The Highlander was a born sportsman as well as a gentleman, who by his paternal chiefs would not be called closely to account for every deer and salmon that went to eke out his frugal fare. Now he can shoot or fish only in the way of business, the very laird making two ends meet by letting out his moors and streams to a stranger, in whose service the sons of warriors play the gamekeeper and gillie, with more or less good will, loading the gun and carrying the well-stocked luncheon basket, perhaps not always very hearty in hunting down those Ishmaelite brethren who do a little grouse-netting on their own account for the supply of London tables by the 12th of August. Sometimes the Gael takes revenge by being able to hint his scorn for the sportsmanship of these new masters; but as often, to do them justice, they will not give him this poor satisfaction. A well-known southron humorist tells a story which needs his voice to bring out the point, how he missed a deer, to the disgust of the keeper, and how, trying to conciliate this worthy by admiration of a fine head, he got the dry answer—“It’s no near so fine as the one ye shot this morning—a-a-at!”
Deer-stalking is a sport that still demands manly skill and hardihood, however many menials can be hired to mark down and circumvent the great game. So much cannot always be said of other shooting, when the noble sportsman entrenches himself behind fortifications to which the fierce wild fowl are driven to be shot down by gun after gun placed in his hands. Sport, that was once a bond between classes, becomes more and more a monopoly of the rich. The very meaning of the word suffers a change in our day from the doing of something oneself to a performance where most of the activity is by paid assistants or “professionals.” One good feature of Highland sport is in not lending itself to the collection of gate-money from a mob of lookers-on; but the dollar-hunting and coup-landing chieftain need not expect to be loved by those whom he would fain bar out of his solitary playground.
I, too, have lived in Arcadia, and was duly entered at this craft, not that I ever took very heartily to it, or that a big capercailzie, then a rara avis in Highland woods, ran much more risk from me than from Mr. Winkle. But I know the free joy of tramping over wet moors behind dogs, shooting for sport and not for slaughter, lunching off bread and cheese, or a cold grouse, with fingers for forks, and coming home to a dinner won by one’s own hands. That old-fashioned muzzle-loading work is scorned by the present generation who, indeed, pay such rents for moors and coverts that they have some reason to be keen after a big bag. Well I remember a true Nimrod’s scorn for the first great noble in our part of the world who sold his game! We children in the nursery would be fed on grouse and salmon to use up what could not be sent away as presents; and, for my part, I have never quite got over a stickjaw conception of these expensive dainties.
There was a Highland shooting which in those days seemed a paradise of schoolboy holiday. It belonged to a well-known Scottish peeress married to a French nobleman, on whom it was thrown away, though their son grew to be of a different mind. Thus it came on a long lease into the occupation of keen sportsmen of my family, who naturally did not care to build for their inevitable successors. The “lodge” was a short row of white cottages, the centre one turned into a parlour, the others into bedrooms; and as youngsters grew up, extra accommodations were provided in the shape of a tent and iron shanties, the whole group backed by a thin clump of wind-blown firs visible some dozen miles away on the bare mountain side. All through the summer months it made an encampment for a band of kilted youngsters, “hardy, bold, and wild,” taking in the Highland air at every pore, with miles of moor and burn for their playground, which they knew not to be haunted by the victims of Druid rites. Not that more sophisticated guests were unknown at this eyry of eyases. The great little Earl Russell, at that time, if I am not mistaken, Prime Minister, was tenant of a neighbouring moor. One day he had come over for a sociable beat, broken in on by a messenger, hot foot across the heather, bearing a huge official envelope superscribed with the name of a ducal colleague. The statesman requested a private apartment in which to examine this communication, but the only closet available was a bedroom, where he opened the cover to find—a caricature of himself from Punch!
I have been led away by a grumble at the self-indulgent and well-appointed sportsmen who in this generation invade my native heath. But, however much they make themselves at home here, we chuckle to think that they at least cannot tune their ears to the native music. For what says the poet—
A Sassenach chief may be bonnily built,
He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;
Stick a skean in his hose—wear an acre of stripes—
But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.
Another comfort taken by the dispossessed son of the mist is in hearing the weather abused by strangers, who may as well stay at home under shelter of their Twopenny Tubes and Burlington Arcades if they are afraid of rain. Dr. Johnson was not, and a gentler critic of his time observed that the Highlanders minded snow “no more than hair powder.” In the warm south of England, I once caught a cold which stuck to me all summer and seemed like to settle on my lungs. Late in autumn, in a kill or cure mood, I went down to the dampest side of the Highlands, got wet from morning to night, and in a week my cough had gone like dew from the heather. But nature’s hydropathy does not always work so well, even on seasoned constitutions. The severest loss of our Volunteer force, as yet, on British soil, has been from that soaking royal review at Edinburgh, when Highlanders were killed and crippled by a long railway journey in drenched clothes, even though at the way-stations matron
