# Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 14

Raasay (September 8-12).
From Corrichatachin our travellers rode down to the sea-side at Broadford, two miles off, where they took boat for the island of Raasay. The Macgillichallum, or laird of Raasay, John Macleod, had politely sent his coach and six, as he called his six-oared boat, to fetch them over. Though it was "thus dignified with a pompous name," writes Johnson, "there was no seat, but an occasional bundle of straw. I never," he adds, "saw in the Hebrides a boat furnished with benches." In it had come the learned Donald M'Oueen, a minister, and old Malcolm Macleod, who had been out in the '45, and had aided the Young Pretender in his escape. I had at one time thought that it was to him that Johnson alludes, when he speaks of having met one man, and one only, who defied the law against wearing the Highland dress. "By him," he adds, "it was worn only occasionally and wantonly." I now believe, however, that it was Macdonald of Kingsburgh who was meant. Ever since the last rebellion the national garb had been suppressed. It had been enacted that "no person whatsoever should wear or put on those parts of the Highland clothes, garb, or habiliments which are called the plaid, philibeg, or little kilt, or any of them." Any offender "not being a landed man, or the son of a landed man" shall be tried before a justice of the peace "in a summary way, and shall be delivered over to serve as as a soldier." Even the loyal Highlanders in the Duke of Cumberland's army had been compelled in part to adopt the southern garb. "Near Linlithgow," writes Henderson, "the whole army passed in review before their illustrious General. When the Highlanders passed he seemed much delighted with their appearance, saying, 'They look very well; have breeches, and are the better for that." Some years later when Pitt "called for soldiers from the mountains of the North," "to allure them into the army it was thought proper to indulge them in the continuance of their national dress." Numerous were the devices to evade the law, and great must have been the perplexities of the magistrates. One of Wolfe's officers wrote in 1752, ​that "one of his serjeants had taken a fellow wearing a blanket in form of a philibeg. He carried him to Perth, but the Sheriff-substitute did not commit him, because the blanket was not a tartan. On his return he met another of the same kind; so, as he found it needless to carry him before a magistrate, he took the blanket-philibeg and cut it to pieces." Another officer wrote two months later: "One of my men brought me a man to all appearance in a philibeg; but on close examination I found it to be a woman's petticoat, which answers every end of that part of the Highland dress. I sent him to the Sheriff-substitute, who dismissed him."
Smollett, in his Humphry Clinker, pleads the cause of the dejected Highlanders, who had not only been deprived of their ancient garb, but, "what is a greater hardship still, are compelled to wear breeches, a restraint which they cannot bear with any degree of patience; indeed the majority wear them, not in the proper place, but on poles or long staves over their shoulders." In 1782 the Marquis of Graham brought in a bill to repeal this prohibitory Act. One of the English members asked that if it became law, the dress should still be prohibited in England. When six Highland soldiers had been quartered at a house in Hampshire, "the singularity of their dress," he said, "so much attracted the eyes of the wife and daughters of the man of the house that he found it expedient to take a lodging for them at another place." A Lowland friend tells me that one day at church her grandfather turned two Highland officers out of his pew, as he thought their dress improper where there were ladies. This she learnt from her aunt who had been present. Old Malcolm Macleod, if he did not return altogether to the ancient dress, nevertheless broke the law. "He wore a pair of brogues; tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare; a purple camblet kilt; a black waistcoat; a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord; a yellowish bushy wig; a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button." Sir Walter Scott tells us that "to evade the law against the tartan dress, the Highlanders used to dye their variegated plaids
​now," he writes, "generally use coat, waistcoat, and breeches, as elsewhere. Persons of distinction wear the garb in fashion in the south of Scotland."
While Johnson in the voyage to Raasay "sat high on the stern of the boat like a magnificent Triton," old Malcolm, no less magnificent through his attire, took his turn at tugging the oar, "singing an Erse song, the chorus of which was Hatyin foam foam cri, with words of his own." The original was written in praise of Allan of Muidart, a chief of the Clanranald family. The following is a translation of the complete chorus:
"Along, along, then haste along, For here no more I'll stay;
I'll braid and bind my tresses long, And o'er the hills away."
In the sound between Scalpa and Raasay, "the wind," writes Boswell, "made the sea very rough. I did not like it. 'This now,' said Johnson, 'is the Atlantic. If I should tell, at a tea-table in London, that I have crossed the Atlantic in an open boat, how they'd shudder, and what a fool they'd think me to expose myself to such clanger.'" In his letter to Mrs. Thrale he makes light of the roughness of the waves. "The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agitation." For a moment or two his temper was ruffled, for by the carelessness of their man-servant his spurs were carried overboard. "There was something wild," he said, "in letting a pair of spurs be carried into the sea out of a boat." What a fine opening we have here for the enthusiasm of the Johnson Club! An expedition properly equipped should be sent to dredge in this sound for the spurs, with directions to proceed afterwards to the Isle of Mull, and make search for that famous piece of timber, his walking-stick, which was lost there.
As the boat drew near the land the singing of the reapers on shore was mingled with the song of the rowers. It was frequently noticed by travellers how the Highlanders loved to keep time with their songs to whatever they were doing. Gray heard the masons singing in Erse all day long as they were building the park wall at Glamis Castle. An earlier writer tells how "the women in harvest work keep time by several barbarous tones of the voice; and stoop and rise together as regularly as a rank of soldiers when they ​ground their arms. They proceed with great alacrity, it being disgraceful for anyone to be out of time with the sickle" According to Pennant, "in the songs of the rowers the notes are commonly long, the airs solemn and slow, rarely cheerful, it being impossible for the oars to keep a quick time; the words generally have a religious turn, consonant to that of the people." Ramsay of Ochtertyre says that "the women's songs are in general very short and plaintive. In travelling through the remote Highlands in harvest, the sound of these little bands on every side has a most pleasing effect on the mind of a stranger." The custom, we learn from him, was rapidly dying out at the end of last century. I did not myself hear any of this singing in my wanderings; but a Scotch friend tells me that more than forty years ago she remembers seeing a field in which thirty Highland reapers were at work in couples, a man and a woman together, all singing their Gaelic songs.
Three or four hours' stout rowing brought the boat to the shore below the Laird of Raasay's house. "The approach to it," says Boswell, "was very pleasing. We saw before us a beautiful bay, well defended by a rocky coast; a good family mansion; a fine verdure about it, with a considerable number of trees; and beyond it hills and mountains in gradation of wildness." At the entrance to the bay is a rocky islet, where we landed, when we visited Raasay on the afternoon of a bright June day. As it was unoccupied, we took formal possession, with a better claim than the European nations have to the well-peopled islands of the Southern Seas. Its name, we learnt from our boatman, was Goat Island, and just as Johnson was addressed as Island Isa, so we were willing to derive our title from our new acquisition. We passed a full half an hour in our domain with great satisfaction. Who, we asked, "would change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?" The waves beat on our coast, breaking in white crests far away in the open sound. We looked across the little bay on the sunny shore of our nearest neighbour, the Laird of Raasay, and did not envy him the pleasant grassy slope, almost ready for the scythe, which stretched from his mansion to the edge of the sea, or the fine woods which covered the hills at the back of his house. We thought how much the scene is changed since our travellers saw it. Then there was no landing-place; ​steps had not been even cut in the natural rock. "The crags," Johnson complained, "were irregularly broken, and a false step would have been very mischievous." Yet "a few men with pickaxes might have cut an ascent of stairs out of any part of the rock in a week's time." There is now a small stone pier. The hayfield, in the memory of people still living, was all heathland down to the water's edge, with a rough cart-track running across it. Trees have been everywhere planted, and the hill-sides are beautifully wooded. Even before Johnson's time something had been done in the way
RAASAY.
of improvement. Martin in his Description of the Western Isles, mentions "an orchard with several sorts of berries, pot-herbs, &c." In the copy of Martin's work in the Bodleian Library, Toland has entered in the margin: "Wonderful in Scotland anywhere." Boswell mentions "a good garden, plentifully stocked with vegetables, and strawberries, raspberries, currants, &c." The house—that "neat modern fabric," which Johnson praises as "the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness"—still remains, but it is almost hidden beneath the great additions which have in later years been made. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says: "It is not large, though we ​were told in our passage that it had eleven fine rooms, nor magnificently furnished, but our utensils were most commonly silver. We went up into a dining room about as large as your blue room, where we had something given us to eat, and tea and coffee." The blue room, less fortunate than its rival at Raasay, has been swept away, with all the beauty and the associations of Streatham Park. I was shown his chamber, with his portrait hanging on the wall. A walking-stick which he had used is treasured up. From his windows he looked down into the garden. However productive it may have been, it was not, I fear, so gay with flowers as it was when I saw it, or so rich in shrubs. I walked between fuchsia hedges that were much higher than my head. One fuchsia bush, or rather tree, which stood apart, covered with its branches a round of sixty feet. Its trunk was as thick as a man's thigh. The Western Islands are kept free from severe frosts by the waters of the Gulf Stream, so that in the spots which face the southern suns, and are sheltered from the north and east, there is a growth which rivals, and perhaps outdoes, that of Devonshire and Cornwall.
Not far from the house is the ruined chapel which provoked Johnson's sarcasm. "It has been," he writes, "for many years popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected churches we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall." Boswell took a more cheerful view. "There was something comfortable," he wrote, "in the thought of being so near a piece of consecrated ground." Here they looked upon the tombs of the Macleods of Raasay, that ancient family which boasted that "during four hundred years they had not gained or lost a single acre;" which was worthily represented in their host; which lasted for two generations longer, and then sank in ruins amidst the wild follies of a single laird. Whilst rack-renting landlords were driving their people across the wide Atlantic, Macleod of Raasay could boast "that his island had not yet been forsaken by a single inhabitant." Pleased with all he saw, "Johnson was in fine spirits. 'This,' he said, 'is truly the patriarchal life; this is what we came to find.'" He was delighted with the free and friendly life, the feasting and the dancing, and all ​"the pleasures of this little Court." The evening of their arrival, as soon as dinner was finished, "the carpet was taken up, the fiddler of the family came, and a very vigorous and general dance was begun." According to Boswell, "Johnson was so delighted with this scene, that he said, 'I know not how we shall get away.' It entertained me to observe him sitting by, while we danced, sometimes in deep meditation, sometimes smiling complacently, sometimes looking upon Hooke's Roman History, and sometimes talking a little, amidst the noise of the ball, to Mr. Donald McQueen, who anxiously gathered knowledge from him."The same accommodating hospitality was shown here as at Corrichatachin in finding sleeping room for the large party that was assembled. "I had a chamber to myself," writes Johnson, "which in eleven rooms to forty people was more than my share. How the company and the family were distributed is not easy to tell. Macleod, the chieftain of Dunvegan, and Boswell and I had all single chambers on the first floor. There remained eight rooms only for at least seven-and-thirty lodgers. I suppose they put up temporary beds in the dining-room, where they stowed all the young ladies. There was a room above stairs with six beds, in which they put ten men." The patriarchal life was so complete that in this island, with a population estimated at nine hundred, there was neither justice of the peace nor constable. Even in Skye there was but one magistrate, and, so late as forty years ago, but one policeman. Raasay is still without a justice. The people, I was told, settle all their disputes among themselves, and keep clear of crime. Much of the land is still held on the old tribal system. "I have ascertained," writes Sir Henry Maine," that the families which formed the village communities only just extinct in the Western Highlands had the lands of the village re-distributed among them by lot at fixed intervals of time." In Raasay there are little plots of land which every year are still distributed by lot. So small are they, and so close together that it often happens that five or six families are all at the same time getting in their harvest on a strip not much larger than a couple of lawn tennis grounds.
Boswell with three Highland gentlemen spent one day in exploring the island, and in climbing to the top of Dun Can, or ​Raasay's Cap, as sailors called the mountain, to whom far away at sea it was a conspicuous landmark. On the top they danced a Highland reel. If we may trust the statement of a young English tourist, the dance was just as enjoyable, though there were no ladies for partners. "The Scotch," he writes, "admire the reel for its own merit alone. A Scotchman comes into an assembly room as he would into a field of exercise, dances till he is literally tired, possibly without ever looking at his partner. In most countries the men have a partiality for dancing with a woman: but here I have frequently seen four gentlemen perform one of these reels seemingly
DUN CAN.
with the same pleasure as if they had had the most sprightly girl for a partner. They give you the idea that they could with equal glee cast off round a joint-stool or set to a corner cupboard." Beyond Dun Can to the north-west the travellers visited the ruins of the old castle, once the residence of the lairds of Raasay. On their return from their walk of four-and-twenty miles over very rugged ground, "we piqued ourselves," Boswell writes, "at not being outdone at the nightly ball by our less active friends, who had remained at home."
Of the ancient crosses which he mentions I fear but one is ​remaining. Martin, who looked upon them as pyramids to the deceased ladies of the family, found eight. Malcolm Macleod thought that they were "false sentinels—a common deception to make invaders imagine an island better guarded." The learned M'Queen maintained that they "marked the boundaries of the sacred territory within which an asylum was to be had." In this opinion Boswell concurred.
Delightful as the mansion at Raasay seemed to the travellers, with "the rough ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling storm without, while within was plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance," yet it had seen another sight only seven-and-twenty years earlier. In the island the Young Pretender "in his distress was hidden for two nights, and the king's troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess," continues Johnson, "at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their king; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths." Pleased as our travellers were with their four days' residence here, in the midst of storms and rain, how much would their pleasure have been increased could they have seen it as I saw it in the bright summer weather! No one who visited it then would have said with Johnson that "it has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and his family." It has almost everything that Nature can give in the delightfulness of scenery and situation. Like Boswell, as I gazed upon it, I might "for a moment have doubted whether unhappiness had any place in Raasay;" but, like him, I might "soon have had the delusion dispelled," by recalling Johnson's lines:
"Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee."
* ↑ Johnson's Works, ix. 47.
* ↑ The philibeg, or fillibeg, is defined as "the dress or petticoat reaching nearly to the knees."
* ↑ An Act to Amend the Disarming Act of the 19 Geo. II., made in the 21 Geo. II. Edinburgh, 1748, p. 15.
* ↑ Henderson's History of the Rebellion, p. 99.
* ↑ Johnson's Works, ix. 94.
* ↑ Wright's Life of Wolfe, pp. 216-18.
* ↑ Humphry Clinker, iii. 20.
* ↑ Gentleman's Magazine, 1782, p. 307.
* ↑ Croker's Boswell, p. 316
* ↑ Martin's Description of the Western Islands, pp. 206-7.
* ↑ Croker's Boswell, p. 364.
* ↑ Gray's Works, iv. 55.
* ↑ Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, ii. 142.
* ↑ Voyage to the Hebrides, ed. 1774, p. 291.
* ↑ Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century. ii. 410, 415.
* ↑ Page 164.
* ↑ Johnson seems to use this word in much the same sense as Caliban does when he speaks of Prosperous "brave utensils" (The Tempest, act iii. sc. 2). In his Journey, he says that in the Hebrides "they use silver on all occasions where it is common in England, nor did I ever find a spoon of horn but in one house."
* ↑ This was Johnson's estimate, based on the number of men who took part in the Rebellion of 1745. The population in 1881 was 750.
* ↑ Lectures an the Early History of Institutions, ed. 1875, p. 101.
* ↑ E. Topham's Letters front Edinburgh, p. 264.
* ↑ I am much indebted to Mr. A. E. Stewart, of Raasay, for his kindness in showing me whatever there was to see, and for his present of the photograph of the old castle.
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