2 6o Notes on Sp07't and Travel i 



Murrays, even so was this people which at this time 

 did arryve ther, called catti.' A cat's a cat, Sir 

 Robert, no doubt ; and I suspect that, although you 

 are too true a clansman to confess it openly, you 

 sniffed a little taint of ' punning heraldry ' in your 

 ' crest or bage.' From the prevalence of the name 

 of Morray, or Murray, in some parts of Sutherland 

 proper, it is not improbable that all the inhabitants 

 of the most north-eastern side of the Highlands are 

 of the same original race. In an old charter even 

 the Earl of Sutherland is called ' Moriff comes 

 StitherlandicB.' 



Whether the present inhabitants be the descend- 

 ants of Scandinavian settlers, or of Celtic tribes driven 

 out of their own country by increasing waves of pure 

 Scandinavianism, the former visited the country often 

 enough, and left their names on many a sculptured 

 stone, and on the more endurable monuments of 

 valleys and rivers. Does not Helms-dale sound like 

 a name in an Edda ? And is not Lax-fiord, the bay 

 of the salmon, the paradise of the salmon-fisher to 

 this day .-' 



If Sir Thomas Brown is correct in stating that a 

 brass Jews'-harp, richly gilded, was found in an 

 ancient Norwegian urn, Sutherland may be indebted 

 to the Norwegians for its favourite, I had almost 

 said national, instrument. The bagpipe is no more 

 the national instrument of Scotland than the hurdy- 

 gurdy. Down to the seventeenth century every 

 parish in England had a noise of bagpipes, and every 



