The pillars of Hercules

Cadiz, Oct. 24th.

In the land of the Hindoos, far away from the ocean, there is a building called the Pearl Mosque. The Spaniards call their Cadiz, the City of Silver. But Cadiz is the daughter, not of the land but, of the sea, and is the pearl of cities.

The impression of brightness I have received in Cadiz does not, however, arise from the lustre of these silvery turrets, but from a swarm of women covering the floor of the cathedral with a mass of silk blonde tresses, and eyes, shining, fluttering, gleaming—and all is black. I had passed from the Ommiades to the Abassides. In that monumental uniformity there are a fascination and a grandeur, which scatter to the wind our freaks of fashion. How contemptible the devices of our continual change, when contrasted with the things discovered, used, and preserved by a whole people!

If I venture on this track so often beaten, and re-attempt the description of things so often described, yet never conveyed, my excuse is, that I have adjusted my eye and observation to a more distant point, and have looked to making what I saw, intelligible to a future time. To this I have been led by the fact that changes are in progress. The day may come when, having exhausted variety without finding contentment, this people may try to go back, and endeavour with pain to regain what now, in heedlessness, they are casting away: then will it be interesting to know what, while Spain still retained manners of her own, struck the passing stranger.

The milliners of Paris, it is a common saying, have accomplished[79] what the arms of Napoleon were unable to achieve,—as if female vanity had broken down national character and taste, which masculine sense struggled to uphold. Alas! for the dignity of manhood;—it is the tailors, not the milliners of Paris, who have triumphed where German insolence, Bourbon fraud, and imperial victories alike had failed.

Spain lives only in the peasantry, and in that sex which an Eastern sage has said is “the first to hope and the last to despair.” The men we see walking about the streets are the ordinary persons inhabiting European towns. You are reminded that you are in a country which is itself only when you see the women.

The crown of this costume is the mantilla. It belongs to the class of vestures intended to screen, not to parade: it nevertheless enhances and sets off beyond every device and contrivance of mere display. The ancient form, the manta, was within the century known in sequestered places. It is in common use in the transatlantic possessions or offshoots of Spain: it lingers still on the verge of the Peninsula at Tarifa, where I have mentioned it.

The manta[80] is a stripe of black taffeta or serge, two yards long by one broad. Three cords are run through it lengthways at one edge; by these it is bound and puckered round the waist: it is then turned up like a petticoat over the head and shoulders, and is gathered in the hand upon the breast. In front there is a lappet of about six inches’ width, lined with crimson silk, which comes round the face. Encasing the person from the waist upwards, it is an admirable protection against wind, rain, and sun. One eye only—generally the left one—is exposed. Thus Solomon sings:

“With thy one eye thou hast bewitched me.”

Backed by such authority, I may venture to say that it is not without its ostensible beauties as well as its revelations of grace and attractions of concealment. The Turkish yashmac conceals the face; the farigee shrouds the person: the manta serves at once for both purposes. The faldett of the women of Malta is of the same description. The petticoat being also black, the dress appears all of one piece, as originally it was. The name of the costume is saya-manta.

The mantilla is the manta narrowed, loosened from the waist and fastened on the head. There are two kinds.[81] The mantilla de tiro is that worn by the peasantry: it is of black serge trimmed with velvet. It is worn high on the head, and round upon the face. The second, the costume of the city, is the mantilla de blonda: it is of silk, rich and stiff; plain or flowered, and differs from the other by having blonde to the depth of twelve inches all round. The blonde is deeper in front, so as to serve as a veil. The edge of the silk is fastened to the comb at the crown of the head; the silk falls behind, the lace before, unless gathered up. It is secured in windy weather against the cheek by the tip of the fan. The mantilla, when dropped on the shoulders, degenerates into a veil joined to an unmeaning scarf or a tippet; yet this is now become the fashion. The whole is sometimes of lace—when it is only a bagged hood.

The mantilla is not spoken of as a piece of dress that fits well or ill. Such a lady, they say, wears her mantilla well, just as if they were speaking of a ship carrying her colours. The port of a Spanish lady is, indeed, like the bearing of a ship. The mantillas, reversing the effect of our costume—which is to impress the wearer with the feelings of a block—gives at once freedom and dexterity. The mantilla, fan, castanet, guitar and dance—which last is not here the business of the legs alone—keep the arms always busy. The head is disencumbered of bonnet, cap, ribands and curls; hence that grace of the Spanish women, which all recognize and none can describe, for mere form or feature does not explain it.

I need not say that beneath a mantilla there are no curls; nor need I add, that where neither bonnets nor caps are worn, and the head is always exposed, the hair is well kept. A Spanish lady remarked to me, that what struck her principally when she travelled in other countries, was the want of cleanliness in the women’s hair. It is always exposed, as hair was intended to be, to the air and wind, and it is every day in water, for they wet it before using the comb.

The hair is dressed in two styles. One is called sarrano. The only explanation I could get for this name was, that sierra means mountain, and that the mountaineers dress in this way. But neither does it seem to be the style of the Sierra, nor does the word sarrano mean mountain: there is, indeed, no such word in Spanish.[82]

Sar and sarrano were Phœnician forms of Tyre[83] and Tyrian. The Tyrian, not the Greek or Roman, pronunciation would prevail in Spain and Africa. Columella, a Spaniard, says, “Sarranam violam;” Silvius Italicus has “Sarranum muricem;” Ennius, “Sarranum ostrum;” consequently, “Sarrano head-dress” means neither more nor less than “Tyrian head-dress.”[84] Such an etymology is in no ways far-fetched. It is quite natural to look for a Tyrian mode of dressing the hair, under a covering of the head, described by Solomon, in a city built by the Tyrians, and from which you can perceive another city, which to this day bears the name of Sidon.

Saint Augustine quotes it as an instance of the retentive memory of the people of his age, that the rustics in the neighbourhood of Carthage, when asked who and what they were, answered, “We are from Canaan;” whence they had come one thousand and ninety years before, and after the name of Canaan had long been obliterated. Here is a head-dress with the name of Tyre,[85] more than double that interval of years.

In the “Tyrian” (Sarrano) style, the hair is divided over the forehead, turned back with an ample fold, the ends fastened behind: the back hair is divided and plaited, and hangs down the back; and no doubt formerly, as in the East and in Barbary, silk of the colour of the hair was plaited in and hung down to the heels in tassels. There appears to be a reason why this style was called “Tyrian.” The Jewesses wear their hair bound upon the head in a very elaborate manner, with feathers, a cushion, and handkerchief, the Tyrian being all open and exposed. I find that I am concurrently using the past and present tenses, referring at one moment to the spot where I am; at the next to the times of Hiram and Solomon; but, in fact, they are so intermingled that it is impossible to dissever the Scriptural descriptions and the things themselves.

The other style is moño;—and has also a foreign association not, however, with Jerusalem, but with Paris, for it has been recently imitated there. The front hair, parted, is plaited on each side into one plait, then rolled as a wheel upon the temple, and fastened by a hair-pin. The back hair is gathered light, and secured behind by a riband. It is then divided into two parts and plaited; these are turned up like a bow, and secured by the same riband. The bow (I mean of the hair) is then twisted, so as to spread on both sides, resting on the nape of the neck. It derives its name from moño, which is a large rose of variously-coloured riband, which is sometimes used to set it off. It is placed on the crown of the head: from it hang two tassels of gold or silver, lace or embroidery.

There is no gown of a piece; the costume is in separate parts: the sleeves and body may be of any colour. They are, out of doors, covered by the mantilla; like it, the petticoat is black: formerly it was not above two yards in width, and fell to the mi-jambe with weights round to keep it down. In a discussion on these subjects with Spanish ladies, an English gentleman maintained, on the authority of Murray’s new “Guide-Book,” which had just come out, and which had been looked forward to with as much expectation as it produced disappointment, that only recently the ladies of Cadiz had taken to show their feet: that, “formerly, they wore their petticoats so long that you could not tell if they had any feet at all.” This produced an exclamation of astonishment and anger. A Gaditana mentioned that, having returned in 1823 from Paris to Madrid in the wake of the French army, bringing her mantilla with her, she sent for a milliner to order the other parts of the Spanish dress. The milliner told her that her Paris dresses would do, for that nothing else was worn; on which she apostrophised the artiste thus:—“Go out into the streets with mantilla and long petticoats!” Her astonishment equalled her indignation at seeing this hideous petticoat imposed on Spaniards, who, as she said, did not require it, not having “feet an ell long.”

The petticoat of the peasants in Andalusia is yellow, of a homely but excellent woollen stuff, and bordered with red, the two colours which the Spanish women most affect—the colours of their gorgeous standard, those of gold and blood.

A Spanish woman is no less attentive to her foot and shoe[86] than to her hair: from below the saga comes forth the plump leg in its creaseless stocking. The impression that remained on me of Spain, having been there as a child, was a black lace-bedizened female figure, with a bunch of flowers on the head and on the foot, and a white satin shoe, cheapening cod in the fish-market at six in the morning. If the wise man was bewitched by the sight of the “one eye,” so was the paynim Holofernes “ravished” by the sight of Judith’s sandal. But the sandal must not be taken for that thing which Abigails call by that name: it was not the service of riband that held the sole on, but the sole itself. Spain is still the country of the sandal: you may see it every day, and there is nothing that more recalls antiquity than the bands (stone-blue) by which it is secured round the ankle and foot.[87]

The old Spanish shoe is very low, and scarcely held at all at the heel: like the slipper of the Easterns, it required the action of the toes to hold it on. The calf of the leg accordingly was full, because its muscles were called into play. So important is this to the grace and ease of the figure, that at Rome the models, male and female, lose their pension if they wear a shoe with a thick sole.

There still wants something to complete the Spanish costume, or, perhaps, I might say the Spanish woman—and that is THE FAN. Yet, how supply this want? at least, without herself—how convey her and it on paper? You might as well attempt to teach on paper how to roll a turban, make coffee, or hit the bull’s-eye.

The petticoat has two names, basqueña and saga. The latter recalls the sagum of the Greeks and Romans, which is derived from sagi or sogi of the Touaregs: sagum designated a web or mantle. How it has come to be a petticoat I shall presently explain.

The sleeves, mangas, are tight to the arm, and buttoned up the fore-arm, not by button-holes in the stuff, but in the Eastern manner, with loops. The buttons are gold filigree, which we call Maltese: they are used in large numbers for ornamenting the maja dress. The body is low round the shoulders, as the present evening dress of Europe; but they do not sin against mechanics and modesty by bringing the edge of the dress to the angle of the shoulder. A scarf is fastened above the dress, which comes up behind, is secured upon the shoulders by clasps, and then brought down in front. There is something approaching to this worn by the women in Morocco. The buckles and clasps on the shoulders are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament.

The parts of the dress in which colour is allowed are the body and the sleeves, which, when out of doors, are shrouded by the mantilla. The dress for the streets is black, and invariably black; while the men display the most gaudy and variegated colours.

The avanico is used ceremoniously and socially:—in the first place, it is stiffly and demurely restricted to its legitimate end. When it enters common life, held firmly, yet freely between the fingers and the ball of the hand, it serves as an extension of it, feathered to flout the air. The ordinary fan practice is to throw the hand outwards while letting go one side of the fan; then turning the hand inwards to recover it by a jerk. If we had no fans in Europe there would be less difficulty in describing, because our imagination would be free and at work. Having fans, and using them to disturb the air, we have settled notions of them; and when we hear what a Spanish fan can accomplish, we conclude that there is a code of signals—some sort of constructive slang imparted to the initiated. The Spanish fan is no more the arm of a telegraph than the leaf of a winnowing machine. A fan is to a Spanish woman what feathers are to a bird. Is she content and happy?—there is its gentle fluttering—in its vivacious and rapid catch—in its long-drawn motion—in its short pulse. There is all that is conveyed to us by the brow when it lowers the eye; when it flushes the cheek—when it glows. She wants not the frown to dismiss, nor the smile to invite: it is an additional and mute voice:—I might compare it to the rod of a magician, or to the passes of a mesmerist. Once seen, you feel that it is what was required to complete—woman. The ideal was always in the mind, guessed only before, but recognised the moment it is seen.[88]

An English lady plays on the harp or the pianoforte. A French lady touches the one and pinches the other. The guitar belongs to the Spaniard—as constant as her mantilla; as familiar as her fan—it is ready to please a guest; to solace a leisure hour. It is no matter of ostentation; it is no performance. Her proficiency is not the result of study; there are no hours,—no years consumed in practising; it is an unceasing amusement, an inseparable companion.

That which would strike the stranger as most extraordinary, is our having one costume in the morning and one in the evening; one dress which lives only in daylight, another which never sees the sun. This is a peculiarity for which no age and no race afford a parallel. Take Cherokee or ancient Egyptian, Hindoo, Athenian, Hottentot, or Kamschatdale, you will not find one who has dressed his body according to the motions of the sun and earth; or held a checked waistcoat, or a close-bodied gown as appropriate at one hour and inappropriate at another. When dress was associated with respect, change either by the hour or month was impossible: the man was then more than the food and the body—than the raiment;—change could only become habitual where such feelings were dead; and then dress, escaping from the guidance of taste, became the trappings of vanity. This evening-dress of Europe is the common in-door dress, slightly disfigured, of the Spanish lady.

The veil and fan, the chief adornment of the female costume, are from Spain; so also is that richest and most distinguishing of its materials, lace.

Barbara of Brabant has received the credit of the discovery; but her share can extend no further than to the mode of working in flax. The texture in silk and cotton must have been carried thither by the Spaniards. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the word blonda is found in a Castilian law,[89] it is referred to as a manufacture in general use, and consequently long established. It was not known in Europe for at least a century later.[90]

Lace is to be seen in every hut, on every domestic article:—pillow-case, napkins, sheets—it is a national type, and must be of ancient date; in all likelihood, from that common source of Spanish things, Judæa. In this conclusion, I was confirmed by finding in Barbary the term Guipoör. It is used by the Jews for the festival of atonement, when they wear white mantles in the synagogue, with the fringes in open embroidery. The name of the country was given to the texture. The texture, then, comes from the Jews.[91]

The word dentelle[92] is explained as meaning the teethlike points of the serrated border lace, as distinguished from the Guipoör, Mechlin, Brussels, and English point, &c. But there was an ancient festival in Spain on the occasion of the child cutting its teeth, which was known to the Christians under the name of Dentilia.[93] Such would be a fitting time for the display of this finery. Whoever has seen the festival of Corpus Christi in Spain, or Portugal, will understand how natural it was to give the name; for on it all the procession, or at least all the public functionaries to this day, wear scarfs of lace over their uniforms.

The blonde is made on the frame. The common lace, which is used as seams and edging, is made with the crochet, which is as familiar in the hands of every Moor, as formerly the cronag in those of the Highland shepherd. The Barbary caps were originally so made, and indeed are so still. In the same way, may yet be seen Highland hose, and formerly the trews. The Shetland shawl still bears testimony to the recorded beauty of the manufactures of the Hebrides, in early times; and in Barbary—although I know not that the art is still preserved—magnificent pieces of Guypoör come from time to time to light. One was brought me at Tetuan three yards and a half in length, and above a yard in width.

The supposed invention, therefore, of lace-making in the Low Countries, must be understood merely as that of a new process, viz., the bobbins, pins, and cushion, by which a new variety was obtained, and which has its beauty and its facility; but which can stand no comparison with the original, which it has caused to fall into disuse; and now that the taste for it is revived, the art is lost.

While the Spanish female costume is unquestionably the most beautiful in Europe, it would thus appear to be at the same time a valuable historical monument. Nor is its antiquarian interest limited to the Peninsula: it carries us back to the land and the people, which, of all others, possess claims on the affections, and merit the study of Christendom.

It is curious that there should be but two countries in the world that have adopted and restricted themselves to a single colour,—that these countries should lie opposite each other—that in the one it should be black, and in the other white; that the one should be the derivative of which the other is the original; that the wearers of black should be the offspring of the people of white, and that the white country should have the title of Mauritania!

It is not to be supposed that the black was assumed after the expulsion of the Moors. General usages are not of these days. We have besides proof that black was the colour of Spain twelve hundred years before the invasion of the Saracens: they wear “black sayas,” says the Greek geographer. But the people of Mauritania were not called black, because of their complexion,—they were a fair people: Scylax applies to them the epithet of ξάνθοι.[94] They were μανζοφόζοι, or clad in black, and hence, no doubt, their name. The two Mauritanias equally wore black, and no doubt the adoption of white by the Mussulmans of the West was the result of the establishment there of the dynasty of the Ommiades.

But beyond the zone of white, there is another zone of black, or of mixed black and white. A portion of the Tuarisks, who occupy the vast tract of Africa between the equator and the habitable portions upon the coast, wear the black sulam with black cowl,[95] a black turban rolled round, not the head only, but the face, the neck, and body, so as to leave exposed alone their black, small, sparkling eyes.

The mantilla is generally considered a relic of Mussulman usages, but the women in Morocco do not now wear the veil. There, men and women have one and the same dress: they wear it in the same manner over the head, the only difference being, that the women keep it closer drawn. The first clothing must have been the single garment, such as we see it in Africa still. Noble as it is simple, it conforms itself to every use in the adaptation, and displays every grace in the adjustment of its folds. It was subsequently divided and cut up into distinct parts or coverings; and dress became a set of integuments for casing the limbs, rather than for clothing the body. The veil cannot, therefore, be known where the original vesture remains in use.

The haïk, as worn by the Jewesses, is the saya manta. It is of enormous dimensions; from one and a half to two yards wide, and from six to eight long.[96] It comes four times round the body, one of the turns being measured by the outstretched arms to form the hood. The Jewesses double two yards and a half, one part longer than the other, so as to serve, when wrapped round the waist, for a petticoat; folds to give play to the limbs are added at one side, and secured by a large pin; a turn is then taken with the whole haïk round the waist, and the remainder is brought from behind over the head and shoulders. They of course wore it so in Spain.[97]

For the source of peculiarities in Spain it is natural that we should look to Morocco; not so for the origin of a costume apparently as different in form as remote in situation—the Highland garb; yet that it does come from the same stock is indubitable. It is no accidental coincidence here and there: the whole build and purpose are identical—every variation can be traced and accounted for. There is nothing that militates against this conclusion, which there is so much directly and collaterally to establish.

If the costume were an original one in its present form, we should have primitive names for kilt and plaid, its distinguishing features. Kilt is not a Gaelic word: there is no word in Gaelic for kilt. It is called “The short plaits” (fillibeg), as distinguished from the “long plaits” (fillimore),[98] now fallen into disuse. Plaid is not a Gaelic word, and for plaid there is in Gaelic no other name than brechan, or “colours.” Plaid and kilt are equally of the brechan, and it is admitted by the best authorities that formerly they were one: the belted plaid still shows it. With “long plaits” the plaid would reach to the dimensions of the present Moorish haïk. In putting on the plaid you bring the corner over the breast, take one turn round the body, and throw the end over the left shoulder: it is precisely the way a Moor accustomed to the haïk would put it on. The kilt and plaid alone are in tartan, being alike composed of the “flag mantle:”[99] the jacket, like the tunic of the Moor, or the body and sleeves of the Spanish lady, was of any colour. To the saya manta and the haïk the peculiarity of colour is in like manner reserved: brechan feil is the name of the Highland garb, and identical with saya manta. Thus, in the haïk still lives the common parent of the costume of the Highland clansmen and the Spanish lady: in the one case the name has descended on the covering of the shoulders (brechan,[100] Gaelic), in the other (saya) in that of the legs. It is curious that the old name is given in Spain to the petticoat of the women; in England to the breeches of the men.

In the mountains between Baeza and Guadix, which were the last refuge of the Moors, I have seen the manta worn by the men, corresponding in texture exactly with the haïk worn by the Arab women in the tents, which are sometimes striped in colours: the colours in like manner being pure, and of course rich and brilliant, are dyed at home. Sometimes the stripes are crossed, which is not the practice in Barbary. The first I saw was so like a Scotch plaid, that, until I examined it, I took it for a piece of English manufacture.

The manta or plaid of the shepherd is doubled, and stitched at one end to serve as a hood, just as our Highlanders do, to put the feet in at night, or to use as a hood or as a bag. In this part of Spain the men wear large white drawers, which leave the knee bare, and appear like a white kilt. The medias, like the Scotch hose, are bound below the knee, and are sometimes of leather like those the Moors use for riding. To the plaid and tartan, to the fac-simile of the kilt and hose, they add the strathspey tune, and the reel step, and “set,” to each other. Seeing them footing it toe and heel, smacking fingers, clapping hands, shouting and wheeling, I was carried at once to the glens and straths of the North. While this merriment was in progress, several carts stopped. These carts had two wheels and two horses, the pole resting on their necks. It was the ancient chariot. In the dialect of the country they are called Elheudi, pure Arabic for the Jewish.

Festivals or solemnities, meetings beyond the commonplaces of ordinary intercourse, are required from time to time to quicken the spirit of a people, and to refresh and preserve its costume. When, in the Highlands, you inquire the date of the disuse of tartan kilt and arms, they will reckon back to the time when they were last worn, “at church.” Yet our clergy have never cultured the Celtic spirit, and have held the trappings of our race but as pagan emblems, disloyal badges, or mundane toys.

Amongst European countries, Spain is distinguished for the splendour of her church, and alone retains the Roman festivities of the bull-fight; and, no doubt, she is partly indebted to these for what she has retained of her ancient character. The men, when they enter the circus, the women when they pass the porch, drop the millinery and tailoring of Paris. What the bull-ring is for the one, the church is for the other; from the one, is inseparable the majo dress, from the other, the saya manta.

The wearing the mantilla at church, I have heard attributed to the despotic power of the priests over the women:—the chulos of the bull-ring, there exercise equal despotism over the men. Blanco White narrates that during the plague at Seville, and when religious fervour was, in consequence, at its height, a priest at Alcala “claimed and exercised a right to exclude from church such females as by a showy dress were apt to disturb the abstracted yet susceptible minds of the clergy. It should be observed, by the way, that as the walking dress of the Spanish females absolutely precludes immodesty, the conduct of this religious madman admits of no excuse or palliation. Yet this is so far from being a singular instance, that what sumptuary laws would never be able to accomplish, the rude and insolent zeal of a few priests has fully obtained in every part of Spain. Our females, especially those of the better classes, never venture to church in any dress but such as habit has made familiar to the eyes of the zealots.”

I was present at the festival of the patron saints of the place, and, throughout the whole population, saw not one coloured dress or one bonnet. The mantilla was worn in deference to the priests, who are to-day as powerful as they ever have been, and as despotic as they could ever wish to be.

A more perfect contrast there cannot be than between the cathedral and a fashionable tertulia. In the former nothing is to be seen but the black and glittering silk and the rich blonde: at the other no trace of Spain—not even in the music or the dances—no mantilla, no bolero, no fandango, no guitar, no castanet—nothing but the unmeaning quadrille, the shuffling heedless step, the Paris millinery, the false tints and kaleidoscope patterns:—everything commonplace and vulgar, or rather the bad imitation of vulgarity and commonplace. The conversation wanted even the compensation you meet with in Europe—stored memories, clever flippancy, and gladiatorial faculties. Thus a people who, had they remained themselves,[101] would have been, in their forms as in their character, an object of study and of admiration, are converted (the higher orders, I mean) into something which must inflict disappointment, if not inspire contempt.

What would a nation be without a flag? What is a nation without a costume? A flag is an emblem, a costume is a property. A flag designates and defies, a costume ennobles and preserves. A flag has come by accident, costume is the produce of a people’s taste. The Medes had a dress; the Persians, the Romans, the Egyptians had each a dress. To say, then, a dress, is to say a people. A costume is to a people like its mountains, its floods, and its lakes. The costume of its land and its fathers has been to every noble people like their tongue, their fame, their precepts, and their laws; in independence, giving dignity; in chains, none. The tyrant and the patriot alike know its worth. The wandering Israelite for two thousand years, has worn, concealed on his person, the proscribed garb of Judæa—a mystic shred, the emblem and promise of restoration. So late as the middle of the last century, the Parliament of England did not conceive its dominion secure until it had put down the Highland dress.

The last in Europe to retain one, the Spaniard has yet a costume. He is in the act of surrendering it, yet no foreign hordes cover the Peninsula and hunt down its inhabitants. Itself, with unnatural hands, tears it off and casts it away, and adopts in lieu of it a foreign garb—which, indeed, is no garb—for it belongs to no people, furnished forth not by a combination of the tastes of all the people of Europe, but by a concentration of their vulgarism. Have they changed with a purpose Ask them: they can give you no reason for what it means. “It is the fashion.”

I have a curious illustration before me, where I am correcting these pages. On the side of Benledi there is a vale, now, with the exception of a few fields, uncultivated below, and bare of trees above. In the wilderness, a burial-ground may be traced, the record of an extinct clan, the last having left the country forty years ago. Immediately above, a hollow in the rock is called, “The Deer’s Repose.” The antlered tribe has also disappeared—forests, deer, culture, and men are all gone. There are six families: the patriarch (still living) in his youthful days remembered twelve. None of the younger generation are married—at least, in their native valley.

While seeking into the causes of this decay, I found that they were changing their diet[102]—the last thing a nation changes. They had loaf-bread from Callender. I asked, “Do you like it better?” “No.” “Is it cheaper?” “No.” “Is it more healthy? Have you no time to knead your cakes? Do you not know how to spend your money?” “No! no!” At last out came—“It is the fashion.”

If the Stuarts of Glenfinlass had said, “It is the custom,” instead of “It is the fashion,” the families would not have fallen from twelve to six within one generation; the sheep would not have eaten up the deer and the forest.

A people with a phrase, “It is the custom,” can never be destroyed. A people with the phrase, “It is the fashion,” cannot be said to exist, for it has nothing of all it possesses that it can call its own. A people that can articulate such a phrase on the lips, has encouraged a power which, tyrannizing over heart and brain, rots the one and steals away the other.

But has a people with the antiquity and the history of the Celts, and amongst the Celts of the Highlanders, no equivalent for Adet-dur? Yes, they have or had. “It was nature,” or “It was natural,” or “It was family,” the word signifying all these. With that word they would have kept their numbers, their customs, their kilts, and their swords. They would have still their songs and songsters. There was in that sentence a knot of life—a knot that no hands but their own could untie.

The Spaniards, too, have a sentence of their own, Cosas de España.