CURRENT LITERAT LIRE.
giGlITEENTH-PENTURY SCOTLAND.
. Life in Scotland a Hundred Years Ago. By James Murray, M.A. (Alexander Gardner, Paisley. 63.)—The Last Jacobite Rising, 1745. Edited by C. Sanford Terry. "Scottish History from Con- temporary Sources." (D. Nutt. Ss.)—In the year 1790 Sir John Sinclair of ' Caithness conceived the idea of getting every minister in Scotland to write an account of his parish, and in 1799 the twenty-first and concluding volume of the Statistical Account was given to the world. The work has ever since been a mine of information for the antiquary and the historian of manners, and Mr. Murray has done well in publishing a series of the most interesting extracts. The work has beea skilfully performed, and it is a connected narrative of a curious old-world Scotland which he furnishes • for us, with references to the different parishes to assure us of his good faith. The first thing which impresses the reader is the high level of attainments shown by the Scots country ministers. Most of them quote the classics aptly, and with taste; many are keen antiquarians, and more than one has a humourist's eye for the odditiesof his parish. Rural Scotland was miserably poor, but there was much thrift, and even education, in the peasantry. The minister of Orieff loses all patience with the growth of tea-drinking among his flock, "bewitched, by the mollifying influences of an enfeebling potion," and sighs for the old days of small-beer. The minister of Mortlach classes it with whisky-drinking as a sign of a degenerate age. In Perthshire the use of tobacco is excessive, "especially, among the female sex. There is scarcely a young woman by the time she has been taught to spin but has also learned to smoke." It is very in. teresting to note the growth of more liberal views on the subject of "promiscuous dancing," card-playing, and shaving on the Sabbath, as contained in Dr. Carlyle's account of Inveresk. Ap- parently at one time Christmas was the great Scots festival, and not New Year, as it is to-day. There is an account of an extra- ordinary kind of football played on Shrove Tuesday at Scone, in which one can discern the first rude beginning of the Rugby game. It was a violent game, whence the proverb, All is fair at the ball of Scone." The fishwives at Inveresk played at golf and football, which must have been worth seeing. But much the most interesting note on sports is the account of the Beltane festival at Callender, which is unfortunately too long to quote. The minister of Gretna Green is naturally extremely annoyed at the unhallowed marriages in his parish, while a Shetland minister's grievance is that his people believe in the efficacy of sacred springs, "as if pure water could ever be beneficial." The best stories are, of course, connected with the Kirk. We have the Rev. Aeneas Sage, who visited his flock girt with a claymore and reproved their irregularities in single combat. By this means, says the narrator, "he struck terror into vice." There is a story from Carluke, unfortunately unquotable, which is the most curious commentary on a well-known religious dogma. One minister laments that "the vulgar read nothing but books on religious subjects." Sunday drinking was a great institution, and after divine service the Drunken Bell was rung to call the people from the alehouses. The minister of Loch- carron drops into occasional verse; which has the merit of naked truth : "We have not fine materials,
And our account is plain ; Our lands and purling streams are good, But we have too much rain."
Altogether, Mr. Murray has given us a most interesting book,— a treasury of good stories, and a vivid picture of an elder Scotland.--Mr. Terry, in the admirable fashion of Mr. Nutt's series, prints extracts from contemporary writers which give a complete picture of the various acts in the drama of the '45. He has also added a copious bibliography. The Culloden papers, Murray of Broughton's "Memorials," the Lockhart papers, the "Lyon in Mourning," and Home's history are some of the sources he has drawn upon. There are few finer tales known to us than the account of Prince Charles's wanderings in the western islands from the "Lyon. in Mourning." Both sides are represented among the historians, for Home was a Whig, and Maxwell and the Chevalier Johnstone were of the straitest sect of the Jacobites. The melancholy story of the futile Rising is best read thus in the plain narratives of the actors, for modern sentiment, however. pretty and appropriate, mars the dramatic simplicity of the events. Mr. Lang has written a fine book on the chief figure, but he will not disinherit the "Lyon in Mourning."
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