The following is a good illustration of an olden chief:—We have many traditional stories about Saddell Castle, in which Mr. M‘Donald or “Righ Fionghal” resided. He claimed despotic power over the inhabitants of Kintyre. It is said he knew the use of gunpowder, and often made a bad use of it. He would for sport shoot people, though they did him no harm, with his long gun, which was kept in Carradale for a long time after his death. His character is represented as being very tyrannical. Being once in Ireland, he saw a beautiful married woman, whom he fancied, and took away from her husband to Saddell. Her husband followed; but M‘Donald finding him, intended to have starved him to death without his wife knowing it. He was put in a barn, but he kept himself alive by eating the corn which he found there. M‘Donald removed him to another place, but a hen came in every day and kept him alive with her eggs. M‘Donald was anxious that the poor man should die, and placed him in another place, where he got nothing to eat, and it is said the miserable prisoner ate his own hand, then his arm to the elbow, before he died, and said, in Gaelic, “Dh’ith mi mo choig meoir a’s mo lamh gu’m uilleann. Is mor a thig air neach nach eiginu fhulang.” When they were burying him, his wife was on the top of the castle, and asked whose funeral it was; she was told it was Thomson’s. “Is it my Thomson?” she inquired. “Yes,” they replied. She then said they might stop for a little till she would be with them. She immediately threw herself over the castle wall, and was carried dead with her husband to the same grave.
Perhaps, after all, Saxon rule has not been such an injury to the Western Isles of Scotland as some people think. At Kintyre there are plenty of schools, and parsons and policemen instead of robber chiefs; and if there are few freebooting expeditions to Ireland and elsewhere, it is quite as well that people have taken to a more decent mode of life.
Alas! my “to-morrow”—unlike that of the poet, which “never comes”—is at hand. Under a smiling sky, and on a summer sea, we thread our way past Arran, or the Land of Sharp Pinnacles, down the Kyles of Bute, where the scenery is of exquisite beauty; past Rothesay, the Hastings of the West, and with an aquarium said to be the finest in the world, and almost as flourishing as that Hastings of the South which rejoices in a yatchsman for M.P. of unrivalled fame; past Dunoon, till we drop anchor at Hunters’ Quay. We seem all at once to have come into the world again. On every side of us there are steamers bearing tourists, and holiday-makers, and health-seekers to the crowded bathing-places and health resorts. As we approach our journey’s end, the Clyde seems covered with rowing-boats, and music and laughter echo along its waters. I feel a little sad to think that my brief holiday is over. The Doctor and the Doctor’s lady tell me we shall meet in London, and that is a consolation. Yes, we shall meet, but no more as equals on deck. He will be in the pulpit or on the platform, I beneath. There is no equality when a man puts on the black gown, and begins lecturing to the pew. The mutual standpoint vanishes like a dream. But when, oh, when shall I sail in such a model yacht as the _Elena_ again, or meet with such hospitality as I enjoyed at its worthy owner’s hands? His sons, amphibious as are all the Scotchmen, apparently, in these parts, row out to meet us. The greeting is as affectionate as mostly the greetings of the British race are. “What did you come back for? We were getting on very well without you,” were the first words I heard.