Memory and History
When the journey takes the writer to Ostig, he learns of the oral traditions of people who have earned the title Seer. The experience is an immersion in the intricacies of unwritten history, leading the author to wax philosophical on the subject of how histories can be recorded or lost forever that is a library of metaphor:
“Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has past away, is again bright in its proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it falls, cannot be rekindled.”
The Cuddy Is a Curious Fish
It is on the island of Ulinish that the author is introduced to the cuddy. Having no previous familiarity with it—and assuming most of his readers will not, either—he turns to the power of comparison in using simile to get his descriptive points across:
“The cuddy is a fish of which I know not the philosophical name. It is not much bigger than a gudgeon, but is of great use in these Islands…Cuddies are so abundant, at sometimes of the year, that they are caught like whitebait in the Thames, only by dipping a basket and drawing it back.”
The Myth of Luxury
While at Ostig, the author confronts the persistent idea that longevity can directly be tied to the level of luxury in which a person lives. This idea is confronted not the end of great wealth, but rather the opposite. As to whether living on the edge helps a person grow old, the author concludes:
“Poverty preserves him from sinking under the burden of himself, but he escapes no other injury of time.”
Not from Around These Parts
Another myth busted is that the arrival of a stranger into clannish and remote villages naturally produces a flurry of wonder marked by persistent questioning of the outside world. The author finds this to hardly be the case, insisting that when a stranger does show:
“He appears to them like some being of another world, and then thinks it peculiar that they take their turn to inquire whence he comes, and whither he is going.”
And Now This Word from Power and Wealth
The author suddenly takes off on a philosophical tangent about the nature of the relationship between power and wealth. The motivation here seems to be the issue of the historical divestments of the Highlander chiefs, but it is not entirely clear. Seeming more like a digression into something the author’s had long been pondering, his observations is that:
“Power and wealth supply the place of each other. Power confers the ability of gratifying our desire without the consent of others. Wealth enables us to obtain the consent of others to our gratification. Power, simply considered, whatever it confers on one, must take from another. Wealth enables its owner to give to others, by taking only from himself. Power pleases the violent and proud: wealth delights the placid and the timorous. Youth therefore flies at power, and age grovels after riches.”
