Even among the higher members of the clans, the tacksmen and most extensive farmers, the fare does not seem to have been by any means abundant, and generally was of the commonest kind. For a few months in the end of the year, when the cattle and sheep were in condition to be killed, animal food appears to have been plentiful enough, as it must also have been after any successful cattle-foray. But for the rest of the year, the food of even the gentlemen in many places must have been such as any modern farmer would have turned up his nose at. In other districts again, where the chief was well-off and liberal, he appears to have been willing enough to share what he had with his relations the higher tenants, who again would do their best to keep from want the under tenants and cottars. Still it will be seen, the living of all was very precarious. “It is impossible for me,” says Burt,[41] “from my own knowledge, to give you an account of the ordinary way of living of these gentlemen; because, when any of us (the English) are invited to their houses there is always an appearance of plenty to excess; and it has been often said they will ransack all their tenants rather than we should think meanly of their housekeeping: but I have heard it from many whom they have employed, and perhaps had little regard to their observations as inferior people, that, although they have been attended at dinner by five or six servants, yet, with all that state, they have often dined upon oat meal varied several ways, pickled herrings, or other such cheap and indifferent diet.” Burt complains much of their want of hospitality; but at this he need not have been surprised. He and every other soldier stationed in the Highlands would be regarded with suspicion and even dislike by the natives, who were by no means likely to give them any encouragement to frequent their houses, and pry into their secrets and mode of life. The Highlanders were well-known for their hospitality, and are so in many places even at the present day, resembling in this respect most people living in a wild and not much frequented country. As to the everyday fare above mentioned, those who partook of it would consider it no hardship, if indeed Burt had not been mistaken or been deceived as to details. Oatmeal, in the form of porridge and brose, is common even at the present day among the lower classes in the country, and even among substantial farmers. As for the other part of it, there must have been plenty of salmon and trout about the rivers and lochs of Inverness-shire, and abundance of grain of various kinds on the hills, so that the gentlemen to whom the inquisitive Captain refers, must have taken to porridge and pickled herring from choice: and it is well known, that in Scotland at least, when a guest is expected, the host endeavours to provide something better than common for his entertainment. Burt also declares that he has often seen a laird’s lady coming to church with a maid behind her carrying her shoes and stockings, which she put on at a little distance from the church. Indeed, from what he says, it would seem to have been quite common for those in the position of ladies and gentlemen to go about in this free and easy fashion. Their motives for doing so were no doubt those of economy and comfort—not because they had neither shoes nor stockings to put on. The practice is quite common at the present day in Scotland, for both respectable men and women when travelling on a dusty road on a broiling summer-day, to do so on their bare feet, as being so much more comfortable and less tiresome than travelling in heavy boots and thick worsted stockings. No one thinks the worse of them for it, nor infers that they must be wretchedly ill off. The practice has evidently at one time been much more common even among the higher classes, but, like many other customs, lingers now only among the common people.
From all we can learn, however, the chiefs and their more immediate dependants and relations appear by no means to have been ill-off, so far as the necessaries of life went, previous to the rebellion of 1745. They certainly had not a superfluity of money, but many of the chiefs were profuse in their hospitality, and had always abundance if not variety to eat and drink. Indeed it is well known, that about 200 years before the rebellion, an enactment had to be made by parliament limiting the amount of wine and brandy to be used by the various chiefs. Claret, in Captain Burt’s time, was as common in and around Inverness as it was in Edinburgh; the English soldiers are said to have found it selling at sixpence a quart, and left it at three or four times that price. In their habits and mode of life, their houses and other surroundings, these Highland gentlemen were no doubt rough and rude and devoid of luxuries, and not over particular as to cleanliness either of body or utensils, but still always dignified and courteous, respectful to their superiors and affable to their inferiors. Highland pride is still proverbial, and while often very amusing and even pitiable, has often been of considerable service to those who possess it, stimulating them to keep up their self-respect and to do their best in whatever situation they may be placed. It was this pride that made the poorest and most tattered of the tacksmen tenants with whom Burt came in contact, conduct himself as if he had been lord of all he surveyed, and look with suspicion and perhaps with contempt upon the unknown English red-coat.
As a kind of set-off to Burt’s disparaging account of the condition of Highland gentlemen, and yet to some extent corroborating it, we quote the following from the Old Statistical Account of the parish of Boleskine and Abertarf in Inverness-shire. The district to which this account refers was at least no worse than most other Highland parishes, and in some respects must have been better than those that were further out of the reach of civilisation.[42] “Till the beginning of this century, the whole heritors and wadsetters in this parish lived in houses composed of cupple trees, and the walls and thatch made up of sod and divot; but in every wadsetter’s house there was a spacious hall, containing a large table, where he and his family and dependants eat their two meals a-day with this single distinction, that he and his family sat at the one end of the table, and his dependants at the other; and it was reckoned no disparagement for the gentlemen to sit with commoners in the inns, such as the country then afforded, where one cap, and afterwards a single glass, went round the whole company. As the inhabitants experienced no want, and generally lived on the produce of their farms, they were hospitable to strangers, providing they did not attempt a settlement among them. But it was thought then disgraceful for any of the younger sons of these wadsetters to follow any other profession than that of arms and agriculture; and it is in the remembrance of many now living, when the meanest tenant would think it disparaging to sit at the same table with a manufacturer.”
The following quotation from the Statistical Account of Rannoch, in Perthshire, will give an idea of another phase of the life of Highland gentlemen in those days, as well as enable the reader to see how it was, considering the general poverty of the country, the low rent, the unproductiveness of the soil, and the low price of cattle, they were still able to keep open table and maintain more retainers than the land could support. “Before the year 1745 Rannoch was in an uncivilized barbarous state, under no check, or restraint of laws. As an evidence of this, one of the principal proprietors never could be compelled to pay his debts. Two messengers were sent from Perth, to give him a charge of horning. He ordered a dozen of his retainers to bind them across two hand-barrows, and carry them, in this state, to the bridge of Cainachan, at nine miles distance. His property in particular was a nest of thieves. They laid the whole country, from Stirling to Coupar of Angus, under contribution, obliging the inhabitants to pay them Black Meal, as it is called, to save their property from being plundered. This was the centre of this kind of traffic. In the months of September and October they gathered to the number of about 300, built temporary huts, drank whisky all the time, settled accounts for stolen cattle, and received balances. Every man then bore arms. It would have required a regiment to have brought a thief from that country.”
As to the education of the Highland gentry, in this respect they seem not to have been so far behind the rest of the country, although latterly they appear to have degenerated in this as in other respects; for, as will be seen in the Chapter on Gaelic Literature, there must have been at one time many learned men in the Highlands, and a taste for literature seems not to have been uncommon. Indeed, from various authorities quoted in the Introduction to Stuart’s Costume of the Clans, it was no uncommon accomplishment in the 16th and 17th centuries for a Highland gentleman to be able to use both Gaelic and Latin, even when he could scarcely manage English. “If, in some instances,” says Mrs Grant,[43] “a chief had some taste for literature, the Latin poets engaged his attention more forcibly than the English, which he possibly spoke and wrote, but inwardly despised, and in fact did not understand well enough to relish its delicacies, or taste its poetry.” “Till of late years,” says the same writer on the same page, “letters were unknown in the Highlands except among the highest rank of gentry and the clergy. The first were but partially enlightened at best. Their minds had been early imbued with the stores of knowledge peculiar to their country, and having no view beyond that of passing their lives among their tenants and dependants, they were not much anxious for any other.... In some instances, the younger brothers of patrician families were sent early out to lowland seminaries, and immediately engaged in some active pursuit for the advancement of their fortune.” In short, so far as education went, the majority of the Highland lairds and tacksmen appear to have been pretty much on the same footing with those in a similar station in other parts of the kingdom.
From what has been said then as to the condition of the chiefs or lairds and their more immediate dependants the tacksmen, previous to 1745, it may be inferred that they were by no means ill-off so far as the necessaries and even a few of the luxuries of life went. Their houses were certainly not such as a gentleman or even a well-to-do farmer would care to inhabit now-a-days, neither in build nor in furnishing; but the chief and principal tenants as a rule had always plenty to eat and drink, lived in a rough way, were hospitable to their friends, and, as far as they were able, kind and lenient to their tenants.
It was the sub-tenants and cottars, the common people or peasantry of the Highlands, whose condition called for the utmost commiseration. It was they who suffered most from the poverty of the land, the leanness of the cattle, the want of trades and manufactures, the want, in short, of any reliable and systematic means of subsistence. If the crops failed, or disease or a severe winter killed the half of the cattle, it was they who suffered, it was they who were the victims of famine, a thing of not rare occurrence in the Highlands.[44] It seems indeed impossible that any one now living could imagine anything more seemingly wretched and miserable than the state of the Highland subtenants and cottars as described in various contemporary accounts. The dingiest hovel in the dirtiest narrowest “close” of Edinburgh may be taken as a fair representative of the house inhabited formerly in the Highlands by the great mass of the farmers and cottars. And yet they do not by any means appear to have regarded themselves as the most miserable of beings, but on the contrary to have been light-hearted and well content if they could manage to get the year over without absolute starvation. No doubt this was because they knew no better state of things, and because love for the chief would make them endure any thing with patience. Generally the houses of the subtenants and cottars who occupied a farm were built in one spot, “all irregularly placed, some one way, some another, and at any distance, look like so many heaps of dirt.” They were generally built in some small valley or strath by the side of a stream or loch, and the collection of houses on one farm was known as the “toon” or town, a term still used in Shetland in the very same sense, and in many parts of Scotland applied to the building occupied by even a single farmer. The cottages were generally built of round stones without any cement, thatched with sods, and sometimes heath; sometimes they were divided into two apartments by a slender partition, but frequently no such division was made. In the larger half resided the family, this serving for kitchen, eating, and sleeping-room to all. In the middle of this room, on the floor, was the peat fire, above which was a gaping hole to allow the escape of the smoke, very little however of this finding its way out, the surplus, after every corner of the room was filled, escaping by the door. The other half of the cottage was devoted to the use of the live-stock when “they did not choose to mess and lodge with the family.”[45] Sometimes these cottages were built of turf or mud, and sometimes of wattle-work like baskets, a common system of fencing even yet in many parts of the Highlands where young wood is abundant. As a rule these huts had to be thatched and otherwise repaired every year to keep them habitable; indeed, in many places it was quite customary every spring to remove the thatch and use it as manure.
