son, but his only daughter was married to Macleod of Harris, and a
young chief was growing up in Macleod's castle. The Macdonalds,
knowing that when the old man was dead, they would have no one to
lead them to battle, were pondering whom they should elect as chief;
and, at the same time, Macleod's lady was just as anxiously pondering
by what means her son should sit in Dunvegan. Well, while all this
thinking and scheming was going on secretly in Skye and Harris,
Macdonald, wishing to visit Macleod, ordered his barge and rowers to
be in readiness, and pushed off. Macleod, hearing that his
father-in-law was coming, went out in his barge to meet him half-way,
and to escort him to his castle with all honour. Macleod's barge was
bigger and stronger than Macdonald's, and held a greater number of
rowers; and while his men were pulling, the chief sat in the stern
steering, and his wife sat by his side. When they got into
mid-channel a heavy mist came down, but still the men pulled, and
still Macleod steered. All at once Macleod found that he was running
straight on his father-in-law's barge, and just when he had his hand
on the helm to change the course and avoid striking, his wife gripped
him hard and whispered in his ear, 'Macleod, Macleod, there's only
that barge betwixt you and Dunvegan.' Macleod took the hint, steered
straight on, struck and sunk Macdonald's barge in the mist, and
sailed for Dunvegan, which he claimed in the name of his son. That
is the way, as the old people tell, that Macleod came into possession
here."
Then we strolled along the undulating paths, and at a sudden turn
there was the ancient keep on its rock, a stream brawling down close
at hand, the tide far withdrawn, the long shore heaped with dulse and
tangle, and the sea-mews above the flag-staff, as the jackdaws fly
above the cathedral towers in England. It was gray as the rock on
which it stood--there were dark tapestries of ivy on the walls, but
at a first glance it was disappointingly modern-looking. I thought
of the mighty shell of Tantallon looking towards the Bass, and waving
a matted beard of lichens in the sea wind, and began to draw
disadvantageous comparisons. The feeling was foolishness, and on a
better acquaintance with the building it wore off. Dunvegan is
inhabited, and you cannot have well-aired sheets, a well-cooked
dinner, and the venerableness of ruin. Comfort and decay are never
companions.
[Sidenote: Dunvegan.]
Dunvegan reminds one of a fragment of an old ballad, encumbered with
a modern editor's introductory chapter, historical disquisitions,
critical comments, explanatory and illustrative notes, and glossarial
index. The dozen or so of rude stanzas--a whole remote passionate
world dwelling in them as in some wizard's mirror--is by far the most
valuable portion of the volume, although, in point of bulk, it bears
no proportion to the subsidiary matter which has grown around it.
Dunvegan is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the country, but
the ancient part is of small extent. One portion of it, it is said,
was built in the ninth century. A tower was added in the fifteenth,
another portion in the sixteenth, and the remainder by different
hands, and at irregular intervals since then. No inconsiderable
portion is unquestionably modern. The old part of the castle looks
toward the sea, and entrance is obtained by a steep and narrow
archway--up which, perhaps, came Macleod of Harris after he sunk the
barge of his father-in-law in the misty Minch. In a crevice in the
wall, which forms one side of this entrance, a well was recently
discovered; it had been built up--no man knows for how long--and when
tasted, the water was found perfectly sweet and pure. In the old
days of strife and broil it may have cooled many a throat thirsty
with siege. The most modern portion of the building, I should fancy,
is the present frontage, which, as you approach it by the bridge
which solidly fills up the ravine, is not without a certain grandeur
and nobility of aspect. The rock on which the castle stands is
surrounded on three sides by the sea; and fine as the old pile looked
at ebb of tide, one could fancy how much its appearance would be
improved with all that far-stretching ugliness of sand and tangle
obliterated, and the rock swathed with the azure and silence of
ocean. To sleep in a bed-room at Dunvegan in such circumstances,
must be like sleeping in a bed-room in fairy-land. You might hear a
mermaid singing beneath your window, and looking out into the
moonlight, behold, rising from the glistening swells, the perilous
beauty of her breasts and hair.
[Sidenote: The Macleod portraits.]
After viewing the castle from various points, we boldly advanced
across the bridge and rang the bell. After waiting some little time,
we were admitted by a man who--the family at the time being from
home--seemed the only person in possession. He was extremely polite,
volunteered to show us all over the place, and regretted that in the
prolonged absence of his master the carpets and furniture in the
"drawing-room" had been lifted. The familiar English _patois_
sounded strange in the castle of a Macleod! On his invitation we
entered an unfurnished hall with galleries running to left and right,
and on the wooden balustrades of one of these galleries the great
banner of Macleod was dispread--a huge white sheet on which the arms
and legend of the house were worked in crimson. Going up stairs, we
passed through spacious suites of rooms, carpetless, and with the
furniture piled up in the centre and covered with an awning--through
every window obtaining a glimpse of blue Loch and wild Skye headland.
In most cases in the rooms the family pictures were left hanging,
some fine, others sorry daubs enough, yet all interesting as
suggesting the unbroken flow of generations. Here was Rory More, who
was knighted in the reign of James VI. Here was the Macdonald lady,
whose marriage with the Macleod of that day was the occasion of the
arms of the families being united on the sculptured stone which we
saw built above the door of the barn outside. Here was a
haughty-looking young man of twenty-five, and yonder the same man at
sixty, grim, wrinkled, suspicious-looking--resembling the earlier
portrait only in the pride of eye and lip. Here were Macleod
beauties who married and became mothers in other houses; yonder were
beauties from other castles who became mothers here, and grew
gray-haired and died, leaving a reminiscence of their features in the
family for a generation or two. Here was the wicked Macleod, yonder
the spendthrift in whose hands the family wealth melted, and over
there the brave soldier standing with outstretched arm, elephants and
Indian temples forming an appropriate background. The rooms were
spacious, every window affording a glorious sea view; but from their
unfurnished and dismantled condition there arose a sort of Ossianic
desolation, which comfortless as it must have been to a permanent
dweller, did not fail to yield a certain gloomy pleasure to the
imagination of the visitor of an hour.
[Sidenote: The Macleod dungeons.]
Passing up and down stairs in the more ancient portion of the castle,
the man in possession showed us the dungeons in which the Macleods
immured their prisoners. I had fancied that these would have been
scooped out of the rock on which the castle stood. Whether such
existed I cannot say; but by candle-light I peered into more than one
stony closet let into the mighty wall--the entrance of which the
garments of the lady must have swept every night as she went to
bed--where the captured foemen of the family were confined. Perhaps
the near contiguity of the prisoner, perhaps the sweeping of garments
past the dungeon door, perhaps the chance-heard groan or clank of
manacle, constituted the exquisite zest and flavour of revenge. Men
keep their dearest treasures near them; and it might be that the
neighbourhood of the wretch he hated--so near that the sound of revel
could reach him at times--was more grateful to Macleod than his
burial in some far-away vault, perhaps to be forgotten. Who knows!
It is difficult to creep into the hearts of those old sea-kings. If
I mistake not, one of the dungeons is at present used as a wine
cellar. So the world and the fashion of it changes! Where the
Macleod of three centuries ago kept his prisoner, the Macleod of
to-day keeps his claret. From which of its uses the greatest amount
of satisfaction has been derived would be a curious speculation.
[Sidenote: The fairy room.]
By a narrow spiral stair we reached the most interesting apartment in
Dunvegan--the Fairy Room, in which Sir Walter Scott slept once. This
apartment is situated in the ancient portion of the building, it
overlooks the sea, and its walls are of enormous thickness. From its
condition I should almost fancy that no one has slept there since Sir
Walter's time. In it, at the period of my visit, there was neither
bedstead nor chair, and it seemed a general lumber room. The walls
were hung with rusty broadswords, dirks, targes, pistols, Indian
helmets; and tunics of knitted steel were suspended on frames, but so
rotten with age and neglect that a touch frayed them as if they had
been woven of worsted. There were also curved scimitars, and
curiously-hafted daggers, and two tattered regimental flags--that no
doubt plunged through battle smoke in the front of charging
lines--and these last I fancied had been brought home by the soldier
whose portrait I had seen in one of the modern rooms. Moth-eaten
volumes were scattered about amid a chaos of rusty weapons, cruses,
and lamps. In one corner lay a huge oaken chest with a chain wound
round it, but the lid was barely closed, and through the narrow
aperture a roll of paper protruded docketed in clerkly and and with
faded ink--accounts of ---- from 1715 till some time at the close of
the century--in which doubtless some curious items were imbedded. On
everything lay the dust and neglect of years. The room itself was
steeped in a half twilight. The merriest sunbeam became grave as it
slanted across the corroded weapons in which there was no answering
gleam. Cobwebs floated from the corners of the walls--the spiders
which wove them having died long ago of sheer age. To my feeling it
would be almost impossible to laugh in the haunted chamber, and if
you did so you would be startled by a strange echo as if something
mocked you. There was a grave-like odour in the apartment. You
breathed dust and decay.
[Sidenote: The fairy flag.]
Seated on the wooden trunk round which the chain was wound, while
Malcolm with his hand thrust in the hilt of a broadsword, was
examining the notches on its blade, I inquired,
"Is there not a magic flag kept at Dunvegan? The flag was the gift
of a fairy, if I remember the story rightly."
"Yes," said Malcolm, making a cut at an imaginary foeman, and then
hanging the weapon up on the wall; "but it is kept in a glass case,
and never shown to strangers, at least when the family is from home."
"How did Macleod come into possession of the flag, Malcolm?"
"Well, the old people say that one of the Macleods fell in love with
a fairy, and used to meet her on the green hill out there. Macleod
promised to marry her; and one night the fairy gave him a green flag,
telling him that, when either he or one of his race was in distress,
the flag was to be waved, and relief would be certain. Three times
the flag might be waved; but after the third time it might be thrown
into the fire, for the power would have gone all out of it. I don't
know, indeed, how it was, but Macleod deserted the fairy and married
a woman."
"Is there anything astonishing in that? Would you not rather marry a
woman than a fairy yourself."
"Maybe, if she was a rich one like the woman Macleod married," said
Malcolm with a grin. "But when the fairy heard of the marriage she
was in a great rage whatever. She cast a spell over Macleod's
country, and all the women brought forth dead sons, and all the cows
brought forth dead calves. Macleod was in great tribulation. He
would soon have no young men to fight his battles, and his tenants
would soon have no milk or cheese wherewith to pay their rents. The
cry of his people came to him as he sat in his castle, and he waved
the flag, and next day over the country there were living sons and
living calves. Another time, in the front of a battle, he was sorely
pressed, and nigh being beaten, but he waved the flag again, and got
the victory, and a great slaying of his enemies."
"Then the flag has not been waved for the third and last time?"
"No. At the time of the potato failure, when the people were
starving in their cabins, it was thought that he should have waved it
and stopped the rot. But the flag stayed in its case. Macleod can
only wave it once now; and I'm sure he's like a man with his last
guinea in his pocket--he does not like to spend it. But maybe, sir,
you would like to climb up to the flag-staff and see the view."
We then left the haunted chamber, passed through the dismantled room
in which the portraits hung, and ascended the narrow spiral
stair--the walls of which, whether from sea damp, or from a
peculiarity of the lime used in building, were covered with a
glistering scurf of salt--and finally emerged on the battlemented
plateau from which the flagstaff sprang. The huge mast had fallen a
month or two previously, and was now spliced with rope and propped
with billets of wood. A couple of days before the catastrophe, a
young fellow from Cambridge, Malcolm told me, had climbed to the
top--lucky for the young fellow it did not fall then, else he and
Cambridge had parted company for ever. From our airy perch the
outlook was wonderfully magnificent. From the breast of the hill
which shut out everything in one direction, there rolled down on the
castle billow on billow of many-coloured foliage. The garden through
which we had passed an hour before was but a speck of bright colour.
The little toy village sent up its pillars of smoke. There was the
brown stony beach, the boats, the ranges of nets, the sinuous
snake-like Loch, and the dark far-stretching promontories asleep on
the sleekness of summer sea. With what loveliness of shining blue
the sea flowed in everywhere, carrying silence and the
foreign-looking bird into inland solitudes, girdling with its glory
the rock on which the chief's castle had stood for ten centuries, and
at the door of the shepherd's shealing calling on the brown children
with the voices of many wavelets, to come down, and play with them on
crescents of yellow sand!
Driving homeward I inquired, "Does the Laird live here much?" "No,
indeed," said Malcolm; "he lives mainly in London."
[Sidenote: Dunvegan.]
And thereupon I thought how pleasant it must be for a man to escape
from the hollow gusty castle with its fairy flag which has yet to be
waved once, its dungeons, its haunted chambers, its large gaunt
rooms, with portraits of men and women from whom he has drawn his
blood, its traditions of revenge and crime--and take up his abode in
some villa at breezy Hampstead, or classic Twickenham, or even in
some half-suburban residence in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park.
The villa at Hampstead or Twickenham is neat and trim, and when you
enter on residence, you enter without previous associations. It is
probably not so old as yourself. The walls and rooms are strange,
but you know that you and they will become pleasantly acquainted by
and by. Dark family faces do not lower upon you out of the past; the
air of the room in which you sit is not tainted with the smell of
blood spilt hundreds of years ago. You and your dwelling are not the
sole custodiers of dreadful secrets. The shadows of the fire-light
on the twilight walls do not take shapes that daunt and affright.
Your ancestors no longer tyrannise over you. You escape from the
gloomy past, and live in the light and the voices of to-day. You are
yourself--you are no longer a link in a blood-crusted chain. You
enter upon the enjoyment of your individuality, as you enter upon the
enjoyment of a newly-inherited estate. In modern London you drink
nepenthe, and Dunvegan is forgotten. Were I the possessor of a
haunted, worm-eaten castle, around which strange stories float, I
should fly from it as I would from a guilty conscience, and in the
whirl of vivid life lose all thoughts of my ancestors. I should
appeal to the present to protect me from the past. I should go into
Parliament and study blue-books, and busy myself with the better
regulation of alkali works, and the drainage of Stoke Pogis. No
ancestor could touch me _then_.
[Sidenote: Donald Gorm.]
"It's a strange old place, Dunvegan," said Malcolm, as we drove down
by the Fairy Bridge, "and many strange things have happened in it.
Did you ever hear, sir, how Macdonald of Sleat--Donald Gorm, or Blue
Donald, as he was called--stayed a night with Macleod of Dunvegan at
a time when there was feud between them?"
"No: but I shall be glad to hear the story now."
"Well," Malcolm went on, "on a stormy winter evening, when the walls
of Dunvegan were wet with the rain of the cloud and the spray of the
sea, Macleod, before he sat down to dinner, went out to have a look
at the weather. 'A giant's night is coming on, my men,' he said when
he came in, 'and if Macdonald of Sleat were at the foot of my rock
seeking a night's shelter, I don't think I could refuse it.' He then
sat down in the torch-light at the top of the long table, with his
gentlemen around him. When they were half through with their meal a
man came in with the news that the barge of Macdonald of Sleat--which
had been driven back by stress of weather on its way to Harris--was
at the foot of the rock, and that Macdonald asked shelter for the
night for himself and his men. 'They are welcome,' said Macleod;
'tell them to come in.' The man went away, and in a short time
Macdonald, his piper, and his body guard of twelve, came in wet with
the spray and rain, and weary with rowing. Now on the table there
was a boar's head--which is always an omen of evil to a
Macdonald--and noticing the dish, Donald Gorm with his men about him
sat at the foot of the long table, beneath the salt, and away from
Macleod and the gentlemen. Seeing this, Macleod made a place beside
himself, and called out, 'Macdonald of Sleat, come and sit up here!'
'Thank you,' said Donald Gorm, 'I'll remain where I am; but remember
that wherever Macdonald of Sleat sits that's the head of the table.'
[Sidenote: Donald Gorm's dirk.] So when dinner was over the gentlemen
began to talk about their exploits in hunting, and their deeds in
battle, and to show each other their dirks. Macleod showed his,
which was very handsome, and it was passed down the long table from
gentleman to gentleman, each one admiring it and handing it to the
next, till at last it came to Macdonald, who passed it on, saying
nothing. Macleod noticed this, and called out, 'Why don't you show
your dirk, Donald; I hear it's very fine?' Macdonald then drew his
dirk, and holding it up in his right hand, called out, 'Here it is,
Macleod of Dunvegan, and in the best hand for pushing it home in the
four and twenty islands of the Hebrides.' Now Macleod was a strong
man, but Macdonald was a stronger, and so Macleod could not call him
a liar; but thinking he would be mentioned next, he said, 'And where
is the next best hand for pushing a dirk home in the four and twenty
islands?' '_Here_,', cried Donald Gorm, holding up his dirk in his
left hand, and brandishing it in Macleod's face, who sat amongst his
gentlemen biting his lips with vexation. So when it came to
bed-time, Macleod told Macdonald that he had prepared a chamber for
him near his own, and that he had placed fresh heather in a barn for
the piper and the body guard of twelve. Macdonald thanked Macleod,
but remembering the boar's head on the table, said he would go with
his men, and that he preferred for his couch the fresh heather to the
down of the swan. 'Please yourself, Macdonald of Sleat,' said
Macleod, as he turned on his heel.
[Sidenote: Donald Gorm's threat.]
"Now it so happened that one of the body guard of twelve had a
sweetheart in the castle, but he had no opportunity of speaking to
her. But once when she was passing the table with a dish she put her
mouth to the man's ear and whispered, 'Bid your master beware of
Macleod. The barn you sleep in will be red flame at midnight and
ashes before the morning.' The words of the sweetheart passed the
man's ear like a little breeze, but he kept the colour of his face,
and looked as if he had heard nothing. So when Macdonald and his men
got into the barn where the fresh heather had been spread for them to
sleep on, he told the words which had been whispered in his ear.
Donald Gorm then saw the trick that was being played, and led his men
quietly out by the back door of the barn, down to a hollow rock which
stood up against the wind, and there they sheltered themselves. By
midnight the sea was red with the reflection of the burning barn, and
morning broke on gray ashes and smouldering embers. The Macleods
thought they had killed their enemies; but fancy their astonishment
when Donald Gorm with his body guard of twelve marched past the
castle down to the foot of the rock, where his barge was moored, with
his piper playing in front--'Macleod, Macleod, Macleod of Dunvegan, I
drove my dirk into your father's heart, and in payment of last
night's hospitality I'll drive it to the hilt in his son's yet.'"
"Macleod of Dunvegan must have been a great rascal," said I; "and I
hope he got his deserts."
"I don't know, indeed," said Malcolm; "but if Donald Gorm caught him
he could hardly miss." He then added, as if in deprecation of the
idea that any portion of ignominy was attachable to him, "I am not
one of the Dunvegan Macleods; I come from the Macleods of Raasay."
_DUNTULM._
[Sidenote: A rainy day.]