Tough
Scottish Highlanders
Hardihood
was in every respect so essential to the character of a Highlander,
that the reproach of effeminacy was the most bitter which
could be
thrown upon him. Yet it was sometimes hazarded on what we
might presume to think slight grounds. It is
reported of old Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, when upwards
of seventy, that he was surprised by night on a hunting or
military expedition. He wrapped him in his plaid, and lay
contentedly down upon the snow, withwhich the
ground happened to be covered. Among his attendants, who were
preparing to take their rest in the same manner, he observed
that one of his grandsons, for his better accommodation, had
rolled a large snow-ball, and placed it below his head. ‘The
wrath of the ancient chief
was awakened by a symptom of what he conceived to be degenerate
luxury.
“Out
upon thee,” said he, kicking the frozen bolster from
the head which it supported, “art thou so effeminate
as
to need a pillow?”
The
“Officer of Engineers,” in his curious Letters
frem the Highlands, tells a similar story of Macdonald of
Keppoch,
and subjoins the following remarks:
“This
and many other stories are romantic; but there is one thing
that at first thought might seem very romantic, of which I
have been credibly assured, that when the Highianders are
constraioed to lie among the hills, in
cold dry windy weather, they sometimes soak the plaid in some
river or burn, and then, holding up a corner of it a
little above their heads, they turn themselves round and round,
till they are enveloped by the whole mantle. They
then lay themselves down on the heath, upon the leeward side
of some hill, where the wet and the warmth of their bodies
make a steam, like that of a boiling kettle. The wet, they
say, keeps them warm by tbickening the
stuff, and keeping the wind from penetrating.
“I
must confess I should have been apt to question this fact
had I not frequently seen them wet from morning
to night; and, even at the beginning of the rain, not so much
as stir a few yards to shelter, but continue in it without
necessity, till they were, as we say, wet
through and tbrougb. And that is soon effected by the looseness
and sponginess of the plaiding ; but the bonnet is frequently
taken off, and rung like a dish-cloth, and then put on again.
“They
have been accustomed from their infancy to be often wet, and
to take the water like spaniels, and this
is become a second nature, and can scarcely be called a hardship
to them, insomuch that I used to say they seemed to be of
the duck kind, and to love water as well. Though I never saw
this preparation for sleep in windy
weather, yet, setting out early in a morning from one of the
huts, I have seen the marks of their lodging, where
the ground has been free from rhime or snow, which remained
all round the spot where they had lain.”
