In the Country of the Clansmen page 2

Nevertheless it is very observable that in this scheme of things, in this era of unrivalled popularity upon which the Highlands have now entered, little of the old order remains beyond the old familiar kinship sentiment and a fortunately growing attachment to the native language and culture. Nowadays the Highlands are to be apprehended not through a distinct polity and a social and political environment altogether foreign to the rest of the monarchy, but by means of such modern institutions as Highland games, the great social gatherings held annually at Inverness, Perth, Oban, Stirling, Portree and other places within the "Highland Line," and lastly by means of the Mods or gatherings of the Gaelic Association, and the smaller provincial assemblies which the parent body has been the means of setting on foot within recent years, in divers parts of the Highlands of Scotland.

The Clans survive, though no longer - to use an expression of President Forbes - "clanned-families," that is families ruled by elected chiefs who held their lands of the tribe, and not of any king. Examine the lists of the names of the notabilities - and eke the commonalty - attending any of the great annual Highland festivals, and note well how the old familiar names abound therein: MacDonalds of the Western mainland and the Isles; Campbells of Argyll, Camerons of Lochaber and the skirts of Badenoch; the powerful and numerous Clan Chattan group (MacPhersons, Shaws, MacGillivrays, Farquharsons, etc.) with the great tribe of Macintosh at their head; MacLeods of the Gael-Norse Hebrides; MacFarlanes of the gentle Lennox country; MacLeans of the island fastnesses of Argyll; Frasers of the Airds in Inverness-shire; MacGregors of central Perthshire, and of many another "country" to which the winds of persecution carried of old that royal and virile seed; MacKays of the cold far North; Robertsons of the warm Perthshire moors; MacKenzies of the wilds of western Ross-shire; and other tribes whose fame is sung in Highland song and whose deeds are Highland story. But these, like other appearances, are deceptive, the deception in this case being that scarce one out of ten of these great tribal names is nowadays represented by a chief who has a legal right to so much as a foot of the soil of his ancestors. In fine, the days of the feudal chivalry of Scottish clanship are gone. With few exceptions, the chiefs are as landless as the Clansmen whom some of their forebears dispossessed in order to make room for deer and sheep. They have been bought up by aliens; they have been taxed or otherwise driven out of existence as lairds, with the result that now their kind appear as guests - as honoured guests, indeed, but still merely as guests.

For the most part, then, the dwindling remnants of the tribes that rose with Dundee, that at Killiecrankie avenged Glencoe on the red-coats, and without whom the Jacobite wars of 1689, of 1715, of 1719, and 1745-6, which shook three kingdoms to their foundations, had not been waged, are now chiefed by landless nobles, by men who claim, and in some cases enjoy, a purely courtesy distinction on the strength of their descent from the last holders of the great feudalised clanships of Highland Scotland.

Such, then, in as few words as the matter can be pressed into, is the story of the feudal past of the Highland Clans.

As to the future (immediate and remote) of both, much will be necessarily depend on circumstances whose nature forbids a formal discussion of them here. On the whole, however, the auguries, as the times, are fair. Thanks to the annual games, the meetings of the Gaelic Association, the popular-drama movement, and others of a like moment and purport, much is now being done, and will continue to be done, to " brighten " rural life for the average Clansman: if these ameliorating movements could be linked up with economic reforms, in that so desirable event all would yet be well with the Clansmen and the country they inhabit.