Gairloch In North-West Ross-Shire Part 17

In the early part of the nineteenth century, as James Mackenzie and others inform me, the kilt was still the dress of many men in Gairloch, who never put on the trews until old age came, and in some cases not even then. As an instance, he says he remembers seeing Hugh M'Phail, a Gairloch man then living at the head of Loch Broom, measuring out herrings from his boat on a cold day in a hard winter, with four inches of snow on the ground and thick ice. Hugh wore only his shirt and kilt; he had put off his jacket for the work. He and his two brothers always wore the kilt; they were all fine men, and two of them were elders of the church of Loch Broom, under the Rev. Dr Ross. Other incidental references to the Highland dress of Gairloch men will be found in James Mackenzie's stories in Part II., chap. xxv.

Up to the present generation the kilt was still occasionally worn in Gairloch, especially at festive gatherings. That it had become infrequent, yet was not altogether abandoned, may be inferred from the following advice given upon dress in his "Hints" by the late Sir Francis Mackenzie, Bart.:--"The nature of this must depend upon your local situation, since it is evident that what is fitted for our mountains would be ill suited to the wants of the fisherman. As an inland labourer or shepherd, the ancient costume of the country, the kilt, hose, plaid, and bonnet, with a warm stout cloth short jacket, will be found the most serviceable, since it admits of a pliancy in the limbs admirably adapted either for labour or climbing our bare and heathery hills. No danger can possibly arise from exposing the limbs to the wet and cold, whilst the loins and back are protected by the thick folds of a kilt and plaid from severity of weather. I may too, without being liable to the charge of national vanity, say, that however much the dress of our ancestors has been lately laid aside, it gives a manly and graceful appearance at all times to the wearer. I have witnessed its attractions amongst the sons and daughters of peace in every country of Europe, and it has marked our bravery in battle wherever a plaid has appeared. It has the sanction of antiquity in its favour; it is a.s.sociated with the virtues and triumphs of Roman citizens; and I should regret its being laid aside, because I am decidedly of opinion that national dress is everywhere a strong incentive to the wearer not to disgrace the region which he proudly claims as the country of his birth."

The Highland dress is now only worn in Gairloch by a few gentlemen, pipers, keepers, and some of the better-to-do schoolboys. Its disappearance from among a people who cling so tenaciously to the Highland tongue is pa.s.sing strange. By some it has been attributed to the inferior hardiness of the modern Highlander, a reason which is perhaps suggested by the following remark in the "General Survey" of Sir George Steuart Mackenzie (1810):--"The first indications of the introduction of luxury appeared not many years ago, in the young men relinquishing the philabeg and bonnet, which are now almost rarities."

The Gairloch company of rifle volunteers originally wore the kilt, but about the year 1878, in common with the majority of the battalion to which they are attached, they agreed to subst.i.tute Mackenzie tartan trousers. The change was made partly on the ground of economy. After the review of the Scottish volunteers at Edinburgh on 25th August 1881, which was attended by the Ross-shire battalion, including the Gairloch company, a general wish was expressed that the example of the volunteer battalions of the adjoining counties should be followed, and the kilt resumed. The Gairloch company unanimously pet.i.tioned their gallant colonel to restore the kilt.

The ordinary dress of most Gairloch men is now the same as in the lowlands, except that some of those engaged as shepherds, keepers, and gillies wear knickerbockers, which display the hose; some men still carry plaids and don the blue bonnet.

Gairloch is justly celebrated for its hose, which are knitted in immense variety of pattern and colour, some being in imitation of old forms of tartan. In the old days the hose worn with the Highland costume were cut from the same web as the tartan of which other parts of the dress were made, but now all hose are knitted. The "diced" patterns are relics of the old tartans.

The Dowager Lady Mackenzie of Gairloch writes as follows regarding the Gairloch hose:--"At my first visit to Gairloch, in 1837, I employed a lady from Skye who was staying at Kerrysdale to instruct twelve young women in knitting nice stockings with dice and other fancy patterns.

When I came to act as trustee, and to live constantly at Flowerdale, I started the manufacture of the Gairloch stockings in earnest, having spinners, dyers, and knitters, all taught and superintended during the ten years I resided there; on my leaving and going abroad, Sir Kenneth gave the concern into the hands of the head gamekeeper, Mr George Ross.

Now, dozens of pairs are brought by the women to the hotels and steamers, and large quant.i.ties go to Inverness, Edinburgh, and London; 100 worth has been sold in one shop."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MUTCH.]

The dress of the women of Gairloch scarcely varies from that of the country women in any other part of the kingdom. The princ.i.p.al distinction is to be seen in the retention by some women of the mutch, or mob-cap (_see ill.u.s.tration_), which they still wear, and make up with considerable taste.

Maidens until the last few years never wore caps, bonnets, or other headgear, only a ribbon or snood to keep the hair in place. Any other headdress was considered a disgrace. Even yet a few girls go to church without bonnets; and within the last dozen years this was almost universal. Now, however, the majority of the young women try even to surpa.s.s their sisters in towns in following the fashions of the day; some girls appear on Sundays with almost a flower-garden on their heads.

The Rev. Donald M'Rae truly remarked, in his statement in the New Statistical Account fifty years ago (and it is still true), that "when a girl dresses in her best attire, her very habiliments, in some instances, would be sufficient to purchase a better dwelling-house than that from which she has just issued."

Dr Mackenzie writes on this point as follows:--"In my early days about six or eight bonnets would be the number on Sunday in our west coast (Gairloch) church in a five or six hundred congregation, and these only worn by the wives of the upper-crust tenantry. The other wives wore beautiful white 'mutches,' _i.e._ caps, the insides of which were made up with broad pretty ribbons, which shewed themselves through the outside muslin. Oh! what a descent from them to modern bonnets! The unmarried women always had their hair dressed as if going to court, and were quite a sight, charming to see, compared with their present abominable hats and gumflowers. But when a visitor at Tigh Dige (Flowerdale) expressed wonder how they contrived to have such beautiful glossy heads of hair, set up as by a hairdresser, every Sunday, my father would say, 'No thanks, the jades stealing the bark of my young elms!' It seems a decoction of elm bark cleans and polishes hair marvellously; which accounted for many a young elm of my father's planting having a strip of bark, a foot long by say six inches wide, removed from the least visible side of the tree, as an always welcome present from a 'jade's' sweetheart on a Sat.u.r.day. I don't believe they ever used oil or grease on their shining heads. So universally were mutches worn by all in the north of the working cla.s.ses who were married, that when we settled in Edinburgh in 1827, my widowed nurse was drawn there by a well-doing son to keep house for him, and my mother having given her a very quiet bonnet to prevent her being stared at in Princes Street when wearing her mutch and visiting us, on her first appearance in a bonnet the dear old soul declared she nearly dropped in the street, for everybody was just staring at her for her pride in wearing a bonnet as if she was a lady!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: CABAR LAR, OR TURF PARER.

SCALE--ONE INCH TO A FOOT.]

Chapter VII.

WAYS AND MEANS.

The princ.i.p.al sources of livelihood of the Gairloch people are their crofts and stock and their fisheries, both treated of in separate chapters. Of course a number of men have regular engagements, as farm or other servants and gamekeepers; whilst a few carry on trades, as tailors, shoemakers, weavers, boatbuilders, thatchers, d.y.k.ers, sawyers, carpenters, and masons.

Some young men of the parish go south, and obtain situations either for the winter season or all the year round, and they often contribute towards home expenses.

The women of Gairloch, like all other Highland women, are noticeable for their industry. It is they who carry home heavy creels of peats for the household fire,--peats in the treatment of which they had taken an active share the previous summer; they herd the cow, and manage the house. But, more than all, it is the women who are mainly instrumental in producing the only manufactures of the parish, and very excellent manufactures too they are. They card and dye and spin the wool, they knit the Gairloch hose, and they prepare the various coloured worsteds which the weaver converts into tweeds of different patterns. Large numbers of the stockings are sent to Inverness, Edinburgh, and London (see last chapter). Some of the tweeds are worn in the parish, and some are sold to strangers.

It will be remembered that the early Pictish inhabitants of Gairloch dwelt in the brochs or round houses of what may almost be called the pre-historic period. These were succeeded by turf-built huts, the roofs of which, rudely framed with boughs, were covered with divots or turfs.

The last turf house in the parish is said to have been at Moss Bank, Poolewe, and was occupied by an uncle of John Mackenzie (Iain Glas), whose improved dwelling stands on the same site. There are, however, two modern turf-built dwellings still to be seen at South Erradale. The turf house was gradually replaced by the style of dwelling which now prevails in the parish. The present cottages have their walls of stone, the better ones cemented with lime; the roofs of timber, thatched with heather, rushes, or straw; divots are also still frequently used in roofing. Some few superior crofters' houses have slated roofs, and modern grates with flues and regular chimneys. But many of the crofters still have their byres under the same roof; still have no chimney in the living room, whence the smoke from the peat fire escapes only by a hole in the roof; and still have the heap of ashes, slops, manure, and refuse just outside the door. Sir Francis Mackenzie, in his "Hints" (1838), has some suggestive remarks on the subject of these dwellings. He writes:--"I must at once protest against human beings and cattle entering together in your present fashion at the same doorway.... I will not raise a laugh at your expense by describing your present smoky dens, and the hole in the roof with sometimes an old creel stuck on it in imitation of a chimney. The smoke you now live in not only dirties and destroys your clothes and furniture, but soon reduces the prettiest rosy faces in the world to premature wrinkles and deformities.... Let there be no apology for want of time for carrying away ashes, sweepings, or dirty water, and adding them to your dunghill, instead of sweeping all into a corner till you have more time, and emptying the dirty water at your door because you are too lazy to go a few yards farther."

The houses of the crofters are certainly undergoing gradual improvement, but the majority cling tenaciously to the type of dwelling their fathers occupied before them. Perhaps the villages of Strath, Poolewe, and Port-Henderson contain the most improved houses in the parish. Very few of the crofters have gardens worthy of the name, so that, of course, they lose the advantage of green vegetables and fresh fruits. Still more rare is it to see trees planted about their dwellings, though pleasant shade and shelter might thus be had, and though, it is understood, saplings might be obtained for the asking from the proprietors.

As a natural consequence of the proximity of middens to dwelling-houses, and other unhealthy arrangements, cases of fever occasionally occur. In the Old Statistical Account, 1792 (Appendix C), the writer, speaking of Gairloch, says that fevers were frequent, and an infectious putrid fever early in the preceding winter had proved fatal to many. Pennant had previously noticed how spring fever used to decimate the west coast.

Such outbreaks have happily become rare since the potato famine of 1847 led the people to depend more on imported meal for their sustenance in spring.

Few of the crofters' houses are floored, so that the inmates stand on the natural ground, or put their feet on a loose plank. In wet weather the ground often becomes damp. From this and other local causes pulmonary consumption is common among the crofter cla.s.s. It is only right to add that this fatal disease often appears among some of the young people who go to work in southern towns, and come home to die.

Smallpox is said to have been fatal in Gairloch in the eighteenth century, at the time when it ravaged the adjoining parish of Applecross.

The _soubriquet_ "breac" (_i.e._ pock-pitted), so often met with in the history of Gairloch, is an evidence of the former frequency of this epidemic. Thanks to vaccination, it is now almost unknown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOR-SGIAN, OR PEAT KNIFE.

SCALE--ONE INCH TO A FOOT.]

The chief articles of diet of the crofter population are fish, either fresh or cured, oatmeal, potatoes, and milk, with a little butcher meat occasionally. Eggs are not much eaten, but are exported to Glasgow in considerable quant.i.ties. None of the crofters keep pigs, which they consider to be unclean beasts; it is singular they should entirely neglect a source of food and profit so universal among their Irish congeners. Captain Burt, in his day, noticed the absence of swine among the mountains; he said, "those people have no offal wherewith to feed them; and were they to give them other food, one single sow would devour all the provisions of a family."

The princ.i.p.al intoxicating beverage in Gairloch is whisky. Very little beer is consumed by the natives. Whisky became known in the Highlands during the sixteenth century, and soon found its way to Gairloch; but it is said that the mania for illicit distillation did not reach the parish until the year 1800. The first whisky was distilled in Gairloch by the grandfather of Alexander Cameron, the Tournaig bard, in Bruachaig, on the way up to the heights of Kenlochewe. The mother of George Maclennan, of Londubh, was at that time servant at the Kenlochewe inn, and long afterwards told her son how the innkeeper bought the whisky and the plant as well.

James Mackenzie says that it was in his father's house at Mellon Charles, in the same year (1800), that the first Gairloch whisky was made by a stranger, who had craved and obtained his father's hospitality. Probably both accounts are correct, but it is impossible at this distance of time to determine to whom the questionable honour of having commenced the illicit distillation of whisky ought to be a.s.signed. The mania for smuggled whisky spread very rapidly throughout the parish, and is not yet extinct. The larger islands of Loch Maree were the scenes of illicit distillation in the early part of the nineteenth century. They say a regular periodical market for the sale of whisky made on the islands, used to be held at the large square stone on the sh.o.r.e of Loch Maree between Ardlair and Rudha Cailleach, called Clach a Mhail (_see ill.u.s.tration_).

Peats are the only fuel used by the crofter population; they are cut from the peat-mosses by means of an instrument admirably adapted for the purpose, called the "torasgian," or peat knife (_see ill.u.s.tration_).

Before the cutting is commenced, a spit of turf is removed from the surface of the ground by another implement called the "cabar lar," or turf-parer (_see ill.u.s.tration_). Each tenant has a portion of a convenient peat-moss allotted to him. The peats are cut when the spring work is over,--in April, May, or June,--if the weather permit. After being cut the peats are reared on end to dry, and when thoroughly dried are stacked for use. The stacks are ingeniously constructed, with the outside peats sloping downwards, so as to throw off rain-water. Some twenty years ago there was a season of such continuous wet weather that the peats never dried, and the people were put to great straits to keep themselves warm during the succeeding winter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLIABH MOINE, OR PEAT CREEL.

SCALE--ONE SIXTEENTH TRUE SIZE.]

The peat creel (_see ill.u.s.tration_), called in Gaelic "cliabh moine," is used for bringing home supplies of peat as needed. Creels are made by the people of willow and birch twigs.

There are very few carts among the crofters, and they have no other vehicles.

Dr Mackenzie gives the following account of the curious sledges which were used in Gairloch instead of wheeled carts in the beginning of the nineteenth century:--"There being no need of wheels in a roadless country, although we had a six-mile road to the big loch [Loch Maree]

and another six miles to its exit at the sea [at Poolewe], we had only sledges (in place of wheeled carts), all made by our farm-bailiff or grieve. He took two birch trees of the most suitable bends, and of them made the two shafts, with ironwork to suit the harness of back belts and collar-straps. The ends of the shafts were sliced away with an adze at the proper angle to slide easily and smoothly on the ground. Two planks, one behind the horse and the other about a foot from the shaft-ends, were securely nailed to the shaft, and bored with many augur-holes to receive many four-feet long hazel rungs to form front and back of the cart to keep in the goods, a similar plank atop of the rungs, making the front and rear of the cart surprisingly stiff and upright. The floor was made of planks, and these sledge-carts did all that was needed in moving crop of most kinds. I think moveable boxes, planted on the sledge-floor between the front and rear hazel rod palings, served to carry up fish from the sh.o.r.e, lime, and manure, &c. And it was long ere my father [Sir Hector Mackenzie of Gairloch] paid a penny a year to a cartwright."

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: HIGHLAND HAND-PLOUGH, CALLED CAS-CHROM, OR CROOKED FOOT.

SCALE--ONE FOURTEENTH TRUE SIZE.]

Chapter VIII.

AGRICULTURE AND STOCK.

In the time of the Roman occupation of Great Britain the Highlands were almost dest.i.tute of agriculture. That some corn was grown is manifest, from the ancient querns or hand-mills found everywhere. The possessions of the Highlanders then princ.i.p.ally consisted of herds of cattle.

Tradition says that cheese and b.u.t.ter supplied the place of bread and b.u.t.ter, and that a sort of pudding was made of blood taken from living cattle and mixed with a little meal. These, with meat and milk, formed the diet of the people. When the Highlands became more settled, agriculture increased, more corn was grown, and oatmeal, in some form or other, became a leading article of food.

The cattle of the Highlanders were mostly of the small black kind.

Now-a-days there is a mixture of other breeds amongst the crofters'

stock, and since the introduction of the black-faced sheep the cattle have become less numerous. The practice of drawing blood from living cattle was universal in the Highlands, even in 1730, when Captain Burt wrote his "Letters," and Pennant noticed the same usage in 1772. In Gairloch the practice continued to the beginning of the nineteenth century, if we may trust the evidence of the old inhabitants. At the east end of "the glen" (the narrow pa.s.s about half way between Gairloch and Poolewe), there is a flat moss called to this day Blar na Fala, or "the bog of the blood," because this was a usual place for the inhabitants to a.s.semble their cattle and take blood from them. At Tournaig also a place is still pointed out where the natives used to bleed the cattle landed here from the Lews. This barbarous mode of obtaining blood as an article of food, affords striking evidence of the miserable poverty of the old days.

There was a pernicious practice much in vogue amongst the small farmers here up to the beginning of the nineteenth century; they let their cows for the season to a person called a "bowman," who engaged to produce for every two cows, one calf, two stones of b.u.t.ter weighing 24 lbs. English, and four stones of cheese. The calf was generally starved, and during winter the cattle got food sufficient only to keep them alive.