Tuesday, 30 October 2007

  • Soft Scots

     

    Although it is true that the Scots explorers and traders lacked the religious motivation of Jesuit missionaries who traversed this wilderness, they had the next best thing. They had grown up in an environment of mountain ruggedness, lochs, and solitude that provided an ideal practical training ground for exploring the North American West. John Rae, for example, positively relished the Orkney gales. As he recalled in his reminiscences:

    I delighted in being out in the worst of weather—snow-storms in winter, rain and gales all the year round. Cared nothing for, and felt no harm from being soaking wet either with salt or fresh water all day long—for a waterproof coat was never thought of."

    The innumerable challenges of Highland and Island life — especially the necessity of being at the beck and call of the clan leader—produced generations of rugged men and women. The women were as hardy as the men. They often went barefoot, wearing shoes only for special occasions such as attending church. Eighteenth-century traveler Edward Burt observed barefoot Highland women stomping their washing in tubs "when their legs and feet are almost literally as red as blood with the cold." During the herring season Highland women from Sutherland would walk the 130 miles to Wick in Caithness without any type of shelter. When the herring boats unloaded their catch, the women remained outside in all types of weather to gut the fish. They cleaned about thirty-five fish a minute and could keep up the pace for hours on end. Not surprisingly, these women often led Northern crofter anti-Clearance agitation. In the 1841 riot at Durness and the 1842 protest at Lochsheil, women sporting shearing hooks and with aprons filled with stones chased away the evicting officers.

    Such a culture thrived on stories of endurance and bravado. Legends told of Highland soldiers on maneuvers who marched overland carrying just a bag of oatmeal and a small stone on which to heat it at night. For rest, they rolled up tightly in their homespun wool plaids and stretched out on the bare ground. When the temperature dropped near freezing, they would occasionally dip their plaids into a stream to freeze them and sleep inside a coating of ice not unlike a snow cave. One clan chieftain was chaffed by his men as "soft" when he was seen making a pillow out of snow (sometimes out of a rock).

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