But We Soon Found What Memorials Were
To Be Expected From An Illiterate People, Whose Whole Time Is A
Series
Of distress; where every morning is labouring with
expedients for the evening; and where all mental pains or pleasure
arose
From the dread of winter, the expectation of spring, the
caprices of their Chiefs, and the motions of the neighbouring
clans; where there was neither shame from ignorance, nor pride in
knowledge; neither curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to communicate.
The Chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury, and daily
difficulties; and in their houses were preserved what accounts
remained of past ages. But the Chiefs were sometimes ignorant and
careless, and sometimes kept busy by turbulence and contention; and
one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten
history. Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while
neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again
impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be
recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the
cloud that had hidden it has past away, is again bright in its
proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it
falls, cannot be rekindled.
It seems to be universally supposed, that much of the local history
was preserved by the Bards, of whom one is said to have been
retained by every great family. After these Bards were some of my
first inquiries; and I received such answers as, for a while, made
me please myself with my increase of knowledge; for I had not then
learned how to estimate the narration of a Highlander.
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