Off we set for stores to Taynuilt on a fine morning. The glass was going up. The good weather was coming. We tied the dinghy below high-water mark, for the tide had to ebb, and walked along the obviously ancient path, over the wooded hill and down to the bay, by the cottages, and up the stream to the Post Office, where we got our letters. Then to the hotel, where we refreshed ourselves and read the strange miscellany that a fortnight will gather together.
The sun was warm. We were in no hurry, did our shopping leisurely, and lay on a bank looking at Cruachan, wondering if we should tackle him some day. The goodness of life entered in at the pores. A week of perfect weather now and living might assume a dream-like beatitude. A woman in a shop had got lettuces from a private garden for the Crew. Tomatoes. A cabbage. Reaping machines were humming in the fields and the new-mown hay scented the air. ‘I think she’ll get me some fresh eggs, too,’ said the Crew drowsily of the woman with whom she had left her milk pail.
The woman duly produced the eggs and the Crew talked to her so long that I all but fell asleep in the shade. Then we came to a cottage, ablaze with roses and hydrangeas, and the Crew stood and stared, until the owner came, removing his old panama, and spoke to her.
They wandered about the little garden and into the little cottage, which all looked like the picture of a lovely memory. Which perhaps it was. For there was no woman now in that place.
Then I thought I should go and ask him about anchorages farther up the loch, and he told me there were a few, particularly one or two near the head of the loch where men went to fish.
‘Fish for what?’ I asked.
‘Trout,’ he answered.
‘The landlords, you mean?’
‘No, anyone. The landlords had tried to stop it—but had failed. It’s the sea.’
‘It’s paradise,’ I murmured.
Free fishing! The times were looking up. The landlords were growing wings. How pleasant and novel an exercise to write a sonnet in praise of landlords—by way of change from the miserable habit of girding at them or of stumbling over the ruins they had so lavishly scattered about the Highlands! We had trout rods and tackle with us. This very night, when the piper had finished, I should write the first sonnet in praise of landlords. And even if they had tried to stop folk fishing, still one could overlook a little thing like that.
So I bundled various parcels about my body, and, picking up the petrol tin of paraffin, led on, the Crew bringing up the rear with milk and eggs. I had the honey.
We had still about three miles before us, and we were a trifle sticky at the shoulder, before we saw our boat through the birches and the dinghy over the bracken. Mutely waiting for us in the quiet bay.
‘There they are!’ cried the Crew, and saluted with the eggs. The petrol tin rumbled response like a tom-tom. ‘Isn’t it lovely getting back to our own place?’
And behold! lying on a seat of the dinghy, a letter! A white envelope superscribed:
‘To the occupier of the Launch.’
An invitation, probably by a landlord, to dinner! We did not want an invitation by anyone to dinner, however . . . I tore open the envelope, withdrew a sheet of paper, and read:
‘————House,
Taynuilt, Argyllshire
July 27th 1937
‘As [the Landlord’s] unwelcome guests have not had the courtesy to call upon him, they are now compelled to do so as the oars are at the House.
‘The nuisance of bathing in front of the house having been added, the launch and the crew will be so good as to remove themselves forthwith.’
I was trying to make head or tail of this invitation, when the Crew said:
‘The oars are gone.’
And they were gone—including the broken third oar which we used as a roller.
But who on earth was this Landlord? And where his House? It was a pretty esoteric sort of practical joke. I read the note a third time, and the spirit beneath the phrasing came up and hit me.
I now remembered having once seen a large house standing back from the sea. But before the occupants of that house could see us they would have to walk a considerable distance! I Then the Crew remembered the woman and children who, the day before, had passed along the shore and stared at our boat. We had assumed no more than the usual and natural curiosity.
In a white heat of anger, I started off for that house, the letter in my hand, and in due course came in sight of the house and of a man walking in front of me.
‘Pardon me’, I said, ‘but can you tell me if that is the House?’
‘It is,’ he answered, ‘and I am—————.’
‘You wrote this letter?’
‘I did.’
And so the debate was joined.
It lasted all the way to the house and for some time at the house. There was thus ample time to go into the relevant points, and even some irrelevant ones, with considerable pith and precision. In some persons, curiously enough, a white heat of anger rising from a sense of injustice can occasionally induce a logical drive as notable for its restraint as for its ruthlessness. Nothing trivial, so to speak, is allowed to deflect the fine edgel For a time I toyed with the idea of attempting to detail that conversation here, but was dissuaded for several reasons, not least that, the important facts being on my side, it was, in the film phrase, relatively easy for me to register. Though I do regret the loss of certain passages touching our social life, because of their redeeming humour.
However, in so far as this may be considered a matter of public interest, perhaps I should mention at least two of these important facts. First, then, I was anchored in a sea bay (an anchorage, as it happened, recommended by an official book of sailing directions—a book on public sale). From such an anchorage, no landlord had the right to order my removal, either forthwith or at any other time. Fact second: the foreshores, like the bays, of our country are still a common heritage and possession. My dinghy was tied below high-water mark, and while she lay in that position no one had any right, legal or otherwise, to interfere with her in any way, much less remove her only valuable gear, namely the oars.
One fact on the personal side: we had not been ‘bathing in front of the house’. Actually we had never even entered the bay in front of the house. Therefore we had not committed ‘the nuisance’. (Later, we discovered a bathing pair who had doubtless been mistaken for us.)
For the rest, in such encounters---especially for those, like myself, who hate them—the perfect retorts are thought of afterwards—and generally in sleepless hours. This stands out as one of those happier occasions to which I still find I could have added nothing.
I marched away from that house with the three oars over one shoulder and probably well cocked in the air, for the final passages had not altered the temper of the occasion. Hm! had been a frequent comment. Hm! indeed!
‘Hml’ and the Crew emerged from behind a tree.
She had been following us up, afraid of the worst.
‘I heard your voices,’ she said, with a valiant effort to meet my high mood. Then she burst into laughter and caught my arm. ‘You didn’t do bad,’ she said, and shook again. She looked as if she might dance. Clearly our little altercation had had its amusing side.
And by the time we reached our own shore I was laughing with her, so we sat down above high-water mark.
For there was something at the back of my mind, beyond the personal, that had to come out. For years past in every part of the Highlands we had met the young on foot between youth hostel and youth hostel, and thought it the most heartening sight in the world, for these young folk were laying up memories, most of them to lie in the subconscious, that would be of incalculable potency in all their after life. Something deeper than feelings of freedom, of health, of its being their land, their country; something that goes to the primordial roots.
And now here is the second part of their country—the sea, infinitely more changeable and exciting than the land, giving a new aspect of the land, wedded to it, yet dangerous and subtle and distinct, calling out instancy and exaltation in a way the land never does.
If our trip was to have value for anyone beyond ourselves it must show how two persons, with no previous experience of handling a sea-going boat or reading charts or coming to strange anchorages, yet managed in their fashion to do these things and to have one of the most memorable of holidays, so that what we had done others could do as simply. All attempts to stop us therefore must—
‘I wonder what would have happened’, said the Crew, ‘if the letter had got blown off the seat before we came back? Or suppose we had climbed Ben Cruachan and returned at three in the morning, dead beat?’
So we laughed all over again as we rowed to our boat, where I put up the fishing rods; for trout from this quiet bay—if the anchorage had not been too much for them—might taste good.
That evening, when we had finished fishing (small timid trout) and the piper had finished his playing, the beauty of the deep night assumed a supernatural character. Where the sun had disappeared, a dream memory of gold and yellow hung in the north-western sky and was reflected in the loch’s still water. In the gulf of the north-east there was an uprising brightness as of the coming of morning. Eastward, a cloud over Ben Cruachan turned to silver, and the blue beyond it was all radiant light, heralding the rising moon. In the south, Venus hung very large and bright, and in some faint movement of the dark water her lamp became a Chinese lantern. The black hills were inverted in the loch and the sea’s margin lost. It was the beginning of our first spell of good weather.
A touch of frost in the morning, followed by brilliant sunshine, and soon we were in our dinghy rowing for Taynuilt. Before setting out, we locked our cabin door, a thing we had never thought of doing in the most thickly populated crofter area. For all the rest of our time in the bay we had the uncomfortable feeling of eyes being about, and this prompted us to do things and take precautions for the safety of our property, that we sensibly told ourselves must be absurd. The one positive thing achieved by the recent interference was this insidious destruction of harmony with environment. It had destroyed the completeness of peace. It is not that we feared what any man could do. In that material region we were prepared for diversion and, the issue now being joined, might have enjoyed it. It was the spirit that had been evoked and lay at the back of everything, as if waking into a joyous holiday one could not quite rid oneself of something sinister behind an absurd nightmare.
Six white galleys making down the loch two or three miles away, large and beautiful, like the escort to some fabled queen, knocked most things out of our minds. We blinked our eyes, but the vision remained, stately and slow-moving. In that direction lay ‘the fort of the sons of Uisneach, which is at Loch Etive in Alba’, and is ‘commonly called Bere-gonium’. Down there was the very core of the whole world of the poems of Ossian. Great warriors and beautiful queens and stately halls. Fingal and Darthula and Selma. The galleys were setting towards the Falls of Lora. ‘He hears at last the sound of Lora, and exclaims with joy “Selma is near”.’
Then the mirage effect passed and six swans at no great distance reached still water by the western shore. The illusion as to distance and size had been so complete that the Crew now doubted the swans themselves!
On the thickly wooded slopes above us as we rowed along were a few old Scots firs, rising over the oaks and the birches and the hazels, their twisting arms warm as with ruddy firelight, nursing grey-wrapped bundles that turned out to be herons. Sheep scraped little beds for themselves in the shingle and settled under the shadows of boulders. A flock of curlew rose up and flew away silently. A wood pigeon, pecking among the stones, showed no fear at our near presence. Old Ben Cruachan had still a nightcap above his head—that slowly lifted even as we looked.
We came to a house with a little private stone jetty in front of it, and we felt we might be allowed to tie up here, for it was a small house. So graciously was the permission given that we were almost made to feel we were conferring a favour!
So we now had the day before us and the dinghy safe.
The adventure with the oars helped, too, for in our endeavour to find out if the path through the woods was a right of way, we were sent from one person to another, who told us so many strange things that local lore, often so prosy and tiresome, inspired us to historic hunts.
One old man said that most of the Houses are comparatively new and in more than one instance have been built on what was once crofting ground. For all this land had belonged to Breadalbane, but now it was broken up into small estates, and perhaps the new owners were ‘worse than the old, for in the old days at least you could go anywhere you liked. Parties used to go over to your bay for picnics. No one ever challenged them—except once, and that was in the time of the previous proprietor and he tried to turn off the minister’s wife. But she dared him to his face. “Ha!” she said, “this is just what I have been waiting for. Make a case of it,” she challenged him.’
‘And did he?’
‘No. You see her husband was all for the crofters and the Land League. And her husband’s brother, also a minister, went to prison for them. So I suppose he was frightened.’
Then he told me so complicated a story about the history of the salmon rights, invoking kings and chiefs and centuries and charters, that I wondered how any ordinary mere man could have squeezed the right to throw the tiniest trout fly.
‘It’s not settled yet,’ he said. ‘But in view of all the circumstances the Crown itself does not feel confident enough to force an issue. Your name and address may be taken, however.’
‘One gets used to giving that. So this was all Breadalbane —Campbell—country once?’
‘Once—but not now. You know the old prophecy about the Campbells?’
‘No.’
‘That an old grey horse will one day carry all they possess over the ridge of Tyndrum.’
‘You make me see the wind in its grey tail.’
‘Myself,’ he said, ‘I have always found the Campbells very nice folk.’
‘But pretty good politicians. The grey horse is not likely to be foaled for a little while yet. So we can hold our sympathy even if Breadalbane has lost a few acres.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ said Mr. Macdonald.
The matter of the right of way was inclined to get lost in these excursions, and presently was forgotten altogether when a learned antiquary pointed toward Ardchattan on the other side of the Loch and said, ‘It was over there that Bruce held his last Gaelic Parliament.’
‘I thought that was all Deirdre—Ossian—country,’ I said, astonished.
‘It’s that, too. But Wallace passed along here before Bruce. And each of them fought a battle back there in the Pass of Brander.’
‘Really!’
‘Yes. And Cumberland passed this way after Culloden. It was some of his officers who saw all this fine wooded country and thought it would be the very place for smelting iron—with the charcoal.’
‘It was a great thought.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The English were always good at making money.’
‘And at using it, too.’
‘That’s true. Not so long ago they dug up some old coins over there at the Priory at Ardchattan. They were the coins of Edward the First.’
‘You mean English subsidies against Bruce—even then?’
He smiled at my surprise. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They were great politicians, the English.’
‘Not greater than the Campbells?’ I asked, jealous for my country.
‘Well—not greater perhaps,’ he said. ‘Just bigger.’
‘But tell me, they didn’t actually come and start smelting iron here?’
‘Oh yes. The foundries were working in my time. If you come over to this knoll, I’ll point them out to you. Sailing ships used to bring in the ore. But look—do you see that standing stone on the hill there above the village? That stone was put up by the furnace workers to celebrate the Battle of Trafalgar. It was the first monument to that battle to be put up anywhere in the world.’
‘In Taynuilt in Argyll! They are a very great race, the English,’ I said, deeply moved.
‘There’s not much goes past them,’ said my friend.
‘Can you tell me the name of any book dealing with all this history about Loch Etive?’
‘Not any one book I can think of. But there’s a book dealing with the Deirdre period you spoke of, a very fine and scholarly book it is, called Loch Etive and the Sons of Usnach, by Angus Smith. You should read that, if you want to get some idea of the culture that should have come out of our own past. It deals with every old corner around the loch.’
‘Very few folk,’ I said, having made a note of the book, ‘know about Deirdre—apart from the modern song. You know the song?’
‘Yes, I have heard it. What you say about folk not knowing is true. The clever ones go to college and learn about the Hebrews and the Greeks. And very wonderful people they were, too. Very.’
I felt the wonder in his pause.
‘About the song—yes, I have heard it,’ he resumed. ‘Though I wonder if the verse about Glendaruel [old Glendaruadh] refers quite to the place Deirdre was thinking of. Up the loch, there, is a place called Dail or Dal. There is a glen behind it with the colour ruadh on the hillside, sort of reddish-brown. It is a fairly common termination. For example, there is a hill on the right before you come to the head of the loch called Stob an Duine Ruaidh—the Stob of the reddish man. So why not at Dail—Glen-Dal-ruadh? Deirdre’s garden is about there. However, that’s just an idea, for Glendaruel is away in Cowal.’
This suggestion so deeply interested me that I realised, with a shock, how antiquarianism might take hold of a man. Historic places as such had never really had any deep appeal for me, whatever I may have pretended. Yet here I was promising I should even hunt out the cave where Campbell cut off Makfadyan’s head and presented it to Wallace—a story I had not hitherto even heard of!
‘I think a few real long walks would do us good,’ said the Crew, game for the next thing that might happen, as I pulled the dinghy home, taking advantage of every eddy by the shore, for the tide was against us. ‘And there—our old friend chorda filum—to tell us how the current runs!’
‘And there—look!’ I said.
A shapely young woman poised on a boulder in a bathing dress, and a young man taking her photograph. Their boat was drawn up beside them.
‘The mystery is solved,’ I suggested, ‘of the bathers who committed the “nuisance”.’
‘If only they knew how they were trespassing on that shore now!’ said the Crew.
‘Should I tell them?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Might be a pity to introduce the serpent into their idyll.’
‘True,’ said the Crew. ‘Besides, they might go and bathe yonder again.’
The weather continued lovely during all our stay in Loch Etive. Now and then, I grudged not being at sea, for this was the cruising weather we had dreamed of, and I had hankerings after the Gulf of Coirebhreacain. But we had promised the Mate to wait for him here. And if we went to sea, who could forecast where we should heave to, or for how long?
And the sun—was due a little quiet worship. So we wandered idly round the neighbouring country enjoying small personal adventures of no interest to anyone but ourselves. We got all our stores in Taynuilt. The milk was half cream. And there was amusement even in buying stores. For example, one day, when the sun had brought back our lost youth, the Crew got a sudden craving for a certain sort of liquorice she used to buy for a halfpenny. Hatless, wearing blue trousers and dark sun glasses, she looked so unlike a figure anxious for a halfpenny worth of liquorice that I challenged her to buy it.
She always accepts any challenge of that sort, so straightway entered a respectable shop in Taynuilt and said seriously, ‘I want a halfpenny worth of liquorice, please: the kind you tear off in strings.’
The man, who was not old, regarded her earnestly, anxious to serve but obviously at a loss.
She repeated her request. His face cleared intelligently. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘You want it for your bowels.’
There was a really splendid silence. Then I went out.
From a solitary excursion, she rarely came home without an odd encounter and a strange saying, some of them local and pithy, as of the old lady who remarked of certain individuals: ‘The trouble with them is that they have nothing to do but eat their bums out.’
Then word came that the Mate was held up a further three days.
‘We have never climbed Ben Cruachan, we have never hunted the cave in the Pass of Brander, and we have never gone up Loch Etive,’ said the Crew.
‘I was merely wondering’, I said mildly, ‘if we could manage the Gulf of Coirebhreacain.’
‘You know we can’t. And I have been reading all about the cave. Now listen. Here’s my synopsis. Are you listening?’
‘Yes. Where did you get it?’
‘Out of that book called Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, by Paterson. Will you listen?’
‘Is it long?’
‘Wallace’, the Crew began, ‘after the treachery and desperate retribution—it was terrible!—of the Barns of Ayr, had moved rapidly. He was resting at Dundaff when news reached him that Atholl, Buchan, Menteith and Lorn had risen against Argyll in the interest of Edward First of England. Neil Campbell of Lochow had defied Edward and stuck to his—my writing is not too good—’
‘Lands and heritages. Stout fellow!’
‘Heritage. That’s it! One Makfadyan, a low-born Irishman, had obtained a gift of Argyll and Lorn from Edward with the view of bringing the more inaccessible portion of Scotland under his control, and “false Jhon of Lorn”, having been made a lord in England, concurred.’
‘Wasn’t Edward a marvel! Talk of astuteness, political genius! And that touch of introducing a low-born Irishman—’
‘Duncan of Lorn, however, still struggled for the lands and joined Neil Campbell. They had against them therefore this Makfadyan, supported by four lordships, and by Makfadyan’s own considerable army supposed to have been brought out of Ireland. “Many of them”—to quote—“he had brought out of Ireland and with characteristic savagery, they spared neither women nor children . . . ”.’
‘Stop!’ I said. ‘I just can’t stand that. I don’t mind political astuteness taking a fellow’s land from him. Edward’s cleverness may have been diabolic but at least it was something the other fellows didn’t possess—and would probably have liked to have possessed. But this propaganda—already—against the Irish! It’s low. It’s an ugly sin. For if one thing is certain—and history is there to prove it—it is that the old fighting Gaels never killed women and children; they were chivalrous to an almost idiotic degree. Even in our own country, take the Prince Charlie rising and the march on Derby. Not one single little atrocity all the way from Moidart to Derby and all the way back to Culloden. The thing is phenomenal. As Cumberland proved within five bloody minutes. Or take Edward’s sack of Berwick and slaughter of the women and children. It’s remembered there to this day. What I’m getting at—’
‘ “Thai bestly folk”—this is Blind Harry, the Scots poet, on the Irish—“could nocht but byrn and sla”.’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Edward knew. Divide—and destroy. When you can’t fight the enemy, get him to fight himself. And there’s always money.’
‘Neil Campbell retired before Makfadyan to the head of the Pass of Brander and broke the bridge behind him. Wallace, having taken Stirling Castle, decided he had better have a look at this business in the west and set off with 2,000 men and Duncan of Lorn for guide. And in due course they came to the Pass of Brander and the fight took place in that narrow defile, high rocks behind, and in front “watter depe and wan”. It was a desperate encounter, for Makfadyan’s men fought stubbornly, but in the end Wallace prevailed, and Makfadyan jumped into the river Awe, held on to a rock until he got his armour off, swam across, and climbed up into a cave under Craigmore. But Duncan of Lorn went after him, and slew him in the cave, and brought his head back, which was stuck high on a rock for “honour of Ireland”—which I think was pretty savage,’ finished the Crew.
‘Hm. The irony, yes. Let us go and see that cave.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to the Gulf of Coirebhreacain?’
‘None of your Edward tricks on me. Come on.’
So off we set on a sunny day. And within the first mile or two of that public road, under repair, the sweet-smelling peace of our boat was brought forcibly home. Dust, petrol stinks, flies, sweat; vehicles bouncing past, eyes concentrated on a highway fenced in with barb wire. And we used to enjoy this!
The volume of water in the Awe surprised us. A large river, with salmon fishers here and there upon it. We watched a graceful if not very expert young woman until her fly stuck in the bottom, which I had prophesied would happen, and I was wondering whether I should risk telling her how she should set about getting the fly free, when she broke. Then her gillie came up and she handed him the rod, amused.
It was such a lovely stretch of water, too.
‘Would you like to try?’ asked the Crew.
‘See these cairns—on the other side. They must be the graves of the dead.’
‘You don’t sound very reverent.’
‘But the bridge that Campbell broke behind him—is manifestly still broken, so we can’t go over. Shall we go on?’
‘Yes. We’ll get the train back. Look, there’s a railway house on the line. They’ll tell you about the cave.’
I climbed the embankment and came on a small platform and one or two houses and the usual tall signal box, at a window of which I saw a man.
When he had told me I could not get a ticket, I asked him about the cave.
He laughed. ‘Who was tellin’ ye?’ And when I had spoken, he laughed again. ‘That’s his stock in trade! We’ve searched for that cave whole Sundays—and haven’t found it yet.’ The irreverent Glasgow voice was infectious. ‘I don’t believe the damned cave is in it! Ye’ll catch a train at Cruachan Falls, if ye step out.’
I joined the Crew, feeling reassured and modern again. ‘We have to step out for Cruachan Falls.’
But the small railway station at Cruachan Falls looked dilapidated and was completely deserted. There wasn’t even a railway bill stuck up. Had the modern failed us, too? We hunted round about and shouted. Echoes, only.
So we resigned ourselves to the beauty of the Falls and presently threw off the grip that time had been fixing on us again, ate wild raspberries, and the Crew found some flowers that pleased her.
‘I read a verse—by Barbour, I think it was—describing this Pass,’ said the Crew. ‘And somehow the old Scots words looked exactly like this place. He first of all tells you that it was an evil place so straight and narrow that two men couldn’t ride together.’
Then (for she looked up the words later):
The nethir half was perelous;
For a schoir crag, bye and hyduous,
Raucht till the se, doun fra the pas.
On the owthir half ane montane was
So cumrous and ek so stay,
That it was hard to pas that way.
‘That would be about Bruce’s fight here?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But I don’t remember much about it. All these chiefs mix me up. He won anyway and went on to Dunstaffnage and put a garrison there.’
‘In the Wallace affair, I must say Lochow and his Campbells did right nobly. If they hadn’t gone political so early, the Campbells might have been a great crowd.’
‘And how is Glencoe explained?’
‘No one can explain it. It’s there like fate, a tragic play of immortal treachery. Yet think—one can parallel it with hundreds of instances of treachery from other countries. But in these countries—Greece excepted—any individual instance of treachery seldom attained tragic dignity. Why?’
‘Go on.’
‘I know it’s obvious. Treachery does not sear the mind of a folk for centuries—unless that mind had nobility for to sear. The Campbells had been playing with politicians greater than themselves, and so were inevitably herded into being the figures of awful destiny. Which, in a sense, was tough on the Campbells.’
‘It was tough on the Macdonalds, too.’
‘I was thinking in terms of Greek drama.’
‘Hm,’ said the Crew.
I looked around the road, for this tendency to collapse a discussion in sudden laughter was becoming an alarming manifestation of our new freedom. Two or three boy scouts on pushbikes did pull up—and told us that Loch Awe station was perhaps three to four miles farther on. After we had walked many miles a bus overtook us, and, as we sank back in our soft seats, for it was a magnificent bus, the Crew smiled. ‘I always liked riding in a bus,’ she said. ‘This one feels like a chariot.’
‘A chariot was a hard racketing—’
‘Still, it feels like a chariot.’
It must be some rightness in a thing that makes one laugh at the wrong moment.
‘Ssh!’ she said. ‘They’ll think you’re English.’
For she can be quite merciless when she gets you going.
But at Loch Awe station, she merely smiled when I told her of the church the antiquary had described to me. I was rather hazy about it, it is true, but I had the distinct impression of a church built of stones carried by chiefs. Perhaps for their sins? A remarkable thought, anyway, and when I began haltingly to interrogate a railway man, he at once said:
‘The church? See that red shed? Well, it’s beyond that. Enough time? If you hurry,’
‘Good-bye,’ said the Crew.
It was three times as far as it looked, and when I arrived I knew it must be the wrong church, for this was a large modern affair in grey granite. And when I got down to it, the doors were locked. I found two Englishmen round the back, dodging flying buttresses, looking for any opening.
‘Isn’t this truly Scotch?’ said one.
‘Every blessed door locked!’ said the other, exasperated.
Silently, if none the less heartily and sincerely, I agreed with them. When suddenly a woman appeared, with a tall conical black hat, a slight stoop, and a bunch of keys. We followed her silently in at the main door. She had a quiet gentle voice. She knew everything. And had silence as a pure gift.
It was a remarkable church interior, containing so much extraordinary detail that I dare hardly be sure of describing one item correctly, for I have deliberately made no effort to find out more about it. There was an effigy of Bruce, the face and hands being of alabaster and the rest of wood. In front of him a chest, containing one of his bones, and to his left a great bell from one of the lighthouses of our western ocean. There were astragals from a window of the old church in Iona; coats of arms of many clans; something here from Edinburgh and there from India; cloisters of a kind, too, with upended gridirons used long ago to defeat the body snatchers. And a hundred other astonishing things.
The large windows and the grey granite filled the interior with light, so that it felt like a church on an immense balcony. Yet despite its architectural peculiarities (it must have had some feature of every mode) and its conglomerate interior, it achieved a unity that affected the two English critics, for one remarked softly to the other, ‘When I turned round there I expected to see the high altar.’ While all he saw was a bare table.
‘The communion table,’ said our guide, and her quiet voice went over its austerity like a reconciling hand.
I hardly heard half of what she said, and have forgotten that, for facts did not seem so important as the feeling of unity that embraced the whole. And when I thought the guide said that the builder was a Campbell, who had devoted his life to the work, I began to understand. For here, written out in stone and ornament, was the clear story of one man’s soul.
And the story, too—I wondered—of the whole Campbell soul in its centuries of dealings with the Church, in its desires and its repressions, its acquisitiveness and its aspirations, its catholicity and its narrowness, its ambitions and its compromise, its effort at a Protestant Church universal achieving —this individual story in stone.
I was so impressed that I forgot to hurry back and after a final sprint just caught the train, which stopped at Cruachan Falls.