The disputes between opposing clans were frequently made matters of negotiation, and their differences were often adjusted by treaties. Opposing clans, as a means of strengthening themselves against the attacks of their rivals, or of maintaining the balance of power, also entered into coalitions with friendly neighbours. These bands of amity or manrent, as they were called, were of the nature of treaties of offensive and defensive alliance, by which the contracting parties bound themselves to assist each other; and it is remarkable that the duty of allegiance to the king was always acknowledged in these treaties,—“always excepting my duty to our lord the king, and to our kindred and friends,” was a clause which was uniformly inserted in them. In the same manner, when men who were not chiefs of clans, but of subordinate tribes, thus bound themselves, their fidelity to their chiefs was always excepted. The smaller clans who were unable to defend themselves, and such clans or families who had lost their chiefs, were included in these friendly treaties.[508] Under these treaties the smaller clans identified themselves with the greater clans; they engaged in the quarrels, followed the fortunes, and fought under the greater chiefs; but their ranks, as General Stewart observes, were separately marshalled, and led by their own subordinate chieftains and lairds, who owned submission only when necessary, for the success of combined operations. Several instances of this union will be found in the history of the clans.
As the system of clanship, by ignoring the authority of the sovereign and of the laws, prevented the clans from ever coming to any general terms of accommodation for settling their differences, their feuds were interminable, and the Highlands were, therefore, for ages, the theatre of a constant petty warfare destructive of the social virtues. “The spirit of opposition and rivalry between the clans perpetuated a system of hostility, encouraged the cultivation of the military at the expense of the social virtues, and perverted their ideas of both law and morality. Revenge was accounted a duty, the destruction of a neighbour a meritorious exploit, and rapine an honourable occupation. Their love of distinction, and their conscious reliance on their courage, when under the direction of these perverted notions, only tended to make their feuds more implacable, their condition more agitated, and their depredations more rapacious and desolating. Superstition added its influence in exasperating animosities, by teaching the clansmen, that, to revenge the death of a relation or friend, was a sacrifice agreeable to their shades: thus engaging on the side of the most implacable hatred, and the darkest vengeance, the most amiable and domestic of all our feelings,—reverence for the memory of the dead, and affection for the virtues of the living.”[509]
As the causes out of which feuds originated were innumerable, so many of them were trivial and unimportant, but as submission to the most trifling insult was considered disgraceful, and might, if overlooked, lead to fresh aggression, the clan was immediately summoned, and the cry for revenge met with a ready response in every breast. The most glaring insult that could be offered to a clan, was to speak disrespectfully of its chief,[510] an offence which was considered as a personal affront by all his followers, and was resented accordingly.
It often happened that the insulted clan was unable to take the field to repel aggression or to vindicate its honour; but the injury was never forgotten, and the memory of it was treasured up till a fitting opportunity for taking revenge should arrive. The want of strength was sometimes supplied by cunning, and the blackest and deadliest intentions of hatred and revenge were sought to be perpetrated under the mask of conciliation and friendship. This was the natural result of the inefficiency of the laws which could afford no redress for wrongs, and which, therefore, left every individual to vindicate his rights with his own hand. The feeling of revenge, when directed against rival tribes, was cherished and honoured, and to such an extent was it carried, that there are well authenticated instances where one of the adverse parties has been exterminated in the bloody and ferocious conflicts which the feuds occasioned.
As the wealth of the Highlanders consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, “the usual mode of commencing attacks, or of making reprisals, was by an incursion to carry off the cattle of the hostile clan. A predatory expedition was the general declaration of enmity, and a command given by the chief to clear the pastures of the enemy, constituted the usual letters of marque.”[511] These Creachs, as such depredations were termed, were carried on with systematic order, and were considered as perfectly justifiable. If lives were lost in these forays, revenge full and ample was taken, but in general personal hostilities were avoided in these incursions either against the Lowlanders or rival tribes. These predatory expeditions were more frequently directed against the Lowlanders, whom the Highlanders considered as aliens, and whose cattle they, therefore, considered as fair spoil at all times. The forays were generally executed with great secrecy, and the cattle were often lifted and secured for a considerable time before they were missed. To trace the cattle which had been thus carried off, the owners endeavoured to discover their foot-marks in the grass, or by the yielding of the heath over which they had passed; and so acute had habit rendered their sight, that they frequently succeeded, in this manner, in discovering their property. The man on whose property the tract of the cattle was lost was held liable if he did not succeed in following out the trace or discovering the cattle; and if he did not make restitution, or offer to compensate the loss, an immediate quarrel was the consequence. A reward, called Tasgal money, was sometimes offered for the recovery of stolen cattle; but as this was considered in the light of a bribe, it was generally discouraged. The Camerons and some other clans, it is said, bound themselves by oath never to accept such a reward, and to put to death all who should receive it.
Besides those who took part in the Creachs there was another and a peculiar class called Cearnachs, a term of similar import with the Catherans of the Lowlands, the Kernes of the English, and the Catervæ of the Romans. The Cearnachs were originally a select body of men employed in difficult and dangerous enterprises where more than ordinary honour was to be acquired; but, in process of time, they were employed in the degrading and dishonourable task of levying contributions on their Lowland neighbours, or in forcing them to pay tribute or black mail for protection. Young men of the second order of gentry who were desirous of entering the military profession, frequently joined in these exploits, as they were considered well fitted for accustoming those who engaged in them to the fatigues and exercises incident to a military life. The celebrated Robert Macgregor Campbell, or Rob Roy,[512] was the most noted of these freebooters.
The cearnachs were principally the borderers living close to and within the Grampian range, but cearnachs from the more northerly parts of the Highlands also paid frequent visits to the Lowlands, and carried off large quantities of booty. The border cearnachs judging such irruptions as an invasion of their rights, frequently attacked the northern cearnachs on their return homewards; and if they succeeded in capturing the spoil, they either appropriated it to their own use or restored it to the owners.
It might be supposed that the system of spoliation we have described, would have led these freebooters occasionally to steal from one another. Such, however, was not the case; for they observed the strictest honesty in this respect. No precautions were taken—because unnecessary—to protect property; and the usual securities of locks, bolts, and bars, were never used, nor even thought of. Instances of theft from dwelling-houses were very rare; and, with the exception of one case which happened so late as the year 1770, highway robbery was totally unknown. Yet, notwithstanding the laudable regard thus shown by the freebooters to the property of their own society, they attached no ideas of moral turpitude to the acts of spoliation we have alluded to. Donald Cameron, or Donald Bane Leane, an active leader of a party of banditti who had associated together after the troubles of 1745, tried at Perth for cattle-stealing, and executed at Kinloch Rannoch, in 1752, expressed surprise and indignation at his hard fate, as he considered it, as he had never committed murder nor robbery, or taken any thing but cattle off the grass of those with whom he had quarrelled. The practice of “lifting of cattle” seems to have been viewed as a very venial offence, even by persons holding very different views of morality from the actors, in proof of which, General Stewart refers to a letter of Field-Marshal Wade to Mr. Forbes of Culloden, then Lord Advocate, dated October, 1729, describing an entertainment given him on a visit to a party of cearnachs. “The Knight and I,” says the Marshal, “travelled in my carriage with great ease and pleasure to the feast of oxen which the highwaymen had prepared for us, opposite Lochgarry, where we found four oxen roasting at the same time, in great order and solemnity. We dined in a tent pitched for that purpose. The beef was excellent; and we had plenty of bumpers, not forgetting your Lordship’s and Culloden’s health; and, after three hours’ stay, took leave of our benefactors, the highwaymen,[513] and arrived at the hut at Dalnachardoch, before it was dark.”[514]
Amid the violence and turbulence which existed in the Highlands, no appeal for redress of wrongs committed, or injuries sustained, could be effectually made to the legal tribunals of the country; but to prevent the utter anarchy which would have ensued from such a state of society, voluntary and associated tribunals, composed of the principal men of the tribes, were appointed. A composition in cattle being the mode of compensating injuries, these tribunals generally determined the amount of the compensation according to the nature of the injury, and the wealth and rank of the parties. These compensations were called Erig.
Besides these tribunals, every chief held a court, in which he decided all disputes occurring among his clansmen. He generally resided among them. “His castle was the court where rewards were distributed, and the most enviable distinctions conferred. All disputes were settled by his decision, and the prosperity or poverty of his tenants depended on his proper or improper treatment of them. These tenants followed his standard in war—attended him in his hunting excursions—supplied his table with the produce of their farms—and assembled to reap his corn, and to prepare and bring home his fuel. They looked up to him as their adviser and protector. The cadets of his family, respected in proportion to the proximity of the relation in which they stood to him, became a species of sub-chiefs, scattered over different parts of his domains, holding their lands and properties of him, with a sort of subordinate jurisdiction over a portion of his people, and were ever ready to afford him their counsel or assistance in all emergencies.