Britain, to find they were living at the next door to tribes whose government and manners were simply and purely patriarchal, and who, in the structure of their social system, much more resembled the inhabitants of the mountains of India than those of the plains of England. Indeed, when we took up the account of Caubul, lately published by the Honourable Mr. Elphinstone, we were forcibly struck with the curious points of parallelism between the manners of the Afghaun tribes and those of the ancient Highland clans. They resembled these oriental mountaineers in their feuds, in their adoption of auxiliary tribes, in their laws, in their modes of conducting war, in their arms, and, in some respects, even in their dress. A highlander who made the amende honorable to an enemy, came to his dwelling, laid his head upon the block, or offered him his sword held by the point;-an Afghaun does the same. It was deemed unworthy, in either case, to refuse the clemency implored, but it might be legally done. We recollect an instance in highland history: William Mac Intosh, a leader, if not the chief, of that ancient clan, upon some quarrel with the Gordons, burnt the castle of Auchindown, belonging to this powerful family; and was, in the feud which followed, reduced to such extremities by the persevering vengeance of the Earl of Huntley, that he was at length compelled to surrender himself at discretion. He came to the castle of Strathbogie, chusing his time when the Earl was absent, and yielded himself up to the Countess. She informed him that Huntley had sworn never to forgive him the offence he had committed, until he should see his head upon the block. The humbled chieftain kneeled down, and laid his head upon the kitchen dresser, where the oxen were cut up for the baron's feast. No sooner had he made this humiliation, than the cook, who stood behind him with his cleaver uplifted, at a sign from the inexorable Countess, severed Mac Intosh's head from his body at a stroke. So deep was this thirst of vengeance impressed on the minds of the highlanders, that when clergyman informed a dying chief of the unlawfulness of the sentiment, urged the necessity of his forgiving an inveterate enemy, and quoted the scriptural expression, Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' the acquiescing penitent said, with a deep sigh,- To be sure, it is too sweet a morsel for a mortal.' Then added, ' Well, I forgive him; but the deil take you,. Donald, (turning to his son,) if you forgive him.' a Another extraordinary instance occurred in Aberdeenshire. In the sixteenth century, Muat of Abergeldie, then a powerful baron, made an agreement to meet with Cameron of Brux, with whom he was at feud, each being attended with twelve horse only. But Muat, treacherously taking advantage of the literal meaning of the words, came with two riders on each horse. They met at Drumgaudrum, gaudrum, a hill near the river Don; and in the unequal conflict which ensued, Brux fell, with most of his friends. The estate descended to an only daughter, Katherine; whose hand the widowed Lady Brux, with a spirit well suited to the times, offered as a reward to any one who would avenge her husband's death. Robert Forbes, a younger son of the chief of that family, undertook the adventure; and having challenged Muat to single combat, fought with and slew him at a place called Badenyon, near the head of Glenbucket. A stone called Clachmuat (i. e. Muat's stone) still marks the place of combat. When the victor presented himself to claim the reward of his valour, and to deprecate any delay of his happiness, Lady Brux at once cut short all ceremonial, by declaring that Kate Cameron should go to Robert Forbes's bed while Muat's blood was yet reeking upon his gully,' (i. e. knife). The victor expressed no disapprobation of this arrangement, nor did the maiden scruples of the bride impede her filial obedience.* One more example (and we could add an hundred) of that insatiable thirst for revenge, which attended northern feuds. One of the Leslies, a strong and active young man, chanced to be in company with a number of the clan of Leith, the feudal enemies of his own. The place where they met being the hall of a powerful and neutral neighbour, Leslie was, like Shakspeare's Tybalt in a similar situation, compelled to endure their presence. Still he held the opinion of the angry Capulet, even in the midst of the entertainment, Now by the stock and honour of my kin, Accordingly, when they stood up to dance, and he found himself compelled to touch the hands and approach the persons of his detested enemies, the deadly feud broke forth. He unsheathed his dagger as he went down the dance-struck on the right and left→ laid some dead and many wounded on the floor-threw up the window, leaped into the castle-court, and escaped in the general confusion. Such were the unsettled principles of the time, that the perfidy of the action was lost in its boldness; it was applauded by his kinsmen, who united themselves to defend what he had done; and the fact is commemorated in the well-known tune of triumph called Lesley among the Leiths. The genealogies of the Afghaun tribes may be paralleled with those of the clans; the nature of their favourite sports, their love of their native land, their hospitality, their address, their simplicity of manners exactly correspond. Their superstitions are the same, or nearly so. The Gholée Beabaun (demons of the desert) re * Vide note to Don, a poem, reprinted by Moir, Edinburgh, 1816, from an edition in 1742. semble the Boddach of the Highlanders, who walked the heath at midnight and at noon.' The Afghaun's most ordinary mode of divination is by examining the marks in the blade-bone of a sheep, held up to the light; and even so the Rev. Mr. Robert Kirk assures us, that in his time, the end of the sixteenth century,' the seers prognosticate many future events, (only for a month's space,) from the shoulder-bone of a sheep on which a knife never came.-By looking into the bone, they will tell if whoredom be committed in the owner's house; what money the master of the sheep had; if any will die out of that house for a month, and if any cattle there will take a trake, (i. e. a disease,) as if planet-struck.'* The Afghaun, who, in his weary travels, had seen no vale equal to his own native valley of Speiger, may find a parallel in many an exile from the braes of Lochaber; and whoever had remonstrated with an ancient Highland chief, on the superior advantages of a civilized life regulated by the authority of equal laws, would have received an answer something similar to the indignant reply of the old Afghaun; 'We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master.'+ The highland chiefs, otherwise very frequently men of sense and education, and only distinguished in lowland society by an affectation of rank and stateliness, somewhat above their means, were, in their own country, from the absolute submission paid to them by their clans, and the want of frequent intercourse with persons of the same rank with themselves, nursed in a high and daring spirit of independent sovereignty which would not brook or receive protection or controul from the public law or government; and disdained to owe their possessions and the preservation of their rights to any thing but their own broadswords. Similar examples may be derived from the history of Persia by Sir John Malcolm. But our limits do not permit us further to pursue a parallel which serves strikingly to shew how the same state of society and civilization produces similar manners, laws, and customs, even at the most remote period of time, and in the most distant quarters of the world. In two respects the manners of the Caubul tribes differ materially from those of the highlanders ; first, in the influence of their Jeergas, or patriarchal senates, which diminishes the power of their chiefs, and gives a democratic turn to each separate tribe. This appears to have been a perpetual and radical difference; for at no time do the highland chiefs appear to have taken counsel with their elders, as an authorized and inde Essay on the Nature and Actions of the subterranean invisible people going under the names of Elves, Fairies and the like. London, 1815. † Account of Caubul, p. 174, Note, pendent pendent body, although, no doubt, they availed themselves of their advice and experience, upon the principle of a general who summons a council of war. * The second point of distinction respects the consolidation of those detached tribes under one head, or king, who, with a degree of authority greater or less according to his talents, popularity, and other circumstances, is the acknowledged head of the associated communities. In this point, however, the highlanders anciently resembled the Afghauns, as will appear when we give a brief sketch of their general history. But this, to be intelligible, must be preceded by some account of their social system, of which the original and primitive basis differed very little from the first time that we hear of them in history until the destruction of clanship in 1748. The Scottish Highlanders were, like the Welch, the unmixed aboriginal natives of the island, speaking a dialect of the ancient Celtic, once the language of all Britain, and being the descendants of those tribes which had been driven by the successive invasions of nations more politic than themselves, and better skilled in the regular arts of war, into the extensive mountainous tract which, divided by an imaginary line, drawn from Dunbarton, includes both sides of Loch Lomond, and the higher and more mountainous parts of Stirling and Perthshires, Angus, Mearns, and Aberdeenshire. Beyond this line all the people speak Gaelic, and wear, or did wear, the highland dress. The Western Islands are comprehended within this wild and extensive territory, which includes upwards of two hundred parishes, and a population of about two hundred thousand souls. The country, though in many places so wild and savage as to be almost uninhabitable, contains on the sea coasts, on the sides of the lakes, in the vales of the small streams, and in the more extensive straths through which larger rivers discharge themselves, much arable ground; and the mountains which surround these favoured spots afford ample pasture walks, and great abundance of game. Natural forests of oak, fir, and birch, are found in most places of the country, and were anciently yet more extensive. These glens, or valleys, were each the domain of a separate tribe, who lived for each other, laboured in common, married usually within the clan, and, the passages from one vale to another being dangerous in most seasons, and toilsome in all, had very little communication with the world beyond their own range of mountains. This * This is to be understood generally; for there were circumstances in which the subordinate chieftains of the clan took upon them to controul the chief, as when the Mackenzies forcibly compelled the Earl of Seaforth to desist from his purpose of pulling down his family-seat of Castle Brahan. circumstance circumstance doubtless tended to prolong among these separate tribes a species of government, the first that is known in the infancy of society, and which, in most instances, is altered or modified during an early period of its progress. The chief himself had a separate appellative formed on the same principle: thus the chief of the Campbells was called Mac Callam more, (i. e. the son of the great Colin;) Glengarry is called Mac Allister more, and so forth. Their language has no higher expression of rank; and when the family of Slate were ennobled, their clansmen could only distinguish Lord Mac Donald as Mac Dhonuil more, (i. e. the great Mac Dohald.) To this was often added some special epithet distinguishing the individual or reigning chief. Thus, John Duke of Argyle was called Jan Roy nan Cath, as the celebrated Viscount of Dundee was termed Jan Dhu nan Cath, namely, Red or Black John of the Battles. Such epithets distinguished one chief from another, but the patronymic of the dynasty was common to all. The obedience of the highlander was paid to the chief of his clan, as representing some remote ancestor from whom it was supposed the whole tribe was originally descended, and whose name, compounded into a patronymic, as we have already mentioned, was the distinguishing appellation of the sept. Each clan, acting upon this principle, bore to its chief all the zeal, all the affectionate deference, all the blind devotion, of children to a father. Their obedience was grounded on the same law of nature, and a breach of it was regarded as equally heinous. The clansman who scrupled to save his chief's life at the expense of his own, was regarded as a coward who fled from his father's side in the hour of peril. Upon this simple principle rests the whole doctrine of clanship; and although the authority of the chief sometimes assumed a more legal aspect, as the general law of the country then stood, by his being possessed of feudal influence, or territorial jurisdiction,—yet, with his clan, no feudal rights, or magisterial authority, could enhance or render more ample that power which he possessed, jure sanguinis, by the right of primogeniture. The duty of the clansman was indelible; and no feudal grant which he might acquire, or other engagement whatsoever, was to be preferred to his service to the chief. In the following letter Mac Intoshe summons, as his rightful followers, those of his people who were resident on the estate of Culloden, who, according to low country law, ought to have followed their landlord. 'Madam, You can'nt be a Stranger to the Circumstances I have put myself in at the tyme, and the great need I have of my own Men & followers wherever they may be found. Wherfor I thought fitt, seeing Collodin is |