long, blue, river-like loch, the house of the Landlord. From the
point at which I now paused, a boat could have taken me across in
half an hour, but as the road wound round the top of the Loch, I had
yet some eight or ten miles to drive before my journey was
accomplished. Meantime the Loch was at ebb and the sun was setting.
On the hill-side, on my left as I drove, stretched a long street of
huts covered with smoky wreaths, and in front of each a strip of
cultivated ground ran down to the road which skirted the shore.
Potatoes grew in one strip or lot, turnips in a second, corn in a
third, and as these crops were in different stages of advancement,
the entire hillside, from the street of huts downward, resembled one
of those counterpanes which thrifty housewifes manufacture by sewing
together patches of different patterns. Along the road running at
the back of the huts a cart was passing; on the moory hill behind, a
flock of sheep, driven by men and dogs, was contracting and expanding
itself like quicksilver. The women were knitting at the hut doors,
the men were at work in the cultivated patches in front. On all this
scene of cheerful and fortunate industry, on men and women, on
turnips, oats, and potatoes, on cottages set in azure films of
peat-reek, the rosy light was striking--making a pretty spectacle
enough. From the whole hill-side breathed peace, contentment,
happiness, and a certain sober beauty of usefulness. Man and nature
seemed in perfect agreement and harmony--man willing to labour,
nature to yield increase. Down to the head of the Loch the road
sloped rapidly, and at the very head a small village had established
itself. It contained an inn, a school-house, in which divine service
was held on Sundays; a smithy, a merchant's shop--all traders are
called _merchants_ in Skye--and, by the side of a stream which came
brawling down from rocky steep to steep, stood a corn mill, the big
wheel lost in a watery mist of its own raising, the door and windows
dusty with meal. Behind the village lay a stretch of black moorland
intersected by drains and trenches, and from the black huts which
seemed to have grown out of the moor, and the spaces of sickly green
here and there, one could see that the desolate and forbidding region
had its colonists, and that they were valiantly attempting to wring a
sustenance out of it. Who were the squatters on the black moorland?
Had they accepted their hard conditions as a matter of choice, or had
they been banished there by a superior power? Did the dweller in
those outlying huts bear the same relation to the villagers, or the
flourishing cotters on the hill-side, that the gipsy bears to the
English peasant, or the red Indian to the Canadian farmer? I had no
one to inform me at the time; meanwhile the sunset fell on these
remote dwellings, lending them what beauty and amelioration of colour
it could, making a drain sparkle for a moment, turning a far-off pool
into gold leaf, and rendering, by contrast of universal warmth and
glow, yet more beautiful the smoke which swathed the houses. Yet
after all the impression made upon one was cheerless enough. Sunset
goes but a little way in obviating human wretchedness. It fires the
cottage window, but it cannot call to life the corpse within; it can
sparkle on the chain of a prisoner, but with all its sparkling it
does not make the chain one whit the lighter. Misery is often
picturesque, but the picturesqueness is in the eyes of others, not in
her own. The black moorland and the banished huts abode in my mind
during the remainder of my drive.
[Sidenote: The Landlord's house.]
Everything about a man is characteristic, more or less; and in the
house of the Landlord I found that singular mixture of hemispheres
which I had before noticed in his talk and in his way of looking at
times. His house was plain enough externally, but its furniture was
curious and far-brought. The interior of his porch was adorned with
heads of stags and tusks of elephants. He would show you Highland
relics, and curiosities from sacked Eastern palaces. He had the tiny
porcelain cup out of which Prince Charles drank tea at Kingsburgh,
and the signet ring which was stripped from the dead fingers of
Tippoo Saib. In his gun-room were modern breech-loaders and
revolvers, and matchlocks from China and Nepaul. On the walls were
Lochaber axes, claymores, and targets that might have seen service at
Inverlochy, hideous creases, Afghan daggers, curiously-curved swords,
scabbards thickly crusted with gems. In the library the last new
novel leaned against the "Institutes of Menu." On the drawing-room
table, beside _carte-de-visite_ books, were ivory card-cases wrought
by the patient Hindoo artificer as finely as we work our laces,
Chinese puzzles that baffled all European comprehension, and comical
squab-faced deities in silver and bronze. While the Landlord was
absent, I could fancy these strangely-assorted articles striking one
with a sense of incongruity: but when at home, each seemed a portion
of himself. He was related as closely to the Indian god as to Prince
Charles's cup. The ash and birch of the Highlands danced before his
eyes, the palm stood in his imagination and memory.
[Sidenote: The Landlord's pets.]
And then he surrounded himself with all kinds of pets, and lived with
them on the most intimate terms. When he entered the breakfast-room
his terriers barked and frisked and jumped about him; his great black
hare-hound, Maida, got up from the rug on which it had been basking
and thrust its sharp nose into his hand; his canaries broke into
emulous music, as if sunshine had come into the room; the parrot in
the porch clambered along the cage with horny claws, settled itself
on its perch, bobbed its head up and down for a moment, and was
seized with hooping-cough. When he went out the black hare-hound
followed at his heel; the peacock, strutting on the gravel in the
shelter of the larches, unfurled its starry fan; in the stable his
horses turned round to smell his clothes and to have their foreheads
stroked: melodious thunder broke from the dog-kennel when he came:
and at his approach his falcons did not withdraw haughtily, as if in
human presence there was profanation; they listened to his voice, and
a gentler something tamed for a moment the fierce cairngorms of their
eyes. When others came near they ruffled their plumage and uttered
sharp cries of anger.
[Sidenote: The Landlord's visitors.]
After breakfast it was his habit to carry the parrot out to a long
iron garden-seat in front of the house--where, if sunshine was to be
had at all, you were certain to find it--and placing the cage beside
him, smoke a cheroot. The parrot would clamber about the cage,
suspended head downwards would take crafty stock of you with an eye
which had perhaps looked out on the world for a century or so, and
then, righting itself, peremptorily insist that Polly should put on
the kettle, and that the boy should shut up the grog. On one special
morning, while the Landlord was smoking and the parrot whooping and
whistling, several men, dressed in rough pilot cloth which had seen
much service and known much darning, came along the walk and
respectfully uncovered. Returning their salutation, the Landlord
threw away the end of his cheroot and went forward to learn their
message. The conversation was in Gaelic: slow and gradual at first,
it quickened anon, and broke into gusts of altercation; and on these
occasions I noticed that the Landlord would turn impatiently on his
heel, march a pace or two back to the house, and then, wheeling
round, return to the charge. He argued in the unknown tongue,
gesticulated, was evidently impressing something on his auditors
which they were unwilling to receive, for at intervals they would
look in one another's faces,--a look plainly implying, "Did you ever
hear the like?" and give utterance to a murmured chit, _chit, chit_
of dissent and humble protestation. At last the matter got itself
amicably settled, the deputation--each man making a short sudden duck
before putting on his bonnet--withdrew, and the Landlord came back to
the parrot, which had, now with one eye, now with another, been
watching the proceeding. He sat down with a slight air of annoyance.
"These fellows are wanting more meal," he said, "and one or two are
pretty deep in my books already."
"Do you, then, keep regular accounts with them?"
"Of course. I give nothing for nothing. I wish to do them as much
good as I can. They are a good deal like my old ryots, only the ryot
was more supple and obsequious."
"Where do your friends come from?" I asked.
"From the village over there," pointing across the narrow blue loch.
"Pretty Polly! Polly!"
The parrot was climbing up and down the cage, taking hold of the
wires with beak and claw as it did so.
"I wish to know something of your villagers. The cotters on the
hill-side seem comfortable enough, but I wish to know something of
the black land and the lonely huts behind."
"Oh," said he, laughing, "that is my penal settlement--I'll drive you
over to-morrow." He then got up, tossed a stone into the shrubbery,
after which Maida dashed, thrust his hands into his breeches' pocket
for a moment, and marched into the house.
[Sidenote: The Landlord's arrival.]
Next morning we drove across to the village, and pretty enough it
looked as we alighted. The big water-wheel of the mill whirred
industrious music, flour flying about the door and windows. Two or
three people were standing at the merchant's shop. At the smithy a
horse was haltered, and within were brilliant showers of sparks and
the merry clink of hammers. The sunshine made pure amber the pools
of the tumbling burn, and in one of these a girl was rinsing linen,
the light touching her hair into a richer colour. Our arrival at the
inn created some little stir. The dusty miller came out, the smith
came to the door rubbing down his apron with a horny palm, the girl
stood upright by the burn-side shading her eyes with her hand, one of
the men at the merchant's shop went within to tell the news, the
labourers in the fields round about stopped work to stare. The
machine was no sooner put to rights and the horses taken round to the
stable than the mistress of the house complained that the roof was
leaky, and she and the Landlord went in to inspect the same. Left
alone for a little, I could observe that, seeing my friend had
arrived, the people were resolved to make some use of him, and here
and there I noticed them laying down their crooked spades, and coming
down towards the inn. One old woman, with a white handkerchief tied
round her head, sat down on a stone opposite, and when the Landlord
appeared--the matter of the leaky roof having been arranged--she rose
and dropped a courtesy. She had a complaint to make, a benefit to
ask, a wrong to be redressed. I could not, of course, understand a
word of the conversation, but curiously sharp and querulous was her
voice, with a slight suspicion of the whine of the mendicant in it,
and every now and then she would give a deep sigh, and smooth down
her apron with both her hands. I suspect the old lady gained her
object, for when the Landlord cracked his joke at parting the most
curious sunshine of merriment came into the withered features,
lighting them up and changing them, and giving one, for a flying
second, some idea of what she must have been in her middle age,
perhaps in her early youth, when she as well as other girls had a
sweetheart.
[Sidenote: The penal settlement.]
In turn we visited the merchant's shop, the smithy, and the mill;
then we passed the schoolhouse--which was one confused murmur, the
sharp voice of the teacher striking through at intervals--and turning
up a narrow road, came upon the black region and the banished huts.
The cultivated hill-side was shining in sunlight, the cottages
smoking, the people at work in their crofts--everything looking
blithe and pleasant; and under the bright sky and the happy weather
the penal settlement did not look nearly so forbidding as it had done
when, under the sunset, I had seen it a few evenings previously. The
houses were rude, but they seemed sufficiently weather-tight. Each
was set down in a little oasis of cultivation, a little circle in
which by labour the sour land had been coaxed into a smile of green;
each small domain was enclosed by a low turfen wall, and on the top
of one of these a wild goat-looking sheep was feeding, which, as we
approached, jumped down with an alarmed bleat, and then turned to
gaze on the intruders. The land was sour and stony, the dwellings
framed of the rudest materials, and the people--for they all came
forward to meet him, and at each turfen wall the Landlord held a
_levée_--especially the older people, gave one the idea somehow of
worn-out tools. In some obscure way they reminded one of bent and
warped oars, battered spades, blunted pickaxes. On every figure was
written hard, unremitting toil. Toil had twisted their frames,
seamed and puckered their leathern faces, made their hands horny,
bleached their grizzled locks. Your fancy had to run back along
years and years of labour before it could arrive at the original boy
or girl. Still they were cheerful-looking after a sort, contented,
and loquacious withal. The man took off his bonnet, the woman
dropped her courtesy, before pouring into the Landlord's ear how the
wall of the house wanted mending, how a neighbour's sheep had come
into the corn, had been _driven_ into the corn out of foul spite and
envy it was suspected, how new seed would be required for next year's
sowing, how the six missing fleeces had been found in the hut of the
old soldier across the river, and all the other items which made up
their world. And the Landlord, his black hound couched at his feet,
would sit down on a stone, or lean against the turf wall and listen
to the whole of it, and consult as to the best way to repair the
decaying house, and discover how defendant's sheep came into
complainant's corn, and give judgment, and promise new seed to old
Donald, and walk over to the soldier's and pluck the heart out of the
mystery of the missing fleeces. And going in and out amongst his
people, his functions were manifold. He was not Landlord only--he
was leech, lawyer, divine. He prescribed medicine, he set broken
bones, and tied up sprained ankles; he was umpire in a hundred petty
quarrels, and damped out wherever he went every flame of wrath. Nor,
when it was needed, was he without ghostly counsel. On his land he
would permit no unbaptized child; if Donald was drunk and brawling at
a fair, he would, when the inevitable headache and nausea were gone,
drop in and improve the occasion, to Donald's much discomfiture and
his many blushes; and with the bed-ridden woman, or the palsied man,
who for years had sat in the corner of the hut as constantly as a
statue sits within its niche--just where the motty sunbeam from the
pane with its great knob of bottle-green struck him--he held serious
conversations, and uttered words which come usually from the lips of
a clergyman.
[Sidenote: The cottages on the hill-side.]
We then went through the cottages on the cultivated hill-side, and
there another series of _levées_ were held. One cotter complained
that his neighbour had taken advantage of him in this or the other
matter: another man's good name had been aspersed by a scandalous
tongue, and ample apology must be made, else the sufferer would bring
the asperser before the sheriff. Norman had borrowed for a day
Neil's plough, had broken the shaft, and when requested to make
reparation, had refused in terms too opprobrious to be repeated. The
man from Sleat who had a year or two ago come to reside in these
parts, and with whom the world had gone prosperously, was minded at
next fair to buy another cow--would he therefore be allowed to rent
the croft which lay alongside the one which he already possessed? To
these cotters the Landlord gave attentive ear, standing beside the
turf dike, leaning against the walls of their houses, sitting down
inside in the peat smoke--the children gathered together in the
farthest corner, and regarding him with no little awe. And so he
came to know all the affairs of his people--who was in debt, who was
waging a doubtful battle with the world, who had money in the bank;
and going daily amongst them he was continually engaged in warning,
expostulation, encouragement, rebuke. Nor was he always sunshine: he
was occasionally lightning too. The tropical tornado, which unroofs
houses and splits trees, was within the possibilities of his moods as
well as the soft wind which caresses the newly-yeaned lamb. Against
greed, laziness, dishonesty, he flamed like a seven-times heated
furnace. When he found that argument had no effect on the obstinate
or the pig-headed, he suddenly changed his tactics, and descended in
a shower of _chaff_, which is to the Gael an unknown and terrible
power, dissolving opposition as salt dissolves a snail.
The last cotter had been seen, the last _levée_ had been held, and we
then climbed up to the crown of the hill to visit the traces of an
old fortification, or _dün_, as the Skye people call it. These
ruins, and they are thickly scattered over the island, are supposed
to be of immense antiquity--so old, that Ossian may have sung in each
to a circle of Fingalian chiefs. When we reached the _dün_--a loose
congregation of mighty stones, scattered in a circular form, with
some rude remnants of an entrance and a covered way--we sat down, and
the Landlord lighted a cheroot. Beneath lay the little village
covered with smoke. Far away to the right, Skye stretched into
ocean, pale headland after headland. In front, over a black
wilderness of moor, rose the conical forms of Macleod's Tables, and
one thought of the "restless bright Atlantic plain" beyond, the
endless swell and shimmer of watery ridges, the clouds of sea birds,
the sudden glistening upheaval of a whale and its disappearance, the
smoky trail of a steamer on the horizon, the tacking of white-sailed
craft. On the left, there was nothing but moory wilderness and hill,
with something on a slope flashing in the sunshine like a diamond. A
falcon palpitating in the intense blue above, the hare-hound cocked
her ears and looked out alertly, the Landlord with his field-glass
counted the sheep feeding on the hill-side a couple of miles off.
Suddenly he closed the glass, and lay back on the heather, puffing a
column of white smoke into the air.
"I suppose," said I, "your going in and out amongst your tenants
to-day is very much the kind of thing you used to do in India?"
"Exactly. I know these fellows, every man of them--and they know me.
We get on very well together. I know everything they do. I know all
their secrets, all their family histories, everything they wish, and
everything they fear. I think I have done them some good since I
came amongst them."
"But," said I, "I wish you to explain to me your system of penal
servitude, as you call it. In what respect do the people on the
cultivated hillside differ from the people in the black ground behind
the village?"
"Willingly. But I must premise that the giving away of money in
charity is, in nine cases out often, tantamount to throwing money
into the fire. It does no good to the bestower: it does absolute
harm to the receiver. You see I have taken the management of these
people into my own hands. I have built a school-house for them--on
which we will look in and overhaul on our way down--I have built a
shop, as you see, a smithy, and a mill. I have done everything for
them, and I insist that, when a man becomes my tenant, he shall pay
me rent. If I did not so insist I should be doing an injury to
myself and to him. The people on the hill-side pay me rent; not a
man Jack of them is at this moment one farthing in arrears. The
people down there in the black land behind the village, which I am
anxious to reclaim, don't pay rent. They are broken men, broken
sometimes by their own fault and laziness, sometimes by culpable
imprudence, sometimes by stress of circumstances. When I settle a
man there I build him a house, make him a present of a bit of land,
give him tools, should he require them, and set him to work. He has
the entire control of all he can produce. He improves my land, and
can, if he is industrious, make a comfortable living. I won't have a
pauper on my place: the very sight of a pauper sickens me."
"But why do you call the black lands your penal settlement?"
Here the Landlord laughed. "Because, should any of the crofters on
the hill-side, either from laziness or misconduct, fall into arrears,
I transport him at once. I punish him by sending him among the
people who pay no rent. It's like taking the stripes off a
sergeant's arm and degrading him to the ranks; and if there is any
spirit in the man he tries to regain his old position. I wish my
people to respect themselves, and to hold poverty in horror."
"And do many get back to the hill-side again?"
"Oh, yes! and they are all the better for their temporary banishment.
I don't wish residence there to be permanent in any case. When one
of these fellows gets on, makes a little money, I have him up here at
once among the rent-paying people. I draw the line at a cow."
"How?"
"When a man by industry or by self-denial has saved money enough to
buy a cow, I consider the black land is no longer the place for him.
He is able to pay rent, and he must pay it. I brought an old fellow
up here the other week, and very unwilling he was to come. He had
bought himself a cow, and so I marched him up here at once. I wish
to stir all these fellows up, to put into them a little honest pride
and self-respect."
"And how do they take to your system?"
"Oh, they grumbled a good deal at first, and thought their lines were
hard; but discovering that my schemes have been for their benefit,
they are content enough now. In these black lands, you observe, I
not only rear corn and potatoes, I rear and train men, which is the
most valuable crop of all. But let us be going. I wish you to see
my scholars. I think I have got one or two smart lads down there."
[Sidenote: The school.]
In a short time we reached the school-house, a plain,
substantial-looking building, standing mid-way between the inn and
the banished huts. As it was arranged that neither schoolmaster nor
scholar should have the slightest idea that they were to be visited
that day, we were enabled to see the school in its ordinary aspect.
When we entered the master came forward and shook hands with the
Landlord, the boys pulled their red fore-locks, the girls dropped
their best courtesies. Sitting down on a form I noted the bare
walls, a large map hanging on one side, the stove with a heap of
peats near it, the ink-smeared bench and the row of girls' heads,
black, red, yellow, and brown, surmounting it, and the boys,
barefooted and in tattered kilts, gathered near the window. The
girls regarded us with a shy, curious gaze, which was not ungraceful;
and in several of the freckled faces there was the rudiments of
beauty, or of comeliness at least. The eyes of all, boys as well as
girls, kept twinkling over our persons, taking silent note of
everything. I don't think I ever before was the subject of so much
curiosity. One was pricked all over by quick-glancing eyes as by
pins. We had come to examine the school, and the ball opened by a
display of copy books. Opening these, we found pages covered with
"_Emulation is a generous passion,_" "_Emancipation does not make
man,_" in very fair and legible handwriting. Expressing our
satisfaction, the schoolmaster bowed low, and the prickling of the
thirty or forty curious eyes became yet more keen and rapid. The
schoolmaster then called for those who wished to be examined in
geography--very much as a colonel might seek volunteers for a forlorn
hope--and in a trice six scholars, kilted, of various ages and sizes,
but all shock-headed and ardent, were drawn up in line in front of
the large map. A ruler was placed in the hand of a little fellow at
the end, who, with his eyes fixed on the schoolmaster and his body
bent forward eagerly, seemed as waiting the signal to start off in a
race. "Number one, point out river Tagus." Number one charged the
Peninsula with his ruler as ardently as his great-grandfather in all
probability charged the French at Quebec. "Through what country does
the Tagus flow?" "Portugal." "What is the name of the capital
city?" "Lisbon." Number one having accomplished his devoir, the
ruler was handed on to number two, who traced the course of the
Danube, and answered several questions thereanent with considerable
intelligence. Number five was a little fellow; he was asked to point
out Portree, and as the Western Islands hung too high in the north
for him to reach, he jumped at them. He went into the North Sea the
first time, but on his second attempt he smote Skye with his ruler
very neatly. Numbers three, four, and six acquitted themselves
creditably--number four boggling a little deal about
Constantinople--much to the vexation of the schoolmaster. Slates
were then produced, and the six geographers--who were the cream of
the school, I daresay--were prepared for arithmetical action. As I
was examiner, and had no desire to get into deep waters, the efforts
of my kilted friends were, at my request, confined to the good old
rule of simple addition. The schoolmaster called out ten or eleven
ranks of figures, and then cried add. Six swishes of the
slate-pencil were heard, and then began the arithmetical tug of war.
Each face was immediately hidden behind a slate, and we could hear
the quick tinkle of pencils. All at once there was a hurried swish,
and the red-head, who had boggled about Constantinople, flashed round
his slate on me with the summation fairly worked out. Flash went
another slate, then another, till the six were held out. All the
answers corresponded, and totting up the figures I found them
correct. Then books were procured, and we listened to English
reading. In a loud tone of voice, as if they were addressing some
one on an opposite hill-side, and with barbarous intonation, the
little fellows read off about a dozen sentences each. Now and again
a big word brought a reader to grief, as a tall fence brings a
steeple-chaser; now and again a reader went through a word as a
hunter goes through a hedge which he cannot clear--but, on the whole,
they deserved the commendation which they received. The Landlord
expressed his satisfaction, and mentioned that he had left at the inn
two baskets of gooseberries for the scholars. The schoolmaster again
bowed; and although the eyes of the scholars were as bright and
curious as before, they had laid their heads together, and were
busily whispering now.