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SECTION III.

Devoted obedience of the clans-Spirit of independence-Fidelity.

THE chief generally resided among his retainers. His castle was the court where rewards were distributed, and the most enviable distinctions conferred. All disputes were settled by his decision; and the prosperity or poverty of his tenants depended on his proper or improper treatment of them. These tenants followed his standard in war, attended him in his hunting excursions, supplied his table with the produce of their farms, and assembled to Leap his corn, and to prepare and bring home his fuel. They looked up to him as their adviser and their protector. The cadets of his family, respected in proportion to the proximity of the relation in which they stood to him, became a species of sub-chiefs, scattered over different parts of his domains, holding their lands and properties of him, with a sort of subordinate jurisdiction over a portion of his people, and were ever ready to afford him their counsel and assistance in all emergencies.

⚫ Great part of the rent of land was paid in kind, and generally consumed where it was produced. One chief was distinguished from another, not by any additional splendour of dress or equipage, but by being followed by more de

• During fifty-five years, in which the late Mr Campbell of Achala ler had the charge of Lord Breadalbane's estate, no instance occurred of tenants going to law. Their disputes were referred to the amicable decision of the noble proprietor and his deputy; and as the confidence of the people in the honour and probity of both was unlimited, no man ever dreamed of an appeal from their decision. Admitting even that their judgment might occasionally be erroneous, the advantages of these prompt and final decisions, to a very numerous tenantry, among whom many causes of difference naturally arose from their mixed and minute possessions, were incalculable.

pendents, and by entertaining a greater number of guests. What his retainers gave from their individual property was spent amongst them in the kindest and most liberal manner. At the castle every individual was made welcome, and was treated according to his station, with a degree of courtesy and regard to his feelings unknown in any other country. This condescension, whilst it raised the clansman in his own estimation, and drew closer the ties between him and his superior, seldom tempted him to use any improper familiarities. He believed himself well born, and was

Dr Johnson, noticing this interchange of kindness and affectionate familiarity between the people and their landlords, thus describes a meeting between the young Laird of Coll, (elder brother of the present,) and some of his attached and dutiful retainers :-" Wherever we moved," says the Doctor, we were pleased to see the reverence with which his subjects regarded him. He did not endeavour to dazzle them by any magnificence of dress: his only distinction was a feather in his bonnet; but as soon as he appeared, they forsook their work and clustered round him; he took them by the hand, and they were mutually delighted. He has the proper disposition of a chieftain, and seems desirous to continue the custom of his house. The bagpiper played regularly when dinner was served, whose person and address made a good appearance, and brought no disgrace on the family of Rankin, which has long supplied the Lairds of Coll with hereditary music."-Dr Johnson's Tour.

+ This pride of ancestry, when directed as it was among this people, produced very beneficial effects on their character and conduct. It formed strong attachments, led to the performance of laudable and heroic actions, and enabled the poorest Highlander begging his bread to support his hardships without a murmur. Alexander Stewart claimed a descent from one of the first families in the kingdom, and through them from the Kings of Scotland; but being poor and destitute, he travelled the country as a privileged beggar. He took no money, nor any thing but a dinner, supper, or night's accommodation, such as a man of his descent might expect on the principles of hospitality. He never complained of bad fare, lodging, or any other privation. Seeing (he said) that one king of his family and name had been assassinated, another had died in a wretched cottage or mill, a queen and a king of the same blood had lost their heads upon the scaffold, and the descendants of these kings, exiles from the countre of their fathers, had been supported by the benevolence of stra seeing that eminent men of his blood had endured misfor with firmness and resignation,-ought not he to do the

taught to respect himself in the respect which he showed to his chief; and thus, instead of complaining of the difference of station and fortune, or considering a ready obedience to his chieftain's call as a slavish oppression, he felt convinced that he was supporting his own honour in showing his gratitude and duty to the generous head of his family. "Hence, the Highlanders, whom more savage nations called savage, carried in the outward expression of their manners the politeness of courts without their vices, and in their bosoms the high point of honour without its follies." *

"Nothing (says Mrs Grant) can be more erroneous than the prevalent idea that a Highland chief was an ignorant and unprincipled tyrant, who rewarded the abject submission of his followers with relentless cruelty and rigorous oppression. If ferocious in disposition, or weak in understanding, he was curbed and directed by the elders of his tribe, who, by inviolable custom, were his standing counsellors, without whose advice no measure of any kind was decided." +

But though the sway of the chief was thus mild in prac tice, it was in its nature arbitrary, and, on proper occasions,

becoming to discredit his descent by unavailing complaints against that Providence which suffered the high as well as the low to be visited by misfortune?

These may be called prejudices, but it were well if all prejudices had a similar effect in making men contented under poverty and destitution; and when such are their effects, perhaps the term prejudice, as usually understood, does not apply.

Alexander Macleod, from the Isle of Skye, was some years ago seized with a fatal illness in Glenorchy, where he died. When he found his end approaching, he earnestly requested that he might be buried in the burying-ground of the principal family of the district, as he was descended from one as ancient, warlike, and honourable, and stated that he could not die in peace if he thought his family would be dishonoured in his person, by being buried in a mean and improper manner. Although his request could not be complied with, he was buried in a corner of the churchyard, where his grave is preserved in its original state by the venerable pastor of Glenorchy.

• Dalrymple's Memoirs.

+ Mrs Grant's Superstitions of the Highlanders.

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was exercised with full severity. There is still to be seen among the papers of the family of Perth, an application from the town of Perth to Lord Drummond, dated in 1707, requesting an occasional use of his Lordship's executioner, who was considered an expert operator. The request was granted, his Lordship reserving to himself the power of recalling him whenever he had occasion for his services. Some time before the year 1745, the Lord President Forbes, travelling from Edinburgh to his seat at Culloden, dined on his way at Blair Castle with the Duke of Atholl. In the course of the evening a petition was delivered to his Grace, which having read, he turned round to the President, and said, "My Lord, here is a petition from a poor man, whom Commissary Bisset, my baron bailie, has condemned to be hanged; and as he is a clever fellow, and is strongly recommended to mercy, I am much inclined to pardon him." "But your Grace knows," said the President, "that, after condemnation, no man can pardon but his Majesty." "As to that," replied the Duke, "since I have the power of punishing, it is but right that I should have the power to pardon;" and calling upon a servant who was in waiting, "Go," said he, " send an express to Logierait, and order Donald Stewart, presently under sentence, to be instantly set at liberty." +

• A civil officer, to whom the Chief's authority was occasionally delegated.

The family of Atholl possessed many superiorities in Perthshire; and when they held their courts of regality at Logierait, their followers, to the number of nearly a hundred gentlemen, many of them of great landed property, assembled to assist in council, or as jurymen on such trials as it was necessary to conduct on this principle; and, as these gentlemen were accompanied by many of their own followers and dependants, this great chief appeared like a sovereign, with his parliament and army. Indeed, the whole was no bad emblem of a king and parliament, only changing a chief and his clan to a king and his nobles. The hall in which the feudal parliament assembled (a noble chamber of better proportions than the British House of Commons) has been pulled down, one of the most conspicuous vestiges of the almost regal influence of this powerful family

Independently of that authority which the chiefs acquired by ancient usage and the weakness of the general government, the lords of regality, and great barons and chiefs, possessed the rights of jurisdiction, both in civil and criminal cases, and either sat in judgment themselves, or appointed judges of their own choice, and dependant upon their authority. Freemen could be tried by none but their peers. The vassals were bound to attend the courts of their chiefs, and, among other things, to assist in the trials of delinquents. When they assembled on these occasions, they established among themselves such regulations as, in their opinion, tended to the welfare of the community; and, whenever it became necessary, they voluntarily granted such supplies as they thought the necessity of their superiors required. Their generosity was particularly shown on the marriage of the chief, and in the portioning of his daughters and younger sons. These last, when they settled in life, frequently found themselves supplied with the essential necessaries of a family, and particularly with a stock of cattle, which, in those patriarchal days, constituted the principal riches of the country."

The laws which the chiefs had to administer were extremely simple. Indeed, his sway was chiefly paternal. Reverence for his authority, and gratitude for his protection, which was generally extended to shield the rights of his clansmen against the aggression of strangers, were the

destroyed, and many of the recollections of the power and dignity to which it owed its foundation obliterated.

• The above information I received from several old gentlemen who remembered the practice. These were intelligent persons, much habituated to conversation, faithful in recollection, and clear in the communication of their knowledge, from having been chroniclers of what to them was of the greatest importance, the history, the policy, the biography, and the character of their ancestors and contemporaries. To a common observer, no part of their communication would have appeared more extraordinary than the control of the Elders, and the firmness and independence of sagacious peasants, in setting effective limits to arbitrary

power.

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