If Individuals Are Thus At Variance With Themselves, It Can Be No
Wonder That The Accounts Of Different Men Are Contradictory.
The
traditions of an ignorant and savage people have been for ages
negligently heard, and unskilfully related.
Distant events must
have been mingled together, and the actions of one man given to
another. These, however, are deficiencies in story, for which no
man is now to be censured. It were enough, if what there is yet
opportunity of examining were accurately inspected, and justly
represented; but such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that
the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of
intellectual retrogradation, knows less as he hears more.
In the islands the plaid is rarely worn. The law by which the
Highlanders have been obliged to change the form of their dress,
has, in all the places that we have visited, been universally
obeyed. I have seen only one gentleman completely clothed in the
ancient habit, and by him it was worn only occasionally and
wantonly. The common people do not think themselves under any
legal necessity of having coats; for they say that the law against
plaids was made by Lord Hardwicke, and was in force only for his
life: but the same poverty that made it then difficult for them to
change their clothing, hinders them now from changing it again.
The fillibeg, or lower garment, is still very common, and the
bonnet almost universal; but their attire is such as produces, in a
sufficient degree, the effect intended by the law, of abolishing
the dissimilitude of appearance between the Highlanders and the
other inhabitants of Britain; and, if dress be supposed to have
much influence, facilitates their coalition with their fellow-
subjects.
What we have long used we naturally like, and therefore the
Highlanders were unwilling to lay aside their plaid, which yet to
an unprejudiced spectator must appear an incommodious and
cumbersome dress; for hanging loose upon the body, it must flutter
in a quick motion, or require one of the hands to keep it close.
The Romans always laid aside the gown when they had anything to do.
It was a dress so unsuitable to war, that the same word which
signified a gown signified peace. The chief use of a plaid seems
to be this, that they could commodiously wrap themselves in it,
when they were obliged to sleep without a better cover.
In our passage from Scotland to Sky, we were wet for the first time
with a shower. This was the beginning of the Highland winter,
after which we were told that a succession of three dry days was
not to be expected for many months. The winter of the Hebrides
consists of little more than rain and wind. As they are surrounded
by an ocean never frozen, the blasts that come to them over the
water are too much softened to have the power of congelation. The
salt loughs, or inlets of the sea, which shoot very far into the
island, never have any ice upon them, and the pools of fresh water
will never bear the walker.
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