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Jamie Scarlett, 2003
I reckon it would have been getting on for midnight, one night in August 1858, when a coach bound from Perth passed through Moy on its way to Inverness; among its passengers was the writer and traveller, Theodor Fontane, whose adventures were recounted in Across the Tweed, published by J.M.Dent in 1965. They had had a fairly dodgy trip and had been much delayed by the need for frequent stops to douse fires in the front axle of the coach, so that it was not until three o’clock in the moming that they reached there destination, the Union Hotel in Inverness High Street.
Their troubles had started soon after leaving Kingussie and why they did not stop at one of the several coaching inns on the way, where there would have been a blacksmith to put things right and some grease to lubricate the offending bearing is not disclosed; we know nothing of his companions, but it is clear that tourist element existed among them, so it may be that the unconquerable urge to reach the next “attraction” with the minimum delay and seeing as little as possible in between was the governing factor. How much better off, both for themselves and us, are the “visitors”, who go where they wish, go there again if they like and stop to talk and make friends.
But press on they did and, after some sleep and an “understandably late” breakfast, nothing soft, like “after lunch” you will notice, the tourist instinct is strong, they set out to tour the town finding, next door to the hotel and to their obvious delight ‘Immediately next to the Union Hotel is the well-known business of Mr Macdougall which is famed both abroad and at home. His merchandise occupies all the storeys of the house’. One feature is common to all these articles; they all appear in the colours of a clan, the objects clothed in these colours being as diverse as they can possibly be…..everything can be found at Mr Macdougall’s on which the mingled shades of red, blue and green can be imposed. ” A room was filled with ‘nick- nacks’ and “If the reader will reflect that Mr Macdougall does due honour to every clan — there are over fifty of them – he will be able to form an adequate conception of the very great size of this business.”
Much, if not most, of Mr Macdougall’s stock-in-trade came from the firm of William Wilson and Son, at Bannockburn, and their products have survived in plenty to show the beauty and quality of the cloth and patterns before blatant commercialism took over but little more than half a century earlier, Strathdearn was self sufficient in this and other necessities of dress, with its own weavers, shoemakers and tailors, supported by as many as twelve thousand sheep, mostly of the blackfaced breed but many of the cross-bred of these with the smaller indigenous animal, which yielded a finer fleece. The Statistical Account of Scotland, familiarly known as the O.(for Old)S.A. for the parish of Moy and Dalarossie concentrates on agriculture and has nothing to say about the actual numbers of the various ‘artificers’ as it calls them, but a handweaver does not work very quickly and cutting his peats and tending his own crops and animals would cut a long way into his time, so we may assume that each of the settlements strung along the strath would have had at least one, or a family of them, to serve the 1813 inhabitants recorded in 1791. There is a touch of modernity the statistics, and an echo of 2.4 children, in the average of 13% marriages per annum quoted.
The O.S.A. was compiled in 1791/2, ten years after the lifting of the ban on the wearing of tartan and Highland dress and in view of the popular stories of the ferocity with which this ban was enforced, the remarks by The Rev. Mr. William MacBean, late Minister of the Parish, and now Minister of Alves, are at least interesting, perhaps enlightening: The language, dress, and most of the peculiarities of the old Highlanders, continue in this place, with very little alteration. Excepting the gentry, few of the inhabitants of this place speak English; nor do they discover much inclination to acquire that language. The tartan plaid and kilt, and other parts of dress peculiar to the Highlanders, are still in general use among the men; the women, in like manner, retain the Highland dress of that sex. (The emphasis is my own.)
A historian sometimes has to guess and if he is honest he admits it. My guess is that the people of Strathdearn and, probably, most of the Highlands, went about their daily business untroubled by Risings and such and were allowed to do so as long as they appeared to behave themselves.