The Whisky Smugglers of the Highlands.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 88, 7 February 1885, Page 5

The Whisky Smugglers of the Highlands.

• I knew George Smith (who in his younger b <l«yp had been a small tenant on the I Glenlivftfc estate of the Duke of Gordon) well in his old age, and many a yarn have I heard him tell of the old smuggling times. He is dead now years ago, and his son reigns » in his stead over that Glenlivat distillery which, beginning with a precarious output l of 100 gallons a week, now regularly distil? about-, 2,000 gallons within the same period I used to enjoy sitting opposite the old gentleman by his own fireside, and listening i to the stories that poured from him as he sat in the big arm chair. His breadth of shoulder and depth of chest were immense, and if in old age he had grown somewhat ponaerous, in the days of his prime, when he had to old his distillery by his stout arm against the smuggling gangs who were the " ratteners" of that day, his muscular development must have been tremendous The father of licensed Highland whisky distU'ation had a strong cr .-t fashion of narra tive. I find the following scrap in an old note book, taken down from his lips, and describing the situation when he commenced operat ; o >■>, " The outlook was an ugly one. I was warned before I began by my neighbours that they meaat to burn the new distillery to the ground, and me in the beat of it. The Laird of A^e^our presented me with a pair of hair-fvigged pistols, and th«v were never out of mv belt for yeat'ft. I got together three or four stout fellows for servants, armed them with pistols, and let it be known everywhere that I would fight for my place till the last shot. I had a pretty good character as « man of my word, and, through watching by turns every night for years, we con trived to save the distillery from tho fate so freely predicted for it But I often, both at kirk and market, had rough times of it among the glen people and if it had not Hppn tor the Laird of Aberlour's pistols, T don't think I should have been telling you this story now. In '25 and '26 three more small distilleries were started in the glen : bat the smugglers succeeded very soon in frightening away their occupants, none of whom ventured to hang on a single year in the face of the threats uttered against them Threats were not the only weapons used. In 1825 a distillery which had just been ftarted at the head of Aberdeen? hire, near tho banks o' Dee. wa« burned to the ground with all its outbuildings and appliances, and the distiller had a very narrow escape of being roasted in his own kiln. The country was in a desperately lawless state at this time. The riding officers of the revenue were the mere sport of the smugpiers, and nothing was more common than for them to be shown a still at work, and then coolly defied to make a seizure." A few of the smuggling stories I gathered in my early days, told me by George Smith and others, I still remember, and they may bear narrating. A man named Shaw, who kept a sort of public-house, or rather she been, on the Shea water, in the district of Mar, was a noted character among th-> smugglers for many years. He was a man of gigantic stature, and was by no means scrupulous as many a gauger knew to his cost, whilst he had a keen sense of rough good humour which redeemed him from being wantonly cruel. His house was a noted haunt of smugglers. One night Smith was on his way down into the South Country, and. being overtaken by a storm, was compelled to take refuge in Shaw's establishment. An acquaintance had existed between the two in the olden time, when as yet Smith had not gone over to the enemy, and Mrs Shaw and Smith had been old cronies. She — Shaw himself was not at home —treated the guest with all the oldtime friendship, and when ready for bed he was shown to the best room in the hou«o, with the promise that should any chance band of smugglers drop in they should nqt be allowed to molest him. In the dead of the night there invaded the establishment a party of drunken smugglers, with big Shaw at their head. Hearing that Smith was an inmate, he determined that he would give the traitor who had betaken himself to lawful distillation a fright he would remember; and the rest of the band were quiet willing to lend him their cooperation. The foremost man carrying a torch, they defiled in deep silence into Smith's bedroom, where he was lying awake. The door having been carefully locked, the conspirators took up positions all round the four poster, and Shaw, producing a huge bladed butcher's knife barkened with dried blood, brandished it over the prostrate man, exclaiming in a voice of thunder that " this gully was for hispowels." The Laird of Aberlour's pistols were Smith's staunch allies. He had one in each hand under the bedclothes. The one in his right hand he levelled at Shaw's head, swearing he would shoot him if he and his party did not evacuate the room immediately ; with his left hand he stealthily fired the other on the great cavernous chimney across which stood the bedstead This discharge made a report as if the whole structure was coming down by the run, and the smugglers bolted in precipitous fright — all except Shaw, who had detected the little stratagem, and who stood his ground and laughed at the whole affair as a joke. Smith was quite content, realising that the joke, if ie were one, was rather in his favour. This same Shaw was the hero of an exploit which made a doughty ganger look very foolish A party of smugglers were conveying two hundred barrels of whisky down to Perth one winter when the snow lay deep on the ground. Being a strong force and well armed, they marched in daylight, and without any regard for concealment. A squadron of the Scots Greys was lying in Perth, with a detachment of six men stationed at out-quarters in Cou parAngus. A revenue supervisor, who had got tidings of the smuggling expedition' ordered out this detachment, and pressed on with it through the snow until the party met the smugglers at Glenshee, under the leadership of Shaw, with the whisky casks hung across the backs of ponies. "Gang off back up the Spittal quietly, Shaw," said the gauger, "and leave the seizure in our hands." "Na. faith," replied Shaw with the utmost coolness, "ye'llonly get just what we like to gie !" " I'll have it all !" swore the doughty excisemen "By ," retorted Shaw, his Highland blood rising, " I'll shoot every gauger here before you will have a drop now!" " Fire !" roared the little exciseman to his attendant dragoons ; and at the same time grappling Shaw by the collar, cried, "You've escaped me often enough, Shaw ! Give in now. I've a pistol in each breeches pocket !" " And it's there they'll no be lang," was the quiet remark of the giant, who made a clutch at each breeches pocket, where the bulge of the pistol made itself apparent, lifted him clean out of the saddle, tore pisto's and pockets clean out, and contemptuously chucked the tattered gauger into the nearest snow wreath. The dragoons, hampered in the deep snow, and greatly outnumbered, thought it wisest to disregard the exciseman's order to fire ; and the final issue was that Shaw permitted the seizure of four casks, " just out of civility," and marched on in triumph with the remainder of the consignment. There linger in the glens numbers of stories of similar indignities heaped upon the exoisemen by the bold smugglers.

On one occasion two smugglers were travelling southwards with a cartload of •'ema' still," when they met a solitary gauger, who valiantly aspired to make the seizure single-handed. It was not lon^ before he was sorry he had beenso foolhardy, they did not beat or maltreat him actively ; they merely seized him and bound Mm in a sitting posture with his hands tied to getherover his knees, and a stick inserted in the bend of the latter. At first they placed him thus helpless in the middle ol the road, but in compliance with his earnest representations that he might be run over hi the dark, they moved him to the roadside, and took their leave with the grim prognostication that he would probably starve before he was found. But all the smugglers were not rough men like Shaw and his fellows. Some of them were hi >hly respectable law-breakers, who lived decent and cle inly lives, and smug g led just because it was their trade. One of those worthies was wont to come down on busine&s into the Aberdeenshire lowlands, and his invariable head -quarters wsre the manse of Udny. While he stayed he rrade a point of conducting the family worship morning and evening. A busybody remonstrated with the minister fot allowing a notorious smuggler to lead the worship of a clergyman's house. " Hout, tout," replied the honest parson, "it pleases him, weel 1 am sure it disna hurt me !" — Archibald Forbes, in " Belgravia."