Chapter I: Front Matter

_LITERARY TOURS_

Literary Tours in
The Highlands and
Islands of Scotland

By D. T. Holmes, B.A.

"Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli"
--_Juvenal_, i. 74

_PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER_
Publisher by Appointment to the late Queen Victoria
1909

* * * * *

_To_
_James Coats, Junr., Esq.,_
_Ferguslie House, Paisley._

_You, but for whom I'd never been
Much further north than Aberdeen;
Whose mandate sent my willing feet
To realms of heather, broom, and peat:
Accept this record of my tours
As something less my own than yours._

_D. T. HOLMES._

_PREFACE._

_White stands the long Kilpatrick row
Of hills with deep and dazzling snow,
And eastward, in a glimmering haze,
Stretch to the Forth the Campsie Braes._

_But see! beyond the Clyde, a stain
Of smoke that runs across the plain,
And flecks for miles the vivid gleam:
It is the tireless steed of steam._

_An old acquaintance! Ben and Strath
Daily behold his thunderous path,
That ceases not, until he feels
The breeze of Mallaig cool his wheels._

_And Memory, fondly gazing back
On many a journey by that track
Of splendour, would, at home, retrace
The charms and lore of every place;_

_Yea, pass, in thought, to storied Skye,
Where all the glens in glamour lie;
And, lightly scorning gust and spray,
Leap o'er the Minch to Stornoway._

_And many a northern beach besides,
Splashed by the foam of racing tides,
Rises in thought: from here to there,
Let Fancy's coinage pay the fare,--_

_Fancy, that wafts us o'er the main
To utmost Thule and home again,
Through mingled din of sea and sky,
Even in the twinkling of an eye._

_D. T. H._

_Ingleholm, Bridge of Weir,
16th January, 1909._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY, 9

Village libraries--Difficulties of travel--Literary Societies in
the Highlands--Gaelic books--Happiness and geniality of
natives--Oban to Gairloch--Winter sailing--A crofting
village--Horrors of the Minch--Notes on Lewis--Highland
doctors--Hotels and anglers--Recent books--Military--Moray
Firth--Among the miners--Handloom weaving--Professor Blackie and
the Highlands.

CHAPTER II.--MUSIC, SPEECHES, AND LITERATURE, 60

Scotch a reading nation--Hardships of students in old
days--Homer in Scalloway--When education ends--Objects of
chapter--Music--M.P.'s--Rural depopulation--Its
causes--Emigration--Village halls--The moon--A lecture in
Islay--Mental and material wealth--Real greatness--A Highland
laird on literature--Varieties of chairmen--"Coming to the
point"--Moral obligation--Compliment to Paisley--Oratory at
Salen--Lecture in a dungeon--Surprises--A visit to the
Borders--Tarbolton--Scotch language--Choice books--The
essayists--A Banff theory--Goldsmith in Gaelic--_Biblia
abiblia_--Favourites for the road--Horace--Shakespeare's
Sonnets--Xenophon--French literature and journalism--Romance and
Augustanism--Victorian writers--Celt and Saxon.

CHAPTER III.--ECCLESIASTICAL, 134

Sectarian feeling--Typical anecdotes--Music and
religion--Ethical teaching in schools--The Moderates--A savoury
book--The Sabbath--"The Men of Skye"--The auldest kirk--The
Episcopal Church--An interlude of metre--The Christian
Brethren--Drimnin in Morven--Craignish--A model
minister--Ministerial trials in olden times--An artful
dodger--Some anecdotes from Gigha--Growing popularity of Ruskin.

CHAPTER IV.--EDUCATIONAL, 180

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

CHAPTER V.--A TRIP TO SHETLAND, 217

Aberdeen--En route--Lerwick--Past and present saints--Some notes
on the islands--A Shetland poet--A visit to Bressay--From
Lerwick to Sandwick--Quarff--"That holy man,
Noah"--Fladibister--Cunningsburgh--"Keeping off"--The indignant
elder--Torquil Halcrow--Philology--A Sandwick gentleman--Local
tales--Foulah and Fair Isle--The fishing season.

CHAPTER VI.--COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS AND THEIR ANECDOTES, 255

Trials of commercials--The two-est-faced knave--Mary, the maid
of the inn--Anecdotes of the smoking-room: Sonnet to
Raleigh--Peelin's below the tree--"She's away!"--A mean
house--One of the director's wives--Temperance hotels--A
memorial window--The blasted heath--The day for it--The
converted drummer--A circular ticket--A compound
possessive--Sixteen medals--"She's auld, and she's thin, and
she'll keep"--The will o' the dead--Sorry for London--"Raither
unceevil"--An unwelcome recitation--A word in season--A Nairn
critic--A grand day for it--A pro-Boer--"Falls of Bruar, only,
please!"--A bad case of nerves.

CHAPTER VII.--LEGENDS AND LITERARY NOTABILIA, 278

Gairloch folk-lore: Prince Olaf and his bride--A laird who had
seen a fairy--Tales from Loch Broom: The dance of death--The
Kildonan midwife--The magic herring--Taisch--Antiquities of
Dunvegan--Miscellaneous terrors--St. Kilda--Lady
Grange--Pierless Tiree--Lochbuie in Mull--Inveraray Castle--The
sacred isle--Appin--Macdonald's gratitude--Notes on the
Trossachs--Lochfyneside: Macivors, Macvicars, and
Macallisters--Red Hector--Macphail of Colonsay--Tales from
Speyside: Tom Eunan!--Shaws and Grants--The wishing well--Ossian
and Macpherson--At the foot o' Bennachie--Harlaw--Lochaber
reivers--Reay and Twickenham--Rob Donn--Rev. Mr. Mill of
Dunrossness.

CHAPTER VIII.--METRICAL AND SUPPLEMENTARY, 340

Arrival of the Mail-train at a Highland Station--Defoe, the
Father of Journalism--A Village Toper--A Reverend
Hellenist--Antigone--Shadows of the Manse--"My Heart's in the
Highlands"--Saddell, Kintyre--Springtime in Perthshire--Dr.
George Macdonald's Creed--Abbotsford--Carlyle--Shelley--Picture
in an Inn--Rain-storm at Loch Awe--Kinlochewe--General
Wade--Sound of Raasay in December--Les Neiges d' Antan--The
Islands of the Ness--American Tourist Loquitur--The Miners--In a
Country Graveyard--No Place like Home.

INDEX, 369

LITERARY TOURING.