Part 3

Sitting in the inn I began to remember me how frequently I had heard in the south of the destitution of the Skye people and the discomfort of the Skye hut. During my wanderings I had the opportunity of visiting several of these dwellings, and seeing how matters were transacted within. Frankly speaking, the Highland hut is not a model edifice. It is open to wind, and almost always pervious to rain. An old bottomless herring-firkin stuck in the roof usually serves for chimney, but the blue peat-reek disdains that aperture, and steams wilfully through the door and the crannies in the walls and roof. The interior is seldom well-lighted--what light there is proceeding rather from the orange glow of the peat-fire, on which a large pot is simmering, than from the narrow pane with its great bottle-green bull's-eye. The rafters which support the roof are black and glossy with soot, as you can notice by sudden flashes of firelight. The sleeping accommodation is limited, and the beds are composed of heather or ferns. The floor is the beaten earth, the furniture is scanty; there is hardly ever a chair--stools and stones, worn smooth by the usage of several generations, have to do instead. One portion of the hut is not unfrequently a byre, and the breath of the cow is mixed with the odour of peat-reek, and the baa of the calf mingles with the wranglings and swift ejaculations of the infant Highlanders. In such a hut as this there are sometimes three generations. The mother stands knitting outside, the children are scrambling on the floor with the terrier and the poultry, and a ray of cloudy sunshine from the narrow pane smites the silver hairs of the grandfather near the fire, who is mending fishing-nets against the return of his son-in-law from the south. Am I inclined to lift my hands in horror at witnessing such a dwelling? Certainly not. I have only given one side of the picture. The hut I speak of nestles beneath a rock, on the top of which dances the ash-tree and the birch. The emerald mosses on its roof are softer and richer than the velvets of kings. Twenty yards down that path you will find a well that needs no ice in the dog-days. At a little distance, from rocky shelf to shelf, trips a mountain burn, with abundance of trout in the brown pools. At the distance of a mile is the sea, which is not allowed to ebb and flow in vain; for in the smoke there is a row of fishes drying; and on the floor a curly-headed urchin of three years or thereby is pommeling the terrier with the scarlet claw of a lobster. Methought, too, when I entered I saw beside the door a heap of oyster shells. Within the hut there is good food, if a little scant at times; without there is air that will call colour back to the cheek of an invalid, pure water, play, exercise, work. That the people are healthy, you may see from their strong frames, brown faces, and the age to which many attain; that they are happy and light-hearted, the shouts of laughter that ring round the peat-fire of an evening may be taken as sufficient evidence. I protest I cannot become pathetic over the Highland hut. I have sat in these turfen dwellings, amid the surgings of blue smoke, and received hospitable welcome, and found amongst the inmates good sense, industry, family affection, contentment, piety, happiness. And when I have heard philanthropists, with more zeal than discretion, maintain that these dwellings are a disgrace to the country in which they are found, I have thought of districts of great cities which I have seen,--within the sound of the rich man's chariot wheels, within hearing of multitudinous Sabbath bells--of evil scents and sights and sounds; of windows stuffed with rags; of female faces that look out on you as out of a sadder Inferno than that of Dante's; of faces of men containing the debris of the entire decalogue, faces which hurt you more than a blow would: of infants poisoned with gin, of children bred for the prison and the hulks. Depend upon it there are worse odours than peat smoke, worse next-door neighbours than a cow or a brood of poultry; and although a couple of girls dragging a harrow be hardly in accordance with our modern notions, yet we need not forget that there are worse employment for girls than even that. I do not stand up for the Highland hut; but in one of these smoky cabins I would a thousand-fold rather spend my days than in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, or in one of the streets that radiate from Seven Dials.

[Sidenote: A Highland village.]

After travelling three or four days, I beheld on the other side of a long, blue, river-like loch, the house of the Landlord. From the point at which I now paused, a boat could have taken me across in half an hour, but as the road wound round the top of the Loch, I had yet some eight or ten miles to drive before my journey was accomplished. Meantime the Loch was at ebb and the sun was setting. On the hill-side, on my left as I drove, stretched a long street of huts covered with smoky wreaths, and in front of each a strip of cultivated ground ran down to the road which skirted the shore. Potatoes grew in one strip or lot, turnips in a second, corn in a third, and as these crops were in different stages of advancement, the entire hillside, from the street of huts downward, resembled one of those counterpanes which thrifty housewifes manufacture by sewing together patches of different patterns. Along the road running at the back of the huts a cart was passing; on the moory hill behind, a flock of sheep, driven by men and dogs, was contracting and expanding itself like quicksilver. The women were knitting at the hut doors, the men were at work in the cultivated patches in front. On all this scene of cheerful and fortunate industry, on men and women, on turnips, oats, and potatoes, on cottages set in azure films of peat-reek, the rosy light was striking--making a pretty spectacle enough. From the whole hill-side breathed peace, contentment, happiness, and a certain sober beauty of usefulness. Man and nature seemed in perfect agreement and harmony--man willing to labour, nature to yield increase. Down to the head of the Loch the road sloped rapidly, and at the very head a small village had established itself. It contained an inn, a school-house, in which divine service was held on Sundays; a smithy, a merchant's shop--all traders are called _merchants_ in Skye--and, by the side of a stream which came brawling down from rocky steep to steep, stood a corn mill, the big wheel lost in a watery mist of its own raising, the door and windows dusty with meal. Behind the village lay a stretch of black moorland intersected by drains and trenches, and from the black huts which seemed to have grown out of the moor, and the spaces of sickly green here and there, one could see that the desolate and forbidding region had its colonists, and that they were valiantly attempting to wring a sustenance out of it. Who were the squatters on the black moorland? Had they accepted their hard conditions as a matter of choice, or had they been banished there by a superior power? Did the dweller in those outlying huts bear the same relation to the villagers, or the flourishing cotters on the hill-side, that the gipsy bears to the English peasant, or the red Indian to the Canadian farmer? I had no one to inform me at the time; meanwhile the sunset fell on these remote dwellings, lending them what beauty and amelioration of colour it could, making a drain sparkle for a moment, turning a far-off pool into gold leaf, and rendering, by contrast of universal warmth and glow, yet more beautiful the smoke which swathed the houses. Yet after all the impression made upon one was cheerless enough. Sunset goes but a little way in obviating human wretchedness. It fires the cottage window, but it cannot call to life the corpse within; it can sparkle on the chain of a prisoner, but with all its sparkling it does not make the chain one whit the lighter. Misery is often picturesque, but the picturesqueness is in the eyes of others, not in her own. The black moorland and the banished huts abode in my mind during the remainder of my drive.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's house.]

Everything about a man is characteristic, more or less; and in the house of the Landlord I found that singular mixture of hemispheres which I had before noticed in his talk and in his way of looking at times. His house was plain enough externally, but its furniture was curious and far-brought. The interior of his porch was adorned with heads of stags and tusks of elephants. He would show you Highland relics, and curiosities from sacked Eastern palaces. He had the tiny porcelain cup out of which Prince Charles drank tea at Kingsburgh, and the signet ring which was stripped from the dead fingers of Tippoo Saib. In his gun-room were modern breech-loaders and revolvers, and matchlocks from China and Nepaul. On the walls were Lochaber axes, claymores, and targets that might have seen service at Inverlochy, hideous creases, Afghan daggers, curiously-curved swords, scabbards thickly crusted with gems. In the library the last new novel leaned against the "Institutes of Menu." On the drawing-room table, beside _carte-de-visite_ books, were ivory card-cases wrought by the patient Hindoo artificer as finely as we work our laces, Chinese puzzles that baffled all European comprehension, and comical squab-faced deities in silver and bronze. While the Landlord was absent, I could fancy these strangely-assorted articles striking one with a sense of incongruity: but when at home, each seemed a portion of himself. He was related as closely to the Indian god as to Prince Charles's cup. The ash and birch of the Highlands danced before his eyes, the palm stood in his imagination and memory.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's pets.]

And then he surrounded himself with all kinds of pets, and lived with them on the most intimate terms. When he entered the breakfast-room his terriers barked and frisked and jumped about him; his great black hare-hound, Maida, got up from the rug on which it had been basking and thrust its sharp nose into his hand; his canaries broke into emulous music, as if sunshine had come into the room; the parrot in the porch clambered along the cage with horny claws, settled itself on its perch, bobbed its head up and down for a moment, and was seized with hooping-cough. When he went out the black hare-hound followed at his heel; the peacock, strutting on the gravel in the shelter of the larches, unfurled its starry fan; in the stable his horses turned round to smell his clothes and to have their foreheads stroked: melodious thunder broke from the dog-kennel when he came: and at his approach his falcons did not withdraw haughtily, as if in human presence there was profanation; they listened to his voice, and a gentler something tamed for a moment the fierce cairngorms of their eyes. When others came near they ruffled their plumage and uttered sharp cries of anger.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's visitors.]

After breakfast it was his habit to carry the parrot out to a long iron garden-seat in front of the house--where, if sunshine was to be had at all, you were certain to find it--and placing the cage beside him, smoke a cheroot. The parrot would clamber about the cage, suspended head downwards would take crafty stock of you with an eye which had perhaps looked out on the world for a century or so, and then, righting itself, peremptorily insist that Polly should put on the kettle, and that the boy should shut up the grog. On one special morning, while the Landlord was smoking and the parrot whooping and whistling, several men, dressed in rough pilot cloth which had seen much service and known much darning, came along the walk and respectfully uncovered. Returning their salutation, the Landlord threw away the end of his cheroot and went forward to learn their message. The conversation was in Gaelic: slow and gradual at first, it quickened anon, and broke into gusts of altercation; and on these occasions I noticed that the Landlord would turn impatiently on his heel, march a pace or two back to the house, and then, wheeling round, return to the charge. He argued in the unknown tongue, gesticulated, was evidently impressing something on his auditors which they were unwilling to receive, for at intervals they would look in one another's faces,--a look plainly implying, "Did you ever hear the like?" and give utterance to a murmured chit, _chit, chit_ of dissent and humble protestation. At last the matter got itself amicably settled, the deputation--each man making a short sudden duck before putting on his bonnet--withdrew, and the Landlord came back to the parrot, which had, now with one eye, now with another, been watching the proceeding. He sat down with a slight air of annoyance.

"These fellows are wanting more meal," he said, "and one or two are pretty deep in my books already."

"Do you, then, keep regular accounts with them?"

"Of course. I give nothing for nothing. I wish to do them as much good as I can. They are a good deal like my old ryots, only the ryot was more supple and obsequious."

"Where do your friends come from?" I asked.

"From the village over there," pointing across the narrow blue loch. "Pretty Polly! Polly!"

The parrot was climbing up and down the cage, taking hold of the wires with beak and claw as it did so.

"I wish to know something of your villagers. The cotters on the hill-side seem comfortable enough, but I wish to know something of the black land and the lonely huts behind."

"Oh," said he, laughing, "that is my penal settlement--I'll drive you over to-morrow." He then got up, tossed a stone into the shrubbery, after which Maida dashed, thrust his hands into his breeches' pocket for a moment, and marched into the house.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's arrival.]

Next morning we drove across to the village, and pretty enough it looked as we alighted. The big water-wheel of the mill whirred industrious music, flour flying about the door and windows. Two or three people were standing at the merchant's shop. At the smithy a horse was haltered, and within were brilliant showers of sparks and the merry clink of hammers. The sunshine made pure amber the pools of the tumbling burn, and in one of these a girl was rinsing linen, the light touching her hair into a richer colour. Our arrival at the inn created some little stir. The dusty miller came out, the smith came to the door rubbing down his apron with a horny palm, the girl stood upright by the burn-side shading her eyes with her hand, one of the men at the merchant's shop went within to tell the news, the labourers in the fields round about stopped work to stare. The machine was no sooner put to rights and the horses taken round to the stable than the mistress of the house complained that the roof was leaky, and she and the Landlord went in to inspect the same. Left alone for a little, I could observe that, seeing my friend had arrived, the people were resolved to make some use of him, and here and there I noticed them laying down their crooked spades, and coming down towards the inn. One old woman, with a white handkerchief tied round her head, sat down on a stone opposite, and when the Landlord appeared--the matter of the leaky roof having been arranged--she rose and dropped a courtesy. She had a complaint to make, a benefit to ask, a wrong to be redressed. I could not, of course, understand a word of the conversation, but curiously sharp and querulous was her voice, with a slight suspicion of the whine of the mendicant in it, and every now and then she would give a deep sigh, and smooth down her apron with both her hands. I suspect the old lady gained her object, for when the Landlord cracked his joke at parting the most curious sunshine of merriment came into the withered features, lighting them up and changing them, and giving one, for a flying second, some idea of what she must have been in her middle age, perhaps in her early youth, when she as well as other girls had a sweetheart.

[Sidenote: The penal settlement.]

In turn we visited the merchant's shop, the smithy, and the mill; then we passed the schoolhouse--which was one confused murmur, the sharp voice of the teacher striking through at intervals--and turning up a narrow road, came upon the black region and the banished huts. The cultivated hill-side was shining in sunlight, the cottages smoking, the people at work in their crofts--everything looking blithe and pleasant; and under the bright sky and the happy weather the penal settlement did not look nearly so forbidding as it had done when, under the sunset, I had seen it a few evenings previously. The houses were rude, but they seemed sufficiently weather-tight. Each was set down in a little oasis of cultivation, a little circle in which by labour the sour land had been coaxed into a smile of green; each small domain was enclosed by a low turfen wall, and on the top of one of these a wild goat-looking sheep was feeding, which, as we approached, jumped down with an alarmed bleat, and then turned to gaze on the intruders. The land was sour and stony, the dwellings framed of the rudest materials, and the people--for they all came forward to meet him, and at each turfen wall the Landlord held a _levée_--especially the older people, gave one the idea somehow of worn-out tools. In some obscure way they reminded one of bent and warped oars, battered spades, blunted pickaxes. On every figure was written hard, unremitting toil. Toil had twisted their frames, seamed and puckered their leathern faces, made their hands horny, bleached their grizzled locks. Your fancy had to run back along years and years of labour before it could arrive at the original boy or girl. Still they were cheerful-looking after a sort, contented, and loquacious withal. The man took off his bonnet, the woman dropped her courtesy, before pouring into the Landlord's ear how the wall of the house wanted mending, how a neighbour's sheep had come into the corn, had been _driven_ into the corn out of foul spite and envy it was suspected, how new seed would be required for next year's sowing, how the six missing fleeces had been found in the hut of the old soldier across the river, and all the other items which made up their world. And the Landlord, his black hound couched at his feet, would sit down on a stone, or lean against the turf wall and listen to the whole of it, and consult as to the best way to repair the decaying house, and discover how defendant's sheep came into complainant's corn, and give judgment, and promise new seed to old Donald, and walk over to the soldier's and pluck the heart out of the mystery of the missing fleeces. And going in and out amongst his people, his functions were manifold. He was not Landlord only--he was leech, lawyer, divine. He prescribed medicine, he set broken bones, and tied up sprained ankles; he was umpire in a hundred petty quarrels, and damped out wherever he went every flame of wrath. Nor, when it was needed, was he without ghostly counsel. On his land he would permit no unbaptized child; if Donald was drunk and brawling at a fair, he would, when the inevitable headache and nausea were gone, drop in and improve the occasion, to Donald's much discomfiture and his many blushes; and with the bed-ridden woman, or the palsied man, who for years had sat in the corner of the hut as constantly as a statue sits within its niche--just where the motty sunbeam from the pane with its great knob of bottle-green struck him--he held serious conversations, and uttered words which come usually from the lips of a clergyman.

[Sidenote: The cottages on the hill-side.]

We then went through the cottages on the cultivated hill-side, and there another series of _levées_ were held. One cotter complained that his neighbour had taken advantage of him in this or the other matter: another man's good name had been aspersed by a scandalous tongue, and ample apology must be made, else the sufferer would bring the asperser before the sheriff. Norman had borrowed for a day Neil's plough, had broken the shaft, and when requested to make reparation, had refused in terms too opprobrious to be repeated. The man from Sleat who had a year or two ago come to reside in these parts, and with whom the world had gone prosperously, was minded at next fair to buy another cow--would he therefore be allowed to rent the croft which lay alongside the one which he already possessed? To these cotters the Landlord gave attentive ear, standing beside the turf dike, leaning against the walls of their houses, sitting down inside in the peat smoke--the children gathered together in the farthest corner, and regarding him with no little awe. And so he came to know all the affairs of his people--who was in debt, who was waging a doubtful battle with the world, who had money in the bank; and going daily amongst them he was continually engaged in warning, expostulation, encouragement, rebuke. Nor was he always sunshine: he was occasionally lightning too. The tropical tornado, which unroofs houses and splits trees, was within the possibilities of his moods as well as the soft wind which caresses the newly-yeaned lamb. Against greed, laziness, dishonesty, he flamed like a seven-times heated furnace. When he found that argument had no effect on the obstinate or the pig-headed, he suddenly changed his tactics, and descended in a shower of _chaff_, which is to the Gael an unknown and terrible power, dissolving opposition as salt dissolves a snail.