Perhaps the busiest centre of Highland illicit whisky-distilling is now to be located in the Gairloch, but anything in the shape of exact information on so shy a subject is necessarily not obtainable. Between this district and the Outer Hebrides, islands where no stills are to be found, a large secret trade is still believed to exist. Seizures are occasionally made but the policy of the Inland Revenue authorities is now a broad one, in which the existence of small stills in inconsiderable numbers, although actually known, is officially ignored: the argument being that undue official activity, with the resultant publicity, would defeat itself by advertising the fact of it being so easy to manufacture whisky, leading eventually to the establishment of more stills.
The illegal production of spirits does, in fact, proceed all over Great Britain and Ireland to a far greater extent than generally suspected; and such remote places as the Highlands are nowadays by no means the most favourable situations for the manufacture. Indeed, crowded towns form in these times the most ideal situations. No one in the great cities is in the least interested in what his neighbour is doing, unless what he does constitutes a nuisance: and it is the secret distiller’s last thought to obtrude his personality or his doings upon the notice of the neighbours. Secrecy, personal comfort, and conveniences of every kind are better obtained in towns than on inclement brae-sides; and the manufacture and repair of the utensils necessary to the business are effected more quickly, less expensively, and without the prying curiosity of a Highland clachan.
It follows from this long-continued course of illegal distilling that the Highlands are full of tales of how the gaugers were outwitted, and of hairbreadth escapes and curious incidents. Among these is the story of the revengeful postmaster of Kingussie, who, on his return from a journey to Aberlour on a dark and stormy night, called at Dalnashaugh inn, where he proposed to stay an hour or two. The pretty maid of the inn attended diligently to him for awhile, until a posse of some half-dozen gaugers entered, to rest there on their way to Badenoch, where they were due, to make a raid on a number of illicit stills. The sun of the postmaster suddenly set with the arrival of these strangers. They were given the parlour, and treated with the best hospitality the house could afford, while he was banished to the kitchen. He was wrathful, for was he not a Government official, equally with these upstarts? But he dissembled his anger, and, as the evening wore on and the maid grew tired, he suggested she had better go to bed, and he would be off by time the moon rose. No sooner had she retired than he took the excisemen’s boots, lying in the inglenook to dry, and pitched them into a great pot of water, boiling over the blaze.
When the moon had risen, he duly mounted his pony and set out for Badenoch, where he gave out the news that the gaugers were coming.
The excisemen could not stir from the inn for a considerable time, for their boiled boots refused to be drawn on; and by the time they had been enabled to stretch them and to set out once more on their way, the Badenoch smugglers had made off with all their gear, leaving nothing but empty bothies for inspection. The local historian is silent as to what happened afterwards to the postmaster, the only possible author of this outrage.
A smuggler of Strathdearn was unfortunate in having the excise pouncing suddenly upon him in his bothy, and taking away his only cask of whisky. The hated myrmidons of a Sassenach Government went off with the cask, and were so jealous of their prize that they took it with them to the inn where they were to pass the night. All that evening they sang songs and were merry with a numerous company in an upper room; but even at their merriest they did not forget their capture, and one of their number sat upon it all the time.
It chanced, however, that among these merry fellows were some of the smuggler’s friends, who were careful to note exactly the position of the cask. They procured an auger and bored a hole from the room below, through the flooring and into the cask, draining all the whisky away. When the excisemen had come to the end of their jollification, they had only the empty cask for their trouble.
One of the brae-side distillers of Fortingal brought a cart laden with kegs of whisky into Perth, by arrangement with an innkeeper of that town; but the innkeeper refused to pay a fair price.
“Wha will her sell it till, then?” asked the would-be vendor.
The innkeeper, a person of a saturnine humour, mentioned a name and a house, and the man went thither with his cart.