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Hail to the chief who in
triumph advances!
Honour’d and bless’d be the
evergreen Pine!
Long may the tree in his banner that glances
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
Heaven send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gaily to burgeon, and broadly to grow,
While every Highland glen,
Sends our shout back agen
Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu! ho! ieroe.
-- SCOTT
When hath the tartan plaid
manteld a coward?
When did the blue bonnet crest the disloyal?
Up, then, and crowd to the standard of Stuart,
Follow your leader – the rightful – the royal!
Chief of Clanronald,
Donald Macdonald!
Lovat! Lochiel! With the Grant and
the Gordon,
Rouse every kilted clan,
Rouse every royal man,
Gun on the shoulder, and thigh the good sword on.
-- JOHN IMLAH
I was the happiest of a’
the clan,
Sair, sair may I repine;
For Donald was the brawest lad,
And Donald he was mine,
Till Charlie Stewart came at last,
Sae far to set us free;
My Donald’s arm was wanted then,
For Scotland and for me,
Their waefu’ fate what need I tell? –
Right to the wrong did yield;
My Donald and his country fell
Upon Culloden’s field.
-- BURNS
No attempt to sketch the
characteristics of the Scottish people can be satisfactory, even in
outline, which fails to make mention of the vigorous Celtic stock of the
Highlands. In Canada, above all—including under that name the whole of
Her Majesty’s possessions in North America—it is essential to take
this element into deliberate account. Whether the British North America
colonist be a farmer, a mechanic, an artisan, a manufacturer, a
merchant, a ship-owner, a professional man, a statesman or otherwise, he
is associated in private and public intercourse with members or
descendants of almost all the clans. Everybody here rubs elbows with
fellow toilers in the hive, or knows public men of distinction, who
trace their descent to the land of mountain and flood, glen and tarn,
moor and heather. The names of Maclean, Macleod, Mackenzie, Macpherson,
Macfarlane, Mackinnon, Macdonald, Macdougall, Mackintosh, MacNab,
Mackay, MacLachlan, MacGregor, MacNeill, MacIntyre, Campbell, Fraser,
Robertson, Cameron, Sutherland, Chisholm, Stewart, Munro, Ross, Grant,
Farquharson, Gunn, Forbes, Menzies, and many others are as familiar to
all Canadians, as if they were indigenous to the soil in this new land
of ours. Unfortunately it would be obviously impossible within the
limits of a brief chapter to do more than attempt to seize the salient
points in Highland character, leaving an examination of its actual
value, in this country, to the fuller survey of the Scot’s work which
is to follow.
It has been already
remarked that a considerable ethnical element from the Norse kingdoms
was, from time to time, absorbed in the north-western portion of the
Highlands—including certainly the shires of Caithness, Sutherland,
Ross and Inverness. Still the entire country must be viewed as
pertaining to the dominant Celtic race, and in the main, exhibiting its
idiosyncrasies. To define the Highlands of Scotland geographically is
not an easy task since its boundary is not physical, but social, lingual
and what is usually called political. An elaborate work on "The
Highlands of Scotland" to which the writer is considerably
indebted, traces the Highland limits thus: — "This definition
assigns to the Highlands all the continental territory north of the
Moray Firth, and all the territory both insular and continental,
westward of an easily traceable line from that firth to the Firth of
Clyde." * This line begins at the mouth of the Nairn and
proceeds irregularly, forming in its progress a rudely-convex series of
bends, impinging upon Aberdeen, Perth, Forfar and Stirling,
thence due south-west to the Firth of Clyde in the parish of Cardross.
The influence of Scotland
upon progress and civilization is altogether a marvel, considering the
odds against her, when she entered the contest. Taken altogether the
country is barren in soil; it is small, and its population has always
been sparse, scarcely able to keep pace with the great Babylon on the
Thames. And when the fearful succession of ordeals under which Scotland
has passed are taken into the reckoning, one almost wonders that, in all
quarters of the globe, they are foremost in adventure, enterprise,
industry and staunch adherance to duty. The Highlander differs from the
Lowlander in several important points. His life is more rugged, and his
notions of man and nature seem simply the result of conditions forced
upon him by that life. Locked up amid the wild scenery of those romantic
shires, and especially upon the Isles of which Thomas Campbell wrote in
Mull:
"Far different are
the scenes allure my wandering eye
The white wave foaming to the distant sky;
The cloudy heaven, unblest by summer’s smile;
The sounding storm that sweeps the rugged isle,
The chill, bleak summit of eternal snow,
The wide, wild glen, the pathless plains below,
The dark, blue rocks, in barren grandeur piled,
The cuckoo sighing to the pensive wild."
—the Highlander
became a philosopher and a poet, as some one has said of Scotsmen
generally, "cultivating all the virtues upon a little
oatmeal." The ordinary notion of the Highlander which comes down,
in bogie form, partly the result of ludicrous terror, and partly of
mental confusion, takes the corporeal form of a dapper bandit, with
round bonnet, belt, kilt and buckled shoes. Pinkerton describes some
weird practices which may, or may not, have existed as relics of
Paganism, mingled with medieval Catholicism, and now and again turning
up in strange contiguity with Presbyterianism. Mr. Lecky has summed up
some of these survivals of the unfittest, one of the latest being the
summoning of the clans "to war by the fiery cross dipped in blood
with those mystic rites which the great Scotch poet has made familiar.
As late as 1745 it was sent round Loch Tay by Lord Breadalbane to summon
his clansmen to support the Government" **
It is not by romance or
poetry, however, though these have been the fruit, in abundance, of
Highland life and adventure, that one may gauge fairly the latent power
which was pent up in those glens. The Celt is always a being of the
brooding and reflective sort, as the Chaldeans, the Arabians, and all
pastoral nations have been since recorded history committed its first
syllable to the keeping of wood, clay, stone or metal. Unfortunate as it
is in one regard, the imaginative and thoughtful side of the Scottish
Celt have lost their philosophic aspect in the picturesque scenery upon
which he played his miniature drama, and the bold, brave, reckless
daring which broke its bounds and poured down upon the fertile South in
raid and romantic adventure. Border history seems to have been forgotten
in the modern conception of the Highlander. Men have lost sight, except
in ballad, of Robin Hood or of Jack Cade, not to speak of even ignoble
heroes like Dick Turpin, Cartouche, or Robert Macaire. The Highlander
was never an outlaw in his own country; on the contrary, he was a law
unto himself, and his code, on the whole, considering the times, seems
to have been a strict one. He has been accused of "reiving,"
of stealing black cattle, and so on; and yet no man was ever more
strongly imbued with the spirit of integrity than he was in the
conventional code of his age. No man ever surpassed him in honour,
bravery, and fidelity, because to no man would he yield in battle, and
never did his fealty or loyalty fail. There may be differences of
opinion concerning the clan system which was not confined to the
Scottish Highlands. It was prevalent in Ireland under the name of septs,
and in the Lowlands it was fully established in the great ballad era of
the Border.*** The clan system was in fact an extension of the family,
and those who rejoice in its practical disappearance under the Act for
the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions by the Pelham Government in
1746, ought to pause before condemning it, during the centuries when it
was the only possible bond of cohesion between men, in a society like
the Highlands, competent to secure even a measure of order and
authority.
The two prime virtues
attributed, and justly attributed, to the Highland clans are fidelity
and courage. Now conscious dishonesty is incompatible with honour or
fealty in any shape, whatever the somewhat hackneyed saw about thieves
may say. The Celtic Highlanders in their hereditary divisions, formed so
many petty nationalities, which were in continual warfare either in
leagues, or separate tribes. They had no king but the chief; and, in the
wild country they inhabited, there was no law but the strong arm. Modern
statesmen seize territories, appropriate revenues, and parcel out
empires under the ostensible pretext of preserving their integrity and
independence. In old times the chiefs simply ordered the lifting of
black cattle, an indiscriminate slaughter where it was necessary, and
that was the end of it. It was thus with most of the Highland raids in
early times; and in the beginning of last century, Rob Roy was always
under the protection of a chief of his own or another clan.+ The
Highland robbery, so-called, was in the first instance simply a
belligerent operation—one with which all great conquerors have been
familiar. In fact it was a sort of via media between robbing a
hen-roost, and ravaging a kingdom. The evidence that the Highland raid
was regarded, not merely as not a crime, but even as praiseworthy and
laudable, is clear both from history and from romance, which is
occasionally quite as trustworthy. There was a distinction between the
"lifting" of sheep and cattle, which was not without its
meaning; there was a feeling of utter abhorrence for robbery,
pure and simple. Captain Burt, who travelled from England with only one
servant, was well-known to have a very large sum in gold about him, and
yet had perfect confidence in Celtic integrity. Finally the Highlander
never took anything, on pain of death, from a friendly clan, and never
made a business of cattle-raiding save upon the Lowlands against which
it would have been easy for him to frame an hereditary bill of
complaint. When he engaged in a descent upon the Lowlands, he was able
to pray for success in good round pious phrases, compared with which
Plantagenet, Hapsburg, Napoleonic, Hohenzollern or Romanoff’s canting
invocations appear like the mincing petitions of a May-fair vicar on
behalf of a rose-water bridal party. Although the Celt was clearly
culpable, according to our conceptions of morality, he was conscious of
no wrong; and in his backward state of culture and the poverty and
hardness of his life might have pleaded, had he known it, the example of
the ancient Spartans and of all the vigorous races of Europe at a
similar stage of development. Had it not been for their free mountains,
their barren moors and their inaccessible glens and caves, they would
have been crushed or exterminated like their Celtic brethren in England,
or across the Irish Sea. If they were guilty of barbarous excesses in
the Stuart persecutions, more atrocious, perhaps, than those connived
at, and rewarded, by a European power in Bulgaria, the sin must not be
laid to their charge, but at the door of those who let them loose upon a
peaceful people, with deliberate instructions to torture and to slay.
Let us look at their
fidelity. In James the Fifth’s reign when Murray suppressed an
insurrection of the Clan Chattan, two hundred of the rebels were
sentenced to death. Each one as he was led to the gallows was offered a
pardon if he would reveal the hiding-place of his chief; but they all
answered, that were they acquainted with it, no sort of punishment could
induce them to be guilty of treachery to their leader. Innumerable cases
of this unwavering steadfastness of faith occurred during and after the
‘15 and ‘45, amongst the Frasers, the Macleans, the Macdonalds and
the Macphersons. One must suffice. In 1745, the home of Macpherson, of
Cluny, was burnt to the ground by Royal troops, and a reward of £1,000
offered for his arrest. The country was scoured by soldiers; and
"yet for nine years the chief was able to live concealed on his
property in a cave which his clansmen dug for him during the night, and,
though upwards of one hundred persons knew of his place of retreat no
bribe or menace could extort the secret; till, at last wearied of the
long and dreary solitude, and despairing of pardon, he took refuge in
France."++ It is hardly necessary to refer to the wanderings of
Charles Edward through the Highlands and Islands for five months with a
reward of £30,000 upon his head, known, as in South Uist, by hundreds
at a time, helpless and at the mercy of any one whom lucre could tempt;
and yet far safer than some of his ancestors had been at Holyrood or St.
James’s. The names of Malcolm Macleod, Macdonald of Kingsburgh, and
the heroic Flora Macdonald who "built herself an everlasting
name" wherever the romantic story of the ‘45 is told.+++ James
Hogg the Ettrick shepherd, embalmed her memory in "Flora Macdonald’s
Lament," from which the temptation is strong to quote one verse:
The target is torn
from the arm of the just,
The helmet is cleft on the brow of the brave,
The claymore for ever in darkness must rust,
But red is the sword of the stranger and slave;
The hoof of the horse, and the foot of the proud,
Have trod o’er the plumes on the bonnet of blue;
Why slept the red bolt in the breast of the cloud,
When tyranny revell’d in blood of the true?
Farewell, my young hero, the gallant and good,
The crown of thy fathers is torn from thy brow " *+
Of Highland bravery, what
need to expatiate when addressing an English-speaking race? What part of
the world does not bear testimony to Celtic valour on a hundred
battle-fields? The hardy life of the Highlander, the free bracing air of
mountain and loch had marked him out as a soldier, reared, though not
disciplined, by Nature herself. The people of the Lowlands, from their
peculiar history and surroundings no doubt, as Mr. Lecky says, shared
their high military qualities to the full extent. "Great courage,
great power of enduring both privation and pain, great fire and
impetuosity in attack, were abundantly shown; but the discipline of a
regular army was required to add to these, that more than English
tenacity which has placed the Scotchman in the first rank of European
soldiers."*++ The clan system had of course inured the Highlanders
to the toils of war, and in the seventeenth century, the great leaders
could bring large numbers into the field. Thus we find that some of the
chiefs could muster men by thousands. In 1764, a muster was made of
about 10,000, and General Wade states the rebel Highlanders at 14,000,
and the loyal at 8,000 in 1745. A song called "The Chevalier’s
Muster Roll," enumerates the chiefs and their clans; these lines
may serve as a sample: --
"The Laird o’
MacIntosh is comin’,
MacGregor and Macdonald’s comin’,
The MacKenzies an’ MacPherson’s comin’,
A’ the wild McRaes are comin’,
Little wat ye fa’s comin’,
Donald Gunn an’ a’s comin’," &c. *+++
The Union, under Anne, in
1707, was at the time exceedingly unpopular in Scotland for many
reasons. There was the absorption of that dearly-prized nationality for
which the Scots had fought so hard, and besides differences in religion
and laws between the two countries, the superior wealth and also the
heavy national debt of England, made the people of the north strongly
averse to the measure. And even long after it had been consummated, and
the benefits flowing from it had discredited the augury of ill, there
was a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction which even influenced
Smollett and Scott. It cannot be doubted that the anti-Union feeling all
over Scotland imparted some of that galvanic energy which temporarily
gave vitality to the dying cause of the Stuarts. This broke out, as
everyone knows, at the death of Anne, the last monarch of that
arbitrary, faithless, and ill-fated house. The rising in 1715, and its
collapse at Sheriffmuir, and the more formidable outbreak under Charles
Edward, the march to Derby and the final defeat by "the butcher
Cumberland" at Culloden, are events which need not be rehearsed
here.+* Were all the histories swept out of existence the story of
"The Forty-Five" could never die, while the songs of the
Jacobites and the poems of many a Scottish bard linger in the memories
of the people. One of the satirical pieces, "Cumberland’s and
Murray’s descent into Hell," is not so generally read, and it
certainly exhibits wealth of diabolical fancy, hate and humour combined,
which make it irresistible. These are the concluding verses: --
"Ae deevil sat
splitting brumstane matches,
Ane roasting the Whigs like baker’s batches;
Ane wi’ fat a Whig was basting,
Spent ‘wi frequent prayer and fasting,
A’ ceased when thae twin butchers roar’d,
And hell’s grim hangman stop’d and glowr’d.
‘Fy, gar take a pie in
haste,
Knead it of infernal paste,’
Quo’ Satan; and in his mitten’d hand,
He hyert up bluidy Cumberland,
And whittled him down like tow-kail castock,
And in his hettest furnace roasted.
Now hell’s black table-claith
was spread,
Th’ infernal grace was reverend
said;
Yap stood the hungry fiends a’ owre it,
Their grim jaws gaping to devour it,
When Satan cried out, ‘fit to scunner,
Owre rank a judgment’s sic a
dinner!"
The brutality of a royal
general whose deeds could call forth so terrible a stroke of
concentrated detestation, must have itself been fearful, and such it
certainly was. Maddened by the defeat of Hawley at Falkirk, in January,
1746, the Duke of Cumberland, who might have been content with an
inglorious victory, in which he fought a starving and dispirited enemy
with more than twice its numbers, began a course of vindictive reprisals
which have earned for him the name of "the Butcher," All that
Lauderdale and his crew had wrought, on behalf of the Stuarts, was now
perpetrated upon the romantic spirits who championed the lost cause, and
the courageous men who desired in their own way to answer the question
"Wha’ll be king but Charlie?" Thus Scotland suffered at
Glencoe under William III., as well as at and after Culloden, on behalf
of the Stuarts.
With 1746 the agony was
over, and, although there were riots occasionally over unpopular
imposts, there has been no warfare in Scotland since. The intrepid Celt
has fought the battles of Britain in every clime wherever the Union Jack
has been unfurled; and the courage of the Highlander, was, by a happy
inspiration, turned into a noble channel. Those gallant regiments, whose
numbers of themselves arouse the British heart with memories of
distinguished prowess, were formed only a year or two after the
Rebellion. Culloden was fought on April 16th, 1746, and only twelve
years after the 79th Highlanders took part in the siege of Louisbourg,
and on the 12th of September in the following year, the Fraser
Highlanders mounted the heights of Abraham and played the foremost part
in the taking of Quebec.+** The merit of forming the Highland regiments
is usually given to the elder Pitt; but he can only be credited with
realizing a splendid idea. It was Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, a man of
splendid powers, unfortunate in not being favoured with a wider stage
upon which to display and develop them, who first proposed to Robert
Walpole the scheme which Pitt afterwards carried out in practice with
such glorious results. It is impossible here to summarize the gallant
achievements of the Highland regiments in the British army or the famous
names associated with them. The 42nd or "Black Watch" arose
apparently out of a tentative effort of the Government in 1729; their
first action was fought at Fontenoy, 1745, and their latest combat in
Ashantee, 1873. As the original Highland regiment, the words of the
"Garb of Old Gaul" have an appropriate connection with the
subject of this volume, a few verses therefore are selected: --
"In the garb of old
Gaul, with the fire of old Rome,
From the heath-covered mountains of Scotia we come;
Where the Romans endeavoured our country to gain,
But our ancestors fought and they fought not in vain.
"Quebec and Cape
Breton, the pride of old France,
In their troops fondly boasted till we did advance,
But when our claymores they saw us produce,
Their courage did fail, and they sued for a truce.
"Then we’ll defend
our liberty, our country and our laws,
And teach our late posterity to fight in freedom’s cause,
That they like our ancestors bold, for honour and applause,
May defy the French, with all their arts, to alter our laws.’
It was in the 42nd that
Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, was Colonel. The London Highlanders were
another old Highland Regiment, but they were reduced after the loss of
Bergen op Zoom and the peace of 1748. The Montgomery Highlanders, the
Frasers, who were prominent at Quebec, forming the old 78th and 71st,
the Keith and Campbells or old 87th and 88th, Johnstons, Keiths and a
number of others have passed across the stage and played their gallant
parts, only to disappear by reduction or amalgamation. Of the existing
regiments best known to fame are the 71st, formerly the 73rd
or Macleod’s Highlanders, the 72nd or Duke of Albany’s, the 78th or
Ross-shire Buffs, the 79th or Cameron Highlanders, the 91st now called
the Princess Louise Argyleshire Highlanders, the 92nd Gordons and the
93rd Sutherlands. Burn’s "son of Mars," rather a roystering
specimen, however, like most of the first Scottish soldiers in the
British army began their service in America in the life and death
struggle with France. +***
From the Seven Years’
War until now, the Scots, and largely the Highlanders, have constituted
the flower of the British fighting stock. Their valour has been
displayed alike in Egypt, the Crimea, India, the Peninsula, Canada or
America, Abysinnia, Ashantee or wherever else the voice of duty called
them.
Much of the poetry and
chivalry of Highland History is bound up with the Stuart cause, and
gathers about such distinguished names as those of Dundee and Montrose.
But it may be well to remind the reader here that the cause of the Whig
and the Covenanter was by no means a dull and unheroic one. The
illustrious house which has stood forages at the head of the clan
Campbell should be held in everlasting esteem and remembrance for its
unfaltering and steadfast adherance to the sacred cause of liberty,
civil and religious. There are weak and dark spots in the history of all
noble families, and yet, taken altogether, there is none which will bear
closer scrutiny, than the house of Campbell of Argyll, "The
MacCallum More," Lord of Lorne, Lochow, and Inverary. Now that our
gracious Sovereign is represented in her fairest colony by the heir of
this ancient and noble family, who brings with him, as an additional
claim upon Canadian loyalty, a Princess, in whose veins flows the blood
of Scotland’s royal race, it may not be amiss to glance episodically
at a few members of the line from which His Excellency sprang. With
genealogical or heraldic considerations it is unnecessary to meddle
here, and, therefore, the first name of note to be mentioned is that of
Sir Neil Campbell, son of Colin-More, who fought by the side of Robert
the Bruce, and obtained the hand of his sister Mary. Sir Colin Campbell,
a name since illustrious, in our day, in far distant fields, was his
son, brave and impetuous to rashness. In 1445 the head of the family
became a Scottish peer, and sat as Lord Campbell, and in 1457, Colin
Campbell became Earl of Argyll. The Argylls always figured conspicuously
upon the stage of public affairs in Scotland, and invariably on what
posterity has adjudged to be the right, if not the picturesque side.
Three who bore the Gaelic title of MacCallum More obtained special
distinction, Archibald, eighth Earl, and first Marquis of Argyll, the
rival of Montrose, stands out in bold relief, both for his firm
adherence to principle, and his tragic death, as a French writer has
observed, like one of "the heroes of Plutarch." He was as
chivalrous as his great opponent; and, although no bigot, he opposed the
Episcopal system and the liturgy, and adhered to the Covenant. He was no
foe to the monarchy, however, and his most strenuous efforts were put
forth to keep the wayward Stuarts in the right path. Against Montrose,
aided by a savage band of Irish raiders, he fought and lost the battle
of Inverlochy in, 1645, which was followed by the complete rout of the
Covenanters near Kilsyth. At Philiphaugh, in the same year, the gallant
Leslie defeated Montrose, but Argyll, who deserved some amends from
fortune, had no share in the victory. The Marquis did all that was
possible, even up to the time of the King’s surrender, to save the
Royal fortunes, and he had nothing to do with the surrender of Charles
to the English Parliament. It was he who crowned Charles II at Scone,
and no one could have been more lavish in his promises to him than the
merry, unstable and faithless King. "Whenever," said he,
"it shall please God to restore me to my just rights, I shall see
him paid £40,000 sterling, which is due to him." This, and all
other scores, were wiped out when Charles caused the great noble’s
head to be struck off on a false charge of treason, in May, 1661, at the
cross of Edinburgh. According to Wodrow, Argyle’s piety set Charles
against him as far back as the coronation at Scone. On one occasion he
kept the young King till two or three in the morning in religious
conversation and prayer. "The Marchioness said plainly that that
night would cost him his head—words which, as has been shown, proved
too true."**+ It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of Scott
that this is the Argyll who figures in the early chapters of The
Legend of Montrose.
Archibald, his son, was
destined to prove a victim to that bloodthirstier of the last two Stuart
kings, the second James. In Charles’ reign, James went down to gloat
over the "boots" and "thumbikins;" and, of course
the head of the Campbells was too conspicuous a Whig to be allowed to
escape. In 1681 he was prosecuted in the Justiciary Court by the Royal
advocate vulgarly known as "Bluidy Mackenzie." In spite of
Court pressure, however, the judges were so closely divided, that Lord
Nairn, who had been superannuated, was brought in to turn the scale. By
the affectionate ingenuity of his daughter-in-law, Lady Sophia Lindsay,
he escaped, after his conviction, disguised as her page. From Holland,
Argyll made the fatal movement at Charles’ death, which was unhappily
premature. In the epitaph which he wrote on the eve of his execution,
there is if not poetry, at least prescience and "an heroic
satisfaction of conscience, expressed in them, worthy of the cause in
which he fell." The lines are these: —
"On my attempt though
Providence did frown,
His oppressed people God at length shall own;
Another hand, with more successful speed,
Shall raise the remnant, bruise the serpent’s head.
Though my head fall, that is no tragic story,
Since, going hence, I enter endless glory."
So perished the most
illustrious of the noble army of Covenanting martyrs. **++
The great John Campbell,
Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, who appears to such advantage as the
patron of Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Mid-Lothian (chaps. 35-38
and chap. 48), has left perhaps the strongest impression upon the
popular Highland mind of all his line. He was supreme in Scotland; as
the strongest bulwark of the House of Hanover; in England his claim upon
Government was, of course, indisputable from the first. He was a
soldier, moreover, and had distinguished himself in Flanders under
Marlborough. In the first Rebellion of 1715, Argyll fought Mar at
Sheriffmuir, with rather questionable success. When all was over,
however, he immediately took up his natural position as intercessor for
his misguided countrymen; and it has been well-observed that if the
counsels of Ian Roy— John the Red, as he was called by his clan—had
been followed, the ‘45 would never have sent England into a cowardly
panic. At the Porteous Riots he had some difficulty in managing matters
in London; and the speech which Sir Walter Scott has merely transcribed,
best describes the man as he appeared to himself and those who knew him:
"I am no minister, I never was a minister, and I never will be one.
I thank God I had always too great a value for those few abilities which
nature has given to me to employ them in doing any drudgery or any job
of any kind whatever."**+++ The Duke’s well-known retort to
the able, and almost great, Queen Caroline, then Regent during one of
the second George’s absences on the Continent, shows clearly the
commanding attitude Argyll felt himself entitled to hold as the
representative of the Scottish people. When the Queen, in a moment of
not unnatural indignation, after the Riots, declared that "she
would turn Scotland into a hunting-seat," the Duke coolly replied,
"if that be the case, madam, I must go down and prepare my
hounds." In his later years, the Duke broke with Sir Robert Walpole
and formed a member of the coalition which caused the downfall of
"The Great Commoner" in 1742. In the October of the following
year John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich died and was interred in
Westminster Abbey. That he must have been a great, as well as a good
man, we have the testimony of those who were of his friends as
well as ours—Pope and Thomson; we know him best through Scott but his
real character is more indubitably fixed by the place he holds in the
affectionate traditions of the Highland people on both sides of the
Atlantic. Of the other branches of the Campbells, it is not necessary to
write at length. All of them from the Breadalbanes down have
distinguished themselves in war and peace. Amongst those who bore the
name, the Campbells of Inverawe were one of the most ancient collateral
branches and one connected in later days with Canada. The Inverawe
branch came of the old Neil Campbell stock which fought with Bruce,
fought with Argyll against Montrose, and poured forth its energy into
the British service when the national troubles were at their height. It
was Duncan Campbell of Inverawe who raised "The Black Watch,"
and he with his only son perished at Ticonderoga, fighting the French in
the war of the Conquest. The Major’s great nephew, another Major
Campbell, seignior of St. Hilaire, in the Province of Quebec, was also a
gallant soldier, and for some years M. P. for the County of Rouville.
The Highland aptitude for
peaceful and industrious labours was not discovered until long after the
Union. But so soon as tranquillity was definitively assured, hereditary
jurisdictions were abolished, education disseminated, roads constructed,
and new avenues for the restrained energies of the Celts opened up; then
a new era dawned upon them. They had always possessed many kindly traits
of character, love of kindred, hospitality, tenderness to the helpless
and unfortunate; but their real power as honest toilers was never fully
proved until they went forth, some of them driven out that a lord might
make a sheep-walk or a game preserve, to the Dominion in which, still
cherishing the Gaelic of their fathers, they have made a name for
themselves and their race, far from the hoary mountain, the rushing
torrent, and the awesome moor.
The literature of the
Highland people is far too extensive a subject to be touched on here.
The pensive imagination which breathes through the poems handed down in
the Celtic tongue is the outcome of nature attuned to loneliness, upon
dark mountains, under a chilly star-lit heaven. "The seat of the
Celtic Muse," says Sir Walter Scott, in Waverley (ch. xxii.),
"is in the mist of the secret and solitary hill, and her voice in
the murmur of the mountain stream. He that woos her must love the barren
rock more than the fertile valley, and the solitude of the desert better
than the festivity of the hall." The music of the Highlands has, in
its brightest moods, an undertone of sadness; even the pibroch has
borrowed some of its basic power from the wail of the coronach. It is
this imaginative and meditative spirit which has passed over the
philosophy of all Scotland, percolating through the husk of all the
creeds, and saturating the national mind with a seriousness which
evolves energy, not despair, and a dignity of self-respect and a stern
feeling of responsibility which makes men at once devout, affectionate,
thoughtful, loyal and true in whatever station, or in the discharge of
whatsoever duty Providence may assign them. Mr. Lecky, in the work often
quoted, has pointed out the essentially beneficial contribution made by
the Highlanders to the national character in a few sentences with which
this chapter may not unfitly conclude: -- "The distinctive beauty
and the great philosophic interest of that (the Scottish) character,
spring from the very singular combination it displays of a romantic and
chivalrous with a practical and industrial spirit. In no other nation do
we find the enthusiasm of loyalty blending so happily with the
enthusiasm for liberty, and so strong a vein of poetic sensibility and
romantic feeling qualifying a type that is essentially industrial. It is
not difficult to trace the Highland source of this spirit. The habits of
the clan life, the romantic loyalty of the clansman to his chief, the
almost legendary charm that has grown up around Mary Queen of Scots, and
round the Pretender, have all had their deep and lasting influence on
the character of the people. Slowly, through the course of years, a mass
of traditional feeling was formed, clustering around, but usually
transfiguring facts.
The clan legends, and a
very idealized conception of clan virtue survived the destruction of
feudal power; and the pathos and the fire of the Jacobite ballads were
felt by multitudes long after the star of the Stuarts had sunk forever
at Culloden. Traditions and sentiments that were once the badges of a
party, became the romance of a nation; and a great writer arose who
clothes them with the hues of a transcendent genius, and made them the
eternal heritage of his country and of the world." (History
ii., p. 99).
* A History of the
Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans and Highland Regiments, &c.
edited by John S. Keltie, F. S. A. Sec., in two vols. Edinburgh and
London; 1875.
**
Lecky: England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. ii. p. 301. It may
be remarked that the whole of Mr. Lecky’s chapter v., in so far as it
relates to Scotland, and especially the Highlands is valuable for the
amount of research displayed by the author, as well as for the generally
impartial deductions from the facts at his command.
*** See Keltie: History
of the Scottish Highlands, Vol ii p. 1l6. Also Scott and
Veitch in their works on the Border and Border Minstrelsy.
+ "Of the
extraordinary impotence of the law in the early years of the eighteenth
century, even in the southern extremity of the Highlands, we have a
striking instance in the career of Robert Macgregor, the well-known Rob
Roy. For more than twenty years he carried on a private war with the
Duke of Montrose, driving away his cattle, intercepting his rents,
levying contributions on his tenants, and sometimes, in broad daylight,
carrying away his servants. He did this—often under the protection of
the Duke of Argyll—in a country that was within thirty miles of the
garrison towns of Stirling and Dumbarton, and of the important city of
Glasgow, and this although a small garrison had been planted at
Inversnaid for the express purpose of checking his depredations. He at
last died peacefully on his bed in 1738 at the patriarchal age of
eighty." Lecky: History, Vol. ii, p. 28.
++ Lecky: History of
the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. pp. 32, 33.
+++ Keltie: History of
the Scottish Highlands, vol i. chaps. 36 and 37, where a very full
and interesting account of Culloden and subsequent events will be found.
*+ Flora Macdonald was
the daughter of Ronald Macdonald, of Miltown, in South Uist one of the
most distant of the Western Isles. She was born about 1722, and died in
Skye in 1790, being buried with the sheet used by Prince Charlie, as her
shroud. See a very interesting biography of her by a granddaughter
published at Edinburgh (new edition), l875. From the earliest period she
was a Jacobite, and remained so to the last. Her earliest recollections
were songs breathing hatred to the Sassenach. Two lines are preserved:
"Geordie sits in
Charlie’s chair;
The de’il tak him for sitting there."
Years after, when
"the lost cause" was beyond recovery, she would never so much
as name George III., and when her son spoke of him as His Majesty, she
slapped him soundly, saying she would hear nothing of "soft
Geordie" (p. 355). As Dr. Johnson said, she left "a name that
will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues,
mentioned with honour." In the work referred to, there is an
admirable portrait of the Highland heroine; and, as Johnson describes
her, we can readily believe that she had "soft features, gentle
manners and elegant presence."
*++ Lecky, Vol. ii. p.
34. Mr. Lecky has heard one of the most eminent English surgeons state
as the result of his experience, that he found a wide difference in the
poster of enduring pain shown by patients from different parts of the
British Empire, and that he has usually found his Scotch patients, in
this respect, greatly superior to his English and to his Irish ones. Ibid.
note.
*+++ James Logan: The
Scottish Gael; or Celtic Manners, pp. 77-78.
+* The battle of
Sherriffmuir was not a victory either for Mar or Argyll, yet its effect
was to extinguish the Chevalier’s hopes. The following verse from Hogg’s
"Jacobite Relics "is quoted in The Scottish
Highlanders, vol. 1. p. 464 : —
"There’s some say
that we wan, and some say that they wan,
And some say that nane wan at a’, man;
But one thing I’m sure, that at Sherriffmuir,
A battle there was that I saw, wan;
And we ran, and they ran, and they ran, and we ran,
But Florence ran fastest of a’, man."
By "Florence"
is meant the Marquis of Huntly’s steed.
Amongst the individual
heroes on the Highland side, Golice or Gillies Macbane is conspicuous.
He was six feet four inches and a quarter in height, and of prodigious
strength. At Culloden, being beset by a party of dragoons, he placed his
back against a wall, and though covered with wounds, defended himself
with targe and claymore. Thirteen of the foe were struck dead at his
feet before he succumbed. The Scottish Highlanders, Vol. 1. p.
506. In The Scottish Gael, p. 96, his memory is preserved in a
poem attributed to Lord Byron, and as it is not often met with, the
reader will be pleased to see it here.
"The clouds may pour
down on Culloden’s red plain,
But the waters shall flow o’er its crimson in vain;
For their drops shall seem few to the tears for the slain,
But mine are for thee, my brave Gillies Macbane.
"Though thy cause was
the cause of the injured and brave,
Though thy death was the hero’s, and glorious thy grave;
With thy dead foes around thee, piled high on the plain,
My sad heart bleeds o’er thee, my Gillies Macbane!
"How the horse and
the horseman thy single hand slew.
But what could the mightiest single arm do?
A hundred like thee might the battle regain;
But cold are thy hand and thy heart, Gillies Macbane
"With thy back to the
wall and thy breast to the targe,
Full flashed thy claymore in the face of their charge;
The blood of their tallest that barren turf stain;
But alas! thine is reddest there, Gillies Macbane
"Hewn down, but still
battling, thou sunk’st to the ground,
The plaid was one gore, and thy breast was one wound;
Thirteen of thy foes by thy right hand lay slain;
Oh! would they were thousands for Gillies Macbane!
"Oh! loud, and long
heard shall thy coronach be,
And high o’er the heather thy cairn we shall see,
And deep in all bosoms thy name shall remain,
But deepest in mine, dearest Gillies Macbane!
"And daily the eyes
of thy brave boy before,
Shall thy plaid be unfolded, unsheathed thy claymore
And the white rose shall bloom on his bonnet, aga’n
Shall he prove the true son of my Gillies Macbane."
+** The heights themselves took their
name from Abraham Martin, dit l’Ecossaie (surnamed the Scot), a
pilot on the St. Lawrence in the time of Champlain, a century and a
quarter before the conquest of Quebec. See Lemoine: Quebec, Past and
Present. Note p. 21; also Murdoch’s Nova Scotia, vol. i. p.
95.
+*** In the same singular
medley the reader of Burns is also treated to a view of the Highlander
of the old time in the song of the "raucle carlia": --
"A Highland lad my
love was born,
The Lowlan’ laws he held in scorn;
But he still was faithful to his clan,
My gallant brew John Highlandman.
With his philibeg an’ tartan plaid,
And gude claymore down by his side,
The ladies’ hearts he did trepan,
My gallant braw John Highlandman.
Sing hey, say braw John Highlandman_&c."
**+ See an interesting brochure
published by Hogg, of London, at the time of the marriage of His
Excellency, the Marquis of Lorne and the Princess Louise.
**++ See McCrie, Wodrow,
and Howie’s Scots Worthies, also Anderson’s Ladies of the
Covenant, and Dodds’ Fifty
Years’ Struggle of the Scots Covenanters, 1638-88.
**+++ Heart
of Midlothian, ch. xxiv.
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