see. The cows browse about on the hills all day, and at sunset they
are driven into a sort of green oasis, amid the surrounding
birch-wood. The rampart of rock above is dressed in evening colours,
the grass is golden green; everything--animals, herds, and milkmaids
are throwing long shadows. All about, the cows stand lowing in
picturesque groups. The milkmaid approaches one, caresses it for a
moment, draws in her stool, and in an instant the rich milk is
hissing in the pail. All at once there arises a tremendous noise,
and pushing through the clumps of birch-wood down towards a shallow
rivulet which skirts the oasis, breaks a troop of wild-looking
calves, attended by a troop of wilder-looking urchins armed with
sticks and the branches of trees. The cows low more than ever, and
turn their wistful eyes; the bellowing calves are halted on the
further side of the rivulet, and the urchins stand in the water to
keep them back. An ardent calf, however, breaks through the cordon
of urchins, tumbles one into the streamlet, climbs the bank amid much
Gaelic exclamation, and ambles awkwardly toward his dam. Reaching
her, he makes a wild push at the swollen udder, drinks, his tail
shaking with delight; while she, turning her head round, licks his
shaggy hide with fond maternal tongue. In about five minutes he is
forced to desist, and with a branch-bearing urchin on each side of
him, is marched across the rivulet again. One by one the calves are
allowed to cross, each makes the same wild push at the udder, each
drinks, the tail ecstatically quivering; and on each the dam fixes
her great patient eyes, and turning licks the hide whether it be red,
black, brindled, dun, or cream-coloured. When the calves have been
across the rivulet and back again, and the cows are being driven away
to their accustomed pasturage, a milk-maid approaches with her pail,
and holding it up, gives you to drink, as long ago Rebecca gave to
drink the servant of Abraham. By this time the grass is no longer
golden green; the red light has gone off the rocky ramparts, and the
summer twilight is growing in the hollows, and in amongst the clumps
of birchwood. Afar you hear the noise of retiring calves and
urchins. The milk-maids start off in long procession with their
pails and stools. A rabbit starts out from a bush at your feet, and
scurries away down the dim field. And when, following, you descend
the hill-side toward the bridge you see the solemn purple of the
Cuchullins cutting the yellow pallor of evening sky--perhaps with a
feeling of deeper satisfaction you notice that a light is burning in
the porch of Mr M'Ian's house. [Sidenote: Lamb-weaning.] "The fold,"
as the milking of the cows is called, is pretty enough; but the most
affecting incident of shepherd life is the weaning of the
lambs--affecting, because it reveals passions in the fleecy flocks,
the manifestation of which we are accustomed to consider ornamental
in ourselves. From all the hills men and dogs drive the flocks down
into a fold, or _fank_, as it is called here, consisting of several
chambers or compartments. Into these compartments the sheep are
huddled, and then the separation takes place. The ewes are returned
to the mountains, the lambs are driven away to some spot where the
pasture is rich, and where they are watched day and night. Midnight
comes with dews and stars; the lambs are peacefully couched.
Suddenly they are restless, ill at ease, goaded by some sore unknown
want, and seem disposed to scatter wildly in every direction; but the
shepherds are wary, the dogs swift and sure, and after a little while
the perturbation is allayed, and they are quiet again. Walk up now
to the fank. The full moon is riding between the hills, filling the
glens with lustres and floating mysterious glooms. Listen! you hear
it on every side of you, till it dies away in the silence of
distance--the fleecy Rachel weeping for her children! The turf walls
of the fank are in shadow, but something seems to be moving there.
As you approach, it disappears with a quick short bleat, and a hurry
of tiny hooves. Wonderful mystery of instinct! Affection all the
more affecting that it is so wrapt in darkness, hardly knowing its
own meaning. For nights and nights the creatures will be found
haunting; about those turfen walls seeking the young that have been
taken away.
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian.]
But my chief delight here is my friend, Mr M'Ian. I know that I
described him when I first saw him in his own house; but knowing him
better now, as a matter of course I can describe him better. He
would strike one with a sense of strangeness in a city, and among men
of the present generation; but here he creates no surprise--he is a
natural product of the region, like the red heather, or the bed of
the dried torrent. He is master of legendary lore. He knows the
history of every considerable family in the island; he circulates
like sap through every genealogical tree; he is an enthusiast in
Gaelic poetry, and is fond of reciting compositions of native bards,
his eyes lighted up, and his tongue moving glibly over the rugged
clots of consonants. He has a servant cunning upon the pipes; and,
dwelling there this summer, I heard Ronald wandering near the house,
solacing himself with their music: now a plaintive love-song, now a
coronach for chieftain borne to his grave, now a battle march, the
notes of which, melancholy and monotonous at first, would soar into a
higher strain, and then hurry and madden as if beating time to the
footsteps of the charging clan. I am the fool of association; and
the tree under which a king has rested, the stone on which a banner
was planted on the morning of some victorious or disastrous day, the
house in which some great man first saw the light, are to me the
sacredest things. This slight, gray, keen-eyed man--the scabbard
sorely frayed now, the blade sharp and bright as ever--gives me a
thrill like an old coin with its half-obliterated effigy, a Druid
stone on a moor, a stain of blood on the floor of a palace. He
stands before me a living figure, and history groups itself behind by
way of background. He sits at the same board with me, and yet he
lifted Moore at Corunna, and saw the gallant dying eyes flash up with
their last pleasure when the Highlanders charged past. He lay down
to sleep in the light of Wellington's watch-fires in the gorges of
the Pyrenees; around him roared the death-thunders of Waterloo.
There is a certain awfulness about very old men; they are amongst us,
but not of us. They crop out of the living soil and herbage of
to-day, like rocky strata bearing marks of the glacier or the wave.
Their roots strike deeper than ours, and they draw sustenance from an
earlier layer of soil. They are lonely amongst the young; they
cannot form new friendships, and are willing to be gone. They feel
the "sublime attractions of the grave;" for the soil of churchyards
once flashed kind eyes on them, heard with them the chimes at
midnight, sang and clashed the brimming goblet with them; and the
present Tom and Harry are as nothing to the Tom and Harry that
swaggered about and toasted the reigning belles seventy years ago.
We are accustomed to lament the shortness of life; but it is
wonderful how long it is notwithstanding. Often a single life, like
a summer twilight, connects two historic days. Count back four
lives, and King Charles is kneeling on the scaffold at Whitehall. To
hear M'Ian speak, one could not help thinking in this way. In a
short run across the mainland with him this summer, we reached
Culloden Moor. The old gentleman with a mournful air--for he is a
great Jacobite, and wears the Prince's hair in a ring--pointed out
the burial-grounds of the clans. Struck with his manner, I inquired
how he came to know their red resting-places. As if hurt, he drew
himself up, laid his hand on my shoulder, saying, "Those who put them
in told me." Heavens, how a century and odd years collapsed, and the
bloody field--the battle-smoke not yet cleared away, and where
Cumberland's artillery told the clansmen sleeping in thickest
swathes--unrolled itself from the horizon down to my very feet! For
a whole evening he will sit and speak of his London life; and I
cannot help contrasting the young officer, who trod Bond Street with
powder in his hair at the end of last century, with the old man
living in the shadow of Blaavin now.
[Sidenote: Skye stories.]
Dwellers in cities have occasionally seen a house that has the
reputation of being haunted, and heard a ghost story told. City
people laugh when these stories are told, even although the blood
should run chill the while. But in Skye one is steeped in a ghostly
atmosphere; men walk about here gifted with the second sight. There
has been something weird and uncanny about the island for some
centuries. Douglas, on the morning of Otterbourne, according to the
ballad, was shaken with superstitious fears:--
"But I hae dream'd a dreary dream--
Beyond the Isle of Skye,
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I."
Then the whole country is full of stories of the Norwegian times and
earlier--stories it might be worth Dr Dasent's while to take note of,
should he ever visit the Hebrides. Skye, more particularly, is
haunted of legends. It is as full of noises as Prospero's Island.
One such legend, concerning Ossian and his poems, struck me a good
deal. Near Mr M'Ian's place is a ruined castle, a mere hollow shell
of a building, Dunscaich by name, built in Fingalian days by the
chieftain Cuchullin, and so called by him in honour of his wife. The
ruin stands on a rocky headland bearded by gray-green lichens. It is
quite desolate, and but seldom visited. The only sounds heard there
are the whistle of the salt breeze, the bleat of a strayed sheep, the
cry of wheeling sea-birds. M'Ian and myself sat one summer day on
the ruined stair. Loch Eishart lay calm and bright beneath, the blue
expanse broken only by a creeping sail. Across the Loch rose the
great red hill, in the shadow of which Boswell got drunk, on the top
of which is perched the Scandinavian woman's cairn; and out of the
bare heaven, down on the crests of the Cuchullins, flowed a great
white vapour which gathered in the sunlight in mighty fleece on
fleece. The old gentleman was the narrator, and the legend goes as
follows:--The castle was built by Cuchullin and his Fingalians in a
single night. The chieftain had many retainers, was a great hunter,
and terrible in war. With his own arm he broke battalions; and every
night at feast the minstrel Ossian sang his exploits. Ossian, on one
occasion, wandering among the hills, was attracted by strains of
music which seemed to issue from a round green knoll on which the sun
shone pleasantly. He sat clown to listen, and was lulled asleep by
the melody. He had no sooner fallen asleep than the knoll opened,
and he beheld the under-world of the fairies. That afternoon and
night he spent in revelry, and in the morning he was allowed to
return. Again the music sounded, again the senses of the minstrel
were steeped in forgetfulness; and on the sunny knoll he awoke, a
gray-haired man, for into one short afternoon and evening had been
crowded a hundred of our human years. In his absence the world had
been entirely changed, the Fingalians were extinct, and the dwarfish
race whom we now call men were possessors of the country. Longing
for companionship, and weary of singing his songs to the earless
rocks and sea waves, Ossian married the daughter of a shepherd, and
in process of time a little girl was born to him. Years passed on,
his wife died, and his daughter, woman grown now, married a pious
man--for the people were Christianised by this time--called, from his
love of psalmody, Peter of the Psalms. Ossian, blind with age, and
bearded like the cliff yonder, went to reside with his daughter and
her husband. Peter was engaged all day in hunting, and when he came
home at evening and the lamp was lighted, Ossian, sitting in a warm
corner, was wont to recite the wonderful songs of his youth, and to
celebrate the mighty battles and hunting feats of the big-boned
Fingalians--and in these songs Cuchullin stood with his terrible
spear upraised, and his beautiful wife sat amid her maids plying the
distaff. To these songs Peter of the Psalms gave attentive ear, and,
being something of a penman, carefully inscribed them in a book. One
day Peter had been more than usually successful in the chase, and
brought home on his shoulders the carcass of a huge stag. Of this
stag a leg was dressed for supper, and when it was picked bare, Peter
triumphantly inquired of Ossian, "In the Fingalian days you sing
about, killed you ever a stag so large as this one?" Ossian balanced
the bone in his hand, then sniffing intense disdain, replied, "This
bone, big as you think it, could be dropped into the hollow of a
Fingalian blackbird's leg." Peter of the Psalms, enraged at what he
considered an unconscionable crammer on the part of his
father-in-law, started up, swearing that he would not peril his soul
by preserving any more of his lying songs, and flung the volume in
the fire: but his wife darted forward and snatched it up,
half-charred, from the embers. At this conduct on the part of Peter,
Ossian groaned in spirit and wished to die, that he might be saved
from the envies and stupidities of the little people whose minds were
as stunted as their bodies. When he went to bed he implored his
ancient gods--for he was a sad heathen, and considered psalm-singing
no better than the howling of dogs--to resuscitate, if but for one
hour, the hounds, the stags, and the blackbirds of his youth, that he
might confound and astonish the unbelieving Peter. His prayers done,
he fell on slumber, and just before dawn a weight upon his breast
awoke him. He put forth his hands and stroked a shaggy hide.
Ossian's prayers were answered, for there, upon his breast, in the
dark of the morning, was couched his favourite hound. He spoke to
it, called it by name, and the faithful creature whimpered and licked
his hands and face. Swiftly he got up and called his little
grandson, and they went out with the hound. When they came to the
top of a little eminence, Ossian said to the child, "Put your fingers
in your ears, little one, else I will make you deaf for life." The
boy put his fingers in his ears, and then Ossian whistled so loud
that the whole sky rang as if it had been the roof of a cave. He
then asked the child if he saw anything. "Oh, such large deer!" said
the child. "But a small herd by the trampling of it," said Ossian;
"we will let that herd pass." Presently the child called out, "Oh,
such large deer!" Ossian bent his ear to the ground to catch the
sound of their coming, and then, as if satisfied, he let slip the
hound, who speedily overtook and tore down seven of the fattest.
When the animals were skinned and dressed, Ossian groped his way
toward a large lake, in the centre of which grew a wonderful bunch of
rushes. He waded into the lake, tore up the rushes, and brought to
light the great Fingalian kettle, which had lain there for more than
a century. Returning to his quarry, a fire was kindled, the kettle
containing the seven carcasses was placed thereupon; and soon a most
savoury smell, like a general letter of invitation, flew abroad on
all the winds. When the animals were stewed after the approved
fashion of his ancestors, Ossian sat down to his repast. Now as,
since his sojourn with the fairies, and the extermination of the
Fingalians, he had never enjoyed a sufficient meal, it was his custom
to gather up the superfluous folds of his stomach by wooden splints,
nine in number. As he now fed and expanded, splint after splint was
thrown away, as button after button burst on the jacket of the
feasting boy in the story-book, till at last, when the kettle was
emptied, he lay down on the grass perfectly satisfied, and silent as
the ocean when the tide is full. Recovering himself, he gathered all
the bones together--set fire to them, and the smoke which ascended
made the roof of the firmament as black as the roof of the turf-hut
at home. "Little one," then said Ossian, "go up to the knoll and
tell me if you see anything." "A great bird is flying hither," said
the child; and immediately the great Fingalian blackbird alighted at
the feet of Ossian, who at once caught and throttled it. The fowl
was carried home, and was in the evening dressed for supper. After
it was devoured, Ossian called for the stag's thigh-bone which had
been the original cause of quarrel, and before the face of the
astonished and convicted Peter of the Psalms, dropped it into the
hollow of the blackbird's leg. Ossian died on the night of his
triumph, and the only record of his songs is the volume which Peter
in his rage threw into the fire, and from which, when half-consumed,
it was rescued by his wife.
"But," said I, when the old gentleman had finished his story, "how
came it that the big-boned Fingalians were extirpated during the
hundred years that Ossian was asleep amongst the fairies?"
"Well," said the old gentleman, "a woman was the cause of that, just
as a woman is the cause of most of the other misfortunes that happen
in the world. I told you that this castle was built by Cuchullin,
and that he and his wife lived in it. Now tallest, bravest,
strongest, handsomest of all Cuchullin's warriors was Diarmid, and
many a time his sword was red with the blood of the little people who
came flocking over here from Ireland in their wicker and skin-covered
boats. Now, when Diarmid took off his helmet at feast, there was a
fairy mole right in the centre of his forehead, just above the eyes
and between his curling locks; and on this beauty spot no woman could
look without becoming enamoured of him. One night Cuchullin gave a
feast in the castle; the great warrior was invited; and while he sat
at meat with his helmet off, Cuchullin's wife saw the star-like mole
in the centre of his forehead, and incontinently fell in love with
him. Cuchullin discovered his wife's passion, and began secretly to
compass the death of Diarmid. He could not slay him openly for fear
of his tribe; so he consulted an ancient witch who lived over the
hill yonder. Long they consulted, and at last they matured their
plans. Now, the Fingalians had a wonderful boar which browsed in
Gasken--the green glen which you know leading down to my house--and
on the back of this boar there was a poisoned bristle, which, if it
pierced the hand of any man, the man would certainly die. No one
knew the secret of the bristle save the witch, and the witch told it
to Cuchullin. One day, therefore, when the chief and his warriors
were sitting on the rocks here about, the conversation was cunningly
led to the boar. Cuchullin wagered the magic whistle which was slung
around his neck, that the brute was so many handbreadths from the
snout to the tip of the tail. Diarmid wagered the shield that he was
polishing--the shield which was his mirror in peace, by the aid of
which he dressed his curling locks, and with which he was wont to
dazzle the eyes of his enemies on a battle day--that it was so many
handbreadths less. The warriors heard the dispute and were divided
in opinion; some agreeing with Cuchullin, others agreeing with
Diarmid. At last it was arranged that Diarmid should go and measure
the boar; so he and a number of the warriors went. In a short time
they came back laughing and saying that Diarmid had won his wager,
that the length of the boar was so many handbreadths, neither more
nor less. Cuchullin bit his white lips when he saw them coming; and
then he remembered that he had asked them to measure the boar from
the snout to the tail, being the way the pile lay; whereas, in order
to carry out his design, he ought to have asked them to measure the
boar _against_ the pile. When, therefore, he was told that he had
lost his wager, he flew into a great rage, maintained that they were
all conspiring to deceive him, that the handbreadths he had wagered
were the breadths of Diarmid's own hands, and declared that he would
not be satisfied until Diarmid would return and measure the boar from
the tip of tail to the snout. Diarmid and the rest went away; and
when he reached the boar he began measuring it from the tail onward,
his friends standing by to see that he was measuring properly, and
counting every handbreadth. He had measured half way up the spine,
when the poisoned bristle ran into his hand. 'Ah,' he said, and
turned pale as if a spear had been driven into his heart. To support
himself, he caught two of his friends round the neck, and in their
arms he died. Then the weeping warriors raised the beautiful corpse
on their shoulders and carried it to the castle, and laid it down
near the drawbridge. Cuchullin then came out, and when he saw his
best warrior dead he laughed as if a piece of great good fortune had
befallen him, and directed that the corpse should be carried into his
wife's chamber.
"But Cuchullin had cause to repent soon after. The little
black-haired people came swarming over from Ireland in their boats by
hundreds and thousands, but Diarmid was not there to oppose them with
his spear and shield. Every week a battle was fought, and the little
people began to prevail; and by the time that Ossian made his escape
from the fairies, every Fingalian, with the exception of two, slept
in their big graves--and at times the peat digger comes upon their
mighty bones when he is digging in the morasses."
"And the two exceptions?" said I.
"Why, that's another story," said M'Ian, "and I getting tired of
legends.--Well, if you will have it, the two last Fingalians made
their escape from Skye, carrying with them the magic whistle which
Cuchullin wore around his neck, and took up their abode in a cave in
Ross-shire. Hundreds of years after a man went into that cave, and
in the half twilight of the place saw the whistle on the floor, and
lifted it up. He saw it was of the strangest workmanship, and
putting it to his lips he blew it. He had never heard a whistle
sound so loudly and yet so sweetly. He blew it a second time, and
then he heard a voice, 'Well done, little man blow; the whistle a
third time;' and turning to the place from which the sound proceeded,
he saw a great rock like a man leaning on his elbow and looking up at
him. 'Blow it the third time, little man, and relieve us from our
bondage!' What between the voice, and the strange human-looking
rock, the man got so terrified that he dropped the whistle on the
floor of the cave, where it was smashed into a thousand pieces, and
ran out into the daylight. He told his story; and when the cave was
again visited, neither he nor his companions could see any trace of
the broken whistle on the floor, nor could they discover any rock
which resembled a weary man leaning on his elbow and looking up."
_A BASKET OF FRAGMENTS._
The month of August is to the year what Sunday is to the week.
During that month a section of the working world rests. _Bradshaw_
is consulted, portmanteaus are packed, knapsacks are strapped on,
steamboats and railway carriages are crammed, and from Calais to
Venice the tourist saunters and looks about him. It is absolutely
necessary that the Briton should have, each year, one month's
cessation from accustomed labour. He works hard, puts money in his
purse, and it is his whim, when August comes, by way of recreation,
to stalk deer on Highland corries, to kill salmon in Norwegian
fiords, to stand on the summit of Mont Blanc, and to perambulate the
pavements of Madrid, Naples, and St Petersburg. To rush over the
world during vacation is a thing on which the respectable Briton sets
his heart. To remain at home is to lose caste and self-respect.
People do not care one rush for the Rhine; but that sacred stream
they must behold each year or die. Of all the deities Fashion has
the most zealous votaries. No one can boast a more extensive
martyrology. Her worshippers are terribly sincere, and many a secret
penance do they undergo, and many a flagellation do they inflict upon
themselves in private.
[Sidenote: Vacation in Skye.]