Sailing from Iona about midday on Wednesday, October 20, our travellers
landed in the evening on the southern coast of Mull, near the house of
the Rev. Neal Macleod, who gave them lodgings for the night. Johnson
oddly described him as “the cleanest-headed man that he had met with in
the Western Islands.” The talk ran on English statesmen. Here it was
that Johnson called Mr. Pitt a meteor, and Sir Robert Walpole a fixed
star, and maintained that Pulteney was as paltry a fellow as could
be. Continuing their journey on the morrow, they dined at the house of
a physician, “who was so much struck with the uncommon conversation
of Johnson, that he observed to Boswell, ‘This man is just a hogshead
of sense.’” This doctor’s practice could scarcely have been very
lucrative, for there came a time when he had no successor. Garnett
writing of Mull at the end of the century, says, “There is at present
no medical man in the island; the nearest surgeon of eminence is at
Inverary.”[687] The distance from that town to the farthest points in
Mull, as the crow flies, is not less than sixty miles, but by the route
taken would be perhaps one hundred. [Sidenote: GLOOM AND DESOLATION.]
In the afternoon our travellers rode, writes Boswell, “through what
appeared to me the most gloomy and desolate country I had ever beheld.”
“It was,” said Johnson, “a country of such gloomy desolation that Mr.
Boswell thought no part of the Highlands equally terrific.” Faujas
Saint-Fond, a few years later, describes Mull as a country “without a
single road, without a single tree, where the mountains have heather
for their only covering.”[688] Amidst the beautiful plantations and the
fine trees with which this island is now in so many parts adorned,
the modern tourist fails to recognize the truthfulness of these gloomy
descriptions. Our travellers were to spend the night at Moy, the seat
of the Laird of Lochbuy,[689] at the head of the fine loch from which
he takes his title. [Sidenote: THE APPROACH TO LOCHBUY.] I approached
it from the north-eastern side of the island, having driven over from
Craignure, a little port in the Sound of Mull. Perhaps the country
through which I passed was naturally finer than that which they had
traversed in coming from the south-west. Perhaps, on the other hand,
the difference was chiefly due to the trees and to better weather.
Certainly the long drive, though in places dreary, was for a great part
of the road on a bright, windy summer day, one of remarkable beauty. I
passed lochs of the sea with the waves tossing, the sea-fowl hovering
and settling and screaming, great herons standing on the shore, and
the sea-trout leaping in the waters. But far more beautiful was Loch
Uisk, an inland lake embosomed among the mountains, its steep shores
covered with trees. The strong wind was driving the scud like dust
over the face of its dark waters. As I drew near Lochbuy, I caught
sight of the ivy-mantled tower across a meadow, where the mowers were
cutting the grass, and the hay-makers were tossing it out to the sun
and wind. Beyond the castle there was a broad stretch of white sand; a
small vessel lay at anchor, ready at the next tide to run ashore and
discharge the hamlet’s winter stock of coal. Tall trunks of fir-trees
were lying near the water’s edge ready for shipping. At the head of
the loch are two beautiful bays, each with its pastures and tilled
lands, its low-wooded heights and its lofty circling mountains, each
facing the south-west and sheltered from the cold winds. Between these
two bays rise fine crags, hidden in places beneath hazels and ivy. For
most of the year it is a land streaming with waterfalls. In beautiful
ravines, half hidden by the trees, wild cascades rush down, swollen
by the storms that have burst on the mountains; but at the time of
my visit their voice was hushed by the long drought. So dry had the
springs become in some places, that I was told at Lochbuy that to one
of the neighbouring islands water had to be carried in boats.
[Illustration: LOCHBUY
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: THE LAIRD OF LOCHBUY.]
Close to the ruined Castle stood “the mansion, not very spacious or
splendid,” where Macleane of Lochbuy, “a true Highland laird, rough and
haughty, and tenacious of his dignity,” entertained our travellers.
“We had heard much,” writes Boswell, “of Lochbuy’s being a
great roaring braggadocio, a kind of Sir John Falstaff, both in
size and manners; but we found that they had swelled him up to
a fictitious size, and clothed him with imaginary qualities.
Col’s idea of him was equally extravagant, though very
different: he told us he was quite a Don Quixote; and said, he
would give a great deal to see him and Dr. Johnson together.
The truth is, that Lochbuy proved to be only a bluff, comely,
noisy, old gentleman, proud of his hereditary consequence,
and a very hearty and hospitable landlord. Lady Lochbuy was
sister to Sir Allan Macleane, but much older. He said to me,
‘They are quite _Antediluvians_.’ Being told that Dr. Johnson
did not hear well, Lochbuy bawled out to him, ‘Are you of the
Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?’ Dr. Johnson gave
him a significant look, but made no answer; and I told Lochbuy
that he was not Johns_ton_, but John_son_, and that he was an
Englishman.”[690]
According to Sir Walter Scott, Boswell misapprehended Lochbuy’s meaning.
“There are,” he says, “two septs of the powerful clan of
M’Donald, who are called Mac-Ian, that is _John’s-son_; and
as Highlanders often translate their names when they go to
the Lowlands,—as Gregor-son for Mac-Gregor, Farquhar-son for
Mac-Farquhar,—Lochbuy supposed that Dr. Johnson might be one
of the Mac-Ians of Ardnamurchan, or of Glencro. Boswell’s
explanation was nothing to the purpose. The _Johnstons_ are a
clan distinguished in Scottish border history, and as brave as
any Highland clan that ever wore brogues; but they lay entirely
out of Lochbuy’s knowledge—nor was he thinking of them.”
I have little doubt, however, that whatever Lochbuy was thinking of he
pronounced the name _Johnston_. In this both Boswell and Johnson agree.
This too was the name which I commonly found given to the great man in
the Highlands and Lowlands alike.
“The following day (writes Boswell) we surveyed the old castle,
in the pit or dungeon of which Lochbuy had some years before
taken upon him to imprison several persons; and though he had
been fined in a considerable sum by the Court of Justiciary,
he was so little affected by it, that while we were examining
the dungeon, he said to me, with a smile, ‘Your father knows
something of this;’ (alluding to my father’s having sat as one
of the judges on his trial). Sir Allan whispered me, that the
laird could not be persuaded that he had lost his heritable
jurisdiction.”
[Sidenote: HEREDITARY JURISDICTIONS.]
Up to the year 1747 “in the Highlands,” to quote Johnson’s words,
“some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction over counties, and
some chieftains over their own lands.” This subjection of the people
to their chiefs was rightly regarded as one of the main sources of
the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. He who by law was privileged to keep
a pit, a dungeon, and a gallows, was not likely to meet with much
resistance when he summoned his people to follow him to the field.
Advantage was therefore taken of the defeat of the clansmen at
Culloden, “to crush all the Local Courts and to extend the general
benefits of equal law to the low and the high, in the deepest recesses
and obscurest corners.” The heritable jurisdiction had been divided
into regalities, ordinary baronies, and baronies which had the right of
pit and gallows.
“The lowest criminal jurisdiction,” says a Scotch legal author,
“is what we call for Battery and Bloodwits, _viz._, Offences
whereby a party is beaten, or blood drawn of him, but no
greater harm done; and this is implied in all Baronies. But if
the erection of the Barony contain a power of Pit and Gallows,
it imports a jurisdiction in ordinary capital cases, but not
in the excepted crimes, which go under the name of the _Four
Pleas of the Crown_, _viz._, Murder, Robbery, Rape, and wilful
Fire-raising. It is so called from the manner of execution
of criminals, _viz._, by hanging the men upon the Gallows or
Gibbet, and drowning the women, sentenced in a capital crime,
in a pit, it not being thought decent of old to hang them.”[691]
In old law Latin this right was known under the name of _furca et
fossa_.[692] A person invested with the jurisdiction of a regality
had power also in the Four Pleas of the Crown. “The sentences in
civil cases are subject to the review of the Lords of Session, and in
criminal to the Court of Justiciary. In criminal trials thirty days
were allowed before execution of the sentence on this [the southern]
side of the Forth, and forty on the other.” From this appeal there was
one regality which was exempt. The jurisdiction of the Duke of Argyle
was absolute even in cases of life and death. From his sentences there
was no appeal.[693] Each barony had its Gallows Hill, and its dempster
or hangman.[694] Pennant, in 1772, saw “on a little flat hill near
the village of Kilarow in Islay the remains of the gallows.”[695] At
Dunvegan men had been hanged on the sentence of the laird, so late as
1740. No doubt this power was sometimes most oppressively exercised.
A chief who lived near Inverness was charged with having rid himself
at a profit of men on his estate who had given him trouble. He charged
them with theft, threatened them with the gallows, and so brought them
“to sign a contract for their banishment.” They were then put on board
a ship bound to the West Indies, “the master paying so much a head for
them.”[696] In other words, they were sold for slaves, if not for
life, at all events for a certain number of years.
No change had been made by the Act of Union of 1706, for it was
expressly provided in it that all these heritable jurisdictions “should
be reserved to the owners as rights and property.”[697] When in 1747
these powers had been swept away, two unhappy classes of men were
excepted from the full benefit of the Act. The workers in any kind of
mine or in salt-works were to remain as they had hitherto been—serfs
for life. These men were found only in the Lowlands, chiefly in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Nevertheless, even they were not left
altogether without relief. “All jurisdiction in any case inferring
the loss of life or demembration, was abrogated.”[698] A collier or a
salter therefore could no longer be hanged or drowned, or even mangled
by his master. It was not till the last year of the century that they
were finally and fully freed. One of these emancipated serfs lived till
the year 1844.[699]
The Act of 1747 not only abolished jurisdictions, but also alleviated
the prisoner’s lot. Till it was passed, “all over Scotland pits were
accounted legal prisons for thieves and other meaner criminals.”[700]
Lady Margaret Bellenden in _Old Mortality_ praises her pit. “It is
not more than two stories beneath ground,” she says, “so it cannot
be unwholesome, especially as I rather believe there is somewhere an
opening to the outer air.”[701] But henceforth—so the Act ran—“the
prison shall have such windows or grates, as that it may be practicable
for any friend of the prisoner to visit, see, and converse with him
when he shall be so minded.”[702] In out of the way places, where there
were no justices within reach, the laird, no doubt, to some extent,
continued to exercise his old powers. Thus in Col, more than sixteen
years after the Act was passed, the laird put a woman into “the family
prison” for theft.[703] There have been men who regarded, or affected
to regard with indignation the abolition of these injurious hereditary
powers. “By the nation at large,” writes Dr. Robert Chambers, “the
measure was contemplated as a last stab to the independence of
Scotland, previously almost destroyed by the Union.”[704] There is
happily no reason to believe that the nation at large was at any period
of its history a set of sentimental fools.
[Sidenote: LOCHBUY BEFORE THE COURT.]
To most of the chiefs this loss of their ancient jurisdictions
must have come as a terrible shock. Lochbuy, as has been seen, had
refused to believe it, and so had got into trouble with the Court of
Justiciary. After some search I was fortunate enough to discover a
report of his case. He had, as I was informed by his descendant, the
present laird, with the help of his piper let down a man into the pit.
But here, for once, tradition has not been guilty of amplification.
Aided by his servant, his piper and son, the innkeeper in Moy, and two
other tenants, he had seized two men of the name of Maclean, and had
imprisoned them two days “in an old ruinous castle.” Two of the accused
did not appear to the indictment, “they were therefore fugitated
(outlawed), and their moveables escheated to the king for their
contempt.” The trial took place on August 15, 1759. It lasted twelve
hours. “The jury (of which a majority was landed gentlemen) returned
their verdict unanimously, finding the pannels (prisoners at the bar)
guilty; but verbally recommending the four servants and tenants to the
mercy of the court, it appearing that what they did was by order of
Lochbuy, their master. The lords pronounced sentence, decerning Lochbuy
in £180 sterling of expenses and damages to the private prosecutors,
and 500 marks Scots (about £27) of fine; and condemning the whole
pannels to seventeen days’ imprisonment.”[705]
Lochbuy had no doubt been the more unwilling to believe in the
abolition of his jurisdiction as he had, it should seem, no share
in that “valuable consideration in money which was granted to every
nobleman and petty baron who was thus deprived of one part of his
inheritance.”[706] On what principle of justice this compensation was
given is not clear, unless we agree with Johnson in his assertion that
“those who have long enjoyed dignity and power ought not to lose it
without some equivalent.”[707] Professor Thorold Rogers informs me that
we have here, he believes, the first instance in our history where
compensation is paid by the country at large for the vested interests
of a class. The claims which were made were excessive, partly no doubt
in the hope that when much was demanded at all events something would
be given, but partly, it was said, with the intention of “obstructing
the Act, and raising discontents in the country.”[708] The total sum
asked for was £587,000, but only £152,000 was granted. Among the
claimants I found “Maclean of Lochbuie, Bailie of the Bailiery of
Morovis and Mulerois, £500.” His name does not appear among the list of
those whose claims were allowed.[709]
[Sidenote: LOCHBUY CASTLE.]
Though in 1759 the castle was described as ruinous, nevertheless it had
been inhabited by the laird a few years earlier. Over the entrance of
the house in which he received Johnson is inscribed: “Hæc domus [a word
effaced] erat per Johannem M’Laine De Lochbuy Anno Dom. 1752.” It has,
in its turn, given way to a more modern mansion, and has been converted
into stables, coach-houses, and hay-lofts. The castle was built on
the edge of the sea, “four-square to all the winds that blew.” The
walls, nine or ten feet thick, “are probably as old as the fourteenth
century, but the upper part seems to have been modified in the
seventeenth.”[710] The ivy has climbed up to the top, nevertheless much
of the stonework is still seen. It would be a pity if it were suffered
to cover the walls on all sides. Hard by a little stream shaded with
trees makes its way into the loch. To the north-west rises the steep
hill of Dun Buy. “_Buy_ in Erse,” says Boswell, “signifies yellow. The
hill being of a yellowish hue, has the epithet of _buy_.” This hue I
altogether failed to discover; perhaps it is only seen in the autumn.
On the bright summer’s day in which I saw the castle, it seemed to be
almost unsurpassed in the pleasantness of its seat. Tall trees grew
near it, their leaves rustling in the wind, and the lights and shadows
dancing on the ground as the branches swayed to and fro, while in front
lay the loch with its foaming waves. The old ruin looked as if it had
been set there to add to the beauty of the scene, not for a place where
lairds and their pipers should let down luckless folk into dismal pits.
In the inside there was gloom enough. A few well-worn stone steps lead
up to the entrance. The strong old door studded with iron nails which
had withstood the storms of many a long year, has at length yielded
to time, and been replaced. Behind it is an iron grate secured by
bolts and by an oaken bar that is drawn forth from a hole in the wall.
Passing on I went into a gloomy vault known as the store-room. Not a
ray of light entered save by the open door. In the rocky floor there is
a shallow well, which in the driest seasons is always full of water.
The arched roof is built of huge boulders gathered from the beach, the
spaces between being filled up with thin layers of stone after the
fashion of Roman masonry. A dark staircase in the thickness of the wall
leads up through another strong door to a second vaulted chamber, dimly
lighted by narrow slits at the end of two slanting recesses, on each
side of which are stone benches. This I was told was the court-room or
judgment-hall. Opening out of it on one side is a very small chamber,
in which was a kind of cupboard, a hiding-place perhaps for title-deeds
and plate, for it could be so closed with stones as to look like solid
wall. On the other side is the door to the dungeon, dismal enough, but
not so dismal as the pit below, with its well in which women could be
put to death with decency. On either side of the mouth of the well is
a narrow ledge some eighteen inches wide, but not long enough to allow
the prisoner to stretch himself at full length. On the floor above the
court-room was the kitchen, with walls more than seven feet thick. It
occupied the whole of the story. On the freestone joints of the great
hearth can be seen the deep marks made by sharpening knives. Above the
kitchen was the family sitting-room, which was entered from a gallery
running all round it outside, and built in the overhanging part of the
tower. Here at length I arrived at what may be called the front door.
There was some attempt at ornament in the carving on the stones at the
top and each side of the doorway. There was, moreover, light enough to
see it clearly, for the gallery can boast of fair-sized windows. From
one of them the laird could look out on the Hangman’s Hill, about a
third of a mile off, now covered with fir-trees, but then bare. Some
stones remain, in which the gallows were set up. The view from the
castle, except when a hanging was going on, must on a fine day have
been always beautiful, even when the country was bare of trees. To the
north and east they looked over fields, once yellow every autumn with
grain, but now pleasant meadow-land, shut in with hills and mountains
down whose sides in rainy weather rivers stream and cascades leap. From
one corner of the gallery a turret projects with two narrow windows,
where the watchman could see anyone approaching from the side of the
land. Not far from it was “the whispering hole,” where, by removing a
stone which exactly fits into an opening, a suspicious laird could
overhear the talk in the kitchen beneath. Above the sitting-room was
another story divided into small rooms, the bed-chamber of the family.
So solidly had the roof been built, that unrepaired it withstood all
the blasts of heaven, till that terrible storm burst upon it and
brought it down, which swept away the Tay Bridge.
In these two upper stories there were, no doubt, cheerful rooms,
but they were reached through gloomy doors and iron grates, up dark
staircases, with rough sides and well-worn steps, past the gloomy
dungeon. Everything shows signs of danger and alarm. “It was sufficient
for a Laird of the Hebrides,” as Johnson says, “if he had a strong
house in which he could hide his wife and children from the next
clan.” At the present day, as I was told by my guide, no one thinks of
locking his door at night-time. My bag and great-coat and travelling
rug were left in perfect safety for a couple of hours by the road-side
while I wandered about. Of the modern mansion Johnson would never
have said what he said of the second house, that “it was built with
little regard to convenience, and with none to elegance or pleasure.”
He would have been delighted not only with it, but with its large
garden full of flowers and vegetables and fruits that testify to the
mildness of the climate. The peaches ripen on the walls, though they
do not attain to a large size. The hot-houses were full of choice
plants, and clustering grapes. One bunch, I was told, had weighed
nearly five pounds. But there are far greater changes than those
worked by builders and gardeners. [Sidenote: THE OLD LAIRD AND THE
NEW.] Here, where the rough old Laird in his out-of-the-way corner
of the world used to rule his people with the help of gallows,
pit and dungeon, I found a money-order office, a savings bank,
a telegraph office, and a daily post. There is a good school,
governed by a School Board, and a large reading room where the
dulness of the long winter nights is relieved by various kinds of
entertainments. There is besides an infirmary under the management
of a qualified nurse, the daughter of a medical man, who has learnt
her art by some years’ study in a hospital. She is provided with a
chest of surgical instruments and a large stock of drugs. On her
little pony she sometimes has to attend sick people at a distance
of eight miles. Forty-three cases of measles had lately been under
her care and none of them ended fatally. There is a salmon-hatching
house, and a museum both of antiquities and natural curiosities. In
it I saw a thumbscrew, with an iron ring at one end through which
a thong could be passed. Used in this way it would have served much
the same purpose as hand-cuffs. I looked with interest on an old
Highland spinning-wheel, the gift of my intelligent and friendly
guide, Mr. Angus Black. It had belonged to his grandmother. He
had given it, he said, “to be kept there as a present for ages
and generations to come.” When a little before I drank water from
“the well by the river side,” such was the name of the spring in
Gaelic, he told me that it was the spring “whence the Lairds had
drunk for ages and generations past.” One thing I in vain looked
for in the Museum. Boswell had been told much of a war-saddle, on
which Lochbuy, “that reputed Don Quixote, used to be mounted; but
we did not see it,” he adds, “for the young Laird had applied it to
a less noble purpose, having taken it to Falkirk Fair _with a drove
of black cattle_.” He took it much farther—to America, whither
he went with his regiment. There he lost his life in a duel, and
it was lost too. Perhaps it is preserved as a curiosity in some
collection on the other side of the Atlantic.
[Sidenote: HIGHLAND FUNERALS.]
I was shown also at a short distance eastwards from the Castle, at
the bottom of a crag by the roadside, a place known as the Cheese
Cave. Here at every funeral the refreshments used to be placed for the
mourners, who had often come twenty miles across the hills. In former
days, when there were more men and fewer sheep some hundreds would
assemble. “Two old respectable friends were left behind to take care of
the food and drink. When the people came back from the grave-yard they
refreshed themselves. I have seen them,” continued my guide, “sitting
on these rocks by the cave having their luncheon.” Ramsay of Ochtertyre
tells how “the women of each valley through which the funeral passed
joined in the procession, but they attended but part of the way and
then returned. The whole company seemed to be running; and wherever
they rested small cairns or heaps of stones were raised to commemorate
the corpse having halted on that spot.”[711] These heaps were pointed
out to us on the side of Rattachan as we drove down to Glenelg. The
silence of the Scotch funeral shocked Wesley, who recorded on May 20,
1774: “When I see in Scotland a coffin put into the earth and covered
up without a word spoken, it reminds me of what was spoken concerning
Jehoiakin, ‘He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.’”[712]
[Sidenote: THE OLD LAIRD AND THE NEW.]
It is not with accounts of funerals that I must take my leave of
a place where I spent so pleasant a day, and had so hospitable a
reception. Here I saw not only the dead past but a vigorous and hopeful
present. Even the old Laird, we are told, “was a very hearty and
hospitable landlord,” though with his belief in his rights of _furca et
fossa_ he certainly was an antediluvian. His descendant does not yield
to him in heartiness and hospitality, but has other ways of guiding his
people than gallows, pit and dungeon. By his schools, his reading-room,
his infirmary and his schemes for developing the fisheries he has won
their affections. An old lady who had been allowed to visit the Castle,
meeting him by chance as she came out, full of anger at what she had
seen, exclaimed: “You ought, Sir, to be ashamed of your ancestors.”
“No,” he replied, “I am not ashamed of them. They led their lives, and
I lead mine.” They were at all events as good as the men of their time,
perhaps better. Old Lochbuy does not seem to have been a bad fellow,
though he was slow in learning that he had lost his right to imprison
his tenants. “May not a man do what he likes with his own?” we can
fancy him asking in the words used more than seventy years later by an
English duke. Much as his descendant has done, there is one thing more
which I would ask him to do. He dreads, no doubt, the throng of noisy
tourists, but he might surely build a modest inn where the pensive
wanderer could find lodging, and enjoy the scenery of Lochbuy.
“The guiltless eye
Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.”
[Illustration: KERRERA ISLAND.]