FAST DAY AT PORTREE.
In rough weather it requires no little courage to make one's way in a
steamer from Tobermory to Portree, the capital of the Isle of Skye. Our
noble-hearted owner is very careful on this point. The _Elena_ is a
beautiful yacht, and he treats her tenderly. It is true, off
Ardanamurchan Point we tumble about on the troubled waves of the
Atlantic, and are glad to shelter in the quiet harbour of Oronsay, where
we pass the night, after the Doctor's lady has gone on shore in search of
milk, whilst the Doctor smokes his cigar on the top of the highest spot
he can find, and I interview the one policeman of the district, who is
unable to put on his official costume, as he tells me it rained heavily
yesterday, and his clothes are hung by the fire to dry. At Oronsay there
are some six houses, including what is called an hotel. Here and there
are some old tubs about us which would cause Mr. Plimsoll's hair to stand
on an end, and which seek in this stagnant spot shelter from the gale.
Next morning we resume our voyage, leaving Oronsay with a very light
heart--to quote a celebrated phrase--and in a few hours are at Portree,
after passing the residence of the Macdonald who is a descendant of the
Lord of the Isles, and such islands as Rum and Muck, and others with
names equally unpoetical in English ears. From afar we watch the giant
hills of the Isle of Skye, their summits wreathed in clouds. Mr. Black
and Mr. Smith have between them much to answer for. They write of fine
weather when the sun shines, when you may see ocean and heaven and earth
all alike, serene and beautiful, when the novelty and the beauty of the
scene excite wonder and praise and joy. It is then people are glad to
come to the Isle of Skye, and find a charm in its lonely and rustic life,
in its tranquil lochs and its purple hills; but I fancy in Skye it is as
often wet as not; and when we were there the rain was in the ascendant,
and one would, except for the name of the thing, have been often just as
soon at home. Mr. Spurgeon once said to a Scotchman, as he was pointing
out the grandeur of a Highland scene, that it seemed as if God, after He
had finished making the world, got together all the spare rubbish, and
shot it down there. Apparently something similar has been done with
regard to Skye. You are bewildered with their number and variety--rocks
to the right, rocks to the left, rocks before, rocks behind, rocks rising
steep out of the sea with all sorts of rugged outlines, rocks sloping
away into wide moors where no life is to be seen, or into lochs where the
fish have it almost all to themselves. It is as well that it should be
so. The land does not flow with milk and honey. The hut of a Skye
peasant, with its turf walls, its bare and filthy floor, not the sweeter
for the fact that the cow--if the owner is rich enough to have
one--sleeps behind, its peat fire, with no chimney for the escape of
smoke, its bare-legged boys and girls, its sombre men, its gaunt women,
seemed to me the climax of human wretchedness.
It is with no common pleasure we get in our boat and are rowed ashore.
It is a secular day with us in England. Here, in Portree, it is fast
day, and all the shops are closed, and if we had not laid in a stock of
mutton at Oronsay, it would have been fast day with us on board the
_Elena_ as well as with the pious people ashore. It seems to me there
are services in the churches, either in English or in Gaelic, all day
long. Of course I attend the Gaelic sermon. It is recorded of an old
Duke of Argyll that on one occasion he was heard to declare that if he
wanted to court a young lady he would talk French, as that was the
language of flattery; that if he wished to curse and swear, he would have
recourse to English; but that if he wanted to worship God, he would
employ the Gaelic tongue. It may be that I heard a bad specimen, as the
sermon or service did not seem to be particularly impressive; and as the
preacher took a whole hour in which to expound and amplify his text, it
must be admitted that, considering I did not understand a word of it, it
was not a little wearying. I must, however, own that the people listened
with the utmost attention, and that even such of them as were asleep all
the time, slept in a quiet, subdued, and reverential manner. Indeed,
they think much of religion in this Isle of Skye, and have a profound
respect for the clergy. "Sure," said an island guide one day, as he was
speaking of a distinguished divine, whom he had attended during a summer
tour--"sure he's a verra godly man, he gave me a drink out o' his ain
flask." And yet Portree is not a drinking place. There are two or three
good hotels for the tourists, and little more. I saw no sign of
intoxication on the evening of the fast day, but I did see churches
filled, and all business suspended, and the sight of the Gaelic
congregation was extremely interesting. The men in good warm home-spun
frieze, the women with clean faces, and plaid shawls, and white caps, the
younger ones with the last new thing in bonnets, looking as unlike the
big, bare-footed damsels of the streets, and the old withered women whom
you see coming in from the wide and dreary moor, as it is possible to
imagine. In London heresy may prevail--sometimes, it is said, it crosses
the Scottish border; but here, at any rate, since the Reformation has
flourished the sincere milk of the Word. These men and women have their
Gaelic Bible, and that they cling to as their guide in life, their
comfort in adversity, their stay and support in death, and as the
foundation of their hopes of immortal life and joy. An old gossiping
writer, who died a year or two since, relates how a Presbyterian
clergyman confessed to him that his congregation, who only used the
Gaelic, were so well versed in theology, that it was impossible for him
to go beyond their reach in the most profound doctrines of Christianity.
Perhaps it is as well for some ministers whom I have heard, but should be
sorry to name, that they have not Gaelic hearers. They must be terrible
fellows to preach to, these men, fed on the Shorter Catechism, the
Proverbs of Solomon, and the rest of the Old and New Testaments. It is
little to them what the philosophers think. Mill, and Spencer, and
Tyndall, and Huxley they ignore. Dark-eyed, black-haired, with heads
which you might knock against a rock without cracking, and with arms and
legs that one would fancy could stop the Flying Dutchman,--evidently
these are not the men to be tossed about with every wind of doctrine or
cunning craftiness of men who lie in wait to deceive. Little pity would
they have for the imperfect, weak-kneed brother, who, in the pulpit or
out of it, could presume to doubt what they had learnt at their mothers'
knees. Up here in Skye, the religion known is bright and clear. The
shops are of the poorest description, merely one room in a common
dwelling, with a stone or earth floor. There is no paper published in
all the Isle of Skye, but the people believe. You man of the nineteenth
century, the heir of all the ages underneath the sun, would think little
of the peasant of that wintry region. I believe he thinks as little of
you as you do of him. You mock, and he believes; you scorn, and he
worships; you stammer about Protoplasms and Evolutions, he says in his
old Gaelic tongue, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light."
There are many in London who would give all that they have if they could
believe as these men and women of the North.
There were sermons again in the afternoon, sermons at night, sermons
again next day, sermons on the coming Sunday, and to them came the fisher
from the sea, the little tradesman from his shop, the ploughman from his
croft, the milkmaid from her dairy, and the child from school; and it
must further be remembered that these fasts are voluntary, and not in
accordance with Acts of Parliament. Remember, also, that nothing is done
to make the service attractive. It is simply the usual form of
Presbyterian worship that is followed. The chapel was as plain as could
be, and the singing was almost funereal. But, after all, the chapel was
to be preferred to the empty streets, along which the wind raged like a
hurricane, or to the contemplation of bleak rocks and angry seas. I can
quite believe at Skye it is more comfortable to go to kirk than stay at
home. Indeed, more than once on the night after, I felt perhaps my
safest place would have been the kirk, as the wind came rushing in
through a gully in the mountains, and kept the water in a constant fury.
Really, from the deck of the _Elena_, Portree looked a very comfortable
place, with the bay lined with buildings, and conspicuous among them all
the Imperial Hotel, where the Empress of the French stayed while
travelling in these parts. There is a good deal of excitement here as
steamers rush in and out, and yachts lazily drop their anchors. It seems
to me that the people quite appreciate the charms of their rocky island.
Coming down the cliff, I saw a notice--"Furnished Apartments to Let"--and
the price asked was quite conclusive on that head. Down by the harbour
an enterprising Scot, who had been a gentleman's servant in London, had
established a store for the sale of bottled beer and such pleasant
drinks, and seemed quite satisfied with the result of his experiment. At
any rate, he preferred Portree to residence further inland, where he said
even the very eggs were uneatable, so strongly did they taste of peat.
My lady friend--rather, I should say, "our lady"--is as much affected by
the gale that dolorous night as myself, and writes, plaintively begging
me to excuse the irregularity of the metre on account of the rolling of
the vessel, as follows:--
"Here off Skye,
The tide runs high;
Through hill and glen
Wind howls again.
The Coolan hills
No more we see,
Save through the mists
Of memory.
The sea birds float,
And seem to gloat,
With loud, shrill note,
Above our boat;
For they, like us,
Are forced to stay
For shelter in this friendly bay;
And now I seek, in balmy sleep,
Oblivion of the perils of the deep,
And wishing rocks and hills good night,
Let's hope to-morrow's log will be more bright."
A cottage in the Hebrides is by no means a cottage _ornee_. Its walls
are made of stone and clay of a tremendous thickness. On this wall, on a
framework of old oars or old wood, are laid large turfs and a roof of
thatch. In this roof the fowls nestle, and lay an infinite number of
eggs; but all things inside and out are tainted with turf in a way to
make them disagreeable. There is no chimney, and but one door, and the
floor is the bare earth, with a bench for the family formed of earth or
peat or stone. Beds and bedding are unknown. If the family keeps a cow,
that has the best corner, for it is what the pig is to the Irishman, the
gentleman that pays the rent. Small sheep, almost as horned and hardy as
goats, may be met with, but never pigs. Pork seems an abomination in the
eyes of the natives. Every cotter has a portion of the adjacent moor in
which to cut peat sufficient to supply his wants. Out of the homespun
wool the women make good warm garments--and they need them. Fish and
porridge seem their principal diet, and it agrees with them. The girls
are wonderfully fat and healthy; and consumption is utterly unknown.
While I was at Stornoway, an old woman had just died in the workhouse
considerably over a century old. As to agricultural operations, they are
conducted on a most primitive scale. A few potatoes may here and there
be seen struggling for dear life; and as the hay is cut when the sun
shines, it is often in August or September that the farmer reaps his
scanty harvest. You miss the flowers which hide the deformity of the
peasant's cottage in dear old England. It seems altogether in these
distant regions, where the wild waves of the Atlantic dash and roar;
where the days are dark with cloud; where you see nothing but rock, and
glen, and moorland; where forests are an innovation, that man fights with
the opposing powers of nature for existence under very great
disadvantage.