THE LIBRARY
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THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
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THE
MISTY ISLE OF SKYE
ITS SCENERY, ITS PEOPLE, ITS STORY
BY
J. A. MACCULLOCH
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER
1905
Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,
I would see them before I die !
But I'd rather not see any one of the three,
'Plan be exiled for ever from Skye !
" Lovest thou mountains great,
Peaks to the clouds that soar,
Corrie and fell where eagles dwell,
And cataracts dash evermore?
Lovest thou green grassy glades.
By the sunshine sweetly kist,
Murmuring waves, and echoing caves?
Then go to the Isle of Mist."
Sheriff Nicolson.
DA
15
To
MACLEOD OF MACLEOD, C.M.G.
Dear MacLeod,
It is fitting that I should dedicate this book
to you. You have been interested in its making and in its publica-
tion, and how fiattering that is to an author s vanity / And what
chief is there who is so beloved of his clansmen all over the world
as you, or whose fiame is such a household word in dear old Skye
as is yours ? A book about Skye should recognise these things, and
so I inscribe your name on this page.
Your Sincere Friend,
THE A UTHOR.
8G54S7
EXILED FROM SKYE.
The sun shines on the ocean,
And the heavens are bhie and high,
But the clouds hang- grey and lowering
O'er the misty Isle of Skye.
I hear the blue-bird singing,
And the starling's mellow cry,
But t4eve the peewit's screaming
In the distant Isle of Skye.
The trees are grand and lofty,
And the grass grows sweet and high.
But I long to see the heather
In the purple Isle of Skye.
The streams are broad and stately,
And the meadows fertile lie,
But I hear the streamlets leaping
Down the rocky glens of Skye.
There's a singing in the cornfields
As the breeze goes whispering by,
But I love the bracken's rustle
On the lonely hills of Skye.
And I'd rather hear the music,
WhenVmy time may come to die,
Of the wind among the corries
In the far-off Isle of Skye.
M. J. M.
PREFACE
THIS book is made up, for the most part, of a
series of impressions of places and things in the
Isle of Skye, noted down from time to time during
the last seven years, and given a connected form in
the intervals of leisure snatched from more serious
work, I have tried to put into words the impressions
formed on the mind of one who is a lover of nature
and alive to the spell of a romantic past. The beauty
of nature and the romance of history are combined
in the Isle of Skye in a way perhaps unequalled in any
other part of Britain. There are few who, if they
know Skye, do not appreciate its charms, natural and
romantic. For them, and for those who care for such
charms wherever found, this book has been written.
Eilean a Cheo, the Isle of Mist, has been my home
for nearly eight years. Each year I have come to
love it better ; had it been fated that I should live
there much longer, there is no telling to what depths
of affection I might not have been brought by this
overmastering mistress ! But, alas, as I pen these
words, I know that fell circumstance is about to
make me an exile from Skye. Soon I shall cry with
the greatest of the bards of Skye —
"My heart is yearning for thee, O Skye,
Dearest of islands ! "
And as I leave its romantic shores and the friends
who have helped to make it so dear to me and mine,
shall I not also say —
" Blessings be with j'ou both now and aye,
Dear fcUow-Skyemen,
Yours is the love that no gold can bii}'
Nor time can wither,
Peace be with thee and thy children, O Skye,
Dearest of islands ! "
5
6 Preface
The Isle of Mist, how much more thrilling is this
than the better-known "Isle of Skye " ! But why
it should be so called, I do not know. Rain there is
in plenty, but scarcely any mist, and one is forced to
go on the luciis a non lucendo principle in seeking
for the reason of this name. But in the early days
when it was first applied to this green isle of the
west, the whole land was covered with forest, and
this, with other changed climatic conditions, must
have brought frequent mists over its hills and glens.
But the name implies something remote, secret,
impenetrable, and I should like my readers to believe
that the islands has these qualities. For they are
suggestive of mystery, and the island is indeed full
of mystery — the mystery of nature's charm and
beauty, the spell of ancient and weird story, and
here, if anywhere, is that shore of old romance of
which the poet sang.
Those chapters which do not come under the head
of "impressions," deal with certain aspects of life
in Skye, past and present, and are the result of
observation, conversation, and reading.
In conclusion, I have to record my grateful thanks
to many friends in Skye to whose frequent hospitality
I owe it that I have been able to visit many of its
remoter corners. There, they will remember, we
have together spent many a pleasant hour. The
poem which precedes this Preface is from the pen
of my wife. Some of the illustrations are from my
own photographs, but they show sadly beside those
others which Miss Margaret MacLeod of MacLeod,
the Rev. A. H. Malan, Mr. Inglis Clark, Mr.
MacLaine, and Dr. Grant, have been good enough
to let me use.
J. A. MACCULLOCH.
Portree, Isle of Skye,
December 1904.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. Characteristics 9
II. The Metropolis of Skye 20
III. Trotternish 31
IV. Vaternish and the Great North Road . . 53
V. DUNVEGAN 69
VI. Loch Bracadale 85
VII. Strath and the Spar Cave . . . .101
VIII. Sleat and Armadale 112
IX. A Skye Industry 123
X. The Mountains 131
XI. The Moorland 149
XII. The Pageant of the Seasons . . . .161
XIII. The Geology of Skye 172
XIV. The People 195
XV. The Crofting System 211
XVI. The Folk-lore of Skye 234
XVII. Antiquities 258
XVIII. Historical and Literary Associations . . 283
Appendix 313
Index 318
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. On the Tower, Dunvegan Castle. Sunset
IN June ....
2. Entrance to Portree Bay .
3. Quiraing^,-— r-^, .
4. The Temple of Analits
5. Dunvegan Castle
6. The Candlestick Cave, Loch Bracadale
7. MacLeod's Maidens
8. Rocks Pierced by the Sea, Loch Braca
dale
9. Clach Glas and Blaaven .
10. DUNTULM AND ArMADALE .
11. Among the Coolins ....
12. Sunset on Coruisk ....
13. A Crofter's House on the Moor
14. A Stormy Day in Glen Sligachan .
15. Basaltic Cliffs near Trumpan
16. Using the Cas-crom
17. A Crofter's House, Interior
18. A Crofting Township.
19. Dun Beag ....
20. Over the Sea to Skye
Map of Skye
Frontispiece
Facing page 24
36
•58
70
86
90
100
106
116
132
140
154
162
182
214
222
232
266
282
312
THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS
"Skye's romantic shore." — Scott.
THERE are travelled persons, deeply read in
Baedeker and Murray, who merely ignore the
Isle of Skye. To others, untravelled, it is only a
name ; while to both it is dimly suggestive of some-
thing remote and savage and windy, a weary land
where the comforts of civilisation are not to be had
for love or money. Yearly, a few adventurous
tourists come as birds of passage, or, if they are
sportsmen, armed with rod and gun, stay for a
longer period. Their impressions are various, de-
pending on the personal equation, still more upon
the weather. If it rains, they are ready to curse
God and die. If the sun shines and the air is still
and the sky blue, they affect to believe themselves
the victims of an illusion, and can scarce credit
that anything so fine should dare to exist so far
away.
But let them be as open-minded as they please, or
as favourably dealt with as can be, they do not enjoy
to the full the flavour of the Isle of Skye. The
tourist is too much engaged scampering from hotel
to hotel, the sportsman too much preoccupied with
birds and dogs, to understand the rare charm, or to
9
lo The Misty Isle of Skye
discover even a tenth part of the beauty of Skye.
For that, you must live there, year in, year out,
summer and winter, in sunshine and storm ; you
must experience the marvellous charm of its spring"
and early summer days, w^hen the air is like a fine
wine and the landscape seems unreal because it is
so beautiful ; you must let the gloom of its winter
melancholy pierce your soul to its depths, until some
morning you awaken to an enchanted day and the
melancholy is routed, and you wonder that it ever
could have been. And if you are not a native of
Skye, but have come from the settled and common-
place landscapes and surroundings of the south, all
the more will the magic of the place charm and
please you. On the other hand, it is possible that
you will merely detest and hate the place, and wish
yourself well out of it. You will be hard to please,
and not open to magic influences. But you will
either hate it or love it, for no via media has yet
been discovered.
The fact that Skye is an island, without railways
and with (until lately) only indiff"erent roads, that it
is so far removed from the busy centres of civilisation,
and that its population is so scattered, has a curious
effect. Living in a crowded district, one's interests
are local, and one hardly knows what is happening
even a few miles off. But here distance is nothing
when you may have to go ten miles to visit a
neighbour. Everyone is known to you, whether
they live east or west, north or south ; and every-
thing that goes on becomes almost a personal
interest to you. In olden days, when the people
of all the larger houses were nearly all related, this
was even more striking, and news travelled apace
from one corner to another, even when there was no
telegraph to carry it. This is all the more surprising
when it is considered that the island is fifty miles
long and from seven to twenty-five broad, and that
every part of it is isolated from another by hills and
valleys, streams and winding sea-lochs. For this
Characteristics 1 1
last reason the length of coast-line is out of all
proportion to the area, and measures thousands of
miles. The area of the island is, roughly, 350,000
acres.
On the map the Isle of Skye, with its numerous
peninsulas (like flying buttresses) starting outwards
from a common centre, is suggestive of some
strange wild-fowl. Hence travellers from the
sixteenth century onwards have derived its native
name Eilean Sgiathanach from the Gaelic sgiath, a
wing, transformed in the Norse sagas into Skid.^
Whether, without a map, the winged formation
would be likely to strike the primitive inhabitant is
uncertain. Other learned philologists debate the
claims of roots signifying cloud, mist, and sword,
or maintain that here stood the winged temple which
fable apportioned to Apollo among the Hyper-
boreans. But it is a far cry from Hellas to Skye,
and only pedantic Celtic antiquaries (the most
pedantic of all pedants) will trace the connection.
To Oisin (or Macpherson) the island is always
Eilean a Cheo, the Isle of Mist.
These peninsulas are most pronounced to the
north and the south, but on the eastern and western
sides there is a series of curtailed promontories,
divided by narrow lochs. They present a curious
variety of surface and seaboard. On the north the
peninsulas are formed of wild and tumbled uplands,
rising into strangely contorted rocks at Storr and
Quiraing, with precipitous cliffs on the eastern coast-
line. In the west these uplands mount occasionally
into considerable hills with heathery flanks and
flattened summits. The southern region resumes
the upland country, but is so much more fertile as
to be called "the garden of Skye." It is in the
centre and running across the island from north-east
to south-west that the great mountains are found,
^ Ptolemy transliterated the native name into Greek, 2»f^Tty ;
in ecclesiastical Latin (Adamnan's, for example) the island is
called Scia.
12 The Misty Isle of Skye
rounded and massy and huddled together to the
north-east ; steep, precipitous, and splintered towards
the south-west, where the Coolins dominate the land-
scape for many a mile. All these breezy uplands
are covered with heather and bent, bracken and
bog-myrtle, which, on warm summer days, make
the air fragrant with odorous scents such as Keats
would have loved. They are given over to sheep,
save where in more or less fertile patches the
crofting population seek their livelihood from the
soil. But they are empty solitudes where one may
wander for a whole day and receive no human
greeting. As far as eye can reach there are lines
of gently swelling hills ; you mount one, and still
they deploy to the horizon, or suddenly lose them-
selves in a narrow loch or the wider sea.
Yet in this apparent monotony there is an in-
finite variety. The summer glory of these uplands
under a sapphire sky, surrounded by azure seas ;
their autumn and winter melancholy ; the splintered
summits looming grimly in the distance ; here and
there steep, windy headlands ; green valleys with
burns tinkling down to the sea ; the glorious tang
of the breeze ; the ever-changing mystic lights and
shadows — these, with the hoary traditions and tales
of eld which are suggested by them at every step,
are pleasures which do not easily pall.
Thus the Isle of Skye offers such a bundle of
delights as are not easily found in any place even
less remote than it is from the busy centres of life
and the madding crowd. To the exterior eye it
presents so many natural features that the bare
catalogue of them bewilders, how much more does
the joyous experience of them fascinate. Great
basalt cliffs hang their steep castellated fronts above
a brilliant green slope, and face the sea. From
their top you gaze down a thousand feet into a
vast abysmal depth of blue water, or across its
sundering tide to the dark summits of the northern
counties. Far out to sea on the western side are
Characteristics 13
purple islands gleaming" on the horizon. Above you
are the immeasurable spaces of the sky, across
which a seabird now poises itself like some uncertain
angel, and now darts off with an incredible swift-
ness and dgemonic clamour. Here and there the sea
sends long arms far inland, so that the unvoyaged
islander (to whom Portree is a metropolis and
Glasgow a merely mythical Babylon), confined to
his moorland solitudes, can touch the pulse of the
unseen and infinite ocean, on which stately ships
are hurrying to far lands beyond the sunrise and the
sunset, where are busy ports thronged with men and
echoing with the hum of endless activity. To speak
by the map and the geographer's compass, no part
of the island, large as it is, lies four miles from the
sea, so much is it broken up by these lochs winding
in among the moors and the bases of the hills. This
recurring presence of the sea has a strange fascina-
tion for the mind. It presents itself in the most
unexpected places. The solid masses of the Coolins,
or the broad miles of rolling uplands, suggest a land
free from these indentations and murmuring waters.
But no ; you have scarce proceeded half a league
when you skirt the upper reaches of a sea-loch, and
in the next mile or two you are walking by the edge
of a second.
Inland and around these lochs the billowy moor-
land swells and falls, or mounts up into a con-
siderable hill. From these hills the air comes pure
from its high elevation and sweet with a hundred
rustic odours of upland flowers. Its extent and its
mysterious hollows, its black peat-hags, and its
strange silence, suggest weird thoughts of ambushes,
of hidden deeds, of brooding secrets, until you
almost expect some voice, tired of its immemorial
silence, to shout them aloud to all the winds. In
summer and autumn the moor exhilarates with its
omnipresent perfume wafted from bog-myrtle and
bracken, while it seems to fling itself to the horizon
in a purple garment dappled with emerald green.
14 The Misty Isle of Skye
But in winter and early spring- that green has
become a wan white, and the purple has turned to
a dingy brown, and the sombre landscape seems to
speak of still deeper mysteries. Every varying
expression of the face of the sky, its summer joy,
its April doubt, its winter gloom, is reflected with
conscientious exactness on this equally expressive
moorland countenance.
A great part of these uplands forms a rich and
happy hunting-ground for the sportsman. Grouse,
snipe, woodcock, and hares are found in plenty.
Some of the loftier ground gives sanctuary to the
red deer, with which the island must have teemed
at one time, for in the sixteenth century organised
hunts, in which a thousand head were killed, took
place among the Red Hills. But the greater part of
Skye is let out in sheep-farms, for, like the Homeric
Ithaca, it is a pasture -land of sheep, and more
pleasant in my sight than one that pastureth horses ;
for of all the isles that lie and lean upon the sea, none
are fit for the drivitig of horses, or rich in meadow-
land, and least of all is Ithaca} The pasture is
scanty enough in winter, when the uplands are like
a moist sponge with the rains ; and the bulk of the
sheep have to be sent to the mainland in autumn,
to return in spring, but, like the daffodil, "before
the swallow does." Here, too, are none of the
active, shaggy, goat-like sheep of Uist and St.
Kilda ; only the familiar black-face and Cheviot ;
but the flavour of their flesh has gained something,
and the fame of Skye mutton has passed into a
proverb. The crofters, who covet earnestly the
best land and would seize it, if they could, re-
gardless of ownership, hate sheep-farms and sheep
alike, and, in their native Gaelic, which I translate
for the mere Sassenach, describe the animals as
" beastly brutes of poll-heads." As for their
language towards farmers and lairds, let the rest
be silence ! Large fortunes were once amassed
^ Odyssey, iv. 6io, Lang's translation.
Characteristics 1 5
by Skye farmers, and more than one small tenant-
farmer, beginning in a humble way, has found
himself in the glorious company of the nouveaux
riches before he died. But the day for that is over,
and much more modest returns must be looked for.
Of the hills and mountains of Skye there will be
much to say. It is enough here to recall their
haunting presence, their magic lights, the solemn
grandeur and beauty that is theirs at all times of
the year. You look at them across the wide moors,
and they touch the last cloud upon the level sky.
Steeped in moonlight or clad in glittering snow
under a cloudless sky, they seem ethereal, trans-
parent. At dawn and sunset, every scaur and
hollow, every corrie and precipice, has all the
definite clearness of a fine steel engraving. Or
when wreaths of mist roll along their flanks, or
cloud-masses huddle together around them, they
are still grand and impressive. Seeing them under
these varied conditions, and with ever- changing
miances of light or colour, you would vow there are
no such hills elsewhere. Those who have not so
seen them will scoff — and no doubt the vow marks
the insular mind ; but what is their sneer against
the opinion of an eye-witness?
Again, there is infinite delight in the colours of
the landscape. Mostly these are what the indif-
ferent would call sad and monotonous. Yet can
the keen eye discover something richer. Even in
winter there is variety, and there is a gorgeousness
about the moors and the hillsides, when late autumn
turns the bracken to a rich brown, and the sun
casts blue shadows everywhere, which is not to be
gainsaid. Often, too, at high summer noontides
there comes a blue Italian sky, which is at once
discredited by those who do not know the island
when they see it reproduced by the artist. Then
the sea is turned to a deeper azure, flecked with
whitest foam where it swings unceasingly against
the cliffs. The seabird, poising itself overhead,
1 6 The Misty Isle of Skye
has wings of transparent alabaster, through which
the blue heaven seems almost visible. Ireland
itself cannot have greener valleys than Skye ; nor
could the choicest English woodland or meadow
boast a richer variety or a greater luxuriance of
wildflowers. And if the air is still, and you have
risen with the lark, and inhaled the rich odour of
the moorland air, you will say that nature looks as
fresh and as young as it first did on the seventh
morning before Paradise had been lost. As day
wears on, the blaze of sunshine touches everything
with a dull burnish of gold. The island is indolent
as ever was the land of the lotus-eaters, and there
is no mountain nor crag but has lost its ruggedness
and now seems voluptuous with gentle swellings
and softened curves.
Yet it would be futile to deny the desolation of
Skye in some of its aspects. Let the clouds hang
low down overhead and everywhere around on a
short winter day, as if they would crush the land ;
let the rain fall in blinding torrents for weeks, and
the morning dawn cheerless over a dripping land-
scape ; let the wind rave across the moorland with
pitiless incessancy ; and let there be the least
melancholy in your heart, and then you will know
something of the abomination of desolation. You
will understand "that distress" (of which Mau-
passant writes so grimly) " which sometimes seizes
travellers on certain sad evenings, in certain desolate
places. It seems that everything is near its ending
— existence and the universe itself. You perceive
sharply the dreadful misery of life, the isolation of
everyone, the nothingness of all things, and the
black loneliness of the heart which nurses itself and
deceives itself with dreams until the hour of death."
So it is, sometimes, in Skye ; until there comes a
day of sunshine, and all is forgotten, and the
desolation passes away as if it had never been.
Throughout the island are many houses, bare,
unattractive, but strong stone structures, the homes
Characteristics 17
of many generations, standing solitary on the moor,
or hidden away under the kindly fold of a hill. To
live in them is to call up a hundred phantoms of
the past, to touch bygone years, to listen unawares
to Time's stolen flight. Nor is there wanting a sense
of depression as one thinks how these walls once
held so many who have now fallen on sleep. No
old house is ever without these sad memories and
pallid gleams of past years. But the vast solitudes
in which these Skye houses are set, the miles of road
traversed to approach them, the brooding silence
that hangs around their walls, as if pregnant with
some mystery which is always on the point of being
revealed, intensify this haunting sense of those who
made them their caravanserai. There, in years
gone by, the gentlemen tacksmen, cadets sometimes
of the great houses, dwelt, and their sons went
forth to fight the battles of their country. From one
of them it is said that more officers came during the
Peninsular War than from any other single house in
the British Empire. Many of these houses are
small, and but little better than cottages. They
could have contained but few of the luxuries of life ;
yet from them came scores of the brave soldiers and
builders of our empire, and they were often lit up
by festive occasions, the dance, the cheerful laughter
of unencumbered hearts, the smiles of fair women.
Boswell's Journal of the famous tour shows at
once the comfort in discomfort which prevailed,
and contains many a picture of the happy houseful
of friends, who were mostly kinsmen, crowded into
a few small rooms, where constant good-humour,
aided (can we doubt it) by copious drams, prevailed.
The grey and brown landscape seems to forbid
such prettiness in architecture as the Swiss chalet,
hanging on the mountain-side, exhibits. The
crofter's hut, with its low, lichen-covered walls,
and its roof thatched with the materials of the
surrounding moor, seems to have grown out of its
surroundings. It is a product of nature, not of
1 8 The Misty Isle of Skye
art, or rather of the artificer. It rhymes with
the sober landscape, and partakes of its shaggy
wildness. Even the larger houses have the same
unadorned character, plain grey stone walls, four
square gables, built for use not beauty. Such a
castle as Dunvegan has the same natural appear-
ance as these small unarchitectural attempts at
house-building. It forms no break in the landscape,
but seems only a more shapely form of the rock on
which it stands. No bird-haunted lawns, no terraces
and stairways, separate stately decorated walls
from the surrounding landscape. Grim keep and
ancient tower and worn battlements join hand-in-
hand with the brown moorland, the shaggy wood-
land, and the lapping waves. They who reared it in
centuries gone by "built better than they knew,"
or else had a true sense of the relation of art and
nature to each other.
But there is a still more remote antiquity than
those old stone walls hint of. There are ruined
heaps on windy hillocks ; mounds of stone under-
neath which lie the ?m'ghty bones of ancient men, old
knights ; a few roughly sculptured monuments.
They speak silently of old, unhappy, far-off things,
and of un remembered wars, which have left no
record in history, scarce even has their faint echo
been preserved in local tradition. The moor-bird
flies around them with its wailing cry, as if regret-
ting old mortality, but of the men who placed them
there or whose deeds they commemorate, the rest is
silence. Norse names, especially in the north and
west, testify to raids by these ancient sea-wolves,
and of a Scandinavian occupation long enough to have
made itself felt in the nomenclature, though it scarcely
survives in race. History speaks of Haco and his
fleet, and Kyleakin is Haco's Strait ; but tradition is
once more silent, leaving to the philologist the
task of explaining the place names by Norwegian
parallels.
Of the race earlier than the Celtic — Neolithic,
Characteristics 1 9
possibly Pictish — there remain still scantier traces,
whether of their social life, their manners, or their
religion. Yet in these green valleys and along the
shores of the sea-lochs they must have formed a
dense population. There are to be seen, not plenti-
fully but occasionally, " Picts' houses," stone circles,
and burial-chambers, and at times the arms and
utensils of these early generations are dug out of the
peat. They speak dumbly of the manners and customs
of a far-distant past, and hint to us moderns that the
same human heart beat then, and cherished such
hopes and fears, such loves and hates, then, as it
does now.
And the story of the rocks of Skye carries the
mind back to an unpeopled and illimitable past.
Ice-scratched cliffs, roches-inoutonnees^ beds of
boulder clay, tell of the time when vast glaciers
crept down these green valleys to the outer sea.
The terraced uplands, the purple Coolins, and the Red
Hills, carry us over millions of years to the Tertiary
period, when great plateaux of lava were laid down,
and within and beneath them internal outbursts
took place through an enormous period of time.
Beneath these lie beds of strata, crowded with
fossils, witnessing to ages of submersion when the
island lay beneath the midmost sea.
Thus, in Skye, antiquity accompanies one at every
step, and the mind has a liberal choice of bygone
ages to revel in, from the romantic days of Prince
Charlie back through the voiceless generations to
those dim ages when the island was built up, stratum
by stratum, out of the unknown deep.
CHAPTER II
THE METROPOLIS OF SKYE
" If people were aware how slow Time journeyed in that
village, and what armfuls of spare hours he gives, over
and above the bargain, to its wise inhabitants, I believe
there would be a stampede out of ... a variety of large
towns, where the clocks lose their heads, and shake the
hours out each one faster than the other, as though they
were all in a wager." — Stevenson.
IN Dr. Johnson's time Portree boasted "a tolerable
inn," though when Prince Charles visited it
twenty-seven years earlier the landlord could not
produce more than thirteen shillings in change for
a guinea. A parish church served the large district,
but there was no village near, only a few scattered
huts. When the caustic pedant, Dr. MacCulloch,
visited the island, he said that Portree boasted one
sign of civilisation, namely, a jail, but even then the
houses were few, as appears from a contemporary
picture of the place. But for years past its population
has increased, and now numbers about a thousand.
The tourist traffic has caused several hotels to be
built ; the increase of business has erected banks
and lawyers' offices ; crime demands a court-house
and an improved jail ; and religious differences have
filled the place with churches.
Apart from the beautiful Episcopal church of St
Columba, with its gorgeous window dedicated to
the memory of Skye's heroine. Flora Macdonald, the
town itself has few architectural beauties. Round
the harbour sweeps a crescent of houses, and piled
20
The Metropolis of Skye 21
above them, in the upper town, mingled with trees,
are still more houses. Beyond these is the square ;
on the outskirts are more pretentious dwellings ;
and round all is the open moorland and the rising
hills. The bay lies in a natural basin, surrounded
by hills and cliflfs ; across the channel lies Raasay,
and beyond it are the hills of Torridon. To say
that the town, which occupies one edge of this basin,
was a busy centre would be a gross exaggeration.
Steamers come and go, bringing mails and cargoes ;
these connect the place with the outer world ; carts
move leisurely pierwards or countrywards to carry
off these cargoes ; the country-folk come in to town
with their shaggy ponies bearing panniers to do
their shopping ; the place swarms with shops ; yet
at any hour of the day you may look upon the square
or wander through the streets and fancy yourself in
Sleepy Hollow. Business goes slowly and requires
much cogitation and lengthy discussion ; as leisurely
goes pleasure ; and though now and then some new
game or sport is attacked, enthusiasm, never very
strong, soon dies down and things become as they
were. Yet the game of shinty is played with some-
thing approaching to enthusiasm, and if a dance is
announced a real frenzy is awakened and the fioochs
of the reel-dancers wake the echoes of the assembly
room till dawn steals through the windows. Culture
is not forgotten : there is a literary society, a library,
and a reading-room. The muses haunt the place :
report speaks of a dramatic society in the past, and
in the present there is a flourishing choral union.
Yet all this quiet life, where nothing is done in a
hurry and where things still get done in time, has a
real attraction for minds innocent and quiet. The
stir of existence dies away to an inarticulate murmur.
Far off, no doubt, life moves with its wonted bustle
and clatter and hurry ; but it is far off, and one has
lost taste for it. The years come and go, unmarked
by outstanding events ; the lives of all are known
and every face is familiar ; there is a conspiracy for
22 The Misty Isle of Skye
quietude, and save when the usual strife of village
factions becomes too evident, the conspiracy succeeds
in its aim. There is something- kindly and ultra-
human about this quiet life. You are in a town and
yet the moorland comes rolling up into the streets.
The hills look down on you at every corner, and
below you is the loch with its blue waters. Nature
invades you at every step, and forbids your petty
humours and feverish ambitions.
The whole natural surroundings of Portree make
it one of the most beautiful spots on the western
coast of Scotland. The narrow entrance to the bay
is guarded on both sides by lofty cliff formations.
On the south side is Ben Tianavaig, a basaltic hill
piled on masses of oolite, which at the sea's edge
are riddled with caves, the haunt of rock-pigeons.
Its sides are curiously contorted and weather-worn,
but among its outcropping rocks and boulders are
large patches of rich green pasturage. Opposite, on
the north side, are the frowning headlands of Creag
Mhor or the Beal, and Ben Chracaig, basaltic pre-
cipices, from which a long green slope, its base
strewn with black boulders, runs down to the sea.
Far up on the latter a black slit denotes the entrance
to a narrow and lofty cave, the Piper's Cave, which
tradition says runs through the island and emerges
again at Loch Bracadale. Another name for it and
an older one is MacCoitar's Cave. MacCoitar was
a brigand in ancient times, who sallied forth from
this dark and damp dwelling-place to plunder the
neighbourhood, and then returned with the spoil.
On the beach below is a boulder which a Raasay
man threw at his wife. It missed her, but with
such violence was it thrown that it flew across the
sound and fell here ! Such tales do the fishermen
tell each other as they go sailing out into the west.
Past Ben Chracaig is the harbour itself, with the
town rising above it, while away beyond are the
billowy moors and the ridges of the Storr valley.
To the west of the harbour and just above the town
The Metropolis of Skye 23
is "Fancy Hill" (what a name!), a rounded pro-
montory, covered with trees, from which, standing
as it does in the centre of the natural basin, a
magnificent view of the surrounding country is to
be had. Behind it the loch turns inland at a right
angle, and becomes gradually shallower, so that it
is uncovered at low water. Fingal's Seat, a long
ridge-like summit, overlooks the town and the upper
part of the loch ; while far away to the south, but yet
appearing so near as to form another side of the
basin, are the jagged peaks of the Coolins. These,
with the rounded Red Hills and the lion-like mass
of Glamaig to their left, form a wonderfully over-
powering and ever-present feature of the scene.
Morning, noon, and night, summer and winter, in
storm or sunshine, magic lights and shadows play
across these hills, or mist and cloud seem to deepen
the sense of mystery which broods around them.
The purple rocks of the Coolins seem to defy the
efforts of the sun to soften their rugged outlines,
save at some high noontide or in the winter sunshine,
when the hills are covered with snow. Then they
melt away into a semi-transparent cloud, and hang
magically against the sky, transmuted almost to its
own ethereal beauty. But the Red Hills with their
rosy tints seem always bathed in light, and invite
the sunshine, even on a cloudy day, to play upon
their sides. The bay itself, opening into the Sound
of Raasay, is always beautiful. On a calm day it is
a mirror reflecting the rocks and summits which
enclose it. Or in darker weather it catches the
leaden hues of the sky, and deepens the contrast
with the purple hills around it.
Thus it is easy to see that the natural surroundings
of Portree make it what it is, and this suggests a
closer treatment of some of them. The tourist who
makes Portree his headquarters, and from there
dashes off to see the Quiraing, or Coruisk, or the
Coolins, or Dunvegan, knows little of the charming
"bits" so near at hand, where so much variety and
24 The Misty Isle of Skye
beauty is spread before and around one. If he be of
an independent turn of mind, he may discover some
of them for himself, but this seldom happens, and
their true value remains known only to those who
live year in year out in their midst, and can wander
to them at the appropriate season.
Between the two frowning basaltic cliffs on the
north side of the entrance to the bay the oolite which
everywhere underlies the basalt is exposed to view.
It runs sloping upwards in long yellow strata full of
fossils far above the blue waters, and on its top lies
a lush green meadow. In one or two places wind
and weather have eroded the cliff and left great
hollows under a canopy of stone where one may sit
in quiet and look down on the placid sea, or watch
the lights and shadows changing on the rugged face
of Ben Tianavaig across the bay. Here and there
a limpid fountain trickles down through a deep
crevice lined with thick curtains of moss, where
lurk hartstongue ferns and black maiden-hair, or
in the drier cracks of the limestone the rare little
wall-rue or the glossy sea spleenwort. Thyme
overhangs the cliff's edge, and the oolite is every-
where channelled and grooved, and in these grooves
and channels ivy has taken a firm hold, so that it
sometimes completely hides the rock beneath a deep
green mantle. Its roots, where they are exposed,
are of the thickness of a man's arm. In the meadow
which runs inshore grow hemlock, meadow-sweet,
and purple vetch, often as high as one's head ; in
the more barren patches peep blue violets, masses of
eyebright, the green sun-spurge, the golden butter-
cup, or, earlier in the year, the pale primrose and the
purple hyacinth.
A little beyond are the crumbling stones of one of
those tiny ancient Celtic churches, rude in archi-
tecture, in which the voice of praise has long been
silent, and where the too luxurious vegetation
girdles the long-forgotten graves, and lulls them to
a deeper sleep. But not all, for there is one stone
o
<
The Metropolis of Skye 25
of recent erection with a touching- epitaph. It tells
of a sailor who, weary of life, committed suicide in
the loch. He was buried here, not in the parish
churchyard, and rumour hints darkly of those who,
thinking even this ancient place of graves too sacred
for the bones of one who had raised an impious hand
against himself, cast him back once more into the
sea. Peace be to his soul, wherever his body lies.
" He was a faithful servant to his earthly master."
A ludicrous story attaches itself to this place. Two
solitary trees rise gaunt and high among- the
deserted ruins. They mark the graves of the
successive wives of an islander who kept their
memory green by these memorials, but who, when
his time came that men should gird and carry him,
found none to do the like for him.
Above this old churchyard is a narrow glen down
which a burn trickles to the sea. It terminates in
the precipitous flank of the cliff, over which the
water dashes, through masses of birch and hazel,
forming- a cool, shadowy grotto with deep recesses
where lurk asplenia and holly-fern in plenty. All
around are thick clumps of fern and bracken, beds
of yellow primroses, blue violets, white anemones,
while the air is scented with their perfumes and the
aromatic odour of the bracken. Overhead is the
black frowning cliff, looking as if it would suddenly
dash itself downwards. Beyond it is the ruined
heap of Dun Torvaig, and near by the gable of the
ancient house of Scorrybreck. Somewhere here
Prince Charles hid from his pursuers after having
crossed to Skye from Raasay, beyond the sound.
Far below are the ruined church, the green meadow,
the rolling sea. In front is Creag Mhor, rising
skywards ; across the water is Raasay and the steep
flanks of Ben Tianavaig, and in the far distance Ben
Alligin looks down upon the glories of Loch Torridon.
You see all this on an early summer day, when sea
and sky are sapphire and a haze hangs over the
slopes of Raasay with their variegated surface of
2 6 The Misty Isle of Skye
brown and grey and green. The lambs are calling,
the plovers are shrieking, the gulls poising themselves
irresolutely in mid-air, and then, with a wild cry,
darting off into the far distance ; some fishing-boats
are putting out to sea, their brown sails now bellying,
now collapsing, as they tack hither and thither,
seeking for a breeze. These are the only signs of
life in the joyous landscape, and you feel how good
a thing it is to be alive, while the air is full of the
tang of the sea and the perfumes of summer, and
the eye rests gladly on the beauty of earth and
sea.
Half a mile from Portree on the side of Fingal's
Seat is another narrow glen, down which a burn
leaps and dashes, swollen in times of rain to a
roaring torrent. To wander along its precipitous
sides, or climb up its rocky bed, is a lesson in rock-
carving and geological lore. At its entrance, just
where the banks begin to rise in steep acclivities,
you look up through a long green vista of bushes
(in which the birch is most prominent, each tiny
leaf glittering in the sunshine), and a thick under-
growth of bracken and fern, amidst which the water
gleams as it courses along. Above it is a piled
mass of greenery and shaggy heath-edged cliffs,
through which the sky is perceived. At the end of
this ravine is an amphitheatre of basalt, forming a
cool grotto, shut in from the world. The water
shoots over the rock in a white cascade down into a
deep brown pool. Brown and green mosses, ferns,
wood-sorrel, nestling primroses and violets, grass
and heather, fringe the edges of the cascade and the
rocky walls. Here, too, in their due season may
be found in luxuriance anemones, wild hyacinths,
starwort, ladies-fingers, vetches, the cuckoo-flower,
orchids, globe-flowers, and grey lichens which make
the rocks look hoary with age. Far above this
natural cup is the blue sky, flecked with fleecy
clouds. The air echoes with the plash of the water
into the pool below. And far outside the narrow
The Metropolis of Skye 27
sides of the glen is seen a background of woodland
and moor and bold cliffs which (as we know) look
down on the restless sea. The shadow of a cloud
moves silently over the moor ; far off is the pre-
cipitous front of Storr ; but unless you emerge from
the glen to seek it, the town, fringed with shadowy
woodlands, is completely hidden. It is a silent land,
where the rippling waters and the birds' song and
the bleating of the sheep alone invade the ear as the
lingering hours go by, and the sun crosses the sky
in the remote infinity.
Farther up the watercourse there is another of
these amphitheatres, more open to the day. But
here a bold bluff of rock, jutting forward, has split
the stream into two channels, down which its waters
swiftly course, eager to meet once more. One of
these channels is formed by a trap dyke in the
basalt, forming, as it has been eroded, a series of
steps and stairs over which the water leaps in
succession. Higher up, the stream is gradually lost
amid a series of lesser burns which well up in the moor-
lands and on the slopes of Fingal's Seat, far above.
Fingal's Seat is easy to climb, for it is not a high
hill (it is only 1367 feet in height), but because
of the curious conformation of the bay and its
surroundings, the landscape, as one ascends,
is strangely foreshortened. Ben Tianavaig, the
sentinel cliffs, and the miniature jutting promontories
have the appearance of a picture-map, as the bay
winds among them, while the town is dwarfish and
looks no bigger than a child's toy. It is a deceptive
hill, for the ridge seen from below is not the summit.
After reaching that, some boggy ground must be
crossed, in which the winter torrents have made
curious islands of black peat, covered on the top
with grass and moss. The second top is soon
reached, but from there one must ascend for twenty
minutes longer to the real top with its large cairn
of stones. Here, if the cold winds of March are
blowing and cutting like a razor, one is glad to
28 The Misty Isle of Skye
shelter behind the cairn, and from that vantage
g-round let the glory of the scene sink into the mind.
Its general appearance is this. The moor falls away
from before the eye, and then on all sides rises and
dips again, rolling to the horizon in a hundred
fantastic waves. Its colours are distracting at a
later time of the year. You note chiefly purple
heather, brown mosses, green grasses, yellow
lichens, and emerald patches among the waste, but
there are scores of intermediate tints, which make the
harmony of the picture. And there are glimpses of
far-off seas beyond intervening summits, and islands,
and capes, and necks of land.
Then the details of the scene force themselves
upon the attention. The Storr, with the Old Man
pointing upwards, is the most prominent object to
the north, while a great space of moorland rising
into prominent ridges stretches to the west and
south of it. Bending southwards in a long curve
on the horizon is the mainland, with the Torridon
Hills capped with snow in winter, purple or pink in
summer, the summits of Applecross and Loch
Carron, then the great peak of Ben Screel, and the
peaks above Loch Hourn. In the middle distance
lie the rocky isle of Rona, Raasay, Ben Tianavaig,
and Scalpa. And far below our feet the waters of
the bay twist in and out among the forelands into
the sound, which is again dimly perceived gleaming
beyond Scalpa under the shadow of Ben-na-Cailleach.
Turning round to the south-west, one sees the
mystic Red Hills, Glamaig, Blaaven, the pyramidal
granitic mass of Marsco, the small peaks at the end
of Glen Sligachan, and then the vast purple range
of the Coolins, frowning darkly on the scene,
showing innumerable precipices and needle - like
points, and dominating the mind like some vision of
immensity. Away in the distance to the right are
the dark summits of Rum ; then comes the silvery
gleam of far Loch Bracadale with its islands and the
precipitous cliffs which guard its entrance, the top
The Metropolis of Skye 29
of Talisker Head, and, farther off, Idrigil Point, with
just the heads of MacLeod's Maidens appearing
beyond it. Outside Loch Bracadale lies South Uist,
and the lofty hills of North Uist are dimly seen
athwart bars of golden light which seem to shame
the grey hues of this March day. Sweeping round,
the eye lights on the flat tops of MacLeod's Tables
and Dunvegan Head, then the cones of Harris, and
so back to Storr. It is a circle on whose circum-
ference rise over a hundred peaks. Immediately to
the north is Loch Snizort winding far inland, and just
below Storr, like a bright eye piercing the dark
moorland, is one of the far-famed trout lochs lying
in the deep valley.
From all sides of the country great clouds of
blue smoke, with here and there the flare of red fires,
tell where the heather is being burnt. The smoke
gives a hazy summer eff"ect to the cold air and to
the wan face of the moorland, across which white
roads wind to remote parts of the island. There is
hardly, in all that vast expanse, a patch which is
perfectly flat. All is rugged, broken, diversified ;
there deep valleys, here rising mounds, and every-
where the grey face of the rock breaking through
the heather.
Thus it is easy to see that Portree has all the
advantages of a town in daily touch with the great
outer world, conjoined with the attractions of a
glorious country which ofl"ers every variety of scenery,
and which at once inspires the mind and invigorates
the body. On spring evenings and at warm summer
noontides, the aromatic odour of the earth and the
moor plants is wafted into your room, and at all
times the eye is met by the good gigantic S77iile 0' the
hro7mi old earthy and looks out upon the great
sentinel mountains which engirdle the horizon and
are the cause of ceaseless wonder and admiration.
A man may stand at his doorstep and, turning his
back on the town, gaze on the lonely sea and
mountains and the desolate seacliff's, and thus
30 The Misty Isle of Skye
imagine himself a thousand miles from the society
of his fellows. Yet a swift step round, and there
are a dozen ready to talk with him, and he sees the
familiar clustered houses, the quay and the banks
and offices, the hotels and churches. Here, indeed,
is ms in tirbe, if anyone care to seek it !
CHAPTER III
TROTTERNISH
"follow
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow,
And bend your fancy to my leading-."
Emerson.
THE peninsula of Trotternish, which forms the
most northerly part of the island, has a back-
bone of lofty ridges which, beginning on the rising
moorland just above Portree, runs on for sixteen
miles till it terminates in Sgurr Mhor, beyond Staffin.
On its eastern side this series of ridges presents a
precipitous face, of which the most marked features
are the cliffs and needles of Storr and the Quiraing.
Below them is a deep valley, in which nestle many
lochs, and on the other side of which rise lesser
slopes, which on their seaward side are equally
precipitous. These steep seaward cliffs, as we
shall see, are sills, or sheets of lava, immensely
thick, intruded between the upper and lower layers
of the basalt plateaux, after they were laid down.
The upper basalt sheets have been cut back to the
ridge, and have left the intrusive sills in a long line
from Portree to the Shiant Isles. But the western
side of the ridge and backbone is gentler. Long
grassy slopes, softer and rounder, run up to its
summit, and on their vast surface, as seen from the
far distance, the cloud shadows and reflected lights
ceaselessly come and go. The loftiest part of the
ridge is Storr, which rises in a sheer black precipice
2360 feet above the sea. Six miles to the north
81
32 The Misty Isle of Skye
Beinn Edra is 2000 feet high, but infinitely less
imposing.
To circumambulate these ridges is a long and
difficult task, for at least a third of the way, from
Portree to Lealt, is by a rough and, at times,
scarcely discoverable track. Beyond that the road
begins, and sweeping round the end of the peninsula,
passes Duntulm, Kilmuir, Uig, and Kingsburgh,
and then returns to Portree. It may be done in two
days ; and if the weather is good, your limbs strong,
and your heart light, it offers such panoramas of
scenery and such a variety of interesting places, as
will scarce be found elsewhere within the same
distance.
Advancing up the valley from Portree by the side
of a tinkling burn, you come first, after four miles'
walking, to Loch Fada, and then, two miles farther
on, to Loch Leatham, both stocked with brown
trout, with which, at the right time, you may easily
fill your basket. In front all the way is Storr, its
black face tossed skywards, and facing it, on a high
ridge, stand the many pinnacles of which the Old
Man is the most prominent. It is a steep climb to
the top of this green ridge, but once the summit is
gained, you find yourself at what seems a giddy
height, and among a series of ghostly pinnacles,
broken and weather - worn, standing at various
angles, and looking down into a dark ravine below
the black precipices which tower grimly high over-
head. The Old Man is a curious pillar, in shape
like a huge elongated pear, its base cut into, its head
150 feet above you. Sitting down below it and
facing the precipices, you are struck at first with the
weird desolation of the place. The ravine below is
full of shattered rocks fallen from the cliffs above ;
the hues of the rock, grey and black, are ghastly
and repellent ; an eerie wind sobs in its gullies ;
wisps of mist floating across its face give it an
unearthly appearance, as its summit and bastions
and shoulders loom out and then disappear. Here
Trotternish 33
is a scene for dark tragedies ; here might lurk the
fabulous creatures of the Celtic mythology ; here
might rise the altars of some horrid and ghastly
faith propitiating the gloomy powers with human
sacrifice.
But turning away from this desolation and look-
ing seawards and down the valley, the sense ot
contrast is relieved by a scene of far-stretching
beauty. The valley which has been traversed lies
far below, green and inviting, and its lochs seem no
larger than and are curiously like the blue spaces
which mark them on the map. At its remote end
lie Portree and the silvery waters of the bay. Over
the eastern ridge in front is the sea, sparkling in the
sunshine, and far beyond it on the remote horizon
is Gareloch, dim and shadowy. Nearly opposite is
Loch Torridon and its encircling mountains. Rona,
with its broken succession of red rocks, and Raasay,
with its purple hills, lie between the ridges and the
mainland, and beyond them one gets a peep at
Applecross and the mountains huddled above Loch
Carron and Kyle-rhea. There is the narrow sound
winding in beneath Ben Tianavaig, and then turning
southwards to Broadford, where it is lost under the
shadow of Scalpa. But there the rounded summits
of the Red Hills attract you, dwarfing the other
features of the landscape, and holding you with
their spell. The sunlight gleams from their ruddy
face, till they seem like glowing masses of light.
Then to their right rise the dark Coolins, frowning
at you over the silvery face of Portree Loch.
The vast precipice of Storr^ is flanked on its
southern side by a retreating wall of rock, ending
in a jutting bastion. Beyond this bastion the
ascent of the cliff may be made by climbing up a
steep and narrow gully, from which you emerge on
the grassy slopes and toil over their lawn -like
surface, wind -worn and sheep - cropped, to the
^ Storr is derived from Fiacaill storacli — a buck-tooth, the
name being suggested by the pinnacles.
3
34 The Misty Isle of Skye
summit. Thence the view to south and east is
much as it appears from the Old Man far below ;
but look westwards, and a huge expanse of rolling
moorland, wandering sea - lochs, the Tables at
Dunvegan, open sea, and the islands of the Outer
Hebrides, meet the eye. By far the best time to
see it is in the clear air of early spring, though the
piercing winds from the north will cut you as with
a razor. But that vast concourse of country with
its diverse features, the far-spreading sea, and the
long chain of purple islands stretching from Lewis
to Barra, will enchant you. And, looking north-
wards, you will follow the line of this mighty
backbone on which you are standing as it twists
and curves until it ends in the remote distance.
Below you are what seem black unfathomed deeps,
giddy recesses, gullies filled with hardened snow,
and, above the ghastly ravine, the pinnacles
curiously foreshortened from this elevation. Sign
of life you perceive none ; in all that wide landscape
you might be the sole survivor ; silence and immensity
fill the soul, and the still small voice speaks and
holds you spellbound. Here, with none to witness,
and amid this scene of solitary beauty, a demented
lover shot himself thirty years ago, his body lying
on this Pisgah height for days till a shepherd found
it. You shudder as you think of it ; just where you
sit the tragedy may have been enacted !
On this lofty precipice a darker mystery, says
tradition, was once enacted. One of the clergy of
Skye wished to find out when Shrovetide should be
kept ; he was a magician, skilled in the black art,
and the devil was at his service. Standing on the
edge of the precipice, he called up his grisly servant,
transformed him with a word into a horse, and
leaped on his back. Off they set for Rome, the
horse trying to get rid of his rider by propounding
questions to him which involved his mentioning the
name of the Deity in his answer. All in vain !
Next morning Rome was reached ; the Pope hurried
Trotternish 3 5
in — with a lady's slipper on one foot. He charged
our Skye parson with his diabolical craft ; the cleric
wagged an accusing finger at the tell-tale slipper,
and (let us hope) brought a blush to the papal face.
Roman augurs, when they met, says Juvenal, could
hardly refrain from smiling ; Pope and cleric were
their mediaeval counterparts, and each resolved to
keep the other's secret safely.
Sheriff Nicolson, the Skye poet, has said that
** to ascend the Storr and follow the mountain ridge
the whole way till you come to the highroad near
the Quiraing, is no doubt one of the grandest
promenades in Skye, commanding wide views in all
directions." Sceptics say he never did follow it
himself, but he who chooses to do so, instead of
descending again to the valley and toiling through
its bogs, will be amply satisfied. You go up and
down as you follow the line of the ridges, dipping
seven times into as many hollows before you come
to Beinn Edra, where you come down upon the road,
tired but delighted. But if you descend from Storr
you may count for the next four miles on a rough
walk, or rather a succession of leaps, over the
shaggy moorland with its bogs and streams at every
step, until the road at Lealt is reached. But you
pass the long line of rolling ridges, here dipping
down, there shooting upwards into peaks and
sgurrs. At Lealt you are once more among the
abodes of men, and follow a succession of tiny
townships and strips of cultivated land. There,
too, is one of the too few industries of the island —
the diatomite works at Cuithir, of which more
presently. The road follows the edge of the cliff,
and from it one looks down to the glittering sea,
and across it to the long chain of mountains on
the mainland. Then at Loch Mealt, which runs
up close to the cliff's edge, the road takes a turn
inland till it reaches the beautiful blue bay of Stafiin
and the shattered front of the Quiraing.
Here, in stormy weather, the wild rollers of the
^6 The Misty Isle of Skye
o
Minch break In fury on the shore, and all landing
or embarking is impossible. But on a still day the
water is like glass, and stretches its radiant surface
for miles before you. The grassy mounds of Staffin
Island, and, a little farther north, Eilean Altavaig,
with its precipitous sides, are mirrored in the blue
depths, while on the remote horizon are seen the
tiny Shiant Isles, and beyond them the dim shadows
of the coast-line of Lewis. Eastwards, over the
gleaming sea, rise the mountains of Ross-shire, and
looking down on the bay are the black cliffs of the
Quiraing and the northern summits of the ridge.
It is a magnificent bit of varied colour and mingled
lights, and all around the bay are scattered crofters'
huts and patches of cornland, which add a touch of
human interest to nature's beauty. Or, if you look
landwards from the bay, you see the wide sweep of
its shores, so fertile and inviting, guarded by the
vast amphitheatre of basaltic rock and green talus
slopes, rising tier above tier to a height of 1800
feet to where the long line of the ridge cuts the
blue sky. The whole scene dazzles, for not only
does the water gleam and sparkle, but the grey rock
itself seems to reflect the rays of the sun as if it
were composed of millions of precious stones. You
see, too, on the terraces, the pinnacles and shattered
walls of rock and detached bastions which make
the Quiraing so wonderful. Dark shadows fill the
ravines and hollows, but they only make the lights
by contrast more intense and more dazzling.
A rough path breaks off the main road, and by
clambering over it the traveller is brought up the
green talus slopes and among the bewildering series
of precipices and pinnacles and hollows of these
famous cliffs. Great slices of rock, fissured and
cracked, stand apart from the main precipice behind,
and through these fissures you look out upon the
bay and its shores far below, where the houses are
dwarfed to insignificance. These detached masses
and the many airy pinnacles of every conceivable
THK «,)I IKAl.NC
Trotternlsh 37
form have the most weird and fantastic appearance,
especially if wisps of summer mist glide through and
among them. You feel yourself surrounded by a
crowd of mute figures, which seem as if they would
fain whisper to you the secret of the ages, and you
understand why folk-belief at all times and in every
part of the world has described such rocks as these
as petrified giants or men. Nay, you begin to
understand why animism should have arisen, and
why men should have attributed spirits like their
own, or even greater than their own, to rocks and
precipices and every other object of nature, and
should, at last, have been led to fall down and
worship them.
The highest of all the pinnacles is the Needle
Rock, a spiry, airy column, 120 feet high. From
its base you gaze out upon the beauties of the
landscape. Far below, the grassy slopes dip down
to the rich cultivated ground which is lapped by
the waters of the bay. The sea, jewelled with
green or rocky islets, stretches in a wide expanse
over to the mainland, of which a glimpse is seen
different from that viewed from the Old Man of
Storr. The peaks of Ross-shire, the hills of
Gareloch, stand mistily beyond the retreating shore
line. But from this giddy height it is the sea
which attracts you most — the sea which gleams and
sparkles in the sunshine, and lies like a vast plain,
in successive bands of light and colour, between the
nearer and the more distant shores. What a vision
of infinite distance it suggests to the mind when it
is seen from this lofty height, and amid these weird
rock forms, with the awful silence wrapping it
around ! Its blithe beauty fills the heart with a
hundred joyful thoughts, and a hundred memories
of happy days of which only the recollection remains.
Like the awe which arises as we gaze on great
mountain masses, the joy which comes from the
smiling ocean raises in us emotions which we can
scarcely understand and which haunt us for days to
38 The Misty Isle of Skye
come. Of course, mountain and sea are only diflferent
forms of matter, but yet they always suggest more
than mere matter can account for, and the eye which
looks upon them at once leads the mind from what
is seen to think of the splendour of the unseen
reflected from them, and pulsing forth in waves to
arouse in it thoughts that do often lie too deep for
tears. How often must this wild workshop of the
Titans, side by side as it were with the peaceful
beauty of the far-spreading sea and dim blue
mountains on the horizon, have roused such thoughts
in the many pilgrims who have come to this lonely
shrine of Mother Nature !
What alone has the right to the name Quiraing
is the extraordinary hollow with its table rock. It
may be entered by a narrow rock-strewn crevice,
but its vastness is best seen from some coign of
vantage overhead. Imagine a huge cup covered
with grass and surrounded at its edge by broken
crags and boulders. At the bottom of the cup
lies a huge oblong mass of rock, 300 feet long,
with a flat top, clothed with the greenest of turf,
a contrast to its craggy sides. This is the Table
Rock, which still awaits its guests. Tradition says
that in this huge hidden hollow sheep used to be
concealed in times of danger. Here they found
safety and green pastures, and could easily be de-
fended by their owners against the raiders, if ever
they discovered this marvellous hiding-place.
Whoever visits the Quiraing and remembers
Wordsworth's famous description of the mountain
forms suddenly seen through the rising mist, will
think of them there, especially if he is fortunate
enough to see these battlements and crags, pinnacles
and spires, with the mist floating round them till it
is driven off by the breeze and the sun shines clear
on the broken rocks. It may well be quoted here :
" Oh ! 'twas an unimaginable sight !
Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks, and emerald turf,
Trotternish 39
Clouds of all tincture, rocks, and sapphire sky.
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array j
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name.
In fleecy folds voluminous, enwrapped."^
In truth, Wordsworth is the poet to read when you
are in Skye. You appreciate him the better on
account of all that lies around you, and you under-
stand that and its lessons the more as they are
interpreted by the poet's vision. I do not know that
Wordsworth ever was in Skye, but he, more than
any other poet, has the key to the secret of its hills
and moors and engirdling- seas.
From Staffin and the Quiraing the road continues
to follow the coast-line, passing under the curious
nose-like headlands of Sgurr Mohr — the extremity of
the vast backbone. Long slopes and deep gullies
run down from the ridge seawards, covered with
rich pasture, and the road dips and rises as it crosses
the hollows and higher banks. At one point the
whole extent of the ridge is seen — a long line of
broken summits towering high in air, melting in the
far distance into softer outlines, but most prominent
of all are the fierce crags of Storr, which not even
the power of distance can soften. Then, bending
westwards a mile or two to the south of the extreme
northern points of Skye — Rudha na h-Aiseig and
the peninsula of Rudha Hunish — the road crosses
a wide moorland in which lies the township of
Kilmaluaig, until it touches the sea once more on
the west by the ruined towers of Duntulm.
" Ged tha thu'n diugh 'a d'aibhcas fliuar,
Bha thu uair 'a d'aros righ," -
may well be applied to the few remaining walls of
this ancient house. For centuries it was the chief
^ The passage occurs in canto second of the Excursion.
^ Though thou art to-day a ruin cold,
Thou wcrt once the dwelling of a king.
40 The Misty Isle of Skye
seat of the Macdonalds of the Isles, and here their
chiefs reigned as kings, and went forth to contest
the sovereignty with the rival kings of Scotland.
In earlier times a dun stood here, called Dun
Dhaibidh or David, after a Viking who had seized
it from the Celts. On its site Duntulm was erected.
The castle itself stands on a lofty mound, the
summit of a cliff down which its windows looked
sheer into the sea. Seawards, it was unapproach-
able, and from the land side could scarcely have
been less so, for the mound was protected by out-
lying walls, and these again by ditches. Secure
in this northern fastness, the kings of the Isles
could well taunt all their foes, and, summoning
their followers, sally forth by sea or land to battle
and victory.
The line of the foundation wall shows what an
extent of building once comprised this lordly seat,
but now only the mouldering gables of what has
the appearance of a chapel with some dark vaults
beneath, the remains of a wall pierced by windows
on the cliff's edge, and two isolated columns, broken
and ruinous, — the last remnants of the ancient keep,
— are all that remain to tell the tale of its quondam
grandeur. Carved and inscribed stones once adorned
the tower, but these have all perished. Seen from
the foot of the mound, these ruins stand sheer
against the sky. Far below, the sea breaks on the
iron cliff, a hummocky island lies in the little bay,
the blue waters of the Minch stretch outward until
they meet the purple hills of Harris lying in an
unbroken line on the horizon. Such was the scene
which met the eyes of the chief and his house as
they gazed from the battlements, or looked down
with pride upon their galleys moored in the bay
below them.^ Until far on in the eighteenth century
this "stark strength" was the home of the chief,
^ A deep groove in the rocks at the edge of the bay is said to
have been made by the lieel of the chief's galley when it was
drawn up on the shore.
Trotternish 41
and then it was suddenly deserted and left in
isolation to moulder and decay. A nursemaid play-
ing- with a child of the house at one of the windows
overlooking the grim depths below, let it fall into
the sea, where, crushed and lifeless, its body was
discovered. This tragic occurrence made the family
leave the castle for ever, but not before the wretched
woman (as tradition avers) had been set adrift in a
boat full of holes to meet a ghastly fate. But not
so long' ago there was living an aged woman who
had spoken in her childhood to another woman,
who in her youth had been a servant in the castle
when the last ball was given there, and when a
brilliant company had made the ancient walls re-
sound with the echoes of their mirth and dancing.
One cannot but regret that this ancient house, hang-
ing-, like Tantallon and Dunnottar, above the sea,
was not preserved to be the roof-tree of the
Macdonalds, as Dunvegan is of the MacLeods. Of
the many scenes these crumbling walls have witnessed
history records only a few. As we shall see. King
James v. visited Duntulm and admired its strength
and position. Only a few years later, the chief,
Donald Gorme, put his treacherous kinsman, Hugh
Macghilleasbuig, to a fearful end in the Duntulm
dungeon. Hugh was as cruel and vicious as he
was strong. A song, composed by the sisters of
some of his own male relations whom he had put to
death, asks indignantly why his foster-nurse did not
crush him in her arms while he was yet a baby.
At last, having plotted against Donald Gorme, the
detested Hugh was captured and brought to Duntulm,
where he was kept starving for some time. By an
aggravated cruelty, salt meat was lowered to him.
He devoured it greedily, but soon a raging thirst
consumed him. None would give him water, and
the poor wretch, victim of his own evil life, suffered
the most awful agonies, gnawing a pewter dish to
pieces, says tradition, before he died.
Some years after, Donald Gorme took an aversion
42 The Misty Isle of Skye
to his wife, a sister of Rory Mor MacLeod, lord of
Dunvegan. The truth was that he had fallen in
love with a daughter of Mackenzie of Kintail, and
resolved to be rid of his lawful wife. The poor lady
had the misfortune to have lost an eye, and Donald
the Grim added insult to her injuries, by mounting-
her on a one-eyed grey horse, led by a one-eyed boy,
and followed by a one-eyed dog, when he drove her
from Duntulm. Rory Mor was not the man to sit
still under an insult of this kind, and when his
sister arrived at Dunvegan with her pitiful cavalcade
and her story of wrong, he began the work of
revenge. Collecting his men, he carried fire and
sword through Trotternish, leaving many a smoking
hamlet and dead Macdonald behind him. Donald
Gorme replied by invading MacLeod's lands in
Harris ; Rory Mor at once went to Donald's terri-
tories in Uist. So the feud went on, until the
respective clans had had their fill of fighting, or at
least until the interference of the Government brought
about a reconciliation.
The farm of Duntulm beyond the mound is
probably the farm which was once held by the
hereditary doctor of the chief — the eldest son in the
family being invariably educated at his expense for
that profession. . On Ru Meanish, under the shadow
of the castle walls, was the " Hill of Pleas," where
the chief sat and administered justice, and there,
doubtless, many a trembling wretch has heard his
doom pronounced and been led off" at once to grace
the gallows. An old print of the castle, dating
about 1750, shows the keep still intact, with a
pinnacled tower, and the descriptive account attached
to it tells the gruesome tale that near by the castle
an incestuous pair (a brother and sister) were
buried alive, by order of the chief. When such
powers were in his hands, we cannot doubt that, as
the descriptive account says, " to the respect paid
to the decisions delivered from the summit of the
Hill of Pleas may in some measure be attributed the
Trotternish 43
strict obedience of a fierce and military race to
their chieftain."
Between Duntulm and Kilmuir the road keeps
close to the shore of Score Bay and the great cliffs
with their clustered pillars and columns and deep
caves which bound it. For miles to come it will
pass through romantic and historic ground, begin-
ning two miles from Duntulm with the ancient
burial-ground of Kilmuir, the church of St. Mary,
every vestige of which has gone. To the lover of
the romantic, few places in this solitary land could
give greater pleasure. It is the Reileag Mhoir
Chlonin Donuill, the burial-place of the Macdonalds
of the Isles, and here lies the dust of her whose
name is best known of all her clan. Flora Macdonald,
"a name that will be mentioned in history, and, if
courage and fidelity are virtues, mentioned with
honour." She died at Peinduin, some miles to the
south, in 1790, and now, her shroud one of the
sheets in which the Prince slept at Kingsburgh,
she rests in this churchyard perched high on the
windy seaboard and looking out upon a glorious
landscape. A great lona cross and a massive slab
of granite cover her mortal remains, and on the
latter is inscribed :
Flora Macdonald,
Born at Milton, South Uist, 1722.
Died at Kingsburgh, Skye, March 1790.
This white cross is visible far out to sea, but it is
exposed to the fury of the wild winter storms, and is
stayed up by a great bar of iron. An earlier cross
was blown down and broken to pieces.^
^ There is another memorial of Flora Macdonald in St.
Columba's (Episcopal) Church at Portree, in the shjipe of a
stained window and a brass. The subject of the window is
Esther delivering her countrymen. The first light shows
Esther receiving the news of the king's edict ; the centre light
her appeal to the king ; that on the right the king with Esther
receiving Mordecai. In the ornamental lights above are figures
of angels, the Macdonald arms, and the words from Esther iv.
44 The Misty Isle of Skye
The view from this ancient place is grand and
beautiful. In front the grassy land slopes down
abruptly to the basaltic cliffs which send out huge
escarpments into the sea, greatest of which is Ru
Bornaskitaigf on the left with its rocky pillar, and,
carved into its heart, Uamh Oir, the Cave of Gold.
From Rudha Hunish, the northern point of Skye,
and Duntulm, whose g'rey ruins are visible from the
churchyard gate, the eye follows a wide, winding",
semicircular belt of gleaming sea. Beyond it is the
massive black line of the Vaternish cliffs bounding
Loch Snizort, and the purple hills of Benbecula,
North Uist, and Harris. North of Harris lies part
of the flat land of Lewis, separated from it by the
long Loch Seaforth. Nearer Skye are numerous
rocky islets, chief of them Fladdahuan — Fladda of
the Ocean, the site of a chapel dedicated to St.
Columba, to the ruined altar of which fishermen
came to bathe the famous stone which brought
them a favourable wind. Everything in Skye is so
ancient, so romantic, that it will surprise nobody
to learn that this island, or, as some say, Holm
Island to the north of Portree, was the famed Tir
na h' Oige, the Celtic land of youth and faery, where
i6, "If I perish, I perish." The words on the brass are as
follows: — "To the glory of God and in memory of Flora
Macdonald, daughter of Ranald the son of Angus Macdonald
the younger, Milton, South Uist. She was born in 1722, and
was married November 6th, 1750, at Flodigarry, Isle of Skye,
to Allan VII. in descent of the Kingsburgh Macdonalds, Captain,
34th Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment. Who served with
distinction through the American War of Independence. She
died March 5th, 1790, and was buried at Kilmuir, Isle of Skye,
She effected the escape of Prince Charles Edward from South
Uist after the battle of Culloden in 1746 ; and in 1779, when re-
turning from America on board a ship attacked by a French
privateer, encouraged the sailors to make a spirited and suc-
cessful resistance, thus risking her life for both the Houses o.
Stuart and Hanover. This window was dedicated to the
memory of Flora Macdonald in the year of our Lord 1896 by
one of her great grandchildren, Fanny Charlotte, widow of
Lieutenant-Colonel R. E. Henry, and daughter of Captain
James Murray Macdonald, grandson of Flora Macdonald."
Trotternish
falls not haily nor. rain, nor any snow.^ The da)'
passed for the dwellers on this happy isle like i
beautiful dream ; thither Oisin was sent for a time
to prevent the tongue of slander from wagging too
freely, for his mother had been transformed into a
deer by fairy enchantments. Behind the churchyard
lies a hollow tract of land, backed by some of the
Trotternish ridges — Sgurr Mor and Meall na Suira-
mach.
The lights and shadows are ever changing on
sea and mountains as the face of the sky varies.
But whether it smile or frown, it cannot make this
wide prospect other than strangely beautiful and
fascinating. And she whose dust lies at our feet
brought her Prince across these miles of sea from far
Benbecula to Vaternish Point, and then down Loch
Snizort to Lady Margaret Macdonald's house at
Monkstadt. Peace to her brave and dauntless
spirit ! There are many nameless graves and
ruined vaults and some beautifully incised ancient
slabs in this churchyard, but this great granite cross
absorbs all our interest. Long may it stand to mark
this honoured dust, and to watch the leaping waves
and the purple mountains in the far distance !
Lying between the sea and the Trotternish ridges,
and stretching for six miles southward towards Uig,
lies the plain of Kilmuir. It is the most fertile part
of the island, and was once known as the granary of
Skye or of the Macdonalds of the Isles.- No wonder
^ An excellent instance of the manner in which the Irish
Feinne legends have been adapted to Hig-liland localities.
Much fairy j^flamour would be needed to see in Fladdahuan
or in Holm Island, tiny islands both, the Land of Immortal
Youth ! As to Oisin, his name is derived from the tuft of fur
which grew on his temple, where his mother's tongue had
touched him. Oisin would not eat venison, and, being asked
the reason, he answered, "When everyone picks his mother's
shank-bone, I will pick my own mother's slender shank-bone."
Is the legend a dim memory of totemistic customs and restric-
tions ?
^ The MacLeods, perhaps a little envious of this fair land,
called it " Duthaich nam stapag," the country of the stappacks
4.6 The Misty Isle of Skye
that many of the Macdonald and MacLeod feuds
were waged for the possession of this fertile country.
In 1598 the Scottish crown let Kilmuir to a lowland
company, but the company could not hold its own
ag-ainst the contending clans, and was ruined. In
1772 the traveller Pennant speaks of its heavy crops
and of its fields "laughing with corn." Barley, a
crop far to seek in Skye now, was grown as well as
oats, and that often without manure for so long a
period as twenty years. In the midst of this plain
lay a shallow loch called Loch Columcille, with an
island on which was a large monastic establish-
ment. The loch was one and one-eighth mile
long, but had gradually become a marsh before
the first draining operations took place in 1715.
These were abandoned, to be again attempted in
1763, when water filled the bed of the loch once
more. Finally, in 1824, after five years' labour and an
expenditure of ten thousand pounds, the task was
accomplished.
This verdant plain lies like a cup between the
basaltic ridge — a great wall of broken rock and
green talus slopes, and a long line of gently rising
ground from which great cliffs overhang the sea.
At its northern end it is open, but towards the
south it is shut in by the heights of Skudiburg
and Idrigill, at the farther side of which Uig lies
hidden. Half-way down the ridge which forms
the seaboard is Monkstadt — a grey farmhouse
with a few sparse trees, — and beyond the ridge
is another glimpse of the sea and Vaternish and
the outer isles. The loch basin is crossed at right
angles to each other by a series of narrow drains
and wider canals, crowded with tall equisetum
and other marsh plants. It is the home of many
wild-fowl — you may perhaps scare a wild-duck
from her eggs or startle the water-hen's brood
(meal and water). Macdonald wit responded by calling'
Duirinish " Duthaich nam mogais," the country of the footless
stockings.
Trotternish 47
darting among the plants on the surface of the
canals.
To inspect the ruins of the monastery one must
leave the highroad and descend into the plain for a
mile and a quarter. The island on which they stand
could never have risen high above the water. It is
nearly three acres in extent, and its whole surface is
covered with rough blocks of grey lichen-covered
stones — remains of the monastic cells. There are a
few traces of buildings, which may be of any age, so
old do they appear, so covered with moss, as well as
of a cashel or protecting wall.^ On what was once
the western shore of the loch are traces of other
buildings, and immediately above, on the height
overlooking the sea, is Carn Liath— an ancient
burial-mound. Ascending to it one gazes down on
the water which fills the air with its noises, and
across it to the dark front of the Vaternish cliffs and
their verdant tops stretching away to the heart of
the peninsula. Southwards down the coast are the
great cliffs at Uig, and Dun Skudiburg with its
"stack" rising from the sea below. In front are
the rocky Ascrib Isles, and on the horizon the chain
of the Outer Hebrides. At either end of the plain
and on the opposite side below the basalt ridges
there are abundant crofts with their fertile patches
of cornland smiling in the sunshine. But the place
where the loch was seems a deserted solitude, dotted
only with rough Highland cattle, and rendered still
more solitary by the ruined heaps of stone. Tadmor
in the wilderness could scarce seem more desolate.
The matin bell rings no longer; the monks no
more go forth to pray or to work ; time and change
have made a solitude and called it peace. The sea
is moaning far below, the ruins of an ancient
Christianity are unspeakably sad ; did Columba and
his monks labour only for this? But a lark is
carolling high in air, it suggests more cheerful
thoughts, and one remembers that Columba's work
^ For details of tliosc ruins, see p. 281,
48 The Misty Isle of Skye
lives on in the hearts of men, it did not fail when the
monastery became a ruin.
From any point in the plain, or from the road itself,
Monkstadt house is seen just below the top of the
ridg'e which looks down on Prince Charles's landing--
place. This plain stone house, retired and solitary,
seems always to be brooding over the scenes that
have happened in it, as other houses give the
impression of their mysteriously awaiting some
event which will at once cause them to leap into
fame. And one remembers that eventful day in the
history of this house : Flora Macdonald seeking help
at its door. Lady Margaret and Kingsburgh bustling
to and fro, yet trying to conceal their tremors from
the Hanoverian officer, the arrangements hurriedly
made, and, probably calmest of all, the hunted
Fugitive, tossing pebbles as he sat on the beach
below out of sight. From Monkstadt the little
party — Charles as Betty Burke — set out for Kings-
burgh, farther to the south, and the house of
Monkstadt was left once more to its solitude.
Just before the road begins to dip down and
double upon itself to Uig Bay, it is worth while
leaving it again by the path which leads to Dun
Skudiburg — an ancient fort perched on a high
eminence above the sea. The landward side of this
height is steep and rocky. It is crowned by the
ruins of the fort — an ancient Celtic place of defence
which must have been well-nigh impregnable. On
the seaward side between the fort and the cliff's
edge is a level piece of greensward completely
surrounded by the remains of a wall. The enemy
who mounted the cliff had to face the prospect of
being hurled backwards down that giddy height
when he attempted to scale the wall. The view
seawards is much the same as from Carn Liath, but
to the left are great cliffs sheltering a little bay, and
Idrigil Point, beyond which lies the mouth of Uig
Bay itself. It is a lonely spot. Far below, rising
upwards to about a fourth of the cliffs height, is the
Trotternish 49
Stack of Skudiburg^a great pinnacle of basalt,
hoary with lichens. Near it are basaltic rocks,
black and shattered, looking like some ruined castle,
and close by them is a reef of dwarf prismatic
columns of the same rock. Down the coast, belov/
Monkstadt, is Prince Charles's Point — a little spit
of land jutting outwards, to which the bonny boat
came over the sea to Skye one hundred and fifty-
seven years ago. The combination of nature's ruins
and man's deserted works, the rolling sea and the
cliffs and the air of unrecorded history which broods
around, almost oppresses the lonely pilgrim. As he
gazes down into the depths, he would not be surprised
to see a mermaid rise from the waves and lament
for her long dead Celtic lover who watched her from
the fort on the height, or some strange sea-monster
— creature of the vivid Celtic imagination — put its
cruel face out of the waves and bellow in baffled
fury. The truth is that all such solitary places in
Skye — the cliffs seldom trodden by mortal foot and
against which the sea is always dashing, and the
ruins of long ago which crown so many of them,
inspire some minds with a fearful joy— the joy at so
much wild beauty, the catching mysterious fear of
the unseen forms which must (you feel it) haunt
these windswept heights. Unhealthy imagination !
cries sober sense. So be it, but something of that
is necessary if one would taste to the full the charm
of the Western Isles, and of Eilean a Cheo in
particular. But the populous village of Uig will
soon chase away all unhealthy imaginings as we
pass through it.
Rounding the high tors of Idrigil, and running
down a steep zigzag, the road brings one suddenly
in full view of Uig Bay and village far below, with
its many crofts, pretty cottages with hedges and
gardens, churches, and hotel. The bay is surrounded
by an amphitheatre of steep green slopes, ending at
either side in high basaltic cliffs. At the upper or
northern end of the bay these slopes are less steep
4
50 The Misty Isle of Skye
and are crowded with fertile crofts divided from each
other by walls of turf. Towards the centre, two
woodland glens, cut into the slopes as with a giant's
knife, converge from opposite directions, and through
them flow the waters of the Rha and the Conon. I
know no prettier glens in Skye — the wide silvery
burns flowing down under the trees which crowd
their banks and the rocky or green sides of the
glens, fringed with all kinds of ferns and wild-
flowers, and haunted by furred and feathered creatures
innumerable. One might spend a whole summer-
tide listening to the chorus of the birds echoing
through the perfumed air, and wandering daily up
these glens to their higher recesses among the ridges
far away, where the waters dash over precipitous
rocks or murmur through secret dells.
The road winds down to nearly the sea-level, and
crosses these burns between the sea and the green
slopes fringed with woodland. Then it mounts
again for 300 feet along the face of the green slopes
gashed with many a torrent bed, and from this
point the whole extent of the bay is spread out
before the eye— the frowning headlands, the grassy
precipices, enclosing the dark glens and the bright
patches of arable land and the tiny cottages. Far
below, the sea swings and heaves continually.
Between the bay and the massive line of the Vaternish
cliffs opposite are the rocky Ascrib Isles, and far
across the Little Minch the cones of Harris. The
exquisite beauty of the scene when dazzling sun-
light pours down upon it and sea and land seem
some strange vision of tremulous beauty, can only
be imagined. To the left the upper waters of Loch
Snizort (Loch Greshornish) are visible running far
inland, and away beyond the rolling moors which
enclose them Macleod's Tables stand out against
the sky. Then the road dips down again southwards,
and the bay and its surroundings are lost to sight.
After some miles of bare moorland it comes upon a
wilder glen. Through the broken heath-covered
Trotternish 5 1
surface emerge great bosses of grey basalt, mount-
ing up into curiously shaped high tors. At one place
these basaltic bosses confine the road to a narrow
lane, but mostly the land is more open and is crossed
by rushing burns which have cut deep chasms in
their rocky bed. One of these comes down from
Glen Hinnisdal — a beautiful winding glen running
far up into the recesses of the Trotternish ridges.
Not far from this point lies Prince Charles's Well, a
little spring beyond the burn on the right of the
road, where the Prince satisfied his thirst as he
journeyed down to Kingsburgh, and where the
belated Jacobite will drink a cup of its fair water to
his memory.
Below the ridge which hides the waters of Loch
Snizort lie at the sea's edge the ruins of Caisteal
Uisdean,^ and three miles farther south Kingsburgh
house with its woods and fields. Close by stood the
older house where Flora Macdonald lived, and where
the Prince and, at a later time. Dr. Johnson and
Boswell slept.- The loch itself comes into view
farther on — a great stretch of gleaming water.
Beyond its mouth the outer islands are seen once
more. Opposite are the cliffs of its western shore
and Lyndale Point, hiding the entrance to Loch
Greshornish. At its head it is divided into three
by the peninsulas of the Aird — a fertile tongue of
land crowded with crofts, and of Skerinish with
its curious tors. The loch lies in a vast cup, its
shores stretching to the far distance, diversified by
dark moorland and cultivated fields and patches of
woodland, over which the shifting lights and shadows
come and go. On the remote horizon are the
splintered Coolins (looking like a vast saw), Glamaig,
and the Red Hills beyond the long line of Fingal's
Seat, with its cairn looking down upon Portree. It
is a wide and various landscape, made happier in
summer with the song of the birds and the sight of
innumerable wildflowers. Towards the head of the
1 See p. 271. 2 See Chap. XVIII.
52 The Misty Isle of Skye
loch nestles the village of Snizort, homelike and
cheerful. Beyond you, as you leave it behind, lies
the loch, its shore fringed with miles of cultivated
land lying snugly beneath the shaggy moorland
topped with a long line of basaltic tors. To the
left is Glen Haultin — a hollow amid a maze of
roughly rounded hills, one of which is seen to be
the green back of the precipitous Storr. After
traversing a few miles more, the top of the ridge at
Drumuie is reached. From it you say good-bye to
Harris, whose mountains have been visible all the
way down the western side of the peninsula. In
front lies Portree above its bay, and surrounded by
its successive lines of hills and mountains, and
having reached it your pilgrimage is over.
It is a long journey which has been accomplished
when the town once more comes into sight, and
whoever performs it will feel as if he had been
travelling for unknown ages through a shaggy land,
among great cliffs, and purple moorlands, sunlit
spaces and leaping seas, with but his thoughts to
bear him company. And yet he will have been con-
scious of a glad music sounding in his ears — the
music of the voice of nature, the flute-notes of the
pipes of Pan !
CHAPTER IV
VATERNISH AND THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me.
The long brown path before me leading wherever I
choose."
Walt Whitman.
WHAT may be called the Great North Road of
Skye begins in distant Ardvasar in the south,
passes to Isle Ornsay, and then over the moors and
far away to Broadford. From there it plunges into
the deep recesses of the Red Hills, winds by lonely
sea-lochs to Sligachan beneath the dark shadow of
the mighty Sgurr-nan-Gillean, and so on for nine
lonely miles to Portree. Leaving Portree it strikes
northward, and, after climbing to the top of the ridge
at Drumuie, descends again into the valley towards
Loch Snizort. Near there, one arm of it branches
off to Uig and Staffin ; the other stretches westwards
to Fairy Bridge, where it divides again, one sub-
branch leading to Vaternish, the other to Dunvegan.
This sub-branch, at about two miles from Dunvegan,
is once more divided, one part turning off at a right
angle, and following the shores of Loch Bracadale
and Loch Harport, crosses Skye to Sligachan, where
it meets the original Great North Road once more.
We shall follow the section of this road from
Portree to Vaternish. The pleasure of the highway,
which to some may be merely monotonous, will
depend much on the weather. I have travelled
across it when the whole atmosphere seemed a mere
54 The Misty Isle of Skye
blinding sheet of water, and, over the undulating-
moorland and down the sides of the hills, the wind
swept unceasingly and lashed itself into fury. You
feel yourself getting colder and colder and wetter
and wetter in spite of oilskin and sou'-wester and
as many greatcoats as an old-clo' man might be con-
ceived to wear. But the very fury of the elements,
the pitiless sting of raindrops or hailstones on the
face, hold you in a kind of mesmeric stupor, and
there is a painful pleasure in listening to the un-
wonted atmospheric noises or watching the water
rushing in rich brown foaming masses along every
river course and down a hundred torrent beds. To
most people all this will sound foolish, and they will
suppose this road the abomination of desolation.
But there are days when it shows to better advantage,
when the mysterious moorland and the winding sea-
lochs by which it wanders, and the glimpses of
distant islands and glimmering horizons, enchant the
wayfarer. There are cloudless summer days and
soft grey autumnal days revealing most unexpected
combinations of light and shadow, when this road
would have charmed Hazlitt or Stevenson — these
lovers of out of doors, into penning some of their
finest descriptive passages.
From the ridge at Drumuie you look back over
leagues of country — moorland valleys, glittering
lochs, the tremendous mountain-masses of Skye,
the shadowy hills of far-off Ross-shire. You cross
the ridge, and on the hillside at your right are the
ruins of an ancient dun. Far westwards, peeping
over a distant ridge, are MacLeod's Tables, and,
swelling away to the ridge, a new aspect of the
moorland. In the valley you see Loch Snizort
winding from far inland away out into the open sea,
beyond which lies Harris with its conical hills. If
you are fortunate enough to see the sun setting
behind those purple cones, you will never forget
what you have seen — billowy waves of colour, lavish
fields of gold, sea and land transmuted into the
Vaternish and the Great North Road ^^
landscape of faery, and such a longing In your heart
for the mystic unknown and unseen as to bring the
tears to your eyes.
A flat valley, unsheltered from the fierce winds of
winter, lies below the ridge, and is watered by the
winding Snizort river (famous for salmon) and its
tributaries. At its mouth, where it joins the loch,
here as narrow as the river itself, is the island of
St. Columba, with its ancient graveyard and ruined
churches. Near by, on the right of the road, is an
isolated boulder on which the saint is said to have
stood and preached the gospel to the heathen Celts.
From this point and for several miles farther, the
road is, for Skye, a populous one, with crofters'
huts and patches of cornland edging it to right
and left. Just beyond the bridge at the loch's head
is Skeabost, and here is to be seen a sight almost
unique for Skye — a beech hedge with woodlands
beyond it running by the roadside for a mile and a
half. Appearing suddenly after the naked landscape
and the waste moor strewn with boulders, it looks as
if a bit of England had been transferred to these
moorland solitudes. So accurately is it cut that
it undulates and winds with every winding and dip
of the road, suggesting a pair of long sinuous green
serpents, like the monsters of the romantic Celtic
folk-tales. In winter it keeps its russet-brown
leaves when all the trees around are bare, and as it
catches the hues of the fiery winter sunsets it blazes
like burnished bronze. In spring the change from
brown to a delicate green is gradual. First one
notes the light greenish-white tint dawning amid
the russet ; then the mingling of green and brown ;
the fading of the brown as the old leaves fall off,
until the long winding road is encompassed with
walls of emerald. Now the road emerges on the
open moorland once more. Below is Loch Snizort ;
on its northern shore, beyond where the road dips
into a curious cup -like valley at Tayinlone, lies
Kingsburgh in a bit of woodland, and there, you
S6 The Misty Isle of Skye
remember with a thrill, the Wanderer rested and
found a kindly welcome.
A mile beyond this point are the g-ates of Lyndale,
which lies hidden in the recesses of a wood down
by the sea, and there a daughter of the ancient
house of the Lords of the Isles has made her home.
From this point Loch Snizort is seen widening out
beyond the cliffs of Uig and the headlands of Vater-
nish, and enclasping midway between these shores
the rocky Ascrib Islands, from whose steep cliffs
you may look sheer down into six fathoms of water,
clear as glass under the summer sky, and watch
the fish swimming amongst the sea forests far below.
If the day is clear, this is one of the best points
from which to view the hills of Harris. The sea
is calm and reflects the rich blue of the sky in a
hundred varying belts of shimmering light. Like
dazzling gems are the rocky islets far out at the
mouth of the loch, while the soft haze on the distant
hills beyond the sea invites you to explore their
mysteries. For there is always something mysterious
and inviting in this road which at every step carries
you farther westward. The charm of the Western
Isles beckons you onwards like the romantic magic
of early Celtic poetry. Your thoughts continually
run on summer seas, and rocky islets, and hills of
purple heather. Was it this that impelled Columba
and his monks to seek a lonelier and yet lonelier isle
to fix their home ? We feel, with them, that un-
known magic isles lie before us, under a fairer sky.
'• Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on."
The road is now crossing the promontory which
divides the upper waters of Loch Snizort — Loch
Greshornish and Loch Snizort Beag— from each other,
and by and by it drops down close to the shore
of the former. At its head lies the township of
Vaternlsh and the Great North Road'
Edinbane, with its patches of corn and potatoes
chequering the hillside with a pattern of irregular
squares and oblongs of varied hues. Beyond this
the road mounts higher and higher until you think
it will never stop ascending. You pause to look
behind. The steep grassy slopes of the hither
side of the ridgy backbone which runs up the
peninsula of Trotternish are seen in the distance,
and, unless the sky is black with tempests, " shadows
dark and sunlight sheen " always rest on their sur-
face and in their hollows, as if they had some
particular gift of catching the changing face of the
sky. In the opposite direction the Coolins, purple and
rugged, seem suspended in the air beyond the near
ridge of the moor, and the steep escarpment of
Talisker Head rises above the gleam of water which
you know to be Loch Bracadale. Then you descend
a long and easy slope (joy of the bicyclist) to Fairy
Bridge, where the road branches off to Dunvegan
and to Vaternish.
After following the Vaternish road for a mile or
two through a rough moorland bounded by low-
lying slopes, you come opposite to what is called in
old antiquarian books the "Temple of Anaitis."
The mind flashes to the gorgeous East, to the
distant past, when mooned Ashtaroth, heaven^ s queen
a7id 7nother both, was worshipped with strange and
mystic rites. What has the divine Anaitis of Syria
to do with the shaggy Isle of Skye ? Thereby hangs
a tale. But let us first explore the ruins. The
moor and a burn must be crossed, and the steep
bank of the burn ascended, when you find yourselt
on a long tongue of land. The burn you have just
crossed, and another on the farther side of the
peninsula in a deep gorge, whose presence is quite
unexpected till you are close to its edge, meet at
the point of the tongue and then flow merrily down
to the sea. These two burns make this peninsula
well-nigh impregnable, for though the side of the
burn on the right is not steep it is easily defensible,
58 The Misty Isle of Skye
while the gorge on the left is 150 feet deep,
with precipitous and narrow sides slightly clad
with birch and hazel. A wall connecting the two
valleys shows that this has once been a stronghold
in the far-off days, when the heather was so often
dyed a deeper purple with the blood of the clansmen.
But the gorge fascinates one most of all. It is
about half a mile in length, but you could easily
throw a stone from one side to the other. Far below,
the burn rushes along in its rocky boulder-strewn
bed ; the sides of the gorge are basaltic, with here
and there a dyke cutting them from top to bottom ;
and just opposite a waterfall dashes down in four
successive leaps.
The stones which formed the defence of the neck
of the peninsula are scattered about ; here and
there piled on each other, as they were by their first
builders. Outside this again are the traces of an
earthen dyke, as the first line of defence. Near
what was the gate of the stone wall, on the outside,
the old writers saw the remains of two houses, one
on either side of the entrance. Inside the wall,
stones are scattered about in all directions ; but,
beyond the foundations of some beehive cells and
possibly of a fort, they give little indication of their
primitive purpose. There can be little doubt that
this natural strength was occupied by a dun or
broch similar to those found in every part of Skye.
But when the advent of the Norsemen was no
longer feared, it seems to have passed to, or its
stones to have been used for, a more peaceful
object, as the Gaelic name Tempul-na- Annait
suggests.
The word annoit occurs in Irish Gaelic as signify-
ing the church in which the patron saint was
educated, or within whose walls his sacred relics
were treasured, and this distinction naturally gave
it a first rank among all the churches of the
district.^ This name, with various combinations,
1 See Senchiis Mor, iii. 65, 75.
7,
<
o
Vaternish and the Great North Road 59
occurs frequently in Celtic regions. At Calligray,
Harris, is an ancient ruin called, like the Vaternish
ruin, Tempul - na- h- Annait (the Annait Church);
Tobar-na-h-Annait (the well of the Annait) is found
in Strath ; there is Annatburn in Perthshire, and
Annait in Appin. All these signify that a church of
the kind mentioned stood where the name remains
with a long-forgotten signification. Our Tempul-
na-Annait was thus a church, perhaps a monastic
establishment, built on the site of the earlier fort ;
the monks taking advantage of a natural stronghold
as a place of defence from their wild fellow-Christians.
Whence, then, all this talk of the Temple of Anaitis,
and the worship of the Syrian goddess in Skye?
The mare's nest was started by Dr. Johnson's
cicerone, the learned Dr. MacQueen, who, thinking
that "the meaning of the word Ainnit, in Erse,"
namely, a water-place, "agrees with all the de-
scriptions of the temples of that goddess, which
were situated near rivers, that there might be water
to wash the statue," concluded that here had once
been a famous pagan temple where the early Celts
worshipped the renowned goddess of the mysterious
East.^ Johnson listened to his arguments and casti-
gated him with his customary vehemence: "We
have no occasion to go to a distance for what we can
pick up under our feet," though (it is to his credit)
the learned minister boldly withstood him. Boswell
visited the ruins with MacQueen, and was partially
convinced when he insisted that " the ruin of a small
building, standing east and west, was actually the
temple of the goddess Anaitis, where her statue was
kept, and from whence processions were made to
wash it in one of the brooks." He made copious
notes of the divine's learning on the subject, but
dared not inflict them on his readers. The whole
^ Dr. MacQueen was minister of tho parish of Bracadale, and
was an excellent specimen of the scholarly cleric of the old days,
a man of culture, if a fanciful theorist, able to discuss questions
of scholarship with the best scholar of his day.
6o The Misty Isle of Skye
theory, like that of the Baal-worship of the Celts,
rests on the accidental likeness of a Celtic and an
Oriental word, and one might as well discover a
kinship between Maoris and ancient Egyptians
because both worshipped a sun-god called Ra. The
fair Anaitis was not even a goddess in exile in Skye,
and imagination cannot conjure up her sensuous
rites here ; it sees only dim tribes fighting on the
moor and white-robed priests chanting their liturgies
while their voices mingle with the rush of the stream
in the gorge far below. ^
Nearer the head of Loch Bay is the land which
MacLeod of MacLeod has recently divided into small
farms — an experiment proposed by the Government,
and loyally responded to by a chief who is beloved
by his people and has their welfare ever at heart.
The head of Loch Bay is guarded by steep basaltic
cliffs, surrounding it like a dark amphitheatre, and
pierced by a deep, narrow cleft — the continuation of
the gorge at Anaitis. From the road the ground
slopes steeply down to the sea, and from this point
there is once more a brilliant outlook to the Outer
Hebrides. Opposite is the beetling promontory of
Dunvegan Head, looo feet in height ; and still
nearer, as if floating in a quiet sea, a small group of
islands. One of these. Island Isay, was offered to
Johnson by MacLeod, on condition that he should
reside there for three months in the year. He was
to build a house there, fortify it with cannon, sally
forth and take the Isle of Muck. But the attractions
of Fleet Street proved too strong for this Hebridean
dream to be realised.
Following the coast-line, the eye loses it at the
curious L-shaped promontory of Ardmore, of which
more will be said presently, and before one is the
^ Pennant, of course, connected the place with the Druids.
In the houses of which he saw the ruins, " lodg-ed the priests
and their families" (Tonr, p. 341). Col. Forbes-Leslie revived
MacQueen's learned nonsense {Early Races of Scotland, i. loi
seq.).
Vaternish and the Great North Road 6i
wide sea girt in by Harris and North Uist. Close
by is the thriving township of Stein, and, sur-
rounded by trees, the house of Captain Macdonald
of Vaternish, a keen naturalist and sportsman, who
knows more of the furred and feathered creatures of
Skye than any man Hving. His otter hounds are
famous, and a dozen of them rush out to greet the
visitor with shrill barks. Not one of them has a
whole body ; the fierce otters have deprived them
of a lip, an ear, a paw, or what not, but you may be
sure the offending otter did not long survive the
combat. The grounds of the house are a sanctuary
for birds and beasts. In the pond near by a heron
is fishing, wild-duck are swimming about, and there
is a moor-hen with her brood. She has three each
summer, and the first brood nurse the second, and
the second the third — precocious nurses like the
little girls who live in the slums. All kinds of
animals are moving around — hares, rabbits, pigeons,
even a tame deer, and tame otters. A gunboat once
visited the loch, and the laird of Vaternish paid the
commander a friendly call. As they were sitting in
his cabin, a wardroom servant put his head in at the
door with, "Please, sir, there's a wild beast swim-
ming round the ship ! " All rushed on deck, ex-
pecting to see the sea-serpent or perhaps a pretty
mermaid. But it was only the deer, which had
missed his master, and, like a new Leander, had
come swimming out to find him.
In the garden is a peregrine falcon with clipped
wings, hopping clumsily about, and making a meal
off a gull. Look at her eye ! What piercing
brilliance, what untamed ferocity, what resolution !
Indoors are many stuffed specimens, shot, often
after days of watching, by the captain's unerring
gun. Most of these are rare occasional visitors to
these shores, like the Iceland peregrine, or the
glaucous gull — a huge white fellow, with snowy
plumage. But rarest of all is a fish of the mackerel
species caught in a fisherman's net, and rescued just
62 The Misty Isle of Skye
in time from the pot. It is a foot in length, with a
curious underhung mouth, and is rare even in the
Mediterranean, which is its habitat. The British
Museum regards it from afar with hungry eyes, but
not the most tempting offers will lure it from its
owner. Here, too (passing from natural history to
the romantic), may be seen a cupboard full of Flora
Macdonald's china, carrying the mind swiftly back
to that age of loyalty from which, indeed, one is
never far distant in the Isle of Skye.
Stein is a purely Norse word, and like many
another place-name in the island, is found in the saga
of King Haco. The Northmen's fleet must often
have lain at anchor between Isay Island and the
shore, as did the mightier Channel fleet a few years
ago. Leaving Stein by the rough road, you soon
find yourself on romantic ground, which recalls
savage fighting and deeds of darkness. Within the
walls of the church whose ruins are seen at Trumpan,
the MacLeods of Vaternish were assembled for divine
service one Sunday four hundred years ago. Mean-
while Macdonalds from Uist had crossed the sea and
landed on the promontory of Ardmore, where they
left their boats, and, hurrying to the church, burned
it with all its worshippers, save one woman who
escaped through a window. As the Macdonalds
were enjoying the spectacle with savage glee, they
forgot that smoke is seen far off and may easily act
as a signal. Their galleys, too, had been spied from
the towers of Dunvegan, and the fiery cross had been
sent round. From every quarter came twos and
threes of the Clan MacLeod. The Uist men rushed
for their boats ; the tide had left them high and dry.
In desperation they tried to pull them down the
strand. Their assailants increased in number, and
soon a desperate encounter took place, in which the
tables were turned, and every Macdonald was slain.
Then their bodies were ranged in a long row beneath
a turf dyke at the neck of the promontory, and the
dyke was overturned upon them. The place is still
Vaternish and the Great North Road 6^
known as Blar milleadh garaidh, the battle of the
spoiling of the dyke ; the bones of the victims were
seen there within living memory.
This Macdonald raid is believed to have been
made out of revenge for the Eigg massacre. Some
years later revenge was sought again for this signal
defeat. The Macdonalds, as usual, raided the
MacLeod's cattle. At daybreak the thieves were
overtaken near Trumpan, where a bloody fight took
place, and the Macdonalds were killed almost to a
man. On each side a blacksmith in full armour
remained fighting. The MacLeod blacksmith was
failing through loss of blood, when his wife arrived
at the scene of conflict. She struck the enemy with
her distaff", crying, "Turn to me !" He turned his
head involuntarily, and that moment was run
through and died. The place of this duel of the
smiths is still called Beinn a Ghobha, or the Black-
smiths' Hill. At this same fight, Roderick, son of
Ian MacLeod of Unish, did great execution with his
sword. At last a Macdonald rushed upon him and
cut off his legs at the knees. The doughty clansman
continued to stand on his stumps cutting down all
comers. At last he fell on the knoll named after
him, Cnoc Mhic Iain, the knoll of the son of Ian,
and Crois Bhan, the white cross, from a wooden
cross placed there to his memory. This cross has
long since disappeared.
This district must have been a favourite battle-
ground for the rival clans. Another fight occurred
here, and is notable because the fairy flag was un-
furled when the MacLeods were losing the day.
At once it seemed to their adversaries that the
MacLeods had increased threefold. Panic seized
them, and they fled from the field. Still another
dark deed is connected traditionally with Ardmore
peninsula. At Cnoc a Chrochaidh, or the Hanging
Hill, the son of Judge Morrison of the Lews was
hanged on three of his own oars. He had been on
a visit to Dunvegan, and, with liberal notions of
64 The Misty Isle of Skye
hospitality, he and his men had killed some MacLeods
on Isay Island. Some g-alleys followed his boat.
Fleeing from them, he landed at Ardmore, where he
was caught and hung. Before execution he was
bidden to kneel down on the rocks and say his
prayers. Long after, silver coins were found in a
crevice of these rocks, and were believed to have
been dropped there by this thrifty murderer while he
was praying.
The peaceful beauty of the scene almost gives the
lie to these savage traditions, but men cared little
for such things as natural beauty then, and lived
only for the lust of fighting and slaughter.
At Trumpan, too, close by the ruined church, died
the unfortunate Lady Grange in 1745, the year of
the Prince's landing. Her story is one of the
strangest of the many strange histories current in
the Highlands, and it shows how remote these High-
lands were in the mid-eighteenth century, — more
remote than are the Fiji Islands now, — and what
deeds of darkness might be done there unchallenged
in a civilised and cultured age. Lady Grange was
the wife of a Scottish judge ; his moral character
was at least dubious. Her father had been that
Chiesley of Dairy who, in a fit of passion and
revenge, shot the Lord President Lockhart. She
inherited his temper ; her husband was said to be a
drunkard ; their married life became intolerable, and
a separation was agreed upon after they had been
twenty years wedded. Jealousy of his amours,
maternal solicitude for her children, may have turned
her brain ; it is certain that she taunted the judge
in more than one public place, even on the bench.
In 1730, Lord Grange was engaged in Jacobite plots
with Lovat, Lord Mar, and others. It is said she
became aware of this, and now threatened him with
discovering everything to the Government. Her
"sequestration" was determined upon, and with
the aid of the MacLeod of that time — he whose own
married life had not been too happy — and possibly
Vaternish and the Great North Road 6^
other chiefs, she was kidnapped from Edinburgh by
Lovat's followers. Tradition speaks of a mock
funeral and a coflfin filled with stones ; on the other
hand, it was whispered in Edinburgh that she had
been abducted, though her sons, grown to manhood,
and her daughter. Lady Kintore, made no attempt
to find her. By secret ways, and under pretext that
she was insane, her captors carried her to the lonely
island of Heiskar, lying to the west of North Uist,
and belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat —
a fact which may implicate him. There she was
kept for three years in the custody of his tacksman.
In 1734 she was carried thence to St. Kilda,
MacLeod's still lonelier island in the Atlantic. No
one there but the catechist knew English ;
MacLeod's factor, who came once a year rent-
collecting, dared not help her ; yet it is known that
the wretched lady made some heroic attempts to
escape. She was treated as kindly as possible under
the circumstances. She had a hut of two apartments,
and a woman to wait on her ; provisions of a sort
were plentiful. Yet such an exile for a woman of
her spirit, a woman who had shone among the
beauties and wits of Edinburgh, was indeed a
diabolical and callous punishment, nor can it be
wondered that in a letter still preserved she describes
St. Kilda as *'a viled, neasty, stinking poor isle."
In 1741, when the catechist left the island, she
gave him letters for her law - agent, Hope of
Rankeillor, who applied for search-warrants and
for the arrest of MacLeod and others. These
were refused : the reasons alleged being that the
letters were in the handwriting of the catechist,
and that he was a scandalous and disreputable
person.
Meanwhile, Hope fitted out a sloop, which set sail
for St. Kilda with the catechist and twenty-five
armed men on board. Of this movement MacLeod
was made aware, and at once removed Lady Grange
from St. Kilda to Harris, and from there to Skye.
5
66 The Misty Isle of Skye
Despair and exile had worn her out in mind and
body ; she became a restless imbecile, wandering
freely about from place to place on MacLeod's lands,
hospitably entertained by his clansmen for seven
weary years. In 1745, exactly fifteen years after
her abduction, she died in a cottar's hut, and
was buried at Trumpan. Even then her ill fate
pursued her, and for some reason unknown a
second mock funeral was arranged. A coffin filled
with turf and stones was buried in presence of a
great crowd of people in the churchyard at
Duirinish, the real funeral taking place secretly
at Trumpan.
Here Lord Mar caused a monument to be erected
to her memory a few years ago, a tardy act of justice
and reparation for his ancestor's part in this tragedy
— a part which may even have been deeper than is
commonly known, for it is said that he, fearing for
his neck, would have had her put to death at
once, but that Lord Grange would only consent
to "sequestration." It is hard to say whether one
should wonder most at the indifference of the powers
that be in thi-s matter of the abduction, which
certainly from 1741 onwards was of public notoriety,
or the shameful callousness of her husband, a man
moving during the years of her exile in the most
brilliant society without exhibiting the slightest
compunction, nay, rejoicing at "the timely notice
you gave me of the death of that person ! " Prince
Charles might well have said, "Save me from my
friends."
Among the many interesting papers preserved at
Dunvegan Castle, few are more pathetic than the
yellow, time-worn accounts for Lady Grange's board
at St. Kilda, and her funeral (a strangely expensive
one) in Skye. They run as follows : —
3
00
00
00
i,^
lO
00
00
09
10
03
£5^
II
02J
£30
22
00
1 1
00
024
£S2
II
02i
Vaternish and the Great North Road 67
I.
Debii— The Laird of MacLeod
To RoRiE M'Neill.
To Lady Grang^e board for a year &
due the 5th current ....
Necessaries provided for her
To cash to account of this current
year from him .....
To Mr. James M'Kenzie's board and
necessaries for him ....
By your hon" order upon your factor
for .......
By my bill upon you to Wm. Tolme for
DuNVEGAN, 2nd Aug^ust 1744.
The above is a Just account betwixt the Laird of MacLeod
and RoRY MacNeill.
Acc'T. CuR"^. The hon>^'«- Normand MacLeod of MacLeod and
R. MacNeill of Trumpan.
Z)ei»'r,_MACLEOD.
To one particular an'='- of expenses in
Lady Grange's Interment . . . ^30 15 05
Do. her board r: c: for nine months . 22 10 00
£s3 05 05
Cr. — By cash from M'Leod per Receipt £\ 00 00
By Do. from \Vm. Tolme upon
MacLeod's an'=f- 21 16 03
By MacLeod's order upon Baj' for the
ballance boing [?] . . . . 21 09 02
£53 OS 05
DUNVEGAN, l6th Attffltst 1745.
The above An'=*- is filled and cleared betwixt us, errors &
omissions excepted by RoRY M'Neill.
These documents show that Lady Grang^e was at
least tolerably well provided for, while the tradition
68 The Misty Isle of Skye
of her wandering proves that she had a certain
amount of freedom. But the whole transaction for
all concerned in it, is worse than odious, and one
cannot but sympathise deeply with the unhappy lady,
who endured for fifteen long- years the blackness of
despair, and at last died among scenes which, how-
ever beautiful, could have brought no ray of hope to
her anguished heart in her lonely exile.
CHAPTER V
DUNVEGAN
" Hast thou seen that lordly castle,
That castle by the sea?
Golden and red above it,
The clouds float gorg-eously.
And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirrored wave below ;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening's crimson glow,"
Longfellow (from Uhland).
" A NE stark strength biggit on ane craig." So
^^ does Munro, Dean of the Isles, describe the
ancient seat of the MacLeods at Dunvegan in 1549.
When moat and ditch defended the castle from the
land side, and the only approach was by a narrow
flight of steps from the loch, guarded by portcullis
and flanking towers, the description must have been
strictly accurate, and the "stark strength" itself
quite impregnable. Even now, modern improve-
ments have not destroyed the force of the description,
and the most ancient inhabited house in Scotland
preserves much of its grim appearance. The name
Dunvegan, little dun or fort, suggests that an
earlier dun stood on the site of the castle. Tradition
gives the tenth century as the date of origin of the
keep, the oldest part of the building, perhaps
referring to this more primitive dun. Authorities
refuse to ascribe an earlier date to the keep than
the thirteenth century. Cold criticism and romantic
tradition seldom agree, but this much is certain, that
69
70 The Misty Isle of Skye
the descendants of Leod have continued to live there
since that time when he married the daughter of
Macraild Armuinn the Dane, and thus obtained his
ancient patrimony of nearly all that part of Skye
north of the Coolins. The date of that marriage was
the mid-thirteenth century.
The keep surrounded by a rampart, part of which
may still remain in the fragments of a ruined wall
to the north of the lofty tower, must have been all
that existed of the castle at that time. Successive
generations enlarged it, and some of its varying
forms can be seen in drawings made from time to
time. The earliest of these drawings represents the
castle as it was in the fourteenth century. The rock
is surrounded by a circular rampart, pierced by a
door where the stair leads down to the sea. The
keep stands at one side of a square fortalice, with
narrow windows. Nothing can be seen of the
ditch on the landward side, but the rock fronting it
must have been as steep then as the seaward rock
is now. Alasdair Crotach, or the hump-backed, in
the sixteenth century, built what is now called the
"Fairy Tower," to the south of the keep, a long
and high rampart connecting the two and forming a
courtyard within protected on the farther side by
the sea wall. A contemporary print shows the
Fairy Tower much as it is now — within the projecting
rampart with its gargoyles rise the crow-stepped
gables, as they still do. Keep and fortalice seem to
have been left unchanged by Alasdair, and the
picturesque architecture of the newer tower contrasts
curiously with the bare and grim outlines of the
older building. Within this Fairy Tower a room,
now used for storing the family documents, bears
the name of Alasdair Crotach's room. Rory Mor,
knighted by James vi., and Ian Breac both made
other alterations in the seventeenth century, prob-
ably making the space between the towers habitable.
Some time after this the keep must have become
more or less ruinous, for so it is represented in
Dun vegan 71
Grose's Antiquities of 1790. Ian Breac died before
he had completed his work, but his purpose outran
his accomplishment, and an inscribed stone, still
existing, " remains to celebrate what was not done,
and to serve as a memento of the uncertainty of life,
and the presumption of man." ^ Later chiefs restored
the keep, and made the castle assume, as far as was
possible to such a grim and venerable structure, the
aspect of a modern mansion. A flight of steps gave
access from the now useless ditch. These were
replaced by a bridge thrown across the moat, while
a modern doorway changed the back of the castle to
the front, and opens now on a lofty hall hung with
trophies of the chase.
The walls of the more ancient part of the castle
are extremely massive. In the cellars which now
replace the older arched kitchen with its huge
fireplace, they are 1 1 feet thick, and enclosed a
huge hall for servants and vassals. Above this they
are 9 feet thick, enclosing the hall for the chief
and his guests, and what is now the drawing-room.
That hall was lit by narrow slits in the walls, but
these have been enlarged, and now each window
makes a wide recess in the sides of the room, like a
series of tiny chapels in some long and lofty church.
But who can imagine the scenes which these ancient
walls witnessed through the dim centuries since
first they were erected — wild revels, deeds of dark-
ness, meetings of council, kilted chiefs and fair
ladies footing it in merry reels? Of these history
has noted only a few, and those of the darkest and
bloodiest nature.
Joined to the keep itself is the modern billiard-
room, hung with portraits, and the passage between
^ The words are Boswell's. The stone has the date 1586 and
the following lines of Latin verse : —
Quern stabilire juvat proavonim tecta vetusta,
Omne scelus fugat, jiistitiam colat.
Vertit in aerias turres magalia virtus,
Intjue casas huniilos Iccta superba iicfas.
72 The Misty Isle of Skye
It and the ancient hall opens upon a dark and
windowless room, in the floor of which a hole,
covered by a flagstone, forms the one and only
entrance to the dungeon below. Through it
prisoners were lowered to that ghastly prison from
which there could be no possible escape. This
narrow dungeon is cut out of the rock on which
the castle stands to a depth of i6 feet. Light is
admitted from a narrow loophole facing the north,
but high up in the rocky wall, so that the prisoner
might have no glimpse of the beautiful world beyond
the impenetrable wall. Part of the staircase which
led up from the kitchen to the hall still remains, but
the old staircase within the keep has long ago
disappeared. But in the sixteenth-century tower,
the Fairy Tower, as it is called, you can still ascend
to the battlements by the narrow, steep, and winding
staircase as of old. Use and wont doubtless made
things easier for the people of old than for their
luxurious descendants, but as you toil upwards,
fearful of knocking your head or grazing your shins,
you perforce marvel at their agility. And how Dr.
Johnson must have puffed and groaned as he toiled
upwards to the haunted room in which he slept, and
which, later, was given to Scott at his own request,
and christened by him the Fairy Room ! Above it
is the muniment room, crowded with interesting
family letters, documents, and charters black with
age and covered with crabbed writing. And above
that again you come out on the battlements and
look down on the waving boughs of countless
trees, the blue loch, and the green islands on its
breast.
The sea-gate still remains, with the worn steps
leading up to it, and opens into a narrow passage
the walls of which are grooved for the portcullis,
and pierced by a hole lo feet deep for the heavy
beam which barred the doorway from within. On
the right of the passage is the ancient well of the
castle, now boarded up, for in its cool depths a
Dunvegan 73
servant who had tasted somethingf else than its
waters was drowned several years ago.
Before the woods were planted and nothing but
the bare moorland surged up to the castle moat, it
must have presented a grim and repellent appear-
ance. "The great size of the castle," writes
Boswell, "which is partly old and partly new, and
is built upon a rock close to the sea, while the land
around it presents nothing but wild, moorish, hilly,
and craggy appearances, gave a rude magnificence
to the scene." But now with its modern front and
surrounded by woodlands it is only romantic and
picturesque, as if it had become the home of the
muse of history. Its grimness returns to it when
it is viewed from the beach to the north. Then it
stands clear of trees ; its lofty tower, and flanking
turrets, its outworks and battlements running at
every conceivable angle, are seen against the sky,
and present a bewildering variety of mediaeval
architecture. And all this mass of grey building
is " biggit on a craig" greyer and more lichen
stained and ever so much more ancient than itself,
while the sea laps its base perpetually. Seen on a
winter afternoon from the north, its towers look
weird and ghostly, and whisper of the strange
scenes they have witnessed in bygone days.
Of those scenes none are more ghastly than the
series of tragic events connected with the name of
Ian Dubh in the sixteenth century. When William,
the ninth chief, died in 1552, his brothers, Donald and
Tormod, were absent, and Ian the Fairhaired, a de-
scendant of the sixth MacLeod, was hailed as chief.
Ian had married Sheila, a daughter of Macdonald of
Knock, and had several sons, one of whom, Ian
Dubh,i was a man of evil and atrocious deeds, hated
and feared. A meeting was held at Lyndale on
Donald's arrival to decide the chieftainship, and
again Ian the Fairhaired was chosen. Donald re-
tired to Kingsburgh, where Ian Dubh visited him,
» The Dark or Black.
74 The Misty Isle of Skye
pretending friendship, and invited him, with six
followers, to meet him at the mirk midnight to
make arrangements for enforcing his just claims.
Donald, unexpectant of evil, arrived with his men at
the rendezvous, where Ian Dubh and his men at
once despatched them. Ian the Fairhaired ordered
the arrest of Ian the Dark, who at once fled to
Castle Uistean to the equally treacherous Hugh
MacGhilleasbuig — a Macdonald. Meanwhile Ian
the Fairhaired died, and his third son, Donald Breac,
was made tutor to his grandson, Tormod. Ian Dubh
now began to play his cards. Sallying forth from
Castle Uistean, he took Dunvegan Castle, put its
warders to the sword, and made a prisoner of his
brother Tormod's widow. When Donald Breac and
Tormod's three sons returned from the funeral of
Ian, they found Dunvegan's gate closed against them
and all admittance refused. Ian Dubh appeared in
full armour at the head of the narrow stairway
above the landing-place. There a hand-to-hand
fight took place between him and Donald, and the
latter was slain. Tormod's three sons were now
slaughtered by this avenging Jehu of Skye, the
wives and children of several leaders of the clan
were seized, and his remaining brothers shut up in
the dungeons of the castle.
At this point the Campbells of Argyll saw fit to
interfere, basing their right on their guardianship of
Mary, William's sole child. A large force landed at
Roag in Loch Bracadale, and their leaders offered
terms to Black Ian. He arranged to meet them at
the church of Kilmuir, and there the terms were
agreed upon, on lan's part only outwardly. He
invited eleven Campbell chieftains to a great feast
in Dunvegan Castle. According to the old plan,
each Campbell was sandwiched between two Mac-
Leods. After the feast a cup of blood was placed
before each guest, and at this gory signal each
Campbell was stabbed by his neighbour, Ian Dubh
selecting the leader for himself. It was probably
Dunvegan 75
in the present drawing - room that this tragedy
occurred.
The end of Ian was a fitting sequel to his evil
life. In 1559, Torquil, William's brother, arrived at
Dunvegan to make good his claim. Ian expected
help from Hugh MacGhilleasbuig, but it did not
come. Treachery was within the walls. A warder,
Torquil MacSween, agreed to give up the castle, and
secured all the passages save that leading to the
entrance and communicating with lan's bedroom,
guarded by his foster-brothers. The noise of
Torquil MacLeod's entrance alarmed Ian. He
reached his galley and sped to Harris. Driven
thence, he went to Ireland. His career was over;
he became a beggared wanderer, until he was seized
by the O'Donnells, whose chief thrust a red-hot
iron through his bowels. An equally horrible fate
awaited his fellow-traitor on the Macdonald side,
MacGhilleasbuig, as we have seen. They were well
matched for a couple of quiet ones !
The treasures of the castle are many and various.
First and foremost is the Fairy Flag, or Bratach Shi.
Tradition says that a fairy wife of one of the chiefs
presented it to him when she left the land of mortals
for ever. She bestowed upon this flag the power of
three times succouring the chief or his clan, after
which an invisible being would appear and carry
off flag and standard-bearer never to be seen again.
A family of Clan y Faitter acted as hereditary
guardians of the flag, and bore it in battle, holding
in return free lands in Bracadale. Twice at least its
power was exerted, once when Clan Donald was
gaining upon the sons of Leod and the banner made
their numbers appear tenfold in the eyes of the
former, and once again when it preserved the heir
about to be born. Pennant avers that, in his time,
it was too tattered for Titania to think it worth
sending for. Scott mentions that besides these
extraordinary powers it had also the power of en-
suring fertility and of bringing herrings to the loch.
76 The Misty Isle of Skye
The flag- is of yellow silk, with red spots wrought at
intervals on its surface. The material is threadbare,
so that it cannot ever be waved a third time, and even
a fairy might scarcely touch it without tearing it,
while its splendour has faded to a dingy hue. It is
not impossible that it was captured from the Saracens,
and that the common Norse traditions of magic
banners gifted by supernatural beings were later
attached to it. It now rests in a glass case in the
drawing-room, beside Rory Mor's drinking-horn and
the Dunvegan cup. The former is a long ox-horn,
with a deep silver band, engraved with animals and
an interlaced pattern of Celtic type and of twelfth-
century date ; the mouth was firmly grasped in the
hand, while the horn twined round the arm ; and
each chief, as he came of age, was expected to give
proof of his manhood by draining its contents at a
draught.! The cup is of Irish origin ; and is made
of dark wood, covered with rich ornamental work
in silver, possibly of a later date than the cup or
" mether." The silver work is of filigree and niello,
and was once encrusted with precious stones which
have disappeared. On the four sides of the rim are
panels containing the following inscription : Katharina
Ingen Y Neill Uxor Johannis Meguigir Principis
De Firmanae me Fieri Fecit, Anno Domini, 1493.
Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine et tu das escam
illorum in tempore opportuno.^ The latter part of
the inscription and the four times repeated sacred
monogram I. H. S. in the interior of the cup, suggest
that it may have been used as a chalice. Nothing is
known as to how the cup came into the possession
of the MacLeods : it may have been the spoil of
some fight or the dowry of a bride.
^ Armstrong in his Dictionary suggests that it may be the
horn of a urus. Urus horns were ornamented with silver, and
used as drinking-cups by the ancient Germans.
- Scott bungled the inscription in a most marvellous way.
See his notes to the Lord of the Isles. Johannis Meguigir is
John Maguire, whose death is recorded in the Annals of the
Four Masters under the year 1503.
Dunvegan 77
Two other glass cases contain autograph letters
from Johnson and Scott, while several other letters
of Scott's, as well as some from the Ettrick Shepherd,
Pitt, and other notables, are among the family papers.
Scott presented to the Lady MacLeod of his time
his own Lord of the Isles and his edition of the Rev.
Robert Kirk's Secret Commo7iwealth. Both are in
the library, and the latter has this characteristic
inscription in the faded handwriting of the poet —
" Mrs. MacLeod of MacLeod
from her faithful humble servant,
W. S.
' Of bogles and brownies full is this book.' "
A case in the dining-room is full of various treasures.
There is a lock of Prince Charles's hair — part of that
cut by Flora Macdonald at Kingsburgh, and presented
by her daughter to the MacLeods. It is golden and
silky — s?ie clipped a lock wi' her ahi hands frae his
lang yellow hair — and one wonders why it never
betrayed him when he was a fugitive. There, too,
is his waistcoat (a gift from Flora Macdonald's
family) — cream silk, embroidered with brown and
yellow, and showing signs of wear ; his drinking-
cup ; Flora Macdonald's stays — very worn and frayed
and dirty ; her pin-cushion, with the names of those
who suffered after Culloden ; some of her lace ; and
a variety of interesting odds and ends.
In the corridor are hung weapons of every age,
including Rory Mor's two-handed sword, which
Johnson said he would fight against with a dirk,
and the claymore of the chief who raised a thousand
clansmen and led them with it for the king at
Worcester fight in 1652. There too are an ethno-
logical collection from Zululand, many skins and
heads of big game, brought here by the present
chief, and all sorts of native manufactures from St.
Kilda.
Among the many family portraits which look down
from the walls are those by Allan Ramsay of the
78 The Misty Isle of Skye
so-called " wicked chief" and his second wife. It
was he who refused aid to Prince Charles, and, if
tradition is to be credited, shut his first wife in the
castle dung-eon. Two exquisite Raeburns, of his
grandson, the general, and his wife, are the gems
of the collection. Their colour is fresh, and no crack
has appeared in the canvas to destroy their charming
colouring and magic portraiture. But these are
only a small part of the interesting contents of this
venerable house, always interesting in itself, but
tenfold more so when its kindly owner, the twenty-
third chief of his line, beloved of his tenants in Skye
and of his clansmen " from China to Peru," tells the
story and describes the successive changes of this
ancient home of his race.
To live in such an ancient house is to put one's
finger upon the pulse of time and feel the vanity of
human life. Generations of men and women have
lived here ; these grey walls have been the outer
casket of ever-recurring hopes and fears and joys and
sorrows, which, one and all, died with those who
experienced them and gave no sign ; they have
witnessed the ceaseless contest of birth and death,
and seen ghastly murder done in distant centuries.
And away beyond them, in the great world, what
wild ecstasy during the course of these generations
— all the multiform drama of existence in the
crowded years, men and women in countless millions
born, dying, and vanishing away, nations rising and
being overthrown — and these walls existing all the
while, wrapped round by eternal silence ! The
thronging highway, the bustling market, forbid such
thoughts, for they enlist us perforce in the service of
the present, and we think bravely that our puny
efforts must have infinite results. But within these
ancient and silent walls, surrounded by the solitudes
of nature, shadowy woods and changeless moorland,
time laughs at our egoism, and sends us in upon
ourselves and binds us willing slaves to the service
of the past.
Dunvegan 79
From the castle windows you look down upon the
waters of the loch — the haunt of herons and sea-fowl,
whose discordant cries alone break the silence. The
blue water glitters ceaselessly in the sunlight.
Beyond the loch rise the green and fir-clad slopes
of Uginish, with bright golden patches of gorse
nestling amongst rocks and trees. In the distance
rise the purple Tables, Healaval Mor and Healaval
Beg, great isolated remnants of the vast basalt
plateaux which once covered the island, and flat like
the famous Table Mountain half across the world.
And over all is the sapphire sky to complete a
summer landscape which none could wish to be
better. That is on one side of the castle. But you
may shift your point of observation, and stand
towards evening at the billiard-room window, below
the shadow of the ancient keep. There are islands
and jutting capes and promontories and rolling
waters. Far out at sea is the dark basaltic head-
land, 1000 feet high, and on the horizon the dimly
descried peaks of Harris. At times all this is
magically transfigured by the setting sun, till all is
like an eve in a sinless world. The surface of the
nearer sea is pink, then crimson, then purple ; and
farther away it is covered with a silvery sheen.
Islands and capes are incarnadined, or stand black
against the glowing background, and are imaged in
the still waters across whose glimmering surface the
seabirds are skimming, leaving long streamers of
light behind them. The light clouds take a hundred
tints of gold and crimson and saff"ron, and float like
unearthly visitants across the opalescent sky. The
sun, like a blazing shield or a globe of crimson fire,
sinks lower and lower into the waves and merges
itself in its image, sending a last flash on to the
castle walls, and making clouds, sky, sea, and islands
one crimson picture. The sky clears, the stars come
out faintly in the June midnight, and a crescent moon
rests over the dark turrets.
Or, yet again, you may watch from the summit
8o The Misty Isle of Skye
of the tower the whispering woods piled upwards
from the moat far below to the heights that edge
the moorland far away. Their leaves, in every
conceivable shade of green, form a sea that gently
undulates in the breeze or tosses tumultuously in the
tempest. From its hidden depths well up the music
of a thousand joyous birds, and the air is redolent
with the odorous fragrance of fir and pine. Amid
the nearer skirts of the woodland you see patches of
yellow primroses still in flower, and the purple mist
which the wild hyacinth makes with its uncounted
blossoms above its own bright green leaves in the
early summer.
But it is not always early summer, and there are
days even in summer, above all in winter, when the
sky vanishes, and becomes a mere dingy waste,
across which scud drifting clouds and mist, hiding
the Tables. The rain falls in vicious torrents and
plunges against the windows behind which you
watch the wild commotion as the wind drives the
waters of the loch to break angrily in foaming
waves on the rock-strewn shore. Over among the
islands at Colbost the white foam is continually
dashing upwards, and retreating broken and spent
from the impassive sea-front. The white horses
dance on the horizon by Dunvegan Head, and among
the islands, until with hiss and splash they surge
below the castle walls. At night the whole train
of chiefs with their respective "tails" might parade
in the corridors and yet be unheard amid that com-
motion of the elements, while doors and windows
rattle, and the wind howls eerily in the chim-
neys. But ensconced behind walls 9 feet thick,
wrapped in the deep spaces of a vast bed, one
cares little for the tempest, and sleeps in peace till
morning. Then, so swift are the changes, it may
be brilliant sunshine when the morning breaks.
The sea will be a placid mirror in which every tint
of the morning sky is reflected, and the Tables
and every knoll and tree on the opposite shore have
Dun vegan 8 1
their counterfeit presentment in this watery looking-
glass.
Striking northwards from the castle, until you
emerge from the shadowy woodland, you follow a
road which will lead you to Claigan Farm. It winds
between gentle slopes, odorous with the savour of
bog-plants, heather and thyme and myrtle ; below
the ruined Suardal, where MacLeod's hereditary
blacksmith lived, and whence came the old minister
of Morven, ancestor of the genial Norman and
of other ministers known well in Scotland ; then
casually crossing a river and passing a clamorous
rookery, it brings the pilgrim at last to a scene of
exquisite beauty. The blue loch runs far inland
between its grassy shores, which are here and there
flecked with patches of the purest white, of which
I shall come to speak presently. Beyond the
southern shore lies Glendale with its thick crofting
population, and in a sheltered cove nestle the white
walls of Husabost ; beyond that again is Borreraig,
where in days of old the famous school of pipers
existed ; where the land ends, Dunvegan Head, a
black, massy foreland, precipitates itself into the
sea. On the right shore, beyond your point of
observation, is a lesser but equally steep cliff, and
between the two headlands the loch widens out into
the sea, across whose waves, on the far horizon, lie
the Outer Hebrides — North Uist and Harris — in a
shimmering blue haze. There are the conical peaks
of Harris, a dozen and more in number, looking out,
on the remote western side, to far St. Kilda and the
Atlantic liners steaming to the New World ; and
down upon the rocky Sound of Harris, the problem
of navigators who may be strangers to its labyrin-
thine waters. On a clear day persons gifted with
good sight can descry houses on these far islands,
but mostly they are vague masses in the blue haze,
and are often topped with white clouds. If the
pilgrim can consent to turn his back upon this
picture, nature is still kind to him. The grey walls
6
82 The Misty Isle of Skye
of the castle are no longer visible, but there is the
loch with its precipitous islands, green as emeralds.
On one side of it MacLeod's Tables look down, while
the other is clothed with the dark woodlands in
which the castle is hidden. Beyond miles of shaggy
moorland the waters of Loch Bracadale gleam in
the sunshine, and Talisker Head frowns down upon
them from its giddy height. Out to sea are the
peaks of Rum, and, inland, the Coolins flecked with
snow if it is June, or covered with it if it is December.
The rookery near by is also a heronry, and the
gaunt white herons are perceived sitting on the
topmost branches of the firs like spectre birds.
Along with a black cloud of clamorous rooks, they
fly out heavily as one approaches, and circle in-
dignantly through the air. Like Jew and Samaritan,
rook has no dealings with heron, but each keeps
strictly to its own end of the wood, and lives un-
conscious, to all appearance, of the existence of the
other. Opposite, the rounded heather-clad slopes
which shut out the seaward view are haunted by the
cuckoo in spring, and all day long her melancholy
flute-notes echo in the valley, where, by good fortune,
you may catch a glimpse of the shy bird flying from
bank to bank. And thus you realise, with strange
minuteness, Wordsworth's lines about
"the cuckoo-bird
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides."
For some miles you may walk along these green
undulating slopes by the sea's edge. In early
summer they are white with sandwort, mingled
here and there with redolent thyme, and blue speed-
well, or the yellow tormentil flaunting it among the
grass. So you pass on amid these hillocks, musical
with the echoes of the sea, over a soft and springy
turf, and then to the sea's edge bright with golden
iris, by a path leading down a steep cliff". Here is
Coral Bay. Above is a great escarpment of basalt,
Dunvegan 83
with stair-like dykes of dolerite running- vertically
through it, and below it is a bed of native coral,
many feet in depth, all in broken fragments, some
as big as one's fist, but mostly mere tiny pieces, their
white brilliance contrasting- vividly with the black
boulders which strew the beach. ^ These are the
records of many a wild winter's storm, of great
waves coming- in from the open sea and breaking
violently on the cliff until they have battered great
hollows in its base. At the openings of the cliff
the greensward runs down to meet the blue sea,
and on the rocks grow sea-pinks and sea-campion,
yellow trefoil and glossy ivy, while in the pools on
the shore are hundreds of anemones, and now and
then a piece of pink coral. There is no sound but
the lapping of the waves ; the sea is like burnished
steel ; you lie on the hot coral and blink at the sun
blazing out of the azure sky, or watch a ship travelling
slowly on the distant horizon ; you are filled with the
ineffable peace of the landscape ; you dream vaguely
of piping tempests when the black waters are lashed
to fury, and break in foaming cataracts over the spot
where you are lying, of desolate days when the scene
is blotted out in the whirling vapour and driving rain,
and the caves of the wind have let loose some of their
worst blasts.
Or, forsaking these open spaces, you may wind
through the shadowed woods, amid larch and pine,
fir and sycamore and beech ; cross several rivulets,
and, after climbing a hillside, emerge on the top of a
lofty knoll, where the scent of the bog-myrtle pervades
the air. Beneath and all around are green wooded
hollows, with sometimes a yellow laburnum or a red
rhododendron peeping through the trees and giving
a touch of tropic colour to the sombre woodland. At
your left, clear cut against the blue sky, are the
Tables in the distance. Beyond the trees, with the
loch as a background, rise the ancient grey towers
^ The coral is really an algas {Melobesia fasciculata) with the
power of secreting a limy frond.
84 The Misty Isle of Skye
of the castle. Its grim walls, suggesting the din of
war, contrast strangely with the peaceful scene ; but
a hundred years ago, before a single tree had been
planted, the grey towers must have looked still more
grim, when, in the precise Boswell's words, " the land
around it presented nothing but wild, moorish, and
craggy appearances." Whatever story these walls
and towers suggests, no warder or armed sentinel
with dirk and claymore paces the battlements now ;
no kerchief of maiden in distress waves from turret
windows ; no din of clashing blades rises on the
breeze. The islands on the loch's surface are like
emeralds set in gold, for the seaweed which fringes
their shores is of a brilliant yellow colour and gives a
luxuriant richness to the landscape. Every indenta-
tion and cape and bay of the opposite shore is dis-
tinctly visible in the inimitable seaside brightness
of the air. Cottages nestle on its side, and the
pleasant house of Husabost lies sheltered beneath a
fold of the hill. Behind it, a white road gleams
through the heather and strikes across the moor to
Glendale, of riotous memory. Still farther on is
Dunvegan Head, and across leagues of sea the Outer
Hebrides once more and the rocky Sound of Harris.
Seen across this waving sea of foliage, the castle
towers have lost much of their grimness, but before
the woods were planted the eye caught sight of them
over miles of bare brown moorland, and they seemed
indeed those of an enchanter's castle in the waste.
All the travellers who reached its hospitable gates
speak of the wild romantic effect produced on their
minds as they first saw the grey battlements standing
midway between moor and sea. But it is still
romantic enough in this age of whirling life, and
suggests visions of the early centuries, of knights
and ladies and kilted clansmen, giants and en-
chanters, dragons and monsters, and mermaids
singing over the blue waves that break for ever
beneath its walls.
CHAPTER VI
LOCH BRACADALE
" O'er all the land the sunlight lay,
The waters seemed asleep,
The blue heavens hungf their azure shield
Over the quiet deep."
AMONG the many sea-lochs of Skye few are so
diversified and broken, or offer such a charming-
variety of scenery, as Loch Bracadale. It is more
than possible to say a good word for all these many
lochs, and indeed memory lingers pleasantly over
their individual attractions. But there is this about
Loch Bracadale that it seems to combine these into
one, or rather to offer them separately at different
points. Portree Bay is famed for its cliffs, but Loch
Bracadale can hold its own there. Loch Dunvegan
boasts of its green and purple islands ; Loch Braca-
dale has islands too. The Coolins seem to rush
tumultuously down into Loch Scavaig ; do they not
stand boldly in the background, from whatever point
Loch Bracadale is looked at ? And what can equal
the emerald slopes of Loch Harport — that long and
sinuous arm which it sends far inland ; they have not
their like in all Skye.
This loch of many enchantments lies on the west
side of Skye, and opens into the Atlantic. Its
mouth, four miles wide, is guarded by lofty basaltic
cliffs on either side. On the north these jut out at
Idrigil Point ; on the south the frowning headland
of Talisker, Rudha-nan-Clach, forms similarly the
8&
86 The Misty Isle of Skye
angle of a line of massive cliffs. From these cliffs
the shores bend inwards on either side, thus present-
ing a wide front seawards as the background of the
loch. Time and tide have carved this background
into a rugged and broken coast with jutting
peninsulas and smaller lochs twisting inland, while
fragments of what was once the shore have been
left stranded as rocky islets with steep sides facing
seawards. There are the successive peninsulas of
Greep, Harlosh, and Uilinish, enclosing Loch Varka-
saig, Loch Vatten, and Loch Caroy ; and strewn
over the wide surface of the loch are the islands
of Wiay, Oransay, Tarner, and Harlosh. Between
Uilinish and a finger of land pointing outwards from
the peninsula of Talisker, the loch narrows, but
again opens and divides into two as Loch Beag and
Loch Harport — both carved out between steep banks
by glacier and river action until they have become
long arms of this great sea-loch.
Such is Loch Bracadale, and it is easy to believe
that from whatever point it is seen — from some lofty
site inland, from any of its windy headlands, from
one of its islands, or from a boat on its surface — it is
always charming. In storm you see the white
waves plunging, churned into foam, against its
black promontories and headlands and rocky islands,
frowning more grimly than ever under a canopy of
leaden cloud and driving mist and rain. But under
a cloudless summer sky how fair it is ! The calm
blue water gleams in the sunshine like burnished
gold and silver ; the black crags are softened and
mellowed ; the green islands lie placidly on the
breast of the sleeping waters ; and the infinite
variety of the broken encircling coast-line reflects
a thousand changing lights like the facets of a
diamond. You cease to wonder, as you gaze upon
that dazzling, gleaming picture, why Merlin
" followed the gleam." The fascination of it enters
your own soul ; you try to analyse its charm, but
it is too airy and indefinite ; when you think you
00
30
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<
'J
o
-J
Loch Bracadale 87
have solved it, it is only to find that something has
eluded your grasp, to reappear in some new protean
disguise till you are bewildered with so much
beauty.
Let us embark on its waters and pay a visit to
MacLeod's Maidens, which lie beyond Idrigil Point.
The boat is waiting at Harlosh, on one of the
peninsulas which run out from the inner shore of
the loch. Wishing the Norse- looking boatmen
good-morning, we are soon gliding over the surface
of the loch, calm in this June weather as a sea of
glass. The boatmen do not sing the rowing songs
as their ancestors used to do — solemn and slow airs
with a rhythmic chorus to regulate the stroke of the
oars, but they point out the objects of interest and
take us where the wonderful coast scenery can be
closely inspected. Half-an-hour's rowing brings us
to the neck of Loch Varkasaig, guarded by steep
and massy cliffs under the shadow of the greater of
MacLeod's Tables. Then, hugging the coast, we
make due south for Idrigil Point and the Maidens.
Just opposite is Harlosh Island, beyond it Tarner
Island, and farther south Wiay. All are basaltic,
presenting steep escarpments seawards, less steep
on the landward side, and covered with rich green
verdure. The laird of Uilinish carried Johnson and
Boswell to Harlosh to see the great cave which
pierces it, and which is said to come out, after a long
underground passage, in the cliffs near Portree. It
is called Uamh-an-Oir, or the Cave of Gold, because,
like a similar cave near Staflfin, a pot of gold is said
to be buried there. The usual legend of the piper
who entered the cave, pipes sounding in full blast,
but, like Macrimmon, never returned, attaches itself
to this ajitrum imma?ie, and he is still heard feebly
piping, " I doot, I doot, I'll ne'er come oot ! "
How wonderful is the long coast-line from Varka-
saig to Idrigil. The boat glides on beneath the
shadow of mighty cliffs, descending sheer into the
water ; broken and shattered in places, or cut here
88 The Misty Isle of Skye
and there by narrow ravines down which a burn
dashes. The successive layers of basalt, betokening-
each a new eruption, can be traced easily, piled one
above the other. In the crevices of the rocks are
clumps of sea-pink or rose-root, ivy trails itself over
the lofty edge, or rare ferns g^row in inaccessible
places. Sometimes the cliffs recede and leave a
little pebbly strand, or at some other place vast
heaps of boulders stained with spray and lichens
have accumulated beneath them. But most wonder-
ful of all are the occasional detached pillars of rock,
the numerous caves, and the natural arches, which
follow each other in quick succession. Not far from
Idrigil Point the cliff sends a bastion out into the
sea. Half-way it is split almost to the sea's edge
by a wide fissure, and the inner half of the bastion
is pierced with a great oval hole through which, on
approaching it from either side, the line of cliffs and
the water beyond is seen framed as in a picture.
The caves are of two kinds. They are formed of a
single arch, cut neatly in the basalt, or they pierce
the cliff behind a series of broken arches and ledges
and columns and great pendants of rock. Into some
of them it is quite possible to take a boat in calm
weather ; but, rowing into them, one can only
imag-ine the fierce clamour and wild revelry of the
waves in their gloomy recesses during a storm. In
one of these caves near Idrigil Point, Lady Grange
is traditionally said to have been imprisoned for a
time after having been brought to Skye.
And now, having rounded the point, the largest
of all these curious caverns is found. The cliffs
here are 500 feet in height, and this particular
cave must be at its entrance at least 150 feet
high. The entrance resembles the half of a huge
dome, but its sides are far from smooth. They are
pierced with crevices, cut into shelves and ledges,
and carved into isolated stacks of rock, while just
outside the inner mouth is such a pillar on a wide
base, called appropriately " the candlestick." Beyond
Loch Bracadale 89
it all is blackness, but the entrance is a curious
mixture of black and white, for the waves and spray
have encrusted the dark rocks with salt. On the
ledges are crowds of cormorants sitting on their
eggs, their long snake-like necks and beaks twist-
ing about as they watch the movements of the
boat.
As we leave this magnificent example of water
action on solid rock, the Maidens come into sight.
They are three isolated pillars of rock standing in
the sea just beyond the mighty cliffs. Once they
were part of the solid cliff itself, but age-long
denudation has sculptured them out, and, like the
pillars and pinnacles at Quiraing and Storr, left them
standing in isolation. Compared with her two
sisters, the Maiden nearest the cliff is a giantess in
bulk and height. The other two rise from one
foundation, and beyond them is a reef of rock which
bears evident trace of having borne a fourth Maiden
long ago. We row between them and feel as if at
the feet of some of the giantesses of whom Norse
story tells. We remember how Sir Walter called
them (his mind running on Norse mythology) the
Choosers of the Slain and Riders of the Storm, but
we marvel to think how he saw them, with the waves
lashing in fury around them, from the windows of
Dunvegan Castle. How fond the beloved Wizard
was of adding a stick and a cocked hat to his remi-
niscences ! Locally the Maidens are known as a
mother, Nic Cleosgeir Mhor by name, and her two
daughters. The mother is the largest of the three,
and is said to be continually weaving a web which
one of her daughters as continually fulls or thickens.
The second daughter apparently is a fine lady, and
does nothing.
Landing on the rocky shore below the cliffs, we
have time to explore the innumerable aquaria with
their anemones and shells and sea-weeds, and to
note the sea -plants and ferns (the sea -spleen-
wort, the holly, the hartstongue) which fringe
90 The Misty Isle of Skye
every crack and crevice. But most delightful of
all is the view, though that is best seen from the
dizzy height of the cliff above. ^ Take it from there.
The Maidens are curiously foreshortened as we look
down upon them ; the giantess has the appearance
of an old lady in a high mob-cap seated in an arm-
chair. On her sculptured ledges seabirds are sitting,
patiently hatching their eggs. But how charming
is the wide expanse of sea ! Just beyond the cliff
the breeze ruflfles it into a series of ripples mingling
with each other, and proving the truth of Tennyson's
epithets, so strange to him who has not seen them
realised, — " wrinkled sea," and " dappled dimplings
of the wave." Then it spreads itself far and wide
in a vague gleam of mingled light and shimmering
water. The coast-line of Skye extends in a broken
line to the jutting point of Sleat, and you note the
magnificent unbroken wall of lofty cliffs stretching
from Loch Bracadale to the headlands at Glen Brittle.
These massive rocks, looo feet high, seem the
very essence of everlastingness and stability, and
yet we know they once stretched out where the sea
now lies, and that at some far distant day they
too will have disappeared. Between them and the
conical peaks of Rum is a glimpse of the mainland
and the mountains of Arisaig. On this side of Rum
is Canna, flat and green ; beyond it is the sharp
sgurr of Eigg. Then comes a long unbroken horizon
on which, but for the summer haze, Coll and Tiree
might be seen. Westwards lie Barra and Uist and
Benbecula, and with a glass you can make out the
fishing-fleet at the first island. Turning back from
this wide seascape, the loch in all its ramifications
lies at your feet. Its islands seem to float on its
calm surface ; its peninsulas stretch long fingers
into its waters, and its waters run inland for many a
^ The cliff is not climbable, but can be reached by a tough
walk of eight miles from Dunvegan, over innumerable hills and
hollows and singing burns, through a country empty of all
habitation save an occasional shepherd's hut.
Loch Bracadale 91
mile. Northwards over leagues of moorland is the
precipice of Storr, and, finest of all, the extended
line of the upheaved mountain masses of the Red
Hills and the Coolins. First comes Ben Tianavaig
at Portree, then the twin humps of Glamaig, the
cones of Marsco and Beinn Dearg, followed by the
many shattered peaks of the purple Coolins, ter-
minating seawards at Glen Brittle and Loch Scavaig.
It is a wonderful picture of land and sea — rolling
moor, mountain chains, islands flat and hilly, and
moving waters, and all steeped in that magic light
which seems peculiar to the glad summer-time in
these western isles.
From the sea the successive layers of basalt in
the cliffs and the Maidens are clearly seen. The
cliff's are 400 feet high, and in them as many as
fourteen beds of lava, averaging nearly 30 feet in
thickness, may be counted, and witness to as many
outpourings of volcanic energy in long past ages,
and at distant intervals, as one may judge by the
intervening layer of red which tells of decayed rock
surface. In the highest Maiden (she measures
150 feet) there are ten such sheets, varying from
the massive prismatic basalt to the more amor-
phous amygdaloid forms which are mostly in thinner
sheets.
We leave these interesting geological formations
with reluctance and return shorewards, marvelling
at the strange story which they reveal.
The road which has been already described as
branching off" near Dunvegan from the Great North
Road of Skye until it arrives at Sligachan and rejoins
it there, runs for three-fourths of its length along
the shores of Loch Bracadale and its arms. Lochs
Beag and Harport. For well-nigh thirteen miles
it offers the traveller a ceaseless succession of new
glimpses of loch scenery. As each peninsula is
crossed, a new vista of sea and land and sky is gained,
so that, if the weather is propitious, the long journey
is ffir from tiresome, And besides the view of the
92 The Misty Isle of Skye
loch, there are the islands which come into view
one by one on the distant horizon — Rum and Canna,
Benbecula and Barra and S. Uist, and the bold front
of the Red Hills and the Coolins, from this point
seen in all their dizzy height, — a long" purple mass
with a series of shattered peaks rising from it against
the sky. The vast expanse of the sky itself, hang-
ing far above the rolling moorland and the gleaming
loch, seems to widen the view into infinity, while
loch and moor, like receptive mirrors, answer to
every variation of this airy curtain. Neither sea nor
land are expressionless ; they are full of character,
and have their passing moods like the most human
of human beings ; and we feel, if we have any skill
at reading them, that they speak to us the secret
thoughts of nature itself, and that these thoughts
are not so far different from the yearnings and
fancies of our own soul.
"All nature is a vast revealing',
VVe know our soul's infinity
When on still moor or silent sea
She sways with the great pulse of feeling."
To the traveller on this road from Dunvegan the
loch first comes in sight a mile or two above the
township of Roag, and he will be at once impressed
with the puzzling complexity of the numerous penin-
sulas and islands, among which and beyond which
the waters of the loch appear and disappear and
reappear, as well as by the steep angular front of
these peninsulas and islands, dipping suddenly into
the sea. Their black precipitous fronts contrast
curiously with the brilliant green of their rolling
surface, and their retreating shores are here and
there splatched with rich browns and yellows, where
seaware has been flung up by the waves, or has
found a foothold on the rocks. To the right, com-
manding a wide expanse of country, are MacLeod's
Tables, their flat tops and the series of successive
steps in their flanks showing how the molten basalt
Loch Bracadale 93
had flowed out in successive sheets from time to
time. These vast sheets have been hewn and carved,
and the evidence of this mighty earth sculpture is
seen in the shattered cHffs of the loch and the lofty-
Tables far above it.
Passing Roag and crossing the neck of Vatten
Peninsula, Loch Caroy comes in sight. Just where
the road begins to dip down to the head of the
narrow loch, two great heaps of stone are seen on
the right, piled high above the brown moorland.
Tradition says that on this magnificent site was
fought the last battle between the rival clans of
Macdonald and MacLeod. It was fought in the
mist, like that other last weird battle in the West ;
the heather was dyed a deeper purple with the blood
of the clansmen, and when the day was done the
bodies of the slain chiefs and warriors were buried
here, and these vast cairns piled above them. There
" lie the mighty bones of ancient men, old knights."
Some years ago the late chief of MacLeod began
to excavate one of the heaps, but the work proved
too laborious, the feeling of the countryside was
against all such meddling with the dead, and the
work was abandoned. Perhaps, too, the workmen
were afraid of encountering the "barrow-dweller,"
the strong ghost who has so often scared and forced
to single combat the robber of ancient Viking graves.
So runs the local tradition, but an inspection of
the mounds proves them to be chambered cairns of
the Neolithic age, long anterior to any historic clan
feuds. Several other cairns, of a smaller type, are
scattered over the moor, and conceivably the place
may have been the scene of a prehistoric battle, but
much more likely it is a prehistoric cemetery — the
large cairns being those of the chiefs ; the smaller, of
the common people.^ The cairns are much dilapi-
dated, but there is still scope for systematic work
1 This arrangement of several smaller mounds associated
with one or two larger heaps is not uncommon. See Green-
well, British Barrows, p. 112.
94 The Misty Isle of Skye
with pick and spade, with the inevitable reward of
interesting " finds."
At the head of the loch stands the little Episcopal
church of St. John the Baptist, in what is one of the
prettiest spots in Skye. A torrent comes rushing
down a steep ravine, and passes by the churchyard
wall. The churchyard lies sloping to the loch ; its
graves nestle below waving trees ; from early spring
onwards it is gay with flowers — snowdrops, prim-
roses, and wild hyacinths ; the torrent murmurs and
the waves break on the shore close by continually.
It is a beautiful but lonely place — an oasis in the
waste of the moorland, where
" Amid the ivy, peers the church, and waves
Of dreaming seas lap its forgotten graves
In deeper rest."
The silence of the moor is lulled to a deeper stillness
in this sacred spot. The church was built sixty
years ago for the convenience of a few families living
each several miles off in different directions, but its
regular use has long ceased, though its churchyard
is still kept trim and beautiful. But local legend,
averse to prelacy, sees in this peaceful spot a haunted
scene. " The people who pass there at night will be
seeing things." And if you press for a further
explanation of the "things," you are told, "Well,
there was no good man ever buried there." Poor
suffering Prelacy !
At this sacred spot the sea is thought to be fast
encroaching on the land, and may in another century
have engulfed the lower parts of the churchyard.
The space between the church and the loch was
formerly much larger ; the grandmother of my
informant remembered it as a wide green space
which was once the rendezvous of the Clan MacLeod.
Here, in 1745, when the fiery cross went round
Skye for the last time, the clan mustered eighteen
hundred strong. The chief, overcome by the
prudent counsels of President Forbes, told his men
Loch Bracadale 95
he would not lead them for the Chevalier. At this
disappointing news two hundred of the clan at once
marched off and joined the brave Prince, who might
have come to his own had the clans of Skye thrown
in their lot with him. But it was not to be !
For the next four miles the road rises and falls
over the moorland, opening up new views of the
loch at every corner, and presenting, at every rise,
the vision of the purple-shadowed Coolin and the
sunny Red Hills, stretched like a mighty barrier along
and above the distant horizon. Talisker Head, too,
comes into closer sight — a mighty headland, which
once dipped sheer into the waters of the loch, but
has now a pile of boulders at its feet, fallen from the
cliff above. Between the loch and the road, in a
hollow of the moor, stands Uilinish house, where Dr.
Johnson passed two cheerful nights, discoursed on
many things, decried Ossian, and found (a rarity in
Skye then) "a. plentiful garden and several trees."
On this occasion, too, Boswell caught a solitary
"cuddy" in Loch Bracadale. The rising ground
near the road is Knock Uilinish, and, like all place-
names in Knock, was an ancient seat of justice.
Just below it is one of the few " Erd-houses " in Skye,
which will be fully described hereafter.
Now the loch, bending round the peninsula of
Uilinish, divides into two arms. The first of these,
Loch Beag, is nearly two miles long, and is very
narrow. The road, doubling on itself, winds round
its shores at the bottom of a steep glen, and above
it rise precipitous hills, which are continued beyond
the loch in the ravine through which flows a typical
Highland burn. Along the north shore of the loch
lies the village of Struan ; in another green glen,
parallel with that just mentioned, is the parish kirk
of Bracadale ("We are not likely to be prosecuted
for ritual practises here," said the minister, satirising
its plainness) ; and up the side of this glen climbs a
rough road to Portree. This road is worth travelling
on, if only to get the impression of the loneliness of
96 The Misty Isle of Skye
the Skye moorlands, for you may travel its whole
extent and not meet with a fellow-wayfarer. When
the head of the glen is reached, you find that you are
looking- down into that other glen which opens into
Loch Beag. Far below, at the foot of a steep ravine,
sings the burn amid walls of rock and beds of fern
and flowers. The upper sides are grassy and often
slippery as ice : the writer, trying to assist a friend,
glissaded down with incredible* swiftness for several
yards, but fortunately was fixed fast by a stone just
on the edge of a precipice, his camera being shot out
of his hand to the depths below, to be picked up later
— unbroken. Then the ravine widens and opens
upon a green meadow with two or three crofts, and
narrows again where the waters of Loch Beag come
far inland.
From the head of this ravine the view on a fine day
is one which can never be forgotten. The eye follows
the gleaming thread of water in the ravine, through
the meadow, into the loch. The steep sides of the
hills which hold it attract you next ; its mouth is hid
by a knob of land ; beyond that is a gleam of water
at the entrance to Loch Harport ; then another jut-
ting finger of dark rock with the waters of Loch
Bracadale beyond it. Now the full majesty of
Talisker Head breaks upon the eye. You see a
grass-covered hill jutting out into the sea, and, as
if cut with a knife, stop short suddenly in a black
face of sheer cliff, 900 feet high, a wonderful head-
land which stands dark and threatening against
blue sky and glittering water. In the strong sun-
shine the waters of the loch and the open sea beyond
gleam and sparkle and shimmer in the pulsing light.
And on the far horizon lie the south end of South
Uist, Barra, and the small islands dotted between
them, half hid in a golden haze. This is one view of
Loch Bracadale and its horizons ; the other from
Idrigil Point, its guardian on the west, has been
already described.
For such a view alone it is worth while walking
Loch Bracadale 97
or bicycling or driving over this lonely road from
Portree, and in addition the pilgrim will have two
others — one of the blue hills of Harris on his right,
the most extensive of all in Skye, and on the left,
high over the valley of Glenmore, the splintered
masses of the Coolins. And he will learn something
of the secret charm of the lonely moorland, its vast-
ness, its detachment, and the infinities of mountains
and seas and skies which lie beyond and around and
above it.
The district around Loch Beag, with its green
glens, must have been populous even in early times.
No less than five duns are in the neighbourhood —
a sure sign of a populous, if not congested district.
One of these, Dun Beag, to the left of the road
before reaching Struan, is the best preserved of the
many duns in Skye, though only suggesting what
it once was. Either it, or Dun Mhor, was visited
by Johnson, and Pennant describes it as it was in his
day.^
The road is now carried farther inland, and though
running parallel to Loch Harport for six miles, low
hills hide its waters, until the head of the loch is
nearly reached. Then it crosses two successive
ravines carved out of the hillside, down which dash
brawling torrents to the loch far below. Loch
Harport, a long snake-like water, runs south-east-
wards for two-thirds of its length, and then bends
nearly eastwards. For its whole length it is enclosed
by nearly perpendicular green banks, running up into
occasional hillocks. At its head is Drynoch, long the
home of the MacLeods of Drynoch. A cart-track
branches off here from the main road, and, following
the southern shore of the loch, leads to the famous
Talisker distillery, whose waters, as everyone knows,
come over fourteen falls. Down by the loch side is
an ancient burying-ground, with a few scanty trees,
broken headstones, and rotting stumps covering its
irregular surface. Here are buried some of the
* See p. 266.
98 The Misty Isle of Skye
MacLeods of Drynoch, their bones resting- still on the
land from which their descendants have long- been
exiles. You trace the foundation of an old church ;
none knows its name ; the whole place is grisly and
gaunt and cheerless, as if a curse rested on it.
It surprises you in this silent glen, by the lonely
loch, to see the signs of a modern distillery, and hear
the sounds of mechanical labour. Yet even they
cannot detract from the charm of these vast solitudes ;
they are enwrapped by them ; and perforce you
give them a romantic colouring. Surely they are
the scene of some secret enterprise hid, in this remote
glen, from human observation ; surely they can never
manufacture nothing but whisky here ! Beyond the
factory is Fernielea, where Johnson and Boswell
landed on their way to Talisker from Uilinish, and
the path which strikes over the hill at the back of
the distillery is probably the one they traversed. It
leaves Loch Harport behind, and, after crossing four
miles of rough moorland, arrives at Talisker Bay
facing seawards beyond the guardian cliffs of Braca-
dale. The green glen facing the bay is one of the
most beautiful and fertile in Skye. Perpendicular
cliffs, pierced with dark caverns, form the coast-line
on either side, and sailing past them, you are scarcely
prepared for the vision of this lovely glen, w'ith its
farmhouse and yellow fields. And if it is exposed
to the vast rollers which break with thunderous
crash on the black cliffs, and the fierce south-westerly
gales, yet the view outwards and seawards must
compensate for many a gloomy day.
Beyond the head of Loch Harport the green slopes
continue and form a narrow winding glen, traversed
by a fine salmon stream and by the highroad to
Sligachan and Portree. In long-past ages the water
of the loch must have bathed the steep sides of this
narrow valley, as they do to-day its lower reaches,
while glaciers have helped to carve its sides as they
pressed onwards to the outer sea. The upper end
of this winding valley, where the road bends round
Loch Bracadale 99
towards Sligachan, marks the former bounds of Loch
Harport, while a series of curious rounded eminences
in the bottom of the valley, with long ridge-like tails,
like some stranded antediluvian monster, were once
green islets in the narrow loch. The exquisitely
green slopes of this glen are covered with the marks
of cultivation, and show that it once was filled with
the populous hum of men. Thousands of families
must have lived and died along this rich valley, until
emigration and sheep - farming restored it to its
ancient solitude and brought back the silence of the
tnidmost sea which once laved its narrow sides.
Beyond the southern side of the glen rise the
shattered peaks of the Coolins in a long line, and
quite near at hand, as if watching over the ridge the
intruder in this solitary glen. At the eastern end of
the line are three of the five pinnacles of Sgurr-nan-
Gillean rising one above the other ; then the great
massive bulk of Meall Odhar, with the tooth of
Bhasteir peering beyond it ; then Bruach-na-Frithe,
Sgurr Madaidh, SgurrThuilm, Sgurr-na-Banachdich,
and Sgurr-nan-Gobhar. The names seem as craggy
as the mountains themselves ! One winter afternoon
when a keen frost had come, it was my fortune to
ride down this glen. Not a breath of wind stirred
the air, no cloud flecked the intense blue of the sky.
The slopes of the valley, no longer green, but grey
and fretted with black torrent beds, were tinged
with warm hues by the setting sun. The shattered
pinnacles and crags of the Coolins cut the sky ; snow
filled their dark recesses and was slowly dyed a
brilliant red by the sunset. Every sense was ex-
hilarated by the intense vividness of the scene and
the keenness of the air. One was steeped in silence,
broken only by the murmur of the stream gliding
over its stony bed in the bottom of the valley. And
if an ancient and prehistoric inhabitant of this glen
had appeared, it would scarce have been a surprise,
for the silence and the remoteness make one oblivious
of time and of the lapse of history. Such is part of
loo The Misty Isle of Skye
the ineffable and indescribable charm of the Isle of
Skye !
As the inn at Sligachan is reached, the massive
cones of Glamaig and Marsco and the broken
summit of Blaaven become more prominent, and
between them and the Coolins lies the wild Glen
Sligachan, surrounded by fierce mountain walls,
boulder strewn, the workshop of some Titan long
weary of his toil. But we have left Loch Bracadale
far behind and reached the waters of Loch Sligachan
on the east side of Skye, and it is time to draw this
chapter to a close.
Cl.IKKS PlEKCr.D RY THK SeA, I.OCH HrACADAT.K
(see />. 88)
A
CHAPTER VII
STRATH AND THE SPAR CAVE
"Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep ;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream."
Matthew Arnold.
WIDE sweeping- bay, whose shore is dotted
round its whole length by crofts and cottages ;
beyond that the moorland undulating far inland till
it rises into distant hills ; a long pier stretching out
into the water, and at its landward end, nestling
among trees, the dainty shooting lodge of Corry ;
while over all loom the steep sides and rounded
summit of Ben-na-Cailleach, — and you have Broadford
in your mind's eye. You look at it from the deck of
the steamer, and save on some early summer morning,
when it is flooded with the rich light of the dawn,
you think it uninteresting. But stand on the shore
and look seawards, and your opinion must change.
The sea is so shut in by islands, by the Skye coast
and the mainland, that it looks like a vast inland
loch. The level coast-line of Skye runs down to
Kyleakin, where you perceive, in the distance, a
raised seabeach. There the mainland seems to join
it, for the dividing strait is invisible from this point
of view. The eye follows up the mountains of Ross-
shire with their various shapes, long-backed hills,
broken peaks, cones, pyramids. Far across you see
the wooded Applecross, erstwhile the seat of a
101
102 The Misty Isle of Skye
famous monastery, nestling- below the shadows of
the brooding hills. Right in front is the flat island
of Pabay, its surface covered with boulder clay,
and, in Dean Monro's time, three hundred and
fifty years ago, clothed with trees to the water's
edge. There lurked many robbers, ruffians, and
broken men. Not a trace of the trees is left, but
there is good grazing for sheep, and the ruins of
an ancient chapel prove that the broken men might
have had the consolations of religion, did they want
them. Farther out to sea are the purple Crowlin
Islands, and, closing up the view on the left, is
hilly Scalpay. When the sea is like glass, and
the world is bathed in sunshine, no scene could
be more peaceful, more suggestive of that light
that never was on sea or land. And, far above,
on the bald summit of the lofty granitic Ben, rests
the Norse princess under her cairn of stones, her
spirit breathing the winds that come to her from
Norroway o'er the faeni. She pined for her home
among the fjords, and now she rests beneath the
starlit spaces amid the lightning and the tempest.
How indomitable was the spirit of these hardy Viking
men and women. In thought you people the bay
and the sound with Haco's galleys, their huge sails
bellying with the wind, and their rowers bending to
the oar and singing the songs of the skalds to Odin
and Thor.
From Broadford roads branch off to Kyleakin, to
Armadale, to Strathaird, to Sligachan and Portree.
Let us follow the road to Strathaird, one of the
most romantic and beautiful in the valley, till it
brings us to Loch Slapin and the famous Spar
Cave.
The road strikes at once inland, through a long
green valley, winding among the hills, and gradually
narrowing. Here it is scattered over with blocks of
grey stone and patches of quartz, there it is covered
with birch. On the right hand of the valley stand
Ben-na-Cailleach and the rounded battlements of
Strath and the Spar Cave loj
the Red Hills, Ben Deargf Mhor, and Ben Dearg
Bheag", their steep sides gleaming in the sunshine, or,
if it is a wet day, swathed in mist, while the wind
sobs and moans in the corries. Under the shadow
of the first is the old farm of Corricatachan, where
Pennant and Dr. Johnson were entertained with
true Highland hospitality ; where Boswell, after
a night of Highland whisky, awoke with a head-
ache, and the English moralist took a married lady
on his knee and "was like a buck indeed," The
house was full of people ; " how they were lodged,"
says Boswell, " I know not. It was partly done
by separating man and wife, and putting a number
of men in one room, and of women in the other."
These were simple times, when hospitality was
without affectation, and romance was not wholly
dead.
Close by the road at this point once stood a
" Druidical " circle, and beside it is a fairy mound,
where the good people still come out on moonlight
evenings, and dance to elfin music on the green turf.
A mile farther on is the old ruined church of Strath,
with its ancient place of graves, and below it the
still waters of Loch Cill Chriosd. Hither came St.
Maelrubha, a thousand years ago, from Applecross
to preach the faith, and hung his bell on a tree, where,
we are told, it remained for centuries, till it was
removed to the church near by. So long as it hung
on the tree it was dumb all the week till sunrise on
Sunday morning, when its voice pealed forth of its
own accord until sunset. But when they took it
from its tree it remained dumb for ever, and the
tree soon after withered away. Perhaps the bell
still exists in some remote corner, for such relics
were seldom destroyed. Nothing now remains of
the church but its walls and gables, mantled with
ivy, while in the churchyard around sleep the long
generations of the nameless and voiceless dead.
A few slightly carved and probably very ancient
stones are still remaining, but mostly an unhewn,
I04 The Misty Isle of Skye
unlettered slab of stone is all that marks their
sleepingf-place.
Do their ghosts people the churchyard in this
lonely glen at the mirk midnight? Once, some
years ago, a withered soldier came every quarter to
Broadford to draw his pension. There his potations
were deep, and his tongue wagged to a breathless
audience of his wonderful deeds. But some, more
critical, doubted, and resolved to test his courage.
Slinking off one evening while he held his audience
in boastful talk, they marched up the glen to the
churchyard, keeping closely together, we may pre-
sume, and there, clad in white sheets, awaited their
victim. Whether inspired by real or by Dutch
courage, he walked straight up to them as soon as
he saw them. " Ach ! " he cried, " you have not been
long buried ; you are too fresh, whatever." The
ghosts squeaked and gibbered and shook their
garments. "Ach! ye needn't try to frighten me,
for if you do, I'll raise the spirits of my ancestors
and they will keep you down." And with that he
fell to beating the ghosts till they howled for
mercy, and then like Christian he went on his way
rejoicing.
The road sweeps down the glen in a great curve,
under birch-clad hills, till at the head of Loch Slapin
and under the shadow of Ben Dearg the primitive
township of Torran is reached. The cones and bold
summits of the Red Hills are clustered like mighty
giants round the head of the loch, contrasting in
their pinkish hues and in their sweeping curves and
unbroken fronts with the purple Blaaven, a seamed
and shattered mass of gabbro, which stands as
outpost at the end of the amphitheatre. Here, amid
the unbroken silence, the lives of these primitive
villagers are lived out. What thoughts are aroused in
them as they contemplate in all the majesty of sunshine
or storm these vast upheaved masses which seem
ready to crush them, or listen to the wind as it shrieks
and bellows in their hidden recesses? What do the
Strath and the Spar Cave 105
voices of the sea and of the mountains whisper to
them, year in, year out? For countless ages this
hidden valley has been the abode of men. It saw
pagan rites of an unknown antiquity — the traces
of a stone circle are yet to be seen near by. It
witnessed the coming of the Cross and the fall of
heathendom — side by side with the circle is the
site of a chapel dedicated to St. Bridget, beloved
of the Celtic people. The web of love and hate,
of joy and sorrow, has been woven here in this
remote glen through the centuries, but it is hidden
by the spirit of Eld, and the mountains and the
sea will not betray the secret. Here, surely, might
a poet or an artist seek inspiration for picture or
lyric ; and here, too, might one, weary with life's
battle and haunted by memories of what might
have been, seek rest in nature's mysterious
sanctuary.
Such thoughts fill the wayfarer as he looks upon
the silent mountains and begins to climb the road
above the western shore of the loch. It is steep
and narrow, but it opens up ever-changing aspects
of the landscape. The whole of the eastern shore
of the loch, forming one side of the peninsula of
Sleat, stretches outwards in a long line till it ends
in the rugged Point of Sleat. And now the road
descends rapidly to Strathaird, where fertile fields
lie between rising knolls, and some ornamental
cottages (part of the improvements of a former laird)
give a touch of southern cheerfulness to the rugged
landscape with their brilliant white and red walls and
doorways. There, too, is the beautiful house and
grounds of the present genial proprietor, filled with
objects of price, paintings, china, and bronzes, from
the gorgeous East. And over all broods the mighty
mass of Blaaven, gleaming with rich purple, its clefts
white with dazzling snow-wreaths, and wisps of
cloud stealing around its secret top. It is a mountain
among mountains, a king among them all, whose
magic influence fills the heart, and whose secret
io6 The Misty Isle of Skye
Alexander Smith tried to discover in that magic
poem of his:
" O Blaaven, rocky Blaaven,
How I long" to be with you again,
To see lashed gulf and gully
Smoke white in the windy rain —
To see in the scarlet sunrise
The mist-wreaths perish with heat,
The wet rock slide with a trickling gleam
Right down to the cataract's feet ;
While towards the crimson islands.
Where the seabirds flutter and skirl,
A cormorant flaps o'er a sleek ocean floor
Of tremulous mother-of-pearl."
A.
But there are other objects of natural beauty to be
seen in Strathaird, and not the least of these is the
famous Spar Cave, the finest of the many caves which
pierce the rocky coast of Skye. It is on the farm
of Glashnakill, near Rhu-na-Heskan, or the point of
the eels. To reach it one must go by boat from some
point near Kilmoree, or from the opposite coast of
Sleat, but even this is only possible in fine weather
and with a favourable wind, for the shore is strewn
with boulders and lined with cliffs, against which
a boat would have little chance of safety in a heavy
sea. Through the courtesy of the proprietor of
Kilmoree, I was able to visit the cave on a cold but
brilliant April day. The coast-line from Kilmoree
to the cave is built up of lofty cliffs of argillaceous
sandstone, or oolite, lying piled in thin strata closely
arranged like some vast heap of sheets of paper.
These horizontal strata of brownish-grey rock are
divided, split, and fractured perpendicularly by deep
clefts and fissures, some of them so narrow and so
close as to appear vertical strata of some darker rock.
They were once filled by molten lava which the tooth
of Time has long since eaten away, though in other
parts of the cliff" the dykes are still remaining — black
bands crossing the yellow sandstone strata at right
angles. Up these fissures the sea-waves lash, or
boom with a hollow reverberation in the numerous
^a^f!.
■>3
-i
Strath and the Spar Cave 107
caves into which the cliffs are hollowed at their base.
Where the sandstone is intersected by the dykes or
beds of trap, so common in Skye, they seem to rise
up the face of the cliff like some steep flight of narrow
steps. The cliffs mount ever higher as the coast
runs southwards, but occasionally it is less steep,
and runs back landwards in a gentle slope, covered
with birch and rowan.
Past a jutting promontory a great gash between
two perpendicular walls of oolite suddenly comes
into sight. It runs in a narrow lane between these
walls, which look as if they had been built by the
hand of man, so straight are their sides. The whole
floor of this lane is covered with boulders. Here is
the landing-place, where, as we walk up the sloping
floor of the chasm, it is as if we had entered a stony
prison. Far above is a ribbon of blue sky, and the
eerie silence of the place, solemn as some deep
cathedral aisle, is broken only by the echo of our
footsteps on the stones, or by the voices of the boat-
men. The gap becomes narrower as we proceed and
the floor steeper, until it ends in a barrier of rock in
which is the mouth of the cave. Just in front stands
a wall built across from cliff" to cliff and pierced by
a doorway, which once boasted a door with bolts
and bars. It was built by a former proprietor a
century ago, to keep out the explorers who robbed
the cave of its exquisite stalactites. Here Sir Walter
Scott came in 1814, and, with his party, scaled the
wall " by the assistance of a rope and some ancient
acquaintance with orchard breaking." Alas, some
years after, a yachtsman plumped a shot through
the door, carrying it clean away, and now only wall
and doorway remain to tell the tale.
The mouth of the cave is high and narrow, and
betrays nothing of the beauty which is hidden far
within. Yet it is fringed with drooping hartstongue,
growing to an immense size in this cool and moist
retreat. Within, all is darkness save for the gleam
of the candles which each of the party carries. Ad-
io8 The Misty Isle of Skyc
vancing" over the round masses of white stone which
form a floor sloping- gradually upwards for about
forty yards, one is suddenly arrested by what seems
at first a perpendicular wall, but which turns out to
be a frozen cataract of white marble, 30 feet high,
filling up the whole space between the white walls
which tower overhead till they are lost in the dark-
ness. But though this cataract is so steep, its surface
is so rough as to afford a convenient foothold to the
hardy climber, if he keep close to the wall on the left
hand. Nearly two-thirds of the way from the top of
the ascent rise on either side lofty columnar pillars,
arched over by the roof, their tops seemingly carved
into capitals. Beyond the arch the roof expands into
a dome, whose height can only be guessed at, as it is
soon lost in impenetrable darkness. Our guides stand
beyond the arch with candles, and from the darkness
below we look forward through pillars and arches.
It is as if we were gazing through the dim shadows
of a Gothic cathedral, upon its lighted sanctuary
where mystic rites are being celebrated.
Beyond the pillars, a few steps more carry the
climber to a flat top under the dome, on the floor of
which is a pool of water so limpid and clear and held
in so white a basin as to be almost invisible. Over-
head are great stalactites hanging in innumerable
clusters like pointing fing^ers from the arching roof.
The walls are broken up into white masses of every
conceivable shape, which it takes little imagination
to depict as chairs or pulpits, niches and statuary, or
any other suitable human contrivance. From this
level floor the cave slopes downward for a few feet to
a lower level, where another but larger pool blocks
up any further passage. It is about 15 feet in
diameter, and, with the extraordinary purity of its
waters and the marbly whiteness of its sides, is like
a fountain in which the naiads might have disported
themselves if ever they had come to Skye, or swan-
maidens have left their feather garments on the brink
and revelled in its waters. Scott makes Allan in his
Strath and the Spar Cave 109
Lord of the Isles, while keeping his midnight watch
by Coruisk, revisit in fancy the
"mermaid's alabaster grot,
Who bathes her Innbs in sunless well,
Deep in Strathaird's enchanted cell.
His foot is on the marble floor,
And o'er his head the dazzling spars
Gleam like a firmament of stars."
Beyond this pool the cave is said to narrow into a
passage which ends soon after, but tradition holds
otherwise, and says that MacLeod's piper marched
onwards, his pipes in full blast, and was then lost
for ever to human ken.
Even now the white floor and walls of the cave,
formed by the dripping water into a hundred fantastic
shapes, its great height, its unbroken stillness, convey
to the mind a picture of weird beauty. But the
countless visitors who, for a century back, have
visited the cave, have despoiled it of its greatest
charms. The thousands of long pendant stalactites
have disappeared ; smoke from candles and torches
have dimmed in part the whiteness of walls and roof.
Scott has the same story to tell in his day, so that,
even then, the work of destruction had begun. But
what the earlier glories of the cave were is seen from
a glowing description penned in 181 1, which exhausts
language in depicting them, and speaks of marble
monks and nuns, caryatides and statues, carved
columns and a hundred other wonders.^ Though
the existence of the cave was well known to the
natives, the author says it was first " discovered " or
visited by Mrs. Gillespie of Kilmoree. Now it is
known as the Spar Cave ; Scott calls it Macallister's
Cave ; but in Gaelic it is Slochd Altrimen or the
Nursling Cave, and thereby hangs a tale.
^ " A Description of the Spar Cave lately discovered in the
Isle of Skye, with some Geological Remarks relative to that
Island. By K. IMacleay, M.D. To which is subjoined 'The
Mermaid,' a Poem. 1811.
iio The Misty Isle of Skye
In the ninth century, MacCairbe, king- of Ulster,
sailed for the Hebrides, where, as the native princes
were absent with King Anlaive of Norway fighting- the
Picts, he was able to devastate the land and commit
many wanton cruelties. His fleet had to shelter at
Colonsay, whose chief, attached to MacCairbe by
relationship, though forced to submit to the North-
men, received him kindly and sent his son with him
to Ireland. And now the lords of Skye invaded
Ulster, defeated MacCairbe, and carried off his
daughter as well as young Colonsay. On return-
ing- to Skye a fearful storm succeeded a night of
calm. Only one galley was left ; it ran for shelter
into Loch Slapin, where it was upset. The Princess
Dounhuila was watching from her father's tower, and
fled to the beach where young Colonsay was washed
ashore. He was taken to Dunglass, and kept there
for many months. And now to a pitying maiden and
a susceptible youth, with her parents the deadly foes
of his kin, what was left but secret love ? Dounhuila
anticipated certain death as soon as her father dis-
covered that she was no more a maiden. But at this
time he left Dunglass on a distant expedition, and
she persuaded the keepers to let the prisoner g-o.
Then she gave birth to a son, who was carried to
the cave by a trusty servant, and there he was guarded
by Colonsay's dog. From time to time the young
mother came thither to nurse her child. At last the
feuds of Dunglass and Colonsay were patched up ;
the union of the lovers took place ; and the nursling-
of the cave was allowed to see the cheerful light of
day.
We, too, returning to daylight and resuming the
sea journey, are rewarded by a brilliant landscape
after the gloom of the cave. Across the gleaming
waters lies the coast of Sleat with low-lying hills
sheltering the lonely hamlets of Taskavaig, and
Orde, and Gillean, and Daalvil. In front the waters
of Loch Slapin divide, and part runs far inland to
form Loch Eishort, where far beyond its valley peer
Strath and the Spar Cave 1 1 1
the hills of Inverness-shire across the plain of Skye.
The twin summits of Ben Dearg- look down on the
head of the loch, at their side is Ben-na-Chro, and
peering down upon us is the wrinkled face of
Blaaven once more. Far out to sea lies the coast
of Ardnamurchan beyond the Point of Sleat, hazy in
the dim distance, and on the horizon are the islands
of E'lgg and Rum. A great cloud of smoke rising
from Eigg suggests the volcanic upheavals which
once formed its lofty sgurr, but really tells of nothing
more harmful than the spring heather - burning
which, just now, is going on briskly all over the
land.
CHAPTER VIII
SLEAT AND ARMADALE
" Sleibhte riabhach nam ban boidheach "
(Brindled Sleat of the beautiful women).
Gaelic Proverb.
THE different geological formations of Skye affect
the nature of the coast-line as one leaves behind
the uniform lofty basaltic cliffs which run northwards
from Portree Bay to distant Stafifin. From Loch
Sligachan to Broadford the Red Hills and the Coolins
behind them take the eye and the mind at once
captive. The long steep sides of Glamaig plunge
straight into the sea, and the whole series of pyramids
and cones forms a most imposing mountain mass
under whatever atmospheric conditions they are seen.
Their massiveness is the more pronounced because
their sides are unbroken by projecting bosses and
rise straight from the sea-level. Seen from the sea
or from the coast of Raasay, they always remind one
of the mountains which watched Childe Roland as
he came to the Dark Tower —
"The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay."
The whole view from the deck of the steamer as
it reaches the narrows of Raasay, always seems to
me one of the finest examples of West Highland
scenery. Close at hand are the granitic Red Hills,
pale red and yellow in colour, their flanks marked
by long lines of scree descending from summit to
base ; beyond them are the darker and more shat-
tered peaks of the Coolins; while, as the eye wanders
nortl. vards up the gleaming Sound of Raasay, it
112
Sleat and Armadale 1 1 3
sees the long line of basaltic ridges and sills with
their green slopes, stretching from Ben Tianavaig
up to Staffin. Now it advances a bold escarpment
seawards ; now it retreats in a curving line ; and
far above the seaward cliffs is the vast ridgy back-
bone of the Trotternish peninsula, the most pro-
minent object of which is the Storr Rock, with its
black precipices and pinnacles and flying buttresses
standing out against the sky.
Then these lofty hills give place after Broadford
to a low-lying coast-line, marked, as one reaches
Kyleakin, by a raised seabeach running in a straight
line above sea-level for nearly half a mile. At
Kyleakin, a pretty and growing village, the main-
land comes close to our island, and the railway
terminus of Kyle of Loch Alsh is seen across the
narrow channel. It may be permitted to a lover of
nature to hope that it may be many a long day
before the iron horse will leap the channel and come
shrieking through the valleys and glens of beautiful
Skye, disturbing their "ancient, solitary reign."
Perched on a rock overlooking the Kyle is Castle
Maol, a ruined keep of vast strength, whose story
will be told in a later chapter, along with that of
Haco, who gave his name to the Kyle, and whose
galleys lay at anchor here on their way southwards
to the fatal battle of Largs. In front lies Loch Alsh
beneath a magnificent amphitheatre of mountains.
The coast of Skye, meanwhile, turns at a sharp right
angle into Kyle Rhea, whose opposite shore is a pro-
jecting nose of the mainland. " Kyle Rhea" takes
us back to the days of the Feinne. These heroes
had ill-luck at the chase for many a day, but as they
grew thinner their wives grew fairer and comelier.
Conan was set to watch, and discovered that their
food was the tops of the hazel trees, boiled, while
they w^ashed themselves in the "bree." But they
had their revenge on Conan for the discovery of their
secret, by tying his hair to stakes while he slept,
and then suddenly awaking him. He sprang up and
114 The Misty Isle of Skye
left his scalp behind him. Smarting with pain and
shame, Conan shut the women up in a hut, piled
brushwood and heather around it, and then set the
pile on fire. The Feinne, hunting" in Skye, saw the
smoke across the strait. With their swords they
leaped the strait, but one of their number Mac an
Reaidhinn fell short and was drowned. From that
day to this his name has been given to this winding
strait. The women were saved, but Conan lost his
head.
Precisely at the angle stands Ben-na-Cailleach the
second (the first is at Broadford), which is the
advance guard of a new line of hills running down
towards Isle Ornsay in Sleat. But most striking of
all is the narrow strait itself through which the
swirling tide-eddies flow with incredible swiftness.
Its black surface is marked by whirlpools and the
swirling lines of currents and eddies which make
one giddy to look at them, until suddenly the boat
is swept into the open amid placid and calm waters.
Woe to the yachtsman or fisher who does not
know the condition of the tides in this dangerous
channel. He will be swept hither and thither like a
cork on the swirling current until he is dashed help-
lessly on the rocky shore. On both sides of the
narrow strait, looking down into its restless waters,
stand high rounded summits, their sides scarred and
seamed with torrent beds, and rough with huge
bosses of shapeless jutting crags. Their lower front
presents a steep face to the sea (into which they dip
down suddenly) of precipitous rocks, rounded and
ice-worn. At a higher level, their slopes are gentler,
affording pasture to many sheep, or purple with beds
of heather. Here and there on these uplands are
hollow dells, fragrant of thyme in summer days,
sheltered and warm, where the rush of the waves is
reduced to a low-sounding murmur ; or in places a
few scanty birch trees quiver in the breeze, or a
clump of hazels shelters a brawling stream eager to
throw itself seawards. After a snowfall, few sights
Sleat and Armadale
115
could be more pleasing- than the prospect of these
hills on a clear winter day. The blue sea rolls and
tosses at their feet ; half-way up to their summits
they are dressed in a snow veil of spotless purity,
glistening in the sun's glow, and sugg^esting (as in
childhood's dreams) visions of angels ; the deep
torrent-beds are filled with shadow, and appear like
long dark ribbons stretching in zigzag fashion across
the pure surface of snow. Far above, the rolling
line of the hilltops melts away vaguely into the
brilliant sky, and gives the impression, in the clear
air, of a picture painted against a flat background.
The narrow strait winds round in a half-circle,
and, emerging from its confined channel, widens out
into the long Sound of Sleat, down which and between
lines of noble hills, broken by numerous sea-lochs
and sheltered bays, one may look to the open sea,
stretching far beyond to the gleaming horizon, on
the right of which lies the island of Kigg with its
lofty sgurr. On the Skye side, the hills which bound
the shore, now lower, now higher, are divided by
green valleys and sheltered hollows, facing south-
wards, nestling in the sunshine, and hidden from
the bullying north-easters : Kinloch, guarded by
the steep, birch-clad slopes of Beinn-na-Seamraig ;
Duisdale, where stands a pleasant cottage hidden in
rhododendrons and odorous pines, with rich gardens
where the flowers seem never to wither, once the
home of the kindliest of hostesses, full of charming
reminiscences of the old days of Skye ; Isle Ornsay,
in whose landlocked bay a fleet of fishing - boats
may find shelter from the trumpeting squalls and
bursting surges outside ; Knock, where the old ruined
castle of the Lords of the Isles perches, toppling,
on a crag.^ Beyond the wall of swelling hills which
shuts them in, there are glimpses of the Coolins,
Blaaven, the Red Hills, and Ben-na-Cailleach,
^ Isle Ornsay is St. Oran's Isle, and his name is again com-
memorated, though in a corrupted form, in Loch Hourn on the
opposite coast.
1 1 6 The Misty Isle of Skye
towering- high in air, and peering curiously above
these less ambitious summits.
And now the country becomes less rugged and
puts on a more fertile and homely aspect. It rises
gently from the sea in long undulating slopes, on
whose green terraces and folded hollows are in-
numerable crofts with their pasture land and corn
and potato patches. For miles the coast is dotted
with them ; above their brown roof-trees curls blue
smoke in wavering columns, and an odour of pungent
peat-reek is wafted seawards ; they give an air of
cheerful habitation after the lonely hillsides. For
Sleat, " brindled Sleat of the beautiful women," is the
garden of Skye, hortus inclusus, a garden enclosed,
full of fertility and easy to cultivate ; and, in summer,
when you see the luxuriant vegetation, flowers of
every colour and kind growing in such profusion as
you had never dreamed of, green hedgerows, lush
meadows, bosky trees, you know that the name is
well deserved, that it is as if a slice of rural England
had been transported to this land of shaggy moors
and solitary hillsides.
This marrowy country soon loses itself among the
dark woods of Armadale, stretching far along the
shore and high up on the hillside. Through their
leafy branches peer the green lawns and graceful
towers of the ancestral home of the Lords of the Isles.
Its regular Elizabethan architecture harmonises with
its soft and genial surroundings ; it completes the
illusion you have cherished that this is a bit of
England ; the grim walls of MacLeod's ancient castle
would be as much out of place here as Armadale
would be on the wild shores of Loch Dunvegan.
Armadale Castle was built when the wild unsettled
days were over, when the fiery cross had burned
itself out, and when the clan fights had ceased to
stain the heather a deeper purple and leave red ruin
in their train. Its walls are too recent to have rung
with the clash of weapons or the echo of murderous
cries. It was built for comfort, not defence. The
Dr.xTui.M Casti.e
The Ancient Seat of the Macdonalds of the Isles {see p. 40)
Armapaif. Casti-e
The Modern Seat of the Macdonalds of the Isles
Sleat and Armadale 1 1 7
only sugfgestion of past perilous times and of a
fabulously ancient line of ancestors who lived clay-
more in hand and claimed equal regal rights with
the kings of Scotland, are the portraits on the walls
and the figure of the founder of the family, Somerled,
Rex Insularum, who, clad in chain shirt and battle-
axe in hand, looks down from the great painted
window above the wide staircase and the lofty hall.
But it is a far cry from the twentieth century to the
twelfth, in which the first Somerled made his name
renowned, and the beautiful fan-tracery of the ceilings
and the tall mullioned windows breathe an air of
luxurious comfort which Somerled never knew, and
to which, had he known it, he would have shown
himself supremely indifferent. But his descendants
are as hospitable and brave as ever was their far-off
ancestor. All Skye mourned the loss of the brave
boy who went forth to die for his country, and who
now rests in a soldier's grave in Africa, far away
from the lochs and hills of Skye which he loved so
well. Didce et decorum est pro pntri'Jl mori!
The castle, with its wide, bird-haunted lawns,
edged with tall firs and odorous limes, stands high
on the seaboard, so that from its windows the
grassy levels seem to dip down suddenly into the
waters of the Sound of Sleat, which, running east
and west like a broad belt of silver, fills up the
foreground. Beyond it and following its whole
length, is such a succession of peaks and summits as
could hardly be seen from any other single point of
observation in all broad Scotland. Far to the left
rise the mountains which overshadow Loch Hourn,
the bald broad mass of Ben Screel towering high
above them and looking over into Glen Shiel, where,
in 1719, the forces of the rightful king contended
with the redcoats of the usurper, and down which
Dr. Johnson travelled fifty-four years later and
** owned he was now in a scene of as wild nature as
he could see." The eye follows the range westwards
to where, directly opposite, the beautiful Loch Nevis
ii8 The Misty Isle of Skye
with its islands opens out to the sea. Guarded at its
mouth by the steep beetUng promontory of Creag
lasgach on the west side, on the east by broken
peninsulas and islands, it retreats far inland amid a
huddled crowd of hills crowned in the far distance
by the sharp and lofty twin peaks of Ladhar Bheinn.
At dawn the morning mists fill the spaces between
these summits, and the sun, as it rises, floods them
with a weird light and tinges the mist as it disappears
with rich hues of gold and crimson, while the solemn
peaks look down into the dark and hidden valleys,
where the sea makes an unheeded music. Or even
if the sun be hidden, yet the lights are ever changing
on these "glimmering limits, far withdrawn," which
are reflected as in a mirror on the unruffled surface
of the sound when the wind has ceased to torment it
and there falls a great calm. But, indeed, it would
take long to tell of the changing beauties of that
opposite shore, seen so often from the windows of
the hospitable castle, at dawn, at summer noontides,
or when the red light of the dying sun is reflected
at late evening on the dim peaks.
It is again a curious change as you traverse the
few miles which separate Armadale from the Point of
Sleat. You pass as if into a diff'erent region. You
exchange smooth lawns, and shadowy woods, and
fertile slopes, for a rough, even savage territory,
wind-vexed and sea-salted, rising and falling with
fearful abruptness, and, at last, dark and grim as
Erebus. You have left the younger basaltic and
gabbro and granophyre rocks, and have emerged on
a bit of the gneiss formation of the outer isles, laid
bare after long ages. The road follows the sea,
mostly at a considerable height above it, and, hewn
in the mountainous seaboard, now projects into the
water, now recedes from it where some ravine is
carved deeply into the land. From it you gain a
long vista of the sound and the opposite coast-line
with its towering mountains and broken reefs. Its
long line runs towards Ardnamurchan Point, where
Sleat and Armadale 119
the Atlantic rollers break in spouting and roaring
masses. Beyond the promontories of Ardnamurchan
are the rounded hills of Moidart, where
" Ships o' war ha'e just come in
And landed royal Charlie,"
with the shadowy summit of Ben Mhor in distant
Mull peering over them. Farther on the horizon,
where the open ocean widens outwards, lie the
vague outlines of Coll and Tiree, fifty miles away.
And it is almost suddenly that the soft fertile land
ceases and the road begins to dip and wind among
huge mounds or tors of curious shape. At the foot
of the first of these, far below on the shore, among
birches and pines, nestles Tormore House with its
gardens, into which you may look directly from your
giddy elevation ; and on the other side of the tor is a
huge bastion of basalt, through which, in bygone
ages, the sea has pierced a lofty arch, until now it
looks like the eastern gable of an ancient cathedral.
Now the land descends steeply to the sea in a series
of bulging shoulders, between each of which a burn
dashes down a steep ravine to the sea. The road
climbs up and down these shoulders, the scene
becomes wilder at every step you take ; far above
the cliff menaces you, far below the sea swirls and
foams among black boulders and in rocky coves.
And here, on a sudden, as you turn a corner, you
come upon the crofting township of Aird, its huts
scattered higgledy-piggledy among the shoulders
and ravines, and its little patches of cultivated
ground reclaimed from the inhospitable soil betoken-
ing a hard fight with nature for bare existence.
Mercifully, the harvest of the sea yields a greater
abundance to these hardy peasants than the harvest
of the land. Wild Highland cattle debate the road
with the pilgrim ; shaggy collie dogs rush out with
wild barks and are recalled by wilder Gaelic curses ;
men, women, and children gaze cautiously from
cottage doors at the hardy stranger who has
I20 The Misty Isle of Skye
disturbed their solitudes ; it is only five miles to the
towers of Armadale, yet you feel yourself in a remote
and unknown country. There, before you, as the
road abruptly ceases by a brawling- torrent rushing
below an ivy -covered mass of rock, is a strange
scene. A huge foreland, towering upwards to a vast
height, its surface presenting the strangest variety
of rude disorder and tumbled contours and a hundred
fantastic shapes, covered, where the dark rock will
allow it a scanty foothold, with decaying heather,
forms the peninsula which ends in the jutting Point
of Sleat. It is grim and uninviting. Here is Ultima
Thule, and the resemblance to Land's End in Corn-
wall is most striking.
A narrow track between rough boulders and across
wet peat-hags traverses the vmeven surface, and
following its intricacies for a couple of miles through
narrow passages amid overhanging bluffs or over the
rocky moorland, you come at last upon a prominence
and look down upon the most southerly point of
Skye. Far below the sea dashes over the weedy
reefs ; the air is clamorous with the cries of soaring
gulls ; the strong odour of the brine contests with
the earthy scents of the bog-plants ; you look far to
seaward and a magnificent spectacle greets the eye.
Beyond the flat plain of the sea, looking eastwards
and southwards, are the retreating hills of Moidart
and Ardnamurchan ; there follows an unbroken line
of gleaming horizon ; next comes the island of Eigg,
at one side rising gradually from the sea, then pre-
senting a long, flattened top, which ceases in an
abrupt and steep declivity at its northern end. In
a cave at its southern end occurred that ghastly
tragedy of vengeance wreaked on Clan Donald by
the Clan MacLeod, when two hundred men, women,
and children were suffocated by a fire of turf and
bracken kindled at the cavern's mouth. Overlooking
the scene of this "ancient tale of wrong" is the
sharp nose of the sgurr of Eigg, w^hose successive
strata tell the story of tropical climate, volcanic erup-
Sleat and Armadale 121
tion, engulphing- sea, and arctic ice. Then comes
another unbroken horizon, and again another island
— Rum, with its dark mountains climbing suddenly
from the sea, and at its northerly point a glimpse of
Canna. Lastly, the remote horizon is closed in by
the blue shadows of the Outer Hebrides. There are
three crofting families living in this barren solitude,
but indeed, though their lot must be a hard one, it
must have certain compensations in the extraordinary
beauty of the scene which stretches far before them.
A calm summer day will repay a month of storms ;
a glowing sunset the most melancholy day.
Once on a quiet afternoon in December, I reached
the last outlying buttress of the Point, and saw such
a sunset as words must fail to give even a halting
description of. The unruffled sea, on which the
changing colours came and went as at the touch of
an enchanter's wand, stretched away into the dim
distance. Right in front lay Eigg, like a black
lustrous jewel set in a frame of luminous molten gold
as the sun sank behind it. Among the mountains
of Rum, purple shadows rose and fell. On the
mainland the tumbled, solid promontories of Ardna-
murchan were changed to transparent mists, so light
they seemed in the enchanted air. As the golden
glory faded, a rich crimson, deepening every moment,
spread over the sky, turning the islands to a gorgeous
Tyrian purple, and the sea to blood, and giving a
rosy flush to the wan clouds and mist-wreaths which
hung threateningly over the mountains of Knoydart.
Presently great gaps appeared low down in the
crimson sky, revealing silvery lines of light, which
lasted until the glow of colour faded away before the
fall of the night, and the pageant became a memory.
Next day, so swift are the changes in these islands,
the whole scene — distant mountains, purple islands,
and wide ocean — was blotted out in a swirl of mist
and rain, while the wind howled eerily among the
cliffs and tors, and was answered only by the moan
of the tired waves far below.
122 The Misty Isle of Skye
An open' road crosses the moorland from Sleat to
Broadford. It runs along the windy seaboard till,
at Knock, it turns inland through the scented moors,
by many a ferny den, past Loch nan Dubhrachan,
haunted (says romantic superstition) by a water-horse
or kelpie. It skirts the sea again at Isle Ornsay,
which owes its name, like Loch Hourn opposite, to
St. Oran of blessed memory, runs through the birch
woods of beautiful Duisdale, and then, boldly plunging
through miles of heathery moorland, comes down by
the wide sweep of Broadford Bay to the sea once
more. A few miles above Broadford, close by the
Black Lochs, with their hundred tiny islets, covered
with juniper bushes, and, in summer, the home of
the Osmunda regalis, is to be seen a wide landscape
of hills and lochs, islands and sea, surrounding the
purple moor like a Titanic circular wall with the
spectator for its central point. Beyond Broadford
the rolling moor is shut in by Raasay, topped by Dun
Caan, with the mountains of Ross-shire peeping at
you above it, and by the round island of Scalpa, the
surf ringing it with white masses of foam. North
and south run the bald summits of Glamaig and Ben-
na-Cailleach (where the Norse princess sleeps her last
sleep), the pyramid of Marsco, and the broken top
of Blaaven, — all rising above a lofty upland, beyond
which lies the valley of Strath, into which the long
grey ridges look down. Then comes a glimpse of
the winding Loch Slapin, while more long uplands
carry the eye on to Loch Eishort and Isle Ornsay
and the Sound of Sleat. On them look down the
peaks of the mainland as we saw them from Armadale.
The view is finally shut in on the left by the steep
hill above Kinloch, birch clad, and seamed all down
its face by a single torrent-bed. This wide horizon
is not seen at a single glance ; it sweeps around you
in a magnificent circle, vast and roomy, and encloses
a wide undulating moorland, purple with heather and
green with bracken, on which the solemn hills, far
and near, look down by night and by day for ever.
CHAPTER IX
A SKYE INDUSTRY
PORTREE boasts a tweed-mill, and Talisker a
distillery, but everyone knows how whisky and
cloth are made, and until the peat industry is started
in Skye it is useless speaking of it. The case is
different with the manufacture of diatomite, which
goes on in a retired spot on the east side of the
Trotternish peninsula, and I shall describe a visit
paid to investigate that unique Skye industry with
my friend M., the proprietor, and R.
The curious reader will already be asking himself,
what is diatomite? It is a clayey substance found
at the bottom of certain fresh-water loclis when
drained, and, after it has been dried and pulverised,
is used for a variety of commercial purposes —
covering boilers, making dynamite, as the basis of a
tooth-powder — indeed, I firmly believe there is no
manufacture in which it is not used. The clayey sub-
stance itself is formed of uncounted millions of micro-
scopic siliceous skeletons of certain algae, which
everyone knows as exquisitely beautiful if common
objects for the microscope. So much for science,
now for the journey.
M.'s launch having failed us, it was necessary to
make the journey in a coal vessel which was to carry
back a cargo of diatomite to the south. A coal vessel
is not the most luxuriant of private yachts, yet when
it is a question of getting to your destination or
remaining at home altogether, it serves. The whole
vessel being used for cargo, there is only standing
188
124 The Misty Isle of Skye
room in the stern beside the skipper at the wheel,
close by the engine-house, from which a grimy
engineer emerges at intervals to breathe. Mingled
smells of oil and cooking greet your nose, you en-
counter every wind that blows, and you may be
drenched with spray ; but then you see all around
you, for there is nothing to obstruct the view.
Having made our plans, we started one fine morning
in June, with a cool breeze blowing, a clear sky
overhead, and amid brilliant sunshine. Beautiful
shadows lay on the splintered Coolins ; the crofts
round the bay slept in the sunshine ; and Portree
town had scarcely awakened to the business of the
day. As we stood beside the skipper (in carpet
slippers) he beguiled the way with tales of the craft
and wickedness of engineers, for whom he had the
utmost sneering contempt — a paltry race, only to be
tolerated on his noble vessel. But one of their
detested race was marked down for his especial
hatred, who, coming on board late at night and
extremely happy, had in some drunken, frolicsome
mood stoked his furnace with his skipper's clothes.
But, indeed, it required no words of this honest
skipper to beguile the way, when there were the
leaping Hebridean seas, the basalt cliffs with their
green slopes, the panorama of mountains, the purple
islands on the horizon, and all the hundred delights
of the Western Isles to charm the senses. The cliff
wall of the eastern coast of Trotternish, with the ridgy
backbone of the peninsula towering above it, now
progresses in a long straight line, now recedes into
a bay, now sends out some broken escarpment sea-
wards. At intervals, notably at Borreraig, a torrent
dashes over the face of the cliff and throws itself
downwards into the sea in one mass of foaming
water, whose thunderous roar is heard from afar.
Or in the oolite strata on which the basalt has over-
flowed there are dark caves running far inland, chief
of them all Prince Charlie's Cave, fern and moss
fringed, with gleaming stalactites and curious fossils.
A Skye Industry 125
Local legfend, emulous of a similar cave at Strathaird,
where the chief of Mackinnon entertained the Prince,
says that he slept here. Truth compels us to say
that the Royal Fugitive only landed near this spot.
Past Holm Island, nestling- below the cliffs and
famous as a fishing-ground for lythe, the mighty,
sheltered precipices of Storr tower beyond the lofty
cliff, here appearing like the outlying rampart of
this grim central keep. The upper part of the cliff
itself is formed of a series of basaltic prisms on a
lesser scale than the Kilt Rock farther north, but
like it presenting the appearance of a kilt hung out
on a flat surface. The black precipices of Storr,
though they are a mile and a half from the sea's edge,
seem to hang threateningly, so lofty are they, over
our noisy craft. They appear like immense cathedral
walls and gables, such as De Quincey might have
dreamt of, with spires and pinnacles set not above
them but in front and around and on their flanks,
and at every conceivable angle. And all this weird
and fearsome example of nature's architecture is
placed on the greenest of green slopes, where sheep
are browsing under these spires and precipices as
peacefully as in an English meadow.
Just beyond Storr is the farm of Rigg, a green
and fertile spot amid these stony sea-walls ; and on
the shore, a little farther north, lies a huge fallen
boulder, through which the ravages of time and the
sea-waves have pierced a high archway. From its
resemblance to a church with an open door, it is
called Eaglais Bhreagach, or the False Church, and
near by stands the petrified minister, a pillar of rock,
never able to enter his pulpit.
This boulder was the scene of a grisly rite, well
known in Celtic folk-lore, but so awful as seldom
to be performed — that of Taghairm, or giving the
devil his supper. A small sept, the MacQuithens,
despised by all men, lived near by, and some of them
resolved to perform the ceremony. They caught
some cats and roasted them living on a spit. By
126 The Misty Isle of Skye
and by they found themselves surrounded by cats,
yelling like fiends. "Whatever you see or hear,
keep the cat turning," said the leader of the Mac-
Quithens to him who held the spit. There came a
dread silence ; another cat had joined the company.
Him the leader knocked down with the cross of his
sword-hilt, and at once the devil appeared in his
proper guise, compelled now to grant whatever the
men asked for. But earthly prosperity was not theirs
for long ; they died, and the devil marked them for
his own, and now they are in hell. The leader of
the band was the last to die, and was warned of the
fate of his comrades. But he was utterly unrepentant,
and with much composure announced his intention of
joining his companions, saying that if they had
" three short swords that would neither break nor
bend they would vanquish all the devils in hell and
make prisoners of them."
On the cliff above are the remains of Dun Greanan,
and rounding a jutting precipice is a little bay, walled
round by what seem perpendicular slopes of grass,
pierced by a ravine, and guarded on either side by the
outlying basaltic cliffs. In this bay, on which the
intolerable glory of the June sunshine blazed down,
the steamer cast her anchor ; and with a hamper of
provisions, we made for the shore in a coble which
had come to meet us. On the shore and on the
slopes above the marks of industry were evident. A
drying and grinding factory has been erected at the
water's edge ; great sheds stand on the upper slopes
at a precarious angle ; while a miniature railway, the
continuation of one which runs inland to the diatomite
beds, connects the edge of the cliff with the landing-
stage and factory far below.
When we arrived, the work-people were all at the
loch, and there was scarce a sign of life round this
lonely bay. But presently a long train of men and
women began to zigzag down the path on the face
of the slope, and transformed this solitude into
humming activity. They must get the cargo em-
A Skye Industry 127
barked while the tide served. Each one carried a
hag of diatomite from the grinding-house to the boat
slip, till the coble was piled up with sacks. Then it
made a slow journey to the steamer, where the sacks
were transferred to the hold. Meanwhile a second
coble was a-filling, and so all day long, for there
were hundreds and hundreds of sacks to be removed,
the work went steadily on. Leaving these busy
people and feeling a mere idler, I explored the ravine
near by. Like most Skye ravines, its sides are formed
of steep rocky scaurs, ending in an amphitheatre of
rock over which a foaming band of water falls into a
deep basin and then rushes noisily down to the sea,
over which, out of this rock recess, the blue hills of
Applecross are visible. When my observations,
geological, botanical, and picturesque, were com-
pleted, I rejoined my companions — M. up to the
ears in business with his manager. It was now
time for lunch, which we ate a I fresco, our cheeks
fanned by the odorous sea - breeze, our ears
greeted by the plangent cries of seabirds, greedy
for scraps.
We ascended the zigzag path leisurely until, at its
top, the busy workers far below seemed dwarfed to
the size of industrious ants. Inland from the cliff's
edge lay miles and miles of undulating moorland,
backed by the long ridges dipping and rising from
Storr to Quiraing, and, just opposite, one bold pro-
montory which overlooks the loch whence the
diatomite is taken. This was the landward side.
Seawards the water lay like a glassy lake, undisturbed
even by a ripple, save where a whale was splashing at
the surface far out to sea. Strange to think how,
at times and with a northerly wind, this coast be-
comes one of the most inhospitable in all Scotland !
In the sound lie the purple Rona and green Raasay.
On the mainland are the Ross-shire mountains— Ben
Alligin, Leagach, An Teallach, Scour Quran and its
Six Sisters, and the rest of the many peaks, steeped
in haze, but with gleams of reflected light on their
128 The Misty Isle of Skye
slopes, or gfolden red as the day advances and
evening comes on.
Leaving behind us this gorgeous vision, we made
ourselves as comfortable as possible on one of the
open trolleys used for transporting the diatomite
from the loch. They are propelled along the level
ground or up the slopes by strong and willing lads,
who jump on board as soon as the car begins to go
downhill. That it does with terrific speed ; the
motion exhilarates and rouses every jaded feeling ;
you have all the joys of motoring without breaking
the rules of the road. For a brake, the poles with
which the lads propel the car, pushed through a hole
and pressed against one of the wheels, serve
admirably. You are jolted horribly, and have to
hold on with your teeth, but not for worlds would
you lose the joy of motion or the perfume of the
moorland air, heavy with aromatic odours, flung in
gusts against your face. The last mile or so is up-
hill, and we took a short cut over the moor to lessen
the labours of our drivers.
Under the shadow of Sgurr a Mhadaidh Ruaidh, the
Red Fox's Hill, in a silent hollow, lies Loch Cuithir,
now mostly drained, leaving a grey mud bottom of
diatomite. Men are employed to dig it out, and it
is then transferred by girls to open trays of wire
netting, set one above another in a staging, so that
wind and sun may have free access to dry it. Dry-
ing the diatomite is, in fact, the problem of the
process, for it is obvious that in a damp climate like
that of Skye, the stuff does not lose its moisture in a
hurry. M. laughingly off'ers us a thousand pounds
for an expeditious and cheap process. Unfortunately
the Germans have been before us, and use a simple
and easy method of drying in their diatomite fields.
When dry the lumps of clay become light and
friable, and turn from dingy grey to white, so that
the heather and grass all round the loch is dusty
with particles of diatomite. The lumps are then
placed in sacks and carried by the trolleys to the
I
A Skye Industry ' 129
cliff, where they are ground to a fine powder in the
mill.
It is a strangely desolate and remote spot in which
such an industry should go on ; you are miles from a
house, and there is not a sound to break the silence.
The eye rests only on the purple moor and the high
ridges to the west. But you rejoice to know that this
industry gives regular employment to the men and
girls of the district, and that since it was begun
eighteen years ago, fourteen thousand pounds have
been paid in wages and for expenses by the proprietor.
Employment is given to about sixty people during the
season in preparing' the five hundred tons of material
annually exported from the loch. Pity that there
were not several more such industries for the crofters
of Skye to work at, without at the same time taking
them away altogether from the work of their crofts.
It is too soon yet to say what may be made of the peat
beds in Skye, but if ever they are made use of as they
are now in Germany and Norway, brighter days may
dawn for all classes in the island.
After a leisurely examination of the place and its
surroundings we resumed our tramway journey, and
were soon flying' along at such a pace that in twenty
minutes we had covered the distance to the cliff, in-
cluding time spent in toiling up hills. Once more we
came in view of sea, and islands, and far mountains,
with the evening lights beginning to colour them.
Far below, the string of men and girls were still at
their work of carrying the sacks. Diatomite, they
say, is good for the complexion, and certainly these
g"irls have delicate skins, charmingly pink and white.
Three very hungry men made their way quickly down
the cliff to their camping-ground, and, having induced
one of the girls aforesaid to boil a kettle, sat down
to tea — a peripatetic meal (like most Skye picnics in
autumn), because clouds of midges hung round and
stung us like fiends till faces and hands ached and
itched and were covered with lumps.
By the time the meal was finished and a peaceful
9
130 The Misty Isle of Skye
pipe smoked, the workers had done their task. The
coble was waiting for us, and, bidding the men and
girls good-bye, we made for the steamer, with its
hold crammed full of sacks of diatomite. In the
growing twilight we steamed down the sound. Far
behind us, on the remote horizon, were the lonely
Shiant Isles, and in front of us stood eleven of the
marvellous peaks of the Coolins and the Red Hills —
great opaque masses clear cut against first a crimson
and then an opalescent sky as the ,sun sunk behind
the unseen outer islands. After such a glorious day
in the open air it was an appropriate ending to sail
home over the waveless sea, with such a peaceful
prospect around us. The long summer twilight kept
off the shadows of the night, and though it was nine
o'clock when we reached Portree, it was still light.
After much ordering and counter-ordering, the skipper
got his boat moored to the mail steamer at the quay,
and we bade each other good-night, charmed with
the success of the day's outing.
CHAPTER X
THE MOUNTAINS
"The fountain-pregnant mountains riven
To shapes of wildest anarchy,
By secret fire and midnight storms
That wander round their windy cones."
Tennyson.
THE Isle of Skye, alone among- the isles of the
west, boasts fifteen peaks over 3000 feet
in height. It is to the existence of the Coolins^
— a great mass of weird, shattered summits — that
Skye owes this proud pre-eminence. The highest
peak in the group is Sgurr Alasdair, the south-west
pinnacle of which is 3275 feet in height, while the
lowest of the fifteen is Bhasteir — to the right of Sgurr-
nan-Gillean as seen from Portree, with its curious
"tooth" jutting out prominently on one side. Its
height is 3020 feet. Sgurr-nan-Gillean, commonly
called the highest, is really fifth in the series, sharing
the honour with Sgurr-na-Banachdich, both 3167 feet.
These fifteen peaks are far from exhausting the
summits of the Coolins, but those others, like the
neighbouring Red Hills, are all under the 3000 feet
limit.
^ The name "Cuchullin Hills," as the late Sheriff Nicolson
pointed out, is due to the guide-books. "The Coolin" is the
English equivalent of the Gaelic name A Chuilionn (of. the
Himalaya, the Caucasus), and the older writers, Boswell, Scott,
etc., use it so, spelling it Quillin. I have, however, called these
mountains by the name which is now popular and known to
everyone — the Coolins. They have nothing lo do with the
Ossianlc hero.
132 The Misty Isle of Skye
It is true that no less a person than Ruskin has
depreciated the Coolins, calling them "inferior
mountains " in his Modem Painters. Ruskin was
an authority on mountains, and perhaps, like
Wordsworth who thought he had a special mono-
poly therein, disliked hearing anyone even speak of
them. But from whatever point of view the Coolins
are looked at, Ruskin's disparaging epithet must be
waved aside. The geologist finds in them the most
remarkable group of volcanic rocks in Britain. They
tax the mountaineer's strength and foot and eye, as
much as do the Alps. And to the mere lover of
nature they are eternally wonderful. To one who
has lived within sight of them for years there can be
nothing inferior in them. He sees the lights and
shadows on their peaks and sides vary with every
hour. In summer sunshine, or on a clear frosty day
in winter, every corrie, every pinnacle, every ridge is
seen in microscopic detail, and the brilliant light
bathes the grey stone masses till they seem to glow
again. Or again, when the sky is overcast with
clouds after rain, but the evening light is falling in
slanting rays upon their flanks, they still stand out
boldly. The lower slopes are clothed in vivid green,
but above them frown rocky splintered precipices,
with their broken tops and innumerable crevices like
gashes in their sheer faces. Deep shadows lie in the
ravines, but the outstanding masses are ruddy or
golden. At dawn or sunset a rosy light streams over
them from base to summit, and stains them with every
shade of colour from pink to blood red. Or, when a
brilliant winter sun shines on the snowy mantle which
descends upon them so easily, the massive peaks
shimmer away into the opalescent sky and lose all
their ruggedness and all their weirdness. Or yet
again, on moonlight nights, when the atmosphere is
full of pearly, silvery light, they seem to hang like
vague, dark curtains against the brilliant heaven.
But there are other aspects of the Coolins, when, if
more terrible, they are also grander. They are hidden
•n
J
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O
i5
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The Mountains 133
from view by clouds and mists, until the wind springs
up and the wrack of clouds is driven among the peaks,
to be torn and shattered by the serrated edges, which
emerge black and frowning out of the whirling cloud
masses. Indeed, to those who watch them in summer
and winter, every conceivable cloud effect is seen
among and around their summits — snow-clouds touch
them and disappear, leaving them clothed in white ;
dark rain clouds settle steadily upon them for weeks
together, and are lit by wild colours as some stray
sun rays touch them at morning or evening ; lighter
wisps of mist, white as snow, weave themselves in
and out of ravines and pinnacles, are dissipated, form
again in new shapes, and are again dissolved. Skye
without the Coolins would have many attractions,
but it would be like the play of Hamlet without its
hero. With them, it is nature's masterpiece in the
Hebrides — a thing of beauty, a joy for ever.
These mountains are unique in Britain. The
fifteen great peaks and the many smaller ones stand
closely packed together in an area which is little
more than six miles long and six miles broad. The
broken flanks of each peak are inextricably mingled
with those of the surrounding heights. They fit
into each other, they rise out of each other, sweeping
up skywards as if to breathe more freely ; and nature
could not get another in if she tried. Two great
corries, Harta Corrie and Coire Uisg, with Loch
Coruisk^ at its lower end, run right up into the heart
of this mass of mountains, and are separated by the
long and massive ridge of Druim-nan-Ramh, which
terminates in the high peaks of Bidein Druim-nan-
Ramh. In these wild corries silence reigns, and '■'■mi
awful hush is felt tjiaudibly,'^ save when the tempests
boom among the peaks, or a fall of stones, loosened
by rain and frost, crashes down some precipice,
wakening thundering echoes as they go. Round
them the hills with their sphinx-like stony faces are
^ Coruisk means "the water cauldron," — coirc, a corrie or
cauldron, and iiisge, water.
134 The Misty Isle of Skye
huddled disorderly, each one gfazing down upon you,
as it seems, half-pityingly, half-threateningly.
The outer summits of this great mountain group
are clothed with coarse vegetation up to a certain
height. Beyond that they are mere broken faces of
stone, made up of precipices gashed with deep
ravines, boulder-strewn slopes, jagged pinnacles and
crags. Within that outer ring, the desolation is
complete. Save for a few rare Alpine plants, or an
occasional patch of brilliant green which makes you
wonder how it came there, all is sheer rock, black,
wrinkled, chaotic, torn and shattered into every
conceivable shape. You seem to stand in nature's
primeval workshop ; here are the very bones of the
old earth. And yet these weird mountain masses
are the most recent, geologically speaking, of all
the British mountains, instead of being the earliest
and oldest. Compared with Snowdon they are in
their infancy ; and dark Lochnagar is a patriarch,
hoary with age, who laughs at their comparative
inexperience ! The lower flanks of all the mountains
in the group are more or less smooth, and exhibit
those rounded forms which tell of the passage of
glaciers over them long ago. They are everywhere
marked by grooves and scratches. But higher up
the glacier limit is reached, and beyond that the
polishing process has stopped, and all is craggy and
rough and broken. I have spoken elsewhere of the
contrast between the Coolins and the other hill
formations of Skye, but it is never so well marked
as when you gaze from some peak or ridge into the
shattered chaos around you, and then let your eye
rest on the smooth domes of the Red Hills across
the Sligachan valley to the east, or on the green
terraces of the basaltic plateaux which stretch away
northwards and eastwards from this mountain region.
It is a striking lesson in physiography, which, when
once seen, and its causes understood, is never
forgotten.
But if the Coolins are the chief wonder of Skye,
The Mountains
^3S
Loch Coruisk is the weird gem which lies hidden
away in their stony recesses. There are many ways
of reaching it. The easiest is to land at Loch Scavaig
by the tourist steamer, proceed leisurely over the rocks,
and stand wonderingly on the margin of Coruisk for
fifteen minutes, while the steamer's solitary gun
awakes the thunderous echoes of the mountains.
There is nothing romantic in that. Others, more
venturesome, come round the cliffs by Camasunary,
past the Bad Step, where a false move will precipitate
you from the ledge into the sea far below. Or, at the
expense of a sum agreed upon, stalwart rowers and
a boat may be hired from Camasunary. But the best
way by which to let the grandeur of the mountains
and the loch be impressed by degrees upon one, is
to proceed from Portree by Sligachan. Then every
step of the way takes you into a wilder country ;
the savage mountains draw nearer ; at last you walk
under their shadow ; you penetrate their depths ;
and for reward, after tough walking and some hard
but not dangerous climbing, the strange grandeur
of Coruisk breaks full upon your prepared spirit.
The road from Portree to Sligachan, nine miles
long, runs through a lonely moorland, by the side of
the Varragill river, while the moor mounts up into
tablelands whose sides are seamed with many a
torrent. From the bridge just beyond the head of
Portree Loch, there is not a single house all the way
to Sligachan, and you are not likely to meet with any
wayfarer. Behind you lie the bay, and the cliffs,
and the town with its woods, steeped in sunshine,
and far beyond them the great precipices of Storr
and the Old Man, diminishing at every step which
carries one onward. But in front are the massive
Coolins, Sgurr-nan-Gillean ^ dominating the left of
the line, and the other peaks tailing away to the
right, and all increasing in majesty as you proceed.
Soon you are in a region covered with heather-clad
hummocks, which give a strange air of loneliness to
^ The sgurr (Norse sgor, a ridg^e) of the young men.
136 The Misty Isle of Skye
this lonely road. They are the ddbris left by one of
the glaciers which issued from the mountains. And
then, while the road is still winding among these
hummocks, it takes a turn, and Glen Sligachan with
its surrounding mountains comes fully and suddenly
into view.
That lonely glen is always fascinating, in sunshine
or by moonlight, or when rain and mist and wind
fill the valley and play in and out among the peaks.
But when the sky is blue and the sun pours down
its beams, and a haze of heat fills the glen, its stern
ruggedness is softened. The great hill masses seem
less massive ; their fissured sides are dimly perceived ;
soft blue shadows fill their hollows ; the snow on
their summits glistens and sparkles. The mountains
seem asleep, and have less the air of crouching
monsters watching for their prey. To the left is
the sheer steep front of Glamaig, covered with rocky
bosses, like huge warts ; then the humpy summits
of Beinn Dearg ; next a corner of Blaaven's dented
crest peers over the shoulders of the pyramidal mass
of Marsco as it dips suddenly into the middle of the
glen, the upper end of which is blocked in front by
the ridge beyond which Coruisk lies. Immediately
to the right the great serrated peak of Sgurr-nan-
Gillean with its many pinnacles guards the entrance
to the glen. The contrast of the rock formations
strikes one at this point more than ever. Sgurr-
nan-Gillean and Blabhein are black and shattered,
because the gabbro of which they are composed has
had a tougher fight with the elements, unlike the
more yielding greyish-pink granophyre of Glamaig
and Beinn Dearg and Marsco, which have an air of
cheerfulness compared with the sombre Coolins, and
present the form of rounded domes or cones with
flowing outlines.
From the inn at Sligachan you look down Loch
Sligachan to distant Raasay, and then, leaving the
firm highway, you are traversing the boulder-strewn
glen by a path rough and ill-defined.
The Mountains 137
Throug-h the glen rushes the Sligachan river ;
its waters beautifully clear ; the stones of its bed
variously coloured and shining like jewels in the
sunshine below the limpid water. Every step
forward in the glen seems to take one farther from
human life and nearer the mysterious recesses of
nature's workshop. The way lies among huge
boulders — fallen from the heights above or stranded
by the glacier that forced its way, ages ago, down
this glen, — moss-covered stones, clumps of heather,
and stretches of peaty bog. It seems impossible
to get rid of the great mass of Sgurr-nan-Gillean.
There it is constantly on the right hand, black and
frowning, its lower slopes deeply furrowed by ravines
and corries, its upper heights shattered and broken,
with perhaps an eagle poised above them. You
have passed Beinn Dearg and Marsco, which rises
like a perpendicular wall on your left, covered with
stones and gravel and sand, and still it is there.
But at last you are beyond it, and the mouth of
Harta Corrie is reached. This corrie runs for a mile
and a half into the mountains, until its upper end is
barred by a great wall of stone. In the glen, in
front of its entrance, are two tiny lochs, infinitely
solitary, and beyond it the track grows still more
stony, and the sense of solitude increases. Sgurr
Dubh dominates the glen to the right, and to the
left Blaaven towers up, a single precipice, from
the depths of the glen. After some further walk-
ing-, the ridge is reached and the climb begins.
Towards the summit of the ridge you find yourself
toiling over absolutely smooth and polished rock,
worn by the glacier which once swept over it into
Coruisk.
Before reaching the top let us pause and look back.
Right in front, a huge wall of black gabbro, with a
splintered crest and deeply fissured face, stands
Blaaven, with mist curling about and around it.
It is over 3000 feet in height, and this front is
probably less precipitous than it looks, but from
138 The Misty Isle of Skye
this point of view it appears one sheer descent, with
two lochs and the narrow glen leading to Camasunary
at its feet. We have seen the other side of Blaaven
from Strathaird, and found it fascinating ; this side
is equally attractive, and recalls Alexander Smith's
eulogy more than ever as you see among its crags
" the mist-wreaths perish with heat," and "the wet
rock slide with a trickling gleam, right down to the
cataract's feet."
From the top of the ridge the three great parts of
the scene at once arrest the eye. There is Loch
Scavaig opening into the outer sea, and surrounded
by the steep spurs of the Coolins. It seems at first
to dwarf Coruisk itself, which like a dark gem lies
at what seems an interminable depth far below.
The ridge slopes down steeply to it, at one place
holding in a small basin the tiny Loch a Coire Ria-
bhaich whose waters dash downwards into Coruisk.
The waters of Coruisk, itself surrounded by the dark
mountains, are black and gloomy, a contrast to the
blue waves of Scavaig, and it has with more realism
than poetry been aptly compared to a huge ink-pot.
The unbroken mountain wall which hems it in,
leaves only the narrowest strip of shore covered
with boulders and rock-fragments, and though the
winds ruffle its surface or the sun glints upon its
cheerless waters, it seems like a prisoned creature,
dead and helpless, overcome by the mighty giants
which have held it there for untold ages. A few
tiny islets, heath-clad or with some sparse birch trees
struggling for existence, rest on its cold bosom.
And then there are the wild hills, thronging each
other, their broken crests rising high in air from the
ridges which connect their lower sides. These lower
flanks, which enclose the loch, are bare, polished
precipices, but above them all is rugged and broken.
Spires, pinnacles, crags, buttresses, broken battle-
ments, shattered peaks — every variety of mountain
form is there, but all of naked rock, black, grisl}^
uninviting. The eye is led on from one to another.
The Mountains
39
and wanders in and out of the maze of peaks, each
black as Erebus.
It is a scene of utter desolation, as if the elements
had just ended their ancient strife and left nothing
but chaos and terror behind them. Even on the
brightest day this fearful solitude strikes upon the
mind with awe : what then must it be in the depths
of winter, when the heavens are darkened and the
winds roar through the crags, driving the rain in
cataract sheets through the glen ? Then the vapours
sweep and swirl above the loch as in a vast devil's
cauldron, and foaming streams dash with hiss and
roar down every gully. Far and wide among the
peaks crashes the thunder, as if its echoes would
never cease, and the lightning flares through mist
and cloud along the grisly slopes of the mountains.
And then the winds die away ; the great banks of
mist, some darker, som.e lighter, roll up the valley ;
and every precipice and corrie and peak is once more
unveiled out of the inky blackness.
Even now as these solemn peaks surround you,
and every sound of wind or torrent is dying away
to a whisper, they seem to be intently listening to
catch your very thoughts. You feel that these great
stone giants are living things ; you have come upon
them unawares and surprised their secret, and what
is there to hinder them leaping forth and crushing
you ? Your heart leaps within you, but reason over-
comes emotion, and you remember that, after all, they
are only mountains. Yet even when the soul is
calmed they speak silently to it with their lesson of
vastness and eternal repose. The elements have
crashed around them in fury for ages ; ice and water
and atmosphere have waged war against them, and
yet they take no part in it all. They are unmoved.
And their very vastness (the vastness, however, of
mere matter) speaks of a vastness greater still — the
infinity of spirit — the aspiring spirit of man, the
eternal Spirit of God. The immensities of nature at
once repel and attract the soul of man. Superstitious
I40 The Misty Isle of Skye
terrors, offspring of those long generations when
men worshipped what most terrified them, are
aroused, but deeper still are the comforting thoughts
which come into the mind as it is led on from the
work to the Worker. Then the words of the Psalmist
are inevitably recalled, and their truth is flashed in
upon the soul : " / iioill lift tip 7mne eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even
from the Lord, who hath made heavefi and earth."
The descent to the shore of Coruisk is a series
of jumps and slides, through heather, breast-high,
among boulders, and over ledges of rock. But at
last it is accomplished, and you stand by the great
boulder near the southern end of the loch, brought
there by the last glacier which filled the valley. The
waters of the loch dash over the rocks into Loch
Scavaig, about an eighth of a mile away. It is at this
point that Scott makes the Bruce land with Ronald
in the Lord of the Isles, and exclaim —
"A scene so rude, so wild as this,
Yet so sublime in barrenness,
Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press
Where'er I happ'd to roam."
Scott himself landed here ; and here, too, all those
who have tried to describe the scene with pen or
pencil have taken their stand. Dr. MacCulloch's is
one of the earliest and most complete ; ^ Scott's has
all a poet's liberty, and the description in his Jourtia I
is vivid and exact ; Lord Cockburn's is critical, but
impressive ; - Robert Buchanan's is passionate and
grand. ^ Yet every description leaves something
wanting : all the details are there, but the soul of the
scene is still to seek. Only Dante or Shelley could
have done it justice. So of all the artists — Thomson,
Daniell, Horatio MacCulloch, Turner, MacWhirter,
and the rest — Turner has succeeded best in giving the
1 Highlands and Western Isles, iii. 473 seq.
- Circuit fourneys, p. 114.
5 The Hebrid Isles, p. 287.
o
a:
u
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o
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c55
The Mountains 141
spirit of the scene, because he paid no attention to
the details, and probably his picture would not be
recognised as a representation of Coruisk.
Proceeding along the north shore of the loch,
beneath the shadows of the enclosing summits, one
is reminded of Dante's journey by the Stygian lake —
" Far murkier was the wave
Than sablest grain ; and we, in company
Of the inky waters, journeying- by their side;"
as well as of the search for the Water of Life in
Sclavonic folk-tales. The seeker had to penetrate a
dark mountain gorge until he came to a face of rock
barring the way. At certain times it swung into two,
and at that moment the hero must boldly plunge in,
fill his flask at the fountain which was suddenly
revealed, and then dash back ere the clanging rocky
gates should close again and shut him in for ever.
The mountain mass which appears to bar the end of
the loch might pass for the clanging gates, but as
one approaches the upper waters, it recedes, and we
see that where the leaden waters of the loch end
they are fed by a river running through a little green
glen, a welcome oasis among these sombre mountains.
Looking back, the loch with its islands occupies the
foreground with the great stone mass of Sgurr-na-Stri
filling the whole horizon. The loch itself is held in
the cup formed by the ridge of Druim-nan-Ramh to
the left, and Sgurr Dubh to the right. Behind is the
great amphitheatre of the watching hills looking
down for ever upon this dark corrie and green glen
and hidden loch. Here may be seen the remains of
a camp, that of the Scottish Mountaineering Club,
some of whom lived here for five weeks. What an
opportunity for poet, or artist, or dreamer ; for, as
one of their number says, "to live for five weeks
in the heart of Coruisk ; to see Ghreadaidh slowly
forming out of the gloom of the morning mists ; to
see, when some storm had passed, the wet slabs of
the Coolins glistening in the sunlight ; to see, when
142 The Misty Isle of Skye
the sun had set, shafts of light darting through every
cleft on the Banachdich ridge and thrusting golden
streamers into the darkness of the corries, and to
feel continually the near presence of the immense
black peaks that crowded our lonely camp — these,
and many other sights that we daily witnessed, it is
hardly in the power of words properly to express." ^
From the head of the loch it is possible to climb or
scramble up the Drumhain ridge and descend into
Harta Corrie. The way is difficult, unless one hits
upon the exact route, but from the top of the ridge
the view of the loch is probably the finest possible,
with the river feeding it at the head, and, far off, its
waters falling into wild Loch Scavaig; and all round,
corries and mountains in strange confusion. The great
peaks lie around in a semicircle — Sgurr-nan-Eag,
Sgurr Dubh, Sgurr Alasdair, Sgurr Mhic Connaich,
Sgurr Dearg, Sgurr Banachdich, Sgurr Ghreadaidh,
Sgurr Mhadaidh, Druim-nan-Ramh, Bidein Carstael,
Bruach-na-Frithe, Sgurr a Bhasteir, and Sgurr-nan-
Gillean, taking them in turn from left to right.
Blaaven and Marsco and Glamaig, too, are once
more visible, and add their number to the surging
waves of stone which toss their broken crests on
every side, while the mysterious depths of that
most barren and fearsome of all corries. Lota Corrie,
under the shadow of Sgurr-nan-Gillean, and Harta
Corrie at our feet, tempt one to explore them. The
descent into the latter should bring one to the famous
Bloody Stone, from which the way to Sligachan
presents no difficulties. This dark gorge, surrounded
by walls of gabbro down which white streams of
water gleam and foam in a hundred torrent beds, is a
place of dread. The ghosts of the slain haunt it ;
the fairy folk dance in it, and, if all tales be true, make
their elfin bolts of the bones of the dead. Here,
where the silence is so sacred that it weighs upon
you like a heavy load, a great clan fight was fought,
^ W. Douglas, in the Scottisfi Mountaineering Chib Jozirnal,
January 1898.
The Mountains 143
grim and great, a whole summer day ; the blood of
Macdonalds and MacLeods ran like water ; and round
this massive red boulder, named so appropriately,
were piled the heaps of the slain. You shudder as
you pause by the stone ; in fancy the g'len rings with
the fierce shouts of the clansmen and the shrieks of
the dying ; you see the eagles at their ghastly feast,
— and you hurry away lest some shape of dread
should confront you.
Sgurr-nan-Gillean is the most prominent and the
best known of all the peaks of the Coolins, and
though not the highest, it is the one which most
people seek to climb. ^ Looked at from Sligachan,
Sgurr-nan-Gillean appears to be one peak or cone,
but in reality there are four pinnacles in descending
order in front of the highest, but, being all of one
dark hue, their individuality is lost except in a profile
view, when they stand out clear and distinct.
Sporting climbers and Alpine Club-men ascend the
peak by the "pinnacle route," though why they
should risk life and limb when there is an easier
way, is a mystery to a non-climber. Readers, ac-
cording to their temperament, will judge whether
'tis nobler to break the record (and possibly one's
neck) or to seek the picturesque quietly and easily.
In general, climbing in the Coolins offers plenty of
sport to the professional mountaineer. There are
dangerous chimneys, ledges, couloirs, and drops.
There are abundance of puzzling obstacles with dizzy
precipices beneath them. There are inaccessible
peaks and gendarmes, inaccessible to all but a
monkey or a skilled mountaineer. The Alps and the
Dolomites offer nothing more sporting, if that is
what you are seeking. There are no glaciers, it is
true, save embryo ones in winter, but there is deep
snow in winter and spring, and wind and hail to
satisfy the keenest lover of out of doors. There are
plently of loose stones to dodge, and these constitute
^ The highest peak is Sgurr Alasdair (3275 feet) ; Sgurr-nan
Gillean is 3167 feet.
144 The Misty Isle of Skye
one of the chief and frequent dangers in the Coolins.
Another, and, to those who go without a guide,
almost fatal danger, is found in the mists which wrap
one round with fearful suddenness, and hide every
landmark. One experienced climber slipped over a
precipice in mist one August day in 1903 ; another met
the same fate in 1902 ; and a third some years before.
This last victim had left his card in the bottle at
the summit of Sgurr-nan-Gillean, telling how he had
ascended it "without a guide." He did not return
to the inn, and two days after his mangled body was
discovered below a precipice near the peak. On the
whole, however, the gabbro rock of the Coolin offers
a firm foothold, "while the large crystals of augite
that weather out in relief from the softer matrix
produce a nutmeg-grater-like surface in contact with
which the human body may almost defy the laws of
gravity." This is the unanimous record of geologists
and climbers alike.
But to return to Sgurr-nan-Gillean. With the
exception of a narrow ledge near the summit, with
precipices on either hand, it may be climbed by any-
one with a steady head, but it is safer to ascend with
a guide. One girl crossed the ledge with her guide
in a mist, not knowing what she had done. She
reached the summit ; the mist cleared off, and when
she returned, fainted at sight of this " brig o' dreid "
as expeditiously as any of Jane Austen's heromes.
Fortunately for her, the guide, her father, and a
friend of the writer's were able to carry her across,
else she might have spent the term of her natural
life on the summit. The whole climb is toilsome
and steep, involving much scrambling, and in some
places slipping and sliding among debris, while the
ridge aforesaid, broken and stony, must be crossed
with care. But there is a magnificent view of the
pinnacles as one ascends, and from the narrow
summit a wonderful panorama stretches before one.
From this dizzy height, with precipices over a
thousand feet deep, falling away from it on three
The Mountains 145
sides, you see the great peaks of the range huddled
around and closing up the view southwards. But
again you look down into the dark recesses of Lota
and Harta corries ; you see the long Glen Sligachan,
with Blaaven, Marsco, and Glamaig. Northwards
the terraced heights of Skye stretch to the Minch,
and on the mainland are the hundred peaks of the
northern counties, which, if you have time and skill,
you may identify one by one. The vast height, the
immense tract of country, the brooding silence, are
all strangely impressive and solemn. Like one
whose soul has left his body to journey through the
far depths of space, the world seems to fall away
from you, and you feel that you are ascending
upwards into the unknown.
After climbing Sgurr-nan-Gillean, the chances are
that, having toiled up its sides and seen the wild sea
of peaks all around, one will think enough has been
done and will be content to have that first magnificent
impression remain unaltered by any fresh ones. On
the other hand, the temptation may come to a rest-
less spirit to assail other peaks and reach " a height
that is higher." Again, therefore, the warning may
be uttered — Do nothing without a guide. A local
guide will take the unpractised climber by easy routes,
where these are available. Still better, perhaps, is
it to go with some member of the Scottish Mountain-
eering Club to whom all the peaks of the Coolins are
known, — unless the would-be climber has not a good
head, for he will then probably find himself hung up
between heaven and earth in a prayerful mood. In
any case, he should study the many Coolin articles,
photographs, and the magnificent map in the Journal
of that club, and he will then see what he must
expect to overcome or leave undone.
Since Professor Forbes made the first recorded
ascent of Sgurr-nan-Gillean in 1836, all the peaks of
the Coolins have been climbed, not excepting the
Inaccessible Pinnacle on Sgurr Dearg, first conquered
by the Messrs. Pilkington in 1880. This pinnacle on
10
146 The Misty Isle of Skye
Sgurr Dearg is one of the most striking objects in
this striking group of mountains. It stands out from
the summit of the mountain, taking different shapes
according to the point of view — a chimney-can, a
great horn, "a slate stuck vertically into the top of
a wall." The pinnacle is a great dyke which runs
up the eastern slope of Sgurr Dearg until it reaches the
summit, where the softer rock of the mountain having
weathered away, it is left jutting into the air — a
solitary column of rock. Inaccessible as it looks,
this pinnacle may be surmounted by experienced
climbers who love to do what no one else has done
and to boast thereof for ever after. Apart from
the pinnacle, Sgurr Dearg is easily climbed from
Glen Brittle, and affords a grand view of Skye with
its moors and winding lochs, and of the Outer Isles.
For those who prefer to look at mountain peaks
from below rather than from their hoary summits,
the walk to Coruisk from Sligachan, and a second
walk from Sligachan to Glen Brittle, will suffice.
By taking these two journeys, they will have skirted
the feet of a group of mountains which have no
parallel in Britain, and seen peaks and precipices and
corries and crevices enough to satisfy completely
their hunger for the sublime. The western spurs of
the Coolins, enclosing dark corries, project one by
one in a curving line into Glen Brittle. At the north
end of the curve is Coire-na-Creiche, its upper part
divided into two smaller recesses by a projecting
ridge, and guarded north and south by Bruach-na-
Frithe and by Sgurr Thuilm respectively. Rounding
Sgurr Thuilm, Coire a Ghreadaidh is reached, with
Sgurr a Ghreadaidh looking down into its depths.
Then comes Coire-na-Banachdich between Sgurr-nan-
Gobhar and Sgurr Dearg, and Coire Labain, and
beyond these corries is a maze of peaks, of which the
cones of Sgurr Alasdair, peering above Sgumain, are
the most mysterious and inviting.
In Coire-na-Creiche (Corry of the Spoil) another
battle took place between the Macdonalds and
The Mountains 147
MacLeods in 1601 — probably the last of all the great
clan fights which had been waged in Skye for
centuries past. The chief of the MacLeods, the
famous Rory Mor, was absent when Macdonald
with his clan invaded his lands. MacLeod's brother,
Alexander, collected his clansmen and encamped near
this corrie. Next day the Macdonald men arrived,
and then began a battle which only ended when the
night had fallen. The Macdonalds were victorious,
but not without suffering great loss, and they took
Alexander and thirty leading men of the MacLeods
prisoners. Perhaps had Rory Mor been there in
person with his great two-handed sword, the fortunes
of the day might have been different. Like Harta
Corrie on the eastern side, this corrie on the west
has rung with the shouts of war. As if these
solitudes were not wild enough in themselves, the
wild passions of men have raged among them. But
this very wildness has given rise to many super-
stitious terrors and weird tales. A grisly shape
haunts the lonely Coire-nan-Uraisg. The mortal
eye which has gazed on this horrid monster with
impunity will not quail at the Cave of the Ghost
near Coruisk, where sits the spectre of a shepherd,
his legs crossed, branding a sheep dripping with
gore, which struggles on his knee and utters unearthly
cries.
And the Coolins, desolate as they are, have their
treasures of gold, like the troll's hoards in the Norse
bergs, if the following tale be true. Long ago it
was noticed by the good folk of Dunvegan that one
of their number was in the habit of leaving home
without saying a word to anyone, and remaining
away for days together. Then he would return with
gold and precious stones, which he sold to those
who could afford to buy them. The people believed
him a sure victim of the devil, to whom, they said,
he had sold himself. One day he returned after a
long absence, weary and ill. Stumbling into his
cottage, he bade the priest be sent for, and when the
148
The Misty Isle of Skye
holy man came he told him that the gold he had
found had made him a wicked man, and now that
he was dying he was afraid. Pressed to tell how
he gained the gold, he said that one night he had
lost his way among the sgurrs of the Coolins, and,
coming upon a cave, had lain down in it to pass
the night. Morning came, and he awoke. Then it
seemed to him that the walls of the cave were
covered with curious marks, which a closer inspection
showed to be nuggets of gold and gleaming gems.
Trembling, he took as many as he dared, and left the
cave. But as he left he saw that an unknown visitor
had been there before him. At the entrance of the
cave were some human bones and a pair of worn
brogues. At sight of them he fled for fear, but
cupidity had impelled him to return to the solitudes
of the mountain and the mysterious cave more than
once. Nothing had molested him, but his spirit had
changed and evil had perverted his soul. With the
ending of his story the wretched man died, and
though many sought from that day for the cave it
was never found. The mountains still guard their
secret, and perhaps that is why they seem to nod and
whisper mysteriously to one another whenever human
foot disturbs their ancient solitary reign. ^
^ I append the height of some of the peaks :
Sgurr Alasdair .
Sgurr Dearg
Sgurr Tearlach
Sgurr Ghreadaidh
Sgurr Mhic Cohincach
Sgurr-nan-Gillean
Blaaven
Glamaig .
Marsco
3275 feet.
3255 ..
3230 M
3190 M
3180 ,,
3167 M
3042 „
2537 n
2414 ..
CHAPTER XI
THE MOORLAND
" I know a stretch of wine-red moor,
The great domed heaven's resplendent floor,
The sun shines o'er it all day long ;
There larks trill out their matin song,
While bees respond with droning hum ;
But human footsteps rarely come,
Though 'tis a land of all delights,
Sweet scents, rich sounds, and magic lights."
I CAN never wander on the moors of Skye without
recalling that passage of Tacitus which describes
the aspect of a land made desolate by war. Vasiitm
ubique silenimm ; secreti colles ; fumantia procul iecta ;
7iemo exploratoribus obviiis. The vast silence, the
lonely hill ridges, the lack of wayfarers, are every-
where in evidence, only it is nature's influence, not
the desolation of war, which has made them so ; while
the smoking roof-trees afar off are suggested by the
blue peat-reek rising from some shepherd's or crofter's
hut. But besides this impression of loneliness which
the moorlands give, they have many aspects, which
they who drive across them, cursing the slowness of
the Skye ponies, can hardly even guess at. But they
are there, and greet one according to the season of
the year, the hour of day or night, or the state of the
weather ; and as they have been noted, so will they
be found recorded here.
Their most joyous, though far from their most
luxurious aspect, is in spring, when the sadness of
their sombre winter dress is giving place to a livelier
14;*
150 The Misty Isle of Skye
covering. The fragrant, earthy smell of the moor
has returned, and is as welcome as the perfume of
the fresh air after long pining in a sickroom. The
face of the moor is still dusky, save where it is inter-
spersed with great staring patches of wan, withered
grass. But by peering down, one sees the tiny shoots
of fresh green grass, and notes that the woody stalks
of the bog-myrtle are already in bud. No longer a
dripping sponge, the earth of the moors is becoming
dry and brown. There are glints of warm sunshine,
lighting up the shadowy hollows which, all winter,
seemed so desolate. The clouds, too, are higher in
the air, and no more oppress the earth with their
nearness, while there is a corresponding increase of
light shed over the wide landscape. A lark is trying
his notes, and a stray bee comes droning past. There
is everywhere an air of expectancy, as if some vast
door were about to be opened throvigh which the
pageant of Spring will pass and dance across the
moor like Bacchus and his train.
On the first dry days of spring, moor-fires, lit to
burn down the exuberant heather and allow of the
growth of fresh pasturage for the sheep, are seen
blazing and smoking in all directions. If the day is
clear and bright, the rolling clouds of blue smoke,
seen from a height, give a curiously unreal effect to
the landscape, and fill the air with a delightfully
pungent odour. It is strange to come upon one of
those fires blazing by itself on the silent moor or the
lonely hillside. The flames make a ruddy glow of
leaping tongues of fire, travelling from clump to
clump of heather, while the pungent smoke rises in
dense blue masses swept to the far distance by the
breeze. The heather crackles and frizzles and hisses,
and there is a dull roar in the air as of subterranean
thunder. All over the moor for miles around you see
similar canopies of smoke, or at night a red glow of
distant fire. There is something demoniac in these
leaping flames and smoke columns seen among those
vacant solitudes. At night the uplands seem so
The Moorland 151
many blazing volcanoes, fiery red against the dark-
ness, the flames waxing or waning as the breeze fans
them or dies away. The question of the amount
of surface which should be burned produces much
searching of heart. Crofter and farmer both want
as much pasture as they can get ; while the landlord,
with an eye to sporting tenants, thinks heavily of
roasted grouse eggs "shrivelled in a fruitless fire."
For the farmer will not greatly mourn if an additional
hundred square yards become the prey of the flames.
Some sapient ones maintain that the fires are good
for the interests of sportsman and farmer alike.
Others, no less sapient, are of a different mind. Let
the gentle reader decide as it please him !
As the days grow longer and warmer, the moor-
land folk go out to cut the peats in family parties.
A spot is selected by the ground-officer, and from it,
for the small payment of half a crown, the crofter may
take as much peat as his natural laziness or his fore-
sight (never too keen where hard work is concerned)
will permit of. The husband carrying the spade, the
wife with provisions for the day, and the children
each with a smouldering peat (from which sparks
dropping occasionally kindle a chance fire) form a
procession and proceed leisurely to the scene of action.
Of the smouldering peats a fire is made, with a view
to later culinary arrangements, and all set to work.
Lifting the upper green turf at the peat-hag and
laying it aside, the digger uncovers the black slimy
peat underneath. The spade is long and narrow,
with a shorter blade set at right angles to the other,
so that forcing it downwards into the exposed peat,
it cuts out an oblong piece of about a foot in length.
These pieces are laid out in rows on the turf, so as
to free them from their excessive moisture ; after-
wards they are stacked in little heaps until the sun
has dried them, and they are then ready for use or
for storage against the winter. It is a cheerful sight,
after traversing miles of lonely moorland, to come
upon a place dotted with these little parties. All
152 The Misty Isle of Skye
stop work to gaze at you, or to shout a kindly
greeting in Gaelic or English, and remain gazing
after you till you are out of sight and discussing who
the chance stranger may be.
Few people realise the importance of these fields
of inexhaustible peat to the crofting population in a
country so destitute of wood, and to which it is so
expensive to bring coal. They, at least, are freed
from the shivering terrors of the poor in great cities,
for, be the weather as cold and wet as it will, they
have abundance of fuel, and the fire on the hearth,
like the sacred fire of the Mazdeans, never goes out.
The act of "smooring," or (as a Sassenach would
call it) laying the fire before retiring to rest, so that
it might be found still burning next morning, was
formerly a semi - religious ceremony, and, in the
Roman Catholic islands, is so still. One way was
to spread the embers on the hearth in a circle, which
was then divided into three parts, with a small heap
in the centre. A peat was then laid along the space
between each section, its inner end resting on the
central heap. The first was laid down in the name
of the God of life, the second in the name of the God
of peace, and the third in the name of the God of
grace. Sufficient ashes were piled over the whole to
lessen without quenching the fire, and a rune was
said^
The sacred Three,
To save,
To shield,
To surround,
The hearth,
The house,
The household,
This eve,
This night ;
Oh, this eve,
This night,
And every night,
Each single night.
Amen.^
^ Carmichael, Carmina Gcedelica, i, 236-237.
The Moorland 153
Spring- advances, and the surface of the moor be-
comes brighter with the lig^ht green hues of unfolding
bracken and fern, the darker green of grass and
heather, and the early flowers of spring. Every-
where the lambs are skipping round their mothers,
plaintively calling, and then butting" wildly at the
maternal fountains, only to dash off again with a hop,
skip, and jump, in all the uncontrolled jollity of
youth and spring. The air is full of delicious per-
fumes, and musical with the voices of birds ; while
overhead the sky is seldom clouded, but brilliant
with a rich sapphire colour, rivalled only by the deep
azure of the sea, running far inland into the heart of
the moorland. Here and there the rising ground on
these moors is topped with the ruins of an ancient fort,
and from there, as from a coig^n of vantage, one
surveys a wide tract of these upland reg^ions in the
clear spring air. For miles and miles it heaves and
swells to the far horizon, where a slight haze shimmers
in the sunlight. Perhaps down in the valley a
babbling brook strays through the heather, or far
southwards the jagged Coolins tower grimly into
the sky, or to the north Storr upheaves its huge
broken face, and the Old Man of Storr stands with
mute appeal in front of the black precipice. Save
for the bleating of the lambs and the voice of the
birds, all is still. You lose touch with your age ;
the years roll by ; it is the eleventh century, and you
are an ancient Celt sheltering behind stone walls
against the Norse invader. For the natural features
of the land cannot have changed much since then ;
the lower slopes are cultivated, but the shaggy moor
remains the same ; and on its impassive face you
discover no hint of date.
As summer glides on the moors become richer in
wildflowers ; the air that blows across their surface
is more heavily perfumed with their fragrant odours ;
and, save on rainy days, which will intervene now
and then, their loveliness increases. Their rolling-
surface is too brilliant even to suggest the " pastoral
154 The Misty Isle of Skye
melancholy" of the same green braes of Yarrow. It
is a place for lovers, a place for Pan and the nymphs
of glen and meadow ; but men and maids appear but
seldom, still more seldom a divinity. The oracles
are dumb ! But on a clear summer day, with the
blue sky overspreading all like a soft translucent
curtain, the wide spaces of the moor (like some
vision of infinite distance) haunt the mind with a
strange fascination. Every sense is appealed to.
The perfume of the vast earthy surface, of bog-
myrtle, of heather and moor flowers, is seductive to
smell and taste, as if one smelt the bouquet of a
rich wine which was presently to be tasted. There
is the strange solitary piping of secret birds, the
rushing music of the lark, the hum of bees and of
more querulous insects, the noise of unseen waters
in some hollow valley, the sighing winds among the
bent and heather. The eye rests satisfied on the
medley of colour, seas of purple heather, of saffron
moor grasses, of green mosses, of russet bracken ;
soft lights and softer shadows ; gleaming cataracts
on the far hillsides. Ranges of mountains, in Skye,
on the mainland, or in more remote islands, block
up the horizon, their retreating peaks giving an
inexpressible air of distance, or, where their rounded
summits tell of another formation, huddled together
like unwieldy cattle.
There follows the rainy season of August and
September, of which the less said the better. The
sky is murky, the rain falls with a sad persistence,
and the moor is a dripping sponge. Yet there are
few days when there is no glimpse of blue sky, no
possibility of going out of doors. On the heels of
that comes the Indian summer, and again the wide
spaces of the moor, pastonwi loca vasia, rejoice and
are glad. Over the billowy surface, here flat as a
table, there tossed into curious hillocks, or again
rising precipitously and showing an outcrop of
weather-beaten rock, the renewed harmonies of light
and colour appear most rare, most generous. All
■I>,
D
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rt
—
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3J
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The Moorland 155
around save to the west, where, beyond the shining
Minch, the peaks of Harris tower in a long Hne be-
hind a pearly mist, is an amphitheatre of hills, their
rounded summits blending gently with the blue sky.
To the east is Dun Caan in Raasay, on which the
lively Boswell, determined to taste life to the lees,
danced a jig. Over these northern slopes a Royal
Prince wandered, homeless and fugitive, hunted like
a partridge on the mountains. So the unstoried
moor joins hands for a brief moment with history!
Its tints are more uniform than those of the hills ;
saffron, light brown, or pale green, as bracken, or
heather, or grass, make up the surface, broken in
places where a peat-hag lies open, or dotted by
chocolate-coloured stacks of peat for winter fuel. But
all these colours are made richer by the generous
sunlight.
On the hills there is greater variety and much more
of a curiously chequered pattern of colours and
shadows. Where tiny crofts nestle in a fold of the
hill, there are yellow spots of fallow ground and
bright green patches where turnips are still growing.
But round them are gorgeous russets and browns
and reds and purples, streaked by zigzag lines of
dark shadow where some torrent has scarred the
face of the hill. Just behind is the gleam of a water-
fall stealing down the hillside through a birch wood ;
now hidden, now shining like the glint of light on
polished steel. And the birch wood with its rich
autumn hues might ravish the soul of an artist as
the sun's rays gleam through the tracery of the
branches, from which scarce a golden leaf has yet
fallen. There is no sign of life in these moorland
solitudes, save where some lads are building a peat-
stack, and, far off, a group of crofters are moving
slowly to the town, walking beside their shaggy
ponies with their laden panniers. Their harsh voices,
with the curious Gaelic intonation, are borne far
across the still moorland.
The upland roads, on either side of which the
156 The Misty Isle of Skye
ditches were, in summer, a mass of luxuriant flowers,
are decked with fringes of fern, some green as in the
earlier year, some hanging in rusty-brown festoons
where the night-frosts have dried them up for their
winter sleep. A leaf flutters gently down from the
hazels on the slopes above ; a rabbit darts to its
cover ; a robin flutters lazily with cheerful chirp
from branch to branch.
Again follows the sad time of the year, when the
grey sky rests on the surrounding hills, and clouds
hurry from the south-west, or huddle black and
leaden on the horizon. Beneath, the wide spaces
of the moor are cheerless and repellent and cold.
The peat-hags speak of death in their mournful
black recesses ; the surface of the moor is wan in its
sad colours, with withered heath and bent, though
one now and then stumbles upon heath-bells still
red but fading fast. The mountains are fierce and
threatening, or already white with snow. The rich
colours of the Indian summer have gone. Chill
frosts have reduced them to cheerlessness, and the
moor is more secret and solitary than ever.
And here I shall strike a more intimate and per-
sonal note, and describe the aspect of the moors
of Skye, with their attendant horizons, as I saw
them on the last day of the nineteenth century. The
day itself had been calm, scarcely cold ; the sky
flecked with grey clouds tending to mass themselves
together in a fashion prophetic of a coming storm ;
but beyond them were patches of sapphire sky, while
bars of a ruddier hue burned in the west. As one
mounts the road above Portree, the wide face of the
moor, with its ridges and hollows and gradually
rising hills, is seen to perfection. To the left is the
wide sweep of Fingal's Seat ; to the right the moor
rises, now almost imperceptibly, and again suddenly
where, towards the north, the Storr ridges come into
view. Everywhere, on this winter day, the wan
hues of bleached grass and heath were apparent.
Patches of a livelier green indicated a crofter's tiny
The Moorland 157
fields, while darker yellows and chocolate browns
spoke of tracts of withered bracken and lichen-
covered rocks. On the open moor the shadow of
death seemed to brood, where the black peat-hags,
with their shiny waters, loomed up in funeral array.
All these sad tints and hues blended into one pattern,
which seemed to harmonise with the silence which
hung around and the solitude inviting to meditation.
Toiling upwards and looking back to the town hid
by the leafless trees, one saw the pale gleam of the
loch, with St. Columba's Isle resting on its glassy
surface, and, miles beyond, the great unbroken
masses of the Red Hills and of Glamaig, and the
shattered crags of Blaaven,
" Each precipice keen and purple
Against the yellow sky."
Between the Red Hills and Ben Tianavaig, the
sentinel that ever watches the approach to the bay,
there was a glimpse of the far-oft" mountains of Ross-
shire, veiled in snow, and, farther to the left, the
lonely Dun-Caan of Raasay. Now, having gained
the crest of the ridge, a new vista of wide-spreading
moorland fell on the eye, while, far beyond the swell-
ing western ridges, the flat tops of Macleod's Tables
gave the lie to the assertion that there are no straight
lines in nature. Immediately in front, and looking
so near that one might almost have cast a stone into
its waters, lay Loch Snizort Beg, widening out into
the open sea, and showing at its farthest extremity
a corner of Loch Greshornish — a tiny silver patch —
guarded by its lofty cliff's. Beyond the sound the
round purple hills of Harris rose far above the
horizon line. Almost while one gazed, the short-
lived day died into night. MacLeod's Tables were
hidden in a bank of clouds ; the Red Hills and
Blaaven became indistinct blurred masses as the
evening shadows wrapped them round. The great
dark hollow of the moor was filled with light, drift-
158 The Misty Isle of Skye
ing- mist, swaying hither and thither as the breeze
caught it and swept it onwards. Moaning voices
came sounding out of its dim recesses ; the wind,
suddenly rising, whistled in many keys through the
bent and heather, and shrieked wildly down some
hidden corrie ;
" vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome."
Time and the hour peopled, to the imagination,
these moorland solitudes with ghosts, until the
mist, swirling to and fro, seemed a mighty army
of the dying century's dead men and women. A
hundred years ago the moor was as it is to-day,
save for the roads which cross its wide surface, nor
is it likely to change when, within a hundred years,
a new century will dawn, and a new army of misty
ghosts fleet amidst its shadows till the surging
winds scatters them and they are seen no more.
In midwinter, after a heavy snowfall, the moors
present themselves in a new aspect. The white
monotony of their rolling surface is broken by the
tufts of withered grass and heath which emerge, a
dirty yellow, from the stainless snow, or by some
outstanding boulder, black and grim against the
white surface. Towards evening, the hilltops in the
distance are lost in banks of leaden clouds, which
become darker and more threatening as the night
closes in. These white solitudes are tenantless, save
for some crofter trudging homewards, and voiceless,
save for a collie barking in the distance. There is a
gleam of fading light on a sea-loch, stretching its
long arm far inland, over which a mountain stands
like a dim ghost in the solemn eventide. The
hollows of the moor fall away in gloomy shadows
from the snow-covered road, which runs, like a long
white ribbon, into the far distance.
For miles you may follow it, hearing nothing but
the monotonous beat of your horse's hoofs on the
The Moorland 159
stones. Darker falls the night ; more mysterious
grows the white-shrouded moor ; the clouds close in ;
a flurry of wind, and you are in the thick of a driving
snow blast which shuts out even the shadows of the
night, closing you into a deeper darkness, and makes
you think eagerly of the chimney-corner. It passes
away. Once more the moorland uplands are seen on
the horizon ; across the sound twinkle the lights of a
cottage on the remote mainland. You come to the
sea's edge, and hear the beat of the waves on the
shingle. A turn of the road, and a township with its
cheerful lights is reached, and the steaming horses
draw up at the door of the post-office. Then on
again into the darkness. A voice comes sounding
and hallooing from far behind ; the driver pulls up ;
and a drunken shepherd flings himself into the mail-
cart with a shower of Gaelic vocables. The spell of
brooding quiet is broken ; it is as if you had heard
" strains of glad music at a funeral." Headdresses
you loudly in a tongue you scarcely comprehend ; he
shouts Gaelic songs, tuneless, in a guttural and
raucous voice: how are you to help yourself but by
shrugging your shoulders and meditating on the evils
of Highland whisky ! Suddenly there comes another
flurry of wind, in which the fellow's cap disappears.
Nothing daunted, he ties a white handkerchief over
his head with much fumbling, and is chaff"ed by the
driver for putting up the white flag and being an
emissary of " Krooger." At this he flourishes his
stick and gesticulates with drunken ardour, and
addresses you once more in unintelligible Gaelic.
" Ach !" cries the driver, with that polite apology
in which none excels the true Celt, "he will have
lost his English with his cap."
"Aye, and his manners too," adds another
passenger.
Plunging into an opposite excess of politeness, the
shepherd pulls out a big bottle of whisky and off"ers
it all round. Then, making up for refusals, he takes
a long pull at it himself, and, with the swiftness of
i6o The Misty Isle of Skye
thought, it takes effect. His Gaelic songs take a
deeper colour, and you listen, unwillingly, to a broken
stream of poetic erotics. At last, he reaches his
destination, tumbles off, rids you of his noisy
company, and, once more, the silence of the moor
wraps you round. It fringes the edge of the sound,
where the waves are lapping round black reefs or
dashing on the shingle. The white, wan moorland
is suddenly lost in the dark waters, under the shadow
of the night. Then you dash through a fragrant pine
wood, and suddenly find yourself at home. A cheer-
ful fire of good sea-coal, a welcome meal, await you.
Then to bed, to sleep or to lie awake listening to the
gusts moaning in the chimney, or to dream of inter-
minable ghostly spaces, through which echo the
hoarse cries of a Gaelic shepherd.
CHAPTER XII
THE PAGEANT OF THE SEASONS
" So forth issued the Seasons of the year." — Spenser.
SKYE has many bad days during- the year, days
which for wild, unrelenting fury of wind and
rain almost baffle description, but there can be no
doubt that it has, year in, year out, the best climate
in Britain. People cry out at its rain ; a picture of
the deluge in an art gallery was described to a short-
sighted old lady as " a summer day in Skye " ; but
the truth is that while more rain falls in a given time,
there are no more rainy days than in any part of the
country where the rainfall is moderate. It is com-
forting in the Lucretian suave niari magno manner to
note, on bad days, the worse state of the weather
elsewhere as described in the newspaper reports, or
to read of wild storms when Skye is enjoying-
sunshine. The midges, it is true, are worse than the
ten plagues of Egypt together, and I am willing to
make a present of them to the man who sneers at
Skye, provided he takes them all off like a new Pied
Piper. But the calm beauty of countless days through
the year is unrivalled. It is a mild country, not
given to great extremes ; health-giving, inspiring ;
there are clear frosty days in winter of peerless
beauty, just as in spring and summer the glory of
sunlight and the gorgeous hues of the landscape
suggest Italy at its best. But a few impressions,
sketched rapidly in various aspects of climate and
atmosphere, will best convey the nature of the
climate.
II 161
1 62 The Misty Isle of Skye
I.
Still ailing wind, will be appeased or no ? For over
a week now the storm has raved ; the lowering sky
has hung like a black banner far down the hillside,
while the clouds have scudded persistently through
the dim air. The rain has scarcely ceased, but,
lashed by the pitiless wind, has driven in sleety blasts
through the air, and flung itself against walls and
windows. The wind itself has been like a furious
madman, bullering and roaring in wild anger, seeming
to throw itself bodily against the house till it has
shaken it to its very foundations, and then, in bafiled
fury, moaning eerily in chimney and keyhole, and
anon rolling and bellowing, never ceasing its clamour.
The hillsides, dimly perceived through sheets of
driving rain and mist, are covered with hundreds of
foaming torrents rushing madly down their beds.
The moor is a mere lake, where what is not black
spongy peat is sheer water, while the wind whistles,
like some vast ^olian music, through bleached grass
and withered bracken. With the fury of the tempest
the loch is forced into sympathy. White waves foam
wildly on its slate-green surface ; the shore is flecked
with spongy masses of foam ; breakers and spray
dash with hiss and splash on the black basaltic
boulders which strevi^ the shore ; or opposite some
funnel in the hills the spindrift is blown along in
clouds of white mist. On days like these the shaggy
encircling hills and the ghastly hues of the lochs, with
the white horses dancing and foaming over them, give
an impression of weird desolation and of infinite
distance. High up on the edge of a cliff a column
of smoke is seen rising for several feet into the air,
and then, caught by the wind, is blown back,
shattered and broken. But it is not smoke ; it is a
waterfall, which by the force of the blast is forced
high into the air above, and then dashed hither and
thither in clouds of spray.
— c
in
p
The Pageant of the Seasons 163
At this time of the year, when everywhere the days
are short, in these northern latitudes and in valleys
so much shut in by hills it is shorter still, and in
these stormy days it is shortest of all. One dresses
by candlelight, and breakfasts (none so early either)
in a half daylig-ht, while what is called daylight is
rapidly retreating by three in the afternoon. But
while these stormy winds do blow, and sun and sky
are hidden all day long by a waste of clouds, the
light is grudging and refuses to be bountiful even
within the compass of its brief sway. To go out of
doors is to be buffeted beyond all measure, to feel
the driving rain on the cheek like needles, to walk
through mire and water, and yet withal to taste the
joy of the storm, to feel the tang of life, and to be
exhilarated by winds that have blown across four
thousand miles of unbroken sea and have been
suffused with its healthful breath. Yet a little of
this boisterous health-giving goes a long way, and
one gladly returns home. There, with the curtains
drawn, the lamps lit, a cheerful fire burning in the
hearth, with books and leisure and cheerful talk, the
wind may bellow, the rain beat on the pane, and the
floods lift up their voice, they cannot hurt us. Yet
one thinks with a shudder of the night and the wild
storm raging among the lonely corries of the Coolins,
or by the ghostly shores of Coruisk, or round the
weird Maidens, and in many another grim Skye
solitude.
But all at once in the evening the tempest has
fallen, and there has come a great calm and a silence
whose '■'■awful hush is felt inaudibly.'^ After this long
continuance of crashing, howling winds, of hissing
rain and foaming waters, the quiet comes as a sweet
relief. No breath of wind stirs ; only the noise of
the torrents' rush is heard ; only the night with its
dark curtain holds everything in a hidden silence.
Such is a winter storm in Skye. Reader, would
you care to experience it, and know at once its
savage melancholy and its boisterous exhilaration ?
164 The Misty Isle of Skye
11.
Snow falls in Skye as it does elsewhere, but there
is less of it, and it seldom lies long". A fall of six or
seven inches will disappear in a single night with a
mild south-west wind laden with rain and moisture.
But sometimes, when the whole landscape is shrouded
in white, there come magic days when the sun shines
warmly out of a cloudless blue sky, when the air
is still and marvellously clear, when a pearly light
suffuses everything, and a purity and mellow softness
unimaginable enwraps the land. The waters of the
lochs are without a ripple, and on their glassy surface
and in their hidden depths the mountains and the
sky are depicted anew. Here and there a black
precipitous scaur looms out of the hillside, but the
hills themselves in their white dresses are folded
softly against the sky, and the snowy peaks of the
Coolins shimmer away like some ethereal phantasy
into the sapphire heaven. For there is little differ-
ence of tint between the glistening" snow on their
tops and the light sapphire of the sky on which,
as on a background, they appear to be painted. It
is only overhead that the sky is so intensely blue.
Were it not for the shadows cast on the hills by their
outstanding rocks and bluffs, they might be fleecy
clouds, forming" and dispersing and reforming in the
dreamy air. Nearer parts of the landscape are
strangely near ; the farther parts are as strangely
remote. The sheep, far up the near hillside, are not
dwarfed as at other times ; they, with their yellow
fleeces, stand out with curious exactness against the
white background. A hare scuttles from its form
in search of food, hard to get from beneath the
snowy surface. The ear catches sounds from hidden
and far-off places, so hushed and still is the air.
Everywhere there is the dazzling intensity of brilliant
light, radiant beauty, purity which is felt rather
than seen. And at evening when the red sun sinks
beyond the hills of Harris, the white landscape is
The Pageant of the Seasons 165
bathed in crimson light, which, as it dies off the wide
scene, leaves the hills like grey and wan ghosts
against the darkening sky.
Often, too, in winter there are quiet grey days
when it neither snows nor rains. The sun's rays
now and then emerge from the bars of intervening
cloud, but most of it is hidden, and these various
strata are each a separate plane of light — the nearer,
bright and mellow, the farther, dark and shadow-y.
Then the hills, far and near, stand out prominently ;
every crag and fissure is plainly seen ; and in the
varying lights of the upper air, they yield all their
colours and tints more readily to the eye. On such
a day, calm and still (monotonous, some will call
it, but that I cannot), the genuis loci reveals itself and
whispers to the attentive ear the dreams of eld, the
secret of the magic song which the sirens sing on
the rocks of Eilean a Cheo.
III.
There follows the time of the awakening of nature
in spring, when the light increases, the clouds are
in full retreat to the higher regions of the atmosphere,
and you look forward to a more consistent out-of-
doors life. There is a strange opaqueness in the
atmosphere on some of these spring days, as if with
a heat haze. It resembles the opaqueness which
takes place when a few drops of milk are let fall into
a glass of water. The winds may still be cold, but
the air is soft, and there is a healthy tang of the
brown old earth everywhere. The face of the moor-
land is yet wan, with clumps of dirty brown where
the heather is. There are forlorn patches of snow
in the folded hollows of the hills, and the withered
grass and heath on their sides gives them still a
curious streaky appearance, the result of these brown
and white-green zigzagging belts of last year's
vegetation.
The awakening of nature is almost feline in its
1 66 The Misty Isle of Skye
stealthiness, it comes upon you at unexpected
moments and in out-of-the-way corners. In that
pool there is a constant hubbub and animation, where
the frogs are spawning and masses of blobby jelly
are half-hidden in the muddy water. On the moor
you meet with fresh green stag-moss, stealing up
serpent-like through the withered heath. Bright red
pointed buds cover the bog-myrtle, and clumps of
velvety-green young ferns {Aspleniuin) are seen in
the crevices of every dyke and bank. A bumble-bee
drones past, with a vivid suggestion of drowsy
summer days and perfumed flowers. Overhead
copper-coloured and lilac clouds are stretched out
in thin strata beneath a sky of palest green.
Of the primroses which cover the cliffs and moors
and hillsides and woodlands in April, I can never
say enough. They form a yellow carpet ; they are
of immense size ; their number is truly legion ; they
fill the air with a faint delicious perfume as the
afternoon sun strikes full upon them. And scattered
everywhere among them are pale windflowers, pink
butterburs, yellow celandines, white wild-strawberry
blossoms. Hard ferns and polypodys are unfolding
themselves. You hear the cuckoo after his long
absence, and always with afresh surprise, as you heard
it first long ago in childhood. Chaffinches, robins,
thrushes, blackbirds, yellow-hammers, and tomtits
are singing all day long ; rock-pigeons wheel above
the cliffs ; jackdaws chatter on the rocks. The days
are growing long ; the light is more intense ; the
air mellower.
During May the crosiers of the bracken are
peering up through the moss and grass, and gradually
rising and unfolding, till innumerable long straight
stems with several cross branches erect themselves
on moor and hillside. Clumps of milkwort, purple,
blue, pink, and white, contest the surface with violets
and the pale primrose. Ferns are everywhere un-
curling, in stony places, on river edges, on the moor,
in the woods, in crannies. There is the stalwart
The Pageant of the Seasons 167
male fern curving downwards and outwards at the
top, like a shepherd's crook, in soft brown curls as
it unfolds. There is the slenderer lady-fern in thick
masses ; here the hard fern with its brown and green
fronds side by side ; there the polypody, tinted with
so soft and tender a green that you regret it will
soon lose its softness ; tiny woodsias ; mountain
bucklers, with a fringe of white lace all down the
stem ; the black maiden-hair peeping out from cracks
in the cliflF ; the holly-fern ; the beech-fern ; the oak-
fern in hidden recesses ; and here and there among
the limestone down by the sea, the hard sea spleen-
wort. Anemones, with their white stars and tender
leaves, cover the sides of glen and moor ; the air is
full of the rich perfume of the bog-myrtle ; vetches
are found in flower here and there, but their true
brilliance comes later. Tiny leaves are unfolding
themselves on the barren heather. On wet places
in the moorland the starry leaves of the Pinguiculse
are fully formed, and out of their midst the flower
stalk crowned with a purple bud is beginning to
erect itself. Only in a few favoured places is the
flower open and fully formed. It is of a rich purple
hue, but if you are lucky you may find the rare
yellow variety. There, too, in the marsh are
sundews, bright green and red, attracting the
swarming insect life, and the curious bog-bean with
its trailing stem, fleshy leaves, and its head of pink
flowers covered with delicate lace-work. On over-
hanging banks is displayed the golden banner of the
gorse, making the air faint with its honeyed sweet-
ness. How intensely yellow are the cups of the
marsh-marigold, flaunting it in ditches by the way-
side, and the spheres of the globe-flower on their tall
stems ! And who would not fancy himself in dream-
land as he saw the endless purple mist of the wild
hyacinth which carpets every woodland glade, or
mingles with the primroses on the slopes ?
During this month the life of the seabirds is worth
watching as you drift among the islands in your
1 68 The Misty Isle of Skye
boat, or, landing, arouse their clamorous cries and
indignant shrieks. The terns have not come yet,
but eider-ducks, divers, the black -backed, the
herring, and the common gull, mergansers, and
oyster-catchers have already laid their eggs among
the rocks and sea-pinks, and you can hardly walk
over the little rocky islands where they build without
stepping on their eggs. The scarts prefer to build
on high cliffs, where they sit solemnly, their plumage
glistening in the sunlight, or for a change bob up
and down in companies on the water below. Little
care is taken by most of these birds to build a nest :
a few wisps of grass, some crumbling, withered twigs
— that is all ; and on that, or in a hollow of the rock,
the eggs are placed, and fall an easy spoil to the
collector. Most of the gull's eggs are difficult to
see at first, so much do they approximate to the
colour of the ground. They are of a dingy brown,
with darker spots ; the oyster-catcher's are cream-
coloured with dark black or brown patches and
streaks and zigzags. Mergansers and eider-ducks
build more elaborately, and lay three times the
number of eggs in their larger nests. Here is an
eider-duck sitting on her eggs — a picture of patient
maternity. There is her dark head with a yellowish
sheen in the sunlight ; her back is grey, with brown
spots. She will sit quite still while you photograph
her a few paces off, but as you approach her she
flies off with a whirr to join her mate who is swim-
ming about in the water near by. The nest is a foot
in diameter, and its sides are three inches thick. Its
basis is withered heather and grass, on which the
sides are built up of a thick ring of fluffy grey down,
and the whole is carefully placed in a clump of
withered bracken so like the mother-bird in colour
that you may pass quite close to her and not see her.
Close at hand are other two nests, one a grouse's,
the other a sandpiper's, with four tiny eggs. And
there is the mother running along the ground as if
with a broken wing, before she flies off for safety,
The Pageant of the Seasons 169
A few weeks later, passing this island, you will see
the eider-duck with her brood — tiny fluffy balls,
swimming on the water and diving out of sight as
you approach. But now as you leave the islands, a
few seals follow the boat, their grey faces appearing
above the surface with a weird humanness. A vivid
imagination might easily transform them to mermaids
tired of the sea and seeking for a human mate, as
they do so often in the folk-tales of the Celt.
June follows when the bracken is already two feet
high, filling the air with a richly aromatic perfume.
Every foot of ground is rich with colour and covered
with abundant flowers. Clumps of sea-pink give a
touch of colour to the black rocks at the sea's edge.
A little higher there is a richer vegetation — vivid
blue milkworts, white stitchworts, white garlic
flowers — too beautiful by far for their acrid odours.
In shadowy glens great masses of honeysuckle cover
the rocks and fill the warm air with odorous perfumes.
There, in a shady recess, yellow pimpernels hide
their tiny flowers modestly from sight, pink vetch
and yellow potentilla trail among the grass ; rich
golden patches of bird's-foot trefoil meet one at
every step ; while among the marshy flats, beds of
iris, with yellow flowers, wave in the air. How pre-
dominant is that key of yellow among the flowers of
Skye ! The moors are a mere carpet of flowers,
brilliant, above all, with the blue veronica, but scores
of other flowers are found in rich abundance. Skye
roads are edged on either side, for purposes of drainage,
with deep ditches, full of vegetation, and brimming
with glowing flowers. They are a constant pleasure
to the eye of the wayfarer, like the roadside ditches of
the flat country around Venice, and seem to form a
fringe of gaudy colour to a long ribbon of dingy grey.
These aspects of the landscape continue through
July and August, but now the whole country is
covered with a royal mantle of rich purple. The
heather is in bloom, and the hills and moorlands seem
ever steeped in the gorgeous hues of glowing sunsets.
lyo The Misty Isle of Skye
A careful eye observes many tints, pink, crimson,
and purple, and there are besides the more vivid
colours of the bell-shaped heath {Erica ciliaris) and
the delicate waxen blush of its cross-leaved sister,
but the general effect of the moor is that of some
vast Titan resting under the folds of his purple
cloak. Happy, too, is he who finds the luck-bringing'
white heather — not so rare, perhaps, as is imagined,
when it is looked for carefully ; but its influence, like
that of most magic herbs, is only powerful to him
who comes upon it accidentally.
IV.
Enough has been said of the glowing summer
weather in the previous chapter. It remains to
describe certain atmospheric effects, and certain
aspects of the sunset.
At times in early summer a bluish mist, strangely
suggestive in these remote solitudes of the smoke
of some populous town, drifts for days down the
narrow sea- passages, with a majestic and slow
motion, or hangs indefinitely about the hollows of
the hills, or folds itself over the edge of the cliffs like
snow projecting from the eaves of a house ; while,
through its semi-transparent shifting mass, reaches
of the sea or patches of heath are dimly descried.
The gradual passing away of rainy weather, again,
Is often accompanied by the phenomenon of a dark
heavy curtain of grey mist hanging half-way down
the hillsides and blotting out the sky. This fall of
mist gives the curious impression of some vast
covering which has been let down from the higher
reaches of the atmosphere, to cramp and shut in the
never very vital energies of the islanders. As it
hangs irresolute, now lifting, now dropping, or,
where a breath of warm wind touches it on a single
hillside, scattering into gleaming wisps of smoke,
unaccustomed colours are given to the landscape as
the lights shift and change. Here a hill or a cliff
The Pageant of the Seasons 171
will loom up black as ink, like some vision of the
Inferno, and give the onlooker the feeling- of being
on the edge of some catastrophe and convulsion of
nature. There a grassy slope will be changed to
indigo, and, near by, an island will be bathed in a
glow of vivid purple. But the absolute stillness and
peace of such days give the mind a feeling of serenity.
Presently the wind has dispersed the canopy of cloud,
and the sun shines out on its retreating and broken
columns. Then the lights are still more beautiful.
Dark shadows make the peaks solemn, but in places
the grassy slopes ontheirflanksarebrightandcheerful,
like sun-steeped meadows where you might surprise a
nymph resting and rejoicing in the thought of summer.
At evening, you will see the pink light on the
Coolins changing to a dark purple, till at last that
also fades away, until there is only a lustrous saffron
sky beyond the dark peaks. The full moon shines
out, making a golden gleam on the water. There is
a warm glow in the air, not a silvery light, and each
crag and spire stands clearly outlined against the
luminous background of the sky. Or again, it is a
still evening ; the water is placid ; the green hillsides
are moist after days of summer rain ; great banks
of white mist lie on the tops of the hills, and are lit
up by the setting sun. A crimson glow is thrown
into their vapoury recesses, till they look like molten
brass. The effect is indescribable : the warm light
gives the touch of life to the vast slowly moving
masses of cold grey mist. Then they resume the
grey hues of death as the sun disappears. They
move slowly behind the peaks, leaving them also
cold and grey against a background of shifting
vapour. On one hill only is there a thin shroud of
mist, moulding itself to the shape of the summit like
a covering of newly fallen snow. Your mind is full
of solemn thoughts, and they are set to music, for
far off a bagpipe is playing a dirge. It gives place
to a lively reel ; you are enlivened, and remember
that, after all, to-morrow is a new day, and that it is
still summer-time in Skyc.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GEOLOGY OF SKYE
" They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat beg-an
And grew to seeming random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man."
Tennyson.
THE whole island of Skye is built upon a series
of sedimentary rocks, — gneissose and schistose,
and dark red sandstone found in Sleat ; various
members of the Jurassic series, full of fossils, as in
Strathaird and at the base of the long line of cliffs
stretching northwards from Loch Sligachan to Staffin.
Above these lie the great volcanic series of Skye,
produced in the Tertiary age, and forming one of the
most interesting group of rocks in Britain.
The earliest rocks are the pre-Cambrian, consist-
ing of Lewisian gneiss, various gneissose and
schistose rocks, full of mica flakes and garnets, and
the red Torridonian sandstones. They form the
peninsula of Sleat, and must once have been covered
by the later sedimentary series, as well as by the lava
sheets which are so prominent in every other part of
the island. These having been removed by denuda-
tion, no longer afforded a protecting covering to the
secondary strata, which have therefore entirely dis-
appeared. The only exception to this occurs at Ru-
Geur, north of the Point of Sleat. There a bed of
Poikilitic strata (fine and coarse conglomerates
composed of Torridonian sandstone fragments, and
172
The Geology of Skye 173
quartzite and limestone pebbles in a matrix full of
calcareous matter) is preserved between the Torrid-
onian sandstone and an isolated patch of Tertiary
basalts.
The Cambrian series is represented at Ord on the
west side of the peninsula of Sleat, and in the district
of Strath, by quartzite and limestone beds, much
affected by thrusts. At Ord the limestone appears
to be destitute of fossils ; the beds of fucoid shales
which belong to the same system contain Olenellus
and other fossils, while the quartzites yield various
kinds of worm-burrows or "pipes" {Scoliihus lin-
earis). In the Strath district the intrusion of the
great granophyre masses has caused considerable
metamorphism in the limestones, converting it into
marble. The fossils in this area are very numerous,
at least eighteen species having been discovered. ^
Red sandstone rocks, lying at the base of the
secondary rocks in different parts of Skye, are now
identified with members of the Triassic system.
They consist mainly of micaceous shaly marls, red
and greenish sandstone, and conglomerates largely
made up of Torridon sandstone and quartz. They
occur at Lussay Bay, notably where the Allt-an-
Daraich falls over the face of a rock, below the
^ These are as follows : —
Archasoscyphia minganensis.
Calathiuni.
Sponge rods.
Sponge.
Planolites.
Solenopleura.
Orthisina pestinata.
,, striatula.
Orthis.
Euchasma blumcnbachia.
Holopea Ophelia.
Ophileta complanata.
Trocholites.
Maclurea crenulata.
* See the Geological Survey Report for i
Maclurea Emmonsi.
,, Oceana.
,, Peachi.
Murchisonia Adelina.
,, gracilis.
,, (Eunenia) pagoda.
Oriostoma Calpiiurnia.
Pleurotomaria calcifera.
Endoceras.
,, (Piloceras)invaginatuin.
Orthoccras durinum.
,, niendax.
,, pertineas.*
174 The Misty Isle of Skye
Lower Lias series. The same group of strata occur
in Sleat, north-west of Tarskavaig ; and again,
between the Torridonian sandstones and the over-
lying bedded basalts, a patch of the same rocks
has been discovered in the form of reddish breccia
passing upwards into a sandy limestone. Nowhere
are these strata very thick, nor have any fossil
remains been found in them.
Of much more importance to the geologist are
the Jurassic rocks which can be traced in cliff
sections or in some of the deep valleys farther
inland throughout the region occupied by the
plateaux basalts. These strata, once they were
exposed, suffered much from denudation, and must
eventually have disappeared altogether had not
the basaltic lavas overwhelmed them and at the
same time protected them from further surface
denudation. These Jurassic beds may be best
studied on the east coast of Trotternish, where,
capped by the Tertiary basalts, they rise far above
sea-level. On the west coast of Skye they occur
less frequently, and are only exposed to the thickness
of a few feet above sea-level, as at Uig and Stein.
They are found again in greater thickness on the
shores of Loch Slapin and in the district round
Broadford. But everywhere they owe their pre-
servation to the fact that they were sealed up by
the basaltic lavas which were poured out over their
denuded floor, and even in the districts where these
have most completely disappeared, their isolated
patches are still found to preserve portions of the
Jurassic series beneath them.
During the whole period from the Carboniferous
to the Cretaceous age, a large part of the Highlands
must have been submerged and have formed areas
of deposition. The great thickness of the beds of
Jurassic rocks — individual members of the series
attaining as much as 200 feet — show the length of
time necessary for their deposition. Though marine
fossils are numerous, many of the fossiliferous
The Geology of Skye 175
deposits show that estuarine conditions prevailed at
recurring intervals in the Jurassic sea. Most of the
strata of the series are well represented in Skye,
beginning- with the Infra-Lias, and ending with tlie
Oxford Clay.
The Infra-Lias series is well represented in the
shore-reefs between Lusa and Ob-Breakish, east of
Broadford. Immediately below them is a thin bed
of Poikilitic strata. Above these are the lower
members of the Infra-Lias group — sandstones and
limestones with a coral reef formed of Isastrcea
Mtcrchisonce. These beds, about 20 feet in thick-
ness, contain also casts of Cardinia coyicinna and a
few traces of Ostrcea irregularis. The next series,
150 feet thick, consists of limestones and shales
with conglomerate bands. The limestones are
made up of masses of Ostrcea irregularis, while
Ostrcea ai-ictis, a huge Pifina, also occur. One of
the higher beds is crowded with Thecosmilia Martini,
forming a true coral reef. Next in the series are
beds of coarse white sandstone, containing quartz
pebbles, apparently unfossiliferous, and, as the
false bedding shows, deposited under estuarine
conditions.
The Lower Lias limestones and shales of Skye are
frequently of a sandy character, with intercalations
of sandstone and quartzose conglomerate devoid of
fossils but containing fragments of wood. They
must, therefore, have been deposited near an ancient
shore line. They are well exposed between Ob-
Breakish and Broadford, beginning with a series of
beds of black micaceous shales deposited on a lime-
stone floor, and attaining a thickness of 125 feet.^
^ The fossils are abundant, and consist mainly of —
Ammonites Bucklandi.
,. Conybeari.
Pleurotomaria similis.
Gryphaea arcuata.
Unicardium cardioides.
Lima gigantea.
Cardinia Listeri.
Pecten textorius.
Pinna Hartmanni.
Avicula sinemuriensis.
Spirifcrina Walcotti.
176 The Misty Isle of Skye
These beds are continued upwards in a series of
the same character, but with fossils of a differing
type. Gryphcea arcuata occurs, but with a less
notably sulcated shell. Lima gigantea also assumes
a less typical form. Ammonites are abundant,
especially Aninionites semicostahis and sauzeanus.
The shales and limestones of the Lower Lias occur
in Strathaird, and at the shores of Lochs Slapin and
Eishort, but much altered by the intrusion of molten
granophyre rocks.
The Middle Lias series in Skye is represented by
beds of sandy shales, micaceous, with limestone
nodules (Pabba shales), and above them beds of
calcareous sandstone, also micaceous. In the
lower strata Ammonites capricornis and Jamesoni
are abundant ; while Ammojiites spinatus and 7nar-
garitatus, Gryphcea gigantea and Gtyphcea cymbium,
are found in the upper strata, which are usually of
great thickness.
The Middle Lias formation is well represented
on the east side of the Trotternish coast, especially
at Prince Charlie's Cave and in the cliffs of
Ben Tianavaig, south of Portree Bay and facing
Raasay. Frequently, however, they are hidden by
talus and rock falls, as well as broken up by
intrusive lavas. The Pabba shales are also exposed
on the coast north-west of Corry, near Broadford ;
but generally round this district, as well as in
Strathaird, the Middle Lias series has suffered
great metamorphosis as the result of volcanic
action, and are changed into quartzites and
burnt shales with nearly every trace of fossils
obliterated.
The Upper Lias series, made up of finely laminated
blue clays, containing argillaceous nodules, and, in
some places, pyrites and jet, is found also on the
east coast of Skye and in the district of Strath,
where, like the Lower and Middle Lias, it has
undergone the usual metamorphism. The thickness
of the sheets is often difficult to ascertain, because of
The Geology of Skye 177
the slipped masses, talus, and the interruption of the
strata by dolerite sills. ^
In the Lower Oolite group the following series are
found: — i. Limestones, made up of shell fragments
in which various species of Brachiopoda and Lamelli-
branchiata have been found. 2. White sandstones
with bands of shale, containing carbonaceous matter
and plant remains (Ferns and Cycads). This group
is of estuarine origin. 3. Alternate beds of calciferous
sandstone and shale, with plant remains, and occa-
sional marine fossils, especially in the upper beds.
The fossils are Belemnites giganteus, aalensis, Am-
monites Htnnphriesianus Blagdeni and coronatus, etc.
4. Sandy micaceous shales with calciferous sand-
stones, and occasional beds of shelly limestone.
The fossils are all marine, and include Ammonites
Mtirchisonce, corrugaitcs, Iceviuscaliis, Belemnites,
Brachiopods, and Lamellibranchiates. All these
groups are found together in the Trotternish cliffs,
especially at Prince Charlie's Cave and opposite
Holm Island, and in part at Beal, near Portree, and
in the cliffs south of Portree. In the Strathaird
district the Lower Oolite series immediately under-
lies the basaltic sheets, but is again much altered
by metamorphosis.
Succeeding the Lower Oolite are members of the
Great Estuarine series, consisting of (i) black shales
and argillaceous limestone, (2) beds of sandstone
containing quartz pebbles, and showing ripple-marks,
sun cracks, and worm tracks. Cypris, Cyrena,
Cyclas, Paltidina, Mela?iia, Ostrcva Hebridica occur
in the upper beds, and a few casts of Cyclas, various
imperfect shells and plant - remains in the lower.
This series is found, like the Lias and Oolite, on the
east side of the Trotternish coast, at Aird and
Duntulm, and also inland round the Storr lochs.
' In this series the following fossils occur : —
Ammonites communis.
,, serpentinus.
,, radians.
12
Ammonites elegans.
Belemnites.
Posidonomya Bronni,
178 The Misty Isle of Skye
The intrusion of Tertiary lavas has altered the sandy
beds into quartzite and chert, the limestones into
marble, the clays into a brittle material resembling
Lydian stone. The beds occur again on the coast at
Loch Bay, Vaternish, and at Gob-na-Hoe on the west
side of Duirinish, beneath the basalt sheets.
The last member of the Jurassic system found in
Skye is the Oxford Clay series. This consists of
beds of blue clay or shale containing pyrites and jet,
and occasional bands of argillaceous limestone. On
the east coast it occurs at great elevation, but, like
the other members of the Jurassic series, it dips away
towards the west below the sea-level. Capped by
the basaltic sheets, it has formed an insecure founda-
tion for these rocks, which have therefore slipped
over it in large masses — a circumstance which in
par.t has given rise to the broken masses of Storr
and Quiraing. It occurs notably at Staffin, and can
be traced at Duntulm, and Monkstadt, and at Uig
Bay. These beds of Oxford Clay are believed to
have extended over the whole British area and to
have been deposited in a sea of great depth.
The characteristic physiographical features of Skye
are not derived from these earlier rocks, interesting
as they are, but from the later volcanic series of the
Tertiary period. These divide themselves roughly
into three classes : (i) the plateaux basalts; (2) the
gabbro rocks ; (3) the granophyre rocks. Ages of
denudation have altered these, but they still pre-
serve their characteristic forms, and are well seen in
the terraced tablelands of northern Skye, the jagged
Coolins, and the rounded Red Hills respectively.
At the beginning of the Tertiary period it cannot
be supposed that Skye was a separate island. It
must have formed part of one continuous tract of
country with the mainland and the group of the
Inner Hebrides, if that tract did not extend even
farther towards Antrim. The Jurassic strata of the
island had suffered much denudation, and had been
removed altogether from what is now the district of
The Geology of Skye i 79
Sleat, laying' bare the Torridonian sandstone and
gneissose rocks. Over the whole district of the
British Isles there had been a cessation of volcanic
activity since the last outbreak of Permian time. The
long ages of the Mesozoic period had come and gone,
and as no trace remains in its rocks of any eruption,
we must suppose that it was a time of volcanic rest.
With the dawn of the Tertiary age volcanic activity
again set in on a gigantic scale, over a district em-
bracing forty thousand square miles, and including
such widely separated places as the Faroe Islands,
the Inner Hebrides, and Antrim in the north-east of
Ireland. This volcanic activity lasted for a long
period, with many intervals of quiescence followed
by times of renewed activity on a greater or less
scale. Thus the plateaux basalts have been laid
down in successive sheets with long intervals between,
as is proved from their appearance and from the
sedimentary materials and even animal and plant
remains found between them. Again, the gabbro of
the Coolins represents a new period of activity, when
vast masses of molten rock were upheaved and
intruded among the basalt sheets. A similar sub-
terranean upflow which also never reached the
surface, gave rise to what are now the Red Hills.
What are known as "sills" — sheets of molten rock
injected between successive planes of other rock —
intruded themselves among the basaltic sheets, or
between them and the Jurassic strata below. P'inally,
during the whole period volcanic activity gave rise to
a great system of dykes, which break through not
only the earlier plateaux basalts, but also the gabbros
and the granophyres of the Coolins and the Red
Hills, proving that the upheaval of the acid grano-
phyres was not the last phenomenon of the Tertiary
volcanic system. Some of these dykes never reached
the surface; others probably did. But, as we shall
see, the plateaux basalts took their origin from just
such fissure eruptions on a more gigantic scale than
that exemplified in the dykes.
i8o The Misty Isle of Skye
I shall take each of these kinds of Tertiary volcanic
activity in turn, and, after showing how the Isle of
Skye was affected by them, shall point out the re-
markable physiographical differences to which they
have given rise throughout the island.
I . The Plateaux Basalts.
The plateaux basalts of Skye are only part of a
volcanic series of which we have traces from Antrim
to Iceland, where indeed similar volcanic activity to
that which produced these plateaux still goes on.
North of a line drawn from Loch Eynort to Loch
Sligachan, nothing is more striking than the
similarity of the land structure. Along great parts
of the coast, lofty cliffs, often looo feet high,
are piled up in a series of parallel bands. In the
glens and valleys this parallel structure is again seen,
and it is also most marked in the uplands, whose
green terraces with outstanding layers of grey rock
show that the lavas were laid down in successive
sheets. Where these uplands mount up into high
hills, like MacLeod's Tables (1600 feet high), their
sloping sides exhibit that structvire admirably, while
their flattened tops give evidence of the surface level
of one of these horizontal sheets. Of how many
others have been removed from these lofty summits
nothing remains to tell. In the Trotternish district
the basaltic sheets stand above the eastern seaboard
in a long ridge over 2000 feet high, with an abrupt
face formed of parallel bands. On the westward side
they dip in long grassy slopes to the horizon, but in
these slopes the parallel band formation is occasion-
ally seen in a long outcrop of rock amidst the verdure.
Even from a long way off the banded structure of the
eastward precipitous face is plainly seen. After a
light fall of snow the precipice of Storr shows long
bands of black rock with lines of white between,
where the snow has rested in grooves or on cornices
between the successive sheets.
The Geology of Skye 1 8 1
The orig-in of these basaltic plateaux is to be found,
not in outpouring- of lava from vast volcanic cones
on a scale greater than that of Vesuvius or Etna,^
but in a tranquil outflow from great fissures opened
in the underlying rocks and communicating with the
mighty reservoirs of molten magma beneath. The
lavas welled upwards and outwards on all sides over
the surface of the land. That surface, in Skye, was
mainly of the Jurassic age, for on the east and west
coasts the basalt sheets are seen to overlie it immedi-
ately, though towards Sleat, as at Loch Scavaig, all
the intervening strata had been removed and left the
Red Torridonian sandstone to be covered immediately
with lava. The lava, as it flowed out, filled valleys
and circled first round and then over the lesser slopes.
As new fissures were opened and new^ outflows took
place during the period, new beds were laid down,
until all underlying rocks were covered, and a flat
surface formed. That surface extended far beyond
the limits of the present island, and probably was
connected with similar lava sheets found in the
adjacent islands. The abrupt precipitous face of the
coast cliffs shows that the sheets, of basalt have been
reduced to an inconceivable extent during the course
of ages.
The length of time which intervened between the
outflow of the successive sheets is well seen by the
fact that they enclose beds of clay and shale and
sand, containing leaves of plants, pieces of fossil
wood, and even wing-cases of beetles. In certain
places seams of lignite and even of coal have been
formed, as at Camas-ban, near Portree ; at Scori-
breck, Talisker, Loch Greshornish, and at An
Ceannaich, south of Dunvegan Head. Five or six
hundred tons of coal are said to have been obtained
at Portree. The existence of these sedimentary
' This is Professor Judd's theory, and in his view the Red
Hills and the Coolins represent the roots of the vast volcano
from whirh tiie basalts were ejected. See Quarterly Journal uf
the Geological Socictj', vol. xxx. p. 233 setj. ""
1 82 The Misty Isle of Skye
deposits and vegetable remains suggests that rivers
ran over the basalt sheets, soil was formed, and
vegetation flourished. Then that pleasant landscape
was overwhelmed by a new outflow which, when it
consolidated, formed a new land surface, to be in
turn buried beneath later molten sheets.
Evidence exists to show that during the whole
period volcanic vents also pierced the surface of the
ground and threw out molten matter. Some of these
may have existed before the plateaux basalts issued
from their fissures ; some were formed in these con-
solidated sheets themselves ; but of others it may be
concluded that, like the cones of Iceland, they arose
in connection with the fissure disturbances. These
vents are now filled with broken fragments of rock
or agglomerate. A great mass of agglomerate in
the valley of Strath between Loch Kilchriosd and
Beinn Dearg Beg, covering an area of several square
miles, points to the existence of one or more vents of
volcanic discharge in that region. Others exist near
this district, greatly reduced owing to the intrusion
of the Coolins and Red Hills among them. An
excellent opportunity for examining such an ancient
vent is off"ered at Camas Garbh, on the south side of
Portree Bay.
2. The Sills.
When the plateaux basalts had been finally laid
down, they must have attained a thickness of not
less than 3000 feet. Even now some of the ruins
of this plateau, which extended not only over its
present area, but over the mountainous belt and
into the peninsula of Sleat (where only the merest
traces of it remain), are over 2000 feet in height.
Probably after this period a new outburst of vol-
canic activity, confined underground, however, gave
rise to the "sills" or intrusive sheets which are
found throughout the whole region covered by the
basaltic sheets, but nowhere more prominently than
in Skye.
<
cu
S
■04
H
u
-J
<
<
The Geology of Sky e 183
We are to conceive an enormous mass of molten
material being- forced upwards from the depths of the
earth. But it cannot get egress to the surface for
lack of a vent and on account of the g^reater resisting
force of the surface crust. It therefore seeks the lines
of least resistance, and finds these between the basaltic
sheets and the underlying strata which these cover,
and with inconceivable uplifting- power raises these
sheets from their foundation and intrudes in thicker
or thinner masses far and wide between them, and
then solidifies. One such intrusive sheet may be
traced from the Shiant Isles in the north of Skye, all
down the Trotternish coast to Loch Sligachan — a
distance of over forty miles ; while it is possible that
once it ran continuously southwards to Eigg and
Mull, where a similar sheet appears, — in all a distance
of over a hundred miles. In the Trotternish district
this sill is now laid bare, and remains as the lofty
escarpment of steep cliffs which, based on the
Jurassic strata here also visible, form a vast wall of
frowning- precipices northwards from Loch Sligachan
to Staffin. The overlying^ basalt sheets have been
denuded from the intrusive sill, and cut backwards
to the massive ridge in which the precipices of Storr
and Quiraing occur. Nothing can be more impress-
ive than this coast-line seen from the sea. At the
base extend the yellow stratified sandstone rocks ;
above them are the dark mural escarpments which
the sill has formed. They are hundreds of feet thick,
and for the most part have solidified into a prismatic
structure, seen notably at the famous Kilt Rock,
resembling the basaltic pillars of Staflfa. Over this
marvellous rock face great waterfalls dash seawards
from the moorland which stretches backwards from
its edge, while at the distance of a mile or more
inland, and mainly following the course of the coast-
line, is the massive ridge — the ruins of the basaltic
sheets which once covered this exposed face of sill,
and stretched out far seawards.
The force necessary to inject this thick intrusive
1 84 The Misty Isle of Skye
sheet of molten lava underneath the vast series of
basaltic sheets is inconceivable, yet the evidence of it
is undeniable. In some cases, how^ever, the intrusive
layers have been injected in thin sheets betw^een the
Jurassic sandstones themselves, or into the shales
which occur between the basaltic sheets. Thus in
the shales at Ach-na-Hannait, south of Portree, as
many as twelve thin sills from i to 4 inches thick
are found between the layers of shale here about
3 feet in height. Similarly, veins and dykes have
forced their way into the basalts from the intrusive
sheets. All down the west coast of Skye, wherever
the junction of the plateaux basalts and the Jurassic
strata or Torridonian sandstones has been laid bare,
similar sills are found, either as thick or thin sheets,
and accompanied with the usual phenomena of dykes.
The lavas which compose the plateaux and the
sills are mainly basalts, dolerites, andesites, and
trachytes, but they have consolidated in various
forms. Sometimes columnar prismatic basalts occur,
as at the Kilt Rock ; mostly the formation is in sheets
of coarse crystalline rock, more or less jointed ;
elsewhere there are amygdaloidal beds, full of
vesicles containing mineral matter. Such beds tend
to decay into mere debris, and have always an
amorphous appearance, which contrasts vividly with
the more crystalline and prismatic layers. This
contrast is well marked in the successive sheets in the
highest of the three MacLeod's Maidens off Loch
Bracadale. In some instances, due to the texture of
the lavas, they assume a stratified form, resembling
that of sedimentary rocks.
3. The Gahhro Area.
This area is confined to the Coolin Hills, the
weirdest mountain group in Britain. They are
mainly composed of gabbro — a basic rock, coarsely
grained, though occasionally of a banded structure —
or of dolerite. This curiously isolated group of
The Geology of Skye 185
peaks, angular, shattered, spiry, and precipitous, is
the result of the upheaval and intrusion of molten
lavas into the overl3'ing" basaltic beds during- the
Tertiary epoch. From several pipes or vents still
buried far underground, the igneous material was
shot up among the basaltic sheets in a series of
mighty masses. These, though they could not reach
the surface, must have upheaved the basalts into a
great dome, and have been injected among the sheets
themselves all around. After solidifying, and when
this series of underground upheavals was at an end,
we are to imagine a great core of gabbro beneath the
dome of basalt, with sheets extending outwards from
it in all directions into the basaltic layers.
How thick the plateaux basalts may have been in
this district it is now impossible to say. But they
have been completely stripped off the underlying core,
which also, after suffering extensive denudation, has
been left as the shattered and splintered group of the
Coolins. Wherever the lower basaltic beds approach
these hills, they are found to be interbanded with
gabbro and dolerite — remnants of the intrusive sheets
just referred to. But the structure of the hills them-
selves, the evidence of protrusion of molten matter
among them, the existence of veins and dykes, prove
that they did not result from one isolated upheaval,
but from a continuous series over a long period of
time. The region, as is proved by the Red Hills
near by, similarly formed, was a weak spot on the
earth's crust, and its lower portions were easily dis-
rupted by the molten magma underneath. Similar
upheavals of gabbro took place in Rum, Mull, and
Ardnamurchan, where the work of denudation has
also left them in their characteristic forms among the
surroundinir hills.
4. The Granophyre Area.
At some period after the gabbro masses had been
upheaved into the plateaux basalts, a new series of
1 86 The Misty Isle of Skye
volcanic outbreaks occurred beneath the basaltic
sheets which lay east and south-east of the region
now occupied by the Coolins. From different channels
or pipes, and at different intervals, masses or bosses of
acid rock were protruded into the overlying rocks
and among the gabbros, but, like the gabbro masses,
never reached the surface. These molten acid rocks
took the form of solid bosses of greater or less mass,
but they are found also as sills and veins underneath
and throughout the sedimentary strata, the basalts,
and the gabbros in the surrounding districts. These
bosses exist now as the Red Hills, and their extent
and size, like those of the neighbouring Coolin Hills,
prove the magnitude and force of the internal up-
heavals which produced them.
The Red Hills proper lie in a group between
Broadford and Loch Ainort. Blaaven and its outliers
belonging to the gabbro series, separate them from
the chain of similar hills which, consisting of the
peaks of Glamaig, Beinn Dearg, and Marsco, run
southwards from Loch Sligachan towards the Coolins.
In form and colour they exhibit a striking contrast to
these splintered masses of dark rock so near them.
Besides the groups of peaks, lesser masses of similar
shape are found around them, some of quite small
size, but all belonging to the same volcanic series.
As in the case of the Coolins, the complete denuda-
tion of the overlying plateaux basalts has left these
curious cones and pyramidal masses, with their steep,
straight sides. The worn aspect of these sides and
their lines of screes show that they, too, have
suffered denudation, but yet possibly on such a
regular scale as, while reducing the separate bosses
in size, to leave them in much the same form as that
in which they were protruded and solidified. The
removal of the basalt sheets around the granophyre
masses has been more complete on the southern side
than elsewhere, leaving exposed the Cambrian lime-
stone, the Jurassic sandstones and shales. The
isolated granophyre mass of Beinn-an-Dubhaich,
The Geology of Skye 187
south of Torran, rises directly out of the Cambrian
limestone of the district which is seen around its
sides. It also forms an interesting example of the
metamorphism caused in the surrounding rocks by
masses of molten rock being forced through them,
for it has changed the limestone into marble of a
workable quality.^ Such isolated masses also prove
that the granophyre extends beneath the surface far
beyond the actual area visible. The basalt sheets
are found around Glamaig, Beinn-na-Cailleach, Beinn-
na-Cro, and other peaks, abutting against their
lower slopes, and altered in form by the contact
with these later molten protrusions. The junction of
the granophyre and gabbro rocks is often plainly
marked, but in certain cases the gabbro overlies the
granophyre in such a way as to have led observers
to suppose that it is the later of the two. Professor
Archibald Geikie's careful investigations may be said
to have set the matter at rest, and to have proved
the later date of the granophyre rocks.
Sills of acid rock are found in such positions as
show that they, like the dolerite sills, sought the
lines of least resistance, and were intruded at the
base of the plateaux basalts. One such sill is seen
beginning near Suishnish on Loch Eishort, and
running for about five miles in a long line towards
Skulamus. The same sheet reappears in Scalpa,
and in Raasay. Veins and dykes of acid rock
belonging to the same eruptive series occur both in
the basalts and gabbros. Sometimes they are seen,
as it were, escaping from a neighbouring boss of
granophyre and protruding into a mass of basic
rock. C)r, again, their connection with the parent
mass is nowhere visible.
The rocks of which these acid bosses are composed
may be roughly described as granophyre, which
' The marble is found near Kilchrist niansc, and was quarried
within recent years. Some beautiful slabs of it were used for
the interior decoration of Armadale Castle. The high altar of
lona Cathedral is said to have been made of this stone.
1 88 The Misty Isle of Skye
resembles granite in form and composition. True
granites occasionally occur, as well as occasional
felsites. The general aspect of the rocks, their
rounded forms, their pink and yellow colours,
separate them clearly from the other rock masses of
the island, and give them an isolated appearance
which only makes them the more striking under
whatever conditions they may be seen.
5. Veins and Dykes.
It has been seen that the basaltic plateaux were
formed by the welling up of molten matter from
great fissures formed in the earth's crust. Such
fissures are now buried deep below the plateaux, or
the evidence of them has been removed by denuda-
tion. But traces of phenomena of a similar character
still exist in the system of dykes by which the whole
area of Britain was traversed during the Tertiary
age.
A dyke is a wall-like mass of solidified lava rising
up through earlier rocks. It may be of varying
length and thickness ; sometimes when it is composed
of harder material, than the rocks through which it
rose, it projects like a ruined wall from the escarp-
ments and corries ; again, where it has been of
softer material, it has been eaten away, and has left
a fissure opening between walls of solid rock. This
latter form is well illustrated in the stratified cliffs
of Loch Slapin in Skye.
Outside Skye and the Hebrides generally isolated
dykes of great length and thickness are found, but
in Skye several dykes, short and narrow, with a
parallel direction usually occur together. They
rise up through all the underlying strata, to the
highest levels of the plateaux basalts ; in the highest
cliffs running south from Dunvegan Head they may
be traced continuously from top to bottom — a height
of 1000 feet. They occur in the gabbro masses of
the Coolins and the granophyres of the Red Hills,
The Geology of Skye 189
and may be followed in certain cases from the
recesses of the lowest glens up to the summit of
the shattered peaks — a known vertical extension of
over 3000 feet.
The origin of this vast series of dykes can only be
found in the protracted formation of vertical fissures
in the earth's crust as the result of enormous
horizontal tension, followed by the filling of these
fissures with molten lava from the great reserVoir
which must have existed below the whole area in
which these dykes occur. It existed at a depth of
at least three miles, and here again we are amazed
at the enormous force necessary to produce a series
of regular cracks in solid rocks of such thickness
and of such wide variety. The lava which uprose
in these fissures must have now and then reached
the surface and flowed outwards, as in the case of the
plateaux basalts ; sometimes it is seen to have given
rise to sills ; at other times its termination upwards
is distinctly seen in the overlying rock-masses. But
what is undoubtedly proved is that the system of
dykes did not originate in one disturbance but in
many. Dykes had been formed before the gabbros
and granophyrcs were upheaved ; and they were
formed long after these had solidified. The proof of
this is strikingly exhibited when one dyke is seen to
cross another, or even two others as at Harrabol, a
little to the east of Broadford ; or when a dyke-
fissure has been reopened and a fresh intrusion of
lava has occurred alongside of the earlier. Many of
these exist in Strathaird. Still another proof is
found in the fact that a dyke of basic rock has itself
been split by and encloses a later dyke of granophyre,
or two parallel basic dykes have similarly been dis-
rupted by a band of acid rock. At Corry, and near
the market stance at Broadford, examples of these
types are to be found.
The general direction of the dykes in Skye and
over the whole British area is north - westerly,
though a more directly north and south trend is not
190 The Misty Isle of Skye
infrequently met with in Skye. In general, too, the
fissure walls descend vertically through the crust,
only occasionally deviating from the perpendicular.
Of the basic dykes the chief constituents are basalt,
dolerite, and andesite, those of later date containing
porphyry. Many of the latest dykes are found to
include fragments of the gabbros and granophyres
derived from the rocks in which the fissures were
formed. As a result of cooling within a constricted
area, the margins of a dyke are of a finer crystalline
grain (sometimes even glassy) than the coarser
central part. Acid dykes of granophyre, felsite, or
rhyolite usually occur near the granophyre masses,
but are also found in cases at some considerable
distance from them. The weathering of the dykes
is usually greater or less than the rocks which enclose
them, as these are harder or softer than they. They
show as long narrow clefts in the harder gabbro of
the Coolins, or stand out as prominent dark bands
on the sides and crests of the softer granophyres.
Even while the series of eruptions were in progress
the work of erosion had set in — rivers cutting their
way across the plateaux, and the Atlantic rollers
shattering their seaward edges. But its chief
manifestations were due to agencies at work at the
close of the long chain of volcanic outbursts. The
overlying sheets of basalt have been removed from
the Coolins and Red Hills, and they also have been
wrought upon and carved and reduced. Again,
glens and valleys several miles long, sometimes two
or three in breadth, and not infrequently over
2000 feet in depth, have been hollowed out of the
plateaux. The sea covers an unknown extent of
the lower series of the plateaux, whose edges,
disrupted and broken, have been eaten back and
now face its waters as frowning escarpments.
The time involved in working such mighty changes
has been calculated by Professor Archibald Geikie to
be not less than twelve millions of years. Its causes
must be sought not only in the ceaseless work of
The Geology of Skye 191
chemical disintegration, but in the grinding force of
the vast ice-fields which covered the whole region
during the glacial age, in the erosive power of the
rivers which flowed across it, in the subsidence of
the land for several hundreds of feet below the
present level, and in the ceaseless action of the
waves then and ever since. All these have cut down
the surface and made the island of Skye what it now
is. Everywhere there are deep glens and lofty
ridges where once there was a more or less level
surface. The rocks show the plain marks of ice-
action in scratches and furrows, and the raised sea-
beach near Kyleakin shows how the land subsided
and was again elevated. The rivers which flow
through glens and valleys, the burns which course
down their sides, are those which, during those long
ages, have carried on this gigantic work of destruc-
tion. The sea-waves aided by rain and frost are
still shattering the cliff's and promontories, and great
falls of rock from their faces no less than the silent
and unseen process of denudation, bear witness even
now to the fact that the plateaux are still being
diminished.
During the glacial period the great ice-sheets moved
across Skye eastwards and south-eastwards, leaving
boulders in the valleys and covering the hillsides
with abundant striae. In the Coolin region glaciers
arose independently of the main ice-sheets, and
moved in various directions, according to the trend of
the valleys of the district. One ice-stream, issuing
from Harta Corrie, divided, part going northwards
towards Portree, part southwards, over Druim-an-
Eidhne and along the eastern side ofCoire Riabhach.
Anotherice-sheet, issuing from the hills round Marsco,
also turned northwards and southwards, each part
joining v^^ith the subdivisions of the other. The
north-going glacier spread out in fan shape at
Sligachan. On the left it joined with smaller
glaciers from Coir-a-'Bhasteir and Fionn Coire, and
crossing the ridge north of Bruach-na-Frithe, flowed
192 The Misty Isle of Skye
into Glen Brittle. The main part of this north-
moving" ice-sheet moved onwards over the moor, and
then sent two glaciers at right angles, one into the
Drynoch valley, the other into Glen Varragill, towards
Portree. Loch Sligachan was probably blocked by
the main ice-sheet from the mainland, hence this
deflection. The moorland at the junction of Glens
Sligachan, Drynoch, and Varragill is covered with
hummocky drift or "kettle moraines" in large
numbers, full of boulders and smaller debris, and
covering the ground with a confused series of little
hillocks from 10 to 60 feet in height. These
represent the material thrown down by stranded
portions of glaciers cut off from their main supply
and left to melt in situ.^
The southward moving glacier filled the Cama-
sunary valley, reaching to nearly the top of Blaaven
and covering the lower heights on the right hand,
which are smooth and polished as a result. Part of
this glacier passed over the ridge into Coruisk,
already occupied by a huge glacier from the heart of
the Coolins which poured itself outwards into Loch
Scavaig".
Besides the hummocky drift which is never found
at any great altitude, a smooth-surfaced drift occurs
in the valleys, and imparts a flowing outline to the
hills. It is occasionally as much as 100 feet
in thickness, and is most developed in the plateaux-
basalt region, where it consists of a reddish sandy
clay, with small boulders and occasional largfer ones,
frequently striated.
In spite of all these changes, the physiographical
types produced by the nature of the successive and
varied volcanic upheavals still remain constant, and
give much variety to the different parts of the island.
All over the northern parts of Skye, the lofty table-
lands with their steep seaward crags, or long green
^At a later period this glacier found access into Loch
Sligachan, and the ice-sheet covering' the moor here was con-
sequently left stranded.
The Geology of Skye 193
slopes dipping down into the valleys or winding- sea-
lochs, are the remnants of the ancient plateaux.
On the cliffs the horizontal sheets, on the green
slopes continuous parallel ribs of jutting- rocks amid
g-rass and heather and bracken, show the remains
of the successive outflows of lava. To some these
uplands may be monotonous, because of the sameness
of their contours. Yet, whether carved into gentle
slopes or steep frowning crags, they have an un-
doubted charm. Far inland they look down upon
romantic sea -lochs; at every mile burns plunge
down their sides or murmur in their hollows ; nothing
can be greener or more luxuriant than the grass
which grows on their soil ; their silence is broken by
no ruder sound than the cries of sheep and cattle
which feed in thousands on their rich pastures ; they
are haunts of ancient peace. In the valleys and on
the margins of the lochs are many crofting townships,
whose inhabitants cultivate the rich soil formed by
the decaying lavas, or find a livelihood on the sea
which has carved its way through the plateaux so
far inland.
Dividing the northern from the southern part of
the island is that tract of land covered by the Coolins
and Red Hills. The rolling uplands come up to its
edges, but within it we pass to an entirely different
region, or rather two. There is first the district
covered by the gabbros of the Coolins. Here are no
tablelands nor gentle green slopes, but vast masses
of black rock torn, broken, and shattered into every
conceivable irregularity of form. Human foot rarely
treads their recesses ; cultivation is impossible in a
region where there are only fissured mountain sides
and serrated peaks too steep and dangerous except
for the most experienced climber.
Over-against them is the region of the Red Hills,
rounded cones and pyramids which contrast at once
with the rolling uplands and the broken Coolins.
The only point they have in common with the latter
is the absence of vegetation. Their slopes are too
13
194 T^he Misty Isle of Skye
steep, too much covered with ddbris, to permit of
any but the hardiest plant finding- a footing there.
Their rocks are of a bright colour, on which the sun's
rays seem to love to linger, and which separates
them sharply from the black and purple masses of
gabbro so near at hand. A deeper silence than
that of the tablelands wraps both round, and when
it is broken it is with wilder clamour and uproar, as
the storm blasts howl and thunder in their ghostly
and eerie recesses. The wild creatures of the land
have here made their last stand, and are found in all
their natural conditions — red deer, wild cats, eagles,
ravens. Strange that volcanic outbursts of such
similar nature should have produced such different
landscapes within so constricted an area as that of
the Isle of Skye !
These volcanic rocks dominate the landscape so
much that the sedimentary strata count for little
where they have been laid bare. In the cliffs they
are seen buried beneath piles of lava, but they are
most prominent in the Strathaird district, and on the
shore of Loch Slapin themselves form lofty cliffs,
pierced by many regular recesses and caves, and
darkened by dykes and veins of basalt and dolerite.
Still older rocks have been laid bare in Sleat, where
dark red sandstone forms the northern part of the
peninsula, and rises into rounded heights covered
with birch, through which great faces of naked rock,
polished smooth by ice action, obtrude at intervals.
The other side of the peninsula is mainly gneissose
and schistose, and differs little in appearance from
the sandstone region save that it has made this part
of the country the garden of Skye. ^
^ Besides personal observation, my authorities for this chapter
are Professor Judd's series of papers on the "Secondary
Rocks of Scotland," in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society, vols. xxx. and xxxiv. ; Sir Archibald Geikie's Ancient
Volcanoes of Britain ; while, thoug-h the Survey map for Skye
is not yet published, much information is found in the annual
reports of the Survey for the last few years, and in the Memoir
on the Tertiary Rocks of Skye (1904).
CHAPTER XIV
THE PEOPLE
"Still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides."
WHEN Skye was first inhabited, and whether
there was a pre-Celtic population, are, like
the song" the sirens sung", mere matters of conjecture.
But hundreds of years after Skye had become an
island of the Celts, there came an alien race of
Norsemen, overrunning the island, as they had done
the greater part of Scotland, conquering" the people
to some extent, forming colonies, and, no doubt,
mixing with the Celtic population and exchanging
ideas with them. But though they have left tokens
of their presence in scores of place-names (three to
two as compared with Celtic names) and in numerous
Scandinavian descendants, these conquerors were
mere birds of passage, and, on the whole, left the
island as Celtic as they found it. Or rather the
Celtic element was too strong- to disappear before
the Norse element ; the two commingled, but, in
the end, after profiting by the new alien life, the
Celtic element found itself still in possession. The
first chief of the MacLeods was a Norseman, and
Somerled, Lord of the Isles, had a Norse mother.
But who can think of Macdonalds or MacLeods as
other than Celtic? Certainly no Skyeman could,
and the present representatives of these ancient
families would, in spite of Scandinavian descent and
numerous intermarriages with the Sassenach, refuse
to think of themselves as other than Celtic. For
195
196 The Misty Isle of Skye
when Alexander defeated Haco's army at Largs, and
his fleet was scattered before the wild autumn blasts
among the Hebridean seas which his race had ruled
over so long, the day of the Scandinavian was over.
Many of the Skye place-names are identical with
those yet found in Norway, and the predominance
of the name Nicholson in the island is directly due
to Norse descent.^ So side by side with the short,
swarthy, large-mouthed, high cheek-boned Celt you
will see the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian
in Skye and all the islands to this day. Yet the
latter hold themselves as Celts and speak the Celtic
tongue, and would deem themselves the direct
antipodes of their kinsmen by race and blood in
Caithness or Orkney. Hence, when we think of
Skye, it must inevitably be as of an island of the
Celts governed by Celtic ideals from first to last.
And (if a certain Scandinavian professor is to be
believed) the Western Isles aroused the poetic fire of
the Norsemen, so that they wrote all their early poetry
there and obtained all their local colour from the windy
headlands and tumbling seas of the Hebrides !^
Of the life of the people during these long silent
ages little that is definite emerges. Probably the
Skyeman of a hundred years ago differed but little
from his far-off ancestor in early times, pagan or
^ A Norse derivation is easily found for many place-names
in Skye. Thus host, a farm, occurs in many names, Calbost,
cold farm, Nisabost, ness farm ; dalr, a dale, is found in
Suardal, the sward or tuft dale ; setr, a seat or residence, or
a mountain pasture, is changed into shader, and is frequently
met with, as in Sulishader, Flashader, etc.; tunga, a tongue
of land, gives Teangue ; gardr, an enclosed space, occurs in
Oshmigarry, which is Osmund's garth ; ogr, a bay, gives its
name to Uig. There are hundreds of other examples, affording
an interesting study in philology. In some cases personal
names like MacLeod had the Gaelic Mac prefixed to a Scandi-
navian name.
" No Celt has 5'et put forward such a claim. But it is con-
fusing to a Sassenach like myself to be told b)' my friends in
Skye that Burns was a Highlander, through some remote
great-grandmother who came from Skye, and, ergo, became the
national bard.
* The People 1 9 7
Christian. Certain new ideals were introduced by
Christianity, but, on the whole, in spite of changing
creeds, altered dynasties, and advancing civilisation,
the circumstances of the people did not alter much.
Theirs was the life of the countryman wherever
found, who battles with a shaggy world and with
the wild elements for a livelihood. Fishing, a
certain degree of rough-and-ready agriculture, and
the pastoral calling gave the chief means of living
when the Romans were trying in vain to pierce the
frontier of Caledonia, as they do now in our own day.
For the higher side of life, there were the religious
rites, pagan or Christian, to which the Celt has
always been so devotedly and superstitiously attached.
Art had its place in the lives of the people, and
though they are now forgotten and have long since
died out of use, the peculiarly Celtic designs repre-
sent a school of art which must have been known
far and wide throughout the Hebrides. Round the
evening fire the people gathered and listened to
those charming folk-tales, so full of a weird beauty,
which are still recited in similar circumstances in
remote places, or joined in the plaintive songs of
nameless bards, which if they never attained to the
lyric beauty of the lowland ballads, were as dear to
the Celt as these to the Sassenach. And during
those forgotten years, dimly remembered wars, clan
feuds, and cattle raids gave an outlet to the activities
of the Skyeman, and supplied a zest to his otherwise
monotonous existence. A document of one of the
early Scottish parliaments says that "the Hieland
men commonly reft and slew ilk uther," a sentence
which sums up centuries of history, and suggests,
to the imaginative, wailing widows, ravished women,
bloody wounds, fierce slogans, the heather dyed a
deeper purple, and homesteads smoking on the
windy moor. Little wonder that another document
inveighs fiercely against " the wicked blood of the
Isles " ! And though the Skyeman might resent
Gildas's description of the Celts of the sixth century
198 The Misty Isle of Skye
as "a set of bloody freebooters with more hair on
their faces than clothes to cover their nakedness,"
it is odd if this is not a fair account of one aspect
of a race who never could get enough of fighting.
Macdonalds raided MacLeods, and Mackinnonsfought
with both, and, on the whole, life in the small island
of Skye must have offered unending excitement in
those days as it still does wherever barbaric tribes
exist together without cultivating friendly relations.
The Skyemen of yore, sallying forth to raid the
cattle of another clan, would have agreed with the
African tribe who declare that Heaven gave all
cattle to them, and therefore wherever there is any
it is their duty to go and seize it.
On the whole, the Celts of Skye as a people strike
the stranger with a certain melancholy. The world
is not even now really converted, says Mr. Andrew
Lang, and the Skyeman has preserved beneath his
Christianity and in spite of the Free Kirk, many
strains of paganism, like the Tuscan peasantry with
their Vecchia religione, ten times more dear to them
than Roman Catholicism. ^ He believes in witches
and the evil-eye, in fairies and the second sight, in
warlocks and water-kelpies and mermaidens. Lucky
and unlucky times cause him to be select in his
periods of work, never very exhausting, it is true,
and he will try to avert evil by all manner of fanciful
practices. He is intensely superstitious, and his
superstition rises from the early pagan instincts and
memories still uneradicated.
But it is not a Hellenic paganism which masters
him ; the gloomy and savage side of an ancient
religion, common to the Celtic and Scandinavian
races, has remained, while its blither aspects have
passed away. The Skyeman has a certain, sly
humour, and, like our brother Boer, he is intensely
slim. Yet it is sad to see a whole race of people
deprived so largely of those simple joys which once
^ For which see Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland's delightful
book, Etruscan Roman Remains.
The People 199
Inspired to merriment. You see them on "Sabbath,"
journeying- to the kirk or returning- from its sleep-
inviting atmosphere after being- stormed at in guttural
and gusty Gaelic, with faces set to gloom, and scarce
illumined by a smile. Or if a smile should flicker
over the faces of the younger people, it is at once
subdued, for remembrance tells of a black mark set
against the name of the frivolous Sabbath-breaker
in the books of Heaven. It is sad that ministers
who might teach the people more hopeful and gener-
ous views of life, should go on insisting on "the
gloomy gospel of damnation." Presbyterianism,
or at least the straiter portion of it, condemns
bagpipe music, dancing, and the numerous innocent
amusements which once made the life of the people
so happy, and, if truth be told, is harder upon those
who cherish these things than upon the more guilty
sinner. The minister has much to answer for, and
religion, as taught to these people, has much to do
with this gloomy character.^ Yet it would be less
than just not to say that an earlier Calvinism than
that of Presbyterianism moulded the Celt and made
him the melancholy creature that he is. The primi-
tive religion which the countless generations, who
were the forgotten forefathers of the crofters, cherished,
must also have been stern and savage, as, in truth,
it is known to have been. The old gods delighted
in human sacrifices, and their Celtic worshippers
loved to pay them due respect, and reeked of blood
and slaughter. Their acquaintance with the rough
Norseman did not teach them a gentle creed.
Nor has the environment in which the people live
been without its depressing effects upon their char-
acter. It is true that on a glorious summer day,
when the sun shines out of a cloudless Italian sky,
when ocean is calm, save for its "many-twinkling
smile," when the moor is decked with flowers and
1 Stewart, in his Sketches of the H!ghla?ids, i. 135 (1825), has
justly noted the effects of fanaticism in religion on the Highland
character.
200 The Misty Isle of Skye
redolent with fragrant scents, when the lark sings
blithely overhead, and all nature invites the beholder
with a subtly seductive charm, the landscape is as
joyful and inspiring as could be wished for. Then
the blithe gods of Greece might conceivably disport
themselves on the flowery moorland, or the nymphs'
wild, careless laughter be heard from the hollows as
they sported with the fauns, or the white arms of a
naiad flash from the dark pools of the mountain
torrent, while the rustics praised these light divinities
with careless song and dance. But "it is not always
May," and though it would be disloyal to say that
Skye has not its due share of summer weather, yet
the gloom of the short winter days, the howling
winds, the pitiless lashing rain and hail, above all,
the savage grandeur of mountain or towering cliff"
or raging sea, and the fixed melancholy of the wide
moorlands with their sober hues, all have a depress-
ing eff"ect on the islander who lives without change
among them. He strives with unsympathetic nature
for a scant livelihood — cultivating scanty patches
between the bare stone ribs of the earth, or braving
the perils of the sea for fish.^ He perceives himself
condemned to the same monotonous life from year
to year, shut in among his moorlands from the
bravery of the outer world, shut out, too, from all
those joyful merry-makings and amusements, which
temper the monotony of other men's lives in cities.
All winter he must sit perforce in his gloomy little
hut, with its earthen floor and peaty atmosphere,
debarred utterly from work or diversion. The gossip
of the township, the deadly ecclesiastical feuds of
the narrow sects of Presbyterianism, the political
situation as it is set forth by the local newspapers
from Dingwall or Inverness, and the delinquencies
of these betes huniahies, the landlords, keep his mind
from becoming quite a blank, and so winter wears
round to spring-time and work. All these things
^ This hardly applies to Skye, for the Skyeman is no great
fisherman.
The People 201
tend to make the islesman what he is, and thoug-h
to the laudator tetnporis acti the life of the Skyeman
may seem bHssful through ignorance, one can but
regret that it is not more open to the more generous
vistas along which other men perceive the things of
the wider life.
Yet the life of the crofter has its compensations.
A living is secure, if it be but a scanty one, and he
has but few wants. Herrings, meal, and tea are
easily procured, and if they do not make a banquet
of the gods, yet, with an occasional braxy sheep,
they satisfy the Skyeman. He lives, too, save in his
hut (where, however, the peat reek does him no real
harm and acts as a disinfectant), amidst an atmo-
sphere which invigorates like a tonic and is a thousand
times more delightful. And, incredible as it may
seem, he manages to save money, and stories are
current of this and the other crofter having- a long-
bank account. One good man came to participate
in the gift of seed potatoes given by a benevolent
Government. He pulled out of his pocket not his
form of application, as he thought, but a deposit
receipt for two hundred pounds ! How do they
manage it ? asks the stranger. But that is a
question which only the crofter can answer, and one
which he is not the least likely to reply to, not even
though his minister should ask it.
Again, if he is prone to certain diseases, like con-
sumption, or to insanity out of all proportion to the
population, that is because he subsists now so largely
on boiled tea, and also because years and years of
inbreeding have enfeebled the vital powers. For,
when all is said, we cannot but feel that the race is
one which, in its present surroundings, is enfeebled
and dying. If it is tenacious of its hold on life, the
elements of strength have little to back them up.
Habits of procrastination denote a feeble vitality,
and the customary submission to fate suggests that
the fires of energy are burning low. "It will do
to-morrow," or " time enough," are common sayings
202 The Misty Isle of Skye
in a Skyeman's mouth when work presses, uttered
in Gaelic with an incredibly and amusingly bored
intonation ; and, to tell the truth, he is incredibly
lazy. An active outsider is sore put to it when he
employs a man who dawdles hopelessly through the
day, and it takes years before he learns patience, nor
indeed is the lesson ever thoroughly acquired. This
procrastination or laziness is humorously illustrated
by the following verse which a crofter was moved
to utter : —
"Oh, that the peats would cut themselves,
The fish shump on the shore,
And that we all in bed might lie
For aye and evermore, och, och ! "
As in all savage communities, the women are the
more active, walking miles to sell eggs or fowls,
carrying up heavy creels of sea-ware for manure,
and in general taking much the greater pains to
accomplish something, while the men merely loaf
about smoking. In spite of these excessive toils,
they preserve an erect carriage, even to old age, and
though not comely, preserve a certain freshness of
appearance which is not unpleasing. Yet much of
this labour seems unwomanly, and it is more than
doubtful whether the emancipated women of our
time would approve of these masculine labours. It
is no uncommon sight to see two women with a rope
round their chests drawing a harrow across the fields,
just as Arthur Young saw a woman and an ox
harnessed to the plough in France before the
Revolution.
Ages ago the Celtic art was justly celebrated over
Europe. Carved stones, ruined fanes, silver work,
and illuminated manuscripts all survive to attest its
curious beauty, its intricate patterns, and the delicacy
of the artist's hand. Like all social art it had sprung
from a close imitation of natural forms, which in time
became conventionalised, but, in its later stages, it
reblossomed into a very luxuriance of new conven-
The People 203
tionalism, in which both the orig-inal pattern and the
earher conventional rendering could barely be traced.
The practice of this native art has long ago perished,
nor, in spite of its long existence, can the Celts be
called an artistic people, as were the Greeks, Only
a few in each generation and over a wide district
preserved the artistic tradition, but the bulk of the
people must have been dull to its refining influence.
You will see more artistic and highly decorated
houses in Fiji than you will in Skye. Even the
wigwam of the Red Indian shows greater refine-
ment than the black houses of Skye and the rest of
the Hebrides. If it were not for the fact that the
people are now, in most cases, within daily touch
of civilisation, and have access to newspapers and
to luxuries which to their grandfathers were not even
a name, you would say, seeing these ugly, dwarfish
black houses for the first time, that they belonged to
a savage race remote from every refining influence.
The eff"orts of the people, never, perhaps, very great,
are frustrated by their natural surroundings and the
moist climate, and, on the whole, the struggle for
life is too keen for them to be careful of its merely
ornamental side. So far as that exists it is seen in
the art of dyeing and of blending colours to form
the tartans of the clans. Its lack, again, is revealed
in the absence of those small gardens which are the
pride of southern cottagers, and beautify to an extra-
ordinary extent the little landscape in which they
are set.
There can be no doubt that it is precisely those
factors, responsible for the want of any widespread
love of beauty, which are to blame for the excessive
whisky-drinking so common in Skye and all over the
Highlands. In days gone by it must have run like
water, and it was no uncommon thing for a man to
drink a bottle of whisky daily. Lairds and tacksmen
had a dram brought to their bedsides before getting
up, as their degenerate successors nowadays have
a cup of tea — both customs bad, but the former
204 The Misty Isle of Skye
probably the lesser evil of the two. Under the old
regime, say forty or fifty years ago, the drinking
customs in Skye were notorious. All the tacksmen
drank heavily, and a whole bottle of whisky only
made them mellow. The real man only appeared
under the influence of liquor ; hence in any business
transaction the parties to it urged each the other on
to fresh exertions, each hoping thus to come in time
to the true opinion of his opponent and so get the
better of him. On market-days in Portree, the
farmers all joined in the ordinary at the village inn,
where they sat eating and drinking till they were
quite tipsy, afterwards sallying out to play shinty.
No shame was attached to these proceedings, and
indeed they were quite en regie. Nowadays things
have changed for the better ; the farmers are sober
men, content with an occasional glass, and conscious
that modern competition makes drunken habits spell
ruin. Formerly every event was made an occasion
. for drinking. If it was raining, it was *' we'll have a
dram to keep out the wet" ; if it was cold, "we'll
have a dram to keep out the cold " ; and if it was a
fine day, why then "we'll drink its health." Yet it
would be foolish optimism to say that drinking has
really entirely ceased, else why do so many scores
of travellers for whisky firms come to Skye ? Every-
body, in fact, drinks, and the crofter, though he has
given up the private manufacture of whisky, can buy
it so cheaply (and badly) that he consumes a good
deal of it. As one of them once said in my hearing,
" Och ! I will never think I have a dram until I have
two." It is not unlikely that wise and not fanatical
dealing with this terrible Highland curse would
eflfect much good ; for instance, a temperance society
lately started at Dunvegan by MacLeod and Mrs.
MacLeod now numbers over a hundred members.
But drinking in Skye is an old story. An act of the
Privy Council in 1616 restricted Mackinnon to one
tun of wine, and MacLeod and Donald Gorme to four
tuns yearly, the act alleging as a reason for this pro-
The People 205
hibition that "the beastlie and barbarous cruelties
and inhumanities that fallis out amang- the Islesmen "
are caused by " the grite and extraordinar excesse in
drinking- of wyne."
I have referred already to the Highland Presby-
terianism. I shall describe one of its most quaint
features, an out-of-doors Communion, or "occasion,"
as it is called. With the straitest sect it begins on
the Thursday, or fast day. The evening before that
day the various ministers are down betimes to aw^ait
the steamer and escort those brethren who have
come to assist at this most solemn time to their
respective manses. Groups of "holy women" — old
creatures whose religious profession and (we shall
hope) practice has bestowed upon them the name —
clad in decent black, with sober bonnets edged neatly
with white, emerge from the steamer's recesses and
step on shore radiant with anticipation. To attend
these wearisome and needlessly long services is the
one joy of their lives, and indeed it speaks much
for the cheerlessness of their lives, or (should I say)
for the intensity of their faith, that they should be
able to extract so much joy from these tedious pro-
ceedings. Each day the services in church begin at
early morning and are carried on at intervals through
the day. Friday forenoon is given up to the old men,
the "bodachs," who, as the spirit moves them, ex-
pound a passage w'ith solemn simplicity and (so it is
said) to the intense amusement of the ministers —
who must enjoy this rest in the midst of their labours.
Sunday, or, I should say. Sabbath, at last arrives,
and long before the hour of service crowds are
collecting in the field or on the hillside, where a pulpit
like a large sentry-box is set up, and in front of
it a long table with seats on which the intending
communicants sit. These, so strictly are the tables
fenced, so extreme is the reverence attached to the
sacrament, will seldom amount to two score out
of four or five hundred worshippers. At last the
congregation is gathered and the service of the day
2o6 The Misty Isle of Skye
begins. There will be three or four ministers to take
part in it, and psalm-singing, Bible-reading, prayers
of an hour in length, two or three sermons of as many
hours long, and the sacred rite itself, carry it on from
eleven in the morning till five in the afternoon. With
bent heads hid in shawls, the communicants sit during
the long service. Around them, on chairs or sitting
on the grass, are family parties, for the "occasion"
means the reunion of relatives from a distance.
These, perhaps three hundred strong, form the
devouter part of the congregation, yet to one accus-
tomed to the decencies of worship even they seem
restless and occasionally inattentive. Beyond them
(to represent the worldly element) are numbers of
less interested persons, constrained to be present
through fear of "the hangman's whip," as well as
groups of children. They loll on the grass, stretch
themselves, yawn, and (if I am not mistaken) long
for the end of the day.
But (to an outsider) the music is the quaintest part
of the service. The Gaelic tune progresses leisurely,
swaying up and down, now slowly, now in sudden
turns or grace-notes, as some supple tree might sway
in an uncertain wind, and giving the effect of some
exaggerated plain-song melody. The ear accustomed
to lowland Scots' psalm-tunes seems now and then
to catch some familiar tune or phrase. Martyrs or
Dundee or what not, but it is presently lost in a
multiplicity of turns and sudden flats and weird skirls.
The precentor intones each line by himself — a remi-
niscence of the day when psalm-books were few and
most people could not read — then the whole congre-
gation take up the line in a swaying cadence. As to
the preaching, the earnest Boanerges from his box
will quickly have the attentive ear of the people if he
is a popular man, and will rub in his points with fiery
gesture and fierce declamation. Hell-fire (there is
no doubt) is freely threatened, and Sabbath-breaking
vigorously condemned, and the elect with grave, set
faces are grimly satisfied as each point is made, or
The People 207
some telling phrase or ludicrous metaphor is pressed
home. The whole proceeding has a certain romantic
quaintness, at once in keeping and out of keeping
with its surroundings, suggesting both the grim
austerities of the most narrow of Puritanic sects and
the barbaric chant of some forgotten but indigenous
paganism. The still air is full of the strident echoes
of the minister's voice, rising and falling in a
monotonous swing, exhorting, admonishing, and,
doubtless, denouncing. And meanwhile God's good
sunshine glows upon good and evil alike, and knows
nothing of sectarian divisions, but only gladdens the
heart of man.
Chateaubriand, in his Rene, describes how he
travelled to Scotland to live in the memory of the
heroes of Morven, and found only herds of cattle
grazing on the spots where Ossian sang and Fingal
conquered. It was a world dispeopled of its drea?ns.
But one may moralise to a deeper strain and ask
what attraction there can be in the austerities of
sectarianism to the race which cherished Fingal
and Cuchullainn, Selma and Bragela, and a host of
graceful and poetic heroes and heroines? Romance
there is none in it ; culture is banished ; and the
cheerful day and the smiling hillsides seem to give
the lie to its dismal forebodings.
But in spite of these things the simple life of the
people has an attractive side for those who are weary
of the many unnatural ways of modern life, and who
sigh for Wordsworth's plain living and high thinking.
The people live close to nature, and, in spite of the
evident discomfort of much in their lives, have virtues
and courtesies which would be often looked for in
vain in higher classes of society. Their speech is
deprecatory but not servile ; they fear to offend your
sensibilities by an injudicious word ; their manners
have natural refinement, and this causes them to do
and say what is the right thing at the right moment.
Much has been written on these qualities of the Celt,
and there is the less need to dwell upon them here,
2o8 The Misty Isle of Skye
save to note the truth of such statements in passing-,
and to say how much of pleasantness it lends to a
stranger's intercourse with the crofters.
Not only their independent condition as, in effect,
peasant proprietors suggests the primitive state of
their life, but many incidental aspects of it do so too,
and strike the stranger with the sense of living in
some primitive foreign land. You see the crofter
leading his horse with panniers slung on its back,
crammed with the stuff which the steamer has
brought him from smoky Glasgow. Where else
in broad Scotland can that be seen? Or, at times,
even when a journey of several miles has to be taken
with the mare, her foal keeps her company, walking
demurely by her side, or seeking nutriment at every
halt. Crofter women toil along the roads in winter
or summer with baskets of eggs or even live fowls,
clucking in a resentful fashion, which they mean to
sell in Portree or elsewhere. On market-day you
will see large family parties who have brought in
stirks or horses to sell ; possibly they started from
home when other people were going to bed, and
even rested for a while in some sheltered nook of
the moor to sleep beneath the stars. On such
occasions friend greets friend with mighty hand-
shakings, prolonged kisses, smiling faces, and a
flow of Gaelic. There is a heartiness in such
friendship which shows the warm nature which,
after all, underlies the usually solemn exterior of
the Celt.
Such foreign and primitive aspects of Skye life
were, of course, far more common before the advent
of MacBrayne's steamers, opening up the markets of
the south, and bringing meal, oil, tea, and a hundred
other things which the people either produced for
themselves, or, not knowing the need of them, did
without. Tea-drinking is now one of the most
fruitful sources of ill-health in Skye, but in 1823
the Rev. A. MacGregor says there were only three
teapots known among the crofters of the large
The People 209
parish of Kilmuir. Excessive tea -drinking- was
unknown, as was also the use of wheaten or loaf
bread. Porridge was frequently made directly from
the standing- grain in the following manner. A
woman cut a certain quantity with a sickle. The
straw and husks were consumed by setting fire to
the ears, while the grain dropped into the quern.
Within a wooden frame the lower stone of the
quern, with a slightly concave surface, was fixed.
The upper stone revolved in it by another woman
giving a circular motion to a peg fixed in a hole
near its outer edge. The first woman fed it with
grain, and the action was accompanied by a chant
in Gaelic. When the grain was sufficiently ground
it was made into porridge, the whole operation
occupying not much more than an hour.
Plates, knives, and forks were mostly unknown.
A square board with an outer frame held the mixture
of potatoes and herring cooked together. All the
members of the family sat round this board, each
with his or her horn spoon, though sometimes one
spoon had to suffice for the family. Paraffin lamps
did not exist for the islanders. A cruisie was used
instead, the oil being made mostly from the livers of
fish, extracted by means of heat. "Not light, but
rather darkness visible," might justly characterise
the illumination given by the cruisie. Such earthen-
ware vessels as were in use were called "craggans,"
and were of home manufacture. They were usually
made by the most tasteful of the family group, from
a certain kind of clay. A circular bottom was first
made on which the vessel itself was built up and
shaped as required. It was then smoothed with a
knife, and after being dried in the sun, was burned
in a peat fire, where it not infrequently fell to pieces.
Not the least touching part of what a stranger sees
of the life of the islander, are the funeral processions.
The coffin is laid on a bier which is borne by six
men, three on each side. In front, a longer or
shorter column of friends and acquaintances walks
a 10 The Misty Isle of Skye
two abreast. At intervals the first six halt and let
the column proceed between them, then, when the
bier is abreast of them, they relieve the bearers, who
now take their place immediately in front of it.
Thus, as each relay of men take their turn, the
original bearers find themselves at last in the front of
the column, ready again to act. The whole thing
works smoothly, and in this simple way each man
has the honour of bearing the dead to the last
resting-place. On these solitary roads, amid the
silent moor, such a procession touches the deepest
chords of feeling in the eye-witness. He who strove
with nature in these noiseless valleys for a scanty
livelihood, is at last committed to the keeping of old
mother earth by those who must still resume the
conflict.
"What traveller — who —
(How far soe'er a stranger) does not own
The bond of brotherhood, when he sees them go
A mute procession on the houseless road ?
Oh ! blest are they who live and die like these,
Loved with such love and with such sorrow mourned."
CHAPTER XV
THE CROFTING SYSTEM
" Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower
proportionate to Nature,
Here cHnib the vast pure spaces unconfin'd, uncheck'd by
wall or roof,
Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently
inure,
Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others' formulas
heed), here fill his time.
To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last.
To disappear, to serve."
Walt Whitman.
THE crofting township system in Skye and else-
where is the direct outcome of a primitive land
tenure which was once common all over Europe, and
may be traced in many far-separated lands throughout
the world. That tenure is known as the village com-
munity system. Apart altogether from all theories
of its origin, or from the primitive relation of the
community to its chief, the system was mainly that
of a common proprietorship or use of land under
cultivation and pasture. The land under cultivation
was divided among the members of the community
according to fixed rules ; the pasture land might be
held in common, or might similarly be divided. The
chief received more shares or allotments than his
people, who looked up to him as their father, and
usually helped to cultivate his land. With the
manner in which the land came to be actually
possessed by patriarchal chiefs or feudal lords, from
whom the people held their allotments as serfs or as
tenants, we are happily not concerned here. But in
211
212 The Misty Isle of Skye
the Western Hig-hlands the remnants of the village
community system — the land, however, being held
from its owner by the tenants for a fixed rent, for
service, or for payment in kind — are not far to seek.
Taking the division of the arable land by lot at
regularly recurring periods among the members of
the township and the use of the hill pasture in
common, as the characteristic features of the village
community system, we can trace its existence in the
islands sometimes in an unchanged, usually in a
modified manner. The division by lot is known as
the runrig system, perhaps a corruption of the
Gaelic Roinn Ruith, division run, or division in
common. This division pure and simple existed
in the island of Heisgeir up to at least 1884. The
land was held by ten tenants and was divided into
twelve portions, two tenants receiving each two
shares. Every three years the tenants met, and
one of their number, called the "constable," duly
elected for that purpose, proceeded to divide the
land into six parts. Lots were then drawn by six
members of the community ; those who held double
shares kept each a sixth, the remaining four then
also by lot subdivided each his sixth with the four
who had not drawn. Thus each person had a sub-
division or rig. The township herdsman then
received a rig, lying outside the others and next
the grazing land ; obviously the cattle could not
stray on to the common land if the herdsman took
care to keep them off his own land. Other small
rigs were then set apart for the poor, squatters or
cottars. At the end of three years this series of rigs
was let out as grazing land, and new ground was
allotted for cultivation. Each tenant had the right
to pasture so many sheep or cattle on the grazing
land according to a definite arrangement limiting
the number — a souming, as it is called.
This represents the village community system
practically unchanged, and there is little doubt that
it once prevailed generally in this form in the West
The Crofting System 213
Highlands. But it tended to disintegration in various
ways. Thus what is called "the intermediate run-
rig system "' represents the next stage. Here the
grazing land is held as before ; part of the arable
land only is held in common and by lot ; the re-
mainder is divided up into fixed allotments. Lastly,
the runrig system disappears where the allotments
or crofts are unchanged and each man holds his
own ; the pasture land, however, being still common
ground.
Each township regulated its affairs and appointed
its officials according to settled rules. Of these
officials the most important was the "constable."
On a fixed day the people met at a place called Cnoc-
na-Comhairle, the Council Hill, and proceeded to
elect their constable. Having been elected, he took
off shoes and stockings, and, uncovering his head,
bowed low, and promised before God and men to be
faithful to his trust. His duties included the allot-
ment of the land ; the watching of roads and their
repairs ; engaging a herdsman ; seeing that the
number of fixed days' labour was duly paid ; and
various other matters, e.g. arranging the circuit of
the townland crops. This last was a most im-
portant matter in days when fences were unknown,
and cattle, not to speak of wilder animals, were too
ready to come down and eat the produce of the land.
The herdsman performed this duty by day ; by night
two men, chosen by rotation, perambulated the lands,
and if they were negligent had to make good the
loss.
In summer the whole township migrated to the
hill pasture with their sheep and cattle. Nothing
could equal the luxuriant verdure which clothes the
West Highland hillsides in early summer, affording
the richest food for stock. A procession of all the
inhabitants, their horses, sheep, and cattle, was
formed on May-day, the men carrying the necessary
implements, the women bedding and food. Arrived
at the high pasture land, the huts were repaired and
214 The Misty Isle of Skye
made ready for habitation ; the cattle turned out to
graze ; and a simple " shieling feast " was prepared.
Then hymns were sung-, for in the Highlands, as
among all primitive people, all work was done to
music. The shieling life continued until the crops
were ripening, and it afforded to these simple
islanders a prolonged picnic under rough condi-
tions, and provided a welcome change in the
monotony of their lives. When the work of the
day was done, the long summer evenings were spent
in music and dancing on the soft turf, the older
people looking on and recalling the days when they
too were young. The calm evening air among the
lonely hills was filled with simple merriment, and
echoed to the strains of sweet love-songs, plaintive
airs, and stirring ballads in the swinging Gaelic
rhythm.
The shieling huts were made of turf with a roof of
branches turf-covered, or were actual beehive dwell-
ings of stone, the roof tapering to a cone and sur-
mounted by a flat stone pierced with a hole to let
the peat smoke out. The floor space was never more
than 6 feet by 9, though several huts were sometimes
joined together, accommodating several families.
The sleeping places were nothing but low narrow
recesses in the thickness of the wall, and called
crupa, from cnipadh, to crouch. In these huts,
whether of stone or turf, we are taken back to a
very early period in human history ; the structural
features differ little from those of the houses of the
Stone Age. But as the shieling life was almost
entirely an out-of-doors one, little harm could have
resulted from these confined dwellings. Indeed, old
people who remember the bygone shieling days,
look back to them with regret. They were a
pleasant holiday, spent in charming surroundings,
in health-giving air, and to many of the young lads
and lasses they must have awakened the primitive
passion of love such as we know it, simple and
beautiful, among the herdsmen and fair girls in
o
at.
u
■■fi
<
u
'J
z.
35
D
The Crofting System 215
the Idyls of Theocritus.^ With the introduction of
sheep-farms and the limitation of the hill pasture
this chapter in the island life was closed, but it is
one which touches the heart, and awakens the
primitive pastoral strain which is dormant some-
where in the being of us all.
The method of cultivating- the ground was (and
still is) simple enough. No plough was used ;
instead of it the cas-croni or crooked spade — an
instrument with a long shaft, a blade about a foot
and a half long set obliquely at the end of the shaft,
and a rest for the foot. With this primitive instru-
ment (which is still in common use) a man could cut
the sod with wonderful speed. The manure used
was mainly sea-ware, scattered on the ground and
covered with each heap of earth turned over by the
spade. Oats were grown for oatmeal ; now they
are grown only for fodder. But even in the golden
age of crofting (which one fears is entirely sup-
posititious) there could scarcely have been a large
harvest of oats, and we know that grain was often
imported into the country. Potatoes were then as
now a staple food. Many of the crofters were fisher-
men, and the herring industry supplied them at once
with money and food. Cloth was spun and woven
from the wool of their sheep, and an interesting
chapter might be written on this home industry, the
dyes used and the methods of using them, and the
weaving songs sung by the women.
Up till the year 1843 there was one industry which
was the source of much money being brought into
the country, but which has now disappeared. This
was the manufacture of kelp, ruined utterly by the
introduction of barilla and free trade. The industry
was started by Rory Macdonald, a tacksman in
North Uist, in 1735. With the Celtic love of nick-
names he was at once rechristened Rory of the
' Here and there among the hills mounds of turf and stone
may be seen, puzzling to antiquaries, but really the remains ot
the shielings.
2i6 The Misty Isle of Skye
Ashes. The industry soon spread, and by Pennant's
time (1770) it was found in all the islands. The
process of manufacture was simple if toilsome. Sea-
ware was collected in larg-e quantities and spread
out to dry. It was then reduced to ashes in rude
kilns — twenty tons of sea-ware yielding only a ton
of kelp. The work was hard ; the kelp-burners
were often not crofters, but the poorest cottars, ill-
clad, ill-fed, and miserable. In the best seasons
these hardy labourers might be paid -(^2 a ton,
but they could not expect to make during a
single season more than five tons of kelp with the
utmost labour. Landlord and tacksman, like the
modern capitalist, profited by this labour, and during
the best years cleared £8 per ton. Incomes of
;^20,ooo a year were made by the kelp industry :
naturally, when Spanish barilla was introduced, it
spelt ruin to more than one landlord, and starvation
to cottars and to the crofters who had neglected
their land for the sake of making a little money. This
department of Highland peasant life, after lasting
for a century, completely disappeared, and is now
practically forgotten ; yet it cannot be omitted in
any picture of crofter life, past and present.
Besides the crofter pure and simple, there were
cottars, who lived mostly by labour, and paid rent,
if any, to a tenant, though they occasionally possessed
a small bit of land which afforded them and their
families a meagre subsistence. As we have seen, this
class was largely occupied in the kelp industry, and
no doubt was much increased by it.
Almost entirely up to the eighteenth century, and
to a considerable extent after that time, crofters did
not hold their land directly from the owner, but from
the tacksman, to whom they were subtenants at
will, paying rent in money, in kind, and in service.
These tacksmen were for the most part what would
be called gentlemen farmers elsewhere, and in many
cases were representatives of collateral branches of
the chiefs own house, and of course, mot'e Scoitico,
The Crofting System 217
related to him more or less nearly. They were well
educated ; in many cases they were officers living on
half-pay ; and as we see them in the pages of
Johnson and other eighteenth-century travellers,
were shrewd, capable men, living roughly but
bountifully ; hard drinkers, but long livers ; ac-
quainted with the manners of good society, but
perfectly at home among the peasantry. They were
invariably called after the name of their farm —
Uilinish, Kingsburgh, Corrie, Gesto, or what not,
while their wives were known as " the mistress of
Kingsburgh," or whatever the farm might be called.
" In this scheme of society much would, of course,
depend on the individual character of the tacksmen.
Some would be careless, some would be benevolent,
some intelligent and enterprising, votaries of innova-
tion and improvement."^ But on the whole the
system was far from being an agreeable one for the
crofter. The tacksman frequently kept the best part
of the land to himself, and rented out the worse
parts to the subtenants at exorbitant rates out of all
proportion to the value of the land. Besides this he
exacted so many days' labour from his crofters,
according to the size of their holdings, and, as human
nature naturally rebels at enforced labour, while the
tenants were more often driven than led, bitter
feeling was all too common between tacksman and
tenant. This is frequently alluded to in terse Gaelic
proverbs, which put the state of matters with a
bluntness excusable under the circumstances. Thus,
" Gille ghille is meas na' n diobhaW'' (The servant of
the servant is worse than the devil) ; while a well-
known rhyme may be rendered in English —
" The tenancy is bad enough,
But tlic devil's own business
Is in the subtenancy."
It is only fair to add that the worst features of the
system, which made the subtenants little better
' Crofters Commission Report, 1884, p. 5.
21 8 The Misty Isle of Skye
than cring-ing- slaves, were introduced by interlopers
who had no connection with the old families, and no
kindly feeling of kinship for the peasantry.
With the growth of our colonies in the eighteenth
century, the people began to seek refuge from these
evils in emigration. It is a curious fact that, while
at a later time the enforced emigration caused by
the wholesale evictions in the Highlands naturally
became a crying grievance and produced a great
outcry through the country, at that time the people
emigrated in such numbers, and often so secretly,
that the Government of the day sought to prevent it,
but in vain. Emigration had then all the glamour
of a new idea, and was palatable when the people
resorted to it of their own free will. An emigrant
ship would come in to one of the lochs by night, and
next morning a whole township would be found
tenantless, its inhabitants having embarked to seek
their fortunes beyond the sea in lands where they
should only again in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Numerous letters which passed between the Govern-
ment and the chief of the MacLeods, beseeching him
to take steps to prevent the emigration if he could,
still exist in the muniment room of Dunvegan Castle.
Probably the Government was prompted to take
action rather from hatred of the Americans, so lately
revolted from the mother-country, than from dis-
interested love of the crofters. Even so late as 1830
a petition was sent up to London, signed by over
three hundred crofters in Bracadale district, praying
for means to remove them to America.
America was the chosen field of the emigrants, and
Lord Selkirk, writing in 1822, quotes a saying that
there were as many Skyemen there as in Skye itself.
North Carolina, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward's
Island were much sought after. At a later time
many went to Australia, where a district on Hunter's
River, colonised by Skyemen, was called Skye.
Meanwhile during the course of the eighteenth
century the subtenants were more and more brought
The Crofting System 219
into direct relationship with the proprietors. In
some cases leases were granted to them ; the holdings
were made more secure ; the scheme of payments and
services was arranged with greater definiteness and
with much less harshness. Thus the evils of the sub-
tenant system to a great extent disappeared with the
disappearance of the system itself.
Meanwhile the sheep-farming mania began, and
was soon in full progress all through the Highlands. 1
It had been discovered that the immense tracts of
hill land afforded the finest pasturage for sheep, and
the temptation to turn these into large sheep-farms
could scarcely be resisted. These were the days
when sheep-farming produced large fortunes, and,
given the land, it was easy to find tenants ready to
pay a large rent to the owners. But, as we have
already seen, much of the hill pasture had been
assigned to the dense crofting population throughout
the Highlands and islands. To remedy this and get
rid of them, or of the bulk of them, clearances on a
large scale were resorted to ; ^ whole glens were
depopulated ; the people were sent off" to America ;
and pasture of less value and much curtailed was
assigned to those who remained.
The cry was raised then as now that the people
had an inalienable right to the land of which they
were deprived. It is easier to assert this than to
prove it. Doubtless, while the clan system prevailed,
a chief would scarcely have ventured to deprive any
of his clan of their patch of ground without strong
reasons. But that did not argue any vested right
in a clansman to his land ; still more, when the clan
system as such had come to an end, did any ground
^ History repeats itself, for in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries much arable land in Yorkshire was formed into sheep-
farms, because of the extension of the wool trade resulting-
from commercial relations with the Low Countries. As a
direct consequence, many villages were absolutely deserted.
Their sites may still be traced on the wolds.
'This statement refers to the Highlands generally, not to
Skye, where it is doubtful how far clearances were resorted to.
220 The Misty Isle of Skye
for such an imaginary right cease with it. On the
other hand, in many Highland districts the clearances
were carried out with great harshness, unpardon-
able in the circumstances. Moreover, as human
nature is full of sentiment, it is easy to see that,
however kindly the clearance of a whole glen might
be effected, the mere fact that fifty or a hundred
families were evicted in a single district at once takes
the colour of a crying evil, which it would not have
done had only one family received notice to quit.
Yet we have also to bear in mind that the increase of
population was already the cause of great hardships
in itself — starvation and misery in every form. And,
taking this into account along with the fact that
voluntary emigration was already being resorted to,
there is reason to believe that, sentiment apart, many
of the people were only too glad to find a home else-
where in lands where nature responded more readily
to their labours. Events proved that they and their
descendants have prospered to an extent which could
never have been possible for them at home. For it
is a curious circumstance that the Highlander works
better and is more prosperous out of the Highlands
than in them. New surroundings, a less enervating
climate, and the positive need of exertion, bring out
in him (as in most people) his best qualities and make
him what our colonies know him to be.
If the gradual diminution of the subtenant system
relieved the crofting population of many evils, it is
as certain that the root of the later grievances which
culminated in the risings of 1882, followed by the
Crofters' Commission and a series of new enactments,
is to be found mainly in the reduction of the pasture
lands due to sheep-farming. From this root, other
grievances, real or imaginary, soon sprung up.
Rents were frequently raised ; compensation for
improvements were seldom granted ; there came
years of depressed values ; on some estates payments
for peats, sea-ware, and heather for thatching were
demanded ; it was alleged (often with truth) that the
The Crofting System 221
arable ground was subject to the ravages of game —
deer, grouse, etc. At the same time the opening up
of the Highlands showed their peasant population,
so long shut up in their own glens, wider vistas of
life. Better systems of education were called for ;
new wants were created which could hardly be sup-
plied out of their scanty means of livelihood ; more
roads, more means of communication, piers, harbours,
steamers, were in demand. The growing discontent
of the people was easily fanned by agitators, who
omitted invariably to paint the better side of the
crofting life, dwelt extravagantly on grievances, and
brought reckless charges on proprietors, many of
whom had no power or means to help their tenants,
with whom they were in sympathy, and some of
whom, like the late chief of MacLeod, had ruined
themselves in trying to help the crofters in a
succession of bad years. Real grievances, agitation,
the example of Ireland, all had a natural effect on
an emotional but ignorant people. Imagination lent
a rosy colour to the past, and it was easy to draw
the picture of their forefathers, prosperous and paying
a moderate rent for a large extent of land ; blessed
with abundant harvests and many cattle, and free
access to the rivers and the sea for their produce.
These were the days of plenty, of contentment.^
Witness after witness examined before the Com-
mission in 1884 showed that some such picture was
fixed in his mind as to the days of old. How little
reason there was for its existence has already been
shown, and is amply confirmed by the sordid misery
of the Highland peasantry in those days, as depicted
by careful but independent observers like Pennant,
^ There is no doubt that before the Highlands became avail-
able to sporting' tenants, the peasantry had more or less free
access to the rivers, lochs, and moors, and subsisted largely
on the produce found therein. But of course game was not
then preserved, and probably there was less of it. Raiding
each other's cattle must also have provided both sport and food !
See Stewart's Sketches of the Character, Manners, etc., of the
Highlanders, i. 87 seq.
2 22 The Misty Isle of Skye
Buchanan, and the writers of the Old Statistical
Account. We know, too, as a mere matter of
history, what fearful destitution existed at recurring
periods during the first half of the nineteenth century,
and the kindness and leniency shown by the MacLeods
and Macdonalds to their tenants. In 1837 Lord
Macdonald gave _;^2ooo worth of provisions to his
tenants, and the self-sacrifice of MacLeod in the bad
season of 1845 will not soon be forgotten in Skye.
Such benefits as may have existed under the old
system — greater extent of land, the kelp industry,
and the ignorance of the outer world which kept
the people from envy, natural or unnatural — were
counterbalanced, if not outweighed, by the exactions
under which they suffered. The exactions removed
were soon forgotten ; the benefits lost were unduly
enlarged upon. To say, however, that the crofters
had no grievances, would be to show scant sympathy
for them as a class, and though we may regret the
methods which led to the risings and the blame so
foolishly cast on the landlords as a class, no one
who knows the crofter can be sorry that things did
come to a head, and that the Government took the
matter in hand.
Anyone who has read the detailed examination of
witnesses before the Royal Commission of 1883, the
appendices in the first volume of the Report of 1884,
and the Report itself, knows how difficult a thing it
is to arrive at a conclusion which will do justice all
round. Of the demands of the crofter, however,
two very plainly emerge — more land and fixity of
tenure. Similarly, those who live in the midst of a
crofting population know how very easy it is for
outsiders, seeing the life of the crofter en passant^ to
make the most grievous mistakes about it. For
example, there are the black houses. The visitor
sees their low stone walls pierced by one or two tiny
windows ; their thatched roofs held down by ropes
weighted with stones, or by old fishing -nets;
occasionally he sees a chimney, more often the
A Ckoi n.k's I lof.^r.— Im kkior
The Crofting System 223
smoke streams out at the door or at a hole in the
roof. He enters, and out of the darkness and peat
smoke, things begin to emerge to his vision. There
is the rough earthen floor ; the peat fire burning on a
flat stone in the middle of the floor ; box beds are
ranged down one side of the hut ; a partition separates
one end from the other ; on the rafters, blackened
with smoke, some hens are perched. It seems to
him the very abomination of desolation. He goes
off, cursing the landlords who would allow such
dwellings as these. He forgets that they may be
dear to the people who dwell in them ; that they
are not necessarily insanitary ; that their inhabitants
exhibit none of the savagery which he inevitably
attributes to them in such surroundings ; they are
refined, courteous, kindly, and from these houses
have come many whose names are honoured and
beloved in Scotland and in many quarters of the
world. Moreover, he does not see that these houses
may, to the people, have associations with the
romantic past which is so dear to them, and are,
indeed, in true harmony with the rugged and shaggy
moorland on which they stand.
Or he sees their scanty patches of arable ground ;
or themselves working out of doors in wet weather,
which is nothing to them but is abominable to him.
All this spells misery in his eyes. But the crofter is
contented with it ; he is not overdriven with work ;
the work is congenial ; he is a son of the soil ; he can
turn to many other occupations ; and, compared with
the lot of slum-dwellers in towns, his is a pleasant one.
So easy is it to form false impressions out of a
little knowledge, joined with a vast ignorance of
surrounding circumstances and atmosphere ! How
few men can say what is true of the crofter so long
as he pays his rent and observes the rules of his
township, that he is independent and his own
master? Besides this, he is pursuing a business
which somehow seems to be bound up with the truer
life of man. Nature and he understand each other :
224 The Misty Isle of Skye
from her he learns many virtues ; his ambitions are
few and easily attained. Happy crofter, who knows
nothing of sturm tind drang^ and has enough to live
on of simple food, and has learned contentment
apart from ease and luxury.
With the passing of the Crofters' Holdings Act of
1886 most of the worst grievances were removed,
and the position of the crofter became one of security,
while a moderate prosperity was brought within the
reach of all who were active enough to strive for it.
The one measure of the Act which produced the
greatest satisfaction was the granting of fixity of
tenure. What a vast improvement this was on the
earlier days, when the tenant " had not even a formal
verbal promise for any fixed time, but relied on the
character of his landlord and the fashion of the
country."! Now, no crofter can be removed from
his holding except for breach of certain conditions.
He must pay his rent regularly, must not injure his
holding or subdivide or sublet it, must not violate
any written condition for the protection of either
landlords or neighbouring crofters. For certain
reasons, to be approved of by the Crofters' Com-
mission, a holding may be resumed by the landlord,
but adequate compensation must be made by letting
to the crofter land of equal value or by compensation
in money. The Act also provides that the rent agreed
upon shall not be altered save by fresh agreement
entered into by both parties, or by appeal to the
Commission to fix a " fair rent." A crofter may
renounce his tenancy at a year's notice, but in such
a case, or where he is removed from his holding for
breach of the statutory conditions, he is entitled to
compensation for permanent improvements made by
him. Enlargement of holdings is also made com-
pulsory on landlords when application is made for
this by five or more crofters, provided that land is
available and after due inquiry and hearing of parties
by the Commission. The land liable to be used for
^ MacCuUoch, Description of tlieWestern Isles, iii. 102 (1824).
The Crofting System 225
enlargement is strictly defined by the Act in fairness
to the proprietor. The right of bequest of a croft
is also fully provided for.
The working of this Act has proved its beneficial
nature, and though it does not relieve poverty where
poverty exists, it makes it possible for a diligent
crofter to obtain a sufficient livelihood with the
consciousness that he, like the large landowner, has
a stake in the country, and is, in effect, himself a
proprietor. At the same time the Act provided that
sums might be lent on due security by the Fishery
Board (acting on behalf of the Treasury) to crofters
engaged in the fishing industry. Such loans might
be used in building, purchasing, or repairing vessels
and fishing gear.
In 1897 a new measure was passed providing for
the administration of sums available for the improve-
ment of congested districts in the Highlands. This
Act allows the expenditure of ;^i 5,000 annually by
the Commissioners, together with other sums which
may be voted by Parliament. This money may be
expended — (i) in developing agriculture, dairy -
farming, breeding of live stock and poultry ; (2)
in providing seed potatoes, seed oats, and imple-
ments for agriculture and dairy work ; (3) in pro-
viding land for subdivision among the crofters and
cottars of a congested district, or for the enlargement
of their present holdings ; (4) in aiding the migra-
tion and settling of crofters and cottars to other
parts of Scotland ; {5) in the development of fishing ;
(6) in making or improving lighthouses, piers, roads,
bridges, footpaths, and meal-mills, and providing
guarantees for telegraphic and postal facilities ; (7)
in developing spinning, weaving, and similar home
industries ; and (8) in providing or improving
harbours. Such assistance in congested areas is
given by way of gift or loan, or by sale at cost price.
During the short time in which the Commissioners
have administered the provisions of this Act, enough
has been done to show that it will be invaluable in time
15
226 The Misty Isle of Skye
to come, if only the people themselves will rise to the
occasion, and engage in the industries which it tries
to develop. Practical lessons have been given in im-
proved agricultural methods, e.g., spraying potatoes
to prevent disease ; stud animals have been provided
in numerous districts to improve the breed of horses,
cattle, and sheep ; bee-keeping has been experimented
with, as well as the improvement of the methods of
poultry-keeping. The making of new roads and of
piers and boat-slips has gone on with great speed,
and has offered to isolated districts such means of
reaching the busier centres as must prove an immense
benefit to the crofters of these districts. As a rule,
in making a new road or pier, the Commissioners
offer to defray the bulk of the cost, provided the
remainder is raised locally, or, in some cases, the
work is carried on by the crofters themselves. The
reports of this Congested Districts Board and of the
Crofters' Commission itself show what has been done,
and should be studied carefully by all who wish to
understand the problems of crofter life in the
Highlands.
Crofters, however, are not always alive to what is
best for them. They are affected deeply by senti-
mental reasons, they do not always exercise fore-
thought, and they too often seize upon a present
good (which is easily obtained) to avoid the trouble
involved in obtaining a future greater good. In
1901 the township of Sconser, one of the poorest
in Skye, infected periodically by typhus, and seldom
visited by sunlight, was offered by the Board the
opportunity of removal to two farms on Loch
Eishort, where houses would be built for them,
roads and fences made, stock improved, and various
other privileges supplied. The offer was refused ;
and though many of the reasons alleged for the
refusal seem sound enough, they are somewhat
discounted by the fact that the new land was said
to be under a ban and therefore "impossible of
profitable occupancy." No better offer could have
The Crofting System 227
been made, but, as far as Sconser is concerned,
the opportunity is gone, as the land in question is
at present in process of being- subdivided into small
crofts to relieve congestion elsewhere.^
Since the formation of the Crofters' Commission
a fair rent has been fixed over all the crofting areas,
and, working out the average on the Macdonald
and MacLeod estates in Skye, I find that on the
former there are 861 crofts paying an average rent
of p^2, i8s. 5d., and on the latter 196 crofts with an
average rent of £2i'~ O" both estates the rents vary
from 2s. 6d. to £10 or £11, but the greater bulk of
the crofters pay a rent of £2 or £2, los. A ;£io
croft will usually mean about 7 acres of arable
ground, besides the hill pasture, but the real extent
of such a croft will depend largely on the nature
of the ground itself.
As examples of the extent of ground held by
the crofters of a township and of the rent paid by
them, I shall take three townships which may be con-
sidered fairly representative, and give the necessary
details.
The township of Peinchorran in the Braes district,
1 Both the Crofters' Holdings and the Cong-ested Districts
Acts refer to cottars as well as crofters. Technically a cottar
is the occupier of a dweirmg--house situated in a crofting- dis-
trict, with or without land, who pays no rent to the landlord
{i.e. a squatter), or the tenant from year to year of a dwelling-
place, situated in a crofting parish, who pays an annual
rent not exceeding £6, but who has no arable or pasture
land. The position of such cottars is obviously a poor one.
They depend for a livelihood on casual work, fishing, etc.
Fortunately they are a decreasing quantity. On the MacLeod
estate there are seventy-seven cottars, paying an average rent
of £i ; on the Macdonald estate there are fifty-five, with an
average rent of 6s. MacLeod has recently assigned land at
Carbostvore in Glen Brittle to ten landless cottars. The higher
average of cottar rental on the MacLeod estate is due to the
fact that many of these cottars have land.
* Taking five as the average number in a crofting family, this
would give 4305 of a crofting population on ,the Macdonald
estate, and 980 on the MacLeod estate.
228 The Misty Isle of Skye
near Portree, contains eighteen crofts.^ The rents of
these crofts vary from ;^4, i6s. to ;£i, 12s., giving- an
averagerent of ;^3, 7s. 8d. The smallest of the crofts
has 2 acres of arable land, and i rood 30 poles of
outrun. For this a rent of ;^2, 9s. is paid. Most
of the others have, roughly, 4 acres of arable, and
I of outrun. The largest has 5;^ acres of arable, and
I of outrun, with a rent of ^^5. The rent of the
whole township is ;;^6o, 19s. Outrun, it should be
explained, is the strip of ground between what is
strictly arable and the wall bounding the hill pasture.
To this township is allotted 3732 acres of common
hill pasture, part of which is held in common with
two smaller townships. The number of cattle and
sheep which each crofter may put on the hill grazing
must not exceed his just allowance, and so affect the
fair exercise of the joint rights of his fellow-crofters
on the township. An Act passed in 1891 allows the
crofters of a township to appoint a committee out of
their own number triennially to regulate all matters
concerning the hill grazing.
This township has the advantage of being situated
close to the sea, unlike our second example — the
township of Mugeary, which lies inland, behind
Fingal's Seat, near Portree. The crofts here are of
a higher value in proportion to their size, as the
ground is richer in quality. Of the seven crofts
which make up the township, the smallest contains
4 acres i rood 30 poles of arable, and i acre 2 roods
of outrun, and the largest 6 acres 3 roods 38 poles
of arable, 2 acres 2 roods 10 poles of outrun. The
rents of these two crofts are ;^g, 15s. and ;^io, 12s.
respectively, and of the whole township ;^66, 7s.
To this township are allotted 1630 acres of hill
pasture.
As a third example I shall take the township of
Roag on the MacLeod estate. The area of this
^ In reality only thirteen, but, as frequently happens, some of
these are subdivided, and the subdivisions made into separate
crofts.
The Crofting System 229
township is 99 acres 2 roods 21 poles of arable, and
54 acres 3 poles of outrun, while the hill pasture
extends to 1688 acres. There are twenty-two crofts
paying- a gross rental of ;^6^, 4s., giving an average
rent of £2, i8s. 4d. The largest croft has an area
of 5 acres 2 roods 6 poles of arable, and 4 acres
I rood II poles of outrun, with a rent of ;^3, los.
The smallest croft, for which a rent of £2, 4s. is
paid, contains 4 acres i rood 8 poles of arable, and
3 acres 26 poles of outrun.
It is interesting to inquire whether a large or a
small croft is better for the majority of crofters.
Some light would be thrown on this question by the
division of the farm of Bay by MacLeod of MacLeod
into five small farms, each valued at ;^2i annually,
but though these farms have been taken up by
crofters, their occupancy is too recent (only since
1901) to say whether the experiment will prove an
unqualified success. MacLeod has informed me that,
on the whole, such small farms probably do better on
the mainland than in Skye. The fishing in Skye is
always more or less doubtful, and the extra hands
employed by such a small farmer would find them-
selves idle for part of the year at least.
The answer to the whole question seems to be
(paradoxical as it may seem) that a small croft, say
of _;^3 rent, is probably better for the crofter than
one of ;^io. On a large croft or small farm, a family
can be supported without much exertion, and
certainly without bringing the crofter into touch
with those wider views of things which keep life
wholesome. He gets a sufficient living from his
croft, and therewith he is content. Men of a less
easy-going temperament, and with more vital energy,
would do otherwise : they would try to do the very
utmost for their farm and to get the very utmost out
of it, and for them the large croft or small farm would
be the one thing needful. Again, in no case does
the crofter do the best by his land. There is little
rotation of crops ; the manuring is done by using
230 The Misty Isle of Skye
sea-ware, or, where a township is far from the sea-
board, is mainly neglected. But since a small croft
of itself cannot support a family, the crofter or his
sons must perforce employ their energies in supple-
menting their crofting work by other employments.
Thus they are compelled to go fishing ; some of them
find lucrative wages as yachtsmen during the season ;
others go as navvies or get occasional occupation in
the large towns.
From the holding itself the gain can never be
great, nor is any crofter ever likely to make his
fortune as a crofter. But an industrious man, work-
ing his croft to the best advantage, and getting such
occasional labour as has just been referred to, will
not fail of a plain yet certain livelihood. His potato
crop makes a staple article of diet for himself and
his family all the year round. He will always have
one or two stirks and horses to sell at the market.
His wife can always obtain a price for her fowls and
eggs. His sheep can be sold as mutton, and their
fleeces provide good rough homespun for himself and
his family. Family affection is very strong among
the crofters, and the croft always offers a home for
the daughters who are in service or the sons employed
in Glasgow, when they have a holiday. They know
that they are always welcome there, and that the
homestead will never be wanting to them. To those
who have studied the crofter nature, this is known to
be a priceless boon. These and the advantages of an
open air and natural life make the crofting system
an attractive one. There are always plenty of appli-
cants when a croft falls vacant, and the lot of the
crofter would be envied by many a hard-driven slave
in our large cities. As he thought over all these
advantages, and considered the trouble of working a
small farm, one crofter exclaimed, "We don't want
your farms ; all we want is a croft, whether it is ten
shillings or a pound, we don't care. It's always a
home, and we know that it is our own."
Social reformers have always and rightly desired
The Crofting System 231
that the people of a country should have the oppor-
tunity of working on the land as a foil to the evils
of society, and as a means of obtaining a livelihood in
the manner of all our primitive ancestors for long
generations. Whether this is likely to come about is
still doubtful, but to all who are interested in such
matters, as well as to all who love the simple life for
itself, the crofting system offers a wide field for study
and observation. Its disadvantages may seem great,
but on the whole its benefits are much greater, and
the recent measures of Parliament in its favour have
at least set it on a firm basis.
The crofting township is familiar to all who have
travelled through Skye, but for the sake of those
who have not seen it, it is worth describing.
Scattered along the roadside, or through the valley,
or by the shore of a sea-loch, are a number of
houses. Some of these are the low, thatched black
houses already described. But, where the spirit of
progress is active, many of them may be two storied
cottages, with slate or iron roofs, large windows,
chimneys, etc. If they are less picturesque than the
more primitive structures, they are more in keeping
with modern ideas of comfort. Where these have
been built, they usually have an enclosed patch of
garden in front, where vegetables and even flowers
are growing. This is almost entirely wanting in the
case of a black house, though one meets now and
then with a tiny garden patch, sheltered by elder
trees or rowans, planted there to keep off the spirits
of evil. On the ground close by the township,
usually on some sloping hillside, are the patches of
arable ground, each patch belonging to an individual
crofter. They are planted with oats or potatoes,
the latter carefully weeded, the former not at all,
and therefore almost always covered by yellow corn
marigolds with which the stunted oats struggle for
existence. Perhaps inherent conservatism may ex-
plain this. It never had been the custom to weed
oats, and such a new-fangled invention as weeding
232 The Misty Isle of Skye
would be a reflection upon the spirit of the past ;
but potatoes, being themselves of modern growth,
might be submitted to modern treatment ! The
various oblong or square patches, with different
shades of green or yellow or gold, make up a kind
of huge variegated carpet when seen from a distance,
and lend an air of cheerfulness to the bare hillside
or moorland. Beyond and around the township
stretches the hill-grazing land, where the sheep and
cattle are seen feeding. The old shieling system is
a thing of the past, and the township no longer
migrates to the uplands in summer to pasture their
flocks. These are now consigned to the township
herd, whose duty it is to see that they do not stray
beyond the limits or to the patches of corn and
potatoes.
As you pass through the township, quiet Celtic
faces gaze at you or politely wish you "good-day."
The men in rough homespun, the women in a short
petticoat, with enormous boots, and, frequently,
wearing a man's jacket, will be working in their
patches, or gossiping in or out of doors, or strug-
gling with an unruly colt or stirk. White-haired
children are playing, barefooted and bareheaded ;
collie dogs rush after you with fiendish barks. Each
crofter may keep one without paying a tax, and (it is
said) usually keeps two or even three on the strength
of this relaxation of the law. It may not be a very
animated scene, but it has its own suggestion of
quiet life and work, of industry after nature's heart.
You are among people who depend almost entirely
on old mother-earth for food and fuel. This is
borne in upon you as you see the potato patches, or
the cattle and sheep ; above all, when you notice that
each house has standing close by it a great stack of
dried peats, cut by the crofter out of the moor, and
supplying heat and, to a certain extent, light to his
home. And all around the peaceful township (which
no doubt knows its troubles and sorrows and heart-
burnings like other communities, as well as its hopes
X
•J
y.
o
'3
The Crofting System 233
and joys) stretches the silent moor to the distant
hills or the blue sea.^
^ The statements made in this chapter have been based on my
own inquiries, as well as the following- indispensable works : —
the volumes of the evidence taken before the Royal Commis-
sion, the Report of that Commission, the annual reports of the
Crofters' Commission and the Congested Districts Board, the
text of the Crofters' Holdings Acts from 1886 to 1891 (these will
be found in a convenient form in a volume by Mr. C. N.
Johnston, advocate, with introduction and notes). For the
earlier history. Pennant's Tour, Stewart's Sketches of the
Highlanders, MacCulloch's Highlmids and Western Isles, Lord
Selkirk's Emigration, the Statistical Account, Old and New,
are also useful. I am also indebted to MacLeod of MacLeod
and Mr. A. Hugh Douglas for facts relative to the MacLeod
and Macdonald estates.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FOLK-LORE OF SKYE
" There is a natural sentiment and prepossession in favour
of ag-e, of ancestors, of barbarous and aboriginal usages,
which is a homage to the element of necessity and divinity
which is in them. " — Emerson.
THERE are always two elements in every religion.
There are the higher divinities, and there are
the multitude of lesser spirits, whom the mass of the
people worship far more than they do the others.
When a new religion is introduced, the higher gods
disappear as such, but mostly the lesser spirits
remain and are still worshipped by the people in
spite of all that the new faith has taught them.
Higher minds easily progress and readily accept and
practise the tenets of the newer creed. Lower minds,
representing the unchanging conservative element in
every race, never do assimilate them, but go on
pinning their faith to these ancient and primitive
rituals and spirits as much as ever. In this way the
Christianised Celts have continued to practise many
of their ancient pagan customs, or have transformed
the gods and spirits into demons or brownies, or
have attributed to witches the powers once possessed
by the Druids. Much of the folk-lore and many of
the folk customs are directly borrowed from the
religion of their pagan ancestors, or they belong to
that still deeper stratum of belief in magic, which is
to us so irrational, but which is the heritage of
humanity from the most distant and primitive ages.
The folk-lore of the Celts has much the same
284
The Folk-lore of Skye 235
features, whether it is found in the Outer or Inner
Hebrides, on the mainland, in Ireland or Wales, or
in Brittany ; but authentic instances of it collected
in the Isle of Skye cannot fail to have their own
value. In many of them we shall see trace of that
primitive pagan element of which I have just spoken.
The ancient worship of the Sun is still com-
memorated in the common practice of circumambul-
ating" anything three times in the direction of the
sun, the beneficent power, or by taking water to be
used in charming and turning it three times round
a lighted candle. This imitation of the action of the
sun, called Deasil, is supposed to bring good-fortune
as a matter of course. The ancient sun-god of the
Celts was named Grannos, or sometimes Gruagach,
the fair-haired. At one time this divinity must have
been represented by rude stones of a certain size.
Such stones still exist, and are called Gruagach
stones. Two of them stand near the manse at
Snizort, others at Holm, at Scorrybreck, and at
Braes (MacQueen's Rock) ; while a writer on the Isle
of Skye, in 1795, asserts that such stones are to be
met with in every district. Not only so, but the
people then were in the habit of pouring libations of
milk upon these stones as an offering to Gruagach.
It is not improbable that they may do so still. But
in popular belief the fair-haired Gruagach was no
longer the great sun-god, but a kindly brownie who
helped, invisibly, in the work of farm or croft. Truly
a god in exile, like Jupiter, Bacchus, and the rest in
Heine's exquisite phantasy. But as the ancient gods
had frequent amours with the daughters of men, so,
as late as 1794, Gruagach was credited with being
the father of a child born at Shulista, near Dunlulm ! ^
^ The name Gruagach is sometimes applied to the Glaistigf or
Fairy Woman who haunts dairies. Indeed, the folk-lore of the
two is inextricably mixed up. Both were doubtless divinities
of pag'an Celtdom, perhaps consorts. The Glaistig used to be
seen at the ruined castle of Knock. There, and at Braes,
libations of milk were poured out for her.
236 The Misty Isle of Skye
Another Gruagach at Tottrome, near Storr, killed a
woman who had cursed him for his pranks. Certain
superstitions seem to point to ancient moon-worship,
or perhaps only to sympathetic magic. During the
fortnight beginning with the new moon in June, no
peats are stacked, because unless stacked with a
waning moon they will give neither light nor heat,
only "a power of smoke." Sheep and cows should
always be killed at new moon, because they would
shrink in the pot if killed under a waning moon.
In pagan times, wells and springs were believed to
be inhabited by a spirit or divinity, who caused the
waters to have healing properties to those who drank
of them or bathed in them, at the same time pro-
pitiating the divinity with an offering. In Christian
times, such useful properties could not be discarded,
and the spirit of the well was still vaguely believed
in, or his power was transferred to some local saint
in whose charge the well was supposed to be. The
ritual observed, the offering made, and the benefit
expected are the same for the Christian Celt as for
his pagan ancestors. Generally speaking, the invalid
went round the well sunwise ; then he drank of the
waters, bathed in them, or washed his wound with
them. Next he threw a small offering into the well
— usually a piece of money, a pin, or some such
trifling offering — and attached to a bush near by
either some article of clothing or a rag. Perhaps
these may represent more costly offerings made to
the divinity of the well in earlier times ; possibly
they were left because they had once been in contact
with the invalid, and now, being in touch with the
spirit of the well, they would be a continual link
between it and him, thus ensuring a blessing. Many
such wells exist in Skye. Some are still resorted to
secretly, and it is only a few years ago that some
bush near by might have been seen covered with
rags fluttering in the wind. A curious instance of
a relic of combined tree and water worship is noted
by the careful Martin. He refers to Loch Slant in
The Folk-lore of Skye 237
Kilmuir — a loch which I have, after much investiga-
tion, failed to discover, though possibly it may be
Loch Sneosdal, a few miles north of Uig. Near it
was a sacred well round which the invalids went
three times after drinking its waters, leaving behind
them scraps of clothing, coloured threads, coins, or
pins. Beside this well was a copse, regarded with
such awe that none would cut even the smallest
twig from it, while the fish in the loch and the loch
itself were both sacred. Well, loch, and copse were
doubtless the relics of some ancient pagan place of
worship, taboo to the pagan Celt, except under strict
conditions, and whose sacredness has still remained
after centuries of Christianity. This loch is referred
to in an unpublished description of the Isle of Skye
in the Advocates' Library, which tells how, if any
ventured to cut the copse, he sickened or was visited
" with some signal inconvenience."
This statement about the copse at Loch Slant
shows the persistence of the belief in the sacredness
of trees. They were themselves worshipped as the
abode of spirits, or were sacred to certain divinities,
just as a multiplicity of plants and herbs were. This
belief is illustrated in the frequent occurrence of
the elder, less frequently the rowan, growing beside
crofters' huts in Skye. They afford protection to the
home, to men, and to cattle, from the evil powers
ever ready to injure humanity and their belongings.
Parts of the rowan have the occult powers of the
whole growing tree. A rowan wand placed over
the door of barn or byre keeps off witches and evil
spirits ; a twig bound in a circlet and placed beneath
a vessel of milk prevents its being spirited away ;
while a fire of rowan-wood is three times sacred.
From classical sources we know that the Celts
ascribed magical powers to certain plants, e.g. the
mistletoe and the club-moss, when gathered with
attention to an ordered ritual. The club-moss is
still regarded in Brittany with awe, and the ancient
ritual in gathering it also survives. We need not
238 The Misty Isle of Skye
wonder, then, that many plants are still sacred to
the Celt. Among" others which have both medical
and occult powers are the water-cress (biolair), the
ivy, the bramble, the figwort, St. John's wort, the
bog-violet. The figwort has the power of ensuring
a supply of milk when placed in the byre ; St. John's
wort wards off enchantments, the evil-eye, even
death itself, besides bringing plenty to house and
field and fold. But it must be accidentally found,
and ought to be placed secretly in a woman's bodice
or a man's waistcoat under the armpit to ensure
luck, for did not the blessed Columcille himself carry
it thus ?
Traces of agricultural magic, of the ancient
worship of the powers of life and growth, are seen
in the custom of taking the last sheaf cut at harvest
and hanging it within the house over the doorway to
ensure luck for the coming year. This corn-maiden,
Maighdean-Bhuana, was once believed to hold the
divine life of the corn. Hence it was of the utmost
importance to secure it and all its life and luck-
bringing powers, so that, at next sowing time, the
precious grains of this sheaf might be mixed with
the bulk of the seed-corn as an invigorating force.
Another custom at harvest has less obvious connec-
tion with the ancient creed. The crofter who first
completes the cutting of his fields makes a sheaf into
the fanciful likeness of an old woman, and places
it in the unfinished field of his neighbour. This
Ghobhar Bhacach, or lame goat, is naturally the
cause of much shame and humiliation to the crofter
who is unlucky enough to have it set up in his land.
Perhaps the custom arose from some gradual mis-
understanding of the purpose of the Maighdean-
Bhuana.
So far these customs are relics of the more whole-
some side of the ancient religion. But the hated
demons, the spirits who brought storm and dark-
ness and evil, who were feared and detested, have
also remained, probably little changed, and hardly
The Folk-lore of Skye 239
even associated with or transformed into the devil and
his imps, as has so often happened elsewhere. We
may see traces of them in the water-bulls, water-
horses, and kelpies which are said to haunt so
many lochs and streams. The two former have
the ordinary animal appearance, but are of a vast
size, and naturally are very terrifying- to the scared
beholder. They pursue him, and when they catch
him, carry him beneath the waters to satisfy their
hunger. Foals and calves of a highly spirited
temper are known to owe their male parentage
to these demoniac animals. But they could also
change their shape, appearing even in human guise,
and luring the unwary traveller to the loch-side,
where they resumed their awful form when it was
too late for him to flee. The nearer of the two
Storr lochs. Loch Fada, is known to be haunted
by a water-bull ; it was also the haunt of a water-
horse, slaughtered with a knife after it had killed
a man. Loch nan Dubhrachan, between Isle Ornsay
and Knock, was also tenanted by a water-horse. As
this latter loch is close to the high road, which here
runs through a lonely part of the island, it is not
to be wondered at that it is an object of local terror.
The water-horse had 3. penchant for pretty girls, but
they did not like his attentions. No young woman
would venture near Loch Sgubaidh in Strath (where
dwelt a water-horse), lest he should rush out and
carry her off. In the wild Coolin Hills is a wilder
corrie called Coire- nan - Uraisg, or corrie of the
monster — a fearful shape, half-human, half-goat,
with long hair, long teeth and claws. Fortunately
for the Skyemen, this corrie is too far removed
from the haunts of men for its grisly inhabitant to
do much harm.
It is but seldom, as has been said, that such
beings are connected with the devil, but of him
some curious stories are told. In old days a certain
officer in Skye make a compact with Satan, who, at
the time appointed, was to meet his victim at a
240 The Misty Isle of Skye
certain place. In order to prevent his being- carried
off, the wise soldier took with him a dozen others,
armed with guns and swords, hoping to beat off
the arch-enemy. One of them, scenting danger in
the enterprise, loitered behind, pretending to be
ill, and when the others were out of sight, quietly
returned home. But as for the soldier and his
friends, nothing was ever heard or seen of them
again. It takes a long spoon to sup with the
devil !
In the fairies (in whom the Skyeman, like his
fellow - Celts, believes so strongly, proving their
existence, like that of witches, from the Bible) we
may see a set of beings standing midway between
the survivals of the beneficent and those of the
harmful powers, and partaking part of the nature
of both. The Skye fairies do not differ much from
the fairies of other places. They are a small race,
dressed always in green ; they live in knolls known
by the greenness of their grass, or (as in Ireland) in
duns ; and from these they emerge at night to
dance and sport to the music of the pipes on the
sward and heath. Fortunate persons, like a certain
man at Staffin, have listened to their ravishing
music. He heard it at Flodigarry, ''and och, it
was beautiful, whatever!" nor, as he said, was he
ever so jolly in his life. Another man, less wise,
was enticed by them to take part in their dance.
Probably it was the irresistible reel. But at the
end of it, though it had seemed to be no more
than a day, he found he had danced for a whole
year.^ The fairies in a kindly mood will do all
the work of a house in a single night. But he for
whom they work must provide employment for them
1 I have recently heard of a boy who saw a lot of people,
little and big, dancing near Dunvegan manse. Next moment
all had vanished. He and those to whom he told the tale had
no doubt they were fairies. Hallucinatory appearances are
often suggested by, or take form from, preconceived ideas and
beliefs. This is probably a case in point.
The Folk-lore of Skye 241
continually, as, like Michael Scott's familiar spirits,
they do their work so swiftly that they are always
asking" for more. Another man at Flodigarry was
troubled with their assiduous attentions, and went
to an old crofter, a wise man, to take his advice.
He bade him give the fairies a sieve, and tell them
to scoop up the sea with it — a task which they have
not completed yet, and thus he got rid of them.
The fairies who lived in Dun Borve, near Portree,
were g-ot rid of by their bored host crying, "Dun
Borve is on fire," and away they rushed to put out
the flames. This is a tale with many local variants
all through the Highlands.
The usual stories are told of grown people being-
carried off into the fairy hill, where time lapsed as
in a dream, of thefts from fairyland, and of infants
stolen away, and an ugly changeling like a withered
old man, with a giant's appetite, left behind. To
prevent an unbaptized infant being stolen (for they
were in especial danger), the tongs were set upright
by the cradle and an oatcake put across the child's
feet.^ The reason alleged was that the fairies
would think the tongs were a human being — a
curious distortion of the well-known fairy taboo
against the use of iron. In addition to this, no
child should be taken out of doors before baptism.
Several places in Skye are noted as haunts of the
fairy folk : Fairy Bridge on the way to Dunvegan ;
a fairy knowe close by the inn at Broadford ; Dun
Gharsainn overlooking the head of Loch Beag at
Totardair, in Struan ; the Sithein (fairy dwelling) of
the Pretty Hill at Braes, from which sounds of
ravishing music have been heard ; and the Piper's
Hollow at Borreraig. Dun Gharsainn is the seat of
an ancient fort which afterwards became, or perhaps
always was, a fairy bower. From it the fairies
sallied forth to dance on the hillside in the moon-
^ A similar practice was used in Scandinavia to prevent
children being stolen by dwarfs. Thorpe, Noilhern Mythology^
il. 2.
16
242 The Misty Isle of Skye
light. One day a foolish fellow destroyed their
bower when they were absent helping the queen of
Blaaven to make a tartan suit for her son, who
was to wed a king's daughter. Only one fairy
woman remained at home ill, when the fellow began
to take away the stones of the bower to build a fold
for his cattle. Then an unearthly light shone forth
and mysterious voices were heard, threatening- this
mortal with dire vengeance. But the fairies were
never seen again, save one who returned at intervals
to weep over this once happy bower. The site of
this fairy home had been well chosen : far below is
the meadow land and the winding loch, opening into
fair Loch Bracadale, and presenting to the view
lofty headlands, gleaming seas, and purple islands
on the horizon. And all this was lost to the fairies
for the sake of a few stones !
The Macrimmons of Borreraig were the hereditary
pipers of MacLeod, and possessed a celebrated
chanter, which was known far and wide as "the
silver chanter of the fairy woman." Once upon a
time, Ian Og Macrimmon was practising his music
in the Piper's Hollow (Slochd nam Piobairean) in
Borreraig. There, as he played, the fairy queen
appeared from a knoll near by, and addressed him
in poetry —
"Thy manly beauty and the sweetness of thy pipe music
Have brought thee a fairy sweetheart ;
Now I give thee this silver chanter,
Which, touched by thy finger, will never lack sweetest
music."
Thus Ian Og won the love of the fairy queen, and
blew such strains from his pipes as had never been
heard in the Isle of Skye.
There are particular kinds of fairies, like the
Bean-nigh, or washer of the ford, who appears when
someone is about to die, washing his shroud and
singing his woeful dirge. So much is she taken up
with this work, that she may be captured, and then
The Folk-lore of Skye 243
must grant her captor three wishes. A g-hilHe of
Macdonald of the Isles saw her washing a shroud in
Benbecula. He held her tightly, and forced her to
tell him whose shroud it was, to grant him that
he should marry whoever his heart desired, and to
promise that there should always be plenty of sea-
ware in the loch by his house. When he heard that
it was his chief's shroud, and that he would never
leave nor return to Benbecula, he threw it far into
the loch, and rushed off with the dreaded informa-
tion. When his chief heard the news, he had a
cow slaughtered (perhaps as a propitiatory sacrifice),
and his galley got ready. Then, hasting to Skye, he
never again returned to the fatal island, and thus
broke the fairy spell.
The fairies, here as elsewhere, keep herds of cattle,
which, however, will only graze on certain spots.
Thus the cows which lived with their fairy mistress
in the ruined Dun Ghearra-Sheader, a mile from
Portree, went all the way to pasture at Achnahannait,
in Braes. The fairy has been seen at twilight,
standing on the dun and calling them home in a
rhyme still recited among the people. Other fairy
cattle live under the waves in
" Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground,"
but occasionally emerge to improve the breed of the
common or land cow ! To prevent their return,
earth, and especially earth from a churchyard, is
thrown between them and the sea. This was done
to the cattle which came ashore at MacNicol's Rock
on Scorrybreck farm, and a voice was heard at night
calling them home in vain.
On the whole, fairies are now seldom seen, though
people may be still afraid of seeing them. They
have gradually disappeared on account of the spread
of gospel truth, as one old woman suggested ; the
244 The Misty Isle of Skye
Bible is a well-known charm against fairies, just as
iron is ! ^ Fairy Bridge is no longer haunted by the
people of peace since the well-known minister, who is
still remembered as the Apostle of the North, held
a preaching there. But if fairies do not abound,
stories about them do, and are firmly believed in.
The mermaid, like the sea-serpent, is still seen by
the credulous islesmen. She is called Maighdean
na Tuinne, maid of the wave. A Skyeman said to
me, " Ach ! I believe there will be such creatures
myself, as there are horses with men's heads in
distant lands. I will have seen a picture of them,
whatever." He had seen a drawing of the classical
centaur probably. One of MacLeod's retainers,
resting on the steep cliff above the Maidens, near
which a reef of rock runs out into the sea, saw a
mermaid combing her tresses. " I lifted my gun,"
said he, "meaning to shoot her, for I thought if I
got her I could carry her round the country, and
myself would be a rich man. And then I put down
the gun, for I thought she's so humanlike that if I
shoot her I will be hanged. And so I kept lifting it
and putting it down, until, plop, the merry-maid
took one dive and disappeared into the sea."
Another islesman at Kyle-rhea gave out that he saw
the sea-serpent. "Yes, yes, one day I saw the
fearful head of the beast go down the Kyle, and
indeed it was a week after before his tail had
passed ! "
So much for supernatural beings. There are
human beings also with supernatural powers, and
in these witches we may see the lineal descendants
of the Druids and Druidesses whose magical powers
kept the pagan Celts in awe. There are white
witches, for the most part harmless, and there are
black witches, feared almost like the plague. I
know one of either sort. The white witch confines
^ An Ulsterman alleged the same reason — the spreading
abroad of so much Scripture, for the disappearance of the
fairies. Wood-Martin, Elder Faiths of Ireland, ii. 4.
The Folk-lore of Skye 245
herself to telling fortunes, and my friend will heartily
scold the luckless servant-girl who is frivolous
enough to laugh at her when she is reading the
leaves in a teacup. Black witches have darker
powers, and of these some account must be given.
It is commonly believed, of course, that they are in
league with the devil, who gave them their power ;
but, as one informant told me, there are but few of
them now and their power is going from them, i.e.
education is driving superstition away. Of all their
powers none is so widely known and feared as that
of the evil-eye. With it they can " overlook " cattle,
horses, and human beings, so that they pine and
die, or, in the case of cows, their milk goes from
them. But others besides witches are credited with
this dire gift. Envious persons, strongly desiring
something of their neighbours, can harm it through
the very strength of their desire. A man was
ploughing when a passer-by stopped and admired
his horse. By ill-fortune the horse soon after began
to shiver, and dropped down dead, and nothing
could persuade the crofter that this other man,
through envy, had not overlooked his horse. This
crofter is still living, and is not an old man. When
a man or woman has been overlooked, he or she
feels uncomfortable, shivers, yawns, and is very
sick. The face is drawn and pinched. Cows, as
we have seen, lose their milk. The cure is
traditionally handed down, from male to female,
and from female to male, so it is said ; and, as my
informant remarked, '* I have seen it done many a
time." Water is taken from a stream dividing two
properties, in some districts only in a wooden not a
metal dish. It is poured into a vessel containing
seven cutting implements, as well as gold or silver,
or both ; a charm is said over it ; sometimes it is
passed deasil round the flame of a candle. Then the
human patient must drink the water ; in the case of
the cow, it suffices to throw it over its body, and
put some in its mouth, the operator saying, " In the
246 The Misty Isle of Skye
Name of Jesus Christ." What remains over is care-
fully thrown out on some fixed stone. Certain
plants, as we have seen, are also herbs of grace
against the power of the evil-eye. Such witches are
naturally too much feared for any revenge to be
taken upon them, but as late as 1775 a remnant of
the frightful legal witch persecutions is found in
Skye. Prosecutions were attempted before the kirk
session against witches for carrying off milk from
cows by the fascination of the evil-eye. Even in
1881 a Free Church elder at Uig tried to induce a
justice of the peace to issue a warrant against a
woman whom he accused of the same crime. Super-
stition does die hard, and has more lives than a cat !
The evil-eye is a species of cursing and malediction
which in itself may come from several causes — e.g.,
some unholy deed having been enacted will lay a
whole district under a curse. Only in 1900, when it
was sought to remove the crofters of Sconser to
better land in the south of Skye, among the printed
reasons alleged by them for remaining in their
unhealthy township, and presented by their agent to
the Crofters' Commission, was this, that the ground
was cursed because of former evictions which had
taken place there, and therefore it was impossible
to expect them to settle on it.
The witch, or indeed any evilly disposed person,
like the sorcerers of every age and race, used sym-
pathetic magic to destroy their victims. An image
of the victim was made of clay, and because it had
a certain resemblance to him (likeness denoting real
connection), it was believed that whatever was done
to the image would produce a similar effect on the
person whom it represented. Having been stuck
full of pins (to produce real aches and pains), it was
laid in running or dropping water, and as it gradually
wasted away, so it was hoped would the victim. He,
doubtless, as credulous as his enemy, would actually
be affected by dint of suggestion, did he hear of
the image having been made and treated thus, just
The Folk-lore of Skye 247
as the West African negro, as Miss Kingsley says,
will die through fear of a poisonous idea as well as
from real poison. Recent instances of this in Skye
are well known. Lord Macdonald's factor, Mac-
kinnon of Corrie, had such an image of himself made
by a crofter with a grievance. It was found in a
barn near his house. A friend, to whom I owe this
instance, told me that when he was resident in the
West Indies such an image of himself was made by
a negro. So do the ends of the earth meet together !
Sympathetic magic is again found in the method
employed by some witches (notably a very " wicked "
one who lived forty years ago near Portree) to
destroy offending fishermen. Pieces of egg-shell,
representing each a boat, were set floating in a cup
of water. Then the witch, with what malicious leer
and curse as we may imagine, thrust one or more of
the pieces below the surface in order that the sea
might similarly swallow up her enemies. Black
magic this, in good sooth, but again it is curious to
note that a method exactly like this, save that the
egg-shell was replaced by models of ships, w-as used
by the ancient Egyptians to destroy an enemy's
fleet ! 1
The Skye witches, like the ancient Druids and
the Celtic priestesses of the Isle of Sena, whom
Pytheas saw, and like witches everywhere, had the
power of shape-shifting cr transformation, and many
are the stories told of this strange gift — some
ancient, some modern. Two hundred years ago,
a MacLeod of Raasay had made himself particularly
obnoxious to the Skye and Raasay witches by his
severe penalties dealt out to them. When he was
crossing the narrow channel between Portree Bay
and Raasay, one of them, in the shape of a cat,
with a number of her fellows similarly transformed,
clambered on the lee gunwale and stays. Their
weight upset the boat, and the chief was drowned,
while they swam triumphantly to shore. A cat was,
' Budge, Egyptian Magic, p. 91 seq.
248 The Misty Isle of Skye
in fact, a common shape for a witch to take. A
crofter in Sleat was much annoyed by a black cat
which sneaked into his house and stole the cream —
never a very plentiful dainty in Skye. It was caught,
and one of its ears cut oflf. A few days after, it was
noticed that an old woman, living- near by, had lost
an ear. She it was who had suffered in cat form,
and ever after, to hide her shame, she kept her head
covered with a shawl. One of Lord Macdonald's
gamekeepers believed firmly that witches could take
the shape of a hare, and always prophesied ill-luck
when a shooting-party saw one on setting out for
the hill.^ Another story of shape-shifting has its
locale in Vaternish. Some fishermen there were
much troubled by a whale which used to come
dashing among their nets, so that they lost their
fish and had their nets torn. After enduring its
depredations for a time, they determined to take
steps to destroy it. Armed with various weapons,
they gave chase when next it appeared. One of
them hurled a three-pronged potato fork at the
whale, wounding it severely. It disappeared. Next
morning news went round that a certain woman,
reputed to be a witch, and to whom these very
fishermen had done some injury, was lying in great
agony, and soon afterwards she died. Her body
was examined, and three ugly wounds were found in
her side. It was never doubted that she had trans-
formed herself into a whale, and in that form had
tormented her enemies and met her death at their
hands. Post hoc, propter hoc I Only a few years
ago a distinguished anthropologist was told by one
of the guides at Sligachan that a friend of his, going
home one night, saw a foal standing on a dyke. It
^ I heard a story of this kind from Sutherland the other day.
The father of the ghillie who told it saw a hare which never
could be shot. Keeping his own counsel, he melted down a
shilling- into a bullet. Poor puss was hit bj' this coin of vantage,
and disappeared into a cottage. There an old woman was
found in bed with a sore leg. The conclusion was obvious.
The Folk-lore of Skye 249
attacked him and knocked him down. In vain he
struggled with it, until his dog bit it. Now to draw
a witch's blood makes her harmless, and compels
her to speak to you. The foal spoke to the man
with a human voice. It was a girl whom he had
first courted and then neglected, and now she up-
braided him for his fickleness. Mon tne parle, et
m^me il parle Men/ History does not tell the
sequel ; let us hope that the course of true love ran
smooth at last.
But the witch could also exert her powers in a
beneficent direction, though still by magical means.
It is commonly believed that the adder, when it
wishes to change its skin, bores a hole in a stone,
and then drags its body through, leaving the skin
behind. Such stones are as rare as they are valu-
able, and the people believe that they are powerful
amulets in the witches' hands for purposes of healing.
Certain stones of a pyramidal shape found near
sacred wells are useful, when "infused" in water,
for curing horses of worms. Such a stone long lay
in the ruined altar of the chapel on Fladdahuan, an
island off the north of Skye. It was always moist,
and fishermen seeking a favourable wind would walk
round the chapel sunwise, and then pour water
over the stone, when they obtained the wind they
sought. This stone had also the usual disease-
curing properties.
It was also possible for a witch to put what may
be best described as an invisible magic armour round
a person in order to ward off all injury from him.
This occult armour was called "sian," and it is said
that a woman in Bernisdale put it on MacLeod of
Berneray, in Harris, when he passed through Skye on
his way to join the Prince. At Culloden the bullets
showered on him like hail, yet he was uninjured.
Having thrown off his coat in the flight from the
fatal field, he was told by his foster-brother, who
picked it up, that it was riddled with holes made
by the bullets.
250 The Misty Isle of Skye
Others beside the witch had supernatural powers
of different kinds. Divination by means of a sheep's
shoulder-blade was one of these. It is a practice
used everywhere, e.g., by Red Indians and by Arabs.
The custom was to scrape the bone, not with metal ;
then it was held at arm's length against the light,
and the seer divined the unknown from certain marks
which his practised eye saw in it. A person in Skye
thus saw and described the defeat of the Prince's
army at CuUoden at the very hour when it took
place, and many other instances of less historical
note are known.
The gift of healing resides in a seventh son. Quite
recently some children were "healed" in Portree.
The healer, a man from the Long Island, obtained
some water from a holy well ; took the children into
a darkened room ; went through some mysterious
ritual known to himself alone ; and then dismissed
the children to their expectant parents. They re-
covered soon after ; probably they would have done
so in any case. But the healer's reputation is made,
and he will have many cases in time to come.
Of all occult qualities that of the *'taisch" or
second-sight is the most widely known. The gifted
person found it a painful quality, but he was an
agent powerless to help himself against the coming
of the vision, like Alan Macaulay in A Legend of
Montrose. Generally speaking, it was believed to be
an inborn gift which could not be taught, but opinions
differed as to this, and a correspondent of the seven-
teenth-century folk-lorist, Aubrey, told him that in
Skye anyone could be taught the second-sight for
the remuneration of a pound of tobacco. The
visions seen were of different kinds ; mostly they
were concerned with the immediate future ; usually
the person whose wraith was seen by the clairvoyant
died soon after.
A woman in Skye frequently saw a double of
herself walking close by her. To make sure that
it was her own double, she went out on different
The Folk-lore of Skye 251
days in different articles of dress, which she found to
be exactly copied by her spectral companion. This
was, of course, regarded as a warning of her speedy
death. The same thing happened, many years ago,
to a dairy-maid at Greshornish. She tested the appari-
tion by reversing part of her dress, and when next
she saw it, the same change was visible. Soon after
she sickened of fever and died. Many instances
occur of the appearance of some person's double to
the seer, followed by that person's death. A poor
woman had a vision of her son falling over one of
the high seacliffs at Uig with a lamb, and heard
him exclaim, "This is a fatal lamb for me." She
warned her son against going near Uig, for they
lived at some distance from that village. But one
day he went there and helped a farmer to separate
the lambs from their mothers. A lamb ran away ;
the young man rushed after it. Before he caught it
he had reached the edge of a cliff, where he slipped
with the lamb in his grasp. The farmer ran to his
assistance, and heard him call out, as he disappeared,
the very words his mother had heard a month before.
Before he could help him, the lad had rolled down
the cliff to the ravine below and was killed. In this
instance the seer heard as well as saw, and her
auditory and visual experience was noted down by
the parish minister at once, and before the fulfilment.
This minister was at first a sceptic on the subject of
second-sight, but after noting many such visions
which afterwards came to pass as real events, he
was driven to admit that some people had the gift.^
In every case the vision was unsought, and the gift
was unwelcome.
Cases are known in which there was no spectral
vision. John MacLeod saw a former minister of
Duirinish dwindle away to the size of a child, and
then recover his natural size, like Alice in Wonderland.
It is not said whether John had been drinking, but
' See a paper in the Journnl ofihe Caledonian Medical Society
for 1897 by his son, Dr. Alaslair Macgregor.
252 The Misty Isle of Skye
soon after the minister sickened and died. In other
cases a dream foretold an event yet unheard of.
The same John dreamt that a man came and told
him of the death of George 11., which news was
corroborated by the same day's post. Perhaps John
had received prior information. An old man, well
educated and well read, who lived near Portree, and
died in 1902, maintained that he saw a coffin lying
near the house of an old woman, where no coffin
should be. He tapped it with his stick. It sounded
hollow. Next day the coffin was gone, and soon
after the woman died.
The treatise on the second-sight by Theophilus
Insulanus (the pseudonym of MacLeod of Hamera, in
Glendale) was published in 1763, and is full of alleged
instances of clairvoyance in Skye. The author was
very credulous, but to the psychologist and folk-lorist
his book is a rich treasure. The cases he mentions
resolve themselves mainly into five groups: — i.
visions of a winding-sheet wrapped round a person
to whom the seer is talking ; 2. visions of the corpse
of someone known or unknown ; 3. visions of a
person drowning or dying by some accidental means ;
4. auditory hallucinations, as hearing a carpenter
hammering at a coffin in a room where no carpenter
is visible {QucBre, How did the clairaudient know it
was a coffin?) ; 5. someone is seen to dwindle to the
size of a child, and then resume his usual height.
All these instances are followed by the death of the
person seen, sometimes by that of the seer. One
case mentioned by Theophilus is worth quoting for
its local colour: — Lieutenant Keith and some other
guests staying at Dunvegan Castle had gone down
to the change-house (its ruins stand half a mile
north of the castle), like Baron Bradwardine and
his friends, to make a night of it. There Keith
was taken ill and died in his chair. The inn-keeper
declared he had seen him dead three hours before
the event — the first time he had been aware of his
powers as a seer, while Donald MacLeod of Feorlig
The Folk-lore of Skye 253
had seen the poor lieutenant dwindle to the size of a
boy. " Both seers are still willing to make oath to
the premises," says Theophilus, and no doubt they
were.
A well-known story in Skye is that of the minister
who, not long ago, walking on a lonely road, saw a
phantasmal funeral. It presaged his own decease,
which took place a few days later. Here is an
interesting case which I heard from the friend of
the woman who had the gift. " It was very trying
to her." One day, visiting a neighbour, she fainted.
On coming to, she was pressed to tell the reason,
but refused. Subsequently she acknowledged that
she had seen the corpse of a boy, who was then
ploughing in a field near by. This boy died within
the week. The woman had many such visions, but
they were disliked by her, a not uncommon trait in
the seer wherever found, just as even the willing
mystic had to undergo the dread pains of " the dark
night of the soul." But it is possible to get rid of
the gift if it is coped with in due time. When the
seer has had his first vision, let him tell it to a friend
who meanwhile turns the leaves of a Bible rapidly
over before his face. He will be troubled with no
further visions. My informant had herself some
curious experiences. She had often heard, in her
little shop, the mysterious sound of scissors cutting
cotton, as if for a shroud, before a death in the
neighbourhood. Two men saw an oilskin coat lying
on her counter begin to move up and down in a
mysterious manner ; they watched its movements
in awed silence. Presently all was explained : a
girl came in saying that so-and-so was dead, and
she wanted cotton for his shroud. The dead man's
spirit had acted on the coat a distance, by way of
giving notice of his death (his procedure was a
failure), or was it simply — rats?
The explanation of such widespread phenomena,
or perhaps of the underlying delusion (or reality if
you will) which has everywhere produced similar
2 54 The Misty Isle of Skye
phenomena, is, like many another occult affair, still
to seek, and baffles the psychologist and psychical
researcher. Well may Dante Rossetti sing of "the
bitterness of things occult ! "
Connected with such visual premonitions are the
more material omens of death. It is not uncommon,
when there is not enough wood for a coffin, to take
some of the boards from the wooden partition which
divides every crofter's house in two, in order to
supply the deficiency. Before the death occurs, or
is even thought of, these very boards are seen to
shake. Then it is known that death will soon seek
out a victim from that house. Mrs. M herself
told me that she ascribed pains in her hands to the
fact that within a few days after she had to carry
into the church the trestles on which a coffin was to
rest. In this case the effect preceded the cause,
contrary to all rules of philosophy ! But more
curious still is the persistence of taboos in connec-
tion with touching the dead which must have pre-
vailed among the pagan Celts, and which are
common among all races, e.g. , to mention no others,
the ancient Jews and the modern Polynesians.
When the coffin has been carried out of a house, it
is usual for anything on which it has rested, or
which it has touched, to be taken outside, washed,
and then turned upside down. By this means the
contagion of death, or any possibility of the spirit
clinging to its old home, is removed. Here, again,
is an authentic ghost story : — A fisherman's recently
made widow in Sleat one stormy night saw her
husband enter their cottage in dripping oilskins,
go to the fireplace, and from it remove a brick.
Then with a gesture of farewell he disappeared.
Underneath the brick his savings, of which she
knew nothing, had been hidden. He had returned
from the unknown to reveal them to her.
Another venerable custom still holds good. When
anyone is found dead, a cairn is secretly erected on
the spot, nor is it ever known who erects it. There
The Folk-lore of Skye 255
is such a cairn on the road near Struan, where a
woman was found dead from exposure to a storm
four years ago, and another stands on the road to
Vaternish, beyond Fairy Bridge. We know that
the ancient Celts had a similar practice, in the case
of someone dying who was much admired, while
every passer-by added a stone to his cairn. ^ In
Skye it has dwindled down to the commemoration
of persons found dead, and perhaps there is some
underlying idea of preventing the ghost haunting
the spot by appeasing it with this monument.
I shall conclude this chapter with a few uncon-
sidered trifles of Skye folk-lore.
Some curious taboos are found. You should
never row in front of the fishing-boats when they
are going out. They will have no luck, or some-
thing worse may happen. Women especially caused
ill-luck to the fishing when they crossed from Skye
to Harris. This was limited to those times when
MacLeod returned after a long absence to Dunvegan
Castle, when, as a result of his return, there were
always plenty of herrings in the loch. On the other
hand, you should never give a woman a needle
without the thread in it, because that would cause
her, when she marries, never to have any children.
It is commonly believed that when anyone commits
suicide by drowning, fish at once leave the loch for
two or three years. The lack of fish in more than
one Skye loch is attributed to suicides which have
taken place in them recently. Again, it is con-
sidered ominous for a shrew-mouse to run over a
cow or sheep, for the animal will soon turn ill and
die. The idea has passed into a proverb, and it is
common to say of anyone who has failed in some
undertaking, "A shrew-mouse has crossed him."
Deformity is not considered unlucky, however much
it may detract from personal beauty, for it is thought
that a deformed child will bring fortune to his family.
^ Cf. the Kafir custom of depositing a stone at certain places
connected with ancestor worship.
256 The Misty Isle of Skye
So a child, born with two teeth, will certainly
become a bard.^
When a knife falls or a feather is seen adhering"
to a dog's nose, that means that a stranger is
coming to pay you a visit.
The following beliefs concerning the chiefs of the
MacLeods are curious. Fish were supposed to be
plentiful in Dunvegan Loch when the chief took up
his residence in the castle. But the luck must have
changed, for now the chief's fisherman will frequently
toil all day and take nothing save a little flounder or
whiting ! The St. Kildans believe that the cuckoo
only appears in their remote island when their laird
dies. The factor who arrived there by the first
steamer which touched at St. Kilda in the season of
1895, was eagerly greeted with the question, " Is
MacLeod dead, for we have heard the cuckoo?"
This was in May ; the chief died in February, and
no news had reached the islanders from the outer
world since the previous summer. Again, when the
chief is in trouble, balls of light are seen dancing
high in air on the shore near Dunvegan Castle.
The aborigines of most lands are popularly believed
by the peasantry to have been giants. So it is
thought in Skye, and at Kilmuir is a wide space of
ground, formerly enclosed, and known as Fingal's
Graves. The graves, which may really be Norse
barrows, are about 14 feet long, and were made
for the "big people." And as my informant, an
old man full of folk-lore, said: "Nobody will be
knowing when these big people came to Skye, and
before they came there was nobody here at all. And
they were the big people ! " It is commonly believed
that underneath the cairn on the top of Ben-na-
Cailleach at Broadford, rests a Norse princess.
Now Pennant, in his Tour, mentions a legend current
then, which approximates to the old man's story of
Kilmuir, to the effect that the cairn covers the place
^ On the Gold Coast such a child and his mother would be
put to death as uncanny.
The Folk-lore of Skye 257
of sepulture of a gigantic woman of the days of
Fingal.^ "There were giants in those days," as
the Hebrew writer says of the times before the Flood,
and the Skyeman is in entire accord with him on this
subject.
As a rule, the younger people give a doubtful
assent to these folk-customs and folk-beliefs. Some
they believe more or less ; others they dismiss with,
" It used to be so in the old days, but it does not
happen now." And usually they preface any item
of folk-belief with the words, "The old people say
it." The march of education and the School Board
system have deprived the world of much of the
romantic. Das Aberglauhe ist die Poesie des Lebens.
But many of the superstitions of the past were as
cruel as they were romantic, and if we regret the
advent of the radical newspaper, cheap finery,
shallow ambitions, and twentieth-century ways in
these glens of Skye, the haunts of ancient peace, we
may console ourselves by thinking that they have
driven off evils quite as bad.
* Tour in Scotland, p. 329.
17
, CHAPTER XVII
- ANTIQUITIES
"Old, unhappy, far-off things." — WORDSWORTH.
SKYE has so much the air of antiquity in itself,
its shag'gy moorlands and wrinkled rocks and
venerable hills give it such an air of hoary eld, of
old, unhappy, far-off things, that it seems needless
to speak of its professed antiquities. Yet there they
are, and they give to this grey old island just that
link of connection with the forgotten generations of
humanity who have dwelt within it, which is necessary
to complete its charm. Like the unnumbered waves
which have beaten on its rocky shores and left their
mark on broken cliff and battered headland, or like
the glaciers of long past ages which grooved and
furrowed the mountain sides as they came and went,
so the generations of men who knew Skye as their
home through the dim centuries have left some tokens
of their lives, of their doings, of their wars, of their
aspirations. The story of these may be spelt out
in the crumbling ruins of house and dun, castle and
church, and in the unconsidered trifles found from
time to time in the earth. Hardly any competent
antiquary has taken the trouble to investigate the
old relics of Skye. I add this chapter to my book
in the hope that from it some of them may learn what
treasures Skye contains, and may visit and examine
them before time has finally destroyed them.
I. Stone Circles.
There have been several stone circles in Skye, but
time and the hand of man have contrived to destroy
258
Antiquities 259
them. The sites remain known, and in a few cases
part of the stones themselves are left, but one seeks
in vain here for the perfection of such remains as are
found in Argyllshire. Such insignificant remains are
still to be found at Uig, and at Kilbride and Borreraig,
both in Strath. The two latter are within a few
miles of each other, and close by the former stood an
early Celtic church ; here as elsewhere the Christian
temple occupied the sacred site of paganism.
Monoliths are only occasionally met with. There
is one in the churchyard at Trumpan, 5 feet in
height. On one side and near the top is a
small hole ij inch in diameter, to which people
were led blindfolded. If they succeeded in putting
their finger in the hole, they would go straight
to heaven at death ; otherwise they would be kept
a long time in purgatory. The stone is locally
known as the Priest's Stone. Two stones stand
on the shore opposite Snizort manse. Once they
were three in number, and on them, says legend, was
set the cauldron in which was cooked Finn Mac-
Coul's (Fingal's) supper ! A little beyond Uilinish
House are three similar stones, and tradition has
connected them with the burning of the dead in early
times. Recently a crofter dug up a small urn con-
taining ashes near one of them. Other stones are
referred to by earlier writers, but they have mostly
disappeared.^ Circles and monoliths alike mark the
last resting-places of the dead ; and as the dead were
worshipped, we may see in them, without accepting
all the nonsense written about the Druids, places of
primitive worship and sacrifice.
2. Tumuli.
Tumuli are more numerous, but they have mostly
been opened, recklessly one fears, and they are now
* See Martin, Western Isles, p. 152, for one at Uig, and
Origines Parothiales, p. 344, for Clach na h Annait at Kilchrist,
an "obelisk" close by the well of the same name, and evidently
of sacred character.
iSo The Misty Isle of Skye
little but rough heaps of stone, with little trace of their
original form. Carn Liath, on the high seaboard
above St. Columba's Loch in Kilmuir, is a large heap of
stones, 15 yards in diameter. In the centre is a pit,
6 feet in depth, and on one side what looks like the
remains of another chamber. In these the urns were
placed, and we must suppose them covered with slabs
of stone, over which smaller stones were piled.
Remains of a cairn of the more usual chambered type
exist near Uilinish House. Part of a passage formed
of low walls covered with slabs or blocks of stone is
exposed to view. It probably led to an inner vaulted
chamber. This has disappeared, as well as the
srreat bulk of the stones which formed the actual
cairn.
Several tumuli which seem to be more of the type
of Carn Liath are to be found on the peninsula of
Vatten, south of the highroad between Caroy and
Roag. Three of these are of considerable size, and
give evidence of containing several chambers ; the
others are smaller, but are numerous. Here must have
been a burial-place of the early inhabitants, though
tradition (wrongly) speaks of it as marking the site
of a battle between Macdonalds and MacLeods, where
the slain were covered with heaps of stone. Such
clan fights belong to a later date, when the art of
tumulus-building had long become extinct.^
Some of the articles found in other cairns have
been recorded. Urns were discovered in cairns at
Snizort, and in the same parish a cairn contained a
coffin, formed of slabs of stone, within which was an
urn of burnt clay with "carving." On the topmost
slab lay the handle of a weapon and a pin, 7 inches
long.- A similar urn of red clay, notched and
scalloped, was found near the parish church of
Duirinish;^ while another, containing burnt bones
and a copper coin, came to light in digging the
1 See p. 93.
" Old Statisiical Accounf, s.v. Snizort.
3 /\^ew Siatistical Account^ p. 336.
Antiquities 261
foundations of the manse at Kilbride. The tumuli
in the same parish (of Strath) are known to have
contained urns, while near Broadford a cairn has an
arched vault or chamber, 6 feet deep, the top of
which was covered by a flat stone. In this lay a
buckle and a dark green polished stone, now in the
Antiquarian Museum, Edinburgh.^
3. Beehive Cells and other Small Dwellings.
The beehive hut consists of " a circular or oval
building constructed of uncemented stones, and so
arranged that each layer overlaps the one beneath
it, till the opening becomes so small, at the apex, as
to be closed in by one stone." - Such single rude
dwellings were often made more complex by connect-
ing two or more by means of low passages, or by
surrounding the circular chamber with a gallery.
In their rudest form they are frequently found in
Celtic Britain ; the highest examples of this primitive
form of architecture are the tombs of Mycenae. I
have noticed several remains of such structures in
Skye. It is doubtless to these that Martin refers
when he speaks of stone houses in Skye, "above
ground, capable of only one person, and round in
form. . . . They are called Teig-uin-Druinich, or
Druids' houses " ; druinich, he says, meaning a retired
person given to contemplation.'' The Gaelic term,
whatever its meaning, is applied loosely, for it is
more usually given to the earth-houses of which I
shall speak presently. These beehive cells formed
the residences of monks in primitive Celtic com-
munities, and there is little doubt that the abundant
stones on the site of the monastery at Kilmuir are
the ddbris of many huts of this kind.'*
Immediately west of the monastery, on what was
once the shore of the loch, and underneath Carn
' The positions of these .and other cairns' are marked on the
Ordancc Survey maps.
" Munro, Prehistoric Scotland, p. 336.
•^ Western Isles, p. 154. ■• See p. 277.
262 The Misty Isle of Skyc
Liath, is a rudely circular building about 5 yards
in diameter, made of large uncemented blocks
rudely squared. At the south-west side is a
smaller chamber, built on to the larger and con-
nected with it by an opening in the wall of the
latter. It probably served as a sleeping -place.
The ruined walls of the structure are only 4
feet high. Buildings of this type, occasionally
oblong, occur in proximity to many of the duns.
At a dun, west of Dunvegan, there is a circular
chamber 2^ yards in diameter ; another, ot
an oval shape, is 4 yards long at its widest
diameter, with a smaller chamber opening out of
it. This chamber is not built on to the other, but
is formed by the bulging out of the enclosing wall.
The foundation of another hut is seen close by.
At this dun and also below Dun Beag, near
Struan, are small circular or oval structures 3
to 4 feet in diameter, and, as they remain, no more
than 4 feet in height. Their purpose is an enigma.
The one at Struan stands within the walls of an
oblong building.
In other cases, as at Dun Torvaig and Dun
Ghearra-Sheader, near Portree, there are remains of
structures built against the face of a rock. These
doubtless served as dwellings, possibly after the
duns had become tenantless.
All such buildings denote a primitive type or
civilisation, and though in many cases they survived
until comparatively recent times, their origin dates
from the pre-Christian age, as has been proved in
the case of Irish buildings of this type.^
4. Earth-hotises.
An earth-house may be described as a long and
narrow passage, running underneath the ground for
^ " Primitive " is a word which is loosely used. The crofter's
hut is almost as primitive looking as these beehive cells must
have been, though it is larger, yet it is in actual use in the
twentieth century.
Antiquities 263
some distance, occasionally expanding as it goes on,
or opening into a chamber. In some cases passages
lead off from the main passage into other chambers.
The walls of the passage are made of blocks of stone
uncemented (they are exactly like a perfectly formed
dry-stone dyke), and over these are laid long slabs
of flat stone. They usually occur in the face of a
bank, and must have been formed by digging out
the earth from the surface, and then piling it over
the finished structure, or by a process of actual
tunnelling. In some cases the passage is in the
form of a curve.
As they occur in Skye, earth-houses are mostly of
a simple type, being little more than an underground
passage widening out occasionally into a terminal
chamber. As they are found now, they are usually
blocked up with debris, and only the entrance can be
traced. This is usually found between two parallel
banks of earth, which when covered with turf would
completely hide it. The most elaborate house is
found near the school at Vatten, in the parish of
Duirinish. It is now choked up, but, as described
in the New Statistical Accou7it, it was an interesting
example of such structures. The entrance is in a
precipitous bank overhanging the burn. The
passage, 3 feet high and 70 feet long, led into
a central chamber, arched with overlapping stones,
5 feet high, while other narrow galleries branched
off the main passage. Another on the farm of
Claigan, near Dunvegan, has wails 3 feet high,
covered with slabs of stone 3^ x i§ x i^ feet,
but after proceeding several yards the passage is
blocked by earth. A third near Uilinish House is
3 feet in breadth and 4 feet high. About 6 yards
from the entrance the roof of the passage has fallen
in, and beyond this it is blocked. A fourth occurs
at Colbost, Glendale, and is interesting as having at
least two side chambers still intact ; beyond them
the gallery is choked up. Two others are found
at Loch Duagraich, one at Uadairn under Ben
264 The Misty Isle of Skye
Tianavaig", one on the Beal cliff, near Portree.
Others have been destroyed through the stones
being taken for building purposes, as at Braes,
where the existence of the earth-house was not
known till a plough struck against the roof. It
consisted of a long passage curving round to form
nearly a semicircle. Another at Peinfiler, near
Portree, has been destroyed within the last two
years. When opened, peat ashes were found on
the floor at the end of the passage.
The name of Druids' houses applied locally to
these structures explams nothing. More useful is
the tradition that they were used as places of retreat
in time of invasion. This agrees with the opinion
of competent antiquaries, with the statement of
Tacitus that the Germans used subterranean places
for this purpose and also as winter -houses and
granaries, and with the fact that in Skye, as else-
where, traces of surface dwellings are usually found
in connection with the earth-houses.^ There could
have been little comfort in these subterranean
galleries and chambers, and nothing exists to show
how a fresh supply of air was provided. We know,
however, that the Esquimaux live underground in
winter, and "the clartier the cosier" was doubtless
as comforting a belief in Scotland then as now.
Were the builders Celts or an earlier race? Prob-
ably the former, as the structure of the passages
is identical with that of the galleries in the brochs,
unless they, too, were the work of an earlier people
than the Celts. Indeed, all these various structures
suggest a small people as their inhabitants, and the
Celts proper could scarcely be described as small.
5. Duns.
The word "dun" originally meant in Gaelic a
hillock or eminence, then it was applied to the
fort which crowned the hillock, then to any fort no
^ Notably at Vatten, and ag-ain at Uilinish, where there is the
foundation of a beehive hut.'
Antiquities 265
matter where situated.^ There are over fifty duns
in Skye, but in nearly every case they are so dis-
mantled and ruinous that it is well-nigh impossible
to tell what their original structure was. As far
as my examination of their unsatisfactory condition
goes, I seem to trace three types: (i) duns which
may have been brochs, properly so called ; (2) duns
of a " semi-broch " type ; (3) duns which are evidently
little more than ordinary hill forts.
Brochs are found over a wide Celtic area, and in
structure consist of a solid dry-stone wall, circular
in form, averaging 13 feet in thickness. At the
height of 10 feet the wall is divided into an outer and
inner wall, enclosing a series of galleries formed by
traversing the walls horizontally by tiers of flag-
stones, which thus form the roof of one gallery and
the floor of the one above. A narrow entrance in the
thickness of the wall, guarded by a door or doors,
gives access to the central court. At one side of this
entrance there is a "guard-chamber, "z.e. abeehive cell
in the thickness of the wall, while usually two or more
^ I append a list, following the districts :
Trotternish, East side, Duns Vannarain, Mlior, Vallerain,
Greanan, Raisaburg', Connabern, Greanan, Borvc,
Ghearra-Sheadcr, Torvaig;.
Trotternish, West side. Duns Liath, Skudiburg-, ? (near
Peinduin), Eyre.
Braes, Dun an Aird.
Lyndale, Duns na h'Airdhe, Borvc, Flasliader, Suledale,
?(near Edinbane).
Vatemish, Duns Cearymorc, Borrafiach, Hallin.
Duirinish, Dun ? (north of Dunvegan), Duns Borreraig,
Colbost, Osdale, ?(near Orbost), Feorlig-, Elireach, Ncill.
BracadaJe and Minginish, Duns Arkaig, Mhor, Beag', Diar-
maid, Taimh, Merkadale, ?(ncar Loch Eynort), two
others near Fiskavaig.
Strath, Duns Borrcraig, Liath, Ringill, Mhor, Beag, Grugaig,
Kearstach.
Sleat, Duns Bhan, a Chelelrich, Chio, Faich, Bhan, Ruaige.
These will all be found on the Survey maps.
Dun Dugan, near Portree, in Christison's list, is only a hill.
His Duns Garsin, Geilbt, and Hasan, I have not been able to
identify; they may represent some of the nameless duns in my list.
266 The Misty Isle ot Skye
such cells are entered from the inner court, one of them
giving access to the galleries above by a staircase.
(i) As far as I can judge, certain duns in Skye may
have been brochs. The best example of this type
is Dun Beag, near Struan. Part of the wall on
the outside is 13 feet high, and this wall, 9 feet
thick, is solid. Traces of the entrance remain on the
south face of the dun. To the right of this entrance
is the "guard chamber," clearly of the beehive type,
and apparently opening to the interior. All trace of
the upper galleries has long disappeared. The
interior court shows the foundation walls of a
central chamber, and of others surrounding it, but
these may be the work of a later time. The diameter
of the court is 36 feet.^
(2) A dun of the "semi-broch " type stands on a
peninsula two miles north-west of Dunvegan Castle.
The wall, which is very ruinous, is 10 feet thick,
but it contains, close to the ground, part of an
interior gallery which can be followed for about
6 yards. It is nearly 3 feet broad, and is covered
with rough-hewn slabs of stone resting on the inner
and outer walls. What may have been a beehive
cell or " guard-chamber " at the entrance, is found in
another part of the structure. Another fort of this
type is Dun Greanan, which is interesting as stand-
ing on a tiny peninsula in Loch Mealt, near Staffin,
approached by a narrow neck of land. The founda-
tions of the inner and outer walls alone remain.
(3) The simple hill fort consists of an outer wall
or walls, covering sometimes a considerable area.
Dun Torvaig, near Portree, suggests this type of
dun. It consists of a wall, roughly oval, 84 x 45
feet, crowning a rocky knoll. Across their
narrowest diameter the walls are connected by two
parallel walls, forming a kind of inner fort, 45 x 21
feet in size. The entrance is 2 feet wide.
^ In Pennant's time the walls were 18 feet high, and the
entrance was in excellent preser\^ation. Dun Mhor, near by, is
traditionally said to have been unfinished by its builders.
<
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Ed
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y,
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Antiquities 267
As a rule, all these duns occupy only part of the
hilltop, either the centre, or more usually one side,
and that the most precipitous. An outer wall
encloses the central structure and guards the summit.
They command an extensive view, and generally
speaking are within sight of each other, so that the
approach of an enemy could be quickly made known
over a wide district by signalling. This, as ancient
poems describe, was done by kindling a fire on the
top of the wall. It is noticeable that the duns are
built mainly along the seacoast, or in the fertile
valleys, where, of course, the population would be
thickest. If the builders were not an earlier race,
then they were Celts, and the Celts built them as
places of refuge and defence against the Norse
invaders. The duns, though often ascribed to the
"Danes" or Northmen, are never found in
Scandinavia, and are confined to Celtic districts.
That many of them bear Norse names is no argument
against their Celtic origin, as doubtless the Norsemen
used them after conquering the country, and probably
translated the earlier Gaelic name into Norse. ^
Round the duns a few fairy stories have clustered ;
one of them, Dun Scaith, figures in the Ossianic saga,
as we shall see, and in the heroic tales of CuchuUainn.
But, like the magnificent subterranean castle of the
Elf-king in Childe Roiulcuid, glittering with gold
and silver and jewels, itself but a transmuted earth-
house, the dun has become a marvellous structure,
with "seven great doors and seven great windows
between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty
couches between every two windows of them, and
thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls in scarlet
cloaks and in beautiful and blue attire." It was
built on a rock " of appalling height," and approached
by a bridge like the weird " brig of dreid, na braider
' The Skye duns have never been dealt with in detail. For
brochs generally, see Dr. Joseph Anderson, Scotland in Ptij^nn
Times; and for hill forts, Dr. David Christison, Ancient Foriijica-
iions of Scotland, who gives a list of thirty-six Skye duns.
268 The Misty Isle of Skye
than a threid," and from its magic casement
Cuchullainn saw the beautiful face of Uathach, the
daughter of the princess of the dun, and straightway
fell in love with her. So folk-tale and saga every-
where have adorned the prosaic facts of life and made
them exceeding magnifical. Where life is simple
man inevitably thinks in poetry.
6. Castles.
A date posterior to the departure of the Norsemen
must be assigned to the ruined fortalices of Skye
perched on rocks round the coast, and in some cases,
if not in all, occupying the site of an earlier dun.
They are of one type, with stony central keep and
flanking outworks, pointing to an early mediceval
origin. They were the strongholds of the chiefs of
Skye, guarding different parts of their lands, but
liable, with the varying fortunes of clan fights, to
pass with part of these lands from one to another,
only to be recaptured with more inevitable bloodshed.
Of these ruined strongholds, omitting Duntulm and
Dunvegan (which is inhabited), already described,
there are traces more or less complete of five of these
castles. They are Caisteall Uisdean on the shore of
Loch Snizort, south of Uig ; the foundation stones of
a nameless castle on one of the islands of Dunvegan
Loch ; Dunakyne or Castle Maoil, near Kyleakin ;
Dunskaith on the southern shore of Loch Slapin, near
Ord ; Knock Castle on the Sound of Sleat, some-
times called Castle Camus.
Like all Hebridean castles, they stand on some
commanding height by the sea, which formed at once
a protection and a means of retreat, when necessary,
in the galleys moored beneath the walls. The keep
and outworks were surrounded by a strong wall,
and all perched on a rock made inaccessible if it were
not naturally so, and surrounded by a ditch. There,
except driven to desperation by hunger, a chief
could bid defiance to his enemies. The few traditions
which have been handed down give us some idea of
Antiquities 269
the wild and dark deeds which their mouldering'
walls have seen through the dim centuries, of the
sieges and attacks, sallies and onslaughts, which
went on around them. In peaceful hours they could
never have been comfortable dwellings ; but a lavish
if rude hospitality was the rule, bagpipe and harp,
song and dance resounded within them ; and brave
men and fair women lived out their lives there, and
cherished the same hopes and resolves and met with
the same disappointments as we. In the romantic
Isle of Skye, these grey ruins quicken the thoughts
of the imaginative, and fancy reconstructs them, and
sees them in all the glory of their past history.
Of Castle Maoil, whose ruined keep is so
prominent an object in the beautiful channel at
Kyleakin, and whose walls are 11 feet thick, tradi-
tion says that a Norse king's daughter, married
to a Macdonald and still remembered as "Saucy
Mary," built it in order to prevent vessels from
passing without paying toll. Whether she did this
by having a chain stretched across the sound may
be doubted, but it is not improbable that such a tax
would be levied by the owner of the castle. It, with
Dunringill, belonged to the Mackinnons of Strath.
Dunskaith and Castle Camus belonged to the Mac-
donalds, and of the first many romantic stories are told.
Little now remains of Dunskaith, but once it was
an extensive building. Its surroundings are grand
and inspiring. Loch Slapin winds past its walls, and
beyond its waters the long range of the Coolins,
Blaaven, and the Red Hills, seem to mount to a
giddy height from the sea, splintered and jagged
and gashed with ravines and torrent-beds. Behind,
the ground rolls upwards into rounded hills, covered
with birch-wood. In this romantic spot, Dunskaith,
or an earlier building, was raised by Cuchullainn and
his heroes, like Aladdin's palace, in a single night.
" All night the witch sang-, and the castle grew
Up from the rock, with tower and turrets crowned ;
All night she sang— when fell the morning dew,
"Twas finished round and round."
270 The Misty Isle of Skye
It stands on an isolated rock separated from the
land by a deep ravine once crossed by a drawbridge,
and the existing ruins show traces of the ancient
dungeon and draw-well. Here Cuchullainn left his
fair wife, Bragela, to pine in his absence, and to gaze
with eager eyes from its ramparts for the white sail
that never came over the sea to Skye.
/ " He Cometh not, she said ;
She said, I am a-weary, a-weary,
I would that I were dead."
In 1449, when the lands of Skye passed formally
into the hands of the Macdonalds, Dunskaith became
the property of Hugh of Sleat, son of John, Lord
of the Isles. Years after, when it had passed into
the hands of his collateral descendant, Donald
Gruamach or the grim (after a series of rapid
changes of owners, sieges, and treacherous murders),
his cousin Ranald came on a visit to Dunskaith
from North Uist. The Gruamach's wife was a
Clanranald, and was entertaining twelve of her clans-
men on Ranald's arrival. Perhaps he had a private
feud with Clanranald, perhaps he was of a morbidly
touchy nature, but disgust seized his soul, and early
one morning he slew the twelve and hung them up
on a wall opposite the lady's window. Then he
sought his cousin and told him he must go. Donald
pressed him to stay until his wife could bid him
farewell. "No, I must go; for she will not thank
me for my morning's work when she looks out of
her bedroom window." Nor did she ; and some time
after, Ranald was assassinated by her steward, and
at her order.
The other fortress in Sleat, Castle Camus, which
a seventeenth-century writer speaks of as standing
" upon the east or south-east over-against Knoydart,"
may be identified with the ivy-covered ruins at
Knock, perched on a crag above the sandy inlet,
commanding a magnificent view of the Sound of
Sleat and the mountains of the mainland. It
Antiquities 271
belongfcd to the barons of Sleat, and between 1488
and 1 5 13 is traditionally said to have been besieged
by the MacLeods. A brave defence was offered by
a heroine known as Mary of the Castle, who, like
another Joan of Arc, inspired her people to hold out
against and defeat the rival clan. At a later date,
in 1617, the famous Donald Gorme was bound by
the terms on which he iield his lands from the Crown,
to have Castle Camus always ready to receive the
king or his lieutenants.
Nearly half-way between Kingsburgh and Uig, on
a rock near the sea, are the ruins of Castle Uisdean
or Hugh's Castle, of which a romantic story is told.
Hugh was a relative and next-of-kin of Donald
Gorme, and by all accounts was only too ready to
hasten his death by fair means or foul. He was a
man who had reason to fear vengeance from more
than one, if the story of the building of Castle Uisdean
be true. The tower contained no windows ; the
only entrance was a little door high up in the wall,
reached by a ladder which the wary Hugh pulled up
after him, and then bade defiance to the world until
his supplies ran short. After entering into a second
plot against Donald, Hugh expressed penitence in
a letter, but unfortunately sent it by mistake to a
fellow-conspirator, while his intended victim received
another describing the arrangements for his own
murder. Unaware of this, Hugh accepted an invita-
tion to Duntulm, where Donald Gorme rid himself of
this relentless enemy in the horrible manner already
described.
7. Churches.
In Dean Monro's time there were twelve parishes
and parish churches, now there are nine, and in no
case is the ancient church used. These have either
disappeared altogether, or stand, a mouldering ruin,
near the barn-like structure, which the heritors in
Scotland so often built because it was cheaper to do
so than to restore the beautiful earlier building. At
272 The Misty Isle of Skye
Duirinlsh, and in the romantic valley of Strath alone,
the remains of the old parochial churches show what
they formerly were. Both are remarkably alike.
Walls and pointed gables, lancet windows, and a
remarkable lack of carved stones sufficiently charac-
terise them. Within the walls the dead are buried,
while attached to each is a modern family vault with
pillared balustrade, in Duirinish the burial-place of
the MacLeods, at Strath of the Mackinnons. The
site of both is beautiful. Duirinish church, dedi-
cated to the Virgin, stands on the edge of the moor
near the head of the loch, in full view of MacLeod's
Tables and a wide tract of country. A little burn
courses down by the edge of the teeming churchyard.
The scenery round the remote and quiet ruins of
Kilchrist has been already described. In the church-
yard at Duirinish stands a curious obelisk, on a
square base. It is much decayed, and the inscribed
marble slab has fallen out and is broken. But the
inscription can still be read as Johnson and Boswell
read it, with a sneer at him whom it commemorates.
This was Thomas, Lord Lovat, father of the infamous
Simon, by whose piety the monument was erected.
Having married MacLeod's sister, he was on a visit
to Dunvegan Castle, where he died in 1699. "And
for the great love he bore to the family of MacLeod,
he desired to be buried near his wife's relations, in
the place where two of her uncles lay."
The old parish church of Kilconan at Trumpan is
interesting as the scene of that grim tragedy when
the Macdonalds fired it while the MacLeods were
worshipping within. It stands on high ground
overlooking the sea and the outer isles. The church,
of which the north wall and the east gable are still
intact, is built of cemented stone. In the north wall
is the doorway with a rudely pointed arch, and in
this wall, at the chancel end, and in the east gable,
are windows — little more than narrow slits on the
outside, but widening out to rather more than
3 feet within. The walls are 3 feet in thickness.
Antiquities 273
The font, or perhaps the holy water stoup, is made
out of a block of basalt hollowed out roughly without
any attempt at ornamentation or even symmetry.
It lies on the ruined south wall, and is said to be
always full of water no matter how often it is emptied.
Experiment has proved this to be true, but as the
stone is porous and full of moisture, the phenomenon
is explained easily. In the interior of the building-
is a carved stone, with a sword and the usual Celtic
interlaced tracery.
In Kilmuir the earlier parish church at Kilmoluag
was dedicated to St. Moluac ; after the Reformation
another church dedicated to the Virgin was used.
Its graveyard still remains, but the church itself is
replaced by the present parish church, built in 1810.
Uig was formerly a separate parish, but is now
united to Snizort. The church stood at Clachan,
at the head of the bay. Its dedication is unknown.
Snizort parish now also includes Lyndale, whose
church, dedicated to St. Donnan, stood at the town-
ship still called Kildonnan.
The old parish church of Sleat, which has now
entirely disappeared, was dedicated to the Virgin,
and stood at Kilmore, where there is still the ruin
of a seventeenth-century church.
These churches in most cases probably did not
date beyond the fourteenth century. But there are
many others, scattered throughout the island, of a
much more ancient date. They are very small,
usually not more than 22 feet long, consist
only of one oblong chamber without chancel, and
have one door and one window, the latter in the
eastern gable above the altar. They are built of
roughly hewn stone, sometimes cemented with lime,
in a few cases not, and must have been erected at an
early period of Celtic Christianity. Their structure
is perfectly plain, and even with their internal orna-
ments, which could never have been very grand,
they must always have been so. They could never
have held a large congregation, but they are very
18
274 The Misty Isle of Skye
numerous, and may have each served as the church
of a township in these far-off times, before the
parishes were formed and parish churches erected.
This is not unlikely, as will presently appear. They
would be served by a few Columban monks, who
lived in cells near by. Most of these tiny buildings
have quite disappeared. Thus of thirty in the three
parishes of Kilmuir, Portree, and Snizort, about one
hundred and twenty years ago, traces of only six
can now be found. Of others only the foundations
remain, as in the case of St. Columba's Island in
Portree Bay, and at the old burying-ground on the
meadow between the lofty cliffs on the north side of
the same bay. At Skeabost, on an island in the
river just where it joins the loch, and accessible only
•by stepping-stones, the remains are more complete.
The walls and gables might easily be roofed over ;
the pointed window is not quite in the middle of the
east gable. The whole length of the building is onlv
21 feet 4 inches. It has been built with lime, but
the stones are rough and of all sizes. Now their
interstices are crowded with wall-rue and spleen-
wort, which cover the walls with delicate green
drapery. The island is still used as a place of burial,
as it has been for untold generations, no doubt even
in pre-Christian times, and the graves are marked
by slabs of unlettered stone, which bear no tribute
to the nameless dead. This chapel, like the other
in Portree Loch, is dedicated to St. Columba, and per-
haps both were erected in his time if not by himself.
Similar churches, showing often no more than the
mere foundation stones, are found in various parts
of the island. In other cases they have entirely
disappeared, and only the local name perpetuates
their memory. In nearly every locality the dedication
was to some Celtic saint. In the parish of Kilmuir
stood a church dedicated to St. Martin (either St.
Martin of Tours, a popular saint in Scotland, or a
Celtic saint of that name) at the township called
Kilmartin, where the ancient burial-ground is still
Antiquities 275
used. At Kilvaxter, near the old monastery on St.
Columba's Loch, stood another of these cells, under
the rule of the nuns of lona. Kildorais, near
Flodig-arry, and Kilbride, north of Dig, may mark
the sites of chapels dedicated to these saints.
In the parish of Bracadale, where St. Assint was the
patron saint, Maelrubha seems to have been equally
popular. Formerly the annual tryst was at the end
of August or the beginning- of September, when St.
Maelrubha's day occurs, and a chapel dedicated to
him stood near the head of the lonely Loch Eynort. It
was rebuilt after the Reformation, but has been ruinous
since the end of the eighteenth century. Of the font
belonging to this church I shall have something to
say later. The parish church of St. Assint must
have stood in the beautiful ravine at the head of Loch
Beag, where the present modern building is. To it
an old record says that the Bishop of Argyll presented
Master John Mackinnon in 1632.
The parish of Strath must at an early date have
been a strong ecclesiastical centre, and the district
was the scene of St. Maelrubha's labours in the eighth
century. A little church dedicated to him stood
at Kilmarie, which, like Loch Maree in Ross-shire,
might at first sight seem to denote the Virgin, but
is in reality merely a corruption of the Celtic saint's
name. Half-way between Broadford and Kyle is a
burial-ground called Kil Ashig. At this place St.
Maelrubha is known to have preached and hung his
bell on a tree, from which it was subsequently taken
to Kilchrist in Strath Suardal, a legend to which I
have already referred. Here, too, stood a chapel
dedicated to St. Ashig or Asaph, and his name is
again found at Tobar Ashig, where there is a beautiful
spring, and in the little loch of the same name, a
mile south-east of the churchyard. The names of
the two saints are joined together in the place-name
of Askemourey. In the same parish there is Kilbride,
west of Kilchrist, with the site of a chapel dedicated
to St. Bride or Bridget — a popular Celtic saint ;
276 The Misty Isle of Skye
while Teampuill Choan and Teampuill Frangaig,
both in Borreraig, point to chapels dedicated to St.
Congan or Coan and St. Francis.
Besides the chapels on St. Columba's Island and
on the meadow near the Beal in Portree parish,
there was still another a little to the north of the
town at Kiltaraglan with a place of burial which
was used until the present churchyard was formed
over a hundred years ago. Chapel and burying-
ground have both disappeared, and only a ploughed
field bears the name of the saint. Who he was is
open to question. The name may be a corruption
of Talorgan, but Dr. Reeves conjectures that this
old chapel may rather have been St. Maelrubha's,
whose fair was held at Portree on the first Tuesday
in September under the name of Samarive's fair.
What seems to demonstrate that these little
churches were of an earlier date than the typical
parish church, is the fact of the occasional existence
of a larger ruined church close beside them. This
occurs at Kirkapoll in Tiree, and notably on the
island at Skeabost where the river joins Loch
Snizort Beag. The island is the parish burying-
ground, and this ruined building served as the
parish church for many centuries, devotion to St.
Columba who visited the island overcoming the
difficulty (very slight after all) of reaching it. Little
of the building now remains ; just enough to show
that it was 82 feet long, and of a chancelled type,
which in itself proves it to be of later date than the
smaller building near by.
On this island, as well as in the churchyard at
Kilmuir, are some interesting carved stones, bearing
deeply incised figures of armed knights. These
closely resemble the lona stones, and are usually
believed to have been stolen from lona by a piratical
Skyeman. This is far from unlikely, as the primitive
Celt had no illusions about property. But it is just
as likely that the stones may be of local origin, as
Celtic art, though confined to typical forms, was not
Antiquities 277
necessarily confined to one particular district. The
stones are exposed to wind and weather, and the
carving is being rapidly destroyed.
Among the ecclesiastical remains of Skye, not
the least interesting are the ruins of the monastic
establishment on the island in the drained moss
which was formerly covered by the waters of Loch
Columcille. They were ruins in the seventeenth
century, when they were described as " a tower and
a town and the remains of a chapel built with
mortar." On the north side of the island is a
roughly circular enclosure, 16 yards in its greatest
diameter, and containing the foundations of three
chambers or cells of varying size. These may have
been of the beehive type. The wall of this enclosure
is broken down, but what is left shows it to have
been built of large blocks, roughly but securely placed
together, and in places fully 9 feet thick. Traces of
what may have been the entrance are found on its
south side, and there may have been little cells in the
thickness of the wall. Probably this is the "tower"
referred to by the seventeenth-century writer.^
Immediately to the south of this building are two
small quadrilateral buildings, one of which measures
30 X 10 feet, and has been divided in two across its
breadth, while still farther to the south-west is the
church or "temple," dedicated to St. Columba.
Its walls are now only 8 feet high ; its length is
21 feet 10 inches ; its breadth 12 feet 2 inches. The
stones have been cemented, and more pains have
been taken with squaring and fitting them than in
the case of the other buildings.
The whole ground surrounding the remains of
these buildings is covered with the debris of the
"town," i.e. the beehive cells, in each of which
dwelt a monk, but not one of them remains entire.
' A rectangular enclosure, surrounded by a wall 4 feet high
and 22 yards long and broad, stands to the north of the tower.
It may be as old as the other buildings, but is probably of more
recent date.
278 The Misty Isle of Skye
Traces of a wall which enclosed all the buildings
and cells are seen here and there.
This group of ruins, lichen and moss covered, and
rude in structure, has a most venerable appearance.
St. Columba may have founded the establishment ;
at least, it must date from near his time, and there
are few earlier ecclesiastical remains in Scotland.
The whole group has the character of similar
monasteries of early Celtic age in Ireland. These,
with their church or churches, cells and oratories,
and other buildings, were surrounded by an outer
wall which served for a protection in a rough age.^
Simplicity, even to rudeness, characterises all these
structures, and connects them and this unique
" cashel " in Skye with the first preaching of the
Faith in Scotland by those brave missionaries for
whom neither man nor nature had any terrors.
8. General. '
Besides the urns discovered in burial cairns, many
other articles of great interest have been found from
time to time in Skye, dating from the Stone Age
onwards. Most of these are now preserved in the
museum of the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh,
while notices of some of them occur in the Proceed-
ings of that society.
Arrow-heads of flint have been met with from time
to time ; the writer found one in his own garden.
But on the whole the relics date from a later age,
and are largely of bronze. As is natural in a
district where the people "could never get eneugh
o' fechtin'," bronze swords have been repeatedly
discovered. They are of one type — that which is
met with commonly in other parts of Scotland —
leaf-shaped, with a sharp point and a flat projection
at the hilt with rivet holes, by means of which the
handle was fastened on. They were probably used
for thrusting rather than for striking, though the
edges bear traces of sharpening. One of the swords
' See Lord Dunraven's Notes on Irish Arcliitecture,
Antiquities 279
was found in 1851 along with two spear-heads and a
pin, in the moss between the farms of Gillean and
Ach-na-Cloich in Sleat. It is 22^ inches long and
if inch broad at the broadest part of the blade.
Another of similar type was found in the moss
near Trumpan. It is 23^ inches long and if inch
broad. It was discovered on the site of the battle
fought between the Macdonalds and the MacLeods
(p. 62), and if it is a relic of that fight, bronze
swords must have continued in use long after the
introduction of iron. Captain Macdonald of Vater-
nish has a third in his possession, found by a crofter
while digging peats in the same locality. Others
have been found at Lyndale (this one is 2 feet long),
at Rigg, and elsewhere, and Pennant describes one
in his Tour.
The bronze spear-heads found at Sleat along with
the sword have blades of a leaf shape with long
cylindrical sockets which are continued up the centre
of the blade, tapering towards its point. Towards
the end of the socket are rivet holes on either side
for fixing the head to the shaft. The heads are
7I inches long and i^ inch broad.
The bronze pin found along with these weapons is
10^ inches in length — too long for wear, says one
antiquary, forgetting the fearful weapons with which
women of a later age affix their bonnets to their heads.
A cup-shaped head, \ inch deep and \ inch in diameter,
is fixed to the upper part of the pin, and probably held
an ornamental stone or piece of amber. Similar pins,
with disc-shaped heads highly ornamented, have been
found elsewhere in Britain and on the Continent.
Associated with these bronze articles in the Sleat
find was a bent leaf-shaped instrument of bronze,
socketed, 4 inches in length. Its use is unknown,
but others like it have been found at Invergordon.
Some fragments of oaken boards were found in situ
with these instruments, and may have formed part of
a box originally enclosing them.
A socketed bronze axe or celt of a common type
28o The Misty Isle of Skye
was found at Strath. It is wedge shaped, and the
socket opening is more or less oval. The sides curve
outward slightly towards the blade, which is 2|iinches
broad. On one side is a loop, used for fastening the
weapon to the L-shaped shaft by a cord. There
is a moulding round the socket, just above the loop,
and the whole length of the weapon is 3f inches.
In a moss at Kyleakin, below 7^ inches of peat, was
discovered a bronze cauldron, of a type rare though
not unknown in Scotland. Its diameter is 18 inches,
its depth 12 inches ; and it is made of one single
sheet of metal beaten into the required shape. It is
patched on the bottom, the patches being put on
with clippings of bronze. The rim and handles are
gone, but the holes for the rivets of the latter are
still visible in the vessel.
Near this cauldron was a keg of "butter." The
keg was barrel shaped, but hollowed out of a single
piece of wood 14 x 13 inches. On either side were
slight projections with holes bored in them apparently
by a red-hot instrument. An analysis of the butter
showed it to be of similar composition to that found
elsewhere in Scotland. Another barrel was also
discovered at Sleat.
In the Antiquarian Museum, Edinburgh, are three
iron padlocks of oblong shape, with spring hook,
dug out of a peat moss in Skye, locality unknown.
There also is an ornamented stone ball, 2f inches in
diameter, of a type frequently found in Scotland but
nowhere else. This ball is peculiar in being covered
with a series of rounded projections ^ inch in height.
It weighs lyf ounces, and is made of pale coloured
claystone. Swung by thongs or attached to a
handle and used as a mace, these balls must have
proved formidable weapons in the chase or war.
Still more interesting is the collection of coins
forming a Viking hoard, and discovered by a keeper
in a rabbit hole beside a boulder above Holm Island
on the Trotternish coast. The boulder and island
were intended as guide-posts for the owner, who,
Antiquities 281
probably killed in a sea-fight, never returned to
claim them. The coins number several hundreds,
and are of all ages, some of the more recent being
Saxon, with the head and title of Ethelred 11. (?)
figured on them. Another hoard opened in 1850
contained six arm-rings of silver.
A once highly ornamented spur was found in the
draining operations at Monkstadt. It is jewelled
and chased, and has once been gilded. The shanks
are 4 inches long and curved to fit the ankle ; the
neck terminates in a prick i inch long. The chasing
is of interlaced ribbons, enclosing quatrefoils, and in
each shank are three oval sockets for gems, which
on one side are filled with stones. Only one of the
sockets on the other shank contains a stone, of a
blue colour. Another socket is placed on the neck.
One shank is bent and shows three indentations,
while the centre gem is cracked, suggesting blows
made by a sword and the tearing of the spur from
the foot in some long-forgotten fight.
Two canoes were also found at Monkstadt, the
first in 1763, the second in 1874. The earlier one
had disappeared at an early date, but was described
to the writer of the Statistical Accotait by the son of
a man who helped to dig it up. It was formed out
of one piece of oak, and at either end were iron rings
of great thickness, three at one end, two at the
other. Local conjecture supposed it to be the ferry-
boat employed by the monks in passing from the
monastery to the shore. The other was discovered
by some crofters while digging out a ditch near the
loch. It was hollowed out of a single trunk, of pine
or perhaps some foreign wood floated ashore. When
found, the wood was quite spongy. The stem was well
rounded ; no signs of fire in hollowing the canoe were
noticeable; and inside and outside were smoothed with
great care. The depth of this canoe was little more
than 6 inches. Both canoes seem to have resembled
others of prehistoric date found in Scotland, though
the iron rings of the first suggest later origin.
282 The Misty Isle of Skye
The last antiquarian relic from Skye which I shall
mention is the ancient font from St. Maelrubha's chapel
at Loch Eynort, now in the Antiquarian Museum.
It is made of hornblendic gneiss, and is bowl shaped.
Across the brim it measures i^ foot, and is i foot in
height. The exterior is sculptured in relief in six
panels. The first panel, surrounded by an interlaced
pattern, contains a crucifix, with the head inclined
to the right and the legs crossed. The figures in
the other panels are St. Michael slaying the dragon
and planting a limb of the cross in its mouth ; the
Virgin and Child ; a mitred bishop with crozier ;
while in the remaining two panels defaced inscriptions
occur. The lower part of the font has four sloping
panels with carved floral devices. A clustered pillar
of four divisions on which the font stood, still remains
in the ruined chapel. A curious story is told of the
removal of the font. Some Roman Catholic fisher-
men from South Uist, having put into Loch Eynort
under stress of weather, discovered the font, and
deeming it too sacred for the Protestants of Skye,
resolved to carry it to their priest. When they put
out to sea with their spoil, the weather rapidly
grew worse, and the boat was forced to put back.
An angry discussion now arose as to whether they
dared provoke the saint by removing his font. A
minority suggested its replacement, but the others
refused, and again put out to sea. Once more the
storm descended ; once more they returned, and now
in terror restored the font to its pillar. The weather
improved, and the voyage to Glasgow was safely
made. The fishermen took heart and made for
Loch Eynort on their return. With much misgiving
they carried the coveted font on board, but this time
Maelrubha was propitious and nothing happened.
The font was duly presented to their priest, his
successor gave it to Mr. Carmichael, whose Celtic
enthusiasm and knowledge are unbounded, and he,
in turn, presented it to the Society of Antiquaries.
a
O
CHAPTER XVIII
HISTORICAL AND LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS
"They are like a mist on the coming' of night,
That is scattered away by a Hg-ht breath of wind."
Old Gaelic Poem.
THE muse of history has not been forgetful of
the Isle of Skye, and lifts the curtain of the
past in successive ages to show a series of vivid
tableaux in which great names have found a part.
The history of Skye is merged in the general history
of the Highlands. Racial wars, clan battles fought
on the windy moors, opposition to the Scottish
kings, fill up the tale of the centuries, followed by
more peaceful ages, though not less romantic, out
of which the Highlands, as we now know them,
gradually emerge.
But at certain turning-points in history, Skye
comes out of the general vagueness of the past,
and stands clearly before our eyes, to fall back again
into the dimness once more. Each new appearance
marks, more or less definitely, an epoch in history,
and it is to these successive appearances that this
chapter will be devoted. Histories of the Highlands
there are in abundance, but from the study of them
the reader rises with a confused idea of warring
chiefs, bearing similar names from generation to
generation, and clan hordes mingling in confused
and confusing mel^e, like the phantoms of some
dim phantasmagoria. It will be enough for our
purpose to depict the occasions when the Isle of
Skye emerges clearly out of the dark backward and
283
284 The Misty Isle or Skyc
abysm of time. Each appearance, as has just been
said, marks a historic epoch. The Christianising-
of Celtic heathendom is suggested by St. Columba's
missionary efforts in the island ; the Scandinavian
conquest by the connection of Haco with Skye ; the
long battle between feudal chiefs and Scottish kings
by King James's visit ; the dynastic struggles, in
which the Highlands were so largely interested, by
the wanderings of Prince Charles Edward through
the island ; the dawn of a more peaceful age and
the opening up of the Highlands, by the visits of
Dr. Johnson and, forty years later. Sir Walter Scott.
And in the dim ages before Columba many mythic
heroes of the Celts played their part in the Isle of
Skye, where their names are yet remembered. Of
these I shall speak first.
I.
Whether CuchuUainn was a culture -hero and
divinity of the pagan Celts, whose mythical story
became in later days a saga, or whether a real
personage called CuchuUainn did exist, whose fame,
as years went on, attracted to itself the myths of
an earlier divine being of the same name, it is now
quite impossible to say. But whoever he was, the
CuchuUainn of the Ossianic poems is brought into
close relationship with Skye. He was the chief of
the Isle of Mist, and his seat was Dunskaith, near
Ord in Sleat. To a stone near by the ruins of the
castle he is said to have tied up his dog Luath when
he returned from the chase. CuchuUainn went to
the Irish wars, leaving his fair wife Bragela, "the
lonely sunbeam of Dunskaith," behind him. Long
she mourned him, but he never returned. Long she
looked across the waves for the first glimpse of his
sail.
Ossian describes her watching and Cuchullainn's
death. " Dost thou raise thy fair face from the rock
to find the sails of CuchuUainn ? The sea is rolling
Historical and Literary Associations 285
far distant, and its white foam shall deceive thee for
my sails. Retire, for it is night, my love, and the
dark wind sighs in thy hair. Retire to the halls of
my feasts, and think of the times that are past, for I
will return not till the storm of war is past." ^
"Spread now thy white sails for the Isle of Mist,
and see Bragela leaning on her rock. Her tender
eye is in tears, and the winds lift her long hair from
her heaving breast. She listens to the winds of
night to hear the voice of thy rowers ; to hear the
song of the sea, and the sound of thy distant harp.
And long shall she listen in vain : CuchuUainn will
never return." ^
" Hills of the Isle of Mist ! when will ye listen to
his hounds ? But ye are dark in your clouds, and
sad Bragela calls in vain. Night comes rolling
down; the face of ocean fails. The heathcock's head
is beneath his wing ; the hind sleeps with the hart
of the desert. They shall rise with morning's light,
and feed on the mossy stream. But my tears return
with the sun ; my sighs come on with the night." ^
Poetry and pathos brood round lonely Dunskaith,
though the dim centuries separate us from brave
CuchuUainn and lovely Bragela. And how often
since then have passionate lovers in Skye known the
bitterness of fruitless love and endless separation !
Another Ossianic hero, Fingal, is made to visit
Skye. Ossian depicts a great deer drive organised
by him, which took place in Strath, and at which
six thousand deer were slain. The numbers need
not be exaggerated ; at a much later time, when
Skye still swarmed with deer, it was possible to get
a thousand head. The northern shoulder of Beinn-
na-Greine, above Portree, is called Suidh Fhinn, or
Fingal's Seat, where, according to tradition, the hero
used to sit directing the chase in the valley below.
He and his followers regaled themselves on the
venison, cooked in a huge cauldron which was set
' Fingal, bk. i. •' Ibid. bk. vi.
' Death of CuchuUainn.
286 The Misty Isle of Skye
on three stones on the shore of Loch Snizort at
Kensalyre. Two of these stones still remain to
prove the truth of the story. These were the heroic
ages of the Celt, when men lived on an opulent scale
and held communion with the earlier gods.^
II.
A more definitely historical figure is that of St.
Columba, with whose coming the paganism of the
Celtic regions of the Hebrides and northern High-
lands was doomed. That paganism consisted of a
worship of the powers of nature, of life and growth.
These powers, more or less personified, had each his
separate department of life and of the world to govern.
Some were gods of the nation, others of the tribe,
and there were spirits of every place — hill and grove
and stream. They were propitiated by sacrifices,
often of human victims, and there are dim traces of
orgiastic rites. In return, they gave life and increase
to their worshippers, their fields and flocks. Magic
rites mingled with religious worship, but both were
under the control of a priesthood, the famous Druids,
but little removed from the medicine-men of savage
races.
All this St. Columba and his monks had to combat
with, and it is certain that, though down to this day
^ I have already referred in a note (p. 45) to the local
application of the Irish Feinne legends in the Highlands. I
add some other instances. When Feinne was in Skye, the
chase was lost. Caoilte, who was swiftest, was sent to look
for the deer while Feinne and his men gathered limpets on
Loch Snizort. Caoilte found deer at Lynecan, an unknown
locality, and gave a shout, which the heroes heard. One of
them squirted some limpets and the grey-cheeked cow's milk
on a rock still called Creagan a' Bhalguinn, the Rock of the
Mouthful. It is discoloured to this day. The bed of this cow
is a Creag nam Meann, the Kid Rock, behind Kingsburgh.
Hiniosdail was one of her grazing places. Others were
Eisgeadal, Toisgeadal, Carn a' Choin, Braigh Bhran, Uisge-
seader, Suilseader, Bheann Mhoraig, Achachoirc, and Malagan.
Some of these places are on the maps ; all are north of
Portree.
Historical and Literary Associations 287
the Celtic mind is full of the ideas of that earlier
paganism, and that its rites arc still practised in a
more or less altered form, the mission of the beloved
Columba of the churches was wonderfully successful.
From lona, where he arrived in 565 a.d., he wandered
over the wild regions beyond the seas. How the
tiny coracles of framework and skins withstood the
seething waters, it is hard even to guess. But the
faith of these early missionaries was a robust one,
and wherever they went they planted cells and
churches and primitive monastic establishments, and
gained the hearts of those barbarous chiefs and
their people, who heard with wonder of the true
Druid, the Christ.^ And thus, as years went by,
"They heard, across the howling' seas,
Chime convent bells on wintry nig-hts ;
They saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,
Twinkle the monastery lights."
Among his wanderings the saint came to the Isle
of Skye. Adamnan, his biographer, tells how he
prophesied that, when in Skye, an aged chief would
come, seeking baptism. This chief, it is pleasing
to know, had kept all the precepts of the natural
law. Soon after the prophecy was uttered, a boat
was seen approaching the shore of the loch, with
an old man sitting in the prow. He was known to
be Artbrannan, chief of a neighbouring tribe, or, as
Adamnan says, of the " Geona cohort." Two of his
companions brought him to the saint, who instructed
him in the faith of the gospel. Then the chief
sought baptism, which the saint administered to
him. Almost immediately he died, and was buried
just where he had landed, under a cairn of stones.
Adamnan gives no note of the scene of this incident
which can now let us identify it, but it is traditionally
said to have been the shore of Loch Snizort. On
the moor to the right of the highway as the river
1 "Christ is my Druid," says St. Columba, in a poem
attributed to him.
288 The Misty Isle of Skye
Snizort is approached, is a boulder on which the
saint is believed to have stood and preached to the
people. His balancing powers must have been as
great as his powers of persuasion, unless the stone
has altered considerably since then.
St. Columba was a favourite in Skye, to judge by
the number of dedications to his memory, mostly,
however, in the northern half of the island. First, in
the upper half of Portree Bay, which was formerly
called Loch Columcille, is a tiny island which bears
the saint's name, and on which the foundations of a
small church, perhaps erected by Columba himself,
may still be traced. The next place where we find
a dedication is in the island at the head of Loch
Snizort ; while a third is found at St. Columba's
Loch, now drained, near Monkstadt.^ Others prob-
ably exist ; there are two, on Troda Island and
Fladdahuan respectively.
\^ Skye was a wooded island in St. Columba's time,
for he miraculously destroyed a wild boar in a dense
forest, and we learn from Adamnan that the ordinary
hunter slew the boars with spears whose shafts
"still kept the untrimmed bark." The saint had
gone to pray alone in the wood, when the boar
attacked him. He looked at it intently, and invoked
God to help him, saying to the boar, "Thou shalt
proceed no farther in this direction ; perish in the
spot which thou hast now reached." And the animal,
it is said, immediately fell dead.
Of the exact itinerary of the saint's wanderings in
Skye, or of the number of visits he paid, we know
nothing. But the influence of this wonderful man,
of the gentle nature and the strong persuasive will,
must have affected the Skyemen of that day deeply.
He and his monks were true Celts. Their holy rites
replaced those of the Druids. Their chants made
the magic runes die away. They held out a true
hope to those whose light, in religious matters, had
been so largely darkness. And in Skye, as in all
1 See Chap. XVII.
Historical and Literary Associations 289
the Western Isles, the echoes of their holy liturgies
sounded in many a green glen, and mingled with
the noise of dashing waves and the long wash of
Hebridean seas.
It was well. The Celtic islanders needed all the
faith and comfort they could obtain to uphold them
in the coming years, when the long snake-like galleys
of the Norsemen were to come gliding over the sea,
carrying fire and slaughter, rapine and havoc, into
the glens and valleys of the Isle of Mist; To that
era our attention must now be turned.
III.
Before the year 794 a.d. , as the Annals of Ulster
tells us, " the islands of Britain were ravaged by the
Gentiles." The Gentiles were Danes and Norsemen,
or, as the Celts called them, Lochlanaich, and the
King of Lochlann is a frequent character in Celtic
folk-tales. For the next century the Western Isles,
the Sudereys of the Norsemen, were the scene of
raids and fights, burnings, ravagings, and killings.
The Norsemen were born adventurers, filled with the
lust of fighting and plunder, and doubtless they
found in the Celts worthy opponents, and in the
monasteries abundance of rich and costly things.
They gave the Islesmen no rest: —
"When watch-fires burst across the main
From Rona, and Uist, and Skye,
To tell tiiat the ships of the Dane
And the rod-haired slayer were nigfh ;
Our Islesmen rose from their slumbers,
And buckled on their arms,
But few, alas, were their numbers
To Lochlann's mailed swarms ;
And the blade of the bloody Norse
Has filled the shores of the Gael
With many a floating corse.
And many a widow's wail."
The permanent occupation of the Isles did not
take place till the end of the ninth century, and the
19
290 The Misty Isle of Skye
immediate occasion of it was a political revolution in
Norway. Harold Haarfager, or the Fairhaired, say
the sagas, made himself master of the whole of
Norway in 875, driven thereto by the ambition of the
maiden Gyda, who refused to become his wife save
on these terms. The independent princelets or jarls
resented his ambition, and fled to the Western Isles,
from which they sallied forth and harassed Harold
and his sworn men and territories. A man of
Harold's untamed disposition would not sit still
under these provocations, and, collecting a fleet, he
set sail for the Hebrides. Rebellious Norsemen and
native Celts alike were reduced to submission, and
the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, and the Orkneys
became for three long centuries Norse dominions.
Not that the occupation was an easy one. The
Celts gave continual trouble, and the Northmen
were at perpetual feud among themselves ; but, on
the whole, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries
were centuries of Norse domination in the Hebrides.
The bays and winding sea-lochs of Skye and the
other isles formed natural harbours for the galleys
of the conquerors, and from them they set sail on
many a distant conquering expedition, returning to
their green shores with rich plunder. On the shores
of the lochs lay their settlements, and some have
seen in the many duns of the Hebrides Norse strong-
holds. But if these were used by the Norsemen, it
could only have been after they had been captured
from their Celtic builders. They must have inter-
married with the Celts to some extent, but the
persistence of the autochthonous type has, save in
a few marked instances, suppressed the traces of
Norse descent. Nor has the Celtic tongue been
affected by the Norse occupation. Norse place-
names there are in plenty, bosts and shaders and
vaigs, Holm and Stein and Hamara, but it is
always possible that these may be mere Scandinavian
equivalents of earlier Celtic place-names. Some
influence has been seen in an altered system of land
Historical and Literary Associations 291
tenures and rents, but, on the whole, the occupation
was too short, the union of conquered and conquerors
too vague, to produce any lasting impression.
Into the succession of Norse princes, their wars,
and their ups and downs, it is not our purpose to
enter. The appearance of a strong Celtic element
and the expulsion of the Norsemen must, however,
be noticed. Gillebride, the Celtic lord of Argyll, had
a son called Somerled, whose ambitious plans and
growing strength caused much uneasiness to Olave
the Red, King of Man and the Isles. This " devout
and voluptuous prince," as he is quaintly called in
an old chronicle, gave his daughter Ragnhildis to
Somerled in marriage in 1140. This might have
cemented friendship between the Norse kingdom and
the overlord of Argyll, but it did not. Somerled
soon fell to fighting with Olave's son and successor,
Godred, whose Celtic subjects helped Somerled in
his schemes. In a sea-fight, grim and great, in 1 156,
Godred's force was defeated off Isla, and after a
second defeat in 1158, he had to cede his territories
to Somerled, whom these victories made master of
the Hebrides and Man. He thus became in eff'ect
the first Lord or King of the Isles, a title which his
descendants still hold. In Somerled the Norsemen
had found their master, and their power began to
totter to its final fall. He emerges from that dim
period as a mighty hero, strong and fearless, filled
with ambitions which he carried out, for he had
brains and could use them, as well, as thews and
sinews. In him we see the saviour of the Celts
from foreign domination, and his traditional scheme
of making himself master of broad Scotland, mythical
though it may be, shows what the Celts believed of
him, and animated his later descendants in their
hostility to the Scottish kings.
After Somerled's death in 1164, his sons could not
hold their own, and the Norsemen were once more in
the ascendant. But now the struggle for Celtic or
Scandinavian domination continued to run its course,
292 The Misty Isle of Skye
and soon the Scottish kings began to take note of
their Norse rivals, for they, naturally, claimed to be
overlords of the Western Isles. One incident shows
the fury of the Celtic and Scandinavian struggle.
Ferchar Maclntaggart, first Earl of Ross, a friend
of Alexander 11., made a descent on the Norsemen in
Skye, where, says the saga, "they burned villages
and churches (the Norsemen were by this time
Christians), and they killed great numbers of men
and women. The Scots even took the small children,
and, raising them on the points of their spears, shook
them till they fell down to their hands, when they
threw them away lifeless." It was a cruel time, and
Celt and Norseman vied with each other in savagery.
The Hebridean lords appealed for assistance to
Haco, already annoyed by the negotiations of
Alexander iii. for the purchase of the sovereignty
of the Isles from him. In July 1263, having collected
a mighty fleet and armament, he set sail to punish
the Celtic princes and to ravage the dominions of
the Scottish king. He arrived first at Lewis, where
new galleys joined his fleet. And now these galleys,
a hundred strong, manned by sturdy rowers and
mighty warriors, and led by Haco's own ship, built
of oak overlaid with gold, with the Norse dragon at
the prow, swept in glittering array down the Sound
of Raasay, past Portree Bay, where the people watched
in awe the mighty fleet sail past the warder cliffs of
their bay. The brown sails were furled, and anchor-
age was made at Kyleakin (Haco's Kyle or Strait)
by the Cailleach Stone, where new reinforcements
met Haco. The Norse dominion seemed about to
be re-established in the islands ; rebellious subjects
were punished ; Argyll and Lennox knew the Norse-
man's blade and brand, and were laid waste with fire
and slaughter. But Alexander iii. had also been
mustering his forces, and the great if doubtful battle
of Largs was fought on a September day. Haco, if
not defeated, was checked, and he and his men took
refuge in their galleys. But the end of the Norse
Historical and Literary Associations 293
plague, like that of the Armada, was due to the
elements. A fierce tempest drove the galleys from
the coast ; such as were not broken on the shore fled
before the blast, to be wrecked, many of them, on
Lome and Mull and Skye. Haco and his remaining
force made for Wester Fjord in Skye, in other words,
Loch Bracadale, "where he levied food of the isles-
men." Then they set sail, broken and dispirited,
for home.
"And thine oaken g-alley, Haco,
That sailed with kingfly pride,
Came shorn and shattered, Haco,
Through the foaming Pentland tide."
Poor Haco, old and broken-hearted, landed at
Kirkwall to die, and with his death the days of the
triumphant Norse domination in the Isles were over.
IV.
If the Scottish kings had rid themselves of the
Norsemen, they found they could not hold their over-
lordship of the Isles in absolutely undisputed sway.
Technically, the Lords of the Isles and the Celtic
chiefs held their lands from the kings of Scotland
as feudal superiors. They seldom acknowledged
their vassalage, or, when they did, resolved also to
give as much trouble as possible. For the next two
hundred years internal feuds among the Islesmen
and rebellion against the Scottish throne fill the
chronicles of the Highlands. Skye, which became
gradually the chief seat of the Lords of the Isles,
saw the fiery cross sent round to summon Macdonalds
and MacLeods to war with the Scots, as often as to
bloody feuds with each other. We have seen what
Somcrled's ambitions were. He founded a kingdom
which was purely Celtic, as against Norsemen and
Scots, and it became a tradition with his descendants,
when there were no more Norsemen to subdue, to
afflict the Scots, or Southrons, as much as possible,
294 The Misty Isle of Skye
and to preserve an anti-Scottish, Celtic kingdom.
"We have been auld enemies to the realm of
Scotland," said the Lord of the Isles to Henry
VIII., in 1545, when seeking- an alliance with that
enemy of the Scots for purposes of his own. The
Scottish crown had always difficulty in reducing this
Celtic kingdom. Scotland was a poor country ; it
had no standing army ; and the Highland mountains
barred the way to the Scots, as they had done to the
Romans long before. The Celts, like the Boers,
knew their wild country, and could make themselves
invisible at will, or at the worst could retire to some
" stark strength biggit on a craig " as often as need
be.
In the wars of Bruce and the Scots with England
for national independence, the Celtic influence was,
for once, against England, but soon after he had to
organise an expedition against the islesmen, when,
having «'dawntyt the His," he tried to pacify their
people with popular measures. But he never quite
trusted them, and left as a legacy to his successors
the advice never to let the Lordship of the Isles get
into the hand of one man. Under succeeding kings
the Lords of the Isles continued their policy of harass-
ing their dominions, and carrying fire and slaughter
far and wide. One of the fiercest incidents of the
struggle was the battle of Harlaw, which arose out
of the claim of Albany, regent of Scotland, to dispose
of the earldom of Ross when it should have passed
to Donald of the Isles. Every glen, strath, and
island was soon aflame, and with an immense army
Donald landed at Strome Ferry and swept across the
mainland. At Harlaw the Earl of Mar met them.
Donald of the Isles, with Macdonalds and MacLeods
from Skye and Lewis and Harris, formed the main
body on that dreadful day, which left few Lowland
families out of mourning, though the battle decided
the struggle but little.
So for years it went on. Raids and forays ; an
occasional pitched battle when the kings penetrated
Historical and Literary Associations 295
to the Highlands ; enforced or pretended submis-
sions followed by renewed revolt, made up the story
of these bygone years. But time and the superior
qualities of the Scottish forces were bound to work
their way. The Celtic armies were too loosely
combined ever to remain a compact force after
either a defeat or a victory. Moreover, the chiefs
of clans were not always inclined to be loyal to the
Lord of the Isles. In such directions lay signs of
weakness. These causes, for example, led the proud
Alasdair of the Isles, clad only in shirt and drawers,
to appear suddenly before King James i. at Holyrood,
to do penance. But this humiliation, of course,
only led the clan to new activities. Meanwhile, the
increasing consolidation of the Scottish kingdom,
and the growing power of the Earls of Argyll and
AthoU as rivals of the Lords of the Isles, led to their
doom. The heroic age of the House of Somerled
passed away in 1493 with the forfeiture of its chief,
his title and lands. This forfeiture resulted in new
attempts of the crown to force the clans to acknow-
ledge its claim, and in struggles between rival scions
of the family of the Isles to gain the honours of the
ancient house.
James iv. and James v. were the hammers of the
Celtic chiefs and their clans, and under them we
see their final defeat and subjection to the Scottish
crown. Both made repeated journeys into the
Highlands, and in the last of these, when the sub-
mission of the chiefs was most complete, the Isle of
Skye comes into prominence once more. James v.
resolved to make such a pageant and progress
through the Isles as would impress the chiefs with
the might of the crown and the forces which it could
summon in its defence. Twelve magnificent ships
were got ready, all armed with artillery. Six of
them were appropriated to the king, his retinue,
and his army ; Cardinal Beaton, the Earl of Huntly,
and the Earl of Arran, had each one ; and the
remaining three carried provisions, baggage, and
296 The Misty Isle of Skye
pavilions. In May this large and splendidly
equipped armament set sail from the Firth of
Forth, and going- northwards, touched at the
Orkneys and Caithness, and doubled Cape Wrath.
The Hebrides were next visited, and at various
places courts of justice were held and punishments
meted out. Magnificent sport occupied the atten-
tion of the king and his courtiers, and doubtless the
glory of the Western Isles in that early summer
time was not lost upon some of them. Having
visited the outer isles, the fleet entered Loch
Dunvegan, where the castle yielded to superior
force, and Alexander, chief of the clan, and some
others, were made prisoners. From Dunvegan the
ships sailed round to Score Bay, where they dropped
anchor. Here the king visited Duntulm Castle,
and was impressed with its magnificent situation
and strong fortifications. It had lately been
occupied by the MacLeods till they were driven
from it by Donald Gorme, Lord of the Isles de facto
though not de jure, who was shortly after killed
before Ellandonan. At this time the chief of the
clan, his son, was only a child.
The fleet then sailed down Raasay Sound, as
Haco's galleys had done three hundred years before,
under the shadow of Storr and the basaltic cliffs of
the east coast of Skye. Sweeping round the Beal,
they entered Portree Bay and dropped anchor there.
The army landed on the rocky shore by the present
Scorrybreck House, which shore was afterwards
known as Creag-na-mor-Shluagh, the rock of the
great multitude, while the king with his court
landed at the burn a little to the east. It was hence
called Port-an-Righ, and this name the bay and
village have since retained instead of the earlier
name of Loch Columcille. There was then no
town where Portree now stands ; the hillsides were
covered with wood, which has long since dis-
appeared ; but the main features of the landscape
are otherwise unchanged. James saw the Coolins
Historical and Literary Associations 297
and the ridge of Storr, Ben Tianavaig- and Fing-al's
Seat, as we see them to-day. Imagination, as we
stand on the " Lump," can depict for us the fleet at
anchor in the blue bay, decked with bunting-, and on
the flat ground where the square now stands, the
canvas town, tents and pavilions without end, snowy
white pennons and banners fluttering in the breeze ;
the royal standard high over all ; richly dressed
courtiers and men-at-arms moving about in crowds.
It was a royal pageant, and no more fitting stage
for it could have been prepared by nature. Here
as elsewhere the island chiefs and their principal
followers came down to prove their submission to
such a superior force, among others the chiefs of
Clanranald and Glengarry, and the guardian of the
young chief of Clan Donald. Clanranald was made
prisoner, and doubtless he and MacLeod cursed
their hard fate in company. The eyes of the wild
islanders who flocked to Portree must have stared
"lang and sair " at the exhibition of pomp and
power. James v., like most of the Stuarts, knew
human nature well, and doubtless his expedition
eff'ected what centuries of fighting had failed to do.
Like that great and loyal servant of his successors,
Claverhouse, he understood and could manage the
Highland chief as few Lowlanders have ever done.
He returned homewards by Kyle-rhea, touching at
Glenelg, and so to Kintyre and the Firth of Clyde.
Some of the many prisoners were then released on
providing hostages, but the bolder spirits were kept
in durance until after the king's death in 1542.
From this date onwards, for the most part, the
island chiefs were warm supporters of the House of
Stuart which had conquered them. A Mackinnon
of Strath was knighted by James vi. in 1604, and
so was the famous Rory Mor of Dunvegan (whose
sword still hangs on the wall of the castle) in 1610,
while Donald Macdonald of Sleat was created a
Nova Scotia baronet by Charles i. Macdonalds of
the Isles and Mackinnons of Strath fought under
298 The Misty Isle of Skye
Montrose for the Royal Martyr against his enemies ;
and when Charles 11. made the abortive attempt to
win the kingdom in 165 1, the Clan MacLeod
mustered for him in full force, as did the Mac-
donalds. At the battle of Worcester, Norman
MacLeod led his clan in person, and there so many
of their number were killed that the northern clans
agreed to let them have respite from military
service until their full strength had been regained.
Under Dundee, Macdonald of Sleat fought with
seven hundred of his clansmen at Killiecrankie, for
which his house in Sleat was burned by some of
William's troops, who afterwards were defeated by
him in a skirmish. His son fought with his clans-
men in the '15 at SheriflFmuir, and was forfeited,
the forfeiture being soon after removed. And in
the '45, though the chiefs themselves did not go out,
their clans were not found wanting in support of
King James vii. and his son the Prince of Wales.
That eventful time invested the Isle of Skye with
such a garb of romantic human interest as it has
never since lost. An outlawed Prince, a protecting
maiden ; it is the case of chivalry inverted, and
makes up such a story as time cannot wither, nor
custom stale.
V.
When Prince Charles raised his standard at
Glenshiel, he expected aid from the great chiefs of
Skye and their clans. He therefore sent young
Clanranald to find out from them what they were
prepared to do. Clanranald met Sir Alexander
Macdonald and MacLeod at the inn of Sconser,
and there learned that they would do nothing.
Unhappily for the Prince's cause (and there is
little doubt that had they joined him with the full
muster of their clans the king would have had his
own again). President Forbes had moved them from
their rightful allegiance, and both thenceforth
supported the Hanoverian. MacLeod sent round
Historical and Literary Associations 299
the fiery cross ; his clansmen mustered at Caroy,
a thousand strong ; but when they found that their
chief, like Macdonald, had accepted a commission
from the German lairdie, and that they were to
fight against the Prince, most of them went off
on their own account to join him. MacLeod found
he could only muster two hundred for the other side.
Sir Alexander Macdonald fared little better. He
went to Trotternish to muster for George. As he
mounted the hill above Portree, he was met at
Drumuie by his tenant and clansman, Macdonald
of Kingsburgh, who roundly told him the clan
would not gather, and in fact he only got fifty
followers.
With the history of the '45 we need not concern
ourselves here. It was, alas, a lost cause, and after
CuUoden our sympathies are equally divided between
the victims of the butcher Cumberland's cruelty and
the Prince as he wandered, hunted and homeless,
with a price on his head which tempted nobody.
After CuUoden he made his way to Glenboisdale ;
thence under the guidance of a Skyeman, Donald
MacLeod of Gualtergill, he was carried in an eight-
oared boat to Benbecula, and then to Lewis and South
Uist. After months of wandering, in which it is a
pleasure to know that Lady Margaret Macdonald
sent him newspapers, the Prince and his party
found themselves being gradually hemmed in on
land by the Hanoverian soldiers and at sea by
men-of-war. It was in this hour of extremity that
Flora Macdonald came to the rescue. She was
then on a visit to her brother in South Uist, and it
was proposed to her that she should conduct the
Prince to her mother's house at Armadale in Skye.
To her the affair seemed hopeless, but loyalty kept
her spirit undaunted. She was brought to the
Prince in a hut on the night of 21st June 1746,
and arrangements were duly made. A letter was
sent by her stepfather to his wife at Armadale
stating that Flora was returning home with an
300 The Misty Isle of Skye
Irish servant, Betty Burke (the Prince), under the
charge of Neil MacEachan.
Meanwhile Lady Clanranald and Flora prepared
a suitable dress for the Prince, who, disguised in
a flowered linen gown, a quilted petticoat, white
apron, and mantle with a hood, embarked with
the heroine in a six-oared boat from Rossinish in
South Uist on the night of 28th June. June nights
are never dark in the Hebrides, but it was no
summer sea which" they crossed, for a storm had
arisen. After eight hours' rowing on a tumultuous
sea, Vaternish Point was reached, but a landing was
impossible, for the redcoats were posted there and
greeted them with a volley. Crossing the mouth of
Loch Snizort, the party landed close by Monkstadt,
the seat of Sir Alexander Macdonald.
The Prince waited on the hillside ; Flora went
forward to acquaint Lady Margaret, who had then
as a guest in her house an officer of the militia
regiment encamped near by. She, with Kingsburgh,
who was then at Monkstadt, arranged the plan for
the rest of the journey, but in great fear and trem-
bling. While Flora dined with Lady Margaret and
the militia officer, Kingsburgh went out with pro-
visions for the Prince. He started up, ready to
strike the intruder with his heavy knotted stick,
when the latter cried, " I am Macdonald of Kings-
burgh, come to serve your Highness."
In a short time the Prince (as Betty Burke), Flora,
Kingsburgh, and a servant, started off for Kings-
burgh House, intending there to pass the night.
They followed the course of the present highroad
by Uig. Betty could not manage her petticoats ;
"Your enemies call you a pretender," said Kings-
burgh, "but if you be, you are the worst at your
trade I ever saw." Now they were held up too
high ; now left to trail in the water as a burn was
crossed. Some passers-by were shocked, or, as
others thought, suspected the disguise. But all
went well, and Kingsburgh was reached without
Historical and Literary Associations 301
mishap. Here the Prince had a good meal and
the luxury of an excellent bed, enjoying the latter
so much that he slept till one next day.
Though the whole party knew the danger that
threatened them, they could afford to find subject
for merriment in the Prince's disguise as they gave
it the finishing touches on his departure. A new
pair of shoes was presented to him, Kingsburgh
preserving his tattered brogues as a relic. To
Flora he gave permission to "cut a lock frae his
lang yellow hair." Then Flora and Neil set out,
followed soon after by the Prince and Kingsburgh,
in a drenching rain. In a wood at some distance
from the house Charles changed his dress, and,
taking leave of his host, went on towards Portree
with a boy as his guide, probably following the
present road thither from Kingsburgh.
The arrangement had meanwhile been made that
the Prince should be taken to Raasay. Young
Raasay (his father was then in hiding) was at
Eyre House, the home of Dr. MacLeod, his brother
(who had been wounded at Culloden), six miles
from Portree. Donald Macdonald had been sent
thither to inform them and to beg them to obtain
a boat. This was no easy matter, as to ask for a
boat in Portree was bound to arouse suspicion.
But, remembering that there was a small boat on
Loch Fada in the Storr valley, they proceeded
thither to carry it to sea. What a laborious task
this must have been ! The boat had to be carried
to the top of the cliff two miles off, and then
brought down the precipitous face to the sea. All
succeeded well ; the boat was taken to Raasay,
there Malcolm MacLeod and two boatmen joined
the party, who then made for Portree, where the
Prince was expected to be waiting. By this time
Charles had reached the inn at Portree (the room
where he sat is still shown in the Royal Hotel), and
here Donald Macdonald met him. At the inn, after
having obtained food, a dram (it had been raining
302 The Misty Isle of Skye
heavily), and tobacco, he tried, unsuccessfully, to
get silver for a guinea. Then, having taken leave
of Flora Macdonald, whom he said he trusted to see
at St. James's yet, he slipped out and met the
Raasay men.
It was by this time nearly midnight. The
embarkation was made near the spot where the
Prince's ancestor, James v., had landed with all
the pomp of a king, and the boat's head was turned
to Raasay. Here the Prince remained in hiding for
two days in a hut, after which it was arranged that
he should return to Skye. The whole party again
embarked in a rough sea, Charles singing a Gaelic
song to keep up the spirits of the rowers. A landing
was effected under the cliffs at Nicolson's Rock,
though with difficulty, as the east coast of Skye is
no agreeable place in a storm. They toiled up the
cliff, and camped, wet and weary, in a byre near the
old house of Scorrybreck on the moor above Portree.^
After a wretched meal of crumbled oatcakes and
cheese, the Prince fell asleep, frequently starting up
and crying, " Oh, poor England ! oh, poor England ! "
All the party except Malcolm MacLeod now left him,
and at seven the Prince and his faithful follower
set out for Strath. Charles took the character of
MacLeod's servant, but announced his intention of
fighting to the death if they met any redcoats.
It was a long and tedious journey, over the
roughest ground in Skye, and the travellers had
only a bottle of brandy to sustain them. When it
was finished, MacLeod hid the bottle under a bush,
where he found it three years afterwards. It is
difficult now to follow the route taken, as the
fugitives went through byways to avoid notice ;
but they seem to have gone from Portree to
Sligachan, walked up Glen Sligachan, crossed the
' The site of the byre is still pointed out, and is called in
Gaelic, "the hollow of the byre." Prince Charlie's Cave,
beautiful as it is, was never tenanted by the Prince. His well-
ascertained movements allow no time for a stay there.
Historical and Literary Associations 303
ridgfe between Glamaig and Marsco, dropped down
on Loch Ainort, and then made their way by
Strathmore to Elgol. Among the lonely Red Hills
Charles said, truly enoug-h, "I am sure the devil
cannot find us now ! " They thought it best to keep
away from the house of the chief of the Mackinnons,
and therefore made for Elgol beyond Kilmoree,
where a sister of MacLeod's lived, married to a kins-
man of the chief's. Thirty miles had been covered
since the byre at Scorrybreck was left. At Elgol
the fugitives were received by Mrs. Mackinnon, and
there they had breakfast and a long rest in bed.
When MacLeod awoke he found the Prince dandling
his nephew in his arms and singing to him. By
this time Mackinnon, who had been absent, was
approaching the house. MacLeod ran to meet him,
and told him whom he had for a guest, but cautioned
him to take no notice of the Prince. The good man
had all the emotion of a Celt, and he had no sooner
entered his house and looked at his Prince than he
burst into tears. Concealment was no longer possible
before such tried devotion.
Mackinnon was now sent for a boat, and, meeting
his chief, informed him of the Prince's arrival. He
sent back his clansman, arranged to provide a boat,
and presently arrived at the house, where, after doing
homage, the aged chief led Charles to a cave, where
Lady Mackinnon had carried a supply of food and
wine. The chief, being on his own territory, now
took control of affairs, and Malcolm, after an
affectionate farewell, returned to his friends with
messages from the Prince. Ten days later he was
arrested.
The cave, which still bears the royal name, and
lies near the south-east end of Loch Scavaig, was left
at eight o'clock in the evening of Friday, 4th July,
and the Prince and the two Mackinnons made for the
mainland, although two ships of war were in sight.
After a rough voyage, they reached Mallaig, thirty
miles off, where Charles once more proceeded on his
304 The Misty Isle of Skye
wanderings, which lasted till 20th September, when
he was able to embark for France ! Thus ended his
wanderings in Skye and the Highlands.
Many princes have fought and failed, but surely
none ever failed with so good a grace as this
Wanderer, the most fascinating and romantic of his
romantic and fascinating line. In Skye, the story of
his journeyings through the island is still preserved,
for Skyemen can never forget the Prince's gratitude
for their loyalty, nor the memory of their ancestors
who fought and bled for his cause. They saw their
beloved hills and glens no more, and now to-day
" Lonely cairns are o'er the men
That fought and died for Charlie."
VI.
After Culloden many interesting and romantic
aspects of Highland life died away, but the country
was no more subject to clan raids, and, becoming
peaceful, was gradually opened up to the knowledge
of the Southron. There is much to regret in what
has for ever passed away — the patriarchal clan
system had many merits which no other system can
quite restore, but it was inevitable that the march
of progress should touch the glens and islands and
transform the life of the people as far as was possible.
The visit of Dr. Johnson, the English moralist, to
the Highlands in 1773, is symbolic of the welding
together of the Southron and the Celt, and the
growing consolidation of the Highlands with the
other parts of the empire from which, in spirit at
least, they had so long stood aloof.
The feeling with which this journey was regarded
by Johnson and his faithful Boswell, as well as by
their friends, shows that, for the most part, the
Highlands were only then beginning to be regarded
as other than barbarous. But there can be little
doubt that the publication of } ohnson^ s /ot<r/iey and
Historical and Literary Associations 305
Boswell's Tour brought about a revolution in regard
to the ideas entertained about this region. It was
seen that the journey had been easily accompHshed,
that civilisation existed in the Highlands, that the
travellers had been treated en prince^ and from that
time onwards a gradually increasing stream of
visitors penetrated to the wild north-west.
We are only concerned with that part of the
journey which led the travellers through the Isle of
Skye, and shall follow their footsteps through the
island from day to day. On 2nd September they
left Glenelg, opposite the coast of Sleat, by boat, and
were rowed across the sound to Armadale. Here
they were met by Sir Alexander Macdonald and his
wife, and entertained by them in a house belonging
to one of their tenants. The pilgrims "were now
full of the Highland spirit," and tried in vain to rouse
the English-bred chief to fitting feudal and patriarchal
feelings.^ Johnson was moved to compose his Latin
ode to Skye, of which, if the Latinity is perfect, the
sentiment is too much in the style of the bewigged
Augustan age to do justice to the Green Isle of the
West. After a four days' visit at Armadale, they set
out on the 6th along the shore, then struck inland,
probably near Knock, through the moorland to
Broadford and the sea. Bending inland again, they
reached the old house of Corricatachin, under the
mighty shadow of Ben-na-Cailleach.
A large company was here assembled under the
hospitable roof of Mackinnon and his wife, to meet
the distinguished strangers and to show them some-
thing of "the joyous social manners of the High-
lands." Johnson heard much of the second-sight,
and indited an ode to his Thrale, " Let the shores of
^ For some reason, Johnson and BoswcU were filled with the
idea that their host and hostess did not do all they might for
them, and afterwards satirised them bitterly. But, judging
from their report of the visit, they themselves did not keep to
the politeness which is expected of a guest, and were as boorish
as Sir Alexander was cold. The chief, in fact, seems to have
been bored by his guests.
20
3o6 The Misty Isle of Skye
Skye learn the sweet name of Thrale." After break-
fast on the 8th, they rode over to Sgianadan, a little
north of Broadford, where the boat of the laird of
Raasay was waiting them. They sailed up the
narrow channel between Scalpa and Skye, Johnson
perched high on the stern, " like a magnificent
Triton," and the crew singing the stirring chorus of
" Hachen foam." Johnson proposed to buy Scalpa,
build a school and an Episcopal church on it, and
set up a printing-press for the publication of Gaelic
literature. They soon landed at Raasay, where the
laird, who had been out in the '45, the chief of
MacLeod, and many other lairds, met them, and
there several days were spent in the pleasantest
manner possible.
On Sunday the 12th they sailed from Raasay to
Portree, and in that beautiful sound, beneath high
mountains and cliffs, with the sea stretching to the
remote northern horizon, Johnson solemnised his
friends by speaking of death — that subject which
at once fascinated and terrified him. They dined
at the inn at Portree, where letters awaited them
from the south, and then set out in a downpour,
which irritated the moralist, for Kingsburgh. They
followed, for the most part, the modern road thither,
and were received by Macdonald of Kingsburgh and
his wife, who was no less a person than Flora
Macdonald. Boswell says with truth: *'To see
Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the
English Tories, salute Miss Flora Macdonald in the
Isle of Skye, was a striking sight." She had heard
of their coming, but understood that the elephantine
doctor was an English buck ! Johnson slept in the
bed in which the Prince had lain, but "had no
ambitious thoughts about it," and in the course of
his stay heard from Flora's lips the story of his
wanderings.
Sending their horses by land to avoid the diffi-
culties of the way, Kingsburgh conducted the
pilgrims by boat to Greshornish ; from there they
Historical and Literary Associations 307
rode on to Dunvegan, reaching- it in the afternoon
of the 13th, by the track which still exists on the
moorland above the present highroad. Here Johnson
"tasted lotus," saw the wonders of the castle, dis-
coursed in his ex cathedrd way on all things, and
spoke of keeping a harem. This so overcame the
flighty Boswell, that he burst into a loud guffaw,
and was at once castigated with such biting wit and
variety of degrading images, as shamed him. The
party visited Rory Mor's Cascade, which still
splashes over the rocks as it did when they admired
it, the temple of Anaitis, the old church with its
pyramid in memory of Lord Lovat, and all the other
lions of the place, and probably Johnson was as
happy here in the company of MacLeod, his mother
and sisters, as ever he had been in his life.
Tuesday, 21st September, saw the travellers on
their way to Uilinish, eight miles from Dunvegan,
and they must have followed the line of route which
the present highroad now takes. Uilinish was then
tenanted by a MacLeod who was sheriff-substitute
for Skye, and whose daughter, as Boswell explains,
though well bred, had never been out of the island.
Several interesting antiquities were visited, the
earth-house (over which Johnson and Dr. MacQueen
had, as usual, a controversy). Dun Beag, and the
cave in Harlosh Island, and these visits, with much
cultured conversation, occupied two days. Johnson's
knowledge and style of talking impressed Uilinish,
as they did most people : " He is a great orator, sir ;
it is music to hear this man speak." Setting out by
boat, the travellers, with MacQueen (who seems to
have let his parochial duties slip during the visit),
crossed Loch Bracadale, and entering Loch Harport,
landed at Fernielea after a pleasant sail over the
waters. From there they rode across the hill to the
green vale of Talisker, where they were entertained
by Colonel MacLeod and met the young laird of Col,
"a little lively young man," who planned much of
their future journeying. They set out from Talisker
3o8 The Misty Isle of Skye
on the 25th, recrossed the hill, and following the
valley of Glen Drynoch, passed Glen Sligachan, and,
coming under Glamaig, arrived at Sconser inn, where,
twenty-eight years before, the island chiefs had met
Clanranald, the Prince's messenger. Sending their
horses over Drum-na-Cloich, they came by boat out
of Loch Sligachan and through the channel between
Scalpa and Skye to Strolimus, whence they rode
once more to hospitable Corricatachin.
They arrived at midnight ; Johnson went to bed,
Boswell sat up drinking, and it was five in the
morning before he got to bed. He awoke at noon
on Sunday with a headache, only to be told by his
governor, as MacQueen called him, that he, drunken
dog, had kept the others up. When Boswell did
come downstairs, he took up Mrs. Mackinnon's
prayer-book, and his eyes lighted on the words, " And
be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." His
surroundings were too strong for him, and on the
whole it was a merry party assembled at Corri-
catachin, and we are scarcely surprised that next
evening Johnson took one of the ladies on his knee
and kissed her. From Mrs. Mackinnon he got
many details of the Prince's wanderings, and his
whispering with her amused the guests. Seeing
their nods and smiles, she cried out, "I am in love
with him! What is it to live and not to love?"
On all these convivial Celts, Johnson made a lively
impression. "Honest man," they one and all said
as he left Corricatachin on Tuesday.
Ostaig, in Sleat, was the last house in which the
wanderers were entertained, and here Johnson wrote
the famous letter to MacLeod, which is preserved at
Dunvegan. Bad weather detained them "on the
margin of the sea," and it was not till Sunday,
3rd October, that they finally left Skye, not without
some heaviness of heart, the natural result of paying
adieu to the kindness they had met with. For them
the visit had been charming, and to a Johnsonian no
pilgrimage could be more delightful than to follow
Historical and Literary Associations 309
their footsteps in Skye, the Tour and Journey in
hand. Skye is much as it was then ; the hills and
lochs and moors are as Johnson and Boswell saw
them ; and of the houses where they stayed some at
least remain. Dunvegan Castle may be haunted
with the portly form of the doctor ; his portrait, by
Reynolds, hangs on the wall ; near it is his Ostaig
letter ; some of the books in the library his scholarly
eye must have glanced at.
By the time that Scott visited Skye in the light-
house yacht, it had become well known to visitors
from the south. He saw but little of it, though of
that little he made excellent use in the Lord of the
Isles. Having sailed round the north of Scotland,
the yacht, after visiting Harris, arrived in Dunvegan
Loch on the 23rd of August 1814. Scott saw the
lions, as Johnson had done, made a mistake, equal
to Oldbuck's, over the famous cup, and slept in the
Fairy Room, where he felt duly eerie. The yacht
sailed again on the 25th, following the coast of Skye
southwards to Loch Scavaig, where the famous visit
to Coruisk was paid, and to the loch Scott did due
justice in his diary and poem. The same day the
yacht reached Loch Slapin ; a landing was made at
the Spar Cave, not then shorn of its finest beauty ;
and here Scott's descriptive powers were taxed to
the full. From thence sail was made for the island
of Eigg.
From the visit to Dunvegan sprang up a friend-
ship with the family of MacLeod, witnessed to by
a number of charming letters, and presentation
copies of the Secret Commowwealth and the Lord of
the Isles. With the latter the poet sent a poet's
letter, which is worth quoting.
"Dear Madam, — I have been postponing from
day to day requesting your kind acceptance of my
best thanks for the beautiful purse of your workman-
ship with which I was some time since honoured.
The hospitality of Dunvegan will long live in my
3IO The Misty Isle of Skye
recollection, and I am not a little flattered by a token
which infers that my visit was not forgotten by the
Lady of the castle. I venture to send (what has
long delayed this letter) a copy of a poem which
owes its best passages to MacLeod's kindness and
taste in directing me to visit the extraordinary
scenery between his country and Strathaird, which
rivals in grandeur and desolate sublimity anything
that the Highlands can produce. The volume should
have reached you in a quarto shape, but while I
sought an opportunity of sending it, behold the
quartos disappeared, and I was obliged to wait for
the second impression, of which I now send a copy.
I shall be proud and happy if it serves to amuse a
leisure hour at Dunvegan. It has had one good
consequence to the author, that it has served to
replenish the purse with which the Lady MacLeod
presented him. Yet he has so much the spirit of
the old Bard, that he values the purse more than the
contents. Should MacLeod and you ever come to
Edinburgh, I will scarce forgive you unless you let
such a hermit as I am know of your living in the
neighbourhood of his recess, and I would have
particular pleasure in endeavouring to show you
anything that might interest you. I do not despair
of (what would give me the most sincere pleasure)
again being a guest at Dunvegan. My eldest girl
sings Cathail gu la — excuse Saxon spelling — and I
hope to send you in a few weeks a very curious
treatise on the second sight, published (not for sale)
from a manuscript in 169 1 which fell into my hands. ^
Hector Macdonald has promised me the means to
send it.
"I beg my respectful compliments to Miss Mac-
Leod, my kindest remembrances to the chieftain,
and my best wishes to the little tartan chief and
nursery. — Believe me, with much respect. Dear
^ This is the famous work by Theophilus Insulanus, a
Skyeman, which forms an appendix to Scott's edition of the
Secret Commowwealth.
Historical and Literary Associations 311
Madam (for I will not say Mrs. MacLeod, and Lady
MacLeod is out of fashion), Your honoured and
obliged and truly grateful, Walter Scott."
"Edinburgh, ■^rd March 1815."
Probably no more characteristic or genial letter
of* Scott's exists. He never visited the castle again,
but his friendship with the MacLeods is borne
witness to by many letters at Dunvegan, preserved
with pious care.
Since Scott's day Skye has been visited and praised
by many men of letters. Tennyson came here in his
young days, but wrote nothing about it. Alexander
Smith, having married a daughter of the island, did
it more justice. Everybody knows, or should know,
his poem on Blaaven ; he wrote the racy Summer in
Skyc (three summer holidays, if truth be told) ; and
introduced his wife's home at Ord into Alfred
Hagarfs Household. Robert Louis Stevenson met
Edmund Gosse on the steamer at Portree, and was
duly fascinated with the charms of the island which
his father had loved so well. And has he not told
us how "some of the brightest moments of my life
were passed over tinned mulligatawny in the cabin
of a 16-ton schooner storm-stayed in Portree Bay " ?
The island itself has had many bards of its own,
who have sung its praises in Gaelic. They are
known and revered by the people, who can recite and
sing their poems for hours together. And for the
ignorant Sassenach who, poor being, has no Gaelic,
the late Sheriff Nicolson, himself a Skyeman and
beloved by all who knew him, made many a
beautiful and ringing line descriptive of its charms.
Did he not sing —
" Dunedin is queenly and fair,
None feels it more than I ;
But in the prime of summer-time,
Give me the Isle of Skye ! "
From the days of Cuchullainn and Fingal to the
312 The Misty Isle of Skye
present time, many a dim century has come and
gone ! But one well-known figure after another
links the centuries together, and as we wander by
blue loch and purple moorland many ghosts rise and
glide before us. There are the gigantic forms of
the mythic heroes of past time ; there is blessed
Columba preaching the gospel of peace. We see
Haco's fleet gliding down the dark blue sound, with
brazen shields and golden prows flashing in the sun.
We see the brilliant array of the Scottish court
assembled at Portree, and that kingly figure, who
loved not wisely but too well, coming out of his
splendid pavilion, clad in all the glory of a king.
And here is one, who bears a royal presence, clad in
torn and stained tartans, tramping bravely over the
heather, smiling and singing, though he knows
himself hunted and a price set on his head. And
who is this florid and stout gentleman, so slovenly
in his dress, who rallies his elegant friend with
notebook and pencil, or in a grumbling tone says,
"Sir, it is very disagreeable riding in Skye",^
We need not give him a name, nor that other
kindly ghost with the broad lowland face, who
ambles past with animated voice and gesture.
Honest Johnson and dear Sir Walter, it adds to
our love for Skye to know that you have trod her
shores and appreciated her beauties and her people.
In their traditions you are enshrined along with
these royal and saintly and mythic figures of the
voiceless past.
THE ISLE OF SKYE
To Illustrate "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE" by J. A. MacCulloch.
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Published by Olipkantf Anderson tf* Fcrria'^ Edinburgh and LoTidon.
APPENDIX
LIST OF THE FLORA OF SKYE.
Achillea tnille/olium , Yarrow.
ptartnica, Sneezewort.
Aegopodiuvt podagraria^ Bishopweed.
Ajuga reptans, Common bugle.
Alchemilla a///«a;, Alpine lady's-mantle.
argentea, Silver lady's-mantle.
arvensis, p'ield lady's-mantle.
vulgaris. Common lady's-mantle.
Allium ursinum, Broad-leaved garlic.
Anchusa sempervirens, Evergreen
alkanet (at Ose, probably a garden
escape).
Anemone nemorosa, Wood anemone.
Angelica syh'estris, Wild angelica.
Antennaria dioica, Mountain ever-
lasting.
Anthyllis vulneraria, Lady's-fingers.
Apium graveolens. Wild celery.
Arabis alpitia, Alpine rock-cress.
hirsuta, Hairy rock-cress.
petrcea, Mountain rock-cress.
Arenaria peploides, Sea purslane.
serpylli/olia. Thyme - leaved sand-
wort.
Amteria »iaritima. Sea-pink.
Asperula odorata, Sweet woodruff.
Aster tripolium, Sea starwort.
Balloia nigra. Black horehound.
Barisia odontites, Red bartsia.
Bellis perennis. Common daisy.
Brassica campestris, Navew.
sinapistrum, Wild mustard.
Calluna erica, Ling or heather (white
and purple).
Caltha palustris. Marsh marigold.
Cardamine pratensis, Lady's-smock.
Carduus pycnocephalus, Slender-
flowered thistle.
Carum verticillatum, Whorlcd cara-
way.
Centaurea nigra. Black knapweed.
scatiosa. Great knapweed.
Cerastium triviale, Wayside mouse-
ear chickweed.
Chenopodium polyspermum, Many-
seeded goose-foot.
Chrysanthemum leucanthemum. Ox-
eye daisy.
parthenium. Feverfew.
segetum, Yellow o.\-eye.
Chrysopienium opposito/oliutn. Com-
mon golden saxifrage.
Circa-a lutetiana. Enchanter's night-
shade.
Cnicus ar-vensis, Creeping plume-
thistle.
heterophyllus. Melancholy plume-
thistle.
lanciolatus. Spear plume-thistle.
pahistris. Marsh plume-thistle.
Cochlcaria alpina, Alpine scurvy-
grass.
anglica, English scurvy-grass.
danica, Danish scurvy-grass.
officinalis. Common scurvy-grass.
Conopodium denudaiu>n. Pignut.
Cytisus scoparius. Broom.
Daucas caroia. Wild carrot.
Digitalis purpurea. Foxglove.
Drosera anglica. Great-leaved sundew
intermedia. Intermediate sundew.
longifolia. Long-leaved sundew.
protundi/olia. Round-leaved sundew.
Square - stalked
smooth • leaved
leaved marsh
Epilo/iittm adnatum,
willow herb.
?>ionianum, Broad
willow herb.
palustre. Narrow
willow herb.
Erica cinerea. Fine-leaved heath.
tetralix. Cross-leaved heath.
Eriocaulon septangulare, Pipewort.
Eriophorum angusti/olium. Common
cotton-grass.
vaginatum, Hare's-tail cotton-grass.
Erophila zmlgaris, Long - podded
Whitlow-grass.
Erythrtra centaurium. Common
centaury.
Euphorbia helioscopia. Sun-spurge.
Euphrasia officinalis, Eyebright.
Fragaria vesca, Wood strawberry.
Galeopsis anscusti/olia. Common red
hemp-nettle.
telrahit, Common hemp-nettle.
Galium aparinc. Goose-grass.
boreale. Cross-leaved bedstraw.
mollugo. Hedge bedstraw.
palustre. Water bedstraw.
Gentiana campestris. Field gentian.
313
3H
The Misty Isle of Skye
Geranium molU, Dove's foot crane's
bill.
pusillvm. Small-flowered crane's bill.
robertianurn. Herb Robert.
Geum dryas octopetala. Limestone
mountain avens.
interniediutn.
rivale. Water avens.
■urbamim, Herb-benet.
Glau.x marititna, Sea milkwort.
Gnaphalhun norvegicum. Highland
cudweed
superium. Dwarf cudweed. ,
ttliginosum, Marsh cudweed.
Habenaria albida. Small white
Habenaria.
bi/olia, Lesser butterfly orchis.
chloroleuca, Greater butterfly orchis.
conopsea. Sweet-scented orchis.
viridis. Frog orchis.
H eracleum sphondyliutn, Cow parsnip.
Hippuris vulgaris. Mare's-tail.
Hychceris radiata, Long-rooted cat's-
ear.
Hypericum dubium. Imperforate St.
John's wort.
pulchrum. Small upright St. John's
wort.
perforatum. Common St. John's
wort.
Iris pseudacorus, 'Yellow iris.
Juniperus nana. Dwarf juniper.
Lactuca virosa, Acrid lettuce.
Lamium intermedium. Intermediate
dead-nettle.
pitrpureit>f:. Purple dead-nettle.
Lathyrus montanus. Tuberous bitter
vetch.
pratensis. Meadow vetchling.
Lapsana coinmunis. Nipplewort.
Leontodon autumnalis. Autumn hawk-
bit.
hirtus. Hairy hawk-bit.
hispidus. Rough hawk-bit.
Limu>n catharticum. Cathartic flax.
Listera cordata. Heart-leaved t way-
blade.
ovata, Tway-blade.
Lobelia dortmanna. Water lobelia.
Loiseleuria procuinbens. Trailing
azalea.
Lonicera periclymenum , Honey-suckle.
Lotus corniculatus, Bird's-foot trefoil.
Lychnis dioica. Red campion.
flos-cuculi. Ragged-robin.
Lysitnackia nemorum. Yellow pim-
pernel.
Malva roiundi/olia. Dwarf mallow.
sylvestris, Common mallow.
Mentha arz'ensis. Corn-mint.
Menyanthes tri/oliata, Buck-bean.
Mimulus luteus. Yellow monkey -flower.
Myosotis arziensis. Field scorpion-grass.
cespitosa. Tufted water scorpion-grass.
collina. Early field scorpion-grass.
palustris. Forget-me-not.
repens, Creeping water scorpion-grass.
sylvatica. Wood forget-me-not.
versicolor. Parti-coloured scorpion-
grass.
Myosurus viinimis. Mouse-tail.
Myrica gale. Bog-myrtle.
Narthecuvi ossi/ragutn , Bog asphodel.
Nasturtium officinale. Water-cress.
Nepeta cataria. Catmint.
glechotna. Ground ivy.
Onobrychis vicicefolia. Common sain-
foin.
Orchis incarnata, Crm^OTi marsh orchis.
latifolia, Marsh orchis.
maculata, Spotted orchis.
mascula, Early purple orchis.
Orobanche rubra. Red broom-rape.
Oxalis acetosella, Wood sorrel.
Oxyria digyna. Mountain sorrel.
Parnassia palustris, Grass of Parnassus.
Pedicularis palustris, Marsh red-rattle.
silvatica. Dwarf red -rattle (also a
white variety).
Petasites officinalis, Butter-bur.
Pinguiciila alpina, Alpine butterwort.
lusitanica. Pale butterwort.
vulgaris. Common butterwort.
Planiago lanceolata, Ribwort plantain.
major. Greater plantain.
Polygala vulgaris. Milkwort.
Polygonatum multijlorum, Solomon's
seal (garden escape ?).
Polygonutn aviculare, Common knot-
grass.
convolvulus. Black bindweed.
cuspidatxan, Japanese knotweed (?).
lapathi/oliuvj. Pale - flowered Per-
sicaria.
persicaria, Common Persicaria.
Potentilla anserina, Silverweed.
palustris, Marsh cinquefoil.
reptans. Creeping cinquefoil.
silvestris, Tormentil.
Primula acaulis, Primrose.
Prunella vulgaris. Self-heal (also a
white variety).
Pyrola minor. Lesser winter-green.
Ranunculus acris. Buttercup.
aquatitis. Water crowfoot.
bulbosus. Bulbous buttercup.
Jicaria, Lesser celandine.
Jlammula, Lesser spear wort.
parvijlorus. Small-flowered crowfoot.
petiolaris.
repens. Creeping buttercup.
sardous. Pale hairy buttercup.
Rhinanthus crista-galli. Yellow rattle.
I
(
Appendix
315
Rosa canina, Dog-rose.
Jrintpinelli/olia, Burnet rose.
rubiginosa. Sweet briar.
Rubvs fruticosus. Bramble.
idceus, Raspberry.
Rumex acetosa. Sorrel.
sanguineus, Bloody-veined dock.
Sangina apeiala, Annual pearlwort.
LinTiaiy Alpine pearlwort.
niaritima. Sea pearlwort.
procutnhens. Procumbent pearlwort.
Salex herhacea, Least willow.
repens. Dwarf silky willow.
Sanicula europtea. Wood sanicle.
Saussurea alpina, Alpine saussurea.
Saxi/raga aizoiiies. Yellow mountain
saxifrage.
hirculus. Yellow marsh saxifrage.
hypnoicUs^ Mossy saxifrage.
stellaris, Starry saxifrage.
uttibrosa, London pride (garden
escape ?).
Scabiosa amensis. Field scabious.
succisa, Devil's bit scabious.
Scilla Jestalis, Wild hyacinth (also a
white variety).
Scrophularia aquatica, Water figwort.
nodosa, Knotted figwort.
Scutellaria galericulata. Greater
skull-cap.
Sedum anglicuni, English stonecrop.
<!'<ijrj'/)/!_y//Kw, Thick-leaved stone-crop.
roseuni, Rose-root.
villosum. Hairy stonecrop.
Scnecio Jacobira, Common ragwort.
vulgaris. Common groundsel.
Sherardia arvensis. Field madder.
Silent acaulis. Moss campion
cucubalus, Bladder campion.
ntaritima, Sea campion.
Solidago virgaurea. Golden-rod.
Spergula arvensis. Corn spurrey.
Sfiirce tilmaria. Meadow-sweet.
Stachys betonica. Wood betony.
pabistris. Marsh woundwort.
silvatica. Hedge woundwort.
Stellaria media, Chickweed.
Taraxacum officinale. Dandelion.
Teucrium scorodonia, Woodsage.
Thyfnus serpyllutn. Mountain thyme.
Tofieldia palustris, Bogasphodel.
Tri/oliutn dubium. Lesser yellow
trefoil.
pratense. Red clover.
repens. White clover.
Trollius europieus, Globeflower,
Tussilago far/ara. Coltsfoot.
Ulex europiFus, Common furze.
Urtica dioica. Great nettle.
urens, Small nettle.
Vacciniutn ntyrtillus. Blaeberry.
uliginosu}>i. Bog whortleberry.
Valeriatia dioica. Marsh valerian.
Veronica ckamadrys, Germander
speedwell.
iHontana, Mountain speedwell.
officinalis. Common speedwell.
serpyllifolia. Thyme-leaved speedwell.
Vicia cracca. Tufted vetch.
orobus, Wood vetch.
sativa. Common vetch.
sepiuiii. Bush vetch.
Viola ericctoruin. Dog violet.
palustris. Marsh violet.
raziiniana. Dark wood violet.
silvestris, Pale wood violet.
tricolor, Heartsease.
Volvulus sepium. Great bindweed.
FERNS.
AUosorus crispns. Parsley fern.
Asplenium adiantuin nigrum. Black
maidenhair spleenwort.
tnarinuiii. Sea spleenwort.
ruta muraria, Wall-rue.
trichomanes. Common maidenhair
spleenwort.
Athyrium /ilix fietnina, Ladyfern
(several varieties).
Blechnum spicant. Hard fern (a bifur-
cated variety is found).
Botrychium lunaria, Moonwort.
Cysopteris tnontana, Mountain bladder
fern.
Hymenophylliuttt iunbridgense. Tun-
bridge filmy fern.
Lastraa dilatata. Broad buckler fern.
tnontana. Mountain buckler fern.
cristata, Crested buckler fern.
/elix-tnas, Male fern (several varieties).
Osmunda regalis. Royal fern.
Polypodium dryopteris. Oak fern.
phegopteris. Beech fern.
vuigarc. Common polypody.
Polystichum aculcatum. Hard prickly
shield.
angulare. Soft prickly shield.
lonchitis. Holly fern.
PteHs aquilina. Bracken.
Scolopendriutn tmlgart, Hartstongue
(two varieties).
Woodsia alpina, Alpine woodsia.
3i6
The Misty Isle of Skye
■
THE FAUNA OF SKYE.
Abbreviations, O. V. = Occasional visitant ; S.V.= Summer visitant ;
VV. V. = Winter visitant.
I. Mammals.
Arvicola agrestis. Field vole.
amphibia. Water vole.
Bos taurus. Ox (domestic).
Canis /atniliaris, Dog (domestic).
Skye is famed for its terriers (otter
hounds).
Caprceolus capma. Roe deer.
Cervus elaphus, Red deer.
Equus caballa, Horse (domestic).
ErinaciFus eurotceus, Hedgehog.
Felis catus. Wild cat.
Lepus ctiKtculuSi Rabbit.
europieus, Brown hare.
variabilis, Varying hare.
Lutra vulgaris. Otter.
Mus deciimanus. Brown rat.
jitinutus. Harvest mouse.
tnusculus. Common mouse.
rattus. Black rat.
sylvaticus. Wood mouse.
Mustela erviinca. Stoat.
vulgaris, Weasel.
Ovis aries, Sheep (domestic).
Phoca vitulina. Seal.
Phocana connnunis. Porpoise.
Sorex vulgaris, Shrew.
Talpa europcea, Mole.
Walrus has been seen off the coast.
The sperm, rorqual, bottle-nose,
thrasher, and white whale are ob-
served from time to time.
2. Birds.
Accentor tnodularis, Hedge-sparrow.
Accipiter nisus, Sparrow-hawk.
Acredula caudata. Long-tailed tit.
Aegiatalus hiaticula, Winged plover.
Alauda atvensis. Skylark, s.v.
A lea tarda, Razorbill, s.v.
Alcedo ispida, Kingfisher, o.v.
Anipelis garrulus. Wax wing, o v.
Anas boschas. Mallard.
Anser cinereus. Greylag goose, w.v.
Anthus obscu7-us. Rook.
pratensis. Meadow-pipit, s.v.
Aguilo chryscetos. Golden eagle.
Archibuteo vulgaris, R.L. Buzzard, o.v.
Ardea cinerea. Heron.
Asia accipitrinus. Short-eared owl.
otus, Long-eared owl.
Astur palumharius. Goshawk, o.v.
Bernicla brenta. Brent goose, w.v.
leucopsis. Barnacle goose, w.v.
Botaurus stellaris. Bittern goose, o.v.
Buteo vulgaris. Buzzard.
Caprimulgus europteus. Swift, s.v.
Carduclis elegaus, Goldfinch, o.v.
Certhia/atniliaris, Creeper.
Charad7-ius pluviaiis. Gold plover.
Chelidon urbica. House-martin, s.v.
Cinclus aquaticus. Water-ouzel.
Circus ieruginosus. Marsh harrier, o.v.
cyaneus. Hen harrier.
C langula glaucion. Golden eye, w.v.
Columba livia. Rock-dove.
palttmbus. Wood-pigeon.
Colymbus arcticus, Black-throated diver,
o.v.
glacialis. Great northern diver, w.i'.
septentrionalis. Red-throated diver,
w.v.
Corvus corax. Raven.
corone. Carrion crow.
comix. Hooded crow.
/rugilegus. Rook.
monedula, Jackdaw.
Crex pratensis. Landrail.
Cueulus canorus. Cuckoo, s.v.
Cygnus musicus, Whooper swan, 7v.v.
Cypselus apus. Swift, o.v.
Emberiza citrinella. Yellow-hammer.
miliaria. Corn-bunting.
schoeniclus. Reed-bunting.
Erythaca rubecula, Robin.
Falco tFsalon, Merlin.
eandieans, Greenland falcon, o.v.
islandus, Iceland falcon, o.v.
peregrinus. Peregrine falcon.
Fraiercula arctiea, Puffin, s.v.
Fringilla eoelebs. Chaffinch.
Fulica atra. Coot.
Fubnarus glacialis. Fulmar, o.v.
Gallinago coelestis. Snipe.
gallinula. Jack-snipe, w.v.
jnajor. Great snipe.
Gallinula chloropus. Water-hen.
\
!
\
Appendix
317
Httmetopus osirahgus, Oyster-catcher.
Halieetus albicilla, White-tailed eagle.
Harelda glacialis, Long-tailed duck, a/. 7'.
Hirundo rustzca, Swallow, s.v.
Lagopus mutus. Ptarmigan.
scoticus, Grouse.
Larus argentatus. Herring-gull.
canus. Common gull.
uscus, Lesser black-backed gull.
glaucus, Glaucous gull, Rare lu.v.
kucopterus, Iceland gull. Rare.
marinus, Great black-backed gull, o.i\
minutus, Little gull, o.v.
ridihundus, Black-headed gull, o.v.
Linota cannabina, Linnet.
flavirostris. Twite.
ru/escens. Lesser redpoll, s.t'.
Locustelta noevia. Grasshopper warbler,
S.TK
Lontvia troile. Common guillemot, s.v.
Mareca penelope, Widgeon, w.v.
Mergulus alle, Little auk. Rare w.v.
Alergus merganser. Goosander, iv.v.
serrator. Red-breasted merganser.
Milvus ictinus, Kite.
Motacillc lugubris. Pied wagtail, s.v.
melanope, Grey wagtail, s.v.
Musicapa grisola. Spotted fly-catcher,
s.v.
Numenius arquata. Curlew.
plufopus, Whimbrel, s.v.
Nyciea scandiaca, Snowy owl, o.v.
Oedemia nigra. Common scoter.
Pandion halitrtus, Osi>rey. o.v.
Parus ater. Coal-tit.
Cteruleus, Blue-tit.
major, Great tit, o.v.
Passer domesticus. House-sparrow.
niontanus, Tree-sparrow.
Pastor roseus. Rose pastor, o.v.
Perdrix cinerea, Partridge.
Phalacrocora.x carbo. Cormorant.
graculus. Shag.
Pltalaropus hyperboreus, Red-necked
phalarope.
Phasianus colchicus. Pheasant.
Phylloscopus trochilus. Willow-wren, s.v.
Pica nistica, Magpie, o.v.
PUctrophanes nivalis. Snow -bunting,
w.v.
Podiceps auritus, Sclavonian grebe, o.v.
fliiviatilis, Dabchick, w.v.
griseigena, Red-necked grebe, o.v.
Pratincola rubetra, Whinchat, s.v.
rubicola, Stonechat, s.v.
Procellaria pelagica. Stormy petrel, s.v.
Pujinus anglorum, Manx shearwater,
s.v.
tnajor, Greater shearwater, o.v.
Pyrrhocorax graculus, Chough.
Pyrrhula europtta. Bullfinch.
Querguedula crecca, Teal, w.v.
Rallusaquaticus, Water-rail.
Regulus cristatus, Goldcrest.
Rissa tridactyla, Kittiwake.
Saxicola cpnanthe, Wheatear, s.v.
Scolopax ruiticula, Woodcock, w.v.
Sitta ccEsia, Nuthatch, o.v.
Sontateria mollissima. Eider, w.v.
Stercorarius crepidatus, Richardson's
skua, o.v.
Sterna fluviatilis. Common tern, s.v.
macmra, Arctic tern, s.v.
Strepsilas interprcs, Turnstone, s.v.
Strix flainviea. Barn owl.
Sturnus vulgaris, Starling.
Sula bassana, Gannet, s.v.
Syhia misoria. Barred warbler, o.v.
)-u/a, Whitethroat, s.v.
Tadoma comuta. Sheldrake.
Tetrao parz'ulus, Blackcock.
Tinnunculus alaudarius, Kestrel.
Totanus calidris, Redshank, s.v.
canescens, Greenshank, s.v.
hypoleucos. Common sandpiper, s.v.
Tringa alpina. Dunlin, o.v.
canutus. Knot, o.v.
striata. Purple sandpiper, s.
Troglodytus parvulus. Common wren.
Turdus iliacus. Redwing, w.v.
nterula. Blackbird.
tnusicus. Song-thrush.
pilaris. Fieldfare, zu.v.
torquatus , Ring-ouzel, s.v.
viscivorus. Missel-thrush.
Ttirtur communis, Turtle-dove.
Uria grylle. Black guillemot.
Vannellus vulgaris. Lapwing, s.v.
In compiling this list of birds, I have
made some use of a paper on " The
Birds of Skye, " by the late Rev.
H. A. MacPherson, M.A., of Glen-
dale (Proceedings, Royal Physical
Society, i886).
3. Reptii,ia.
Anguis/ragilis, Blind worm.
Lacerta viviparia. Common lizard.
Vipera vcrtts, Common adder.
4. Amphibia.
Bu/o vulgaris. Toad.
Rana temporaria. Frog.
Triton punctatus. Common newt.
Among the fresh-water fish the sal-
mon, sea, brown, and rainbow trout
are the best known.
INDEX
AiRD, 51, 119.
Alasdair Crotach, 70.
Anaitis, Temple ot, 57, 307.
Antiquities, 18, 39, 44, 47,
51. 55. 58, 62, 93, 103,
258 seq.
Ardmore, 60, 62-3.
Ardvasar, 53.
Armadale, 116, 187, 305.
Arrowheads, stone, 278.
Artbrannan, 287.
Ascrib Isles, 47, 56.
Atmospheric phenomena,
170 seq.
Autumn, 156 seq.
Bad Step, 135.
Banachdich, 142.
Beal, 22, 264, 276.
Bean-nigh, 242.
Beehive cells, 261.
Beinn Edra, 32, 35.
a Ghobha, 63.
na • Cailleach, 28, 101-2,
114, 122, 156.
Greine, 285.
Seamraig, 115.
Ben Chracaig, 22.
Dearg, 91, 103-4, "i.
136.
na-Chro, m.
Tianavaig, 22, 24, 25, 28,
33. "3. 157. 264.
Bernisdale, 249.
Betty Burke, 48.
Bidein Carstael, 142.
Blaaven, 32, 100, 104, 105-
106, 122, 137, 142, 145,
157, 242, 269.
Black houses, 222.
Bloody Stone, 142.
Bornaskitaig, 48.
Borreraig, 81, 241-2.
(Strath), 259.
Boswell, 17, 51, 71, 73, 84,
87, 95. 98, 103. 155,
304 J^v. 312.
Braes, 235, 241, 243, 264.
Bragela, 207, 270, 284.
Bridget, St., 105.
Broadford, 53, 101-2, 122.
Brochs, 265.
Bronze age, relics of, 278
seq.
Bruach-na-Frithe, 142.
Burial-grounds, old, 24, 25,
43. 55, 66, 98, 103.
Cairns, chambered, 93, 260.
Memorial, 254.
Caisteal Uisdean, 51, 74,
268, 271.
Camasunary, 135.
Canoes, 281.
Cam Liath, 47, 260.
Caroy, 94.
Carved stones, 276.
Cas-crom, 215.
Castles, ancient, 113, 268
seq.
Caves, 88, 124, 147, 176.
Celtic art, 197, 202.
Folk-tales, 197.
Paganism, 234, 286.
Poetry, 56, 197.
Changelings, 241.
Charles, Prince, 19, 25, 43,
45. 48, 56, 66, 77, 95,
298 seq., 308, 312.
Cave, 124, 176, 303.
Point, 49.
Well, 51.
Churches, ancient, 24, 44,
55. 271 seq., 274 seq.,
277-8.
Monastic, 273 seq.
St. Columba's, Portree,
20.
memorial window in,
43-
St. John Baptist, Caroy,
^ .94-
Claigan, 81, 263.
Clan feuds, 62 seq., 93, 143,
. 146, 197-
Cliff scenery, 13, 88, 50,
106.
Climate, 161.
313
Cnoc a Chrocaidh, 63.
Mhiclain, 63.
Coal, 181.
Coast-line of Skye, 112, 114-
IIS, 124.
Coire-a-Greadaidh, 146.
Labain, 146.
na- Banachdich, 146.
na-Creiche, 146.
nan Uraisg, 147, 239.
Uisg, 133.
Columba, St., 47, 56, 238,
286 seq., 312.
Island, 55.
Island, Portree, 157, 28S.
Colbost, 80, 263.
Coll, 90, 119.
Colours of landscape, 15.
Communion, 205.
Congested Districts Board,
225.
Conon, 50.
Coolins, 12, 13, ig, 23, 33,
51.57. 82, 91, 92, 95,99,
112, 130, 131 seq., 153,
184, 269.
and Red Hills contrasted,
134. 193-
derivation of name, 131.
Coral Bay, 82.
Corp creidh, 246.
Corry, loi.
Corricatachan, 103, 305,
308.
Creag Mhor, 22, 25.
Crofter's Commission, 220
seq.
Holdings Act, 224.
Crofting life, 230.
Crois Ban, 63.
Crowlin Islands, 102.
Cuchullainn, 207, 267, 269,
_ 284 seq., 311.
Cuithir, 35, 128.
Daalvil, no.
Death, folk-lore of, 254.
Deer, 14, 194, 285.
Diatomite, 35, 123.
Index
* Divination, 250.
Donald Gorme, 41, 271.
Gruamach, 271.
Druids, 244.
Houses, 261.
Druim-nan-Ramh, 133, 141-
142.
Drumhain, 142.
Drumuie, 52-4, 299.
Drynoch, 98.
Duirinish, 66.
Duisdale, 115, 122.
Dun, derivation of, 264.
Duns, 40, 47, 48, 97, 126,
241, 243, 262, 266-7,
269, 284, 290, 307.
Dunnottar, 41.
Duntulm, 39, 42, 271, 296.
Dunvegan Castle, 66, 69
seq., 252, 266, 296, 307,
309-
Head, 29, 60.
Earth-houses, 95, 262, 307.
Edinbane, 57.
Eigg, 63, 90, III, IIS, i2°-
Eilean Altavaig, 36.
a Cheo, 49.
Elgol, 303.
Emigration, 218.
Eruptive rocks, history of,
Es'ictions, 219.
Evil-eye, 245 seq.
Fairies, 240 seq.
Fairy Bridge, 53, 57, 241,
244. 255.
Flag, 63, 67.
Mounds, 103, 241.
Room, 72, 309.
Tower, 70, 72.
Fancy Hill, 23, 297.
Farms, small, 229.
Feinne, legends of, 45, 113,
286.
Fernielea, 98, 307.
Ferns, 166-7.
Fingal, 207, 257, 259, 285,
. 3"-
Fingal's Seat, 16, 23, 27, 51,
156, 285.
Fladdahuan, 44, 249, 288.
Floddigarry, 240-1, 275.
Font, ancient, 273, 282.
Forts, hill, 266.
Fossils, 173 seq.
Funerals, 210.
Gabbro area, 184.
Geology, lo, 91, 172 seq.
Ghobhar Bhacach, 238.
Ghost story, 254.
Giants, 256.
Gillean, no, 279.
Glacial period, 19, 191.
Glaistig, 235.
Glamaig, 28, 51, 100, 122,
136, 142, 145.
Glashnakill, 106.
Glen Brittle, 90, 146.
Haultin, 52.
Hinnisdal, 51.
Glendale, 81, 84.
Glenmore, 97.
Grange, Lady, 64, S8.
Grannos, 235.
Granophyre area, 185.
Greadaidh, 141.
Greep, 86.
Gruagach, 235.
Haco, 18, 102, 113, 292, 312.
Harlosh, 86-7.
Harta Corrie, 133, 137, 142,
MS- .
Healing, gift of, 250.
Heather-burning, 29, 150.
Heronry at Dunvegan, 82.
Holm Island, 44, 125, 235,
280.
Houses, old, in Skye, 16,
18.
Hugh Macghilleasbuig, 41,
75, 271.
Husabost, 81, 84.
Ian Breac, 70.
Dubh, 73.
Fairhaired, 73.
Idrigil Point, 29, 85-6, 87,
(U^g), 48-9. .
Inaccessible Pinnacle, 145.
Island Isay, 60, 62.
Isle Ornsay, 53, 114-5, 122.
James v., 295 seq., 312.
Johnson, Dr., 21, 51, 59, 60,
87. 95, 97, 103. "7,
304 seq., 312.
Kelp, 215.
Kelpie, 122, 239.
Kensalyre, 286.
Kilbride, 259.
Kilmaluag, 39.
Kilmoree, 106.
Kilniuir, 43, 45, 256.
Kilt Rock, I2S, 183-4.
Kingsburgh, 43, 51, 55, 300,
306.
Kinloch, 115, 122.
Knock, 115, 268, 270.
Knock Uilinish, 95.
Kyleakin, 18, 101, 113, 270,
292.
Kyle-rhea, 33, 113, 244.
319
Leak, 32, 35.
Loch Bay, 60.
Beag, 86, 91, 95, 97, 241.
Bracadale, 28, 57, 82, 85,
96, 293, 307.
Caroy, 86.
Cill Chriosd, 103.
Columcille, 46, 277.
Coruisk, 133, 135 stq.,
138, 309.
Cuithir, 128.
Duagraich, 263.
Dunvegan, 85.
Eishort, no, 122.
Fada, 32.
Greshornish, 50, 56, 157.
Harport, 85, 91, 96, 98,
307-
Leatham, 32.
Mealt, 35, 266.
nan Dubhrachan, 122,
239-
Scavaig, 85, 91, 135, 138,
140,. 303, 309-
Sgubaidh, 239.
Slant, 236.
Slapin, 104, no, 309,
Sligachan, 100.
Sneosdal, 237.
Snizort, 29, 44, 45, 50,
53 Jf^., 151, 287-8.
Varkasaig, 86-7.
Vatten, 86.
Lota Corrie, 142, 145.
Lyndale, 51, 73, 273, 279.
MacCoitar's Cave, 22.
Macdonald, Flora, 20, 43,
45. 48. 5', 62, 77, 299
seq.
Macdonalds of the Isles,
40, 45, 48-
MacLeod of MacLeod, 78.
MacLeod's Maidens, 29, 87,
89.
Tables, 29, 34, 50, 54, 79,
82, 92, 157, 180.
MacQueen, Dr., 59.
MacQuithens, 125.
Macraild, 70.
Macrimmon, 87, 242.
Maelrubha, St., 103.
Maighdeann-Buanna, 238.
na-Tuinne, 244.
Martin, M., 261.
Marsco, 28, 91, 100, ijj,
» ij6, 142, 145.
Mary of the Castle, 271.
Meall-na-Suiraniach, 45.
Mermaid, 244.
Midges, 129, 161.
Monxstery, 57, 261, 377.
Monoliths, 359.
320
The Misty Isle of Skye
Monkstadt, 46, 48, 281,
288, 300.
Moon superstitions, 236.
Moorland scenery, 13, 149.
Moraines, 135, 192.
Mountain scenery, 15, gg,
104, I3g seq.
Mugeary, 228.
Needle Rock, 37.
Neolithic age, 18, g3.
Nic Cleosgeir Mhor, 8g.
Nicolson, Sheriff, 35, 311.
Norsemen, 18, 58, 62, 102,
19s, 267, 289 seq.
Oisin, II, 45, 95, 207, 267,
284.
Omens, 254.
Oran, St., 122.
Ord, no, 284, 311.
Peat-cutting, 151.
Peinchorran, 227.
Peinduin, 43.
Peinfiler, 264.
Pennant, 46, 75, 97, 103,
256, 27g,
Picts' houses, ig.
Piper's Cave, 22, 87,
Place-names, 195.
Plants, folk-lore of, 237.
Plateaux basalts, 180.
Portree, 20, 23, 51, 53, 96,
i3S> 156, 3oi> 306, 311.
Loch, 35, 85, 156, 288,
292, 296, 311.
Quiraing, 11, 31, 35-6.
Rain, 16, 54, 154, 161, 200.
Red Hills, 14, 19, 23, 28, 33,
51. 53. 9°. 92. 95. 103.
112, 130, 157, 185 seq.,
269.
and Coolins, 134, 193.
Reileag MhoirChloninDon-
uill, 43-
Rigg. 125, 279-
Roag, 92, 228.
Rory Mor, 42, 70, 76-7, 147,
297.
Rudha Hunish, 39, 44.
nan h-Aiseig, 39.
nan Clach, 85.
Ru Meanish, 42.
Runrig, 212.
Sconser, 226, 298, 308.
Score Bay, 43, 259.
Scorrybreck, 25, 235, 243,
302.
Scott, 72, 75, 77. 89. 107-8,
140, 309 xr^., 312.
Seabirds, 168.
Sea-serpent, 244.
Second-sight, 250 seq.
Sedimentary rocks, 172 seq.
Selma, 207.
Sgumain, 146.
Sgurr a Bhasteir, 142.
Alasdair, 131, 142, 146.
Dearg, 142, 145-6.
Dubh, 137, 141-2.
Greadaidh, 141-2.
Mhadaidh, 142.
Mhic Connaich, 142.
Mhor, 31, 39, 45.
na-Banachdich, 131, 142.
na Stri, 141.
nan Gobhar, 146.
nan-Gillean, 53, 131, 135-
136, 142.
Thuilm, 146.
Sheep-farming, 14, ii^seq.
Shielings, 213.
Shrew-mouse, 255.
Shulista, 235.
Sian, 249.
Sills, 182, 187.
Skeabost, 59.
Skerinish, 51.
Skudiburg, 46 seq.
Skye, derivation of, 11.
Garden of, 11, 116, 194.
Granary of, 45.
History of, 283 seq.
Life in old days, 196 seq.,
209.
Physiography of, 192 seq.
Scandinavian element in,
195 seq.
Size of, II.
Skyeman, life and character
of, 200.
Sleat, 90, 105, 116, iiZseq.,
\ii, 270, 279.
Sligachan, 53, 100, 135, 248.
Glen, 28, 136 seq., 145,
302.
Slochd Altrimen, 109.
Smith, Alexander, 106, 138,
311-
Snizort, 52, 55, 235.
Snow, 158, 164.
Somerled, 117, 195, 291.
Spar Cave, 106 seq., 309.
Spring, 150, 165.
Staffin, 31, 35, S3, 87,
H2.
Stein, 61-2.
Stevenson, 54, 311.
Stone ball, 280.
Stone circles, ig, 103, 105,
258.
Storr, II, 27-8, 2g, 30, 33,
34. 9'. "3. 125, 1381
153-
Storr lochs, 239.
Old Man of, 32, 153.
Strath, 103, 122, 285.
Strathaird, 105, 194.
Struan, 95, 97, 241, 255.
Suardal, 8i.
Subtenant system, 217.
Suicide, folk-lore of, 255.
Summer, 153.
Sunsets, 130, 171.
Sun worship, 235.
Superstitions, 198.
Taboos, 255.
Tacksmen, 216 seq.
Taghairm, 125.
Talisker, 97-8, 307.
Head, 29, 57, 82, 85, 95.
Tamer, 86-7.
Tayinlone, 55.
Teampuill-na-Annait, 58.
Choan, 276.
Frangaig, 276.
Temple of Anaitis, 57 seq.
Tertiary rocks, ig, 178.
Tir na h'Oige, 44.
Tormore, iig.
Torran, 104.
Torvaig, 25.
Township, 213.
Traditions, 22, 34, 41, 44-5,
93. 94. 103. i°9. "3.
122, 125, 142, 147, 23g,
241 seq., 26g.
Trees, folk-lore of, 237.
Troda, 288.
Trotternish, 31, 57.
Trumpan, 62, 64 seq., 259,
272, 279.
Tumuli, 19, 259.
Uamh, Oir, 44, 87.
Uginish, 79.
Uig, 45, 47. 49, 53. 251. 258.
Bay, 48-9.
Uilinish, 86-7, 95, 239-60,
263.
Varragil, 135.
Vaternish, 44-5, 5°, S3, 6',
96.
Vatten, 93, 260, 263.
Viking hoards, 280.
Volcanic rocks, 178 seq.
Vents, 182.
Water bull, 239.
Horse, 239.
Wells, folk-lore of, 236.
Whisky-drinking, 203.
Wiay, 86-7.
Wildflowers, 166 seq.
Winter, 156, 162.
Witches, 244 seq.
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