Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

276 DANES OF LEWIS.
late date. Instead of cutting off a Knight's spurs, they
then cut off his hair; and thus we learned to shave our
felons, and thus the slaves in Greece were not allowed
to wear long" hair, and the form of their tonsure was
called 6p)^ 'avhpcitoU^i;, and thus French citizenship taught
us to crop our heads and ruin the hair dressers, and thus
fashions are concatenated and affiliated, and thus open-
ings are made for learned treatises on Euplocamy and
Cacoplocamy, which I leave to Mr. Stewart, perruquier,
of Broad Street, whose learned treatise I trust you have
read, and to antiquaries who have greater talents in
splitting hairs than myself.
We found, on subsequent inquiry, that they consti-
tuted an independent colony, if it may so be called
scarcely mixing with their neighbours, and never indeed
but when brought unavoidably into contact with them,
as at markets : the other inhabitants, in return, consider-
ing them in the light of foreigners, and maintaining no
voluntary communication with them. They were, how-
ever, well spoken of, as acute and intelligent, and as
being very industrious fishermen. They possess this
green northern extremity of the island in joint tenantry;
and their agriculture appeared to be carried on in the
same slovenly manner that it usually is upon this sys-
tem. Judging from their aspect, however, we consi-
dered them as much better fed than their neighbours,
and understood that they only fished for their own con-
sumption.
The existence of a detachment of the original Northmen
who so long possessed a large share in these islands,
in a state of such purity, and of a separation which is
almost hostile, appears a remarkable circumstance ; but
it is, perhaps, more remarkable that it should be the case
no where else, and that the breed should, throughout all
the rest of the islands, have so completely coalesced with
;