POPULAR TALES OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS. *
Wmin geologists have been constructing the history of the earth's surface out of its own inherent testimony, other inquirers have traced back the origin and migration of nations by a similar induction from their languages and traditions. It is now an ex- tablished fact that Europe has been peopled by successive migra- tions from the heart of Asia, and that all its principal races have sprung from a common stook. Some feeble remains of a previous population, whose origin is not yet determined, are seen in the Basques, Lapps, and Finns, races who were pushed aside by the advancing tide from the East, and " huddled up in the holes and corners of Europe." Next to them in chronological order come
the Celts, the earliest immigrants of the Aryan or Indo-European stook, but of all its brandies the last whioh modern ethnologists have brought within the pale of their science. Mr. Campbell's collection of tales is a perfectly new and most important accession to that domain. The tales themselves are fundamentally identi- cal with others belonging to all the kindred races, but they are told with variations of their own, which possess extraordinary interest for the patient student whose aim it is to pene- trate the obscurity of prehistoric times, and reconstruct the obliterated images of their humanity. That they are for the most part genuine traditions, orally preserved and transmitted from primeval antiquity, is not only apparent from the resemblance they bear to others with which they cannot possibly be connected by direct affiliation, but is put beyond doubt by the effectual precautions the collector has taken to verify their authenticity. He began his gathering in 1859, and not a day too soon, for the custom of relating these tales by the fire on winter nights, once universal wherever Gaelic was spoken, is fast dying out, and has become extinct in many districts. Highland tales have hitherto been despised by educated men, and the clergy have generally put them under a ban, and by no persua- sion can Highland peasants and fishermen be prevailed ou to tell them to strangers. 'They are shy and proud, and peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. " Many have a lurking belief in the truth of the stories which they tell, and a rooted conviction that any one with a better education will laugh at the belief, and the story, and the narrator and his language, if he should be weak enough to ven- ture on English, and betray his knowledge of Sgeultachd and his creed." But the same influences which have been adverse to the preservation and diffusion of these tales, have also tended strongly to keep their primitive character unchanged by any admixture of alien elements, and Mr. Campbell has been careful to render them into English as nearly as possible with literal fidelity. He gives his readers not merely the ultimate meaning of the original phrases, but the very elements of which they are composed, and thus he preserves many striking images and turns of thought which would be lost in a free translation. Thus in the first tale, he does not say that the hero meets " the forest lion," but " the slim dog of the greenwood ; " and where he has been advised to write " in the dusk," " in the evening," " at night- fall," " in the mantle of night," " at twilight," " in the grey of the evening," he has been true to the poetical form of the Gaelic expression, " in the month of night," which seems to refer to some old mythical notion that the sun went into a cave or a tent to sleep.
In collecting the materials of these volumes, Mr. Campbell en- countered none of the obstacles which would have made the task impracticable for a Southron. He had able and willing coopera- tors. Himself a Highlander, he knows the nature of the people with whom he had to deal, and with a Gaelic tongue in his head, he possessed a charm of irresistible power to open the floodgates of Gaelic speech. Nor did he ever fail to use it when opportunity presented itself. " I met two tinkers," he says, " in St. James's Street, in February, with black faces and a pan of burning coals each. They were followed by a wife, and preceded by a mangy terrier with a stiff tail. I joined the party, and one told me a version of 'the man who travelled to know what shivering meant," while we walked together through the park to West- minster." He made a trip of five days in the Isle of Man and picked up some stories not found in the Manx books ; but he was less successful there than among the people of the Scottish hills and islands, because his Gaelic dialect was not that of the Manx peo- ple, and he was forced to converse with them in English. He got on with them very well upon everything but the subject of story telling. Everywhere he was told that the practice used to be common; "but any attempt to extract a story or search out a queer old custom, or a half forgotten belief, seemed to act as a pinch of snuff does on a snail."
We have said that the lion figures in some of these traditional Highland tales. It is one of the tokens of their Eastern origin which they retain among others which show that they now belong to the lanpage and the people of the Gael. No real animal is ever mentioned in them which is peculiar to lands out of the road which leads overland to India. There are landscapes in them not native to Scotland, which may be real pictures seen long ago some- where on the same route by ancestral eyes. There are traces, too, of foreign or forgotten laws or customs. A man buys a wife as he would a cow, and acquires a right to shoot her, which is acknow- ledged as good law. The very prominent part played by horses in the romances of boatmen and fishermen inhabiting small islands, is a remarkable fact, but not so anomalous as it may seem to be. " The Celtic has in fact much which savours of a tribe who are boatmen by compulsion, and would be horsemen if they could."
* Popular Tales of the West Highlands. Orally collected, with a Translation. By J. F. Campbell. Published by Edmonston and Douglas .
Those fearless boatmen, the Western islanders, are very rare in the royal navy ; not many of them are professed sailors, but they become bold huntsmen in the far North of America. "Nothing seems to amaze a Highlander more than to see any one walk who can afford to ride ; and he will chase a pony over a hill, and sit in misery on a packsaddle when he catches the beast, and endure discomfort, that he may ride in state along a level road for a short distance."
These fictions then involve many a nucleus of fact, just as do many of the superstitions which are widely spread over the world, but how is the real nature of the facts to be detected be- neath their fantastic envelopments ? This problem is treated with great ingenuity by Mr. Campbell in his very able and fas- cinating introduction. Some of his speculations we have already alluded to ; others aim at discovering the real facts out of which sprung the belief in giants and fairies, and the magic virtues ascribed to iron and other material objects. The giants of High- land story are on the whole less mythical than many others, and may have been a powerful savage race, the weight of whose hands was confessed by Celts, while the latter salved their wounded vanity by asserting for themselves an incontestable superiority in mother wit. In the Highland fairies, Mr. Campbell recognizes a native race of men closely resembling, in their physical quali- ties, and all their habits of life, the Lapps, amongst whom he has
lived, and one of whose conical turf-clad dwellings, he says, would answer to the description of a fairy mound exactly. Note, too, that if the Fairies were regarded as supernatural beings, the Lapps are professed wizards. Things to which magic virtues are attributed, he finds to be especially such as would naturally be held in high esteem by the old inhabitants of these islands for their utility and their rarity. The work of art which is most sought after in Gaelic tales, next to the white glaive of light, is a pair of combs. The comb is a treasure for which men con- tend with giants, and it is magical. " There is evidence throughout all popular tales that combs were needed. Trans- lations are vague, because translators are bashful; but those who have travelled amongst half civilized people understand what is meant when the knight lays his head on the lady's knee, and she dresses his hair. "
Mr. Campbell speaks of his book like a man who feels a just conviction of its value, but is diffident as to the reception it may meet with from the public. We by no means share his doubts on that score ; on the contrary, we feel assured that his labours will be rewarded with such signal success as shall encourage him to extend them in every direction over the rich field which he has been the first to explore and cultivate.
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