Preface
I am delighted to write the preface to this publication, which marks another step in the long and diligent scientific career of a group of investigators who have spent decades studying the behavioral structures underlying social interaction.
The publication of Anolli, Duncan, Magnusson, and Riva’s reading path a decade ago marked an era. Now, with the heartfelt losses of Luigi Anolli and Starkey Duncan, we are set to take another step, united in our interest to further explore the vast opportunities offered by T-pattern detection and to take stock of the already extensive areas of knowledge in which T-pattern analysis has proven to be an exceptional analytical tool, while enabling a permanent exchange with the respective conceptual framework.
The detection of structures in behavior patterns forms a nexus between studies carried out in very diverse fields and contexts, involving humans (with highly diversified characteristics, and by analyzing the relation with hormonal levels, personality, culture, and so forth), animals (dogs, cats, primates, shoals of fish, wolves, rodents, chickens, insects), interaction studies between hormones and behavior, or neurons. Most studies are observational, with a perfectly established methodology. However, T-pattern detection is also used in laboratorybased experimental studies, where observation is simply a technique. A unifying factor is the observation of visually or even acoustically perceptible events or behaviors, nearly always arranged in clusters, which often correspond to interactive situations. The scale is extraordinarily rich and varied, ranging from micro-movements of individual facial expressions to broad migratory movements in the marine environment.
As the following chapters confirm, there are many forms of communication, and none is resistant to T-pattern detection. These forms range from the basic dyadic interaction between two individuals who regularly communicate and take decisions (be they two people, or a cat and its owner) to gregarious interaction (a shoal of fish) in a real or virtual situation, group conduct, or “self-interaction” (if that is a valid term), in the study of personal style.
Communication flows offer enormous research potential thanks to their multiple dimensions or levels of response (Anguera and Izquierdo 2006) and their extraordinary dynamic nature. Their study, however, poses methodological challenges, beginning with the establishment of dimensions or response levels (known as variables in THEME) and the criteria used to segment episodes into behavioral units, which give rise to event types and their arrangement into separate blocks. For good reason, the complexity of interactive behavior results in an episode or chain of episodes being expressed in a code matrix, adapted to the syntactic rules of THEME, so that the invisible structure to which it adapts and by which it is regulated can be extracted and studied quantitatively. An important aid to recording is the recently created freeware program LINCE (Gabín et al. 2012), which facilitates researchers’ work by enabling the direct export of data to THEME.
We want to foreground the ample possibilities of the multivariate approach of T-pattern detection in data recorded using ad hoc , highly flexible observation instruments (Anguera et al. 2007), comprising field format or field formats combined with category systems. The invisible nature of T-patterns increases the potential for discovery, as researchers are interested in extracting the internal structure that unveils the key to
Preface
In terms of qualitative research, the new options of THEME Version 6 permit highlevel scrutiny (see Casarrubea et al. 2015; Nicol et al. 2015) and have given rise to several components of the T-pattern model: T-Bursts, T-Markers, T-Associates, Satellites and Taboos, T-Packet structure (gravity and repulsion zones), Drifters and T-Kappa.
In terms of quantitative research, the presentation in November 2012—coinciding with the MASI meeting held in Guadalajara, Mexico—of the open access, educational version of THEME Version 6 for noncommercial purposes has enabled researchers and professionals the world over to use the program in their everyday work. Evidently, this straightforward program should ideally be used as an integral part of conceptual and methodological training, since it is vital to have knowledge of the basic structure involved in detecting patterns and of certain fundamental features of parameter assignment (such as the level of significance, the minimum number of occurrences, lumping factor, how to reduce redundancy, and deciding between modalities by shuffling or rotation in order to randomize data).
We firmly believe that the “great THEME family” will continue to strive to further develop the potential of T-pattern detection and further explore the hidden structures that emerge from data.
Barcelona, Spain
M.
Teresa Anguera January 1st 2015
References
Allister N, Segonds-Pichon A, Magnusson MS (2015) Complex spike patterns in olfactory bulb neuronal networks. J Neurosci Methods 239:11–17
Anguera MT, Magnusson MS, Jonsson GK (2007) Instrumentos no estándar. Avances en Medición 5(1):63–82
Anguera MT, Izquierdo C (2006) Methodological approaches in human communication. From complexity of situation to data analysis. In: Riva G, Anguera MT, Wiederhold BK, Mantovani F (eds) From communication to presence. Cognition, emotions and culture towards the ultimate communicative experience. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 203–222
Anolli L, Duncan S, Magnusson MS, Riva G (eds) (2005) The hidden structure of interaction. From neurons to culture patterns. IOS Press, Amsterdam
Casarrubea M, Jonsson GK, Faulisi F, Sorbera F, Di Giovanni G, Benigno A, Crescimanno G, Magnusson MS (2015) T-pattern analysis for the study of temporal structure of animal and human behavior: A comprehensive review. J Neurosci Methods 239:44–46
Gabín B, Camerino O, Anguera MT, Castañer M (2012) Lince: multiplatform sport analysis software. Procedia Social Behav Sci 46:4692–4694
Kemp AS, Fillmoreb PT, Lenjavia MR, Lyond M, Chicz-DeMeta A, Touchettec PE, Sandmana CA (2008) Temporal patterns of self-injurious behavior correlate with stress hormone levels in the developmentally disabled. Psychiatry Res 157(1-3):181–189
Lapresa D, Arana J, Anguera MT, Garzón B (2013) Comparative analysis of the sequentiality using SDIS-GSEQ and THEME: a concrete example in soccer. J Sports Sci 31(15):1687–1695
Introduction
Discovering hidden recurring patterns in observable behavioral processes is an important issue frequently faced by numerous advanced students and researchers across many research areas, such as, for example, psychology, biology, sports, robotics, media, finance, and medicine. As generally, the many powerful methods included in statistical software packages were not developed for this kind of analysis, discovering such patterns has proven a particularly difficult task, due to a lack of (a) adequate formalized models of the kinds of patterns to look for, (b) corresponding detection algorithms, and (c) their implementation in available software.
The research described in this book is based on the application of such pattern types, algorithms, and software developed over decades or since the late 1970s and until this day in the context of research in collaboration with human and animal behavioral research teams at internationally leading universities in the USA and Europe, thus testing the usefulness and validity of the pattern types, algorithms, and software in numerous research areas.
With the (scale-independent statistical hierarchical and fractal-like) T-Pattern at its heart, a set of proposed pattern types, called the T-System, forms the basis for the search algorithms implemented as the software THEME™ (v 6), which is easily available in free educational and full commercial versions (copyright www.patternvision.com). Recent original additions to the T-System and Theme are the T-Burst, the T-Packet (with its gravity and repulsion zone), T-Associates, T-Satellites, and T-Taboos.
As each chapter of this book describes a different research application of T-Pattern Detection and Analysis with THEME™, it can be seen as a sequel to Anolli et al. eds. book The Hidden Structure of Interactions: From Neurons to Culture Patterns. Both books can also be seen as products of an international research network, called “Methodology for the Analysis of Social Interaction” (MASI), based on a formal international interuniversity collaboration convention between leading European universities, with “Magnusson’s analytical model” as the common reference, initiated in 1995 by the University of Paris V, René Descartes and first signed by the rectors and presidents of seven universities, but now involves 24 universities in Europe and the Americas. Both books include a number of contributions from collaborators outside the MASI network, for example, in the area of human interaction at the University of Chicago in continuation of collaboration since the beginning of this R&D effort in the 1970s; moreover, the University of Arizona (deception in interactions, Burgoon et al.); the University of California, Irvine (psychiatry, Sandman et al.); the University of Palermo, Italy (behavior and brain research, Casarrubea et al.); and the University of Cambridge, UK (neuroscience; multi-cell interaction patterns in living brains, Nicol et al.).
The chapters of this book provide advanced students and researchers highly varied models for their own research with easily available software tools (including free educational version) and should be a natural addition to university and research libraries.
Reykjavik, Iceland
M.S. Magnusson Tucson, AZ, USA
M. Casarrubea
J.K. Burgoon Palermo, Italy
Series Preface
Preface
Introduction
Contributors.
Authors Biography
PART I HUMAN BEHAVIOR
1 Time and Self-Similar Structure in Behavior and Interactions: From Sequences to Symmetry and Fractals
Magnus S. Magnusson
2 Interactive Deception in Group Decision-Making: New Insights from Communication Pattern Analysis
Judee K. Burgoon, David Wilson, Michael Hass, and Ryan Schuetzler
3 Imposing Cognitive Load to Detect Prepared Lies: A T-Pattern Approach . . . . . 63 Valentino Zurloni, Barbara Diana, Massimiliano Elia, and Luigi Anolli
4 Paraverbal Communicative Teaching T-Patterns Using SOCIN and SOPROX Observational Systems
Marta Castañer, Oleguer Camerino, M. Teresa Anguera, and Gudberg K. Jonsson
5 The Self-Organization of Self-Injurious Behavior as Revealed through Temporal Pattern Analyses.
Aaron S. Kemp, Mohammed R. Lenjavi, Paul E. Touchette, David Pincus, Magnus S. Magnusson, and Curt A. Sandman
6 Detecting and Characterizing Patterns of Behavioral Symptoms of Dementia
Diana Lynn Woods, Maria Yefimova, Haesook Kim, and Linda R. Phillips
7 Typical Errors and Behavioral Sequences in Judo Techniques: Knowledge of Performance and the Analysis of T-Patterns in Relation to Teaching and Learning the Ouchi-Gari Throw
Ivan Prieto, Alfonso Gutiérrez, Oleguer Camerino, and M. Teresa Anguera
8 Qualitative Differences in Men’s and Women’s Facial Movements in an Experimental Situation.
Anaïs Racca, Magnus S. Magnusson, César Ades, and Claude Baudoin
9 Understanding Film Art: Moments of Impact and Patterns of Reactions
Monika Suckfüll and Dagmar Unz
10 Immersive Dynamics: Presence Experiences and Patterns of Attention. . . . . . .
Michael Brill, Gudberg K. Jonsson, Magnus S. Magnusson, and Frank Schwab
11 Accessing Individual Style through Proposed Use of THEME Associates. . . . .
Liesbet Quaeghebeur and David McNeill
12 Application of T-Pattern Analysis in the Study of Rodent Behavior: Methodological and Experimental Highlights .
Maurizio Casarrubea, Magnus S. Magnusson, Giuseppe Di Giovanni, Vincent Roy, Arnaud Arabo, Andrea Santangelo, and Giuseppe Crescimanno
13 Using Hidden Behavioral Patterns to Study Nausea in a Preclinical Model. . . . 237
Charles C. Horn and Magnus S. Magnusson
14 Informative Value of Vocalizations during Multimodal Interactions in Red-Capped Mangabeys .
Isabelle Baraud, Bertrand L. Deputte, Jean-Sébastien Pierre, and Catherine Blois-Heulin
15 Identification and Description of Behaviours and Domination Patterns in Captive Vervet Monkeys (Cercophitecus Aethiops Pygerythrus) During Feeding Time.
Gerardo Ortiz, Gudberg K. Jonsson, and Ana Lilia del Toro
16 Tidal Location of Atlantic Cod in Icelandic Waters and Identification of Vertical and Horizontal Movement Patterns in Cod Behavior .
Gudberg K. Jonsson, Vilhjalmur Thorsteinsson, and Gunnar G. Tomasson
17 Complex Spike Patterns in Olfactory Bulb Neuronal Networks
Alister U. Nicol, Anne Segonds-Pichon, and Magnus S. Magnusson
Contributors
CÉSAR ADES • Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
LUIGI ANOLLI • Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”, CESCOM (Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
M. TERESA ANGUERA • Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
ARNAUD ARABO • UFR des Sciences et Techniques, Université de Rouen, Mont-Saint-Aignan, France
ISABELLE BARAUD • UMR 6552 CNRS, Biological Station of Paimpont, University of Rennes 1, Paimpont, France
CLAUDE BAUDOIN • Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology, University of Paris 13 Sorbonne Paris Cité, Villetaneuse, France
CATHERINE BLOIS-HEULIN • UMR 6552 CNRS, Biological Station of Paimpont, University of Rennes 1, Paimpont, France
MICHAEL BRILL • Wuerstburg University, Wuerstburg, Germany
JUDEE K. BURGOON • Center for the Management of Information, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
OLEGUER CAMERINO • Laboratory of Human Movement Observation, INEFC-University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain
MAURIZIO CASARRUBEA • Human Physiology Section “Giuseppe Pagano”, Laboratory of Behavioral Physiology, Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
MARTA CASTAÑER • Laboratory of Human Movement Observation, INEFC-University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain
GIUSEPPE CRESCIMANNO • Human Physiology Section “Giuseppe Pagano”, Laboratory of Behavioral Physiology, Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
BERTRAND L. DEPUTTE • E.N.V.A., Plélan le Grand, France
BARBARA DIANA • Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”, CESCOM (Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy
MASSIMILIANO ELIA • Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”, CESCOM (Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy
GIUSEPPE DI GIOVANNI • Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta, Msida, Malta; School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
ALFONSO GUTIÉRREZ • Faculty of Education and Sport Science, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain
MICHAEL HASS • Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, Okmulgee, OK, USA
CHARLES C. HORN • Biobehavioral Oncology Program, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Division Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Department of Anesthesiology, Center for Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
GUDBERG K. JONSSON • Human Behavior Laboratory, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
AARON S. KEMP • Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
HAESOOK KIM • School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
MOHAMMED R. LENJAVI • Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
MAGNUS S. MAGNUSSON • Human Behavior Laboratory, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
DAVID MCNEILL • McNeill Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
ALISTER U. NICOL • Bioinformatics Department, Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK
GERARDO ORTIZ • Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones en Comportamiento, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico
LINDA R. PHILLIPS • School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
JEAN-SÉBASTIEN PIERRE • UMR 6553 CNRS, University of Rennes 1, Beaulieu, France
DAVID PINCUS • Crean School of Health and Life Sciences, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA
IVAN PRIETO • Faculty of Education and Sport Science, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain
LIESBET QUAEGHEBEUR • Faculty of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
ANAÏS RACCA • Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology, University of Paris 13 Sorbonne Paris Cité, Villetaneuse, France
VINCENT ROY • PSY-NCA, EA4700, Laboratoire de Psychologie et de Neurosciences de la Cognition et de l’Affectivité, Université de Rouen, Mont-Saint-Aignan, France
CURT A. SANDMAN • Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
ANDREA SANTANGELO • Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
RYAN SCHUETZLER • University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA
FRANK SCHWAB • Wuerzburg University, Wüerzburg, Germany
ANNE SEGONDS-PICHON • Bioinformatics Department, Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK
MONIKA SUCKFÜLL • The Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany
VILHJALMUR THORSTEINSSON • The Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland
GUNNAR G. TOMASSON • School of Science and Engineering, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland
ANA LILIA DEL TORO • Posgrado en Ciencia del Comportamiento: Análisis de la Conducta, Universidad de Guadalajara-Mexico, Guadalajara, Mexico
PAUL E. TOUCHETTE • Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
DAGMAR UNZ • University of Applied Sciences, Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Schweinfurt, Germany
DAVID WILSON • University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
DIANA LYNN WOODS • Azusa Pacific University, School of Nursing, Azusa, CA, USA
MARIA YEFIMOVA • School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
VALENTINO ZURLONI • Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”, CESCOM (Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences), University of MilanoBicocca, Milano, Italy
3 Looking for Ideas Regarding Hidden Patterns in Behavior
Behavior as repeated nonobvious or hidden sequences or patterns in time is a traditional viewpoint in behavioral science. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, sometimes called the father of human ethology (the biology of human behavior), thus opens his book in 1970 with these opening words: Behavior consists of patterns in time. Investigations of behavior deal with sequences that, in contrast to bodily characteristics, are not always visible. ([16]. Emphasis added.)
Repeated sequences or temporal patterns in behavior having some kind of nonrandom syntactic structure to be discovered is obviously a long established idea in, for example, Linguistics [17], Ethology [18] and in Radical Behaviorism, where repeated realtime probabilistic contingencies (temporal patterns) are also paramount [19].
Numerous other areas of behavioral science such as Anthropology, Social Psychology, and Cognitive Science are also concerned with the discovery and analysis of often nonobvious or hidden repeated behavioral patterns such as scripts, plans, routines, strategies, rituals, and ceremonies, which all are repeated patterns of patterns, etc., that is, they are hierarchical and syntactically constrained temporal patterns (see, as an early example [20]).
4 Speech and Nonverbal Behavior
Human speech and language had evolved in the context of other behavior for thousands of years (see, for example [21]) long before the first ideas of systematic analysis. Since then, centuries of analysis and inventions have led to modern Linguistics, recently including computational linguistics. In speech and writing we again find repeated hierarchical patterns of patterns varying greatly in complexity, content, function and meaning. From the simplest muscular movements in the vocal tract to phonemes, syllables, words, sentences and frequently repeated longer (vocal or written) patterns such as stories, poems, and massively repeated and standardized legal and religious verbal patterns, often of great length and complexity. These patterns are also made up of physical entities that do not simply clump in time and space, but form repeated hierarchical and syntactically constrained, spatially and temporally structured clusters. We thus see that they have nonrandom distances between their parts, which themselves have nonrandom distances between their parts at a lower scale, etc.
As the two major categories of human communicative behavior, verbal and nonverbal, are typically intertwined, a unified theory of both is a longstanding dream. Thus a leading linguist in his time,
Magnus S. Magnusson
Pike, begins his book “Language: in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior” with a description of a party game—the repetition of a song—a timed sequence of words, but at each repetition, one more word is replaced by an equivalent gesture. Finally, after further repetitions and replacements, there may be left only a few connecting words like the, and a sequence of gestures performed in unison to the original timing of the song. ([22], p. 1).
A little later ([22], p. 2) Pike continues:
The activity of man constitutes a structural whole, in such a way that it cannot be subdivided into neat “parts” or “levels” or “compartments” insulated in character, content, and organization from other behavior. Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such. {Emphasis added.}
After years of intensive collaborative efforts within a group including among others Birdwhistell [23] and Bateson analyzing speech and body movements, McQuown thus ends his foreword to their “Natural History of an Interview” (NHI) [24] with these words:
It is expected that, as a result of such investigations, the frames for describing language, paralanguage and body-motion in English (and in other) language communities will be perfected, that the linguistic, paralinguistic, and body-motion markers of sentence-like units manifest in these communicative behavioral channels will be uncovered, and that the foundations of a general theory of the structure of human communicative behavior, as manifest through these channels, and such units, will eventually be worked out. It is hoped that the materials here presented may facilitate the first steps in this on-going process.
Bateson’s chapter in NHI [24] starts with an overview of the impressive scientific scene in the first half of the twentieth century citing many of the principal contributors (e.g., Shannon, von Neumann, Ashby, Tinbergen, and Lorenz) ending with this interesting partial conclusion (p. 5):
What has happened has been the introduction into behavioral sciences of very simple, elegant, and powerful ideas all of which have to do with the nature of communication in the widest sense of the word. The steps and sequences of logic have been coded into the causal sequences of computing machines and, as a result, the Principia Mathematica has become a cornerstone of science. {Italics added}.
Just as the study of phenomena from micro to cosmic scales depended on the invention of microscopes and telescopes, the invention of film and video recording has allowed the fleeting character of human behavior and interactions to be captured for unlimited inspection and the collection of high quality data. But paper-and-pencil behavioral data collection, whether directly or from film and video often overwhelmed the data processing possibilities of that time.
Time, Symmetry and Fractals in Behavior and Interactions
As computers became more easily available, existing statistical methods were implemented in software and attempts made to use them in behavioral research (e.g., [25–27]). But these statistical methods were created when minimizing calculation was essential and therefore did not fully exploit the new computational power. More importantly here, these methods were not developed for the discovery of complex multilevel, multiordinal, hierarchical realtime patterns within partly independent parallel processes such as human behavior and interactions. New models were thus needed concerning the kinds of behavioral structure allowing the development of adequate computational methods.
The present “beginning-from-scratch” or Cartesian mathematical and computational approach could also among other, be seen as a reaction to two common aspects of observational interaction research, at the time based on film and video recordings, (a) highly subjective qualitative interpretation and/or (b) nearly exclusive focus on the frequency and duration of behaviors. Only rarely were multivariate or sequential analyses applied and then mostly standard and simple ones allowing little chance of discovering much of the complex hidden real-time structure of behavior and interactions.
5 Towards a Fresh Neutral and Objective Look
Two world wars in less than half a century is probably more than enough to suggest that something is wrong and a fresh look at human behavior, interactions, and relationships was overdue. But how to obtain true understanding of that elusive and complex phenomenon? Experiments in unnatural laboratory environments meant that the results might not be valid in real life and watching the events of everyday life through glasses heavily tainted by theories and the collection and interpretation of data based on too much subjectivity might lead to a distorted view.
In his chapter in NHI, Bateson writes: “Our primary data are the multitudinous details of vocal and bodily action recorded on this film. We call our treatment of such data a “natural history” because a minimum of theory guided the collection of the data.” ([24], p. 5). He also notes (p. 3) that Kurt Lewin [28] had already suggested a “mathematics of human relationships,” thus starting on the hard scientific path away from subjectivity through mathematics.
Ethology and then human ethology promoted direct objective non-intrusive and open-minded observation of each species’ behavior in its natural environment, which for modern humans is not easily defined otherwise than as human everyday environments.
In 1973, the Dutch ethologist Tinbergen’s pioneering ethological research [29] earned together with K. Lorenz and K. von
Magnus S. Magnusson
Frisch the Nobel Prize in ethology/zoology “for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns” (www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1973/) providing new inspiration for biologically oriented behavior research.
5.1 Towards T-Patterns and THEME
As a teenager, I had the good luck to find Tinbergen’s then brand new and inspiring book “Animal Behaviour” [30] and then a few years later another by the French ethologist and psychiatrist Jacques Cosnier [31] and later I visited with Cosnier and his laboratory at the University of Lyon around 1975. Later, during my work in Paris (1983–1993), he directed the first (state) doctoral thesis where T-pattern Analysis was applied [32].
Until the 1970s, ethology was almost exclusively concerned with nonhuman behavior, but human ethological studies began in earnest and under that name with the work of Blurton-Jones [33] and McGrew [34]. At about the same time, most importantly here, Montagner, who earlier had analyzed social insect interactions using high-speed filming and frame-by-frame analysis [35], turned to extensive filming of children’s interactions in their everyday kindergarten environments, followed by frame-by-frame analysis [36], and the many interesting results suggested great possibilities of further insight especially given powerful computational analysis. A visit with Montagner around 1975 at his laboratory resulted in his long standing invaluable support, a collaborative paper and two doctoral theses, applying TPA, that he directed [37–39].
Fortunately, well before the advent of the PC, I had read some new American literature about the computer revolution. This was just before I moved to Denmark and began my studies at the University of Copenhagen in the biological and animal behavior section of its Psychological Laboratory where ethology and behaviorism struggled with the difficult questions of behavioral research—and with each other, and with Chomsky’s devastating assault on Skinnerian behaviorism still in fresh memory [40]. The triangular struggle between these three directions is partly indicated by the words of the ethologist Cosnier who wrote about “Chomsky’s lacuna,” a serious one from a biologist’s point of view: …if the competence is a part of the organizing system of the species, what we agree on, then speech activity should be placed within the general homeostatic system of the talking individual. ([31], p. 122, here translated from French).
Strongly inspired by recent research on social phenomena in animals and especially in social insects [35], I wrote in 1975 a B.A. thesis entitled “Social Organization and Communication in Social Insects and Primates (Humans Included)” [41] and began the theoretical, methodological and software development of my doctoral studies completed in 1983. Computational methodology
including multivariate statistics and Artificial Intelligence was coming into focus and I experimented for a few years with multivariate statistics using the principal statistical program packages on the mainframe IBM computer of the North European University Computation Center (NEUCC) at the Technical University of Denmark, helped invaluably by my countryman, a statistician and computer statistics specialist there, Agnar Hoeskuldsson, but it turned out fairly soon that these methods were not fully adequate for the task at hand. So in 1978, I wrote a thesis entitled “The human ethological probabilistic structural multivariate approach to the study of children’s nonverbal communication” [42] where I initiated the alternative approach that eventually led to the T-pattern, the T-System, and THEME.
Using the brand new smaller computers (PDP 11 and 8) of the Psychological Laboratory, I developed and programmed the first version of the (3000 lines) THEME software. I was helped getting started with Fortran IV programming by psychologist Strange Rosss, who was also the principal computer person of the laboratory, but I was soon on my own. My very first computer program, Theme, was running in 1980 on a PDP 8, based on my developing model of temporal structure in behavior. I first presented it with the first results of an analysis of toddlers’ dyadic interactions, at an A.I. workshop at Uppsala University in Sweden. The title was “Temporal Configuration Analysis” [3] corresponding in essence to the present (“fast,” see below) T-pattern Analysis. Now, after 35 more years of development, programming and application in my research mostly in Paris at the National Museum of Natural History 1983–1988 and the University of Paris (V, VIII and XIII) 1988–1993 and since at the Human Behavior Laboratory that I created at the University of Iceland in 1991, many new features have been added. Particularly useful was the special T-pattern diagram (see Fig. 12) that I developed at the Anthropology Laboratory of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and at the Psychology Department of the University of Paris VIII around 1988–1989. Theme now also has a hundred times more lines (300 thousand), can process far larger data and is orders of magnitude faster. The research application has always involved collaboration with a number of researchers at a still growing number of universities mostly in Europe and the USA that since 1995 is based on a formal interuniversity collaboration convention started at the (Binet) Psychological Laboratory of University of Paris V in the Sorbonne and now includes 24 universities.
In around 1976, I met Paul Ekman in Copenhagen and then visited his laboratory in San Francisco. It was a great inspiration as his new FACS (Facial Action Coding System) provided high quality real-time data with possibilities of new intensive kinds of analysis unimaginable without the power of computers. A few studies have since combined the use of FACS and Theme, for example, in Time, Symmetry and Fractals
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
the four Incorporations of Leith (aggregate), £53, 16s. 7d.; the Episcopal Clergy of Edinburgh, £8, 8s.; Magistrates of Haddington (and collected by them), £28; Society of Periwigmakers in Edinburgh, £24, 4s. 3d.; Inhabitants of Musselburgh, Inveresk, and Fisherrow, £20; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, at Dumbarton, £30; Colonel Charteris’s lady, £5, 7s. 6d.; collected by Lady Grizel Cochrane, from sundry persons specified, £180.[487]
To do the government justice, the rebel prisoners were treated mildly, not one of them being done to death, though several were transported. An attempt was made, two years later, by a commission of Oyer and Terminer sent into Scotland, to bring a number of other Jacobite delinquents to punishment. It sat at Perth, Dundee, and Kelso, without being able to obtain true bills: only at Cupar was it so far effective as to get bills against Lord George Murray, of the Athole family; Sir James Sharpe, representative of the too famous archbishop; Sir David Threipland of Fingask; and a son of Moir of Stonywood; but it was to no purpose, for the trials of these gentlemen were never proceeded with.[488]
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Captain John Cayley (son of Cornelius Cayley of the city of York), one of the commissioners of his majesty’s customs, was a conspicuous member of that little corps of English officials whom the new arrangements following on the Union had sent down to Scotland. He was a vain gay young man, pursuing the bent of his irregular passions with little prudence or discretion. Amongst his acquaintance in Edinburgh was a pretty young married woman—the daughter of Colonel Charles Straiton, well known as a highly trusted agent of the Jacobite party— the wife of John M‘Farlane, Writer to the Signet, who appears to have at one time been man of business to Lord Lovat. Cayley had made himself notedly intimate with Mr and Mrs M‘Farlane, often entertained them at his country-house, and was said to have made some valuable presents to the lady. To what extent there was truth in the scandals which connected the names of Commissioner Cayley and Mrs M‘Farlane, we do not know; but it is understood that Cayley, on one occasion, spoke of the lady in terms which, whether founded in truth or otherwise, infinitely more condemned himself. Perhaps
1716.
drink made him rash; perhaps vanity made him assume a triumph which was altogether imaginary; perhaps he desired to realise some wild plan of his inflamed brain, and brought on his punishment in self-defence. There were all sorts of theories on the subject, and little positively known to give any of them much superiority over another in point of plausibility. A gentleman,[489] writing from Edinburgh the second day after, says: ‘I can hardly offer you anything but matter of fact, which was—that upon Tuesday last he came to her lodging after three o’clock, where he had often been at tea and cards: she did not appear till she had changed all her clothes to her very smock. Then she came into a sort of drawing-room, and from that conveyed him into her own bedchamber. After some conversation there, she left him in it; went out to a closet which lay at some distance from the chamber; [thence] she brought in a pair of charged pistols belonging to Mr Cayley himself, which Mr M‘Farland, her husband, had borrowed from him some days before, when he was about to ride to the country. What further expressions there were on either side I know not; but she fired one pistol, which only made a slight wound on the shackle-bone of his left hand, and slanted down through the floor—which I saw. The other she fired in aslant on his right breast, so as the bullet pierced his heart, and stuck about his left shoulder-blade behind. She went into the closet, [and] laid by the pistols, he having presently fallen dead on the floor. She locked the door of her room upon the dead body, [and] sent a servant for her husband, who was in a change-house with company, being about four afternoon. He came, and gave her what money he had in the house, and conducted her away; and after he had absented himself for about a day, he appeared, and afterwards declared before the Lords of Justiciary he knew nothing about it till she sent for him.... I saw his corps after he was cereclothed, and saw his blood where he lay on the floor for twenty-four hours after he died, just as he fell, so as it was a difficulty to straight him.’[490]
Miss Margaret Swinton, a grand-aunt of Sir Walter Scott, used to relate to him and other listeners to her fireside-tales,[491] that, when she was a little girl, being left at home at Swinton House by herself one Sunday, indisposed, while all the rest of the family were at church, she was drawn by curiosity into the dining-room, and there saw a beautiful female, whom she took for ‘an enchanted queen,’
1716.
pouring out tea at a table. The lady seemed equally surprised as herself, but presently recovering self-possession, addressed the little intruder kindly, in particular desiring her to speak first to her mother by herself of what she had seen. Margaret looked for a moment out of the window, and, when she turned about, the enchanted queen was gone! On the return of the family, she spoke to her mother of the vision, was praised for her discretion, and desired to keep the matter from all other persons—an injunction she strictly followed. The stranger was Mrs M‘Farlane, who, being a relative of the family, had here received a temporary shelter after the slaughter of Captain Cayley. She had vanished from Margaret Swinton’s sight through a panel-door into a closet which had been arranged for her concealment. The family always admired the sagacity shewn in asking Margaret to speak to her mother of what she had seen, but to speak to her alone in the first instance, as thus the child’s feelings found a safe vent. It will be remembered that Scott has introduced the incident as part of his fiction of Peveril of the Peak.
In the ensuing February, criminal letters were raised against Mrs M‘Farlane by the Lord Advocate, Sir David Dalrymple, and the father and brother of the deceased, reciting that ‘John Cayley having, on the 2d of October last, come to the house of John M‘Farlane in order to make a civil visit, she did then and there shoot a pistol at John Cayley, and thereby mortally wounded him.’ Not appearing to stand her trial, she was declared outlaw.[492] Sir Walter Scott states it as certain, that she was afterwards enabled to return to Edinburgh, where she lived and died;[493] but I must own that some good evidence would be required to substantiate such a statement.
The romantic nature of the incident, and the fact of the sufferer being an Englishman, caused the story of Mrs M‘Farlane to be famed beyond the bounds of Scotland. Pope, writing about the time to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, breaks out thus: ‘Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, as the world goes, ’tis hardly worth anybody’s while to do one for the honour of it. Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill-paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor you for returning to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia.’[494]
O . 20.
A newspaper which enjoyed a temporary existence in Edinburgh[495]—each number consisting of five small leaves—is vociferous with the celebrations of the anniversary of King George’s coronation in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth, and other Scottish towns. Ten days later, it proclaims with equal vehemence the rejoicings in the same places in honour of the birthday of the Prince of Wales. Paradings and firings of musketry by the troops, drinkings of loyal toasts from covered tables at the Cross, bonfires, ringings of bells, form the chief demonstrations. And it is notable that in Dundee, Brechin, and Aberdeen, which we know to have been in those days full of Jacobites, the symptoms of loyalty to Hanover are by many degrees the most ostentatious, there being the more need of course for the friends of the reigning house to exert themselves. In Dundee (where in reality the Jacobites were probably two to one), ‘everybody looked cheerful, and vied who should outdo other in rejoicing, except some few of our Jacobite neighbours, who, being like owls, loved darkness; but care will be taken that they spared not their money by being singular.’
1716.
Loyalty is altogether a paradox, appearances with it being usually in the inverse ratio of its actual existence, and the actuality in the inverse ratio of the deserving. No monarch ever enjoyed so much of it as Charles I. Since the days of his sons, when the bulk of the people of Scotland felt themselves under a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, the demonstrations at market-crosses on royal birthdays had not been so violent as now, when a new family, about whom nobody cared or could care, occupied the throne. Nor did these again become equally loud till the time of George III., when Wilkes prosecutions, losses of American colonies, and unjustifiable wars with French reformers, made loyalty again a needful article, and king’s-healthdrinkings in the highest degree desirable. On the other hand, when rulers are truly worthy of a faithful affection on the part of their people—as in our happy age—one never hears the word loyalty mentioned.
All through the reign of the first George and a great part of that of his successor, the newspaper estimate of human character seems to have had but one element—the attachment of the individual to ‘our
present happy establishment in church and state.’ At the end of every paragraph announcing a choice of magistrates in Scotland, it is pointedly stated that they are all friends of the Hanover succession. Such things are, of course, simply the measure of the extent of hatred and indifferency with which the happy establishment and dynasty were regarded, as well as of the danger in which it was the fate of both to exist, from the eagerness of many to get them destroyed.
The same newspaper, while telling us of such grave things as Scottish nobles and gentlemen waiting in the Tower and in Carlisle Castle for death or for life, as an incensed government might please to dictate, gives us other notices, reminding us of the affecting truism breathed from every sheet of the kind in our own day, that all the affairs of human life, the serious, the comic, the important, the trivial, are constantly going on shoulder to shoulder together. We glance from a hardwrung pardon for a dozen rebels, or an account of the execution of Sergeant Ainslie, hung over the wall of Edinburgh Castle for an attempt to render the fortress up to the Jacobites—to the let of the lands of Biggarshiels, which ‘sow above eighty bolls of oats,’ and have a good ‘sheepgang’ besides—or to David Sibbald’s vessel, the Anne of Kirkcaldy, which now lies in Leith harbour for the benefit of all who wish to transport themselves or their goods to London, and is to sail with all expedition—or to the fact that yesterday the Duke of Hamilton left Edinburgh for his country-seat, attended by a retinue of gentlemen—or to an announcement of Allan Ramsay’s forthcoming poem of the Morning Interview—for all these things come jostling along together in one month. Nor may the following quaint advertisement be overlooked:
1716.
‘A young gentlewoman, lately come from London, cuts hair extremely well, dresses in the newest fashion, has the newest fashioned patterns for beads, ruffles, &c., and mends lace very fine, and does all sort of plain work; also teaches young gentlewomen to work, and young women for their work. She does all manner of quilting and stitching. All the ladies that come to her on Monday and Thursday, have their hair cut for sixpence; at any other time, as reasonably as any in town; and dresses the beads on wires cheaper than any one. She lodges in the Luckenbooths, over against the
Tolbooth, at one Mr Palmer’s, a periwig-maker, up one pair of stairs.’[496]
Since the Revolution, there had been a constant and eager pressure towards commerce and manufactures as a means of saving the nation from the wretched poverty with which it was afflicted. But as yet there had been scarcely the slightest movement towards the improvement of another great branch of the national economy— namely, the culture of the ground. The country was unenclosed; cultivation was only in patches near houses; farm establishments were clusters of hovels; the rural people, among whom the distinction of master and servant was little marked, lived in the most wretched manner. A large part of rent was paid in produce and by services. Old systems of husbandry reigned without disturbance. Little had yet been done to facilitate communications in the country by roads, as indeed little was required, for all goods were carried on horseback.
1716.
The first notable attempt at planting was by Thomas, sixth Earl of Haddington, about the time of the Union. From a love of common country sports, this young nobleman was called away by his wife, a sister of the first Earl of Hopetoun, who desired to see him engaged in planting, for which she had somehow acquired a taste. The domain they had to work upon was a tract of low ground surrounding their mansion of Tyninghame, composing part of the coast of the Firth of Forth between North Berwick and Dunbar. Their first experiment was upon a tract of about three hundred acres, where it was believed that no trees could grow on account of the seaair. To the marvel of all, Lord Haddington included, the Binning Wood, as it was called, soon became a beautiful sylvan domain, as it continues to this day. To pursue his lordship’s own recital: ‘I now took pleasure in planting and improving; but, because I did not like the husbandry practised in this country, I got some farmers from Dorsetshire. This made me divide my ground; but, as I knew the coldness of the climate, and the bad effects the winds had, I made stripes of planting between every enclosure, some forty, fifty, or sixty feet broad, as I thought best.... From these Englishmen we came to the knowledge of sowing and the management of grass-seeds. After making the enclosures, a piece of ground that carried nothing but
1716.
furze was planted; and my wife, seeing the unexpected success of her former projects, went on to another.... There was a warren of four hundred acres, vastly sandy [near the mouth of the Tyne]. A gentleman who had lived some time at Hamburg, one day walking with her, said that he had seen fine trees growing upon such a soil. She took the hint, and planted about sixty or seventy acres of warren. All who saw it at the time thought that labour and trees were thrown away; but to their amazement, they saw them prosper as well as in the best grounds. The whole field was dead sand, with scarce any grass on it; nor was it only so poor on the surface, but continued so some yards down.’[497] Such was the origin of the famous Tyninghame Woods, which now present eight hundred acres of the finest timber in the country. By means of his Dorsetshire farmers, too, Lord Haddington became the introducer of the practice of sowing clover and other grass-seeds.
Another early improver of the surface was Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (second baronet of the title), whose merits, moreover, are the more remarkable, as his operations took place in a remote part of the north. ‘In my early days,’ says he, ‘soon after the Union, husbandry and manufactures were in low esteem. Turnips [raised] in fields for cattle by the Earl of Rothes and very few others, were wondered at. Wheat was almost confined to East Lothian. Enclosures were few, and planting very little; no repair of roads, all bad, and very few wheel-carriages. In 1720, I could not, in chariot, get my wife from Aberdeen to Monymusk. Colonel Middleton [was] the first who used carts or wagons there; and he and I [were] the first benorth Tay who had hay, except very little at Gordon Castle. Mr Lockhart of Carnwath, author of Memoirs, [was] the first that attempted raising or feeding cattle to size.’[498]
‘By the indulgence of a very worthy father,’ says Sir Archibald, ‘I was allowed [in] 1716, though then very young, to begin to enclose and plant, and provide and prepare nurseries. At that time there was not one acre upon the whole estate enclosed, nor any timber upon it but a few elm, sycamore, and ash, about a small kitchen-garden adjoining to the house [a very common arrangement about old Scotch country mansion-houses], and some straggling trees at some of the farmyards, with a small copsewood, not enclosed and
1716.
dwarfish, and browsed by sheep and cattle. All the farms [were] illdisposed and mixed, different persons having alternate ridges; not one wheel-carriage on the estate, nor indeed any one road that would allow it; and the rent about £600 sterling per annum, [when] grain and services [were] converted into money. The house was an old castle, with battlements and six different roofs of various heights and directions, confusedly and inconveniently combined, and all rotten, with two wings more modern of two stories only, the half of the windows of the higher rising above the roofs; with granaries, stables, and houses for all cattle and the vermin attending them close adjoining; and with the heath and muir reaching in angles or gushets to the gate, and much heath near. What land was in culture belonged to the farms, by which their cattle and dung were always at the door. The whole land [was] raised and uneven, and full of stones, many of them very large, of a hard iron quality, and all the ridges crooked in shape of an S, and very high, and full of noxious weeds, and poor, being worn out by culture, without proper manure or tillage. Much of the land and muir near the house [was] poor and boggy; the rivulet that runs before the house in pits and shallow streams, often varying channel, with banks always ragged and broken. The people [were] poor, ignorant, and slothful, and ingrained enemies to planting, enclosing, or any improvements or cleanness; no keeping of sheep or cattle, or roads, but four months, when oats and bear (which was the only sorts of their grain) was on ground. The farmhouses, and even corn-mills, and manse and school, [were] all poor, dirty huts, [occasionally] pulled in pieces for manure, or [which] fell of themselves almost each alternate year.’[499]
By Sir Archibald’s exertions, Monymusk became in due time a beautiful domain, well cultivated and productive, checkered with fine woods, in which are now some of the largest trees to be seen in that part of Scotland.
There is reason to believe that the very first person who was effective in introducing any agricultural improvements into Scotland was an English lady. It was in 1706—the year before the Union—that Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the famous Earl of Peterborough, married the eldest son of the Duke of Gordon, and came to reside in Scotland. A spark of her father’s enterprising genius made her desire
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to see her adopted country put on a better aspect, and she took some trouble to effect the object, by bringing down to some of her fatherin-law’s estates English ploughs, with men to work them, and who were acquainted with the business of fallowing—heretofore utterly unknown in Scotland. Her ladyship instructed the people of her neighbourhood in the proper way of making hay, of which they were previously ignorant; and set an example in the planting of muirs and the laying out of gardens. Urged by her counsels, during the first twenty years of her residence in Scotland, two Morayland proprietors, Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonston, and a gentleman named Dunbar, and one Ross-shire laird, Sir William Gordon of Invergordon, set about the draining and planting of their estates, and the introduction of improved modes of culture, including the sowing of French grasses.[500] It is rather remarkable that Scotland should have received her first impulse towards agricultural improvements from England, which we have in recent times seen, as it were, sitting at her feet as a pupil in all the various particulars of a superior rural economy.
N .
We are informed that, after the close of the Rebellion, owing to the number of people cast loose thereby from all the ordinary social bonds, ‘thefts, robberies, rapines, and depredations became so common [in the Highlands and their borders], that they began to be looked upon as neither shameful nor dishonourable, and people of a station somewhat above the vulgar, did sometimes countenance, encourage, nay, head gangs of banditti in those detestable villanies.’ The tenants of great landlords who had joined the Whig cause were particularly liable to despoliation, and to this extent the system bore the character of a kind of guerilla warfare. Such a landlord was the Duke of Montrose, whose lands lying chiefly in the western parts of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton shires, were peculiarly exposed to this kind of rapine. His Grace, moreover, had so acted towards Rob Roy, as to create in that personage a deep sense of injury, which the Highland moral code called for being wreaked out in every available method. Rob had now constituted himself the head of the broken men of his
1716. district, and having great sagacity and address, he was by no means a despicable enemy.
At the date noted, the duke’s factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, came in the usual routine, to collect his Grace’s Martinmas rents at a place called Chapel-eroch, about half-way between Buchanan House and the village of Drymen. The farmers were gathered together, and had paid in about two hundred and sixty pounds, when Rob Roy, with twenty followers, descended upon the spot from the hills of Buchanan. Having planted his people about the house, he coolly entered, took Mr Graham prisoner, and possessed himself of the money that had been collected, as well as the account-books, telling the factor that he would answer for all to the duke, as soon as his Grace should pay him three thousand four hundred merks, being the amount of what he professed himself to have been wronged of by the havoc committed by the duke upon his house at Craigrostan, and subsequently by the burning of his house at Auchinchisallen by the government troops. Mr Graham was permitted to write to the duke, stating the case, and telling that he was to remain a prisoner till his Grace should comply with Rob’s demands, with ‘hard usage if any party are sent after him.’
Mr Graham was marched about by Rob Roy from place to place, ‘under a very uneasy kind of restraint,’ for a week, when at length the outlaw, considering that he could not mend matters, but might only provoke more hostility by keeping his prisoner any longer, liberated him with his books and papers, but without the money.
Part of the duke’s rents being paid in kind, there were girnels or grain stores near Chapel-eroch, into which the farmers of the district used to render their quotas of victual, according to custom. ‘Whenever Rob and his followers were pressed with want, a party was detached to execute an order of their commanders, for taking as much victual out of these girnels as was necessary for them at the time.’ In this district, ‘the value of the thefts and depredations committed upon some lands were equal to the yearly rent of the lands, and the persons of small heritors were taken, carried off, and detained prisoners till they redeemed themselves for a sum of money, especially if they had at elections for parliament voted for the government man.’[501]
The duke got his farmers armed, and was preparing for an inroad on the freebooter’s quarters, when, in an unguarded moment, they were beset by a party of Macgregors under Rob’s nephew, Gregor Macgregor of Glengyle, and turned adrift without any of their military accoutrements. The duke renewed the effort with better success, for, marching into Balquhidder with some of his people, he took Rob Roy prisoner. But here good-fortune and native craft befriended the outlaw. Being carried along on horseback, bound by a belt to the man who had him in charge, he contrived so to work on the man’s feelings as to induce him to slip the bond, as they were crossing a river, when, diving under the stream, he easily made his escape. Sir Walter Scott heard this story recited by the grandson of Rob’s friend, and worked it up with his usual skill in the novel bearing the outlaw’s name.
While these operations were going on, the commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were coolly reckoning up the little patrimony of Rob Roy as part of the public spoil of the late rebellion. It is felt as a strange and uncouth association that Steele, of Tatler and Spectator memory— kind-hearted, thoughtless Dicky Steele—should have been one of the persons who administered in the affairs of the cateran of Craigrostan. In the final report of the commissioners, we have the pitiful account of the public gains from the ruin of poor Rob, Inversnaid being described as of the yearly value of £53, 16s. 8½d., and the total realised from it of purchase-money and interest, £958, 10s. There is all possible reason to believe, that it would have been a much more advantageous as well as humane arrangement for the public, to allow these twelve miles of Highland mountains to remain in the hands of their former owner.
1716. 1717. J .
Wonder-seekers were at this time regaled with a brochure stating how Mr John Gardner, minister near Elgin, fell into a trance, and lay as dead for two days, in the sight of many; and how, being put into a coffin, and carried to his parish church in order to be buried, he was heard at the last moment to make a noise in the coffin; which being opened, he was found alive, ‘to the astonishment of all present.’ Being then carried home, and put into a warm bed, he in a little time coming to
himself, ‘related many strange things which he had seen in the other world.’ In the same publication was a sermon which the worthy man had preached after his recovery.
A . 29.
Mr Gordon of Ellon, a rich merchant of Edinburgh, lived in a villa to the north of the city, with a family composed of a wife, two sons, and a daughter, the children being all of tender age.[502] He had for a tutor to his two boys a licentiate of the church, named Robert Irvine, who was considered of respectable attainments, but remarked for a somewhat melancholic disposition. A gloomy view of predestination, derived from a work by Flavel, had taken hold of Irvine’s mind, which, perhaps, had some native infirmity, ready to be acted upon by external circumstances to dismal results.
The tutor, having cast eyes of affection upon a servant-girl in his employer’s house, was tempted, one day, to take some liberties with her, which were observed and reported by his two pupils. He was reprimanded by Mr Gordon for this breach of decorum, which, on an apology from him, was forgiven. The incident sunk into the man’s sensitive nature, and he brooded upon it till it assumed proportions beyond the reality, and raised in his heart an insane thirst for revenge. For three days did the wretch revolve the idea of cutting off Mr Gordon’s three children, and on the day here noted he found an opportunity of partially accomplishing his morbid desire. It was Sunday, and Mr and Mrs Gordon went to spend the latter part of the day with a friend in the city, taking their little daughter along with them. Irvine, left with the two boys, took them out for a walk along the then broomy slope where St Andrew Square and York Place are now situated. The children ran about gathering flowers and pursuing butterflies, while this fiend-transformed man sat whetting a knife wherewith to cut short their days. Calling the two boys to him, he upbraided them with their informing upon him, and told them that they must suffer for it. They ran off, but he easily overtook and seized them. Then keeping one down upon the grass with his knee, he cut the other’s throat; after which he despatched in like manner the remaining one.
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The insane nature of the action was shewn by its being committed in daylight in an open place, exposed to the view of multitudes who
might chance to look that way from the adjacent city. A gentleman, enjoying his evening walk upon the Castle Hill, did obtain a tolerably perfect view of the incident, and immediately gave an alarm. Irvine, who had already attempted to cut his own throat, but unsuccessfully, ran from his pursuers to the Water of Leith, thinking to drown himself there; but he was taken, and brought in a cart to prison, and there chained down to the floor, as if he had been a wild beast.
There was a summary process of law for murderers taken as he was with the red hand. It was only necessary to bring him next day before the judge of the district, and have sentence passed upon him. In this case, the judge was the Baron Bailie of Broughton, a hamlet now overwhelmed in the spreading streets of the New Town of Edinburgh, but whose court-house existed so lately as 1827.[503] Till the abolition of heritable jurisdictions in 1747, the bailie of the Baron of Broughton could arraign a criminal before a jury of his own people, and do the highest judgment upon him. Irvine was tried by the bailie upon the 30th of April, and received sentence of death. During the brief interval before execution, which was but a day, the unhappy wretch was addressed by several clergymen on the heinousness of his crime, and the need of repentance, and, after a time, he began to exhibit signs of contrition. The bloody clothes of the poor children being then exhibited before him, he broke out in tears and groans, as if a new light was shed upon his mind, and he had been able to see his offence in its true character. He then sent a message to the bereaved parents, beseeching their Christian forgiveness to a dying man; and this they very kindly gave.
1717.
Irvine was next day hanged at Greenside, having first had his hands hacked off, and stuck upon the gibbet by the knife with which he had committed the murder. His body was thrown into a neighbouring quarry-hole.[504]
J 10.
Occurred this day at Edinburgh a thunder-storm, attended with such remarkable effects, that an account of it was published on a broadside. It was little, perhaps, that it frightened the people off the streets, caused the garrison at the Castle to look well to the powdermagazine, and killed a man and a woman at Lasswade. What
attracted particular attention was the fate of a tavern company at Canonmills, where two barbers from the Lawnmarket had come to celebrate the Pretender’s birthday over a bottle of ale. They had just drunk to the health of their assumed monarch—one of the company had remarked with a curse how the bells were not rung or the Castle guns fired on ‘the king’s’ birthday—when a great thunder-clap broke over the house. ‘The people on earth,’ cried one of the party, ‘will not adore their king; but you hear the Almighty is complimenting him with a volley from heaven.’ At that moment came a second stroke, which instantaneously killed one of the barbers and a woman, and scorched a gentleman so severely that he died in a few hours. The rest of the company, being amazed, sent to Edinburgh for doctors to take blood of the gentleman; but the doctors told them they could do no good. They tried to let blood of him, but found none. ‘Their bodies were as soft as wool.’
1717.
‘There is none more blind than them that will not see: these men may see, if they wilfully will not shut their eyes, that Providence many times hath blasted their enterprises.... These men were contending for that which did not concern them; they were drinking, cursing, and passing reflections—which in all probability hath offended the King of Heaven to throw down his thunder, &c., a warning to all blasphemers, drunkards, swearers, licentious livers, and others.’[505] It is a little awkward for this theory, that among the killed was but one of the Jacobite barbers, the other and equally guilty one escaping.
J .
The capture of the fugitate Rob Roy seeming now an object worthy of the regard of the Duke of Athole, a negotiation took place between them, which ended in Rob being taken into custody of a strong party at Logierait, the place where his Grace usually exercised his justiciary functions, and where his prison accordingly was situated. The outlaw felt he had been deceived, but it did not appear that he could help himself. Meanwhile, the duke sent intelligence of the capture of Rob to Edinburgh, desiring a company of troops to be sent to receive him. Ultimately, however, the duke countermanded the military, finding
he could send a sufficiently strong party of his own people to hand over the outlaw to justice.
While preparations were making for his transmission to the Lowlands, Rob entertained his guards with whisky, and easily gained their confidence. One day, when they were all very hearty, he made a business to go to the door to deliver a letter for his wife to a man who was waiting for it, and to whom he pretended he had some private instructions to give. One of the guard languidly accompanied him, as it were for form’s sake, having no fear of his breaking off. Macgregor was thus allowed to lounge about outside for a few minutes, till at last getting near his horse, he suddenly mounted, and was off to Stirlingshire like the wind.[506]
To have set two dukes upon thief-catching within a twelvemonth or so, and escaped out of the clutches of both, was certainly a curious fate for a Highland cateran, partisan warrior, or whatever name he may be called by.
1717.
N .
Sir Richard Steele appears not to have attended the business of the Forfeited Estates Commission in Edinburgh during the year 1716, but given his time, as usual, to literary and political pursuits in London, and to a project in which he had become concerned for bringing fish ‘alive and in good health’ to the metropolis. It was reported that he would get no pay for the first year, as having performed no duty; but those who raised this rumour must have had a very wrong notion of the way that public affairs were then administered. He tells his wife, May 22, 1717, in one of those most amorous of marital letters of his which Leigh Hunt has praised so much, that ‘five hundred pounds for the time the commission was in Scotland is already ordered me.’ It is strange to reflect that payment of coach-horses, which he, as a man of study, rarely used, and condemned as vain superfluities, was among the things on which was spent the property wrung out of the vitals of the poor Scotch Jacobites.
When the second year’s session of the commissioners was about to commence in September 1717, Sir Harry Houghton appears to have proposed that Steele should go at the first, in which case the baronet
1717.
proposed to relieve him in November; in case he did not go now, he would have to go in November, and stay till the end of January. He dallied on in London, only scheming about his journey, which, it must be admitted, was not an easy one in 1717. He informs his wife: ‘I alter the manner of taking my journey every time I think of it. My present disposition is to borrow what they call a post-chaise of the Duke of Roxburgh [Secretary of State for Scotland]. It is drawn by one horse, runs on two wheels, and is led by a servant riding by. This rider and leader is to be Mr Willmot, formerly a carrier, who answers for managing on a road to perfection, by keeping tracks, and the like.’ Next it was: ‘I may possibly join with two or three gentlemen, and hire a coach for ourselves.’ On the 30th of September, he tells Lady Steele: ‘The commission in Scotland stands still for want of me at Edinburgh. It is necessary there should be four there, and there are now but two; three others halt on the road, and will not go forward till I have passed by York. I have therefore taken places in the York coach for Monday next.’ On the 20th of October: ‘After many resolutions and irresolutions concerning my way of going, I go, God willing, to-morrow morning, by the Wakefield coach, on my way to York and Edinburgh.’ And now he did go, for his next letter is dated on the 23d from Stamford, to which place two days’ coaching had brought him.
An odd but very characteristic circumstance connected with Steele’s first journey to Scotland was, that he took a French master with him, in order that the long idle days and evenings of travelling might be turned to some account in his acquisition of that language, which he believed would be useful to him on his return. ‘He lies in the same room with me; and the loquacity which is usual at his age, and inseparable from his nation, at once contributes to my purpose, and makes him very agreeable.’
Steele was in Edinburgh on the 5th of November, and we know that about the 9th he set out on his return to London, because on the 11th he writes to his wife from Ayton on the third day of his journey, one (a Sunday) having been spent in inaction on the road. ‘I hope,’ says he, ‘God willing, to be at London, Saturday come se’ennight:’ that is to say, the journey was to take a fortnight. In accordance with this view of the matter, we find him writing on Friday the 15th from Pearce Bridge, in the county of Durham, ‘with my limbs much better
than usual after my seven days’ journey from Edinburgh towards London.’ He tells on this occasion: ‘You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done me there, and [I] never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense, than there.’[507]
Brief as his visit had been, he was evidently pleased with the men he met with in the Scottish capital. All besides officials must have felt that he came about a business of malign aspect towards their country; but his name was an illustrious one in British literature, he was personally good-natured, and they could separate the great essayist from the Whig partisan and servant of the ministry. Allan Ramsay would be delighted to see him in his shop ‘opposite to Niddry’s Wynd head.’ Thomson, then a youth at college, would steal a respectful look at him as he stood amongst his friends at the Cross. From ‘Alexander Pennecuik, gentleman,’ a bard little known to fame, he received a set of complimentary verses,[508] ending thus:
‘Scotia....
Grief more than age hath furrowèd her brow, She sobs her sorrows, yet she smiles on you; Tears from her crystal lambics do distil, With throbbing breast she dreads th’ approaching ill, Yet still she loves you, though you come to kill, In midst of fears and wounds, which she doth feel, Kisses the hurting hand, smiles on the wounding S .’
1718.
Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh, in attendance upon the business of the commission. We find him taking a furnished house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May (the Whitsunday term in Scotland), from Mr James Anderson, the editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ. But on the 29th July he had not come to take possession: neither could he say when he would arrive, till his ‘great affair’ was finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for Scotland, ‘though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife’s inability to go with me.’ ‘I shall,’ he adds, ‘want the four-horse stable for my saddle-horses.’
He appears to have taken the same house for the same period in 1719, and to have revisited Scotland in the same manner in 1720, when he occupied the house of Mr William Scott, professor of Greek
in the Edinburgh University.[509] There is a letter to him from Mr James Anderson in February 1721, thanking him for the interest he had taken in forwarding a scheme of the writer, to induce the government to purchase his collection of historical books. Steele was again residing in Edinburgh in October 1721, when we find him in friendly intercourse with Mr Anderson. ‘Just before I received yours,’ he says on one occasion, ‘I sent a written message to Mr Montgomery, advising that I designed the coach [Steele’s own carriage?] should go to your house, to take in your galaxy, and afterwards call for his star:’ pleasant allusions these probably to some party of pleasure in which the female members of Mr Anderson’s and Mr Montgomery’s families were to be concerned. In the ensuing month, he writes to Mr Anderson from the York Buildings Office in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a small bill representing money of his own for her relief. ‘This trifle,’ he says, ‘in her housewifely hands, will make cheerful her numerous family at Collingtown.’[510]
These are meagre particulars regarding Steele’s visits to Scotland, but at least serviceable in illustrating his noted kind-heartedness.
1718.
‘Kind Richy Spec, the friend of a ’ distressed,’
as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal acquaintance at this time.
There is a traditionary anecdote of Steele’s visits to Scotland, which has enough of truth-likeness to be entitled to preservation. It is stated that, in one of his journeys northward, soon after he had crossed the Border, near Annan, he observed a shepherd resting on a hillside and reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. ‘And what do you learn from this book?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I learn from it the way to heaven.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the knight, ‘we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would shew us the way.’ Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence at some miles’ distance, and said: ‘Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower.’ The party,
surprised and amused, demanded to know how the tower was called. The shepherd answered: ‘It is the Tower of Repentance.’
It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Repentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.
We are informed by Richard Shiels that Steele, while in Scotland, had interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches—a ‘devout imagination,’ which one would have thought a very few such interviews would have been required to dispel. He was particularly struck with the singular and original character of James Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who is universally admitted to have been an excellent man, as he was a most attractive preacher. That strange enthusiast, Mrs Elizabeth West, speaks of a discourse she once heard from him on a passage in Canticles: ‘The king hath brought me into his chambers; we will be glad,’ where he held forth, she says, ‘on the sweet fellowship Christ and believers have together.’ ‘Oh,’ she adds, ‘but this was a soulrefreshing sermon to me!’ What had most impressed the English moralist was the contrast between the good-humour and benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of human nature, and on the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him on this account ‘the Hangman of the Gospel.’[511]
1718.
The only other recollection of Steele in Edinburgh which has ever come under the notice of the author, represents him, characteristically, as assembling all the eccentric-looking mendicants of the Scottish capital in a tavern in Lady Stair’s Close, and there pleasing the whimsical taste of himself and one or two friends by witnessing their happiness in the enjoyment of an abundant feast, and observing all their various humours and oddities. Shiels also relates this circumstance, and adds that Steele afterwards confessed he had drunk in enough of native drollery to compose a comedy.
Lord Grange tells us, in his Diary, of a woman in humble life, residing in the Potterrow in Edinburgh, who had religious experiences reminding us of those of St Theresa and Antonia Bourignon, but consonant with orthodox Presbyterianism. Being taken, along with Mr Logan, the minister of Culross, to see her at ‘Lady Aytoun’s, at the back of the College,’ he found her a woman between thirty and forty. At the communion in Leith, a month ago, she had striven to dwell upon the thought of Christ, and came to have ‘clear uptakings of his sufferings.’ She saw him on the cross, and his deserted sepulchre, ‘as plainly as if she had been actually present when these things happened, though there was not any visible representation thereof made to her bodily eyes. She also got liberty to speak to him, and ask several questions at him, to which she got answers, as if one had spoken to her audibly, though there was no audible voice.’ Lord Grange admits that all this was apt to look like enthusiasm or delusion; but ‘far be it from me to say it is delusion.’ Being once at a communion in Kirkcaldy, ‘it was born in upon her—“Arise and eat, for thou hast a journey to make, a Jordan to pass through.”’ In passing across the Firth of Forth that afternoon, she was upset into the water, but sustained till a boat came to her rescue.
1717.
The pious judge seems to have desired much to keep up acquaintance with Jean Brown—for such was her name—and he went several times to see her at her little shop; but the place was so much crowded with ‘children and people coming in to buy such things as she sells,’ that his wish was frustrated. ‘Afterwards,’ he tells us, ‘I employed her husband [a shoemaker] to make some little things for me, mostly to give them business, and that I might thereby get opportunity now and then to talk with such as, I hope, are acquainted with the ways of God.’
1717. N . 1718.
Immediately after the Union, the shrewdwitted people of Glasgow saw the opportunity which was afforded them of making a profitable trade with the American colonies. They had as yet no vessels of their own, and little means of purchasing cargoes; but diligence, frugality, and patience made up for all deficiencies. There is scarcely anything in
