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

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HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANns.
To discontinue practices in themselves innocent, and which con
tribute to tlie social hajjpiness of mankind, must ever be regretted, and
it is not therefore to be wondered at, that a generous and open-hearted
Highlander, like General Stewart, should have expressed his regret at
the partial disuse of these ceremonies, or that he should have preferred
a Highland wedding, where he had himself "been so happy, and seen
80 many blithe countenances, and eyes sparkling with delight, to such
weddings as that of the Laird of Drum, ancestor of the Lord Sommer-
ville, when he married a daughter of Sir James Baiinatyne of Corehouse."
*
The festivities of the wedding-day were generally prolonged to a late
hour, and during the whole day the fiddlers and pipers never ceased
except at short intervals, to make sweet music. The fiddlers perfornierl
in the house, the pipers in the field;-]- so that the company alternately
enjoyed the pleasure of dancing within and without the house, as
inclined, provided the weather permitted.
No people were more attached to the fulfilment of all the domestic duties,
and the sacred obligation of the marriage vow, than the Higlilanders. A
violation thereof was of course of unfrequent occurrence, and among the
common people a separation was almost unknown. Rarely, indeed, did
a husband attempt to get rid of his wife, however disagreeable she miglit
be. He would have considered his children dishonoured, if he had
driven their mother from the protection of his roof. The punishment
inflicted by the ecclesiastical authority for an infringement of the
marriage vow was, that "the guilty person, whether male or female,
ivas made to stand in a barrel of cold water at the church door, after
* "On that occasion, sanctified by tlie puritanical cant of the times, there was 'one
marquis, three earls, two lords, sixteen barons, and eight ministers present at the solemnity,
but not one musician ; they liked yet better the bleating of the calves of Dan and Bethel
^the ministers' long-winded, and sometimes nonsensical graces, little to purpose, than
(ill musical instruments of the sanctuaries, at so sulemn an occasion, which, if it be
lawful at all to have them, certainly it ought to be upon a wedding-day, fordivertisement
to the guests, that innocent recreation of music and dancing being much more warraniable
and far better exercise than drinking and smoking tobacco, wherein the holy brethren of
the Presbyterian (persuasion) for the most pait employed themselves, witlvout any formal
health, or remembrance of their friends, a nod with the head, or a sign with the turning
up of the white of the eye, served for the ceremony," Stewart's Sketches— Memoirs of
the Summerville Family.
" Pla}ing the bagpipes within doors," says General Stewart, "is I a Lowland and
English custom In the Highlands the piper is always in the open air ; and when
people wish to daiice to his music, it is on the green, if the weather permits; nothing but
necessity makes them attempt a pipe-dance in the house. The bagpipe was a field instrument
intended to call the clans to arms, and animate them in baule, and was no more
intended for a house than a round of six pounders. A broadside from a first-rate, or a
round from a battery, has a sublime and impressive efiect at a propei- distance. In the
same manner, the sound of bagpipes, softened by distance, had an indescribable effect 0!»
the mind and acticms of the Highlanders. But as few would choose to be under the
muzzle of the guns of a battery, so 1 have seldom seen a Highlander, whose ears were
not grated when close to pipes, however much his breast might be warmed, and his feclinga
roused, by the sounds to which he had been accustomed in his youth, when procoediwg
from the proper distance."— Sketches, App. Kxiii,