National Library of Scotland HHllllil *6000132921’ 'U7 3 *6 PRESBYTERIAN LIBRARY, ROSSETT. REMINISCENCES of a HIGHLAND parish REMINISCENCES OF A HIGHLAND PARISH By NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D. AUTHOR OF "character sketches,” “the starling: a scotch story,” “eastward,”' “the old lieutenant and his son," &c., &c. LONDON CHARLES BURNET & CO 9, Buckingham Street, Strand 1887 (Tenth Edition y B JN xq 75 ?' A A' 0^ PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. J AM for many reasons peculiarly gratified by the reception which has been given to these sketches of Highland life and manners in several of their least-known aspects, and these reminiscences of a state of society which has almost passed away with the old people of the land. Several mistakes in the earlier chapters' of a local and personal kind,—in no way, however, affecting the truthfulness of the narrative, or the impression intended to be conveyed by it,—have been pointed out to me. I have, in this edition, corrected as many of them as possible. If I have recorded little in these pages regarding the inmates of the manse during the later years of its history, it is only because delicacy to the living forbade my doing what otherwise would have VI PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. been prompted by affection, and by happy me mories, which connect the past with the present. Indeed, so mingled in my thoughts are my earlier and later days in “ the Parish,” that some incidents recorded here as having belonged to the one, I find belong in reality to the other. It is alleged—with what truth it is not for me 1 o determine—that a Scotchman cannot understand a joke ; but, judging from the grave manner in which allusions made by me to the bagpipes, peat-reek, &c., have been commented on by some of the southern newspapers, I am disposed to think that this dull- ness of apprehension is not always confined to one side or the Tweed. I have only further to add, that the translations Irom the Gaelic were made by my brother-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Clerk, minister of Kilmallie, one of the best Gaelic scholars living. CONTENTS PAGE PREAMBLE, ..... I THE MANSE, . 17 THE BOYS OF THE MANSE AND THEIR EDUCATION, . 40 THE MANSE BOY SENT TO COLLEGE, . 6l THE MANSE GIRLS AND THEIR EDUCATION, . 81 THE MINISTER AND HIS WORK, . IOO PASSING AWAY, . 119 SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HIGHLAND PEAS- ANTRY, . .131 STORIES OF SNOWSTORMS FOR THE FIRESIDE, . 159 TACKSMEN AND TENANTS, . 174 mary campbell’s marriage, . .194 CHURCHYARDS AND FUNERALS, . 219 THE OLD STONE COFFIN ; OR, THE TOMB OF THE SPANISH PRINCESS, . 234 vin CONTENTS. PAGE THE GRASSY HILLOCK ; OR, THE GRAVE OF FLORY CAMERON, , 4 , , .251 THE SCHOOLMASTER, . 2 71 FOOLS, 292 STAFFA TOURISTS, . 319 NEW YEAR’S CUSTOMS, . .337 SPIRIT OF ELD, ..... 356 EMIGRANT SHIP, . .37^ MARY OF UNNIMORE, .... 394 COMMUNION SUNDAY 410 A HIGHLAND PARISH. PREAMBLE. T HE Highlands of Scotland, like many greater things in the world, may be said to be unknown, yet well-known. Thou- sands of summer tourists every year, and from every part of the civilised world, gaze on the romantic beauties of the Trosachs and Loch Lomond, skirt the Hebrides from the Firth of Clyde to Oban, trundle through the wild gorge of Glencoe, chatter among the ruins of Iona, scramble over the wonders of Staffa, sail along the magnifi- cent line of lakes to Inverness, reach the sombre Coolins, or disturb th6 silence of Coruisg. Pedes- trians also, with stick and knapsack, search the more solitary wildernesses and glens of the main- 1 A HIGHLAND PARISH. land, from the Grampians to Ross-shire and Caithness. Sportsmen, too, have their summer quarters dotted over the moors, or scattered on the hill-sides and beside clear streams, with all the irregularity of the boulders of the great northern drift, but furnished with most of the luxuries of an English home. All these, it must be admitted, know something of the Highlands. Tourists know the names of steamers, coaches, and hotels; and how they were cheated by boat- men, porters, and guides. They have a vague im- pression of misty mountains, stormy seas, heavy rains, difficult roads, crowded inns, unpronounce- able Gaelic names, with brighter remembrances of landscapes whose grandeur they have pro- bably never seen surpassed. Pedestrians can recall lonely and unfrequented paths across broken moorlands undulating far away, like brown shoreless seas, through un- ploughed and untrodden valleys, where the bark of a shepherd’s dog, and much more the sight of a shepherd’s hut, were dearly welcomed. They can also recall panoramas from hill-tops or from rocky promontories, of lake and river, moor and PREAMBLE. 3 iorest, sea and island, of lonely keeps and ruined homesteads, and of infinite sheep-walks and silent glens which seemed to end in chaos. And these remembrances will flit before them like holy days of youth, and “hang about the beatings of the heart,” refreshing and sanctifying it, amidst the din and worry of a city life. Sportsmen, when they visit old shootings, hail from afar the well-known hill-sides and familiar “ ground.” They can tell many miles off where the birds are scarce, or where, according to the state of the weather, they can be found. They have waded up to the shoulders in Highland lakes, nothing visible but hat swathed with flie. and hand wielding the lithe rod and line. They have trodden the banks and tried the pools of every famous stream, until the very salmon that are left know their features and their flies, and tremble for their cunning temptations. The whole scenery is associated in their memory with the braces that have been bagged, the stags which have been killed, or—oh, horrid memory !—missed, “when the herd was coming right towards us, and ail from that blockhead Charlie, who would look 4 A HIGHLAND PARISH. if they were within shot.” * The keepers, and gillies, and beaters, and the whole tribe of ex- pectants, are also well-known, as such ; and every furrowed face is to these sportsmen a very poem, an epic, a heroic ballad, a history of the past season of happiness, as well as a prophecy of the morrow, hoped for with a beating heart, which blames the night and urges on the morn. There are others, too, who may be expected to know something of the Highlands. Low-country sheep-farmers, redolent of wool; English proprie- tors, who, as summer visitants, occupy the old castle of some extinct patriarchal chief; Highland * The following are two authentic anecdotes of the manner in which such misses are sometimes brought about. A young English gentleman was very recently stationed 6n a good pass, while a crowd of gillies, with the usual unnatural shouting and screaming, “ beat ” the wood for his special benefit. An antlered monarch soon made for the pass. The young gentleman, by way of being very cool, lighted a cigar. The stag soon snuffed the tainted gale, and retreated to his covert—as a certain excellent Dean would do to his deanery—whence he refused again to issue forth. Another, a Highlander, a keen, perhaps a too keen sportsman, was stationed on a pass; a stag was speeding towards him, when a friend on the opposite edge of the corrie, wishing to give him due warning, shouted out, “There he is near you ! ” “Where? where ? ” roared out the sportsman, in greatest excitement. Of course, while echo answered “ where,” he saw no more of the stag. PREAMBLE. 5 lairds, who are absentees save during the grouse season; geologists, who have explored the phy- sical features of the land; and antiquaries, who have dipped into, or even studied profoundly, its civil and ecclesiastical antiquities. Nevertheless, to all such, the Highlands may be as unknown in their real life and spirit as the scent of the wild bog-myrtle is to the accom- plished gentleman who has no sense of smell; or as a Gaelic boat-song is to a Hindoo pundit. Some readers may very naturally be disposed to ask, with a sneer of contempt, what pre- cise loss any human being incurs from want of this knowledge ? The opinion may be most reasonably held and expressed that the summer tourist, the wandering pedestrian, or the autumnal sportsman, have probably taken out of the Nor- thern wilderness all that was worth bringing into the Southern Canaan of civilised life; and that as mucli gratitude, at least, is due for what is for- gotten as for what is remembered. Perhaps those readers may be right. And if so, then, for their own comfort as well as for mine, I warn them that if they have been foolish enough 6 A HIGHLAND PARISH. to accompany me thus far, they should pity me, bid me farewell, and wish me a safe deliverance from the mountains. Is there any one, let me ask, who reads these lines, and yet dislikes peat-reek ? any one who puts his fingers in his ears when he hears the bagpipe—the real war-pipe—-begin a real pibroch? any one who dislikes the kilt, the Gaelic, the clans, and who does not believe in Ossian ? any one who has a prejudice to the Mac, or who cannot compre- hend why one Mac should prefer a Mac of his own clan to the Mac of any other clan ? any one who smiles at the ignorance of a Highland parson who never reads a London review, who never heard about one in ten of the “ schools of modern thought,” and who believes, without any mental suffering, that two and two make four ? any one who puts his glass to his eye during prayer in a Highland church, and looks at his fellow-traveller with a sneer while the peasants sing their psalms ? any one who, when gazing on a Highland land- scape, descants to his local admirers upon some hackneyed Swiss scene they never saw, or enu- merates a dozen Swiss Horns, the Wetter Horn, PREAMBLE.