A FOREIGNER IN SCOTLAND
By L. A. G. STRONG 'ITEM; vidi, rictus sum. It is just ten years since, doggedly resolved to be faithful to the Ireland of my blood and the. Devon of my birth, I travelled up to Scotland, and, before the first day'-was out, had no more spirit in me. Whether so complete a surrender disqualifies me from rational comment I do not know. There were, perhaps, extenuating circumstances. The most sensitive of modern Scottish novelists said of my book The Brothers that while occasional details told him it was not the work of a native, it had a clear blood- affinity with the life -it - portrayed ; it breathed the Gaelic air. " At any rate," he wound up, " no English- man could have - written it." It - may be that this inherited propensity, plus the fact that Wicklow and Kerry and the timeless calm of Dartmoor had inclined me towards what I was to see, made the surrender inevitable. Yet, though I have been up to the Highlands every summer since, I remain a foreigner, if only because of my one obstinate quarter of English blood : and my admiration for the country and its people is not uncritical.
In spite of the ten years, I have only .a very limited acquaintance with Scotland. The Arisaig-Morar-Mallaig district, at most times of the year from May to November ; Edinburgh, Glasgow, and parts of Lanark; the neigh- bourhood of Perth, up to Schiehallion and Loch Rannoch ; Inverness, Nairn, Forres, and the road from Inverness to Fort William ; Moidart ; a couple of the Islands ; it is scarcely a title to talk. All the same, certain im- pressions emerge with such force, and so consistently, that it is hard not to think they have some value. Of the country itself I shall make no attempt to speak. Its quality is impossible to convey to those who have not seen it ; and it is always changing. Ten summers spent in the same place should prepare a moderately observant eye for most effects, but the West Highland light, on sea and land, has a thousand surprises. It can at any moment confound the onlooker with some absolutely new performance, some magic alteration in the contours of a landscape that is never still. The very hills seem to expand and contract, the horizon comes closer than the middle distance, the weather changes every quarter of an hour, and the loveliest gestures are so evanescent that one is left wondering if they were not a dream.
The people offer something more definite. Two generalizations my experience suggests to be safe, generalizations which refute existing libels. The Scots are neither mean nor dour. Scottish hospitality is second to none in the world, and it seems to the visitor to be informed by a real warmth of goodwill. I, certainly, have never met a friendlier people. And, as for dourness, I have never met a people more ready to talk, and, what is more, to talk about themselves. Wherever I have been, Scots of all types, from artist to com- mercial traveller, from minister to tinker, have spoken freely what was in their mind. In certain remote districts were people simply coruscating with auto- biography. The Gaelic-speaking Highlander has an essential deep reserve, a dignity which is not for the stranger to assail ; but he responds instantly to friendly intention, and has an extraordinary power of bringing all intercourse to the level of common humanity. In a word, he has sympathy, and can see quickly through artificial coverings of caste or circumstance to the human being beneath ; and his dignity enables him without embarrassment to treat king and commoner alike. Moreover, he has a real intellectual curiosity, and an interest in learning for its own sake. A farmer, when I was visiting Forres, rode many miles to _ call at breakfast time, and_ discuss a review in The Spedatar. A very poor woman stopped me in the road to ask if " jewel " were derived from " Jew "--" because the Jews were often rich people that would have jewels."
• The zest for learning can become pedantry, the friendli- ness can go side by side with a deep practical distrust for a creature of a different sky, but in each case the original impulse is real, and it is up to the visitor not to awaken the distrust by himself emphasizing the difference.
At the same time, while there is so much to like and admire, there is frequent excuse for impatience. I feel it with my English fraction, and others, wholly English, may feel it more. Something of the weather and some- thing of the long dark winter and something of the isolation in which he lives have got into the character of the West Highlander, and put difficulties in his way when he meets those whose lives move to a brisker tempo. Coming to the avocations of the twentieth century—his own being timeless—he is often at a disadvantage. True, he passes the disadvantage on to those with whom he deals ; but he is the sufferer in the end.
For instance—it would in no way spoil his charm to realize that time is an essential feature of a business con- tract, and that a commission promised for Monday is not satisfactorily discharged by being completed on the following Friday week. No serious harm would be done if a shopkeeper got it into h's head that a consignment of apples is not an adequate response to an order for bananas. It is without doubt difficult for those who for generations have been accustomed to eat when they killed to understand that there are people who prefer fixed meal-times, and therefore want their food delivered by a certain hour, so that they may cook it : yet it would be to everyone's advantage if such a fact could sink in. I have never been able to see why the half-dozen shops in a village should feel in duty bound to carry identical stocks, and differ only in the degree of difficulty with which the Wanted articles can be located. Again, while there are in the Highlands hotels at which it is a delight to stay, and where one seems to get more than a commer- cial welcome, there are others which are a disgrace to a hospitable country. I could name hotels which seem to accept their guests on sufferance, at the guests' own peril ; where there is neither grace nor comfort nor punctuality nor good cooking nor anything but the complacent or even arrogant enjoyment of a monopoly. Others are merely unimaginative and incompetent. There will be goodwill and courtesy on the part of the staff, but a decided reluctance to carry these virtues beyond amiable speech. Nothing is done to meet the guest's wishes or to consider his comfort. That is the gist of the matter ; nothing is done ; and those who love the country regret it, for it puts the West Highlander at a real disadvantage. His laziness recoils upon himself. The village shopkeeper cries out bitterly when the van from the multiple store takes away his custom, but he has only himself to blame. Nor can we wholly sympathize with the hotel-keeper when he laments the numbers of those who camp and caravan, for he and his like have helped to drive them from his door. The plea is frequently put forward that the Highlander is indifferent to money. Even if one grant this, and allow indifference to money to be a virtue, it is still no excuse for incompetence. And, if he is really indifferent to money, he should not complain. Indifference to money hardly squares with furious jeremiads when trade is lost to a more competent rival.
A delectable country it certainly-is ; and this defect, the most serious I can report, is no terrible matter. It arises from a lack of imagination—or rather, a restric- tion of imagination to purely personal instead of to communal or business dealings. Man to man, the Highlander is one of the aristocrats of the human species, with a speech and manner worthy of his country.
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