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.
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