to him. The child got ill, and the
poor mother was terribly afraid of its dying un-
baptised. So was the father of it, who was far
from being thoroughly evil and inhuman, although
passionate and violent. The minister, telling
the man that he would call him to account
for his double misconduct, accepted the girl's father
and mother as sponsors, and there and then by torch-
light in the pinewood, baptised the child, who did
not die of its infantile ailments. Mr Macara was
not vindictive nor revengeful although a hard dis-
ciplinarian. In this case he had an opportunity for
giving unruly parishioners an impressive exhibition
SOME PARISH HISTORY. 69
of Church power and discipline. He had the offender
in a cleft stick, for had he not violated the law of
the land as well as the law of the Church ? The
minister did not appeal to the law of the land, but
he carried out the law of the Church in regard to
adulterers to the utmost extent; and the man, who
was well connected, fearing the criminal prosecution to
which he was liable, escaped that danger by making
twenty-six appearances as a penitent, most of them
in the parish church of Fortingall, and some at
Kinloch and Killichonain when the parish minister
preached and baptised children there. Similar work
was going on in the less unruly parishes. A power,
as all saw, had arisen in the land which claimed the
right, in God's name, of supervising faith and morals
without fear or favour. Mr Macara had elders
ordained in every part of his parish, who, along with
teachers and catechists, formed what might be called
his field army. He had no difficulty with Fortin-
gall, Glenlyon, and Bolfracks, and he overcame his
difficulties in Rannoch.
Church and school were in those days one and
indivisible, although the parish schoolmaster had his
" ad vitam aut culpam " tenure. It had always
been so, amidst all State and Church mutations
from the Reformation downwards. The parish
schools of the Perthshire Highlands were not
neglected during the Restoration period, but they
were few and far between, and it was only after
1 700 that the wide gaps outside began to be filled
up by humble but very useful side schools. Glen-
lyon had three of these schools before I was born.
One was at Innervar, another at Roro, and the
third at Innerwick. The last was the oldest of the
three ; for the story of the laying of the ghost in
70 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Meggernie Castle by its schoolmaster shows that it
must have been set up before 1700. But somehow
it fell behind the other two before my birth, for
instead of having, like them, a settled teacher, it
was taught by ever-changing teachers, young men
from parish schools who were aiming at going to the
Universities, or who were qualifying for getting
parish schools. They got their board and lodging
at the farmhouses, moving about after their pupils.
It was not in all respects a satisfactory arrangement,
and it was surely very primitive, but the annually
or almost annually changing teachers diligently and
efficiently taught the three R's. In the preceding
century Glenlyon turned out three or four ministers
and two advocates, as well as some army officers
and clerks and schoolmasters. The elder of the
two advocates was Angus Fletcher, who earned the
great distinction of being called " The Father of
Burgh Reform." The younger one's career, which
promised to be a brilliant one, was cut short by
early death. He was a son of the Roro school-
master, Robert Macarthur, and a nephew of Mr
Macarthur, minister of Kilfinan in Mull. About
1800, Leyden, the border poet, made an excursion to
the Highlands in search of remains of Ossianic poetry
and traditions. Among many others he interviewed
this Mull minister, who was then an old man, and
who told him something that seems to indicate that
a learning that was never taught in the side-schools,
but had come down from ancient days, existed in
Glenlyon far down into the 18th century. Mr
Macarthur told Leyden that when he was a student
at St Andrews, he had, by means of the carrier who
brought him supplies from home, regular fortnightly
correspondence with his father, who had no command
SOME tARISH HISTORY. 71
of English, and who wrote his Gaelic epistles to
him, not in the Roman but in the Irish characters.
Another of the Glenlyon ministers of the 1 8th cen-
tury was Mr Macdiarmid, who was minister of
Weem for fifty years 1778 to 1828. Until Glen-
lyon was made a quod sacra parish, the minister of
Weem had to preach a certain number of Sundays
annually in the Glen, because the Roro district
belonged to his parish, and the minister of Kenmore
also held an annual service or two there because his
parishioners crowded with their cattle to the sheal-
ing of the Rialt, which, however, was in the parish
of Fortingall. Of the schoolmasters that Glenlyon
turned out in the 18th century, one was Archibald
Macdiarmid, the maternal grandfather of Sir Noel
Paton ; another was Duncan Lothian, Dugald
Buchanan's pupil and fellow-worker, who made a
felicitously-rhymed gathering of Highland proverbial
sayings which commences so :
'Nuair a chailleas neach a mhaoin,
'S gnothuch faoin bhi 'g iarraidh meas :
Ged do labhair e le ceill,
'S beag a gheibh e dh'eisdeas ris.
Clever boys like the two brothers of Duncan the
Fool could go direct from the Fortingall parish
school to the Universities of St Andrews and Edin-
burgh, but similarly clever Glenlyon and Rannoch
boys who aspired to the higher education were much
handicapped by having to go to the parish or some
further-oif and more costly intermediate school to
get qualified for entering on their college career.
But where there was a strong will, a way was found
to overcome the difficulties.
72 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER IX.
CURSOKY REMARKS ON THE OSSIAN1C CONTROVERSY.
GLENLYON and Fortingall people were not behind
other Highlanders in defending Macpherson's
"Ossian" against Dr Johnson and other assailants.
They boasted that they had twelve forts of the
Feinne and Dun-Ossian named after the great bard
in their glen. Eight of the forts, which they' called
Castullau nam Fiann not "caistealan," as they
called the Castles of Meggernie and Garth, Weem
and Taymouth, and the like are still visible, and
so, of course, is Dun-Ossian. They had screeds of
Ossianic poetry to place all the poetic ancient
poetry under one label and prose tales handed
down through many generations, which contained
the personal names and most of the incidents which
Macpherson had manipulated ; so how could the
genuineness or authenticity of his English " Ossian"
be doubted by anyone less pigheaded than that
"Ollamh Maclan," who wrapped himself in a mantle
of prejudice and invincible ignorance to such a
degree that he denied the existence of documents
written in Gaelic which were older than a few score
years before his own time ? They knew that James
Macgregor, Vicar of Fortingall, before he became
Dean of Lismore, and his brother Duncan, had put
down in writing between 1500 and 1530 a great
deal of the Ossianic poetry then current in the
Highlands, and which with little change had
remained current until Macpherson had made his
THE OSSIAKIC CONTROVERSY. 73
gathering of manuscripts and materials. They ad-
mitted that his "Ossian" did not in all respects
agree with their traditional poetry and prose tales,
but they readily jumped to the conclusion that in
the Western Isles Macpherson had got hold of
manuscripts that contained the poetry and tales in
fuller and better form than did their traditional lore.
It was only after Macpherson's death and the publi-
cation of his Gaelic "Ossian" that they were reluc-
tantly driven to doubt his good faith. As for his
having located the Feinne in Alba instead of in
Ireland, that had been done long before his time.
And truly the localisation in Ireland is open to
much the same objection as the Albania one. The
mythological and prehistoric belongings of the Celtic
race were in both countries freely used to invest
new scenes and personages with romantic glamour
and ancient drapery. Dr Johnson was utterly
wrong in maintaining that there was no ancient
Gaelic literature ; but he was right in saying that
Macpherson's English "Ossian" as presented to the
world was an imposture. The Gaelic " Ossian " is
not an original but a translation of his English one
into good eighteenth century Gaelic. He was a
man of genius, but an unprincipled manipulator of
materials which, in the main, were undeniably
genuine. Subsequent publications of really old
Celtic literature have equally confounded him and
his John Bull assailant, Dr Johnson.
74 REMINISCENCES AMD REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER X.
THE UNWEILDY PARISH DIVIDED INTO THREE.
A SHORT time before my birth, and a good many
years after Mr Macara's death, the latter's dream of
ecclesiastical reform was fulfilled by the erection of
Glenlyon and Rannoch into quoad sacra parishes.
Each of them got a minister and kirk session of its
own, a manse and glebe, a new church and an en-
dowment of 120 a year out of the thanksgiving
parliamentary grant made after the long struggle
with Napoleon. It was complained at the time
that the Church of England got much more
than its fair proportionate share of that grant, but,
at anyrate, the portion of it given to the Church of
Scotland did a vast deal of good in the Highlands.
The parish of Fortingall, formed soon after the
Reformation, was properly and legally styled the
united parishes of Fortingall and Killichonain, which
meant Rannoch. The patronage of the former be-
longed to the Earls and Dukes of Atholl, and of the
latter to the Knights and Baronets of Weem, and
the joint patrons exercised their rights by turns ;
and it is only just to say that the ministers pre-
sented by them were, upon the whole, good workers
who were worthy of their vocation. Duncan
Macaulay, the first Protestant minister of Fortingall,
was appointed by the Crown. He lived in peace
with his Catholic predecessor's curate, who was
allowed to retain manse, glebe, and other perquisites
till his death about 1580. Mr Macaulay was an
DIVIDED INTO THREE. 75
active promoter of Reformation doctrines and
organisation, who often preached at Kenmore, Dull,
and Killin, until these parishes got Protestant
ministers of their own. His influence also extended
to the lower part of Rannoch, but although sup-
ported by the Weem family, who owned the
'' Slis-miu," styled in charters the Barony of Rannoch,
the sons of misrule connected with Lochaber and
Clan Gregor raiders were then, and for a hundred
years to come, beyond the control of ecclesiastical
and feudal authorities. There as everywhere the
"broken men," who, when Stuart kings ruled, were
denounced arid hunted down as thieves, cut-throats,
and outlaws, and who, when caught, were executed,
exiled, or transported to the colonies, suddenly
blossomed into extreme Jacobite loyalty when
rebellions and civil broils promised spoils and oppor-
tunities for displaying the martial qualities in which
they undoubtedly excelled. It required the military
pacification which came after Culloden, and all the
efforts of resolute Mr Macara and his groups of
elders and catechist-schoolmasters to put a final end
to the disorders which, with a short exception in
James the Fourth's reign, had been chronic in the
braes of Rannoch from the murder of James I.
downwards.
76 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XL
KKLIGIOUS REVIVAL.
THE revival movement in the south which is
particularly connected with the names of the two
brothers, Robert and James Haldaue, met a ready
response, or evoked a corresponding " dusgadh " or
awakening, over a large part of the Highlands.
The ground for this "dusgadh" was prepared by the
evangelical preaching in churches, the teaching in
Sunday and week schools, the publication of the
Gaelic Bible, and the institution of family worship,
which, beginning with the elders, soon came to be
general, and if not held daily, was held at least once
a week. I cannot remember how I came to learn to
read Gaelic, for it was not taught in our day school,
but I have no doubt I and many others learned it
very young from looking at the books at family
worship. The religious revival took a great hold in
Breadalbaue, Glenlyon, and in Rannoch also. It had
passed from its missionary stage to its separatist
one before Glenlyon and Rannoch were made into
parishes with ministers and sessions of their own.
At first there was no intention of forming new
religious bodies. But it came to that. Although
in other respects there was no difference between
the doctrines preached by evangelical parish min-
isters and those of the revivalists, a fulcrum for
separatism was found in the question of baptism.
It was indeed a double question. Should not
baptism be by immersion instead of sprinkling ?
RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. 77
Should it not only be administered to adults who
gave evidence of being converted and took the vows
on themselves ? The Haldane brothers on these
two questions accepted the teaching of the English
Baptists, and many of their followers in Highlands
and Lowlands joined with them in forming Baptist
congregations. Small congregations of that kind
were formed in many places between the Forth and
the Spey. We had one in Glenlyon which continued
to exist and do good until its excellent minister,
Mr Donald Maclellan, died at a very advanced age
about twenty years ago. The unpaid pastor of
this small congregation in my early days was
Mr Maclellan's father-in-law, the fine, genial old
Highlander, Archibald Macarthur, our miller, who
in the Sunday school worked harmoniously with our
minister, Mr David Campbell, although argumentative
enough on the baptism question. A rich mine of
local and traditional lore was the worthy Muilear
Mor. He made Scripture scenes, characters and
incidents, seem all real and vividly alive to us
youngsters by throwing over them the glow of his
poetic imagination in graphic Gaelic. The Grantown-
on - Spey hymn - poet, Mr Peter Grant, and Mr
William Tulloch from Atholl, used to come as visi-
tors and field-preachers to the Glen in the miller's
time of leadership, and so did Donnachadh Chalum
Thaileir, a glen Highlander from Paisley. Baptist
congregations have now, I believe, ceased to exist in
Breadalbane, Glenlyon, and Rannoch. When the
missionary revivalists split up into parties, the
majority of them remained in the Church of Scot-
land, into which they introduced a hotter and more
intolerant spirit than many of her best evangelical
ministers wholly approved of. They deterred
78 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
worthy people, who could not honestly say they had
gone through a process of conversion and obtained
an assurance of forgiveness, from becoming communi-
cants. Hypocrites who made loud professions im-
posed upon them until they were found out. They
looked upon men with life-long blameless records,
including elders of the old stamp, as being devoid of
the unction of grace, and little better than heathens.
Hysterical revival epouters called the old people who
had only a good record of morality and humble
practical faith, "Gray Egyptians," and later on
" Black Moderates." I was without a brother, and
although I had plenty of boy cousins, and enjoyed
boyish pranks and school play and scrapes, I felt
lonely at times, and liked nothing better than to sit
at the feet of the "Gray Egyptians" and listen
attentively to their talk. They were full of stories
of the olden times, which hugely delighted me.
They gave the revivalists credit for good intentions,
but said they were doing evil unconsciously in
denouncing innocent enjoyments such as dancing
and singing of songs, practised by the preceding
generations. They unfavourably compared the
morality of the revival period with that of the last
twenty-five years of Mr Macara's spiritual superin-
tendence, during which they said there had been
only two illegitimate children born in Glenlyon.
They regretted that there were no resident landlords
in the Glen to modify, by their influence, the new
religious tyranny, which, with all the good it was
doing or intending to do, was being pushed to a
height of intolerance which would only end in evil.
The "Gray Egyptians" agreed with Duncan the
Fool, who, when an enthusiast from a field-service
came into the farmer's house where he was staying,
RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. 79
and, without sitting down, began to sermonise, drew
near the old mother of the family and whispered,
"Biomaid taingeil do Dhia gu'n d'fhag e ar ciall
againn" " Let us be thankful to God that he has
left us our reason ! "
But the religious revival was a genuine force
which had far-reaching consequences. The result
first seen was that the awakening made the Church
of Scotland stronger and more zealous in good works
than had ever, in the Highlands at least, been the
case before. The hiving off by small Baptist com-
munites and the formation of a very few congrega-
tions of Independents only stimulated the activity
and increased the power of the national Church
between 1810 and 1843.
The custom of having only one communion a
year in each parish had been long established
throughout the Highlands. It was a necessity in
the early days of the Reformation when Gaelic
speaking ministers were rare, and even readers,
who could not baptise or officiate at communions,
were not sufficiently numerous for holding ordinary
services of prayer, scripture reading, and exhortation
in all parishes. Few Highland places were so well
equipped as Glenlyon with its converted and married
clerk, Niven, and Fortingall with Mr Duncan Mac-
aulay, who, for some years, had also Dull, Kenmore
and Killin apparently under his superintending
care. The custom which arose out of a temporary
necessity rooted itself like a tree of life in the
habits of the Highland people. It replaced the pre-
Reformation pilgrimages and suited their social
instincts ; for it brought together gatherings of
people from neighbouring parishes to the field
preaching connected with the dispensing of the
80 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
communion inside churches. There was much
decorus hospitality and the visiting went round, for
the holding of communions was so arranged that
ministers could assist one another on those occasions,
and the parishioners could follow their ministers in
crowds to the places where the communions were
held and the field preaching took place. In the
contentious years before the Disruption I often
listened to the tent preaching of Mr, afterwards Dr,
Macdonald of Ferintosh, whose eldest daughter was
the wife of our minister, and who was an annual
visitor to Glenlyon and Breadalbane at the com-
munion season. We called him the " Domhnullach
Mor," or Great Macdonald, but he is best known in
the Ten Years' Conflict annals by the designation of
" The Apostle of the North." It is true that I was
young and susceptible, but I think he was, in Gaelic,
the most wonderfully eloquent, poetical and mesmeric
speaker I ever listened to, and I may add that I
heard most of the other Disruption celebrities and
afterwards many of England's famous orators, clerical
and political. Peace be to his ashes ! I do not
remember that be ever introduced into his sermons
the controversial topics of the day. He spoke more
like an inspired evangelist than an ecclesiastical
partisan. His presence at a communion always
caused a huge multitude from far and near to
assemble.
SOCIAL, LIFE AND MORALS. 81
CHAPTER XII.
SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS.
I HAVE read much, seen much, and lived long,
and I do not think it within human nature possi-
bilities that there ever could be or can be a more
morally blameless community of a thousand people
than was the one in which I was born and brought
up. Of course there were a few wastrels, and not
every one of the honestly industrious people was
either a born or a converted saint. My friends the
Gray Egyptians said that too much religious rule
and teaching had done more evil than good, that
it had knocked joyousness out of life, and rather
lowered than raised the standard of honour, truth-
fulness, and sense of duty which existed in their
own young days and in the days of their fathers.
And I think the history of the Glen after Culloden,
to a certain extent, bore out their contentions.
Between 1830 and 1843 the spiritual power ruled
without a check. Of the three proprietors none
was resident. Culdares was a minor away in Eng-
land at school and college. Chesthill resided down
at Duneaves, Fortingall, and Lord Breadalbane had
no residence on his Roro estate, which he seldom if
ever visited. Divided into wards, each of which had
an elder or two, the Glen was wholly ruled in the
years mentioned by minister and kirk session. It
was good, wholesome rule, although needlessly
intolerant in regard to the dancing, fiddling, song-
6
82 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
singing, tale-telling amusements, and shinty play,
putting-stone, and hammer-throwing games of pre-
ceding generations. It was a rule which regularised
wakes, and put an end to excesses at weddings and
funerals. " Render to Csesar " preaching did more
than excisemen and cuttersmen to convince Glen
farmers that smuggling was sinful and should be
discontinued. It was not easy to convince any
Highland growers of here and barley that the Eng-
lish Parliament had not done them gross injustice
in the whisky business, and that they had not a
perfect moral right to convert their grain into malt
and whisky, which found a ready market in the
Lowlands, and made it easy for them to pay their
rents. Glenlyon smuggling was almost brought to
an end before I began to range over hills and to
take note of the secret places in which, not long
before, whisky used to be secretly distilled. The
old Highland smugglers, unlike modern ones, turned
out splendidly manufactured whisky, which, how-
ever, required some maturing delay before it
attained its perfection. My dear old friend, Mr
Murray-Macgregor, minister of Balquhidder, gave
me more than once a taste of smuggler's whisky,
distilled in Glenbuckie thirty or forty years before
then. It was singularly aromatic. It did not grip
the throat like raw whisky, but it sent quickly a
pleasant feeling of warmth through one's whole
body. The excise people had seized the smuggler's
big barrel when he was taking it to the Lowlands.
After having been declared forfeited by the Gal-
lander Justices of the Peace, it was sold, and one of
them, Captain Stewart of Glenbuckie, bought it.
In 1846 Captain Stewart's son sold Glenbuckie to
Mr David Carnegie, and went to Argyllshire, where
SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 83
he bought the Island of Coll. On leaving Bal-
quhidder, he gave the minister what remained of
the smuggler's whisky a half-dozen bottles or so
which for the next twenty years the minister doled
out to friends as a real curiosity. This leads me to
another little story of smuggled whisky. In 1826
Archibald Stewart, Craigelig (Gilleaspa Mor), one
of the four partners in our Eight Merkland
club farm, was about to marry my aunt, Mary
Campbell. He was as strictly honest and honour-
able a man as ever stood in shoe leather, but he
thought it then no sin nor shame to make the
whisky for his own wedding out of his own "eorna."
He made a good deal more than \vas consumed at
the wedding. He put the surplus I forget how
many gallons in a big earthen jar, which, carefully
stoppered, he carried on a dark night to Car Dun-
shiaig, and buried it there in a peat bog where it was
to stay hidden until wanted for sale or use. Weeks
or months elapsed before he went to see in daylight
the place in which he buried the jar on a mirk night.
He then searched for it in vain, for in the interval a
great flood had washed away his marks and very
much changed the whole face of the moss. For the
next nineteen years at every sheep gathering he took
the beat that led him through Car Dunshiaig, and
in passing he searched for his lost jar with a long
iron probe, but he never found it. Gilleaspa Mor,
with a large family, a mother ninety years old, and
two widowed sisters with large families, emigrated
in 1846 to the London district of Ontario, where
there was a brother previously settled and glad to
give them all a hearty welcome. Now, 1908, there
is a large clan of Stewarts, exclusive of the many
descendants of daughters, representing the two
84 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
brothers in Ontario and Manitoba. Gilleaspa Mor
was perfectly sure that no one but himself knew
about the burial of the jar in Dunshiaig moss, and
almost equally confident that if by chance anyone
found it, the discovery would have been revealed to
him. From the anti-septic, hermetically-sealing
nature of peat, it is likely that the whisky is still
contained in the buried jar, and if so, and it is
ever found, a bottle of it would be a gift for a
king. It must not be supposed that much of
the whisky illicitly distilled before smuggling was
cried down by the Church was consumed in the
Glen itself, for that was not the case. It was made
for export and profit, and the very magistrates who
sat in judgment on detected smugglers had a good
deal of sympathy with them. The obstinate belief
of Glenlyon men that they were wronged and robbed
of an ancient right, in being prevented from freely
making the most profitable use of their fine " eorna"
had a good deal of historical justification ; for the
making of malt for sale was a Glen trade from the
ancient times when kings came there to hunt in
their own prehistoric forest. Until he went to reign
in England, James VI. came annually with many
followers to hunt in the then much reduced belt of
that old forest which still stretched across the heads
of Glenlochy and Glenlyon to Bendoran and the
Coireachan Batha, or Blaek Mount tops, about which
the Marchioness of Breadalbane has lately been
writing in " Blackwood." The royal hunter and his
party were a drouthy lot. John Dow Malster, the
Laird of Glenlyon's " maor," or land steward, was
busily employed before the hunting season in con-
verting the laird's rent in kind " eorna," and the
purchased surplus " eorna ' of the tenants, into malt
SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 85
and ale. When royal demand failed and finally ceased,
the tenants had to carry the malt to Perth and
Stirling to be sold there. James II. had a " pubal,"
or wooden hunting lodge in the braes of Glenlyon,
but it was in the days of his grandson, James IV.,
who had his court at Insecallan, on the Glenorchy
side of the watershed, that the whole district profited
most from the annual coming of the King and his
followers and many visitors from adjacent Highland
districts. With his free command of their language,
appreciation of their music, songs, and heroic poetry,
and chivalrous if not wholly faultless personal
qualities, James IV. was the king for the High-
landers, and had his reign not been cut short by the
fatal error of rushing to meet his fate at Flodden,
the subsequent history of Scotland would certainly
have been of a less disturbed and regretful com-
plexion. His descendant, the British Solomon, was
not a man of noble or fascinating character, but he
was affable, homely, shrewd, and accessible, and, as
the last king who spoke Gaelic, " Seumas Mac
Mairi," was fairly popular in the forest lands. It
was through the forest that the potato got into
Glenlyon. I was told that the introduction took
place when Seumas Mac Mairi was king, and in
corroboration manifest signs of old lazy- beds were
pointed out. If the introduction took place early
in the 17th century, the next century was well
advanced before the potato was ranked as a main
crop in Glenlyon agriculture.
The " Gray Egyptians," on information from
their seniors and personal knowledge, asserted that
for the century before the religious revival the
inhabitants of the Glen were as temperate drinkers
as it was physically and morally wholesome for any
86 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
community to be. In my time that was truly the
case, a few ne'er-do-weels excepted. The smuggling
had been cried down, but there were three small
licensed inns, one at Innervar, one at Innerwick,
and one at Bridge of Balgie. The Innerwick one
was the provision Old Culdares made for the clans-
man who was his officer son's piper, and who brought
an Irish wife with him from Ireland. The other two
represented alehouses with crofts, which had been
in existence for hundreds of years. The whole three
disappeared years ago, and now tourists have reason
to complain that in the forty miles westward from
Fortingall to Tyndrum, and in the cross-country
line of twenty miles from Kinloch-Rannoch to
Killin, there is not a single licensed house for the
entertainment of man or beast. As far as I can
see, there never was much general need for the
Innervar inn, although it existed as an alehouse
from time beyond memory. Until railways and
large Inverness and Perth cattle sales changed the
whole situation, there was clamant need for the
Bridge of Balgie inn, which, till the bridge was
built in about 1780, was situated a little further
east, near the churchyard ; and for the later inn at
Innerwick, which never was an old alehouse, there
was general utility justification likewise ; for these
two places of public entertainment were placed at
the entrance to Larig-an-lochain, and where the
eastern and western passes came together by which
the stock of the North was driven to Falkirk trysts
and other southern markets. The driving time
created no small stir in Glenlyon, and all along the
old line of cattle tracks and immemorially appointed
stopping stations. It helped to make northern and
southern Highlanders known to one another.
SOCIAL LIFE AND MORALS. 87
With differences which were generally of a trivial
nature, the social and moral life of the Highlands
eighty or seventy years ago was very like what I
have been describing from information and observa-
tion as being the social and moral life of the people
of my native Glen at that time. A high ideal of
individual responsibility and obligation, reverence
for age, family affection, love of children and care in
training them up to be good men and women,
mutual helpfulness of kinsfolk, and ready sympathy
with the afflicted were characteristics of the whole
race. Primogeniture backed by entail which was
profitable to the eldest sons of landed, families im-
posed a self-sacrificing duty in the eldest son of a
tenant, whose father happened to die when his
children were young. The son had to take the
father's place, to keep a roof tree over his brothers'
and sisters' and mother's heads, to labour, sweat and
struggle, remain celibate until the brothers were
launched on their own careers and the sisters were
married. Even when the father lived to old age,
the eldest son did not escape the bearing of the
burdens peculiarly his own. But he generally had
his reward in the fealty and patriarchal position he
had won by self-sacrifice.
88 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER XIII.
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS.
MAITHEAN NA GAELTACHD* mustered in full array to
give George IV. a superabundantly loyal welcome
on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822, and, with hardly
an exception, the Highland nobles, chiefs, and
landlords who put in appearance on the occasion,
represented families who owned land and held sway
in the same districts 250 years before then, and in
not a few instances twice as long as that. Between
1560 and 1822 there had been many broils, for-
feitures, and temporary displacements, followed by
changing back, first after the Revolution of 1688,
and finally by the restorations of their estates to the
families who had lost them after Culloden. As a
political force and factor for keeping the Highlands
separate from the rest of the country, Jacobitism
was killed long before the death of Prince Charles.
It was persistently assailed by the now dominant
Church of Scotland, and undermined by the teaching
given in the schools. Chatham's bold scheme of
raising the Highland regiments for national defence
gave rise to a welding imperial pride which never
existed among the Highlanders before, and which
from the military quarter co-operated with the
spiritual power in changing the situation. From
Fontenoy and the capture of Quebec to Waterloo,
Highland soldiers had pre-eminently distinguished
themselves for valour, discipline, and endurance.
They were proud to call themselves Breatunnaich
* The aristocracy of the Highlands.
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 89
(Britons), and to have done good service in defence
of the British Empire, and sustained the martial
fame of their ancestors. George IV. was not a bad
Constitutional King, although as a man he might be
said to well deserve all the contempt poured on him
by the Whig writers down to Thackeray, from the
time he had ceased to rattle dice with Charles
James Fox, their belauded, awfully-debauched and
debauching leader. George IV. was not personally
liked by his Highland people. They had heard
stories about his bad conduct to his wife, and of his
relations with other women, including, what they
could not forgive, other men's wives. They could be
and were far more tolerant than their ministers and
kirk- sessions about sexual immorality between
unmarried sprigs of the upper classes and peasant
girls, but they ground their teeth against adultery,
which was indeed an exceedingly rare vice among
themselves. What they felt due to George IV. was
a modified loyalty as the headman of the British
Empire. Had George III. come to Scotland after
the restoration of the forfeited estates, he would
have received from all classes of Highlanders as
heart-felt a "ceud mile failt" welcome as was given
to his grand-daughter, Queen Victoria, at Blair-
Atholl, Taymouth, and Castle Drummond. Farmer
George, the "born Briton," through the reports of
homely virtues which reached them, obtained a real
hold on Highland loyalty. He was the first of his
race who did so.
I was present at the Taymouth gathering in
1842, and cannot yet recall without emotion how
we all, gentle and simple, old and young, were
carried out of ourselves, and thrilled into unity by
enthusiastic loyal and chivalrous devotion to our
90 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
young Sovereign Lady. His countrymen, forgetting
recent evictions and well-grounded fears of more to
come, were exultingly proud of the Marquis of
Breadalbane that day. He spent his money and
dispensed his hospitality lavishly, created fairyland
effects by flags and coloured lamps, and managed
the whole procedure connected with an unusual event
with organising skill and grand success. But when
criticism succeeded enthusiasm it was pointed out
that, compared with that of 1822, the impressive
muster of 1842 exhibited gaps which showed that
in the conflict between the old and the new land
systems the new was steadily gaining. Ross-shire,
Atholl, and Breadalbane gave excellent illustrations
of how incoming feudal magnates established their
charter rights, and infused a clannish spirit in
7iative tenants of many surnames. Until the Mac-
donalds, Lords of the Isles, and Earls of Ross, were
suppressed, the Mackenzies of Kintail were their
vassals, and hardly reckoned among their chief
vassals. They made the most of their opportunities
on the fall of their over-lords to enlarge their
influence and possessions, and the Reformation tur-
moils later on enabled them to lay appropriating
hands on ecclesiastical and old Crown lands in
Easter Ross. How did they secure their new pos-
sessions ? By planting out as little lairds or chief
tenants all the cadets and near kinsmen of the
house of Kintail. The Earldom of Atholl a much
smaller affair than the County of Atholl, which
embraced all the regions above Dunkeld between
the Garry and the Strathearn border was, from
the reign of King Duncan, the father of Malcolm
Ceannmor, an appanage of the Royal family. It
passed through many owners ere it was bestowed
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 91
on the half-brother of James II. What did the
wise son of the Black Knight of Lome do ? He
strengthened the Wolf of Badenoch Stewart element
he found in Atholl by bringing in Appin kinsmen of
his own and giving them small properties. He also,
I think, instituted the policy, which his successors
long followed out, of acquiring superiorities by
buying or otherwise obtaining estates held of the
Crown, and then of selling them on subinfeudation
terms. He gave his daughters in marriage to the
smaller barons of his district, and by those wise
devices, Huntly was prevented from laying grasping
hands on forfeited Garth and other lands south of
the Grampian boundary. When the present Duke
of Atholl's father, then Lord Glenlyon, gave a most
hearty Highland welcome to Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert in 1842, he was still surrounded by
many of the lairds of old lineage who had formed
his predecessors' Comhairle Taighe, or provincial
court and family council, and were in war times the
officers of their host. The estates of these lairds are
now, with very few exceptions, owned by proprietors
who cannot, however good, as aliens in race, sur-
names, traditions and language, fill the places of the
vanished families. But in the ducal domains the
old kindly relations between the Castle and the
farmhouse and cottage, have been throughout the
whole long period of mutation and desolation so well
maintained, that an old Highlander like myself in
visiting Atholl feels himself taken back to the good
old days, and is warmed by a glow of admiration
which is in contrast to the cold shudder he has to
endure in much depopulated and much un-Celticised
districts of his native land.
92 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
"BJack Colin of Rome" and his descendants
invaded Breadalbane from Glenorchy, much in the
same manner as the Kintail Mackenzies invaded the
Black Isle and Easter Ross. The Glenorchy Camp-
bells began their "bris sios" or eastward progress
when, as a whole, the wide regions they were in due
time to acquire were King's lands, and monastic
lands belonging to the Abbot of Scone, and to
James the First's newly introduced and profusely
endowed Carthusians of Perth. By public services,
Court favour, and purchase, the Glenorchy Camp-
bells, who were not only sturdy warriors, but men
wise in council, and educated beyond the greater
number of their aristocratic contemporaries, first got
the management and part-possession of the King's
lands, and forthwith commenced to lay the firm and
broad foundations of their future principality, by
giving out Lawers and Glenlyon to younger sons,
and using their influence to give their own followers
foothold on the lands of King and monks. To the
Glenorchy Campbells, as well as to the Mackenzies
of Kintail, the Reformation afforded a grand oppor-
tunity for adding Church lands to their already
considerable possessions. Infamous Hepburn, the
Abbot of Scone and Bishop of Moray, laden with the
burden of his sins and fearing coming events, sold
his Breadalbane monastic lands at a low price and
ready money to Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy
the "Cailean Liath" or Gray Colin of local songs and
stories but after Sir Colin's death, his son, Sir
Duncan "Donnachadh Dubh a Churraichd," "Black
Duncan of the Cowl," had, under the revocation
law, to pay another purchasing price to King James.
I think this same thing happened to the lands of the
Carthusians. Donnachadh Dubh and Kenneth of
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 93
Kintail were contemporaries. They were much
alike in policy and character, although Kenneth was
illiterate, and Sir Duncan was able to read arid
speak in so many languages that he gained the
reputation of being a formidable wizard. Both
these men were good to their own people and
oppressive to their neighbours and rivals. Besides
building castles and bridges, making roads, improv-
ing on the very good estate regulations issued by
James V., King of the Commons, to his Breadalbane
tenants, and introducing stallions of two sorts from
England to improve the native breeds of Highland
horses, Sir Duncan, without wronging his eldest son
and heir, Sir Colin, gave out estates to his host of
sons, legitimate and illegitimate ; portioned his
daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, and by the
marriage of his sons and daughters with the sons
and daughters of other houses, or even chief tenants,
organised a semi-clannish league which once formed
should in perpetuity make the heads of it great
chiefs. But Sir Duncan was only fourteen years in
his grave at Finlarig when Montrose burned the
whole of the Glenorchy property from the junction
of the Lyon with the Tay to Lismore, without, how-
ever, having been able to take any of its places of
strength, Taymouth, the Isle of Loch Tay, Finlarig,
Isle of Loch Dochart, and the Castle of Glenurchy,
etc. A few years later Cromwell's soldiers, under
Monk, had seized on all the strengths, but did not,
like Montrose, ravage or oppress the country. No
military rule could indeed be milder or more justly
administered. But then and on two or three other
occasions there was no little danger of collapse for
the Glenorchy chiefs and their possessions. Yet
Restoration, Revolution, and the two eighteenth
94 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
century Jacobite Rebellions, finally left them with
widened possessions and well surrounded with satel-
lites of their own blood and name, and the other
small proprietors connected with them by ties of
affinity and custom. Time, of course, had brought
about some changes. The Lairds of Lawers, having
become Earls of Louden, sold Lawers to the Chief of
their house, and Breadalbane knew them no more.
Two or three other cadet branches had become
extinct. But in 1782 when John Campbell of
Carwhin succeeded his kinsman as Fourth Earl of
Breadalbane, he found himself surrounded by a large
provincial court or assembly of landed kinsmen and
allies, and his tenant communities, in winter-towns
and shealings, living under the land settlement
system of James, which Black Sir Duncan had
revived and vastly improved. This Fourth Earl was
a truly kindly and thoroughly Highland-hearted
man, and a patriot who raised three fencible regi-
ments during the war with France. He resided
very constantly at Taymouth, was a Whig and a
Presbyterian, and spent much money on wood-
planting and other improvements. He was made a
Marquis in 1831. During his longer than half-a-
century of sway he saw, as if stricken by a strange
fatality, his house council satellites diminishing
rapidly to the vanishing point. Although he kept a
hospitable house, was a free hand giver, and added
to and improved his vast property, from living so
much at home among his people he accumulated
much wealth, which he divided among his three
children, to wit, his son and successor, and his two
daughters, Lady Elizabeth Pringle and the Duchess
of Buckingham. He was not, like his son, a
Manchester-school political-economist, and in sheer
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 95
kind - heartedness he committed the blunder of
making holdings, which the changed conditions of
farming and the contracting value of domestic
industries liad made already too small, more con-
gested still by finding "rooms' 7 for such of his
fencible men as were not the eldest sons of tenants.
Had the circle of smaller lairds attached to his
house not ceased before then to exercise the func-
tions of informal yet very practical family council,
he would surely have been advised by them to leave
Black Duncan's land-settlement alone, or if he
meddled with it at all, as opportunities offered to
increase instead of diminishing the size of the hold-
ings. The old Marquis lived and died as a great
and much-honoured Highland magnate. His son
was in personal conduct as good a man as his father,
and admittedly the abler man of the two, but he
never was the man for Gaeldom. In 1842 he made
a brave and, for the moment, a successful show of
being that man, and years afterwards, at the first
review of Volunteers in Edinburgh, he did, at the
head of his Breadalbaue Volunteers, appear to be a
great Chief to people who did not know what an
isolated magnate lie was in his own country, and
how he had alienated the affections of his own folk.
It was no fault of his, indeed, that veiy few four or
five at most representatives of the thirty or forty
cadet lairds of his house, and affinity lairds of other
surnames who surrounded his father in 1782, were
about him to receive the Queen in 1842. The dis-
appearance of these landed families, some by natural
extinction, and some by having got into money
troubles which compelled selling out, may, however,
be taken to account in some measure for the line of
estate management he deliberately adopted. He be-
96 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
*
lieved in the new political economy principles, and
consistently carried them out until he died a lonely
man and sad, although rich beyond the dream of
ordinary avarice, at Lausanne in 1862.
To the heads of noble houses, the small lairds of
their name and lineage, and those who were con-
nected with them by affinity or feudal ties, were
bodyguards or crios-leine (literally shirt girdles).
They were then the connecting links with the
common people, and their advisers in the matters
which concerned the well-being of the whole com-
munity within the bounds of their lords' and their
own possessions. The magnate only gained mere
isolation when lie acquired estates by honest
purchase of small estates which old bodyguard
adherents of his family found themselves compelled
to sell. Factors could not, and those of them who
could, would not, inform him so fully about matters
he ought to know, as the lairds who were in close
touch with the people, spoke their language, and
thoroughly understood their circumstances and
feelings. On the other hand the magnates used
their influence and patronage to open careers in the
Army, Navy, and Civil Service, and in the Church,
and legal and medical professions, to the sons of
the small lairds, and the sons of their own tenants,
crofters, and cottars. The unruly spirits among the
sons of the mansion-houses, who while sowing their
early wild oats at home, caused vexation to parents
and strict ecclesiastical disciplinarians, in many
instances illustrated the truth of Burns's lines :
" Yet oft a ragged cout's been known
To mak' a noble aiver,"
by blossoming out into sturdy warriors and pioneers
of empire abroad, or by turning over new leaves
THE HIGHLAND LANDLORDS. 97
at home, and setting themselves resolutely and
doucely to useful pursuits. The lairds and their
families made life in the country attractive to the
magnates and their families by furnishing them
with a far less pleasure-jaded society than they
were accustomed to in London. The lairds were
the acting Justices of the Peace, and in some large
parts of the Highlands, as far as the common people
were concerned, almost the sole representatives of
civil power, while ministers and kirk sessions repre-
sented the spiritual power. For fifty years after
the restoration of the forfeited estates these two
powers, working amicably together, preserved good
order at small cost, and reduced crimes which had
to be dealt with by Sheriff and Assize Courts to a
minimum. Most of the then Highland lairds were
Presbyterians, and not a few of them elders of
the Church of Scotland. Only a few old Jacobite
families stuck to Episcopalianism as the pathetic
badge of a lost cause. Highland nobles, who were
Church of England people in England, when at
home in their Highland castles worshipped con-
tentedly in canopied pews in their parish churches.
Political and caste causes which, after the passing
of the Reform Bill, spoiled the previous harmony by
degrees, had yet to arise, and, practically, Highland
depopulation and the annual invasion of English
sportsmen and buying out of Highland proprietors
had almost yet to begin. Despite the invasion of
Lowland sheep, shepherds and renters of shealing
grazings, and disforested old deer forests, the
general situation to the superficial observer remained
unchanged, say up to 1832.
98 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XIV.
FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA.
THIS last Chief of the Macnabs, who possessed what
fragment of the patrimony of his ancestors had
escaped the vengeance of Robert Bruce, and sub-
sequent forfeitures and disasters, died twelve years
before I was born, and his property was sold at
highest market value a few years after his death to
his old and very helpful friend, the Earl of Bread-
albane, who had at a former crisis in his financial
affairs saved him by procuring a commission for him
as major in the Perthshire and Local Militia, and
later on in the Breadalbane Volunteers. Long after
his death the country rang with stories of his doings
and sayings. He was so eccentric that he was a
law to himself. His word was his bond, but it was
only the word on his honour which could really bind
him, while he looked upon a written obligation as a
thing to be discharged when it suited his con-
venience. He was tall, strong, handsome, and
brave to excess, but withal too good-natured to be
quarrelsome. He had his moral line of prohibition,
but he looked on unmarried peasant girls as the
natural prey or prizes of long descent chiefs like
himself. He never married, but was the father of a
baker's dozen of children. Rumour magnified the
number of tht-.m so generously that a society lady in
Edinburgh plurnply asked him if it was true that he
had twenty-six children. The answer she got was
" Madam, T never could count aboon twenty-five."
FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 99
That was mere banter, but as Janet, his house-
keeper, bore eight children to him, and he had five
or more by different servant girls before Janet took
command of himself and his house, he was fairly
well supplied with offspring. In his early roving
days he was a thorn in the flesh to his worthy
father, John Macnab of Bovain, and to the scholarly
and sensitively religious minister of Kill in, the Rev.
James Stewart, who translated the New Testament
and a good portion of the Old Testament into the
Gaelic of the Highlands. Father and minister, the
one with his paternal lectures and the other with
his Church censures, were such plagues to him that
he bought the farm of Cruigruie, in Balquhidder,
and went to live there. He paid an instalment of
the price by money which had come to him pro-
bably from his grandmother, but he never completed
the purchase. When his father died a lad was sent
over the hill to tell him the news, which he received
with gladness, being then botli without credit and
money. As reported to me by Balquhidder men,
these were the words which passed between him
and the messenger, who came to him bonnet in
hand outside the house and said, " Mhic an Aba, tha
ur n-athair marbh."
Macnab "Mata, 'ille, 's math do naigheachd.
So dhuit tri sgilean. Rach a stigh's gheibh thu
biadh's deoch."
Messenger "Macuab, your father is dead."
Macnab " Well lad, good is your news. Here's
threepence for you. Go in and you'll get food and
drink."
The three pennies were no doubt all the coins he
had in his pocket then, for he was a liberal giver
when he had anything to give. When he succeeded
100 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
to his patrimony and brought Janet to be his house-
keeper at Kinnell, he settled down to a life of
comparative decency. His father provided for the
proper bringing-up of the early crop of illegitimate
grandchildren. He provided fairly well for Janet's
brood himself. The daughters married honest
countrymen and made good wives to them. Janet's
two sons, who did not marry, were well provided
"for by a property in Callander which their father
bought for them at a low price, and promptly paid
for, and which turned out to be a profitable invest-
ment. He was ready enough to admit paternity in
every case of misconduct, but to profess penitence
and to promise amendment was more than he could
be induced to do. When he settled down in regular
concubinage with Janet, he paid his "umhla" or fine
to the poor box, got respectable people to hold his
children for baptism, and was otherwise let off by
more lax ministers than the first he had to deal
with, as a half-reformed reprobate. His good quali-
ties made him popular, and were supposed to out-
balance his one notorious and incorrigible immorality.
In another matter he took a slantendicular view
of duty. He was a Justice of the Peace and a
friend and patron of the smugglers. This friendship
and sympathy suffered no interruption during the
few years in which he was himself a licensed pro-
ducer of whisky. It was shortly before 1796 that
he set up a small distillery at Killin on his own side
of the river Dochart. That speculation did not pay
and had soon to be dropped. When he was residing
in Balquidder, a smuggler whom he had befriended
came to him in much distress to announce that two
barrels full of whisky, which he had hidden in the
hills till he could get them conveyed southward for
FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 101
sale, had been discovered by revenue men, who were
then taking them with great difficulty (as they had
no horses) down to the roadway, whence they were
to be carried to Callander to be condemned. "Have
they found out that the barrels belong to you?"
p.sked Macnab. "No doubt," replied the man,
" their base informant knew and told that they
were mine." " You are a law-breaking rascal, and
it would only be like you if you, with your
accomplices, followed them to the place on the way
where the revenue men, arriving late and tired, will
certainly stop to rest, eat, and drink, and if, while
they are doing so, you and the other fellows trans-
ferred under cloud of night the whisky into new
barrels, and filled the old ones with water Lord !
if your trick succeeded what a joke it would be
when the amazed revenue men, on being called
upon to prove they had really seized smuggled
whisky, found there was nothing of whisky about
them except an old smell!!" The plan suggested
was, with some help from the innkeeper of the
half-way house of entertainment, easily carried out.
The revenue men were covered with ridicule, for
they could not swear that the barrels contained
whisky when they had seized them, and whatever
they might suspect regarding the transfer, they
were far from anxious to confess how careless their
guardianship had been.
Macnab kept his Volunteer regiment, under ex-
cellent discipline, not so much by military severity
as by terrible scoldings in barbed Gaelic. He was
ordered to take his men to Stirling, and he took
care that there should be no indiscretions by the
way, as he was bent on making his regiment a
model of military propriety. They were close on
102 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Stirling, and Macnab, looking like an old hera of
romance, was riding in state at the head of his men,
swollen with pride in their good conduct, splendid
marching, and kilted and plaided picturesque
appearance, when word came to him from the rear
that gangers were trying to stop the waggons to
search for smuggled whisky, which, they said, they
had learned was concealed among the baggage. A
wrathful burst of surprise and indignation proved
that oji this occasion the smugglers had abused
Macriab's confidence. Yet for all that he would do
his best to cover their misconduct. He ordered the
regiment to halt, and rode back to the rear, taking
with him a sergeant and a dozen men. On coming
to the waggons he found his quartermaster and the
chief of the would-be searchers in hot altercation.
He silenced the former by a wave of his hand, and
turning to the latter, asked, " My pretty man, who
are you and your people ? And what do you want ? "
The latter explained that he was a revenue officer,
and that on information received he wanted to
search the waggons for smuggled whisky. " Well,"
replied Macnab, " the information you declare you
have received has been kept from my knowledge,
and without proof I'll not believe it. But produce
your warrant and you may search away." The
other, taken aback, said he had had no time to
procure a warrant. " Not time to procure a war-
rant ? How dare you stop the King s waggons on
the King's highway ? Who are you ? Show your
commission." He acknowledged that he had not
his commission with him. " No search warrant, no
commission to be shown ? How do I know that
you are not impostors, thieves, and robbers ? " Then
turning to the sergeant and his men, he said, "Lads,
FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 103
this is a serious matter. Load with ball." The,
revenue men scampered off as fast as they could,
thankful to escape with their lives. Then, reverting
to Gaelic, Macnab first swore at the waggon men
for abusing his confidence, and then told them to
drive into Stirling as fast as if the deil were
chasing them, and if they had whisky among the
baggage, to get it out, and out of sight, before the
revenue men could come on them with a search
warrant. His orders were carried out, and when
the search was made in Stirling nothing seizable
vras discovered.
Macnab was punctilious about being properly
addressed. No mistake was ever made in Gaelic.
Everybody addressed him as Mhic an Aba, "Son of
the Abbot." But those who did not know Gaelic
and Highland rules of precedence often made him
angry by calling him "Mr Macnab." He could not
bear that indignity, although he took no offence at
all if he was called Laird of Macnab. One day as
he was sitting in an upper room which had its
windows open, in his house at Kinnell, he heard the
bell of the front door below ring, and when Janet
appeared, a stranger asked : "Is Mr Macnab at
home ? " The Chief, resenting the unconscious in-
sult to his dignity, rushed to the open window of
his room above, thrust out his head and roared like
a bull of Bashan, " There is nae Mister Macnab
here. There are mony Mister Macnabs, but deil
tak' me if there is but ae Macnab."
Macnab's always precarious financial business was
managed by the Perth bank, where the officials, by
knowing his peculiarities and how to humour him,
always got back the money lent to him with full
interest. Macnab never thought that it was incuin-
104 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
bent 011 him to pay upon the dates mentioned in his
bills. But by mischance one of his bills fell into the
hands of a Stirling bank agent, who, when no reply
was made to his note asking payment without delay,
resorted to legal proceedings, which Macnab ignored,
and having got decree against him the agent sent a
Sheriff-officer and concurrent to Kihnell to poind
goods and chattels, unless the debt with interest
and expenses should be instantly paid. Macnab
knew that these limbs of the law were coming forth-
with to pounce on him, so he thought it best to pay
at once a long visit to Taymouth, where he was
always welcome, and to leave Janet to deal with the
visitors. When he was away they came late in the
evening. They were footsore, weary, hungry, and
thirsty. When they told their errand, Janet assured
them that the Laird had gold in his kist, and would
readily pay them when he got back from visiting
his friends, Lord and Lady Breadalbane, at Tay-
mouth, which return, she hoped, would take place
the next day. They got plenty to eat and drink,
were elated with the hope of obtaining full payment
promptly, and it was in a jubilant frame of mind
that they followed Janet to the ground -floor room in
which they were to sleep. The moon was shining
bright ; the bed was at the room's further end ;
while the window, which was near the door, was
open ; and Janet, while bidding them good-night,
and holding the door half-open, advised them to shut
the window. The one who went to do her bidding
looked out, and seeing the figure of a man hanging
to a tree outside, emitted a cry of consternation
which drew his companion to his side. " What is
that horrid thing ? " they asked in one breath.
" Oh," replied Janet, " that is only a poor body who
FRANCIE MOR MAC AN ABA. 105
has been hanged out of hand by the Laird, because
he came bothering about the payment of a miserable
debt." Having given her explanation, Janet quickly
withdrew, and closed and locked the heavy door
behind her. The trembling limbs of the law, believ-
ing Janet's tale, and fearing a similar fate for
bothering the formidable Macnab about a debt,
made their escape through the unbarred window and
got far beyond the Breadalbane march before the
sun rose. What so thoroughly frightened them
were old clothes stuffed with straw and a round bag
filled with chaff to represent a human head. Wher-
ever he got the money perhaps it was lent to him
at Taymouth this particular debt was paid without
further delay, and nothing worse than fun sprang
out of Janet's trickery.
All classes of his countrymen agreed in the
opinion variously expressed that Francie Mor Mac
an Aba was the most remarkable anachronism that
could be found in the orderly-disposed Highlands of
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries. His faults were counter-
balanced by many good qualities. In grain he was
noble and chivalrous. He made no enemies. He
was a perpetual source of amusement and eccentric
surprises. When in good old age he was buried
with his ancestors in romantic Innis Buidhe, he had
sincere mourners there, and thousands who were not
there said with a sigh, "We shall never see his like
again." His lineage probably went back to William
the Lion's Abbot of Glendochart ; and an ancestor of
his, to the detriment of his descendants, for the most
of his lands was taken from him to endow the new
priory of Strathfillan, fought along with the Lome
Chief against Bruce at Dalrigh, where the future
106 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hero of Bannockburn narrowly escaped death, or a
capture which would end in death to him and to the
independence of Scotland. Francie succeeded to a
small estate which was encumbered by some family
charges in favour of junior members of his father's
family. At his death Francie's estate was quite
hopelessly insolvent. It had, therefore, to be sold,
and as the next legitimate heir, Erchie'n Doctair,
could not re-purchase it, the Earl of Breadalbane
became the purchaser. Thus the candle of an old
lineage was removed from the place which had been
lighted by it for four or five centuries.
CHAPTER XV.
DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD LANDED FAMILIES-
MUCH REGRETTED.
IT is a far cry from Glenlyon to Glengarry, and
there never had been race or historical connections,
or even much direct communication between the
two places ; yet there was deep and general sorrow
in Glenlyon when the debt-burdened property of
the Macdonells had to be sold, and an English
lord bought the chief part of it which, however, he
afterwards resold to a worthy Scotsman, "although"
this is how the Highlanders qualified their praise
of him "he had the misfortune to be a Lowlander."
When the landless Chief was making his prepara-
tions for emigrating to Australia, with a portion
of his people, his proceedings were watched with
exceeding interest every drover, pedlar, and travel-
ling tinker or beggar from the north being closely
questioned about him. On his departure, he and
THE OLD LANDED FAMILIES. 107
his party had the good wishes of all their Celtic
countrymen. The news of their arrival in Australia
and the welcome they got there excited hopes of
success at home, which, while not totally realised,
were not totally disappointed. Glengarry's emigra-
tion, with wooden huts and tents ready to be put
up on landing, and with a company of clansfolk,
caused Highland emigrants, including a batch from
Glenlyon, to go to Australia instead of taking the
customary route to Canada, or the United States.
The collapse of the Glengarry house was
throughout all the Highlands felt to be a whole
race calamity. The Seaforth earls, Chiefs of the
Mackenzies, had passed away a little earlier, and
the remnant of their property which was not sold
went to the heir by the spindle side, who, although
he claimed to do so, could riot on clan principles
inherit the chiefship. But Ross-shire was not left
without many important landed proprietors of the
house of Kintail. There was no such compensation
in regard to the disappearance of the Macdonells,
a main branch of the Somerled tree from Glengarry.
That disappearance was like the fall of a fixed star
from the Celtic firmament. It turned war-songs
and proud piobaireachd into hollow mockeries or
pathetic laments, and took the pith out of the oral
traditions. The Huntly Seton-Gordons, who, as
Earls of Huntly and Dukes of Gordon, figure so
largely in the history of Scotland from 1 400 down-
wards, had wide possessions in the Highlands, and
succeeded through marriage to give one of their
off-shoots the Earldom of Sutherland. Able and
ambitious as these Seton-Gordons were, and anxious
as they were at times to act as Highland chiefs, and
readily as they were taken for such at Court and
108 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
in the Lowlands, they never in Highland opinion
levelled themselves up to equality with a Mac-
donell of Glengarry, or a Cameron of Lochiel, or
even a Keppoch Chief, who was only their tenant.
The Duke of Gordon who died in 1836 was
genuinely popular in the Highlands, for had he not
by his mother's effective if unscrupulous method of
recruiting raised the glorious 92nd or Gordon High-
landers ? It was the minister of Fortingall's son,
Sir .Robert Macara, who commanded that regiment
when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and he fell as a
noble warrior should fall, resisting Ney's charge at
Quatre Bras. If not the fighting, the Duke of
Gordon was the ornamental colonel of the 92nd,
and on it he spent much care and money. This
kindly man and generous landlord was the last of
his race. Our Glenlyon men of age, who were wise
and deep in traditional lore, while speaking very
kindly of the last Duke of Gordon, did not regret
his being the last, seeing that his heir and successor
was a Stuart, and bar-sinister descendant of Charles
II. Later on their calmness was disturbed by the
sale to an Englishman of the lordship of Lochaber,
and Inverlochy Castle and the estate attached to it.
Transfers of properties by sales or devolution on
female line heirs who were strangers and had resi-
dences elsewhere, furnished our aged sages of all
surnames with causes of mourning and with auguries
of evil to come. They were all admirers of the state
of peace which was established throughout the
Highlands within twenty years after Culloden. As
soon as the forfeited estates were restored they
thought good rule could be carried on for ever by
Church and landlords working together in harmony,
and truly between 1780 and 1830 that co-operation
THE OLD LANDED FAMILIES. 109
of the spiritual and secular powers was strongly in
evidence and produced excellent results. But in
course of time the lairds or smaller barons, who were
the essential links for connecting the high aristocracy
with the classes below, displayed inability to keep
their footing. Main lines died out and side line
successors had neither their knowledge nor sympa-
thies. Other most popular families of small estates
failed to live within their incomes, and their estates,
on coming to be sold, were bought by strangers who
might do temporary good by spending money on
improvements, but who could not, in one generation
at least, be such leaders of the people on their land
as their impoverished predecessors had been. I
question if any landowner in the southern Highlands
could make out a longer claim for his own and his
ancestors' possession of the same lands than Francie
Mor Mac an Aba. But most of the lairds who were
his contemporaries and neighbours or acquaintances,
had two centuries of possessory history and had
consequently acquired the position f natural leaders.
This was not a position which in old Highland days
could be gained in one generation by strangers.
There was a curious form of stability in the seemingly
hopeless instability of the times of ancient feuds,
broils, rebellions and forfeitures ; for the next up-
set usually resettled what the previous one had
unsettled.
110 BEMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XVI.
PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS.
"THE Children of the Gael " as they loved to call
themselves had, from the days of their prehistoric
wanderings, plenty of race patriotism and conquer-
ing ambition. They miserably lacked the blessed
stolidity which anchored Saxons and other less
imaginative races in the places which they had won.
Stability, appropriation of other people's inventions
and ideas, and the power of building up empires
did not belong to world-teachers like the ancient
Greeks, nor to world-roamers like the ancient Celtic
swarms. But lost opportunities in the past haunted
and still haunt the minds of the descendants of both
the world-teachers and the world-roamers.
It was only when they proudly learned, as
soldiers of the Empire, to call themselves Britons,
that Imperial patriotism took a strong and lasting
hold on the Children of the Gael. The last rebellion
of sectional patriotism and politics was the rebellion
of 1745, which, while far more picturesque and
dramatic, was far less spontaneous and united than
the rebellion of 1715. After Culloden, down to the
passing of the Eeform Bill of 1832, the Highland
people left politics to their nobles, chiefs, and land-
lords. Paper votes were made by portioning out
superiorities generally on easy terms of revocation,
by the manipulating magnates. So " barons" grew
and decayed like mushrooms ; the power of the
magnates appeared to be established on sure and
PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. 1 1 1
lasting foundations ; and the whole commonalit
contentedly looked on, especially after the restora-
tion of the forfeited estates, thankful to enjoy peace
under the combined rule of the Church and the
landowners. They had cause for thankfulness. The
combined rule was the best and cheapest that they
could obtain, or, if they obtained, that they could use
with advantage.
Outside the burghs, of which we had scarcely
any in the southern Highlands, the Reform Bill
agitation made little noise in Gaeldom. Whenever
a little stir got up it was the work of outsiders,
who, like our Glenlyon celebrity, the Father of
Burgh Reform, had become reformers in Edinburgh
and other towns, and wished to get Highlanders to
follow their lead. When the bill was passed into
law, the newly enfranchised tenants qualified by a
50 rent were not unduly elated by their political
importance, for all but a very few left the registra-
tion of their claims to proprietors and their agents,
who forthwith proceeded to act on the assumption
that the tenant-electors would follow their lead, as
in hosting and hunting did their fathers in bygone
times. Landlord influence, through harmonious co-
operation with the national Church, had wonderfully
recovered from the blow inflicted on it by the
abolition of heritable jurisdictions and the restriction
or sweeping away of various old feudal privileges of
a vexatious kind. Why should not the 50 rent
electors buttress landlord influence even better than
the former " paper- vote " barons did ? Highland
lords and lairds, who lived pretty constantly on
their properties, were in close touch with their
people, and usually worshipped in the same churches
with them. Their people looked upon such as
112 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their natural leaders in politics, and followed them
willingly without the least undue compulsion.
Radicalism in the Highlands only grew rank when
landlord compulsion by agents of non-resident
landlords took the place of the former natural and
kindly leadership.
From Dunkeld to the border of Argyll the people
on the land watered by the Tay and its affluents
had long been accustomed to form two political
groups the Tory group round the family of Atholl,
and the Whig group round the family of Breadal-
bane. Excepting Roro, belonging to the Earls of
Breadalbane, all Glenlyon had been under Atholl
superiority since the sale of the barony by Robert
Campbell, of the unhappy massacre of Glencoe
notoriety, to the Marquis of Atholl shortly before
the Revolution of 1688. But when the 50 rent
voters on the estate of Culdares were, in the election
immediately following the passing of the Reform
Bill, called upon to exercise their right, they asserted
their independence by voting for the Whig candidate.
That candidate was the heir of Breadalbane, who,
when his father was created a Marquis in 1831,
dropped his former title of Lord Glenorchy, and
took that of Earl of Ormelie, which he would not
have done had he consulted the Breadalbane people,
who liked the title he dropped and superstitiously
disliked the one he had assumed, because it was
borne by Duncan, the eldest son of the first Earl,
who, on account of imbecility, was displaced in the
succession by his next brother, John. I was much
too young when that first election after the passing
of the Reform Bill took place to care for or under-
stand political questions. But I well remember the
fuss and discussions it gave rise to among the newly
PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. 113
enfranchised farmers on the estate of Culdares.
What they did in the end was to vote for Lord
Ormelie, not because of his political opinions but
because he was his father's son " Mac an duine
fhiachail sin, tha sios an Caisteal Bhealaich," " Son
of the worthy man who is east of us in Taymouth
Castle." Lord Ormelie was triumphantly returned
for Perthshire, but as his father died in 1834, he
soon passed from the House of Commons into the
House of Lords.
In 1822 Lord Ormelie married Eliza, daughter
of Mr George Baillie of Jerviswood. It was at
Auchmore, near Killin, that the new member of
Parliament for Perthshire and his lady chiefly
resided for the first ten years of their married life.
And although, to the great regret of the people and
no doubt their own, they had no children, their
married life, in other respects, was all that such a
life should be. They were in these Auchmore days
a very popular pair, and they deserved popularity.
The husband's personal character commanded respect
even in the dark years to come when, as a landlord,
he had lost all his early popularity, and his amiable
lady remained popular till her death in 1861. Re-
joicing gatherings and feastings to celebrate the
Whig victory in Perthshire were held in various
parts of the country. At Killin, near Lord Ormelie's
residence, a big tent was run up close to the hotel,
where many hundreds were to dine together and
listen to speeches after feasting. In half-witted
Willie Chalum, Killin possessed a fool of its own
who kept the village and neighbourhood entertained
by his sayings and doings, but who, from his prying
habits and babbling tongue, could be a plague to
those who had anything to conceal. Willie watched
8
114 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the setting up of the pavilion tent for the festivity,
and, on the day appointed for the meeting, when
those entrusted with the arrangements were busy
laying the tables and fixing flags and decorations,
he often stepped inside and was often turned out,
but finally got in and out unobserved, with some-
thing under his " ciotag," or short cloak. This
something was a suckling pig roasted whole and
now of course cold, which as a garlanded central
ornament was to 1'ecall symbolically the Campbell
tale of lineage and to represent the clan crest
Ceaun na muicc fiadhaich
A mharbh Diarmad 's a choill' udlaidh.
Decorated, spiced, cold-roasted pigling made
Willie's mouth water. He could not resist the
temptation of lifting it and running off with it. He
got out of the pavilion unobserved, but outside he
roused suspicions by running too fast to the bank of
the river. He was soon followed. The weather had
been hot for some time, and now suddenly, when
Willie was being followed, a thunderstorm broke
over Killin. He got into a snug place, under rock
and tree shelter, with the pursuers, whom he did
not notice, hard at his heels, when the second flash
and crash came. Willie, who was preparing to
dine, looked up at the sky and spoke out loud as if
protesting that it was much ado about nothing
" Ubh-ubha ; Nach e sin an stairirich mhor airson
uircean firionn muice ?" " Oo-oo ; Is that not the
great uproar on account of the suckling son of a
pig ?" And poor Willie was deprived of his ex-
pected dinner.
The Fortingall blacksmith, George Drysdale, had
no vote, but he had a tongue, which he used freely
on behalf of Lord Ormelie, and against his opponent,
PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS. 115
General Sir George Murray, Wellington's old mili-
tary secretary, during the election contest. George
had been a soldier himself, and the General he wor-
shipped above all others was Thomas Graham of
Balgowan, Lord Lyndoch. George " came up the
water" to Fortingall from the Lowland border, and
I think it probable that he was born on the Bal-
gowan estate, although I do not know it for a fact.
At any rate George was well known to Lord
Lyndoch, and there was apparently a feudal-clannish
tie between the aged General and the ex-soldier.
Not long after the election a tragic event took place
on the moor of Fortingall between a poacher and
a gamekeeper, neither of whom, as it happened,
belonged to the district. The poacher was a
journeyman-weaver who had been hired for a time
to help the village weaver to get through arrears of
work. The gamekeeper said that, when he had
tried to catch him, the poacher had deliberately
fired at him. The poacher said that his gun went
off accidentally in a struggle, and that he had had
no intention whatever of killing or maiming the
gamekeeper. They were alone on the moor, and the
gamekeeper was peppered by small shot in the legs,
although not fatally nor even seriously wounded.
The poacher said that, horrified at the accident, he
had willingly carried the wounded man home. The
gamekeeper said that, having got hold of the
poacher, he compelled him to carry him home.
The weaver was tried for attempted murder and
sentenced to be hanged. The minister of Fortin-
gall, Mr Robert Macdonald, wrote out a petition,
which the people were signing, when one evening
word reached them that the Home Secretary was to
be at Tay mouth that night, but was to leave next
116 KEMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
morning. A meeting was hastily called, and it was
resolved to send a deputation with the petition to
the Home Secretary that night, although the depu-
tation could not reach Taymouth before bed-time.
Lord Lyndoch was in bed before the deputation
reached the Castle, but George persuaded his valet
to take in his name and mention his errand. He
was readily admitted, and the aged peer, then over
eighty, having found out that the Home Secretary
had not yet retired, got up himself and introduced
the deputation. He then took George back with
him to his bedroom, and there the two fought their
Peninsular battles over again till day-break. In
parting Lord Lyndoch gave George a 5 note, say-
ing, "I understand that in your joy over the
victory at the election, you broke all your crockery.
See then that you give this to your wife to buy new
crockery." But whether he had shillings of his own
in his pocket or broke into the crockery fund,
George did not pass the village of Kenmore without
inviting those he found out of bed and house to
drink with him in the Square, the health of the
" Hero of Barossa."
The weaver escaped the gallows, but I think
he was sent to Botany Bay.
THE BREAD ALBANE EVICTIONS. 117
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BREAD AL BANE EVICTIONS.
As second Marquis, " the son of his father," contrary
to all prognostications, became, as soon as expiring
leases permitted it, an evicting landlord on a large
scale, and he continued to pursue the policy of
joining farm to farm, and turning out native people,
to the end of his twenty-eight years' reign. But
like the first spout of the haggis, his first spout
of evicting energy was the hottest. I saw with
childish sorrow, impotent wrath, and awful wonder
at man's inhumanity to man, the harsh and sweep-
ing Roro and Morenish clearances, and heard much
talk about others which were said to be as bad if
not worse. A comparison of the census returns for
1831 with those of 1861 will show how the second
Marquis reduced the rural population on his large
estates, while the inhabitants of certain villages
were allowed, or, as at Aberfeldy, encouraged to
increase. When such a loud and long-continued
outcry took place about the Sutherland clearances,
it seems at first sight strange that such small notice
was taken by the Press, authors, and contemporary
politicians, of the Breadalbaue evictions, and that
the only set attack on the Marquis should have
been left to the vainglorious, blundering, Dunkeld
coal-merchant, who added the chief-like word "Dun-
alastair" to his designation. One reason perchance
the chief one for the Marquis's immunity was the
prominent manner in which he associated himself
118 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
with the Nonintrusionists, and his subsequently
becoming an elder and a liberal benefactor of the
Free Church. He had a Presbyterian upbringing,
and lived in accordance with that upbringing. His
Free Church zeal may therefore have been as
genuine as he wished it to be believed ; but whether
simply real or partly simulated, it covered as with a
saintly cloak his eviction proceedings in the eyes of
those who would have been his loud denouncers and
scourging critics had he been an Episcopalian or
remained in the Church of Scotland. The people
he evicted, and all of iis, young and old, who were
witnesses of the clearances, could not give him
much credit for any good in what seemed to us the
purely hard and commercial spirit of the policy
which he carried out as the owner of a princely
Highland property. Such of the witnesses of the
clearances as have lived to see the present desolation
of rural baronies on the Breadalbane estates can
now charitably assume that had he foreseen what
his land-management policy was to lead up to, he
would, at least, have gone about his thinning out
business in a more cautious, kindly, and considerate
manner, and not rudely cut, as he did, the precious
ties of hereditary mutual sympathy and reliance
which had long existed between the lords and the
native Highland people of Breadalbane.
It is quite true that in 1834 the population on
the Breadalbane estate needed thinning. The old
Marquis had made a great mistake in dividing
holdings which were too small before, in order to
make room for Fencible soldiers who were not, as
eldest sons, heirs to existing holdings. In twenty
years congestion to an alarming extent was the
natural result of the old man's mistaken kindness.
THE BREAD ALBANE EVICTIONS. 119
There was indeed a good deal of congestion before
that mistake was committed, although migration
and emigration helped to keep it within some limits.
Emigration would have proceeded briskly from 1760
onwards had it not been discouraged by landlords
who found the fighting manhood on their estates a
valuable asset ; and when not positively prohibited,
emigration was impeded in various ways by the
Government, now alive to the value of Highlands
and Isles as a nursery of soldiers and sailors.
Although discouraged and impeded, emigration was
never wholly stopped, and after Waterloo, Glenylon,
Fortingall and Breadalbane, Rannoch, Strathearn
and Balquidder, sent off swarms to Canada, the
United States, and the West Indies. A large
swarm from Breadalbane, Lochearnhead, and Bal-
quidder went off to Nova Scotia about 1828, and
got Gaelic-speaking ministers to follow them. In
1829 a great number of Skyemen from Lord Mac-
donald's estate went to Cape Breton, where Gaelic
is the language of the people, pulpit, and the
" Mactalla " newspaper to this day. The second
Marquis of Breadalbane would have won for himself
lasting glory and honour, and done his race and
country valuable service, if he had chosen to place
himself at the head of an emigration scheme for
his surplus people, instead of merely driving them
away, and further trampling on their feelings by
letting the big farms he made by clearing out the
native population to strangers in race, language,
and sympathies. He was rich, childless, and gifted,
and he utterly missed his vocation, or grand chance
for gaining lasting fame among the children of
the Gael.
At a later period of my life than this of which I
am now writing, I looked into many kirk-session
120 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
books, and found that those of the parishes of
Kenmore and Killin indicated a worse state of
matters in Breadalbane than existed in any of the
neighbouring parishes. Pauperism was increasing
at a rapid rate, although it was a notorious fact
that rents there were lower than on other Highland
estates. The old Marquis was never a rack-renter.
Other proprietors, when leases terminated, took
more advantage than he did of a chance to raise
rents, and when once raised they strove ever after-
wards to keep them up. But I do not wonder that
his son thought that if things were allowed to go
on as he found them on succeeding to titles and
estates, a general bankruptcy would soon be the
result. Without ceasing to regret and detest his
methods, I learned to see the reasonableness of the
second Marquis's view of the alarming situation.
The population had simply outgrown the means of
decent subsistence from the carefully cultivated
small holdings which were the general rule. Had
it not been for the frugality and self- helpfulness of
the people, the crisis of general poverty would have
come when the inflated war prices ceased, or at
least in the short-crop year of 1826, when the corn
raised in Breadalbane, although the hillsides were
cultivated as far up as any cereal crop could be
expected to ripen in the most favourable season,
did not supply meal enough for two-thirds of the
people. But the "calanas" of the women, especially
as long as flax-spinning continued in a flourishing
condition, brought in a good deal of money ; and
for many years "Calum a Mhuilin" (Calum of the
Mill), otherwise Malcolm Campbell, road contractor,
Killin, led out a host of young men to make roads
in various parts of the country, and these returned
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 121
with their earnings to spend the winter at home.
These sources of profit were beginning to dry up
when the old Marquis died.
What came of the dispersed ? The least adven-
turous or poorest of them slipped away into the
nearest manufacturing town, or mining districts
where there was a demand for unskilled labourers.
There some of them flourished, but not a few of them
foundered. The larger portion of them emigrated to
Canada, mainly to the London district of Ontario,
where they cleared forest farms, cherished their
Gaelic language and traditions, prospered, and hated
the Marquis more, perhaps, than he rightly deserved
when things were looked at from his own hard
political-economy point of view.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.
OUR " Gray Egyptians," who suspected that more
evil than good would come out of emotional religious
revivalism, shook their old heads over the Reform
Bill likewise. They were local weather seers who
could read from signs in earth and sky, and the
blowing of the wind, the manners of birds and
animals, prophecies of coming weather, good and
evil. Gloom on Coir'n Dubhaich portended a storm
from the west. When the quickly circling shadow
of a mist, which they called the " Fuathas," or
Spirit of the Storm, was seen on the conical top of
the Cairn Gorm, then very bad weather was to come
from the east. As people of long personal experience
and depositaries of old traditions, they assumed a
122 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
modified right to make predictions in respect to the
effect which innovations in Church and State would
soon have on the welfare of Gaeldom. They were
inconvincible Tories in their way, although they
would not call themselves so. While admitting that
he committed an error in making small holdings still
smaller, they praised the old Marquis to the skies.
They deplored his son's cruel evictions, but at the
same time confessed the need for a thinning of the
population on his estates, and indeed in most parts
of the Highlands, since the congestion was daily
increasing while the old sources of profit were daily
diminishing. As for religious and civil rule, they
felt sure there could never be a better one for Gael-
dom than the one which had been in existence for
fifty years, through the cordial co-operation of
Church and State ; the Church looking after morals,
education, and the poor ; and the landlords, as
Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply,
looking after the preservation of civil order, roads,
bridges, etc. But the Reform Bill brought Church
and landlords to a parting of the ways. The
harmonious co-operation was superseded by a separa-
tion which at first was reluctant and partial, but
which the Disruption widened and which grew into
completeness when household suffrage was extended
to the country.
Old friendship was turned into incipient hostility
by causes of offence which arose on both sides. Sir
Walter Scott is credited with having been the
first man to reveal the Highlands to the English-
speaking public and the outer world. That revela-
tion filled the heirs of Highland lords, chiefs, and
lairds, who had been sent to be educated in England,
with an exaggerated conceit of their own position
THE PAETING OP THE WAYS. 123
because they took no notice of an essential condition
which Scott had not overlooked, although he had
failed to emphasise it sufficiently. " Shoulder to
shoulder " union of Highland inhabitants of estates
held on feudal tenure, with the legal individual
proprietors, depended on proprietors' recognition of
reciprocal duty towards their people. The idea of
an unwritten compact older than and superior to
feudal charters had come down to the children of
the Gael from dim days of antiquity, and was the
basis of their clannish readiness to follow in war,
and obey in peace, the landlord who stood shoulder
to shoulder with them as they did to him. As long
as magnates were, through family councils of allied
lairds, kept well linked with those below them, and
as long as the lairds lived on their own estates most
of the year, and for a change thought Edinburgh
good enough for them, the idea of the unwritten
compact was well kept in mind by the land-owning
classes of all degrees. The new generation of land-
owners in many cases lost sight of the old Celtic
idea, and with that lost all the hold their elders
had on the shoulder to shoulder fidelity of their
inferiors. The men of the latter generation had no
Gaelic, which their elders knew to be the " open
sesame " for reaching Highland hearts ; and many
of those whose fathers were Church of Scotland
men joined other religious bodies. That desertion
was politically a mistake for them, whatever it
might be religiously. In short with exceptions
owners of Highland properties resolved after the
passing of the Reform Bill to assert their full feudal
rights and something more, to make their 50
tenants vote to order under the implied if not
always clearly emphasised threat that if they dis-
124 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
obeyed they would lose their farms at the end of
their leases.
Throughout the long period of harmonious co-
operation Highland private patrons had been doing
their level best to select worthy men as presentees to
their vacant charges, and with an irreducible mini-
mum of inevitable mistakes their efforts were crowned
with eminent success. As a matter of fact congrega-
tions had almost always a say in the selection. If
there was a man they wished strongly to have for
their minister they made their wishes directly known
to the patron, or got some lairds or large tenants
who were elders or members to speak to the patron,
who generally acted on the request made to him.
Patrons and congregations had both a tendency to.
prefer, other things being equal, one who belonged
to their district, and whose character and whose
people were known to them. Local clannishness
operated in all directions. As long as reasonable
attention was paid to the wishes of the congrega-
tions, and patrons were fellow-worshippers, the
theoretical objectionableness of patronage was veiled
and almost forgotten by churchmen, and as the
compromise system worked well, feudalists felt
inclined to give up their fears of and hatred to the
representative and essentially democratic character
of Presbyterian organisation. Highland ministers
took scarcely any share in party politics since the
suppression of the '45 rebellion, but were great
patriots, and as far as preaching went, Army and
Navy recruiters at the time of the war with
America, and above all during the life-and-death
struggle with Napoleon. Shortly after the passing
of the Eeform Bill, they were hauled by their
divided Lowland brethren and the hot- heads among
THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 125
themselves into party strife within their Church
Courts ; and into fighting outside with feudalists,
who wished to drive instead of lead the new voters,
and with private patrons who now wished to stand
on the strict right of presentation without regard
to the wishes of congregations, with whom they no
longer deigned to associate themselves in public
worship. Blundering on the one side evoked
answering blundering on the other side. In a short
time the heather was on fire, and much of what
would have been of inestimable value to the future
welfare of Scotland perished.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY IN GLENLYON.
THE early rumblings of the Ten Years' Conflict did
not create any stir in my native glen. Our people
were very well pleased with their successive
ministers presented by the Crown after the Glen
had been made into a quoad sacra parish, endowed
and provided with a new church and manse out of
the Parliamentary grant voted as a national thank-
offering after the war with Napoleon. The first of
these was Mr John Macalister, a native of the Island
of Arran, who put his foot down on smuggling,
although the story ran that before his conversion he
had something to do with smuggling himself. If he
had he knew the evils thereof, and he certainly
exposed and denounced them vigorously. When
the manse was being built Mr Macalister lodged in
the house of our neighbour, Elder Duncan Macalum,
and I used to toddle after him down to the river
126 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
bank when he was angling for trout. He was a
stern disciplinarian to adults who needed to be
admonished or rebuked, but a delightful friend to
children. When the manse was ready he went to
live there and brought home a wife. There their
eldest son, Donald, afterwards Free Church minister
in Edinburgh, was born, arid often, on seeing from
the other side of the river, his mother carrying him
about in front of the manse, I longed to wade across
to play with the child, but the depth of the water
on the driest day of summer was beyond my small
length. Mr Macalister was a fervent evangelical
revivalist. In a few years he left us for the Gaelic
Church, Edinburgh, whence he migrated north to
become minister of Nigg in Ross-shire. I do not
know on whose recommendation he was presented to
Glenlyon, but the next two were appointed on the
petition of the congregation through the influence of
the Marquis of Breadalbane. These two, Mr David
and Mr Duncan Campbell, were brothers, and natives
of our Glen. We first got the younger brother, Mr
David, while at about the same time Mr Duncan was
appointed to Lawers, and married the eldest daughter
of the Apostle of the North. Mr David's bright and
clever wife, Margaret Macbean, was also from the
north, the daughter of an Inverness-shire parish-
teacher. Probably their marriages had something
to do with the first introduction of the brothers to
the notice of northern congregations, but it was
because of their own undoubted merits that they
were one after the other so soon wiled away from
their native Glen over the Grampians.
Eloquent, warm-hearted, lovable, and peace-
loving, Mr David was in 1836 so far " left to
himsel' " as to accept a majority call to the East
THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 127
Church, Inverness. On January 12th of that year
a meeting of the elders, managers, and male com-
municants of that church was held to elect a
minister. Provost Eraser, who presided, proposed
the election of the Rev. David Campbell, minister
of Glenlyon, and Bailie George Mackay proposed
the election of the Rev. Archibald Cook, of Bruar.
Thirty-three voted for Mr Campbell and twenty-
five for Mr Cook. The former on a majority of
eight was declared elected. The acceptance of the
call by Mr Campbell was laid before the Presbytery
of Inverness on March 30th. He was not inducted
until November 23rd, and meanwhile Mr Cook's
adherents raised such a schismatic clamour, that to
pacify them they got the North Church erected for
themselves and their favourite. The new minister
of the East Church was a man who hated strife.
His position at Inverness was irksome to him,
although he rallied round him many new members
and adherents, who made up wholly or in great
part for the departure of the Cookites. His fame
as a powerful evangelical preacher spread further
northwards. At the beginning of September, 1838,
he was presented to the parish of Tarbat, East
Ross-shire. The patron's choice was endorsed by a
unanimous call from the congregation. In Tarbat
he laboured faithfully, first as a minister of the
Church of Scotland, and afterwards for some fifteen
years as Free Church minister. His health, after
his wife's death, broke down, and he craved for the
air of his native Ben Lawers range, and was glad
to accept a call from Lawers, where he died at a
good old age. Unlike the then rulers of the Free
Church, he died blessing the act which abolished
patronage in the Church of Scotland, and hoping
128 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
for the union of the Scotch Presbyterian Churches.
He was a lover and preacher of charity, peace, piety,
and industry, whose lot was cast in an age of strife
and of social and ecclesiastical unsettlement. He
liked right and hated wrong. In speaking to me,
many years after the Disruption, of the Convocation
which preceded it, and of which he was a member,
he grew angry over Dr Candlish's adopted proposal
to lock the doors of Roxburgh Church so that none
could escape voting for or against the official
resolutions. He went there, he said, determined to
vote for the resolutions, but this made him feel that
they were being coerced by the device of locking
the doors. On the south side of the Grampians
we had no minister of the stamp of Mr Archibald
Cook and Mr Rory, of Snizort, whose intolerably
narrow views respecting conversion, baptism, and
communion fitted them better for heathenising
than for Christianising congregations ; but we had
some braying lay-asses whose mouths had been
opened, without a jot of the inspiration of Balaam's
beast, by revival and Church dispute excitements.
Years after the Disruption the Free Church Assembly
appointed a Commission to go to the parish of Snizort,
to see and report on the state of matters there ; for
complaints had been formally made that Mr Rory
refused baptism to the children of parents of irre-
proachable life and character with whose conversion
assurances he was not satisfied, or who refused to
give him any such assurances at all. The Free
Church minister of Tarbat was a member of
that Commission, and at a meeting held in Mr Rory's
church was subjected to an insult which deeply
touched his sensitive nature. Mr Rory's admirers
gathered in force from many quarters and roughly
THE CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 129
interrupted the Commissioners and complainers.
One woman was conspicuously noisy and insulting.
Mr David remonstrated with her, and in his earnest
pleading for decent behaviour patted her shoulder.
Then the virago shouted out, " Tha'm fear so cur
laimh orm" (" This man is laying hand on me.") In
Gaelic the phrase might mean taking indecent
liberties, and such an insinuation, which a differently
constituted man would only have laughed at, hurt
Mr David so deeply that he would never go to Skye
on a Church business again.
When Glenlyon lost dear Mr David, it got as his
successor his elder brother, Mr Duncan Campbell
from Lawers, and kept him until, shortly before the
Disruption, he was presented and called to be parish
minister of Kiltearn, Ross-shire. He was an excel-
lent administrator, a worthy man, and a good solid
evangelical preacher, although not so eloquent and
sympathetic as Mr David. So far Crown patronage
had been exercised in accordance with the expressed
wishes of the Glen people. The three ministers who
left us for northern parishes, Mr Macalister, Mr
David Campbell, and Mr Duncan Campbell, went
out at the Disruption. The Church dispute had
not arisen in Mr Macalister's time among us. Mr
David Campbell did not take it with him to the
pulpit. Mr Duncan Campbell could not wholly
ignore it, for he had Assembly documents to read
and expound from the pulpit, but the subject got
very little notice in his sermons.
9
130 KEMINISCBNCES AND BEFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XX.
THE OUTSIDE DISCUSSIONS.
WHILE the Sunday services remained much as they
were before, devotional and doctrinal, the Glen
people plunged on their own account into discussion
and study of the Church question. Before the
Reform Bill I think no more than three or four
weekly newspapers came regularly into our district.
Some second - hand ones came irregularly from
Glensmen in the Lowlands, England, and Canada,
and the United States. Intellectual activity was
never wanting among the Children of the Gael.
It. would have been better for the material pros-
perity of their race if they had more stolidity,
less imagination, arid a smaller share of mingled
mysticism and love of daring adventure. In the
period admired by the " Gray Egyptians " there was
a wonderful burst of original and, tested by any
standard, high -class Gaelic poetry; and the masterly
translation of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic, which
anticipated many of the recent amendments of the
revised English version, had been completed about
that time. In that period the spread of education
and the freer inter-communication had made
the greater number of Highland men and women
bi-lingual. So even in our isolated Glen, where
Reform and the raising of the Church dispute
brought more newspapers, and many controversial
pamphlets, we had people ready to translate them
round the firesides, and to discuss them on hillsides,
or even over their farming work.
THE OUTSIDE DISCUSSIONS. 131
I remember how deaved I was by those fireside
readings, translations, and the discussions that
followed in their train, ere I got fairly into my
teens, and when " Robinson Crusoe," the " Pilgrim's
Progress," "Arabian Nights," ponderous Guthrie's
" Grammar of Geography," and Sir Walter Scott's
poems and novels were the English books which
I then wanted to pore over. But after all, this
imposition had its educational value, and gained in
interest as the quarrel progressed to its crisis. In
an accidental way the libel case against Mr Mac-
laurin, minister of Strathfillan, which was dragging
its slow length along before the Presbytery of
Weem, intertwined itself in Glen discussions with
the larger question. Mr Maclaurin had been mis-
sionary minister in Glenlyon before it had been
made into a separate parish. He was a promising
young probationer of impulsive and revival-evan-
gelical type. He married in Glenlyon, and within
little more than a year lost the young wife whom
he dearly loved, and was left with a baby daughter.
It seems that after some years of what was acknow-
ledged to be good service at Strathfillan, he fell
into irregular habits. After a long trial, which
went through all the Courts of the Church, he was
deposed on the charge of drinking and fighting.
He went to the United States, where he recovered
himself, and obtained a church and congregation.
Our Glen people watched this case in all its stages,
and through that watching they for the first time
acquired a real knowledge of the constitution of the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The deposition
of Mr Robertson, of Fortingall, in 1716, for reading
treasonable papers in his church at the time of
Mar's rebellion, was the only similar case in which
132 REMINISCENCES AND EEFLECTIONS.
the Glen had been interested since the Reformation.
The Presbytery of Weem had not then been cut
out of the huge Presbytery of Dunkeld, and a case
heard at Dunkeld was beyond their limit.
At first our people discussed the Church question
as if it were an abstract one which was not likely to
cause trouble to themselves. If their minister re-
mained with them, all would be well. If, like his
predecessors, he went away, why should they not as
before get the man of their choice through the
action of Crown patronage? Possessed of this sense
of what happened to be unsafe security, they looked
without fear or passion at the question in all its
bearings, and qualified themselves as best they
could for an impartial jury business. There was a
little parish library under the control of the kirk-
session, which contained some books on Scotch
history, and one or more copies of the Confession of
Faith. These books were now in request, and those
who read them expounded their contents to those
who could not read them, or, if they could read
them, could not easily understand them. All this
reading and debating training for intelligently exer-
cising the functions of an impartial jury took place
after the Assembly had crossed the Rubicon by
passing the Veto Act.
THE VETO ACT. 133
CHAPTER XXI.
THE VETO ACT.
FBOM the first raising of the question, all our Glen
debaters, on the strength of the knowledge they got
from their own thoughtful if limited studies, and
from the more vehement arguments put forth in the
Assembly and in Press reports and pamphlets,
unanimously agreed that patronage was not in
harmony with the theory of Presbyterian Church
organisation, that it had always been considered a
grievance, and that having been abolished imper-
fectly after the Revolution of 1688, its restoration
near the end of Queen Anne's reign, for a reactionary
political purpose, by English Ministers backed by a
majority of English members of Parliament, was a
fraud upon Scotland ; and if not in the letter, surely
enough in the spirit, a gross violation of the 1707
Act of Union. The few "Gray Egyptians" who did
not yet sleep with their fathers were by this time
too old and feeble to take a leading part in Glen
politics. But younger men imbued with their ideas
in diluted form contended that it was premature,
and consequently most inexpedient, to raise such a
weighty controversy, while in the districts they
knew best, patronage had been exercised with con-
scientious care to select excellent presentees here
many names were mentioned and great deference
had been paid to wishes of congregations and the
cause of religion, morality, and education.
134 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
The supporters of the Veto Act frankly admitted
that in the past the co-operation of landlords and
patrons with the Church of Scotland had been
kindly and beneficial, but they asserted that now
landlords as a class were taking up a hostile
attitude to the Church and to the native Highland
population. They alleged that at the second post-
Reform election, which had just taken place, the
Tory landlords with some honourable exceptions
had not let tenants vote as their fathers would have
done, but, by factors and other agents, had driven
them like dumb cattle to vote for Tory candidates.
They next called attention to the Breadalbane and
Sutherland evictions to show what hollow mockeries
the liberal professions of Whig magnates really
were. On these great properties the big farms
made by clearing out the native inhabitants were
usually let to strangers in race and language. Such
was the substance of the rejoinder ; and it is worth
being noted. I was so young that it did not impress
me deeply at the time, but at the Disruption I
realised that the something felt, if unmentioned,
which underlay the religious and ecclesiastical
agitation in the Highlands was a seeking for means
of native race defence in. a democratically con-
stituted national Church, liberated from influences
which were formerly friendly but were now be-
coming hostile. The seeking for defence in this
direction might not have been vain if the High-
landers themselves had not made it so by leaving
the Church of Scotland in 1843. At the time
when our Glen people were discussing patronage
and the Veto Act, anyone who prophesied the
Disruption would have been ridiculed as a fool or
morally stoned as a lying mouthpiece of Baal. At
THE VETO ACT. 135
and after the Disruption a similar fate would have
been his who prophesied the Union of the United
Free Church in 1900.
Our Glen objectors to the Veto Act wished)
as almost all Highlanders did, to see patronage
abolished in a regular way, since they had to admit
sorrowfully that there was too much cause to fear
the old harmony was nearly at an end, but they
argued that a wrong thing done by Parliament
could only be undone and righted by Parliament ;
and that the device of giving the majority of male
communicants the right of rejecting presentees was
a wretched piece of tinkering, even if it were within
the legal competence of the General Assembly to
confer such a right of rejection at all. The other
side did not denv that the Veto Act was far from
being so satisfactory as the abolition of patronage
by Act of Parliament would have been. " Why
then," asked the objectors, "do we not ask Parlia-
ment to give us abolition ?" " Because," replied the
others, " there would be small chance of Parliament
soon granting us our request, when all Church of
England members, peers and commoners, would join
our Scottish Tories in resisting abolition."
136 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE COMING OF THE QUEEN.
THE booming of the quarrel over the Veto Act,
which quickly developed into a bitter war between
Church arid State, was from south and north soon
rolling over the heads of our Glen academic debaters,
who still thought themselves safe when the corona-
tion of Queen Victoria diverted people's thoughts
for a moment to a far more agreeable subject, and
united all Highlanders in one glow of chivalrous
loyalty and devotion to their girl Sovereign, whose
age, sex, and loneliness, appealed to their deepest
sympathies. Well do I remember being set to read
a florid account of the Coronation from an Edin-
burgh paper either the "Courant" or "Caledonian
Mercury" to an attentive audience gathered round
our kitchen fire, while my aged grandmother took
upon herself the larger part of the task of simul-
taneously translating the English, sentence by
sentence, into Gaelic. She had, pat and perfect,
old Gaelic words for throne, coronation, robes,
crown, sceptre which I fear I called "skepter"-
and Sword of State, etc., but the globe bothered her
so entirely that she had to give it up. She trans-
lated it "cruinneag" or ball, but could make nothing
of its symbolical meaning. She and others of her
generation enjoyed the liberty this occasion gave
them for going back from Kings of Judah and Israel
to the history of Scottish Kings as far as Kenneth
Macalpin, which had come down by oral tradition.
A PARISH VACANCY. 137
Long afterwards when I read the "Duan Alban-
nach," I was much surprised to discover that the
substance of it was retained to a remarkable extent
in the oral and local traditions which our aged
people recalled and told at the time of Queen
Victoria's coronation. As for the later Kings from
the days of Wallace and Bruce, as Glenlyon was
visited by so many of them for hunting purposes
until the Union of the English and Scottish Crowns,
there was nothing very strange in the fact that the
traditions were fairly strong and unbroken.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A PARISH VACANCY.
I SHOULD here refer to the losses suffered by
Highland farmers in the hard years "Na Bliadh-
nachan Cruaidh" between 1836 and 1841, but as
it would break the thread of discourse on the
ecclesiastical subject, I will postpone my remarks
till another time.
The war was at a roaring height of mutual ex-
asperation the State bullying through the Courts
of Law, and the dominant party in the Church
bullying through the General Assembly, and from
pulpits, platforms, and press when Mr Duncan
Campbell left Glenlyon in 1842 for the parish of
Kiltearn in Ross-shire. The Glen people had not
fixed their minds on any particular person as the
man they would like to get as his successor. They
were not, however, left long to seek for a successor.
The dominant party in the Assembly took good care
that a follower of theirs should be recommended to
138 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
every vacant Highland charge where there was the
slightest chance of winning a victory, or failing
that, of raising a loud cry against pat.rons, the Peel
Government, and minatory Tory lairds. A Mr
Hamilton, of whom the Glen people knew nothing
at all, was provided for the Glenlyon vacancy.
Presbytery of Weem ministers of his party gave
him their turns for preaching in the Glen. He
came, was welcomed hospitably, and preached on
two Sundays, in English and in Gaelic, as the rule
then was. He seemed to be of the sound, solid, and
somewhat heavy class of preachers. The general
verdict was that he could not stand favourable
comparison with any of the three former ministers.
But as he belonged to the popular side, and was
recommended from headquarters, the Glen people
were easily induced to sign a petition to the Govern-
ment requesting that he should be presented. Sir
Niel Menzies, chief of his clan, a kindly old fashioned
resident landlord, and a ruling Church of Scotland
elder, knew Glenlyon and its people very well ; for
besides old social intercourse between Castle Menzies
and Meggernie Castle, he was one of the three
trustees who managed the Culdares estate during
the long minority and absenteeism of young Culdares.
If Sir Niel, like the new Tories, thought the tenant
voters should take their politics from their pro-
prietors, he led his tenants in the shoulder to
shoulder way, without a hint of coercion. Now
when the Glen people finished the signing of their
petition, they appointed a deputation of three to go
over the hills to Rannoch Lodge to see Sir Niel to
tell him what they wanted and to beg him to lend
them his support I do not know exactly in what
way and to assure him that why they petitioned in
THE PRESENTEE. 139
favour of Mr Hamilton was because they desired to
keep out of the Veto Act trouble, which they could
not do unless their petition was granted. I suppose
what they asked was gi-anted, for they came back
highly delighted with their reception, and not a
little amused by Sir Niel's discovery that one of
their number, Archibald Macdiarmid, in Glen par-
lance, " Gilleaspa Mor Scoileir," or " Big Gillespie the
Scholar," was as like Dr Chalmers as if they had
been twin-brothers. The likeness was striking,
although not so twin-like as Sir Niel declared it
to be.
The petition was sent to the proper quarter, and
its receipt was duly acknowledged. The sanguine
waited in hope that the prayer would be granted,
and the whole congregation would have been very
glad indeed to get a decent minister without being
hauled into the turmoil connected with the operation
of the Veto Act north, south, east, and west of them.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PKESENTEE.
WITHOUT any long delay the Glen petitioners
received their reply in the substantial form of a
presentee a Mr Stewart, whom they had never
seen, and about whom they had no previous infor-
mation whatever. The Melbourne Liberal Govern-
ment was in 1841 succeeded by a Conservative
Government headed by Sir Robert Peel. To do
them justice, the men who passed the Veto Act,
and continued through thick and thin to defend it
on grounds of spiritual rights which might have
140 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
suited Pope Hildebrand, never pretended that the
Veto was the complete remedy, which the Parlia-
mentary abolition of patronage would have been.
If asked, when Lord Melbourne was in office with a
Liberal majority behind him, why they did not go
to Parliament for abolition, their answer was that it
would have been no use to do so, because English
peers and English commoners had heavy material
interests in English Church patronage, and on this
Scottish question they would be sure to side with
the Scottish Tories. I believe the supposition was
indisputable that nothing more was to be expected
from the Melbourne Government than this, that in
dispensing Crown patronage some attention would
be paid to the wishes of congregations ; as in the
case of Glenlyon before the Peel Government came
into office. Yet before that event occurred, things
had come to such a crisis that only the abolition of
patronage by Act of Parliament could bring Church
and State out of the conflict in which the rash
passing of the Veto Act by an Assembly majority
had involved them both. The Veto Act had been
declared illegal by the Court of Session and the
House of Lords before the Glen male communicants
were persuaded, incited, and morally coerced by
their ecclesiastical leaders to go through the form of
vetoing Mr Stewart. They resented the manner in
which their petition had been rejected when they
only wanted peace. Their sympathies were enlisted
on the side of the leaders of the majority in the
Assembly, and reports of what was happening in
other places and cases aroused their indignation.
So before they ever saw or heard him they resolved
to veto Mr Stewart. He received a cold but re-
spectful reception when he did come, very different
THE PRESENTEE. 141
indeed from the warm and hospitable one that had
been given to the nominee of the non-intrusionist
Vetoists. On the two Sundays on which he
officiated, young and old flocked to hear him ; and
not a few of his hearers frankly said afterwards that
they liked his sermons and his looks, and that if he
had not been forced down their throats they would
willingly sign a call to him. But although he made
a favourable impression on them, the presentee did
not benefit by it. Matters had come to such a
pass that liberty of individual judgment and of
congregational action had to give way to war
partisanship. Our Glen communicants felt bound in
honour to follow the lead of the assertors of popular
religious liberties, and if any of them showed an
inclination to desert the cause, or decline entering
into contest with the declared law of the land, his
womenkind kept him in the road laid down for
him and vigorously pushed him on. Female com-
municants were shabbily debarred from exercising
the veto, but for all that they were the most
zealous of the supporters of the Veto Act. When
the Presbytery met in the church the most zealous
of the women went there as spectators to see that
the men did their duty, and the men fulfilled
expectations by putting Mr Stewart under their
veto. The Presbytery suspended proceedings
pending an appeal to the next Assembly. The
next Assembly was that of 1843, and the case
was not continued further because Mr Stewart
soon got a much better place.
Before the people of the Glen had been called
upon to testify their adherence to the Veto Act by
acting contrary to the statute law as interpreted by
the civil Courts, Candlish and Cunningham had
142 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
been to Inverness as fiery-cross bearers, and all over
the Highlands, and I suppose the Lowlands also,
meetings were held to hear the cause expounded by
able debaters sent out from the Church's head-
quarters. Principal Dewar of Aberdeen in his best
Breadalbane Gaelic addressed the meeting held in
our church. He did not, like others who were with
him, go out at the Disruption. That fact deprived
him in his native district of the honour in which,
contrary to the proverbial saying, he was formerly
held. I must say that in my teens I thought well
of the people ridiculed as the "Forty Thieves," who
made a last futile effort to prevent the Disruption
catastrophe, and wished to go to Parliament for the
abolition of patronage, and, afterwards, more mature
consideration and more experience convinced me
that if they had been listened to, a great mistake
would not have been made through the blind,
passionate intolerance of both the fighting parties, a
Government bent upon suppressing by main force a
national movement for the redress of a long-felt
grievance, and an ecclesiastical party which advanced
extreme papal claims of spiritual jurisdiction, and
had, when thwarted, soon lost sight of moderation
and the wisdom of working out a desirable purpose
by patient adherence to, and persistency in, orderly
and legal methods. Moderation so lost its character
that the word "Moderate" was used then and long
afterwards as a term of reproach.
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 143
CHAPTER XXV.
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE.
IN associations for secular purposes, even whole
nations are not incapable of recognising their mis-
takes and of trying to correct them. But religious
associations of all denominations ape at infallibility,
and will, as a rule, follow the course they have once
set for themselves although it should lead them to
the gates of Hades. In this twentieth century those
who deplore the deplorable divisions of Scottish
Presbyterianism, and who search back for their
originating causes, will, I have no doubt, say that
the Veto Act was a blunder, albeit a well-intentioned
one, which ought to have been repudiated as soon as
its inefficiency was discovered, and its illegality de-
clared, in favour of that perfectly proper course by
which the abolition of patronage was obtained thirty
years after the calamitous disunion of 1843 had
taken place. It was not till the edge of the preci-
pice had been reached that the demand for abolition
was countenanced by the clerical leaders, who stuck
to their own inflated spiritual independence and
papal infallibility claims, and who, when they did at
last as a great concession to lay-desire for the larger
boon, look at the preferable alternative, did not stop
the march on the line leading over the precipice.
They had given and received provocations not to
be forgiven or forgotten readily. Throughout all
Scotland, and not only from hot religious zeal, but
also, as already noticed, for underlying race defence
144 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
reasons, more blazingly in the Highlands than any-
where else, the national heather was in flames. Dr
Cook and his Assembly minority had not as a party
any just title to the name of Moderates. They and
the Tory lairds, the private patrons, with a few
exceptions, and the Peel Government, had com-
mitted themselves to a policy of coercive repression
which angered the people of Scotland and furnished
the heather-firers with fine torches. Enlightened
patriotism was compulsorily blind-folded or stricken
dumb. By the faults both sides had committed in
this contest, they had unconsciously laid broad
foundations for the Radicalism which at once took
hold of cities and burghs, and came to the top
in the counties when household suffrage was
extended to them. Sir Robert Peel and his
colleagues banished political commonsense to
Jericho when, in utter forgetfulness or utter
ignorance of the lessons taught by Scottish history,
they fell back on the policy of coercion which
had been so ruinous to the Stuart dynasty. Their
Scotch advisers, lawyers, clericals, Tory patrons, and
proprietors who either recommended that policy or
meekly endorsed it, were still more culpable because
they knew, or ought to know, the fierce nature of
the Scottish Presbyterians when called upon by their
Church leaders to rally in defence of their religious
rights, with which in every blue banner mustering,
the cause of civil rights and liberties was dead sure
to be inseparably intertwined in some manner. No
gleam of second-sight faintly showed to the Church
leaders that a generation later on their successors
would not only throw away the grand opportunity
the abolition of patronage provided for re-union, but
bitterly dislike the liberation from the old yoke
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 145
given to the Church of Scotland, adopt a dis-
establishment policy, plunge into unnatural political
association with Irish Separatists, English Socialists,
and so-called Liberationists, and finally by their
1900 Union with the U.P. Voluntaries, stray widely
from the principles of the Claim of Bight and
Protest, and thereby cause other separations. But
if deficient in foresight and recklessly careless about
the future of Presbyterianism in Scotland, they were
adepts at stirring up and organising a big national
movement which had many of the features of a
general trade-union strike. In 1842 this strike was
in the name of the crown rights of Christ and His
supreme sovereignty, plainly and professedly directed
against the unfavourable decisions of the Civil Courts
(which decisions were often garnished with de-
liberate words of offence), and against the repressive,
coercive policy of the Peel Government. It passes
human comprehension to understand how the Scottish
advisers and supporters of that Government failed
to take in the extent and the significance of the
popular movement, and to impress upon Sir Robert
Peel and his colleagues the necessity for resorting
to reasonable compromise. Lord Aberdeen's Act,
passed after the Disruption had taken place, from
its general impracticability and the varying measure
in which ever changing Assembly majorities ad-
ministered it, proved to be much of a costly sham ;
but it was a plausible sham containing a modicum
concession. Had it been passed in the session of
1842 it would, at least, have greatly strengthened
the " Forty Thieves " and added largely to their
numbers. It might even have prevented the catas-
trophe of 1843. Lord Aberdeen in 1841 introduced
a similar Bill in the House of Lords which was still
10
146 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
more of a sham and came to nothing. The rulers of
the Church had in the Presbyterian organisation,
with its Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and
General Assemblies, splendidly constructed machinery
for working up the agitation. As, for example,
in the deposition of the Strathbogie ministers, for
refusing to run their heads against civil penalties,
by obeying ecclesiastical injunction, they used their
spiritual power as despotically as their opponents
used their civil power. Their opponents made some
feeble attempts to hold public meetings to pass
counter-resolutions and to make counter-protests.
But they had no popular organisation at their com-
mand, and as they found that the people would not
attend their meetings, and that they were mocked
as mere class and caste demonstrations, they dis-
continued holding them. They tried pamphlet war
with no better success. The arguments put forth in
those pamphlets, although some of them were good
from the legal and customary point of view, caused
the tide of popular opinion to rise higher and higher
against their side, and to evoke new Radical argu-
ments and threats from hot-headed antagonists. As
soon as the Peel Government displaced the Melbourne
one, threats of separation began to be muttered by
irresponsible individuals on the popular side, but it
was not till that threat was taken up by the
responsible leaders gathered together in Convocation
that Government and country were seriously warned
of such an extreme project as separation being really
contemplated by the then rulers of the Church of
Scotland.
As a matter of fact I know very well that in
our Glen the idea of separation, under any circum-
stances, was at first most unfavourably received
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 147
It would not be too much to say that to all but a
few thoughtless or reckless individuals it caused
consternation. But throughout the whole contest
there had been almost perfect unanimity in favour
of the abolition of patronage by Act of Parliament.
Our people, at the instigation of the Church leaders,
had just applied the Veto Act to prevent the
settlement of a presentee who was only unaccept-
able on mere party grounds. They were far from
being proud of their tame submission to outside
dictation, but they were unitedly convinced that
abolition and not the Veto, with its exhaustive
process possibilities and indefinite delays of settle-
ment, was the remedy that should be sought for.
As a stone rolling down a precipitous hill gains
momentum as it rolls on, so did this movement.
There were parishes in the north, such as Daviot
near Inverness, and Kiltearn in Ross-shire, which
had, years before this, resorted to temporary divisive
courses; but in December, 1842, so highly and so
justly appreciated was the Church of Scotland by
the vast majority of the Highland people as the
most precious part of " dileab nan athraichean "-
the legacy of their fathers that if secession had
been put to the vote, it would, I feel sure, have been
vetoed as plumply as any unacceptable presentee,
and that too in defiance of contrary orders from
headquarters.
How was the alarm calmed ? By assurances
given in good faith by ministers and other trusted
leaders that the Church of Scotland was not in the
smallest danger of being injured by a threat of
secession, which was meant to work in the opposite
direction by forcing the Government to change its
attitude on the whole matters in dispute. The
148 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
threat was made in time for the Government to
change its attitude in the forthcoming session of
Parliament, and if it did so there would be a con-
cordat instead of a secession when the Assembly
met in May. But what would happen if the
Government refused to make any satisfactory con-
cessions ? It was said that in that improbable
event the majority of the ministers, elders, and
people would go out ; but it would be only to be
quickly called back again on conditions satisfactory
to them. Behind Dr Chalmers were whirlwind
riders who were so carried away by the ideas of
their own importance, and so inflated by the cheers
of excited audiences, that they could not now come
down to earth and settle there in comfort unless in
a brand new Church where they would be rulers,
and by which their fame as founders would be kept
high forever. But those whirlwind riders were
yet held in check by Dr Chalmers through his
commanding intellect and conservative proclivities,
supported as he then was by all the older, saner,
and more reasonable men of his party, who, whether
ranked as leaders or as followers in Church courts,
were influential in their own parts of the vineyard.
The threat of separation placed both Church and
State in a very difficult position. But why should
peaceful negotiations be yet despaired of? Both
sides had become too obstinate and blind to the
reasons for expedient mutual concessions, which
reasons were as plentiful as blackberries. So nothing
was done between the meeting of Parliament in
winter and the meeting of the Assembly in May.
Sir Robert Peel, who did not understand Presby-
terian Church affairs nor the temper of the Scottish
people, came to Scotland with the Queen in Sep-
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE. 149
tember, 1842. I saw him for the first and last time
at Taymouth. He was singled out for more obser-
vation in that large gathering than any other man.
A rumour had reached the Highlands that he had
been insulted by an Edinburgh mob, and good care
was taken that he should be respected as Prime
Minister by the children of the Gael. His visit did
not enlighten him on the true inwardness of the
Scotch ecclesiastical crisis. Perhaps the exuberant
loyalty evinced by all classes towards the Queen led
him to suppose that the Queen's Minister might
with a light heart refuse concession to a noisy set of
ecclesiastical agitators. Scotch officials and Scotch
supporters of the Conservative Government deceived
him, and, what is far more strange, honestly deceived
themselves by taking a portentously wrong estimate
of the importance of the agitation. When the
separation threat was issued a short time after his
visit, he might well ask why should an English
Prime Minister, incrusted in English ideas and sup-
ported by Scotch Tories, pay any attention to the
threat, when he was made to believe by those who
should know best, that if he firmly put down his
foot and kept it down, nothing worse would happen
than the secession of a few agitating ministers
whose departure would be a gain. It was not
necessary on that showing to yield to a threat when
yielding would be humiliating to his own credit and
the credit of his Government and party. Having,
as they asserted, to defend civil and religious
liberty, the threateners had voluntarily placed
themselves under a necessity either to humble them-
selves or to make the State yield. Month after
mouth glided by without any practical means being
taken to effect compromise and reconciliation, and
150 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
just in the proportion in which hopeful expectation
diminished, the violence of the agitation increased,
and so did the popular determination to range up
behind those who threatened to throw the unity of
the Church of Scotland over the precipice.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DISRUPTION.
THAT threat was dramatically fulfilled on Thursday,
the 18th of May, 1843, when the majority of its
ministers and elders went out of the General
Assembly, protesting that secession was forced on
them by the encroachments of civil law and rule
which left the Church no proper freedom for carrying
out spiritual functions. But the Protest still em-
bodied the hope of early restoration by surrender on
the part of the Government, .for it contained, in
legal phraseology, a claim for compensation on behalf
of those who left for conscience' sake, for losses
incurred during the time that they were left in the
wilderness. As they were not expelled, but went
out of their own accord, this claim had a strange
look about it. Was it arrogant bravado, or the
expression of an over-confident hope that in the
face of such a demonstration as that of the 18th of
May, and the popular support at the back of it, the
Government would, stricken by dismay, yield all
that was asked of it ? I have no doubt whatever
that among people and ministers in country places,
the hope of immediate restoration through Govern-
ment compliance was very generally entertained for
a short time after the 18th of May. Nor have I
THE DISRUPTION. 151
any doubt that, had it not been for the assurances
they had received on that point, many doubters
would at an earlier stage have utterly refused to
commit themselves to the secession threat, which
the November Convocation had endorsed. A
number of the doubters did draw back in time, and
incurred no small popular obloquy thereby. Others
of them who looked for early restoration and let
themselves be hurried forward, repented of their
credulity before the Disruption month came to an
end, for they saw that the Government remained
obstinately inflexible, and that the Free Church
leaders, with admirable energy and secular skill,
were setting that Church up on separatist founda-
tions.
Telegraphs and telephones were yet undreamed of.
The Highlands were yet unpenetrated by railways,
but stage coaches were running, and favoured places
had daily posts. Our Glen was not important
enough to have a daily post except on week days in
the shooting season ; but before Sunday we got
reports of how the " fathers and brethren" of the
General Assembly had riven the veil of the temple
of the Church of Scotland from top to bottom in
Edinburgh on Thursday, and how the formation of
the " Free Protesting Church of Scotland " had been
impressively proclaimed. I do not think means had
been pre-arranged for the dissemination of the news
before Sunday, nor that there was need for doing so,
since so many from all parts of the country, besides
ministers and elders who were members of Assembly,
had flocked to Edinburgh to witness the event, and
returned home before Sunday, flushed with the
enthusiasm of Covenant days or, in more instances
than could be openly avowed, depressed by doubts
152 REMINISCENCES AND BEFLECTIONS.
and anxieties both on public and personal grounds.
In some of the outlying places to which news of the
Edinburgh proceedings had not come before Sunday,
the sure conviction that secession must have taken
place was assumed and acted upon. The storm of
ecclesiastical excitement which swept over Scotland
from end to end raged like an irresistible tornado in
the Highlands north of the Grampians. Yet there
were ministers there who held firm and kept the
greater part of their congregations, because they
had consistently set their faces against secession, and
were men of good works and more than average
talent and character. In the Highlands south of
the Grampians, although it never rose to such
violence, the storm was ruinous to the Church of
Scotland.
Sunday, the 21st of May, 1843, was the people's
day for giving their testimony. The Moderates
who would not go out had to bear reproaches which
were galling to flesh and blood and spirit. They
were told that they were faithless Christians, and
that on low, personal motives they were deserting in
secular, as well as in religious affairs, the cause of
the people. Moderate ministers were described in
most cases, very untruly, as lazy workers in the
vineyard, and lovers of loaves and fishes. Although
there was no violence, the adherents of the Church
of Scotland suffered no small amount of persecution
when they were small minorities. Those who went
out on that eventful Sunday were not so unanimous
as the act of going out betokened. Some went out
on the hope of being soon back again. Without
that delusive hope hundreds and thousands of the
older people, and of the more or less enthusiastic
vouuger ones would not so suddenly have com-
THE DISRUPTION. 153
raitted themselves to the Disruption. In tha
committal, were it, as they hoped not, to lead to
permanent severance, they knew they were going
against their own convictions and inherited sym-
pathies. Old parish churches our Glen church,
built in 1830, had no such ancient sacro-sanctity
were placed in the churchyards where the fore-
fathers of untold generations slept. Of all people
Highlanders think most of the reverence due to
their dead, and of the privilege of being under the
shadow of the old place of worship while living, and
when dead of being buried in ancestral graves. In
their minds old churches and churchyards seem to
unite the living with their dead of many genera-
tions. The conservatism of mystic association has
a strong hold on Celtic minds. A Highlander
wishing to replace the old ancestral home by a
better one, feels the necessary demolition a painful
task because he remembers that at the door of the
old building symbolic oat-cakes had been broken
above the heads of incoming brides by his people in
joy, and their dead had been carried out over its
threshold in sorrow.
Our Glen church remained closed on that
momentous Sunday, the charge being vacant, and
the Presbytery too much engaged otherwise to
provide a supply. Unless the handful of Baptists
met as usual in the school-house, there was no
Glen gathering at all for religious worship. It was
a fine summer day, and their own feelings made the
people think that a portentous solemnity overspread
the whole Glen. They gathered in knots in houses
or on hillocks, and spoke in hashed tones of what
had taken place in Edinburgh three days before,
and on what was likely to follow. Exultation was
154 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
predominant, but it was not free "from misgiving.
While the more sanguine heard a psalm of thanks-
giving in the voices of the river and the streams,
and saw omens of blessing from on high in the sun-
shine on the hills, the more thoughtful looked with
less assurance at the flitting shadows produced by
passing clouds, and feared that there was an under-
tone of wailing in the voices of the waters, and the
sighing of the faint breezes in the leafy woods.
Moderates were so few and so silent with one
unfortunate exception that they were looked upon
as being practically non-existent. The unlucky
exception was Donald Macdonald, the " maor" or
ground officer on the estate of Culdares, whose laird
was still a minor and an absentee. "Am Maor
Ruadh," the Red Maor, was not at all a bad sort of
fellow, but his drinking habits scandalised the godly,
and his intervention in Church affairs gave deep
offence to many who were not exceedingly straight-
laced. He would have given less offence if he had
not presumed to more than hint that he was the
mouthpiece of the trustees and of the young laird.
It was well known that the young laird had become
an Episcopalian, like many others of his class whose
fathers, like his, had been members of the Church of
Scotland. Intervention by any outsiders in this
quarrel was resented deeply everywhere, and land-
lords who were stauuch Presbyterians only retained
extra influence by putting themselves on equality
with ordinary members of the Church of Scotland.
The Maor Ruadh, after the vetoing of Mr Stewart,
lost any discretion he formerly possessed, and plainly
threatened the Culdares tenants with eviction on
the termination of their leases in 1845, unless they
took warning now and remained quietly, as their
THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 155
landlord wished them to do, in the Church of Scot-
land. This threat, garnished with many oaths,
stiffened backs that were limp before. What came
to pass in two years' time went far to prove that
the Maor.Ruadh was really, in 1843, injudiciously
acting on instructions from his superiors, although
the inhabitants of the Culdares estate then thought
so well of the absent young laird that they stoutly
maintained the threatening interference on his part
to be incredible, and attributed the Maor Ruadh's
vapourings to his vanity and love of dictation.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GLENLYON FKEE CHURCH.
UNTIL July, when the annual Communion was, by
established custom, due to be held, our Glen was
wholly neglected by the ministers of both sides of
the now disrupted Church of Scotland, which, in the
height of power and well-doing, had been so sorely
stricken. But although ministers did not come to
preach to them, the people gathered regularly on
Sundays to prayer meetings held by the elders, all
of whom had seceded. The small handful of
Moderates kept as quiet as mice, for they had no
leader, unless they took the Maor Ruadh for a
leader, and they knew better than to do that. They
knew too well that he had done, unwittingly, service
to the Free Church and disservice to his laird, and
to what was now called, by those who had gone out,
the Residuary Church. They were waiting for what
the dispensers of Crown patronage would send them
in the shape of a presentee, since Mr Stewart was
156 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
not to come. Overwhelmed as they were with
organising worries, the newly-formed Free Church
Presbytery of Breadalbane took care that Glenlyon
should have a Communion on the customary day.
Of course it had to be a Communion in the open
air, and it was settled that it should be held just
opposite the closed and deserted parish church, with
nothing but the burn and its banks between them.
When the Maor JRuadh heard that this was to be
done, he lost the last remnant of self-control, and
took to swearing and threatening at large. The
Glen church is situated on the farm of Innerwick,
which was then held by my mother's brother,
Donald Macnaughtou, and where his father and
grandfather had been tenants before him. When
the Maor Ruadh heard that a tent for the preacher
and tables for the communicants were, with Donald's
consent, to be placed on the field opposite the
church, he at once rushed down from Meggernie to
Innerwick, breathing fire and fury to forbid the
proposed arrangement in the name of the laird, and
to threaten Donald with eviction if he did not
withdraw his consent. My uncle had a temper of
his own, and was moreover a man of independent
mind and spirit, who had, from the purely religious
point of view, decided that it was his duty to join
the Free Church, while regretting that such a duty
should have been forced on him. As he and the
Maor were related, he tried at first to point out to
him that the place was the most central and con-
venient for the people to assemble at. And he went
on to say that if he had not been with them, even if
he had been the rankest of Moderates, he would not
have refused what had been asked of him by the
elders. The Maor raged on : " You had no right
THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 157
to grant their request. The land is the laird's an
not yours. An interdict could be taken out against
you and your elders." Donald's temper was now
roused, and he replied hotly: "The land is mine for
all purposes and uses which are not illegal or not
forbidden by my contract with the proprietor as
long as that contract lasts. Religious meetings are
not illegal, nor is the holding of such meetings on
the land for which I pay rent forbidden by the
conditions of my lease. What may happen when
that lease shall expire I do not know, but I know
this, that I will not listen to your threats, nor
believe that the young laird knows how you are
taking his name in vain, and bringing discredit on
yourself." The wrathful estate official having been
reasoned with in vain, and then answered in wrath
and defied, tent and tables were forthwith set up on
the place separated from the church by the burn.
Interdicts had been so often flying about in the long
Church conflict, that there were some among our
Free Church people who believed that the Maor had
not been talking mere rubbish when he spoke about
the supposed right or intention of the laird to apply
for one, and who, indeed, would not have been sorry
if an interdict sensation accompanied the holding of
the first Glenlyon Free Church Communion.
I was at that open air communion gathering
at Innerwick, as an attentive hearer and keen
observer. I had read so much and listened to, or
sometimes taken part in, so many discussions about
the Church controversy for several years back, that,
young as I was, I had formed opinions of my own
upon it. My sympathies were given to the much
derided " Forty Thieves." I looked upon the Dis-
ruption as a dreadful disaster which had been
158 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
brought about by lamentable blunders, the first and
worst of which was the attempt of the ruling party
in the Church to circumvent an Act of Parliament
by the wretched device of the Veto Act, instead of
working for the abolition of patronage by orderly
political action and legislation, and the last of which
was the Pharaoh -like hardening of heart shown by
the Peel Government when concession was the only
alternative to the event which came to pass on the
18th of May. Yet these views notwithstanding, the
almost awful solemnity of this startlingly novel
communion made a lasting impression on me.
Memory yet recalls the earnest faces of the people
at the tables and of those who formed the outside
audience. The day was a perfect summer day,
and the scene was such as only a poet of the
first rank could adequately describe, or a great
artist adequately depict. Whether communicants
or onlookers, all present felt that this was a Free
Church service of consecration for Gleulyon. Two
ministers of the local Presbytery, and Mr Duncan
Campbell from Ross-shire, the late minister of the
Glen, officiated, and there were many visitors from
Breadalbane, Rannoch, and Fortiugall.
Ere this Glen communion was held, the fond
hope had vanished that the ministers who went out
on the 18th of May would be quickly recalled and
replaced by Government and Parliament hastening
to pass a great Act of grace, such as the abolition
of patronage would amount to. With patronage
would go many other subjects of contention which
arose out of it. Before the end of July many of the
charges left vacant on the 1 8th were already filled
up, chiefly however by the promotion of ministers
of inferior charges to superior ones which meant
THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 159
of course new vacancies. But Government and
private patrons were busy rummaging for qualified
men to send as presentees to, in all cases, thinned,
and in many instances, shadowy congregations, so
that every vacancy should be filled up within the
period of six months to which patronial right of
presentation was limited. Although the hope of
restoration through compulsion was in the form of a
legal claim to compensation retained in the Protest,
I hardly think the advanced section of ecclesiastical
rulers and agitators ever entertained that hope ;
but it was entertained by many country ministers
and by a large portion of the anti-patronage laity.
So it was put in the Protest, but meanwhile
wonderfully quick progress was being made for
securing funds for the sustenance of the ministers
who had gone out, and the building of new
churches for them.
As soon as the intensely devotional and romantic
open-air communion was over, the Glen Free Church
people mustered their forces by subscribing a formal
printed declaration of adhesion to the new denomi-
nation. They formed fully 80 per cent, of the whole
population, and that population was still dense not-
withstanding the Marquis of Breadalbane's Roro
evictions and the steady drawing away by the
voluntary migration and emigration which had been
going on for a long time. Our Free Church folk
were numerous enough to form a good rural congre-
gation, and they were willing to make heavy self-
sacrifice on behalf of the cause to which they had
declared their devoted allegiance, and which they
had now come to look upon as the Church's cause.
But while ready to do their utmost, it was plainly
impossible for them to stand the expense of building
160 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
a church and manse like the old ones, and to provide
an annual income on which a minister could live
decently. Frankly recognising their financial weak-
ness, they went forward in hope, saying, " We shall
do all we can for ourselves, and as for the rest, the
Lord will provide." The first thing they had to do
was to obtain a site and to run up a building in
which they could hold their Sunday meetings
during the coming winter. Here the Marquis of
Breadalbane came to their aid by placing at their
disposal a vacant crofter's house, barn, and byre, at
Balnacraig, a mile below the deserted church, on
the opposite side of the river. He also gave them
timber from Drummond Hill, and window-frames
which had been taken out of the old Taymouth
Castle and stored when the new one was built.
They pulled down the crofter's buildings, quarried
and carted in more stones, and set themselves
methodically to build a roomy church, made without
lime or mortar except about doors and windows.
They had of course to attend to their harvest and
ordinary farm work at the same time. So they
were hard pressed, but their minds were so uplifted
that they laboured incessantly without feeling the
hardship of it. They divided themselves into
parties so that the building should go on by relays
every week-day, and every man and big lad give
a day's work every week. They quickly ran up
strong, neatly built, black walls, piebald with lime
about the doors and windows, on which they placed
a good roof made watertight by divots overlaid
with a thatching of heather. The Glen people were
adepts at building and roofing and thatching, for,
generation after generation, they had to build and
keep in repair their dwellings and farm steadings,
THE GLENLYON FREE CHURCH. 161
getting nothing more than the uncut timber from
the proprietors. When the shell was completed
the inside fittings were taken in hand without a
pause pulpit, precentor's desk, elders' square pew,
and seats for the congregation. Two capable Glen
carpenters, who were paid for five days in the week
and gave their sixth day's work for nothing, had
under them squads of assistants who knew how to
use axe, saw, and plane, as well as trained men, for
was there not a carpenter's bench in almost every
farmer's cart-shed, and were there not carpenter's
tools in every house ? Our church-builders, as they
had good reason to do, took an honest pride in their
work, not so much because it was in itself a credit-
able piece of work, as because it testified to their
devotion to what they thought the cause of Christ
in Scotland. There was a crowded congregation
when Mr Stewart, Killin, who had scarcely settled
in his comfortable manse when he went out on the
18th of May, came to formally open the humble
Balnacraig place of worship on behalf of the Bread-
albane Free Presbytery. Henceforward they had
what, summed up at the end of the year, amounted
to a fortnightly supply of preachers, although there
were several weeks' gaps at times, while at other
times a divinity student officiated for a month or
six weeks consecutively. On Sundays without
preachers, meetings for prayer, praise, and scripture
readings were held by the elders, and well attended.
The leading elder, Mr Patrick Campbell, Koroyare,
who for many years taught the Roro school, could,
if he chose to try, preach better sermons than many
a minister ; but he did not choose to try, because on
our side of the Grampians lay-preaching was dis-
countenanced by Presbyterians, who, whether in or
11
162 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
out of the Church of Scotland, stuck to the old
traditions of order and organisation, of which deep
respect for a learned and trained ministry was a
leading characteristic. " The Men," as they were
called, invaded the sphere of the clergy in the
matter of holding forth like preachers in Easter
Ross and other places north of the Grampian line.
Genuinely pious many of them were, but even the
best of them were full of zeal without knowledge,
and an intolerance, without charity. Such of the
revivalists of the south side of the Grampians as
wanted to hold forth like " The Men" in the North
only found free scope for their gifts among the
Baptists. Our Glen Free Church congregation had
to wait for some years for a regularly trained,
licensed, ordained, and inducted minister. When
John Stewart Menzies of Chesthill, proprietor of the
lower part of the Glen, joined them and gave them
a feu for church, manse, and school, at Cambus-
vrachdan, they at last saw a clear way out of their
long troubles and struggles. From the first they
had been contributing more liberally than they
could well afford to Free Church funds, and now
having made an effort to increase subscriptions
largely, they gave personal labour as well as money
for building the stone-and-lime and slated church
and manse. I am sorry to say that in clearing the
site for the manse, or in trenching ground for the
garden, they destroyed an ancient monument one
of the round forts called " Castullan nam Fian."
This one, however, like the one above the east end
of Fortingall, must have been called " Fortur," an
alternative name for these old fortresses, for in my early
years the old house near it was named " Tigh-an-t-
fhartuir," which, although slightly corrupted, meant
THE BROKEN WALLS OF NATIONAL ZION. 163
the "House of" or "near the Fortur." Their first
minister was Mr Angus Brown, who laboured many
years among them, then went to Inverness, and was
called thence to be Free Church minister of Fort-
rose. He was succeeded by Mr Murdo Macaskill,
who, when he succeeded Dr John Kennedy at
Dingwall, took a prominent part in the resistance
of the Free Church Constitutional party to the
policy of the Rainy-Hutton combination. Mr John
Mackay, afterwards of Cromarty, came next, and he
was followed by Mr John McColl, whose lengthened
ministry led him into the troubles of the Union of
1900, which he joined, while the portion of his
people who did not join got from the Commission
his church and manse.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BROKEN WALLS OF THE NATIONAL ZION.
FROM the Tweed to John o' Groat's, the Church of
Scotland was left in a very dilapidated condition by
the sweeping "beam sleibh" or deluge burst of the
Disruption; but it ravaged the Highlands a hundred
times worse than the Lowlands, although a few
ministers of high reputation and force of character,
and consistency of conduct, firmly kept their footing
and the majorities of their congregations. The most
popular ministers of the day left the Church, shak-
ing the dust off their feet ; and with anything but
farewell words of blessing on their lips. Among the
Moderate ministers left behind were scholarly, cul-
tured men, who were excellent parish workers, and,
in their sober style, excellent preachers also. The
164 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
least active among them attended decently to their
set duties, and few, if any of them, unless sarcasti-
cally, would use the words of the minister who,
when told that many of his people were going off to
the Free Church, is reported to have asked his
informant, "Did you see them carrying away the
stipend on their heads?" The Cook Moderates, who
had now the majority, were resolute defenders of the
Church's broken walls, although their ecclesiastical
policy was too much akin to, and too closely con-
nected with, the Toryism of the new set of landlords,
who separated themselves from their people and
thought of driving them instead of leading them, to
be ever really reconstructive, since it could never be
made acceptable to the people of either Highlands
or Lowlands. The redeeming hope and recuperative
power depended chiefly on the party of the "Forty
Thieves," and particularly on the younger and
bolder men who widened their policy. Cookites
themselves saw that the legal decisions had imposed
undue restrictions on the exercise of spiritual func-
tions, so relief had to be sought from legislation, and
as the Peel Government hearkened to the cry for
relief, and perchance felt remorseful for previous
inflexibility, the worst of the grievances were
removed. But the Peel Government and private
patrons had no thought of capitulating to those who
went out protesting on the 18th of May. The
seriousness of the secession took them completely
by surprise, but they still believed that in the rural
districts at least it would be found impossible to
uphold a Free Church equipment in every parish for
any length of time. That happy inspiration of Dr
Chalmers the Sustentation Fund did what had
never been done before, and gave an establishment
THE BROKEN WALLS OF NATIONAL Z1ON. 165
stability to a non - established church. But it
could not give the equality demanded by the
Presbyterian theory. Nothing could do that but
its own perpetual separate endowment for every
parish. However, that was lost sight of in the
enthusiastic years during which the rich were
giving of their wealth and the poor of their poverty,
like very brethren, to cover all Scotland with Free
Churches and to provide their ministers with in-
comes. A full generation had to pass by ere Time
the Revealer made astonished Highlanders aware of
their dependent position, and of the patronage and
control which went with the holding of the purse.
In truth the spirit in which the Free Church was
founded had to give place to a different spirit before
that revelation came. But to return to the Broken
Walls. Government and private patrons made haste
to find qualified men to present to vacant charges.
They had difficulty in finding a sufficient number of
them for filling up all the vacancies in six months,
but they managed to do so. They mustered what,
without irreverence, might be called a motley host
of returned colonials, schoolmasters with probationer
qualifications, and not a few old probationers who,
hopeless of getting charges, had fallen back into
secular work and habits. 'The young probationers
and the divinity students who were nearly ready for
being licensed were unfortunately few, the larger
number of them having joined the Free Church. In
the motley host there were undesirables who, for the
next dozen years or so, gave the Church Courts
trouble with scandal cases, libel prosecutions, and
depositions. But these undesirables were far fewer
than might well have been expected when there had
been no opportunity for selection. Most of the men
166 REMINISCENCES AJND REFLECTIONS.
who received promotion after they had given up
hope and had become worthy teachers or had fallen
back into secular life, comported themselves with
ministerial dignity, and preached to shadowy con-
gregations with conscientious regularity. They
suffered social boycotting, which amounted to moral
persecution in many Highland parishes, where, how-
ever, they performed the useful service of saving
parish endowments from lapsing and left them open
for successors with better chances than their own.
While other consequences of the Disruption had
to remain on the knees of Time, two were forthwith
perceived, namely, that a new Poor Law Act must
be passed, and that the school system, which with
little cost had done so much good, was to be
subjected to the undoubted evil of division and the
equivocal benefit of educational rivalry. I think
now, as I thought then, that the Church of Scot-
land blundered most foolishly and tyrannically in
depriving the parish and other teachers who adhered
to the Free Church of their offices and incomes.
Had these teachers been let alone, a rival set of
schools would not have been set up by the Free
Church. Although there were some daft fanatics
in that communion who thanked God they were not
like other men, and who maintained it was not fit
that the children of the godly should be taught in
the same schools as the children of the Moderates,
and by teachers who, albeit professing the same
faith, had not all of them the special Free Church
unction of grace, that nonsensical view was not
held by the overwhelming majority of Free Church
parents. The foolish illiberalism of the then rulers
of the Church of Scotland, however, gave the
-anatice their chance, and they used it. / t
THE BROKEN WALLS OF NATIONAL ZION. 167
was in 1856 that Mr Moncrief, then Lord Advocate,
introduced a Bill into the House of Commons,
which, if passed into law, would have remedied a
great deal of the mischief done, by throwing the
schools open to all Presbyterian teachers, and
at the same time would have relieved the Free
Church from what was a growing burden to her,
notwithstanding what her schools earned from the
Government Grant. At our statutory Widows'
Fund meeting, we parish schoolmasters of the
Presbytery of Weem passed a resolution in favour
of Mr Moncriefs Bill, which, on being published,
called out a small ebulition of clerical indignation
that resulted in another meeting being called and
in the resolution being rescinded by the votes of
the members who had not attended the statutory
meeting. My neighbour, Mr Macnaughton, school-
master of Dull, and I stood to our guns ; and our
protest against the rescinding of the resolution, and
our reason for looking with favour on the Bill
being published with the rescinding, the clerical
interveners gained little by having meddled in
the affair.
The ratepayers and taxpayers of this twentieth
century, burdened with the upkeep of public boards
and bodies with numerous officials, will find it
difficult to understand how cheaply and, on the
whole, how satisfactorily affairs were administered
in the rural districts when country gentlemen, as
Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply,
did the work now entrusted to County Councils, and
when ministers and kirk-sessions looked after the
poor. The rapid growth of population in manufactur-
ing towns and districts had, no doubt, outstripped
the powers of the old system to cope with pauperism
168 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
among the heterogeneous multitudes of incomers in
such places, but it was the Disruption which made
it impossible in rural parishes to continue that good
old system any longer. The " box" funds dried up
at their source ; for half of the Sunday worshippers
everywhere, and a vast deal more than that in the
Highlands, had gone off to the Free Church where
all the money they could give (and many of them
ungrudgingly gave more than they could well spare)
was urgently wanted for establishing a . non-
established Church, from the Tweed to John o'
Groat's. Ministers and elders looked of old upon
their unpaid services to the poor as a most important
part of their religious duty. They were able as
Parochial Boards are not to discriminate between
God's poor and the Devil's poor. The widow,
orphan, arid those stricken with disease, and the
honest old man or woman who had fallen upon evil
days, were tenderly cared for, while those poor by
their own laziness or vices were put under religious
and moral pressure to mend their ways, and openings
were found for them to make fresh starts. Under
this pressure, and with new chances, the Devil's
poor were frequently reclaimed from laziness and
evil habits. They were taught that self-help is the
best help of all " Se fein-chomhnadh an comhnadh
is fhearr a th' ami." So well did kirk-sessions man-
age their financial affairs that some of them had
money out on interest, when the 18th of May, 1843,
gave the old system of poor relief and management
its death-blow.
THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. 169
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER.
THE Government, with the help of the Laird of
Ardvoirlich, one of the trustees of the Culdares
estate, found, in Mr David Drummond from Comrie,
a presentee for Glenlyon. Mr Drummond came of a
good farming race, and if he had remained years
after having been licensed without being settled in
any charge, it was for no other cause than his
eccentricity. In life arid conversation he was a
thorough Christian. His talents and learning were
decidedly above the average. I do not know
whether it was true or not, but the story we heard
about him was that in preparing to compete for some
University prize or honour, he had by hard study
thrown himself into a brain fever, out of which he
emerged different from his former self, and also from
the ordinary rank and file. He was always gentle-
manly, and cleanliness he held to be next to godli-
ness. He was particular about his dress, but
eccentric in regard to his brown, curly wig, which,
according to the weather, he took off or put on like
a skull-cap. That is what it really was to him. His
head was partly bald, and the hair on what was not
bald he kept closely cut for health's sake. He had
no thought of disguising baldness by the curly wig,
which went off and on just as he felt his head to be
hot or cold. One day when he preached at Fortin-
gall for Mr Stewart, his treatment of the wig so
astonished that gentleman's little son, that after the
170 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
sermon he ran away to his mother to tell her that
when Mr Drummond came out of the church, he
took off his head and put it in his pocket.
When he came to Glenlyon to preach his trial
sermons, he saw the desolation of the Church of
Scotland there; for he had to preach to congrega-
tions not exceeding twenty in number in a building
which, with its galleries, was then seated for an
audience of seven or eight hundred. The Maor
Ruadh entertained him hospitably, and the few
communicants who remained in signed his call.
There was nobody left to object, and the settle-
ment was carried through without a hitch of
any kind. When settled in the snug little manse,
where a studious bachelor like him should in
other circumstances feel happily lodged, he
found himself placed very much like a sun-loving
plant compelled to pine beneath the shadow of a
yew-tree. His kindly sociable nature craved for
the sympathy and social intercourse which were
denied to him. He had a high idea of his ministerial
responsibilities, wished to do good, and found no
scope for doing it left to him. He could not say
that the Free Church folk persecuted or insulted
him openly, but he suffered just as badly as if they
did. They treated him politely, but as a stranger
who was always to remain a stranger among them.
It was well for him that he could find refuge in
books from the boycotting he had to endure. As
the years slipped by the boycotting slackened. His
peculiarities were laughed at, but his blameless,
guileless character, and high ideals were admired.
The coming of Mr Drummond to the Glen was a
great gain to me. I was beginning to struggle with
Latin, and could get no help in that study from the
THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. 171
young man who was that year the teacher of our
side-school and a capital teacher of the three R's
he was. Mr Drummond, who took much interest
in the school and often visited it, found out my
difficulty, and at once invited me to come to the
manse for evening lessons. I was as eager to learn
as he was willing to teach. So throughout the
winter I walked round by the bridge, or crossed the
river below the manse on stilts night after night to
be drilled in Latin by a man bursting with classical
learning and naturally gifted for imparting instruc-
tion. I worked hard, and under his stimulating
tuition made rapid progress. I was only a young
lad, but when I shook off my shyness, and saw what
a lovable man, a Nathaniel without guile, my
teacher was, I became warmly attached to him.
From being teacher and pupil we became life-long
friends. Nothing could be better for a young lad
than close contact with such a cultured, noble-
minded teacher. On the other hand, in getting a
pupil so eager to learn, the isolated hermit found an
opening for doing goed and some mitigation of his
trying position. I was the first, but not the last, of
Mr Drummond's pupils. There was quite a number
of Glenlyon lads placed under a similar obligation of
unending gratitude to him. It mattered little to
him whether these boys were the sons of Established
Churchmen or Free Churchmen. Mr John Mac-
lellan, the eldest son of the worthy Baptist pastor,
was a specially favourite pupil of his, and he was
proud indeed when this pupil became minister of the
Edinburgh Baptist congregation that Mr James
Haldane had founded, and of which he was the
pastor till his death at an advanced age.
Mr Drununoud carefully wrote out his sermons,
both English and Gaelic. When we got to be con-
172 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
fidential, he told me that he was troubled about his
Gaelic, which he had not cultivated as much as he
ought to have done at Comrie, where it was already
in his boyhood showing signs of dying out. I had
to listen to him reading his Gaelic sermons before
their being preached, and give help in correcting the
mistakes which slipped into them. His command of
Gaelic words was extensive enough for all purposes,
but the case changes and euphony modifications,
which seemed easy and natural to rne from habit,
were perplexing to him, and led him into awkward
expressions. His English sermons, in diction and
substance, were of more than good average quality.
But he had an ambition for extempore preaching
which frequently caused him, after reading the
opening sentences tmd the headings, to roll up the
manuscript and use it as a baton for beating the
pulpit bookboard to give emphasis to thoughts which
had just come into his mind, and which were not in
the written sermons. The written sermon itself had
generally been delivered to the fishes on Saturday,
if the weather was fine; for to commit it to memory,
which lie was never able to do, it was his habit to
read it aloud while walking back and forward in his
glebe on the bank of the river. In similar perambu-
lations he spoke aloud long passages of the sermons
which he was intending to write. When I was
schoolmaster of Fortingall, during Christmas week I
went up Glenlyon late on v a Saturday night to my
father's house with the intention of going to a big
hare hunt on Monday ; for at Christmas the schools
had a few days' holiday. On Sunday morning
snow was falling heavily, and there had been plenty
of snow and ice on the ground before this second
storm had come. Owing to the storm I was a little
THE ECCENTRIC MINISTER. 173
behind time in getting to church. When I went in
I slipped into the nearest seat, and was just in the
act of sitting down when, to my confusion, the
minister, who had opened the Bible to give out the
psalm, hailed me from the pulpit, asked me when I
had come up, and said he was glad to see me there
that day "For," said he, "we are a small company,
but still a larger one than that of the Apostles. '
Minister included, we numbered seventeen. That
day he kept his hat on the top of his curly wig
while giving out the psalms, reading the lessons,
and preaching, but he always took it off at prayers
and singing. He had a most reverent soul, and yet
on sudden impulse he could commit irreverent in-
discretions unconsciously.
Mr Drummond had been preaching for fifteen
years or longer to a skeleton congregation, looking
well after the side-school and catechising the children
that went to it, and, as a labour of love, helping
ambitious lads to a higher education than could be
obtained in that useful class of schools, when he
received a heavy blow. A double calamity indeed
befel him in one year. His trustworthy servant
man died of fever after a short illness. That loss
threw him into a state of sorrowful excitement which
was sad to witness. But the second loss was much
more tragic. His brother's son, Peter Drummond,
who had come from Comrie to live with him, and
whom he was beginning to train for college, was
accidentally killed by the fall of a tree, when the
schoolmaster and the elder scholars were cutting
down birch trees which were given to them for
school-house fuel. Young Peter was beloved by his
school-companions, and well-liked by all that knew
him. He was a bright, intelligent, good-looking
174 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and most amiable lad of fourteen or so, and the idol
of his poor uncle, who had fairyland hopes of the
boy's future career. Long before this sad accident
occurred the Free Church folk had considerably
altered opinion and demeanour in regard to Mr
Drummond. They threw away all reserve on this
occasion, and warmly expressed their sympathy and
affection. Their sympathy helped him to bear his
loss with outward composure, but he could not for-
get, he could not sleep as he used to do, and his
oddities gradually increased. The result was that
some years later he retired on a pension, and went
back to his people at Comrie, and there ended his
days and slept with his fathers.
CHAPTER XXX.
EVICTION.
RONALD STEWART-MENZIES of Culdares completed
the twenty-first year of his age on the 3rd of
January, 1845. His minority had been a long one.
He was a five-year-old boy when his father died,
and on his mother's death soon afterwards, was
taken away from the Glen, to which he only returned
on attaining his majority. He was educated in
England and came back from Eton and Oxford as
much a stranger to the people on his property as
they were strangers to him. Had he been educated
in Scotland and spent his holidays on his own land
many things might have been different. The reason
for his being brought up thus like a stranger was
that his excellent mother died so soon after his
father. She was an Appin Stewart, a daughter of
EVICTION. 175
the Laird of Fasnacloich, and a Gaelic speaking
lady with all the kindly old Highland sympathies
which knit gentle and simple together. Her husband
Avas an amiable man and a j ust and considerate land-
lord. It was naturally hoped that the young Laird
would, as a landlord, tread in the footsteps of his
father and mother, notwithstanding his English
education and alien rearing. As soon as it was
made known to them by the Maor Ruadh that he
was coming to Meggernie Castle with college com-
panions and local gentry to celebrate his coming of
age, preparations were made for giving him a hearty
welcome. Tar barrels and logs of birch and pine
were hauled up the steep " leacuin " to the top of
Craig-an-fhaoraich to be piled in a high pyramid
there for a grand bonfire that would throw its light
far up and down the Glen. On the day of his com-
ing the tenants met him at the march of his estate
on horseback, and escorted him to the castle. On
his birthday the Laird gave a great feast to guests
and tenants in the long empty peat-house forming
one side of the court-yard, which the Maor Ruadh,
who had a genius for such matters, had transformed
with evergreens into a summer bower. The dinner
was followed by a ball, to which all the people on the
estate were invited, and between dinner and this
ball there was a display of fireworks on the wide
lawn which lighted up the fine old trees round the
castle. Old Duncan Dewar and I had been told off
to light the bonfire. The signal for applying the
torch was to be the firing of a gun at the castle.
And we were scolded by the Maor when we got to
the castle for lighting it a quarter of an hour too
soon. It seems the shot we heard and mistook for
the appointed signal was fired at Milton-Eonan by
176 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
some one who, in the dusk, took a pop at partridges
lying among the stubble. The Maor swore terribly
at the unknown poacher, but his adjutant hinted it
was a lucky accident because the premature firing
shortened the after-dinner drinking before it had
gone too far. At anyrate the bonfire blazed splen-
didly, and with the undeserved scolding for a
blessing, old Dewar and I had a good dinner and
then hastened to see the fireworks.
Outdoor and indoor Highland music of the best
was supplied by pipers and fiddlers of more than
local celebrity. At the ball the dancing was kept
up with spirit throughout the long winter night. I
never was a dancer, and never felt that I had been
wronged in not having been taught dancing in early
years. As an onlooker I enjoyed this ball very
much, which was not the case with the lads and
lasses of my age, who took the floor and came away
from the merry gathering full of vexation, and in a
spirit of revolt against ministers, elders, and parents,
who, on mistaken religious grounds, had prevented
them from being regularly taught dancing like the
generations before them. Dancing' had been so
L?
strongly preached down that there had been no
dancing school held in the Glen for twenty years.
It was only surreptitiously that boys and girls were
taught to dance to the Jew's harp or to "ceileireachd"
in out-of-sight places by a few of their elders who
loved the old ways, and were looked upon by the
godly as frivolous persons or incorrigible sinners,
although they were as honest, industrious, and moral
as the best of the pious. As soon as I got into my
teens, I was an outspoken rebel to the authority of
ministers, elders, Baptists, and the "unco guid" of
both sexes in regard to song-singing, fiddling, and
EVICTION. 177
dancing, and I could be all the more outspoken
because I did not care to dance, and because I was
unable to sing ; having, strangely enough, consider-
ing my father's fondness for scraping a fiddle for his
own amusement, no musical gift whatever. I think
the gloomy, ascetic piety which looked upon inno-
cent joyousness of life as either sinful or leading to
paths of sin was more genuine and wide-spread in
Glenlyon before than it was after the Disruption.
Ecclesiastical controversy is not conducive to the
advancement of real piety of any sort ; for it fills the
minds of the controversialists with other thoughts
than those of introspection and supererogatory
analyses of positive and relative good or evil. The
spirit of the Disruption was not a spirit of mystic
asceticism, but one of holy war, sacrifice, and con-
struction. It was, in modern form, the spirit which
sent Crusading armies to Palestine, and impelled
mediaeval Europe to build grand churches and
monastic establishments. The Meggernie Castle ball
was an eye-opener to the young people who had not
been allowed to learn dancing properly though
most of them had surreptitiously practised steps and
got some idea of figures. They felt shy and awk-
ward because of their ignorance of the art, but they
went in for the dancing with all their heart. A
spell was broken, though what had been lost could
not be restored. The young people were all the
more vexed because parents who formerly yielded to
or sided with the prohibitionists now danced as
merrily as if the days of their youth had been
brought back to them by the fine fiddling of their
Roro countryman, and coeval little Mackerchar of
Dunkeld, and the rest. The dancing of the elder
people was so excellent as to put that of their sons
12
178 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and daughters to open shame. I watched the kirk-
session elders who were present, to see whether the
music and dancing excitement would so thoroughly
renew their youth as to compel them to take the
floor. They resisted the temptation, but they
looked on with beaming faces.
A great shinty match concluded the coming of
age celebrations. In the Glen we called shinty
"camanachd" from "caman," the bent stick or
club, and football we named "creatag," which
simply means ball. In both forms the game was a
favourite one with schoolboys. The Kirk had very
rightly put down the Handsel Monday cock-fighting
at the school, but left the other games untouched.
These were shinty, football, rounders, duckstone,
terzie or "eun-corr" (odd bird), races, wrestling, etc.
As a very little boy I was present at the last cock-
fight held at Innerwick, and did not like it at all,
though seemingly the grown-up people who came to
see it liked it well. But to revert to the Meggernie
Castle "camanachd"; boys under fourteen being
rejected from the ranks of war, divided themselves
into rival teams, and went off to play in a separate
part of the long, level haugh. Culdares and a
friend of his divided the multitude of adults between
them, and the battle, which began early in the
morning of a frosty day, was finished by moonlight.
Among the players were several heads of families
who would not see fifty again. Pipers played
stirring war-music, which warmed their blood. The
spirit of fun and frolic seized upon them, and they
entered the lists feeling their youth renewed. But
the reverse of what happened at the ball happened
on the field. In the dancing the young were put to
shame by the better-taught, elderly people ; on the
EVICTION. 179
field the young men and lads showed the "bodaich,"
who strove their best, that their sons were the
better players. We called Culdares and his com-
pany the Castle Defenders, and their opponents the
Invaders. I myself belonged to the Invaders.
Victory was to be decided by the winning of two of
three goals or "taothalan." The companies were
evenly matched. I think all the Glen people wished
that Culdares should fairly win. I am sure that
such was my own wish, but I played my best for the
Invaders, and so did the rest of my side. Our
captain was good at arranging his men and retriev-
ing defeat. Culdares and his company won the first
"taothal" easily. We (the Invaders) struggled hard
to win the second, and very barely succeeded.
Then came the concluding struggle, which was the
longest of all, and which, as the light was failing,
ended in our favour rather by accident than merit.
As we confessed that it was accident and bad light
which gave us the victory, both sides were pleased,
and we parted with loud cheers of mutual good-will
and pleasure. On the Sunday which came after the
Camanachd, Culdares and his guests, among whom
it was said there was not a single Presbyterian,
went in carriages, as in a State procession, to the
parish church. It was known beforehand that this
was to take place ; but if the idea was anywhere
entertained that people who had joined the Free
Church would be led by sycophancy or curiosity to
go that day or ever back to the church they had
left, it was at once proved to be a delusion. The
Castle party only saw the desolation the Disruption
had wrought there. Young Culdares was much
mislti if he was made to believe that his temporary
patronage of a church to which he did not belong
180 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
would have any influence in changing the opinion of
the Glen people on church questions; opinions which
they had deliberately formed for themselves, and
deliberately resolved to act upon. In secular poli-
tics they were not so stiff-necked. At the 1841
Election, all the tenants on the Culdares estate,
with a solitary exception, voted willingly for the
Tory candidate, Mr Henry Drummond, who won the
seat for Perthshire, because they relied upon Sir
Robert Peel, little foreseeing his 1 846 conversion, to
i-esist the abolition of the Corn-laws. The exception
was the oldest elder in the Glen, Duncan Macalum,
who was one of the four partners on the Eight
Merkland club farm.
When the short visit came to an end the people
on the estate thought themselves blessed in having
a young laird in whom they saw blended all the
good qualities of father and mother, and who had
far more advantages on entering on his inheritance
than fell to their share. Glen people were sharp
readers of character. They read their young Laird's
character very correctly. He possessed all the good
qualities they ascribed to him ; yet, when they
wished he would soon make a happy marriage and
find a wife with strong will and plenty of common
sense, they hinted that they suspected that he was
one of those amiable well-intentioned people who
are easily influenced by those who are their intimate
companions. The happy marriage came and the
suitable wife was found, but ere that happened the
young Laird had made haste to do something which
could never be undone, and which there is good
cause to believe he much regretted afterwards. In
January the people on the Culdares estate were
boasting loudly of their Laird to their neighbours
EVICTION. 181
on other properties. They saw no cloud on their
own sky, for although the last short leases granted
by the trustees were to expire in May, they had no
doubt but that they would be renewed on just terms.
They were ready to offer the former rents, because
seasons and prices were mending, but as the trustees,
during the six hard years, had not been able to give
abatements of rent like proprietors who were free to
do what they thought right, and as the losses in-
curred in these hard years were yet a heavy weight
on them, they hoped the Laird would listen to their
request for a small lowering of the rents which had
been sent up to war price thirty years before and had
been kept up ever since. But if he would not give
that small reduction for the ensuing nine years'
leases, they would struggle on to pay the old rents,
or even more, rather than be turned out of their
holdings. During the life-time of the young Laird's
father, they had been accustomed to bargain face to
face with him and his factor. When leases termin-
ated the trustees advertised the farms to let, which
the late Laird did not do, but continued the practice
of giving the old tenants an opportunity for mending
their offers ; so while the trust lasted there were no
changes at all, except such as must always occur by
the dying out of families or their resignation of
holdings.
The young Laird took good care that the old
tenants should not get the chance of having a
personal conference with him. He held his setting
or re-letting meeting in the offices of the Edinburgh
firm which did his legal and factorial business for
him. The Maor Ruadh was called to Edinburgh,
and came back with his own dismissal notice in hie
pocket. What the Laird decided to do was to turn
182 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
eight farming families out of their holdings, and
three crofters out of their small bits of land. The
four farmers of the Eight Merkland, of whom my
father was one, were among the evicted. The whole
big club farm was let to one tenant, who offered a
small advance on the old rent ; but gave up the
farm at the end of his nine years' lease, and left the
Glen. At that time there was a craze for making
large sheep farms out of holdings in which the
arable land was divided among tenants who had the
adjoining hill-grazing in common. The Marquis of
Breadalbane and the Duke of Sutherland had above
all others set this fashion. In this year of grace
(1909) the cry is for sending people back to the
land. And a very good cry it is, but all the same
it was much easier to send them off the land in last
century than it is now to induce them to go back to
it. Here I may, in passing, make a remark or two
about club farming and crofter farming, as in my
youth I was necessarily well acquainted with the
large club farms in Glenlyon, and in after years,
when schoolmaster of Fortingall, was one of forty
who had hill grazings in common and arable land
separately. The crofter township system is so
well known that I may pass over my Fortingall
experience, and as regards large club farming I shall
at once confess that in my opinion separate holdings
would on the whole be much preferable, if they
could be obtained in such a way that there might
be some proportion kept between arable and hill
distribution. What I have in view is the formation
of farms large enough to give employment all the
year round to an average farming family, and a
chance of profit sufficient to provide simple life
subsistence, and modest fair wages for labour and
EVICTION. 183
a small return on the tenant's invested capital.
There are few places in the Highlands in which
separate farms of moderate size can be so con-
veniently parcelled out as in the Lowlands. Club
farming in one or other of the forms used of old is
the only way by which a due apportionment of the
small arable and meadow land, and of the large hill
grazings and rocks, can be in a measure obtained.
Now the club farming of Glenlyon, to which I was
in early days accustomed, worked well and smoothly.
The arable land was much better cultivated than it
has been ever since. The sheep stocks were well
managed, and the stock of cattle and horses, kept
and wintered, was very large. What made the
losses of the hard years so heavy was that at that
time too many sheep were wintered at home.
Consolidation was not believed to be the Laird's
sole motive in turning out the four tenants of the
Eight Merkland without as much as giving them an
opportunity for mending the offers they had sent in.
Duncan Macalum, the premier elder, who voted
against the Tory candidate in 1841, was a marked
offender, and all the four tenants had joined the
Free Church. As for the tenant of Innerwick, there
could be no mistake in his case. His farm was a
one man's farm, and remained so ever afterwards.
He was himself the best tenant that farm ever had.
He sinned beyond forgiveness by letting the Free
Church open air communion be held, in spite of the
Maor Ruadh's threats, on the bank of the burn
opposite the Innerwick Church. As for Gallin and
Ross, it was subsequently alleged that the former
was to be taken to enlarge the Meggernie home
farm. Ross, strange to say, was soon let to the
evicted Innerwick tenant and his partner, Hugh
184 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Maclaren, who had taken the big sheep farm of
Lochs on the Breadalbane estate. The poor Maor
Ruadh had acted seemingly on his instructions in
trying to browbeat the people at the time of the
Disruption. He meant well by them although he
acted injudiciously. Though too fond of strong
drink and strong language, he was a clever estate
manager and a faithful servant to his employer.
It was his unhappy fate, on behalf of an absent
employer who knew not the nature of the Highland
people, to have to intermeddle unsuccessfully in the
Church question. If his bullying had prospered,
perhaps his unsteadiness might have been forgiven.
He took a pledge of total abstinence when he left
Glenlyon, and kept it during a long period of service
in Isla as an estate official. He came back from
Edinburgh in 1845 in a most dismal mood, lament-
ing the eviction of old tenants much more than his
own dismissal. He admitted enough to show
that he fully believed the eviction had been pre-
determined, but he would neither deny or corroborate
the story which gained currency to account for the
young Laird's precipitate action. That story was to
the following eifect.
In 1843, some cause probably the Atholl
Gathering had brought about a large assemblage
of landed proprietors. Such of these as were of the
new post-Reform Bill school of Toryism put their
heads together, and agreed to hold a secret meeting
at some place I think Pitlochry was the place
named to discuss the Disruption and the best means
for counteracting its apprehended Radical tendencies,
and effect on party politics. The men who attended
this secret meeting were either young proprietors
like Culdares, or the heirs of old gentlemen whose
EVICTION. 185
lives were nearly ended. The conclusion come to
was so ran the report that Free Church tenants
should be driven in Church matters as they had
already been driven to vote as their proprietors
asked them to do. A resolution to this effect was
passed and signed by all present, excepting two or
three who protested and pointed out that what was
contemplated could not be carried out, and that if
it could, its consequences would be disastrous to just
and reasonable landlord influence. Culdares was
the first member of the secret conclave who, by the
expiry of leases, had power to re-let his farms as he
liked. He probably thought himself in honour
bound to act in accordance with the iniquitous policy
of the foolish compact. He did what he thought he
was in honour bound to do ; but he was the only
one of the conclave who did so. When the others
had the freedom of re-letting their farms they had
not the courage or unwisdom to do as he had done,
and as they had bound themselves to do. I believe
this story had a solid foundation of truth, although
there may not have been a written and signed, but
merely verbal, agreement to push the driving policy
of the new Toryism beyond party politics into the
ecclesiastical sphere. Such an extension Scotch
people, whether Highland or Lowland, were dead
sure to resent and to resist victoriously, and keep in
resentful remembrance ever afterwards.
186 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XXXI.
FAREWELL TO THE OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM.
THE eviction notices gave rise to much commotion in
the Glen. Astonishment, indignation, and conster-
nation were all mingled together. The opinion they
had formed of the young laird was wholly contrary
to his unexpected action ; and yet that favourable
opinion was upheld by his future conduct. Hot
indignation arose that Culdares, who, unlike his
father, was not a Presbyterian, should use his power
as a landlord to punish people for exercising their
religious liberty, with which none but themselves
should have anything to do. The consternation was
momentary, but bitter while it lasted. The Glen
people were accustomed to take the blows of evil
fortune standing, and to seek at once for self-help
as a means of recovery and an outlet of escape. For
forty years they had been unwillingly feeling that
the old industrial system was slipping off its ancient
foundations cattle and calanas- and migrants and
emigrants were going out from among them to seek
their fortunes in Lowland towns and in the Colonies.
When the huge shealings of the Braes and of Lochs
had been turned into sheep runs, a fatal blow was
given to the old system from which it could never
recover again, although the high prices of the war
times and the still very flourishing state of the
domestic flax-spinning industry threw a veil over
the approaching fatality. In 1845 it was obvious
enough that in the Highlands sheep-farming now
FAKE WELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 187
paid best, and that the domestic industries were
being made unprofitable and killed by mill machinery
and steam power. The flax industry, however,
might have been kept as it was in Ulster had it not
been given up in despair when large sheep-farms
became the rule, and when the old communities
were upset by changed estate management, con-
formed to changed conditions of profitable labour,
and, finally and worst of all, by the self-evictions of
the people themselves, who poured into the towns
and manufacturing and mining districts, with chances
of disappointment if they went away in large groups
and in families, for town-life is not natural to High-
landers, nor do they take readily to urban industries.
As for individual Highlanders who migrated to
towns sixty years ago, they found free scope for
their various ambitions, and as a class they took
with them, from their glens and isles, moral and
mental qualities which, as a rule, ensured moderate
and, in exceptional cases, eminent success. How
completely sixty years have reversed the then state
of affairs ; cities, towns, manufacturing districts,
over-crowded, and urban life and habits undermining
the national manhood ; the rural districts desolated
by their people deserting them for uncertain wages,
amenities, and vices of towns ; Highland large sheep-
farms no longer lettable at half the former rents, and
not a few of them converted into deer forests, while
"back to the land" is the cry of the people who
would not know how to work the land if they got
it for nothing, and would undoubtedly prefer the
fate of Poplar and West Ham paupers to the simple
and hardy life of well-to-do Highland farmers of the
first half of last century !
Naturally, in consequence of the loss of the
shealings and the lessening value of domestic indus-
188 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
tries, there was more congestion of population on
the Roro and Chesthill estates, in the lower part
of the Glen, than there ever was on the Culdares
estate. The Marquis of Breadalbane took advantage
of the impoverishment the losses of sheep in the
hard years had brought upon the Roro tenants to
make a clearance there. On the Chesthill estate it
was impossible that the Innervar crofters should
get on as they did before, when the flax and
other industries helped to keep them in frugal but
cheerful contentment. Their welfare depended on
the now superseded ancient industrial system which
had existed without any important variation from
the time of which we have any fairly full written
records say the reign of Alexander III. until the
sheep regime invaded it in the last thirty years
of the eighteenth century, and manufacturing
machinery and steam power gave it its death blow
in the next century. Highland proprietors and the
Highland people were flotsam and jetsam in the
swirling eddies of a resistless stream of change. In
this twentieth century we are in the back-flow of
that stream, and, horrified by urban congestion, and
the moral and physical degeneracy it entails, we
take up the cry " Back to the land."
Before the 1845 disturbances, the estate of
Culdares would have suited the present-day land
reformers who wish to see the country divided into
moderately sized farms, interspersed with artisan
and crofter villages. Its farms, where there was
arable land, were large enough without being too
large. The crofters, who were not many, comprised
a carpenter, a smith, a weaver, and some working
men families. As for the Braes, which formerly
were shealings, they have no arable land worth
FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 189
maintaining, and can only be used as shealings or
deer forests, or sheep runs. Mr Charles Stewart
had them, along with the farms of Cashlie and
Chesthill on the Chesthill estate, until he was
knocked out by the losses of the hard years. He
was a famous breeder of Highland cattle, and his
blackfaced sheep stock was ranked among the best
in Scotland. When he failed, through no fault of
his own, but through the inclemency of the seasons,
which ruined many large sheep and stock farmers,
the Braes, after a few years, fell into the hands of
Border incomers, who never resided there per-
manently, and who, to the end of their long holding,
never assimilated with the rest of the people.
Speaking of the hard years reminds me that in
one of them, 1839, I nearly lost my life in a snow-
storm. The harvest of 1838 was not gathered in,
and late black oats were not cut, when frost and
snow came early in November, and the grouse left
the hills to cluster on the stocks. A short-enduring
thaw, however, allowed the harvest work to be
finished in a hurried way ; but the ice on the river
never broke up. For eleven weeks at a stretch
people who wished to shorten the distance to church
in some places crossed the river on the ice ; and no
plough could turn up the frozen glebe until the
seventh of April. There was a succession of snow-
storms up to the end of March, with intervals of
cold winds and sunshine between, which left the
high tops of the hills and the sharp hillocks on the
lower ground bare, while the rest remained under a
heavy snow cover. I think it was at the end of
February, but it may have been March, when I was
sent early one dreadfully stormy morning to tell the
Craigelig men to turn out to gather in the sheep to
190 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
sheltered places, and to dig out such of them as they
found in hollows covered with the drifting snow. I
was then a boy of eleven, and, like all Glen boys of
my age, wore the kilt, which is a good dress for
summer mountaineering but not for deep heaps of
snow in which one sinks up to the knees at every
move. I had only a mile to go, and although the
wind had risen to hurricane pitch, and the falling
and drifting snow were blending together, I did not
think of danger, nor did anybody else. The first
and larger part of the distance I got over without
much difficulty, but when I was so near my journey's
end that in calm weather I could send a shrill cry
for help to the nearest farmhouse, I got stuck in a
soft, newly-formed wreath of snow, and when I at
last ploughed through it breathless and exhausted,
it was to find another and bigger wreath barring
further passage. The whistling, hissing wind and
drifting snow affected me curiously. I feared noth-
ing. The only wish I had in the world was to rest
and sleep. But I was the bearer of a message which
ought to be delivered without delay, and so must
struggle on. It then flashed on my mind that as
those heaps had gathered at a bend of the park wall
near the road, if I got to the wall I could walk on
the top of it. That thought saved me. I managed
to struggle in the hollow between the two snow
barriers to the wall, which I reached in a dazed
condition. But as soon as I got upon its rough,
uneven, slippery stone-coping, strength, confidence,
and care of life, absent before, at once returned.
There was no further difficulty. I reached the
houses and delivered my messages. The sheep
rescuers turned out and marched away, not on the
blocked road on which I had so nearly stuck, but by
FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 191
the wind-swept fields within the park wall. I
remained behind resting and recovering until the
hurricane abated, and followed in their tracks.
One youthful recollection recalls others. I think
it was in the same winter of 1838-39, the worst of
the whole bad series, that the following incidents
occurred. I had been reading " Robin Hood "
stories, and also hearing from local seanachies the
tale of a wonderful feat of archery when one of the
Malcolms or Calums was king, and Glenlyon was a
royal hunting ground and a place in which there
was a summer mustering of the Feinn. The mound
from which the famous shooting took place is called
" Tullach Calum," or the mound of Calum, to the
present day, and the far away spot on the other
side of the river which the arrow reached is, or at
least was then, kept in remembrance. The archery
stories which took such a hold of me I passed on to
my schoolmates, with the result that a mania for
making bows and arrows seized on us. With the
help of Peter, our ploughman, I made for myself a
stiff hazelwood crossbow, and three arrows with
heads hardened in the fire, and feathered in a kind
of way too. We were forbidden to tip them as we
wanted to do with big pins or headless nails, lest
serious accidents should be the result. Even with
the blunt arrows we were a nuisance while the craze
lasted. We tried shooting straight and shooting
compass, and sometimes killed a crow, but usually
our arrows failed to hit the object aimed at,
although they always struck pretty near it. I only
once in my school life played truant, and this
archery craze was the cause of my doing so. My
cousin, Duncan Macintyre, was my companion in
this affair. We slunk early past the schoohouse
192 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
with our bows and arrows, and went away to where
we knew crows to be diligently working for their
daily bread, and sure to be found. We did find the
crows, and worried them with our arrows, which on
a few occasions hit but never killed or disabled
them. In pursuing the crows we came to heath-
clad sands and gravel hillocks on which grouse
gathered, it being a sunny day between storms, and,
tops excepted, nearly the whole land was lying
under snow. We knew well that it was a high
offence in the eyes of our parents, as well as in
those of the gamekeeper, who rather encouraged us
to kill rabbits, and could wink at the killing of
hares, to meddle in any way with the grouse. But
how could boys in possession of bows and arrows
resist the temptation of shooting at birds that
gathered in clusters like targets ? We let fly again
and again, and our arrows always fell among them
or very near them, but not one of them lost a
feather by our archery. That day's experience
cured our craze, and our truancy escaped detection
and the punishment it deserved.
My other bit of poaching that year was no
poaching at all, because I went to tell my grievance
to Donald Stalker the gamekeeper, who lent me a
trap and said I was free to kill the depradator if
I could. From my earliest years I had a strong
instinctive, but wholly uninstructed, liking for
gardening. How that came to me I do not know,
for, like most Highlanders, the Glen people,
although the best of farmers, were negligent and
bad gardeners, who cultivated hardly anything
more than curly greens and cabbages, with some
gooseberry and currant bushes among them. At
the same time they were full of nature feeling, and
FAREWELL TO OLD INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. 193
had a wonderfully wide knowledge of plants, as
well as of wild creatures. Now my father had two
gardens, one close to his house, and what we called
the "Garadh Dubh," or Black Garden, below the
churchyard, which had for hundreds of years been
the garden of the alehouse or inn of Bail-na-h'
eaglais. When the Bridge of Balgie was built, the
inn was removed to the end of it, and a new garden
and croft provided for it. Through the removal of
the inn my father came to have two gardens. He
gave me a part of the Black Garden, in which I
pottered away with my amateur experiments. I
dried potato apples on strings, and raised new
potatoes from the seed of them. With onions,
leeks, and peas I had likewise fair success. I sowed
little beds of cabbages and curly greens for planting
out next spring, and it was to save these beds and
other things that I got a trap for killing a hare
which had made night ravages among them. I set
the trap at dusk with much care, and when I went
to see it next morning what did I find in it but my
mother's best cat with a fore leg broken and the
bones protruding. The poor creature, furious with
pain, scratched my hand pretty badly when I was
opening the trap. When freed he hobbled painfully
to a hollow tree-stump at the churchyard wall, into
the hole of which he sank out of sight ; and there,
being so much damaged, he must soon have died in
the freezing weather. I re-set the trap and kept
silent, hiding as best I could my wounded hand.
Next day when I went to see the trap I found the
robber hare in it, and when I triumphantly handed
over the second catch, I told all about the cat
affair, and having confessed, felt a weight off my
conscience.
13
194 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Of all the wild creatures the badgers were the
least troubled and distressed during the hard years.
They had their usual fare in the open season and
slept comfortably in their lairs throughout the long
and stormy winters. We had two badger lairs on
the Eight Merkland hills, one in the Faradh above
Craigelig, and the other three miles away at the
further end of Larig Bhreissladh. Crows and rooks
as well as all the tribes of small birds, pushed them-
selves among the hens and pigs to snap up some
food. The gulls, fortunately for themselves, always
got away to the sea in time to escape the early
winter storms and did not come back until spring
ploughing was going on. I believe it was in the
winter of 1839-40 that a pole-cat came down from
his hiding place on the high hills to forage among
the hen-roosts. At most farm-steadings the hen-
roost was placed over a heap of peats at the inner
end of an open cart shed. Now this foraging pole-
cat one night killed six or seven of the elder's hens,
and the very next night killed seven or eight of
ours. He did not eat much of their flesh but merely
sucked their blood and left them. There were
lamentations over the ravaged roosts, and fears
about the yet unvisited ones. This sly and rare
pole-cat unless hunted down and killed, would be a
perfect vampire for the Glen poultry. Therefore
men and dogs gathered to hunt him down. The
first day's hunt was not successful. Perhaps he
needed to sleep and rest after having gorged himself
with so much hen's blood. But, if so, he was in a
day or two awake and out at night for further
mischief. This time he killed three hens in the inn
byre, and was disturbed before he could proceed to
kill more. Unluckily for him he had to run away
EMIGRATION. 195
to his hole under the roots of a tree on the river
bank, leaving foot-marks on the thin cover of new
snow. There in his temporary stronghold he was
besieged in the morning by men and dogs. The
tree was cut down, but he still remained safe in a
recess behind it until he was smoked out and killed
on the ice of the linn when trying to run away. In
the final struggle he had no chance, but he did not
allow himself to be killed before he gave the dogs
and men malodorous proof that he belonged to the
skunk class of animals notwithstanding his fine fur.
CHAPTER XXXII.
EMIGRATION.
THE people he turned out of their holdings did not
hate or curse the Laird, but rather pitied him and
excused him on the score of youth, alien upbringing
and education, the influence of English views on
property rights, and of the new Scotch Toryism
which left nothing really Highland to many young
men with large estates and long lines of ancestors
glorified in Gaelic songs (which these degenerates
could not understand) beyond empty pride in a
vanished past and the gewgaws of Highland dress
and accoutrements. The larger number of those he
evicted never saw him again. He remained in
England or on the Continent or elsewhere in Scot-
laud until they cleared away ; but for that absence
he fully atoned by providing them with work and
wages during the year they had necessarily to
remain for delivering their crops at Martinmas,
selling their household chattels, and winding up
196 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their whole affairs in Scotland. The trustees had
been chary in spending money on improvements ;
but they saved money which the laird was now
spending freely, and wisely also, in planting, drain-
ing, fencing, repairing and enlarging Meggernie
Castle, and generally making up for arrears of
neglect during his long minority.
The majority of the evicted at once resolved to
emigrate as soon as their affairs were settled.
Emigration indeed was always more or less steadily
going on since the war with France ended. The
idea of it was never absent from the thoughts of the
young and adventurous. In the year before the
eviction a small band of young people from the
Culdares estate had gone to Ontario, then called
Upper Canada. Some years earlier a larger band
from the Glen had gone to Port Philip, Australia,
which now means Melbourne not then in existence.
Stray individuals had also found their way to New
Zealand and South Africa. The migrations at home
which had been perpetually, if silently and little
noticed by historians, going on from immemorial
times had now become brisker than ever before.
Expanding cities and towns, railway construction,
mining districts, and manufacturing districts offered
boundless openings to incomers. But although at
first sight it might seem natural that Highland
families should follow the " calanas," that coal,
steam, and mill-machinery had taken away from
them, the southward migration from the central
Highlands remained for many years what it had
ever been, a drifting of individuals rather than of
families. The potato disease, however, caused a
great drove to go to Glasgow and its neighbouring
districts from Argyll, the Isles, and the West Coast.
EMIGRATION. 197
To our Glen people emigration was a familiar and
far from disagreeable idea, and the thought of town
life and work, especially for the women and children,
was more than unattractive, positively abhorrent.
They thought deeply, reasoned thoroughly, and
resolved wisely. If they went with their families to
manufacturing towns, they would have to begin life
anew as unskilled labourers, their women and chil-
dren would be the slaves of the mill, and they would
have to put up with miserable homes amidst low-
class neighbours, who had no faith or morals. They
admitted that many Highlanders who went south
flourished in business or professions, both in England
and Scotland, and they were proud that among
them were Glensmen and relatives of their own ; but
they said that only young men without family cares,
and with determination to succeed, could be certain
of getting on by migrating, while emigration would
enable whole families to live and work together as
they had been accustomed to do. In towns, the
knowledge of farming and country life which they
possessed would be of no use ; while in a new country
and on land of their own, they would be of infinite
value to themselves and of advantage to the new
country. So they resolved to emigrate. They
could not have done anything better. They could
pay their passage, and, after arriving in Canada,
have money with which to buy forest farms and to
keep themselves supplied with necessaries until they
cleared land and raised crops. Habitable dwellings
could be easily run up in the woods, and what had
they to learn in respect to cattle and farming
except slight climatic differences, to which a year's
experience would teach them to adapt themselves ?
In their estimate of themselves there was no
198 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
exaggeration or mistake. They were about the
fittest and most resourceful farming colonists that
any new country could possibly have. The United
States had no attraction for them. They were full
of British loyalty, and wished to live under the
British flag, and their descendants to do the same in
secula, seculorum.
They preferred Canada to all other Colonies,
because they had there many kith and kin to give
them welcome and helpful advice. The connection
with Canada began with the capture of Quebec,
when among the other Highland soldiers who re-
mained behind as colonists, were two or three Glen-
lyon men who drew out their relations across the
Atlantic to join them. The connection thus formed
broadened a good deal during and after the war
between Great Britain and the United States, and
about 1816 it received a new accession of strength
by the company of Glenlyon emigrants who joined
other Highlanders in colonising Glengarry and its
chief village or town, Lancaster, some seventy miles
above Montreal. Our people of 1845 never thought
of any other place of refuge. Although the time of
mail steamers and cheap postage had yet to come,
they had correspondence with emigrated friends in
various parts of what is now the wide Dominion of
Canada, and with at least one Glensman on the
hunting prairies, Robert Campbell, who rose high in
the service of the Hudson Bay Company. They
were therefore fairly well informed about Canadian
scenery, climate, productions, and varieties of soil.
Their later emigrants and many Breadalbane ac-
quaintances had gone to Upper Canada now
Ontario and settled in a successful way about
places subsequently called London and Ailsa Craig.
EMIGRATION. 199
Among the pioneer Highland settlers in that region
was Iain Mor Stewart from Innerwick, who, with
his wife and a large family of children, chiefly sons,
went out in 1833. Iain Mor was the eldest son of
his father, but as he got a farm of his own and
married in his father's lifetime, his next brother,
Gilleaspa Mor, who, after the old man's death,
married my aunt (Mary Campbell), took his place in
the paternal Craigelig holding, and his widowed
mother remained with him. Now Gilleaspa Mor,
with his wife and eight children, and his two
widowed sisters, each with families almost equally
large, formed the solid core of the 1846 band of
Glenlyon emigrants, and in one way or another, by
kinship or affinity, the others were almost all con-
nected with them. The old settlers made arrange-
ments for receiving those who were to emigrate from
Glenlyon and Breadalbane in 1846, and facilitated
the placing of them. The outgoers formed a
numerous company. They had a favourable but
tedious voyage, in a sailing ship of course, and lost
none of their number by sea or on the land journey
afterwards. Glad indeed they were when they
reached their destination.
The most picturesque figure of the Glenlyon
exodus was Margaret Macnaughton, a dame of
ninety, who was still as straight as a girl of
eighteen, and walked with firm and almost springy
step. She was the mother of Gilleaspa Mor and
the two widowed sisters, and the grandmother of
their children, more than twenty in number. With
this squad of descendants she was marching away
to Ontario, where she would see once more her
eldest son and his wife and their large family.
Another son, Duncan, the youngest, who was an
200 BEMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
officer of Excise on the Moray Firth, and had also
a large family, remained behind in Scotland. She
had, at the head of her emigrating band, therefore,
good cause to consider herself a patriarchal chief-
tainess. But her thoughts took another line. She
was afraid of being left behind and provided for, as
had often been done in cases like hers when old
people feared to face the long voyage and land
travelling. She feared none of these things, and
yet, I daresay, had never in her long life been fifty
miles away from her birthplace. Her father had
followed Prince Charlie into England, and had
fought at Culloden. His adventurous spirit had
descended to his daughter, although she did not
know it until the belated test came. I may mention
that her rebel father, Black John of Culloden, as he
came to be called, was my maternal great-grandfather.
He lived till he was within a few months of
completing his hundredth year. Four of his five
children died without reaching the age of seventy ;
while Margaret, who went with her troop of des-
cendants to the Ontario woods at ninety, lived fully
seven years after arriving there. She was a great
spinner of flax and wool, and had had a turn at her
wheel before breakfast on the day on which she
died. After breakfast she told her grand-daughter
that she did not feel well, and would go and rest in
bed for a while. She went to bed, and seemed to
feel comfortable, but in an hour or so when her
grand-daughter went to look at her she was dead.
On the voyage she was the only one of the party of
emigrant passengers who was not sea-sick. She felt
more tired of the land travelling, but bore its dis-
comforts bravely and patiently. Black John's elder
brother, Duncan, was with him at Culloden, having
EMIGRATION. 201
left his newly-married wife behind him ; and while
he was campaigning their first child, Janet Mor,
was born, and in his absence baptised by Mr
Ferguson, minister of Fortingall, who was hated by
the Jacobites because he prayed so emphatically for
"our lawful sovereign, King George," and acted so
resolutely against their cause. Of Janet's brothers
and sisters, only one, Duncan the Maor, attained
the age of eighty. He was my godfather, and
always gave me sixpence a great sum in my eyes,
when a penny was the usual gift to buy sweets or
apples at the annual local fair at Innerwick ; but
when I was small and shy he plagued me terribly
by saying that Janet Mor wanted to marry me.
That was a joke of his which two generations of
boys had to put up with. When I knew Janet
more intimately, that joke of his lost its sting. She
was a merry old soul with a youthful mind, and
with a good memory, up to the last, of ordinary
events of Glen life during her time, and of the
genealogies of Glen people. But she was not half
so interesting as her cousin, Margaret, who had a
large store of legends and songs. I wish I had paid
more attention to her local songs, and written them
down ; for several of them were of high merit, and
had stories attached to them. All of them have
now perished, with the exception of two taken
down by Turner, the " Lament for Macgregor of
Roro," and the lament of his Campbell widow for
Gregor, the Chief of the Clan, who was beheaded
at Bealach or Taymouth in 1570. Turner, in taking
down the lament for Gregor, fell into a blunder,
because he thought the lamenting widow was the
daughter of Sir Duncan Campbell, or his father, Sir
Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, when in reality she
202 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
was the daughter of their near kinsman, Duncan
Campbell of Glenlyon. To my grand-aunt's annoy-
ance, he muddled two verses to suit his theory.
Gregor had committed atrocities which the Regent
could not overlook. His hunting down was a State
affair ; and when captured he was tried at Bealach
before the Earl of Atholl, Lord Justice Clerk, and
an assemblage of local barons. He was fully
convicted, and forthwith beheaded. The correct
verses are
'S truagh nach robh m'athair arm an galar
Agus Cailean ann am plaigh ;
'S gach Caimbeulach a bha'm Bealach
Gu giulain nan glas-lamh.
Chuirinn Cailean Liath fo ghlasaibh,
'S Donnachadh Dubh an laimh,
Ged bhiodh nigheari an Ruadhainich,
Suathadh bhas a's lamh.
Pity it is that my father (Duncan Roy of Glenlyon) is not in
illness,
And Colin (her brother, afterwards called Cailean Gorach) is not
plague stricken,
And every Campbell in Bealach made to wear hand-cuff's.
I would put Grey Colin (Sir Colin of Glenorchy) under lock
And Black Duncan (his son and heir) under arrest.
Although Ruthven's daughter* rubbed hands and palms in grief.
Turner's muddled version is
'S truagh nach robh m' athair ann an galar
Agus Cailean ann an plaigh,
Ged bhiodh nighnean an Ruadhainich
Suathadh bhas a's lamh.
Chuirinn Cailean Liath fo ghlasaibh,
'S Donnachadh Dubh an laimh,
'S gach Caimbeulach a bha'm Bealach
Gu guilan nan glas-lamh.
*Lonl Ruthven'v daughter was Sir Colin's wife and the mother
of his heir, Black Duncan.
EMIGRATION. 20 S
When the large clearances, and after them the
long-continued systematic lesser evictions on the
Breadalbane estate, escaped general publicity and
criticism, such a small side-swirl in the broad sea of
change as the turning out of a few tenants on the
Culdares estate was not likely to receive any notice
from the press ; yet the unlikely came to pass,
through the impression which the stout-hearted
chieftainess of ninety made upon a journalist of some
fame in his day, and one who had an enviable gift of
writing vivid sketches and artistically neat para-
graphs. This was Mr Macdiarmid, editor of the
Dumfries Courier, who, then on holiday, chanced to
meet our emigrants at the head of Loch Long,
whence they were to ship to Liverpool and embark
on the sailing vessel in which they were to cross the
Atlantic. Macdiarmid sought an interview with
the old dame, and wrote a paragraph about her in
the Dumfries Courier, which many papers copied.
Had he been able to converse with her in Gaelic he
would have been as much struck with her mental, as
he was with her physical, vigour and courage.
Our emigrants cheerfully and carefully made
their preparations for the long journey, following the
directions sent them by the friends who had gone
before them. They talked hopefully of the homes
they would make for themselves, God willing, in the
new far-off country to which they were going. It
was not until the parting wrench came that they
realised or were willing to admit the clutching hold
which the scenery of their native Glen, with all its
associations, and the graves of their dead of many
centuries, had on their hearts. Travelling to and
fro on the face of the earth was not then so cheap
and easy as it is now. Those who went to the south
204 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
of the British Isles, or to Ireland, could revisit the
places from which they or their fathers had gone,
and be thrice welcomed by kindred who listened
with interest to the stories they had to tell, and who
in return told what had been passing since they or
their fathers had gone away. A good deal of money
earned in the south filtered back to the Highlands
from successful migrants who ever remembered the
old folk at home. Emigrants to Canada had no
hope, even as late as 1846, of ever seeing again the
glens of their youth, and the friends they left behind
them unless they followed them, as some of them
intended to do, and did ere many years had gone
over their heads. "Cha till, cha till, cha till sinn
tuille" return, return, return we shall never was
still the Highland emigrant's pathetic farewell to the
beloved native land, which, with all the hardships of
life there, had laid a spell of love on his soul,
which he transmitted without much lessening force
to his children and children's children. In this
twentieth century the Canadian Premier, Sir Wilfred
Laurier, has been calling the Scots emigrants the
salt of the Dominion. Of that salt the Highland
emigrants were not the least important part; for in
the first generation they took, as a class, almost
exclusively to farming; and although rulers like Sir
Allan Macnab and Sir John Macdonald came out of
their ranks, their children, as a rule, kept hold of the
soil, and sent off-shoots further and further afield
till they spread over to the Pacific Coast. None of
the elderly people of the Glen emigrants of 1846 did
ever come back to revisit their birth-place. But
some of the younger generations and of the next
swarm of self-evicted ones who went out in the
fifties, came back and saw a depopulated Glen, in
EMIGRATION. 205
which all had changed except the grand scenery.
The depopulation was completed, as in other places,
by the people, of their own free-will, going away to
seek better openings for themselves either in the
south or in the colonies. What happened in Glen-
lyon was typical of what was taking place over most
of the Central Highlands sixty years ago. As for
the West Coast and Isles, the potato disease did the
worst and most hurried ravaging of population as
it did in Ireland by driving away and pauperising
the people. So the old order perished. Nothing
could have averted the doom pronounced by radically
changed economic conditions of national commerce
and industries. From 1600 till the dispersion, Glen-
lyon population remained essentially unaltered. It
consisted of people of about a dozen different sur-
names, with separate graves in the old churchyard, but
who, by intermarrying, were knit together as a kith
and kindred clan. The Privy Council Records be-
tween 1600 and 1620, in giving lists of the Glenlyon
people who were fined for resetting Clan Gregor,
denounced as rebels, conclusively proves this asser-
tion. Sir James Macgregor, Vicar of Fortingall,
afterwards Dean of Lismore, and his brother
Duncan, began a Chronicle about 1500, which was
continued by a clansman who was curate of Fortin-
gall until 1579. This Chronicle indicates that
between 1400 and the reign of James the Sixth, a
few new surnames had been introduced into an older
community which still and always retained, numeri-
cally, dominating position. Dynasties of proprietors
rose and fell, but till the old order passed, the people
held their ground without any wholesale change.
In Ontario emigrants from adjacent districts like
Breadalbane, Glenlyon, Rannoch, and Fortingall, as
206 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
long as selection of lots of land was anything like
free to choose, clustered together, and continued the
religious, moral, and social and industrious life they
had led at home. As a body they prospered better
than they ever could have done either by remaining
on their old holdings or by removing in families to
manufacturing towns and mining districts. The
large tribe of the chieftainess of ninety has by this
time grown into a very large clan, but it is a widely
dispersed clan, for while the main section of it
remains and prospers in Ontario, there is a strong
swarm in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The High-
landers of Canada have always been most loyal to
the British Flag and citizenship, notwithstanding
the unfriendly feeling to some nineteenth century
Highland landlords which they took with them to
their new homes, and which indeed they displayed
strongly during the crofter agitation in this country
twenty years ago. They rose in arms to defeat the
Fenian invasions of Canada from the United States.
They looked with anger arid disgust at advocates of
annexation like Mr Goldwin Smith, and they are
ever suspicious of Washington policy lest it should
have a snake hidden in its fine, innocent-looking
grass. When Kiel's rebellion threatened to sever
the vast prairie land of the West from Canada, and
to establish some mongrel sort of a hostile State
between Canada and British Columbia, who volun-
teered more promptly than Highlanders of Ontario
for the expedition to squash that rebellion ? And
who showed more hardihood and capacity for
bearing the discomforts and overcoming the diffi-
culties of the long marches by water and by land ?
In the gallant band led by Sir Garnet Wolseley
were grandsons of our Glenlyon dame of ninety,
EMIGRATION. 207
who, with other Gaelic-speaking acquaintances,
resolved when the rebellion was over to settle in
Manitoba. It is their children and relatives who
are now spreading themselves over into Saskat-
chewan and further west even to the Pacific.
If the Scottish sections, which are very large, of
the Canadian population have a just right to be
called the salt of the Dominion, it is because whether
of Highland or Lowland descents they devoted
themselves more than any other sections to farming
and healthy country pursuits, and less than others
plunged into the speculating madness and enervating
habits of cities and towns. Although it has a fair
show of mineral wealth, the Dominion is and always
must remain an agricultural, pastoral, fishing,
lumbering, and hunting country. For all of these
pursuits people of Scotch rural descent have heredi-
tary inclination and both natural and acquired
qualifications. The owners and the tillers of the
soil must of necessity be the backbone of every
nation on the face of the earth which has a patent
of long endurance with the force and patriotism
requisite to make that patent good. The High-
landers of the Dominion appeared there as farmers,
levellers of primeval forests, and Hudson Bay Com-
pany hunters. Long may their descendants keep
out of the urban life, and retain their hold on the
soil and the simple healthy open-air existence.
208 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.
I WAS nearly fifteen when I began to learn Latin
by myself, and next year when Mr Drummond took
me in hand to inspire, guide, and drill me properly,
he was pleased to find that I had made substantial
rudimentary progress. By that time my mind was
stored with a curious medley of information. The
humble school furnished me with the three keys of
knowledge, and outside the school I did a great deal
for myself. From infancy I was becoming insensibly
saturated with the traditional lore of old Gamaliels
tales of the Feinne, fairy stories, local history
(which subsequent publication of State records proved
to be wonderfully correct) back to John of Lome
(called by us Iain Dubh nan Lann, who married
Janet Maciosaig, the grand-daughter of Bruce in
1360, and got as her tocher from her uncle, King
David, Glenlyon), and old songs most of which have
perished, and which carried, in prefatory explana-
tions in prose, information of various kinds on their
backs. From the age of five I could read English
and Gaelic, and get enjoyment for myself from easy
books in both these languages. All we children of
that time were well drilled in the Shorter Catechism,
which, no doubt, we repeated by rote at first, but
which, as the years passed, took hold of our under-
standing and furnished us with a canon of reasoned
theology, and, what was of more importance, a rule
of life to which we might not always make our
A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 209
conduct conform, but which always kept its grip on
us. It was not such a hard task to commit the
Catechism to memory as to find the proofs for the
dogmatic assertions contained in it by searching the
Bible. That part of our task belonged more to the
Sunday than to the week school. It was the part
which I liked least myself, and in it boys and girls,
especially the girls in my class, were often ahead of
me. The " Ceasnachadh," which came once a year,
when the minister, accompanied by the elders of
each ward into which the parish was divided, went
his rounds to examine old and young, was less a
terror to us youngsters than it was to some of
the grey-headed old men, whose early Catechism
education had been neglected, or who had forgotten
what they had once learned. We school children
took a wicked pleasure in their worry and blunders,
and afterwards made fun among ourselves of their
wrong or haphazard answers.
Bible narratives had such an overwhelming
fascination for me that one summer, when quite a
small boy, I read all the historical books, and
because of their historical references to ancient
nations, most of the prophetical books likewise.
That summer my daily occupation was to herd
calves, and to keep them out of corn and hay land,
on a stretch of banks and bogs within the park
wall which extended from above the churchyard to
Clachaig, named so, the Place of Stones, because
the old Druidic stone circle was there. Herding
alone would have been tedious enough, had not this
Bible-reading made the time pass pleasantly. My
dog Torm, indeed, did the biggest part of the
herding, for he knew as well as myself how far it
was free for the calves to go, and when it was his
14
210 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
duty to deal with them as trespassers. When on
a very rainy day we had taken them to a corner
above Clachaig, and I told him to take care of them
there, I could go off to Calum Macgibbon's house
with an easy conscience and stay there for a while.
On returning I was sure to find the calves more
closely pinned up in their corner than when I left
them. Torm then would come rushing to me with
self-satisfied eyes to be praised and patted on the
head, and given leave to go on a scamper of his own
if he felt so inclined. He liked to have such runs,
but never went too far to hear being called back by a
whistle. The worst fault of the faithful, intelligent
creature was that he would not let a strange dog
pass on the road without looking on him as a
trespasser and wanting to fight with him.
When ten years old, the medley of information
which I had gained out of school was derived from
the following sources : Glenlyon traditional lore,
Bible history, the " Pilgrim's Progress," " Scots
Worthies," " Robinson Crusoe," and the "Arabian
Nights." About the latter I had much trouble with
my mother, whose own reading was limited to her
Gaelic Bible. She highly approved of my Bible
studies, and knew enough about the " Pilgrim's
Progress " and the " Scots Worthies " to think the
reading of them commendable. I gave her such an
account of Robinson Crusoe's adventures that she
became interested in them herself. I was indeed
rather in the habit of telling in Gaelic round the
kitchen fire on winter nights the stories I had read
in English. It was that habit which brought down
maternal condemnation on the un-Christian tales
of the "Arabian Nights." She wanted to restrict
my reading to Boston's "Fourfold State" and the
A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 211
similar prim books which were contained in the
parish library. My father's authority was invoked,
but, although no scholar, he could read and speak
English, and had broader views than hers. He saw
I was mutinous, and thought it was best to let me
follow my own course. But till I reached the age
of twelve, when she gave up her attempt at censor-
ship as a bad job, my mother was suspicious, and
bothered me a good deal about the books I read.
Because the poetry of Burns was under clerical ban
in our Glen and my mother knew it was so, I had
to read it out of her sight, and found it as sweet
as stolen waters. Had she known as much as the
little she did about Burns about other books which
I devoured between the ages of twelve and fifteen,
she would have been truly horrified, although
perhaps Defoe's " History of the Devil" might have
passed muster as perfectly orthodox !
My grandfather, who received a good middle-
class education at the parish schools of Muthil and
Crieff, left behind him a collection of English and
Gaelic books, which were kept stored in a cupboard
until I rummaged among them. I found that in
other farm houses there were many old books which
nobody read, and which were gladly lent to me.
The books of friends who died in the South came
back to their relations in the Glen, but these were
books of the beginning of the last century, and were
more read than the others. The others stretched
back in a straggling way to the time of the Refor-
mation, and forwards to 1770. How did these old
books come into the possession of people who did
not, and few of whom could, read them or under-
stand them ? I believe it was because they were
sold with the furniture in Meggernie Castle on the
212 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
death of Commissioner Archibald Menzies in 1776.
His father, Old Culdares, died the year before.
When his son died, leaving a widow and an infant
daughter, the upper and bigger part of the barony
went to John Stewart of Cardeney under the deed
of entail, and the Chesthill end fell to the Com-
missioner's daughter, but it was so burdened with
debt that it soon had to be sold to her uncle by
marriage, Archibald Menzies, Chief Clerk to the
Court of Session. No doubt that at this sale of
effects the books went so cheap that, with an eye to
the future, people who could not read them were
tempted to buy them for possible use by their
descendants. The most ponderous, and to me not
the least attractive, was Hackluyt's " Collection of
Voyages and Travels." Interspersed with imperish-
able literature were publications of the Restoration
period, some of which were witty and wicked, and
some of which were simply dull and immoral.
I judged Charles II. and his Court with the
merciless severity of a young Puritan or Covenanter,
but was quite tolerant about the disreputable doings
of heathen gods and goddesses. I do not think it
did me the least moral harm to get in early life a
peep-show knowledge of the seamy side of human
life. That side of human life was much dwelt upon
in the Bible itself, in the authority, inspiration, and
infallibility of which we were taught to believe
implicitly by our own spiritual guides. And was
there not much of it in our own ancient Celtic
poetry and prose tales ? I remember I sided strongly
with Prometheus against thundering Jupiter, and
felt glad that the latter's autocratic tyranny was at
times controlled by Fate. I pondered often on the
similarities between the full-fledged mythology of
A SCRAMBLE FOE HIGHER EDUCATION.
Greece and Rome and the . fragments of Celtic
mythology which came down to us in the Cuchullin
and Feinne stories. Was not Cuchullin himself the
Hercules of our race ? Then my own clan claimed
descent from Diarmid O'Duibhne, who eloped with
his uncle Fionn's wife, or, at least, betrothed bride,
Grainne. Was their story not somewhat like the
elopement of Paris and Helen ? Comparative rumi-
nation cleared paths for me through the tangles of
classical mythology. But I thought less of assorting
than of acquiring knowledge. I had a retentive
memory, and stored my mind like a pawnbroker's
shop with miscellaneous goods that had to wait
for sorting out at convenience. Everything in the
shape of a book was fish that came into my nets.
I had read Pope's Homer and Dryden's Virgil before
Mr Drummond took me in hand, and was full of the
enthusiastic hope of being some day able to read
these great poems in their original languages.
Knowledge of Gaelic is a great help to any young
student of Latin and Greek. Bi-lingualism of any
kind is in itself a mental discipline and an educa-
tional ladder.
The desultory reading which I began in my early
youth became a habit which clung to me throughout
my life. It was my form of dissipation. I had
much hard work to do to earn my daily bread, and
at first that work had nothing in connection with
books. But although I did not know it, I was
qualifying myself for the journalistic work into
which I ultimately drifted, and at which I remained
for forty-six years. When I began to learn Latin
I intended to go to a University ; but I did not
know to what profession I should devote attention.
The ministry was the usual aim of Highland lads of
214 REMWJISCENCES AKD REFLECTIONS.
my kind, but I did not think myself pious enough
for that calling, for the revival doctrine of conversion
was then overawing the rising generation, and I
knew I could not honestly say to myself or others
that I had gone through any process of conversion.
I had more leaning towards the medical than to the
legal profession. But to get some learning was my
first craving, and the choice of a profession would
be made when I had more knowledge of the world
and of my capacity, likings, and chances. Mean-
while the great thing was to earn money, and with
the money I earned to scramble for a higher educa-
tion. I was the eldest of my parents' family of five
children, and the only son. But before my father
had lost the farm on which he and his ancestors had
been for two hundred years, it was tacitly under-
stood by all concerned that I was to turn my back
on farming and to shape a course for myself. Had
my people kept on the ancestral farm they could
manage to work it without me, for a bachelor
brother of my father's had lately come home after
long service with Mr Charles Stewart as his
manager at Chesthill. When my father went out
of the old farm, he never took another one, and he
needed his small means and industry for his own
family needs. I was determined to earn for myself
what I was to spend on my own education. In the
process of earning that money by my own efforts, I
steadily kept the idea of a University career before
my mind. It was useful as a stimulus to exertion
and saving, but as things turned out, I was never
to get nearer to a University training than two
partial sessions at the Edinburgh Training College,
or Normal School, as it was then called.
A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 215
My scramble for a higher education was made
with strenuous self - effort ; as mutatis mutandis
was that of many country lads, Highland and Low-
land, who broke away from their birth -spheres and
shaped their own careers. Not a few of such youths
fell short of their aims by overworking brains and
bodies, and throwing themselves into consumption
or some other fatal or disabling illness. But such as
succeeded increased that aristocracy of merit which,
in Scotland from the Reformation downwards, did so
much to link classes together, and to harmonise old-
fashioned feudalism and clanship with a Church
and system of education established on democratic
principles. From fifteen until nearly twenty, I was
spending in fees, books, bread, and lodgings, money
I had earned in the country. I might almost call
myself a jack-of-all-trades; so many were my employ-
ments that it would be difficult for me now to
enumerate them in consecutive order. I did my
share in planting the wood on Meggernie hill. For
several years I was gillie to the Earl of Sefton
during the shooting season. Lord Sefton had
Meggernie Castle, and the shooting and fishing
both of the Culdares estate and of the Marquis of
Breadalbane's Roro estate, for fifteen years. He
knew the Glen and its people better than the pro-
prietor whose shooting tenant he was ; and the
people knew him and his wife and children, and,
although shy of showing their feelings, they looked
upon the Sefton family with almost clannish affec-
tion. One day I heard Lord Sefton pay a high
compliment to Glen honesty. Looking at the
carcases of two fat wedders hanging up in an open
shed, he said "In Lancashire these would have
been stolen before morning unless kept under lock
216 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and key. Here the people would never lay hands
on anything which did not belong to them." He
was not in his former robust state of health when I
was his gillie. When not equal to the exertion of
going far up the rugged hills, he and I and his two
favourite dogs, Nelson and Juno, went by ourselves
up the Loch hills, to the bottom of which he rode,
and when he got tired of shooting, lie would join his
lady and children at the Loch's side and take a turn
at fishing. My business then was to row the boat.
Hauls of salmon were got on the Lyon by nets on
the linns and by poke-nets at the falls between
Gallin and Moar. Rod-fishing, too, was often
resorted to by Lord Seftori, and, less often, by one
or more of his guests. Although Lord Sef'ton gave
me credit for being very efficient at the river and
loch business, considering my want of training, it was
the joy of the hill sports my memory treasured
up for ever more. How often in smoky towns I
thought of the mountain tops where' ptarmigan and
golden plover were to be found ; of the corries where
deer that strayed from the Black Mount could be
stalked, and of the heather slopes on which the
passing breezes caused billowy movements like waves
of the sea ! How often when in fair and fertile
country scenes, free from the smoke of long
chimneys, the clatter of streets, and the rattle of
machinery, I said with Byron :
England, thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roved o'er the mountains afar ;
Oh, for the crags that are wild and majestic !
The steep, frowning glories of dark Loch-na-Garr !
When our neighbour the elder was turned out of
the Eight Merkland holding like ourselves, he took
the farm of Balnahanait on the Roro estate, and
A SCRAMBLE FOE, HIGHER EDUCATION. 217
there I worked under him as farm servant for six
months. The work was hard enough for a growing
lad, but it was one to which I was accustomed, and
we were all of us a cheery household of friends and
acquaintances. That was the end of my farm life,
and it does not come in here in proper sequence, but
I am rather grouping my chief employments during
the jack-of-all-trades' years than giving them in the
order in which they occurred. An odd job after the
shooting season was the smearing of sheep at Lochs.
This in itself was far from being so pleasant as
ranging the hills or cutting hay with a well-balanced
scythe, or indeed any field-work. A month of it
was enough at any time, and in wet weather even
too much, for blackened nails and sore hands. But
the smearing - house company always kept itself
hearty with songs, jests, and stories, and, not in-
frequently, with discussions like a debating club.
Smearing has long been displaced by dips, to the
detriment of the poor sheep, and, I almost think, of
the grazings too. It could not be kept on much
longer than it was, because, with the desolation of
the country districts, smearers were not to be found
in most places. So the sheep had to lose their
warm, water-tight, winter cloaks, and to put up
with less clean skins than the tar and butter or oil
unction had given them.
On losing the ancestral holding my father took a
series of contracts for repairing and rebuilding head-
walls which separated arable and hay lands from
outer grazings. In carrying out these contracts he
had to associate others with himself, sometimes only
one his cousin, Duncan Dewar if it was merely
repairing, sometimes three, two for each side of the
wall, when it meant building or rebuilding altogether.
218 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Of all his wall contracts the one which was looked
upon at first as a bad bargain turned out to be the
most profitable. This was the long wall between
the Dalreoch and the Leacan Odhar remnant of the
self-sown Caledonian forest. The park and the
wood are on the other side of the river opposite
Meggernie Castle. His associates in building this
wall were Duncan Dewar, Duncan Macnaughton
(Donnachadh Ruadh), and myself. Donnachadh
and I built the hill-side and my father arid Duncan
Dewar the inside of the wall. The wall that was
there before had fallen into utter disrepair, and it
had originally been one of the irregularly built
structures of the cattle age which would keep cows
in or out but would be no great hindrance to more
audacious climbing or jumping animals. It was
plain that much new building material would be
required, hence the doubt of the value of the con-
tract. But we soon discovered that we had stones
in plenty quite near us concealed under the long
heather, mixed with cranberry patches, juniper
bushes, and anthills. Outside the park everything
was little different from what it had been in the
days of Galgacus and Agricola. The roe-buck herd
itself was as primeval as its surroundings, although
it must lately have been inconvenienced by the
wintering of sheep in its preserves. Blackcocks and
woodcocks no doubt resented that invasion also.
But all the ancient denizens were now to be relieved of
their woolly invaders who disturbed their immemorial
heritage. The new building material being so easily
won made it possible for us to earn a considerably
higher daily wage than the average one of the
district at those times, when two shillings a day
was considered good pay. We about doubled that
A SCRAMBLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 219
and were quite content. Early in the spring we
began leaving home by dawn of day and returned
at dusk ; for we had to go two miles to get to our
work. Until I hardened to this work I was glad
enough when the seventh day's rest came round.
Donnachadh Ruadh and I were, notwithstanding
the great disparity of age, the best of friends and
the best possible companions. He was an old ex-
perienced hand, and I was a young willing one at
the work on which we were engaged. Any little
controversy that arose came from old Dewar on the
other side of the wall, who wanted to boss everyone
except my father, and who now and then accused
us, unjustly as we thought, of not doing our just
part in packing the wall interior with pinning and
filling stone fragments. Our wall face at any rate
was as good as his and my father's. But it was old
Dewar's nature to find fault with somebody, when
company working. On the other hand he was the
best and most diligent of servants when his master
kept out of sight. My finger-nails, worked down to
the quick, and the worn skin of my hands, sorely
needed the Sunday's recuperative rest and restora-
tion. But, after all, it was a joyous time for me.
In my jacket pocket I always took with me to the
wall-building a small neatly-printed edition of the
poems of Horace, published in 1814 by R. Morison,
Perth ; and then, or a short time afterwards, I used
to take the small copy of Greenfield's Greek New
Testament with lexicon with me to church, and I
used it for following the scripture lessons and the
text. I fear that I sometimes continued my own
reading of it, seeking in the lexicon the words which
were new to me, instead of listening to the sermon.
In learning Latin and Greek I thought it best to
220 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
peg away at my task with grammar and dictionary,
and not to look at any translation until I had
first done the best for myself. With the little
edition of Horace I used a crib made in the reign
of Queen Anne, but it was not until I had gone over
it all and could enjoy the Latin text without any
help that I realised the charms of the Burns of
Roman literature and polished society in the great
Augustan reign. With his revelations of himself,
his great fear of death, his Epicurean philosophy and
observance of the rites of a mythology which he did
not believe, and his love of the country life when in
Rome, and his desire to be back at Rome when on
his Sabine farm, Horace makes himself so personally
and intimately known to his reader that he exercises
a peculiar fascination.
PART II.
THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD.
PART II. THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
KERRUMORE SCHOOL.
THIS school had been removed, when I was about
six years old, from Innerwick, where it had been
since the reign of Queen Anne. My first attendance
was at Innerwick before the building of the new,
slated, and, for that time, commodious school -
house at Kerrumore. There had been at one
time a school - master's house at Innerwick, and
a permanently - placed teacher, but that better
arrangement had come to an end, I believe, about
1783, when the Barony of Glenlyon was divided
into the estates of Culdares and Chesthill. What
remained was an endowment of 10, half from the
estate of Culdares and half from the Bishopric of
Dunkeld fund. As already mentioned, the teachers
were young men who usually changed from year to
year, and who, instead of fees, received board and
lodging by going about from house to house after
their pupils. The school session was shorter than
in most places, for there was much herding to do,
and other summer occupations for children were
numerous. It does not come in here in chronological
order, but after having been at my first session at
Perth, Mr Drummond got me to teach the Kerru-
more school for the usual period of seven or eight
months. I would rather have tried my 'prentice
224 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hand elsewhere, for it was a habit of big lads to
come to school in the dead months of the winter
after having done their corn-threshing, feeding of
animals, and other duties in the morning. Some of
these lads were as old as myself, and had been in
former years my class-mates and companions. As
for the younger ones, I knew I could easily rule
them, for I could always readily make friends with
and exercise influence over children and dogs. I
had over sixty pupils in winter at Kerrumore
School. I need not have been afraid of the big
lads, my co-evals and former class-fellows. They
respected my new magisterial position fully as much
as I did myself, and were my faithful henchmen and
assistants in the daily mending of quill-pens which
were then in use. I had got the name of being a
book- worm, and it was supposed that having been
for ten months at Perth schools, I had come back
with a load of learning. These first ten months at
Perth left me much run down physically, and with
an empty purse. I had been working very hard
and living frugally, though not at all half-starving
myself, as others of my kind too often did. Having
paid everything I owed, and given the servant at
the lodging-house a shilling or two, I bought books
with what remained, packed my box, paid the
carrier for taking it home, and then found I had not
money enough for the coach-fare to Aberfeldy. It
was the afternoon of a fine summer day when the
schools broke up, and I resolved to start at once and
to tramp all the fifty miles home by road, for I did
not then know the hill short cuts well, and much of
my journey would be by night. So, having bought
some Abernethy biscuits, I set off by the road to
Dunkeld late in the afternoon, and got to Aberfeldy
KERRUMOEE SCHOOL. 225
bridge by. daylight. I rested there and half-dozed
for a while, and then tackled the next twenty miles,
at the end of which I felt as tired as ever I did in
my life. I have no doubt that I more than once
walked quite as great a distance on the hills without
being a penny the worse for it next day. But hill-
walking is different from hard road-walking.
Not a few of my pupils at Kevrumore came from
places three or four miles away, and in the winter
months had to start in the grey dawn. They made
good haste to come, but in going home in the
evening they loitered and played by the way till
the night quite closed in. It was so when I myself
was a pupil. When the new schoolhouse was being
built, and the old one at Innerwick had quite
collapsed, the school was held one winter in the
servants' hall at Meggeruie Castle. Every evening
we came home in grand style from the Castle, for
in John Macfaiiane, youngest son of the Innerwick
smith, a lad of ten or eleven, we had a piper of our
own, who played marches and reels and laments on
miniature pipes. His father was the fourteenth of
a series of Macfarlane smiths, who were famous of
old for making swords and daggers of excellent
quality. John's father himself had more than local
fame and custom as a sgian-dubh maker. John
became a Free Church schoolmaster, but, to the
regret of all who knew him, died ere he reached
middle age. It was indeed supposed that the
juvenile piping, of which he and his little troop
were so mightily proud, did John's health serious
harm.
My own Kerrumore scholars were a hardy,
cheerful lot, who were easily ruled in school, and
out of it indulged in no more fun, frolic, and childish
15
226 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
pranks than healthy children are justly entitled to.
In school they had to speak English. Gaelic was
their vernacular, and they were all the more easily
taught because bi-lingualism had sharpened their
brains. Every morning they brought with them,
in the primitive way of the time, peats and sticks
to feed the schoolhouse fire. Besides the daily
collection of peats and sticks, birch trees on the
opposite hill slope were given each winter to the
school. These were felled, sawed, and split by the
elder boys, while all helped to carry them home
rejoicingly. The fatal accident to Mr Drummond's
nephew, which has been already referred to,
occurred when these trees gifted by the estate
were being cut down.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CARGILL.
IN Perth I was taught Latin and Greek by Mr
James Davidson, who kept a classical academy in
Melville Street, while his wife, who had received a
good education, taught French and German. Mr
Davidson had become totally blind, although one
would not know it to look at him. But his memory
was prodigious and his mind was richly stored with
Greek and Roman lore. Mr Davidson was at the
head of his profession in Perth. Except on Satur-
days his time was wholly taken up with his various
classes. He had many town boys in the lower
classes, but his higher ones contained big lads from
the country districts who intended to be ministers,
doctors, and lawyers, and, in the vacation months,
CARGILL. 227
schoolmasters desirous of advancing their classical
knowledge. It was useless for dolts and lads who
had neglected to learn prescribed lessons diligently
to go to the Melville Street Academy, for they
would meet with anything but forbearing tolerance
there. Mr Davidson was an enthusiastic teacher,
and his pupils, with their own projects in view,
responded to their master's enthusiasm and strove
hard to fulfil his expectations, and made wonderful
progress. I am proud to say that I became a
favourite with Mr Davidson because I was as
strenuously bent upon acquiring, as he was on
imparting, instruction. In my second year at Perth
Mr Davidson one day surprised me by asking me if
I would go to Cargill to teach the parish school
there instead of the parochial schoolmaster, Mr Peter
Cochrane, who had been disabled for some time by
paralysis and was consequently obliged to provide a
substitute. The proposal came upon me unexpectedly,
but I accepted it. I was to have the house or as
much of it as I wanted, the glebe, the school fees,
and a few pounds of salary. At that period of my
life I thought it would be a fine thing to have the
teaching of a parish school. The disabled school-
master lived at Perth, so there would be free scope
for his assistant to do his best in his own way.
But I was beginning to have some small tutorial
work at Perth, and felt unwilling to break off the
course of my own studies. Mr Davidson suggested
that I should come in on Saturdays and go over
with him what Latin and Greek I had been reading
for myself during the week. That suggestion put
an end to my objections. I went to Cargill, and
liked the place, the people, and the work.
When I went to Cargill in 1848, the parish
school was up on the high ground at Newbigging, a.
228 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
good distance above the village parish church and
manse. I believe the building at Newbigging was
formerly the minister's manse. It was a tall build-
ing, solidly built. Its lower storey contained the
school-room and a large kitchen. The flat above,
and the attics above that, gave good and plenty
house room to the schoolmaster. There was a glebe
of four acres of arable land, including the garden. I
had more than sixty pupils. They were, with few
exceptions, the children of well-to-do farmers, farm-
servants, and workmen on the Stobhall estate.
Only two or three of them were over thirteen years
of age. The custom, so common in the Highlands,
of older pupils coming back for a spell of schooling
in the winter did not exist in Cargill, nor in the
Lowlands generally, I believe. When the children
left school to work, they generally left it forever ;
or if their parents were well off, they were sent for
higher education elsewhere. No doubt the Cargill
children had suffered from the disability of the
master and the annual changing of his substitutes,
but it did not seem to me that the desire for
education, beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic,
was so keen in Cargill as it was in the Highlands.
I liked the children, and, in parting, they made
known that they liked me. They were orderly in
the school-room, attentive to their lessons and tasks,
and cheerfully frolicsome without being quarrelsome
in the play-ground.
I occupied only a bedroom and the kitchen, and
when the school was dismissed lived all alone in
the big building, doing my own cooking such
as it was and sending out my washing to the
neighbouring ploughman's wife. My nearest neigh-
bours, the farmer of Newbigging, Mr Irvine, and
CAKGILL. 229
his wife, were kindly concerned about the hermit
life I was leading, and often made me come over
and have supper with them. I was a bad cook and
housekeeper, arid if someone had not come to join
me and take the management of the house in hand,
I daresay that my health might have been seriously
injured. But I did not feel the least bit lonely,
and preparatory studies for the Saturday readings
with Mr Davidson fully employed my mind, and
made spare time fly on fast wings. It was a break
in my hermit life when, every Saturday, whether
it was fair and frosty or wet and snowy, I tramped
off to Perth to give Mr Davidson an account of my
week's studies. Nine miles there and nine back
made a good day's walk and insured sound sleep.
By going to the station a mile or two out of my
direct way I could have taken the train, but that
meant paying railway fares, and I had no money to
throw away. In truth I was nearly at the end of
my money when payment of the first quarter's
school fees brought me relief. The parents of the
Cargill children were the best of payers.
Dunsinane, with the ruins of Macbeth's Castle
on it, was near at hand, and as I was full of
Shakespeare I soon paid it a visit, and looking
across to Birnam, I thought the men of old must
have had wonderful power of sight to see the wood
moving. Coupar Angus was within four mlies, and
I went to see what remained of its Abbey, which
had become dreadfully demoralised before the
Reformation put an end to it. The Abbey of Scone
was equally infamous before it was swept away ;
but I happened to hear more about Coupar than I
did about Scone, because of the way in which the
corrupt Coupar Angus abbots endowed their illegiti-
230 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
mate children with Church lands, which habit was
the cause of the feud between Argyll and Airlie.
Stobhall, the ancient patrimony of the Drummond
Chiefs, and the place from which Robert III. got
his excellent wife, Queen Arabella, had its own
interesting history, variegated with lights and
shades, of which the Cargill parishioners of 1848
seemed to have no such vivid traditions as would
have been handed down from generation to
generation regarding a similar seat of Chiefs in
the Highlands. Yet these people as a whole must
have been of the same stock as the inhabitants of
Queen Arabella's time or centuries earlier than that.
The practical Lowlander concentrated his vigorous
attention on the present, leaving the past to records
and writers of books, while the more visionary
Highlander cherished traditional history strung
together on long genealogies and enlivened by
snatches of song. There were songs also in the
Cargill parish bothies and in sheds in which women
were weaving for Dundee employers, but they had
nothing to do with local stories.
My hermit life ended when my second cousin,
Duncan Mackerchar, came down to join me from the
Braes of Glenlyon. He was a good bit older than I,
and had been shepherding since boyhood. He had
saved a little money, and was now bent upon leaving
the glen arid getting into commercial life. He
wanted to perfect himself in arithmetic, learn book-
keeping, and improve his knowledge of English
grammar and composition. He was very intelligent,
and, when tending the sheep on the hills, had mused
on many subjects beyond his proper calling. When
Duncan took the house-keeping in hand, the cooking
vastly improved, and the parts of the house which
CARGILL. 231
we occupied became forthwith neat and orderly.
We had pleasant days and studious nights together.
When 1 left Cargill, he went to Greig's Academy,
Perth, after which he went to England; from which,
in the course of years, he returned to Glasgow,
where he settled, married, and modestly prospered
until his death, now a long time ago. About
Christmas time, when the weather happened to be
mild and foggy, I was worrying myself as to how I
could get the glebe ploughed so as to be ready for
oat-sowing in spring. That difficulty was soon
solved by the generous and spontaneous action of
the farmers whose children attended the school.
They sent me word that on a certain day a
Saturday, I think they would send men, ploughs,
and horses sufficient for doing the whole job in less
than one day. The thing had never been done
before, and it was a great kindness and high com-
pliment to a young stranger who had so recently
come among them. Duncan and I he more than I
had to make arrangements for giving the plough-
men a plentiful if but a rough-and-ready feast. If
Mrs Irvine had riot helped, we should have been
without the necessary equipment of spoons, knives,
forks, and plates. Duncan and I were practically
total abstainers, but on that evening, when the
ploughing was done, whisky circulated pretty freely
round the festive board. I suspect from the price
given for it that whisky never paid duty. Duncan
bought it from a trader from Glenisla, who made
periodical visits to our district. At any rate it
suited the ploughmen, who, after singing "Auld
Lang Syne," departed in a merry mood, but sober
enough for all purposes.
232 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AN UNEXPECTED EVENT.
DUNCAN MACKERCHAR and I were so much en-
grossed in our own affairs that we seldom wrote
letters to our friends in the Highlands, and they too
seldom sent us any news down the Pass of Dunkeld.
So it was quite a surprise when I got a letter from
Mr Drummond, saying that he and my father
thought I ought to apply for the Fortingall Parish
School, which had fallen vacant, because my name-
sake Duncan Campbell, who had taught it for
twenty years, had gone to Lesmahagow, where he
vigorously exercised his vocation for the next twenty-
five years. I thought that Mr Drummond and my
father weie expecting too much for me, and I at
first declined to become a candidate, both because I
wished to continue my own education and because
I thought myself too young and inexperienced for
the management of such a large school. But while
my reply was in the course of transmission by the
winter weekly post, Mr Drummond had actually
sent in my name, and, on knowing this, I felt bound
to attend on the day appointed at Fortingall for ex-
amination before the heritors. Through delay I was
the last. Five or six had been examined, and some
way or another, none of them seemed to have given
satisfaction. An Edinburgh professor and Dr Duff
of Kenmore had prepared test questions which
ranged over a fair amount of history, literature,
Latin, Greek, and practical mathematics.
AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 233
Duncan Mackerchar and I walked together from
Cargill to Port-na-craig, opposite Pitlochry. It is a
long way from Cargill to Port-na-craig round by
Dunkeld, and we stopped there for the night. Next
morning before daylight I left my companion and
crossed the hill to Strathtay, and walked on to
Fortingall, another pretty long walk, so as to be
there at twelve o'clock.
I had not the least expectation of being appointed,
so I was not in the least flustered when Doctor
Duff took me in hand and put the questions of his
examination catechism to me. Finding that I had
read a great deal more Latin than the former candi-
dates, he passed beyond his catechism, and I really
got interested in the proceedings, and was not a
whit concerned as to what the issue would be. To
my astonishment I was appointed, subject, of course,
to another examination by the Presbytery of Weem.
The old hotelkeeper and his wife took care to
give me a good dinner before I set off on my return
journey. Night closed round me soon after I left
Weem rather stormy, and with heavy showers of
snow. In crossing from Strathtay I lost my way
and wandered westward off the line amidst bogs
and ice, so that it was a dilapidated youth I was
when I finally reached Port-na-craig. My boots
had got soaked in ice water, and next morning my
toes were blistered, and I had a sore journey back
with Duncan Mackerchar round by Dunkeld to
Cargill.
Pitlochry looked a very small village when we
passed through it on that sunshiny morning after
the snowy night on our return to Cargill. Some
eighteen years had yet to elapse before railway
connected Perth and Inverness, and caused forth-
234 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
with to make old villages expand into towns and
new villages to arise for the accommodation of
summer visitors. In the winter of 1849 Aberfeldy,
although a small village, was bigger than Pitlochry
and of more local importance. Birnam had scarcely
begun to tower over and absorb little Dunkeld.
Mickle or old Dunkeld, with its now partly
restored cathedral, has remained throughout the
whole era more unchanged than any place on the
line from Perth to Inverness. It still belongs to
the far off past. The old villages which expanded
into towns and the new ones which have been
called into existence by railway and steamer com-
munications with the crowded cities and industrial
districts of the South, as well as with the whole
world, have now made the Highlands a happy
hunting - ground for sportsmen, and one large
shealing for summer visitors. Mingled good and
evil are the result. The old humble shealing
existence was part of the agricultural system. It
helped mightily to keep a large and hardy popu-
lation, dependent on cultivation and grazing, spread
out over the face of the country, people content
with simple, natural life if they only had a bare
sufficiency of absolutely necessary means of sub-
sistence. To all appearance the Highlanders, with
their ancient language, were impregnably race-
defended. But with the sheep regime began the
change which culminated in the conversion of
the Highlands and Isles into summer resorts.
Visitors brought with them the artificial life of
towns, and Highlanders who served them com-
menced to turn their backs upon farming pursuits
and forget their ancestral language, although bi-
lingualism would often be materially, and always
AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 235
intellectually, useful to themselves and to their
children. " Sluagh gun teangaidh, sluagh gun
anam" a race which loses its language loses its
soul but it would only fortify its soul to acquire
other languages while carefully keeping its own as a
sacred inheritance and source of inspiration. Gaelic
suffered no fatal detriment from the sheep regime
and the invasion of the Lowland farmers and shep-
herds. The real destroyers have been the children
of the Gael themselves ; and I fear the Gaelic
Societies, Mod, and Comunn Gaidhealach, began
their revival movement when the decay had gone
too far for being but very partially stopped.
Before leaving Cargill, I had to look for a substi-
tute, and was lucky enough to find one at once, who
sowed and reaped, or rather sold the crop which
grew on the glebe the farmers had so generously
ploughed for me. My substitute was a Highlander
from Aberfeldy, who went to some other school in
the Lowlands next year. For seventy or eighty
years before the setting up of the school board
system, Highland schoolmasters were constantly
drifting southward, very many to the Lowlands,
and not a few to England. I suppose they must
have been good teachers in other respects, but I
suspect they met with special favour in various
places where broad dialects held sway, because they
spoke and wrote book English. After the passing of
the Scotch Education Act, Highland school boards
reversed the former rule by preferring teachers from
the Lowlands to Highland ones. This preference
contributed to the forces which were killing the
Gaelic language. In this matter, the Gaelic revival
movement has done much to induce school boards
in Gaelic-speaking places to appoint teachers who
236 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
can understand, read, and speak and teach the
language of their pupils. But the southward drift-
ing of the Highland teachers continues and must
continue, since the professorial chances in the south
are much better than they are in the Highlands.
Examination before heritors was rather a new
thing. It was the usual custom that, on personal
knowledge or certificates, they should select and
nominate a man for the parish school vacancy, and
that the Presbytery should examine him, and either
appoint him or reject him. As it happened, I had
to undergo two examinations ; for the Presbytery
examination was the real seal of appointment, and
not the one before the heritors. In my own case,
the examination before the heritors was of a more
searching kind than the legal one before the Presby-
tery. But I did myself far more justice in the first
than in the easier one, for when before the heritors,
as I had no idea of being appointed, I was perfectly
self-possessed, and rejoiced in being catechised in
such a manner as allowed me to make use of some
of my desultory reading as well as of my more
scholastic studies. Before the Presbytery I must
have been flurried and nervous, for I managed, or
mismanaged, to misstate a mathematical proposition
with which I was quite familiar. In Latin and
Greek I succeeded much better, and in general
knowledge subjects I passed muster. My appoint-
ment was therefore ecclesiastically confirmed. As
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the parish
schools were covenanted State institutions under the
Revolution Settlement, ministers and schoolmasters
had to take the same oaths of loyalty as officers of
State, Members of Parliament, Magistrates, and
others holding public office. On the morning of the
AN UNEXPECTED EVENT. 237
day on which I was examined by the Presbytery at
Weem, Mr Stewart, the minister of Fortingall, took
me to Moness House, where I was sworn by Mr
Campbell of Glenfalloch, a ruling elder of the Church
of Scotland, whose son, fourteen years later, suc-
ceeded the evicting Marquis as Earl of Breadalbane.
His son's son is now the third Marquis. Parish
schoolmasters might hold different views on the
public questions of the day, but few, if any of them,
took any pronounced part in politics. They did not
think it suited their profession to speak, write, or
act as political partisans. I fully agreed with that
view, and acted upon it all the years I was a parish
schoolmaster. As an ex-officio freeholder, I had the
right to be registered as a voter. But I never
allowed myself to be registered, because I wanted to
keep out of party politics while teaching the children
of Whigs and Tories, and was in honour bound, as I
thought, to remain neutral in the conflict which
divided the parents of my pupils. The schoolmasters
who did register themselves gave quiet votes, and
were never mixed up with hot political agitations.
Their school board successors do not always act so
wisely.
238 REMINISCENCES -A.ND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
FOETINGALL.
MY predecessor and namesake, who drifted south
to Lesrnahagow, left the Fortingall school in an
excellent condition. During the months of vacancy
its teaching was carried on by the parish minister,
Mr Stewart, assisted by Duncan Macgregor, Don-
nachadh Ruadh, who had been one of the best
pupils of my predecessor. On taking possession of
the dwelling-house, which was connected with the
schoolhouse, I found that when it was unoccupied
all the rats of the village had made it their
stronghold and nursery. It was no easy matter to
overcome the rat nuisance, for they had drains and
a space under the schoolroom floor to take refuge in,
and to resort to poison produced another trouble
when they died and rotted in their secret places of
abode. I never saw a brighter school than the one
at Fortingall. During my nearly eight years of
labour there three of its pupils passed out of it to
become ministers, four to become doctors, two
bank agents, and half-a-dozen or so to become
schoolmasters. Others drifted south to enter into
commercial life and various business callings.
There was a responsiveness of youthful eagerness
between the teacher and the taught that made
work enjoyable. On the occasion when the Celtic
Society of Edinburgh sent down a heap of books
to be competed for by the schools within the
Presbytery of Weem, my pupils made me very
PORTING ALL. 239
proud, for they nearly carried all before them. But
it was said for the other schools that the com-
petition was scarcely fair to them, because their
pupils were younger than several of the Fortingall
prize-winners. To some extent that was the truth,
but the juniors in Fortingall ranked up pretty
closely with their seniors. In winter it was the
custom in Fortingall to send back to school lads
and lasses above fourteen years of age who had
other employments during the outdoor working
season, and these came back very eager to advance
after having pondered on what they had learnt
before when at other work. Owing to this habit
the schoolhouse was overcrowded with about a
hundred and forty pupils in the winter months.
This number diminished to seventy or eighty in
summertime. In the winter season the scholars
were far too many for one teacher, and I often had
prickings of conscience in regard to the younger
children, who had to be left to the teaching of
advanced pupils whose fees were remitted. Their
income debarred parish schoolmasters from getting
any help from the Government Grant, and were it
otherwise the space of the Fortingall schoolroom
was insufficient in winter, according to the regu-
lations of the Education Department. Perhaps
there should have been less strict space regulation
for the country than for the town schools ; for
although inconveniently crowded, the Fortingall
schoolhouse did not appear to have a bad effect on
the health of the pupils, a good number of whom
came from places three or four miles distant. The
little ones were brought fairly well forward on the
lower steps of the ladder of learning by the hearty
efforts of my upper class assistants. But there was
240 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
no need for their being sent to the parish school
at all until they had learned to read easy books,
aad to do a little writing and arithmetic, for there
were three salaried dame-schools in the district,
in which infants were taught English as well as
sewing ; and this double work was well done at
the Keltneyburn and Tynayare dame-schools.
The valley of Fortingall had no resident pro-
prietor when I was schoolmaster there, unless Mr
John Stewart Menzies of Chesthill a true hearted
Gaelic-speaking Highlander of the old stamp might
be reckoned as one because he owned " Fearan na
Craoibh," or Moncrieff's land there, and his residence
up Glenlyon was not far away. He had only
recently sold Dun eaves to the Marquis of Breadal-
bane, who thus became proprietor of both sides of
Drummond Hill. The Garth or East End belonged
to Mr Macdenald of St Martin, and the Fortingall
end to Mr Gardyn Campbell of Troup both of
them absentees. There was one large farm and
three or four well-sized ones. But the bulk of the
arable land was divided between forty small farmers
and crofters, who had the hill grazings as a com-
munity under old regulations. I had a small croft
myself with horse, cow, and some twenty sheep, not
to mention pigs and poultry. The minister had one
also, besides his glebe. We both followed the
example of our predecessors, no one could say how
far back. Sheltered by two low hills in front of
high ranges, warm, fertile, and soft-featured, Fortin-
gall always looked curiously like a bit of romantic
English scenery, set like a gem in the rough bosom
of the Grampians. It looked more so than ever
when I saw it last (1907), for Sir Donald Currie,
proprietor of the whole of it except Duneaves, had
PORTING ALL. 241
so transformed the village and farmsteads by new
buildings, which harmonise with the scenery, that
the natural beauty of the whole has been increased.
Unlike depopulated Glenlyon and Breadalbane,
Sir Donald Currie's Fortingall property has still
a full population who are, in the main, descendants
of the native stock. When I was schoolmaster of
Fortingall one or two swarms of emigrants went off
to Canada, and a southward migration of the more
energetic and ambitious young people was ever going
on. That process of depletion was required to keep
the population from extending beyond the local
means of subsistence. Congestion would have been
more felt than it was ere then by the stay-at-home
ones had it not been that a large number of them
found employment and wages near at hand in the
Marquis of Breadalbane's woods, and in the trench-
ings on his Comrie home farm. The Fortingall people
were benefited by the Marquis's evictions. They
also sent out farm and domestic servants of the best
brand over a wide district where the depopulating
effect of the big sheep farms was already being
felt. At home they were good farmers, and for a
good many years their surplus potatoes nearly or
altogether paid their rent. Up to 1 842 the
kirk session funds and the benevolent help of
friends and neighbours sufficed for the support
of the poor, and indeed till about then the
kirk session had money out on heritable bonds,
paying interest. In my time pauperism was increas-
ing, but, on the whole, it was confined to old men of
honest records, who had been left lonely and had
become helpless, and to diligent old women who had
now lost the old value of their spinning industry,
or to mental or bodily afflicted sufferers. There
16
242 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
was occasionally too much drinking, but habitual
drunkards were few, and strangely enough the
few included some of the most capable men of the
community.
I had hard enough work to do in the crowded
Fortingall school, work which would have been
exhausting if its hardness had not compensations
and relaxations. But I was young and ardent, and
the eagerness of bright scholars made the labours
of the teacher light and enjoyable, for he was re-
warded by the progress due to combined efforts.
And in teaching the upper classes of such a school
his own self-education was ever expanding. Then
at the end of the session came seven or eight weeks
of holiday time, when health and strength were
recruited by open air life, and botauising excursions,
although private studies were never wholly neglected.
At the back of Fortingall lies weird Sithchalliou,
and westward, towering in the not far-off distance,
is Ben Lawers, which, with the whole range of which
it is the chief, has many rare plants and, in general,
a rich flora. How it came into existence I know
not, but we had an informal botanical club or excur-
sionary association in our district, of which an Aber-
feldy college student, Hugh Macmillan, afterwards
Dr Macmillan, the Free Church minister of Greenock,
and distinguished author, was facile princeps. The
majority of us were content with a knowledge of the
flowering plants, but he pushed his researches deep
among the crotals or lichens. We were rather a
numerous band of mountain climbers and rock and
ravine searchers, but, as far as I know, only three
of us are alive to-day (August 25, 1908). How
vividly the recollections of those botanising days,
with the perfumes of mountain flowers and the
FORTINGALL. 243
inspiring freshness of the Ben Lawers' breezes, coine
back to utie at the fireside, an old decrepit man ! I
was never a systematic botanist, but at one time I
had a good unsystematic knowledge of most of the
flowering plants in the flora Britannica. Even yet
I recognise the plants when I see them and remember
where we got the rare ones, but I stumble over their
names chiefly, I think, because we had Gaelic,
English and Latin names for them, and those three
nomenclatures have become mixed. However, I
have thus three chances, and after an effort rarely
fail to make one hit. Old Highlanders had names
for all the plants and the crotals also, and knew their
qualities and the uses that could be made of them.
They had likewise a system of grouping them more
on natural than on Liimean lines. But, as I have
said, I was never a thorough botanist ; my inclina-
tions were indeed leading me in another direction
local history and the conditions of life in former
days. From youth upwards I had a slight con-
nection with newspapers, especially with the Perth-
shire Advertiser and the Edinburgh Ladies Journal.
To the former I sent many contributions on local
history, and to the other verses which I thought
were poetry, but afterwards discovered to be only
rhyming without any poetic afflatus ; while sending
articles on local history to the Advertiser I over-
hauled kirk session records, and furnished the paper
with gatherings of extracts, some of which threw
light on the obscurities of family and genealogical
affairs, some on the Covenant war times and on
Cromwellian occupations as they affected that part
of the Highlands. My friend, the late Mr John
Cameron, a native of Lawers, fortunately gathered
the Gaelic names of plants, before they had been
244 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
swept away by the deluge of changes and depopula-
tion. I did a little towards the rescuing of
traditional lore from complete oblivion.
The overhauling of written records and the
gathering of oral traditions were, like the botanical
excursions, recreations during the holiday weeks.
But there was also something of a more exciting
kind hare-hunting in which I took part. How it
came to pass I cannot tell, but three evils potato
disease, grouse disease, and a plague of white hares
came closely upon one another's heels. In those
days fishing rights were not so much valued and not
so strictly enforced as they are now, and, moreover,
the parish schoolmaster was usually a sort of privi-
leged person. I could have had wide permission to
fish for trout on rivers, burns, and lochs, had I been
an angler, but I never took to the gentle craft.
Shooting and hill-walking I enjoyed intensely, and
during the vacations I had plenty of both. The
estate of Culdares was the first and, perhaps, the
worst infested, but the hare invasion extended over
all the big sheep farms of Perthshire. The evil
came to such a height, and the tenants complained
so loudly of the damage done through the eating
and fouling of grass by the hares, that exterminating
hunts had to be resorted to in many places. In not
a few of such hunts I was one of the shooters.
The schoolmaster of Fortingall had also a right
to cut peats in a certain place on the East-End hill.
I do not know when the parish school of Fortingall
was first set on foot, but it was in existence when
Charles the Second recovered his father's throne. I
do not know when the Fortingall people first took it
upon themselves to gather in force and cut the
schoolmaster's peats thirty peat cart-loads or more
PORTING ALL. 245
in one day but my predecessor and I enjoyed the
benefit of that custom, which seemed to be an old
one. The cutting of the schoolmaster's peats was
an annual event which was looked forward to with
pleasant anticipations as a social as well as a work-
ing function. It was the duty of the schoolmaster
to provide an abundance of oat-cakes, cheese, and
milk, and an ungrudging but not dangerously large
supply of whisky, for the workers, and, whatever
the weather, the work went on merrily; and I would
not vouch for it that understandings, which some-
times led to marriages, were not come to by some of
the young people. Peat-winning, and thatching
and repairing or rebuilding dwellings and outhouses
required much time and labour when I was at
Fortingall. When it could be got, broom was the
thatching preferred, but ferns and straw were used
when broom was not to be had. Heather was used
largely in Rannoch and parts of Glenlyon and
Breadalbane. It was the most picturesque of the
thatching materials, and it was almost or wholly as
lasting as broom.
Peat -cutting has now been almost altogether
discontinued in most parts of the Perthshire High-
lands. Perchance, dearness of coal may force people,
where peat abounds, to resort to it again. But it
was well, in view of such an event, that the peat
deposits should have rest and time to fill up and
condense, for in some places they had been so run
upon that they were wholly used up, and, in others,
pretty nearly exhausted as far as good black peat
was concerned. It is well for the future that while
old woods are being cut down, the area under trees
is yearly increasing. The planters may not see
more than the beauty of their improvements, but
246 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their successors will find the value of that long
unprofitable investment. Considering how American
and Russian forests are being cleared, and the care
Germany and France bestow upon the prevention of
timber scarcity by State protection of forests, and
considering the rate at which our British coal
deposits are being worked out, it is surely full time
for the Government and the proprietors of this
country to pay close attention to arboriculture.
While areas newly planted with trees must be a
deferred investment for a long stretch of years, they
are certain, after they produce useful timber, to
pay owners high profits, with compound interest
for delay, and give country people a permanent
industry. Fortingall was comparatively well-
wooded sixtv years ago, and it has now been much
further enriched in that respect by Sir Donald
Currie's new plantations. Sixty years ago it was a
good place for keeping bees, and no doubt it is so
yet. I found it very profitable myself. The school
children seemed to be as much interested in watch-
ing them in swarming time as I was myself. On
week-days no swarm could escape, but my bees were
Sunday - breakers, and occasionally went beyond
bounds when people were at church, and the village
quiet, and the sun shining.
A POPULATION OF MANY SURNAMES. 247
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A POPULATION OF MANY SURNAMES.
FORTINGALL has an early Chronicle extending from
1400 till 1579, begun by Sir James Macgregor,
vicar of Fortingall, and his brother Duncan, and
continued by a Macgregor curate, whose name we
do not know. But the records of the post-Reforma-
tion period down to Mr Macara's induction have
been lost. It would seem that Mr Robertson, the
minister who was deposed in 1716 for reading rebel
documents from the pulpit, kept the older parish
books, as many more of the displaced Jacobite
ministers did when not compelled by legal pressure
to hand them over. As for the books kept in the
time of Mr Fergus Ferguson, they and some later
ones perished or disappeared when, at the beginning
of the war with France, a mob of furious women
from Glenlyon and Rannoch, with a number of old
men, surprised and mobbed the parish schoolmaster,
Thomas Butter, as well as the local magistrates,
with a view of preventing the making out of lists
for militia enrolments. Militia riots were numerous
at that time, but this particular one was due to an
alleged attempt to hand over to the East India
Company a regiment raised for service in the
American War, and which should have been dis-
banded, as indeed it had to be, after mutiny and
much discussion in Parliament at the end of that
war. It was a pity that the parish records were
wrecked because of the attempted and frustrated
248 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
breach of faith. And immediately afterwards who were
so ready as the mobbers' sons and grandsons to en-
list in the Highland regiments, and to join militia,
fencibles, and volunteers ? The early Chronicle of
Fortingall, written by the three Roman Catholics,
contained most of the surnames which the Fortingall
people bore in my time, such as Macnaughtons,
Robertsons, Macdougals, Menzieses, Macgregors,
Stewarts, Maclellaus, Campbells, Irvines. The
introduction of most of these surnames could be
traced by the procession of proprietors. John of
Lome, who received Glenlyon as tocher with his
wife, the neice of King David Bruce, was not indeed
proprietor of Fortingall, but he was the " toiseach "
or King's representative, and upliffcer of his rents
and dues until the next reign, when the Wolf of
Badenoch, who placed an eagle's nest up at Garth,
" tntromitted " with his charge, and got the heiress
of Fortingall, Janet Menzies, married to his son
James. John of Lome placed a Macgregor vicar in
Fortingall, and introduced Macdougal clansmen of
his own there. The Stewarts began to come in
with the Wolfs usurpation, and afterwards had
additions from the Appin-Innermeath line. They
were divided into the " Stiubhartaich Dubh-Shuil-
each " and " Na Stiubhartaich Gorm-Shuileach "-
that is to say, the black-eyed and the blue-eyed
Stewarts. Huntly, on the forfeiture of Neil Ruadh
of Garth, had temporary hold of the superiority of
that place, and introduced the Irvines. The Mac-
naughtons, many of whom were called Mackay
that is, the Children of Aodh were transported
from the North to the banks of the Tay by William
the Lion. The Chief of the old Atholl clan
afterwards called Robertsons and Fergus, son of
A POPULATION OF MANY SURNAMES. 249
Aod or Aoidh, were lessees of Fortingall and other
thanages before John of Lome appeared on the
scene. As for the Maclellans, named after St
Fillan, they came at a later date to Fortingall from
Glenlyou. I think the Macnaughtons and Robert-
sons are the people of longest descent in Fortingall.
The Macintyres were late comers from Argyll, and
the Andersons and Fishers were also late comers
from Breadalbane. So were the Campbells from
Glenlyon and Breadalbane, and also the much-
scattered Clan Charles Campbell branch of the
Black Dougal of Craignish stock. With the
variations of a small kind which a long period of
time must bring about anywhere, the Fortingall
population had retained the same complexion and
composition for four hundred years.
The Militia riot, in which the Fortingall people
took no part, was an abnormal incident due to a
particular cause. Law-abiding as the Highlanders
had become since Culloden, they had lost nothing of
the warrior instincts and qualities of their race.
The parish of Fortingall as yet undivided was
behind none of the Gaelic-speaking places in sending
forth its sons to fight Napoleon by land and sea,
and to establish British supremacy in India. While
many of those who went forth to fight in their
country's cause fell on battle-fields or died of wounds
and fever, a goodly number returned home with
medals and pensions to keep the military fire alive
among boys of the next two generations. Although
the number of our veterans was much reduced when
the Crimean war broke out, several still survived to
gloat and glory over the achievements of the High-
landers at Alma and Balaclava, and to read with
sad and angry feelings about the insufficiencies of
250 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
organisation and the sufferings of the troops during
the horrible winter of storms, and the disappoint-
ments which nearly culminated into fatal disasters.
I was at that time treating myself to the unwonted
luxury of a daily newspaper, and before I could
scarcely glance over it, a veteran who had fought
under Abercromby in Egypt would come to hear the
news and to ask for the paper when I had read it.
This was John Campbell, called "Iain Caimbeul a
Chlaidh" John Campbell of the Churchyard
because his house stood near the famous old yew
tree and at the churchyard gate. John was a reader
of history and a critic of military affairs. Sir Colin
Campbell was at that time the hero of all Scotland;
but when,,on the death of Lord Raglan, people said
that Sir Colin should have been made Commander -
in-Chief, John, rising above clannishness, thought
that it was a wise decision to select another, and
that Sir Colin, however good in the open field,
would not have been the most fitting man for a
siege. After Sir Colin had quelled the Indian
Mutiny, John came to the conclusion that he was fit
for any military achievement whatever. A gloom
fell over Fortingall when the news came that
General Sir John Campbell, whom all the population
of the village knew intimately, was killed in the
brave but abortive attack in the Redan. Sir John's
father, General Sir Archibald Campbell, who was a
descendant of the Duneaves family, bought the
estate of Garth, which he sold again ten years later
to the trustees of Macdonald of St. Martin's. Sir
Archibald and his wife were Gaelic-speaking people
who belonged to the parish by race, and whose
children were well known to the Fortingall people.
Sir John's death was deeply and universally
FEILL CEIT. 251
regretted, but yet some consolation was drawn from
the fact that his body was found in advance of those
of the others who fell in that assault. They all
praised the Russian Commander-in-Chief for chival-
rously restoring to the family the ancestral sword
which Sir John was wearing when he fell. We
were expecting to hear of the fall of Sevastopol two
days before the news of it reached us. Postal and
telegraph arrangements then were far from being
what they are now. But at last the news did come,
and so late at night that many people had gone
to bed before the mail came in. But when the
announcement was read out to the people who were
waiting for it, a rush was made to the church, the
bell was rung furiously, and from different places, at
some distance from each other, bonfires blazed up to
show that the message of the bell was understood
and welcomed. All next Sunday's sermons were of
a thanksgiving character.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
FEILL CEIT.
RAILWAY transport and sales in large towns and
central places have almost effaced the old local fairs,
and reduced the Falkirk trysts themselves to mere
shadows. " Feill," often contracted to " Fil," meant
both festival and fair. The festival was in honour
of the patron saint of the locality, but the religious
gatherings led to secular business in early times,
and after the Reformation the saint element was
almost entirely forgotten except in a few Roman
Catholic corners. Cedd, one of the Saxon pupils of
252 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Saint Aidan, was the patron saint of Fortingall, and
his festival, the Feill-ma-Chaoide, was a lamb market
held in August. Fill-Ceit, of course, means the
Catherine Festival or Fair, but I do not think that
it was a Saint Catherine that gave the fair a name.
I was told by Fortingall ancients that it was called
after a daughter of the Laird of Glenlyon, because
she had persuaded her father or brother to give a
better stance for what had been a small fair for the
sale of goats held at Balnauld at the beginning of
December. When changed it continued to be held
at the old date, and soon grew into importance.
When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall the Filkate,
as the Lowlanders called it, was rather a provincial
institution than a small parish fair. Thousands of
people gathered to it from five or six parishes.
Perth merchants flocked to it to settle accounts with
rural shopkeepers and farmers, and to get new orders.
Farmers paid servants' wages and made new con-
tracts of services with them or renewed old ones.
It was quite a great feeing market ; for it had grown
into a habit with male and female servants to put
off till Filkate closing engagements with employers
even when determined to stay on in their places,
and those who consented to be feed at home would
not be content without going to the Filkate to spend
more than arles there infairings and drink. Thegather-
ing was, to a large extent, a servant's saturnalia.
At it employers and employed were on a footing of
equality. A great deal of whisky was consumed, and
the pockets of the women were filled with sweets.
There were at times quarrels and fighting among a
few of the young men who were rivals in love, and
it might happen that old grievances among older-
people who had taken too much of the mountain
FEILL CEIT. 253
dew might find outlets in angry language. Still
the two or three policemen who assembled to keep
the peace had usually nothing more to do than
to look on and enjoy themselves as far as the
Highland people were concerned, but they had to
keep a sharper eye on some of the doubtfully
honest characters who came from beyond the pass
of Dunkeld or across the Highland line from other
directions. Mishaps of a serious nature rarely
happened, but a few years before my time a fatal
accident did occur. After the Filkate, a man from
Strathtay who attended it was discovered to be
missing. Suspicion of foul play arose, because on
the evening of the fair the boots and feet of a
prostrate man had been seen coming out of straw in
an empty stall of the hotel stable, The Procurator-
Fiscal came to hold an enquiry in the village. Those
who believed that there had been foul play had two
theories. The first was that the man had got into
a tipsy quarrel, been accidentally killed, and that
his body had been put in the stable straw and
afterwards taken to some better hiding place. The
second that he had been waylaid, robbed, and killed,
and thrown into the river by some of the rogues
who had come to the fair from distant towns. No
one who knew him could believe that the stableman
had anything to do with the disappearance. He
was indeed capable of taking a dram too much on
odd occasions, and he admitted that this fair-day
was one of them. He had been working hard the
previous day and much of the night, felt weary,
took whisky to brace him up, and then laid himself
down in the straw to sleep. His straightforward
story was corroborated by fellow-servants. So the
stable story was reduced to nothing. The quarrel
254 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
theory also broke down. The missing man was of
a pacific disposition, and his acquaintances said he
had no enemies in the world. The enquiry of the
Procurator-Fiscal left the matter as it was before.
But far down its stream the river Tay, after some
time, rendered up the missing man's body, which
the Lyon had borne into it. There were no marks
of violence on the body, and in the purse found on
it were receipts for accounts he had had settled, and
the balance of the money he was known to have
taken with him to the Filkate. The night was
dark, and he must have stumbled into the Lyon,
then in flood, where it flowed close to the road
east of Drumcharry.
Among those examined by the Procurator -Fiscal
was Peter Macdougal, one of the two tenants of
Balnacraig Peter was called Paraig Eoghain
Peter the sou of Ewan in Fortingall, but outside
the village he was widely known as Paraig na feile
Peter of the kilt because he habitually wore the
garb of old Gaul. Peter and his twin brother,
Alastair, were so closely alike in person, face, and
voice, that it would have been difficult to distinguish
one from the other if Peter did not wear the kilt
and Alastair trousers. Peter told the Fiscal that
he had had a talk with the missing man before noon
on the fair day, together with a friendly dram.
" Did you see him after six o'clock at night ?" asked
the Fiscal. Peter's reply was prompt and thorough.
" Lord bless you, how could I, when before two my
son and daughter took me home shoulder high and
sent me to bed ?" The shoulder high was a flourish,
but, no doubt, Peter had indulged in a good spree
before his son and daughter interfered. He was no
drunkard nor habitual tippler, but a light-hearted
FELL CEIT. 255
social creature who could enjoy a bit of a spree now
arid then. As Peter was a widower, his daughter,
Isabel, who was a religious Free Churchwoman,
ruled his house. She had an idea that the kilt was
not a fit garment on communion days, and, without
consulting him, got him a pair of sacramental
trousers. With much persuasion she induced him
to wear them at the next Kenmore communion to
which the Free Church people of Fortingall resorted
because they had then no church or minister of their
own. At that communion Peter caught the first
bad cold of his life. It sent him to bed for days,
and his first act on getting up was to throw the
trousers on the fire, from which Isabel rescued them
in a scorched condition. Peter was seventy-seven
when he went with his well-doing family and other
friends to Ontario. Before he went away people
told him, to tease him, that he would have to wear
the condemned but carefully stored garment on
board ship. He declared he would not, and asked
who would like to go out in clothes that would
smell like a singed sheep's head ? Peter lived long
in Ontario. His people had taken up laud and
settled near where the migrating myriads of pigeons
passed, and Peter with his gun and kilt annually
marched off to shoot the pigeons until he was a very
old man.
256 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XL.
REMARKS ON PARISH OF FORTINGALL CHURCH
AFFAIRS.
BEFORE he died, Mr Macara had the satisfaction of
getting missionary ministers placed in Rannoch and
Glenlyon. This was a long step in advance of the
catechist help of schoolmasters on which he had to
rely before, but a quarter-of-a-century had still to
elapse before Rannoch and Glenlyon were created
into quoad sacra parishes. In 1804, Mr John Mac-
naughton, a native of the Glen, was the missionary
minister at Innerwick, and Mr Alexander Irvine
held a similar position at Kinloch Rannoch. The
latter, as Dr Irvine of Little Dunkeld, was, when he
died in 1824 at the premature age of fifty-two,
prominent among the leaders of the Church of
Scotland. Because he set his face as hard as steel
against the narrow views and intolerance into which
the revivalists plunged headlong, he has been classi-
fied among the Moderate leaders of the Church of
Scotland ; but in his preaching he was as fervently
evangelical as any of the men who went out at the
Disruption. His memory is still green in Little
Dunkeld and Strathbrand as an eloquent preacher in
English and Gaelic, and an indefatigable parochial
worker. He was born at Garth, where his father
was a farmer; licensed by the Presbytery of Mull as
missionary at Kintra in July, 1797 ; removed to
Rannoch in 1799 ; and, on Mr Macara's death, was
presented to Fortingall by Sir Robert Menzies, whence
FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. 257
he was transferred in fifteen months to Little
Dunkeld. His marriage with Jessie, the younger
daughter of Robert Stewart, Laird of Garth, and
sister of General David Stewart, the historian of the
Highland Regiments, was a romantic outcome of
early boy and girl love. Caste feeling refused
sanction to the marriage. The son of a small
tenant, however superior in natural talents and
scholarship, was not thought a fit mate for the
bonnie daughter of the laird. So, as the straight-
forward application for her hand was refused, the
lovers made an elopement marriage, and the laird
and his family soon became proud of their son and
brother-in-law. The graceful, lively style of General
Stewart's History owes much to Dr Irvine's revision
and assistance. He was a ready debater, with
flights of fancy and touches of humour to set off"
solid arguments, an impressive preacher, and a
whole-hearted Highlander who did much for Gaelic
literature and the gathering of the Ossianic poetry
which had come down orally from generation to
generation.
Mr Irvine was succeeded, first in Rannoch and
soon afterwards in Fortingall, by Mr Robert Mac-
donald, a younger son of the Laird of Dalchosnie,
and uncle of General Sir John Macdonald. Mr
Macdonald was licensed by the Presbytery of Mull
in October, 1802, and ordained by the Presbytery
of Abertarff in May, 1803, whence he removed to
Rannoch. He was presented to Fortingall by John,
Duke of Atholl, and inducted there in September,
1806. He died in February, 1842, in the seventy-
second year of his age, and the thirty-ninth of his
ministry. He prejudiced his position among the
local gentry and among the common people like
17
258 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
wise by marrying his servant maid, who, although
uneducated, made a good wife for him. It was
indeed said that she was a kind of guardian angel
to him as long as she lived, and that after her death
he deteriorated in respect to strict sobriety and
diligent discharge of his ministerial duties. He
took life easy, and was too much inclined to boon
companion sociality, but never went so far as to lay
himself open to Church discipline or censure. That
he was a jolly good fellow nobody could deny, nor
that he had talents and knowledge which would
have given him ministerial influence had he made
the most of them. But he was always far more
liked as a man than he was respected or reverenced
as a minister. He wrote the paper on his parish
given in the "New Statistical Account of Scotland."
1 have seen other documents written by him, which
showed that he could state a legal case or draw
up a petition with singular ability. He was
fond of Gaelic poetry, and possessed a great store
of stories.
Mr Macdonald was succeeded by Mr, afterwards
Dr, Alexander Irvine eldest son of Dr Irvine,
Little Dunkeld. He came to Fortingall from Foss,
where he had been minister for some years, and
was soon after the Disruption taken to Blair-Atholl,
where he spent the remainder of his life. Mr Irvine
was followed by Mr Donald Stewart, from Tober-
mory. He was a native of Breadalbane, the pious
and worthy son of pious farming people. His wife,
Agnes Shiels, was descended from a brother of the
author of the " Hind Let Loose." It is rather
singular that Mr Macara, Mr Macdonald, and Mr
Stewart should not now have a single represen-
tative, and I am not sure that Mr Fergus Ferguson
FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. 259
has any either. Sir Robert, who fell at Quatre
Bras, was Mr Macara's only child, and he died
unmarried. Mr Macdonald and Mr Stewart had
sons and daughters who all died unmarried. The
deposed Mr Robertson is still represented by his
daughters. General Sir Archibald Campbell and
his wife were both of them great-grandchildren
of his.
In 1842 dissent in Fortingall was confined to a
small number of Baptists who were associated with
the Baptists of Lawers, and whose pastor was worthy
Mr Duncan Cameron, father of the author of the
" Gaelic Names of Plants," and also of Mr Robert
Cameron, a north of England member of Parliament.
Mr Donald Maclellan, cousin of Mr Cameron,
Lawers, another Fortingall man, was for many years
Baptist minister in Glenlyon. During the revival
movement out of which the Baptist communities
arose, Mr Macdonald, the easy-going parish
minister, was so far from coming up to the
popular ideal of ministerial zeal and strictness of
life that it is almost a wonder the sectaries
were so few. Of the many stories told about him
two small harmless ones may be related briefly. A
good many young men of the upper classes who
gathered to a Christmas entertainment at Glenlyon
House were amusing themselves putting the stone
and throwing the hammer when the minister
happened to be passing by. They hailed him, and
he joined them. He was then beyond middle age,
but having been in his youth an athlete, he boasted
of former feats and ran down their performances.
He was handling the hammer while delivering his
criticism, and they challenged him to throw it, and
he did so, but he was out of practice, and the
260 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hammer, having taken a wrong swirl, fell close to
him. At this mishap there was much laughter.
The minister, now on his mettle, asked for another
throw, and sent the hammer several feet beyond
their farthest mark. He then went away, saying to
them as he left " When you go beyond my mark,
send down word to the manse, and I'll come up and
put off my cassock."
For the last period of his preaching life he had
made a selection from his written sermons, and used
to read them in order, Sunday after Sunday, till he
came to the end of the parcel, and then, turning it
over, began at the beginning again. People with
good memories knew beforehand what would be
next Sunday's sermons, for they were in pairs,
English and Gaelic. Some years before his death
he went for a month or two in the summer to live in
the thatched house belonging to the croft he rented
and farmed along with his glebe, because repairs
were being made on the manse. In this temporary
abode an outbreak of fire took place one night,
which caused more alarm than damage to anything,
except the disarrangement of the minister's sermons.
His New Year sermon was familiarly known to his
congregation. The text was: -"Observe the month
of Abib, and keep the Passover unto the Lord thy
God : for in this month of Abib the Lord thy God
brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt by
night." Now there was no month of Abib sermon
on the New Year Sunday after the fore-mentioned
incident. But in the March of that year the Abib
sermon turned up again. The minister, after the
fire, had never troubled himself to re-arrange the
sermons as they were previously, but took them one
by one in the order in which they chanced to fall,
FORTINGALL CHURCH AFFAIRS. 261
without looking at the text before he went into the
pulpit. When chaffed about preaching a New Year
sermon in March, he good-humouredly replied that
March was the month of Abib, and that the old
Christian year used to begin then.
In the changes brought about by time, the
Jacobite Episcopal ianism with which Mr Ferguson
had to contend died out utterly. Lively memory of
Mr Macara's evangelical preaching, stern discipline,
and all round ministerial efficiency counteracted Mr
Ma,cdonald's slackness largely, but, I believe, al-
though they liked him as a man, the Fortingall
people must have felt the flouts and gibes of the
Baptists keenly, and during the Ten Years' Conflict
the sneers of their neighbours about their minister,
and the feelings so roused, coloured their after
conduct in the case of the disputed settlement in
which I was subsequently involved. In their short
and far separated periods of service at Fortingall,
the two Irvines, father and son, kept up the Macara
tradition, and the son, although far from being such
a popular preacher as his father, helped to confirm
not a few of the Fortingall people in their determina-
tion to stick to the Church of Scotland at the Dis-
ruption. Those who seceded were not numerous
enough to form a separate congregation. They put
themselves under Mr Sinclair, the Free Church
minister of Kenmore. They regularly crossed
Drummond Hill to go to church Sunday after Sun-
day, but in time they got a meeting house on
Chesthill's land at Croftgarrow, to which Mr Sinclair
came at stated times to preach. They communicated
at Kenmore until 1857 or a year later, when, having
accession through the split in the parish church
congregation as the result of the disputed settlement
262 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
case, they got a church and a minister of their own.
They never made an attempt to set up a Free
Church school. Those who did not secede in 1843
were more happy in their next minister, Mr Donald
Stewart, presented by the Duke of Atholl. Mr
Stewart was an earnest evangelical preacher, of
amiable peace-loving character, who applied himself
assiduously to his pastoral duties, and in the fiercely
hot days after the Disruption gained the respect of
those who did not go to hear him. Candid Free
Churchmen said they only regretted that they had
not themselves more ministers like him, and the
more critical of their party could say nothing worse
of him than that he was a Moderate, and had
attached himself to the wrong side. He died, un-
fortunately, at the end of 1855, when in the fifty-
fifth year of his age. Having, when in Mull, been
induced to become security for a relation who came
to financial grief, he had to bear the burden of the
debt so incurred for the remainder of his days, and
he did not live long enough to pay it all off, although,
notwithstanding his numerous family, that end was
not far off at the time of his premature death. He
kept his trouble to himself, and it was only when he
died that people understood how manfully he bore
his trials.
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 263
CHAPTER XLI.
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. LORD ABERDEEN'S ACT.
I HAD been nearly seven years among the Fortingall
people when Mr Stewart died. The quoad civilia
parish of Fortingall was legally the " United
Parishes of Fortingall and Kilchonain" (probably
Kil-Chomgain), and as such it had two patrons,
who exercised their rights alternately. The Duke
of Atholl was patron of Fortingall, and the Chief
of the Menzieses patron of Kilchonain or Rannoch.
Glenlyon before the Reformation days had belonged
to the Abbey of Scone, and after the Reformation
merged into Fortingall. The later presentations
were as follows. The Duke of Atholl presented Mr
Macara, Sir Robert Menzies presented Mr Irvine,
the Duke of Atholl presented Mr Macdonald, Sir
Neil Meuzies presented Mr Robertson Irvine, and
the Duke of Atholl, when Mr Irvine was promoted
to Blair-Atholl, presented Mr Stewart. On Mr
Stewart's death it was the turn of Sir Robert
Menzies. Sir Neil's son, to present his successor.
Soon after Mr Stewart's death it was rumoured
that Sir Robert was being persuaded to present a
young man who had been assistant at Dull, and
was then at Straloch. In the after proceedings I
was called, by the legal representatives of patron
and presentee, "Captain of the Fortingall people"
by way of denunciation, and from the Bar of the
General Assembly it was pleaded that in addition
to its being the law of the land, " it was much
264 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
better that patronage should be attached to status
and property than given up, as was sought in this
case, to a clever but unscrupulous schoolmaster."
Now the simple fact was that the opposition had
gathered sweeping force before I had anything
whatever to do with it. I knew less about the
presentee than did many of my co-parishioners,
and my slight knowledge of him was rather in his
favour, for he had likeable qualities, and the alleged
flightmess which was objected to in him might well
be attributed to youth and inexperience. Those who
got up the opposition founded it on independent
grounds, but there were others who wished strongly
that Sir Robert should be respectfully asked to
present Mr Grant, of Tenandry. Now, unlike the
greater number of the people, I had never heard
Mr Grant. He was, I knew, a man of good report,
and a popular preacher, but he suffered from bad
health. Sir Robert, who was living at Foss House,
was quite accessible. It was thought wise to
suggest to the patron that Mr Grant would be a
very acceptable presentee, and not to mention any
other name at all. At this stage of the congrega-
tional movement I certainly did become a sort of
leader, because the people had no one else to fall
back upon. I had found by this time that they
had cause to believe their objections were not base-
less, and had become convinced that there would
be a split if the man objected to was settled as
minister of Fortingall. Mr John Robertson, Glen-
lyon House, one of the elders, and myself were
appointed to go to Sir Robert and bring Mr Grant's
name before him as that of a man who would be
gladly and thankfully accepted at his hands. When
we reached Foss House we were told Sir Robert
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 265
was out with a host of shooters and beaters on a
great hare hunt on the hill, but Lady Menzies
received us most kindly and hospitably. We
explained our errand to her, and she expressed
a very high opinion of Mr Grant, but mentioned
his unsatisfactory state of health. She readily
promised to lay the matter before Sir Robert, and
we went away pleased because assured that no
presentation had yet been issued, and hopeful that
Lady Menzies's influence would be used in favour
of an appointment by which all trouble would be
avoided. But on the hill, amidst a snowstorm, we
came up to the line of shooters and beaters, and had
a short conference with the patron himself, which
was not quite so reassuring in character, but it did
not leave us hopeless either. We were sanguinely
deceiving ourselves. In a short time the man to
whom our people objected was their presentee.
When he came to preach his trial sermons, Sir
Robert and other gentlemen, who were all Episco-
palians, and a company of non-parishioners came to
hear him, and, in fact, to overawe the Fortingall
congregation. That, however, was impossible. The
same device was again resorted to, and again in
vain, when the Presbytery met in Fortingall Church
to moderate in the call. By this time the war
spirit had seized upon us and united us in a solid
body of objectors determined to resist the settle-
ment under the provisions of Lord Aberdeen's Act.
It was at this stage that I did willingly become a
leader, because I happened to know more about
Lord Aberdeen's Act and ecclesiastical procedure
than the rest of the objectors. At the Presbytery
meeting the call was signed by so very few
members or adherents of the congregation that
266 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
if it had retained any of its theoretical
vitality the presentee should have been rejected
then and there. Theoretically the call was
what gave the presentee his spiritual commission,
but in practice the call had been whittled down to
a mere formality which two or three signatures
of communicants made valid. Still, in a case
like ours, the call remained a test of congregational
feeling. It was signed by a very few of Mr Stewart's
former hearers and by some nou-Presbyterian heri-
tors. That Free Church elder, the Marquis of
Breadalbane, who was a large heritor in the parish,
honourably held aloof. Still his name was so un-
scrupulously used to influence workmen on his home
farm by all who were beating up recruits to sign the
call that one of the elders, Mr John Anderson, and
myself went to see him at Taymouth Castle. But
before that interview a batch of his workmen, some
of whom were Free Churchmen, and others who,
though parishioners, went to worship at Kenmore,
came late one night and signed the call. Mr
Anderson and I found the Marquis very affable.
We had a long conversation with him, and he did
not let us away without giving us supper. He was
annoyed at hearing that his name had been used,
and gave us authority to contradict the false report.
He said they were not free from troubles in his own
Church, and that to fan fires of discord in another
Church was the last thing he would think of.
With the exception of the few from the home farm,
the Free Church people of Fortingall held aloof like
the Marquis. They showed indeed that they
expected and wished the objectors to be defeated,
but they had a just idea of fair play, and, as
Presbyterians they knew how hotly outside inter-
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 267
ference would be resented. Besides all this they
felt sure that their own party would gain by the
defeat of the objectors, which they predicted was
sure to be effected by the combined forces of land-
owners and Moderatism. The case was the first
which had arisen under the Aberdeen Act, not only
in the Presbytery of Weem, but as far as I can
remember in all the southern Highlands. It was
therefore keenly watched with contrary hopes and
fears by both Church of Scotland and Free Church
people. The Aberdeen Act had been boasted of on
the one side and sneered at on the other for years,
and now it was to be tested in a Highland parish.
If the objectors looked at the case from the local
point of view, its broader aspect as a test of the
worth or worthlessness of the Aberdeen Act was
what engaged the attention of the general Highland
public. Both sides engaged legal agents, and issues
were joined before the Presbytery. The relevancy
of the objections lodged had first to be dealt with,
and that was not any easy thing to settle, for any-
thing which amounted to libel could not be admitted
under the Act. That contest being finished,
witnesses were examined, first on behalf of the
objectors and then on behalf of the presentee. On
relevancy and other points appeals were taken to
'the Synod and Assembly, but it was to the honour
of the Presbytery of Weem that no change of
consequence resulted from the appeals. The work
was a new one to the Presbytery, yet it was carried
through with conspicuous ability and fairness.
When it is mentioned that the case went before two
Assemblies first on relevancy and then on merits
it may be seen what a weary long contest it was.
It was indeed wearisome, trying, and costly to both
268 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
sides, and to one who knew no more than what was
admissible in the objections under the Act it might
seem to be much ado about nothing, or an illustra-
tion of the old couplet :
"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell;
The reason why I cannot tell."
The working out of the deceitful Aberdeen Act
imposed great hardships both on objectors and
presentees. It is different now, but in 1856 any
presentee to a Gaelic-speaking parish who had no
Gaelic could be rejected without much trouble to
parishioners or any slur on his own fitness for an
English -speaking parish. Our Fortingall presentee
had excellent Gaelic, for he had been thoroughly
taught by his uncle, Mr Samuel Maclaren, school-
master of St Fillans. It would have been better
for both sides if he had made the wretchedly-signed
call an excuse for retirement before issues had been
joined, but he could not have done that without
giving offence to those who wanted, in pursuance of
a mistaken policy, to force him upon an almost
unanimously objecting congregation. From begin-
ning to end the Fortingall people stood firmly
shoulder to shoulder. Open and underhand efforts
to divide them united them more closely than
before. Near the end of the proceedings a rumour
went forth on bat-like wings over all the parishes of
the Presbytery of Weem that many of the objectors
were now repenting of the action taken and wished
to withdraw. When indignant people sp .>ke to me
about it, I did not think that this rumour was
worthy of more serious consideration than other
falsehoods of a hostile nature which had gone before
it. But so many of our side were so angry at
the malicious intention, and so much afraid of its
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 269
possible consequences, that a petition to the Presby-
tery flatly contradicting it and repeating unshaken
adherence to the original objections was sent round
and signed by all the original objectors, and also by
some others who were not at home on the previous
occasion. That retort killed the lie before it could
do any mischief by being circulated underhand, if
not openly used as an argument in Synod and
Assembly.
The Assembly of 1857 had two cases of disputed
settlements to dispose of the first from Fortingall
and the second from Kilmalcolm. The Fortingall
case was taken up on the evening of the day
which was observed as the Queen's Birthday. The
pleadings were long, and ministers and elders who
were invited to or gave Birthday dinners went
away on the understanding that no decision should
be come to until the next day's meeting. This
informal understanding did not bind Mr Procurator
Cook, who, when he had cause to believe himself at
the head of a majority, set his face against adjourn-
ment, and had the satisfaction, in the small hours of
a misty morning, of getting by a majority of six the
chance of throwing aside the case of the objectors,
and ordering the settlement of the presentee to be
proceeded with at once. More than a score of the
members who went away under the belief that an
adjournment would take place recorded their pro-
tests the next day against what had been done in
the night, and others who did not record their
protests spoke in wrathful terms about what they
called a dirty party trick. We heard many stories
about the way in which the trick had been
engineered, some of which were probably untrue,
but one of them was partly corroborated by the fact
270 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
that after dining several of those who voted for Mr
Cook's motion came back, while those of the other
side, believing in the adjournment, did not. It was
customary on the Queen's Birthday to adjourn
early in the evening. Without any informal under-
standing at all it was contrary to that custom to
continue proceedings throughout the night. The
wrong done to the Fortingall people under cloud of
night, and other accidental or cunningly contrived
misconceptions, turned out to be balm in Gilead for
the Kilmalcolm objectors. Their case was by far
the weaker of the two, but they got rid of their
undesired presentee in a short and sharp manner.
It was clear to every one that the two decisions
were as inconsistent as they could be, and that
besides its other faults the Aberdeen Act was subject
to all the uncertainties of a fluctuating Assembly,
which in cases of this kind had no such guidance of
precedents and principles as in libel cases. I will
not refer to the subject again, but will say that the
after history of the Fortingall settlement vindicated
the objectors and reflected no honour on the wisdom
of the Assembly's decision. Ere many years its
sequel was a failure that ended in a tragedy. Most
of the objectors joined the Free Church and then
had a minister of their own.
The ludicrous contrast between the two decisions
of the Assembly given at the interval of a few hours
led to something more important and far-reaching
than the settlement of the Fortiugall presentee and
the summary rejection of the one for Kilmalcolm.
On the day on which the protest of the absent ones
had been recorded and the Kilmalcolm case disposed
of, a hasty semi-private meeting of members of the
Assembly and others was held, at which the first
A DISPUTED SETTLEMENT. 271
step was taken for forming an organisation to work
for abolishing patronage by Act of Parliament and
the paying out of the patrons. The movement thus
instituted marked a turning point in the latter-day
history of the Church of Scotland ; and as a greater
result Presbyterian union would long ago have been
happily brought about had the spirit of religion and
reason been stronger than the pampered cult of con-
creted sectarianism and suicidal perversity. For a
period of years after the Disruption the party of the
"Forty Thieves" had neither the force nor the courage
to contend energetically on behalf of their own sound
principles. They accepted Lord Aberdeen's Act as
a great and valuable concession ; and in respect to
the recognition of the full spiritual powers of the
Church Courts in purely spiritual matters, so it was.
After ten years' trial it was found to be a delusion
in regard to disputed settlements and a snar,
cumbrous, costly, uncertain, a dreadful ordeal for
presentees, and a worrying and disintegrating bone
of contention for congregations. The younger, more
resolute and clear-sighted ministers and ruling elders
scarcely needed to be convinced that the Act was a
failure. But a sudden illumination was required to
brace up the half-measure and less courageous sec-
tion of the party to go in at once for the abolition of
patronage. This movement for the abolition of
patronage, once it was properly started, gained
momentum like a stone rolling down a steep hillside.
At the end of sixteen years a Conservative Govern-
ment granted the relief which had been so often
petitioned for to no purpose for two hundred and
sixty years, and that, too, in a fuller measure than
our ancestors had ever sought to obtain it. Noth-
ing short of the total abolition of patronage would
272 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
give general satisfaction to the laity of the Church
of Scotland after ten years' experience of the work-
ing of Lord Aberdeen's well-meant but disappointing
Act. Could it by any conceivable possibility have
been so carried out as to fulfil the full promise of its
plausible phraseology ? No, because its working
could never be divested of party characteristics, and
placed on the same judicial non-party platform as
regular libel cases. Throughout all its existence
decisions on cases under it were arrived at less on
judicial principles than like votes in the House of
Commons on party grounds. The policy of abolish-
ing patronage was truly conservative, while that
adopted by many patrons and the Peel Government
after the passing of the first Reform Bill was short-
sighted and radically destructive.
CHAPTER XLII.
A REMOVE.
I CAME out of the Assembly Hall that misty
summer morning on which the surprise decision was
given fully resolved to resign the mastership of the
Fortingall School and to leave that neighbourhood.
I could not acquiesce in the justice of that decision,
and the contrary one a few hours later in the
Kilmalcolm case made it certain to me that the
Fortingall people would leave the Parish Church in
a body and go over to the Free Church. It needed
no prophetic spirit to guess at what was likely to
happen in other respects. If I loved war, my
position as parochial teacher made me independent
as long as I did my duty in the school and did not
A REMOVE. 273
lay myself open to libel on moral grounds, and the
Presbytery had to deal with me in precisely the
same way as a minister. But manse and school-
house were near each other, and continual friction
was abhorrent, and it was only fair to the new
minister and to myself that I should go away and
leave him a clear ground of action. After what had
taken place T could not help being looked upon as
the head of the party opposed to the minister.
Well, I formed my resolution to go away, and
stuck to it without any wavering. I thought of
emigrating to Canada, where so many of my kith
and kin were already settled. Being an unmarried
man under thirty, " flitting " was comparatively
easy. I had no misgiving about being able to make
a living in Canada, as teacher, farmer, or by a
mixture of both, with a dash of journalistic or
magazine work besides. I never had wild dreams
of wealth or wild ambitions. The dream which
from youth to age best pleased my fancy was to be
the owner of a one-farm little island where I could
read books in the sunshine with my back to a rock
and my face to the sea. Perhaps the modest scope
of that island dream goes far to explain what is a
puzzle to myself, namely, the constancy with which
I adhered to principles and convictions accepted on
what I thought sufficient reasons, and the drifting
slackness by which I left to the unsolicited action of
friends the determination of leading events in my
life. Mr Drummond and my father's unauthorised
sending in of my name as candidate led to my going
to Fortingall. Mr Charles Stewart, Tigh 'n Duin,
and the Laird of Chesthill were the ultroneous
agents in sending me to Balquhidder. Chesthill
remonstrated with me for thinking of emigrating to
18
274 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Canada, and on his return from a Falkirk tryst he
met a crowd of Balquhidder people at the Kings-
house and gave them such a character of me that
they were anxious to have me.
CHAPTER XLIII.
BALQUHIDDER.
EXCEPTING the parts of Comrie parish on both sides
of Lochearn which are ecclesiastically attached to
it, the parish of Balquhidder is, as outlined by its
hills and waters, not unlike the three-legged symbol
of the Isle of Man. The head waters of the Teith
gather in the braes of Balquhidder and flow from
west to east through two lochs and connecting river
links to Stronlsancy, and this first valley represents
one leg of the symbol. At Stronlsancy the river
Balvaig turns at a sharp angle through Strathyre to
Loch Lubnaig, which folds itself about the foot of
Ben Ledi, and Strathyre is the second leg. Beyond
the low ridge below the Kingshouse and opposite
Stronlsancy the burn which is the fountain head of
the Earn flows eastward into Lochearn. This third
leg is shorter and less strongly marked than the
other two, and it belongs of course to a separate
water system. Lochearnhead has two romantic
side glens in Glenample and Glenogle. The former
enjoys primitive solitude in the shadow of Ben
Voirlich and the embraces of old Glenartney Forest.
The latter, traversed by road from immemorial time,
and now penetrated by railway, is well known to
tourists, but only tourists who walk through on
foot can understand what Larig-h-Ile, as this whole
BALQTTHIDDER. 275
wonderful pass is called, meant to the men of the
fighting days of old. Agricola, for instance, had
good cause for not trying to penetrate Caledonia by
the passes of Leny and Larig-h-Ile. Ben Voirlich
towers like a pyramid over the whole three sections
of Balquhidder, and shines from afar to distant
places. Its favourable position, standing up free from
competition by near rivals of almost equal height,
gives it more prominence and individuality than
belongs to it by right of elevation. On the other
hand, Ben Ledi, at the Loch Lubnaig border, suffers
from its position, and only asserts its superiority to
those who approach the Highlands from Stirling.
The peaks and mountains which are crowded in two
lines fronting one another in the Braes of Bal-
quhidder would be more imposing if spread out, and
not placed out of the way of tourists. Several of
these are fit to rival Ben Voirlich and Ben Ledi in
height, and still more so in regard to the steepness
with which they spring up from the bottom of that
long and low valley ; but as seen from the Kings-
house, they look like a group of low hills. If
distance robes them in their azure hue to the eyes
of the beholder, it robs them of their Alpine
magnificence. It is like looking through a long
avenue of arching trees, or the wrong end of the
telescope. Those who wish to see the high peaks
and the huge hills of Rob Roy's farm must go on
that one errand where the blaeberries grow midst
the bonnie blooming heather. My friend the present
farmer would like the heather to be more plentiful
than it is, and could dispense with the blaeberries.
This is the finest summer grazing land in the High-
lands, but it has the drawbacks of too much wet
land and of the want of heather, bushes, and shelte
276 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
for the purpose of wintering sheep. The principal
side-glen of the Balquhidder valley is Glenbuckie,
which strikes off from the river Balvaig at Stronvar
arid stretches back to march with Glenfinlas
which, alas, is no longer occupied by the community
of Stewarts who farmed it for long centuries.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CIVIL HISTORY NOTES.
THE history of Balquhidder has yet to be written.
An obscure mist hangs over it until the marriage
of James IV., who settled Balquhidder on his bride,
Margaret Tudor, as part of her dowry. Sir Walter
Stewart was Queen Margaret's bailie of Balquhidder.
It. is clear that when King James married his Tudor
princess Balquhidder was, like the forest lands in its
neighbourhood, Crown property. It may have been
so from ancient days, yet it is not unlikely that
when Albany was regent it had become detached
for a period during which Stewarts began to be
placed as principal men in it. I only jot down hints
and facts which may give help to the future
historian of this beautiful and romantic part of the
Highlands. About 1600 the Church patronage and
superiority of Balquhidder, along with possessions of
a large portion t>f the land of the parish, belonged to
David Murray, Lord Scone. It was he who built the
post-Reformation church which now exists as a
picturesque ruin. The narrow chancel of the old
Roman Catholic building was left out of that edifice,
and it was within its precincts that Rob Roy was
buried. How and when and why the Atholl family
CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 277
took the place of the Mansfield family in Balquhidder
I do not know, but the event must have taken place
before the Athollman, Mr Ferguson, was appointed
minister of the parish. He was the gentleman into
whose glebe Rob Hoy used to place a gift cow or
two by night each year at Martinmas. It was the
long-continued habit of the Atlioll family to extend
their influence by buying properties held of the
Crown, and then of selling them to feudal vassals,
while they retained the superiority and the Church
patronage. The estates of several small single
owners in Balquhidder sprung out of this Atholl
custom. The most curious of the small estates was
Muirlaggan, which belonged to " portioners" of the
Macintyre clan. At, or shortly before, the beginning
of last century the Church patronage and what
remained of Atholl lands in Balquhidder passed to
Sir John Macgregor of Lanrick, who is better known
under the name of Murray in Indian history. Sir
John also bought the adjoining small estate of two
unmarried co-heiresses. They were the last repre-
sentatives of Patrick Beag, an illegitimate son of
Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy. Black Duncan,
besides giving Edinchip to his son, Patrick, about
1600, took possession of a stretch of land at the
loch end and along the side of it. He also purchased
from the Earl of Argyll Edinample and Glenample
on the south side of the Loch, and there he built
Edinample Castle. For a long time the Edinample
estate belonged to the Earls of Argyll, and when
they sold it they made the purchaser promise
to protect the Maclarens, or Clan Laurin of Bal-
quhidder, as they themselves had been wont to do.
Local tradition tells of a time when that protection
failed against the Buchanans who took possession
278 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
of Strathyre in the fifteenth century. "Cailean
Uaine" Green Colin, so called from the colour of
his armour a younger son of the first Earl of
Argyll, came to the help of the Clan Laurin, but
was defeated and slain. His cairn is yet pointed
out at the top of the Kirkton Glen. Lord Moray, I
think, possessed the Braes before either branch of
the Hurrays had any rights in Balquhidder. The
Moray lands, Buchanan lands, and Campbell lands,
barring Edinchip, still belong to the representatives
of their old owners, while all the little properties
have disappeared.
In 1860 the inhabitants of Balquhidder, under
many surnames, were, with the fewest possible
exceptions, of undoubted Celtic descent. They
spoke the excellent Gaelic of the days of Robert
Kirke and Dugald Buchanan, but there were not
many of them who could not well speak English
also. It was a singular thing that the people
beariog the names of the oldest proprietors
Stewarts, Buchanans, and Campbells made such
a small numerical show in the nominal muster.
Fergusons came in with the Atholl minister of the
first half of the eighteenth century. The Mac-
donalds of Monochyle and Blarcriche came from
Glenlyon in the preceding generation. It is pro-
bable that when Colin, Earl of Argyll, held a
Justiciary Court in Balquhidder in 1526, he brought
in Macintyres to strengthen his clients, the Clan
Laurin, against the Clan Gregor, who were even
then becoming more dangerous to the peace of the
district than the Buchanans had been in the former
century. By the end of that century, Balquhidder,
out-lying place as it was, without any strong-handed
local magnate invested with official authority,
CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 279
became a convenient resort for the unruly Clan
Gregor. It was in the kirk of Balquhidder that they
went through their "ethnic" ceremony of swearing
over the head of murdered Drummond - Ernoch.
Fearfully were they punished for that murder and
that heathenish ceremony. In I 860 the number of
people bearing the Stewart surname was surprisingly
small, considering that they had had a footing in
the parish as early as 1400, and that being of the
King's clan they were favoured above others, especi-
ally when Sir Walter Stewart ruled in Queen
Margaret's name, and that they got legal titles to
the Braes, Glenbuckie, Gartnafuaran, and other
places. The Earl of Moray has still kept the Braes,
but the other Stewart properties were all gone
before my time. The bigger one of them, Glen-
buckie, was sold in 1846 to Mr David Carnegie of
Stronvar, who added to it by other purchases until
he left his son the far-largest and best estate in the
parish. In 1860 the people of the Clan Gregor
surname were numerous. I had great-great-grand-
children of Rob Roy in my school, although the
most of his male descendants went to the West Indies
soon after the execution of Robin Og. Rob Roy's
youngest son, Ranald, who was not mixed up with
the evil doings of the others, remained behind, and
died as tenant of the Kirkton farm in good old
age. In 1860 there were at least two old men,
Hugh Macgregor and the old bellman, who re-
membered him perfectly. He was still living when
the lame boy, Walter Scott, was gathering strength
and stories at Cambusrnore, ten miles away, and
lived a good many years more. We have not in
" Rob Roy" and the introduction thereto, all the
information Sir Walter had about Rob's descendants,
280 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
good and bad. If the negative records of public
records can be trusted there were no Clan Gregor
people, at least none who could give trouble in
Balquhidder, when the helm of the ship of State was
in the firm hands of James the Fourth. The trouble
began after Flodden. As a kindred the Clan Gregor
existed and were certainly widely spread, although
not very numerous before 1400, but it was later
than that before their clan name appeared in public
records. Its first appearance, as far as I know,
occurred about 1429, when notice is taken of a
disturbance caused by some Clan Gregor men in
Strathearn. About the same time, or a little later,
the Maor of Crieff was a Macgregor. Duncan Beag,
who, about 1456, obtained a seven year's lease of
the toiseachd or thanage of Roro in Glenlyon, as
successor of Allan Stewart, who failed to pay the
King the stipulated rent, is not called Macgregor
but Duncan Beag. He was, however, the founder of
the important Roro branch of the Clan Gregor, an
off-shoot of which was the Dunan Clan-house on the
moor of Ranrioch, although the lease by the knight
of Weem was given to their chief of Glenstrae. On
his lands of Roro and the Braes of Rannoch Sir
Robert Menzies kept, or allowed the descendants of
Little Duncan to remain in R,oro as middlemen, and
in Dunan as kindly tenants. Sir Robert's successors
had to put up with Clan Gregor middlemen and
tenants whom they could not get rid of for a
hundred and fifty years. A Clan Gregor tenant
was placed or placed himself on the lands of Bealach
or Taymouth belonging to the Abbey of Scone, or
more properly to that Abbey's Priory of Loch
Tay, and it took a vigorous and lengthy effort
to turn out his descendants. The Clan Gregor
CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 281
undoubtedly had a grievance which impelled
its members to launch out into the excesses
of the sixteenth century under such ferocious
leaders as Duncan Ladosach, Gregor, the Clan Chief
who was hunted down and tried before the Earl of
Atholl, Justice-General, and beheaded at Bealach
in 1570, and the next chief, his son, Alexander,
who presided at the " ethnic " swearing on the
murdered man's head in the kirk of Balquhidder.
But what was the grievance which worked up the
most energetic and the most romantic of our clans
to such a pitch of ferocious madness that they defied
all law and order, and perpetrated atrocities which
were in themselves wholly inhuman, and yet beyond
themselves were curiouslv contrasted with chivalrous
*/
fidelity, heroism, and instances of redeeming love
and tenderness ? This question is one which I
cannot answer. I hope, however, that others will
search for an answer and find it. The fact that
there was a grievance which deeply affected the
whole clan can hardly be doubted. I, for my part,
have a suspicion that the answer is to be found in
the feudalising of what had been King's lands.
That feudalising process, which had been slowly
going on since Bannockburn, progressed by leaps
and bounds in the reign of James the Fourth, who
not only set old Crown thanages to individual
owners on feu-ferme tenure, but placed sheep in
Ettrick forest, and brood mares in the Inchcallan
forest, with which the Glenstrae Chiefs were so
closely connected. He also cut out farms from that
great forest which formerly stretched 'along the
watershed from the head of Glenlochay to the hills
of Lochaber. Dunan was one of the farms so cut
out of forest land. Formerly Crown thauages were
282 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
let on leases of seven or more years to middlemen
like Little Duncan Roro, and the leases were often
renewed to the same people until they thought they
had a "duchas" or hereditary right. If we may
suppose that the leading men of the Clan Gregor
had for ages been the Kings' foresters, thanage
undertakers, and officials, it is easy to see how the
feudalising process would throw them out of living
and employment; and, with them, the clansmen who
depended on them. The secularisation and the
feudalisation of Church lands at the Reformation
would aggravate the hardship, for Bealach was not
the only place on which members of the clan had a
hold by fair bargain or without-your-leave squatting.
From the feudal law point of view, the Clan Gregor
were as landless a tribe in the reign of James IV. as
they were when persecuted by James VI. They
had not then a stable permanent charter to any
scrap of land, and yet for all that they were in
profitable occupation of much land and very widely
dispersed. The supposition that they had been for
ages the foresters, and often acted as officials and
thanage undertakers, would, if proved, explain the
wide dispersion and the resentful grievance when
the old order changed, and to their horror arid
surprise left them stranded.
Before Sir John of Lanrick's purchases of land in
Balquhidder, his father, and perhaps his grandfather,
possessed one of the small Balquidder properties
created during the Atholl overlordship. This was
Glencarnaig, a small Brae farm which has long
formed part of the large sheep farm of Monachyle.
It was the one of the race who married the daughter
of Campbell of Lix who acquired Glencarnaig.
Glencarnaig and Glengyle were rival claimants for
CIVIL HISTORY NOTES. 283
the chiefship of the Clan Gregor, the right of which
had been in dispute since the death of Patrick,
brother of John of Glenstrae, about 1750. John
died leaving only daughters. Patrick his brother
raised the Clan to fight for King Charles. He
married Jean Campbell, daughter of Sir Robert
Campbell of Glenorchy, and they had children. I
think that he had a wife before this Jean, who was
the young and well-dowered widow of Archibald,
Younger of Glenlyon, and who, after Patrick's
death, married Duncan Stewart of Appin, by whom
she also had children. The Glenlyon genealogists
told me that Jean had two sons by each marriage.
Patrick's sous must have died young, or else there
could not have been the long dispute about the
Chiefship. Glengyle, in 1745, joined Prince Charles,
and Glencarnaig took the Government side. They
divided the clan between them. It was long after
the '45 when Sir John came home from India that
the great majority of the Macgregors, by a formally
signed document, recognised him as their Chief.
But Glengyle and his adherents declined to accept
that recognition, and continued to contend that it
was contrary to justice and genealogical facts.
Glenlyon opinion was, I think, wholly against
Glengyle and in favour of Sir John.
But it is time to leave the entangled Clan
Macgregor story, and to turn to the Balquhidder
people who have the oldest surnames. These are
the Maclarens or Clan Laurin, who derive their
designation, and presumably their lineage, from a
Culdee Abbot of Cuil who lived in the later times
when the Culdees married. A married Abbot of
Glendochart was the founder of the Clan Macnab,
and Laurence Abbot of Cuil founded the Clan
284 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Laurin of the adjoining district. Cuil is on the
Edinchip estate. Not the smallest vestige of its
monastic structures remains ; probably they were
wooden buildings, as was usual in Columban and
Culdee days. But the memory of it and the
names of its Abbots have been preserved in ancient
ecclesiastical documents. So faint grew the local
tradition about the Cuil monastery, and so much
was Abbot Laurence forgotten, that in my time
fanciful members of the Clan Laurin began to claim
tribal origin from a Scoto-Dalriadic prince of Argyll.
It is not unlikely that the protection of the clan
by Earls of Argyll long afterwards suggested this
fancy. Had Abbot Laurence belonged to the early
era of Columban missionaries, he might well have
been a Dalriadic-Scot or Irishman. But as he
belonged to a very much later time, he was much
more likely to be of the Pictish race.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE PATRON SAINT.
SAINT ANGUS, the patron saint of Balquhidder,
appears to have belonged to the eighth or ninth
century. Perhaps he might have been Angus of the
Feilire. The Balquhidder church was the only one
dedicated to his memory. I found local tradition
very vivid about him. He had evidently lived long
and worked with success in the parish. He very
likely belonged to the Pictish Church after it had
asserted its independence of lona. The hillock on
which he used to preach is still called " Beannach
Aonghais," which means " the Blessing of Angus."
THE PATRON SAINT. 285
He had a stone built oratory Oirrionn Aonghais
in the field below the church and churchyard. I
saw the large foundation stones of this oratory
removed from the middle of the cornfield in which
they had been tolerated out of reverence age after
age, although certainly very inconvenient to the
Kirkton farmers. The oratory had been a small
but solidly constructed building very unlike the
perishable wooden structures of the early Columbans.
Angus died in Balquhidder, and was buried inside
the parish church, or, more likely, the parish church
was built afterwards over his grave. On his grave was
placed a flagstone on which was sculptured, in out-
line, the figure of a man in a clerical garment. This
flagstone, named after Angus " Clach Aonghais," is
still to the fore. I have no doubt that the grave
and its flagstone were, in pre-Reformation days, in
front of the high altar which, irrespective of the
reverence in which the patron saint was held, would
make it necessary for people marrying to exchange
their matrimonial vows upon it. The small old
chancel was excluded from Lord Scone's re- built
church, but Clach Aonghais was taken in and placed
in the passage before the pulpit so that people
coming to marry could still exchange vows upon it.
The harmless superstitious belief that a special
blessing was obtainable by being married on Clach
Aonghais was tolerated by Protestant ministers for
two hundred years. But shortly before 1800,
during the incumbency of Mr Stewart, the last of
the ministers presented by the Atholl family, the
church was re-seated and re-arranged inside. The
pulpit and Clach Aonghais then lost their old
relative positions, and the minister then, for the
first time, apparently, understood the significance
286 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
attached to the sacred flagstone, and realised the
tenacity with which the people held to the custom
of being married upon it. Mr Stewart was a true
blue Presbyterian, and he summarily put an end to
the ancient custom of Balquhidder marriage rites by
putting Clach Aonghais out into the churchyard.
When Mr David Carnegie built the handsom^
present church fifty odd years later, taking the old
one for his family burial place, Clach Aonghais was
taken inside the picturesque ruins, and placed up-
right against a part of the old wall. By all accounts
Mr Stewart was a painstaking, hard working, arid
efficient parish minister, who had no tolerance for
what he called Popish superstitions. No doubt it
was he who, when the church was re-seated, caused
the rudely massive old boulder-stone font to be
buried out of sight under the floor. It was dug up
when the inside of the church was being prepared
for burial vaults, and so was the skull, with a ball
rattling within it, of that unfortunate Stewart laird
of Glenbuckie, who was found dead in bed at Leny
House after a convivial gathering of post-Culloden
Jacobites.
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 287
CHAPTER XL VI.
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS.
MR ROBERT KIRKE and Mr Alexander Macgregor
were both notable men. Mr Kirke was remarkable
for his Gaelic and general scholarship, much literary
work, and, finally, for being as was believed
abducted by vindictive fairies. Singularity" and
longevity distinguished Mr Macgregor from the long
series of post-Reformation Balquhidder ministers
who, as a class, seem to have been good quiet men
that strove to do their duty under circumstances
which were of a very trying nature occasionally.
Mr Robert Kirke was the seventh and youngest
son of Mr James Kirke, minister of Aberfoyle.
After having taken his degree in Edinburgh, and
studied theology in Saint Andrews, he was inducted
minister of Balquhidder in 1669, and stayed there
until the end of 1685, when he succeeded his father
as minister of Aberfoyle. It was when he was at
Balquhidder that he made his Gaelic metrical version
of the first hundred psalms. In poetical rhythm,
force and flow, there is no metrical version in English
which can stand favourable comparison with Kirke's
work. He must have had high poetic gifts as well
as a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, and full
command of an ancient language into which Hebrew
thought was easily transmitted. The Highland
ministers and others who, before 1740, completed
the metrical version of the psalms in Gaelic, imitated
Kirke to the best of their ability, and so gave the
288 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
whole version a very homogeneous appearance.
Although Kirke faithfully adhered to the original,
he permitted himself the use of phrases at which Dr
Smith of Campbellton and his revising committee
boggled in the last century, and which they altered,
or of which they reduced the use to a minimum.
" Pubal," the proper Gaelic word for tent, was
properly used by Kirke and his imitators. The
revisers went so far wrong as to substitute for it
the mongrel word " pailluin" pavilion. As non-
scriptural terms, they looked askance at " Dia nam
feairt" (not " feart"), God of strengths, and " Righ
nan dul," King of the Elements, or of all existence.
Our old Glenlvon miller of Milton Eonain had some
j
cause for his indignant declaration : " Thug Mac-
aghobha agus a chuideachd an smiorchailleach as an
t-salmadair." (" The son of the Smith and his
Committee have taken the spinal marrow out of the
psalm book.") That was going too far. They made
not a few good amendments, but they ought to have
respected Kirke's poetic words and phrases, which
were far more telling than any they could substitute.
Kirke's last year in Balquhidder was darkened to
him by the death of his young wife, over whose
grave he placed a flagstone with a suitable inscrip-
tion in English, followed by a Latin quotation. He
married again in Aberfoyle. The Irish Gaelic Bible
of Bishop Bedell and William O'Donnell, as it was
printed in Irish characters, was not easily read by
Highlanders who were taught to read only books
printed in Roman letters. Mr Kirke wrote out the
whole Irish Bible from Genesis to Revelation for the
purpose of putting it in the plain Roman alphabet
which Highlanders were taught in the schools. It
was a laborious undertaking which must have
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 289
absorbed a great deal of his time for a number of
years. His Bible was published in London in 1690.
I have a copy of it, which belonged to my grand-
father, and which, I suppose, had come down to him
from his grandfather. Mr Kirke adhered strictly
to the Irish Bible wording, but had, of necessity, to
supply the place of the useful Irish dot by the
vagabond " h," which exercises so many functions
in Gaelic, written or printed in Roman characters.
His work undoubtedly removed a difficulty, but it
would have been more satisfactorily removed by
teaching children both the Celtic and Roman
alphabets. The Celtic alphabet, besides being
beautifully ornamental, suits Gaelic, whether Irish,
Scotch, or Manx, much better than the unorna-
mental Roman alphabet. Mr Kirke, as the metrical
version of the psalms demonstrates, was master of
the best style of the Highland Gaelic ; a style which
passed on to the Balquhidder hymn writer, Dugald
Buchannan, in the next century. It seems a pity,
therefore, that instead of trying to popularise Irish
Gaelic, he did not devote himself to writing the
Bible in his own excellent Scottish Gaelic. He
appended to his work a vocabulary of several
hundred words in which Irish and Highland Gaelic
differed, and this vocabulary was the first foundation
stone of our after- time Gaelic dictionaries. With
all his learning Mr Kirke believed in the fairies,
and wrote a curious pamphlet in English about
them, called the " Invisible Commonwealth." Sir
Walter Scott, who did not know about Mr Kirke's
valuable Gaelic work, got hold of the " Invisible
Commonwealth" pamphlet and the story of Mr
Kirke's death. When walking alone on a reputed
fairy mound near his Aberfoyle manse Mr Kirke
19
290 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
fell down in a fit and was dead when found there.
It was, therefore, believed that the fairies had
abducted him in revenge for having revealed their
secrets, and that the body found on the mound was
one of their usual delusive impostures.
Mr Alexander Macgregor, presented by Sir John
Macgregor of Lanrick, was inducted in November,
1804, and died in May, 1836. The notice of this
man in the "Fasti" does not tell where he was
born, or where educated, or how he was employed
during the first fifty years of his long life. It states
that he was licensed by the Presbytery of Kintyre
on the 2nd of January, 1788, and ordained by them
as chaplain to the Highland Society of London. I
can supply some of the deficiencies. Mr Macgregor
was a native of Rannoch, and of the Macgregors of
the Smithy "Griogaraich na Ceardaich" a strongi
swarthy race. He was in the habit of telling people
of later generations that, as a bonnetless boy, six or
seven years of age, he saw the mustering of the
rebels of Rannoch who marched out at the beginning
of the rebellion to follow Prince Charlie. That oft-
repeated story of his pretty nearly agreed with the
universal belief of the Balquhidder people that he
was a hundred and three years old when he died.
But what had he been doing between the bonnetless
boy date and 1788 ? I do not remember how I got
it, but I have been always under the impression
that he was attached as chaplain, assistant chaplain,
or perhaps as teacher and catechist, to a Highland
regiment, and that he had been with his regiment
in America during the war with the United States.
There must have been past services in his favour to
account for his being licensed and ordained at such
an advanced age, for he was then sixty years of
TWO NOTABLE BALQTJHIDDER MINISTERS. 291
age. When first settled in Balquhidder he was, on
his own showing, sixty-six or sixty-seven years old,
yet he looked and felt like a man in the prime of
life, and for the next quarter of a century his eyes
did not grow dim, nor was his natural strength
much abated. It was stiffness in his legs that
made him incapable of mounting to and descending
from the pulpit, which caused him to get an
assistant a year or two before his death. The old
man went regularly to church and sat with the
elders, and one day when the assistant said some-
thing which did not agree with the Confession of
Faith, the alert critic below exclaimed " That is
wrong and heretical." As a minister he was sui
generis. Without being scholarly, cultured, or
gentlemanly, his force of character and the Tightness
of his views gave him a drill-sergeant mastery over
gentle and simple. In London he had seen much of
high society, and had come into contact with many
distinguished people, and elsewhere he had seen life
under various aspects. And to judge from his
manner, the conclusion to which he had come was
that people of all classes needed to be driven to
cultivate Christian morals, and in their different
spheres to be diligent and well-doing, and to act up
to their respective responsibilities. Old parishioners
spoke with awe of strong-handed acts of his, and at
other times chuckled over his unclerical sayings and
doings. They said he was pitifully tender and very
liberal with his own money to the afflicted, and to
those whose poverty was no fault of their own,
while he scourged with the scorpions of his tongue
those who did not use all diligence to help them-
selves by honest work. Loafers and tipplers feared
him, and so did sluttish women who did not keep
292 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their homes tidy and see to it that their families
were well clad in homespun. He kept a comfortable
house, hospitable in a plain way, for the wages of
servants were low, and he raised a great part of his
food supplies on his own glebe. Far as he was from
being a niggard, he lived so well within his com-
paratively liberal stipend that his savings swelled up
to 1600. Towards the end of his long life he
became troubled as to how he should dispose of
that money. He had outlived almost all his blood
relatives. When at last he began to think of
making his will, his next-of-kin was a sister's grand-
son or great-grandson of the (to him) appalling
Lowland surname of Kitchener. Little foreseeing
the fame which the future was to throw on that
surname, he would mutter in Highland scorn
" Kitchener, Kitchener ; pots and pans and smells of
greasy messes !" Therefore he went one day to the
Chief of his clan with his bank deposit receipt,
intending to hand it over to him endorsed there and
then. The Chief said he would gladly take any-
thing left to him in a properly-made will, but that
he could not honourably take his money in any
other form. The intention of making a will was
never carried out, and the heir-at-law, notwith-
standing his surname, came in for the whole little
fortune.
He denounced cruelty to animals, advocated
protection to all harmless creatures in their breeding
season, impressed upon children the idea that it was
a heinous crime to disturb or rob the nests of little
singing birds, and constituted himself a truculent
water-bailiff to prevent poachers from blazing the
river and killing the fish in spawning time. He
did not care a straw if poachers killed any amount
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDBR MINISTERS. 293
of fish and game outside the breeding season. Let
proprietors look to that, it was no business of his.
His bellman, who was still bellman in my time, and
lived to be nearly a hundred years, held his memory
in awful respect, and, when telling me stories
about him, lowered his voice to a whisper as if he
feared the ghost of the doughty despot was listening
near him. It chanced that once upon a time the
minister caught Calum, one of the bellman's sons,
killing fish in the spawning season, whereupon he fell
into a tierce rage and raised such a storm that the
lad fled from the parish until his father should make
peace for him. The bellman, much alarmed about
losing his own post, waited one day on his knees on
the gravel for the coming out of the minister, and
when the minister did come out, as was his habit to
do after breakfast, he made abject apol'ogies and
gave the most profuse assurances that Calum would
never offend in the same way again. So conditional
pardon was granted and Calum came back to his
father's house.
The harvest of 1826 the year of the short corn
was, for the whole United Kingdom, the most de-
ficient in yield of food for man and beast of all the
harvests of the nineteenth century. The potato
disease, heavily as it fell in some districts, was not
such a general calamity as the bad harvest of 1826.
In that year there was no rain in the growing and
ripening period. The sun scorched the fields and
much of the lighter grazing lands. The corn crop
was so stunted that in many places it was pulled
instead of being cut, and, in not a few instances, it
was neither pulled nor cut, but animals were turned
in to graze upon it. Food supplies from the outer
world were not so quickly or so easily obtainable as
294 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
they are now. Scarcity and clearness of provisions
had to be faced. The minister of Balquhidder, like
so many others, caught the alarm, and bestired him-
self to prepare for the coming ordeal. In ordinary
years the kirk session fund barely coped with the
needs of the parochial pauperism, and there was no
reserve, as in many other parishes, to fall back upon.
So the minister civilly asked the heritors to aid the
kirk session by laying a rate on themselves, for the
relief of the poor. When the heritors delayed
compliance with this request he waxed wroth and
threatened legal action to compel them, under the
useful, but seldom resorted to, Act of Charles II. to
meet and stent themselves for the relief of the poor.
It was a plain case of emergency and the minister
had the law on his side, and he was not a man
whose threats could lie disregarded. A meeting of
heritors was accordingly held at the hotel at Loch-
earnhead, which the minister, of course, attended,
and at which, as the advocate of the poor and the
minister of the parish, he asked for more than was
granted to him. His assertions in regard to the
gloomy outlook for Strathyre and Lochearnhead,
which had both a crowded population already im-
poverished by the shrinking profits on the spinning
of flax and wool, were ridiculed by all the heritors
and pertinaciously controverted by one of the single-
farm proprietors five or six were then to the fore
who, as a resident, was held to be sure of his facts.
The minister lost his temper and so did the little
Laird. The dispute became so hot that at the close
of the meeting the minister refused to stay to the
dinner which invariably followed occasions of this
kind. Although beyond his ninetieth year he was
still a splendid walker He had come three miles on
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDEB MINISTERS. 295
foot to the meeting and thought nothing of striding
back again. Besides this he had to call at a house
on the way in which there was illness. The stiffness
which disabled him at the end of his life did not
come upon him until he was bordering on his
hundredth year. It was wet weather, for immedi-
ately after the deficient crops had been gathered in
the rain, so long withheld, poured down in deluge
abundance. His visit to the house of sickness so
delayed the minister that the little Laird, who was
riding, overtook him at Achtoo. Flushed with meat
and drink, and made more angry than ever by being
chaffed at dinner about what the minister had
contemptuously said to him and of him, the Laird
rashly renewed the controversy when he overtook
the minister, and swaggering on his horse with his
whip at a spot where the dry and dusty ditch of
summer time was now filled with muddy water, he
happened to strike and knock off the minister's hat.
In an instant he found himself pulled out of his saddle
and on his back in the ditch, a grim giant bending
over him, who said in sternest tones, " larr mathanas
airson do beatha ! " (Beg pardon for your life).
He had to do what he was commanded, but when
he got on his feet he earnestly declared that the
whip smack on the hat was a pure accident for
which he was truly sorry. The explanation, which
was perfectly true, was at once accepted, and the
incident closed. The minister's forecast of the evil
about to fall upon many honest and industrious
people in Strathyre village and the Lochearnhead
district was exceeded by the sad reality. The
distress, which then attained its height, continued
in a lessened degree until some years later the
congestion in those two places was relieved by a
296 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
large flight of emigrants to Nova Scotia and Cape
Breton. Yet the Laird was far from being wrong
in contending as stoutly as he did that, taken all
together, the crops and grazings of Balquhidder
came nearly to an average in the year of unexampled
drought. Most moist and upland places where
ripening is backward in ordinary years, produced
good and early ripened crops of grain, and wet
meadows had excellent yields of hay in the dry and
hot year when other lands were parched.
However he picked it up, our old clerical despot
held the Covenanters' severe and all - embracing
theory of church discipline, and, what was more,
carried it out inflexibly in practice. Combining in
his own person the functions of policeman, sheriff,
and parish minister, he suppressed any remnant
which remained of the wildness of the Rob Roy
period by putting down drinking excesses, fighting
among young men, and quarrelling among older
people. His aims were always good, but his
methods were simply his own peculiar ones. In
his public rebukes of the fathers of illegitimate
children, he habitually lost control of tongue and
temper. He let off the women offenders with
scoldings before the session, but male offenders had
to stand up in church to be scolded before the
congregation. As soon as a male offender was cited
to appear in church, word of the coming affair went
forth to the neighbouring districts, and on the
appointed day people came from other parishes to
enjoy what was fun to them, but a sore ordeal to
the rebuked sinner, whose punishment did not end
with that one day. Words and phrases of the
torrent of abuse which poured on his head from the
pulpit, stuck like burs in the memory of the public,
TWO NOTABLE BALQUHIDDER MINISTERS. 297
and he was sure to be reminded of them through
the rest of his days. These were the opening
sentences of admonishment of a lad of twenty, who
became a delinquent before he was quite out of his
trade-apprenticeship :
"Eirich suas a bhiasd ghreannaich 's gum faigh
thu cronachadh do pheacaidh. Nach e chuis-naire
's an nith graineil gum biodh tusa, nach eil fhastast a
coisneadh luach peic mhine 's an t-seachduin, a falbh
mar tharbh sgireachd feadh na duthcha, anns an
oidche, 'sa briseadh challaidean 's a dol mar ghad-
aiche, a stigh troimh uineagan," etc.
" Stand up, ye touzle-haired little wretch, that
you may be rebuked for your sin. Is it not a
shameful and abominable thing that you, who do
not yet earn the price of a peck of meal in the week,
should go, like a parish bull, through the country in
the night, and be breaking fences and going through
windows like a thief?" etc., etc.
Fear of his pulpit reproofs promoted some hasty
marriages. As for children born out of wedlock,
they were carefully looked after by ministers and
elders all over Scotland. The Balquhidder minister
and his elders took great pains to have such children
properly brought up and treated as well as if no
stain rested on their birth. In the eye of the law
there was a wider difference between the two sets of
children than there was in the eye of the Church.
298 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER XLVII.
BALQUHIDDER IN 1857-60.
As long as the Macgregor Chiefs had the patronage,
they naturally presented clansmen. Mr Alexander
Macgregor was succeeded by Mr Alexander Murray
Macgregor, who, before his translation, was minister
of Atharacle in Argyllshire. He was related to a
landed family in that district, and his father had
been a captain in the army. There may be a hidden
similitude in contrast, but to the people who knew
him there were only two binding links between
these two Macgregors, and these were their names
and their striving to reach one end by pursuing
widely different ways. It was a blessing for one to
know Mr Alexander Murray Macgregor. Of all the
good ministers and priests of the different denomi-
nations into which the Christian world is divided,
with whom I came in contact during a long life, I
thought I had found in him the finest type of the
Christian guide and example most fully realised.
During the Ten Years' Conflict he sympathised with
the popular party, and was reckoned one of them.
But like the rest of the "Forty Thieves'" party,
and like so many of those who were hurried out at
the Disruption, he wished to exercise patience and
to proceed by civil methods to seek the removal
of grievances. He was by nature and reflection
bound to recoil from violent agitation and a policy
which, after the meeting of Convocation, directly
threatened to destroy the integrity of the Church of
BALQUHIDDER IN 1857-60. 299
Scotland. And because he did not go out in 1843,
the "Witness" assailed him in one of its bitterly
unfair articles in which it was then running down
the ministers with popular sympathies who did not
go out. Fiercely hot and, too frequently, scan-
dalously unjust as were the mutual recriminations
of those days of angry partings, it is impossible to
believe that, had he personally or by truthful report
known the minister of Balquhidder, Mr Hugh Miller
would have allowed that particular article to go into
the "Witness." Peace-loving, pious, and charitably-
minded, Mr Macgvegor was a sensitive man who was
no seeker of vain-glorious applause, but he expected
justice from his fellow-men. The instant he read
the attack upon him, he decided to give up his
charge. Forthwith he sent his resignation to the
Presbytery of Dunblane, packed his boxes, and,
having provided for pulpit supplies, left the parish.
After seven years' service among them, the Bal-
quhidder people knew his worth, and even those
who had joined the Free Church were unwilling
that the parish should lose him. As for his own
congregation, they were thrown into a state of
consternation and sorrow at first, but, rallying
quickly, they sent remonstrances after the fugitive
minister, and unanimously petitioned the Presbytery
of Dunblane to refuse the acceptance of his resig-
nation. The Presbytery did so, and added its
remonstrances to those of the parishioners. Deeply
moved and conquered by these proceedings, which
he looked upon as amounting to a renewal of his
commission, he came back, declaring that as long as
he could do his work there nothing would tempt
him to leave Balquhidder. He kept to that reso-
lution when he might have had more lucrative and,
300 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
what some would have considered, more desirable
charges.
The incident of Mr Macgregor's resignation and
triumphant restoration helped to clear and sweeten
the local ecclesiastical atmosphere, surcharged as it
was for a short while with Disruption electricity.
No one could deny that the parish minister had
been enthusiastically recalled and elected by his
congregation after seven years' work. The placing
of the Free Church and manse at Lochearnhead
also did much to reduce sectarian friction. At
Lochearnhead the Free Church was less like a
rival than a desirable supplement to the parish
church. In far-off days, indeed, the Bishops of
Dunblane placed at Carstran, very near where the
Free Church stands, a chapel of ease, the ruins of
which were pointed out to me and may yet be
visible. It was at Lochearnhead and Strathyre that
the Free Church strength lay. And the Lochearn-
head congregation were fortunate in getting Mr
Eric Findlater for their first minister, and in having
him for a long period of years at their head. Parish
minister and Free Church minister were personally
good friends with separate spheres of labour. So
there was more peace in Balquhidder than was
usually found in Highland parishes after the Dis-
ruption. Mr Findlater came from the north side of the
Grampians. And so, a quarter of a century before, did
his uncle, Mr Robert Findlater, who gained a high
reputation when missionary minister at Ardeonaig
on the south side of Loch Tay as an ardent young
revivalist. He was called back to a more important
charge in his native region, and died before the
Disruption. His successor at Ardeonaig, Mr Hunter,
was a revivalist who, in a few years, received a
BALQTJHIDDER IN 1857-60. 301
better appointment, and in 1843 lost repute among
his former admirers by not going out. The sturdy,
rustical, short-trousered successor of Mr Hunter in
Ardeonaig, Mr Donald Mackenzie, seerns to demand
a nod of recognition. He was the nephew of Mr
Lachlan Mackenzie, minister of Lochcarron, in Ross-
shire, who was believed to have the gift of prophecy.
The nephew shared in that belief, and revered his
uncle's memory. Outside the range of the ideas held
by the pious folk of Ross-shire regarding dreams,
visions, and sudden flashes of communication with
the unknown world, Mr Donald Mackenzie was the
most practical of men, and his sermons were of
the same practical character as the cultivation of
his carefully farmed glebe. But he imported from
Lochcarron the sing-song habit of intoning which
the Ross-shire " men " loved, and their favourite
ministers imitated. The sing-song intoning of Mr
Donald Mackenzie spoiled his English sermons, but
in his Gaelic seemed to fall into not unmusical
cadence. He went out at the Disruption without
the slightest hesitation, although he had not taken
any prominent part in the preceding controversy,
and after the parting there was no lessening of the
old friendship between him and the scholarly,
scientific and gentlemanly Dr Duff, minister of
Kenmore, his former ecclesiastical superior.
Balquhidder had four schools. Three of these,
the parish school and the side schools at Strathyre
and Lochearnhead, were under the superintendence
of the Church of Scotland. The fourth was the
Free Church school at Lochearnhead, which received
an endowment from the Maclaren Trust. This Trust
was formed by the will of Mr Donald Maclaren, a
native of the parish, who, as banker and wool dealer
302 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
at Callander, made what was then held to be a
large fortune, and left the bulk of it for Free Church
purposes, chiefly in the locality with which he was-
connected by birth and business.
Poor Mr Carleton, my predecessor, lingered on
in a dying state for six weeks after I began the
teaching of the parish school, and after his death,
some more weeks elapsed before I was fully
installed, as I had first to be appointed by the
heritors, then examined by the Presbytery of Dun-
blane, and sworn again to bear true allegiance to
Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Throughout the
whole of that houseless time I was the guest of Mr
Macgregor at the manse, and a happy time it was
for guest and host until a fearful outbreak of
diphtheria among the children filled many homes
with sorrow and threw gloom over the whole
district, and especially saddened and harassed the
parish minister, who had been partially educated
for the medical profession before taking to the
clerical profession, and as the nearest doctors were
ten and seven miles away, gave medical aid in
simple cases, and in serious cases saw to it that the
doctor's instructions were carried out. In 1857-8
diphtheria was a new disease to the British people,
just as appendicitis was to a later generation. No
doubt there had been cases of both in former days,
but they had been too few to be classified as specific
diseases. The deaths of five children of the Dean of
Carlisle, Dr Archibald Campbell Tait, who, after
being Bishop of London, became Archbishop of
Canterbury, took place not very long before the
Balquhidder outbreak, and raised discussions in the
medical journals about what was called " Boulogne
sore throat," but no treatment beyond burning the
PROPRIETORS. 303
throat affected with nitric acid seems to have been
found out. At Mr Carnegie's expense, Dr Julius
Wood, Edinburgh, gave help as a specialist to the
local doctors, but it was the coming of snow and
frost which really stopped the plague suddenly and
thoroughly. Before the purifying snow and frost,
there had been a long spell of foggy, oozy weather,
when people looking down from their homes on the
flooded meadows could almost feel as if they were
beginning themselves to get covered with green moss.
The victims of the scourge were the smaller school-
children and those who were too young to be sent
to school at all. There were no deaths among
children in their teens, and adults were not
attacked at all.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
PROPRIETORS.
The Marquis of Breadalbane and the Earl of
Moray, who had their residences elsewhere, were
represented in Balquhidder by their factors, who
were also residents elsewhere. There was, however,
one occasion when the Marquis came in a hurry to
visit his Lochearnhead land. This was when the
report reached him that gold had been found in the
bed of a burn on Leiter hill, and that hundreds,
with pickaxes, spades, and shovels, were out digging
for the precious metal. The discoverer of gold in this
hill burn was a gold miner who had returned from
Australia with a little pile, and who, therefore, ought
to know what he was about. He probably did
discover some grains of gold in the gravel of that
304 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Leiter burn, but as the gold-diggers found nothing
on the hillside, they charged him with having per-
petrated a wicked joke upon them. The heiress of
the Buchanans of Arnprior was a minor, who was
being brought up and educated in England ; and
had she been of age, and her estates out of the
hands of trustees, her home would have been at
Cambusmore, near Callander, and not at Ardoch, in
Strathyre. Thus the three who represented the
farthest back possessors of Balquhidder lands were
constant absentees. The Macgregors were not
considered absentees, for whenever it was possible
for them they lived at Edinchip House. They were
poor, popular, and energetic. Lanrick had left
them, and so had half of the Balquhidder lands
purchased by old Sir John. His son did not know
how to keep what his father had won, and amiable
Sir John, the grandson, was unable to retrieve
damages. The great-grandson, Sir Malcolm, was a
navy officer, who was always away on foreign
service ; but his mother and the younger members
of the family lived at Edinchip one of the three
summers I was in the parish. Two years earlier
the eldest daughter had married Lord Stormout,
the son of the Earl of Mansfield. Indeed they were
connected by many marriages with several of the
highest families in the kingdom. Not only their
own clan, but Highlanders of all surnames cherished
a feeling of hearty goodwill to the Macgregor
chiefs and all their branches. In regard to all such
families, Highlanders felt as if they had a right of
common interest in them.
Mr David Carnegie of Stronvar bought the estate
of Glenbuckie in 1846, when the last of its Stewart
owners thought it safest to sell because he
PROPRIETORS. 305
got into a panic about the ruinous effect which he
apprehended Sir Robert Peel's free-trade policy
would have on landed property of every description.
He went away to act as the Duke of Argyll's factor
at Campbeltown, and when the evils feared by him
did not come to pass, he bought the Isle of Coll,
which he left to his son. Mr Carnegie made his
fortune in Scandinavia as the head of the great
brewing firm at Gothenburg in Sweden. The
Swedes elected the French Marshal Bernadotte to
succeed the last king of their old dynasty. He
reigned under the name of King John, and horrified
at the excessive drinking of bad spirits distilled
from turnips, potatoes, and raw grain, granted
monopoly privileges to a British company for brewing
porter and ale, in the hope that malt liquors
would supersede illimitable drinking of spirits
and so bring about comparative temperance.
Teetotalism, shrewd King John knew to be
out of the question. Prohibition of any kind
would not be submitted to. But the temperate
Frenchman expected good results through attacking
the national social evil by the indirect method of
giving the Swedes a choice of liquors. As the story
was told to me, the Swedes were slow in taking to
the drinking of malt liquors, and for some years the
Company made more losses than profits. Such was
the discouragement that some of the original pro-
moters were glad to sell out at low prices, and Mr
Carnegie's uncle, who had faith in the undertaking,
bought their shares and introduced his nephew into
the concern. With the advent of the nephew,
prosperity set in. Mr David Carnegie was un-
doubtedly one of those clear-headed, high -principled,
born-business men who gain honour for themselves
20
306 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and their native land throughout the world. He
married his uncle's daughter and heiress, and, when
his uncle died, became the head of the firm. Mrs
Carnegie was very much admired and loved by the
Balquhidder people, and her death was sincerely
lamented. She and her sister-in-law, Miss Jane
Carnegie, were constant in quiet works of charity
and kindness, which were deeply appreciated and
gratefully remembered. Mr Carnegie added to his
first Balquhidder purchase until he left his son an
estate which had formerly been divided among five
or six owners. Although not a Highlander, he had
the advantage of being a Scotchman who understood
Scotch ways and habits of life and thinking. He
saw through all things at a glance, and could not
be imposed upon. But if a hard man in a deal, he
was always willing to be just to his tenants. He
kept a large part of his property in his own hands,
and farmed it skilfully. His knowledge as a farmer
taught him to understand farmers' positions, and
that rents should not be run so high as not to allow
of interest on farmers' capital, and a fair return for
management and labour. He was descended from a
landed' branch of the Forfarshire Carnegies, and was
connected with other landed families. He was
manifestly ambitious of founding a county family
with an undoubtedly genuine long pedigree, and
that ambition gave a foreseeing character to what
he did on the lauds he purchased. He and his
family spent the summers in Balquhidder. They
were all lovers of rural life and enjoyments. Mr
Carnegie built farmhouses and steadings on his
estate, drained, fenced, planted in short, wrote his
poem on the face of the land. He fought with the
ferns which spread over fine-grass hillsides when
PROPRIETORS. 307
sheep succeeded cattle and houses ceased to be
fern-thatched. The fern-spread afflicted the sheep
with trembling disease. By constant cutting Mr
Carnegie nearly conquered it. As he lived to be
an octogenarian, he saw something of the beauties
which his improvements gave to the naturally-
beautiful scenery of a romantic district. And he
gave so much employment by these improvements
that day labourers from Strathyre and other places
outside his estate found work and wages to support
them. The old stock of tenants remained on the
land which was not in his own hands, and if they
had anything to complain of or any favour to ask,
they could go to him with their complaints or
petitions. Although Mr Angus Macdonald, bank
agent, Callander, collected his rents and saw to it
that the instructions he sent when away were
carried out, he was practically his own factor. His
large host of gardeners, shepherds, ploughmen, and
day labourers grew grey and usually died in his
service, except such of them as went off to better
situations, which were easier for them to get
because they had been trained in his employment.
The only one of the Balquhidder heritors who
constantly lived on his property in the parish,
summer and winter, year in, year out, was Mr John
Macdonald of Monachyle. His estate of Monachyle
had formerly been divided into the three small
separate estates of Craigruie, Monachyle, and Glen-
carnaig. The three united extended to 5525 acres.
It made a pretty brae estate with fine grazings and
a small allotment of arable laud, all of which Mr
Macdonald farmed himself, as his elder brother had
done before him. Their father, Mr Archibald Mac-
douald, with his wife, came from Glenlyon about
308 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
1780 to be tenant of Craigruie. They brought with
them some Glenlyon cattle, from which came the
famous Monachyle Highland cattle herd of the first
half of the next century. Archibald Macdonald
farmed the land carefully, and his wife and her
servant maids were diligent at their wheels, spinning
flax and wool. The flax spinning was then at its
height. When Craigruie came to be sold, the
tenant bought it ; but I have heard that far more
of the purchase money came from the " calanas," or
spinning, than from the farm. After Craigruie was
bought, things throve so well that the old people
were able to place their son Donald as tenant in the
much larger neighbouring farm of Monachyle. Mr
Donald Macdonald was a leading stock farmer and
breeder of Highland bulls and cattle in the first
half of the last century. Another son, Angus, was
an army officer in the great war with Napoleon, and
when he retired he joined his youngest brother,
John, in taking a lease of Lord Moray's 10,000 acres
farm of Inverlochlarig, once tenanted by Rob Roy.
Angus died unmarried, and John remained at Inver-
lochlarig as sole tenant until the death of his
brother Donald through a dogcart accident, when
he succeeded to the estate of Monachyle. He then
gave up Inverlochlarig, out of which he came with
a comfortable fortune, although the rent had been
raised step by step much higher than can now
be paid for it. He was by no means as well
educated as were his two elder brothers. This
was, I suppose, because he was a short-sighted,
shy, and delicate child, and the Benjamin of the
family. But he had learning enough for all his
needs, and a great share of natural shrewdness, and
keen observation, lurking under a genuine veil of
PEOPRIETOBS. 309
simplicity. Some of his hit-the-mark sayings
became locally proverbial. He was a saving man,
but not at all mean. I was inspector of the poor as
well as schoolmaster at Balquhidder, and once or
twice in sad, sudden emergencies, I had to ask help
for accidentally distressed families from Monachyle
in the absence of Mr Carnegie, and although the
distressed were not on his property, he always gave
me more than I asked for. He never mentioned his
own deeds of charity, which were numerous. He
was a Gaelic-speaking Highlander who stuck to
Highland habits and traditions, and readily re-
cognised kith and kin near at hand or far off. One
case was that of a brother of his mother, who, after
having seen better days, came to the end of his
means. He took this uncle of his and had him with
him at Inverlochlarig as an honoured guest until he
died there many years later. Two old sisters, born
at Carie in Rannoch, paid him periodical visits.
One, a widow with a weak-minded child, lived at
Deanstoun, and the other an old spinster, lived at
Ross in Glenlyon. The kinship between them and
Mr Macdonald was real, but so remote that outside
the Highlands it would have been ignored by the
rich relative. Monachyle recognised it, hospitably
received each kinswoman when she visited him, and
sent her off rejoicing with a five pound note in her
pocket. He was very content to live a yeoman-
farmer's life at Monachyle, but was latterly induced
for the sake of Dr Stewart, who was then the
nephew that was to inherit his estate, to build a
handsome mansion-house at Craigruie, and to let
Monachyle to Duncan Stewart, the nephew who had
been his right hand in farming, and whose son, as
fate decreed, became the heir to the estate in the
310 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
end, for Dr Stewart, after marrying, and living with
his uncle at Craigruie, died childless. Monachyle
stuck to the homely habits and saving ways in
which he had been brought up. As a landed pro-
prietor he was the least pretentious of the sons of
men ; but he took a great pride in his career as a
Highland sheep and cattle farmer. That had been
his life-long employment, and it was the life which
he was eminently suited for and the only one he
could thoroughly enjoy. Removed from the Bal-
quhidder braes and transported to a town, he would
certainly have found himself an exiled, lost, and
miserable man. As he lived far within his income
his money steadily increased. And he liked to see
it grow, though it had no miser grip on his mind and
he never spoke about it. While the three sons of
his father, of whom he was the youngest and the
longest lived, remained bachelors, the daughters all
married and had families. It was a fixed idea with
him, and with his elder brother before him, that the
estate must go undivided to one, and if John, who
was then well- advanced in years, did not marry and
have children, it was arranged when Donald was
dying that Dr Stewart should be the heir to the
land. Fate set aside that arrangement, and John
ultimately left the estate under trustees to the
infant son of the nephew who had been for long
years his faithful farming assistant. As for the rest
of his wealth it was ever his intention to divide it
equally among the other nephews and nieces, and
years before his death it occurred to him that he
should like to divide a large part of it among them
himself out of hand, and that it would be good
for them not to have to wait for their shares until he
died. So he made his preparations for distribution
CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 311
secretly, and invited all his nephews and nieces to
come to dine with him at Craigruie. They came
not knowing what this novel gathering meant. He
had the minister and his own cousin and banker,
Mr Angus Macdonald, with him, and these were the
only guests who knew what was going to happen.
After dinner Monachyle handed a cheque for 800
to each nephew arid niece. He distributed that
night among them a total of 16,000. Perhaps he
had a thrifty eye to the saving of legacy duty, but
his chief motive was to benefit his relatives in his
life time. When Monachyle died another sum about
equal to this one he had distributed at his dining-
table was divided among them.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE.
IN 1857 the nearest railway station was at Dun-
blane, but the line from Dunblane to Callander
was in course of construction, and when opened it
brought railway communication as near as ten miles
to Balquhidder Church. As long as the railway
stayed at Callander, the summer visitors to Bal-
quhidder might still think themselves far from the
madding crowd's ignoble strife, in a purely romantic
Highland district. But even before the passes of
Leny and Glenogle were forced, profaned, and
vulgarised by the Callander and Oban railway, the
old was slowly giving place to the new. The
occupancy of the land did not much differ from
what it had been a hundred years before. There
were large grazing farms, with little arable land or
312 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
none at all worth speaking of, which took up a big
portion of the area of the parish, moderate-sized,
well-managed, and diligently cultivated farms in
the occupancy of good tenants, crofts, and Strathyre
village feus. As the old spinning industry no
longer brought in a revenue, the smaller crofters
had to be craftsmen or labourers to make ends meet,
and had to send their children out to service.
There was not much pauperism among them as long
as they were blessed with health and found work to
do. Before the coming of the railway, which caused
renovation and the building of better houses for
the accommodation of summer visitors, Strathyre
village was a row of stoutly-built and slated peasant
feu houses, with a good space of land attached to
each, which might have been but, except in a
few cases, were not made into excellent gardens.
Over all the Highlands gardening was shamefully
neglected, as it yet is in so many places. Owner-
ship of the feu properties often changed, but there
were some who held on for three generations.
Selling out took place when owners died, and what
they left had to be divided among children or
relatives. The resident feuars of my time were a
respectable class of industrious men and women who
had small independent means or were supported by
wealthier friends. The village had two inns, and
thereby got the nickname of Nineveh, by which it
was known to drivers and drovers from Falkirk to
Skye, and which its inhabitants deeply resented.
They said the name was given it long ago by a
traveller, who, when bound to hasten elsewhere,
lost himself there for three days, not preaching
repentance, but getting drunk, sleeping, and getting
drunk again. Whatever abuse of drinking facilities
CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 313
existed was mainly due to way-goers and the ten-
ants and lodgers of non-resident feuars. Resident
feuars and the people of the neighbourhood were
far from being habitual drinkers or frequenters of
the two inns. The other two licensed places in the
parish were the hotel at Lochearnhead and the
Kingshouse half-way between it and Strathyre
village, which owed its name and existence to
General Wade's road-making, as did Kingshouse in
the Black Mount, and several other places of public
entertainment. The Highlands had still to be
thoroughly penetrated by railways, and years after
that had to elapse before railway transport and
sales in central towns interfered with local fairs and
cleared the roads and passes of the droves and
herds driven southward to Falkirk trysts.
Mr Robertson, minister of Callander, an erudite
Highlander, as can be seen in his description of his
parish in the old Statistical Account, anticipated
the Wizard of the North in expressing appreciation
of the scenery of Loch Katrine, the Trossachs, Loch
Vennacher, Loch Lubnaig, and the Pass of Leny
and Callander districts. But it was Sir Walter who
made that district and Rob Roy's country known to
all the world. Ever after the publication of the
" Lady of the Lake" and " Rob Roy," many visitors
from Edinburgh and Glasgow, besides pilgrims from
afar, came in summer to see the glens and lakes and
hills on which the revealing light of Sir Walter's
genius had flashed. By - and - bye steamers were
placed on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine much
to the annoyance of superseded boatmen and
hotels were built and stage-coaches run to accommo-
date the ever-increasing stream of tourists. Anglers
made incursions when and where they could ply
314 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their gentle craft. Artists and wearied professional
men sought out private lodgings wherever they
could get them, and business men sent wives and
families to Callander, or preferably to capacious
farmhouses when they could be got, coming to see
them on what would now be called week-end visits.
In my time Balquhidder was its own Highland self
in winter, while in summer it came much in contact
with the outside world. In the winter of 1858 or
'59, however, on a sunny winter's day when the
whole landscape was white with snow, and ice
covered lochs and streams, Balquidder was shaken
out of its repose for a moment by the unexpected
passing through of a very distinguished personage
in the Duke of Atholl's open boat- carriage. This
was the Empress Eugenie, the half-Spanish, half-
Scotch, and at that time wholly beautiful consort of
Napoleon III. She had come to visit the country
of her maternal ancestors, the Kirkpatricks, as a
private person, and wished to be as little noticed as
possible in her winter wanderings. Word was sent
to me to put on good fires in all the rooms of my
house, as the Empress was to come to see Rob Roy's
grave a few hours later, and might wish to warm
herself at a fireside while the horses had a feed of
corn and a short rest. The order was obeyed, but
for some reason the Empress gave up the visit to
Rob Roy's grave, and the horses stopped at Kings-
house, where a small gathering of parishioners
saluted her respectfully, who afterwards raved about
her good looks and especially of her glorious hair,
which, when the sunlight shone upon it, lit up into
a halo of gold. Poor lady, what trials and sorrows
were in store for her ! How impossible it was then
for her or anybody to foresee the tragical end of the
CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 315
Napoleonic dynasty and the calamities which France
had to go through !
Speaking of artist visitors in the Highlands, I
met at Fortingall, besides other aspirants who after-
wards became well-known, Mr then, in days to come,
Sir John Millais. He came on his marriage tour to
visit his brother, Mr William Millais, who was then
painting Allt-da ghob, a burn which from high up
the hill top all down to the river Lyon is one white
chain of cascades in rainy weather, and which in all
weathers attracts the attention of everyone who has
an eye for scenery. Handsome young Mr Millais
was at that time too much wrapt up in his art and
his bride to have much to say on other matters.
The Pass of Glenlyon impressed him much. He
walked up the hill to have a look at Sithchallion
from a distance, but when he returned it was not of
the mountain he spoke but of a flowering plant
which grew abundantly on the Fortingall grazings
at Fanduie. This was the misnamed Grass of
Parnassus, a plant he had never seen before, and
which, I believe, he afterwards introduced into one
or more of his pictures. Fionnsgoth (the lovely
flower) is the Gaelic name, and a beautiful flower it
is, whose place among the orders of plants is difficult
to determine, although it has been assigned to the
saxifrages. At Balquhidder I had Mr Waller Pa ton
lodging with me one summer, while he was making
an oil painting of the waterfall above the Church-
yard bought when finished by Mr Carnegie and
many exquisite water-colour sketches of other places.
He gave me one of these water-colours, which I have
ever since highly prized. It is a capital sketch of
the main valley taken from a place east of the
manse and looking westward to the blue-purpled
316 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
brae hills. What a wonderful facility he had for
knocking off in a short time an artistic and faith-
fully true sketch of land and sky and light and
shade. But he had little of the poetic mysticism
and creative power of his more famous brother, Mr,
afterwards Sir, Noel Paton. Their sister, Mrs D.
O. Hill, took a considerable rank among sculptors.
Their father was a splendid designer in his day, and
an out and out admirer of Queen Mary, a collector
of curios and old furniture, and what perhaps had
more than all to do with giving a special colouring
to the varied gifts of his artistic family, a fully
convinced Swedenborgian. There was also a strong
Celtic source of hereditary inspiration on the mater-
nal side. The maternal grandfather of these gifted
people was a native of Glenlyon, Archibald Mac-
diarmid, who was a schoolmaster in Atholl, and
married a daughter of Rob Ban Robertson, who was
a near relation of the Struan chiefs. Archibald
Macdiarmid could not paint pictures, but he could
make as well as sing Gaelic songs. It seems to me
that Sir Noel Paton's poetry, fairy and allegorical
pictures, and Arthurian chivalry tendencies reveal
Celtic heredity.
The only things the Kirkton of Balquhidder had
in common with the general run of clachan villages
were the church, churchyard, and school buildings.
In my days there were only four dwelling-houses,
the farmer's, the schoolmaster's, the gardener's
formerly an inn and the cottage occupied by a
weaver's widow and her mason son. The old school
buildings were situated on the top of the bank above
the road, and so close to the churchyard wall that
Rob Roy's grave was within a few yards of my
kitchen window. They were old buildings, and
CONDITIONS OF PARISH AND PEOPLE. 317
would have been unsightly, too, if ivy, roses, and
tropaeolum, and a good position had not redeemed
them. The schoolroom, which had two bedrooms
over it, was fitter for condemnation than the dwell-
ing-house, which had four bedrooms upstairs, and
downstairs a good room, kitchen, and small closet.
Mr Carnegie, soon after I left, caused new up-to-
date school buildings to be erected on another site,
and the old ones were completely obliterated. So
the part of the churchyard wall which they screened
was laid open to view. The old church and church-
yard were exceedingly well placed on elevated
ground, but in an over-crowded space. When Mr
Carnegie gave the parish the fine new church, he
added new land to the crowded space, had gravel
walks made, and used brain and money to make the
Balquhidder burial and worship-place the finest of
its kind anywhere to be found. If any sweet,
romantic spot in splendid scenery could make one in
love with death, this Balquhidder churchyard should
do it sooner than any country churchyard I have
ever seen in Scotland or England, and I have seen
not a few that had various strong charms of their
own.
318 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER L.
ANOTHER REMOVE.
I HAD, for three years, a pleasant time of it in
Balquhidder, amidst lovely Highland scenery and a
kindly people. After my Fortingall experience, it
was not oppressive work to teach a school of seventy
children, and as the parish was a compact one, the
inspectorship of the poor was not such a heavy
adjunct to the school work as it would have been in
a wider district. The outside paupers in Glasgow
and Stirling and two or three lunatics gave a little
more trouble than the decent old bodies resident in
the parish. My income was sufficient for my needs,
and left a margin for buying books and other
purposes. I had spare time for a good deal of
miscellaneous reading in the school season, and
during the vacation I did a lot of walking among
the hills and of gathering traditional lore and infor-
mation from kirk -session records and other sources.
The Perthshire Advertiser got most of the gatherings
I thus made. For about ten years I was a rather
profuse contributor of local history articles and
antiquarian notes to the Advertiser, and occasionally
of other literary stuff to other publications. These
vacation and spare-time amusements of mine led to
my being suddenly, and in a manner undreamed of
and wholly unsought by me, launched into English
journalism. My friend, Mr Sprunt, editor of the
Advertiser, had been editor of the Bradford
Observer, and had afterwards kept up friendly and
ANOTHER REMOVE. 319
professional connection with Mr William Byles,
proprietor of that paper. Mr Byles wrote to Mr
Sprunt that he was in want of an editor, and asked
if he could recommend one for the situation. Mr
Sprunt sent him my name, coupled with higher
praise than deserved. So, one day, I was surprised
by getting two letters, one from Perth and one from
Bradford, telling about the correspondence which
had taken place without my knowledge, and offering
me the situation. I felt nattered by the unasked
offer, and having crossed the hill to Killin and con-
sulted with my friend, Mr Charles Stewart, Tigh'n-
Duin, I resolved to accept it. When I look back I
cannot help wondering at the fact that I owed all
the situations I ever held to the extraneous and
ultroneous action of friends. I must have been
constitutionally deficient in self-pushing energy and
initiative, and yet I had my full snare of fighting
spirit when principles and circumstances called for
its display. As Mr Sprunt assured me, and as I
found afterwards to be the case, the Observer was
then, and remained for the next many years, a
moderate organ of old Whig principles. There was
only one thing on which Mr Byles and I could not
agree, and that was the question of the national
recognition of religion. He was far from being an
ardent member of the Liberation Society, and far
from being blind to the enormous value of the
religious and educational work which was being
done by the Church of England, but he belonged by
birth, training, and conviction, to the old religious
Independents, and now and then let articles written
by Dissenting ministers and professors go into the
paper. We agreed to disagree on this matter, and
I never was asked or expected to write on this
320 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
subject. A long and intimate acquaintance with
Mr Byles caused me to look up to him as an ideal
type of the sincerely-religious, high-principled, and
unusually tolerant and broad-minded Puritans of
the nineteenth century.
Having agreed to go to Bradford, what remained
for me to do at Balquhidder was to give timely
notice of resignation to heritors and parochial board,
to have a sale, and to wind up my small affairs in
Scotland. The two offices vacated by me were filled
before I left, and so there was no hitch in regard to
school or poor. My successor was session-clerk, as I
and all the teachers before me had been, but the
poor inspectorship was then separated from the
schoolmastership. It was with a sharp wrench that
I went away from beautiful Balquhidder and the
kindly people among whom I had enjoyed three
years of restful and happy life, free from care, and
passing rich on 100 a year.
CHAPTER LI.
OFF TO ENGLAND.
DECEMBER, 1860, was a month of severe wintry
weather. Having spent the previous night with
my hospitable friend, Mr Alexander Macdonald, the
farmer of Cambusmore, I took the morning train at
Callander when the sun was shining on whitened
hills and vales, and ice-bound lochs and streams.
In the south snow was falling again before I crossed
the Tweed for the first time. The low and dreary
Northumbrian coast, under its snow sheet, I felt
depressive, and such is the force of first impressions
OFF TO ENGLAND. 321
that when many times in years to come I saw it in
summer sunshine, something still of the old feeling
remained. With the exception of Whitby and
Scarborough I never could muster up admiration for
any other part of the east coast of England. The
West Highland coast had spoiled me, and until I
saw the Devonshire and Cornwall hills rising over
the British Channel I quite underestimated the
many attractions which others find on the English
sea coasts.
At York, where there was an hour's stoppage, I
saw the Cathedral in pale moonlight flecked partly
by gaslight, and the massiveness of the building left
an image of such vastness in my mind, that after-
wards when I saw the grand minster in broad day-
light, and inspected it in and out, I was disappointed
unreasonably with its exterior, while I thought I
could not admire its interior too much. Such was
the effect of a delusive yet tenacious first impression.
I would have stopped that night at York had I
known that I should have to freeze for long hours
at Normanton, which had then but a miserable
station. Between leaving Callander and next morn-
ing looking down from the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway station on Bradford in its forked valley,
twenty-four hours had gone by. It was weary
travelling, especially south of the Tweed, be-
cause of many stoppages, darkness, and inclement
weather. I was glad enough to get a wash and
breakfast at the first inn I came to in Bradford,
which happened to be an unpretentious old and
comfortable one, close to the station. Railway
companies had not then taken to building and
running station hotels.
21
322 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Although for a quarter of a century railway
making had made prodigious progress, in 1860 most
of the criss-cross lines by which the manufacturing
and mining districts were later on chequered like a
Highland plaid or chessboard had yet to be made.
So the jointing loops connecting trunk lines were
few and far between, and with uncertain train con-
nections, stoppages were inevitable. The trunk
lines themselves were waiting for straightening,
extensions, and completions. In country districts
coaches and carriers continued still to ply their
vocations as of old, and the canals of the eighteenth
century continued to carry coal, wool, timber, build-
ing stones, and minerals much as before. Roadside
inns with their bright fires, rounds of corned beef,
and foaming tankards were scarcely yet conscious
that they were doomed to be superseded except in
some few obscure and thinly inhabited places. The
canals of the eighteenth century had, by facilitating
transport, given an enormous impetus to trade, the
building of towns and mills, and helped also to make
railway construction easier than it otherwise would
have been. And at the back of the canalization
facilities of transport came the revolution of industry
caused by Arkright's spinning machine, Watt's
steam engine, the use of the power loom, and all
the long train of subsequent inventions. The old
handicraft trades were swamped by the new inven-
tions, and the new order much amounted to this,
that men, women, and children should be adjuncts
to machinery. Hence the Luddite riots, which
preceded the Chartist movement, and the more
orderly and better organised trade-unionism of the
time when I first went to England.
PART III.
JOURNALISTIC
PART HI.- JOURNALISTIC.
CHAPTER LIT.
IN BRADFORD.
WITH literary work I had been long acquainted,
but I had a good many things to learn about the
office work on which I now entered in Bradford.
Mr Byles, however, helped me over technical stiles,
and his and his family's kindness made me feel from
the first much at home in my new location. I got
comfortable lodgings in Springfield Place, and never
changed them until, on marriage, I took a newly-
built house on the road between Peel Park and the
UnderclifFe Cemetery a hilltop, airy situation, with
a varied outlook. My dear wife, Mary Catherine
Aspinall, and I were married at Horton Lane Chapel
on the 31st of March, 1864, by Dr J. R Campbell,
in the presence of a cloud of witnesses. My fair
young bride was twenty-one years old in the previous
December, and two months after that I saw my
thirty-sixth birthday.
The Bradford of the sixties was very different
from the Bradford, say, of 1900. A process of
extension and of transformation had, indeed, been
going on since the beginning of the railway era, if
not earlier. Extension was visible in the new
tentacular streets which connected Manningham,
Bowling, and Horton with the Bradford overlooked
by the Parish Church of St. Peter's. Architectural
326 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
advance was visible in Peel Square, St. George's
Hall, and some other business buildings, dwelling-
houses, and places of worship. But the great
architectural transformation, rectification of streets,
covering of offensive becks, and getting rid of the
stinking canal, which had served its day, were yet
mostly all to come. Peel Park, indeed, had been
acquired and well laid out before 1860, but its young
trees required years to grow before its beauties
could be developed. The nobly wooded Manning-
ham Hall Park was, until many years later, the
property and residence of Mr S. C. Lister, afterwards
Lord Masham, whose inventions made many men's
fortunes besides his own. The smaller public parks
were not yet thought of or desired. New wants
grew with the town's growth and its wealth and
dense population. When on the morning of my
arrival, I first looked down on Bradford with its
mills, workshops, and dwellings pouring out black
smoke amidst the hilly, snow-white scenery, I was
surprised to see that most of its buildings were
covered, not by slates as in Scotch towns, but by
weather-beaten sandstone flags, which in many
instances had weathered the gales and storms for
hundreds of years. Like the iron and coal which
gave life to the adjacent foundries of Bowling and
Lowmoor, the sandstone quarries helped to enrich
the place, and furnished the best possible building
material for the wonderful extension and architec-
tural transformation which were just beginning.
Bradford had, before I ever saw it, made itself in
the manufacturing line the capital of the worsted
trade, while Leeds had gone in for broadcloth, and
Halifax for carpets. The first attempt to add
fabrics made from alpaca w to the original worsted
IN BRADFORD. 327
trade ended in disappointment, because the machinery
which suited the wool's natural curl did not at all
suit the different one of alpaca. It was, I was told,
a Highlander of the name of Mackenzie who finally
invented means to overcome the difficulty. He did
not live to reap the benefit of his invention, which
was bought on terms that would have been sure to
enrich him had his life been prolonged, by Mr Titus
Salt, who, after having built the great mill and
handsome village of Saltaire by the profits made
from alpaca manufacturing, of which he and some
associates had at first a practical monopoly, was
created a baronet. The crinoline fashion, introduced
or at least patronised by the Empress Eugenie,
brought much gain to Bradford and to all the
worsted manufacturing villages and hill and glen
mills which sold their goods in Bradford market.
After that, the civil war in America, which caused
starvation in Lancashire, enriched the worsted
district. I knew a Bradford tinsmith who made a
modest fortune by furnishing blockade-runners with
watertight cases, which, filled with goods, were
sunk at appointed places on the coasts of the
Confederate States, and which when taken up and
emptied were filled with cotton, sunk as before, and
then taken up again by the blockade-runners. In
this enterprise it was said Wesleyan manufacturers
had more success than others, because they were
better served by their co-religionists and agents on
the other side, In the flush of worsted district
advancing prosperity, the ambition of invading the
Continent seized upon Bradford's great inventor,
" Sam Lister," on whom in advanced age the title
of Lord Masham was tardily bestowed in recognition
of the fact that he was truly one of his country's
328 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
most remarkable captains of industry in the nine-
teenth century. He set up manufacturing works in
the north of France and in Saxony which in the end
turned out to be more profitable to others than they
were to himself.
CHAPTER LIII.
RAMBLING ETHNOLOGICAL REMARKS.
ANCIENT Britons, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Nor-
wegians, Danes, and Normans, were well shaken to-
gether and compounded to form the English nation.
In rural and inland districts that composition re-
mained substantially unaltered from the death of King
Henry, the Conqueror's youngest son, in 1136, to 1800.
The mixture varied in different localities. From
Kent to Leith on the whole of the east coast of Great
Britain, the Teutonic, Scandinavian, Frisian, and
Danish element undoubtedly so markedly predomin-
ated that the aboriginal British element almost
appeared to have been eliminated, which, however,
could scarcely have been the case. Wessex also
was pretty thoroughly Saxonised, and its kings
were able to extend their sway over nearly all
modern England, and to impose their language, by
degrees, on their whole dominions. But Wales
remained independent, and Devonshire, Cornwall,
and Cumberland, and Westmoreland and Lancashire
also, did not lose their native British population.
On the West side, from the Channel to the rock of
Dumbarton, the British element remained as pre-
dominant as the non-Celtic element was on the
island's other side. How was it that the ancient
RAMBLING ETHNOLOGICAL REMARKS. 329
Britons of the west side of the country so early
adopted the language of their Saxon rulers, when
they themselves continued to be the people of these
districts much as they had been under the higher
civilisation of Boman domination ? Well, it is a
characteristic of all the large branches of the
Celtic stock to be able to acquire foreign languages
with much facility, and to be proud of that gift of
theirs, while it is otherwise with more stolid and
stable descendants of the followers of Hengist and
Horsa. During the Roman domination many of
the ancient Britons had, no doubt, learned to speak
and write the language of their rulers, and to
neglect their own. A Saxonised Church was at
the back of King Alfred, and of his less civilised
and very truculent predecessors. But here it is to
be noted that Alfred's language, once nationalised,
held its ground firmly against a further overwhelming
change. Although after the Conquest Norman
French was, for upwards of three centuries, the
language of court, feudal nobility, and legislation,
Saxon stolidity, with its immovable tenacity, has
to be thanked for giving the British Empire the
language of Shakespeare. Upon Saxon stability,
solidly resting upon limited practical aims and upon
Celtic restlessness, backed by boundless imagination
and initiative potentialities, the Norman Conquest
deeply impressed the seal of cementing feudal order.
Before, their common faith more than secular
organisation, was the bond of union between badly
amalgamated races with discordant traditions. The
Church founded by Augustine and Paulinus was
arrogant from the beginning. It absorbed the
work of the lona missionaries in Northumbria, and
trampled on the feelings and rights of the bishops
330 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and clergy of the old British Church, but it breathed
into the races possessing England a sort of con-
solidating unity.
Setting aside the numerous and widely variegated
incomers of recent time, and excepting the dalesmen
of old Danish descent who still retain marked
ancestral characteristics, there are not many among
the native people of the West Riding of Yorkshire
belonging to the white-skinned, fair-haired, blue-
eyed type that Pope Gregory said should not be
called Angles but Angels. The prevalent type
everywhere is that of medium-sized, dark-eyed,
brown or black-haired, alert and energetic people.
This is particularly the case in the district which
includes Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax, with their
dependent townships, villages, and glens. Charlotte
Bronte has embalmed, in her wonderful stories, the
dialect of the English language which was spoken
over that whole district in her time, and is
yet spoken pretty largely, although board school
teaching is killing it by degrees. It retained on
the face of it marks of high antiquity. But
language can pass from race to race like the bird
from bush to bush ; and, as said already, the Celtic
races have always been ready learners of new
languages. They have proved this in Great Britain
and Ireland. Race types are a very different thing.
The Brigantes of Yorkshire, who sent a colony
called the " Clan Breogan " to Ireland, probably in
the time of Agricola, were submerged under Latin
domination, Saxon rule, and Norman feudalism, but
if one can judge from the looks of the native in-
habitants of the West Riding, descendants of the
submerged Brigantes always retained their position
as the people of that part of the country, and in
last century became masterfully resurgent.
THE GREAT CHANGE AND ITS CAUSES. 331
CHAPTER LIV.
THE GREAT CHANGE AND SOME OF ITS CAUSES.
IN 1860 and years thereafter there were thousands
and tens of thousands still living in the West Riding
of Yorkshire and in Lancashire whose fathers and
mothers belonged to the end of the old industrial
period, when wool and cotton were wheel-spun
round household fires and the yarn woven on hand-
looms. The spinning jenny and other inventions
caused manufacturing mills to be put up on rivers
and becks, but the change was gradual until the
steam engine and the power loom crushed out the
old handicraft trades, and led to the Luddite riots,
which were exceedingly foolish, and withal very
natural. The ignorant rioters were kicking against
the prick of fateful progress, but they were in their
futile way fighting for that individual freedom
which they feared, with reason, would be lost under
the new mechanical dispensation. Trade-unionism
cannot be said to have restored individual freedom ;
it has merely counteracted the power of capital by a
power of combination adverse to individual freedom.
Socialism of the present day kind would put an end
to individual freedom altogether.
Canals and roads first facilitated transports, and
facilitated means of transport, made the almost
intact mineral wealth of the country more available
and profitable. Then came railways and steamers
to complete the transformation. If we say the great
change began to make itself somewhat freely felt in
332 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
1780, we can add with confidence that it conquered
before 1860. It inevitably involved a corresponding
revolution in political and municipal affairs. Mining
districts attracted large populations. New towns
started into existence, small old towns grew into
big cities, and, on the contrary, cities and towns of
historical renown in purely rural regions fell into
decadence. The radically altered relations of town
and country, in respect to both population and
wealth, necessitated large constitutional and muni-
cipal reforms, and made the maintenance of the
Corn Laws in war time form untenable, before the
Irish potato famine gave Sir Robert Peel an acci-
dental excuse for sweeping them away. Later
experience has shown that the Cobden-Bright dream
of free trade all round was nothing better than a
gross delusion, and that it would have been wise to
have retained a small corn duty as a weapon of
defence against foreign countries which shut out
British Trade by tariff walls, and also as a means
for consolidating the British Empire by giving a
little preference to the produce of colonies and
dependencies.
The new start given to British industry and
commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, by
improved machinery and ever-increasing facilities of
transport, would have received a terrible back-set
had Napoleon managed to ferry over the Channel
the army of invasion he had gathered at Boulogne.
His conquering ambition was thwarted by the
British fleet, which, besides protecting the coasts of
our tight little islands, maintained throughout the
long Titanic struggle the sovereignty of the sea.
The Berlin Decree, by which Napoleon intended to
shut British trade out of the European Continent,
THE GREAT CHANGE AND ITS CAUSES. 333
although detrimental, was never so effective as he
wanted it to be. How could it when he had not
enough of naval power to shut even all the French
ports against British trade, and when running his
insufficient blockades became a sporting and profit-
able profession to daring smugglers ? French hold
in India was lost. The seizure of Egypt and Syria
could not be made good, and the mastery of the
Mediterranean was not his. With all the oceans
and seas of the world in general free, British
commerce found new outlets while the war was
still going on and its issue still doubtful. Out of
the hard struggle by land and sea our country
emerged with enhanced reputation, enlarged posses-
sions, and a heavy burden of debt. That burden of
debt had its full compensation in the escape from
invasion and the other advantages already referred
to. The escape from invasion secured the undis-
turbed progress of industries, while on the Continent
industries were ravaged, except so far as they
administered to war purposes. Confidence and
credit were for a time almost destroyed and it
required a long period after peace came to repair
damages, and to learn from us, whose industrial
progress had not been disturbed, how to utilise
material resources, and to adopt new means for
changed conditions of production and commerce.
No doubt the depression which always follows
inflated war prices was, with bad harvests, severely
felt by a large section of our people for ten years or
more after Waterloo, which depression was further
accentuated by the trying way in which the collec-
tive steam-power dispensation was crushing out the
old handicraft individualism. But all the time
trade was expanding and wealth was almost magic-
334 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ally accumulating in the hands of those who were
in a position to take advantage of the chances
opened to them by the new industrial reform, or
who possessed properties or shops in growing towns.
So when the time came for making railways, and
for covering the seas with steamers, there was plenty
of money available for these undertakings. It was
long ere other countries could overtake the start
before them which, owing to these causes, and the
reliable, steady, and forecasting character of our
people, British industry had gained on them. The
Manchester school of political economists were right
enough in agitating for the abolition of the war time
Corn Laws, but time has proved their dream of
world-wide free trade a grim delusion, and that a
rigid adherence to free imports had its drawbacks
when it obstructed British Empire consolidation and
gave tariff- fenced States an tmdue advantage in our
unfenced markets.
CHAPTER LV.
STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES.
THE industrial revolution everywhere led to a vast
disturbance and new assortment of population.
Country people deprived of their domestic industries
flocked to the manufacturing mills and to the
mining and ironwork localities. In the Bradford
district the revolution seemingly worked itself out
up to about 1830 more gradually than in the
majority of similar cases. In this district the old
communities were, till the time mentioned, half
rural. Bradford itself was surrounded with small
STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 335
farms, all of which are now covered with streets,
roads, railways, and buildings, or as parks dedicated
to urban amenity and recreation. Sanitation did
not proceed pari passu with enlargement. The
formerly clean waters of becks were polluted, and
the necessity came for bringing pure water supply
from afar. The canal connecting Bradford with
Shipley was a stinking sink before it was remedied)
and so was the beck in the valley before it was
covered in, as earlier had been done with its
tributary rivulets which passed through the town,
and which old people said they saw running clear
and bordered with banks beautified by wild flowers.
As far up as Keighley the river Aire itself was so
polluted that trout could not live in it. The whole
district is hilly and naturally attractive, even to a
Highlander, but it got sadly spoiled by smoke-laden
atmosphere and polluted waters before energetic,
costly, and, to a large degree, effective means were
taken to remedy what had grown into intolerable
evils, and to restore to the scenery a part of what
God had originally bestowed upon it.
The earliest incomers were from the rural
districts of the West Riding itself. They were the
same in race dialect and habits as the native
population. Next came others from both the north
and south of England to try their luck in a place
which oifered many chances. So far the gathering
muster was almost exclusively English. After 1830
the flowing-in stream changed its character a good
deal. Scotchmen, Irish, and Germans poured in,
first in driblets, and then in large numbers. In
1860, Mr Robert Milligan, the head of one of the
largest merchant firms in the town, kept in his
lobby at Acacia, with honest pride, the travelling
336 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
merchant's pack with which he had began his
strictly honourable and exceptionally successful
career in England. Other Scotchmen of the past
generation were then leading merchants, manu-
facturers, doctors, ministers, professors, teachers,
and shopkeepers, or trusted officials in various
kinds of employment. With their better education
and, as a rule, prudent conduct, the Scotch incomers
had good chances of prospering. They made them-
selves respected. So did the Germans whether
they belonged to the Teutonic race or the ubiquitous
race of Jacob. The Scotch mingled, as they were
sure to do, with the native population, and kept
their names and numbers, but after the defeat of
France and the founding of the German Empire,
many of the sons of the Fatherland, taking with
them the commercial and mechanical knowledge
they acquired in England, returned home to take
part in the fierce trade rivalry which has since been
going on between their country and ours.
It is a probable supposition that when the
primitive race of cave dwellers who have left so many
traces behind them, came into our land, there was a
broad dry land connection between England and
France at the Strait of Dover, and another between
Scotland and Ireland at the promontory of Cantyre.
On this supposition the United Kingdom in a far
off era would have been an antler-like horn of the
European continent. But as far back as we have
any gleam of historic light to guide us, Great
Britain and the Lesser Britain, or Ireland, were
separate islands as they are now, and the diverse
races which founded our composite nation came in
at successive periods by sea. Ireland and Alba
or Scotland north of the firths of Forth and Clyde
STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 337
escaped the Roman Empire rule to which the rest
of Great Britain had to submit. It is likely that
they were places of asylum to British fugitives who
rebelled against Roman rule, or had committed
crimes which put their lives in peril from Roman
justice. The Romans meditated the conquest of
Ireland, but the intention was never carried out.
The subjection of that country to England in the
reign of Henry II. was brought about, not by
Saxons, but by Norman and Welsh adventurers,
who, in a generation or two, became more Irish
than the Irish themselves. The conquest and
settlement of Ulster, and the " strike down the
Amalekites " of Cromwell, might, with more truth,
be called the " Saxon Conquest." It is a strange
fact that the early conquest was nominally carried
out with Papal warrant to bring Ireland under
complete subjection to the Holy See, and that the
latter conquest was nominally intended to make
Ireland a Protestant country. Irish politics got
curiously twisted with Irish religion. Had the
audaciously priest-predicted son been given to Mary
Tudor, and the anti-Protestant policy of her reign
been continued with success under her successor, it
is more than likely that Ireland would have become
ultra-Protestant. As matters otherwise turned out,
Ireland fought for Catholicism and the cause of
expelled James II. and his successors. For all the
bitter hatreds begotten by race and religious
differences, plottings, rebellions, and suppressions
thereof, the Irish did their share as soldiers, sailors,
colonists, and daring adventurers in defending and
extending the British Empire.
The pacific invasion of England by masses of Irish
working people, who came to stay, commenced in
22
338 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
last century, when the industrial revolution was
pretty far advanced. Previously there used to
come bands of harvesters, men and women, who
returned home with the wages they had earned in
England when the crops were gathered in. Rail-
way construction, mining, manufacturing, caused by
degrees many of them to take up permanent
residence among the " Saxons." Next followed the
dispersion which the potato famine time enforced,
and ever after the Irish invasion of England
assumed, in places, a conquering aspect. In the
worsted district, however, the Irish incomers found
themselves submerged amidst a native population
that always could, and always calmly did, hold the
first place. Divided between Church of England
and Dissenting Churches, that population was very
Protestant, and yet very tolerant. As far as I am
aware, there was not, before the incoming of the
Irish, a single Catholic place of worship in the whole
parish of Bradford, which was of far wider extent than
the area of the town. Church and Dissent, while
fighting between themselves on other questions,
were united in defence of the Revolution Settlement
and the Protestant Faith. The Irish incomers had
to put up with the Gunpowder Plot annual satur-
nalia of the 5th of November, when the youth of the
town and district indulged in a sportive riot of
crackers and bonfires which often led to police court
cases, and sometimes produced serious injuries, or
ended in tragedies. But, on the other hand, they
could be a little riotous themselves on St. Patrick's
Day, and noisy enough at municipal and Parlia-
mentary elections. From Ulster and Dublin came
Orangemen who, although comparatively few in
number, exercised counteracting influence as men of
STBANGERS WITHIN THE GATES. 339
a much higher standard of acquired knowledge and
superior social status. As a body, the Catholic
Irishmen sympathised with all the separatist and
rebellious proceedings of their people at home, and,
when they got them, gave their votes to the English
candidates for seats in Parliament who promised the
biggest surrender. But in every-day life and conduct
they were a hard-working, orderly, warm-hearted,
lovable people, who attended well to their family and
religious duties, and sent a good deal of the money
they earned to old parents and needy friends they
left behind them in Ireland. Under the provocation
of what they had just cause to consider a gross
attack on the Catholic Church, they got up a tre-
mendous riot, when the Frenchman called Baron de
Carnin came to hold open-air meetings in Bradford,
at which to denounce papal policy, Jesuit intrigues,
and alleged immoralities of continental monks and
nuns. But they learned moderation and respect
for freedom of speech from their surroundings and
the manner in which their most Radical friends and
allies resented the mobbing of Baron de Gamin,
whose worst allegations were mere echoes of the
language used by the anti-clericals of France, Italy,
and Spain. Having learned by sharp experience
that to get they must give toleration, and that in
respect to freedom of speech and action within the
wide limits of law there was a broad difference
between Bradford and Cork, they kept prudently
quiet when Gavazzi thundered to a crowded audience
against the Church from which he had openly
revolted, belauded Cavour and Mazzini, crowned
Garibaldi with the hero chaplet of Italian patriotism,
and in floods of stirring eloquence advocated the
complete unity and independence of the whole
340 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Italian peninsula, which in a short time afterwards
came to be effected.
Those of the young people from Ireland who
entered into domestic service quickly learned their
various duties, and, remaining true to their Church,
assimilated themselves with their new environment,
and, in a manner reminding one of Highland clau-
nishness, attached themselves to the families they
served. When we married, my young wife brought
with her as our servant, Kate Carty, from Nenagh,
Tipperaray, who had been servant to her father
and mother for three years. Kate and her young
mistress were of the same age. They had been
girls together, and had, under Mrs Aspinall's super-
vision, gone through the same excellent English
domestic training. Kate remained with us for
seventeen years. She went with us to the Cape,
came back with us to England, and when we came
from England to Inverness, she accompanied us, and
stopped with us until her mother, getting helpless
by age and infirmity, called her home to her birth-
place in a manner which a dutiful and affectionate
only daughter felt at once bound to obey. She
saved while in our service a good bit over a
hundred pounds, which she took to Ireland with
her, and yet she had been annually paying out of
her not-exorbitant wages the rent of her mother's
little house and holding. Her day of departure
was a day of sorrow to my wife and myself, and,
still more so, to our large group of young children,
who looked upon her as a permanent and indispens-
able member of the family. She had been like a
sort of second mother to them all, but the boys were
her special favourites. She took one of them out to
the Cape, and two of them home, and these first
THE NATIVE POPULATION. 341
two were her special favourites until a younger boy
worked himself forward into the front rank, by promis-
ing to adopt her as his daughter. In telling them
the story of her early Irish life, and how the death
of her father had left her an orphan, four years old,
Willie cried out "Kate, I'll be your father."
That infantile promise of paternal protection tickled
Kate's fancy ; but the little boy took a rather artful
advantage of the position he had so easily gained.
When she had to refuse any of his requests or to
rebuke his restlessness, he got round her by the
threat "Kate, I'll not be your father."
CHAPTER LVI.
THE NATIVE POPULATION.
I HAD abundant opportunities between 1860 and
1880 of seeing at close quarters how firmly the
natives of the Bradford worsted district kept their
predominant position, and came to the conclusion
that as long as they remained the same in character
as they then were, they would never lose strength
nor be submerged. They had passed, ere I saw
them, through the severe ordeal of the industrial
revolution which superimposed the collectivism of
the big steam-engine mills and other works upon
the individualism of the handicraft arts which their
forbears combined with small farming pursuits. It
was a painful trial to conform to an order of things
which made men and women and children slaves to
machinery instead of retaining the skilful mastery
of simple tools, with the individual or family
freedom which they had before. After a few
342 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ructions and riots they saw they had no chance
but to conform, and that in the matter of work and
wages the revolution would have its compensations.
They yielded to necessity, but their surrender was
not unconditional, because they brought into the
new order as much as possible of hereditary habits
and moral ideals. With imperturbable unconscious-
ness they spliced the new order with the old in a
manner which was as conservatively wholesome as
it was, in some of its aspects, singular to behold.
Was it not, for instance, a remarkable thing that
long after Bradford had a population of over a
hundred thousand, it should not have a single
bakery, because its housewives had continued the
ancestral habit of baking their own home-made
bread, than which no better bread could be found
anywhere ? Between Bradford and Skipton there
were many thousands of garden allotments worked
diligently and profitably by working men in their
leisure hours. And in a corner of the allotment
was often found, snugly housed and much cared for,
the family pig, which, when fattened and killed,
was cured and converted into fine bacon with all
the skill which had come down from days of old.
After having been to church or chapel fathers and
mothers, with their children, could be seen making
Sunday visits to the allotment gardens to see how
the pig, the pot vegetables, and the flowers were
growing, and to hold there, in fine weather, their
little pic-nics. Such a firm hold had the majority
of the native operatives kept on the arts pertaining
to rural life, that at home or in the colonies " back
to the land " would have well suited them if they
saw advantage in the change.
THE NATIVE POPULATION. 343
The practical and seemingly harsh outer crust of
native Yorkshire character covers a large store of
soft inner virtues, domestic affection, lovingkind-
ness, self-denial, noble aspiration, and high idealism
not wholly of this world. Castes and classes may
and do arrange themselves under different banners,
but are at bottom united by hereditary habits,
common ideas of right and wrong, national
patriotism, and conservative instincts which can
be disowned but never entirely shaken off. These
qualities helped the working classes of the worsted
district to pass through the ordeal of the industrial
revolution with wonderfully little damage to family
life and the moral training connected therewith.
Factory Acts have brought about a vast improve-
ment, but, I fear, mill work can never be made
thoroughly conducive to the cultivation of the
higher domestic virtues, including the relation of
parents and children and the habits, arts, and
amenities which throw a halo round household
hearths. Honour and grateful thanks, however, are
due to the sturdily stable working people of the
past who bore the first dislocating brunt of the
bewildering industrial revolution without demoralis-
ation, and who managed so well to splice the old
with the new as to preserve moral, social, and
national continuity.
One must take it for being in obverse accordance
with their hard grit and naturally noble race that
the Yorkshire man or woman who takes to an evil
course will keep on it resolutely and defiantly, and
be evil indeed, yet with streaks of goodness now and
then bursting out. If the worst housed and most
crowded parts of Bradford, Bingley, Keighley, and
the surrounding villages should be called slums,
344 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
these slums, in my time, were far more inhabited by
low class and poor strangers, than by natives who,
as loafers, drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes, had
fallen out of the native ranks. The comparative
smallness of the native race fringe of worthlessness
and criminalism could be partly accounted for on
mere race grounds, and very much on grounds of
family and religious training, which helped to steady
the young lads and lasses who earned wages that
made them prematurely independent. What they
did, as a rule, was to marry early, and to begin
housekeeping on the sensible lines they had learned
from their parents. The young couples often had
ambitions which they strove hard to realise, and
they often succeeded in doing so, and going even far
beyond their most sanguine expectations. Ambition
to rise was not useless when it failed to attain its
material object, for it strengthened self-respect and
self-control and promised well for the children of
parents who missed the material advance they had
qualified themselves to deserve. The best of the
men who rose to wealth from little or nothing did
not ignore their poor relations, nor fail, if they were
reliable, to give them chances for bettering them-
selves. The crops of children consequent on early
marriages kept the vital statistics all right, and
ensured steady increase to the native people, of
whom, through personal acquaintance, I formed a
much higher estimate than the one I had got from
Charlotte and Emily Bronte's novels. The grim-
looking old father of the gifted sisters was, for
several years after I went to Bradford, still living,
like Ossian after the Feinne, in the wind-swept
mountain -top parsonage at Haworth. His daughters
and his gifted, errant son could scarcely have got
RELIGION. 345
their genius from him ; but Emily seems to have
inherited his fierceness of character. Charlotte,
fortunately for lasting preservation, caught up the
dialect before it sustained any damage or showed
the marks of coming decay, which, in my time, were
slowly making themselves visible under the influence
of pulpit, press, and School Board English. But if
it is doomed to die it will yet take some generations
of gradual killing before it will quite cease to be
spoken, and when it ceases to be spoken it will be
embalmed in a great deal of local literature, as well
as in the Bronte novels.
CHAPTER LVII.
RELIGION.
SOLEMN Sunday rest with cessation of work came
once a week to the Bradford district. It was
preceded on Saturday by a great house cleaning,
and washing of persons likewise from the grime of
six days' labour. The many places of worship were
well attended by men, women, and children in their
best clothes. The line of demarcation between
Church and Dissent was much more broadly marked
in things civil than in matters of faith. Excluding
the recently imported Irish Roman Catholics and
some minor sects, the whole population might well
be said to wear the same decided Protestant brand.
Dissenters had to justify the continuance of separa-
tism by exaggerating small points of difference,
manufacturing fancy grievances as soon as the old
real ones disappeared, and by carefully raking to-
gether the embers of ancient feuds which once were
346 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
of importance, but which had been, in course of
time, deprived of sensible meaning. The Church,
assailed without by the Liberation Society and its
train of strangely assorted Roman Catholic and
Secularist auxiliaries, was, at the same time,
beginning to be troubled within by the ritualism
which was, in the main, the natural reaction to
rationalism, and in some cases, too, the outcome of
individual petty arrogance or the desire to create
sensations, and to pander to the theatrical and
superstitious tastes of society ladies, or to appeal
to the element of mysticism which is strong in
speculative dreamers, and is not wholly absent
from any human mind. Ritualism found very
little of congenial soil in which to strike its roots
within the diocese of Ripon, whose then bishop,
Bickersteth, was a strong Evangelical, and one of
the most earnest preachers of his day. There should
be room for the Ritualists as well as for the Evan-
gelicals and Broad parties in the Church of Eng-
land ; and it has to be acknowledged that they
have done much good, self-denying work in the
slums of London and other places. That rescue
work should be set off to the credit side of their
account against their priestly pretensions, their
ministering to the theatrical tastes and superficial
remorses of society sinners, and their sending to
Rome the more logical and thorough receivers of
their doctrines. The laity of the Church of Eng-
land are, taken in the mass, I verily believe, more
immovably Protestant than the Dissenters who
speak so much about the Romanising mischief done
by ritualism. The English Church people are
tolerant to an exceptional degree. They will listen
apathetically to sermons and discourses by high and
RELIGION. 347
dry clergymen who refrain from, introducing innova-
tions in worship, but they set their teeth in deadly
wrath against new priestly garments, and postures,
and genuflexions which they denounce as Popish.
If they had the right to elect their clergymen the
Evangelicals would be chosen almost everywhere.
They like good sermons, but can put up with dull
and foolish ones, because they think the Prayer
Book services sufficient for the need of Christians,
and that as long as he cannot add to or take from
these services it does not much matter what may be
the clergyman's personal views or character. The
Church of England gains breadth from theoretical
imperfections and startling contrasts. It is aristo-
cratic and popular, rich and poor, lax in some
matters of importance, and rigorous in some small
ones, such as confirmation of children, which has no
importance beyond that of custom, and yet which
acts as a barrier against the entrance into communion
of outsiders wishing to come in from other de-
nominations, who have ten times more of scripture
knowledge, and far deeper religious feelings than
the youngsters on whose heads bishops lay their
hands. Evangelical awakening in the Church was
so directly and unmistakably due to the eighteenth
century revival outside of it, which is connected
specially with the names of Whitefield and Wesley,
that the one thing might be considered an off-shoot
of the other. To the same pressure of external
influence must, in a large measure, be ascribed the
generating of the reforming force which, by degrees,
swept away many old abuses, such as pluralities,
absenteeism, and scandals of clerical life. Ritualism,
and the Anglican High Churchism of modern days,
must be taken as protests of religious people against
348 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the materialism of an unbelieving age, which is
cutting away human beings from the highest
sources of inspiration and forcing them to deprive
their souls of the spiritual wings with which God
had furnished them. In sense and purpose, the
protest is commendable and timely, too. But it has
taken a form which is detestable to the majority of
English people. Many intelligent Eomanists would,
if they possibly could, get gladly rid of the supersti-
tious lumber of the Middle Ages to which our
self-styled Catholics of the Church of England
are striving to bring back a people stubbornly
Protestant, who anchor themselves on Bible and
Prayer Book, and are, in country places especially,
loyally attached to the old churches, which are
often museums of local historical monuments, and
about which the dead of many ages have been
buried. In the worsted district I found that the
Church of England was by far the strongest single
religious denomination, although it had not perhaps
a numerical majority against all the other sects,
Christian, Jewish, Secularist, when pooled together.
Out in non-manufacturing rural districts the Church
was predominant, and Dissent, in all its forms, was
weak and wavering in character and fortunes, al-
though subsidised and patronised by urban co-
religionists.
In Bradford and district, as indeed all over
England, Old Dissent, hailing back to Common-
wealth time, and in less definite form to the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, was represented by
Independents, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The
Quakers were so few that they hardly counted,
and the old English Presbyterians had, at the end
of the eighteenth century, slided into Unitarianisin,
RELIGION. 349
except those of them who joined the Independents,
or Wesleyans, or slipped back into the Church of
England. With the exception of very few places,
the English Presbyterians of Baxter days, who had
the majority of the four thousand ministers expelled
from vicarages and rectories on St Bartholomew's
Day, 1662, had lost their chapels and endowments,
and all but ceased to exist as a religious denomina-
tion. But the Scotch incomers of the industrial
revolution built new Presbyterian chapels for them-
selves, and imported ministers from benorth the
Tweed, which, I believe, would rarely have been
done if, in the First Parliament of the Restoration,
clericals and cavaliers had not, by the Uniformity
Act, shut the door on conciliation by refusing to
recognise any but episcopal orders, and by putting
obstacles in the way of men and women of non-
episcopal churches joining the Church of England.
Educated, fair-minded English Church people of
recent times regret the exclusiveness embodied in
the Uniformity Act, which is in such a contrast to
the servility of passive obedience, recognition of the
divine right of kings, and hailing such a scamp as
Charles II. with the blasphemous title of Sacred
Majesty. But the punishment came with the
endeavour of his brother and successor to make
logical use of these professions of abject servility for
reimposing the Papal yoke on Protestant England ;
and the trial of the bishops brought a sort of
absolution to the self-degraded Church which all
the while had many good and learned men among
its ministers.
If James II. of England and VII. of Scotland
had possessed half the insight and cleverness of his
gay, profligate, and wholly selfish and unprincipled
350 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
elder brother, he would never have dreamed of
forcing Protestant England England of the
Smithfield martyrs, of the Armada, and the great
Elizabethan reign and literature back into the
bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, nor would
he have placed reliance, as if bond slaves because
of their profession of the servile obedience, on the
clergy of the Established Church. The man was,
however, fatuously sincere in his religious fanati-
cism, while in his relations with women nearly as
immoral as the preceding Sacred Majesty. The
Church of England, by slavish professions of loyalty
on the one hand and oppressive proceedings against
Nonconformity on the other, damaged its character
in England as the willing aider of attempted royal
despotism, earned the disrespect of a blood-stained,
persecuting aggressor in Scotland, and by the Act
of Uniformity cut itself off from alliance and inter-
communion with all the Reformed Churches of the
Continent, whose existence was placed in danger by
French conquests. The fact that from such an
abyss there was a quick recovery, Jacobite plottings
notwithstanding, proved beyond dispute the strong
hold their national Church had got on the freedom-
loving English people. In the dark days before
the 1688 Revolution, the Nonconformists of all
denominations were the real champions of civil and
religious liberty, and as such they acted throughout
the next century, and as such they love to pose to
the present day, though matters are so changed
that the nominal championship slips with fatal
ease into petty persecution of foolish vicars and
rectors with swollen priestly heads, who try to
uphold prerogatives and customs, which common-
sense, or contrary laws, have consigned to the tomb
of all the Capulets.
RELIGION. 351
The idea of perfect religious liberty is a plant of
such slow growth that even yet it has not come to
flower and fruit in all civilised countries. It took no
real root at all in any land during the fierce religious
wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
our own country the desire for toleration changed as
the three main parties into which Protestants had
become divided, changed from top or to bottom their
respective positions. Unitedly the English Protest-
ants passed through the ordeal of the Marian perse-
cution, to get divided by different ideals in the reign
of Elizabeth. But these divided parties acted like
one in keeping down the Catholics, although the
latter acted like true patriots in defence of their
native land in the year of the Armada. It was no
double dose of original sin but greater opportunities
which made the Church of England the greater and
longer oppressor of the outside Protestant parties.
When Henry VIII. deposed the Pope he put himself
in his place as head of the English Church. That
headship principle was maintained by the succeeding
Tudor sovereigns with the exception of the much-to-
be-pitied " Bloody Mary," who was as brave as any
of her remarkably strong-headed race. The Tudors
were popular despots, who attached themselves to
great national causes, and established law and order
in a turbulent time. Elizabeth got a poor law passed
which solved a long-standing difficulty, and took
care that the meanest of her subjects should get
justice against big superiors. The Puritans provoked
her by outspoken denunciation of the slack discip-
line and doctrines and constitution of the National
Church into capricious acts of persecution, and yet
they remained all the time her loyal subjects. When
the headship passed on to the " Scotch Solomon,"
352 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the aspect of political and religious affairs very soon
assumed a stormy appearance. For all the pedantry
and personal oddities which made James an object
of ridicule to his English subjects, he was the farthest-
seeing, and, except in regard to unworthy favourites,
the wisest of the four Stuarts that sat on the throne
of England. Unity of Church and State on the Royal
headship accorded admirably with the kingship prin-
ciples he frankly expounded in his "Basilicon Doron,"
arid which, in a later time, Hobbes more thoroughly
and logically argued out in his " Leviathan." James
had come out of Scotland with a perfect dread of the
democratic nature of Presbyterianism, and muttering
-" No bishop, no king." He had laboured artfully,
with patient perseverance, to pave the way for his
accession to the English throne by the creation of
Scotch bishops, who at first were without a shadow
of pretension to the shadow of historical and so-called
canonical Apostolic succession, magnified in England.
After he got to a safe distance from the recalcitrant
and loudly rebuking Presbyterian ministers and the
fear of their ultra-Protestant followers, and had for his
ecclesiastical design in Scotland the whole influence
of the Church of England at his back, he pushed
forward the completion of his Episcopal-Presbyterian
blend. With similar artfulness and the willing help
of his bishops, he throttled the independence of the
Scotch Parliament through a juggling manipulation
of the Lords of the Articles. He would never have
committed his son's error of letting Laud or any
Englishman, clerical or lay, presume to interfere, far
less to dictate in the affairs of the Scotch Kirk. His
design was to bring about both ecclesiastical and
parliamentary union between England and Scotland.
What marred that great design was the kingly des-
RELIGION. 353
potism which he intended to place on the top of it.
His son set the heather on fire in Scotland by treating
that poor, proud, and warlike country as if it had
been made a conquered province of England ; and
the revolt of defiant Scotland gave the English
Parliament and the English freedom-loving patriots
their opportunity for calling Stuart despotism to
strict account.
Banded together as Covenanters, the Scotch
Presbyterians were every whit as intolerant as their
former oppressors had ever been, or were destined
again to be during the, to the whole realm, dark-
clouded Restoration period. Throughout the whole
struggle they had an earnest desire to preserve the
hereditary kingship when it was deprived of the
despotic powers claimed and exercised by James and
his more stately yet far less astute son. They also,
in a reverse way, adopted James's policy of ecclesias-
tical union. He wanted by his royal power to impose
Anglican Episcopacy on Scotland. They hoped that
Presbyterianism would be voluntarily adopted by
the English Parliament and people, because, they
argued, it was the system of Church Government
which was more consistent with constitutional
monarchy. The arguments from the Scriptures and
the early records of Christianity, with which the
learned disputants of both sides belaboured one
another, had far less weight with the public, who
did not find any clearly defined and unalterable
scheme of Church Government in the New Testa-
ment, than this plain constitutional argument. It
was the force of this constitutional argument, and
the solution of very pressing difficulties, which led
so many of the English Church clergy and laity to
surmount their international prejudices against tak-
23
354 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ing a lesson from Scotland and Geneva, and to avow
themselves Presbyterians. Hence the strong muster
of Presbyterians in the Long Parliament before it
was violently reduced to a mere faction. Hence the
Westminster Assembly of Divines, whose Confession
of Faith, although truly the work of the English
majority, was at once accepted in Scotland, and still
remains, nominally at least, the Confession of Faith
of the various sections into which the Kirk got
unhappily divided. The English reformers, clerical
and lay, who wished to preserve what was good in
the past, and to bring the continued Kingship under
constitutional restrictions, saw that Episcopacy had
made itself condemned not because of inherent
demerits but because Charles, Laud, and Stafford
had involved it in the discredit of having been used
as the servile drudge of a system of political and
ecclesiastical despotism to which the British people
would no longer submit.
The Congregational Puritans hated with good
cause the Episcopal system and refused to look with
favour at the Presbyterian alternative. They had
long and nobly testified against crowned and mitred
tyranny, and manfully suffered for their testimonies.
They had a just right to look upon themselves,
especially in the Restoration period, as the torch -
bearers of heavenly light in a long night of darkness
and as the standard-bearers of civil liberty. But
they had no scheme for preserving national continu-
ity and making an orderly re-settlement come after
the upheaval. In their view every single worshipping
and faithful congregation was a perfectly organised
and divinely ordained Church. The wildly theocratic
views of some of them transcended the bounds of
reason altogether. They looked for miscellaneous
.RELIGION. 355
inspiration as the outcome of individual religious
fervour, and so could dispense with a learned and
regularly appointed ministry altogether. Of course,
those were the views of extremists and not of the
more sober-minded Congregationalists. But they
were views which took hold of the army, and decided
the course of public events against the larger number
who wanted to stop at constitutional reform of a
very extensive character, and to obtain an ecclesiasti-
cal system which would accord with that reform.
Although they had not so much as the shadow of a
practical reconstructive plan, the extremists, with the
help of the army, got their destructive innings. By
" Pride's purge" the Long Parliament was reduced to
a rump which would have been simply farcical if it
had not also been so tyrannical and inhumanly
intolerant. The Cromwell dictatorship then followed
as a blessing undisguised. It effectually stopped the
rapid progress of anarchy and rescued the precious
heritage of the past from irreparable damage. Abroad
it restored British prestige, and boldly vindicated
British honour and interests. At home, after war
devastations and the fierce collisions of parties and
factions, it enforced peace and order, accompanied
with a more impartial administration of justice and a
larger amount of religious toleration than England
ever enjoyed before or after under a Stuart king.
While the English Presbyterians within a hundred
years of the death of Richard Baxter disappeared
almost entirely, by partly lapsing into Unitarianism,
and partly dispersing themselves among orthodox
dissenters or joining the Church of England, the
Congregationalists - - Independents, Baptists, and
minor sects holding their one-congregation one-
church organisation views stiffly retained in cities,
356 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
towns and populous districts their historical continu-
ity through all trials and ups and downs, until the
Reform Bill gave them their reward in the shape of
an enormous increase of their political and municipal
power. In Bradford, when the majority of the much
decayed Presbyterian body there became Unitarians,
and, by keeping the old name, managed to possess
themselves of chapel property, the orthodox minority
joined the Independents, and founded a new chapel
for themselves, which in 1860 had one of the largest
congregations in the town and whole district. This
was typical of what was earlier or at the same time
taking place at the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century in mostly all
places in England in which, at St. Bartholomew's
Day, 1662, Presbyterianism had been strong. Exter-
iorly it suffered from adherence to the principle of
monarchy, while not accepting the rule of bishops,
and interiorly the philosophies of the eighteenth
century and sympathy with the first promising phase
of the French Revolution hastened disintregation
which only left a shadowy and misleading simulacrum.
The Congregationalists retained a large portion of the
bitter hostility of their ancestors to the Church of
England, although in other respects they professed
and practised liberal sentiments and promoted in and
outside their own country philanthropic and human-
itarian objects and projects. For the root thing in
which they showed an unforgiving and un-Christian
temper, they had the wrongs of many ages to plead
as a kind of justification. Hereditary hostilities
between religions long resist eliminating influences,
and are paradoxically conservative. During the
twenty years I was in the West Riding, Puritannic
doctrines among the younger ministers were obvi-
RELIGION. 357
ously losing their hold, and giving place to rational-
istic, philosophical, or unmistakably evasive pulpit
eloquence and platform dissenterism. In proportion
as spiritual Puritanism decayed the Liberation Society
grew stronger in number, and so did the ambition to dis-
establish, cripple, and destroy the Church of England.
However purely spiritual their faith may be, and
however high their original aims, religious association
of all sorts more or less quickly harden into secular
interests that cannot help getting earth-cased and
clogged in various forms and degrees. The policy of
the Liberation Society seems to me to have brought
into unblessed prominence and suicidal activity the
little something devilish which by natural law was
always mixed up with the much which was really
divine in ancient Puritanism. Discipline had lost its
early inquisitorial severity before I went to England,
yet ministers and deacons did not neglect proper over-
sight of members and adherents of their congrega-
tions ; and moreover, they made themselves helpful
in many ways to young people in search of openings,
and to widows, orphans, and disabled or afflicted
men and women of their respective communions.
They had no very large proportion of helpless ones,
or ne'er-do-wells among them ; for they were to an
extent beyond ordinary companies of hard-working,
well-conducted, and generally fairly well off upper-
class operatives, shopkeepers, and artisans, and their
leaders, and often their employers, were the middle-
class aristocracy of the newly enriched, who had
crows of their own to pluck with the old feudal
aristocracy. In my long residence among them,
Liberation Society policy, decay of Puritanic doctrines,
and municipal and parliamentary electioneering did
not seem to detrimentally affect the good old life
358 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
habits of the people who worshipped in congrega-
tional chapels. Their Christian ideal of duty and
their standard of morality were as high as they had
ever been.
In Bradford and its district I found the Wesley-
ans, or Methodists as they preferred to call them-
selves, very numerous and still hrgely animated with
the enlivening spirit of the great revival movement,
which shook Christian England out of lethargic
slumbers in the eighteenth century, and had its
Calvinistic counterpart in Scotland and in Wales
also. Let evolution theory, higher criticism and
science limited to materialistic researches, do their
worst, but in spite of all, human beings conscious of
possessing immortal souls will always be seeking
spiritual connections with God, or the Soul of the
Universe, and that seeking will ever and anon after
a period of slackness become intense and burst forth
in a revival which may take a warlike shape like the
Crusades, or a monastic form, as often happened in
the Roman Catholic Church, or a doctrinal and
purifying overhauling and reconstruction like the
Reformation, or a pacific religious enthusiasm such as
that in which Wesleyanism originated. The move-
ment began in the Church of England ; and Wesley-
anism as a missionary organisation might have con-
tinued in affiliated union with and subordination to
the Church of England had not the first Cavalier
Parliament of Charles the Second fettered freedom
and furnished the hierarchy with a good excuse for
neglecting a great opportunity, and stupid rectors,
vicars, and squires with weapons of contumelious
offence and paltry persecution. John Wesley died
without ever separating himself from the communion
and mtmbership of the Church of England. Long
RELIGION. 359
after his death, the Bradford Wesleyans, although
they had a chapel and ministry of their own,
communicated only in the parish church as long as
the evangelical vicar, who deeply sympathised with
them, held the incumbency. I think it was not until
1816 that the severance was made complete.
Unlike the Congregationalists, the Wesleyans had
no hereditary roots of bitterness planted in the dust
of the Civil War and of the Restoration time. They
were dissenters by no design, or irreconcilable prin-
ciples of their own, but because the Church of
England had failed to find for them a field of
work within its vineyard. If the rulers of
that Church despised and neglected them, and
if some rectors, vicars, and squires despitefully
treated and abused them, others, like the vicar
of Bradford, befriended them, and so did not
a few of the nobility and gentry. So far were
they from objecting on principle to the recognition of
religion by the State, and from thinking that every
congregation should rule and uphold itself, that by a
Deed enrolled in Chancery they established their
missionary- board scheme for securing corporate
funds and a circulating ministry. They had had
their troubles and divisions in the first half of last
century. The waves of the revival tide had broken
on rocks of strife and secular interests, but for all
that I found between 1860 and 1880 there was a
good deal of the old purely religious revival force
operating among the whole of them. They accepted
the Bible as their unerring guide and did not con-
cern themselves with the controversies regarding its
composition and contents raised by what is called
the higher criticism. If their religion was emotional
it was lovable and kindly and brotherly to outsiders.
360 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
But reluctantly and slowly the Wesleyans, as far as
their ruling and representative bodies could do it,
were drawn into the net of the Liberation Society,
and thereby placed in antagonism to their original
and natural principles, and the system by which
they had made themselves an unendowed but estab-
lished denomination under the binding guarantee of
the law of the land. This conquest by the Libera-
tion Society was not completed when I was in
England. I question whether it can ever be made
quite complete as long as the old revival spirit
continues to operate with sensible effect.
CHAPTER LVIII.
EDUCATION.
THE re-animating and, it might almost be said, re-
creative Renaissance at the end of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth century, preceded and
intermingled with the Reformation, necessarily
stimulating it, but sometimes trying to limit and
divert it. Many of the scholars and apostles of the
Renaissance, like Erasmus, the chief of them all,
while mercilessly exposing and bitterly satirising
the scandalous corruptions into which the Western
Church had fallen, wished to preserve its wonderful
organisations, thoroughly purified, and with a
General Council instead of the Pope, in supreme
command. This was an alterative, although it
turned out to be a thoroughly impracticable
ideal. The art of printing, which unfettered and gave
wings to the vast stores of classical and Christian
lore formerly imprisoned in manuscripts which were
EDUCATION. 361
only accessible to the few, was the chief agency in
producing the Renaissance movement in its diversified
forms and manifestations. It was a contributive
coincident that simultaneously the Vatican should
have sunk to its lowest point of degradation ; and
something, too, was due to the capture of Con-
stantinople by the Turks, and the flight of learned
Greeks carrying precious manuscripts with them to
Western countries. The Renaissance took a strong
and early hold on England. Caxton's early press
set an example to the reformers which they soon
learned to imitate. Henry VIII. was born and
trained under the influence of the Renaissance.
Cardinal Wolsey, using the funds of dissolved small
and scandalous monastic institutions, founded and
endowed Christ Church College, Oxford, with several
professorships, and gave his native town of Ipswich
a college which, unfortunately, had but a short
existence. Dean Colet spent his fortune in founding
and endowing St Paul's School, London. He was
the friend of Erasmus, and quite as an advanced
reformer as that learned Dutchman. A vigorous
and popular preacher, Dean Colet attacked the
Church and monastic vices of his age, and spoke
with a good man's scorn of the celibacy of the
clergy, which was so badly abused by many of those
who took the vow. It was, perhaps, fortunate for
himself that he died in peaceful retirement before
Bluff Hal quarrelled with the Pope, but one cannot
help believing that had he lived to have had a hand
in educational affairs after the separation from Rome,
the schooling of the English people would have
profited thereby, as his views in regard to teaching
was of a piece with his views in regard to preaching,
that it should reach down to the masses.
362 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Zeal for extending the light of the new learning
was not confined to the leaders of the religious
Reformation movement, which had to pass to
severance through many wars and troubles. Sir
Thomas More a son of the Renaissance who ad-
hered to and died for the Roman Catholic Church
was a keen student of classical lore, and had
generous, even Utopian, views of his own upon the
spread of education and a reconstruction of society
on something like more scientific principles than
feudalism. Colet's example in founding and endow-
ing grammar schools was followed largely by Edward
VI., Queen Elizabeth, private individuals, and
trade guilds. Nor was it lost sight of in after
times. Oxford and Cambridge were splendidly
equipped for keeping the lamps of the higher learn-
ing brightly burning, and for advances in science and
arts. Several of the grammar schools did the work of
complete colleges, and the hurnblestof them were local
centres of light and leading. The Reformation and
the discovery of America, superadded to the art of
printing, which gave wings to ancient lore, woke
the nations out of long uneasy slumbers to a life of
extraordinary intellectual activity, daring specula-
tion, and romantic adventure. Out of that came
the magnificent crop of the Elizabethan literature.
But while the children of the landed gentry and of
professional classes, and rich citizens were enjoying
what was, for the age, high educational privileges,
and breathing the intoxicating air of almost a new
life, the masses of the people were left without much
schooling, except what came to them from Church
and ruling classes, or what they acquired by
experience as sailors, soldiers, and apprentices to
artizans and traders. In the century of unsettle-
EDUCATION. 363
merit and resettlement, England had great scholars
and great authors, and the multitudes followed
their leaders and under them performed glorious
achievements. But while England had many Colets
and Cranmers, many thinkers, many poets, one
Shakespeare, and able statesmen and sea-kings in
abundance, it missed having a John Knox with fiery
eloquence and a brain to conceive and a backing
strong enough to give effect to a system of parochial
schools by which the whole people would be brought
into an all sweeping educational net. True it is
that aspirants from the lowest social grades were
not excluded from English grammar schools and
universities. On the contrary, fair provision was
made for their entrance and maintenance ; but with-
out a national system of elementary education, the
masses could not be much raised by the few from
among them who shot out of their birth-spheres by
means of superior knowledge and ability.
So much from the passing of the Reform Bill
downwards had been said and written about the
deficiency of popular education in England that I
was quite surprised and delighted to find so little
evidence of it in the Bradford district. Very few
of the native people were incapable of reading the
Bible, the Prayer Book, hymn book, and news-
papers. Absolute inability was only to be found among
in -comers from the country and from Ireland, and in
the second generation of them also it was surely
disappearing. With little book knowledge, the old
women of the native working classes were, as wives,
housekeepers, and mothers, a credit to their sex and
a blessing to their country ; and among them were
many who were as full of individual character and
proverbial philosophy, garnished with sharp personal
64 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
observation, as Mrs Poyser herself. It is only just
to the Congregationalists to state that all along they
had striven, by means of private and boarding
schools, to give their children a fair amount of
education. As a body they were a select and
prosperous host of middle-class people. The
Wesleyan revival and the counter evangelical
revival in the Church of England produced
along with the religious an educational
awakening among the masses. But the transition
period of the industrial revolution caused a serious
backset until the Factory Acts rescued the children
from being wholly made mill slaves, bereft of
schooling instruction and healthy open-air exercise.
Before legislation checked it, rather serious damage,
physical, moral, and mental, was done to the child
slaves of the mill ; but home life kept that damage
from spreading as widely as would otherwise have
been the case, and has been the case in other
countries, where family and religious influences have
not been equally strong.
Elementary education made a great advance in
England between 1835 and 1860. The Church of
England tried to establish a national school, not only
in every parish, but in every part of a town, or
district of a country parish, in which there were
children to be gathered together for weekly
instruction. The Wesleyans showed similar zeal
and enterprise in building many schools. Roman
Catholics, and smaller Christian and non-Christian
sects, followed suit. State aid, encouragement, and
grant payments, according to results of examination
by official inspectors, gave increased momentum to a
movement which had the whole-hearted sanction of
public opinion. On every hand sprung up mechanics'
EDUCATION. 365
institutes, which turned smiling faces to science and
politics, and shrugging shoulders to the religious
teaching in the denominational schools, which in
England were by this time doing the work that had
long been done in Scotland by parish schools and
side schools. The Secularists had a hall in Brad-
ford, in which Bradlaugh and Holyoake expounded
their views, while Huxley and other scientific
agnostics gathered large audiences in St George's
Hall to listen to their lectures. There also, blind
Mr Fawcett vigorously endeavoured to elevate
political economy, impressed with the seal of the
then, in towns, all popular Manchester School, to
the rank of an exact science.
Between the numerous State-aided and State-
inspected denominational schools and many private
and boarding schools, which were doing excellent
work in an unobtrusive way, and old grammar
schools which needed to be reformed so as to better
adapt them as connecting links with colleges and
universities, Bradford and its district were well
furnished with educational machinery before the
first English Elementary School Bill was passed.
The Minister of Education who sponsored that Bill
was one of the Bradford members of Parliament, Mr
William Edward Forster,as honest, patriotic, and fair-
minded a man as ever stood in shoe leather. He was
a broad churchman himself, and the pupil and son-
in-law of Dr Arnold, of Rugby, but was by lineage
connected with Quaker families of high standing and
historical renown. He entered enthusiastically into
the Volunteer movement, and took a deep and
enlightened interest in foreign and colonial affairs.
Fate, in the shape of Mr Gladstone, played him a
cruel trick on the defeat of the Beaconsfield Govern-
366 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ment, by making him Chief Secretary for Ireland,
where, although the kindest of men by nature and
training, he got the nickname of" Buckshot Forster."
On the education question Mr Forster was
an optimist, who thought that the Board School
system to be established by his Bill would only add
3d in the pound, or at the utmost 6d, to the rates.
He proclaimed with conviction that the new system
would not supersede or despitefully ill-use, but
merely fill up the gaps left by the State-aided and
State - inspected schools already in existence, on
which the people of different religious persuasions
the Church of England leading had spent vast
sums of their money. It was confessed on all hands
that better general organisation was desirable; that
in many places there were sad gaps waiting to be
filled up, and that compulsory attendance of children
in school should, up to a reasonable limit, be en-
forced. Mr Forster had great admiration for the
Scotch parish school system, which, without much
intermediate help from higher-grade schools, enabled
clever and studious lads from the country districts
and the villages, as well as the farm-houses and
mansions, to get to the universities, and afterwards
to distinguish themselves in all callings and profes-
sions. I had some correspondence with him before
he introduced the Scotch Bill, which was to be the
companion and complement of the English one, from
which I gathered that he was anxious to preserve as
far as possible the features and qualities of the
Scotch schools, which had succeeded so long and so
successfully in continuously eliminating an aristo-
cracy, not of wealth, but of merit, out of the whole
Scotch people.
EDUCATION. 367
As three -fourths of the Scotch people were
Presbyterians who all professed adherence to the
Westminster Confession of Faith as their subordinate
standard ; as the Free Church schools were to be
willingly handed over to the new School Boards ;
and as " use and wont" was to be conceded, it was
much easier to deal in bulk with the Scotch than it
was with the English education problem. Mr
Forster had in his large-minded way of measuring
others by his own reasonableness, overlooked the
sleepless hostility of the Liberation Society to the
Church of England, and the dead certainty that it
would use for its disestablishment levers every ful-
crum that malevolent and skilled observation, or
even imagination, could find or read into the
Elementary Education Act. On the 25th clause of
the Act an agitation was at once raised, which made
a good deal of noise, but received less support than
its promoters had expected. It was in that agitation
that, along with Dr Dale, Dr George Dawson, and
others, Mr Joseph Chamberlain made his first
appearance in public life. Birmingham agitators
were so far advanced towards Unitarianism and
Agnosticism that the Nonconformists who still clung
to old Puritan doctrines, were unwilling to accept
them as leaders. But all Nonconformists that
marched under the Liberation Society banner voted
for members holding disestablishment views at the
first election of School Boards, and wherever the
men they returned found themselves in a majority
balm in Gilead was found for their party ; and gall
and wormwood for the Church of England and the
schools on which its public had spent their millions
of money. When he spoke of a 3d to a 6d rate, in
the vast majority of cases Mr Forster optimistically
assumed that the School Boards would only put up
368 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
their schools where there were glaring gaps of
educational machinery. Wherever they had the
power, the Liberation Society men, disregarding the
pockets of the ratepayers, ran up palatial school
buildings in open opposition to the national and
other denominational schools which had to be
content with humbler buildings, and in these had
done educational services of the highest importance
to the children of the masses, and poorer middle
classes. The Congregationalists, who looked well to
the education of their own children, generation after
generation, had, in proportion to their wealth and
numbers, done least of all for the education of the
masses until they got their hands, by control of
School Boards, into the pockets of the ratepayers.
As soon as they got their opportunity, they found
deficiencies everywhere, and plausible arguments for
tacking profligate expenditure on equipment and
costly fads arid fancies to the reading, writing, and
arithmetic limits of elementary education.
CHAPTER LIX.
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.
To keep strongly the unity of a nation which had,
as has been the case with most States of the world,
arisen out of the co-mingling of various races, with
various race traditions, predilections, and proclivities,
a common national designation is scarcely less of
importance than one central Government : One flag,
a common State language permitting of the con-
tinuance of sectional languages older than itself,
common laws, and as much sameness of standards of
faith and morals as full religious liberty will permit.
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 369
The Romans knew the two islands which form our
United Kingdom as Britannia Major and Britannia
Minor the Greater Britain and the Lesser Britain.
On the coins is put the inscription, King or Queen
"of the Britains." But, unfortunately, the docu-
mentary and legislative formula is King or Queen
"of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland." This want of a common designation has
accentuated the sea severance and all the other
causes by which Irish discontent and feelings of
alienation, carefully fostered by professional agitators
and disloyal conspirators, have so long been kept in
active operation. The laudable suggestion of the
inscription on the coins has proved abortive, be-
cause effect has not been given to it in the two
Treaties of Union. The kingdom of the British
Isles was the common designation it suggested.
The Irish, I believe, never recognised the Roman
title of the Lesser Britain as a proper one for their
country, but they would certainly have been less
offended by the irrepressible arrogance of the "pre-
dominant partner" if that style of co-partnership
had been adopted, and more heard of the British
Government, the British Parliament, the British
Army, the British Navy, and less, of the English
Government, the English Parliament, the English
Army, and the English Navy. Even Lord Palmerstou,
in the great speech in which he so splendidly
defended his conduct of foreign affairs, boasted that
he was "the Minister of England." As for the late
Lord Salisbury, he was on this matter a constant
offender, who did not see that he was giving offence
to Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Welshmen, who had in
war and peace done somewhat more than their pro-
portionate share in building up the British Empire.
24
370 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
The project of an incorporating union between
England and Scotland was entertained and discussed
for a hundred years before it was accomplished.
One name had to be found for the united countries,
and choice lay between reviving the old name of
Albion or adopting that of Great Britain. The
Romans had made the name of Britain familiar to
literature and the whole civilised world of their own
and after- times. Albion was only kept in memory
by the Picts of Galloway and the people, their race
relations, north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde,
whom the Romans had never conquered. At the
Northallerton Battle of the Standard, which King
David of Scotland fought for his niece, Matilda, and
her son, Henry Plantagenet a battle which he
disastrously lost the Gallowegians rushed fiercely
at their foes shouting "Albannaich! Albannaich!"
Their compatriots north of the friths called their
country Alba, or Albyn, and that is the only name
which Gaelic - speaking people have yet for all
Scotland. Like England, Scotland received its
present name in a curiously-indirect way. The
Welsh retained the name of Britain, and so did the
Britons of Strathclyde, who called their capital on
the cliff of the Clyde, Dun Breatunn (Dumbarton)
the Britain stronghold.
In all the Celtic tongues of these islands, and, I
think, in the Breton language also, the Angles are
put aside, and only the Saxons and Norse are
recognised. England is named Saxonland, the
English people are Sasunnaich or Saxons, and their
language is called Beurla, which is a word of doubt-
ful character. Now, when one comes to think of it,
the Celtic words agree with the actual facts, and it
does seem curious that England and English are
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 371
words which disagree with these facts. What had
the East Anglicans to do with the work of consolida-
tion ? Was it not by the West Saxon kings and
people that the Heptarchy was swept into a united
Saxon kingdom ? The adoption by the West
Saxons of the Anglican names for themselves, their
language, the kingdom they had formed out of the
unruly Heptarchy, is indeed passing strange. Per-
haps the Church founded by St Augustine, which
had its head- quarters in Kent, and its second seat
of power and influence at York, had something to
do with the self-abnegation of the West Saxons.
The legend ran, and it bears every mark of being a
perfectly true one, that good Pope Gregory the
Great, when a young man and as yet only a deacon,
saw one day in the market place of Rome youths of
fair hair, fair skin, and blue eyes, bound as captives,
to be sold into slavery, and that, struck by their
beauty, he asked who they were and from what
country they had come, and was told they were
Angli, or Angles, and had come from a part of
Britain than called Deira. On hearing this he
remarked they should not be called Angles but
Angels, and plucked from the wrath of God by faith
in Christ. We do not hear that he succeeded in
rescuing the captives and converting them, but,
when Pope, he remembered the fair Angli, who
should be angels, and, in 596, sent St Augustine
and holy monks to convert the pagans of the newly
formed Saxon kingdom.
Those who go to the West Riding expecting to
find most of the people there proving Saxon descent
by bearing in their personal appearance the descrip-
tion of the Germans given by Tacitus in his
Germania, the Pope Gregory story, and the state-
372 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
ments of many later writers, will be, as I was myself,
surprised to find that the predominant type is that
of medium - sized, well - built, energetic, dark or
brown-haired, and dark-blue or brown -eyed people.
Those with milk-white skins, light-blue eyes, and
fair hair, or the hair tinged with red, which, when
touched with the sun's rays, flashes into gold, can be
found indeed, but are comparatively few in number,
and do not always belong to the native stock. On
the eastern seaboard and in the southern counties,
the modern representatives of the Germans of
Tacitus, and of Pope Gregory's angel-like Angles
from Deira, are, however, far more numerous.
Mercia, the latest-founded of the Heptarchy king-
doms, had plenty of internal troubles, but, being
inland, was less frequently visited and ravaged by
invaders from the sea than the regions to the east
and south of it. Being hilly and presumably in
former days much-wooded, its inhabitants could
better defend themselves and escape being killed,
or captured to be enslaved, or forced to flee away
from their native district to seek asylum elsewhere.
The district called Elmet appears to have retained a
sort of independence during the Heptarchy period,
and after England had been united under the West
Saxon monarchy. Elmet included Leeds, Bradford,
Halifax, and probably extended at times far up
Craven. Loidis in Elmet was its chief town, and
those who speak the ancestral dialect call Leeds
Loids to the present day.
Whether Elmet was finally conquered by force of
arms, or absorbed by infiltration and necessities of
common defence against outside invaders, is not
clearly known, but the fact is undoubted that long
before the turmoils at the end of the tenth and in
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 37o
the early part of the eleventh century the Saxons
had imposed their ruling supremacy and their
language, laws, and institutions up in Elmet as on
all the rest of Mercia, and that the whole population
of this great internal region had laid aside past
inter-racial hostilities, and learned to think of them-
selves as Englishmen and to act together as one
people. By the co-mingling of Saxons, Ancient
Britons, and Romans, a blend was produced which
accounts for the characteristics, physical and mental,
of the natives of the West Hiding as a whole, and of
those of the Elmet district especially. They com-
bine the best qualities of all the races from which
they have sprung.
William the Conqueror, burdened with many
other cares and heavy undertakings, would gladly
have left the North of England for a while alone if
Edwin and Morkere, the Saxon Earls of Mercia, had
not made an untimely revolt. Their outbreak caused
him to march north through the middle of England
with an army composed of both Normans and
Englishmen. The rebels yielded, but a second
outbreak led to the occupation of York and the
thorough subjection of Mercia and Northumbria.
William's son, Rufus, conquered Cumberland, and
before the Conqueror's youngest son Henry's reign
ended, the West Riding, like most of the rest of
England, was placed under Norman barons. Ilbert
de Lacy, Lord of Pontefract, had Bradford and its
district, which stretched along the hills as far as
Haworth. Another Norman baron built a castle at
Bingley, and ruled over that neighbourhood. Robert
de Romeli or Romily ruled Craven and Upper
Wharfedale from his rock stronghold at Skipton.
They had their day, these Norman barons, who were
374 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
good war captains, capable organisers, but rapacious
local despots, who, in a singular manner, joined
refinement with cruelty, while each of them made
himself as much as he could a despot king in his
own domain. All of them were ever seeking, as a
ruling clan, to extort more and more of feudal right
from their sovereigns. So it required all the excep-
tional talents of the Conqueror, the ferocity of Rufus,
and the statesmanship of Henry to keep them in
order. If the best that can truly be said of Rufus
is that he was a strong beast of a ruler, whose
beastly forcibleness overawed the rebellious, rapacious
and, on their own domains, the brutally despotic
Norman barons, who had to be rewarded out of the
spoils of England, and never were satisfied with
what they had got, it cannot be disputed that
William the Conqueror and his youngest son, Henry
I., were far-seeing statesmen', who wanted to estab-
lish orderly national and local institutions upon a
perfected feudal system, which would bind rulers by
mutual responsibilities upon graded classification
and fixed law. Out of the conflicts between the
Norman baronage and their sovereigns English
liberty slowly evolved, and the English people again
raised their heads, after having learned much from
their Norman masters and much profited by what
they had learned, and likewise unlearned, in the
school of adversity.
I do not think there were many places in all
England in which the oppressiveness of the Norman
barons was less heavy and less lasting than in the
district between Low Moor and the upper end of
Craven, the district with which I am chiefly con-
cerned in this part of my miscellaneous scribblings
The Norman lords of Pontefract do not appear to
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 375
have ever had a castle or residence of any sort in the
Bradford part of their possessions. As they were
absentees who had urgent need of all their foreign
retainers at Pontefract, the probability is that almost
from the beginning and all through they made
trusted natives their deputies in the Bradford
district. There are no persons bearing their name in
the district now. In fact as far as record evidence
goes, there were never, four centuries ago, any De
Lacy's there. The Bingley barons of two lines
Le Bruns and Paganels, if I rightly remember did
not add, as far as can be ascertained, people of their
name and lineage as a new element to the native
and permanent population. The line of Robert
Romily soon ended in a female heiress, Alice Homily,
who married the Scotchman, William Fitz-Duncan.
Rombold's Moor is called after Robert Romily.
In regard to place-names the Normans made no great
innovation. Domesday Book proves they took and
perpetuated the place-names as the Saxons had left
them, and only imposed Norman names on a few
castles, halls, and forests of their own making. The
Teutonic and, in a less degree, Scandinavian invaders
changed place - names wherever they went, took
possession, and established authority. This was no
doubt partly due to race-pride, but it seems to have
been more largely owing to invincible linguistic
conservatism. Even yet the English people are
behind other nations in learning foreign languages.
Their Saxon ancestors would use no language at all
but their own, excepting their scholars who learned
Latin. The Saxons effaced as far as they possibly
could the British and Roman place - names they
found in England, and when they could not wholly
deface an old name, they usually masked it beyond
376 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
easy recognition. Who can easily discern Eboracum
under its York mask ? G'astra, the Roman camp or
great military centre, is more discernible in the
Chesters, with Saxon caps on their heads, such as
Manchester. In the district with which I am chiefly
concerned, there was a junction Roman station
where the great Roman road from the south by
Otley Chevin to York was joined by the cross-
country road from the west coast, but the old
Roman name of that station is not easily recognis-
able in the Ilkley to which the Saxons degraded it.
Of the many ancient British place-names which have
in this district been similarly maltreated, Craven
has suffered the least damage. Craven in Gaelic
would be Craig-bhan or White-rock-land. It takes
its designation from the limestone rocks with which
it abounds. Penygherit and Penistone, while retain-
ing the Celtic 'ben,' in Cymric 'pen' get spoiled tails.
Farther north the Pennine chain which separates
the waters which flow east from those which flow
west, mean a chain of hills with pointed or ben tops.
In Gaelic 'pen' would be 'beinn,' but in Cymric 'p'
takes the place of 'b.' It is a far cry from West-
moreland to the Alps, but the Pennine Alps and the
North of England Pennines have exactly the -same
meaning. When a proper search is made into the
disguised and transformed place - names of the
Mercian hill districts, perhaps some good guess can
be made as to what was the language of the
Brigantes, and whether they belonged to the Cymric
or Gaelic Celts, or were something between the two.
Their colony in Ireland, mapped by Ptolemy, became
Gaelic-speakers before St. Patrick's time, but as all
the Celtic races quickly caught up new languages,
that Gaelic-speaking in Ireland is no proof at all to
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 377
us of what division of the Celtic race the Brigantes
belonged, and what Celtic dialect was spoken in
Mercia. Although Norman French was for three
hundred years the language of their rulers, the
English people with characteristic, stolid, and
patriotic conservatism refused to learn it, and so
in the end made Englishmen of the descendants
of their former haughty foreign conquerors and
oppressors.
When David, King of Scotland, invaded England
in 1138, with all his forces, to support his niece
Matilda's cause against King Stephen and his
supporters, his nephew, William Fitz- Duncan, and
his wife, Alice Homily, held Skipton Castle, and
had probably openly espoused Stephen's cause, since
David's host, on their inarch to meet defeat at
Northallerton, committed ravages and sacrileges in
Craven, which caused such remorse to pious David
that he afterwards sent a silver chalice to every
Craven church as a sign of his penitence and as an
expiation offering. William Fitz-Duncan was his
nephew, and had he chosen to assert his claim to the
throne of Scotland he might have been his formid-
able rival. William's father was that eldest son of
Malcolm-Ceannmor who as Duncan II. reigned over
Scotland for two years. The legitimacy of William's
birth was never challenged, but that of his father-
was. The children of Malcolm by his Saxon queen,
Margaret, and their descendants saw to it that
Duncan, in chronicles and documents written after
his death, should be called nothus or bastard.
Malcolm was seemingly a widower when he first
saw the Saxon princess who became his second wife,
and the mother of the three sons who were kings
afterwards. Malcolm's first wife was the widow, or
378 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
as some suppose the daughter, of his cousin, Thorfinn.
According to our present law the marriage was per-
fectly legal, and the issue of it, Duncan II., was
legitimate. But it seems that a flaw was found in
it by the new Margaretan clergy, which suited the
second wife's family, and the clergy too, by declar-
ing the first marriage null and void, and setting
Malcolm's eldest son aside as one of illegitimate
birth. It was on "Tanistry" or eldest prince of the
blood ground something like the Turkish law
that Donald Ban claimed a right to succeed his
brother Malcolm. Duncan's claim was that of
legitimately born eldest son of Malcolm. William,
son of Duncan, had been married in Scotland, and
left children there before he went to England and
married the great Norman heiress, Alice Homily.
Descendants of William MacWilliams as well as
descendants of Donald Ban, gave many and long-
continued troubles to the kings of the Queen
Margaret line. Succession to the Scotch and
English thrones had gone far off the straight lines
when David led the forces of Scotland into England
to support the cause of his Norman niece, Matilda,
against Stephen, and never mentioned the undis-
putable fact that on his uncle, Edgar Atheling's
death, he had himself become the sole legitimate
heir to Alfred's throne and dynasty. When his
West of Scotland levies, on the march to Northaller-
tori, passed the rock of Skip ton, in the fortress on
the top of it dwelt his nephew, William, the son of
Duncan, who had, as far as can be now judged, a
better right than himself to the throne of Scotland.
As for the hilly route followed by the Scotch
western levies, it was the one which, no doubt, their
ancestors used for their invasions in Roman days,
MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. 379
whenever they had the opportunity, and it was the
one that their after race always used down to the
union of the crowns. It was a route on which they
could not be well attacked by mail-clad horsemen.
The Scots Were always defeated in heavy cavalry
and in mail-clad fighting. That deficiency was the
cause of their defeat in the battle at Northallerton.
William Fitz-Duncan and Alice Homily's only
child was the Boy of Egremont, who was called so
because he was born at Egremont, near Liverpool.
The Boy was his mother's darling, and the heir to
very extensive estates. Some contemporary writer,
quoted by Palgrave, hinted that there was an
obscure conspiracy among a party of the Norman
barons to nominate him as their candidate for the
throne during the struggle between Stephen and
Matilda. If so, the project was put an end to by his
early and tragic death. But as he had no hereditary
right, as far as is known, of any kind to the English
throne, the story is in the highest degree improbable.
The Augustiniau Canons, who as early as 1121 had
a monastic house at Embsay, were the Boy's teachers,
and he was accompanied by one or more of them
when he went one day with dogs on leash to hunt
in Barden Forest, and was drowned when jumping
the Strid. I easily jumped the Strid myself, both
back and forward, but would certainly have no dogs
on leash when doing so. The Strid is a narrow
channel with jagged edges, and with, at the lower
end, rock points and boulders, cut through the rock
bed of the river. When the Wharfe is moderately
low most of the water rushes foaming and madly
singing through this channel, which is very much
like a mill lead made by Nature's hand. The Boy
was drowned, and the monk who had to take the sad
380 KEM1NISCENCKS AND REFLECTIONS.
news to his mother, according to tradition but it
is likely they both spoke in Norman French began
by asking the bereaved lady " What is good for a
bootless bene ? " meaning a prayer which had not
been answered, and she, quickly realising the great
calamity which had fallen upon her, replied " End-
less sorrow." This is truly a pathetic story of a
bright youth of great expectations suddenly cut off
in his teens, and of a poor mother, no longer young,
plunged by his death into endless sorrow. The
sorrowing mother turned to religion as her only
source of consolation, and built Bolton Priory, which
it has long been the local habit to erroneously
call Bolton Abbey, as the Boy's monument. So the
Augustinian Canons, keeping their house and lands
at Embsay, and getting much of new land, erected
the fine buildings and church on the fair Bolton field.
Although it was a priory and not an abbey, it had
territorial possessions large enough for any abbey.
The lordship of Skipton having passed through
severe vicissitudes, reverted to the Crown, and
was given by Edward II. to his favourite, Piers
Gaveston, who was not long able to keep it. Then
the Cliffords got it, and although they now and then
lost it, always regained it, and kept it until the last
Earl of Cumberland died, and it passed to a female
heiress, the Countess of Pembroke, and afterwards
to the Earls of Thanet, the last of whom left his
own Kent property and the large Clifford estates in
Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Craven, to his
illegitimate son, Richard Charles Tuftou, who was
created a baronet in 1857. As for the plunder of
the priory, it went by marriage with an heiress first
to an Irish nobleman, and then by a similar marriage
came to the Cavendish family, and is in possession
THE LANDED GENTRY. 381
of the Duke of Devonshire to this day. The priory
church, which was a grand one, is partly in ruins
and partly in use as a parish church. The other
monastic buildings have all perished except the
gate-house, which, with additions, has been made
into a lodge for use by the Duke and his party in the
shooting season. What was the gateway with a
fine arch in the monk's time is now the central hall
of the transformed building.
CHAPTER LX.
THE LANDED GENTRY.
THE Duke of Devonshire, owner of the Bolton
Priory lands, and Sir Richard Tuffcon, heir of the
Cliffords, were our big landed magnates, and as they
had their chief seats elsewhere, they only paid visits
to their Yorkshire estates. The Duke and his sons
were sure to come for a week or two to Bolton in the
shooting seasons. Sir Richard seldom left Appleby
Castle and his southern residence to visit Skipton,
whose castle stood a three years' siege on behalf of
Charles I., and when at last famished into surrender,
was dismantled by order of Parliament, and rebuilt
after the Restoration. If these two landed magnates
were practically absentees, it must be said for them
that they were just and generous landlords. Sir
Richard indeed had the name of being the easiest-
going landlord in the whole of the West Riding.
As for the rest of our district, it had got, as far
back as the reign of Edward I., parcelled out into
moderate-sized manors, smaller township estates,
single-farm yeoman properties, and urban freehold
382 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
or burghal holdings. That parcelling-out, however
owners might change, passed on essentially unaltered
through the political earthquakes of the Wars of
the Roses, the Pilgrimage of Grace Uprising, the
Commonwealth War, the Restoration, and the
Revolution of 1688, and stiffly endured until the
industrial revolution assailed it with sap and mine
forces of a wholly new and irresistible kind. The
parcelling-out led to the building of many manorial
and other halls ; few of which, however, could claim
a higher antiquity than the latter end of the reign
of Elizabeth. The proprietors of the manors and
smaller estates who built these halls were men of
English names and lineage. They formed the ruling
class, but were not by caste, pride, or difference of
blood so separated from the rest of the inhabitants
as the Normans had been.
I met many old people who remembered the time
when the minor landed gentry were, as Justices of
the Peace, lords of manors, and owners of small
properties of different kinds, "the quality" or ruling
aristocracy of what soon afterwards steam and
machinery turned into manufacturing towns and
villages, which by degrees bought out most of the
old families. Bradford itself was a manor, and so
were Bowling, Horton, and Manningham, which it
clutched into its embrace and incorporated with
itself. The estate of the manor of Bradford was
almost all covered by streets and buildings before
1860. Years after I saw the town, the Corporation
at long last bought the Manor House and the
manorial rights at a high price. An old-world
ceremony ushered in the twice-a-year market held in
the streets. The bellman and his attendants were
like the Tower beefeaters in quaint uniforms, and
THE LANDED GENTRY. 383
the "Oh yes ! Oh yes ! Oh yes!" proclamation ended
with : " God bless the Queen and Elizabeth Rawsou,
the Lady of this Manor ! " " Elizabeth Rawson, the
Lady of this Manor," did not live in the Manor
House, nor anywhere else in the Bradford district.
The lands and minerals of Bowling Manor had been
acquired long before my time by the Bowling Iron
Foundry Company, and its hall had got buried
and degraded amidst street buildings. The great
inventor, familiarly called Sam Lister, who in old
age was created Lord Masham, retained portions of
Manningham, his ancestral patrimony. He gener-
ously half-gifted, half-sold, his new hall and its
grounds for a public park to the town when the
profits from his Manningham mill and his latest
invention for silk manufacturing enabled him to buy
the Masham estate near Ripon. He never took
much part in Parliamentary or municipal politics.
But a brother of his, who died young, was the first
member Bradford sent to the House of Commons.
The inventor was a churchman and a Conservative,
whose influence would have been great in public
affairs had he chosen to exert it. But he was all
his life one of the hardest workers in the United
Kingdom, and his work resulted in adding to the
industrial development of his country, and in
making others wealthy before wealth, to stay, came
to himself. Horton Hall, and the strips of land
which encroaching streets and buildings yet left to
it, belonged to Mr afterwards Sir Francis Sharpe
Powell, who resided in Lancashire. The Sharpe
name, with the Horton Hall estate, had come to him
through the Dean of York, who was the son of
James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, too well
known in the miserable history of Scotland during
the Restoration period.
384 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Bolton Manor and Heaton Manor were still
considerable landed estates, although slices of them
had been sold. Bolton Hall, with a slice of its land,
were purchased for Peel Park. Saltaire was built
on a purchased slice of Heaton Manor. About the
time I went to Bradford, the old Bolton Manor
family had died out. But Mr Atkinson-Jowett,
who had till then been a small farmer who went
round selling his milk, proved his descent from a
far-back cadet of that family, and succeeded to a
property which, I was told, brought him an income
of about 8000 a year. He built himself a new hall
overlooking Peel Park from the hill-top, and com-
ported himself with kindness and modest discretion
in his new position. His children got the better
education which he missed himself. As for Heaton
Manor, Mr John Filmer Field was succeeded by two
daughters co-heiresses. Mary, the elder of the
two, married the Irish Earl of Rosse, of monster
telescope and scientific fame, and became the mother
of four sons. She, of course, resided with her
husband in Ireland at Birr Castle, Parsonstown,
King's County. H<-r younger sister also seldom or
never visited the Heaton estate, the hall of which
was let on lease for many years to Mr S. Laycock,
banker, who remembered Bradford before it had gone
through its industrial revolution transformation.
When with irresistible force the new order of
things was superseding the old one, which, in its
main features, had existed from the Norman Con-
quest, there was one stieve squire in the district who
constantly resided on his property near Bingley, and
who stood up like the grim keep tower of a dilapi-
dated feudal fortress amidst its ruined battlements
and lower buildings. This was Mr William Busfield
THE LANDED GENTRY. 385
Fearand, to whom had descended the compact united
estates of Harden Grange and St Ives. Mr Ferrand
was a Tory of the Tories, who hated innovations in
State and Church, and detested the political economy
thinkers of the Manchester school. Mr Disraeli's
Reform Bill made him angry with the leaders of his
own party, and when Mr Gladstone disestablished
the Church of Ireland, and began his Irish land
legislation, it was said he felt for a moment inclined
to sell his estate to Sir Titus Salt, who would give
half a million for it. But if he had such an intention
he soon changed it. Selling out at any price would
leave him without a vocation. He was by nature a
fighting man, and the greater the odds against him
the greater his pleasure in his natural vocation.
Socialism is an elusive term, which has many mean-
ings. Mr Ferrand might be truly called a Tory-
Socialist. As against the new aristocracy or pluto-
crats of manufactures and commerce, his sympathies
were with the labouring classes. He was a member
of the House of Commons when the first Factory
Bill was introduced, and so vehemently supported it
that the Cobden-Bright party, who opposed it on
what they called economic principles, nicknamed
him " the Bull of Bingley." It was not only in the
House of Commons, but on platforms and at open-
air mass meetings, along with Richard Oastler and
other agitators, that his strong voice resounded on
behalf of the children and women, on whose virtual
slavery he maintained large fortunes were being
made by unscrupulous tyrants. They were not as a
class intentionally cruel, but yet Mr Ferrand, who
thoroughly knew the state of things in his own
district, had too many facts not to be disputed at
the back of his denunciations. So " Bill Ferrand,"
25
386 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
as they familiarly called him, earned the affection
and gratitude of the working classes of his own
district in particular, and of Yorkshire and Lanca-
shire in general, although he was such a Tory of the
Tories. Vain attempts were made to show him up
as a landlord tyrant. But his relations with his
tenants and dependents were such as could hear any
inspection. He was a good farmer himself, and the
tenants were spurred on by his example, and some-
times by his scoldings, if he saw that they were not
making the best of their opportunities. They were
a comfortably-off lot, and when undeserved mis-
fortunes fell on any of them, they had a forbearing
and helping landlord in the gentleman whose bark.
they said, was worse than his bite. As he constantly
lived among them, and went daily in and out among
them, he intimately knew them and they intimately
knew him and his ways. He could get angry over
a trifle, and scold intemperately, but it was all a
passing storm which left no bad feeling behind it.
Under appearance of masterful despotism, he was in
reality a kind-hearted man, who sincerely sought to
do his duty to his own people and also to abate evils
and nuisances in his neighbourhood. I may here
relate one instance of his kindness which came under
my own observation. John Mitchell, an old labourer,
who was fond of gardening, had a cottage and a
garden plot on Mr Ferrand's outskirt farm of Morley,
near Thwaites' House, where I and my family lived
for eleven years. Old John told me the story him-
self when doing some g'ardening for me. John was
nearing eighty when he told me how kind Mr
Ferrand had been. Some ten years before then
age and stiffness had knocked him out of the
ranks of able-bodied farm labourers. He took
THE LANDED GENTRY. 387
then to gardening for himself, and to putting in
order the small gardens of other people, while his
wife brought in a small revenue from eggs and
poultry. They were like many of the labouring
section of the native race, far too independent-minded
to fall back upon parish relief or charity of any kind.
That was the sort of people whom Mr Ferrand most
heartily admired. So he gave John a well-grown
apricot tree, and told him he would give so much
3d I think for every apricot he sold to him. For
years the fruit of this tree paid more than John's
moderate rent. But from some cause or another the
profitable tree suddenly died, and John was left
forlorn, until one day a waggon came to his cottage
from Harden Grange, and on it, carefully packed
with roots and earth on them, was another well-
grown apricot tree to replace the lost one.
Mr Ferrand was hard on poachers, and yet the
story ran among them that in his youth he had
been an audacious poacher himself on the lands
which were bound to come to him, because the
relatives then in possession did not give him the
shooting liberties he required. He was a preserver
of game for sport, and not for profit. When he and
his friends and dogs had had their sport, much of
the game killed was freely given away, partly to
tenants and partly to charitable institutions and
persons in the towns whom the squire respected.
On his own lands the poachers had small chance,
because the tenants were as opposed to them as Mr
Ferrand was himself. The poachers indeed were,
upon the whole, thievish loafers from the towns and
villages, whom Mr Ferrand stigmatised as Irishmen
and tramp incomers from other districts. With the
full-blown prejudices of local patriotism, he wished
388 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
to persuade himself that criminals and offenders
were rarely of the native stock of people, and that
the few of them who lapsed owed their fall to
the demoralisation of mills, factories, and other
employments of the new industrial era by which the
atmosphere was clouded with smoke and deleterious
fumes damaging to animal and vegetable life, and
the once- clear hill stream and the Aire itself were
polluted into stinking sewage. Although urban and
industrial necessities made it impossible to fully
restore the natural beauties of a really beautiful
region of dales and glens, moors and bushy recesses,
and to make the Aire and the Wharfe as pure as
they were when salmon ran up in shoals from the
sea to their head waters, and when they and the
streams which flowed into them were full of fine
trout, Mr Ferrand lived long enough to see a vast
abatement of the smoke and water-pollution nuis-
ances, and child and woman slavery in crowded and
insanitary mills abolished, or at least reduced to a
minimum. He had a right to rejoice in these
ameliorations, for he had laboured long and vigorously
to bring them about. He had a powerful voice, and
was an able and ready speaker who had always the
courage of his convictions or, as opponents said, of
his invincible Tory prejudices.
He paid constant attention to his duties as Justice
of the Peace, and made an excellent chairman of the
local Bench. He had a good knowledge of law and
procedure, and seemed always to leave all his pre-
judices and prepossessions outside when he entered
the court-house, but took them up again as soon as
he went out. He scolded first offenders for their
good, and then let them off with as lenient sentences
as law and custom permitted. Liberal colleagues
THE LANDED GENTEY. 389
admitted his thorough impartiality, and valued his
guiding common-sense and experience. Ritualists
found as little favour in his sight as did agitating
Radicals. He looked upon them both as being, in
their different ways, enemies of the Church of Eng-
land, who were working for bringing about dis-
establishment, the former i;y Popish or foolish
innovations which all sound-hearted Protestants
abominated, and the latter by open assaults, at the
back of which were sectarian spitefulness and hopes
of plunder. Although he usually held himself dis-
creetly aloof during trade disputes, the working
people believed that he always sympathised far
more with them than with their employers, but they
knew well if they committed riots and breaches of
the peace they would change him at once into a
formidable foe.
His keen watchfulness on one occasion saved the
district from what might have been another Holm-
firth or Sheffield valley reservoir disaster. When
Bradford polluted its own becks and wells, it made
water dams in the nearest places to it where water
for household purposes could be gathered and im-
pounded. The supply from these dams soon became
insufficient, and then the Corporation foraged far
along the moors for more pure water sources, and
under Parliamentary powers bought gathering rights
and sites for dams. Two of these dams were made
in the Cottingley valley, one above the other. The
lower one was on Mr Ferrand's land, but I don't
recollect from whom the moor water rights and the
site for the dam were purchased. If the moor dam
burst, the roaring flood from it, rushing down from
a height, would certainly have broken the other
dam, and the combined flood, besides destroying
390 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
many farmsteads and small villages, would have
swept Saltaire and other places along the Aire. The
Corporation believed that all was right with the two
having had no information from their own officials
to the contrary when suddenly Mr Ferrand raised
a loud alarm about the moor dam's embankment,
which he said was about to give way. For a few
hours he was supposed to have raised a false alarm,
but as soon as the embankment was inspected by
the Corporation's engineers, they said the alarm had
just been raised in time to prevent what would have
been a deplorable catastrophe. I drove out next
day, on behalf of the Observer, to see what was
the true state, and found that the embankment was
letting a stream large enough to turn a mill wheel
through a hole it had made in the puddle that ought
to have been water tight. By that time the danger
was nearly over, because the water in both dams
was being allowed to flow by the proper outlets in
a properly controlled manner.
CHAPTER LXI.
CLASSES AND MASSES.
IN the immediate neighbourhood of Bradford, as
already indicated, the "quality." between sales of
land, absenteeism, and the dying-out of some old
families, fell so low that Mr Ferrand was left alone
as a residential and unyielding exponent and
champion of superseded feudalism, with its strong
blend of Tory-Socialism. Between 1833 and 1860,
power and wealth had passed from the old landed
gentry to the manufacturing and trading classes.
CLASSES AND MASSES. 391
So, when household suffrage and the ballot came, it
was chiefly the ruling influence of the newly-enriched
which they diminished. As for professional classes,
ministers of religion, lawyers, doctors, and teachers,
they kept increasing in number in proportion to the
growth of population, but they had no prominent
part in public affairs.
The Irish Roman Catholics formed a class by
themselves. In political and municipal matters they
were not so much guided by their priests as by the
disloyal and separatist organisations in Ireland and
the United States, for which most of the priests had
no love ; which, indeed, they had good cause to
detest, because the Clan-na-Gael crimes in America
and the Fenian crimes at home not only brought
discredit on their Church, but also because by these
unholy secret societies great numbers were led away
into utter infidelity. However remiss in the observ-
ance of their religious duties many of the young
Irishmen of our district might have become, and
although some of them might even have swallowed
doses of infidel poison imported from Chicago and
New York, they all rose like one man in defence of
the true faith, to mob the foreigner, called the Baron
de Camin, when he came to Bradford to hold forth
upon the alleged immoralities of monks and nuns
abroad, and especially to denounce the intrigues of
the Jesuits. What a riot those defenders of the
faith kicked up ! English-born Irishmen cannot
keep long, by association and environment, from
being insensibly Saxonised and forced to look at all
public questions in a broader and clearer light.
In public life, and, in a more restricted way, in
social life there was a broad line of distinction
between Church and Dissent, but on the Church
392 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
side the line wavered far more than it did on the
other side ; this was because the chapel organisations
were all gathered into a solid host under the Libera-
tion Society and Free Trade conjoint banners. The
Church had no counterbalancing organisation and
mostly all its manufacturing and commercial mem-
bers and adherents were free-traders, who had not
yet understood that the beautiful dream of free
exchange of goods all round was never to be realised,
but to lead shortly to the dumping of their goods in
our open markets by foreign rivals who shut our
goods out of their markets by bounties and prohibi-
tive tariffs. Free imports of food, however, were so
great a boon to the working classes that they mis-
took this part of the theory for the whole and lost
sight of the other side of the matter. When Liberal
platform speakers could not otherwise get a rise out
of apathetic audiences, it was quite a common device
of theirs to bring in, by heels or head, the names of
Cobden and Bright, which usually, yet not always,
evoked loud cheers. Not always, for on questions
of foreign policy the masses, with their deep heredi-
tary patriotism and pride in their native land,
believed far more in Lord Palmerston " Old Pam "
than in Manchester school political economists,
however much they felt obliged to the latter for free
importation of food. Radical working men did any-
thing but bless the " broad brims " of his Cabinet
who prevented " Old Pam " from effectively interfer-
ing to save Denmark from German plunderers. It
was the general custom of the more advanced Liberal
writers and speakers, before and after the Civil
War, to belaud the constitution and institutions of
the United States slavery excepted. American
republicanism was held up for admiration as if the
CLASSES AND MASSES. 393
United Kingdom would not be what it should be
until it had a President and a Congress. Well,
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," John Brown of immortal
memory, and the whole long agitation against the
slavery in the Southern States of the Union, had
enflamed our masses against slavery, and made them
at first hot partisans of the North. But when a
blustering Federal Navy captain dragged Mason
and Sliddel, the deputies sent by the Confederates
to plead their cause in Europe, out of a British mail
steamer on the high seas, a scowl of rage darkened
the faces of our patriotic operatives, which changed
into a gratified grin of joy when " Old Pam "
promptly resolved to send troops out to Halifax and
to make ready for war unless the indignity was
atoned for by liberating the seized deputies which
was done. That incident, with the wonderful
generalship of Lee, the Crornwelliau heroism of
Stonewall Jackson, and the gallantry of the hope-
lessly outnumbered Confederates, caused a revulsion
of feeling in favour of the weaker side, and, on the
suppression of the rebellion, the doings of the carpet-
baggers in the Southern States stripped the Great
Republic of a deal of its old reputation. Since then
scandals of millionairism, syndicates, combines, and
gigantic swindles by people who get the manipulation
of honest folks' money, have been a constant night-
mare to all true American patriots, who wish nobly
to find correctives, but as yet have not met with the
desired success. The constitution and institutions
of the United States are theoretically good, and if
they were in the right hands and worked in the
right spirit should fulfil expectations. The misfor-
tune is that they have been captured by organised
parties looking for spoils, and that by the very
394 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
machinery decreed for ensuring fulness and freedom
of elections and the choice of the worthiest have, by
the party ticket trick, been reduced to what is
nearly a sham. Liberal payment of members keeps
the ball of corruption merrily rolling. Those who
would be best men for Congress and State Legis-
latures, in many instances, turn away from public
life, and the voters, who, in the main, are patriotic,
honest people, leading industrious, moral lives, are
driven to put up with the ticket candidates.
In this twentieth century the two great English-
speaking nations live in bonds of peace and amity.
It ought to be so for ever. The bond of blood and
brotherhood, their common history, and law, legisla-
tion, and social customs should draw them ever closer
as the years slide by. But mutual criticism of fair
and kindly nature can only do good for both of
them. Our Radicals want payment of members of
Parliament. They openly advocate that as a first
step, but they do not intend to stop at that.
Socialists, in their general schemes of plunder, wish
to get for the members of all public bodies paid
salaries. What has come out of such payments in
the United States ought to be taken by sensible
Britons as a warning, and not as an example to be
imitated. Our constitutional monarchy is after all
the truest form of Republicanism, and it saves us
from the quadrennial turmoil of a presidential elec-
tion, followed, when parties change sides, by a
wholesale distribution of offices from the highest to
the lowest from the village postmaster to the
President. Disestablishers at one time were never
weary of extolling the United States as a country
which was a highly-religious and Christian country,
in which all creeds were free, and in which there
CLASSES AND MASSES. 395
was no Church connected with the State. I do not
know whether they will venture so loudly to praise
the religious and moral conditions of things there
now. At anyrate when, for obtaining their support
at elections, they appeal to the predatory instincts of
Socialists and Radicals, by suggesting that a vast
amount of plunder would be made available for
distribution were the Church of England and
Church of Scotland disestablished, they should
remember that in the United States the various
religious bodies have been allowed to accumulate
property far exceeding that of the two national
Churches of this land, which alone make sure
provision for continuous religious worship in every
parish from Land's End to John 0' Groats.
Republicanism as a speculation and subject of
debate was attractive to young men who fancied
themselves disciples of Mill, Huxley, and Morley,
and likewise to older men who posed as pundits of
the so-called science of political economy then in
fashion. The hope of a successful rebellion in
Ireland was dear to the Irishmen who were con-
nected with Fenian or Land League conspiracy, but,
take them in all, our classes and masses were loyal
subjects of Queen Victoria, and even chivalrously
and romantically proud of their dear Sovereign lady.
George Odger, one of the wildest of the London
revolutionaries of that time, confessed that revolution
would be impossible during the Queen's reign when
he said "Me and my friends have resolved that the
Prince of Wales shall never ascend the throne of
these realms." He and his friends did all they could
to make the Prince of Wales unpopular, and little
did they profit thereby. The marriage of the Heir-
Apparent with the Princess Alexandra of Denmark
396 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
was celebrated in all our district with great rejoic-
ings. Towns and villages, even country-houses and
scattered farm-steads, were made to look gay with
flags, arches, and devices of a benedictory and festive
character. Bonfires and illuminations followed at
night. I have never seen anything so striking as
the effect of the Bradford illuminations and bonfires
that night. Far up in the sky a dome of light hung
over the whole place. No doubt this was caused by
the situation of the town, which rises up surrounding
heights from the bottom of forked valleys. Soon
after their marriage the Royal couple came to visit
Lord Ripon at Studley Royal, and the Prince on
that visit opened the new town hall of Halifax.
The West Riding people on that occasion gave them
as hearty and unanimous a welcome as could possibly
be given. Years afterwards, when the Prince was
lying between life and death ill of fever at Sand-
ringham, the bulletins were scanned with gloomy
anxiety from hour to hour until the crisis was over
and recovery ensured. Then a feeling of joyful
thankfulness spread over all the country.
The newly - enriched middle classes, who, in
urban and mining and manufacturing districts held
supremacy from the passing of the Reform Bill to
the coming of household suffrage with the ballot,
were not lacking in self-confidence, nor in good
intentions either. They administered local affairs
uprightly and sagaciously. Their ready acceptance
of the really grand, although never to be realised,
doctrine of cosmopolitan Free Trade somewhat
twisted and contracted their patriotism of which,
however, they had plenty. The individual freedom
and open career which formed part of the Manchester
school political-economy creed suited the self-made
CLASSES AND MASSES. 397
or luck-made people of that period of transition from
handicrafts and domestic industries to the capitalist
and company monopolies which were to come, and
had to be confronted and counteracted by defensive,
and sometimes offensive and detrimental, trade-
union forces. To persons who happened to own
fields or houses of little annual value before the
transformation began, fortunes came without their
own merit, but in ninety per cent, of cases it came
by devotion to business honestly conducted, prudent
investments, and habits of life moulded by Christian
morality, and a frugality which, as a rule, was quite
consistent with helpful aid to poor relations and
general liberality. Here a few typical cases of the
rise of the newly enriched may be cited in illustra-
tion of the changes brought about by the industrial
revolution. Mr Gathorne - Hardy, created Earl
Cranbrook in 1892, received his peerage in reward
of political services, but derived his wealth from
great ironworks near Bradford, in which he had
inherited a heavy stake, and which had first been
made profitable in a high degree by the chemical
discoveries of a clerical ancestor of his. Mr Samuel
Cunliffe-Lister created Baron Masham belonged
by birth to the old smaller gentry of the locality,
but it was in his inventive brains that he had an
unfailing mine which finally made him wealthy in
old age, after having made and lost one or two
previous fortunes by letting others manage his
business while he became himself engrossed in new
inventions.
Mr Titus Salt, I think, was the first of our
successful captains of industry who was created a
baronet. Mr Salt, who had made a moderate
fortune as a wool-stapler, got hold of a loom fit for
398 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
weaving alpaca wool, then a drug in the market,
and boldly launched into manufacturing that wool,
when for a time he could have a monopoly of that
branch of business. Wonderful success crowned his
efforts. When his wealth grew with something like
the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, he bought land on
the east of Shipley, on the bank of the Aire, and on
it built a gigantic mill, a fine village, and an Inde-
pendent chapel, on the plan of the Paris Madeleine,
in which, when his time came, he was buried, and
which he intended to be forever his own and his
descendants' mausoleum. He had the biggest
funeral that had ever taken place in the Bradford
district. A high-class statue of him, in a shrine,
was placed in front of the Bradford Town Hall ; and
and a Dissenting minister wrote a florid biography
of him. He liked praise and flattery, and in life
and death got plenty of both. He called his new
model village Saltaire, joining his own and the river
names together. He was generous with his money,
founded and endowed a school for Saltaire, was
kind to the poor, the old, and the afflicted, and gave
donations to many charities. Within his proper
limits he was admirable as the organiser and con-
troller of a great undertaking, and the provider on
fair terms of comfortable and sanitary houses for his
working people. But at the same time he was an
enlightened despot to them, or he that must be
obeyed. He transgressed his proper limits when he,
in his paltry quarrel on a political question with
Abraham Holroyd, acted the despot, Abraham
Holroyd was a poor, honest man who had a book-
stall on the land of Sir Titus. In literary ability
and general intelligence he was the baronet's un-
doubted superior. Having convictions of his own
CLASSES AND MASSES. 399
and the manliness to express them, and his views
being contrary to the views Sir Titus had adopted,
Abraham, who refused to recant or be silent, was
deprived of his bookstall stand. On second thoughts,
however, Sir Titus saw he was wrong, and hand-
somely acknowledged his mistake. Masterful but
just, generous and well-meaning by nature, Sir
Titus, I think, was somewhat spoiled by the
obsequiousness of his own people, the hero-worship
given to him by his political and religious party,
and the well -deserved praises which were bestowed
on his model village in home and continental publi-
cations.
Up the hills in the direction of Halifax there is
a village on the steep which for some cause per-
haps the sign of a roadside inn was once called
Queenshead. Its centre of industrial life was
Foster's mill, and as mill and village steadily grew
together the inhabitants objected to let the place
be any longer called by a name which had come by
public usage to mean a postage stamp. They there-
fore had their village renamed Queensbury. Mi-
John Foster, the founder, and in my time, with his
up-to-date sons as partners, the head of the manu-
fucturing firm which gave this hill place its
prosperity and importance, was, while an excellent
business man, an unassuming old gentleman, who
liked to speak the dialect and stick to kindly,
homely, old-fashioned ways. There were not a few
other employers who had gained respect and clannish
loyalty from the people in their employment ; but I
think the relations between Mr John Foster and his
operatives were the most patriarchal and materially
trustful and confidential that existed anywhere in a
district in which much of what was best in the
400 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
spirit of feudalism had passed from the "quality" to
the newly enriched. The Hornby estate with its
fine historical castle having come into the market,
Mr John Foster bought it for a high price, which he
paid down on the nail. He was not the man to buy
a pig in a poke, and so we may be sure he had
expert opinion to go upon before the sale took place.
It seems that he did not himself visit Hornby until
after the price had been paid and the transfer com-
pleted. One day a man who looked like a well-to-
do, honest farmer, and who spoke the dialect as to
the manner born, entered the Hornby village inn,
and said he wanted to have a smoke and a glass of
beer. The innkeeper, who had no other customers
at the time, took him ito the room reserved for his
genteeler guests, and then went for a glass of beer,
a churchwarden pipe, and a screw of tobacco. On
coming back with these supplies, he found that
some uppish young men had entered the room, and
that they were looking on the placid, farmer-like
man as if they objected to his presence. So, to
propitiate these gentry, the innkeeper said to Mr
Foster, " Will you please come with me to the
kitchen, as I think these gentlemen want to have
the room to themselves ? " Mr Foster rose at once
and said nothing would suit him better than to have
his smoke and his drink at the kitchen fireside.
When host and guest settled themselves in the
warm, comfortable kitchen, they soon became chatty.
The stranger asked questions about the district,
and the host, puzzled by these questions, tried to
find what was the stranger's business in that part
of the country, where he had never seen him before.
At last the host, finding that circumlocution would
not do, put a direct question. The answer was
CLASSES AND MASSES. 401
" Oh, I have bought some land hereabouts, and I
have come to see it." " Do you mean you have
bought a farm ? " " Yes." " I have not heard of
any farm having been sold in this neighbourhood ;
what is the name of your farm ? " " The name of
it that was given to me is the Hornby Castle estate."
Boniface was overwhelmed with surprise and very
unnecessary regret at having taken his new landlord
to the kitchen, but it was just the sort of incident
best suited to please Mr Foster.
Bradford, when I went there, had a large staft' of
merchants English, Scotch, German, Jewish who
traded with all parts of the world, and who. in their
Chamber of Commerce, discussed in the light of
experience questions affecting trade, finance, and
navigation. Besides those scattered out elsewhere,
Peel Square was surrounded by splendid merchant
warehouses. But until 1835, or thereabouts, the
state of things was wholly different. The manufac-
turers of the town and neighbourhood brought the
product of their mills to the old Piece Hall in
Market Street, and sold them there, chiefly to Leeds
merchants. When that old yoke of dependence was
shaken off, a feeling of rivalry, which continued
long, sprang up between Leeds and Bradford. But
when once started, the emancipation movement
could have but one issue. Bradford, in a few years,
made itself the unchallengable capital and emporium
of the worsted district. One of the earliest and
biggest Bradford merchant firms, that of Milligan
& Forbes, was founded by two Scotchmen, who were
a credit to their native land. Mr Forbes, on coming
to Bradford, set up a draper's shop, in which he
modestly prospered for many years. He was dead
before my time. Mr Bx>bert Milligan, the senior
26
402 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
partner, who, for years after 1860, actively superin-
tended the great business of the firm, started his
remarkable career in England as a packman. He
brought with him from Scotland a good parish school
education, spiced with Shorter Catechism theology,
and the aptitude for business and. moral qualities
which led to success. An observant and most
intelligent and, withal, a most unassuming young
man was Mr Robert Milligau. When a merchant
prince and held in high reverence and respect by
the whole community among whom he had lived
and prospered so long, he was so far from concealing
his humble start in life, that he placed his old pack
in the entrance hall of his mansion of Acacia, and
was always ready to draw the attention of guests
to it, and to tell stories of his experiences and
adventures as a pedlar or travelling merchant who
carried all his stock-in-trade on his back. Mr
Milligan had the clannishness of a Scotchman. So
he found openings for many of his relations, and also
for not a few countrymen who were no relations at
all. As he had no children of his own, his great
wealth was by his will carefully and justly distributed
among a large number of people connected with him
by blood or marriage, his wife's kindred sharing
with his own.
William Brown, a saddler by trade, came from
Otley, his native place, to Bradford, and bought or
rented two united cottages in Market Street, then
newly made, one in which he lived and the other in
which he had his shop and working place. Having
thus established himself, he looked about for a wife,
and found one who was a treasure in herself in
Elizabeth Ingham, of a good old Bradford stock.
Their marriage took place shortly before or after
CLASSES AND MASSES. 403
1800. If the cottages were not his own at first, he
became the owner of them before his death some ten
years later, when his widow and their only child,
Henry Brown, were left with these cottages as all
that came to them from husband and father. They
prospered because the widow was a strong-minded,
high-principled business woman, who managed to
lay broad and firm foundations for what has long
been, and still is, the largest drapery and outfitting
establishment in Bradford and its district. When
they married, William Brown was a Churchman,
and Elizabeth Ingham belonged to the Independent
Chapel which the orthodox Presbyterians foimded,
when the Unitarian majority got hold of the old
Chapel Lane place of worship and its endowment.
The strife between Church and Dissent had, at the
beginning of last century, for several reasons much
subsided in Bradford. One of these reasons was the
lapsing of the majority of the Presbyterians into
Unitarianism, which gave a shock to orthodox
Dissenters, and another was the Wesleyan revival,
which swept into its broad stream both church -folk
and chapel-folk. It was not also without a modifying
effect that the then vicar of Bradford was a fervent
evangelical who compelled respect from the old
Dissenters, and whom the Wesleyans so honoured
that during his life they continued to communicate
and have their children baptized and confirmed in
the Parish Church. After marriage, while William
Brown continued as before to worship in the Parish
Church, his wife stuck to her Independent Chapel,
and took their boy Henry with her there as soon as
he could walk to it. There is, I suppose, everywhere
a business connection side to religious associations,
and in England, I think, this side is far more
404 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
apparent than in Scotland. Whether or not her
husband's connection with the Parish Church brought
customers to Elizabeth when left a widow, I cannot
say with certainty, but there is no doubt at all that
she profited by chapel connection. On her husband's
death she disposed of his stock-in-trade, and con-
verted his saddlering cottage into a drapery shop
and a store for children's ready-made clothes. She
sold for cash down to the general public, and only
gave short credit in exceptional cases to purchasers
she well knew and could trust. She had a head for
business and closely attended to it. Her customers
soon became numerous. They knew her straight-
forward way, and that there was no use in haggling
with her. They had to pay the price she first
mentioned, or else to leave without getting what
they wanted. She made few or no losses. She was
content with small profits, but as these small profits
grew into tidy heaps, she looked about for safe
investments, and as the town was growing at a
great pace, readily found them. While of a saving
disposition, she was anything but miserly. To kith
and kin who needed help, she gave it liberally and
ungrudgingly. She took care that Henry, her son,
should have a good education, and should from
infancy be brought up in the way he should go.
She bestowed similar care on cousins of his who came
under her protection. Her son, Henry Brown, ful-
filled her expectations. He was for a life-time a
member of the Bradford Town Council, was elected
Mayor three times in succession, and took a promin-
ent part in the public life and progress of the town
and neighbourhood. The business built by his
mother on sure foundations enormously increased
under the management of Mr Henry Brown and his
CLASSES AND MASSES. 405
brother-in-law, Mr T. P. Muff, whom he took into
partnership with him, and in due time new and
spacious premises were built for it on the sites of the
old cottages and their annexes iu Market Street.
Mr Brown's son, an only child, died in his infancy.
Having no child of his own to educate and provide
for, Mr Brown spent a large portion of his wealth
upon the promotion of the higher education of the
children of other people, especially those who could
not afford to pay for it. The Bradford Grammar
School and the corresponding higher school for girls
received large endowments from him while living,
and more by will. Besides what he spent on charit-
able and educational institutions when alive, his
executors had to pay 26,000 to charities of various
kinds before distributing the rest of his fortune
among his blood relations by father arid mother's
side, some fifty in number, according to the specific
instructions contained in his will.
Old Mrs Brown was able to grow with her
circumstances and to wisely enjoy the fortune she
had made, although to the last she was, by precept
and example, a preacher of righteousness against
waste, laziness and fechlessness. When she saw
the business nourishing in her son's hands, she
removed her habitation from Market Street to a
commodious house in the suburbs, in which friends
and acquaintances were sure of receiving a hospit-
able welcome, and which was a place of recuperance
for the many young relatives whom she had helped
on their onward course. Mrs Eennie, the well-
endowed and comfortably housed widow of a
merchant, was not able, like Mrs Brown, to grow
with her circumstances, arid yet she was a sympa-
thetic and generous helper to afflicted people she
406 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
knew, and liberal in her donations to chapels and
charities. As far as food, fire, and other comforts
were concerned she did not stint herself and her
servants. But she stuck to some habits of her
early days, probably days of pinching and struggling,
which made her seem very eccentric to later genera-
tions. When her husband was alive she made
dresses for herself out of fents or remnants of webs,
of different shades of one colour say red, blue, or
grey, because the fents could not be better utilised,
and the dresses were as clean and comfortable as if
they were of the same shade of colour. From early
days to the end of a long life, Harrogate was
the only place to which she went for her summer
" outing." There were some cottage lodgings there
which she had trysted from year to year. She used
to go with the carrier's cart, and to take supplies
from home witli her. Then came a year when a
coach regularly plied between Bradford and Harro-
gate, but Mrs Rennie stuck to the carrier, and would
not look at the coach nor afterwards at the railway
either. Unfortunately her faithful allegiance to use
and wont gave her, when quite an old widow, a
broken leg, through a fall from the top of the
carrier's cart. After that accident, I think she gave
up going to Harrogate. She had no patience with
dressy servant maids nor with any man or woman
that would not put their hand to any kind of useful
work. A lady friend, when passing Mrs Rennie's
house one day, saw her hastily coming out with a
jug in her hand and crossing the street to a milk
cart standing on the other side, where she got it
filled, and paid the milkman. The lady stopped till
Mrs Rennie crossed back, to remonstrate with her
for not sending her maid on all such errands.
CLASSES AND MASSES. 407
" Bless you ! " was the reply, " my maid would take
half-an-hour to dress before she would think herself
fine enough to come out of the house, and do you
think I could let the man stop waiting for her when
I could come myself at once for my three pennies'
worth of milk ? "
It was in a larger measure than is generally
recognised owing to the British mothers who kept
a firm grip on Christian faith and morals that a
hundred years ago our country escaped the double
danger of conquest by the greatest war lord the
world has ever seen, and of suffering severe and
instant demoralisation from an industrial revolu-
tion, which substituted collectivism for the old
handicraft arts and domestic industries, and made
the working classes to a large extent mere attach-
ments and slaves to machinery. With unshaken
confidence and fixed family-life principles, which
they knew to be blessed by Almighty God, the
noble British mothers of that era bred and trained
brave sons and virtuous daughters. Many of the
sons went forth to fight for their country by sea
and land. By sea victory was always with the
British warriors. By land the British soldiers
fought on undismayed by trials and disappoint-
ments until Napoleon was finally defeated at
Waterloo, and sent like a caged eagle to the lonely
yet pleasant island of St Helena. The daughters
had to fight their own battles against demoralising
influences in the mixed assemblages of mills and
other places where many worked together, and
upon the whole they fought these fights victoriously,
and became in their turn wives and mothers like
the mothers who had borne and trained them.
408 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
One of my first impressions of the natives of
the worsted district was that they were much alike,
whether rich or poor, a hard-headed, practical
people, of whom it was not easy even for a Yankee,
although that happened once .if not oftener to
get the better in a deal. But if hard they were
upright in their dealings, and in social relations
their hardness frequently converted itself into the
generous deeds, which shun rather than seek pub-
licity and applause. Further acquaintance revealed
unsuspected strains of romance and stores of senti-
ment, well kept out of sight, but which had still a
softening influence on life and character. They had
much humour of a caustic kind, which sometimes,
as in the case of a Wesleyan local preacher, assumed
an irreverent or grotesque form. When working
up a revival movement, this local preacher is said
to have fervently prayed, " Lord, send down Thy
Spirit upon us this minute, through the ceiling, and
never mind expenses." On another occasion, to
illustrate how easy it was to slide downward into
sin, and how difficult to pull upwards without
Divine help, he slid down the bannister on the
outside of the pulpit stair, and then began to
struggle to pull himself up with puffing and
difficulty. But the highest flight of his peculiar
humour took place in an outlying village, where he
was to hold a series of meetings. He was much
dissatisfied with the poor attendance at the first
meeting, and said so. He then with a solemn face
announced that at the next meeting he intended to
make a pair of shoes in the pulpit. That singular
announcement gave him a crowded audience at the
next meeting all agog to see how he was to fulfil
his promise. He made his way through that crowd
POLITICAL CUBBENTS AND EDDIES. 409
with a pair of old boots in one hand and a big sharp
knife in the other. He mounted the stair into the
pulpit, turned to the audience without a smile on
his face, cut off the tops of the boots and flung them
over the side, then held up the truncated remains,
and called them the pair of shoes he had made in
their presence. After that he launched out in racy
dialect ridiculing them for their readiness to be
attracted by such a silly device as a promise to make
a pair of shoes in a pulpit, and their unreadiness to
assemble to hear God's Word, and to come with
their sins, to pray for grace and mercy and guidance
at His footstool.
CHAPTER LXII.
POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES.
IN the twenty years between 1860 and 1880, all
true Britons, whatever their rank and callings, were
as far asunder as are the North and South Poles
from Keir Hardie Socialism and twentieth -century
gospel of universal revolution in theology preached
from the erstwhile orthodox pulpit of the City
Temple, which has been endorsed, I feel sure, to
the amazement and disgust of the majority of
English operatives, by the Labour Conference held
at Hull in January, 1908. The Liberation Society,
indeed, in its blind hostility to the Church of
England, baited its disestablishment policy by the
suggestion that after life-interests had been exhausted
and liberal grants of buildings and funds had, as in
Ireland, been made to the dispossessed Episcopalians,
there would ultimately be a heap of capital available
410 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
for secular and popular purposes. This policy was
accepted by the Welsh Labourists in its barefaced
form, and they destined the plunder for education and
the payment of salaries, as in the United States, to
members of Parliament. It was a policy which had,
in the plurality of election contests in England, to
be carefully masked, because the full avowal of it
would alienate Liberal Churchmen and scare away
the candidates for whom the sturdiest Noncon-
formists had a very decided preference.
Faddists, theorists, and enthusiasts were held in
check in the worsted district by the commonsense of
an industrious, practical people intolerant of shams
and wild dreams. Plutocrat and democrat of the
native breed were at bottom both Conservative, and
thoroughly agreed about the sacredness of private
property, and the justice of giving full compensation
and something over for land or heritages required
for public or railway company purposes. However
i-eady the plutocrat on a Liberal platform might be
to promise going on with perpetual tinkering of the
Constitution, he would, of course, be the last man to
concur in projects which would rob him of his
possessions or diminish the value of his securities
and investments. His ambition was almost invari-
ably from the beginning of his career to become
owner of a landed estate, and many of his class
attained that position, and left estates and baronet-
cies to their sons. Feudalism did not die, but
transmigrated to the newly-enriched. Shopkeepers,
small traders, and artisans sought to acquire a real
property stake in their country before they took to
invest in bank or railway shares, or in Consols or
other stock. The thrifty workman had no peace of
mind until he became owner of his house.
POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EIJDlES. 411
Trade-unionism had two sides, a fighting with
capital side, and a benefit society or mutual assur-
ance side to provide against want of work, or
sickness, or old age. There were strikes and lock-
outs in the worsted district between single firms
and their operatives ; but I did not see anything
like a general strike or lock-out. In the conflicts
which did take place employers were, in my opinion,
oftener in the wrong than the employed, who re-
luctantly spent union funds on a strike when driven
to extremity by the greed and injustice of employers.
Our operatives felt that while the strike was their
best weapon of defence and offence, it was well to
keep it as much as possible hanged up in terrorem,
because the use of it was costly to the union funds,
which were wanted for benefit society purposes.
Our unions had then a local character and a spirit
of independence in politics and trade affairs which
agreed with the sturdy character of the people that
formed them. The otiicials of these local unions
were not glib-tongued agitators, but intelligent
business men who kept accounts straight, and as
soon as opportunity came used their connection
advantages to start in some line of business as
employers. Every good member of a trade union
wished to develop into an employer or, at least, to
have an independent career and a stake in the
country.
While employers and employed, rich man and
poor man, were ambitious to acquire real property,
and held the same views regarding the rights of
property, I rather think the instructive and
genuinely patriotic conservatism of the masses was
stronger than that of the wealthier and better
educated classes, whether they called themselves
412 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Liberals or Conservatives. Our working people did
not realise how conservative they were in their
principles, habits, practices, and ambitions. They
had been taught by Liberal politicians to dislike the
Tories. The word " Tory " was one to be hissed at.
But for all that, they retained hereditary respect for
the " quality," and never forgot that it was Sir
Robert Peel who gave them the free imports, which
they called free trade, and that their out-and-out
Tory neighbour, Mr Ferrand, advocated with all the
strength of his vigorous nature the passing of the
Factory Bill, which Mr Bright and Mr Cobden
opposed on economic grounds. Because of the boon
of cheap and plenty food they were always willing
to give cheers for Cobden and Bright, but not at all
disposed to follow their lead on all questions.
Mr Bright, because of his ancestral creed, con-
curred in the sending of a foolish Quaker embassy
to Czar Nicholas, which made the Crimean war
inevitable, by convincing the haughty autocrat of
All the Russias that peace at any price would be
the British policy, whatever might be that of
France. He was sure of Austria's neutrality, and
of the fetch and carry conduct of Prussia. Mr
Cobden bitterly opposed British participation in the
Crimean war, because he was plunged and lost in a
wild Utopian dream of his own, little expecting the
collision of armies and the war of tariffs which were
fated to come. He believed that in a few years the
doctrine of free trade in all its fulness would be
accepted by all nations, and that as a consequence
of that acceptance the world at last would enjoy a
Golden Age for evermore. This visionary hope
made the Manchester school of political economists
careless about retaining the colonies as integral
POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 413
parts of the British Empire. Mr Bright, in a speech
glorifying the United States, assumed that it would
absorb the Dominion of Canada, and possess all from
the North Pole to the Gulf of Mexico, and, I think,
the Isthmus of Darien. He lived long enough to
see the big wars on the Continent, as well as the
Civil War in the United States, with the demorali-
sation which followed thereon. He saw the war of
tariffs, and like the good patriot he ever was when
freed from Utopianism, he set his face like flint
against Mr Gladstone's mad proposal to give the
Irish a measure of Home Rule, which they could
soon and easily use for the disintegration of the
United Kingdom, which would leave Great Britain
open to attacks from Irish separatists and foreign
enemies in alliance with them.
It was clear, from the way in which working
men, who called themselves Radicals, and were so
on reform and free trade matters, spoke of Lord
Palmerston, both before and after his death, that
they always had had unbounded trust in his conduct
of foreign affairs, and that they had no confidence
at all on that matter in the men whose names they
cheered at public meetings, and for whose candidates
they demonstrated noisily at election times, before
household suffrage and the ballot put the electoral
supremacy at their disposal. In regard to the
colonies and dependencies which formed the outer
and greater Britain, our working people were proud
of them, and wished strongly that they should ever
remain in unity of allegiance and citizenship with
the Mother Country. They had close ties with these
outer parts of the Empire, through sons, daughters,
and friends, who went there and found themselves
happier and more at home under the old flag than
414 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
they could be ever under the Stars and Stripes of
the United States, however many the openings and
however high the wages that were to be had in that
go-ahead country of boundless extent and resources,
where, until after the Civil War, carpet-baggers,
and swindlers, and syndicates, and combines had not
vitiated pristine republican virtues and perverted
constitution and institutions into instruments for
running " machines " to benefit birds and beasts of
prey by the defrauding of honest citizens, to the
endless vexation of true patriots down to President
"Roosevelt, the strongest of them all. Our working
men went merrily into the Volunteer movement,
regardless of the cold water thrown upon it by the
peace-at-any- price dreamers of vain dreams.
When I first went to Bradford, I found the town
represented in the House of Commons by Mr
Wickham, a Conservative, and by Mr Titus Salt, a
Liberal, who had too great a stake in the country to
be really much of a Radical. Mr Salt, who found
attendance at Westminster incompatible with the
close superintendence of his big mill at Saltaire,
soon resigned his seat, and was afterwards made a
baronet. On his resignation, Mr William Edward
Forster, manufacturer, in partnership with Mr Fison,
was elected in his place. Mr Forster, who had in
him the make of a broad-minded and truly patriotic
statesman, was a representative of whom any con-
stituency might well be proud, altogether apart from
party considerations. It is as the man who had the
fashioning and the piloting through Parliament of
the first Education Bills for England and Scotland
that his memory will be preserved in history. The
Bills were drawn upon right lines, but Mr Forster
had not the least idea of the huge cost to which
POLITICAL CURRENTS AND EDDIES. 415
they would lead under School Board and Education
Department management, nor the least conception
of how the new system in England and Wales
would be abused to the purposes of sectarian attacks
upon the Church of England schools. At the head
of the Education Department, Mr Forster was the
right man in the right place. He was, in Mr
Gladstone's 1881 Administration, sadly misplaced
when sent to Ireland as Chief Secretary. He soon
sickened of Ireland, but got out of it without being
assassinated.
The West Riding, before it was divided, had two
members. The last two were Sir John Ramsden,
owner of large estates in England by inheritance,
and of an Inverness-shire sporting estate by pur-
chase, and Sir Francis Crossley, one of the three
brother - partners of the famous Halifax carpet-
manufacturing firm. Sir Francis was a newly-made
baronet, while Sir John's baronetcy dated back to
1680. On the West Riding being divided and two
seats being given to each division, Sir Francis and
Lord Frederick Cavendish, second son of the Duke
of Devonshire, were returned for our Northern
Division. I was present at the big meeting in St
George's Hall, at which -- accompanied by Sir
Francis, who was well known - - Lord Frederick
made his first appearance as a candidate. The play
of "Lord Dundreary" had, a little before, been per-
formed in that hall, with Suthern as the inimitable
representative of the chief character. Now it so
happened that, in the opening sentences of his
speech, Lord Frederick, in nervous flurry, spoke so
like "Dundreary" as to cause irrepressible laughter.
He said that, on being asked to stand, he hesitated,
because he thought an older and more experienced
416 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
man would be a fitter candidate for such an impor-
tant constituency. He then proceeded: "If I
was then afwaid, what must be my feelings now
when I see this magnificent woom cowded from the
floor to the v-v-wewy woof?" He, that night, in
his opening sentences, had a stammer in addition to
the slippery lisping over certain letters. The burst
of laughter put him on his mettle, and he made a
clever speech which read very well in print. I often
heard him afterwards, and wondered at the way in
which, like Demosthenes, he had conquered his
stammering, and got rid of his youthful " Dun-
drearyism." Sent to Ireland as Chief Secretary, in
succession to Mr Forster, he had just taken the
oath, when, crossing Phoenix Park in company with
Mr Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary, Fenian
scoundrels beset and assassinated them. That tragic
event, which sent a shock of horror, mingled with
righteous indignation, through the whole British
Empire, took place in May, 1882.
From the passing of the first Reform Bill to
the coming of household suffrage and the ballot
in Parliamentary elections, the two currents of
Liberalism and Conservatism balanced each other
over all England in a manner which Tories of Lord
Eldon's type deemed to be utterly impossible, since
they only trusted in feudal leadership, and had no
faith in the wisdom of newly-enriched upstarts, and
no true conception of the inherent caution and
patriotic intuition of the common people. When
Mr Disraeli cut the ground from under the feet of
Lord John Russell and the Liberals who wanted to
keep the franchise at much higher qualifications, by
boldly digging down at once to household suffrage
in the boroughs, he relied upon a spirit of Conserva-
POLITICAL CURBENTS AND EDDIES. 417
tism among the masses, the existence of which was
quite as much doubted by Liberals as by the most
Tory members of his own party. What happened
when power passed from the middle classes to the
masses was that the two main political currents
became full of eddies and side-whirlings which were
apt to confound the calculations of electioneering
agencies. In our district, Liberalism was usually
predominant, but it had ebbs and flows which,
superficially looked at, seemed very perplexing. For
instance, when Sir Francis Crossley died, the elec-
tors of the Northern Division gave Lord Frederick
Cavendish a Conservative colleague. That, however,
was nothing in comparison with the sweeping
changes which afterwards took place, back and for-
ward, in Parliamentary representation. All the
twenty years I was in close touch with English
politics, the masses of voters seemed to act consis-
tently upon the principle of giving each of the two
political parties a turn about of office. By plunging
into the bog of Irish Home Rule, and by Majuba
and Convention blundering in South Africa without
which there would have been no Boer War Mr
Gladstone threw power a great deal longer into the
hands of the Unionists than on the turn-about plan
of action they would otherwise have beeu thought
justly entitled to.
418 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXIII.
LONDON.
THE first time I saw London was when I was sent on
newspaper business to the opening of the Exhibition
of 1862. As London was to be invaded by myriads
of visitors from all countries of the world as well as
from all parts of the United Kingdom, lodgings had
been in good time secured for me in Aldersgate,
which were very comfortable, and where my fellow
lodgers were exhibitors from Manchester and York-
shire. One day, however, when I continued my
work in the Exhibition buildings so late that on
coming out I saw the last of the conveyances driving
off before I could reach it, I had to walk back on
foot, and was saved from losing myself on the way
by a strong sense of locality which made it pretty
easy, either by night or by day, to find out places I
had once seen without looking to street names or
asking policemen.
As I represented two newspapers, I had two
tickets of admission for the opening day, besides a
season pass. One of the two tickets I gave to my
landlord, who was so pleased with the little gift that
he put himself in place of a guide, and went with
me to see the Tower, the Guildhall, Covent Garden,
the Docks, St Paul's, and various other places. My
fellow lodgers and I, and our landlord got into the
Exhibition buildings among the first, all in a batch,
and had, therefore, a free choice of places. We
stationed ourselves in what I may call a park of
LONDON. 419
f
artillery, Armstrong guns, Krupp guns, and so on,
near the platform. I perched myself on a field gun
with our two exhibitors, and we had some trouble
all day in so balancing ourselves as to keeput from
playing tricks by swaying up and down. Its height
gave us a wide view of the immense building, and
we watched with interest how it filled up with people x
as time went on. Our landlord sat below us on
a big Krupp gun, which was solid and ugly enough
for anything.
After a while came the splendid procession, and
passed close to us to the platform, which also was
very near at hand. Foreign Ambassadors, Ministers
and ex -Ministers of State, men eminent in arts and
sciences and literature, the Lord Mayor of London,
and other chiefs of municipalities, in their robes and
decorations, made that day a splendid muster. Then
all eyes were concentrated on the royal personages
who were to take the chief part in the formal open-
ing ceremony. Owing to the recent death of Prince
Albert neither the Queen nor any of her children
could take part in the opening ceremony. The
Duke of Cambridge was deputed to officiate, and he
was supported right and left on the platform by the
Prince of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick
of Germany, the Queen's son-in-law, and by Prince
Oscar of Sweden, who afterwards succeeded his elder
brother and reigned long as Oscar II., but had the
misfortune before his death to see, through no fault
of his, Norway separated from Sweden.
Broad, burly, and of more than medium height
as the Duke of Cambridge was, he was that day
overtopped by the Prussian Crown Prince, a blonde
giant and one of the handsomest of the sons of
men, and by the dark and slimmer Prince Oscar of
420 REMINISCENCES AUD MFLHCTIONS.
Sweden, who had inherited the French type of the
Bernadottes. I gazed at him with peculiar interest
on account of his name. His father, Oscar I. of
Sweden and Norway, was the godson of Napoleon,
who gave him the name of the finest hero of the
Ossianic cycle of Gaelic poetry. But of all the
Koyal personages at the opening ceremony, the
best known and best liked and most vigorously
cheered by the huge crowd was the Princess Mary
of Cambridge, who soon afterwards married the
Duke of Teck.
I sat up all night writing my account of the
opening ceremony, and when I went to bed at last
in broad daylight the headache of exhaustion and
excitement kept me for an hour or so awake. As
the procession passed within a few yards of me, and
afterwards when its members arranged themselves
on the platform close at hand, I was astonished
to find how easily I could identify many of the
celebrities of the day, whom I had never seen
before, by their pictorial representations, particularly
" Punch " caricatures of them. The musical part of
the ceremony was grand, and I was glad to observe
that a place had been found for Highland bagpipe
music also, which in such a vast building sounded
as if coming down a glen in a May morning,
raising stirring memories of a thousand years, and
harmonising itself with the voices of the mountain
streams, and of breezes which made heather slopes
bend and curl like waves of the sea.
For the first few days I had long hours of constant
work in the Exhibition. I dined in the well-ordered
French refreshment place, and after losing the
vehicles once, took care to be out in time to catch
them ever afterwards. The well-guarded stand on
LONDON. 421
which the Koh-i-noor diamond was exhibited had
always a little crowd about it. With its glow of
light within itself, it is no doubt a wonderful stone,
but to me it had little more attractiveness than if
it had been a piece of glass of the same size and
humpy form. I admire emeralds and pearls, and
some of the other gems in a moderate degree, but
I have a curious dislike to diamonds, as if in a
previous existence I had come to connect them with
guile and crime. I have never been a fanciful
person, and this unexplainable antipathy remains
a puzzle to me to this day.
Sunday brought a welcome cessation from news-
paper work, but I was too anxious to see as much
as possible of London to rest in my comfortable
lodgings. I went to the morning service in St
Paul's. Dean Milman, whose writings I much
admired, officiated. He was then a bent old man,
but had such a clear voice that every word he spoke
was distinctly heard by all the huge congregation.
Several of us, with Exhibition tickets, banded
together for going to Westminster in the afternoon.
A. river steamer landed us on the terrace of the
Palace of Westminster, and we had drinks of beer
in the crypt by gaslight before going to the Abbey.
Mr Forster, our Bradford M.P., had sent me a ticket
for the Speaker's Gallery for the sitting of the
House of Commons on the Monday, but the business
happened to be of a humdrum kind on that evening.
I gazed with unbounded admiration at the splendid
exterior of St Paul's, by which London appeared to
be wholly dominated and to be largely redeemed
from architectural commonplace, but was dis-
appointed with the interior, which was then in a
far IWKB finished state than it is now. At West-
422 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
minister my sensations were quite different. The
Palace of Westminster or Houses of Parliament
outwardly dwarfed the Abbey, but the inside of
the Abbey is without comparison.
There was a remarkable contrast between the
quietness of London on Sunday and the crowded
state of the streets and roaring traffic on week-days.
In 1862 all the movements of the people and all the
carrying of goods were above ground. Underground
railways and tubes had yet to come. So had
tramways, motor cars, and London County Council
improvements. Temple Bar still stood in its old
place, bearing on its tops the spikes on which the
heads of traitors had been placed of old, and
strangulating traffic in a main artery. It was not
so ornamental a relic of the past as I had imagined
it to be ; but it was ornamental enough to be
entitled to be kept in possession of the Corporation,
and placed in some appropriate public place for
perpetual preservation. Considering its connection
with the history of the past, it should not have
been sold as rubbish to a private buyer, but kept
as an interesting ancient monument. Subsequent
visits corrected some of my first impressions of
London, but my first impression of its vastness only
got magnified and, so to speak, more oppressive as
my knowledge of the apoplectic head of the United
Kingdom enlarged itself. In 1862 I neither saw a
London mob disturbance nor inhaled an oily fog so
thick that it might be cut with a knife. Whatever
might be the tragedies of life in many of its homes,
whatever the brutal vices and crimes in its festering
slums, or the gilded profligacies and immoralities in
its aristocratic quarters, to the happily lodged casual
visitor the London of more than forty years ago,
OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 423
although in respect to population u nation within a
nation, appeared to be a most orderly city, full of
attractions of all sorts, and rich in beautiful as well
as in historical places, and with far from a bad
climate notwithstanding superabundant fog and
rain at times, and the want of a romantic situation,
like Edinburgh for instance. Since that time
London sanitation has been vastly improved, and so
have the London streets and their architecture.
LXIV.
OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA.
ON the 5th of November, 1865, my dear young wife
and I, with our little boy, ten months old, and our
loyal Irish maid, Kate Carty, embarked at South-
ampton for Cape Town, on board the " Roman,"
Captain Dixon, of the Union Line. We left port
late in the evening, and had a rough night down
the Channel. The next morning the sun was brightly
shining on the " Roman" at anchor in Plymouth
harbour. As we had to stay there until the after-
noon, I went on shore and had a good look round
the town and its neighbourhood. It was discovered
when the ship came to anchor, that one of the
crew was missing. There could be no doubt as to
his having fallen overboard during the stormy night
when still under the influence of the spree in which
he had indulged before he left Southampton. The
captain had to go on shore to report the incident,
and to hand over the lost man's kit to the
authorities. This caused the usual period of de-
tention for passengers and cargo to be a little
424 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
lengthened, but on leaving we had a good view of
the bold Devon and Cornish coasts which are such
a pleasant contrast to the flat east coast of England
that from Kent to Berwick can only boast of a few
romantic places like Whitby and Scarborough.
The rough weather in which we bade our native
land good night, followed us through the ever
restless Bay of Biscay, with sea sickness as its
consequence. I am not a good sailor at any time,
but ou this occasion I was not absolutely sick, but
miserably queasy for, I think, a whole week. I
almost felt as if the cook and waiter, by showing
the roast joints for dinner at the door of the saloon
were in a conspiracy with the sea. But when the
uneasy feeling passed and a keen appetite returned,
all that discomfort was soon forgotten. Palmas was
the only land we saw on the passage out. One fine
morning it lay before our eyes, set in a calm sea
with shores, hill slopes, and glen depressions like a
panoramic little map. Another incident was an
invasion of locusts which struck sails and ship
further ou when we were more than a hundred
miles from the nearest part of the African ceast.
Lots of them fell on deck, and created quite a sensa-
tion, especially among those of us who had never
seen a flight of locusts before. The wind was driv-
ing them out to sea where the cloud of them that
passed over the " Roman" must have found a watery
grave. The " Roman" was not trying to make a
record, but merely an economical voyage. So when
the wind was favourable coal was spared, and we
jogged on for days under sail. We took thirty-two
days between leaving the Southampton docks and
coming to anchor in Table Bay, and that was then
considered an average good voyage.
OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 425
When the first uneasy days were over, we, the
first-class passengers, settled down and soon became
acquainted with one another. The Army was
represented by a general and a captain, and the
Navy by a quarter-master appointed to Ascension,
who, with his wife, children, and governess, had to
go to Cape Town in order to be able to get back
from there to his grilling station, and its turtle beds.
Mr Williams, who was going out to be Dean of
Grahamstown, and had his wife, child, sister-in-law,
and servant maid with him, represented the Church
of England militant, and a Free Church probationer
who was going out to be a Gill College professor,
made a meek representative of Presbyterianism. I
was going out to edit a new bi-weekly Conservative
newspaper, " The Cape Standard." Three young
ladies, one English, one Scotch, and one Irish, were
going out to be married to gentlemen who could not
get leave to go to fetch their brides. There were
many Colonials who had been " home," as they
affectionately called the old country, and were
returning to their businesses, trades, and farms in
South Africa. In addition, there were several
who were voyaging for health and pleasure, or
whose trade undertakings called them, after South
Africa, to India, China, and Japan. The second
class passengers were a decent lot of outgoing
mechanics, and servants, and young men in search
of situations. If there were any steerage passengers,
they were so mixed up with the crew as to be not
discernible. Upon the whole, we were a sort of
happy family, well fed and lodged, and with as few
frictions among ourselves as could well be expected.
The children, although, poor things, they suffered
from prickly heat, were a source of general pleasure
and enjoyment.
426 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Dean Williams, to his honour, instituted a daily
short religious service Prayer Book readings and
prayers, which many of us regularly attended. As
the Dutch passengers were mostly Presbyterians,
and as|Dean Williams was so bellicose, so down on
Bishop Colenso, so full of the Lambeth Conference,
and so incapable of seeing good in any non-Episcopal
communion, that he annoyed people of his own
church, and also the Presbyterians on board, there
was a move to set up the Free Church probationer
as a rival to officiate turn about. But the probationer
very sensibly declined to interfere with the Dean's
monopoly ; and in truth, for a short daily worship,
the Prayer Book is more suitable than anything
else. The Dean was as full of admiration for
Pusey's " Eirenicon," published that year, as he was
of condemnation for Colenso, and contempt for non-
Episcopal denominations. He certainly had the full
courage of his opinions. A time was to come when
he would keep the Bishop of Grahamstown out of
his Cathedral, because lie, the Dean, stood upon his
right as a dignitary of the Church of England, and
absolutely refused to recognise the newly formed
Episcopal Church of South Africa, although it
remained in union and communion with the Church
of England. No two men could be more unlike
than Dean Williams with his aggressive and
unreasonable traditional dogmatism, and gentlemanly
scholarly Bishop Colenso, with his logical and
arithmetical habits of analysis, and yet circumstances
placed them incongruously on the same platform of
opposition to what most of their co-religionists
naturally held to be canonical authority.
One night when we went to bed on the
" Roman," we knew that Table Mountain and its
OFF TO SOUTH AFRICA. 427
outliers the Lion's Head and the Devil's Kop
would be in sight next morning. I was one of those
who were up on deck early to enjoy that sight, and
truly a grand sight it was. We must have been
still more than twenty miles out at sea when the
shadows of night dispersed, the panoramic scene
opened on the view, and the flocks of seabirds came
out to meet us. Nature has been strangely niggard
to Africa in regard to sheltered harbours and land-
locked bays. As a rule that big lump of a continent
has a low-lying malarial seaboard without openings,
and in the few places where the coast line is high
and rocky, it has breakers in front and no fertile
land behind. Table Bay is a remarkable exception
to the general rule. Delagoa Bay is an exception
also, but in my time it was considered a malarial
death - trap because of the surrounding marshes,
which began only to be drained when the railway
was made to the Transvaal. As for Table Bay, the
approach to it from the sea is grand because of the
range of high mountains. At the entrance to it is
Robben Island, which, in 1866, was occupied by
rabbits, lepers, political prisoners, and official care-
takers of the two latter classes. The political
prisoners were native chiefs and followers who had
been involved in the Kaffir invasion of the Eastern
Provinces or in rebellions elsewhere. Natives con-
victed of ordinary crimes, to the number of five
hundred or more, were employed on the breakwater
and grand docks then in course of construction.
Sheltered as the bay looked, there was much need
for the breakwater and docks to make it safe from
the one wind which could sweep it, and had the
year before driven about twenty ships ashore.
I was sorry to lose sight of the Great Bear,
which had looked down upon all the great events in
428 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the past history of the human race, and felt strongly
when I reached Cape Town that the Southern Cross
had for incalculable milleniums been looking down
on lands which were waiting their chance for making
history of their own. Table Bay has few, if any,
equals in the whole world. The Dutch founders of
Cape Town deserve praise and everlasting gratitude
for the judicious way in which they laid out broad
streets sloping from the mountains to the shore, on
the hill-enclosed plain. The castle fronting the bay
was, I daresay, sufficient at first for the whole of the
white people, as it had space enough within its
circuit. But when the town became more a place
of call for ships passing to the Far East, and return-
ing, care was taken to make wide streets, and to set
aside a large space for the splendid Government
Gardens and residence for the Governor.
CHAPTER LXV.
AT CAPE TOWN.
was the way in which I was led to go to Cape
Town. Mr John Byles, nephew of my Mr Byles,
was sent home to buy an Otley printing machine,
types, and other office furnishings for a Conservative
newspaper at Cape Town, started by gentlemen who
undertook to supply the capital for floating it, and
who appointed Messrs Pyke and Byles their printers.
These two had previously been the proprietors of a
provincial paper at Swellendam, where they were
doing fairly well until they were burned out by one
of the most destructive veldt fires that had ever
taken place in the Colony a fire which burned all
AT CAPE TOWN. 429
before it for a length of three hundred miles and a
breadth of twenty or so. The selection of an editor
was entrusted to Mr Thompson, a London merchant.
I was asked through Mr John Byles if I would take
the situation, and at first declined to do so. When
I was approached again, seeing that the salary
offered was pretty liberal, I said I would, provided
if at a year's end I and mine would have a free
passage home, as well as the free passage out, should
either side wish to terminate the engagement. The
free passage home was consented to, which was
fortunate for me, because at the end of nine months
I got a trouble in my right knee which kept me
long in pain before it came to a crisis, and then
made me walk on crutches for the rest of my life,
which was a sad affliction for a man in his prime,
who loved to breathe the air of mountain tops.
But I scaled Table Mountain, shot snipe on the
Downs, and had several visits through the cleuch to
Camp Bay before my ailment began. On landing
we were taken to Wynberg, and hospitably enter-
tained in a capital reed-thatched house there, until
the office in Cape Town was fitted up, and until I
took a house above the Government Gardens, near
the waterworks, where on one hand we nad Sir
Cristofer Brand, the Speaker of the Assembly, for
a neighbour, and below us Dean Douglas, afterwards
Bishop of Bombay, with whom I had many walks
and talks when he was going to the Cathedral and
I to the "Standard" office. He was a man whom it
did one good to come in contact with. When we
were at Wynberg I explored, besides the Downs
and their splendid heaths, the beautiful places held
in the loving embrace of the mountain range from
Constantia, famous for its wines, to the neighbour-
430 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hood of Cape Town. My wife and I liked the
country and climate so well, that if it had not
been for that wretched knee disablement, we would
probably have not thought of ever returning to
England except on a visit. But perchance if we
stayed I would have passed from journalism to
farming, for which I always retained a hereditary
hankering that made me a crofter at Fortingall
and Balquhidder.
LXVI.
VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES.
IT was not until 1869, when the Suez Canal was
opened, that Cape Town lost its importance as a
place of call. On the jetty there the new docks
being yet in course of construction one could see
men of almost all the tribes of earth coming ashore
and going back to their ships, whether steamers or
sailing vessels, whether traders or warships. Russian
frigates manned by handsome Baltic coast sailors,
took out big dusky Cossacks to Vladivostock or the
mouth of the Amoor, and returned with the troops
which had served their time in that region. The
Siberian railway had still to be made, and to use a
Yorkshire word, the gainest way for the passing
back and forward of troops was by sending them in
war vessels round the Cape of Good Hope, which its
first Portuguese discoverers had just cause to call
the Cape of Storms. We had visits from German
and American trading ships, but I do not remember
seeing any of their navy vessels in Table Bay in
1866. Spain and Portugal, like Russia, were regu-
VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES. 431
larly sending out to, and taking back from, their
Far East possessions, armed forces and officials in
warships. So was Holland and so was France.
Even Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, sent down the east
side of Africa his gunboats used as traders, which
gunboats were usually officered by Europeans,
English, French, Italian, and Greek, while the
crews were meek -looking tillers of the soil from the
valley of the Nile, Arabs with adust complexion,
hearty negroes and Levantine rascals. All the
ships trading with India, China, Japan, Borneo,
Cochin-China, Siam, and the Philippines, had speci-
mens of the native races of their countries among
their crews. The whale-fishing of the antarctic seas
was then and, I suppose, is yet mostly in the
hands of the energetic Yankees, who had sometimes
strong Red Indians and many negroes in their
companies. The rendezvous of the New England
whaling fleet was St Helena, but some of its ships
visited Table Bay. I do not think that even San
Francisco could at any time boast of such a show of
all the tribes of the earth as Cape Town of 1866
could do. As for the Chinese, the sugar-planters
of Natal were then allowed to employ indentured
Chinese coolies who, when they had served their
term, and saved almost all their wages, as the
majority of them managed to do, got free passage
home to their native land. But some of them did
not wish to go back, and cutting off their pigtails,
made their way to Cape Town and other parts of
Cape Colony, where they began new pursuits and
hid their nationality. My barber at Cape Town
was one of the ex-coolies who preferred the Colony
to China, grew his hair in European fashion, married
a half-caste wife, abjured the joss-house, and made
432 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
himself a respectable and modestly prosperous
citizen.
The hundreds of male convicts employed on the
docks and the breakwater were compounded in
healthy and spacious ground at the foot of the Lion
Head hills overlooking the bay, and lying between
the city and the Green Point villas. The enclosure
was strongly fenced in and guarded by armed
sentries, who were ready by night and by day to
shoot down convicts who attempted to escape. Very
few such attempts were made. The convicts were
well fed, more comfortably bedded, housed, and clothed
than they had been in their days of freedom ; the
labour was not excessive, and they learned many
useful arts as well as discipline and order. They
contained representatives of all the coloured races
within the colony, from the big Kaffirs and
Basutos to the puny and almost deformed bushmen
of Namaqualand, whose favourite weapons were
poisoned arrows. There were even among them
woolly-headed negroes from the West Coast and
Mozambique, who had some way drifted into the
colony and got into trouble there. These pure-
blooded negroes were physically far superior to the
Hottentots, with hair in patches, who were the
original inhabitants of the western provinces of Cape
Colony, and are still very numerous there. Between
the native tribes themselves mixed castes had arisen,
and there were likewise thousands who were the
descendants of white men and native women, and
who bore the proofs of their origin in their persons.
The largest squad of these who gathered themselves
into a tribe were the Bastards, of whom big Adam
Cok was the captain, and who in my time occupied
the land on which, after the discovery of the
VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND RACES. 433
diamonds, Kimberley was built. The Bastards had
to be bought out before the whites took possession
of their lands. Captain Adam Cok and his tribe
were proud of their half-European descent, and
wished to live pacific and orderly lives; but I under-
stand that since then they have much dwindled
away, although to look at them, one would expect
them to multiply and hold their own. There seems
to be some mysterious law about the dying out of
hybrid races in Africa and everywhere. As for the
Kaffirs, Basutos, Zulus, and their allied tribes, they
are certainly not of the negroid stock, although in
the long procession of time since they came down
from the Persian Gulf or the backlands of Egypt, as
the Arabs came afterwards, they got, by intermix-
ing, partly marked with the African brand.
I soon found that the Malays formed a most
important section of the population of Cape Town
and the neighbouring districts. They had been
slaves before their emancipation in the early days of
Queen Victoria's long reign. Rebels in Java and
Sumatra to Dutch rule, their ancestors had been
transported to the Cape, and made slaves there to
the Dutch officials and colonists. The banished ones
had in most cases, I believe, belonged to the upper
classes in their native land. Generations of slavery
failed to degrade them. It might be truly said
to have improved them. They stuck, under diffi-
culties, to their ancestral Mohammedan faith, and
learned in the furnace of tribulation to get rid
of ancestral faults, and become a truly pious and
patient people, with a high standard of morality.
The instant they were emancipated they took to
well-doing, and prospered. Very few Malays found
their way to the convict establishment, except it
28
434 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
might be as sellers of food supplies. Diligent and
honest in business, and serving the Lord according
to the light of their creed, the Malays of Cape Town
and its neighbourhood gathered gear in a quietly pro-
gressive way as sooii as they were freed. They highly
valued education, and managed, I cannot say how,
even when in bondage, to have their children taught
to read the Koran. Afterwards, a higher education
came within their reach, and they took full advantage
of it. They owned much of the smaller house-
property in Cape Town when I saw them, and plots
of land outside the town limits. They were artisans,
small traders, and general utility people, who did
not often go into service, although always ready for
any employment which did not interfere with their
well-ordered domestic life. They would not taste
wines or spirits, but the least strict of them had no
objection to take a drink of the frothy Cape beer, or
" pop," which had hardly any intoxicating power.
The law did not interfere with polygamy among the
native race. Whenever a native had money to spare
he invested it in the purchase of another wife. The
Koran sanctioned polygamy, but the Cape Malays
were monogamists almost to a man. In fact, the
only one I heard of who had two wives was my
friend Ishmael, the imaum of one of the mosques,
who, when an old man of seventy, was induced by
his old wife to marry an orphan niece of hers, so
that his property would descend to her. Ishmael
was the swearer-in of Malay witnesses in the Supreme
Court, and the interpreter when required. He was
also paid a small sum monthly for the information he
supplied to the " Standard." Great liars were many
of the native witnesses, and some of the white men
too, but a sworn Malay could be trusted to tell the
VISITORS OF MANY NATIONS AND EACES. 435
truth under examination, although he might be a
reluctant witness on many occasions.
Our Cape Malays were, I was told by persons
who had been in Java, a handsomer people than the
stock from which they had come. Under thirty
they might pass with their clear olive complexions
for Andalusian Spaniards. Their children were
neatly if cheaply clad, and clean and bonnie bairns.
Cleanliness was, no less than predestination, part of
the Malay creed. A boy of twelve or so, who used
to come to our door, selling fruit, would, for a
painter or sculptor, have made a splendid model for
a boy Apollo.
The loyalty of the Cape Malays appeared to be
imbued with a spirit of religious fervour. On the
Queen's birthday they mustered on the Castle
esplanade in their gala dresses and ornaments, each
mosque congregation headed by its imaum, bilals,
and gatieps say, its minister, elders, and deacons.
They had previously prayed in their mosques for
long life, happiness, and prosperity to Her Majesty,
and mingled their prayers ]with thanksgiving for
their own redemption from slavery.
436 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXVII.
THE POSITION OF THE KULING RACE.
IN 1866 Cape Colony, thanks to help of Imperial
troops in defeating the Kaffir invasion of the eastern
provinces, was in a peaceful and settled condition.
The Kaffirs were punished by being deprived of a
large piece of their former roving and hunting lands,
half a million acres of which, divided into farms,
were sold in the above year on quit-rent terms for
very small purchase money. But the purchasers
had to go out into wilds where there were no roads,
and no easy access to markets, unless for horses,
cattle, and sheep, that could go on their own feet
far distances, where they would have feeding and
watering resting-places at day-march distances.
They had also to put up boundary marks, and to
defend their households and cattle kraals against
native raiders, who thought it an honourable feat
to buy their first wives by stolen cattle. The
Hottentots and other mixed tribes of the western
provinces had learned to be submissive. The
Cromwellian masterfulness of the Dutch pioneers
who had first come among them had taught them
obedience. On my arrival at Cape Town the war
between Moshesh, chief of the Basutos, and the
Orange Free State was near its conclusion ; the
result being that the Basutos were defeated and
deprived of land which added 1500 large-sized
farms to the Boer Republic. So, under the presi-
dency of Mr John Brand, who was afterwards
THE POSITION OP THE RULING RACE. 437
knighted by Queen Victoria, the Orange Free State
became as orderly and, as long as Sir John Brand
lived, as well ruled as Cape Colony. Natal and the
Transvaal were far from enjoying similar blessings
of order and security. Railway construction was in
its infancy. The Paarl was the furthest place to
which one could go from Cape Town. Mail carts,
however, traversed the interior, and Resident
Magistrates and other officials, with very little
force at their backs, upheld justice and authority.
The Zulus had yet to learn that there was a great,
far-away, and irresistible Power at the back of the
small minority of whites who had assumed rule
over South Africa, and whose rule, once firmly
established, brought in its train advantages which
had been utterly unknown and undreamed of
during the perpetual tribal wars and unspeakable
atrocities which preceded the coming of the white
men on the scene.
Great as the disparity formerly was between
the rulers and the ruled, with huge extensions of
territory it has now become greater still, notwith-
standing the increase of the white race during the
intervening period. Diamond diggings and gold
mines were not thought of in 1866, and trading
inland had to be done by waggons drawn by teams
of oxen over tracks which were roads only in name,
and streams without bridges. Roads, railways, and
bridges have since very much changed the situation in
favour of white men's rule, and it is undeniable that
wherever that rule is established in British South
Africa, the natives are now treated with all the
consideration which is consistent with the cause of
general order, and, besides being rescued from old
tribal wars and barbarous atrocities and customs, are
438 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
being taught the useful arts of peace and ideas of
social and moral duties, to which their ancestors
were total strangers. They do not wither away
through the change like American Red Indians, or
with difficulty keep on the edge of that withering
away like the Maories of New Zealand, who are
naturally superior to all of them except the Kaffir,
Basuto, and Zulu tribes that, like the whites, are
themselves incomers of a far-back era.
From the little I saw, and the much I have read
and heard, I believe the enduring source of pros-
perity for British South Africa is to be found in the
cultivation of the soil, and not in the gold mines
and diamond diggings. These act as magnets for
the time only, and by-and-by will get exhausted.
The culture potentialities of the land, on the other
hand, appear to be immense in extent, as well as
inexhaustible in quality. But this is a source of
prosperity which has scarcely yet been as much as
fairly tested. The heat is too great for white men's
field work in by far the larger part of the country.
White men can "boss," and their "bossing" will be
needed, but if the cultivable land is to be cultivated,
natives or Indians will have in many fertile districts
to be the field-workers. I have mentioned the
Indians, because of the controversies raised about
their admission to British Colonies, and because, I
think, in Uganda and the British part of the valley
of the Zambesi, wide tracts of land now practically
waste could be set apart for our Indian fellow-
subjects to colonise and cultivate like the very
similar plains of Bengal, for the same banking and
irrigation methods would be needed, and soil and
climate would be similar.
THE POSITION OF THE RULING RACE. 439
Half-a-century ago Boers and Britons were, as
they are yet after a big war between themselves,
the rulers of South Africa. The whites of various
nationalities who sought an Alsatia there were
nuisances to both ruling parties, and the ubiquitous
Jews who went in search of trade were far from
being welcomed by the Boers. There was, however,
one set of new white incomers who deserve special
notice. During the Crimean War, when Prussia
was playing into the hands of Russia and the
feeling of the Baltic German States was against
that policy the project of raising a German Legion
was advocated by Prince Albert and sanctioned by
the Government of the day. But when the Legion
was being mustered in London, the war came to an
end. The legionairies, without smelling gunpowder,
got the reward of warriors. They were offered
free grants in the land about Williamstown,
which had been taken from the Kaffirs, and a
free passage there with their wives and families,
while no similar offer was made to British veteran
soldiers. The Germans went and settled on their
African little farms, and setting themselves to work,
prospered, as they deserved. They were Protestants,
and readily fraternised with the Wesleyans and the
Dutch Reformed churchmen of the eastern provinces.
They took no part with the Boers in the late war,
but comported themselves as loyal British subjects.
440 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE BOERS.
I MENTION the Boers first because they were the
first white settlers. At the beginning say 1646
they were burghers gathered within the lines of
Cape Town to guard the important place of call for
the ships of the Dutch East India Company. It
was when they increased in number and spread out
over the neighbouring districts that they called
themselves "Boers" or "Farmers." As adventurous
farmers they had quarrels with Holland as they had
long subsequently, for less good reason I think, with
the British Government. The Dutch policy from
the beginning was to make colonial possessions
directly profitable to the Mother Country, or in
effect to deal with them as if they were private
estates of the United Provinces, and all the settlers
in them, white or coloured, were tenants at will.
To this day that policy in a modified manner is
carried out in regard to Java and Sumatra. Now
the Dutch burghers of Cape Town, when they got
beyond the lines and seized upon farms, with long
gun in one hand and Bible in the other, naturally
objected to being treated as tenants at will. So
there were frictions, and out of these evolved the
desire among the Boers to wander out further and
further so as to escape the yoke of the Mother
Country and the monopolistic restrictions of the
Dutch East India Company.
THE BOERS. 441
They came to South Africa full of bitter memories
of Alva and the Spanish Inquisition, and with the
stern Protestantism which had been steel-hardened
in the fires of religious persecution and in the
desperate struggle for national existence, which did
not end with the collapse of Spanish power after
the defeat of the Armada and the death of Philip.
Louis XIV. of France took up and renewed the
contest between Roman Catholicism and Protestant-
ism, which from the race point of view, was also a
death or life contest between Northern and Southern
Europe. England and Holland sheltered the fugi-
tives who escaped from the disgraceful and terrible
persecution which followed the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes by the French king. Holland sent
a batch of the refugees to the Cape, and there they
introduced the culture of the vine, and readily
amalgamated with the Dutch population, who had
the same creed and form of Church government as
themselves, and whose ancestors had gone tli rough
the same fiery furnace.
Amalgamation intensified the ultra-Protestantism
of Boers and Huguenots, and yet, when under the
Union Jack they enjoyed more security and better
rule than they had ever had before,, they thought
themselves ill-used. As the earliest white settlers
they looked upon themselves as the divine-right
inheritors of all the wild land which lay before them,
and their confident pioneer bands that went forth
to conquer new lands, spoke of continuing their
victorious march until they reached Jerusalem.
They entirely forgot that without the help of Queen
Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada by her
navy, the heroic struggle of the Dutch for faith and
country would have been in vain ; and that the
442 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
all-conquering and persecuting schemes of Louis
XIV. were brought to nought at Blenheim and
Ramillies by Marlborough, the greatest of English-
born generals, in whose complicated character the
extremes of greatness and meanness met and blended.
They refused to look at the fact that British rule
was founded on the double right of conquest and
purchase, and that Java had been surrendered after
having been justly taken possession of. Another
more important fact of which they lost sight was
that without having the British power at their back
they would be in peril of being overwhelmed by the
natives, and, if Britain withdrew, of seeing South
Africa seized by some more truculent and despotic
Power.
There were Boers and Boers, with a broad line
of distinction dividing them, and yet in affairs of
State and Church they all were a united body. The
people of Dutch, French, and mixed Franco-Dutch
descent in Cape Town and its adjoining districts
had before my time learned to speak English, and
took care that their children should be well educated.
Cape Colony in 1866 had two elective Houses of
Parliament. It was the transitional stage of repre-
sentative Government. Responsible Government
which enabled Parliament to change Ministries, and
gave the Legislative Assembly unlimited powers in
financial matters, had yet to come, and all the Boer
members were working to bring it about. They
felt it a grievance that the salaries of the higher
officials should be beyond their reach and review,
and that these officials should be appointed by the
Crown and mainly Englishmen, whom they accused
of putting on " side," and looking presumptuously
down on the numerically predominant and, in faith
THE BOERS. 443
and morals, the less faulty people. The Dutch who
possessed adequate knowledge of English and other
requisite qualifications received many minor, and
some of the higher, official appointments. There
were, for instance, three judges of the Supreme
Court, and of these one was an Englishman, one a
Scotchman, and one a Dutchman. The Attorney-
General was an Irishman, and the Colonial Secretary
was Mr Southey, a nephew of the poet's, and Sir
Philip Wodehouse was Governor and High Com-
missioner. Theoretically imperfect as it was, the
Governmental machinery in the hands of the high
officials appointed by the Crown was worked with
impartiality, efficiency, and cheapness. Responsible
Government brought with it ever - increasing
expenditure, with official spoils and political pre-
dominance for the foes of English rule.
The Church of Scotland and her offshoots have
the same organisation as the Dutch Reformed
Church. The Shorter Catechism and the Cate-
chism of the Synod of Dort are much alike in their
exposition of doctrines. Scotchmen, therefore, had
no difficulty in joining the Dutch Reformed Church,
while the Church of England put in the Colony the
foolish barrier of confirmation against outsiders
joining it. Because of religious community, Scotch-
men understood far better than Englishmen did the
real inwardness of Boer character and projects. The
Boers looked upon the intrusion of the Church of
England into their country as an aggravation of
their subjection to a foreign Power, and they were
irritated still more by the air of superiority the
intruding clergy had assumed. Lord Bishop of
Cape Town, Lord Bishop of Grahamstown, Lord
Bishop of Natal, aye, and Lord Bishop of the Free
444 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Orange State all lords in virtue of patents from
Queen Victoria very reverend deans, venerable
archdeacons, and so on ; how fiercely the Boers
resented all this brave show of superiority ! And
how they grinned when Bishop Colenso was deposed,
and his deposition was legally declared invalid ; and
how they mocked when the Bishop of the Free
Orange State fled from canonical trial, and when my
ship acquaintance, Dean Williams, kept the Bishop
of Grahamstown out of his cathedral ! Henry
Grey, Bishop of Cape Town, did the work of a man
of God in giving the South African Episcopal
Church a higher and nobler character than the one
with which the intrusion started. The Boers com-
pared their own ministers, educated at Edinburgh and
Leydon, very unfavourably with the first squads of
English Church ministers. There can be no question
about the fact that the ecclesiastical grievance
acted as a dividing factor from the first establish-
ment of British rule down to the late big war. In
gathering themselves up for that war, the Boers
indiscriminately used, or abused, Church organisa-
tion, nachtmaals, or communion gatherings, and
masonic lodges. They proved themselves as astute
in conspiring skill, as they were brave in fight, and
obstinately tenacious of their policy of separation
and independence.
I believed the Boers to be a genuinely religious
people, and that their family worship, church
attendance, and domestic life in the older settled
districts testified to that effect. Wherever they
trekked, they got ministers as soon as ever they
settled down. But in practice their religion had
crooks and corners. They had Scripture, they
thought, for making all coloured people as descen-
THE BOERS. 445
dants of Ham their servants or slaves. The only
slavery the law of the Colony ever recognised was that
of the Malays ; and out of their bondage the Malays
emerged with their religion unimpaired, and I think
I may add, with improved morals and civilised
habits. It was in the process of taking possession
of what they called waste lands that the Boers
committed the deeds which Dr Livingstone and
other missionaries so loudly and justly denounced ;
but when they took possession and established their
authority, the natives found them to be far less
oppressive masters than their former chiefs or
conquerors had been. The Boers are not by nature
a cruel or hard-hearted people. But they believed
that the slavery of the children of Ham was ordered
by divine decree, and their belief suited their per-
sonal interests. They hated British missionaries,
and abolitionists, and they had as their motto,
" Put out the light," when extending their conquests
or securing them. " Put out the light " meant to
keep missionaries, tale-bearing traders, and news-
paper men in ignorance about their actions. They
received compensation for the emancipation of their
legal Malay slaves, but the mode of payment,
unhappily adopted, added to their grievance. They
should have been paid in hard cash, instead of in
promises to pay, which many of them foolishly sold
for a small part of their value to cunning money
brokers before they had matured.
Beyond the neighbourhood of towns, the Boers
did little for the cultivation of the soil. They had,
indeed, in districts without markets and means of
transport, no inducements for raising more crops
than were needed on their separate farms. Soil
cultivation was more congenial to the vineyard
446 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
French immigrants than it was to the Boers, and
for a generation or two these growers of grapes and
producers of wines did not spread themselves far
away from Cape Town. The liking of the Boers
was for pastoral farming. Cattle, horses, sheep, and
goats they raised in huge numbers. A Boer's idea
of bliss was to have a grazing farm of such an area
that he could not see from his house the smoke of a
neighbouring Boer's chimney. He wanted to be
monarch of all he surveyed, and irresponsible lord of
the natives within his bounds ; and, as a rule, he
managed to be what he desired. As a rule, too, when
his earth -hunger was satisfied, and his authority was
established, he was a mild despot to his natives,
although he might scold them and crack his bamboo
whip at them like the tyrant he was not. In his
family he was father, priest, and as much of a king
as his good wife and his daughters allowed him to
be. When his sons grew up, and wished to be
married and settled, they went forth to acquire
farms of their own in the approved appropriating
fashion, and only one remained with the old folk.
In this manner, before and after the great treks
consequent on the abolition of slavery in Cape
Colony, the Boers spread themselves out widely, and
took possession of the land.
THE BEITONS. 447
CHAPTER LXIX.
THE BRITONS.
FROM its very beginning and all onwards British
rule strove to introduce and establish a better order
and more impartial justice than had existed in
South Africa before. But the many opportunities
which presented themselves, time after time, for
giving that rule a firm hold were almost always
thrown away, partly through the negligence or
shortsightedness of Governors and local officials, but
chiefly through the faults of the Imperial Govern-
ment and the ill-instructed humanitarianism of the
British people, which ended in producing the
inhumanity of wars and rebellions that in most
cases could have been easily evaded had British
colonisation been early resorted to and persistently
promoted. The Wesleyan colonisation of the Port
Elizabeth and Grahamston region showed what
should and could easily have been done. So did the
British sugar-planters and farmers of the sea-board
side of Natal. But what about the land taken from
the Kaffirs after they had attempted to kill or drive
all the whites of the Eastern Provinces into the
sea ? Free grants of land and free passages, with
other help, could be found for the warriors of the
German Legion, who had never seen the war for
which they were raised ; and they and their wives and
families were settled in more comfort than they had
ever enjoyed in their native land. Why then were
not the other half-million acres distributed in a
448 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
similar generous manner among British agricultural
colonists instead of being sold in big grazing farms ?
Besides being, as compared with the Boers inside
and outside the colonies, in the minority, the
Britons, in 1866, were badly distributed, being
mainly collected about the towns, and only in a few
places spread out as farmers. The people who are
rooted in the soil as owners and occupiers are the
real backbone in every land. British traders,
mechanics, and other urban classes were good
enough in their way where there were openings for
them, but they were not at all the sort of people
for amalgamating with and influencing the Boers so
as to bring the kindred white races into something
like the bonds of brotherhood, which, in the eye
of reason, their position among the natives so
emphatically recommended.
The great trekking bands of Boers, who, with
bag and baggage, went away in hot rage at the
abolition of slavery to attempt to take Natal, and
to successfully found the Orange and Transvaal
Republics, were allowed to go away without being
obliged to take the British flag with them. That
early fatal folly was even worse than the throwing
away of chances for promoting British agricultural
colonisation in Cape Colony and Natal. The new
backland Boer Republics hardened the hostility of
the colonial Boers to British rule, and when the
mineral wealth of the Transvaal came to supply
sinews of war to the empty Boer treasury, the
widespread anti - British conspiracy passed from
smaller aims to the grand one of making all South
Africa a Boer State, and driving the British into
the sea or the grave, and making the children
of Ham obediently serve their masterful white
brethren.
THE BRITONS. 449
All who did not shut their eyes to facts, and
cherished self-deception, understood perfectly well
in 1866 that revolt was in the minds of the Boers,
and that they were silently banded together, ecclesi-
astically, linguistically, socially, and politically, to
obtain minor aims meanwhile, and to wait patiently
for a great chance. There was, however, a section
of them that did not expect nor wish for a great
chance to be given to the would-be revolters. These
were the better educated men and women, who had
learned to speak English, and who intermarried
with British men and women. The Anglicised
Boers, like the generality of the Britons, little
foresaw that a time would come when the Imperial
Government should play into the hands of the anti-
British Boers, and with the gold of the Transvaal,
promote the scheme of conquest, which was so
daringly undertaken at the end of the century. In
1866, no British colonist or English-speaking Boer
thought it probable or in the least degree possible
that the Imperial Government would ever commit
the incredible blunders of unavenged Majuba, the
cancellation of the Shepstone annexation of the
Transvaal, and the infamy of the surrendering
Conventions.
Up to 1868, or a year or two later, the South
African Britons were confident their countrymen at
home would never, in any time of trial, leave them
unsupported. Before 1880 that trust was well
founded, although Downing Street now and then
blundered, and now and then by oversight and care-
lessness let affairs go wrong. One thing which
they thought went wrong was the Delagoa Bay
dispute with Portugal about the ownership of Dela-
goa Bay. They saw that the British Government,
29
450 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
in the case submitted by them to the arbitration
of Marshall MacMahon, was ridiculously imperfect,
and so weakly expressed, as to justify the French
President in giving the two sides of the Bay to
Portugal, although it was quite clear that one side
of it, by prior right of possession, belonged to the
British Empire. At the time of the arbitration the
future value of the then malarious region along the
Bay was not foreseen by either party, and Portugal
probably would have sold the whole for a very
moderate sum. Marshal MacMahon indeed, taking
the probability of sale in view, so far recognised the
right to one side of the Bay as to give our country
a right of pre-emption.
Trust in the firm backing of the Imperial Govern-
ment was restored by the Zulu war, in which the
Prince Imperial, Napoleon III.'s son, unfortunately,
lost his life. But that confidence was shaken by
the clamour raised by Nonconformist and Exeter
Hall humanitarians against Sir Bartle Frere, whose
bold policy was to bring all the wild unannexed
regions up to the Zambesi under the British flag,
leaving the two Boer Republics alone. It was a
propitious time for carrying out that project, and
had it been carried out, Dr Karl Peters and his
filibustering band would not have been allowed
to raise the German flag in Great Namaqualand
and Damaraland, when Lord Granville delayed
replying to Prince Bismarck's note of enquiry
until it was too late. German policy is exhibited
on the present day maps by the horn of their
south - west African colony, which they pushed
east-ward to the Zambesi ere Cecil Rhodes came on
the scene as a British Empire builder, when the
British flag was taken far north of the Zambesi.
THE BRITONS. 451
Past damages were then, as far as possible, redeemed,
and poor Sir Bartle Frere's policy was vindicated,
after his Nonconformist enemies had hunted him
into his grave. They tried the same persecuting
game with Governor Eyre for daring to save Jamaica
from negro rebels, but he was made of tougher stuff
than Sir Bartle Frere, and lived to enjoy his pension
for many years after his persecution.
As their treasury was empty, and as they were
in peril from a native revolt, which a first failure to
crush would make a general rising, the Transvaalers
peacefully acquiesced in the Shepstone annexation
of their country. The native rebels feared the
Power that had defeated Kaffirs and Zulus, and
their project of a general rising collapsed like a
castle of cards when the Union Jack was hoisted at
Pretoria. The annexation would assuredly have
been maintained, and there would have been no
Majuba, no surrendering Conventions, no inde-
fensible Jameson raid, and no costly or bloody war
between Boers and Britons, had the Conservatives
not been, in 1880, replaced by Liberals under the
inspired blundership of Mr Gladstone, whose great
qualities were marred by what seemed the gift of
some malicious fairy, unlimited in effect, to mislead
himself and others, which, whenever a craving for
heroic home legislation, or a mere desire for gaining
new supporters, beset him, he was easily tempted to
use, and think himself acting under divine command.
His first patriotic impulse was to wipe off the stain
on Britannia's war shield by avenging Majuba. An
army to do so was gathered in Africa, and then,
when all was ready, he suddenly changed his mind,
and declared it would be " blood guiltiness " to
employ that army for the purpose for which it had
452 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
been gathered. His pseudo-humanity disgraced his
country, and involved not only the surrendering
Conventions, but made the recent Boer war
inevitable. Foreigners believed that weakness and
not humanity inspired this misguided, whirl-about
policy. So did the Boers ; and for the first time
loyal colonists were driven to suspect that under a
Liberal Ministry in London there would be small
security for the Britains beyond the seas, and for
the integrity of the British Empire. Ever since
there has been mistrust of Liberal administration
among loyal colonists and subjects abroad, and
corresponding trust in getting chances for doing
mischief among foreign and domestic foes.
The political sky of South Africa is yet far from
clear, and is likely long to have some dark clouds on
it. But the storm clouds between the two white
peoples, that impended over the land from Majuba
to the end of the late war, have, I hope, dispersed,
never to return again. In the tough war-struggle,
Boers and Britons learned to appreciate each others'
good qualities better than they ever did before.
Mutual respect has grown out of that better under-
standing. The Boers of the two republics, and also
the Boers of some parts of the colonies, who did not
come much in contact with Britons of the higher
moral stamp, cherished many fond delusions about
the inferiority of the latter, which delusions the
war has dispersed to the four winds. The coming
of Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders
to the help of the Mother Country im-
pressed the Boers with the vastness of the
British Empire and the strength of the ties of
loyalty and common citizenship by which, although
as yet unorganised, the various parts of it are held
THE BRITONS. 453
together. They were at one time persuaded by the
encouragement given to them by noisy Irish dis-
loyalists that the United Kingdom itself was on
the eve of disintegration, and that self-governing
colonies were hastening to proclaim themselves
independent states. The German Kaiser flirted
with them, and the German press assured them that
the British Empire was in an advanced stage of
decay and slowly bleeding to death. They have
now gauged correctly the value of Irish encourage-
ment, and the motives of the German flirtation.
They know what is going on in German South-west
Africa, and the knowledge tends to make them
thankful, since their own project failed, to be under
the British flag, and citizens of an Empire which
girdles the world. For various reasons they lost
faith during the war in the light and leading of
office-seeking Hollanders of their own stock ; and
as for the Germans, Jews and Gentiles, who were
attracted by the mineral wealth of the Rand, and
who promoted companies and manipulated stocks
and shares and war contracts, they have no good
and much evil to say. The Britons with whom
they have been acquainted for a century, now that
fostered delusions are no longer tenable, have
risen so high in Boer estimation, that combination
with gradual amalgamation is quite possible ;
especially as all the backlands of Rhodesia are
under British rule.
The situation of the whites as a small ruling
oligarchy, spread out over an immense territory,
among an overwhelming number of coloured people,
is a compulsory cause for the political union of
Boers and Britons, who have before them a harder
task than our sentimental humanitarians appear to
454 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
be capable of understanding. Things are different
now from what they were in the early history of
colonisation, or even in the time of the treks, when
armed Boers could go boldly forward among tribes
who fought with clubs and assegais. By no law
and by no vigilance can the smuggling of fire-arms
among the natives be wholly prevented. The
French Protestant missionaries more than forty
years ago taught the Basutos how to make tolerably
good gunpowder. The materials necessary for its
production are abundant in most districts of Africa,
and the knowledge how to produce is dead sure to
pass from tribe to tribe and district to district.
But even without this home resource, the smuggling
of ammunition is a much easier thing than the
smuggling of rifles and revolvers.
CHAPTER LXX.
AFLOAT AGAIN.
ON leaving South Africa, our number was raised
from four to five by our second boy, born at Cape
Town. We had our choice between returning by a
sailing ship, or by a Union liner as we went out. I
preferred the sailing ship because I hoped the longer
voyage would be good for my health. The barque
" Chatham," Captain Thurtle, which had been doing
transport of troops work in India, was lying in the
bay repairing some damage it had suffered in a
storm off Cape Agulhas. I went on board to see
what kind of quarters we should have in it. It's
poop cabins were comfortable, and the stern one,
with two broad windows, which my wife and I were
AFLOAT AGAIN. 455
to have, was a nice square room in which a bed was
set up for my wife and the baby, while I slept on
the bulkhead under the two windows. My bed was
comfortable, except on stormy nights, when I was
liable, with blankets and mattress, to be thrown
out on the floor, which was only a foot below the
bulkhead. Having settled our few small affairs,
and sold our house furniture at a heavy loss, we
embarked, bag and baggage, when the captain
thought we would sail in two days, as his Admiralty
case concerning the damages suffered in the storm
was concluded. But he was deceived. Some hitch
occurred, and the decision was postponed for a fort-
night. We did not much grudge the delay ; for we
amused ourselves by fishing from the deck. It was
the high time for the mosquito nuisance on shore,
and the little plagues did not venture out on the
bay. I discovered that I could, while stretched on
my mattress reading a book, fish in a lazy way by
sending my lines out through the stern windows. I
had a pail beside me in which to throw the caught
fish, some of which were of the sardine kind, and
others of a much larger sort. The snook, a fish of
salmon size and shape, did not come often further
than the breakwater, where it was in shoals, but
stray specimens of the species paid us visits, and
escaped capture because we were not looking for
them.
We sailed at last, and in starting lost an anchor,
which loss the captain took quite philosophically,
although he was apt to lose his temper about trifles.
There were but two passengers besides ourselves >
Dr Burlinson, from Mauritius, and young Mr Scar-
borough from the Oliphant Eiver Valley, whose
stepfather had been striving to carry out a vast
456 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
scheme of agricultural improvement, and showing
the Boers what they might do if they took to soil
cultivation. He did not, unfortunately, reap the
reward he deserved, and the Boers stuck to their
old easy-going pastoral ways. We left Table Bay
in fair weather, but got into a rough gale before we
parted company with the sea birds, or lost sight of
the Lion's Head and Table Mountain. We scudded
before that gale for several days on our way to St
Helena, but did not suffer from sea sickness as we
would certainly have done in a steamer. Barring
loss of time and risks from storm, one enjoys the sea
far more in a sailing ship than in the most up-to-
date and luxurious liner, with its moving hotel
company.
On coming out on deck one morning, after a
rainy night, I saw that we were sailing close to the
rough, abrupt, and barren cliffs of St Helena, which
looked as sooty black as if they had in the long ago
been crowded stacks of chimneys for Vulcan's under-
ground furnaces. There is plenty of lava and scoriae
scattered about on the surface of St Helena, and
plenty evidence of extinct volcanoes, but the sooty
cliffs owe their forbidding colour to their own
basaltic substance. We passed one narrow valley
and then came to another, at the mouth of which is
Jamestown, the capital of the island. In front of it
is the roadstead, where, among the other shipping,
we cast anchor. The roadstead has good anchorage,
which is fortunate, for the island has no harbour,
and even here the landing on the stairs is not easy
when the Atlantic rollers are being driven by wind.
From the sea, St Helena has the appearance of
having been intended to be a towering mountain like
Ascension, and to having stopped in elevation at
AFLOAT AGAIN. 457
half the intended height, with a tableland top. I
would not think it, in my Highland walking years, a
long journey to go round its circumference of little
more than thirty miles in one sun-lit day.
Almost as soon as we anchored, the Governor
sent notice that the " Chatham " was wanted for
Government service, and must await orders. The
captain was delighted, and neither Dr Burlinson
nor we were sorry about the fortnight's stay. The
service required was to take home old artillery guns,
with shells, round shot, and chain-shot, old muskets,
and other obsolete military and naval accoutrements
which had been sent out when George the Third was
king. In the fortnight of detention we had ample
time for exploring the little island, with its hot,
tropical, narrow valleys, and its pleasant tableland.
Here plants and trees of temperate and hot countries
flourish well together. We happened to arrive at
the end of the early rain, and when vegetation was
reviving. The early St Helena rain comes in
January and February, and the late one in July or
August. I never saw a hay-stack at the Cape, but
on the tableland of St Helena there were not a few
of them, and the grazing fields were like English
ones. So were the homes of the farmers, and the
villas of the traders, who wanted to breathe cooler
air than they had in Jamestown. This island is,
notwithstanding its small size and its tropical
position between the African Coast and Brazil,
wonderfully well watered all the year round, thanks
to the rain clouds which so often visit and bedew it.
The steam era had already partly put an end to
St Helena's old importance as a place of call, but in
1867 it was a rendezvous for the Americans who
prosecuted the Antarctic whale fishing, and also for
458 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the squadron which watched the African Coast for
putting down the slave trade ; and it had then, and
for years afterwards, a small British garrison
to man its strong fortifications. Its resident popu-
lation were of many races and shades of colour, but
there was no mistake in this lone isle of the ocean
about British supremacy. Like all visitors to St
Helena, we went to see Napoleon's empty grave,
and Longwood, where he lived and died, the doctor
and captain on horseback, and my wife and I in a
small phaeton drawn by smart little ponies. How
refreshing it felt after the stifling heat of the
narrow valley to breathe the upland air and to look
out on the surrounding ocean and hear the thunder
of its huge waves dashing themselves high against
the black, barren, frowning cliffs ! Napoleon III.
was on the throne of France, and naturally cherished
the memory of his uncle. The Crimean war brought
him into close alliance with our country, and it
pleased him to be allowed to guard Longwood and
the empty tomb, whence years before Louis Philippe
had, to his own dynastic detriment, transported
Napoleon's body to Paris, " to repose on the banks
of the Seine among the people he had loved so
well." So we found Longwood and the valley, or
depression of the tomb, guarded as sacred by
courteous French soldiers.
The valley of the tomb was a lovely place to be
buried in. The willow under which Napoleon used,
when alive, to stop and meditate was close to the
tomb, and vigorously flourishing. Canary birds were
flitting among the samphire bushes, and we started
on our way a covey of partridges. Longwood has a
delightful situation. The house is very like many
residences of small farming proprietors or yeomen
AFLOAT AGAIN. 459
in England, comfortable, with good rooms, and of
no great size. The room in which Napoleon died
had been put back into precisely the same state in
which it was when he breathed his last there on the
5th of May, 1821. Longwood might well have
been an ideal residence for a modern philosopher, or
for a brotherhood of mediseval monks who cultivated
the fruitful soil and served future generations by
writing annals and transcribing precious ancient
manuscripts. To the restless greatest leader of
hosts the world had ever seen, Longwood was a
prison, and the whole island a cage against whose
bars the captured eagle was perpetually Happing its
wings, and tearing with beak and talons in impotent
rage. It was shabby on the part of the Allies to
refuse him the title of Emperor. Russia, Austria,
and France again under the Bourbons sent
representatives to St Helena to see to it that he
was kept by Britain in safe custody. Well was it
for the prisoner of Europe that he had not been
placed in the hands of any one of the other three
Powers, and that his captivity was in no worse
place than St Helena. But, excusably, he and
his devoted partisans were constantly plotting a
repetition of the escape from Elba, and Napoleon
personally got some amusement out of the nervous
anxiety in which he kept Governor Sir Hudson
Lowe. Could Napoleon have seen himself as after
ages see him, he would surely not have acted like a
lion changed into a cat, which tormented a caught
mouse by playing with it before dispatching it.
Before descending to Jamestown we dined the
four of us in the cool of the evening, in the Rose
and Crown Inn, which is at the top of the steep
ascent, and in the neatly kept lawn of which there
460 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
were camellias that grew to the size of small trees.
I have a camellia walking stick and a little twig
from Napoleon's tomb as St Helena memorials to
this day. A chief item of the well-cooked dinner
was the delicate fish called bullseye. St Helena is
well furnished with many kinds of fine, and less
good, eatable fish, and the names by which the
various sorts have got ticketed, such as bullseyes,
old wives, soldiers, five fingers, hogs-in -armour, are
even more curious than the fish themselves. The
large conger eels, so ugly to the eyes, are splendid
to eat. The rocks and stones in or on the edge of
the sea are covered with active black crabs which
scuttle out of sight when people approaches. Boys
in boats come out with ground bait to fish among
the shipping. Bonita, a fish nice to look at and
poor to eat, was a frequent capture of theirs. We
had aldermanic turtle soup on board the " Chatham"
one or more days. The fishermen had just caught
some turtles, one of which was excessively big,
which had floated in with a gale from Ascension,
and Captain Thurtle bethought him of giving us a
treat. He always kept a good board, but at St
Helena he was doing a profitable business, and was
extra liberal.
It happened, fortunately for Captain Thurtle,
that when he anchored in the roadstead, the islanders
had exhausted their supply of sugar, and that he
had Mauritian sugar, intended for England when he
bought it, to sell to them, and that, at the same
time, the St Helena Government had a cargo of old
war stores to give him for taking home. Sugar
went and the old war stores came in, and our " old
man" was in the best of humours. He, therefore,
made no objection to fit out and man one of his
AFLOAT AGAIN. 461
boats for conveying himself, the doctor, and me,
with a band of the island officials, for whom there
was no room in their own boat, on a fishing excur-
sion to guano rock-islets some nine miles away from
the anchorage. Provisions, solid and liquid, for
luncheon on the rocks were stowed in our boat, and
on the other boat likewise, yet when far on and
passing nearly away from the other corner of St
Helena, it was discovered that there was not a
frying-pan in either ; but, with difficulty, our sailors
managed to guide the boat through the surf near
enough for the revenue man stationed there to let a
frying-pan down upon us. On our return in the
evening the sea was calmer, and the frying-pan was
landed with less trouble than it had been embarked.
On approaching our destination, we saw a Scotch
vessel from Aberdeen, I think moored close to
the biggest rock of the group, and its crew busily
engaged in lading it with guano. The stuff they
gathered seemed too white and new to be of the
best quality, but had no doubt a good manurial
market value. Although the greater number of the
birds must then have been out at sea foraging for
their daily food, a screeching cloud of them fluttered
in a disturbed state about the rocks, in no thankful
mood of mind regarding the intruding humans who,
for their own ends, were scraping and cleaning their
polluted residence. We took our boats to a rock
which had been cleaned out previously, and round it
many sorts of fish were swimming, ready to swallow,
or suck any bait. We had fishing there to our
hearts' content. Our rock had a hollow in the
middle of it, and in this hollow our black cook and
his assistants built a fire, placed the borrowed
frying-pan over it on an improvised tripod, and
462 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
cooked to perfection, for our sumptuous luncheon, as
many as could be consumed of the fish freshly
landed. The heat was excessive, but we came
prepared for it, and also for the coolness that would
come with the evening breeze and the setting sun.
When we left the guano islets, we turned in to the
false bay or snip in the St Helena coast, where we
had to land the frying-pan. Here we had such a
catch of big conger-eels that we did not leave until
night closed in around us.
Anchored a little away from us on the Jamestown
roadstead was quite a large squadron of wooden
sailing vessels some small and some of large size
which had been condemned, and were in process of
being broken up, because of the way in which
strength and safety had been stealthily eaten out of
them by white ants. They were vessels which had
been employed in the trade of the West African
coast. I am not sure, yet I think I was told that
the white ants were not indigenous pests of St
Helena, but were imported there by the West Coast
trading ships. At anyrate they had got by 1867 a
strong hold on the capital of St Helena, and spread
beyond. On going to the public library one day, I
saw that both it and the other buildings near were
being gutted, because every bit of timber in them
had been hollowed and ruined by these wretched
pests, which conceal their ravages by hiding them-
selves in the heart of the beams or posts, or anything
else that is wooden, on which they prey, leaving the
outside untouched. In the gutted and re-roofed
buildings at Jamestown they were putting in iron
instead of the eaten-out wooden beams.
But I am lingering too long over the pleasant
time we stayed at St Helena. Let us now be off to
AFLOAT AGAIN. 463
England. After hoisting sail, and setting off, we
had a favouring breeze and quick passage to Ascen-
sion, the conical mountain island, which lifts its tall
bully's head to the sky, and has little more than its
turtle beds to recommend it. The scorched, dark-
gray, barren rocks of the base of this mighty hill
made it by contrast refreshing to think of Ben
Lawers covered with snow. But I was told that
the top of Ascension was pretty cool, and well
watered in the dry season by catching the passing
clouds, and that on it lived in peace and comfort a
small colony of pensioned naval and military
veterans, who raised crops and garden vegetables
and fruits. Ascension was placed under the British
flag, as an outpost to St Helena, the year before
Napoleon had been sent there. Although of small
area and small account, in the event of war, these
lonely islands might turn out to be possessions of
much value to the British Empire. At the Ascen-
sion sea birds, which were numerous and divided
into companies, we shot with ball from small bore
rifles. The many that were frightened suddenly
dived, while the two or three which were killed
floated away on the surface of the sea.
A favouring breeze sent us out of sight of
Ascension, at our highest rate of steed ten or
twelve knots an hour. When it deserted us, a few
days afterwards, we found ourselves becalmed in the
Doldrums, that space about the Equator where
there is a gap, sometimes wide, and sometimes
narrow, between the two trade-winds. It happened
to be wide when we fell into it, and was a perfect
trap for sailing vessels. We found one vessel held
up before us, and more came up as the detention
was prolonged, until we were seven, all so close
464 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
together, that a project of mutual visits and enter-
tainments was just about to be carried out when a
sudden breeze dispersed us as if by a magician's
wand. Water-spouts, porpoises, and flying fish are
in this equatorial, middle of the Atlantic region,
but we saw no birds but a few Mother Carey
chickens. It is certainly a lonesome place to be
held up in. Like " painted ships upon a painted
ocean," the seven were kept there for upwards of a
week, drifting a little forward and backward with
the turns of the tide, and always coming back to
their old positions. The rising of the sun out of the
sea in the morning, and its sinking into it at night,
was a grand sight. At noon, when it was right
overhead, it seemed small, and glittering down on us
like an evil eye. But under covering the heat was
not so excessive as it is occasionally felt in the
height of summer at Cape Town, because of the
effect on the city of the bare cliffs of Table Moun-
tain, which keeps its own head cool by the table-
cloth of morning mist.
When we left Table Bay I forthwith began to
write a story called " Uncle George." The plot
which I had in mind to begin with was never fully
developed but merely indicated, for the thing
became a gallery of character sketches mingled with
various speculations. The writing of it made the
time fly, and caused forgetfulness of the pain of my
knee, which, although never absent, was less on
board than it was on land, both before and after-
wards. Most of the story was written on deck, but
on stormy days I lay on my bulkhead bunk and
contentedly scribbled on. The only time when I
stopped was when the dead lights were on the stern
cabin windows. My scanty supply of what I called
AFLOAT AAIN. 465
civilised copy paper gave out long before the story
could be wound up, however abruptly, and the end
of it was written OH the backs of old ship papers
which the captain kindly rummaged out for me.
This story was first published in the South African
Magazine, a shilling monthly brought out by Mr
William Foster, M.P. for Namaqualand, who suc-
ceeded me as editor of the Standard. After
appearing in the magazine, it was brought out as a
separate volume of upwards of 600 octavo pages.
Mr Foster threw up a good commercial situation to
launch out in newspaper and literary undertakings,
in. which I think he might have succeeded if his
business methods had been more careful and his
views less sanguine. I got .46 out of the story.
Before I left Cape Town Mr Foster engaged me
to act on reaching England as a monthly home
correspondent of the Standard; which meant
that I should send out monthly a summary, with
comments, of British and Continental events, that
would form a sort of European supplement to
the Standard. I did so for years, until the
Standard was amalgamated with another Cape
newspaper. I liked Mr Foster very much, for he
was a cultured gentleman with high ideals, but
always disposed to expend money on things which
were more showy than profitable or absolutely
necessary. The Standard had a good circulation,
and made on the face of its books a good income.
But it cost, in days of mail cart and other slow
travelling, a big sum to collect accounts over the
whole colony. It was not a small item of expendi-
ture to keep a boat for boarding every ship tha,t
came into the bay, and to pay my friend the imaum,
for interpreting and reporting services connected
30
466 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
with Malay evidence in the Supreme Court. Mr
Foster, who was the son of King Leopold's steward
at Claremont, did not study the small economies,
and the consequence of this was that, after a gallant
fight, he ultimately came to financial grief, and his
paper passed into other hands.
Embroidery work kept my wife as fully employed
as I was with my scribbling. Mr Barry gave me a
goat at Cape Town which furnished our two children
and the cabin tea with milk. Kate milked the goat
twice a day, and she and, indeed, all the sailors had
to watch our elder boy, whose ambition was to climb
the poop deck, whence a roll of the ship would have
thrown him into the sea. One day he was lost
sight of. An alarm was raised, but the supposed
lost one came out of the captain's cabin with a
banana in his hand, quite unconscious of the com-
motion he had raised. Our Afrikander baby, who
was beginning to feel that feet were for standing
and walking, spent his days mainly in trying to pull
himself up to the brass capstan by the loose end of
its cable, and took all his falls, when the ship rolled,
like a small philosopher. But he made up for the
capstan's good behaviour by having a noisy fight
with his mother about being put to bed before
he felt inclined. The whole of us on board the
" Chatham " formed a fair approach to a happy
family. Captain Thurtle could, I believe, have been
as promptly energetic as Captain Kettle himself in
a dire emergency. He was of the old school of
skippers, while the mate, Mr Marsden, was of the
new. The cook was an Irishman, and the rest of
the crew were English, except three shipwrecked
foreigners who were working their passage home
from the Far East. One of them, Mr Lyons, was a
AFLOAT AGAIN. 467
quiet Dutchman, who acted as second mate, and
thought much about his wife and children in
Holland. The second was a small Breton French-
man of fiery mein and temper, whom the Dutchman
kept under stern control. The third was a big,
good-natured Dane, who always went about his
work with a smile on his face and top-boots on his
legs. He and his boots were so inseparable that
Dr Burlinson would wish us to believe that he slept
in them.
When we got out of the Doldrums, Captain
Thurtle had to mark our course on a new chart
section, and by a careless matching of the old with
the new section, about which he was afterwards very
angry with himself, he began his fresh markings on
a wrong degree of longitude. We, therefore, to the
captain's surprise and vexation, found ourselves, one
rather stormy morning, in the Sargasso Sea, sailing
among large and small heaving islands of weeds, by
which, as far as we could see, the water around us
was all covered. The channels between these islands
were often closing, and new ones were often opening,
so that it was impossible to keep the ship clear of
the clogging masses of mysterious weeds. A lunar
observation told us where we were, and then the
charts were overhauled and the cause of our wander-
ing into the Sargasso Sea was discovered. We had
rough weather among the weeds, and then such
calm weather that when we neared Flores, the
doctor and I persuaded the captain to call there and
let us have a run ashore, while he did trading with
the islanders. But an hour later, a high gale set in,
and before daylight the " Chatham" swept far past
Flores, and was going down into valleys, between
mountain waves, and rising like a duck out of what
488 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
looked like a pit of destruction. The storm was a
long continued one, and the ship was so strained
that pumping was never afterwards wholly neglected.
As we were swept past Flores in the dark by the
gale, which developed into a prolonged storm that
caused many vessels to be lost on the British,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts, we saw no
land between Ascension and the mouth of the
Channel ; and what we first saw there was not laud
but St Mary's lighthouse in the Scilly Isles. The
sea was still heaving with the after-swell of the
recent storm, and the little islands lay so low amidst
the high waves that the lighthouse appeared to
stand on the sea, and almost to be swaying like a
floating edifice. It was not quite dark when we
passed the Eddystone lighthouse, and got among
the crossing and passing-out and coming-in ships.
Further up the Channel we found ourselves in a
dead calm, and for three or four days could not get
out of sight of the Ventnor cliff and its flagstaff.
We sent letters ashore, and waited impatiently for a
breeze. At last it came, dispersed the fog, and one
wet morning we passed Dover and Margate, and ere
mid-day reached the mouth of the Thames, and cast
anchor at Sheerness. There I and mine landed, and
took train to London. But before leaving the old
" Chatham," for which we had contracted a sort of
home affection, the Captain gave us a parting
dinner, for which his last fattened goose had been
killed and cooked to perfection.
My father-in-law, Mr George Aspinall, one of the
kindest and best of the sons of men, met us in
London and took care of us all. His little namesake,
the Africkander boy, found his feet in Mrs Cordeau's
quiet hotel. A steady floor suited him better than
AFLOAT AGAIN. 469
the rolling deck and the capstan cable. Our elder
boy, John, three years, had become absurdly
nautical. He called the banks of deep railway
cuttings shores ; when we stopped at a station asked
where were the boats, and when taken upstairs to
be put to bed, called it going up-a-deck. We were
two or three days in London, and it \vas on one of
these days that a riotous mob pulled down the Hyde
Park railings. My troublesome knee swelled for the
first time when we were becalmed in the Channel.
I could still walk, and perhaps I walked about more
than was good for me in London. At anyrate there
was no doubt about its having got worse then, and
of my being nearly disabled for walking when we
reached Bradford, and were welcomed and sheltered
by my wife's father and mother. In my journey
through life I have met with kindness from all sorts
of people, but theirs exceeded all, and it was heartily
shown in time of need, when I was more helpless
than I had ever been before, or ever have been since.
Little did I think in that time of trial that I should
live to eighty years and upwards, and do my full
man's share of work in the journalistic vocation, into
which I had happened to drift.
470 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXXI.
BEEAKDOWN.
ON landing in England on May, 1867, the knee
trouble which was acute before we left Cape Town,
and seemed to subside on the voyage, changed its
character, and slowly and painfully worked up to
a crisis, out of which I emerged as a cripple for the
rest of my days. I never was very robust, but my
constitution was tough enough to struggle with the
flaw in it, and finally to, in a manner, surmount it.
For eighteen months I was next thing to being laid
on my back. We were most of that time with my
wife's parents in Bradford. From a visit to Burton
I returned in a worse plight than when I went. In
August and September I took my wife with me to
the Highlands, and we stayed among our hospitable
friends there for a month or longer. That did me
no good, and recollections of what I went through
during the ensuing winter is like the ghost of a bad
nightmare. In the summer of 1868 I found myself
so much better, that having got house-room from
my uncle, who then had the farm of Laurick, on
Loch Vennacher's side the mustering place of the
Clan Gregor in the "Lady of the Lake " we all,
wife, self, the two boys, and Kate, went there and
stayed there for a couple of months. That was a
happy time for us. Throughout the whole illness, I
regularly wrote my despatches for the Cape, and
also leaders for my old Bradford paper. My general
health remained satisfactory all through, and the
BREAKDOWN. 471
pain in the limb stimulated rather than diminished
mental activity. Reading and writing were a solace,
and these and native air helped to make me sleep
soundly at Laurick, a blessing which was made more
enjoyable by contrast with the insomnia from which
I had previously been often suffering, and which at
one time became so severe, that Dr Goyder, whose
patient I was when in Bradford, brought me a
sleeping draught, which I was unwilling to take,
because having seen the effect of opium on people
who indulged in it, in South Africa, I hated to
resort to it. I told him to put the phial on the
mantelpiece, and that perchance looking at it would
suffice, as I had been without a wink of sleep for
two or three successive nights. The looking or
wearying out did the business ; and now, as an
octogenarian, I am able to say that I have never
taken a narcotic drug.
Ere this severe breakdown, I had, ever since I
entered into my teens, earned, like Longfellow's
blacksmith, my night's repose by daily work of some
kind, and like him, could look the whole world in the
face as I owed not anyone, except in the mutual
good-will and interchange of affections, which are
the hoops of society. Unambitious, somewhat
dreamy, and a lover of nature and books, I was still
a diligent worker, and felt contented with, and
proud, too, of my position of small independence.
I knew I could in half a dozen ways earn my living
before the breakdown, but was so deficient in what
is called push, that every change in my vocation
was brought about, not by myself, but by the
spontaneous action of other people. But it remained
for the teaching of adversity to confirm my faith in
the innate goodness of human nature. We my
472 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
dear wife and I in our period of trouble and trial,
were not only lapped round by the lovingkindness
of kith and kin, but likewise solaced by the sym-
pathies of many with whom we had no such ties,
and not, in some instances, any previous intimacy.
As already mentioned, most of the medical men of
the district were either born Scotchmen, or men who
had got their professional training in Edinburgh
University, when its fame as a medical school had
reached its highest. Many of them in my time of
wo^st trials were as good to me as if I had been a
forlorn and shipwrecked brother with an imperative
claim on their attention and help. To one of them,
my dear friend, the late Doctor William Dobie,
Keighley, I and mine fell tinder obligations for
which endless gratitude was the only repayment.
During ten years l)r Dobie and his assistants did all
the medical work myself and family required for
nothing at all ; and besides, he and his wife were
our dearest and closest private friends in the
Keighley district.
Dr Dobie, born at Langham, where his father
was a United Presbyterian minister, represented the
Borders, as I and Dr Angus Cameron from Rannoch,
and Dr Jack from Ross-shire, did the Highlands.
Dr Murray, soon afterwards of York, and Dr Arthur,
from near Stirling, belonged to the Lowland Mid-
lands, and were, as their surnames showed, of far
away Celtic descent. Dr Rabaghliati's father, in
the days of the Austrian domination of Lombardy,
came to Scotland as a political exile, and taught
modern languages in Edinburgh. He married a
Rannoch wife, and so their only child was half a
Highlander by birth, and more than half by
sympathies. When the Austrians were expelled
AT THWAITES HOUSE. 473
from Lombardy, the confiscated property of the
Rabaghliaties was restored, and our friend " Rab"
got his share of it. He married the daughter of
Mr Duncan M'Laren, for a long time M.P. for
Edinburgh, and of his second wife, Priscilla
Bright, sister of Mr John Bright. We had good
friends among the English medicals outside this
Scotch company. When Scotchmen cross the
Tweed, or go out into the colonies and all parts of
the world, they forget home distinctions of High-
landers and Lowlanders, remember their Caledonian
brotherhood, and draw up shoulder to shoulder, not
for offence or aggressiveness, but for mutual social
intercourse and help, and the cultivation of Scotch
memories and sympathies, worthy of preservation.
In England, Scotchmen are very much at home, and
mingle easily enough into the English people among
whom they reside.
CHAPTER LXXII.
AT THWAITES HOUSE.
As already indicated, I was far from being out of
work during the breakdown period, when I had to
lie most of my time on my back, for besides the
monthly budget for the Cape, I wrote many leading
articles and reviews of books for other papers. I
chose my own subjects, and wrote as I honestly
thought on those subjects. Before I went to South
Africa I was by habit and conviction what I may
call a Palmerstonian Whig. So, at the time of my
editorial connection with it, was the Bradford
Observer, and its proprietor, Mr William Byles.
474 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
There was only one subject on which he and I
agreed to differ, and that was the aggressive policy
of Mr Edward Miall and the Liberation Society
towards the Established Churches of England and
Scotland. Dissenters, I knew, had grievances which
ought to be redressed, and were by degrees being
redressed, in rural districts where squire and parson
looked upon themselves as monarchs of all they
surveyed, but Mr Byles, who belonged to the old
class of religious Dissenters, was ready enough to
admit that the two National Established Churches
had done, and were doing work which, if they were
levelled down, Voluntaryism could not undertake to
do, and he did not deny that their work and
historical continuity were the backbone of Protestant
strength not only at home but in the United States,
where there was no Established Church. On this
one subject I never wrote in his paper, nor did he
want me to do so. The truly religious Dissenters of
his generation and training did not realise how
among the younger generation political dissent was
already eating out the heart of puritanic belief,
although happily to a large extent the old standard
of morality was still upheld. Mr Byles, with his
long business experience, was far less sanguine than
I that co-operation and limited liability would go far
to solve the capital and labour difficulty. Co-opera-
tion stores, with their assured customers and ready
money payments, under ordinary good management,
cannot help being comparatively successful. But
co-operation mills and other works have not stood
the test of many fair trials. Individual manage-
ment in competent hands must always beat collective
management, however careful and free from the
corruption of secret commissions and scandals such
AT THWAITES HOUSE.
475
as those of Poplar, West Ham, and Mile End. I
always valued the colonies and dependencies as the
Greater Britain there was to be, and always resented
the tone adopted towards them by Messrs Cobden
and Bright, and all their Manchester School fol-
lowers. I came back from the Cape a stronger
Imperialist than when I went there, and with new
doubts about the abiding value of the free import
policy which we glorified by calling it free trade
when it never got to be anything of the kind.
A political era closed with the death of Lord
Palmerston and the going to the House of Lords of
old Lord John Russell. The leaders who came
after them, Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone, had
began public life, the former as a flashy, philosophical
Radical, and the latter as a High Church Anglican
Tory. After Mr Disraeli's democratic Reform Bill,
establishing household suffrage in boroughs, and ten
pound suffrage in the counties, and Mr Gladstone's
disestablishment of the Irish Church, the old desig-
nation of parties as Whigs and Tories lost their
meaning ; and the new ones of Liberals and Con-
servatives became more appropriate. As for the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, the only thing
I deeply regretted myself was that the confiscated
ecclesiastical funds were not retained and pro-
portionately shared among Catholic parish priests
and Protestant ministers of all denominations for
permanent . endowment purposes as far as they
would go. The Protestant Episcopal Church of
Ireland was in very truth " A garrison church,"
which represented English domination, and a
half conquest, which was much more irritating and
ten times less beneficial than a settlement on com-
plete conquest might have been. 1 had read all Mr
476 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Disraeli's published works, and while fully aware of
the genius displayed in them, I did not like their
foreign-like glitter, superlatives, and class and caste
limitations in regard to his subjects and the way he
treated them. But on questions of foreign and
colonial policy his views seemed always to be as far-
seeing and truly patriotic as those of Mr Gladstone
were hazy and unreliable. It was after the time I
am writing about that Mr Gladstone took to having
special revelations like Mahomet, which suited
personal and party interests. When he disestab-
lished the Irish Church, he was yet far enough from
Irish Home Rule, and from the passionate claptrap
of the Bulgarian atrocity agitation. He had, with
wonderful gifts of oratory and financial talents, the
singular faculty of persuading himself as well as
others that on every occasion of his making a new
departure in politics he was acting on the highest
motives, as if he had a revelation and order from
heaven. No one could listen to his glowing oratory
without being to some degree mesmerised, but when
his speeches, with their bursting sentences so
troublesome to reporters were read in print, the
mesmerism of tone and personality disappeared, and
one wondered how the sought-for impression could
have been produced at the public meeting or in the
House of Commons by a flow of words, which were
in sense frequently elusive, however imposing in
form. 1 think I must admit that I got an early
prejudice against Mr Gladstone, because he was the
only House of Commons member of Sir Robert Peel's
Government in 1842-3 who understood the dispute
which ended in the Disruption, and who, instead of
doing all he could to prevent the catastrophe, joined
with Manning and others in setting up the Glen-
AT THWAITES HOUSE. 477
almond College, for Anglicanising the sons of the
Scotch nobility and gentry.
On returning from South Africa, I found myself,
like many more of the Ne quid nimis Palmerstonian
Whigs, out of sympathy and general agreement with
the new Liberalism, and filled with distrust of Mr
Gladstone's tendency to heroically plunge into all
sorts of domestic policy innovations, and of his
capacity for blundering in foreign affairs, and for
neglecting the colonies and British Empire con-
solidation. So henceforward I was, like others of
my kind, ranked as a Conservative, and as the years
passed got accustomed in words and writings to
express my fears and ever increasing convictions of
the dangers ahead, with Highland forcibleness of
language. I lost, no doubt, professional chances by
refusing to float with the current of Gladstonian
Liberalism, but I lost none of my old friends, not-
withstanding political separation at the parting
of the ways, and in after years not a few of them
were driven by Mr Gladstone's Home Rule plunge
to join the ranks of the Unionists. This is all
preliminary to what I have to say about our eleven
years' residence at Thwaites House, within a mile of
Keighley, but by a small field's breadth inside the
parish of Bingley.
I returned from the Highlands on the second
visit with health so much improved that we forth-
with began to look out for a house in the country,
where we should for the third time since our marriage
set up our penates. Ere long we heard of Thwaites
House. My wife and her mother went to see it,
and their report was so favourable that I took it
without having first visited it. I was delighted
with it when I did see it. It had been built in
478 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
succession to an older homestead by one of a line of
Rishworth proprietors about 1780. The houses then
put up, like this one, were built to last as it were
for ever. The fold of farm buildings claimed a much
higher antiquity than the homestead, which con-
sisted of a broader main building and a narrower
kitchen end, with plenty room for the farmer, Mr
William Wilkinson, and his wife, and the wife's
father, who resided with them until his death, a few
years later. The Wilkinsons had no family, and
when the wife died the husband's niece came to
keep house for him. Worthy, hard-working, and
excellent neighbours they all were. With the
exception of one upstairs room, we had all the main
building five rooms, two of which were very large,
with a kitchen, cellar, and broad staircase. Our front
door and the face of the whole house faced the mid-
day sun, while the door of the farmer's part of the
building was at the other side. When there was
level ground so near, it was a strange fancy of the
old proprietors to have stuck in their homestead at
the foot of a steep grassy brae, over which the larks
delighted to sing like mad, while they rose and fell
in the air as if dancing to their own music. The
farmer had the better and more level half of the old
garden, our part being an intake from the steep
hillside. But it was enough for our needs, and,
besides vegetables for the pot, and salad stuffs,
produced plums, apples, gooseberries, rasps, and
strawberries. I was always fond of gardening, and
it did me good to spend spare hours in fighting this
unlevel piece of ground. The house roofs were covered,
not by slates, but by Yorkshire grit flags, as was
the case with most of the old buildings of the whole
district. A later Rishworth built, some time in the
AT THWA.ITES HOUSE.
479
early half of last century, three cottages at the end
of the homestead, with their fronts and doors facing
away from the mid-day sun. Slate, I believe, was
not much known, or at anyrate much used, before
the making of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. In
the fifties or early sixties, the Rishworths sold
their Thwaites House property, and went to Tuam,
in Galway, where they established themselves as
manufacturers. Their history was like that of many
others of the old class of small landowners who were
tempted to sell in order to launch out in new careers,
or to divide capital among a numerous family of
children. The area of the Thwaites House property
was just enough for a snug farm, which, before the
arable and level part was sold and cut off' for the
Keighley Gasworks, Mr Wilkinson and his wife,
with a servant man's aid in spring and autumn, were
able to manage very well.
We went to Thwaites House with two children,
the boys we brought back with us from Africa.
We left it with a family of nine, and two more were
born to us at Inverness.
Between Keighley and Bingley, on the Thwaites
or west side of the Aire, the scenery is exceedingly
pretty, being varied by low fields, and some boggy
still lower nooks, where willows for basket-work
were profitably cultivated an industry which
ought to be introduced into many places in the
Highlands, which are undoubtedly suitable for
willow cultivation. Besides Bingley wood, trees
and hedges abounded everywhere. By rising
abruptly from the plain, the upper grazings, with
their trees, bushes, and hedges, made a successful
attempt to produce the impression of being rather
lofty, or at least very picturesque hills. But when
480 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
we climbed the abrupt little hill above our house,
so beloved of larks, starlings, and other birds, we
came to a fairly level farm, above which rose the
higher small and romantic rocky hill which had at
some unknown date acquired the name of the Druid
altar. Rights-of-way, by roads and footpaths, had
been carefully preserved, throughout all the varia-
tions brought about by encroachments of towns and
changes of industrial and social life. So there was
free access to a lovely scenery, rich in flower and
fauna, where the air was pure, and smoky towns
and polluted streams could be forgotten. On the
east or Rumbold Moor side of the river, the scene
was less varied, and the much higher hill was less
interesting until the heather was reached and the
open lower slopes, with ancient halls, were lost
sight of.
While we could fancy ourselves out of the world
in this rural retreat, we were yet in it, not only
because of my work for various newspapers, but
likewise because we had many callers, such as
friends and acquaintances of various classes,
politicians, and clergymen of different Churches,
Episcopalians, Nonconformists, and my good friend
Father Kiernan from Tipperary, whose Gaelic, to
his huge regret, had in the days of his youth
been neglected. Political opponents liked to have
arguments with me. Among these was Mr
Moggridge, who succeeded me as editor of the
Observer, and flung himself conscientiously into
the Radicalism from which I had determinedly
revolted. Mr Moggridge was the son and heir
of a Welsh landowner. While at the University
he had fallen under the influence of John Stuart
Mill's economical theories, Herbert Spencer's
AT THWAITES HOUSE. 481
metaphysics, and Goldwin Smith's shallow
political philosophy. He made sacrifices for his
opinions. He had studied for being a clergyman
of the Church of England, and drifting into
Agnosticism, renounced his church connection and sure
prospects of promotion, disappointed his father and
relatives, flung himself into journalism, and married
a nice lady of the fair Saxon type, who was the
niece of the enemy of grouse and game Mr Peter
Taylor, for a long time the Radical M.P. for
Blackburn, but who drew the line at Irish Home
Rule, and died a firm Unionist. Mr Moggridge
himself was a dark Welshman, and so was their
daughter the brightest, sylph-like, of young lassies
that could be found, while their boy was like the
mother. Mr Moggridge and I had many discussions
on the evolution theory and kindred subjects. He
admitted it was not at that time fully proved, but
believed that it was wholly true, and expected that
the missing links would soon be found. I admitted
that for generalisation and classification purposes it
might have its usefulness, but contended that, rightly
defined, the distinction of species was on this planet,
as far as men knew or could know, immutable and
eternal, and that the history of hybrids in plants
and animals sustained my contention. We both
realised the far-reaching consequences of the evolu-
tion doctrine if accepted for proved truth. Mr
Moggridge, I always felt, could not find rest all
his life in the cold atmosphere of Agnosticism. He
was too fond of Homer, Plato, and even the
Arthurian stories, and naturally too religious for
becoming rooted in his thin unbeliefs. High aspira-
tions and ideals connected him too closely, despite
reasoning and will, with the soul side of the universe
21
482 BEMINTSCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
to be satisfied with the materialism, which science
can only dissect like a dead corpse, leaving the soul
side alone. It would not have been impossible
for him, I thought, to find, when averted from
Christianity, something to suit his imagination in
Buddhism or the creed of Pythagoras, but I deemed
it far more likely that he would rather, when he
revolted from materialism and found out that human
nature was, for good and evil, not what he had
dreamed of, like Cardinal Newman, put himself
under the authority and discipline of the Church of
Rome. But he contented himself with return to the
Church of England. He left Bradford several years
before we left Thwaites House. I missed his visits
many a day, but as I always disliked to keep up
correspondence by letters with friends as much as I
liked to talk with them face to face, I lost sight of
him for a long time. It was a good while after we
came to Inverness that I was one day startled by
reading in an Aberdeen or Elgin paper news of his
death on the Moray Firth coast, where he had been
in charge of an Episcopal Church and congregation.
Had I known sooner that he was there, I would
certainly have gone to see him, and to invite him
and his to come and see me and mine at Inverness.
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 483
CHAPTER LXXIII.
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS.
THE gate which opened on the highway was a short
distance up above a small portion of field separating
the parishes of Bingley and Keighley. But small
as the distance was this access was only used for
wheeled vehicles and horses and cattle. A footpath
led straight to a stile in the boundary wall, and
then through a little field, and another stile into
Thwaites village. From the village to Keighley the
way of foot passengers was, on crossing the Midland
Railway a few yards below the village, by a long
" snicket," or narrow path between the railway wall
and the well-kept hedge above the lawns of the
String Close mansion which had not many years
before been erected by a Keighley manufacturer.
These little matters are mentioned to show how
jealously old rights-of-way were preserved amidst
all the changes, and how England is super-abundantly
provided with short cut footpaths, besides the public
roads.
The village had a shop, an inn, called the Shoulder
of Mutton, and a carpenter's workshop, but it lived
in pure air outside the region of smoke and clatter
of machinery, as it had no manufacturing mill or
ironworks. The villagers were as good-living, hard-
working, and honest a set of people as could be found
anywhere. Religiously they appeared to be mostly
divided between the Church of England and the
Wesleyans. Their girls worked in the mills and
484 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
shops of Keighley, and their men were artisans or
workers in mills, ironworks, or trading firms, except
the few who were employed in farm and garden
work. I daresay a liberal amount of beer was
imbibed by the major part of the male population
at their gatherings in the Shoulder of Mutton, but,
if so, they managed their drinking with such dis-
cretion as to give their neighbours no offence and
the police no trouble. I was only once inside the
Shoulder of Mutton, and that was when I was
summoned to a coroner's jury that had to sit on the
body of a poor boy, who was killed on the crossing,
by trying, against warning, to rush a coming train
within sight of him. The inn was, for a village, one
of a superior sort, and a well managed one also.
Good management was made easy by the habitually
good conduct of the village frequenters. The inn-
keeper's trouble, however, occasionally was apt to
come on holidays, when hundreds, or it might, in
fine weather, be thousands of the town young men
arid women came out to the woods, fields, and Druid
Altar, and on their return, full of joyousness, stopped
to refresh at the Shoulder of Mutton, and created a
bit of stir and noise there.
I am tempted to diverge here for the purpose
of referring briefly, and in no chronological order,
to two incidents which flash on my mind with
compelling vividness. The first of these was the
wind-storm of December, 1879, in which the Tay
Bridge went down, and the second the trip of my
wife and myself to the Isle of Man. The storm
was sweeping over our district through the whole
afternoon, but in was in the night that, with
every successive gust, it gathered its thunderous
destructive forces. My wife, with the then baby
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 485
and younger children, was on a visit to her people
in Bradford, and I lingered an hour or two after
the boys and Kate had gone to their respective
bedrooms over some writing I had to do. When I
did go to the big bedroom, and laid down to sleep
alone, the thundering gale made sleep impossible.
The feeling I had was not fear of it, but a sort of
mad desire to be out in the midst of its wild
turmoil. Raging winds and raging waters have
always excited me in this way. Well, I listened
and did not sleep, and some of the slabs which
covered the roof, when the storm reached its
highest force, rattled down with a despairing noise
of their own, heard weirdly through the roars of the
tempest. Solidly as it was built, the old house
shook, but whatever damage the roof might sustain,
I was sure it would outstand the fiercest wind-
storm ever heard of in the British Isles. Besides
the strong outer walls, there was an inner wall of
such thick dimensions that the door entrance of it
was like a culvert. The one end of the solid oak
beams, which in the rooms below and above stairs
supported the ceilings, rested on this thick interior
wall, and their other end upon the house walls.
The roof was of a similarly strong construction, and
the chimney-stacks would have outlived a Skerry-
more ocean blast. Sure enough next morning, in
the fairyland calm succeeding the violent tempest,
Thwaites House stood up stieve and stern, and
barring the slabs which had rattled down from its
roof with such uncanny noise in the night, alto-
gether undamaged. But round about us a deal of
damage had been done to buildings, and many fine
trees had been blown down. Still, as I found later
on when I made a flying visit to Glenlyon, the
486 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Highland woods had suffered much worse than ours.
It saddened rne to see so many of the magnificent
beech trees planted about 1710 by Stewart of
Ballied, the maternal grandfather of James Menzies
of Culdares, uprooted, smashed, and huddled, as if
by the hands of furious giants, on the top of one
another, and fir trees, larch trees, and oak trees
and birches prostrate in all the Glen woods. In
Upper Airedale we escaped the worst wind-storm
damage which ravaged the woods of Atholl and other
parts of Scotland.
My wife and I remember with pleasure the trip to
the Isle of Man, which was to us both like a
romantic elopement and a new honeymoon. After
we settled down at Thwaites House, we were
seldom free to go out together, unless on a day
excursion to Morecombe, Blackpool, or to visit the
Leeds Exhibition, or to witness some Bradford great
function. Since the enjoyable and, to me, recupera-
tive sojourn at Loch Vennachar-side, we never had
any real outing together until we went to the Isle
of Man in the summer of a year I do not presently
remember. I always, indeed, had an annual sort of
holiday ; but when I made a run to the Highlands
my wife could not leave the children to go with me.
That was a great drawback, and there was this other
one in addition to it, that some of my work was sure
to follow me, and make me feel as if at every step I
dragged a lengthened chain. The writing of articles
which at home would have been always easy, and
frequently pleasurable work, was in the outing time
forced labour and penal servitude. I hated to write
letters, and hated to see newspapers. Even on a
rainy day I could not sit comfortably in a house to
read a book, however entertaining. Now our trip
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 487
to the Isle of Man was made ten times more enjoy-
able to us by perfect security against wbat was, to
me, such a source of irritation in both apprehension
and fact, that the bad temper it invariably en-
gendered would spoil my wife's pleasure as well as
my own. Mrs Aspinall, my wife's always helpful
arid kind-hearted mother, undertook, with Kate, to
rule our house and children when we were away.
So we quietly slipped away without leaving an
address, got to Barrow-in-Furness, which then was
rising into great importance, thanks to iron ore, and
the liberal and enterprising help of the Duke of
Devonshire. A few years before our visit Barrow had
been a small old-fashioned seaside place of ao account
whatever, but it has now grown into one of the most
important towns in the North of England. At
Barrow we embarked in the small steamer which
was then plying between Barrow and Douglas in
the Isle of Man. When we embarked the sea was
lively and the wind was rising. I expected to be
seasick, especially if I saw any of the children and
women on deck first giving way. My former
experience was that I was very imitative, and had
to pay a tribute to Neptune before having much
pleasure on his watery domain. After that entrance
tribute was paid, I found sea life very happy, but
more so in a sailing ship than in a floating hotel
steamer. I withdrew down stair, and was settling
myself among coils of ropes, when my wife came and
persuaded me to go up again upon deck. She was
confident she was not to be sick herself, and I am
not sure she did not, in a soft way, accuse me of
nervous fancifulness and what amounted to moral
cowardice. Ere the Barrow coast looked like a dim
dark line, the breeze hardened into a half gale, and
488 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
there were several cases of seasickness on board.
But the sight of the afflicted did not affect me in
the least, nor did the heaving sea, nor the plunging
boat, nor its smoke, nor its smell of oil. On the
other hand, my wife was not so fortunate. She had
slightly to give way just when we were within a few
miles of our destination, and just when I was ex-
patiating to her, with glowing enthusiasm, on the
picturesqueness of Douglas Bay and its neighbouring
coasts.
Douglas is splendidly situated in irregular
crescent form on rising ground round its beautiful
bay. Its name is pure Gaelic, and has the same
" dark-grey " meaning as the surname of our famous
Gallowegian Douglases, who played such prominent
and diverse parts in the history of Scotland. Like
Barrow, Douglas is a,n upstart of recent date, but
nearly a century older than the former. When the
Duke of Atholl built Castle Mona to be his palatial
residence as Lord of Man the kinship having before
then been sold under compulsion, on what now
seems inadequate price, to the British Crown I was
told that Douglas was nothing more than a small
collection of thatched houses, inhabited by fisher-
men, smugglers, and crofters. The Duke, who was
the last Lord of Man, is called in Atholl " John the
Planter," and the woods of Atholl are his
lasting memorial. He has left the marks of his
taste, tree-planting passion, and rather reckless
expenditure on the Isle of Man likewise. Castle
Mona, with spacious, well laid- out, and finely wooded
grounds, was devoted to grand hotel purposes, at
the time of our visit to the island. Very likely his
costly planting of the hills of Atholl which could
only be profitable to his successors his building of
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 489
Castle Mona, and the fine Bridge of Dunkeld, and
other various undertakings, had run him into
financial difficulties, but without these, I believe, it
would have been necessary for the Crown, in the
reign of George IV., to buy him out under com-
pulsion, since otherwise the revenue could not be
protected from the extensive smuggling of the
Manxmen. Before the royalty was bought up,
debtors and outlaws from England, Scotland, and
Ireland sought, and, in spite of the " Kings in Man,"
whether Stanley or Murray, found asylum in the
island. It was during the long war with France
that the smuggling of the Manxmen, supported as
it was by British and foreign capitalists arid blockade-
runners, assumed intolerable dimensions, which could
only be effectively dealt with by gathering all
powers into the hands of the British Government.
I could not help feeling sorry that the Atholl family
had to part first with the royalty and afterwards
with all their feudal, patronial, and territorial rights
in the Isle of Man, but it was at the same time clear
that only the British Government could put down
the evils which urgently called for drastic repression.
The Atholl regime in Man made a real and recent
connection between that island and the Perthshire
Highlands. When I was schoolmaster of Fortingall,
we had living among us John Macgregor, the piper
of Duke John the Planter, who had come back after
his master's death to end his days, which were pro-
longed in the place of his nativity. John was one
of the sept of musicians and lorists, or seanachies,
who were called Clann an Sgeulaiche children of
the story-teller or reciter. John, who could play
on many instruments, and had carried off chief
prizes of musical contests held at the Tinwald and
490 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
elsewhere, was full of Manx music, songs, and
legends. In his time steamers had not yet begun to
bring in hosts of visitors from England, Ireland, and
Scotland. Douglas had not grown into a reception
place and settlement for " foreigners." The natives
all over the island spoke their native Gaelic dialect,
into which the Bible had been translated and
phonetically printed for them, and which was
preached to them in their places of worship, both
by their Church of England clergy and by their
Methodist rivals. I gathered that John had no
difficulty in understanding and speaking Manx
Gaelic. And, indeed, there was no reason that he
should, for it was, as far as the vocabulary and
grammatical construction were concerned, the twin
or "lath-bhreac" of his own Fortingall Gaelic,
although the pronunciation differed pretty widely.
In the interval of thirty years between John's fare-
well to Man and my visit to it, a great change had
taken place. When I asked, on the first Sunday we
were there, where I should go to hear service and
sermon in Manx Gaelic, I was told that in Douglas
and its neighbourhood religious services had ceased
to be regularly held in Gaelic, but that two men
the old and very popular vicar of Kirkbraddan and
a Methodist local preacher held such services
occasionally, and that they were eagerly attended
by the old people, while the young ones gave them
the go-by. We got good lodgings up the hill
behind the shoulder of the Castle Mona wood, in the
house of the English man and wife who kept the
bathing machines down on the shore ; and here,
from the Manx girl-servant of those two "foreign"
invaders, I had an object-lesson about the way in
which Manx Gaelic was dying out, and, in languages,
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS.
491
the imitative character of the Celtic race. The girl,
not yet fully woman-grown, with her brown hair,
black eyes, round face, and mental and physical
alertness, was typically Celtic. When I tried to
make her speak in Manx Gaelic, she denied that she
could speak it, but said her grandmother spoke
nothing else. "And why then," I asked, "did you
not learn it from your grandmother ? " The reply,
after hesitation, was, " Because it isn't nice." Next
morning, when at breakfast, I heard her through the
open window scolding a man with a basket of fish or
groceries, in fluent Manx Gaelic, about some blunder
or other. I had no idea then that in after years
I should see the same assimilative snobbishness
playing havoc with the native language of the
Highlanders, who, while mastering English, should
not have lost their hold on Gaelic ; for bi-lingualism
is in itself an aid to education, and Gaelic is rich in
pabulum for the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
We had such glorious summer weather all the
time we were on the island, that we spent our
days out of doors, either about Douglas or making
excursions into the country. On our first Sunday
we went to Kirkbraddan, but it happened to be the
day on which the new church was being opened,
and although services were simultaneously held in
the handsome and capacious new edifice and in the
old church near it, which was to be kept up as a
memorial of past times, such crowds attended, that
with hundreds more of the later comers we had to
stop in the churchyard, and only heard the singing
through the open windows. But in the evening we
went to hear the local Methodist, who preached in
Gaelic to some three or four hundred, among whom
were few young men or women, and no children at
492 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
all. My wife, of course, did not understand a word
of what the preacher said ; she had to practice
patience while listening to language which was
wholly unintelligible to her. At first I was much
at sea myself, as I was then wholly unacquainted
with Manx Gaelic. But by the time the first
prayer and singing were over, I began to get my
bearings, and to follow the preacher when he read
a chapter of St John's Gospel and preached from it.
His Gaelic and mine were substantially the same,
but differed much in pronunciation and to some
degree in the use of words which, although known
to me, were not quite of the same meaning in
Highland Gaelic and Manx Gaelic. When, after
the service, the preacher and I spoke to one
another, we found that, with ease, we could make
ourselves mutually intelligible, and the good old
man bewailed the way in which the young islanders
were, while properly enough learning English,
foolishly and needlessly dropping the old native
language entirely.
We went to Castletown, Peel, and the Tinwald.
The Tinwald, although the Parliament Mound of
the Kingdom of Man, from which laws must still be
proclaimed ere they take effect, is, with its three
stages, a pretty little mound, not at all so imposing
in size and form or so commandingly situated as
Tom-na-cuairteig, the similar law and justice
mound above Kerrumore, in Glenlyon, where I
was born. I looked in vain for fair-headed, blue-
eyed descendants of the Scandinavians among the
country population. The prevalent dark Celtic
type appeared to connect them with the Irish more
than with the Gaels of Scotland, although their
language is nearer Highland than Irish Gaelic.
NEIGHBOURS AND INCIDENTS. 49S
The Norse domination of three centuries left behind
it place-names, burial-mounds, and various other
memorials, but it passed over the original inhabi-
tants without changing their language or physical
appearance. The marks of the Norse domination,
although few and far between, are certainly more
discernible on the people of the Scotch islands than
they were forty years ago on the people of Man.
But the English invasion was even then rapidly
abolishing their language, and changing, in Douglas,
Ramsey, and other places that were frequented by
regular or excursion steamers, the ethnological
situation.
From early boyhood I was familiar with the
story of Diarmid and Grainne, as it used to be told
by ceilidh seanachies. There was a rock above my
father's house, which was called " Craig na Grainne"
or "Rock of Grainne," where there was a sheltered
nook in which the fugitives could have, and were
supposed to have rested. Moreover, the Campbell
clan claimed with far - back, although not well-
sustained, confident audacity, thin descent from
Diarmid O'Duibhne and Grainne, and in that
belief adopted the boar's head for their clan crest.
In their genealogies they had a Diarmad and a
Duibhne, and that fact led no doubt to their appro-
priation of legend and crest. Of course I believed
when a boy in the ceilidh myth, and in that myth
Diarmid was made the pupil of Mannanan Mac Lir,
the weird magician who owned and gave his name
to the Isle of Man Eilean Mhannain, as we called
it in Glenlyon.
In bidding looking far back a long farewell to
the Isle of Man, where, away from our world and all
its cares, my wife and I had our glorious outing in
494 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
glorious weather, I may mention that I, ever since I
remember, have had a liking for islands that was
strange in one born and brought up in an inland
Grampian glen, the soul of whose grand scenery
entered into and mixed inseparably with the souls of
its children. The kinks and crooks in human nature
are very inexplicable. My life, I can truly say, has
been that of a hard-working, practical man, who
had no time for indulging in futile reveries and
luxuriating in deceptive pleasures of the imagination.
Yet I did refresh wearied mind and body when the
day's task was done by building castles in the air
which were as evanescent as the smoke from my
pipe. But there was one of these castles in the air
which persistently reared itself anew. This was
the thought that there could be no better earthly
paradise for me than to possess a one-farm little
island, not far from a mainland, where, on sunny
days, I could read a book with my face to the sea
and my back to a cliff, and where, in other weather
circumstances, I could look out from a cosy study
window on raging storms and wars of the elements.
The long spell of good weather lasted till some time
after we got home, and found all well there. The
sea was as calm as the proverbial mill pond when
the little fussy steamer brought us back in the
morning from Douglas to Barrow. We broke our
journey at Furness to see the ruins of the Abbey,
which are in a sheltered hollow amidst grand old
trees. Furness Abbey had, in days of old, close
relations with the Isle of Man, and some connection
likewise with the Scotch Galloway, which remained
long Celtic in race and language. To use a High-
land phrase, the day was one of those rare ones
which threw a white or fairyland calm on sea and
THE ANTI-VACCINATION AGITATION.
495
land " feath gheal air muir 's air tir " and in-
delibly impresses the picture of a lovely scene on
one's memory.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE ANTI-VACCINATION AGITATION.
IN resisting the law compelling the vaccination of
children, Keighley and its neighbourhood took rank
next to Leicester. I am not sure that at starting
the Keighley agitation was of local spontaneous
generation ; for an enthusiastic tailor and clothier
who had come from the south was, from the begin-
ning, its most ardent promoter. Whatever the
history of its origin, there could be no dispute about
the fact that the opposition to compulsory vaccina-
tion took a strong hold upon a large number of the
inhabitants of the Keighley district. Consequently
opportunity was seized upon to elect members of
the Board of Guardians who were avowed anti-
vaccinators. When such guardians found themselves
in a majority, compulsory vaccination ceased to be
enforced. They would neither allow their own
children to be vaccinated nor subject others to the
obligations of a law which they denounced, and were
doing their best to nullify. This line of conduct
brought them into collision with the State authorities
and courts of law, and then they preferred imprison-
ment as rebels in York Castle to submission to
injunctions to carry out compulsory vaccination as
their statutory duty. The rebel guardians had a
popular send-off as martyrs in a noble cause when
they left Keighley to be imprisoned in York Castle.
496 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
When they came back they received a hearty " see
the conquering hero come " welcome home again.
Later on smallpox broke out in Keighley, and
caused such a scare there that many former oppo-
nents of Jenner's protective remedy resorted to it
in a panic. As soon as the panic subsided the
agitation recovered much of its temporarily lost
strength.
Putting aside the plea of conscientious objection,
which too often in the present day is a cloak for
some purpose that it is not convenient to avow, the
most convinced upholders of vaccination, among
whom I number myself, had to confess that the
anti-vaccinators were not without some solid excuse
for their agitation. They firmly believed that the
taint of several bad diseases was introduced into the
blood of healthy infants. In discussions with my
medical friends, who were all fervid advocates of
vaccination, I found that they could not deny that
it was possible to transmit certain kinds of disease
from one child or one person to another, unless care
was taken that the lymph came from an untainted
source. Medical practitioners had not all of them
been careful not to use inoculating matter which did
not come from healthy cows, the original source, or
from patients that neither inherited nor acquired
the seeds of a class of transmissible diseases. The
agitation took a violent form in places like Leicester
and Keighley, when a panic was created by a few
isolated facts which appeared to be conclusively
proved. It led at once to greater care in regard to
the gathering of the inoculating matter from cows
and healthy patients.
So far the agitators did the public a desirable
service. But that partial success did not satisfy
THE ANTI- VACCINATION AGITATION. 497
them. They wanted to get rid of compulsory
vaccination altogether. Finally they got their plea
of conscientious objection recognised, and on that
plea exemption for themselves. In the long wrangle
arguments were used on both sides which struck far
down into the heart of fundamental principles. As
for the arguments the agitators tried to derive from
the Bible, they were too shadowy to impress even
the ignorant. Their sounder contention was that
parents were the natural guardians of their children,
and that while they strove to do their best for
their offspring, they should not be interfered with
by the State. Red-hot Radicals in this agitation
spoke loudly and angrily against grandmotherly
legislation, and in support of the sacred rights of
parents and, unless in cases of gross neglect or
incompetence, the inviolability of the family institu-
tion, and they were applauded and hotly supported
by multitudes of those who held the most con-
servative views in regard to all other questions
of a public nature. Political and ecclesiastical
separation hedges were thrown down or jumped
over for the nonce.
The defenders of compulsory vaccination were of
a similarly mixed description. The medical men
did not much obtrude themselves on public notice
during the heat of the controversy. They left the
defence of the law to the authorities and to the
more thoughtful majority of the nation ; and those
who spoke or wrote for that majority relied upon
the proved benefits of Jenrier's prophylactic, and,
perhaps with too little qualification, upon the
maxim, Salus populi suprema lex. Scarred and
pitted faces among the older people, and undis-
figured faces of the younger generations that had
32
498 REMINISCENCES AND BEFLECTIONS.
been protected by vaccination, proved beyond
dispute the great change for the better which had
been brought about by the widespread voluntary
adoption of vaccination of infants in the early
part of last century, which the compulsory law
intended to make universal.
CHAPTER LXXV.
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS.
FROM the Revolution of 1688 to the passing of the
Reform Bill of 1832, the freeholders of Keighley
followed the lead of their Cavendish Lords, who
belonged to the old Whig and Protestant Reforma-
tion aristocracy, and had been enriched directly by
Catholic Church spoils in the sixteenth century, and
succeeded to more of it by intermarriages in subse-
quent ages. The passing of the Reform Bill had no
weakening effect on the allegiance of the Keighley
voters ; but new parties complaining of grievances
and calling for enfranchisement appeared on the
scene, and the coming of the borough household
franchise, in 1867, modified without revolutionising
the traditional political situation. I think the Duke
of Devonshire, who died in 1858, either through his
own fault, or the altered state of things through the
growth of local industries, must have held the reins
loosely, and lost much of the dominating influence
exercised by his predecessors. He was succeeded by
his cousin, William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, a
distinguished Cambridge scholar, who, before his
succession to his grandfather's peerage, represented
that University in Parliament. He was also one of
KEIGHLEY PAKTIES AND POLITICS. 499
the earliest Chancellors of the University of London.
Although a Whig magnate by birth and training,
and an adherent of the Manchester School of
political economists by conviction, he had no
ambition for taking the leading part he could have
done in public life, and no liking for city life and
society. He loved rural life, and cultivated a
studious life as far as the conscientious management
of his large and largely separated estates gave him
leisure to do so. He was deeply interested in agri-
cultural and horticultural affairs, and dealt with
rent-roll more as a revenue for carrying out improve-
ments than as an income which he had a right to
spend with individual irresponsibility. He left active
politics to his two elder sons, Spencer Compton,
Marquis of Hartington, his heir and successor, who
refused to follow Gladstone in his plunge into the
bog of Irish Home Rule and disunion, and later on,
as Duke of Devonshire, refused to look with favour,
or tolerance, at Tariff Reform for safeguarding
British trade and consolidating the British Empire.
His second son, Lord Frederick Cavendish, was a
rising politician, when his career was cut short by
being assassinated along with Mr Burke in the
Phoenix Park, Dublin. The third son, whose son is
now Duke of Devonshire, took small part in political
life.
If the Cavendish influence waned to some extent
between 1832 and 1858, it waxed again under Duke
William, and was not much shaken by household
suffrage given to boroughs in 1867, and extended to
the counties in 1885. Until Mr Gladstone betook
himself to inspirational plungings, there was, for
twenty years after the repeal of the Corn Laws, a
sort of transitional period in party politics, during
500 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
which almost all the inhabitants of this district,
with the exception of a few uncompromising and
inconvincible Tories like Mr Ferrand, were ardent
Free-traders, and thought they had got free trade
in free imports, which for a pretty long time
improved trade, as well as cheapened food. Mr
Ferrand made himself the headsman of the Eldon
School Tories, not only in his native parish of
Bingley, where he was the chief landowner, but in
the whole district from Bradford to the upper end of
Craven. His thorough Tory followers, however,
were numerically few, and his prophecies of coming
tariff wars and rural depopulation were disregarded
as the heated fancies of an intemperate man. On
the other hand, this extreme Tory of loud voice,
strong personality, thorough knowledge of the people
of his district, with kindly interest in their welfare
from the standpoint of feudal relationship with
them, had, by the prominent part he had taken in
passing the Factory Acts, earned the respect and
gratitude of the working classes in spite of his
Toryism and their Radicalism, which, indeed, was
greater in supposition than in reality, as future
events brought to light. Duke William was not a
resident proprietor, but merely an annual visitor in
the shooting season to Bolton Abbey, but he was
a kindly and improving landlord, a Whig Free-
trader, and a man who admirably managed his large
scattered estates, on the improvement of which he
spent much of his princely revenue for the benefit of
the inhabitants more than for the return the outlays
were ever likely to yield to himself and his successors.
In knowledge of agricultural affairs, and in sympathy
with farmers and working people, he was not much
inferior to Mr Ferrand himself.
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 501
When new machinery and steam power super-
seded the old handicraft industries which used to be
carried on in towns, villages, and isolated homes, in
conjunction with agricultural and pastoral pursuits,
the richer class of natives of Keighley built mills
and set up ir D works, and workshops for collective
industries. More exclusively than, I think, in any
other part of the West Riding, the heads of
Keigliley tirms of al. kinds were, between I860 and
1880, the descendants of inhabitants of the place,
whose names were to be found in the muster roll
for Flodden and in the local records and documents
of the reign of Queen Elizabeth Under the monks
of Bolton, and the Cliffords and Cavendishes, a
middle class of yeoman gentry had arisen and taken
hereditary root in the soil, who led the lower class
of feudal vassals and labourers, and in peace and
war served as henchmen of their over-lords. In
Keighley the hereditary loyalty of the newly-
enriched and thoroughly independent captains of
the new order of things survived the abolition of
the feudal system and the industrial and political
revolution.
The visit of Burns to Inverary chanced to be ill-
timed, for it happened when the place was crowded
by important county visitors, who had gathered to
give Field-Marshal John Duke of Argyll a " ceud
mile failt" on his home-coming after a long absence.
The neglected poet vented his spleen in a couple of
angry verses, the first of which runs :
Who e'er is he that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he comes to wait upon
The lord, their god, his Grace.
Radicals of republican views, who wished to get rid
of kings and nobles, spoke much in the same strain
502 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
of the welcome given by Keighley to the Duke of
Devonshire when he came to the agricultural show,
and to his sons when they came to make speeches
at political meetings. But the men who felt so
indignant at what they called the servility of the
Keighley people were not of the native stock, but
outsiders who had no share in the history of the
parish and the hereditary ties and sympathies
between the over-lords and people. Of the native
stock Radicals, James Leach was the most pictur-
esque and outspoken specimen that could be found,
but catch James, with in other matters almost
unbounded freedom of speech, butting his hard
head against a sentiment which had its root deep in
ancient history, and the continuance of which was
justified by the existing relations between the Duke
of Devonshire and the Keighley community.
I feel I must here break the thread of discourse
to give James Leach the recognition for which,
whether good or bad, his frank egotism craved, and
which his peculiar character and position in the com-
munity earned for him. When I became acquainted
with him he was a sturdy man over sixty,
who was assisted by his second wife and a niece.
He never had children of his own; kept a flourishing
greengrocer's shop in Low Street, and owned some
house property, with other investments. By way of
endearment, he often called his wife by a foul and
inappropriate epithet, which she received in the
spirit in which it was given. But, although he
could swear on small provocation, like Uncle Toby's
army in Flanders, he was really a good-hearted
man of generous disposition. For years he liberally
supported a childless and husbandless sister of his,
who was slowly dying by an incurable disease, and,
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 503
strange to say for he was the vainest of self-made
men claimed no merit or public notice for doing so.
He had been a miner in his early days, and had
never "got religion" to curb the licence of speech he
had thus acquired. Between his mining and green-
grocery employments he had tried his hand at many
things, and apparently never failed to secure enough
for his wants, and slowly to pile up a little fortune
against the rainy day. His Radicalism, so bound-
less, if so confused in theory, was conditioned in
practice by contempt for loafers and belief in
strenuous self-efforts. There were a few Secularists
and Socialists, mostly outsiders, among the Keighley
folk, and likewise extreme Trade-unionists, whose
revolutionary ideas, besides being less confused,
went far ahead of the Radicalism of Leach. But
until they afterwards learned to hook themselves on
to Liberation ists, who wanted to disestablish and
disendow the Church of England, and who drifted
in pursuance of that object into reluctant acceptance
of irreligious, State-aided, and controlled education,
the followers of George Holyoake and Charles
Bradlaugh, the admirers of United States institu-
tions, and the would-be despoilers of capitalists and
of individual freedom, were of small account com-
pared with James Leach, whose self-assertiveness,
command of the dialect in its raciest form, and
thorough knowledge of local affairs, had always to
be taken into account by the Liberal managers of
Keighley at political and municipal meetings.
When he rose to speak, he took the attitude of a
man that could not be put down, and had to be
listened to. He could, by turns, speak as buffoon
and sage, and had invariably the backing of those
of the audience who enjoyed the fun of seeing him
504 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
"riled," and giving straight blows and backhanders
to those who wished to silence him. So he worked
himself up into a kind of power, and was placed
on district arid municipal boards, where he did
occasionally good service as a man of independent
mind and experience. His inordinate vanity was so
inflated by the distinction he thus obtained, that he
set up a monument in the public cemetery recording
his services, and leaving a blank meanwhile for the
date of his death. His first wife's name, age, and
date of death were all filled in. His second wife, on
being buried, received her equal rights. Then,
when bordering on eighty, he married a third time,
and on that occasion Keighley gave the newly-
married pair a reception which flattered, but
unnerved, the aged bridegroom.
A liberal share of Reformation Church spoils to
begin with, and to end with the union in his person
by right of inheritance of what had formerly been
large separate estates, made William Cavendish,
Duke of Devonshire, the patron of over forty Church
of England livings. In the exercise of his patronial
rights, he took the utmost care to select good men,
giving the preference to evangelicals and reformers.
His appointments suited the views and wishes of
North of England congregations so well, that few
complaints were made by churchmen, and the
complaint of Liberationists was that they gave no
rise to clerical scandals, or afforded chances for the
scientific picking of quarrels with pig-headed incum-
bents. On the rectory of Keighley falling vacant,
the Duke selected for it an energetic and altogether
worthy gentleman, whom he knew to be a good
worker in the vineyard, and a good Liberal in
politics, but who, when instituted, developed
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 505
moderate tendencies towards the High Church
ritualism, which gave offence to those who had
been accustomed to the evangelical preaching, which
best suited the people, not only of Keighley, but of
the whole district. When the Duke heard of this,
by him, unexpected cause of discontent, he seized,
on Buxton falling vacant, on the opportunity for
transferring the gentleman who caused discontent
from Keighley to that place.
I heard, and believed, that in 1832 the
parishioners of Keighley, Churchmen and Dissenters,
masters and men, were, with the fewest possible
exceptions, all ardent supporters of the Reform Bill.
They were nearly as unanimous in regard to the
abolition of the Corn Laws. But there was no such
unanimity about the Factory Acts, which liberated
women and children from what almost amounted
to slavery. Tories and Chartists co-operated in
bringing about that much needed emancipation,
which was resisted on economic grounds by Cobden
and Bright, and was anathema maranatha to manu-
facturing employers, who plumed themselves on
being great reformers, but would fain, if possible,
keep far away from their profit-making establish-
ments the searchlight investigations and purgatorial
reforms to which they were so willing to subject
despotic landowners and arrogant parsons of the
Established Church, whose follies operators of the
Liberation Societies knew well how to bring into
light and exaggerate. It was by the friction of
classes, and reforms brought about by mutual
retaliation, that a splice was being made between
the old and the new order of things ; but at
the time I am writing about, the slumbering sub-
terranean powers of Trade Unionist and Socialistic
506 REMINISCENCES >ND REFLECTIONS.
Utopianism were little understood by either of the
two great political parties or the working classes
themselves, who, in England, at least, are funda-
mentally more Conservative than they are themselves
at all times aware of.
In many parts of England traditional feudal
allegiance long survived changes of law and condi-
tions with a sentimental tenacity similar to High-
land clannishness. In Keighley the Cavendish
influence, never obtrusively or oppressively asserted,
had a moderating effect on the acerbities of party
politics, especially before the Congregationalists and
Wesleyans, and other Dissenters, assisted by
Secularists and various extreme factions, took
advantage of the School Board system to try to
build out and starve out the Church of England
schools, which had, with old endowed schools, been
carrying on the main part of the educational work
of the town and district before, of which the
Wesleyans also had been doing their fair share.
Notwithstanding many grievances, amounting at
times to persecution, inflicted on them in rural
districts by despotic landlords and inimical incum-
bents, the Wesleyans inherited deep sympathies
with the Church of England, and had they been
recognised as such in the eighteenth century, might
have remained long as a missionary organisation in
union and communion with it, which was what their
founder intended. They looked for a long time
askance at the disestablishing and disendowing
projects of the Congregationalists, but finally their
ruling bodies for they had been divided among
themselves in a generation after John Wesley's
death joined* the Liberation Society and brought
to it not only the greater part of its numerical
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 507
strength, but an accession of religious force that it
much needed.
In Keighley, before the disestablishment of the
Irish Church and the passing of the English Elemen-
tary School Act, of which the member for Bradford,
Mr Forster, was sponser, the relations between
Church and Dissent were more friendly, or less
unfriendly, than was the case in other places.
Dissenters had, in truth, no grievance of a practical
kind, except Church rates, of which they made the
most, and of which Churchmen were tired and very
willing to see abolished. It might almost be said
that all the inhabitants of the parish, voters and
non-voters, were reformers between 1832 and 1846,
and between the last date and 1868 reformers plus
free-traders. With a preponderance for Dissent, the
heads of firms and employers of mill and workshop
hands were divided between Church and Dissent,
and they were usually the leading men in their
respective congregations. Leadership in churches
and chapels, accompanied by liberal donations, in-
creased their influence over the working classes,
with whom they were thus religiously as well as
industrially closely associated, and made trade union
disputes fewer and less bitter than they would
otherwise have been. At bottom the native in-
habitants of the parish, while professedly Liberals, or
Radicals, were in reality Conservatives, although at
election times they, as a rule, acted like partisans
who obeyed orders from the Liberal headquarters,
and echoed the party cries which then were popular
and supposed to be catching.
The unwieldy West Riding, with its two seats
in the House of Commons, was divided into three
electoral districts by the Disraeli Reform Bill of
508 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
1867, and these divisions were further subdivided
by the Gladstone Reform Bill of 1885. Keighley
formed an important part of the Northern Division
between 1867 and 1885. Now it chanced that a
vacancy occurred in the Northern Division in
1872, when unexpectedly a strong Conservative and
strenuous defender of the Church of England, Mr
Francis Sharpe Powell, was returned. Two years
later, at the General Election of 1874, the Liberals
recovered their previous predominance, and Mr
Sharpe Powell had to find another seat in Lan-
cashire. The Conservatives of Keighley and
neighbourhood found themselves strong enough to
establish a club and weekly newspaper. The
Liberals called them Tories by way of reproach.
When one thinks of what William Pitt and the
Tories of his time did for their country, it is
difficult to understand why the word "Tory" should
be, down to the twentieth century, used by any
sensible person, as a contumacious epithet. Among
the Keighley Conservatives, who were labelled
' Tories," there was scarcely anyone who was not a
free-trader as free-trade was then understood
and a moderate Liberal, who would in 1832 have
been classed an advanced reformer.
The aggressive policy of the Liberation Society
alienated Churchmen everywhere, and it in Keighley
hastened political severance and gave Conservatism
a backbone of organisation. Between 1868 and
1874 other causes for political division came into
operation. David Urquhart from Cromarty the
apologist of the Turks, the knower and foe of
Russia, and the writer of many able publications
about the Western Asia races, had been prophesying
evils to come in the House of Commons as long as
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 509
he had a seat there, and when out of Parliament
remained a force still, through the Foreign Affairs
Committees his followers had formed in many
places. We had one of these Committees at
Keighley, and now and then a visit from Urquhart
himself, who was a man of picturesque personality,
as well as of wide knowledge and singular ability,
albeit not what could be called an eloquent
platform orator. Russia lost no time in taking-
advantage of the prostration of France in the war
with Germany to get rid of the restrictions imposed
on her by the Treaty of Paris in regard to the
Black Sea. I do not see how the Gladstone
Government, with France for the moment effaced,
and Germany and Austria not disposed to dispute
Russia's demands, could have offered efficient
opposition to the cancellation of the Black Sea
clauses of the Treaty of Paris. But Urquhart and
his followers rightly understood the purpose behind
the cancellation, and were true prophets who loudly
foretold the Russian invasion which was to follow
the cancellation.
Mr Urquhart accordingly gauged Russia's ambi-
tion to obtain predominant power in Europe and
Asia, and understood her methods of advancement
by preliminary intrigues, fraudful diplomacy, and
fine pretences, which were crowned by ruthless force
when things were ripe for its application. He looked
upon Turkey as the mainstay of the balance of power
in Europe against Russian extension to the Mediter-
ranian, and upon the Turks as inherently the noblest
of the Oriental races, while he admitted their faults
as rulers, and hoped they would reform themselves.
His committees, wherever they were set up, did
much to widen people's knowledge on international
510 REMINI8CENCKS AND REFLECTIONS.
affairs in general as well as on what was called the
Eastern Question. In Keighley as everywhere
else the followers of Mr Urquhart, although they
could not be silenced were overwhelmed and next
thing to ostracised during the Bulgarian atrocity
agitation, into which Mr Gladstone flung himself
with all the intensity of his sympathy with the
Eastern Church Christians and his hatred to the
Disraeli Government, and its chief. But when
Russia sent her hosts into Roumania, and across the
Danube, Urquhart's Keighley followers raised their
heads and voices, and found a response to their
doctrines among the masses, many of whom yet
continued to obey the instructions from the Liberal
headquarters, and managed, on some occasions, with
some difficulty, to get public meetings to pass the
stereotyped Liberal party resolutions. The Bul-
garian atrocity agitation, which preceded the
Russian invasion and gave a sort of Cross versus
Crescent sanction to it, broke down party barriers
for a short time in this country. The Turks, under
great provocation, had undoubtedly committed
savage atrocities on Christian victims. So they
were, with hot indignation, denounced, and Con-
servative Church of England clergymen, and the
ministers of the Dissenting communions, fraternised
on platforms and vied with one another in the vigour
of their denunciations. It was a genuine but most
hysterical agitation, not a dishonest political dodge
like the cry raised about Chinese chains and slavery
in the Transvaal at the 1905-6 General Election.
When the British people saw how bravely the
Turks fought in the hopeless war with the over-
whelming Russian forces, they, according to their
generous nature, turned to sympathise with and
KEIGHLEY PARTIES AND POLITICS. 511
admire the weaker side. So Radicals nudged one
another with satisfaction, or openly praised the
Disraeli Government when the British fleet was sent
up the Hellespont, and the menace of war with
Great Britain made the Russians halt when they
were almost at the gates of Constantinople,
and when further south they had reached
Gallipoli. This bold and successful move
appealed to the underlying instincts and pride
of the British people for approval, and received it.
Its consequence was that Lord Beaconsfield brought
home " peace with honour " from Berlin, and that
Turkey got with diminished territory an oppor-
tunity for reforming itself of which as yet it has
not till just lately made the best possible use and
that Russian advances to the Mediterranean was
meanwhile barred. It was of no party use for
Sir William Harcourt and our much respected
local M.P., Mr Forster, to head agitations against
the purchase of the Khedive's Suez Canal shares
and the acquisition of Cyprus, for the current of
opinion in the rank and file of their own party,
although it might not be frankly avowed, ran
strongly in favour of these two ventures of the
Conservative Government. Beaconsfield's prediction
that Cyprus, in British hands, would be made into
an important Mediterranean place of arms has not
yet been fulfilled, but who knows what the future
may bring forth. It is there ready to our hands
should there be need for it. As for the Suez Canal
shares, the purchase of them turned out to be a
most profitable investment as well as a stroke of
timely political sagacity.
Trade - Unionists are liable to imperil their
class interests, and damage national interests, by
512 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
acting, in their contests with employers, on con-
tracted views, or in complete ignorance of the
Gordian knot subtle interfacings by which capital
and labour are bound to one another and inseparably
tied together with individual freedom, thrift, and
morality, public and private. But they are not
wholesale revolutionists, like the Socialists, whose
theory is that a regenerated order of things could
be established on universal plunder and regimented
despotism. The Irish Nationalists work for separa-
tion and the uprooting of landlords, but having
obtained these objects they propose to establish
their Irish Republic on old principles of law and
individual rights. Nonconformist policy, as shaped
by the Liberation Society and its allies, would
willingly stop short at the smashing up and
plundering of the old National Churches of England
and Scotland. But while seeking their different
ends, all those parties work together, and all the
concessions which co-operation brings about tend to
strengthen wild Socialism and to undermine the
foundations of free and civilised Society. The drag
upon the progress to the brink of the precipice
which overlooks the cauldron of chaos exists, how-
ever, in the underlying conservatism of the British
people as a whole, and of the English part of that
people in particular. Deep down in the most of the
English people is the conviction that safety lies in
giving political parties turn about in office. In
Scotland allegiance to party, or to party names,
which have no longer their old meanings, brings
dishonour on Scottish patriotism, intelligence, and
education ; and yet that degrading allegiance is a
curious form of inverted Conservatism.
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 513
CHAPTER LXXVI.
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND.
BEING crippled for life, the fireside miscellaneous
newspaper work in which I was chiefly engaged
during the eleven years at Thwaites House suited
me well enough. I usually got plenty of it to do,
notwithstanding fluctuations, some of which were
due to two health breakdowns on my own part, and
some to outside changes. For several years I con-
tinued to send my monthly budget to the Cape, and
that connection came only to an end with changed
proprietorship. At one time, for a lengthened
period, I was writing leaders and other articles to
three daily papers. On having formed their Club,
the Conservatives of Keighley determined to have
likewise a weekly newspaper. I was its editor for
some years, and through its leader columns gave
vigorous expression to moderate men's views, and
their fears of the devious paths into which Mi-
Gladstone was leading his party. I happened to
have a right to call myself the godfather, if not the
father, of the Keighley Press, for I was the first
editor of the first newspaper a weekly one
Keighley ever had. This first paper was an offshoot
of the Bradford Observer when, except on the
Liberation Society's policy, it was still of the old
Whig type. The Conservatives of Keighley kept to
the old paths, while the followers of Mr Gladstone
had, in our opinion, strayed away into the path that,
if followed far, would lead them to secular education,
33
514 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
as well as the separation of Church and State, to
interference with parental rights and responsibilities,
and all kinds of rights belonging to and forming the
soul of individual freedom. Among the Keighley
Conservatives were, I think, no more Tories than
could be counted almost on the fingers of one hand.
The rest of us were old Whigs, or moderate Liberals,
who refused to be dragged into the new path that led
to revolutionary perils. I felt strongly, and wrote
strongly, but made no personal enmities. Educa-
tional enthusiasts, Liberationists, and Radicals saw
that T wrote as I spoke, and gave me credit for
speaking honestly as I thought on public questions.
When the time for parting came, and after the
Conservative Club had presented me with a valuable
timepiece, bearing a complimentary inscription,
Liberal and Conservative friends joined to give me a
farewell dinner, and to send me off with a well-lined
new purse.
During my twenty years' absence I took a lively
interest in legislative measures, and all other things
which concerned Scotland. I know that people of
my generation and rearing remained true to Scot-
land wherever they \vent and however long away,
and I hope it is so yet, and ever will be. I was
much excited and buoyed up with inflated hopes
of Presbyterian reunion when the Conservative
Government proposed to abolish patronage in the
Church of Scotland. English old Tories, large and
small patrons of all political parties, and pundits of
the English Universities would like to stop short
at an amendment of Lord Aberdeen's Act. Mr
Gladstone, looking with High Church hostility at
a project of liberation which, reason ruling the
divided bodies, might again give Scotland a mighty
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 515
Presbyterian Church, tabled a series of adverse
resolutions, from which, however, he fled when the
time for moving them came. The English Libera-
tionists and the Scottish United Presbyterians were
more valorous in their opposition than either Mr
Gladstone or Dr Rainy and his Free Church
followers. I wrote a long letter to Lord Advocate
Gordon, in the opening sentence of which I told
him I did not want him to reply and he did not,
except by sending a copy of the Bill, which was a
perfectly satisfactory reply. In my letter I gave
him my own and other people's experiences of the
mockingly illusive nature of Lord Aberdeen's Act,
with its costly, prolonged procedure, so irritating to
objecting parishioners, and so damaging to objected
presentees, whether the frequently inconsistent
decisions were favourable to them or the reverse.
I was afraid not so much of Gladstone and Non-
conformist hostility as of the feeling which was
rather prevalent among English Conservatives that
a mere tinkering of the Aberdeen Act should suffice,
and that to abolish patronage in Scotland would be
the first blow of the axe to patronage in England,
which has a market value it never had north of
the Tweed. In my letter to the Lord Advocate and
in the English newspapers which allowed me free
expression of opinion, I pleaded earnestly for total
abolition, with reasonable compensation to patrons.
The Lord Advocate and the Government stood
to their guns. Hesitating English Conservative
members were reassured, and followed their leaders ;
and if I remember rightly, some Liberal peers and
commoners, who were well instructed in Scottish
history, past and contemporary, supported the policy
of root and branch abolition, which was carried out.
516 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
And as soon as the Act was passed, several dukes
and other noblemen of Scotland, who were the chief
lay patrons, generously resolved to forego their
claims to compensation, and the extensive Crown
patronage, which in the main had formerly belonged
to the bishops, was also relinquished without com-
pensation. With this relief, and its Revolution and
Treaty of Union guaranteed rights and privileges,
the Church of Scotland was made the freest of all
the Churches of Christendom, whether established
or non-established. The Church of Scotland was
thus much strengthened, and yet the ardent friends
of Presbyterian reunion had much cause to feel
deeply disappointed. Instead of the reunion, which
they believed would have been, religiously, morally,
socially, and economically, in the highest degree
beneficial to Scotland, they saw the hedges of par-
tition trimmed afresh, and armed with the barbed
wire of the separation of Church and State, devised
by English Nonconformists when, losing hold of
their Puritan doctrines, they had stepped into
political dissenterism.
In the later years of the seventies, while clearly
seeing the trend towards secular education, and the
adoption of hasty devices, pregnant with dangers to
come, in making the splice with the past which
altered circumstances required, there were surprises
impending which I could not have believed if an
angel from heaven had foretold them. Who could
then believe the plunge into the bog of Irish
separation possible ? or deem it credible that any
British Ministry would, through unavenged Majuba,
the retrocession of the Transvaal, and the miserable
Conventions, make the Boer war, as soon as the
Boers completed their preparations, as sure as death,
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 517
unless our once great country sank so low as to
abandon her loyal children in South Africa, and to
eat her leek of dishonour before envious and mighty
Powers, who wished for opportunities to seize
British colonies and dependencies ? In the seventies
I saw, in their initiating stages, movements in
operation which I feared would develop into dangers
to all existing institutions and principles of liberty
and order, on which nations had built up their
somewhat varied forms of Christian civilisation.
As yet indeed Holyoake, the argumentative thinker,
and Bradlaugh, the blustering orator of infidelity,
had not a numerous army of followers, and the
all-plundering and all-levelling theory of Socialism
had got only a slight grip of the maddest of
trade-unionists in strikes and wars with capitalist
employers and companies. Higher criticism, archae-
ology, and the unproved theory of evolution were
working together to undermine the old reliance on
the plenary inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible
which had so long been common, with variations of
interpretation to all the Churches of Christendom,
but as yet neither the attacks on the Bible nor the
evolution theory, which went far beyond them, had
much visibly weakened the faith or changed the
habits of nine hundred in the thousand of the
British people.
From early youth I was conscious of the great
revolution that was being irresistibly worked out
by new mechanical inventions, steam power, rail-
ways, and steamships, and looked with apprehension
upon the growth of cities and towns, and the
dispersion, by healthy emigration to colonies or
unhealthy migrations to centres of crowded urban
industries at home, of the rural population that
518 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
had ever been in all times of trial the backbone of
national strength. But in I860, when I left Scot-
land, children were brought up in the old way,
which had given Scotsmen for centuries a high
ranking among the nations of the world. The
three parties into which Presbyterians had divided
themselves, while bitterly wrangling over minor
matters, were zealously working on the old prin-
ciples in worship and education. They had by their
divisions lost the moral policing power of the grand
parochial system, which had been in rural districts
the marvel-working agency for religious and civil
advancement before the Disruption. Professing the
same creed, and having the same form of Church
government, and looking fully in the face the war
with infidelity which was already waxing hot, it
was reasonable to expect that a reunion of the
Presbyterians of Scotland would take place when
patronage, the chief cause of disunion, had been
abolished root and branch, and when, in electing
their ministers, Church of Scotland congregations
had got a voting equality between the rich and the
poor members, which is very rarely found among
Dissenters, because those who are the greater givers
of money are of more account than poor and
perchance more pious members.
In the seventies I was fully conscious of the fact
that the white-race nations were doomed to go
through the ordeal of a transition period which
involved far more than wild outbursts like the
French Revolution or wars of conquest. It seemed
to me then, and it seems to me so yet, that
Christianity alone can be relied upon as a break-
water against raging floods of materialistic degra-
dation and suicidal revolutionarism, and that with
FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. 519
readjustment of creeds, broadening of views, and
co-operative efforts, Romanists, Greeks, and Pro-
testants should form solidly into battle line to
defend faith in God and life beyond the grave
against those to whom the present life is the be-all
and end-all, and also against the predominating
pretences of science to transgress beyond the realm
of matter, its proper sphere, wherein it works
wonders, while of the soul-side it knows nothing.
While looking forward to the greater muster of the
forces of Christianity, I was in the seventies griev-
ously disappointed because the three sections of
Scottish Presbyterians did not at once seize upon a
great opportunity for closing up their ranks.
I was not so much surprised at the hardened
Liberation Society sectarianism of the United Pres-
byterians as at the renegading recalcitrancy of the
ruling majority of the Free Church. The old sects
of Seceders in 1847 formed their Union by burying
the " Testimonies" of their founders, and erecting on
the tomb an obelisk inscribed, " Voluntaryism." I
had no idea that during my absence from Scotland
the new rulers of the Free Church had '43 men
not yet having disappeared or changed been
quietly burying Disruption principles, and making
ready an obelisk of their own, which as yet had no
clear inscription. The political element was already
making sad inroads on the spiritual life of Dissenting
Churches. Reactionary Ritualists were alienating
or provoking Church of England Protestants, but
there was still so much religious vitality a thing
which has not so much connection as many people
suppose with flourishing finances and grandiose
places of worship in all our Churches of the
Reformation that one had a right to expect a
520 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
general rally of all denominations in support of
Christian ethics, and the laws, customs, and insti-
tutions which had been founded on them. Full of
the hope that there would be such a rally as soon
as the Christian laity understood how faith and
morals were endangered by the streams of revolu-
tionary and utterly subversive ideas which were
flowing in from various and widely separate sources,
I wrote a series of articles, expressive of my mingled
hopes and fears, which appeared in the Glasgow
News, and it was in consequence of these articles
that, to my surprise, I was called back to Scotland.
One fine day in September or October, 1880, I
received a note intimating that Mr Charles limes,
solicitor, Inverness, and Sheriff-Clerk of Ross-shire,
who was in search of an editor for a weekly
Conservative newspaper about to be started at
Inverness, was coming to see me, and hoped to find
me at home. As we were living in the country,
this note only reached me a few hours before Mr
Innes arrived. We talked the matter over freely
tt
and frankly. I was a cripple for life, and subject
to breakdowns, which did not disable me for writing
but kept me tied to the home, sometimes for a few
days, and sometimes for a week at a stretch. I was
in my fifty-third year, and felt it a serious matter
to pull up stakes. That night we came to no settle-
ment, but he called me again to meet him and dine
with him at Leeds, and there and then I was per-
suaded to make the venture. I trusted in Mr Innes,
who was to be managing director. That trust at
first sight was more than justified by our friendly and
mutually co-operative relations for a long period of
years, till Mr Innes, who was ten years my junior,
died.
BACK TO SCOTLAND. 521
CHAPTER LXXVII.
BACK TO SCOTLAND.
THE first issue of the new paper at Inverness was to
take place in the first week of 1881, but I thought
it would be well to make a preliminary survey v of my
new sphere of labour by personal observation and
conversation with people of different classes and
callings. With this purpose in view I left England
about the middle of November, 1 880. My wife,
with our large brigade of young children, remained
with her own people until I got a house for them.
As it happened, the house was ready for them several
weeks before they could get to it, because of the
snowstorms and blocks on the Highland Railway.
But they were happy where they were, and Mr and
Mrs Aspinall were glad to have them for a longer
time thaiy had been foreseen by us when I left
England.
My first halting place was Dunmore. Mr Archi-
bald Campbell, the Earl's factor, one of my dearest
friends from the time he was a little delicate pupil
of mine in the Keumore school, until his pre-
mature death, after a bright and most honourable
career, when factor of the Colquhoun estates, had
pressingly invited me to diverge from the direct
route to the Highlands and stop with him a couple
of days. He threw in as an inducement the
information that " Manitoba" would be my fellow
guest, and would come by my train with me from
Edinburgh to Larbert, where he would meet us with
522 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
a dogcart and drive us to his picturesque factorial
residence. " Manitoba" and I missed one another
in the murky dark of the station in Edinburgh, but
our host picked us up quickly enough when we
emerged from our different carriages at Larbert.
" Manitoba " meant Mr Robert Campbell, a
Glenlyon man, who, in his modest way, had done
more than he was aware of for the extension of the
territories of the Dominion of Canada, and the
establishing of British authority over the Indians of
the great North-West. I was quite a small boy
when Robert went away from shepherding his father's
farm of Dalchioiiich to Hudson Bay, to enter the
service of the old Royal Charter Company of traders
and hunters. In that service he passed through
many adventures and hardships, and proved his
sagacity and tough powers of physical endurance.
But he was one of those men of action who are
sparing of their words. The best way for getting a
full story out of him was to spread a map before
him, and to make him describe his march, stage by
stage, from commencement to finish. By means of a
very imperfect map, Archie and I got him to tell us,
stage by stage, the story of the expedition into the
unknown wilds, of which he was chief, which dis-
covered the Yukon Valley, and penetrated under
great difficulties into Alaska, which was then
Russian territory, with an undefined boundary
between it and British territory. If first discovery
counted in the settlement of the boundary, the
whole of the Klondyke hinterland should belong to
the Dominion, because no white man's foot had ever
traversed these regions before Robert Campbell led
his hardy little party over it. He rose, as he
deserved, to be one of the Company's chief officers,
BACK TO SCOTLAND. 523
and was in charge of Fort-Garry on the Red River,
where the large city of Winnipeg now stands, when
the rebellion of Riel and the half-breeds took place.
He was, however, far away on his annual trading
expedition, with the best and most faithful of his
men, when the outbreak took place. He had some
years before then married Miss Stirling from Comrie,
and she and their children were left behind in the
fort, which was in the charge of Thomas Scott, and
could not be held against the rebels within and
without. Mrs Campbell rallied together some fugi-
tives and faithful Indians, who seized upon boats,
and with them escaped, while "President" Riel and
his half-breeds were employed in looting the stores
and in condemning Scott by mock court-martial, and
most barbarously murdering him. Mrs Campbell
took care to bring away with her the books and
papers of the factory when she and her children and
companions slipped away out of Riel's clutches, and
hastened to put between them and the "President"
as much distance as they could.
There was, however, no real safety for white
loyalists until Colonel Wolseley came with his Red
River expeditionary force of 1200 men of all arms,
by lakes and hitherto pathless forests, from Canada.
Two -thirds of that little, hardy, well - organised
army were volunteers from Quebec and Ontario,
formed into two battalions the 1st or Ontario
Rifles and the 2nd or Quebec Rifles. From
Glengarry and other places not far from Montreal,
there were among the French and English-speaking
riflemen of Quebec, a good many second and third
generation men of Gaelic-speaking descendants
of the old-time emigrants. - The men of the Ontario
battalion were mostly all Scotchmen, and the
524
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
younger men of the recent emigrations from High-
land glens, straths, bens, and islands were particularly
conspicuous both by number and readiness to endure
fatigue and conquer difficulties, which now can be
scarcely understood by those who travel in their
trail by railways and steamers. Among the Ontario
Highland volunteers were several descendants of the
old dame of ninety who marched off with her band
of children, grand-children, and other relations from
Gleulyon, as I have previously related. When the
rebellion of 1870 was put an end to, and Kiel, by
timely flight, escaped to the United States, whence,
in after years, he returned to give fresh trouble
until he was captured, tried, and executed, a good
many of the Scotchmen of the Ontario Rifles, High-
landers and Lowlanders, seeing the capabilities of
the virgin soil, and comparing its easy cultivation
with the clearing of forest land, resolved to take up
farms in Manitoba, and to bring their lares and
penates from Ontario to establish them in the
boundless and fertile prairie regions. Among those
who so resolved were two stalwart grandsons of the
old dame, Donald and David Stewart, the former
being my first and the latter my second cousin, and
in addition my mother's godson. Other relations
and acquaintances from both Ontario and Scotland
soon began to join the ex-riflemen. So the farming
colonisation, which assumed at first a strong Scottish
colouring aspect, steadily progressed, and the city
of Winnipeg rose where Riel had hoisted the flag of
half-breed rebellion and murdered poor Scott. It
so happened that the new Scotch settlers found
themselves among previous settlers of their race
who, on retiring from the service of the Hudson
Bay Company, took to farming patches of land near
the forts, and hunting and trading routes.
BACK TO SCOTLAND. 525
Altogether dear Archie's friendship is to me one
of my most unalloyed pleasures of memory, although
shadowed by sadness because of his early death.
We were a clannish little gathering in the factor's
house at Dunmore. Our host was the young man
of the party, I the middle-aged one, and " Manitoba"
the patriarch of three-score and ten, who lived to be
over eighty, without much abatement till past the
four-score of mental or physical vigour. Then Archie,
who never married, had his youngest sister, Jessie,
a bright, genial, lovable girl, not yet out of her
teens, as housekeeper, who listened with interest
to our feast of reason and flow of soul when we spoke
in English, but having been born at Monzievaird,
when the old language was dying out there, could
not follow us when we launched out into Gaelic. I
dwell on this visit to Dunmore because, besides
being a pleasant remembrance, it much widened my
views in regard to the agricultural wealth which yet
slumbered, waiting for colonising farmers, in the vast
plains between Winnipeg and the Rocky Mountains.
From early youth I had been pretty well posted in
the history of Lower and Upper Canada and Nova
Scotia, and of the life and environment of High-
landers, who, from the capture of Quebec downwards,
had been settling in these regions. All I had read
about the Hudson Bay Company's hunting and
trading regions, and about those of the other Com-
pany which was its rival for a time, and then united
with it, left me quite unprepared for Robert and
Archibald Campbell's astouudingly high estimate of
the agricultural and pastoral potentialities of the huge
area of land lying west between Winnipeg and the
Rocky Mountains, and south and north between the
boundary line of the United States and Athabasca.
526 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Both of them were the sons of Highland farmers
who had grazing and arable land ; and both of them
had increased their initial and hereditary farming
knowledge Archie as factor, and Robert by taking
to farming in Manitoba on retiring from his Com-
pany's service. In that service Robert had travelled
over much of the land from Hudson Bay to the
Rocky Mountains, and while i-ather sorry that,
outside Athabasca, the buffalo was doomed to
extinction, and the hunting area to be restricted,
and the roving Indian to be sent into reserves, con-
fessed that on the fertile prairie lands the whole
population of the United Kingdom, if they took to
farming and went there, could not cultivate all the
cultivable lands of that region. Archie had quite
lately been to Manitoba and further westward, com-
missioned to select and buy blocks of land where
the Canada Pacific Railway, then in course of
construction, was to pass. I think the chief of the
purchasing gentlemen was Sir J. Elphinstone, but
probably the Earl of Dunmore, who had before then
been hunting and exploring in the then Wild West
before rail way -making had got far from Winnipeg
had also a share in the enterprise. At any rate,
Archie executed his commission so satisfactorily that
he was rewarded by a generous slice of the purchased
land for himself. He stayed for some time with my
cousin, Donald Stewart, at Totogan as the Earl of
Dunmore had done before him, saw many of the
1870 settlers, heard their opinions, and their
practical experiences confirmed the view he had
taken himself of the future importance of that part
of the British Empire.
We left Dunmore early on the sunshiny morning
of a fair winter day. Our host drove " Manitoba 1 '
BACK TO SCOTLAND. 527
and me to Stirling and saw us entrained there ere
bidding us " good-bye." But we parted at Dunblane,
for " Manitoba" was going round by Crieff to see his
late wife's people at Comrie, and from afar the
snow-capped top of Benledi, shining in sunlight,
was giving me a cheerful invitation back to Bal-
quhidder, where I had long ago spent the three
most restful years of my life. I only stayed a night
and a day at Balquhidder, where I found twenty
years had brought about fewer changes than in
most places. My former pupils were now heads of
families, and in their turn beginning to get grey.
Owing to the coming in of the railway the village
of Strathyre had increased in size, architecturally
improved, and adorned itself with flowers for attract-
ing summer visitors. Farms were much the same
as before, and the old population stock continued to
flourish. The only other thing which struck me was
that the children were insensibly beginning to lose
firm hold of the excellent Gaelic of their forebears
the Gaelic of Kirke and Dugald Buchanan.
From Balquhidder I passed on to Killin, where,
as usual, I enjoyed the hospitality of my staunch old
friend, Mr Charles Stewart. Retired from banking
and wool-stapling business, Tighnduin as he got
by this time to be called was now engaged in
gathering up broken threads of ancient history, and
in making his valuable " Killin Collection" of Gaelic
poetry and music. Oh ! what an ardent Highlander
he was, and what natural talents he had ! And
how many Highlanders owed him grateful thanks
as I did myself for acts of kindness and helpful
counsel and guidance ! He had much experience,
and saw below the surface of things pretty far. He
crammed me on this occasion with useful information
528 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
on the agricultural situation, the social situation,
and future prospects of the diminished, and still
diminishing rural population. If his judgment on
some few questions might be warped by prejudices
inherited or acquired, his facts were always reliable
and his knowledge of the state of the whole High-
lands was extensive.
My cousin, Iain Ruadh Macnaughton, drove me
in his dogcart from Killin, over the hills of my
youth, to the farm of Cashlie in the braes of Glen-
lyon, of which he then was tenant. After a stay of
two or three days there, during which I was told
all that had to be told about Glenlyon affairs, I
got to Fortingall, stopped there a day, and made
Aberfeldy my next stage. Thence I went by railway
to Birnam, where my cousin, William Macnaughton,
met me, and drove me to his farm of Ridhop, some
four miles above Dunkeld. There I had been resting
for two or three days, and enlarging my information,
when I got a message from Mr limes, who wished
me to hasten on to Inverness. It was snowing when
I got this message, and I narrowly escaped being
blocked by snowdrifts by setting off next day.
That winter the Highland line was twice or thrice
seriously blocked, and the disastrous one, in which
fat cattle for the Christmas London market perished
at Dava, took place just after I passed through from
Grautown to Forres.
THE NORTHERN CHRONICLE." 529
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
"THE NORTHERN CHRONICLE."
THIS was the name which, after consideration and
discussion, was given to the Conservative Inverness
weekly paper, of which I was editor from its first
issue in the beginning of January, 1881, until May
Day, 1907. The capital for its establishment was
raised by a company of over two hundred share-
holders. Before and after its advent, the North
had a plentiful supply of local newspapers, but none
that represented the growing conservatism of
what was not the least intelligent, section of the
population. What Carlyle called the " shooting of
Niagara," by household suffrage given to the boroughs
in 1869, was now in a few years to be extended
to the counties, and its coming was sure to sever
old Whigs from the Radical wing of the Liberal
party in fear of rash innovations. On the other
hand, the representatives of Tory old families had
come to see that readjustment, called for by the
wholly altered relations between town and county,
and between capital and labour, arid landlords and
tenants, should have to be made cautiously arid
progressively, but not rashly and indiscriminately,
if danger to national character and to the stability
of fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and
equity could be escaped. I was allowed a perfectly
free hand in dealing with home, foreign, and social
questions. Except once, before the first issue
appeared, I never was called upon to a meeting of
34
530 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
the company's directors, and with Mr limes, the
managing director, and his successor, Mr William
Mackay, I had always pleasant relations. Mr
Innes was an outside tower of strength to us during
the early period of the Chronicle's career. His
knowledge of the rocks, under the smooth sea
surface, saved us from many mistakes in regard to
local news and communications from districts beyond
our ken. By energetic searching, careful selection,
happily aided by good luck, Mr Innes mustered a
" Chronicle crew " of competent workers in all
departments. Of those of them who entered into
the service of the company when young, a few are
still to the fore, holding their former or higher
places ; and of those who went away to Canada or
elsewhere to seek their fortune, good reports, as a
rule, come back to their old office. Trade Unionists
found so little favour in Mr Innes's eyes that he
would not have any of them in the Chronicle
office. Coming from a district in England where
Trade Unionism was rampant, I thought he ran a
risk in setting his face like steel against Unionists.
But he carried out his purpose, and, having had
experience of many offices, I have no hesitation in
saying that he got together as competent, and, in
all respects, as highly respectable a set of compositors
and machine-room people as could be found anywhere.
Their wages and their hours of work were fully better
than if they had been Unionists, and they annually
got 20 for a sail on Lochness, or a trip by railway
with wives and children. As many of them aspired
to be some day employers themselves, or to rise in
their vocations by their good work, the spirit
of individual freedom and self-reliance pervaded
them all.
THE PROCESSION OF CHANGES. 531
From what I afterwards was told by several of
themselves, I have reason to believe that almost
all the original shareholders looked upon the money
they put into the concern as money dedicated to
the purpose of giving the Highlands one organ of
Conservative opinion in affairs of State and Church,
and would be content if the Chronicle paid its own
working expenses, and did not, in the course of a
few years, collapse as several similar ventures on
both sides of politics had already done, or were
verging upon doing. As far as working expenses
were concerned, the paper paid its way almost from
the beginning, and after two or throe years it
steadily paid a five per cent, dividend upon the
capital invested in it from first to last. Mr Innes
was the most sanguine prophet of commercial success
when the paper was started, but the success it had
attained long before his lamented death, and which
since then has been sustained, far exceeded his most
sanguine expectations, at the time he went to see
me at Thwaites House.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
THE PROCESSION OF CHANGES.
IT was my intention when I began to scribble these
"Reminiscences" to stop short at 1881, and leave
what I may call contemporary history alone. Now,
however, I feel tempted to string loosely together, in
a sort of epilogue, some detached observations on
new outcomes or further developments of the
industrial revolution, with its compelling economic
changes, which I have endeavoured already to
describe as I saw it.
532 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
When I left for England in December, 1860, the
sheep-farming regime had reached its zenith. Wool
was paying the rent, and the wintering expenses
had not yet risen very high, nor had shepherds and
other servants wages ; for although self-evictions
had followed and far exceeded the previous landlord
evictions, the clachaus and crofter villages supplied
all the servants the farmers wanted. On coming
back to the Highlands exactly twenty years later,
the servant-supply in the southern and central parts
of the Highlands had become scanty, and wages had
risen. The process of joining farm to farm was still
going on, but after 1870 rents were steadily falling,
for colonial wools and foreign wools were swamping
the value of the home-grown wools, and the impor-
tation of live stock and preserved meat from other
lands came in competition with the home butcher-
meat productions, although the carcase prices all
through remained high.
In 1860, railways had not yet penetrated the
Highlands. The stage coaches were running as
before, and cattle, sheep, and horses were driven
by the ancient routes to Falkirk trysts and other
southern markets on their own feet. Twenty years
later the situation was radically changed by the
opening of the Highland Railway and the railway
connection of Inverness with Aberdeen, while, in
subsequent years, further railway extensions and
new lines called for hosts of navvies. Lawyers also
shared in the general prosperity of that time of
activity, for rival companies warred with one another
about predatory invasion of each other's spheres ot
monopoly, and especially about getting or keeping
a grip on Inverness as a centre of appropriating
activity in regard to the whole North.
THE PROCESSION OF CHANGES. 533
Money circulated freely all round, and there was
plenty of employment both for skilled and unskilled
workers. So, when I came to Inverness, and for a
number of years after that date, the Highlands, as a
whole, were full of unwonted employment and pros-
perity. The two main springs of that prosperity
flowed from the capital of the railway shareholders,
and from the heavy burdens laid on the rates for
building school premises and other objects deemed
necessary for advanced civilisation, which had been
dispensed with and not missed by previous genera-
tions. Besides the ordinary railway shareholder,
who had, at the end of a period of prosperity, to put
up with small dividends or, once or twice, none at
all and the school buildings, for the somewhat
profligate outlay on which ratepayers were heavily
burdened, proprietors of fishings and shootings were
putting up shooting lodges for sporting tenants, or,
when new owners, sumptuous mansions for them-
selves. For upwards of a quarter of a centuiy,
whenever and wherever railways extended, buildings
of a superior kind rose up along the lines at chosen
spots, where feus were to be had, as if by the magic
of Aladdin's lamp. In the neighbourhood of stations
in the wilds, new villages sprung up, and old ones
were improved beyond recognition ; and, like Pit-
lochry, Kingussie, Grantown, Aberfeldy, and places
north and west of Inverness, enlarged from humble
clusters of heath, fern, and straw-thatched dwellings
into towns with large populations, big hotels, hydro-
pathics, stately streets, fashionable shops, and no
end of lodging accommodation for summer visitors.
Owners of woods, land to feu, and lime and stone
quarries, shared in the profits of the building trans-
formations. So, as carriers, did the railways.
534 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Money flowed and work abounded as long as the
building and railway-making activity went on. But
in the nature of things that activity could not last
for ever. In this twentieth century, although the
stream of summer visitors has not diminished, and
is, indeed, likely to go on indefinitely, the fall in the
value of buildings and house-property has been serious
everywhere, and disastrously so where feu-duties are
high and where over-building has been carried on to a
mad extent. The Highland building trade, which,
up to 1890 or so, engaged so many hands, may now
be said to be almost dead, and without much hope
of an early or large revival.
Highland railways have done far better for the
Highlands than they have been able to do for their
ordinary shareholders. With the cessation of build-
ing activity, their carrying trade diminished.
Compared with Lowland and English lines passing
through centres of industries and dense population,
and bridging spaces between such centres as ports
for export, or internal places of demand and
exchange, Highland railways far from coal and iron,
and passing through long spaces with scanty
resident population, were from the start dis-
advautageously placed. When they had 110 longer
to carry building materials, what steadfastly
remained for them was the carrying of passengers,
cattle, and fish. Fast steamers competed for part
of the fish trade. Bicycles, and then, with more
serious effect, motor cars affected their passenger
traffic. Coal became dear, and workmen's wages
increased, and it required exceedingly good manage-
ment to secure very modest dividends to the
ordinary shareholders that represented the people
by whose capital and credit the lines had
THK PROCESSION OF CHANGES. 535
been constructed. Traction engines, noisy, slow,
dangerous to weak bridges, have taken in hand
much of the work for carrying timber and stones,
and other heavy materials, in places where shipping
ports are near, or local building is still going on by
small spurts and starts. Bicycles, motor cars, and
traction engines have come to stay. To the many
changes caused by railways, new inventions are daily
adding others, which, while not reversing, alter and
modify some of the previous changes.
Railways soon put an end to the running of
stage coaches on the roads which General Wade
had made passable in the eighteenth century, and
which were perfected in the early part of last
century. More slowly, but surely and steadily,
railways and steamers put an end to the driving
of animals for sale from the islands and mainlands
by roads and by prehistoric routes, over moors and
through mountain passes, to Falkirk trysts and
other markets. The markets, national and local,
which showed their antiquity by being named after
saints, either lost importance or died out entirely.
Dying out has been for local fairs the rule and
not the exception. The cause of all this was the
transport of our animals and produce by railway
to cattle sale centres and town markets.
536 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXXX.
LAND AND PEOPLE.
ON my way to Inverness, and more fully after I
settled there, I heard two stories about the land and
the people, which, on the face of them, appeared to
be contradictory of one another, but both of which
were the truth, looked at from different points of
view. Old Highlanders bewailed in eloquent Gaelic
the desolating change which had come over the
rural districts, and which was still going on as if it
would never end. On the other hand, I met with
young Highlanders, who, pointing to the growth of
population along the railway lines, contended that
there were more people now within the Highland
lines than had been in the times to which the old
ones looked back with so much vain longing, and
that also there was room for further increase. The
further increase took place as predicted, but not in
the manner expected. As new railway lines were
opened, new lodging - places for summer visitors
sprung up, and some of the older places of resort
losing many of their visitors, who went off to the
new places, found to their cost that they had over-
built themselves, and had to suffer for their rashness.
The summer visitors with a few winter ones thrown
in are still what they have been from the start
the mainstay of the places along the railway lines.
Trade prosperity makes the stream of them larger,
and trade depression smaller. Many of them like to
go to fresh scenes, and change their summer habitats
AND PEOPLE. 537
every year, but the majority stick pretty closely to
favourite places. Payment for houses, lodgings, and
service is far from being all the profit brought by
summer visitors. Brisk trade comes in their train
to grocers, butchers, bakers, and others, as well as
to hotel -keepers and people who have furnished
houses or lodgings to let. The traders of the towns
and villages along the railway lines supply not only
their own places, but the adjacent stretches of
country, to which they send out their vans with all
the necessaries and most of the luxuries of life. To
do away with grocers' licenses would not suit these
traders, but the suppression of old licensed country
inns, in the name of temperance, would not be
unwelcome to them. The owners or tenants of
mansions and shooting lodges are their best cus-
tomers, and such of them as get goods from Army
and Navy or other London stores, forfeit popularity
by not encouraging local trade.
The population of those towns and villages has
become a little mixed. The people of Highland
descent are largely in the majority, and likely to
be so always. But while the fathers and mothers
spoke Gaelic habitually and universally, few of their
children do so. The next important section of the
inhabitants are Lowlanders, who came with or
followed the railway making. Then we have Irish
and English incomers, the ubiquitous Jew, the
Italian cream shop keeper, and the German waiter
or hotelkeeper. While men and women of High-
land blood and surnames hold the front places, to
which they have a race-hereditary right, in the life,
trades, professions, and other activities, in our much
changed town and new village communities, other
Highlanders who have drifted in from country
538 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
places have not fared so well. Some of them had
been workers on the railways, but old farm servants
and crofters, who thought they could with gain pass
from occupations they had been accustomed to, to
other employments of which they know nothing,
were those deluded ones who deserved most pity.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
THE LATTER DAYS' INVASIONS OF THE HIGHLANDS.
IT is not only the Highlands, but all the rural
districts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which
are now annually invaded by hosts of strangers.
Nor are such invasions confined to the small United
Kingdom. The whole world is a scampering ground
for globe-flying not trotting Americans, and also
for Europeans who have money to scatter, or are
trying by fair means or foul to catch Dame Fortune
by her back-blown hair, or to chase elusive pleasures
and new sensations.
Enough has been said already about the
suppression of the old social and industrial system
of the coal-less Highlands by the sheep regime,
which began to be introduced about 1770. The
next invasion was that of the sportsmen who took
fishings and shootings. There were isolated cases
before then, but it was not until 1820 that pro-
prietors of Highland estates began to find out the
lettable value of the moors, lochs, and rivers which
their predecessors had kept in their own hands,
and shared with their friends and tenants. The
opening up of the Highlands by railways led to the
building of many shooting lodges, and to the
INVASIONS OP THE HIGHLANDS. 539
preserving and letting of shooting and fishing
rights, which, as being of an inferior kind, were
neglected by their owners, when I first began to
hear and take notice of what was going on in the
Highlands.
To the Highland people the sportsmen have
always been welcome invaders. They brought
much money among them, and their coming gave
an army of gamekeepers, and, later on, of foresters,
regular employment which suited, above everything,
Highland temperament and inherited mountain-
walking arid wild nature proclivities. Boatmen,
fishing- men, gillies, and ponies, as a summer reserve
array, had likewise their wages and participation in
sport during a part of the year, and were enabled
to join crofting to advantage with this secondary
employment. The shooting and fishing rents lined
the pockets of proprietors, and the rates paid on
them alleviated the ever-increasing pressure of local
burdens. The sporting tenants, moreover, did not
directly intermeddle with the life and habits of the
Highland people ; for were they not birds of passage,
who, when the sporting season ended, returned to
their native habitats ? It is true that for a genera-
tion after they first put in appearance, the sporting-
visitors to moors and lochs were not perceptibly an
innovating force ; but they were destined to become
that when the craze for deer forests set in, and
Highland estates and islands, and coast places with
anchorage for yachts, released from old entails, came
freely into the market, and fetched fabulous prices.
540 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXXXII.
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS.
IN 1860 the deer forests were few and far between.
They were mere remnants of the old forests of the
time of James IV., who first put sheep in Ettrick
forest, and was ashamed to own it, although he
gained thereby. He also had brood mares summer
ing in the Inchcallan forest, of which the Black
Mount was an appendage, which mares and their
followers he removed in winter to Falkland and
other Lowland possessions of his. Along the ridge
of Alba, and in mountains elsewhere, deer and sheal-
ings held their own stiffly, although with many
changes, down to the institution of the sheep regime
after Culloden days. Even after 1770 scattered
deer were to be met with wherever the shealings
still existed ; and by a "timchioll mor" or great
circuit drive-in they could be gathered together at
the "co-sheilgs" and " iollcraigs," which had been
the slaughtering - places from immemorial times.
The Jacobite rebellion of 1715 received its baptism
of deer blood at such a great circuit drive on the
Braes of Mar. When James VI. went to England,
the royal forests in the Highlands were still of large
extent. Bit by bit they were given out or sold
to private owners, and after 1770 nothing but a
shadowy ghost of them remained. It must be
acknowledged that, in the old days, the royal forests
and the forests belonging to the great nobles were
often refugees for outlaws and thieves, and that the
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 541
sheep regime marked the full establishment of the
reign of law in what had been the deer forest soli-
tudes of the olden times.
The vacant shealing huts, within and on the
skirts of the forests, provided the outlaws and
thieves with winter residences, and they killed the
deer for food. When in peril in one place they
could shift off readily to another place. This
shifting about gave rise to a sort of trade-union
between the outlaws of districts widely apart. The
Clan Grigor, with their certainly real, although to
this day not clearly ascertained grievances, from
the turmoils consequent on the disaster of Flodden
to the death of Rob Roy, furnished the outlaws
with the leaders that are most notorious in song,
legends, and Privy Council minutes such as Duncan
Ladosach Gregor of Glenstrae, beheaded at Bealach
in 1570, Alastair, his son, who officiated at the
gruesome ceremony over the head of the murdered
King's forester in the kirk at Balquhidder, and
fought with the Colquhouns at Glenfruin, Gilderoy
and John Dubh Gearr of Charles the First's time,
and Patrick Roy, brother of John of Glenstrae, who
seized upon Menzies of Weem's Brae of Rannoch
lands during the Covenant War disturbances, when
almost all the outlaws, hoping for spoils, made
themselves inlaws by taking the side of the King,
and fighting for him most manfully. Lochaber,
Glencoe, Moidart, Arisaig, the islanders, and Gunns
of the North were much associated with the Clan
Gregor, and the whole of the lawless had a market
in Ireland for such of their spoils as they did not
need for themselves. Until Jacobitism received its
death blow, loyalty to the dethroned dynasty
secured the protection of great chiefs and landowners
542 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
to raiders and outlaws. The law-abiding population
could defend themselves, and did defend themselves
in their winter towns, but were never quite safe
from having their cattle stolen from their shealings.
It was not so much as a robber as an insurer against
depredations by other robbers, that Rob Roy raised
his " blackmail," and in Perthshire and Argyleshire,
in a unique way, gained far from ill-deserved
popularity.
When outlaws and raiding bands were put down,
and individual thieves were got well in hand, thanks
to the combined forces of law and religion, sheep
could for the first time be safely put upon shealings
and on ancient forest lands. Imperative economic
reasons the sure hope of making much profit for
themselves, induced the larger number of the
Highland proprietors of the last thirty years of the
eighteenth century to do so. But still not a few of
them were so tenacious of use and wont that they
declined to move on with the main body of their
class, and went down to their graves leaving their
estate to their heirs much in the same condition as
they found them. The men, however, who would
not go in for change were not the owners of large
farms and shealing stretches, but owners of small
or moderate-sized estates with, for the Highlands,
liberal shares of arable land.
Enlightened self - interest induced Highland
nobles, chiefs, and other landlords, between 1770
and 1800, to convert the mountain solitudes into
sheep runs until there was nothing left of them
unstocked but the few old forests, or bits of them,
which a few magnates kept still under deer for their
own and their friends' hunting. But I question if
any of them thought then of ruthlessly breaking and
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 543
brushing aside the thousand kindly ties with the
people who lived on their lands. They were, like
these people, for a long time blind to the impending
doom of the domestic industries on the profits of
which the coal-less districts fairly well participated,
until new machinery driven by steam power, division
of labour, and concentration in towns and mineral
districts, changed the whole industrial order. If
evictions were thought of as they must have been
by the foreseeing they were not much spoken of or
carried out until after Waterloo, when the Highlands
lost their previous value as a nursery for soldiers,
and when the calanas was already suffering from
the blight which was slowly and surely killing it.
Feudalism arid clannishness in the Highlands
the two always by a mysterious process amalgamated
together, simple habits of life, and simple tools of
industry, gave the superseded order a stability which
the lapse of centuries did not essentially change.
The case is now entirely different. Who of the
landlord promoters of the sheep regime foresaw that
in a century sheep-farming should commence to be
superseded by deer forests in more than the places
which had been of old devoted to shealings and
deer ? Change follows change in endless chain. To
change the metaphor, rural life is tossing on a heav-
ing sea of changes in a badly-equipped boat striving
to struggle to land.
When I went to England in 1860, mountain
sheep - farming had reached its highest point of
expansion. Grouse moors and fishings were also
paying high rents, and shooting lodges were being
run up. A few derelict Highland estates had passed
into the hands of new owners, but there was yet no
reason to suppose that the change of ownership
544 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
should proceed very far when the rent - rolls of
Highland properties had so remarkably swelled up,
and when old landed families were, or should be,
tenacious in keeping a firm hold on the ancestral
lands. After twenty years' absence from Scotland,
I found when I came to Inverness that the 1860
situation was undergoing a series of changes, the end
of which has not yet been reached. For one thing
the profit and loss scale was turning decidedly
against sheep-runs, the rents of which were falling,
and in favour of deer forests, the rents of which
were rising, and the purchasing demand for which
was far exceeding the supply.
The Earl of Dudley, as tenant of the Blackmount
Forest, was paying a rent of 4500 to the Earl
of Breadalbane. It was, however, an American
millionaire, Mr W. L. Winans, who " topped
creation " by his taking of moors and forests
between Beauly and Kintail. He took all he could
get regardless of the huge cost he had to pay, and
was vexed that he could not get more. He paid a
rent of 5750 to Lord Lovat, of 2940 to the
Chisholm, and of 1104 to Mr Mackenzie of Kintail.
And for all this extravagance he could not be called
a true sportsman. He believed in drives of deer
and grouse, and in sumptuous hill pic-riics. Others
of his countrymen who rented Highland forests,
shootings, and fishings, were true sportsmen, and so,
too, were his own sons. Sir John Ramsden, who
purchased 138,000 acres of mountain land in Upper
Badenoch, including Ben Alder Forest, may be
taken to represent the class of new proprietors who
bought estates in the Highlands, mainly for sporting
purposes. Sir John Ramsden was not indeed the
first English purchaser of a great Highland estate,
DEER FOBESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 545
for Lord Dudley had been before him as owner of
Glengarry, which, however, he did not keep long
before he sold it to the good Scotsman, Mr Ellice.
The earlier purchasers got better bargains than the
later ones. Prices rose as if bidders had gone mad,
and the temptation to sell was too strong to be
resisted by many old owners who were either
burdened with debts and settlements, or anxious to
provide their children with means for making new
starts in life under promising conditions. So all
over the Highlands and Islands land has, bit by bit,
and, sometimes, in big lumps, for now a long period,
been passing from old families to new owners. The
boom is yet on districts where sheep-runs can easily
be changed into deer forests. But I doubt whether
it can last much longer at its present height. It
has slackened already in crofter community districts.
Mr Andrew Carnegie got the estate of Skibo at a
price much reduced from what his predecessor, Mi-
Sutherland, had paid for it.
The same economic reason natural love of profit
which, at the end of the eighteenth century,
caused shealings and forest lands to be stocked with
sheep, led to the reversal of that process at the end
of the nineteenth century. But when an almost
mad demand arose for the creation or purchase of
deer forests it could not be suddenly and completely
met. Owners who would gladly sell for the fancy
prices readily offered were tied down by strict entail
restrictions, until heirs, born after 1848, succeeded
their father, and regained liberty of sale by com-
pounding with expectant heirs. Sheep farmers of
lands wanted for making new deer forests, had often
long leases, for the expiry of which impatient sports-
men, and profit-expecting landlords wishing to sell,
35
546 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
could not wait. Their tenants had therefore to be
bought out, and between compensation for giving
up their leases and high valuation for their stock,
they went off to pastures new with full purses and
rejoicing hearts.
Lest I should otherwise overlook a subject which
not long ago was of first class importance, and has
not yet lost all its importance, although restricting
conditions in new leases have changed matters, I
will digress a little to make a few remarks on stock
valuations. It was proper that an acclimatised
stock on a farm should be bought at a higher rate
than an unacclimatised one in open market. From
the first, in granting leases, landlords had made it a
condition that the out-going tenant should deliver
at valuation the stock to the incoming tenant, or
failing such a tenant, to the landlord himself, who
was bound to receive it and pay for it. Up to 1860,
or some years later, in the delivering of sheep stock,
the allowance made for acclimatisation was so
reasonable that landlords and incoming tenants had
little or nothing to complain of except it may be
that in some few instances out-going tenants so
managed that they delivered more stock than the
graziugs could regularly carry. I am not quite sure,
but have some reason to believe, that it was in the
hot haste to make new deer forests an upward hitch
was given to valuations, which went higher and
higher over the whole land, until incoming tenants
could not stand it, and landlords thought they had
good reason to think themselves swindled.
The sheep farmers having their own grievances
and sore trials, defended themselves as they best
could against ruinous losses. Their best weapon of
defence was the high valuations for stock on going
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 547
out of their farms, which, having once been
established on the principle of a great difference
between farm-bred stock and flying market stock,
could only be adjusted by resort to new forms of
contract. Looking forward to recovery of losses by
high valuations, they took care to have very full
stocks for delivery. As a class the only relations
between them and their landlords were the purely
commercial ones of contract buying in the cheapest
and selling in the dearest markets. They had
invested much capital in their stock. 1000 meant
quite a small farm, and 5000 a good regulation
one, and 10,000, or upwards, a topping one. In
taking long leases they had not foreseen the
frightful fall in the prices of wool, which fall was
but wretchedly compensated by a rise in the value
of the carcase. Then, as the years rolled on, the
wintering rents rolled up, and so did servants'
wages. The sheep likewise lost much of their old
foraging hardihood, and new diseases got in among
them notably the " crithein," or " trembling."
This disease was unknown, or so rare as not to
be marked, when cattle and horses and goats
ate the coarser grasses, and sedges, and when
the ferns they did not trample and destroy, were
pulled for thatching and cut for bedding. A
steadily, if stealthy, progressive deterioration of hill
grazings went on, which old natives were the first
to notice. They remembered the days when herds
of cattle, with many horses, were mixed with the
sheep stocks, and when every bit of arable land was
carefully cultivated, and even the last of the
shealings had not been left vacant in summer.
They said that the bigger animals manured the
ground behind them, and consumed the rougher
548 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
herbage ; that the droppings of the sheep had no
mauurial value, and that, while incapable of keeping
down the rougher vegetation, they nipped every
patch of fine grass so close to the ground as to lay
its roots bare to be destroyed by ' winter frosts.
The green spots which marked the old hill shealings,
and abandoned spots of old cultivation, have
certainly, within my own memory, much contracted
or effaced themselves, while rushes arid ferns and
sedges have spread themselves into nuisances. I
have no doubt that there was much truth in what
the ancient natives said. The sheep farmers of
shealing regions, and of big holdings formed by the
turning out of old communities of winter towns,
where arable and pastoral pursuits used to be
conjoined, profited for a long time by the unex-
hausted manures and other leavings of the old
system which had been superseded by the sheep
reign. Whatever were its passing fluctuations, and
whatever happened to individuals who did not know
their business, or hazarded beyond their means
and credit, that reign for a hundred years was a
profitable one to landlords whose rents were doubled
or trebled, and to farmers who knew how to make
good use of their opportunities, and secure them-
selves from losses by wintering out the young of
their flock.
At the end of a century of prosperity for both,
appeared the Nemesis which threw landlords and
large sheep farmers into fierce conflict all on
commercial lines. Smaller sheep farms with arable
land continued to be easily let, generally to the old
tenants, on moderate reductions of rent, but the big
sheep-runs, on the expiry of lease, were thrown on
landlords' hands, because that was the only way
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 549
in which the outgoing farmers could hope to recoup
losses, and retire if old to live on that capital, or
if young to take farms again on new conditions if
outgoing, and rents so reduced that they could be
fairly sure of profits, or safe against losses, and
with comfortable homes and the occupations which
suited them. Some who went out came back after
a while into their old farms, on rent reduced from
what they had once been by a third, or in some
cases by a half.
The financially-embarrassed landlords, on whose
hands sheep-stocks at high valuations were thrown
all in a row as leases usually expire in batches-
saw nothing before them but trouble likely to end in
bankruptcy unless they sold their estates. Some
have done so, and others may follow their example,
which, indeed, is worldly-wise, while fancy prices
can be obtained for Highland forests ; yet it hurts
one to see old landed families disappear from the
places which had so long known them. Political
economists look only to money profit and loss, but
the sentimental associations which they scorn are
binding cords in social life, the value of which cannot
be estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence. On
the political economist's code rules, the embarrassed
landlords who take advantage to sell out when the
market boom for Highland estates lasts are certainly
acting very wisely. They get rid of their burdens,
and recoup themselves like the sheep-farmers who
have pushed them to the wall. Probably when they
have paid all their liabilities, they will find them-
selves financially in a better position than they had
been before. The purchasers, in giving such fancy
prices for Highland estates, thought more of sport
than of making profitable investments. They wanted
550 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
forests of their own, spent money freely on planting,
fencing, and other improvements, and some of them,
like Sir Donald Currie on his Glenlyon estate, by
joining large grazing outruns to arable and meadow
land, and putting deer fences between these outruns
and the forest hills, formed separate farms of size
enough for giving employment to families all the
year round, with chances of steady and just returns
on capital and labour, and have initiated what is un-
doubtedly an improvement on crofting communities
the plan of separate holdings of the moderate and
manageable size to which it would be most desirable
to resort. There are few obstacles now to sales and
transfers, because successive Acts of Parliament
have, in a majority of instances, put an end to
entails, and in all cases reduced their operations to a
minimum of obstruction.
The owners of estates equal in area to small
English counties, who had no wish, and, if they
lived within their incomes, no need to sell portions
of their land, found themselves "held up" by their
larger tenants when they, in self-defence, took to
giving up their holdings, on high valuations, unless
they got rents reduced by a third or a half, and the
other concessions they demanded, so to speak, at the
points of their conquering spears. It was a hard
choice between taking over farms and stocks and
agreeing to accept such heavy reductions of pastoral
rents as had not been heard of for a hundred years.
But when the outrageously large farms turned into
white elephants, why were they not at once divided
by landlords into small and moderately -sized, separate
holdings, for which there always continued to be a
good demand by a very good class of people who
had, by industry and frugality, saved sufficient
DEEK FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 551
capital for stocking and equipping, and knew all
which concerned utilising grazings and arable lands?
To hereditary landlords there was a formidable
difficulty in going back to smaller holdings by
dividing the big ones which had turned into white
elephants. They or their predecessors, chiefly the
latter, had made heavy outlays on building stead-
ings, and farmhouses that might be called gentlemen's
modest mansions, on the big holdings. When these
were sub-divided there would only be one division
of them which would have farm buildings on it, and
to that division the buildings on it would be a vast
deal more than it wanted. The thatched houses,
barns, and byres of former days, which tenants built
for themselves and kept in repair, getting nothing
more than timber from their landlords, had been
swept away. The new tenants of sub-divided huge
holdings expected, as a matter of course, that the
landlord would put up new boundary fences and
comfortable storie-and-lime and slated buildings
when they were to pay rents which, in the aggregate,
would far exceed what he could now get for the
undivided big holding. From such an undertaking
hereditary landlords recoiled, and having re-let at
much reduced rents the more manageable farms, and
having, at a heavy loss, sold at market prices the
stock of the practically unlettable mountain sheep-
runs, they turned them into deer forests for which,
after a stocking interval, they thought themselves
sure to get high rents, or they made sure at once
by selling such lands to people who had made large
fortunes in business and trade, and who, looking
less to investment than to sport, and the strangely
attractive social status of landed gentry, did not
much care what price they paid for their Highland
forest, shooting, and fishing purchases.
552 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Imperative economic causes brought the old
industrial system of the Highlands to an end and
established the reign of sheep. At the end of a
century similar reasons are, to a great extent,
superseding sheep by deer. Those who hold
Cobden-Club views in logical purity should, there-
fore, rest content ; for if true to their professed
creed economic reasons ought to be accepted and
acted upon, without respect to cherished sentiments.
Cobcleuism and science are much alike in excluding
from consideration the innate principles of human
nature and the soul-side of the universe. They
have undoubted truths to teach, but without those
complements they are too liable to be used or abused
as poisonous because imperfect truths. The sheep
reign deeply hurt the Highland people. The
present phase of reversion to deer and the coming
in of new sporting landlords with plenty of money,
and willingness to expend it on their sporting
pleasures, and on such valuable improvements as
planting, fencing, and buildings, are materially
beneficial to the native population. Employment
as foresters, gamekeepers, home-farm servants, and
gardeners has great benefits for young Highlanders,
and keeps them from going away from their birth-
places to towns and colonies.
Previously unsuspected causes so often lead up
to unexpected results, that it is quite within the
wide range of possibility the placing of mountain-
side glens, corries, and hill-tops under deer, may
turn out to be the means for creating a great
number of desirable small separate farms, far larger
than crofts, but not too large for being taken and
advantageously worked by people who possess a few
hundred pounds of saved money. The process has
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 553
began in other places, as well as in the one already
referred to. It is a natural process to form farms of
the arable lands and hay meadows where cultivation
can be carried on, and to give each of them grazing
outruns, divided from the forest wild lands by deer
fences. Wild talk has been plentifully indulged
in by radical agitators and newspapers, about the
wickedness of dedicating to sport land fit for
cultivation. It would be certainly wicked to do so.
But is the Highland land put under deer, land fit
for cultivation ? People who talk so loudly, should
try to know what they are talking about. Before
the installation of the sheep reign in full form,
cultivation was pushed to the farthest limits, within
which it was possible to find small patches of
suitable soil. But even before the sheep put an end
to the shealings, the cultivators of patches of
promising, exceedingly well-manured shealing land,
discovered to their cost that there was a line
beyond which crops would not grow and ripen for
the harvest. Let the decriers of wickedness inspect
the existing Highland forests before denouncing
them on a false cry. Let them watch the making
of new forests, and if they find that cultivable land,
to the extent of an acre in a thousand, is being
included in them, shout for penal legislation. At
present they have no case for calling out for
penalising the owners and tenants of forests by
differential rates and taxes. They are already
paying rates far above what their places would have
to pay if they remained under sheep, and the rents
of them fluctuated down to the lowest pastoral level.
It is safe to confidently predict that the reign of
deer will not last so long as the reign of sheep
has done, and that it will never extend beyond
554 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
uncultivable mountain and moor lauds. Were it to
spread itself out, so as to include areas fit for mixed
grazing and agricultural farming, it would, no doubt,
be dealt with by prohibitive legislation. But there
!s no need for legislative interference, as long as only
uncultivable spaces are placed under deer, because
that is the most profitable, selling, letting, and
rating use which can be made of them in present
circumstances. Grouse moors and fishing are in a
different category, and may retain their value
indefinitely. People who are not ranked among
the wealthy, have grouse, hare, rabbit, partridge,
and ptarmigan shootings, and salmon and trout
fishings within their reach. Deer forests are
luxuries in which only rich people can indulge.
They are bought at fancy prices, and let by old
proprietors who do not sell lands at fancy rents.
Happy are the owners who have well-stocked deer
forests with good lodges in these days to let. But
the new ones which are being formed in places
cleared of sheep, take five or six years, with care and
expenditure, to stock with imported deer, and partly,
too, with deer that have strayed in from neighbour-
ing forests. Straying away to pastures new, from
which they do not come back, calls for the erection
of deer fences between adjoining forests. Between
forests and farms the need for such fences is still
more clamant. The deer ravage crops and meadows
to an intolerable degree. Fences and walls which
shut in or shut out other animals are not barriers to
them. Out of their own grounds, they are wild
beasts of nature, whose raiding ravages are to be
stopped by getting killed and eaten by those who
suffer. So deer must be shut in by deer fences in
their own grounds if they are to be saved from the
DEER FORESTS AND SHEEP FARMS. 555
fate they deserve. And when fenced in they have
still to be guarded by hosts of foresters, reinforced
in the hunting season by many gillies.
After new forests have been fenced, stocked, and
furnished with sumptuous lodges, the heavy cost of
upkeep will remain ; and the more new forests are
made, the less will become the letting value and the
less the selling price of former forests. It is quite
easy, by multiplying them, to exceed the demand
for deer forests, for that demand will always be
restricted to the very rich, who can afford to please
themselves, or to the reckless who march on the
road to ruin. There are changes of fashion in sports
as well as in ladies' dresses. With fast steamers on
sea, airships in view, and railways, and roads for
motor-cars opening up formerly sealed countries, and
bringing all parts of the earth in close proximity, it
is not at all unlikely that hunting elephants and
other large game in what used to be called "Darkest
Africa" will come into deadly competition with deer-
hunting in the Highlands. All things considered, I
look upon the present process of converting sheep-
runs into deer forests as a passing phase in a period
of general transition, the end of which it is impossible
to foretell. But if nothing more than a passing
phase, it is, at any rate, for many reasons a good one
for the children of the Gael, and it promises, if left
to run its course, to be a helpful factor in keeping
Highlanders on their native land, and in leading up
to the formation of much-to-be-desired moderately-
sized, separate farms.
556 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
THE CROFTERS.
FARMERS' associations preceded and set the example
of combination to crofter agitation. Classes and
castes, secular and religious, in all lands and
throughout all the ages, aimed at monopolies and
dominating influence. The masses also had
occasional outbursts of revolt when their burdens
and grievances were more than flesh and blood could
bear. Trade unionists learned from aristocracies,
Churches, and political parties in Constitutional
States how to put up cactus-hedges of separatism
in self-defence, and when household suffrage and the
ballot came, how to master their masters by strikes
or threats of strikes, without the least regard to
general interests and future trade and employment.
The country people, farmers and labourers, were
slow to imitate the town trades unions. In Eng-
land and the Lowlands of Scotland the feudal system
had woven many connecting ties between landowners
and tenants, and in the Highlands clannishness
made these ties almost sacred when the chief of the
clan was the landlord. Although in not a single
instance known to me the people on such a chief's
land were all, or mostly a 1 !, of his own surname, yet
the non-clansmen were as much his faithful followers
as were his clansmen. They all looked up to him
as their natural leader in peace and war. Their
ancestors had followed his ancestors in days of old,
and many rattling Gaelic songs, and sad laments,
THE CROFTERS. 557
commemorated the triumphs and sorrows of their
conjoint legends and more recent histories. And
clannishness of a strong kind existed between old
landed families and their people where there was
little or no blood relationship at all. As long as
Highland landowners spent most of their time on
their estates, knew all their people, and their
circumstances, and worshipped with them in the
parish churches, their was no chance for the
agitator to stir up a war of classes. So deeply
rooted in Celtic minds is the habit of clannish
looking up to the landlord as natural leader, that
men who bought Highland estates and used them
for residential purposes, succeeded frequently to gain
the respect and influence which belonged, as of
right, to the extinct or superseded families whose
places they occupied. Evictions, sheep-runs, the
incoming of Lowland farmers and shepherds,
weakened, but did not wholly break, the kindly
ties. Highlanders did not fully realise, although
some of them did at the beginning of last century,
or later in between the war with- Napoleon and the
revolution which the railways brought in their trail,
that the old system of domestic industries and
shealings, and small farms, had fallen under the
doom of economic causes. They understood well
enough that it was necessary for them to send out
swarms of their young people to seek their fortunes
in towns and colonies, or to serve in the army or
navy as had always been done ; but they thought,
rightly or wrongly, that they had claims for
help, guidance, and sympathy on their landlords
to which many of them who could afford to do
so, did not generously respond. While they
grieved and murmured at being deserted, hustled,
558 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
and concussed by not a few of their natural
leaders, they did not think of breaking out into
lawlessness and forming secret leagues for perpetrat-
ing atrocities by night or by day. On the West
Coast and in the Islands, the potato famine produced
a crisis of distress equal to that in the worst parts of
Ireland. In that crisis landlords, upon the whole,
did their utmost to save their people from starvation.
Several of them mortgaged their estates to obtain
money for buying provisions for their people. Some
old families, who were struggling before, wrecked
themselves entirely for the sake of their people, and
not only endless gratitude is felt for them to this
day by all Highlanders, but the careers of their
representatives and offshoots are watched with the
affectionate respect due to unjustly-deposed royal
dynasties. With the potato famine set in the
determined full current of self-evictions, which the
Crofter Acts have done something, but not as much
as should be wished for, to stem.
When I came to Inverness in December, 1880,
there was as yet no movement of any consequence
among the crofters. Farmers' associations, on the
contrary, had, by that time, spread themselves all
over Scotland. The movement first arose among
the Lowland arable farmers ; and then it took hold
on the sheep farmers of the Borders and Highlands.
The agricultural farmers had suffered much from
the abolition of the Corn Laws, and were as yet only
very slowly recovering from losses incurred during
the currency of former long leases. It was, I believe,
in 1873 that I heard an English corn-miller, who
had until then been a rank Radical, denouncing, in
racy Yorkshire dialect, "Bob Lowe," the then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, for abolishing, when
THE CKOFTERS. 559
nobody asked him, the shilling per quarter registra-
tion duty on imported grain, to which the Cobdenites
had not objected, and which by that time was pro-
ducing a tidy revenue. The angry miller prophesied
that the causeless remission of that duty would go
far to destroy the corn -milling business in this
country, because the remission would throw the
meal-making of imported cereals into the hands of
the foreign exporters. His prophesy turned out to
be true, although it seemed at the time like the
exaggeration of a man who was looking through a
narrow and twisted self-interest chink. On return-
ing to Scotland seven years later, I found that many
corn-mills on Highland streams and rivers, which
were at work in 1873, had already been closed ; and
since then many more of them have gone on the list
of the unemployed. But in the sheep - farming
regions, the letting-out under grass of former arable
land was not so much due to "Bob Lowe's" remission
of the shilling duty as to the pasturing, and especi-
ally the wintering requirements, of stock, and higher
servants' wages.
Lowland farmers also let out under grass the
less valuable parts of their arable land, and, besides
other advantages, got higher and higher rents for
wintering sheep that came down to them at the
harvest end from the hill districts. Wheat cultiva-
tion, because made unprofitable, ceased alike in
Essex and Easter Ross ; but Scotch agriculturists
learned much sooner than their English fellow-
sufferers how to recover themselves by labour-
saving implements, feeding cattle for the butchers,
the use of nitrates, and other artificial manures the
stimulating effect of which is visible, but the ultimate
consequences to soil, animal life, and human salubrity
560 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
must yet be held to be somewhat questionable.
Above all they set about fencing themselves by a
monopolistic class association to protect them against
outside bidders when leases had to be renewed,
and to place landlords in the position in which they
had placed their tenants, when the old relationship
had been changed into contracts on purely commercial
lines. The Hypothec Law was indefensible on
commercial and equitable principles, for when a
tenant became bankrupt it gave the landlord a
sweeping preference over the other creditors. But
for all its iniquity, it was the ladder by which many,
who now cried out against it, had climbed from small
beginnings into the position of large farmers.
Those climbers did not wish that others with
small capital and trust in themselves should climb
up after them, and, as bidders for farms, whistle
up rents whicli they, in possession, were working
strenuously and artfully to compel landlords
to reduce, far below open market obtainable
value. Hypothec they succeeded in reducing to
practical nullity. I must confess that I admire the
energy and skill with which the agricultural farmers
acted in most trying circumstances, and the readi-
ness with which they adopted new methods for
retrieving losses and securing their class interests.
But neither sheep farmers nor arable land farmers,
when they formed their farmers' associations, took
crofters and working people into serious consideration.
They were both of them thoroughly convinced that
large farms could be more economically managed
than small ones ; and all things being considered on
commercial principles, and from class interest point
of view, they had a good deal of reason for the
belief that was in them. The large farm involved a
THB CROFTERS. 561
large outlay of capital in stock and equipments.
How could the one plough farmer compete with the
many plough farmer who invested many hundreds
of pounds on new labour saving machines, and when
seeds and artificial manures required to be purchased,
or famous bulls and fancy price tups and splendid
horses, needed only to sign cheques on his banker ?
While taking small or no account of crofter and
farm servant questions, farmers' associations aimed
at perpetuating large holdings, and at reducing the
rents of these holdings by excluding free competition,
and exercising a trade union pressure on landlords.
The crofter agitation presented one aggressive
front against landlords, and another against the
large farmers. That agitation did not spring up
suddenly nor without forewarnings for many years.
The crofting townships, with one hand on the laud
and the other on the sea, were long incited by out-
side enthusiasts of their race and by Irish object-
lessons before they rose in revolt. They grumbled,
but in fact they did not attempt a combined move-
ment until they got household suffrage with the
ballot, and the political magicians, with their bags
of tricks and promises, came among them. Among
these agitators were honest enthusiasts, who cared
less for political economy and actual facts than they
did for the race- interests of the children of the Gael.
But most of the politicians were self-seekers, who
would promise sun, moon, and planets for votes to
give them seats in the House of Commons, with such
social and other profits as might with proper care
result therefrom. The crofters were by no means so
simple as they chose to appear. With their better
knowledge of the real situation, they looked with
concealed contempt on the bagmen politicians, but
36 ....-,
562 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
at the same time thought they could make use of
them as supple tools and loud-mouthed House of
Commons brayers. So it came about that landlord
and large farmer candidates were defeated at the
polls by outsiders. But it was a different affair
when County Councils and other local bodies had to
be elected. After crofter members got a single trial
turn they were set aside, and landed gentlemen and
men with good local standing were elected. Crofters
and household suffragists, while wanting many things
many of which were not attainable wished their
local affairs to be managed by men whom they knew
and trusted. The simplest among the crofters, how-
ever, were made to believe, and others of them who
knew better pretended to believe, that there was
"plenty of money in London," part of which could
be obtained by putting pressure, as the Irish did, on
a squeezable Government. It would be nice to get
extensions of grazing outruns from deer forests as
well as from sheep-runs, and so the crofters joined
heartily in the outcry of outsiders against deer
forests, although they knew very well that no crop-
bearing use could be made of many acres of the large
area given up to the deer, the hunting of which
brought so much money into the country, and with
rents of moors and fishings, such relief to the rates
which would otherwise have been intolerable. Not-
withstanding incitements from without, and the folly
of a few hot-heads within, the Highland crofters, un-
like the Irish, refused to be drawn into criminal acts.
The nearest approach to such acts were the farcical
raiding of a deer forest in the Lews, many years ago,
and the quite recent Vatersay seizure of land by
Barra men, which, after seeming by their action,
or rather non-action, to countenance, the Radical
THE CROFTEKS. 563
Secretary for Scotland, Mr Sinclair, and his
colleague - blunderer, Mr Thomas Shaw, Lord-
Advocate, has since in a new form officially
denounced. As proprietors of the Kilmuir estate in
Skye, our public rulers were also placed in an object-
lesson difficulty.
Before the passing of the Crofters' Acts, High-
land crofters, whether on the sea coast or inland,
had real grievances to complain of, from which people
of their class did not suffer in the Lowlands. They
had to build their houses and byres and barns, and
to keep them in habitable repair. They had to pay
rents out of proportion with the rents paid for
similar land and acreage by their neighbours, the
large farmers, who, in the inland districts, although
not on the sea coast, added to their wintering old
parish clachan crofts left vacant by the departure
of weavers, shoemakers, smiths, and millers who,
under the new dispensation, had lost their trades.
They were subject to evictions at the will of the
landlord. If they added to their arable land by
trenching part of their grazings they were not fairly
compensated if evicted. There was, however, more
trenching and reclamation of wild land on the east
than on the west side of the water line. I believe
more of that work had been done in Sutherland
than in all the Highland counties put together, and
after the great upset of " Gloomy Memories," land-
lord rule in Sutherland was not oppressive and
evictions were not capricious. In verity the old
dispensation farmers had pushed cultivation in most
Highland districts to its utmost limits, and tried to
raise black oats for fodder beyond the line where
they had any chance of ever ripening, unless in a
most exceptionally dry and hot season.
564 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Fair rent, fixity of tenure, and compensation on
disturbance for improvements effected, have infinitely
improved the condition of the crofters. And what
is the visible result of this bettering of conditions ?
In almost all places new buildings of the stone and
lime and slated order, and, particularly on the east
side of the water line, better stock and better
farming of the arable land. Better gardening is in
its initial stage as yet, but I hope it is sure to follow
the other betterings. There is a wide scope for it,
and much pot and flower-beauty need for it. In
gardening Highlanders have always been as far
behind Lowlanders as the latter have, with some
exceptions in a few localities, been behind their
English fellow-subjects. Whoever knows the crofters
and their modes of thoughts and habits, however
adverse to some of their land-question views and
actions, cannot honestly refuse to admit that they
have extraordinarily good qualities, and that they
cherish higher ideals of duty, religion, and morality,
which they fairly try to act up to as a class, than
are to be found anywhere else among what are
called " the lower orders " because the poorer in
purse section of society.
I cannot say from personal knowledge how the
crofters of Argyle and the Western Isles are using
their chances, but I can confidently say that since
the passing of the Crofters' Acts, the advance made
on the northern mainland from the Grampian divide
to Thurso, and also in Skye, has been most gratify-
ing, and in particular districts almost marvellous.
Crofter townships are by no means up to the ideal
standard of what would be best for land settlement
if the land-settlers had no obstacles to encounter
when carrying out their scientific plans. But there
THE CROFTERS. 565
are not only possessory rights, which the State
might remove by purchase if it had boundless funds,
and feared not to undertake boundless risks stand-
ing in the way of the theorists, but, likewise,
natural obstacles arising from the way in which the
scanty proportion of crop-bearing soil is distributed
among the uncultivable areas. The separate holding,
whether big or little, is doubtlessly far more desirable
than the township system of common grazings and
separate arable plots. And most desirable of all
would be the formation of many moderately-sized
farms, well fenced, which would have arable land
sufficient for the working of a pair of horses, and
grazings sufficient for a score of cattle and some
hundreds of sheep. Things are drifting towards the
formation of such a middle class of holdings, between
large farms which only men with thousands of
capital can venture to take and the usually small
holdings of township crofters. The separate holding,
be it a good-sized croft or a small farm, puts the
occupier on his mettle. With fair rent, fixity of
tenure, and compensation for improvements on dis-
turbance, the energetic, thoughtful, frugal, and
diligent occupier is sure barring what are called
visitations of God, such as loss of crops by blight or
bad weather, and loss of stock by cattle and sheep
plagues to make more than ends meet, although he
may benefit his country by having many hardy,
healthy children, and training them up in the way
they should go straight in paths of well - doing
through life. On separate holdings the good and
diligent would be as sure, as anything is sure in this
world, of reaping the rewards of their merits ; and
the slothful, foolish, or debauched would, sooner
than in township communities, fall under the
566 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
punishment of their demerits. In the crofter town-
ships the wastrels are indeed much fewer than they
are proportionately among other sections of society,
high or low ; but few as they are, thanks to the
influence of moral and religious public opinion among
the crofters, they can make themselves pests to their
neighbours, and some thorns in the flesh to their
blood relations. Such black sheep are loud-tongued
in public- houses, still more loud-tongued at local and
parliamentary elections, and, in their own opinion,
enlightened politicians of the predatory Socialistic
school to which all loafers who seek to be kept up at
honest people's cost, without being treated as self-
made paupers worthy of coercion and forced labour,
rightly belong. In the higher Socialism there is a
wild but pure enthusiasm which claims respect, not-
withstanding its madness; in the lower or loafer and
criminal Socialism nothing of a redeeming character
is discernible.
While the formation of farms of moderate size
and of fairly large separate crofts should be looked
upon as the best means for land settlement, it is a
plan which cannot be everywhere carried out in the
Highlands, although the building difficulty should
in some way be got over, and the mountain tops
and conies should be left to the deer as long as they
yield higher rents than sheep, and relieve rates, and
bring much money into the country. The township
community system will have to continue where people
have one hand on the sea and another on the land,
and also, I fear, in inland places where the small
areas of arable land are so situated among extensive
grazings, that divisions of holdings would leave some
without potato ground in their grazing stretches,
and give to others more than their share of arable,
THE CROFTERS. 567
and less of the better grazings, than their neighbours
had. If introduced where people had not been for
untold generations accustomed to it, the community
system would be prolific in frictions and fractions,
and produce wholesale discontent. But the High-
landers of the crofting regions know how to work it
under time-honoured regulations, and settle any
quarrels which arise quietly among themselves.
Most of the faults of a theoretically bad system can
be covered up by equitable administration. The
crofting township is the remnant of what was once
the general land system of all the Highlands, and of
part of the Lowlands likewise. The crofting town-
ships of to-day represent the immemorial order,
when foundations were undermined by the invasion
of sheep at the end of the eighteenth century, and
which was blown almost entirely to pieces in the
first half of the last century.
By twenty years' good conduct, and very notable
material progress, the crofters have falsified many
prophesies of evil, disarmed many prejudices, and
gained the respect of former opponents. Landlords
excusably defended their property rights, and
thought, perhaps with some justification, that the
Highlands were on the verge of becoming as unruly
and criminally lawless as the worst parts of Ireland.
They know better now, and discover also that
without the crofter communities there would be a
dearth of honest and capable farm and domestic
servants, gamekeepers, foresters, gillies, and police-
men, over all the Highland counties, whether under
or not under the Crofter Acts. And without them
where would have been the stalwart, trusty, and
easily trained Highlanders of the new Territorial
Force, and the brave recruits who serve in the Navy
568 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
or in the Regular Army ? So thoroughly has the
temporary alienation been succeeded by renewed
friendship, that nobility and gentry spare no effort
to promote crofter material interests, and especially
to save and give new life to the spinning, weaving,
and dyeing domestic industries, which, after ceasing
elsewhere, were kept alive in a weak state by the
crofters' wives and daughters, with many other
useful, self-helping arts which have come down from
past ages.
In boyhood I saw in every house wheels merrily
spinning flax and wool, much home-dyeing done, and
country weavers busy at their looms. In early
manhood I saw the profitable flax industry brought
to its end, and after that the woollen industry
brought to such a low state, step by step, that at
last it had not an abiding place except among the
crofter communities. These also were not sure cities
of refuge until renovation, under a new stimulus,
set in a few years ago. Welcome as it is, that
renovation is too artificial for being relied upon as
having an enduring commercial foundation. But it
saves the arts of domestic industries from being lost,
and it is possible that these arts may have yet a
great value. Coal, steam, and machinery concen-
trated manufacturing industries in favoured localities.
Division of labour robbed the workers of a great
deal of inherited skill. They became mechanical
adjuncts of division of labour and machinery, and,
before the Factory Acts, the women and children
were reduced to something like slavery, and the
men themselves were thirled to capital until they
organised themselves in trade unions, which do
good when wisely used for legitimate defence, but
are liable to be abused for the destruction of trade
THE CROFTERS. 569
and for the oppression of non-unionists. I now and
then indulge in a pleasant dream. I imagine that
centralisation of organised manufacturing industries
has reached its furthest limit ; that decentralisation
which means the emancipation of individualism-
is about to begin, if it has not, in a small way,
began in some directions already. Lady Electra
throws her weird light of hope over this pleasant
dream of decentralisation and emancipation. The
Falls of Foyers are only one of the many places in
which electricity can be caught and stored in our
land of mountains and streams and lochs and arms
of the sea. The sight I dream of is the restoration
of the "calanas" to the coal-less Highlands by means
of electricity as a motive power, so harnessed
that in every house a woman can work a spinning
jenny and a loom. What is between us and the
realisation of that dream ? Nothing which science
and inventors cannot overcome. I suspect that the
adaptation of machinery and the harnessing of
electricity for domestic industries would soon be
done if inventors and men of science turned their
attention to that object from other objects which
hold forth promises of higher fame and rewards. Is
there not among all the scientific and inventive
children of the Gael any who will solve the problem,
and give to the Highland women remunerative work
which will keep them at home to be wives and
mothers of Highlanders, instead of drifting away, as
too many of them now do, to seek service in cities
and towns, where many of them find neither happi-
ness nor fortune, and some meet a worse fate than
all that.
In former days of town and mining districts'
growth and prosperity, there was excuse for the
570 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
drifting to these places of multitudes of single
persons and of whole families from the country.
There is no such excuse now. The hoarse distress
cries of the unemployed, mingled in some instances
with threats of riot and robbery, should make all
who have the slenderest means of decent living in
the country stick where they are, or, if move they
will, let them go to Canada or some other British
colony, and keep there to the rural pursuits for
which they are so well qualified. The life of towns
is not the natural life for the children of the Gael.
Crofter-bred boys and girls, with exceptional talents
and ambition to shoot out of their birth sphere into
one or other of the professions of this age, must be a
rule to themselves. But they will find most of the
professions over-crowded, and the struggle upwards
correspondingly severe. There are in nearly all
parts of Scotland three, or perchance four or five,
ministers of religion where one was before 1843, and
that one, with the assistance of his elders, did more
than the batch can do for practical religion and
moral policing. Lawyers and doctors are so
numerous that nothing short of universal litigation
and chronic plagues could give them all the employ-
ment and fees they desire. The mania for education
of the sort now in vogue has probably reached its
climax, but the army of male and female teachers
will, no doubt, be very large and costly for a long
time yet ; and in colonies and other outside lands
the call for teachers perhaps may get yet much
stronger than it is at present. I may be a prejudiced
octogenarian " dominie," but I doubt very much
whether the present sort of popular education is as
sound in principle as was the old parochial school
system, which qualified the clever pupils for entering
THE CROFTERS. 571
the universities, and having furnished the less clever
ones with the reading, writing, and arithmetic keys
of knowledge, let them go back to the most useful
vocations for which they were fitted, without
attempting to drive them through the asses' bridges
of crams and exams. I think the pupils of the
parochial and humble side-schools were better-
taught to exercise their own thinking faculties on
matters of faith, morals, and patriotism, than are
the pupils of the new schools. The old class of
pupils had more reverence for God and man than
their successors of the present day, unless I happen
to be entirely mistaken. When so many who hoped
to forge ahead in lucrative trades or professions find
themselves disappointed, they become discontented,
and in their discontent take up the wildest views of
this unsettled and unsettling age. I have met
with many men of little learning, and very humble
positions, who seemed to me to think more deeply
and justly on questions, both of a public and private
nature, than learned pundits, literary stars, and
popular politicians are capable of doing, because
they are less experienced in the science of human
nature, or themselves bound to pander to the crafts
or party factions which are fashionable for the
moment, and promise them notoriety in literature,
or seats in the House of Commons with prospects
of offices or birthday honours.
The readiness with which former opponents have
recognised their good qualities; the kindly considera-
tion with which people of all classes and parties are
willing to deal with claims of theirs which are
reasonable in themselves, and can, with some State
help, be granted without injustice to others ; the
world-wide fame gained by Highland soldiers in
572 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
many wars, and the honours and success acquired in
many lands by Highlanders in various callings, have
laid the crofters under a burden of obligation to
uphold by worthy conduct the high character of
their race for manly honesty, morality, and patriotic
loyalty. It is scarcely any exaggeration to say that,
from the beginning of the crofter movement to the
present day, all the dispersed Highlanders in all
parts of the world have been watching it with the
keenest interest and, at one time, with some fear lest
it should compromise race-fame by slipping down into
lawless Irish ways and methods. Irish and Clan-
na-Gael incitements to enter into lawless and
criminal conspiracies were not wholly wanting.
Within the crofters' own ranks, foolish, blustering
voices were heard, but not listened to by many. As
a class the crofters could not let themselves down
from the religious and moral platform to which,
whether Presbyterians of divided communions, or
old-fashioned Roman Catholics, they had been raised
by ancestral training, and on which they were fixed
by inclination and habit to discriminate right from
wrong. I have the firm conviction that there will
be no descent from the high platform now. Poli-
ticians willing to make unlimited promises for their
own ends are seen through very clearly, and used as
convenient and only temporary tools. It would be
no great surprise if, on the next appeal to con-
stituencies, the unlimited promise - givers found
themselves sent about their business, and their seats
given to native candidates. The crofters are not
over-fond of "coigrich" or strangers, and many of
them would like to fall back upon trusted native
representatives, who did not make promises which
could not be fulfilled, or, if fulfilled in some sort of
THE CROFTERS. 573
way, would ignore the eternal distinction between
right and wrong. In a certain sense we are all
Socialists. Society, rightly constituted, has number-
less mutual inter-connections for foundation corner
stones. The crofters are, by the township system
under which they live, compelled to be more
Socialistic than other people. They know better
than others how far Socialism, comparable with
justice and individual freedom, is workable ; and
their knowledge makes them determined enemies of
the Socialism which seeks to deprive the individual
of freedom, to confiscate property, and to level all to
an equality abhorred by natural laws, and denounced
and scorned by all communities which are not
falling into imbecility and the abyss of chaotic
destruction. Socialists have no chance for making-
converts in Ireland and Wales, and as for the
Highlanders, they are, outside the land question, as
conservative a people as can be met with in any
country.
Every State or incorporated nation has the
right to take possession, on just purchase from
former private owners, of all the land of its country,
for redistribution, under new conditions, should com-
pelling national needs require it and the purchase
money be obtainable. State infringement on private
rights, without purchase or compensation, shakes
confidence and credit, and is a gross violation of
rules of equity and sound policy. Of the pleas
urged for State intervention on behalf of the
crofters, two at least were thoroughly well-founded
and so peculiar to the Highlands that Lowlanders
had no share whatever in them. These were the
building and maintenance of houses and premises by
the people themselves, and no compensation for
574 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
reclamation of land or any of/her improvement of
lettable value on eviction, whether just or capricious,
or on the tenant giving up his holding in a voluntary
manner. I do not believe that capricious evictions
were very numerous, but certainly they were not
altogether unknown. Nor were a few cases in
which, when a man had made improvements, his
rent was raised forthwith. Highlanders have
tremendously long memories. The tradition of tribal
possessorship, with, in every district, a toiseach at
the head of every locality, and a maormor at the
head of a province, with a king over all, is ignored
in feudal charters and records of the kingdom of
Scotland from the reign of King David downwards.
But this is mere tiegative disproof. The long-
cherished belief was at least a fiction based upon
facts. Tt was no stretch of the long Highland
memory at all to recall the events of comparatively
near times, when nobles, chiefs, and other proprietors
resided almost constantly among their people in
their Highland castles and mansions, and when
between them and their people there was mutual
knowledge baptised in clannish sympathy. In war
and peace, and very generally in parish church
worship, there were strong ties of union and com-
munion between Highland landlords and people
until Napoleon was finally crushed at Waterloo.
After that the unpreventable industrial revolution,
the evictions, and the introduction of the large-farm
system, would not have wholly cut the old ties if
noble landlords with huge estates had not delegated
their powers to commissioners, chamberlains, and
factors, and took to living away most of their time
from their Highland residences, and had not other
chiefs and proprietors got into financial difficulties,
THE CROFTERS. 575
which left them no freedom to act 011 kindly
intentions. Nothing was more certain to alienate
Highlanders from those to whom they had been
accustomed to look upon as their natural leaders,
than to be subjected to the delegated power of
factors, some of whom had ends of their own to
carry out through acts of guile and insolent tyranny,
and others of whom had no knowledge of High-
landers and their language, or patience with their
fair claims of right. No doubt the honest Lowland
factors were doing what they thought right, and
which in law was justifiable. They were true to
their employers, and not designedly cruel to the
Highland people, with whom they had to deal on
strictly legal principles. But the factor rule good,
bad, or indifferent ran up a heavy score against
the invisible or, at least, unapproachable landlords.
Having been made into a privileged class, and
having, on the whole, proved themselves by material
progress and sensible conduct, which disarms hostile
criticism, worthy of the privileges bestowed on them,
the crofters could have got in the first part of the
Parliamentary Session of 1908, by concurrence of
Lords and Commons, an Act to amend and extend
the Crofter Acts, if the Secretary for Scotland had
not resolved to roll up the cause of the crofters with
his scheme for the Lowlands, whose case is radically
different. Lord Lovat's Bill, and other moves and
declarations, indicated the willingness of Highland
landlords to remove reasonable grievances, and to
meet the wishes of the crofters as far as they seemed
to be just and practicable. How different is this
appreciation of and kindly feeling towards the
crofters by the landlords from the attitude most of
them assumed, excusably, it must be said, in the
576 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
early days of the crofter agitation ? The use the
crofters are making of their privileges has been the
chief factor in this conversion, although other factors
have played their part in it, such as the scarcity
of upright and capable servant men and women,
and the shuttle cock and battledore game between
sheep runs and deer forests. Much has been won,
and more can be won, by the crofters' peaceful
behaviour, and their quiet persistence in making the
best use of their privileges. Let the crofters, by
continuing in well-doing, strive to keep and augment
the sympathy and respect which they have gained
far and wide from people who are not of their
race. Let them strenuously uphold " Cliu nan
Gaidheal."
Let my wild but pleasant dream of the restora-
tion of profitable " calanas," in a huge volume, to
our coal- less land of mountains and of streams, by
the reversing wave of Lady Electra's fairy wand, be
set aside in the limbo of vain imaginings for the
present ; but yet in the ordinary developments of
changes which must proceed, with or without
legislation, prospects of recovery in their native
land are brightening for the children of the Gael,
and by patience and wise use of increasing oppor-
tunities, the crofters may do more than other
Highlanders towards turning these fair prospects
into fairer realities. Highlanders scattered abroad
and at home, and the descendants of Highlanders
who left their country ages ago, look upon the
crofter townships as the centres from which chiefly
the Highlands are in time, and without noise or
strife of any kind, to be again re-peopled by High-
landers, who, while as able to use English as Oxford
and Cambridge professors, will retain along with it
THE CRY OP " BACK TO THE LAND." 577
the language of their ancestors. If they drop the
ancestral language, they will cut themselves off from
an ever-flowing fountain of refreshment of mind and
hereditary inspiration. It is really in the crofter
townships that Gaelic has just now its last place of
retiral and refuge ; and even in them the security of
the refuge is far from being lastingly guaranteed.
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
THE CRY OF " BACK TO THE LAND."
THIS cry is a sign of grace, although, as always
happens, unprincipled politicians and party agitators
make a base use of it for their miserable personal
ambitions or levelling down theories. The land is a
nation's sole enduring asset, the corner stone of the
whole edifice of confidence and credit, and the only
property which nothing short of submergence in the
sea can deprive of all value. Wealth in other forms
can melt away or take wings and fly away to other
lands. " Back to the land " signifies realisation of
more than one kind of danger. Like the other cry
about the preservation of Gaelic, it has been raised
after destructive mischief has gone far ; but better
late than never. There is yet scope for salvage
work in both cases. It is of primary importance
that the people already on the land should be got to
stay there. They know best how to work the land
for raising crops, and how to use pasturage to
advantage. Their practical knowledge of soils,
seasons, herds and flocks, and stable and farm-
yard denizens, and the gathering and applying
of the most wholesome manure stuffs, is far more
37
578 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
useful than anything which the urban agricultural
tyro can learn from books. The born farmer and
born farm labourer have inherited and accumulated
a vast amount of information, habits of precaution,
and natural fitness for their vocations, which it takes
a long time for novices to acquire, with the help of
all the farming literature in the world, and under
the most favourable circumstances. It is not,
indeed, to be denied that novices can learn in a
long time, and after going through trying dis-
appointments become good farmers here, and still
better ones in colonies where farming of new soil is
more rudimentary and with fewer pitfalls, or at least
with less severe consequences should there happen
to be one or two mishaps, which in this country
would be disastrous, should they precede the victory
of persistence and the gathering in of the fruits of
victory. But at home and abroad the born farmer
and the born farm labourer have always and every-
where a natural superiority. Still the others deserve
to be encouraged. When mixed with practical
farmers, whose advice they take, and whose doings
they imitate, those of them who persevere, and are
content with rural life, will get on, and strengthen
the rural population both numerically and socially ;
for they will infuse a stay in the land feeling among
farmers and rustics with wavering inclinations to
leave 'the vocations to which they had been born.
Those who seek to change urban for rural life are
missionaries of reformation and recuperation, whose
message is not rendered of less account by many
individual failures. The failures are nearly sure to
happen among persons who have been too long
accustomed to urban life habits, amenities, and
vices, to put up with country humdrum pleasures
THE CRY OF " BACK TO THE LAND." 579
and hard work. Persons of that kind are bound to
fail and drop back to urban degradations like dogs
to their vomits. Salvation Army experiments in
Essex, although not as pecuniarly self-supporting as
should be desired, have proved that town children
can be trained up without difficulty to be capable
and hearty agriculturists, with a health, strength,
and morals that would have been beyond their reach
if they had not been rescued from slums and streets.
If " Back to the land " be a good cry, " Keep on
the land " is a far better one, but there is no reason
why the two should not be conjoined. " Keep on
the land," with patience, industrial orderliness, and
the operation of economical forces which are already
at work will suffice for the re-peopling glens and
straths and isles with native Gaelic-speaking and
English-speaking inhabitants. Our share of culti-
vable Highland soil is so scanty that our people will
need it all, and would be able to work it more pro-
fitably if they could get it. It is in England, and
in parts of the Lowlands of Scotland, that agricul-
tural colonists back from the towns can find room
and be exceedingly useful. Market-gardening work
and the raising of pigs and poultry can be taught to
them in drilled companies, and from that stage the
taught individuals with capacity and enterprise
will launch out into undertakings of their own, and
attain the same, or nearly the same, level as the
best class of farm servants, who elevate themselves
into prosperous farmers whenever success, hard to
reach, lies at all in the line of their diligent endea-
vours and prudent, frugal way of living.
Nature has immutably decreed that a nation's
strength and its guarantee of power, and even of
its very existence, must be its rural population.
580 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
That truth is beginning to be slowly realised in
this country, where it had too long been set at
defiance by sacrificing country to town interests,
and trusting all to free imports, labelled free trade.
Money and trade are good, but are not the all-good
which the Manchester School political economists
of sixty years ago supposed them to be. Wealth,
which is without sufficient Army and Navy defence,
is apt to suddenly be seized upon by war-victors,
or undermined and slowly appropriated by other
means of conveyance, such as tariff walls to shut
out British merchandise from the markets of other
nations, who pour and dump their goods, free of
duty, into the British markets.
As soldiers, town-bred men cannot be ranked as
equal to country-bred men, simply because they have
not the same power of physical endurance, however
full of courage and love of country. The late African
war gave many proofs of the difference between the
enduring qualities of soldiers that came out of
towns and those who had been born, brought-up,
and hardened to bear fatigues and make long
marches in rural places here and in the Colonies.
The lowering of physical strength in towns is one of
the penalties that are not to be avoided, though it
is possible to lighten this particular one by sanita-
tion, pure water, clean houses, temperance, and
military and athletic exercises. It has been charged
against Paris that in three or four generations it
kills out the people who constantly reside in it,
which charge, put in other words, comes to this,
that the population of Paris has in every hundred
years to be renewed from the outside.
A tardy recognition of the fundamental truth
that the country people are the mainstay of national
THE CRY OF " BA.CK TO THE LAND." 581
strength is surely wrapt up in the cry of " Back to
the land." So is a recognition of the other fact
that it is only in country air and country pursuits
town-bred people must seek the fountain for renew-
ing their youth. Inducements of a more substantial
character than empty recognition of fundamental
truths are required to make those born on the land
stay on the land, when the Colonies offer them
hearty welcome and free land. Still more are
inducements necessary for alluring town people to
go back to the land. Hates, which get heavier
every year, would in some Highland parishes amount
to rack-rents were it not for the sportsmen's contri-
butions.
In bulk the country people of England and
Scotland are as honest as any in the world it
would not be much of a stretch if I called them the
most honest people on earth. They cling to Christian
ethics and to the old fashioned, yet perpetually new
principle of equity, " Let every one have his own,"
or if, for public purposes, he has to sell, " Let him
have top market value for it, with something over
for compulsory sale." The lawless terrorising of
Irish conspirators themselves stops short at asking
that landlords should be bought out at prairie value.
The new peasant landowners of Ireland are as great
upholders of their property rights as the sternest or
most oppressive of the old landlords had ever been.
Levelling Socialism will never take firm root among
farming people. It is in urban places, and in
temporary alliance with trade unionists, who do
not believe in it, that the upas tree of Socialism can
rear its head and throw its poisonous shade over
political, municipal, and Poor Law affairs. Genuine
Socialists believe in their vrild theory, that if the
582 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
State seized upon all kinds of property, and made
itself the sole employer of labour, the regimented
labourers, although in a manner enslaved, would find
themselves in a Golden Age. Socialism could never
spring up spontaneously among farming people, who
have a more thorough knowledge than their unborn
theorists of human nature, and the conditions of the
greatest and most permanent of natural industries.
Small is the number of convinced Socialists in com-
parison with the predatory hordes which follow in
their wake, looking out for prey and easy loafing life
at the expense of the honest and industrious. Were
Socialism in a full-fledged form to be adopted,
certain it is that all free wealth would spread its
wings and fly where it would be safe ; then manu-
facturing mills and workshops, by the passing away
of trade and commerce, would become habitations
for bats and owls, and house property would lose its
value, and grass grow on what are now busy streets.
But the land would remain, and its inhabitants
would find themselves in the position of hard-
working slaves to tyrannical urban paupers. Con-
vinced Socialists appear to labour under the gross
delusion that the land is such an inexhaustible
mine of wealth as to be equal to any amount of
imposts. Country people know the land to be
already overburdened with rates and taxes, and
ascribe to the overburdening the going away of
farmers to British colonies or perchance to Pata-
gonia, and the drifting in past years of country
labourers to London and other large cities and
towns. They are not thankful for County Councils,
Parish Councils, School and other Boards, because
of the lavish manner in which they spend the
ratepayers' money, and borrow on the future rates.
THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PRESENT AGE. 583
They growl about the number of paid officials and
the salaries paid to them. They hate over-officialism
and its interference, as well as its cost. They look
back with sighs of regret to the cheap and less
interfering local and county governing methods of
the past, and they look forward at anyrate the
more thoughtful to some relief for the ratepayers
by reforming and simplifying the new methods.
But it is probably in fiscal reform that their wisest
men place their trust for relief and some revival of
agricultural prosperity.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PRESENT AGE.
ARE the white rulers of the world losing staying
and holding power when so many of them have
taken, like children of Cain, to move to and fro on
the face of the earth ? Never within the historical
period has such aimless gadding about been witnessed
before. Wars of conquest and defence; the barbarian
invasion and overthrowing of the Roman Empire
when luxury and wealth had destroyed its manli-
ness, and filled all departments of its administration
with corruption and inefficiency ; the further-back
overthrow of Darius and his purple and gold-clad
Persians by Alexander the Great and his shaggy
Macedonians; the religiously -inspired Crusaders;
and to come by a long jump to recent times, the
Napoleonic wars, had all definite aims and mean-
ings. The present-day gadding about has for its
openly-avowed object love of pleasure and a crave
for new sensations. Though a little elusive, its
584 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
hidden meanings are not difficult to get at, and
when unearthed they are found to augur badly for
the continuance of white - race leadership and
stability.
We do not know how in prehistoric times the
human race was parcelled out in all lands. Clearly
the earth was then going through a series of cata-
clysmal changes, which ended in severing lauds
formerly connected, and which also caused backward
and forward alterations of climates, and relative
positions of land and water. What we do know is
that from the era of the cave-dwellers downwards,
there could have been no very rapid movements of
people on the surface of this planet until steamers
and railways, followed by motor-cars and bicycles,
provided the means for rapid locomotion on land
and sea. To some extent the locomotive facilities
diminish the evil significance of the to - and - fro
ramblings of all who can afford it, and of many who
cannot but trust to their wits either as parasites or
thieves and impostors. When full deduction is
made for facilities of locomotion to Cassandra-like
alarmists, whose prophecies are not believed, the
significance of the roving fever will lose very little
of its seriousness. The gloomy prophets will still
continue to regard it as positive proof of decay of
morality and manhood, and point to accessories of it
which confirm their pessimistic views.
America, the historically young and boastingly
freest and wealthiest country in the world, is, in
respect to evil signs, the farthest gone in decay. It
is certainly the leader in the roving line. And
President Roosevelt bears witness that its wealth is
associated with a stupendous amount of fraud and
corruption, fraud that ingeniously circumvents
THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PEESENT JLGE. 585
good laws, and corruption in municipal and political
affairs which serves monopolistic, trusts and syndi-
cates, and makes it possible for those who get control
of other people's money to use it improperly for
their own speculations. In the United States the
farming classes on the whole are just as honest,
religious, and moral as they are in this country. It
is through them that purgation and redemption will
come if they are ever to come. With free represen-
tative institutions, many lightly say "Reform is
easy." But how can it be easy when the anti-
reformers have by clever devices, as well as
unblushing corruption, got hold of the electoral
machinery ?
The gambling crave for money-making and
money-catching by fair means or foul, and the
selfish love of roving from one pleasure haunt to
another, place marriage at a heavy discount, widen
the gates of divorce, and fatally affect the family
life, and prevent the raising and training of
adequately numerous crops of children. In this
and other European countries the evils which
threaten to brand the young and great go-ahead
Republic of the United States with marks of prema-
ture decrepitude and decay are in operation, although
far as yet from having reached the excess of New
York and Chicago.
Churches and creeds are troubled by inward
shakings and outside assaults. Literature, whether
in the guise of science, critical philosophy, or popular
fiction, is drifting away upon unknown seas without
a compass or the guidance of familiar stars. Un-
settling notions, of a most unwholesome nature, are
as numerous and well -winged for dispersion by
breeze and gale as are our dandelion seeds at
586 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
Inverness worst pest of our gardens. The vital
statistics of the United Kingdom, although very
much better than those of France and of the
native-born and Anglo-Saxon sections of the
United States population, are far from satis-
factory. The crop of children has fallen below
its former level. Infant mortality has increased.
Women are in more or less revolt against marriage
and motherhood by God's decree their highest
functions. As for the women who, having the
rating qualifications or propert}' of their own, claim
a voting equality with men, their claim is right
enough, although their methods are not to be always
commended or excused. In self protection they are
fully entitled to have votes on the same qualifica-
tions on which men have it. I remember, when Mi-
Disraeli's Bill, giving household suffrage to borough
constituencies, was under discussion, arguing with a
Radical in favour of giving qualified women votes
like men, and of his emphatically condemning the
idea of doing so. Looking at it from what was then
the Radical party point of view, he was, I daresay,
quite right. Women householders, or owners of
separate property, are sure to be more Conservative
than loafers who possess the franchise even when
they receive, as unemployed, public aid like paupers.
Wonderful scientific discoveries and admirable
mechanical inventions have, like the head of Janus,
two faces one beneficent and the other maleficent.
Terrorists quickly learned how to make powerful
bombs and how to make atrocious use of them. All
the discoveries and inventions of the white nations
pass on to the yellow and brown races, and will in
time pass on to the African races. Even now many
Zulus, Basutos, and Kaffirs possess good firearms
THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE PRESENT AGE. 587
and suitable ammunition. Jewish aftd other traders
of the unscrupulous kind smuggle old firearms and
ammunition up the country and from the west and
east coasts to the tribes of the interior, and against
that smuggling strict regulations and frontier and
port watching are by no means perfect protection.
The roving spirit, or love for adventures and
experiences by land and sea, comes with us into the
world, and we would be poor creatures without it.
It sent forth the knight-errant to fight monsters
and redress wrongs, and hardy voyagers and
travellers to sail upon unknown seas, and to plunge,
taking their lives in their hands, among savages
and the pathless forests and deserts of unknown
lands. Except the ice-circles about the poles there
is nothing of the lands and waters of the earth now
left to be explored. The days of new discoveries
and romantic adventures belong to the past. The
old, old spirit, however, still survives, and seeks
such outlets as it can find in sport on Highland
moors and rivers, and shooting elephants and lions
in Africa, or other animals in the liocky Mountains.
All these hunting "outs" make considerable
demands on hardihood, and are healthy exercises.
So much cannot be said of the " outings " of the
crowds who carry their luxurious habits with them
in grand steamers, and pass on land along beaten
tracks over-abundantly furnished with magnificent
hotels and all the attractions for capturing vanity
and moral instability. Yet the moving about is in
its worst form a protest against the burden of over-
civilisation, and a ludicrously weak attempt to
escape for a while from that burden. Health,
wealth, pleasure, and leisure are not the highest
ideals for men and women to keep before their eyes,
588 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
but there is a good deal to be said for each of them,
while taken as a whole they are incompatible with
one another.
Cricket, football, tennis, golf, curling, and, in
short, all athletic exercises, help to break the weari-
some monotony of present-day life, and to give some
increase of health and contentment of mind and
body to the workers in towns and centres of indus-
tries. But as regards all the able-bodied young
men of the United Kingdom, it would be good for
themselves and for their country if they went into
the Territorial Army, and while learning to be
disciplined soldiers, at the same time inhaled
vigorous health from pure air, and hardened their
muscles by military drills and campings and march-
ing. What the clubmen of London, and the jaded
business men, and the nobility and gentry get from
shootings and fishing, working-class young men can
get by joining the Territorial Army, and qualifying
themselves for the patriotic defence of their native
land should the call for defence come, as come it
may at an unexpected moment. In a bit of a poem
on Scotland, which some time ago I saw in the
" Scotsman," the secular side of the old way of
training of the young of our country appeared to me
to be happily summarised in the lines
" Let virtue crown the maiden's brow,
And valour mould the man."
We lose all if we do not keep that aim before us.
THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. 589
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY.
COUNTRY life, with all its drawbacks, is the natural
life ; and Nature, though expelled with a fork, will
now and then return to the most cynical and selfish
and sensual of city men. What a pleasure it must
be to London slum dwellers to go a-gipsying once a
year to the Kent hop-gathering ? How glad are
peers and commoners to scurry away on week-end
excursions to the country by trains and motor-cars?
How sadly washed - out by pursuit of pleasure
become Society ladies, and how good it is for them
to seek rest in the country and forget balls, operas,
and all junketings and racketings of city life among
trees and flowers, listening to the songs of birds ?
What a mistake they make if they rush off to the
Continent instead of going to the far more pleasant
rural retreats at home which belong to them, where
they have duties to discharge ? Well, the shooting
season does fill halls and manors with owners and
guests. And it is just to acknowledge that
both classes of land-owning people the old and the
new are far from being negligent in the discharge
of their duty to those who live on their estates.
Still the number of noblemen and gentry who spend
the greater part of their time on their estates, and
shun city life unless taken in small dozes, is not so
large as should be desired for their own and their
people's good, and for the union of classes and
masses in a critical transitional period of national
history.
590 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
The industrious, prudent workman who is earning
daily wages can afford to pay one visit to the
Continent. Paris and Rome, the Rhine, and even
Egypt and Jerusalem, with Jericho thrown in, are
quite within his reach. But why should his fancy
roam so far away ? Is it not far wiser for him to be
content with what he can so readily find at home
beautiful scenery, mountain air, and refreshing sea-
breezes ? As a matter of fact, the well-to-do,
comfortably - off, middle - class inhabitants of our
Scotch cities and towns are not much given to
roaming abroad. Neither are those of the wage-
earning class, unless in the way of employment. It
was not the case of old, but now "the Scot abroad"
is usually one who has emigrated to a British colony,
or one who holds a position in the public service or
in a banking or business establishment.
There are many scenes of beautiful landscape in
England besides the Lake district, which exhibits in
miniature form, with the omission of sea lochs,
firths, and rocky shores, the features of Highland
scenery. The Scotch Borders, Wales, and Ireland
put in rival claims to favourable comparison. But
Highland scenery is alone and above comparison
with anything of its kind in the United Kingdom,
It laid its spell upon the stranger who saw it before
railways had been dreamed of, and before passable
roads joined glen to glen. The romance of Highland
history likewise laid hold upon those who knew
about it, or who merely observed with intelligence
the picturesque peculiarities of the Highland people
and their clannish propensities. The peculiar people
romance has now almost become as shadowy as
Ossian's ghosts.
As the Highlands became more and more
accessible, the summer visitors grew from a small
THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. 591
beginning into a host, divided into three classes,
namely, sportsmen, passing tourists from all countries,
and families and individuals from Scotch cities
and towns, with some from a further distance, who
came to the villages along the railways and to sea-
side places, and took lodgings for the summer. Some
of this third class built or bought houses for them-
selves in the Highland summering resorts which they
liked best, or which best suited their business or
professional vocations, near enough to give the men
week-end excursions to see the wives and families
they sent away to summer in the country. The
first of the invading classes were the sportsmen.
A few of them appeared with the making of fairly
good roads, and the opening of the Caledonian Canal,
and the few grew into many on the coming of the
railway. The circulating tourists and the day-
trippers come and go, leaving no trace. The sports-
men are quite free from innovating intentions, but
most of them being Church of England people they
innocently and unconsciously help to accentuate the
ecclesiastical separatism of the upper classes from
the masses, who are themselves separated by
unreasonable ecclesiastical hedges. The third class
are the mainstay of the Highland summer resorts,
which grew up like Jonah's gourd the instant
railways and steamers opened up the Highlands.
They exercise a far more direct innovating influence
on Highland character, habit, and language than the
others. That, however, is not the fault of the
visitors, but of Highland imitativeness. The good
in the said influence is mixed with positive evil, or
what in another generation, should it not be stopped,
will strip Highlanders of their best Highland
characteristics.
592 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
The Scotch town-folk who, to compare great
things with small, use our summering resorts, as
Highlanders of the olden times used their shealings,
are douce and decent folk, as well as profitable and
welcome visitors. Without them the extensive
lodging accommodation provided for summer visitors
would be a dead loss. A.S it is, too much of building
for such visitors has taken place. The stream of the
desirable class of visitors shrinks or swells according
to the prosperity or depression of trade. There
are, no doubt, many persons of independent means
in the annual class of visitors, whom fluctations in
trade will not keep from coming every summer to
the Highlands. But without those who depend
upon trade the stream of visitors would shrink to a
small rivulet, like a mountain burn during a severe
drought. And more than those who had lodgings
to let would suffer from the shrinkage. The inter-
dependencies of all sections of modern society are
as numerous and complicated as the mechanical
inventions for manufacturing processes, and main-
tenance of trade and commerce to which compelling
causes have driven us, like other manufacturing
nations.
Laden with blessings is the annual retreat to
what may be called Highland shealings, to denizens
of cities and towns. From worries of professions and
business cares, heads of families shake themselves
free, and get a freshening feeling of youth renewed.
Young men and maidens sauntering in woods or
scaling mountains often step into a paradise of their
own. It is happiest of all for the school children,
emancipated from the yoke of crams and exams.,
and with unbounded capacity for making the most
of novel and blameless enjoyment. The small
THE URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. 593
trotters are amazed and delighted that they can
run in a few minutes from houses to heather or
bushes or crystal clear streams. The very babies
wheeled about in perambulators fill their lungs
with pure air, and with solemn round eyes look
round them, and in a wordless way seem to be
mightily pleased with the wonderful change in their
surroundings.
The truth of the saying " God made the
country, and man made the town," has been self-
evident in all ages and in all lands. But for many
ages in Scotland town and country life were of old
more alike than they are now. It was not until
the early part of last century that the present state
of matters began at first almost imperceptibly,
and then of a sudden grew into a sweeping flood,
which swept away all the old relations of urban and
rural districts. What were our ancient Scotch
cities when James VI. set off to England to sit on
the throne of Queen Elizabeth ? Small places
crowded with buildings within walls for defence,
and, as a rule, commanded by castles belonging
to or held for the King. In such a state they
remained long after the union of the Crowns. They
were the seats of learning, arts, crafts, and legis-
lative judicial and administrative organisations.
Their inhabitants, like those of the early and most
heroic days of Republican Rome, were cultivators,
or farmers, or owners of land near their walls, and
as interested and skilled in rural matters as the
country people themselves. It was the industrial
organisation which steam power and mechanical
inventions brought about in last century that drew
a hard and fast line between urban and rural life,
aud made a sacrifice of rural interests to urban,
38
594 BEMINJSCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
or, in a broader sense, manufacturing and trading
interests. As our industries were better organised
and better capitalised than those of other countries,
our enterprising traders poured British goods into
the markets of the world, and forthwith our trade
advanced by leaps and by bounds, and our cities
and towns spread themselves out in a corresponding
manner. So country life and country interests
were complacently sacrificed or neglected until it
began to dawn on a younger generation that other
countries were, by tariff walls, getting up to us
and ahead of us, and urban life was sapping out
strength physically, morally, socially, and religiously.
The town-dwellers who are able to escape once
a year from smoke, bustle of streets, noise of
machinery, and pressure of monotonous business to
rustication places where they can breathe pure air,
and where connection with Nature refreshes body and
soul, have in Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland,
an infinite number of places of retreat from which to
make a choice, each of which is more fitted to give
the health benefits they are in search of, than a rush
to Paris and a scamper on the Continent. And in
their beautiful retreats they will have the additional
pleasure of giving themselves credit for patriotism,
because they spend their " outing " money in their
own country. But they cannot help bringing with
them into the country luxuries and habits of
town life such as town clothes and foods, and
house comforts which country people too readily
imitate. This imitation is more damaging to country
girls who take to domestic service in summering
retreats, than to other natives. They are the best
of domestic servants after a little training, and the
most honest and trustworthy. So, many of them
THK URBAN INVASION OF THE COUNTRY. 595
are drawn away by the visitor mothers of families
into the cities and towns, where they meet with
various fortunes some good and some evil. And
those who do not go away, learn to turn their backs
upon dairy and field work, and lose in health more
than they gain in wages, neatness, and aped ladyism.
Thoughtful students of vital statistics and scien-
tific experts preach return to the simple life. They
stand aghast when they look at the diminishing
crop of children, infant mortality, and such signs
of degeneracy as decay of teeth and defects of sight
in so many of the children who survive infancy, and
are to be the fathers and mothers of the next
generation. The oculist, spectacle-maker, and the
dentist have numerous clients, where they should
not have them, in the ranks of the young. I cannot
recollect a case of decay in a child's first set of teeth
when I was a boy, and 1 knew many men and
women who had their second set of teeth, full, or
nearly so, in advanced old age. Country folk then
lived on home-grown food, and women worked in
youth and age more then they do now in the open
air from early spring to the end of the harvest.
The simple life is no longer what it used to be in
the farmhouses, or in the crofter's or even the cottar's
home. Oatcakes, barley scones, and porridge and
milk, are not prized as they used to be. Kail and
fish keep their footing well, but tea and groceries
and loaf-bread, which in my early days were luxuries
sparingly used in country houses, are now classed as
necessaries of life by farmers, farm servants, crofters
and cottars. But enough of the simple life remains
among the country folk for their own preservation,
and the town folk who come to what I may call
Highland shealings in summer are asking renova-
tions in the best way open to them.
596 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS.
I BELIEVE that eighty per cent, of the native-born
population of all Scotland call themselves Presby-
terians, and the proportion exceeds that figure in
the Highlands. It is clear to everyone who has eyes
to see, and intelligence to understand, that our
country, and other countries as well, must pass
through the fiery ordeal of a transitional era, which
already exhibits not a few of the dangers it carries
in its bosom. The cause of religion, sound education,
wise and firm government and administration, calls
loudly for organised defence and cautious progress
on lines which will lead to safety and save us from
plunging into chaos, to find destruction there instead
of the Socialist Golden Age. When proverbially
and actually union is strength, and disunion is
weakness, the question which every Christian
possessing commonsense should put to himself is
"Why do we not knock down paltry hedges of
partition, and unite into a great host, fit, should
there be need, to repeat the achievements of our
ancestors in a new form ?"
In 1860 the Free Church was as yet pervaded
by the preaching fervour of evangelicalism and
revivalism, and flourishing on Disruption principles,
from which there could be no lapsing as long as the
ruling power remained in the hands of those who
had gone through the excitement of the "Ten Years'
Conflict," and sealed their testimony by leaving the
PRESBYTERIAN DIVISIONS. 597
Church of Scotland in May, 1843. The repre-
sentatives of Old Secessions that united in 1847 on
the platform of Voluntaryism, and threw aside the
testimonies and declarations of the founders of their
little communions, counted for nothing in the High-
lands, but were of consequence in the southern
towns, and had a footing in southern villages and
rural districts. They took a lively part in political
and municipal affairs, and were worthy and pros-
perous people, who, in the opinion of their less
bustling and less self-confident neighbours, had not
the least need to pray the Lord to give them a good
conceit of themselves. Their ministers were orthodox
evangelicals, and they kept themselves as much as
they could out of the political and municipal affairs
in which their hearers liked to display their gifts,
and from which they often snatched the prizes of
their ambition. In the South the Church of Scotland
had, before 1870, in a great measure recovered from
the staggering blow of the Disruption, and the
party within her walls who wished to throw Lord
Aberdeen's Act to the dogs and get patronage
abolished root and branch, were gaining power and
courage to fight and conquer. In the Highlands the
smashing-up had been too thorough to allow of any-
thing more than very slow recovery. The majority
of Highland Church of Scotland ministers had to put
up for a long time with skeleton congregations, and
although a vast improvement has taken place since
the abolition of patronage, some of them have to do
so to this day.
In 1880 the Presbyterians of Scotland remained
divided as they were in 1860 between the Church
of Scotland, the Free Church, and the United
Presbyterian Church. But in the interval of twenty
598 REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS.
years the policy and relations of the three bodies
had changed, and modifications of theology with
innovations in worship were insensibly going on.
The abolition of patronage, which popularised the
Church of Scotland, in place of being hailed as a
blessing was, unfortunately, resented as a grievance
by the ruling party in the Free Church, and having
taken their stand on the narrow platform of Volun-
taryism, the United Presbyterians had committed
themselves to the policy of the English Liberation
Society and clamoured for disestablishment. The
abolition of patronage gave to disunited Scotch
Presbyterianism a grand opportunity for a union
which involved no sacrifice of any principle worth
keeping and which would promote the cause of
religion and morality, and give Scotland ecclesiastical
peace. Surely it is to be deeply regretted that the
opportunity was not eagerly and instantly seized
upon, and that the work of rebuilding the broken
walls of the Presbyterian Zion was not immediately
taken in hand with united forces. The spirit of
rival sectarian interests spread her wings on the
blast, instead of the spirit of patriotism and religious
harmony. Had there been the will there would
have been the means, by using money thrown away
on worse than useless strife, for providing funds to
meet life-interests, and save every superfluous
minister from unjust loss. Feelers were thrown out,
and union negotiations, tried in a half-hearted way,
were carried on for some years. They could not be
whole-hearted since the disestablishment agitation
which the Free and the U.P. Churches set on foot
left no place for a successful issue when the Church
of Scotland had 
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