Burton, in his _History of Scotland_, declares that the check given to Donald of the Isles at Harlaw, was a greater relief to Scotland than even Bannockburn was. If the Stuart kings, hard pressed as they were by England on the south, had been threatened by a formidable Celtic sovereignty on the north, Holyrood might have been in ruins a good many centuries earlier. I am not going to shock my Highland friends by saying it was a good thing for the country that Donald, with the remnant of his plaids and claymores, had to retreat to the misty straths and islands of the west. The coalition of Celt and Teuton has taken place in an unostentatious way, to the advantage of both races: Macfadyen does not now, as in the days of Dunbar, bide "_far norrart in a neuk_;" he has come to the Lowlands long ago, and rarely goes North, except on holiday. And the language, which to the finical ears of James Fourth's poet-laureate, seemed too terrible even for the devil to tolerate, has come south, too, and has a chair all to itself in the University of Edinburgh. _Time_, says Sophocles, _is a god who performs difficult things with ease_. Mention of Harlaw suggests a comic tale told to the credit of the Provost of Inverness. That gentleman, on being threatened with a predatory visit from Donald in 1400, took the remarkable plan of sending an ample supply of Inverness whisky into the Celtic camp. The men of Lewis and Skye tackled the liquid bounty with great glee, and soon were in a state of maudlin intoxication. The wily Provost meanwhile collected a force and attacked Donald's men, who (as they magnified the attacking host to _double its real numbers_) were easily scared and routed. At Harlaw, eleven years later, the Provost of Aberdeen, evidently a man who lacked the resource of the chief magistrate of Inverness, was killed, and 500 men with him. LOCHABER REIVERS. The predatory habits of the Highlanders gave great trouble to the Aberdeenshire farmers _for fully three hundred years after Harlaw_. In 1689 a dozen wild Lochaber men came right down into the heart of Aberdeenshire and lifted six score of black cattle. The fate of the marauders is thus described by the author of _Johnny Gibb_:--