Picture of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson


places mentioned

Reasons for poverty and emigration

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The great business of insular policy is now to keep the people in their own country.  As the world has been let in upon them, they have heard of happier climates, and less arbitrary government; and if they are disgusted, have emissaries among them ready to offer them land and houses, as a reward for deserting their Chief and clan.  Many have departed both from the main of Scotland, and from the Islands; and all that go may be considered as subjects lost to the British crown; for a nation scattered in the boundless regions of America resembles rays diverging from a focus.  All the rays remain, but the heat is gone.  Their power consisted in their concentration: when they are dispersed, they have no effect.

It may be thought that they are happier by the change; but they are not happy as a nation, for they are a nation no longer.  As they contribute not to the prosperity of any community, they must want that security, that dignity, that happiness, whatever it be, which a prosperous community throws back upon individuals.

The inhabitants of Col have not yet learned to be weary of their heath and rocks, but attend their agriculture and their dairies, without listening to American seducements.

There are some however who think that this emigration has raised terrour disproportionate to its real evil; and that it is only a new mode of doing what was always done.  The Highlands, they say, never maintained their natural inhabitants; but the people, when they found themselves too numerous, instead of extending cultivation, provided for themselves by a more compendious method, and sought better fortune in other countries.  They did not indeed go away in collective bodies, but withdrew invisibly, a few at a time; but the whole number of fugitives was not less, and the difference between other times and this, is only the same as between evaporation and effusion.

This is plausible, but I am afraid it is not true.  Those who went before, if they were not sensibly missed, as the argument supposes, must have gone either in less number, or in a manner less detrimental, than at present; because formerly there was no complaint.  Those who then left the country were generally the idle dependants on overburdened families, or men who had no property; and therefore carried away only themselves.  In the present eagerness of emigration, families, and almost communities, go away together.  Those who were considered as prosperous and wealthy sell their stock and carry away the money.  Once none went away but the useless and poor; in some parts there is now reason to fear, that none will stay but those who are too poor to remove themselves, and too useless to be removed at the cost of others.

Of antiquity there is not more knowledge in Col than in other places; but every where something may be gleaned.

How ladies were portioned, when there was no money, it would be difficult for an Englishman to guess.  In 1649, Maclean of Dronart in Mull married his sister Fingala to Maclean of Coll, with a hundred and eighty kine; and stipulated, that if she became a widow, her jointure should be three hundred and sixty.  I suppose some proportionate tract of land was appropriated to their pasturage.

The disposition to pompous and expensive funerals, which has at one time or other prevailed in most parts of the civilized world, is not yet suppressed in the Islands, though some of the ancient solemnities are worn away, and singers are no longer hired to attend the procession.  Nineteen years ago, at the burial of the Laird of Col, were killed thirty cows, and about fifty sheep.  The number of the cows is positively told, and we must suppose other victuals in like proportion.

Mr. Maclean informed us of an odd game, of which he did not tell the original, but which may perhaps be used in other places, where the reason of it is not yet forgot.  At New-year's eve, in the hall or castle of the Laird, where, at festal seasons, there may be supposed a very numerous company, one man dresses himself in a cow's hide, upon which other men beat with sticks.  He runs with all this noise round the house, which all the company quits in a counterfeited fright: the door is then shut.  At New-year's eve there is no great pleasure to be had out of doors in the Hebrides.  They are sure soon to recover from their terrour enough to solicit for re-admission; which, for the honour of poetry, is not to be obtained but by repeating a verse, with which those that are knowing and provident take care to be furnished.

Very near the house of Maclean stands the castle of Col, which was the mansion of the Laird, till the house was built.  It is built upon a rock, as Mr. Boswell remarked, that it might not be mined.  It is very strong, and having been not long uninhabited, is yet in repair.  On the wall was, not long ago, a stone with an inscription, importing, that 'if any man of the clan of Maclonich shall appear before this castle, though he come at midnight, with a man's head in his hand, he shall there find safety and protection against all but the King.'

This is an old Highland treaty made upon a very memorable occasion.  Maclean, the son of John Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered Barra, had obtained, it is said, from James the Second, a grant of the lands of Lochiel, forfeited, I suppose, by some offence against the state.

Forfeited estates were not in those days quietly resigned; Maclean, therefore, went with an armed force to seize his new possessions, and, I know not for what reason, took his wife with him.  The Camerons rose in defence of their Chief, and a battle was fought at the head of Loch Ness, near the place where Fort Augustus now stands, in which Lochiel obtained the victory, and Maclean, with his followers, was defeated and destroyed.

The lady fell into the hands of the conquerours, and being found pregnant was placed in the custody of Maclonich, one of a tribe or family branched from Cameron, with orders, if she brought a boy, to destroy him, if a girl, to spare her.

Maclonich's wife, who was with child likewise, had a girl about the same time at which lady Maclean brought a boy, and Maclonich with more generosity to his captive, than fidelity to his trust, contrived that the children should be changed.

Maclean being thus preserved from death, in time recovered his original patrimony; and in gratitude to his friend, made his castle a place of refuge to any of the clan that should think himself in danger; and, as a proof of reciprocal confidence, Maclean took upon himself and his posterity the care of educating the heir of Maclonich.

This story, like all other traditions of the Highlands, is variously related, but though some circumstances are uncertain, the principal fact is true.  Maclean undoubtedly owed his preservation to Maclonich; for the treaty between the two families has been strictly observed: it did not sink into disuse and oblivion, but continued in its full force while the chieftains retained their power.  I have read a demand of protection, made not more than thirty-seven years ago, for one of the Maclonichs, named Ewen Cameron, who had been accessory to the death of Macmartin, and had been banished by Lochiel, his lord, for a certain term; at the expiration of which he returned married from France, but the Macmartins, not satisfied with the punishment, when he attempted to settle, still threatened him with vengeance.  He therefore asked, and obtained shelter in the Isle of Col.

The power of protection subsists no longer, but what the law permits is yet continued, and Maclean of Col now educates the heir of Maclonich.

There still remains in the Islands, though it is passing fast away, the custom of fosterage.  A Laird, a man of wealth and eminence, sends his child, either male or female, to a tacksman, or tenant, to be fostered.  It is not always his own tenant, but some distant friend that obtains this honour; for an honour such a trust is very reasonably thought.  The terms of fosterage seem to vary in different islands.  In Mull, the father sends with his child a certain number of cows, to which the same number is added by the fosterer.  The father appropriates a proportionable extent of ground, without rent, for their pasturage.  If every cow brings a calf, half belongs to the fosterer, and half to the child; but if there be only one calf between two cows, it is the child's, and when the child returns to the parent, it is accompanied by all the cows given, both by the father and by the fosterer, with half of the increase of the stock by propagation.  These beasts are considered as a portion, and called Macalive cattle, of which the father has the produce, but is supposed not to have the full property, but to owe the same number to the child, as a portion to the daughter, or a stock for the son.

Children continue with the fosterer perhaps six years, and cannot, where this is the practice, be considered as burdensome.  The fosterer, if he gives four cows, receives likewise four, and has, while the child continues with him, grass for eight without rent, with half the calves, and all the milk, for which he pays only four cows when he dismisses his Dalt, for that is the name for a foster child.

Fosterage is, I believe, sometimes performed upon more liberal terms.  Our friend, the young Laird of Col, was fostered by Macsweyn of Grissipol.  Macsweyn then lived a tenant to Sir James Macdonald in the Isle of Sky; and therefore Col, whether he sent him cattle or not, could grant him no land.  The Dalt, however, at his return, brought back a considerable number of Macalive cattle, and of the friendship so formed there have been good effects.  When Macdonald raised his rents, Macsweyn was, like other tenants, discontented, and, resigning his farm, removed from Sky to Col, and was established at Grissipol.

These observations we made by favour of the contrary wind that drove us to Col, an Island not often visited; for there is not much to amuse curiosity, or to attract avarice.

The ground has been hitherto, I believe, used chiefly for pasturage.  In a district, such as the eye can command, there is a general herdsman, who knows all the cattle of the neighbourhood, and whose station is upon a hill, from which he surveys the lower grounds; and if one man's cattle invade another's grass, drives them back to their own borders.  But other means of profit begin to be found; kelp is gathered and burnt, and sloops are loaded with the concreted ashes.  Cultivation is likely to be improved by the skill and encouragement of the present heir, and the inhabitants of those obscure vallies will partake of the general progress of life.

The rents of the parts which belong to the Duke of Argyle, have been raised from fifty-five to one hundred and five pounds, whether from the land or the sea I cannot tell.  The bounties of the sea have lately been so great, that a farm in Southuist has risen in ten years from a rent of thirty pounds to one hundred and eighty.

He who lives in Col, and finds himself condemned to solitary meals, and incommunicable reflection, will find the usefulness of that middle order of Tacksmen, which some who applaud their own wisdom are wishing to destroy.  Without intelligence man is not social, he is only gregarious; and little intelligence will there be, where all are constrained to daily labour, and every mind must wait upon the hand.

After having listened for some days to the tempest, and wandered about the Island till our curiosity was satisfied, we began to think about our departure.  To leave Col in October was not very easy.  We however found a sloop which lay on the coast to carry kelp; and for a price which we thought levied upon our necessities, the master agreed to carry us to Mull, whence we might readily pass back to Scotland.

Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (London: W. Strahan and T.Cadell, 1775) Text transcribed from the 1775 edition by David Price, including the corrections noted in the 1785 errata. Placename mark-up by Humphrey Southall.

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