’Tis never by invention got;
Men have it when they know it not.
It is in the country, and more particularly in the remoter and less frequented parishes, that the older type of minister has to some extent survived. We meet with him rather in the Highlands than in the Lowlands. He cultivates his glebe, and sometimes has also a farm on his hands. He has thus some practical knowledge of agriculture, is often a good judge of cattle, and breeds his own stock.
A HIGHLAND MINISTER
The best example of a Highland clergyman I ever knew was the Rev. John Mackinnon, minister of the parish of Strath, Skye, to whose hospitable house of Kilbride I have already referred as my first home in the island. He succeeded to the parish after his father, who had been its minister for fifty-two years, and he was followed in turn by his eldest son, the late Dr. Donald, so that for three generations, or more than a hundred years, the care of the parish remained in the same family. Tall, erect, and wiry, he might have been taken for a retired military man. A gentleman by birth and breeding, he mingled on easy terms with the best society in the island, while at the same time his active discharge of his ministerial duties brought him into familiar relations with the parishioners all over the district. So entirely had he gained their respect and affections that, when the great Disruption of 1843 rent the Establishment over so much of the Highlands, he kept his flock in the old Church. He used to boast that Strath was thus the Sebastopol of that Church in Skye.
The old manse at Kilchrist, having become ruinous, was abandoned; and, as none was built to replace it, Mr. Mackinnon rented the farm and house of Kilbride. There had once been a chapel there, dedicated to St. Bridget, and her name still clings to the spot. Behind rises the group of the Red Hills; further over, the black serrated crests of Blaven, the most striking of all the Skye mountains, tower up into the north-western sky, while to the south the eye looks away down the inlet of Loch Slapin to the open sea, out of which rise the ridges of Rum and the Scuir of Eigg. The farm lay around the house and stretched into the low uplands on the southern side of the valley. The farming operations at Kilbride will be noticed in a later chapter.
A HIGHLAND MINISTER’S WIFE
In the wide Highland parishes, where roads are few and communications must largely be kept up on foot, the minister’s wife is sometimes hardly less important a personage than her husband, and it is to her that the social wants of the people are generally made known. Mrs. Mackinnon belonged to another family of the same clan as the minister, and was in every way worthy of him. Tall and massive in build, with strength of character traced on every feature of her face, and a dignity of manner like that of a Highland chieftainess, she was born to rule in any sphere to which she might be called. Her habitual look was perhaps somewhat stern, with a touch of sadness, as if she had deeply realised the trials and transitoriness of life, and had braced herself to do her duty through it all to the end. But no Highland heart beat more warmly than hers. She was the mother of the whole parish, and seemed to have her eye on every cottage and cabin throughout its wide extent. To her every poor crofter looked for sympathy and help, and never looked in vain. Her clear blue eyes would at one moment fill with tears over the recital of some tale of suffering in the district, at another they would sparkle with glee as she listened to some of the droll narratives of her family or her visitors. She belonged to the family of Corriehatachan, and among her prized relics was the coverlet under which Samuel Johnson slept when he stayed in her grandfather’s house. That house at the foot of the huge Beinn na Cailleach has long ago disappeared; some fields of brighter green and some low walls mark where it and its garden stood.
The younger generation at Kilbride consisted of a large family of stalwart sons and daughters, whose careers have furnished a good illustration of the way in which the children of the manses of Scotland have succeeded in the world. The eldest son, as above stated, followed his father as minister of Strath; another became proprietor of the Melbourne Argus; a third joined the army, served in the Crimea, and in the later years of his life was widely known and respected as Sir William Mackinnon, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, who left his fortune to the Royal Society for the furtherance of scientific research.[5] Most of the family now lie with their parents under the green turf of the old burial-ground of Kilchrist. Miss Flora, the youngest daughter, was gathered to her rest not many months ago. The later years of her life had been spent by her at her beautiful home of Duisdale in Sleat, looking across the Kyle to the heights of Ben Screel and the recesses of Loch Hourn. She was a skilled gardener and had transformed a bare hillside into a paradise of flowers and fruit. She lent a helping hand to every good work in the parish, managed the property with skill and success, and knew the pedigree and history of every family in the West Highlands. When I paid her my last visit, feeling sure it would be the last, it was sad to see her once tall muscular frame bowed down with illness and pain, and to find her alone, the last of her family left in Skye.
HIGHLAND MANSES