CAULD SOWENS
A former minister of the parish of Kirkmichael, in Ayrshire, was resting in his study one Saturday afternoon after having finished the preparation of his sermon for next day, when he was startled with sounds of violent quarrelling in his own house. He jumped up from his easy chair, opened the door, and heard the angry voice of his own ‘man’ shouting in the kitchen, ‘Na, noo ye limmer, tho’ I chase ye to Jericho I’ll catch ye.’ The minister rushed off to save life, burst into the kitchen, and found there, to his great surprise, nobody but the man himself who worked on the glebe, and who was now seated at a table taking his supper. ‘John, John, what’s the meaning o’ this? What were ye swearing at? Wha were ye fechtin’ wi’?’ ‘Me, minister,’ said the astonished John, ‘I’m no fechtin’, I’m no swearin’ at onybody, I’m only suppin’ thae cauld sowens oot o’ a pewter plate wi’ this thick horn-spoon, and they’re gey an’ fickle to catch.’
Let me now turn to some recollections of farm and crofter-life in the Highlands, as they presented themselves to me in the year 1854 and thence onwards. The house which for some happy weeks in that year, and at intervals for forty years afterwards, became my home in Skye, was Kilbride, to which I have already made reference as the residence of my friend the minister of Strath. Besides his ministerial duties, Mr. Mackinnon had a large farm, most of which was rough pasture for sheep and cattle, but with some arable land in the valley bottom, where crops of oats and potatoes were grown.
Farming in the neighbourhood of a deer forest entailed in those days some serious trials, besides what arose from scanty soil, tempestuous seasons, uncertain crops, and late harvests. And with these trials I soon came actively to sympathise at Kilbride. The farm lay at the west end of the valley of Strath, immediately at the foot of the range of the Red Hills. These heights formed part of Lord Macdonald’s deer-forest, and though the deer were not numerous, the fields of oats or green crops at Kilbride and the neighbouring hamlet of Torrin offered a tempting pasturage to them, as a change from their sterile granite corries above. Barbed wire, or indeed wire of any kind, had not made its way to these parts, as a help towards the enclosing of land. The fields were only fenced in with low dry-stone dykes, which offered no protection against inroads even from stray sheep. Hence it was needful to watch all night and to make noise enough to frighten away the deer. I can remember sometimes awaking before daylight, and hearing the thumping of trays, blowing of horns, and shouting of the watchmen. And yet with all this labour and some occasional depredation and loss, when the deer contrived to elude detection, one seldom heard any complaints, and I never in those days knew of a deer being shot or injured either by the farm-servants or by the crofters around.
FARMING IN SKYE
Another source of vexation in the farming operations at Kilbride arose from a very different cause. Although the arable fields were more or less enclosed, it had not been found possible to enclose the farm as a whole, much of the ground being rough hill-pasture. Sheep and cattle were thus liable to stray elsewhere unless watched. Through the lower ground, where, the herbage being best, the animals chiefly grazed, ran the only road from Strathaird to the east coast. To prevent the flocks from escaping along this thoroughfare into other pastures, a rude fence had been constructed there for some distance on either side of the road, across which a gate had been placed. Except the scattered crofters, who gave no trouble, as they performed their journey on foot and willingly closed the gate when they had passed through, Kilbride had no near neighbours. On the west side, however, some six miles off, there lived an eccentric and somewhat quarrelsome laird. He received inebriates in his remote dwelling with a view to their cure by distance from temptation. If all tales we heard were true, he was by no means a teetotaller himself. It was even reported that he allowed strong drink to be placed on the dinner-table, and partook of it himself, but required his patients to pass the bottle round without helping themselves. We did not wonder that under such a régime some of them, like Lucio, ‘had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment,’ and that we now and then met those who had escaped, and who were walking all the way to Broadford, some nine miles off, and back again in order that they might once more have a glass or two of whisky.
SUMMARY JUSTICE IN SKYE
Between the laird and the Kilbride family there was no love lost. As the public road passed through the heart of the minister’s farm, it was necessary to have a gate across it at the farm boundary-wall, otherwise the cattle and sheep would have escaped. But this gate was a dire offence to the laird. For a while, every time he drove that way, he would lift the gate off its hinges and fling it into the loch at Kilchrist. At last the consequences of this conduct became too serious to be tolerated, and the minister was preparing to take legal steps to protect himself, when two of his giant sons quietly resolved to take the law into their own hands. Ascertaining when the laird would pass along the road, they concealed themselves among some copse on the hillside immediately above the gate, and waited for their man. In due time he arrived, and finding the gate closed as usual, he jumped from his dog-cart, wrenched it off its fastenings, and threw it, with an angry imprecation, into the lake. In an instant he was seized by the two young men, and, after receiving a sound horse-whipping, was sent on his journey. As the result of this escapade, the assaulters were summoned before the Sheriff and fined, but they let it be widely known that they would willingly pay the fine ten times over for the pleasure of thrashing the laird once more, if he ever ventured to remove the gate again. He never did remove it, but he always left it wide open thereafter, and some lad had to be employed to see that it was duly shut after he had passed.
At the head of the sea-inlet of Loch Slapin lies an alluvial plain, through which a broad stream brings down the drainage of the valley of Strath More. On this plain the water has gathered into a lake—a favourite haunt of sea-trout, which the minister had the right of dragging with the net. The days set apart for this employment were red-letter days at Kilbride. We sometimes hauled ashore large numbers of fine fish, which in various forms—fresh, dried, and pickled—supplied the commissariat for some time thereafter.
During my earlier visits to Skye I saw much of the crofters. On distant excursions I used to find quarters for the night in their cottages, being franked on to them by some minister or other friend who knew them well. In those days the political agitator had not appeared on the scene, and though the people had grievances, they had never taken steps to agitate or to oppose themselves to their landlords or the law. On the whole, they seemed to me a peaceable and contented population, where they had no factors or trustees to raise their rents or to turn them out of their holdings. In a later chapter, which will contain some reminiscences of my wanderings as a geologist among the Western Isles, I shall give some particulars of my intercourse with the crofters of Skye.