The common method of making peat fires, is
by heaping it on the hearth; but it burns well in grates, and in
the best houses is so used.
The common opinion is, that peat grows again where it has been cut;
which, as it seems to be chiefly a vegetable substance, is not
unlikely to be true, whether known or not to those who relate it.
There are water mills in Sky and Raasa; but where they are too far
distant, the house-wives grind their oats with a quern, or hand-
mill, which consists of two stones, about a foot and a half in
diameter; the lower is a little convex, to which the concavity of
the upper must be fitted. In the middle of the upper stone is a
round hole, and on one side is a long handle. The grinder sheds
the corn gradually into the hole with one hand, and works the
handle round with the other. The corn slides down the convexity of
the lower stone, and by the motion of the upper is ground in its
passage. These stones are found in Lochabar.
The Islands afford few pleasures, except to the hardy sportsman,
who can tread the moor and climb the mountain. The distance of one
family from another, in a country where travelling has so much
difficulty, makes frequent intercourse impracticable. Visits last
several days, and are commonly paid by water; yet I never saw a
boat furnished with benches, or made commodious by any addition to
the first fabric. Conveniences are not missed where they never
were enjoyed.
The solace which the bagpipe can give, they have long enjoyed; but
among other changes, which the last Revolution introduced, the use
of the bagpipe begins to be forgotten. Some of the chief families
still entertain a piper, whose office was anciently hereditary.
Macrimmon was piper to Macleod, and Rankin to Maclean of Col.
The tunes of the bagpipe are traditional. There has been in Sky,
beyond all time of memory, a college of pipers, under the direction
of Macrimmon, which is not quite extinct. There was another in
Mull, superintended by Rankin, which expired about sixteen years
ago. To these colleges, while the pipe retained its honour, the
students of musick repaired for education. I have had my dinner
exhilarated by the bagpipe, at Armidale, at Dunvegan, and in Col.
The general conversation of the Islanders has nothing particular.
I did not meet with the inquisitiveness of which I have read, and
suspect the judgment to have been rashly made. A stranger of
curiosity comes into a place where a stranger is seldom seen: he
importunes the people with questions, of which they cannot guess
the motive, and gazes with surprise on things which they, having
had them always before their eyes, do not suspect of any thing
wonderful. He appears to them like some being of another world,
and then thinks it peculiar that they take their turn to inquire
whence he comes, and whither he is going.
