Introduction
THE AREA COVERED BY this book is vast and varied. It ranges from the outskirts of Glasgow to the remote loveliness of Kintyre, from the majesty of Glen Coe to the tiny jewelled beauty of Jura, from the busy holiday resort of Dunoon to the utter loneliness of Loch Etive, from the nuclear submarine bases on Holy Loch to Scotland's birthplace at Dunadd. Here there is choice enough, and room enough, for all.
The whole area is an ideal holiday centre, whether you seek a be-tartaned knees-up every night, or the total peace of remote glens and lochs.
Most of this part of Scotland is indeed a Lonely Land. Even these days you can find yourself a mountain side or a hill loch and spend idyllic hours in solitude. You can visit ancient places where the carved stones tell stories of centuries long past. You can wander great beaches where Atlantic breakers roar, or where the sea is gentle. Indeed, it is a wonderland of beauty, surely unsurpassed in this world. And it is all available and open. The roads are good, the foot tracks mostly well-marked, the people welcoming and the hotels comfortable.
Quite certainly you need have no fears of knifing or mugging or bag-snatching. Those features of holiday areas in other countries are unknown to us. Perhaps such things come with wall-to-wall high-rise hotels, and they, too, thankfully, are absent.
That is not to say that you cannot find good hotels. Far from it. Indeed, I think you can eat and drink better, in greater comfort and in more welcoming surroundings, in Scotland today than in any other place. A sweeping statement, perhaps, but I believe it to be true. So your creature comforts are assured. And should you be seeking relief for a jaded spirit, then watch the wonder of a summer sunset over Jura. Sunset comes late there but it comes bejewelled in glory, with colours gleaming like enamel - lovely, almost unbelievable. Watching that, all the worries, fears and tensions of life are relieved.
Like all guidebooks, this one tries to advise you on what to do, what to see, and how to get there. However, I have tried to do much more than that. It has always seemed to me that enjoyment of any area is greatly enhanced if you have some knowledge of what has happened in the past, of what forces have shaped the countryside and the people. In this book you will find a good deal of history, a lot of description, and a fair amount of polemic, all designed to give you a better understanding of the area. Frankly, if you are the type of visitor who brings along his own cocoon, who has no interest in the past, who thinks Harry Lauder and Andy Stewart were typical Scots, then this book is not for you. But if you seek to understand what has made the things among which and the people among whom you are holidaying, then perhaps this little book will help. It is written with great love and burning indignation: love for a country and a people; indignation for what they have endured, and fear for a future perhaps worse than a miserable past.
The area covered in this book is virtually what was once Argyll. Properly speaking, that ancient and honourable name disappeared in the last senseless reorganisation of local government, and it mostly disappeared into the amorphous mass of Strathclyde, with its centre in Glasgow. But Argyll it remains in the mouths and minds of all those fortunate enough to live there.
The name 'Argyll' derives from Araghaidal or Ergadia, which means the boundary of the Gaels. It was at Dunadd near Crinan that, around 500AD, the first seeds were sown from which Scotland grew as a unified nation and state. The peoples who established the great network of forts around Dunadd had come over the narrow sea from Northern Ireland, and for long afterwards Argyll's links were with Ireland, not the rest of Scotland, and that is not surprising. There are only 12 miles of sea between Argyll and Ireland, while many miles of trackless wilderness and forests divided Argyll from the rest of the country.
Yet, as the centuries passed, it was found that in fact there was easy access from the south west to the centre and the north east of Scotland. There was the Great Glen, there was Loch Awe and Loch Fyne, there was the narrow neck of land between the Firths of Clyde and Forth. Rather than being barriers, they were found to be means of communication, and gradually the centre of gravity of Scotland shifted from Argyll to places more central. But for centuries Argyll was the channel through which new influences travelled from Ireland to the rest of the country - influences like the proselytising and ascetic Celtic brand of Christianity.
The lovely island of Iona off Argyll's coast was the chief centre of the Celtic church, and for as long as that Church survived, Argyll remained at the centre of Scotland's story, although by then it was remote from her secular centre. Only when the Roman brand of Christianity triumphed (due largely to the efforts of Queen Margaret, the English wife of King Malcolm Canmore) at the end of the 11th century, did Argyll become remote from Scotland's development.
The Norsemen had for long been troublesome on these coasts and islands, and by the middle of the 12th century they had in fact become the major influence. The Norsemen were not just the hit-and-run raiders of legend. They came, and they stayed, intermarrying and adopting Christian beliefs. It was out of this colonisation and miscegenation that the great Lordship of the Isles arose, controlling all the western seaboard and the islands down to the Isle of Man.
The Lords of the Isles controlled large territories, and exerted great power. For reasons which we do not understand, they chose to centre that power on an insignificant island in an insignificant loch on Islay, although there they built a great stone meeting place, which is at present being excavated in a fascinating archaeological dig. In 1549, Dean Munro recorded that in the time of the Lords of the Isles, there 'was great wealth and peace' in the Isles, 'through the ministration of justice.'
It could not last, of course. The Scottish Crown could not accept this state within a state, and when it was capable enough to do so, it broke the power of the Lords. Although strong enough to do that, it was not capable enough in those distant parts to fill the power vacuum that resulted, and so the long years of clan feuding and warfare began.
The Lords of the Isles were great warriors and jealous of the power of the Crown. They may have occasionally recognised that their territory was part of Scotland, but mostly they held to a fierce independence, and maintained a separate fiefdom. The first Lord of the Isles was Somerled, and Argyll became the lordship of his son, Dugall. The MacDougall line held this land for generations until the Wars of Independence of the 14th century, when, misguidedly, they opposed Robert Bruce. John MacDougall, Lord at the time, was related to Bruce's opponents, and allied himself with the English - a sad mistake. Like everything else that stood in the way of Bruce and his vision of a free and independent Scotland, they were soundly thrashed, and lost their lands.
The Campbells of Lochawe, a comparatively minor clan, had been good allies to Bruce, and he rewarded them with grants of land taken from the MacDougalls. The Campbells prospered, and eventually almost the whole of Argyll became a virtual kingdom to them, with their head a duke, no less. Because of this vast and unchallenged Campbell power, Argyll was spared some of the worst excesses of Highland history, as, elsewhere, rival clan chiefs drove their followers into battle after battle in an incessant search for advantage and power.
Not that Argyll was altogether insulated from history. The great dynastic and religious struggles of the mid-17th century were as bitter here as elsewhere in Scotland, and at least twice as much of Argyll had to be repopulated by Gaelic-speaking Lowlanders from Ayrshire. The people had been killed off and the land scorched in war.
Like all things, those long years of death and destruction passed. But their passing did not bring tranquility for the common people. The times were changing. There was a Union of England and Scotland, and the centralised government in London was powerful: it was not prepared to allow the old Highland pattern to continue, with its constant internecine warfare and struggle for advantage.
Besides, there had been the Jacobite rebellions, centred in the Highlands, and the Crown in London rightly saw those rebellions as real threats. In particular, the 1745 uprising of Prince Charles Edward - the Bonnie Prince Charlie of song and legend - had been close to success. The Highlands had to be tamed, and they were, in 1746 and 1747, in an episode of savagery and genocide unparalleled in its day.
The clan chiefs had been thoroughly house-broken after the 1745 rising. Indeed, their very raison d'être had been removed. They were no longer needed to lead their clans into battle, and, from being Highland chiefs they turned to the pursuits of being North British gentlemen instead. For this, they required money, not men - money to build great houses, to maintain establishments in London, to gamble, whore and drink. There was money available, far more than the miserable rents that could be exacted from the peasant farmers on the clan lands. The great sheep farmers of the Lowlands and from England had money, and offered it as rent for all the vast acres of the clan lands.
Some chiefs took that road, and others hired factors skilled with sheep to work the land for them. No one of power or authority thought to...
