waited on the landlord, and desired a conveyance. The landlord
informed us that the only vehicle which he possessed was a phæton, at
present on hire till the evening, and advised us, now that it was
Saturday, to remain in his establishment till Monday, when he could
send us on comfortably. To wait till Monday, however, would never
do. We told the man our story, how for two days we had been the
sport of fortune, tossed hither and thither; but he--feeling he had
us in his power--would render no assistance. We wandered out toward
the rocks to hold a consultation, and had almost resolved to leave
our things where they were, and start on foot, when a son of the
innkeeper's joined us. He--whether cognisant of his parent's
statement, I cannot say--admitted that there were a horse and gig in
the stable; that he knew Mr M'Ian's place, and offered to drive us to
a little fishing village within three miles of it, where our things
could be left, and a cart sent to bring them up in the evening. The
charge was--never mind what!--but we closed with it at once. We
entered the inn while our friend went round to the stable to bring
the machine to the door; met the landlord on the stairs, sent an
indignant broadside into him, which he received with the utmost
coolness. The imperturbable man! he swallowed our shot like a
sandbank, and was nothing the worse. The horse was now at the door,
in a few moments our luggage was stowed away, and we were off.
Through seventeen miles of black moorland we drove almost without
beholding a single dwelling. Sometimes, although rarely, we had a
glimpse of the sea. The chief object that broke the desolation was a
range of clumsy red hills, stretching away like a chain of gigantic
dust-heaps. Their aspect was singularly dreary and depressing. They
were mountain _plebs_. Lava hardens into grim precipice, bristles
into jagged ridge, along which the rack drives, now hiding, now
revealing it; but these had no beauty, no terror, ignoble from the
beginning; dull offspring of primeval mud. About seven P.M. we
reached the village, left our things, still soaked in sea-water, in
one of the huts, till Mr M'Ian could send for them, and struck off on
foot for the three miles which we were told yet remained. By this
time the country had improved in appearance. The hills were swelling
and green; up these the road wound, fringed with ferns, mixed with
the purple bells of the foxglove. A stream, too, evidently escaped
from some higher mountain tarn, came dashing along in a succession of
tiny waterfalls. A quiet pastoral region, but so still, so deserted!
Hardly a house, hardly a human being! After a while we reached the
lake, half covered with water-lilies, and our footsteps startled a
brood of wild-ducks on its breast. How lonely it looked in its dark
hollow there, familiar to the cry of the wild bird, the sultry
summer-cloud, the stars and meteors of the night--strange to human
faces, and the sound of human voices. But what of our three miles?
We have been walking for an hour and a half. Are we astray in the
green wilderness? The idea is far from pleasant. Happily a youthful
native came trotting along, and of him we inquired our way. The boy
looked at us, and shook his head. We repeated the question, still
the same shy puzzled look. A proffer of a shilling, however,
quickened his apprehension, and returning with us a few paces, he
pointed out a hill-road striking up through the moor. On asking the
distance, he seemed put out for a moment, and then muttered, in his
difficult English, "Four mile." Nothing more could be procured in
the way of information; so off went little Bare-legs, richer than
ever he had been in his life, at a long swinging trot, which seemed
his natural pace, and which, I suppose, he could sustain from sunrise
to sunset. To this hill-road we now addressed ourselves. It was
sunset now. Up we went through the purple moor, and in a short time
sighted a crimson tarn, bordered with long black rushes, and as we
approached, a duck burst from its face on "squattering" wings,
shaking the splendour into widening circles. Just then two girls
came on the road with peats in their laps: anxious for information,
we paused--they, shy as heath-hens, darted past, and, when fifty
yards' distant, wheeled suddenly round, and burst into shrieks of
laughter, repeated and re-repeated. In no laughing mood we pursued
our way. The road now began to dip, and we entered a glen
plentifully covered with birchwood, a stream keeping us company from
the tarn above. The sun was now down, and objects at a distance
began to grow uncertain in the evening mist. The horrible idea that
we had lost our way, and were doomed to encamp on the heather, grew
upon us. On! on! We had walked six miles since our encounter with
the false Bare-legs. Suddenly we heard a dog bark; that was a sign
of humanity, and our spirits rose. Then we saw a troop of horses
galloping along the bottom of the glen. Better and better. "'Twas
an honest ghost, Horatio!" All at once we heard the sound of voices,
and Fellowes declared he saw something moving on the road. The next
moment M'Ian and a couple of shepherds started out of the gloom. At
sight of them our hearts burned within us, like a newly-poked fire.
Sincere was the greeting, immense the shaking of hands; and the story
of our adventures kept us merry till we reached the house.
Of our doughty deeds at supper I will not sing, nor state how the
toddy-jugs were drained. Rather let me tell of those who sat with us
at the board--the elder Mr M'Ian, and Father M'Crimmon, then living
in the house. Mr M'Ian, senior, was a man past eighty, but fresh and
hale for his years. His figure was slight and wiry, his face a fresh
pink, his hair like snow. Age, though it had bowed him somewhat, had
not been able to steal the fire from his eye, nor the vigour from his
limbs. He entered the army at an early age; carried colours in
Ireland before the century came in; was with Moore at Corunna;
followed Wellington through the Peninsular battles; was with the 42d
at Quatre Bras, and hurt there when the brazen cuirassiers came
charging through the tall rye-grass; and, finally, stood at Waterloo
in a square that crumbled before the artillery and cavalry charges of
Napoleon--crumbled, but never flinched! It was strange to think that
the old man across the table breathed the same air with
Marie-Antoinette; saw the black cloud of the French Revolution torn
to pieces with its own lightnings, the eagles of Napoleon flying from
Madrid to Moscow, Wellington's victorious career--all that wondrous
time which our fathers and grandfathers saw, which has become history
now, wearing the air of antiquity almost. We look upon the ground
out yonder from Brussels, that witnessed the struggle; but what the
insensate soil, the woods, the monument, to the living eye in which
was pictured the fierce strife? to the face that was grimed with the
veritable battle-smoke? to the voice that mingled in the last cheer,
when the whole English line moved forward at sunset? M'Ian was an
isle-man of the old school; penetrated through every drop of blood
with pride of birth, and with a sense of honour which was like a
second conscience. He had all the faults incidental to such a
character. He was stubborn as the gnarled trunk of the oak, full of
prejudices which our enlightenment laughs at, but which we need not
despise, for with our knowledge and our science, well will it be for
us if we go to our graves with as stainless a name. He was quick and
hasty of temper, and contradiction brought fire from him like steel
from flint. Short and fierce were his gusts of passion. I have seen
him of an evening, with quivering hands and kindling eye, send a
volley of oaths into a careless servant, and the next moment almost
the reverend white head was bowed on his chair as he knelt at evening
prayer. Of these faults, however, this evening we saw nothing. The
old gentleman was kind and hospitable; full of talk, but his talk
seemed to us of old-world things. On Lords Palmerston and Derby he
was silent; he was eloquent on Mr Pitt and Mr Fox. He talked of the
French Revolution and the actors thereof as contemporaries. Of the
good Queen Victoria (for history is sure to call her that) he said
nothing. His heart was with his memory, in the older days when
George III. was king, and not an old king neither.
Father M'Crimmon was a tall man, being in height considerably above
six feet. He was thin, like his own island, where the soil is washed
away by the rain, leaving bare the rock. His face was mountainously
bony, with great pits and hollows in it. His eyes were gray, and had
that depth of melancholy in them which is so often observed in men of
his order. In heart he was simple as a child; in discourse slow,
measured, and stately. There was something in his appearance that
suggested the silence and solitude of the wilderness; of hours lonely
to the heart, and bare spaces lonely to the eye. Although of
another, and--as I think, else I should not profess it--a purer
faith, I respected him at first, and loved him almost when I came to
know him. Was it wonderful that his aspect was sorrowful, that it
wore a wistful look, as if he had lost something which could never be
regained, and that for evermore the sunshine was stolen from his
smile? He was by his profession cut off from all the sweet ties of
human nature, from all love of wife or child. His people were widely
scattered: across the black moor, far up the hollow glens, blustering
with winds or dimmed with the rain-cloud. Thither the grim man
followed them, officiating on rare festival occasions of marriage and
christening; his face bright, not like a window ruddy with a fire
within, rather like a wintry pane tinged by the setting sun--a brief
splendour that warms not, and but divides the long cold day that has
already passed from the long cold night to come. More frequently he
was engaged dispensing alms, giving advice in disaster, waiting by
the low pallets of the fever-stricken, listening to the confession of
long-hoarded guilt, comforting the dark spirit as it passed to its
audit. It is not with viands like these you furnish forth life's
banquet; not on materials like these you rear brilliant spirits and
gay manners. He who looks constantly on death and suffering, and the
unspiritual influences of hopeless poverty, becomes infected with
congenial gloom. Yet cold and cheerless as may be his life, he has
his reward; for in his wanderings through the glens there is not an
eye but brightens at his approach, not a mourner but feels he has a
sharer in his sorrow; and when the tall, bony, seldom-smiling man is
borne at last to his grave, round many a fireside will tears fall and
prayers be said for the good priest M'Crimmon. All night sitting
there, we talked of strange
"Unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago,"
blood-crusted clan quarrels, bitter wrongs and terrible revenges: of
wraiths and bodings, and pale death-lights burning on the rocks. The
conversation was straightforward and earnest, conducted with perfect
faith in the subject-matter; and I listened, I am not ashamed to
confess, with a curious and not altogether unpleasant thrill of the
blood. For, I suppose, however sceptical as to ghosts the intellect
may be, the blood is ever a believer as it runs chill through the
veins. A new world and order of things seemed to gather round us as
we sat there. One was carried away from all that makes up the
present--the policy of Napoleon III., the death of President Lincoln,
the character of his successor, the universal babblement of scandal
and personal talk--and brought face to face with tradition; with the
ongoings of men who lived in solitary places, whose ears were
constantly filled with the sough of the wind, the clash of the wave
on the rock; whose eyes were open on the flinty cliff, and the
floating forms of mists, and the dead silence of pale sky dipping
down far off on the dead silence of black moor. One was taken at
once from the city streets to the houseless wilderness; from the
smoky sky to the blue desert of air stretching from mountain range to
mountain range, with the poised eagle hanging in the midst,
stationary as a lamp. Perhaps it was the faith of the speakers that
impressed me most. To them the stories were much a matter of course;
the supernatural atmosphere had become so familiar to them that it
had been emptied of all its wonder and the greater part of its
terror. Of this I am quite sure, that a ghost story, told in the pit
of a theatre, or at Vauxhall, or walking through a lighted London
street, is quite a different thing from a ghost story told, as I
heard it, in a lone Highland dwelling, cut off from every habitation
by eight miles of gusty wind, the sea within a hundred feet of the
walls, the tumble of the big wave, and the rattle of the pebbles, as
it washes away back again, distinctly heard where you sit, and the
talkers making the whole matter "stuff o' the conscience." Very
different! You laugh in the theatre, and call the narrator an ass;
in the other case you listen silently, with a scalp creeping as if
there were a separate life in it, and the blood streaming coldly down
the back.
Young M'Ian awoke me next morning. As I came down stairs he told me,
had it not been Sunday he would have roused me with a performance on
the bagpipes. Heaven forfend! I never felt so sincere a
Sabbatarian. He led me some little distance to a favourable point of
rock, and, lo! across a sea, sleek as satin, rose a range of hills,
clear against the morning, jagged and notched like an old
sword-blade. "Yonder," said he, pointing, "beyond the black mass in
front, just where the shower is falling, lies Lake Coruisk. I'll
take you to see it one of these days."
_AT MR M'IAN'S._
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's porch.]
The farm which Mr M'Ian rented was, in comparison with many others in
the island, of but moderate extent; and yet it skirted the seashore
for a considerable distance, and comprised within itself many a rough
hill, and many a green valley. The house was old-fashioned, was
_harled_ all over with lime, and contained a roomy porch, over which
ivies clustered, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a lot of bedrooms,
and behind, and built out from the house, an immense kitchen, with a
flagged floor and a huge fire-place. A whole colony of turf-huts,
with films of blue smoke issuing from each, were scattered along the
shore, lending a sort of homely beauty to the wild picturesqueness.
Beside the house, with a ruined summer-seat at one end, was a large
carelessly-kept garden, surrounded by a high stone wall. M'Ian kept
the key himself; and on the garden door were nailed ravens, and other
feathered malefactors in different stages of decay. Within a stone's
throw from the porch, were one or two barns, a stable, a wool-house,
and other out-houses, in which several of the servants slept. M'Ian
was careful of social degree, and did not admit every one to his
dining-room. He held his interviews with the common people in the
open air in front of the house. When a drover came for cattle he
dined solitarily in the porch, and the dishes were sent to him from
M'Ian's table. The drover was a servant, consequently he could not
sit at meat with my friend; he was more than a servant for the nonce,
inasmuch as he was his master's representative, and consequently he
could not be sent to the kitchen--the porch was therefore a kind of
convenient middle place; neither too high nor too humble, it was, in
fact, a sort of social purgatory. But Mr M'Ian did not judge a man
by the coat he wore, nor by the amount of money in his purse. When
Mr Macara, therefore, the superannuated schoolmaster, who might have
been a licentiate of the Church thirty years before, had he not
brought his studies in divinity to a close by falling in love,
marrying, and becoming the father of a large family; or when Peter,
the meek-faced violinist, who was of good descent, being the second
cousin of a knight-bachelor on his mother's side, and of an Indian
general on his father's--when these men called at the house, they
dined--with obvious trepidation, and sitting at an inconvenient
distance, so that a morsel was occasionally lost on its passage from
plate to mouth--at M'Ian's own table; and to them the old gentleman,
who would have regarded the trader worth a million as nothing better
than a scullion, talked of the old families and the old times. M'Ian
valued a man for the sake of his grandfather rather than for the sake
of himself. The shepherds, the shepherds' dogs, and the domestic
servants, dined in the large kitchen. The kitchen was the most
picturesque apartment in the house. There was a huge dresser near
the small dusty window; in a dark corner stood a great cupboard in
which crockery was stowed away. [Sidenote: The black kitchen.] The
walls and rafters were black with peat smoke. Dogs were continually
sleeping on the floor with their heads resting on their outstretched
paws; and from a frequent start and whine, you knew that in dream
they were chasing a flock of sheep along the steep hill-side, their
masters shouting out orders to them from the valley beneath. The
fleeces of sheep which had been found dead on the mountain were
nailed on the walls to dry. Braxy hams were suspended from the roof;
strings of fish were hanging above the fire-place. The door was
almost continually open, for by the door light mainly entered. Amid
a savoury steam of broth and potatoes, the shepherds and domestic
servants drew in long backless forms to the table, and dined innocent
of knife and fork, the dogs snapping and snarling among their legs;
and when the meal was over the dogs licked the platters. Macara, who
was something of a poet, would, on his occasional visits, translate
Gaelic poems for me. On one occasion, after one of these
translations had been read, I made the remark that a similar set of
ideas occurred in one of the songs of Burns. His gray eyes
immediately blazed up; he rushed into a Gaelic recitation of
considerable length; and, at its close, snapping defiant fingers in
my face, demanded, "Can you produce anything out of your Shakespeare
or your Burns equal to _that_?" Of course, I could not; and I fear I
aggravated my original offence by suggesting that in all likelihood
my main inability to produce a passage of corresponding excellence
from the southern authors arose from my entire ignorance of the
language of the native bard. When Peter came with his violin the
kitchen was cleared after nightfall; the forms were taken away,
candles stuck into the battered tin sconces, the dogs unceremoniously
kicked out, and a somewhat ample ballroom was the result. Then in
came the girls, with black shoes and white stockings, newly-washed
faces and nicely-smoothed hair; and with them came the shepherds and
men-servants, more carefully attired than usual. [Sidenote: The reel
of hoolichan.] Peter took his seat near the fire; M'Ian gave the
signal by clapping his hands; up went the inspiriting notes of the
fiddle and away went the dancers, man and maid facing each other, the
girl's feet twinkling beneath her petticoat, not like two mice, but
rather like a dozen; her kilted partner pounding the flag-floor
unmercifully; then man and maid changed step, and followed each other
through loops and chains; then they faced each other again, the man
whooping, the girl's hair coming down with her exertions; then
suddenly the fiddle changed time, and with a cry the dancers rushed
at each other, each pair getting linked arm in arm, and away the
whole floor dashed into the whirlwind of the reel of Hoolichan. It
was dancing with a will,--lyrical, impassioned; the strength of a
dozen fiddlers dwelt in Peter's elbow; M'Ian clapped his hands and
shouted, and the stranger was forced to mount the dresser to get out
of the way of whirling kilt and tempestuous petticoat.
Chief amongst the dancers on these occasions were John Kelly, Lachlan
Roy, and Angus-with-the-dogs. John Kelly was M'Ian's principal
shepherd--a swarthy fellow, of Irish descent, I fancy, and of
infinite wind, endurance, and capacity of drinking whisky. He was a
solitary creature, irascible in the extreme; he crossed and
re-crossed the farm I should think some dozen times every day, and
was never seen at church or market without his dog. With his dog
only was John Kelly intimate, and on perfectly confidential terms. I
often wondered what were his thoughts as he wandered through the
glens at early morning, and saw the fiery mists upstreaming from the
shoulders of Blaavin; or when he sat on a sunny knoll at noon smoking
a black broken pipe, and watching his dog bringing a flock of sheep
down the opposite hill-side. Whatever they were, John kept them
strictly to himself. In the absorption of whisky he was without a
peer in my experience, although I have in my time encountered some
rather distinguished practitioners in that art. If you gave John a
glass of spirits, there was a flash, and it was gone. For a wager I
once beheld him drink a bottle of whisky in ten minutes. He drank it
in cupfuls, saying never a word. When it was finished, he wrapt
himself in his plaid, went out with his dog, and slept all night on
the hillside. I suppose a natural instinct told him that the night
air would decompose the alcohol for him. When he came in next
morning his swarthy face was a shade paler than was its wont; but he
seemed to suffer no uneasiness, and he tackled to his breakfast like
a man.
[Sidenote: Lachlan Roy.]
Lachlan Roy was a little cheery, agile, red squirrel of a man, and
like the squirrel, he had a lot of nuts stowed away in a secret hole
against the winter time. A more industrious little creature I have
never met. He lived near the old castle of Dunsciach, where he
rented a couple of crofts or so; there he fed his score or two of
sheep, and his half dozen of black cattle; and from thence he drove
them to Broadford market twice or thrice in the year, where they were
sure to fetch good prices. He knew the points of a sheep or a stirk
as well as any man in the island. He was about forty-five, had had a
wife and children, but they had all died years before; and although a
widower, Lachlan was as jolly, as merry-eyed and merry-hearted as any
young bachelor shepherd in the country. He was a kindly soul too,
full of pity, and was constantly performing charitable offices for
his neighbours in distress. A poor woman in his neighbourhood had
lost her suckling child, and Lachlan came up to M'Ian's house with
tears in his eyes, seeking some simple cordials and a bottle of wine.
"Ay, it's a sad thing, Mr M'Ian," he went on, "when death takes a
child from the breast. A full breast and an empty knee, Mr M'Ian,
makes a desolate house. Poor Mirren has a terrible rush of milk, and
cold is the lip to-day that could relieve her. And she's all alone
too, Mr M'Ian, for her husband is at Stornoway after the herring."
Of course he got the cordials and the wine, and of course, in as
short a space of time as was possible, the poor mother, seated on an
upturned creel, and rocking herself to and fro over her clasped
hands, got them also, with what supplementary aid Lachlan's own
stores could afford. Lachlan was universally respected; and when he
appeared every door opened cheerfully. At all dance gatherings at
M'Ian's he was certain to be present; and old as he was
comparatively, the prettiest girl was glad to have him for a partner.
He had a merry wit, and when he joked, blushes and titterings
overspread in a moment all the young women's faces. On such
occasions I have seen John Kelly sitting in a corner gloomily biting
his nails, jealousy eating his heart. But Lachlan cared nothing for
John's mutinous countenance--he meant no harm, and he feared no man.
Lachlan Roy, being interpreted, means red Lachlan; and this cognomen
not only drew its appropriateness from the colour of his hair and
beard; it had, as I afterwards learned, a yet deeper significance.
Lachlan, if the truth must be told, had nearly as fierce a thirst for
strong waters as John Kelly himself, and that thirst on fair days,
after he had sold his cattle at Broadford, he was wont plentifully to
slake. His face, under the influence of liquor, became red as a
harvest moon; and as of this physiological peculiarity in himself he
had the most perfect knowledge, he was under the impression that if
he drew rein on this side of high alcoholic inflammation of
countenance he was safe, and on the whole rather creditably virtuous
than otherwise. And so, perhaps, he would have been, had he been
able to judge for himself, or had he been placed amongst boon
companions who were ignorant of his weakness, or who did not wish to
deceive him. Somewhat suspicious, when a fresh jorum was placed on
the table, he would call out--"Donald, is my face red yet?" Donald,
who was perfectly aware of the ruddy illumination, would
hypocritically reply, "Hoot, Lachlan dear, what are ye speaking
about? Your face is just its own natural colour. What should it be
red for?"
"Duncan, you scoundrel," he would cry fiercely at a later period,
bringing his clenched fist down on the table, and making the glasses
dance--"Duncan, you scoundrel, look me in the face!" Thus adjured,
Duncan would turn his uncertain optics on his flaming friend. "Is my
face red yet, Duncan?" Duncan, too far gone for speech, would shake
his head in the gravest manner, plainly implying that the face in
question was not red, and that there was not the least likelihood
that it would ever become red. And so, from trust in the veracity of
his fellows, Lachlan was, at Broadford, brought to bitter grief twice
or thrice in the year.
[Sidenote: Angus-with-the-dogs.]