A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans : with an ...

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HISTORY OF TFtE HIGHLANDS.
Ilieir love and the hills of their nativity. Its strains were the first
sounded on the ears of infancy, and they are the last to be forgotten, in
the wanderings of age. Even Highlanders will allow that it is not
the gentlest of instruments ;
but when fur from their mountain homes,
what sounds, however melodious, could thriU round their heart like ona
burst of their own wild native pipe ? The feelings which other in-
struments awaken, are general and luidefined, because they talk alike
to Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, and Highlanders, for they are
common to all ; but the bag-pipe is sacred to Scotland, and speaks a
language which Scotsmen only feel. It talks to them of home and all
the past, and brings before them, on the burning shores of India, the
wild hills and oft frequented streams of Caledonia ;
the friends that are
thinking of them, and the sweethearts and wives that are weeping
for them there I and need it be told here, to how many fields of dan-
ger and victory its proud strains have led ! There is not a battle
that is honourable to Britain in which its war blast has not sounded.
When every other instrument has been bushed by the confusion and
caniage of the scene, it has been borne into the thick of battle, and, far
in the advance, its bleeding but devoted bearer, sinking on the earth,
has sounded at once encouragement to his countrymen and his own
coronach."* Many interesting anecdotes connected with the .use of
this instrument on the field of buttle will be given when we come to
treat of the military history of the modern Highlanders.
History bus thro«ni little light on the state of learning in the
Highlands during the Pictish and Scottish periods ; but, judging trom
the well-attested celebrity of the college of Icolm-killj which shed its
rays of knowledge over the mountains and through the glens of Caledonia,
we cannot doubt that learning did flourish in some degree among
the Scots and Picts. The final destruction of the venerable abbey of
lona, by the Danish pirates, unfortunately checked for a time the pro-
gress of civilization, and swept away, as is supposed, the proofs collected
by the monks in support of the learning of those times, and to which,
if they had been preserved, the historian of future ages would have
appealed. No man, no scholar, no christian can visit the hallowed ruins
of lona without awakening associations, the most powerful and affect-
ing. Dr. Johnson, the great and inflexible moralist, thus describes
the emotions he felt on visiting this celebrated spot : " We were now
treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the
Caledonian regions, whence sav.ige clans and roving barbarians derived
the benefit of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract
the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured,
and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws
as from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant,
or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignitji
of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frig-id
• Preface to ."Maidonald's Ancient Martial Music of Scotland.