DEDICATION TO Mr JOHN MACPHERSON, Martyr of Glendale Dear John, who was, through good and ill, My comrade ever true, This little speech of Idrigil I dedicate to you. D. McC. Lochs, 1910. THE IDRIGIL CROFTERS. SPEECH BY REV. DONALD MACCALLUM, LOCHS. The Bev. Donald Maccallum, speaking at a mass meeting of crofters of Idrigil on the lith July, 1910, said :— I am proud of the honour you have conferred upon me in sending so many men to meet me at the pier, and to bring me up to the summit of this lofty mountain, ever famous as the spot on which the great reformer, Henry George, stood when he addressed the people of this land, and most heartily I thank you. This banner iloating in the breeze, the sound of these horns calling the people together, this bevy of bluecoats guarding us on every hand, full vividly, to my mind, recall the olden days, when in their thousands the people assembled to place the barrier of the Red Sea of manliness between them and the slavery of Egypt as they set their faces towards the promised land. You have heard the man who has just turned his back upon us say—" As the traitors now have eome, I leave your company." No doubt he knows what is right for himself to do. I find no fault with him. For my own'part, however, I have no objection to traitors being present here. Indeed, I am glad of it, and I hope that in the ears of our enemies they will repeat all we say, so that they will understand that the cup of wrath is nearly full, and that the day of reckoning is at hand. Speaking of the things that appertain to our life on earth, why do I stand in your midst this day ? 1*1 ot because I imagine I can tell you anything new; not because I am of opinion I can give you a helping hand in your struggle against the tyranny of those who have taken the place of the old usurpers, but because I am unable to resist the desire I have of showing you how deeply I sympathise with you and how ardently I hope you may be successful. Having put myself in this position, it is imperative that I should make a speech, and I shall now make the attempt. I begin by stating the principles which I inculcate, without entering into minute detail, and I shall afterwards proceed to illustrate them. It was in order that it should be possessed, inhabited, governed by the sons of men that God created the earth and gave it over to them. "The profit of the earth is for all." "Rent is robbery." Although the lords have a legal, they have not a moral right to the land and all that it contains. Equivalent in every way you take it is the right of the lord to the soil, to that of the lord of the slave, to their usurped possessions. In other words, the law that condemns the lord of the slave cannot acquit the lord of the land. " The land shall not be sold for ever." Indeed, until the passing of the Crofters Act, the Highland proprietors were owners both of the land and of the people. "When the lords needed men to guard them against each other's wrath it was high treason for men to leave their properties. You all know the letter which, in the name of Beelzebub, Burns wrote to Glengarry, which to the end of the world will hold this fact in crystal. When the lords divided the inheritance of the people among themselves and had no need of men to fight for them, they found employment for them as agricultural machines to improve their lands, removing them from one bog to another till there was no room left for them. "When the lands were improved the lords, hating to see men who were impressed with the idea that they had rights in the land, macie it their life work to evict them and to let the land to strangers, who claimed no right in the land. The root of all the evil which we suffer is the uplifting of rent. For ever oppressed with this plague, the wonder is not that we are poor, but that we exist at all. Radium is no new substance to us. The Highlands is a radium. Eternally producing rent, it does not seem to exhaust itself. Pharoah's lean cattle is no dream to us. The lords are lean cattle, and in devouring all the produce of the land they are not fattened. The cannibal who dons his victim's clothes is no wonder to us, who have seen a solitary figure ciad in the garb of Old Gaul roaming over the ruined homes of our forefathers. What ought to be raised in the shape of money for the right to possess a piece of land should be determined by the people and used for the requirements of the land and the benefits of the inhabitants, and not spent on the amusement of idlers, the growth of profligates, and the glorification of regal paupers. So long as the lords, or the Congested Districts Board in their place, continue to uplift rent to be used, as of old, for purposes other than the good of the land and the benefit of the people, it is in vain that the Government will give us a helping hand. To improve our stock by givingus bulls and stallions, to benefit our lands by constructing roads and bridges, to guard our crops by erecting walls and fences, is to give herring to the hungry gulls, for whom the frigate birds are waiting, to heal the cancer with a soothing plaster, to quench the fire by pouring oil thereon. I know hundreds of crofts whose values are doubled since I first saw them by Government money being squandered on them, and the day is not far distant when no one will benefit by that except the landlord, for the rents of these crofts will assuredly be raised according to their value. Did I say " not far distant ?" It is already at hand. In many instances the rent has already been raised in accordance with the help given to the lords in the name of the crofters. I know that some of you who do not know better 5 are saying :—" But is not the Crofters' Act a safeguard against such a thing as this happening ?" I answer "No." The Crofters Act is only an excuse for the Government acting in this manner. Before I am done I hope to prove this. Can anyone deny that as each day passes away the Crofters Act is losing its hold as a power for good in the land, and at the present rate of fading away it will very soon be as dead as the dodo ? So long as rent i3 uplifted to be spent as it is at present, the Government's action in helping the Highlands is simply feeding the monster landlordism to quench for a moment its insatiable hunger, and not to save in the end its victims from its gaping maw. The lord who owned the land on which my father strove to exist made a law to this effect—"A farmer who sells meadow hay shall be evicted." If my father had not sold the meadow hay he could not have paid the rent. What he did was to get the neighbours to help him to cart the meadow hay away at night, when the lord was sleeping in his bed. To this law the lord added a reason—" For the land, in order to keep it from deterioration, requires to be manured by its own production." I thoroughly agree with the reason. What I object to was the compulsion to make bricks without straw in the requirement of rent on these conditions. Now, what this lord prohibited others from doing he gloried in doing himself when he made off with the produce of the whole land in the form of rent, and did not use it for the good of the land. Indeed the land is quite unable to produce what is required of it as rent and taxes. I am astonished at the men of Uist in finding out this truth in that they took for granted that in any case the rent shonld be paid, and that it was to the rates they took exception. They have shown how deeply the Highlanders are steeped in slavery to the old lords, and how little they are alive to their own interests. Because, forsooth, only rent or taxes must be paid, the former must be cherished and the latter abolished! Can they not see that rent spells "desolation," and that taxes spells "population?'' The men of this island, I hope, know "better. For my part, I love to see the rent in the grip of the taxes in the hope that some day I may see rent falling dead at the feet of taxes. You have been saved from the tyranny of the old lords, but your present position reminds me of that of the frogs when Jupiter answered their prayer in giving them a crane to worship instead of the old log, and the reason is to be found in the word "rent." I teach that it is not right that a man should hold more land than he can cultivate and use in rearing a family. In my opinion this is just as reasonable as that a man should be compelled to educate and rear his family in order to make th«>m worthy and strong citizens. An Agricultural Act is as much called for as ever an Education Act was. To save tile land from the curse of lent I am sure you wish to know what I propose to do with the lords who live on rent, and whose ancestors for eight hundred years have not soiled their hands with honest work. Well, in consideration of the fact that to a great extent, through no fault of their own, they can do nothing for themselves, I would leave them in possession of the manor farms for their livelihood. The rest of the land I would at once, by an Act similar to that by which Mr Gladstone disestablished the Church in Ireland, proclaim the right of the people to the land, to be used for them and by them for the benefit of the whole. To pay for the soil would be to make ourselves foreigners, to refund the robbers for our own, to scorn the free gift of the Creator. PART II. There are three kinds of rent—real, rack, tair. Real rent is the amount of money yearly realised on the croft after deducting the cost of working it as well as a reasonable wage for the worker. Consequently the year in which there is no surplus over and above these two things, it does not yield any rent. A man whose ancestors for generations has freely elected to be lord of a croft, or a man who has bought such a position, though of course not legally, is morally bound, not only not to exact rent the year the croft does not produce it, but to support the crofter. On no other ground can the crofter be justified in acknowledging hiin as lord. P.ut sad to say, the formula for a lord is— " Heads I win, tails you lose." Though a landlord is on earth a glorified being, allowed to walk the streets in the garb of an ancient Knight-errant without being stared at, while a master-fisher is looked upon as the commonest of men, who on assuming the attire and manner of such a strange individual would be courting confinement in a lunatic asylum, the morality required of the latter is much higher than that required of the former. For instance while a landlord would be considered a fool even who would support his crofters the year they would lose by working their crofts, yet a master-iisher who wonld not support his hands the year they would lose on the fishing would be considered a knave. A master fisher has honour in making comrades of his hands, in sharing their joys and bearing their sorrows, whereas a landlord who would be seen eating and drinking with his crofters at the festive board, or ciying with them in the day of anguish, would be disgraced forever. A master-fisher who would sp?nd all his income in riotous living would be consid red a spendthrift—porridge and milk varied by potatoes and herring, being his natural food; while a lord who would live on such simple fare as that would he considered a miser—wine and venison, varied by champagne and salmon, being his natural food. What constitutes the glory of tire one is the disgrace of the other. A master-fisher would be prosecuted fo? attempting to cut off one loch for his own use by putting a chain across the mouth of it, but the special glory of the landlord is that he is entitled to put up, at the expense of the Government, a wire fence round all our mountains to convert them into deer forests for his own use, and to call the British Army and Navy to uphold his rights against the people of the land From this spot where 1 stand I can see a land—the fairest I have ever seen—desolated by a lord for whom the men dispossessed cut a trench in the road leading to it from other lands, and blocked up the anchorage with great stones leading to it from the sea. I mention that as it is the most abject act of slavery it has been my misfortune to witness. For it was a joy to those men thus to serve the lord. In complaining that the lords have not left us even a place to stand on, I often got this answer—"Have you not been left the King's highway and God's acre?" Yes, I know the lords have of late made this concession—"The public are requested to keep to the road to avoid risk to themselves and annoyance to persons shooting with rifles," but it is on a great iron gate set across the middle of the king's highway you will iind it set up. There are a great many King's highways in the Highlands which are made utterly impassable at night owing to the multitude of these concessions set up on iron gates across the King's highway. The wonder is not that the lords take this liberty, but that this is the will of the people to grant it. Indeed, they look upon these gates, with their mysterious inscriptions, as the Hindoos look on the altars raised on the roadside to the imps of the Evil One. 1 am not at all sure that the story of the woman who would not receive her son because lie would not allow himself to be hanged to please the lord is a myth. Previous to the passing of the těrof ters Act the people of the South were of opinion that a crofter was an animal not many stages removed from the orangoutang. When specimens of the Highland crofter were taken to Edinburgh to answer for the Park deer raid the Metropolis was not tess moved by their advent than the kingdom was by that of the Shah of Persia in the reign of Queen Victoria, and the question, "Did you see ¦the Shall?" was not more rife in its day than this one, " Did you see the crofters?" was then. In my peregrinations over the lands of the South I have often been asked—"What is a crofter?" and my answer has invariably been—"A creature who pays rent, and a lord is a creature who spends it." tě A crofter prides himself on his sanctity, righteousness, purity, and the ancient schoolman was not a greater adept at hair-, splitting in the study of dogmatic theology than he; but I have one thing., to lay to his charge which, in my estimation, somewhat dims the glory of these qualities, and shows him to be lacking in the faculties of: penetration, equity, scrupulousness, and it is this—Every penny his hands lay hold of, be it the wages his family earn in the South, old age pension, the money he earns by gathering whelks, or anything else you , can mention, he calls it rent, and gives it up to the lord in name of, money produced by the croft. The crofter is a devout being, and prays morn and eve—"Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven;" but I surmise that he has so little perception of what Heaven should be that he would be quite content to find, on getting there, that an agitation to get an Access to Mountains Bill passed there would be accounted such wicked rebellion as to entail its supporters being thrown into outer darkness over the golden battlements, so well pleased is he with the law that makes them private property here. He is so accustomed to see the lords pampered, idolised, pitied for their poverty, entitled to folly and idleness, helped by the Government and the serfs starved, despised, grudged for their peuury, abused for want of energy, robbed by the Government, that he cannot conceive it will be otherwise in Heaven. ' PART III. Rack rent is any sum of money a lord may see fit to ask for a croft* Outside the will of the lord it has no restriction. A lord is perfectly certain in his own mind that he has as much a right to charge his own price for a croft as a joiner has to charge his own price for a wheelbarrow. The crofters being in his eyes a lazy, ignorant and ungrateful herd, a lord thinks he ought to be highly praised for keeping him hard at work to provide for him, the only really important unit in the land, and that he could do wrong was perfectly inconceivable. At the time when the Highlands were groaning under the lash applied to make it deliver up the "violent profits" demanded by the lords under the' visitation of rack rent, on being brought to task these terrible beings, swore for all they were worth that the land was given for less than; prime cost, and that the crofters were being demoralised in the encouragement they got to rebel against them, their natural leaders. The world believed the lords then, and pitied them greatly. The philanthropist^; of the day could conceive of nothing they could do for the crofters except? to pay their arrears of rent for them. They offered to do this for the -crofters, who claimed Ben Lea and others, but to their credit let it be recorded, they refused to be party to thus providing their enemies with the sinews of war against themselves. "I trust," wrote your own late uncrowned king to every crofter in this island, "tenants will no longer be deluded by men who hold out to them false and vain hopes which can never be realised, and that they will at once set themselves vigorously to work with the view of making payment honestly, as their fathers did of the rents due by them to the proprietor." The crofts were not (supposed to yield the rent at all. The tenants were at once to disperse rover the world to earn money as their fathers did to feed the sacred .crocodile, and allow their families to starve, some to work at the railways, some smear the tacksman's sheep, some to make roads to Poltalloch. This sentence from the famous ultimatum of the late Captain Allan Maedonald of Waternish has caused me great searching of heart—"The I Crofters, in response to paid agitators, have, to a man asked for 'more land,' yet they all say that it is too dear, and people don't generally press for what they consider too dear.' Because, forsooth, the lord elected . for the purpose of devastating the whole land, while he was to be considered a saint of the first water, to make the land too dear, it was to be taken for granted that the people would, without more ado, retire into boundless space in search of a lord who would not, by rackrenting, make his land forbidden; and if none such were found, that they, of course, had nothing for it but to launch into eternity, if they could not make themselves non-existent. This lord found that the paid agitators were successful in making his tenants sufficiently wicked to ask for "more land," but he could not conceive that they could be made so desperately satanic as to question his right to rack-rent his own land to his heart's content. The heavens would fall, the elements melt, and the end of the world would come ere they would dare to ask ior a reduction of rent. And I am not less struck by the assurance of a lord of the present day, who publicly holds that there is no difference in iniquity between walking on his grass and stealing a shilling, and abuses '"the law that only fines the trespasser, while it imprisons the thief. In the olden days it was difficult to get in touch with the lord at all. His armour-bearer, the factor representing the law, went before him, and the minister, representing the Gospel, took up the rear, while surrounding this triumvirate was a dim religious mist. Indeed, in the eyes of the multitude, they were the embodiment of righteousness, regality and holiness; but I need hardly tell you that we found them to be wonderfully ¦wicked, mean and sycophantic. For my part, I take it that their 10 prototype, the pyramid contractor, tlie Pharaoh of Egypt, the priest of On, were mere novices in the scienceof slave driving, the art of p uipous-ness, the practice of soul-benumbing, compared to them. Under theip maladministration in the nethermost dungeons of slavery, landlordism, priestcraft, we found the crofters loaded with the chains of poverty, pride, superstition; and had not their cry for mercy been heard by a wondering nation they would long ago have died for want of bread and light and heat. In consideration of the amount of arrears even such a lordly tribunal as the Crofters' Commission saw fit to cancel as being wickedly imposed on the long-suffering crofters, and of the reduction of rent they gave almost every crofter in the Highlands as making life impossible in the future there ; in consideration of the millions of acres of fertile lands, once inhabited by a happy peasantry, which by the frost of their greed have been found to be given over to the vulture, the fox, the adder; in consideration, also, of tim mockery of what, in the name of reform, they offered to do in scrutinising the rack-rent book, expelling Land Leaguers and giving leases to improving tenants -if the lords were blessed with the feelings of common humanity they would on the spot dissolve their order as an institution of which no honest man could be a member. PART IV. Among the knights of devastation attendant on the lords, legal notice, witli its squire, decree in absence, takes a high place. Not less terrible is the throne on which it is raised, with rack rent on its right hand, and Mammonic Glamour on its left, than that other one of wider fame, on which is raised slaughter, with Famine on its right hand and Plague on its left. From the days of Prince Charles to those of Queen Victoria legal notice found through the Highland glens as free a way as the winds of heaven, causing, wherever it went, the hearts of the valiant to quake, the cheek of the youth to blanch, the song of labour to be hushed. In my native parish, when I was a little boy, the people would as soon question the right of the Lord of Heaven to do what seemed good in His sight as to question that of the lord of earth. When the one who held sway over them, through the havoo of legal notice, took the land, sufficiently improved by them, into his own hands, he stocked it with herds of stots, to be fattened for the butcher, and on the luxuriant vegetation of tlie deserted farms, as they grew strong and wild, my first recollection is connected with the terror thev caused to the few inhabitants still left. I must confess I cannot read in Holy Writ of the bulls 11 of Ihtslian without thinking of the stot* of Lergychonie and surely the former were n"t a greater terror ro the Canaanues than the latter were to Oraigpishites. I have not yet ceased to become angry when I think of the meanness of the people who looked upon those stots as sacred because they attained to the glory of being the property of a lord. They would no more think of striking one of them than a Hindu would of striking a Brahmin cow to make it move. Bnt the day came when, sharing the fate of the Papal Bull of Pope Leo, at the hands of the Reformer Luther, legal notice was consigned to the flames of an open-air bonfire as being too vile to walk (lie earth, and terrible was the cheer of the assembled throng as its smoke ascended op into the blue of heaven. "ě?o pass away," cried the aged seer who set the spark to it, "the arrogance of the lord and the senility of the serf! Out of the ashes of the monster nay we have beauty, ont of the carcase of the lion honey, out of the waters bread. 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us, therefore, east oft' the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.' " Seeing his chief engine of destruction thus consigned to cremation, the lord, Ahab, came to his honse heavy and displeased, and he laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread; but the factor, Jezebel, came unto him and said unto him— "Why is thy spirit so sad that thou eatest no bread?" And he said— " Because the crofters refuse to accept of legal notice, and will not leave the land." And the factor said unto him — " Is the land not thine own, and canst thou not do with it as thou pleasest? Arise, eat bread, and let thine heart be merry. I will send the crofters to the uttermost ends of the earth." And he wrote letters in the name of the lord, and sealed them with his seal, and sent them to the members of the Government of the day. And he wrote in the letters saying—"Thereis rebellion in the Highlands. The Queen's writ does not run there. The crofters refuse to pay the rent, and they harbour rebels. Send us down an armed force sufficiently strong to guard the messenger at-arins, auctioneer and the Sheriff against the assault of the rebels, as they deliver the notice, sell the effects of the crofters and catch the Land Leaguers." The Government did as the factor sent unto them, and, as it is written in the annals of the nation, so effective was the fear of the bluecoats, guarded by the army and navy forces, that, without obstruction, in the first instance, on the part of the crofters their houses were papered over with legal notices, the child was sold with the oradle for rent, and the leaders of the people found lodgment in the prison cell. I shall speak of our victory when I come to the Crofters Act. However, strange to say, when the smoke of battle cleared away and the light of the blessed sun shone upon the battlefield, it was found that the back of legal notice was broken, that its teeth had slipped donn 12 its throat, that its leather wings were badly torn, and that this active monster, like the meanest of reptiles, could only crawl on its belly along the earth. Since that day, I am sorry to say, it has greatly improved, and at the present rate of convalescence it will soon be as vigorous as ever. In carrying out its work in the meantime, however, it has a wonderful assistant in Mammonic Glamour. Rising but a little above the waves, sparkling in white and green, there is an island in the Atlantic which, from an aeroplane, you would be apt to take for an ocean liner, so small it is. Loving this island and its inhabitants, I often visit it. On this trip, as I was staying with a friend there, I said to him one morning—"I am going this day to see the fisherman who lives on his peninsula on the west. He is such a good Land Leaguer, you know." If, answered he, " you are active enough to jump over a number of barbed wire fences without tearing your clothes, if you are insured against being put in prison for trespass, or gored by a Highland stot, you may visit the ruins of his house, which has been razed to the ground since you were here last year ; but you cannot see the fisherman, for he is not there." " Evicted?" said I "Well, scarcely," he replied. With the bait of a large farm he was angled out of it; and with that successful fishing, and a few others equally clever, the Land Leaguer has been for ever quashed in this lord-ridden island. The peninsula on which the fisherman lived is now added to the tacksman's run. Thus the two monsters, legal notice and rack rent, being hors-de-combat, Mammonic Glamour go about clearing off the lands once inhabited by the Highlanders, the few homes that still remain. What I told you is by no means a solitary instance of my looking for old friends over the lands of their fathers and finding that they had been angled out by the lord, some by the bait of a few guineas, some by the bait of a cement house in the village, and some by the bait of a situation in the south. As if the transformation of Scotland into a part of England were not yet complete! For where is the Highlander who lias the hardihood even to stand on the bank of one of the rivers, once of Scotland, now of England, as the salmon pass from the prohibited estuary to the prohibited lake ? And even should he have his reverie, in which he would ee one out of every thousand salmon sacrificed, to die of congestion, to be devoured by the sharks, or to swim in other waters, placed on the table of the lord, it would soon be broken by a belted, armed, oilskinned wight rising, after the manner of a hero of Ruaraidh Dubh, out of the bracken at his feet, to ask him to have the goodness to move on with the pomposity of a Sauchiehall Street constable. The transformation, it seems, in the eyes of the lord, is not yet complete. 13 PART V. During the decade 1370-80 the Highland lords, sanctified by the Church, guarded by the law, idolised by the world, and conceiving themselves to be demi-gods, possessing a divine right to do as they pleased with the land, the water, the light, the air, and to lock in prison any person, without their leave, found walking on the land, drinking water at the spring, basking in the sun on the moorland, enjoying the air on the mountain top, became so terrible in their strength that they were on the point of desolating ntterly the whole land. We humbled ourselves before their factors, the lords themselves being too great to take any interest in their own affairs, being made for pure enjoyment, and prayed for mercy, but the answer they gave us was—"If the land is too dear you are quite welcome to leave it, and when we are assured you cannot pay more rent for. it we will take it off your hands, on condition that you give us your stock at our own valuation." There were some among us who were so pleased with this answer that they said to the factors—"Please, gentlemen, to convey to the lords our thanks for having allowed us so far to live on their estates, and tell them we will take advantage of their kind offer." We cried to the clergy to help us, and the answer we got was—"Collect more money for the sustentation of the Church, repair the manses, be obedient to the powers that be, and ye shall be prosperous, safe and happy." We sent petitions to the Government, and the answer we got was "Keep the law, be thrifty, obey your leaders, do your duty, envy not the rich, work hard." Having failed to obtain justice by peaceful requests, constitutional agitation or publication of our grievances, we declared war, and a no-rent policy was initiated During the time we upheld the banner of revolt against the policy of extermination or transportation pursued by the lords we were in close negotiation with the Government. We'declared— " Being robbed of our patrimony by the lords, we are in great distress." They replied— "The law must be kept, antl until you lay down your arms nothing can be done for you." "The earth." we declared, "was given by the Creator for the good of mankind, and not to be desolated to make room for wild beasts." "Granting," they replied, "then the Hottentots have as much right to the Highlands as you have." "Who," we asked "when the land is converted into deer forests to provide sport for the lords, will guard the kingdom against the invading army?" "Who," they told us, "but the ghillies and the bailiffs employed by the lords to watch the deer and the salmon. And surely, trained as they are to catch the agile Highlander by day and night as he goes over the rugged mountains and follows the course of the winding river, no foreign boor can escape their vigilance." I believe it was out of this idea the great Lovat Scout Corps took its origin. At last we raised the cry which was effective— "Down with deer forests! The Highlands for the Highlanders ! God forbid that to usurping lords we should give the inheritance of our fathers. We shall not sheath the sword till we procure fixity of tenure, fair rent and compensation for improvements." Thus we declared war, and, as I have already reminded you, although the lords, by the aid of the blue-coats, guarded by the army and navy forces, gained nany signal victories, some of which I have mentioned, in the end, through the passing of the Crofters Act, we are the conquerors. And the engagements in which we repulsed the enemy shall ever be famous in the history of the Highlands. To wit—the riots of Uig, Crossbost, Aignish, the raids of Arinish, Park, Benlea, the deforcements of ICilmuir, Glendale, Tiree, the battles of the Braes, Waternish, ^taflin. And in the galaxy of Highland leaders, of note I love to mention the Martyr of Glendale, Murchadh an Pheile, A' Chlach, Tearlach Ban, J. G., Garafada, Hamarabhiorain, and we had foemen worthy of our steel in the Uncrowned King of Skye, Tormňr, Strath, Alain na Fŕsaich, Glengarry. In our firm and steady tread as we marched to battle in the face of terrible obstruction, we made the nation quake, and government offered terms of peace, which resulted in the Crofters' Act. "You are right," now answered Parliament, " from the beginning you were joint-owners of the lands of the Highlands with the lords thereof. They have usurped your right, robbed you of your patrimony and ruined you with rack rent, free labour and compulsory sale. We shall restore to you the rights which your fathers held and put an end to the depredations of your so-called chiefs, Mac of Macs and Baron Bailies." In vain did the Highland lords protest that the crofters were serfs and slaves and vassals and that they never had any right at all to the land ; that they were originally the private property of their ancestors, that through the ages they obtained their freedom to roam the world, but that they now preferred to live as parasites upon their country. One lord exclaimed "An ancestor of mine some eight hundred years ago got from an old Norwegian Knight the lands which I possess as dowry with his wife." " Some king of the dark ages," cried another, " for killing a wild boar that ravaged the country rewarded a progenitor of mine with the lands which have fallen to me." And yet another cried "A certain hero, of whom, in a winding line, I am the heir, in battle killed the ancient owner of my estates and accordingly the law of chivalry took his place." The lords were simply laughed at for the grotesque, fabulous, diabolical titles they put forward as being sufficient to make them sole owners of the lands of the Highlands, and no one paid them the least attentionf or a season. " I wonder," said one of your great Tories to me the other day, lo "you still go about lecturing in favour of the crofters, seeing they are such an expensive luxury to the whole nation." "How is that ?" said I. "They are," said he, " responsible for the existence of the Crofters Commission." " Not at all," I answered," " the lords are." And do you not agree with me in sayjng this in explanation?—There are in the Highlands other people besides the crofters: there are the lords, for instance. Now, the Government of this nation found that the latter robbed the former of their patrimony. " Give the crofters back what you have stolen from them," said the Government to the lords. "No," answered the lords, " for these creatures are parasites living on our properties. They have no right to be there, and we are entitled to clear them out, as we have been doing, by a strong dip of that excellent vermin killer, rack rent." " Well" said the Government, " on account of your robbing propensity, your pig-headedness, your fully we shall appoint a Crofters Commission, which might as well be called a Lords Commission, to force you to disgorge your ill-gotten gain«, to keep your violence within bounds in future, and to mete out to you due reward — punitive, educational, deterrent—as well as to restore to the crofters their own, to retain people in the land, and to allow peace, prosperity and joy to reign again." " You lower," say the lords, "the morality of men by giving them aid that can be described as eleemosynary." They are right, and the Government in giving to the lords themselves the aid they are giving continually through the nails of their catspaws, the crofters, go far towards giving point to the expression, "As drunk as a lord," which we have heard from our childhood, and always in our minds invokes a picture which is the personification of idleness. PART VI. Out of the Babel of conflicting tongues to which the walls of St Stephens's resounded during the passing of the Crofters Act, let me give a clarified articulation to the leading ones, giving their proper names to the spirits from which they emanted. My attempt to show you what fair rent really is without a reasonable consideration of the Crofters Act would be in vain; for the Crofters Act is the mountain which, after mighty labour, brought forth the ridiculous mouse fair rent. And at the foot of this mountain this ridiculous mouse, having, indeed, the 16 breath of life in its nostrils, but blind and unable to walk, is sleeping in *ts nest in the grass. When the fabric of our nation was being reared, to the builders appeared Satan in the guise in which he appeared to Uriel, the angel of the Sun, when he enquired the way to earth, and said unto them — "Sirs, will you allow me to place this stone which I hold in my hands as the foundation of the glorious "temple which you raise to justice?" "Surely," they replied, "thou shining one." In its place Satan put the 3tone which he held in his hands, and with the finger of his right hand these words he scrolled upon it— "JNo custome is to bee allowed, but such custome as bath been used by title of prescription—that is to say, from time out of mind." The effect of this interference on the part of Satan in the rearing of our nation has been most disastrous. The elaboration of the principal which he laid down justifies all evil on the first lwur of the forty-first year after it has been perpetrated, and the property of the oppressed remains for ever in the hands of the oppressor. Thus the principle has been elaborated—"Prescription not only protects individuals from adverse proceedings which other parties might have conducted if the lapse of time had not taken place, but it in some instances creates a positive title to property. Like electricity, prescription is positive and negative—that is to say, when a lord holds that he has a musty parchment in an iron safe, which forbear of losing lie cannot show to anyone, which some mythical knight errant gave him, he holds his lands by positive prescription. On the other band, when the right of a lord to hold his lands has not been disputed at the law for forty years, he holds them by negative prescription." Whatever atrocities have been . committed by a lord in securing the lands he holds when the grass of forty summers has grown glossy on their gore, they shall be glorified as adventures, and by the law of prescription his title to the lands can never more be disputed. You have heard of an alchemy which changes copper into . gold, and you exclaimed—"How useful!" Here is an alchemy of which you must exclaim—"How detrimental, for its property is to change gold into copper!" Yea, the song of joy it changes into the wail of woe, the sceptre of right into the rod of wrong, the wine of life into the hemlock of death. From being, as it ought to be, like the sun, thesame yesterday, to-dayand forever, prescription has changed thenatureof justice to be like the moon, which, as the "toiseagan" has it, existed from the beginning of the world, and is only one month old yet. Even so, justice existed for the same period, but it is only forty years old yet. Or, to be more exact, justice done up with the rouge of prescription, defies the ravages caused by the-flight of years, and is ever a coy, soft maiden, fair, fat and never more than forty. It is an insult to the dear, sweet maiden, justice, to remind her of anything that happened forty years ago—that is, to 17 place her in the category of old maids, warlocks and fortune-tellers. 'A rehearsal, therefore, of the wiles, the allurements, the atrocities, perpetrated by the lords to defraud our fathers of every right to the land more than forty years ago would be too indelicate for the transparent, pink-shell ears of this beautiful young creature. While the means by which the lords obtained possession of the land, however, must be for ever forgotten, it must be eternally remembered that, in any case, they did possess them. In that respect the memory of justice is to go back through the dark ages even to the time of William the Conqueror. This is anomalous, no doubt, but too convenient for the lords to straighten. Or perhaps she takes this as a hearsay, true, because repeated by such glorified beings as lords. Did you ever wonder why grants of lands belonging to the natives given in the dark ages by marauding brigands to their underlings shall for ever hold good, while the same given to their equerries by the mightiest monarchs upon earth in this enlightened age would have no more finality than if they were given by gipsy kings to their tinker menials—that is to say, why we are ruled by the hand mouldering in the dust, and not by the hand in which stills flows the warm blood of life? Wonder no longer, it is because justice is only forty, years old, and knows nothing of what happened beyond that number of years. In the time beyond forty years ago the evil deeds of the lords are ordained to be forgotten, but all they possessed from time out of mind must be remembered, so that it may be sealed as theirs for ever, for that is English justice. When the Crofters Act was in the melting-pot at St. Stephen's, thus, one day, Legality addressed the assembled magicians—" Sirs, sucli an Act as you contemplate is contrary to the law of this kingdom. The fear of your lives made you break the law in the case of Ireland. You have no such excuse to do so in this instance. For though the Irish are a wild, rebellious and determined race, all the world knows the character of the Highlanders to be God-fearing, lord-serving, church-sustaining. You have nothing to fear from them. What you did in the case of Ireland was that you took away from the landlord that which the landlord had always had a right to in Ireland for centuries, that which he had a right to in every other country in the world—that is to say, of occupying as he pleases the land which he owns. You have taken that from the Irish 'landlord. It was a tremendous measure, crushing equity, greatness, belief under it in the dust with all the weight of an Indian Juggernaut." . Legality ceased, and Expediency rising, caught the speaker's eye. "Sirs," said she, "I agree with Legality in saying that in the IS case of tlie Irish tenant, Parliament, in its terror, set aside the rights of the landlord which had existed for many, many years, had existed by full confession and approval of the law, in many cases by the direct provision of the Acts of Parliament. What I propose is that in the case of the Highland crofter we extend the period of prescription —that is, the time in which the lords will be held accountable for their illegal land-grabbing, from forty, as*it now stands, to eighty years. Surely justice, in a case like this, where we are threatened with civil war, will not be offended for mildly forcing her to call to mind, for once injier life, what happened say, eighty years ago, so that we may get at the Highland lords for the atrocities committed by them within that period. You English lords need not look so terrified, for let ine explain —Tilis extension shall be local. It shall be for the Highlands of Scotland only. The Grampian Hills shall be the barrier over which it shall not pass, and God grant may never go farther! Tt shall be limited. The illegal land-grabbing of the lords shall be all it shall take cognisance of; and even that only on the estates of lords who have been foolish enough to leave a few crofters in possession, as of old, to be witnesses against themselves. Those who bavo been sufficiently wise to have cleared their estates utterly, or have got them let on the consolidation principle, advocated and pursued by certain of the very great ones, such as Argyll, Poltalloch, Sutherland, shall be free so far as they have done so. It shall be temporary and for the purposes of this Act only. Immediately the Act is passed the gates shall be closed so far as justice is concerned on all time previous to the last forty years as before." Sic Brittaniai Justitia juvenescit. 10 ANN AM MARBIIAIG, SGI RE-NAN-LOCH. Bho Ajax MEASG nan gaisgeach uaighreach, spčiseil, Sheas ar taobh, Feirg nan uachdran nuair a dh' čirich 'N aghaidh tuath do'n smachd nach gčileadh, Iaian Ruaraidh togaidh euchdan, Nach robh faoin. DO IAIN MACFHIONNLAIDH, CLACHAIR- 20 '8 math leam fhein gu bheil am hůrain Fathast beň, Oirnn nuair bheir a' nŕmhaid ionnsuitlh Sheasas ŕite nan fear fiůghail Shaor o shean o chěs ar důthaich 'S rinn i mňr. Agus's cinnteach mi gn'm feum sinn, 'Chumail ait', 'N aghaidh spůileadli luchd na h-eucoir, Chuir nan nlfhartaich ar slčibhtean, Fathast dol a mach n'ar 'n čididh Thabhairt blŕir. Nach iad so na briathran 'sgrěobhadh Leis an treun Anns an Bilean so tha rěochadh? "Goid aon tasdan 's gheibh thu priosan Ach ma's fearann 's, ann a ni do Lŕmhan euchd." 'S mňr an t-ionadh nis leam fein e Bhi cho dall, 'Us an fhěrinn so nach lčir dha, Gur e thoirt o'n t-sluagli le lčiridh Rinn a sheňrs' air tiodhlachd Dhe dhoibh Fada thall Agus ceartas e mar dh'ňrdiaeh Nan robh deant', 'N ŕite bhi na'n lůchairt glňirichc', 'S duthaich cuir a steach ri'm beň-shlaint', Gn'm be'n daingneach ŕite-coinhnuidh H-uile triaih. ¦22 2! CUMAIDH sinn an diugh's a' bhaile Bheag so fčill, Ann an gabhail seilbh air baideal Bhatersčidh. Tabhairt do ar důthaich glňir bhith's Geal gach re, Cluinnear ann an naigheachd's ňran Bhatersčidh. 'Na Eilean air chuairt bhi, Am bliadhna mar aoidh, Co dh'innseas na fhuair mi De aoibbneas 's a chruadal A nochd e fo'n bhuaireas • Bha strě ris gach taobh! "Ged bhitheadh," an Diůc thuirt, "A charaid mo ghaoil, Gach baile 's an důthaich, A thŕinig ga m' ionnsuidh Mar oighre nam fiůran, 'S an aonta mar sgoil, "Air saibhreas neo-chrěochnaeh, Aon mhionaid na saoil, * Gn'm brisinn a sěos iad Chum ait' thoirt gu siol-chuir Do ghaisgich nach strěocadh Fo cheannas nam maor." "A ghaoil," deir an sluagh sin, G'an saoradh linn laogh, Do'n gěmanach uaibhreach Le foill a thug uapa Gach cňir thŕinig nuas dhoibh O'n Tě rinn an saogh'l, "Nach d'innseadh so trŕth dhuit, 'S cha sgeul e ta faoin, Gur claidhean tŕrruint', A bha's bhith's gu brŕth ann, Na h-uachdrain gu teŕrnadh Air clŕrsaichean dhaoin' ?'. EI LAN BHATERSEIDH AN AM BARRAIDH. Le Ajax. 24 Oir an Dragon mor sin, Uum ar, Seachnaidh 'n sčun, 'Dh' čireas ann an solus suaicheanta Bhatersčidh. So doch-slŕinte nam fear curant', Anns an streup, Thog an cliů, gu ŕird nan rionnag, Bhatersčidh. Fhir, na cupain, gn cuir thairis Air am beul, Lionadh-mid gu bňideaeh' cath le Bhatersčidh. Ged a bhiodh gach cuach dheth gini Oir an tč, Sinn cha bhiodh as eugais pigean Bhatersčidh. Gum a fada beň na gillean Oga, treun, Shaor o lŕmhan, an fhir-nihillidh Bhatersčidh. Clann an cloinne cěs na pŕigheadh Chaoidh na'n deigh, Neart thoirt dhoibh-san o'n do gheŕrr iad Bhatersčidh. Iad-san thig air bhŕr nan cuantan Chi iad leus JN aitreabh bhith's na dheigh so cuartach' Bhatersčidh. 's their iad—" 0 ! nach grinn an t-ŕite Bi la grčin, Dealradh ann am maise Phŕrais Bhatersčidh." Eileanan gn lčir an lar-chuain, Creag 'us lčug, Faitichibh an t-adh tha 'g iadhan ' Bhatersčidh. 'Us le chčile dol gu h-uaibhreach Mach fo čid', Coisnidh sibh mar thuil a' bhuaidh Unig Bhatersčidh. 2o AIR RUARAIDH MACLEOID nach .mairean. foirfeacm a bha ann an eilean leodhais. Le Ajax. O! gu ma fad' air Eilean Leodh's Mu'n tig lŕ '3 nach bi cuimhn, ort measg nam mňr, Thug le'n gněomharan dha glňir, 'Charaid chaoimh, ri'n can sloěgh— Ruaraidh Bŕn .-Hi 21) Nuair a chluinneas mise sčis Air la tŕimh, Aig an teachdail'' air a phcin Sior bhith's dhoibhsan dha nach geill, 'S trie a bhios mo smuaint ort foin, 'Ruaraidh Bhŕin. Oir cha'n ann le puingean croud Chumiiail slŕn, Dh'aindeoin olca* gněomh 'us gne, Ach le grŕdh neo chrěochnach' Dhč, Thrňireachadh gu sěth na nčamh Cuaraidh Bŕn. 'S cinnteach mi na'n robh 's an t-saogh'l Thusa lŕth'r, Ann a'd' anam gu'm biodh gaoir, 'Faicinn anns an linn so daoin' Sčuleadh fuadh le clach 'us aol, 'Ruaraidh Bhŕin. Air a' bhriseadh anns an t-slěgh' Bha toirt ait', Dh'nachdrain saogh'lta mar an Tě Sinn do'n dligheach a bhi strěocht', 'N acflininn bhris na měle pios Ruaraidh Bŕn. Dh'aindeoin luchd a' chŕbhaidh fhuar His bha 'g radh -" B' fhearr dhiiit strě ri croitean shuas," Air an dream ar těr thug bh'uainn Chaidh fo čid' leinn gu toirt buaidh Bualaidh Bŕn. 'Us le clilaidheamh dŕ-lŕinih, geur, 'N ioma blŕr, 'is lion Goliah le fear sgčith, Důlan thug do'r feachd gu lčir, Le aon bhuille treun a lčir Bualaidh Bŕn. C^uin a bheir na naoimh da chŕil' Fois 's an ar, Anns nach eil ach claoidh 'u» pain, 'Us an aghaidh nŕmhaid thčid Dlůth gu leantuimi ann an ceum Ruaraidh Bhŕin. DO CHALUM PEUTAN, CROITEIR. ANN AN DUN-TH ALU INN, BHATERNISII. [Bho AJAX.J Chaluim Peutan, (ěun tug mi spčis dhuit Nach d' rinn thu leughadh, Nuair bha mo cheilidh 'S an Eilean uain' •28 29 DO DHONULL MAC-ILL'-IAIN, FIGHEAGAIR. ann an airidhbhrudhaicit, sgire-nan-loch. Bho AJax. THA fichead bliadhn' 'us cor ann O'n chaidh 's an rod an la '8 an d' tugt' o Thi-an-eorn' mi 'An Eilean Leodh's gu tamh; !S o sin a measg nan olach A' sheas ar coir's a' bhlar Cha d'fhuair mi fear's a chomhraig A chaidh roimh Dlionull Ban. Fo strě nam blaraibh 'Nuair tboght' mo nŕdui', Mar niharcaehd ŕrd-thonn, Ged theireadh each rium Gu'n robh thu fuar, Do shuilean miogach Bha lasadh sith dhomh, Mar bhotha-dile, Nuair bhith's an t-side Cuir oirre gruaim. 'S do ghuth cho grasmhor Gun fhois dhuit 'g radhtuinn— "A ghaoil bi samhach," '3 tric chuir gu naire Mo bhriathran cruaidh. O'n chaill mi dochas Le cion na h-oige, Bhi tuile co-ruit 'S an Eilean bhoidheach Tha thar nan cuan, Gur tric air tiomhaigh Mo shuilean bhith's iad, Gu cumail siorraidh Do chuimhn' air m'inntinn "S mi fada tuadh. so Mar dhaoimean lens is gloirmhor' A fhuair's an or ghlan ait', Gu lannair thoirt don neamhnuid Nach ceannaich stor na staid ; A cruth gun ghaise shonraicht' O chuailean fos gu 'shail, A' tabhairt boillse dhomhsa Tha spiorad Dhonuill Bhain. Ma fhuair an sgire mhor so Chuir fear-na-croice fas, 'S an la so faochadh eorlach O sgrios 'us foirneart mail ; Air son cho mor 's bha dhochas, Toirt misneach 's treoir do chach Cha bheag an taing bu choir thoirt A nis ds Dhonull Ban. 'S an la fo chrabhadh leomach 'S an robh na sloigh ag radh — "Bhi 'ceusadh toil na feola 'S e cosnadh gloir gu h-ard," A bhos 'toirt sligh' bhi beo dhuinn Gur e ar coir an drast, Bhi gleidheil aite comhnuidh Do theagaisg Donull Ban. 'S gn'm faod an t-ionad gloir bhi Mar bheannta mor na Pairc', Na h-ulfhartaich fo'n sgoid-san A thagras coir thar chaich; A' leigil ris gur gorach An creideamh nos ghabh ait— Nach fhiach an cruinne fheoraich — Mur ceartaicht' Donull Ban. Gur maith leam leis na seoid ud Nuair leagar oirnn a' chain, A ghlac gun gheilt nan dornaibh An claidheamh-mor gu ar; An diugh a bhi's a' cheol so, A' thig o ni' mheoir le adh— A togail cliu an olaich Ri'n can mi—"Donull Ban." 32 Bifch'dh sinn děleas arms an rod Fad ar rč. As a eliupan so o'n dh'ňl Sinn le chčil'; 'S bheir sinn důlan do gach uamh Shileas gaise chuir's a' ghrŕdh Bhňidich sinn bhi toirt gu brŕth Aig a' bhňrd. Ann an aoibh an t-sholuis fhňil Bhris thar slčibht', As a' chupall so o'n dh'ňl Sinn le chčil'; Nuair a leagail- sinn a sěos Ann an spŕirn Ghetsemani Gheibh sinn neart o lamh an Ti Fhuair an dňbh. Ann am Bŕca, tir a' bhrňin, Taobh a' cheum, As a' chupan so o'n dh'ňl Sinn le chčil'; 'S mňr a niheudaichear an t-ŕdh Gheibh sinn ann an gabhail ait' Mar ris fčin g'ar togail 'n ŕird Dh'eug's tha beň. Saoraidh sinn na diňbraich leňint' 'S cha sinn fčin, As a' chupan so o'n dhol Sinn le chčil'; Dol na shil' ri'n d'čibh an sluagh— " O'n chrann-ceusaidh thig a nuas Agus creididh sinn's an uair Ann ad' ghloir." Le ar sinnsear ghleidh sinn eňl Iobairt-rčidht', As a' chupan so o'n dh'ol Sinn le chčil'; Mar ri dochas teachd an lŕ Anns am bi so air a rŕdh— " Feuch a nis a' ghlňir a ta Lasadh neoil."