1In 1773, when Mrs. Grant of Laggan, as a girl, had to make the journey from Inveraray to Oban there was ‘no road but the path of cattle,’ ‘an endless moor, without any road, except a small footpath, through which our guide conducted the horses with difficulty.’—Letters from the Mountains, 5th edit., vol. i., p. 4. Half a century later the conditions do not seem to have altered much in that region, as shown in Dr. Norman Macleod’s Reminiscences of a Highland Parish.

2Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. vi., p. 50. This was written in the early years of railway enterprise. The journey is now performed every day in seven hours and three quarters, and the time will probably be further shortened in the not distant future.

3Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, vols. ii. and iii.

4Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland [Captain Burt], 5th edit., vol. i., p. 203, footnote by Editor R. Jamieson.

5Dr. Norman Macleod, writing in 1867, stated that since the beginning of the last wars of the French Revolution the island of Skye alone had sent forth 21 lieutenant-generals and major-generals; 48 lieutenant-colonels; 600 commissioned officers; 10,000 soldiers; 4 governors of colonies; 1 governor-general; 1 adjutant-general; 1 chief baron of England; and 1 judge of the Supreme Court of Scotland. The martial tide is now but feeble, though some additions could still be made to the list.

6It will be remembered what a high opinion Johnson formed of the learning and breeding of the West Highland clergy. There is no reason to think they have deteriorated since his time, though possibly their learning would not now be singled out for special eulogium.

7Life of Chalmers, vol. iv., p. 450. The catastrophe of the last ladleful is not given by Dr. Hanna.

8PrimitiÆ et Ultima, or the Early Labours and Last Remains that will meet the public eye, etc., etc., of the late Rev. and learned Mr. Thomas Boston, minister of the Gospel at Ettrick, now first published from his MSS. In three volumes. Edinburgh, 1800.

9Many years ago I told this story to my friend Mr. Thomas Constable (son of Scott’s publisher), and a few days thereafter received a note from him asking if I would write it down. This I did, and he told me afterwards that for a time he carried my MS. in his pocket and read from it to his friends, but that the paper becoming tender with frequent use, he had the manuscript thrown into type, struck off a number of copies, and circulated them among his acquaintance. One of these copies must have fallen into the hands of Mr. Mark Boyd, who, in his Social Gleanings, London, 1875, p. 57, printed the story as here given.

10A. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (1900), vol. i. p. 163.

11Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, collected entirely from oral sources, 1900, and Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 1902.

12Horae Sabbaticae, by Godfrey Higgins, 1833, p. 2.

13Higgins, Horae Sabbaticae, p. 53.

14English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l. 632.

15Thus Mrs. Grant of Laggan tells us that she sat up on Sunday night, 17th October, 1794, that she might write a letter to a friend ‘without infringing on a better day.’—Letters from the Mountains, 5th edit., vol. iii., p. 14.

16Satyre of the Three Estaitis, Part ii.

17More ludicrous still was the desire of the Highland porter in Glasgow who, as Dr. Norman Macleod relates, ‘sent his amputated finger to be buried in the graveyard of the parish beside the remains of his kindred. It is said also that a bottle of whisky was sent along with the finger, that it might be entombed with all honour.’

18The statistics for Edinburgh University during 1903 show that of the 1451 students of medicine 677 or over 46 per cent. belonged to Scotland; 333, or nearly 23 per cent., were from England and Wales; 118 from Ireland; 72 from India; 232, or about 16 per cent., from British Colonies; and 19 from foreign countries.

19This story is sometimes said to have been told by the Rev. Dr. Guthrie. It is also reported as having had its origin in a smiddy at Auchtermuchty, in Fife. The idea is probably as old as the human race. The Ayrshire farmer’s expression of it however was a good deal more graphic than Pope’s

20Another version of this story changes the father into the grandmother!

21Letters from the Mountains, 5th edition, vol. ii., p. 124

22Burt’s Letters, 5th edition (1818), vol. ii., pp. 46, 47.

23Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland (1811), vol. ii., p. 143. Writing some thirty years earlier she expressed herself to the same effect in her Letters from the Mountains, vol. ii., p. 103.

24There were probably many descents and slaughters in these islands of which no historic record remains. It is known, however, that in 1585 a party of Macdonalds from Skye was forced by stress of weather to take refuge in the part of Jura belonging to Maclean of Dowart. Two gentlemen of the Macdonald clan, independently driven at the same time into a neighbouring inlet, remained concealed from their kinsmen and secretly carried off by night a number of Maclean’s cattle, which they took with them to sea, intending that the blame should fall on their chief. The Macleans, on discovering the robbery, attacked the Macdonalds who remained, and slew sixty of them, the chief escaping only because he had slept that night on board his galley.

25See J.G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900), pp. 112, 114, 121.

26Letters from the Mountains, vol. i., p. 112; Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 202.

27A. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, 1900, Introduction, p. xxvi. Dr. Norman Macleod, who had no sympathy with this bigotry, relates—‘A minister in a remote island parish once informed me that “on religious grounds,” he had broken the only fiddle on the island. His notion of religion, I fear, is not rare among his brethren in the far west and north.’—Reminiscences of a Highland Parish, p. 35.

28A. Carmichael, op. cit., p. xxviii.

29A. Carmichael, op. cit., vol. i., pp. 258, 276.

30This anecdote has been variously related; but the version given here is probably the true one.

31Translated from the Gaelic by A. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, vol. ii., p. 235.

32In another version the predatory animal has become a wild sow!

33This story is told with variations in the name of the parish and number of interments.

34The story of this entombment alive is told in my Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad, p. 71.

35Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits, vol. i. p. 57.

36There are various versions of this story; and different towns are assigned as that to which it refers. I heard it more than forty years ago in the form given above.

37Life of Chalmers, iv. p. 462.

38Opening Address to Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1st December, 1862. The distinguished author expresses regret that a certain feeling of patriotism did not still keep a portion of the labours of the Scottish geologists for the Transactions of the Scottish Royal Society, and he makes a kindly and half prophetic allusion to my own probable removal to London. I may here say that I never forgot his words, and that I have considered it a duty as well as a pleasure, even when no longer resident in Scotland, to send some of the results of my researches to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

39This and the next paragraph are taken with some alterations from my Life of A.C. Ramsay.

40Journey of a Tour to the Western Islands, 1757, p. 124.

41Burt’s Letters, vol. ii., p. 28.

42Burt in his Letters says that he found these lines scribbled on the window with the initials A.H. at the end of them, and he conjectured them to be Hill’s. They were afterwards included in the poems of that writer, who seems to have had a passion for thus disfiguring window-panes, for he has collected a series of his verses ‘written on windows in several parts of the kingdom in a journey to Scotland.’

43From BouÉ’s Autobiography, which he wrote in French some time before his death, and printed in Vienna. It abounds in misprints, over and above those of which he appends a long list, and reminds one of the French of his Esquisse GÉologique sur l’Écosse. He addressed copies of the work in his own handwriting to his friends, to be distributed after his death. Mine was not only inscribed to me inside, but the postal cover was also addressed by him, and I received it by post shortly after the news came that he had passed away.

44The last wolf is believed to have been killed in Scotland about the year 1743 in the forest of Tarnaway, Morayland, by Macqueen of Pall-a’-Chrocain, a deer-stalker of great stature and strength (Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, Vol. III. p. 609). The fox is still common in many districts, where it is hunted with dogs and rifles. The wild-cat is becoming scarce, but continues to haunt some of the mountainous tracts of the Highlands. A number of captive individuals are kept in confinement at the Earl of Seaforth’s residence in Glen Urquhart.