MULL.
ROVING AMONG THE HEBRIDES.
They dined at “a cluster of rocks, black and horrid,” near to which was a public-house where they had hoped to procure some rum or brandy for the boatmen; “but unfortunately a funeral a few days before had exhausted all their store.” Smollett in his Humphry Clinker, tells how a Highland gentleman, at his grandmother’s funeral, “seemed to think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion.”[679] The rest of this day’s voyage Johnson thus finely described in one of his letters: “We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us: the wind rose; the sea swelled. We passed by several little islands in the silent solemnity of faint moonshine, seeing little, and hearing only the wind and the water. At last we reached the island; the venerable seat of ancient sanctity, where secret piety reposed, and where fallen greatness was reposited.” Boswell adds that as they “sailed along by moonlight in a sea somewhat rough, and often between black and gloomy rocks, Dr. Johnson said, ‘If this be not roving among the Hebrides nothing is.’”
THE MACLEANES OF IONA.
Iona, which of old belonged to the Macleanes, in their recent embarassments had been sold to the Duke of Argyle. Though the tie of property was broken yet the feeling of clanship remained entire. “Whatever was in the island,” writes Johnson, “Sir Allan could demand, for the inhabitants were Macleanes; but having little they could not give us much.” A curious scene described by Boswell bears witness to the strength of the devotion of these poor people.
“Sir Allan had been told that a man had refused to send him some rum, at which the knight was in great indignation. ‘You rascal! (said he,) don’t you know that I can hang you, if I please?’ Not adverting to the Chieftain’s power over his clan, I imagined that Sir Allan had known of some capital crime that the fellow had committed, which he could discover, and so get him condemned; and said, ‘How so?’ ‘Why, (said Sir Allan,) are they not all my people?’ Sensible of my inadvertency, and most willing to contribute what I could towards the continuation of feudal authority, ‘Very true,’ said I. Sir Allan went on: ‘Refuse to send rum to me, you rascal! Don’t you know that, if I order you to go and cut a man’s throat, you are to do it?’ ‘Yes, an’t please your honour! and my own too, and hang myself too.’ The poor fellow denied that he had refused to send the rum. His making these professions was not merely a pretence in presence of his Chief; for after he and I were out of Sir Allan’s hearing, he told me, ‘Had he sent his dog for the rum, I would have given it: I would cut my bones for him.’ It was very remarkable to find such an attachment to a Chief, though he had then no connection with the island, and had not been there for fourteen years. Sir Allan, by way of upbraiding the fellow, said, ‘I believe you are a Campbell.’”
The memory of the power so lately exercised throughout the Highlands by the chiefs was not soon forgotten. It was noticed so late as 1793, that in Scotland master was still, for the most part, the term used for landlord. As an instance of this it was mentioned that in a sermon preached in the High Church of Edinburgh in 1788, the minister thus described the late Earl of Kinnoul in relation to his tenants.[680] Even after the abolition of the jurisdictions of the chiefs the powers left in the hands of the justices were very great. “An inferior judge in Scotland,” wrote the historian of Edinburgh in the year 1779, “makes nothing of sentencing a man to whipping, pillory, banishment from the limits of his jurisdiction, and such other trifling punishments, without the idle formality of a jury.”[681]
In Iona, however, there was no need of threats. The poor people were devoted to their former chief. “He went,” says Johnson, “to the headman of the island whom fame, but fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was, perhaps, proud enough of his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon produced more provision than men not luxurious required.” There was not a single house in which, with any comfort, they could have been lodged. Pennant, who had been there a year earlier, “had pitched a rude tent formed of oars and sails.” There was but one house which had a chimney. “Nevertheless, even in this,” says Johnson, “the fire was made on the floor in the middle of the room, and notwithstanding the dignity of their mansion the inmates rejoiced like their neighbours in the comforts of smoke.” Though the soil was naturally fruitful, yet the poverty of the people was great. “They are,” he adds, “remarkably gross and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read.” The population was probably not less than four hundred souls.[682] Sacheverell, who was there in 1688, mentions a class of “hereditary servants. They are,” he adds, “miserably poor. They seem an innocent, simple people, ignorant and devout; and though they have no minister, they constantly assemble in the great church on Sundays, where they spend most part of the day in private devotions.”[683] According to Pennant they were “the most stupid and the most lazy of all the islanders.” “They used,” he says, “the Chapel of the Nunnery as a cow-shed; the floor was covered some feet thick with dung, for they were too lazy to remove this fine manure, the collection of a century, to enrich their grounds.”[684] Boswell, however, gives a much better report. “They are industrious,” he says, “and make their own woollen and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer, which we did not find in any of the other islands.” In July, 1798, Dr. Garnett and his companion, Mr. Watts, the painter, passed a night in the public-house. The floor of their chamber was liquid mud; the rain fell on their beds. For fellow-lodgers they had several chickens, a tame lamb, a dog, some cats, and two or three pigs. Next morning they invited the schoolmaster to breakfast, and found that the inn could boast of only two tea-cups and one spoon, and that of wood.[685] Sir Walter Scott, who visited Iona in 1810 mentions “the squalid and dejected poverty of the inhabitants—the most wretched people he had anywhere seen.”[686] With such houses and such people Sir Allan Macleane certainly did wisely in choosing a barn for the lodgings of himself and his two friends. “Some good hay,” writes Boswell, “was strewed at one end of it, to form a bed for us, upon which we lay with our clothes on; and we were furnished with blankets from the village. Each of us had a portmanteau for a pillow. When I awaked in the morning, and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleanes, the great English Moralist, and myself, lying thus extended in such a situation.”
IONA’S PAST AND PRESENT.