Chapter L: M. K. J. M. K (3)

“He seemed to me,” writes Sir Walter, “to suspect many of the
Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity
on the subject of Johnson’s having been entertained in the
wretched huts of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside,
and conjured me to tell him the truth of the matter. ‘This Sir
Allan,’ said he, ‘was he a _regular baronet_, or was his title
such a traditional one as you find in Ireland?’ I assured my
excellent acquaintance that, ‘for my own part, I would have
paid more respect to a knight of Kerry, or knight of Glynn; yet
Sir Allan Macleane was a _regular baronet_ by patent;’ and,
having given him this information, I took the liberty of asking
him, in return, whether he would not in conscience prefer the
worst cell in the jail at Gloucester (which he had been very
active in overlooking while the building was going on) to those
exposed hovels where Johnson had been entertained by rank and
beauty. He looked round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan
had some advantage in exercising ground; but in other respects
he thought the compulsory tenants of Gloucester had greatly the
advantage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning which
Johnson has recorded that ‘it wanted little which palaces could
afford.’”

Johnson, by the way, did not write “_it_ wanted,” but “_we_ wanted little that palaces afford.” We have from Sir Walter also an amusing story which shows how the chief of the Macleanes in the embarrassment of his affairs had learnt to hate the sight of an attorney—_writers_, as they are called in Scotland:

“Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend residing at
Carron lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks of
that river are studded with pretty villas: Sir Allan, admiring
the landscape, asked his friend whom that handsome seat
belonged to. ‘M——, the writer to the signet,’ was the reply.
‘Umph!’ said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, ‘I
mean that other house.’ ‘Oh! that belongs to a very honest
fellow, Jamie ——, also a writer to the signet.’ ‘Umph!’
said the Highland chief of Macleane, with more emphasis than
before, ‘And yon smaller house?’ ‘That belongs to a Stirling
man; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer too;
for ——.’ Sir Allan, who had recoiled a quarter of a circle
backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire, and
turned his back on the landscape, saying, ‘My good friend,
I must own you have a pretty situation here; but d—n your
neighbourhood.’”[676]

In his dislike of lawyers he would have found a common feeling in Johnson, who one day, “when inquiry was made concerning a person who had quitted a company where he was, observed that he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney.” Happily there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity of the scene during the visit of our travellers. [Sidenote: A SUNDAY ON INCHKENNETH.] The Sunday which Johnson spent on Inchkenneth was, as he told Boswell, “the most agreeable he had ever passed.” He thus describes it to Mrs. Thrale: “Towards evening Sir Allan told us that Sunday never passed over him like another day. One of the ladies read, and read very well, the evening service, ‘and Paradise was opened in the wild.’”[677] Such was the impression produced on him that he commemorated the day in some pretty Latin lines entitled, _Insula Sancti Kennethi_. Though he would not attend a Scotch church and hear Robertson preach, yet a woman’s reading the English service did not shock him.

“Quid quod sacrifici versavit femina libros?
Legitimas faciunt pectora pura preces.”

“A woman’s hand, ’tis true, turned o’er the sacred leaves,
But prayer from hearts so pure God’s sanction sure receives.”

He thus prettily ends his verses:

“Quo vagor ulterius? quod ubique requiritur hic est;
Hic secura quies, hic et honestus amor.”

“Why should we further roam? here what all seek we gain,
Both peace without a care, and love without a stain.”

Sir Allan had chosen well his hermitage. The landing-place is on the south-eastern side of the island, in a little bay with a sandy beach, sheltered by a low point from the storms coming from the north-west, while the cold blasts from the north and the north-east are kept off by a low hill. The ground slopes up from the shore in pleasant meadow land. At the bottom of the slope, a little above the beach, Sir Allan, I conjecture, had his habitation. Here are the ruins of a farmhouse which was burnt down a few years ago. It is very likely that it occupied the same site as his cottages. [Sidenote: THE CHAPEL ON INCHKENNETH.] The road marked with cart-wheels, as on the main land, at the sight of which Dr. Johnson’s heart was cheered, I failed to discover. We wandered up the little path to where on the rising ground the ruined chapel stands within the hearing of the wave.

“We walked uncovered into the chapel,” writes Johnson, “and saw
in the reverend ruin the effects of precipitate reformation.
The floor is covered with ancient grave-stones, of which the
inscriptions are not now legible. The altar is not yet quite
demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a _bas relief_
of the Virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her.
On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it
has no clapper, neither Presbyterian bigotry nor barbarian
wantonness has yet taken away. The chapel is thirty-eight feet
long and eighteen broad. Boswell, who is very pious, went into
it at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste
for fear of spectres. Near the chapel is a fountain, to which
the water, remarkably pure, is conveyed from a distant hill
through pipes laid by the Romish clergy, which still perform
the office of conveyance though they have never been repaired
since Popery was suppressed.”

Our boatman, whom I had in vain questioned about Johnson’s host, led me up to the tomb of an old knight, clothed in armour, with a dog lying at his feet, and said, “That is Sir Allan.” The little fountain, in spite of the lapse of years and the long drought, still ran with a stream of pure water. Besides the chapel, there had once been on the island a seminary of priests. “Sir Allan,” writes Johnson, “had a mind to trace the foundations of a college, but neither I nor Mr. Boswell, who bends a keener eye on vacancy, were able to perceive them.” Where they failed we could not hope to succeed. We next explored, as they had done, a neighbouring islet.

[Sidenote: SANDILAND.]

“Even Inchkenneth,” says Johnson, “has a subordinate island,
named Sandiland, I suppose in contempt, where we landed, and
found a rock, with a surface of perhaps four acres, of which
one is naked stone, another spread with sand and shells, some
of which I picked up for their glossy beauty, and two covered
with a little earth and grass, on which Sir Allan has a few
sheep. I doubt not but when there was a college at Inchkenneth,
there was a hermitage upon Sandiland.”

The shells, perhaps, he kept to add to the collection of Mrs. Thrale’s eldest daughter. “I have been able,” he wrote later on, “to collect very little for Queeney’s cabinet.” The name which our boatman gave to the island was, so far as I could catch it, not Sandiland, but Sameilan. At the time of our visit it had for inhabitants four sheep, and flocks of sea-birds who made it their breeding ground. They flew circling and screaming over our heads, while a mother bird led off a late brood of little ones into the sea. Before each of the burrows in which they made their nests was a litter of tiny shells thrown up like sand before a rabbit-warren. The sun shone brightly, the little waves beat on the shore, while all around us there were mountains, islands, and lochs. As I picked up a few shells, I thought that on this lonely rock, perhaps, none had been gathered since the day when they caught Johnson’s eye by their glossy beauty. In sailing back to the mainland of Mull we saw four seals popping up their heads in the water near the shore.

So pleasant did Johnson find the life in Inchkenneth that he remained a day longer than he had intended. “We could have been easily persuaded,” he writes, “to a longer stay, but life will not be all passed in delight. The session at Edinburgh was approaching from which Mr. Boswell could not be absent.” On the morning of Tuesday, October 19, they started for Iona in a good strong boat, with four stout rowers under the guidance of the chief of the Macleanes. On the shore they took their last farewell of poor Col, “who,” wrote Johnson, “had treated us with so much kindness, and concluded his favours by consigning us to Sir Allan.” [Sidenote: MACKINNON’S CAVE.] On the way they visited Mackinnon’s Cave, on the opposite coast of Mull, “the greatest natural curiosity,” said Johnson, “he had ever seen.” He thus describes it in a letter to Mrs. Thrale.

“We had some difficulty to make our way over the vast masses
of broken rocks that lie before the entrance, and at the mouth
were embarrassed with stones, which the sea had accumulated
as at Brighthelmstone; but as we advanced we reached a floor
of soft sand, and as we left the light behind us walked along
a very spacious cavity vaulted overhead with an arch almost
regular, by which a mountain was sustained, at least, a very
lofty rock. From this magnificent cavern went a narrow passage
to the right-hand, which we entered with a candle, and though
it was obstructed with great stones, clambered over them to
a second expansion of the cave, in which there lies a great
square stone, which might serve as a table. The cave goes
onward to an unknown extent, but we were now one hundred and
sixty yards under ground; we had but one candle, and had never
heard of any that went further and came back; we therefore
thought it prudent to return.”

“Tradition,” according to Boswell, “says that a piper and twelve men once advanced into this cave, nobody can tell how far; and never returned.” It is indeed a wonderful place. As we sat on the rocks near the entrance, with the huge cliffs rising sheer above us, and the waves breaking at our feet, we could see in the distance Iona, with its beach of white sand, Staffa with its lofty masses of dark rock, Little Colonsay with the waves dashing in foam upon it, and on the horizon a coast which we took to be the island of Col. Vast masses of rock lay along the beach in huge and wild disorder. Beyond the cavern they came to an end; for there the cliff rose from the sea steep as the wall of a house. The cascade near the cave, which Boswell mentions, was falling in a very slender stream. Hard by a huge crag was covered almost to the top by the fresh young leaves of a great ivy-tree. It called up to my memory the ivy-mantled ruins of Kenilworth Castle.

Our travellers, taking boat again, continued their voyage along the shore of Mull. “The island of Staffa,” writes Boswell, “we saw at no very great distance, but could not land upon it, the surge was so high on its rocky coast.” It is strange that Sir James Mackintosh, with this passage before him, should have accused Johnson of having visited Iona, “without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him.”[678] As they sailed along, “Sir Allan, anxious for the honour of Mull, was still talking of its _woods_, and pointing them out to Dr. Johnson, as appearing at a distance on the skirts of that island. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘I saw at Tobermory what they called a wood, which I unluckily took for _heath_. If you show me what I shall take for _furze_, it will be something.’”

[Sidenote: ROVING AMONG THE HEBRIDES.]

They dined at “a cluster of rocks, black and horrid,” near to which was a public-house where they had hoped to procure some rum or brandy for the boatmen; “but unfortunately a funeral a few days before had exhausted all their store.” Smollett in his _Humphry Clinker_, tells how a Highland gentleman, at his grandmother’s funeral, “seemed to think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion.”[679] The rest of this day’s voyage Johnson thus finely described in one of his letters: “We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us: the wind rose; the sea swelled. We passed by several little islands in the silent solemnity of faint moonshine, seeing little, and hearing only the wind and the water. At last we reached the island; the venerable seat of ancient sanctity, where secret piety reposed, and where fallen greatness was reposited.” Boswell adds that as they “sailed along by moonlight in a sea somewhat rough, and often between black and gloomy rocks, Dr. Johnson said, ‘If this be not roving among the Hebrides nothing is.’”

[Sidenote: THE MACLEANES OF IONA.]

Iona, which of old belonged to the Macleanes, in their recent embarassments had been sold to the Duke of Argyle. Though the tie of property was broken yet the feeling of clanship remained entire. “Whatever was in the island,” writes Johnson, “Sir Allan could demand, for the inhabitants were Macleanes; but having little they could not give us much.” A curious scene described by Boswell bears witness to the strength of the devotion of these poor people.

“Sir Allan had been told that a man had refused to send him
some rum, at which the knight was in great indignation. ‘You
rascal! (said he,) don’t you know that I can hang you, if I
please?’ Not adverting to the Chieftain’s power over his clan,
I imagined that Sir Allan had known of some capital crime that
the fellow had committed, which he could discover, and so get
him condemned; and said, ‘How so?’ ‘Why, (said Sir Allan,) are
they not all my people?’ Sensible of my inadvertency, and most
willing to contribute what I could towards the continuation
of feudal authority, ‘Very true,’ said I. Sir Allan went on:
‘Refuse to send rum to me, you rascal! Don’t you know that, if
I order you to go and cut a man’s throat, you are to do it?’
‘Yes, an’t please your honour! and my own too, and hang myself
too.’ The poor fellow denied that he had refused to send the
rum. His making these professions was not merely a pretence
in presence of his Chief; for after he and I were out of Sir
Allan’s hearing, he told me, ‘Had he sent his dog for the rum,
I would have given it: I would cut my bones for him.’ It was
very remarkable to find such an attachment to a Chief, though
he had then no connection with the island, and had not been
there for fourteen years. Sir Allan, by way of upbraiding the
fellow, said, ‘I believe you are a _Campbell_.’”

The memory of the power so lately exercised throughout the Highlands by the chiefs was not soon forgotten. It was noticed so late as 1793, that in Scotland _master_ was still, for the most part, the term used for _landlord_. As an instance of this it was mentioned that in a sermon preached in the High Church of Edinburgh in 1788, the minister thus described the late Earl of Kinnoul in relation to his tenants.[680] Even after the abolition of the jurisdictions of the chiefs the powers left in the hands of the justices were very great. “An inferior judge in Scotland,” wrote the historian of Edinburgh in the year 1779, “makes nothing of sentencing a man to whipping, pillory, banishment from the limits of his jurisdiction, and such other trifling punishments, without the idle formality of a jury.”[681]

In Iona, however, there was no need of threats. The poor people were devoted to their former chief. “He went,” says Johnson, “to the headman of the island whom fame, but fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was, perhaps, proud enough of his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon produced more provision than men not luxurious required.” There was not a single house in which, with any comfort, they could have been lodged. Pennant, who had been there a year earlier, “had pitched a rude tent formed of oars and sails.” There was but one house which had a chimney. “Nevertheless, even in this,” says Johnson, “the fire was made on the floor in the middle of the room, and notwithstanding the dignity of their mansion the inmates rejoiced like their neighbours in the comforts of smoke.” Though the soil was naturally fruitful, yet the poverty of the people was great. “They are,” he adds, “remarkably gross and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read.” The population was probably not less than four hundred souls.[682] Sacheverell, who was there in 1688, mentions a class of “hereditary servants. They are,” he adds, “miserably poor. They seem an innocent, simple people, ignorant and devout; and though they have no minister, they constantly assemble in the great church on Sundays, where they spend most part of the day in private devotions.”[683] According to Pennant they were “the most stupid and the most lazy of all the islanders.” “They used,” he says, “the Chapel of the Nunnery as a cow-shed; the floor was covered some feet thick with dung, for they were too lazy to remove this fine manure, the collection of a century, to enrich their grounds.”[684] Boswell, however, gives a much better report. “They are industrious,” he says, “and make their own woollen and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer, which we did not find in any of the other islands.” In July, 1798, Dr. Garnett and his companion, Mr. Watts, the painter, passed a night in the public-house. The floor of their chamber was liquid mud; the rain fell on their beds. For fellow-lodgers they had several chickens, a tame lamb, a dog, some cats, and two or three pigs. Next morning they invited the schoolmaster to breakfast, and found that the inn could boast of only two tea-cups and one spoon, and that of wood.[685] Sir Walter Scott, who visited Iona in 1810 mentions “the squalid and dejected poverty of the inhabitants—the most wretched people he had anywhere seen.”[686] With such houses and such people Sir Allan Macleane certainly did wisely in choosing a barn for the lodgings of himself and his two friends. “Some good hay,” writes Boswell, “was strewed at one end of it, to form a bed for us, upon which we lay with our clothes on; and we were furnished with blankets from the village. Each of us had a portmanteau for a pillow. When I awaked in the morning, and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleanes, the great English Moralist, and myself, lying thus extended in such a situation.”

[Sidenote: IONA’S PAST AND PRESENT.]

The smile might have passed into a sigh, had Boswell contrasted the splendours of Iona’s past with the meanness of her present lot. They had come to

“Where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid.”

Like the pilgrim

“From the Blue Mountains, or Ontario’s Lake,”

amidst the ruins of fallen greatness and fallen learning they had sought

“Some peasant’s homely shed,
Who toils unconscious of the mighty dead.”

Whether with Johnson among “those illustrious ruins,” we look upon Iona as the instructress of the west, or with Gibbon as the island whence was “diffused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition,” in either case it is surely a spot where we are forced to pause, and with pensive mind “revolve the sad vicissitude of things.” I must not, however, be unjust to Boswell. It was his enthusiasm which had led them hither. It was he who had longed to survey Iona. “I,” said Johnson, “though less eager did not oppose him.” To him then we owe that splendid passage in which the great Englishman celebrates the power exerted over the mind by the sight of places where noble deeds were done, and noble lives were lived.

“We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once
the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans
and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and
the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local
emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would
be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the
power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or
the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the
dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends,
be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and
unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom,
bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose
patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or
whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!”

Boswell surely not without good reason maintains that “had their tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain.”

THE SOUTHERN COAST OF MULL AND LOCHBUY (OCTOBER 20-22).

Sailing from Iona about midday on Wednesday, October 20, our travellers landed in the evening on the southern coast of Mull, near the house of the Rev. Neal Macleod, who gave them lodgings for the night. Johnson oddly described him as “the cleanest-headed man that he had met with in the Western Islands.” The talk ran on English statesmen. Here it was that Johnson called Mr. Pitt a meteor, and Sir Robert Walpole a fixed star, and maintained that Pulteney was as paltry a fellow as could be. Continuing their journey on the morrow, they dined at the house of a physician, “who was so much struck with the uncommon conversation of Johnson, that he observed to Boswell, ‘This man is just a hogshead of sense.’” This doctor’s practice could scarcely have been very lucrative, for there came a time when he had no successor. Garnett writing of Mull at the end of the century, says, “There is at present no medical man in the island; the nearest surgeon of eminence is at Inverary.”[687] The distance from that town to the farthest points in Mull, as the crow flies, is not less than sixty miles, but by the route taken would be perhaps one hundred. [Sidenote: GLOOM AND DESOLATION.] In the afternoon our travellers rode, writes Boswell, “through what appeared to me the most gloomy and desolate country I had ever beheld.” “It was,” said Johnson, “a country of such gloomy desolation that Mr. Boswell thought no part of the Highlands equally terrific.” Faujas Saint-Fond, a few years later, describes Mull as a country “without a single road, without a single tree, where the mountains have heather for their only covering.”[688] Amidst the beautiful plantations and the fine trees with which this island is now in so many parts adorned, the modern tourist fails to recognize the truthfulness of these gloomy descriptions. Our travellers were to spend the night at Moy, the seat of the Laird of Lochbuy,[689] at the head of the fine loch from which he takes his title. [Sidenote: THE APPROACH TO LOCHBUY.] I approached it from the north-eastern side of the island, having driven over from Craignure, a little port in the Sound of Mull. Perhaps the country through which I passed was naturally finer than that which they had traversed in coming from the south-west. Perhaps, on the other hand, the difference was chiefly due to the trees and to better weather. Certainly the long drive, though in places dreary, was for a great part of the road on a bright, windy summer day, one of remarkable beauty. I passed lochs of the sea with the waves tossing, the sea-fowl hovering and settling and screaming, great herons standing on the shore, and the sea-trout leaping in the waters. But far more beautiful was Loch Uisk, an inland lake embosomed among the mountains, its steep shores covered with trees. The strong wind was driving the scud like dust over the face of its dark waters. As I drew near Lochbuy, I caught sight of the ivy-mantled tower across a meadow, where the mowers were cutting the grass, and the hay-makers were tossing it out to the sun and wind. Beyond the castle there was a broad stretch of white sand; a small vessel lay at anchor, ready at the next tide to run ashore and discharge the hamlet’s winter stock of coal. Tall trunks of fir-trees were lying near the water’s edge ready for shipping. At the head of the loch are two beautiful bays, each with its pastures and tilled lands, its low-wooded heights and its lofty circling mountains, each facing the south-west and sheltered from the cold winds. Between these two bays rise fine crags, hidden in places beneath hazels and ivy. For most of the year it is a land streaming with waterfalls. In beautiful ravines, half hidden by the trees, wild cascades rush down, swollen by the storms that have burst on the mountains; but at the time of my visit their voice was hushed by the long drought. So dry had the springs become in some places, that I was told at Lochbuy that to one of the neighbouring islands water had to be carried in boats.

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON. IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]

[Sidenote: THE LAIRD OF LOCHBUY.]

Close to the ruined Castle stood “the mansion, not very spacious or splendid,” where Macleane of Lochbuy, “a true Highland laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity,” entertained our travellers.

“We had heard much,” writes Boswell, “of Lochbuy’s being a
great roaring braggadocio, a kind of Sir John Falstaff, both in
size and manners; but we found that they had swelled him up to
a fictitious size, and clothed him with imaginary qualities.
Col’s idea of him was equally extravagant, though very
different: he told us he was quite a Don Quixote; and said, he
would give a great deal to see him and Dr. Johnson together.
The truth is, that Lochbuy proved to be only a bluff, comely,
noisy, old gentleman, proud of his hereditary consequence,
and a very hearty and hospitable landlord. Lady Lochbuy was
sister to Sir Allan Macleane, but much older. He said to me,
‘They are quite _Antediluvians_.’ Being told that Dr. Johnson
did not hear well, Lochbuy bawled out to him, ‘Are you of the
Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?’ Dr. Johnson gave
him a significant look, but made no answer; and I told Lochbuy
that he was not Johns_ton_, but John_son_, and that he was an
Englishman.”[690]

According to Sir Walter Scott, Boswell misapprehended Lochbuy’s meaning.

“There are,” he says, “two septs of the powerful clan of
M’Donald, who are called Mac-Ian, that is _John’s-son_; and
as Highlanders often translate their names when they go to
the Lowlands,—as Gregor-son for Mac-Gregor, Farquhar-son for
Mac-Farquhar,—Lochbuy supposed that Dr. Johnson might be one
of the Mac-Ians of Ardnamurchan, or of Glencro. Boswell’s
explanation was nothing to the purpose. The _Johnstons_ are a
clan distinguished in Scottish border history, and as brave as
any Highland clan that ever wore brogues; but they lay entirely
out of Lochbuy’s knowledge—nor was he thinking of them.”

I have little doubt, however, that whatever Lochbuy was thinking of he pronounced the name _Johnston_. In this both Boswell and Johnson agree. This too was the name which I commonly found given to the great man in the Highlands and Lowlands alike.

“The following day (writes Boswell) we surveyed the old castle,
in the pit or dungeon of which Lochbuy had some years before
taken upon him to imprison several persons; and though he had
been fined in a considerable sum by the Court of Justiciary,
he was so little affected by it, that while we were examining
the dungeon, he said to me, with a smile, ‘Your father knows
something of this;’ (alluding to my father’s having sat as one
of the judges on his trial). Sir Allan whispered me, that the
laird could not be persuaded that he had lost his heritable
jurisdiction.”

[Sidenote: HEREDITARY JURISDICTIONS.]

Up to the year 1747 “in the Highlands,” to quote Johnson’s words, “some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction over counties, and some chieftains over their own lands.” This subjection of the people to their chiefs was rightly regarded as one of the main sources of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. He who by law was privileged to keep a pit, a dungeon, and a gallows, was not likely to meet with much resistance when he summoned his people to follow him to the field. Advantage was therefore taken of the defeat of the clansmen at Culloden, “to crush all the Local Courts and to extend the general benefits of equal law to the low and the high, in the deepest recesses and obscurest corners.” The heritable jurisdiction had been divided into regalities, ordinary baronies, and baronies which had the right of pit and gallows.

“The lowest criminal jurisdiction,” says a Scotch legal author,
“is what we call for Battery and Bloodwits, _viz._, Offences
whereby a party is beaten, or blood drawn of him, but no
greater harm done; and this is implied in all Baronies. But if
the erection of the Barony contain a power of Pit and Gallows,
it imports a jurisdiction in ordinary capital cases, but not
in the excepted crimes, which go under the name of the _Four
Pleas of the Crown_, _viz._, Murder, Robbery, Rape, and wilful
Fire-raising. It is so called from the manner of execution
of criminals, _viz._, by hanging the men upon the Gallows or
Gibbet, and drowning the women, sentenced in a capital crime,
in a pit, it not being thought decent of old to hang them.”[691]

In old law Latin this right was known under the name of _furca et fossa_.[692] A person invested with the jurisdiction of a regality had power also in the Four Pleas of the Crown. “The sentences in civil cases are subject to the review of the Lords of Session, and in criminal to the Court of Justiciary. In criminal trials thirty days were allowed before execution of the sentence on this [the southern] side of the Forth, and forty on the other.” From this appeal there was one regality which was exempt. The jurisdiction of the Duke of Argyle was absolute even in cases of life and death. From his sentences there was no appeal.[693] Each barony had its Gallows Hill, and its dempster or hangman.[694] Pennant, in 1772, saw “on a little flat hill near the village of Kilarow in Islay the remains of the gallows.”[695] At Dunvegan men had been hanged on the sentence of the laird, so late as 1740. No doubt this power was sometimes most oppressively exercised. A chief who lived near Inverness was charged with having rid himself at a profit of men on his estate who had given him trouble. He charged them with theft, threatened them with the gallows, and so brought them “to sign a contract for their banishment.” They were then put on board a ship bound to the West Indies, “the master paying so much a head for them.”[696] In other words, they were sold for slaves, if not for life, at all events for a certain number of years.

No change had been made by the Act of Union of 1706, for it was expressly provided in it that all these heritable jurisdictions “should be reserved to the owners as rights and property.”[697] When in 1747 these powers had been swept away, two unhappy classes of men were excepted from the full benefit of the Act. The workers in any kind of mine or in salt-works were to remain as they had hitherto been—serfs for life. These men were found only in the Lowlands, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Nevertheless, even they were not left altogether without relief. “All jurisdiction in any case inferring the loss of life or demembration, was abrogated.”[698] A collier or a salter therefore could no longer be hanged or drowned, or even mangled by his master. It was not till the last year of the century that they were finally and fully freed. One of these emancipated serfs lived till the year 1844.[699]

The Act of 1747 not only abolished jurisdictions, but also alleviated the prisoner’s lot. Till it was passed, “all over Scotland pits were accounted legal prisons for thieves and other meaner criminals.”[700] Lady Margaret Bellenden in _Old Mortality_ praises her pit. “It is not more than two stories beneath ground,” she says, “so it cannot be unwholesome, especially as I rather believe there is somewhere an opening to the outer air.”[701] But henceforth—so the Act ran—“the prison shall have such windows or grates, as that it may be practicable for any friend of the prisoner to visit, see, and converse with him when he shall be so minded.”[702] In out of the way places, where there were no justices within reach, the laird, no doubt, to some extent, continued to exercise his old powers. Thus in Col, more than sixteen years after the Act was passed, the laird put a woman into “the family prison” for theft.[703] There have been men who regarded, or affected to regard with indignation the abolition of these injurious hereditary powers. “By the nation at large,” writes Dr. Robert Chambers, “the measure was contemplated as a last stab to the independence of Scotland, previously almost destroyed by the Union.”[704] There is happily no reason to believe that the nation at large was at any period of its history a set of sentimental fools.

[Sidenote: LOCHBUY BEFORE THE COURT.]

To most of the chiefs this loss of their ancient jurisdictions must have come as a terrible shock. Lochbuy, as has been seen, had refused to believe it, and so had got into trouble with the Court of Justiciary. After some search I was fortunate enough to discover a report of his case. He had, as I was informed by his descendant, the present laird, with the help of his piper let down a man into the pit. But here, for once, tradition has not been guilty of amplification. Aided by his servant, his piper and son, the innkeeper in Moy, and two other tenants, he had seized two men of the name of Maclean, and had imprisoned them two days “in an old ruinous castle.” Two of the accused did not appear to the indictment, “they were therefore fugitated (outlawed), and their moveables escheated to the king for their contempt.” The trial took place on August 15, 1759. It lasted twelve hours. “The jury (of which a majority was landed gentlemen) returned their verdict unanimously, finding the pannels (prisoners at the bar) guilty; but verbally recommending the four servants and tenants to the mercy of the court, it appearing that what they did was by order of Lochbuy, their master. The lords pronounced sentence, decerning Lochbuy in £180 sterling of expenses and damages to the private prosecutors, and 500 marks Scots (about £27) of fine; and condemning the whole pannels to seventeen days’ imprisonment.”[705]

Lochbuy had no doubt been the more unwilling to believe in the abolition of his jurisdiction as he had, it should seem, no share in that “valuable consideration in money which was granted to every nobleman and petty baron who was thus deprived of one part of his inheritance.”[706] On what principle of justice this compensation was given is not clear, unless we agree with Johnson in his assertion that “those who have long enjoyed dignity and power ought not to lose it without some equivalent.”[707] Professor Thorold Rogers informs me that we have here, he believes, the first instance in our history where compensation is paid by the country at large for the vested interests of a class. The claims which were made were excessive, partly no doubt in the hope that when much was demanded at all events something would be given, but partly, it was said, with the intention of “obstructing the Act, and raising discontents in the country.”[708] The total sum asked for was £587,000, but only £152,000 was granted. Among the claimants I found “Maclean of Lochbuie, Bailie of the Bailiery of Morovis and Mulerois, £500.” His name does not appear among the list of those whose claims were allowed.[709]

[Sidenote: LOCHBUY CASTLE.]

Though in 1759 the castle was described as ruinous, nevertheless it had been inhabited by the laird a few years earlier. Over the entrance of the house in which he received Johnson is inscribed: “Hæc domus [a word effaced] erat per Johannem M’Laine De Lochbuy Anno Dom. 1752.” It has, in its turn, given way to a more modern mansion, and has been converted into stables, coach-houses, and hay-lofts. The castle was built on the edge of the sea, “four-square to all the winds that blew.” The walls, nine or ten feet thick, “are probably as old as the fourteenth century, but the upper part seems to have been modified in the seventeenth.”[710] The ivy has climbed up to the top, nevertheless much of the stonework is still seen. It would be a pity if it were suffered to cover the walls on all sides. Hard by a little stream shaded with trees makes its way into the loch. To the north-west rises the steep hill of Dun Buy. “_Buy_ in Erse,” says Boswell, “signifies yellow. The hill being of a yellowish hue, has the epithet of _buy_.” This hue I altogether failed to discover; perhaps it is only seen in the autumn. On the bright summer’s day in which I saw the castle, it seemed to be almost unsurpassed in the pleasantness of its seat. Tall trees grew near it, their leaves rustling in the wind, and the lights and shadows dancing on the ground as the branches swayed to and fro, while in front lay the loch with its foaming waves. The old ruin looked as if it had been set there to add to the beauty of the scene, not for a place where lairds and their pipers should let down luckless folk into dismal pits. In the inside there was gloom enough. A few well-worn stone steps lead up to the entrance. The strong old door studded with iron nails which had withstood the storms of many a long year, has at length yielded to time, and been replaced. Behind it is an iron grate secured by bolts and by an oaken bar that is drawn forth from a hole in the wall. Passing on I went into a gloomy vault known as the store-room. Not a ray of light entered save by the open door. In the rocky floor there is a shallow well, which in the driest seasons is always full of water. The arched roof is built of huge boulders gathered from the beach, the spaces between being filled up with thin layers of stone after the fashion of Roman masonry. A dark staircase in the thickness of the wall leads up through another strong door to a second vaulted chamber, dimly lighted by narrow slits at the end of two slanting recesses, on each side of which are stone benches. This I was told was the court-room or judgment-hall. Opening out of it on one side is a very small chamber, in which was a kind of cupboard, a hiding-place perhaps for title-deeds and plate, for it could be so closed with stones as to look like solid wall. On the other side is the door to the dungeon, dismal enough, but not so dismal as the pit below, with its well in which women could be put to death with decency. On either side of the mouth of the well is a narrow ledge some eighteen inches wide, but not long enough to allow the prisoner to stretch himself at full length. On the floor above the court-room was the kitchen, with walls more than seven feet thick. It occupied the whole of the story. On the freestone joints of the great hearth can be seen the deep marks made by sharpening knives. Above the kitchen was the family sitting-room, which was entered from a gallery running all round it outside, and built in the overhanging part of the tower. Here at length I arrived at what may be called the front door. There was some attempt at ornament in the carving on the stones at the top and each side of the doorway. There was, moreover, light enough to see it clearly, for the gallery can boast of fair-sized windows. From one of them the laird could look out on the Hangman’s Hill, about a third of a mile off, now covered with fir-trees, but then bare. Some stones remain, in which the gallows were set up. The view from the castle, except when a hanging was going on, must on a fine day have been always beautiful, even when the country was bare of trees. To the north and east they looked over fields, once yellow every autumn with grain, but now pleasant meadow-land, shut in with hills and mountains down whose sides in rainy weather rivers stream and cascades leap. From one corner of the gallery a turret projects with two narrow windows, where the watchman could see anyone approaching from the side of the land. Not far from it was “the whispering hole,” where, by removing a stone which exactly fits into an opening, a suspicious laird could overhear the talk in the kitchen beneath. Above the sitting-room was another story divided into small rooms, the bed-chamber of the family. So solidly had the roof been built, that unrepaired it withstood all the blasts of heaven, till that terrible storm burst upon it and brought it down, which swept away the Tay Bridge.

In these two upper stories there were, no doubt, cheerful rooms, but they were reached through gloomy doors and iron grates, up dark staircases, with rough sides and well-worn steps, past the gloomy dungeon. Everything shows signs of danger and alarm. “It was sufficient for a Laird of the Hebrides,” as Johnson says, “if he had a strong house in which he could hide his wife and children from the next clan.” At the present day, as I was told by my guide, no one thinks of locking his door at night-time. My bag and great-coat and travelling rug were left in perfect safety for a couple of hours by the road-side while I wandered about. Of the modern mansion Johnson would never have said what he said of the second house, that “it was built with little regard to convenience, and with none to elegance or pleasure.” He would have been delighted not only with it, but with its large garden full of flowers and vegetables and fruits that testify to the mildness of the climate. The peaches ripen on the walls, though they do not attain to a large size. The hot-houses were full of choice plants, and clustering grapes. One bunch, I was told, had weighed nearly five pounds. But there are far greater changes than those worked by builders and gardeners. [Sidenote: THE OLD LAIRD AND THE NEW.] Here, where the rough old Laird in his out-of-the-way corner of the world used to rule his people with the help of gallows, pit and dungeon, I found a money-order office, a savings bank, a telegraph office, and a daily post. There is a good school, governed by a School Board, and a large reading room where the dulness of the long winter nights is relieved by various kinds of entertainments. There is besides an infirmary under the management of a qualified nurse, the daughter of a medical man, who has learnt her art by some years’ study in a hospital. She is provided with a chest of surgical instruments and a large stock of drugs. On her little pony she sometimes has to attend sick people at a distance of eight miles. Forty-three cases of measles had lately been under her care and none of them ended fatally. There is a salmon-hatching house, and a museum both of antiquities and natural curiosities. In it I saw a thumbscrew, with an iron ring at one end through which a thong could be passed. Used in this way it would have served much the same purpose as hand-cuffs. I looked with interest on an old Highland spinning-wheel, the gift of my intelligent and friendly guide, Mr. Angus Black. It had belonged to his grandmother. He had given it, he said, “to be kept there as a present for ages and generations to come.” When a little before I drank water from “the well by the river side,” such was the name of the spring in Gaelic, he told me that it was the spring “whence the Lairds had drunk for ages and generations past.” One thing I in vain looked for in the Museum. Boswell had been told much of a war-saddle, on which Lochbuy, “that reputed Don Quixote, used to be mounted; but we did not see it,” he adds, “for the young Laird had applied it to a less noble purpose, having taken it to Falkirk Fair _with a drove of black cattle_.” He took it much farther—to America, whither he went with his regiment. There he lost his life in a duel, and it was lost too. Perhaps it is preserved as a curiosity in some collection on the other side of the Atlantic.

[Sidenote: HIGHLAND FUNERALS.]

I was shown also at a short distance eastwards from the Castle, at the bottom of a crag by the roadside, a place known as the Cheese Cave. Here at every funeral the refreshments used to be placed for the mourners, who had often come twenty miles across the hills. In former days, when there were more men and fewer sheep some hundreds would assemble. “Two old respectable friends were left behind to take care of the food and drink. When the people came back from the grave-yard they refreshed themselves. I have seen them,” continued my guide, “sitting on these rocks by the cave having their luncheon.” Ramsay of Ochtertyre tells how “the women of each valley through which the funeral passed joined in the procession, but they attended but part of the way and then returned. The whole company seemed to be running; and wherever they rested small cairns or heaps of stones were raised to commemorate the corpse having halted on that spot.”[711] These heaps were pointed out to us on the side of Rattachan as we drove down to Glenelg. The silence of the Scotch funeral shocked Wesley, who recorded on May 20, 1774: “When I see in Scotland a coffin put into the earth and covered up without a word spoken, it reminds me of what was spoken concerning Jehoiakin, ‘He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.’”[712]

[Sidenote: THE OLD LAIRD AND THE NEW.]

It is not with accounts of funerals that I must take my leave of a place where I spent so pleasant a day, and had so hospitable a reception. Here I saw not only the dead past but a vigorous and hopeful present. Even the old Laird, we are told, “was a very hearty and hospitable landlord,” though with his belief in his rights of _furca et fossa_ he certainly was an antediluvian. His descendant does not yield to him in heartiness and hospitality, but has other ways of guiding his people than gallows, pit and dungeon. By his schools, his reading-room, his infirmary and his schemes for developing the fisheries he has won their affections. An old lady who had been allowed to visit the Castle, meeting him by chance as she came out, full of anger at what she had seen, exclaimed: “You ought, Sir, to be ashamed of your ancestors.” “No,” he replied, “I am not ashamed of them. They led their lives, and I lead mine.” They were at all events as good as the men of their time, perhaps better. Old Lochbuy does not seem to have been a bad fellow, though he was slow in learning that he had lost his right to imprison his tenants. “May not a man do what he likes with his own?” we can fancy him asking in the words used more than seventy years later by an English duke. Much as his descendant has done, there is one thing more which I would ask him to do. He dreads, no doubt, the throng of noisy tourists, but he might surely build a modest inn where the pensive wanderer could find lodging, and enjoy the scenery of Lochbuy.

“The guiltless eye
Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.”

OBAN AND INVERARY (OCTOBER 22-26).

[Sidenote: THE FERRY FROM MULL TO OBAN.]

On the morning of Friday, October 22, our travellers set out for the ferry by which they were to cross to Oban—a distance of about twelve miles. According to Dr. Garnett, travellers were conveyed first to Kerrera, an island lying off the mainland. Crossing this on foot or horseback they found awaiting them another boat to take them to Oban. At Auchnacraig in Mull there was an inn about half a mile from the ferry. Here he and his companion could procure, he says, neither oats for their horses nor straw for their litter. They wanted to give them a mess of oatmeal and water, but the woman, who acted as hostler, at first refused, “asking whether it was proper to give the food of Christians to horses.” After a long dispute she yielded. “In these islands,” he adds, “horses seldom taste oats.”[713] “The bottom of the ferry-boat,” says Boswell, “was strewed with branches of trees or bushes upon which we sat. We had a good day and a fine passage, and in the evening landed at Oban, where we found a tolerable inn.” This place, which I have seen recommended to cockney tourists in huge advertisements as The Charing Cross of the North, was then a little hamlet. In 1786 Knox found “about twenty families collected together with a view to the fisheries.”[714] It boasted of a custom-house and a post-office. In the islands no customs were paid, for there was no officer to demand them.[715] Faujas Saint-Fond gives a curious account of his stay in the inn, a few years after Johnson’s visit. He would have got on very well, for the food though simple was good, and his bed though hard was clean, had it not been for a performer on the bag-pipes—“un maudit joueur de cornemuse” who played “une musique d’un genre nouveau, mais bien terrible pour mon oreille.” The day of their arrival this man had strutted up and down before the inn with haughty and warlike looks, and had stunned them with his airs. “Nous crûmes d’abord que ce personnage était une espèce d’insensé qui gagnait sa vie à ce métier.” They were informed that he was an accomplished musician, “de l’école _highlandoise_,” and that in this display of his talents he was shewing the joy which he felt on seeing strangers in a place where they came so rarely. Touched by his friendly sentiments Saint-Fond had not only applauded him, but had even pressed on him “quelques shelings,” which he accepted, it almost seemed, merely out of complaisance. Taking pity on the stranger’s solitude he came and played under his bed-room window in the silence of the night. It was all in vain that Saint-Fond rose, went out of doors, took him by the hand and led him away. “Il revint au même moment, me donnant à entendre qu’il n’était point fatigué, et qu’il jouerait toute la nuit pour me plaire, et il tint parole.”[716]

[Sidenote: OBAN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]

The bagpiper was surely the direct ancestor of those bands of musicians who at Oban distress the peaceful tourist. But there are things worse even than musicians. How melancholy is the change which has come over the whole scene in the last quarter of a century! A beautiful bay ruined by man! That it should become thronged was inevitable; it need not have been made vulgar. It was on no scene of overgrown hotels that Johnson looked, as, with the tear starting in his eye, he repeated those fine lines in which Goldsmith describes the character of the British nation: