“A fourth attempt, however, proved successful, though differently for each of us. One of the three, a rotund, squirrel-eyed boy, named Robinson, was shipped off as an apprentice in an Indiaman. A few years later he went to his dreamed-of South Seas, was killed in a squabble with hostile islanders, and, as was afterward discovered, afforded a feast (I am sure a succulent one) to his captors. The second of the three is now a dean in the Anglican Church. I have never met him, but once at a big gathering I saw the would-be pirate in clerical garb, with a protuberant front, and bald. I think Robinson had the better luck. As for the third of the three, he has certainly had his fill of wandering, if he has never encountered cannibals and if he is neither a dean nor bald.”
When their son was twelve years old, William’s parents left Paisley and took a house in Glasgow (India Street), and he was sent as a day scholar to the Glasgow Academy. In his sixteenth year he was laid low with a severe attack of typhoid fever. It was to that summer during the long months of convalescence in the West that many of his memories of Seumas Macleod belong. Of this old fisherman he wrote: “When I was sixteen I was on a remote island where he lived, and on the morrow of my visit I came at sunrise upon the old man standing looking seaward with his bonnet removed from his long white locks; and upon my speaking to Seumas (when I saw he was not ‘at his prayers’) was answered, in Gaelic of course, ‘Every morning like this I take my hat off to the beauty of the world.’ Although I was sent to the Academy at Glasgow, and afterward to the University, I spent much of each year in boating, sailing, hill-climbing, wandering, owing to the unusual freedom allowed to me during our summer residence in the country and during the other vacations. From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up every loch, fjord, and inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arran and Colonsay to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns of Galloway to the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associated myself with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers, gipsies, wandering pipers, and other musicians.” In this way he made many friends, especially among the fishermen and shepherds, stayed with them in their houses, and, ‘having the Gaelic,’ talked with them, gained their confidence, and listened to tales told by old men, and old mothers by the fireside during the long twilight evenings, or in the herring-boats at night.