There had been a ferry at John o' Groat's years before our visit, and mails and passengers had been carried across the Firth to and from the Orkney Islands, the distance across being shorter from this point than from any other in Scotland; but for some unexplained reason the service had been discontinued, and the presence of the ferry would probably account for so many names being written in the album. The day was already drawing to a close as we sat down to tea and the good things provided by Mrs. Mackenzie, and we were waited upon by a Scotch lassie, who wore neither shoes nor stockings; but this we found was nothing unusual in the north of Scotland in those days. After tea we adjourned to our room, and sat down in front of our peat fire; but our conversational powers soon exhausted themselves, for we felt uncommonly drowsy after having been exposed so long to the open air. We sat there silently watching the curling smoke as it went up the chimney and dreamily gazing into the caverns which had been formed in the fire below, imagining that we could see all kinds of weird objects therein, and then we thought of the times when we should not have been able to rest so securely and comfortably in the "Huna Inn," when one Scottish clan was trying to exterminate another not so far away from where we were then sitting, for no more apparent reason than that the Scots were born soldiers, and if they had no foreigners to fight they must fight among themselves. We must have been nearly asleep when our reveries were interrupted by the entrance of the shepherd, whom for the moment we had entirely forgotten. He had come in response to our invitation to talk with us about things in general, but particularly about John o' Groat, and we were glad to see him, and we now give—
THE SHEPHERD'S STORY
John o' Groat was a fisherman belonging to Holland who was caught when at sea in a great storm which damaged his sails so that his boat drifted almost helplessly across the sea. When he came in sight of the Scottish coast he was carried with the current into the Pentland Firth, and as he could not repair the sails in the boat and could not get back to Holland with them in their damaged condition, he decided to land on one of the islands and repair them on shore. His wife was very much opposed to his landing on Stroma, as she thought it was a desert island, so he got his boat across from there to the Scottish coast; but when he attempted to land at Huna, the natives opposed his landing, for they thought he was a pirate. Fortunately for him he had a few kegs of gin in his boat, and when the canny Scots saw these they became more friendly, especially as they had a great respect for Holland's gin, and so they allowed him to land, and even helped him to mend his sails. They afterwards allowed him to settle amongst them on condition that he did not attempt to go into the interior of the country, and that he built his house on the seashore. He got on well amongst his new friends, and in time became their chief and had eight sons, and on one festive occasion, when they all came to see him, they quarrelled as to which should have precedence at his table, so John told them that the next time they came he would have matters so arranged as to avoid that kind of thing in the future. He therefore built an entirely new house with eight sides to it and a door in each, and made a table inside of the same octagonal shape, so that when they came to see him again each of them could enter by his own door and sit at his own head of the table.
In reply to our questions the shepherd said he thought this event happened about 350 years ago, but the house had long since disappeared, and only the site of the foundations which he had shown us previously now remained. He also said that heaps of ladies and gentlemen came there to picnic on the site, and he had seen them take even small stones away; but though he had lived there for fifty years, he had never seen John o' Groat's any different from what it was now. We asked him why John did not return to Holland, and he said it was because he had a letter from the king. We thanked the shepherd for his story, and, having suitably rewarded him, bade him farewell and hurried off to bed in the fading light of our rapidly diminishing candle.
Sunday, September 17th.
The strict observance of the Sabbath Day in Scotland was to us a most pleasing feature in Scottish life, and one to which we had been accustomed from early childhood, so we had no desire to depart from it now. We were, therefore, very pleased when Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie invited us to accompany them to the Free Kirk service, and, as half-past ten o'clock was the time fixed for our departure from the inn, we concluded that the kirk could not be far away, as that was the hour that service began in our village church in Cheshire, but we could not remember seeing any kirk in the neighbourhood of the "Huna Inn." We continued walking one mile after another for more than an hour, and must have walked quite four miles before we came in sight of the kirk, and we were then informed that the service did not commence until twelve o'clock! The country through which we passed was very bare, there being a total absence of hedges and trees, so we could see people coming towards the kirk from every direction. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and, as they came nearer the sacred enclosure, they formed themselves into small groups and stood conversing with each other, chiefly on religious matters, until the minister arrived to take charge of his flock. He was a quaintly dressed and rather elderly man, evidently well known, as he had a nod or a smile of recognition and a friendly word for all. We followed him into the kirk, where we found ourselves in the presence of quite a large congregation, and sat with Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie in their own pew in the rear of the kirk. The form of the service was quite different from that to which we had been accustomed. The congregation stood up while they prayed and sat down while they sang the Psalms, with the exception of one man, who remained standing in what we thought was the clerk's desk immediately below the pulpit. This man acted as leader of the singing, but he failed to get much assistance from the people, and had great difficulty in keeping the singing going. Possibly the failure of the congregational singing might be accounted for by the absence of an organ or other instrument of music to assist and encourage the people to sing, the nearest approach to anything of the kind being the tuning-fork which the conductor held in his hand. There was also the fact that the sitting posture was not the best position for bringing out the powers of the human voice; but we came to the conclusion that music was not looked upon favourably in that remote part of Scotland.
In front of the pulpit there was an enclosure, fenced in by the communion rail, and inside this were seated the elders, or deacons of the church. These were very old men with bent heads and white hair, and had the appearance of centenarians; they were indeed the queerest-looking group of old men we had ever seen assembled together. But it was their noses that chiefly attracted our attention, as they were so very long and crooked, and the strange feature about them was that they were all of the same pattern. Their only rival, as far as we could see, in length of nose was the minister, but we thought he had enlarged his by artificial means, as we found to our surprise that he was addicted to snuff-taking, a habit very prevalent in Scotland in those days.
Then came the sermon. On the pulpit was the Bible, and beside it a substantial box of snuff, to which the minister resorted occasionally in the course of his long discourse. His pinches must have been considerable, for every sniff lasted from two to three seconds, and could be heard distinctly all over the kirk. This had a tendency to distract our attention from his sermon, which, by the way, was a very good one; but, owing to his rather slow delivery, we experienced a feeling of relief when he reached the end, for it had lasted quite an hour.
There was now a slight movement amongst the congregation, which we interpreted as a sign that the service was at an end, and we rose to leave; but, imagine our consternation when our friends told us that what we had listened to was only the first part of the service, and that we must on no account leave, as the second part was to follow immediately. We therefore remained not altogether unwillingly, for we were curious to know what the next service was like. It proved to be almost exactly the same as the first, and we could not distinguish much difference between the two sermons; but we listened attentively, and were convinced that the preacher was a thoroughly conscientious man in spite of his occasional long sniffs of snuff, which were continued as before, but what astonished us was that the old gentleman never once sneezed! It was the most remarkable service we had ever attended, and it concluded exactly at three o'clock, having lasted three hours.
We had then to retrace our four-mile walk to "Huna Inn," but the miles seemed rather longer, as Mrs. Mackenzie could only walk in a leisurely manner and we were feeling very hungry. We whiled away the time by talking about the sermons and the snuff, but chiefly about the deacons and their wonderful noses, and why they were all alike and so strangely crooked. Mr. Mackenzie suggested that they were crooked because if they had grown straight they would have projected over their mouths and prevented them from eating, the crook in them being a provision of nature to avoid this; or, they might have descended from the Romans or some other ancient race who had formerly inhabited the coast of that part of Scotland. Books had been written and sermons preached about noses, and the longer the nose the greater the intellect of the owner was supposed to be. We told our host that there was only one-sixteenth part of an inch between the length of Napoleon's nose and that of Wellington's. We had forgotten which was the longer, but as Wellington's was so conspicuous that he was nicknamed "Nosey" by his troops, and as he had won the great battle of Waterloo, we concluded that it was his, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. We quoted the following lines:
Knows he, that never took a pinch,