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[ Journey through Scotland, by the author of the Journey through England, 1723.]
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[ Almost all these circumstances are taken from Burt's Letters. For the tar, I am indebted to Cleland's poetry. In his verses on the "Highland Host" he says
"The reason is, they're smeared with tar,
Which doth defend their head and neck,
Just as it doth their sheep protect.">[
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[ A striking illustration of the opinion which was entertained of the Highlander by his Lowland neighbours, and which was by them communicated to the English, will be found in a volume of Miscellanies published by Afra Behn in 1685. One of the most curious pieces in the collection is a coarse and profane Scotch poem entitled, "How the first Hielandman was made." How and of what materials he was made I shall not venture to relate. The dialogue which immediately follows his creation may be quoted, I hope, without much offence.
"Says God to the Hielandman, 'Quhair wilt thou now?'
'I will down to the Lowlands, Lord, and there steal a cow.'
'Ffy,' quod St. Peter, 'thou wilt never do weel,
'An thou, but new made, so sane gaffs to steal.'
'Umff,' quod the Hielandman, and swore by yon kirk,
'So long as I may geir get to steal, will I nevir work."'
Another Lowland Scot, the brave Colonel Cleland, about the same time, describes the Highlander in the same manner
"For a misobliging word
She'll dirk her neighbour o'er the board.
If any ask her of her drift,
Forsooth, her nainself lives by theft."
Much to the same effect are the very few words which Franck Philanthropus (1694) spares to the Highlanders: "They live like lauds and die like loons, hating to work and no credit to borrow: they make depredations and rob their neighbours." In the History of the Revolution in Scotland, printed at Edinburgh in 1690, is the following passage: "The Highlanders of Scotland are a sort of wretches that have no other consideration of honour, friendship, obedience, or government, than as, by any alteration of affairs or revolution in the government, they can improve to themselves an opportunity of robbing or plundering their bordering neighbours.">[