Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

There was a series of savage attacks on the island by Viking raiders in the eighth and ninth centuries, but the monastery persisted. Large-scale rebuilding operations on Iona took place in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, with Benedictine and Augustine structures replacing the old Columban monastery. Medieval pilgrims came regularly to the island. According to authors Anna Richie and Ian Fisher in their valuable and succinct guidebook Iona Abbey and Nunnery (2004), “the Scottish Reformation of 1560 put an end to monastic life in Iona and the abbey and nunnery gradually fell into the picturesque ruins so popular with the tourists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Restoration work beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing intermittently afterwards has allowed modern travelers a better sense of the abbey’s magnificence, and a community has been created on the island to assist modern-day pilgrims.

  Boswell and Johnson were foremost among the eighteenth-century tourists. Johnson’s first observations seem a bit supercilious in hindsight: “We were now treading that illustrious island, which once was the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion.” But he warmed to the site quickly and added his oft-quoted comment, “The man is to be little envied … whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!” The two men arrived in the evening and spent the night in a well-provisioned barn (no longer in existence) with lots of hay, sheets for cover, and portmanteau for a pillow. Boswell’s pleasure at having Johnson with him for this portion of the journey was palpable, and excitement courses through these pages in his Journal.

  In the morning the travelers visited the religious sites, and Boswell gives us a memorable and quite Boswellian portrait of his experience in the abbey:

  I then went into the cathedral, which is really grand enough when one thinks of its antiquity and of the remoteness of the place; and at the end, I offered up my adorations to god. I again addressed a few words to Saint Columbus; and I warmed my soul with religious resolutions. I felt a kind of exultation in thinking that the solemn scenes of piety ever remain the same, though the cares and follies of life may prevent us from visiting them, or may even make us fancy that their effects were only “as yesterday when it is past,” and never again to be perceived. I should maintain an exemplary conduct. One has a strange propensity to fix upon some point from whence a better course of life may be said to begin. I read with an audible voice the fifth chapter of St. James and Dr. Ogden’s tenth sermon. I suppose there has not been a sermon preached in this church since the Reformation. I had a serious joy in hearing my voice, while it was filled with Ogden’s admirable eloquence, resounding in the ancient cathedral of Icolmkill.

  I thought of that moment as I stood in the same place in the same abbey 234 years later. I did not possess a copy of St. James with me, nor did I claim knowledge of the works of Samuel Ogden, an eighteenth-century English-born churchman whose sermons were widely acclaimed. But I felt obliged to speak out loud when I found myself alone. “Bless all who have been here,” I said. And then, merrily channeling Boswell, I added, “Hi Bozzy” without a trace of embarrassment. I turned around and saw a couple of other tourists behind me, looking quite puzzled. I excused myself and moved on, not wanting to go through more chatter about who has or hasn’t heard of Boswell and Johnson.

  The remains of the nunnery are the first things that greet visitors after passing through the houses and the shop or two that constitute the village of Iona at ferry’s edge. I was dressed in a cotton turtleneck sweater, a wool outer sweater, and a heavy wind and rain parka with a drawstring hood. I was still getting soaked with the rain, and the cold, blustery wind whipped through all of my clothing as easily as a hurricane rolls through levees. I realized I had left my good gloves on the ferry. So much for doing anything with my hands except keeping them in my pockets. I walked much faster than I should have through those outdoor ruins.

  A brisk five-minute walk away was the restored abbey cathedral, a welcome refuge from the wind and rain, though the stones made the damp cold feel oppressive. A soft-spoken woman gave a group of seven of us a tour of the sanctuary, her first of the season, she said. The other tourists were college kids from Aberdeen, red-cheeked and laughing self-consciously, snapping photos as quickly as they could turn around. Our guide mentioned Boswell and Johnson on the island, and I was shamelessly pleased. Later in the gift shop—no whisky here—the clerk found a copy of their books and told me that there had been a filmed reenactment of Boswell and Johnson’s experiences on Iona some ten years ago, adding, “You know, Boswell and Johnson really discovered this part of Scotland for the rest of the world.” I considered kissing her, but resisted. I’ve been unable to locate the video to which she referred.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around various parts of the island. Iona is just over three miles long and a mile and a half at its widest point, but in the steady rain and wind it seemed larger. Iona is said to be the burial place for many of Scotland’s kings, chieftains, and lairds, including Macbeth. There’s a graveyard that is alleged to hold his remains, though the key words here seem to be alleged to hold. No one knows for sure, and most historians have lots of doubts. The story is one of those Scottish legends, perhaps, and another instance of the problem in separating historical reality from cherished myth.

  It was hard to deny that the atmosphere of the island was special. Once a center for scholarship and spirituality, Iona still possesses an aura of peacefulness and solitude that was able to touch me in spite of the deteriorating weather all around. And while the ruins of castles and deserted buildings elsewhere in Scotland can evoke melancholy feelings, I experienced only gratitude that these structures on Iona have endured and are in use. I had a few minutes to talk with members of the ecumenical Iona Community who help ensure that the abbey and cloister are in daily use and who take responsibility for spiritual renewal programs on the island. One of them, a white-haired man named George, told me that the experiences there “speak to a grace within each of us, and allow us to renew our commitment to our God and our community.” He spoke quietly, welcoming me and inviting me back when I had more time.

  Boswell and Johnson made their way back across Mull, through country Johnson labeled “gloomy desolation.” It was on this part of the journey that Johnson let Boswell know for the first time that he was contemplating writing about his experiences. “I rejoiced at the thought,” Boswell wrote in his Journal. Once back on Mull, Boswell—in one of those moments his critics dwell on—once again slipped off the wagon, got drunk on punch, and found himself admonished by Johnson. “It humbled me to find that my holy resolutions at Icolmkill had been so ineffectual that the very day after having been there I had drank too much. I went to Mr. Johnson before he was up. He first said none of our (London) Club would get drunk, but then, taking himself, he said [Edmund] Burke would get drunk and be ashamed of it; [Oliver] Goldsmith would get drunk and boast of it, if it had been with a little whore or so, who had allowed him to go in a coach with her.” I think we may conclude that with this refreshing conversation Johnson forgave his irrepressible younger companion. And hardly for the first time.

  7

  Mull to Fort William

  Boswell and Johnson then returned to the mainland, to Oban, Inveraray, and southward as their journey came to a close. I wanted to go in the opposite direction, to Coll and to see the uninhabited island of Staffa, known as Fingal’s Cave, with its giant rock face cut by the sea. My companions saw it during their trip toward Iona, and over a half century later it inspired composer Felix Mendelssohn’s vivid, sea-washed work known as the “Hebrides Overture” or “Fingal’s Cave,” written during his visit there in 1829. That visit was part of a walking tour of Scotland which also gave the twenty-one-year-old composer the inspiration for his “Scotch Symphony.” Both pieces are among my favorites. Even Queen Victoria was rowed by barge into the cave in 1847. I was eager, almost desperate, to get there for my own
view.

  But I first needed to get off Iona or face an extra twenty-four hours or more of delay. The wind was blowing hard, and the water between Iona and Mull seemed angry. I could see the small ferry struggling toward me through high seas. I was bone-cold waiting for it. The ferry finally made it as darkness neared, rocking and straining against the wind. Once I was on board a member of the crew walked up to my seat and asked if I had left a pair of gloves on the early morning ferry. I replied yes, and he handed them over. Scotland is amazing!

  As we struggled through the sound, waves crashing over the side of the ferry, I wondered about my willingness to take a trip of an hour toward Staffa in this fierce weather. “Weather can be difficult here any time of year, but in the winter months, it’s very hard,” my Fionnphort host John said later that evening over a warming cup of tea. As a former fisherman, he not only counseled against going to Staffa but also said that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone willing to take me there this time of year. He was right. My trip to Fingal’s Cave would have to wait for another journey to Scotland. John also warned me about possible ferry cancellations to Coll. He would be proved right once again.

  The next day I met a just-arrived couple of students from the University of Edinburgh taking a holiday. They knew of Boswell and Johnson and had planned a trip to Iona in part because they had read of the travelers. I shared a few impressions of Iona; their morning weather was much more forgiving than mine yesterday, though the forecast called for more storms on the way soon. After packing up I headed back to Craignure on the single-track road, pulling into the lay-bys with confidence, and even doing a little speeding in the sections where I had a long view ahead.

  This part of Mull defied Johnson’s desolate observations. The large tracts of moorlands nestled near the island’s highest peak, Ben More (3,169 feet), appeared in a mix of gentle colors in the subdued sunlight, and the isolation of the island became a value not a threat. There were few farms visible, only a handful of vehicles in either direction and no one in sight. The feeling was one of suddenly finding yourself transplanted to another world where you are alone and the first to see the landscape surrounding you. It was dazzling, breathtaking, heart-stopping. A minute later the road ascended a plateau, offering an unobstructed view for miles. I pulled over and got out. A pure, clean smell, quiet hills. Nothing seemed to move, to speak. A gust of wind, then nothing. I held my breath for a moment. A quick movement to one side. A rabbit, perhaps? I felt myself teetering in place, almost dizzy, my senses overloaded by … well, by nothing, really. My mouth dropped open; I strained to hear something. Nothing. No stirrings as far as my eyes could reach, either. The moment stretched. I was afraid to move and force my canvas to change. And then … in the distance the faint noise of an engine, a car or truck, I suppose. The precious moment ended. I blinked for the first time in many seconds. I climbed reluctantly back into the car. I’m pretty sure I was smiling.

  In Craignure the weather had turned nasty, and I discovered I had misread the ferry schedule. Going to Coll wouldn’t be possible for at least another twenty-four hours, perhaps longer with the worsening weather. Boswell and Johnson would have appreciated my difficulty, I hoped. Their trip to Coll was nightmarish, or at least in Boswell’s colorful description.

  The travelers had set off in a small boat headed from Skye to Mull. The weather appeared favorable, the sort of omen that is invariably short-lived in Scottish waters. Boswell and Johnson would pass by islands engagingly named Rhum, Eigg, and Muck (which, when pronounced together, sound rather like the name of a hot toddy or perhaps someone’s idea of a bad dinner). Boswell relates a bizarre, brutal tale of how some residents of Eigg murdered some members of the MacLeod clan who came hunting for them. When the people of Eigg refused to send out the accused killers, the MacLeods set a peat fire at the mouth of the cave and smoked everyone—men, women, and children—to death. For some reason Boswell regretted not getting to see the place. Once Boswell and Johnson were on board the ship, it didn’t take long for the weather to change and make island stops impossible. Johnson wrote succinctly in his Journey: “We were doomed to experience, like others, the danger of trusting to the wind, which blew against us, in a short time, with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest. I was seasick and lay down. Mr. Boswell kept the deck.”

  The prolix Boswell, however, gives us a much fiercer portrait of what they encountered, and, even allowing for some exaggerations, the trip indeed must have been frightening (more so for one on deck than for one lying below, I suspect): “As we advanced, the storm grew greater, and the sea very rough,” he wrote. Darkness came, the winds howled, the sails were in danger of being ripped apart, and the crew was shouting in nervous tones. Boswell was understandably agitated.

  The boat lay so much on a side that I trembled lest she should be overset; and indeed they told me afterwards that they had run her sometimes to within an inch of the water, so anxious were they to make what haste they could before the night should be worse…. I saw tonight what I never saw before, a prodigious sea with immense billows coming upon a vessel, so as that it seemed hardly possible to escape. There was something grandly horrible in the sight.

  Boswell feared his life would be lost. He thought of his wife. He prayed fervently.

  It was half an hour after eleven before we set ourselves on the course to Coll. As I saw them all busy doing something, I asked Coll with much earnestness what I could do. He with a lucky readiness put into my hand a rope which was fixed to the top of one of the masts, and bid me hold it fast till he bid me pull. This could not be of the least service; but by employing me, he kept me out of their way, who were busy working the ship; and at the same time diverted my fear to a certain degree, by making me think I was occupied. There did I stand firm to my post, while the wind and rain beat upon me, always expecting a call to pull my rope.

  That, to me, captures much of the essence of Boswell. The scene is both funny and heroic. There can be little doubting Boswell’s courage; he is on the deck of the bobbing ship, tossed by the mighty winds, soaked to the skin, but refusing to hide or turn away from whatever his fate will be. In such a moment many of us would have cowered or maybe even cried. A crew member gives Boswell a task—a totally meaningless one, probably, unless the mast collapses—which focuses the nervous passenger. Boswell knows it is an empty gesture, but he appreciates it. It gives him strength and prevents him from becoming a burden to the already overburdened crew trying to save the ship. How can you not like, even admire, Boswell at such a tempestuous moment? Boswell eventually went below, became ill, and struggled through the rest of the night before the ship landed safely at Coll. He found Johnson recovered, lying quiet and unconcerned about any danger, anticipating landfall.

  I already knew what I would have to do; Coll would have to be dropped from my itinerary. I had a reservation coming up soon on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides that couldn’t be missed, and I needed some extra time to follow Boswell and Johnson on Skye. Rearranging plans in Scotland is hardly unheard of; nearly all of my predecessors in the pursuit of Johnson and Boswell have found themselves having to adjust their itineraries, and almost always because of the weather (although in several instances the pursuers decided they’d rather focus on one or two areas the men visited rather than the entire journey).

  My alternative was to head back to the mainland and drive up the coast to Skye, my jumping-off point for Lewis. I had some time before the ferry back to Oban arrived, so I read again what Boswell and Johnson had written about their much longer-than-intended stay on Coll. The island doesn’t seem to offer much now nor did it then. The Rough Guide to Scotland tells of the possibilities for bird-watching and the sandy beaches, but it seems to me a long way to come just for a stretch of sand blown by the untrammeled breezes off the Atlantic.

  Coll is about twelve miles by three, fish-shaped, and a two-and-a-halfhour ferry ride from Oban. It has a resident population of about one hundred
, roughly one-ninth of what it was in 1773. Johnson said of it, “there is not much to amuse curiosity, or to attract avarice.” What struck me most compellingly was never what the travelers thought of the island as much as the incredible, dangerous journey they endured getting there. Once he was forcibly marooned on Coll by the weather, Johnson wrote a bit dryly about the history, work habits, and religion of the islanders. Boswell, typically, was much more personal, endorsing the “primitive heartiness” of some lodgings and the odd custom of some islanders donning cow skins for special celebrations; observing Johnson’s insatiable curiosity and confessed disgust with the coarse manners he found (“I cannot bear low life”); and, of course, reporting on the regular bouts of stormy weather, which is unusual, and even surprising, for a native Scotsman.

  It was time for me to depart from my two literary companions for a while until we reunited on Skye. The ferry crossing back to the mainland went smoothly, and once on shore I zipped up the A828 and the A82, with an overnight stop planned at Fort William. The route had beautiful strips of water off to my left—Loch Linhe, Loch Creran, and pretty little Cuil Bay—and under temporarily sunny skies my spirits soared.

  Near the village of Portnacroish, which I reached an hour or so later, there was a restaurant beside the road with a spectacular view of a castle surrounded by water a few hundred yards away. It was Castle Stalker, which, like Doune Castle, played a role in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Near the end of the film the castle stood in for a French-occupied fortress which once again rejects King Arthur and his knights. Arthur is seen knee-deep in water, dejectedly walking away from Stalker at the end of the movie. Stalker (which means hunter or falconer) is quite unbelievably picturesque even at a distance. The present structure got its start under the Stewarts in the fourteenth century, and by 1620 it had fallen into the hands of the powerful and ubiquitous Clan Campbell. They occupied the castle when they repulsed a Jacobite invasion in 1745. There were other bloody clashes before the castle was abandoned and began falling into ruin by the end of the nineteenth century. Restoration began in the mid-twentieth century, and Stalker now has been made habitable and is once again occupied. From any angle, it is a spectacular sight. I was told that it’s been the castle most often used in movies, though I later heard the same about three or four other castles. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, even as I ate a sandwich in the restaurant. The skies had darkened and rain began falling hard, but I still couldn’t resist walking outside to make some photographs before I got back in the car.