The demureness of the Scottish Highlander appears to have been in large measure developed during last century, and especially since the Disruption of the National Church and the domination of the Free Kirk. At the time of the Reformation and for many generations afterwards, he was wont on Sunday to play games--throwing the stone, tossing the caber, shinty, foot-races, horse-races, together with music and dance. It was formerly usual for him to be able to play on some musical instrument; in older times on the harp and in later days on the pipes, the fiddle, or at least the Jew’s harp. Writing in 1773 Mrs. Grant of Laggan averred that in the Great Glen ‘there is a musician in every house, and a poet in every hamlet.’ In 1811 she could still say, ‘there are few houses in the Highlands where there is not a violin.’[26] Whereever there was a good story-teller, or one who could recite the old poems, songs, tales, legends, and histories of former times, the neighbours would gather round him in the evenings and listen for hours to his narratives. These customs continued in practice until the early part of last century, and some of them still sparingly survive among the Catholic islands of the Hebrides. But the Presbyterian clergy in later times have waged ceaseless war against them. ‘The good ministers and the good elders preached against them and went among the people and besought them to forsake their follies and to return to wisdom. They made the people break and burn their pipes and fiddles. If there was a foolish man here and there who demurred, the good ministers and the good elders themselves broke and burnt their instruments, saying Better is the small fire that warms on the little day of peace Than the big fire that burns on the great day of wrath. The people have forsaken their follies and their Sabbath-breaking, and there is no pipe and no fiddle here now.’[27] [Sidenote: CLERICAL RAIDS AGAINST FIDDLES]