A Cottage in Islay. From Pennant’s Voyage to the Hebrides, 1774.
Buchanan, even in the latter half of the 18th century, thus speaks of the dwellings of tenants in the Western Isles; and, in this respect at least, it is not likely they were in worse plight than those who lived in the early part of the century. “The huts of the oppressed tenants are remarkably naked and open; quite destitute of furniture, except logs of timbers collected from the wrecks of the sea, to sit on about the fire, which is placed in the middle of the house, or upon seats made of straw, like foot hassacks, stuffed with straw or stubble. Many of them must rest satisfied with large stones placed around the fire in order. As all persons must have their own blankets to sleep in, they make their beds in whatever corner suits their fancy, and in the mornings they fold them up into a small compass, with all their gowns, cloaks, coats, and petticoats, that are not in use. The cows, goats, and sheep, with the ducks, hens, and dogs, must have the common benefit of the fire, and particularly the young and tenderest are admitted next to it. This filthy sty is never cleaned but once a-year, when they place the dung on the fields as manure for barley crops. Thus, from the necessity of laying litter below these cattle to keep them dry, the dung naturally increases in height almost mid-wall high, so that the men sit low about the fire, while the cattle look down from above upon the company.” We learn from the same authority that in the Hebrides every tenant must have had his own beams and side timbers, the walls generally belonging to the tacksman or laird, and these were six feet thick with a hollow wall of rough stones, packed with moss or earth in the centre. A tenant in removing carried his timbers with him to his new location, and speedily mounted them on the top of four rude walls. But indeed the condition of many of the Western Isles both before and after 1745 and even at the present day, was frequently much more wretched than the Highlands in the mainland generally. Especially was this the case after 1745, although even before that their condition can by no means be taken as typical of the Highlands generally. The following, however, from the Statistical Account of the island of Tiree, might have applied at the time (about 1745), to almost any part of the Highlands. “About 40 years ago, a great part of the lands in this parish lay in their natural uncultivated state, and such of them as were in culture produced poor starved crops. The tenants were in poor circumstances, the rents low, the farm houses contemptible. The communication from place to place was along paths which were to be known by the footsteps of beasts that passed through them. No turnips, potatoes, or cabbages, unless a few of the latter in some gardens; and a great degree of poverty, indolence, and meanness of spirit, among the great body of the people. The appearance of the people, and their mode of thinking and acting, were but mean and indelicate; their peats were brought home in creels; the few things the farmer had to sell were carried to market upon the backs of horses; and their dunghills were hard by their doors.” We have reliable testimony, however, to prove, that even the common Highland tenants on the mainland were but little better off than those in the islands; their houses were almost equally rude and dirty, and their furniture nearly as scanty. The Statistical Account of the parish of Fortingal, in Perthshire, already quoted, gives a miserable account of the country and inhabitants previous to 1745, as does also the letters of Captain Burt in reference to the district which came under his observation; and neither of these districts was likely to be in worse condition than other parts of the Highlands, further removed from intercourse with the Lowlands. “At the above period (1745), the bulk of the tenants in Rannoch had no such thing as beds. They lay on the ground, with a little heather, or fern, under them. One single blanket was all their bed-cloaths, excepting their body-cloaths. Now they have standing-up beds, and abundance of blankets. At that time the houses in Rannoch were huts of, what they called, ‘Stake and Rife.’ One could not enter but on all fours; and after entering, it was impossible to stand upright. Now there are comfortable houses built of stone. Then the people were miserably dirty, and foul-skinned. Now they are as cleanly, and are clothed as well as their circumstances will admit of. The rents of the parish, at that period, were not much above £1500, and the people were starving. Now they pay £4660 per annum, and upwards, and the people have fulness of bread. It is hardly possible to believe, on how little the Highlanders formerly lived. They bled their cows several times in the year, boiled the blood, eat a little of it like bread, and a most lasting meal it was. The present incumbent has known a poor man, who had a small farm hard by him, by this means, with a boll of meal for every mouth in his family, pass the whole year.” This bleeding of the cattle to eke out the small supply of oatmeal is testified to by many other witnesses. Captain Burt refers to it;[46] and Knox, in his View of the British Empire,[47] thus speaks of it:—“In winter, when the grounds are covered with snow, and when the naked wilds afford them neither shelter nor subsistence, the few cows, small, lean, and ready to drop down through want of pasture, are brought into the hut where the family resides, and frequently share with them their little stock of meal, which had been purchased or raised for the family only, while the cattle thus sustained are bled occasionally to afford nourishment for the children, after it has been boiled or made into cakes.”
It must be borne in mind that at that time potatoes were all but unknown in the Highlands, and even in the Lowlands had scarcely got beyond the stage of a garden root. The staple food of the common Highlander was the various preparations of oats and barley; even fish seems to have been a rarity, but why it is difficult to say, as there were plenty both in the sea and in freshwater rivers and lochs. For a month or two after Michaelmas, the luxury of fresh meat seems to have been not uncommon, as at that time the cattle were in condition for being slaughtered; and the more provident or less needy might even go the length of salting a quantity for winter, but even this practice does not seem to have been common except among the tacksmen. “Nothing is more deplorable than the state of this people in time of winter.” Then they were completely confined to their narrow glens, and very frequently night and day to their houses, on account of the severe snow and rain storms. “They have no diversions to amuse them, but sit brooding in the smoke over the fire till their legs and thighs are scorched to an extraordinary degree, and many have sore eyes and some are quite blind. This long continuance in the smoke makes them almost as black as chimney-sweepers; and when the huts are not water-tight, which is often the case, the rain that comes through the roof and mixes with the sootiness of the inside, where all the sticks look like charcoal, falls in drops like ink. But, in this circumstance, the Highlanders are not very solicitous about their outward appearance.”[48] We need not wonder under these circumstances at the prevalence of a loathsome distemper, almost peculiar to the Highlands, and the universality of various kinds of vermin; and indeed, had it not been that the people spent so much of their time in the open air, and that the pure air of the mountains, and been on the whole temperate in drinking and correct in morals, their condition must have been much more miserable than it really was. The misery seems to have been apparent only to onlookers, not to those whose lot it was to endure it. No doubt they were most mercilessly oppressed sometimes, but even this oppression they do not seem to have regarded as any hardship, as calling for complaint on their part:—they were willing to endure anything at the hands of the chief, who, they believed, could do no wrong.
As a rule the chiefs and gentlemen of the clan appear to have treated their inferiors with kindness and consideration, although, at the same time, it was their interest and the practice of most of them to encourage the notions the people entertained of their duty to their chiefs, and to keep them in ignorance of everything that would tend to diminish this profitable belief. No doubt many of the chiefs themselves believed as firmly in the doctrine of clanship as their people; but there is good reason to believe, that many of them encouraged the old system from purely interested and selfish motives. Burt tells us that when a chief wanted to get rid of any troublesome fellow, he compelled him, under threat of perpetual imprisonment or the gallows, to sign a contract for his own banishment, when he was shipped off from the nearest port by the first vessel bound for the West Indies. Referring no doubt to Lord Lovat,[49] he informs us that this versatile and long-headed chief acted on the maxim that to render his clan poor would double the tie of their obedience; and accordingly he made use of all oppressive means to that end. “To prevent any diminution of the number of those who do not offend him, he dissuades from their purpose all such as show an inclination to traffic, or to put their children out to trades, as knowing they would, by such an alienation shake off at least good part of their slavish attachment to him and his family. This he does, when downright authority fails, by telling them how their ancestors chose to live sparingly, and be accounted a martial people, rather than submit themselves to low and mercenary employments like the Lowlanders, whom their forefathers always despised for the want of that warlike temper which they (his vassals) still retained, &c.” This cunning chief was in the habit, according to Dr Chambers’s Domestic Annals, of sending from Inverness and paying for the insertion in the Edinburgh Courant and Mercury of glaring accounts of feasts and rejoicings given by himself or held in his honour.[50] And it is well known that this same lord during his lifetime erected a handsome tombstone for himself inscribed with a glowing account of his heroic exploits, intended solely for the use of his clansmen. By these and similar means would crafty selfish lairds keep their tenants and cottars in ignorance of their rights, and make them resigned to all the oppressive impositions laid upon them. No doubt Lovat’s was an extreme case, and there must have been many gradations of oppressions, and many chiefs who really cared for their people, and did their best to make them happy and comfortable, although, considering their circumstances and general surroundings, it is difficult to see how they could succeed. Yet notwithstanding their miserable and filthy huts, their scanty and poor food, their tattered and insufficient clothes, their lean cattle and meagre crops, their country wet above and below, their apparent want of all amusements and of anything to lighten their cheerless condition, and the oppressive exactions of their chiefs, the Highlanders as a body certainly do not seem to have been an unhappy or discontented people, or to have had any feeling of the discomfort attending their lot.[51] There seems to have been little or no grumbling, and it is a most remarkable fact that suicide was and probably is all but unknown among the Highlanders. Your genuine Highlander was never what could strictly be called a merry man; he never had any of the effervescence of the French Celt, nor of the inimitable never failing light-hearted humour of his Irish brother; but, on the other hand, under the old system, at heart he showed little or no discontent, but on the contrary seems to have been possessed of a self-satisfied, contented cheerfulness, a quiet resignation to fate, and a belief in the power and goodness of his chief, together with an ignorance and contempt for all outside his own narrow sphere, that made him feel as happy and contented as the most comfortable peasant farmer in France. They only became discontented and sorely cut up when their chiefs,—it being no longer the interest of the latter to multiply and support their retainers,—began to look after their own interests solely, and show little or no consideration for those who regarded them with reverence alone, and who thought their chief as much bound to support and care for them and share his land and his bread with them, as a father is to maintain his children. After the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, of course everything was changed; but before that there is every reason to believe that the Highland tenants and cottars were as contented and happy, though by no means so well off, as the majority of those in the same condition throughout the United Kingdom. Indeed the evils which prevailed formerly in the Highlands, like all other evils, look far worse in prospect (in this case retrospect) than they do in reality. Misery in general is least perceived by those who are in its midst, and no doubt many poor and apparently miserable people wonder what charitable associations for their relief make so much fuss about, for they themselves see nothing to relieve. Not that this misery is any the less real and fruitful of evil consequences, and demanding relief; it is simply that those who are in the midst of it can’t, very naturally, see it in its true light. As to the Highlands, the tradition remained for a long time, and we believe does so still in many parts, that under the old regime, chiefs were always kind as fathers, and the people faithful and loving as children; the men were tall and brave, and the women fair and pure; the cattle were fat and plentiful, and the land produced abundance for man and beast; the summers were always warm, and the winters mild; the sun was brighter than ever it has been since, and rain came only when wanted. In short everybody had plenty with a minimum of work and abundance of time for dancing and singing and other amusements; every one was as happy as the day was long. It was almost literally “a land flowing with milk and honey,” as will be seen from the following tradition:[52]—“It is now indeed idle, and appears fabulous, to relate the crops raised here 30 or 40 years ago. The seasons were formerly so warm, that the people behoved to unyoke their ploughs as soon as the sun rose, when sowing barley; and persons yet living, tell, that in traveling through the meadows in the loan of Fearn, in some places drops of honey were seen as the dew in the long grass and plantain, sticking to their shoes as they passed along in a May morning; and also in other parts, their shoes were oiled as with cream, going through such meadows. Honey and bee hives were then very plenty.... Cattle, butter, and cheese, were then very plenty and cheap.” This glowing tradition, we fear, must melt away before the authentic and too sober accounts of contemporaries and eye-witnesses.
As for wages to day-labourers and mechanics, in many cases no money whatever was given; every service being frequently paid for in kind; where money was given, a copper or two a day was deemed an ample remuneration, and was probably sufficient to provide those who earned it with a maintenance satisfactory to themselves, the price of all necessary provisions being excessively low. A pound of beef or mutton, or a fowl could be obtained for about a penny, a cow cost about 30 shillings, and a boll of barley or oatmeal less than 10 shillings; butter was about twopence a pound, a stone (21 lbs.) of cheese was to be got for about two shillings. The following extract, from the Old Statistical Account of Caputh, will give the reader an idea of the rate of wages, where servants were employed, of the price of provisions, and how really little need there was for actual cash, every man being able to do many things for himself which would now require perhaps a dozen workmen to perform. This parish being strictly in the lowlands, but on the border of the Highlands, may be regarded as having been, in many respects, further advanced than the majority of Highland parishes.[53] “The ploughs and carts were usually made by the farmer himself; with little iron about the plough, except the colter and share; none upon the cart or harrows; no shoes upon the horses; no hempen ropes. In short, every instrument of farming was procured at small expense, wood being at a very low price. Salt was a shilling the bushel: little soap was used: they had no candles, instead of which they split the roots of fir trees, which, though brought 50 or 60 miles from the Highlands, were purchased for a trifle. Their clothes were of their own manufacturing. The average price of weaving ten yards of such cloth was a shilling, which was paid partly in meal and partly in money. The tailor worked for a quantity of meal, suppose 3 pecks or a firlot a-year, according to the number of the farmer’s family. In the year 1735, the best ploughman was to be had for L.8 Scots (13s. 4d.) a year, and what was termed a bounty, which consisted of some articles of clothing, and might be estimated at 11s. 6d.; in all L.1, 4s. 10d. sterling. Four years after, his wages rose to L.24 Scots, (L.2) and the bounty. Female servants received L.2 Scots, (3s. 4d.) and a bounty of a similar kind; the whole not exceeding 6s. or 7s. Some years after their wages rose to 15s. Men received for harvest work L.6 Scots, (10s.); women, L.5 Scots, (8s. 4d.). Poultry was sold at 40 pennies Scots, (3⅓d.) Oat-meal, bear and oats, at L.4 or L.5 Scots the boll. A horse that then cost 100 merks Scots, (L.5 : 11 : 1¾) would now cost L.25. An ox that cost L.20 Scots, (L.1 : 13 : 4) would now be worth L.8 or L.9. Beef and mutton were sold, not by weight, but by the piece; about 3s. 4d. for a leg of beef of 3½ stones; and so in proportion. No tea nor sugar was used: little whisky was drunk, and less of other spirits: but they had plenty of good ale; there being usually one malt barn (perhaps two) on each farm.”[54]
When a Highlander was in need of anything which he could not produce or make himself, it was by no means easy for him to obtain it, as by far the greater part of the Highlands was utterly destitute of towns and manufactures; there was little or no commerce of any kind. The only considerable Highland town was Inverness, and, if we can believe Captain Burt, but little business was done there; the only other places, which made any pretensions to be towns were Stornoway and Campbeltown, and these at the time we are writing of, were little better than fishing villages. There were no manufactures strictly speaking, for although the people spun their own wool and made their own cloth, exportation, except perhaps in the case of stockings, seems to have been unknown. In many cases a system of merchandise somewhat similar to the ruinous, oppressive, and obstructive system still common in Shetland, seems to have been in vogue in many parts of the Highlands. By this system, some of the more substantial tacksmen would lay in a stock of goods such as would be likely to be needed by their tenants, but which these could not procure for themselves, such as iron, corn, wine, brandy, sugar, tobacco, &c. These goods the tacksman would supply to his tenants as they needed them, charging nothing for them at the time; but, about the month of May, the tenant would hand over to his tacksman-merchant as many cattle as the latter considered an equivalent for the goods supplied. As the people would seldom have any idea of the real value of the goods, of course there was ample room for a dishonest tacksman to realise an enormous profit, which, we fear, was too often done. “By which traffic the poor wretched people were cheated out of their effects, for one half of their value; and so are kept in eternal poverty.”[55]
As to roads, with the exception of those made for military purposes by General Wade, there seems to have been none whatever, only tracts here and there in the most frequented routes, frequently impassable, and at all time unsafe without a guide. Captain Burt could not move a mile or two out of Inverness without a guide. Bridges seem to have been even rarer than slated houses or carriages.
We have thus endeavoured to give the reader a correct idea of the state of the country and people of the Highlands previous to the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions. Our only aim has been to find out the truth, and we have done so by appealing to the evidence of contemporaries, or of those whose witness is almost as good. We have endeavoured to exhibit both the good and bad side of the picture, and we are only sorry that space will not permit of giving further details. However, from what has been said above, the reader must see how much had to be accomplished by the Highlanders to bring them up to the level of the rest of the country, and will be able to understand the nature of the changes which from time to time took place, the difficulties which had to be overcome, the prejudices which had to be swept away, the hardships which had to be encountered, in assimilating the Highlands with the rest of the country.
Having thus, as far as space permits, shown the condition of the Highlands previous to 1745, we shall now, as briefly as possible, trace the history down to the present day, showing the march of change, and we hope, of progress after the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions. In doing so we must necessarily come across topics concerning which there has been much rancorous and unprofitable controversy; but, as we have done in the case of other disputed matters, we shall do our best to lay facts before the reader, and allow him to form his opinions for himself. The history of the Highlands since 1745 is no doubt in some respects a sad one; much misery and cruel disappointment come under the notice of the investigator. But in many respects, and, we have no doubt in its ultimate results, the history is a bright one, showing as it does the progress of a people from semi-barbarism and slavery and ignorance towards high civilisation, freedom of action with the world before them, and enlightenment and knowledge, and vigorous and successful enterprise. Formerly the Highlanders were a nuisance to their neighbours, and a drag upon the progress of the country; now they are not surpassed by any section of her Majesty’s subjects for character, enterprise, education, loyalty, and self-respect. Considering the condition of the country in 1745, what could we expect to take place on the passing and enforcing of an act such as that which abolished the heritable jurisdictions? Was it not natural, unavoidable that a fermentation should take place, that there should be a war of apparently conflicting interests, that, in short, as in the achievement of all great results by nations and men, there should be much experimenting, much groping to find out the best way, much shuffling about by the people to fit themselves to their new circumstances, before matters could again fall into something like a settled condition, before each man would find his place in the new adjustment of society? Moreover, the Highlanders had to learn an inevitable and a salutary lesson, that in this or in any country under one government, where prosperity and harmony are desired, no particular section of the people is to consider itself as having a right to one particular part of the country. The Highlands for the Highlanders is a barbarous, selfish, obstructive cry in a united and progressive nation. It seems to be the law of nature, as it is the law of progress, that those who can make the best use of any district ought to have it. This has been the case with the world at large, and it has turned out, and is still turning out to be the case with this country. The Highlands now contain a considerable lowland population, and the Highlanders are scattered over the length and breadth of the land, and indeed of the world, honourably fulfilling the noble part they have to play in the world’s history. Ere long there will be neither Highlander nor Lowlander; we shall all be one people, having the best qualities of the blood of the formerly two antagonistic races running in our veins. It is, we have no doubt, with men as with other animals, the best breeds are got by judicious crossings.
Of course it is seldom the case that any great changes take place in the social or political policy of a country without much individual suffering: this was the case at all events in the Highlands. Many of the poor people and tacksmen had to undergo great hardships during the process of this new adjustment of affairs; but that the lairds or chiefs were to blame for this, it would be rash to assert. Some of these were no doubt unnecessarily harsh and unfeeling, but even where they were kindest and most considerate with their tenants, there was much misery prevailing among the latter. In the general scramble for places under the new arrangements, every one, chief, tacksman, tenant, and cottar, had to look out for himself or go to the wall, and it was therefore the most natural thing in the world that the instinct of self-preservation and self-advancement, which is stronger by far than that of universal benevolence, should urge the chiefs to look to their own interests in preference to those of the people, who unfortunately, from the habit of centuries, looked to their superiors alone for that help which they should have been able to give themselves. It appears to us that the results which have followed from the abolition of the jurisdictions and the obliteration of the power of the chiefs, were inevitable; that they might have been brought about in a much gentler way, with much less suffering and bitterness and recrimination, there is no doubt; but while the process was going on, who had time to think of these things, or look at the matter in a calm and rational light? Certainly not those who were the chief actors in bringing about the results. With such stubbornness, bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance on one side, and such power and poverty and necessity for immediate and decided action on the other, and with selfishness on both sides, it was all but inevitable that results should have been as they turned out to be. We shall do what we can to state plainly, briefly, and fairly the real facts of the case.