This post is in reply to one sent by Greg requesting my sources for information about the Highlands, and doubting my perspective on the social and economic situation there before the 17th century. Unfortunately, I have lost that post and so I am responding to it by memory of its content. I recall that Greg cited the burgh system as a monetary _base_d industrial system that would have had a large social effect upon the Highlands due to their proximity. I believe that this statement places far too much of both influence, and affluence upon the burghs. In fact, the majority of the craftsmen in the burghs were Flemish or Dutch, not Scottish, and the Highlanders by large majority spoke no English (the language of the Lowlands). If the idea that since there were trade burghs in the Lowlands there had to be industry in the Highlands were true then what about the Zulu’s who have lived in and around Natal for so long? The Highlanders were not ignorant, nor were they stupid they were very culturally different from their Lowland neighbors by choice. To the English and Lowlanders of the times the Irish were dogs and the Highlanders were known as wild Irish. Does this sound like a similar culture? In 1380 the Aberdeen chronicler John of Fordun wrote that : The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech. For two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic: the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The people of the coast are of domestic and civilized habits, trusty, patient and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful, devout in Divine worship yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hand of their enemies. The highlanders and people of the islands on the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude, and independent, given to rapine, easy living, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to English people and language and owing to diversity of speech, even their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. Doesn’t sound like they wanted anything the Lowlands had to teach does it
? In regards to the Lowlands, Fynes Morrison had this to say about a visit he paid there in 1578: The Scots living then in factions, used to keep many followers and so consumed their revenew of victuals, living in some want of money If this is so of the civilized Lowlands of the time, what shall we make of the remote Gaedhealtacht? As to farming, the Western Highlands of the time had about five percent arable land. Anything that could be used for fertilizer was valued. The two main crops were barley, and bear (or four row barley of an inferior type used for ale) the ale was brewed and drunk at the home of the farmer (T.C.Smout, 118). As to industry: In the Highlands, where water-mills were scarce, grinding was normally done at home by hand-querns (Smout,120). Smout qouting contemporary sources has this to say about the common mans personal wealth: Apart from the bed, the meal kists and a stool or two, the husbandman had little furniture. A Perthshire tenant in 1596, a man with forty sheep, twenty goats, fifteen cattle and four horses had as houshold possesions just one chest, one pot, one kettle, one brass pot, one chair, two dishes, two cups, and four wooden plates (140). Boy those soft Lowlanders sure got it easy with their burghs! :-' Here is some more of Smouts musings on the picture of the Highlands of the 17th century: It is a society which, while already changing in the direction of the Lowland norms, belongs still to another cultural milieu altogether. Half of the drama of Highland history in the next century is caused by the clash and tangle of these two cultures, and by resolvingthe differences between them (313). These differences are crucial to understand if we are to understand the Highlander of the pre-16th C. I know that I have already taken up too much space here but I would like to quote Smout one more time to finish illustrating my hurriedly made points: Highlanders were everywhere necessarily ingenious at fashioning the essentials of life from local materials. Candles, for instance were made from the pitchy core of living pines or from animal fat cooled in moulds, ropes were woven out of wood-roots, clothing spun and woven from animal hair, and brogue cut from skins. Much of this was done in the summer when the community moved up to the hill shielings and lived in temporary huts, tending their cattle and sheep, churning butter, and taking life with its temporary bounty of abundant food and a modicum of sunshine, in a holiday spirit. An estate might have an occasional specialized weaver and a smith, living partly from their own calling and partly from a holding of land and some animals. It might support some itinerant tinkers (who made spoons from melted horn), a few professional drovers and a very few pedlars. Martin Martin noticed pedlars on Skye , and said they were Lowlanders from Morayshire. A few Lowland merchants, generally of Glasgow or Inverness sent their boats round to the isles and sea lochs, mainly to barter with the chiefs and tacksmen. Otherwise there was no one to fill the niche of craftsman, manufacturer or merchant because at this level such a niche hardly existed to fill (319). Since you did not ask for sources on a specific topic it is rather hard to comply as I have spent almost 12 years studying, demonstrating, teaching, and lecturing on life in the Highlands at various Scottish festivals and Highland games . Some of the most influential sources I have used and recommend are: Tocher, Tales, Songs and Traditions A quarterly booklet put out by the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh Johnson, Samuel. Johnson and Boswell’s Tour of the Hebrides New York, Oxford University Press,1957. Lang, Andrew. A History of Scotland In four volumes, New York, William Blackwood And Sons, 1901. Smout, T.C. A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830 Glasgow, William Collins & Sons Ltd., 1979. I. James Basilikon Doron (ed. James Craigie) Scottish Text Society, 1942. The Dewar Manu_script_s, Volume I. Scottish West Highland Folk Tales, collected originally in Gaelic by John Dewar for the 8th Duke of Argyll, translated into English by Hector Maclean of Islay, edited by the Rev. John MacKechnie. Glasgow, 1964. And all of John Prebble’s works on Scottish history. Always willing to learn, just show me the proof! Conal an Iolar mac Eoghan. Na Glennateigh (Who is far from an expert, but has been doing this long enough to have a minor amount of discernment and an often too large ego about it!)
