The Whisky Smugglers

A modern form of smuggling little suspected by the average Englishman is found in the illicit whisky-distilling yet carried on in the Highlands of Scotland and the wilds of Ireland, as the records of Inland Revenue prosecutions still annually prove. The sportsman, or the more adventurous among those tourists who roam far from the beaten track, are still likely to discover in rugged and remote situations the ruins of rough stone and turf huts of no antiquity, situated in lonely rifts in the mountain-sides, always with a stream running by. If the stranger is at all inquisitive on the subject of these solitary ruins, he will easily discover that not only are they not old, but that they have, in many cases, only recently been vacated. They are, in fact, the temporary bothies built from the abundant materials of those wild spots by the ingenious crofters and other peasantry, for the purpose of distilling whisky that shall not, between its manufacture and its almost immediate consumption, pay duty to the revenue authorities.This illegal production of what is now thought to be the “national drink” of Scotland and Ireland, is not of any considerable antiquity, for whisky itself did not grow popular until comparatively recent times. Robert Burns, who may not unfairly be considered the poet-laureate of whisky, and styles it “whisky, drink divine,” would have had neither the possibility of that inspiration, nor have filled the official post of exciseman, had he flourished but a few generations earlier; but he was born in that era when whisky-smuggling and dram-drinking were at their height, and he took an active part in both the drinking of whisky and the hunting down of smugglers of it.

One of the most stirring incidents of his career was that which occurred in 1792, when, foremost of a little band of revenue officers, aided by dragoons, he waded into the waters of Solway, reckless of the quicksands of that treacherous estuary, and, sword in hand, was the first to board a smuggling brig, placing the crew under arrest and conveying the vessel to Dumfries, where it was sold. It was this incident that inspired him with the poem, if indeed, we may at all fitly claim inspiration for such an inferior Burns product:

THE DE’IL’S AWA’ WI’ THE EXCISEMAN

The De’il cam’ fiddling thro’ the town,
And danc’d awa’ wi’ the exciseman;
And ilka wife cry’d, “Auld Mahoun,
I wish you luck o’ your prize, man.”We’ll mak’ our maut and brew our drink,
We’ll dance, and sing, and rejoice, man;
And monie thanks to the muckle black De’il,
That danced awa’ wi’ the exciseman.

There’s threesome reels, and foursome reels,
There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man;
But the ae best dance e’er cam’ to our lan’,
Was—the De’il’s awa’ wi’ the exciseman.

Whisky, i.e. usquebaugh, signifying in Gaelic “water of life,” originated, we are told, in the monasteries, where so many other comforting cordials were discovered, somewhere about the eleventh or twelfth century. It was for a very long period regarded only as a medicine, and its composition remained unknown to the generality of people; and thus we find among the earliest accounts of whisky, outside monastic walls, an item in the household expenses of James the Fourth of Scotland, at the close of the fifteenth century. There it is styled “aqua vitÆ.”

A sample of this then new drink was apparently introduced to the notice of the King or his Court, and seems to have been so greatly appreciated that eight bolls of malt figure among the household items as delivered to “Friar James Cor,” for the purpose of manufacturing more, as per sample.

But for generations to come the nobles and gentry of Scotland continued to drink wine, and the peasantry to drink ale, and it was only with the closing years of another century that whisky became at all commonly manufactured. We read that in 1579 distillers were for the first time taxed in Scotland, and private stills forbidden; and the rural population did not altogether forsake their beer for the spirit until about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Parliament, however, soon discovered a tempting source of revenue in it, and imposed constantly increasing taxation. In 1736 the distillers’ tax was raised to 20s. a gallon, and there were, in addition, imposts upon the retailers.

It might have been foreseen that the very natural result of these extortionate taxes would be to elevate illegal distilling, formerly practised here and there, into an enormously increased industry, flourishing in every glen. Only a very small proportion of the output paid the duties imposed. Every clachan had its still, or stills.

This state of things was met by another Act which prohibited the making of whisky from stills of a smaller capacity than five hundred gallons; but this enactment merely brought about the removal of the more or less openly defiant stills from the villages to the solitary places in the hills and mountains, and necessitated a large increase in the number of excisemen.

Seven years of these extravagant super-taxes sufficed to convince the Government of the folly of so overweighting an article with taxation that successful smuggling of it would easily bring fortunes to bold and energetic men. To do so was thus abundantly proved to be a direct provocation to men of enterprise; and the net result the Government found to be a vastly increased and highly expensive excise establishment, whose cost was by no means met by the revenue derived from the heavy duties. Failure thus becoming evident, the taxes were heavily reduced, until they totalled but ten shillings and sixpence a gallon.

But the spice of adventure introduced by illegal distilling under the old heavy taxation had aroused a reckless frame of mind among the Highlanders, who, once become used to defy the authorities, were not readily persuaded to give up their illegal practices. The glens continued to be filled with private stills. Glenlivet was, in especial, famed for its whisky-smugglers; and the peat-reek arose in every surrounding fold in the hills from hundreds of “sma’ stills.” Many of these private undertakings did business in a large way, and openly sold their products to customers in the south, sending their tubs of spirits under strong escort, for great distances. They had customers in England also, and exciting incidents arose at the Border, for not only the question of excise then arose, but that of customs duty as well; for the customs rates on spirits were then higher in England than in Scotland. The border counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, Berwick, Roxburgh, and Dumfriesshire were infested with smugglers of this double-dyed type, to whom must be added the foreign contrabandists, such as the Dutchman, Yawkins, who haunted the coasts of Dumfriesshire and Galloway with his smuggling lugger, the Black Prince, and is supposed to be the original of Dirk Hatteraick, in Scott’s romance, “Guy Mannering.”

The very name of this bold fellow was a terror to those whose duty it was to uphold law and order in those parts; and it was, naturally, to his interest to maintain that feeling of dread, by every means in his power. Scott tells us how, on one particular night, happening to be ashore with a considerable quantity of goods in his sole custody, a strong party of excisemen came down upon him. Far from shunning the attack, Yawkins sprang forward, shouting, “Come on, my lads, Yawkins is before you.”

The revenue officers were intimidated, and relinquished their prize, though defended only by the courage and address of one man. On his proper element, Yawkins was equally successful. On one occasion he was landing his cargo at the Manxman’s Lake, near Kirkcudbright, when two revenue cutters, the Pigmy and the Dwarf, hove in sight at once, on different tacks, the one coming round by the Isles of Fleet, the other between the point of Rueberry and the Muckle Ron. The dauntless free-trader instantly weighed anchor and bore down right between the luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvas, without receiving injury.So, at any rate, the fantastic legends tell us, although it is but fair to remark, in this place, that no practical yachtsman, or indeed any other navigator, would for a moment believe in the possibility of such a feat.

To account for these and other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition freely alleged that Yawkins insured his celebrated lugger by compounding with the Devil for one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of the stock and tithes is left to our conjecture. The lugger was perhaps called the Black Prince in honour of the formidable insurer. Her owner’s favourite landing-places were at the entrance of the Dee and the Cree, near the old castle of Rueberry, about six miles below Kirkcudbright. There is a cave of large dimensions in the vicinity of Rueberry, which, from its being frequently used by Yawkins and his supposed connection with the smugglers on the shore, is now called “Dirk Hatteraick’s Cave.” Strangers who visit this place, the scenery of which is highly romantic, are also shown, under the name of the “Gauger’s Leap,” a tremendous precipice.

“In those halcyon days of the free trade,” says Scott, “the fixed price for carrying a box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway to Edinburgh was fifteen shillings, and a man with two horses carried four such packages.”

This condition of affairs prevailed until peace had come, after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Government then, as always, sadly in need of new sources of revenue, was impressed with the idea that a fine sum might annually be obtained by placing these shy Highland distillers under contribution. But there were great difficulties in the way. The existing laws were a mere dead letter in those regions, and it was scarce likely that any new measures, unless backed up by a display of military force, would secure obedience. The Duke of Gordon, at that period a personage of exceptionally commanding influence with the clansmen, was appealed to by the Government to use his authority for the purpose of discouraging these practices; but he declared, from his place in the House of Lords, that the Highlanders were hereditary distillers of whisky: it had from time immemorial been their drink, and they would, in spite of every discouragement, continue to make it and to consume it. They would sell it, too, he said, when given the opportunity of doing so by the extravagantly high duty on spirits. The only way out of the difficulty with which the Government was confronted was, he pointed out, the passing of an Act permitting the distilling of whisky on reasonable terms.

The result of this straightforward speech was the passing of an Act in 1823 which placed the moderate excise duty of 2s. 3d. a gallon on the production of spirits, with a £10 annual license for every still of a capacity of forty gallons: smaller stills being altogether illegal.

These provisions were reasonable enough, but failed to satisfy the peasantry, and the people were altogether so opposed to the regulation of distilling that they destroyed the licensed distilleries. It was scarce worth the while of retailers, under those circumstances, to take out licenses, and so it presently came to pass that for every one duly licensed dealer there would be, according to the district, from fifty to one hundred unlicensed.

And so things remained until by degrees the gradually perfected system of excise patrols wore down this resistance.

In the meanwhile, the licensed distillers had a sorry time of it.

Archibald Forbes, many years ago, in the course of some observations upon whisky-smugglers, gave reminiscences of George Smith, who, from having in his early days been himself a smuggler, became manager of the Glenlivet Distillery. This famous manufactory of whisky, in these days producing about two thousand gallons a week, had an output in 1824 of but one hundred gallons in the same time; and its very existence was for years threatened by the revengeful peasantry and proprietors of the “sma’ stills.” Smith was a man of fine physical proportions and great courage and tenacity of purpose, or he could never have withstood the persecutions and dangers he had long to face. “The outlook,” he said, “was an ugly one. I was warned, before I began, by my neighbours that they meant to burn the new distillery to the ground, and me in the heart of it. The Laird of Aberlour presented me with a pair of hair-trigger pistols, and they were never out of my belt for years. I got together three or four stout fellows for servants, armed them with pistols, and let it be known everywhere that I would fight for my place till the last shot. I had a pretty good character as a man of my word, and through watching, by turns, every night for years, we contrived to save the distillery from the fate so freely predicted for it. But I often, both at kirk and market, had rough times of it among the glen people, and if it had not been for the Laird of Aberlour’s pistols I don’t think I should have been telling you this story now.”

In ’25 and ’26 three more small distilleries were started in the glen; but the smugglers succeeded very soon in frightening away their occupants, none of whom ventured to hang on a second year in the face of the threats uttered against them. Threats were not the only weapons used. In 1825 a distillery which had just been started at the head of Aberdeenshire, near the banks o’ Dee, was burnt to the ground with all its outbuildings and appliances, and the distiller had a very narrow escape of being roasted in his own kiln. The country was in a desperately lawless state at this time. The riding-officers of the Revenue were the mere sport of the smugglers, and nothing was more common than for them to be shown a still at work, and then coolly defied to make a seizure.Prominent among these active and resourceful men was one Shaw, proprietor of a shebeen on the Shea Water, in the wilds of Mar. Smugglers were free of his shy tavern, which, as a general rule, the gaugers little cared to visit singly. Shaw was alike a man of gigantic size, great strength, and of unscrupulous character, and stuck at little in the furtherance of his illegal projects. But if Shaw was a terror to the average exciseman, George Smith, for his part, was above the average, and feared no man; and so, when overtaken by a storm on one occasion, had little hesitation in seeking the shelter of this ill-omened house. Shaw happened to be away from home at the time, and Smith was received by the hostess, who, some years earlier, before she had married her husband, had been a sweetheart of the man who now sought shelter. The accommodation afforded by the house was scanty, but a bedroom was found for the unexpected guest, and he in due course retired to it. Mrs. Shaw had promised that his natural enemies, the smugglers, should not disturb him, if they returned in the night; but when they did return, later on, Shaw determined that he would at least give the distillery man a fright. Most of them were drunk, and ready for any mischief, and would probably have been prepared even to murder him. Shaw was, however, with all his faults, no little of a humorist, and only wanted his joke at the enemy’s expense.

The band marched upstairs solemnly, in spite of some little hiccoughing, and swung into the bedroom, a torch carried by the foremost man throwing a fitful glare around. The door was locked when they had entered, and all gathered in silence round the bed. Shaw then, drawing a great butcher’s knife from the recesses of his clothes, brandished it over the affrighted occupant of the bed. “This gully, mon, iss for your powels,” said he.

But Smith had not entered this House of Dread without being properly armed, and he had, moreover, taken his pistols to bed with him, and was at that moment holding one in either hand, under the clothes. As Shaw flourished his knife and uttered his alarming threats, he whipped out the one and presented it at Shaw’s head, promising him he would shoot him if the whole party did not immediately quit the room; while with the other (the bed lying beside the fireplace) he fired slyly up the chimney, creating a thunderous report and a choking downfall of soot, in midst of which all the smugglers fled except Shaw, who remained, laughing.

Shaw had many smart encounters with the excise, in which he generally managed to get the best of it. The most dramatic of these was probably the exploit that befell when he was captaining a party of smugglers conveying two hundred kegs of whisky from the mountains down to Perth. The time was winter, and snow lay thick on field and fell; but the journey was made in daytime, for they were a numerous band and well armed, and feared no one. But the local Supervisor of Excise had by some means obtained early news of this expedition, and had secured the aid of a detachment of six troopers of the Scots Greys at Coupar-Angus, part of a squadron stationed at Perth. At the head of this little force rode the supervisor. They came in touch with the smugglers at Cairnwell, in the Spittal of Glenshee.

“Gang aff awa’ wi’ ye, quietly back up the Spittal,” exclaimed the supervisor, “and leave the seizure to us.”

“Na, faith,” replied Shaw; “ye’ll get jist what we care to gie!”

“Say ye so?” returned the excise officer hotly. “I’ll hae the whole or nane!”

The blood rose in Shaw’s head, and swelled out the veins of his temples. “By God,” he swore, “I’ll shoot every gauger here before ye’ll get a drap!”

The supervisor was a small man with a bold spirit. He turned to his cavalry escort with the order “Fire!” and at the same time reached for Shaw’s collar, with the exclamation, “Ye’ve given me the slip often enough, Shaw! Yield now, I’ve a pistol in each pocket of my breeches.”

“Have ye so?” coolly returned the immense and statuesque Shaw, “it’s no’ lang they’ll be there, then!” and with that he laid violent hands upon each pocket and so picked the exciseman bodily out of his saddle, tore out both pistols and pockets, and then pitched him, as easily as an ordinary man could have done a baby, head over heels into a snow-drift.Meanwhile, the soldiers had not fired; rightly considering that, as they were so greatly outnumbered, to do so would be only the signal for an affray in which they would surely be worsted. A wordy wrangle then followed, in which the exciseman and the soldiers pointed out that they could not possibly go back empty-handed; and in the end, Shaw and his brother smugglers went their way, leaving four kegs behind, “just out o’ ceeveelity,” and as some sort of salve for the wounded honour of the law and its armed coadjutors.

Not many gaugers were so lion-hearted as this; but one, at least, was even more so. This rash hero one day met two smugglers in a solitary situation. They had a cart loaded up with whisky-kegs, and when the official, unaided, and with no human help near, proposed single-handed to seize their consignment and to arrest them, they must have been as genuinely astonished as ever men have been. The daring man stood there, purposeful of doing his duty, and really in grave danger of his life; but these two smugglers, relishing the humour of the thing, merely descended from their cart, and, seizing him and binding him hand and foot, sat him down in the middle of the road with wrists tied over his knees and a stick through the crook of his legs, in the “trussed fowl” fashion. There, in the middle of the highway, they proposed to leave him; but when he pitifully entreated not to be left there, as he might be run over and killed in the dark, they considerately carried him to the roadside; with saturnine humour remarking that he would probably be starved there instead, before he would be noticed.

Smugglers hiding goods in a tomb

The flood-tide of Government prosecutions of the “sma’ stills” was reached in 1823–5, when an average of one thousand four hundred cases annually was reached. These were variously for actual distilling, or for the illegal possession of malt, for which offence very heavy penalties were exacted.

Preventive men were stationed thickly over the face of the Highlands, the system then employed being the establishment of “Preventive Stations” in important districts, and “Preventive Rides” in less important neighbourhoods. The stations consisted of an officer and one or two men, who were expected by the regulations not to sleep at the station more than six nights in the fortnight. During the other eight days and nights they were to be on outside duty. A ride was a solitary affair, of one exciseman. Placed in authority over the stations were “supervisors,” who had each five stations under his charge, which he was bound to visit once a week.

George Smith, of Glenlivet, already quoted, early found his position desperate. He was a legalised distiller, and paid his covenanted duty to Government, and he rightly considered himself entitled, in return for the tribute he rendered, to some measure of protection. He therefore petitioned the Lords of the Treasury to that effect; and my lords duly replied, after the manner of such, that the Government would prosecute any who dared molest him. This, however, was not altogether satisfactory from Smith’s point of view. He desired rather to be protected from molestation than to be left open to attack and the aggressors to be punished. A dead man derives no satisfaction from the execution of his assassin. Moreover, even the prosecution was uncertain. In Smith’s own words, “I cannot say the assurance gave me much ease, for I could see no one in Glenlivet who dared institute such proceedings.”

It was necessary for a revenue officer to be almost killed in the execution of his duty before the Government resorted to the force requisite for the support of the civil power. A revenue cutter was stationed in the Moray Firth, with a crew of fifty men, designed to be under the orders of the excise officers in cases of emergency.

But the smugglers were not greatly impressed with this display, and when the excisemen, accompanied with perhaps five-and-twenty sailors, made raids up-country, frequently met them in great gangs of perhaps a hundred and fifty, and recaptured any seizures they had made and adopted so threatening an attitude that the sailors were not infrequently compelled to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. One of these expeditions was into Glenlivet itself, where the smugglers were all Roman Catholics. The excisemen, with this in mind, considered that the best time for a raid would be Monday morning, after the debauch of the Sunday afternoon and night in which the Roman Catholics were wont to indulge; and accordingly, marching out of Elgin town on the Sunday, arrived at Glenlivet at daybreak. At the time of their arrival the glen was, to all appearance, deserted, and their coming unnoticed, and the sight of the peat-reek rising in the still air from some forty or fifty “sma’ stills” rejoiced their hearts.

But they presently discovered that their arrival had not only been observed but foreseen, for the whole country-side was up, and several hundred men, women, and children were assembled on the hill-sides to bid active defiance to them. The excisemen keenly desired to bring the affair to a decisive issue, but the thirty seamen who accompanied them had a due amount of discretion, and refused to match their pistols and cutlasses against the muskets that the smugglers ostentatiously displayed. The party accordingly marched ingloriously back, except indeed those sailors who, having responded too freely to the smugglers’ invitation to partake of a “wee drappie,” returned gloriously drunk. The excisemen, so unexpectedly baulked of what they had thought their certain prey, ungraciously refused a taste.

This formed the limit of the sorely tried Government’s patience, and in 1829 a detachment of regulars was ordered up to Braemar, with the result that smuggling was gradually reduced to less formidable proportions.The Celtic nature perceives no reason why Governments should confer upon themselves the rights of taxing and inspecting the manufacture of spirits, any more than any other commodity. The matter appears to resolve itself merely into expediency: and the doctrine of expediency we all know to be immoral. The situation was—and is, whether you apply it to spirits or to other articles in general demand—the Government wants revenue, and, seeking it, naturally taxes the most popular articles of public consumption. The producers and the consumers of the articles selected for these imposts just as naturally seek to evade the taxes. This, to the Celtic mind, impatient of control, is the simplest of equations.

About 1886 was the dullest time in the illicit whisky-distilling industry of Scotland, and prosecutions fell to an average of about twenty a year. Since then there has been, as official reports tell us, in the language of officialdom, a “marked recrudescence” of the practice. As Mr. Micawber might explain, in plainer English, “there is—ah—in fact, more whisky made now.” Several contributory causes are responsible for this state of things. Firstly, an economical Government reduced the excise establishment; then the price of barley, the raw material, fell; and the veiled rebellion of the crofters in the north induced a more daring and lawless spirit than had been known for generations past. Also, restrictions upon the making of malt—another of the essential constituents from which the spirit is distilled—were at this time removed, and any one who cared might make it freely and without license.

Your true Highlander will not relinquish his “mountain-dew” without a struggle. His forefathers made as much of it as they liked, out of inexpensive materials, and drank it fresh and raw. No one bought whisky; and a whole clachan would be roaring drunk for a week without a coin having changed hands. Naturally, the descendants of these men—“it wass the fine time they had, whateffer”—dislike the notion of buying their whisky from the grocer and drinking stuff made in up-to-date distilleries. They prefer the heady stuff of the old brae-side pot-still, with a rasp on it like sulphuric acid and a consequent feeling as though one had swallowed lighted petroleum: stuff with a headache for the Southerner in every drop, not like the tamed and subdued creature that whisky-merchants assure their customers has not got a headache in a hogshead.

The time-honoured brae-side manner of brewing whisky is not very abstruse. First find your lonely situation, the lonelier and the more difficult of access, obviously the better. If it is at once lonely and difficult of approach, and at the same time commands good views of such approaches as there are, by so much it is the better. But one very cardinal fact must not be forgotten: the site of the proposed still and its sheltering shieling, or bothy, must have a water-supply, either from a mountain-stream naturally passing, or by an artfully constructed rude system of pipes.A copper still, just large enough to be carried on a man’s back, and a small assortment of mash-tubs, and some pitchers and pannikins, fully furnish such a rustic undertaking.

The first step is to convert your barley into malt; but this is to-day a needless delay and trouble, now that malt can be made entirely without let or hindrance. This was done by steeping the sacks of barley in running water for some forty-eight hours, and then storing the grain underground for a period, until it germinated. The malt thus made was then dried over a rude kiln fired with peats, whose smoke gave the characteristic smoky taste possessed by all this bothy-made stuff.

It was not necessary for the malt to be made on the site of the still, and it was, and is, generally carried to the spot, ready-made for the mash-tubs. The removal of the duty upon malt by Mr. Gladstone, in 1880, was one of that grossly overrated and really amateur statesman’s many errors. His career was full of false steps and incompetent bunglings, and the removal of the Malt Tax was but a small example among many Imperial tragedies on a grand scale of disaster. It put new and vigorous life into whisky-smuggling, as any expert could have foretold; for it was precisely the long operation of converting the barley into malt that formed the illegal distiller’s chief difficulty. The time taken, and the process of crushing or bruising the grains, offered some obstacles not easily overcome. The crushing, in particular, was a dangerous process when the possession of unlicensed malt was an offence; for that operation resulted in a very strong and unmistakable odour being given forth, so that no one who happened to be in the neighbourhood when the process was going on could be ignorant of it, while he retained his sense of smell.

Brought ready-made from the clachan to the bothy, the malt was emptied into the mash-tubs to ferment; the tubs placed in charge of a boy or girl, who stirs up the mess with a willow-wand or birch-twig; while the men themselves are out and about at work on their usual avocations.

Having sufficiently fermented, the next process was to place the malt in the still, over a brisk heat. From the still a crooked spout descends into a tub. This spout has to be constantly cooled by running water, to produce condensation of the vaporised alcohol. Thus we have a second, and even more important, necessity for a neighbouring stream, which often, in conjunction with the indispensable fire, serves the excisemen to locate these stills. If a bothy is so artfully concealed by rocks and turves that it escapes notice, even by the most vigilant eye, amid the rugged hill-sides, the smoke arising from the peat-fire will almost certainly betray it.

The crude spirit thus distilled into the tub is then emptied again into the still, which has been in the meanwhile cleared of the exhausted malt and cleansed, and subjected to a second distilling, over a milder fire, and with a small piece of soap dropped into the liquor to clarify it.

The question of maturing the whisky never enters into the minds of these rustic distillers, who drink it, generally, as soon as made. Very little is now made for sale; but when sold the profit is very large, a capital of twenty-three shillings bringing a return of nine or ten pounds.

But the typical secret whisky-distiller has no commercial instincts. It cannot fairly be said that he has a soul above them, for he is just a shiftless fellow, whose soul is not very apparent in manner or conversation, and whose only ambition is to procure a sufficiency of “whusky” for self and friends; and a “sufficiency” in his case means a great deal. He has not enough money to buy taxed whisky; and if he had, he would prefer to make his own, for he loves the peat-reek in it, and he thinks “jist naething at a’” of the “puir stuff” that comes from the great distilleries.

He is generally ostensibly by trade a hanger-on to the agricultural or sheep-farming industries, but between his spells of five days at the bothy (for it takes five days to the making of whisky) he is usually to be seen loafing about, aimlessly. Experienced folk can generally tell where such an one has been, and what he has been doing, after his periodical absences, for his eyelids are red with the peat-smoke and his clothes reek with it.

Dragoons dispersing smugglers

Perhaps the busiest centre of Highland illicit whisky-distilling is now to be located in the Gairloch, but anything in the shape of exact information on so shy a subject is necessarily not obtainable. Between this district and the Outer Hebrides, islands where no stills are to be found, a large secret trade is still believed to exist. Seizures are occasionally made but the policy of the Inland Revenue authorities is now a broad one, in which the existence of small stills in inconsiderable numbers, although actually known, is officially ignored: the argument being that undue official activity, with the resultant publicity, would defeat itself by advertising the fact of it being so easy to manufacture whisky, leading eventually to the establishment of more stills.

The illegal production of spirits does, in fact, proceed all over Great Britain and Ireland to a far greater extent than generally suspected; and such remote places as the Highlands are nowadays by no means the most favourable situations for the manufacture. Indeed, crowded towns form in these times the most ideal situations. No one in the great cities is in the least interested in what his neighbour is doing, unless what he does constitutes a nuisance: and it is the secret distiller’s last thought to obtrude his personality or his doings upon the notice of the neighbours. Secrecy, personal comfort, and conveniences of every kind are better obtained in towns than on inclement brae-sides; and the manufacture and repair of the utensils necessary to the business are effected more quickly, less expensively, and without the prying curiosity of a Highland clachan.

It follows from this long-continued course of illegal distilling that the Highlands are full of tales of how the gaugers were outwitted, and of hairbreadth escapes and curious incidents. Among these is the story of the revengeful postmaster of Kingussie, who, on his return from a journey to Aberlour on a dark and stormy night, called at Dalnashaugh inn, where he proposed to stay an hour or two. The pretty maid of the inn attended diligently to him for awhile, until a posse of some half-dozen gaugers entered, to rest there on their way to Badenoch, where they were due, to make a raid on a number of illicit stills. The sun of the postmaster suddenly set with the arrival of these strangers. They were given the parlour, and treated with the best hospitality the house could afford, while he was banished to the kitchen. He was wrathful, for was he not a Government official, equally with these upstarts? But he dissembled his anger, and, as the evening wore on and the maid grew tired, he suggested she had better go to bed, and he would be off by time the moon rose. No sooner had she retired than he took the excisemen’s boots, lying in the inglenook to dry, and pitched them into a great pot of water, boiling over the blaze.

When the moon had risen, he duly mounted his pony and set out for Badenoch, where he gave out the news that the gaugers were coming.

The excisemen could not stir from the inn for a considerable time, for their boiled boots refused to be drawn on; and by the time they had been enabled to stretch them and to set out once more on their way, the Badenoch smugglers had made off with all their gear, leaving nothing but empty bothies for inspection. The local historian is silent as to what happened afterwards to the postmaster, the only possible author of this outrage.

A smuggler of Strathdearn was unfortunate in having the excise pouncing suddenly upon him in his bothy, and taking away his only cask of whisky. The hated myrmidons of a Sassenach Government went off with the cask, and were so jealous of their prize that they took it with them to the inn where they were to pass the night. All that evening they sang songs and were merry with a numerous company in an upper room; but even at their merriest they did not forget their capture, and one of their number sat upon it all the time.

It chanced, however, that among these merry fellows were some of the smuggler’s friends, who were careful to note exactly the position of the cask. They procured an auger and bored a hole from the room below, through the flooring and into the cask, draining all the whisky away. When the excisemen had come to the end of their jollification, they had only the empty cask for their trouble.

One of the brae-side distillers of Fortingal brought a cart laden with kegs of whisky into Perth, by arrangement with an innkeeper of that town; but the innkeeper refused to pay a fair price.

“Wha will her sell it till, then?” asked the would-be vendor.

The innkeeper, a person of a saturnine humour, mentioned a name and a house, and the man went thither with his cart.

“What is it, my man?” asked the occupier, coming to the door.

“Well, yer honour, ’tis some o’ the finest whusky that iver was made up yon, and niver paid the bawbee’s worth o’ duty.”

“D’ye know who I am?” returned the householder. “I’m an officer of excise, and I demand to know who sent you to me.”

The smuggler told him.

“Now,” said the exciseman, “go back to him and sell him your whisky at his own price, and then begone.”

The man did as he was bidden; sold his consignment, and left the town. It was but a few hours afterwards that the innkeeper’s premises were raided by the excise, who seized the whisky and procured a conviction at the next Assizes, where he was heavily fined.

One of the last incidents along the Border, in connection with whisky-smuggling between Scotland and England, occurred after the duty had been considerably lowered. This was a desperate affray which took place on the night of Sunday, January 16th, 1825, at Rockcliffe Cross, five miles from Carlisle on the Wigton road. One Edward Forster, officer of excise, was on duty when he observed a man, whose name, it afterwards appeared, was Charles Gillespie, a labourer, carrying a suspicious object, and challenged him. This resulted in an encounter in which the excise officer’s head was badly cut open. Calling aid of another labourer, who afterwards gave evidence, he remarked that he thought the smuggler had almost done for him, but pursued the man and fired upon him in the dark, with so good an aim that he was mortally wounded, and presently died. It was a dangerous thing in those times for an excise officer to do his duty, and at the inquest held the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Murder”; the men who formed the jury being doubtless drawn from a class entirely in sympathy with smuggling, and possibly engaged in it themselves. Forster, evidently expectant of that verdict, did not present himself, and was probably transferred by his superiors to some post far distant. There the affair ends.

About the same time, on the Carlisle and Wigton road, two preventive men at three o’clock in the morning met a man carrying a load, which, when examined, proved to be a keg of spirits. Two other men then came up and bludgeoned the officers, one of whom dropped his cutlass; whereupon a smuggler picked it up, and, attacking him vigorously, cut him over the head. The smugglers then all escaped, leaving behind them two bladders containing eight gallons of whisky.