The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

112 THE HIGHLANDERS [parti
bound to the soil, but because they could not be removed from it
at the will of their lord. It was not a restriction upon their
libert}-, but a privilege that gave them their peculiar name.
The native man was the tenant who cultivated the soil, and
who possessed, all over Scotland, but especially in the Highlands,
a definite and recognized estate in the soil. So long as he performed
his services he was not to be removed from his land, nor
could the lord exact from him a higher rent or a greater proportion
of labour than what was due, and of right accustomed to be
given.
Their great privilege, therefore was, that they held their
farms by an inherent right which was not derived from their lord,
and from which he could not remove them. And in this way we
find that all old Highland alienations of land included the
" Nativis ad dictas terras pertinentibus." The servi and fugitivi
were the cottars and actual labourers of the soil, who were
absolute slaves, and posses.sed no legal rights either of station or
property. It is very remarkable, however, that the servi or slaves
were confined entirely to the Lowlands of Scotland, not a trace
as the existence of
of them being found in the Highlands ; and
slavery of this description invariably points out a conquered
people under the domination of another race, it forms a strongargument
for the Highlanders being the original inhabitants of
the country. Where a clan had retained their original property
without addition ordiminution, the whole of the families connected
with it, from the Tighern to the native man, were unquestionably
of the same race, and although the Tighern may have held his
lands of the crown as a Norman baron, yet the Gaelic system of
tenure would be preserved in his barony in all its purity. When
a Norman baron obtained by succession or otherwise a Highland
property, the Gaelic nativi remained in actual possession of the
soil under him, but at the same time paid their calpes to the
natural chief of their clan and followed him to war. When a
Highland chief, however, acquired, by the operation of the feudal
succession, an additional property which had not been previously
in the possession of his clan, he found it possessed by the nativi
of another race. If these nativi belonged to another clan which
still existed in independence, and if tliey chose to remain on the
property, they did so at the risk of being placed in a perilous
situation should a feud arise between the two clans. But if they