IN JUNE 1844 GEORGE MacLennan appeared before Dingwall sheriff court accused of assaulting John Williamson, a farm servant, causing him serious injury. MacLennan proffered this statement in his defence. ‘I had been at the Muir of Ord market that day and had had a dram. Williamson seeing this said to me I was drunk and further provoked me by saying I was a tailor and not a man.’ MacLennan answered him ‘that if he would not be quiet I would show to him what I was’. When Williamson refused to react to MacLennan's provocations, MacLennan took hold of the spade with which Williamson was working and in the ensuing struggle Williamson was struck in the mouth. A commonplace confrontation between two men on a roadside in rural Scotland provides us with an entry point into everyday understandings of masculinity. George MacLennan felt insulted by Williamson's insinuation that he was not a real man because he was a tailor – presumably an effeminate trade to be contrasted with Williamson's physical labour – and furthermore, that he could not hold his drink. The verbal altercation descended into a physical one as the pair allegedly tussled over the spade, but in this case it is the slight perceived by MacLennan that should interest us rather than the fight alone. George MacLennan felt insulted by a man who cast aspersions on his manliness and that manliness, in this case, was defined as being able to take a drink, undertaking physical labour and being up for a fight. It is rare for the historian to come across such an unequivocal statement regarding what men in the past understood as constituting masculinity. More often we use descriptions of male behaviour or representations of ideal and alternative masculinities as indicators of masculine gender norms. George MacLennan regarded himself as just as much of a man as John Williamson, notwithstanding his occupation and his drunken demeanour. And he sought to prove it by provoking Williamson to a fight.