Some Of The Chief Families
Still Entertain A Piper, Whose Office Was Anciently Hereditary.
Macrimmon Was Piper To Macleod, And Rankin To Maclean Of Col.
The tunes of the bagpipe are traditional.
There has been in Sky,
beyond all time of memory, a college of pipers, under the direction
of Macrimmon, which is not quite extinct. There was another in
Mull, superintended by Rankin, which expired about sixteen years
ago. To these colleges, while the pipe retained its honour, the
students of musick repaired for education. I have had my dinner
exhilarated by the bagpipe, at Armidale, at Dunvegan, and in Col.
The general conversation of the Islanders has nothing particular.
I did not meet with the inquisitiveness of which I have read, and
suspect the judgment to have been rashly made. A stranger of
curiosity comes into a place where a stranger is seldom seen: he
importunes the people with questions, of which they cannot guess
the motive, and gazes with surprise on things which they, having
had them always before their eyes, do not suspect of any thing
wonderful. He appears to them like some being of another world,
and then thinks it peculiar that they take their turn to inquire
whence he comes, and whither he is going.
The Islands were long unfurnished with instruction for youth, and
none but the sons of gentlemen could have any literature. There
are now parochial schools, to which the lord of every manor pays a
certain stipend. Here the children are taught to read; but by the
rule of their institution, they teach only English, so that the
natives read a language which they may never use or understand.
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