The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Ceilidh. 563
There are also present some boys, I among them,
squatting down in any convenient corner as near the fire
as the heat permitted, but as far away as possible from the
dark corners of the house, where the ever-moving shadows
flitted to and fro like the uncanny beings who at the time
formed the subject of conversation. But let us leave
Galium Mor, the skipper of the " Pride of the Ocean,"
to finish an account of a remarkable storni that he,
encountered off Cape Wrath some years ago, during which
the boat was pooped by a tremendous sea that, on retiring,
left a cran and a half of herring strewn about the deck,
and make some general remarks on the origin and result
of the mischevious habit—as it undoubtedly was—of
Ceilidh.
Seventy or eighty years ago, English education was in
a very backward state in many parts of the Highlands. I
say English, because the great majority of the people could
read Gaelic, the vernacular. Now, almost the only Gaelic
books on which they could lay their hands were the Bible,
Shorter Gatechism, the translated works of Bunyan and
Baxter, and others of the same kind. Why they confined
their reading to religious books may be accounted for in
two ways. First, books treating of secular subjects were
very scarce, and secondly, secular literature was in those
days regarded by the Northern Gelts as incompatible with
nay, as directly antagonistic to, the true spirit of
Ghristianity. Hence, in the Gaelic schools in which our
grandfathers were taught, the highest aim of the teachers
was to enable their pupils to read the Bible in the
vernacular. A few carried their education to the length ot
reading more advanced books. I remember well one old man
in my native parish who had in his possession a copy of
the songs of Duncan Ban Macintyre. and a Gaelic trans-
lation of a History of Scotland. This old man used to tell
us, boys, stories of Wallace, Bruce, and Douglas during the
long winter nights ; or he would recite passages from
" Moladh Beinn Dorain " or " Cead Deireanach Nam