CHAPTERVII.THE CLANS IN BARBARY.“Scoti per diversa vagantes.”—Am.Marcellinus.From things which only a Highlander could have observed, I learned that my forefathers had visited Barbary. I perceived the intercourse of the two people in their baking and cooking, dairy, dress, ornaments, superstition and words. If this connexion were with the Celts in general, it would be a matter of mere ethnography, but it is one of history, for the coincidences are with the clans alone.The kirtle, plaid, bonnet, eagle’s plume, family cognisances are unknown in Brittany; nor do the Bretons call their farm-steads,gabhail, or their greyhounds,sloghie. The dress of the clans is not that of the ancient Gauls: those who advocate its antiquity are much puzzled to find a source for it, and content themselves with supposing it to be derived from the Roman. No supposition can be more groundless: that branch of the Celts which never did submit to Roman domination could not be the only one to adopt the Roman dress.[279]The Scots, during the period of Roman power in Britain, never came in contact with them, and under the empire, the Toga itself had been laid aside; at least, corpses[280]and statues only wore it.The costume of the Highlands, then, carries us back beyond Roman times, and beyond all written record; it alone remains in Europe, a monument of this order,—that of Barbary alone remains among a people derived from the East. I have already shown that they are the same; which carries both back to the plains of Mesopotamia, or the banks of Jordan.Mr. Layard’s researches above, as well as under ground, have furnished further evidence in many points of resemblance between their manners and the scenes carved on the alabasters of the Assyrians, and the customs preserved by the mountain-tribes in the neighbourhood.The clans crowned their king on a stone, and threw down their plaids before him. One full statue only has been found at Nimroud: it is that of a king, and he is seated on a square stone:[281]doubtless the Assyrians threw down their mantles before him.The eagle’s plume is worn in the bonnet by the Tigari.[282]The King at Nimroud wears a cap standing up in front like the Scotch bonnet; the straps and ribbons flow behind.[283]In several bas-reliefs, the kilt appears, and is pointed out by Mr. Layard:[284]the mountaineers wear a long shirt dyed of one colour, as was formerly used among the clans.The chief and impregnable fortress of the Kurds is called the “Castle of the Cymri,”[285]and, as if to return the compliment, the Celts have given the name Carneserai,[286]to the place in Argyleshire, where, on a sculpture of the thirteenth century, the long plaids (philemore)[287]with the double-folds, may be seen, exactly as they are worn by the Jewish women in Morocco.In Nineveh there was no bath. The mountain-tribes indulge, in all ways and in all places, in washing and dabbling in water, without the slightest regard to the sense of delicacy which is so strong in all other Eastern people. The clans were formerly remarkable in like manner for the use of water;—new-born infants were plunged in cold water.[288]The clan system hinges on the distinction of the different families by “sets” of colours. In this they differ from all the people of the West, who have colours in a flag, and not on their persons. The Yezidis, called the worshippers of the devil, have in like manner their colours, black and red,[289]which they wear, and with which they adorn their habitations. The clans passing through these countries, and engaged in the wars (as I shall presently show they were), of necessity must have also so distinguished themselves; and being neither a horde migrating, nor a nation in possession, but serving as mercenaries under distinct leaders, each of these would adopt distinguishing badges, and thence the “sets” and tartans of the different clans, and the common name adopted by them.The discoveries of Nineveh, and the modes of dyeing among the population which still lives in the neighbourhood of those ruins, confirm to the letter what I have said elsewhere respecting the selection of a standard of colour, and the preservation of it in the tartan.The tartan existed only by the art of dyeing: without perfection in it, the idea of distinction by colours could not be entertained. This was not a mere difference between black and white, as theakandcara coïnjolou, or white and black fleeces of the Turks, which was obtained by natural wool; nor was it the colour of a cap or a slipper which might be purchased ready dyed: proficiency in one colour did not suffice, but in all. They had to be dyed in every cottage, or under every tent. They were applied to the coarsest substances, for the rudest wear, and to be recognizable so long as the material held together. This was to be achieved by a migratory and erratic people, in times when no lac or indigo, no chromates or phosphates were to be found at every apothecary’s. The dyes were to be sought in the fields or on the mountain sides;[290]and each emigration involved a new series of experiments, to be rewarded by new triumphs of unaided industry and untutored taste. How deeply planted in their natures must have been the instinct of colours, thus to preserve those tints in daily wear, which at Nineveh have been saved by being buried in the bowels of the earth. It was not the colours most easily obtained that they selected: they had a rule, to which circumstances were made to bend.Brown is the natural colour of a large proportion of the fleeces; it is dyed with a moss (crottle) by simple boiling: the colour is beautiful and indelible. They like brown as a common wear: shepherd’s coats, plaids, and trowsers, are made of it, but never was brown seen in a Tartan! The clans learnt this art where they had occasion to adopt the badge.“Dyes of the finest quality, particularly reds and greens, which even European ingenuity has been unable to equal, are obtained by the inhabitants of Kurdistan from flowers and herbs, growing abundantly in their mountains. The art of extracting them is not a recent discovery, but has been known for ages to people living in the same country; as we learn from the frequent mention of Babylonian and Parthian dyes by ancient authors. The carpets of, Kurdistan and Persia are still unrivalled, not only for the beauty of their texture, but for the brilliancy of their hues. From the ornaments on the dresses of the figures in the Assyrian sculptures, we may conclude, that similar colours were extensively used, either in dyeing the garments themselves, or the threads with which the material was woven.”[291]On asking a gentleman well acquainted with these countries,[292]if he perceived any resemblance between their customs, and those of the Highlanders, his answer was, “It strikes every one, especially in respect to their chiefs and clan government: The different tribes may also be known by the stripes of colour on the shalvar, as the Highland clans by the stripes on their tartan; and they have the tradition, that Europe is peopled by tribes that emigrated from their country.”My informant connected this tradition with the recognised Eastern origin of the people of Europe, but it cannot refer to these emigrations. That the Celts came from the East all history attests, and philology has confirmed its verdict;[293]but the waves of emigration which flowed westward passed all to the northward of the Caspian Sea. A physical necessity determined their course; and from the Himalaya to the Carpathian Seas deserts or mountain barriers extend, which prevented their overflowing the south, and set them on Europe. The Turks are an exception, being enabled to cross the desert regions between the Sea of Aral and the Hindoo Cush by means of their horses, and their pastoral habits. To the southward, therefore, of this line no tradition of this peopling of Europe could subsist; and I might have set this one aside, as some uncertain reverberation of the great Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic emigrations, had I not recollected the name which the Jews of Morocco apply to Europe—“Erse dom.” They then were acquainted with the “Erse,”[294]or Gaelic tribes, and must have known them to have gone to Europe, and called it by their name. This explained at once how the Koords should have a similar recollection of the peopling of Europe by tribes who emigrated from their country.Many coincidences might be added to these. For instance, among the Irish Scots a higher class of Druids, unknown among the British, was calledOllama, evidently the “Ulema”—the learned—of the East. The name of fairies in Erse isshechyan, the Arabsheik. Moore remarks, that these beings seem to record some lost class or people, which he supposes to be the Druids. The blood-fine was, for a prince, a thousand oxen; in Arabia it is a thousand camels. It was commuted in the Highlands for a coin, which is designated by the Spanish wordoros. The soldier’s allowance in the East is called “tain,” whencetimariot, the feudal tenure of Turkey. A Celtic poem, attributed to the sixth century, and “claiming respect as exceeding in antiquity any production of any vernacular tongue of Europe,”[295]is entitledTain Bho, which is translated “Spoil of Cattle.”The Irish Scots are the only people of Europe who have had their language, not through the Greeks and Romans, but directly from the first inventors. But I do not lay any stress on this coincidence, as their letters probably were—or at least may have been—in use in Ireland long before the arrival of the clans, having been taught by the Phœnicians.The peculiarities which distinguish the clans from the Celts in general, may thus be traced to the countries lying upon the Euphrates and the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, in Judæa and the coast of Africa, are to be found cromlechs and Druidical remains, which attest their passage through these countries. With the inference thence to be drawn, their own traditions concur.Great Britain and Ireland were inhabited from the beginning by Gauls. The Scots, though Gauls, were a distinct and a military body, and they entered at a subsequent time from a different direction. We trace them from Scotland to Ireland, where for a time they were the dominant race. They had reached Ireland from Spain: they had not reached Spain, however, from Gaul butfrom Barbary,—such were their traditions when first recorded.[296]In Westminster Hall there is a stone on which the Kings of England are crowned. It was carried thither from Scone, where the kings of Scotland had been crowned upon it; and had been placed there by Kenneth, son of Alpen, after his victory over the Picts in 843. To Scone it had been transported from Dunstaffnage, where the successors of Fergus had been crowned upon it. To Dunstaffnage it had been brought from Tarah,[297]where the Scottish kings of Ireland had been crowned upon it; and Ireland had been named from it Innisfail. To Tarah it had been brought from Spain,[298]and to Spain, it was said, from the Holy Land.[299]It emitted under the rightful prince a sound like that of the statue of Memnon,[300]and remained dumb under a usurper. The importance attached to it was such as to make its removal to England to be considered in the time of Edward I. a necessary step towards the subjugation of the Scottish kingdom. They called it the stone of fortune, and the stone of destiny (Lia fail).[301]Tradition, among the other people of Europe, is an inventor of fable, rather than a recorder of facts; but its value is very different among these races. Supposing that our books were swept away—not one ancient name could be found in Europe: the Gaul of the North alone would be able to restore them. He would tell you the names of the islands of Britain and Ireland which Aristotle used twenty-three centuries ago—they know no others,[302]therefore are their traditions valuable.Although I think I have established my proposition without the aid of history, I can boldly appeal to it. Historical works of authority are dramas performed by some great people, who are ever on the stage and in front; and events are assorted so as to wind in and conceal, if not to disguise and suppress, whatever does not belong to them. In Livy’s pages the earth is a chess-board, and the players sit in the senates of Rome and Carthage; but if we go to the sources from which he drew, and refer to authors who have dealt with special subjects, we find other actors and other passions. We then see the honour of one battle transferred from the devotion of a consul to the docility of quadrupeds, and the glory of another from legionary valour to fameless barbarians.[303]Roman history is a conspiracy to rob of their fame the Elephants and the Gauls. What were the conditions imposed by Rome—what the fate incurred by Carthage? the surrender of her ships, her elephants, and herGauls. Such was the importance of tribes which Roman writers exhibit as warlike, yet undisciplined as brave; but unmanageable, with long unwieldy swords, and rash and aimless impulses. Here were theyin Africathe prop ofCarthage. They had “learned from long military service to speak Phœnician,”[304]and yet remained so distinct a body as to require “interpreters to disclose to the Carthaginians their decrees.”[305]Further to the east, a century before, during the convulsions which followed the death of Alexander, and preceded the great contest between Carthage and Rome, the part they played is thus described by Justin:“So powerful at this time was the race of the Gauls, that they filled all Asia, as if with a swarm: neither did the kings of the East carry on any war without a mercenary army of Gauls; nor when driven from their throne did they seek refuge elsewhere than amongst the Gauls. Such was the terror of the Gaelic name—such the unconquered fortune of their arms, that dominion was not deemed securely possessed, nor lost greatness capable of recovery, unless by Gaelic bravery.”The Gauls are here measured against Greeks,[306]with the art of war carried to the highest point, and strategy raised into a science, amongst the general-kings, disputants for the relics of Alexander’s army and dominion. Here were Gauls—but how different from those of Gaul! here were Gauls as thoroughly conversant, and as essentially imbued with the knowledge of all the systems of the East and South, as those of the North were ignorant of all habits foreign to their own. Here then is the people to furnish the emigration from the Holy Land to Spain, and to the Highlands, which their own traditions report: here are the circumstances to fashion them into that peculiar discipline which up to this day they have preserved.According to their own tradition they had crossed into Spain from Barbary. They were not originally in Africa; they must then have come all the way round the Mediterranean, and then must they have derived their origin from those Celts who, six or seven centuries before the Christian era, having been repulsed from Italy and Greece, crossed the Bosphorus and settled a large kingdom in Asia Minor: such is the account given of them by the writers of the period. They wandered through Asia Minor—as the Arabs and Patans do in India, or the Albanians in Turkey—before they settled in Galatia, and to this settlement they were constrained. But probably they did not all so settle when the Romans conquered that country, and in a manner waged against them a war of extermination: their wanderings were resumed, and it must have been to the South that they directed their steps. Already were they familiarized with these regions, and probably entertained a peculiar relationship with the most remarkable of its people.“Galilee,” and “Galileeof the Gentiles,” can only mean a Celtic colony or settlement.[307]The Gauls are of as frequent occurrence in Josephus as in Cæsar’s Commentaries. The “Gentiles” of Galilee were not the ancient inhabitants, for it was the land of the Gergesenes, who never could become Jews, as the Galileans were in the time of Christ. The expression “of the Gentiles[308]” must apply to strangers admitted within the Jewish pale. It was this country that Solomon had desired to give away, and that Hiram would not take.This would be the most likely place for a settlement of Gauls. The name is given at a period which would coincide with the hypothesis; nor is there anything extraordinary in the Galileans being Celts, seeing that in the time of Jerome the language ofTreveswas spoken in nearly its primitive purity in the centre of Asia Minor.[309]The idea which we have formed of the barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, arises from the extermination of, and the constant denunciations against the nations of Canaan—the Gibeonites alone excepted—an exception obtained by fraud. There was no obstacle whatever to the admission of any stranger to full participation and entire identification with the Jewish people. Whenever there was an exception it was in consequence of transactions between that people and the Jews. The Jew resembled a man whose life is prolonged some thousand years with a memory unimpaired. He had been enslaved by the Egyptian—he was ever after shy of him. (The Egyptian became a Jew only in the third generation.) Amalek had smote him on the way of the Desert, and he hated him.[310]The exceptions were the Canaanite among the children of Esau, Amalek and the Egyptians: any other stranger had only to be circumcised.[311]From the time of the Grecian Conquests, the Jews themselves attempted to efface this distinction, that they might appear in the Palestra like the Greeks.This explains perhaps why Galilee was the chief field of the labours of Christ, and how his disciples were principally from that people, who were most untainted by the prevailing superstitions, not ranked amongst Jewish schisms, and free from the servile imitation of the Greeks. Thus may we claim for our race a share in the first fishing for men; and it is not an extravagant stretch of the imagination to picture the listeners to “the Sermon on the Mount,” decked with the eagle’s plumes and girded with the sporran and dirk.[312]The sagacious Ptolemies gathered from Syria all the scattered elements of strength: they turned elephants to account: they collected Jews and attracted them into Egypt—they could not have neglected the Gauls. In common with the Jews, they must have suffered in the convulsions of Egypt, and those who abandoned Egypt left it always for the West. Down that slope of the Barbary shore—like so many other races—they must have slid, and, arriving at the bourne of the wandering Arab, they too raised their pillar opposite the stones which Hercules placed. This stone no local tradition consecrates, no ancient belief confirms, no contemporary monument explains, no people claims. It is their own. The Arab, as he tents beside it, calls it a “peg,” and on it hangs the history of the Highland clans. Arrested by the ocean—like the Saracens a thousand years later—they turned to the North, and crossing the Straits, got back again to Europe.Thus, by the aid of history and monuments have we brought them down to Spain, up to which their own traditions had carried them. They appeared in Spain to continue that contest with Rome which the exterminations of Galatia had commenced, and their breasts might have been animated by the remembrance even of Brennus and the capitol. At last, after all the world had been subjugated by the final conquest of the Asturians and the Vascones, they took ship to seek new settlements. Gauls were in great numbers in Asia, Syria, Africa, and Spain: no trace of them is to be found in the present day, nor any record of them after the first centuries of the Christian era downwards: they were not a people to become confounded with the native populations: they passed, then, out of these regions. Let us see if Spain preserves any record of the event.To this day the Irish and Scotch are entitled, on setting foot in Biscay, to every privilege and immunity of the natives;—they have the rank of nobles, can be elected to any magistracy, and have the right of holding land. From these privileges Spaniards are excluded. In the whole range of history no more interesting record will be found of the friendship of two races divided by 2000 years. This isopolitan league, recorded in the institutions of Biscay, is a monument of the passage through Spain, of our mountain clans, not less remarkable than the Usted of Tangier; and we may be as certain of the event as if the day of departure and the numbers of the vessels[313]had been chiselled on granite or engraven on steel.Driven from Spain by the advance of the Roman arms, where should they have taken, or where could they have sought refuge? Gaul was occupied, America not open, Africa and Britain were provinces of Rome; the North of Europe, if not Roman, distant or difficult of access—there remained only Ireland. The Romans were in possession of Britain for 400 years; why did they never set foot in Ireland? They had fleets at their command; a few vessels collected on the coast had sufficed to cross to Britain—that coast was difficult. Ireland invited their approach; they had forces to dispose of, even for the conquest of barren lands; they could send 50,000 men to the North, and support the expedition by sea; they could circumnavigate the island, push commerce, spread agriculture, pierce forests with roads, fix on stations, and fortify camps. Ireland was then green as she is now; wooded as she is no longer; rich in her produce, refined in her industry. Science and learning were there; strangers had settled on her soil, and adventurers from the Holy Land had, perhaps, for a thousand years exported her produce and worked her mines. Ireland was then every way attractive;—no British parliament had yet passed an Irish law;—why then did not the Romans cross from the Severn and the Mersey?The Scots were there.The Roman historians do not mention them; they were not in Caledonia to meet Agricola or Severus; their first passage into Scotland coming within the range of history, occurred onlyA. D.258, and it was centuries before they established their dominion in the North.—The “Stone of Fate” accomplished its pilgrimage to Argyle. A century after their first passage (368), an incursion into England is the first recorded instance of collision with the Romans.[314]And are they not even as we see them—or at least such as they made themselves felt but a century ago—a people who must have had some such history, whose adventurous spirit must have been disciplined by long peregrinations—the Ulysses of nations, seeing the cities and observing the manners of many people, and having an eye to mark what was profitable, and a hand to hold what they had thought proper to select? What other people brought a flag to every breast? in its vestment conferred upon the humblest the blazon of heraldry, and the insignia of kings; selecting emblems and signs from the fairest objects of nature, or the most imaginative inventions of man: primitive colours, flowers of the field, plume of the sky? Alone in Europe they retain a stamp, a memory, and a name. After discomfiting the remnant of a line of false princes, the British parliament feared to dwell in the same island with the Kilt, nor deemed itself secure where the “battle colours” were dyed with the heather, spun on the soil, and worn by the clans.[315]All that remains is the last flickering of the light of a land extinguished, not by the blast of battle, but by the breath of her sons. Had Scotland’s chiefs been true to the noblest station in Europe, she would have held her own and saved England.[279]Some of them took service, but not before the fourth century.[280]“Nemo togam sumit nisi mortuus.”—Juven.Sat.iii.171.[281]Nineveh,v. ii.p.52.[282]Ibid.vol. i. p.194.[283]The resemblance appears most in the oldest sculptures: it is not rendered in the plates to the work. The same figure is also found in the Toshr—lower part of the Egyptian head-dress—calledpshent.[284]Also in the Xanthian marble, E.ix.No. 45, 50, 157.[285]Kalah Kumri.—Layard,v. i. p.118.[286]Carni is also a name in Galilee.[287]It is figured in the large work of the Stuarts, they were of course not aware of the meaning of the double fold.[288]“The children are bathed night and morning in cold or warm water.”—Hunter’sWestern Islands,vol. i. p.194.“The practice still with those who wear the kilt, is to wash their limbs every morning as a preventative against cold.”—Brown,vol. i. p.100.“Strong from the cradle, and of sturdy brood,We bear our new-born infants to the flood,There bathed amidst the waves our babes we hold,Inured to summer’s heat and winter’s cold.”[289]Nineveh,vol. i. pp.300, 522.[290]Ordering some stuff from a Highland woman, and having fixed the time for its being sent to me, she ran after me to say, that I must not have the yellow stripe, or I could not have it till next year. Inquiring the reason, she said, “for the yellow I must wait till June, when the heather is in bloom.”[291]Nineveh,vol. ii. p.311.[292]Mr. Ross, the companion of Mr. Layard.[293]I need only refer to Prichard’s work entitled, “On the Indian origin of the Celts.”[294]Erse is the name which the clans give to their language: it includes Irish, Scotch, and Manx, and excludes Armorican, Welsh, Cornish, and Carniolan.—Brown’sHighland Clans.[295]Report of Highland Society on Ossian.[296]“The Scots were a nation of Kelts, who came from Asia along the African shore, into Spain, and thence into Ireland, which they fill,” says Nennius,sec.13, 14, “even to this day.” Afterwards he says, “other Scots came from Spain, and, by little and little possessed themselves of many districts in Ireland. A Scottish colony from Ireland planted itself in Argyleshire, then called Dabriada, or Dabreta, where,” says Nennius, “they dwell to this day; another in the Isle of Man, and the parts adjacent.”—Anstey’sLaws and Constitution of England,p.38.[297]Teamhuyr, in the oblique cases Teamhra, whence Tarah. This is evidently the Temorah celebrated by Ossian as the Irish capital.[298]Moore’s Ireland.[299]“The names of the stone are both of them derived from a persuasion the ancient Irish had, that in what country soever the stone remained, there one of their blood was to reign.”—Toland’sHistory of the Druids,p.152.[300]Sir G. Wilkinson found a stone in a statue, sonorous, and that in its top while concealed from below, he could by striking it produce a sound. Referring to this incident, while standing beside the Assyrian statue, mentioned a few pages back, I struck it in illustration of the method used. It instantly answered in Memnon’s voice, with the clear sound of bell-metal.[301]Harris,Antiq.of Ireland,c. i. p.10. O’Brien gives this as two words “Lia fail,” the fatal stone, otherwisecloch na cinncamhuin, an ominous accident or destiny, genit.cinncamhua. Both concur in the great veneration in which it was held by the ancient Irish, on account of its “miraculous virtues.” Antiquitiesut sup.p.10, 124. See also Ledwich’sAntiq.of Ireland,p.308.[302]Grant’s Origin of the Gaulsp.262. Ptolemy’s names of the tribes can still be nearly all identified, and he only edited the old work of the Phœnician mariners.[303]Compare Livy and Polybius on the battle of Zama, and these with Ælian on the last struggle of Macedon for the part played by the Gauls and Elephants. From the latter it appears, that by an “Elephant and Castle,” Cæsar crossed the Thames, and won Britain.[304]Πάλαι στρατευόμενος ἤδει διαλέγεσθαι Φοίνικ εσι.—L. i. p.80.Ταύτῃ δὲ πῶς οἱ πλείστοι συνεσαίνοντο τῇ διαλέκτῳ διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς προγεγενημένης στρατείας.[305]Δι’ ἑρμηνέως τὰ δέδογμένα παρ’ αὐτοὺς διέσαφε τοῖς ὄχλοις—L. iii. p.197.[306]Sir W. Scott, in the “Legend of Montrose,” says that the clans have an ancient order of battle, which seems to be derived from the Macedonian phalanx.[307]The names ofGolan,Galaza,Garne,Yara, have also been preserved.[308]“Harosheth of the Gentiles,” see Judges,ch. iv.[309]“Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere Treveros.”—Epist. ad Galat. Proem.l.2.[310]“And thou shalt not forget it.”—Deut. xxv.19.[311]Exodusxii.48.[312]In the Nineveh marbles, the king wears two daggers in one case, side by side. The Circassians wear a smaller one on the case of the largest, as the dirk.[313]The bards do enumerate the vessels of different expeditions.[314]They were, however, expelled by Theodosius. In the fifth century from theNotitia Imperii, large bodies of them appear to have taken service in the empire: one corps was stationed in Illyricum, one at Rome, one in Italy.[315]“Their peaceful glens were visited with the scourge of a licentious soldiery let loose upon the helpless inhabitants, and every means taken to break up the peculiar organization, and consequent power of the Highland clans. The disarming act, which had been passed after the insurrection of the year 1715, was now carried into rigid execution, and with a view to destroy as much as possible any distinctive usages of this primeval race and thus to efface their nationality, an act was passed, proscribing the use of their ancient garb. The indignity inflicted by this act was perhaps more keenly felt by the Highlanders, attached in no ordinary degree to their ancient customs, than any of the other measures resorted to by the English Government: but at the same time it must be admitted, that it effected the object contemplated in its formation, and that more was accomplished by this measure, in destroying the nationality, and breaking up the spirit of the clan’s-men, than by any of the other acts. The system of clanship was also assailed by an act passed in the year 1748, by which heritable jurisdictions were abolished throughout Scotland, and thus the sanction of law was removed from any claim which Highland chiefs, or barons, might in future be disposed to make upon the obedience or service of their followers.”—Skinner’sSketch,vol. i. p.145.
“Scoti per diversa vagantes.”—Am.Marcellinus.
From things which only a Highlander could have observed, I learned that my forefathers had visited Barbary. I perceived the intercourse of the two people in their baking and cooking, dairy, dress, ornaments, superstition and words. If this connexion were with the Celts in general, it would be a matter of mere ethnography, but it is one of history, for the coincidences are with the clans alone.
The kirtle, plaid, bonnet, eagle’s plume, family cognisances are unknown in Brittany; nor do the Bretons call their farm-steads,gabhail, or their greyhounds,sloghie. The dress of the clans is not that of the ancient Gauls: those who advocate its antiquity are much puzzled to find a source for it, and content themselves with supposing it to be derived from the Roman. No supposition can be more groundless: that branch of the Celts which never did submit to Roman domination could not be the only one to adopt the Roman dress.[279]The Scots, during the period of Roman power in Britain, never came in contact with them, and under the empire, the Toga itself had been laid aside; at least, corpses[280]and statues only wore it.
The costume of the Highlands, then, carries us back beyond Roman times, and beyond all written record; it alone remains in Europe, a monument of this order,—that of Barbary alone remains among a people derived from the East. I have already shown that they are the same; which carries both back to the plains of Mesopotamia, or the banks of Jordan.
Mr. Layard’s researches above, as well as under ground, have furnished further evidence in many points of resemblance between their manners and the scenes carved on the alabasters of the Assyrians, and the customs preserved by the mountain-tribes in the neighbourhood.
The clans crowned their king on a stone, and threw down their plaids before him. One full statue only has been found at Nimroud: it is that of a king, and he is seated on a square stone:[281]doubtless the Assyrians threw down their mantles before him.
The eagle’s plume is worn in the bonnet by the Tigari.[282]The King at Nimroud wears a cap standing up in front like the Scotch bonnet; the straps and ribbons flow behind.[283]
In several bas-reliefs, the kilt appears, and is pointed out by Mr. Layard:[284]the mountaineers wear a long shirt dyed of one colour, as was formerly used among the clans.
The chief and impregnable fortress of the Kurds is called the “Castle of the Cymri,”[285]and, as if to return the compliment, the Celts have given the name Carneserai,[286]to the place in Argyleshire, where, on a sculpture of the thirteenth century, the long plaids (philemore)[287]with the double-folds, may be seen, exactly as they are worn by the Jewish women in Morocco.
In Nineveh there was no bath. The mountain-tribes indulge, in all ways and in all places, in washing and dabbling in water, without the slightest regard to the sense of delicacy which is so strong in all other Eastern people. The clans were formerly remarkable in like manner for the use of water;—new-born infants were plunged in cold water.[288]
The clan system hinges on the distinction of the different families by “sets” of colours. In this they differ from all the people of the West, who have colours in a flag, and not on their persons. The Yezidis, called the worshippers of the devil, have in like manner their colours, black and red,[289]which they wear, and with which they adorn their habitations. The clans passing through these countries, and engaged in the wars (as I shall presently show they were), of necessity must have also so distinguished themselves; and being neither a horde migrating, nor a nation in possession, but serving as mercenaries under distinct leaders, each of these would adopt distinguishing badges, and thence the “sets” and tartans of the different clans, and the common name adopted by them.
The discoveries of Nineveh, and the modes of dyeing among the population which still lives in the neighbourhood of those ruins, confirm to the letter what I have said elsewhere respecting the selection of a standard of colour, and the preservation of it in the tartan.
The tartan existed only by the art of dyeing: without perfection in it, the idea of distinction by colours could not be entertained. This was not a mere difference between black and white, as theakandcara coïnjolou, or white and black fleeces of the Turks, which was obtained by natural wool; nor was it the colour of a cap or a slipper which might be purchased ready dyed: proficiency in one colour did not suffice, but in all. They had to be dyed in every cottage, or under every tent. They were applied to the coarsest substances, for the rudest wear, and to be recognizable so long as the material held together. This was to be achieved by a migratory and erratic people, in times when no lac or indigo, no chromates or phosphates were to be found at every apothecary’s. The dyes were to be sought in the fields or on the mountain sides;[290]and each emigration involved a new series of experiments, to be rewarded by new triumphs of unaided industry and untutored taste. How deeply planted in their natures must have been the instinct of colours, thus to preserve those tints in daily wear, which at Nineveh have been saved by being buried in the bowels of the earth. It was not the colours most easily obtained that they selected: they had a rule, to which circumstances were made to bend.
Brown is the natural colour of a large proportion of the fleeces; it is dyed with a moss (crottle) by simple boiling: the colour is beautiful and indelible. They like brown as a common wear: shepherd’s coats, plaids, and trowsers, are made of it, but never was brown seen in a Tartan! The clans learnt this art where they had occasion to adopt the badge.
“Dyes of the finest quality, particularly reds and greens, which even European ingenuity has been unable to equal, are obtained by the inhabitants of Kurdistan from flowers and herbs, growing abundantly in their mountains. The art of extracting them is not a recent discovery, but has been known for ages to people living in the same country; as we learn from the frequent mention of Babylonian and Parthian dyes by ancient authors. The carpets of, Kurdistan and Persia are still unrivalled, not only for the beauty of their texture, but for the brilliancy of their hues. From the ornaments on the dresses of the figures in the Assyrian sculptures, we may conclude, that similar colours were extensively used, either in dyeing the garments themselves, or the threads with which the material was woven.”[291]
On asking a gentleman well acquainted with these countries,[292]if he perceived any resemblance between their customs, and those of the Highlanders, his answer was, “It strikes every one, especially in respect to their chiefs and clan government: The different tribes may also be known by the stripes of colour on the shalvar, as the Highland clans by the stripes on their tartan; and they have the tradition, that Europe is peopled by tribes that emigrated from their country.”
My informant connected this tradition with the recognised Eastern origin of the people of Europe, but it cannot refer to these emigrations. That the Celts came from the East all history attests, and philology has confirmed its verdict;[293]but the waves of emigration which flowed westward passed all to the northward of the Caspian Sea. A physical necessity determined their course; and from the Himalaya to the Carpathian Seas deserts or mountain barriers extend, which prevented their overflowing the south, and set them on Europe. The Turks are an exception, being enabled to cross the desert regions between the Sea of Aral and the Hindoo Cush by means of their horses, and their pastoral habits. To the southward, therefore, of this line no tradition of this peopling of Europe could subsist; and I might have set this one aside, as some uncertain reverberation of the great Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic emigrations, had I not recollected the name which the Jews of Morocco apply to Europe—“Erse dom.” They then were acquainted with the “Erse,”[294]or Gaelic tribes, and must have known them to have gone to Europe, and called it by their name. This explained at once how the Koords should have a similar recollection of the peopling of Europe by tribes who emigrated from their country.
Many coincidences might be added to these. For instance, among the Irish Scots a higher class of Druids, unknown among the British, was calledOllama, evidently the “Ulema”—the learned—of the East. The name of fairies in Erse isshechyan, the Arabsheik. Moore remarks, that these beings seem to record some lost class or people, which he supposes to be the Druids. The blood-fine was, for a prince, a thousand oxen; in Arabia it is a thousand camels. It was commuted in the Highlands for a coin, which is designated by the Spanish wordoros. The soldier’s allowance in the East is called “tain,” whencetimariot, the feudal tenure of Turkey. A Celtic poem, attributed to the sixth century, and “claiming respect as exceeding in antiquity any production of any vernacular tongue of Europe,”[295]is entitledTain Bho, which is translated “Spoil of Cattle.”
The Irish Scots are the only people of Europe who have had their language, not through the Greeks and Romans, but directly from the first inventors. But I do not lay any stress on this coincidence, as their letters probably were—or at least may have been—in use in Ireland long before the arrival of the clans, having been taught by the Phœnicians.
The peculiarities which distinguish the clans from the Celts in general, may thus be traced to the countries lying upon the Euphrates and the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, in Judæa and the coast of Africa, are to be found cromlechs and Druidical remains, which attest their passage through these countries. With the inference thence to be drawn, their own traditions concur.
Great Britain and Ireland were inhabited from the beginning by Gauls. The Scots, though Gauls, were a distinct and a military body, and they entered at a subsequent time from a different direction. We trace them from Scotland to Ireland, where for a time they were the dominant race. They had reached Ireland from Spain: they had not reached Spain, however, from Gaul butfrom Barbary,—such were their traditions when first recorded.[296]
In Westminster Hall there is a stone on which the Kings of England are crowned. It was carried thither from Scone, where the kings of Scotland had been crowned upon it; and had been placed there by Kenneth, son of Alpen, after his victory over the Picts in 843. To Scone it had been transported from Dunstaffnage, where the successors of Fergus had been crowned upon it. To Dunstaffnage it had been brought from Tarah,[297]where the Scottish kings of Ireland had been crowned upon it; and Ireland had been named from it Innisfail. To Tarah it had been brought from Spain,[298]and to Spain, it was said, from the Holy Land.[299]It emitted under the rightful prince a sound like that of the statue of Memnon,[300]and remained dumb under a usurper. The importance attached to it was such as to make its removal to England to be considered in the time of Edward I. a necessary step towards the subjugation of the Scottish kingdom. They called it the stone of fortune, and the stone of destiny (Lia fail).[301]
Tradition, among the other people of Europe, is an inventor of fable, rather than a recorder of facts; but its value is very different among these races. Supposing that our books were swept away—not one ancient name could be found in Europe: the Gaul of the North alone would be able to restore them. He would tell you the names of the islands of Britain and Ireland which Aristotle used twenty-three centuries ago—they know no others,[302]therefore are their traditions valuable.
Although I think I have established my proposition without the aid of history, I can boldly appeal to it. Historical works of authority are dramas performed by some great people, who are ever on the stage and in front; and events are assorted so as to wind in and conceal, if not to disguise and suppress, whatever does not belong to them. In Livy’s pages the earth is a chess-board, and the players sit in the senates of Rome and Carthage; but if we go to the sources from which he drew, and refer to authors who have dealt with special subjects, we find other actors and other passions. We then see the honour of one battle transferred from the devotion of a consul to the docility of quadrupeds, and the glory of another from legionary valour to fameless barbarians.[303]Roman history is a conspiracy to rob of their fame the Elephants and the Gauls. What were the conditions imposed by Rome—what the fate incurred by Carthage? the surrender of her ships, her elephants, and herGauls. Such was the importance of tribes which Roman writers exhibit as warlike, yet undisciplined as brave; but unmanageable, with long unwieldy swords, and rash and aimless impulses. Here were theyin Africathe prop ofCarthage. They had “learned from long military service to speak Phœnician,”[304]and yet remained so distinct a body as to require “interpreters to disclose to the Carthaginians their decrees.”[305]
Further to the east, a century before, during the convulsions which followed the death of Alexander, and preceded the great contest between Carthage and Rome, the part they played is thus described by Justin:
“So powerful at this time was the race of the Gauls, that they filled all Asia, as if with a swarm: neither did the kings of the East carry on any war without a mercenary army of Gauls; nor when driven from their throne did they seek refuge elsewhere than amongst the Gauls. Such was the terror of the Gaelic name—such the unconquered fortune of their arms, that dominion was not deemed securely possessed, nor lost greatness capable of recovery, unless by Gaelic bravery.”
The Gauls are here measured against Greeks,[306]with the art of war carried to the highest point, and strategy raised into a science, amongst the general-kings, disputants for the relics of Alexander’s army and dominion. Here were Gauls—but how different from those of Gaul! here were Gauls as thoroughly conversant, and as essentially imbued with the knowledge of all the systems of the East and South, as those of the North were ignorant of all habits foreign to their own. Here then is the people to furnish the emigration from the Holy Land to Spain, and to the Highlands, which their own traditions report: here are the circumstances to fashion them into that peculiar discipline which up to this day they have preserved.
According to their own tradition they had crossed into Spain from Barbary. They were not originally in Africa; they must then have come all the way round the Mediterranean, and then must they have derived their origin from those Celts who, six or seven centuries before the Christian era, having been repulsed from Italy and Greece, crossed the Bosphorus and settled a large kingdom in Asia Minor: such is the account given of them by the writers of the period. They wandered through Asia Minor—as the Arabs and Patans do in India, or the Albanians in Turkey—before they settled in Galatia, and to this settlement they were constrained. But probably they did not all so settle when the Romans conquered that country, and in a manner waged against them a war of extermination: their wanderings were resumed, and it must have been to the South that they directed their steps. Already were they familiarized with these regions, and probably entertained a peculiar relationship with the most remarkable of its people.
“Galilee,” and “Galileeof the Gentiles,” can only mean a Celtic colony or settlement.[307]The Gauls are of as frequent occurrence in Josephus as in Cæsar’s Commentaries. The “Gentiles” of Galilee were not the ancient inhabitants, for it was the land of the Gergesenes, who never could become Jews, as the Galileans were in the time of Christ. The expression “of the Gentiles[308]” must apply to strangers admitted within the Jewish pale. It was this country that Solomon had desired to give away, and that Hiram would not take.
This would be the most likely place for a settlement of Gauls. The name is given at a period which would coincide with the hypothesis; nor is there anything extraordinary in the Galileans being Celts, seeing that in the time of Jerome the language ofTreveswas spoken in nearly its primitive purity in the centre of Asia Minor.[309]
The idea which we have formed of the barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, arises from the extermination of, and the constant denunciations against the nations of Canaan—the Gibeonites alone excepted—an exception obtained by fraud. There was no obstacle whatever to the admission of any stranger to full participation and entire identification with the Jewish people. Whenever there was an exception it was in consequence of transactions between that people and the Jews. The Jew resembled a man whose life is prolonged some thousand years with a memory unimpaired. He had been enslaved by the Egyptian—he was ever after shy of him. (The Egyptian became a Jew only in the third generation.) Amalek had smote him on the way of the Desert, and he hated him.[310]The exceptions were the Canaanite among the children of Esau, Amalek and the Egyptians: any other stranger had only to be circumcised.[311]From the time of the Grecian Conquests, the Jews themselves attempted to efface this distinction, that they might appear in the Palestra like the Greeks.
This explains perhaps why Galilee was the chief field of the labours of Christ, and how his disciples were principally from that people, who were most untainted by the prevailing superstitions, not ranked amongst Jewish schisms, and free from the servile imitation of the Greeks. Thus may we claim for our race a share in the first fishing for men; and it is not an extravagant stretch of the imagination to picture the listeners to “the Sermon on the Mount,” decked with the eagle’s plumes and girded with the sporran and dirk.[312]
The sagacious Ptolemies gathered from Syria all the scattered elements of strength: they turned elephants to account: they collected Jews and attracted them into Egypt—they could not have neglected the Gauls. In common with the Jews, they must have suffered in the convulsions of Egypt, and those who abandoned Egypt left it always for the West. Down that slope of the Barbary shore—like so many other races—they must have slid, and, arriving at the bourne of the wandering Arab, they too raised their pillar opposite the stones which Hercules placed. This stone no local tradition consecrates, no ancient belief confirms, no contemporary monument explains, no people claims. It is their own. The Arab, as he tents beside it, calls it a “peg,” and on it hangs the history of the Highland clans. Arrested by the ocean—like the Saracens a thousand years later—they turned to the North, and crossing the Straits, got back again to Europe.
Thus, by the aid of history and monuments have we brought them down to Spain, up to which their own traditions had carried them. They appeared in Spain to continue that contest with Rome which the exterminations of Galatia had commenced, and their breasts might have been animated by the remembrance even of Brennus and the capitol. At last, after all the world had been subjugated by the final conquest of the Asturians and the Vascones, they took ship to seek new settlements. Gauls were in great numbers in Asia, Syria, Africa, and Spain: no trace of them is to be found in the present day, nor any record of them after the first centuries of the Christian era downwards: they were not a people to become confounded with the native populations: they passed, then, out of these regions. Let us see if Spain preserves any record of the event.
To this day the Irish and Scotch are entitled, on setting foot in Biscay, to every privilege and immunity of the natives;—they have the rank of nobles, can be elected to any magistracy, and have the right of holding land. From these privileges Spaniards are excluded. In the whole range of history no more interesting record will be found of the friendship of two races divided by 2000 years. This isopolitan league, recorded in the institutions of Biscay, is a monument of the passage through Spain, of our mountain clans, not less remarkable than the Usted of Tangier; and we may be as certain of the event as if the day of departure and the numbers of the vessels[313]had been chiselled on granite or engraven on steel.
Driven from Spain by the advance of the Roman arms, where should they have taken, or where could they have sought refuge? Gaul was occupied, America not open, Africa and Britain were provinces of Rome; the North of Europe, if not Roman, distant or difficult of access—there remained only Ireland. The Romans were in possession of Britain for 400 years; why did they never set foot in Ireland? They had fleets at their command; a few vessels collected on the coast had sufficed to cross to Britain—that coast was difficult. Ireland invited their approach; they had forces to dispose of, even for the conquest of barren lands; they could send 50,000 men to the North, and support the expedition by sea; they could circumnavigate the island, push commerce, spread agriculture, pierce forests with roads, fix on stations, and fortify camps. Ireland was then green as she is now; wooded as she is no longer; rich in her produce, refined in her industry. Science and learning were there; strangers had settled on her soil, and adventurers from the Holy Land had, perhaps, for a thousand years exported her produce and worked her mines. Ireland was then every way attractive;—no British parliament had yet passed an Irish law;—why then did not the Romans cross from the Severn and the Mersey?The Scots were there.
The Roman historians do not mention them; they were not in Caledonia to meet Agricola or Severus; their first passage into Scotland coming within the range of history, occurred onlyA. D.258, and it was centuries before they established their dominion in the North.—The “Stone of Fate” accomplished its pilgrimage to Argyle. A century after their first passage (368), an incursion into England is the first recorded instance of collision with the Romans.[314]And are they not even as we see them—or at least such as they made themselves felt but a century ago—a people who must have had some such history, whose adventurous spirit must have been disciplined by long peregrinations—the Ulysses of nations, seeing the cities and observing the manners of many people, and having an eye to mark what was profitable, and a hand to hold what they had thought proper to select? What other people brought a flag to every breast? in its vestment conferred upon the humblest the blazon of heraldry, and the insignia of kings; selecting emblems and signs from the fairest objects of nature, or the most imaginative inventions of man: primitive colours, flowers of the field, plume of the sky? Alone in Europe they retain a stamp, a memory, and a name. After discomfiting the remnant of a line of false princes, the British parliament feared to dwell in the same island with the Kilt, nor deemed itself secure where the “battle colours” were dyed with the heather, spun on the soil, and worn by the clans.[315]
All that remains is the last flickering of the light of a land extinguished, not by the blast of battle, but by the breath of her sons. Had Scotland’s chiefs been true to the noblest station in Europe, she would have held her own and saved England.
[279]Some of them took service, but not before the fourth century.
[280]“Nemo togam sumit nisi mortuus.”—Juven.Sat.iii.171.
[281]Nineveh,v. ii.p.52.
[282]Ibid.vol. i. p.194.
[283]The resemblance appears most in the oldest sculptures: it is not rendered in the plates to the work. The same figure is also found in the Toshr—lower part of the Egyptian head-dress—calledpshent.
[284]Also in the Xanthian marble, E.ix.No. 45, 50, 157.
[285]Kalah Kumri.—Layard,v. i. p.118.
[286]Carni is also a name in Galilee.
[287]It is figured in the large work of the Stuarts, they were of course not aware of the meaning of the double fold.
[288]“The children are bathed night and morning in cold or warm water.”—Hunter’sWestern Islands,vol. i. p.194.
“The practice still with those who wear the kilt, is to wash their limbs every morning as a preventative against cold.”—Brown,vol. i. p.100.
“Strong from the cradle, and of sturdy brood,We bear our new-born infants to the flood,There bathed amidst the waves our babes we hold,Inured to summer’s heat and winter’s cold.”
“Strong from the cradle, and of sturdy brood,We bear our new-born infants to the flood,There bathed amidst the waves our babes we hold,Inured to summer’s heat and winter’s cold.”
“Strong from the cradle, and of sturdy brood,
We bear our new-born infants to the flood,
There bathed amidst the waves our babes we hold,
Inured to summer’s heat and winter’s cold.”
[289]Nineveh,vol. i. pp.300, 522.
[290]Ordering some stuff from a Highland woman, and having fixed the time for its being sent to me, she ran after me to say, that I must not have the yellow stripe, or I could not have it till next year. Inquiring the reason, she said, “for the yellow I must wait till June, when the heather is in bloom.”
[291]Nineveh,vol. ii. p.311.
[292]Mr. Ross, the companion of Mr. Layard.
[293]I need only refer to Prichard’s work entitled, “On the Indian origin of the Celts.”
[294]Erse is the name which the clans give to their language: it includes Irish, Scotch, and Manx, and excludes Armorican, Welsh, Cornish, and Carniolan.—Brown’sHighland Clans.
[295]Report of Highland Society on Ossian.
[296]“The Scots were a nation of Kelts, who came from Asia along the African shore, into Spain, and thence into Ireland, which they fill,” says Nennius,sec.13, 14, “even to this day.” Afterwards he says, “other Scots came from Spain, and, by little and little possessed themselves of many districts in Ireland. A Scottish colony from Ireland planted itself in Argyleshire, then called Dabriada, or Dabreta, where,” says Nennius, “they dwell to this day; another in the Isle of Man, and the parts adjacent.”—Anstey’sLaws and Constitution of England,p.38.
[297]Teamhuyr, in the oblique cases Teamhra, whence Tarah. This is evidently the Temorah celebrated by Ossian as the Irish capital.
[298]Moore’s Ireland.
[299]“The names of the stone are both of them derived from a persuasion the ancient Irish had, that in what country soever the stone remained, there one of their blood was to reign.”—Toland’sHistory of the Druids,p.152.
[300]Sir G. Wilkinson found a stone in a statue, sonorous, and that in its top while concealed from below, he could by striking it produce a sound. Referring to this incident, while standing beside the Assyrian statue, mentioned a few pages back, I struck it in illustration of the method used. It instantly answered in Memnon’s voice, with the clear sound of bell-metal.
[301]Harris,Antiq.of Ireland,c. i. p.10. O’Brien gives this as two words “Lia fail,” the fatal stone, otherwisecloch na cinncamhuin, an ominous accident or destiny, genit.cinncamhua. Both concur in the great veneration in which it was held by the ancient Irish, on account of its “miraculous virtues.” Antiquitiesut sup.p.10, 124. See also Ledwich’sAntiq.of Ireland,p.308.
[302]Grant’s Origin of the Gaulsp.262. Ptolemy’s names of the tribes can still be nearly all identified, and he only edited the old work of the Phœnician mariners.
[303]Compare Livy and Polybius on the battle of Zama, and these with Ælian on the last struggle of Macedon for the part played by the Gauls and Elephants. From the latter it appears, that by an “Elephant and Castle,” Cæsar crossed the Thames, and won Britain.
[304]Πάλαι στρατευόμενος ἤδει διαλέγεσθαι Φοίνικ εσι.—L. i. p.80.Ταύτῃ δὲ πῶς οἱ πλείστοι συνεσαίνοντο τῇ διαλέκτῳ διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς προγεγενημένης στρατείας.
[305]Δι’ ἑρμηνέως τὰ δέδογμένα παρ’ αὐτοὺς διέσαφε τοῖς ὄχλοις—L. iii. p.197.
[306]Sir W. Scott, in the “Legend of Montrose,” says that the clans have an ancient order of battle, which seems to be derived from the Macedonian phalanx.
[307]The names ofGolan,Galaza,Garne,Yara, have also been preserved.
[308]“Harosheth of the Gentiles,” see Judges,ch. iv.
[309]“Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere Treveros.”—Epist. ad Galat. Proem.l.2.
[310]“And thou shalt not forget it.”—Deut. xxv.19.
[311]Exodusxii.48.
[312]In the Nineveh marbles, the king wears two daggers in one case, side by side. The Circassians wear a smaller one on the case of the largest, as the dirk.
[313]The bards do enumerate the vessels of different expeditions.
[314]They were, however, expelled by Theodosius. In the fifth century from theNotitia Imperii, large bodies of them appear to have taken service in the empire: one corps was stationed in Illyricum, one at Rome, one in Italy.
[315]“Their peaceful glens were visited with the scourge of a licentious soldiery let loose upon the helpless inhabitants, and every means taken to break up the peculiar organization, and consequent power of the Highland clans. The disarming act, which had been passed after the insurrection of the year 1715, was now carried into rigid execution, and with a view to destroy as much as possible any distinctive usages of this primeval race and thus to efface their nationality, an act was passed, proscribing the use of their ancient garb. The indignity inflicted by this act was perhaps more keenly felt by the Highlanders, attached in no ordinary degree to their ancient customs, than any of the other measures resorted to by the English Government: but at the same time it must be admitted, that it effected the object contemplated in its formation, and that more was accomplished by this measure, in destroying the nationality, and breaking up the spirit of the clan’s-men, than by any of the other acts. The system of clanship was also assailed by an act passed in the year 1748, by which heritable jurisdictions were abolished throughout Scotland, and thus the sanction of law was removed from any claim which Highland chiefs, or barons, might in future be disposed to make upon the obedience or service of their followers.”—Skinner’sSketch,vol. i. p.145.