Had They
Been Sea-Marks Or Light-Houses, They Would Have Been Of More Use To
The Invader Than The Natives, Who Could Want No Such Directions Of
Their Own Waters:
For a watch-tower, a cottage on a hill would
have been better, as it would have commanded a wider view.
If they be considered merely as places of retreat, the situation
seems not well chosen; for the Laird of an Island is safest from
foreign enemies in the center; on the coast he might be more
suddenly surprised than in the inland parts; and the invaders, if
their enterprise miscarried, might more easily retreat. Some
convenience, however, whatever it was, their position on the shore
afforded; for uniformity of practice seldom continues long without
good reason.
A castle in the Islands is only a single tower of three or four
stories, of which the walls are sometimes eight or nine feet thick,
with narrow windows, and close winding stairs of stone. The top
rises in a cone, or pyramid of stone, encompassed by battlements.
The intermediate floors are sometimes frames of timber, as in
common houses, and sometimes arches of stone, or alternately stone
and timber; so that there was very little danger from fire. In the
center of every floor, from top to bottom, is the chief room, of no
great extent, round which there are narrow cavities, or recesses,
formed by small vacuities, or by a double wall. I know not whether
there be ever more than one fire-place. They had not capacity to
contain many people, or much provision; but their enemies could
seldom stay to blockade them; for if they failed in the first
attack, their next care was to escape.
The walls were always too strong to be shaken by such desultory
hostilities; the windows were too narrow to be entered, and the
battlements too high to be scaled. The only danger was at the
gates, over which the wall was built with a square cavity, not
unlike a chimney, continued to the top. Through this hollow the
defendants let fall stones upon those who attempted to break the
gate, and poured down water, perhaps scalding water, if the attack
was made with fire. The castle of Lochbuy was secured by double
doors, of which the outer was an iron grate.
In every castle is a well and a dungeon. The use of the well is
evident. The dungeon is a deep subterraneous cavity, walled on the
sides, and arched on the top, into which the descent is through a
narrow door, by a ladder or a rope, so that it seems impossible to
escape, when the rope or ladder is drawn up. The dungeon was, I
suppose, in war, a prison for such captives as were treated with
severity, and, in peace, for such delinquents as had committed
crimes within the Laird's jurisdiction; for the mansions of many
Lairds were, till the late privation of their privileges, the halls
of justice to their own tenants.
As these fortifications were the productions of mere necessity,
they are built only for safety, with little regard to convenience,
and with none to elegance or pleasure. It was sufficient for a
Laird of the Hebrides, if he had a strong house, in which he could
hide his wife and children from the next clan. That they are not
large nor splendid is no wonder. It is not easy to find how they
were raised, such as they are, by men who had no money, in
countries where the labourers and artificers could scarcely be fed.
The buildings in different parts of the Island shew their degrees
of wealth and power. I believe that for all the castles which I
have seen beyond the Tweed, the ruins yet remaining of some one of
those which the English built in Wales, would supply materials.
These castles afford another evidence that the fictions of
romantick chivalry had for their basis the real manners of the
feudal times, when every Lord of a seignory lived in his hold
lawless and unaccountable, with all the licentiousness and
insolence of uncontested superiority and unprincipled power. The
traveller, whoever he might be, coming to the fortified habitation
of a Chieftain, would, probably, have been interrogated from the
battlements, admitted with caution at the gate, introduced to a
petty Monarch, fierce with habitual hostility, and vigilant with
ignorant suspicion; who, according to his general temper, or
accidental humour, would have seated a stranger as his guest at the
table, or as a spy confined him in the dungeon.
Lochbuy means the Yellow Lake, which is the name given to an inlet
of the sea, upon which the castle of Mr. Maclean stands. The
reason of the appellation we did not learn.
We were now to leave the Hebrides, where we had spent some weeks
with sufficient amusement, and where we had amplified our thoughts
with new scenes of nature, and new modes of life. More time would
have given us a more distinct view, but it was necessary that Mr.
Boswell should return before the courts of justice were opened; and
it was not proper to live too long upon hospitality, however
liberally imparted.
Of these Islands it must be confessed, that they have not many
allurements, but to the mere lover of naked nature. The
inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and
penury give little pleasure.
The people collectively considered are not few, though their
numbers are small in proportion to the space which they occupy.
Mull is said to contain six thousand, and Sky fifteen thousand. Of
the computation respecting Mull, I can give no account; but when I
doubted the truth of the numbers attributed to Sky, one of the
Ministers exhibited such facts as conquered my incredulity.
Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the
people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary
price of the necessaries of life; a principle of judgment which is
never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the
value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown
quantity by an uncertain standard.
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