Travellers' Tales of Scotland

The following is from Travellers' Tales of Scotland by R. H. Coats:

VIII - Captain Burt

(1726)

WHEN General Wade was appointed Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's forces in Scotland, in the year 1724, and was instructed to discover the strength and resources of that country, and to reconnoitre it with a view to possible Jacobite risings in the north, he took with him into the Highlands a certain Edward Burt. Very little is known of this gentleman's personal history. He has generally been styled "Captain" Burt, but he held no officer's rank in the army itself, and seems rather to have been attached to the contract and commissariat department. He also served in making the well-known military road which was to be Wade's principal means of penetrating the Highlands, and connecting their remotest fastnesses with "Edinburgh and the south. This highway ran northwards for a hundred and fifty miles from Crieff, through Glenalmond, to Dunkeld, Blair Athol, and Dalwhinnie, whence it branched off to Inverness, Fort Augustus, and Fort William. Five hundred soldiers were employed in its construction for a period of three years, and sixpence a day extra was paid them for their work. So great a reputation did General Wade earn by the success of this undertaking that he came to be spoken of in the district as "the highwayman," and a humorous rhymed bull concerning him passed rapidly into circulation:

"Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade."

The magnum opus of the whole enterprise was the building of a bridge over the Tay. This structure spanned that wild and rapid river in fifteen arches, the longest of which extended to fifty feet. It was built of ashlar stone, and bore on its central pier an inscription in Latin from the pen of no less a person than the headmaster of Westminster School, which was designed to carry Wade's fame to the farthest ages, and which rose to the following exultant climax:

Ecce quantum valeant,
Regis GEORGII SECUNDI auspicia.

General Wade now lies in Westminster Abbey, buried beneath a heavy monument by Roubillac. Could he rise from his grave at the present day and view the mighty girders which span the Firth of Forth, it is possible he might form a more modest estimate of his own achievements. But at least he accomplished a feat that was noteworthy in his time, and he could boast, before he died, of being able to gallop for miles into the Highlands, where formerly he had been obliged to dismount every few yards.

Fortunately for us, this Captain Burt whom Wade took with him, devoted himself not only to the making of roads, but also, by way of relaxation, to the writing of letters, which describe in the greatest detail the Highlands as he saw them in 1726. Burt made it a rule to put nothing into those letters which he had not observed for himself, or at any rate learned from reliable sources of information, and he sat down to pen them in a genial, expansive frame of mind, determined to write colloquially of whatever might come his way. He was evidently a man with a whimsical vein in him, and given to simple and innocent delights. "You might have seen me throwing haddocks' and whitings' heads into the river from the parapet of the bridge at Inverness, only to see the eels turn up their silver bellies in striving one with another for the prey. At other times they might tell you they saw me letting feathers fly in the wind, for the swallows that build under the arches to make their circuits in the air, and contend for them to carry them to their nests. I have been jestingly reproached by them, en passant, for both these amusements, as being too juvenile for me. This I have returned in their own way (by telling them I thought myself at least as well employed as they when tumbling over and over a little cube made out of a bone, and making every black spot on the faces of it a subject of their fear and hope."

There are one or two references scattered among the letters which assist us in placing them in their historical setting. Witches, we read, were still tortured to death in pitch-barrels, and the recent Union of the Kingdoms was bitterly resented everywhere in Scotland. Burt tells us he met an old laird somewhere who remembered the stirring times of Oliver Cromwell, and recollected the day when his standard floated in the wind from Inverness Castle, with the word IMMANUEL written over it in letters of bright gold. Indeed, the terror of the Protector's name was still held threateningly over the intractable and disobedient youngsters of Inverness in the eighteenth century, although it was grudgingly admitted that not only the cabbages but also the pure and beautiful accent of that city had been introduced in the first instance by Cromwell's soldiers.

By the year 1726, when Burt was in Scotland, the country was hotly Jacobite. "Being at church in Aberdeen one Sunday morning, with another English gentleman, when the minister came to that part of the litany where the King is prayed for by name, the people all rose up as one in contempt of it, and men and women set themselves about some trivial action, as taking snuff, etc., to show their dislike, and signify to each other they were all of one mind. And when the responsal should have been pronounced, though they had been loud in all that preceded, to our amazement there was not one single voice to be heard but our own, so suddenly and entirely were we dropped." Of the Glasgow of those days Burt tells us it was "the prettiest and most uniform town he had ever seen." Edinburgh he admired for its picturesqueness and beauty of situation, but he threaded its wynds and closes with trembling and apprehension, fearful lest the throwing up of a window-sash should expose him at any moment to a shower of filth, and led by a man who cried out incessantly, "Haud your haund," in order to give warning and prevent his discomfiture and disgrace.

Burt's duties, however, took him not to the cities of the south, but to the remote glens and mountains of the north, which were less known to Englishmen than the East Indies, and were seldom approached but by those who had been devout enough to make their testament beforehand. To the road-surveyor from England the Grampians seemed hideous in the extreme, especially if observed from east to west. "Then the eye penetrates far among them and sees more particularly their stupendous bulk, frightful irregularity, and horrid gloom, made yet more sombrous by the shades and faint reflections they communicate one to another." Ben Nevis, which Burt understood to be three-quarters of a mile high, was attacked, he tells us, by a group of English officers who made every effort to reach the top. "But they could not attain to it, for bogs and huge precipitous rocks, and when they were got as high as they could go, they found a vast change in the quality of the air, saw nothing but the tops of other mountains, and altogether a prospect of one tremendous heath with here and there some spots of crags and snow." In addition to these awful deterrents, there were the pitiless rains. "At Fort William I have heard the people talk as familiarly of a shower (as they call it) of nine or ten weeks as they would of anything else that was not out of the ordinary course."

It is scarcely to be wondered at that in such a country the crops were scanty and the grain poor. Burt could find nothing but oats and barley in the north. A field of wheat, he writes, would be "as great a rarity as a nightingale in any part of Scotland, or a cat-o'-mountain in Middlesex." Once only did he come across a patch of real corn which, by favour of an extraordinary year, had been grown in the county of Ross. "But the owner made so much parade of it that the stack stood in his courtyard till the rats had almost devoured it." In many parts the agricultural implements in use were constructed entirely of wood, and ploughmen might be seen walking backwards in front of their horses, guiding them to avoid the rocks, the share or harrow being in some cases attached to the animals' tails, without the relief of any sort of harness whatever. Even when harvests did ripen on those high altitudes, they were almost certain to be gathered wet because of the heavy rains, when the only chance of their ever being dried again was from the free passage of the wind through the barns in which they were stored. Of these damp oats a few ears would be roasted daily. The straw and husks were thus burnt off and the sooty remains ground and converted into bannocks, as the needs of the family required.

Burt willingly testified that he found every available foot of arable land thus cultivated in the Highlands, and even, so far as possible, improved. The great lack everywhere was a supply of good manure. Women might frequently be seen carrying dung in their creels from the garrison at Fort William, and then spreading it out on the land with their own hands, "even breaking the balls so that every part might have its due proportion." In a country of such barrenness and extremes of poverty one may sympathize with the feelings of an English officer of whom Burt gives us an account. He had ridden with a certain laird over several miles of waste moorland, when his companion turned to him and said, "Now, sir, all the ground we have hitherto gone over is my property." "By G------," replied the other, "I have an apple tree in Herefordshire that I would not swop with you for it all!" On another occasion Burt himself, who had ordered his servant to use some lemons in preparing a bowl of whisky punch, was asked by a native if these were apples which his servant was squeezing. "And indeed," adds the writer, with feelings of silent pity," there are as many lemon-trees as there are apple-trees in that country. The only fruit the natives have are bilberries"

But the open country of the Highlands, bleak and barren though it might be, was sometimes to be preferred to the wretched dwellings. The hovels which Burt saw in various parts of the country he could only liken to "fuming dunghills removed and fresh piled up again, and pretty near the same in colour, shape, and size." Outside these filthy huts would be a group of children, naked and overrun with vermin; and, inside, a group of old people, crouching over the smoke of a smouldering peat fire till their eyes were blinded and their feet scorched. "This long continuance in smoke makes them almost as black as chimney-sweepers; and, when the huts are not watertight, the rain that comes through the roof and mixes with the sootiness of the inside, where all sticks look like charcoal, falls in drops like ink." The excuse for all this, of course, was that the smoke kept the occupants warm, and cleanliness was a luxury which could not be afforded. How was it possible for a starving crofter to invest in soap, towels, or a scrubbing brush, when even in Inverness the domestic servants counted themselves rich if they received three half-crowns a year and a peck of oatmeal every week?

The inns of the country were little better than the houses. The heart of Burt was strangely warmed within him on the first night of his sojourn in Scotland, when the landlady suggested that his supper might consist of a dish of potted pigeons. But, alas! the cloth on which they were served was so greasy, and the pigeons themselves floated in such a mess of rancid butter, that the traveller was thankful to exchange them for a crust of bread. Burt good-humouredly mentions in his letters that, being an Englishman, he was regarded by the Scots as a "pock-pudding," and in one place he interjects the remark, "And now, methinks, I hear one of this country say, 'A true Englishman! He is always talking of eating.'" But even a pock-pudding may surely feel justified in objecting to a cook who places a large lump of butter on the smoky chimney-piece, and then rakes out what she may want of it for the saucepan with her fingers!

Better fare than this, however, was sometimes to be had. Burt was often surfeited in the Highlands with what would have been esteemed in London the rarest delicacies; and grouse, trout, partridge were common articles of diet. Especially was he fed to repletion on salmon, which could be bought in the market at twopence a pound; while beef and mutton would be sold in the autumn at half that price. And it was always possible to wash down these good things with a cup of fine claret or excellent French brandy. The glory of the country, however, was a drink by the natives called Usky, "which, though a strong spirit, is to them as water." Sometimes three or four quarts would be drunk by one person at a sitting; and Burt was informed by a collector of customs in Stornoway that about 120 families in the island of Lewis consumed every year as many as four thousand English gallons of that spirit. As for the honey of the district it was "in every respect as good as that of Minorca." The Lowlanders might talk to their hearts' content of a "land o' cakes." The Highlanders could boast of a "land of milk and honey."

Of the manners of the people, Burt had much to say to his English correspondent. He was evidently vastly entertained with the ceremony of a "penny wedding," at which the bride must go round and kiss every gentleman in the room, and a collection would be taken among the company assembled, sufficient not only to pay the fiddler and cover the expenses of the feast, but also to enable the young couple to start comfortably in life. The funeral customs were even more remarkable. "The friends of the deceased usually meet at the house of mourning the day before the funeral, where they sit a good while like Quakers at a silent meeting, in dumb show of sorrow; but in time the bottle is introduced, and ceremony quite reversed. The company are invited to walk into a room where there usually are several pyramids of plumcake, sweetmeats, and several dishes, with pipes and tobacco. The last is according to an old custom, for it is very rare to see anybody smoke in Scotland... When the company return to the house, all sorrow seems immediately to be banished, and the wine is filled about as fast as it can go round, till there is hardly a sober person among them. In the conclusion, some of the sweet-meats are put into your hat or thrust into your pocket, which enables you to make a great compliment to the women of your acquaintance." At funerals of a better class there would be dancing, a coronach, and the shrieking of hired mourners, till all ended at last in a confusion of drunkenness and bloody broils.

The women of Scotland were objects of great interest to our observer. He commended their industry in the spinning of wedding linen, and confessed that they were far more thrifty and well set up in these matters than their sisters in England who belonged to the same rank. A woman, on getting married, he found, immediately set about spinning her own winding sheet, and woe to the husband who ever dreamed of selling or sending to the pawn so sacred a household treasure! This, of course, was reasonable enough, but Burt could not get over his astonishment when he saw Scotswomen treading their washtubs with their skirts tucked up about their waists, and even carrying their husbands ashore from the fishing boats to keep them from the wet. If anything could surprise him more than this, it was probably to find himself kissed quite frankly and ingenuously by well-bred hostesses on his bidding them farewell. "The two young ladies, on my saluting them at parting, did me a favour which with you would be thought the utmost invitation; but it is purely innocent with them, and a mark of the highest esteem for their guest. This was no great surprise to me, having received the same compliment several times before in the Highlands, and even from married women, who, I may be sure, had no further design in it. But I am not singular, for several officers in the army have told me they received the same courtesy from other females in the hills." A watchful eye, however, was kept on all such liberties by the Kirk. "The ministers here in Scotland would have the ladies come to church in their plaids, which hide any loose dress, and their faces too, if they could be persuaded, in order to prevent the wandering thoughts of young fellows, and perhaps some old ones too; for the minister looks upon a well-dressed woman to be an object unfit to be seen in the time of divine service, especially if she be handsome."

As for the preaching of these watchful ministers themselves, Burt thought it savoured too much of dogma and too little of morality. "The subjects of their sermons are for the most part grace, free will, predestination, and other topics hardly ever to be determined. They might as well talk Hebrew to the common people, and I think to everybody else. But thou shalt do no manner of work they urge with very great success. Their prayers are often more-like narratives to the Almighty than petitions for what they want, and the sough, as it is called (the whine) is unmanly, and much beneath the dignity of the subject. I have heard of one minister so-great a proficient in this sough, and his notes so remarkably flat and productive of horror, that a, master of music set them to the fiddle; and the wag used to say that in the most jovial company, after he had played his tune but once over, there was no-more mirth among them all the rest of that evening than if they were just come out of the cave of Trophonius." Burt was much amused to find that whenever there was a bottle to be opened or a dram drunk, if a minister happened to be present a grace was sure to be called for and given at great length, unless indeed the company were hopelessly unmannerly and irreverent. At the same time he could not but feel the greatest respect for the Presbyterian clergy whom he met. "Although they have not the advantage of any outward appearance by dress to strike the imagination or to distinguish them from other men who happen to wear black or dark gray, yet they are, I think I may say, ten times more reverenced than our ministers in England. In business or ordinary conversation they are for the most part complaisant, and I may say supple, when you talk to them singly at least I have found them so. But when collected in a body at a Presbytery or Synod, they assume a vast authority and make the poor sinner tremble."

Of the Highlander as he saw him, Captain Burt entertained a very high opinion, and he conceived the greatest reverence for the magnificence of a clan chieftain. Such a potentate in those days would not dream of visiting a brother-chieftain without taking with him a retinue which included a bard, a spokesman, a piper, a piper's gillie, a baggage-man, a man to carry his broadsword, and another to carry himself bodily across fords. The common people, however, seemed stunted in appearance, "nor is it likely that by being half-starved in the womb and never afterwards well fed they should by that means be rendered larger than other people. How often have I heard them described in London as almost giants in size." The truth is that probably the Highlanders whom he had seen in London were the giants of the race, who had gone to the metropolis to seek their fortune, for Burt could not but notice that the tide of emigration had already begun to set southwards. "When a young fellow finds he has a genius for his trade or business, and has anything of spirit, he generally lays hold of the first occasion to remove to England or some other country where he hopes for better encouragement. Hence, I take it, arose a kind of proverb that "there never came a fool out of Scotland."

At the same time even those who remained were splendid specimens of humanity. Burt was especially impressed with their erect carriage. "The Highlanders walk nimbly and uprightly, so that you will never see among the meanest of them, in the most remote parts, the clumsy, stooping gait of the French paysans, or our own country fellows, but, on the contrary, a kind of stateliness in the midst of their poverty." Two causes, it seemed, contributed to this result. For one thing the Highlander wore light brogues which enabled them to skip easily from rock to rock, and did not have to drag heavy clouted shoes over ploughed claylands, as in the south. For another, he enjoyed the airy freedom of a kilt. How would he have been able to wade rivers, or climb mountains, or walk through bogs, with dignity, if clad in the unseemly impediments of breeches? Still more admirable for its purpose was the Highland plaid. It was a cloak for the day and a blanket for the night, and effectually concealed the wearer when out upon the heather, intent on robberies and depredations. What Burt could not understand, however, was that the natives should sleep out all night in a plaid which not only was not dry but had been deliberately wetted. He was told that the cloth, when thus moistened, both kept in the warm air and kept out the cold wind. But indeed there was no limit to the hardihood of Highlanders. "The Laird of Keppoch, chieftain of a branch of the Macdonalds, once gave orders for rolling a snowball to lay under his head at night; whereupon one of his followers murmured, saying, 'Now we despair of victory, since our leader has become so effeminate he cannot sleep without a pillow.'"

Two things especially Burt noticed in the Highlander. He was thrifty, and he was proud. If a man stopped to give a beggar a half-penny in the streets of Inverness, he would wait to get back a plack or two bodies by way of change. The same man would consider it an indignity that a member of his pure, unmixed race should be joined in matrimony to a Lowlander. If such a thing were ever to be permitted, a goldsmith of Edinburgh might consider himself well-matched to be allied to a blacksmith of Lochaber. And, of all fine fellows, the finest was the piper. When one of the great players had roused the spirit of his clan by a strathspey or a reel, he would disdainfully throw his bagpipes on the ground. A gillie must come forward to do the carrying. Burt tells us of the fury of a certain piper belonging to a Highland regiment when the place of priority was given to a drummer. The contention waxed so hot between them that the captain called both combatants impatiently into his presence, and, after hearing all the arguments, decided in favour of the drummer. "Wuds, sir," said the piper, "shall a rascal that beats upon a sheepskin take the right hand of me that am a musician?"

There remains the vexed question of the morality of cattle-lifting. Ought it, or ought it not, to be described as thieving? Let an acquaintance of Captain Burt provide the answer. Being charged with stealing cattle and playing the part of a common thief, the man lost all patience, and exclaimed indignantly, "Common tief! common tief! Steal ane cow, twa cow, dat be common tief. Lift hundred cow, dat be shentilman trovers." Burt at least could testify that, so far as his own experience went, thefts in the Highlands were unknown. "I could ride to Edinburgh from the remotest Highlands with five hundred guineas in my portmanteau, and no apprehension of robberies by the way, though in my sleep any one with ease might have thrust a sword from outside through the wall of the hut and my body together. I wish I could say I were as safe going from London to Highgate."

Burt well deserved to reach Edinburgh in safety. He rendered good service to Scotland in many ways, and had every justification for referring to some of them, in his last letter, with a touch of modest pride, "Whereas formerly there were none but squalid huts of turf for hundreds of miles, there are now houses with chimneys built with stone and lime, and ten or twelve miles distant from each other. Another thing is, there are pillars set up at the end of every five miles, mostly upon eminences, which may not only amuse the passer by, and relieve the tediousness of the way, but prevent his "being deceived in point of time in rain, snow, drift, or the approach of night." For these and other services we may be truly grateful. Alas! that man's gratitude should have done but little for him during his own lifetime. Burt's later years were clouded with misfortune, and he died in abject poverty and distress in 1755.

IX - John Wesley (1751-1790)