Transcriber’s Notes.
Footnotes have been numbered in one continuous sequence.
Differences in hyphenation of specific words and missing punctuation
have been rectified where applicable.
The advertisments from the front of the book have been placed
at the end.
Bold print is denoted with equal signs, such as =20=.
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS
OF SCOTLAND
[Illustration: INVERNESS]
THE HIGHLANDS AND
ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND
PAINTED BY W · SMITH
JUN^[R.] · DESCRIBED BY
A · R · HOPE MONCRIEFF
PUBLISHED BY A · & C ·
BLACK·LONDON·MCMVII
[Illustration]
_Published April 1906
Reprinted with slight corrections, July 1907_
Preface
In _Bonnie Scotland_ was promised a further volume that should be
devoted to the sterner and wilder aspects of Caledonia. That book dealt
with the main body of Highlands and Lowlands, more familiar to the
gentle tourist for whose patronage it was a candidate. This one, whose
title might have been qualified as _West_ Highlands, deals with the
less visited side that is still Highland indeed, both in ruder natural
features and in a life holding out longer against the trimming and
taming of Sassenach intromissions. The author, as before, has tried to
weave a pattern of entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of
information, all making a darker-hued tartan than is worn in the centre
of Bonnie Scotland. Another metaphor would put it that he has prepared
a brisk, perhaps frothy, but, it is hoped, not unpalatable, brew of
“heather ale,” which contains in solution more solid ingredients than
may be manifest to every reader.
Contents
CHAPTER I
PAGE
“TO THE HIGHLANDS BOUND” 1
CHAPTER II
TARTANS 19
CHAPTER III
THE LAND OF LORNE 43
CHAPTER IV
THE HOLY ISLES 65
CHAPTER V
PIBROCHS AND CORONACHS 88
CHAPTER VI
TOURISTS 117
CHAPTER VII
LOCHABER NO MORE! 146
CHAPTER VIII
THE OUTER HEBRIDES 171
CHAPTER IX
THULE 195
CHAPTER X
CHILDREN OF THE MIST 217
List of Illustrations
1. Inverness _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. Glen Rosa, Arran 8
3. Aberdeen from the Harbour Entrance 16
4. Cawdor Castle 30
5. Loch Linnhe 36
6. Inveraray Cross and Castle 44
7. Glencoe 52
8. Oban Bay at Night 56
9. The Islands of Oronsay and Colonsay 66
10. Iona Cathedral 68
11. Interior, Iona Cathedral 70
12. Staffa 72
13. The Island of Eigg 74
14. The Island of Canna 76
15. Tobermory 78
16. The Hills of Jura 82
17. Port Askaig, Islay 84
18. Ben Nevis 92
19. The Island of Rum, from Arisaig 96
20. The River Spey near Fochabers 102
21. Inverlochy Castle and Ben Nevis 108
22. Castle Urquhart, Loch Ness 120
23. Spinning in Skye 122
24. Glen Sligachan, Skye 128
25. Loch Coruisk, Skye 138
26. Skye Crofter 140
27. The Falls of Spean, Inverness-shire 148
28. Crofters’ Cottages, Onich, Inverness-shire 152
29. Reddin’ the Line 162
30. The Standing Stones of Callernish, Island of Lewis 172
31. A Hebridean Crofter’s House 178
32. Shelling Mussels, Cromarty 180
33. The Herring Fleet in Stornoway Bay, Island of Lewis 188
34. Carting Peat, Orkney 196
35. An Orcadian Fireplace 200
36. Kirkwall Cathedral, Orkney 206
37. Shetlanders 214
38. Caithness Coast near Dunnet Head 218
39. Kyle of Tongue and Ben Loyal 222
40. Dunrobin Castle, Sutherlandshire 226
_Map at end of Volume_
CHAPTER I
“TO THE HIGHLANDS BOUND”
Highlands and Islands, as we Scots chuckle to ourselves, is the one
phrase which an Englishman cannot mispronounce. I read lately a book
of Scottish travel by an American, who made my countrymen leave out
their _h_’s like any Cockney; then I at once laid aside this writer’s
observations as vain. The humblest Scot never drops an _h_, unless in
words like _hospital_, which the Southron painfully aspirates in his
anxiety not to be judged vulgar, as in living memory he has tacked this
test of breeding on to _h_umour and _h_umble. More fairly we may be
charged with overdoing the _h_ sound; and there are two or three words
in which we insert it: _huz_, for instance, said in some parts for
“us.” In the game of _anglicé_ “touch” or “tag,” my childish
conception of the formula “who’s _hit_?” made it a participle meaning
“struck” or “touched,” till I heard German children crying in like
case “_Ich bin es!_” when I did not know how _hit_ is the old English
pronoun, preserved by Scots dialects, which are the truest copies of
our national tongue.
Once, indeed—it was in Derbyshire—I came across a man speaking with
a strong West Highland accent, yet misusing the letter _h_. This
seemed such a prodigy that I made a point of getting it explained. It
turned out that he was the son of a Yorkshire shepherd, who had taken
service on the Isle of Mull. There the boy came to be most at home in
Gaelic, while what English he had was on a bad model—the reverse of
_lingua Toscana in bocca Romana_. His younger brothers, he told me,
grew up hardly speaking English at all, and he, the bilingual member
of the family, had often to interpret between them and their mother,
who could never get her tongue round the strange speech. We speak of a
mother-tongue; but it is from their play-fellows that active lads seem
to learn fastest. The Italian author De Amicis relates an experience
like that of this Yorkshire family: transplanted at the age of two from
a Genoese to a Piedmontese town, he picked up the Piedmontese dialect
so readily that his own mother could not always understand him when
once he got loose from her apron-strings.
In the far Highlands and Islands can still be found countrymen of
ours who speak no language but Gaelic, these hardly, indeed, unless
among older people, the rising generation being schooled into the
dominant tongue, in their case often a stiff book English, spangled
with Lowland idioms and native constructions. Distrust the author who
reports true Highlanders talking broad Scots after the school of
Stratford-atte-Bow. This remark does not fully apply to the Central and
Inner Highlands, where some generations have passed since people living
a mile off spoke tongues foreign to each other, as may still happen
on the borders of Wales. In the Highlands best known to tourists,
the blending of blood, language, and customs has gone so far that a
stranger may be excused for confounding a Perthshire strath with the
true kailyard scenery. Beyond the Great Glen, still more markedly
beyond the sounds, firths, and minches of the west coast, we find
Highlanders less touched by the spirit of a practical age, whose first
breath sets them shivering and drawing their tartans about them as
they wake from fond dreams of a romantic past. All Scotland, alas! has
been too much overrun by the alien clan of MacMillion, who, as one of
its most eloquent sons complains, go on cutting it up into “moors” and
“forests,” and its rivers into “beats.” Sheep farming on a large scale
and other industries have here and there brought Saxon sojourners,
like my Derbyshire acquaintance, to the western wilds. The aristocracy
are much Anglified, even in these “Highlands of the Highlands.” But
the mass of their human life is still Celtic, or at least Gaelic, if
language can be trusted, with an old blend of Teuton infused both by
sea and land, through Norse, Norman, and Saxon invaders, and with
touches of Spanish Armada or other shipwrecked blood surmisable here
and there among waifs and strays all going to make up a stock that may
have absorbed who knows what prehistoric elements. The controversy
between Thwackum and Square is not more famous than that hot debate
between Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour, which stands as
warning to a modest writer not to quarrel with any readers, at least
at an early stage of his book, by taking sides on certain much-vexed
ethnological and philological questions.
To reach those rain-bitten and wave-carved coasts where the true
Highlander mainly holds his own, we have various ways now made smooth
by arts which go on sapping his seclusion. It does not much matter
which way the stranger takes, for he can hardly go wrong, to understand
how right Gray was when he told his mole-eyed generation, “the Lowlands
were worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be
visited in pilgrimage once a year.” All roads to the Inner Highlands
lead through the Outer Highlands, more fully described in _Bonnie
Scotland_.
For leisurely tourists the choice road is still by water, down the
Clyde from Glasgow. If the name of this river be derived, as is said,
from a Celtic word meaning _clean_, that title has become a mockery,
since its banks from Glasgow to Greenock sucked together the most
industrious life of Scotland. “Come, bright Improvement, on the Car of
Time!” sang Glasgow’s youthful poet, but lived to exclaim against the
questionable shape in which came a spirit he had invoked so hopefully:
And call they this Improvement?—to have changed,
My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore,
Where Nature’s face is banished and estranged,
And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more;
Whose banks, that sweetened May-day’s breath before,
Lie sere and leafless now in summer’s beam,
With sooty exhalations covered o’er;
And for the daisied green-sward, down thy stream
Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.
The banks of the Clyde have not grown more Arcadian since Campbell’s
day, so the traveller does well to hurry by rail over the windings
of the smoky river, embarking at Greenock or Helensburgh, where it
broadens out into a firth deep enough to drown the offences of man.
Here launch forth a fleet of steamboats, whose admirals, almost alone
in Britain, rival the luxurious arks of the Hudson and the Mississippi;
and here begins a “delectable voyage,” too often spoiled by rain, else
warmly praised by a hundred pens, for instance in Colonel Lockhart’s
_Fair to See_, one of the most amusing of Highland novels, as readers
might not guess from this opening passage:
The mountain panorama which greets you as you start, noble though it
be, is but the noble promise of still better things; for it cannot
show you the exquisite variety, the contrasts, the combinations, the
marvellous chiaroscuro, the subtle harmonies, the sublime discords,
that meet you and thrill you at every turn, passing through the inner
penetralia of all that is most glorious in the land of mountain and
of flood. Gliding through those strange sounds and estuaries, with
their infinite sinuosities, traced about peninsula and cape and
island—traced as it were with a design of delighting the eye with
sudden presentments of scenic surprises, as it were with a design of
furnishing not one, but twenty points of view, wherefrom to consider
each salient wonder and beauty round which they seem to conduct
you proudly on their glittering paths—there must be something far
wrong with you if you find no delight in all this. For here indeed
you have a succession of the noblest pictures,—no mere iteration
of rugged mountains, monotonous in their grim severity and sublime
desolation,—no mere sleepy tracts of unbroken forest, nor blank
heaths losing themselves vaguely in the horizon, nor undulating
expanses of lawn-like pasture-land, but with something of all these
features blending in each of the splendid series; every feature in
turn claiming its predominance, when all the others seem to pose
themselves about the one central object, sinking for the moment their
own individualities that it may be glorified.
For the first stage of this voyage, indeed, the shore is too much
masked by a long line of bathing and boating resorts, to which Glasgow
folk love to escape even from the comforts of the Saltmarket. On the
right-hand side stands Dunoon, whose fragment of ruined fortress looks
stranded above a flood of hotels, shops, and villas, in which several
villages have run together into a town. Farther down, on the Isle of
Bute, Rothesay makes the focus of Clyde pleasure trips, no mushroom
resort, but seat of an ancient royal castle that titled the heir of
Scotland. The Stuarts still flourish here in the person of the Marquis
of Bute, who is as great a man in the Principality of Wales as in the
Dukedom of Rothesay. The old town has expanded into a couple of miles
of esplanade, curving below green hills upon a land-locked bay, its
surface lively with yachts, pleasure boats, and steamers that in the
summer season turn out myriads of excursionists to sack the joys of
the place. I was about to belittle Rothesay by calling it the Southend
of Glasgow; but in view of its hydros, its mineral spring, and its
background of dwarf Highland scenery, its character may better be
expressed in terms of chemical analysis:
Torquay 21.00
Douglas 13.45
Cowes 16.00
Weston-super-Mare 14.10
Scarborough 14.00
Clacton 6.25
Blackpool 12.07
Residuum of Local Peculiarities 3.13
------
100.00
======
In winter, when “Wee Macgreegors” and the like desert its waters,
Rothesay becomes the Ventnor of Scotland, recommended by a sheltered
western mildness, which indeed its own guide-book advocate has to
qualify as “rather humid.” Even in ordinary winters it may bear
comparison with South Devon or the Isle of Wight, while sometimes a
whim of Nature has set the thermometer standing higher here than at
Mentone. This mildness is attested by exotic plants in Lord Bute’s
park, whose late owner, Disraeli’s “Lothair,” for a time maintained
colonies of kangaroos, beavers, and other outlandish creatures.
Whatever harsh things may be said of Eastern Scotland’s climate,
the West Highland skies are more apt to be “soft,” and to snow only
“whiles.” Some patriotic Scots go so far as to claim that their
country is on the whole warmer than England, no part of the former
being over forty miles from the Gulf Stream that so muggily wraps the
islands of our far north.
For the rest, Bute makes a miniature of the Highlands, once rich in
chapels and hermitages, as in monuments of a dimmer faith, too many of
which have been destroyed, like that monastic ruin carted away to baser
uses by a thrifty farmer, who thought to gain his lord’s approval for
“clearing” a beautiful spot. A modern memorial, not to be pointed out
to French visitors, is the woods of Southhall, planted by a veteran
owner as plan of the battle of Waterloo. The boss of the island, Barone
Hill, rises over 500 feet, from which, or from the park above Rothesay,
fond local eyes have tried to count a dozen counties, and half a dozen
are certainly in view. “Why don’t you pretend to see to America, while
you are about it?” quoth a rude Southron to some local prospect-monger;
and the dry answer was, “Ye can see farther than that—as far as the
moon!”
[Illustration: GLEN ROSA, ARRAN]
Bute, of course, sinks to a mere Isle of Wight when compared with the
grandeurs and loveliness of Arran, lying to the south. This island
indeed has scenery which some declare unsurpassed in Britain, notably
on the flanks of its Goatfell summit. Yet while Glen Rosa, Glen Sannox,
and Loch Ranza have often been famed by painters, it seems the case
that poets, novelists, and other artists in words make not much copy
out of the charms of Arran. One feels inclined to suspect authors
of Sybarite tastes, since a weak point of Arran as tourist ground
is, or has been, a want of accommodation under the shadow of a ducal
house that looked askance on building. The only two townlets on the
island, Brodick and Lamlash, count their population in hundreds; and
their hotels are hard put to it to accommodate the strangers who have
often had to be content with a shake-down in the room used as an
English chapel, or with shelter in one of the few bathing machines; I
have heard of a whole boatful of excursionists lodged in a hay-field.
Holiday quarters in this paradise are engaged for a year ahead,
and Piccadilly prices may have to be paid as rent of a hovel. Thus
hitherto Arran has been preserved as a haunt of real nature-lovers, and
within two or three hours’ sail of Glasgow one could find an almost
pristine solitude of purple heather and solemn crags all unprofaned by
watering-place gaiety or luxury. The sourest Radical of sound taste
might here exclaim, “God bless the Duke!”—not of Argyll—yet one
wonders what a late duke’s creditors thought of such a demesne being
kept clear from vulgar considerations of profit.
I am not going to try my hand at word-pictures of these glorious
landscapes, for “how can a man can what he canna can?” as I once heard
a Highland lad sagaciously express himself in our foreign tongue. One
had better not invite one’s readers even to land on Arran, lest there
might be a difficulty in getting them off again; but if they do, let
them not omit the ascent of Goatfell, no perilous adventure, for a view
hardly surpassed in Scotland, as shown in Black’s _Where shall we go?_
a work over which the present author has some rights of plagiarism.
The summit is composed of mighty rocks, ensconced among which one
may shelter from the searching wind and gaze in comfort at the wild
picture around and below—Glen Rosa at our feet, with its sharp
precipices beyond rising into the pinnacled heights of A Chir and
Cir Vohr; the saddle into Glen Sannox (the glen itself is invisible
from here), and the equally sharp and even loftier ridges beyond that
glen; the nearer range of Goatfell itself extending round a nameless
glen below us, and terminating in a sharp peak that overhangs the
village of Corrie; and beyond the limits of the island itself and the
broad belt of sea which allows the eye to range unchecked, a glorious
bewilderment of heights and hollows innumerable, with here the smoke
of a manufacturing town, and there the familiar shape of some mainland
mountain-giant, the view extending on a clear day, it is said, from
Ben Nevis to the Isle of Man.
Arran owes its unsophisticated state also in part to lying a little
off the highway of travel. Strong-stomached voyagers may round the
Mull of Cantyre, to be tossed upon Atlantic waves, and thus get a
chance of seeing Ailsa Craig, “Paddy’s Milestone,” whose cliffs are
in some respects finer than the much-visited Staffa. The gentle
tourist takes an easier and straighter line to Oban. His boat threads
the beautiful Kyles of Bute, then stands across to Tarbert, on the
Isthmus of Cantyre, from the farther side of which goes the steamer
to Islay. Up Loch Fyne is reached Ardrishaig, terminus of the big ark
whose Oban-bound passengers are transferred to a smaller craft for
the Crinan Canal cut, that brings them over to the island-studded and
cliff-cornered sounds of the west coast. Well then for the land-lubber
that he fares forward on one of Messrs. MacBrayne’s stout craft! To
play the Viking here without experience were a perilous task, so
thick-set are these waters with rocks and shallows, so tormented by
sudden shifty squalls, so distracted by currents, eddies, and rushing
tideways. But the steamer pants masterfully through the Dorus Mor,
keeps clear of the Maelstrom of Corryvreckan, whose roar may be heard
leagues off in calm weather, and steers safe along the islands of the
Firth of Lorne, past the great slate quarries on Easdale, round the
bridged island of Seil, and inside the dark heights of Kerrera, by a
narrow sound to reach its port at Oban, whose once mighty strongholds
are overshadowed by such an eruption of smart hotels and villas.
Here we come into touch with the Caledonian Railway, which is the
shortest way to this “Charing Cross of the Highlands.” Having entered
the mountains beyond Stirling Castle and Dunblane, passing near the
Trossachs and under the Braes of Balquhidder, the line turns westward
to wind through the mountains of southern Perthshire, and reaches
Argyll by some of Scotland’s grandest scenes, finding a way between
the head of Loch Awe and the mighty Ben Cruachan, after a glimpse, at
Dalmally, into the strath of Glenorchy, oasis-like after terrific Glen
Ogle and dreary Glen Lochy. The railway holds on through the stern Pass
of Brander, scene of the _Highland Widow_, where cairns still record
the crushing of the Macdougalls of Lorne by Robert Bruce. Then we gain
Oban by Loch Etive, whose upper part runs into one of the grandest
of Highland glens, and its waters rush out with the tide in Ossian’s
Falls of Lora, through the narrow throat now bridged by a branch to
Ballachulish.
On one side, this line takes in tributaries of tourist traffic from
Loch Earn and Loch Tay, and roads through the grand Breadalbane
Highlands marked by their name as heart of ancient Albin. On the other
side, by coaches and steamboats, Ben Cruachan is reached from Inveraray
or from the head of Loch Long. Campbell seems the dominant name now in
this country, but once it was the land of the Macgregors, whose hearts
still turn to fair Glenorchy, whence they were driven landless and
nameless. This ancient clan stood as model for Scott’s Vich-Alpines,
a name which they in fact claim as descended from Gregor, son of King
Alpin. Not every one reads Scott nowadays; few read his introductions
and miscellaneous essays; and perhaps nobody, without special interest
in the subject, will go through Miss Murray Macgregor’s elaborate
history of her name; so there will be many of my readers to whom may
not come amiss a short digression on the peculiar fortunes of a clan
distinguished by ferocity among warlike neighbours in a ruthless age.
It was not the Saxon that to them “came with iron hand,” but men of
their own blood and speech, who “from our fathers rent the land”
about which the moon could be significantly known as “Macgregor’s
Lantern,” as also indeed “Macfarlane’s Lantern,” and the lamp of other
Highlandmen bent on business that would not well bear brighter light.
From very early times the Macgregors passed for Ishmaelites, every
hand against them, their fastnesses again and again threatened by
commissions of fire and sword as soon as troubled Scottish kings could
attempt to settle the quarrels of the Highland border. Their most
resounding offence was the slaughter of the Colquhouns at Glenfruin
by Loch Lomond, a little before James VI. posted off to his softer
throne in London. This was a fair fight, made flagrant in tradition
by the murder of the Dumbarton schoolboys who had come out to see the
battle, as in our day lads might go some way to a football match. It is
stated that the Macgregor chief bid these non-combatants take refuge
in a church, either to keep them out of the way of shots, or to have
under his hand a troop of hostages from among the principal families in
Scotland; and that it was his foster-brother or some of his followers
who stabbed the unfortunate youths, to the chief’s indignation.
Another legend tells of a barn in which the poor boys were burned to
death. One tradition points out two murderers, who henceforth lived
as outlaws from the clan. Miss Murray Macgregor naturally defends her
kinsmen from the charge of an atrocity so heavily weighing on their own
conscience that for long no Macgregor would cross after nightfall the
stream in that “Glen of Sorrow,” believed to be haunted by the ghosts
of the victims. It is in print, though I cannot find any authority of
weight, that up to the middle of the eighteenth century the Dumbarton
schoolboys annually went through a ceremony of funeral rites on what
was taken for the anniversary of the massacre, their _dux_ being laid
on a bier and with Gaelic chants carried to an open grave as effigy of
those luckless predecessors.
The story of the scholars may have been exaggerated. But when eleven
score widows of the slain Colquhouns, dressed in black on white
palfreys, each bearing her husband’s bloody shirt on a spear, came
before James demanding vengeance, this object-lesson deeply moved
the pacific king. The very name of Macgregor was proscribed on pain
of death. The clan was handed over to the Campbells for execution;
and when its chief surrendered to Argyll on promise of escaping with
exile, this condition was kept to the letter by sending him over the
English border and at once bringing him back to be hanged at Edinburgh.
Throughout the century, acts of proscription against the Macgregors
were repeatedly renewed, most of them having to disguise themselves
as Campbells, Drummonds, Murrays, or other neighbour names, while
one branch, settled in Aberdeenshire, took that of Gregory, and some
wandered north as far as Ross. The bulk of their lands passed to the
Campbells. But still a tough stock of them held fast near their old
seats, not to be rooted out by all the power of the crown or of the
Campbells, as we know from Rob Roy’s exploits, who, “ower bad for
blessing, and ower good for banning,” hardly played the hero in the
political strife of his day, but did a good deal of doughty fighting
for his own hand.
This last of semi-mythical heroes had come to look on Argyll as a
protector, and turned his depredations chiefly against the house of
Graham; whereas in the former century many of the clan had followed
Montrose, which was worth to them the favour of Charles abolishing the
penal laws against their name, afterwards re-enacted under William. It
was not till George III.’s reign, when the tamed Macgregors had amply
proved their loyalty in arms as well as their ability in other walks
of life, that their proscription was finally annulled, the scattered
clan free to take their own name, for which they recognised Sir John
Murray as chief, in a deed signed by over 800 Macgregors. Rob Roy had
represented the junior branch of Glengyle, claiming descent from that
ruffian on whom was laid the blood of the Dumbarton scholars. Rob
appears to have died a Catholic; but a contemporary divine of his clan
tells how they were in the way of boasting that they had a religion
of their own, “neither Papist nor Protestant, just Macgregors!” So
much for a stock that seems to have been more unlucky but not more
undeserving, perhaps, than its neighbours.
In the Macgregor country the Caledonian line crosses its rival the West
Highland Railway, that from Helensburgh turns northward up the shores
of Loch Long and Loch Lomond to mount into the wilds of Perthshire, the
great Caledonian Forest of old, still showing a wide waste, the Moor
of Rannoch, about which lay hid Charles Edward in fact, as Stevenson’s
David Balfour in fiction slunk before the redcoat dragoons over that
naked moorland, crawling on all fours from patch to patch of heather
among its moss bogs and peaty pools. Above the loftiest point of the
line stands a shooting lodge which used to boast itself the highest
habitation in Britain, but has been far overtopped by the Observatory
on Ben Nevis, round whose snow-streaked flanks the railway turns west
at Fort-William towards its terminus on the coast.
[Illustration: ABERDEEN FROM THE HARBOUR ENTRANCE]
This is bound to be a somewhat flat chapter, in which one can merely
hint at the landmarks of rapid routes to the Inner Highlands, most of
them by scenery already traversed in _Bonnie Scotland_. From Ben Nevis
there is a straight way to Inverness by the bed of the Caledonian
Canal. To that “capital of the Highlands,” the high-road from the
centre of Scotland is by the famed Highland Railway over the wilds of
Atholl and Badenoch. Other lines lead less directly from the south to
Inverness. The Caledonian through Strathmore, and the North British
over the Firths of Forth and Tay, unite to reach Aberdeen by the rocky
coast on which stands out Dunottar Castle, that old Scottish Gibraltar,
honoured with the custody of the Regalia, and accursed by the cruel
confinement of Covenanters. At Aberdeen, close to the rounded and
trimmed beauties of Deeside, avenue for Balmoral and Braemar, one has a
choice of routes to Inverness, over a fine half-Highland, half-Lowland
country, or along the rocky coast of the Moray Firth. From
Inverness a single line runs on to the far north, with a branch to
the ferries of Skye, rivalled now by the West Highland extension to
Mallaig. Half a century ago Dean Stanley declared it easier to get
to Jerusalem than to Skye. Jerusalem to-day has its railway; while
Skye is reached by steamers from Oban, besides the easy crossings for
which cyclists wind upon good roads through the bens and glens beyond
Inverness.
Oban, Fort-William, and Inverness are the chief bases of West Highland
touring. To Lorne and to Lochaber we shall return anon. Of Inverness,
properly a Highland frontier city, if capital of the Highland Railway,
enough has been said in my former volume; but here I would take the
opportunity of correcting a slight anachronism by which I there spoke
of Inverness Castle as used for a prison. I learn that within the
last two or three years it has been freed from this degradation. The
Highlands have not much need of prisons; the Fiji Islanders did not
more quickly shift a character for fierce violence. But for whisky and
political or religious agitation, there would be little need of police
in this country. It is many a year since a Highlander was “justified.”
During the last quarter of a century or so, some half-dozen executions
have served all Scotland; and it is stated on good authority that not
one of the criminals was of native blood or religion; indeed, sound
Presbyterians have the satisfaction of noting—but let sleeping dogs
lie!
Peacefulness and honesty were not always characteristic virtues of
the Highlands; and even yet, now that we are about to visit Donald
in his native wilds, let us understand how, like the rest of us, he
has his weak points as well as his strong ones, both of them sometimes
exaggerated into a caricature as like the original as is the rigid
Highlander of a snuff shop. His critics are apt to dwell on certain
faults which may be often regarded as the seamy side of fine qualities
that also distinguish him. His groundwork of laziness will be chequered
by spells of energy and endurance. He may still put too much of the
hard drudgery on women; but he does not shrink from tasks of danger and
death. His want of smart practical turn goes with his readiness for
romantic imaginings. His hot temper is related to a pride that begets
chastity and courtesy as well as brawls. His loves as well as his
hates catch fire more briskly than in the coarser Saxon nature, whose
affections, indeed, if harder to kindle, may burn with an intenser glow
when once well alight. The Lowlander is a better man of business, but
the Highlander more of a gentleman, as the stranger will soon remark.
And now that old feuds have smouldered out, the dourest Whig will not
care to contradict a Tory poet—
Nowhere beats the heart so kindly
As beneath the tartan plaid.
All the same, Aytoun might have found cause to choose another epithet
for Highland hearts, if, in those loyal old days of his, wearing a
MacTavish plaid, let us say, he had chanced to forgather on some lonely
moor with the tartans of “ta Fairshon.”