The Dowager Lady Mackenzie of Gairloch writes as follows regarding the Gairloch hose:—"At my first visit to Gairloch, in 1837, I employed a lady from Skye who was staying at Kerrysdale to instruct twelve young women in knitting nice stockings with dice and other fancy patterns. When I came to act as trustee, and to live constantly at Flowerdale, I started the manufacture of the Gairloch stockings in earnest, having spinners, dyers, and knitters, all taught and superintended during the ten years I resided there; on my leaving and going abroad, Sir Kenneth gave the concern into the hands of the head gamekeeper, Mr George Ross. Now, dozens of pairs are brought by the women to the hotels and steamers, and large quantities go to Inverness, Edinburgh, and London; £100 worth has been sold in one shop."
The dress of the women of Gairloch scarcely varies from that of the country women in any other part of the kingdom. The principal distinction is to be seen in the retention by some women of the mutch, or mob-cap (see [illustration]), which they still wear, and make up with considerable taste.
CABAR LAR, OR TURF PARER.
SCALE—ONE INCH TO A FOOT.
Maidens until the last few years never wore caps, bonnets, or other headgear, only a ribbon or snood to keep the hair in place. Any other headdress was considered a disgrace. Even yet a few girls go to church without bonnets; and within the last dozen years this was almost universal. Now, however, the majority of the young women try even to surpass their sisters in towns in following the fashions of the day; some girls appear on Sundays with almost a flower-garden on their heads. The Rev. Donald M'Rae truly remarked, in his statement in the New Statistical Account fifty years ago (and it is still true), that "when a girl dresses in her best attire, her very habiliments, in some instances, would be sufficient to purchase a better dwelling-house than that from which she has just issued."
Dr Mackenzie writes on this point as follows:—"In my early days about six or eight bonnets would be the number on Sunday in our west coast (Gairloch) church in a five or six hundred congregation, and these only worn by the wives of the upper-crust tenantry. The other wives wore beautiful white 'mutches,' i.e. caps, the insides of which were made up with broad pretty ribbons, which shewed themselves through the outside muslin. Oh! what a descent from them to modern bonnets! The unmarried women always had their hair dressed as if going to court, and were quite a sight, charming to see, compared with their present abominable hats and gumflowers. But when a visitor at Tigh Dige (Flowerdale) expressed wonder how they contrived to have such beautiful glossy heads of hair, set up as by a hairdresser, every Sunday, my father would say, 'No thanks, the jades stealing the bark of my young elms!' It seems a decoction of elm bark cleans and polishes hair marvellously; which accounted for many a young elm of my father's planting having a strip of bark, a foot long by say six inches wide, removed from the least visible side of the tree, as an always welcome present from a 'jade's' sweetheart on a Saturday. I don't believe they ever used oil or grease on their shining heads. So universally were mutches worn by all in the north of the working classes who were married, that when we settled in Edinburgh in 1827, my widowed nurse was drawn there by a well-doing son to keep house for him, and my mother having given her a very quiet bonnet to prevent her being stared at in Princes Street when wearing her mutch and visiting us, on her first appearance in a bonnet the dear old soul declared she nearly dropped in the street, for everybody was just staring at her for her pride in wearing a bonnet as if she was a lady!"