Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland

by Daniel Turner Holmes

ARNISDALE, ETC.

It will be perhaps interesting to the general reader if I strive, by drawing on my reminiscences, to give him an idea of how education is carried on in certain remote corners of Scotland at the present time. He will, perhaps, be led to admire as much as I do the noble work that is being done by teachers and inspectors for the rising generation of the country.

Arnisdale, on the mainland facing Skye, is a very destitute district, and has suffered much from the failure of the once-flourishing herring-fishery of Loch Hourn. One can see by the attire of the children that the poverty must be exceptional, even for the Highlands. The teacher says that in winter she has to think as much how to feed the children as to teach them. By the charity of some benevolent visitors, she was, last winter, able to give the pupils a mid-day meal of cocoa and biscuits. It is a sad contrast to the extraordinary beauty of this picturesque spot that such dire misery should overtake a proportion of the natives during the winter season.

Arnisdale is not very accessible, even in the height of the summer traffic, and when one gets there, it is a problem how to get away. I asked the captain of the Glencoe to set me down near what is called the dry island, in Loch Hourn, and thence I was rowed ashore by two very wild-looking, unkempt boatmen. The school-house, where I lodged, is right on the beach, and just at the base of the gigantic Ben Screel. Twelve miles along the coast, by a road of the most awe-inspiring kind, one comes to the interesting nook of Glenelg, with its Pictish towers and ruined barracks.

It was a mild and hazy morning when I traversed the road between Arnisdale and Glenelg. On coming to the summit, a great breeze arose and drove away the heavy white mists from the Sound of Sleat, and showed the white, sentinel-like lighthouse of Isle Ornsay and great fertile stretches of the near portion of Skye. Reluctantly the clouds finally curled and rolled away before the wind and the glitter of the sun, until the Cuchullins were visible beyond the water and the green peninsula of Sleat.

In a cosy recess near the highest part of the road, beside a bubbling spring, a gipsy family had pitched its tent. I admired the taste shown in the selection of a place commanding such a view. The family was still under canvas, but hanging on the branch of a tree was a worn and mud-stained skirt. Do not ladies in hotels, in similar fashion, hang out their dusty and travel-soiled attire at the doors of their chambers? And perhaps the dark-skinned owner had hung up her dank and dripping weeds in the hope that some silvan faun or Robin Goodfellow would, without a tip, perform the dusting process, in this case so palpably necessary. We do wrong in supposing that imagination is not the portion of these woodland rovers.

One of the most difficult problems of the Education Department is to see that gipsy children get a suitable amount of schooling. "Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie," is applicable to all their tribe. How can progressive instruction be carried on where there is no fixity of habitation? One day the camp is pitched on an eminence overlooking Loch Hourn; but before twelve hours have passed, the nomads may have crossed the ferry at Kyleakin and be warming their hands round a blaze of stolen peats in the wild moorland between Portree and Dunvegan. Only in winter, when frost and snow drive the gipsies into the city slums, do the children get some smattering of the three R's.

GOLSPIE TECHNICAL SCHOOL.

There are now in the Highlands a number of excellent higher class public schools, in which the elements of secondary education are taught. The pupils in these schools are drawn from wide areas, and, by means of bursaries, can board away from their own homes. The Golspie Technical School is an altogether unique higher-grade institution. At a library lecture delivered in Golspie, the boys belonging to the school (forty-eight in number, divided into four clans, each with a chief) were present, accompanied by the Principal and his staff. My attention was at once drawn to them by their fine physique, their gentlemanly bearing, and their earnest attention. Next day, I had the pleasure of visiting the school and seeing the working of the scheme initiated by the Duchess of Sutherland.

The institution is really a boarding-school for poor lads of talent belonging to the northern counties. They are under the eye of some teacher at every hour of the day, and are kept incessantly busy, not at books alone. They are taught to do their own washing, dusting, scrubbing, cooking, and darning. The training is excellent: one is impressed by its practical character and educational thoroughness. Latin and Greek are not attempted at all, the literary instruction being entirely based on English and the modern tongues. The science part of the curriculum is remarkably complete, and art is by no means neglected.