Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  By the way, I read in Frank Delaney’s A Walk on the Wild Side a delightful story I had never heard about the derivation of the name kangaroo, an animal discovered too late for inclusion in Johnson’s Dictionary. The name, so legend has it, was bestowed by an English explorer (Captain Cook?) who observed the animal and asked an Aboriginal, “What in heaven’s name is that?” The reply was “Kangaroo”—native tongue for “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  With a population of eighty thousand and serving as a hub of transportation in and through the region, Inverness is the relatively prosperous capital of the Highlands. It has a busy and not-very-pretty commercial center on the banks of the River Ness, and it is easily accessed and conveniently close to a lot of places I found more interesting. It was the last “city” of any import that Boswell and Johnson passed through on their journey into the Highlands and Islands, and the first “city” I had been to since Stirling at the start of my trip. It was also useful: I was able to load up a new selection of books (as Johnson did), buy some cooler shirts to replace my now too-warm sweaters, purchase a new phone card at a store whose employees spoke perfectly understandable English, and walk right past the Royal Bank of Scotland to cash my travelers checks elsewhere.

  I did need to take a bathroom break and slipped into the public library. Big mistake; for some reason the library didn’t have any restrooms, and a woman at the circulation desk directed me across the street to the bus station. They had a restroom, but it was closed. Frantic, I raced down the street until I found a bookstore, whose clerk mercifully allowed me to use their facilities—another reason to spend time in bookstores, as if I needed one. My investment in books so far had exceeded the money I had spent on petrol, one of those quirks of the ledger sheet that still puzzles most people.

  While in Inverness Boswell wrote his wife and lamented the absence of a note from her. It was an occasion for him to compliment himself on his affection for her: “I value myself on having as constant a regard—nay, love—for her as any man ever had for a woman, and yet never troubling anybody else with it.” He could overlook easily those falls from grace with lowerclass women because, I suspect, they were not affairs of the heart and did nothing to dilute his evident and continuing affection and devotion and support to his family. Or, he was just really good at compartmentalization.

  The two men did visit what they believed to be Macbeth’s castle; unfortunately, that castle had been destroyed in the eleventh century. The structure they actually saw was Inverness Castle, which had been mostly destroyed by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s soldiers in 1746 and was razed in 1834. The travelers did not stay long in Inverness; they were eager to press forward toward Skye and eventually Iona, little aware, of course, of the wonderful and sometimes frightening circumstances that would envelop them on the way.

  Johnson, meanwhile, wrote in his Journey of the nature of Highlanders, comparing the English and the Scots and seldom in favor of the latter: “Yet men thus ingenious and inquisitive were content to live in total ignorance of the trades by which human wants are supplied, and to supply them by the grossest means.” Until the Treaty of 1707 made them familiar with English ways, he continued, “the culture of their lands was unskilful, and their domestick life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts of Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots.” Such observations (even though Johnson’s firsthand knowledge of Eskimos could scarcely fill one sentence in a one-page book) would bring down scorn upon Johnson from Scots who read his words in his published book. And even though Johnson qualified his judgments by finding improvements in living and manners, he couldn’t resist adding, “What remains to be done they will quickly do, and then wonder, like me, why that which was so necessary and so easy was so long delayed. But they must be for ever content to owe the English that elegance and culture, which, if they had been vigilant and active, perhaps the English might have owed to them” Had some of the Highlanders the pair would soon visit know of Johnson’s words, their greetings likely would have been much chillier.

  With mounting excitement—“We were now to bid farewell to the luxury of travelling, and to enter a country upon which no wheel has never rolled,” Johnson wrote joyfully and expectantly—the two travelers departed Inverness. They headed southwest along the banks of Loch Ness on a gorgeous fall day, heading ultimately to the Isle of Skye, where we have already met. Just over twenty-three miles in length, no more than two miles in width, Loch Ness lies between Inverness to the north and Fort Augustus at its southwestern tip and is framed by mountains and lovely glens on both sides of its high banks. Loch Ness is Scotland’s best-known waterway, even more so than Loch Lomond. And yes, that’s entirely because of the sea monster said to inhabit its dark, cold, deep waters.

  Neither Boswell nor Johnson apparently ever mentioned rumors of the monster, but in the years since it has become something of an epic industry almost rivaling Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, who will be making a surprise appearance in this story in a moment. Johnson thought the loch beautiful and full of exaggerated tales, none of which had to do with Nessie. First he realized that geographic reports placing the loch’s width at a dozen miles suggested that the compilers had never visited the area. Then he discounted stories that a loch so far north had never frozen. (It really has never frozen.) And finally he discredited stories that the loch could be 140 fathoms deep. (It is that deep, maybe more.) Boswell thought the whole scene “as remote and agreeably wild as could be desired.” Mercifully both were spared what has become of this place today.

  The legend of Nessie has spawned the worst of tourist entrepreneurs catering to the worst instincts of modern travelers. Here’s how bad it has gotten: there are now two competing Loch Ness Visitor Centres built within a few yards of each other near the village of Drumnadrochit. It’s not enough to have one tacky, contrived, laughable establishment to separate visitors from their cash, but there are two! I, of course, visited both, beginning with the Loch Ness 2000 Exhibition, housed in a castlelike structure. It boasted seven themed walk-through areas complete with sound and visual effects documenting the monster with something of a scientific veneer. But it ended up, oddly enough, slightly pooh-poohing those who have claimed a sighting of Nessie. As I walked out I regretted wasting my money, but then again I have to admit I’ve always been a sucker for the too-tacky. I was obviously in the right place.

  That Loch Ness attraction was separated from its competitor by a whisky shop (always a good idea), a shop selling tartans, shortbread, postcards, and local crafts (local if your neighborhood is Beijing), a restaurant and a hotel, which seemed to be doing steady business only in its restroom. I tried to see Loch Ness from the car park, but it was blocked by shrubbery and cars. The rival Nessie attraction around the corner was the Loch Ness Monster Visitor Centre.

  Now that was more like it—if you’ve got something to sell, sell it up front. This attraction featured a thirty-minute film narrated by a gentleman who didn’t seem to believe a word he was saying, but the presentation was sort of entertaining and definitely more oriented to the notion that there really is something huge (and not just another visitor centre) hiding in those great depths. There was also a statue of Nessie in the car park for the kiddies to climb on. The monster looked something like a Disney character as interpreted by a fifth grader.

  The Loch Ness Monster Visitor Centre also had a little house in the rear that was labeled the Braveheart Museum. And having come this far through Mel Gibson, Braveheart, kilts, bagpipes, Mary, queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and Sean Connery, there’s no way I could possibly resist this. The house turned out to be a cabin with lots of small rooms, each with paintings depicting colorful moments in Scotland’s colorful history, all painted in color. The paintings consisted of crudely drawn figures, everyone wearing kilts, and most of them getting killed in one way or other. It was as if the fifth grader who created the Nessie monster outdoors had apprenticed on these paintings as a third grader. It was hi
lariously amateurish if not embarrassingly foolish, absolutely the worst museum I had ever stepped into, surpassing even that museum of string I saw once somewhere in Iowa, I think. I forgot all about Scottish history—a good thing, since I recall the painting captions were occasionally misconceived nuggets of history. There was another painting out front that apparently depicted Mel Gibson; I don’t think he would be flattered.

  I assumed, by the way, that admission to the Braveheart Museum came with admission to the Monster Centre. A clerk informed me otherwise, but perhaps taking pity on someone who had already been to the museum, she didn’t make me pay extra. She did, however, confide that she’d always wanted to visit the United States, especially some place in the West with wide-open spaces, like Montana or Wyoming. She loved cowboys and Indians, and was eager to see both up close.

  Before leaving the area, I drove south along the loch a few miles to Urquhart Castle, a once mighty, impossibly picturesque ruin on the western shore of the loch that Boswell and Johnson passed near but did not see. It has played host to some famous people including St. Colomba, who stopped by around 580 A.D. The decidedly unpleasant King Edward I of England—whose bitter adversary was William Wallace (will Mel Gibson never go away?)—seized it in 1296, and later the lords and henchmen of the Macdonald Clan ruled from here before the Grant Clan took over. When the last blood was shed here in 1692 English soldiers blew up most of the castle to ensure it would not be garrisoned by Jacobite-leaning Scots, and the castle was indeed never repaired or occupied. Natural decay and plundering of the stones by locals reduced it to what we see today: picturesque ruins which allow a romantic view into Scotland’s past. It is much more interesting—and real—than any prospect of viewing Nessie.

  Boswell and Johnson continued down the loch, stopping for an over-the-top, hilarious encounter with an old Highlands woman. Let’s allow Boswell to tell the story:

  I perceived a little hut with an oldish woman at the door of it. I knew it would be a scene for Mr. Johnson. So I spoke it. “Let’s go in,” said he. So we dismounted, and we and our guides went in. It was a wretched little hovel, of earth only, I think; and for a window had just a hole which was stopped with a piece of turf which could be taken out to let in light. In the middle of the room (or space which could be entered) was a fire of peat, the smoke going out at a hole in the roof. She had a pot upon it with a goat’s flesh boiling. She had at one end, under the same roof but divided with a kind of partition made of wands, a pen or fold in which we saw a great many kids.

  Johnson inquired of her where she slept. The old woman, apparently misunderstanding, announced that she was afraid the group wanted to assault her.

  This coquetry, or whatever it may be called, of so wretched a like being was truly ludicrous. Mr. Johnson and I later made merry upon it. I said it was he who alarmed the poor woman’s virtue. “No sir,” said he. “She’ll say, ‘There came a wicked young fellow, a wild dog, who, I believe would have ravished me had there not been with him a grave old gentleman who repressed him. But when he gets out of sight of his tutor, I’ll warrant you he’ll spare no woman he meets, young or old.’

  “No,” said I. “She’ll say, ‘There was a terrible ruffian who would have forced me, had it not been for a gentle, mild-looking youth, who, I take it, was an angel.’”

  Between the wild dog and the terrible ruffian, the two men had clearly enjoyed a great laugh at the old woman’s expense. Their bantering does seem a tad cruel in retrospect, but taken in these writings it conjures up images of a bizarrely amusing nature, the corpulent Johnson and the randy Boswell behaving rather like two giggly teenage girls. Once those matters were resolved, Boswell recounted fascinating aspects of the woman’s life with her eighty-year-old husband, perhaps even being intrusive in the process. With typical Highland hospitality, however, their host offered her guests a dram of whisky, and then asked for snuff, her sole “luxury.” Not having any, Boswell and Johnson offered a sixpence each. In return she brought out the entire bottle of whisky and collected another sixpence. It must have been a good bargain all the way around.

  Johnson offered more details on the hut, obviously similar to the previously described blackhouses of the Hebrides, and also of the woman, who was the mother of five children, “of which none have yet gone from her.” (Further evidence that getting the birds to leave the nest is hardly a new problem for parents.) But Johnson made no mention in his published Journey of the lengthy conversation about bedding the woman with which Boswell so delighted us, a reminder for modern readers of why it is best to follow these two accounts side by side.

  Without tossing cold water on the accounts above, I should advise readers of what Boswell and Johnson were not aware of at the time, and that is the very good reason why the old woman, whom we know now as Mrs. Fraser, was so fearful of her visitors. She had acquired the small property under her care in 1747, just a year after some of her relatives had been forced to leave it. The ouster came when officers and soldiers of the English duke of Cumberland passed by following the battle at Culloden and found only a small girl and her grandmother present. An officer raped the girl with the help of his soldiers and strangled the old woman in order to silence her. His behavior was later uncovered, and he was said to have been punished in some way. But the inhabitants of the home could no longer live at the scene of the horrible crime and left it to Mrs. Fraser. She would unquestionably have known of the story, and as Moray McLaren writes, “The Celtic people have long memories, and it may not have been only pathetic ageing female vanity that had made the woman fearful of two English-speaking travellers who wanted to see her bedroom.” In everyone’s defense let us recall that Boswell and Johnson departed from her on happy terms and with her prayerful blessings.

  The travelers soon headed west across the Highlands toward Skye, stopping at a house in the village of Anoch (no traces of this site remain). Johnson encountered an attractive young woman, educated in Inverness and daughter of their host, and presented her the gift of a book he was carrying. He said nothing further of the brief incident. Boswell, however, enlightens us considerably with some wonderful details in a footnote that helps make this stop in the journey unforgettable:

  This book has given rise to much inquiry, which has ended in ludicrous surprise. Several ladies, wishing to learn the kind of reading which the great and good Dr. Johnson esteemed most fit for a young woman, desired to know what book he had selected for this Highland nymph. “They never adverted,” said he, “that I had no choice in the matter. I have said that I presented her with a book which I happened to have about me.” And what was his book? My readers, prepare your features for merriment. It was Cocker’s Arithmetic! Wherever this was mentioned, there was a loud laugh, at which Dr. Johnson, when present, used sometimes to be a little angry. One day, when we were dining at General Oglethorpe’s, where we had many a valuable day, I ventured to interrogate him, “But, sir, is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker’s Arithmetic about you on your journey? What made you buy such a book at Inverness?” He gave me a very sufficient answer. “Why, sir, if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you have read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.”

  Legions of novelists and poets have disliked Johnson ever since then.

  The rest of the journey toward Skye continued without the same high level of entertainment. Johnson provided some valuable descriptions of the rugged countryside, and Boswell supplied some interesting details of their encounters. There was a point just before they reached the boat to take them to Skye, as they proceeded through the woods, when Boswell rode ahead, leaving Johnson in his wake. His companion, however, shouted after him angrily. “He was really in a passion with me for leaving him,” Boswell wrote contritely. Johnson apparently was genuinely frightened to find himself alone; he was, after all, an old man with a variety of ailments in an unfamiliar count
ry, and he was tired after a strenuous trip on horses through the afternoon. The discomfort was not resolved until the next morning when Johnson relieved Boswell’s uneasy night by telling him, “Let’s think no more on’t.” It was now September 2; Skye awaited.

  For me it was back to Inverness. At my B&B the next morning my hostess asked if I would like some fresh salmon for breakfast. I of course said yes, and added that I would enjoy some sausage, too. There was a moment of dead air while my hostess inhaled. With a kind of tone of voice that suggested she was asking a pederast if he wanted to play with her child, she inquired, “Did you want sausage with your salmon?” It occurred to me that perhaps that just isn’t done in Scotland, that I had committed a gross culinary faux pas. I hastily replied that no, absolutely not, of course I didn’t actually want the sausage with the fish—who would do that? Ha-ha—I meant only that at some point in my stay I would love to eat some sausage. She backed away, still looking rather pale, and slipped into the kitchen, no doubt to whisper to her befuddled husband what peculiar people Americans really are. When I left the next morning after a breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and sausage—no fish, of course—I suspect both of them breathed a sigh of relief and vowed not to take in weirdos again.

  Having made sure that I wouldn’t need to make any bathroom stops, I parked in Inverness to take care of a few bits of business including paying a visit to a nifty, well-stocked used-book store occupying an old downtown church. Over a cup of tea I read in the newspaper that Loch Ruthven, a small freshwater loch a dozen or so miles south of Inverness, had become the most important site in the United Kingdom for breeding Slavonian grebes. I almost choked on my tea. I had no idea Slavonian grebes could be found so far north. Or south. Or anywhere away from Slavonia. And where is Slavonia, and what the heck are grebes, anyway? Later, having resolved the most burning question (grebes are birds), I was back in the car for an eastward jaunt, back on the trail of Boswell and Johnson.