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'Friend, said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, 'honour not me. I do not go out to park-dikes and to steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o' Cairnvreckan, and ca' me laird or captain or honour.
There was no bridge over the Tay at Dunkeld, or over the Spey at Fochabers, or over the Findhorn at Forres. Nothing but wretched pierless ferries, let to poor cottars, who rowed, or hauled, or pushed a crazy boat across, or more commonly got their wives to do it. There was no mail-coach north of Aberdeen till, I think, after the battle of Waterloo.
'Friend, said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, 'honour not me. I do not go out to park-dikes and to steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o' Cairnvreckan, and ca' me laird or captain or honour.
"A great deal?" he said. "What did your father give for it?" "The place was sold by auction, and he got it cheap. Fifty thousand crowns, I think it was." Peer strode off towards the house again. "We'll buy it. It's the very place to make into a home. . . . Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, cottars ah! it'll be grand." Merle followed him more slowly.
His correspondents were of every social grade peers and peasants; of every intellectual attainment philosophers like Dugald Stewart, and simple swains like Thomas Orr; and of almost every variety of calling, from professional men of recognised eminence to obscure shopkeepers, cottars, and tradesmen.
And even in the cottars' houses the good-wife would have a meal on such a night, and it would be pork and greens, or herring and potatoes; and then when it was bedtime in the morning, the ceilidhers would take the road, with maybe a piper at the head of them, and it would be at another house they would be meeting on the next night.
A guardian of an ancient parish and borough, in an agricultural district, observed the other day, "This new removal act is a serious matter to us, as the cottars in the out-parishes die off, the cottages are pulled down, and this impoverished borough will have to support the children, because they reside here."
They, however, enjoyed the protection and civil rights imparted by the laws, and to their class belonged all the cottars on the land paying a rent in work on the farm of the bonder or udaller, also the house-carles or freeborn indoormen, and the tradesmen, labourers, fishermen, etcetera, about villages and farms. Thralls were slaves taken in war, over whom the owners had absolute control.
Public policy demands that every legitimate means be used to better the condition of the crofters and cottars, and to encourage them to remain in and develop the industries of their own country, instead of abandoning it to sheep and deer. Private interests must be made subordinate to the public good.
The best were selected for the use of the principal farmers, the others divided among their shepherds, cottars, dependents, and others of inferior rank who attended. These fish, dried in the turf smoke of their cabins or shealings, formed a savoury addition to the mess of potatoes, mixed with onions, which was the principal part of their winter food.
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