Women of the Highlands by Katharine Stewart sampler

Introduction
Women of the Highlands
women, people of the allegedly weaker sex, have tended to
occupy but little space in the story of their country. Kings and
warriors, bishops and barons, speculators and improvers, their
feats and follies shaped the land.
It was, nevertheless, to the women who bore and reared them,
that these men owed their strength of body and mind, to those
women who watched and waited, counselled or encouraged. In a
recent widespread poll it was reckoned that the most valued word
in the language, in any language, was ‘mother’. The instinct of childless
women was, and often is, to ‘mother’ others or causes in which
they believe.
It was always the women who were closest to the land on
which they lived, especially those high lands which were nearer
to the sun but which yet bore hard on human life, with sudden
storm, darkness among the rocks, quick spate in the quiet burns.
But to those with the soft tread, the quick eye and the lively mind
land, however remote from habitation, yielded sustenance and
healing. The machair, that coastal meadowland in the Islands, bore
a rich profusion of plant life. On the steepest hillside grew juniper
and cranberry, which later became badges of the clans. In sheltered
hollows berries and nuts abounded, to make squirrel-like provision
for the winter days.
Men were the hunters, women the gatherers, moving quietly
among the treasures, storing up knowledge to pass on to the generation
ahead. It was a long process of trial and error, finding
what nourished and what healed.
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