the benefit of it. Their winter houses are not a great advance upon their bee hive habitations; they, too, are void of window and chimney, and are very low in the roof; the walls are made of turf, lined outside and inside with undressed stones, and as the roof does not overlap them, the water simply falls into them, and they are always damp. The beds are built in the thickness of the wall, and the byre is in the centre and is only cleaned out once a year. These "black houses "—as they are locally called to distinguish them from the stone and lime houses which an improving proprietor is gradually substituting for them are poor enough dwellingplaces in all conscience, yet their inhabi tants may certainly compare favorably with any similar section of the community in all the essentials of civilization. had the idea that in the open air magic could have less power over the judges. That reason is expressly given in the old statutes of the Isle of Man, as the ground why the dempsters or judges were required to decide causes anywhere they chose, if only in the open air. It is a remnant of the old worship of the sun, for in those primitive courts the presiding magistrate not only sat in the open air, but sat with his face to the east. When Sir John Stanley ascended the throne of the Isle of Man in the fourteenth century, he asked what was the customary ceremonial at the annual assembly of the islanders on Tynwald Hill, on St. John the Baptist's Eve, and the instructions he received thus began: First you shall come thither in your royal array as a king ought to do, by the preroga. tives of the Isle of Mann, and upon the Hill of Tynwald sitt in a chaire covered with a Royal Cloath and cushions, and your visage unto the East, and your sword before you holden with the point upwards. They are, like the Swiss herdsmen, a self-governing community. They live in a village together, and they hold all the pasture in common as joint tenants. Formerly their arable used to be held in common too, and cultivated on the runrig We may fancy that in old times the or common-fields system; but now every president of this little village court in tenant has his own separate bit of land, Lewis sat in the same way on his knock and the only part of the old village farm with his face to the east, and his sword which they still occupy jointly is the or dirk held up before him. The dirk is neighboring moorland and the distant of course now gone, but we gather that shealing that is attached to it. For the the custom of facing the east still remains. management of their common affairs and | Mr. Carmichael, a local gentleman, to the settlement of differences, and punish- whose interesting communication, pubment of offenders, the tenants elect one lished in Mr. Skene's "Celtic Scotland," of their number, the shrewdest and most we are indebted for much of the foregoing respected of them, to be a kind of head- information, gives a curious description man of the village, and to rule it under of their method of voting. The two sides the name of constable, or sometimes of go to separate lobbies as it were; the mayor or little mayor. He is always ayes go sunwise to the south and the sworn in a regular way before a justice of right of the chairman, the noes go sunwise the peace as a valuator, and his decisions to the north and his left. The chairman, in all cases of trespass or other damage therefore, has his left hand to the north are final. He convenes the tenants from and his right hand to the south, and contime to time in open-air courts held on a sequently faces the east. The going sunknock or mound in front of his house, for wise is another circumstance connecting the purpose of deliberating on common the practice with the primitive worship of affairs, on the building of a dyke, or the the sun. The chairman yielded deference repairing of a ditch, or the purchase of a to the sun by facing his rising-place, the bull; or for deciding upon some change members by following his course. There in the old by laws and customs of the was really something fine in the rationale community, or punishing some violation of our forefathers' custom of holding their of them. These open-air courts, meeting courts in the open air. The proceedings on a little knock, are a very primitive in- were to be conducted in the sight of God stitution. In early times in England all and man. The light of the sun was the courts of justice or deliberation met in very presence of the divinity they wor the open, on a little mound like this one, shipped, and nothing that worked in darkor at standing stones, or in a grove. And ness could enter there. The searching the reason for this was not that they could eye of day was to be upon everything, and not build houses adequate for the pur- to impress all minds, as by the sanction pose, for the practice continued de rigueur of an oath, with the characteristics that long after they were able to do so. They have been always dear to Englishmen, 2296 LIVING AGE. VOL. XLV. They do not ornament their cattle, like the Swiss peasants, but they arrange them carefully in order. The sheep go first, then the calves, then the older cattle, and the horses last. The men are laden with sticks, ropes, spades to repair their bothies, and the women with meal and milk-dishes, and they knit their stockings as they go. Barefooted, bareheaded boys and girls are running about, and collies excited with importance fly hither and thither. And so they go on mile after mile over the moor, bleating, lowing, neighing, barking, singing, laughing, fill of many-throated joy. Every one they meet pronounces a word, blessing the trial and commending it expressly to the Shepherd of Israel. with being straightforward, open, and set out in a long and noisy procession. aboveboard in all their ways, dispensing honest judgment, making just complaints, and bearing true witness. If the votes are equal in the Lewis court, then lots are resorted to; they are drawn three times, and the best of three carries the day; and if any obstinate fellow still holds out and refuses to accept the decision, he is greeted with cries of "goat tooth," and finds it his best policy to agree. Mr. Carmichael, who being long resident in the district knows the facts well, states that the deliberations at these village courts are very thorough and well-conducted, that the tenantry speak well anding the heavens with an unceasing chorus often with great force and mastery over their native Gaelic, that they reason, and illustrate, and argue surprisingly, and that, though they sometimes use strong language, they usually listen patiently and At length the grazing-ground is reached. respectfully, and are tolerant of anything Some little repairs are made in the huts, but doggedness and pertinacity. Another fires are lit, food is prepared. Every man interesting trait mentioned by him about then brings forward his stock of cattle these village communities is that in laying and sheep, and they are counted by the out their land for the year, they set apart constable and another teller as they pass a portion for the poor, which is called the into the enclosure. For the pasture is poor man's acre. This is probably an stinted, each tenant being only allowed archaic exhibition of humanity, with, how-to send a number of cattle proportioned ever, the feeling it embodies still alive to the share he pays of the rent. the wonderful sympathy of the poor man process being over, the cattle are turned for the poor. out to graze, and the people bid farewell to care for a season. They sit down to the shealing-feast, all the families together. It is simple enough, as regards good cheer, the main fare being a cheese which each of the housewives has been careful to keep for the occasion from her winter supply. We shall describe the festivity in Mr. Carmichael's own words: -- Such are the people we have found dwelling in the primeval beehive huts. They had come to their summer quarters about the beginning of June, after they had sown their corn, and planted their potatoes, and cut their peats for their winter fuel, and they were to remain while the crops were growing, and things were slack at the home farm. The day of their migration is a red-letter day in the com munity. They call it "the trial," but it is as little of a trial as anything can be, and this phrase must have descended from a time when there was still danger in such an expedition, either from wild animals or other sources. Even as it is, the day is not without its pathetic and grave side, for the village sets out in a body; they bring their babes and their aged along with them; they leave house and standing corn behind. They may not now fear the spoiler, but there are many things to make them mingle a tear with the bustling joy of the day. Still, the ruling state is mirth and excitement. It is a natural and spontaneous festival. The families are all astir very early that morning, bringing their different herds together into one drove, packing up their dishes and their bedding. When everything is ready they This The cheese is shared among neighbors and friends as they wish themselves and their cattle luck and prosperity. Every head is uncovered, every knee is bowed, as they dedicate them selves and their flocks to the care of Israel's Shepherd. In Barra, South Uist, and Benbecula, the Roman Catholic faith predominates, and the people there invoke the Trinity, St. Columba, the Golden-haired Virgin Shepherdess, the Mother of the Lamb without spot Lewis, the Protestant faith entirely prevails, and blemish. In North Uist, Harris, and and the people confine their invocation to The Shepherd that keeps Israel, Who slumbereth not nor sleeps. As the people sing their dedication psalm their voices resound from their shealings here literally in the wilderness, and as the music floats in the air and echoes among the rocks, hills, and glens, and is wafted over fresh water lakes and sea-lochs, the effect is very striking. A better subject could not be desired for a picture than the scene here described the Highland township sitting at their shealing-feast on the green mead ow sloping towards the lake or river, with their strange beehive houses behind them, their cattle and sheep browsing here and there, and the hills and richly clouded skies of Scotland around and over all. At the shealing the people have of course a "good time." It is a great sum mer outing, and they are as happy as fine weather and long days, and the run of the hills and streams, can make them. The women milk the cows, and make cheese and spin wool, and the men used in former times to fish and hunt, and probably do so to some extent still, and then when the business of the day is over they are all ready for the song and the dance on the green. The national bagpipe has not been forgotten, and its strains, moving Highland blood so powerfully, still shed the soul of music over these upland valleys. It is not surprising that many of the best songs in the Gaelic language are written about the free, open, happy life at the summer shealing. Another interesting feature must be mentioned, both for its own sake and for its analogy with a custom of the Swiss herdsman, which has attracted much attention. The herdsman's horn has been already alluded to, but he as often uses what is historically, as we know, a refinement on the horna bagpipe or chanter, and plays his cattle home. The "Ranz des Vaches"- the herdsman's cattlesong is almost the national air of Switz erland. At any rate no air touches the people more profoundly. Its effect on the mercenaries in the army of Napoleon was so great that it had to be prohibited, for as soon as the bagpipes struck up that air these Swiss troops were first suffused with joy as they recalled their native valleys, and then plunged into a deep melancholy as they thought they might never see those valleys again. It was like playing "Lochaber No More" to an old Highland regiment. Now this "Ranz des Vaches" is just the air that the herds man plays to his cattle in calling them to the fold at night, and it has been termed the Cows' Marseillaise.'" Every can ton has its own Ranz, and they all celebrate the beauty of the mountains, the peace and delight of the chalets, their dear cows," their "gentle, gentle flock," their Jeannettes listening to the nearer and nearer sound of the horn, and welcoming their approach. In some cases the words are directly addressed to the cattle. Now whether the cattle-song is an institution of the Highland shealing still, we know not, but something like it once was. In the county of Caithness there are no shealings now, but at one time there were plenty, as we know from the number of place-names ending in ery or ary and seter. Ary is a corruption of airidh, the Gaelic word for shealing, and seter is the Norse word for the same thing. Every Norwegian farm to this day has a summer pasturage belonging to it many miles up the fjeld, and that pastur age is always called the seater. Caith ness being half Norse, half Celtic, has both words in the terminations of its placenames, and wherever there is now an ery or a seter in that county there was at one time a shealing such as we have described above. Now in Caithness it was always the practice to sing to the cows at the shealing. Captain Henderson gives us an account of the shealings existing in Caithness in his time, about the beginning of this century, and says: There they passed a complete pastoral life, making butter and cheese and living on curds and cream, or a mixture of oatmeal and cream stirred together cold, seasoned with a glass of whiskey before and after meals, dancing on the green and singing Gaelic songs, to the music of which at milking-time, morning and evening, the cows listened with attention and pleasure. There seems, however, to have been one, or perhaps more, particular airs which were chiefly employed on those occasions; for the same writer tells us that in the neighboring county of Sutherland, what the women sung to the cows at the shealing at milking-time was "a certain plaintive air (of which the cows seem very fond) similar to the "Ran de Vache sung in Switzerland." In olden times people always sung at their work, no matter very much what their work might be. English cobblers were famous for their catches; the ploughman, as Dr. Carr tells us in his "Praise of Music," used to "please himself and flatter his beast with whistlings and singings;" the harvest-field was always merry with the reaping-song, and generally with a piper; boatmen sung at the oar; on road making days, the laborers were never without their piper, to put mettle in their pick and spade; and a "country song" and a "country dance" had some real meaning when in the week-days people still sung to their sowing and sung to their reaping, and when every village had its bagpiper for its Sunday dances on the green. The milking-song of the Caithness | clay, and cylindrical in shape, with conical and Sutherland dairy-maids would, therefore, in former days have found parallels in any part of Scotland or England, and perhaps the habit of piping the cattle into good humor may have given an edge of truth to the satirical scrap of old song preserved by Burns: There was a piper had a cow, And he had nought to gie her; And gave the piper a penny The chalet and the chalet life are, therefore, no peculiarities of Switzerland, Swa. bia, or the Tyrol, where they have attracted most notice. They are natural to every thinly populated, mountainous country, and they only disappear when the wants of an increasing population push agricul ture and sheep-farming beyond their old limits. The Norwegian seater of the present day is the exact counterpart of the Highland shealing, except that from the abundance of wood the houses are a great deal better. The elder Mr. Samuel Laing, who took a farm in Norway in order to understand the people and their institutions, thus describes the seater: — This is a pasture or grass farm often at a distance of thirty or forty miles up the Fjelde, to which the whole of the cattle, and the dairy. maids with their sweethearts, are sent to junket and amuse themselves for three or four months of the summer. There are huts in these seaters, such as the French call châlots, whence our Highlanders apparently get the word shealings, and although only for temporary residence they are generally substantial buildings with every accommodation necessary for the dairy. The seaters are generally situated on the banks of some stream or lake in the Fjelde, and the people who reside there catch trout, gather molteberries, and make cheese and butter for the mistress, and I dare say have a pleasant life of it up in the Fjelde, all in the fine, still, summer evenings. The same practice prevailed in Ireland long ago. Dr. Sullivan says: "When they had sown their corn they took their herds and flocks to the mountains and spent the summer there, returning in autumn to reap their corn and take up their residence in their sheltered winter residences." They lived too in beehive huts, for indeed they had no other kind of house even in winter. "The houses of all classes," says Sullivan," were of wood, chiefly wattles and wickerwork enclosing roofs thatched with rushes." The beehive bothies of the shealing are just the ordinary Highland houses of the Middle Ages, and they have remained to this day simply because they are the houses that are most easily constructed out of the What materials to be found on the spot. has not come and gone since these were the common dwellings of the country? And now the shealing itself is about to go; it will disappear from the islands as it has disappeared from the mainland, and "the lilting at the ewe-milking" will die away; and just as old men recollect best their earliest days, so this old insti tution seems most retentive at the last of its most primitive features. The beehive hut is not so pretty or picturesque as the the village organization of the Highland Swiss cottage, but it is certainly stranger; tenants is not less antique or interesting than the land community of Swiss peasants; and in one respect the shealing has a decided advantage, inasmuch whole village, men, women, and children together, go to the shealing, and home life becomes glorified with the natural enjoy. ments of the season, whereas the Swiss ceased for the most part taking their herdsmen have, under modern influences, as the wives and families with them to the chalets. From The Saturday Review. THOMAS HOOD. IT is with peculiar pleasure that we notice the issue of a new edition of the complete works of Hood by Messrs. Ward & Lock. It would require a long and most probably a dull dissertation_to justify the thesis that Hood is, of all English men of letters, the most underval ued; and there certainly are facts which might be adduced on the other side. This is, unless we mistake, the third time that a complete edition of his works has ap peared during the last twenty years; while of his verses, comic and serious, separate editions almost innumerable have been called for. This, it may be said, is conclusive against neglect; it is not quite so certain that it is conclusive against undervaluation. The grievance that we have against the British public as regards Hood is twofold. The general reader has persisted in regarding him as a person who was unmatchedly clever in writing such things as And there I left my second leg And the Forty-Second Foot, to the entire ignoring of a faculty of producing other than burlesque work, which was at its best inferior to that of very few of his contemporaries. The particular reader, if that phrase may be used, knows perfectly well that he had this faculty; but, apparently to revenge himself on him for his knack of pleasing the general read er, obstinately refuses to give him due credit therefor. Everybody knows, or ought to know, Thackeray's generous and whimsical outburst of wrath with Hood for writing buffoonery when he could write things so much better. It would perhaps be more reasonable to find fault with Hood's readers, who seem to a great extent either to have made up their minds that he was nothing but a buffoon, or else that, being one, he had no business to be anothing better. to be admitted that, like most men who write for the press under the anonymous system, Hood did not a little work which is beyond the possibility of identification and recovery. But the fact that for the most part he was his own editor made him suffer less in this way than some other men, and, considering that he died still a young man, these eleven stout vol. umes of, for the most part, neither large nor loosely-spread print, represent a very great amount of work. We should not ourselves prefer to start an edition of Hood with the olla podrida called "Hood's Own," but that may be a matter of taste. Considering, however, that, not to mention a fair volume full of serious poetry, and "Tylney Hall," which is perhaps not a masterpiece, Hood has left a substantive work of excellent merit in the shape of "Up the Rhine," there could not be much difficulty in leading off. To our To show the injustice that is done to thinking, that admirable volume is, all Hood as a man of letters, no better test things considered, far from being his can be resorted to than the appearance | least title to fame. The borrowing of which he usually cuts in books of selec- the ground plan and some details from tions. There will be found, of course, the " Humphrey Clinker" is, of course, as un"Song of the Shirt" and "The Bridge mistakable as it is avowed, but that matof Sighs," pieces which we are very farters very little. The execution is hardly from wishing to undervalue in our turn, inferior to Smollett's, except where actual but which, from the literary point of view, satire of living persons is introduced; must underlie the charge of being exag- and lastly, in no book does Hood's extraorgerated, popular, and a little claptrappy. dinary system of illustration fit in so hap There may be one of the purely burlesque pily with the text. To the present genpieces, among which which it is certainly eration, we believe, these illustrations possible to select admirable examples seem extravagant, which indeed they are, of the kind. Perhaps there is an extract and are meant to be. But their remarkafrom "Miss Kilmansegg,' an effort in ble appositeness to the text (we can hardthe moral-satirical verse way of which ly, by the way, forgive the person responit is difficult to speak too highly. Possible for the present edition for cutting sibly, though not by any means certainly, the admirable "Eugene Aram may ap pear. But the beautiful "Elm Tree," "The Haunted House," absolutely unsurpassed of its kind, the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," not unworthy of Keats himself, who inspired it, and of Lamb, who praised it, the numerous exquisite snatches which have the grace and melody of Moore, without his triviality and pinchbeck - where are they? Professed students of English literature know them, of course, but to the general public Hood is still the man who had an unmatched facility of making puns in verse, and a still more unmatched but somewhat perverse power of mixing up jest and earnest in the manner of "The Desert Born." Here, at any rate, are all the pieces before us; serious and comic, prose and verse, ephemeral and lasting. It seems them out of "Up the Rhine" altogether, and printing them in "Hood's Own," where they have the remotest possible relevance), and the whimsicality of their adaptation to their legends, or of the adaptation of their legends to them (for it may be doubtful which, in Gavarni's phrase, "spoke" first to the author), distinguishes them from almost everything else of the kind. With the single exception, however, of "Up the Rhine" Hood's work may be admitted to be a thing of shreds and patches. There are probably quite five thousand pages in this edition, and when "Tylney Hall," " Up the Rhine,' and the "Memorials," which do not fill three volumes of the eleven, are deducted, hardly anything is left that extends to more than a few pages. It is all journalism in a way, and yet it has nothing, or very little, of the ephemeralness of jour nalism. For besides his inexhaustible |