a journey to the western islands of scotland(苏格兰西部群岛)

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A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

A JOURNEY TO THE

WESTERN ISLANDS OF

SCOTLAND

INCH KEITH

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

I had desired to visit the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, so

long, that I scarcely remember how the wish was originally excited; and

was in the Autumn of the year 1773 induced to undertake the journey, by

finding in Mr. Boswell a companion, whose acuteness would help my

inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation and civility of manners are

sufficient to counteract the inconveniences of travel, in countries less

hospitable than we have passed.

On the eighteenth of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well known

to admit description, and directed our course northward, along the eastern

coast of Scotland, accompanied the first day by another gentleman, who

could stay with us only long enough to shew us how much we lost at

separation.

As we crossed the Frith of Forth, our curiosity was attracted by Inch

Keith, a small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited,

though, lying within their view, it had all their lives solicited their notice.

Here, by climbing with some difficulty over shattered crags, we made the

first experiment of unfrequented coasts. Inch Keith is nothing more than

a rock covered with a thin layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and

very fertile of thistles. A small herd of cows grazes annually upon it in

the summer. It seems never to have afforded to man or beast a permanent

habitation.

We found only the ruins of a small fort, not so injured by time but that

it might be easily restored to its former state. It seems never to have been

intended as a place of strength, nor was built to endure a siege, but merely

to afford cover to a few soldiers, who perhaps had the charge of a battery,

or were stationed to give signals of approaching danger. There is

therefore no provision of water within the walls, though the spring is so

near, that it might have been easily enclosed. One of the stones had this

inscription: 'Maria Reg. 1564.' It has probably been neglected from the

time that the whole island had the same king.

We left this little island with our thoughts employed awhile on the

different appearance that it would have made, if it had been placed at the

same distance from London, with the same facility of approach; with what

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

emulation of price a few rocky acres would have been purchased, and with

what expensive industry they would have been cultivated and adorned.

When we landed, we found our chaise ready, and passed through

Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Cowpar, places not unlike the small or straggling

market-towns in those parts of England where commerce and

manufactures have not yet produced opulence.

Though we were yet in the most populous part of Scotland, and at so

small a distance from the capital, we met few passengers.

The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger

a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption

of toll-gates. Where the bottom is rocky, as it seems commonly to be in

Scotland, a smooth way is made indeed with great labour, but it never

wants repairs; and in those parts where adventitious materials are

necessary, the ground once consolidated is rarely broken; for the inland

commerce is not great, nor are heavy commodities often transported

otherwise than by water. The carriages in common use are small carts,

drawn each by one little horse; and a man seems to derive some degree of

dignity and importance from the reputation of possessing a two-horse cart.

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

ST. ANDREWS

At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once

archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy

was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to

immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer

than the instability of vernacular languages admits.

We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings

had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose easy

civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers; and in the whole

time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and

entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality.

In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history

shews to have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient

magnificence, of which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some

care be taken to preserve them; and where is the pleasure of preserving

such mournful memorials? They have been till very lately so much

neglected, that every man carried away the stones who fancied that he

wanted them.

The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a

small part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and

majestick building, not unsuitable to the primacy of the kingdom. Of the

architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit, even to an artist, a

sufficient specimen. It was demolished, as is well known, in the tumult

and violence of Knox's reformation.

Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a

fragment of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided. It was

never very large, and was built with more attention to security than

pleasure. Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had workmen employed in

improving its fortifications at the time when he was murdered by the

ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he

himself calls a merry narrative.

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was,

raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness

and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their

own thoughts, and who, conversing only with each other, suffered no

dilution of their zeal from the gradual influx of new opinions, was long

transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade and

intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast

to that laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men, not

sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily shelter

themselves from rigour and constraint.

The city of St. Andrews, when it had lost its archiepiscopal pre-

eminence, gradually decayed: One of its streets is now lost; and in those

that remain, there is silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy

depopulation.

The university, within a few years, consisted of three colleges, but is

now reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by

the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the

professors of the two others. The chapel of the alienated college is yet

standing, a fabrick not inelegant of external structure; but I was always, by

some civil excuse, hindred from entering it. A decent attempt, as I was

since told, has been made to convert it into a kind of green-house, by

planting its area with shrubs. This new method of gardening is

unsuccessful; the plants do not hitherto prosper. To what use it will next

be put I have no pleasure in conjecturing. It is something that its present

state is at least not ostentatiously displayed. Where there is yet shame,

there may in time be virtue.

The dissolution of St. Leonard's college was doubtless necessary; but

of that necessity there is reason to complain. It is surely not without just

reproach, that a nation, of which the commerce is hourly extending, and

the wealth encreasing, denies any participation of its prosperity to its

literary societies; and while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces,

suffers its universities to moulder into dust.

Of the two colleges yet standing, one is by the institution of its founder

appropriated to Divinity. It is said to be capable of containing fifty

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

students; but more than one must occupy a chamber. The library, which is

of late erection, is not very spacious, but elegant and luminous.

The doctor, by whom it was shewn, hoped to irritate or subdue my

English vanity by telling me, that we had no such repository of books in

England.

Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and

education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing

the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and

dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of

commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of

knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is in

danger of yielding to the love of money.

The students however are represented as at this time not exceeding a

hundred. Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase that there

is no episcopal chapel in the place. I saw no reason for imputing their

paucity to the present professors; nor can the expence of an academical

education be very reasonably objected. A student of the highest class

may keep his annual session, or as the English call it, his term, which lasts

seven months, for about fifteen pounds, and one of lower rank for less

than ten; in which board, lodging, and instruction are all included.

The chief magistrate resident in the university, answering to our vice-

chancellor, and to the rector magnificus on the continent, had commonly

the title of Lord Rector; but being addressed only as Mr. Rector in an

inauguratory speech by the present chancellor, he has fallen from his

former dignity of style. Lordship was very liberally annexed by our

ancestors to any station or character of dignity: They said, the Lord

General, and Lord Ambassador; so we still say, my Lord, to the judge

upon the circuit, and yet retain in our Liturgy the Lords of the Council.

In walking among the ruins of religious buildings, we came to two

vaults over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-prior. One of

the vaults was inhabited by an old woman, who claimed the right of abode

there, as the widow of a man whose ancestors had possessed the same

gloomy mansion for no less than four generations. The right, however it

began, was considered as established by legal prescription, and the old

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

woman lives undisturbed. She thinks however that she has a claim to

something more than sufferance; for as her husband's name was Bruce, she

is allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were persons of

quality in the place, she was distinguished by some notice; that indeed she

is now neglected, but she spins a thread, has the company of her cat, and is

troublesome to nobody.

Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our curiosity,

we left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly pleased with the

attention that was paid us. But whoever surveys the world must see

many things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not

contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a

college alienated, and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.

St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and

more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We

were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a

calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or

sympathy. Events long past are barely known; they are not considered.

We read with as little emotion the violence of Knox and his followers, as

the irruptions of Alaric and the Goths. Had the university been destroyed

two centuries ago, we should not have regretted it; but to see it pining in

decay and struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and

ineffectual wishes.

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

ABERBROTHICK

As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to

mind our way. The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the

traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and

who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible

boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone. From the bank of

the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not

believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then

about a gentleman's house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is

called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young.

The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree

for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger,

and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the

road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between two

hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St.

Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I

told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This,

said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to

hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman

that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the county.

The Lowlands of Scotland had once undoubtedly an equal portion of

woods with other countries. Forests are every where gradually

diminished, as architecture and cultivation prevail by the increase of

people and the introduction of arts. But I believe few regions have been

denuded like this, where many centuries must have passed in waste

without the least thought of future supply. Davies observes in his

account of Ireland, that no Irishman had ever planted an orchard. For

that negligence some excuse might be drawn from an unsettled state of life,

and the instability of property; but in Scotland possession has long been

secure, and inheritance regular, yet it may be doubted whether before the

Union any man between Edinburgh and England had ever set a tree.

Of this improvidence no other account can be given than that it

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

probably began in times of tumult, and continued because it had begun.

Established custom is not easily broken, till some great event shakes the

whole system of things, and life seems to recommence upon new

principles. That before the Union the Scots had little trade and little

money, is no valid apology; for plantation is the least expensive of all

methods of improvement. To drop a seed into the ground can cost nothing,

and the trouble is not great of protecting the young plant, till it is out of

danger; though it must be allowed to have some difficulty in places like

these, where they have neither wood for palisades, nor thorns for hedges.

Our way was over the Firth of Tay, where, though the water was not

wide, we paid four shillings for ferrying the chaise. In Scotland the

necessaries of life are easily procured, but superfluities and elegancies are

of the same price at least as in England, and therefore may be considered

as much dearer.

We stopped a while at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable,

and mounting our chaise again, came about the close of the day to

Aberbrothick.

The monastery of Aberbrothick is of great renown in the history of

Scotland. Its ruins afford ample testimony of its ancient magnificence:

Its extent might, I suppose, easily be found by following the walls among

the grass and weeds, and its height is known by some parts yet standing.

The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far

dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great

loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was

very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly

attracted our attention. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded

by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs

within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were

told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed it, but we did not immediately

discern the entrance, and as the night was gathering upon us, thought

proper to desist. Men skilled in architecture might do what we did not

attempt: They might probably form an exact ground-plot of this

venerable edifice. They may from some parts yet standing conjecture its

general form, and perhaps by comparing it with other buildings of the

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