cual 6 Supplement No. 6-DAKING
" MY heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer," is the opening line of an old Scottish song, sung in hall and sheiling, long before stalking the red stag had become fashionable. "Chasing the deer, and following the roe, my heart's in the Highlands wherever I go," exclaims the poet of these blissful times when the Celt was untempted by the siller of the Sassenach. Every clachan held its clan then, but, alas ! clansmanship is now buta tradition kept alive by some annual meeting at Glasgow or Edinburgh. Tugald, the grocer, drinks "sworry" tea with Donald, the draper, or Duncan, the ironmonger, low- land all of them in nearly everything but name, or possibly a few words of Gaelic and the old patriarchal pride of race. That fateful day at Culloden saw the last of the old Scottish Highlands, as Scott loved to describe them, of the time of Montrose. The kilt and the tartan proscribed, chieftainship abolished, and without heads or leaders the Celts abandoned their old wild ways and their lawlessness, and became peaceable tenders of flocks and herds in their native glens, or took the shilling and followed the drum. The old- fashioned huntsman of Ranald McEagh's type, who lived by the fruits of the chase, and found the flesh of wild goats and venison for the clachans, one by one disappeared from the hills, and if they survive in any form at all nowadays, it is in that of the mountain fox-hunter, who is maintained largely by the sheep-tacksmen to protect their flocks from the ravages of the vulpine race during the lambing season. The establishment of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1786, for the purpose of improving the condition of the people by introducing better systems of cultivation, did away with these old-fashioned sportsmen who lived a life amongst the hills much after that of a Red Indian on the Rocky Mountains. It is curious to note that Duncan MacIntyre wasappointed poet to the society that year, chiefly owing to the favour with which was received his Gaelic song, written much
