第48章 OSTIG IN SKY(13)

The Chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury,and daily difficulties;and in their houses were preserved what accounts remained of past ages.But the Chiefs were sometimes ignorant and careless,and sometimes kept busy by turbulence and contention;and one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten history.Books are faithful repositories,which may be a while neglected or forgotten;but when they are opened again,will again impart their instruction:memory,once interrupted,is not to be recalled.Written learning is a fixed luminary,which,after the cloud that had hidden it has past away,is again bright in its proper station.Tradition is but a meteor,which,if once it falls,cannot be rekindled.

It seems to be universally supposed,that much of the local history was preserved by the Bards,of whom one is said to have been retained by every great family.After these Bards were some of my first inquiries;and I received such answers as,for a while,made me please myself with my increase of knowledge;for I had not then learned how to estimate the narration of a Highlander.

They said that a great family had a Bard and a Senachi,who were the poet and historian of the house;and an old gentleman told me that he remembered one of each.Here was a dawn of intelligence.

Of men that had lived within memory,some certain knowledge might be attained.Though the office had ceased,its effects might continue;the poems might be found,though there was no poet.

Another conversation indeed informed me,that the same man was both Bard and Senachi.This variation discouraged me;but as the practice might be different in different times,or at the same time in different families,there was yet no reason for supposing that Imust necessarily sit down in total ignorance.

Soon after I was told by a gentleman,who is generally acknowledged the greatest master of Hebridian antiquities,that there had indeed once been both Bards and Senachies;and that Senachi signified 'the man of talk,'or of conversation;but that neither Bard nor Senachi had existed for some centuries.I have no reason to suppose it exactly known at what time the custom ceased,nor did it probably cease in all houses at once.But whenever the practice of recitation was disused,the works,whether poetical or historical,perished with the authors;for in those times nothing had been written in the Earse language.

Whether the 'Man of talk'was a historian,whose office was to tell truth,or a story-teller,like those which were in the last century,and perhaps are now among the Irish,whose trade was only to amuse,it now would be vain to inquire.

Most of the domestick offices were,I believe,hereditary;and probably the laureat of a clan was always the son of the last laureat.The history of the race could no otherwise be communicated,or retained;but what genius could be expected in a poet by inheritance?

The nation was wholly illiterate.Neither bards nor Senachies could write or read;but if they were ignorant,there was no danger of detection;they were believed by those whose vanity they flattered.

The recital of genealogies,which has been considered as very efficacious to the preservation of a true series of ancestry,was anciently made,when the heir of the family came to manly age.

This practice has never subsisted within time of memory,nor was much credit due to such rehearsers,who might obtrude fictitious pedigrees,either to please their masters,or to hide the deficiency of their own memories.

Where the Chiefs of the Highlands have found the histories of their descent is difficult to tell;for no Earse genealogy was ever written.In general this only is evident,that the principal house of a clan must be very ancient,and that those must have lived long in a place,of whom it is not known when they came thither.

Thus hopeless are all attempts to find any traces of Highland learning.Nor are their primitive customs and ancient manner of life otherwise than very faintly and uncertainly remembered by the present race.

The peculiarities which strike the native of a commercial country,proceeded in a great measure from the want of money.To the servants and dependents that were not domesticks,and if an estimate be made from the capacity of any of their old houses which I have seen,their domesticks could have been but few,were appropriated certain portions of land for their support.Macdonald has a piece of ground yet,called the Bards or Senachies field.

When a beef was killed for the house,particular parts were claimed as fees by the several officers,or workmen.What was the right of each I have not learned.The head belonged to the smith,and the udder of a cow to the piper:the weaver had likewise his particular part;and so many pieces followed these prescriptive claims,that the Laird's was at last but little.

The payment of rent in kind has been so long disused in England,that it is totally forgotten.It was practised very lately in the Hebrides,and probably still continues,not only in St.Kilda,where money is not yet known,but in others of the smaller and remoter Islands.It were perhaps to be desired,that no change in this particular should have been made.When the Laird could only eat the produce of his lands,he was under the necessity of residing upon them;and when the tenant could not convert his stock into more portable riches,he could never be tempted away from his farm,from the only place where he could be wealthy.Money confounds subordination,by overpowering the distinctions of rank and birth,and weakens authority by supplying power of resistance,or expedients for escape.The feudal system is formed for a nation employed in agriculture,and has never long kept its hold where gold and silver have become common.