University in Old Aberdeen, "where many men, especially of those parts," above described, "would readily apply themselves to the study of letters, and acquire the precious pearl of knowledge" thus "would provision be made for the salvation of souls, and the rude and ignorant people would be instructed in honest life and manners by others who would apply themselves to such study of letters.”

Such was the picture drawn about a century before the Reformation, by a not unfriendly hand, of the social, religious, and intellectual condition of our North Celtic forefathers.

Of the history of the Reformation in Scotland, as of the sub sequent bickerings of Prelatist and "Priest writ large," I have nothing here to say. The truly catholic aims and constitution of your Society very rightly forbid it.

But when the thunderstorm of the Reformation had passed away, and when the subsequent storms-in-a-teapot had subsided-when the public life of Scotland was again settling down, so far as peace and settlement could then be looked for-what provision do we find for the education of the Scottish people?

Of actual provision, at least outside the larger towns and royal burghs, there was in truth very little left. With the rich patrimony of the Church, the nobles and barons had gobbled up also the little provision of oatmeal, already grievously attenuated by lay impropriation, on which wholesome "victual" the scoloc and ferleyn had formerly contrived to cultivate their modicum of literature. But the General Assembly did not long sit down with folded hands while this work of spoliation was being consummated. For the new clergy the rescue of the tiends, or of what little of them remained, was naturally a matter of first importance. They did not, however, at all neglect to make inquiry about the "schoollands" and other special endowments for education. In 1616 the Privy Council had, no doubt, ordained the erection of a school in every parish in Scotland. But for long years in the Highlands, and largely also in the Lowlands, the Act was a dead letter. For this neglect the Highland proprietors had an excuse which would naturally carry great weight with the Highland people; for to the Highlanders the Act of the Council was grossly insulting. Its one great professed object was "that the Ingleshe tong be universally planted, and the Irishe language, which is one of the chieff and principal causes of the continuance of barbaritie and incivilitie among the inhabitants of the Isles and Heylandis, may be abolished and removit." Among Highland landowners there were already not a few who really had little regard for their native

tongue. But they jumped eagerly at this excuse, and clung to it with stubborn tenacity, which was so convenient and so serviceable in saving their pockets. In 1638 the Assembly, which that year met in Glasgow, "recommended" the several Presbyteries to see to the settling of schools in every parish, and the providing in such schools of "men able for the charge of teaching the youth, public reading, and precenting of the Psalm, and catechising the young people." In 1642 the Assembly "appointed," that is, ordered, that this should be done, and they demanded that "the means formerly devoted to this purpose" should now be applied to their proper use. The Assembly's Act of 1649 is so significant that I will quote the words of the authorised abridgment "Tis recommended to Parliament or the committee for plantation of churches, that whatever either in parishes of burgh or landward was formerly given for maintenance of those who were readers, precentors in congregations, and teachers of schools, before the establishment of the Directory of Public Worship, may not, in whole or in part, be alienated or taken away, but be reserved for maintenance of sufficient schoolmasters and precentors, who are to be approven by the Presbytery; and Presbyteries are required to see that none of that maintenance given to the foresaid uses, or in use to be paid thereunto, before the establishing of the Directory for Worship, be drawn away from the Church."

Thus did they, whose duty it was to preach the great text, "Ask and ye shall receive," themselves plead, pray, and remonstrate for the disgorgement of some part of the stolen endowments of church and school. They asked, but in the Highlands, at least, they received nothing. On paper, no doubt, the parish schools had already, as we have seen, been erected by Act of the Privy Council, but all over the Highlands and Isles the Act was almost universally evaded. The Church had therefore no alternative but to turn from the landowners to the people. In 1704 the General Assembly ordered contributions and collections throughout her bounds, in order that, by the funds thus voluntarily raised, the scandal of the Highlands might be removed. Again and again, from 1704 to 1709, was this order of the Assembly renewed and earnestly pressed on all her members and congregations.

It is in the midst of all this concern and urgent solicitude of the Church for the deplorable ignorance of the Highlands that the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge first emerges on our view. In response to the repeated appeals of the General Assembly, and more especially in reply to its pointed

injunction in 1709, that in every parish in Scotland the minister and elders should perambulate the parish to solicit the contributions of the people, a sum not largely exceeding £1000 was provided. The money was handed over to the Society, which now, on this modest nest-egg in name of capital, began its blessed and beneficent work. The Society was not what we would now call a scheme of the Church. Church schemes and Church committees were, in truth, the outcome of the Church's wider experience and later emergencies. But the Society was, from its origin, most intimately associated with the Church. Its members and directors were leading Churchmen; it began its work with the Church's free contributions, which were renewed from year to year for half-a-century, and at frequent intervals thereafter, down to recent times; and by its charter, its whole work, more especially its whole work in the Highlands and in Highland schools, was placed expressly under the supervision of the Church Courts, and made primarily subservient to strictly religious purposes. I need not tell you how splendidly did grow and prosper the work and the wealth of this the oldest of all our Scottish patriotic and charitable Christian Societies. In 1711 it had already "settled" a school in the lone islet of St Kilda, and it resolved to erect eleven "itinerating schools" in the places following:-Abertarff, Strathdon, Braes of Mar (2 schools), some one of several competing localities in Caithness, the same in Sutherland, the same in Skye, Glencoe, the South Isles of Orkney, the North Isles of Orkney, and in Zetland. In 1712 five of these schools were "settled;" in 1713 there were 12 schools; in 1715, 25; in 1718, 34. The capital of the Society grew in equal step with the advancing number of its schools. Thus, in 1719, there were 48 schools and a capital of £8168, and by 1733 there were 111 schools, with a capital of £14,694.

In 1717 the Society reported to the General Assembly a fact which was eminently discreditable to the Highland landowners. In many parishes in which its schools were settled there was still no parish school, as by law provided; so that the heritors were using the charity of the Society to relieve them of a legal burden. For this reason the Society withdrew several of their schools, removing them to other localities, and the General Assembly renewed its injunctions to Presbyteries and Synods to see that every parish was provided with a parish school at the expense of the heritors, as by law required.

The Act George I. cap. 8, set aside for education in the Highlands, a capital sum of £20,000 out of the forfeited estates; but

not a shilling of that money ever reached the coffers of the Society, or was in any way applied to educational uses. It seems never to have got farther than the itching palms of parasites and Court favourites. The old minutes of the Society are justly indignant on this shameful grievance. Need we wonder if again the innocent paid for the sins of high-born evil doers. The Society withdrew every one of their schools on, or near, these forfeited estates! In 1753 the Society's capital had risen to £24,308, and its schools numbered 152. In 1755 it is reported to the General Assembly that no fewer than 175 parishes are still without the parish schools by law required of the heritors. No wonder that the Assembly does well to be angry, and peremptorily instructs the Procurator and Agent of the Church to bring the offending heritors into Court.

Of the missionary schoolmasters employed in the beneficent work of the Society, I shall name but two-Alex. Macdonald, Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, the foremost of our native Gaelic poets, and Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch, the prince of Gaelic hymnists. Than these two men, though in widely differing ways, and with widely different effects, there are few of our countrymen, in high or low estate, who ever exercised a larger influence over the Highland people. Macdonald's poems, the first original Gaelic work ever printed in Scotland, if not the inspiration of the people, have furnished an excellent model for the Gaelic poets who came after him. To him we owe the first attempt at the production of a Gaelic dictionary. To Buchanan and other pious men of like gifts and graces we owe, mainly through the funds and influence of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, almost everything that we possess in the way of Gaelic devotional literature. Nor should it be forgotten that Buchanan had also some share in the Society's greatest work--completed subsequently by the revered Stewarts of Killin and Luss, father and son-our Gaelic version of the Holy Scriptures. Thus, in various spheres of pious and patriotic labour, and through the agency of able and godly men, from generation to generation wisely chosen for its service, did the work and wealth of this venerable Society go on and prosper till, in 1872, the abstract of its scheme stood thus:-268 schools, male and female, costing annually £416%; 55 superannuated teachers and catechists, £456; 11 mission churches, £700. Its vested capital now touched £200,000.

Before leaving the purely historical aspects of my subject, I must be allowed to pay a tribute of warm admiration to the labours and research. in this connection, of your honorary secretary,

Mr William Mackay. His unwearied zeal and fine historic instinct have turned to most fruitful account the many opportunities for such inquiry which his widespread and influential professional relations have opened up to him from time to time; and his papers in the Celtic Magazine will serve, not only as a rich granary of local historic lore, already winnowed and sifted, but they may very profitably be used as an index for yet farther research into your many sources of as yet unwritten history.

Like the statutory work of the parish schools in the Highlands, as ordered by Act of the Privy Council, the teaching in the Society schools had at first one blot and serious blemish-it ignored, and ignored of set deliberate purpose, the native tongue of the people. Gaelic was regarded as the fertile source of Highland Jacobitism and so-called Highland indolence. It was, therefore, to be rooted out at all cost. The whole work of the school was gone through in speech which, to most of the pupils, must have been less intelligible than dumb show. It is true that ere long this absurd and barbarous cure for so-called Highland barbarism was, to a great extent, abandoned or mitigated. But with the more pedantic and baser sort of Highland dominie the practice was much in vogue down to the time of my own school days. I well remember the first bit of high English which was regularly taught to new comers at my first school. It was an iron

rule that, under certain stress of nature, we should thus address the supreme head of the school-" Please, Master, shall I get out?" If asked in Gaelic, come what might, no notice was taken of the agonised request. It must be spoken in English. You can fancy what happened, and happened often. The poor shy, selfconscious boy would long defer the awkward attempt to utter the sounds he could neither remember nor co-ordinate in proper sequence. But nature in such cases has a strong pull on a young fellow; and so the attempt must be made. Very slowly, and painfully embarrassed in more ways than one, wee kiltie edges his way up to the master's desk, pulls his forelock, and makes his doubly painful bow, "Pleasche, Meash-pleasch-h-h, Mheaschter-r Mo-v-v-v-MH-N. (Tableaux !) Another curse of this absurd practice, in the hands of an ignorant, pedantic teacher, was the utter hopelessness, on the part of really thoughtful boys, of the most earnest attempts at learning. I well remember one nice, bright boy, who was thus sat upon with crushing effect. He was kept for more than a year at the alphabet. All that time he was made the sport of the school. His shy attempts at English were mimicked and grossly caricatured. Hours were spent in making game of him,