highlander: tourists in the wild

1773. James Boswell had dragged Samuel Johnson from Edinburgh to Inverness to Skye and back to the Lowlands. Boswell could, and soon set about immortalizing the tour…

…Among the Western Islands, however, some traces of the feudal system lingered, and memories of the ’45 and the galant Young Pretender were still handed down in conversation. As our travelers crossed to Skye, they were shown “the land of Moidart,” on which Prince Charles had first set foot. But when they themselves disembarked, at Armadale, they were welcomed ashore by a somewhat unexpected type of Scottish laird. True, Sir Alexander Macdonald was properly attired in the decorative tartan of his clan, and received them with appropriate courtesy, while “my lady stood at the top of the bank and made a kind of jumping for joy.”

Otherwise the chieftain of the Macdonalds proved an extremely unattractive character. His ancestral seat had burned down, and he inhabited a modern house, which,since Edinburgh offered greater comforts, he was now preparing to abandon. Nor did he keep a generous table. Boswell reports:

We had an ill-dressed dinner…I alone drank port wine. No claret appeared. We had indeed mountain and Frontignac and Scotch porter. But except what I did myself, there was no hospitable convivial intercourse, no ringing of glasses. Nay, I observed that when Captain Macdonald and Mr. Maqueen came in after we were sat down to dinner, Sir Alexander let them stand around the room and stuck his fork into a liver pudding… Sir Alexander himself drank punch…which he distributed to those men who were accustomed even in their own houses to much better. He gave it with a pewter dividing-spoon which had served the broth. At tea there were few cups and no tea-tongs nor a supernumerary tea-spoon, so we used our fingers.

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…James Boswell: …In my opinion, however, Goldsmith had not more of it than other people have, but only talked of it freely.

He now seemed very angry that Johnson was going to be a traveller; said ‘he would be a dead weight for me to carry, and that I should never be able to lug him along through the Highlands and Hebrides.’ Nor would he patiently allow me to enlarge upon Johnson’s wonderful abilities; but exclaimed, ‘Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent?’ ‘But, (said I,) Johnson is the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle.’ …

…After some compliments on both sides, the tour which Johnson and I had made to the Hebrides was mentioned. JOHNSON. ‘I got an acquisition of more ideas by it than by any thing that I remember. I saw quite a different system of life.’ BOSWELL. ‘You would not like to make the same journey again?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why no, Sir; not the same: it is a tale told. Gravina, an Italian critick, observes, that every man desires to see that of which he has read; but no man desires to read an account of what he has seen: so much does description fall short of reality. Description only excites curiosity: seeing satisfies it. Other people may go and see the Hebrides.’ BOSWELL. ‘I should wish to go and see some country totally different from what I have been used to; such as Turkey, where religion and every thing else are different.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir; there are two objects of curiosity,—the Christian world, and the Mahometan world. All the rest may be considered as barbarous.’ BOSWELL. ‘Pray, Sir, is the Turkish Spy a genuine book?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir. Mrs. Manley, in her Life, says that her father wrote the first two volumes: and in another book, Dunton’s Life and Errours, we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley.’ Read More:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1564/1564-h/1564-h.htm

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(see link at end)…When we had advanced a good way by the side of Lochness, I perceived a little hut, with an old looking woman at the door of it. I thought here might be a scene that would amuse Dr Johnson: so I mentioned it to him. ‘Let’s go in,’ said he. We dismounted, and we and our guides entered the hut. It was a wretched little hovel of earth only, I think, and for a window had only a small hole, which was stopped with a piece of

, that was taken out occasionally to let in light. In the middle of the room or space which we entered, was a fire of peat, the smoke going out at a hole in the roof. She had a pot upon it, with goat’s flesh, boiling. There was at one end under the same roof, but divided by a kind of partition made of wattles, a pen or fold in which we saw a good many kids.

Dr Johnson was curious to know where she slept. I asked one of the guides, who questioned her in Erse. She answered with a tone of emotion, saying (as he told us) she was afraid we wanted to go to bed to her. This coquetry, or whatever it may be called, of so wretched a being, was truly ludicrous. Dr Johnson and I afterwards were merry upon it. I said, it was he who alarmed the poor woman’s virtue. ‘No, sir,’ said he, ‘she’ll say, ‘”There came a wicked young fellow, a wild dog, who I believe would have ravished me, had there not been with him a grave old gentleman, who repressed him: but when he gets out of the sight of his tutor, I’ll warrant you he’ll spare no woman he meets, young or old.”‘ ‘No, sir,’ I replied, ‘she’ll say, “There was a terrible ruffian who would have forced me, had it not been for a civil decent young man who, I take it, was an angel sent from heaven to protect me.”‘

Dr Johnson would not hurt her delicacy, by insisting on ‘seeing her bedchamber’, like Archer in The Beaux’ Stratagem. But my curiosity was more ardent; I lighted a piece of paper, and went into the place where the bed was. There was a little partition of wicker, rather more neatly done than that for the fold, and close by the wall was a kind of bedstead of wood with heath upon it by way of bed; at the foot of which I saw some sort of blankets or covering rolled up in a heap. The woman’s name was Fraser; so was her husband’s. He was a man of eighty. Mr Fraser of Balnain allows him to live in this hut, and keep sixty goats, for taking care of his woods, where he then was. They had five children, the eldest only thirteen. Two were gone to Inverness to buy meal; the rest were looking after the goats. This contented family had four stacks of barley, twenty-four sheaves in each. They had a few fowls. We were informed that they lived all the spring without meal, upon milk and curds and whey alone. What they get for their goats, kids, and fowls, maintains them during the rest of the year.

She asked us to sit down and take a dram. I saw one chair. She said she was as happy as any woman in Scotland. She could hardly speak any English except a few detached words. Dr Johnson was pleased at seeing, for the first time, such a state of human life. She asked for snuff. It is her luxury, and she uses a great deal. We had none; but gave her six pence a piece. She then brought out her whisky bottle. I tasted it; as did Joseph and our guides: so I gave her sixpence more. She sent us away with many prayers in Erse.

– The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by James Boswell;
Monday, 30th August 1773: Inverness, Fort Augustus. Read More:http://www.eccentricbliss.com/tag/jacobite-uprising-of-1745/