Milton in one of his Sonnets plays in sportive satire with the name of another left-handed Scot, “Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp.” The person referred to under the first name was the Earl of Antrim’s deputy, by whom the invasion of Scotland was attempted in 1644 on behalf of the Stuarts. The name is scarcely less strange in its genuine form of Alastair MacCholla-Chiotach; that is, Alexander, son of Coll, the left-handed. This was the elder Macdonnel, of Colonsay, who was noted for his ability to wield his claymore with equal dexterity in the left hand or the right; or, as one tradition affirms, for his skill as a left-handed swordsman after the loss of his right hand; and hence his sobriquet of Colkittock, or Coll, the Left-handed. The term “carry” is frequently used in Scotland as one implying reproach or contempt. In some parts of the country, and especially in Lanarkshire, it is even regarded as an evil omen to meet a carry-handed person when setting out on a journey. Jamieson notes the interjectional phrase car-shamye (Gaelic sgeamh-aim, to reproach) as in use in Kinross-shire in the favourite Scottish game of shinty, when an antagonist takes what is regarded as an undue advantage by using his club in the left hand.
All this, while indicating the exceptional character of left-handedness, clearly points to a habit of such frequent occurrence as to be familiarly present to every mind. But the exceptional skill, or dexterity, as it may be fitly called, which usually pertains to the left-handed operator is generally sufficient to redeem him from slight. The ancient Scottish game of golf, which is only a more refined and strictly regulated form of the rustic shinty, is one in which the implements are of necessity right-handed, and so subject the left-handed player to great disadvantage, unless he provides his own special clubs. The links at Leith have long been famous as an arena for Scottish golfers. King Charles I. was engaged in a game of golf there when, in November 1641, a letter was delivered into his hands which gave him the first account of the Irish Rebellion. The same links were a favourite resort of his younger son, James II., while still Duke of York; and some curious traditions preserve the memory of his relish for the game. There, accordingly, golf is still played with keenest zest; and among its present practisers is a left-handed golfer, who, as usual with left-handed persons, is practically ambidextrous. He has accordingly provided himself with a double set of right and left drivers and irons; so that he can use either hand at pleasure according to the character of the ground, or the position of the ball, to the general discomfiture of his one-handed rivals. The Scotchmen of Montreal and Quebec have transplanted the old national game to Canadian soil; and the latter city has a beautiful course on the historical battle-field, the scene of Wolfe’s victory and death. Their experience induced the Quebec Golf Club, when ordering spare sets of implements for the use of occasional guests from Great Britain, to consider the propriety of providing a left-handed set. In the discussion to which the proposal gave rise, it was urged to be unnecessary, as a left-handed player generally has his own clubs with him; but finally the order was limited to two left-handed drivers, so that when a left-handed golfer joins them he has to put with his driver. This considerateness of the Quebec golfers was no doubt stimulated by the fact that there is a skilled golfer of the Montreal Club whose feats of dexterity as a left-handed player at times startle them. A Quebec golfer writes to me thus: “There is one left-handed fellow belonging to the Montreal Club who comes down occasionally to challenge us; and I have watched his queer play with a good deal of interest and astonishment.”
To the left-handed man his right hand is the less ready, the less dexterous, and the weaker member. But in all ordinary experience the idea of weakness, uncertainty, unreliability, attaches to the left hand, and so naturally leads to the tropical significance of “unreliable, untrustworthy,” in a moral sense. Both ideas are found alike in barbarous and classic language. An interesting example of the former occurs in Ovid’s Fasti (iii. 869), where the poet speaks of the flight of Helle and her brother on the golden-fleeced ram; and describes her as grasping its horn “with her feeble left hand, when she made of herself a name for the waters,” i.e. by falling off and being drowned—
Utque fugam capiant, aries nitidissimus auro
Traditur. Ille vehit per freta longa duos.
Dicitur informa cornu tenuisse sinistra
Femina, cum de se nomina fecit aquæ.
In the depreciatory moral sense, Plautus in the Persa, (II. ii. 44) calls the left hand furtifica, “thievish.” “Estne hæc manus? Ubi illa altera est furtifica læva?” So in like manner the term in all its forms acquires a depreciatory significance, and is even applied to sinister looks. So far, then, as the evidence of language goes, the distinction of the right from the left hand, as the more reliable member, appears to be coeval with the earliest known use of language.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRIMITIVE ABACUS
Under varying aspects of the question of right-handedness the inquiries into its origin have naturally reverted to the lateral position of the heart as a probable source of diversity of action in the two hands; and this is the more suggestive owing to the fact that exceptional cases of its reversed position are occasionally found. When Carlyle reflected on right-handedness as “probably the oldest human institution that exists,” he suggested as the source of choice of the hand that it “probably arose in fighting: most important,” as he says, “to protect your heart and its adjacencies, and to carry the shield on the hand.” This idea, in so far as it implies the habitual use of the shield in the left hand, or on the left arm, and consequently of the shield-hand as left and passive, is old as Homer; and the evidence of its practice is abundantly confirmed by the drawings on the most archaic Greek vases. The right side was ἐπὶ δόρυ, the spear side, while the left was ἐπ’ ἀσπίδα, the shield side. The familiar application of the terms in this sense is seen in Xenophon’s Anabasis, IV. iii. 26: Καὶ παρήγγειλε τοῖς λοχαγοῖς κατ’ ἐνωμοτίας ποιήσασθαι ἕκαστον τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόχον, παρ’ ἀσπίδας παραγαγόντας τὴν ἐνωμοτίαν ἐπὶ φάλαγγος, “He ordered to draw up his century in squads of twenty-five, and post them in line to the left.” And again, Anabasis, IV. iii. 29: Τοῖς δὲ παρ’ ἑαυτῷ παρήγγειλεν ... ἀναστρέψαντας ἐπὶ δόρυ, κ.τ.λ., “He ordered his own division, turning to the right,” etc. Egyptian paintings are older than the earliest Greek vases, but they are less reliable; for in the symmetrical arrangements of hieroglyphic paintings the groups of figures are habitually reversed, right and left, looking toward a central line or point. Yet there also evidence may be found confirming the same idea.