grass beyond the yellow sand. The house looked deserted as we
passed. Our friend of the morning we saw seated on a rock, smoking,
and gazing up Glen Sligachan, still looking out for the appearance of
his messenger from Broadford. At our shout he turned his head and
waved his hand. We then climbed the hill and descended on Kilmaree.
It was evening now, and as we pulled homewards across the rosy frith,
I sat in the bow and watched the monstrous bulk of Blaavin, and the
wild fringe of the Cuchullins bronzed by sunset. M'Ian steered, and
the rowers, as they bent to their work, sang melancholy Gaelic songs.
It was eleven at night by the time we got across, and the hills we
had left were yet cutting, with dull purple, a pale yellow sky; for
in summer in these northern latitudes there is no proper night, only
a mysterious twilight of an hour and a sparkle of short-lived stars.
[Sidenote: Broadford Fair.]
Broadford Fair is a great event in the island. The little town lies
on the margin of a curving bay, and under the shadow of a somewhat
celebrated hill. On the crest of the hill is a cairn of stones, the
burying-place of a Scandinavian woman, tradition informs me, whose
wish it was to be laid high up there, that she might sleep right in
the pathway of the Norway wind. In a green glen at its base stands
the house of Corachatachin, breathing reminiscences of Johnson and
Boswell. Broadford is a post town, containing a lime kiln, an inn,
and perhaps three dozen houses in all. It is a place of great
importance. If Portree is the London of Skye, Broadford is its
Manchester. The markets, held four times a year, take place on a
patch of moorland, about a mile from the village. Not only are
cattle sold, and cash exchanged for the same, but there the Skye
farmer meets his relations, from the brother of his blood to his
cousin forty times removed. To these meetings he is drawn, not only
by his love of coin, but by his love of kindred, and--the _Broadford
Mail_ and the _Portree Advertiser_ lying yet in the womb of time--by
his love of gossip also. The market is the Skye-man's exchange, his
family gathering, and his newspaper. From the deep sea of his
solitude he comes up to breathe there, and, refreshed, sinks again.
This fair at Broadford I resolved to see. The day before the market
the younger M'Ian had driven some forty stirks from the hill, and
these, under the charge of John Kelly and his dog, started early in
the afternoon that they might be present at the rendezvous about
eight o'clock on the following morning, at which hour business
generally began. I saw the picturesque troop go
past--wildly-beautiful brutes of all colours,--black, red,
cream-coloured, dun and tan; all of a height, too, and so finely bred
that, but for difference of colour, you could hardly distinguish the
one from the other. What a lowing they made! how they tossed their
slavering muzzles! how the breaths of each individual brute rose in a
separate wreath! how John Kelly shouted and objurgated, and how his
dog scoured about! At last the bellowings of the animals--the horde
chanting after that fashion their obscure "_Lochaber no more_"--grew
fainter and fainter up the glen, and finally on everything the wonted
silence settled down. [Sidenote: On the way to the fair.] Next
morning before sunrise M'Ian and I followed in a dog-cart. We went
along the glen down which Fellowes and I had come; and in the meadows
over which, on that occasion, we observed a troop of horses galloping
through the mist of evening, I noticed, in the beamless light that
preceded sunrise, hay coops by the river side, and an empty cart
standing with its scarlet poles in the air. In a field nearer, a
couple of male blackcocks with a loud _whirr-rr_ were knocking their
pugnacious heads together. Suddenly, above the hill in front the sun
showed his radiant face, the chill atmosphere was pierced and
brightened by his fires, the dewy birch-trees twinkled, and there
were golden flickerings on the pools of the mountain stream along
whose margin our road ascended. We passed the lake near which the
peat-girls had laughed at us; I took note of the very spot on which
we had given Bare-legs a shilling, and related the whole story of our
evening walk to my companion as we tooled along.
A mile or two after we had passed the little fishing village with
which I had formerly made acquaintance, we entered on a very dismal
district of country. It was precisely to the eye what the croak of
the raven is to the ear. It was an utter desolation in which nature
seemed deteriorated, and at her worst. Winter could not possibly
sadden the region; no spring could quicken it into flowers. The
hills wore but for ornament the white streak of the torrent; the
rocky soil clothed itself in heather to which the purple never came.
Even man, the miracle-worker, who transforms everything he touches,
who has rescued a fertile Holland from the waves, who has reared a
marble Venice out of salt lagoon and marsh, was defeated there.
Labour was resultless--it went no further than itself--it was like a
song without an echo. A turf-hut with smoke issuing from the roof,
and a patch of green round about, which reminded you of the smile of
an ailing child, and which would probably ripen, so far as it was
capable of ripening, by November, was all that man could wrest from
nature. [Sidenote: Broadford Fair.] Gradually, however, as we
proceeded, the aspect of the country changed, it began to exhibit
traces of cultivation; and before long, the red hill with the
Norwegian woman's cairn atop, rose before us, suggesting Broadford,
and the close of the journey. In a little while the road was filled
with cattle, driven forward with oath and shout. Every now and then
a dog-cart came skirring along, and infinite was the confusion, and
dire the clangour of tongues, when it plunged into a herd of sheep or
skittish "three-year-olds." At the entrance to the fair, the horses
were taken out of the vehicles, and left, with a leathern thong
fastened round their fore-legs, to limp about in search of breakfast.
On either side of the road stood hordes of cattle, the
wildest-looking creatures, with fells of hair hanging over their
eyes, and tossing horns of preposterous dimensions. On knolls, a
little apart, women with white caps and wrapped in scarlet tartan
plaids, sat beside a staked cow or pony, or perhaps a dozen sheep,
patiently waiting the advances of customers. Troops of horses
neighed from stakes. Sheep were there, too, in restless throngs and
masses, continually changing their shapes, scattering hither and
thither like quicksilver, insane dogs and men flying along their
edges. What a hubbub of sound! what lowing and neighing! what
bleating and barking! Down in the hollow ground tents had been
knocked up since dawn; there potatoes were being cooked for drovers
who had been travelling all night; there also liquor could be had.
To these places, I observed, contracting parties invariably repaired
to solemnise a bargain. At last we reached the centre of the fair,
and there stood John Kelly and his animals, a number of drovers
moving around them and examining their points. By these men my
friend was immediately surrounded, and much chaffering and
bargain-making ensued; visits to one of the aforesaid tents being
made at intervals. It was a strange sight that rude primeval
traffic. John Kelly kept a sharp eye on his beasts. Lachlan Roy
passed by, and low was his salute, and broad the smile on his
good-natured countenance. I wandered about aimlessly for a time, and
began to weary of the noise and tumult. M'Ian had told me that he
would not be able to return before noonday at earliest, and that all
the while he would be engaged in bargain-making on his own account,
or on the account of others, and that during those hours I must amuse
myself as best I could. As the novelty of the scene wore off, I
began to fear that amusement would not be possible. Suddenly lifting
my eyes out of the noise and confusion, there were the solitary
mountain tops, and the clear mirror of Broadford Bay, the opposite
coast sleeping green in it with all its woods; and lo! the steamer
from the south sliding in with her red funnel, and breaking the
reflection with a track of foam, and disturbing the far-off morning
silence with the thunders of her paddles. That sight solved my
difficulty for me in a moment. I thought of Dr Johnson and Boswell.
"I shall go," I said, "and look at the ruins of the House of
Corachatachin, that lies in the green glen beneath the red hill, on
the top of which the Norse woman is buried;" and so saying I went.
To me, I confess, of all Hebridean associations, Dr Johnson's visit
is the pleasantest. How the doctor ever got there is a matter for
perpetual wonder. He liked books, good cheer, club-life, the roar of
Fleet Street, good talk, witty companions. One cannot imagine what
attractions the rainy and surge-beaten islands possessed for the
author of the "Vanity of Human Wishes." Wordsworth had not yet made
fashionable a love for mountain and lake, and the shapes of changing
cloud. Scott had not yet thrown the glamour of romance over the
northern land, from the Sark to the Fitful Head. Sidenote: Dr
Johnson in Skye.] For fine scenery Johnson did not care one rush.
When Boswell in the fulness of his delight pointed out "an immense
mountain," the doctor sincerely sneered, "an immense protuberance."
He only cared for mountains in books, and even in books he did not
care for them much. The rain-cloud, which would put Mr Ruskin into
ecstasies, could only suggest to the moralist the urgent necessity of
an umbrella or a coach. Johnson loved his ease; and a visit to the
Western island, was in his day a serious matter--about as serious as
a visit to Kamtschatka would be in ours. In his wanderings he was
exposed to rain and wind, indifferent cookery, tempestuous seas, and
the conversation of persons who were neither witty nor learned--who
were neither polished like Beauclerk, nor amusing like Goldsmith--and
who laughed at epigram as Leviathan laughs at the shaking of the
spear. I protest, when I think of the burly doctor travelling in
these regions, voluntarily resigning for a while all London delights,
I admire him as a very hero. Boswell commemorates certain outbreaks
of petulance and spleen; but, on the whole, the great man seems to
have been pleased with his adventure. Johnson found in his
wanderings beautiful and high-bred women, well-mannered and
cultivated men--and it is more than probable that, if he were
returning to the islands to-day, he would not find those admirable
human qualities in greater abundance. What puzzles me most is the
courage with which the philosopher encountered the sea. I have, in a
considerable steamer more than once, shivered at the heavy surge
breaking on Ardnamurchan; and yet the doctor passed the place in an
open boat on his way to Mull, "lying down below in philosophical
tranquillity, with a greyhound at his back to keep him warm," while
poor Bozzy remained in the rain above, clinging for dear life to a
rope which, a sailor gave him to hold, quieting his insurgent stomach
as best he could with pious considerations, and sadly disturbed when
a bigger wave than usual came shouldering onward, making the boat
reel, with the objections which had been taken to a particular
providence--objections which Dr Hawkesworth had lately revived in his
preface to "Voyages to the South Seas." Boswell's journal of the
tour is delicious reading; full of amusing egotism; unconsciously
comic when he speaks for himself, and at the same time valuable,
memorable, wonderfully vivid and dramatic in presentment when the
"Majestic Teacher of Moral and Religious Wisdom" appears. What a
singular capacity the man had to exhibit his hero as he lived, and at
the same time to write himself complacently down an ass! It needed a
certain versatility to accomplish the feat, one would think. In both
ways the most eminent success attends him. And yet the absurdity of
Boswell has all the effect of the nicest art. Johnson floats, a vast
galleon, in the sea of Boswell's vanity; and in contrast with the
levity of the element in which it lives, its bulk and height appear
all the more impressive. In Skye one is every now and again coming
on the tract of the distinguished travellers. They had been at
Broadford--and that morning I resolved I should go to Broadford also.
[Sidenote: Corachatachin.]
Picking my steps carefully through the fair--avoiding a flock of
sheep on the one side, and a column of big-horned black cattle on the
other, with some difficulty getting out of the way of an infuriated
bull that came charging up the road, scattering everything right and
left, a dozen blown drovers panting at its heels--I soon got quit of
the turmoil, and in half an hour passed the lime-kiln, the dozen
houses, the ten shops, the inn, and the church, which constitute
Broadford, and was pacing along the green glen which ran in the
direction of the red hills. At last I came to a confused pile of
stones, near which grew a solitary tree whose back the burden of the
blast had bent, and which, although not a breath of wind was
stirring, could no more regain an upright position than can a
round-shouldered labourer on a holiday. That confused pile of stones
was all that remained of the old house of Corachatachin. I wandered
around it more reverently than if it had been the cairn of a chief.
It is haunted by no ghost. So far as my knowledge extends, no combat
ever took place on the spot. But there Boswell, after Dr Johnson had
retired to rest, in company with some young Highland bloods--ah, me!
their very grandchildren must be dead or gray by this!--brewed and
quaffed five gigantic bowls of punch, with what wild talk we can
fancy; and the friend of the "Majestic Teacher of Moral and Religious
Wisdom" went to bed at five in the morning, and awoke with the
headache of the reprobate. At noon the doctor burst in with the
exclamation, "What, drunk yet?" "His tone of voice was not that of
severe upbraiding," writes the penitent Bozzy, "so I was relieved a
little." Did they fancy, these young men, as they sat that night and
drank, that a hundred years after people would write of their
doings?--that the odour of their punch-bowls would outlive
themselves? No man knows what part of his life will be remembered,
what forgotten. A single tear, hurriedly brushed away mayhap, is the
best thing we know of Xerxes. Picking one's steps around the ruin,
one thought curiously of the flushed faces which death has cooled for
so long.
[Sidenote: The Fair at Broadford.]
When I got back to the fair about noon, it was evident that a
considerable stroke of business had been done. Hordes of bellowing
cattle were being driven towards Broadford, and drovers were rushing
about in a wonderful manner, armed with tar-pot and stick, and
smearing their peculiar mark on the shaggy hides of their purchases.
Rough-looking customers enough these fellows, yet they want not
means. Some of them came here this morning with £500 in their
pocket-books, and have spent every paper of it, and this day three
months they will return with as large a sum. As I advanced, the
booths ranged along the side of the road--empty when I passed them
several hours before--were plentifully furnished with confections,
ribbons, and cheap jewellery, and around these fair-headed and
scarlet-plaided girls swarmed thickly as bees round summer flowers.
The fair was running its full career of bargain-making, and
consequent dram-drinking, rude flirtation, and meeting of friend with
friend; when up the middle of the road, hustling the passengers,
terrifying the cattle, came three misguided young gentlemen--medical
students, I opined, engaged in botanical researches in these regions.
But too plainly they had been dwellers in tents. One of them, gifted
with a comic genius--his companions were desperately solemn--at one
point of the road threw back the collar of his coat, after the
fashion of Sambo when he brings down the applauses of the threepenny
gallery, and executed a shuffle in front of a bewildered cow.
Crummie backed and shied, bent on retreat. He, agile as a cork,
bobbed up and down in her front, turn whither she would, with shouts
and hideous grimaces, his companions standing by the while like mutes
at a funeral. The feat accomplished, the trio staggered on, amid the
scornful laughter and derision of the Gael. In a little while I
encountered M'Ian, who had finished his business and was anxious to
be gone. "We must harness the horse ourselves," he said, "for that
rascal, John Kelly, has gone off somewhere. He has been in and out
of tents ever since the cattle were sold, and I trust he won't come
to grief. He has a standing quarrel with the Kyle men, and may get a
broken head." [Sidenote: Lachlan Roy.] Elbowing our way through the
crowd, we reached the dog-cart, got the horse harnessed, and were
just about to start, when Lachlan Roy, his bonnet off, his
countenance inflamed, came flying up. "Maister Alic, Maister Alic,
is my face red yet?" cried he, as he laid his hand on the vehicle.
"Red enough, Lachlan; you had better come with us, you may lose your
money if you don't." "Aw, Maister Alic dear, don't say my face is
red--it's no red, Maister Alic--it's no vera red," pled the poor
fellow. "Will you come with us, or will you not?" said M'Ian, as he
gathered up the reins in his hand and seized the whip. At this
moment three or four drovers issued from a tent in the neighbourhood,
and Lachlan heard his name shouted. "I maun go back for my bonnet.
It wouldna do to ride with gentlemen without a bonnet;" and he
withdrew his hand. The drovers shouted again, and that second shout
drew Lachlan towards it as the flame draws the moth. "His face will
be red enough before evening," said M'Ian, as we drove away.
After we had driven about a quarter of an hour, and got entirely free
of the fair, M'Ian, shading his eyes from the sun with a curved palm,
suddenly exclaimed, "There's a red dog sitting by the road-side a
little forward. It looks like John Kelly's." When we got up, the
dog wagged its tail and whined, but retained its recumbent position.
"Come out," said M'Ian. "The dog is acting the part of a sentinel,
and I daresay we shall find its master about." We got out
accordingly, and soon found John stretched on the heather, snoring
stertorously, his neck-tie unloosened, his bonnet gone, the sun
shining full on the rocky countenance of him. " [Sidenote: John
Kelly.] He's as drunk as the Baltic," said M'Ian; "but we must get
him out of this. Get up, John." But John made no response. We
pinched, pulled, and thumped, but John was immovable. I proposed
that some water should be poured on his face, and did procure some
from a wet ditch near, with which his countenance was splashed
copiously--not to its special adornment. The muddy water only
produced a grunt of dissatisfaction. "We must take him on his
fighting side," said M'Ian, and then he knelt down and shouted in
John's ear, "Here's a man from Kyle says he's a better man than you."
John grunted inarticulate defiance. "He says he'll fight you any day
you like." "Tell him to strike me, then," said John, struggling with
his stupor. "He says he'll kick you." Under the insult John visibly
writhed. "Kick him," whispered M'Ian, "as hard as you can. It's our
only chance." I kicked, and John was erect as a dart, striking
blindly out, and when he became aware against whom he was making such
hostile demonstrations his hands dropped, and he stood as if he had
seen a ghost. "Catch him," said M'Ian, "his rage has sobered him,
he'll be drunk next moment; get him into the dog-cart at once." So
the lucid moment was taken advantage of, he was hoisted into the back
seat of the vehicle, his bonnet was procured--he had fallen asleep
upon it--and placed on the wild head of him; we took our places, and
away we started, with the red dog trotting behind. John rolled off
once or twice, but there was no great harm done, and we easily got
him in again. As we drove down the glen toward the house we set him
down, and advised him to dip his wildly-tangled head in the stream
before he went home.
During the last few weeks I have had opportunity of witnessing
something of life as it passes in the Skye wildernesses, and have
been struck with its self-containedness, not less than with its
remoteness. A Skye family has everything within itself. The bare
mountains yield mutton, which possesses a flavour and delicacy
unknown in the south. The copses swarm with rabbits; and if a net is
set over-night at the Black Island, there is abundance of fish to
breakfast. The farmer grows his own corn, barley, and potatoes, digs
his own peats, makes his own candles; he tans leather, spins cloth
shaggy as a terrier's pile, and a hunchbacked artist in the place
transforms the raw materials into boots or shepherd garments. Twice
every year a huge hamper arrives from Glasgow, stuffed with all the
little luxuries of housekeeping--tea, sugar, coffee, and the like.
At more frequent intervals comes a ten-gallon cask from Greenock,
whose contents can cunningly draw the icy fangs of a north-easter, or
take the chill out of the clammy mists.
"What want they that a king should have?"
And once a week the _Inverness Courier_, like a window suddenly
opened on the roaring sea, brings a murmur of the outer world, its
politics, its business, its crimes, its literature, its whole
multitudinous and unsleeping life, making the stillness yet more
still. [Sidenote: The islesman's year.] To the Islesman the dial
face of the year is not artificially divided, as in cities, by
parliamentary session and recess, college terms, vacations short and
long, by the rising and sitting of courts of justice; nor yet, as in
more fortunate soils, by imperceptible gradations of coloured
light--the green flowery year deepening into the sunset of the
October hollyhock; the slow reddening of burdened orchards; the slow
yellowing of wheaten plains. Not by any of these, but by the higher
and more affecting element of animal life, with its passions and
instincts, its gladness and suffering; existence like our own,
although in a lower key, and untouched by solemn issues; the same
music and wail, although struck on rude and uncertain chords. To the
Islesman the year rises into interest when the hills, yet wet with
melted snows, are pathetic with newly-yeaned lambs, and it completes
itself through the successive steps of weaning, fleecing, sorting,
fattening, sale, final departure, and cash in pocket. The shepherd
life is more interesting than the agricultural, inasmuch as it deals
with a higher order of being; for I suppose--apart from
considerations of profit--a couchant ewe, with her young one at her
side, or a ram, "with wreathed horns superb," cropping the herbage,
is a more pleasing object to the æsthetic sense than a field of
mangel-wurzel, flourishing ever so gloriously. The shepherd inhabits
a mountain country, lives more completely in the open air, and is
acquainted with all the phenomena of storm and calm, the
thunder-smoke coiling in the wind, the hawk hanging stationary in the
breathless blue. He knows the faces of the hills, recognises the
voices of the torrents as if they were children of his own, can
unknit their intricate melody as he lies with his dog beside him on
the warm slope at noon, separating tone from tone, and giving this to
rude crag, that to pebbly bottom. From long intercourse, every
member of his flock wears to his eye its special individuality, and
he recognises the countenance of a "wether" as he would the
countenance of a human acquaintance. Sheep-farming is a picturesque
occupation: and I think a multitude of sheep descending a hill-side,
now outspreading in bleating leisure, now huddling together in the
haste of fear--the dogs, urged more by sagacity than by the
shepherd's voice, flying along the edges, turning, guiding, changing
the shape of the mass--one of the prettiest sights in the world.
[Sidenote: The fold.]