Even the friends and well-wishers of the illicit
distiller did not always act in the way most conducive to his comfort
and well-being, for if his still turned out a whisky that was extra
seductive, he speedily became so popular, so run after, and the list of
his acquaintances so extended, that sooner or later tidings of his
whereabouts leaked round to the ears of the gaugers, and arrest, or a
hasty midnight flitting, was the outcome. Besides, such popularity
became a severe tax on the pocket of the distiller, for the better the
whisky the greater the number of those who desired to sample it, and the
oftener they sampled it, the more they yearned to repeat the process.
Nor was it safe to make a charge for the liquor thus consumed, lest it
might chance that some one of those who partook of it might, out of
revenge for being charged, lay an information.
About the end of the eighteenth century there lived in a remote glen on
Cheviot a Highlander, one Donald M'Donald, who was famous for the
softness and flavour of the spirit he distilled. Whether it was a
peculiar quality imparted to his whisky by some secret process known
only to Donald himself, a knowledge and skill perhaps handed down from
father to son from generation to generation, like the secret of the
brewing of heather ale that died with the last of the Picts, one cannot
say.
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