First Impressions of Island Life, by Ruari Cumming
I was just 11 years old when I first visited Colonsay, with my parents, in 1957. We had such an enjoyable holiday, we came back the next three years as well, before I went on to Nautical College. My mother was born in Dunoon, moving to the south when she was still a child and my father, whilst born in London, was of Scottish extraction, his ancestors coming from Busby, just outside Glasgow.
I suppose you would have called us a typical "South of England" family in those days. We enjoyed, and took for granted, the amenities available to us in that part of Great Britain. We had no thought of life in the more remote parts of the country. The previous year we had our holiday at Fort William, where I first fell in love with Scotland. Even during that visit, I don't think any of us realised what the islander's "way of life" was really like.
Our journey from Reading to Colonsay took nearly 30 hours and involved ten changes of transport. The last few legs being from Gourock, through the Kyles of Bute to East Loch Tarbet on the old, 1912 built, SS "Saint Columba". After sailing from Gourock, we descended into the restaurant for our "silver service" breakfast, finishing in time to be on deck again to see Dunoon, the birthplace of my mother and always a very emotional moment for her.
From East Loch Tarbet, a coach took us across the peninsula to West Loch Tarbet, where the TSMV "Lochiel" was to take us on to Colonsay, via Gigha, Craighouse on Jura and Port Askaig. On arrival at Scalasaig, the "Lochiel" dropped her anchor and alongside came a small motor boat. We had to climb down a ladder, which was hung out over the side of the steamer. At the bottom of the ladder we had to wait for the right moment to step off and into the motor boat, as it rose & fell in the sea's swell. Not only did the passengers disembark this way but also all the luggage and general stores for the island were off loaded into this tossing motor boat.
Once ashore at the small sloping jetty, we were met by David Clark, from whom we had rented Baleromindubh farm house. David, who was also the local JP (Justice of the Peace), was a tall, impressive man with a soft, quiet voice and a calm manner. He put us and our suitcase, the latter of which was replaced with a more sturdy trunk in subsequent years, into the back of his van and we headed off inland. By now it became evident as to just how naive we were to island life. Our ordnance survey map showed the main road as being an "A" class road but what we didn't expect was to see heather growing up the middle of it ! My father sat up front, with David, and was happy to open any gates for him. After we passed through the gate at the bottom of the track to Baleromindubh, the van started to lurch all over the place as David negotiated the small boulders that littered this track. Father turned and looked at mother, as if to say, "….where on God's earth were we going to ?" Little did we know what an idyllic place awaited us with hospitality second to none.
After passing through the last gate, David steered the van up onto the crest of the hill, which overlooks Baleromindubh farm. The view that beheld us I have not, nor will ever, forget. It was, in the calm warm evening air, with the "Lochiel" sailing back to Islay, simply a Hebridean utopia. David manoeuvred the suitcase down the hill and at the door to the farm house we were warmly greeted by David's sisters, Mary Clark and Mrs Paris, who both helped David with the farm.
What a wonderful welcome, with a fire lit in the lounge and a supper prepared for us. Electricity hadn't come to Baleromindubh yet, so paraffin lamps gave us our light and the big black cooking range gave us lashings of hot water. A large scrap book and photo album, compiled by previous guests, sat on a table in the lounge, together with a wonderful book - "Colonsay and Oronsay in the Isles of Argyll" by John De Vere Loder.
Our rooms were wonderful, one looked inland over the farm yard to the hills beyond whilst the other looked out to sea, with Mull & Scarba in the distance. The walls were so thick, I could sit in the window and gaze out at the view. Between the bedrooms, the bathroom looked out to a large paddock, totally enclosed by tall elms, with the Paps of Jura visible through their stately trunks. Each morning, whilst shaving in the peat coloured water, father would always open the sash window to see the view.
As evening fell, we all went out into the gloaming and stood, taking in the atmosphere. The silence so noticeable that our ears complained at the lack of noise!
Our first morning was to buy provisions. Father & I donned a rucksack each and we all three walked the 2½ miles to Scalasaig. Across the rough track and down to the main road, passed Milbuie, the hotel and down to the harbour. Our naivety hit us again, as we expected to see a shop with a large plate glass frontage and a painted fascia board displaying the name of the shop owner, as you would have seen in southern England. But no, just a very large wooden building, with a single word painted on it's side - SHOP.
Once inside, it was an "Aladdin's cave" of all you would need on a remote island. Pots, pans, rakes and all sorts of hardware hung from the beams in the ceiling. The shelves were stacked with not only food, but all miscellany of other items, many of which were not necessarily for internal consumption. Packets of biscuits rubbed shoulders with liniment and boxes of matches. Mother launched off with her list by asking for a pound of Anchor butter. She soon found out that brand names were not the "in thing" on Colonsay. Butter was butter. Who manufactured it was immaterial ! This gave father an immediate problem, as he realised he wouldn't be able to buy his favourite brand of pipe tobacco. In later years, having learnt from these experiences, we brought any "specific" provisions in the trunk. Mother, having bought all she needed, finished by asking for two pounds of bananas, only to be told, very politely, that "there were none on the boat yesterday, perhaps they'll come next week".
We walked back up the road to the hotel where mother thought we ought to buy some gin & whisky for the farmhouse. Father pointed out that as it was only 10.20 a.m. and that pubs didn't open until 10.30. We sat on the wall, outside the hotel, admiring the fuschia hedge that grew alongside the wall. Twenty minutes later, we entered the "bar" and rang the bell on the counter. After a little while, a man came and sold father the bottles he wanted. During the conversation, father explained we were staying at Baleromindubh and that we had been sitting outside until opening time. The man replied that he knew who we were and went on to say that the bar was never closed and that doors were never locked on the island. Apparently we should have "….just come in and helped yourselves. Pay before you leave the island". But what about the Custom & Excise, father said ? "We don't worry about them, we can see them coming 10 miles off".
The next day we embarked on the long walk from Baleromindubh, passed Scalasaig Farm, where David's brother John was the tenant, over the pass on Beinn nan Gudairean, passed Loch Fada, through the woodland gardens behind Colonsay House and on to Kiloran Bay. What a bay it was, stretching ahead of us, half a mile of golden yellow sand. But when you picked up a handful, the granules were of many and varied colours. After our day at Kiloran, we set off to walk the 5 odd miles back to Baleromindubh. I must say, I was flagging on the way back and it was only by playing a "game", to keep my spirits up, that we made it. When recounting this to David, he suggested that we could always walk to our destination and pre-book for Finlay, in his taxi, to come & collect us. This was welcome news and we did do this on several occasions later. In fact it was Finlay who gave me a beautiful crook, with a carved horn hilt, which I have treasured ever since. What kindness & generosity to virtual strangers.
The telephone system was, of course, "manually operated". I believe the telephone number for Baleromindubh was something like "Colonsay 5" ! I remember one day, when I was playing in the dining room, David asked if he could use the telephone.
"Of course", mother said and told me to leave Mr Clark in private to make his call.
"Oh that's alright" said David. "The little lad is fine where he is". He picked up the handset, turned the handle to attract the switchboard and immediately lapsed into gaelic. No wonder privacy was not important in such a situation. Of course the telephone system had other uses. We called somebody on the island, one day, only to be told by the switchboard operator that "I think they've gone to Oban today". Saved the cost of a call!
Of course this "bush telegraph" did have other advantages. One day we decided to walk down to the Strand and cross, in bare feet, to Oronsay. We had just got to the road end and were in the process of removing shoes & socks, when a vehicle appeared from Garvard Farm. This was Mrs McNeill, who had heard from David Clark, of our intended exploit and kindly offered to take us across in her Land Rover. I don't think for a moment she had need to go to Oronsay herself, but just wanted to make visitors to the island as welcome as possible.
My memories of this wonderful and peaceful island, and the warm and genuine welcome from it's inhabitants, will never leave me.
I have been back since, in the late 60's and again in the early 70's and still get that "thrill" on arrival and that sadness on leaving, like parting from a lifelong friend.
But I will be coming back again, after 30 years, in just a few days time, at the end of April.
Ruari A. L. Cumming, FBII, LRPS
24th April 2002
THE COLONSAY CATECHIST - Part 6
Dr. Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart's series of articles continues this issue, and will revert shortly to the specific details of Colonsay's experience. Readers are reminded that the finished work will now be published in book form. When the series is complete, information about such a publication will appear here. Advance subscribers and expressions of interest will be welcomed by the Editor.
Crisis and Cooperation: the Royal Bounty 1728-9
A partnership with the SSPCK?
The latter half of 1728 saw further tightening up of the rules of the Royal Bounty Committee. To a large extent this was due to the fright the committee got when they handed in the 1727 accounts to the government auditors, the Barons of the Exchequer. The barons promptly and rather maliciously – for the first time ever – refused to ratify them, on the grounds that the committee had (mis)used some of the Royal Bounty to pay retainers to the clerk, the doorkeeper, and for stationery expenses. In some confusion, the committee decided to try to draw these personal payments out of an already existing £500 church fund, an attempt which was successful the following year. The committee were obviously rather rattled about the state of their accounts, however, and stressed to presbyteries that the relevant certificates and receipts must be received before the 1 December 1728, "Seing at that time The Committee’s Accounts to be Revised and Errors therein or Mismanagment may Reflect on the Church, and be the Occasion of Withdrawing this ffund."
While the delegation from the committee argued their case with the Barons of Exchequer, the latter made a rather crucial suggestion: that "also it might be humbly desired, that his Majesty would allow some part of this ffund of One Thousand Pounds Sterling, to be bestowed for Charity Schools, which was formerly Demanded." The committee were certainly not averse to considering such a suggestion. Most of them were members of the SSPCK as well, and thus committed to the charity school movement, and convinced of its value. Ever since the very first year of the Royal Bounty, there had been some degree of cooperation with the SSPCK, with certain of the latter’s schoolmasters being paid to catechize for the Bounty on weekends. Because the 1728 scheme had spent much of the Royal Bounty upon the Synod of Glenelg, new corners had to be cut in other areas of the Gàidhealtachd. One way of getting around this problem was to try to make the local SSPCK schoolmasters do the catechizing for them, a patently unsatisfactory solution nevertheless resorted to in the schemes for presbyteries of Kincardine O’Neil, Fordyce, Aberlour and Abernethy.
The Royal Bounty Committee composed a memorial to the Barons of the Exchequer, in which the members requested that the barons try to secure a change in the terms of the royal grant. The language used, and the anti-Gaelic ideology lying behind it, is not at all what we might expect of the committee; it is, however, most typical of the SSPCK:
And because it is Evident that the teaching the People in the highlands and Islands to read the Scriptures in the English Language is the only solid Foundation of all ffuture Instruction in Christian Knowledge and will tend to Extirpate the Irish Language, which much Obstructs the Civilizing of that People Therefore the Committee also begs, that Your Lordships will be Pleas’d to Procure, That the Maintaining of Charity Schools in the Highlands and Islands, and furnishing Necessary Books for Teaching them to read the Scriptures, and understand the Principles of the Protestant Reform’d Religion, may be Added to the Purposes for which the said Royal Bounty is bestow’d
The barons replied on 12 July 1728. It was not for them, they said, to apply for changes in the terms of the grant; rather, it was a matter for the Church of Scotland, to be discussed either at its quarterly Commission, or at the annual General Assembly. After lengthy discussion, the committee decided not to apply for an alteration in the grant; nonetheless, they began to make moves towards a even closer rapprochement with the SSPCK:
And that as to maintaining of Schools in the Highlands and Islands the places most needing the same this Committee shall keep a Correspondence thereanent with the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and their Committee and Concert Measures, about their Schoolmasters being employed as Catechists upon the Saturndays & Lord’s Day and other times when their Scholars are not at School and that this Committee Grant some Allowance to them, upon that head.
In a memorial to General Wade composed in August 1728, requesting military help to capture Catholic priests, and asking for his help in strengthening government authority in the Gàidhealtachd, the Royal Bounty Committee closely followed the line of the SSPCK; indeed, the society was given paeons of praise:
The Abovementioned Society have now for Near twenty Years past had many Schools Scattered in the Most Barbarous Corners, which have had Desireable Success in teaching the Rising Generation Reading, Writing, Arithmetick, and the Principles of Religion, Virtue and Loyalty, and likewise to Speak the English Language; great Care is taken by them, that such as they Employ to teach, be well Affected to his Majesty, and his Illustrious Royal Protestant ffamily. The Judicatorys likewise of this Church, have very Carefully Laboured to Procure Legal Schools to be Errected in many Parishes of the Highlands, where there were never any Schools before, and are still going on, to obtain More, But the Reforming and Civilizing the Highlands and Islands, will be a Work of time, It is now happily begun, and if the helps already Afforded be continued and some other things that are hereafter humbly Propos’d be granted, it will make a Remarkable tho’ Gradual Progress to the Strengthening of his Majesty’s Govt Notwithstanding the Restless Endeavours of it’s Enemies who deall in their Power to Oppose and Retard it. These Schools, and other Means of Instruction spoken of, will through the Blessing of God in Due time Remove the Ignorance & Barbarity of the Poorer Sort, But it is a Loss that for furder improving these of a higher Rank and of more than Ordinary pregnant Spirits, there are not some few Grammar Schools set up, in the most Populous Places.
The committee were not the only ones, however, who were planning to make new changes in the rules of the Royal Bounty Committee. At that very same meeting the members received a seemingly innocent letter from Rev. Donald MacLeod moderator of the Synod of Glenelg. The minister requested that a copy of the original Royal Grant and the committee’s rules be sent to them as soon as possible. Suspecting nothing, the committee complied with MacLeod’s request.
Double dealing by the Synod of Glenelg
In fact, for some time the Synod of Glenelg had been running out of patience with the Royal Bounty Committee. The first hint that its attitude to the committee was fast deteriorating comes in a rather cantankerous letter written by the Rev. Aeneas Sage to Professor Hamilton – and pointedly not to the committee – on 6 September 1728. In the letter Sage once more complained about the unpaid ministerial stipends owed to him, but this time hinted that the reason that legal pressure was not being brought to bear upon the recalcitrant heretors – the local landlords who should have been paying Sage’s salary – was that the agent of the church, Nicol Spence, was simply not doing his job. Spence defended himself spiritedly, alleging that to some extent it was Sage’s own unreasonable desire to push back the augmentation of his stipend right to the date of his admission which was to blame for the delay. There were only two Barons of Exchequer in Scotland all last winter, meaning that they were not quorate to grant petitions, while the process was now being considered by the Lord Advocate "As his other Weighty Affairs will Allow". All of Sage’s process was being paid for out of the public purse, even the minister’s own travelling expenses, a sum amounting to nearly £200.
Later on during the same meeting, on 15 November 1728, the committee were presented with some rather surprising information, namely "that the Synod of Glenelg hath a Strong Inclination, to have the Kings Bounty turned out of the Present Channel and Apply’d for Annual New Erections [of parishes] and that a Memorial was given to General Wade at Fort William to Procure Countenance to it at Court". The committee were obviously quite astonished that the synod had been going behind its back. An emergency meeting was called for three days later; all lawyers on the committee were urged to attend. The committee were far from happy with the synod’s little project, and "Did judge that Motion very improper, and Unseasonable, and also Disrespectful to the General Assembly, it’s Commission and Committees, who Petition’d for that Bounty to be employ’d in the Manner it now is, and that they should have been Acquainted before any such Motion had been made". Not only was the motion disrespectful, it showed "a Dissatisfaction with the Method Graciously Propos’d in his Majestys Royal Grant, after it was sought in that Manner by this Church, and may have a Tendence to Withdraw the same." Ten days later, the subcommittee brought in a draft of a letter to the synod, recalling that they had asked for a copy of the Royal Grant, and wherein they thought it "Exceeding Strange that You did not Judge it proper to Communicate Your Design to them, who (by Delegation from the General Assembly of this Church Your Superior Judicatory are intrusted with the Managment of that Bounty) before You made an Attempt to introduce so great an Alteration in a Matter that Nearly Concerns the Interest of Religion, Regard to his Majesty, and the Honour of this Whole Church." The committee, obviously in high dudgeon, was quite merciless to the Synod of Glenelg, bringing the full weight of its authority to bear upon them:
It was a great Adventure, and a most improper and unseasonable one in so small a Number as your Synod Consists of, or in their Committee, or any Presbytery in Your Bounds, to take upon them to Counterwork the General Assembly and their Commission, to the Prejudice of other Eight Synods as Considerable as you, who have an Interest in the Matter. When the Committee have Weighed the many bad Consequences that must Necessarily Attend this New Project, They have Reason to think that the first Movers thereof, are either not friendly to this Glorious Work, and judge this a likely Way to Marr it, and no doubt it will prove so, Or if friendly, they have not duly Considered all the disadvantages of that Proposal
The committee’s letter was accompanied by another memorial to General Wade, urging him of the necessity to carry on the Royal Bounty scheme as it now was, given the scattered nature of the population, and the impossibilities of carrying the heritors along with such a scheme.
Yet the idea of the synod’s scheme had in the first place come from the heritors themselves. Also, it should be remembered that the use of Royal Bounty funds to pay parish stipends had in fact been mooted in the original lobbying for the scheme. The Synod of Glenelg had first floated the idea the previous year, when it was suggested that half the fund be reallotted to pay for the splitting of large, unwieldy parishes into more manageable units. At their annual meeting, on 19 June 1728, the synod had appointed a committee to draw up a scheme for the better employing of the Royal Bounty, and to correspond with other neighbouring synods on the subject – evidently this was how it leaked to the Royal Bounty Committee in Edinburgh. In January it came out that the author of the report was Rev. James Gilchrist of Kilmallie; the committee record that he wrote a letter to them on 4 April 1729, in which he defends himself:
He says it was no Application to the Government, Only an Unsign’d Memorial, giving the General a thought, which Perhaps might be new, and which he was to make, what use of he Pleas’d, And the said Mr Gilchrist owns he was the Writer thereof, and, except that that Scheme is Agreeable to his Own Sentiments, the Writing of that Paper, is all the hand he had in it. It was at the Desire of a Certain Gentleman that he wrote it
Whatever support the Synod’s idea might have had among local landowners, the government were firmly on the side of the Royal Bounty Committee. The upshot was that relations between the committee and the various presbyteries in the Synod of Glenelg – supposedly their greatest beneficiaries – became positively glacial, the more so in that the committee, evidently set on pursuing their grudge to the bitter end, insisted on taking the affair before the General Assembly of 1729. The Assembly disapproved of the synod’s memorial, and that was an end to the matter, at least as far as the committee was concerned.
A solution to the crisis?
Nevertheless, the affair of the Synod of Glenelg had clearly shown up the inadequacy of the Royal Bounty scheme as it was then being administered. Despite their rather desperate circumstances, the Presbyteries of Gairloch and Abertarff had received little or no support from the fund; despite all the good intentions, ministers and catechists were simply not willing to come to preach in their bounds. Both sides, the synod and the committee, saw the need to encourage resident preachers and catechists in the community. Yet a scheme by which itinerant preachers were ordered to leave their home for an uncertain, uncomfortable and even dangerous three months among hostile strangers was obviously totally unsatisfactory. Something had to be done. The Synod of Glenelg had proposed using the Royal Bounty to increase the number of resident ministers; the Royal Bounty Committee, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about using the SSPCK schoolteachers as part-time catechists. General Wade’s opinion, expressed in a letter of 16 November the previous year, was that an annual bounty scheme could not be used to employ full-time established teachers. Nevertheless, at the 1729 General Assembly the committee pursued this aim, asking – as it was rather coyly put – "the Addition only of dispersing Books & Encouraging Schools." The General Assembly agreed to allow the Royal Bounty Committee for 1729 to make its own decisions, and after that matters moved very quickly.
On 29 May 1729 the subcommittee decided that seeing demand for the Royal Bounty was so high, they should correspond with the SSPCK and bring in a report accordingly. A month later, the report was ready. It recommended that:
the Committee should Resolve in Concert with the said Society, to give Commissions to several of the Masters settled in the said Schools, to be Catechists for Catechising the People in these Places upon three Days of the Week, namely Each Lord’s Day, Each Saturnday and each Munday, both forenoon and Afternoon, and to allow such Catechists for their Annual Service this say a Sum not exceeding Ten Pounds Sterling Per Annum to be paid to the said Schoolmasters at two Terms of the Year Vizt Whitsunday and Martinmass, beginning the first Term’s Payment at Whitsunday 1730 for the half Year Preceeding
On their part, the SSPCK were willing and ready to settle schools in proper and needful places according to the committee’s desire. Their own committee was ordered to work together with the Royal Bounty Committee as soon as possible to work out suitable places and candidates:
When the said Society and this Committee have Agreed upon a Certain Number of Wel Qualified Persons to be their Respective Schoolmasters and Catechists and Concerted the Proper Places of their Settlments That the said Persons should for Distinction’s sake be thus Design’d in the several Minutes of Register Vizt The Catechists jointly employ’d by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge and this Committee.
The jointly employed catechist-schoolmaster, receiving half his salary from the SSPCK as a schoolmaster, and the other half from the Royal Bounty Committee as a catechist, was not a new creation in 1729; there had been isolated examples beforehand. But 1729 was the first year that this job share, as it were, was officially recognised. The category of catechist-schoolmaster was by no means the largest in the 1729 Royal Bounty scheme: 46 of them to 60 of the older itinerant preacher types. However, there was no doubt which group was the more cost-effective: 46 catechists, whose salary was shared with the SSPCK, cost only £249; 60 missionaries, on the other hand, cost £818. When it was found that some £59 was left over from the previous year, the Royal Bounty Committee, tellingly, chose to fund 11 joint catechist-schoolmasters.
Conclusion
Thus it was that the two bodies, the SSPCK and the Royal Bounty Committee, had to begin to work together, in an alliance which lasted some forty years. As we shall see, it was by no means an easy partnership: communication channels could be confused, and the charitable SSPCK in particular had to be ready to defer to the official committee whenever tensions arose. Nevertheless, through cooperation with the Royal Bounty the SSPCK were able to spread their influence and their ideology far and wide, much more so than they would have done had they to rely upon their own resources alone. Granted, many, indeed most members of the Royal Bounty Committee also attended meetings of the SSPCK; but the Royal Bounty funds were not originally to be used – overtly at least – towards well-defined ideological ends, other than the basics of preaching the gospel, encouraging loyalty, and combatting Roman Catholicism and Episcopalianism. The SSPCK, on the other hand, had over their twenty years’ existence evolved a very specific picture of their ideal Gàidhealtachd: it goes without saying that goodwill towards Gaelic language and culture was not exactly a crucial part of the society’s vision. The SSPCK had a cultural as well as a religious and political agenda, and this would henceforth be prosecuted throughout the region with the assistance of official funds.
At the same time, the cooperation between Royal Bounty and SSPCK meant a great extension in the missionary effort. For one thing, the society’s network of schoolteachers, now enjoying a hefty injection of official funds, had already spread far outwith the borders of the Gàidhealtachd. Then again, by working together and effectively halving their costs, the two bodies were able to fund posts in much smaller, isolated communities than previously. Among these new placements would be the island of Colonsay.
