DUNVEGAN.
The road lay over long miles of moors, with now and then beautiful distant views of the mountains of Harris, but pale blue shadows oil the western horizon, and of the high peaks of the Cuchullins, dark and sombre above the moorland.
Here and there at long intervals we came to the wretched groups of cottages we had begun to know so well. Old witch-like women and young girls passed, bent double under loads of peat or sea-weed, so heavy that were the same thing seen in Italy, English people would long since have filled columns of the Times with their sympathy. As it is, these burdens are accepted as a matter of course, or sometimes even as but one of the many picturesque elements of Highland life. From one writer one hears of the Skye lassies, half hidden under bundles of heather, stopping to laugh and chatter; from another of Lewis women knitting contentedly as they walked along with creels, bearing burdens that would have appalled a railway porter of the south, strapped to their backs. We saw no smiles, no signs of contentment. On the faces of the strongest women there was a look of weariness and of pain. But perhaps the most pathetic faces in this land of sorrow were those of the children, already pinched and care-worn. I know others who have felt this even as we did. An Englishman who last summer spent a week in Skye has since told us how day after day he and his wife went upon their excursions lunchless, because in the first village to which they came they emptied their luncheon-basket among the half-naked, half-starved children they found there. They could not bear the sight of the hungry little faces. But even in his sympathy, the general poverty seemed to him only right, he said, since it is in such perfect harmony with the dismal, dreary land in which the people live. If they were happy, however, if moors and hills were green with their crops, would it still seem so dismal?
A REAL HIGHLAND LASSIE.
That day and those which had preceded and those which followed we went into many huts, talked to many people. We became bold because we wished to learn for ourselves the truth of what we had heard, and not to be prejudiced by hearsay. The crofter's hut is felt to be a disgrace to the Highlands. The landlord shifts all responsibility. The crofter alone is at fault; he has no shame in living in his hovel, which is scarcely fit to shelter a dog. This is the favorite argument. How the crofter, without money, without other materials than those at his disposal, could build anything better has not as yet been explained. If, however, he does contrive to make it better, his rent is raised, and he might, until within two years, have been turned out on the morrow. If he moves into a house set up by a landlord there is again question of higher rent, though he may find it has been put up so cheaply that cold winds pour through cracks and crannies, heavy rains soak through roof and walls. In his own black hut, if he lives with his cattle he can at least keep warm. His contentment in his degradation is a myth. To many cottages we were absolutely refused admittance. Ours was not the experience of Miss Gordon Cumming. Whenever we approached a cottage, a kindly voice did not bid us welcome. I remember one in particular where the door was shut against us. Of a woman of the village who could speak English—and it must be borne in mind that with few rare exceptions people in the Hebrides speak but Gaelic—and who had already shown us her smoky, dismal home, we asked that we might be let in to see the old loom. No, was the first answer sent out; its owner will not be dressed. No, was the second; the loom will not be working. No, was the third and final; "we wass just pretending about the loom; it wass the house we wanted to see." In another, though the woman drew up chairs by the peat smouldering and smoking in the middle of the floor, there was no mistaking she looked upon us as intruders. She shook her head and said without a smile, "No English," when we spoke to her; and then she turned her back and began to comb her hair. A bright, fresh-looking girl who rowed us over the water near Kingsburgh House received us more amiably. It was the usual interior, thick with smoke, all details lost in black shadow, though without the sun was shining. "You will find our houses very queer places to live in," she said. And as she ferried us across, every few minutes she turned and asked if we didn't find their cottages queer homes.
Nothing is left of Flora Macdonald's house which has made Kingsburgh famous. But our ferry-woman pointed to a clump of trees on the shores of the loch where it once stood. "Flora Macdonald was a good friend of the people," she said; "she was a strong woman and clever, and she helped to hide Prince Charlie from those who were in search of him, and for that reason she will be loved and remembered."
Strange as it may seem, these were her words. They so struck us at the time that I wrote them down once we were on shore again. I have heard people wonder at the intelligence Italian peasants show in expressing themselves; but it is not more striking than that of Western Islanders. When they could speak English, it always made us marvel. No one can read the report of their evidence before the Royal Commission without marvelling with us.
It was not only in Skye we talked to the people; already in Harris we had much to say to those who had the English. The very fact that we were walking, a great part of the time with packs on our backs, made the people meet us on more friendly terms than if we drove in coaches or sailed in yachts. We were strangers, it was evident; but we were not sportsmen or moneyed tourists. On every side we heard the same story of hated landlords and exhausted crofts. We know that what we say can have but little influence for good or evil. And yet when we remember the sad stories to which we listened, and the cruel lot of those who told them, we would not run the smallest risk of making that lot still more cruel, those stories still more sad. There is ill-feeling enough between Hebridean landlords and their slaves. In three cases at least crofters were turned from their crofts because they gave evidence to the Commissioners of 1883. It is well to be on the safe side. The chances are, not a landlord will know that we have been writing about his estates after walking over them; but we think it best to give no clew to the identity of men who told us in a friendly way that which already had been proclaimed officially.
The chief complaint was the same wherever we went: "We have not enough land; we could and would pay rent willingly if we had more ground to cultivate. As it is, our crofts are not large enough to keep us in food." The outside world has been busy watching the battle in Ireland; little attention has been spared to the Highlands; yet every small paragraph on the subject for which newspapers can make room, between accounts of stolen breeches and besieged members of Parliament, shows the determination of the men who are fighting the same battle in the far north. If troops are kept in Ireland, if Welsh tithes can only be collected by hussars, war-ships are sent to the Islands. If Irishmen, protected by a Land League, refuse to pay rent, so do Scotch crofters. Indeed, the latter are far more determined and daring. They know, too, how to hold together. In Glendale, an out-of-the-way corner of Skye to which strangers seldom penetrate, not a crofter has paid rent for five years. An old man, tenant on another estate, told us about them with pride. "No, sir," he said, "they have no paid a penny for five years, but the factor he will keep friends with them. He will know ferry well if he wass not their friend it will be worse trouble that will be coming whatever."
He was a fine, healthy old man, between sixty and seventy; and when he found that we sympathized, he walked about half a mile just to talk with us. He pretended he came to show us the way, but as the road was straight before us it was easy to see through his excuse.
J—— asked him what he thought about the crofter question. "I will be a real old Land Leaguer every time," he declared; and then he went on to tell us that in his part of the island the crofters held together like one man. The Commission was coming; it was slow, but they would wait for it. Then, if it did not improve their condition, they would take matters into their own hands. Their landlord was good enough, as landlords went; he was a civil-spoken gentleman if rents were paid on the very day they were due, but that was about all that could be said for him. Rents were not so high on his estate as on others, but the taxes were heavy, and it was more land they needed. "You will see those potatoes"—and he pointed to a tiny green patch sloping down from the road to a ditch, beyond which was heather—"you will see for yourself they grow well whatever. And they would be growing as well on the other side of the ditch, where I myself have planted them in other days. But what will grow there now? Heather and ferns! And it will be heather and ferns you will see as far as you can for twelve miles. If they will be giving us more land, sir, it's no trouble from the Highlanders they will be having; but if they don't give it to us we will take it."
DUNVEGAN CASTLE.
He shook hands heartily with us both when he left. One may doubt the demagogue who uses the people's suffering for political capital; but one can but respect a man like this sturdy old crofter, himself one of the people, who knows his wrongs and determines to right them. His methods may be illegal; so have been those of many men who have struggled for freedom.
At Dunvegan Inn we were again in civilized society. We dined with two young men from London who were followed even here by the Saturday Review and the Standard. They took interest in the evicted Irish, and ignored the existence of Highland crofters; they could tell us much of the fish, but nothing of the fishermen. They were anxious to direct us to many howling wildernesses within an easy walk of the dinner-table, where we could escape from the people; and when the people, in the shape of two Aberdeen farmers, full of the crofter's wrongs, appeared at breakfast, they went from the room in disgust. I think this disgust would have been greater had they known how much more interesting we found the farmers.
Beyond the inn the road led through a dense wood to the castle of the Macleod of Macleod. Trees will not grow on Hebridean soil until the laird wishes to raise them for himself; then they thrive well enough. Of course we did not expect to find them growing on northern exposed shores; but surely there must be other sheltered spots besides those directly around the laird's house. However, it is the same with his crops; broad acres are covered by his grain and that of his large tenants; his pasture-land is fresh and green. It is a strange fact that only when the crofter asks to cultivate the land does it become absolutely barren. It is but a step from the wild, lonely moorland to the beautiful green wood at Dunvegan. Landward it shuts in the castle, whose turreted keep rises high above the ivy-grown battlemented walls, crowning a rocky island in a sheltered corner of the loch. The water has been drained from the natural moat, but the rock falls sheer and steep from the castle gate, and the drawbridge still crosses the gulf below. We did not go inside; we were told that the present wife of the Macleod objected to visitors, even though she admitted them. We believe there are tapestries and old armor and the usual adjuncts to be seen for the asking, such things as one can find in any museum; but it is only by going to the islands that you can see the crofters' wrongs.
Almost at the end of the woods, and yet sheltered by them, was a pretty, old-fashioned flower-garden, surrounded by well-clipped hedges, and as well cared for as the garden of an English castle. Nearer to the inn, on a low hill, was the graveyard of the Macleod. We pushed open the tumble-down gate and squeezed through. A hundred years ago Dr. Johnson found fault with the bad English on Lord Lovat's tomb; to-day we could hardly find the tomb. The stone on which the inscription was carved lay in pieces on the ground. It may be that the Macleod of Macleod has bankrupted himself to save his tenants from starvation. This is most praiseworthy on his part. But we could not help thinking that if he and all the Macleods, from one end of Great Britain to the other, are so anxious to be buried here, they might among them find money enough to free the enclosure of their dead from the whiskey bottles and sandwich tins left by the tourist. The resting-place of the dead Macleod lies desolate; not far off is the garden, with smooth lawn and many blossoms. A few flowers less, perhaps, and at least the bottles and tins that defile what should be a holy place, could be cleared away. And this graveyard, with its broken tombs and roofless chapel, is a ruin of yesterday. A century ago Dr. Johnson saw it still cared for and in order. The people in Dunvegan told us that twenty years since the roof fell in; it has never been repaired. We have been to the graveyard of old St. Pancras in London, where every few minutes trains rush above the desecrated graves; but here the dead are unknown, or else, like Mary Wolstonecraft and Godwin, their tombs have been removed beyond the reach of modern improvements. We have been to the Protestant burying-ground in the cemetery of old St. Louis in New Orleans, neglected because those who lie there belong to the despised faith. And yet neither of these is dishonored as is the graveyard where sleep the Macleods of the far and near past, whose greatness the living Macleods never cease to sing. Beneath the weeds are old gray slabs, with carvings like those of Iona; in the ruined weed-grown chapel walls are fresh white marble tablets. At Dunvegan the dead are not forgotten, not despised; they are only neglected. The mower comes and cuts the long grass from above their trampled graves. Let the laird make hay while the sun shines, for the day is coming when the storms, forever brooding over the Isle of Mists, will break forth with a violence he has never felt before, and he and his kind will be swept away from off the face of the land.
GRAVEYARD OF THE MACLEOD.
To-day Macleod of Macleod is a poor man. One year of famine, to keep the crofters from starving, he emptied his own purse. It is but another proof of the uselessness of charity in the Hebrides. What did it profit the crofters that Macleod became for their sake a bankrupt? They still starve. He who would really help them must be not only their benefactor, but their emancipator.
From Dunvegan to