possible for any critic, or for any
collector in the world, to disregard or dispose of them. All farther
serious controversy on the subject, in short, is destined to be of this
character--common-sense and practical; and the sooner we prepare
ourselves, as honest enquirers, to engage in it after this fashion and
in this spirit, the better.

P. HATELY WADDELL.

THE HIGHLAND CEILIDH.

BY ALASTAIR OG.

WE are in a west coast village or township, cut off from all
communication with the outer world, without Steamers, Railways, or even
Roads. We grow our own corn, and produce our beef, our mutton, our
butter, our cheese, and our wool. We do our own carding, our spinning,
and our weaving. We marry and are taken in marriage by, and among, our
own kith and kin. In short, we are almost entirely independent of the
more civilized and more favoured south. The few articles we do not
produce--tobacco and tea,--our local merchant, the only one in a
district about forty square miles in extent, carries on his back, once a
month or so, from the Capital of the Highlands. We occasionally indulge
in a little whisky at Christmas and the New Year, at our weddings and
our balls. We make it too, and we make it well. The Salmon Fishery Acts
are, as yet, not strictly enforced, and we can occasionally
shoot--sometimes even in our gardens--and carry home, without fear of
serious molestation, the monarch of the forest. We are not overworked.
We live plainly but well, on fresh fish, potatoes and herring, porridge
and milk, beef and mutton, eggs, butter, and cheese. Modern pickles and
spices are as unknown as they are unnecessary. True, our houses are
built not according to the most modern principles of architecture. They
are, in most cases, built of undressed stone and moss (_coinneach_),
thatched with turf or divots, generally covered over with straw or ferns
held on by a covering of old herring nets, straw, and rope, or _siaman_.

The houses are usually divided into three apartments--one door in the
byre end leading to the whole. Immediately we enter we find ourselves
among the cattle. A stone wall, or sometimes a partition of clay and
straw separates the byre from the kitchen. Another partition, usually of
a more elegant description, separates the latter from the _Culaist_ or
sleeping apartment. In the centre of the kitchen a pavement of three or
four feet in diameter is laid, slightly