Whisky And Priests In The Highlands

Abstract

The 'whisky priest' is familiar from Graham Greene, but the title here avoids the phrase. Catholic clergymen addicted to alcohol do feature in the historical account which follows, but one of the central clerical characters was a strict teetotaler repenting from a youthful life of crime as a whisky smuggler. The Highland areas in question are inevitably those which remained or became loyal to Rome between Barra and Braemar, and from Strathglass down to Moidart. They may be imagined as a saltire of scattered communities intersecting around Invergarry on Loch Ness. They were given dignity near here, late on, by Fort Augustus Abbey. 2 The clergy are presented in relation to the communities they served, so that the drinking habits of ordinary men and women also come into consideration, and particularly in the period around 1840 when the effects of illicit whisky smuggling were still being felt. Priests who drank to excess were sometimes helped b y their superiors, but in chronic cases they were ultimately dismissed. Some made a new start in North America, and the contrasting experience of three clergymen who left for Nova Scotia is noted. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century Highlanders used alcohol sparingly, although heavy drinking of ale took place at weddings, funerals and occasional gatherings in the homes of clan chiefs. These leading men were licensed by the crown to import wine and spirits and their hospitality became legendary through the bards, but 'instances of prodigality were not commonplace in the wake of the statutes of Iona ... [and] lowered expectations for hospitality went against the grain of praise poetry... ' . 4 Shortage of barley discouraged excess, and when whisky began to be distilled it 'featured little in the day to day social life of the village except as a means of paying rent or for medicinal purposes.' 5 Alcohol was scarce in the 1620s when Irish missionaries came to an area almost untouched by the Scottish Reformation. When one ran short of wine for mass he had to go to Edinburgh. Franciscans who reached Mull after a summer in Kintyre 'were given a rare delicacy a drink of beer; this was the first time they had tasted beer since they left Ireland.' . In Benbecula, near the end of the century, Martin Martin met 'an old lay Capuchin' or strict Franciscan who 'drank only fair water.' 7 Early examples can be found of whisky priests, but when Bishop James Gordon mentioned the Franciscan Antony Kelly's 'old inclinations of wronging himself with drink' in Barra, the case was presented as an exception. His successor Bishop Hugh MacDonald had to deal with Neil MacFie, a notorious drinker in the Outer Hebrides, and suspended him in 1750. MacFie was the only priest to have his faculties withdrawn for this offence in the 18th century, but the Catholic chronicler Abbe Paul MacPherson represented him as part of a general problem: 'On the Mission, exposed as all the Western Scots clergy then were to much company by not having houses of their own, he fell into the habit of drinking, which increased to that degree as to oblige the Bishop to deprive him of his faculties.' 0 MacPherson was an East Highland clergyman from Glenlivet. In 1774 the master of the Scalan seminary there, where many priests began their training, observed neighbouring farmers 'only drinking down sorrow, and with the