Thirty years have now passed since I shared in the Highlander's evening meal, and during the first twenty of these, the use of the potatoe—unknown in the Highlands a century before—greatly increased. I have been told by my maternal grandfather, that about the year 1740, when he was a boy of about eight or nine years of age, the head-gardener at Balnagown Castle used, in his occasional visits to Cromarty, to bring him in his pocket, as great rarities, some three or four potatoes; and that it was not until some fifteen or twenty years after this time that he saw potatoes reared in fields in any part of the Northern Highlands. But, once fairly employed as food, every season saw a greater breadth of them laid down. In the North-western Highlands, in especial, the use of these roots increased from the year 1801 to the year 1846 nearly a hundredfold, and came at length to form, as in Ireland, not merely the staple, but in some localities almost the only food of the people; and when destroyed by disease in the latter year, famine immediately ensued in both Ireland and the Highlands. A writer in the Witness, whose letter had the effect of bringing that respectable paper under the eye of Mr. Punch, represented the Irish famine as a direct judgment on the Maynooth Endowment; while another writer, a member of the Peace Association—whose letter did not find its way into the Witness, though it reached the editor—challenged the decision on the ground that the Scotch Highlanders, who were greatly opposed to Maynooth, suffered from the infliction nearly as much as the Irish themselves, and that the offence punished must have been surely some one of which both Highlanders and Irish had been guilty in common. He, however, had found out, he said, what the crime visited actually was. Both the Irish and Highland famines were judgments upon the people for their great homicidal efficiency as soldiers in the wars of the empire—an efficiency which, as he truly remarked, was almost equally characteristic of both nations. For my own part, I have been unable hitherto to see the steps which conduct to such profound conclusions; and am content simply to hold, that the superintending Providence who communicated to man a calculating, foreseeing nature, does occasionally get angry with him, and inflict judgments upon him, when, instead of exercising his faculties, he sinks to a level lower than his own, and becomes content, like some of the inferior animals, to live on a single root.
There are two periods favourable to observation—an early and a late one. A fresh eye detects external traits and peculiarities among a people, seen for the first time, which disappear as they become familiar; but it is not until after repeated opportunities of study, and a prolonged acquaintanceship, that internal characteristics and conditions begin to be rightly known. During the first fortnight of my residence in this remote district, I was more impressed than at a later stage by certain peculiarities of manner and appearance in the inhabitants. Dr. Johnson remarked that he found fewer very tall or very short men among the people of the Hebrides than in England: I was now struck by a similar mediocrity of size among the Highlanders of Western Ross; five-sixths of the grown men seemed to average between five feet seven and five feet nine inches in height, and either tall or short men I found comparatively rare. The Highlanders of the eastern coast were, on the contrary, at that period, mayhap still, very various of stature—some of them exceedingly diminutive, others of great bulk and height; and, as might be seen in the congregations of the parish churches removed by but a few miles, there were marked differences in this respect between the people of contiguous districts—certain tracts of plain or valley producing larger races than others. I was inclined to believe at the time that the middle-sized Highlanders of the west coast were a less mixed race than the unequally-sized Highlanders of the east: I at least found corresponding inequalities among the higher-born Highland families, that, as shown by their genealogies, blended the Norman and Saxon with the Celtic blood; and as the unequally-sized Highland race bordered on that Scandinavian one which fringes the greater part of the eastern coast of Scotland, I inferred that there had been a similar blending of blood among them. I have since seen, in Gustav Kombst's Ethnographic Map of the British Islands, the difference which I at this time but inferred, indicated by a different shade of colour, and a different name. The Highlanders of the east coast Kombst terms "Scandinavian-Gaelic;" those of the west, "Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic,"—names indicative, of course, of the proportions in which he holds that they possess the Celtic blood. Disparity of bulk and size appears to be one of the consequences of a mixture of races; nor does the induced inequality seem restricted to the physical framework. Minds of large calibre, and possessed of the kingly faculty, come first into view, in our history, among the fused tribes, just as of old it was the mixed marriages that first produced the giants. The difference in size which I remarked in particular districts of the Scandinavian-Gaelic region, separated, in some instances, by but a ridge of hills or an expanse of moor, must have been a result of the old clan divisions, and is said to have marked the clans themselves very strongly. Some of them were of a greatly more robust, and some of a slimmer type, than others.
I was struck by another peculiarity in the west coast Highlanders. I found the men in general greatly better-looking than the women, and that in middle life they bore their years much more lightly. The females seemed old and haggard at a period when the males were still comparatively fresh and robust. I am not sure whether the remark may not in some degree apply to Highlanders generally. The "rugged form" and "harsher features," which, according to Sir Walter, "mark the mountain band," accord worse with the female than with the male countenance and figure. But I at least found this discrepancy in the appearance of the sexes greatly more marked on the west than on the eastern coast; and saw only too much reason to conclude that it was owing in great part to the disproportionately large share of crushing labour laid, in the district, in accordance with the practice of a barbarous time, on the weaker frame of the female. There is, however, a style of female loveliness occasionally though rarely exemplified in the Highlands, which far transcends the Saxon or Scandinavian type. It is manifested usually in extreme youth—at least between the fourteenth and eighteenth year; and its effect we find happily indicated by Wordsworth—who seems to have met with a characteristic specimen—in his lines to a Highland girl. He describes her as possessing as her "dower," "a very shower of beauty." Further, however, he describes her as very young.
"Twice seven consenting years had shed
Their utmost bounty on her head."
I was, besides, struck at this time by finding, that while almost all the young lads under twenty with whom I came in contact had at least a smattering of English, I found only a single Highlander turned of forty with whom I could exchange a word. The exceptional Highlander was, however, a curiosity in his way. He seemed to have a natural turn for acquiring languages, and had derived his English, not from conversation, but, in the midst of a Gaelic-speaking people, from the study of the Scriptures in our common English version. His application of Bible language to ordinary subjects told at times with rather ludicrous effect. Upon inquiring of him, on one occasion, regarding a young man whom he wished to employ as an extra labourer, he described him in exactly the words in which David is described in the chapter that records the combat with Goliath, as "but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and on asking where he thought we could get a few loads of water-rolled pebbles for causewaying a floor, he directed us to the bed of a neighbouring rivulet, where we might "choose us," he said, "smooth stones out of the brook." He spoke with great deliberation, translating evidently his Gaelic thinking, as he went on, into scriptural English.
CHAPTER XIII.
"A man of glee