While Scotland is, by its definition, a “pene-insula,” or “peninsula,” that is, “almost an island,” it has, out in the Atlantic Ocean, an archipelago of five hundred islands. Of these about one fifth are inhabited, and of these one third have each a population of only ten or even fewer souls. This great group lies wholly to the westward, for the east coast of Scotland is singularly free from islands, the number on this side being very much like that of angels’ visits, which are spoken of as few and far between.
These islands are all situated within three degrees of latitude. Another name for them is the “Hebrides,” which term was formerly held to embrace all the Scottish western islands, including also the peninsula of Kintyre and islets in the Firth of Clyde, as well as the Isle of Man and the Isle of Rathlin.
In discriminating between the Outer and the Inner Hebrides as many do, this differentiation has a geological basis, for the Outer Hebrides have a foundation of gneiss, while the more northerly at least of the Inner Hebrides are of trap rock. Broadly speaking, in popular usage the term is “Western Islands,” while in literature “Hebrides” is used. This seems all the more appropriate, because it was the accident of a misplaced or added letter that gave the islands their literary cognomen.
As in the case of our own country, which has profited so richly through Scottish emigration from those islands, some of the most delightfully sounding names, in their present form, have come to us through the mistake of a transcriber; as, for example, the romantic name, Horicon, with which tourists on Lake George as well as readers of Cooper’s novels are familiar. The real word intended for the map is “Iroquois,” but as a Frenchman wrote it “Horicou,” which was further altered by a misprint, which made it “Horicon,” it has so remained. So also the “Hebudes” of Pliny, spelled by a misprint “Hebrides,” has held its own. Sir Walter Scott adheres to the form “Hebudes.” “Grampian,” which sounds so pleasant to the ear, is another instance of a false reading or misprint, which improves the original form and sound.
The total area of these Western Islands is 2812 square miles, or a fourth larger than Delaware. Only one ninth of the soil is cultivated, for most of the surface consists of moors and mountains. This region being at the terminal of the Gulf Stream, the climate is mild, though so humid that mists are almost perpetual. The drizzling rains are so common that the mountains are hidden from view or shrouded in fog or cloud most of the time. The rainfall is heavy. In one place forty-two inches is the average. Potatoes and turnips, barley and oats form the staple crops, though with sheep-farming, cattle-raising, fishing, distilling, slate-quarrying, and the making of tweeds, tartans, and woollen cloth, with assistance from the patronage of summer tourists, the people are able to get a living. In religious “persuasion” most of the inhabitants belong to the United Free Church, though on some of the islands the people adhere to the forms of religion cherished in the Roman Catholic Church.
From the earliest centuries the Scandinavian pagans poured into the islands and among the Celts, to rob and burn, but also to settle down and be decent. When satiated with robbery and slaughter, they became peaceful, married the daughters of the land, and adopted the language and faith of the islanders. The vikings and the immigrants multiplied in the Hebrides, especially when tyrants in Norway became unusually active and severe. Battles and fighting between the islanders and the Norwegians kept the region in turmoil for centuries. Not a few attempts were made by the Scottish kings to displace the Norsemen. One of these, John Macdonald, adopted the title of “Lord of the Isles.” He married the daughter of the earl, who afterwards became Robert II. Battles, treaties, and alliances followed, but insular sovereignty was abolished in the reign of James V. Bloody feuds continued, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among the rival clans and their dependent tribes.
Even the subsidies granted by William III to the chiefs could not preserve order. Peace dawned only when the tribal system was broken up. Then, through the abolition of hereditary jurisdiction, through inheritance, and the appointments in the different districts of sheriffs who held the writ of the king, peace was secured. Nevertheless, in the new system of management the rents being made too high, there began an emigration to America that continued for many years, threatening at one time to depopulate the islands. Dr. Johnson, who, with Boswell, made what was virtually an exploration and published the classic, entitled “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,” in 1773, tells of the ships waiting in the harbors ready to take on their human cargo for the continent of promise. Thousands crossed the ocean to Canada or into those Atlantic colonies which became the United States.
Following the loss of so many able-bodied men and women, the standard of civilization in these islands began to sink, even though the population, which subsisted almost wholly on potatoes and herring, kept multiplying. When in 1846 the potato blight reduced the masses, both in Ireland and in western Scotland, to the verge of starvation, another large emigration of thousands to Australia and America took place. Had Carlyle’s advice been followed, Canada would have forty million and South Africa ten million loyal British subjects. This sage wanted the Government to turn men-of-war into emigrant ships, in order to give free transport of people to waste lands beyond sea. A royal commission, appointed by Parliament, later secured legislation which has made life for the crofters in the island more tolerable.
Steering south from Oban, we passed some rocky isles, one of which is called, from its shape, the Dutchman’s Cap. When in front of Fingal’s Cave, we are awed by its imposing entrance which is formed by a series of basaltic columns from twenty to forty feet high, which sustain an arch sixty feet above the sea. We land in a boat amid the fuming waves and climb into the cave, which for a distance of about two hundred feet has a sort of rather rough natural sidewalk made of fallen columns. The waves beneath us are continually surging and the thunderous echoes resound continually. The island, of volcanic origin, is nothing more or less than the fragment of an ancient stream of lava. In Fingal’s Cave there is first a basement of tufa, from which rise colonnades of basalt in pillars which form the walls and faces of the grotto, the roof of which consists of amorphous basalt.
Fingal’s Cave was first noted and described by Sir Joseph Banks in 1773. The grotto is two hundred and twenty-seven feet long, forty-two feet wide, and sixty-six feet high. But the height of the pillars is irregular, being thirty-six feet on one side and but eighteen on the other. Its waters are the haunts of seals and of sea-birds.
Happily for us, instead of seeing nothing but the sombre gray, in an atmosphere of fog or cloud, or storm-tossed waves, which on occasions do not allow passengers to disembark, the bursts of sunlight made unique beauty, both in atmospheric conditions and in an exquisite play of colors. The basalt appeared to combine every tint of warm red, brown, and rich maroon, while the seaweed and lichen of green and gold seemed like the upholstery of a palace. Through the percolation of the limestone water, the walls were in places of a snow-white tint. Looking upward we could see yellow, crimson, and white stalactites. When we examined the columns they appeared to possess a regularity so perfect as to suggest the work of a Greek sculptor rather than the play of Nature’s forces in her moods of agony. The Gaelic form of the name is taken from the murmuring of the sea, meaning the “Cave of Music.” In times of storm the compressed air rushes out producing a sound as of thunder.
“Fingal” is the name of the hero in the poems of Ossian, which are based on the ancient traditions of the Gaelic people of Scotland and Ireland, still known and told among the people, so many of whom in the outer islands use this ancient tongue. The Finn in these old stories was the Rig or King of the Fenians of Leinster, Ireland, who lived at a “du” or fort in the County of Kildare, and who was killed on the Boyne by a fisherman, A.D. 283. As for the name “Fingal,” it is thought to mean a “fair foreigner,” or Norwegian; the word “Dubgal,” meaning a “dark foreigner” or invader; the blond pirates or intruders being the Norwegians and the swarthy ones coming from Denmark. Both varieties of these unscientific marauders ravaged Ireland in the ninth century.
Only the chief caves have names. On the south-east coast is the Clam Shell, or Scallop Cave. It is thirty feet high, eighteen feet wide, and about one hundred and thirty feet long, one side of it consisting of ridges of basalt which stand out like the ribs of a ship. Near by is the Rock of the Herdsmen, from a supposed likeness to a shepherd’s cap. The Isle of Columns can be fully seen only at low water.
No human habitations were noted on the Island of Staffa by us, during our short stay. We got on board the steamer again and proceeded to Iona, that is, “the island”; for Columkill, or the Island of Columba, from time unrecorded has had a fertile soil. This fertility, supposed to be in the dark ages miraculous, led probably to its early occupation.
Iona’s history begins in the year 563 when St. Columba, from Ireland, landed on its shores with twelve apostles. By his life and work he rendered the place so rich in holy associations that to-day the hosts of divided Christendom, Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopal, and Presbyterian, claim Iona as the cradle of their faith, and on different days—never together in holy union—visit the sacred isle. Sweethearts and wives must not meet. Which is which?
Iona’s scenery was ever attractive, with its precipitous cliffs, its dazzling stretches of white shells and sand, its fertile fields, and its grassy hollows. Its natural charms drew visitors from afar and made those dwelling upon its acres content. Even before the name of Christ was uttered, it had been, as the Highlanders called it in their Gaelic tongue, the “Island of the Druids.” It was therefore famous, before it became the centre of Celtic Christianity, and the mother community, whose children were the depositories of the human spirit. From its numerous monastic houses, hundreds of alumni went out as missionaries to convert all northern Britain. In a word, the story of humanity in all the earth is told here. The strata of religions, the deposits of the human soul, are almost as discernible on Iona as are the layers of geology, or the floors of successive cities revealed by the spade, in Egypt or Palestine, in the terpen of Holland or the mounds of Babylon.
Even the humorous side of religion is here discernible to sharp eyes. Some of the carvings in the choir stalls and chisellings of the marble aloft show the joker in stone. The demons are represented as having their fun—and this is equally true in the art of Buddhism in Japan and of mediævalism in Iona. The tower of the church of St. Mary, on this island, has one bit of sculpture representing an angel weighing souls in a pair of scales, one of which is kept down by a demon’s paw. It reminded us of Dr. Franklin’s Yankee characterization of the Dutchman’s trade with the Indians.
Iona was at times so sacred a place, with its scores of monasteries and nunneries, with its small forest of crosses, and with architecture that enthralled by its beauty, that it was for centuries a spot to which pilgrims came from all lands, and in its holy soil kings and nobles longed to be buried; yet it was not free from the robber pagan and the bloody spoiler. The North Sea rovers, from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, descended in the eighth century to plunder, to burn, and to kill. For two hundred years Iona lay desolate, until Queen Margaret restored the desecrated monastery, building the chapel over the site of St. Columba’s grave. Later came the Benedictine monks, who expelled or absorbed the Celtic community. Intermittently the island was the seat of the bishopric of the Western Isles, but at the Reformation the monastic buildings were dismantled by order of the legal authorities. When Dr. Johnson visited Iona in 1773, only two persons on the island could speak English. None could read or write.
Of Iona’s political fortunes the story is brief, the most interesting point to an American being that, when oppression and the severe conditions made life here undesirable or scarcely possible, the people emigrated. From the hardy race, inhabiting this and other of the Western Isles, the United States received a noble contingent, to enrich its grand composite of humanity.
We spent some time in the cemetery called “the Burial Place of Kings,” which is reputed to contain the dust of forty-eight Scottish, four Irish, and eight Danish and Norwegian monarchs, besides many monumental stones. The number of crosses set up on Iona was nearly equal to that of the days of the year. These were standing, up to Reformation times, when most of them were thrown into the sea by order of the Synod of Argyl. Yet a few still remain. The finest are the Maclean’s cross and St. Martin’s cross, both being almost perfect in form, despite centuries of weathering. Both are richly carved with runic inscriptions, emblematic devices, and fanciful scroll-work.
It was certainly a brain stimulant and a heart-warmer to ramble among these ruins. Imagination re-created the scenes in those ancient days when the light of the gospel was brought by a saintly man filled with the spirit of Jesus. We realized, in measure at least, how great was his work and how far-reaching was his influence in winning men to Christ, before Latin and Germanic disputes for mastery had divided the Christian Church. Columba’s coming quickly changed the landscape of pagan Scotland. First in the cities and then in almost every village, the cross, symbol of the sacrificial death of Him who came to give life more abundantly, arose, first in wood and then in enduring stone. The savage people, whose passions and appetites had so closely allied them to the brutes, were transformed and uplifted.
In time the children of the first hearers of the gospel message were converted, not only outwardly to the acceptance of creeds,—which in their scholastic form they could not at first understand,—not only to symbols, which are ever but the shadows of eternal truths, but were inwardly transformed in the renewing of their minds. Gradually they became so changed in heart and life that we, after having seen Christianity in very many of its varied ethnic forms, and met its exemplars in lands not a few, cannot but feel that in the home, the school, and the church, there is no land on earth in which Christianity is more genuine than in Scotland. Between Columba’s homilies and “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” long centuries were to pass slowly away. Nothing in literature, or art, or history, or statistics, furnishes so true a picture of the leavening of a whole nation, or illustrates more finely the truth that among believers, even the common people may be “kings and priests unto God,” than this poem of Burns. It is a revelation of “Old Scotia’s grandeur.”