John o' Groat was a fisherman belonging to Holland who was caught
when at sea in a great storm which damaged his sails so that his boat
drifted almost helplessly across the sea. When he came in sight of
the Scottish coast he was carried with the current into the Pentland
Firth, and as he could not repair the sails in the boat and could not
get back to Holland with them in their damaged condition, he decided
to land on one of the islands and repair them on shore. His wife was
very much opposed to his landing on Stroma, as she thought it was a
desert island, so he got his boat across from there to the Scottish
coast; but when he attempted to land at Huna, the natives opposed his
landing, for they thought he was a pirate. Fortunately for him he
had a few kegs of gin in his boat, and when the canny Scots saw these
they became more friendly, especially as they had a great respect for
Holland's gin, and so they allowed him to land, and even helped him
to mend his sails. They afterwards allowed him to settle amongst them
on condition that he did not attempt to go into the interior of the
country, and that he built his house on the seashore. He got on well
amongst his new friends, and in time became their chief and had eight
sons, and on one festive occasion, when they all came to see him,
they quarrelled as to which should have precedence at his table, so
John told them that the next time they came he would have matters so
arranged as to avoid that kind of thing in the future. He therefore
built an entirely new house with eight sides to it and a door in
each, and made a table inside of the same octagonal shape, so that
when they came to see him again each of them could enter by his own
door and sit at his own head of the table.
In reply to our questions the shepherd said he thought this event
happened about 350 years ago, but the house had long since disappeared,
and only the site of the foundations which he had shown us previously
now remained. He also said that heaps of ladies and gentlemen came there
to picnic on the site, and he had seen them take even small stones away;
but though he had lived there for fifty years, he had never seen John o'
Groat's any different from what it was now. We asked him why John did
not return to Holland, and he said it was because he had a letter from
the king. We thanked the shepherd for his story, and, having suitably
rewarded him, bade him farewell and hurried off to bed in the fading
light of our rapidly diminishing candle.
_Sunday, September 17th._
The strict observance of the Sabbath Day in Scotland was to us a most
pleasing feature in Scottish life, and one to which we had been
accustomed from early childhood, so we had no desire to depart from it
now. We were, therefore, very pleased when Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie
invited us to accompany them to the Free Kirk service, and, as half-past
ten o'clock was the time fixed for our departure from the inn, we
concluded that the kirk could not be far away, as that was the hour that
service began in our village church in Cheshire, but we could not
remember seeing any kirk in the neighbourhood of the "Huna Inn." We
continued walking one mile after another for more than an hour, and must
have walked quite four miles before we came in sight of the kirk, and we
were then informed that the service did not commence until twelve
o'clock! The country through which we passed was very bare, there being
a total absence of hedges and trees, so we could see people coming
towards the kirk from every direction. Everybody seemed to know
everybody else, and, as they came nearer the sacred enclosure, they
formed themselves into small groups and stood conversing with each
other, chiefly on religious matters, until the minister arrived to take
charge of his flock. He was a quaintly dressed and rather elderly man,
evidently well known, as he had a nod or a smile of recognition and a
friendly word for all. We followed him into the kirk, where we found
ourselves in the presence of quite a large congregation, and sat with
Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie in their own pew in the rear of the kirk. The
form of the service was quite different from that to which we had been
accustomed. The congregation stood up while they prayed and sat down
while they sang the Psalms, with the exception of one man, who remained
standing in what we thought was the clerk's desk immediately below the
pulpit. This man acted as leader of the singing, but he failed to get
much assistance from the people, and had great difficulty in keeping the
singing going. Possibly the failure of the congregational singing might
be accounted for by the absence of an organ or other instrument of music
to assist and encourage the people to sing, the nearest approach to
anything of the kind being the tuning-fork which the conductor held in
his hand. There was also the fact that the sitting posture was not the
best position for bringing out the powers of the human voice; but we
came to the conclusion that music was not looked upon favourably in that
remote part of Scotland.
In front of the pulpit there was an enclosure, fenced in by the
communion rail, and inside this were seated the elders, or deacons of
the church. These were very old men with bent heads and white hair, and
had the appearance of centenarians; they were indeed the
queerest-looking group of old men we had ever seen assembled together.
But it was their noses that chiefly attracted our attention, as they
were so very long and crooked, and the strange feature about them was
that they were all of the same pattern. Their only rival, as far as we
could see, in length of nose was the minister, but we thought he had
enlarged his by artificial means, as we found to our surprise that he
was addicted to snuff-taking, a habit very prevalent in Scotland in
those days.
Then came the sermon. On the pulpit was the Bible, and beside it a
substantial box of snuff, to which the minister resorted occasionally in
the course of his long discourse. His pinches must have been
considerable, for every sniff lasted from two to three seconds, and
could be heard distinctly all over the kirk. This had a tendency to
distract our attention from his sermon, which, by the way, was a very
good one; but, owing to his rather slow delivery, we experienced a
feeling of relief when he reached the end, for it had lasted quite an
hour.
There was now a slight movement amongst the congregation, which we
interpreted as a sign that the service was at an end, and we rose to
leave; but, imagine our consternation when our friends told us that what
we had listened to was only the first part of the service, and that we
must on no account leave, as the second part was to follow immediately.
We therefore remained not altogether unwillingly, for we were curious to
know what the next service was like. It proved to be almost exactly the
same as the first, and we could not distinguish much difference between
the two sermons; but we listened attentively, and were convinced that
the preacher was a thoroughly conscientious man in spite of his
occasional long sniffs of snuff, which were continued as before, but
what astonished us was that the old gentleman never once sneezed! It
was the most remarkable service we had ever attended, and it concluded
exactly at three o'clock, having lasted three hours.
We had then to retrace our four-mile walk to "Huna Inn," but the miles
seemed rather longer, as Mrs. Mackenzie could only walk in a leisurely
manner and we were feeling very hungry. We whiled away the time by
talking about the sermons and the snuff, but chiefly about the deacons
and their wonderful noses, and why they were all alike and so strangely
crooked. Mr. Mackenzie suggested that they were crooked because if they
had grown straight they would have projected over their mouths and
prevented them from eating, the crook in them being a provision of
nature to avoid this; or, they might have descended from the Romans or
some other ancient race who had formerly inhabited the coast of that
part of Scotland. Books had been written and sermons preached about
noses, and the longer the nose the greater the intellect of the owner
was supposed to be. We told our host that there was only one-sixteenth
part of an inch between the length of Napoleon's nose and that of
Wellington's. We had forgotten which was the longer, but as Wellington's
was so conspicuous that he was nicknamed "Nosey" by his troops, and as
he had won the great battle of Waterloo, we concluded that it was his,
and gave him the benefit of the doubt. We quoted the following lines:
Knows he, that never took a pinch,
Nosey, the pleasure thence that flows?
Knows he the titillating joy
Which my nose knows?
O Nose, I am as proud of thee
As any mountain of its snows;
I gaze on thee, and feel that pride
A Roman knows.
Our host confided to us the reason why he was so anxious that we should
not leave in the middle of the service. The second service was
originally intended for those who had to come long distances to reach
the kirk, some of whom came from a place seven miles away, but in late
years the two services had become continuous. A few Sundays before our
visit some persons had left the kirk at the end of the first part, and
in his second sermon the minister had plainly described them as
followers of the Devil! so we supposed our host was anxious that we
should not be denounced in the same way.
We found our tea-dinner waiting our arrival at the inn. We sat down to
it at half-past four, and, as we rose from what was left of it at five
o'clock, having worked hard meanwhile, we may safely be credited with
having done our duty.
We had a walk with our host along the shore, and had not proceeded far
before we saw a dark-looking object some distance away in the sea. We
thought it looked like a man in a boat, rising and falling with the
waves, but Mr. Mackenzie told us that it was two whales following the
herrings that were travelling in shoals round the coasts. We were very
much interested in their strange movements, as they were the only
whales we ever saw alive, but we could not help feeling sorry for the
fish. Evening was coming on as we re-entered "Huna Inn," and when we
were again seated before our turf fire, joined by our host and hostess,
our conversation was chiefly on the adventures we had already had, the
great walk we were to begin on the morrow, and the pleasure it had given
us to see the manifest and steadfast determination of the people at the
kirk to observe the Commandment of the God of the Sabbath, "REMEMBER
THAT THOU KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH DAY." We wondered how much the
prosperity of the Scottish nation and its representatives in every part
of the "wide, wide world" was attributable to their strict observance of
the Sabbath. Who knows?