Oban is the heart’s delight for a tourist, provided he does not arrive when the hotels are overcrowded. If one can get a room upon the high ridge overlooking the shining waters, he will have a view that is inspiring.
One can reach Oban either by the Caledonian Railway, by way of Stirling and Callander, or on the water through the Crinan Canal. This is an artificial highway, nine miles long, which was cut to avoid the much longer passage of seventy miles round the Mull of Cantyre, when going from Glasgow to Inverness. This shorter canal was excavated toward the end of the eighteenth century, but its life has not been without those accidents which we, from digging the Panama Canal, have learned are inevitable. In 1859, after a heavy rain, one of the three reservoirs which supply the canal, the highest being eight hundred feet above the canal, burst. The torrent of water rushing down the mountain-slope washed away part of the bank and filled the canal with earth and stones for upwards of a mile. Nevertheless, both the Crinan and Caledonian Canals pay well, and from the surplus earnings are kept in good order.
At Oban, sheltered and with a delightful climate, we look out upon the pretty little island of Kerrera, an old fortress of the MacDougalls, which now serves for use as well as beauty. It not only screens the town from the Atlantic gales, but virtually converts the bay into a land-locked harbor.
Instead of the little village and fishing-station, which Dr. Johnson looked upon in 1773, Oban is now a bustling town, which is very lively and crowded in summer, withal the paradise of the tourist and shopper. Here any pater familias, with loose change in his pocket, when travelling with his wife and daughters, is apt to be, on entering one of those splendid shops, as wax in their loving hands. Silks, plaids, gay woollens, delightful things of all sorts in dry goods—which ladies especially can so well appreciate—are here in luxurious abundance, and at prices that do not seem to soar too high. As for tartans, one can study in color and pattern not only a whole encyclopædia of the heraldry of the clans, but may be shown combinations of checks and stripes, wrought into tartans never known in dream, use, or history, by any Highland clan. Nevertheless these unhistorical and expensive plaids are delightful to look at and will make “cunning” sashes and “lovely” dress goods.
Not the least of our pleasant memories of Oban are associated with those wonderful products of the loom. Whether coming from the splendid machinery of the great mills, built with the aid of capital and thus reaching the highest perfection of craftsmanship joined to the last refinement of invention and experiment, or simply the handwork of the crofters in the distant isles, these tartans show a wonderful evolution of national art. From many women and girls on the islands far out at sea, without much of human society and whose dumb friends are but dogs, cattle, and sheep, come reminders of their industry and taste that are touching to both one’s imagination and sympathies. Let us hope that not too much of the profits of this cottage industry goes into the hands of those who control the trade. Let the worker be the first partaker of the fruits of his toil.
In going up by water through Scotland’s great glen and canal, at our leisure, we shall stop at the places worth seeing. Moreover, the twenty-eight locks forming “Neptune’s Staircase” will enable us to alternate pedestrianism with life on deck. First, after a ride of an hour and a half, we come to the town called Ballaculish. It has an imposing situation at the entrance of Loch Leven, and is not far away from the wild glen, which has left, in its name and associations, such a black spot on the page of Scotland’s annals during the reign of William III.
With our Boston and Buffalo friends, we chatted over British politics in the past, reopening leaves of history, as we steamed to Ballaculish, or progressed on our way on wheels to Glencoe. Except shops and hotels, and the old slate quarries, by which the roofs of the world are covered,—since the quarries send many million roofing slates abroad every year,—there is little to see in this town on the loch.
Next day we mounted the top of the stage-coach, which was equipped with plenty of seats and was geared to fine horses, and started for our ride into the upper and lower valleys of Glencoe, which form a ravine about eight miles long. Accompanying us was the mountain stream called the Cona, that is, “the dark Cona” of Ossian’s poems, while the scarred sides of the hills show the beds of numerous mountain torrents. These, in springtime, must display an impressive activity. Halfway up the glen, the stream forms a little loch. Toward Invercoe, the landscape acquires a softer beauty. Lord Strathcona of Canada had not yet, in 1900, purchased the heritage of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, or built his stately mansion. Yet the wild glen is well worth seeing, either by starting from the northeastern base or by coming up from Ballaculish. We spent a half-hour in “Ossian’s Cave.”
All natural associations, however, whether weird or beautiful, and even the Cave of Ossian faded into insignificance compared with the thrilling story of the terrible massacre of February 13, 1690, when six score soldiers, most of them of Campbell’s clan, who had a personal spite against the Macdonalds, lived for twelve days in the glen, in order to become all the more successful murderers in the end. After receiving the hospitality of the villagers, they began early in the morning, before daylight, the massacre of men, women, and children. The work of butchery was finished by fire and the flocks and herds were driven off.
From childhood we had heard this story. Who that has lived in Schenectady, New York, which suffered a like fate with Glencoe, during “King William’s War,” or who has studied, without family prejudice, the episode of Jacob Leisler, the people’s champion on Manhattan, but has heard of the many horrors for which William was blamed and unjustly condemned?
What was the share of King William III in this Glencoe transaction? The subject has been discussed in pamphlets and books. Turning to Macaulay, the Whig historian,—since historiography, as with Grote, for example, is often political pamphletism,—who found his greatest hero in the Dutch Deliverer, we are told that His Majesty knew of the Macdonalds only as a rebellious clan who had rejected his conciliatory offers. The Government had, in good season, fixed the day for rebellion to cease, and in signing the order for their extirpation, His Majesty merely meant that the existence of the clan as a predatory gang should be broken up. Indeed, their stronghold had long been called “a den of thieves.” William did not know that the certificates of loyalty to the throne, made in correct form by MacIan, the chief of the Macdonalds at Glencoe, had been delayed for a week after the date of possible pardon, and that this certificate had been suppressed so that when he signed the order of attack, he was ignorant of the situation. It is not for us to give judgment in the case.
On the second visit our travel mate, Frances, on seeing the dark glen, felt like a child entering into a haunted chamber, almost expecting the ghosts of the Macdonalds to rise up and call for justice.
Nevertheless, while twice visiting Glencoe, and still again and more, when in Ireland, in 1913, I wondered why no complete life of William III, King of England and Stadholder of the Dutch Republic, and one of England’s best rulers, had ever been written. Pamphlets, sketches, materials to serve, biographical chapters there are, but no work at once scholarly and exhaustive. There is abundant material for such a biography, and if written with historical accuracy and literary charm, it would be not only a great contribution to literature, but would serve to allay prejudices that still rankle. Such a work, so greatly needed, would help to solve some of those terrible problems generated by age-long misrule and misunderstanding, that have made Ireland the weakest spot in the British Empire and a reproach to English government. It may even be true to assert that the political condition of Ireland in 1913 was one of the potent causes precipitating war in Europe. Personally, I believe, from having studied the life of King William, from documents in Holland and England, that he is not responsible for one half of the cruelties with which the Irish Nationalists, mostly of alien form of faith, charge him. Nor does he deserve the censure and reproach which so many Scottish writers and prejudiced Englishmen have heaped upon him. Nor could he possibly have been the “sour” Calvinist of popular tradition. From his reign the Free Churchmen date their freedom.
It is not at all creditable that such a hiatus exists in the library of English biography, for the fame of William is as surely and as constantly increasing as is that of William Pitt, Millard Fillmore, and Abraham Lincoln. In 1914 a new statue of this royal statesman was reared and dedicated in one of the towns of England. It was this champion of representative government who, with sword and pen, curbed in Louis XIV of France that same spirit of ambition which was manifested by Philip II and has been shown by William of Germany. The Stadtholder of Holland saved Europe to the principles of Magna Charta and of constitutional government.
Just before our first visit to Scotland, Quandril had been reading Scott’s story of “Aunt Margaret’s Mirror,” the scenes of which romance are laid in Lady Stair’s house and “close.” Since that time Marjorie Bowen has put in fiction some of the salient incidents of the king’s life, and thus brought him to the notice of many tens of thousands of readers to whom he had been previously but a name. The novel entitled “The Master of Stair” treats of the Glencoe incident, with great detail and with wonderful vividness and great literary power. The title of the book is identical with that of the title of Sir James Dalrymple, first Viscount of Stair, who must bear the blame of the odious transaction, for he was undoubtedly the principal adviser of the king, and was perhaps personally responsible for the treachery and cruelty which accompanied the deed. It was he who urged this method of extirpation as an effective way of repressing rebellion in the Highlands. In spite of his great services to the State, this stain upon his name cannot be effaced. He is buried in the church of St. Giles in Edinburgh.
As for Claverhouse, or “Claver’se,” as the common folks pronounce his name,—the “Bonnie Dundee” of Scott’s rollicking cavalry song,—he still bears with many the Gaelic name given him, which means “Dark John of the Battles.” How highly King William appreciated the military abilities of one whom he had known in the Belgic Netherlands as a soldier of fortune in the Dutch army, and who is said to have there, on one occasion, saved William’s life, is shown, when on hearing the news of the death, at Killiecrankie, of his friend, Claverhouse, the Viscount of Dundee, who had become his enemy, he remarked, “Dundee is slain. He would otherwise have been here to tell the news himself.”
At Drumclog, near Loudon Hill, where the Covenanters obtained a temporary victory over Claverhouse, a stone has been erected to commemorate the triumph. For many years an annual sermon, on the 1st of June, was preached on the field. Perhaps this may even yet be the case, but, under the shadow of the great world-war of the twentieth century, it is probable that these local anniversaries suffer, are ignored, or their celebrations are postponed to a happier time.
Happily for Scotland’s people, they have the gift of song, which lightens many labors. Even on the days we visited Glencoe’s dark ravine, we heard, toward the end of the afternoon, sounds of melody from the toilers in the grain-fields. It came like a burst of sunshine after a dark and cloudy day.
This inborn love of music among the Highlanders was shown when the women reaped the grain and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulations of the harvest song, by which all their voices were united. The sight and sound recalled the line in Campbell’s poem, “The Soldier’s Dream,” committed to memory in boyhood:—
“They accompany in the Highlands every action, which can be done in equal time, with an appropriate strain, which has, they say, not much meaning, but the effects are regularity and cheerfulness,” writes the historian of Scottish music. The ancient song, by which the rowers of galleys were animated, may be supposed to have been of this metrical kind and synchronous. There is an oar song still used by the Hebridians, and we all recall the boat song in “The Lady of the Lake,” which begins:—
Finely, in “Marmion,” is the story of rhythmic motion joined to song to lighten labor, told by Fitz-Eustace, the squire, concerning the lost battle, on which Scott comments, with an American reference:—
Yet it is not in secular music only that the Scots excel. They have also a rich treasury of devotion and praise, though for centuries the superabundance of song which had only worldly associations and was linked with the lower pleasures made them put superfine value on the Hebrew Psalms as being most fit for the soul’s utterance before the Infinite.