In the variety of mental powers, some must perform extemporary prayer with much imperfection; and in the eagerness and rashness of contradictory opinions, if publick liturgy be left to the private judgment of every Minister, the congregation may often be offended or misled.

There is in Scotland, as among ourselves, a restless suspicion of popish machinations, and a clamour of numerous converts to the Romish religion.  The report is, I believe, in both parts of the Island equally false.  The Romish religion is professed only in Egg and Canna, two small islands, into which the Reformation never made its way.  If any missionaries are busy in the Highlands, their zeal entitles them to respect, even from those who cannot think favourably of their doctrine.

The political tenets of the Islanders I was not curious to investigate, and they were not eager to obtrude.  Their conversation is decent and inoffensive.  They disdain to drink for their principles, and there is no disaffection at their tables.  I never heard a health offered by a Highlander that might not have circulated with propriety within the precincts of the King’s palace.

Legal government has yet something of novelty to which they cannot perfectly conform.  The ancient spirit, that appealed only to the sword, is yet among them.  The tenant of Scalpa, an island belonging to Macdonald, took no care to bring his rent; when the landlord talked of exacting payment, he declared his resolution to keep his ground, and drive all intruders from the Island, and continued to feed his cattle as on his own land, till it became necessary for the Sheriff to dislodge him by violence.

The various kinds of superstition which prevailed here, as in all other regions of ignorance, are by the diligence of the Ministers almost extirpated.

Of Browny, mentioned by Martin, nothing has been heard for many years.  Browny was a sturdy Fairy; who, if he was fed, and kindly treated, would, as they said, do a great deal of work.  They now pay him no wages, and are content to labour for themselves.

In Troda, within these three-and-thirty years, milk was put every Saturday for Greogach, or ‘the Old Man with the Long Beard.’  Whether Greogach was courted as kind, or dreaded as terrible, whether they meant, by giving him the milk, to obtain good, or avert evil, I was not informed.  The Minister is now living by whom the practice was abolished.

They have still among them a great number of charms for the cure of different diseases; they are all invocations, perhaps transmitted to them from the times of popery, which increasing knowledge will bring into disuse.

They have opinions, which cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects.  They expect better crops of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon’s increase.  The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy.  In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, ’to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling.’