HIGHLAND SOCIETIES.
The Highland Societies of London and Scotland have contributed materially towards the cultivation of Celtic literature, although the latter for more than half a century has developed into a merely agricultural association. The Scottish one has given us the learned “Report” on the Ossianic literature, which Henry Mackenzie, author of “The Man of Feeling,” edited as well as the magnificent Dictionary already described. The London Society helped to give Smith’s Seann Dana to the world more than a century ago, and Patrick Macgregor’s Genuine Remains of Ossian in 1840. Ibis Society still flourishes under royal and aristocratic smiles in London, and in recent years, under the guidance of Dr Farquhar Matheson, Dr Roderick Macdonald, M.P., and others, has helped many Highland youths with bursaries to enable them to obtain University training. The Gaelic Society of London was formed in the year 1777, and is still rejoicing in a vigorous manhood. In those days there were many Gaelic patriots about the metropolis who had made considerable fortunes abroad and in the south; and they felt it a sacred duty to encourage organisations which might nurse the apparently decaying spirit of the threatened Scottish nationality. Some twenty years ago the Gaelic Society of Inverness was formed, and to it the Celtic world is indebted for a series of annual volumes of Transactions in which we have materials for a rich museum of folk-lore, poetry, tradition, history, philology, etc. These volumes will be of the utmost value for the future student. Two names deserve special mention in connection with these volumes—that of Mr William Mackenzie, Principal Clerk of the Highland Land Court, a gentleman who wields a facile pen in both Gaelic and English; and that of Mr William Mackay, solicitor, Inverness, who is among the most distinguished archæological lawyers in the country, and who has furnished contributions of the highest value to these volumes.
The Gaels of Glasgow more recently formed a Gaelic Society, of which Mr Magnus Maclean, M.A. of Glasgow University, is the admirable secretary. This Society has made a good beginning with the publication of the first volume of its Transactions lately published. Perth and other large towns have also their Gaelic Societies in this country, and if we look across the Atlantic we find quite a large number of them in Canada. The Gaelic Society of Toronto, of which a distinguished native of Islay—Mr David Spence—has been a moving spirit, is in a very flourishing condition.
In the great political change which has just come over the dreams of Highlanders the Gaelic language has been of the most undoubted service. Indeed it is through its judicious use as a political weapon that this change was brought to a successful pass in 1886. It was the thousands of the Gaelic Land-Law Reform manifestoes sent forth from London in 1883-4, that organised the Highlands and Islands for the brilliant Parliamentary triumph of 1885, by which the first practical fruits of the Gaelic revival were reaped. And here it may be interesting to preserve a copy of one of these manifestoes, which played so prominent a part in bringing about the Imperial recognition of Highland rights. The following prose paragraphs may be referred to as a specimen of the Gaelic of the period as well as a monument of the services rendered by the use of Gaelic in an important national crisis:—