第27章 CORIATACHAN IN SKY(2)

Their native bread is made of oats,or barley.Of oatmeal they spread very thin cakes,coarse and hard,to which unaccustomed palates are not easily reconciled.The barley cakes are thicker and softer;I began to eat them without unwillingness;the blackness of their colour raises some dislike,but the taste is not disagreeable.In most houses there is wheat flower,with which we were sure to be treated,if we staid long enough to have it kneaded and baked.As neither yeast nor leaven are used among them,their bread of every kind is unfermented.They make only cakes,and never mould a loaf.

A man of the Hebrides,for of the women's diet I can give no account,as soon as he appears in the morning,swallows a glass of whisky;yet they are not a drunken race,at least I never was present at much intemperance;but no man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram,which they call a skalk.

The word whisky signifies water,and is applied by way of eminence to strong water,or distilled liquor.The spirit drunk in the North is drawn from barley.I never tasted it,except once for experiment at the inn in Inverary,when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy.It was strong,but not pungent,and was free from the empyreumatick taste or smell.What was the process Ihad no opportunity of inquiring,nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.

Not long after the dram,may be expected the breakfast,a meal in which the Scots,whether of the lowlands or mountains,must be confessed to excel us.The tea and coffee are accompanied not only with butter,but with honey,conserves,and marmalades.If an epicure could remove by a wish,in quest of sensual gratifications,wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.

In the islands however,they do what I found it not very easy to endure.They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of cheshire cheese,which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea.

Where many questions are to be asked,some will be omitted.Iforgot to inquire how they were supplied with so much exotic luxury.Perhaps the French may bring them wine for wool,and the Dutch give them tea and coffee at the fishing season,in exchange for fresh provision.Their trade is unconstrained;they pay no customs,for there is no officer to demand them;whatever therefore is made dear only by impost,is obtained here at an easy rate.

A dinner in the Western Islands differs very little from a dinner in England,except that in the place of tarts,there are always set different preparations of milk.This part of their diet will admit some improvement.Though they have milk,and eggs,and sugar,few of them know how to compound them in a custard.Their gardens afford them no great variety,but they have always some vegetables on the table.Potatoes at least are never wanting,which,though they have not known them long,are now one of the principal parts of their food.They are not of the mealy,but the viscous kind.

Their more elaborate cookery,or made dishes,an Englishman at the first taste is not likely to approve,but the culinary compositions of every country are often such as become grateful to other nations only by degrees;though I have read a French author,who,in the elation of his heart,says,that French cookery pleases all foreigners,but foreign cookery never satisfies a Frenchman.

Their suppers are,like their dinners,various and plentiful.The table is always covered with elegant linen.Their plates for common use are often of that kind of manufacture which is called cream coloured,or queen's ware.They use silver on all occasions where it is common in England,nor did I ever find the spoon of horn,but in one house.

The knives are not often either very bright,or very sharp.They are indeed instruments of which the Highlanders have not been long acquainted with the general use.They were not regularly laid on the table,before the prohibition of arms,and the change of dress.

Thirty years ago the Highlander wore his knife as a companion to his dirk or dagger,and when the company sat down to meat,the men who had knives,cut the flesh into small pieces for the women,who with their fingers conveyed it to their mouths.

There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick,so great,and so general,as that which has operated in the Highlands,by the last conquest,and the subsequent laws.We came thither too late to see what we expected,a people of peculiar appearance,and a system of antiquated life.The clans retain little now of their original character,their ferocity of temper is softened,their military ardour is extinguished,their dignity of independence is depressed,their contempt of government subdued,and the reverence for their chiefs abated.Of what they had before the late conquest of their country,there remain only their language and their poverty.Their language is attacked on every side.Schools are erected,in which English only is taught,and there were lately some who thought it reasonable to refuse them a version of the holy scriptures,that they might have no monument of their mother-tongue.

That their poverty is gradually abated,cannot be mentioned among the unpleasing consequences of subjection.They are now acquainted with money,and the possibility of gain will by degrees make them industrious.Such is the effect of the late regulations,that a longer journey than to the Highlands must be taken by him whose curiosity pants for savage virtues and barbarous grandeur.