Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

by William Elliot Griffis

Moreover, what still tended to induce military habits among the Gaelic mountain folk, and what still maintains most wars, in the same spirit, though on a larger scale,—national instead of private,—was the hereditary enmity against each other, systematically maintained, purposely cultivated and instilled in their children. In what respect were the clan feuds and fights of the Celtic Scots any nobler than those which so long distracted China, Japan, and Iroquois and Algonquin America? With such philosophy dominant as still in our day creates armies and navies, while being no more ethically worthy, it was required that every man capable of bearing arms should be in perpetual readiness to foment war, or to seize or repel opportunities of vengeance. In fact, the hideous brutality of Confucian, Japanese, Iroquois, Scottish, and Albanian codes of vengeance alike befitted the common savagery that runs counter to the teachings of the Universal Man of Nazareth.

The Celtic Highlanders were nominally subjugated by the iron hand of Cromwell. Of this mighty man, Dr. Johnson says, “No faction in Scotland loved the name of Cromwell or continued his fame. Cromwell introduced, by useful violence, the arts of peace. People learned to make shoes and plant kail.” Shoes were not common in this part of Scotland until as late as 1773.

At the Restoration of the Stuarts, in the person of Charles II, the Highlanders, with no illustrious and stimulating example before them, rebounded into all their former privileges and vigor. They were kept in arms during the reign of the last two monarchs, who fomented those unhappy struggles, on account of religion, which have made the Stuart name so detested. The patriarchal system of laws, upon which Highland society was constituted, disposed these mountaineers to look upon these unhappy princes, Charles I and James II, and upon the Pretenders, who came after them, as the general fathers or chiefs of the nation, whose natural and unquestionable power had been wickedly disputed by their rebellious children. Hence at Killiecrankie, Prestonpans, Falkirk, and Culloden, they fought with the same ardor that would induce a man of humanity to ward off the blow which an unnatural son had aimed at a parent. In a word, as to political education, they had only the ideas of feudalism in which they were steeped.

Having myself lived under feudal institutions, and seen the daily workings of a society, graded from lowest to highest, although with many variations, and fixed in customs which seemed to me to be tedious, absurd, and ridiculous, as well as interesting and fascinating, and living meanwhile under the shadow of castle walls and towers, crossing daily the drawbridge and often visiting the towers of the citadel, I could understand the mediæval processes of thought, so long surviving in western Scotland. I was able to appreciate also these Scottish castles, whether still maintained as of old, intact and modernized, or in ruins, and easily re-create in imagination the mental atmosphere and customs of the old feudal days, when swords were an article of daily dress and frequent use, and the steel blade the chief bond and instrument of social order. The border ruffianism of “bleeding Kansas” in the West and much of the old social situation down South, in cotton land,—the pride and contempt on the one side and the hatred, with occasional cattle-lifting propensities, on the other, especially in the Southern Highlands,—of which in my boyhood I heard so much, helped me to enjoy not only Scottish history, but Sir Walter Scott’s inimitable word pictures in prose and verse. One can describe most of the spectacular phenomena of Japanese as well as Scottish feudalism in Scott’s verse and prose. His writings make illuminating commentary.

It was hard for the Lowlanders, after their discipline under the feudal system had passed with the institution, to understand or get along peaceably with the Highlanders, who hated industrialism, shop-keeping, and money-making. Highland poverty and rawness are in the main the immediate inheritances, even as the old semi-civilized life was the direct result, of feudalism. The reason why the dwellings of the plain people in the rocky regions were, even in our day, so wretchedly poor and bare, is revealed in the book of Mair, entitled “De Gestis,” published in Latin in 1518, concerning land tenure. He says: “In Scotland the houses of the peasants are mere small thatched huts, and the cause is, that they do not hold their land in perpetuity, but only rent on a lease of four or five years at the will of the lord; therefore, though there are plenty of stones, they will not build neat houses, nor will they plant trees, or hedges to the woods, nor will they enrich the soil; and this is to the no small loss and disgrace of the whole realm. If the lords would give them their land in perpetuity, they would get double or triple the money they now have, because the peasants would cultivate the land incomparably better.”

This system of land tenure, which in theory and practice made the laird the landowner and the tenant, or worker of the soil, a virtual serf or semi-slave, sufficiently indicates the grounds and nature of the Highland chief’s power and the degradation of the average or common man. In almost every clan, there were subordinate chiefs, cadets of the principal family, that had acquired a territory and founded separate septs. In this community, the majority of commoners were distinct from the “gentlemen,” who were persons who could clearly trace their derivation from the chiefs of former times and assert their kinsmanship to the present one. Below this clan aristocracy were the mass of plain fellows (“kerns”) who could not tell how or why they came to belong to the clan and who were always distinctly inferiors.

There were several distinctions, based on ability, of status and condition. The commoners were little better than serfs, having no certain idea of a noble ancestry to nerve their exertions or to purify their conduct. It was not to these, but to the gentry, that the chief looked for active service and upon whom he depended in time of war. These upper grades of men did most of the fighting, while the larger body of common retainers (“kerns”) were left behind, during a raid, to perform the humbler duties of driving the cows or tilling the fields. Or, if they accompanied the foray, they were put in the rear ranks and given poor arms, sometimes being provided only with dirks. To illustrate these facts there were and are many stories told and traditions handed down. Note the incident in “The Lady of the Lake”:

“Because a wretched kern ye slew,

Homage to name to Roderick Dhu?”

In a word, in Scotland and in Japan, of which we can bear witness from personal experience, social evolution among clansmen and arms-bearing men had begun and continued, though separation had early taken place between the fighters and the field laborers. In both countries the process and result were much the same. Moreover, after the Reformation, the proud Highlanders, clinging to the old faith and traditions, looked down, with even greater contempt than before, upon the commercial Presbyterians of the Low Countries. They regarded with absolute horror the newer social and political order, which in their eyes was but a dark system of Parliamentary corruption. They were only too ready to believe the stories of luxury, extravagance, and predatory dishonesty, which were supposed to be rife and chronic in London. Here, too, human nature, Japanese and Scotch, was as much alike as in a pair of twins, born of the same mother, and throughout history running in parallel lines of action.