Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

PREAMBLE.
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lairds, who are absentees save during the grouse
season; geologists, who have explored the phy¬
sical features of the land; and antiquaries, who
have dipped into, or even studied profoundly,
its civil and ecclesiastical antiquities.
Nevertheless, to all such, the Highlands may
be as unknown in their real life and spirit as the
scent of the wild bog-myrtle is to the accom¬
plished gentleman who has no sense of smell;
or as a Gaelic boat-song is to a Hindoo pundit.
Some readers may very naturally be disposed
to ask, with a sneer of contempt, what pre¬
cise loss any human being incurs from want of
this knowledge ? The opinion may be most
reasonably held and expressed that the summer
tourist, the wandering pedestrian, or the autumnal
sportsman, have probably taken out of the Nor¬
thern wilderness all that was worth bringing into
the Southern Canaan of civilised life; and that as
mucli gratitude, at least, is due for what is for¬
gotten as for what is remembered.
Perhaps those readers may be right. And if so,
then, for their own comfort as well as for mine, I
warn them that if they have been foolish enough