Note 362 — MEMOIRS OF THE REBELLION IN 1745 AND 1746, SO FAR AS IT CONCERNED THE COUNTIES OF ABERDEEN AND BANFF

Highland squatters. ‘Humly’ is the ordinary north-country term for hornless cattle. Robert Jamieson in a note to Letter XXII. in the 5th edition of Burt’s Letters from the North of Scotland, published in 1818, says: ‘In the days of our grandfathers the lower class of highlanders were, by their lowland neighbours (in the north-east lowlands at least), denominated humblies, from their wearing no covering on their head but their hair, which at a more early period they probably matted and felted.’