LEGENDS AND LITERARY NOTABILIA.
Gairloch folk-lore: Prince Olaf and his bride--A laird who had
seen a fairy--Tales from Loch Broom: The dance of death--The
Kildonan midwife--The magic herring--Taisch--Antiquities of
Dunvegan--Miscellaneous terrors--St. Kilda--Lady
Grange--Pierless Tiree--Lochbuie in Mull--Inveraray Castle--The
sacred isle--Appin--Macdonald's gratitude--Notes on the
Trossachs--Lochfyneside: Macivors, Macvicars, and
Macallisters--Red Hector--Macphail of Colonsay--Tales from
Speyside: Tom Eunan!--Shaws and Grants--The wishing well--Ossian
and Macpherson--At the foot o' Bennachie--Harlaw--Lochaber
reivers--Reay and Twickenham--Rob Donn--Rev. Mr. Mill of
Dunrossness.
GAIRLOCH FOLK-LORE.
I do not think anyone interested in local history and antiquities could
find a greater treat than that furnished by Mr. Dixon's _Account of the
Parish of Gairloch_. That romantic and lovely district is fortunate in
having found a historian of unlimited enthusiasm and untiring industry.
There is not a single dry page in his long and detailed narrative. Many
of the legends he tells are known to me from other sources, but I am
certain that no Scotch compiler (Mr. Dixon, let me say, is English) has
written of them with such enjoyable sympathy and poetical ardour. I have
been assured by local authorities that the facts adduced by Mr. Dixon
are invariably reliable. That I can well believe; but what is still more
rare, Mr. Dixon's facts are everywhere made to gleam and glitter in the
radiance of romance. Let me narrate, in concentrated form, one of the
legends which this clever writer has alluded to in more than one of his
chapters.
PRINCE OLAF AND HIS BRIDE.
In the ninth century of the Christian era, one of the islands that in
such picturesque fashion dot the surface of Loch Maree, was honoured by
being the abode of a pious hermit, despatched thither from the sacred
isle of Iona. His presence there, implying as it did austerity,
perpetual worship of Heaven, and the reading of devout treatises,
inspired veneration in the minds of the obstreperous tribes around. They
felt themselves better from having such a good man near them. Wherever
in these old times of war and gore, a saintly pioneer established
himself, the kingdom of chaos and night was pushed back for miles around
his cell.
The Picts of the ninth century revered this man, and his fame was known
also to the predatory seamen who came buccaneering among the islands of
the West. A Viking of royal blood, Prince Olaf, in the intervals of his
sea-roving, hied sometimes to the hermit's retreat, for instruction and
spiritual blessing. The young man, as tradition alleges, was not beyond
the need of guidance, for his temper was of the most fiery violence,
and, at the slightest provocation, his hand was on the hilt of his
sword. No doubt the saint of Isle Maree managed to moderate the Prince's
vehemence, and draw him somewhat away from wrath which (as Homer puts
it), waxeth like smoke in the breasts of warriors, and is far sweeter to
them than trickling honey.
By and by, this youth fell in love, and in characteristic fashion he
loved with a whole-souled and overwhelming passion. The hot-tempered
Viking became a new man, and he thus communed with himself: "How can I
ask this maid to share my life on the stormy sea? She is too tender and
gentle to go under the dark clouds in a war-galley with me and my rude
mates, when we sail to meet the enemy. Nor, were she my wife, could I
leave her behind and unprotected. Marry her I must, but I can neither
take her with me thereafter, nor defend her in my absence. Go to, I'll
e'en visit the monk of Isle Maree and get counsel from _him_."
It is pleasant to note that the holy father found a way out of the
difficulty. "Marry her, my son," said he, "and build a tower of strength
as her abode on this isle of mine. When you are away, she will be near
me. Old man as I am, the natives respect me for my devotion and my hoary
hairs." The prince's scruples, so honourable to his love, were overcome.
The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and rejoicing. The green
pathways of the isle were thronged with feasters; tents were erected
beside the thickets of oak and holly, and the Loch had little rest from
the plashing of oars. The hermit blessed the couple and blessed the
castle too in which the twain were for a time to reside.
Prince Olaf and his lady were perfectly happy, and the golden hours of
their wedlock sped merrily by. But the hours that were short to them,
were long and dreary to the Norse rovers, lying inactive in the ships
anchored hard by in the waters of Loch Ewe. Murmurs, growing at length
in volume, were muttered by the men as they reflected, day by day, on
the soft uxoriousness of their leader. They wished to be at sea on an
expedition that had been planned aforetime ere the marriage had taken
place. These murmurs reached the prince's ears, and, with many tears, he
tore himself away from the bridal tower to take his place at the head of
the squadron. It was a bitter severance, but tempered by the expectation
of a speedy reunion. The prince took with him two pennons, a black and a
white. "If I am successful in my expedition," he said, "I will display
the white pennon on my galley; if misfortune befalls me (which God
avert) the black will be flying on the prow. Do you come to meet my
returning fleet and let a similar indication be visible on your barge to
tell of your safety or your misfortune. A lover feels his excitement
growing, the nearer he comes to his home: let us abridge, by such a
device, the length of our anxiety."
Love did not make Olaf a worse fighter: rather, indeed, it improved his
prowess. The thought of the fair young wife in the lonely tower,
protected mainly by the sanctity of an old hermit, nerved his arm, and
he speedily got through the expedition with great applause. He swept
everything before him, and turned homeward in the expectation of a
cordial and meet welcome. During his absence, the lady had been
fretting. Finally, as the days passed, she became downright angry. "He
is neglecting me," she cried; "he goes away from my arms to the society
of rough seamen. I am a mere bauble, a plaything for his leisure. He is
tired of me, and perhaps on some distant coast he is dallying with a
newer sweetheart. But I will try his heart. When I hear of his
homecoming, I will go forth on my barge and have the black flag of
desolation flying from the prow. In this way I may obtain some hint of
his real feelings."
Olaf came homeward in great glee, and on entering Loch Ewe from the
outer sea, the white pennon of success flapped gaily in the wind. The
princess, on the other hand, let prepare her boat, and, clothed in the
weeds of death, lay down on the deck, while simulated sobs of woe and
lamentation were raised by all her attendants. Slowly the boat, with its
ill-omened signal, moved to meet the conquering hero. Olaf, the
impetuous, was chilled to the heart, when he saw what he thought the
sure indication of his lady's misfortune. What a sight met his eyes when
he leapt on board! The princess stretched out in apparent death, and
robed in the garments of the grave! He could not endure the torment and
disillusion. He drove a dirk into his bosom with such passionate might
that he fell down, bereft of life, mighty and mightily fallen, on the
deck beside her.
She had not expected such a tragic conclusion to her blamable artifice.
Remorse, of course, got hold of her, and drawing the gory weapon from
her dead lord's breast, she plunged it into her own. Too late was she
convinced of his true love for her: she had only one duty, and that was
to die with him. It is said in the legend that her life was not extinct
when the barge, with its weird freight, returned to the hermit's isle.
The old man, holding in his quaking hand the cross before her dying
eyes, strove to comfort her somewhat as her blood ebbed quickly away.
"The bodies of the unhappy pair," says Mr. Dixon, "were buried within
the inclosure on the island, beneath the shade of the sacred hollies;
they were laid with their feet towards each other, and smooth stones
with outlines of mediæval crosses were placed over the graves, and there
they remain to this day. A few stones still indicate the site of the
hermit's cell, and a considerable mound marks where the tower stood."
The last time I stood beside the little pier on Loch Maree, I noticed
many indications of the advent of southern tourists. Empty bottles were
floating on the waves, and the tiny steamer that plies on the loch was
getting ready for the summer traffic. Visitors from the Lowlands do not
suspect that such tales as I have narrated still live on the lips of the
Gairloch natives, and help to pass the hours at many an evening reunion.
How the centuries meet in such nooks of Ross! Steamers on Loch Maree,
and Olaf's cross still standing on the hermit's isle! The driver of the
mail-coach from Achnasheen to Gairloch will discuss creeds and schisms
with you, and tell you he does not believe in modern religious
developments at all; anon, as the coach passes the Gairloch Church, he
will point with extended whip to a grassy hollow on the left, and say:
"That is where the Free Church used to have its open-air Communion
Service: the place is called _Leabaidh na Ba Bhàine_, because Fingal
scooped it out as a bed where his white cow might calve." "But did
Fingal lodge in this neighbourhood?" you ask. "Oh yes, he did whatever,"
the driver will reply, "and the best proof of it is, that if you go to
the north end of Loch Maree, you will see the _sweetheart's
stepping-stones_, placed there by Fingal to keep his feet dry when he
went that way to court Malvina."
A LAIRD WHO HAD SEEN A FAIRY.
Bailie Nicol Jarvie, whom we all know so well, confessed that when he
heard the wild stories of the North, he felt his blood tingle and his
pulses leap. This fact, which as a sober man of business he felt bound
to apologize for, was probably due to heredity, his mother having been a
Macgregor. The Bailie lived at a time when rumours of witchcraft and
fairydom were more common than now, and when there was less
dissemination of Scripture truth. It is a saying in some parts of the
North that the profuse spread of the Shorter Catechism has been the
means of driving witches and fairies out of their old haunts. For my own
part, I know of nothing more likely to make them decamp.[28]
I was lucky enough to meet a gentleman who declared, not with an oath,
but with a _pretty strong_ asseveration, that he had once seen a fairy.
It was in a railway train that I knit conversation with him. He was a
kilted country squire, tall, thin, and soulful: on his head was a
glengarry with a pair of flying ribbons. He spoke in rapt sentences, as
if he were looking on a vision. This is the substance of his remarks:--
One autumn morning, when the world lay fair
Under the radiant blue, I musing lay
By a green knoll, beside a rippling bay,
When, suddenly, gliding through the silent air,
A green-clad apparition, wrinkled, spare,
Angry, and grieving, passed along the way
Before me for a moment's space. The fay
Was old and did not see me lying there.
I grieved to see her sob in fretful mood,
And often since I marvel in my mind
What grievous heart-pang drove her from the wood
To ease her heart away from her own kind.
Strange, that these tiny, soulless beings should,
Like us, be grieved and be with passion blind!
These are the words of a man who speaks with conviction. I ought to
mention that, ecclesiastically (and I hope in other ways, too,) he was a
Moderate. Two things annoyed him greatly: (1) that the fairy did not
deign to look at him; (2) that nobody but his little grand-daughter of
eight would believe he had seen a fairy at all. "Why," he said, "I could
draw that fairy now, if I had pencil and paper. I see her as plain as I
see you. _Her little bosom was heaving, and she wore a necklace of
twisted corn-stalks. I am sorry I did not offer her some refreshment._"
[28] A very similar account is given, of the dearth of the little
folk in England, by the poet Chaucer; only, that eminent writer
declares that the phenomenon is due to the zeal and prayers of
the monks and begging-friars, who paced about the country
muttering blessings and exorcistic paragraphs.
TALES FROM LOCH BROOM.
The enquirer will find a specially abundant crop of old stories if he
stays long on Loch Broom side. The bard of Ullapool, Mr. Roderick
Mackenzie, has made an excellent collection of romantic incidents
associated with the neighbourhood, and has told them in a very quaint
and effective fashion. From his collection I now cite a specimen or two.
I by no means recommend them as reading for the small hours of the
morning.
THE DANCE OF DEATH.
Three young fellows belonging to Strathmore, in the parish of Loch
Broom, were returning from the Low Country, where they had been living
for some time. It was long before the days of Watt and Macadam; roads
were not good, progress was slow, and rain was frequent. When they, in
the final lap of their journey, arrived at the green hillside of
Lochdrom, the weather was extremely inclement. Seeing a commodious
shieling on the braeface, the young men entered, and one of them, with
the object of driving dull care away, struck up a lightsome tune on his
pipes. His two comrades at once began to fling their legs about and
caper merrily. Soon, having succeeded in dancing themselves dry, they
all agreed that female partners would be a great acquisition. The wish
was at once gratified. Three women mysteriously glided into the
shieling, and the dancing began in earnest. One of the women stood close
by the piper, while the other two skipped about, with their partners,
all round the building. Outside it thundered and lightened in terrific
fashion. Tired and sweating, the two couples were at length fain to
stop, and they sat down to rest on seats of turf and heather. The piper
stopped too: he felt some malign influence coming over him; he was
certain some devilish deed was a-doing. Stealing a glance at his two
friends, he perceived that they were both stark dead, and that the two
infernal huzzies were smiling a hideous smile of triumph. Action, he
felt, was immediately necessary: he flung the still groaning bagpipes
full in the face of the witch near him, stunned her thus for an instant,
and with one wild leap cleared the threshold. And now began a hot race
and hot pursuit. Like another Tam o' Shanter, but without the mare, the
piper sped over the moor and through the rain, plying a foot as good as
wings. Not till they came in sight of the clachan of Fasagrianach, did
the witches relinquish the chase. The exhausted piper had a sad tale to
tell to the mothers of his two hapless friends. Next day a company of
mourners went to the scene of the infernal dance, and, amid much
mourning, they sang a weird wail with the sad refrain, _Airidh mo
Dhubhaich_, which, being interpreted, means "Shieling of my Sorrow."
Let me give another tale, but of less sombre issue, culled from the
folk-lore of the same locality.
THE KILDONAN MIDWIFE.
A woman living at Kildonan, on the north shore of Little Loch Broom, and
exercising the useful profession of howdie, or midwife, had been
summoned to attend a case at Keppoch. She did not arrive at her
destination, although she left home after telling her neighbours where
she was going. It was on Christmas eve that Fair Sarah, as she was
called, left Kildonan, and for the space of an entire year, not a word,
good or bad, was heard of her. Search parties were organized, but all to
no purpose. Exactly twelve months after her disappearance--the next
Christmas eve, namely--back came the errant midwife to her home, not a
hair the worse for her long absence. She was immensely astonished to
find she had been so long away, her own impression being that only an
hour or two had elapsed. It was evident to all the natives of Kildonan
that Fair Sarah had been among the fairies, in whose company, as every
one knows, months and years slip past as quickly as hours and days.
Sarah was asked to speak out and tell her experiences. "It seems to me,"
said the flustered howdie, "that it was but last night that I left for
Keppoch. Just as I passed the White Knoll, between Strathmore and
Strathbeg, I came upon a company of little folk, who would have me with
them, right reason or none. I accepted their hospitality, and what
drinking, skipping, revelry, and glee my eyes beheld! At last I grew
sick of their cantrips and capers. Remembering I was a Christian and a
communicant, _I blessed myself in the name of the Glorious Trinity_,
with the result that I was unceremoniously bundled out of the place."
The White Knoll had long had the repute of harbouring fairies; Sarah's
experiences put the matter beyond all doubt. That worthy female
continued to ply her vocation for many years after, with unvarying
dexterity and signal success. She was certainly a more prosperous woman
after her year's excursion into Fairy-land.
THE MAGIC HERRING.
There is an interesting legend told of the device by which shoals of
herring were first induced to come into Loch Broom.
It seems that long ago (the precise date is unessential) the lochs round
the island of Lewis were invariably, at the herring season, visited by
magnificent shoals of fish, while not a tail was ever seen to twinkle in
the spacious waters of Loch Broom. Abundance on one side of the Minch,
destitution (for no earthly or apparent reason) on the other! After
mature consideration, the dwellers by Loch Broom came to the conclusion
that the anomaly could only be explained by the malignant operation of
the Lews witches. Query: How best neutralise the spells of these partial
harridans? A remedy, both unique and effective, was at length devised. A
silver herring was made and given into the hands of a sturdy crew, who
set sail with it over the water to Lewis. On arriving there, the men
partook of an adequate amount of refreshment, let down the silver fish
(attached to a cord) among the jostling shoals in one of the lochs, and
then, with the metallic animal trailing in the sea behind them, they
turned the prow of the boat in the direction of home. The ruse was
successful beyond all belief: glimmering clouds of phosphorence followed
through the seas below in the wake of the boat and its silver lure.
Under the stars of night, in all the rapture of excitement and success,
the Loch Broom fishers led the droves of herring right up to the
farthest reach of their loch. The metallic herring was then allowed to
sink to the bottom: there it remains, and so long as it is there, an
abundant harvest of the deep will be the portion of the resourceful
toilers of these shores. Perhaps I ought to mention that the famous boat
which did the feat was painted black on one side and red on the other. I
am not sufficiently versed in the niceties of _grammarye_ to be able to
render a reason for this piebald device.
Of late years, as I have been told, the prosperity of Ullapool is not as
high as it was. Can it be that the Lews witches are at their old tricks
again? Or has the silver herring been borne, by the wash of retreating
surges, out into the Hebridean deep. Every visitor who walks through the
sea-facing, white-washed little town, must be struck by the silence of
the streets and the utter lack of business animation.
TAISCH.
The most interesting place in the island of Skye is, beyond question,
the neighbourhood of Dunvegan. It was of surly, superstitious,
loyal-hearted Samuel Johnson that I chiefly thought when I leapt out of
the trap that landed me at the Hotel of Dunvegan, for I had just been
reading his famous _Journey_, with its diverting remarks on
second-sight. It would not, I confess, have surprised me over much, in
my tired and wind-beaten condition, to see the Doctor and the Auchinleck
laird, walking arm in arm along the road. I should have put it down to a
kind of inverted _taisch_, certainly to nothing stronger.
It may surprise many southerners to know that the belief in _taisch_ is
not by any means extinct. I have met educated Skyemen who firmly
believed in the mysterious visual gifts of the seventh son of a seventh
son. In old days, the Highlanders were wont to attribute the gift to
none but those of an austere and devout cast, who, living a solitary
life in the eye of nature, were thought to be specially prepared for
receiving supernatural impressions. I am afraid the vast majority of
_taisch_ tales are dreadful nonsense. Mr. MacCulloch, in his recent work
on Skye, has usefully summarized the various types of second-sight as
expounded by the very credulous Macleod of Hamera: (1) The seer is aware
of a phantom winding-sheet enwrapping the doomed person; (2) he may see
the corpse of some one still in life; (3) he may behold a drowning or
accidental death; (4) he may hear noises as of a coffin being hammered;
(5) he may see a living person dwindle to the size of a child, and anon
expand to normal bulk. As Johnson remarks, many of the seers declared
themselves poignantly afflicted by what they saw. Aubrey tells of a
clairvoyant who asked the presbytery to pray that the gift (or curse)
might be taken away. Instant prayer removed the obsession.
The extraordinary futility and droll language of the sentences uttered
by some of the seers are very mirth-provoking. Here are one or two
prophecies of the Brahan Seer:--
"The heir of the Mackenzies will take
A white rook out of the wood,
And will take a wife from a music-house
With his people against him.
And the heir will be great
In deeds, and as an orator,
When the Pope in Rome
Will be cast off his throne,
Over opposite Creagh-a'-chon
Will dwell a little lean tailor," etc.
The following is excellent: "_When the big-thumbed sheriff-officer and
the blind man of the twenty-four fingers shall be together in Barra,
Macneill may be making ready for the flitting._" It is said that the
same seer prophesied thus of the Strathpeffer wells: "The day will come
when this disagreeable spring, with thick-crusted surface and unpleasant
smell, shall be put under lock and key, so great will be the crowd of
people pressing to drink the waters."
Belief in clairvoyance and prophecy was quite common among the Lowland
Covenanters; and I believe _Peden's Prophecies_ may still be found among
the lumber of the book-shops. An old lady, in Irvine, once repeated to
me the following couplet, as having been uttered by Peden:--
"Between Segton and the sea
A bloody battle there shall be."
Now, as Segton is the old name for Kilwinning, it would seem that the
locale of the battle (probably, as the lady, indeed, thought, the battle
of Armageddon) will be _in the immediate neighbourhood of the site at
present occupied by Nobell's Dynamite Factory_.
ANTIQUITIES OF DUNVEGAN.
_Taisch_ has taken me a long way from Dunvegan, of which I meant to say
something. No souvenir is to me more delicious than that of some days
spent there, on one of which I visited the fine old castle of the
Macleods, stablished on its rocks, and filled with romance from base to
topmost turret. On the landward side are lawns, flowers, and abundance
of eye-gladdening leafage, while, seaward, there is the unspeakable
glory of isle-dotted loch and distant sea. By the kindness of Macleod of
Macleod (you must not call that grand and most genial gentleman by any
more garish title: he is _the_ Macleod; he typifies the clan--that is
his highest glory), I visited the delightful old castle and saw every
room, relic, and dirk of importance. What gave me the most pleasure was
the illuminating commentary of Macleod himself and of his charming
daughters. One cannot hear the history of some of the rooms without a
feeling of terror. In the drawing-room of the castle (the room now used
for prayers, and well it may be,) a horrible outrage was planned to take
place by Black Ian, a usurping chief. The atrocious deed happened in the
middle of the sixteenth century, and was due to Ian's fear that the
Campbells, who had landed with a large force in Skye, would expel him
from Dunvegan castle. Ian, pretending that he wished to discuss terms,
invited eleven of the leading Campbells to a banquet. At table, Macleods
and Campbells were seated side by side; and, at a given signal, which
consisted in placing a cup of blood in front of each guest, all the
Campbells were simultaneously stabbed to death, each Macleod
exterminating his man. I was glad to get out of that drawing-room.
The main relics in the castle are: (1) The Fairy Flag; (2) Rory Mor's
Drinking-horn; and (3) the Dunvegan Cup.
It is not as well known as it should be that one of the mediæval chiefs
of the Macleods married a fairy. This dainty little woman presented her
lord with a yellow silk flag, dotted here and there with red spots. The
virtue of the flag, she told him, resided in its efficacy to save the
chief of the Macleods on three different occasions. After the third
employment of the flag, it would flutter away to fairy-land. The flag
has twice saved a chief out of a particularly awkward predicament, and
it is still in Dunvegan, though sadly grimed and rent. The present
chief, who has served his country nobly, is quite fit, in soldierly
fashion, to grapple single-handed with any difficulty he may encounter;
but he is in hopes that the flag may yield its residual virtue to the
contentment of some one or other of his successors.
Rory Mor's drinking-horn, which could contain, I should think, between
two and three bottles of wine, is an interesting indication of
pre-Reformation thirst. Of old, each chief as he came of age, was
expected to drink off its contents at one draught as a proof that he had
arrived at years of discretion.
The cup is made of dark wood, and is finely adorned with silver work. It
is dated 1493, and contains a Latin inscription.
The Fairy Tower in Dunvegan Castle contains the room in which Dr.
Johnson and Sir Walter Scott slept during their respective visits to the
castle. The burly lexicographer would have little wind left for
argument after he had toiled up the steep and narrow spiral stairway
leading to the room. Formerly, so the smiling chief told me, the young
lady chosen by the Macleod to be his wife, had to pass a night alone in
this haunted chamber, in order that the fairies might have an
opportunity of seeing her, and formally approving the choice.
MISCELLANEOUS TERRORS.
He who investigates Celtic demonology will hear a good deal about a
gruesome and insidious animal called the _Water Horse_. This fell beast,
though able at need to transform itself into the shape of a human being,
is normally like a horse, though much bulkier and fiercer. Its usual
abode is in the deep lochs, but it may occasionally be seen, with wreck
or sea-weed clinging to its hoof or mane, feeding on the hill-side among
earthly horses. The detestable feature about the brute is its fondness
for human beings. There is no hope for any man, woman, or child, who
gets upon its back: at a furious gallop, the animal bounds off by the
nearest road to the loch, and leaps under the waves to devour its prey.
Foals of a specially vicious turn are believed to have this brute for
their sire: in some such way the furious nature of the horse called
"Kelpy" in George Macdonald's story might be explained.
Certain lochs in Skye are believed to harbour a variant terror, the
water-bull. Loch Morar, on the mainland, contains a huge mystic bogie,
undefined in shape, but of terrible malignity. I have heard too, in
Uist, of a phantom dog, with eyes of glede and unearthly bark, that
frequents the entrance to the old wayside burying-ground. No driver,
unless fortified by several glasses, will drive you that way after dark.
"Duncan," said a commercial traveller to a driver, "I'll have to go to
Gruiginish farm to-night. Have everything ready at 8.30."
"I can't do that, Mr. Smith; it'll be dark."
"But you have lamps, Duncan."
"Yes, yes, but I can't go. You have to pass the old cemetery."
"I know that, but I must attend to my business. What ails you at the
cemetery?"
"There's the dog at the gate, the dog with the eyes of burning coal.
What is he doing there? And the wee man inside, _What is he doing
there?_"
"I don't know what he's doing, but to Gruiginish this night I must go.
Do you think a glass of _forked lightning_ would do you any good?"
"Well, it might help."
In spite of more than one glass of forked lightning, poor Duncan was in
a terrible state of excitement when the cemetery was approached. He kept
his head averted, and clutched the reins so nervously that the vehicle
was in imminent danger of being upset.
It is a beautiful saying of Goldsmith that innocently to amuse the
imagination in this dream of life is wisdom. Judged by this standard,
the imaginative operations taking place in Duncan's brain, considering
their effect on his happiness, cannot be pronounced either innocent or
wise. To add ideal terrors to the prosaic hardships of a place like Uist
is the very height of folly. And yet it is precisely in such bare and
rough regions where man has to fight with nature as with a constant
foe, that the unseen powers are believed to be most terrible. The
_lutin_ of the smiling land of France is a mere capering trickster, and
the "lubber fiend" of Milton's poem is pictured as an unpaid adjunct of
the dairy. Duncan's "wee man up on the hill-side" is a permanent and
unspeakable horror of the night. "_What is he doing there?_"[29]
[29] Collins's long _Ode on Popular Superstitions in the
Highlands of Scotland_, addressed to Home, author of _Douglas_,
contains some excellent rhetorical passages. Speaking of the
second-sighted seer, Collins represents him as one who
"In the _depth of Uist's dark forest_ dwells."
We may say of Uist what Lord Rosebery said of Caithness, that it
is _entirely delivered from the contaminating influence of
foliage_. The air one breathes there does not suffer
deterioration by coming through any such _dark forest_ as Collins
mentions: it blows from the Atlantic in an absolutely pure and
strong condition.
ST. KILDA.
St. Kilda, the lonely and precipitous island, forty miles west of Lewis,
which Boswell at one time thought of buying, has now, like so many other
islands of the West, a well-furnished library from Paisley. I hope the
minister of the place encourages the reading of the books, and does
everything in his power to broaden the religious views of the people by
healthy secular literature. A luckless inspector of schools crossed over
once to examine the school of this island. His boat arrived late on
Saturday, and was to leave again early on Monday. To suit his own
convenience, the greatly-daring official proposed to examine the
scholars on Sunday. Never was their such indignation among the
islanders. What! examine the school on the first day of the week! Did
the unhappy man wish the wrath of Heaven to fall in fire and brimstone
on the island? The inspector was angrily hooted and denounced. Still, as
he must needs return by his steamer, the islanders agreed to send their
children immediately after Sunday was over, _i.e._, _the bairns were
assembled at midnight_, and parts of speech were bandied about then in
the visible darkness of the tiny school.
St. Kilda belongs to the Macleod, and every spring the factor goes over
to collect the rents. All winter the island is isolated, and has no
outer news save, perhaps, from some stray Aberdeen trawler. For twenty
years the factor went over in a sailing-boat belonging to the chief, but
by some mishap, in which no lives were lost, this boat was
ill-manoeuvred and, with sails full-set, was engulfed in a whirlpool.
He now goes over in the steamer.
The first question propounded to the factor is this: "_Has there been
war anywhere, my dear?_" If the answer is "Yes," a great joy is visible
on every face. "_That's good, that's good: tell us all about it._"
Having heard all about the war, the natives show an eagerness for
sweets, of which they are inordinately fond.
The natives are expert cragsmen, and much of their time is occupied in
collecting birds' feathers. The oil of the solan goose is also a source
of wealth. Rough tweeds are now woven in many of the houses. The factor
informed me that, for some unknown reason, everything that comes from
the island is impregnated with a heavy odour that is most disagreeable.
Means have been tried to neutralise this smell, but success is only for
a time: by and by the odour returns, as bad as ever, to fabric and
feather. Merchants, both at home and abroad, are loath to purchase such
unfragrant wares.
In Dunvegan Castle are to be seen several of the little letter-boats
employed by the St. Kildeans to convey news to Scotland in the winter
months. The tide is watched, and the letter-boat cast into the sea.
Usually the message is washed ashore on some part of the Long Island.
Natural superstition supplements, in a small degree, the lack of mails:
when the islanders, for example, hear _the notes of the cuckoo_, they
are convinced that the Macleod is dead. Happily the cuckoo is rarely
heard breaking the silence of the seas so far west.
LADY GRANGE.
To this day there are in the possession of the Macleod family certain
old accounts of the years 1744 and 1745, that recall one of the most
diabolical and continuous pieces of cruelty recorded in history. I refer
to the accounts paid in these years to the Laird of Macleod for the
board and burial of Lady Grange. No one who knows the history of that
ill-fated lady can look at these time-stained documents without a
knocking of the seated heart at the ribs.
Everyone who has enjoyed the light and graceful poetry of Ovid, has
sighed over the relegation of that city man to the barbarous horrors of
the Black Sea. As Gibbon exquisitely phrases it: "The tender Ovid,
after a youth spent in the enjoyment of wealth and luxury, was condemned
to a hopeless exile on the frozen banks of the Danube, where he was
exposed without remorse to those fierce denizens of the desert with
whose stern spirits he feared that his gentle shade might hereafter be
confounded." The banishment of Lady Grange to St. Kilda, in 1734, by her
rascally husband, is to me fully as pathetic as Ovid's expatriation to
Tomi. She, a refined and beautiful woman, the light of Edinburgh
drawing-rooms, was hustled off to a lonely rock and left remorselessly
to pine there amid the squalls. Let me briefly summarise this affecting
history.
Lord Grange, a Scottish judge of strong Jacobite leanings, was known by
his Lady to be concerned in a plot, along with Lovat, Mar, and others,
to bring back the Pretender. This was in the year 1730. Stung in her
wifely pride by her husband's ill-treatment and licentiousness, she
openly threatened to expose his treason. To prevent such exposure,
Grange caused his wife to be kidnapped and clandestinely conveyed first
to a small island off North Uist, and subsequently to St. Kilda. In the
latter island, no one could speak any English except the catechist, and
here for seven years this polished society dame lived amid the blasts
and the screaming ocean-fowl, lacking even the privilege, which Ovid
enjoyed, of sending letters to child or friend. In 1741, when the
catechist left the island, she made him bearer of letters to her
law-agent, Hope of Rankeillor. Hope fitted out a sloop, with twenty-five
armed men on board, and set out for St. Kilda to rescue the lady.
Macleod, who was, of course, privy to her detention, at once removed her
to Skye, and Hope's expedition came to nothing. The poor woman, worn out
with sorrow and suffering, died in 1745, a helpless imbecile!
The story, which throws a lurid light on the savagery of the eighteenth
century, and which, to my thinking, surpasses in pathos anything
occurring in fiction, was long disbelieved. But it was only too true. It
is said that ill-luck pursued the lady even after death, and that her
funeral was a miserable parody. A coffin filled with stones and turf was
interred, before a large crowd, in the churchyard of Duirinish, the real
remains being, with maimed rites or none at all, secretly buried
elsewhere.
It is noteworthy that Lady Grange died in 1745, the year when Prince
Charlie's hopes were shattered on Culloden Moor. Like her, he too had
the ill-luck to be a hopeless wanderer in the Misty Isle.
PIERLESS TIREE.
I regret to say that I did not stay long enough in the island of Tiree
to add to my store of legends, and yet, I went there with a capacious
note-book and excellent intentions. What is more, I read from beginning
to end, Dr. Erskine Beveridge's detailed book on the island, and could
have passed an examination on semi-brochs, rock-forts, marsh duns,
islet-forts, sandhill dwellings, and prehistoric burial-sites. I steeped
myself so thoroughly in the _minutiae_ of pre-Reformation churches, that
I almost forgot to go to the modern ones. Tiree took hold of me
completely, and so did the Norse invaders of the Hebrides--men like
Ketil Flatnose, Magnus Barelegs, Hako, and Somerled. I got a pocket map
arranged for my own use (copied from Dr. Beveridge's large one) with a
red cross at all the sites of ancient forts. It was my fond hope, for
pride attends us still, that I might find some inaccuracy in Dr.
Beveridge's book, and, from measurements on the spot, be able to
contradict some of his statements. But what are the hopes of man! I did
not know that predestination, in the form of dirty weather, was working
against me, and was about to quench all my interest in _duns_. On
September 5th, 1907, I determined to take Dr. Beveridge's measurements
for granted.
On that day, in fact, I was for some time under the impression that my
last lecture had been delivered. It was on the way between Coll and
Tiree. The gale was a furious one and, combined with the greasy odours
of the _Fingal_, was enough to sicken a practised seafarer. I did notice
that some of the crew were prostrated, so that there was some excuse for
a landsman not being proof against Neptune's dandling. So low, exposed,
and precarious is the shore at Scarinish, that, often for weeks, the
ferrymen dare not venture out to the steamer for passengers. I asked one
of the _Fingal_ men if there was any chance of being landed. He was a
cruel cynic, and said: "No, not to-day. The sea is too wild for the
ferry to come out. We'll go right across to Bunessan in Mull, so prepare
for three more hours' shaking. You won't forget the _Dutchman's Cap_
for the rest of your life." Then with a remark addressed to the
Creator, he added: "_There's the ferryboat after all; she's racing over
the water like a stag._"
He was right: the lugsail was careering out to us and came alongside at
length, and, after fearful trouble, got fastened to the _Fingal_.
Sometimes the ferryboat was even with our deck, sometimes far above it,
sometimes fifteen feet below. It looked like certain death to leap into
that lugsail.
I hesitated, and shouted to the captain: "Is it safe to jump?"
He replied, "I wish to Tophet I had the chance."
I watched for the next opportunity of the ferryboat and the _Fingal_
being approximately on the same plane, and leaped into the arms of a
boatman.
Other passengers followed,--men, women, even babies. Then came the
mails; and finally, live stock. I remember being struck on the mouth by
a sheep heaved into the boat by the above-mentioned cynic. "Come, come,
that's enough, keep the rest; let us be off," shouted a boatman.
Everybody was wet to the skin: the wind was howling; the women weeping;
and the babies were mixed up with the sheep.
Once clear of the _Fingal_, the adroit ferrymen did their duty well, and
in less than ten minutes we were all landed. A crowd of islanders were
waiting to lift us out. All agreed that it had been a _close shave_.
Such was my introduction to _Pierless Tiree_.
I did not stay long enough in the island to measure brochs, but quite
long enough to experience the good-will and kindliness of the natives.
The houses are solid and substantial, the inhabitants strong and
muscular. Great gales from the Atlantic blow almost continually, sweep
up the sand in clouds, and prevent any trees from taking root. I did not
see much poverty with my own eyes, but the ministers all assured me
there was a great deal. Maize, more than oatmeal, is the cereal used for
porridge. For supplementary information, Dr. Beveridge's admirable and
accurate work may be consulted.
LOCHBUIE IN MULL.
The great straggling island of Mull, so full of scenery, romance, and
song, still awaits its historian. Few, who have ever visited the noble
isle, will refuse to say with Macphail, the bard of Torosay:
"O the island of Mull is an isle of delight
With the wave on the shore and the sun on the height,
And the breeze on the hills and the blast on the Bens,
And the old green woods and the old grassy glens."
The gem of the island is undoubtedly the haven of Lochbuie, one of the
choicest nooks in insular Scotland. The modern mansion, which is but a
step or two from the well-preserved castle of olden times, is quite near
the shore, and looks straight south over the Atlantic to the island of
Colonsay. The entire surroundings are a delight to the eye: great
towering mountains behind, the sea in front, and in the space between,
green lawns, rocks, gorse, and many-tinted garden-plots.
The MacLaines of Lochbuie trace their descent from the great Gillean of
the Battle-axe, a redoubtable warrior who flourished his weapon to some
purpose in the reign of Alexander III. But the most notorious of all
the MacLaines is _Ewen of the Little Head_, who died in battle, and
thereafter assumed the rôle of family ghost. Before the death of any of
his race, this phantom-warrior gallops along the sea-beach near the
castle, announcing the event by cries and loud lamentations. The doctor,
who attended the present chief's mother, declares that, while sitting
beside her bed during the silent watches of the night, he heard the
noise of the spectral horse just before the old lady's decease. The
natives of Mull can describe the ghost and horse with accurate detail.
The horse is a small, hardy, sure-footed animal of brown colour, and
Ewen is known by the smallness of his head, and by a long floating
mantle of green. He performed a weird and long-continued gallop round
the bay in 1815, before the news of the valiant Sir Archibald MacLaine's
death became known by official despatch from the seat of war.
Lochbuie, like so many other places in Scotland, has its Piper's Cave.
There is a remarkable similarity in all such tales--diversified,
however, by quaint local additions. MacLaine's piper, a foolhardy man,
determined once to test the allegation that a certain cave on Lochbuie
was connected with another cave at Pennygown on the Sound of Mull.
Attired in his official costume and having his dog at his heels, he
entered the cave, blowing his pipes triumphantly. Those above, on the
hills, were able to make out his line of passage by the sound of the
music. At a certain point the pipes ceased, and nevermore did the piper
come up to the shores of light. The dog got to the cave of Pennygown--a
limp and hairless parody of its former self.
Browning, in his "Pied Piper of Hamelin," has but poetised one version
of a world-wide tale. Often, in the Highland tales, it is money the
piper is after. There is a deep cave near Melvaig, in Wester Ross, into
which a piper is said to have led a band of men in search of gold, and
never returned. In this case the pipe-music is said to have continued
for years--some natives even asserting that it may be heard still by
those who have ears to hear.
In spite of all the legendary lore connected with the family of the
MacLaines, the chief interest of Lochbuie for a lover of literature,
centres round the visit of Boswell and Johnson. In one of the rooms of
the castle there is a fine portrait of Johnson. On looking at it, my
mind reverted to the amusing question addressed to the sage by the
"bluff, comely, noisy old gentleman" who was the laird of Lochbuie in
1773: "Are you of the Johnstons of Glencro or of Ardnamurchan?" "Dr.
Johnson," says Boswell, "gave him a significant look, but made no
answer; and I told Lochbuie that he was not Johnston, but Johnson, and
that he was an Englishman."
I regret to say that the great war saddle, which was in Lochbuie's
possession in 1773, and which Boswell did not see because the young
laird had taken it to Falkirk with a drove of black cattle, is no longer
in the island: somebody took it to America, and forgot to bring it
back.
The present laird is greatly beloved by his tenantry. At the lecture I
gave at Lochbuie, he was unable, owing to illness, to take the chair.
His absence was a terrible grief to the people, and the piper of the
family, in a brief speech, alluded in a most touching way to the sorrow
felt by all present.[30]
INVERARAY CASTLE.
Three days after Johnson and his friend left Lochbuie, they were
entertained by the Duke of Argyll in Inveraray Castle. Boswell's
description of the incidents of this visit is one of his finest efforts.
He tells us that Johnson admired the "utter defiance of expense" shown
by the Duke in the building and appointments of the place. Records exist
which show that the masons were paid at the rate of 4½d. a day,
_plus_ a weekly bonus of meal!
It is interesting to note that the Rev. John Macaulay (grandfather of
Lord Macaulay) was one of the ministers of Inveraray in 1773. Boswell
gives him a very high character, but this had no emollient effect on the
great historian, when he came to review _Croker's Edition of Boswell's
Johnson_.
Inveraray Castle is a superb object-lesson in Scotch history. All the
Campbells of note for centuries past are hanging on the walls, from the
old Duke who passed away last, to the squinting Marquis (_Gleed Argyll_
mentioned in the "Bonnie House o' Airlie"), who was beheaded on the
Castle Hill of Edinburgh in 1661. The Duke, who commanded at Sheriffmuir
("when we ran and they ran, and they ran and we ran," etc.) is standing
in his accoutrements of pride, painted by the son of Allan Ramsay:
"Argyll the State's whole thunder, born to wield
And shake alike the Senate and the Field."
Mediæval armour, firelocks from Culloden, flags from a score of
battlefields, mutely suggest the glory and gore of the olden times. It
is impossible to walk through the rooms of such a place without feeling
intimately in touch with the events of the past.
The present hotel is the one in which Johnson and his biographer lodged.
Burns came sixteen years later, and wrote on the pane of his bedroom
window the scandalous epigram on Inveraray so often quoted. The present
Duke (who has perpetrated a fair amount of poetry himself) would give
much of his odd cash to recover that pane, which was cut out some years
ago by a pilfering visitor.[31]
[30] I am inclined to think that the relationship formerly
existing between the Highland chief and the member of his clan
was perfect in its way--a _model_ of class relationship. There
was nothing menial about the clansman's attitude, though he gave
unbounded homage to his lord. At the battle of Inverkeithing, a
clansman and his seven sons gave up their lives to shield from
death their chieftain, Sir Hector Maclean. As the old man saw his
boys fall one after the other, he shouted with glee and pride,
"_Another for Sir Hector!_" until he himself lay, like a true
thane, beside his progeny. Nothing could be finer or more
touching than such a scene.
[31] Burns tells us that when in Inveraray Hotel, he was entirely
neglected by the servants, who gave all their attention to some
gentlemen from the Castle. In our day, the Campbells have shown
contrition by their willingness to admit that Burns was one of
their own clan. Burns's ancestors were, it is said, Campbells of
Taynuilt. Taynuilt means in English, Burnhouse. When the poet's
ancestors emigrated to Forfarshire, they were known as _Campbells
from Burnhouse_. In course of time the appellation was shortened
into Burnhouse simply, and latterly into Burness or
Burns.--Q.E.D.
THE SACRED ISLE.
Wordsworth came to Iona (which also belongs to the Argyll family) in
1833, and wrote four poor sonnets on the sacred isle. This is what he
saw:
"To each voyager
Some ragged child holds up for sale a store
Of wave-worn pebbles, pleading on the shore
Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir."
Owing to its ecclesiastical renown as the cradle of Christianity in
Britain, no island is so much visited as Iona. The audience I addressed
was the most miscellaneous I have ever seen: there were boatmen and
barristers, anglers and artists, curates and crofters, French and
Germans.
The present-day natives seem desirous of keeping up the old reputation
for theology. The boatman who ferries visitors ashore, remarked to me
with pride that his favourite book was one entitled _The Great
Controversy between God and the Devil_, a book with which I was, and am
still, unacquainted.
Dr. Johnson's remarks on Iona remain the most eloquent tribute to the
island. He never wrote anything finer. All the children in the Iona
school should be made to learn the piece by heart.[32]
It is most gratifying to think that Christianity has been the great
purifying force in Europe. The introduction of Christianity into the
world must be reckoned as the most revolutionary event of history.
Nothing was ever more needed. To one who knows the morality of the most
brilliant society of the Greeks and Romans, there is no need to extol
the pure and lofty moral tone of Jesus of Nazareth. But those who have
not read the masterpieces of ancient art, with their mingled beauty and
foulness, may be assured that literature owes more to Christianity than
has ever yet been told. With Christianity a great healthy breeze swept
over the world. Men became ashamed of wallowing in the mire. An ideal
was raised up before them for their worship and imitation. The old Adam
and his deeds needed stern repression after the wild iniquities of the
effete society of imperial Rome. The spirit needed to curb the flesh,
literature needed to be cleansed. We, living to-day and nursed on the
accumulated tradition of so many anterior Christian centuries, are
sometimes disposed to minimise the debt we owe, in pure and simple
morality, to the teachings of the New Testament. I find it impossible to
imagine what the world would be without these teachings. They renewed
the world, they made it do penance for its sins, they made advance
practicable. An entirely retrograde movement is impossible when once man
is indoctrinated with a grand ideal.
[32] Boswell's religious instincts come well out in his account
of the visit to Iona. Two of his descendants, Messrs. Albert and
James Boswell, devoted themselves entirely to religion, and were
well known in Ayrshire, thirty years ago, as zealous evangelists.
These two gentlemen went on a preaching campaign through the
northern islands, and did much highly appreciated philanthropic
and religious work there. They were members of the sect called
Plymouth Brethren.
APPIN.
In this chapter (as, indeed, in all the others) I am rummaging among my
souvenirs for materials that are in some way noteworthy. It is utterly
impossible to exhaust the romance and glamour of the Highlands. Those
who go regularly North are certain to bring back, on each occasion, a
host of interesting memories. "Swift as a weaver's shuttle fly our
years": the chief difficulty is to jot down all that one sees and hears.
On the occasion of my second visit to Appin, I stayed in the fine new
hotel built on the eminence called Druim-an-t-Sealbhain. The landlord is
a man of great wit and reading, and with him I had some enjoyable hours
of miscellaneous conversation. Mr. Macdonald (for that is his name) has
an excellent knowledge of the Celtic dialects, has translated into
Gaelic verse some of the best-known poems of Burns, Tannahill, and
Byron, and is extremely clever at retailing the legendary tales that
still go rumouring along the Strath of Appin. He has also a good
knowledge of English literature, and told me certain details regarding
Scott and Wordsworth which I was pleased to know.
It seems that Sir Walter was at one time tutor in Appin House, and was
in the habit of visiting the cot of an old shepherd, a notorious
_seanachie_, full of romantic lore, for the purpose of hearing, and
writing down, the old man's tales. An oak tree is still pointed out,
under which, it is said, Scott composed part of _The Lord of the Isles_.
Appin is not very far from the castles of Dunollie and Dunstaffnage,
which Sir Walter wrought skilfully into the texture of his tales.
The most interesting item mentioned by Mr. Macdonald had reference to
the visit of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in the year
1803. Everyone who has read the life of the great poet of Nature knows
the charming description of the district contained in one of his
sister's letters. "We arrived," she says, "at Port-na-croish. It is a
small village--a few huts and an indifferent inn, by the side of the
loch; ordered a fowl for dinner, had a fire lighted, and went a few
steps from the door up the road, and turning aside into a field, stood
at the top of a low eminence, from which, looking down the loch to the
sea through a long vista of hills and mountains, _we beheld one of the
most delightful prospects that, even when we dream of fairer worlds than
this, it is possible to conceive in our hearts_." Here follows a
description so exquisite of the sea-scenery and the Morven Hills, that
it deserves to be classed with the finest examples of word-painting in
the English language.
The new hotel at Appin is built on the low eminence referred to in the
above-cited letter. The name Druim-an-t-Sealbhain is giving way to the
complimentary title of "Dorothy Wordsworth's View." From the front
windows of the hotel, the same calm inland seas, grassy hills, Morven
mists, grim old forts, and intricate communion of land and water, can be
seen precisely as they were seen by the Wordsworths more than a century
ago. The Port-na-croish inn has become a village store: it is well
worthy of note, not merely for the reference in the letter, but for a
fine legend, which I shall now narrate.
MACDONALD'S GRATITUDE.
The first tenant of the inn was a Macdonald of Glencoe, a man between
sixty and seventy at the time of the story, the year 1755 namely. He had
around him a family of stalwart sons, all imbued with intense hatred of
the clan Campbell. The peculiar and fiendish malignity of the terrible
massacre of Glencoe precluded all possibility of forgiveness on the part
of the clan. Highland hospitality has always been a lavish and
magnificent thing, and Colonel Campbell and his assassins had been
treated with exceptional kindness in Glencoe. The bloody outrage, in a
midnight of winter snows, was too terrible a meed of hospitality to be
readily forgotten or forgiven by the Macdonalds. This old innkeeper of
Port-na-croish, then, hated the Campbells with the unquenchable hate
that deep wrongs, done not alone to an individual but to a tribe,
engender in the Celtic soul.
One day a white-bearded wayfarer begged food and shelter in the little
hostel, and in the course of conversation over the meal that was soon
spread on the board for his wants, he let slip an avowal that, in his
youth, as one of Campbell's men, he had taken part in the gruesome
massacre of the "valley of weeping." Without more ado, the landlord
slipped out and posted his sons at the door, with whispered orders to
them that the stranger should be dirked to death on crossing the
threshold of the inn. Returning indoors, old Macdonald, dissimulating
his fell intentions, proceeded to ply the visitor with question upon
question, so as to gain a detailed knowledge of all the incidents of the
weird carnage. Finally he said, "Tell me, Campbell, what part of that
devilish business made the strongest impression on your mind?" "I will
tell you," said the old soldier, "what to me was the outstanding
incident of that night. Towards the close of the massacre, a child's
voice was heard piercingly on the night air--a scream it was, and seemed
to come from no great distance. The captain sent me in the direction of
the sound, bidding me, if the child should be a male Macdonald, to kill
it forthwith; if a girl, to spare. I soon came up to the place whence
the sound proceeded, and saw through the whirling snow, under the
protection of a jutting cliff, a nurse with a boy of four years old,
both of them wailing and shivering with cold. The child was gnawing a
bone and, near by, a dog was crouching. Pity wrung my heart. I drove my
bayonet through the trembling cur, and, going back to the captain,
showed him the bloody steel as a proof that I had obeyed his commands."
The innkeeper, who had been all ears, said: "You, then, were that
soldier?" "I was, indeed," replied the old wanderer. "_And I was that
child!_" said the landlord, "and _your_ life is saved. My sons stand at
the threshold of the inn, ready to fall upon you when you leave. I
countermand the order for your destruction. Here you shall stay, an
honoured guest, till the end of your days, as a recompense for saving my
life on that awful night."
The story goes on to state that the foot-weary Campbell lived for some
years a pensioner in Port-na-croish inn, and was buried at the expense
of the grateful innkeeper. I do not know any story that comes nearer
perfection.
NOTES ON THE TROSSACHS.
The Rev. Mr. Wilson, the cultured and genial minister of the Trossachs,
has recently published a most readable little book on the district he
knows so well. Perhaps no district indeed on the world's surface is so
well known (even to those who have never seen it), as the Trossachs.
Little did Sir Walter suspect, when he penned the stirring iambics of
_The Lady of the Lake_, that he was furnishing materials to the
pedagogue which would be parsed, analysed, and dissected by myriads of
pupils in all the schools of the British Empire. We shall all carry with
us to the grave the leading passages of that romantic lay: the
stag-hunt, the duel at Coilantogle Ford, the whistle that garrisoned the
glen, and the episode of the Fiery Cross. Such lines, we may say, have
gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
Happening to pass Strathyre station in July, 1907, I was requested by a
bright-eyed little Japanese gentleman in the compartment to tell him
where we were. On being informed, he (after casting an eye of pity on
the deplorable stork that is supposed to decorate the drinking-fountain
of the station), began to declaim, in capital English, the passage that
begins--
"Benledi saw the Cross of Fire,
It glanced like lightning up Strathyre,
O'er dale and hill the summons flew,
Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew;
The tear that gathered in his eye
He left the mountain breeze to dry."
Mr. Wilson's book to which I have alluded is a collection of the
impressions written down by eminent visitors to the locality, from
Dorothy Wordsworth to Queen Victoria. Carlyle, who was in Perthshire in
1818, wrote the following note, which, though short, is finely
characteristic of him: "The Trossachs I found really grand and
impressive, Loch Katrine exquisitely so, my first taste of the beautiful
in scenery. Not so, any of us, the dirty, smoky farm-hut at the
entrance, with no provision in it but bad oatcakes and unacceptable
whisky, or the Mrs. Stewart who somewhat royally presided over it, and
dispensed these dainties, expecting to be flattered like an
independency, as well as paid like an innkeeper." The foregoing note, by
itself, is good value for the cost of Mr. Wilson's book (two shillings,
namely), and raises regrets that the author of _Sartor_ did not travel
oftener through the Land of Cakes. (The only other place in the
Highlands where I have heard Carlyle spoken of, is Kyleakin in Skye,
where he was the guest of Lady Ashburton, and where (as the natives
say), the cocks and hens had to be removed out of ear-shot for his
convenience.)
One of Mr. Wilson's stories (contributed by a lady) is apposite at the
present time, when so much is being heard of women's rights. Glengyle, a
district of the Trossachs, was once _entirely ruled_ by a number of
women, who constituted a sort of High Court with women as Judge and
Jury. "The most notorious case which they dealt with, and which probably
led to their downfall through drawing the ridicule of the country upon
them, was a case of horse-stealing. The accused man had been seen riding
furiously away on someone else's horse, and all evidence pointed to his
guilt. To the astonishment of the outsiders, the jury returned a verdict
of 'not guilty,' and the Judge on summing up declared the horse was the
culprit, as it had run away with the man. _She condemned the unfortunate
animal to be hanged, and hanged it was, while the man got off scot
free._"
LOCHFYNE-SIDE.
None of the mainland counties of Scotland can boast of such wonderful
ramifications of sea and loch as the county of Argyll. The present
amiable and cultured head of the Clan Campbell declaimed, with great
applause, at a social gathering not long ago, a fine poem, in which the
beauties of his ancestral shire were floridly--but not
unjustly--elaborated. It would be difficult to over-praise the county of
Argyll, with its splendid sea-board, its rugged and impressive peaks,
and its unrivalled fiords and lakes. Thanks to its proximity to large
centres of population, few counties are so much visited. Its fame, in
our day, is likely to be more widespread than ever, owing to the
graceful and entertaining writings of Mr. Neil Munro, who probably
knows the details of its local history better than any man living, and
who possesses the inimitable art of interesting others in his
delineations of the past. I confess that I feel, personally, as much
interest in the Wars of Lorn as I do in the Siege of Sphacteria, and
that "Glee'd Argyll" seems fully as attractive as Cleon or Brasidas.
Of course, long before Mr. Munro, Loch Fyne had a European reputation,
which it owed to its herring. The Popes of Rome used to eat these
herring in mediæval times, and sent for them _viâ_ Amsterdam or Antwerp.
Orthodox Catholics have always had good judgment in the matter of fish,
and especially the French, who belong to a country which proudly boasts
of being _the eldest daughter of the Church_. For many a generation the
French came annually to Lochgilphead, and bartered their kegs of claret
for barrels of salt herring. The French Revolution, among its many other
effects, put a stop to this trade. War lasted for so many years between
Britain and France, that, at the end of it all, the continental sailors
had forgotten the way to Loch Fyne.
Argyllshire is rich in legends, for many of which no date can be given
except the elastic one _long ago_ or _in byegone times_. Let me cite one
or two of these:--
MACIVORS, MACVICARS, AND MACALLISTERS.
On the road to Kilmartin is a place called the Robber's Den, the
locality of which may be firmly fixed in the tourist's memory by noting
that it is just behind a large distillery. Here, long ago, lived one
Macvicar, whose wife was a Macivor. These names are important, and so
also is that of the Macallisters of Tarbert, who one day stole cattle
belonging to the Macivors. Mrs. Macvicar noticed these Tarbert
scoundrels driving her father's cattle through the glen, and mentioned
the fact to her boy. Young Macvicar followed the robbers, and found them
in a forest feeding joyously on a slain bullock belonging to his
grandfather. As each Macallister finished picking a bone, he would throw
it violently against a big stone, remarking at the same time, with a
chuckle: "_If a Macivor were here, that's how I would treat him_." The
boy, from his hiding-place in the foliage, threw a stone and struck one
of the feasters. The injured man blamed one of his own clansmen, and,
after much recrimination, a free fight of Macallisters was the result.
During the mêlée, the boy slunk off and told his mother's family what
was happening. The Macivors, in a furious and determined band, soon fell
upon their disordered foes, and completely routed them and regained
their cattle, _minus_ the consumed bullock. The chief of the
Macallisters was slain by a woman, who took off her stocking, placed a
_large stone therein_, and heaved it at his head. That same night, Mrs.
Macallister, wife of the chieftain thus ignominiously laid low, gave
birth, perhaps prematurely, to a son, whom the care of a discriminate
midwife secreted from the vengeance of the Macivors, who were howling
all round the house. This child grew up to manhood with the picture of
the stone-laden stocking ever before his mind's eye. He prepared a most
effective retaliation: he sent to Ireland and got over a large band of
Antrim men, who were quite pleased to help him in his bloody projects.
The Macivors were completely overpowered, and even the Macvicars had a
taste of Irish steel. Macvicar, father of the boy who distinguished
himself in the wood, was attacked in his own house. He was an athlete of
great powers, and was _able to jump thirty feet either in a backward or
a forward direction_. The Irishmen set fire to his house, and
Macvicar--hoping, no doubt, to make a final leap for life--tried to
escape by the chimney. His foes struck him on the knee with a spear: he
fell into their hands, and was at once despatched.
RED HECTOR.
We hear a good deal of the Irish in the traditions of Argyllshire. The
ruthless Colkitto, notorious for his own deeds and also for Milton's
mention of him, brought over a contingent of men from Ireland to help
Montrose in the Royalist wars. These auxiliaries swooped down on
Kintyre, murdered hundreds of Campbells, and devastated with fire and
sword the whole of Argyll's country. To this period belongs the story of
Red Hector and the Irish colossus, Phadrig Mor.
Hector was a little, red-haired kern of the Campbell clan, who was
caught by Colkitto's men skulking in the wood, and dragged with pinioned
arms before the son of that bandit. Hector was about to be hanged
without more ado, but as preparations were being made he cried out:
"_Give me a sword and I'll fight any one of you. If I am beaten, kill me
then._" The Irishmen, to whom an "illigant foight" has always been
welcome, agreed to the proposal of Red Hector. They chose Phadrig Mor, a
fierce giant of a man, to fight with the little fellow. The latter, to
neutralise the advantages of Phadrig's stature, leapt nimbly on the sawn
stump of a tree, and, in an attitude of defence, awaited the oncoming of
his foe. The wee man parried most dexteriously every blow that Phadrig
wished to deal, and there was much mirth and excitement among the
spectators. At length, seeing a terrific blow coming his way, Hector
speedily leapt off the trunk of the tree, and the Irishman's sword came
fiercely down and was embedded in the timber. Now was Hector's chance:
he laid about the defenceless giant to such purpose that Phadrig was
soon a corpse.
MACPHAIL OF COLONSAY.
Leyden, the polyglott poet, has written a poem on an Argyllshire
tradition attaching to the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. Near that dreaded
tumult of waters, Macphail, a Colonsay man, was pulled out of his boat
by a mermaid, and taken down to her shell-strewn chamber at the bottom
of the sea. They stayed for years together, and five little, unbaptized
Macphails claimed him at length as their sire. By and by he grew tired
of the eternal swirling of the currents, the saltwater garden growths,
and the irritating deflection of the sunlight. His mind continued to
revert to Colonsay and the girl he had left behind him there. One day he
got the mermaid to take him near the strand of his native island,
whereupon he suddenly leapt ashore and escaped. In future years he
avoided the sea as much as possible, preferring to devote his time and
talents to cultivating the soil of Colonsay.
TALES FROM SPEYSIDE.
Part of my purpose in this chapter is to show to any of my readers who
may have poetical talents, that abundance of material for verse, and
that of the most pathetic, thrilling, and gruesome kind, is still to be
found in the North country. No one since Scott has thought fit to draw
much on traditions of the Highlands: and though Scott poetised a great
many of these, plenty of them still remain unsung. Many fine tales are
associated with the delightful district of Speyside.
TOM EUNAN!
Near the little village of Kincraig is a queer old church built on a
hill called Tom Eunan, just beside the Spey. This church is declared to
be the only one in Scotland in which services have been continuously
held since the seventh century. The outside is antique in the extreme;
inside, there have been renovations: there is a deal of varnished
wainscoating that would have scared the Culdees, and instead of the
uneven cobble stones of old, there is a modern floor of wood. On one of
the windows of the church, there is a fine old bronze bell that exists
as a relic of Culdee times. Some profane person once laid hands on this
bell and carried it off to Perth; but it _would not_ ring away from
Speyside. To speak figuratively, the bell was broken-hearted: from its
metallic tongue, night and day, came the mournful wail, "Tom Eunan, Tom
Eunan." I am happy to say that it was brought back to its beloved
hillock.
Rural churches with earthen floors were not uncommon in Scotland even in
the nineteenth century: in such there would be no great trouble in
interring the dead. Two Speyside stories, dealing with kirks and
kirkyards, are told of the Grants of Rothiemurchus.
SHAWS AND GRANTS.
For several generations the possession of Rothiemurchus was a constant
subject of dispute between the Shaws and the Grants. The Shaws were the
original owners, but having waxed fat and kicked against the Government
on more than one occasion, word was sent from Edinburgh to one of the
Grants, who was Laird of Muckerach, that he should dispossess the Shaws
of the lands of Rothiemurchus, _gin he could_. Grant was by no means
"blate" in availing himself of the hint, but the Shaws were tough
fighters. In a final and decisive contest between the two clans, the
Grants were victorious and the chief of the Shaws slain. The victorious
Muckerach, now unequivocal Laird of Rothiemurchus, caused his dead rival
to be buried deep down within the kirk beneath his own seat. Every
Sunday _when he went to pray_ he stamped his feet triumphantly upon the
place under which lay the corpse of his enemy.
Patrick Grant, surnamed Macalpine, cuts a rather picturesque figure in
clan history. With a body of gaily-dressed retainers he paraded round
the countryside, dispensing justice and letting the minimum of time
elapse between the sentence and the execution. He was twice married,
and his second wife survived him. That forlorn lady had much to endure
from the first family, and notably from the wife of Macalpine's eldest
son and heir. The widow took a very dramatic way of publicly showing her
grievances. Once after the service in the kirk was over, she stepped up,
with her fan in her hand, to the corner of the kirkyard, and, taking off
her high-heeled slipper, she tapped with it on the stone laid over her
husband's grave, crying out through her tears, "_Macalpine! Macalpine!
rise up for ae half-hour and see me richted!_"
A diverting legend explains the _low-lying situation of Ballindalloch
Castle_, a beautiful specimen of baronial architecture, standing near
the junction of the Spey and the Avon. In planning the place, somewhere
about 1545, the laird fully intended to secure a wide prospect, and to
that end, chose a commanding site. But his views did not commend
themselves to the Powers of the Air, and the masons could make no
progress. Every night, when the workers had retired from building the
walls, a prodigious gale came roaring from the summit of Ben Rinnes and
swept stones and mortar into the bed of the Avon. The laird, sorely
puzzled at this strange phenomenon, lay in watch one night, with the
result that he was blown off his feet, and landed right up among the
branches of a holly-tree. Having taken the conceit out of the laird in
this abrupt way, the Mysterious Power, chuckling in fiendish fashion,
called out "_Build on the cow-haugh_." Frightened out of his wits, the
laird was only too glad to comply.
THE WISHING WELL.
Round the old Castle of Rothes clings a legend of a more pathetic kind.
"Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralise my song," says Spenser,
and it is with these well-worn but ever-fresh subjects that the story
deals. The heiress of one of the old lairds of Rothes, being allowed to
roam at will with her foster-mother, cast an eye of love on the son of
the laird of Arndilly. As in ballad lore, the love seems to have been
immediate, reciprocal, and unquenchable. The girl's father, hearing of
the attachment, summarily forbade it, and commanded his daughter to turn
her back on young Arndilly, and take a different road in future. But as
journeys end in lovers meeting, the two young people, by whatever way
they set out, invariably met at the _Wishing Well_. A sad severance
came, however, for young Arndilly, like so many mediæval knights of song
who had faithful mistresses, must needs go crusading to the Holy Land.
During his absence, the lady hied daily to the Wishing Well, and many a
tear she let fall therein as she thought of the lad that was so far
away. But after many a month, back from Palestine came young Arndilly,
and went, of course, straight to the old trysting-place, where he found
his lady-love praying for his safe return. The meeting was rapturous but
tragically short. A dark shape glided upon the scene, and drove a fatal
dirk in the young soldier's back. The lady shrieked aloud and swooned
away. For the rest of her life she was an imbecile: she never left the
castle, and spent her time crooning a plaintive song and rocking a
cradle. Her ghost still haunts the place, and those who have ears to
hear can, at nightfall, make out, above the sough of the wind, the
mournful notes of a weird lullaby, and mysterious cradle-rockings within
the ruined walls. Close by the Well, at the spot of the murder, a bush
sprang up, whereof the leaves resembled crosses; in autumn they turned
to a bright scarlet colour, as if typical of the blood that had flowed
there from its victim's wounds. Others will have it that the lady's
ghost may be seen flitting about, distractedly, in the woods, on a
particular night of the year--the anniversary, it is supposed, of
Arndilly's murder.
OSSIAN AND MACPHERSON.
The beautiful little town of Kingussie is famous for its association
with "Ossian" Macpherson, who was born near by. No man, born on Scottish
earth, except perhaps, Sir Walter Scott, had ever such an influence on
European literature as this Highland dominie. "His Ossian," as Professor
Macmillan Brown says, "was translated into almost every European
language; and its influence is apparent in Goethe's Werther, in
Schiller's Robbers, and in all the Storm-and-Stress literature of
Germany, in the productions and speeches of the French Revolutionists,
in the romantic literary movement that preceded and followed the
Revolution, and in much of the Italian, Spanish, and Danish poetry of
the time. It generally affected the prose style of eighteenth century
romance, and was a direct antidote to Johnsonianism in the imaginative
literature. In our own century it bent the genius of Scott to the
Highlands, and moulded the dramas of Byron, and the often vague imagery
of Shelley; it appears in the style of Kingsley's Hereward, and directly
or indirectly it is responsible for the pioneering efforts of Walt
Whitman in prose poetry and for the rapid growth of poetic prose through
De Quincey, Bulwer Lytton, and Ruskin. During last century it stirred
Blake to misty prophecies, led writers of romance back into the less
known periods of the past, and gave the new audience a delight in
mysterious and almost formless legend and tale and idea."
The extraordinary vogue of Macpherson's Ossianic poems was due to
literary merit of a high order, and also to the parched and dry state
into which the poetry of Europe had sunk in the middle of the eighteenth
century. Boileau and his rules had crushed all sap and life out of
European verse, and the poet had become either a teacher of rimed ethics
or a framer of dexterous satire. How refreshing Ossian must have been to
the men of such a time:
"The hills were round them, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Their foreheads felt the wind and rain."
Let the modern reader go through the _Rape of the Lock_, and then take
up the song of the hunter Shilric from Macpherson's "Carric-thura."
Shilric, not knowing that his love Vinvela is dead, thus communes with
himself:
"I sit by the mossy mountain; on the top of the hill of winds.
One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves roll over the heath.
The lake is troubled below. The deer descend from the hill. No
hunter at a distance is seen. It is mid-day; but all is silent.
Sad are my thoughts alone. Didst thou but appear, O my love! a
wanderer on the heath! thy hair floating on the wind behind
thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes full of tears
for thy friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed! Thee I
would comfort, my love, and bring thee to thy father's house!"
To him mourning thus, the spirit of his dead love appears:
"But is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the
heath? bright as the moon in autumn, as the sun in a
summer-storm, comest thou, O maid, over rocks, over mountains to
me? She speaks: but how weak her voice! like the breeze in the
reeds of the lake.
"'Alone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief
for thee I fell. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb.'
"She fleets, she sails away; as mist before the wind! and wilt
thou not stay, Vinvela? Stay and behold my tears! fair thou
appearest, Vinvela! fair thou wast, when alive!
"By the mossy mountain I will sit; on the top of the hill of
winds. When mid-day is silent around, O talk with me, Vinvela!
come on the light-winged gale! on the breeze of the desert,
come! Let me hear thy voice, as thou passest, when mid-day is
silent around.'"
The readers of the eighteenth century did not stay to consider whether
the foregoing was, or was not, a genuine antique: it suited their taste
admirably. Rousseau had brought sentimentalism into favour; the "return
to nature" was a kind of creed with the French philosophers: these
facts aided greatly in causing the epidemic of Ossianism that overran
Europe.
I should not like to be condemned to read nothing but Ossian for a year.
The short staccato sentences, the difficulty of getting hold of anything
definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and
feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is
too much weeping: one is constantly saying with Tennyson, "Tears, idle
tears, I know not what they mean." Yet, no one can dip into Macpherson
without being rewarded by some phrase of an impressive or refreshing
kind, _e.g._:--
"Thou art with the years that are gone; thou fadest on my soul."
"Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days?"
"Her steps were like the music of songs; she saw the youth and
loved him. He was the stolen sigh of her soul."
"Why does Ossian sing? Soon shall he lie in the narrow house,
and no bard shall raise his fame."
"When shall it be morn in the grave to bid the slumberer wake?"
"Mixed with the murmur of waters rose the voice of aged men, who
called the forms of night to aid them in the war."
"Autumn is dark on the mountains; grey mist rests on the hills."
AT THE FOOT O' BENNACHIE.
I have on several occasions, during the last year or two, visited that
part of Aberdeenshire which is immediately under the glorious ridge of
Bennachie. Like all lovers of ballad lore, I know by heart the poem of
the little wee man who had such prowess, and who invited the poet to go
with him to his green bower. After seeing magnificent examples of
dancing, the poet found himself lying in the mist at the foot of
Bennachie:--
"Out went the lichts, on cam' the mist,
Leddies nor mannie mair could I see;
I turned aboot, and gave a look,
I was just at the foot o' Bennachie."
The exquisite little ballad from which I quote is calculated to raise
expectations of beauty which the picturesque surroundings of Bennachie
are well able to satisfy. Great tracts of Aberdeenshire are flat,
treeless, and painful in their monotony; in winter, great gusts sweep
the cold plains, and make driving or walking a trying ordeal; the
country is thinly peopled, and the impression of the visitor is that, in
some districts, railway stations are more numerous than villages. Round
Bennachie, however, the scenery is most pleasant and picturesque. The
villages of Oyne and Insch, in which hospitality to strangers is a
religion, are beautifully placed and well-foliaged all around. The
region is, indeed, one of romance, and the little brook of Gadie ripples
on in the radiance and glamour of pathetic song.
HARLAW.
Those who consider, like Ruskin, that the stories of the past add no
inconsiderable item to the beauty of a landscape, as it appears to the
eye and intelligence of modern observers, will not fail to remember the
momentous issues decided at no great distance from the foot of
Bennachie, in 1411. Teutonic and Celtic Scotland came to grips at
Harlaw, near by:--
"The Hielandmen, wi' their lang swords,
They laid on us fu' sair;
And they drave back our merry men
Three acres' breadth and mair.
. . . . . . . . . .
Gin anybody speer at ye
For them we took awa',
Ye may tell them plain and very plain,
They're sleeping at Harlaw."
Burton, in his _History of Scotland_, declares that the check given to
Donald of the Isles at Harlaw, was a greater relief to Scotland than
even Bannockburn was. If the Stuart kings, hard pressed as they were by
England on the south, had been threatened by a formidable Celtic
sovereignty on the north, Holyrood might have been in ruins a good many
centuries earlier. I am not going to shock my Highland friends by saying
it was a good thing for the country that Donald, with the remnant of his
plaids and claymores, had to retreat to the misty straths and islands of
the west. The coalition of Celt and Teuton has taken place in an
unostentatious way, to the advantage of both races: Macfadyen does not
now, as in the days of Dunbar, bide "_far norrart in a neuk_;" he has
come to the Lowlands long ago, and rarely goes North, except on holiday.
And the language, which to the finical ears of James Fourth's
poet-laureate, seemed too terrible even for the devil to tolerate, has
come south, too, and has a chair all to itself in the University of
Edinburgh. _Time_, says Sophocles, _is a god who performs difficult
things with ease_.
Mention of Harlaw suggests a comic tale told to the credit of the
Provost of Inverness. That gentleman, on being threatened with a
predatory visit from Donald in 1400, took the remarkable plan of sending
an ample supply of Inverness whisky into the Celtic camp. The men of
Lewis and Skye tackled the liquid bounty with great glee, and soon were
in a state of maudlin intoxication. The wily Provost meanwhile collected
a force and attacked Donald's men, who (as they magnified the attacking
host to _double its real numbers_) were easily scared and routed. At
Harlaw, eleven years later, the Provost of Aberdeen, evidently a man who
lacked the resource of the chief magistrate of Inverness, was killed,
and 500 men with him.
LOCHABER REIVERS.
The predatory habits of the Highlanders gave great trouble to the
Aberdeenshire farmers _for fully three hundred years after Harlaw_. In
1689 a dozen wild Lochaber men came right down into the heart of
Aberdeenshire and lifted six score of black cattle. The fate of the
marauders is thus described by the author of _Johnny Gibb_:--
"They were pursued by a body of nearly 50 horsemen, well mounted and
armed, and each carrying bags of meal and other provisions, both for
their own support, and to offer in ransom for the cattle, if peaceful
negotiations could be carried through. On through the hills, over
marshes, rocks, and heather, the spirited horsemen followed, under
their leader; and guided by a herd-boy whom they encountered, they
traced the robbers by Loch Ericht side into the heart of their own
country. At nightfall, they came upon them at Dalunchart, encamped and
busily engaged roasting a portion of the flesh of one of the cattle they
had stolen. They offered, after some parley, to give each of the
freebooters a bag of meal and a pair of shoes in ransom for the cattle.
The Highlanders treated such an offer for cattle driven so far and with
so much trouble with contempt; the herd was gathered in, and the fight
began in deep earnest, the result being that the Lochaber men were all
shot down, killed or wounded, except three, who escaped unhurt to tell
the tale; and the cattle were, of course, recovered."
REAY AND TWICKENHAM.
Perhaps the least attractive of the Scotch counties, in respect of
scenery, is Caithness. The North-going train enters it a little after
Helmsdale, and from thence to Thurso the journey is of a most dreary and
depressing character. He who wishes to see the romantic part of the
county should quit the train at Helmsdale, and go right to John o'
Groats by the shore road: thereafter he should proceed along the line of
the Pentland Firth to the dainty town of Thurso and to the village of
Reay, the citadel of the Mackays. The district round Reay is a
delightful one, and has great historical interest.
Some good examples of the power assumed of old by the country ministers
are furnished by a perusal of the life of an eighteenth century
minister, the Rev. Alexander Pope, who was stationed for many years in
Reay. He was a huge giant of a man, and invariably carried about with
him a nail-studded cudgel that was a terror to sinners. A lout of a
fellow in his parish refused to come to church and get rebuked for an
infringement of the usual commandment. Mr. Pope sent three elders with
ropes to pinion the adulterer, hale him to church, and fasten him to a
conspicuous pew right under the pulpit. The minister cannonaded the
culprit to his heart's content, beginning thus: "_Shame, shame, son of a
beggar, where art thou now?_"
Another parishioner who neglected family worship on the ground that he
could not make up a prayer, was severely taken to task by Mr. Pope, who
gave the man a year within which to manufacture one. At the end of the
twelvemonth, Mr. Pope called and requested to hear the prayer. The man
glibly rattled off a long succession of phrases that did not please the
minister at all. "That won't do," he said, "you must prepare over
again." "And is all my long labour to go for nothing," said the man,
"all my year's toil? No, no: rather than lose my labour, I'll _break the
prayer up and make two graces of it_." For the rest of his life, as the
story runs, he did actually employ the two parts of his mutilated prayer
as Grace before and Grace after meat respectively. Could there be a
finer example of natural thrift in the spiritual world?
An Inverness journalist, Mr. Carruthers, wrote a life of the great poet,
Alexander Pope, in which occurs the following curious note respecting
the minister of Reay, just mentioned: "The northern Alexander Pope
entertained a profound admiration for his illustrious namesake of
England; and it is a curious and well-ascertained fact that the simple
enthusiastic clergyman, in the summer of 1732, rode on his pony all the
way from Caithness to Twickenham, in order to pay the poet a visit. The
latter felt his dignity a little touched by the want of the necessary
pomp and circumstance with which the minister presumed to approach his
domicile; but after the ice of ceremony had in some degree been broken,
and their intellects had come in contact, the poet became interested,
and a friendly feeling was established between them. Several interviews
took place, and the poet presented his good friend and namesake, the
minister of Reay, with a copy of the subscription edition of the
'Odyssey' in five volumes quarto."
A grandson of the Reay minister, a Mr. James Campbell of Edinburgh, gave
a description to Mr. Carruthers of a snuff-box which the poet had
presented to the Rev. Mr. Pope. A series of letters to the _Northern
Ensign_, in April, 1883, brought out the information that a Wick
gentleman, Mr. Duncan, had in his possession two volumes of de Vertot's
_History of the Roman Republic_, bearing an inscription to the effect
that they had been presented by the poet of Twickenham to his northern
namesake.
It has been suggested that the poet and the minister were distant
blood-relations. Mr. Campbell, alluded to above, said that "the two
Popes claimed kin." In any case, the friendship of the two men, one
living on the shores of the wild Pentland Firth, in sight of the
Orkneys, and the other not far "from streaming London's central roar,"
is pleasant to think of. In 1737, Pope wrote the lines--
"Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep,"
adding, in a note, that he refers to "the farthest northern promontory
of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades." Perhaps his mind reverted to the
burly incumbent of Reay as he penned the note.
ROB DONN.
The little township of Reay is less famous for the Rev. Mr. Pope's
incumbency than for the fact of Rob Donn, the satirical Gaelic bard,
being a native of the district. The author of the _Dunciad_ is the
greatest satirist in British Literature; Rob Donn is supreme among
Gaelic bards for the sharpness of his tongue and his clever way of
showing up his contemporaries to ridicule. He was in the habit of giving
praise to people in order to make his satire more biting. Praise on his
tongue was compared to oil on the edge of a razor: the cut was all the
deeper. Rob, although a master of language, was unable to read or write,
so that though he "lisped in numbers"--he began to compose at the age of
three--he could not say, like Pope:
"Why did I _write_? What sin to me unknown
_Dipt me in ink_, my parents' or my own?"
Blackie speaks thus of him: "Rob Donn, according to all accounts, though
outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour,
unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not
always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he
took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters;
besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield
with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in
such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. The
consequence has been that much of the wit and humour of his pieces,
however telling for its immediate purpose, has lost half of its interest
by the disappearance of the persons to whom it referred. These personal
allusions also import an additional difficulty into the language which
he uses, and cause his productions, however belauded, to be less known
amongst Highlanders generally than those of Duncan Ban and Dugald
Buchanan. Severe moralists also very properly object to the undue
license and occasional coarseness of his verses."[33]
[33] Rob was at one time in the army, for every Mackay has the
fighting instinct in him. (Reay is one of the few townships in
the North that possess a drill-hall and a military instructor. It
is impossible adequately to describe the consternation in the
Mackay country at the time of our South African reverses.
Everyone was in a fury and it was felt there was urgent need for
the Mackays to straighten out matters at the seat of war. It was
at this time that the drill-hall was built in Reay. Many of the
young men went to the front as volunteers, and if the war had
lasted much longer, there would have been few Mackays left in
Sutherlandshire.)
REV. MR. MILL OF DUNROSSNESS.
Before concluding the present chapter, I should like to refer briefly to
a valuable and amusing book (brought under my notice in Shetland) that
furnishes details of the life of Mr. Mill, minister of Dunrossness from
1742 till 1805. Mr. Mill's special talent was his unrivalled power of
exorcism: he was a strenuous foe to the devil in every shape and form,
and his life was one long battle with the Prince of Darkness. The latter
was constantly bringing into play all manner of gins, traps, and wiles
to confound the uncompromising clergyman; but, on a calm review of the
evidence, one cannot but admit that the devil was far inferior in
intelligence to his opponent.
On one occasion, Satan had the effrontery to come into Dunrossness
Church and take his seat at the Communion Table. Mr. Mill at once
recognised his life-long adversary, and began to speak in all the deep
languages, and, last of all, in Gaelic, and that beat him altogether.
Satan went off like a flock of "doos" over the heads of the people, many
of whom swooned. "As a permanent reminder of the hostility cherished
against him by the Arch-Enemy, it was said that Mr. Mill always had the
wind in his face. One day he came up to officiate at Sandwick, in the
teeth, as usual, of a pretty stiff breeze. An ordinary person would
naturally have expected the wind to be on his back on the return
journey. But during the service the wind veered round. Mr. Mill's only
comment, as he started for home, was, 'It's all he can do.' In one
respect, Mr. Mill benefited by the penalty of always having the wind in
his face, for on his very numerous sea-journeys he could always secure
a favourable breeze _by sitting with his back to the head of the boat_."
The following additional tale from Mr. Mill's biography only brings into
more striking relief the resource of the minister in all emergencies.
"One day a very respectable gentleman entered the house of a tailor in
Channerwick, and ordered a suit of clothes to be made out of cloth which
he brought with him. The tailor's delight at having such a fine
gentleman for a customer was, however, turned into perplexity and fear
as he opened up the cloth and found that the colour kept constantly
changing. He at once sent for the minister and laid the matter before
him. He was advised to spread a sheet on the floor and cut the cloth
upon it, so that none of the clippings should be scattered about the
room, and the minister said that he would be present to meet the
stranger when the latter called to get the clothes. The day came, and
when the stranger entered the house, Mr. Mill stepped forward to meet
him. A terrible controversy ensued, and the respectable-looking
gentleman was swept out of the house in a cloud of blue, sulphurous
flame. It is not recorded if he took the new suit with him. A clue to
his identification was furnished by his accidentally striking his foot
against the door-step as he departed. The result of the collision was
that a mark as of a cloven hoof was imprinted on the stone."