PORT ASKAIG, ISLAY
So Wordsworth was moved to exclaim in the Sound of Mull; and we may take his example to pass quickly over a catalogue of sickening deeds that go to show how, with all their unenlightened devotion, the far Highlands were half heathen up till the time of the Jacobite risings. Then a vigorous enforcement of law was accompanied by a movement of civilising evangelisation, that put the people on a higher level both in Protestant and in Catholic districts. In some parts the Catholic faith has never been ousted. In some its adherents have vanished only by migration, as on the island of Canna, with its conspicuous tower of a modern fane, erected as memorial of a Catholic peer. In some cases the chief was able to lead over or to lead back his people in a body, an easy process of conversion that does not speak much for their principles. In the parish of the Small Isles, Pennant heard of congregations “indifferently” attending the services of priest or pastor, whichever happened to turn up. As a rule, the two communions live more kindly together in the Highlands than do the Orangemen and Papists of Ireland. In certain nooks the Episcopalianism of Stuart days still obstinately survives, where in many cases the first Presbyterian preachers had a rough induction, as that one who, on his presenting himself a second time at Kinlochewe, was stripped naked, tied to a tree, and left to be tortured by midges; or that Perthshire presentee that could find no shelter but in the house of the charitable divine whom he came to displace, who held his own for years after the intruder had been marched, under escort of bagpipes and drawn swords, to the bounds of the parish, and there dismissed unhurt only after taking an oath never to return.
In most parts of the Highlands, however, the Kirk took its place with more or less acceptation, the thinly-placed ministers helped by an inferior order of “catechists” and by the schools promoted through a Christian Knowledge Society. This church had the name of being on closer terms with lairds, tacksmen, and factors than with the mass of its flock. About a century ago began to pass over the Highlands waves of evangelical revival, by which dissenting and other missionaries stirred the souls of an excitable people. In the north especially great influence was exerted by self-appointed censors of morals and doctrine called the “Men,” of whom the ministers themselves often stood in awe, and who, by their insistence on the sternest aspects of a stern theology, preluded to that revolt against “moderate” religion that came to a head in early Victorian days.
Since then the most active and most attractive body of faith in the Highlands has been the Free Church of Scotland, whose ministers succeeded to much of the loyalty lost by chiefs turned into unpopular landlords. As the Free Church was the austerer wing of the Old Kirk, so itself is lately split into two branches, of which the more rigid has taken deeper root among the mountains and islands where the old Calvinistic and Covenanting views, banished from city pulpits, now find asylum. And when not even the more liberal section of their own church seems pure in the sight of Gaelic zealots, it might be expected that they would look on the Erastian Establishment as Moabite and Philistine, albeit its nominal doctrines and ritual are the same as their own. The struggle between these two has been marked by an acrimony transferred from the former clan feuds, and in most cases the Old Kirk went down like the Macdonalds before the Campbells. Where means of grace are so hard to come by, the Free Church might be thought to do well in garrisoning some neglected end of huge, wave-sundered parishes; but often it has chosen rather to gather its congregations beside the emptied parish church. In Iona, for instance, with its two or three hundred inhabitants, there rose both an Established and a Free Church in the face of the Cathedral, whose long-deserted stones silently preached such a moving sermon for hearts open to “the still, sad music of humanity.”
The communion, now so powerful in the Highlands, is accused by its enemies of provoking more to “sound” faith than to good works, but it appears to have raised the moral character of the clergy, perhaps at the expense of their culture, while it too indiscriminately sets its face against the joys of life fostered by divines like Norman Macleod’s forebears. The Free Church has done its best to frown down not only bogeys and fairies, but the bagpipes, fiddling, dancing, and other alleviations of a hard lot, on which is imposed the burden of the Mosaic or Babylonian Sabbath, so patiently taken up by Scotsmen in exchange for the penances of the monkish dispensation. The Catholic priests are more tolerant: in at least one island the bagpipe summons the people to mass; but the orthodox Calvinist frowns at music unless the pseudo-Biblical strains of the Jew’s harp, which, under the name of the trump, has long been popular in the Highlands. Here lingers the prejudice against instrumental music in church, not so long ago strong over all Scotland, as was the childish objection to hymns, even scriptural paraphrases, or any sacred songs but those believed to be written by David. Thus the prevalent theology has become accomplice with hard times and sad surroundings in deepening the cloud that lies over Highlands and Islands.
CHAPTER V
PIBROCHS AND CORONACHS
Long before reaching Ben Nevis the delicate-eared Southron may shudder at a far-heard strain, which some strangers, indeed, find “not so bad as it sounds,” as the Frenchman said of Wagner’s music, while others will indulgently admit—