Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 11

One of the most cheerful features in the present-day thought of Scotland, and one from which we may antic.i.p.ate excellent results in every department of social and religious life, is the growing popularity of the great apostle of the nineteenth century, John Ruskin. Though dead, he continues to speak; and from close inspection of the registers that show in detail the nature of the books asked for, at the various village libraries, I have noted, with no small pleasure, that Ruskin's works are eagerly read all over the Highlands and islands of Scotland.

This is something quite new, and will, I am certain, work immense good.

For Ruskin's work in the department of religion, no words can be too commendatory. His genius was in thorough accord with the spirit of the Biblical writers, and his modes of speech and ill.u.s.tration perpetually reminiscent of Scripture. He loses no opportunity of dwelling on the culturing influence of the Bible. There is also a fine tolerance in his religious teaching, which is alike helpful and suggestive. His is that variety of teaching which we find most effectively outside of the ranks of professional commentators, and which comes through the keen flashes of genius that accompany the insight of the literary artist. He has pointed out to us with great eloquence that, while specific doctrines take at various epochs very different degrees of importance, and aspects of rite, ceremony, and all that, appeal with changing force to different generations, the essence of religious feeling, without which dogma becomes harsh and rite insipid, hardly varies at all; seeing that in the musings of the great minds of all ages, we have oftenest the pure gold of devotion, mingled, though it may sometimes be, with the adhesive dross of superst.i.tion. He also warns us of the danger of mistaking pugnacity for piety, and earnestly urges that, at every moment of our lives, we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other men, but in what we agree. Ruskin considers this to be the correct spirit in which to approach ancient as well as modern religion, believing that if a reader cannot understand a spiritual agency, or thinks that the best of ancient men were not dominated by any such, the understanding of the very alphabet of history will be endangered. It would tend greatly to salvation from arid formalism, if ministers would teach that Plato, Sophocles, Browning, Carlyle, are all apostles of religion. A living word from an intuitionist like the last-named not unfrequently vivifies with new force the dark sayings of a Hebrew seer, in much more direct fas.h.i.+on than half-a-score of mutilated Pentateuchs made in the delirium of the Higher Criticism.

In spite of his unsystematic procedure, Ruskin deserves to be numbered among the men who have earned the grat.i.tude of their fellows, by translating some of the ever-vital aspects of religion into the vocabulary of the hour. The language of religious discourse is liable to a subtle kind of pedantry, requiring a vigorous intellect adequately to dissolve. New ill.u.s.trations, novel forms of definition, are often helpful in expelling the dreariness of outworn and meaningless phrases.

Ruskin's task is facilitated by the nice balance of his intellectual and imaginative endowments, by the fact that his words are not mere symbols of definite connotation, but marvellous centres of emotional force.

Happily he did not seek to elaborate any system of religion: but now here, now there, in his books, one comes upon the pure gold of religion, enshrined in exquisite jewelries of diction, which glimmer on (if I may say so) to the utmost verge of emotion, and more successfully than any formal harangue, work out their intended function. Such works as _Unto this Last_ and _Munera Pulveris_, however keen the mental antagonism they may initially provoke, mark a period in the spiritual life of the reader: no matter what the prepossessions of a man may be, these books will modify them. He is reverent, but, like Plato, he is dynamic. You can't sit at ease as you read his pages, for they are charged as much with defiance as with guidance.

CHAPTER IV.

EDUCATIONAL.

Some Insular Dominies--Education Act of 1872--Education in the Highlands--Feeding the hungry--Parish Council boarders--Dwindling attendances--Arnisdale--Golspie Technical School--On the Sidlaws--Some surprises--Arran schools--Science and literature--Study of Scott--The old cla.s.sical dominie--Vogue of Latin in former times--Teachers and examinations--Howlers--Competing subjects.

SOME INSULAR DOMINIES.

It is by no means an easy matter for a teacher to get south again once he is installed in a remote Highland school. He accepts a distant rural or insular post, marries the girl of his heart, gets settled in the schoolhouse of the glen or towns.h.i.+p, and rarely moves thence all the succeeding years of his life. He becomes identified with local affairs; plays whist maybe with the doctor, the factor, and the banker; and is apt to magnify the cackle of his bourg into the great Voice that echoes round the world. The monotony of his life is varied by such happenings as a birth or a death in his own household, a visit from the emissary of My Lords, an epidemic of measles, a general election, and the like. I don't say these men are unhappy, but unless they develop a hobby, torpidity is bound to settle like a mist upon their brains. Such studies as geology, botany, and gardening, are sovereign for driving off the vapours of ennui. Nor are golf, angling, and the composition of verse, specifics that the rural dominie can afford to despise.

I have in my mind at this moment the portraits of many notable gentlemen (for true gentlemen they are, though their purses are thin) who have given up their lives to educating the progeny of the inclement North.

Lamont, for example, whom I remember as a first-cla.s.s mathematician, is living in the marshy navel of an Outer Isle, amid wild-fowl and spirals of peat-reek. If you want to visit him you have (1) to cross the billowy western deep; (2) drive fifteen miles in a trap; (3) traverse a four-mile arm of the sea in a ferry that needs baling; (4) proceed seven miles to another ferry two miles in breadth; (5) hop, step, and jump three miles along a narrow and tortuous track, enough to give vertigo to a goat. Lamont is not unhappy: he keeps his mind active by solving stiff quadratic equations and fiddling with Cartesian co-ordinates. I hope he will get credit for all these studies, when the last trump sounds, for he gets little enough at present.

Ramsay, too, is a dweller among these treeless bogs, and is engaged, during his leisure, on a translation of Anacreon which will never be finished, or, if finished, will never be published. I called on him and immolated myself on the altar of his Anacreon in order to give him a little pleasure. He, later on, enlarged on his school, scholars, and daily life. The horizon of the boys and girls is extremely limited: most of them have never seen either a pig or a policeman. Cabbages have only been recently introduced into the district, but are already thriving wonderfully well considering the thin soil. There are of course no trees: for what trees could stand against the buffeting of the fierce wintry gales of the Atlantic? Ramsay's only chum is a missionary, who is of an antiquarian turn, and goes fumbling about for arrow-heads and prehistoric bracelets, especially after a storm, when the hill-sides are laid bare.

Neither Lamont nor Ramsay know a word of Gaelic, and there they are in districts where English is a foreign language. Needless to say, the lack of Gaelic is a terrible drawback to these two men. They should never have been where they are, for they are aliens. The scholars, unbreeched little rogues, have an advantage over their teacher, and in the playground talk the tongue of the Celt invariably, and may be maligning him for all he knows. I am afraid, too, that teacher and minister do not always consider themselves as auxiliaries in these outer isles. The younger generation of teachers have, as might be expected, a more extensive knowledge of books than the old school of Presbyterian ministers. The latter, feeling their literary inferiority, are inclined to regard the teacher as an intruder whose work in the school-room will cause the rising generation to look slightingly on the "essentials." I have in my possession numerous letters from Highland teachers dealing with this fear on the part of the clergy, that novels and secular literature generally will pervert the minds of the people. The addition of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's books to a library was recently likened to the arrival of the Serpent in Eden.

EDUCATION ACT OF 1872.

In one of the best-known chapters of _Rob Roy_, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, the utilitarian Glasgow merchant, says to his cattle-reiving kinsman: "Your boys, Rob, dinna ken the very multiplication table, which is the root o'

a useful knowledge, and it's my belief they can neither read, write, nor cipher, if sic a thing could be believed o' ane's ain connections in a Christian land." Rob replies in a sentence that is worthy of being put alongside the remark of old Earl Douglas in the poem of _Marmion_: "Hamish can bring down a blackc.o.c.k on the wing with a single bullet, and Rob can drive a dirk through a twa-inch board." These quotations adequately explain the almost complete absence of prose remains in the literature of the Gael. Bards there were in plenty, but they could neither read nor write.

In the year 1872, education was made the concern of the nation. It was rightly considered to be a standing menace to the security of the realm that ignorance, which is the parent of disorder and lawlessness, should be the doom of a large proportion of the nation. Rather than hazard the dangers of an illiterate population, education was undertaken by the State, and paid for out of the national purse. The a.n.a.logy between disease and ignorance is, in truth, sufficiently close to justify both sanitation and education coming into the wide domain of imperial duties.

Looking back on the changes that resulted in the Lowlands from the Education Act of 1872, we see grounds for criticism. The measure, like all earthly things, was imperfect. There was something hard and inelastic about the system fostered by the old Code. The psychology of Child Nature was almost totally ignored. A system of examination was established that a.s.sumed an equal and mechanical progress on the part of every child every year. Yet, in spite of grave defects, the Act of 1872 brought inestimable blessings with it. For one thing, the health conditions of education were vastly improved. Many of the old schools were absolute hovels. After 1872, large, airy, and s.p.a.cious buildings, were erected in every district of the land. It was no longer a case of one old dominie facing singly a whole regiment of unruly youngsters: every school was organised and disciplined into regular and seemly order. We had the advantage in Scotland of a complete system of School Boards, and that awakened an intense and universal interest in educational affairs. The old parochial schools of Scotland had many admirable features, but in 1872 they were quite unfit to cope with the nation's needs. On the whole, the School Board system was a decided boon to the land.

EDUCATION IN THE HIGHLANDS.

It is only since the Act of 1872 that any education of a serious or systematic kind has been attempted in the Celtic parts of Scotland.

Nevertheless, a word of praise is due to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and other civilising agencies of the Churches (Established and Free), for their work during the educational night that preceded the Act. These agencies were, of course, utterly inadequate to meet the needs of the Highlands, as may be easily seen from the fact that in 1862, over 47 per cent. of the men who married, could not sign their own names. But, indeed, what resources, save those of the Imperial Treasury, could ever be adequate to meet the expense of educating the children spread over such wide and spa.r.s.ely-peopled tracts? Sheriff Nicolson, one of the most fervid Gaels that ever lived, made a report to Government in 1865, characterising the education given in the Highland schools as lamentably insufficient.

The effects of the Act of 1872 were slow but sure, and in the course of fifteen years a change, a.n.a.logous to that effected by General Wade in the state of the roads, was brought about in the realm of education. Yet the expenses involved in the working of the measure were of an unduly burdensome kind, in spite of the generous bounty of the Education Department. In some of the large parishes of the Long Island, the heavy school rate was such a cause of complaint that My Lords were forced to take very drastic measures to relieve the financial strain. In summing up the results of the Education Act, Professor Magnus Maclean says: "Among the good things that education has brought the Highlanders, are a knowledge of English, wider social and political interests, a brighter intelligence and brighter outlook, freedom from mental vacuity and traditional superst.i.tions."

FEEDING THE HUNGRY.

Probably, as I have hinted, one of the chief benefits of the Education Act, was that teaching had to be carried on in conditions of s.p.a.ce and air. Given such conditions and an enthusiastic master, some good progress will certainly be made.

Connected with the physical side of education we have had, of late, signs of a new departure. There is a talk of _feeding the hungry_.

Every parent worthy of the name is proud to provide food and clothing for his children. That's what he's there for. But it does not require much keenness of vision to see that there are many parents unworthy of the name, and that, by the dark and inscrutable degrees of Heaven, such worthless individuals are often allowed to be parents of a numerous progeny. We must (i) inject into these wastrels the feeling of responsibility and (ii) prevent the children from dying of starvation.

The first problem requires lengthy treatment and is perhaps hopeless of accomplishment; the second can be done at once by philanthropy, either individual or national.

However much it may wound the pride of our gilded youth, it can hardly be a.s.serted that birth and rank are matters that involve the slightest personal merit. It seems to be an affair of the purest accident into what cla.s.s of society a child is born. We have overcome the difficulties and dangers of youth--most of us--but it might well have been otherwise.

Soften your hearts, ye political economists, and cease to regard the poor, the weak, and the wretched as criminals. If there is no wealth but life, our country must soon be poor indeed should the rising generation be sickly and underfed. Bairns must not be allowed to study on an empty stomach.

PARISH COUNCIL BOARDERS.

Let me here mention a point alluded to by more than one friend of the Highlands. It has reference to one aspect of the new science called Eugenics, which deals with the means for producing the maximum of vigour in our nation. It is not well enough known that for years the authorities have been pouring into a few of the islands and straths of the North and West a great number of maimed, consumptive, and mentally defective children. Some houses in the Hebrides have three or four of these children, who, but for the action of the authorities, would be living under the most deplorable conditions of life in the towns. The results, as regarding improvement in health and physique, are of the most encouraging kind.[21]

After a certain age the official subsidy ceases, and the children as a rule go to work on the farms and crofts. It is evident that such extensive planting out of city boys and girls is bound by and by to work a great change in the composition of our rural districts. It is believed that some of the islands would soon be without children but for these incomers: it is a well-known fact that the indigenous youthful population of certain of them is very meagre indeed. We are thus in modern times witnessing some most instructive operations of Nature: for generations the country has been depleted to swell the bloated population of the towns; and now the wastage of the cities is being sent back to the country to get a renewal of vigour at the primeval fountain of health.

There is one further point of great moment. As a proportion, relatively large, of these children come of morally dubious parentage, it is of supreme interest to know their subsequent career and conduct. I have seen reports and statistics which seem to prove that questionable heredity can be overborne by healthy surroundings and good training; in other words, that the offspring of criminals may, if rescued early from a vicious environment, become respectable citizens. Such facts ought to rejoice the hearts of all moral reformers.

[21] In that part of South Arran which lies between Dippen and Shannochie, there is high up on the hillside, a row of cottages and crofts collectively nicknamed "Mount Misery." The reason for this sinister name is that in most of the houses there is some maimed, consumptive, or imbecile child boarded out by the Parish Council. The children are better there than selling matches at St. Enoch's Station: they are well looked after and almost invariably improve in health.

DWINDLING ATTENDANCES.

It is in the country school that the need for new blood is most apparent to the eye. In schools capable of holding 120 children, you will often find a shrunken roll of less than a dozen. A gentleman of mature years usually does all the teaching and keeps himself from getting insane by breeding hens and cultivating roses in his spare time. He has also, in all likelihood, the little pickings of officialdom in the district, and is registrar, session-clerk, and precentor. One facetious teacher, who dwelt on a wide moor, headed his letter to me _Parish Council Chambers_, thereby suggesting marble staircases and sumptuous furniture. It was this same teacher who, on being asked to bring forward Standard V. for inspection, had to admit that Standard V. was laid up with a broken leg.

For such small schools there is an increasing difficulty in finding male teachers.[22] Widows, who in their ante-nuptial days, had been engaged in teaching are often preferred to men, for reasons of salary. The lot of such women, who have usually families to support out of their meagre earnings, is hard indeed: if they keep their health, they manage tolerably well, but when illness comes into the house, there must be a deal of suffering and distress. The young pupils who attend the remote schools of the uplands, also deserve much sympathy. During the heavy snows and extreme cold of winter, these children--often ill-shod and scantily fed--have to trudge along miles of country cross-roads or hill-paths to their little school. Our country is a glory to the eye when mid-summer and autumn are there, but think of the harsh winter months with their torrents of driving rain, their whirlwinds of hail and sleet and the icy nip of the blasts that blow down the snow-sheeted glens.

[22] A country teacher in Kintyre, with a roll of eight, said to me: "We have had only one marriage in the district during the last year, and the bridegroom was aged _three score and fifteen_.

I wonder what education is coming to: there is little or no patriotism about Kintyre or my roll would be higher. I wish I could get the people to think more imperially than they do at present."

ARNISDALE, ETC.

It will be perhaps interesting to the general reader if I strive, by drawing on my reminiscences, to give him an idea of how education is carried on in certain remote corners of Scotland at the present time. He will, perhaps, be led to admire as much as I do the n.o.ble work that is being done by teachers and inspectors for the rising generation of the country.

Arnisdale, on the mainland facing Skye, is a very dest.i.tute district, and has suffered much from the failure of the once-flouris.h.i.+ng herring-fishery of Loch Hourn. One can see by the attire of the children that the poverty must be exceptional, even for the Highlands. The teacher says that in winter she has to think as much how to feed the children as to teach them. By the charity of some benevolent visitors, she was, last winter, able to give the pupils a mid-day meal of cocoa and biscuits. It is a sad contrast to the extraordinary beauty of this picturesque spot that such dire misery should overtake a proportion of the natives during the winter season.

Arnisdale is not very accessible, even in the height of the summer traffic, and when one gets there, it is a problem how to get away. I asked the captain of the _Glencoe_ to set me down near what is called the _dry island_, in Loch Hourn, and thence I was rowed ash.o.r.e by two very wild-looking, unkempt boatmen. The school-house, where I lodged, is right on the beach, and just at the base of the gigantic Ben Screel.

Twelve miles along the coast, by a road of the most awe-inspiring kind, one comes to the interesting nook of Glenelg, with its Pictish towers and ruined barracks.

It was a mild and hazy morning when I traversed the road between Arnisdale and Glenelg. On coming to the summit, a great breeze arose and drove away the heavy white mists from the Sound of Sleat, and showed the white, sentinel-like lighthouse of Isle Ornsay and great fertile stretches of the near portion of Skye. Reluctantly the clouds finally curled and rolled away before the wind and the glitter of the sun, until the Cuchullins were visible beyond the water and the green peninsula of Sleat.

In a cosy recess near the highest part of the road, beside a bubbling spring, a _gipsy family_ had pitched its tent. I admired the taste shown in the selection of a place commanding such a view. The family was still under canvas, but hanging on the branch of a tree was a worn and mud-stained skirt. Do not ladies in hotels, in similar fas.h.i.+on, hang out their dusty and travel-soiled attire at the doors of their chambers? And perhaps the dark-skinned owner had hung up her dank and dripping weeds in the hope that some silvan faun or Robin Goodfellow would, without a tip, perform the dusting process, in this case so palpably necessary. We do wrong in supposing that imagination is not the portion of these woodland rovers.

One of the most difficult problems of the Education Department is to see that gipsy children get a suitable amount of schooling. "Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie," is applicable to all their tribe. How can progressive instruction be carried on where there is no fixity of habitation? One day the camp is pitched on an eminence overlooking Loch Hourn; but before twelve hours have pa.s.sed, the nomads may have crossed the ferry at Kyleakin and be warming their hands round a blaze of stolen peats in the wild moorland between Portree and Dunvegan. Only in winter, when frost and snow drive the gipsies into the city slums, do the children get some smattering of the three R's.

GOLSPIE TECHNICAL SCHOOL.