Their Suppers Are, Like Their Dinners, Various And Plentiful.
The
table is always covered with elegant linen.
Their plates for
common use are often of that kind of manufacture which is called
cream coloured, or queen's ware. They use silver on all occasions
where it is common in England, nor did I ever find the spoon of
horn, but in one house.
The knives are not often either very bright, or very sharp. They
are indeed instruments of which the Highlanders have not been long
acquainted with the general use. They were not regularly laid on
the table, before the prohibition of arms, and the change of dress.
Thirty years ago the Highlander wore his knife as a companion to
his dirk or dagger, and when the company sat down to meat, the men
who had knives, cut the flesh into small pieces for the women, who
with their fingers conveyed it to their mouths.
There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so
great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands,
by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws. We came thither too
late to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and
a system of antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their
original character, their ferocity of temper is softened, their
military ardour is extinguished, their dignity of independence is
depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence
for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest
of their country, there remain only their language and their
poverty.
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