here
is, against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little
understood, and for it, the indistinct cry of national persuasion, which
may be perhaps resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never
could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only
willing to believe.

As there subsists no longer in the Islands much of that peculiar and
discriminative form of life, of which the idea had delighted our
imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past times as
would be given us. But we soon found what memorials were to be expected
from an illiterate people, whose whole time is a series of distress;
where every morning is labouring with expedients for the evening; and
where all mental pains or pleasure arose from the dread of winter, the
expectation of spring, the caprices of their Chiefs, and the motions of
the neighbouring clans; where there was neither shame from ignorance, nor
pride in knowledge; neither curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to
communicate.

The Chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury, and daily difficulties;
and in their houses were preserved what accounts remained of past ages.
But the Chiefs were sometimes ignorant and careless, and sometimes kept
busy by turbulence and contention; and one generation of ignorance
effaces the whole series of unwritten history. Books are faithful
repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they
are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once
interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed
luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has past away, is
again bright in its proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if
once it falls, cannot be rekindled.

It seems to be universally supposed, that much of the local history was
preserved by the Bards, of whom one is said to have been retained by
every great family. After these Bards were some of my first inquiries;
and I received such answers as, for a while, made me please myself with
my increase of knowledge; for I had not then learned how to estimate the
narration of a Highlander.

They said that a great family had a Bard and a Senachi, who were the poet
and historian of the house; and an old gentleman told me that he
remembered one of each. Here was a dawn of intelligence. Of men that
had lived within memory, some certain knowledge might be attained. Though
the office had ceased