This was not Lord Kames speaking, or even Adam Smith. It was Smith"s friend William Robertson, cleric and historian, and later Princ.i.p.al of the University of Edinburgh. Robertson"s great contribution to the Enlightenment was to take Kames"s four-stage theory and apply it to the history of Europe since the fall of Rome. By doing so, he created the modern study of history, turning Kames"s evolutionary model into a way of organizing the history of Western civilization.
The year was 1769, and the book was The History of the Reign of Emperor The History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V. Robertson demonstrated how the Dark Ages marked the return of a pastoral-nomadic society to Europe, with barbarian tribes such as the Vandals and Franks, and how the revival of agriculture, the third stage of civil society, brought with it the seeds of medieval feudalism. Then, starting in the Low Countries and Italy, merchants revived trade in its ancient home, the Mediterranean, and the fourth stage, commercial society, was born in its European guise. "In proportion as commerce made its way into the different countries of Europe," Robertson concluded, "they successively . . . adopted those manners, which occupy and distinguish polished nations." Politeness, as Lord Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson had understood it, now had a firm historical basis. Charles V. Robertson demonstrated how the Dark Ages marked the return of a pastoral-nomadic society to Europe, with barbarian tribes such as the Vandals and Franks, and how the revival of agriculture, the third stage of civil society, brought with it the seeds of medieval feudalism. Then, starting in the Low Countries and Italy, merchants revived trade in its ancient home, the Mediterranean, and the fourth stage, commercial society, was born in its European guise. "In proportion as commerce made its way into the different countries of Europe," Robertson concluded, "they successively . . . adopted those manners, which occupy and distinguish polished nations." Politeness, as Lord Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson had understood it, now had a firm historical basis.
At each stage of civil society, Kames, Smith, and Robertson said, the way people earn their living shapes the character of their laws, their government, and their culture. Who we are depends on whether we are hunters and gatherers, or shepherds and nomads, or farmers and peasants, or merchants and manufacturers-the latter being the makers of "commercial society," or, to use a more familiar term, capitalism capitalism. Almost one hundred years before Karl Marx, Kames and the Scots had discovered the underlying cause of historical change: changes in the "means of production."
Kames had done two other remarkable things. First he had developed a flexible, sliding scale by which to characterize and compare different societies, in the past or the present, based on their position in the four-stage process. Modern England and France clearly fit the modern commercial stage, as did ancient Athens and Renaissance Italy. Medieval England, on the other hand, belonged to the agrarian stage, as did eighteenth-century Russia. The ancient Hebrews and the Indians of the American Plains fit the pastoral-nomadic-along with the Highland clans of Kames"s own Scotland.
But none could be said to be forever fixed or static. This was the point: Human communities are in a state of constant evolution, as they slowly, sometimes inperceptibly, make their way from one stage to the next, higher stage. Kames"s followers borrowed a French term for this process of social evolution. They called it "civilization," meaning a transformation of society from primitive barbarism to a civilized "polite" state.
The four-stage theory of civilization defined human history as a continuous vista of secular progress. Understanding the character of those different stages, and identifying the crucial moving parts in each, would become the task of the Scottish historical imagination for the next hundred years.
But Kames had also solved the question Francis Hutcheson had by implication posed, but never quite answered: Why, if everyone has the same desire to be free and happy, as Hutcheson had claimed, are there so many societies in which people are neither?
Now Lord Kames gives us the answer. Because, under certain primitive material conditions, when resources are scarce or in uncertain supply, the rights of the individual have to give way to the imperatives of the group. The Bushman hunter divides his kill with the rest of his little clan, whether he wishes to or not, because otherwise the group might starve. During the Dark Ages, peasants were bound to the land to produce food, because no one knew when the next attack by marauding Vikings or Saracens might disrupt the harvest and plunge the community into famine.
Under these harsh conditions, society cannot afford to trust individual choice or inclination. Men are guided instead by custom, and the personal authority of those they do trust-"the elders of the tribe" or a warrior n.o.bility. The laws are strict, the punishments harsh.
Then, as material conditions improve, as they inevitably will as they inevitably will when human beings devise new ways to increase their stock of property, the inst.i.tutions governing the community also improve. In short, material progress-from the relative scarcity of the hunter-gatherer Bushmen to the relative prosperity of mercantile London and Edinburgh-brings other kinds of progress in its wake. The affluence and mutually beneficial union of commercial society "softens and polishes the manners of men," as Robertson put it. Individual conscience is prepared to do the work that laws, and fearful punishments and taboos, used to do. As a modern social scientist would say, the rules of socialization are internalized. We no longer need awe-inspiring authority figures-kings and n.o.bles, popes and priests-to tell us what to do, or what is right and wrong. "The moral sense," Kames explained, "is openly recognized, and cheerfully submitted to." Hutcheson"s community of free and active human beings becomes possible, and the old collective traditions and constraints give way to individual liberty. when human beings devise new ways to increase their stock of property, the inst.i.tutions governing the community also improve. In short, material progress-from the relative scarcity of the hunter-gatherer Bushmen to the relative prosperity of mercantile London and Edinburgh-brings other kinds of progress in its wake. The affluence and mutually beneficial union of commercial society "softens and polishes the manners of men," as Robertson put it. Individual conscience is prepared to do the work that laws, and fearful punishments and taboos, used to do. As a modern social scientist would say, the rules of socialization are internalized. We no longer need awe-inspiring authority figures-kings and n.o.bles, popes and priests-to tell us what to do, or what is right and wrong. "The moral sense," Kames explained, "is openly recognized, and cheerfully submitted to." Hutcheson"s community of free and active human beings becomes possible, and the old collective traditions and constraints give way to individual liberty.
Even in Scotland. On the heels of the Jacobite revolt of 1745,8 Kames published his Kames published his Essay Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Essay Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities. Antiquities. In it Kames demonstrated that the politics of traditional Scotland was not about loyalty and devotion to the king, as Jacobites claimed, but about royal land grants, which enabled the king to reward his closest followers and secure control over the people. This was the origin of feudalism. "No Const.i.tution," he wrote, "gives [the sovereign] such an immediate hold of the persons and property of his subjects." Scotland"s traditional laws were not bulwarks of political freedom, as Andrew Fletcher and the rest had used to argue. They were in fact an invitation to despotism. In it Kames demonstrated that the politics of traditional Scotland was not about loyalty and devotion to the king, as Jacobites claimed, but about royal land grants, which enabled the king to reward his closest followers and secure control over the people. This was the origin of feudalism. "No Const.i.tution," he wrote, "gives [the sovereign] such an immediate hold of the persons and property of his subjects." Scotland"s traditional laws were not bulwarks of political freedom, as Andrew Fletcher and the rest had used to argue. They were in fact an invitation to despotism.
Then came the sweep of historical change. "After the arts of peace began to be cultivated" at the close of the Middle Ages, "manufacturers and trade began to revive in Europe, and riches to encrease," and the feudal system "behoved to turn extreme burdensome. It first tottered, and then fell of its own weight, as wanting a solid foundation." Feudalism loses out to trade and commerce, because it runs counter to "love of independence and property, the most steady and industrious of all human appet.i.tes." Commercial society supplies that "love of independence" in abundance. It encourages men to overturn custom and tradition, and establish a new kind of law, based on a free circulation of goods and services.
Already, in 1747, Kames recognized what Adam Smith and later economists would confirm. More than any other stage of society, the commercial stage represents the greatest change from the past. This progress comes at a price: the overturning of almost everything that came before, in laws, in forms of government, even in manners and morals. Capitalism"s innate capacity for creative destruction would fascinate Kames"s followers, including Adam Smith, who would witness its awesome power in the Lowlands and Highlands of their own day.
III.
The four-stage theory, which Kames revised and refined in his Sketches Sketches on the History of Man on the History of Man when he was nearly eighty, would live on after him. It served as the model for William Robertson and others of the "Scottish historical school," and for the great masterpiece of Enlightenment history, Edward Gibbon"s when he was nearly eighty, would live on after him. It served as the model for William Robertson and others of the "Scottish historical school," and for the great masterpiece of Enlightenment history, Edward Gibbon"s The Decline and Fall of the The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Roman Empire. It defined the fields of comparative anthropology and sociology for two hundred years, and inspired a historical genre, "the story of civilization," that would last down to Arnold Toynbee"s It defined the fields of comparative anthropology and sociology for two hundred years, and inspired a historical genre, "the story of civilization," that would last down to Arnold Toynbee"s A Study A Study of History of History and William McNeill"s and William McNeill"s The Rise of the West. The Rise of the West. And at its core was Kames"s notion that changing forms of property drove the evolution of civil society. "Without private property," he wrote in the And at its core was Kames"s notion that changing forms of property drove the evolution of civil society. "Without private property," he wrote in the Sketches, Sketches, "there would be no industry, and without industry, men would remain savages forever." "there would be no industry, and without industry, men would remain savages forever."
Today, of course, we have grown suspicious of attempts to cla.s.sify entire societies as "savage" or "civilized." The multiculturalist teaches us to see them as misleading stereotypes, which denigrate certain non-Western peoples, especially peoples of color, in order to exalt our own Western values. We try to dismiss the four-stage theory as "ethnocentric" or even racist.
It is true that the four-stage theory would help to underpin racial theory in the nineteenth century. But at the time it served a powerful and useful purpose. It enabled people to think of history as a progressive progressive enterprise, with change as a normal, even desirable, feature of society, rather than an undesirable one. It also enterprise, with change as a normal, even desirable, feature of society, rather than an undesirable one. It also cut across cut across issues of race. Enlightened Scots had no difficulty in thinking of China or Persia as "civilized " or even "commercial" societies, just as they understood primitiveness and savagery to be prominent aspects of their own white European past-or, in the case of the Highlands, in their own backyard. It immunized the Scottish historical imagination against attempts to make race determine culture. Nurture, not nature, explained human behavior and inst.i.tutions. Kames himself dismissed the idea that Africans and blacks were inherently inferior to whites. Who can say, he wondered, what kind of society they might produce, if they had the occasion to exercise their powers of freedom, as European whites had? issues of race. Enlightened Scots had no difficulty in thinking of China or Persia as "civilized " or even "commercial" societies, just as they understood primitiveness and savagery to be prominent aspects of their own white European past-or, in the case of the Highlands, in their own backyard. It immunized the Scottish historical imagination against attempts to make race determine culture. Nurture, not nature, explained human behavior and inst.i.tutions. Kames himself dismissed the idea that Africans and blacks were inherently inferior to whites. Who can say, he wondered, what kind of society they might produce, if they had the occasion to exercise their powers of freedom, as European whites had?
Kames and Robertson may have been willing to make "value judgments" about other societies and peoples, but they did it without concerning themselves with skin color. The fundamental issue for them was not race but human liberty, much as it was for Francis Hutcheson. And the proof of it came in the Joseph Knight case.
Joseph Knight was an African-born slave sold in Jamaica, whose master took him to Scotland in 1769. Three years later Knight learned about the celebrated decision by the English Chief Justice Lord Mansfield9 that slavery was contrary to the laws of England. Knight a.s.sumed this included the rest of Britain. Knight went to his master and demanded wages for the work he had been doing for free. His master refused. When Knight tried to run away, the master had him arrested. that slavery was contrary to the laws of England. Knight a.s.sumed this included the rest of Britain. Knight went to his master and demanded wages for the work he had been doing for free. His master refused. When Knight tried to run away, the master had him arrested.
When the case came before the Sheriff of Perth, however, he ruled that there was no slavery in Scotland, and that the slave laws of Jamaica had no validity in his jurisdiction. He let Knight go. Knight"s master appealed, and in 1777 the case arrived at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. It was momentous enough that it was granted a full hearing in front of the full panel of judges, including Lord Kames. History was about to be made, and not just for Scot-land.
Knight"s advocate told the judges, "The law of Jamaica in this case, will not be supported by the Court: because it is repugnant to the first principles of morality and justice." James Boswell had helped him to prepare his brief for Knight"s freedom, with the advice of another tireless opponent of slavery, Samuel Johnson. Their argument was simple: "No man is by nature the property of another." To become the legitimate chattel of another person, he must renounce that original natural freedom. If there is no proof he has done this (and Knight"s own actions clearly proved the opposite), then he must be set free.
Kames, who was now over eighty, vigorously a.s.sented. "We sit here to enforce right," he told his colleagues, "not to enforce wrong." The majority of the court agreed with Kames. They wrote, "The dominion a.s.sumed over the negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country to any extent." They p.r.o.nounced slavery to be against the law in Scotland, and set Knight free. James Boswell was jubilant. He pointed out to friends that although Lord Mansfield had made a similar ruling five years earlier, the Scottish decision was more significant, because it established a broader principle. It went "to the general question, whether a perpetual obligation of service to one master in any mode in any mode should be sanctioned by the laws of a free country." It was a vindication of the historical point Kames had been making for years, that what might have been suitable or necessary for ancient or primitive societies may not be now. Progress was possible, in law as well as in everything else. should be sanctioned by the laws of a free country." It was a vindication of the historical point Kames had been making for years, that what might have been suitable or necessary for ancient or primitive societies may not be now. Progress was possible, in law as well as in everything else.
But it was also a vindication of the Scottish approach to the law. Kames and his fellow judges had decided the case not on precedent but on "the dictate of reason," in order to a.s.sert a basic principle of equity and justice. It was a victory for the notion that man"s claim to liberty is universal. What Francis Hutcheson had first a.s.serted in his Glasgow cla.s.sroom had now been confirmed by Kames and the judges of the Court of Session.
The Knight case shows Lord Kames at his best. In other respects, he is a hard man to like. If Francis Hutcheson represents the soft, humane side of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Scottish character, Kames represents its hard, cold-eyed edge. His sardonic view of the primacy of self-interest and the "thirst for opulence" antic.i.p.ates what comes later in the works of David Hume, and dismays champions of Hutcheson"s moral altruism.
So does Kames"s enthusiastic support for capital punishment. Unlike some of his colleagues on the Court of Justiciary, he saw no conflict between a civilized legal system and hanging men for stealing sheep. "The objects of the penal laws," he argued, "are to be found among that abandoned and most abject cla.s.s of men, who are the disgrace of the species." No other punishment will deter those individuals, he decided, who have "no feelings at all of honour, justice, and humanity."
This is not the sort of sentiment to endear him to the modern liberal, and it must be said that Kames handed out death sentences with a kind of relish that shocked even his fellow judges. Once in a single session he convicted and sentenced two prisoners to be hanged. That evening Kames was in particularly good spirits, boasting to his guests that "he had killed two birds that day." Another time he p.r.o.nounced the death sentence on an old acquaintance, who had been an opponent at chess. "And that"s checkmate, Thomas!" Kames quipped as they led the man away.
Courtesy and social niceties, key ingredients of Hutcheson"s notion of politeness, meant nothing to Kames. He did not mind being vulgar. He liked to call people "brutes" or even "b.i.t.c.hes" (in Scots it can apply to men as well as women). "Davie, how are ye, ye brute?" was a standard greeting if he met a friend on the street. Some took it in good humour, others were horrified. He ignored all questions of social rank. If he could not get an intellectual guest such as Boswell or Thomas Reid to accompany him on one of his interminable walks on his estate, he would get his estate foreman or gardener, or even one of his farm laborers, to go with him, arguing about law and social customs at the top of his lungs as they swung along across the fields, with Kames occasionally stooping to examine, or even taste, the new experimental fertilizer he had ordered laid down the week before.
In the final a.n.a.lysis, we find in Lord Kames and his writings the Scottish mind geared entirely toward the practical and the concrete, shorn of any sentimentality or pretense but also of any compa.s.sion. Religious feeling, too, got short shrift from Kames. Divine Providence increasingly disappeared from his a.n.a.lysis of man as a moral or social animal. When mortal illness finally overtook him, at age eighty-six, he greeted it stoically with his usual lack of sentimentality. His last day on the bench, he said merely good-bye to his colleagues with a jocular "Fare ye weel, ye b.i.t.c.hes!"
James Boswell came up from London to visit him at home a month or so later, shortly before Christmas in 1782. He was shocked, and a little disappointed, to see that the approach of death had failed to lift his old mentor"s thoughts beyond the mundane and trivial. There were no last words of wisdom, insight, or even regret. Nothing.
Boswell, who was a professing Christian and a believer in an afterlife, tried to corner the old man about his views on the subject. "I believe, my Lord," he said, "you have been lucky enough to have always an amiable view of the Deity, and no doubt of a future state."
Kames, sitting in his armchair, said nothing. Boswell confessed he believed the doctrine of an eternity of h.e.l.l"s torment was counterproductive. "No," Kames replied, "n.o.body believes it."
Six days later he was dead.
CHAPTER FIVE.
A Land Divided The Highlanders are Great Thieves.
-Ca.s.sius Dio, Roman historian, Third Century A.D.
Twenty thousand years ago, the last great ice age buried the northern half of Europe under a ma.s.sive glacier. In some places, the Eurasian ice sheet was as much as one mile thick; it acted as a primordial bulldozer, relentlessly shoving aside everything in its path. It did its most destructive work in Scandinavia and northern Britain, grinding the earth"s surface down to the bare rock. When the huge ice plate finally melted and receded, it left behind a pitiless landscape of granite mountains and deep, gouged-out river valleys-the landscape of the Scottish Highlands. Only a thin, provisional crust of topsoil covered the harsh, flinty ground. It is the poorest land in Britain.
Nonetheless, over the next millennia it would become home to a succession of peoples. First, pre-Celtic Neolithic tribesmen; then the Picts, who battled the Romans along Hadrian"s Wall for control of northern Britain; and then, finally, wanderers from Ireland whom the Romans termed Scoti Scoti (or "bandits") but who called themselves the (or "bandits") but who called themselves the Gael. Gael. Celtic by language and culture, the Gaels congregated in extended family groupings-the ancestors of the clans. By the middle of the eighteenth century there were more than 600,000 people living in this wild, inaccessible region. The agriculture produced by that poor layer of topsoil could barely support half that number. Celtic by language and culture, the Gaels congregated in extended family groupings-the ancestors of the clans. By the middle of the eighteenth century there were more than 600,000 people living in this wild, inaccessible region. The agriculture produced by that poor layer of topsoil could barely support half that number.
By 1745 the Highlands were on the brink of starvation. Political events far beyond the mountains and glens were about to set off a ma.s.sive upheaval, as the news spread south that the clans were on the move.
I.
To an observant Scot in the 1730s and 1740s, Lord Kames"s four-stage theory of social evolution was more than a theory; it was a part of everyday reality. Looking around him, he could see all four stages in action at once.
For example, Glasgow and Edinburgh were beginning to exhibit all the characteristics of "polite" commercial society. The fertile river valleys in the middle Lowlands, from Ayrshire and Lanarkshire in the Clyde Valley across the Lothians to Berwick and Roxburgh, fit the agrarian stage, as lairds and tenants labored as they always had to produce the annual harvest. In fact, the Scottish version of "fixed" agriculture was anything but fixed: a prodigious wave of agricultural improvement was about to sweep over the Lowlands. One of the most enthusiastic improvers was Lord Kames himself. He constantly experimented on his family estate with new crops, crop rotation, and different manures and fertilizers-all in order to make his land more productive. Kames even dubbed agriculture "the chief of the arts," and wrote an influential book on the subject. In it he admonished his fellow landlords and their tenants for their "stupid attachment to ancient habit and practices," and pushed them to embrace the new. After the disastrous harvest of 1740, which triggered the last widespread famine in Scottish history, many were ready to follow his lead. Change was becoming the norm in Lowland Scotland, just as it is for us living in the modern global village: change for those living on the land, as well as those in the city.
The Highlands, by contrast, seemed permanently stuck in the pastoral stage. Its inhabitants were herdsmen, living off their flocks of cattle and sheep, with farming coming in a poor second. The clan way of life fit perfectly Kames"s own description of the "shepherd life, in which societies are formed by the conjunction of families for mutual defense." Once a source of strength, the clan system now increasingly isolated its members from the rest of Britain and Scotland.
In 1600, Lowlanders and Highlanders would not have been strangers to each other. By 1700 they were. Even before the Act of Union, a series of changes had driven a wedge between the two halves of Scotland. Some were social and economic, as cities and the cash-based relations between laird and tenant uprooted the last remnants of clanship in the Lowlands. Some were religious, as the Lowlands embraced the Presbyterianism of John Knox, while the clansmen in the north tended to remain loyal to the Catholic faith or followed their chieftains into the Episcopalian Church. Others were linguistic, as Gaelic disappeared from the regions of Scotland south of the Firth of Forth but remained firmly rooted in the glens and Hebridean Islands to the north. But in every case, the next century would only deepen the split, which the events of 1745 would set in high relief.
Then, if the observer turned to the Western Isles and the remotest parts of the north of Scotland, he might catch a glimpse of the most primitive of social stages, the hunter-gatherer stage. Tiny communities of fishermen and gatherers of seaweed and whelks dotted the Hebridean coast, eking out an existence from the rocky sh.o.r.eline as they had for hundreds of years. Samuel Johnson saw them when he made his tour of the Hebrides with James Boswell in 1773, and noted the crude and pitiful huts in which they lived.
A visit to the north made any Scot immune from the romantic myth of the "n.o.ble savage." This was not a life of harmony with nature, as the disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau-or the modern radical environmentalist-might think. It was a world of dreary drudgery, inhabited by a people, Johnson observed, "whose whole time is a series of distress; where every morning is labouring with expedients for the evening; and where all mental pain or pleasure arose from the dread of winter, the expectation of spring, the caprices of their chiefs, and the motions of the neighboring clans." No wonder he concluded, in one of his most famous maxims, that "the best prospect a Scotsman ever sees is the high road to London."
London, perhaps, but more likely Glasgow or Edinburgh. If hunting-gathering and pastoral-nomadic Scotland chained people to a life of dest.i.tution and ignorance, commercial Scotland opened them up to the rest of the world, and the rest of Britain. In 1740, Glasgow"s great Tobacco Lords were just coming into their own, and the wealth from their American trade was about to transform the face of the city. The teeming warehouses and counting-houses along Glasgow"s business district not only looked westward over the Atlantic but also south and east, as Glasgow merchants re-exported their American tobacco cargoes to ports in France, Scandinavia, and Russia, as well as the Mediterranean.10 But it was Edinburgh that first exhibited the key advantages of life in a commercial, modern society. In 1740 it was still a small town compared with London or even Bristol. Citizens rich and poor still lived in the dank narrow alleys and wynds of the Old Town, now packed to overflowing. But the city breathed an energy and cultural vitality that every observer noted immediately. James Boswell described what it was like growing up in Edinburgh in the 1740s, with its unceasing bustle and social diversity, as he would race home after cla.s.s down Horse Wynd and up Borthwick"s Close, past "advocates, writers, Scotch Hunters, cloth-merchants, Presbyterian ministers, country lairds, captains both by land and sea, porters, chairmen, and cadies"-"cadies" being young men hired to do menial tasks (such as the one for which we still use the word, namely carrying golf clubs).
Secular polite culture had arrived in Edinburgh, of a sort that a Lord Shaftesbury could recognize, and despite the occasional fierce opposition of local clergy. The sound that had symbolized the good life for the young Lord Kames-a harpsichord-had become part of everyday public life, thanks to the Crosskeys Tavern off Canongate. There, owner Patrick Steel, who was also a violin maker, sponsored regular concerts by talented amateur musicians. Lord Colville on the harpsichord, Forbes of Newhall on the viola da gamba, Steel himself on the violin, and Sir Gilbert Elliott of Minto on a new instrument from Germany, the transverse flute, drew flocks of admiring ladies. A little later the Edinburgh Musical Society would soon make the city Scotland"s music capital.
More daringly, dancing also penetrated the Edinburgh scene. In 1710, Edinburgh had its first public ball. By the next decade Scotland"s leading aristocrats-Hamilton, Morton, Annandale, and Islay-could be seen dancing minuets, gavottes, and polonaises at parties or "a.s.semblies" in private homes, much like their counterparts in London or Paris. The real breakthrough came in 1737, when ministers-in-training were allowed to learn to dance without fear of retribution, divine or otherwise. Alexander Carlyle, who was studying to be a minister at the university in the 1740s, took up dancing lessons with enthusiasm. As he confessed years later, he became quite good at it, "and had my choice of partners on all occasions."
Carlyle probably also perused Rules of Good Deportment, Rules of Good Deportment, published in Edinburgh in 1720 by Adam Petrie. The published in Edinburgh in 1720 by Adam Petrie. The Rules Rules vividly demonstrated how "polite society" in Shaftesbury and Hutcheson"s sense required new standards of personal behavior. Petrie"s premise was that "civility is a pleasant Accomplishment" as well as "a Duty injoined by G.o.d." He explained to his fellow Scots that gentlemen walk, rather than run, in the street. They don"t make faces or move their hands when they speak. They don"t prod people in the stomach to emphasize a point, and "when you discourse with another, stand not so near him as to breathe in his face." vividly demonstrated how "polite society" in Shaftesbury and Hutcheson"s sense required new standards of personal behavior. Petrie"s premise was that "civility is a pleasant Accomplishment" as well as "a Duty injoined by G.o.d." He explained to his fellow Scots that gentlemen walk, rather than run, in the street. They don"t make faces or move their hands when they speak. They don"t prod people in the stomach to emphasize a point, and "when you discourse with another, stand not so near him as to breathe in his face."
Petrie also warned against making noises when you eat, or cramming your mouth with food, which is behavior, he explained, "more suitable to a Beast than a rational creature." The polite diner does not lick his fingers at the table, or blow on his soup if it is too hot. Petrie concluded his advice on table manners by saying, "Do not smell at what you eat or drink, and it is most rude to do it to what another eats or drinks."
Edinburgh got its first daily newspaper in 1705. The Royal Bank of Scotland, the first such since the disastrous Darien failure, opened its doors in 1727, as did the Friendly Insurance Company and the Royal Infirmary. Scots Magazine Scots Magazine published its first issue in 1739. It is still published today. Shops offering the physical accoutrements of polite manners-lace, gloves, linen underclothing, snuff, and gentleman"s powdered wigs-became part of Edinburgh commercial life, employing local men and women. Allan Ramsay, for example, was apprenticed to a wigmaker when he arrived in Edinburgh from his home in Lanarkshire. Once again, his education was a tribute to Scottish village schools. Although Ramsay was the son and stepson of day laborers, he learned enough Latin to read Horace "faintly in the original," as he put it. Ramsay set up his own wigmaking shop in 1707, the same year as the Act of Union, but continued his voracious intellectual interests, poring over London publications such as Addison"s published its first issue in 1739. It is still published today. Shops offering the physical accoutrements of polite manners-lace, gloves, linen underclothing, snuff, and gentleman"s powdered wigs-became part of Edinburgh commercial life, employing local men and women. Allan Ramsay, for example, was apprenticed to a wigmaker when he arrived in Edinburgh from his home in Lanarkshire. Once again, his education was a tribute to Scottish village schools. Although Ramsay was the son and stepson of day laborers, he learned enough Latin to read Horace "faintly in the original," as he put it. Ramsay set up his own wigmaking shop in 1707, the same year as the Act of Union, but continued his voracious intellectual interests, poring over London publications such as Addison"s Spectator Spectator and Defoe"s and Defoe"s Review. Review. In 1727 he published his first poems, and then opened a bookstore in the Luckenbooths, beside St. Giles"s church. In 1727 he published his first poems, and then opened a bookstore in the Luckenbooths, beside St. Giles"s church.
Ramsay understood, as other Scots soon would, that high culture could also be good business. To increase his customer base, he permitted patrons not only to buy the latest books but also to borrow them for a week or two, for a subscription fee. It was the first lending library in Britain, and soon people were following Ramsay"s example up and down Scotland. At first Ramsay ran afoul of the Kirk: clerics warned that he was allowing profane and sinful works to circulate in the city, and demanded that he be shut down. The day the town council sent inspectors to examine Ramsay"s bookshelves, however, they were amazed to discover them full of theological works and sermons. The city fathers decided to allow Ramsay to stay open.
He did go too far, however, when he tried to open a theater, almost within sight of the John Knox House. The Kirk attacked Ramsay"s "h.e.l.lbred Playhouse Comedians who debauch all the Faculties of the Souls of our Rising Generation," and the place had to be closed. It would be several more years before plays could be performed publicly in Edinburgh; people instead went to what were called "presentations," usually in someone"s private home. But a corner had been turned in the battle against the old prohibitions and taboos, and the Kirk"s warning about "the Souls of our Rising Generation" shows that it knew the old Presbyterianism was losing its grip.
Commercial Scotland had another significance in the 1740s. Glasgow and Edinburgh were where loyalty to the British union ran the deepest. They were "Whig" cities par excellence, meaning committed to ties to England and parliamentary rule from Westminster, as well as the new Hanoverian kings, a succession of German-born Georges with their English prime ministers. The first generation of Scottish Whigs, men such as Princ.i.p.al Carstares, had had to fight for union, and saw it primarily as a way to keep a Protestant on the throne. The next generation-men such as William Robertson, David Hume, Hugh Blair, John Home, and Alexander Carlyle-could take union for granted. Those self-professed disciples of Kames and Hutcheson saw their mission as securing Scotland"s rightful place as England"s equal in this United Kingdom. When Robertson composed his History of Scotland History of Scotland in 1759, he could boast that "the union having incorporated the two nations, and rendered them one people, the distinctions which had subsisted for many ages gradually wear away; peculiarities disappear; the same manners prevail in both parts of the island. . . ." in 1759, he could boast that "the union having incorporated the two nations, and rendered them one people, the distinctions which had subsisted for many ages gradually wear away; peculiarities disappear; the same manners prevail in both parts of the island. . . ."
One such distinction had been political. John Erskine of Grange, a jurist and leading Scottish Whig, noticed this as early as 1735. The end of independent Scotland, with its own Parliament and Privy Council, had not brought despotism and tyranny, as so many had feared. Just the opposite. "There is a wide difference," Erskine noted, "between const.i.tutional and effectual liberty." In Scotland, he explained, "we had the first; but actual liberty was a stranger here." Even the greatest aristocrats were not really free men, "for they were lawless, and with lawlessness freedom is inconsistent." Thinking of figures such as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, Erskine remarked, "the truth is our Scottish heroes of old savor a little of the Poles at present," Poland being the eighteenth-century equivalent of const.i.tutional anarchy. "They fought for liberty and independency, but not [for] the country, but [for] the Crown and the grandees." Scots were beginning to realize that the pa.s.sing of the old laws could be a matter of celebration rather than regret. In fact, that same year, 1735, saw the death penalty for witchcraft finally abolished.
The other distinction between England and Scotland, and just as important in the minds of Robertson and others, had been cultural and literary. Whereas seventeenth-century Scotland had little or no great literature to set beside the achievements of Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, today, Robertson wrote, "the same standard of taste, and purity of language, is established" in both England and Scotland.
"Purity of language"-this touched on a th.o.r.n.y issue in the eighteenth century, namely whether educated Scotsmen should adopt English, instead of Scots, as their primary written and spoken tongue. The social and cultural pressures for taking up English were intense. Everyone knew that England was the dominant partner in this new united kingdom. A Scotsman with drive and ambition measured his success by his success in England, and particularly in the English equivalent of the Big Apple, London. Succeeding there required learning to be and act English: Dr. Johnson"s maxim about the high road to London turned out to be true in more ways than one. At the same time, one was expected to set aside the language and culture one had grown up with since childhood. But how far and how much? That was the question that the early Scottish Enlightenment confronted head-on, and with it something that has bedeviled the modern world ever since: the question of cultural ident.i.ty.
In fact, Scottish Whigs such as Robertson, Adam Smith, and David Hume confronted much the same problem that Indian, Chinese, and other Third World intellectuals would encounter a century or two later: how to deal with a dominant culture that one admired but that threatened to overwhelm one"s own heritage, and oneself with it. At times they tried to act as if there were really only one culture, a British culture, just as there was only kingdom, Great Britain. They even took to calling themselves "North Britons," implying that any remaining difference between the two people was merely geographic. However, no Englishman ever referred to himself as a "South Briton," and Scots knew it. No amount of political wishful thinking could close the cultural gap.
One of the first to realize this was the poet James Thomson. Born in the Scottish border country, he was not only the first nature poet and forerunner of British Romanticism; he also composed the anthem of Scottish Whiggery, which would resound down through the next two centuries as rousing choruses of "Rule Britannia": When Britain first at Heaven"s Command Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung the strain: Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!
Britons never shall be slaves.
Here was the Scottish Whig ideal: we are Britons, Scots and English all, belonging to one nation and enjoying the same privileges and liberties. All the same, although it was Thomson"s own home of Southdean in the Tweed river valley that inspired his poetic landscapes, and although he studied in Edinburgh and lived there for nine years, it was not until he went to London in 1726 and found a fellow Scot named Millan to publish the first part of his cycle of poems, The Seasons, The Seasons, that he found the literary success he craved. that he found the literary success he craved.11 An English, not a Scottish, reading public made Thomson one of the most celebrated writers of the eighteenth century-and English, not his native Scots, served as the vehicle for his poetic muse. An English, not a Scottish, reading public made Thomson one of the most celebrated writers of the eighteenth century-and English, not his native Scots, served as the vehicle for his poetic muse.
So which to use, English or Scots (not, we note, Gaelic, which hardly any urban dweller spoke)? Despite their shared origin as dialects of old Anglo-Saxon, the two languages diverged widely in vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Enlivened by borrowings from French and Scandinavian as well as Gaelic, broad Scots could be heard up and down the streets of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, as well as in the farms and valleys of the Clyde and Tweed. For centuries it had served as the language of law, government, commerce, and the Kirk. It had also sp.a.w.ned a rich literary heritage during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as even a dedicated Scottish Whig such as William Robertson readily admitted. But now, as the eighteenth century dawned, it seemed second-cla.s.s. As the career of James Thomson demonstrated, any Scottish modern or "polite" culture would have to take root in the idiom from the south.
For most Scots, learning to converse and write in English was as difficult as learning a new language. Mistakes in grammar, as well as accent, would constantly give them away. David Hume conversed in broad Scots all his life, but he always regretted that he never learned to speak English as well as he wrote it. He confessed that he and his fellow Scots were "unhappy in our Accent and p.r.o.nunciation." It was not easy to p.r.o.nounce night night as as nite nite instead of instead of nicht, nicht, or say or say brite brite instead of instead of bricht. bricht. It was hard to remember to say It was hard to remember to say old old instead of instead of auld; above auld; above instead of instead of aboon; talk aboon; talk instead of instead of crack; crack; a a gathering gathering instead of a instead of a rockin"; rockin"; to say "It made me very glad" instead of "It pat me fidgin" fain" or "I am angry" instead of "I"m a" in a pelter" and "I have drunk a great deal" instead of "I drang a muckle." Hume confessed to an English correspondent, "Notwithstanding all the Pains, which I have taken in the Study of the English Language, I am still jealous of my Pen. As to my Tongue, you have seen, that I regard it as totally desperate and irreclaimable." to say "It made me very glad" instead of "It pat me fidgin" fain" or "I am angry" instead of "I"m a" in a pelter" and "I have drunk a great deal" instead of "I drang a muckle." Hume confessed to an English correspondent, "Notwithstanding all the Pains, which I have taken in the Study of the English Language, I am still jealous of my Pen. As to my Tongue, you have seen, that I regard it as totally desperate and irreclaimable."
However, the person who best and most famously represents the problems of being a Scot in Georgian Britain is James Boswell.
Boswell is one of those writers whose reputation has suffered from his own success. Generations have come to take him for granted. In his Life of Johnson, Life of Johnson, Boswell turned himself into a sensitive, self-effacing sounding board in order to reveal the character of someone he believed to be not only interesting and admirable, but a truly great man-much as he would have done if he had ever finished his biography of Lord Kames. His voluminous diaries suffer from the same virtues. Boswell made them an absolutely honest and candid record of his own thoughts, experiences, and emotions. They present us with "Bozzie" not as he appeared to others but as he appeared to himself: his fantasies, ambitions, missteps, anxieties, and weaknesses are all revealed in detail. They dominate our recollection of reading them-and of him. Taken together, they have created the image of James Boswell as a genial, b.u.mbling mediocrity, who happened to compose a literary masterpiece almost by accident. Boswell turned himself into a sensitive, self-effacing sounding board in order to reveal the character of someone he believed to be not only interesting and admirable, but a truly great man-much as he would have done if he had ever finished his biography of Lord Kames. His voluminous diaries suffer from the same virtues. Boswell made them an absolutely honest and candid record of his own thoughts, experiences, and emotions. They present us with "Bozzie" not as he appeared to others but as he appeared to himself: his fantasies, ambitions, missteps, anxieties, and weaknesses are all revealed in detail. They dominate our recollection of reading them-and of him. Taken together, they have created the image of James Boswell as a genial, b.u.mbling mediocrity, who happened to compose a literary masterpiece almost by accident.
Now, finally, we are beginning to realize that Boswell was a truly gifted writer and an accomplished man, that rare combination of an intellectual with broad human sympathies as well as a deep personal honesty. He grew up in Edinburgh under the shadow of the impossibly high demands of his disapproving father, Lord Auchinleck of the Court of Session, and found an emotional and intellectual counterweight in his mentor, Lord Kames. It was Kames who encouraged Boswell"s intellectual and literary interests, and who probably enabled Boswell, against his own inclinations, to complete his studies to become a lawyer.
The idea of setting off for London was Boswell"s own, however. He was twenty years old when he first arrived in 1760, determined to succeed in the city that seemed the center of civilized life. He was, as he described himself, "a young fellow whose happiness had always centered in London, who had at last got there, and had begun to taste its delights." He fantasized about "getting into the Guards, being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the beau monde beau monde and the company of men of Genius." and the company of men of Genius."
One thing stood in the way of this fantasy: being Scottish. When he first met Dr. Johnson, his first stammered words were, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." Johnson"s reply was devastating: "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help." It was a bad season for being a Scot in London. The new king, George III, had selected an extremely unpopular prime minister of Scottish origin, Lord Bute, and political feelings ran high against "North Britons." Boswell even attended a play at which the audience kept shouting over and over, "No Scots! No Scots!" The radical John Wilkes published daily diatribes against Scottish immigrants, attacking them as ignorant, grasping, and corrupt: "The princ.i.p.al part of the Scottish n.o.bility are tyrants," Wilkes sneered, "and the whole of the common people are slaves."
In this hostile atmosphere, Boswell struggled with his giveaway Scottish diction, just as Hume did. When he introduced General Sir Alexander MacDonald to Dr. Johnson in March 1772, the distinguished soldier remarked, "I have been correcting several Scotch accents in my friend Boswell. I doubt, Sir, if any Scotchman ever attains to a perfect English p.r.o.nunciation." Johnson replied loftily, "Why, Sir, few of "em do. . . . But, sir, there can be no doubt that a man who conquers nineteen parts of the Scottish accent may conquer the twentieth." Later, Boswell met a Dr. Kenrick, who claimed "he taught a man from Aberdeen to speak good English in six weeks." Kenrick explained to Boswell that his great difficulty was to get the Aberdonian to stop lilting his words as he spoke, as a Scotsman did and an Englishman did not. Kenrick finally told the man, "Sir, you don"t speak at all. You sing."
Today we would naturally expect this sort of prejudice and "negative stereotyping" to breed a deep cultural resentment among educated Scots, or at least a backlash. Remarkably, and characteristically, it had just the opposite effect. Boswell not only read Wilkes"s anti-Scottish scandal sheet (he admired its "poignant acrimony," as he put it), but when they met he found Wilkes to be funny and charming, and they struck up a lasting friendship. Intellectuals in Edinburgh were thrilled, not offended, when in the summer of 1761 the Irish actor and "orthoepist" (or p.r.o.nunciation expert) Thomas Sheridan arrived in town to offer a series of lectures on English elocution. More than three hundred gentlemen, "the most eminent in this country for their rank and abilities," attended Sheridan"s lectures (one of them, we note, was Boswell). They encouraged Sheridan to enlarge on those aspects of spoken English "with regard to which Scotsmen are most ignorant, and the dialect of the country most imperfect." They even encouraged him to run a separate set of lectures for ladies. Sheridan, whose son Richard would become a celebrated playwright and author of The School for The School for Scandal, Scandal, sold places at his lectures for a guinea each-in today"s money, almost a hundred dollars-as well as subscriptions for his forthcoming book for half a guinea. The Edinburgh town council even made him a honorary freeman of the city. All in all, it was a remarkable summer, not only for Sheridan but also for Edinburgh"s elite, whose cultural anxiety evidently ran so deep that they were eager to be lectured on good English from an Irish actor. sold places at his lectures for a guinea each-in today"s money, almost a hundred dollars-as well as subscriptions for his forthcoming book for half a guinea. The Edinburgh town council even made him a honorary freeman of the city. All in all, it was a remarkable summer, not only for Sheridan but also for Edinburgh"s elite, whose cultural anxiety evidently ran so deep that they were eager to be lectured on good English from an Irish actor.
This has led some critics to condemn the Scottish Enlightenment for knuckling under to English "cultural imperialism." But just the opposite was the case. Far from leading educated Scots to abandon or forget their Scottish ident.i.ty, Anglicization seems to have encouraged them to keep it alive and intact. Kames continued to speak Scots on the bench up into the 1780s. Poets such as Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns became in effect bilingual, composing verse in good Scots or perfect Augustan English, depending on the occasion or the mood. Boswell himself spoke his native dialect during his stays in Edinburgh, and when he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau he fantasized about admonishing him in broad Scots for his eccentricities: "Hoot, Johnie Rousseau mon, what for hae ye sae mony figmangairies? You"re a bonny man indeed to mauk siccan a wark; set ye up. Canna ye just live like ither fowk?"12 In effect, the Scots became became English speakers and culture bearers, but English speakers and culture bearers, but remained remained Scots. Instead of forgetting their roots, they acquired new ones. Men such as Boswell, Hume, and Robertson freely conceded the superiority of English culture so that they could a.n.a.lyze it, absorb it, and ultimately master it. They refused to be intimidated, because they intended to beat the English at their own game. They would reshape the dominant English culture so that both the English and the Scots could find a home in it. Scots. Instead of forgetting their roots, they acquired new ones. Men such as Boswell, Hume, and Robertson freely conceded the superiority of English culture so that they could a.n.a.lyze it, absorb it, and ultimately master it. They refused to be intimidated, because they intended to beat the English at their own game. They would reshape the dominant English culture so that both the English and the Scots could find a home in it.
The effort paid off. Robertson and Hume taught the English how to write "philosophical history," using the four-stage theory to illuminate the past. The greatest masterpiece of Enlightenment history, Edward Gibbon"s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, would be unimaginable without its Scottish school predecessors. Boswell"s would be unimaginable without its Scottish school predecessors. Boswell"s Life of Johnson Life of Johnson would become the most famous biography in English letters-again, in would become the most famous biography in English letters-again, in English, English, not Scottish letters. And of course Adam Smith would compose the founding text of modern economics- not Scottish letters. And of course Adam Smith would compose the founding text of modern economics- Inquiry Concerning the Wealth Inquiry Concerning the Wealth of Nations of Nations-in a language that was, it is all too easy to forget, a foreign tongue to him.
By 1758, Horace Walpole, the son of the former prime minister, had to admit "Scotland is the most accomplished nation in Europe." Voltaire agreed: "It is to Scotland that we look for our idea of civilization." A central European observer stated that "it is now an incontestable fact that the princ.i.p.al authors who have adorned the British literature in these latter times, or do honour to it in the present days, have received their birth and education in Scotland." It was as neat an example of reverse cultural imperialism as one can find, and David Hume expressed his pleasure with it in the form of a paradox: Is it not strange that at a time when we have lost our Princes, our Parliament, our independent Government . . . are unhappy in our accent and . . . speak a very corrupt Dialect of the Tongue which we make use of, is it not strange, I say, that in these Circ.u.mstances, we shou"d really be the People most distinguished for Literature in Europe?
All the same, it was a rash man who could have predicted all this before 1745. At that date, Scottish Whigs knew that life even in Edinburgh was still pretty primitive compared with what was going on south of the Tweed. But they understood that change was under way, and that the changes were for the better-that the inst.i.tutions and habits that still held Scotland back, such as the intolerance of the Kirk and the old feudal customs that made rural tenants so dependent on their lairds, were slowly improving. So it came as a shock when so much of Scotland lashed out violently against these changes in 1745, and the deepest, darkest aspects of Scotland"s past suddenly rose up to blot out the future.
II.
Many myths abound about the Highland clans. The oldest, and most persistent, is that the rising of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 symbolized a cultural clash between a Celtic "Jacobite" Highlands, steeped in primeval tribal loyalties, and a modernizing, proto-industrial "Whig" Lowlands. Scottish Whigs actually encouraged this view. It implied that they and their English allies were engaged in a virtual crusade for civilization, a war against an anachronistic social order left over from Scotland"s barbarous history.
The clans were an anachronism, all right, except that they were a holdover from Scotland"s feudal, not tribal, past. The bonds that held the clan together were land and landholding. Their origins had as much to do with French-speaking Normans as with ancient Celts. If we want to identify the true prototypes of the Highland warriors who fought for the Earl of Mar at Sheriffmuir or Prince Charlie at Culloden, we should look not to the ancient Picts or Britons, but to the followers of William the Conqueror.
The term clan, clan, of course, comes from the Gaelic of course, comes from the Gaelic clann, clann, meaning "children." It implied a kinship group of four or five generations, all claiming descent from a common ancestor. And clan chieftains encouraged their followers to believe that they were indeed bound together like family. Men such as the Duke of Argyll of the Campbells or Lord Lovat of the Frasers routinely demanded a loyalty from their tenants not unlike that of children for a father. But it was entirely a fiction. The average clan-and there were more than fifty of them in 1745-was no more a family than is a Mafia "family." The only important blood ties were those between the chieftain and his various meaning "children." It implied a kinship group of four or five generations, all claiming descent from a common ancestor. And clan chieftains encouraged their followers to believe that they were indeed bound together like family. Men such as the Duke of Argyll of the Campbells or Lord Lovat of the Frasers routinely demanded a loyalty from their tenants not unlike that of children for a father. But it was entirely a fiction. The average clan-and there were more than fifty of them in 1745-was no more a family than is a Mafia "family." The only important blood ties were those between the chieftain and his various caporegimes, caporegimes, the so-called tacksmen who collected his rents and bore the same name. Below them were a large, nondescript, and constantly changing population of tenants and peasants, who worked the land and owed the chieftain service in war and peacetime. Whether they considered themselves Campbells or MacPhersons or Mackinnons was a matter of indifference, and no clan genealogist or bard, the the so-called tacksmen who collected his rents and bore the same name. Below them were a large, nondescript, and constantly changing population of tenants and peasants, who worked the land and owed the chieftain service in war and peacetime. Whether they considered themselves Campbells or MacPhersons or Mackinnons was a matter of indifference, and no clan genealogist or bard, the seanachaidh, seanachaidh, ever wasted breath keeping track of them. What mattered was that they were on clan land, and called it home. ever wasted breath keeping track of them. What mattered was that they were on clan land, and called it home.
"In that sense," says one prominent authority on the history of the Highlands, "one cannot really talk about a "clan system," only about specific clans." Those clans that appear in the first written sources were all extinct by the beginning of the sixteenth century. The ones that dominated the landscape in 1745-Fraser, Cameron, Mackenzie, Stewart of Appin, and the most famous of all, the Campbells and the MacDonalds-mostly date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, after Norman mercenaries had come to Scotland at royal invitation and established a pattern of feudal landholding across both the Highlands and Lowlands. Norman feudalism intermingled with Celtic tribal tradition, creating a hybrid: the clan, headed by a chief with his tenants living on a wartime footing. Many of these Norman knights and their descendants, such as Fraser, Drummond, Montgomery, Grant, and Sinclair, became heads of clans. Secured in their power by royal decree and tribal superst.i.tion, they became the power brokers of medieval Scotland and a law unto themselves, just like their feudal magnate counterparts in England or France. The only difference was that while the John of Gaunts and Charles the Bolds disappeared across the rest of Europe, and eventually even from Lowland Scotland, men such as the Lords Lovat of Fraser and MacDonnells of Keppoch lived on, a source of Highland pride and legend, but also of disunity and strife.
Scottish feudal law gave the chiefs land and peasants, as well as tenants-in-chief, the tacksmen, to run things. It also gave them formal jurisdiction over persons living in the clan area, including the power of life and death. They did not hesitate to use it. Once a woman was brought before MacDonald of Clanra.n.a.ld, accused of stealing money from him. He ordered her tied by the hair to seaweed among the rocks, until the Atlantic tide came in and drowned her.
Another chief, Coll MacDonnell13 of Barrisdale, required all fishermen on his land to pay him one-fifth of their catch. Those who failed to pay up found themselves tied to a device locals dubbed the "Barrisdale." Iron rings held a man flat on his stomach while a large stone weight was strapped to his back, and a steel spike placed under his chin. If the miscreant failed to support the stone"s weight, the spike would drive up through his chin to the roof of his mouth. It is with a jolt that we remember this was in 1740, not 1140, and that there was nothing in Scottish law to protect a MacDonnell tenant from his chieftain"s protection racket. of Barrisdale, required all fishermen on his land to pay him one-fifth of their catch. Those who failed to pay up found themselves tied to a device locals dubbed the "Barrisdale." Iron rings held a man flat on his stomach while a large stone weight was strapped to his back, and a steel spike placed under his chin. If the miscreant failed to support the stone"s weight, the spike would drive up through his chin to the roof of his mouth. It is with a jolt that we remember this was in 1740, not 1140, and that there was nothing in Scottish law to protect a MacDonnell tenant from his chieftain"s protection racket.
What the average clansman got in exchange for submitting to this sometimes brutal authority was land, land to work or graze in order to feed his family, and to pay his rent. Rarely did he call himself a MacDonald or a MacKinnon or an Ogilvie or whatever the clan name was; he used patronymics or nicknames instead, such as Collum mac (meaning "son of") Fergus vic ("grandson of") Ian, or Angus mor (Angus the elder) or Angus ruadh ruadh (meaning "red"). His membership in the clan rested on the ties of custom, not kinship. He obeyed the chief, paid the chief"s rent, listened to his bard"s songs and stories, wore his badge, a sprig of herb or plant, in battle, and shouted his slogan because they were the (meaning "red"). His membership in the clan rested on the ties of custom, not kinship. He obeyed the chief, paid the chief"s rent, listened to his bard"s songs and stories, wore his badge, a sprig of herb or plant, in battle, and shouted his slogan because they were the clan"s clan"s badge and slogan, just as it was the clan"s land he worked. He saw the chief and his tacksmen and his bodyguards, the henchmen, not as masters, but as guardians and trustees of what ultimately belonged to everyone. badge and slogan, just as it was the clan"s land he worked. He saw the chief and his tacksmen and his bodyguards, the henchmen, not as masters, but as guardians and trustees of what ultimately belonged to everyone.
Unfortunately, this was not how the chieftains themselves saw it. Whatever sense of communal responsibility might have existed was fading fast; loyalty was becoming more and more a one-way street. Most chieftains now thought of themselves as landed aristocrats. They wore ruffled lace and drank French claret. They and their sons were educated at the universities. Families such as the Campbells and the Camerons kept fine houses in Edinburgh, although most of their followers were dirt poor. The sons of a chief continued to be raised in the traditional way, in the midst of the clan, and wet-nursed in the cottage of a humble clanswoman, whose own son became his milk-brother. He still had to prove his leadership in battle, by leading cattle raids on neighboring clans or committing acts of petty revenge. But increasingly the chieftains came to think of the clan land as their own property, and looked for ways to guarantee