Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

318 NORTH RONA.
cient for the most indispensible purposes ; the males
were better dressed. However, I satisfied myself that
it was as good a Toga as Cato wore, and was content.
There is much virtue in a word, as I dare say I have
remarked before. The Highlanders choose to be angry
now, because we tell them, (somebody at least does so,)
that their heroic ancestry had no covering but a dirty
blanket. But if Fingal had no other dress for his days
of peace, he was fully as heroically clothed as the Gens
Togata itself. If that blanket descended to John Lord
of the Isles, or to all the Johns and the Donalds of the
Clan Colla, and to all their myrmidons, even down to the
last century, call it a Toga, and Cicero himself was no
better dressed. That the Blanket of Cato, and Pompey
and Marc Antony, and Coriolanus, was not often washed,
is very clear; so that, there also, the Highlanders may
boast of their heroism. If it had, it would not have kept
out the Malaria, as Signor Brocchi has proved ; besides
which, since it was really white, or whitened by the ful-
lones, when the Candidati thought it proper to appear
in their best, it is pretty clear that a clean blanket was a
mark of distinction. Since the Highlanders are anxious
tp derive their dress from the Romans, and as I would
not allow them the kilt formerly, I hope they will accept
of the Toga as a substitute and an apology.
But as Kenneth and all his family were amply sup-
plied with food, they were fat, and must therefore be con-
sidered as rich people ; as being far wealthier in fact,
than the great proportion of small Highland tenants; in-
finitely more so than those of Barra and Benbecula. The
wife and mother looked as wretched and melancholy as
Highland wives and mothers generally do; but Mac Cagie
himself seemed a good humoured careless fellow, little
concerned about to-morrow, and fully occupied in hunting
his sheep about the island. There are not many places