Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland

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Title: Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Author: Daniel Turner Holmes

Release date: June 20, 2009 [eBook #29178]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY TOURS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND ***

Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

_LITERARY TOURS_

Literary Tours in
The Highlands and
Islands of Scotland

By D. T. Holmes, B.A.

"Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli"
--_Juvenal_, i. 74

_PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER_
Publisher by Appointment to the late Queen Victoria
1909

* * * * *

_To_
_James Coats, Junr., Esq.,_
_Ferguslie House, Paisley._

_You, but for whom I'd never been
Much further north than Aberdeen;
Whose mandate sent my willing feet
To realms of heather, broom, and peat:
Accept this record of my tours
As something less my own than yours._

_D. T. HOLMES._

_PREFACE._

_White stands the long Kilpatrick row
Of hills with deep and dazzling snow,
And eastward, in a glimmering haze,
Stretch to the Forth the Campsie Braes._

_But see! beyond the Clyde, a stain
Of smoke that runs across the plain,
And flecks for miles the vivid gleam:
It is the tireless steed of steam._

_An old acquaintance! Ben and Strath
Daily behold his thunderous path,
That ceases not, until he feels
The breeze of Mallaig cool his wheels._

_And Memory, fondly gazing back
On many a journey by that track
Of splendour, would, at home, retrace
The charms and lore of every place;_

_Yea, pass, in thought, to storied Skye,
Where all the glens in glamour lie;
And, lightly scorning gust and spray,
Leap o'er the Minch to Stornoway._

_And many a northern beach besides,
Splashed by the foam of racing tides,
Rises in thought: from here to there,
Let Fancy's coinage pay the fare,--_

_Fancy, that wafts us o'er the main
To utmost Thule and home again,
Through mingled din of sea and sky,
Even in the twinkling of an eye._

_D. T. H._

_Ingleholm, Bridge of Weir,
16th January, 1909._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY, 9

Village libraries--Difficulties of travel--Literary Societies in
the Highlands--Gaelic books--Happiness and geniality of
natives--Oban to Gairloch--Winter sailing--A crofting
village--Horrors of the Minch--Notes on Lewis--Highland
doctors--Hotels and anglers--Recent books--Military--Moray
Firth--Among the miners--Handloom weaving--Professor Blackie and
the Highlands.

CHAPTER II.--MUSIC, SPEECHES, AND LITERATURE, 60

Scotch a reading nation--Hardships of students in old
days--Homer in Scalloway--When education ends--Objects of
chapter--Music--M.P.'s--Rural depopulation--Its
causes--Emigration--Village halls--The moon--A lecture in
Islay--Mental and material wealth--Real greatness--A Highland
laird on literature--Varieties of chairmen--"Coming to the
point"--Moral obligation--Compliment to Paisley--Oratory at
Salen--Lecture in a dungeon--Surprises--A visit to the
Borders--Tarbolton--Scotch language--Choice books--The
essayists--A Banff theory--Goldsmith in Gaelic--_Biblia
abiblia_--Favourites for the road--Horace--Shakespeare's
Sonnets--Xenophon--French literature and journalism--Romance and
Augustanism--Victorian writers--Celt and Saxon.

CHAPTER III.--ECCLESIASTICAL, 134

Sectarian feeling--Typical anecdotes--Music and
religion--Ethical teaching in schools--The Moderates--A savoury
book--The Sabbath--"The Men of Skye"--The auldest kirk--The
Episcopal Church--An interlude of metre--The Christian
Brethren--Drimnin in Morven--Craignish--A model
minister--Ministerial trials in olden times--An artful
dodger--Some anecdotes from Gigha--Growing popularity of Ruskin.

CHAPTER IV.--EDUCATIONAL, 180

Some Insular Dominies--Education Act of 1872--Education in the
Highlands--Feeding the hungry--Parish Council
boarders--Dwindling attendances--Arnisdale--Golspie Technical
School--On the Sidlaws--Some surprises--Arran schools--Science
and literature--Study of Scott--The old classical dominie--Vogue
of Latin in former times--Teachers and
examinations--Howlers--Competing subjects.

CHAPTER V.--A TRIP TO SHETLAND, 217

Aberdeen--En route--Lerwick--Past and present saints--Some notes
on the islands--A Shetland poet--A visit to Bressay--From
Lerwick to Sandwick--Quarff--"That holy man,
Noah"--Fladibister--Cunningsburgh--"Keeping off"--The indignant
elder--Torquil Halcrow--Philology--A Sandwick gentleman--Local
tales--Foulah and Fair Isle--The fishing season.

CHAPTER VI.--COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS AND THEIR ANECDOTES, 255

Trials of commercials--The two-est-faced knave--Mary, the maid
of the inn--Anecdotes of the smoking-room: Sonnet to
Raleigh--Peelin's below the tree--"She's away!"--A mean
house--One of the director's wives--Temperance hotels--A
memorial window--The blasted heath--The day for it--The
converted drummer--A circular ticket--A compound
possessive--Sixteen medals--"She's auld, and she's thin, and
she'll keep"--The will o' the dead--Sorry for London--"Raither
unceevil"--An unwelcome recitation--A word in season--A Nairn
critic--A grand day for it--A pro-Boer--"Falls of Bruar, only,
please!"--A bad case of nerves.

CHAPTER VII.--LEGENDS AND LITERARY NOTABILIA, 278

Gairloch folk-lore: Prince Olaf and his bride--A laird who had
seen a fairy--Tales from Loch Broom: The dance of death--The
Kildonan midwife--The magic herring--Taisch--Antiquities of
Dunvegan--Miscellaneous terrors--St. Kilda--Lady
Grange--Pierless Tiree--Lochbuie in Mull--Inveraray Castle--The
sacred isle--Appin--Macdonald's gratitude--Notes on the
Trossachs--Lochfyneside: Macivors, Macvicars, and
Macallisters--Red Hector--Macphail of Colonsay--Tales from
Speyside: Tom Eunan!--Shaws and Grants--The wishing well--Ossian
and Macpherson--At the foot o' Bennachie--Harlaw--Lochaber
reivers--Reay and Twickenham--Rob Donn--Rev. Mr. Mill of
Dunrossness.

CHAPTER VIII.--METRICAL AND SUPPLEMENTARY, 340

Arrival of the Mail-train at a Highland Station--Defoe, the
Father of Journalism--A Village Toper--A Reverend
Hellenist--Antigone--Shadows of the Manse--"My Heart's in the
Highlands"--Saddell, Kintyre--Springtime in Perthshire--Dr.
George Macdonald's Creed--Abbotsford--Carlyle--Shelley--Picture
in an Inn--Rain-storm at Loch Awe--Kinlochewe--General
Wade--Sound of Raasay in December--Les Neiges d' Antan--The
Islands of the Ness--American Tourist Loquitur--The Miners--In a
Country Graveyard--No Place like Home.

INDEX, 369

LITERARY TOURING.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

VILLAGE LIBRARIES.

At pretty frequent intervals, during the last four years, I have sallied
forth from my home in Renfrewshire, north, south, east, and west, to
some of the most remote and isolated nooks of insular and provincial
Scotland, on a mission so uncommon as to justify the writing of a book
of impressions and experiences. The Highlands and Islands of Scotland
are, of course, visited every summer by a great host of excursionists,
who go thither to fish, play golf, lounge, climb hills, and otherwise
picturesquely disport themselves. A few earnest devotees of science
spend their holidays botanising in the glens, scanning the geological
strata, looking for fossils, measuring the outlines of brochs and
prehistoric forts, or collecting relics of Culdee churches. My journeys
were undertaken for none of the objects named: they were entirely
connected with _libraries_ and _lecturing_, and, being undertaken mainly
in the months of winter and spring, they have given me the opportunity
of noting a great many interesting particulars that the summer
traveller, bent on recreation or science, cannot be expected to notice.

_I do not think any finer gift could be given to a village community
than a collection of useful and entertaining books._ The libraries with
which my work was connected were sent, free of charge, to strath and
glen, and nothing was asked in return, except that the volumes should be
well housed and delivered to the people to read by some local librarian.
You will find these libraries in all the townships of the Hebrides, from
Ness in Lewis, down the long chain of islands, to Islay and Jura. About
thirty of them are established in the Shetlands, and as many in the
Orkneys. Scores of little villages in Aberdeen, Ross, Sutherland,
Argyle, Bute, and Perth, have been gratuitously supplied with them. The
same is true of many a weather-beaten, quaint, red-tiled little
fishing-village along the shores of the Moray Firth. In the barracks of
Fort-George, Inverness, and Dingwall, the soldiers can solace their
leisure hours by delightful, patriotic, and instructive reading,
furnished to them without money and without price. Even in quiet,
pastoral Roxburghshire, at a spot near the birthplace of Dandie
Dinmont, you will find one of these serviceable collections of books.

It is a pleasure to me to be able to say that I have visited a great
number of the districts mentioned, for the purpose of speaking to the
people in a familiar and non-academic way on some of the books which
have been presented to them. In this way I have spoken to about 40,000
people, the majority of whom had never previously been present at a
discourse on a literary topic. Most of them had, of course, been in the
habit of attending religious services and election meetings: but neither
of these is the very best preparation for a literary evening. Some of my
experiences have been intensely amusing, and I do not think any lecturer
has ever, as regards rough roads, inclement weather, and amazing votes
of thanks, had quite the same joys and sorrows as I have come through. I
have often laughed (good-naturedly, I hope) at what came under my
notice, but I am not so conceited as to suppose that the hilarity was
always on one side.

DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVEL.

It can very easily be seen that he who proposed to visit all the above
districts would have some hard and continuous work in prospect. Even on
the mainland of Scotland there are many villages of difficult access.
The nearest railway station to Durness on Loch Eriboll is Lairg, sixty
miles away. Gairloch in Ross-shire is thirty miles distant from the
railway station of Achnasheen. In the great county of Aberdeen there are
a good many villages that can only be reached by long and tiresome
driving in a mail coach. At different parts of the Moray Firth little
townships lie huddled at the foot of precipitous cliffs, and, at first
sight, seem inaccessible except by sea. To one accustomed to the
sumptuous equipment of the Clyde steamers, even the journey to the
shrine of Hugh Miller at Cromarty is pleasant only in good weather: a
wee, puffing, hard-wrought steam-launch takes a slant course of five
miles from Invergordon to Cromarty pier, accomplishing the journey in
forty-five minutes. The fare between the two piers is one shilling, and
there is no extra charge for the use of the cabin, which is reached by a
perpendicular and very slippery ladder, and would be better suited for
philosophical reflection in a gale if the crew did not use it as a
store-room for engine-grease and old oilskins. In the Outer Islands,
Watt's machine is, of course, unknown, and many of the roads which
imaginative cartographers have inserted in their maps, will perhaps be
finished when the last trump is about to sound.

Railway travelling, too, is attended with some inconveniences in winter.
The Glasgow-Inverness train, for example, may, on the coldest night of
the year, break down at Dalnaspidal; and in such a case the passengers
will have to sit, entertained by howling blasts, till a fresh engine
comes up from Blair Atholl. Such an experience was once mine, and I
always think of it when I read the ninth ode of Horace's first book.
Outside were the great snow-sheeted mountains, and the moon was gazing
in blear-eyed compassion through a screen of haze. From end to end of
the train resounded the rhythmic beat of cold-footed passengers striving
to bring some warmth of blood to the toes.

In Grantown-on-Spey, I got an uncommon surprise one February. There had
been some snow in the Lowlands, but at Grantown the fall had been
excessive, and the roads were encumbered. On arriving at the station,
the travellers saw a sleigh waiting to convey them to the hotel. The
conveyance suited the weather admirably, and the horses seemed to be
enjoying the fun. No wheeled vehicles were to be seen: even the milkmen
sleighed their commodity from door to door. "_If we had a brace of
grand-dukes and a bomb or two, we could fancy ourselves in Russia_,"
said the facetious hotel-porter. He asserted that it was well for the
country when abundant snow came down early in the year. It seems that
Grantown is apt to suffer from drought in a hot summer following on a
rainless spring. A copious fall of snow early in the year is retained in
the mountains, and ensures plenty of moisture during the months of heat.
Moisture is needed in summer, for the population is trebled then, and
most tourists require a little water, sometimes, to qualify their
potations.

It is evident from what I have said, that the pedantic and vexatious
system adopted by Euclid in his Elements of Geometry could not be
employed in arranging the chapters of this book. The stern
consecutiveness of that immortal but unpopular author would be out of
place in describing journeys which might have been taken in the reverse
order without much difference in the results.

LITERARY SOCIETIES IN THE HIGHLANDS.

Winter with its long nights gives leisure to the remote glensmen and
crofters. The distractions of the town are not there to take their minds
away from study and meditation. Books may not be abundant, but what
literature is available is eagerly fastened on and thoroughly digested.
In the Lowlands we skip over our books and know nothing thoroughly. The
Highlander, with his limited means and choice, is forced to peruse and
re-peruse, even though he has nothing more lively than Boston's
_Fourfold State_, or Hervey's _Meditations among the Tombs_. But he
knows well what he has so often read, and is quite competent to discuss
and criticise his little row of volumes. A few of the Highland townships
have literary societies in which every variety of subject is debated:
the meetings are usually opened with prayer, but not always closed in
that way. There is a tiny clachan, some twenty miles distant from
Ullapool, on the side of a hill, in view of the grotesque peaks of
Suilven, which has a most flourishing literary society--with president,
vice-president, rules, minutes, and committees. Not once, but twice a
week does this society meet, and when the full moon is propitious for a
clear journey home through the morasses, the debates are often unduly
prolonged and the chairman's summing-up luxuriantly prolix. How many
politicians of note in London have been raked fore and aft in that
little schoolroom! What measures and enactments, plausible to the
unthinking metropolitans, have been cut and slashed there, while the
conscious moon, gleaming in at the window, strove vainly to disperse
the loquacious throng! Listen to the chairman's modest remarks: "_I do
not wish_," he says, "_to embarrass the Government, but_...." Unthinking
Asquith, here is a man who does not wish to embarrass you; he could do
it, but he is merciful! You may breathe freely, you and your Cabinet,
for spite of your slips and blunders, the Ross-shire crofters will not
turn round and rend you. They do not wish to embarrass the Government;
but have a care: their eyes are on you, and forbearance has its limits.
Think not because they live remote from train and telegraph, that you
are immune from their censure. Far from it! Round the hill-side at a
stated hour every day, in shine or shower, gust or calm, comes the
mail-coach of King Edward VII., bringing its pile of letters and
newspapers. I see the little throng of village politicians, eager-eyed,
peruse the latest parliamentary news. There they get all the needed
pabulum for the next political debate. If the answers to Mr. Galloway
Weir have been shifty and evasive, it will go hard with the Government
to-night in the little schoolroom, and the plaster will fall in showers
of dust from the ceiling as the iniquities of our rulers are ruthlessly
shown up. I should not like to feel the rough side of that chairman's
tongue.

A library of representative English works, presented to a remote
provincial society like the one I speak of, is a centre of unspeakable
entertainment and instruction. The _entertainment_, during the long
nights of winter, when the natives gather round the ingle and someone
reads aloud, is a very palpable addition to the joys of life. The
_instruction_ is perhaps slower in coming, but is none the less sure.
Only by comparison of books can their relative value as literature be
determined. Bigotry and narrow-mindedness in literature and religion are
almost always the result of ignorance. In the Highlands it is oftenest
the local teacher who is the librarian, and the books are accommodated
in the school. The teacher is thus able to make his instruction in
literature vivid and interesting to his senior pupils; he can authorise
a pupil to take a particular volume home and require an essay to be
written on it within a given time; and he can, in school, read aloud
typical passages of good prose to supplement the limited extracts of the
class text-books. The books have been selected (i.) to form useful
reading for adults; (ii.) to supply suitable pabulum for literary
societies; (iii.) to aid the schemes of the Education Department in
connection with what is called the "Supplementary Course of Instruction
in English Literature." The selection of the books for the use of senior
scholars has been, as a rule, easy enough. Dictionaries of the French
and German languages, good atlases, and works of reference have, in most
cases been included.[1]

[1] Let the southern reader remember that a boy born in a city
like Glasgow has, as respects opportunities of getting on,
infinitely better chances than a lad of equal ability born in a
Highland village. The crofter's son has no reading-room with
costly works of reference, scientific manuals, English
translations of Latin authors, etc., to go to when he is in need
of help. He begins the battle of life at a very serious
disadvantage, and often gives up the fight altogether. Anything
that tends to equalise the chances of town and country, from the
point of view of mental equipment, would do more general good to
Scotland, by bettering the available brain power, than any
half-dozen Acts of Parliament taken at random.

GAELIC BOOKS.

In selecting the books specially intended for the perusal of the older
people, an attempt is made to meet the needs of the various localities.
In the bi-lingual districts there is always a shelf of Gaelic books,
such as the original texts of Norman Macleod's exquisite sermons,
M'Rury's religious compilations, Macleod's clever poetry _The Lyre of
the Grove_, Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, and Magnus
Maclean's manuals of Celtic Literature. There being a distinct dearth of
comely Celtic reading that the ordinary native can understand,
arrangements have been made for the translation into Gaelic in several
volumes by competent scholars, of extracts from Mr. Lang's _True Story
Book_, and from other sources.

The regrettable thing about Gaelic is its hopelessly bewildering
spelling. The sounds are pleasing and melodious in a high degree, but
they hide themselves behind most peculiar disguisements of print. Most
people will admit, I think, that a language which spells Avon,
_Amhuinn_, and Rory, _Ruaridh_, would benefit greatly by a visit from
Pitman. The utility of sane phonetics was brought home to me very
forcibly by a story I heard from a gentleman in the west of Skye. This
gentleman is an excellent English scholar, can speak Gaelic but is
unable to read it. He got a letter once from St. Kilda composed by an
islander who spelt Gaelic by ear and not according to the awe-inspiring
orthography of the dictionary. The gentleman, who could not have made
out the letter had it been spelt correctly, was able to read it as it
stood, without the slightest hesitation. If a more rational spelling
were generally adopted, an immense number of Lowlanders who are
interested in philology, would study the grand old tongue, were it only
to understand the numberless place names of Celtic origin that occur in
British geography.

What I have said about Gaelic spelling explains the inability of a large
percentage of the population to read a book printed in the native idiom.
What is the use then, it may be asked, of translating the _True Story
Book_? The answer is obvious to one who knows the Highlands. In the
Outer Isles there are many old people who know no English and whose only
literary solace comes from listening to others reading. At the evening
_ceilidh_ a competent reader of Gaelic can usually be found. Then,
again, we are likely to see, in the near future, a notable revival of
interest in the old language, consequent on the efforts of the _Mod_,
and on the recognition of Gaelic by the Department as a fit subject of
study in the Highland schools. Such a revival, to be lasting in its
effects, must be enforced and sustained by a constant supply of pure and
interesting Gaelic books, both native and translated. Religious books
there are in abundance, thanks to the zeal of the Protestant clergy.
Needless to say, the compilations of the Dean of Lismore are as
unintelligible to the modern Gael as Cynewulf is to a London cab-driver.
I should like to see a round dozen of good English novels put into
Gaelic by translators who knew the idiom thoroughly.

The fervour displayed at Highland gatherings, admirable as it is from a
sentimental point of view, is apt to grow cold at the prospect of
laborious work to be done. It is not creditable that the great majority
of Gaelic speakers are unable to read a page of Gaelic print. Nor is it
creditable that those who can both read and speak, do so little for the
interpretation of the literature. Blackie's books and translations are
still among the best, and Blackie was a Lowlander, was born, indeed, in
the Saltmarket of Glasgow. My frequent visits to the north and west have
convinced me that another difficulty in the way of a possible resurgence
of Gaelic is the lack of a recognised standard of colloquial speech. The
language is split up into many dialects, each possessing its own special
idioms and vocabulary. A Glasgow firm of printers not long ago conceived
the idea of printing post-cards with Gaelic greetings: they found that
every city Highlander they consulted had either in grammar or turn of
phrase some special way of framing the sentences. "Grand Gaelic to-day!"
is an exclamation sometimes heard at the door of a Highland church in
town, and indicates that the minister who has officiated comes from the
same strath as the person speaking.

A moderate amount of encouragement to Gaelic is all that can reasonably
be expected from the Government, seeing that the prime duty of the
schoolmaster everywhere is to impart a sound knowledge of English.[2]

[2] In an editorial of June 6, 1908, the _Glasgow Herald_
excellently says:--"The first requisite for a Highlander is such
a knowledge of English as will open up to him the lucrative
employment from which ignorance of English must shut him out,
and it is no kindness to him to interfere with his acquisition
of this indispensable accomplishment.... So good a Gael as
Professor Magnus Maclean has observed that 'even more remarkable
than the dearth of philosophical and dramatic poems, and, we
might add, of narrative and pastoral poetry proper, is the
scarcity of Gaelic prose.' By all means, however, let a literary
knowledge of the Gaelic language be encouraged among
Gaelic-speaking children. It is a very different matter to
enforce such steps as would lead to the teaching of Gaelic to
children that live indeed in Gaelic-speaking districts but yet
speak only English."

HAPPINESS AND GENIALITY OF NATIVES.

What has struck me most in my travels by land and sea, is the
extraordinary amount of happiness, geniality, and good humour that still
exists in the world. There is a substantial amount of felicity in the
majority of men. Every one knows the sentence of Emerson: "Give me
health and a day, and I will make the pomp of empires ridiculous." I
like to give concrete examples of philosophic maxims, and I should
particularise Emerson's dictum thus: "Bard Macdonald of Trotternish,
Skye, whose only cow came near being impounded by the Congested
Districts Board in order to pay for the price of seed-potatoes furnished
to him by the said Board, having good health, makes the pomp of empires
ridiculous three hundred and sixty-five days every year." Bard Macdonald
is a very poor man, yet he has contrived to hitch his waggon on to a
fixed star. He lives in one of those low thatch-roofed bothies that,
with the accompanying croft, are rented at from £2 to £4 a year. He has
a wife and a large family. Yet, tormented as he is by present poverty
and past arrears, he eyes the future with serenity. I heard him sing a
Gaelic poem of his own composition, containing twenty-five verses of
intricate versification, and at the conclusion he was far less exhausted
than any of the company. Then, again, Torquil M'Gillivray, schoolmaster
of a rainy township on the sea-edge of one of the Skye _nishes_, has
tranquillity of mind as great as any of the Seven Sages ever enjoyed. He
is perfectly contented with his lot of rural dominie, and when I, in my
presumption, ventured to speak critically of certain social conditions
in his beloved island, he rebuked me by crooning tenderly the following
lines:

"Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,
I would see them before I die,
But I'd rather not see any one of the three,
Than be exiled for ever from Skye!"

We all know what a unique poetical gem Wordsworth composed after he
heard a Highland girl singing at Inversnaid. I witnessed many fine
examples of concentrated joy which might have resulted in metre if I had
not had the presence of mind to pull myself up and refrain. One was at
Acharacle, where in front of a croft a young fellow was dancing the
Highland fling with such whole-souled and consuming zeal that I stood
transfixed with wonder and awe. He was alone, and I came suddenly upon
him at a sharp bend of the road. He threw his legs about him with such
regardless glee, that for a moment I was afraid one of them would get
unfixed and come spinning through the air to hit me. I watched him like
one fascinated for fully ten minutes. When at length he saw me, the
glory flowed suddenly off his legs; he subsided into a country bumpkin,
and beat a hasty retreat indoors. "If Greek dances were as artistic as
this one," said I, "and if the lines of each chorus had a reference to
the diversity of the steps, it is little wonder that God in His
providence should have sent us so many commentators to explain the
mysteries of ancient scansion."

Another instance of natural and spontaneous bliss came under my notice
about two miles along from Kinlochewe, on the banks of Loch Maree. It
was a glorious, sun-illumined spring morning, and every crevice in the
rough flanks of Ben Slioch was mirrored in the unwrinkled surface of the
noble loch. Ben Eay had a bright covering of Nature's whitest, softest
lawn. No sounds were heard except the low droning of a vagrant bee, the
whizzing of a sea-mew's pinions, or a bark from this croft answered by a
bark from that other a mile away. Suddenly the repose of the morning, in
which a pedestrian could hear the echo of his own feet, was startled by
the voice of a girl singing. For a moment I thought of the _Lorelei_;
but it was soon evident where the notes were coming from. A maiden of
ten or twelve was sitting in front of a cottage that faced the lake,
combing her long, black hair that glistened in the morning rays, and
pouring forth such exquisite trills as might have made Orpheus envious.
The whole beauty of ben, loch, and sky seemed to be gathered up in that
child's song. I had been wandering along in the sparkling air and
feeling that something ought to be done to intimate to Heaven that it
was a heavenly morning. The girl felt so happy in the gracious gift of
another blue day that her nature responded at once in a spontaneous
burst of melody. I was very grateful for her vicarious hymn of praise--

"Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place.
Joy have I had; and going hence
I bear away my recompense."

OBAN TO GAIRLOCH.

It is impossible for anyone who has a fair supply of the uncurdled milk
of human kindness to sail from Oban to Gairloch and not be struck with
the heartiness and good humour of the native population. Such a trip is
rarely accomplished without some memorable incident or some outstanding
impression. The landscape is doubtless magnificent, but the people one
sees on the way are infinitely more interesting. No one, I am sure, can
fail to observe the well-groomed, fresh, and imperial aspect of the pier
policemen. The general polish of their boots and belts, the
self-satisfied, Parnassian smile that never comes off, the spotless
gloves, the muscular frame, combine to make up a splendid type of
impressive Law grounded on Strength. I am ashamed to employ the term
"policemen" to a body of officials who command such instantaneous
respect. These men are King Edward's Highland satraps, and they both
know it and feel it: law in the North is never undignified or unkempt.
Then, again, the captain of the steamer is a man whom it is impossible
to regard without veneration. All Macbrayne's men are fine fellows; they
look well as they stand in stately fashion on the bridge: yet many a
scowling sky of torrential rain they have to face, many a time have
their beards been shaken by the hurricanes of the Minch. If you speak to
a ship-captain, you are certain to get the utmost civility and
politeness. It is true that most of them have several sets of
vocabularies: to passengers they are urbane and choice of speech; but
they have, within easy reach, another set of phrases, which they find of
service in addressing delinquent mariners.

A student of Virgil in making the trip I have alluded to above, would
run the risk of recalling the passage in which the poet suggests that
the big island of Sicily was at one time connected with the mainland,
but that some huge convulsion of nature disjoined the twain and allowed
the Mediterranean to come roaring in a channel between. The scenery of
Western Scotland stirs the imagination to suppose that some similar
catastrophe permitted the sea to mangle the fair uniformity of a
prehistoric coast, submerge the low-lying lands, and leave a great
number of islands lying in lonely fashion out in the watery waste.
Heavy weather, truly, it must have been ere Coll, Tiree, Rum, and Eigg
were sundered from the mainland by the Atlantic flow.

All the islands I mention (save Tiree) can be seen from the deck of the
_Gael_ during the earlier part of the daily passage of that boat from
Oban in the summer season. Tiree is off the main tourist track, but a
few antiquarians are now finding it worth their while to go and dig
there for relics of byegone civilisation. A friend of mine, a zealous
and erudite F.S.A., has spent many a pleasant holiday in Tiree, and has
come back with loaded trunks of valuable prehistoric remains. Certain
artists go out to the island regularly in order to transfer to canvas
some of Nature's most impressive aspects of cloud, wave, and crag. Nor
let me forget the doughty members of the _Faith Mission_, who evangelise
this and others of the outer isles, and sing such sweet melodies to the
natives as would melt any "Wee Free" heart, let alone an ordinary heart
of stone. Tiree has long been famous for its schools and for its
intelligent inhabitants; as a consequence, the libraries have been
enthusiastically welcomed in its townships, and are regarded by the
teachers there as a new and valuable adjunct of education. I have often
heard it said that Tiree produces more ministers than any other
district, of like population, in the Celtic part of Scotland. The Duke
of Argyll does not allow any licensed house on the island, but he has
not as yet suppressed the _Fingal_ and the parcels post. Should His
Grace ever unbend so far as to permit the temperance hotels to obtain
the licence, learned men might flock in greater numbers to Tiree, and
dazzle themselves and the world with further antiquarian finds.[3]

Rum has not been dowered with a Paisley library, and I regret to say
that the natives have the reputation of not keeping the Sunday with
ostentatious strictness. Eigg, the little island contiguous, is a little
heaven below. The missionary there well deserves a word of commendation:
the island of Muck is under his spiritual supervision, and with a
sandwich and a sermon in his pocket, he often sets sail, scorning gust
and current, to preach to his parishioners in that tiny islet.

[3] Coll is also a very interesting island for the antiquarian.
It contains distinct traces of twenty-nine Hill-forts or Duns,
so that there must have been lively times out there long ago.
Some fine shells, beads, pins and pottery have been found in the
prehistoric _kitchen-middens_. Before the Reformation the island
was thickly peopled, and sites of old churches and deserted
crofts are numerous. Coll has gone back in population; in 1901
it had 432 inhabitants; in 1755 the number of natives was 1,193.

WINTER SAILING.

The summer tourist knows Skye very imperfectly, for he goes there in a
commodious steamer and traverses the island at a season when the days
are long and the weather benign. No one should vaunt of knowing Skye
unless he has seen it in winter also. It is the small _Lochiel_ that, in
the dark days of December, bears the passengers along the chilly Sound
of Sleat, and through the narrows of Raasay, into the haven of Portree.
At such a time there is something fearsome and weird in the aspect of
the coast, as seen from the cabin window of the brave little boat as
she battles and plunges along in the teeth of the north-eastern gale.
Her progress is slow, for when passengers are few Macbrayne wisely
economises his coal. The long-stretching hills of Raasay (on the highest
of which Boswell danced a jig) are white from head to foot, and gleam
through the darkness of the afternoon, vivid and ghostly. As Raasay
House, with its lamp-lit windows shining in a snowy recess, is
approached, the engines slow down, and through the howl of the wind can
be heard the plashing of oars. The broad waves swirl and seethe cruelly
around the ferry-boat and toss it about at all angles, up and down, on
crest and in trough, till you fear it will end its struggles keel
upwards, and send the mail-bags down among the mackerel. But the boatmen
know their trade, and so do the dripping, top-booted seamen of the
_Lochiel_. Amid much running and shuffling and casting of ropes and
animated bandying of (I fear) strong expressions in Gaelic sung out upon
the night, the ship's ladder is cast down and the boat tied thereto. In
a few minutes the transfer of mails is over, the ladder up, and the
small boat leaping back to land. (I speak of December 22, 1904). A new
passenger has come on board and is seen to descend the cabin stairs to
unfreeze his fingers over the tiny stove. Half-an-hour's heaving still
remains before Portree. A lady who has been on the border-line of
squeamishness for the last hour, hurriedly leaves the cabin, probably to
see if her luggage is all right. Good news at last for all! Portree is
visible, and its lights are twinkling on the height. The moon comes
graciously out, silvering the snowy shoulders of Essie Hill. What a
contrast is this moonlit haven, with its background of terraced lights,
to the rough surges outside. Glad indeed is everyone to set foot on the
pier and trudge through disregarded slush to the warmth of home or
hotel. We are told by our island friends that all Skye is under snow and
that the roads are impassable. No mail-coach has ventured to Dunvegan
for two days and in other directions, the postmen, turned cavaliers,
have gone off on horseback with their letters. (Let me say in passing,
that a red-bearded Highland postman, clad in post-office livery and
seated on a sheltie, is a sight which any artist would go a hundred
miles to see.)

Winter sailing may at times be as pleasant as a cruise in June. At 8
A.M. in the snug cabin, the breakfast-table, with its tea, ham, eggs,
and sausages, is a welcome piece of scenery, and the genial talk of the
captain and his colleagues is far better than pepsine as a digestive.
After breakfast, a pipe on deck is a necessity. Who that has once seen
Ben-na-ceallich all white to the feet and softly veiled with airy mists,
but wishes he were a Turner to paint, or a Shelley to sing? The sail
from Broadford to Kyle on a calm, cold, snow-dazzling morning is (if one
is wrapped and coated well) absolutely majestic. The sun pours, if not
warmth, at least light and heat on the hundred bens of the mainland and
the breeze aiding, wakens a multitudinous smile on the glittering face
of the cold waters.

I never take this trip without thinking of such books as _The Brave Sons
of Skye_, which gives a record of the brave men born in the misty island
who have come south and distinguished themselves in many a different
walk in life. It is a most inspiring thing to reflect on the dauntless
way in which genius treads the stony road that leads from poverty to
glory. There is not a district in Skye but has its great man, who forms
the subject of conversation round the peat fire when the winter winds
are blowing down the strath. "From Log Cabin to White House" is the
American way of putting it: in Scotland we might say "From Crofter's Cot
to Professor's Chair."

A CROFTING VILLAGE.

The sight of a crofting village is at first rather surprising to one
accustomed to large towns. The low roofs are not far from the ground.
Often, while driving, if you turn a corner swiftly, you run the risk of
being thrown out of the trap on to one of the chimneys. It does not take
much imagination, especially in the dim dusk, to transform a
low-thatched cot into some weird animal that might begin to walk along
the hill-side at any moment. So irregularly grouped are the townships,
dropped here and there, as it were, that you might fancy the houses had
begun at one time to run a race with each other, and in the middle of it
had suddenly stopped. Dr. Johnson complained that the windows were fixed
into the walls and could not, in consequence, be opened to let in the
air. That fault exists to some extent still: I have been told, however,
that peat reek is very purifying, and that its thick fumes make short
work of any noxious germs that might lodge about the nooks of the
interior. Great changes are gradually coming over many of the clachans,
changes not loved by an artist or a devotee of the picturesque. Instead
of thatch, held down by ropes weighted with heavy stones, there is often
to be seen a roofing of tarred cloth or corrugated iron. Romance might
attach itself to a roof of thatch, but corrugated iron, with its
distressing parallelism, could never awaken a genuine lyric note.
Further, it does not make a very comfortable seat, whereas thatch is
soft. Now, children in the Highlands are rather fond of sitting and even
playing on the roof: thatch is less cruel on bare feet than iron is.

HORRORS OF THE MINCH.

I have alluded to the distresses of winter voyaging to Skye. But there
are other routes worse, notably that from Tarbert in Harris to
Lochmaddy, which is a perfect Tartar of a trip. When the wind is high
and contrary, the traveller (if he can stay on deck and maintain an
interest in the scenery), beholds a sight of extreme grandeur. The waves
are to be seen all along the Harris coast leaping up to a terrific
extent with an unbroken line of foam extending for miles. So much does
the boat romp and dance, however, that most passengers forsake the deck
and retire inelegantly below. When a man lies in a stuffy cabin wishing
himself wedged into it to prevent the perpetual rolling to this side and
to that, and hearing the desperate thud of the Minch flinging itself
against the port-hole, a series of vivid panoramic pictures pass before
his mental eye. Home appears so lovely and reposeful: faces of friends
on shore arise, transfigured by the glow of love: the squeamishness and
retching he endures seem to the sufferer a special and direct judgment
on him for impiously endeavouring to find pleasure otherwise than by the
practice of the domestic virtues. Disquieting memories of bursting
boilers surge up to the surface of the mind, and old catches like the
weird ballad of Sir Patrick Spens lilt themselves to the clank of the
staggering ship's machinery--

"The anchor's brak and the tapmast lap,
It was sic a deadly storm,
And the waves dashed into the gude ship's side
Till a' her planks were torn."

The romance of the sea is apt to vanish as you look out upon a
wilderness of foaming water, tossing the boat like an insignificant toy,
drenching the bulwarks and vehemently smiting everything in its riotous
anger. Neptune seems a mere blind force without reverence or mercy for
the works of man. It is good for a boy of romantic disposition to cross
to the Long Island in a gale: it will effectually cure him of all desire
to take up the profession of pirate. What a sad moment for such a youth
when he sees his breakfast where it shouldn't be, and reflects that he
has not the staying power of Sir Ralph the Rover!

I regret to say that I have no specific to give as a preventive for
sea-sickness. Even the Phoenicians who had time, during the intervals
of their hardy voyaging, to invent the alphabet, were unable to devise a
remedy for the _mal de mer_. Custom does not create immunity, for even
the mighty Nelson, who had a life-long acquaintance with the ocean, was
afflicted with sea-sickness to the end of his days. In France there
exists a _Ligue contre le mal de mer_, commenting upon which a French
journalist says: _Avec une ligue on est toujours assuré d'une chose: à
défaut de progrès, qu'elle nous fera peut-être attendre, elle fera des
congrès: et c'est du moins une consolation que de pouvoir discourir de
son mal._

He that will to Cupar maun through Fife, and he that has business in the
Lews must brave the billows of the Minch.

NOTES ON LEWIS.

The great island of Lewis, formerly so distant from Edinburgh and
Glasgow, can now be reached in fourteen hours by one who leaves the
latter city at 5.40 A.M. The old route was very tiresome and circuitous:
the traveller had to proceed to Inverness, take the Dingwall and Skye
line to Strome Ferry, and then sail over the Minch to Stornoway. The
opening up of the West Highlands by the railway to Mallaig has changed
all that. At Mallaig pier, when you leave the train, you find the
connecting steamer ready to set off, at noon, for its journey to
Stornoway, where it arrives about eight in the evening.

I don't think anyone would want to stay more than a week at a time in
Stornoway. The town itself is just like the fishy part of
Boulogne-sur-Mer, only more so. There is a pervading odour of mussels,
bait, and herring, and the gulls go flapping overhead in crowds
everywhere. If the tourist remained a week in the place, he would go
every day to the Castle grounds. Here, if anywhere, is the paradise of
the Lews. There is a profusion of dells, burns, glades, ivy-grown
bridges, and far-extending vistas over sea, moorland, and town. As with
a knife (so precise is the division) the well-wooded policies are
separated from the barren and disheartening moor. When one gets to the
highest point of the grounds and gazes over the long, tiresome slopes of
the island, one's belief in _design in nature_ gets a sudden stab. A man
will think long and sore before he arrives at any _raison d'être_ for
including such a wilderness of bogs in the scheme of creation.

The men of the island are, in the main, shrewd, resourceful, and
intelligent--qualities fostered by their constant fighting with the sea.
"The young fellows here," said one of the hotel-keepers to me, "will
either make a spoon or spoil a horn. They come to a decision speedily
and put it into practice at once. It is hit or miss with them, usually
hit. At sea, in a gale, there is no time for parliamenting; and Lewismen
act on land with the swift decision that is needed in a tempest." All
round the coast are fishing-villages, thickly populated by these
intrepid children of the tempest.

Fishing is a precarious industry, and often fails. The harvest of the
land may fail at the same time as that of the sea: in such a case the
plight of the islanders is sad indeed. During the last five years, the
trade of weaving has been wisely fostered by the Government, so that in
future, when sea and soil are churlish, the loom will to some extent
supply the lack. The Duchess of Sutherland and the Congested Districts
Board have done excellent service in encouraging the tweed-weaving
industry all over the Long Island. Her Grace, some years ago, made a
progress through Lewis and addressed the people by means of an
interpreter, on the advantages of such industry in their homes. She also
instituted exhibition sales of work in the big cities of the south, with
the result that large quantities of cloth were sold and a precious
publicity given to the scheme. Depots for receiving the cloth from the
workers are now established in Stornoway and Harris. The Congested
Districts Board advance money without interest for the purchase of
looms, provide an experienced instructor to supply the people with new
patterns, and give an adequate supply of dye-pots free of charge. This
instructor goes over the whole of Lewis and Harris, spending month about
in each, erecting new looms and modernising old ones. There is a large
carding mill in Stornoway, where the natives can have the wool
expeditiously carded in the most approved modern style. An industry thus
fostered and supervised is bound to succeed.

Educationally, the Long Island is making great progress. Higher
education is almost entirely centred in the Nicolson Institute,
Stornoway, a school admirably conducted and finely equipped. The pupils
of marked ability in the elementary schools of Lewis come here to
continue their higher studies, and, in many cases, to prepare themselves
for the University. I have seen specimens of a magazine, annually put
forth by the senior pupils of this school, and containing many
interesting essays and poems, grave and gay. The English of the essays
was remarkably good, and contained here and there some piquant
suggestions of Gaelic idiom. The pupils read French well, probably
because their native Gaelic contains such a rich reservoir of nasal
sounds to draw upon.

HIGHLAND DOCTORS.

I have a great respect for the medical gentlemen who have taken up their
position in remote districts of Scotland, and devote themselves to the
healing art under most disadvantageous circumstances. The distances are
incredibly long and dangerous in winter: I have in my mind an insular
doctor who has a deal of midnight boating to do in glacial weather, and
whose bills are often paid not in coin but _in fleece newly off the
sheep's back_. As the population gets smaller, the doctor's work becomes
more laborious and less remunerative. The institution of district nurses
has been a great success, and I wish there were more of them. A
sympathetic and competent _nurse_ is a valuable asset in a crofting or
seafaring community. In one district of Mull, recently visited, I found
that the nurse was also the village librarian. She was quite at home
both with lotions and literature, and could recommend a poet or prepare
a poultice with equal skill. The ante-room to the village hall was her
dispensary: it seemed to me remarkably complete, and to have as
scientific an odour as any city pharmacy. I was glad to see that the
Clan Maclean was so well supplied with the resources of modern
civilisation.

In every one of the village libraries there is a copy of Black's
_Medical Dictionary_, a most useful compilation, written in clear and
simple language, and detailing all the commonest remedies. Many rural
teachers and clergymen have considerable skill in coping with illness.
Every country minister should have at least a smattering of medical
knowledge.[4]

[4] At Spean Bridge there is a worthy old farmer, Mr. Chalmers,
who has a widespread fame for dexterous bone-setting, a talent
which is said to have descended to him from a long line of
forbears. A young gentleman from Glasgow was in the hotel there
during my stay, and from personal experience spoke of Mr.
Chalmers's remarkable powers. He told me that patients come from
far and near (after eminent surgeons have failed to give
benefit), in order to be treated at Spean Bridge.

HOTELS AND ANGLERS.

Wherever the angler goes, you find a good hotel. Uist is low-lying and
barren, with nothing to attract the eye--no tourist would go near the
place for anything it has to show in the way of scenery. But as it has
hundreds of small lochs, full of fish, ardent anglers go thither from
all parts of the British Isles; and so at Lochmaddy and Lochboisdale the
hotels are not merely good, they are excellent. The recording angel is
kept busy, during the season, in taking a note of all the myths told
there by the fishers in the evening over the whisky and soda.

There may be heard, at night, in most hotels in the Western Isles, the
riotous scampering of rats overhead and along the walls. In Lochmaddy
hotel there used to be an old frisker (perhaps he is living still) that
gave great entertainment, though no one ever saw him. He lifted a stone,
evidently with his mouth, ran a yard or two with it, and then dropped it
with a great clatter. The game was a pleasure to him, for he would
practice it for half an hour at a time. The anglers who frequented the
hotel called him _the mason_.

I have got into conversation with innumerable knights of the rod, and
can sympathise to a slight extent with their enthusiasm. Nothing seems
to take hold of a man so irrevocably as Walton's mania. Travelling by
night in the north lately, I looked out into the dusk from the carriage
window and beheld a bright flash of lightning, and by the gleam thereof
saw a midnight maniac with his rod silhouetted against the vast inane.
How few fishers nowadays, except perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang, can write
their experiences in good marrowy English--

The quaint loquacious wits of long ago,
Whose ease was never broken by the shrill
Whistle of engine panting round the hill,
Could by the brook where fishful waters flow,
Spend the long hours in angling to and fro,
And hooking lusty trout and salmon, till
The low-descending sun and evening chill
Would send them to the merry ingle-glow;
Then, after fit refection, pen and ink
Would consecrate on paper all their feats
In rippling phrases flashing with the blink
Of forest glades and living water-sheets;
The race is poorer now than it was then:
We have no anglers that can wield the pen.

I believe the best region in all Scotland for trout is the wild and
picturesque county of Sutherland. In the district of Assynt alone there
are 150 lochs, fine sheets of water most of them, lying about among the
hills. Half-way between the two seas and just on the borders of
Sutherland and Ross, is the cosy wee hotel of Altnacealgach, with a
well-stocked loch at the door, from which hundredweights of trout are
taken every year. The air that blows about the house is to that of
London as champagne is to dish-water.

There is a close connection, as I said, between the frequentation of a
district by anglers and the excellence of its hotels. Where there is no
great influx of tourists, the hotel accommodation is decidedly poor. I
remember one inn, at a cold windy clachan on the west coast, which only
stress of weather and dire necessity would make a man enter. Dirty stone
steps, worn and crumbled in the centre, led to an upper room which had
apparently not been swept out for a year or two. Not even the city of
Cologne in Coleridge's time could have produced from among its imposing
catalogue of stenches anything to match the complex ensemble of that
malodorous inn. There was stale fish intil't, and bad beer intil't, and
peat reek intil't, and mice intil't, and candle grease intil't, and the
devil and all intil't. Though I was the only visitor, I feared I should
not have the bed to myself: so I e'en wrapped myself in my Highland
plaidie (after the minimum of disinvestiture), and stretched my limbs on
an arthritic settee, with intent to sleep. No sleep came till the
quaffing roysterers of the clachan had ceased fighting under the moon
outside, about 2 A.M. namely. Rather than stay two nights in such a
place, I boated out early next day into the mid-channel of the Sound of
Mull, and clambered up the sides of Macbrayne's _Lapwing_, which took me
to Oban.

RECENT BOOKS.

The most charming of recent works on the Outer Islands is that one of
which the preface was written in Jerusalem. I refer to the volume of
Miss Goodrich Frere, a lady whose vivacity, fervour, and picturesque
style are deserving of unqualified praise. All the libraries in the
bilingual districts contain the book, and few are so often asked for. In
conversation and publicly I have often given myself the pleasure of
recommending it, alike to Highlander and Lowlander. My admiration for
Miss Frere's talents makes me wish that one or two of her prejudices had
been less glaringly displayed. She speaks, for example, with something
like scornful reproach of Lochmaddy, because the habit of taking
afternoon tea is common in that township. It would have been more to the
purpose if Miss Frere had issued a general warning to the people of the
Hebrides not to drink tea as black as porter, and, above all, not to
boil it. The pale anæmic faces one so often sees in the north and west,
the mental prostration and actual insanity so alarmingly on the increase
in the Long Island, are unquestionably due, in great measure, to the
abominably strong tea that is swilled in such quantities there. A
Tarbert doctor told me that the medical profession now talk quite
familiarly of the Harris stomach just as drapers talk of Harris tweed:
the former is, he averred, as weak and devoid of tone as the latter is
strong and of good texture. This doctor was called up at two one morning
to attend a patient in one of the moorland townships. At that hour, away
over there on the gusty rim of the Atlantic, the natives were all afoot.
People were talking to each other at the doorsteps; lamps were lighted
inside, and tea that had been boiling for hours among the red peats, was
being imbibed with infinite gusto. This, the doctor assured me, was the
normal style of living.[5]

Talking of North Uist, Miss Frere shows indignation at the invasion of
southern ideas, and thinks that everything is being vitiated by the
taint of Lochmaddy. Lochmaddy, characterised in so droll a way, is a
tiny township with a Sheriff Court, a church, a few well-built modern
houses, a school, and an excellent hotel. Cleanliness is a welcome
feature of the place, and I am sorry to say that the same can not be
said of certain crofting villages not far distant. I expect that the
visits of the Government Sanitary Officer, whom I met at Lochmaddy, and
who knows his business well, will ultimately work an enormous amount of
good. That gentleman gave me such unsavoury details regarding the
conditions of life in certain of the townships as made me hope that the
"taint of Lochmaddy," that is to say, the cleanliness and civilised
life of that village, may more and more become evident throughout both
the Uists. Improved sanitation would allow heaven's breath to circulate
through the low-lying cots and prevent them from being hot-beds of
malignant disease.

One feature of Miss Frere's book which does honour to her fine sympathy,
but which is not ethnologically justifiable, is the persistent attempt
to draw a sharp racial distinction between Highlander and Lowlander. The
truth is, that no part of the Highlands is purely Celtic: the population
is a welter of Picts, Gaels, Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons. The Lowland
blood is, in like manner, a bewildering blend, there being no
uncontaminated Anglo-Saxon district in any single county of Scotland.
Mr. J. M. Robertson's clever book, _The Saxon and the Celt_, seems to me
to dispose finally of certain fallacies that Hill Burton and others have
light-heartedly written on the subject of racial characteristics. The
conditions of life, the ungeniality of sea and soil, the wild and grand
aspect of nature, influence thought, feeling, and character at least as
much as blood and heredity.[6]

Another delightful book on the Outer Hebrides is that written by Mr. W.
C. Mackenzie. Proceeding in the order of chronology, the author gives a
vivid series of historic summaries (enlivened by many a piquant episode
and humorous touch) of the Long Island from the earliest times. The
wanderings of Prince Charlie, and the condition of the country after
Culloden, have never been better told than in Mr. Mackenzie's narrative.

[5] The student of eugenics will note that among the tea-bibbing
islanders of the west the teeth of the natives are poor. My
experience tends to show that the best teeth in Scotland are to
be found in Aberdeenshire. When a Buchan audience laughs, there
is a gleam of polished ivory that is very impressive; but rural
Aberdeen has deviated less into slops than any other part of
Britain.

[6] "There are probably now more persons of Highland descent in
the Lowlands than in the Highlands themselves."--_Scotland of
To-Day_, by Henderson and Watt, p. 300. See also note at end of
chapter on Inverness surnames, etc.

MILITARY.

I hinted at the beginning of this chapter that the barracks of the
Highland regiments had been supplied with extensive libraries for the
use of the soldiers during their leisure hours. Fort-George, the
erection of which was directly due to the Highland rebellions, has been
presented with two fine libraries, and I am happy to say that the men
greatly appreciate the gift. I happened to be in the vicinity of
Fort-George when the Duke of Connaught was conducting an official
inspection. The little town of Ardersier, which is some two miles from
the Fort, was gay with bunting for the ducal visit. The books at the
Fort are under the charge of Sergeant-Major Markham, an able
elocutionist and one who, in his own sphere, does an immense amount of
good. He gets the young recruits to band themselves together in social
clubs, organises games and entertainments for them, and encourages them
to read and study. The philanthropic Sergeant-Major was engaged in
typing a catalogue of the books when the genial Duke came upon the
scene. His Royal Highness was astonished to see such a magnificent
selection of reading matter at the disposal of the soldiers, and eagerly
asked for information as to the origin of the boon. His curiosity was
satisfied, and when he heard that the same donor had given appropriate
libraries to the garrisons at Inverness, Dingwall, and Kinbrace, he
exclaimed, "Such a gentleman is indeed the Soldier's Friend."

Since the Duke's visit, a small library of books has been sent to the
children's school at the Fort. The population of this military
community, containing as it does a great many married men with their
wives and families, is fully equal to that of Ardersier, and
necessitates a separate school. I was struck with the pronunciation of
the children in this part of the country. Many of the Fort children,
having mothers from the other side of the Border, speak with an
unmistakable English accent and are rather unscrupulous with respect to
the aspirate. The town of Inverness, which is at no great distance from
Fort-George, has long been famous for its clear and unprovincial English
speech, a fact which Johnson (oddly enough) thought due to some of
Cromwell's soldiers having settled there.

Dr. Johnson devotes two pleasant little paragraphs to describe his visit
to Fort-George and his entertainment there by Sir Eyre Coote. I have
always admired the Doctor's sly way of avoiding a description of the
Fort: "I cannot," he says, "delineate it scientifically, and a loose and
popular description is of use only when the imagination is to be
amused."

In spite of the menace of Fort-George, the Highlanders fondly cherished
the memory of Charlie for many a year. To no subject even now do their
descendants listen with such rapt attention as to his tragic story. I
have heard indeed of a Highland minister who was so displeased at the
homage paid to the Prince's memory by some of his flock, that he threw
at them the unanswerable question, "What will Prince Charlie do for you
at the day of judgment?"

I have had the curiosity to ask some of the Session Clerks of country
parishes that were in the line of the insurgents' advance or retreat, if
any references to the rebellion appear in the minutes of the year 1745.
No references appear, as a rule, for that year; but, under 1746, there
are brief accounts of church discipline being exercised in the case of a
few illegitimate births,--the paternity being ascribed usually to _ane
sodger_.[7]

At Inverness and Dingwall there exist similar libraries of great range
and excellence. The men show an interest in Miss Marie Corelli's works
that is rather astonishing. Their hard and strenuous drill does not
deprive them of a curiosity to know something about _Barabbas_ and _The
Sorrows of Satan_. Sir Conan Doyle and Dr. Neil Munro are also great
favourites, and deserve to be.

A large number of the Inverness recruits come from the Long Island. They
almost invariably require to be taken to the hospital a week or two
after their arrival. Change of diet and new modes of life seem to upset
them at first. For those who have a mind to improve themselves, there
are abundant opportunities. The reading and recreation rooms are well
appointed and comfortable. Altogether, the regular life, physical drill,
and healthy tone of the barracks must have a most beneficial effect on
the men.

I am bound to say that I do not greatly admire the English style of the
gentleman who composes the War Office placards that one sees at railway
stations in the north. These are meant to allure country labourers to
join the army, but the following piece of fatuous rhetoric must surely
act rather as a deterrent than otherwise:--"Are you, the descendants of
those who conquered India and carried the colours of the Gordon
Highlanders through the Peninsula and at Waterloo, _content to sit at
home, or be satisfied with dull labours in the fields or at the mills_,
whilst the ranks of your own regiment are filled by strangers from the
South?" I heard two freckled rustics, with difficulty and labour hard,
spelling out the phrases of the foregoing sentence at the little station
of Fyvie. They did not seem at all impressed by the fervent
interrogation nor by this picture of prospective delights: "_Many of
your countrymen have seen the wonders of the Indian Empire and enjoyed
the soft calm of Malta, and of Ceylon, the Paradise of the Ancients._"
It does not evince much knowledge of a ploughman's mind to seek to
awaken his martial ardour by old myths about the Garden of Eden; nor is
it specially alluring to him to mention, as the acme of glory, that he
may distinguish himself so much as to gain "_thanks from both Houses of
Parliament_." Such weak and watery declamation won't do for a country
that has had thirty-eight years of compulsory education. If our War
Office wishes to rouse patriotic feeling, it should cease to contrast
"the dull labour of the fields" with "the soft calm of Malta": the
veriest clown would not be caught by such chaff. It would be more to the
point to send gratuitous copies of _The Barrack Room Ballads_ to all the
village libraries.

[7] I have heard it maintained by some zealots, whom I greatly
esteem, that Gaelic is a highly _moral_ language, that the use of
it conduces to purity of life and thought, and that everyone
would be improved in tone by contact with its roots. Those
ministers who have charge of Session Records, chronicling events
that happened before English was known in the West, cannot
unreservedly corroborate these views.

MORAY FIRTH.

My various visits to the shores of the Moray Firth have convinced me
that a man may enjoy the majesty and terror of the sea without embarking
on a boat at all. All he need do is to take a ticket to Portsoy in the
month of March, when the wind is snell and the clouds low. I have never
seen a more grim or cruel-looking coast than that which stretches for
miles east and west of Portsoy. One shudders even at the thought of
those detestable, razor-edged rocks, tilted up at all angles, with the
tide for ever boiling and hissing about them. Neither by land nor sea,
at many parts of the coast, can you get to what might be reasonably
called a beach. The so-called shore-road is high up on the hills, and
gives a good view far out over the billows, but does not take the
traveller's feet near the water at all. Ill-advised would he be who
should strive to guide his skiff from the outer firth to any chance cove
on the shore, for the uncouth crags, huge and sombre, would have no
mercy on any timber jointed by the hand of man. Perhaps the summer sun
would give a gentler appearance to the rocky and wave-beaten shore, but
I am certain Mr. Swinburne would prefer to see it in March.

The town of Portsoy in itself cannot be said to have much comeliness;
the streets are irregular, the houses dismal, and the shops few. God
has, as is meet, the best of the architecture, most of the churches
being graceful and well-spired.

About twenty minutes by rail from Portsoy is the trim and typical
fishing village of Portknockie, high-raised on a hill, and with little
protection from any wind that Aeolus may send out of his cavern. The
population comes near 1,600 souls, and it is rare to find a native who
is not called by one of the following surnames: _Mair_, _Wood_, _Munro_,
_Pirrie_. I believe such a dearth of appellatives is the invariable rule
in the fishing villages of the North Sea. To counteract the confusion
that would inevitably arise, an agnomen or "tee-name" is usually
appended. The Portknockie tee-names are _Mash_, _Deer_, _Doodoo_,
_Bobbin_, and _Shavie_. Examples of postal addresses are--

John Wood (Bobbin), Portknockie.
Duncan Munro (Doodoo), "
Samuel Pirrie (Shavie), "
Daniel Mair (Mash), "

I don't envy the young minister who, fresh from Lucian, has to read with
solemnity a roll of such communicants.

Between Portknockie and the sea-town of Cullen is a charming stretch of
links and sea-sands. Over the broad Firth, as one looks north-west, may
be faintly seen the hills of Sutherland and Caithness.

It is pleasant to read books amid the scenery in which they were
conceived, and among the people they portray. Those who spend their
holidays at Cullen would act wisely in reading George Macdonald's novels
there. No one has drawn the character of the Moray Firth fisherman so
lovingly, beautifully, and sympathetically as he. After reading such a
tale as the _Marquis of Lossie_ one looks upon places like Portknockie
and the sea-town of Cullen with different eyes. The toilers of the deep
that go forth on the waters from these seaboard shires are serious and
moral men. Contact with the sea and the presence of danger at all hours,
have made them alert, keen, and dexterous. Most of the crews carry a box
of choice books with them for their odd hours of leisure when they go to
the Yarmouth fishing. Let a stranger get into conversation with one or
two of these hardy heroes, and he will be surprised at their
intelligence and wide interests. He will certainly conclude that the
young fisherman, Malcolm Macphail, whom Macdonald introduces in the
novel mentioned, is no exaggeration, but true to the life.

The sea-town of Cullen consists of some hundreds of houses closely
huddled together just at the edge of the sea. The rank odour of wreck,
tar, fishing-gear, and bait, pervades the air, and is effectually kept
from corruption by the searching sea-breezes that are ever blowing. When
not engaged on the water, the men are busy mending their nets, stitching
their sails, making fast the seams of their craft and tarring the big
inflated floaters that support the lines. They are quite ready to chat
with a stranger and discuss their methods of working, their gains,
mishaps, and partnerships.

When the fishing season is over and the crews are known to be on the way
home, the excitement among the women is intense. No Bourse ever tingled
more feverishly with rumours and sinister fears than Sandhaven or
Rosehearty or Seatown at such a crucial time. Costly nets may be riven,
boats may be stove in by untoward accidents, or worse than all, fathers,
husbands and brothers may be drowned on the road home to their loved
ones. Rarely does a season pass without bringing sorrow to the heart of
some waiting wife or sister.

The joys, hopes, and fears of these maritime townships have been
worthily made vocal by Dr. George Macdonald. He has done this with a
grace and an artistic conception that raise his stories to a very high
rank in pure literature. I am afraid Macdonald is not much read by the
present generation: his stories are too long, too philosophical, perhaps
too poetical, for the taste of to-day. Every book of his is saturated
from beginning to end with the religion of the Gospels--a religion of
love, beauty, tolerance, and sympathy.

I am happy to say that I saw Dr. Macdonald once and heard him speak. His
venerable aspect and chaste elocution made a powerful impression on all
who heard him. His discourse could not be reported in cold print, for
the flash of the mystic's eye, the human kindness that emanated from his
whole being, and the felt emotion of his every tone could not be
reproduced by any artifice known to the printer.

The Forfarshire fishwives have quite a Dutch mania for cleanliness. On
Saturdays they give their homes a complete overhaul, and the men are
driven out of doors during the ceremony. What man could stay at home
when his wife, supplied with a mop and a big pail of soapy water, is
sousing the floor and the walls? Furniture is scrubbed and dusted, glass
ornaments, porcelain hens, and shell-boxes have to be carefully wiped,
grates and fire-irons must be rubbed to a glittering polish. These
industrious women, panting with the enthusiasm of work, enjoy Saturday
more than any other day of the week. The enjoyment springs from various
causes. There is first the delight that comes from a vigorous exercise
of the muscles. This pleasure is heightened by the knowledge that the
work is for a good end, and that on Sunday the house will be
resplendent, immaculate, and peaceful. It is not to be denied that the
feeling of satisfaction at having evicted the husband is also an
important item. When he comes home from discussing politics with his
co-mates and brothers in exile, she will not fail to jibe him on the
general worthlessness of his existence, and accuse him of intemperance.

AMONG THE MINERS.

A fishing village has a picturesqueness and a kinship with Nature and
the hills, utterly lacking in a mining locality. The squalid rows of the
latter, arranged in wretched, heart-breaking symmetry, are an offence to
the landscape. Mud and filth cumber the door-steps, runnels of
malodorous water ooze along the rows, ragged and ill-kempt bairns tumble
about like little savages. A pitiful sight it is to see the black squads
of colliers returning to their homes after a day in the damp bowels of
the earth: greasy caps with little oil-lamps attached, wet, miry
clothing and grimy faces, all make up a most saddening spectacle. The
wages given to these poor fellows are miserably meagre, considering that
after the age of forty-five, their limbs are stiffened with rheumatism
and their lungs the seat of chronic asthma. It is not surprising that
miners should be intemperate, and that their recreations should rise no
higher than dog-racing and cock-fighting.

It is very unpleasant to think that so much good bone and muscle is
being ground and destroyed by work so brutalising and unnatural. Coal
must be brought to the surface for the wants of civilisation, and in the
process the collier is destroyed, body and soul. Society needs
constantly to be reminded of its duties towards those who, in Helot
fashion, clean the drains and work the mines. Those duties involve more
than the distribution of tracts.

I had the opportunity of speaking to a crowded meeting of miners in the
county of Stirling quite recently, and was immensely pleased with the
behaviour and close attention of the audience. Before the speaking
began, the proceedings resembled a University Graduation Ceremony, that
is, there was a great deal of whistling, cat-calling, and rowdy
merriment. The audience kept on their caps, and many of them, disdaining
the use of chairs and benches, squatted against the walls in the
position so dear to subterranean workers. Once the lecture began, the
resemblance to a University gathering ceased, for the colliers behaved
like gentlemen. What subject, it may be asked, could possibly interest
an assembly of illiterate miners? It so happens that, in Scotland, we
have a great number of working-men poets, who have, in a homely but very
graphic way, voiced the feelings of the labouring classes, and given fit
expression to every joy and sorrow that men experience in this mortal
round. These hodden-gray bards furnish abundance of material for giving
even the humblest and most untrained mind a few glimpses of what is
meant by literature. Burns has a broad and brawny humanity that appeals
to all men, and, besides Burns, there are scores of major and minor
warblers that are interesting, quotable, and full of grace.

The wild and unruly manners of some mining districts, even at the
present day, may partly be explained by remembering that up to the end
of the eighteenth century, colliers were serfs and, as such, were not
allowed to leave the mines and seek work elsewhere. When a pit was sold,
the workers passed as a matter of course into the hands of the new
proprietor. The son of a miner was compelled to follow the father's
occupation.[8] Slavery fixed a brutalising mark on generation after
generation that is not yet entirely erased. In the first half of the
nineteenth century the knights of the shuttle--intellectual,
disputatious, and lyrical--looked down with infinite contempt on the
ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence,
little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier
Laddie," attributed to Burns, is one of the very few pleasant pieces of
verse associated with the miner.

The Scotch mining villages of to-day contain a queer juxtaposition of
nationalities, and the proportion of native colliers is becoming less
and less. Thousands of Irish families from Ulster and Connaught are now
settled permanently in the counties of Lanark, Stirling, and Ayr. The
alien Pole, too, is to be found in the same regions uttering melodious
oaths learned on the banks of the Vistula. To complete the welter,
huckstering Orientals may be seen gliding about among the rows of
houses, fulfilling prophecy and selling highly-coloured pictures of the
Virgin Mary.

[8] In his book, _Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood_, Hugh Miller
tells the following story, on the authority of Robert
Chambers:--"Though legally only transferable with the works and
the minerals to which they were attached, cases occasionally
occurred in which miners were actually transferred _by sale_ from
one part of the country to another. During the early part of the
XIXth century, the son of an extensive coal-proprietor was
examining with a friend the pits of another proprietor, and
finding a collier whose speech resembled that of the colliers of
his own district, he inquired where he came from. 'Oh!' exclaimed
the man with surprise, 'd'ye no' ken me? _Do ye no' ken that your
faither sell't me for a powny?_'"

HAND-LOOM WEAVING.

The miner is still with us, but the weaver is almost obsolete in the
Lowlands. You must search diligently for him. In Laurencekirk (a quaint
village of one long street, in the shire of Forfar), and in similar
out-of-the-way nooks, can still be faintly heard the music of the
hand-loom. I went recently into a weaver's shop in Laurencekirk, and
found three old men and one aged woman plying their shuttles. The oldest
of the men was born four years after the battle of Waterloo, and there
he sat, like a vision of the vanished years, striving to weave a few
more yards of drugget before going to rejoin his contemporaries of the
reign of George III. He told me there were once seven hundred hand-loom
weavers in the place, and "_that young fellow_" said he, pointing to a
wrinkled carle of eighty on the loom behind, "remembers it as well as I
do."

The industry of hand-loom weaving, which, a century ago, made every town
in Scotland resonant with the din of shuttles, is thus almost a thing of
the past, and the men who engaged in it have gone the way of their
shoe-buckles, knee-breeches, and seventeen-hundred linen. Yet weavers
were typical of all that was intellectual in Scottish life: every shop
was in its way a miniature university, and every weaver a man who
believed himself capable of giving Pitt a lesson or two on the
management of the war, and Dundas a few hints on political economy. They
had, indeed, far clearer views on politics than most of their
legislators; from their ranks at a subsequent period the Chartist
agitators--regrettably extreme as they were--were largely recruited; and
it is not too much to say that the minds of many of our leading
accredited reformers took the ply from these politicians of the loom.
These men who, in a way so characteristic of Scotland, managed to make
high-thinking subsist on homely fare, can never quite fade from memory
while their tuneful poetical exponent, Tannahill, is read and enjoyed.
In his works we have a page out of the past; and as we read his life and
poems, we behold the Scotch village as it was a century ago; we see the
old houses with their outside stairs, the antique boulder-paved cross,
and the assemblies of aproned craftsmen discussing news much older than
their ale.

In Broadford, Skye, there is an old crofter who, in his early years,
worked at the loom with Alexander Bain, late Professor in the University
of Aberdeen. Half a century ago, John Stuart Mill said that Bain's
erudition was encyclopædic. From long residence in France, I know that
few British philosophers are better known than Bain (whose name the
French amusingly pronounce to rhyme with _vin_). This old crofter tells
how he used to chaff the future professor for invariably having a book
in front of him as the shuttle was plied. Bain, by slow and careful
work, overcame prejudice, and secured a high position among the leaders
of thought. Long ago, those who had to sit for the London degrees used
to regard him as the greatest thinker in Europe. When he retired from
the examinership at London, students lost some of their old veneration
for him, and when he married a second time, a Miss Barbara Something,
they even ventured to make a logical joke on him, and say that he had
been fascinated by _Barbara's perfect figure_. I know that many pupils
of our public schools, in love with football more than syntax, often
regretted that Bain ever composed his _English Grammar_. No book (unless
perhaps Morell's _Analysis_) has ever been more cordially execrated, and
no book ever more richly deserved it, for though, like Aberdeen granite,
it is stately and impressive, it is also ruthless, cold, and implacable.
The draught may be wholesome and medicinal, but there is no honey on the
rim of the cup.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE IN THE HIGHLANDS.

One hears a great deal of Professor Blackie in the North and West, and
no wonder. He was a laughing, jocular, impressionable man, who hobnobbed
with landlords and amiably slapped drivers and policemen on the back,
throwing a Gaelic greeting at them as he did so. His faculty for writing
poetry is seen in many a guidebook; Oban, Inverness, Pitlochry, and
numberless other places, have had their beauties celebrated by this
animated writer. He was a good friend to the Highlands--studied Gaelic
most arduously, translated some of the finest of the Celtic bards,
worked assiduously for the establishment of a Celtic Chair in Edinburgh,
spoke many a good word for the crofters--in fact, did everything well
except what he was paid to do, viz., teach Greek to his students. Grave
D.D.'s could not understand or condone his cantrips. I have been assured
that on one occasion, when Professor in the College of Aberdeen, he
actually _stood on his head_ before a class of students. Mr. Barrie has
given a very amusing and quite unexaggerated account of the Professor's
normal demeanour in Edinburgh. Blackie's text books of _Greek Dialogues_
are full of the most waggish remarks.

The landlady of Kinlochewe Hotel gave some lessons in Gaelic to this
convulsive old scholar. He would come in with a Celtic Bible below his
arm, and, opening the sacred volume, read a chapter or two at a terrific
rate of speed, and whistle triumphantly when he had finished. Highland
folk did not care to converse with Blackie for three reasons: (1) he
spoke too quickly for the leisurely and composed conversation of the
Gael; (2) his pronunciation was bad, and people did not like to tell him
so or correct him--(no one ever pronounced Gaelic to perfection who did
not get the language with his mother's milk); (3) he was fond of using
literary words, taken from the older bards, in his ordinary
conversation; now, such words are obsolete in every-day talk and quite
unfamiliar to crofters and cottars. In the Highlands, Blackie's English
was better understood than his Gaelic.

Blackie was undoubtedly a very able scholar--not, indeed, of that minute
burrowing kind famous in Germany, but rather of the class that delights
in the literature and vivid force of a language. He _spoke_ Latin and
Greek, and held views on the teaching of these tongues that seemed more
eccentric in his time than they do now. He declared that the linguistic
achievement of which he was proudest was his mastery, such as it was, of
the language of the Gael.

It affords me pleasure in the retrospect to think of old Blackie at a
distribution of prizes to school-children in a town of the West some
years before his death. During the chairman's opening remarks the merry
old man continued to whistle like a mavis. When the chairman sat down,
Blackie embraced him and called him fellow-sinner. Some recitations
followed from the children, one of which was Burns's "Address to a
Haggis." When the young elocutionist came to the lines--

"Till a' their weel-swall'd kites belyve
Are bent like drums."

Blackie rolled in his chair, held his sides and uproariously expressed
his approbation. Then came the distribution of prizes, during which the
Grand Old Boy made some pun or quaint remark on each of the children's
names, as he presented the books: _"Miss Minnie Morrow_: never put off
till to-morrow what you can do to-day; _James Glen_: be a real genuine
_Glen_ all through life, not a _valet_ or flunkey; _William Lindsay_:
Willie, my lad, imitate your ancestors at Otterburn: 'The Lindsays flew
like fire about till a' the fray was done'; _Mary Black_: black but
comely like the daughters of Jerusalem," and so on, in a bird-witted,
half-daft way that the audience contemplated with benevolent wonder.

NOTE ON INVERNESS SURNAMES, ETC.

Let me mention here a very useful and interesting piece of philology
that was done by Dr. Macbain in 1895. That eminent scholar, working on
the _Inverness Directory_, analysed the names occurring there, explained
them on sound principles of etymology, and gave percentages of Celtic
and Saxon surnames in the Highland capital.

Roughly speaking, the _Directory_ of 1894-1895 had 5,000 single entries,
and _750 distinct surnames_. Of these surnames, only 110 are pure
Gaelic. About 70 per cent. of the natives are, however, supposed to be
of Highland descent.

Dr. Macbain points out that certain Highland clans have names that are
not Celtic: _Grant_ is from the French "grand"; _Fraser_ from the French
"fraise," a strawberry (the Frasers have a strawberry in their
coat-of-arms); _Chisholm_ is English and means "gravel-holm,"--the
Anglo-Saxon _ceosol_ (pebble) is preserved in _Chesil Beach_ and
_Chiselhurst_; _MacLeod_ signifies "son of Ljot"; and _ljotr_ is the
Norse word for "ugly." _Campbell_ is probably Norman-French, though Dr.
Macbain suggests _cam-beul_, Gaelic for "crooked mouth." In olden times
an external conqueror would sometimes subdue a district, and call the
natives after his noble self.

The commonest names in the town are Fraser, Macdonald, Mackenzie,
Macintosh, Ross, Cameron, and Munro. About 1,200 of the population have
one or other of the first three names. The Frasers are an easy first,
and form more than 9 per cent. of the population.

_John_, _Alexander_, and _William_, are the commonest Christian names in
Inverness. "It is remarkable and indeed regrettable," says Dr. Macbain,
"that the Gaelic Christian names (Donald, Duncan, Kenneth, Murdoch, and
Angus), are not higher in the list."

The name of the first recorded inhabitant of Inverness (A.D. 1200) is
Geoffrey Blount, a feudal warrior no doubt (French _blond_). In the
thirteenth century we have the names _Noreys_, _Grant_, and _Hay_. In
the fourteenth century the leading name is Pilch, derived from
_peluche_, the French for "plush." In the fifteenth century, _Reid_,
_Vaus_, and _Cuthbert_ are prominent citizens. _Vaus_ is said to mean
"of the vales," _i.e._, _de Vallibus_; _Reid_ is Scotch for "red"; and
_Cuthbert_ is pure Lowland. Evidently the leading men were aliens and
interlopers.

CHAPTER II.

MUSIC, SPEECHES, AND LITERATURE.

SCOTCH A READING NATION.

I think it was Mr. Holyoake, the veteran lecturer, who, in a volume of
reminiscences, declared he found the audiences in Scotland more
intelligent than elsewhere. I cannot draw such comparisons, for I have
not spoken often south of the Tweed; this I can say with assurance,
however, that no one need hesitate to address an audience of Scotch
peasants on a topic of literary interest. Predestination and such
religious trifles may stir them to disrespectful heat, but pure
literature invariably draws forth their cool and critical attention.
Probably no nation has ever devoted so much attention to books, and, as
the result of this characteristic, Scotland, considering its size and
population, has produced far more than its proportion of eminent men. At
the Reformation epoch, when the comforts of a Lowland cottage would be
little in advance of those in a present-day Uist croft, writers like
George Buchanan and his fellows of the _Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum_ made
the excellence of Scotch scholarship known in every university of
Europe. Buchanan was really a typical Caledonian man of
genius--open-eyed, sagacious, patriotic, and cosmopolitan--and I can
strongly recommend the occasional perusal of his Latin Psalms to all
modern readers who wish to keep their feelings of reverence fresh and
prevent their Latin quantities from getting amorphous.

HARDSHIPS OF STUDENTS IN OLD DAYS.

Those who think highly of the Scotch intellect, point with pride to the
fact that for many a year the Prime Minister, the leader of the
Opposition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury all hailed from the North.
For my own part, I am chiefly interested in cases where eminence has
resulted from the cultivation of literature on a little oatmeal. A few
months ago, I had the pleasure of chatting, over a cup of tea, with the
suave old gentleman who combines the postmastership of Dunvegan with the
office of factor to the Macleod of Macleod. He held me spell-bound for
an afternoon as he narrated in graphic language the hardships of the
Skye students in former times. Many a Skye youth, I was told, bent on
studying the humanities at Aberdeen, would mount his sheltie, traverse
thereon the rough roads of his misty island as far as Kyleakin, cross
the ferry there, ride on east through the ben-shadowed track of Glen
Moriston, and finally bear down on the streets of the Granite City.
There the o'erlaboured sheltie would be sold to pay the matriculation
fees.

HOMER IN SCALLOWAY.

Many little out-of-the-way townships in insular Scotland contain
scholars who would find themselves quite at home among a set of college
dons. In the course of my travels in Shetland I came to the tiny village
of Scalloway, and while standing on the pier gazing alternately at the
confusion of sea and island, and at the grim old ruined castle where
Earl Patrick, the wicked viceroy, once resided, I heard a conversation
on geology being carried on between a tall and brawny shopman and some
sailors. The latter, who were on board a ship, shouted their replies
over a few yards of water to the shopman, who was on the pier near me. I
was interested in the men's talk, which had to do with the subsidence of
the land at this part of the coast. One of the sailors alleged that his
grandmother's cabbage-patch was now covered by the water on which his
boat was floating. The big shopman, turning to me, quoted the well-known
passage of Tennyson (everyone can repeat it) of the sea flowing where
the tree used to grow. "O Earth, what changes thou hast seen." This
quotation led to a literary talk in which he remarked that of all poets
he preferred Homer. "What translator do you like best?" I enquired.
"Blackie's," he replied, "as being the most faithful to the original.
But I rarely read a translation, '_I prefer Homer in his own Greek._'"
This remark made by one whose fingers were glistening with
herring-scales, came to me as a pleasant surprise. Later on in the day,
I visited his house and saw his fine library and his splendid selection
of classical books. Not many teachers of my acquaintance have a better
array of the editions of Homer. He was not one of your ignorant
collectors who know only the outside of what they buy. He had read over
the whole forty-eight books of the text again and again, and could
discuss knotty passages in most interesting and original fashion. His
memory was evidently an excellent one. He informed me that most of his
reading was done in the early morning, and that he found five hours'
sleep quite adequate. I have a most agreeable recollection of my
interview with this self-taught scholar. I believe there are many like
him in not a few outlandish nooks of Scotland,--men who read books not
for any material advantages that result from their studies, but simply
and solely for the intense pleasure that comes from communion with the
masterminds of bygone generations.

Travel in remote districts of Britain reveals the fact that our
provincials, whenever they have the chance, are a studious and
thoughtful race. The isolation and monotony of life in many parts are
bound to drive men to study and reflection if the means for these are at
hand. Sisyphus himself had hardly less variety of occupation than some
of our shepherds whose work on the hills involves long absences from
social intercourse. To such men (whose life is suggestive of a repeating
decimal) the access to an ell or two of good books often means mental
salvation. Nothing is so melancholy as to find a countryman of brains
who has never had the opportunity of cultivating his mind in such a way
as to eliminate prejudice and widen the range of interest.

WHEN EDUCATION ENDS.

I am sometimes inclined to think that many of our rural clergymen,
intent on shielding their congregations from pestilent doctrine and
latitudinarism, are actuated by much the same spirit as the Sultan Omar
when he set fire to the great Library at Alexandria. The Bible is no
doubt the best of books, and it may be that the Confession of Faith
comes next: but when these have got their share, there still remains the
religious duty of educating the intellect by a wide perusal of the
inspired apostles of secular literature. A Highland teacher, who
presided at one of the lectures in the north, expressed himself very
appositely thus on the subject of education: "The supposition that
education is over when a boy leaves school, is far too prevalent," he
said. "Education properly considered comes to an end when the last
breath of life is drawn. Edward Young in his _Night Thoughts_ says:
'Were man to live coeval with the sun, the patriarch-pupil would be
learning still.' Young was undoubtedly right: some of the most forceful
and penetrating lessons of life are given to us long after we have cast
our text-books into some dusty corner, never to be opened more. In our
early days, we cannot choose our own teachers, and there is often a good
deal of force and constraint. The delightful thing about our education
in mature life is that we have the selection of our own masters. There
is no compulsion whatever. I am convinced that for everyone of us there
is some one author whose works will act as medicine for the mind and be
an unfailing tonic in all conditions of the soul."

OBJECT OF CHAPTER.

I intend to devote this chapter to a description of a few of the
speeches delivered by some of the speakers at such literary evenings in
various parts of the country. After I had said my say, I sometimes
invited an expression of opinion. Almost invariably someone responded to
the invitation, with the object of asking a question, expressing
dissent, or intimating concurrence. I do not recollect a single meeting
out of hundreds that could be called monotonous. It did not in the
slightest detract from the interest of a meeting that many of the
remarks erred on the score of irrelevancy. The attention never flagged
from first to last, and it was no uncommon thing for the proceedings to
last for over three hours. In giving typical speeches delivered by
crofters, lairds, tradesmen, and clergymen, I mean to indicate to the
reader _the subjects that are of interest to our provincial population,
their attitude to questions of literature and social life, and
incidentally the great amount of humour that still exists in the world_.

MUSIC.

The free and unconventional character of these meetings was perhaps seen
best of all in the musical part of the proceedings, which was always
arranged locally. Usually the songs were well-known Highland or Lowland
airs, in many cases so exquisitely rendered that it was quite evident
there had been much previous preparation. When my opinion was asked
beforehand, I invariably recommended national melodies. It was always a
treat to get a Gaelic song or two well rendered. At Acharacle (a little
place at the far end of Lochshiel) Mr. Rudd's piper gave some fine
Highland tunes, which evoked great enthusiasm. Personally I prefer the
pipes to every other instrument, for this reason, that even if I don't
understand all the music, I can appreciate the scenic effects. The
Acharacle piper was a fine specimen of the Celt, and his get-up was
glorious:

"He screwed his pipes and gart them skirl
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl."

Sometimes the phonograph formed part of the musical programme. I do not
approve of this demoralising instrument except to a very limited extent.
The cylinders usually gyrate with records of fatuous music-hall songs,
unedifying coster-airs and farcical speeches. The _vox humana_
interpreting national melodies is infinitely better. What vigour and
illustrative expression the islanders can throw into their songs! I have
but to shut my eyes to see the policeman of Staffin interpreting "The
Bonnie House o' Airlie." When his big, manly voice threw out the
terrible threat, "_I'll no' leave a staunin' stane in Airlie_," his eyes
shot fire, his teeth gleamed, and his ponderous fist came thundering
down on the table in front of him.

I still remember with infinite pleasure the strains of Mr. Cameron's
Poolewe Choir, heard in Gairloch school-house. That energetic and
complaisant conductor brought his clear-throated minstrels over to the
meeting in a brake. It was a luxury to see them with their white robes
and tartan sashes, while in front of them stood their genial leader clad
in kilts. The Gaelic _Mod_, which is now a regular institution in the
land, is bound to do splendid service towards keeping alive the fine old
music of the North. The Poolewe Choir, I am happy to say, won much
distinction at the _Mods_ of both Inverness and Greenock. _There is
great need for choirs, and great need, also, for innocent songs of a
secular character._ Before I spoke to the people of Eigg, I requested
the teacher to arrange, if possible, for a musical programme. The reply
staggered me: "No man, woman, or child in this island would for a moment
even dream of singing a worldly song. We are all converted here, except
a few benighted Catholics. The vain, fleeting joys of this world are as
dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men
and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the
parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter
mechanically, "_Dross_," "_Missionary_,'" "_Modulator_," in a vain
effort to seize the situation. Conversion I understood and approved of,
but where, in the wee island of Eigg, were the vain, fleeting joys?
There is no public-house in the place, and little temptation of any
kind. The most disquieting item of all was the modulator: I have not
seen one for a long time, and am not sorry, for there is nothing which
so spoils the appearance of a wall nor anything so dismal as practising
scales. A compromise was come to, and it was arranged that some Gaelic
readings, containing a dash of religion, should take the place of songs,
and give some variety to the evening's proceedings.

At some of the meetings there was perhaps an _excess of realism_.
Bottom, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," wishing to avoid excitement and
fear among the ladies when he is acting the part of Pyramus, says:
"Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no
harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the
more better assurance tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but
Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear." I thought of
Bottom's extreme delicacy when I was present at a meeting in Tomatin not
long ago. An outstanding feature of the evening's proceedings was the
vividly dramatic rendering of the song, "Macpherson swore a feud," by
the local postman. The latter, a big, burly man, was extremely
formidable in his Highland attire. When he came to the verse dealing
with the untimely decease of Macpherson, he whipped the dagger out of
its sheath, flourished it as in act to kill, and terrified some of the
lady visitors by his vivid suiting of the action to the word. They were
as much astonished at the flash of the _skian dhu_ as the Commons were
when Burke threw a dagger on the floor of the House.

A musical treat is sometimes got in the most unexpected places. I was
particularly struck with a children's glee-party in Jura (a rough island
known chiefly for its sterile Paps). The bairns admirably rendered Ben
Jonson's delightful ditty, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," and the
Shakespearian song, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I." In such islands
a musical teacher is a valuable asset. Let me add that all the libraries
have been gratuitously supplied with fine collections of Scottish music.

At Acha, in the island of Coll, four sturdy farm-maidens, ruddy with
health and robed in white, gave various English and Gaelic airs in
admirable style. A divinity student sang a _coster song_ (think of this
in an island of craggy shores, gulls, wild-swans, and curlews!), and on
being encored, he gave a "Cradle Lullaby," and by gently swaying a chair
backwards and forwards on the platform, he strove to illustrate the
movements of childhood's earliest receptacle.

A military gentleman--an ex-major--in proposing a vote of thanks, one
evening, to the singers, said he had sung a song but once in his life,
the occasion being his admission to the Royal Engineers, thirty years
before. It was a standing law in that body that every novice should sing
a song or drink a mixture consisting of whisky, ink, and cayenne pepper.
He chose the former alternative, and at the end of the first verse the
Royal Engineers had all left the room in a demoralised condition!

M.P.'s.

At one of the meetings in Argyleshire, I had the joy of speaking under
the chairmanship of the glib and able Mr. Ainsworth, M.P. for that
county. Among the votes of thanks was one for the chairman: it made a
profound impression upon me, as much by its form as by its substance: "I
hope, Mr. Ainsworth, that you will take better care of your health in
future (hear, hear). No, no, you are not taking care of your health at
all (laughter). We all expect you to be Prime Minister, and that is the
reason we would like you not to roam about so much and undermine your
constitution (cheers). You are always travelling. You are like the
Wandering Jew. No! you are like a little bird on a bough. To-day, we see
you on a tree near the door; to-morrow, we see you on a tree a hundred
miles away" (great cheering). Mr. Ainsworth kindly promised that, in
view of his destiny, he would cease to range around the country so
indiscriminately.

Unfortunately, I have never met Mr. Galloway Weir, but I have heard much
of the zeal of himself and his agents. The following story hinges on the
fact that _Weir_ and _wire_ have the same pronunciation in Lewis. An old
illiterate crofter came to record his vote by word of mouth, and told
the polling sheriff: "I will vote for the right man, yes, yes, it's the
right man I will be voting for this time." "That may be," said the
sheriff, "but unless you will tell me his name, you can't vote." "Well,
if you must know," said the old man, handing the sheriff a
stocking-wire, "_I will be voting for the man that has the same name as
that_."

RURAL DEPOPULATION.

The mention of that eminent politician brings to my mind the frequent
references made at these meetings to the painful subject of rural
depopulation. Everyone regrets the exodus of young men from the country
to the town, a practice which depletes the rural villages and deprives
the land of the strong arms that should find employment in working it.
The ministers are not without hope that the rush city-wards may be
checked by improving the conditions of country life, rendering it more
attractive to the young, and enlisting the aid of Government in the
scheme of small-holdings. Motives of health, morality, and patriotism,
are all concerned in the fostering of a hardy peasantry. Everything that
makes country life attractive to young men must operate to make them
regret to quit it. I wish I could reproduce textually all the strong and
astounding speeches I have heard in the Highlands on this subject of
depopulation.

"We often hear," said a farmer, "that it's healthy men and women that
make up the true wealth of a country, and if that is true, Scotland, for
all its increase of riches, is every year growing poorer. How can the
people left in the glens continue to propagate a hardy race, if all the
young healthy bloods leave for the cities and settle there? I am afraid
that both brain and brawn will continue to get feebler among us, unless
the Government give some kind of inducement for the peopling of the land
with bien, self-respecting men _that have a bit land of their own_. It's
impossible to get farm-hands round Tayside nowadays, and it's not to be
wondered at. Suppose a young man stays here, what prospect has he, what
incentive has he to work? At the age of seventeen he has earned the
highest wage he will ever earn. Thereafter his life is a slow,
monotonous serfdom; he has no hope whatever of rising, he is doomed to
live from hand to mouth all the years of his existence. But put before
that young man the hope that he can _become the owner_ of a morsel of
land, however small, and you put life and pride into him. He will work
in that case with intelligent purpose, knowing that every penny he saves
is to be employed in making him a landed proprietor, and every detail of
experience he gains will tell in the future for his direct benefit. Our
young fellows don't really want to leave the land and go to die
prematurely (as a great many of them do) in the slums of Glasgow and
Edinburgh. They go to the cities because there is at least _a chance_ of
bettering their lot there, a chance which is entirely lacking at home.
Some of them go away to the colonies and thrive as farmers there. I
rejoice to hear of such success; but I rejoice with trembling when I
think how much of Britain's best manhood has to leave her shores to till
Transatlantic fields, while so much land at home remains unoccupied. By
and by, if you want to see a good specimen of the Highlander, you will
have to go to Canada. Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, the
vigorous action of Government will be demanded to remedy the present
iniquities of land-tenure, and to put a stop to the compulsory
degradation of those who till the soil."

ITS CAUSES.

The present seems to be an opportune time for directing public attention
to some remarkable changes that are taking place in the population of
the rural districts of Scotland. A great deal of speaking and writing
has been expended of late years in lamenting the depopulation of the
country. Young fellows do not like the monotony of village and farm
life: they prefer the stir and excitement of the cities. Such things are
not to be wondered at. Town life has always had an attraction for those
whose energy requires a wide scene of action. Energy and ambition go
together, and it is the possessor of such qualities that makes the
successful city man. The country does not give scope enough for their
adequate display.

The railway train and the inventions of modern times are both answerable
for a certain amount of depopulation. I believe the condition of
farm-hands has been markedly improved of late years. They have now a
shorter day, higher wages, better food, and superior house
accommodation. Mechanical appliances have made farm-work lighter and
more agreeable. The drudgery of the threshing flail is now unknown; the
hook and the scythe have given way to the reaping-machine: in every way
hand labour has been lightened. But it is precisely this machinery that
lessens the need for large numbers of agricultural labourers. It is also
notorious that shoemakers, tailors, and blacksmiths, are not so much
required in the country as they used to be. Ready-made shoes and clothes
are brought by rail from the city, and local tradesmen are reduced in
numbers.

EMIGRATION.

There seems to be in our day a competition among the Governments of the
New World, which of them can lure away the greatest number of our
peasantry. The latest candidate for our rural youth is the State of
Virginia, the legislature of which has voted a large sum of money to
pay the expenses of two delegates, who are at work in the East of
Scotland, hunting for likely emigrants. These Virginian delegates--Mr.
Koiner and Col. Talliafer--paid the passage-money of over a hundred
stalwart lads from Lochtayside in the autumn of 1906.

No one who has the opportunity of travelling through Scotland can fail
to be struck by the absolute frenzy for emigration that exists
everywhere. There is a constant stream of emigrants from all our
agricultural counties to the wide plains of Canada. That great colony is
being "boomed" in a most energetic way. In Sutherlandshire, I saw a
large van, with placards and specimens of Canadian produce, being driven
through Strath Halladale, to tempt the crofters over the deep. I have
also, at the railway stations in the North, beheld heart-rending scenes
of parting as the young fellows said good-bye to their parents and
friends:

"Who could guess
If ever more should meet these mutual eyes."[9]

[9] Such emigration has, of course, nothing to do with the
systematic work instituted by Mr. William Quarrier of Bridge of
Weir. That devout philanthropist occupied himself with the waifs
and strays of Glasgow, taught them trades, and sent large numbers
of them to the colonies to learn farming. One Saturday, in 1907,
I saw a hundred and twenty of these lads, who were on Bridge of
Weir platform waiting for the train. The scene was pathetic in
the extreme--enough to melt a heart of nether millstone. Many of
the lads were in tears as they answered the roll-call for the
last time. In the afternoon they (and over two thousand
emigrants) left the Clyde, amid sobs, cheers, and the waving of
multitudinous handkerchiefs. These boys go, in the first
instance, to Brockville, in the province of Ontario, whence they
are distributed out among the Canadian farmers.

VILLAGE HALLS.

In most of the places I have visited, the school-house is the only
available hall for public meetings. Now, a school-room, with its small,
cramped seats, its lack of platform, and its defective ventilation, is
not well adapted for large gatherings. No man likes to speak _up to the
waist in audience_, under a low roof, and in stifling air. If less money
were spent on needless church-building, every district in the Highlands
might have its hall for purposes of recreation, reading, and lecturing.
As it is, the churches should everywhere be used far more than they are
for secular gatherings of an elevating kind. Religion suffers greatly
from the closing of churches to concerts and lectures.

The kindness of local lairds is nowhere more pleasantly shown than in
the giving of funds towards the creation of village halls and recreation
rooms. The little village of Alness has a splendid Working Men's Club,
furnished with everything requisite for pleasure and
profit--smoking-room, billiard-room, and reading-room. This Club owes
its existence to the generosity of Mr. Perrins--known everywhere for the
excellence of his famous condiment--who has an estate in the vicinity.
Kiltarlity and Beauly have, for similar instances of discreet bounty,
permanent reason for blessing the name of Mr. Phipps. Other instances
that occur to me are the spacious Dunbar Hall in Auldearn, due to the
kindness of the family of which the genial Sir Frederick Dunbar, Bart.,
is the present representative, and the Astley Hall in Arisaig, named
after the family so long associated with that charming West Highland
village.

It must not be supposed that the natives do not thankfully welcome such
work on their behalf. Many of the townships, it is true, have had
libraries and halls for many a year, and have established these entirely
on their own initiative; but outside help and enterprise stimulate local
effort in a way often impossible otherwise, as the natives themselves
admit. At Nethy Bridge, a fine hall, with club-room, has been recently
erected, largely owing to the enthusiasm of a London lady resident in
the vicinity. She was distressed to see the young fellows of the place
loafing aimlessly about at night, and proceeded to organise some
rational amusement for them. Her philanthropy has been greatly
appreciated. At Kilmartin, the jubilee of Queen Victoria was signalized
by the erection of the Poltalloch Victoria Hall--an enterprise in which
laird and crofter alike willingly co-operated. It is in this hall that
the Library is established. Mr. Dixon, the erudite historian of
Gairloch, set aside the profits of his book to help in furnishing the
reading-room at Poolewe, in Wester Ross.

When a rural community has a library and a place to meet in, a literary
society is, as a rule, soon formed. Such a society, founded for an
elevating and educational purpose, forms a common meeting-ground for all
sects, schisms, and parties. I am aware that in most towns of any size
there are such societies in connection with the special churches. In the
Highlands it is better to eliminate the denominational element, for the
very good reason that, the population being small, no one of the too
numerous churches would furnish a representative enough roll of
members. I was charmed to find that the little town of Portree, of which
the population is not much more than eight hundred, has a fine literary
society, established on the broad and rational lines I have indicated.
As might be expected from the intellectual advancement and strong
literary bent of the inhabitants, the lectures given and the subjects
discussed at the meetings of the Portree society are of a more erudite
nature than anywhere else in the West Highlands. Most of the Portree
clergymen and professional men are on the list of members.

THE MOON.

Very few city people pay much attention to the moon: in the country that
luminary has to be constantly deferred to when arrangements are being
made for social meetings, dances, or lectures. When many of the audience
have to come six, or even ten miles by land or water, light is needed,
and light from above is best. It increases a lecturer's pride to be told
that the plashing of oars over there on the argent face of the waters is
an indication that some of his audience are coming from the other side
of the loch. At the conclusion of many of the lectures, I have seen half
a dozen traps, boats, and bicycles speeding away merrily in different
directions. But for the bright moon, the audience would have been
limited to the immediate neighbourhood of the place of meeting.

It has often happened that my hotel was as much as seven miles from the
lecture hall. As closed carriages are rare in certain districts, and as
it frequently rains--when it is not snowing--in the West and North of
Scotland, I had many good opportunities for gauging my powers of
endurance. The road from Killin to Ardeonaig is a fair example of a
Highland highway:--

"Rough, hilly roads, that stain the spokes with mire;
Thick folds of ebon night on loch and law;
The moan of breezes wailing through the shaw
Like the weird plaints of an Æolian lyre:
And intermittently through the clouds, the fire
Of lightning streaks the night with glitter and awe,
And lapses swiftly in the dismal maw
Of darkness, 'mid the din of thunder dire.
But to relieve the sad night's sullenness,
And clear the heavens for the timid moon,
The straight-descending rain riots like hail
For a fierce hour, in prodigal excess;
Anon the clouds unmuffle, and the pale,
Thin crescent of Diana gilds night's noon."

The place of meeting at Ardeonaig was on the shores of Loch Tay, and the
main road from Killin is high up and does not go near the water at this
point. After alighting from the machine, I had to descend to the
loch-side by a steep, miry, and circuitous road through a wood. As the
"thin crescent of Diana," alluded to above, was not adequate to light my
footsteps here, I struck some futile vestas, which the dripping leaves
at once extinguished. Two elders, swinging lanterns and calling me by
name, by and by divided the night in my vicinity. Their appearance was
welcome, for the torrential rain had made the track one continuous
slippery quagmire. The hospitality of the Ardeonaig minister speedily
banished all recollection of the "sad night's sullenness."[10]

A more trying, because a longer, drive is that from Kilmun to Strachur,
by way of Loch Eck. In the leafy month of June, nothing could be finer;
but in a winter blizzard, one's appreciation of the glory of nature is
somewhat less than rapturous. I mention the Strachur meeting because it
was graced by the presence of a large contingent of local volunteers in
civilian attire. The War Office ought to know that the inclement weather
prevented these warriors appearing in their uniform.

[10] It is not often possible, in the _islands_, to get anything
but a trap or open coach. In Lochranza, on a day of dreary,
disheartening rain, I found on enquiry that there was no covered
vehicle to be had except the _hearse_.

A LECTURE IN ISLAY.

The westerly leg of Islay contains one or two places that have public
libraries sent from Paisley: Portnahaven and Port Charlotte on the sea,
and Gruinart inland and more to the north. It is a weird experience to
drive along the shore road from Bridgend on a night of pitiless rain,
and see the heavy mists broken every now and then by the far-reaching
flash of the Portnahaven lighthouse. Equally weird is it to lecture in a
school with no lamps (as happened at Port Charlotte). At eight o'clock I
could see the faces of the audience well enough, but by and by the room
became quite dark, and I seemed to be addressing an audience of silent
and attentive ghosts. After I had finished, a Phantom arose in the far
corner of the room and proposed a vote of thanks; and thereafter a Voice
somewhere pronounced the benediction. Then there was a movement of feet,
and the shadowy spectres trooped out into the night. The foolish virgins
had no oil in their lamps; in Port Charlotte, there was neither oil
_nor_ lamps.[11]

[11] Islay is yearly becoming better known. It is an undulating
island, covered with rich meadow-land, the home of horses, sheep,
and cattle. There should not be a hungry man within its
circumference. Under the old lairds--the Campbells--there were
14,000 inhabitants, now there are 6000.

SOME SPEECHES.

MENTAL AND MATERIAL WEALTH.

I never heard the difference between mental and material wealth more
forcibly expressed than by an old Perthshire shoemaker. "Supposing,"
said he, "that I had fifty pounds in my pocket at the present moment.
What a wild supposition, but good enough for an illustration! What
inference would you draw from me having that sum of money? This, namely,
that no other person in the universe has the same fifty pounds. The same
pair of boots cannot be worn by two persons at the same time. The same
guinea cannot be twice spent by the same man. It is different with
spiritual things, and with works of art. Scores of people can
simultaneously enjoy a great painting or a fine piece of music: _my_
enjoyment does not interfere with _yours_, indeed, it is more than
likely that my enjoyment will be greatly increased from knowing that
other people are enjoying it as I am. Then again, you can't eat the same
loaf of bread twice: but you can return a hundred times to the same
song, poem, or picture, and like them better the hundredth time than the
first. A pathetic old tune does not lose anything in being sung by
generation after generation. It is always as good as new. Like the
widow's cruise of oil, it can be used without being consumed. These
facts show that works of art--good books, good poems, good music--are,
in a certain sense, immortal and divine. A hundred years ago, our
ancestors sang 'Bonnie Doon'; we, to-day, sing it with undiminished
fervour; a hundred years after this, the song will be fresh. Aye, and a
humorous American writer thinks some of us will hanker for it in heaven:

'Perhaps in that refulgent sphere
That knows not sun or moon,
An earth-born saint would long to hear
One verse of Bonnie Doon.'"

REAL GREATNESS.

The Rev. Chairman of this meeting emphasised the shoemaker's remarks in
the following admirable words: "I often wonder what is really the
greatest thing ever done by a citizen of this country of ours, by a man
of English speech. If we agree with our worthy shoemaker and his way of
thinking, we shall not look at the big accumulation of guineas as an
indication of greatness. Certain commercial men (who ought to know
better) seem to think God has sent us into this lovely world for the
sole purpose of piling up as much money as possible, and then, by death,
leaving it to others to spend. _That_ can hardly be considered our
reasonable service. Life is not so low-pitched as that. The best work of
man does not admit of being put into an equation with cash. The greatest
feat, to my mind, an Englishman ever performed was the writing of
_Paradise Lost_. How much did John Milton get in money for his
incomparable epic during his lifetime? _Five Pounds_: and if he had got
five million pounds, the recompense would have been absolutely
inadequate. History, however, has indemnified Milton for the neglect and
poverty he endured. He has shot up into stature while those of his
contemporaries who bulked largest in the eyes of the world have dwindled
and shrunk into insignificance in comparison with him. The witty,
dissolute king, Charles II., is now seen to be a wretched pigmy: Milton,
who died in blindness and political disgrace, is the real king of that
era, overtopping all the rulers, cabals, and intriguers. So, too, in
Scotland, Burns is the giant of _his_ period. During Burns's life, the
Earl of Dundas was to all intents and purposes king of the country. He
could say to whomsoever he pleased, '_Friend, come up higher; be you a
Sheriff, or Lord-Lieutenant, or Justice of the Peace_.' Dundas is pretty
well forgotten by this time: probably he will by and by be remembered
solely by Burns's description of him: _That slee, auld-farrant chiel
Dundas._ Kings and men of temporary renown do well to keep on good terms
with the men of letters."

It is always a great treat to hear a working-man who has the power of
utterance deliver a speech in a straightforward and unrhetorical way.
There is _always_ a pith and vigour about such deliverances quite
unattainable in a formal harangue. The magnates of the little Fife
villages are specially notorious for their gift of the gab: when Bailie
M'Scales or Provost Cleaver gets up to speak, no one has any inclination
to fall asleep.

A HIGHLAND LAIRD ON LITERATURE.

Max O'Rell has told us that his chairmen sometimes took advantage of
their position to push their claims for the Town Council. I have not had
the time at my disposal curtailed by any such municipal oratory, though,
occasionally, my remarks on literature have seemed to the chairmen to
stand in need of supplementing. One gentleman, in proposing a vote of
thanks, pulled a copy of Bacon out of his pocket and read the whole of
the famous essay on _Studies_. Another managed to bring in a lengthy
dissertation on radium! The following speech, delivered by a Highland
laird of a poetical turn, is noteworthy: "I am very fond of poetry," he
said, "and yet I turn with a very languid interest to the writings of
modern poets like Watson and Davidson. The verses of these gifted
singers are for others, not for me. The truth is, I don't want any more
lyrics and such like sugar pellets. My brain is already stocked with a
plenteous supply on which I browse in weal and woe, which I almost think
I personally composed, and to which I have attached a great many
emotions and extraneous incidents known to nobody but myself. My old
poetic favourites have been lying in various corners of my brain for
forty or fifty years; I know every turn, rhyme and rhythm of them; and
as they have served my need and alleviated my sorrow so long, I do not
intend to give them many fellow-lodgers more. I do not know at what
particular time literary nausea sets in, but Solomon had it when he said
that of the making of books there was no end. No doubt his father David
had primed him well in boyhood in the Psalms, and Solomon, feeling (like
many others since) that the paternal psaltery met all his need of
literary stimulus, would turn wearily from the heaps of presentation
copies of new verse sent by the rising poets of Judæa for their
sovereign's inspection. When a new book came out, Charles Lamb re-read
an old one,--an excellent practice and one which has the additional
recommendation of economy. It is not an unpleasant thing to find
yourself falling back on old favourites and losing interest in the
current hour. I knew a happy old gentleman whose reading was confined to
Walter Scott. Every evening the lamp was lighted in the trim snuggery,
and the appropriate _Waverley_ taken down from the shelf. For such a man
to begin a new novel would have been as irksome as travelling in a
foreign land."

I am bound to say that I have great sympathy with the sentiments I have
quoted from the speech of this kilted critic. If it were possible to
retain the elasticity and adjustableness of the mind till the end of
life, new authors would perhaps fix our attention as much as the old.
But only a limited number of articulate-speaking men, such as the
omnivorous Professor Saintsbury of Edinburgh, preserve their appetite
tireless and intact. The Professor, like a literary Livingstone, can
grapple with the most arid and dusty libraries, and is the envy of all
scholars; but, alas! the majority of us have to take something less than
the whole of knowledge for our province.

It must not be supposed that all the remarks made at these meetings were
like those I have quoted. An airy irrelevancy was quite as common as the
serious note.

VARIETIES OF CHAIRMEN.

I have had experience of hundreds of chairmen, and admired most of them.
It is rather a painful thing to have one who is utterly unversed in
speaking. I remember being introduced in the ante-room to the chairman
of the evening, and, big bucolic giant as he was, he seemed fearfully
perturbed. His hand trembled, his lips were ashy-gray, and his laugh was
a nervous grin. "I am not much used to this sort of thing," said he,
with a poor attempt at mirth and a furtive movement of his hand to his
waistcoat pocket, where he had his introductory speech. "All you have to
do is to introduce me," I hinted; "you needn't say much." On the
platform he shook so much that the whole structure quivered. He rose,
and was received with loud applause. Happily he did not read his speech,
but simply pointed to me and said, "G-g-go on." He sank in his chair,
while runnels of sweat coursed down his cheeks. I admired that chairman
more than one in Caithness, who, after angling for the honour of taking
the chair, grew so terrified towards the hour of meeting, that he went
to bed and sent word he couldn't be present owing to flying pains in his
leg! In country districts, reluctance to take the chair arises from a
man's fear of making himself ridiculous; once he cuts a poor figure in
public, discredit is for ever attached to his name.

Highlanders as a rule make excellent chairmen. The superior gifts of the
Celtic mind, in imagination and wealth of florid expression, nowhere
show themselves to better purpose than when compliments have to be paid.
Then again, the kilt is very impressive on a brawny chairman's legs: it
commands attention and respect at once. I have little knowledge of
colloquial Gaelic, though I have studied the grammar, and have some
skill in reading. A little Gaelic goes a long way in stirring the soul
of a Highland audience. Often I have heard a kilted chairman quitting
his English for a little and giving the audience a mellifluous Ossianic
sentence or two. The effect was electric: eyes gleamed, breath came
quick and fast, the souls of the hearers seemed to have tasted a tonic.
Spoken Gaelic is akin to the elements: it has a mystic affinity with the
winds that sough around the flanks of the mountains and along the
surface of the lonely lochs. There is perhaps not much business
precision about it, but for preaching, praying, and poetry, it is a
splendid medium.

In Arran, a jovial chairman thus introduced me: "Before I left home, I
thought of a great many nice things to say as a preface to the remarks
of our friend from Paisley. (Here he coughed violently.) Unfortunately,
I am unable to bestow these tit-bits on the audience owing to a
_kittlin'_ in my throat. Instead of saying what I meant to say, I think
I had better tell you a story. A minister one Sunday had occasion to be
highly displeased with the precentor, who broke down twice in quite a
simple psalm-tune. 'Excuse me, minister,' said the precentor, 'but I've
got a kittlin' in my throat this morning.' '_Kittlin'!_' hissed the holy
man in scornful wrath: '_it's mair like a big tom-cat_.' Ladies and
gentlemen, after these few and decidedly imperfect remarks, I resume my
seat, merely expressing the hope that our friend will feel himself as
much at home here as the deil did in the Court of Session."

Another chairman in an adjoining island, while engaged in tremulously
reading his introductory speech, came to a sudden stop. An irreverent
youth shouted, "_Is that a blot?_" After the laughter provoked by this
query had subsided, the chairman said: "I feel to-night like a square
pin in a round hole, or rather, like the Irishman who, when asked if he
was dead, replied, '_No, I'm not dead, I'm only spacheless._'" Having
said these words with a weird attempt at mirth, the chairman sat down
too hurriedly, and struck his head so violently against the back of his
chair, that the noise of the impact was heard in every part of the hall.

I may hint to anyone who lectures or preaches in the Highlands, not to
adopt a patronising attitude or make it appear that he is talking down
to the audience. Such a feature would be at once detected and deeply
resented. A well-known Professor lectured to a Bute audience on
Electricity, and out of ignorance, spoke in a very elementary way to the
audience, defining the simplest terms, and interspersing a great many
"_you know's_" and "_you see's_." The chairman, in proposing a vote of
thanks, slyly remarked: "We have listened to-night to a very good
discourse, and I'm only sorry there are so few young people here. Next
time the Professor comes to speak to us, I hope to see all the
school-children in the hall, for the lecture to-night was admirably
adapted to their capacity."

COMING TO THE POINT.

A very loquacious lawyer proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman in
the following fashion: "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is often a
very difficult thing to come to the point. When I was at College, I
consented once to write an essay on 'The Progress of America,' the
subject being one of my own choosing. I wrote twenty-five pages of
preliminary matter, and at the end of my writing, I found that Columbus
was not landed. As my essay was to bring my hearers up-to-date on
American progress, I became nettled at my failure to _get Columbus
ashore_ and went round canvassing among my friends to secure a
substitute. No one would relieve me, so I was forced to slaughter an
aunt. I was wired for, by arrangement, on the day before the meeting,
and responded with great alacrity, knowing that there would be no
funeral. Without wasting more words let me on _this_ occasion come to
the point, and ask you to accord to our worthy chairman a very hearty
vote of thanks for the brilliant way in which he has kept us all in
order this evening."

MORAL OBLIGATION.

A minister of a western parish thought it his duty, in the course of his
introductory speech, to make some jovial remarks on the subject of
conscience and moral obligation. "A student of my acquaintance," said
he, "went to Arrochar on Loch Long by excursion steamer. At mid-day,
being thirsty, he _drifted thoughtlessly_ into the hotel and asked for a
cup of tea. With this beverage he washed over some dry biscuits he had
brought with him from home. Imagine his surprise on being told that the
cup of tea would cost him two shillings. Bang went not one sixpence but
four! He looked at the maid and his breath came quick and fast; but he
counted out the money nevertheless. Having occasion to visit the
bathroom to cool his throbbing brow, he perceived a razor on a little
shelf near the mirror there. At once he pocketed this razor and made
off, whistling _Scots Wha Hae_. He had recouped himself for the
overcharge on the cup of tea. Strange to say, every time he shaved with
the stolen razor he feared some impending calamity. He knew enough Greek
to be aware that Ajax committed suicide with the very sword that hero
got from the enemy. Whenever the student disfigured his chin and
reddened the lather with a new-made gash, he felt in his inmost soul
that a Nemesis was being wrought out. _By this simple tale, my friends,
one may see the sovereign power of conscience, which, though dormant for
a time, invariably asserts itself and flogs the culprit._"

COMPLIMENT TO PAISLEY.

The following remarks made by a speaker at one of the meetings are worth
citing: "I do not wish our Paisley friend," he said, "to go back to the
banks of the Cart under the impression that we are not a very literary
people up here in Ross-shire. On the contrary, we are clean gone on
literature. Just look at our syllabus! One night we have a discussion on
Shakespeare. Eh? What do you think of that? Shakespeare no less! Next
night we deal with _an equally great poet--Tannahill_." (No doubt the
speaker meant to compliment Paisley in thus comparing the author of
_Lear_ and _Hamlet_ with the poet-laureate of the loom.) I have heard
Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Pollok's _Course of Time_ clashed together
in the same ludicrous way. I was dreadfully nonplussed on one occasion
by hearing a speaker strongly recommend the audience to give their days
and nights to the study of Bunyan and M'Cheyne. "Bunyan by all means,"
said I to myself, "but who is M'Cheyne that one should be mindful of him
and put him for importance alongside of the immortal tinker?"

ORATORY AT SALEN.

I shall never forget a vote of thanks proposed in my hearing by the
excellent doctor of Salen, a pleasant little place situated on a
V-shaped creek of Loch Sunart. I never expect to meet a more genial or
more humorous man than the doctor, on this side of eternity. He knows
the roads of gusty Ardnamurchan better than any other living man, and,
night and day, by sun and by moon, in weather of clear blue, and under
the eddying blinding flakes, he is ever on the move. He found time to
come to the meeting and propose a vote of thanks to the donor of the
library. Everyone listened intently to him as he stood there in his
professional frock-coat,--a thin, wiry, twinkling-eyed gentleman. "If
the donor by any chance," said he, looking at me, "should ever sail up
Loch Sunart in his yacht, and land among the people of Salen, to whom
his books have given such pleasure, I should advise him not to stand too
near the edge of the pier, for fear some of the grateful natives might
push him over into the loch, _in order to have the pleasure of saving
his life!_" This unexpected sally convulsed the audience, and gave a gay
and rollicking touch to the speeches that came after. Mr. M'Gregor, a
farmer from Resipol, broad and brawny, rose to make a few remarks. The
schoolhouse was very hot and close, but he disdained to throw off the
thick and ample Highland cloak which he had on, and which he had worn
all day at the Oban Cattle Show, and on the deck of the boat that had
brought him thence. Mr. M'Gregor had been much struck by my remarks on
the knights of King Arthur, and their custom of sitting at the Round
Table, to avoid questions of precedence. He spoke to this effect: "I do
not wish the lecturer to go back to Paisley under the impression that
Salen is not a very bye-ordinary and consequential place. We have a
fleet of yachts out there, the like of which is not to be seen _between
this and Manch-oo-ria_. We have a blacksmith that can preach and quote
Scripture as well as any D.D. in the land; my friend the grocer over
there, will give you such bargains as you could never get in
Sauchie-_hall_ Street; and we have a choir here that might give the
angels singing-lessons. I am a very modest man, but I would like to say
just a word about this Round Table business. The lecturer says the Table
was round so that every knight might be at the head of it. That's the
theory, but what's the fact? I'll tell you. _One of King Arthur's
knights was an ancestor of mine, and his name was M'Greegor._[12] Now,
wherever M'Greegor sat, that was always considered the head of the
table." This contribution to Arthurian criticism was delivered with such
force, faith, and genial glee, that no one, considering the powerful
muscles of the speaker, was disposed to question it. (Mr. M'Gregor's
eulogy of Salen did not comprise a reference to the local hotel, which
is conducted on the Gothenburg system. It is comfortable and snug, but
not whole-heartedly patronised by some of the natives, as they consider
the system is an un-Celtic innovation, and believe further that every
drink they take is written down in a big book with an alphabet on the
edge of the leaves to facilitate reference).

[12] Judging from the number of clans that make a similar claim,
we might fancy that all King Arthur's knights

"Gartened low their leg,
And rowed their hurdies in a philabeg."

LECTURE IN A DUNGEON, ETC.

I have an agreeable recollection of my stay in Saddell, on the coast of
Kintyre, as the guest of Colonel Macleod, son of the never-to-be-forgotten
Dr. Norman Macleod. The Colonel was born in 1820, was present at the
Eglinton Tournament, and is, to-day, in spite of his eighty-eight
years, hale in body, sound of wind, and perfectly clear in the
intellect. He is a walking encyclopædia of all the social and political
changes that have come about since the accession of Victoria. He is also
an authority on live stock, and it is intensely amusing to see his
horses scampering from the far-end of the field when they see him, in
the hope of getting some of the bits of sugar he always carries in his
pocket for their benefit.

The school-house being badly situated for the convenience of the people,
the meeting was held in the _dungeon of the old castle_, a spacious and
airy place quite near the beach. Altogether, I reckon this meeting as
the drollest in all my experience. There were no windows in the
overhanging vaulted roof, and the long stone stair leading to the ground
above, was filled with the audience that could not get accommodation
below. The aged Colonel presided over about one hundred prisoners, and
humorously remarked that the table at which he was standing, was really
a _patent incubating apparatus_, under which four dozen of Mrs.
Macleod's chickens were coming to maturity. He hoped these embryo fowls
would not interrupt the lecture by any unseemly remarks. At the risk of
wearying the chickens, I spoke for an hour and a half, dealing in the
course of my remarks (to be as apposite as possible) with the dungeon
scene in "The Legend of Montrose," where Dugald Dalgetty squeezes the
windpipe of the Duke of Argyll.

In one little village hall in Kintyre, I was much perturbed by some of
the placards that had been placed on the walls. The hall had been used
for evangelical purposes, and there, facing me, in yard-long type, was
the dreadful command, _Get right with God_. To speak on Hood and his
puns with those colossal letters burning their message into your soul,
would need nerves of steel. I have not nerves of steel, and I felt
dreadfully incommoded by the bill. For the space of five minutes I might
occasionally forget it, and then, in the midst of some light and
skittish quotation, my eye would light upon it, and the verses would
come feebly and falteringly off the tongue. _Vox faucibus haesit._

SURPRISES.

My narrative would be lacking in completeness if I did not frankly
confess that I have sometimes met with humiliations of a kind to wring
the heart and call forth a sigh. In one nook of the north I stayed in
the manse of an excellent clergyman, an eloquent preacher, but austere
and extremely devout. He took the chair at the lecture, which was very
well attended. Before the meeting began I was told that a local
gentleman wished to ask me _an important question_. This was good news
for me, as I thought the inquirer might have some literary difficulty
which it would be profitable to handle in the course of my remarks. The
anxious enquirer proved to be the local hotel-keeper, who, in a deadly
earnest whisper made the following request: "You have a big meeting," he
said, "and it's not likely there will be such a number of people so near
my hotel for many a long day. _Would it be asking too much of you to
finish up about half-past nine and give the audience time to sample
some of my commodities before departing homewards?_ It's chiefly the
minister I have to fear; for if he suspects I wish to do business, he'll
prolong the vote of thanks till after the stroke of ten."

One of my compensations in wandering Scotland thorough has been the
heartfelt but rather naïve way in which some of the provincials have
expressed their gratitude. "_I've paid half-a-crown for worse_," said an
old man of Ross to me, shaking me warmly by the hand and believing he
was uttering a most delicate and hyperbolical compliment. (Now, during
my remarks, I had noticed this man taking copious pinches of snuff to
enable him, as I suspected, to sit out the meeting.) Another rustic,
this time an Aberdonian, was impressed by the number of authors
mentioned and the copious citations from their works. "Heavens!" he
cried, "what a memory that man has! That's the kind of partner I should
like to have at whist: he would never forget the cards that were out."

I know not whether to laugh or weep when I think of the occasion on
which the following charmingly irrelevant remarks were made to me: "We
are all proud of our village library and _even prouder of the feeling
that prompted such a gift_. I am reminded," the speaker went on to say,
"of a cousin of mine who got a present of exquisite fruit (preserved in
wine) from a friend in a distant part of the country. He wrote to the
donor saying, 'Your fruit is delicious: I like it very much; but I like
even more _the spirit in which it has been sent_.'"

A VISIT TO THE BORDERS.

In order that these pages may fitly represent all the districts of
Caledonia that I have traversed as an uncommercial traveller, I should
like to give a short sketch of how I reached Tweedside by way of Lanark,
at a season when the Glasgow people were beginning their Fair holidays.
Winter, as I remarked, is the time I prefer for travelling, but untoward
circumstances have now and again compelled me to be on the move when
"mid-summer, like an army with banners, was marching through the
mid-heavens."

I may say at once that it is a great trial to leave Glasgow at that
particular date. The city pours forth its myriads at such a time. The
stations are surging and heaving with throngs of men, women, and
children, all in a hurry and all impatient. Families by tens and dozens
are swarming about. How pathetic it is to see the father with one child
in his arms and two clinging to his coat-tails, while the mother (poor
bedraggled soul) is vainly striving to quieten a squalling fourth! Some
children have lost their parents, and grope about underneath, nipping
the legs of tourists to attract attention and get hold of the right
father; others fall among bales of strawberries that were pulled
yesterday in the fresh country air, but are now being trampled into gory
pulp. Even in the fetid and dust-laden air, rendered almost unbearable
by the hot sunlight that blazes through the overarching glass of the
station roof, Cupid twangs his arrows, and soft eyes speak love to eyes
that speak again. Suddenly the train arrives, and on the already
crowded platform lands the human freight of twenty carriages--a fresh
addition to the welter and confusion worse confounded. What a wealth of
language one hears! Cyclists tinkle with bell and horn to secure the
needed lane of passage. Porters, in desperate madness, throw wooden
boxes down and rope-tied trunks of tin with little sympathy for injured
knees and fiery corns. The train just in will shortly leave with a new
load of passengers. A rush is made for the vacated seats: in tumbles the
surging crowd without regard for the class of ticket they have
purchased. A score of occupants per carriage is about the average; many
swarm into the guard's van, where they are regaled with pandemoniac
odours of ancient fish and decaying vegetables. The heavy train at
length steams out into the open, and in an hour's time Lanark is
reached. "_God made the country and man made the town_" is the
involuntary reflection of the city man as he steps out of the train and
breathes the fresh air of the hills.

From Lanark to Peebles, by road, is thirty miles. The track is
excellent, and if the wind is not adversely strong the joy of cycling
the distance is difficult to parallel.

On this route, no lumbering vehicles, laden with heavy merchandise, tear
up the soil into ruts. No cab-drivers cast sarcastic remarks at you from
their high perch. The only annoyance comes from the cast-off nail of a
horse-shoe or the sharp splinter of a macadamised stone. The air is as
fresh as on Creation's morn. Up hill and down again one can hurry on
without ever touching the brake. For the first ten miles, the stately
bulk of Tinto dominates the landscape. What a splendid range of scenery
the eye could grasp from the high vantage-ground of its summit in clear
weather! As one approaches the base of the big hill, the road turns
sharply to the east, and you feel about your ears innumerable breezes
that blow along from the little glens leading down from Tinto's breast.
By and by, the clean, trim, little town of Biggar appears. (The
inhabitants are proud of the fact that John Brown, author of the
beautiful story, _Rab and his Frien's_, was a native of the town.) One
notices the name of Gladstone prominent above the shops, and it is a
fact that the ancestors of the Grand Old Man were, in the days of yore,
denizens of those quiet hamlets. After a short rest here, we (for you
are with me, _ami lecteur_) shoot on and pass the sleepy street of
Broughton, lying clear and radiant in the slanting rays of the sun. Here
is the ideal spot for a country clergyman in love with Hebrew roots and
gardening and quiet contemplation. Soon we strike the tiny waters of the
infant Tweed, prattling and gushing up and bubbling clear over its
snow-white pebbles. Now the breeze of gloaming blows more snell. Away
low in the west the sun begins to gather golden clouds in pomp around
his setting. A gorgeous glimmer, gold and red, is thrown over the whole
sky. Keeping close beside the ever-widening stream, we dash through
little clachans on the bank, beneath long, over-arching avenues of
trees, and past the gates of ivy-mantled homes of blessed outlook. Here
a croquet party stops playing, for the grass is getting wet with
evening dew, and there, in the river, and up to the knees in it, are
half a dozen anglers sweeping the wave with their spurious fly. Peebles
is not far off, and the quiet nooks of the high road are filled with
pedestrians. The entrance to Peebles is exquisite. The long rows of
trees, the situation of the road high above the river in the dell,
combine to make an eerie blend of sound from sighing leaves and gurgling
waters. An old Border peel, Needpath Castle, stands near the straggling
outskirts of the town, and proves, by its choice situation on the knoll,
that our cattle-reiving ancestors were quite alive to the advantages of
a good view. It was a stirring quarter here in the days of the old
Scotch kings. The deadly thrust of lance has reddened every burn in the
wide Borderland. Every brae has had its gory bicker.

On this _tournée_ I had the pleasure of giving a lecture on "Scotch
Ballads," at a little village not more than half a mile from the
birthplace of Dandie Dinmont. The place was full of sturdy, firm-knit
Borderers, descendants of the dare-devil troopers who wrought such
devastation along the Marches when the Stuarts reigned in Holyrood.
Fresh, ruddy faces, coloured by breeze and sun; hard, keen, inquisitive
looks; intelligence such as comes from knowledge of nature, hereditary
quickness and good circulation of blood: all these could be instantly
seen by glancing round the audience. (How insignificant a mere bookworm
or scholar feels among a company of brawny Liddesdale farmers!) During
the lecture, it was easy to note by the grim smile on their faces, their
flashing eyes and the way they gripped their big sticks, that the old
stirring rhymes of fight struck a sympathetic chord in their hearts. Now
and again, during the address, one could see the lips of the listeners
moving in soft repetition of the lines, as some typical quotations were
being made.

It is not likely that there has been much change or influx of population
in these districts for centuries. The alertness and intelligence of the
natives must be to some extent an inheritance from the generations of
strenuous clansmen whose blood flows in their veins. Life in a
historical district is bound to have an ennobling effect on a man,
especially if he feels knit to the past by lineal descent from the
historical actors. A glamour of romance clings to hill and glen. The
dalesman you meet on the highway can tell you all the lore of his
parish, giving dates and citing illustrative lays. It is pleasant to
find that the stories of the Borderland are still known where they first
took birth, and that the local names, which to students instantly
suggest delightful bits of rhyme, have also to those who dwell near
them, a romance that is borrowed from the olden time.[13]

Anyone who has travelled in the shires that run along the Cheviots and
the Tweed, will conclude that poetry and romance may ever find a home
there. The hills, with their green pastoral slopes and abundant leafage,
are a delight to the eye in fresh spring and tinted fall. The sound of
the streams, as Ruskin has pointed out, is sweet and rhythmic to an
extraordinary degree, combining with the sough of the winds to form an
undersong of Nature's own melody. As the traveller drives or cycles
along the roads, he now and again gets such impressive vistas of
long-stretching waterways, wooded to the brink with graceful trees, as
grave themselves on the memory for evermore. For rock, crag, and dashing
linn, the northern Highlands are supreme; but in the green Borderland,
there is a more sedate and proportioned beauty. Nature is none the less
attractive for losing somewhat of her wildness and austerity.

[13] A favourite and appropriate book in this part of Scotland is
Wilson's _Tales of the Borders_. There are not many farm-houses
in the Lowlands of Scotland in which one does not find old
copies, bound and unbound, of Wilson's _Tales_. Usually they show
unmistakable evidence of having been frequently perused. One is
bound to admit that the modern reader, if he spends an evening
turning over these old pages, will find little reason to pride
himself on the superiority of the popular reading of to-day. The
short story, now in vogue, may be finely illustrated, and highly
sensational, but its matter is certainly inferior, as a rule, to
the general run of Wilson's stories. Wilson, in his humble way,
was a gleaner in the field so richly harvested by Sir Walter
Scott. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ had called
attention to the great stores of poetry and romance lingering
among the peasantry of the Debateable Land. Wilson's _Tales_
showed how much of the old spirit remained more than two
centuries after the Union, and, in spite of all Christianity and
an orderly Government had done for the softening of manners.
Hogg, in speaking of his own countryside, said: "The poor people
of these glens know no other entertainment in the long winter
nights than repeating and listening to the feats of their
ancestors recorded in songs which I believe to have been handed
down from father to son for many generations." Wilson and his
successors gathered up as much of the romantic material as they
found available, and printed it for the delight of their
generation.

TARBOLTON.

In the agricultural lowlands of Scotland it is not rare to come upon
little villages that seem entirely left behind by modern progress. Not
long ago my work took me to Tarbolton, a quiet, uneven village in the
heart of the queenly shire of Ayr. The railway company has treated the
place very badly: a full fifteen minutes' drive is needed to reach the
town from the station. It is as if the company said: "Make what you can
of our line, ye insignificant Tarboltonians; our trains are in a hurry
to get from Ayr to Muirkirk; be thankful if we set you down only three
miles from your home." If it is not wet, the drive is a grand one. Five
miles to the right, Mauchline shows its red complexion on the green
hillside, and awakens lyric memories of Burns's imperishable mouse and
share-torn gowan. Over the pasture lands on the right come freshening
winds that hint of the heaving Firth not far away. The road pursued by
the coach meanders among all that is best of rural and pastoral scenery,
for coaly Annbank, defaced by the exhumed entrails of the earth, is
happily on the rear. At a turn of the road, a majestic spire, that of
Tarbolton Parish Church, suddenly stands before the view of the
traveller, and suggests Eternity even when tolling the hours of Time.
Soon the village is reached, and one is in a position to form an idea of
eighteenth century Scotland. The main street is built with that
irregularity so charmingly illustrative of the evolution of the
builder's art. Old cots roofed with thatch take the mind back to the
time when George I. was defending the faith and maltreating his wife.
Side by side with such are trim two-storey houses with all modern
elegancies.

I have a pleasant recollection of this interesting village, not merely
from its associations with Burns (which Mr. T.F. Henderson in a dainty
little book has recently recounted anew), but also from the fact that
the natives keep alive the literary traditions of the place in quite a
worthy way. The local baker has written a fluent volume of Essays
dealing with village incidents and worthies, which proves, as Mr. Barrie
says, that life in every stage, if truthfully portrayed, is intensely
interesting, and that every window-blind is the curtain for some tragedy
or comedy.

THE SCOTCH LANGUAGE.

Very fine Scotch is still spoken in the rural districts of Ayrshire, and
most of Burns's dialect words are in daily use, at least by the older
generation. The Education Department has most wisely given encouragement
to the study of Lowland Scotch, and I do not see why a special grant
should not be given for special excellence in that department. Some
national movement for a complete Dictionary of Modern Scotch with
explanations in up-to-date philology ought to be organised.

During the lifetime of Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Jamieson published the
famous _Scottish Dictionary_, which still holds the field as the most
elaborate compendium of the Lowland dialects. Looked at in the light of
modern science, the derivations are often absurd and fanciful.
Jamieson's love for Gothic parallels led him constantly astray.
Nevertheless, his dictionary, as amended by various revisers, remains a
stately monument of industry and a necessary adjunct in the study of the
Scotch language.

In our own day, Dr. Murray of Oxford has compiled an illuminating
grammar of the language, indicating the various dialects of the Lowlands
and their geographical areas. Local antiquarians have also written out
lists of words special to particular counties. Dialect books, such as
the entertaining _Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk_, as well as Mr. Barrie's
delightful sketches, have put excellent specimens of provincial speech
within the hands of a wide circle of readers. A good dictionary of
modern Scotch, dealing with what has been written during the last two
centuries, would be a very useful and a very interesting compendium. It
would show that a great many expressive words employed by thirteenth
century English writers are still in use on the Scotch side of the
Border.

There is no denying the fact that book-English will soon push out the
relics of the old Scotch tongue. Burns will soon be read by lexicon,
even in the shire of Ayr. Men now write poetry in Scotch as boys at Eton
and Harrow write Latin verses, the result in both cases being, as a
rule, hideous and artificial doggrel. The little book, _Wee Macgregor_,
written in what may be called the Scotch Cockney dialect, was a brave
and amusing attempt to phonograph the talk of a Glasgow boy of the lower
middle class. The unlovely speech employed by the author is, happily,
quite unlike the careful and deliberate speech of the educated citizen
of Glasgow or Paisley. The main differences between the educated Scot
and the educated Englishman are that the vowel sounds of the former are
pure and that _r_ and _h_ have a real value in most words where these
letters occur.

It seems to me a _very undesirable_ thing that a uniform system of
pronunciation should be aimed at in every country of the British Isles.
So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained,
intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary,
are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane of
life.

CHOICE BOOKS.

"Whether the books are borrowed books or no
That show their varied stature row on row
Along your walls, there will I truly find
The image of your character and mind.
Light, flimsy novels suit the flying train
Or _Western Isle_ excursions of Macbrayne,
Where, dazed by gleaming firths of visible heat,
The torpid soul disdains substantial meat;
But oft-read volumes, to which men recur
The whole year round, bespeak the character."

The above lines, written by some unknown poetaster, indicate that it is
the book we read over and over again that has the greatest potency in
our education. I quite agree with the author, and I love to behold the
well-thumbed pocket-edition that speaks to the eye of much handling and
frequent perusal. There are very few books _worth_ reading once that are
not worth reading oftener. Hobbes used to say that if he had read as
much literature as the majority of men, he would have been as ignorant
as they. In that remark what depths of meaning lie! The sage of
Malmesbury attributed his success in philosophy to his habit of
judicious selection--to the fact that he concentrated his attention on
those authors who were likely to help the development of his powers.
Selection is more required now than in Hobbes's time. Few men would care
to read more than a hundred books through in a year, and yet there are
twenty thousand volumes added annually to the shelves of the British
Museum.

THE ESSAYISTS.

It has been my privilege, during the last three or four years, to
examine with more or less care something like four hundred bookcases,
containing works on all departments of literature. _I am inclined to
turn away in disgust if the Essayists are not patronised._

Those delightful Essayists! Happy is the man who has his shelves full of
them--writers who talk sense with wanton heed and giddy cunning, who
spread their souls out on paper, who disarm hostility by taking you
completely into their confidence. Addison, with the roguish gleam in his
eye as he is calculating the number of sponges in the cost of a lady's
finery; Goldsmith, in his London garret, talking of the ludicrous
escapades of the Man in Black; Lamb luxuriating in reminiscences of Old
Benchers. All these splendid, unsystematic delights, mingled with the
breezes of byegone summers and the sunsets of long ago! Old ghosts
whisper you their secrets; you hear the brush of sweeping garments that
have been moth-eaten these hundred years. Crowded streets of people
appear before the eye of fancy--London in the days of Anne and the
Georges. In the company of such wits, there are no slow-moving hours:
you have in them friends who never need tire you, for should the
slightest tedium intervene, you may, without offence, stop their flow of
conversation. Our living intimates are prone to drynesses and huffs; but
these old prattling wits ever welcome us with a smile of affability.

A BANFF THEORY.

While speaking of Essayists, I ought to mention a peculiar Banffshire
theorist who addressed me in the following words: "Give me an old set of
_Blackwood_ in the Kit North days, and I can easily forego your
pinchbeck stories and propagandist novels of to-day. I put the most
interesting period for reading at _sixty years ago_, and I think Scott
must have known the charm of that number when he gave the alternative
title to _Waverley_. It is pleasant to know how the world wagged when
your grandfather was a ruddy egg-purloining rogue of five. When I read
farther back than a century, I feel imagination flagging--the Merry
Monarch is not much more to me than John the Baptist. But the men of the
forties stand out clear and distinct. If I have never seen an
out-and-out fiery Chartist, I have at least seen some smouldering
specimens--men with much of the eloquence and a little of the enterprise
of the original five-pointers. It may be that as I grow older, my most
interesting historical period will move with me, keeping always at a
distance of sixty years from the present, until, when I get within hail
of the Psalmist's stint, I shall be most interested in childish things."
These words rather staggered me, and set me thinking of geometrical
_loci_. A man holding such views would find it difficult to obtain a
bird's-eye view of history.

GOLDSMITH IN GAELIC.

If I had an adequate knowledge of Gaelic, combined with plenty of money
and leisure, I should set myself the task of translating the whole of
Goldsmith's Essays and Tales into that language, for the benefit of
those who had no English. It would be a great feat if one could impress
on the modern Celtic mind the conviction that piety and diversion are by
no means incompatible. Goldsmith's _Auburn_ introduces us to the most
delightful prospect on earth: a simple village community, unacquainted
with luxury and uncorrupted by vice. The inhabitants are full of health
and joy--they till the soil and gain ample satisfaction for their
unambitious wants. Life passes along bringing a pleasant succession of
happy hours. After the labours of the day, the young people dance
merrily on the green, and the old folk look on and regret that their own
legs are too stiff to keep time to the fiddles. Certain Highland
landlords might also read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines
in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural
paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are
depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to
seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of
Britain that is being drained away.

On the whole, probably no English writer has given such genuine delight
as Goldsmith, and such genuine instruction too. Ineradicably frivolous,
culpably negligent of the morrow, whimsically vain and living all his
days from hand to mouth, he had the faculty of drawing upon himself the
pity, and even the contempt, of his associates. But in the eyes of
posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has
left behind him, for _it_ is pure and good. His river of speech flows
ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the
adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky
humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process
of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the
sound of the sentences, combine to delight the judgment, the ear, and
the fancy. Though the _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a prose production, it
produces all the effect of a poem on the affections of the heart. Of
wit, properly speaking, it is as full as any volume of _The Spectator_;
with humour it is flooded from beginning to end; and in those pathetic
delineations of life which no one can read without being profoundly
touched, there are few poems so rich.

BIBLIA ABIBLIA.

In many (indeed most) houses I have visited, I see in the bookcase large
publications in six or seven well-bound parts and as good as new,
dealing with subjects of little interest to anyone who breathes the
vital air of heaven. Such titles as _Science for All_, _The Thames from
its Source to the Sea_, _The Queens of England_ are among the commonest
on the boards of the books I allude to. The presence of these editions
indicates that the possessor at a certain period of his life was shy and
could not say _no_ to that limb of the Evil One--the book-canvasser. The
latter individual is the forerunner of the colporteur, who will bring
you, if you wish poetry, an edition of the works of Shakespeare which is
peculiarly ill-adapted for holding in the hand and reading. The print is
large, the page is in size like a miniature wall-map, and the
illustrations are got up with an easy defiance of archeology. The
annotations, though stolen, are distinguished for extreme futility.
After you have begun the purchase of such a book, shame and chagrin
drive you to attempt the study of it; but it is of no use, and on each
occasion of the very regular advent of the colporteur, you are inclined
to swear horribly, after which a period of extreme dejection supervenes
when you recollect the many fine things you could purchase for the
half-guinea periodically expended. The knowledge of human nature
displayed by the man who books the order surpasses anything in the works
of the analytical philosophers. Every artifice of attack is his, and he
knows how to play on all the emotions so ably and exhaustively
catalogued in the manuals of Professor Bain. I believe a gay and
chaffing rejoinder is what he can least overcome. Suggest to him that
you are far gone in poverty and offer to _sell_ him a few of your own
books. Frequent exercise will confirm your principles, until finally,
when you see one of the book-canvassing tribe, you will foresee half an
hour's innocent amusement.

Certain of the points he so feelingly brings before you may no doubt
awaken a responsive echo in your own bosom. You are well aware, for
example, that your knowledge of the Queens of England is culpably
imperfect. You know you are never likely to go in steadily for the study
of constitutional developments, and so are led to admit the
reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining
point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that
a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would
result from the ability to contradict your friends as to the length in
miles of some of its minor tributaries. In science, too, you are no
Kepler or Linnaeus, and there is something satisfactory when pedants
talk of orbits, planes, bulbs, or beetles, in being able to say that
_you have a big book at home that tells all about those things_.

Many people buy books, not because they have a present need for them,
but on the chance that at some time in the future such volumes as they
see for sale will solve a doubt or answer a need. The precise doubt or
the pressing need rarely arises. I met a Celt who had bought a copy of
Josephus in most irritating type, in the hope that it would help him to
confute a Roman Catholic on the Power of the Keys. Then again, people of
a wavering and bird-witted type of mind are constantly changing the
subject of their interest: this month they are attacked by the _furor
poeticus_, next month it will be a _furor botanicus_ or _politicus_.
Each separate frenzy means expenditure. When Browning is the temporary
subject of the mania, a host of expository books on that poet have to be
purchased, all of which are duly consigned to the topmost shelves when
the soreness of the fit is past. There is also a tendency to purchase,
because on the chance opening of a book you light on something that
pleases the whim of the moment. It is a thousand to one that when you
have bought the book you will not find another item worth perusing in
the entire contents. This tendency to buy a book in a panic may be
neutralised by remembering the story (whether true or not) of Defoe, who
is said to have boomed the languid sale of the dreary _Drelincourt on
Death_ by means of a spicy little ghost story as introduction! Buy in
haste, repent at leisure.

SECOND-HAND BOOKS.

It is a much pleasanter sight to my eyes to see a bookcase with
second-hand books in it, for these are almost always bought to be read.
In a teacher's house near Elgin, I recently saw a most remarkable
collection--a veritable ragged regiment of books: single volumes of
Plutarch, unexpurgated plays by Farquhar and Mrs. Behn, Civil War
pamphlets, and rows of oddities. Mr. Forbes (the owner) was at one
period of his life assistant in Falkirk, and every Saturday morning,
rain or shine, he proceeded to the city of Glasgow, for no purpose but
to roam through the dusty byeways and side streets in quest of
bookstalls. He knew all the dealers by name, and they welcomed him, for
he never left them without a purchase, however slight. It was a saying
of his that while it took half-a-crown to purchase you two hours'
amusement at a theatre, for a couple of shillings, or even less, you
might divide out a whole Saturday most enjoyably in the old book-shops.
He simply rioted in haggling over a threepenny piece. Even old Henderson
feared him. This Henderson was a thirsty old bookseller who kept a shop
at the corner of Cowcaddens and Ingram Street, and whose leading
speciality was second-hand family Bibles, with the former genealogical
leaf riven out and replaced by a clean sheet pasted in for the family of
the next purchaser. To him, sitting enthroned on a pile of Bibles,
Forbes, entering, spake: "Have you a copy of the _Lives of the Twelve
Cæsars_?" "Aye, aye," said old Henderson, with a gracious smile;
"_thirteen_ if you like." The copy of Suetonius was produced, and "How
much do you want for Suet.?" queried Forbes. "Half-a-crown," said old
Henderson. "I'll give you ninepence," said Forbes. "Make it
one-and-six," said the bookseller, rising from his Biblical throne, "and
the book's yours." "I'll give you a shilling and a half of whisky,"
retorted Forbes. "Say a whole glass and the shilling, and we'll do
business," quoth the vendor of volumes. This was agreed upon, and the
two retired into the nearest dram-shop to conclude the bargain. Every
Saturday evening, Forbes came home by the last train, carrying his
bundle of volumes. He was careful to fumigate them for the purpose of
destroying any microbes, and finally would sprinkle them with _eau de
Cologne_ to make them tolerable to the nose. On Sunday, he enjoyed the
luxury of desultory reading.

Like Mr. Forbes, I enjoy a ramble among these old shops, and can say, as
he said to me at parting:--

"I love the trundling stall
Where ragged authors wait the buyer's call,
Where, for the tariff of a modest supper,
You'll buy a twelvemonth's moral feast in Tupper;
Where Virgil's tome is labelled at a groat,
And twopence buys what tittering Flaccus wrote;
Where lie the quips of Addison and Steele,
And the thrice-blessed songs of Rob Mossgiel;
And some that resurrection seek in vain
From the swart dust that chokes the lumbering wain."

FAVOURITES.

I have often been asked: "You who are so much on the move, who have had
so much train-travelling to do, what books would you recommend for a
long railway journey?" I do not know that one man's likes and dislikes
in reading are of value save as showing his own limitations, yet there
are certain books of which I never tire. I never leave home without the
following books handy for perusal: (i.) The _Odes of Horace_, (ii.) The
_Sonnets of Shakespeare_, (iii.) A French novel and a few copies of the
Paris _Matin_, (iv.) A Greek book of some kind, (v.) Pope or Addison,
(vi.) Some Victorian classic. The list is varied enough, and has
furnished me with much of the material for my speaking.

HORACE.

The pleasant thing about Horace is that his odes are so short: you can
read one in a few minutes--shut your eyes and enjoy the mental taste of
it--try to repeat it, and, if you fail, consult the original--then,
finally (as Pope and many others have done), endeavour to find modern
parallels. Suppose, _e.g._, you are reading, as is likely, the first Ode
of the first Book, you might find present-day resemblances like the
following:--

_Curriculo pulverem._

What mad attractions sway the world!
Some are unhappy save when whirled
In motor cars that madly race,
To leave a stench in every place,
And maim those foolish folk that stray
Abroad upon the king's highway.

_Tergeminis honoribus._

Yon babbling wight, of sense forlorn,
Who thinks himself a Gladstone born,
Although a bailie, still must strain
To gain himself a Provost's chain.
And, after that, the worthy prater
Aspires to be a legislator;
Dreams of St. Stephen's, where he sees
Himself hobnobbing with M.P.'s.

_Patrios agros._

But Farmer Bob is somewhat saner--
He minds his stock and is the gainer;
Content to pass his life amid
The scenes that his old father did.
With hose in hand he cleans the byre,
And saves himself a menial's hire;
But gives his girls an education
That may unfit them for their station.
But don't ask Bob to tempt the tide,
Even on a turbine down the Clyde;
Neptune and Ceres don't agree,
And farmers hate the name of sea.

_Mox reficit rates._

When Skipper Smith (whose usual goal
Is Campbeltown with Ayrshire coal)
Is labouring thro' Kilbrannan Sound,
He sighs for Troon and solid ground,
And swears, if he were safe on shore,
He'd never be a sailor more.
But once on shore--he thinks it dull,
And soon begins to tar the hull
And caulk the timbers of his ship:
"I'll try," he says, "another trip."

_Lene Caput._

Some love to mangle turf: I see
Them drive their balls from sandy tee,
And think their day's delight begins
When they are up among the whins.
Some elders, full of godly zeal,
Turn crazy about rod and reel;
And ministers, reputed wise,
Take service with the Lord of Flies
(Beelzebub), and like the work
Better than prosing in a kirk.

_Conjugis immemor._

Sir Samuel Croesus (noble wight!
Who paid so dear to be a knight)
Forsakes his lady for the hills,
And aims at birds he never kills.
Too late in life he shouldered gun,
Breathless he toils beneath the sun,
Sips whisky every other minute,
Until his flask has nothing in it;
Then, at the end of strength and tether,
Falls tipsy in the blooming heather.

_Praemia frontium._

But as for me, my wants are few:
£3,000 a year would do;
A villa built upon a height,
With ample view to left and right;
A garden with a sunny seat,
A grassy lawn with borders neat.
Inside, a study furnished well
(Like a true scholar's citadel)
With books and pipes and easy chairs;
Here, in despite of worldly cares,
If I should write a verse or two--
A lyric that a _judge_ like you
Could read, without once yawning, through--
I'd be as proud as any man
That scribbled since the world began.

Horace is thus fit for all times and conjunctures, and is the most
modern of all the Latin writers--

"Horace still charms with pleasing negligence,
And without method talks us into sense."

The translation of Horace's Odes into modern speech is generally
admitted to be one of the most difficult tasks to which a versifier can
apply himself. And yet there is no task so often essayed. It is a common
saying in France that, when a lawyer quits the bar and retires, he is
certain to publish a new translation of Horace after a year or two's
studious ease. M. Loubet, we know, is a zealous devotee of the Sabine
bard. Not the least droll of Mr. Gladstone's many feats was the
publication, shortly before his death, of a translation of Horace's
Odes, a translation wholly worthless indeed, in spite of the writer's
immense scholarship, but valuable as showing the fascination exercised
by Horace over the most austere and ecclesiastical of minds. It seemed
strange indeed to see the great statesman turn aside from his study of
Butler and the Fathers of the Church, in order to put into English verse
the gay, and often scandalous odes, of an old Pagan epicure. Mr. Morley,
who revised the translation, must have smiled as he read the old man's
rendering of--

"_Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa._"

It is a fact, I suppose, that poetic translations of Horace are rarely
read, save by scholars, and the verdict is almost always unkind. Yet an
excellent anthology could be compiled by selecting the happiest
renderings of the most talented translators. Dryden's paraphrase of
III., 29, has been uniformly praised, and was a great favourite of
Thackeray's. Cowper's nimble wit and classic taste are seen in his
translation of II., 10, an ode beautifully rendered also by Mr. William
Watson. Sir Theodore Martin and Connington are always readable, Francis
is uniformly insipid, and Professor Newman, with his metrical capers,
absolutely absurd. Pope's "Imitations of Horace" are so brilliant, that
no student of English literature can afford to neglect them. Pope's
method of replacing ancient allusions by modern ones, was employed by
Johnson in some magnificent renderings of Juvenal, and no doubt
suggested to our Scotch vernacular poets a mode (still popular) of
translating Horace into Doric speech. Our Scotch bards preferred, as a
rule, to work on the Odes, and they succeeded best when they departed
most widely from the Latin text.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

The same blessed quality of brevity that attracts one in Horace is to me
one of the recommendations of Shakespeare's Sonnets. I am glad the
mystery of them is never likely to be discovered. From frequent perusal
of them in the train, I know the majority by heart, but despair of
finding any cryptogram in them.

The cord on which these exquisite beads of poetry are strung is of the
most flimsy and frayed character. In other words, the characters are all
bad, and the verses that laud them are of the utmost brilliancy and
fascination. The poet himself supplies material that would justify us in
stigmatising his friend as a heartless and dissipated rogue. He also
lets us know that the pale-faced lady was an unwholesome and treacherous
minx. Yet he addresses the one in language that would be too laudatory
for Sir Galahad, and the other he idolises and insults by turns.

How strange it is that the poet, while lingering fondly over the doings
of these two un-moral persons, should give utterance to some of the most
impressive lines in English literature! Certain of the sonnets pierce
the heart as with an arrow: such are those that deal, in broad and
pathetic fashion, with the ceaseless flux of all things human, the grim
realities of the grave, the ruthless sequence of earthly events, and the
measureless melancholy of the reflecting mind. The effect produced is
often like what we experience in reading Ecclesiastes or Omar Khayyam.
"Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney-sweepers, turn to dust."

Though Shakespeare is dolefully impressed by the decay and destruction
of all material things and by the evanescent nature of beauty, he has no
doubt whatever of the immortality of the verses he is writing. He vaunts
as boldly as ever Horace did--indeed, in words that suggest the _Exegi
monumentum_ ode--that his verses will outlast the proudest works of man.
It is a sorry anti-climax to such a boast that the poet harps on the
immortality of the dissolute youth as a consequence of the sonnets
having an eternity of renown. Was there ever such a puzzling and
unworthy association of ideas? The puzzle is rendered more perplexing
still by the fact that Shakespeare took no pains to enlighten posterity
as to the identity of the youth he praises, or even to supervise the
publication of the sonnets. Thorpe's piratical edition was full of
misprints, but Shakespeare, so far as we know, took no notice of it, and
made no attempt, by giving the world a correct and authentic version, to
secure what his verses declare him to be anxious to bring about, viz.,
the renown of his friend among generations to come. For us the youth
still exists, no doubt, but not as an historical character. _He takes
his place among the creatures of the poets imagination, and is far more
of a shadow or phantom than any one of them._[14]

_If we suppose_ the sonnets to be connected with real life, it is not
easy to understand why the radiant youth, "the world's fresh ornament,"
"only herald to the gaudy spring," etc., should need such an amount of
persuasion to marry. Seventeen sonnets of great poetical beauty and
felicitous language are devoted to this object. It is an exquisite treat
to read them as works of art, but taken literally they are unspeakably
absurd. No sane man would draw out such lengths of linked sweetness for
the purpose named; nor would any youth, however credulous, _take the
sonnets at their face value_. Shakespeare is merely practising his art,
and we may be perfectly sure that these "sugared" sonnets (as Meres
calls them), if they did circulate among the poet's private friends,
were regarded as rhetorical exercises. They are intensely interesting,
as showing the overpoweringly dramatic nature of Shakespeare's genius.
Being impressed with the desirability of perpetuating beauty, he is
driven to express the idea in the conventional form of a
sonnet-sequence. The result is an exhaustiveness of treatment, a wealth
of imaginative ornament, and a dramatic vividness of presentation that
makes the reader marvel how so much could be made out of so little.

[14] Mr. Lee has collected an amount of evidence which seems to
prove that T. T., _i.e._, Thomas Thorpe, who wrote the
dedication, was not only a piratical publisher, but also a
humourist. The dedication, read in the light of these
observations, acquires a character of jocularity, and _begetter_
means _procurer_ or _getter_. Thorpe thus becomes what we know
Curll to have been a century later, a printer of stolen copy,
with a turn for cynical waggery. Mr. W. H., the begetter,
accordingly, is not a glittering aristocrat, but an unscrupulous
go-between, who has made free with somebody's escritoire, and
handed the sonnets over to the gay T. T.!

XENOPHON.

There is one Greek book, of which I have gone through three or four
copies by carrying it about in the pocket for my _moments perdus_. I
refer to the _Economist_ of Xenophon, a gem of a book, and one on which
I have often lectured. The title is not an attractive one, but the body
of the work is charming in the highest degree, and gives a better notion
of ancient Greek life than any other book in existence. Ruskin, who had
an unerring instinct for good literature, got two of his disciples to
put the book into English, himself furnishing a preface of
characteristic insight and brilliancy. He might well do such homage to
the old Greek soldier, for the _Economist_ contains teaching remarkably
like what is to be found in certain of the chapters of _Unto This Last_.
A reader cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful modernness of
Xenophon's writing, his love for the country, his simple and genuine
piety, his soldierly directness, and his practical common sense. Here is
a delightful sidelight on Greek family life, written twenty-three
centuries ago, but which might have been spoken yesterday: "_My wife_,"
says one of the characters, "_often puts me on trial and takes me to
task--When I am candid and tell her everything, I get on well enough,
but if I hide or disguise anything, it goes hard with me, for I cannot
make black seem white to her._"

The _Economist_ is an ideal volume for the country calm: it will not
deliver up its best to you in the city; but if it is leisurely perused
while hayrick fragrances are in the air, while butterflies are
fluttering round the lawns, and while the flow of a clear-gushing brook
chimes with your fancy and the quiet tone of the old Greek's musings,
then (be sure) the mellow sweetness of the "Attic Bee" will be
adequately enjoyed.

It is a great pity that life is so short, that there are only
twenty-four hours in the day, and that, owing to the general scarcity of
money among the intellectual portion of the community, the possession of
free-will is a pathetic fallacy. Nobody, in these bonds of time and
space, can do precisely what he would like to do. Mr. T. P. O'Connor
once said that, if he were master of his fate, and his feet in every way
clear, he would at once proceed to Athens and learn Greek. I can
conceive no keener or greater joy than that: it is the wish of a genuine
lover of letters. At the age of ten, I came upon an old copy of Pope's
_Homer_, and have been in love with Greek literature ever since. The
cares of this world, including rates and taxes, prevent me likewise from
proceeding to the City of the Violet Crown, but there are plenty of
cheap copies of Homer to be had in Scotland, and it is no disadvantage
that some of them have the translation printed on the opposite page.

So many things have to be learned at school now, that Greek is being
pushed out. In future, it will be a University subject solely. That is a
great pity, for although there are fine translations of the Greek
authors in English, these are not so much read as they ought to be.
Greek itself would be much easier to learn if editors would write fewer
and shorter notes.[15]

[15] Penalties of a really deterrent kind might at least be laid
upon those gentlemen who write _more than three_ pages of notes
to one of the author's text:

O that the Kaiser showing sense for once
Would loose his fury on each learned dunce,
And visit with his summary proceedings
The rogues who tease us with their _variant readings_.

FRENCH LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

I am always delighted to see French books on the shelves of a rural
library. I notice Dowden's _French Literature_ in many a Highland
bookcase; and I am sure it will please that erudite and most excellent
professor to know he has hundreds of students who never saw his face.
Everybody should learn the French language: I don't know a better
intellectual investment. French is rich in precisely those qualities
that English lacks. It is not necessary, for proof of that statement, to
read Gautier, Bourget, or Hugo. A daily paper from Paris supplies all
the proof required.

I freely admit that the French newspaper seems, on first acquaintance,
to be a wonderful and puzzling affair. It is never dull or tiresome, or
glum. You may have your dearest susceptibilities wounded by it, but you
won't fall asleep as you read its columns. Humour trickles from
paragraph to paragraph; wit coruscates in the accounts of the most
ordinary police cases; and abundant of dexterous literary workmanship is
to be found in the leading articles. In spite of such admirable
qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I
speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking
to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of
touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of
edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's
pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the
writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main
line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining
nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written
conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French
are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the
daily record of mundane things.

I regret to say that the majority of French newspapers do not give their
readers a quite fair or accurate account of events happening outside of
France. French topics, as is right, have the bulk of the space, and
foreign events are usually treated in a very prejudiced and perfunctory
way. The Frenchman's enthusiasm for home politics does not leave him
much emotion to spare for the rest of the world. Political life with him
is always more or less in a state of turmoil. There is usually some
scandalous _affaire_ afoot or impending, to which political import can
easily be given. Many of the most talented editors, being members of the
Chamber, import into their articles much of the heat and unreasoning
vehemence engendered by the violence of direct debate. There has always
been a feeling since the _great_ Revolution that _others_ might follow,
and that one or other of the royal gentlemen of this or that
disestablished race might, by some cyclone of popular or military
sympathy, be blown back to power in Paris. Unluckily, there are far too
many parties in France, far too many nicknames, badges, and shibboleths.
The language of political discussion is bitter, and heated beyond
anything the cooler Anglo-Saxon would tolerate. And yet, amid all such
electric discharges of wordy rancour, the French nation goes on its way
rejoicing, not a penny the worse, making wines, silks, and fashions, for
an ungrateful world.

There is now, and always has been, a strange sympathy between France and
Scotland. A Scot learns French, as a rule, easily. One of the striking
differences between dialect Scotch and book English is precisely the
peculiar French ingredients in the former. For three hundred years the
two countries were allies, and the advantages to England may be gathered
from the remark of King Henry V. in Shakespeare's play--

"For you shall read that my great-grandfather
Never went with his forces into France,
But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom,
Came rolling like the tide into the breach."

GIL BLAS.

One French book that has solaced my leisure (in train, steamer, and
trap), is that altogether delectable volume _Gil Blas_. It would be
worth learning French to be able to read the book in the original. The
characters are non-moral reprobates who lie, rob, and drink with the
most unaffected sincerity. Vice loses all its grossness, and becomes
intensely entertaining. The tone of the confessions is at once subtle
and naïve, tragic and trivial, comic and pathetic. The humour is
absolutely colossal: many English books, alleged to be humorous, do not
contain, in their entire bulk, as much humour as a single chapter of
this great work. For brilliancy of style it stands very high, and few
authors, either in France or elsewhere, have attained such admirable
clearness, precision, and pith. Read _Gil Bias_, say I, if you wish to
appreciate the possibilities of the French tongue, and taste all the
delicate flavour of its racy idiom.

ROMANCE AND AUGUSTANISM.

There is a well-known text of Scripture, "In my father's house are many
mansions" which, with a slight turn, might be applied to the House of
Literature. There is room there for every pure and beautiful expression
of human thought and emotion. Romance and Augustanism have both the
right of entry.

I am glad to see that Alexander Pope, the cleverest of our English
bards, is still a popular favourite wherever I go. It would be a pity if
this were not so, for he is head of the guild of Queen Anne wits, and
no one of them can rival his instinctive delicacy, careful workmanship,
and crystalline lucidity. His skill in the coining of impressive
aphoristic couplets is unrivalled: it is almost as good as a novel
addition to truth to find an old maxim supplied with the winged words of
such a consummate verbal artist. Pope is a writer who appeals directly
to all readers, for he never hides poverty of thought in a cloud of
vague words.

In Pope and his fellows we miss the lavish magnificence and unchartered
freedom of the spacious times of great Elizabeth. Instead of Spenser's
amazing luxuriance of matter and metre, we have a neat uniformity and
trim array of couplets, which suggest the constant supervision of the
pruning craftsman. Compared with the Elizabethans, Pope's time has less
wealth but more careful mintage, less power but more husbanding of
strength, fewer flights of imagination but finer flutterings of fancy,
little humour but abundance of clear and sparkling wit. _It is not a
difficult task, by means of suitable selections, to bring home to an
audience of crofters the salient differences between the poetry of Pope
and of Spenser._

It is also easy to show to any audience that the quality which pleases
to such a high degree in poems like the _Highland Lass_ and _Yarrow
Revisited_, there is a romantic charm and thrilling magic which Pope
never could produce. A line or two from one of the poems cited has a far
more potent effect over the affections of the heart than the gorgeous
declamatory rhetoric of _Eloisa and Abelard_. But it would be foolish
to suppose that because Pope has not the passion for nature nor the glow
of self-oblivious benevolence, he has not highly educative and estimable
features. He should not be censured for what he never meant to supply:
we should rather strive to cultivate catholicity of taste by extracting
from his poems the information and enjoyment they are so well able to
furnish.

The Prologue of Pope's _Satires_ is, of course, the best introduction to
a systematic study of the works of this writer. That poem is the
masterpiece of Pope's volume, and exemplifies better than any other
piece the striking and brilliant qualities for which he is so famous. In
perusing it, the reader soon discovers that he is in presence of a work
which is the result of incessant and prolonged labour, and which,
consequently, deserves patient study. The works of a great technical
artist require such elaborate treatment if the force of their genius is
to be adequately felt.

VICTORIAN WRITERS.

If any man proposes to stay a month among scenery of hill, mountain, and
lake, I should advise him to slip a copy of Wordsworth into his pocket,
and read therefrom an hour daily; not hurrying over the pages, but
turning aside, now and again, to take in the glory of pinewood, heather,
and linn. In no volume, ancient or modern, can a tired man find such
soft and genial balm for his weariness as in the calm pages of the Rydal
singer. The poet is at his best in the broad region of natural religion.
He looks round on the beauties of the world with that solemn awe a man
feels in the hallowed precincts of a mediæval temple. The grandeur and
mystery of the world throw him into a kind of enchantment: his own soul
and that of the universe touch and commune with each other. In his rapt
verses we feel some of that mystic thrill felt by a devotee in the open
sanctuary of the Almighty. No man ever interpreted Nature in such
inspired strains as William Wordsworth. What supremely delights the
lover of scenery is that this poet's muse can overwrap the exact and
detailed knowledge of Nature with a superb mantle of idealistic glory.
He saw and understood the harmony of Nature's forms and colours through
all the seasons: at the quiet ingleside he meditated on what he had seen
and heard, enshrined these in verse, and added to them the warmth of his
own devout and sensitive soul. There is no exaggeration in Arnold's
tribute:--

"He laid us, as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us, and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again.
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead--
Spirits dried up and closely furled--
The freshness

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