Or wild Ontario’s boundless lake;
Where heart-sick exiles, in the strain,
Recalled fair Scotland’s hills again!”
Yet it is not in secular music only that the Scots excel. They have also a rich treasury of devotion and praise, though for centuries the superabundance of song which had only worldly associations and was linked with the lower pleasures made them put superfine value on the Hebrew Psalms as being most fit for the soul’s utterance before the Infinite.
CHAPTER XII
SCOTLAND’S ISLAND WORLD: IONA AND STAFFA
While Scotland is, by its definition, a “pene-insula,” or “peninsula,” that is, “almost an island,” it has, out in the Atlantic Ocean, an archipelago of five hundred islands. Of these about one fifth are inhabited, and of these one third have each a population of only ten or even fewer souls. This great group lies wholly to the westward, for the east coast of Scotland is singularly free from islands, the number on this side being very much like that of angels’ visits, which are spoken of as few and far between.
These islands are all situated within three degrees of latitude. Another name for them is the “Hebrides,” which term was formerly held to embrace all the Scottish western islands, including also the peninsula of Kintyre and islets in the Firth of Clyde, as well as the Isle of Man and the Isle of Rathlin.
In discriminating between the Outer and the Inner Hebrides as many do, this differentiation has a geological basis, for the Outer Hebrides have a foundation of gneiss, while the more northerly at least of the Inner Hebrides are of trap rock. Broadly speaking, in popular usage the term is “Western Islands,” while in literature “Hebrides” is used. This seems all the more appropriate, because it was the accident of a misplaced or added letter that gave the islands their literary cognomen.
As in the case of our own country, which has profited so richly through Scottish emigration from those islands, some of the most delightfully sounding names, in their present form, have come to us through the mistake of a transcriber; as, for example, the romantic name, Horicon, with which tourists on Lake George as well as readers of Cooper’s novels are familiar. The real word intended for the map is “Iroquois,” but as a Frenchman wrote it “Horicou,” which was further altered by a misprint, which made it “Horicon,” it has so remained. So also the “Hebudes” of Pliny, spelled by a misprint “Hebrides,” has held its own. Sir Walter Scott adheres to the form “Hebudes.” “Grampian,” which sounds so pleasant to the ear, is another instance of a false reading or misprint, which improves the original form and sound.
The total area of these Western Islands is 2812 square miles, or a fourth larger than Delaware. Only one ninth of the soil is cultivated, for most of the surface consists of moors and mountains. This region being at the terminal of the Gulf Stream, the climate is mild, though so humid that mists are almost perpetual. The drizzling rains are so common that the mountains are hidden from view or shrouded in fog or cloud most of the time. The rainfall is heavy. In one place forty-two inches is the average. Potatoes and turnips, barley and oats form the staple crops, though with sheep-farming, cattle-raising, fishing, distilling, slate-quarrying, and the making of tweeds, tartans, and woollen cloth, with assistance from the patronage of summer tourists, the people are able to get a living. In religious “persuasion” most of the inhabitants belong to the United Free Church, though on some of the islands the people adhere to the forms of religion cherished in the Roman Catholic Church.