Morning journal and courier., 1890-11-15
MIR. wAKRMAN,s JoURNKxrNGs.
Al Thurso, scotland-A Chapter on the "Crofterss-Evolution Clan System-Some Charactcrfsties-Lov Of Home Environment.


 At Thurso, Scotland-A Chapter on
 the "Crofter's-Evolution Clan
 System-Some Charactcrfsties-Lor
 of Home Environment.
 THuRso, Scotland, Sept. %.
 To the Editor Of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 To the average American the ''crofter' has always been a dim legend of the isles and highlands of Scotland. Though the ''crofter question" has for over half cen tury been the sTrish question: of Scot land, and has had much to do in effecting certain important land reforms in the kingdom, the "woes of poor Donald, though as sad and hopeless as thoss of the Irish peasant, have agitated Scotland ex- clusively rather than America largely, as in the latter case. Their remoteness have kept them from our universal ken, and to that degree that, while people of Scotch descent in the United States and Canada have been keenly alive to measures for the crofter's relief, there are many ordinarily wsll-informed Americans quite unable to tell you the real difference between a croft and loft, or a crofter and claymore.
 Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary" defines croft-land as Gland of superior quality, which was still cropped" Cham bers' Encyclopedia, remarkable like most encyclopedias for deepening ignorance and itensifying longing for exact informa- ton, says 'a croft is piece of land con- nected with a humble kind of dwelling, whose inhabitant, the renter of the land, is called a "crofter" Lord Colin Camp bell asserts that the term 'f1croftern was unknown in the seventeenth century, al though in old tacks and leases of that De riod the word ''croft" is of common oc- currence. He further states that in the ''tack," or temporary holding, given by Sir John Campbell of Glenurchy to . "weil belouit' servant, in 1880, besides the four markland of Kincrakin there were "the croft of Polgreyich and the croft that Ewin McEwin was wont to have" In the twelfth-century English characters in Latin the word is often used. In fact it is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning simply 'a field" At the end of the eighteenth century the tenants of the smallest Scotch divisions of land, in dis tinction from tenants holding from five to one hundred acres and upwards, were first called crofters; that is, acre-men or croft CTS. In those days the crofters had the same relation to Highland tenants of the important class who cultivated something like farms, as the cotters of the present day do to Irish and English small farmers and the still smaller farmer, or crofter, ot the Highlands; and the Scottish crofter of to-day is simply that surviving relic of the ancient Highlander, who, despite all ef- forts of the owner of great northern and western Highland estates to extirpate him, absolutely stsrves along where the bones l of his ancestors lie, on one-hundredth as much land as, on the average, is devoted to the rearing and killing of one red deer The evolution of the wobegone croftel of to-day from the olden matchlessl, brave Highland warrior of the north anC west is briefly as follows: He was lonl ago an integral portion of the clan system "Clan" is Gaelic word meaning ''child. The clansman was in the highest sense tn | child of his chief. The clan system is tn, ! family system on a larger scale. Al clansmen were brethren in a common fam | fly, and institutional preference for thu i purpose of recognized heads and authori ty could not abolish equality in every oth CT respect and particular. The absolut, loyalty to the chief to the limit of freely giving life in defense, or aggression, wal tribute of fealty to family and tribal rela tions, rather than to the absolutism of in dividual authority. Each clansman hat absolute and undeniable share in the terri tory occupied by the entire clan. If h. paid tribute to the head of the clan i could never have been in the form of ren to an individual owner for temporary oc cupancy. It was practically . self-im posed and freely bestowed taxation fo puphc purposes, common offense or de fense, common betterment, the common good. Under this system the result wa agricultural competency, pastoral simplici ty and pleasure, and surpassing militar, valor and virtues. The clansmen WOW their own cloth, forged their own tool and weapons, titled their own soil, fed am grazed their own sheep and cattle and pos sessed insliensble rights to their owl homes and the soil necessary to sustai
 them. He perforce possessed habits O hardihood; his healthy life of the mour taineer made him strong and brave; th necessities of limitations gave him shrew craft in all exigencies; doing everythin with his own hands he became perfecte in expedients rather than the dwarfet one-sided man resultant from latereday il finite division of labor; and thus when hi sad day of repatriation came these Sec
 tish Highlanders gave to the United State
 to Canada and to Australia, the mo- grandly self-sustsining colonists they eve knew. Indeed his many splendid charal teristics proved his own ruin in Scotland No men living, barring perhaps his T less unfortunate brethren, the Irish Celt l ever displayed such consummate love ( l home environment, kindred and chic !, His bens, lochs, straths and glens prov ded an allconsuming nature-worship; h ancestry and the traditions of his lineas ; became his exultantly-sung epics; : chief and the deeds of his clan wel , adored with almost the passion of idol B try. His devotion to the Stuarts, fro Cromwell's time to Bonnie Prince Cha B lie" was sublime in its desperate loyalt , and furnish some of the most thrilliI 3 pages in history. But being too far fro
 Edigburgh, London and Paris to "kno
 the political time of day." he alwa.
 fought for lost cause. Naturally lit