360 THE BRITISH ISLES. 



The soldiers, in their strange and showy garb, have so frequently won distinc- 

 tion upon the field of battle that all their panegyrists said about their native 

 virtues was implicitly believed ; and on the faith of poets we admired their 

 pipers, the successors of the ancient bards, who accompanied their melancholy 

 chants on the liarp. In reality, however, the Highlanders, until recently, were 

 warlike herdsmen, as the Montenegrins, Mirdits, and Albanians are even now, 

 always at enmity with their neighbours. It was only after forts had been built at 

 the mouths of the valleys, and military roads constructed through their territories, 

 that they were reduced to submission. The members of each family were closely 

 united, and, like American Hedskins, they had their war-cries, badges, and distinctly 

 patterned tartans. The people were thus split up into about forty clans, or, 

 including the Lowland families, into about one hundred, and several of these 

 clans consisted of more than 10,000 individuals.* The members of each clan, 

 though, sometimes only cousins a hundred times removed, all bore the same 

 name, and they fought and worked together. The land was originally held in 

 common, being periodically divided amongst the clan. The honour of the 

 tribe was dear to every one of its individual members, and an injury done to 

 one amongst them was avenged by the entire community. When the Kings 

 of Scotland had to complain of a Highland chief, they attacked his clan, for they 

 well knew that every member of it would embrace the cause of the chief. There 

 existed no courts of justice in the Highlands, but blood was spilt for blood. 

 Various monuments recall such acts of savage vengeance, and as recently as 1812 

 a Highland family set up seven grinning heads as a trophy to commemorate a 

 sevenfold murder committed by its ancestors. A cavern on Eigg Island is 

 strewn with human bones, the relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, 

 200 in number, who are said to have been suffocated within the cavern by a neigh- 

 bouring chief, MacLeod, in retaliation for some private injury. t 



As long as every member of the community possessed a share in tlie land 

 Scotland was spared the struggle between rich and poor. But by the close of 

 the eighteenth century the poorer members of the clan, though still claiming 

 cousinship with their chiefs, had lost all proprietary rights in the land, and the 

 lairds, when remonstrated with by the clan, responded in the words of the device 

 adopted by the Earls of Orkney, " Sic fuit, est, et erit ! " They were even then able 

 to drive away the ancient inhabitants from the plots of land they occupied, in order 

 that they might transform them into pasturing or shooting grounds. Several 

 landlords even burnt down the cabins of their poor "cousins," thus compelling 

 them to leave the country. Between 1811 and 1820, 15,000 tenants were thus 

 chased from the estates of the Duchess of Stafford. Entire villages were given up 

 to the flames, and on a single night 300 houses might have been seen afire. 

 Nearly the whole population of four parishes was in this way driven from, its 

 homes. Sir;ce the middle of the century about 1,000,000 acres in the Highlands 

 have been cleared of human beings and sheep to be converted into shooting 



* Principal Highland clans in 1863 :— Mac Gregors, 36,000; MacKenzies, 21,000; MacLeans, 

 16,000; MacLeods, 14,000; Macintoshes, 11,000; MacDonalds, 10,000. 

 t Hugh Miller, "Cruise of the Betsy." 



