The Spell of Scotland Part 21

One is bound to Staffa, incidentally, on the way to Iona, and for the sake of Mendelssohn. Always afterward one is bound to Staffa because of itself. If only one could have Staffa for one's self. But there are always fellow travelers, there is no inn, no habitation here, not even a shepherd's s.h.i.+eling, visible from the water. There are a few sheep, a shepherd, and so there must be a s.h.i.+eling. To be marooned here--was it here Stevenson understudied for Bill Gunn, and "cheese, toasted mostly"?

The cave is truly wonderful, a superb cathedral nave, with dark basaltic columns lifted in marvelous regularity, and arches lifting over with groining the hand of G.o.d.

"Nature herself it seemed would raise A minster to her Maker's praise."

The broken surfaces of the walls are in mosaic with green sea gra.s.ses and gleaming limpets, and the floor is a s.h.i.+fting thing of surging waves. The ocean thunders through the narrow gate as it has done since the time Staffa began, and since Mendelssohn, a mighty organ surge, like the "Overture to Fingal's Cave," and yet, more than that. To be here alone, to be the shepherd of Staffa, and come to this cathedral, with the might and mystery of the night about, and the winds and the sea making symphony--life will always hold many things in possibility, which cannot die!

From the top of Staffa, if one flees the pa.s.sengers a moment, may be seen the islands lying about whose names are romance, Trehinish, and Inchkenneth on Mull and Skerryvore, "the n.o.blest of all deep sea light,"

a mere speck on the far Atlantic--what vigils the man must have in the house of light built by Stevenson's father; and on to the far north and Skye; and to the near south and Iona.

"Where is Duncan's body?

Carried to Colme-kill, The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, And guardian of their bones."

Very definite was Shakespeare about these things. A more modern antiquarian would have doubted, and sent us wandering from pillar to post of royal burial places. But not the man who created what he declared. Icolmkill--Iona--certainly.

That such a little island could have had such a large history. It is so small a place, yet a beautiful island withal, and with its cathedral, now alas, "restored" and "reformed," and all its far sounding memories of Columba.

He came up from the South as we came down from the North, but his voyage was across the wide seas to unknown goals; while we have the advantage of having come after him to Iona. And yet, to Columba, valiant adventuring saint, Iona nor any other place was unknown goal. There was to him but one purpose in life, one goal. And he found it everywhere.

It was a large life and simple, austere but with unlimited horizon, that Columba lived here. It is a small exquisite life that is lived here to-day. Or, perhaps my belief in its proportion and perfection came because of contact with a certain two persons, man and woman, who had taken this life to themselves. While being practical in that they sold exquisite wares, in silver and gold and bra.s.s and bronze, each article, large or little, carrying some Ionian insignia, still they must have a very beautiful life, ever making things of beauty out of the historic heritage of this island. It was a large acc.u.mulation of jeweled hints they discovered here, in the ornamentations of the stones of Iona. They have used them to very lovely ends. And they have lived the life of memories and of the keen sea air.

One may have forty minutes, or day after day in Iona. And, of course, the reward and the intimacy is in proportion. It is a quiet fragment of land, the little village with its white-washed cottages in prim lines, and its simple cotters, perhaps a little more sophisticated than those of other western islands because of their continuing contact with a curious world; and yet these men and women and serious children live here the year round, and in winter there is no world, and the Atlantic thunders on the little land as though one beat of the wave would carry all into the abyss, or smashes on the rough granite coast of Mull across the strait.

The western sh.o.r.e of the island is cruel, even on a summer day. And if the "merry men" ran their violent ways on the sh.o.r.e of Mull, there are other Merry Men just as merry, just as lurking. As McLeod of Dare saw it--

"Could anything have been more beautiful than this magnificent scene ...

the wildly rus.h.i.+ng seas, coming thunderingly on the rocks, or springing so high in the air that the snow-white foam showed black against the glare of the sky; the near islands gleaming with a touch of brown on their sunward side; the Dutchman's Cap with its long brim and conical center, and Lunga also like a cap with a shorter brim and a higher peak in front, becoming a trifle blue. And then Col and Tiree lying like a pale strip on the far horizon; while far away in the north the mountains of Rum and Skye were faint and spectral in the haze of sunlight. Then the wild coast around, with its splendid ma.s.ses of granite; and its spare gra.s.s a brown-green in the warm sun, and its bays of silver sand; and its sea birds whiter than the clouds that came sailing over the blue."

On many of these western islands, and the northern, and it is said particularly on the far northern Shetlands, there are some dark somber faces remaining over from the Armada. The sea has never been kind; it breaks the rocks, it breaks men.

There are low-lying hills, the chief is Dun I, there are pasture lands, and still there are fields of wheat and clover. Just before he died, Columba was carried out to see the men at work in the fields. No doubt he lifted his eyes and looked around, on his little island, and the great sea, and the great world beyond. No doubt he wished he might live longer and labour farther. St. Columba who carried the Gospel and his gentle Irish gospel from the sixth century of Ireland into the far North until it swung round and met in Durham and York the Gospel and the culture coming up from Rome; and that neither so polished nor so Christian. Yes, even Columba regretted leaving the world behind him, though he was going to the other world.

Yes, I am certain he regretted leaving the island world behind him. Did he not sing of his longing--

"Delightful would it be to me to be in _Uchd Ailiun_ On the pinnacle of a rock, That I might often see The face of the ocean; That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, Source of happiness; That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves Upon the rocks; At times at work without compulsion-- That would be delightful; At times plucking dulse from the rocks; At times fis.h.i.+ng."

Thirteen hundred years ago; and the song is undimmed, and the world has not faded. The Port of the Coracle on the far side is still open to boats adventuring across pleasant or perilous seas. The very rock on which Columba landed, the traveler seeking the subtle transubstantiation from the past may stand on. And there is the White Beach of the Monks, where the companions of Columba paced to and fro in those days and in this lovely land that seems too far away to be believed in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHEDRAL OF IONA AND ST. MARTIN'S CROSS.]

The entire island is the shrine of the Saint, and not only the cathedral of Iona. In truth this particular church dates from six hundred years later than Columba, six hundred years backward from us. The crosses that stand in the cemetery of St. Oran, St. Martin's and the Maclean, the only two left out of nearly four hundred, cannot date much farther back than this, or than "gentle Duncan." There is a long line of graves, each with its aged granite slab, of the kings, Norwegian and Irish and Scottish, of those early centuries. I do not remember that I saw the one that speaks of Duncan. But I do remember that the carvings were very curious and often very fascinating, the "pattern" intricate and intriguing.

Once the cathedral was a place of magic, an unroofed broken shrine, where the winds might wander in search of the past, and where the moonlight might s.h.i.+ne through as lovely a cas.e.m.e.nt, tracery as exquisite, as at fair Melrose. If the generations coming six hundred years after us are to know of St. Columba, and not to reproach us for our cooperation with time the vandal, these roofs, this protection, must be afforded. Still, the gate is so close locked to-day that even Joseph Pennell could not steal in, and so closely watched that no black lamb or ram or other hobgoblin could affright Miss Gertrude White or cause her to cease loving the daring McLeod of Dare.

Yet, if one resolves as did Boswell, to leave the close inspection to Dr. Johnson, and "to stroll among them at my ease, to take no trouble to investigate minutely, and only receive the general impression of solemn antiquity," one will come upon much that is of particular impression, like the carvings about and on the capitals, with the early grace of the later Italians; quite worth careful preserving. And here is the altar, and I doubt not at this very spot--church shrines continue in this steadfast Scotland--Columba knelt before the G.o.d whose wors.h.i.+p he had brought over the seas, and was to carry still farther over land and seas. There may be one shrine in the Christian world more sacred. But not more than one. Dr. Johnson is still quite right--"The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."

The storm did not come, although we waited three days for it. Nothing but calm in the island of Iona, and peace on the deep of the Atlantic; tender dawns, still high noons, twilights of soft visible gray that lasted over to the next morning; a land of hushed winds and audible sounds, the seas lying like gla.s.s.

Not even on a Sunday morning when in a coracle, or some such smaller boat than one usually cares to venture, perhaps a lug, whatever that may be, we accompanied the clergyman to the mainland of Mull, and watched the stern sad faces of these far away folk as they listened to a very simple sermon of an old simple story. I remembered that at Earraid, Robert Louis Stevenson had been interested in the religious services held for the workmen who were cutting stone for a lighthouse building by Thomas Stevenson. From these people religion will go very late, if at all. Surely men and women need what Columba brought hither, now as ever.

And because of David Balfour I walked a little way into Mull, which still must look as he saw it, for except for the roadway it looked as though I were the first who had ever ventured that way since time and these rough granite heaps began.

"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye.

"Mull was astern, Rum on the port, Egg on the starboard bow; Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now?

"Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone!

Give me the eyes, give me the soul, Give me the lad that's gone!"

CHAPTER X

THE LAKES

All the world goes to the Trossachs. Yet there are only two kinds of people who should go, and they are as widely separated as the poles; those who are content and able to take the Trossachs as a beautiful bit of the world, like any lake or mountain country which is unsung, and then they will not take it but merely look at it; and those who know the Trossachs as theirs, The Trossachs, who can repeat it all from--

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade.

On to

"The chain of gold the king unstrung The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung Then gently drew the golden band And laid the clasp in Ellen's hand."

Half knowledge is exasperating to those who have whole knowledge; and half love--half love is maddening, should lead to ma.s.sacre by those whose love is all in all.

I cannot remember when I did not know "The Lady of the Lake"--which, of course, is the Trossachs. It is as though I knew it when I first knew speech, lisped in numbers and the numbers came. It was the first grown-up book I ever owned, and I own the copy yet. It is not a first edition, this my first and only edition. I presume that in those far away days when it was given to me, "a Christmas gift"--I always chose to receive it from my Scottish grandmother, though she had been dead thirty years before I came--I might have had a first edition for a song; but the preciousness of first editions had not yet become a fetich. Since then I have looked with respect and affection on that impress of "1810."

I have never looked on it with longing. So much better, that first edition of mine, an ordinary sage-green cloth-bound book, with ornamental black and gold t.i.tle, such as the inartistic Eighties sent forth; I do like to note that the year of its imprint is the year of my possession. It has not even a gilt edge, I am pleased to state. The paper is creamy, the ink is not always clear. And because it went through one fire and flood, the pages have little brown ripples, magic marginal notes. There is not a penciled margin in the whole volume.

That, in a book owned by one who always reads with a pencil in hand, is beyond understanding! And yet it was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea. Memory was tremendously active then, not quite the memory of a Macaulay, but still one reading, or at least one and a half, was sufficient to thrust the rimes of these two-edged couplets into unsurrendering possession. Criticism was in abeyance; there is not even a mark among the notes. I cannot be certain that I read them. Who reads notes at the age of eight?

I remember how my acquaintance began with "The Lady of the Lake," even before I read it. In those days there was little literature for children, and there was prejudice against that which was provided. There was especial prejudice in my own household. I think my teacher in school may have shared it. If he were an adult he would read, ostensibly to us, but for himself, something he could tolerate. Yes, it was he; an exception in those days, for in the public schools men seldom taught in "the grades."

He must have been a young man, not more than nineteen or twenty, waiting to mature in his profession. And Scotch, as I think it now; not only because his name was Kennedy, but because of his Highland dark eyes and hair, and because of certain uncanny skill in mathematics--as I thought who had not even a moiety--and because, oh, very much because, of the splendid tussle he had--tulzie! that's the word--a very battle royal to my small terrified fascinated vision, there on the school-room floor, with the two Dempsey boys, who were much older than the rest of us; they must have been as old as fourteen! One merited the punishment and was getting it. The other, with clan loyalty, came to his rescue. And the Highlander, white to the lips, and eyes black-and-fire, handled them both.

Oh, it was royal understudy to the combat at Coilantogle ford--

"Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu When on the field his targe he threw."

_The Trossachs_

To write a guide to the Trossachs--that has been done and done more than once; done with much minutiae, with mathematics, with measurement; to-day it is possible to follow the stag at eve, and all the rest of it, in all its footsteps; to follow much more accurately than did even Sir Walter; to follow vastly more accurately than did James Fitz James.

For, in the first place, the world is not so stupendous a place as it was in the days of Fitz James, or of Sir Walter. The Rockies and the Andes have been sighted, if not charted, and beside them the Grampians look low enough. Yet, fortunately, the situation can never be "beside them." The most remembering traveler has crossed the seas and buried his megalomanian American memories, let it be hoped, in the depths of the Atlantic. Neither Rockies nor Andes carry so far or so rich memories.

Sir Walter has never projected an imaginary Roderick Dhu or a King errant into any of the majesty or loveliness of those empty lakes and mountains. I can imagine in what spirit the Pennells came to Loch Lomond and declared that it "looked like any other lake." Dr. Johnson was quite right, sir. "Water is the same everywhere," to those who think water is water.

Of course the traveler should not come upon the land by way of Lomond.