Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 21
The Southern Coast of Mull and Lochbuy
(October 20-22).
Sailing from Iona about midday on Wednesday, October 20, our travellers landed in the evening on the southern coast of Mull, near the house of the Rev. Neal Macleod, who gave them lodgings for the night. Johnson oddly described him as "the cleanest-headed man that he had met with in the Western Islands." The talk ran on English statesmen. Here it was that Johnson called Mr. Pitt a meteor, and Sir Robert Walpole a fixed star, and maintained that Pulteney was as paltry a fellow as could be. Continuing their journey on the morrow, they dined at the house of a physician, "who was so much struck with the uncommon conversation of Johnson, that he observed to Boswell, 'This man is just a hogshead of sense.'" This doctor's practice could scarcely have been very lucrative, for there came a time when he had no successor. Garnett writing of Mull at the end of the century, says, "There is at present no medical man in the island; the nearest surgeon of eminence is at Inverary."[1] The distance from that town to the
Carsaig Arches: Mull.
island is now in so many parts adorned, the modern tourist fails to recognize the truthfulness of these gloomy descriptions. Our travellers were to spend the night at Moy, the seat of the Laird of Lochbuy,[3] at the head of the fine loch from which he takes his title. I approached it from the north-eastern side of the island, having driven over from Craignure, a little port in the Sound of Mull. Perhaps the country through which I passed was naturally finer than that which they had traversed in coming from the south-west. Perhaps, on the other hand, the difference was chiefly due to the trees and to better weather. Certainly the long drive, though in places dreary, was for a great part of the road on a bright, windy summer day, one of remarkable beauty. I passed lochs of the sea with the waves tossing, the sea-fowl hovering and settling and screaming, great herons standing on the shore, and the sea-trout leaping in the waters. But far more beautiful was Loch Uisk, an inland lake embosomed among the mountains, its steep shores covered with trees. The strong wind was driving the scud like dust over the face of its dark waters. As I drew near Lochbuy, I caught sight of the ivy-mantled tower across a meadow, where the mowers were cutting the grass, and the hay-makers were tossing it out to the sun and wind. Beyond the castle there was a broad stretch of white sand; a small vessel lay at anchor, ready at the next tide to run ashore and discharge the hamlet's winter stock of coal. Tall trunks of fir-trees were lying near the water's edge ready for shipping. At the head of the loch are two beautiful bays, each with its pastures and tilled lands, its low-wooded heights and its lofty circling mountains, each facing the south-west and sheltered from the cold winds. Between these two bays rise fine crags, hidden in places beneath hazels and ivy. For most of the year it is a land streaming with waterfalls. In beautiful ravines, half hidden by the trees, wild cascades rush down, swollen by the storms that have burst on the mountains; but at the time of my visit their voice was hushed by the long drought. So dry had the springs become in some places, that I was told at Lochbuy that to one of the neighbouring islands water had to be carried in boats.
Close to the ruined Castle stood "the mansion, not very spacious or splendid," where Macleane of Lochbuy, "a true Highland laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity," entertained our travellers.
"We had heard much," writes Boswell, "of Lochbuy's being a great roaring braggadocio, a kind of Sir John Falstaff, both in size and manners; but we found that they had swelled him up to a fictitious size, and clothed him with imaginary qualities. Col's idea of him was equally extravagant, though very different: he told us he was quite a Don Quixote; and said, he would give a great deal to see him and Dr. Johnson together. The truth is, that Lochbuy proved to be only a bluff, comely, noisy, old gentleman, proud of his hereditary consequence, and a very hearty and hospitable landlord. Lady Lochbuy was sister to Sir Allan Macleane, but much older. He said to me, 'They are quite Antediluvians.' Being told that Dr. Johnson did not hear well, Lochbuy bawled out to him, 'Are you of the Johnstons of Glencro, or of Ardnamurchan?' Dr. Johnson gave him a significant look, but made no answer; and I told Lochbuy that he was not Johnston, but Johnson, and that he was an Englishman."[4]
According to Sir Walter Scott, Boswell misapprehended Lochbuy's meaning.
"There are," he says, "two septs of the powerful clan of M'Donald, who are called Mac-Ian, that is John's-son; and as Highlanders often translate their names when they go to the Lowlands,—as Gregor-son for Mac-Gregor, Farquhar-son for Mac-Farquhar,—Lochbuy supposed that Dr. Johnson might be one of the Mac-Ians of Ardnamurchan, or of Glencro. Boswell's explanation was nothing to the purpose. The Johnstons are a clan distinguished in Scottish border history, and as brave as any Highland clan that ever wore brogues; but they lay entirely out of Lochbuy's knowledge—nor was he thinking of them."
I have little doubt, however, that whatever Lochbuy was thinking of he pronounced the name Johnston. In this both Boswell and Johnson agree. This too was the name which I commonly found given to the great man in the Highlands and Lowlands alike.
"The following day (writes Boswell) we surveyed the old castle, in the pit or dungeon of which Lochbuy had some years before taken upon him to imprison several persons; and though he had been fined in a considerable sum by the Court of Justiciary, he was so little affected by it, that while we were examining the dungeon, he said to me, with a smile, 'Your father knows something of this;' (alluding to my father's having sat as one of the judges on his trial). Sir Allan whispered me, that the laird could not be persuaded that he had lost his heritable jurisdiction."
Up to the year 1747 "in the Highlands," to quote Johnson's words, "some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction over counties, and some chieftains over their own lands." This subjection of the people to their chiefs was rightly regarded as one of the main sources of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. He who by law was privileged to keep a pit, a dungeon, and a gallows, was not likely to meet with much resistance when he summoned his people to follow him to the field. Advantage was therefore taken of the defeat of the clansmen at Culloden, "to crush all the Local Courts and to extend the general benetits of equal law to the low and the high, in the deepest recesses and obscurest corners." The heritable jurisdiction had been divided into regalities, ordinary baronies, and baronies which had the right of pit and gallows.
"The lowest criminal jurisdiction," says a Scotch legal author, "is what we call for Battery and Bloodwits, viz., Offences whereby a party is beaten, or blood drawn of him, but no greater harm done; and this is implied in all Baronies. But if the erection of the Barony contain a power of Pit and Gallows, it imports a jurisdiction in ordinary capital cases, but not in the excepted crimes, which go under the name of the Four Pleas of the Crown, viz., Murder, Robbery, Rape, and wilful Fire-raising. It is so called from the manner of execution of criminals, viz., by hanging the men upon the Gallows or Gibbet, and drowning the women, sentenced in a capital crime, in a pit, it not being thought decent of old to hang them."[5]
In old law Latin this right was known under the name of furca et fossa.[6] A person invested with the jurisdiction of a regality had power also in the Four Pleas of the Crown. "The sentences in civil cases are subject to the review of the Lords of Session, and in criminal to the Court of Justiciary. In criminal trials thirty days were allowed before execution of the sentence on this [the southern] side of the Forth, and forty on the other." From this appeal there was one regality which was exempt. The jurisdiction of the Duke of Argyle was absolute even in cases of life and death. From his sentences there was no appeal.[7] Each barony had its Gallows Hill, and its dempster or hangman.[8] Pennant, in 1772, saw "on a little flat hill near the village of Kilarow in Islay the remains of the gallows."[9] At Dunvegan men had been hanged on the sentence of the laird, so late as 1740. No doubt this power was sometimes most oppressively exercised. A chief who lived near Inverness was charged with having rid himself at a profit of men on his estate who had given him trouble. He charged them with theft, threatened them with the gallows, and so brought them "to sign a contract for their banishment." They were then put on board a ship bound to the West Indies, "the master paying so much a head for them."[10] In other words, they were sold for slaves, if not for life, at all events for a certain number of years.
No change had been made by the Act of Union of 1706, for it was expressly provided in it that all these heritable jurisdictions "should be reserved to the owners as rights and property."[11] When in 1747 these powers had been swept away, two unhappy classes of men were excepted from the full benefit of the Act. The workers in any kind of mine or in salt-works were to remain as they had hitherto been—serfs for life. These men were found only in the Lowlands, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Nevertheless, even they were not left altogether without relief. "All jurisdiction in any case inferring the loss of life or demembration, was abrogated."[12] A collier or a salter therefore could no longer be hanged or drowned, or even mangled by his master. It was not till the last year of the century that they were finally and fully freed. One of these emancipated serfs lived till the year 1844.[13]
The Act of 1747 not only abolished jurisdictions, but also alleviated the prisoner's lot. Till it was passed, "all over Scotland pits were accounted legal prisons for thieves and other meaner criminals."[14] Lady Margaret Bellenden in Old Mortality praises her pit. "It is not more than two stories beneath ground," she says, "so it cannot be unwholesome, especially as I rather believe there is somewhere an opening to the outer air."[15] But henceforth—so the Act ran—"the prison shall have such windows or grates, as that it may be practicable for any friend of the prisoner to visit, see, and converse with him when he shall be so minded."[16] In out of the way places, where there were no justices within reach, the laird, no doubt, to some extent, continued to exercise his old powers. Thus in Col, more than sixteen years after the Act was passed, the laird put a woman into "the family prison" for theft.[17] There have been men who regarded, or affected to regard with indignation the abolition of these injurious hereditary powers. "By the nation at large," writes Dr. Robert Chambers, "the measure was contemplated as a last stab to the independence of Scotland, previously almost destroyed by the Union."[18] There is happily no reason to believe that the nation at large was at any period of its history a set of sentimental fools.
To most of the chiefs this loss of their ancient jurisdictions must have come as a terrible shock. Lochbuy, as has been seen, had refused to believe it, and so had got into trouble with the Court of Justiciary. After some search I was fortunate enough to discover a report of his case. He had, as I was informed by his descendant, the present laird, with the help of his piper let down a man into the pit. But here, for once, tradition has not been guilty of amplification. Aided by his servant, his piper and son, the inn-keeper in Moy, and two other tenants, he had seized two men of the name of Maclean, and had imprisoned them two days "in an old ruinous castle." Two of the accused did not appear to the indictment, "they were therefore fugitated (outlawed), and their moveables escheated to the king for their contempt." The trial took place on August 15, 1759. It lasted twelve hours. "The jury (of which a majority was landed gentlemen) returned their verdict unanimously, finding the pannels (prisoners at the bar) guilty; but verbally recommending the four servants and tenants to the mercy of the court, it appearing that what they did was by order of Lochbuy, their master. The lords pronounced sentence, decerning Lochbuy in £180 sterling of expenses and damages to the private prosecutors, and 500 marks Scots (about £27) of fine; and condemning the whole pannels to seventeen days' imprisonment."[19]
Lochbuy had no doubt been the more unwilling to believe in the abolition of his jurisdiction as he had, it should seem, no share in that "valuable consideration in money which was granted to every nobleman and petty baron who was thus deprived of one part of his inheritance."[20] On what principle of justice this compensation was given is not clear, unless we agree with Johnson in his assertion that "those who have long enjoyed dignity and power ought not to lose it without some equivalent."[21] Professor Thorold Rogers informs me that we have here, he believes, the first instance in our history where compensation is paid by the country at large for the vested interests of a class. The claims which were made were excessive, partly no doubt in the hope that when much was demanded at all events something would be given, but partly, it was said, with the intention of "obstructing the Act, and raising discontents in the country."[22] The total sum asked for was £587,000, but only £152,000 was granted. Among the claimants I found "Maclean of Lochbuie, Bailie of the Bailiery of Morovis and Mulerois, £500." His name does not appear among the list of those whose claims were allowed.[23]
Though in 1759 the castle was described as ruinous, nevertheless it had been inhabited by the laird a few years earlier. Over the entrance of the house in which he received Johnson is inscribed: "Hæc domus [a word effaced] erat per Johannem McLaine De Lochbuy Anno Dom. 1752." It has, in its turn, given way to a more modern mansion, and has been converted into stables, coach-houses, and hay-lofts. The castle was built on the edge of the sea, "four-square to all the winds that blew." The walls, nine or ten feet thick, "are probably as old as the fourteenth century, but the upper part seems to have been modified in the seventeenth."[24] The ivy has climbed up to the top, nevertheless much of the stonework is still seen. It would be a pity if it were suffered to cover the walls on all sides. Hard by a little stream shaded with trees makes its way into the loch. To the north-west rises the steep hill of Dun Buy. "Buy in Erse," says Boswell, "signifies yellow. The hill being of a yellowish hue, has the epithet of buy." This hue I altogether failed to discover; perhaps it is only seen in the autumn. On the bright summer's day in which I saw the castle, it seemed to be almost unsurpassed in the pleasantness of its seat. Tall trees grew near it, their leaves rustling in the wind, and the lights and shadows dancing on the ground as the branches swayed to and fro, while in front lay the loch with its foaming waves. The old ruin looked as if it had been set there to add to the beauty of the scene, not for a place where lairds and their pipers should let down luckless folk into dismal pits. In the inside there was gloom enough. A few well-worn stone steps lead up to the entrance. The strong old door studded with iron nails which had withstood the storms of many a long year, has at length yielded to time, and been replaced. Behind it is an iron grate secured by bolts and by an oaken bar that is drawn forth from a hole in the wall. Passing on I went into a gloomy vault known as the store-room. Not a ray of light entered save by the open door. In the rocky floor there is a shallow well, which in the driest seasons is always full of water. The arched roof is built of huge boulders gathered from the beach, the spaces between being filled up with thin layers of stone after the fashion of Roman masonry. A dark staircase in the thickness of the wall leads up through another strong door to a second vaulted chamber, dimly lighted by narrow slits at the end of two slanting recesses, on each side of which are stone benches. This I was told was the court-room or judgment-hall. Opening out of it on one side is a very small chamber, in which was a kind of cupboard, a hiding-place perhaps for title-deeds and plate, for it could be so closed with stones as to look like solid wall. On the other side is the door to the dungeon, dismal enough, but not so dismal as the pit below, with its well in which women could be put to death with decency. On either side of the mouth of the well is a narrow ledge some eighteen inches wide, but not long enough to allow the prisoner to stretch himself at full length. On the floor above the court-room was the kitchen, with walls more than seven feet thick. It occupied the whole of the story. On the freestone joints of the great hearth can be seen the deep marks made by sharpening knives. Above the kitchen was the family sitting-room, which was entered from a gallery running all round it outside, and built in the overhanging part of the tower. Here at length I arrived at what may be called the front door. There was some attempt at ornament in the carving on the stones at the top and each side of the doorway. There was, moreover, light enough to see it clearly, for the gallery can boast of fair-sized windows. From one of them the laird could look out on the Hangman's Hill, about a third of a mile off, now covered with fir-trees, but then bare. Some stones remain, in which the gallows were set up. The view from the castle, except when a hanging was going on, must on a fine day have been always beautiful, even when the country was bare of trees. To the north and east they looked over fields, once yellow every autumn with grain, but now pleasant meadow-land, shut in with hills and mountains down whose sides in rainy weather rivers stream and cascades leap. From one corner of the gallery a turret projects with two narrow windows, where the watchman could see anyone approaching from the side of the land. Not far from it was "the whispering hole," where, by removing a stone which exactly fits into an opening, a suspicious laird could overhear the talk in the kitchen beneath. Above the sitting-room was another story divided into small rooms, the bed-chamber of the family. So solidly had the roof been built, that unrepaired it withstood all the blasts of heaven, till that terrible storm burst upon it and brought it clown, which swept away the Tay Bridge.
In these two upper stories there were, no doubt, cheerful rooms, but they were reached through gloomy doors and iron grates, up dark staircases, with rough sides and well-worn steps, past the gloomy dungeon. Everything shows signs of danger and alarm. "It was sufficient for a Laird of the Hebrides," as Johnson says, "if he had a strong house in which he could hide his wife and children from the next clan." At the present day, as I was told by my guide, no one thinks of locking his door at night-time. My bag and great-coat and travelling rug were left in perfect safety for a couple of hours by the road-side while I wandered about. Of the modern mansion Johnson would never have said what he said of the second house, that "it was built with little regard to convenience, and with none to elegance or pleasure." He would have been delighted not only with it, but with its large garden full of flowers and vegetables and fruits that testify to the mildness of the climate. The peaches ripen on the walls, though they do not attain to a large size. The hot-houses were full of choice plants, and clustering grapes. One bunch, I was told, had weighed nearly five pounds. But there are far greater changes than those worked by builders and gardeners. Here, where the rough old Laird in his out-of-the-way corner of the world used to rule his people with the help of gallows, pit and dungeon, I found a money-order office, a savings bank, a telegraph office, and a daily post. There is a good school, governed by a School Board, and a large reading room where the dulness of the long winter nights is relieved by various kinds of entertainments. There is besides an infirmary under the management of a qualified nurse, the daughter of a medical man, who has learnt her art by some years' study in a hospital. She is provided with a chest of surgical instruments and a large stock of drugs. On her little pony she sometimes has to attend sick people at a distance of eight miles. Forty-three cases of measles had lately been under her care and none of them ended fatally. There is a salmon-hatching house, and a museum both of antiquities and natural curiosities. In it I saw a thumbscrew, with an iron ring at one end through which a thong could be passed. Used in this way it would have served much the same purpose as hand-cuffs. I looked with interest on an old Highland spinning-wheel, the gift of my intelligent and friendly guide, Mr. Angus Black. It had belonged to his grandmother. He had given it, he said, "to be kept there as a present for ages and generations to come." When a little before I drank water from "the well by the river side," such was the name of the spring in Gaelic, he told me that it was the spring "whence the Lairds had drunk for ages and generations past." One thing I in vain looked for in the Museum. Boswell had been told much of a war-saddle, on which Lochbuy, "that reputed Don Quixote, used to be mounted; but we did not see it," he adds, "for the young Laird had applied it to a less noble purpose, having taken it to Falkirk Fair with a drove of black cattle." He took it much farther—to America, whither he went with his regiment. There he lost his life in a duel, and it was lost too. Perhaps it is preserved as a curiosity in some collection on the other side of the Atlantic.
I was shown also at a short distance eastwards from the Castle, at the bottom of a crag by the roadside, a place known as the Cheese Cave. Here at every funeral the refreshments used to be placed for the mourners, who had often come twenty miles across the hills. In former days, when there were more men and fewer sheep some hundreds would assemble. "Two old respectable friends were left behind to take care of the food and drink. When the people came back from the grave-yard they refreshed themselves. I have seen them," continued my guide, "sitting on these rocks by the cave having their luncheon." Ramsay of Ochtertyre tells how "the women of each valley through which the funeral passed joined in the procession, but they attended but part of the way and then returned. The whole company seemed to be running; and wherever they rested small cairns or heaps of stones were raised to commemorate the corpse having halted on that spot."[25] These heaps were pointed out to us on the side of Rattachan as we drove down to Glenelg. The silence of the Scotch funeral shocked Wesley, who recorded on May 20, 1774: "When I see in Scotland a coffin put into the earth and covered up without a word spoken, it reminds me of what was spoken concerning Jehoiakin, 'He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.'"[26]
It is not with accounts of funerals that I must take my leave of a place where I spent so pleasant a day, and had so hospitable a reception. Here I saw not only the dead past but a vigorous and hopeful present. Even the old Laird, we are told, "was a very hearty and hospitable landlord," though with his belief in his rights of furca et fossa he certainly was an antediluvian. His descendant does not yield to him in heartiness and hospitality, but has other ways of guiding his people than gallows, pit and dungeon. By his schools, his reading-room, his infirmary and his schemes for developing the fisheries he has won their affections. An old lady who had been allowed to visit the Castle, meeting him by chance as she came out, full of anger at what she had seen, exclaimed: "You ought, Sir, to be ashamed of your ancestors." "No," he replied, "I am not ashamed of them. They led their lives, and I lead mine." They were at all events as good as the men of their time, perhaps better. Old Lochbuy does not seem to have been a bad fellow, though he was slow in learning that he had lost his right to imprison his tenants. "May not a man do what he likes with his own?" we can fancy him asking in the words used more than seventy years later by an English duke. Much as his descendant has done, there is one thing more which I would ask him to do. He dreads, no doubt, the throng of noisy tourists, but he might surely build a modest inn where the pensive wanderer could find lodging, and enjoy the scenery of Lochbuy.
"The guiltless eye
Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys."
- ↑ Dr. T. Garnett's Observations, &c., i. 148.
- ↑ Voyage en Angleterre, &c., ii. 86.
- ↑ The name is now commonly written Lochbuie.
- ↑ See ante, p. 5.
- ↑ An Essay upon Feudal Holdings, Superiorities, and Hereditary Jurisdictions in Scotland. London, 1747, p. 16.
- ↑ "Baro dicitur qui gladii potestatem habet, id est imperium merum; apud nos furcæ et fossæ nomine significamus."—Craig, De Feudis, i. 12, 16, quoted in Arnot's History of Edinburgh, p. 224.
- ↑ An Essay upon Feudal Holdings, &c., pp. 18, 28.
- ↑ Dunbar's Social Life, &c., ii. 141.
- ↑ Pennant's Voyage to the Hebrides, ed. 1774, p. 221.
- ↑ Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, i. 54.
- ↑ Smollett's History of England, ii. 79.
- ↑ An Act for Abolishing the Heritable Jurisdictions, 1747, p. 19.
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, iii. 202, n. 1.
- ↑ Scotland and Scotsmen, &c., ii. 94.
- ↑ Old Mortality, ed. 1860, ii. 14.
- ↑ An Act for Abolishing, &c., p. 17.
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, v. 292.
- ↑ History of the Rebellion in Scotland, ed. 1827, ii. 293.
- ↑ Scots Magazine, 1759, p. 441.
- ↑ Smollett's History of England, iii. 206.
- ↑ Johnson's Works, ix. 91.
- ↑ Marchmont Papers, i. 234, 248.
- ↑ Scots Magazine, 1747, p. 587, and 1748, p. 136.
- ↑ Macgibbon and Ross's Architecture of Scotland, iii. 127.
- ↑ Scotland and Scotsmen, &c., ii. 430.
- ↑ Wesley's 'Journal, iv. 14.