HIGHLAND CLANS

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 2

HIGHLAND CLANS

' The clan system has hroken down: ifi OQuld not withstand the stress of modern usages or adapt itself to modern conditions. Whether its disappearance is a-loss or a benefit to the remnant of the Highland people that remains in its old fastnesses must always be a matter of opinion, but divers efforts made lately to revive it on social lines have met with no very firm response. The efforts to which I refer are those put forward in various quarters to form, clan societies with something of the old l traditional ego. In most cases those bodies were *shopt4ives, out <*he few that have survived .ifl. anything lik« an active mood are doing good work ia tho philanthropicaV direction. Th« clan, as an institution, had much to commend it in ancient times. To-day it can have no "locus standi" seeing; that self-defence against near neighbours is no longer an urgent necessity 1 .. Time was when people of one country* side seized every opportunity of adjust-, ing records with those of another, and the reprisals were usually long drawn~ out battles, whether lethal weapon* were employed or not. The Highland clans at one time wero analogous to small States which had to arm and coalesce against larger neighbours. Never again will the Highlands militantly revert to their old condition of being divided up against themselves. There "is now, generally speaking, harmony and peace where once little reigned but jealousy and -envy.— ' Weekly Scotsman.'