[495] Stewart’s Sketches.
[496] Two remarkable instances of the regard paid by the Highlanders to their engagements, are given by General Stewart. “A gentleman of the name of Stewart, agreed to lend a considerable sum of money to a neighbour. When they had met, and the money was already counted down upon the table, the borrower offered a receipt. As soon as the lender (grandfather of the late Mr. Stewart of Ballachulish) heard this, he immediately collected the money, saying, that a man who could not trust his own word, without a bond, should not be trusted by him, and should have none of his money, which he put up in his purse and returned home.” An inhabitant of the same district kept a retail shop for nearly fifty years, and supplied the whole district, then full of people, with all their little merchandise. He neither gave nor asked any receipts. At Martinmas of each year he collected the amount of his sales, which were always paid to a day. In one of his annual rounds, a customer happened to be from home; consequently, he returned unpaid, but before he was out of bed the following morning, he was awakened by a call from his customer, who came to pay his account. After the business was settled, his neighbour said, “You are now paid; I would not for my best cow that I should sleep while you wanted your money after your term of payment, and that I should be the last in the country in your debt.” Such examples of stern honesty are now, alas! of rare occurrence. Many of the virtues which adorned the Highland character have disappeared in the vortex of modern improvement, by which the country has been completely revolutionized.
[497] On the Superstitions of the Highlanders.
[498] Stewart’s Sketches, vol. i. p. 82.
[499] Id.
[500] Stewart’s Sketches.
[501] Mrs. Grant’s Superstitions of the Highlanders.
[502] Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, p. 189.
[503] Stewart’s Sketches, vol. i. p. 22.
[504] The power of the chiefs over their clans was, from political motives, often supported by the government, to counteract the great influence of the feudal system which enabled the nobles frequently to set the authority of the state at defiance. Although the Duke of Gordon was the feudal superior of the lands held by the Camerons, M’Phersons, M’Donells of Keppoch and others, he had no influence over those clans who always obeyed the orders of Lochiel, Clunie, Keppoch, &c.