Ebook History of the Highlands

In offering to the public the following History of the Highlands and Highland Clans, which has so long occupied my attention, I think it right to state, without reserve, that the Work makes no pretensions whatever to original discovery, or novel speculation. Nothing is more easy than to hazard conjectures, invent theories, construct plausible hypotheses, and indulge in shadowy generalizations. In the regions of doubt and obscurity, there is always ample scope for the exercise of that barren ingenuity, which prefers the fanciful to the certain, and aims at the praise of originality by exciting surprise rather than producing conviction. My object has throughout been of a humbler, though, as I conceive, of a much more useful kind. I have sought to embrace, in this Work, the different branches of the subject of which it treats, and to render it a repertory of general information respecting all that relates to the Highlands of Scotland rather than a collection of critical disquisitions on disputed questions of history or tradition. How far I have succeeded in this object, or whether I have succeeded at all, is another and very different question, as to which the public alone are entitled to decide; and I am fully aware that, from their decision, whatever it may be, there lies no appeal. In any event, however, I shall console myself with the reflection that I have done somewhat to facilitate the labours of those who may come after me, by collecting and arranging a body of materials, the importance of which will be best appreciated by those who are the most intimately conversant with the subject.

In reference to the History of the Clans, I have to acknowledge, and I do so with the greatest pleasure, my obligations to the work of the late Mr Donald Gregory, and more particularly to that of Mr W. F. Skene, in as far as it treats of the origin, descent, and affiliations of the different Highland tribes. Many of the opinions and views promulgated by the latter I have ventured to dispute, at the same time assigning the reasons which have led me to differ from him; but it must, nevertheless, be unequivocally admitted, that, without the benefit of his researches and those of his immediate predecessor, Mr Gregory, it would have been a task of no ordinary difficulty to compile even the faintest sketch of the History of the Highland Clans, far less to arrange it in any thing like a systematic form.