Grandmother and the Priests (8 page)

“When I was a bairn,” said the priest, “the Scots in the Highlands, the Orkney Islands and the Outer and Inner Hebrides ignored England still, or if forced to acknowledge her existence they did it with bloody dispatch. They wanted nothing to do with the Sassenach, his Parliament, his monarch, his tax-gatherers and his religion. Their fief was still to their vanished kings, and chieftains and clans, and it was a company of valiant Englishmen, indeed, who braved those men in the shadow of their dark hills and before their darker faces. The mace and the dirk were still called into active use, and many an unwary Sassenach was buried in some wild glen together with his tax-papers or his warrants.”

The clans, still powerful, had their own laws, which were administered rigidly by local chieftains. It was unusual for any Scotsmen, in those remote places, to resort to city magistrates, except for high crimes calling for ropes or long prison terms or suchlike. But if a man merely fought with his neighbor, as always, he sought out his own chieftain and laid the matter before him. However, if the case concerned murder — and it often did — then sometimes, but only sometimes, it was referred to the city magistrates for disposal via the hangman’s rope. It was a terrible thing to be consigned to those granite cities, with the granite statues guarding every intersection, and with a granite sky arched overhead like frozen stone. Your Highlander hated those cities, for he was usually Catholic, and the cities had the odor of Calvin and Knox, and there was no cross permitted on a steeple, not even a Catholic one. And the Scotsman had his own Parliament, as he has today.

Occasionally London was shocked by some unusual amount of blood being shed ‘up there, among the ruddy Scots’, and made inquiries about the matter. But on the whole London preferred to have no part in those affairs. It could be dangerous. And what were a few score Scotsmen more or less? Let well enough alone, said London, wisely, remembering the border raids not so far back in history, and burning hamlets and the mad scream of bagpipes in the black crannies of the hills. London only asked, reasonably, that taxes be paid, and did not press the point too much if returns were languid. The tax-gatherer had learned not to look too closely in hedges where boxes of gold sovereigns might be hidden. He took the man’s word for what he ‘owed’. If it seemed somewhat small, in view of the large herds of sheep and the rich meadows and the size of the house, compromise, as always, was the better part of taxation.

The Highlander despised the meek townsman with his books and his bank statements and his eagerness to be legal. Where was the rascal’s spirit, then? Where was his blood, his pride? Where was the passion of his soul, the remembrance of his ancestors? All had died in the granite cities. All had died, with liberty. Aye, and he paraded in his larcenous kilts, in the streets, on the holidays, looking brave then, with the bagpipes skirling and his legs stumping, but he was a weak fox for all that, he with the white town-face and the womanish eyes. He was no true son of Scotland. Be damned to him.

The Scotsman, unlike the Irishman — though they are blood-brothers — is rarely sentimental. He is a harsher and bitterer breed, with long cold memory and an unforgiving heart. A feud with an Irishman can frequently be resolved in a burst of good temper and humor, and after a drink or two, especially if a priest intervenes in a spirit of brotherly love and conciliation. But a feud with a Scotsman is for life. He will reluctantly give his word, then keep it, but God help the man who gives a Scotsman his word and does not keep it.

And, if he wants something badly enough, he will get it.

Hence the tale of the Doughty Chieftain.

Douglass MacDougall was the laird of an island so remote that even the inhabitants of the Isle of Skye had seldom heard of it. Very cold, craggy and assaulted by the sea, it was doubted by many that even potatoes, turnips, barley and oats could be grown there, and few believed that cattle or even the hardy sheep could survive in that bitter weather. The race of Somerled had once ruled all the Islands, and had given birth to the lairds of Lome, brothers in blood and war and raids on Norway and Sweden. All, then, had called themselves MacDougalls. But later came the clans of Argyll, Campbell, MacLean, MacNaughton and MacDonald, and various others, to make life lively for the outlander and themselves. Robert the Bruce had ranged over the Islands and had done certain bloody things to the lairds of Lome, and especially to the MacDougalls. The latter were believed by almost everyone to have been pretty well exterminated by Bruce — who went after his countrymen during boring interludes of peace with the Saxon dog. A Scotsman may be one of the most courageous men on earth, but he knows when to retire and lick his wounds, and the few MacDougalls who survived the general slaughter retired to that far isle and thought long and homicidal thoughts. However, reality faced the few families. After a very long time, they thought of asking the help of the great houses of MacLeod and MacNeill, and such, but learned that these had come under the influence of William III and Queen Anne, and were receiving handsome subsidies in return for a cease-fire between all the clans of Scotland, and another cease-fire against England. Protestantism, too, had invaded the ancient Catholic clans, and the MacDougalls were firmly Catholic. There was nothing for it but to hate in the liveliest fashion, fashion songs of war and murder, play the bagpipes stirringly, and, in the hope that the new world would forget their existence, to lie low.

They lay low for centuries, but their hatred did not.

A warrior people do not breed lavishly, for it is hard to stay awake for love after the arm has been busy all day lopping off heads in battle or bashing in skulls with a mace. Too, the warrior has a wide swath of modesty in him, and a fear of women, the latter the result of a simple and primitive perspicacity. None of these things are conducive to large families around the hearth. After centuries following Bruce the inhabitants of Douglass MacDougall’s isle numbered some fewer than three thousand darkly Catholic souls, counting even the youngest baby in its cradle and its oldest men. The cattle and the sheep could boast a larger population and breeding rate, even in that fearful climate where the midnight sun could be expected every summer.

Young Father Robert MacBurne had just been ordained in Edinburgh when he was taken by the Bishop to his home. His lordship was by way of being Robert’s uncle, oldest brother to Robert’s mother, and he was a kindly soul. His manse was poor, bare and cold, with niggardly fires — all he could afford. He eyed Robert with affection, asked about the family, and gossiped a little. He was unnaturally effusive, and Robert began to feel a sensation of nasty premonition. As the Bishop’s nephew, he had not exactly hoped for preferred treatment and a parish that would give him luxuries, for he knew that Scotsmen will bend themselves backwards until their heads touch their heels rather than use favoritism where favoritism among other races is the natural thing, and expected. So he began to fear that his uncle was about to assign him to a parish where he would be lucky to get a joint of mutton once a month, and where the old ladies put buttons in the offering plates rather than shillings, or even pennies, and where his church would be about the most poverty-stricken building in the whole county.

The Bishop was short. He was also stout, which was amazing, considering the tiny funds at his disposal and the condition of his larder. Robert was convinced all his life that in some mysterious way the angels must have fed the Bishop while he slept his innocent sleep, or that sheer piety gave him his roundness of face and figure. It could have been nothing else — the angels or the piety. It simply could not have been roast beef and pasties and other luscious things, or even potatoes. The Bishop was also rosy and jolly, the latter unusual for a Scotsman, and he had a high and subtle humor, another trait not customarily found in his countrymen. He was a philosopher and a learned man, possessed of miraculous patience and great gentleness. The gentleness was incredible, considering the state of the Church in Scotland. It was merely a heavenly bonus granted by God to the harassed priests in their Bishop’s character. If he could ‘take a’ that like a ‘mon’, then a priest could ‘take’ what he had to, and he always had to.

Robert, incessantly hungry because he was young as well as poor, was diverted from direful premonitions when he discovered that in some mystifying way his uncle had been able to secure a leg of young lamb, potatoes, some sprouts, white bread, and ale in honor of his nephew’s visit, not to mention lemon-cheese tarts which made a man’s mouth water at the mere look of them. (With these the Bishop, with noble gestures, produced a fourth of a bottle of brandy, hoarded for just this occasion.) Robert was further astonished at being offered a glass of Scotland’s best whiskey. He was so overcome with affection, and amazement, that he almost forgot his forebodings. Then it came to him: he was being fattened like a lamb for the slaughter. Or, to use another simile, it was the condemned man’s final meal.

The lamb and the condemned man, both simultaneously present in young Robert, did not mar his appetite, however. He even forgot to glance apologetically at his uncle’s rueful face when he took the fourth offering of young mutton, after he had first had a monster bowl of broth stiff with barley, carrots and potatoes, a dish which would have surfeited anyone, in itself, but a hungry young priest. “My, my,” marveled the Bishop, when Robert had demolished five tarts, and inhaled several cups of tea rich with cream and sugar. “It gives an auld heart pleasure to see such an appetite. They’d not be feedin’ ye well, in the Seminary, young Bob?”

Robert, blissful with food, ale, whiskey and brandy and tarts, sighed dolefully and shook his head. “I’ve nae had a meal like this since I was a lad.”

And not even then, thought the Bishop, sighing. Nor, he added to himself, will I hae another, mysel’. It had all cost him three pounds, which he had been saving for a long time for this night. They retired to what the Bishop called his library, a mere hole of a little room solidly walled with books, cold as death, and with a handful of coals on the hearth. A table stood in the center of the room, and there were two hard chairs in front of the fire, which gave out practically no heat. Robert, feeling drowsy and stuffed, would have liked to absorb that fire, but his uncle was now all brisk business. He was spreading a map on the table, his bald head shining like a big egg in the light of the one dull lamp, and seeing that map, and the Bishop’s busyness, Robert’s premonitions returned in full power and with dismal liveliness.

“Ye’ll hae heard of the MacDougalls of auld,” said the Bishop, smoothing out the map with small fat hands.

Robert had thought the MacDougalls had been well cleared out by Robert the Bruce and the stronger clans, but his uncle soon disillusioned him. Now, here on this map, if Robert would please come to it, there was a small island. A flyspeck, merely, in the Outer Hebrides, which were no land-masses in themselves. His uncle informed him, with pride, that not even Haakon IV of Norway had been able to land his jarls on that island, because of the valor of the MacDougalls, and, the Bishop added as an afterthought, the general terrain facing the sea. (Robert, much later, suspected the terrain.)

“Catholic, to the mon,” said the Bishop, with a happy smile. “There’s nae United Free Church there, laddie!”

A Scotsman prefers to have the bad news immediately, rather than to delay it in the hope it will go away if ignored. In other words, Robert said to his uncle, the island needed a priest, and he was to be the victim. The Bishop tried to appear shocked, then he went to one of the chairs and admitted that such was the case. Robert wanted all the bad news in one blow; there was no common sense in cutting off a puppy’s tail inch by inch to spare him the pain of one large lop. So the Bishop lopped, after first trying to expound on the beauty, wild and unearthly, of the Hebrides. Robert was not beguiled. He only fixed his uncle with his grim black eye, his hands planted stiffly on his knees.

MacDougall’s isle supported itself by sheep-raising and the production of the hardiest wool in existence. (“I can weel onderstand that,” remarked Robert.) The wool was much in demand for outer garments, if not for underdrawers. (“Scrape the hide off a mon, nae doot,” commented Robert, forgetting the fine meal in his dismay.) It also carried on some brisk fisheries, slate-quarrying, and, best of all, distilling. Robert looked up with a less anguished countenance. The Bishop nodded. “It was their whiskey you had, this night,” he said. Robert smiled the slightest of smiles, thinking of a hearty glass of that whiskey each night before dinner, at his own fireside, perhaps with a friend who was at least partly civilized. He then asked about the weather. One knew about the weather in the Hebrides. It was the national boast that a man could get his nose frostbitten, frequently, in mid-July, and everyone had exceptionally high color by reason of being unremittingly chapped. As for their storms — well, they admitted to a man, not without some pride, that God used the Islands as a proving-ground for storms He had in mind for the polar legions. He wanted to discover just how much wind, rain, snow, sleet, gales and general hell any bit of earth could stand without breaking up into chunks.

And MacDougall’s isle, suggested Robert, was one of God’s favorite spots for testing. The Bishop sat down, as if suddenly tired, and nodded his head. “It hasna disappeared as yet,” he said, to which Robert replied that that was damned unfortunate — for him. And who ruled this less than Paradise on earth?

The Bishop hesitated. Why, of course, the laird was Douglass MacDougall. Who else? A fine lad, in his mid-twenties, if somewhat wild, and still unmarried. Robert commented that Douglass probably carried his dirk in his teeth, his two hands being well occupied with more lethal instruments, such as maces and firearms. And, doubtless, he was as unread as any Congo bushman. The Bishop’s spirits picked up. No, the lad had taken a short, but effective, medical course in Edinburgh. The reason was obvious to the alarmed Robert. There was no physician on the isle, and in addition to owning and managing the fisheries, the quarries, the cattle and the sheep herds, and keeping general peace and order and acting as magistrate, the young chieftain officiated as obstetrician, bone-setter and general practitioner, midwife and veterinarian. “In a nutshell,” admitted the Bishop.

“He’ll nae have time, then, for mischief,” said Robert, somberly. “It’s nae wonder he’s never wedded. Nae doot a virgin, by necessity.”

There was no sense in being facetious, the Bishop admonished, remembering suddenly that he was a Bishop and this young man, though his nephew, was only a fledgling priest. One had to admire the MacDougall. In addition to his medical studies, he had become exceedingly proficient in the liberal arts, the law, Latin and Greek, and sundry other things. Robert marveled, only half believing.

Then a horrid thought came to him. How did the isle communicate with its sisters in the event of great necessity? It had a telegraph, did it not? It did not, the Bishop confessed. But, there were the fishing boats and sailboats, which every man on the isle could handle — if the weather was not too ferocious nor the seas too high. During at least four months in the year boats from the big ships from Glasgow put in at its one usable cove, bringing necessities and taking away the salt herrings, the wool, the slates, and the thick homespun tweeds. And, at least five months in the year the boats from MacDougall’s isle called for the post on the nearest larger isle. “I think,” said Robert, “that I’d prefer the Congo.” But he said this without much hope. For eight months, then, one had only the MacDougall to turn to in distress or travail. No, said the Bishop, he was wrong. There were six Dominican Sisters there. Robert groaned, and held his head in his hands, and the Bishop looked at him sympathetically.