Raasay is supposed to have been very long inhabited. On one side
of it they show caves, into which the rude nations of the first
ages retreated from the weather. These dreary vaults might have
had other uses. There is still a cavity near the house called the
oar-cave, in which the seamen, after one of those piratical
expeditions, which in rougher times were very frequent, used, as
tradition tells, to hide their oars. This hollow was near the sea,
that nothing so necessary might be far to be fetched; and it was
secret, that enemies, if they landed, could find nothing. Yet it
is not very evident of what use it was to hide their oars from
those, who, if they were masters of the coast, could take away
their boats.
A proof much stronger of the distance at which the first possessors
of this island lived from the present time, is afforded by the
stone heads of arrows which are very frequently picked up. The
people call them Elf-bolts, and believe that the fairies shoot them
at the cattle. They nearly resemble those which Mr. Banks has
lately brought from the savage countries in the Pacifick Ocean, and
must have been made by a nation to which the use of metals was
unknown.
The number of this little community has never been counted by its
ruler, nor have I obtained any positive account, consistent with
the result of political computation. Not many years ago, the late
Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition. The
sixth part of a people is supposed capable of bearing arms: Raasay
had therefore six hundred inhabitants. But because it is not
likely, that every man able to serve in the field would follow the
summons, or that the chief would leave his lands totally
defenceless, or take away all the hands qualified for labour, let
it be supposed, that half as many might be permitted to stay at
home. The whole number will then be nine hundred, or nine to a
square mile; a degree of populousness greater than those tracts of
desolation can often show. They are content with their country,
and faithful to their chiefs, and yet uninfected with the fever of
migration.
Near the house, at Raasay, is a chapel unroofed and ruinous, which
has long been used only as a place of burial. About the churches,
in the Islands, are small squares inclosed with stone, which belong
to particular families, as repositories for the dead. At Raasay
there is one, I think, for the proprietor, and one for some
collateral house.
It is told by Martin, that at the death of the Lady of the Island,
it has been here the custom to erect a cross. This we found not to
be true. The stones that stand about the chapel at a small
distance, some of which perhaps have crosses cut upon them, are
believed to have been not funeral monuments, but the ancient
boundaries of the sanctuary or consecrated ground.
Martin was a man not illiterate: he was an inhabitant of Sky, and
therefore was within reach of intelligence, and with no great
difficulty might have visited the places which he undertakes to
describe; yet with all his opportunities, he has often suffered
himself to be deceived. He lived in the last century, when the
chiefs of the clans had lost little of their original influence.
The mountains were yet unpenetrated, no inlet was opened to foreign
novelties, and the feudal institution operated upon life with their
full force. He might therefore have displayed a series of
subordination and a form of government, which, in more luminous and
improved regions, have been long forgotten, and have delighted his
readers with many uncouth customs that are now disused, and wild
opinions that prevail no longer. But he probably had not knowledge
of the world sufficient to qualify him for judging what would
deserve or gain the attention of mankind. The mode of life which
was familiar to himself, he did not suppose unknown to others, nor
imagined that he could give pleasure by telling that of which it
was, in his little country, impossible to be ignorant.
What he has neglected cannot now be performed. In nations, where
there is hardly the use of letters, what is once out of sight is
lost for ever. They think but little, and of their few thoughts,
none are wasted on the past, in which they are neither interested
by fear nor hope. Their only registers are stated observances and
practical representations. For this reason an age of ignorance is
an age of ceremony. Pageants, and processions, and commemorations,
gradually shrink away, as better methods come into use of recording
events, and preserving rights.
It is not only in Raasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless;
through the few islands which we visited, we neither saw nor heard
of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The
malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency
together; and if the remembrance of papal superstition is
obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewise effaced.
It has been, 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.
Of the destruction of churches, the decay of religion must in time
be the consequence; for while the publick acts of the ministry are
now performed in houses, a very small number can be present; and as
the greater part of the Islanders make no use of books, all must
necessarily live in total ignorance who want the opportunity of
vocal instruction.
