THE WESTERN ISLES
_Oban_
There is something theatrical about Oban, artificial, and therefore
among Scottish towns Oban is a contrast. It is as uncovenanted as--joy!
And it is very beautiful, "the gay and generous port of Oban," as
William Winter calls it, set in its amphitheater of high hills, and
stretching about its harbour, between confining water and hill. An
embankment holds it in, and at twilight the scimeter drawn from the
scabbard of night flashes with light, artificial, but as wonderful at
Oban as at Monte Carlo. One is content to be, at Oban. Quite certainly
Oban has centered its share of Scottish history and romance, history
from the time of the Northmen, romance from the time resurrected by
Scott and continued indigenously by William Black. But in Oban and round
about Oban, one is quite content to take that past as casually as one
takes yesterday.
It is very interesting, very fascinating; one wakes now and then, here
and there, to keen remembrance, to a sensitiveness that so much beauty
could not be only for to-day and of to-day, that men must have come
hither to claim it or dispute possession of it in the beginning of time.
Of course the Stewarts came out of this Island West! But, either because
one has made a round circle of Scotland from out of romantic Edinburgh,
or because one has come from practical Glasgow and is about to make a
round circle of Scotland, Oban has a peculiarly satisfying and yet
undemanding beauty.
It is set for pageantry; life is always, has been always, a procession
at Oban. If ever the history of Scotland is set forth as pageant--I do
not know that this has ever been done, but it should be--it should be
staged at Oban, on the esplanade.
Life moves swiftly through the streets and across the waters. For it is
a place that all the world comes to, in its search for the next
beautiful place. Steamers from the Caledonian Canal and Inverness,
steamers from the Crinan Canal and Glasgow, coaches from the near
country, railroads from the east and north, bring the world to Oban. And
from Oban boats move out on the Firth of Lorne and the Sound of Mull
and through the broken waters of the Hebrides, out into the unbroken
waters of the Atlantic. People come and go, come and go. It is not that
Oban is filled with people. Very often the inns are filled and the
careless traveler may seek eagerly if not vainly for a lodging for the
night, to find his landlady a Campbell of the Campbells.
But there is seldom a feeling of too many people in Oban. They come and
go, night and morning. They do not stay. In the evening the esplanade
may be filled and the crowd very gala; the circle of lights marking the
embankments, steamers lying at their ease after the day's work, looking,
yes, like pirates, retired pirates, rakish, with tapering spars and
brave red funnels, the soft plash of oars out on the bay and the moving
lights of the rowboats, with perhaps--no quite certainly--a piper, or
two or three, dressed in tartan, more like the red and black of the
Campbells in this historic region of Argyle, piping up bravely "The
Campbells are Coming, yoho, yoho."
It is lively in the evening, there is always a touch of pageantry. Yet
Oban is a very good place in which to stay and make the little foot
excursions that penetrate only a few miles into the circumurban
territory. The most constrained walker may find rich foot-interest out
of Oban; nowhere do comfort and beauty and story combine in more
continuous lure. Easy and attainable is Dunolly Castle, much more
attainable than it was in the old days when the Lord of the Isles made
his permanent seat here, and defied the world and the king; more
attainable now than when Scott came this way seeking "copy" and "colour"
and declaring "nothing can be more beautifully wild than Dunolly."
To-day Dunolly is beautiful, but scarcely wildly beautiful; that is, in
comparison with other wild castles of this wild West; and very
attainable, the walk being provided with seats all the way, casual "rest
and be thankfuls," of the municipal corporation.
But beyond Dunolly, four miles of good highway, with Loch Linnhe
breaking magnificently on the eye, and Loch Etive reaching off endlessly
into the deep purple, is Dunstaffnage, which, before Stirling, or Perth,
or Edinburgh, was capital of Scotland and the place of destiny. Very
redoutable it sits on its high crag, as picturesque a castle as there is
in the world--and we are in a land of castles picturesquely set. The
walls above the waters lift themselves in lofty height, and promise to
remain, with their great thickness presented to the consuming world. It
is still towered for strength and scope, and looks its part of royal
residence. Here was found the Stone of Destiny--after Jacob or another
had carried this Jacobite sleeping pillow hither from Palestine. Kenneth
McAlpine, somewhat sacrilegiously, carried the Stone away to Perth. And
Edward sacrilegiously carried it down to Westminster, where George V sat
on it, in 1911, or nearly on it, so as to prove his destined right.
Bruce took the castle from the Lord of Lorne, at what time he was taking
all the castles of Scotland. And even The Bruce in his busy days of
castle-storming, must have paused in this height, at these bastions, to
look over this western world and decide that it was good and should be
added to his Scottish world. Across Loch Linnhe he could see the bens of
Morven and of Appin, and up Loch Etive, Ben Cruachan--even as you and I.
The Highlands and the Islands are still primitive, man dwindles here,
and the world becomes what it was before the Sixth Day.
But The Bruce did not see these brass cannon from a wreck of the Armada,
The Bruce lived too far before that great day to see the coast "strewn
with the ruined dream of Spain." And he was too early for the ancient
ruined Gothic chapel of much austere beauty which stands near.
It is from Pulpit Hill that Oban gives the best view of all the lyric
lay of this water and land world; on a clear day when the wind is from
the west, when sunshine has been drenching the world, and when the sun
is about to sink behind Ben More. Pulpit Hill is a wooded steep bluff to
the east of Oban, at its foot parklike drives and forest-embowered
cottages with their windows open to the sea, with rich roses filling the
air and flaunting fuchias filling the eye. It is an easy climb, even
after a day of Scotch-seeing in the backward of the land.
Here one may sit and meditate on the life and character of David McCrae,
to whom the pulpit is dedicated. Or one may look over the land and
"soothly swear was never yet a scene so fair." Or, to borrow again from
that same Scottish scene painter, and another scene--"One burnished
sheet of living gold."
The eye runs far out over the world, across the Bay of Oban, across the
Island of Kerrera, across the Island of Mull set against the late sky,
and over to Lismore which lies shining and tender against the deepening
purple background of Morven. The sun casts slant rays across the land
and across the bay, bathing the far land in tender lilac, the sea in
steely blue, while Kerrera lies in patches of dark and light, a
farmhouse sharp against a rose mist that rises in shallow places and
quickly fades, leaving all the world purple in hue. Shepherd lads and
shepherd dogs may be seen at this last moment preparing to watch the
flocks by night, and long horned shaggy cattle browse at peace in the
fading light. Flocks of birds fly over, starlings in scattered black
patches, sea swallows poising for prey, and sea gulls resting on the
wave after a weary day. Everything is at peace.
Two longer excursions one must make from Oban; to Loch Awe, to Glencoe.
Each is possible in a day, and yet a night in Glencoe is almost
imperative if one would be played upon by its full tragic compass; and a
lifetime of summers would not exhaust Loch Awe.
The Loch I would visit; because of its beauty; and because of Kilchurn
Castle, which is picturesque in fact as well as in picture, on its
densely wooded island with its broken outline lying against the farther
mountain; because of Ardchonnel Castle, ivy covered, and "it's a far cry
to Loch Awe"; because of Fraoch-Eilean (isle of heather) which is the
island of Ossian's Hesperides; and because, capitally because,
Innishail is the island where Philip Gilbert Hamerton established his
camp through so many summers and through a number of Scottish winters.
[Illustration: KILCHURN CASTLE.]
One must belong, oh, quite to "another generation," to admit any debt of
instruction or pleasure to Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I do not think that
this generation knows him, hardly as a name. But when I was young,
collegiately young, Hamerton was an authority on life and art, and a
preceptor of beauty. And, if one read "The Intellectual Life," then, of
course, one read the rest of him. And so, one came to Loch Awe before
one came to Loch Awe.
To the lake I went quite shamelessly on train. But repenting half way,
over-awed by Ben Cruachan, as who should not be, I left the train at the
"platform" and won the memory on foot. The mountain looks as high and as
mighty as a Rocky, and the white foaming threads of falls, hundreds of
feet high, dashed down the sides in a true "Rocky" splendour; like those
on the Cut bank or the Piegan trails in Glacier Park, yet not quite so
high. I did not climb Ben Cruachan to look on the Atlantic--but I have
not made my last journey to Scotland. On foot and alone, I threaded "the
dark pass of Brandir," and felt in my blood and bone that something in
me ancestral had been there before. Perhaps we inherit where we
hero-worship. In any event, Sir William Wallace went through this defile
in 1300, and King Robert Bruce in 1310, with his faithful friend Sir
James Douglass, fighting John of Lorn (the dead are still heaped beneath
these gray cairns), and going on to take Dunstaffnage. Sir Walter Scott
came here when he sought environ for "The Highland Widow."
On one side is the sheer cliff which guards the foot of Ben Cruachan. On
the other the rapid awesome dash of the River Awe. "You will not find a
scene more impressive than the Brandir Pass, where the black narrowing
water moves noiselessly at midnight between its barren precipices, or
ripples against them when the wind wails through its gates of war."
In the Loch lies the island of Innishail, still green, and not less
solitary than when Hamerton entertained travelers, unaware of his
identity. It still carries old gravestones, for islands in the far days
were the only safe places, safe for the dead as for the living; war and
ravage would pass them by. Throughout this western land you will find
island graveyards, and the procession of quiet boats carrying the dead
to their rest must have been a better expression than can be had by
land.
From here one sees Ben Cruachan to advantage, even as one saw it in 1859
with Hamerton.
"At this moment the picture is perfect. The sky has become an exquisite
pearly green, full of gradations. There is only one lonely cloud, and
that has come exactly where it ought. It has risen just beyond the
summit of Cruachan and pauses there like a golden disk behind a saint's
white head. But this cloud is rose-colour, with a swift gradation to
dark purple-gray. Its under edge is sharply smoothed into a clearly-cut
curve by the wind; the upper edge floats and melts away gradually in the
pale green air. The cloud is shaped rather like a dolphin with its tail
hidden behind the hill. The sunlight on all the hill, but especially
towards the summit, has turned from mere warm light to a delicate,
definite rose-colour; the shadows are more intensely azure, the sky of a
deeper green. The lake, which is perfectly calm, reflects and
reverberates all this magnificence. The islands, however, are below the
level of the sunshine, and lie dark and cold, the deep green Scotch firs
on the Black Isles telling strongly against the snows of Cruachan."
It was even as Hamerton had told me so long ago, a trifle different in
July from what he saw it in December, but equal in magnificence, and the
outlines had not changed in a half-century.
And so I did not hesitate to go with Hamerton to Glencoe, lovely and
lonely and most terrible glen. There is such a thing as being haunted,
the dead do cry for revenge, the evil that men do does live after them.
It is a wide valley, yet closed in by great granite precipices, for safe
guarding against betrayal. The first section of the strath is calm
enough, human, green, habitable, with Loch Leven, a branch of Loch
Etive, sparkling in the sun. The second wide opening is terrible as
massacre, not green, very stern, and wild as Scottish nature, human or
not, can become. Even the little clachan of the Macdonalds seems not to
welcome the world except on suspicion. And that murder, that
assassination (February 14, 1692) when William was king--William who
might have been "great" except for Boyne and Glencoe--still fills the
memory.
Hamerton painted the picture--"In the vastness of the valley, over the
dim, silver stream that flowed away into its infinite distance, brooded
a heavy cloud, stained with a crimson hue, as if the innocent blood shed
there rose from the earth even yet, to bear witness against the
assassins who gave the name of Glen Coe such power over the hearts of
men. For so long as history shall be read, and treachery hated, that
name, Glen Coe, shall thrill mankind with undiminished horror! The story
is a century old now (1859). The human race has heard it talked of for
over a hundred years. But the tale is as fresh in its fearful interest
as the latest murder in the newspapers."
Yet, a half century still later, I have heard those who declared Glencoe
lovely and not terrible. No doubt the generation does not read history
and does not feel story.
We did not go on to the King's House, built in the days of King William,
when roads were being driven through the Highlands in order that they
might be held to a doubtful Stewart sovereignty. For we had read how
Hamerton thought it more than enough to drink a glass here, and we
doubted not he had read of the trials of Dorothy Wordsworth, sheets that
must be dried for hours before the beds could be made, the one egg for
breakfast, and--could we have found that china cup that Dorothy forgot?
Rather, we chose to return down the lake side for another look at the
red roofs of the home of Lord Strathcona, that wizard of the nineteenth
century, who had left Scotland with only his wits and returned from
America with his millions and a title.
_Iona_
There is no pilgrimage which can be taken to any shrine excelling
pilgrimage to Iona. And all the pilgrim way is lined with memory and
paved with beauty.
On almost every promontory stand ruined castles, not so frequent as the
watch towers on the Mediterranean heights, and therefore not so
monotonous. One knows that each of these, as of those, has had its
history, and here one ponders that history, perhaps tries to remember
it, or, tries to evoke it. Dunolly which we visited in the day's drift
from Oban stood up on the right with the city still in view. But it is
when the Firth opens into the Sound that the glory of the water-world of
the West comes on you.
[Illustration: AROS CASTLE.]
The Sound of Mull is, so Sir Walter has said, "the most striking water
of the Hebrides." It is very lovely in this shell-pink light of early
morning, it could not have looked lovelier when Sir Walter estimated it.
The hills begin to stand boldly forth, for the gray mists of the morning
are rising. It is to be a fine day, which here because of its
exception means a brilliant sun-stricken day, and all things clear as
geography. But, at least once, one should see things one wishes always
to keep as material for remembrance and for imagination, not in the mist
dimly, but face to face like this. Or, as the Maid of Lorn in
Ardtornish, when she was led
"To where a turret's airy head
Slender and steep and battled round,
O'erlooked, dark Mull! thy mighty Sound.
Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar
Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore."
On the left of Mull stands the grim Castle of Duart on its high rock, on
the right on Morven the Castle of Ardtornish, and Aros a little farther
on, and Kinlochalive at the top of the bay of the Loch--mighty were
these lords of the islands, and most mighty the Lord of the Isles.
Perhaps--it has been suggested--Sir Walter overstated the might of the
Lord, the grandeur of the islands, the splendour of those thirteenth
century days. It depends on what light one views them in.
Tobermory is the capital of Mull, and is a place of some resort. Like
all these little capitals it is set in the wilderness world, and what
one would like best to do instead of sailing past them is to stay with
them and go far into the backward. Perhaps traversing Mull as did McLeod
of Dare when he hunted so royally--and in such a moonstruck way; or
David Balfour when he was shipwrecked and walked through Mull; or the
Pennells when they sought to walk through and did not take pleasure in
it. It is the pilgrims who won their goal one chooses to remember--not
the defeated Pennells. And here--I am leaving Mull and Tobermory behind
me, perhaps for always.
Suddenly one sweeps out into the Atlantic! The stretch is wide, oceanic,
although far and away there are islands, black lines thickening here and
there the horizon edge. The sea is exquisitely, deeply blue, like the
Mediterranean at its best.
One passes Ardnamurchan point, the most westerly point of the mainland
of Great Britain, "Cape of the Great Seas"; how one loves the poetic
grandeur, the sufficing bigness of these names, and the faith, and the
limitations back of them; as though there should never be a greater
world with greater seas and mountains in the greater West. To the south
the boat passes Trehinish isles, black gems lying on the sea.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO FINGAL'S CAVE.]
Far out on the horizon lie Col and Tiree, low clouds in the line. "Col,"
I heard the professorial people--from Oberlin--speak the name. "Col! So
that is Col!" they said to each other, "so that is Col off there!"
"Col," I said to myself, "so that is Col." And we all became related
through the great Doctor.
One is bound to Staffa, incidentally, on the way to Iona, and for the
sake of Mendelssohn. Always afterward one is bound to Staffa because of
itself. If only one could have Staffa for one's self. But there are
always fellow travelers, there is no inn, no habitation here, not even a
shepherd's shieling, visible from the water. There are a few sheep, a
shepherd, and so there must be a shieling. To be marooned here--was it
here Stevenson understudied for Bill Gunn, and "cheese, toasted mostly"?
The cave is truly wonderful, a superb cathedral nave, with dark basaltic
columns lifted in marvelous regularity, and arches lifting over with
groining the hand of God.
"Nature herself it seemed would raise
A minster to her Maker's praise."
The broken surfaces of the walls are in mosaic with green sea grasses
and gleaming limpets, and the floor is a shifting thing of surging
waves. The ocean thunders through the narrow gate as it has done since
the time Staffa began, and since Mendelssohn, a mighty organ surge, like
the "Overture to Fingal's Cave," and yet, more than that. To be here
alone, to be the shepherd of Staffa, and come to this cathedral, with
the might and mystery of the night about, and the winds and the sea
making symphony--life will always hold many things in possibility, which
cannot die!
From the top of Staffa, if one flees the passengers a moment, may be
seen the islands lying about whose names are romance, Trehinish, and
Inchkenneth on Mull and Skerryvore, "the noblest of all deep sea light,"
a mere speck on the far Atlantic--what vigils the man must have in the
house of light built by Stevenson's father; and on to the far north and
Skye; and to the near south and Iona.
"Where is Duncan's body?
Carried to Colme-kill,
The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,
And guardian of their bones."
Very definite was Shakespeare about these things. A more modern
antiquarian would have doubted, and sent us wandering from pillar to
post of royal burial places. But not the man who created what he
declared. Icolmkill--Iona--certainly.
That such a little island could have had such a large history. It is so
small a place, yet a beautiful island withal, and with its cathedral,
now alas, "restored" and "reformed," and all its far sounding memories
of Columba.
He came up from the South as we came down from the North, but his voyage
was across the wide seas to unknown goals; while we have the advantage
of having come after him to Iona. And yet, to Columba, valiant
adventuring saint, Iona nor any other place was unknown goal. There was
to him but one purpose in life, one goal. And he found it everywhere.
It was a large life and simple, austere but with unlimited horizon, that
Columba lived here. It is a small exquisite life that is lived here
to-day. Or, perhaps my belief in its proportion and perfection came
because of contact with a certain two persons, man and woman, who had
taken this life to themselves. While being practical in that they sold
exquisite wares, in silver and gold and brass and bronze, each article,
large or little, carrying some Ionian insignia, still they must have a
very beautiful life, ever making things of beauty out of the historic
heritage of this island. It was a large accumulation of jeweled hints
they discovered here, in the ornamentations of the stones of Iona. They
have used them to very lovely ends. And they have lived the life of
memories and of the keen sea air.
One may have forty minutes, or day after day in Iona. And, of course,
the reward and the intimacy is in proportion. It is a quiet fragment of
land, the little village with its white-washed cottages in prim lines,
and its simple cotters, perhaps a little more sophisticated than those
of other western islands because of their continuing contact with a
curious world; and yet these men and women and serious children live
here the year round, and in winter there is no world, and the Atlantic
thunders on the little land as though one beat of the wave would carry
all into the abyss, or smashes on the rough granite coast of Mull across
the strait.
The western shore of the island is cruel, even on a summer day. And if
the "merry men" ran their violent ways on the shore of Mull, there are
other Merry Men just as merry, just as lurking. As McLeod of Dare saw
it--
"Could anything have been more beautiful than this magnificent scene ...
the wildly rushing seas, coming thunderingly on the rocks, or springing
so high in the air that the snow-white foam showed black against the
glare of the sky; the near islands gleaming with a touch of brown on
their sunward side; the Dutchman's Cap with its long brim and conical
center, and Lunga also like a cap with a shorter brim and a higher peak
in front, becoming a trifle blue. And then Col and Tiree lying like a
pale strip on the far horizon; while far away in the north the mountains
of Rum and Skye were faint and spectral in the haze of sunlight. Then
the wild coast around, with its splendid masses of granite; and its
spare grass a brown-green in the warm sun, and its bays of silver sand;
and its sea birds whiter than the clouds that came sailing over the
blue."
On many of these western islands, and the northern, and it is said
particularly on the far northern Shetlands, there are some dark somber
faces remaining over from the Armada. The sea has never been kind; it
breaks the rocks, it breaks men.
There are low-lying hills, the chief is Dun I, there are pasture lands,
and still there are fields of wheat and clover. Just before he died,
Columba was carried out to see the men at work in the fields. No doubt
he lifted his eyes and looked around, on his little island, and the
great sea, and the great world beyond. No doubt he wished he might live
longer and labour farther. St. Columba who carried the Gospel and his
gentle Irish gospel from the sixth century of Ireland into the far North
until it swung round and met in Durham and York the Gospel and the
culture coming up from Rome; and that neither so polished nor so
Christian. Yes, even Columba regretted leaving the world behind him,
though he was going to the other world.
Yes, I am certain he regretted leaving the island world behind him. Did
he not sing of his longing--
"Delightful would it be to me to be in _Uchd Ailiun_
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
At times at work without compulsion--
That would be delightful;
At times plucking dulse from the rocks;
At times fishing."
Thirteen hundred years ago; and the song is undimmed, and the world has
not faded. The Port of the Coracle on the far side is still open to
boats adventuring across pleasant or perilous seas. The very rock on
which Columba landed, the traveler seeking the subtle transubstantiation
from the past may stand on. And there is the White Beach of the Monks,
where the companions of Columba paced to and fro in those days and in
this lovely land that seems too far away to be believed in.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF IONA AND ST. MARTIN'S CROSS.]
The entire island is the shrine of the Saint, and not only the cathedral
of Iona. In truth this particular church dates from six hundred years
later than Columba, six hundred years backward from us. The crosses that
stand in the cemetery of St. Oran, St. Martin's and the Maclean, the
only two left out of nearly four hundred, cannot date much farther back
than this, or than "gentle Duncan." There is a long line of graves, each
with its aged granite slab, of the kings, Norwegian and Irish and
Scottish, of those early centuries. I do not remember that I saw the one
that speaks of Duncan. But I do remember that the carvings were very
curious and often very fascinating, the "pattern" intricate and
intriguing.
Once the cathedral was a place of magic, an unroofed broken shrine,
where the winds might wander in search of the past, and where the
moonlight might shine through as lovely a casement, tracery as
exquisite, as at fair Melrose. If the generations coming six hundred
years after us are to know of St. Columba, and not to reproach us for
our coöperation with time the vandal, these roofs, this protection, must
be afforded. Still, the gate is so close locked to-day that even Joseph
Pennell could not steal in, and so closely watched that no black lamb or
ram or other hobgoblin could affright Miss Gertrude White or cause her
to cease loving the daring McLeod of Dare.
Yet, if one resolves as did Boswell, to leave the close inspection to
Dr. Johnson, and "to stroll among them at my ease, to take no trouble to
investigate minutely, and only receive the general impression of solemn
antiquity," one will come upon much that is of particular impression,
like the carvings about and on the capitals, with the early grace of the
later Italians; quite worth careful preserving. And here is the altar,
and I doubt not at this very spot--church shrines continue in this
steadfast Scotland--Columba knelt before the God whose worship he had
brought over the seas, and was to carry still farther over land and
seas. There may be one shrine in the Christian world more sacred. But
not more than one. Dr. Johnson is still quite right--"The man is little
to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of
Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."
The storm did not come, although we waited three days for it. Nothing
but calm in the island of Iona, and peace on the deep of the Atlantic;
tender dawns, still high noons, twilights of soft visible gray that
lasted over to the next morning; a land of hushed winds and audible
sounds, the seas lying like glass.
Not even on a Sunday morning when in a coracle, or some such smaller
boat than one usually cares to venture, perhaps a lug, whatever that may
be, we accompanied the clergyman to the mainland of Mull, and watched
the stern sad faces of these far away folk as they listened to a very
simple sermon of an old simple story. I remembered that at Earraid,
Robert Louis Stevenson had been interested in the religious services
held for the workmen who were cutting stone for a lighthouse building by
Thomas Stevenson. From these people religion will go very late, if at
all. Surely men and women need what Columba brought hither, now as ever.
And because of David Balfour I walked a little way into Mull, which
still must look as he saw it, for except for the roadway it looked as
though I were the first who had ever ventured that way since time and
these rough granite heaps began.
"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
"Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
Egg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
Where is that glory now?
"Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that's gone!"