It was for the sake of my friend’s father that we were so well treated, and those who knew him best will understand why; but he did not command the approval of all that countryside. For one thing, he was a hardened “Erastian,” if my readers know what that means. When the Free Church proposed to set up a tabernacle and applied to him for a subscription, he growled out, “As soon as the parish church is full, I will build you a new one out of my own pocket—not a penny till then!” For Free Church students sent on awakening missions to those wilds, it was a daring adventure to tackle the profane Englishman who would stroll out on the Sabbath with a cigar in his mouth, though he did not miss attending the English service held in the parish church mainly for his benefit. One of these missioners received the crown of martyrdom at his hands, or rather at his feet, for the poor fellow had no sooner begun his remonstrance, “Sir, do you know this is the Lord’s Day?” than he found himself vigorously kicked along the road. This was an arbitrary as well as an open-handed gentleman, who, as a sound Tory and master of a thousand workers, was disposed to look down on the Whig duke, so much looked up to by the natives. He little knew how his only daughter would marry a son of that duke, whose heir made a more brilliant match with a princess, as to which Punch hardly exaggerated the simple judgment of Argyll: “Wasna’ the Queen a proud woman!”
The duke has been a Campbell for time out of mind; but the silent ruins round Oban are older than the intrusion of this name. Dunollie Castle, close to the town, was lair of the Macdougalls, ancient lords of Lorne, who still hold here a remnant of their shrunken domain, and in their modest home behind the ruin have treasured that brooch their forebear won from Robert Bruce. The larger Dunstaffnage, another Macdougall stronghold, is believed to have been at one time seat of the ancient Scottish kings, shrine of that mysterious “Stone of Destiny,” fabled as Jacob’s Pillow, and St. Columba’s, which, after many adventures by land and sea, was removed to Scone, and thence to Westminster Abbey. Gylen Castle, on the island of Kerrera, was a Macdougall eyry; Aros and Ardtornish guarded the Sound of Mull for the Lords of the Isles. Across the Firth of Lorne the island shores are haunted by Maclean legends. To the south, the castles and chapels of Cantyre are Macdonald and Macmillan monuments; and Isla, now the most prosaically prosperous of the Hebrides, shows traces of days when it was chief seat of Somerled’s house. But most of those ruins, before they fell into picturesque decay, had passed to Campbells, often by deeds of fire and blood, often again by the marriages that have done so much for this family, of whom it might be said, as of another clan, that they put wedding rings on the fingers of the daughters, and dirks in the hearts of the sons. In our day, indeed, the most thriving house in Argyll seems to be that of Malcolm, whose head, it is said, can walk forty miles on his own land. The name would show his ancestor as “servant of Columba,” while the misnamed “Macallum” was at one time “Gillespic,” the gillie of some bishop who would be pioneer of civilisation before barons or dukes got grants from court.
Cantyre, with the adjacent Isla, appears to-day the most tamed part of the West Highlands. This peninsula was almost depopulated by the great plague of Charles II.’s reign; and to some extent became restocked by Covenanting clients of Argyll from the Lowlands. There was a time when it might be called the heart of Scotland, for here seems to have been the first foothold of the Dalriad Scots, who, passing over from Ireland, its cliffs only some dozen miles off the Mull of Cantyre, spread their power far among the wild Picts, and their name before long over the whole kingdom. Campbeltown boasts of having been their first capital, now the largest burgh of Argyll, noted for its distilleries and its fishing fleet, as for the adjacent coal-mine, which is the only one in the Highlands, and for the grand golf-links on Machrihanish Bay, another feature more frequent on the eastern side of Scotland.
But if Scotland take shame to have been colonised from Ireland, its patriotic and poetic antiquaries point back to dimmer days, when an Ossianic Conar sailed from Lorne to found a kingdom in the Emerald Isle, long before its most thriving part was authentically overrun by Scottish names. National pride has indeed little but mist from which to weave theories of romantic early history, either for Albin or Erin. The one thing certain is, that the people or peoples of these projecting shores were in close connection of peace and war with each other. If Columba carried the cross from Ireland into Scotland, Patrick had been a Scotsman who devoted himself to the conversion of Ireland. And the Isle of Man, which is said to have made part of his mission-field, long stood in near relation with the Hebrides. The whole string of western islands was formerly divided into Nordereys and Sudereys, the latter being at one time under that bishop whose mysterious title Sodor and Man is thus explained.
All these once belonged to the crown of “Norroway over the foam,” even Cantyre, which, by the forced title of dragging a boat across its narrow neck, shifty King Magnus brought into his island domain. As we go farther north and out into the open sea, in place-names and other marks we shall see clearer signs of that Norse conquest, which cannot but have modified the stock of natives or previous invaders. For one point, the philo-Celt can protest that if Highlanders be no strict teetotalers, such a failing came not from the pious and sober Gael, but through ungodly Goths, notoriously addicted to wassail as to bloodshed. Then in Ireland, too, these thirsty Vikings have left some trace of their customs.
Tamed and trimmed as much of Lorne has been, no Highland region shows more variously those aspects of earth and sky, sublime, stern, sad, and anon tender, that seem reflected in the character of the people. Sir Archibald Geikie, who pushes scientific candour to the point of hinting that Bannockburn would have gone otherwise had the ground been drained, finds the Highlander’s nature moulded by his rugged hills and streaming glens. The contrast between the Scottish and the Irish Gael, which some would explain by the former’s stronger strain of Norse blood, this author accounts for rather by the fact of the latter enjoying a milder climate, a better soil, and more level fields, that give fairer play to the natural buoyancy, good-humour, and quick wit of the Celt.
In the Highlander, on the other hand, these characteristics have been replaced by a reserved, self-restrained, even somewhat sullen and morose disposition. He is neither merry nor witty, like his cousin across the Irish Channel. Yet he is courteous, dutiful, persevering; a courageous foe, an unwavering ally, whether serving in the ranks or leading his comrades where dangers are thickest. I am disposed to regard this difference in temperament as traceable in great measure to the peculiar condition of the Highlander’s environment. Placed in a glen, often narrow and rocky, and separated from his neighbours in the next glens by high ranges of rugged hills, he has had to contend with a scant and stony soil, and a wet, cold, and uncertain climate. He has to wage with the elements a never-ending battle, wherein he is often the loser. The dark mountains, that frown above him, gather around their summits the cloudy screen which keeps the sun from ripening his miserable patch of corn, or rots it with perpetual rain as it lies week after week on the sodden field. He stands among the mountains face to face with nature in her wilder moods. Storm and tempest, mist-wreath and whirlwind, the roar of waterfalls, the rush of swollen streams, the crash of loosened landslips, which he may seem hardly to notice, do not pass without bringing, unconsciously perhaps, to his imagination their ministry of terror. Hence the playful mirthfulness and light-hearted ease of the Celtic temperament have, in his case, been curdled into a stubbornness which may be stolid obstinacy or undaunted perseverance, according to the circumstances which develop it. Like his own granitic hills, he has grown hard and enduring, not without a tinge of melancholy, suggestive of the sadness that lingers among his wind-swept glens, and that hangs about the birken slopes around his lonely lakes.
There is little need to point the stronger contrast between this dweller beside hungry mountains or cruel seas, and the otherwise mingled race that has grown stout, ruddy, and jovial on Lowland or Midland plains, among green pastures and still waters, where the cattle, hardly raising a head to look beyond their own hedgerows, may well be content with their lot, and the very dogs, familiar and placable, will not always trouble to wag a tail at the wayfarer. Generations of ancient peace have here tamed men’s spirits, quieted their fears, and worn down their reverence to a sober respect for honesty, good-fellowship, good-nature, prudence, prosperity, all the qualities which make neighbours pleasant company and keep them from coming on the parish. They think for the most part little enough of the awful horizons of life, as they saunter through it from the christening cake to the coffin, with an eye more often on the fruitful ground than on the sky, unless for signs of the weather. A charm of homeliness rests upon churches, halls, farms, and hamlets, scattered roomily in secure confidence, where man may well nestle in the kindly lap of earth and rejoice in nature’s gifts to a generation for which rough edges of peril have been blunted by use and wont. Yet when she fondles not, but scrimps their daily bread with frowns, her hardy sons love their motherland the more dearly for her rare smiles, even though the poverty of their home makes it easier for them to believe that elsewhere must be their abiding city.
Lorne would be no Highland country if it had not as many relics of devotion as of romance, some of them from days of chiefs and priests who prayed and fought long before its Christian saints and its half-Christian princes. Not any part of Scotland is more thickly set with ruined chapels, broken graveyards, caves of Columba, and Kils common as the Llans of Wales, which mark the stations of Culdee preachers. But also it abounds in cairns, barrows, and other nameless memorials; and there is reason to suppose that many of its Christian tombs have been adapted from pagan monuments far older than the cross that consecrated them. Near Oban there is a remarkable serpent-shaped mound, headed by a circle of stones, which appears to have been a high place of superstition, kindred to that which raised similar mounds in the Mississippi basin. This is but one of many Highland examples how our shifting divisions of creed, name, and nation are now divergent, now confluent, phases of the same human nature, that out of stocks and stones, funeral piles and grave heaps, has developed its countless temples, the barn-like Presbyterian kirks of Cantyre, as well as such elaborately sculptured walls as long stood silent on Iona. But how slow is the clan of Macadam to learn from their purest faith that Christian and pagan, Scots and Irish, Celt and Saxon, Campbells and Macdonalds, have nobler duties than cutting each other’s throats in the way of war or trade!