More than a hundred years have passed since these words were written, yet the usages Mrs. Grant described may still be seen in operation. A few years ago, in boating along the north shore of Loch Carron, on a warm day, I passed a field where the women were hard at harvesting work, while the men were leaning against a wall, with tobacco-pipes in their mouths and their hands in their pockets. I remarked to my two boatmen that these hulking fellows should be ashamed of themselves, to let the women do that heavy work under the hot sun, while they looked on in idleness. The answer was characteristic and not unexpected: ‘Ye surely wadna hae men doin’ women’s wark, wad ye, sir?’
This habit of allowing the women to do menial drudgery, so characteristic of uncivilised races, seems hard to throw off, though probably it is now undergoing amelioration. Burt, writing in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, gives an amusing instance of how the treatment of women in the Highlands appeared to a foreigner. ‘A French officer coming hither to raise some recruits for the Dutch service, met a Highlandman with a good pair of brogues on his feet, and his wife marching bare-foot after him. This indignity to the sex raised the Frenchman’s anger to such a degree, that he leaped from his horse and obliged the fellow to take off the shoes, and the woman to put them on.’ In commenting on this incident, the editor of the fifth edition of Burt’s volumes records an instance in which ‘a stout fellow of the very lowest class in Ardgour, took his wife and daughter, with wicker baskets on their backs, to a dunghill, filled their baskets with manure, and sent them to spread it with their hands on the croft; then, with his greatcoat on, he laid himself down on the lee side of the heap, to bask and chew tobacco till they returned for another load. A stranger, who merely looked at the outside of things, would hardly believe that this man was a kind and tender husband and father, as he really was. The maxim that such work (which must be done by some one) spoils the men, has been so long received as unquestionable by the women, that it makes a part of their nature; and a wife would despise her husband, and expect the contempt of her neighbours on her husband’s account, if he were so forgetful of himself, as to attempt to do such a thing, unless her situation at the time did not admit of her doing it.’[22]
Manufactures have never flourished in the Highlands. Yet the region has many advantages for the establishment of industries, especially abundant water-power and the existence of numerous inlets and natural harbours to and from which commodities could easily be shipped. Whisky-making, indeed, has long flourished, the traditions of the ‘sma’ still’ no doubt making it natural to take service in a large distillery. Mrs. Grant of Laggan maintained that ‘nature never meant Donald for a manufacturer; born to cultivate or defend his native soil, he droops and degenerates in any mechanical calling. He feels it as losing his caste; and when he begins to be a weaver, he ceases to be a Highlander. Fixing a mountaineer on a loom too much resembles yoking a deer in a plough, and will not in the end suit much better.’[23] The indignant imprecation which Scott puts into the mouth of Rob Roy, when honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie proposes to make the Highlander’s sons weavers, represents the ingrained national repugnance to mechanical crafts. In recent years a few industries have been introduced on a small scale into some of the little Highland towns, such as Inverness, Oban, and Campbeltown. These innovations, however, make slow progress. Possibly the utilisation of the Falls of Foyers by a Sassenach company of manufacturers may prove to be the forerunner of other similar invasions. But if the future of the Highlands be left to Donald himself, the lovers of the unspoilt charms of the mountains may console themselves with the belief that these charms will remain much as they still are for many a long day to come.
CHAPTER IX.
Highland ferries and coaches. The charms of Iona. How to see Staffa. The Outer Hebrides. Stones of Callernish. St. Kilda. Sound of Harris. The Cave-massacre in Eigg. Skeleton from a clan fight still unburied in Jura. The hermit of Jura. Peculiar charms of the Western Isles. Influence of the clergy on the cheerfulness of the Highlanders. Disappearance of Highland customs. Dispersing of clans from their original districts. Dying out of Gaelic; advantages of knowing some Gaelic; difficulties of the language.
In continuation of the Highland reminiscences contained in the last chapter, reference may here be made to some further characteristics of the Western Isles, and to a few of the more marked changes which, during the last half century, have affected the Highlands as a whole.
Fifty years ago Highland ferries were much more used than at the present day, when railways and steamers have so greatly reduced the number of stage-coaches and post-horses. These little pieces of navigation across rivers, estuaries, and sea-lochs, afforded ample scope for certain Celtic idiosyncrasies. The ferryman could, as occasion served, contract his knowledge of English, and on one pretext or another contrive to exact more than the legal or reasonable fare, remaining imperturbably insensible to the complaints and remonstrances of the passengers. An illustrative story is told by Dr. Norman Macleod in his charming Reminiscences of a Highland Parish. A Highland friend of his who had been so long absent in India that he had lost the accent, but not the language of his native region, had reached one of these ferries on his way home, and asked one of the boatmen in English what the charge was. The question being repeated in Gaelic by the man to his elder comrade, the answer came back at once in the same language, ‘Ask the Sassenach ten shillings.’ ‘He says,’ explained the interpreter to the supposed Englishmen, ‘he is sorry he cannot do it under twenty shillings, and that’s cheap.’ No reply was made to this extortion at the moment, but as the boat sailed across, the gentleman spoke to the men in good Gaelic. Whereupon, instead of taking shame to himself for his attempted cheat, the spokesman turned the tables on the traveller: ‘I am ashamed of you,’ he said, ‘I am, indeed, for I see you are ashamed of your country; och, och, to pretend to me that you were an Englishman! You deserve to pay forty shillings—but the ferry, is only five!’
HIGHLAND FERRYMEN
On another occasion, when a sea-loch had to be crossed where strong currents swung the ferry-boat round and some manoeuvring with the oars was required, the chief ferryman kept saying, ‘Furich, Donald,’ to the one assistant, and ‘Furich, Angus,’ to the other. At the other side of the loch the passenger paid the fare and then said to the ferryman, ‘Now, I’ll give you another shilling if you will tell me what you mean by “Furich, furich,” which I have heard you say so often in the passage across. It must surely have many different meanings.’ The coin was duly pocketed and the Highlander thus deliberately explained: ‘Ah, it’s ta English of ta Gaelic “furich” ’at you wass wantin’ to know. Well, I’ll tell you; it’s meanin’ “Wait,” “Stop”; och ay, it means “Howld on,” “Niver do the day what you can by any possibeelity put off till to-morrow.”’