Part 6

The ferry is a narrow passage between the mainland and Skye; the current is powerful there, difficult to pull against on gusty days; and the ferrymen are loath to make the attempt unless well remunerated. When we arrived, we found four passengers waiting to cross; and as their appearance gave prospect of an insufficient supply of coin, they were left sitting on the bleak windy rocks until some others should come up. It was as easy to pull across for ten shillings as for two! One was a girl, who had been in service in the south, had taken ill there, and was on her way home to some wretched turf-hut on the hill-side, in all likelihood to die; the second a little cheery Irishwoman, with a basketful of paper ornaments, with the gaudy colours and ingenious devices of which she hoped to tickle the æsthetic sensibilities, and open the purses, of the Gael. The third and fourth were men, apparently laborious ones; but the younger informed me he was a schoolmaster, and it came out incidentally in conversation that his schoolhouse was a turf-cabin, his writing-table a trunk, on which his pupils wrote by turns. Imagination sees his young kilted friends kneeling on the clay floor, laboriously forming pot-hooks there, and squinting horribly the while. The ferrymen began to bestir themselves when we came up; and in a short time the boat was ready, and the party embarked. The craft was crank, and leaked abominably, but there was no help; and our bags were deposited in the bottom. The schoolmaster worked an oar in lieu of payment. The little Irishwoman, with her precious basket, sat high in the bow, the labourer and the sick girl behind us at the stern. With a strong pull of the oars we shot out into the seething water. In a moment the Irishwoman is brought out in keen relief against a cloud of spray; but, nothing daunted, she laughs out merrily, and seems to consider a ducking the funniest thing in the world. In another, I receive a slap in the face from a gush of blue water, and emerge, half-blinded, and soaked from top to toe. Ugh, this sea-waltz is getting far from pleasant. The leak is increasing fast, and our carpet-bags are well-nigh afloat in the working bilge. We are all drenched now. The girl is sick, and Fellowes is assisting her from his brandy-flask. The little Irishwoman, erst so cheery and gay, with spirits that turned every circumstance into a quip and crank, has sunk in a heap at the bow; her basket is exposed, and the ornaments, shaped by patient fingers out of coloured papers, are shapeless now; the looped rosettes are ruined; her stock-in-trade, pulp--a misfortune great to her as defeat to an army, or a famine to a kingdom. But we are more than half-way across, and a little ahead the water is comparatively smooth. The boatmen pull with greater ease; the uncomfortable sensation at the pit of the stomach is redressed; the white lips of the girl begin to redden somewhat; and the bunch forward stirs itself, and exhibits signs of life. Fellowes bought up the contents of her basket; and a contribution of two-and-sixpence from myself made the widow's heart to sing aloud for joy. On landing, our luggage is conveyed in a cart to the inn, and waits our arrival there. Meanwhile we warm our chilled limbs with a caulker of Glenlivet. "Blessings be with it, and eternal praise." How the fine spirit melts into the wandering blood, like "a purer light in light!" How the soft benignant fire streams through the labyrinthine veins, from brain to toe! The sea is checkmated; the heart beats with a fuller throb; and the impending rheumatism flies afar. When we reached the inn, we seized our luggage, in the hope of procuring dry garments. Alas! when I went up-stairs, mine might have been the carpet-bag of a merman; it was wet to the inmost core.

Soaked to the skin, it was our interest to proceed without delay. We waited on the landlord, and desired a conveyance. The landlord informed us that the only vehicle which he possessed was a phæton, at present on hire till the evening, and advised us, now that it was Saturday, to remain in his establishment till Monday, when he could send us on comfortably. To wait till Monday, however, would never do. We told the man our story, how for two days we had been the sport of fortune, tossed hither and thither; but he--feeling he had us in his power--would render no assistance. We wandered out toward the rocks to hold a consultation, and had almost resolved to leave our things where they were, and start on foot, when a son of the innkeeper's joined us. He--whether cognisant of his parent's statement, I cannot say--admitted that there were a horse and gig in the stable; that he knew Mr M'Ian's place, and offered to drive us to a little fishing village within three miles of it, where our things could be left, and a cart sent to bring them up in the evening. The charge was--never mind what!--but we closed with it at once. We entered the inn while our friend went round to the stable to bring the machine to the door; met the landlord on the stairs, sent an indignant broadside into him, which he received with the utmost coolness. The imperturbable man! he swallowed our shot like a sandbank, and was nothing the worse. The horse was now at the door, in a few moments our luggage was stowed away, and we were off. Through seventeen miles of black moorland we drove almost without beholding a single dwelling. Sometimes, although rarely, we had a glimpse of the sea. The chief object that broke the desolation was a range of clumsy red hills, stretching away like a chain of gigantic dust-heaps. Their aspect was singularly dreary and depressing. They were mountain _plebs_. Lava hardens into grim precipice, bristles into jagged ridge, along which the rack drives, now hiding, now revealing it; but these had no beauty, no terror, ignoble from the beginning; dull offspring of primeval mud. About seven P.M. we reached the village, left our things, still soaked in sea-water, in one of the huts, till Mr M'Ian could send for them, and struck off on foot for the three miles which we were told yet remained. By this time the country had improved in appearance. The hills were swelling and green; up these the road wound, fringed with ferns, mixed with the purple bells of the foxglove. A stream, too, evidently escaped from some higher mountain tarn, came dashing along in a succession of tiny waterfalls. A quiet pastoral region, but so still, so deserted! Hardly a house, hardly a human being! After a while we reached the lake, half covered with water-lilies, and our footsteps startled a brood of wild-ducks on its breast. How lonely it looked in its dark hollow there, familiar to the cry of the wild bird, the sultry summer-cloud, the stars and meteors of the night--strange to human faces, and the sound of human voices. But what of our three miles? We have been walking for an hour and a half. Are we astray in the green wilderness? The idea is far from pleasant. Happily a youthful native came trotting along, and of him we inquired our way. The boy looked at us, and shook his head. We repeated the question, still the same shy puzzled look. A proffer of a shilling, however, quickened his apprehension, and returning with us a few paces, he pointed out a hill-road striking up through the moor. On asking the distance, he seemed put out for a moment, and then muttered, in his difficult English, "Four mile." Nothing more could be procured in the way of information; so off went little Bare-legs, richer than ever he had been in his life, at a long swinging trot, which seemed his natural pace, and which, I suppose, he could sustain from sunrise to sunset. To this hill-road we now addressed ourselves. It was sunset now. Up we went through the purple moor, and in a short time sighted a crimson tarn, bordered with long black rushes, and as we approached, a duck burst from its face on "squattering" wings, shaking the splendour into widening circles. Just then two girls came on the road with peats in their laps: anxious for information, we paused--they, shy as heath-hens, darted past, and, when fifty yards' distant, wheeled suddenly round, and burst into shrieks of laughter, repeated and re-repeated. In no laughing mood we pursued our way. The road now began to dip, and we entered a glen plentifully covered with birchwood, a stream keeping us company from the tarn above. The sun was now down, and objects at a distance began to grow uncertain in the evening mist. The horrible idea that we had lost our way, and were doomed to encamp on the heather, grew upon us. On! on! We had walked six miles since our encounter with the false Bare-legs. Suddenly we heard a dog bark; that was a sign of humanity, and our spirits rose. Then we saw a troop of horses galloping along the bottom of the glen. Better and better. "'Twas an honest ghost, Horatio!" All at once we heard the sound of voices, and Fellowes declared he saw something moving on the road. The next moment M'Ian and a couple of shepherds started out of the gloom. At sight of them our hearts burned within us, like a newly-poked fire. Sincere was the greeting, immense the shaking of hands; and the story of our adventures kept us merry till we reached the house.

Of our doughty deeds at supper I will not sing, nor state how the toddy-jugs were drained. Rather let me tell of those who sat with us at the board--the elder Mr M'Ian, and Father M'Crimmon, then living in the house. Mr M'Ian, senior, was a man past eighty, but fresh and hale for his years. His figure was slight and wiry, his face a fresh pink, his hair like snow. Age, though it had bowed him somewhat, had not been able to steal the fire from his eye, nor the vigour from his limbs. He entered the army at an early age; carried colours in Ireland before the century came in; was with Moore at Corunna; followed Wellington through the Peninsular battles; was with the 42d at Quatre Bras, and hurt there when the brazen cuirassiers came charging through the tall rye-grass; and, finally, stood at Waterloo in a square that crumbled before the artillery and cavalry charges of Napoleon--crumbled, but never flinched! It was strange to think that the old man across the table breathed the same air with Marie-Antoinette; saw the black cloud of the French Revolution torn to pieces with its own lightnings, the eagles of Napoleon flying from Madrid to Moscow, Wellington's victorious career--all that wondrous time which our fathers and grandfathers saw, which has become history now, wearing the air of antiquity almost. We look upon the ground out yonder from Brussels, that witnessed the struggle; but what the insensate soil, the woods, the monument, to the living eye in which was pictured the fierce strife? to the face that was grimed with the veritable battle-smoke? to the voice that mingled in the last cheer, when the whole English line moved forward at sunset? M'Ian was an isle-man of the old school; penetrated through every drop of blood with pride of birth, and with a sense of honour which was like a second conscience. He had all the faults incidental to such a character. He was stubborn as the gnarled trunk of the oak, full of prejudices which our enlightenment laughs at, but which we need not despise, for with our knowledge and our science, well will it be for us if we go to our graves with as stainless a name. He was quick and hasty of temper, and contradiction brought fire from him like steel from flint. Short and fierce were his gusts of passion. I have seen him of an evening, with quivering hands and kindling eye, send a volley of oaths into a careless servant, and the next moment almost the reverend white head was bowed on his chair as he knelt at evening prayer. Of these faults, however, this evening we saw nothing. The old gentleman was kind and hospitable; full of talk, but his talk seemed to us of old-world things. On Lords Palmerston and Derby he was silent; he was eloquent on Mr Pitt and Mr Fox. He talked of the French Revolution and the actors thereof as contemporaries. Of the good Queen Victoria (for history is sure to call her that) he said nothing. His heart was with his memory, in the older days when George III. was king, and not an old king neither.

Father M'Crimmon was a tall man, being in height considerably above six feet. He was thin, like his own island, where the soil is washed away by the rain, leaving bare the rock. His face was mountainously bony, with great pits and hollows in it. His eyes were gray, and had that depth of melancholy in them which is so often observed in men of his order. In heart he was simple as a child; in discourse slow, measured, and stately. There was something in his appearance that suggested the silence and solitude of the wilderness; of hours lonely to the heart, and bare spaces lonely to the eye. Although of another, and--as I think, else I should not profess it--a purer faith, I respected him at first, and loved him almost when I came to know him. Was it wonderful that his aspect was sorrowful, that it wore a wistful look, as if he had lost something which could never be regained, and that for evermore the sunshine was stolen from his smile? He was by his profession cut off from all the sweet ties of human nature, from all love of wife or child. His people were widely scattered: across the black moor, far up the hollow glens, blustering with winds or dimmed with the rain-cloud. Thither the grim man followed them, officiating on rare festival occasions of marriage and christening; his face bright, not like a window ruddy with a fire within, rather like a wintry pane tinged by the setting sun--a brief splendour that warms not, and but divides the long cold day that has already passed from the long cold night to come. More frequently he was engaged dispensing alms, giving advice in disaster, waiting by the low pallets of the fever-stricken, listening to the confession of long-hoarded guilt, comforting the dark spirit as it passed to its audit. It is not with viands like these you furnish forth life's banquet; not on materials like these you rear brilliant spirits and gay manners. He who looks constantly on death and suffering, and the unspiritual influences of hopeless poverty, becomes infected with congenial gloom. Yet cold and cheerless as may be his life, he has his reward; for in his wanderings through the glens there is not an eye but brightens at his approach, not a mourner but feels he has a sharer in his sorrow; and when the tall, bony, seldom-smiling man is borne at last to his grave, round many a fireside will tears fall and prayers be said for the good priest M'Crimmon. All night sitting there, we talked of strange

"Unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago,"

blood-crusted clan quarrels, bitter wrongs and terrible revenges: of wraiths and bodings, and pale death-lights burning on the rocks. The conversation was straightforward and earnest, conducted with perfect faith in the subject-matter; and I listened, I am not ashamed to confess, with a curious and not altogether unpleasant thrill of the blood. For, I suppose, however sceptical as to ghosts the intellect may be, the blood is ever a believer as it runs chill through the veins. A new world and order of things seemed to gather round us as we sat there. One was carried away from all that makes up the present--the policy of Napoleon III., the death of President Lincoln, the character of his successor, the universal babblement of scandal and personal talk--and brought face to face with tradition; with the ongoings of men who lived in solitary places, whose ears were constantly filled with the sough of the wind, the clash of the wave on the rock; whose eyes were open on the flinty cliff, and the floating forms of mists, and the dead silence of pale sky dipping down far off on the dead silence of black moor. One was taken at once from the city streets to the houseless wilderness; from the smoky sky to the blue desert of air stretching from mountain range to mountain range, with the poised eagle hanging in the midst, stationary as a lamp. Perhaps it was the faith of the speakers that impressed me most. To them the stories were much a matter of course; the supernatural atmosphere had become so familiar to them that it had been emptied of all its wonder and the greater part of its terror. Of this I am quite sure, that a ghost story, told in the pit of a theatre, or at Vauxhall, or walking through a lighted London street, is quite a different thing from a ghost story told, as I heard it, in a lone Highland dwelling, cut off from every habitation by eight miles of gusty wind, the sea within a hundred feet of the walls, the tumble of the big wave, and the rattle of the pebbles, as it washes away back again, distinctly heard where you sit, and the talkers making the whole matter "stuff o' the conscience." Very different! You laugh in the theatre, and call the narrator an ass; in the other case you listen silently, with a scalp creeping as if there were a separate life in it, and the blood streaming coldly down the back.

Young M'Ian awoke me next morning. As I came down stairs he told me, had it not been Sunday he would have roused me with a performance on the bagpipes. Heaven forfend! I never felt so sincere a Sabbatarian. He led me some little distance to a favourable point of rock, and, lo! across a sea, sleek as satin, rose a range of hills, clear against the morning, jagged and notched like an old sword-blade. "Yonder," said he, pointing, "beyond the black mass in front, just where the shower is falling, lies Lake Coruisk. I'll take you to see it one of these days."

_AT MR M'IAN'S._

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

The farm which Mr M'Ian rented was, in comparison with many others in the island, of but moderate extent; and yet it skirted the seashore for a considerable distance, and comprised within itself many a rough hill, and many a green valley. The house was old-fashioned, was _harled_ all over with lime, and contained a roomy porch, over which ivies clustered, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a lot of bedrooms, and behind, and built out from the house, an immense kitchen, with a flagged floor and a huge fire-place. A whole colony of turf-huts, with films of blue smoke issuing from each, were scattered along the shore, lending a sort of homely beauty to the wild picturesqueness. Beside the house, with a ruined summer-seat at one end, was a large carelessly-kept garden, surrounded by a high stone wall. M'Ian kept the key himself; and on the garden door were nailed ravens, and other feathered malefactors in different stages of decay. Within a stone's throw from the porch, were one or two barns, a stable, a wool-house, and other out-houses, in which several of the servants slept. M'Ian was careful of social degree, and did not admit every one to his dining-room. He held his interviews with the common people in the open air in front of the house. When a drover came for cattle he dined solitarily in the porch, and the dishes were sent to him from M'Ian's table. The drover was a servant, consequently he could not sit at meat with my friend; he was more than a servant for the nonce, inasmuch as he was his master's representative, and consequently he could not be sent to the kitchen--the porch was therefore a kind of convenient middle place; neither too high nor too humble, it was, in fact, a sort of social purgatory. But Mr M'Ian did not judge a man by the coat he wore, nor by the amount of money in his purse. When Mr Macara, therefore, the superannuated schoolmaster, who might have been a licentiate of the Church thirty years before, had he not brought his studies in divinity to a close by falling in love, marrying, and becoming the father of a large family; or when Peter, the meek-faced violinist, who was of good descent, being the second cousin of a knight-bachelor on his mother's side, and of an Indian general on his father's--when these men called at the house, they dined--with obvious trepidation, and sitting at an inconvenient distance, so that a morsel was occasionally lost on its passage from plate to mouth--at M'Ian's own table; and to them the old gentleman, who would have regarded the trader worth a million as nothing better than a scullion, talked of the old families and the old times. M'Ian valued a man for the sake of his grandfather rather than for the sake of himself. The shepherds, the shepherds' dogs, and the domestic servants, dined in the large kitchen. The kitchen was the most picturesque apartment in the house. There was a huge dresser near the small dusty window; in a dark corner stood a great cupboard in which crockery was stowed away. [Sidenote: The black kitchen.] The walls and rafters were black with peat smoke. Dogs were continually sleeping on the floor with their heads resting on their outstretched paws; and from a frequent start and whine, you knew that in dream they were chasing a flock of sheep along the steep hill-side, their masters shouting out orders to them from the valley beneath. The fleeces of sheep which had been found dead on the mountain were nailed on the walls to dry. Braxy hams were suspended from the roof; strings of fish were hanging above the fire-place. The door was almost continually open, for by the door light mainly entered. Amid a savoury steam of broth and potatoes, the shepherds and domestic servants drew in long backless forms to the table, and dined innocent of knife and fork, the dogs snapping and snarling among their legs; and when the meal was over the dogs licked the platters. Macara, who was something of a poet, would, on his occasional visits, translate Gaelic poems for me. On one occasion, after one of these translations had been read, I made the remark that a similar set of ideas occurred in one of the songs of Burns. His gray eyes immediately blazed up; he rushed into a Gaelic recitation of considerable length; and, at its close, snapping defiant fingers in my face, demanded, "Can you produce anything out of your Shakespeare or your Burns equal to _that_?" Of course, I could not; and I fear I aggravated my original offence by suggesting that in all likelihood my main inability to produce a passage of corresponding excellence from the southern authors arose from my entire ignorance of the language of the native bard. When Peter came with his violin the kitchen was cleared after nightfall; the forms were taken away, candles stuck into the battered tin sconces, the dogs unceremoniously kicked out, and a somewhat ample ballroom was the result. Then in came the girls, with black shoes and white stockings, newly-washed faces and nicely-smoothed hair; and with them came the shepherds and men-servants, more carefully attired than usual. [Sidenote: The reel of hoolichan.] Peter took his seat near the fire; M'Ian gave the signal by clapping his hands; up went the inspiriting notes of the fiddle and away went the dancers, man and maid facing each other, the girl's feet twinkling beneath her petticoat, not like two mice, but rather like a dozen; her kilted partner pounding the flag-floor unmercifully; then man and maid changed step, and followed each other through loops and chains; then they faced each other again, the man whooping, the girl's hair coming down with her exertions; then suddenly the fiddle changed time, and with a cry the dancers rushed at each other, each pair getting linked arm in arm, and away the whole floor dashed into the whirlwind of the reel of Hoolichan. It was dancing with a will,--lyrical, impassioned; the strength of a dozen fiddlers dwelt in Peter's elbow; M'Ian clapped his hands and shouted, and the stranger was forced to mount the dresser to get out of the way of whirling kilt and tempestuous petticoat.