Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  In later years there would be some criticism of Boswell for showing Johnson endorsing, in effect, the drunkenness. Boswell’s response eloquently points to the biographer’s responsibility: “In justice to him I would not omit an anecdote, which, though in some degree to my own disadvantage, exhibits in so strong a light the indulgence and good humor with which he could treat those excesses in his friends, of which he highly disapproved.” Johnson, in spite of his professed aversion for the lower classes, got into a lengthy and apparently enjoyable conversation with Mrs. Mackinnon, a kinswoman of Flora Macdonald, about her stories of Prince Charles and his escape. Boswell savored the two of them together, and she told everyone, “I’m in love with him. What is it to live and not love?” Johnson’s response, if any, is unknown.

  In addition to the exchanges with Mrs. Mackinnon, while he and Boswell were trapped by the inclement weather there Johnson indulged in some remarkable, if innocent, flirty play with a neighbor’s sixteen-year-old wife. “She was a neat, pretty girl,” Boswell recounts with relish. “She sat down upon Mr. Johnson’s knee, and upon being bid by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and kissed him. ‘Do it again,’ said he, ‘and let us see who will tire first.’ He kept her on his knee for some time (I’ll bet they could scarcely have pried her off) while he and she drank tea. He was now like a buck indeed. All the company laughed in great glee, and they were all pleased to see him have so much good humour. To me it was a very high scene. To see the grave philosopher—the Rambler—toying with a Highland wench!” My guess is that Boswell was a tad bit jealous of his companion at that point. Nonetheless, the picture is a funny one; for a man whose appearance could literally frighten small children to be so catered to must have been a delightful moment for him. Some critics have suggested that Johnson was probably very uncomfortable, but given his appreciation of sexuality, I doubt it. Besides, Johnson later read portions of Boswell’s notes and pronounced himself pleased.

  “The more I read of this, I think the more highly of you,” Johnson said.

  “Are you in earnest?” Boswell asked.

  “It is true, whether I am in earnest or no.”

  Boswell added a poignant note about the islanders’ increasing immigrations to America: “Mrs. Mackinnon told me that last year that when the ships sailed from Portree to America, the people on shore were almost distracted when they saw their relations go off; they lay down on the ground and tumbled, and tore the grass with their teeth. This year there was not a tear shed. The people on shore seemed to think that they would soon follow. This is a mortal sign.” As I said, there was nothing amusing about the clearances and what they did to the soul of Scotland. Still, Skye had been a wonderful experience for Boswell and Johnson, and so it had for me.

  11

  The Outer Hebrides

  I was now separating myself from Boswell and Johnson for several weeks. I was going where they and hardly anyone else in the eighteenth-century could have imagined going: to the Outer Hebrides, known as the Western Isles, the farthest western reaches of Scotland. Actually not that many people in the twenty-first century go there, either. It’s remote even from the places I’ve been that are remote.

  It was there Bonnie Prince Charlie first thought himself safe, and with good reason, although the English were so passionate about revenge that they followed him even there. Skye native Martin Martin (his father so loved his name that he named him twice) traveled to the Hebrides, and his 1703 book—A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, which so impressed the young Johnson, you may recall—is one of the first published accounts of what was there. (A Scottish clergyman named Donald Munro had visited some of the islands in 1549, but his published account lacks the clarity, thoroughness, and fame of Martin’s.) Martin noted how little others knew about the islands: “Foreigners, sailing thro the Western Isles, have been tempted … to imagine the Inhabitants, as well as the Places of their residences, are barbarous.” London’s Royal Society in 1690 knew virtually nothing of life in the Hebrides. In fact, as related by Martin, the people were civilized—with some quirks—and lived relatively harmoniously, at least once the Vikings finally stopped invading and left them alone.

  It’s difficult for anyone to know much about a place that doesn’t exist on maps. And the Outer Hebrides didn’t appear on maps—at least on any kind of map that got them in approximately the right order and the right place—until John Elder’s, which was published about 1543. One of the reasons it was so hard to map these islands was the necessity of mapmakers having to do their task in two ways, not just by land but also by sea. It was almost impossible to get a sense of the Hebrides, and except for the Vikings, there were few geographers with enough maritime experience and willingness to accomplish that formidable task.

  These “outer isles” form a 130-mile-long archipelago stretching from Lewis and Harris (they share one island but seem as if they are separate) in the far north to the Uists and Barra in the south. There are some two hundred islands and islets that comprise this area, though most of them consist of only a few rocks and remain uninhabited, reachable only by boat, and lacking much reason to visit them under any circumstances. The population of these islands now is about twenty-seven thousand; the capital, Stornoway, has about eight thousand people. There is a lot of empty space here. To get to the Outer Isles requires a boat in most cases; there is limited air service from the mainland, because it is always subject to the weather (as is everything in Scotland). There are surprisingly good roads for travelers, a few single tracks, and markings are good if you can read Gaelic. There are bilingual maps available since few visitors have a clue what the Gaelic words mean (Steornabhagh is Stornoway, for example).

  The Outer Hebrides remains the heart of Gaelic culture, not just because of the road signs, but also on account of the way of life. A majority of the islanders can speak Gaelic, though its usage is threatened by the dominance of English and incursions of everyone from travelers like me to businessmen from the mainland. The government here is determined to preserve the language, and it survives in the schools (where it is taught as part of nursery school, play school, and primary education) and in the church, where it is the means of communication in the services. Gaelic is lovely to the ear, less so to the eye, I’m sorry to say. Here’s why: This sentence in English—“In Scotland, there are some 66,000 Gaelic speakers and at least as many again in other parts of the world”—in Gaelic becomes, “A’ Ghaidhlig an SgoileAnn an Alba, tha mu 66,000 a’ bruidhinn na Ghaidhlig agus uimhir eile co-dhiu air feadh ant-saoghail.” The survival of language seems clearly worth much more than anyone’s inconvenience, however.

  Tourism isn’t nearly as important on the Outer Hebrides as the Inner Hebrides; clearly the distance and difficulty in getting here makes most travelers opt out. Boswell and Johnson would have struggled to find a boat to get them over the Minch, the name for the treacherous, wind-blown waters that separate the Outers from the Inners. When they were on their mid-fall journey, few boatmen would have had the courage to make that crossing; indeed, such a proposal would have been deemed foolhardy, and not many knew the waters. Boswell knew no one on the islands, so he could be assured of no warm welcome or even acceptable accommodation. No, a journey here would have been outrageous, and neither man would have considered it seriously.

  My CalMac ferry departed from Uig (pronounced Weeeg) near the northern tip of Skye in the morning. The weather was stormy, the rain stronger than the wind. I got my car in line for the ferry about an hour before departure, then stepped into the ticket office for a cup of tea. I would be on the ferry for three hours, crossing first to Lochmoddy on North Uist and then, after a short pause to offload a handful of passengers, northward to the coastal town of Tarbert on the island of Harris. From there I would drive to Lewis and the house I had rented for a week’s stay.

  The crossing weather began on the stormy side, and when I stepped outside the passenger lounge, the wind slapped my face with rain. The large ferry offe
red a surprisingly smooth and comfortable ride (thank you, CalMac; once again I was grateful not to have to contemplate capsizing), but the skies grew portentously dark, the water increasingly churning, and when I tried to step outside a second time, the door was blown shut by the wind. High waves crashed against the bow, and the ship’s side-to-side motion became more noticeable. Back inside over some hot soup, I heard radio announcements of a major storm with gale-force winds bearing down. One of the crew members told me that the wind already was up to gale force 8, more than forty miles an hour, and strengthening. He assured me we would make it to Tarbert, but there were no guarantees for the return trip today.

  I drove off the ferry at Tarbert on Harris after a three-and-a half-hour journey, convinced that the Outer Hebrides were indeed way outer. The temperature was cold and falling. The wind was howling; I could hear it through the closed windows, and I began to worry about keeping the car on the narrow two-lane pavement. There was little choice; to my left were black peaks rising up to a blacker sky, and to the right was a drop-off to rocky waters. That’s where the wind was coming from, and I had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. The rain was pelting down, and the landscape looked like an uninhabited planet in a sci-fi movie. My pace was slow, deliberate, and I made cautious headway against the wind. Within twenty minutes or so, however, I entered more hospitable surroundings: buildings, cars, and signs of Stornoway. The rain eased up, and so did the wind.

  I located a grocery in town, bundled myself against the elements, and raced inside to load up on supplies for the week. The store was packed with shoppers on a Saturday afternoon. Everyone was talking about the approaching storm and filling up carts in preparation. Not a good sign, I figured; these people are used to whatever is going to happen, and I’m not. Nonetheless, several customers paused and commented on my American accent. They couldn’t have been more friendly and curious, especially wanting to know why I had come here in such an off-season. This time I had no Boswell and Johnson story; I’ve come, I said, because I’ve always been intrigued by the remoteness of this place. Because I expected it would not be like anywhere else I’ve ever known (which was certainly the case this far). And because I liked an adventure, though a very cynical friend back home suggested I could have an adventure just by driving Interstate-285 around Atlanta on a rainy-afternoon commute and save all the expense of going to Scotland. Cynics always miss the point.

  The grocery—one of two in Stornoway—wasn’t like an American grocery. It was considerably smaller with fewer choices than the average American supermarket. The produce and the meats and eggs and dairy products all had listed a point of origin, a specific county or shire, indicated on their packaging if they came from Scotland. Sometimes even an individual farm would be noted. I liked that accountability and the likelihood that something from nearby would be fresh. The portions of meat and produce were smaller than in the U.S.; typical portion sizes of meat were three to four ounces; the roasts appeared to be about half the size of roasts back home. One big difference: when I had to ask for directions to a specific product—and I had to do that a lot—no one seemed to know anything about Saltine crackers—a clerk would not point the way but personally guide me. I was impressed with this invariably courteous service. The bread and vegetables were pretty much picked over, most likely because of the stormy forecast. But the store still had a splendid supply of liquors, lawn furniture, and washing machines. I opted out of the latter two and focused on the liquor. The storm could last a while, I figured.

  My sturdy stone rental cottage was about twelve miles from Stornoway across the peat bogs, near the west coast village of Barvas, less than a mile from the North Atlantic. I knew a little about Barvas, just a fascinating tidbit of history. It’s only a small community now with a convenience store selling supplies and petrol and an assortment of housing around the road. The early explorer Martin Martin, however, wrote about a curious custom in this area:

  The natives in the village of Barvas retain an ancient custom of sending a man very early to cross the Barvas River, every first day of May, to prevent any female crossing it first; for that they say would hinder the salmon from coming into the river all the year round; they pretend to have learned this from a foreign sailor, who was shipwrecked upon that coast a long time ago. This observation they maintain to be true from experience.” In my short experience here, it seemed reasonable to expect the salmon might be blown across the river quite easily, sparing everyone the necessity of crossing the water.

  My host, bundled up in what appeared to be three sweaters, met me at the cottage to provide instructions about the heating system, the oven, the television, and so on. She said the house was a “good, renovated crofter’s home” and said to call about any problems—if the phone lines didn’t go down in the storm. She also warned that the storm was supposed to be a serious one overnight, and snow was likely tomorrow. Given that the wind blew me off my feet as I tried to walk from my car to the house with a bag of groceries, I took her words seriously. That night the storm hit in a fury. I found out later wind gusts reached one hundred miles an hour, and sustained winds were more than seventy. The rain seemed as if it would blast the house sideways. But nothing happened.

  The house was a rock. With walls three-feet thick, it neither budged nor made a sound even as the wind screamed outside. What I remember most, though, was the cold. It was so cold. It was colder than a demon spawn’s diaper rash. The electrical system put out only a miniscule bit of heat, and the house stayed frigid. I made a light dinner and climbed into a bed with sheets that must have been stored in an igloo. I’ve had frozen carp warmer than those linens. It was colder than the Bonnie Prince’s corpse. It was so cold … well, you get the idea.

  In the morning it was still cold, it was still raining and the wind was still blowing, though gusts were now only fifty miles an hour or so. The phone worked. Wearing my own three sweaters, I made breakfast and looked out toward the ocean. I couldn’t believe my eyes—next door, about fifty yards away, there was an elderly white-haired man walking through the wind, carrying a feed bag and heading toward a flock of sheep hunkered down on the ground. He calmly fed his flock, then gracefully walked back to his house, barely bent by the maelstrom around him. How did he do that? I fell over on a paved path just crossing the twenty feet from my car to the front door. I felt very much a visitor in this unusual place.

  And then it snowed, not a lot, but it snowed. In the cutting wind I stayed inside all day. It was “Silent Sunday,” and on this Calvinist Presbyterian island, nothing was open: petrol stations, groceries, shops. It was a good day to make a hot peat fire—there’s lots of peat on this island; it’s been the preferred fuel for centuries—and my host left me fifty pounds for starters. It was hard to get the flame going, but once lighted the fire remained hot and easy to maintain. I read, and I could scarcely do better than my two choices: Adam Nicolson’s Sea Room, an eloquent account of a man taking ownership of the Shaint Islands off the southeast coast of the Western Isles, and David Yeadon’s Seasons on Harris, a lovely and perceptive true story by an American who spent a year in the Outer Hebrides. Both are packed with valuable insights on the people and the land and should be required reading for anyone who even imagines a trip here. The house was surprisingly roomy; it even had a glass-protected sun porch attached to the back, though I never used it—no sun, naturally—and wondered how much use it could possibly get even in the middle of summer.

  Imagining trips here has been a cottage industry for generations. The islands have inspired some passionate and beautiful words from writers who never got farther physically than the Scottish west coast. Few have produced more moving words than the English poet William Wordsworth in “The Solitary Reaper.” Here is his poem:

  Behold her, single in the field,

  Yon solitary Highland Lass!

  Reaping and singing by herself;

  Stop here, or gently pass!

  Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,


  And sings a melancholy strain;

  O listen! for the Vale profound

  is overflowing with the sound.

  No nightingale did ever chant

  More welcome notes to weary bands

  Of travellers in some shady haunt,

  Among Arabian sands:

  A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard

  In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

  Breaking the silence of the seas

  Among the farthest Hebrides.

  Will no one tells me what she sings?—

  Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

  For old, unhappy, far-off things,

  And battles long ago:

  Or is it some more humble lay,

  Familiar matter of to-day?

  Some natural sorrow, loss or pain,

  that has been, and may be again.

  Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang

  As if her song could have no ending;

  I saw her singing at her work,

  And o’er the sickle bending;—

  I listened, motionless and still,

  And, as I mounted up the hill,

  The music in my heart I bore,

  Long after it was heard no more.

  We don’t know what specific girl might have inspired those lines, but it is not unlikely that the solitary reaper was an island girl. Lowland Scottish women often went to the islands for the harvest after their own had been completed. And her song suggests as much; music has always been an accompaniment to work in the islands, and a voice in Gaelic would have been unfamiliar to Wordsworth when he visited the west coast in 1803. Gaelic songs and hymns were published in the mid-nineteenth century; might they not have been the words that the poet heard and responded to earlier?