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290 Gaelic Society of Inverness.
interest lie made his own, to recoive in turn from each member,
young and old, a subjection and obedience of the most devoted
kind. Wo need only glance at the history of the clans to see how
faithfully and heroically they served their chiefs in every crisis
and emergency, whilst there are not wanting examples of Highlanders,
providing at the sacrifice of their own lives, for the safety
of their chiefs. How sad it is to think how little had been done
on the part of many of those same chiefs to repay such devoted
fidelity. With regret must it be said that many of them from
selfish and sordid motives sacrificed that position of trust and
severed those ties of aflection which mutually bound the body to
the head, the children to the father, the clansman to his chief.
Fidelity to the Soveteign.—As the natural outcome of loyal
devotion to home and chief, we have the most attached loyalty on
the part of the Gael to his Sovereign. The undying attachment
of the Scottish Gael to the Stuart Dynasty, while there remained
a ray of hope of the restoration of that family, has emjihasised
the loyalty of the Gael, and has stored it in records of imperishable
fame. Tn the ballads and songs relating to the Jacobite
rising, we meet the outpourings of sentiments of the most loyal
and loving attachment of the subject to his Sovereign ever perhaps
expressed. Future generations will point to these ejiisodes as the
period in liis history which mai'ks out most prominently the char-
acteristic fidelity of the Gael. In a doleful eft'usion of the time,
we read
'Thearlaich oig, a mhic Righ Seumas,
Chunna mi 'n toir mhor an de ort
ladsa sughach 's mise deurach
Le uisge mo chinn tighinn teann gum' leursainn.
Mharbh iad m' athair, mharbh iad mo bhrathair,
Mhill iad mo chinneadh, a's sgrios iad mo ehairdean,
Loisg iad mo dhuthaich, a's ruisg iad mo mhathair,
Ach cha chluinnte mo ghearan na'n tigeadh tu 'Theaidaich.
And our present much-lovad Sovereign has no more devoted
and lovingly loyal subjects than the Highlanders of Scotland.
Although at the present day there may be an appearance of a
want of submission to constituted authority in some parts of the
Highlands, and esj)ecially in Skye, the respect shown to her
Majesty's Marines during their recent stay in that I sland proves
that the opposition arises from an impi*ession on the part of the
])eoplo that the Police Force is employed exclusively in the interest
of landlords to enforce what is in these hard times felt to be oppres-
;