Chapter VII: The Lord of the Isles

'The Lord of the Isles,' was another effort to deceive the critics. A long poem acknowledged by Walter Scott, following soon after 'Waverley' and only a month preceding 'Guy Mannering,' was calculated to 'throw off' those who were trying to identify the mysterious author of the Waverley Novels with the well-known poet. It was the result of a vacation journey of about six weeks in a lighthouse yacht, made in the summer of 1814 in the company of a party of congenial friends. The chief of the expedition was Robert Stevenson, a distinguished civil engineer in charge of the lighthouse service on the north coast of Scotland, and the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. After circling the Shetland and Orkney Islands they came down into the Minch or channel which separates the west coast of Scotland from the Hebrides, and stopped at Dunvegan, on the Isle of Skye, to see the ancient castle. Two days later they stopped to examine Loch Corriskin, which made a profound impression upon the poet's mind. 'We were surrounded,' he said in his Diary of the expedition, 'by hills of the boldest and most precipitous character and on the margin of a lake which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude neighbours. The shores consist of huge layers of naked granite, here and there intermixed with bogs and heaps of gravel and sand, marking the course of torrents. Vegetation there was {101} little or none, and the mountains rose so perpendicularly from the water's edge that Borrowdale is a jest to them. We proceeded about one mile and a half up this deep, dark, and solitary lake, which is about two miles long, half a mile broad, and, as we learned, of extreme depth.... It is as exquisite as a savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene of stern beauty.' In the poem he gives a little more vivid description:--

For rarely human eye has known
A scene so stern as that dread lake
With its dark ledge of barren stone.
Seems that primeval earthquake's sway
Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way
Through the rude bosom of the hill,
And that each naked precipice,
Sable ravine, and dark abyss,
Tells of the outrage still.
The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of Nature's genial glow;
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;
But here--above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,
Nor tree nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power
The weary eye may ken.
For all is rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone,
As if were here denied
The summer's sun, the spring's sweet dew,
That clothe with many a varied hue
The bleakest mountain-side.

No wonder that the exiled monarch, Bruce, should say:

A scene so rude, so wild as this,
Yet so sublime in barrenness,
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Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press
Where'er I happed to roam.

Returning to their vessel after an extraordinary walk, the party left Loch Scavig and, rounding its southern cape, sailed into the Loch of Sleapin, where they visited Macallister's Cave. Here they found a wonderful pool, which, 'surrounded by the most fanciful mouldings in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by the depth and purity of its waters, might be the bathing grotto of a Naiad.'

In the morning they sailed toward the south and

Merrily, merrily goes the bark
On a breeze from the northward free,
So shoots through the morning sky the lark,
Or the swan through the summer sea.
The shores of Mull on the eastward lay,
And Ulva dark and Colonsay,
And all the group of islets gay
That guard famed Staffa round.

They were following the same route, or nearly so, which the poet afterward laid down for Robert Bruce on his return from the Island of Skye to his native coast of Carrick.

They stopped at Staffa to view the famous basaltic formation,--

Where, as to shame the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seemed, would raise
A minster to her Maker's praise.

'The stupendous columnar side walls,' says the Diary; 'the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern is filled--the variety of tints formed by stalactites {103} dropping and petrifying between the pillars and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of the roof--the corresponding variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places a violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars--the dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene--are all circumstances unparalleled.'

They also stopped to view 'Old Iona's holy fane,' the ancient burial-place of kings and abbots and other men of eminence. It is said that Macbeth was buried here and before him sixty other Scottish kings whose names are now unknown.

The vivid descriptions of scenes along the route of Bruce to Scotland, with which 'The Lord of the Isles' abounds, were gathered on this memorable journey of the poet. It was not so, however, with the arrival of Bruce at his ancestral castle of Turnberry on the coast of Ayr, the information for which was supplied by Scott's indefatigable friend, Joseph Train, whose investigations brought to light the ancient superstition that on each anniversary of the night of Bruce's return a meteoric gleam reappeared in the same quarter of the heavens.

The light that seemed a twinkling star
Now blazed portentous, fierce and far,
Dark red the heaven above it gleamed,
Dark red the sea beneath it flowed,
Red-rose the rocks on ocean's brim,
In blood-red light her islets swim.

The ruins of Bruce's castle may still be seen close by the lighthouse at Turnberry. So little remains that they are scarcely visible from the land side, and though {104} thousands visit the locality for a run over the superb golf links, few realize that here was the birthplace of Robert Bruce, and that the skirmishes here begun, when the future king returned prematurely from exile, led eventually to the series of successes which terminated in the great victory of Bannockburn.

The poetic description of this terrific combat lacks nothing of the vigour and dramatic force that characterize the story of Flodden Field. The scene where the Bruce, suddenly attacked by Sir Henry de Bohun, rises in his stirrups and fells the fierce knight with a single blow of his battle-axe; the stratagem of the concealed ditches into which the English rode with fearful losses; the kneeling of the Scottish army in prayer before the battle; the charge of the cavalry against the English archers; the sudden appearance of the Scottish camp-followers on the brow of the hill, waving their spears and banners, so that they resembled a fresh army of reinforcements; the tragic death of De Argentine and the final triumph of the Scottish cause are vividly portrayed with all the poet's accustomed power.

'The Lord of the Isles' was the last of Scott's important poems. Two other attempts followed, 'The Field of Waterloo' and 'Harold, the Dauntless,' but neither was considered successful.

'Rokeby,' 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'The Lord of the Isles,' though well worthy of the genius of the poet, had failed to equal in popularity the three greater poems by which his fame had been established. The brilliant success of Byron was, as Scott feared, 'taking the wind out of his sails.' Moreover, his own interest in poetry had waned under the influence of his greater achievements {105} in prose. As the author of the Waverley Novels he had stepped into a new and vastly more important field, where he now stood alone. So with the passing of Walter Scott the poet came the rising star of the novelist, and the world was the richer by the transition.

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