Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)

by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

In the warm sunshine of a day in June we sat on a bank above the dark pool beneath whose eddying waters some of the arms perhaps still lie. There was a gentle breeze, the larks were singing over our heads, the water was sparkling and splashing, the sides of the torrent were overhung with the mountain ash and were green with ferns, but below us and in front lay a scene of wild desolation. Far off to the west was the mountain which Boswell had pointed out to Johnson as being like a cone. “No, Sir,” said Johnson. “It would be called so in a book, and when a man comes to look at it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top; but one side of it is larger than the other.” Its Gaelic name, Faochag, which signifies whelk, shows that though Johnson’s objection may have been a proof of his “perceptive quickness,” yet Boswell’s description was quite accurate enough for two men out on a tour. We tried in vain to distinguish which among the mountains was “the considerable protuberance.” Perhaps the Johnson Club may not disdain to appoint a committee who shall be instructed to bid farewell for a time to the delights of Fleet Street and visit Glen Shiel, with full powers to come to a final decision in this important matter. A long drive down the steep pass brought us to the place which Boswell said was “a rich green valley, comparatively speaking.” AUCHNASHEAL.A little way beyond it lay the twenty huts which formed the village of Auchnasheal. “One of them,” says Johnson, “was built of loose stones, piled up with great thickness into a strong, though not solid wall. From this house we obtained some great pails of milk, and having brought bread with us were very liberally regaled.” The curious scene which they witnessed here is thus described by Boswell:—

“We sat down on a green turf-seat at the end of a house; they brought us out two wooden dishes of milk,[604] which we tasted. One of them was frothed like a syllabub. I saw a woman preparing it with such a stick as is used for chocolate, and in the same manner. We had a considerable circle about us, men, women, and children, all M’Craas, Lord Seaforth’s people. Not one of them could speak English. I observed to Dr. Johnson, it was much the same as being with a tribe of Indians. Johnson: ‘Yes, sir, but not so terrifying.’ I gave all who chose it snuff and tobacco. Governor Trapaud had made us buy a quantity at Fort Augustus, and put them up in small parcels. I also gave each person a piece of wheat bread, which they had never tasted before. I then gave a penny apiece to each child. I told Dr. Johnson of this: upon which he called to Joseph and our guides, for change for a shilling, and declared that he would distribute among the children. Upon this being announced in Erse, there was a great stir: not only did some children come running down from neighbouring huts, but I observed one black-haired man, who had been with us all along, had gone off, and returned, bringing a very young child. My fellow-traveller then ordered the children to be drawn up in a row, and he dealt about his copper, and made them and their parents all happy.”

FAOCHAG.

“It was the best day the McCraas declared they had seen since the time of the old laird of Macleod.” He, no doubt, had made a halt in their valley on his way to or from Skye. The snuff and tobacco must have won their hearts more even than the money. “Nothing,” Johnson was told, “gratified the Highlanders so much.” Knox recorded a few years later that “any stranger who cannot take a pinch of snuff or give one is looked upon with an evil eye.”[605] So uncommon was wheaten bread even a quarter of a century later, that Dr. Garnett, after leaving Inverary, tasted none till he reached Inverness.[606] At present it can be had in most places, being brought by the steamers in large boxes from Glasgow, and transported inland in the country carts. The way in which the villagers had gathered round the travellers had startled even Johnson, stout-hearted though he was. “I believe,” he says, “they were without any evil intention, but they had a very savage wildness of aspect and manner.” My friend, the minister of Glen Shiel, pointed out to me that it was no doubt mere curiosity which brought them round him. Johnson was as strange a sight to them as they were to Johnson. An earlier traveller in the Hebrides has expressed this very well. “Every man and thing I met with,” he writes, “seemed a novelty. I thought myself entering upon a new scene of nature, but nature rough and unpolished. Men, manners, habits, buildings, everything different from our own; and if we thought them rude and barbarous, no doubt the people had the same opinion of what belonged to us, and the wonder was mutual.”[607]

SHEEP INSTEAD OF MEN.

Auchnasheal has been swept away; nothing of it is left but a few banks of earth and the foundations of the one stone house. The same fate has befallen it which befell that other village near Fort Augustus where Coleridge heard a Highland widow mourn over the desolation of the land:

“‘Within this space,’ she said, ‘how short a time back!—there lived a hundred and seventy-three persons, and now there is only a shepherd and an underling or two. Yes, Sir! One hundred and seventy-three Christian souls, man, woman, boy, girl, and babe, and in almost every home an old man by the fire-side, who would tell you of the troubles before our roads were made; and many a brave youth among them who loved the birthplace of his forefathers, yet would swing about his broad-sword, and want but a word to march off to the battles over sea; aye, Sir, and many a good lass who had a respect for herself. Well, but they are gone, and with them the bristled bear [barley] and the pink haver [oats], and the potato plot that looked as gay as any flower-garden with its blossoms! I sometimes fancy that the very birds are gone—all but the crows and the gleads [kites]. Well, and what then? Instead of us all, there is one shepherd man, and it may be a pair of small lads—and a many, many sheep! And do you think, Sir, that God allows of such proceedings?’”[608]

The desolation had already begun even at the time of our travellers’ visit. Their host of the evening before was following seventy of the dalesmen to America, whither they had been driven by a rack-renting landlord. “I asked him,” writes Johnson, “whether they would stay at home if they were well-treated. He answered with indignation, that no man willingly left his native country.”

Taking leave of these inoffensive, if wild-looking people, our travellers rode on, much refreshed by their repast. They had, as Johnson complained, “very little entertainment, as they travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I fancy,” he adds, “no singing birds in the Highlands.” It is odd that he should have looked for singing-birds on the 1st of September. Had it been earlier in the summer he would have found melody enough. Nowhere have I heard the thrushes sing more sweetly than at Glenelg. Wesley, visiting Inverness on an early day of May, “heard abundance of birds welcoming the return of spring.”[609] If so late in the summer there was no music for the ear, the eye surely should have been something more than entertained, when in the evening light the first sight was caught of Loch Duich and the waters of the Atlantic, and the barrier of mountains which so nobly encloses them. Yet they are passed over in silence by both our travellers. So fine is the scenery here that I longed to make a stay in the comfortable inn at Shiel, near the head of the loch. SHEEP-SHEARING IN SHIEL. But we were forced to press on, having first witnessed, however, sheep-shearing on a large scale on a farm close by. In front of a storing-house for wool fifteen men were seated all hard at work with their shears, their dogs lying at their feet. They wore coloured jerseys in which the shades of blue and green were all the pleasanter to the eye because they were somewhat faded. Young lads were bringing up the sheep from the fold. The forelegs of each animal were tied, it was then lifted on to a narrow bank of turf which had been raised in front of each shepherd, thrown on its back, and in a moment the busy shears were at work. In the long summer day a quick hand could finish eighty, we were told. As soon as the fleece fell loose, an old woman came forward, folded it up tight, and carried it into the store-house; while a boy, dipping the branding-iron into boiling pitch, scored the side of each sheep with a deep black mark. From time to time the farmer went round with a bottle and a small glass, and gave each man a dram of pure whisky. Not far from here on the banks of the loch was an old house where it was said that Johnson made a halt. It is so pleasant a place, with its grove of trees and its garden of roses, and so kindly was I welcomed, that I would willingly believe the tradition. I could wish, however, that he and Boswell had not treated it with the same neglect as they did the view. Had their reception been as kind as mine they would certainly have expressed their gratitude. MAM RATTAKIN. It was here that I was told of the address which he made to the mountain at the foot of which the house stands, and up which he was now to climb, “Good-bye, Mam Rattakin, I hope never to see your face again.”[610] They did not reach it till late in the afternoon. Both Johnson and the horses were weary, and they had “a terrible steep to climb.” Going down was almost worse than going up, for his horse now and then stumbled beneath his great weight. On the edge of one of the precipices he was, he thought, in real danger. He grew fretful with fatigue, and was not comforted by the absurd attempt made by his guide to amuse him.