THE PROPOSED GAELIC UNIVERSITY FOR THE HIGHLANDS [To the Editor
of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Since the correspondence on this subject continues I should like to express my complete agreement with your original correspondent " Highlander," whose excellent letter appeared in your issue of May 28th. I, too, am a Gaelic- speaking Highlander, and at least as ardent a lover of the Gael, his history, traditions and achievements, as any of the " fashionable folk " now engaged in fostering, Heaven bless the word ! a language they do not understand and a literature of which, for most part, they are abysmally ignorant. Certainly their efforts, half comic, half tragic, are doing the Highlands and Highlanders no service.
The letter of F. Marian McNeill in last week's Spectator is merely a piece of specious special pleading. This writer is, of course, welcome to Dr. Johnson's opinions on chief- tainship and feudalism. Bluntly put, highland feudalism meant serfdom for the people. When they protested or tried to better themselves they were harried, persecuted, treated as traitors to the chiefs and lords whose serfs they were. One recalls Sutherland Clearances and other beautiful instances of benevolent despotism. The result is the lament- able condition of the Highlands to-day. In our Colonies and in the United States, Highlanders prosper and make history ; in their own land they arc gamekeepers and ghillies. More than a century ago a man of genius noting the trend of events put his sentiments into the mouth of one Beelzebub in an address to a Highland Lord :-
"They and be damned, what right hae they To meat or sleep or light o' day, Far less to riches, power or freedom, But what your lordship likes to gio them The policy thus satirized was the policy that ruined the I I ighlands.
American business men arc likely to grin knowingly over F. Marian MeNeill's compliments.—I am, Sir, &c.,
YET ANOTHER HIGHLANDER.
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