Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 20

The story, which throws a lurid light on the savagery of the eighteenth century, and which, to my thinking, surpa.s.ses in pathos anything occurring in fiction, was long disbelieved. But it was only too true. It is said that ill-luck pursued the lady even after death, and that her funeral was a miserable parody. A coffin filled with stones and turf was interred, before a large crowd, in the churchyard of Duirinish, the real remains being, with maimed rites or none at all, secretly buried elsewhere.

It is noteworthy that Lady Grange died in 1745, the year when Prince Charlie's hopes were shattered on Culloden Moor. Like her, he too had the ill-luck to be a hopeless wanderer in the Misty Isle.

PIERLESS TIREE.

I regret to say that I did not stay long enough in the island of Tiree to add to my store of legends, and yet, I went there with a capacious note-book and excellent intentions. What is more, I read from beginning to end, Dr. Erskine Beveridge's detailed book on the island, and could have pa.s.sed an examination on semi-brochs, rock-forts, marsh duns, islet-forts, sandhill dwellings, and prehistoric burial-sites. I steeped myself so thoroughly in the _minutiae_ of pre-Reformation churches, that I almost forgot to go to the modern ones. Tiree took hold of me completely, and so did the Norse invaders of the Hebrides--men like Ketil Flatnose, Magnus Barelegs, Hako, and Somerled. I got a pocket map arranged for my own use (copied from Dr. Beveridge's large one) with a red cross at all the sites of ancient forts. It was my fond hope, for pride attends us still, that I might find some inaccuracy in Dr.

Beveridge's book, and, from measurements on the spot, be able to contradict some of his statements. But what are the hopes of man! I did not know that predestination, in the form of dirty weather, was working against me, and was about to quench all my interest in _duns_. On September 5th, 1907, I determined to take Dr. Beveridge's measurements for granted.

On that day, in fact, I was for some time under the impression that my last lecture had been delivered. It was on the way between Coll and Tiree. The gale was a furious one and, combined with the greasy odours of the _Fingal_, was enough to sicken a practised seafarer. I did notice that some of the crew were prostrated, so that there was some excuse for a landsman not being proof against Neptune's dandling. So low, exposed, and precarious is the sh.o.r.e at Scarinish, that, often for weeks, the ferrymen dare not venture out to the steamer for pa.s.sengers. I asked one of the _Fingal_ men if there was any chance of being landed. He was a cruel cynic, and said: "No, not to-day. The sea is too wild for the ferry to come out. We'll go right across to Bunessan in Mull, so prepare for three more hours' shaking. You won't forget the _Dutchman's Cap_ for the rest of your life." Then with a remark addressed to the Creator, he added: "_There's the ferryboat after all; she's racing over the water like a stag._"

He was right: the lugsail was careering out to us and came alongside at length, and, after fearful trouble, got fastened to the _Fingal_.

Sometimes the ferryboat was even with our deck, sometimes far above it, sometimes fifteen feet below. It looked like certain death to leap into that lugsail.

I hesitated, and shouted to the captain: "Is it safe to jump?"

He replied, "I wish to Tophet I had the chance."

I watched for the next opportunity of the ferryboat and the _Fingal_ being approximately on the same plane, and leaped into the arms of a boatman.

Other pa.s.sengers followed,--men, women, even babies. Then came the mails; and finally, live stock. I remember being struck on the mouth by a sheep heaved into the boat by the above-mentioned cynic. "Come, come, that's enough, keep the rest; let us be off," shouted a boatman.

Everybody was wet to the skin: the wind was howling; the women weeping; and the babies were mixed up with the sheep.

Once clear of the _Fingal_, the adroit ferrymen did their duty well, and in less than ten minutes we were all landed. A crowd of islanders were waiting to lift us out. All agreed that it had been a _close shave_.

Such was my introduction to _Pierless Tiree_.

I did not stay long enough in the island to measure brochs, but quite long enough to experience the good-will and kindliness of the natives.

The houses are solid and substantial, the inhabitants strong and muscular. Great gales from the Atlantic blow almost continually, sweep up the sand in clouds, and prevent any trees from taking root. I did not see much poverty with my own eyes, but the ministers all a.s.sured me there was a great deal. Maize, more than oatmeal, is the cereal used for porridge. For supplementary information, Dr. Beveridge's admirable and accurate work may be consulted.

LOCHBUIE IN MULL.

The great straggling island of Mull, so full of scenery, romance, and song, still awaits its historian. Few, who have ever visited the n.o.ble isle, will refuse to say with Macphail, the bard of Torosay:

"O the island of Mull is an isle of delight With the wave on the sh.o.r.e and the sun on the height, And the breeze on the hills and the blast on the Bens, And the old green woods and the old gra.s.sy glens."

The gem of the island is undoubtedly the haven of Lochbuie, one of the choicest nooks in insular Scotland. The modern mansion, which is but a step or two from the well-preserved castle of olden times, is quite near the sh.o.r.e, and looks straight south over the Atlantic to the island of Colonsay. The entire surroundings are a delight to the eye: great towering mountains behind, the sea in front, and in the s.p.a.ce between, green lawns, rocks, gorse, and many-tinted garden-plots.

The MacLaines of Lochbuie trace their descent from the great Gillean of the Battle-axe, a redoubtable warrior who flourished his weapon to some purpose in the reign of Alexander III. But the most notorious of all the MacLaines is _Ewen of the Little Head_, who died in battle, and thereafter a.s.sumed the role of family ghost. Before the death of any of his race, this phantom-warrior gallops along the sea-beach near the castle, announcing the event by cries and loud lamentations. The doctor, who attended the present chief's mother, declares that, while sitting beside her bed during the silent watches of the night, he heard the noise of the spectral horse just before the old lady's decease. The natives of Mull can describe the ghost and horse with accurate detail.

The horse is a small, hardy, sure-footed animal of brown colour, and Ewen is known by the smallness of his head, and by a long floating mantle of green. He performed a weird and long-continued gallop round the bay in 1815, before the news of the valiant Sir Archibald MacLaine's death became known by official despatch from the seat of war.

Lochbuie, like so many other places in Scotland, has its Piper's Cave.

There is a remarkable similarity in all such tales--diversified, however, by quaint local additions. MacLaine's piper, a foolhardy man, determined once to test the allegation that a certain cave on Lochbuie was connected with another cave at Pennygown on the Sound of Mull.

Attired in his official costume and having his dog at his heels, he entered the cave, blowing his pipes triumphantly. Those above, on the hills, were able to make out his line of pa.s.sage by the sound of the music. At a certain point the pipes ceased, and nevermore did the piper come up to the sh.o.r.es of light. The dog got to the cave of Pennygown--a limp and hairless parody of its former self.

Browning, in his "Pied Piper of Hamelin," has but poetised one version of a world-wide tale. Often, in the Highland tales, it is money the piper is after. There is a deep cave near Melvaig, in Wester Ross, into which a piper is said to have led a band of men in search of gold, and never returned. In this case the pipe-music is said to have continued for years--some natives even a.s.serting that it may be heard still by those who have ears to hear.

In spite of all the legendary lore connected with the family of the MacLaines, the chief interest of Lochbuie for a lover of literature, centres round the visit of Boswell and Johnson. In one of the rooms of the castle there is a fine portrait of Johnson. On looking at it, my mind reverted to the amusing question addressed to the sage by the "bluff, comely, noisy old gentleman" who was the laird of Lochbuie in 1773: "Are you of the Johnstons of Glencro or of Ardnamurchan?" "Dr.

Johnson," says Boswell, "gave him a significant look, but made no answer; and I told Lochbuie that he was not Johnston, but Johnson, and that he was an Englishman."

I regret to say that the great war saddle, which was in Lochbuie's possession in 1773, and which Boswell did not see because the young laird had taken it to Falkirk with a drove of black cattle, is no longer in the island: somebody took it to America, and forgot to bring it back.

The present laird is greatly beloved by his tenantry. At the lecture I gave at Lochbuie, he was unable, owing to illness, to take the chair.

His absence was a terrible grief to the people, and the piper of the family, in a brief speech, alluded in a most touching way to the sorrow felt by all present.[30]

INVERARAY CASTLE.

Three days after Johnson and his friend left Lochbuie, they were entertained by the Duke of Argyll in Inveraray Castle. Boswell's description of the incidents of this visit is one of his finest efforts.

He tells us that Johnson admired the "utter defiance of expense" shown by the Duke in the building and appointments of the place. Records exist which show that the masons were paid at the rate of 4d. a day, _plus_ a weekly bonus of meal!

It is interesting to note that the Rev. John Macaulay (grandfather of Lord Macaulay) was one of the ministers of Inveraray in 1773. Boswell gives him a very high character, but this had no emollient effect on the great historian, when he came to review _Croker's Edition of Boswell's Johnson_.

Inveraray Castle is a superb object-lesson in Scotch history. All the Campbells of note for centuries past are hanging on the walls, from the old Duke who pa.s.sed away last, to the squinting Marquis (_Gleed Argyll_ mentioned in the "Bonnie House o' Airlie"), who was beheaded on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh in 1661. The Duke, who commanded at Sheriffmuir ("when we ran and they ran, and they ran and we ran," etc.) is standing in his accoutrements of pride, painted by the son of Allan Ramsay:

"Argyll the State's whole thunder, born to wield And shake alike the Senate and the Field."

Mediaeval armour, firelocks from Culloden, flags from a score of battlefields, mutely suggest the glory and gore of the olden times. It is impossible to walk through the rooms of such a place without feeling intimately in touch with the events of the past.

The present hotel is the one in which Johnson and his biographer lodged.

Burns came sixteen years later, and wrote on the pane of his bedroom window the scandalous epigram on Inveraray so often quoted. The present Duke (who has perpetrated a fair amount of poetry himself) would give much of his odd cash to recover that pane, which was cut out some years ago by a pilfering visitor.[31]

[30] I am inclined to think that the relations.h.i.+p formerly existing between the Highland chief and the member of his clan was perfect in its way--a _model_ of cla.s.s relations.h.i.+p. There was nothing menial about the clansman's att.i.tude, though he gave unbounded homage to his lord. At the battle of Inverkeithing, a clansman and his seven sons gave up their lives to s.h.i.+eld from death their chieftain, Sir Hector Maclean. As the old man saw his boys fall one after the other, he shouted with glee and pride, "_Another for Sir Hector!_" until he himself lay, like a true thane, beside his progeny. Nothing could be finer or more touching than such a scene.

[31] Burns tells us that when in Inveraray Hotel, he was entirely neglected by the servants, who gave all their attention to some gentlemen from the Castle. In our day, the Campbells have shown contrition by their willingness to admit that Burns was one of their own clan. Burns's ancestors were, it is said, Campbells of Taynuilt. Taynuilt means in English, Burnhouse. When the poet's ancestors emigrated to Forfars.h.i.+re, they were known as _Campbells from Burnhouse_. In course of time the appellation was shortened into Burnhouse simply, and latterly into Burness or Burns.--Q.E.D.

THE SACRED ISLE.

Wordsworth came to Iona (which also belongs to the Argyll family) in 1833, and wrote four poor sonnets on the sacred isle. This is what he saw:

"To each voyager Some ragged child holds up for sale a store Of wave-worn pebbles, pleading on the sh.o.r.e Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir."

Owing to its ecclesiastical renown as the cradle of Christianity in Britain, no island is so much visited as Iona. The audience I addressed was the most miscellaneous I have ever seen: there were boatmen and barristers, anglers and artists, curates and crofters, French and Germans.

The present-day natives seem desirous of keeping up the old reputation for theology. The boatman who ferries visitors ash.o.r.e, remarked to me with pride that his favourite book was one ent.i.tled _The Great Controversy between G.o.d and the Devil_, a book with which I was, and am still, unacquainted.

Dr. Johnson's remarks on Iona remain the most eloquent tribute to the island. He never wrote anything finer. All the children in the Iona school should be made to learn the piece by heart.[32]

It is most gratifying to think that Christianity has been the great purifying force in Europe. The introduction of Christianity into the world must be reckoned as the most revolutionary event of history.

Nothing was ever more needed. To one who knows the morality of the most brilliant society of the Greeks and Romans, there is no need to extol the pure and lofty moral tone of Jesus of Nazareth. But those who have not read the masterpieces of ancient art, with their mingled beauty and foulness, may be a.s.sured that literature owes more to Christianity than has ever yet been told. With Christianity a great healthy breeze swept over the world. Men became ashamed of wallowing in the mire. An ideal was raised up before them for their wors.h.i.+p and imitation. The old Adam and his deeds needed stern repression after the wild iniquities of the effete society of imperial Rome. The spirit needed to curb the flesh, literature needed to be cleansed. We, living to-day and nursed on the acc.u.mulated tradition of so many anterior Christian centuries, are sometimes disposed to minimise the debt we owe, in pure and simple morality, to the teachings of the New Testament. I find it impossible to imagine what the world would be without these teachings. They renewed the world, they made it do penance for its sins, they made advance practicable. An entirely retrograde movement is impossible when once man is indoctrinated with a grand ideal.

[32] Boswell's religious instincts come well out in his account of the visit to Iona. Two of his descendants, Messrs. Albert and James Boswell, devoted themselves entirely to religion, and were well known in Ayrs.h.i.+re, thirty years ago, as zealous evangelists.

These two gentlemen went on a preaching campaign through the northern islands, and did much highly appreciated philanthropic and religious work there. They were members of the sect called Plymouth Brethren.

APPIN.