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THE Highland churchyard
is a spot which seldom betrays any other traces of human art or care
than those simple headstones which mark its green graves. In very few
instances is it enclosed; its graves generally mingle with the mountain
pasture and blooming heather, and afford shelter to the sheep and lamb
from the blast of winter and the Beat of summer. But although not
consecrated by holy prayer and religious ceremony, these are,
nevertheless, holy spots in the hearts and memories of the peasantry,
who never pass them without a subdued look, which betokens a feeling of
respect for the silent sleepers. To deck a father's or mother's grave,
would be, in the estioration of the Highlander, to turn it into a
flower-garden. He thinks it utter vanity to attempt to express his grief
or respect for the departed by any ornament beyond the tombstone, whose
inscription is seldom more than a statistical table of birth and death.
Many of those Highland
churchyards, so solitary and so far removed from the busy haunts of men,
are, nevertheless, singularly touching and beautiful. Some are on green
islands whose silence is disturbed only by the solemn thunder of the
great ocean wave, or the ripple of the inland sea; some are in great
wide glens, among bracken and blooming heather, round the ruins of a
chapel, where prayers were once offered by early missionaries, who with
noble aim and holy ambition penetrated these wild and savage haunts;
while others break the green swards about the parish church on ground
where God has been worshipped since the days of St Columba.
One of the most beautiful
I ever visited is on a small green island in Loch Shiel in Argyleshire.
The loch for nearly twenty miles is as yet innocent of roads on either
shore, so that the tourist who visits the place has to navigate the lake
in a rude country boat; and if he attempts to sail, he must probably do
so with blankets attached to the oar, and then trust to a fair wind. Yet
what can be more delicious than thus to glide along the shore with a
crew that won't speak till they are spoken to, and in silence gaze upon
the ever-varying scene —to skim past the bights and bays with their
reedy margins—the headlands tufted with waving birch —the gulfy torrents
pouring down their foaming waterfalls and "blowing their trumpets from
the steeps"—with the copse of oak and hazel, that covers the sides of
the mountain from the deep dark water up to the green pasture, and
beyond, the bare rocks that pierce the blue.
Not unlikely the crew,
when they take to their oars, will sing "Ho Mhdrag," in honour of Prince
Charlie, "the lad wi' the philabeg," who on the green diluvial plain at
the head of the loch—where his monument now stands — first unfurled his
banner, to regain the British crown; and if you don't know this romantic
episode in history, the boatmen will point out with pride the glens
where the; Camerons, Macdonalds, Stewvarts, and Macleans poured down
their kilted clans, the last "old guard" of the clan times, to do battle
for "the yellow-haired laddie;" and unless you cordially believe (at
least until you leave Loch Shiel) that you would have joined them on
that day, with the probability even of losing your head and your common
sense, you are not in a fit state of spirit to enjoy the scene.
Half way up this lake,
and at its narrowest portion, there is a beautiful green island, -which
stretches itself so far across as to leave but a narrow passage for even
the country boat. Above it, and looking down on it, rises Ben Reshiepol
for 2000 feet or more, with its hanging woods, gray rocks, dashing
streams, and utter solitude. On the island is an old chapel, with the
bell,—now we believe preserved by the Laird,—which long ago so often
broke the silence of these wilds on holy days of worship or of burial.
There lie chiefs and vassals, fierce cateran robbers of sheep and
cattle, murderers of opposing clans, with women and children, Catholic
and Protestant, Prince Charlie men, and men who served in army and navy
under George the Third. How silent is the grave-yard! You sit down among
the ruins and hear only the bleat of sheep, the whish-whish of the
distant waterfalls, the lapping of the waves, or the wind creeping
through the archways and mouldering windows. The feuds and combats of
the clans are all gone; the stillness and desolation of their graves
alone remain.
But "the parish"
churchyard is not much less picturesque. It is situated on a green
plateau of table-land which forms a ledge between the low sea-shore and
hilly background. A beautiful tall stone cross from Iona adorns it; a
single Gothic arch of an old church remains as a witness for the once
consecrated round, and links the old "cell" to the modern building,
which in architecture—shame to modern Lairds—is to the old one what a
barn is to a church. The view, however, from that churchyard, of all
God's glorious architecture above and below, makes one forget those
paltry attempts of man to be a fellow-worker with Him in the rearing and
adorning of the fitting and the beautiful. There is hardly in the
Highlands a finer expanse of inland seas, of castled promontories, of
hills beyond hills, until cloudland and highland mingle; of precipice
and waterfall, with all the varied lights and shadows which heathy hill
sides, endless hill tops, dark corries, ample bays and rocky shores, can
create at morn, noonday, or evening, from sun and cloud,—a glorious
panorama extending from the far west beyond the giant point of
Ardnamurchan, "the height of the great ocean," to the far east, where
Ben Cruachan and "the Shepherds of Etive Glen" stand sentinels in the
sky. No sea king could select a more appropriate resting-place than
this, from whence to catch a glimpse, as his spirit walked abroad
beneath the moonlight, of galleys coming from the Northland of his early
home; nor could an old saint find a better, if he desired that after
death the mariners, struggling with stormy winds and waves, might see
his cross from afar, and thence, in extremis, snatch comfort from this
symbol of faith and hope; nor could any man, who in the frailty of his
human nature shrunk from burial in lonely vault, and who wished rather
to lie where birds might sing, and summers sun shine, and winter's
storms lift their voices to God, and the beautiful world be ever above
and around him, find a spot more congenial to his human feelings than
the kirkyard of "the parish."
The Celt ;ias a strong
desire, almost amounting to a decided superstition, to lie beside his
kindred. He is intensely social in his love of family and tribe. It is
long' ere he takes to a straneer as bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh. When sick in the distant hospital, he will, though years have
separated him from home and trained him to be a citizen of the world,
yet dream in his delirium of the old burial-ground. To him there is in
this idea a sort of homely feeling, a sense of friendship, a desire for
a congenial neighbourhood, that, without growing into a belief of which
he would be ashamed, unmistakably circulates as an instinct in his
blood, and cannot easily be dispelled. It is thus that the poorest
Highlanders always endeavour to bury their dead with kindred dust. The
pauper will save his last penny to secure this boon.
A woman, for example,
from "the main land," somewhere in Kintail, was married to a highly
respectable man in one of the Hebrides which need not be specified. When
she died, twelve of her relations, strong men, armed with oak sticks,
journeyed sixty miles to be present at her funeral. They quietly
expressed their hope to her husband, that his wife should be buried in
her own country and beside her own people. But on ascertaining from him
that such was not his purpose, they declared their intention to carry
off the body by force. An unseemly struggle was avoided only through the
husband being unable to find any one to back him in his refusal of what
was deemed by his neighbours to be a reasonable request. He therefore
consented, and accompanied the body to the churchyard of her family.
This feeling is carried
to a length which, in one instance I have heard of, was too ludicrous to
be dignified even by the name of superstition. A Highland porter, who
carried our bag but the other day, and who has resided for thirty years
in the low country, sent his amputated finger to be buried in the
graveyard of the parish beside the remains of his kindred! It is said
that a bottle of whisky was sent along with the finger that it might be
entombed with all honour!—but I don't vouch for the truth of the latter
part of the story. I never heard who dug the grave of the finger—whether
it was "I, says the owl"—nor who attended the funeral, nor what monument
was erected over the respected member. But there, nevertheless, it lies,
and I doubt not that the porter will one day lie beside it.
This desire of being
interred with kindred dust or with "the faithful ones," as they express
it, is so strong, that I have known a poor man selling all his potatoes,
and reducing himself to great suffering, in order to pay the expense of
burying his wife in a distant churchyard among her people; and that,
too, when the minister of his parish offered to bury her at his own
expense in the churchyard of the parish in which the widower resided.
Only a year or two ago a pauper in the parish of K—, begged another poor
neighbour to see her buried beside her family. When she died, twelve men
assembled, carried her ten miles off, dug her grave, and paid all the
expenses of her funeral, which, had she been buried elsewhere, would
have been paid by the parish.
It is still a very common
belief among the peasantry that shadowy funeral processions precede the
real ones, and that "warnings" are given of a coming death by the
crowing of cocks, the ticking of the death watch, the howling of dogs,
voices heard by night, the sudden appearance of undefined forms of human
beings passing to and fro, &c.
It has also been the
custom of the poorest persons to have all their dead clothes prepared
for years before their death, so as to insure a decent orderly
interment. To make these clothes was a task often imposed upon the
ladies, or females in a parish who were good at their needle. The
pattern of the shroud was a fixed one, and special instructions were
given regarding it by the initiated. Such things are common even now
among Highland families who have emigrated to Glasgow. A short time ago
a highly respectable lady in that city, when she found that her illness
was dangerous, gave a confidential servant the key of a box, where, in
the event of death, all would be found that was required to dress her
body for the grave.
The old wrapping of the
body was woollen cloth, and the Gaelic term used to express it, (ollanachd,)which
may be translated "woollening," is still used to describe the dressing
of the body before burial. The old stone coffin is dug up in the
Highlands as elsewhere, but the coffins hollowed out of the solid
log—one of which was discovered a few years ago in Lochaber—seem, as far
as I know, to have been peculiar to the Highlands. The Gaelic term still
in use for a coffin (caisil chrd,) the "wattle enclosure," points to
what we doubt not was equally peculiar to the Highlands, that of
surrounding the dead body with slender branches of trees, and bending
them firmly together with witks or twisted rods of hazel or willow, and
thus interring it.
From the time of death
till that of interment, the body is watched day and night. A plate of
salt is always placed upon the breast. Candles are also frequently
lighted around it. These are the remains of Roman Catholic customs. When
the body, on the day of funeral, is carried a considerable distance, a
cairn of stones is always raised on the spots where the coffin has
rested, and this cairn is from time to time renewed by friends and
relatives. Hence the Gaelic saying or prayer with reference to the
departed, "Peace to thy soul, and a stone to thy cairn!"—thus expressing
the wish, that the remembrance of the dead may be cherished by the
living.
The bagpipe is sometimes
still played at funerals. Five or six years ago a medical man, greatly
beloved and respected for his skill and kindness to the poor, died at
Fort William from fever, caught in the discharge of his duties. The
funeral was attended by about 1400 people. Strong men wept, and women
threw themselves on the ground in the agony of their impassioned sorrow.
Three pipers headed the procession, playing the wild and sad lament of
"I'll never, I'll never, I'll never return."—The whole scene has been
described to me by those present as having been most deeply affecting.
But after these
digressions I must return to the churchyard of "the parish."
There are two graves
which lie side by side across the ruins of the old archway I have spoken
of. The one is an old stone coffin, the other a grassy hillock—and I
shall tell what I have heard, and what I know about their inhabitants.
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