The Pirate
of each county of Scotland which borders on the sea, holds ex-officio a
place at the Board. These gentlemen act in every respect gratuitously,
but have the use of an armed yacht, well found and fitted up, when they
choose to visit the lighthouses. An excellent engineer, Mr. Robert
Stevenson, is attached to the Board, to afford the benefit of his
professional advice. The author accompanied this expedition as a guest;
for Selkirkshire, though it calls him Sheriff, has not, like the kingdom
of Bohemia in Corporal Trim's story, a seaport in its circuit, nor its
magistrate, of course, any place at the Board of Commissioners,--a
circumstance of little consequence where all were old and intimate
friends, bred to the same profession, and disposed to accommodate each
other in every possible manner.
The nature of the important business which was the principal purpose of
the voyage, was connected with the amusement of visiting the leading
objects of a traveller's curiosity; for the wild cape, or formidable
shelve, which requires to be marked out by a lighthouse, is generally at
no great distance from the most magnificent scenery of rocks, caves, and
billows. Our time, too, was at our own disposal, and, as most of us were
freshwater sailors, we could at any time make a fair wind out of a foul
one, and run before the gale in quest of some object of curiosity which
lay under our lee.
With these purposes of public utility and some personal amusement in
view, we left the port of Leith on the 26th July, 1814, ran along the
east coast of Scotland, viewing its different curiosities, stood over to
Zetland and Orkney, where we were some time detained by the wonders of a
country which displayed so much that was new to us; and having seen what
was curious in the Ultima Thule of the ancients, where the sun hardly
thought it worth while to go to bed, since his rising was at this season
so early, we doubled the extreme northern termination of Scotland, and
took a rapid survey of the Hebrides, where we found many kind friends.
There, that our little expedition might not want the dignity of danger,
we were favoured with a distant glimpse of what was said to be an
American cruiser, and had opportunity to consider what a pretty figure
we should have made had the voyage ended in our being carried captive
to the United States. After visiting the romantic shores of Morven, and
the vicinity of Oban, we made a run to the coast of Ireland, and visited
the Giant's Causeway, that we might compare it with Staffa, which we had
surveyed in our course. At length, about the middle of September, we
ended our voyage in the Clyde, at the port of Greenock.
And thus terminated our pleasant tour, to which our equipment gave
unusual facilities, as the ship's company could form a strong boat's
crew, independent of those who might be left on board the vessel, which
permitted us the freedom to land wherever our curiosity carried us. Let
me add, while reviewing for a moment a sunny portion of my life, that
among the six or seven friends who performed this voyage together, some
of them doubtless of different tastes and pursuits, and remaining for
several weeks on board a small vessel, there never occurred the
slightest dispute or disagreement, each seeming anxious to submit his
own particular wishes to those of his friends. By this mutual
accommodation all the purposes of our little expedition were obtained,
while for a time we might have adopted the lines of Allan Cunningham's
fine sea-song,
"The world of waters was our home,
And merry men were we!"
But sorrow mixes her memorials with the purest remembrances of pleasure.
On returning from the voyage which had proved so satisfactory, I found
that fate had deprived her country most unexpectedly of a lady,
qualified to adorn the high rank which she held, and who had long
admitted me to a share of her friendship. The subsequent loss of one of
those comrades who made up the party, and he the most intimate friend I
had in the world, casts also its shade on recollections which, but for
these embitterments, would be otherwise so pleasing.
I may here briefly observe, that my business in this voyage, so far as I
could be said to have any, was to endeavour to discover some localities
which might be useful in the "Lord of the Isles," a poem with which I
was then threatening the public, and was afterwards printed without
attaining remarkable success. But as at the same time the anonymous
novel of "Waverley" was making its way to popularity, I already augured
the possibility of a second effort in this department of literature, and
I saw much in the wild islands of the Orkneys and Zetland, which I
judged might be made in the highest degree interesting, should these
isles ever become the scene of a narrative of fictitious events. I
learned the history of Gow the pirate from an old sibyl, (the subject of
a note, p. 326 of this volume,) whose principal subsistence was by a
trade in favourable winds, which she sold to mariners at Stromness.
Nothing could be more interesting than the kindness and hospitality of
the gentlemen of Zetland, which was to me the more affecting, as several
of them had been friends and correspondents of my father.
I was induced to go a generation or two farther back, to find materials
from which I might trace the features of the old Norwegian Udaller, the
Scottish gentry having in general occupied the place of that primitive
race, and their language and peculiarities of manner having entirely
disappeared. The only difference now to be observed betwixt the gentry
of these islands, and those of Scotland in general, is, that the wealth
and property is more equally divided among our more northern countrymen,
and that there exists among the resident proprietors no men of very
great wealth, whose display of its luxuries might render the others
discontented with their own lot. From the same cause of general
equality of fortunes, and the cheapness of living, which is its natural
consequence, I found the officers of a veteran regiment who had
maintained the garrison at Fort Charlotte, in Lerwick, discomposed at
the idea of being recalled from a country where their pay, however
inadequate to the expenses of a capital, was fully adequate to their
wants, and it was singular to hear natives of merry England herself
regretting their approaching departure from the melancholy isles of the
Ultima Thule.
Such are the trivial particulars attending the origin of that
publication, which took place several years later than the agreeable
journey from which it took its rise.
The state of manners which I have introduced in the romance, was
necessarily in a great degree imaginary, though founded in some measure
on slight hints, which, showing what was, seemed to give reasonable
indication of what must once have been, the tone of the society in these
sequestered but interesting islands.
In one respect I was judged somewhat hastily, perhaps, when the
character of Norna was pronounced by the critics a mere copy of Meg
Merrilees. That I had fallen short of what I wished and desired to
express is unquestionable, otherwise my object could not have been so
widely mistaken; nor can I yet think that any person who will take the
trouble of reading the Pirate with some attention, can fail to trace in
Norna,--the victim of remorse and insanity, and the dupe of her own
imposture, her mind, too, flooded with all the wild literature and
extravagant superstitions of the north,--something distinct from the
Dumfries-shire gipsy, whose pretensions to supernatural powers are not
beyond those of a Norwood prophetess. The foundations of such a
character may be perhaps traced, though it be too true that the
necessary superstructure cannot have been raised upon them, otherwise
these remarks would have been unnecessary. There is also great
improbability in the statement of Norna's possessing power and
opportunity to impress on others that belief in her supernatural gifts
which distracted her own mind. Yet, amid a very credulous and ignorant
population, it is astonishing what success may be attained by an
impostor, who is, at the same time, an enthusiast. It is such as to
remind us of the couplet which assures us that
"The pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat."
Indeed, as I have observed elsewhere, the professed explanation of a
tale, where appearances or incidents of a supernatural character are
referred to natural causes, has often, in the winding up of the story, a
degree of improbability almost equal to an absolute goblin narrative.
Even the genius of Mrs. Radcliffe could not always surmount this
difficulty.
ABBOTSFORD,
_1st May, 1831._
ADVERTISEMENT.
The purpose of the following Narrative is to give a detailed and
accurate account of certain remarkable incidents which took place in the
Orkney Islands, concerning which the more imperfect traditions and
mutilated records of the country only tell us the following erroneous
particulars:--
In the month of January, 1724-5, a vessel, called the Revenge, bearing
twenty large guns, and six smaller, commanded by JOHN GOW, or GOFFE, or
SMITH, came to the Orkney Islands, and was discovered to be a pirate, by
various acts of insolence and villainy committed by the crew. These were
for some time submitted to, the inhabitants of these remote islands not
possessing arms nor means of resistance; and so bold was the Captain of
these banditti, that he not only came ashore, and gave dancing parties
in the village of Stromness, but before his real character was
discovered, engaged the affections, and received the troth-plight, of a
young lady possessed of some property. A patriotic individual, JAMES
FEA, younger of Clestron, formed the plan of securing the buccanier,
which he effected by a mixture of courage and address, in consequence
chiefly of Gow's vessel having gone on shore near the harbour of
Calfsound, on the Island of Eda, not far distant from a house then
inhabited by Mr. FEA. In the various stratagems by which Mr. FEA
contrived finally, at the peril of his life, (they being well armed and
desperate,) to make the whole pirates his prisoners, he was much aided
by Mr. JAMES LAING, the grandfather of the late MALCOLM LAING, Esq., the
acute and ingenious historian of Scotland during the 17th century.
Gow, and others of his crew, suffered, by sentence of the High Court of
Admiralty, the punishment their crimes had long deserved. He conducted
himself with great audacity when before the Court; and, from an account
of the matter by an eye-witness, seems to have been subjected to some
unusual severities, in order to compel him to plead. The words are
these: "JOHN GOW would not plead, for which he was brought to the bar,
and the Judge ordered that his thumbs should be squeezed by two men,
with a whip-cord, till it did break; and then it should be doubled, till
it did again break, and then laid threefold, and that the executioners
should pull with their whole strength; which sentence Gow endured with a
great deal of boldness." The next morning, (27th May, 1725,) when he had
seen the terrible preparations for pressing him to death, his courage
gave way, and he told the Marshal of Court, that he would not have given
so much trouble, had he been assured of not being hanged in chains. He
was then tried, condemned, and executed, with others of his crew.
It is said, that the lady whose affections GOW had engaged, went up to
London to see him before his death, and that, arriving too late, she had
the courage to request a sight of his dead body; and then, touching the
hand of the corpse, she formally resumed the troth-plight which she had
bestowed. Without going through this ceremony, she could not, according