Isle of Arran

“ It was a remote and savage story, which began in the island of Arran, fifty years ago: a small farm of stone in the mountain above Kilmory Water, dreaming above a waste of sea in which, at night, the lighthouse on the Isle of Pladda shows the only token of life. But by day all the mouth of the firth to Ailsa Craig would be streaked with the smoke of steamers making for the p. ”

“ Opposite that weird glen, of evil omen, we turn northward, and steam past the Fallen Rocks, and round the north point of Arran into Kilbrannan Sound, our purpose being to sail round Arran and to anchor for the night in Lamlash Bay. We have a pleasant glimpse, in passing, of Loch Ranza and its rugged keep, and of the valleys and ‘cols’ that lead over to Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa. The west coast of Arran, however, is distinctly tame, and gives few tokens of cultivation and industry, until we approach the south end of the island. ”

“ The geology of Arran has attracted much attention, as furnishing within a comparatively narrow space distinct sections of the great geological formations; while the botany possesses almost equal interest, both in the variety and the rarity of many of its plants. Among objects of interest are relics of Danish forts, standing stones, cairns, &c. Lamlash and Brodick are villages. The island is a favourite resort of summer visitors, and is reached by steamer from Ardrossan. ”

“ It is into no flat expanse of water that the dying sun sinks here. The peaks and crags of Arran invest its passage with an indescribable pomp and majesty, standing out against it like the massive pillars of some giant gateway of the West. It is never twice the same. Sometimes lurid and blazing, with masses of thunder-cloud piled high, all their outer edges rimmed with fire ”

“ To gaze on their colossal dimensions and barbaric rudeness seems to carry us back almost to the beginning of time, when the earth was inhabited by beings unlike ourselves. But however old the forts in Arran may be, it is evident that they were the strongholds of a seafaring people; for the whole products of the barren islands on which they stand would not be worth the labour of erecting such gigantic fortresses for their protection. These islands support a good many people now, thanks to the potato ”

“ Féile, kilt, in North Argyll éile, is eibhle (bh sounded v) in Arran; Shaw gives ebhladh, and the Highland Society’s Dictionary has éibhleadh from Gillies. Éibhleag, live coal, is eilbheag, and earball, tail, generally urball, but sometimes ulabar, all in Arran. Diordaoin, Thursday, is Di-daoirn in Arran, Islay, and Jura. Aonghas, Angus, is Naoghas in Arran, Kintyre, Islay, and Skye, and seangan, an ant, is sneaghan in Arran, Kintyre (pronounced ‘sneagan’ in those two districts) , Islay, Perth, and West Ross, snioghan in Badenoch, and snioghag in Sutherland. ”

“ This kind of gipsying expedition to the sea in summer would hardly suit the form of European, or at least British civilisation; but we do not see why, in the one continent more than in the other, one's country lodgings should be required to resemble a town-house. In the Clyde, which we have mentioned as a resort for summer loiterers, there is one exceptional place—the island of Arran. ”

“ Sweet the air is in the doorway, and peaceful is the hour! The sun is just setting beyond the Cantyre hills, and out there, over the water, the lonely peaks of Arran are purple in the evening light. Scarcely a cloud lingers in the clear green sky, and the calm sea stirs but at intervals with the incoming of the tide. The tan-brown sails of111 the fishing-boats that came out of Loch Ranza an hour ago have hardly moved a mile yet up Kilbrannan Sound. The rooks have gone home to the Mount Stuart woods; the whirr of the reaping-machine in the corn-field over there has ceased; all the air is still. ”

“ Another very interesting island visited that autumn was Arran, where the Duchess of Hamilton and her daughter were established in a shooting-box, which literally was a sort of sportsman’s paradise. Every officer in the ship who could be spared from duty was provided with some sort of sport. One party went after grouse. ”

“ Of that group of islands off the north-west coast of Ireland called the Arrans, Innishmore is a striking instance of this neglect and desolation. Probably within the wide sweep of the British islands there could not be found a spot more irretrievably given up to poverty and barbarism. Some circular mud hovels, shaped like beehives, and with a central aperture for the escape of the smoke, are the dwellings of an almost naked, famine-stricken people, whose looks, language, and gestures mark them out for foreigners if they chance to come over to the mainland. ”

“ The sea was a sheet of blue and purple washed with gold. Arran rose above all like a dream of beauty. I was the sole passenger in the steamer, for the whole island! What made the drive of six miles more beautiful than ever was the extraordinary fantastic beauty of the frozen [244] waterfalls and burns caught as it were in the leap. Sometimes these immense icicles hung straight and long, like a Druid’s beard: sometimes in wrought sheets of gold, or magic columns and spaces of crystal.
Sweet it was to smell the pine and the heather and bracken, and the salt weed upon the shore. ”

“ Thair is twa Iles that pertenis to thir saids four Iles named Arran and Boyd (Bute) . Arran is 24 miles lang, 12 and 8 miles in sum pairtis braid, and is 300 merk land, perteining to my Lord Hamiltoun, quhairin is twa castells. Arran will raise 100 men. Boyd is aucht mile lang, four mile braid, quhairin stands ane great Burrowstown callit Rosa. It will raise 300 men, and is of na less commoditie and profit nor Arran.
Thir haill Iles abovewritten, gif thai were on ane end, are fourteen score and twelve mile of lenth and miles of breid. ”

“ The islands seem innumerable, and the shores are so indented with bays, and the lake itself so pierced by jutting headlands, that on sailing on Loch Erne it is often impossible to know an island from a peninsula, or a peninsula from an island. There is certainly no lake in Ireland or in Great Britain whose shores are so indented as are those of Loch Erne. The great charm of its shores and islands is their roundness and their greenness. ”

“ The man at the helm turns the wheel, the compass is set due west, the island of Arran is doubled, the steamer turns the peninsula of Kintyre, and, ascending the western coast, enters the Gigha Pass, then through the Sound, between the islands of Islay and Jura, she arrives at the wide entrance of the Frith of Lorn, which narrows, until it is quite closed, a little above Oban. ”

“ The geography of the Aran Islands is very simple, yet it may need a word to itself. There are three islands, Aranmor, the north island, about nine miles long; Inishmaan, the middle island, about three miles and a half across, and nearly round in form; and the south island, Inishere—in Irish, east island—like the middle island but slightly smaller. They lie about thirty miles from Galway, up the centre of the bay, but they are not far from the cliffs of County Clare, on the south, or the corner of Connemara on the north. ”

“ Our early Christianity came from Ireland, and the route was by the Firth of Clyde, where Kintyre, Arran, Cumbrae, Bute, Kilmun, Dumbarton, Luss, and Balquhidder were all already provided with places of worship. The Vale of Leven and Loch Lomond were the natural approaches from the west to the upper end of Loch Earn and Strathearn. Another route connecting Perthshire with Iona was by Loch Etive, Dalmally, Tyndrum, and Glendochart. ”

“ If we wanted a contrast to the wild desolation of Arran, it wonld be in the lovely valley of North Wales, where Vyner’s cottage stood. It was a purchase he had made purely from its picturesque beauty; a spot chanced upon in a summer’s ramble, and bought at once with that zest which leads a rich man to secure the gem that has captivated his fancy. ”

“ All must have courage to submit to their own destiny.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Preparations for going away for the summer were hurried on, and there seemed more visitors than usual. I was pleased at the idea of going to the Island of Arran, which had many attractions for visitors, I longed to see the place, having heard so much about its hills and mountains. Miss Heslip, a young friend of Miss Mouncey's, was with them for the summer. From that day things were pleasing and mirthful. One evening, while I was passing the cake-basket in the drawing-room, I held the cake to a tall and dark gentleman. ”

“ But it is chiefly in Aran, and on the opposite Connemara coast, that Irish ballads are still being made as well as sung. The little rock islands of Aran are fit strongholds for the threatened language, breakwaters of Europe, taking as they do the first onset of the ocean 'that hath no limits nearer than America.' The fisher-folk go out in their canvas curraghs to win a living from the Atlantic, or painfully carry loads of sand and seaweed to make the likeness of an earth-plot on the bare rock. The Irish coast seems far away ”

“ On all sides, except to the north, it is bounded by hills. Those at the southern end are very lofty, the tallest of which is Arran, which lifts its head to the clouds like a huge loaf. As I wandered on the strand I thought of a certain British prince and poet, who in the very old time sought a refuge in the vicinity of the lake from the rage of the Saxons. His name was Llewarch Hen, of whom I will now say a few words. ”

“ Such are the stories told of the five successive hordes of adventurers who first attempted to colonize our wooded Island. Whatever moiety of truth may be mixed up with so many fictions, two things are certain, that long before the time when our Lord and Saviour came upon earth, the coasts and harbours of Erin were known to the merchants of the Mediterranean, and that from the first to the fifth Christian century, the warriors of the wooded Isle made inroads on the Roman power in Britain and even in Gaul. ”

“ Until the arrival of Albany in May 1515, the young king remained in the hands of Angus and the queen-dowager. Arran supported Albany in the proceedings which led to the flight of Angus and the queen-dowager to England, and when Lord Home, one of the few nobles who supported Angus, was taken prisoner, he was committed by Albany to the custody of Arran in Edinburgh Castle. Home now flattered Arran with the hope that Angus and the queen-dowager would support his claims to the regency. ”

“ As lieutenant-general of the kingdom Arran was sent in 1504 to co-operate with Sir Andrew Wood and Robert Barton in reducing the Western Isles. After his return he was despatched, with ten thousand men, to the assistance of the king of Denmark, whom he succeeded in re-establishing on his throne (Lesley, History, Bannatyne ed. p. 72) . ”

“ But strangely enough a saviour now appeared to Arran in the person of the master of Gray, who, either because he had become doubtful of Elizabeth's regard for himself or wished to conceal his intrigues with her, arranged with the king, on the receipt of certain bribes from Arran, that Arran should be sent to nominal confinement in Kinneil. Nevertheless, the master knew that he could not trust Arran, and immediately set on foot a new plot for his overthrow by the recall of the banished lords. ”

“ A strange tranquillity has come over the island this morning, as happens sometimes on Sunday, filling the two circles of sea and sky with the quiet of a church.
The one landscape that is here lends itself with singular power to this suggestion of grey luminous cloud. There is no wind, and no definite light. Aranmor seems to sleep upon a mirror, and the hills of Connemara look so near that I am troubled by the width of the bay that lies before them, touched this morning with individual expression one sees sometimes in a lake. ”

“ Aran Islands, or South Islands of Aran, three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the W. coast of Ireland. The largest, Aranmore or Inishmore, comprises 7635 acres, and has a pop. of 2592; the next, Inishmaan, 2252 acres, pop. 473; and the least, Inishere, 1400 acres, pop. 456. They are remarkable for a number of architectural remains of a very early date. The inhabitants are chiefly engaged in agriculture and fishing. ”

“ I don’t know about Grenfell, but I know that Ireland is not to be bettered by men like you. It is out of our own rough energies must come the cure for our own coarse maladies. Go back and build model cottages in Norfolk, give prizes to your oldest farm labourer, or the mother of the largest family. Here’s your yawl ”

“ Meanwhile, immediately on the repudiation of the treaty, war had broken out with England, and Arran was unable either to maintain order within the realm or defend it from outside aggression, the Scots being defeated at Pinkie on the 10th of September 1547. He reluctantly agreed in July 1548 to the marriage of the dauphin with Mary, whom he had designed for his son, to the appeal for French aid, and to the removal of Mary for security to France, and on the 5th of February 1549 was created duke of Châtelherault in Poitou, his eldest son James being henceforth commonly styled earl of Arran. ”

“ On Arranmore island, in the Bay of Galway, the Rev. W. Kilbride discovered habitations and artificial structures extending from above high water-mark to under the low water-level of spring tides: from this it may be inferred that man existed in Ireland before the last subsidence of the land. The Irish Annals contain much that was formerly looked upon as fabulous relations of inbreaks of the ocean, but which may be reasonably held to be the reflex of traditionary tales having some foundation in fact. ”