The Cruise of the Elena: or, Yachting in the Hebrides
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 glenWind howls again.The Coolan hillsNo more we see,Save through the mistsOf memory.The sea birds float,And seem to gloat,With loud, shrill note,Above our boat;For they, like us,Are forced to stayFor 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 ornée. 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.
CHAPTER VII.
to stornoway
A fine day came at last, and we steered off from Portree, leaving the grand Cachullin Mountains, rising to a height of 3,220 feet, and the grave of Flora Macdonald, and the cave where Prince Charles hid himself far behind. On the right were the distant mountains of Ross-shire, and on our left Skye, and the other islands which guard the Western Highlands against the awful storms of the ever-restless Atlantic. Here, as elsewhere, was to be noticed the absence of all human life, whether at sea or on land. It was only now and then we saw a sail, but, as if to compensate for their absence, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea seemed to follow in a never-ending crowd. More than once we saw a couple of whales spouting and blowing from afar, and the gulls, and divers, and solan-geese at times made the surface of the water absolutely white, like snow-islands floating leisurely along. Just before we got up to Stornoway, at a great distance on our right, Cape Wrath, more than a hundred miles off, lifted up its head into the clear blue sky, the protecting genius, as it were, of the Scottish strand. It was perfectly delightful, this; one felt not only that in Scotland people had at rare intervals fine weather, but that by means of steamers and yachts and sailing vessels of all kinds, the people of Scotland knew how to improve the shining hour. It was beautiful, this floating on a glassy sea, clear as a looking-glass, in which were reflected the clouds, and the skies, and the sun, and the birds of the air, and the rocks, with a wonderful fidelity. It seemed that you had only to plunge into that cool and tempting depth, and to be in heaven at once. At Stornoway we spent a couple of days. The town stands in a bay, perhaps not quite so romantic as some in which we have sheltered, but very picturesque, nevertheless. The first object to be distinctly seen as we entered was the fine castle which Sir James Mathieson has erected for himself, at a cost altogether of half a million, and the grounds of which are in beautiful order; them we had ample time to inspect that evening, as in Stornoway the daylight lasted till nearly ten o’clock. Happily, Sir James was at home, and we on board the yacht had an acceptable present of vegetables, and cream, and butter, very welcome to us poor toilers of the sea. Stornoway is a very busy place, and has at this time of the year a population of 2,500. In May and June it is busier still, as at that time there will be as many as five hundred fishing boats in the harbour, and a large extra population are employed on shore in curing and packing the fish. In the country behind are lakes well stocked with fish, and mountains and moors where game and wild deer and real eagles yet abound. But a great drawback is the climate. An old sportsman writes: – “The savagery of the weather in the Lewes, the island of which Stornoway is the capital, is not to be described. A gentleman from the county of Clare once shot a season with me, and had very good sport, which he enjoyed much. I asked him to come again. ‘Not for five thousand pounds a year,’ he replied, ‘would I encounter this climate again. I am delighted I came, for now I can go back to my own country with pleasure, since, bad as the climate is, it is Elysium to this.’” Let me say, however, the weather was superb all the time the Elena was at Stornoway.
As a town, Stornoway is an immense improvement on Portree. It rejoices in churches, and the shops are numerous, and abound with all sorts of useful articles. The chief streets are paved. It has here and there a gas lamp, and the proprietor of the chief hotel boasted to me that so excellent were his culinary arrangements, that actually the ladies from the yachts come and dine there. Stornoway has a Freemasons’ Hall, and, wandering in one of the streets, I came to a public library, which I found was open once a week. On Saturday night the shops swarmed with customers, chiefly peasant women – who put their boots on when they came into the town, and who took them off again and walked barefoot as soon as they had left the town behind – and ancient mariners, with a very fish-like smell. On Sunday the churches were full, and at the Free Church, where the service was in Gaelic, the crowd was great. In a smaller church I heard a cousin of Norman Macleod – a fine, burly man – preach a powerful sermon, which seemed to me made up partly of two sermons – one by the late T. T. Lynch, and the other by the late Alfred Morris. I strayed also into a U. P. church, but there, alas! the audience was small. In Stornoway, as elsewhere, the couplet is true —
“The free kirk, the poor kirk, the kirk without the steeple,The auld kirk, the rich kirk, the kirk without the people.”On the Monday morning we turned our faces homeward, and as the weather was fine, we passed outside Skye, and saw Dunvegan Bay, of which Alexander Smith writes so much; passing rocky islands, all more or less known to song, and caves with dark legends of blood, and cruelty, and crime. One night was spent in Bunessan Bay, where some noble sportsmen were very needlessly, but, con amore, butchering the few peaceful seals to be found in those parts; and a short while we lay off Staffa, which rises straight out of the water like an old cathedral, where the winds and waves ever play a solemn dirge. In its way, I know nothing more sublime than Staffa, with its grey arch and black columns and rushing waves. No picture or photograph I have seen ever can give any adequate idea of it. “Altogether,” writes Miss Gordon Cumming, “it is a scene of which no words can convey the smallest idea;” and for once I agree with the lady. It is seldom the reality surpasses your expectations. As regards myself, in the case of Staffa I must admit it did.
The same morning we land at Columba, or the Holy Isle. The story of St. Columba’s visit to Iona is laid somewhere in the year a. d. 563. He, it seems, according to some authorities, was an Irishman, and from Iona he and his companions made the tour of Pagan Scotland; and hence now Scotland is true blue Presbyterian and always Protestant. Here, as at Staffa, we miss the tourists, who scamper and chatter for an hour at each place, and then are off; and I was glad. As Byron writes: —
“I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feelWhat I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”The history of Iona is a history of untold beauty and human interest. Druids, Pagans, Christian saints, have all inhabited the Holy Isle. Proud kings, like Haco of Norway, were here consecrated, and here —
“Beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms were laid.”
All that I could do was to visit the ruins of the monastery and the cathedral, and one of the stone crosses, of which there were at one time 360, and to regret that these beautiful monoliths were cast into the sea by the orders of the Synod as “monuments of idolatrie.” St. Columba, like all the saints, was a little ungallant as regards the fair sex. Perhaps it is as well that his rule is over. He would not allow even cattle on the sacred isle. “Where there is a cow,” argued the saint, “there must be a woman; and where there is a woman there must be mischief.” Clearly, the ladies have very much improved since the lamented decease of the saint. From Iona we made our way to the very prosperous home of commerce and whisky known as Campbeltown. Actually, the duty on the latter article paid by the Campbeltown manufacturers amounts to as much as £60,000 a year. At one time it was the very centre of Scottish life. For three centuries it was the capital of Scotland. It is still a very busy place, and it amused me much of a night to watch the big, bare-footed, bare-headed women crowding round the fine cross in the High Street, which ornaments what I suppose may be called the Parochial Pump. Close to the town is the church and cave of St. Kieran, the Apostle of Cantyre, the tutor of St. Columba. At present the chief boast of Campbeltown is that there were born the late Norman Macleod and Burns’ Highland Mary. When Macleod was a boy the days of smuggling were not yet over in that part of the world. Here is one of his stories: – “Once an old woman was being tried before the Sheriff, and it fell to his painful duty to sentence her. ‘I dare say,’ he said uneasily to the culprit, ‘it is not often you have fallen into this fault.’ ‘No, indeed, shura,’ was the reply; ‘I hae na made a drap since yon wee keg I sent yoursel’.’” Let me remark, en passant, that my friend, the Doctor, was born here, and that is proof positive that at Campbeltown the breed of great men is not yet exhausted. I mention this to our lady, and she is of the same opinion.
CHAPTER VIII.
kintyre and campbeltown
In my wanderings in the latter town I pick up the last edition of a useful and unpretending volume called “The History of Kintyre,” by Mr. Peter M‘Intosh – a useful citizen who carried on the profession of a catechist, and who is now no more. The book has merits of its own, as it shows how much may be done by any ordinary man of average ability who writes of what he has seen and heard. Kintyre is a peninsula on the extreme south of the shire of Argyle, in length about forty geographical miles. That the Fingalians occasionally resided at Kintyre is without doubt, and a description of their bravery and generosity is graphically given in some of the poems of Ossian. At one time there was much wood in its lowlands, and in them were elk, deer, wild boars, &c., and the rivers abounded with fish. There were clans who gathered together with the greatest enthusiasm around their chiefs, who repaired to a high hill, and set up a large fire on the top of it, in full view of the surrounding district, each unfolding his banner, ensign, or pennant, his pipers playing appropriate tunes. The clan got into motion, repaired to their chief like mountain streams rushing into the ocean. He eloquently addressed them in the heart-stirring language of the Gael, and, somewhat like a Kaffir chief of the present day, dwelt at length on the heroism of his ancestors. The will of the chief instantly became law, and preparations were soon made; the chief in his uniform of clan tartan takes the lead, the pipers play well-known airs, and the men follow, their swords and spears glittering in the air.
Up to very recent times there were those who remembered this state of things. An old man who died not a century ago told my informant, writes Mr. M‘Intosh, that the first thing he ever recollected was a great struggle between his father and his mother in consequence of the father preparing to join his clan in a bloody expedition. The poor wife exerted all her strength, moral and physical, but in vain. He left her never to return alive from the battlefield. The proprietors of Kintyre were wise in their generation, and mustered men in their different districts to oppose Prince Charles, partly on account of his religion, and partly to retain their lands. On one occasion they marched to Falkirk, but not in time to join in the battle, it being over before they reached there. Prince Charles being victorious, they went into a church, which the Highlanders surrounded, coming in with their clothes dyed with blood, and crying out “Massacre them”; but they were set at liberty on the ground that their hearts were with the Prince, and had been compelled by their chiefs to take arms on the side of the House of Hanover against their will. But even the chiefs were not always masters, and men often did that which was right in their own eyes alone. An instance of this kind is traditionally told about the Black Fisherman of Lochsanish. The loch, which is now drained, was a mile in length and half-a-mile in breadth, and contained a great number of salmon and trout. The Black Fisherman would not suffer any person to live in the neighbourhood, but claimed, by the strength of his arm, sole dominion over the loch. The Chief Largie, who lived eighteen miles north of the loch, kept a guard of soldiers, lest the Fisherman should make an attack on him. He sent his soldiers daily to Balergie Cruach to see if the Fisherman was on the loch fishing, and if they saw him fishing they would come home, not being afraid of an attack on that day. A stranger one day coming to Largie’s house asked him why he kept soldiers. The answer was, it was on account of the Fisherman. When he saw him sitting he went and fought the Fisherman, bidding the soldiers wait the result on a neighbouring hill. When the battle was over, the Fisherman was minus his head. We read the head, which was very heavy, was left at Largie’s door. These old men were always fighting. The number of large stones we see erected in different parts of Kintyre have been set up in memory of battles once fought at these places. On one occasion two friendly clans prepared to come and meet. They met somewhere north of Tarbert, but did not know each other, and began to ask their names, which in those days it was considered cowardice to answer. They drew swords, fought fiercely, and killed many on both sides. At last they found out their mistake, were very, very sorry, and, after burying their dead, returned to their respective places. The feuds and broils among the clans were frequent, and really for the most trifling causes, as the whole clans always stood by their chiefs, and were ready at a moment’s notice to fight on account of any insult, real or imaginary. It appears that in this distant part of the Empire, though the whole district is not far from Glasgow, with its commerce and manufactures, and university and newspapers, and the modern Athens, with its great literary traditions, there still linger many old Druid superstitions.
Some are particularly interesting. Old M‘Intosh thus writes of May-day and the first of November, called in Gaelic Bealtuinn, or Beil-teine, signifying Belus fire, and Samhuinn, or serene time.
On the first of May the Druids kindled a large fire on the top of a mountain, from which a good view of the horizon might be seen, that they might see the sun rising; the inhabitants of the whole country assembling, after extinguishing their fire, in order to welcome the rising sun and to worship God. The chief Druid, blessing the people and receiving their offerings, gave a kindling to each householder. If the Druid was displeased at any of the people, he would not give him a kindling; and no other person was allowed to give it, on pain of being cursed, and being unfortunate all the year round. This superstition is observed by some to this day. On the first of November the Druids went nearly through the same ceremony.
The superstition of wakes in Kintyre is nearly worn out. The origin of this superstition is, that when one died the Druid took charge of his soul, conveying it to Flath-innis, or heaven; but the friends of the deceased were to watch, or wake, the body, lest the evil spirits should take it away, and leave some other substance in its place. When interred, it could never be removed.
An old man named John M‘Taggart, who died long ago, was owner of a fine little smack, with which he trafficked from Kintyre to Ireland and other places. Being anxious to get a fair wind to go to Ireland, and hearing of an old woman who pretended to have the power to give this, he made a bargain with her. She gave him two strings with three knots on each; when he undid the first, he got a fine fair breeze; getting into mid-channel he opened the second, and got a strong gale; and when near the Irish shore he wished to see the effect of the third knot, which, when he loosed, a great hurricane blew, which destroyed some of the houses on shore. With the other string he came back to Kintyre, only opening two of the knots. The old man believed in this superstition.
