Part 18

While Johnson in the voyage to Raasay “sat high on the stern of the boat like a magnificent Triton,” old Malcolm, no less magnificent through his attire, took his turn at tugging the oar, “singing an Erse song, the chorus of which was _Hatyin foam foam eri_, with words of his own.” The original was written in praise of Allan of Muidart, a chief of the Clanranald family. The following is a translation of the complete chorus:

“Along, along, then haste along, For here no more I’ll stay; I’ll braid and bind my tresses long, And o’er the hills away.”[625]

In the sound between Scalpa and Raasay, “the wind,” writes Boswell, “made the sea very rough. I did not like it. ‘This now,’ said Johnson, ‘is the Atlantic. If I should tell, at a tea-table in London, that I have crossed the Atlantic in an open boat, how they’d shudder, and what a fool they’d think me to expose myself to such danger.’” In his letter to Mrs. Thrale he makes light of the roughness of the waves. “The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agitation.” For a moment or two his temper was ruffled, for by the carelessness of their man-servant his spurs were carried overboard. “There was something wild,” he said, “in letting a pair of spurs be carried into the sea out of a boat.” What a fine opening we have here for the enthusiasm of the Johnson Club! An expedition properly equipped should be sent to dredge in this sound for the spurs, with directions to proceed afterwards to the Isle of Mull, and make search for that famous piece of timber, his walking-stick, which was lost there.

[Sidenote: HIGHLAND SINGING.]

As the boat drew near the land the singing of the reapers on shore was mingled with the song of the rowers. It was frequently noticed by travellers how the Highlanders loved to keep time with their songs to whatever they were doing. Gray heard the masons singing in Erse all day long as they were building the park wall at Glamis Castle.[626] An earlier writer tells how “the women in harvest work keep time by several barbarous tones of the voice; and stoop and rise together as regularly as a rank of soldiers when they ground their arms. They proceed with great alacrity, it being disgraceful for anyone to be out of time with the sickle.”[627] According to Pennant, “in the songs of the rowers the notes are commonly long, the airs solemn and slow, rarely cheerful, it being impossible for the oars to keep a quick time; the words generally have a religious turn, consonant to that of the people.”[628] Ramsay of Ochtertyre says that “the women’s songs are in general very short and plaintive. In travelling through the remote Highlands in harvest, the sound of these little bands on every side has a most pleasing effect on the mind of a stranger.” The custom, we learn from him, was rapidly dying out at the end of last century.[629] I did not myself hear any of this singing in my wanderings; but a Scotch friend tells me that more than forty years ago she remembers seeing a field in which thirty Highland reapers were at work in couples, a man and a woman together, all singing their Gaelic songs.

[Sidenote: RAASAY.]

Three or four hours’ stout rowing brought the boat to the shore below the Laird of Raasay’s house. “The approach to it,” says Boswell, “was very pleasing. We saw before us a beautiful bay, well defended by a rocky coast; a good family mansion; a fine verdure about it, with a considerable number of trees; and beyond it hills and mountains in gradation of wildness.” At the entrance to the bay is a rocky islet, where we landed, when we visited Raasay on the afternoon of a bright June day. As it was unoccupied, we took formal possession, with a better claim than the European nations have to the well-peopled islands of the Southern Seas. Its name, we learnt from our boatman, was Goat Island, and just as Johnson was addressed as Island Isa, so we were willing to derive our title from our new acquisition. We passed a full half an hour in our domain with great satisfaction. Who, we asked, “would change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?” The waves beat on our coast, breaking in white crests far away in the open sound. We looked across the little bay on the sunny shore of our nearest neighbour, the Laird of Raasay, and did not envy him the pleasant grassy slope, almost ready for the scythe, which stretched from his mansion to the edge of the sea, or the fine woods which covered the hills at the back of his house. We thought how much the scene is changed since our travellers saw it. Then there was no landing-place; steps had not been even cut in the natural rock. “The crags,” Johnson complained, “were irregularly broken, and a false step would have been very mischievous.” Yet “a few men with pickaxes might have cut an ascent of stairs out of any part of the rock in a week’s time.” There is now a small stone pier. The hayfield, in the memory of people still living, was all heathland down to the water’s edge, with a rough cart-track running across it. Trees have been everywhere planted, and the hill-sides are beautifully wooded. Even before Johnson’s time something had been done in the way of improvement. Martin, in his _Description of the Western Isles_,[630] mentions “an orchard with several sorts of berries, pot-herbs, &c.” In the copy of Martin’s work in the Bodleian Library, Toland has entered in the margin: “Wonderful in Scotland anywhere.” Boswell mentions “a good garden, plentifully stocked with vegetables, and strawberries, raspberries, currants, &c.” The house—that “neat modern fabric,” which Johnson praises as “the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness”—still remains, but it is almost hidden beneath the great additions which have in later years been made. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says: “It is not large, though we were told in our passage that it had eleven fine rooms, nor magnificently furnished, but our utensils[631] were most commonly silver. We went up into a dining-room about as large as your blue room, where we had something given us to eat, and tea and coffee.” The blue room, less fortunate than its rival at Raasay, has been swept away, with all the beauty and the associations of Streatham Park. I was shown his chamber, with his portrait hanging on the wall. A walking-stick which he had used is treasured up. From his windows he looked down into the garden. However productive it may have been, it was not, I fear, so gay with flowers as it was when I saw it, or so rich in shrubs. I walked between fuchsia hedges that were much higher than my head. One fuchsia bush, or rather tree, which stood apart, covered with its branches a round of sixty feet. Its trunk was as thick as a man’s thigh. The Western Islands are kept free from severe frosts by the waters of the Gulf Stream, so that in the spots which face the southern suns, and are sheltered from the north and east, there is a growth which rivals, and perhaps outdoes, that of Devonshire and Cornwall.

Not far from the house is the ruined chapel which provoked Johnson’s sarcasm. “It has been,” he writes, “for many years popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected churches we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall.” Boswell took a more cheerful view. “There was something comfortable,” he wrote, “in the thought of being so near a piece of consecrated ground.” [Sidenote: THE MACLEODS OF RAASAY.] Here they looked upon the tombs of the Macleods of Raasay, that ancient family which boasted that “during four hundred years they had not gained or lost a single acre;” which was worthily represented in their host; which lasted for two generations longer, and then sank in ruins amidst the wild follies of a single laird. Whilst rack-renting landlords were driving their people across the wide Atlantic, Macleod of Raasay could boast “that his island had not yet been forsaken by a single inhabitant.” Pleased with all he saw, “Johnson was in fine spirits. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is truly the patriarchal life; this is what we came to find.’” He was delighted with the free and friendly life, the feasting and the dancing, and all “the pleasures of this little Court.” The evening of their arrival, as soon as dinner was finished, “the carpet was taken up, the fiddler of the family came, and a very vigorous and general dance was begun.” According to Boswell, “Johnson was so delighted with this scene, that he said, ‘I know not how we shall get away.’ It entertained me to observe him sitting by, while we danced, sometimes in deep meditation, sometimes smiling complacently, sometimes looking upon Hooke’s _Roman History_, and sometimes talking a little, amidst the noise of the ball, to Mr. Donald M’Queen, who anxiously gathered knowledge from him.” The same accommodating hospitality was shown here as at Corrichatachin in finding sleeping room for the large party that was assembled. “I had a chamber to myself,” writes Johnson, “which in eleven rooms to forty people was more than my share. How the company and the family were distributed is not easy to tell. Macleod, the chieftain of Dunvegan, and Boswell and I had all single chambers on the first floor. There remained eight rooms only for at least seven-and-thirty lodgers. I suppose they put up temporary beds in the dining-room, where they stowed all the young ladies. There was a room above stairs with six beds, in which they put ten men.” [Sidenote: THE PATRIARCHAL LIFE.] The patriarchal life was so complete that in this island, with a population estimated at nine hundred,[632] there was neither justice of the peace nor constable. Even in Skye there was but one magistrate, and, so late as forty years ago, but one policeman. Raasay is still without a justice. The people, I was told, settle all their disputes among themselves, and keep clear of crime. Much of the land is still held on the old tribal system. “I have ascertained,” writes Sir Henry Maine, “that the families which formed the village communities only just extinct in the Western Highlands had the lands of the village re-distributed among them by lot at fixed intervals of time.”[633] In Raasay there are little plots of land which every year are still distributed by lot. So small are they, and so close together that it often happens that five or six families are all at the same time getting in their harvest on a strip not much larger than a couple of lawn tennis grounds.

[Sidenote: SCOTTISH DANCES.]

Boswell with three Highland gentlemen spent one day in exploring the island, and in climbing to the top of Dun Can, or Raasay’s Cap, as sailors called the mountain, to whom far away at sea it was a conspicuous landmark. On the top they danced a Highland reel. If we may trust the statement of a young English tourist, the dance was just as enjoyable, though there were no ladies for partners. “The Scotch,” he writes, “admire the reel for its own merit alone. A Scotchman comes into an assembly room as he would into a field of exercise, dances till he is literally tired, possibly without ever looking at his partner. In most countries the men have a partiality for dancing with a woman: but here I have frequently seen four gentlemen perform one of these reels seemingly with the same pleasure as if they had had the most sprightly girl for a partner. They give you the idea that they could with equal glee cast off round a joint-stool or set to a corner cupboard.”[634] Beyond Dun Can to the north-west the travellers visited the ruins of the old castle, once the residence of the lairds of Raasay. On their return from their walk of four-and-twenty miles over very rugged ground, “we piqued ourselves,” Boswell writes, “at not being outdone at the nightly ball by our less active friends, who had remained at home.”

Of the ancient crosses which he mentions I fear but one is remaining. Martin, who looked upon them as pyramids to the deceased ladies of the family, found eight. Malcolm Macleod thought that they were “false sentinels—a common deception to make invaders imagine an island better guarded.” The learned M’Queen maintained that they “marked the boundaries of the sacred territory within which an asylum was to be had.” In this opinion Boswell concurred.

Delightful as the mansion at Raasay seemed to the travellers, with “the rough ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling storm without, while within was plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance,” yet it had seen another sight only seven-and-twenty years earlier. In the island the Young Pretender “in his distress was hidden for two nights, and the king’s troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess,” continues Johnson, “at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their king; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths.” [Sidenote: AN EARTHLY PARADISE.] Pleased as our travellers were with their four days’ residence here, in the midst of storms and rain, how much would their pleasure have been increased could they have seen it as I saw it in the bright summer weather! No one who visited it then would have said with Johnson that “it has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and his family.” It has almost everything that Nature can give in the delightfulness of scenery and situation.[635] Like Boswell, as I gazed upon it, I might “for a moment have doubted whether unhappiness had any place in Raasay;” but, like him, I might “soon have had the delusion dispelled,” by recalling Johnson’s lines:

“Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee.”

PORTREE AND KINGSBURGH (SEPTEMBER 12-13).

Much as Johnson had delighted in the patriarchal life at Raasay, yet after four days’ stay he became impatient to move. “There was,” writes Boswell, “so numerous a company, mostly young people, there was such a flow of familiar talk, so much noise, and so much singing and dancing, that little opportunity was left for his energetic conversation. He seemed sensible of this; for when I told him how happy they were at having him there, he said, ‘Yet we have not been able to entertain them much.’” The weather, which had been very wet and stormy, cleared up on the morning of September 12. “Though it was Sunday,” says Johnson, “we thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day.” [Sidenote: THE ROW TO PORTREE.] A row of some five or six miles brought them to Portree in Skye, a harbour whose name commemorated the visit of King James V. The busy little town on the top of the cliff, with its Court House, hotels, banks, and shops, which has grown up at the end of the land-locked harbour, did not then exist. Sir James Macdonald, “the Marcellus of Scotland,” as Boswell called him, had intended to build a village there, but by his untimely death the design had come to nothing. There seems to have been little more than the public-house at which the travellers dined. “It was,” Johnson believed, “the only one of the island.” He forgot, however, as Boswell pointed out to him when he read his narrative, another at Sconser, and a third at Dunvegan. “These,” Boswell adds, “are the only inns properly so called. There are many huts where whisky is sold.”[636] [Sidenote: HIGHLAND VOLUNTEERS.] On the evening which I spent at Portree, a company of Highland volunteers were going through their yearly inspection, in tartan plaids and kilts, with the bagpipes playing as only bagpipes can. Had it been as it was in the days of their forefathers, when twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a rebellion, there was ample provision made here for at least five or six. Each volunteer, in addition to his guilt as a rebel, both for the arms which he carried, and the garb which he wore, would have been liable to be sent off by summary process to serve as a common soldier. But happily we live in loyal days, and under milder laws. These bold citizen-soldiers ran but one risk, which no doubt was averted by a good-natured and sympathetic magistracy. To a fine of five shillings for being drunk and disorderly some of them certainly became exposed as the evening wore away. Let us hope that their excess was little more than an excess of loyalty in drinking the health of a Hanoverian queen.

[Sidenote: FLORA MACDONALD.]

At Portree our travellers took horse for Kingsburgh, a farmhouse on Loch Snizort, whither they went, though a little off their road, in order to see Flora Macdonald. She had married a gentleman of the same clan, and so had not changed her name. “Here,” writes Johnson, “I had the honour of saluting the far-famed Miss Flora Macdonald, who conducted the Prince, dressed as her maid, through the English forces, from the island of Lewis; and when she came to Skye, dined with the English officers, and left her maid below. She must then have been a very young lady—she is now not old—of a pleasing person and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit; and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid.” Boswell describes her as “a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. 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.” By _salute_ I have little doubt that both Boswell and Johnson meant _kiss_. Johnson in his _Dictionary_ gives it as the third meaning of the word, though he cites no authority for the usage. “The Scotch,” wrote Topham in 1774, “have still the custom of salutation on introduction to strangers. It very seldom happens that the salute is a voluntary one, and it frequently is the cause of disgust and embarrassment to the fair sex.”[637] By the uncouth appearance of the man who thus saluted her, Flora Macdonald might with good reason have been astonished, for “the news had reached her that Mr. Boswell was coming to Skye, and one Mr. Johnson, a young English buck, with him.” Her husband, “a large stately man, with a steady, sensible countenance,” who was going to try his fortune in America, was perhaps for that reason the more careless of obeying the laws of the country he was leaving. This evening he wore the Highland costume. “He had his tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black riband like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffil, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button-holes, a bluish philibeg, and tartan hose.” The bed-curtains of the room in which our travellers slept were also of tartan. Johnson’s bed had whatever fame could attach to it through its having been occupied for one night “by the grandson of the unfortunate King James the Second,” to borrow Boswell’s description of him. The grandson, before many years passed over his head, proved not unworthy of the grandfather—equally mean and equally selfish. The happy failure of the rebels hindered him from displaying his vices, with a kingdom for his stage. His worthlessness, which though it might have been suspected from his stock, could not have been known in his youth, takes away nothing, however, from the just fame of Flora Macdonald, “whose name will be mentioned in history, and, if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.” Johnson, after recounting how “the sheets which the Prince used were never put to any meaner offices, but were wrapped up by the lady of the house, and at last, according to her desire, were laid round her in her grave,” ends the passage with much satisfaction, by observing: “These are not Whigs.” Upon the table in the room he left a piece of paper “on which he had written with his pencil these words: _Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum_.”[638] He was thinking, no doubt, of the reward of £30,000 set upon Charles Edward’s head, and of the fidelity of the poor Highlanders who one and all refused to betray him. To more than fifty people he was forced in his wanderings to trust his life, many of them “in the lowest paths of fortune,” and not one of them proved faithless. It was well for him that he had not had to trust to fifty hangers-on of a Court.

[Sidenote: KINGSBURGH.]

The old house in which he had taken shelter for one night, and where Boswell and Johnson were so hospitably received, where they heard from their hostess the strange story of her adventures—this interesting old house no longer exists. Some of the trees which surround the modern residence must be old enough to have seen not only our two travellers, but also the fugitive Prince. As we looked upon it from the opposite shore of the narrow loch it seemed a pleasant spot, nearly facing the west, sheltered from the east by hills, and embosomed in trees, with meadows in front sloping down to the sea. In the rear rose barren dreary hills, but all their lower slopes were green with grass and with the young crops of oats. Far down the loch the green slopes ended in a steep rocky coast. In the distance the mountains of Lewis fringed the northern sky. The steep headland on which we sat was beautiful with grasses and flowers and ferns and heather. Of wild flowers we gathered no less than thirty-six varieties on this one small spot. We found even a lingering primrose, though June was rapidly drawing to its close. How different were our thoughts as we watched this peaceful scene from those which, one hundred and forty-three years earlier, had troubled the watchers as the young Wanderer slept! As the morning wore on, and he did not awake, one of them, in her alarm lest the soldiers should surprise him, roused her father, who was also in hiding, and begged that “they should not remain here too long. He said, ‘Let the poor man repose himself after his fatigues! and as for me, I care not, though they take off this old grey head ten or eleven years sooner than I should die in the course of nature.’ He then wrapped himself in the bed-clothes, and again fell fast asleep.” That same afternoon the two fugitives set off for Portree, where the Prince took boat for Raasay.

DUNVEGAN CASTLE (SEPTEMBER 13-21).

[Sidenote: KINGSBURGH TO DUNVEGAN.]