Whatever the material condition of the Highland people, whatever their lack, in many parishes, of elementary education, they possessed, in legends, Märchen, traditional poems, and the living art of popular song, a native culture—rich, dignified, and imaginative—which newspapers merely destroy. This great element of happiness, where it survives, is the bequest of the good old times.
Such is our evidence; and now, having described its nature, we may turn to the details.
A considerable portion of the people were terribly destitute. We have heard what the biographer of Young Barisdale says, about a diet of shell-fish from March to August, about the faces that never wear a smile. Franck, writing in 1654-1660, tells us how, when Monk held Scotland, the Strathnaver crofters bled their cows in winter, and fed on blood mixed with oatmeal.[167] Burt and Knox testify to the same practice, a century later and more. ‘This immoderate bleeding reduces the cattle to so low a plight that in the morning they cannot rise from the ground, and several of the inhabitants join together to help up each other’s cows.’[168] ‘The gentry may be said to be a handsome people, but the commonalty much otherwise; one would hardly think, by their faces, they were of the same species, or, at least, of the same country, which plainly proceeds from their bad food....’[169]
The old times were not so good; the peasants, who protected and concealed him, could not give Lord Pitsligo salt to his porridge: ‘Salt is dear.’ But people who have seen nothing better are not discontented. The gentry—not chiefs, but tacksmen—as we have said, did not live luxuriously. Examples may be given. ‘Although they have been attended at dinner by five or six servants, they have often dined upon oat-meal varied several ways, pickled herrings, or other such cheap and indifferent diet.... Their houses are sometimes built with stone and lime’ (like Barisdale’s palace), but other houses of the gentry ‘are built in the manner of the huts.’ Burt mentions one such house, with beasts dwelling under the roof of the owner, or tacksman. For many years Old Glengarry dwelt in a hut, his castle being occupied by an English commercial gentleman. The laird’s children were ‘dirty and half naked’—this is on hearsay—and it was a common proverb that ‘a gentleman’s bairns are known by their speaking English.’ Glengarry’s niece, daughter of Æneas, shot at Falkirk, ‘had no English,’ when she could not have been under thirteen years of age.[170]
Thus there was no very great gulf, in some cases, between gentry and peasantry, where comfort was concerned. The difference of appearance between them, as between beings ‘of a different species,’ is the less intelligible. But herrings and game are more nutritious than nettles, cows’ blood, and shell-fish, especially where all are scarce.
As to rents, payments to chief or tacksman, how did things fare? Conservatives, like Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott, have written about the chiefs ‘degenerating from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords.’ The Duke of Argyll, on the contrary, speaks of the sub-tenants, in the good old times, as ‘holding at the will of the lease-holders or tacksmen, and complaining bitterly of the oppressions under which they laboured.’ This is on the evidence of Sheriff Campbell of Stonefield, speaking of Mull, Morven, and Tyree, in 1732.[171] ‘It was only beginning to be felt these poor people that even a bare subsistence could not be secured when plunder had been stopped, and before industry had begun.’ What were the ‘oppressions,’ not including, of course, such exceptional outrages as those of Barisdale? Well, Burt tells us that a tenant’s improvements, in 1730-1740, meant an instant rise of rent. ‘What would the tenant be the gainer of it’ (enclosures and improvements on his farm), ‘but to have his rent raised, or his farm divided with some other?’[172] The division would serve to recruit another swordsman for the Chief. The writer of a MS. of 1747, in the possession of Graham of Gartmore,[173] says, ‘The practice of letting many farms to one man’ (the tacksman, say Lochgarry or Barisdale), ‘who, again subsetts them to a much greater number than these can maintain, and at a much higher rent than they can afford to pay, obliges these poor people to purchase their rents and expences by theifts and robberys.’[174]
In the good old days, something like the iniquitous Truck System existed, we learn from the same authority, on some Highland estates. ‘Some of the substantial Tacksmen play the merchant, and supply the common people.... As the poor ignorant people have neither knowledge of the value of their purchase, nor money to pay for it, they deliver to these dealers (the tacksmen) ‘cattle in the beginning of May for what they have received; by which traffick the poor wretched people are cheated out of their effects for one half of their value.’ This is a mournful aspect of the good old times. The MS. 104 confirms the statements, and describes the thriftless agricultural methods.
Each of these (the tacksmen) ‘possesses some very poor people under him, perhaps five or six on a farm, to whom he lets out the skirts of his possession, these people are generally the soberest and honestest of the whole. Their food all summer is milk and whey mixed together without any bread, the little butter or cheese they are able to make is reserved for winter provision, they sleep away the greatest part of the summer, and when the little Barley they sow becomes ripe, the women pull it as they do flax, and dry it on a large wicker machine over the fire. Then burn the straw, and grind the corn upon Quearns or hand mills. In the end of Harvest, and During the winter they have some Flesh, Butter, and cheese, with great scarcity of Bread. All their business is to take care of the few Cattle they have. In spring, which is their only season in which they work, their whole food is bread and gruel without so much as salt to season it.
‘About twenty years ago Lochiel erected two or three Water Mills, but by reason of the great distance of many of the people from them, and their natural Laziness, with the prejudice in favour of the old Custom of burning the straw, they were made very little use of. The custom has been given up some time except by the Camerons and Macdonalds, some McLeans, and some of the people of Skye.’
It is not safe, of course, to argue from a report about the state of the people in one part of the Highlands to a conclusion about their condition everywhere. A river may divide comfort from destitution. And it is certain that reports by Lowlanders, Englishmen, or Highlanders, like the famous Forbes of Culloden, who practically defeated the Rising of 1745, will not please some Highland reasoners.[175]