Discipline

19

Miss Percy's description is far, indeed, from exaggerating the horrors of some lunatic asylums in Edinburgh, as they existed twenty years ago. One of these, which was even more recently the disgrace of Scotland and of human nature, is now managed with great attention to the health and cleanliness of its miserable inmates.

20

'Near adjoining are the parks; that is, one large tract of ground, surrounded with a low wall of loose stones, and divided into several pans by partitions of the same. The surface of the ground is all over heath, or, as they call it, heather, without any trees; but some of it has lately been sown with a seed of firs, which are now grown about a foot and a half high, but are hardly to be seen for the heath.

'An English captain, the afternoon of the day following his arrival here, desired me to ride out with him and show him the parks of Culloden, without telling me the reason of his curiosity. Accordingly we set out; and when we were pretty near the place, he asked me; "Where are these parks? for," says he, "there is nothing near in view but heath, and at a distance rocks and mountains." I pointed to the enclosures; and, being a little way before him, heard him cursing in soliloquy; which occasioned my making a halt, and asking if any thing displeased him? Then he told me, that, at a coffee-house in London, he was one day commending the park of Studley in Yorkshire, and those of several gentlemen in other parts of England, when a Scots Captain who was by, cried out, "Ah, sir, but if you were to see the parks of Culloden in Scotland!"' —Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London, vol. i, p. 297.

21

Whoever recollects the inns at C – i – gh and B – rr – le, and no doubt many others, as they stood two-and-twenty years ago, will be at no loss for the prototypes of Miss Percy's house of entertainment. Later travellers in the Highlands may not find her description agree with their experience. The 'land of the mountain and the flood' has of late been the fashionable resort of the lovers of the picturesque, and of grouse-shooting; the refuge of those who wish to skulk or to economise; of fine gentlemen and fine ladies, who find the world not quite bad enough for them. The accommodations for travellers are of course improved. It were devoutly to be wished that this had been the only change effected by such visitants.

22

A packer.

23

Gille cumsrian.

24

The said Breadalbane spring once existed in Atholl; but its guardian Saint having been offended by some failure in respect, or in liberality, removed it to its present site. This neglect was the more unpardonable, because Highland saints have a very saint-like facility of propitiation. A halfpenny is considered as a profuse offering; a nail, a pin, or a rag, is all that the saints exact in return for the benefit of these healing waters. The saints' wells can generally be distinguished by the shreds of cloth hung upon the impending bushes; and other offerings of like value dropped into the basin.

Some of these springs are resorted to annually by way of preventative; others are visited as occasion requires. Some of the waters are taken as a medicine. Others – and these, I apprehend, the most useful – are externally applied. In this case, the ablutions must be repeated for three years successively; and if the patient die in the interim, a friend must complete this ceremony in his stead, bringing away at the same time a bottle of water, to be poured upon the grave of the deceased. Within these few years, an old woman, for this pious purpose, twice performed a journey of nearly a hundred miles.

25

See Scott's Border Minstrelsy.

26

Messages from the living to the dead are not uncommon in the Highlands. The Gael have such a ceaseless consciousness of immortality, that their departed friends are considered as merely absent for a time; and permitted to relieve the hours of separation by occasional intercourse with the objects of their earliest affection.

27

Falbh bi falbh.

28

Extemporary songs are common among the Highlanders. With these they beguile their labours; often, of course, at small expense of taste or invention. The readiness with which they apply their verses to compliment, to banter, often to graver purposes, is, however, very remarkable; and Cecil is far from furnishing a rare or exalted specimen of the powers of Highland improvisatori.

I have been told, that an Argyllshire woman, one evening, while expecting her husband's return, was surprised by a visit from some persons whom she guessed to be officers of justice sent to apprehend him. Finding the man absent, they determined to wait his arrival in the hut; taking care, of course, that his wife should not go out to apprise him of his danger. She contrived, however, to hush her baby with an extemporary song, which, without alarming the vigilance of the guards, warned her husband from his perilous threshold, and he escaped. Other instances, somewhat of a similar kind, suggested the incident in the text.

Indeed, the only merit which the Highland scenes in Discipline presume to claim, is, that, however inartificially joined, they are all borrowed from fact.

29

Although, in the remoter parts of Scotland, chastity is by no means the universal virtue of unmarried persons, instances of conjugal infidelity are still rare. Within the present generation they were almost unknown.

About twenty years ago, it happened, in a remote country town, that two persons of the lower rank were accused of adultery. The charge, whether true or false, had such an effect, that the man was driven like a wild beast from human converse. The very children pelted him with mud in the street; crying out, 'There goes the adulterer.'

30

Hamlet, —Town.