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temporary interruptions, from the nearer relations of the deceased, who are stationed round the corpse, and at a signal given, the howl becomes general in a few minutes, after which the most extravagant among them, who, during the solemn chorus, have torn their hair and beat their breasts, will be foremost in joining the first rude provocation to returning merriment. Such hilarity is certainly incongruous to this melancholy occasion, and very opposite to the sensation naturally produced in the mind, by contemplating the only scene in which all are equally concerned.*

If not more than sixty years ago, the state of the Highlands was similar to that of England before the Norman conquest, it is no wonder although we still find customs practised there that have been long neglected in every other part of the island. Of these, their funeral ceremonies are perhaps the most curious. When a Highlander dies, the corpse being stretched on a board called the Straighting Deal, and covered with coarse linen, the friends place a wooden platter on the breast of the dead person, containing a small quantity of salt, sepa

* Sidley, vol. i. p. 231.

+ Earl of Selkirk's Emigration of the Highlanders.

rately from an equal quantity of earth; the former of which is an emblem of the immortal spirit, the latter of the corruptible body. All fire is extinguished where the dead is laid; and if a dog or cat happen to pass over the corpse, it is killed immediately. The friends of the deceased assemble to the Late Wake with bagpipes or fiddles, when the nearest of kin opens a melancholy ball, dancing and wailing at the same time this continues till day-break, and is renewed nightly till the interment; during which time such frolics take place among the younger part of the company, that the loss of society is often more than supplied by the consequences of the night.*

It was not, like the Scythians, to rejoice at the deliverance of their friends out of this life of misery, that the Highlanders convened at Wakes, but to divert the survivors of the family from dwelling too fully on the evil of the separation, and to guard against the corpse being exposed to the liberty of brute animals, or to prevent it from being carried off by some of the agents of the invisible world, which it is still believed would happen were the corpse to

* Pennant's Tour in Scotland.

be left alone at midnight without light in the house.

The pibroch played at any memorable battle in which the deceased had been engaged, was always thought indispensibly necessary to be repeated at the commencement of his LateWake, in order to rouse the feelings of his surviving companions to the strongest recollection of his valiant atchievements, and to stimulate the young and inexperienced to imitate his virtues and his valour. But as the family feuds, which cherished this marshal spirit, disappeared in the country, the discontinuance of these customs followed as a natural consequence. The melancholy ball, opened by the nearest relations, is now rarely to be seen, even in the most remote isles of the Hebrides; and the Coranoch, which was a metrical narrative, not only of the public actions of the deceased, but lengthened out by long digressions in honour of his ancestors, recited at these meetings by the oldest of the clan, is now degenerated into unconnected anecdotes related by any of the company.

Although the exploits of a warrier are infinitely more inviting to the Muse than the trifling incidents which mark the unvariegated

life of a peasant, yet the other appendages requisite to complete the account of a Wake in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, are so extremely opposite to the solemnity of the scene, that the Author has been induced to represent the Wake as it really is observed at present in the central Highlands, where, by a circumstance which fixed his residence there for a considerable time, he had the opportunity of personally observing the ceremonies and superstitions he has attempted here to describe.

THE

RURAL WAKE.

I.

THOUGH Soaring Fancy, as she sings
The fate of armies and of kings,
To decorate each lofty theme
Invoketh many a mighty name;

A rustic wight of stinted powers,
Who gathers Nature's wildest flowers,
Where minstrel never deigned before

To cull traditionary lore,

B

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