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Updated: June 9, 2025
These peasants whom we see in tidy kilted tunics and leathern gaiters, driving their barrel-laden bullock carts, or riding their mules up to the red city gates in many a Florentine and Sienese painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were in many respects better off than the small artizans of the city, heaped up in squalid houses, and oppressed by the greater and smaller guilds.
He was a grenadier in person, with the hale colour and circular wrinkles of a peasant; and as he complained much of how he had been impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted cassock, through the bleak hills of Gévaudan.
There is the bonnie Lizzie Lindsay, who kilted her coats o' green satin to be off with young Macdonald; and Burd Helen she will come to you pale and beautiful; and proud Lady Maisry, that was burned for her true love's sake; and Mary Scott of Yarrow, that set all men's hearts aflame. See, they will take you by the hand. They are the Queen's Maries. There is no other grandeur at Castle Dare.
Then as deer or calves in the season of Spring leap along the meadow, when they have had their fill of pasture, so lightly they kilted up the folds of their lovely kirtles, and ran along the hollow chariot-way, while their hair danced on their shoulders, in colour like the crocus flower.
And when the din ceased at last there was a sound of military music. The Castle gates swung wide, and a kilted regiment marched down High Street playing "God Save the Queen." When Bobby was in good spirits the marching music got into his legs and set him to dancing scandalously.
Clanship, the remains of feudalism, and historical associations, whose dark colours have been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic pencil of Scott national costume and national customs the wild sports of the wilder regions all conspired to give a peculiar interest to this royal progress; and from the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted Highlander upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well have evoked the exclamation of our queen, who, standing on the terrace at Drummond, and gazing on the scene below her, uttered “HOW GRAND!”
Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joints was unmarred. It was long beyond noon when we reached the head of the pass, and saw before us the dip of the valley of the Spey.
The place has increased from a little poverty-stricken village to a large and thriving town, which swarms during the fishing season with lowland Scotchmen, fair Northmen, broad-built Dutchmen, and kilted Highlanders. The bay is at that time frequented by upwards of a thousand fishing-boats and the take of herrings in some years amounts to more than a hundred thousand barrels.
All was excitement, all bustle; but in the joyous tone of every voice was spoken the longing anxiety to meet the enemy. The gay, reckless tone of an Irish song would occasionally reach us, as some Connaught Ranger or some 78th man passed, his knapsack on his back; or the low monotonous pibroch of the Highlander, swelling into a war-cry, as some kilted corps drew up their ranks together.
Then, a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their shapely arms and hands.
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