“Woods they have none: that suits not with the frugality of the people, who are so far from propagating any, that they destroy those they had upon this politick State Maxim, that Corn will not grow on the land pestered with its Roots, and their branches harbour Birds, Animals above their humble conversation, that exceeds not that of Hornless Quadrupedes; marry, perhaps some of their houses lurk under the shelter of a plump of trees (the Birds not daring so high a presumption) like Hugh Peters Puss in her Majesty, or an Owl in an Ivy-Bush. Some fir-woods there are in the High-lands, but so inaccessible, that they serve for no other use than Dens for those ravenous Wolves with 2 hands, that prey upon their neighbourhood and shelter themselves under this Covert; to whom the sight of a stranger is as surprizing as that of a Cockatrice. The Vallies for the most part are covered with Beer or Bigg, and the Hills with Snow.
“If the air was not so pure and well-refined by its agitation, it would be so infected with the stinks of their Towns and the steam of the Nasty Inhabitants that it would be pestilential and destructive.
“The people are Proud, Arrogant, Vainglorious boasters; Bloody, Barbarous and Inhuman Butchers. Couzenage and Theft is in perfection among them, and they are perfect English-haters. Their spirits are so mean that they rarely rob, but they take away life first. Lying in Ambush, they send a brace of bullets through the traveller’s body, and to make sure work they sheath their Durks in his liveless trunk.
“Their cruelty descends to their Beasts, it being a custom in some places to feast upon a living Cow. They tie it in the middle of them, near a great fire, and then cut collops off this poor living beast, and broil them on the fire, till they have mangled her all to pieces: nay, sometimes they will only cut off as much as will satisfy their present Appetites, and let her go till their greedy Stomachs call for a new supply: such horrible cruelty as can scarce be paralleled in the whole world.”
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
“The Highlanders talk only Erse, the Lowlanders understand and talk English, but they are so currish that if a stranger enquires the way in English they will certainly answer in Erse, and find no other language until you force it from them with a Cudgel.”
Let us hope, for the travellers’ own sakes, that they did not take this advice. But let us follow Mr. Kirke indoors. This, according to him, was a Scottish interior: “To enter a kitchen is to enter Hell alive: the stew and stink enough to suffocate you,” while “Musick they have, but not the Harmony of the Spheres, but loud Terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts: the loud Bagpipe is their chief delight.”
As for the inns: “Change-houses they call them, poor small cottages, where you must be content to take what you find, perhaps Eggs with Chicks in them, and some Long Cale; at the better sort of them a dish of chop’d Chickens, which they esteem a dainty dish, and will take it unkindly if you do not eat very heartily of it.”
Oddly enough, he says nothing of porridge. But St. Jerome attributed the heresy of Pelagius to his feeding upon oatmeal porridge, which may perhaps be responsible for more religious difficulties than we are aware of. The heresy of Pelagius (whose real name was Morgan, and himself therefore presumably a Welshman), was divided into six points, chief of them being what one is tempted to characterise as the “common-sense” view that Adam’s sin was confined to his own person. The daring Pelagius was condemned, A.D. 418, as an heretic, but he lived on, notwithstanding, to the age of threescore years and ten: a jolly, fat man, by all accounts, and of distinctly anti-celibate views.
It is rarely, nowadays, you see a plaid, and not often a kilt. Nowhere is the sight now seen that once astonished travellers: the sight of countryfolk walking barefoot, carrying shoes and stockings in their hands, for sake of economy, until they reached the outskirts of a town, where, for sake of appearance, they put them on. The once poor country has grown a great deal beyond that. But kilts formed the only wear at the time of the rebellion of 1745, when one unhappy detachment of rebels found them rather embarrassing. An English subaltern, in command of a few men, had the good fortune to secure a numerically superior body of rebels, and was sorely at a loss what to do with them on the march to Carlisle; being afraid that they would on their way, finding themselves more powerful, turn upon his small force and wreak a terrible revenge. The happy idea struck him of having the waist-bands of the prisoners’ kilts cut before the march was begun: and thus they went; the Scotsmen being too busily engaged in holding their petticoats up to be in any way dangerous.