Edinburgh, Mar. 8.
The great boom of the Royal wedding is over, everything possible has been said and written about it. At least so I thought until I read an account of a celebration in one of our remote Western Isles. The writer is evidently a business man,—perhaps in the East he would be called a trader,—who talks of carrying civilization in the shape of the latest? in all things edible and sartorial." But he can write, and tell what he has seen and read: of that there can be no doubt.
"I was privileged," he says, take part in the celebration Princess Mary's wedding day one of the smaller islands of the Hebrides, and I shall never forget it. It is a Roman Catholic community of crofters and fishers, who regarded it as the happiest of portents that the King's daughter chose Shrove Tuesday for her wedding. I was half a mile out at sea when I heard the chimes of bells which seemed to descend from the skies to dissolve themselves in the larger harmony of the Atlantic. The folk were beginning their celebrations, and as is there wont, within the little chapel which, like a jewelled brooch, knits the plaid of green and heather around it.
Pipry aND PLeasurp.
"A lovely send-off," I thought, "but I should like to see the other end,—what of the night-time revelry?' Oh, monstrous cities that have left their mark upon me, when will you learn that piety and pleasure, religion and rejoice ing, can and do go hand in hand? For it was the night-time revelry I witnessed, and I doff my hat to these poor but superb people. The; night began at seven o'clock in a; long lantern-lighted barn. The' laird, who was present to receive us, filled the part, as it were, of Deputy-King. "At the door stood Seumas Mor, wearing the King's; uniform; for, as all the island} knows, he had been many years ago a petty officer in the Royal Navy. There he stood to announce and usher in the loyal people,—boys and girls, middle-aged stalwarts, wives and maidens with quiet eyes,' and septuagenarians too, all in their Sunday' best, to do honour, as is meet, to the King's; daughter.
"Then broke upon my unaccustomed ears the strange, sweet swelling of an ancient Gaelic hymn: it told the people to rejoice, and withal to recall the festival of Cana! of Galilee. Next the laird stood; up, an elderly man, with the carriage of a Roman Senator. Hei wore on his breast a decoration for! war work,—and indeed nine out of! every ten men-assembled there had been actively engaged in the world's greatest war. The laird stood up and ordered that every man and woman above the age of 16 be served with a glass of wine which,' said he, 'I have drawn from the cellars of my forbears; and within each glass there is at least one drop of a vintage dating from a time when a Prince of the Royal House of Stewart visited these parts.' And in that. wine the health of the Princess and of Viscount Lascelles was toasted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.