OFF MULL.
As I sit musing in the dining-saloon of the _Elena_, it occurs to me that
a Scotchman is bound to be a better educated man than an Englishman; for
these simple reasons--in the first place, he does not drink beer--and
beer is fatal to the intellect, inasmuch as it magnifies and fattens the
body; and secondly, because the climate compels him to lead the life of a
student. In the south, we Englishmen have fine weather. In this world
everything is comparative. We in Middlesex may not have the warm
sunshine and blue skies of France or Italy, but we have weather which
admits of garden parties, and country sports, and pastimes; up in this
region of mountain, rock, and river, it is perpetually blowing big guns
or raining cats and dogs, and the Scotchman, as he can't go out, must sit
at home and improve his mind. In dull weather Oban is not a lively spot,
but here at Tobermory dulness fails adequately to express the thorough
stagnation of the place. Few of my readers have ever heard of Tobermory;
yet Tobermory is the principal town--indeed, the only one that is to be
found in all Mull. It rose to its present height of greatness as far
back as the year 1788, when it was developed under the auspices of the
Society for the Encouragement of British Fisheries. But the place was
founded before then, as three or four miles off there are the remains of
a monastery, and in a niche in the wall of one of the hotels there was,
evidently, a crucifix or an image of the Virgin Mary, whose name seems to
be connected with the town. Tobermory means Well of St. Mary, and up at
the top of the town there is shown to you the well of that name. The
_Florida_, one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, was sunk off
Tobermory, and some of her timbers and her brass and iron guns have
occasionally been fished up. The place must be valuable, as the present
proprietor gave 90,000 pounds for the estate, which had been bought by
the former owner for about a third of that sum. The house and ground are
on the left, and his yacht lies in the bay as we enter. By our side are
a few trading vessels which have entered the harbour for shelter. On the
right, at the entrance of the harbour, is a rock, on which some one has
had painted, in large red letters, "God is love." In rough seas, on this
rock-bound coast, where the wind howls like a hurricane as it rushes down
the gorges of the hills, and where the Atlantic seems to gather up its
strength, here and there, at fitful intervals, ere it becomes still and
tame--under the soothing influence of Scotch bag-pipes--it is well to
remind the traveller on the deep that He, who holds the waters in the
hollow of His hands, is love. Tobermory is, I imagine, a very religious
place; on a Sunday night the Sheriff preaches in the Court House, and
there, on our left, is a Baptist chapel--where, once upon a time, the
Doctor preached, and in his warmth upset the candle over the head and
shoulders of his colleague sitting below--and up on the hill is a kirk
and a churchyard; the latter, as is the case with all the churchyards in
this part of the world, in a truly disgraceful state of neglect, with the
graves, which are but a few inches deep, covered with long grass and
weeds. At one corner is what evidently was a receptacle for holy water,
and all around the place there is an antiquity--in the grass growing in
many of the streets, in the deserted walls of houses crumbling to decay,
in the weather-beaten, ancient look of the people, certainly by no means
suggestive of gaiety or life. Tobermory reminds me, says the Doctor, of
what the auld woman said of the sermon--that it was neither amusing nor
edifying. The Doctor's lady, overcome by her feelings, writes verses,
which I transcribe for the benefit of my readers who may not enjoy the
honour of her acquaintance.
"Off Mull
'Tis rather dull.
Hope is vain,
Down pours the rain;
The wind howls
Like groans of ghouls."
But the subject is too much for her, and we land to have a chat with the
natives. A deal we get out of them, as we wander, something like the
river of the poet--
"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."
They seem to me suspicious and reserved, as the Irishman when at home.
We meet one of the natives--an ancient mariner, with a long, grey beard,
and glistening eye. He can tell us all about the legends connected with
the Well of St. Mary, we are told.
"You have lived here all your life?
"Oh, yes," replies he, thoughtfully, picking the lower set of left
grinders in his mouth.
"And you know the place well?"
"Oh, yes," says he, commencing picking on the other side of his mouth.
"And you can tell us all about it?"
"Oh, yes, sure," says he, as he calmly proceeds to pick the remainder of
his teeth individually and collectively.
"What about the well--you know that?"
"Yes, it is up there," pointing to the spot we had just left.
"What do the people call it?"
"The Well of St. Mary."
"Can you tell us why?" said we, thinking that at last the secret which
had been hidden from the policeman of the district and the inn-keeper (I
beg his pardon, in these parts every little cabin in which you can buy
whisky or get a crust of bread is an hotel), and every man we met. "Can
you tell me why the place is so called?"
"Yes," says he, "the Well of St. Mary--that is the question." And then
he shut up--the oracle was dumb. I need not describe my feelings of
disappointment. I could have punched that man's head.
I learn that Mull is a cheap place--as it ought to be--to live in. In
Tobermory, butter--beautiful in its way--is eighteenpence a-pound;
mutton, tenpence; eggs, eightpence a dozen; and, says my informant,
things are now very dear. The people are agricultural, and each one
cultivates his little crop. The women are fearfully and wonderfully
made; they seem born for hard work, and a large number of the young ones
leave yearly for Glasgow, where, as maids-of-all-work, they are much in
request. In the mud and rain, children, barefooted, come out to stare.
The girls have no bonnets on, the boys mostly wear kilts, but they have
all the advantages of a school, and the steamers from Oban now and then
bring batches of the Glasgow papers. One of the things that most strikes
a stranger in these Western isles is the astonishing number of
sweetshops. Every one is born, it is said, with a sweet tooth in his
head, but here every islander must have a dozen at least. Tobermory is
no exception to the general rule. The lower part of the town, at the far
end of the bay, is chiefly devoted to trade, and at every other shop I
see sweets exposed for sale. It is the same at Portree, the capital of
Skye, and it is the same at the still more important town of Stornoway,
in the island of Lewis. At Tobermory, one sees in the shop windows,
besides ship stores, mutton--you never see beef either in the Inner or
Outer Hebrides; articles symptomatic of feminine love for
fashion--actually a skating-rink hat being one of the attractions at one
of the leading shops, though I can't hear of a skating-rink on this side
of the world at all. In the interior of the island are farmers and
farmers' wives, who evidently have cash to spare. As we skirt along the
coast we see here and there a grey castle in ruins, telling of a time and
manners and customs long since passed away. At one castle--that of Moy,
for instance--the laird was a real knight and chief, and behaved as such.
One part of the castle was built over a precipice, and in the wall was a
niche in which a man could just stand, and barely that; a man or woman
charged with a crime was placed in that niche; after a certain time the
door was opened, and if he or she was still standing the result was a
verdict of "Not guilty." Had strength or nerve failed, the unhappy
individual was considered guilty and had received the punishment due to
his or her crime. It was rather hard, this, for weak brethren, and
perhaps it is as well that the system is in existence no longer. There
was a good deal of the right that is born of might in Scotland then; it
is to be hoped that the land is happier now with its castles in ruins,
and its sons and daughters wanderers on the face of the earth, farming in
Canada, climbing to wealth and power in the United States, governing in
India, growing wool in Natal, coming to the front with true Scotch
tenacity and instinct everywhere. At the same time, when we need men for
our armies and our fleets, and remember that the flower of them come from
such islands as Mull, one may regret the forced exile of these hardy sons
of the Celt or the Norseman.