path: root/76787-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76787 ***







  A SUMMER IN SKYE


  BY ALEXANDER SMITH

  AUTHOR OF "A LIFE DRAMA," ETC.



  VOLUME II.



  ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
  148 STRAND, LONDON
  1865




CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


THE LANDLORD'S WALK

ORBOST AND DUNVEGAN

DUNTULM

JOHN PENRUDDOCK

A SMOKING PARLIAMENT

THE EMIGRANTS

HOMEWARDS

GLASGOW

HOME




A SUMMER IN SKYE.



_THE LANDLORD'S WALK._

Walking into the interior of Skye is like walking into antiquity; the
present is behind you, your face is turned toward Ossian.  In the
quiet silent wilderness you think of London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, or
whatever great city it may be given you to live and work in, as of
something of which you were cognisant in a former existence.  Not
only do you breathe the air of antiquity; but everything about you is
a veritable antique.  The hut by the road-side, thatched with turfs,
smoke issuing from the roof, is a specimen of one of the oldest
styles of architecture in the world.  The crooked spade with which
the crofter turns over the sour ground carries you away into fable.
You remove a pile of stones on the moor, and you come to a flagged
chamber in which there is a handful of human bones--whose, no one can
tell.  Duntulm and Dunsciach moulder on their crags, but the song the
passing milkmaid sings is older than they.  You come upon old swords
that were once bright and athirst for blood; old brooches that once
clasped plaids; old churchyards with carvings of unknown knights on
the tombs; and old men who seem to have inherited the years of the
eagle or the crow.  These human antiques are, in their way, more
interesting than any other: they are the most precious objects of
_virtu_ of which the island can boast.  And at times, if you can keep
ear and eye open, you stumble on forms of life, relations of master
and servant, which are as old as the castle on the crag or the cairn
of the chief on the moor.  Cash payment is not the "sole nexus
between man and man."  In these remote regions your servants'
affection for you is hereditary as their family name or their family
ornaments; your foster-brother would die willingly for you; and if
your nurse had the writing of your epitaph, you would be the bravest,
strongest, handsomest man that ever walked in shoe leather or out of
it.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's house]

The house of my friend Mr M'Ian is set down on the shore of one of
the great Lochs that intersect the island; and as it was built in
smuggling times, its windows look straight down the Loch towards the
open sea.  Consequently at night, when lighted up, it served all the
purposes of a lighthouse: and the candle in the porch window, I am
told, has often been anxiously watched by the rough crew engaged in
running a cargo of claret or brandy from Bordeaux.  Right opposite,
on the other side of the Loch, is the great rugged fringe of the
Cuchullin hills; and lying on the dry summer grass you can see it,
under the influence of light and shade, change almost as the
expression of a human face changes.  Behind the house the ground is
rough and broken, every hollow filled, every knoll plumaged with
birches, and between the leafy islands, during the day, rabbits scud
continually, and in the evening they sit in the glades and wash their
innocent faces.  A mile or two back from the house a glen opens into
soft green meadows, through which a stream flows; and on these
meadows Mr M'Ian, when the weather permits, cuts and secures his hay.
The stream is quiet enough usually, but after a heavy day's rain, or
when a waterspout has burst up among the hills, it comes down with a
vengeance, carrying everything before it.  On such occasions its roar
may be heard a mile away.  [Sidenote: View from the bridge.] About a
pistol-shot from the house the river is crossed by a plank bridge,
and in fine weather it is a great pleasure to sit down there and look
about one.  The stream flows sluggishly over rocks, in the deep
places of a purple or port-wine colour, and lo! behind you, through
the arch, slips a sunbeam, and just beneath the eye there gleams a
sudden chasm of brilliant amber.  The sea is at ebb, and the shore is
covered with stones and dark masses of sea-weed; and the rocks a
hundred yards off--in their hollows they hold pools of clear
sea-water in which you can find curious and delicately-coloured ocean
blooms--are covered with orange lichens, which contrast charmingly
with the masses of tawny dulse and the stone-littered shore on the
one side, and the keen blue of the sea on the other.  Beyond the blue
of the sea the great hills rise, with a radiant vapour flowing over
their crests.  Immediately to the left a spur of high ground runs out
to the sea edge,--the flat top smooth and green as a billiard table,
the sheep feeding on it white as billiard balls,--and at the foot of
this spur of rock a number of huts are collected.  They are half lost
in an azure veil of smoke, you smell the peculiar odour of peat reek,
you see the nets lying out on the grass to dry, you hear the voices
of children.  Immediately above, and behind the huts and the spur of
high ground, the hill falls back, the whole breast of it shaggy with
birch-wood; and just at the top you see a clearing and a streak of
white stony road, leading into some other region as solitary and
beautiful as the one in which you at present are.  And while you sit
on the bridge in a state of half-sleepy contentment--a bee nuzzling
in a bell-shaped flower within reach of your stick, the sea-gulls
dancing silent quadrilles overhead, the white lightning flash of a
rabbit from copse to copse twenty yards off--you hear a sharp
whistle, then a shout, and looking round there is M'Ian himself
standing on a height, his figure clear against the sky: and
immediately the men tinkering the boat on the shore drop work and
stand and stare, and out of the smoke that wraps the cottages rushes
bonnetless, Lachlan Dhu, or Donald Roy, scattering a brood of poultry
in his haste, and marvelling much what has moved his master to such
unwonted exertion.

My friend's white house is a solitary one, no other dwelling of the
same kind being within eight miles of it.  In winter, wind and rain
beat it with a special spite; and the thunder of the sea creeps into
your sleeping ears, and your dreams are of breakers and reefs, and
ships going to pieces, and the cries of drowning men.  In summer, it
basks as contentedly on its green knoll; green grass, with the daisy
wagging its head in the soft wind, runs up to the very door of the
porch.  But although solitary enough--so solitary; that if you are
asked to dine with your nearest neighbour you must mount and
ride--there are many more huts about than those we have seen nestling
on the shore beneath the smooth green plateau on which sheep are
feeding.  If you walk along to the west,--and a rough path it is, for
your course is over broken boulders,--you come on a little bay with
an eagle's nest of a castle perched on a cliff, and there you will
find a school-house and a half-a-dozen huts, the blue smoke steaming
out of the crannies in the walls and roofs.  Dark pyramids of peat
are standing about, sheep and cows are feeding on the bits of
pasture, gulls are weaving their eternal dances above, and during the
day the school-room is murmuring like a beehive--only a much less
pleasant task than the making of honey is going on within.
[Sidenote: The pensioner.] Behind the house to the east, hidden by
the broken ground and the masses of birch-wood, is another collection
of huts; and in one of these lives the most interesting man in the
place.  He is an old pensioner, who has seen service in different
quarters of the world; and frequently have I carried him a string of
pigtail, and shared his glass of usquebaugh, and heard him, as he sat
on a stone in the sunshine, tell tales of barrack life in Jamaica; of
woody wildernesses filled with gorgeous undergrowth, of parasites
that climbed like fluttering tongues of fire, and of the noisy towns
of monkeys and parrots in the upper branches.  I have heard him also
severely critical on the different varieties of rum.  Of every fiery
compound he had a catholic appreciation, but rum was his special
favourite--being to him what a Greek text was to Person, or an old
master to Sir George Beaumont.  So that you see, although Mr M'Ian's
house was in a sense solitary, yet it was not altogether bereaved of
the sight and sense of human habitations.  On the farm there were
existing perhaps, women and children included, some sixty souls; and
to these the relation of the master was peculiar, and perhaps without
a parallel in the island.

[Sidenote: Rude courts of justice.]

When, nearly half-a-century ago, Mr M'Ian left the army and became
tacksman, he found cotters on his farm, and thought their presence as
much a matter of course as that limpets should be found upon his
rocks.  They had their huts, for which they paid no rent; they had
their patches of corn and potato ground, for which they paid no rent.
There they had always been, and there, so far as Mr M'Ian was
concerned, they would remain.  He had his own code of generous
old-fashioned ethics, to which he steadily adhered; and the man who
was hard on the poor, who would dream of driving them from the places
in which they were born, seemed to him to break the entire round of
the Commandments.  Consequently the huts still smoked on the hem of
the shore and among the clumps of birch-wood.  The children who
played on the green when he first became tacksman grew up in process
of time, and married; and on these occasions he not only sent them
something on which to make merry withal, but he gave them--what they
valued more--his personal presence; and he made it a point of honour,
when the ceremony was over, to dance the first reel with the bride.
When old men or children were sick, cordials and medicines were sent
from the house; when old man or child died, Mr M'Ian never failed to
attend the funeral.  He was a Justice of the Peace; and when disputes
arose amongst his own cotters, or amongst the cotters of
others--when, for instance, Katy M'Lure accused Effie M'Kean of
stealing potatoes; when Red Donald raged against Black Peter on some
matter relating to the sale of a dozen lambs; when Mary, in her anger
at the loss of her sweetheart, accused Betty (to whom said sweetheart
had transferred his allegiance) of the most flagrant breaches of
morality--the contending parties were sure to come before my friend;
and many a rude court of justice I have seen him hold at the door of
his porch.  Arguments were heard _pro_ and _con_, witnesses were
examined, evidence was duly sifted and weighed, judgment was made,
and the case dismissed; and I believe these decisions gave in the
long run as much satisfaction as those delivered in Westminster or
the Edinburgh Parliament-House.  Occasionally, too, a single girl or
shepherd, with whose character liberties were being taken, would be
found standing at the porch-door anxious to make oath that they were
innocent of the guilt or the impropriety laid to their charge.  Mr
M'Ian would come out and hear the story, make the party assert his or
her innocence on oath, and deliver a written certificate to the
effect that in his presence, on such and such a day, so and so had
sworn that certain charges were unfounded, false, and malicious.
Armed with this certificate, the aspersed girl or shepherd would
depart in triumph.  He or she had passed through the ordeal by oath,
and nothing could touch them farther.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's cotters.]

Mr M'Ian paid rent for the entire farm; but to him the cotters paid
no rent, either for their huts or for their patches of corn and
potato ground.  But the cotters were by no means merely
pensioners--taking, and giving nothing in return.  The most active of
the girls were maids of various degree in Mr M'Ian's house; the
cleverest and strongest of the lads acted as shepherds, &c.; and
these of course received wages.  The grown men amongst the cotters
were generally at work in the south, or engaged in fishing
expeditions, during summer; so that the permanent residents on the
farm were chiefly composed of old men, women, and children.  When
required, Mr M'Ian demands the services of these people just as he
would the services of his household servants, and they comply quite
as readily.  If the crows are to be kept out of the corn, or the cows
out of the turnip-field, an urchin is remorselessly reft away from
his games and companions.  If a boat is out of repair, old Dugald is
deputed to the job, and when his task is completed, he is rewarded
with ten minutes' chat and a glass of spirits up at the house.  When
fine weather comes, every man, woman, and child is ordered to the
hay-field, and Mr M'Ian potters amongst them the whole day, and takes
care that no one shirks his duty.  When his corn or barley is ripe
the cotters cut it, and when the harvest operations are completed, he
gives the entire cotter population a dance and harvest-home.  But
between Mr M'Ian and his cotters no money passes; by a tacit
understanding he is to give them house, corn-ground, potato-ground,
and they are to remunerate him with labour.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's old-fashioned speech.]

Mr M'Ian, it will be seen, is a conservative, and hates change; and
the social system by which he is surrounded wears an ancient and
patriarchal aspect to a modern eye.  It is a remnant of the system of
clanship.  The relation of cotter and tacksman, which I have
described, is a bit of antiquity quite as interesting as the old
castle on the crag--nay, more interesting, because we value the old
castle mainly in virtue of its representing an ancient form of life,
and here is yet lingering a fragment of the ancient form of life
itself.  You dig up an ancient tool or weapon in a moor, and place it
carefully in a museum: here, as it were, is the ancient tool or
weapon in actual use.  No doubt Mr M'Ian's system has grave defects:
it perpetuates comparative wretchedness on the part of the cotters,
it paralyses personal exertion, it begets an ignoble contentment; but
on the other hand it sweetens sordid conditions, so far as they can
be sweetened, by kindliness and good services.  If Mr M'Ian's system
is bad, he makes the best of it, and draws as much comfort and
satisfaction out of it, both for himself and for others, as is
perhaps possible.  Mr M'Ian's speech was as old-fashioned as he was
himself; ancient matters turned up on his tongue just as ancient
matters turned up on his farm.  You found an old grave or an old
implement on the one, you found an old proverb or an old scrap of a
Gaelic poem on the other.  After staying with him some ten days, I
intimated my intention of paying a visit to my friend the
Landlord--with whom Fellowes was then staying--who lived some forty
miles off in the north-western portion of the island.  The old
gentleman was opposed to rapid decisions and movements, and asked me
to remain with him yet another week.  When he found I was resolute he
glanced at the weather-gleam, and the troops of mists gathering on
Cuchullin, muttering as he did so, "'Make ready my galley,' said the
king, 'I shall sail for Norway on Wednesday.'  'Will you,' said the
wind, who, flying about, had overheard what was said, 'you had better
ask my leave first.'"

[Sidenote: The Landlord.]

Between the Landlord and M'Ian there were many likenesses and
divergences.  Both were Skyemen by birth, both had the strongest love
for their native island, both had the management of human beings,
both had shrewd heads, and hearts of the kindest texture.  But at
this point the likenesses ended, and the divergences began.  Mr M'Ian
had never been out of the three kingdoms.  The Landlord had spent the
best part of his life in India, was more familiar with huts of ryots,
topes of palms, tanks in which the indigo plant was steeping, than
with the houses of Skye cotters and the processes of sheep-farming.
He knew the streets of Benares or Delhi better than he knew the
streets of London; and, when he first came home, Hindostanee would
occasionally jostle Gaelic on his tongue.  The Landlord too, was
rich, would have been considered a rich man even in the southern
cities; he was owner of many a mile of moorland, and the tides of
more than one far-winding Loch rose and rippled on shores that called
him master.  In my friend the Landlord there was a sort of
contrariety, a sort of mixture or blending of opposite elements which
was not without its fascination.  He was in some respects a resident
in two worlds.  He liked motion; he had a magnificent scorn of
distance: to him the world seemed comparatively small; and he would
start from Skye to India with as much composure as other men would
take the night train to London.  He paid taxes in India and he paid
taxes in Skye.  His name was as powerful in the markets of Calcutta
as it was at the Muir of Ord.  He read the _Hurkaru_ and the
_Inverness Courier_.  He had known the graceful salaam of the East,
as he now knew the touched bonnets of his shepherds.  And in living
with him, in talking with him, one was now reminded of the green
western island on which sheep fed, anon of tropic heats, of pearl and
gold, of mosque and pinnacle glittering above belts of palm-trees.
In his company you were in imagination travelling backwards and
forwards.  You made the overland route twenty times a day.  Now you
heard the bagpipe, now the monotonous beat of the tom-tom and the
keen clash of silver cymbals.  You were continually passing backwards
and forwards, as I have said.  You were in the West with your
half-glass of bitters in the morning, you were in the East with the
curry at dinner.  Both Mr M'Ian and the Landlord had the management
of human beings, but their methods of management were totally
different.  Mr M'Ian accepted matters as he found them, and
originating nothing, changing nothing, contrived to make life for
himself and others as pleasant as possible.  The Landlord, when he
entered on the direction of his property, exploded every ancient form
of usage, actually _ruled_ his tenants; would permit no factor,
middle-man, or go-between; met them face to face, and had it out with
them.  The consequence was that the poor people were at times sorely
bewildered.  They received their orders and carried them out, with
but little sense of the ultimate purpose of the Landlord--just as the
sailor, ignorant of the principles of navigation, pulls ropes and
reefs sails and does not discover that he gains much thereby, the
same sea-crescent being around him day by day, but in due time a
cloud rises on the horizon, and he is in port at last.

[Sidenote: The waterspout.]

As M'Ian had predicted, I could only move from his house if the
weather granted permission; and this permission the weather did not
seem disposed to grant.  For several days it rained as I had never
seen it rain before; a waterspout, too, had burst up among the hills,
and the stream came down in mighty flood.  There was great hubbub at
the house.  Mr M'Ian's hay, which was built in large stacks in the
valley meadows, was in danger, and the fiery cross was sent through
the cotters.  Up to the hay-fields every available man was despatched
with carts and horses, to remove the stacks to some spot where the
waters could not reach them; while at the bridge nearer the house
women and boys were stationed with long poles, and what
rudely-extemporised implements Celtic ingenuity could suggest, to
intercept and fish out piles and trusses which the thievish stream
was carrying away with it seaward.  These piles and trusses would at
least serve for the bedding of cattle.  For three days the rainy
tempest continued; at last, on the fourth, mist and rain rolled up
like a vast curtain in heaven, and then again were visible the clumps
of birch-wood, and the bright sea and the smoking hills, and far away
on the ocean floor Rum and Canna, without a speck of cloud on them,
sleeping in the coloured calmness of early afternoon.  This uprising
of the elemental curtain was, so far as the suddenness of the effect
was concerned, like the uprising of the curtain of the pantomime on
the transformation scene--all at once a dingy, sodden world had
become a brilliant one, and all the newly-revealed colour and
brilliancy promised to be permanent.

[Sidenote: The farm of Knock.]

Of this happy change in the weather I of course took immediate
advantage.  About five o'clock in the afternoon my dog-cart was
brought to the door; and after a parting cup with Mr M'Ian--who pours
a libation both to his arriving and his departing guest--I drove away
on my journey to remote Portree, and to the unimagined country that
lay beyond Portree, but which I knew held Dunvegan, Duntulm,
Macleod's Tables, and Quirang.  I drove up the long glen with a
pleasant exhilaration of spirit.  I felt grateful to the sun, for he
had released me from rainy captivity.  The drive, too, was pretty;
the stream came rolling down in foam, the smell of the wet
birch-trees was in the brilliant air, every mountain-top was
strangely and yet softly distinct; and looking back, there were the
blue Cuchullins looking after me, as if bidding me farewell!  At last
I reached the top of the glen, and emerged on a high plateau of
moorland, in which were dark inky tarns with big white water-lilies
on them; and skirting across the plateau I dipped down on the
parliamentary road, which, like a broad white belt, surrounds Skye.
Better road to drive on you will not find in the neighbourhood of
London itself!  and just as I was descending, I could not help
pulling up.  The whole scene was of the extremest beauty--exquisitely
calm, exquisitely coloured.  On my left was a little lake with a
white margin of water-lilies, a rocky eminence throwing a shadow
half-way across it.  Down below, on the sea-shore, was the farm of
Knock, with white outhouses and pleasant patches of cultivation, the
school-house, and the church, while on a low spit of land the old
castle of the Macdonalds was mouldering.  Still lower down and
straight away stretched the sleek blue Sound of Sleat, with not a
sail or streak of steamer smoke to break its vast expanse, and with a
whole congregation of clouds piled up on the horizon, soon to wear
their evening colours.  I let the sight slowly creep into my study of
imagination, so that I might be able to reproduce it at pleasure;
that done, I drove down to Isle Oronsay by pleasant sloping stages of
descent, with green hills on right and left, and along the roadside,
like a guard of honour, the purple stalks of the foxglove.

[Sidenote: Mr Fraser's trouts.]

The evening sky was growing red above me when I drove into Isle
Oronsay, which consists of perhaps fifteen houses in all.  It sits on
the margin of a pretty bay, in which the cry of the fisher is
continually heard, and into which the _Clansman_ going to or coming
from the south steams twice or thrice in the week.  At a little
distance is a lighthouse with a revolving light.--an idle building
during the day, but when night comes, awakening to full
activity,--sending now a ray to Ardnamurchan, now piercing with a
fiery arrow the darkness of Glenelg.  In Isle Oronsay is a merchant's
shop, in which every conceivable article may be obtained.  At Isle
Oronsay the post-runner drops a bag, as he hies on to Armadale
Castle.  At Isle Oronsay I supped with my friend Mr Fraser.  From him
I learned that the little village had been, like M'Ian's house,
fiercely scourged by rains.  On the supper-table was a dish of
trouts.  "Where do you suppose I procured these?" he asked.  "In one
of your burns, I suppose."  "No such thing; I found them in my
potato-field."  "In your potato-field!  How came that about?"  "Why,
you see the stream, swollen by three days' rain, broke over a
potato-field of mine on the hill-side and carried the potatoes away,
and left these plashing in pool and runnel.  The Skye streams have a
slight touch of honesty in them!"  I smiled at the conceit, and
expounded to my host the law of compensation which pervades the
universe, of which I maintained the trouts on the table were a
shining example.  Mr Fraser assented; but held that Nature was a poor
valuator--that her knowledge of the doctrine of equivalents was
slightly defective--that the trouts were well enough, but no
reimbursement for the potatoes that were gone.

Next morning I resumed my journey.  The road, so long as it skirted
the sea-shore, was pretty enough; but the sea-shore it soon left, and
entered a waste of brown monotonous moorland.  The country round
about abounds in grouse, and was the favourite shooting-ground of the
late Lord Macdonald.  By the road-side his lordship had erected a
stable and covered the roof with tin; and so at a distance it flashed
as if the Koh-i-noor had been dropped by accident in that dismal
region.  As I went along, the hills above Broadford began to rise;
then I drove down the slope, on which the market was held--the tents
all struck, but the stakes yet remaining in the ground--and after
passing the six houses, the lime-kiln, the church, and the two
merchants' shops, I pulled up at the inn door, and sent the horse
round to the stable to feed and to rest an hour.

[Sidenote: Island of Scalpa.]

After leaving Broadford the traveller drives along the margin of the
ribbon of salt water which flows between Skye and the Island of
Scalpa.  Up this narrow sound the steamer never passes, and it is
only navigated by the lighter kinds of sailing craft.  Scalpa is a
hilly island of some three or four miles in length, by one and a half
in breadth, is gray-green in colour, and as treeless as the palm of
your hand.  It has been the birthplace of many soldiers.  After
passing Scalpa the road ascends; and you notice as you drive along
that during the last hour or so the frequent streams have changed
colour.  In the southern portion of the island they come down as if
the hills ran sherry--here they are pale as shallow sea-water.  This
difference of hue arises of course from a difference of bed.  About
Broadford they come down through the mossy moorland, here they run
over marble.  Of marble the island is full; and it is not impossible
that the sculptors of the twentieth century will patronise the
quarries of Strath and Kyle rather than the quarries of Carrara.  But
wealth is needed to lay bare these mineral treasures.  The fine
qualities of Skye marble will never be obtained until they are laid
open by a golden pickaxe.

Once you have passed Scalpa you approach Lord Macdonald's deer
forest.  You have turned the flank of the Cuchullins now, and are
taking them in rear, and you skirt their bases very closely too.  The
road is full of wild ascents and descents, and on your left, for a
couple of miles or so, you are in continual presence of bouldered
hill-side sloping away upward to some invisible peak, overhanging
wall of wet black precipice, far-off serrated ridge that cuts the sky
like a saw.  Occasionally these mountain forms open up and fall back,
and you see the sterilest valleys running no man knows whither.
Altogether the hills here have a strange weird look.  Each is as
closely seamed with lines as the face of a man of a hundred, and
these myriad reticulations are picked out with a pallid gray-green,
as if through some mineral corrosion.  Passing along you are
strangely impressed with the idea that some vast chemical experiment
has been going on for some thousands of years; that the region is
nature's laboratory, and that down these wrinkled hill-fronts she had
spilt her acids and undreamed-of combinations.  You never think of
verdure in connexion with that net-work of gray-green, but only of
rust, or of some metallic discoloration.  You cannot help fancying
that if a sheep fed on one of those hill-sides it would to a
certainty be poisoned.  Altogether the sight is very grand, very
impressive, and very uncomfortable, and it is with the liveliest
satisfaction that, tearing down one of the long descents, you turn
your back on the mountain monsters, and behold in front the green
Island of Raasay, with its imposing modern mansion, basking in
sunshine.  It is like passing from the world of the gnomes to the
world of men.

[Sidenote: Lord Macdonald's forest.]

I have driven across Lord Macdonald's deer forest in sunshine and in
rain, and am constrained to confess that, under the latter
atmospherical condition, the scenery is the more imposing.  Some
months ago I drove in the mail-gig from Sligachan to Broadford.
There was a high wind, the sun was bright, and consequently a great
carry and flight of sunny vapours.  All at once, too, every half-hour
or so, the turbulent brightness of wind and cloud was extinguished by
fierce squalls of rain.  You could see the coming rain-storm blown
out on the wind toward you like a sheet of muslin cloth.  On it came
racing in its strength and darkness, the long straight watery lines
pelting on road and rock, churning in marsh and pool.  Over the
unhappy mail-gig it rushed, bidding defiance to plaid or waterproof
cape, and wetting every one to the skin.  The mail jogged on as best
it could through the gloom and the fury, and then the sunshine came
again making to glisten, almost too brightly for the eye, every
rain-pool on the road.  In the sunny intervals there was a great race
and hurry of towered vapour, as I said; and when a shining mass smote
one of the hill-sides, or shrouded for a while one of the more
distant serrated crests, the concussion was so palpable to the eye
that the ear felt defrauded, and silence seemed unnatural.  And when
the vast mass passed onward to impinge on some other mountain
barrier, it was singular to notice by what slow degrees, with what
evident reluctance the laggard skirts combed off.  [Sidenote: The
meek-faced man of fifty.] All these effects of rain and windy vapour
I remember vividly, and I suppose that the vividness was partly due
to the lamentable condition of a fellow-traveller.  He was a
meek-faced man of fifty.  He was dressed in sables, his
swallow-tailed coat was thread-bare, and withal seemed made for a
smaller man.  There was an uncomfortable space between the wrists of
his coat and his black-thread gloves.  He wore a hat, and against the
elements had neither the protection of plaid nor umbrella.  No one
knew him, to no one did he explain his business.  To my own notion he
was bound for a funeral at some place beyond Portree.  He was not a
clergyman--he might have been a schoolmaster who had become
green-moulded in some out-of-the-way locality.  Of course one or two
of the rainy squalls settled the meek-faced man in the thread-bare
sables.  Emerging from one of these he resembled a draggled rook, and
the rain was pouring from the brim of his pulpy hat as it might from
the eaves of a cottage.  A passenger handed him his spirit-flask, the
meek-faced man took a hearty pull, and returning it, said
plaintively, "I'm but poorly clad, sir, for this God-confounded
climate."  I think often of the utterance of the poor fellow: it was
the only thing he said all the way; and when I think of it, I see
again the rain blown out towards me on the wind like a waving sheet
of muslin cloth, and the rush, the concussion, the upbreak, and the
slow reluctant trailing off from the hill-side of the sunny cloud.
The poor man's plaintive tone is the anchor which holds these things
in my memory.

The forest is of course treeless.  Nor are deer seen there
frequently.  Although I have crossed it frequently, only once did I
get a sight of antlers.  Carefully I crept up, sheltering myself
behind a rocky haunch of the hill to where the herd were lying, and
then rushed out upon them with a halloo.  In an instant they were on
their feet, and away went the beautiful creatures, doe and fawn, a
stag with branchy head leading.  They dashed across a torrent,
crowned an eminence one by one and disappeared.  Such a sight is
witnessed but seldom; and the traveller passing through the brown
desolation sees usually no sign of life.  In Lord Macdonald's deer
forest neither trees nor deer are visible.

When once you get quit of the forest you come on a shooting-box,
perched on the sea-shore; then you pass the little village of
Sconser; and, turning the sharp flank of a hill, drive along Loch
Sligachan to Sligachan Inn, about a couple of miles distant.  This
inn is a famous halting-place for tourists.  There are good fishing
streams about, I am given to understand, and through Glen Sligachan
you can find your way to Camasunary, and take the boat from thence to
Loch Coruisk, as we did.  It was down this glen that the messenger
was to have brought the tobacco to our peculiar friend.  If you go
you may perhaps find his skeleton scientifically articulated by the
carrion crow and the raven.  From the inn door the ridges of the
Cuchullins are seen wildly invading the sky, and in closer proximity
there are other hills which cannot be called beautiful.  Monstrous,
abnormal, chaotic, they resemble the other hills on the earth's
surface, as Hindoo deities resemble human beings.  The mountain,
whose sharp flank you turned after you passed Sconser, can be
inspected leisurely now, and is to my mind supremely ugly.  In summer
it is red as copper, with great ragged patches of verdure upon it,
which look by all the world as if the coppery mass had _rusted_
green.  On these green patches cattle feed from March to October.
You bait at Sligachan,--can dine on trout which a couple of hours
before were darting hither and thither in the stream, if you
like,--and then drive leisurely along to Portree while the setting
sun is dressing the wilderness in gold and rose.  And all the way the
Cuchullins follow you; the wild irregular outline, which no
familiarity can stale, haunts you at Portree, as it does in nearly
every quarter of Skye.

[Sidenote: Portree.]

Portree folds two irregular ranges of white houses, the one range
rising steeply above the other, around a noble bay, the entrance to
which is guarded by rocky precipices.  At a little distance the
houses are white as shells, and as in summer they are all set in the
greenness of foliage the effect is strikingly pretty; and if the
sense of prettiness departs to a considerable extent on a closer
acquaintance, there is yet enough left to gratify you so long as you
remain there, and to make it a pleasant place to think about when you
are gone.  The lower range of houses consists mainly of warehouses
and fish-stores; the upper, of the main hotel, the two banks, the
court-house, and the shops.  A pier runs out into the bay, and here,
when the state of tide permits, comes the steamer, on its way to or
from Stornoway and unlades.  Should the tide be low the steamer lies
to in the bay, and her cargo and passengers come to shore by means of
boats.  She usually arrives at night; and at low tide, the burning of
coloured lights at the mast-heads, the flitting hither and thither of
busy lanterns, the pier boats coming and going with illumined wakes,
and ghostly fires on the oar-blades, the clatter of chains and the
shock of the crank hoisting the cargo out of the hold, the general
hubbub and storm of Gaelic shouts and imprecations make the arrival
at once picturesque and impressive.  In the bay the yacht of the
tourist is continually lying, and at the hotel door his dog-cart is
continually departing or arriving.  In the hotel parties arrange to
visit Quirang or the Storr, and on the evenings of market-days, in
the large public rooms, farmers and cattle-dealers sit over tumblers
of smoking punch and discuss noisily the prices and the qualities of
stock.  Besides the hotel and the pier, the banks, and the
court-house already mentioned, there are other objects of interest in
the little island town--three churches, a post-office, a poor-house,
and a cloth manufactory.  And it has more than meets the eye--one of
the Jameses landed here on a visitation of the Isles, Prince Charles
was here on his way to Raasay, Dr Johnson and Boswell were here; and
somewhere on the green hill on which the pretty church stands, a
murderer is buried--the precise spot of burial is unknown, and so the
entire hill gets the credit that of right belongs only to a single
yard of it.  In Portree the tourist seldom abides long; he passes
through it as a fortnight before he passed through Oban.  It does not
seem to the visitor a specially remarkable place, but everything is
relative in this world.  It is an event for the Islesman at Dunvegan
or the Point of Sleat to go to Portree, just as it is an event for a
Yorkshireman to go to London.

[Sidenote: Skeabost.]

When you drive out of Portree you are in Macleod's country, and you
discover that the character of the scenery has changed.  Looking
back, the Cuchullins are wild and pale on the horizon, but everything
around is brown, softly-swelling, and monotonous.  The hills are
round and low, and except when an occasional boulder crops out on
their sides like a wart, are smooth as a seal's back.  They are
gray-green in colour, and may be grazed to the top.  Expressing once
to a shepherd my admiration of the Cuchullins, the man replied, while
he swept with his arm the entire range, "There's no feeding there for
twenty wethers!" here, however, there is sufficient feeding to
compensate for any lack of beauty.  About three miles out of Portree
you come upon a solitary-looking school-house by the wayside, and a
few yards farther to a division of the roads.  A finger-post informs
you that the road to the right leads to Uig, that to the left to
Dunvegan.  As I am at present bound for Dunvegan, I skirr along to
the left, and after an hour's drive come in sight of blue Loch
Snizort, with Skeabost sitting whitely on its margin.  Far inland
from the broad Minch, like one of those wavering swords which
mediæval painters place in the hands of archangels, has Snizort come
wandering; and it is the curious mixture of brine and pasture-land,
of mariner life and shepherd life, which gives its charm to this
portion of the island.  The Lochs are narrow, and you almost fancy a
strong-lunged man could shout across.  The sea-gull skims above the
feeding sheep, the shepherd can watch the sail of the sloop, laden
with meal, creeping from point to point.  In the spiritual atmosphere
of the country the superstitions of ocean and moorland mingle like
two odours.  Above all places which I have seen in Skye, Skeabost has
a lowland look.  There are almost no turf-huts to be seen in the
neighbourhood; the houses are built of stone and lime, and are tidily
white-washed.  The hills are low and smooth; on the lower slopes corn
and wheat are grown; and from a little distance the greenness of
cultivation looks like a palpable smile--a strange contrast to the
monotonous district through which, for an hour or so, you have
driven.  As you pass the inn, and drive across the bridge, you notice
that there is an island in the stony stream, and that this island is
covered with ruins.  The Skyeman likes to bury his dead in islands,
and this one in the stream at Skeabost is a crowded cemetery.  I
forded the stream, and wandered for an hour amongst the tombs and
broken stones.  [Sidenote: The Island of Graves.] There are traces of
an ancient chapel on the island, but tradition does not even make a
guess at its builder's name or the date of its erection.  There are
old slabs, lying sideways, with the figures of recumbent men with
swords in their hands, and inscriptions--indecipherable now--carved
on them.  There is the grave of a Skye clergyman who, if his epitaph
is to be trusted, was a burning and a shining light in his day--a
gospel candle irradiating the Hebridean darkness.  I never saw a
churchyard so mounded, and so evidently over-crowded.  Here laird,
tacksman, and cotter elbow each other in death.  Here no one will
make way for a new-comer, or give the wall to his neighbour.  And
standing in the little ruined island of silence and the dead, with
the river perfectly audible on either side, one could not help
thinking what a picturesque sight a Highland funeral would be,
creeping across the moors with wailing pipe-music, fording the river,
and his bearers making room for the dead man amongst the older dead
as best they could.  And this sight, I am told, may be seen any week
in the year.  To this island all the funerals of the country-side
converge.  Standing there, too, one could not help thinking that this
space of silence, girt by river noises, would be an _eerie_ place by
moonlight.  The broken chapel, the carved slabs lying sideways, as if
the dead man beneath had grown restless and turned himself, and the
head-stones jutting out of the mounded soil at every variety of
angle, would appal in the ink of shadow and the silver of moonbeam.
In such circumstances one would hear something more in the stream as
it ran past than the mere breaking of water on stones.

After passing the river and the island of graves you drive down
between hedges to Skeabost church, school, post-office, and manse,
and thereafter you climb the steep hill towards Bernesdale and its
colony of turf-huts; and when you reach the top you have a noble view
of the flat blue Minch, and the Skye headlands, each precipitous,
abrupt, and reminding you somehow of a horse which has been suddenly
reined back to its haunches.  The flowing lines of those headlands
suggest an onward motion, and then, all at once, they shrink back
upon themselves, as if they feared the roar of breakers and the smell
of the brine.  But the grand vision is not of long duration, for the
road descends rapidly towards Taynlone Inn.  In my descent I beheld
two bare-footed and bare-headed girls yoked to a harrow, and dragging
it up and down a small plot of delved ground.

[Sidenote: A Highland hut.]

Sitting in the inn I began to remember me how frequently I had heard
in the south of the destitution of the Skye people and the discomfort
of the Skye hut.  During my wanderings I had the opportunity of
visiting several of these dwellings, and seeing how matters were
transacted within.  Frankly speaking, the Highland hut is not a model
edifice.  It is open to wind, and almost always pervious to rain.  An
old bottomless herring-firkin stuck in the roof usually serves for
chimney, but the blue peat-reek disdains that aperture, and steams
wilfully through the door and the crannies in the walls and roof.
The interior is seldom well-lighted--what light there is proceeding
rather from the orange glow of the peat-fire, on which a large pot is
simmering, than from the narrow pane with its great bottle-green
bull's-eye.  The rafters which support the roof are black and glossy
with soot, as you can notice by sudden flashes of firelight.  The
sleeping accommodation is limited, and the beds are composed of
heather or ferns.  The floor is the beaten earth, the furniture is
scanty; there is hardly ever a chair--stools and stones, worn smooth
by the usage of several generations, have to do instead.  One portion
of the hut is not unfrequently a byre, and the breath of the cow is
mixed with the odour of peat-reek, and the baa of the calf mingles
with the wranglings and swift ejaculations of the infant Highlanders.
In such a hut as this there are sometimes three generations.  The
mother stands knitting outside, the children are scrambling on the
floor with the terrier and the poultry, and a ray of cloudy sunshine
from the narrow pane smites the silver hairs of the grandfather near
the fire, who is mending fishing-nets against the return of his
son-in-law from the south.  Am I inclined to lift my hands in horror
at witnessing such a dwelling?  Certainly not.  I have only given one
side of the picture.  The hut I speak of nestles beneath a rock, on
the top of which dances the ash-tree and the birch.  The emerald
mosses on its roof are softer and richer than the velvets of kings.
Twenty yards down that path you will find a well that needs no ice in
the dog-days.  At a little distance, from rocky shelf to shelf, trips
a mountain burn, with abundance of trout in the brown pools.  At the
distance of a mile is the sea, which is not allowed to ebb and flow
in vain; for in the smoke there is a row of fishes drying; and on the
floor a curly-headed urchin of three years or thereby is pommeling
the terrier with the scarlet claw of a lobster.  Methought, too, when
I entered I saw beside the door a heap of oyster shells.  Within the
hut there is good food, if a little scant at times; without there is
air that will call colour back to the cheek of an invalid, pure
water, play, exercise, work.  That the people are healthy, you may
see from their strong frames, brown faces, and the age to which many
attain; that they are happy and light-hearted, the shouts of laughter
that ring round the peat-fire of an evening may be taken as
sufficient evidence.  I protest I cannot become pathetic over the
Highland hut.  I have sat in these turfen dwellings, amid the
surgings of blue smoke, and received hospitable welcome, and found
amongst the inmates good sense, industry, family affection,
contentment, piety, happiness.  And when I have heard
philanthropists, with more zeal than discretion, maintain that these
dwellings are a disgrace to the country in which they are found, I
have thought of districts of great cities which I have seen,--within
the sound of the rich man's chariot wheels, within hearing of
multitudinous Sabbath bells--of evil scents and sights and sounds; of
windows stuffed with rags; of female faces that look out on you as
out of a sadder Inferno than that of Dante's; of faces of men
containing the debris of the entire decalogue, faces which hurt you
more than a blow would: of infants poisoned with gin, of children
bred for the prison and the hulks.  Depend upon it there are worse
odours than peat smoke, worse next-door neighbours than a cow or a
brood of poultry; and although a couple of girls dragging a harrow be
hardly in accordance with our modern notions, yet we need not forget
that there are worse employment for girls than even that.  I do not
stand up for the Highland hut; but in one of these smoky cabins I
would a thousand-fold rather spend my days than in the Cowgate of
Edinburgh, or in one of the streets that radiate from Seven Dials.

[Sidenote: A Highland village.]

After travelling three or four days, I beheld on the other side of a
long, blue, river-like loch, the house of the Landlord.  From the
point at which I now paused, a boat could have taken me across in
half an hour, but as the road wound round the top of the Loch, I had
yet some eight or ten miles to drive before my journey was
accomplished.  Meantime the Loch was at ebb and the sun was setting.
On the hill-side, on my left as I drove, stretched a long street of
huts covered with smoky wreaths, and in front of each a strip of
cultivated ground ran down to the road which skirted the shore.
Potatoes grew in one strip or lot, turnips in a second, corn in a
third, and as these crops were in different stages of advancement,
the entire hillside, from the street of huts downward, resembled one
of those counterpanes which thrifty housewifes manufacture by sewing
together patches of different patterns.  Along the road running at
the back of the huts a cart was passing; on the moory hill behind, a
flock of sheep, driven by men and dogs, was contracting and expanding
itself like quicksilver.  The women were knitting at the hut doors,
the men were at work in the cultivated patches in front.  On all this
scene of cheerful and fortunate industry, on men and women, on
turnips, oats, and potatoes, on cottages set in azure films of
peat-reek, the rosy light was striking--making a pretty spectacle
enough.  From the whole hill-side breathed peace, contentment,
happiness, and a certain sober beauty of usefulness.  Man and nature
seemed in perfect agreement and harmony--man willing to labour,
nature to yield increase.  Down to the head of the Loch the road
sloped rapidly, and at the very head a small village had established
itself.  It contained an inn, a school-house, in which divine service
was held on Sundays; a smithy, a merchant's shop--all traders are
called _merchants_ in Skye--and, by the side of a stream which came
brawling down from rocky steep to steep, stood a corn mill, the big
wheel lost in a watery mist of its own raising, the door and windows
dusty with meal.  Behind the village lay a stretch of black moorland
intersected by drains and trenches, and from the black huts which
seemed to have grown out of the moor, and the spaces of sickly green
here and there, one could see that the desolate and forbidding region
had its colonists, and that they were valiantly attempting to wring a
sustenance out of it.  Who were the squatters on the black moorland?
Had they accepted their hard conditions as a matter of choice, or had
they been banished there by a superior power?  Did the dweller in
those outlying huts bear the same relation to the villagers, or the
flourishing cotters on the hill-side, that the gipsy bears to the
English peasant, or the red Indian to the Canadian farmer?  I had no
one to inform me at the time; meanwhile the sunset fell on these
remote dwellings, lending them what beauty and amelioration of colour
it could, making a drain sparkle for a moment, turning a far-off pool
into gold leaf, and rendering, by contrast of universal warmth and
glow, yet more beautiful the smoke which swathed the houses.  Yet
after all the impression made upon one was cheerless enough.  Sunset
goes but a little way in obviating human wretchedness.  It fires the
cottage window, but it cannot call to life the corpse within; it can
sparkle on the chain of a prisoner, but with all its sparkling it
does not make the chain one whit the lighter.  Misery is often
picturesque, but the picturesqueness is in the eyes of others, not in
her own.  The black moorland and the banished huts abode in my mind
during the remainder of my drive.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's house.]

Everything about a man is characteristic, more or less; and in the
house of the Landlord I found that singular mixture of hemispheres
which I had before noticed in his talk and in his way of looking at
times.  His house was plain enough externally, but its furniture was
curious and far-brought.  The interior of his porch was adorned with
heads of stags and tusks of elephants.  He would show you Highland
relics, and curiosities from sacked Eastern palaces.  He had the tiny
porcelain cup out of which Prince Charles drank tea at Kingsburgh,
and the signet ring which was stripped from the dead fingers of
Tippoo Saib.  In his gun-room were modern breech-loaders and
revolvers, and matchlocks from China and Nepaul.  On the walls were
Lochaber axes, claymores, and targets that might have seen service at
Inverlochy, hideous creases, Afghan daggers, curiously-curved swords,
scabbards thickly crusted with gems.  In the library the last new
novel leaned against the "Institutes of Menu."  On the drawing-room
table, beside _carte-de-visite_ books, were ivory card-cases wrought
by the patient Hindoo artificer as finely as we work our laces,
Chinese puzzles that baffled all European comprehension, and comical
squab-faced deities in silver and bronze.  While the Landlord was
absent, I could fancy these strangely-assorted articles striking one
with a sense of incongruity: but when at home, each seemed a portion
of himself.  He was related as closely to the Indian god as to Prince
Charles's cup.  The ash and birch of the Highlands danced before his
eyes, the palm stood in his imagination and memory.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's pets.]

And then he surrounded himself with all kinds of pets, and lived with
them on the most intimate terms.  When he entered the breakfast-room
his terriers barked and frisked and jumped about him; his great black
hare-hound, Maida, got up from the rug on which it had been basking
and thrust its sharp nose into his hand; his canaries broke into
emulous music, as if sunshine had come into the room; the parrot in
the porch clambered along the cage with horny claws, settled itself
on its perch, bobbed its head up and down for a moment, and was
seized with hooping-cough.  When he went out the black hare-hound
followed at his heel; the peacock, strutting on the gravel in the
shelter of the larches, unfurled its starry fan; in the stable his
horses turned round to smell his clothes and to have their foreheads
stroked: melodious thunder broke from the dog-kennel when he came:
and at his approach his falcons did not withdraw haughtily, as if in
human presence there was profanation; they listened to his voice, and
a gentler something tamed for a moment the fierce cairngorms of their
eyes.  When others came near they ruffled their plumage and uttered
sharp cries of anger.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's visitors.]

After breakfast it was his habit to carry the parrot out to a long
iron garden-seat in front of the house--where, if sunshine was to be
had at all, you were certain to find it--and placing the cage beside
him, smoke a cheroot.  The parrot would clamber about the cage,
suspended head downwards would take crafty stock of you with an eye
which had perhaps looked out on the world for a century or so, and
then, righting itself, peremptorily insist that Polly should put on
the kettle, and that the boy should shut up the grog.  On one special
morning, while the Landlord was smoking and the parrot whooping and
whistling, several men, dressed in rough pilot cloth which had seen
much service and known much darning, came along the walk and
respectfully uncovered.  Returning their salutation, the Landlord
threw away the end of his cheroot and went forward to learn their
message.  The conversation was in Gaelic: slow and gradual at first,
it quickened anon, and broke into gusts of altercation; and on these
occasions I noticed that the Landlord would turn impatiently on his
heel, march a pace or two back to the house, and then, wheeling
round, return to the charge.  He argued in the unknown tongue,
gesticulated, was evidently impressing something on his auditors
which they were unwilling to receive, for at intervals they would
look in one another's faces,--a look plainly implying, "Did you ever
hear the like?" and give utterance to a murmured chit, _chit, chit_
of dissent and humble protestation.  At last the matter got itself
amicably settled, the deputation--each man making a short sudden duck
before putting on his bonnet--withdrew, and the Landlord came back to
the parrot, which had, now with one eye, now with another, been
watching the proceeding.  He sat down with a slight air of annoyance.

"These fellows are wanting more meal," he said, "and one or two are
pretty deep in my books already."

"Do you, then, keep regular accounts with them?"

"Of course.  I give nothing for nothing.  I wish to do them as much
good as I can.  They are a good deal like my old ryots, only the ryot
was more supple and obsequious."

"Where do your friends come from?" I asked.

"From the village over there," pointing across the narrow blue loch.
"Pretty Polly!  Polly!"

The parrot was climbing up and down the cage, taking hold of the
wires with beak and claw as it did so.

"I wish to know something of your villagers.  The cotters on the
hill-side seem comfortable enough, but I wish to know something of
the black land and the lonely huts behind."

"Oh," said he, laughing, "that is my penal settlement--I'll drive you
over to-morrow."  He then got up, tossed a stone into the shrubbery,
after which Maida dashed, thrust his hands into his breeches' pocket
for a moment, and marched into the house.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's arrival.]

Next morning we drove across to the village, and pretty enough it
looked as we alighted.  The big water-wheel of the mill whirred
industrious music, flour flying about the door and windows.  Two or
three people were standing at the merchant's shop.  At the smithy a
horse was haltered, and within were brilliant showers of sparks and
the merry clink of hammers.  The sunshine made pure amber the pools
of the tumbling burn, and in one of these a girl was rinsing linen,
the light touching her hair into a richer colour.  Our arrival at the
inn created some little stir.  The dusty miller came out, the smith
came to the door rubbing down his apron with a horny palm, the girl
stood upright by the burn-side shading her eyes with her hand, one of
the men at the merchant's shop went within to tell the news, the
labourers in the fields round about stopped work to stare.  The
machine was no sooner put to rights and the horses taken round to the
stable than the mistress of the house complained that the roof was
leaky, and she and the Landlord went in to inspect the same.  Left
alone for a little, I could observe that, seeing my friend had
arrived, the people were resolved to make some use of him, and here
and there I noticed them laying down their crooked spades, and coming
down towards the inn.  One old woman, with a white handkerchief tied
round her head, sat down on a stone opposite, and when the Landlord
appeared--the matter of the leaky roof having been arranged--she rose
and dropped a courtesy.  She had a complaint to make, a benefit to
ask, a wrong to be redressed.  I could not, of course, understand a
word of the conversation, but curiously sharp and querulous was her
voice, with a slight suspicion of the whine of the mendicant in it,
and every now and then she would give a deep sigh, and smooth down
her apron with both her hands.  I suspect the old lady gained her
object, for when the Landlord cracked his joke at parting the most
curious sunshine of merriment came into the withered features,
lighting them up and changing them, and giving one, for a flying
second, some idea of what she must have been in her middle age,
perhaps in her early youth, when she as well as other girls had a
sweetheart.

[Sidenote: The penal settlement.]

In turn we visited the merchant's shop, the smithy, and the mill;
then we passed the schoolhouse--which was one confused murmur, the
sharp voice of the teacher striking through at intervals--and turning
up a narrow road, came upon the black region and the banished huts.
The cultivated hill-side was shining in sunlight, the cottages
smoking, the people at work in their crofts--everything looking
blithe and pleasant; and under the bright sky and the happy weather
the penal settlement did not look nearly so forbidding as it had done
when, under the sunset, I had seen it a few evenings previously.  The
houses were rude, but they seemed sufficiently weather-tight.  Each
was set down in a little oasis of cultivation, a little circle in
which by labour the sour land had been coaxed into a smile of green;
each small domain was enclosed by a low turfen wall, and on the top
of one of these a wild goat-looking sheep was feeding, which, as we
approached, jumped down with an alarmed bleat, and then turned to
gaze on the intruders.  The land was sour and stony, the dwellings
framed of the rudest materials, and the people--for they all came
forward to meet him, and at each turfen wall the Landlord held a
_levée_--especially the older people, gave one the idea somehow of
worn-out tools.  In some obscure way they reminded one of bent and
warped oars, battered spades, blunted pickaxes.  On every figure was
written hard, unremitting toil.  Toil had twisted their frames,
seamed and puckered their leathern faces, made their hands horny,
bleached their grizzled locks.  Your fancy had to run back along
years and years of labour before it could arrive at the original boy
or girl.  Still they were cheerful-looking after a sort, contented,
and loquacious withal.  The man took off his bonnet, the woman
dropped her courtesy, before pouring into the Landlord's ear how the
wall of the house wanted mending, how a neighbour's sheep had come
into the corn, had been _driven_ into the corn out of foul spite and
envy it was suspected, how new seed would be required for next year's
sowing, how the six missing fleeces had been found in the hut of the
old soldier across the river, and all the other items which made up
their world.  And the Landlord, his black hound couched at his feet,
would sit down on a stone, or lean against the turf wall and listen
to the whole of it, and consult as to the best way to repair the
decaying house, and discover how defendant's sheep came into
complainant's corn, and give judgment, and promise new seed to old
Donald, and walk over to the soldier's and pluck the heart out of the
mystery of the missing fleeces.  And going in and out amongst his
people, his functions were manifold.  He was not Landlord only--he
was leech, lawyer, divine.  He prescribed medicine, he set broken
bones, and tied up sprained ankles; he was umpire in a hundred petty
quarrels, and damped out wherever he went every flame of wrath.  Nor,
when it was needed, was he without ghostly counsel.  On his land he
would permit no unbaptized child; if Donald was drunk and brawling at
a fair, he would, when the inevitable headache and nausea were gone,
drop in and improve the occasion, to Donald's much discomfiture and
his many blushes; and with the bed-ridden woman, or the palsied man,
who for years had sat in the corner of the hut as constantly as a
statue sits within its niche--just where the motty sunbeam from the
pane with its great knob of bottle-green struck him--he held serious
conversations, and uttered words which come usually from the lips of
a clergyman.

[Sidenote: The cottages on the hill-side.]

We then went through the cottages on the cultivated hill-side, and
there another series of _levées_ were held.  One cotter complained
that his neighbour had taken advantage of him in this or the other
matter: another man's good name had been aspersed by a scandalous
tongue, and ample apology must be made, else the sufferer would bring
the asperser before the sheriff.  Norman had borrowed for a day
Neil's plough, had broken the shaft, and when requested to make
reparation, had refused in terms too opprobrious to be repeated.  The
man from Sleat who had a year or two ago come to reside in these
parts, and with whom the world had gone prosperously, was minded at
next fair to buy another cow--would he therefore be allowed to rent
the croft which lay alongside the one which he already possessed?  To
these cotters the Landlord gave attentive ear, standing beside the
turf dike, leaning against the walls of their houses, sitting down
inside in the peat smoke--the children gathered together in the
farthest corner, and regarding him with no little awe.  And so he
came to know all the affairs of his people--who was in debt, who was
waging a doubtful battle with the world, who had money in the bank;
and going daily amongst them he was continually engaged in warning,
expostulation, encouragement, rebuke.  Nor was he always sunshine: he
was occasionally lightning too.  The tropical tornado, which unroofs
houses and splits trees, was within the possibilities of his moods as
well as the soft wind which caresses the newly-yeaned lamb.  Against
greed, laziness, dishonesty, he flamed like a seven-times heated
furnace.  When he found that argument had no effect on the obstinate
or the pig-headed, he suddenly changed his tactics, and descended in
a shower of _chaff_, which is to the Gael an unknown and terrible
power, dissolving opposition as salt dissolves a snail.

The last cotter had been seen, the last _levée_ had been held, and we
then climbed up to the crown of the hill to visit the traces of an
old fortification, or _dün_, as the Skye people call it.  These
ruins, and they are thickly scattered over the island, are supposed
to be of immense antiquity--so old, that Ossian may have sung in each
to a circle of Fingalian chiefs.  When we reached the _dün_--a loose
congregation of mighty stones, scattered in a circular form, with
some rude remnants of an entrance and a covered way--we sat down, and
the Landlord lighted a cheroot.  Beneath lay the little village
covered with smoke.  Far away to the right, Skye stretched into
ocean, pale headland after headland.  In front, over a black
wilderness of moor, rose the conical forms of Macleod's Tables, and
one thought of the "restless bright Atlantic plain" beyond, the
endless swell and shimmer of watery ridges, the clouds of sea birds,
the sudden glistening upheaval of a whale and its disappearance, the
smoky trail of a steamer on the horizon, the tacking of white-sailed
craft.  On the left, there was nothing but moory wilderness and hill,
with something on a slope flashing in the sunshine like a diamond.  A
falcon palpitating in the intense blue above, the hare-hound cocked
her ears and looked out alertly, the Landlord with his field-glass
counted the sheep feeding on the hill-side a couple of miles off.
Suddenly he closed the glass, and lay back on the heather, puffing a
column of white smoke into the air.

"I suppose," said I, "your going in and out amongst your tenants
to-day is very much the kind of thing you used to do in India?"

"Exactly.  I know these fellows, every man of them--and they know me.
We get on very well together.  I know everything they do.  I know all
their secrets, all their family histories, everything they wish, and
everything they fear.  I think I have done them some good since I
came amongst them."

"But," said I, "I wish you to explain to me your system of penal
servitude, as you call it.  In what respect do the people on the
cultivated hillside differ from the people in the black ground behind
the village?"

"Willingly.  But I must premise that the giving away of money in
charity is, in nine cases out often, tantamount to throwing money
into the fire.  It does no good to the bestower: it does absolute
harm to the receiver.  You see I have taken the management of these
people into my own hands.  I have built a school-house for them--on
which we will look in and overhaul on our way down--I have built a
shop, as you see, a smithy, and a mill.  I have done everything for
them, and I insist that, when a man becomes my tenant, he shall pay
me rent.  If I did not so insist I should be doing an injury to
myself and to him.  The people on the hill-side pay me rent; not a
man Jack of them is at this moment one farthing in arrears.  The
people down there in the black land behind the village, which I am
anxious to reclaim, don't pay rent.  They are broken men, broken
sometimes by their own fault and laziness, sometimes by culpable
imprudence, sometimes by stress of circumstances.  When I settle a
man there I build him a house, make him a present of a bit of land,
give him tools, should he require them, and set him to work.  He has
the entire control of all he can produce.  He improves my land, and
can, if he is industrious, make a comfortable living.  I won't have a
pauper on my place: the very sight of a pauper sickens me."

"But why do you call the black lands your penal settlement?"

Here the Landlord laughed.  "Because, should any of the crofters on
the hill-side, either from laziness or misconduct, fall into arrears,
I transport him at once.  I punish him by sending him among the
people who pay no rent.  It's like taking the stripes off a
sergeant's arm and degrading him to the ranks; and if there is any
spirit in the man he tries to regain his old position.  I wish my
people to respect themselves, and to hold poverty in horror."

"And do many get back to the hill-side again?"

"Oh, yes! and they are all the better for their temporary banishment.
I don't wish residence there to be permanent in any case.  When one
of these fellows gets on, makes a little money, I have him up here at
once among the rent-paying people.  I draw the line at a cow."

"How?"

"When a man by industry or by self-denial has saved money enough to
buy a cow, I consider the black land is no longer the place for him.
He is able to pay rent, and he must pay it.  I brought an old fellow
up here the other week, and very unwilling he was to come.  He had
bought himself a cow, and so I marched him up here at once.  I wish
to stir all these fellows up, to put into them a little honest pride
and self-respect."

"And how do they take to your system?"

"Oh, they grumbled a good deal at first, and thought their lines were
hard; but discovering that my schemes have been for their benefit,
they are content enough now.  In these black lands, you observe, I
not only rear corn and potatoes, I rear and train men, which is the
most valuable crop of all.  But let us be going.  I wish you to see
my scholars.  I think I have got one or two smart lads down there."

[Sidenote: The school.]

In a short time we reached the school-house, a plain,
substantial-looking building, standing mid-way between the inn and
the banished huts.  As it was arranged that neither schoolmaster nor
scholar should have the slightest idea that they were to be visited
that day, we were enabled to see the school in its ordinary aspect.
When we entered the master came forward and shook hands with the
Landlord, the boys pulled their red fore-locks, the girls dropped
their best courtesies.  Sitting down on a form I noted the bare
walls, a large map hanging on one side, the stove with a heap of
peats near it, the ink-smeared bench and the row of girls' heads,
black, red, yellow, and brown, surmounting it, and the boys,
barefooted and in tattered kilts, gathered near the window.  The
girls regarded us with a shy, curious gaze, which was not ungraceful;
and in several of the freckled faces there was the rudiments of
beauty, or of comeliness at least.  The eyes of all, boys as well as
girls, kept twinkling over our persons, taking silent note of
everything.  I don't think I ever before was the subject of so much
curiosity.  One was pricked all over by quick-glancing eyes as by
pins.  We had come to examine the school, and the ball opened by a
display of copy books.  Opening these, we found pages covered with
"_Emulation is a generous passion,_" "_Emancipation does not make
man,_" in very fair and legible handwriting.  Expressing our
satisfaction, the schoolmaster bowed low, and the prickling of the
thirty or forty curious eyes became yet more keen and rapid.  The
schoolmaster then called for those who wished to be examined in
geography--very much as a colonel might seek volunteers for a forlorn
hope--and in a trice six scholars, kilted, of various ages and sizes,
but all shock-headed and ardent, were drawn up in line in front of
the large map.  A ruler was placed in the hand of a little fellow at
the end, who, with his eyes fixed on the schoolmaster and his body
bent forward eagerly, seemed as waiting the signal to start off in a
race.  "Number one, point out river Tagus."  Number one charged the
Peninsula with his ruler as ardently as his great-grandfather in all
probability charged the French at Quebec.  "Through what country does
the Tagus flow?"  "Portugal."  "What is the name of the capital
city?"  "Lisbon."  Number one having accomplished his devoir, the
ruler was handed on to number two, who traced the course of the
Danube, and answered several questions thereanent with considerable
intelligence.  Number five was a little fellow; he was asked to point
out Portree, and as the Western Islands hung too high in the north
for him to reach, he jumped at them.  He went into the North Sea the
first time, but on his second attempt he smote Skye with his ruler
very neatly.  Numbers three, four, and six acquitted themselves
creditably--number four boggling a little deal about
Constantinople--much to the vexation of the schoolmaster.  Slates
were then produced, and the six geographers--who were the cream of
the school, I daresay--were prepared for arithmetical action.  As I
was examiner, and had no desire to get into deep waters, the efforts
of my kilted friends were, at my request, confined to the good old
rule of simple addition.  The schoolmaster called out ten or eleven
ranks of figures, and then cried add.  Six swishes of the
slate-pencil were heard, and then began the arithmetical tug of war.
Each face was immediately hidden behind a slate, and we could hear
the quick tinkle of pencils.  All at once there was a hurried swish,
and the red-head, who had boggled about Constantinople, flashed round
his slate on me with the summation fairly worked out.  Flash went
another slate, then another, till the six were held out.  All the
answers corresponded, and totting up the figures I found them
correct.  Then books were procured, and we listened to English
reading.  In a loud tone of voice, as if they were addressing some
one on an opposite hill-side, and with barbarous intonation, the
little fellows read off about a dozen sentences each.  Now and again
a big word brought a reader to grief, as a tall fence brings a
steeple-chaser; now and again a reader went through a word as a
hunter goes through a hedge which he cannot clear--but, on the whole,
they deserved the commendation which they received.  The Landlord
expressed his satisfaction, and mentioned that he had left at the inn
two baskets of gooseberries for the scholars.  The schoolmaster again
bowed; and although the eyes of the scholars were as bright and
curious as before, they had laid their heads together, and were
busily whispering now.

The schools in Skye bear the same relationship to the other
educational establishments of the country that a turf-hut bears to a
stone-and-lime cottage.  These schools are scattered thinly up and
down the Island, and the pupils are unable to attend steadily on
account of the distances they have to travel, and the minor
agricultural avocations in which they are at intervals engaged.  The
schoolmaster is usually a man of no surpassing intelligence or
acquirement; he is wretchedly remunerated, and his educational aids
and appliances, such as books, maps, &c., are defective.  But still a
turf-hut is better than no shelter, and a Skye school is better than
no school at all.  The school, for instance, which we had just
visited, was an authentic light in the darkness.  There boys and
girls were taught reading, writing, and ciphering--plain and homely
accomplishments it is true, but accomplishments that bear the keys of
all the doors that lead to wealth and knowledge.  The boy or girl who
can read, write, and cast up accounts deftly, is not badly equipped
for the battle of life; and although the school which the Landlord
has established is plain and unostentatious in its forms and modes of
instruction, it at least, with tolerable success, teaches these.  For
the uses made of them by the pupils in after life, the pupils are
themselves responsible.




_ORBOST AND DUNVEGAN._

Punctually at nine next morning there was a grating of wheels on the
gravel, and Malcolm and his dog-cart were at the door.  After a
little delay I took my place on the vehicle and we drove off.
Malcolm was a thick-set, good-humoured, red haired and whiskered
little fellow, who could be silent for half a day if needed, but who
could speak, and speak to the point, too, when required.  When
driving, and especially when the chestnut mare exhibited any
diminution of speed, he kept up a running fire of ejaculations.  "Go
on," he would say, as he shook the reins, for the whip he mercifully
spared, "what are you thinking about?" "Hoots! chit, chit, chit!  I'm
ashamed of you!" "Now then.  Hoots!" and these reproaches seemed to
touch the mare's heart, for at every ejaculation she made a dash
forward as if the whip had touched her.

[Sidenote: View from the dog-cart]

On the way from Grishornish to Dunvegan, about a couple of miles from
the latter place, a road branches off to the right and runs away
downward through the heathery waste; and about forty yards onward you
come to a bridge spanning a gully, and into this gully three streams
leap and become one, and then the sole stream flows also to the right
with shallow fall and brawling rapid, the companion of the descending
road.  The road up to the bridge is steep, but it is steeper beyond,
and at the bridge Malcolm jumped down and walked alongside with the
reins in his hands.  In the slow progression your eye naturally
follows the road and the stream; and beyond the flank of a hill
sloping gradually down to the purple gloom of undulating moorland,
you catch a glimpse of a bit of blue sea, some white broken cliffs
that drop down into it; and, leaning on these cliffs, a great green
sunny strath, with a white dot of a house upon it.  The glimpse of
sea, and white cliffs, and stretch of sunny greenness is pleasant;
the hill, which you have yet to climb, keeps the sun from you, and
all around are low heathery eminences.  You stare at the far-off
sunlit greenness, and having satisfied yourself therewith, begin to
examine the ground above and on either side of the bridge, and find
it possessed of much pastoral richness and variety.  The main portion
is covered with heather, but near you there are clumps of ferns, and
further back are soft banks and platforms of verdure on which kine
might browse and ruminate, and which only require the gilding of
sunshine to make them beautiful.  "What bridge is this?" I asked of
Malcolm, who was still trudging alongside with the reins in his hand.
"The Fairy Bridge"--and then I was told that the fairy sits at sunset
on the green knolls and platforms of pasture chirming and singing
songs to the cows; and that when a traveller crosses the bridge, and
toils up the hill, she is sure to accompany him.  As this was our own
course, I asked, "Is the fairy often seen now?"  "Not often.  It's
the old people who know about her.  The shepherds sometimes hear her
singing when they are coming down the hill; and years ago, a pedlar
was found lying across the road up there dead; and it was thought
that the fairy had walked along with him.  But, indeed, I never saw
or heard her myself--only that is what the old people say."  And so
in a modern dog-cart you are slowly passing through one of the
haunted places in Skye!

[Sidenote: The spoiling of the dikes.]

I fancy Malcolm must have seen that this kind of talk interested me.
"Did you ever hear, sir, about the Battle of the Spoiling of the
Dikes down at Trompon Kirk, yonder?" and he pointed with his whip to
the yellow-green strath which broke down in cliffs to the sea.

I answered that I never had, and Malcolm's narrative flowed on at
once.

"You see, sir, there was a feud between the Macdonalds of the
Mainland and the Macleods of Trotternish; and one Sunday, when the
Macleods were in church, the Macdonalds came at full of tide, unknown
to any one, and fastened their boats to the arched rocks on the
shore--for it's a strange coast down there, full of caves and natural
bridges and arches.  Well, after they had fastened their boats, they
surrounded the church, secured the door, and set it on fire.  Every
one was burned that Sunday except one woman, who squeezed herself
through a window--it was so narrow that she left one of her breasts
behind her--and escaped carrying the news.  She raised the country
with her crying and the sight of her bloody clothes.  The
people--although it was Sunday--rose, men and women, and came down to
the burning church, and there the battle began.  The men of Macleod's
country fought, and the women picked up the blunted arrows, sharpened
them on the stones, and then gave them to the men.  The Macdonalds
were beaten at last, and made for their boats.  But by this time it
was ebb of tide; and what did they see but the boats in which they
had come, and which they had fastened to the rocky arches, hanging in
the air!  Like an otter, when its retreat to the sea is cut off, the
Macdonalds turned on the men of Macleod's country and fought till the
last of them fell, and in the sheughs of the sand their blood was
running down red into the sea.  At that time the tide came further in
than it does now, and the people had built a turf dike to keep it
back from their crops.  Then they took the bodies of the Macdonalds
and laid them down side by side at the foot of the dike, and tumbled
it over on the top of them.  That was the way they were buried.  And
after they had tumbled the dike they were vexed, for they minded then
that the sea might come in and destroy their crops.  That's the
reason that the battle is called the Battle of the Spoiled Dikes."

"The men of Macleod's country would regret the spoiling of the dikes,
as Bruce the battle-axe with which, on the evening before
Bannockburn, and in the seeing of both armies, he cracked the skull
of the English knight who came charging down upon him."

[Sidenote: The Sciur of Eig.]

Undiverted by my remark, Malcolm went on, "Maybe, sir, you have seen
the Sciur of Eig as you came past in the steamer?"

"Yes, and I know the story.  The Macdonalds were cooped up in a cave,
and the Macleods ranged over the island and could find no trace of
them.  They then in high dudgeon returned to their boats, meaning to
depart next morning.  There was a heavy fall of snow during the
night, was there not? and just when the Macleods were about to sail,
the figure of a man, who had come out to see if the invaders were
gone, was discerned on the top of the Sciur, against the sky line.
The Macleods returned, and by the foot-prints in the snow they
tracked the man to his hiding-place.  They then heaped up heath and
what timber they could procure, at the mouth of the cave, applied
fire, and suffocated all who had therein taken shelter.  Is that not
it?"

"The Macdonalds first burned the church at Trompon down there.  The
bones of the Macdonalds are lying in the cave to this day, they say.
I should like to see them."

"But don't you think it was a dreadful revenge?  Eig was one of the
safe places of the Macdonalds; and the people in the cave were
chiefly old men, women, and children.  Don't you think it was a very
barbarous act, Malcolm?"

"I don't know," said Malcolm; "I am a Macleod myself."

[Sidenote: Macleod's Tables.]

By the time I had heard the story of Lady Grange, who sleeps in the
Trompon churchyard, we had toiled pretty well up the steep ascent.
On our way we heard no fairy singing to the kine, nor did any
unearthly figure accompany us.  Perhaps the witchery of the setting
sun was needed.  By the time we reached the top of the hill the
pyramidical forms of Macleod's Tables were distinctly visible, and
then Malcolm took his seat beside me in the dog-cart.

Macleod's Tables, two hills as high as Arthur's Seat, flat at the top
as any dining-table in the country--from which peculiar conformation
indeed they draw their names--and covered deep into spring by a
table-cloth of snow; Macleod's Maidens, three spires of rock rising
sheer out of the sea, shaped like women, around whose feet the foamy
wreaths are continually forming, fleeting, and disappearing--what
magic in the names of rocky spire and flat-topped hill to him who
bears the name of Macleod, and who can call them his own!  What is
modern wealth--association-less, without poetry, melting like snow in
the hot hand of a spendthrift--compared to that old inheritance of
land, which is patent to the eye, which bears your name, around which
legends gather,--all vital to you as your great-grandmother's blue
eyes and fair hair; as your great-grandfather's hot temper and the
corrugation of his forehead when he frowned!  These bold landmarks of
family possession must be regarded with peculiar interest by the
family.  They make the white sheet on which you--a shadow of fifty
years or thereby--are projected by the camera obscura of fate.  The
Tables and the Maidens remain for ever bearing your name, while
you--the individual Macleod--are as transitory as the mist wreath of
the morning which melts on the one, or the momentary shape of
wind-blown foam which perishes on the base of the other.  The value
of these things is spiritual, and cannot be affected by the click of
the auctioneer's hammer, or the running of the hour-glass sand on the
lawyer's table after the title-deeds have been read and the bids are
being made.  Wealth is mighty, but it can no more buy these things
than it can buy love, or reverence, or piety.  Jones may buy the
Tables and the Maidens, but they do not own him; he is for ever an
alien: they wear the ancient name, they dream the ancient dream.
When poverty has stripped your livery from all your servants, they
remain faithful.  When an Airlie is about to die, with tuck of drum,
they say, a ghostly soldier marches round the castle.  Rothschild,
with all his millions, could not buy that drummer's services.  What
is the use of buying an estate to-day?  It is never wholly yours; the
old owner holds part possession with you.  It is like marrying a
widow; you hold her heart, but you hold it in partnership with the
dead.  I should rather be the plainest English yeoman whose family
has been in possession of a farm since the Heptarchy than be the
richest banker in Europe.  The majority of men are like Arabs, their
tents are pitched here to-night and struck to-morrow.  Those families
only who have held lands for centuries can claim an abiding home.  In
such families there is a noble sense of continuity, of the unbroken
onflowing of life.  The pictures and the furniture speak of
forefather and foremother.  Your ancestor's name is on your books,
and you see the pencil marks which he has placed against the passages
that pleased him.  The necklace your daughter wears heaved on the
breast of the ancestress from whom she draws her smile and her eyes.
The rookery that caws to-night in the sober sunset cawed in the ears
of the representative of your house some half-dozen generations
back--the very same in every respect, 'tis the individual rooks only
that have changed.  The full-foliaged murmur of the woods shape your
name, and yours only.  As for these Macleods--

[Sidenote: The house at Orbost.]

"That's Orbost, sir, the house under the hill," said Malcolm,
pointing with his whip, and obviously tired of the prolonged silence,
"and yonder on the left are the Cuchullins.  The sea is down there,
but you cannot see it from this.  We'll be there in half an hour,"
and exactly in half an hour, with Macleod's Tables behind us, we
passed the garden and the offices, and alighted on the daisied sward
before the house.

After I had wandered about for an hour I made up my mind that, had I
the choice, I should rather live at Orbost than at any other house in
Skye.  And yet, at Orbost, the house itself is the only thing that
can reasonably be objected to.  In the first place, it is one of
those elegant expressionless houses in the Italian style with which
one is familiar in the suburban districts of large cities, and as
such it is quite out of keeping with the scenery and the spiritual
atmosphere of the island.  It is too modern, and villa like.  It is
as innocent of a legend as Pall Mall.  It does not believe in ghost
stories.  It has a dandified and sceptical look; and as it has not
taken to the island, the island has not taken to it.  Around it trees
have not grown well; they are mere stunted trunks, bare, hoary,
wind-writhen.  There is not a lichen or discoloration on its
smoothly-chiselled walls; not a single chimney or gable has been
shrouded with affectionate ivy.  It looks like a house which has
"cut" the locality, and which the locality has "cut" in return.  In
the second place, the house is stupidly situated.  It turns a cold
shoulder on the grand broken coast; on the ten miles of sparkling sea
on which the sun is showering millions of silver coins, ever a new
shower as the last one disappears; on Rum, with a veil of haze on its
highest peak; on the lyrical Cuchullins--for although of the rigidest
granite, they always give one the idea of passion and tumult; on the
wild headlands of Bracadale, fading one after another, dimmer and
dimmer, into distance;--on all this the house turns a cold shoulder,
and on a meadow on which some dozen colts are feeding, and on a low
strip of moory hill beyond, from which the cotters draw their peats,
it stares intently with all its doors and windows.  Right about face.
Attention!  That done, the most fastidious could object to nothing at
Orbost, on the point of beauty at least.  The faces of the Skye
people, continually set like flints against assaults of wind and
rain, are all lined and puckered about the eyes; and in Skye houses
you naturally wish to see something of the same weather-beaten look.
Orbost, with its smooth front and unwinking windows, outrages the
fitness of things.

Of the interior no one can complain; for on entering you are at once
surrounded by a proper antiquity and venerableness.  The dining-room
is large and somewhat insufficiently lighted, and on the walls hang
two of Raeburn's half-lengths--the possession of which are in
themselves vouchers of a family's respectability--and several
portraits of ladies with obsolete waists and head-dresses, and
military gentlemen in the uniform of last century.  The furniture is
dark and massy; the mahogany drawing depth and colour from age and
usage; the carpet has been worn so bare that the pattern has become
nearly obliterated.  The room was not tidy, I was pleased to see.  A
small table placed near the window was covered with a litter of
papers; in one corner were guns and fishing-rods, and a
fishing-basket laid near them on the floor; and the round dusty
mirror above the mantelpiece--which had the curious faculty of
reducing your size, so that in its depth you saw yourself as it were
at a considerable distance--had spills of paper stuck between its
gilded frame and the wall.  From these spills of paper I concluded
that the house was the abode of a bachelor who occasionally smoked
after dinner--which, indeed, was the case, only the master of the
house was from home at the time of my visit.  In the drawing-room,
across the lobby, hooped ladies of Queen Anne's time might have sat
and drunk tea out of the tiniest china cups.  The furniture was
elegant, but it was the elegance of an ancient beau.  The draperies
were rich, but they had lost colour, like a spinster's cheek.  In a
corner stood a buffet with specimens of cracked china.  Curious
Indian ornaments, and a volume of Clarissa Harlowe, and another
volume of the Poetical Works of Mr Alexander Pope--the binding faded,
the paper dim--lay on the central table.  Had the last reader left
them there?  They reminded me of the lute--it may be seen at this day
in Pompeii--which the dancing girl flung down in an idle moment.  In
a dusky corner a piano stood open, but the ivory keys had grown
yellow, and all richness of voice had been knocked out of them by the
fingerings of dead girls.  I touched them, and heard the metallic
complaint of ill-usage, of old age, of utter loneliness and neglect.
I thought of Ossian, and the flight of the dark-brown years.  It was
the first time they had spoken for long.  The room, too, seemed to be
pervaded by a scent of withered rose leaves, but whether this odour
lived in the sense or the imagination, it would be useless to inquire.

[Sidenote: The garden at Orbost.]

Orbost lies pleasantly to the sun, and in the garden I could almost
fancy Malvolio walking cross-gartered--so trim it was, so sunnily
sedate, so formal, so ancient-looking.  The shadow on the dial told
the age of the day, clipped box-wood ran along every walk.  Trees,
crucified to the warm brick walls, stretched out long arms on which
fruit was ripening.  The bee had stuck his head so deeply into a rose
that he could hardly get it out again, and so with the leaves--as a
millionaire with bank-notes--he impatiently buzzed and fidgeted.  And
then you were not without sharp senses of contrast: out of the sunny
warmth and floral odours you lifted your eyes, and there were
Macleod's Tables rising in an atmosphere of fable; and up in the wind
above you, turning now and again its head in alert outlook, skimmed a
snow-white gull, weary--as tailors sometimes are with sitting--of
dancing on the surges of the sea.

Orbost stands high above the sea, and if you wish thoroughly to enjoy
yourself you must walk down the avenue to the stone seat placed on
the road which winds along the brow of the broken cliffs, and which,
by many a curve and bend, reaches the water level at about a quarter
of a mile's distance, where there is a boat-house, and boats lying
keel uppermost or sideways, and a stretch of yellow sand on which the
tide is flowing, creamy line after creamy line.  From where you sit
the ground breaks down first in a wall of cliff, then in huge
boulders as big as churches, thereafter in bushy broken ground with
huts perched in the coziest places, each hut swathed in the loveliest
films of blue smoke; and all through this broken ground there are
narrow winding paths along which a cow is always being gingerly
driven, or a wild Indian-looking girl is bringing water from some
cool spring beneath.  Here you can quietly enjoy the expanse of
dazzling sea, a single sail breaking the restless scintillations; far
Rum asleep on the silver floor; and, caught at a curious angle, the
Cuchullin hills--reminding you of some stranded iceberg, splintered,
riven, many-ridged, which the sun in all his centuries has been
unable to melt.  In the present light they have a curiously hoary
look, and you can notice that in the higher corries there are long
streaks of snow.  [Sidenote: The glen at Orbost.] On the right,
beyond the boat-house, a great hill, dappled with brown and olive
like a seal's back, and traversed here and there by rocky terraces,
breaks in precipices down to the sea line; and between it and the
hill on which you are sitting, and which slopes upward behind, you
see the beginning of a deep glen, in its softness and greenness
suggesting images of pastoral peace, the bringing home of rich pails
by milkmaids, the lowing of cattle in sober ruddy sunsets.  "What
glen is that, Malcolm?" "Oh, sir, it just belongs to the farm."  "Is
there a house in it?"  "No, but there's the ruins of a dozen."
"How's that?"  "Ye see, the old Macleods liked to keep their cousins
and second cousins about them; and so Captain Macleod lived at the
mouth of the glen, and Major Macleod at the top of it, and Colonel
Macleod over the hill yonder.  If the last trumpet had been blown at
the end of the French war, no one but a Macleod would have risen out
of the churchyard at Dunvegan.  If you want to see a chief
now-a-days, you must go to London for him.  Ay, sir, Dun Kenneth's
prophecy has come to pass--'In the days of Norman, son of the third
Norman, there will be a noise in the doors of the people, and wailing
in the house of the widow; and Macleod will not have so many
gentlemen of his name as will row a five-oared boat around the
Maidens!'  The prophecy has come to pass, and the Tables are no
longer Macleod's--at least one of them is not."

After wandering about Orbost we resumed our seats in the dog-cart,
and drove to Dunvegan Castle.

As we drew near Dunvegan we came down on one of those sinuous
sea-lochs which--hardly broader than a river--flow far inland, and
carry mysteriousness of sight and sound, the gliding sail, the
sea-bird beating high against the wind, to the door of the shepherd,
who is half a sailor among his bleating flocks.  Across the sea, and
almost within hail of your voice, a farm and outhouses looked
embattled against the sky.  Along the shore, as we drove, were boats
and nets, and here and there little clumps and knots of houses.
People were moving about on the roads intent on business.  We passed
a church, a merchant's store, a post-office; we were plainly
approaching some village of importance; and on the right hand the
chestnuts, larches, and ashes which filled every hollow, and covered
every rolling slope, gave sufficient indication that we were
approaching the castle.

[Sidenote: The garden at Dunvegan.]

In the centre of these woods we turned up a narrow road to the right
along which ran a wall, and stopped at a narrow postern door.  Here
Malcolm rang a bell--the modern convenience grating somewhat on my
preconceived notions of an approach to the old keep; if he had blown
a horn I daresay I should have felt better satisfied--and in due time
we were admitted by a trim damsel.  The bell was bad, but the
brilliant garden into which we stepped was worse--soft level lawns, a
huge star of geraniums, surrounded at proper distances by half-moons
and crescents of calceolarias rimmed with lobelias.  The garden was
circled by a large wall, against which fruit-trees were trained.  In
thinking of Dunvegan my mind had unconsciously become filled with
desolate and Ossianic images, piled and hoary rocks, the thistle
waving its beard in the wind, flakes of sea spray flying over
all--and behold I rang a bell as if I were in Regent Street, and by a
neat damsel was admitted into a garden that would have done no
discredit to Kensington!  After passing through the garden we entered
upon a space of wild woodland, containing some fine timber, and
romance began to revive.  Malcolm then led me to an outhouse, and
pointed out a carved stone above the doorway, on which were quartered
the arms of the Macleods and Macdonalds.  "Look there," said he,
"Macleod has built the stone into his barn which should have been
above his fire-place in his dining-room."

"I see the bull's head of Macleod and the galley of Macdonald--were
the families in any way connected?"

"Oftener by a bloody dirk than by a gold marriage ring.  But with all
their quarrellings they intermarried more than once.  Dunvegan was
originally a stronghold of the Macdonald."

"Indeed! and how did the Macleods get possession?"

[Sidenote: The sinking of the barge.]

"I'll tell you that," said Malcolm.  "Macdonald of Dunvegan had no
son, but his only daughter was married to Macleod of Harris, and a
young chief was growing up in Macleod's castle.  The Macdonalds,
knowing that when the old man was dead, they would have no one to
lead them to battle, were pondering whom they should elect as chief;
and, at the same time, Macleod's lady was just as anxiously pondering
by what means her son should sit in Dunvegan.  Well, while all this
thinking and scheming was going on secretly in Skye and Harris,
Macdonald, wishing to visit Macleod, ordered his barge and rowers to
be in readiness, and pushed off.  Macleod, hearing that his
father-in-law was coming, went out in his barge to meet him half-way,
and to escort him to his castle with all honour.  Macleod's barge was
bigger and stronger than Macdonald's, and held a greater number of
rowers; and while his men were pulling, the chief sat in the stern
steering, and his wife sat by his side.  When they got into
mid-channel a heavy mist came down, but still the men pulled, and
still Macleod steered.  All at once Macleod found that he was running
straight on his father-in-law's barge, and just when he had his hand
on the helm to change the course and avoid striking, his wife gripped
him hard and whispered in his ear, 'Macleod, Macleod, there's only
that barge betwixt you and Dunvegan.'  Macleod took the hint, steered
straight on, struck and sunk Macdonald's barge in the mist, and
sailed for Dunvegan, which he claimed in the name of his son.  That
is the way, as the old people tell, that Macleod came into possession
here."

Then we strolled along the undulating paths, and at a sudden turn
there was the ancient keep on its rock, a stream brawling down close
at hand, the tide far withdrawn, the long shore heaped with dulse and
tangle, and the sea-mews above the flag-staff, as the jackdaws fly
above the cathedral towers in England.  It was gray as the rock on
which it stood--there were dark tapestries of ivy on the walls, but
at a first glance it was disappointingly modern-looking.  I thought
of the mighty shell of Tantallon looking towards the Bass, and waving
a matted beard of lichens in the sea wind, and began to draw
disadvantageous comparisons.  The feeling was foolishness, and on a
better acquaintance with the building it wore off.  Dunvegan is
inhabited, and you cannot have well-aired sheets, a well-cooked
dinner, and the venerableness of ruin.  Comfort and decay are never
companions.

[Sidenote: Dunvegan.]

Dunvegan reminds one of a fragment of an old ballad, encumbered with
a modern editor's introductory chapter, historical disquisitions,
critical comments, explanatory and illustrative notes, and glossarial
index.  The dozen or so of rude stanzas--a whole remote passionate
world dwelling in them as in some wizard's mirror--is by far the most
valuable portion of the volume, although, in point of bulk, it bears
no proportion to the subsidiary matter which has grown around it.
Dunvegan is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the country, but
the ancient part is of small extent.  One portion of it, it is said,
was built in the ninth century.  A tower was added in the fifteenth,
another portion in the sixteenth, and the remainder by different
hands, and at irregular intervals since then.  No inconsiderable
portion is unquestionably modern.  The old part of the castle looks
toward the sea, and entrance is obtained by a steep and narrow
archway--up which, perhaps, came Macleod of Harris after he sunk the
barge of his father-in-law in the misty Minch.  In a crevice in the
wall, which forms one side of this entrance, a well was recently
discovered; it had been built up--no man knows for how long--and when
tasted, the water was found perfectly sweet and pure.  In the old
days of strife and broil it may have cooled many a throat thirsty
with siege.  The most modern portion of the building, I should fancy,
is the present frontage, which, as you approach it by the bridge
which solidly fills up the ravine, is not without a certain grandeur
and nobility of aspect.  The rock on which the castle stands is
surrounded on three sides by the sea; and fine as the old pile looked
at ebb of tide, one could fancy how much its appearance would be
improved with all that far-stretching ugliness of sand and tangle
obliterated, and the rock swathed with the azure and silence of
ocean.  To sleep in a bed-room at Dunvegan in such circumstances,
must be like sleeping in a bed-room in fairy-land.  You might hear a
mermaid singing beneath your window, and looking out into the
moonlight, behold, rising from the glistening swells, the perilous
beauty of her breasts and hair.

[Sidenote: The Macleod portraits.]

After viewing the castle from various points, we boldly advanced
across the bridge and rang the bell.  After waiting some little time,
we were admitted by a man who--the family at the time being from
home--seemed the only person in possession.  He was extremely polite,
volunteered to show us all over the place, and regretted that in the
prolonged absence of his master the carpets and furniture in the
"drawing-room" had been lifted.  The familiar English _patois_
sounded strange in the castle of a Macleod!  On his invitation we
entered an unfurnished hall with galleries running to left and right,
and on the wooden balustrades of one of these galleries the great
banner of Macleod was dispread--a huge white sheet on which the arms
and legend of the house were worked in crimson.  Going up stairs, we
passed through spacious suites of rooms, carpetless, and with the
furniture piled up in the centre and covered with an awning--through
every window obtaining a glimpse of blue Loch and wild Skye headland.
In most cases in the rooms the family pictures were left hanging,
some fine, others sorry daubs enough, yet all interesting as
suggesting the unbroken flow of generations.  Here was Rory More, who
was knighted in the reign of James VI.  Here was the Macdonald lady,
whose marriage with the Macleod of that day was the occasion of the
arms of the families being united on the sculptured stone which we
saw built above the door of the barn outside.  Here was a
haughty-looking young man of twenty-five, and yonder the same man at
sixty, grim, wrinkled, suspicious-looking--resembling the earlier
portrait only in the pride of eye and lip.  Here were Macleod
beauties who married and became mothers in other houses; yonder were
beauties from other castles who became mothers here, and grew
gray-haired and died, leaving a reminiscence of their features in the
family for a generation or two.  Here was the wicked Macleod, yonder
the spendthrift in whose hands the family wealth melted, and over
there the brave soldier standing with outstretched arm, elephants and
Indian temples forming an appropriate background.  The rooms were
spacious, every window affording a glorious sea view; but from their
unfurnished and dismantled condition there arose a sort of Ossianic
desolation, which comfortless as it must have been to a permanent
dweller, did not fail to yield a certain gloomy pleasure to the
imagination of the visitor of an hour.

[Sidenote: The Macleod dungeons.]

Passing up and down stairs in the more ancient portion of the castle,
the man in possession showed us the dungeons in which the Macleods
immured their prisoners.  I had fancied that these would have been
scooped out of the rock on which the castle stood.  Whether such
existed I cannot say; but by candle-light I peered into more than one
stony closet let into the mighty wall--the entrance of which the
garments of the lady must have swept every night as she went to
bed--where the captured foemen of the family were confined.  Perhaps
the near contiguity of the prisoner, perhaps the sweeping of garments
past the dungeon door, perhaps the chance-heard groan or clank of
manacle, constituted the exquisite zest and flavour of revenge.  Men
keep their dearest treasures near them; and it might be that the
neighbourhood of the wretch he hated--so near that the sound of revel
could reach him at times--was more grateful to Macleod than his
burial in some far-away vault, perhaps to be forgotten.  Who knows!
It is difficult to creep into the hearts of those old sea-kings.  If
I mistake not, one of the dungeons is at present used as a wine
cellar.  So the world and the fashion of it changes!  Where the
Macleod of three centuries ago kept his prisoner, the Macleod of
to-day keeps his claret.  From which of its uses the greatest amount
of satisfaction has been derived would be a curious speculation.

[Sidenote: The fairy room.]

By a narrow spiral stair we reached the most interesting apartment in
Dunvegan--the Fairy Room, in which Sir Walter Scott slept once.  This
apartment is situated in the ancient portion of the building, it
overlooks the sea, and its walls are of enormous thickness.  From its
condition I should almost fancy that no one has slept there since Sir
Walter's time.  In it, at the period of my visit, there was neither
bedstead nor chair, and it seemed a general lumber room.  The walls
were hung with rusty broadswords, dirks, targes, pistols, Indian
helmets; and tunics of knitted steel were suspended on frames, but so
rotten with age and neglect that a touch frayed them as if they had
been woven of worsted.  There were also curved scimitars, and
curiously-hafted daggers, and two tattered regimental flags--that no
doubt plunged through battle smoke in the front of charging
lines--and these last I fancied had been brought home by the soldier
whose portrait I had seen in one of the modern rooms.  Moth-eaten
volumes were scattered about amid a chaos of rusty weapons, cruses,
and lamps.  In one corner lay a huge oaken chest with a chain wound
round it, but the lid was barely closed, and through the narrow
aperture a roll of paper protruded docketed in clerkly and and with
faded ink--accounts of ---- from 1715 till some time at the close of
the century--in which doubtless some curious items were imbedded.  On
everything lay the dust and neglect of years.  The room itself was
steeped in a half twilight.  The merriest sunbeam became grave as it
slanted across the corroded weapons in which there was no answering
gleam.  Cobwebs floated from the corners of the walls--the spiders
which wove them having died long ago of sheer age.  To my feeling it
would be almost impossible to laugh in the haunted chamber, and if
you did so you would be startled by a strange echo as if something
mocked you.  There was a grave-like odour in the apartment.  You
breathed dust and decay.

[Sidenote: The fairy flag.]

Seated on the wooden trunk round which the chain was wound, while
Malcolm with his hand thrust in the hilt of a broadsword, was
examining the notches on its blade, I inquired,

"Is there not a magic flag kept at Dunvegan?  The flag was the gift
of a fairy, if I remember the story rightly."

"Yes," said Malcolm, making a cut at an imaginary foeman, and then
hanging the weapon up on the wall; "but it is kept in a glass case,
and never shown to strangers, at least when the family is from home."

"How did Macleod come into possession of the flag, Malcolm?"

"Well, the old people say that one of the Macleods fell in love with
a fairy, and used to meet her on the green hill out there.  Macleod
promised to marry her; and one night the fairy gave him a green flag,
telling him that, when either he or one of his race was in distress,
the flag was to be waved, and relief would be certain.  Three times
the flag might be waved; but after the third time it might be thrown
into the fire, for the power would have gone all out of it.  I don't
know, indeed, how it was, but Macleod deserted the fairy and married
a woman."

"Is there anything astonishing in that?  Would you not rather marry a
woman than a fairy yourself."

"Maybe, if she was a rich one like the woman Macleod married," said
Malcolm with a grin.  "But when the fairy heard of the marriage she
was in a great rage whatever.  She cast a spell over Macleod's
country, and all the women brought forth dead sons, and all the cows
brought forth dead calves.  Macleod was in great tribulation.  He
would soon have no young men to fight his battles, and his tenants
would soon have no milk or cheese wherewith to pay their rents.  The
cry of his people came to him as he sat in his castle, and he waved
the flag, and next day over the country there were living sons and
living calves.  Another time, in the front of a battle, he was sorely
pressed, and nigh being beaten, but he waved the flag again, and got
the victory, and a great slaying of his enemies."

"Then the flag has not been waved for the third and last time?"

"No.  At the time of the potato failure, when the people were
starving in their cabins, it was thought that he should have waved it
and stopped the rot.  But the flag stayed in its case.  Macleod can
only wave it once now; and I'm sure he's like a man with his last
guinea in his pocket--he does not like to spend it.  But maybe, sir,
you would like to climb up to the flag-staff and see the view."

We then left the haunted chamber, passed through the dismantled room
in which the portraits hung, and ascended the narrow spiral
stair--the walls of which, whether from sea damp, or from a
peculiarity of the lime used in building, were covered with a
glistering scurf of salt--and finally emerged on the battlemented
plateau from which the flagstaff sprang.  The huge mast had fallen a
month or two previously, and was now spliced with rope and propped
with billets of wood.  A couple of days before the catastrophe, a
young fellow from Cambridge, Malcolm told me, had climbed to the
top--lucky for the young fellow it did not fall then, else he and
Cambridge had parted company for ever.  From our airy perch the
outlook was wonderfully magnificent.  From the breast of the hill
which shut out everything in one direction, there rolled down on the
castle billow on billow of many-coloured foliage.  The garden through
which we had passed an hour before was but a speck of bright colour.
The little toy village sent up its pillars of smoke.  There was the
brown stony beach, the boats, the ranges of nets, the sinuous
snake-like Loch, and the dark far-stretching promontories asleep on
the sleekness of summer sea.  With what loveliness of shining blue
the sea flowed in everywhere, carrying silence and the
foreign-looking bird into inland solitudes, girdling with its glory
the rock on which the chief's castle had stood for ten centuries, and
at the door of the shepherd's shealing calling on the brown children
with the voices of many wavelets, to come down, and play with them on
crescents of yellow sand!

Driving homeward I inquired, "Does the Laird live here much?"  "No,
indeed," said Malcolm; "he lives mainly in London."

[Sidenote: Dunvegan.]

And thereupon I thought how pleasant it must be for a man to escape
from the hollow gusty castle with its fairy flag which has yet to be
waved once, its dungeons, its haunted chambers, its large gaunt
rooms, with portraits of men and women from whom he has drawn his
blood, its traditions of revenge and crime--and take up his abode in
some villa at breezy Hampstead, or classic Twickenham, or even in
some half-suburban residence in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park.
The villa at Hampstead or Twickenham is neat and trim, and when you
enter on residence, you enter without previous associations.  It is
probably not so old as yourself.  The walls and rooms are strange,
but you know that you and they will become pleasantly acquainted by
and by.  Dark family faces do not lower upon you out of the past; the
air of the room in which you sit is not tainted with the smell of
blood spilt hundreds of years ago.  You and your dwelling are not the
sole custodiers of dreadful secrets.  The shadows of the fire-light
on the twilight walls do not take shapes that daunt and affright.
Your ancestors no longer tyrannise over you.  You escape from the
gloomy past, and live in the light and the voices of to-day.  You are
yourself--you are no longer a link in a blood-crusted chain.  You
enter upon the enjoyment of your individuality, as you enter upon the
enjoyment of a newly-inherited estate.  In modern London you drink
nepenthe, and Dunvegan is forgotten.  Were I the possessor of a
haunted, worm-eaten castle, around which strange stories float, I
should fly from it as I would from a guilty conscience, and in the
whirl of vivid life lose all thoughts of my ancestors.  I should
appeal to the present to protect me from the past.  I should go into
Parliament and study blue-books, and busy myself with the better
regulation of alkali works, and the drainage of Stoke Pogis.  No
ancestor could touch me _then_.

[Sidenote: Donald Gorm.]

"It's a strange old place, Dunvegan," said Malcolm, as we drove down
by the Fairy Bridge, "and many strange things have happened in it.
Did you ever hear, sir, how Macdonald of Sleat--Donald Gorm, or Blue
Donald, as he was called--stayed a night with Macleod of Dunvegan at
a time when there was feud between them?"

"No: but I shall be glad to hear the story now."

"Well," Malcolm went on, "on a stormy winter evening, when the walls
of Dunvegan were wet with the rain of the cloud and the spray of the
sea, Macleod, before he sat down to dinner, went out to have a look
at the weather.  'A giant's night is coming on, my men,' he said when
he came in, 'and if Macdonald of Sleat were at the foot of my rock
seeking a night's shelter, I don't think I could refuse it.'  He then
sat down in the torch-light at the top of the long table, with his
gentlemen around him.  When they were half through with their meal a
man came in with the news that the barge of Macdonald of Sleat--which
had been driven back by stress of weather on its way to Harris--was
at the foot of the rock, and that Macdonald asked shelter for the
night for himself and his men.  'They are welcome,' said Macleod;
'tell them to come in.'  The man went away, and in a short time
Macdonald, his piper, and his body guard of twelve, came in wet with
the spray and rain, and weary with rowing.  Now on the table there
was a boar's head--which is always an omen of evil to a
Macdonald--and noticing the dish, Donald Gorm with his men about him
sat at the foot of the long table, beneath the salt, and away from
Macleod and the gentlemen.  Seeing this, Macleod made a place beside
himself, and called out, 'Macdonald of Sleat, come and sit up here!'
'Thank you,' said Donald Gorm, 'I'll remain where I am; but remember
that wherever Macdonald of Sleat sits that's the head of the table.'
[Sidenote: Donald Gorm's dirk.] So when dinner was over the gentlemen
began to talk about their exploits in hunting, and their deeds in
battle, and to show each other their dirks.  Macleod showed his,
which was very handsome, and it was passed down the long table from
gentleman to gentleman, each one admiring it and handing it to the
next, till at last it came to Macdonald, who passed it on, saying
nothing.  Macleod noticed this, and called out, 'Why don't you show
your dirk, Donald; I hear it's very fine?'  Macdonald then drew his
dirk, and holding it up in his right hand, called out, 'Here it is,
Macleod of Dunvegan, and in the best hand for pushing it home in the
four and twenty islands of the Hebrides.'  Now Macleod was a strong
man, but Macdonald was a stronger, and so Macleod could not call him
a liar; but thinking he would be mentioned next, he said, 'And where
is the next best hand for pushing a dirk home in the four and twenty
islands?'  '_Here_,', cried Donald Gorm, holding up his dirk in his
left hand, and brandishing it in Macleod's face, who sat amongst his
gentlemen biting his lips with vexation.  So when it came to
bed-time, Macleod told Macdonald that he had prepared a chamber for
him near his own, and that he had placed fresh heather in a barn for
the piper and the body guard of twelve.  Macdonald thanked Macleod,
but remembering the boar's head on the table, said he would go with
his men, and that he preferred for his couch the fresh heather to the
down of the swan.  'Please yourself, Macdonald of Sleat,' said
Macleod, as he turned on his heel.

[Sidenote: Donald Gorm's threat.]

"Now it so happened that one of the body guard of twelve had a
sweetheart in the castle, but he had no opportunity of speaking to
her.  But once when she was passing the table with a dish she put her
mouth to the man's ear and whispered, 'Bid your master beware of
Macleod.  The barn you sleep in will be red flame at midnight and
ashes before the morning.'  The words of the sweetheart passed the
man's ear like a little breeze, but he kept the colour of his face,
and looked as if he had heard nothing.  So when Macdonald and his men
got into the barn where the fresh heather had been spread for them to
sleep on, he told the words which had been whispered in his ear.
Donald Gorm then saw the trick that was being played, and led his men
quietly out by the back door of the barn, down to a hollow rock which
stood up against the wind, and there they sheltered themselves.  By
midnight the sea was red with the reflection of the burning barn, and
morning broke on gray ashes and smouldering embers.  The Macleods
thought they had killed their enemies; but fancy their astonishment
when Donald Gorm with his body guard of twelve marched past the
castle down to the foot of the rock, where his barge was moored, with
his piper playing in front--'Macleod, Macleod, Macleod of Dunvegan, I
drove my dirk into your father's heart, and in payment of last
night's hospitality I'll drive it to the hilt in his son's yet.'"

"Macleod of Dunvegan must have been a great rascal," said I; "and I
hope he got his deserts."

"I don't know, indeed," said Malcolm; "but if Donald Gorm caught him
he could hardly miss."  He then added, as if in deprecation of the
idea that any portion of ignominy was attachable to him, "I am not
one of the Dunvegan Macleods; I come from the Macleods of Raasay."




_DUNTULM._

[Sidenote: A rainy day.]

The Landlord's house had been enveloped for several days in misty
rain.  It did not pour straight down, it did not patter on door and
window, it had no action as it has in the south,--which made it all
the more tormenting, for in action there is always some sort of
exhilaration; in any case you have the notion that it will wear
itself out soon, that "it is too hot work to last long, Hardy."  An
immense quantity of moisture was held in the atmosphere, and it
descended in a soft, silent, imperceptible drizzle.  It did not seem
so very bad when you looked out on it from the window, but if you
ventured on the gravel you were wet to the skin in a trice.  White
damp vapours lay low on the hills across the Loch; white damp vapours
lay on the rising grounds where the sheep fed; white damp vapours hid
the tops of the larches which sheltered the house from the south-west
winds.  Heaven was a wet blanket, and everything felt its influence.
During the whole day Maida lay dreaming on the rug before the fire.
The melancholy parrot moped in its cage, and at intervals--for the
sake of variety merely--attacked the lump of white sugar between the
wires, or suspended itself, head downwards, and eyed you askance.
The horses stamped and pawed in their stables.  The drenched peacock,
which but a few days before was never weary displaying his starry
tail, read one a lesson on the instability of human glory.  The
desolate sea lapping the weedy piers of Tyre; Napoleon at St Helena,
his innumerable armies, the thunders of his cannon that made capitals
pale, faded away, perished utterly like a last year's dream, could
not have been more impressive.  It sat on the garden seat, a mere
lump of draggled feathers, and as gray as a hedge-sparrow.  The
Landlord shut himself up in his own room, writing letters against the
departure of the Indian mail.  We read novels, and yawned, and made
each other miserable with attempts at conversation--and still the
clouds hung low on hill, and rising ground, and large plantation,
like surcharged sponges; and still the drizzle came down mercilessly,
noiselessly, until the world was sodden, and was rapidly becoming
sponge-like too.  On the fourth day we went upstairs, threw ourselves
on our beds dead beat, and fell asleep, till we were roused by the
gong for dinner.  Thrusting my face hurriedly into a basin of cold
water, tidying dishevelled locks, I got down when the soup was being
taken away, and was a good deal laughed at.  Somehow the spirits of
the party seemed lighter; the despotism of rain did not weigh so
heavily on them; I felt almost sportively inclined myself; and just
at the conclusion of dessert, when wine had circulated once or twice,
there was a flush of rosy light on the panes.  I went at once to the
window, and there was the sun raying out great lances of splendour,
and armies of fiery mists lifting from the hills and streaming
upwards, glorious as seraph bands, or the transfigured spirits of
martyrdom.  The westward-ebbing loch was sleek gold, the wet trees
twinkled, every puddle was sun-gilt.  I looked at the barometer and
saw the mercury rising like hope in a man's breast when fortune
smiles on him.  The curtains were drawn back to let the red light
fully into the room.  "I like to see that fiery smoke on the hills,"
said the Landlord, "it's always a sign of fine weather setting in.
Now it won't do for you fellows to lie up here like beached boats
doing nothing.  You must be off after tiffin to-morrow.  I'll give
you letters of introduction, a dog-cart and a man, and in a week or
so come back and tell me what you think of Duntulm and Quirang.  You
must rough it you know.  You mustn't be afraid of a shower, or of
getting your feet wetted in a bog."

[Sidenote: Departure from the Landlord's.]

And so next day after tiffin the Landlord sent us off into the wilds,
as a falconer might toss his hawk into the air.

The day was fine, the heat was tempered by a pleasant breeze, great
white clouds swam in the blue void, and every now and again a shower
came racing across our path with a sunbeam at its heel.  We drove
past the village, past the huts that ran along the top of the
cultivated hill-side, dropped down on Skeabost, and the stream with
the island of graves, and in due time reached the solitary
school-house at the junction of the roads.  Turning to the left here,
we drove along the east shore of Loch Snizort, up stages of easy
ascent, and then, some four or five miles on, left the Parliamentary
Road and descended on Kingsburgh.  I pointed out to Fellowes the
ruins of the old house, spoke to him of the Prince, Flora Macdonald,
Dr Johnson, and Boswell.  After sauntering about there for a quarter
of an hour, we walked down to the present house with its gables
draped with ivies, and its pleasant doors and windows scented with
roses and honey-suckles.  To the gentleman who then occupied the farm
we bore a letter from the Landlord, but, on inquiring, found that he
had gone south on business a couple of days previously.  [Sidenote:
Kingsburgh.] This gentleman was a bachelor, the house was tenanted by
servants only, and of course at Kingsburgh we could not remain.  This
was a disappointment; and as we walked back to the dog-cart, I told
my companion of a pleasant ten days I had wasted there three or four
summers since.  I spoke to him of the Kingsburgh of that time--the
kindly generous Christian Highland gentleman; of his open door and
frank greeting, warm and hospitable; of his Christianity, as open and
hospitable as his door; of the plenteous meats and drinks, and the
household pieties which ever seemed to ask a blessing.  I spoke of
the pleasant family, so numerous, so varied; the grandmother, made
prisoner to an easy-chair, yet never fretful, never morose; who, on
the lip of ninety, wore the smile of twenty-five; who could look up
from her Bible--with which she was familiar as with the way to her
bedroom--to listen to the news of the moment, and to feel interested
in it; who, with the light of the golden city in her eyes, could
listen and enter into a girl's trouble about her white frock and her
first dance.  There is nothing keeps so well as a good heart; nothing
which time sweetens so to the core.  I spoke of Kingsburgh himself,
guileless, chivalrous, hospitable; of his sisters, one a widow, one a
spinster; of his brave soldier nephew from India; of his pretty
nieces, with their English voices and their English wild-rose
bloom--who loved the heather and the mist, and the blue Loch with the
gulls sweeping over it, but him most of all; of his sons, deep in the
Gorilla Book, and to whose stories, and the history of whose
adventures and exploits grandmamma's ears were ever open.  I spoke
too of the guests that came and went during my stay--the soldier, the
artist, the mysterious man, who, so far as any of us knew, had
neither name, occupation, nor country, who was without parents and
antecedents--who was himself alone; of the games of croquet on the
sunny lawn, of the pic-nics and excursions, of the books read in the
cool twilight of the moss-house, of the smoking parliament held in
the stables on rainy days, of the quiet cigar in the open air before
going to bed.  'Twas the pleasantest fortnight I ever remember to
have spent; and before I had finished telling my companion all about
it we had taken our seats in the dog-cart, and were pretty well
advanced on the way to Uig.

[Sidenote: On the way to Uig.]

Uig is distant from Kingsburgh about five miles; the road is high
above the sea, and as you drive along you behold the northern
headlands of Skye, the wide blue Minch, and Harris, rising like a
cloud on the horizon; and if the day is fine, you will enjoy the
commerce of sea and sky, the innumerable tints thrown by the clouds
on the watery mirror, the mat of glittering light spread beneath the
sun, the gray lines of showers on the distant promontories, the
tracks of air currents on the mobile element between.  The clouds
pass from shape to shape--what resembles a dragon one moment
resembles something else the next; the promontory which was obscure
ten minutes ago is now yellow-green in sunlight; the watery pavement
is tesselated with hues, but with hues that continually shift and
change.  In the vast outlook there is utter silence, but no rest.
What with swimming vapour, passing Proteus-like from form to
form--obscure showers that run--vagrant impulses of wind--sunbeams
that gild and die in gilding--the vast impressionable mimetic floor
outspread,--the sight you behold when you toil up the steep road from
Kingsburgh to Uig is full of motion.  There is no rest in nature,
they say; and the clouds are changing like opinions and kingdoms, and
the bodies and souls of men.  Matter is a stream that flows, a fire
that burns.  By a cunninger chemistry than ours, the atoms that
composed the body of Adam could be arrested somewhere yet.

[Sidenote: The inn at Uig.]

Just when you have reached the highest part of the road you come in
view of the Bay of Uig.  You are high above it as you drive or walk
along, the ground is equally high on the other side, and about the
distance of a mile inland, on a great sandy beach, the tide is
rolling in long white lines that chase each other.  On the deep water
outside the tidal lines a yacht is rocking; there is a mansion-house
with a flag-staff on the shore, and at the top of the bay are several
houses, a church, and a school-house, built of comfortable stone and
lime.  When the Minch is angry outside, washing the headlands with
spray, Uig is the refuge which the fisherman and the coaster seek.
When once they have entered its rocky portals they are safe.  The
road now descends towards the shore; there is an inn midway,
low-roofed, dimly-lighted, covered with thatch--on the whole perhaps
the most unpromising edifice in the neighbourhood.  Here we pulled
up.  Already we had driven some twenty-five miles, and as we wished
to push on to Duntulm that evening, we were anxious to procure a
fresh horse.  The keen air had whetted our appetites, and we were
eager for dinner, or what substitute for dinner could be provided.
Our driver unharnessed the horse, and we entered a little room,
spotlessly clean, however, and knocked with our knuckles on the deal
table.  When the red-haired handmaiden entered, we discovered that
the Uig bill of fare consisted of bread and butter, cheese, whisky,
milk, and hard-boiled eggs--and a very satisfactory bill of fare we
considered it too.  There is no such condiment as hunger honourably
earned by exercise in the open air.  When the viands were placed
before us we attacked them manfully.  The bread and butter
disappeared, the hard-boiled eggs disappeared, we flinched not before
the slices of goats'-milk cheese; then we made equal division of the
whisky, poured it into bowls of milk, and drank with relish.  While
in the middle of the feast the landlord entered--he wore the kilt,
the only person almost whom I had seen wearing it in my sojourn in
the island--to make arrangements relative to the fresh horse.  He
admitted that he possessed an animal, but as he possessed a gig and
eke a driver, it was his opinion that the three should go together.
To this we objected, stating that as we already had a vehicle and a
driver, and as they were in no wise tired, such a change as he
suggested would be needless.  We told him also that we meant to
remain at Duntulm for one night only, and that by noon of the
following day we would be back at his hostelry with his horse.  The
landlord seemed somewhat moved by our representations, and just when
victory was hanging in the balance the brilliant idea struck my
companion that he should be bribed with his own whisky.  At the rap
on the deal table the red-haired wench appeared, the order was given,
and in a trice a jorum of mountain dew was produced.  This decided
matters, the landlord laid down the arms of argument, and after we
had solemnly drunk each other's health he went out for the fresh
horse, and in a quarter of an hour we were all right, and slowly
descending the steep hill-road to Uig.

[Sidenote: The road to Duntulm.]

We drove through the village, where a good deal of building seemed
going on, and then began to climb the hill-road that rose beyond it.
Along the hill-side this road zig-zagged in such a curious manner,
ran in such terraces and parallel lines, that the dog-cart
immediately beneath you, and into which you could almost chuck a
biscuit--the one machine heading east the other west--would take ten
minutes before it reached the point to which you had obtained.  At
last we reached the top of the wavy ascent, passed through a mile or
two of moory wilderness, in which we met a long string of women
bringing home creels of peats, and then in the early sunset descended
the long hill-side which led to Kilmuir.  Driving along we had
Mugstot pointed out to us--a plain white dwelling on our left in
which Macdonald lived after he had vacated Duntulm, and while
Armadale was yet building.  About this place, too, the Parliamentary
Road stopped.  No longer could we drive along smoothly as on an
English turnpike.  The pathway now was narrow and stony, and the
dog-cart bumped and jolted in a most distressing manner.  During the
last hour, too, the scenery had changed its character.  We were no
longer descending a hill-side on which the afternoon sun shone
pleasantly.  Our path still lay along the sea, but above us were high
cliffs with great boulders lying at their feet; beneath us, and
sloping down to the sea level, boulders lay piled on each other, and
against these the making tide seethed and fretted.  The sun was
setting on the Minch, and the irregular purple outline of Harris was
distinctly visible on the horizon.  For some time back we had seen no
house, nor had our path been crossed by a single human being.  The
solitariness and desolation of the scenery affected one.  Everything
around was unfamiliar and portentous.  The road on which we drove was
like a road in the "Faery Queen," along which a knight, the sunset
dancing on his armour, might prick in search of perilous adventure.
The chin of the sun now rested on the Minch, the overhanging cliffs
were rosy, and the rocky road began to seem interminable.  At last
there was a sudden turn, and there, on a little promontory, with
shattered wall and loophole against the red light, stood Duntulm--the
castle of all others that I most wished to see.

[Sidenote: A hospitable reception.]

Going down the rocky road, the uncomfortable idea crept into our
minds that Duntulm, to whom we bore a letter of introduction from the
Landlord, might--like the owner of Kingsburgh--have gone to the south
on business.  We could hardly have returned to Uig that night, and
this thought made yet more rigid the wall of rosy cliff above us, and
yet more dreary the seethe of the Minch amongst the broken boulders
beneath.  As suspense was worse than certainty, we urged on the Uig
horse, and in a short time, with the broken castle behind us, drew up
at the house.  Duntulm had seen us coming, and when we alighted he
was at the door, his face hospitable as a fire in winter time, and
his outstretched hand the best evidence of good wishes.  In a moment
the bald red cliffs and the homeless seething of the Minch among the
broken stones faded out of my memory.  We mentioned our names, and
proffered the letter of introduction.  "There is no need," said he,
as he thrust the epistle into his pocket, "civility before ceremony.
Having come you are of course my guests.  Come in.  The letter will
tell me who you are soon enough."  And so we were carried into the
little parlour till our bedrooms were got ready, and then we went
up-stairs, washed our hands and faces, changed our clothes, and came
down for tea.  When we entered the parlour, the tea-urn was hissing
on the table, and with our host sat a photographer--bearded as all
artists at the present day are--who had been engaged during the
afternoon on Flora Macdonald's grave.

When tea was over we were carried into another room where were
materials placed for the brewing of punch.  Through the window I
beheld spectral castle, the sea on which the light was dying, the
purple fringe of Harris on the horizon.  And seated there, in the
remotest corner of Skye, amongst people whom I had never before seen,
girt by walls of cliffs and the sounding sea, in a region, too, in
which there was no proper night, I confess to have been conscious of
a pleasant feeling of strangeness, of removal from all customary
conditions of thought and locality, which I like at times to recall
and enjoy over again.  Into this feeling the strange country through
which I had that day driven, the strange room in which I sat, the
strange faces surrounding me, the strange talk, all entered; yet I am
almost certain that it was heightened to no inconsiderable extent by
the peculiar spirit bottle on the table.  This bottle was pale green
in colour, was composed of two hollow hemispheres like a sand-glass,
the mouthpiece surmounting the upper hemisphere of course; and from
the upper hemisphere to the lower sprang four hollow arms, through
which the liquor coursed, giving the bottle a curiously square
appearance.  I had never seen such a bottle before, and I suppose
till I go back to Duntulm I am not likely to see its like.  Its shape
was peculiar, and that peculiarity dove-tailed into the peculiarity
of everything else.  We sat there till the light had died out on the
sea, and the cloud had come down on Harris, and then the candles were
brought in.

[Sidenote: Donald Gorm.]

But the broken tower of Duntulm still abode in my memory, and I began
to make inquiries concerning it.  I was told that it was long the
seat of the Macdonalds, but that after the family had been driven out
of it by the ghost of Donald Gorm, they removed to Mugstot.  "Donald
Gorm!" I said; "were they driven out by the restless spirit of the
Donald who flouted Macleod at his own table at Dunvegan--who, when he
was asked to show his dirk, held it up in the torch-light in the face
of Macleod and of his gentlemen, with the exclamation, 'Here it is,
Macleod of Dunvegan, and in the best hand for pushing it home in the
four and twenty islands of the Hebrides?'"  "They were driven away by
the spirit of the same Donald," said our host.  "That chieftain had
been stricken by a lingering yet mortal illness, and removed to
Edinburgh, and placed himself under the care of the leeches there.
His body lay on a sick-bed in Edinburgh, but his spirit roamed about
the passages and galleries of the castle.  The people heard the
noises, and the slamming of doors, and the waving of tartans on the
staircases, and did not know that it was the spirit of their sick
master that troubled them.  It was found out, however.  The servants
were frightened out of their wits by the unearthly voices, and the
sounds of weeping, the waving of shadowy tartans, and the wringing of
shadowy hands, and declared that they would no longer abide in the
castle.  At last a young man, from Kilmuir over there, said that if
they would provide him with a sword and a Bible, and plenty to eat
and drink, he would sit up in the hall all night and speak to the
apparition.  His offer was accepted, and he sat down to supper in the
great hall with his sword drawn and his Bible open on the table
before him.  At midnight he heard doors open and close, and the sound
of footsteps on the stairs, and before he knew where he was there was
Donald Gorm, dressed in tartan as if for feast or battle, standing on
the floor and looking at him.  'What do you want with me, Donald?'
said the young man.  'I was in Edinburgh last night,' said the
spirit, 'and I am in my own castle to-night.  Don't be afraid, man;
there is more force in the little pebble which you chuck away from
you with your finger and thumb than there is in my entire body of
strength.  Tell Donald Gorm Og--("Donald's son, you know,"
interpolated the photographer)--tell Donald Gorm Og to stand up for
the right against might, to be generous to the multitude, to have a
charitable hand stretched out to the poor.  Woe's me! woe's me!  I
have spoken to a mortal, and must leave the castle to-night,' and so
the ghost of Donald vanished, and the young man was left sitting in
the hall alone.  Donald died in Edinburgh and was buried there; but
after his death, as during his life, his spirit walked about here
until the family was compelled to leave.  It was a fine place once,
but it has been crumbling away year by year, and is now broken and
hollow like a witch's tooth.  The story I have told you is devoutly
believed by all the fishermen, herdsmen, and milkmaids in the
neighbourhood.  I think Mr Maciver, the clergyman at Kilmuir, is the
only person in the neighbourhood who has no faith in it."  This ghost
story the photographer capped by another, and when that was finished
we went to bed.

[Sidenote: Flora Macdonald's grave.]

Next morning we went out to inspect the old castle, and found it a
mere shell.  Compared with its appearance the night before, when it
stood in relief against the red sky, it was strangely unimpressive; a
fragment of a tower and a portion of flanking wall stood erect; there
were traces of building down on the slope near the sea, but all the
rest was a mere rubble of fallen masonry.  It had been despoiled in
every way; the elements had worn and battered it, the people of the
district had for years back made it a quarry, and built out of it
dwellings, out-houses, and dikes--making the past serve the purposes
of the present.  Sheep destined for the London market were cropping
the herbage around its base--suggesting curious comparisons, and
bringing into keener contrast antiquity and to-day.  While we were
loitering about the ruins the photographer came up, and under his
guidance we went to visit Kilmuir churchyard, in which Flora
Macdonald rests.  We went along the stony road down which we had
driven the night previously--the cliffs lately so rosy, gray enough
now, and the seethe of the fresh sea amongst the boulders and shingle
beneath rather exhilarating than otherwise.  After a walk of about a
couple of miles we left the road, climbed up a grassy ascent, and
found the churchyard there, enclosed by a low stone wall.  Everything
was in hideous disrepair.  The gate was open, the tomb-stones were
broken and defaced, and above the grave of the heroine nettles were
growing more luxuriously than any crop I had yet had the good fortune
to behold in the island.  Skye has only one historical grave to
dress--and she leaves it so.  On expressing our surprise to the
photographer, he told us that a London sculptor passing that way, and
whose heart burned within him at the sight, had offered at several
dinner-tables in the district to execute a bronze medallion of the
famous lady, gratis, provided his guests would undertake to have it
properly placed, and to a have fitting inscription carved upon the
pedestal.  "The proposal was made, I know," said the photographer,
"for the sculptor told me about it himself.  His proposal has not
been taken up, nor is it likely to be taken up now.  The country
which treats the grave of a heroine after that fashion is not worthy
to have a heroine.  Still,"--he went eyeing the place critically,
with his head a little to one side--"it makes a picturesque
photograph as it stands--perhaps better than if it were neat and
tidy."  We plucked a nettle from the grave and then returned to
Duntulm to breakfast.

[Sidenote: Quirang.]

Shortly after breakfast our dog-cart was at the door, and followed by
Duntulm and the photographer in a similar machine, we were on our way
to Quirang.  A drive of a couple of hours brought us to the base of
the singular mountain.  Tilting our vehicles, leaving the horses to
roam about picking the short grass, and carrying with us materials
for luncheon on the crest, we began the ascent.  The day was fine,
the sky cloudless, and in an hour we were toiling past the rocky
spire of the needle, and in fifteen minutes thereafter, we reached
the flat green plateau on the top.  Here we lunched and sang songs,
and made mock heroic speeches in proposing each other's health.  I
had ascended the Quirang before in rain, and wind, and vapour, and
could hardly recognise it now under the different atmospherical
conditions.  Then every stone was slippery, every runnel a torrent,
the top of the needle lost in the flying mist, everything looking
spectral, weird, and abnormal.  On the present occasion, we saw it in
fair sunlight; and what the basalt columns, the shattered precipices,
the projecting spiry rocks lost in terror they gained in beauty.
Reclining on the soft green grass--strange to find grass so girdled
by fantastic crags--we had, through fissures and the rents of ancient
earthquake, the loveliest peeps of the map-like under world swathed
in faint sea azure.  An hour, perhaps, we lay there; and then began
the long descent.  When we reached the dog-carts we exchanged a
parting cup, and then Duntulm and the photographer returned home, and
we hied on to Uig.

Arriving at Uig we dined--the bill of fare identical with that on the
preceding day; the hard-boiled eggs, only a shade harder boiled
perhaps; and then having settled with the kilted landlord--the charge
wondrously moderate--we got out our own horse, and with the setting
sun making splendid the Minch behind us, we started for Portree.  It
was eleven P.M. before we reached the little town, the moon was
shining clearly, a stray candle or two twinkling in the houses, and
when we reached the hotel door the building was lighted up--it had
been a fair day, the prices for cattle were good, and over whisky
punch farmer and drover were fraternising.

Next morning, in the soft sky was the wild outline of the Cuchullins,
with which we were again to make acquaintance.  Somehow these hills
never weary, you never become familiar with them, intimacy can no
more stale them than it could the beauty of Cleopatra.  From the
hotel door I regarded them with as much interest as when, from the
deck of the steamer off Ardnamurchan ten years ago, I first beheld
them with their clouds on the horizon.  While at breakfast in the
public room, farmer and drover dropped in--the more fiery-throated
drinking pale ale instead of tea.  After breakfast we were again in
the dog-cart driving leisurely toward Sligachan--the wonderful
mountains beyond gradually losing tenderness of morning hue and
growing worn and hoary, standing with sharper edges against the
light, becoming rough with rocky knob and buttress, and grayly
wrinkled with ravines.  When we reached the inn we found it full of
company, bells continually jangling, half a dozen machines at the
door, and a party of gentlemen in knickerbockers starting with rods
and fishing-baskets.  Here we returned the dog-cart to the landlord,
and began to address ourselves to the desolate glen stretching
between the inn and Camasunary.

[Sidenote: Glen Sligachan.]

In Glen Sligachan, although you lose sight of the Cuchullins proper,
you are surrounded by their outlying and far-radiating spurs.  The
glen is some eight miles in length, and is wild and desolate beyond
conception.  Walking along, too, the reticulations of the hills are
picked out with that pale greenish tint, which I had noted as
characteristic of the hills seen from Lord Macdonald's deer forest,
and which gives one the idea of the overflow of chemical fluids, of
metallic corrosions and discolorations.  There is no proper path, and
you walk in the loose debris of torrents; and in Glen Sligachan, as
in many other parts of Skye, the scenery curiously repels you, and
drives you in on yourself.  You have a quickened sense of your own
individuality.  The enormous bulks, their gradual recedings to
invisible crests, their utter movelessness, their austere silence,
daunt you.  You are conscious of their presence, and you hardly care
to speak lest you be overheard.  You can't laugh.  You would not
crack a joke for the world.  Glen Sligachan would be the place to do
a little bit of self-examination in.  There you would have a sense of
your own meannesses, selfishnesses, paltry evasions of truth and
duty, and find out what a shabby fellow you at heart are--and looking
up to your silent father-confessors, you would find no mercy in their
grim faces.  I do not know what effect mountains have on the people
who live habitually amongst them, but the stranger they make serious
and grave at heart.  Through this glen we trudged silently enough,
and when two-thirds of the distance had been accomplished, it was
with a feeling of relief that a lake was descried ahead.  The sight
of anything mobile, of an element that could glitter and dimple and
dance, took away from the sense of the stony eternities, gray and
wrinkled as with the traces of long-forgotten passion, listening for
ever, dumb for ever.  After rounding the lake, which plashed merrily
on its margin, and clambering over a long waste of boulder, we saw as
we ascended a low flank of Blaavin, the Bay of Camasunary, the house,
and the very boat which M'Ian had borrowed on the day we went to
visit Loch Coruisk, below us.  The tobacco-less man was nowhere
visible, and I marvelled whether his messenger had yet returned from
Broadford.

[Sidenote: Kilmaree.]

When we got to the top of the hill we had to descend the slope to
Kilmaree; and as on my return from Loch Coruisk I had come down
pleasantly under the guidance of M'Ian, I fancied, naturally enough,
that I could act as guide on the present occasion.  But there is a
knack in descending hills as there is in everything else.  First of
all, I lost the narrow footpath at the top; then as we were bound to
reach Loch Eishart, and as Loch Eishart lay below us distinctly
visible, I led directly for it; but somehow we were getting
continually on the wrong bank of a pestilent stream, which, through
chasm and ravine, found its way to the sea by apparently the most
circuitous of courses.  This stream we forded a dozen times at the
least, and sometimes in imminent danger of a ducking.  It was now
late in the afternoon, and the weather had changed.  The tops of the
hills began to be lost in mist, and long lines of sea fog to creep
along the lower grounds.  There was at intervals a slow drizzle of
rain.  Fetching a cunning circuit, as I supposed, we found the
inevitable stream again in our front, and got across it with
difficulty--happily for the last time.  After we had proceeded about
a hundred yards we came upon the lost pathway, and in fifteen minutes
thereafter we were standing upon the shore of the Loch watching the
flying scud of Atlantic mist, and the green waves rolling underneath
with their white caps on.

[Sidenote: The wood-choppers.]

The question now arose--By what means could we reach Mr M'Ian?  There
was no ferry at Kilmaree, but sundry boats were drawn up on the
shore, and a couple were bobbing on the restless water at the stony
pier.  There were the boats certainly enough, but where were the
boatmen?  In the neighbourhood men could surely be obtained who, for
a consideration, would take us across.  We directed our steps to the
lodge at Kilmaree, which seemed untenanted, and after some little
trouble penetrated into the region of the offices and outhouses.
Here we found a couple of men chopping sticks, and to them my
companion--who as a man of business and learned in the law was the
spokesman on such occasions--addressed himself.  "You want to go over
to Mr M'Ian's to-night?" said the elder, desisting from his task, and
standing up with his axe in his hand.  "Yes, we are particularly
anxious to get across.  Can you take us?"  "I don't know; you see we
are no ferrymen, an' if we take you across we must leave our work."
"Of course you must; but we'll pay you for your trouble."  Here the
two men exchanged a sentence or two of Gaelic, and then the elder
wood-chopper asked, "Do you know Mr M'Ian?"  "Oh, yes, we know him
very well."  "Does he expect you this night?"  "No; but we are
anxious to see him, and he will be glad to see us."  "I'm no sure we
can take you across," said the man hesitatingly; "you see the master
is from home, an' the wind is rising, an' we're no ferrymen, an'
we'll need to borrow a boat, an'"--here he hesitated still more--"it
would cost you something."  "Of course it will.  What will you
expect."  "Wad you think ten shillings too much?"  "No, we'll give
you ten shillings," said Fellowes, clinching the bargain.  "And,"
said I, coming in like a swift charge of lancers on a
half-disorganised battalion, and making victory complete, "we'll give
you a glass of spirits at the house, too, when you get across."  The
men then threw down their axes, put on their jackets, which hung on
nails on the walls, and talking busily in Gaelic, led the way to the
little stony pier where the boats were moored.

[Sidenote: On Loch Eishart.]

"There's a gale rising," said one of the men, as he pulled in a boat
to the pier by a rope, "an' it'll no be easy taking you across, and
still harder to get back ourselves."  As, however, to this expression
of opinion we made no response, the men busied themselves with
getting the boat to rights, testing the rollock pins, rolling in
stones for ballast, examining the sail and ropes, and such like
matters.  In a short time we took our seats, and then the men pulled
slowly out to sea in the opposite direction from Mr M'Ian's house, in
order to catch the wind, which was blowing freshly inland.  The
course of the boat was then changed, the oars shipped, the sail
shaken out, and away we went through the green seas with long
lurches, the foam gathering up high at the bows, hissing along the
sides, and forming a long white wake behind.  The elder man sat with
the rope of the sail in his hand, and taking a shrewd squint at the
weather at intervals.  When not so engaged, he was disposed to be
talkative.  "He's a fine gentleman, Mr M'Ian, a vera fine gentleman;
an' vera good to the poor."  "I understand," I said, "that he is the
most generous of mankind."  "He is that; he never lets a poor man go
past his door without a meal.  Maybe, sir, ye'll be a friend o' his?"
"Yes, both of us are friends of his, and friends of his son's too."
"Maybe ye'll be a relation of his?--he has many relations in the
south country."  "No," I said, "no relation, only a friend.  Do you
smoke?"  "Oh, yes, but I have forgot my spleuchan."  "I can provide
you with tobacco," I said, and so when his pipe was lighted he became
silent.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian and the boatmen.]

We were now two-thirds across, and the white watery mists hung low on
the familiar coast as we approached.  Gradually the well-known
objects became defined in the evening light--the clumps of
birch-wood, the huts seated on the shore, the house, the cliffs
behind on which the clouds lay half-way down.  When we drew near the
stony quay we noticed that we were the subjects of considerable
speculation.  It was but seldom that a boat stood across from the
Strathaird coast, and by our glass we could see a group of the
men-servants standing at the corner of the black kitchen watching our
movements, and Mr M'Ian himself coming out with his telescope.  When
the keel grated on the pebbles we got out.  "Now, my men," said
Fellowes, "come up to the house and have your promised glass of
spirits!"  To our astonishment the men declined; they could not wait,
they were going back immediately.  "But you must come," said my
companion, who acted as purser, "for before I can pay you I must get
Mr M'Ian to change me a sovereign.  Come along."  We climbed up to
the house, and were welcomed by Mr M'Ian, father and son, in the
ivy-covered porch.  "By the way," said Fellowes, "I wish you to
change me a sovereign, as we have ten shillings to pay these men."
"Did the scoundrels charge that sum for bringing you over?  It's
extortion; five shillings is quite enough.  Let me go and speak to
them."  "But," remonstrated Fellowes, "we don't consider the charge
immoderate: we made the bargain with them: and so anxious were we to
be here that we would willingly have paid them double."  "Don't talk
to me," cried M'Ian, as he put on his hat and seized his stick.
"Why, you rascals, did you charge these gentlemen ten shillings for
taking them across the Loch?  You know you are well enough paid if
you get half."  "Sir," said the elder man respectfully, while both
touched their bonnets, "we'll just take what you please; just
anything you like, Mr M'Ian."  "Don't you see the mischief you do and
the discredit you bring on the country by this kind of thing?  Every
summer the big lying blackguard _Times_ is crammed with complaints of
tourists who have been cheated by you and the like of you--although I
don't believe half the stories.  These fools"--here the old gentleman
made reference to us by a rapid backward chuck of his thumb--"may go
home to the south and write to the newspapers about you."  "The
bargain the gentlemen made was ten shillings," said the man, "but if
you think we have asked too much we'll take six.  But it's for your
sake we'll take it, not for theirs."  "They're honest fellows these,"
cried the old gentleman, as he poured the coins into the palm of the
elder man; "Alick, bring them out a dram."  The dram, prefaced by a
word or two of Gaelic, to which Mr M'Ian nodded, was duly swallowed,
and the men, touching their bonnets, descended to their boat.  The
old gentleman led the way into the house, and we had no sooner
reached the porch than my companion remembered that he had left
something, and ran down to fetch it.  He returned in a little while,
and in the course of the evening he gave me to understand that he had
seen the boatmen, and fully implemented his promise.

[Sidenote: Lamb-branding.]

The wind had changed during the night, and next morning broke forth
gloriously--not a speck of vapour on the Cuchullins; the long stretch
of Strathaird wonderfully distinct; the Loch bright in sunlight.
When we got down to breakfast we found Mr M'Ian alone.  His son, he
said, had been on the hill since four o'clock in the morning
gathering the lambs together, and that about noon he and his
assistants would be branding them at the fank.  When breakfast was
over,--Fellowes, having letters to write, remained in-doors,--I and
the old gentleman went out.  We went up the glen, and as we drew near
the fank we saw a number of men standing about, their plaids thrown
on the turfen walls, with sheep-dogs couched thereupon; a thick
column of peat-smoke rising up, smelt easily at the distance of half
a mile; no sheep were visible, but the air was filled with
bleatings,--undulating with the clear plaintive trebles of
innumerable ewes, and the hoarser _baa_ of tups.  When we arrived we
found the narrow chambers and compartments at one end of the fank
crowded with lambs, so closely wedged together that they could hardly
move, and between these chambers and compartments temporary barriers
erected, so that no animal could pass from one to the other.  The
shepherds must have had severe work of it that morning.  It was as
yet only eleven o'clock, and since early dawn they and their dogs had
coursed over an area of ten miles, sweeping every hill face, visiting
every glen, and driving down rills of sheep toward this central spot.
Having got the animals down, the business of assortment began.  The
most perfect ewes--destined to be the mothers of the next brood of
lambs on the farm--were placed in one chamber; the second best, whose
fate it was to be sold at Inverness, were placed in a congeries of
compartments, the one opening into the other; the inferior
qualities--_shots_, as they are technically called--occupied a place
by themselves: these also to be sold at Inverness, but at lower
prices than the others.  The fank is a large square enclosure; the
compartments into which the bleating flocks were huddled occupied
about one half of the walled-in space, the remainder being perfectly
vacant.  One of the compartments opened into this space, but a
temporary barrier prevented all egress.  Just at the mouth of this
barrier we could see the white ashes and the dull orange glow of the
peat-fire in which some half-dozen branding irons were heating.  When
everything was prepared two or three men entered into this open
space.  One took his seat on a large smooth stone by the side of the
peat-fire, a second vaulted into the struggling mass of heads and
fleeces, a third opened the barrier slightly, lugged out a struggling
lamb by the horns, and consigned it to the care of the man seated on
the smooth stone.  This worthy got the animal dexterously between his
legs, so that it was unable to struggle, laid its head down on his
thigh, seized from the orange glow of the smouldering peat-fire one
of the red-hot heating irons, and with a hiss, and a slight curl of
smoke, drew it in a diagonal direction across its nose.  Before the
animal was sufficiently branded the iron had to be applied twice or
thrice.  It was then released, and trotted bleating into the open
space, perhaps making a curious bound on the way as if in bravado, or
shaking its head hurriedly as if snuff had been thrown into its eyes.
All day this branding goes on.  The peat-fire is replenished when
needed; another man takes his seat on the smooth stone; by two
o'clock a string of women bring up dinner from the house, and all the
while, young M'Ian sits on the turfen wall, note-book in hand,
setting down the number of the lambs and their respective qualities.
Every farmer has his own peculiar brand, and by it he can identify a
member of his stock if it should go astray.  The brand is to the
farmer what a trade mark is to a manufacturer.  These brands are
familiar to the drovers even as the brands of wine and cigars are
familiar to the connoisseurs in these articles.  The operation looks
a cruel one, but it is not perfectly clear that the sheep suffer much
under it.  While under the iron they are perfectly quiet,--they
neither bleat nor struggle, and when they get off they make no sign
of discomfort save the high bound or the restless shake of the head
already mentioned--if indeed these are signs of discomfort--a
conclusion which no sheep farmer will in anywise allow.  In a minute
or so they are cropping herbage in the open space of the fank, or if
the day is warm, lying down in the cool shadows of the walls as
composedly as if nothing had happened.

Leaning against the fank walls we looked on for about an hour, by
which time a couple of hundred lambs had been branded, and then we
went up the glen to inspect a mare and foal of which Mr M'Ian was
specially proud.  Returning in the direction of the house, the old
gentleman pointed out what trenching had been done, what walls had
been built in my absence, and showed me on the other side of the
stream what brushwood he meant to clear next spring for potatoes,
what fields he would give to the people for their crops, what fields
he would reserve for his own use.  Flowing on in this way with scheme
and petty detail of farm work, he suddenly turned round on me with a
queer look in his face.  "Isn't it odd that a fellow like me,
standing on the brink of the grave, should go pottering about day
after day thinking of turnips and oats, tups and ewes, cows and
foals?  The chances are that the oats I sow I shall never live to
reap--that I shall be gone before the blossom comes on my potatoes."

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian on death.]

The strangeness of it had often struck me before, but I said nothing.

"I suppose it is best that I should take an interest in these
things," went on the old gentleman.  "Death is so near me that I can
hear him as if it were through a crazy partition.  I know he is
there.  I can hear him moving about continually.  My interest in the
farm is the partition that divides us.  If it were away I should be
with him face to face."

Mr M'Ian was perhaps the oldest man in the island, and he did not
dislike talking about his advanced age.  A man at fifty-five,
perhaps, wishes to be considered younger than he really is.  The man
above ninety has outlived that vanity.  He is usually as proud of the
years he has numbered as the commander of the battles he has won, or
the millionaire of the wealth he has acquired.  In respect of his
great age, such a one is singular amongst his fellows.  After a
little pause Mr M'Ian flowed on:

"I remember very well the night the century came in.  My regiment was
then lying in the town of Galway in Ireland.  We were all at supper
that evening at the quarters of Major M'Manus, our commanding
officer.  Very merry we were, singing songs and toasting the belles
we knew.  Well, when twelve o'clock struck the major rose and
proposed in a flowing bowl the health of the stranger--the nineteenth
century--coupled with the hope that it would be a better century than
the other.  I'm not sure that it has been a whit better, so far at
least as it has gone.  For thirty years I have been the sole survivor
of that merry table."

"Sixty-five years is a long time to look back, Mr M'Ian."

The old gentleman walked on laughing to himself.  "What fools men
are--doctors especially!  I was very ill shortly after with a liver
complaint, and was sent to Edinburgh to consult the great doctors and
professors there.  They told me I was dying; that I had not many
months to live.  The fools! they are dead, their sons are dead, and
here I am, able to go about yet.  I suppose they thought that I would
take their stuffs."

By this time we had reached the house.  Mr M'Ian left his white hat
and staff in the porch: he then went to the cupboard and took out a
small spirit case in which he kept bitters cunningly compounded.  He
gave Fellowes and myself--Fellowes had finished his letters by this
time--a tiny glassful, took the same amount himself.  We then all
went out and sat down on a rocky knoll near the house which looked
seaward, and talked about Sir John Moore and Wellington till dinner
time.

[Sidenote: Departure from Mr M'Ian's.]

We stayed with the M'Ians for a couple of days, and on the third we
drove over to Ardvasar to catch the steamer there that afternoon on
its way to Portree.

As we drove slowly up the glen, my companion said, "That old
gentleman is to my mind worth Blaavin, Coruisk, Glen Sligachan, and
all the rest of it.  In his own way he is just as picturesque and
strange as they are.  When he goes, the island will have lost one of
its peculiar charms."

"He is a thorough Islesman," said I; "and for him Blaavin forms as
appropriate a background as the desert for the Arab, or the prairie
for the Pawnee Indian.  When he dies it will be like the dying of the
last eagle.  He is about the end of the old stock.  The younger
generation of Skyemen will never be like their fathers.  They have
more general information than their elders, they have fewer
prejudices, they are more amenable to advice, much less stubborn and
self-willed--but they are by comparison characterless.  In a few
years, when they will have the island in their own hands, better
sheep will be produced I have no doubt, finer qualities of wool will
be sent south, grand hotels will be erected here and there--but for
all that Skye will have become tame: it will have lost that
unpurchaseable something--human character; and will resemble Blaavin
shorn of its mist-wreaths."

[Sidenote: Armadale Castle.]

When we reached the top of the glen, and dropped down on the
Parliamentary Road near the lake of water lilies, we held our way to
the right, toward the point of Sleat.  We passed the farm of Knock,
the white outhouses, the church and school-house, the old castle on
the shore, and driving along, we could pleasantly depasture our eyes
on the cultivated ground, with a picturesque hut perched here and
there; the towering masses of the Knoydart hills and the Sound of
Sleat between.  Sleat is the best wooded, the sunniest, and most
carefully cultivated portion of the island; and passing along the
road the traveller is struck with signs of blithe industry and
contentment.  As you draw near Armadale Castle you can hardly believe
that you are in Skye at all.  The hedges are as trim as English
hedges, the larch plantations which cover the faces of the low hills
that look towards the sea are not to be surpassed by any larch
plantations in the country.  The Armadale home farm is a model of
neatness, the Armadale porter-lodges are neat and white; and when,
through openings of really noble trees, you obtain a glimpse of the
castle itself, a handsome modern-looking building rising from sweeps
of closely-shaven lawn, you find it hard to believe that you are
within a few miles of the moory desolation that stretches between
Isle Oronsay and Broadford.  Great lords and great seats, independent
of the food they provide the imagination, are of the highest
practical uses to a country.  From far Duntulm Macdonald has come
here and settled, and around him to their very tops the stony hills
laugh in green.  Great is the power of gold.  Drop a sovereign into
the hat of the mendicant seated by the wayside and into his face you
bring a pleasant light.  Bestow on land what gold can purchase,
Labour, and of the stoniest aridity you make an emerald.

[Sidenote: Waiting the steamer.]

Ardvasar is situated about the distance of a mile from the Armadale
plantations, and counts perhaps some twenty houses.  A plain inn
stands by the wayside, where refreshments may be procured; there is a
merchant's shop filled with goods of the most miscellaneous
description; in this little place also resides a most important
personage--the agent of the Messrs Hutcheson, who is learned in the
comings and goings of the steamers.  On our arrival we learned from
the agent that the steamer on the present occasion would be unusually
late, as she had not yet been sighted between Ardnamurchan and Eig.
In all probability she would not be off Ardvasar till ten P.M.  It is
difficult to kill time anywhere; but at this little Skye clachan it
is more difficult than almost anywhere else.  We fed the horse, and
returned it and the dog-cart to Mr M'Ian.  We sat in the inn and
looked aimlessly out of the window; we walked along the ravine, and
saw the stream sleeping in brown pools, and then hurrying on in tiny
waterfalls; we watched the young barbarians at play in the wide green
in front of the houses; we lounged in the merchant's shop; we climbed
to the top of eminences and looked seaward, and imagined fondly that
we beheld a streak of steamer smoke on the horizon.  The afternoon
wore away, and then we had tea at the inn.  By this the steamer had
been visible for some little time, and had gone in to Eig.  After tea
we carried our traps down to the stony pier and placed them in the
boat which would convey us to the steamer when she lay to in the bay.
Thereafter we spent an hour in watching men blasting a huge rock in a
quarry close at hand.  We saw the train laid and lighted, the men
scuttling off, and then there was a dull report, and the huge rock
tumbled quietly over in ruins.  When we got back to the pier,
passengers were gathering: drovers with their dogs--ancient women in
scarlet plaids and white caps, going on to Balmacara or Kyle--a
sailor, fresh from China, dressed in his best clothes, with a
slate-coloured parrot in a wicker cage, which he was conveying to
some young people at Broadford.  On the stony pier we waited for a
considerable time, and then Mr Hutcheson's agent, accompanied by some
half dozen men, came down in a hurry; into the boat we were all
bundled, drovers, dogs, ancient women, sailor, parrot, and all, the
boat shoved off, the agent stood up in the bow, the men bent to their
oars, and by the time we were twenty boat-lengths from the pier the
_Clansman_ had slid into the bay opposite the castle and lay to,
letting off volumes of noisy steam.

[Sidenote: The Clansman.]

When the summer night was closing the _Clansman_ steamed out of
Armadale Bay.  Two or three ladies were yet visible on the deck.
Wrapped in their plaids, and with their dogs around them, drovers
were smoking amidships; sportsmen in knickerbockers were smoking on
the hurricane deck; and from the steerage came at intervals a burst
of canine thunder from the leashes of pointers and setters
congregated there.  As the night fell the air grew cold, the last
lady disappeared, the sportsmen withdrew from their airy perches,
amidships the pipe of the drover became a point of intense red.  In
the lighted cabin gentlemen were drinking whisky punch, and
discussing, as their moods went, politics, the weather, the
fluctuations in the price of stock, and the condition of grouse.
Among these we sat; and my companion fell into conversation with a
young man of an excited manner and a restless eye.  I could see at a
glance that he belonged to the same class as my tobacco-less friend
of Glen Sligachan.  On Fellowes he bestowed his entire biography,
made known to him the name of his family--which was, by the way, a
noble one--volunteered the information that he had served in the
Mediterranean squadron, that he had been tried by a court martial for
a misdemeanour of which he was entirely guiltless, and had through
the testimony of nefarious witnesses been dismissed the service.
While all this talk was going on the steward and his assistants had
swept away the glasses from the saloon table, and from the oddest
corners and receptacles were now drawing out pillows, sheets, and
blankets.  In a trice everything became something else; the sofas of
the saloon became beds, the tables of the saloon became beds, beds
were spread on the saloon floor, beds were extemporised near the
cabin windows.  When the transformation had been completed, and
several of the passengers had coiled themselves comfortably in their
blankets, the remainder struggling with their boots, or in various
stages of dishabille, the ex-naval man suddenly called out "Steward!"

[Sidenote: The ex-naval man.]

That functionary looked in at the saloon door in an instant.

"Bring me a glass of brandy and water."

"It's quite impossible, Mr ----," said the steward; "the spirit-room
is shut for the night.  Besides, you have had a dozen glasses of
brandy and water to-day already.  You had better go to bed, sir."

"Didn't I tell you," said the ex-naval man, addressing Fellowes, who
had by this time got his coat and vest off; "didn't I tell you that
the whole world is in a conspiracy against me?  It makes a dead set
at me.  That fellow now is as great a foe of mine as was the
commodore at Malta."

Fellowes made no reply, and got into bed.  I followed his example.
The ex-naval man sat gloomily alone for a while, and then with the
assistance of the steward he undressed and clambered into a cool
berth beside one of the cabin windows.  Thereafter the lights were
turned low.

I could not sleep, however; the stifling air of the place, in which
there lived a faint odour of hot brandy and water, and the constant
throb throb of the engines, kept me awake.  I turned from one side to
the other, till at last my attention was attracted by the movements
of my strange friend opposite.  He raised his head stealthily and
took covert survey of the saloon; then he leant on his elbow; then he
sat upright in his berth.  That feat accomplished, he began to pour
forth to some imaginary auditor the story of his wrongs.

He had not gone on long when a white night-capped head bounced up in
a far corner of the dim saloon.  "Will you be good enough," said the
pale apparition in a severe voice, "to go to sleep?  It's monstrous,
sir, that you should disturb gentlemen at this hour of the night by
your nonsensical speeches."

At the sight and the voice the ex-naval man sank into his berth as
suddenly as an alarmed beaver sinks into his dam, and there was
silence for a time.

Shortly, from the berth, I saw the ex-naval man's head rising as
stealthily as the head of a blackcock above a bunch of rushes.  Again
he sat up in bed, and again to the same invisible auditor he confided
his peculiar griefs.

"Confound you, sir."  "What do you mean, sir?" and at the half-dozen
white apparitions confronting him the ex-naval man again dived.

In about ten minutes the head opposite began again to stir.  Never
from ambush did Indian warrior rise more noiselessly than did the
ex-naval man from his blankets.  He paused for a little on his elbow,
looked about him cautiously, got into a sitting position, and began a
third harangue.

"What the devil!"  "This is intolerable!" "Steward, steward!"  "Send
the madman on deck;" and the saloon rose _en masse_ against the
disturber of its rest.  The steward came running in at the outcry,
but the ex-naval man had ducked under like a shot, and was snoring
away in simulated slumber as if he had been the Seven Sleepers rolled
into one.

That night he disturbed our rest no more, and shortly after I fell
asleep.

A fierce trampling on deck, and the noise of the crane hoisting the
cargo from the deep recesses of the hold awoke me.  I dressed and
went above.  The punctual sun was up and at his work.  We were off a
strip of sandy beach, with a row of white houses stretching along it,
and with low rocky hills behind the houses.  Some half-dozen
deeply-laden shore boats were leaving the side of the steamer.  Then
a cow was brought forward, a door was opened in the bulwarks, and the
animal quietly shoved out.  Crummie disappeared with a considerable
plunge, and came to the surface somewhat scant of breath, and with
her mind in a state of utter bewilderment.  A boat was in readiness;
by a deft hand a coil of rope was fastened around the horns, the
rowers bent to their task, and Crummie was towed ashore in triumph,
and on reaching it seemed nothing the worse of her unexpected plunge
forth.

The noisy steam was then shut off; from the moving paddles great
belts of pale-green foam rushed out and died away far astern; the
strip of beach, the white houses with the low rocky hills behind,
began to disappear, and the steamer stood directly for Portree, which
place was reached in time for breakfast.  We then drove to the
Landlord's, and on alighting I found my friend John Penruddock
marching up and down on the gravel in front of the house.




_JOHN PENRUDDOCK._

Penruddock was rather a hero of mine.  He was as tall, muscular, and
broad-shouldered as the men whom Mr Kingsley delights to paint, and
his heart was as tender as his head was shrewd.  A loquacious knave
could not take him in, and from his door a beggar would not be sent
empty away.  The pressure of his mighty hand when he met you gave you
some idea of what the clenched fist would be with its iron ridge of
knuckles.  He was the healthiest-minded man I have ever met in my
walk through life.  He was strong yet gentle, pious yet without the
slightest tincture of cant or dogmatism; and his mind was no more
infested with megrims, or vanity, or hypochondriasis, or
sentimentality, than the wind-swept sky of June with vapours.  He was
loyal and affectionate to the backbone: he stuck to his friends to
the last.  Pen was like the run of ordinary mortals while your day of
prosperity remained, but when your night of difficulty fell he came
out like a lighthouse, and sent you rays of encouragement and help.

[Sidenote: John Penruddock.]

Pen had farms in Ireland as well as in Skye, and it was when on a
visit to him in Ulster some years since that I became acquainted with
his homely but enduring merits.  For years I had not seen such a man.
There was a reality and honest stuff in him, which in living with him
and watching his daily goings on revealed itself hour by hour, quite
new to me.  The people I had been accustomed to meet, talk with, live
with, were different.  The tendency of each of these was towards art
in one form or other.  And there was a certain sadness somehow in the
contemplation of them.  They fought and strove bravely; but like the
Old Guard at Waterloo, it was brave fighting on a lost field.  After
years of toil there were irremediable defects in that man's picture;
fatal flaws in that man's book.  In all their efforts were failure
and repulse, apparent to some extent to themselves, plain enough to
the passionless looker-on.  That resolute, hopeless climbing of
heaven was, according to the mood, a thing to provoke a jest or a
sigh.  With Penruddock all was different.  What he strove after he
accomplished.  He had a cheerful mastery over circumstances.  All
things went well with him.  His horses ploughed for him, his servants
reaped for him, his mills ground for him, successfully.  The very
winds and dews of heaven were to him helps and aids.  Year after year
his crops grew, yellowed, were cut down and gathered into barns, and
men fed thereupon; and year after year there lay an increasing
balance at his banker's.  This continual, ever-victorious activity
seemed strange to me--a new thing under the sun.  We usually think
that poets, painters, and the like, are finer, more heroical, than
cultivators of the ground.  But does the production of a questionable
book really surpass in merit the production of a field of
unquestionable turnips?  Perhaps in the severe eyes of the gods the
production of a wooden porringer, water-tight, and fit for househould
uses, is of more account than the rearing of a tower of Babel, meant
to reach to heaven.  Alas! that so many must work on these Babel
towers; cannot help toiling on them to the very death, though every
stone is heaved into its place with weariness and mortal pain; though
when the life of the builder is wasted out on it, it is fit
habitation for no creature, can shelter no one from rain or snow--but
towering in the eyes of men a _Folly_ (as the Scotch phrase it) after
all.

I like to recall my six weeks' sojourn in sunny Ulster with my
friend.  I like to recall the rows of whity-green willows that
bordered the slow streams; the yellow flax fields with their azure
flowers, reminding one of the maidens in German ballads; the flax
tanks and windmills; the dark-haired girls embroidering muslins
before the doors, and stealing the while the hearts of sheepish
sweethearts leaning against the cottage walls, by soft blarney and
quick glances; the fields in which a cow, a donkey, half a dozen
long-legged porkers--looking for all the world like pigs on
stilts--cocks and hens, ducks and geese promiscuously fed; and, above
all, I like to recall that somnolent Sunday afternoon in the little
uncomfortably-seated Presbyterian church, when--two-thirds of the
congregation asleep, the precentor soundest of all, and the good
clergyman illustrating the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints
by a toddler at its mother's knee attempting to walk, falling and
bumping its forehead, getting picked up, and in a little while,
although the bump had grown to the size of an egg, spurring and
struggling to get to the floor once again--my eye wandered to the
open church door, and in the sunshine saw a feeding bee fold its
wings on a flower and swing there in the wind, and I forgot for a
while drawling shepherd and slumbering flock.  These are trifles, but
they are pleasant trifles.  Staying with Pen, however, an event of
importance did occur.

It was arranged that we should go to the fair at Keady; but Pen was
obliged on the day immediately preceding to leave his farm at
Arranmore on matter of important business.  It was a wretched day of
rain, and I began to tremble for the morrow.  After dinner the storm
abated, and the dull dripping afternoon set in.  While a distempered
sunset flushed the west the heavy carts from the fields came rolling
into the courtyard, the horses fetlock-deep in clay and steaming like
ovens.  Then, at the sound of the bell, the labourers came, wet,
weary, sickles hanging over their arms, yet with spirits merry
enough.  These the capacious kitchen received, where they found
supper spread.  It grew dark earlier than usual, and more silent.
The mill-wheel rushed louder in the swollen stream, and lights began
to glimmer here and there in the dusty windows.  Penruddock had not
yet come; he was not due for a couple of hours.  Time began to hang
heavily; so slipping to bed I solved every difficulty by falling
soundly asleep.

The lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, and
the loud voices of men in the courtyard beneath, awoke me shortly
after dawn.  In the silence that followed I again fell asleep, and
was roused at last by the clangour of the breakfast bell.  When I got
up the sun was streaming gloriously through the latticed window;
heaven was all the gayer and brighter for yesterday's gloom and sulky
tears, and the rooks were cawing and flapping cheerfully in the trees
above.  When I entered the breakfast-room Pen was already there, and
the tea-urn was bubbling on the table.

[Sidenote: On the way to the fiar.]

At the close of the meal Tim brought the dog-cart to the door.  Pen
glanced at his watch.  "We have hit the time exactly, and will arrive
as soon as Mick and the cattle."  There was an encouraging chir-r-r,
a flick of the whip, and in a trice we were across the bridge and
pegging along the highway at a great pace.

After proceeding about a mile, we turned into a narrow path which
gradually led us up into a wild irregular country.  Corn-fields,
flax-tanks, and sunny pasture lands, dotted with sheep, were left
behind as up-hill we tugged, and reached at last a level stretch of
purple moor and black peat bog.  Sometimes for a mile the ground was
black with pyramids of peat; at other times the road wriggled before
us through a dark olive morass, enlivened here and there with patches
of treacherous green; the sound of our wheels startling into flight
the shy and solitary birds native to the region.  Ever and anon, too,
when we gained sufficient elevation, we could see the great waves of
the landscape rolling in clear morning light away to the horizon;
each wave crested with farms and belts of woodland, and here and
there wreaths of smoke rising up from hollows where towns and
villages lay hid.  After a while the road grew smoother, and afar the
little town of Keady sparkled in the sun, backed by a range of
smelting furnaces, the flames tamed by the sunlight, making a
restless shimmer in the air, and blotting out everything beyond.
Beneath, the high road was covered with sheep and cows, and vehicles
of every description, pushing forward to one point; the hill paths
also which led down to it were moving threads of life.  On the brow
of the hill, just before we began to descend, John pulled up for a
moment.  It was a pretty sight.  [Sidenote: The fair at Keady.] A few
minutes' drive brought us into Keady, and such a busy scene I had
never before witnessed.  The narrow streets and open spaces were
crowded with stalls, cattle, and people, and the press and confusion
was so great that our passage to the inn where our machine was to be
put up was matter of considerable difficulty.  Men, stripped to
trousers and shirt, with red hair streaming in the wind, rushed
backwards and forwards with horses, giving vent at the same time to
the wildest vociferations, while clumps of sporting gentlemen, with
straws in their mouths, were inspecting, with critical eyes, the
points of the animals.  Travelling auctioneers set up their little
carts in the streets, and with astonishing effrontery and power of
lung harangued the crowd on the worth and cheapness of the articles
which they held in their hands.  Beggars were very plentiful--disease
and deformity their stock-in-trade.  Fragments of humanity crawled
about upon crutches.  Women stretched out shrunken arms.  Blind men
rolled sightless eyeballs, blessing the passenger when a copper
tinkled in their iron jugs--cursing yet more fervently when
disappointed in their expectation.  In one place a melancholy acrobat
in dirty tights and faded tinsel was performing evolutions with a
crazy chair on a bit of ragged carpet; he threw somersaults over it;
he embraced it firmly, and began spinning along the ground like a
wheel, in which performance man and chair seemed to lose their
individuality and become one as it were; and at the close of every
feat he stood erect with that indescribable curve of the right hand
which should always be followed by thunders of applause, the clown
meanwhile rolling in ecstasies of admiration in the sawdust.  Alas!
no applause followed the exertions of the artist.  The tights were
getting more threadbare and dingy.  His hollow face was covered with
perspiration, and there was but the sparsest sprinkling of halfpence.
I threw him a shilling, but it rolled among the spectators' feet, and
was lost in the dust.  He groped about in search of it for some
little time, and then came back to his carpet and his crazy chair.
Poor fellow! he looked as if he were used to that kind of thing.
There were many pretty faces among the girls, and scores of them were
walking about in holiday dresses--rosy-faced lasses, with black hair,
and blue eyes shadowed by long dark eyelashes.  How they laughed, and
how sweetly the brogue melted from their lips in reply to the ardent
blarney of their sweethearts.  At last we reached an open square, or
cross, as it would be called in Scotland, more crowded, if possible,
than the narrow streets.  Hordes of cattle bellowed here.  Here were
sheep from the large farms standing in clusters of fifties and
hundreds; there a clump of five or six, with the widow in her clean
cap sitting beside them.  Many an hour ago she and they started from
the turf hut and the pasture beyond the hills.  Heaven send her a
ready sale and good prices!  In the centre of this open space great
benches were erected, heaped with eggs, butter, cheeses, the
proprietors standing behind anxiously awaiting the advances of
customers.  One section was crowded with sweetmeat stalls, much
frequented by girls and their sweethearts.  Many a rustic compliment
there had for reply a quick glance or a scarlet cheek.  Another was
devoted to poultry; geese stood about in flocks; bunches of hens were
scattered on the ground, their legs tied together; and turkeys,
enclosed in wicker baskets, surveyed the scene with quick eyes, their
wattles all the while burning with indignation.  On reaching the inn
which displayed for ensign a swan with two heads afloat on an azure
stream, we ordered dinner at three o'clock, and thereafter started on
foot to where Penruddock's stock was stationed.  It was no easy
matter to force a path; cows and sheep were always getting in the
way.  Now and then an escaped hen would come clucking and flapping
among our feet, and once a huge bull, with horns levelled to the
charge, came dashing down the street, scattering everything before
him.  Finally, we reached the spot where Mick and his dogs were
keeping watch over the cows and sheep.

"Got here all safe, Mick, I see."

"All safe, sir, not a quarter o' an hour ago."

"Well, I have opened my shop.  We'll see how we get on."

[Sidenote: Bargain-making.]

By this time the dealers had gathered about, and were closely
examining the sheep, and holding whispered consultations.  At length
an excited-looking man came running forward; plunging his hand into
his breeches pocket, he produced therefrom half-a-crown, which he
slapped into Penruddock's hand, at the same time crying out
"Ten-and-six a head."  "Fifteen," said John, returning the coin.
"Twelve shillings," said the man, bringing down the coin with
tremendous energy; "an' may I niver stir if I'll give another
farthin' for the best sheep in Keady."  "Fifteen," said John,
flinging the half-crown on the ground; "and I don't care whether you
stir again or not."  By this time a crowd had gathered about, and the
chorus began.  "There isn't a dacenter man than Mr Penruddock in the
market.  I've known him iver since he came to the counthry."  "Shure
an' he is," began another; "he's a jintleman ivery inch.  He always
gives to the poor man a bit o' baccy, or a glass.  Ach, Mr Loney,
he's not the one to ax you too high a price.  Shure, Mr Penruddock,
you'll come down a six-pence jist to make a bargain."  "Is't Mr Loney
that's goin' to buy?" cried a lame man from the opposite side, and in
the opposite interest.  "There isn't sich a dealer in county Monaghan
as Mr Loney.  Of coorse you'll come down something, Mr Penruddock."
"He's a rich one, too, is Mr Loney," said the lame man, sidling up to
John, and winking in a knowing manner, "an' a power o' notes he has
in his pocket-book."  Mr Loney, who had been whispering with his
group a little apart, and who had again made an inspection of the
stock, returned the second time to the charge.  "Twelve-an'-six,"
cried he, and again the half-crown was slapped into Penruddock's
palm.  "Twelve-an'-six, an' not another farthin' to save my soul."
"Fifteen," said John, returning the half-crown with equal emphasis;
"you know my price, and if you won't take it you can let it stand."
The dealer disappeared in huge wrath, and the chorus broke out in
praises of both.  By this time Mr Loney was again among the sheep; it
was plain his heart was set upon the purchase.  Every now and then he
caught one, got it between his legs, examined the markings on its
face, and tested the depth and quality of its wool.  He appeared for
the third time, while the lame man and the leader of the opposing
chorus seemed coming to blows, so zealous were they in the praises of
their respective heroes.  "Fourteen," said Mr Loney, again producing
the half-crown, spitting into his hand at the same time, as much as
to say, he would do the business now.  "Fourteen," he cried, crushing
the half-crown into Penruddock's hand, and holding it there.
"Fourteen, an' divil a rap more I'll give."  "Fourteen," said John,
as if considering, then throwing back the coin, "Fourteen-and-six,
and let it be a bargain."

"Didn't I say," quoth John's chorus leader, looking round him with an
air of triumph, "didn't I say that Mr Penruddock's a jintleman?  Ye
see how he drops the sixpence.  I niver saw him do a mane thing yet.
Ach, he's the jintleman ivery inch, an' that's saying a dale,
considerin' his size."

"Fourteen-and-six be it then," said the dealer, bringing down the
coin for the last time.  "An' if I take the lot you'll give me two
pounds in t' myself?"

"Well, Loney; I don't care although I do," said Penruddock, pocketing
the coin at last.  A roll of notes was produced, the sum counted out,
and the bargain concluded.  The next moment Loney was among the
sheep, scoring some mark or other on their backs with a piece of red
chalk.  Penruddock scattered what spare coppers he possessed among
the bystanders, and away they went to sing the praises of the next
bargain-maker.

Pen turned to me laughing.  "This is a nice occupation for a
gentleman of respectable birth and liberal education, is it not?"

"Odd.  It is amusing to watch the process by which your sheep are
converted into bank-notes.  Does your friend, Mr Loney, buy the
animals for himself?"

"Oh, dear, no.  We must have middlemen of one kind or another in this
country.  Loney is commissioned to purchase, and is allowed so much
on the transaction."

By this time a young handsome fellow pushed his horse through the
crowd and approached us.  "Good morning," cried he to Penruddock.
"Any business doing?"

"I have just sold my sheep."

"Good price?"

"Fair.  Fourteen and six."

"Ah, not so bad.  These cattle, I suppose, are yours?  We must try if
we can't come to a bargain about them."  Dismounting, he gave his
horse in keeping to a lad, and he and John went off to inspect the
stock.

Business was proceeding briskly on all sides.  There was great
higgling as to prices, and shillings and half-crowns were tossed in a
wonderful manner from palm to palm.  Apparently, nothing could be
transacted without that ceremony, whatever it might mean.  Idlers
were everywhere celebrating the merits and "dacency" of the various
buyers and sellers.  Huge greasy leather pocket-books, of undoubted
antiquity, were to be seen in many a hand, and rolls of bank-notes
were deftly changing owners.  The ground, too, was beginning to
clear, and purchasers were driving off their cattle.  Many of the
dealers who had disposed of stock were taking their ease in the inns.
You could see them looking out of the open windows; and occasionally
a man whose potations had been early and excessive went whooping
through the crowd.  In a short time John returned with his friend.

"Captain Broster," said John, presenting him, "has promised to dine
with us at three.  Sharp at the hour, mind, for we wish to leave
early."

"I'll be punctual as clockwork," said the captain, turning to look
after his purchases.

[Sidenote: The Welsh forgemen.]

We strolled up and down till three o'clock, and then bent our steps
to the inn, where we found Broster waiting.  In honour to his guests
the landlord himself brought in dinner, and waited with great
diligence.  When the table was cleared we had punch and cigars, and
sat chatting at the open window.  The space in front was tolerably
clear of cattle now, but dealers were hovering about, standing in
clumps, or promenading in parties of twos and threes.  But at this
point a new element had entered into the scene.  It was dinner hour,
and many of the forgemen from the furnaces above had come down to see
what was going on.  Huge, hulking, swarthy-featured fellows they
were.  Welshmen, chiefly, as I was afterwards told, who, confident in
their strength, were at no pains to conceal their contempt for the
natives.  They, too, mingled in the crowd, but the greater number
leaned lazily against the houses, smoking their short pipes, and
indulging in the dangerous luxury of "chaffing" the farmers.  Many a
rude wit-combat was going on, accompanied by roars of laughter,
snatches of which we occasionally heard.  Broster had been in the
Crimea, was wounded at Alma, recovered, went through all the work and
privation of the first winter of the siege, got knocked up, came home
on sick leave, and having had enough of it, as he frankly confessed,
took the opportunity on his father's death, which happened then, to
sell out and settle as a farmer on a small property to which he fell
heir.  He chatted about the events of the war in an easy familiar
way, quietly, as if the whole affair had been a game at football; and
when courage, strength, and splendid prospects were changed by unseen
bullet, or grim bayonet stab, into a rude grave on the bleak plateau,
the thing was mentioned as a mere matter of course!  Sometimes a
comrade's fate met with an expression of soldierly regret, slight and
indifferent enough, yet with a certain pathos which no high-flown
oration could reach.  For the indifferent tone seemed to acquiesce in
destiny, to consider that disappointment had been too common in the
life of every man during the last six thousand years to warrant any
raving or passionate surprise at this time of day; that in any case
our ordinary pulse and breath beat our march to the grave; passion
the double-quick; and when it is all over, there is little need for
outcry and the shedding of tears over the eternal rest.  [Sidenote:
The scuffle in the inn.] In the midst of his talk voices rose in one
of the apartments below; the noise became altercation, and
immediately a kind of struggling or dragging was heard in the flagged
passage, and then a tipsy forgeman was unceremoniously shot out into
the square, and the inn door closed with an angry bang.  The
individual seemed to take the indignity in very good part; along he
staggered, his hands in his pockets, heedless of the satirical gibes
and remarks of his companions, who were smoking beneath our windows.
Looking out, we could see that his eyes were closed, as if he scorned
the outer world, possessing one so much more satisfactory within
himself.  As he went he began to sing from sheer excess of happiness,
the following stanza coming distinctly to our ears:--

  "When I was a chicken as big as a hen,
  My mother 'ot me, an' I 'ot her agen;
  My father came in for to see the r-r-rrow,
  So I lifted my fist, an' I 'ot him a clow."


"I hope that fellow won't come to grief," said Broster, as the
forgeman lurched through a group of countrymen intent on a bargain,
and passed on without notice or apology, his eyes closed, and singing
as before--

  "Ses my mother, ses she, There's a Peeler at hand."


[Sidenote: The fair fight.]

"By Jove, he's down at last, and there'll be the devil to pay!"  We
looked out, the forgeman was prone in the dust, singing, and
apparently unconscious that he had changed his position.  A party of
farmers were standing around laughing; one of them had put out his
foot and tripped the forgeman as he passed.  The next moment a
bare-armed black-browed hammersmith strode out from the wall, and,
without so much as taking the pipe from his mouth, felled the dealer
at a blow, and then looked at his companions as if wishing to be
informed if he could do anything in the same way for them.  The blow
was a match dropped in a powder magazine.  Alelu! to the combat.
There were shouts and yells.  Insult had been rankling long in the
breasts of both parties.  Old scores had to be paid off.  From every
quarter, out of the inns, leaving potheen and ale, down the streets
from among the cattle, the dealers came rushing to the fray.  The
forgemen mustered with alacrity, as if battle were the breath of
their nostrils.  In a few seconds the square was the scene of a
general _mêlée_.  The dealers fought with their short heavy sticks;
the forgemen had but the weapons nature gave, but their arms were
sinewed with iron, and every blow told like a hammer.  These last
were overpowered for a while, but the alarm had already spread to the
furnaces above, and parties of twos and threes came at a run, and
flung themselves in to the assistance of their companions.  Just at
this moment a couple of constables pressed forward into the yelling
crowd.  A hammersmith came behind one, and seizing his arms, held
him, despite his struggles, firmly as in a vice.  The other was
knocked over and trampled under foot.  "Good heavens, murder will be
done," cried Broster, lifting his heavy whip from the table; "we must
try and put an end to this disgraceful scene.  Will you join me?"
"With heart and soul," said Penruddock, "and there is no time to be
lost.  Come along."  At the foot of the stair we found the landlord
shaking in every limb.  He had locked the door, and was standing in
the passage with the key in his hand.  "M'Queen, we want out; open
the door."

"Shure, jintlemen, you're not goin' just now.  You'll be torn to
paces if you go."

"If you won't open the door, give me the key, and I'll open it
myself."

[Sidenote: Black Jem.]

The landlord passively yielded.  Broster unlocked the door, and flung
the key down on the flagged passage.  "Now, my lads," cried he to
half-a-dozen countrymen who were hanging-on spectators on the skirts
of the combat, and at the same time twisting his whip-lash tightly
round his right hand till the heavy-leaded head became a formidable
weapon, a blow from which would be effective on any skull of ordinary
susceptibility; "Now, my lads, we are resolved to put an end to this;
will you assist us?"  The captain's family had been long resident in
the county, he was himself personally known to all of them, and a
cheerful "Ay, ay," was the response.  "Penruddock, separate them when
you can, knock them over when you can't, Welshman or Irishman, it's
quite the same."  So saying, in we drove.  Broster clove a way for
himself, distributing his blows with great impartiality, and knocking
over the combatants like nine-pins.  We soon reached the middle of
the square, where the fight was hottest.  The captain was swept away
in an eddy for a moment, and right in front of Penruddock and myself
two men were grappling on the ground.  As they rolled over, we saw
that one was the hammersmith who had caused the whole affray.  We
flung ourselves upon them, and dragged them up.  The dealer, with
whom I was more particularly engaged, had got the worst of it, and
plainly wasn't sorry to be released from the clutches of his
antagonist.  With his foe it was different.  His slow sullen blood
was fairly in a blaze, and when Pen pushed him aside, he dashed at
him and struck him a severe blow on the face.  In a twinkling
Penruddock's coat was off, while the faintest stream of blood
trickled from his upper lip.  "Well, my man," said he, as he stood up
ready for action, "if that's the game you mean to play at, I hope to
give you a bellyful before I've done."  "Seize that man, knock him
over," said Broster; "you're surely not going to fight _him_,
Penruddock, it's sheer madness; knock him over."  "I tell you what it
is," said Penruddock, turning savagely, "you shan't deprive me of the
luxury of giving this fellow a sound hiding."  Broster shrugged his
shoulders, as if giving up the case.  By this time the cry arose,
"Black Jem's goin' to fight the gentleman;" and a wide enough ring
was formed.  [Sidenote: The fight.] Many who were prosecuting small
combats of their own desisted, that they might behold the greater
one.  Broster stood beside John.  "He's an ugly mass of strength,"
whispered he, "and will hug you like a bear; keep him well off, and
remain cool for Heaven's sake."  "Ready?" said John, stepping
forward.  "As a lark i' the mornin'," growled Jem, as he took up his
ground.  The men were very wary--Jem retreating round and round, John
advancing.  Now and then one or other darted out a blow, but it was
generally stopped, and no harm done.  At last the blows went home;
the blood began to rise.  The men drew closer, and struck with
greater rapidity.  They are at it at last, hammer and tongs.  No
shirking or flinching now.  Jem's blood was flowing.  He was
evidently getting severely punished.  He couldn't last long at that
rate.  He fought desperately for a close, when a blinding blow full
in the face brought him to the earth.  He got up again like a madman,
the whole bull-dog nature of him possessed and mastered by brutal
rage.  He cursed and struggled in the arms of his supporters to get
at his enemy, but by main force they held him back till he recovered
himself.  "He'll be worked off in another round," I heard Broster
whisper in my ear.  Ah! here they come!  I glanced at Pen for a
moment as he stood with his eye on his foe.  There was that in his
face that boded no good.  The features had hardened into iron
somehow; the pitiless mouth was clenched, the eye cruel.  A hitherto
unknown part of his nature revealed itself to me as he stood
there--perhaps unknown to himself.  God help us, what strangers we
are to ourselves!  In every man's nature there is an interior
unexplored as that of Africa, and over that region what wild beasts
may roam!  But they are at it again; Jem still fights for a close,
and every time his rush is stopped by a damaging blow.  They are
telling rapidly; his countenance, by no means charming at the best,
is rapidly transforming.  Look at that hideously gashed lip!  But he
has dodged Penruddock's left this time, and clutched him in his
brawny arms.  Now comes the tug of war, skill pitted against skill,
strength against strength.  They breathe for a little in each other's
grip, as if summoning every energy.  They are at it now, broad chest
to chest.  Now they seem motionless, but by the quiver of their
frames you can guess the terrific strain going on.  Now one has the
better, now the other, as they twine round each other, lithe and
supple as serpents.  Penruddock yields!  No!  That's a bad dodge of
Jem's.  By Jove he loses his grip.  All is over with him.  Pen's brow
grows dark; the veins start out on it; and the next moment Black Jem,
the hero of fifty fights, slung over his shoulder, falls heavily to
the ground.

[Sidenote: Retreat of the hammermen.]

At his fall a cheer rose from the dealers.  "You blacksmith fellows
had better make off," cried Broster; "your man has got the thrashing
he deserves, and you can carry him home with you.  I am resolved to
put a stop to these disturbances--there have been too many of late."
The furnacemen hung for a moment irresolute, seemingly half-inclined
to renew the combat, but a formidable array of cattle-dealers pressed
forward and turned the scale.  They decided on a retreat.  Black Jem,
who had now come to himself, was lifted up, and, supported by two
men, retired toward the works and dwellings on the upper grounds,
accompanied by his companions, who muttered many a surly oath and vow
of future vengeance.

When we got back to the inn, Pen was very anxious about his face.  He
washed, and carefully perused his features in the little
looking-glass.  Luckily, with the exception of the upper lip slightly
cut by Jim's first blow, no mark of the combat presented itself.  At
this happy result of his investigations he expressed great
satisfaction--Broster laughing the meanwhile, and telling him that he
was as careful of his face as a young lady.

The captain came down to see us off.  The fair was over now, and the
little streets were almost deserted.  The dealers--apprehensive of
another descent from the furnaces--had hurried off as soon as their
transactions could in any way permit.  Groups of villagers, however,
were standing about the doors discussing the event of the day; and
when Penruddock appeared he became, for a quarter of an hour, an
object of public interest for the first time in his life, and so far
as he has yet lived for the last; an honour to which he did not seem
to attach any particular value.

We shook hands with the captain; then, at a touch of the whip, the
horse started at a gallant pace, scattering a brood of ducks in all
directions; and in a few minutes Keady--with its whitewashed houses
and dark row of furnaces, tipped with tongues of flame, pale and
shrunken yet in the lustre of the afternoon, but which would rush out
wild and lurid when the evening fell--lay a rapidly dwindling speck
behind.

[Sidenote: John Penruddock.]

I am induced to set down this business of the Irish market and market
fight in order that the reader may gather some idea of the kind of
man Penruddock was.  He was not particularly witty, although on
occasion he could say a good and neat thing enough; on no subject was
he profoundly read; I don't think that he ever attempted to turn a
stanza, even when a boy and in love; he did not care for art; he was
only conscious of a blind and obscure delight in music, and even for
_that_ the music had to be of the simplest kind--melody, not harmony.
He had his limitations, you see: but as a man I have seldom met his
equal.  He was sagacious, kindly, affectionate, docile, patient, and
unthinking of self.  There was a peculiar deference in his ordinary
manner, as if he were continually in the presence of a lady.  Above
all things, he was sincere, and you trusted Pen when you came to know
him as implicitly as you would a law of nature.  If you were out in a
small boat in a storm with him; if you were ascending or descending a
steep rocky hill-face with him, and got giddy on his hands; if you
were in the heart of a snow-storm on the hills with him, when all
traces of the road were lost, and the cold began to make thick your
blood with the deadly pleasure of sleep--in such circumstances you
found out what he was: cool, courageous, helpful; full of resource,
with a quick brain, an iron nerve, a giant's strength.  To the
possessor of such solid worth and manhood your merely brilliant
talker, your epigrammatist, your sayer of smart things, is
essentially a poor creature.  What is wit?--a sounding brass and a
tinkling cymbal.  What is epigram?  Penruddock did not paint pictures
or write poems; it was his business "to make good sheep," as the Skye
people say, and magnificent sheep he did make.

Pen had an ideal sheep in his mind, and to reach that ideal he was
continually striving.  At the yearly winnowings of his stock he
selected his breeding ewes with the utmost care, and these ewes,
without spot or blemish, he crossed with wonderfully-horned and
far-brought rams, for which he sometimes paid enormous prices--so at
least his neighbours said.  His sheep he bred in Skye for the most
part, and then he sent them over to Ulster to fatten.  There, on
pasture and turnips, they throve amazingly, all their good points
coming into prominence, all their bad points stealing modestly into
the shade.  At markets, Penruddock's sheep always brought excellent
prices, and his lot was certain to be about the best shown.

Pen and the Landlord had business relations.  In partnership, they
brought over meal from Ireland, they speculated in turnips, they
dealt in curious manures which were to the sour Skye soil what
plum-pudding is to a charity boy: above all, he was confederate in a
scheme of emigration which the Landlord had concocted, and was in the
course of carrying out.  Pen's visit at this time was purely a
business one: he wished to see me, but that was far from his sole
motive in coming--so he frankly said.  But I did not care for that; I
was quite able to bear the truth, and was glad to have him on any
conditions.




_A SMOKING PARLIAMENT._

[Sidenote: The opposite side of the street.]

One morning after our return, when breakfast was over, the Landlord,
followed by Maida, carried the parrot into the sunshine in front of
the house, and, sitting down on one of the iron seats, lighted a
cheroot.  As there was nothing on the cards on that special morning,
we all followed him, and, lifting his cheroot-case, helped ourselves.
The morning was warm and pleasant; and as no one had anything
particular to say, we smoked in silence and were happy.  The only one
who was occupied was Fellowes.  A newspaper had reached him by post
the evening before, and with its pages he was now busy.  Suddenly he
burst out laughing, and read out from a half column of _facetiæ_ how
an Irishman was anxious to discover the opposite side of the street,
and making inquiries at the passengers, was kept knocking about from
one side of the thoroughfare to the other, like a ball in a
racket-court.  Pat was told that the opposite side of the street was
"over there;" and when he got "over there," to his sore bewilderment
he discovered that the opposite side of the street, as if on purpose
to torment him, had slipped anchor and flitted away to the side on
which he had been making inquiries a few moments previously.  We all
laughed at Pat's intellectual perplexity; and shutting up the paper
Fellowes maintained, in the light cynical vein so common at present,
that the hunt after the opposite side of the street was no bad image
of the hunt after truth.  "Truth is always 'over there,'" he said;
"and when you get 'over there,' running extreme peril from cab and
dray in crossing, you find that it has gone back to the place from
which you started.  And so a man spends his life in chasing, and is
as far on at the end of it as he was at the beginning.  No man ever
yet reached truth, or the opposite side of the street."

"What creatures those Irish are, to be sure!" said the Landlord, as
he knocked a feather of white ash from the tip of his cheroot; "it
would be a dull world without them.  In India, a single Irishman at a
station is enough to banish blue devils.  The presence of an Irishman
anywhere keeps away low spirits, just as a cat in a house keeps away
rats and mice.  Every station should wear an Irishman, as an amulet
against despondency."

"I have lived a good deal both in Ireland and the Highlands," said
Pen, "and the intellectual differences between the two races have
often struck me as not a little curious.  They are of the same stock
originally, antiquarians say; and yet Ireland is a land of Goshen,
overflowing with the milk and honey of humour, whereas in every
quality of humour the Highlands are as dry as the Sahara.  Jokes
don't usually come farther north than the Grampians.  One or two are
occasionally to be found in Ross-shire over there; but they are far
from common, and their appearance is chronicled in the local prints
just as the appearance of the capercailzie is chronicled.  No joke
has yet been found strong-winged enough to cross the Kyles.  That's
odd, is it not?"

[Sidenote: Highland wit.]

"But have not the Highlanders wit?"

"Oh yes, plenty of it, but rather of the strenuous than of the
playful kind; their wit is born for the most part of anger or
contempt.  'There she goes,' sneered the Englishman, as Duncan
marched past in his tartans at a fair.'  'There she lies,' retorted
Duncan, as he knocked the scorner over at a blow.  'Coming from Hell,
Lauchlan,' quoth the shepherd, proceeding on a sacrament Sunday to
the Free Church, and meeting his friend coming from the Church of the
Establishment.  'Better than going to it, Rory,' retorted Lauchlan,
as he passed on.  Of that kind of rapid and sufficient retort, of the
power of returning a blow swiftly and with interest, the Highlander
is not in the least deficient.  But he differs from the Irishman in
this--that he has no eye for the pleasantly droll side of things; he
has no fun in him, no sense of the genially comic.  He laughs, but
there is generally a touch of scorn in his laughter, and it is almost
always directed against a man or a thing.  The Irishman's humorous
sense puts a stitch in the torn coat, ekes the scanty purse, boils
the peas with which he is doomed to limp graveward.  The bested
Highlander can draw no amelioration of condition from such a source.
The two races dine often scantily enough, but it is only the Irishman
that can sweeten his potatoes with point.  'They talk of hardships,'
said the poor Irish soldier as he lay down to sleep on the deck of
the transport--'They talk of hardships; but bedad this is the hardest
ship I ever was in in my life.'  No Highlander would have said
_that_.  And I believe that the joke made the hard plank all the
softer to the joker."

"And how do you account for this difference?"

"I can't account for it.  The two races springing from the same
stock, I rather think it is _un_accountable; unless, indeed, it be
traceable to climatic influence,--the soft, green, rainy Erin
producing riant and ebullient natures; the bare, flinty Highlands,
hard and austere ones.  There is one quality, however, in which your
Highlander can beat the world, with the exception, perhaps, of the
North American Indian."

[Sidenote: Pride of the Highlander.]

"What quality is that?"

"The quality of never exhibiting astonishment.  The Highlander would
as soon think of turning his back on his foe as of expressing
astonishment at anything.  Take a Highland lad from the wilds of Skye
or Harris and drop him in Cheapside, and he will retain the most
perfect equanimity.  He will have no word of marvel for the crowds
and the vehicles; the Thames Tunnel will not move him; he will look
on St Paul's without flinching.  The boy may have only ridden in a
peat-cart; but he takes a railway, the fields, hedges, bridges, and
villages spinning past, the howling gloom of the tunnels, the speed
that carries him in an hour over a greater extent of country than he
ever beheld in his life even from his highest hill-top, as the merest
matter of course, and unworthy of special remark."

"But the boy will be astonished all the same?"

"Of course he is.  The very hair of his soul is standing on end with
wonder and terror, but he will make no sign; he is too proud.  Will
he allow the Sassenach to triumph over him?  If he did, he would not
be his father's son.  He will not admit that earth holds anything
which he has not measured and weighed, and with which he is not
perfectly familiar.  When Chingachgook groans at the stake in the
hearing of his tormentors, the Highlander will express surprise."

"This disinclination to express astonishment, if it does exist to the
extent you say amongst the Highlanders, must arise from a solitary
mode of living.  People up in these Western Islands live on the
outskirts of existence, so to speak; and the knowledge that a big,
bustling, important world exists beyond their horizon 'intensifies
their individualism,' as the poet said the bracing air of old St
Andrews intensified his.  They are driven in on themselves; they are
always standing in an attitude of mental self-defence; they become
naturally self-contained and self-sustained."

[Sidenote: Chaff.]

"To some extent what you say is true; but the main reason of the
Highlander's calmness and self-command in the presence of new and
wonderful objects is pride.  To express astonishment at the sight of
an object implies previous ignorance of that object; and no
Highlander worthy of the name will admit that he is ignorant of
anything under the sun.  To come back, however, to what we were
speaking about a little while ago,--the differences between the
Highlanders and the Irish--the light-hearted Irishman delights to
'chaff' and to be 'chaffed;' the intenser and more serious-hearted
Highlander can neither do the one nor endure the other.  The bit of
badinage which an Irishman will laugh at and brush carelessly aside,
stings the Highlander like a gadfly.  When the Highlander is fencing,
the button is always coming off his foil, and the point is in your
arm before you know where you are.  If you enter into a gay
wit-combat with a Highlander, it is almost certain to have a serious
ending--just as the old Highland wedding-feasts, beginning with
pledged healths and universal three-times-three, ended in a brawl and
half-a-dozen men dirked."

"Chaff, in common with shoddy, the adulteration of food, and the
tailor-sweating system, is the product of an over-ripe civilisation.
It is the glimmer on the head of the dead cod-fish--putridity become
phosphorescent.  It can only thrive in large cities.  It is the
offspring of impudence and loquacity.  I am not astonished that the
Highlander cannot endure it; it is out of his way altogether.  He no
more can use it as a weapon of offence or defence than David could
wear the armour of Saul.  Chaff grows in the crowded street, not in
the wilderness.  It is the one thing we have brought into perfection
in these later days.  It is a weed that grows lustily, because it is
manured with our vices and our decomposed faiths.  I don't think the
worse of the Highlander because he cannot chaff or endure being
chaffed.  A London cabman would slang Socrates into silence in a
quarter of an hour."

"I suppose," said the Landlord, "when the Skye railway is finished we
poor Highlanders will get our jokes from the South, as we get our tea
and sugar.  It's a pity the Board of Directors did not mention that
special import in their prospectus.  The shares might have gone off
more rapidly, Pen!"

[Sidenote: Distrust of nature.]

"By the by," said Fellowes, turning to me, "you were speaking the
other day of the curious distrust of Nature, which you consider the
soul of all Celtic poetry and Celtic superstition, and you were
inclined to attribute that distrust and fear to the austerities of
climate and physical conformation, to the rain-cloud, and the
precipice, the sea-foam, and the rock.  I agree with you so far; but
I think you lay too much stress on climatic influences and the
haggardness of landscape.  That quick sense of two powers--of Nature
and Humanity, of man and a world outside of man--is the root of all
poetry."

"Of course it is.  To the Celt, Nature is malign, evil-disposed,
cruel; and his poetry is dreary as the strain of the night wind.  To
a Wordsworth, on the other hand, Nature is merciful and tranquil,
deep-thoughted and calm; and as a consequence his poetry is temperate
and humane, cool as a summer evening after the sun has set, and--with
all reverence be it spoken--sometimes tiresomely hortatory."

"Preaching is generally dull work, I fear; and Nature's sermons, even
when reported by Wordsworth, are as dull as some other sermons which
I have heard and read."

"But what I was going to say was, that the sense of malevolence in
Nature which you claim as the central fact of Celtic song and
superstition, is not so much the result of harsh climates and wild
environments as it is a stage in the mental progress of a race.  At
one stage of progress, all races fear Nature alike.  The South-Sea
Islander, whose bread-fruit falls into his mouth, fears Nature just
as much as the Greenlander, who hunts the white bear on the iceberg
and spears the walrus in the foam.  When once man has got the upper
hand of Nature, when he has made her his slave, when her winds sit in
his sails and propel his ships, when she yields him iron whereby she
is more firmly bound to his service, when she gives him coal
wherewith to cook food and to mitigate the rigours of her
winters--when man has got that length, the aboriginal fear dies out
of his heart, the weird Celtic bard goes, and Wordsworth comes.  Even
in the Lowlands, scraps of verses still exist--relics of long past
time, and shuddering yet with an obsolete terror--which are as full
of a sense of the malevolence of Nature as any Highland song or tune
you could produce."

"Let me hear one or two."

"Well, here is one which has been occasionally quoted, and which you
have in all likelihood come across in your reading:--

  'Says Tweed to Till,
  What gars ye rin sae still?
  Says Till to Tweed,
  Though ye rin wi' speed,
  An' I rin slaw,
  For ae man that ye droon,
  I droon twa.'"


"Yes, it is very striking, and hits the nail on the head exactly.
Sir Walter quotes it somewhere, I think.  I have little doubt that
these rhymes suggested to Scott his Voices of the River in the 'Lay,'
which is not that of the kelpie, a creature _in_ the river, but of
the river itself, in spiritual personation."

[Sidenote: "The dowie Dean."]

"That may be, or it may not.  But nowhere, that I know of, does that
sense of an evil will, and an alienation from man in nature, find a
profounder and more tragic, if withal a playful, half-humorous
expression than in this curious little Border fragment, unless,
indeed, it be beaten by this from Forfarshire.  Of the Dean stream,
wherein, while it was yet golden time with me, I slew many a fine
trout, there existed then a local rhyme of much less artistic and
literary completion than that relating the colloquy between Till and
Tweed, but, as I think, in its rudeness if anything even more
gruesome and grim--

  'The dowie Dean,
  It rins it lean,
  An' every seven year it gets ean.'"


"What a hideous _patois_," quoth the Landlord, "your Forfarshire
people must talk!  I can't say I understand a word of your rhymes.
Perhaps you will be good enough to translate."

Fellowes laughed.  "I'll do my best,--

  'The dowie (quietly dismal) Dean,
  It rins it lean, (its lane, lone, solitary,)
  An' every seven year it gets ean, (ane, one.)'

There it is now, in Scotch and English, for you.  What specially
strikes me in this rhyme is its quiet power of awe, its reflex of the
passionless calm, which, in scorn of contrast with the 'fever and
fret' and flux of human feeling, is the specially frightful thing in
Nature.  No need for the Dean to trouble itself to employ kelpies: it
runs quietly, gloomily on, feeding its fine red trout, and sure that
by the serene law of the case when the hour comes the man will, and
will drop to his moist doom, with no trouble given.  'It gets ean'
when the said 'ean' is due; and never having been disappointed, it
runs on 'dowie,' and not disturbing itself, as certain of its food in
season.  This it plainly reckons on, somewhat as year after year we
look for strawberries and new potatoes.  Then, the 'It rins it lean'
by itself, solitary, sullen, morose, as it were, and in the deeps of
its moody pools, meditating periodical unsocial mischiefs, past and
to come.  For haggard, imaginative suggestion, unless it be in the
'Twa Corbies,' I don't know where we can quite equal this.  Beside
this primal poetry of man's spiritual instinct of terror our later
verse-developments are the merest nothings."

While I kept repeating over to myself the rude triplet which was new
to me, and creeping as best I could into its fell significance, Pen
said--

"And I suppose, in point of fact, that your gloomy hermit and
murderer of a stream did get 'ean' every seven years.  Don't you
think only 'ean' in seven years a somewhat scant allowance?  Most
streams are as well supplied, I rather think."

"This septennial victim was in my boyhood considered by the natives
as the toll exacted by, and fated due of the river; and I have heard
the old people reckon back, over 'Jock Tamson that was drowned i' the
year ----, coming hame fou frae the fair;' 'Wull Smith,' fou of
course, also, who, fresh from 'the spring roup of grass parks at the
Hatton in the year ----,' was unexpectedly treated to more water than
he needed for his purposes of grog; and so on.  The old inhabitant
would then conclude with a grave--'It's weel kent the burn's nae
canny;' and a confident prediction, with half a shudder in his voice,
that 'ye'll see it winna be lang noo till it maun get anither.'  Any
sceptic was at once silenced with--'Weel-a-weel--say yer say o't the
noo, and jist bide till ye see.  But dinna ye be daunerin' doon 't
yersel', neist nicht ye're fou, or maybe, my braw man, _ye'll no
see_.  I'm no saying but ye'll mak' a bonny corp, giff ye downa swall
wi' the burn-water, yer stamack nae bein' used to't.'"

"Your theory is correct," said the Landlord, turning to Fellowes,
"that the fear of Nature is common to all races, and that as each
race advances in civilisation the terror dies out.  The kelpie, for
instance, always lives near a ford--bridge the stream, and the kelpie
dies.  Build a road across a haunted hill, and you banish the fairies
of the hill for ever.  The kelpie and the fairy are simply spiritual
personations of very rude and common dangers--of being carried away
by the current when you are attempting to cross a river--of being
lost when you are taking a short cut across hills on which there is
no track.  Abolish the dangers, and you at the same time abolish
those creatures, Fear and Fancy."

"Rhymes like these are the truest antiques, the most precious
articles of _virtu_.  What is the brooch or ring that the fair woman
wore, the brogues in which the shepherd travelled, the sword or
shield with which the warrior fought, compared with a triplet like
that, which is really an authentic bit of the terror that agitated
human hearts long ago?"

[Sidenote: The Skye railway.]

But while we were discussing the Dean flowing on solitarily, every
gurgle silenced with expectation as the hour drew near when its seven
years' hunger would be appeased, Pen and the Landlord had drifted
away to the subject of the Skye railway--this summer and the last a
favourite subject of discussion in the Island.

"You are a great friend of the railway?"

"Of course I am," said the Landlord.  "I consider the locomotive the
good wizard of our modern day.  Its whistle scares away filth,
mendicancy, and unthrift; ignorance and laziness perish in the glare
of its red eyes.  I have seen what it has done for the Hindoo, and I
know what it will do for the Islesman.  We hold India by our railways
to-day rather than by our laws or our armies.  The swart face of the
stoker is the first sign of the golden age that has become visible in
my time."

"What benefits do you expect the railway will bring with it to Skye?"

"It will bring us in closer contact with the South.  By the aid of
the railway we shall be enabled to send our stock to the southern
markets more rapidly, more cheaply, and in better condition, and as a
consequence we will obtain better prices.  By aid of the railway the
Islands will be opened up, our mineral treasures will be laid bare,
our marbles will find a market, the Skye apple and the Skye
strawberry will be known in Covent Garden, our fisheries will
flourish as they have never flourished before.  The railway will
bring southern capital to us, and humane southern influences.  The
railway will send an electric shock through the entire Island.
Everybody's pulse will be quickened; the turf-hut will disappear; and
the Skyeman will no longer be considered a lazy creature: which he is
not--he only seems so because he has never found a proper field for
the display of his activities.  There are ten chances to one that
your Skye lad, if left in Skye, will remain a fisherman or a
shepherd; but transplant him to Glasgow, Liverpool, or London, and he
not unfrequently blossoms into a merchant prince.  There were quick
and nimble brains under the shock heads of the lads you saw at my
school the other day, and to each of these lads the railway will open
a career great or small, or, at all events, the chance of one."

[Sidenote: The emigrants.]

When the Landlord had ceased speaking, a boy brought the post-bag and
laid it down on the gravel.  It was opened, and we got our
letters--the Landlord a number of Indian ones.  These he put into his
coat pocket.  One he tore open and read.  "Hillo, Pen!" he cried,
when he got to the end, "my emigrants are to be at Skeabost on
Thursday; we must go over to see them."  Then he marched into the
house, and in a little time thereafter our smoking parliament
dissolved.




_THE EMIGRANTS._

[Sidenote: Emigration.]

The English emigrant is prosaic; Highland and Irish emigrants are
poetical.  How is this?  The wild-rose lanes of England, one would
think, are as bitter to part from, and as worthy to be remembered at
the antipodes, as the wild coasts of Skye or the green hills of
Ireland.  Oddly enough, poet and painter turn a cold shoulder on the
English emigrant, while they expend infinite pathos on the emigrants
from Erin or the Highlands.  The Highlander has his Lochaber-no-more,
and the Irishman has the Countess of Gifford's pretty song.  The ship
in the offing, and the parting of Highland emigrants on the
sea-shore, has been made the subject of innumerable paintings; and
yet there is a sufficient reason for it all.  Young man and maid are
continually parting; but unless the young man and maid are lovers,
the farewell-taking has no attraction for the singer or the artist.
Without the laceration of love, without some tumult of sorrowful
emotion, a parting is the most prosaic thing in the world; with these
it is perhaps the most affecting.  "Good-bye" serves for the one; the
most sorrowful words of the poet are hardly sufficient for the other.
Rightly or wrongly, it is popularly understood that the English
emigrant is not mightily moved by regret when he beholds the shores
that gave him birth withdrawing themselves into the dimness of the
far horizon,--although, if true, why it should be so? and if false,
how it has crept into the common belief? are questions not easy to
answer.  If the Englishman is obtuse and indifferent in this respect,
the Highlander is not.  He has a cat-like love for locality.  He
finds it as difficult to part from the faces of the familiar hills as
from the faces of his neighbours.  In the land of his adoption he
cherishes the language, the games, and the songs of his childhood;
and he thinks with a continual sadness of the gray-green slopes of
Lochaber, and the thousand leagues of dim, heart-breaking sea tossing
between them and him.

The Celt clings to his birthplace, as the ivy nestles lovingly to its
wall; the Saxon is like the arrowy seeds of the dandelion, that
travel on the wind and strike root afar.  This simply means that the
one race has a larger imagination than the other, and an intenser
feeling of association.  Emigration is more painful to the Highlander
than it is to the Englishman--this poet and painter have
instinctively felt--and in wandering up and down Skye you come in
contact with this pain, either fresh or in reminiscence, not
unfrequently.  Although the member of his family be years removed,
the Skyeman lives in him imaginatively--just as the man who has
endured an operation is for ever conscious of the removed limb.  And
this horror of emigration--common to the entire Highlands--has been
increased by the fact that it has not unfrequently been a forceful
matter, that potent landlords have torn down houses and turned out
the inhabitants, have authorised evictions, have deported the
dwellers of entire glens.  That the landlords so acting have not been
without grounds of justification may in all probability be true.  The
deported villagers may have been cumberers of the ground, they may
have been unable to pay rent, they may have been slowly but surely
sinking into pauperism, their prospect of securing a comfortable
subsistence in the colonies may be considerable, while in their own
glens it maybe nil,--all this may be true; but to have your house
unroofed before your eyes, and made to go on board a ship bound for
Canada, even although the passage-money be paid for you, is not
pleasant.  An obscure sense of wrong is kindled in heart and brain.
It is just possible that what is for the landlord's interest may be
for yours also in the long run; but you feel that the landlord has
looked after his own interest in the first place.  He wished you
away, and he has got you away; whether you will succeed in Canada is
matter of dubiety.  The human gorge rises at this kind of forceful
banishment--more particularly the gorge of the banished!

When Thursday came, the Landlord drove us over to Skeabost, at which
place, at noon, the emigrants were to assemble.  He told me on the
way that some of the more sterile portions of his property were
over-populated, and that the people there could no more prosper than
trees that have been too closely planted.  He was consequently a
great advocate of emigration.  He maintained that force should never
be used, but advice and persuasion only; that when consent was
obtained, there should be held out a helping hand.  It was his idea
that if a man went all the way to Canada to oblige you, it was but
fair that you should make his journey as pleasant as possible, and
provide him employment, or, at all events, put him in the way of
obtaining it when he got there.  In Canada, consequently, he
purchased lands, made these lands over to a resident relative, and to
the charge of that relative, who had erected houses, and who had
trees to fell, and fields to plough, and cattle to look after, he
consigned his emigrants.  He took care that they were safely placed
on shipboard at Glasgow or Liverpool, and his relative was in waiting
when they arrived.  When the friendly face died on this side of the
Atlantic, a new friendly face dawned on them on the other.  With only
one class of tenant was he inclined to be peremptory.  He had no wish
to disturb in their turf hut the old man and woman who had brought up
a family; but when the grown-up son brought home a wife to the same
hut, he was down upon them, like a severing knife, at once.  The
young people could not remain there; they might go where they
pleased; he would rather they would go to Canada than anywhere, but
out of the old dwelling they must march.  And the young people
frequently jumped at the Landlord's offer--labour and good wages
calling sweetly to them from across the sea.  The Landlord had
already sent out a troop of emigrants, of whose condition and
prospects he had the most encouraging accounts, both from themselves
and others, and the second troop were that day to meet him at
Skeabost.

[Sidenote: The emigrants.]

When we got to Skeabost there were the emigrants, to the number
perhaps of fifty or sixty, seated on the lawn.  They were dressed as
was their wont on Sundays, when prepared for church.  The men wore
suits of blue or gray kelt, the women were wrapped for the most part
in tartan plaids.  They were decent, orderly, intelligent, and on the
faces of most was a certain resolved look, as if they had carefully
considered the matter, and had made up their minds to go through with
it.  They were of every variety of age too; the greater proportion
young men who had long years of vigorous work in them, who would fell
many a tree, and reap many a field before their joints stiffened:
women, fresh, comely, and strong, not yet mothers, but who would be
grandmothers before their term of activity was past.  In the party,
too, was a sprinkling of middle-aged people, with whom the world had
gone hardly, and who were hoping that Canada would prove kinder than
Skye.  They all rose and saluted the Landlord respectfully as we
drove down toward the house.  The porch was immediately made a hall
of audience.  The Landlord sat in a chair, Pen took his seat at the
table, and opened a large scroll-book in which the names of the
emigrants were inscribed.  One by one the people came from the lawn
to the porch and made known their requirements:--a man had not yet
made up his passage-money, and required an advance; a woman desired a
pair of blankets; an old man wished the Landlord to buy his cow,
which was about to calve, and warranted an excellent milker.  With
each of these the Landlord talked sometimes in Gaelic, more
frequently in English; entered into the circumstances of each, and
commended, rebuked, expostulated, as occasion required.  When an
emigrant had finished his story, and made his bargain with the
Landlord, Pen wrote the conditions thereof against his or her name in
the large scroll-book.  The giving of audience began about noon, and
it was evening before it was concluded.  By that time every emigrant
had been seen, talked with, and disposed of.  For each the way to
Canada was smoothed, and the terms set down by Pen in his
scroll-book; and each, as he went away was instructed to hold himself
in readiness on the 15th of the following month, for on that day they
were to depart.

When the emigrants were gone we smoked on the lawn, with the moon
rising behind us.  Next morning our party broke up.  Fellowes and the
Landlord went off in the mail to Inverness; the one to resume his
legal reading there, the other to catch the train for London.  Pen
went to Bracadale, where he had some business to transact preparatory
to going to Ireland, and I drove in to Portree to meet the
southward-going steamer, for vacation was over, and my Summer in Skye
had come to an end.




_HOMEWARDS._

Life is pleasant, but unfortunately one has got to die; vacation is
delightful, but unhappily vacations come to an end.  Mine had come to
an end; and sitting in the inn at Portree waiting for the
southward-going steamer, I began to count up my practical and ideal
gains, just as in dirty shillings and half-crowns a cobbler counts up
his of a Saturday night.

[Sidenote: Practical and ideal gains.]

In the first place, I was a gainer in health.  When I came up here a
month or two ago I was tired, jaded, ill at ease.  I put spots in the
sun, I flecked the loveliest blue of summer sky with bars of
darkness.  I felt the weight of the weary hours.  Each morning called
me as a slave-driver calls a slave.  In sleep there was no
refreshment, for in dream the weary day repeated itself yet more
wearily.  I was nervous, apprehensive of evil, irritable--ill, in
fact.  Now I had the appetite of an ostrich, I laughed at dyspepsia;
I could have regulated my watch by my pulse; and all the dusty,
book-lettered, and be-cobwebbed chambers of my brain had been tidied
and put to rights by the fairies Wonder, Admiration, Beauty,
Freshness.  Soul and body were braced alike--into them had gone
something of the peace of the hills and the strength of the sea.  I
had work to do, and I was able to enjoy work.  Here there was one
gain, very palpable and appreciable.  Then by my wanderings up and
down, I had made solitude for ever less irksome, because I had
covered the walls of my mind with a variety of new pictures.  The
poorest man may have a picture-gallery in his memory which he would
not exchange for the Louvre.  In the picture-gallery of my memory
there hung Blaavin, the Cuchullins, Loch Coruisk, Dunsciach, Duntulm,
Lord Macdonald's deer-forest, Glen Sligachan, and many another place
and scene besides.  Here was a gain quite as palpable and appreciable
as the other.  The pictures hung in the still room of memory, and to
them I could turn for refreshment in dull or tedious hours; and
carrying that still room with its pictures about with me wherever I
went, I could enter and amuse myself at any time--whether waiting at
a station for a laggard train, or sitting under a dull preacher on a
hot Sunday afternoon.  Then, again I had been brought in contact with
peculiar individuals, which is in itself an intellectual stimulus, in
so far as one is continually urged to enter into, explore, and
understand them.  What a new variety of insect is to an entomologist,
that a new variety of man is to one curious in men, who delights to
brood over them, to comprehend them, to distinguish the shades of
difference that exist between them, and, if possible, sympathetically
to be them.  This sympathy enables a man in his lifetime to lead
fifty lives.  I don't think in the south I shall ever find the
counterparts of John Kelly, Lachlan Roy, or Angus-with-the-dogs.  I
am certain I shall never encounter a nobler heart than that which has
beat for so long a term in the frame of Mr M'Ian, nor a wiser or
humaner brain than the Landlord's.  Even to have met the tobacco-less
man was something on which speculation could settle.  Then, in the
matter of gain, one may fairly count up the being brought into
contact with songs, stories, and superstitions; for through means of
these one obtains access into the awe and terror that lay at the
heart of that ancient Celtic life which is fast disappearing now.
Old songs illustrate the spiritual moods of a people, just as old
weapons, agricultural implements, furniture, and domestic dishes,
illustrate the material conditions.  I delighted to range through
that spiritual antiquarian museum, and to take up and examine the
bits of human love, and terror, and hate, that lay fossilised there.
All these things were gains: and waiting at Portree for the steamer,
and thinking over them all, I concluded that my Summer in Skye had
not been misspent; and that no summer can be misspent anywhere,
provided the wanderer brings with him a quick eye, an open ear, and a
sympathetic spirit.  It is the cunningest harper that draws the
sweetest music from the harp-string; but no musician that ever played
has exhausted all the capacities of his instrument--there is more to
take for him who can take.

[Sidenote: The steamer.]

The _Clansman_ reached Portree Bay at eleven P.M., and I went on
board at once and went to bed.  When I awoke next morning, the
engines were in full action, and I could hear the rush of the water
past my berth.  When I got on deck we were steaming down the Sound of
Raasay; and when breakfast-time arrived, it needed but a glance to
discover that autumn had come and that the sporting season was
well-nigh over.  A lot of sheep were penned up near the bows,
amidships were piles of wool, groups of pointers and setters were
scattered about, and at the breakfast-table were numerous sportsmen
returning to the south, whose conversation ran on grouse-shooting,
salmon-fishing, and deer-stalking.  While breakfast was proceeding
you saw everywhere sun-browned faces, heard cheery voices, and
witnessed the staying of prodigious appetites.  Before these stalwart
fellows steaks, chops, platefuls of ham and eggs disappeared as if by
magic.  The breakfast party, too, consisted of all orders and degrees
of men.  There were drovers going to, or returning from markets;
merchants from Stornoway going south; a couple of Hebridean
clergymen, one of whom said grace; several military men of frank and
hearty bearing; an extensive brewer; three members of Parliament, who
had entirely recovered from the fatigues of legislation; and a tall
and handsome English Earl of some repute on the turf.  Several
ladies, too, dropped in before the meal was over.  We were all
hungry, and fed like Homer's heroes.  The brewer was a valiant
trencher-man, and the handsome Earl entombed cold pie to an extent
unprecedented in my experience.  The commissariat on board the
Highland steamers is plentiful and of quality beyond suspicion; and
the conjunction of good viands, and appetites whetted by the
sea-breeze, results in a play of knife and fork perfectly wonderful
to behold.  When breakfast was over we all went up stairs; the
smoking men resorted to the hurricane deck, the two clergymen read,
the merchants from Stornoway wandered uneasily about as if seeking
some one to whom they could attach themselves, and the drovers smoked
short pipes amidships, and talked to the passengers there, and when
their pipes were out went forward to examine the sheep.  The morning
and forenoon wore away pleasantly--the great ceremony of dinner was
ahead, and drawing nearer every moment--that was something--and then
there were frequent stoppages, and the villages on the shore, the
coming and going of boats with cargo and passengers, the throwing out
of empty barrels here, the getting in of wool there, were incidents
quite worthy of the regard of idle men leading for the time being a
mere life of the senses.  We stopped for a couple of hours in
Broadford Bay--we stopped at Kyleakin--we stopped at Balmacara; and
the long looked-for dinner was served after we had past Kyle-Rhea,
and were gliding down into Glenelg.  For some little time previously
savoury steams had assailed our nostrils.  We saw the stewards
descending into the cabin with covered dishes, and at the first sound
of the bell the hurricane deck, crowded a moment before, was left
entirely empty.  The captain took his seat at the head of the table
with a mighty roast before him, the clergyman said grace--somewhat
lengthily, I fear, in the opinion of most--the covers were lifted
away by deft waiters, and we dined that day at four as if we had not
previously breakfasted at eight, and lunched at one.  Dinner was
somewhat protracted; for as we had nothing to do after the ladies
went, we sat over cheese and wine, and then talk grew animated over
whisky-punch.  When I went on deck again we had passed Knock, and
were steaming straight for Armadale.  The Knoydart hills were on the
one side, the low shores of Sleat, patched here and there by strips
of cultivation, on the other; and in a little we saw the larch
plantations of Armadale, and the castle becoming visible through the
trees on the lawn.

[Sidenote: Loch Nevis.]

In autumn the voyage to the south is lengthened by stoppages, and
frequently the steamer has to leave her direct course and thread long
inland running lochs to take wool on board.  These stoppages and
wanderings out of the direct route would be annoying if you were
hurrying south to be married, or if you were summoned to the deathbed
of a friend from whom you had expectations; but as it is holiday with
you, and as every divergence brings you into unexpected scenery, they
are regarded rather as a pleasure than anything else.  At Armadale we
stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then struck directly across the
Sound of Sleat, and sailed up the windings of Loch Nevis.  When we
reached the top there was an immense to do-on the beach; some three
or four boats laden with wool were already pulling out towards the
steamer, which immediately lay to and let off noisy steam; men were
tumbling bales of wool into the empty boats that lay at the stony
pier, and to the pier laden carts were hurrying down from the
farm-house that stood remote.  The wool boats came on either side of
the steamer; doors were opened in the bulwarks, to these doors steam
cranes were wheeled, and with many a shock of crank and rattle of
loosened chain, the bales were hoisted on deck and consigned to the
gloomy recesses of the hold.  As soon as a boat was emptied, a laden
one pulled out to take its place; the steam cranes were kept
continually jolting and rattling, and in the space of a couple of
hours a considerable amount of business had been done.  On the
present occasion the transference of wool from the boats to the hold
of the steamer occupied a longer time than was usual; sunset had come
in crimson and died away to pale gold and rose, and still the laden
boats came slowly on, still storms of Gaelic execration surged along
the sides of the ship, and still the steam cranes were at their noisy
work.  The whole affair, having by this time lost all sense of
novelty, was in danger of becoming tiresome, but in the fading light
the steward had lighted up the saloon into hospitable warmth and
glow, and then the bell rang for tea.  In a moment all interest in
the wool boats had come to an end, the passengers hurried below, and
before the tinklings of cup and saucer had ceased, the last bale of
wool had been transferred from the boats alongside to the hold, and
the _Clansman_ had turned round, and was softly gliding down Loch
Nevis.

[Sidenote: Arisaig.]

A lovely, transparent autumn night arched above us, a young moon and
single star by her side, when we reached Arisaig.  By this time the
ladies had retired, and those of the gentlemen who remained on deck
were wrapped in plaids, each shadowy figure brought out more keenly
by the red tip of a cigar.  The entrance into Arisaig is difficult,
and the _Clansman_ was put on half steam.  The gentlemen were
requested to leave the hurricane-deck, and there the captain
stationed himself, while a couple of men were sent to the bows, and
three or four stationed at the wheel.  Slowly the large vessel moved
onward, with low black reefs of rocks on either side, like smears of
dark colour, but perfectly soft and tender in outline; and every here
and there we could see the dark top of a rock peering out of the dim
sea like a beaver's head.  From these shadowy reefs, as the vessel
moved on, the sea-birds were awaked from their slumbers, and
strangely sweet, and liquid as flute-notes, were their cries and
signals of alarm.  Every now and again, too, with a sort of weary
sigh, a big wave came heaving in, and broke over the dark reefs in
cataracts of ghostly silver; and in the watery trouble and movement
that followed, the moon became a well of moving light, and the star a
quivering sword-blade.  The captain stood alone on the hurricane
deck, the passengers leaned against the bulwarks watching rock and
sea, and listening to the call and re-call of disturbed mews, when
suddenly there was a muffled shout from the outlook at the bows, the
captain shouted "Port! port! hard!" and away went the wheel spinning,
the stalwart fellows toiling at the spokes, and the ship slowly
falling off.  After a little while there was another noise at the
bows, the captain shouted "Starboard!" and the wheel was rapidly
reversed.  We were now well up the difficult channel; and looking
back we could see a perfect intricacy of reefs and dim single rocks
behind, and a fading belt of pallor wandering amongst them, which
told the track of the ship--a dreadful place to be driven upon on a
stormy night, when the whole coast would be like the mouth of a
wounded boar--black tusks and churning foam.  After a while, however,
a low line of coast became visible, then a light broke upon it; and
after a few impatient turns of the paddles we beheld a dozen boats
approaching, with lights at their bows.  These were the Arisaig
boats, laden with cargo.  At sight of them the captain left the
hurricane deck, the anchor went away with a thundering chain, the
passengers went to bed, and, between asleep and awake, I could hear
half the night the trampling of feet, the sound of voices, and the
jolt of the steam-cranes, as the Arisaig goods were being hoisted on
deck and stowed away.

[Sidenote: Ardnamurchan.]

I was up early next morning.  The sky was clear, the wind blowing on
shore, and the bright, living, rejoicing sea came seething in on the
rocky intricacies through which we slowly sailed.  Skye was perfectly
visible, the nearer shores dark and green; farther back the dim
Cuchullins, standing in the clouds.  Eig rose opposite, with its
curiously-shaped sciur; Muck lay ahead.  The _Clansman_ soon reached
the open sea, and we began to feel the impulse of the Atlantic.  By
the time the passengers began to appear on deck the ship was lurching
heavily along towards the far-stretching headland of Ardnamurchan.
It was difficult to keep one's feet steady--more difficult to keep
steady one's brain.  Great glittering watery mounds came heaving on,
to wash with unavailing foam the rocky coast; and amongst these the
steamer rolled and tossed and groaned, its long dark pennon of smoke
streaming with the impulse of the sea.  The greater proportion of the
passengers crawled amidships--beside the engines and the cook's
quarters, which were redolent with the scent of herrings frying for a
most unnecessary breakfast--for there the motion was least felt.  To
an unhappy landsman that morning the whole world seemed topsy-turvy.
There was no straight line to be discovered anywhere; everything
seemed to have changed places.  Now you beheld the steersman against
the sky on the crest of an airy acclivity, now one bulwark was buried
in surge, now the other, and anon the sheep at the bows were brought
out against a foamy cataract.  But with all this turmoil and dancing
and rolling, the _Clansman_ went swiftly on, and in due time we were
off the Ardnamurchan lighthouse.  Here we rolled and tossed in an
unpleasant manner,--the smitten foam springing to the top of the
rocks and falling back in snowy sheets,--and seemed to make but
little progress.  Gradually, however, the lighthouse began to draw
slowly behind us, slowly we rounded the rocky buttress, slowly the
dark shores of Mull drew out to sea, and in a quarter of an hour,
with dripping decks and giddy brains, we had passed from the great
bright heave and energy of the Atlantic to the quiet waters of Loch
Sunart; and, sheltered by Mull, were steaming towards Tobermory.

The first appearance of Tobermory is prepossessing; but further
acquaintance is if possible to be eschewed.  As the _Clansman_ steams
into the bay, the little town, with its half circle of white houses,
backed by hill terraces on which pretty villas are perched, and
flanked by sombre pine plantations, is a pleasant picture, and takes
heart and eye at once.  As you approach, however, your admiration is
lessened, and when you go ashore quite obliterated.  It has a "most
ancient and fish-like smell," and all kinds of refuse float in the
harbour.  Old ocean is a scavenger at Tobermory, and is as dirty in
his habits as Father Thames himself.  The houses look pretty and
clean when seen from the steamer's deck, but on a nearer view they
deteriorate and become squalid, and several transform themselves into
small inns, suggestive of the worst accommodation and the fiercest
alcohol.  The steamer is usually detained at Tobermory for a couple
of hours, and during all that time there is a constant noise of
lading and unlading.  You become tired of the noise and tumult, and
experience a sense of relief when steam is got up again, and with
much backing and turning and churning of dirty harbour water into
questionable foam, the large vessel works its way through the
difficult channel, and slides calmly down the Sound of Mull.

[Sidenote: The Sound of Mull.]

Gliding down that magnificent Sound, the "Lord of the Isles" is in
your memory, just as the "Lady of the Lake" is in your memory at Loch
Katrine.  The hours float past in music.  All the scenes of the noble
poem rise in vision before you.  You pass the entrance to the
beautiful Loch Aline; you pass Ardtornish Castle on the Morven shore,
where the Lords of the Isles held their rude parliaments and
discussed ways and means; while opposite, Mull draws itself grandly
back into lofty mountains.  Further down you see Duart Castle, with
the rock peering above the tide, on which Maclean exposed his wife--a
daughter of Argyle's--to the throttling of the waves.  After passing
Duart, Mull trends away to the right, giving you a space of open
sun-bright sea, while on the left the Linnhe Loch stretches toward
Fort-William and Ben Nevis.  Straight before you is the green
Lismore--long a home of Highland learning--and passing it, while the
autumn day is wearing towards afternoon, you reach Oban, sheltered
from western waves by the island of Kerrera.

[Sidenote: The passengers.]

The longest delay during the passage is at Oban, but then we had
dinner there, which helped to kill the time in a pleasant way.  The
_Clansman_ had received a quantity of cargo at Tobermory, at Loch
Aline a flock of sheep were driven on board, goods were taken in
plentifully at other places in the Sound at which we touched, and
when we had received all the stuffs waiting for us at Oban, the
vessel was heavily laden.  The entire steerage deck was a bellowing
and bleating mass of black cattle and sheep, each "parcel" divided
from the other by temporary barriers.  The space amidships was a
chaos of barrels and trunks and bales of one kind or another, and
amongst these the steerage passengers were forced to dispose
themselves.  Great piles of wooden boxes containing herring were laid
along the cabin deck, so that if a man were disposed to walk about it
behoved him to take care of his footsteps.  But who cared!  We were
away from Oban now, the wind was light, the sun setting behind us,
and the bell ringing for tea.  It was the last meal we were to have
together, and through some consciousness of this the ice of reserve
seemed to melt, and the passengers to draw closer to each other.  The
Hebridean clergymen unbent; the handsome earl chatted to his
neighbours as if his forehead had never known the golden clasp of the
coronet; the sporting men stalked their stags over again; the members
of Parliament discussed every subject except the affairs of the
nation; the rich brewer joked; the merchants from Stornoway laughed
immoderately; while the cattle-dealers listened with awe.  Tea was
prolonged after this pleasant fashion, and then, while the Stornoway
merchants and the cattle-dealers solaced themselves with a tumbler of
punch, the majority of the other passengers went up stairs to the
hurricane deck to smoke.  What a boon is tobacco to the modern
Englishman!  It stands in place of wife, child, profession, and the
interchange of ideas.  With a pipe in your mouth indifference to your
neighbour is no longer churlish, and silent rumination becomes the
most excellent companionship.  The English were never very great
talkers, but since Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the Virginian weed
they have talked less than ever.  Smoking parliaments are always
silent--and as in silence there is wisdom, they are perhaps more
effective than the talking ones.  Mr Carlyle admired those still
smoke-wreathed Prussian assemblies of Frederick's, and I am
astonished that he does not advocate the use of the weed in our
English Witenagemote.  Slowly the night fell around the smokers, the
stars came out in the soft sky, as the air grew chill, and one by one
they went below.  Then there was more toddy-drinking, some playing at
chess, one or two attempts at letter-writing, and at eleven o'clock
the waiters cleared the tables, and began to transform the saloon
into a large sleeping apartment.

[Sidenote: The Mull of Cantyre.]

I climbed up to my berth and fell comfortably asleep.  I must have
been asleep for several hours, although of the lapse of time I was of
course unconscious, when gradually the horror of nightmare fell upon
me.  This horror was vague and formless at first, but gradually it
assumed a definite shape.  I was Mazeppa, they had bound me on the
back of the desert-born, and the mighty brute, maddened with pain and
terror, was tearing along the wilderness, crashing through forests,
plunging into streams, with the howling of wolves close behind and
coming ever nearer.  At last, when the animal cleared a ravine at a
bound, I burst the bondage of my dream.  For a moment I could not
understand where I was.  The sleeping apartment seemed to have fallen
on one side, then it righted itself, but only to fall over on the
other, then it made a wild plunge forward as if it were a living
thing and had received a lash.  The ship was labouring heavily, I
heard the voices of the sailors flying in the wind, I felt the shock
of solid, and the swish of broken seas.  In such circumstances sleep,
for me at least, was impossible, so I slipped out of bed, and,
steadying myself for a favourable moment, made a grab at my clothes.
With much difficulty I dressed, with greater difficulty I got into my
boots, and then I staggered on deck.  Holding on by the first
support, I was almost blinded by the glare of broken seas.  From a
high coast against which the great waves rushed came the steady glare
of a lighthouse, and by that token I knew we were "on" the Mull of
Cantyre.  The ship was fuming through a mighty battle of tides.
Shadowy figures of steerage passengers were to be seen clinging here
and there.  One--a young woman going to Glasgow as a housemaid, as
she afterwards told me--was in great distress, was under the
impression that we were all going to the bottom, and came to me for
comfort.  I quieted her as best I could, and procured her a seat.
Once when the ship made a wild lurch, and a cloud of spray came
flying over the deck, she exclaimed to a sailor who was shuffling
past wearing a sou'-wester and canvas overalls, "O sailor, is't ever
sae bad as this?"  "As bad as this," said the worthy, poising himself
on the unsteady deck, "as bad as this!  Lod, ye sud jist a seen oor
last vi'age.  There was only three besides mysel o' the ship's crew
able to haud on by a rape."  Delivering himself of this scrap of
dubious comfort, the sailor shuffled onward.  Happily the turmoil was
not of long duration.  In an hour we had rounded the formidable Mull,
had reached comparatively smooth water, and with the lights of
Campbelton behind the pallid glare of furnaces seen afar on the
Ayrshire coast, and the morning beginning to pencil softly the east,
I went below again, and slept till we reached Greenock.




_GLASGOW._

The idea of Glasgow in the ordinary British mind is probably
something like the following:--"Glasgow, believed by the natives to
be the second city of the empire, is covered by a smoky canopy
through which rain penetrates, but which is impervious to sunbeam.
It is celebrated for every kind of industrial activity: it is fervent
in business six days of the week, and spends the seventh in hearing
sermon and drinking toddy.  Its population consists of a great
variety of classes.  The 'operative,' quiet and orderly enough while
plentifully supplied with provisions, becomes a Chartist when hungry,
and extracts great satisfaction in listening to orators--mainly from
the Emerald Isle--declaiming against a bloated aristocracy.  The
'merchant prince,' known to all ends of the earth, and subject
sometimes to strange vagaries; at one moment he is glittering away
cheerily in the commercial heaven, the next he has disappeared, like
the lost Pleiad, swallowed up of night for ever.  The history of
Glasgow may be summed up in one word--cotton; its deity, gold; its
river, besung by poets, a sewer; its environs, dust and ashes; the
_gamin_ of its wynds and closes less tinctured by education than a
Bosjesman; a creature that has never heard a lark sing save perhaps
in a cage outside a window in the sixth story, where a consumptive
seamstress is rehearsing the 'Song of the Shirt,' 'the swallows with
their sunny backs' omitted."  Now this idea of Glasgow is entirely
wrong.  It contains many cultivated men and women.  It is the seat of
an ancient university.  Its cathedral is the noblest in Scotland; and
its statue of Sir John Moore the finest statue in the empire.  It is
not in itself an ugly city, and it has many historical associations.
Few cities are surrounded by prettier scenery; and of late years it
has produced two books--both authors dead now--one of which mirrors
the old hospitable, social life of the place, while the other
pleasantly sketches the interesting localities in its neighbourhood.
Dr Strang, in his "Clubs of Glasgow," brings us in contact with the
old jolly times; and Mr Macdonald, in his "Rambles round Glasgow,"
visits, stick in hand, every spot of interest to be found for miles
around, knows every ruin and its legend, can tell where each unknown
poet has lived and died, and has the martyrology of the district at
his fingers' ends.  So much for the books; and now a word or two
concerning their authors.

[Sidenote: Dr Strang.]

Dr Strang was long chamberlain to the city of Glasgow; for more than
half a century he saw it growing around him, increasing in
population, wealth, and political importance, as during the same
period no other British city had increased; and as he knew everything
concerning that growth, he not unnaturally took in it the deepest
pride.  He could remember the old times, the old families, the old
buildings, the old domestic habits; and when well-stricken in years,
it pleased him to recall the matters which he remembered, and to
contrast them with what he saw on every side.  I think that on the
whole he preferred the old Glasgow of his boyhood to the new Glasgow
of his age.  All his life he had a turn for literature; in his
earlier day he had written stories and sketches, in which he mirrored
as vividly as he could the older aspects of the city; and as, along
with this turn for writing, he had that antiquarian taste which has
been a characteristic of almost every distinguished Scotsman since
Sir Walter, while his years and his official position gave him
opportunities of gratifying it, he knew Glasgow almost as well as the
oldest inhabitant, who has been a bailie and cognisant of all
secrets, knows his native village.  He was an admirable _cicerone_;
his mind was continually pacing up and down the local last century,
knowing every person he met as he knew his contemporary
acquaintances; and when he spoke of the progress of Glasgow, he spoke
proudly, as if he were recounting the progress of his own son.
[Sidenote: Glasgow clubs.] During the last years of his life, it
struck him that he might turn his local knowledge to account.  The
Doctor was a humorist; he was fond of anecdote, had a very proper
regard for good eating and drinking; he remembered regretfully the
rum-punch of his youth, and he was deeply versed in the histories of
the Glasgow Clubs.  In a happy hour, it occurred to him that if he
told the story of those clubs--described the professors, the
merchants, the magistrates, the local bigwigs, the clergymen, the
rakes, who composed their memberships--he would go to the very core
and essence of old Glasgow Society; while in the course of his work
he would find opportunities of using what antiquarian knowledge he
had amassed concerning old houses, old social habits, the state of
trade at different periods, and the like.  The idea was a happy one;
the Doctor set to work valiantly, and in course of time in a spacious
volume, with suitable index and appendix, the "Clubs of Glasgow" was
before the world.  Never, perhaps, has so good a book been so badly
written.  The book is interesting, but interesting in virtue of the
excellence of the material, not of the literary execution.  Yet, on
the whole, it may fairly be considered sufficient.  You open its
pages, and step from the Present into the Past.  You are in the
Trongate, through which Prince Charles has just ridden.  You see
Virginian merchants pacing to and fro with scarlet cloaks and
gold-headed sticks; you see belle and beau walk a minuet in the Old
Assembly-Room; you see flushed Tom and Jerry lock an asthmatic
"Charlie" in his sentry-box, and roll him down a declivity into the
river--all gone long ago, like the rum-punch which they brewed, like
the limes with which they flavoured it!

[Sidenote: Hugh Macdonald.]

Mr Macdonald is Dr Strang's antithesis, and yet his complement.  The
one worked in antiquarianism and statistics; the other in
antiquarianism and poetry.  The one loved the old houses, the old
hedges, the old churchyards within the city; the other loved these
things without the city and miles away from it--and so between them
both we have the district very fairly represented.  Mr Macdonald was
a man of genius, a song-writer, an antiquary, a devout lover of beast
and bird, of snowdrop and lucken-gowan, of the sun setting on
Bothwell Bank, of the moon shining down on Clydesdale barley fields.
He was in his degree one of those poets who have, since Burns's time,
made nearly every portion of Scotland vocal.  Just as Tannahill has
made Gleniffer hills greener by his songs, as Thorn of Inverury has
lent a new interest to the banks of the Dee, as Scott Riddell has
added a note to the Border Minstrelsy, has Mr Macdonald taken poetic
possession of the country around Glasgow.  Neither for him nor for
any of his compeers can the title of great poet be claimed.  These
men are local poets; but if you know and love the locality, you
thankfully accept the songs with which they have associated them.  If
the scenery of a shire is gentle, it is fitting that the poet of the
shire should possess a genius to match.  Great scenes demand great
poems; simple scenes, simple ones.  Coleridge's hymn in the Vale of
Chamouni is a noble performance, but out of place if uttered in a
Lanarkshire glen where sheep are feeding, and where you may search
the horizon in vain for an elevation of five hundred feet.  Mr
Macdonald could not have approached Coleridge's hymn had he been
placed in Chamouni; but he has done justice to the scenery that
surrounded him--made the ivies of Crookston more sombre with his
verse, and yet more splendid the westward-running Clyde in which the
sun is setting.

He was one of those, too--of whom Scotchmen are specially proud--who,
born in humble circumstances, and with no aid from college, and often
but little from school, do achieve some positive literary result, and
recognition more or less for the same.  He was born in one of the
eastern districts

of Glasgow, lived for some time in the Island of Mull, in the house
of a relative--for, as his name imports, he was a pure Celt--and from
his sires he drew song, melancholy, and superstition.  The
superstition he never could completely shake off.  He could laugh at
a ghost story, could deck it out with grotesque or humorous
exaggeration; but the central terror glared upon him through all
disguises, and, hearing or relating, his blood was running chill the
while.  Returning to his native city, he was entered an apprentice in
a public manufactory, and here it was--fresh from ruined castle, mist
folding on the Morven Hills, tales told by mountain shepherd or
weather-beaten fisherman of corpse lights glimmering on the sea; with
English literature in which to range and take delight in golden
shreds of leisure; and with everything, past Highland experience and
present dim environment, beginning to be overspread by the "purple
light of love"--that Mr Macdonald became a poet.  Considering the
matter now, it may be said that his circumstances were not
unfavourable to the development of the poetic spirit.  [Sidenote:
Glasgow poets.] Glasgow at the period spoken of could boast of her
poets.  Dugald Moore was writing odes to "Earthquake" and "Eclipse,"
and getting quizzed by his companions.  Motherwell, the author of
"Jeanie Morrison," was editor of the _Courier_, and in its columns
fighting manfully against Reform.  Alexander Rodger, who disgusted
Sir Walter by the publication of a wicked and witty welcome--singular
in likeness and contrast to the Magician's own--on the occasion of
the visit of his gracious Majesty George IV. to Edinburgh, was
filling the newspapers of the west with satirical verses, and getting
himself into trouble thereby.  Nay, more, this same Alexander Rodger,
either then or at a later period, held a post in the manufactory in
which Mr Macdonald was apprentice.  Nor was the eye without
education, or memory without associations to feed upon.  Before the
door of this manufactory stood Glasgow Green, the tree yet putting
forth its leaves under which Prince Charles stood when he reviewed
his shoeless Highland host before marching to Falkirk.  Near the
window, and to be seen by the boy every time he lifted his head from
work, flowed the Clyde, bringing recollections of the red ruins of
Bothwell Castle, where the Douglases dwelt, and the ivy-muffled walls
of Blantyre Priory where the monks prayed; carrying imagination with
it as it flowed seaward to Dumbarton Castle, with its Ossianic
associations, and recalling, as it sank into ocean, the night when
Bruce from his lair in Arran watched the beacon broadening on the
Carrick shore.  And from the same windows, looking across the stream,
he could see the long straggling burgh of Rutherglen, with the church
tower which saw the bargain struck with Menteith for the betrayal of
Wallace, standing eminent above the trees.  And when we know that the
girl who was afterwards to become his wife was growing up there,
known and loved at the time, one can fancy how often his eyes dwelt
on the little town, with church tower and chimney, fretting the
sky-line.  And when he rambled--and he always _did_
ramble--inevitably deeper impulses would come to him.  Northward from
Glasgow a few miles, at Rob Royston, where Wallace was betrayed,
lived Walter Watson, whose songs have been sung by many who never
heard his name.  Seven miles southward from the city lay Paisley in
its smoke, and beyond that, Gleniffer Braes--scarcely changed since
Tannahill walked over them on summer evenings.  [Sidenote: A poetic
education.] South-east stretched the sterile district of the Mearns,
with plovers, and heather, and shallow, glittering lakes; and beyond,
in a green crescent embracing the sea, lay a whole Ayrshire, fiery
and full of Burns, every stock and stone passionate with him, his
daisy blooming in every furrow, every stream as it ran seaward
mourning for Highland Mary--and when night fell, in every tavern in
the county the blithest lads in Christendie sitting over their cups,
and flouting the horned moon hanging in the window pane.  And then,
to complete a poetic education, there was Glasgow herself--black
river flowing between two glooms of masts--the Trongate's all-day
roar of traffic, and at night the faces of the hurrying crowds
brought out keenly for a moment in the light of the shop windows--the
miles of stony streets, with statues in the squares and open
spaces--the grand Cathedral, filled once with Popish shrines and
rolling incense, on one side of the ravine, and on the other, John
Knox on his pillar, impeaching it with outstretched arm that clasps a
Bible.  And ever as the darkness came, the district north-east and
south of the city was filled with shifting glare and gloom of furnace
fires; instead of night and its privacy, the splendour of towering
flame brought to the inhabitants of the eastern and southern streets
a fluctuating scarlet day, piercing nook and cranny as searchingly as
any sunlight--making a candle needless to the housewife as she darned
stockings for the children, and turning to a perfect waste of charm,
the blush on a sweetheart's cheek.  With all these things around him,
Mr Macdonald set himself sedulously to work, and whatever may be the
value of his poetic wares, plenty of excellent material lay around
him on every side.

[Sidenote: Hugh Macdonald.]

To him all these things had their uses.  He had an excellent literary
digestion, capable of extracting nutriment from the toughest
materials.  He assiduously made acquaintance with English literature
in the evenings, gradually taking possession of the British
essayists, poets, and historians.  During this period, too, he
cherished republican feelings, and had his own speculations
concerning the regeneration of the human race.  At this time the
splendid promise of Chartism made glorious the horizon, and
Macdonald, like so many of his class, conceived that the "five pints"
were the _avant-couriers_ of the millennium.  For him, in a very
little while, Chartism went out like a theatrical sun.  He no longer
entertained the idea that he could to any perceptible extent aid in
the regeneration of the race.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether, in his
latter days, he cared much whether the race would ever be
regenerated.  Man was a rascal, had ever been a rascal, and a rascal
he would remain till the end of the chapter.  He was willing to let
the world wag, certified that the needful thing was to give regard to
his own private footsteps.  His own personal hurt made him forget the
pained world.  He was now fairly embarked on the poetic tide.  His
name, appended to copies of verses, frequently appeared in the local
prints, and gained no small amount of local notice.  At intervals
some song-bird of his brain of stronger pinion or gayer plumage than
usual would flit from newspaper to newspaper across the country; nay,
several actually appeared beyond the Atlantic, and, not unnoticed by
admiring eyes, perched on a broadsheet here and there, as they made
their way from the great cities towards the Western clearings.  All
this time, too, he was an enthusiastic botanist in book and field, a
lover of the open country and the blowing wind, a scorner of fatigue,
ready any Saturday afternoon when work was over for a walk of twenty
miles, if so be he might look on a rare flower or an ivied ruin.  And
the girl living over in Rutherglen was growing up to womanhood, each
charm of mind and feature celebrated for many a year in glowing
verse; and her he, poet-like, married--the household plenishing of
the pair, love and hope, and a disregard of inconveniences arising
from straitened means.  The happiest man in the world--but a widower
before the year was out!  With his wife died many things, all buried
in one grave.  Republican dreamings and schemes for the regeneration
of the world faded after that.  Here is a short poem, full of the
rain cloud and the yellow leaf, which has reference to his feelings
at the time--

  Gorgeous are thy woods, October!
    Clad in glowing mantles sear;
  Brightest tints of beauty blending
  Like the west, when day's descending,
    Thou'rt the sunset of the year.

  "Fading flowers are thine, October!
    Droopeth sad the sweet blue-bell;
  Gone the blossoms April cherish'd--
  Violet, lily, rose, all perish'd--
    Fragrance fled from field and dell.

  "Songless are thy woods, October!
    Save when redbreast's mournful lay
  Through the calm gray morn is swelling,
  To the list'ning echoes telling
    Tales of darkness and decay.

  "Saddest sounds are thine, October!
    Music of the falling leaf
  O'er the pensive spirit stealing,
  To its inmost depths revealing:
    'Thus all gladness sinks in grief.'

  "I do love thee, drear October!
    More than budding, blooming Spring--
  Hers is hope, delusive smiling,
  Trusting hearts to grief beguiling;
    Mem'ry loves thy dusky wing.

  "Joyous hearts may love the summer,
    Bright with sunshine, song, and flower;
  But the heart whose hopes are blighted,
  In the gloom of woe benighted,
    Better loves thy kindred bower.

  "'Twas in thee, thou sad October!
    Death laid low my bosom flower.
  Life hath been a wintry river,
  O'er whose ripple gladness never
    Gleameth brightly since that hour.

  "Hearts would fain be with their treasure,
    Mine is slumb'ring in the clay;
  Wandering here alone, uncheery,
  Deem 't not strange this heart should weary
    For its own October day."


The greater proportion of Mr Macdonald's poems first saw the light in
the columns of the _Glasgow Citizen_, then, as now, conducted by Mr
James Heddenvick, an accomplished journalist, and a poet of no mean
order.  The casual connexion of contributor and editor ripened into
friendship, and in 1849, Mr Macdonald was permanently engaged as Mr
Hedderwick's sub-editor.  He was now occupied in congenial tasks, and
a gush of song followed this accession of leisure and opportunity.
Sunshine and the scent of flowers seemed to have stolen into the
weekly columns.  You "smelt the meadow" in casual paragraph and in
leading article.  The _Citizen_ not only kept its eye on Louis
Napoleon and the Czar, it paid attention to the building of the
hedge-sparrow's nest, and the blowing of the wild flower as well.

Still more to prose than to verse did Mr Macdonald at this time
direct his energies; and he was happy enough to encounter a subject
exactly suited to his powers and mental peculiarities.  He was the
most uncosmopolitan of mortals.  He had the strongest local
attachments.  In his eyes, Scotland was the fairest portion of the
planet; Glasgow, the fairest portion of Scotland; and Bridgeton--the
district of the city in which he dwelt--the fairest portion of
Glasgow.  He would have shrieked like a mandrake at uprootal.  He
never would pass a night away from home.  But he loved nature--and
the snowdrop called him out of the smoke to Castle Milk, the
lucken-gowan to Kenmure, the craw-flower to Gleniffer.  His heart
clung to every ruin in the neighbourhood like the ivy.  He was
learned in epitaphs, and spent many an hour in village churchyards in
extracting sweet and bitter thoughts from the half-obliterated
inscriptions.  Jaques, Isaak Walton, and Old Mortality, in one, he
knew Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Ayrshire by heart.  Keenly
sensible to natural beauty, full of antiquarian knowledge, and in
possession of a prose style singularly quaint, picturesque, and
humorous, he began week, by week, in the columns of the _Citizen_,
the publication of his "Rambles Round Glasgow."  City people were
astonished to learn that the country beyond the smoke was far from
prosaic--that it had its traditions, its antiquities, its historical
associations, its glens and waterfalls worthy of special excursions.
These sketches were afterwards collected, and ran, in their separate
and more convenient form, through two editions.  No sooner were the
"Rambles" completed than he projected a new series of sketches,
entitled, "Days at the Coast"--sketches which also appeared in the
columns of a weekly newspaper.  Mr Macdonald's best writing is to be
found in this book--several of the descriptive passages being really
notable in their way.  As we read, the Firth of Clyde glitters before
us, with white villages sitting on the green shores: Bute and the
twin Cumbraes are asleep in sunshine; while beyond, a stream of
lustrous vapour is melting on the grisly Arran peaks.  The
publication of these sketches raised the reputation of their author,
and, like the others, they received the honour of collection, and a
separate issue.  But little more has to be said concerning his
literary activity.  The early afternoon was setting in.  During the
last eighteen months of his life he was engaged on one of the Glasgow
morning journals; and when in its columns he rambled as of yore, it
was with a comparatively infirm step, and an eye that had lost its
interest and lustre.  "Nature never did betray the heart that loved
her;" and when the spring-time came, Macdonald, remembering all her
former sweetness, journeyed to Castle Milk to see the snowdrops--for
there, of all their haunts in the west, they come earliest and linger
latest.  It was a dying visit, an eternal farewell.  Why have I
written of this man so?  Because he had the knack of making friends
of all with whom he came into contact, and it was my fortune to come
into more frequent and more intimate contact with him than most.  He
was neither a great man nor a great poet--in the ordinary senses of
these terms--but since his removal there are perhaps some half-dozen
persons in the world who feel that the "strange superfluous glory of
the air" lacks something, and that because an eye and an ear are
gone, the colour of the flower is duller, the song of the bird less
sweet, than in a time they can remember.

Both Dr Strang and Mr Macdonald have written about Glasgow, and by
their aid we shall be able to see something of the city and its
surroundings.

[Sidenote: Early history of Glasgow.]

The history of the city, from the period of St Mungo to the
commercial crisis in 1857 and the fall of the Western Bank, presents
many points of interest.  Looking back some thirteen centuries into
the gray morning-light of time, we see St Mungo led by an angel,
establishing himself on the banks of the Molendinar, and erecting a
rude chapel or oratory.  There for many summers and winters he prayed
his prayers, sung his aves, and wrought his miracles.  The fame of
his sanctity spread far and wide, and many pilgrims came to converse
with, and be counselled by, the holy man.  In process of time--the
prayers of the saint proving wondrously efficacious, and the Clyde
flowing through the lower grounds at a little distance being populous
with salmon--people began to gather, and a score or so of wooden
huts, built on the river bank, was the beginning of the present city.
In 1197 the cathedral was consecrated by a certain Bishop Jocelyn,
and from thence, on to the Reformation, its affairs continued in a
prosperous condition; its revenues, taking into consideration the
poverty of the country and the thinness of the population, were
considerable; and its bishops were frequently men of ambition and of
splendid tastes.  Its interior was enriched by many precious relics.
On days of high festival, the Lord Bishop and his officials, clad in
costly vestments, entered by the great western door, and as the
procession swept onward to the altar, incense fumed from swinging
censers, the voices of the choir rose in rich and solemn chanting,
the great organ burst on the ear with its multitudinous thunders, and
rude human hearts were bowed to the ground with contrition, or rose
in surges of sound to heaven in ecstasy.  Glasgow, too, is closely
connected with Wallace.  The Bell o' the Brae saw the flash of his
sword as the Southrons fled before him.  At the kirk of Rutherglen,
Sir John Menteith and Sir Aymer de Vallance met to plan the capture
of the hero: and at Rob Royston the deed of shame was consummated.
Menteith, with sixty followers, surrounded the house in which Wallace
slept.  Traitors were already within.  His weapons were stolen.
Kierly, his servant, was slain.  According to Blind Harry, at the
touch of a hand Wallace sprung up--a lion at bay.  He seized an oaken
stool--the only weapon of offence within reach--and at a blow broke
one rascal's back, in a second splashed the wall with the blood and
brains of another, when the whole pack threw themselves upon him,
bore him down by sheer weight, and secured him.  He was conveyed to
Dumbarton, then held by the English, and from thence was delivered
into the hands of Edward.  The battle of Langside was fought in the
vicinity of the city.  Moray, lying in Glasgow, intercepted Mary on
her march from Hamilton to Dumbarton, and gave battle.  Every one
knows the issue.  For sixty miles without drawing rein the queen fled
towards England and a scaffold.  Moray returned to Glasgow through
the village of Gorbals, his troopers, it is said, wiping their bloody
swords on the manes of their horses as they rode, and went thence to
meet his assassin in Linlithgow town.  During the heat and frenzy of
the Reformation, nearly all our ecclesiastical edifices went to the
ground, or came out of the fierce trial with interiors pillaged,
altars desecrated, and the statues of apostles and saints broken or
defaced.  Glasgow Cathedral was assailed like the rest; already the
work of destruction had begun, when the craftsmen of the city came to
the rescue.  Their exertions on that occasion preserved the noble
building for us.  They were proud of it then; they are proud of it
to-day.  During the persecution, the country to the west of Glasgow
was overrun by dragoons, and many a simple Covenanter had but short
shrift--seized, tried, condemned, shot, in heaven, within the hour.
The rambler is certain to encounter, not only in village churchyards,
but by the wayside, or in the hearts of solitary moors, familiar but
with the sunbeam and the cry of the curlew, rude martyr stones, their
sculptures and letters covered with lichen, and telling with
difficulty the names of the sufferers and the manner of their deaths,
and intimating that--

  "This stone shall witness be
  'Twixt Presbyterie and Prelacie."


[Sidenote: Prince Charles.]

The next striking event in the history of the city is the visit of
Prince Charles.  Enter on the Christmas week of 1745-46 the wild,
foot-sore, Highland host on its flight from Derby.  How the sleek
citizens shrink back from the worn, hairy faces, and fierce eyes in
which the lights of plunder burn.  "The Prince, the Prince! which is
the Prince?"  "That's he--yonder--wi' the lang yellow hair."  Onward
rides, pale and dejected, the throne-haunted man.  He looks up as he
catches a fair face at a window, and you see he inherits the Stuart
smile and the Stuart eye.  He, like his fathers, will provoke the
bitterest hatred, and be served by the wildest devotion.  Men will
gladly throw away their lives for him.  The blood of nobles will
redden scaffolds for him.  Shepherds and herdsmen will dare death to
shelter him; and beautiful women will bend over his sleep--wrapped in
clansman's plaid on bed of heather or bracken--to clip but one shred
of his yellow hair, and feel thereby requited for all that they and
theirs have suffered in his behalf.  But with all his beauty and his
misfortunes, his appearance in Glasgow created little enthusiasm.  He
scarcely gained a recruit.  Only a few ladies donned in his honour
white breast-knots and ribbons.  He levied a heavy contribution on
the inhabitants.  A prince at the head of an army in want of brogues,
and who insisted on being provided with shoe-leather gratis, was
hardly calculated to excite the admiration of prudent Glasgow
burgesses.  He did not remain long.  The Green beheld for one day the
far-stretching files and splendour of the Highland war, on the
next--in unpaid shoe-leather--he marched to his doom.  Victory, like
a stormy sunbeam, burned for a moment on his arms at Falkirk, and
then all was closed in blood and thunder on Culloden Moor.

[Sidenote: Glasgow Clubs.]

It is about this period that Dr Strang's book on the "Clubs" begins.
In those old, hospitable, hard-drinking days, Glasgow seems to have
been pre-eminently a city of clubs.  Every street had its tavern, and
every tavern had its club.  There were morning clubs, noon-day clubs,
evening clubs, and all-day clubs, which, like the sacred fire, never
went out.  The club was a sanctuary wherein nestled friendship and
enjoyment.  The member left his ordinary life outside the door, like
his greatcoat, and put it on again when he went away.  Within the
genial circle of the club were redressed all the ills that flesh is
heir to: the lover forgot Nerissa's disdain, the debtor felt no
longer his creditor's eye.  At the sight of the boon companions, Care
packed up his bundles and decamped, or if he dared remain, he was
immediately laid hold of, plunged into the punch-bowl, and there was
an end of him for that night at least.  Unhappily those clubs are
dead, but as their ghosts troop past in Dr Strang's pages, the sense
is delicately taken by an odour of rum-punch.  [Sidenote: The
Anderston Club.] Shortly after the Pretender's visit to the city, the
Anderston Club--so called from its meetings being held in that little
village--flourished, drank its punch, and cracked its jokes on
Saturday afternoons.  Perhaps no club connected with the city, before
or since, could boast of a membership so distinguished.  It comprised
nearly all the University professors.  Dr Moore, professor of Greek;
Professor Ross, who faithfully instilled the knowledge of Humanities
into the Glasgow youth; Drs Cullen and Hamilton, medical teachers of
eminence; Adam Smith; the Brothers Foulis--under whose auspices the
first Fine-Art Academy was established in Scotland, and from whose
printing-press the Greek and Roman classics were issued with a
correctness of text and beauty of typography which had then no
parallel in the kingdom--were regular and zealous members.  But the
heart and soul of the Anderston Club seems to have been Dr Simson,
professor of mathematics.  His heart vibrated to the little hostelry
of Anderston as the needle vibrates to the pole.  He could have found
his way with his eyes shut.  The following story, related of the
professor by Dr Strang, is not unamusing in itself, and a fair
specimen of the piebald style in which the greater portion of the
book is written:--

"The mathematician ever made it a rule to throw algebra and
arithmetic 'to the dogs,' save in so far as to discover the just
_quadratic equation_ and _simple division_ of a bowl of punch.  One
thing alone in the club he brought his mathematics to bear upon, and
that was his glass.  This had been constructed on the truest
principles of geometry for emptying itself easily, the stalk
requiring to form but a very acute angle with the open lips ere its
whole contents had dropped into the æsophagus.  One fatal day,
however, Girzy, the black-eyed and dimple-cheeked servant of the
hostelry, in making arrangements for the meeting of the club, allowed
this favourite piece of crystal, as many black and blue eyed girls
have done before and since, to slip from her fingers and be broken.
She knew the professor's partiality for his favourite beaker, and
thought of getting another; but the day was too far spent, and the
Gallowgate, then the receptacle of such luxuries, was too far distant
to procure one for that day's meeting of the fraternity.  Had
Verreville, the city of glass, been then where it has since stood,
the mathematician's placid temper might not have been ruffled, nor
might Girzy have found herself in so disagreeable a dilemma.  The
club met, the hen-broth smoked in every platter, the few standard
dishes disappeared, the _medoc_ was sipped, and was then succeeded,
as usual, by a goodly-sized punch-bowl.  The enticing and delicious
compound was mixed, tasted, and pronounced nectar: the professor,
dreaming for a moment of some logarithm of Napier's, or problem of
Euclid's, pushed forward to the fount unconsciously the glass which
stood before him, drew it back a brimmer, and carried it to his lips;
but lo! the increased angle at which the professor was obliged to
raise his arm, roused him from his momentary reverie, and, pulling
the drinking-cup from his lips as if it contained the deadliest
henbane, exclaimed, 'What is this, Girzy, you have given me?  I
cannot drink out of this glass.  Give me my own, you little minx.
You might now well know that _this_ is not mine.'  'Weel-a-wat, it's
a I hae for't, Maister Simson,' answered Girzy, blushing.  'Hush,
hush,' rejoined the mathematician, 'say not so.  I know it is not
_my_ glass, for the outer edge of this touches my nose, and _mine_
never did so.'  The girl confessed the accident, and the professor,
though for some minutes sadly out of humour, was at length appeased,
and swallowed his _sherbet_ at the risk of injuring his proboscis."

[Sidenote: Dr Simson.]

Dr Strang informs us that the eccentric mathematician, in his
progress from the University to Anderston, was in the habit of
counting his steps, and that, walking blind-folded, he could have
told the distance to a fraction of an inch.  He has omitted, however,
to tell us whether the Doctor's steps were counted on his return, and
if the numbers corresponded!

Along with the notices of the clubs subsequent to the one mentioned,
Dr Strang gives his reader a tolerable notion of how it went with
Glasgow in those years.  We have a peep of the Trongate during the
lucrative tobacco trade, when Glasgow had her head not a little
turned by her commercial prosperity.  There are rich citizens now in
the streets.  Behold Mr Glassford, picking his steps daintily along
the Crown o' the Causeway, with scarlet cloak, flowing wig,
cocked-hat, and gold-headed cane!  He has money in his purse, and he
knows it too.  All men warm themselves in the light of his
countenance.  If he kicks you, you are honoured, for is it not with a
golden foot?  How the loud voice droops, how the obsequious knee
bends before him!  He told Tobias Smollett yesterday that he had
five-and-twenty ships sailing for him on the sea, and that
half-a-million passed through his hands every year.  Pass on a little
farther, and yonder is Captain Paton sunning himself on the ample
pavement in front of the Tontine.  Let us step up to him.  He will
ask us to dinner, and mix us a bowl of punch flavoured with his own
limes--

  "In Trinidad that grow."

For hospitality was then, as now, a characteristic of the city.  The
suppers--the favourite meal--were of the most substantial
description.  A couple of turkeys, a huge round of beef, and a
bowl--a very Caspian Sea--of punch, seething to its silver brim, and
dashed with delicate slices of lime or lemon--formed the principal
ingredients.  Good fellowship was the order of the day.  In the
morning and forenoon the merchants congregated in the Tontine
reading-room for news and gossip, and at night the punch-bowl was
produced, emptied, replenished, and emptied again, while the
toasts--"Down with the Convention," "The Pilot that weathered the
storm"--were drunk with enthusiasm in some cosy tavern in the then
aristocratic Princes Street.  At a later period, during the disturbed
years that preceded the Reform Bill, we see the moneyed
classes--"soor-milk jockeys" they were profanely nicknamed by the
mob--eagerly enrolling themselves in yeomanry corps: on field days
resplendent in laced jacket and shako, or clanking through the
streets with spur and sabre.  As we approach our own times the clubs
pale their ineffectual fires--they shrink from planets to
will-o'-the-wisp; at last

                      "They die away
  And fade into the light of common day."

Glasgow is now, so far as history is concerned, a clubless city.

[Sidenote: The Glasgow operative.]

During the commercial distress of 1848-49, and the agitation
consequent on the flight of Louis Philippe and the establishment of
the French Republic, Glasgow had the bad eminence of going further in
deeds of lawlessness and riot than any other city in the empire.  The
"Glasgow operative" is, while trade is good and wages high, the
quietest and most inoffensive of creatures.  He cares comparatively
little for the affairs of the nation.  He is industrious and
contented.  Each six months he holds a saturnalia--one on New-year's
day, the other at the Fair, (occurring in July,) and his excesses at
these points keep him poor during the intervals.  During periods of
commercial depression, however, when wages are low, and he works
three-quarter time, he has a fine nose to scent political iniquities.
He begins to suspect that all is not right with the British
constitution.  These unhappy times, too, produce impudent demagogues,
whose power of lungs and floods of flashy rhetoric work incredible
mischief.  To these he seriously inclines his ear.  He is hungry and
excited.  He is more anxious to reform Parliament than to reform
himself.  He cries out against tyranny of class-legislation,
forgetting the far harder tyranny of the gin-palace and the
pawn-shop.  He thinks there should be a division of property.  Nay,
it is known that some have in times like these marked out the very
houses they are to possess when the goods of the world are segregated
and appropriated anew.  What a dark sea of ignorance and blind wrath
is ever weltering beneath the fair fabric of English prosperity!
This dangerous state of feeling had been reached in the year spoken
of.  Hungry, tumultuous meetings were held on the Green.  The
ignorant people were maddened by the harangues of orators--fellows
who were willing to burn the house of the nation about the ears of
all of us, if so be _their_ private pig could be roasted thereby.
"The rich have food," said they, "you have none.  You cannot die of
hunger.  Take food by the strong hand wherever you can get it."  This
advice was acted upon.  The black human sea poured along London
Street, and then split--one wave rushed up the High Street, another
along the Trongate--each wasting as it went.  The present writer,
then a mere lad, was in the streets at the time.  [Sidenote: Glasgow
riots.] The whole thing going on before his eyes seemed strange,
incredible, too monstrous to be real--a hideous dream which he fought
with and strove to thrust away.  For an hour or so all order was
lost.  All that had been gained by a thousand years of strife and
effort--all that had been wrested from nature--all the civilities and
amenities of life--seemed drowned in a wild sea of scoundrelism.  The
world was turned topsy-turvy.  Impossibility became matter of fact.
Madness ruled the hour.  Gun-shops were broken open, and
wretched-looking men, who hardly knew the muzzle from the stock, were
running about with muskets over their shoulders.  In Buchanan Street
a meal cart was stopped, overturned, the sacks ripped open with
knives, and women were seen hurrying home to their famishing broods
with aprons full; some of the more greedy with a cheese under each
arm.  In Queen Street a pastry cook's was attacked, the windows
broken, and the delicacies they contained greedily devoured.  A large
glass-case, filled with coloured lozenges, arranged in diamond
patterns, stood serene for a while amid universal ruin.  A scoundrel
smashed it with a stick; down rushed a deluge of lozenges, and a
dozen rioters were immediately sprawling over each other on the
ground to secure a share of the spoil.  By this time alarm had
spread.  Shops were shutting in all directions, some of the more
ingenious traders, it is said, pasting "A Shop to Let" upon their
premises--that they might thereby escape the rage or the cupidity of
the rioters.  At last, weary with spoliation, the mob, armed with
guns, pistols, and what other weapons they had secured, came marching
along the Trongate, a tall begrimed collier, with a rifle over his
shoulder, in front.  This worthy, more than two-thirds drunk, kept
shouting at intervals, "Vive la Republic!  We'll hae Vive la
Republic, an' naething _but_ Vive la Republic!" to which intelligible
political principle his followers responded with vociferous cheers.
At last they reached the Cross.  Here a barricade was in process of
erection.  Carts were stopped and thrown down, and London Street
behind was crowded with men, many of them provided with muskets.  On
a sudden the cry arose, "The sogers, the sogers!" terrible to the
heart of a British mob.  Hoofs were heard clattering along the
Trongate, and the next moment an officer of Carabineers leaped his
horse over the barricade, followed by his men, perhaps a dozen in
all.  The effect was instantaneous.  In five minutes not a rioter was
to be seen.  When evening fell the Trongate wore an unwonted
appearance.  Troops stacked their bayonets, lighted their fires, and
bivouacked under the piazzas of the Tontine.  Sentinels paced up and
down the pavements, and dragoons patrolled the streets.  Next day the
disturbance came to a crisis.  A riot occurred in Calton or
Bridgeton.  The pensioners were sent to quell it there.  While
marching down one of the principal streets, they were assailed by
volleys of stones, the crowd meanwhile falling back sullenly from the
bayonet points.  The order was given to fire, and the veterans, whose
patience was completely exhausted, sent their shot right into the
mass of people.  Several were wounded, and one or more killed.  When
the pensioners were gone, a corpse was placed on boards, carried
through the streets shoulder-high by persons who, by that means,
hoped to madden and rouse the citizens; a large crowd attending,
every window crammed with heads as the ghastly procession passed.  As
they approached the centre of the city, a file of soldiers was drawn
across the street up which they were marching.  When the crowd fell
back, the bearers of the dead were confronted by the ominous glitter
of steel.  The procession paused, stopped, wavered, and finally beat
a retreat, and thus the riots closed.  That evening people went to
look at the spot where the unhappy collision had taken place.  Groups
of workmen were standing about, talking in tones of excitement.  The
wall of one of the houses was chipped in places by bullets, and the
gutter, into which a man had reeled, smashed by the death-shot, had
yet a ruddy stain.  Next day tranquillity was in a great measure
restored.  [Sidenote: Special constables.] Masses of special
constables had by this time been organised, and marched through the
city in force.  Although they did not come into contact with the
rioters, the bravery they displayed in cudgelling what unfortunate
females, and _keelies_ of tender years fell into their hands, gave
one a lively idea of the prowess they would have exhibited had they
met foes worthy of the batons they bore.

Glasgow, as most British readers are aware, is situated on both sides
of the Clyde, some twenty or thirty miles above its junction with the
sea.  Its rapidity of growth is perhaps without a parallel in the
kingdom.  There are persons yet alive who remember when the river,
now laden with shipping, was an angler's stream, in whose gravelly
pools the trout played, and up whose rapids the salmon from the sea
flashed like a sunbeam; and when the banks, now lined with warehouses
and covered with merchandise of every description, really merited the
name of the Broomy Law.  Science and industry have worked wonders
here.  The stream, which a century ago hardly allowed the passage of
a herring-boat or a coal-gabbert, bears on its bosom to-day ships
from every clime, and mighty ocean steamers which have wrestled with
the hurricanes of the Atlantic.  Before reaching Glasgow the Clyde
traverses one of the richest portions of Scotland, for in summer
Clydesdale is one continued orchard.  As you come down the stream
towards the city, you have, away to the right, the mineral districts
of Gartsherrie and Monkland--not superficially captivating regions.
Everything there is grimed with coal-dust.  Spring herself comes with
a sooty face.  The soil seems calcined.  You cannot see that part of
the world to advantage by day.  With the night these innumerable
furnaces and iron-works will rush out into vaster volume and wilder
colour, and for miles the country will be illuminated--restless with
mighty lights and shades.  It is the Scottish Staffordshire.
[Sidenote: Moors of the covenant.] On the other hand, away to the
south-west stretch the dark and sterile moors of the covenant, with
wild moss-haggs, treacherous marshes green as emerald, and dark mossy
lochs, on whose margins the water-hen breeds--a land of plovers and
curlews, in whose recesses, and in the heart of whose mists, the
hunted people lay while the men of blood were hovering near--life and
death depending on the cry and flutter of a desert bird, or the flash
of a sunbeam along the stretches of the moor.  In the middle of that
melancholy waste stands the farm-house of Lochgoin, intimately
connected with the history of the Covenanters.  To this dwelling came
Cameron and Peden and found shelter; here lies the notched sword of
Captain John Paton, and the drum which was beaten at Drumclog by the
hill-folk, and the banner that floated above their heads that day.
And here, too, was written the "Scots Worthies," a book considerered
by the austerer portion of the Scottish peasantry as next in
sacredness to the Bible.  And it has other charms this desolate
country: over there by Mearns, Christopher North spent his glorious
boyhood; in this region, too, Pollok was born, and fed his gloomy
spirit on congenial scenes.  Approaching the city, and immediately to
the left, are the Cathkin Braes: and close by the village of
Cathcart, past which the stream runs murmuring in its rocky bed, is
the hill on which Mary stood and saw Moray shiver her army like a
potsherd.  [Sidenote: The estuary of the Clyde.] Below Glasgow, and
westward, stretches the great valley of the Clyde.  On the left is
the ancient burgh of Renfrew; farther back Paisley and Johnston,
covered with smoke; above all, Gleniffer Braes, greenly fair in
sunlight; afar Neilston Pad, raising its flat summit to the sky, like
a table spread for a feast of giants.  On the right are the
Kilpatrick Hills, terminating in the abrupt peak of Dumbuck; and
beyond, the rock of Dumbarton, the ancient fortress, the rock of
Ossian's song.  It rises before you out of another world and state of
things, with years of lamentation and battle wailing around it like
sea-mews.  By this time the river has widened to an estuary.
Port-Glasgow, with its deserted piers, and Greenock, populous with
ships, lie on the left.  Mid-channel, Rosneath is gloomy with its
woods; on the farther shore Helensburgh glitters like a silver
thread; in front, a battlement of hills.  You pass the point of
Gourock, and are in the Highlands.  From the opposite coast Loch Long
stretches up into yon dark world of mountains.  Yonder is Holy Loch,
smallest and loveliest of them all.  A league of sea is glittering
like frosted silver between you and Dunoon.  The mighty city, twenty
miles away, loud with traffic, dingy with smoke, is the working
Glasgow; here, nestling at the foot of mountains, stretching along
the sunny crescents of bays, clothing beaked promontories with
romantic villas, is another Glasgow keeping holiday the whole summer
long.  These villages are the pure wheat; the great city, with its
strife and toil, its harass and heart-break--the chaff and husks from
which it is winnowed.  The city is the soil, this region the bright
consummate flower.  The merchant leaves behind him in the roar and
vapour his manifold vexations, and appears here with his best face
and happiest smile.  Here no bills intrude, the fluctuations of stock
appear not, commercial anxieties are unknown.  In their places are
donkey rides, the waving of light summer dresses, merry pic-nics, and
boating parties at sunset on the splendid sea.  Here are the
"comforts of the Sautmarket" in the midst of legendary hills.  When
the tempest is brewing up among the mountains, and night comes down a
deluge of wind and rain; when the sea-bird is driven athwart the
gloom like a flake of foam severed from the wave, and the crimson eye
of the Clock glares at intervals across the frith, you can draw the
curtains, stir the fire, and beguile the hours with the smiling
wisdom of Thackeray, if a bachelor; if a family man, "The Battle of
Prague," or the overture to "Don Giovanni," zealously thumped by
filial hands, will drown the storm without.  Hugging the left shore,
we have Largs before us, where long ago Haco and his berserkers found
dishonourable graves.  On the other side is Bute, fairest, most
melancholy of all the islands of the Clyde.  From its sheltered
position it has an atmosphere soft as that of Italy, and is one huge
hospital now.  You turn out in the dog-days, your head surmounted
with a straw-hat ample enough to throw a shadow round you, your
nether man encased in linen ducks, and see invalids sitting
everywhere in the sunniest spots like autumn flies, or wandering
feebly about, wrapt in greatcoats, their chalk faces shawled to the
nose.  You are half-broiled, they shiver as if in an icy wind.  Their
bent figures take the splendour out of the sea and the glory out of
the sunshine.  They fill the summer air as with the earthy horror of
a new-made grave.  You feel that they hang on life feebly, and will
drop with the yellow leaf.  Beyond Bute are the Cumbraes, twin
sisters born in one fiery hour; and afar Arran, with his precipices,
purple-frowning on the level sea.

[Sidenote: Arran]

In his preface to the "Rambles" Mr Macdonald writes:--

"The district of which Glasgow is the centre, while it possesses many
scenes of richest Lowland beauty, and presents many glimpses of the
stern and wild in Highland landscape, is peculiarly fertile in
reminiscences of a historical nature.  In the latter respect, indeed,
it is excelled by few localities in Scotland--a circumstance of which
many of our citizens seem to have been hitherto almost unconscious.
There is a story told of a gentleman who, having boasted that he had
travelled far to see a celebrated landscape on the Continent, was put
to the blush by being compelled to own that he had never visited a
scene of superior loveliness than one situated on his own estate, and
near which he had spent the greater part of his life.  The error of
this individual is one of which too many are guilty."

[Sidenote: Celebrated scenery disappointing.]

These sentences would make an admirable text for a little week-day
sermon.  For we are prone, in other matters than scenery, to seek our
enjoyments at a distance.  We would gather that happiness from the
far-off stars which, had we the eyes to see, is all the while lying
at our feet.  You go to look at a celebrated scene.  People have
returned from it in raptures.  You have heard them describe it, you
have read about it, and you naturally expect something very fine
indeed.  When you arrive, the chances are that its beauties are
carefully stowed away in a thick mist, or you are drenched to the
skin, or you find the hotel full, and are forced to sleep in an
outhouse, or on the heather beneath the soft burning planets, and go
home with a rheumatism which embitters your existence to your dying
day.  Or, if you are lucky enough to find the weather cloudless and
the day warm, you are doomed to cruel disappointment.  Is _that_ what
you have heard and read so much about?  That pitiful drivelling
cascade!  Why, you were led to expect the wavy grace of the Gray
Mare's Tail combined with the flash and thunder of Niagara.  That a
mountain forsooth!  It isn't so much bigger than Ben Lomond after
all!  You feel swindled and taken in.  You commend the waterfall to
the fiend.  You snap your fingers in the face of the mountain.
"You're a humbug, sir.  You're an impostor, sir.  I--I'll write to
the _Times_ and expose you, sir."  On the other hand, the townsman,
at the close of a useful and busy day, walks out into the country.
The road is pretty; he has never been on it before; he is insensibly
charmed along.  He reaches a little village or clachan, its
half-dozen thatched houses set down amid blossoming apple-trees; the
smoke from the chimneys, telling of the preparation of the evening
meal, floating up into the rose of sunset.  A labourer is standing at
the door with a child in his arms; the unharnessed horses are
drinking at the trough; the village boys and girls are busy at their
games; two companies, linked arm-in-arm, are alternately advancing
and receding, singing all the while with their sweet shrill voices--

  "The Campsie Duke's a riding, a riding, a riding."

[Sidenote: Unexpectedness of pleasure.]

This is no uncommon scene in Scotland, and why does it yield more
pleasure than the celebrated one that you have gone a hundred miles
to see, besides spending no end of money on the way?  Simply because
you have approached it with a pure, healthy mind, undebauched by
rumour or praise.  It has in it the element of unexpectedness; which,
indeed, is the condition of all delight, for pleasure must surprise
if it is to be worthy of the name.  The pleasure that is expected and
looked for never comes, or if it does it is in a shape so changed
that recognition is impossible.  Besides, you have found out the
scene, and have thereby a deeper interest in it.  This same law
pervades everything.  You hear of Coleridge's wonderful conversation,
and in an evil hour make your appearance at Highgate.  The
mild-beaming, silvery-haired sage, who conceived listening to be the
whole duty of man, talks for the space of three mortal hours--by you
happily unheard.  For, after the first twenty minutes, you are
conscious of a hazy kind of light before your eyes, a soothing sound
is murmuring in your ears, a delicious numbness is creeping over all
your faculties, and by the end of the first half-hour you are snoring
away as comfortably as if you were laid by the side of your lawful
spouse.  You are disappointed of course: of the musical wisdom which
has been flowing in plenteous streams around, you have not tasted one
drop; and you never again hear a man praised for power or brilliancy
of conversation without an inward shudder.  The next day you take
your place on the coach, and are fortunate enough to secure your
favourite seat beside the driver.  Outside of you is a hard-featured
man, wrapt in a huge blue pilot-coat.  You have no idea to what class
of society he may belong.  It is plain that he is not a gentleman in
the superfine sense of that term.  He has a very remarkable gift of
silence.  When you have smoked your cigar out, you hazard a remark
about the weather.  He responds.  You try his mind as an angler tries
a stream, to see if anything will rise.  One thing draws on another,
till, after an hour's conversation, which has flown over like a
minute, you find that you have really learned something.  [Sidenote:
Pleasure not to be sought at a distance.] The unknown individual in
the pilot-coat, who has strangely come out of space upon you, and as
strangely returns into space again, has looked upon the world, and
has formed his own notions and theories of what goes on there.  On
him life has pressed as well as on you; joy at divers times has
lighted up his grim features; sorrow and pain have clouded them.
There is something in the man; you are sorry when he is dropped on
the road, and say "Good-bye," with more than usual feeling.  Why is
all this?  The man in the pilot-coat does not talk so eloquently as
S.T.C, but he instructs and pleases you--and just because you went to
hear the celebrated Talker, as you go to see the Irish Giant, or the
Performing Pig, you are disappointed, as you deserved to be.  The man
in the pilot-coat has come upon you naturally, unexpectedly.  At its
own sweet will "the cloud turned forth its silver lining on the
night."  Happiness may best be extracted from the objects surrounding
us.  The theory on which our loud tumultuary modern life is
based--that we can go to Pleasure, that if we frequent her haunts we
are sure to find her--is a heresy and a falsehood.  She will not be
constrained.  She obeys not the call of the selfish or the greedy.
Depend upon it she is as frequently found on homely roads, and
amongst rustic villages and farms, as among the glaciers of Chamouni,
or the rainbows of Niagara.

In one of his earliest rambles, Mr Macdonald follows the river for
some miles above the city.  The beauty of the Clyde below Glasgow is
well known to the civilised world.  Even the _roué_ of landscape, to
whom the Rhine is weariness and the Alps common-place, has felt his
heart leap within him while gazing on that magnificent estuary.  But
it is not only in her maturity that the Clyde is fair.  Beauty
attends her from her birth on Rodger Law until she is wedded with
ocean--Bute, and the twin Cumbraes, bridesmaids of the stream; Arran,
groomsman to the main.  With Mr Macdonald's book in pocket to be a
companion at intervals--for one requires no guide, having years
before learned every curve and bend of the river--let us start along
its banks towards Carmyle and Kenmure wood.  We pass Dalmarnock
Bridge, and leave the city, with its windowed factories and driving
wheels and everlasting canopy of smoke behind.  The stream comes
glittering down between green banks, one of which rises high on the
left, so that further vision in that quarter is intercepted.  On the
right are villages and farms; afar, the Cathkin Braes, the moving
cloud shadows mottling their sunny slopes; and straight ahead, and
closing the view, the spire of Cambuslang Church, etched on the
pallid azure of the sky.  We are but two miles from the city, and
everything is bright and green.  The butterfly flutters past; the
dragonfly darts hither and thither.  See, he poises himself on his
winnowing wings, about half a yard from one's nose, which he
curiously inspects; that done, off darts the winged tenpenny-nail,
his rings gleaming like steel.  There are troops of swallows about.
Watch one.  Now he is high in air--now he skims the Clyde.  You can
hear his sharp, querulous twitter as he jerks and turns.  Nay, it is
said that the kingfisher himself has been seen gleaming along these
sandy banks, illuminating them like a meteor.  [Sidenote: Dalbeth
Convent.] At some little distance a white house is pleasantly
situated amongst trees--it is Dalbeth Convent.  As we pass, one of
the frequent bells summoning the inmates to devotion is stirring the
sunny Presbyterian air.  A little on this side of the convent, a
rapid brook comes rushing to the Clyde, crossed by a rude bridge of
planks, which has been worn by the feet of three generations at the
very least.  The brook, which is rather huffy and boisterous in its
way, particularly after rain, had, a few days before, demolished and
broken up said wooden planks, and carried one of them off.  Arriving,
we find a woman and boy anxious to cross, yet afraid to venture.
Service is proffered, and, after a little trouble, both are landed in
safety on the farther bank.  The woman is plainly, yet neatly
dressed, and may be about forty-five years of age or thereby.  The
boy has turned eleven, has long yellow hair hanging down his back,
and looks thin and slender for his years.  With them they have
something wrapped up in a canvas cloth, which, to the touch as they
are handed across, seem to be poles of about equal length.  For the
slight service the woman returns thanks in a tone which smacks of the
southern English counties.  "Good-bye" is given and returned, and we
proceed, puzzling ourselves a good deal as to what kind of people
they are, and what their business may be in these parts, but can come
to no conclusion.  However, it does not matter much, for the
ironworks are passed now, and the river banks are beautiful.  They
are thickly wooded, and at a turn the river flows straight down upon
you for a mile, with dusty meal-mills on one side, a dilapidated
wheel-house on the other, and stretching from bank to bank a
half-natural, half-artificial shallow horse-shoe fall, over which the
water tumbles in indolent foam--a sight which a man who has no
pressing engagements, and is fond of exercise, may walk fifty miles
to see, and be amply rewarded for his pains.  In front is a ferry--a
rope extending across the river by which the boat is propelled--and
lo! a woman in a scarlet cloak on the opposite side hails the
ferryman, and that functionary comes running to his duty.  [Sidenote:
Carmyle.] Just within the din of the shallow horse-shoe fall lies the
village of Carmyle, an old, quiet, sleepy place, where nothing has
happened for the last fifty years, and where nothing will happen for
fifty years to come.  Ivy has been the busiest thing here; it has
crept up the walls of the houses, and in some instances fairly "put
out the light" of the windows.  The thatched roofs are covered with
emerald moss.  The plum-tree which blossomed some months ago
blossomed just the same in the spring which witnessed the birth of
the oldest inhabitant.  For half a century not one stone has been
placed upon another here--there are only a few more green mounds in
the churchyard.  It is the centre of the world.  All else is change:
this alone is stable.  There is a repose deeper than sleep in this
little, antiquated village--ivy-muffled, emerald-mossed, lullabied
for ever by the fall of waters.  The meal-mills, dusty and white as
the clothes of the miller himself, whir industriously; the waters of
the lade come boiling out from beneath the wheel, and reach the Clyde
by a channel dug by the hand of man long ago, but like a work of
nature's now, so covered with furze as it is.  Look down through the
clear amber of the current, and you see the "long green gleet of the
slippery stones" in which the silver-bellied eel delights.  Woe
betide the luckless village urchin that dares to wade therein.  There
is a sudden splash and roar.  When he gets out, he is laid with
shrill objurgations across the broad maternal knee, and fright and
wet clothes are avenged by sound whacks from the broad maternal hand.
Leaving the village, we proceed onward.  The banks come closer, the
stream is shallower, and whirls in eddy and circle over a rocky bed.
There is a woodland loneliness about the river which is aided by the
solitary angler standing up to his middle in the water, and waiting
patiently for the bite that never comes, or by the water-ousel
flitting from stone to stone.  [Sidenote: Kenmuir Bank.] In a quarter
of an hour we reach Kenmuir Bank, which rises some seventy feet or
so, filled with trees, their trunks rising bare for a space, and then
spreading out with branch and foliage into a matted shade, permitting
the passage only of a few flakes of sunlight at noon, resembling, in
the green twilight, a flock of visionary butterflies alighted and
asleep.  Within, the wood is jungle; you wade to the knees in
brushwood and bracken.  The trunks are clothed with ivy, and snakes
of ivy creep from tree to tree, some green with life, some tarnished
with decay.  At the end of the Bank there is a clear well, in which,
your face meeting its shadow, you may quench your thirst.  Seated
here, you have the full feeling of solitude.  An angler wades out
into mid-channel--a bird darts out of a thicket, and slides away on
noiseless wing--the shallow wash and murmur of the Clyde flows
through a silence as deep as that of an American wilderness--and yet,
by to-morrow, the water which mirrors as it passes the beauty of the
lucken-gowan hanging asleep, will have received the pollutions of a
hundred sewers, and be bobbing up and down among the crowds of
vessels at the Broomielaw.  Returning homeward by the top of Kenmuir
Bank, we gaze westward.  Out of a world of smoke the stalk of St
Rollox rises like a banner-staff, its vapoury streamer floating on
the wind; and afar, through the gap between the Campsie and
Kilpatrick hills, Benlomond himself, with a streak of snow upon his
shoulder.  Could one but linger here for a couple of hours, one would
of a verity behold a sight--the sun setting in yonder lurid,
smoke-ocean.  The wreaths of vapour which seem so common-place and
vulgar now, so suggestive of trade and swollen purses and rude
manners, would then become a glory such as never shepherd beheld at
sunrise on his pastoral hills.  Beneath a roof of scarlet flame, one
would see the rolling edges of the smoke change into a brassy
brightness, as with intense heat; the dense mass and volume of it
dark as midnight, or glowing with the solemn purple of thunder; while
right in the centre of all, where it has burned a clear way for
itself, the broad fluctuating orb, paining the eye with concentrated
splendours, and sinking gradually down, a black spire cutting his
disk in two.  But for this one cannot wait, and the apparition will
be unbeheld but by the rustic stalking across the field in company
with his prodigious shadow, and who, turning his face to the flame,
will conceive it the most ordinary thing in the world.  We keep the
upper road on our return, and in a short time are again at Carmyle;
we have no intention of tracing the river bank a second time, and so
turn up the narrow street.  But what is to do?

[Sidenote: The acrobat.]

The children are gathered in a circle, and the wives are standing at
the open doors.  There is a performance going on.  The tambourine is
sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a fillet round his brow, tights
covered with tinsel lozenges, and flesh-coloured shoes, is striding
about on a pair of stilts, to the no small amazement and delight of
the juveniles.  He turns his head, and--why, it's the little boy I
assisted across the brook at Dalbeth three hours ago, and of course
that's the old lady who is thumping and jingling the tambourine, and
gathering in the halfpennies!  God bless her jolly old face! who
would have thought of meeting her here?  I am recognised, the boy
waves me farewell, the old lady smiles and curtsies, thumps her
tambourine, and rattles the little bells of it with greater vigour
than ever.  The road to Glasgow is now comparatively uninteresting.
The trees wear a dingy colour; you pass farm-houses, with sooty
stacks standing in the yard.  'Tis a coaly, dusty district, which has
characteristics worth noting.  For, as the twilight falls dewily on
far-off lea and mountain, folding up daisy and buttercup, putting the
linnet to sleep beside his nest of young in the bunch of broom, here
the circle of the horizon becomes like red-hot steel; the furnaces of
the Clyde iron-works lift up their mighty towers of flame, throwing

  "Large and angry lustres o'er the sky,
  And shifting lights across the long dark roads;"

and so, through chase of light and shade, through glimmer of glare
and gloom, we find our way back to Glasgow--its low hum breaking into
separate and recognisable sounds, its nebulous brightness into
far-stretching street-lamps, as we draw near.

[Sidenote: Paisley.]

The tourist who travels by train from Glasgow to Greenock must pass
the town of Paisley.  If he glances out of the carriage window he
will see beneath him a third-rate Scotch town, through which flows
the foulest and shallowest of rivers.

The principal building in the town, and the one which first attracts
the eye of a stranger, is the jail; then follow the church spires in
their order of merit.  Unfortunately the train passes not through
Paisley, but over it; and from his "coign of vantage" the tourist
beholds much that is invisible to the passenger in the streets.  All
the back-greens, piggeries, filthy courts, and unmentionable
abominations of the place, are revealed to him for a moment as the
express flashes darkly across the railway bridge.  For the seeing of
Scotch towns a bird's-eye view is plainly the worst point of view.
In all likelihood the tourist, as he passes, will consider Paisley
the ugliest town he has ever beheld, and feel inwardly grateful that
his lot has not been cast therein.  But in this the tourist may be
very much mistaken.  Paisley is a remarkable place--one of the most
remarkable in Scotland.  Just as Comrie is the abode of earthquakes,
Paisley is the abode of poetic inspiration.  There is no accounting
for the tastes of the celestials.  Queen Titania fell in love with
Bottom when he wore the ass's head; and Paisley, ugly as it is, is
the favourite seat of the Muses.  There Apollo sits at the loom and
earns eighteen shillings per week.  At this moment, and the same
might have been said of any moment since the century came in, there
is perhaps a greater number of poets living and breathing in this
little town than in the whole of England.  Whether this may arise
from the poverty of the place, on the principle that the sweetness of
the nightingale's song is connected in some subtle way with the thorn
against which she leans her breast, it may be useless to inquire.
Proceed from what cause it may, Paisley has been for the last fifty
years or more an aviary of singing birds.  To said aviary I had once
the honour to be introduced.  Some years ago, when dwelling in the
outskirts of the town, I received a billet intimating that the L.C.A.
would meet on the evening of the 26th Jan. 18--, in honour of the
memory of the immortal Robert Burns, and requesting my attendance.
N.B.--Supper and drink, 1s. 6d.  Being a good deal puzzled by the
mystic characters, I made inquiries, and discovered that L.C.A.
represented the "Literary and Convivial Association," which met every
Saturday evening for the cultivation of the minds of its members--a
soil which for years had been liberally irrigated with toddy--with
correspondent effects.  To this cheap feast of the gods on the sacred
evening in question I directed my steps, and beheld the assembled
poets.  [Sidenote: The poets.] There could scarcely have been fewer
than eighty present.  Strange!  Each of these conceited himself of
finer clay than ordinary mortals; each of these had composed verses,
some few had even published small volumes or pamphlets of verse by
subscription, and drank the anticipated profits; each of these had
his circle of admirers and flatterers, his small public and shred of
reputation; each of these envied and hated his neighbour; and not
unfrequently two bards would quarrel in their cups as to which of
them was possessor of the larger amount of fame.  At that time the
erection of a monument to Thom of Inverury had been talked about,
_apropos_ of which one of the bards remarked, "Ou ay, jist like them.
They'll bigg us monuments whan we're deid: I wush they'd gie us
something whan we're leevin'."  In that room, amid that motley
company, one could see the great literary world unconsciously
burlesqued and travestied, shadowed forth there the emptiness and
noise of it, the blatant vanity of many of its members.  The eighty
poets presented food for meditation.  Well, it is from this town that
I propose taking a walk, for behind Paisley lie Gleniffer Braes, the
scene of Tannahill's songs.  One can think of Burns apart from
Ayrshire, of Wordsworth apart from Cumberland, but hardly of
Tannahill apart from the Braes of Gleniffer.  The district, too, is
of but little extent; in a walk of three hours you can see every spot
mentioned by the poet.  You visit his birthplace in the little
straggling street, where the sound of the shuttle is continually
heard.  You pass up to the green hills where he delighted to wander,
and whose charms he has celebrated; and you return by the canal
where, when the spirit "finely touched to fine issues," was
disordered and unstrung, he sought repose.  Birth, life, and death
lie side by side.  The matter of the moral is closely packed.  The
whole tragedy sleeps in the compass of an epigram.

[Sidenote: Stanley Castle.]

Leaving the rambling suburbs of Paisley, you pass into a rough and
undulating country with masses of gray crag interspersed with whinny
knolls, where, in the evenings, the linnet sings; with narrow sandy
roads wandering through it hither and thither, passing now a clump of
gloomy firs, now a house where some wealthy townsman resides, now a
pleasant corn-field.  A pretty bit of country enough, with larks
singing above it from dawn to sunset, and where, in the gloaming, the
wanderer not unfrequently can mark the limping hare.  A little
further on are the ruins of Stanley Castle.  This castle, in the days
of the poet, before the wildness of the country had been tamed by the
plough, must have lent a singular charm to the landscape.  It stands
at the base of the hills which rise above it with belt of wood, rocky
chasm, white streak of waterfall--higher up into heath and silence,
silence deep as the heaven that overhangs it; where nothing moves
save the vast cloud-shadows, where nothing is heard save the cry of
the moorland bird.  Tannahill was familiar with the castle in its
every aspect--when sunset burned on the walls, when the moon steeped
it in silver and silence, and when it rose up before him shadowy and
vast through the marshy mists.  He had his loom to attend during the
day, and he knew the place best in its evening aspect.  Twilight,
with its quietude and stillness, seemed to have peculiar charms for
his sensitive nature, and many of his happiest lines are descriptive
of its phenomena.  But the glory is in a great measure departed from
Stanley Tower; the place has been turned into a reservoir by the
Water Company, and the ruin is frequently surrounded by water.  This
intrusion of water has spoiled the scene.  The tower is hoary and
broken, the lake looks a thing of yesterday, and there are traces of
quite recent masonry about.  The lake's shallow extent, its glitter
and brightness, are impertinences.  Only during times of severe
frost, when its surface is iced over, when the sun is sinking in the
purple vapours like a globe of red-hot iron--when the skaters are
skimming about like swallows, and the curlers are boisterous--for the
game has been long and severe--and the decisive stone is roaring up
the rink--only in such circumstances does the landscape regain some
kind of keeping and homogeneousness.  There is no season like winter
for improving a country; he tones it down to one colour; he breathes
over its waters, and in the course of a single night they become
gleaming floors, on which youth may disport itself.  He powders his
black forest-boughs with the pearlin's of his frosts; and the
fissures which spring tries in vain to hide with her flowers, and
autumn with fallen leaves, he fills up at once with a snow-wreath.
But we must be getting forward, up that winding road, progress marked
by gray crag, tuft of heather, bunch of mountain violets, the country
beneath stretching out farther and farther.  Lo! a strip of emerald
steals down the gray of the hill, and there, by the way-side, is an
ample well, with the "netted sunbeam" dancing in it.  Those who know
Tannahill's "Gloomy Winter's noo awa" must admire its curious
felicity of touch and colour.  Turn round, you are in the very scene
of the song.  [Sidenote: Gleniffer.] In front is "Gleniffer's dewy
dell," to the east "Glenkelloch's sunny brae," afar the woods of
Newton, over which at this moment laverocks fan the "snaw-white
cluds;" below, the "burnie" leaps in sparkle and foam over many a
rocky shelf, till its course is lost in that gorge of gloomy firs,
and you can only hear the music of its joy.  Which is the fairer--the
landscape before your eyes, or the landscape sleeping in the light of
song?  You cannot tell, for they are at once different and the same.
The touch of the poet was loving and true.  His genius was like the
light of early spring, clear from speck or stain of vapour, but with
tremulousness and uncertainty in it; happy, but with grief lying
quite close to its happiness; smiling, although the tears are hardly
dry upon the cheeks that in a moment may be wet again.

[Sidenote: Tannahill.]

But who is Tannahill? the southern reader asks with some wonder; and
in reply it may be said that Burns, like every great poet, had many
imitators and successors, and that of these successors in the north
country Hogg and Tannahill are the most important.  Hogg was a
shepherd in The Forest, and he possessed out of sight the larger
nature, the greater intellectual force; while as master of the weird
and the supernatural there is no Scottish poet to be put beside him.
The soul of Ariel seems to inhabit him at times.  He utters a strange
music like the sighing of the night-wind; a sound that seems to live
remote from human habitations.  In openness to spiritual beauty,
Burns, compared with him, was an ordinary ploughman.  Like Thomas the
Rhymer, he lay down to sleep on a green bank on a summer's day, and
the Queen of Fancy visited his slumber; and never afterwards could he
forget her beauty, and her voice, and the liquid jingling of her
bridle bells.  Tannahill was a weaver, who wrote songs, became
crazed, and committed suicide before he reached middle life.  His was
a weak, tremulous nature.  He was wretched by reason of
over-sensitiveness.  "He lived retired as noon-tide dew."  He wanted
Hogg's strength, self-assertion, humour, and rough sagacity; nor had
he a touch of his weird strain.  From Burns, again, he was as
different as a man could possibly be.  Tannahill knew nothing of the
tremendous life-battle fought on wet Mossgiel farm, in fashionable
Edinburgh, in provincial Dumfries.  He knew nothing of the Love,
Scorn, Despair,--those wild beasts that roamed the tropics of Burns's
heart.  But limited as was his genius, it was in its quality perhaps
more exquisite than theirs.  He was only a song-writer--both Burns
and Hogg were more than that--and some of his songs are as nearly as
possible perfect.  He knew nothing of the mystery of life.  If the
fierce hand of Passion had been laid upon his harp, it would have
broken at once its fragile strings.  He looked upon nature with a
pensive yet a loving eye.  Gladness flowed upon him from the bright
face of spring, despondency from the snow-flake and the sweeping
winter winds.  His amatory songs have no fire in them.  While Burns
would have held Annie in his "straining grasp," Tannahill, with a
glow upon his cheek, would have pointed out to the unappreciating
fair the "plantin' tree-taps tinged wi' gowd," or silently watched
the "midges dance aboon the burn."  Then, by the aid of that love of
nature, how clearly he sees, and how exquisitely he paints what he
sees--

  "Feathery breckans fringe the rocks;
  'Neath the brae the burnie jouks."

  "Towering o'er the Newton wuds,
  Laverocks fan the snaw-white cluds."

Neither Keats nor Tennyson, nor any of their numerous followers
surpassed this unlettered weaver in felicity of colour and touch.
Any one wishing to prove the truth of Tannahill's verse, could not do
better than bring out his song-book here, and read and ramble, and
ramble and read again.

[Sidenote: Elderslie.]

But why go farther to-day?  The Peesweep Inn, where the rambler
baits, is yet afar on the heath; Kilbarchan, queerest of villages, is
basking its straggling length on the hill-side in the sun, peopled by
botanical and bird-nesting weavers, its cross adorned by the statue
of Habbie Simpson, "with his pipes across the wrong shoulder."
Westward is Elderslie, where Wallace was born, and there, too, till
within the last few years, stood the oak amongst whose branches, as
tradition tells, the hero, when hard pressed by the Southrons, found
shelter with all his men.  From afar came many a pilgrim to behold
the sylvan giant.  Before its fall it was sorely mutilated by time
and tourists.  Of its timber were many snuff-boxes made.  Surviving
the tempests of centuries, it continued to flourish green atop,
although its heart was hollow as a ruined tower.  At last a gale,
which heaped our coasts with shipwreck, struck it down with many of
its meaner brethren.  "To this complexion must we come at last."  At
our feet lies Paisley with its poets.  Seven miles off, Glasgow
peers, with church-spire and factory stalk, through a smoky cloud;
the country between gray with distance, and specked here and there
with the vapours of the trains.  How silent the vast expanse! not a
sound reaches the ear on the height.  Gleniffer Braes are clear in
summer light, beautiful as when the poet walked across them.  Enough,
their beauty and his memory.  One is in no mood to look even at the
unsightly place beside the canal which was sought when to the poor
disordered brain the world was black, and fellow-men ravening wolves.
Here he walked happy in his genius; not a man to wonder at and bow
the knee to, but one fairly to appreciate and acknowledge.  For the
twitter of the wren is music as well as the lark's lyrical up-burst;
the sigh of the reed shaken by the wind as well as the roaring of a
league of pines.




_HOME._

When of an autumn evening the train brought me into Edinburgh, the
scales of familiarity having to some little extent fallen from my
eyes, I thought I had never before seen it so beautiful.  Its
brilliancy was dazzling and fairy-like.  It was like a city of
Chinese lanterns.  It was illuminated as if for a great victory, or
the marriage of a king.  Princes Street blazed with street lamps and
gay shop-windows.  The Old Town was a maze of twinkling lights.  The
Mound lifted up its starry coil.  The North Bridge leaping the chasm,
held lamps high in air.  There were lights on the Calton Hill, lights
on the crest of the Castle.  The city was in a full blossom of
lights--to wither by midnight, to be all dead ere dawn.  And then to
an ear accustomed to silence there arose on every side the potent hum
of moving multitudes, more august in itself, infinitely more
suggestive to the imagination than the noise of the Atlantic on the
Skye shores.  The sound with which I had been for some time familiar
was the voice of many billows; the sound which was in my ears was the
noise of men.

And in driving home, too, I was conscious of a curious oppugnancy
between the Skye life which I had for same time been leading, and the
old Edinburgh life which had been dropped for a little, and which had
now to be resumed.  The two experiences met like sheets of metal, but
they were still separate sheets--I could not solder them together and
make them one.  I knew that a very few days would do that for me; but
it was odd to attempt by mental effort to unite the experiences and
to discover how futile was all such effort.  Coming back to Edinburgh
was like taking up abode in a house to which one had been for a while
a stranger, in which one knew all the rooms and all the articles of
furniture in the rooms, but with whose knowledge there was mingled a
feeling of strangeness.  I had changed my clothes of habit, and for
the moment I did not feel so much at ease in the strange Edinburgh,
as the familiar Skye, suit.

[Sidenote: Ossianic translations.]

It was fated, however, that the two modes of life should, in my
consciousness, melt into each other imperceptibly.  When I reached
home I found that my friend the Rev. Mr Macpherson of Inverary had
sent me a packet of Ossianic translations.  These translations,
breathing the very soul of the wilderness I had lately left, I next
day perused in my Edinburgh surroundings, and through their agency
the two experiences coalesced.  Something of Edinburgh melted into my
remembrance of Skye--something of Skye was projected into actual
Edinburgh.  Thus is life enriched by ideal contrast and interchange.
With certain of these translations I conclude my task.  To me they
were productive of much pleasure.  And should the shadows in my book
have impressed the reader to any extent, as the realities impressed
me--if I have in any way kindled the feeling of Skye in his
imagination as it lives in mine--these fragments of austere music
will not be ungrateful.




  EXTRACT FROM CARRICK-THURA.

  Night fell on wave-beat Rotha,
  The hill-shelter'd bay received the ships;
  A rock rose by the skirt of the ocean,
  A wood waved over the boom of the waves;
  Above was the circle of Lodin,
  And the huge stones of many a power;
  Below was a narrow plain
  And tree and grass beside the sea.
  A tree torn by the wind when high
  From the skirt of the cairns to the plain.
  Beyond was the blue travel of streams;
  A gentle breeze came from the stilly sea,
  A flame rose from a hoary oak;
  The feast of the chiefs was spread on the heath;
  Grieved was the soul of the king of shields,
  For the chief of dark Carrick of the braves.

    The moon arose slow and faint;
  Deep slumber fell round the heads of the braves,
  Their helmets gleam'd around;
  The fire was dying on the hill.
  Sleep fell not on the eyelids of the king;
  He arose in the sound of his arms
  To view the wave-beat Carrick.
    The fire lower'd in the far distance,
  The moon was in the east red and slow.
  A blast came down from the cairn;
  On its wings was the semblance of a man,
  Orm Lodin, ghastly on the sea.
  He came to his own dwelling-place,
  His black spear useless in his hand,
  His red eye as the fire of the skies,
  His voice as the torrent of the mountains.

  Far distant in the murky gloom.
  Fingal raised his spear in the night,
  His challenge was heard on the plain--
    "Son of the night, from my side,
  Take the wind--away;
  Why shouldst come to my presence, feeble one,
  Thy form as powerless as thy arms?
  Do I dread thy dark-brown shape,
  Spirit of the circles of Lodin?
  Weak is thy shield and thy form of subtle cloud,
  Thy dull-edged sword as fire in the great waves,
  A blast parts them asunder,
  And thou [thyself] art straightway dispersed
  From my presence, dark son of the skies.
  Call thy blast--away!"
    "Wouldst thou drive me from my own circle?"
  Said the hollow voice of eeriest sound.
  "To me bends the host of the braves;
  I look from my wood on the people,
  And they fall as ashes before my sight;
  From my breath comes the blast of death;
  I come forth on high on the wind;
  The storms are pouring aloft
  Around my brow, cold, gloomy, and dark.
  Calm is my dwelling in the clouds,
  Pleasant the great fields of my repose."
    "Dwell in thy plains,"
  Said the mighty king, his hand on his sword;
  "Else remember the son of Cumal in the field;
  Feeble is thy phantom, great is my strength.
  Have I moved my step from the mountain
  To thy halls on the peaceful plain?
  Has my powerful spear met
  In the skyey robe the voice
  Of the dark spirit of the circle of Lodin?
  Why raise thy brow in gloom?
  Why brandishest thy spear on high?
  Little I fear thy threats, feeble one,
  I fled not from hosts on the field,
  Why should flee from the seed of the winds
  The mighty hero, Morven's king?
  Flee he will not, well he knows
  The weakness of thy arm in battle."
    "Flee to thy land," replied the Form,
  "Flee on the black wind--away!
  The blast is in the hollow of my hand--
  Mine are the course and wrestling of the storm,
  The king of Soroch is my son,
  He bends on the hill to my shade,
  His battle is at Carrick of the hundred braves,
  And safe he shall win the victory--
    "Flee to thy own land, son of Cumal,
  Else feel to thy sorrow my rage."
    High he lifted his dark spear,
  Fiercely he bent his lofty head.
  Against him Fingal advanced amain, [a-fire,]
  His bright-blue sword in hand,
  Son of Loon--the swartest cheek'd.
  The light of the steel passed through the Spirit,
  The gloomy and feeble spirit of death.
  Shapeless he fell, yonder [opposite]
  On the wind of the black cairns, as smoke
  Which a young one breaks, rod in hand,
  At the hearth of smoke and struggle,
  The Form of Lodin shriek'd in the hill,
  Gathering himself in the wind,
  Innis-Torc heard the sound,
  The waves with terror stay their courses:
  Up rose the braves of Cumal's son.
  Each hand grasp'd a spear on the hill,
  "Where is he?" they cried with frowning rage,
  Each armour sounding on its lord.




  EXTRACTS FROM FINGAL.

  Cuchullin sat by the wall of Tura,
  In the shade of the tree of sounding leaf;
  His spear leant against the cave-pierced rock,
  His great shield by his side on the grass.
  The thoughts of the chief were on Cairber.
  A hero he had slain in battle fierce,
  When the watcher of the ocean came,
  The swift son of Fili with the bounding step.
    "Arise, Cuchullin, arise,
  I see a gallant fleet from the north,
  Swift bestir thee, chief of the banquet,
  Great is Swaran, numerous is his host!"
    "Moran, answered the dauntless blue-eyed,
  Weak and trembling wert thou aye;
  In thy fear the foe is numerous;
  Son of Fili is Fingal,
  High champion of the dark-mottled hills."
    "I saw their leader," answer'd Moran;
  "Like to a rock was the chief,
  His spear as a fir on the rocky mountain,
  His shield as the rising moon:
  He sat on a rock on the shore
  As the mist yonder on the hill."
    "Many," I said, "chief of the strangers,
  Are the champions that rise with thee,
  Strong warriors, of hardiest stroke,
  And keenest brand in the play of men.
  But more numerous and valiant are the braves
  That surround the windy Tura."
  Answer'd the brave, as a wave on a rock,
  "Who in this land is like me?
  Thy heroes could not stand in my presence;
  But low they should fall beneath my hand.
  Who is he would meet my sword?
  Save Fingal, king of stormy Selma.
  Once on a day we grasp'd each other
  On Melmor, and fierce was our strife.
  The wood fell in the unyielding fight,
  The streams turn'd aside, and trembled the cairn.
  Three days the strife was renew'd,
  Warriors bravest in battle trembled.
  On the fourth, said Fingal the king--
  'The ocean chief fell in the glen.'
  He fell not, was my answer."
  Let Cuchullin yield to the chief,
  Who is stronger than the mountain storm.
    I, said the dauntless blue-eyed,
  Yield I shall not to living man.
  Cuchullin shall, resolute as he, be
  Great in battle, or stainless in death.
  Son of Fili, seize my spear,
  Strike the joyless and gloomy shield of Sema;
  Thou shalt see it high on the wall of spears;
  No omen of peace was its sound.
  Swift, son of Fili, strike the shield of Sema,
  Summon my heroes from forest and copse.
    Swift he struck the spotted [bossy] shield,
  Each copse and forest answer'd.
  Pauseless, the alarm sped through the grove;
  The deer and the roe started on the heath:
  Curtha leap'd from the sounding rock:
  Connal of the doughtiest spear bestirr'd himself
  Favi left the hind in the chase:
  Crugeal return'd to festive Jura.
  Ronan, hark to the shield of the battles,
  Cuchullin's land signal, Cluthair,
  Calmar, hither come from the ocean:
  With thy arms hither come, O Luthair.
  Son of Finn, thou strong warrior, arise;
  Cairber [come] from the voiced Cromlec;
  Bend thy knee, free-hearted Fichi.
  Cormag [come] from streamy Lena.
  Coilte, stretch thy splendid side, [limbs]
  Swift, travelling from Mora,
  Thy side, whiter than the foam, spread
  On the storm-vex'd sea.
  Then might be seen the heroes of high deeds
  Descending each from his own winding glen,
  Each soul burning with remembrance
  Of the battles of the time gone by of old:
  Their eyes kindling and searching fiercely round
  For the dark foe of Innisfail.
  Each mighty hand on the hilt of each brand
  Blazing, lightning flashing [_lit._, streaming bright, like the
      sun] from their armour.
    As pours a stream from a wild glen
  Descend the braves from the sides of the mountains,
  Each chief in the mail of his illustrious sire.
  His stern, dark-visaged warriors behind,
  As the gatherings of the waters of the mountains [i.e., rain-clouds]
  Around the lightning of the sky.
  At every step was heard the sound of arms
  And the bark of hounds, high gambling
  Songs were humm'd in every mouth,
  Each dauntless hero eager for the strife.
  Cromlec shook on the face of the mountains,
  As they march'd athwart the heath:
  They stood on the inclines of the hills,
  As the hoary mist of autumn
  That closes round the sloping mountain,
  And binds its forehead to the sky.

  FINGAL, Lib. i., line 1-100.

  As rushes a gray stream in foam
  From the iron front of lofty Cromla;
  The torrent travelling the mountains,
  While dark night enwraps the cairns:
  And the cold shades of paly hue
  Look down from the skirts of the showers;
  So fierce, so great, so pitiless, so swift
  Advanced the hardy seed of Erin.
  Their chief, as the great boar [whale] of the ocean,
  Drawing the cold waves behind him:
  Pouring his strength as billows; [or _in_ billows,]
  'Neath his travel shakes the shore.
    The seed of Lochlin heard the sound,
  As the cold roaring stream of winter;
  Swift Swaran struck his shield,
  And spoke to the son of Arn beside him--
  I hear a sound on the side of the mountains,
  As the evening fly of slow movements;
  It is the gallant sons of Erin,
  Or a storm in the distant woodland.
  Like Gormal is the sound,
  Ere wakes the tempest in the high seas:
  Hie thee to the heights, son of Arn,
  Survey each copse and hill-side.
  He went, and soon return'd in terror,
  His eye fix'd and wild in his head;
  His heart beat quick against his side,
  His speech was feeble, slow, and broken.
    "Arise! thou Lord of the waves,
  Mighty chief of the dark shields;
  I see the stream of the dark-wooded mountains,
  I see the seed of Erin and their lord.
  A chariot! the mighty chariot of battle
  Advances with death across the plain;
  The well-made swift chariot of Cuchullin,
  The great son of Sema, mighty in danger.
  Behind, it bends down like a wave,
  Or the mist on the copse of the sharp rocks;
  The light of stones of power [gems] is round,
  As the sea round a bark at night.
  Of polish'd yew is the beam,
  The seats within are of smoothest bone;
  The dwelling-place of spears it is,
  Of shields, of swords, and of mighty men.
  By the right side of the great chariot
  Is seen the snorting, high-mettled steed;
  The high-maned, broad, black-chested,
  High-leaping, strong son of the hills.
  Loud and resounding is his hoof:
  The spread of his frontlets above
  Is like mist on the haunts of the elk;
  Bright was his aspect, and swift his going,
  Sith-fadda [Long-stride] is his name.
    By the other side of the chariot
  Is the arch-neck'd, snorting,
  Narrow-maned, high-mettled, strong-hoofed,
  Swift-footed, wide-nostril'd steed of the mountains,
  Du-sron-geal is the name of the horse.
  Full a thousand slender thongs
  Bind the chariot on high;
  The bright steel bits of the bridles
  Are cover'd with foam in their cheeks:
  Blazing stones, sparkling bright,
  Bend aloft on the manes of the steeds--
  Of the steeds that are like the mist on the mountains,
  Bearing the chief to his renown.
  Wilder than the deer is their aspect,
  Powerful as the eagle their strength;
  Their sound is like the savage winter
  On Gormal, when cover'd with snow.
  In the chariot is seen the chief,
  The mighty son of the keenest arms--
  Cuchullin of the blue-spotted shields.
  The son of Sema, renown'd in song,
  His cheek is as the polish'd yew;
  His strong eye is spreading high,
  'Neath his dark-arch'd and slender brow.
  His yellow hair, as a blaze round his head,
  Pouring [waving] round the splendid face of the hero,
  While he draws from behind his spear.
  Flee, great chief of ships!
  Flee from the hero who comes
  As a storm from the glen of streams."
    "When did I flee? said the king of ships;
  When fled Swaran of the dark shields?
  When did I shun the threatening danger,
  Son of Arn--aye feeble?
  I have borne the tempest of the skies,
  On the bellowing sea of inclement showers;
  The sternest battles I have borne,
  Why should I flee from the conflict,
  Son of Arn, of feeblest hand?
  Arise my thousands on the field,
  Pour as the roar of the ocean,
  When bends the blast from the cloud,
  Let gallant Lochlin rise around my steel.
  Be ye like rocks on the edge of the ocean,
  In my own land of oars,
  That lifts the pine aloft
  To battle with the tempests of the sky."
    As the sound of autumn from two mountains
  Towards each other drew the braves,
  As a mighty stream from two rocks,
  Flowing, pouring on the plain;
  Sounding dark, fierce in battle,
  Met Lochlin and Innesfail.
  Chief mix'd his strokes with chief,
  Man contended with man,
  Steel clang'd on steel,
  Helmets are cleft on high,
  Blood is pouring fast around,
  The bow-string twangs on the polish'd yew;
  Arrows traverse the sky,
  Spears strike and fall,
  As the bolt of night on the mountains,
  As the bellowing seething of the ocean,
  When advance the waves on high;
  Like the torrent behind the mountains
  Was the gloom and din of the conflict.
  Though the hundred bards of Cormag were there,
  And their songs described the combat,
  Scarcely could they tell
  Of each headless corpse and death--
  Many were the deaths of men and chiefs,
  Their blood spreading on the plain.
    Mourn, ye race of songs,
  For Sith-alum the child of the braves:
  Evir, heave thy snowy breast
  For gallant Ardan of fiercest look.
  As two roes that fall from the mountain,
  [They fell] 'neath the hand of dark-shielded Swaran;
  While dauntless he moved before his thousands,
  As a spirit in the cloudy sky,
  A spirit that sits in cloud,
  Half made by mist from the north,
  When bends the lifeless mariner
  A look of woe on the summit of the waves.
    Nor slept thy hand by the side,
  Chief of the isle of gentle showers;
  Thy brand was in the path of spoils,
  As lightning flashing thick,
  When the people fall in the glen,
  And the face of the mountain, as in a blaze,
  [Or is seething white with torrents,]
  Du-sron-geal snorted over brave men,
  Sith-fadda wash'd his hoof in blood,
  Behind him lay full many a hero,
  As a wood on Cromla of the floods,
  When moves the blast through the heath,
  With the airy ghosts of night.

  Weep on the sounding rock,
  Noble daughter of the isle of ships;
  Bend thy splendid countenance over the sea,
  Thou lovelier than a spirit in the woods,
  Rising up soft and slow
  As a sunbeam in the silence of the hills.
  He fell, soon he fell in the battle,
  The youth of thy love is pale,
  'Neath the sword of great Cuchullin.
  What has made thee so wan and cold?
  He will move no more to hardy deeds,
  He will not strike the high blood of heroes;
  Trenar, youthful Trena has fallen in death;
  Maid, them shalt see thy love no more for ever.
  His hounds howl piteously
  At home, as they see his ghost,
  His bow is unstrung and bare;
  His death-sound is on the knoll, [_i.e._, on the knoll he
      utters his death-groan.]
    As roll a thousand waves to the shore,
  So under Swaran advanced the foe;
  As meets the shore a thousand waves,
  So Erin met the king of ships.
  Then arose the voices of death,
  The sound of battle-shout and clang of arms,
  Shields and mail lay broken on the ground.
  A sword like lightning was high in each hand,
  The noise of battle rose from wing to wing,
  Of battle, roaring, bloody, hot,
  As a hundred hammers striking wild,
  By turns, showers of red sparks from the glowing forge.
  Who are those on hilly Sena?
  Who of darkest and fiercest gloom?
  Who likest to the murkiest cloud?
  The sword of each chief as fire on the waves,
  The face of the woods is troubled,
  The wave-beat rock shakes on the shore.
  Who, but Swaran of ships
  And the chief of Erin, renown'd in song?
  The eye of the hosts beholds aside
  The encounter of the mighty heroes.
  Night descended on the combat of the braves,
  And hid the undecided conflict.

  FINGAL, Book i., 313-502.



THE END



_Ballantyne, Roberts, and Company, Printers, Edinburgh._









*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76787 ***