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National Geographic : 1974 Nov
Contents
Scotland's Inner Hebrides isles of the Western Sea By KENNETH MACLEISH SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITOR Photographs by R. STEPHEN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICSTAFF THEY LIE LIKE A SCATTER of rough- holy in the cut gems, these Isles of the Western Sea, The car arrayed between the Highland hills and more, whc the Outer Hebrides. They are, in their behind dar entirety, larger, more numerous, and vastly church (nc more varied than the starkly, darkly lovely hide in) bl Isles on the Edge of the Sea, as the outer empty ma group is called.* Too, the Inner Hebrides are chief harbc more troubled by the soft relentless pressure moors. No of machine-age civilization, whose ways are swans slep not those of the Gaelic islandman. The sea- early riser bred Gael holds in a loving but loosening Eastwar grasp an age-old skein of folkways born of Islay with i human nature rather than the mind-molding with splen strictures of the industrial society. rocky shor "We belong to this place," a crofter said. Dunyveg "I'm a Gaelic-speaking man; we all had the Donald Lc Gaelic once. Och, but now we're growing few, Norwegian and our tongue is being lost, and the language strong sly holds the tales, and the tales hold the knowl- to their 171 edge of the old ways and the old days, of My dest holy and unholy things... ." place. No crumbling I woke in the full darkness of a moonless rials to mi night, dressed quickly, stepped out into silence small roo and moist sweet air, sea-seasoned, moor- beautiful C scented. I drove down across Islay, the south- years ago t ernmost isle of the Inner Hebrides, deter- *The auth mined to see a wondrous thing both old and 1970 NATION UZZELL III first light of a Scottish morning. whispered through pretty Bow >se neat slated houses slumbered kened windows and whose round corners, there, for the Devil to essed the town from the top of the in street. Port Ellen, the island's r town, was as quiet as the inland wind disturbed the water, where t in mirrored duplication, nor any the silence of the street. d, then, past distilleries that supply ndustry fit for Gaels and the world did whisky. Beyond these, on a e, stood the ruins of 13th-century Castle, fortress seat of the Mac >rds of the Isles who ruled under *and, later, Scottish kings until the Campbells of Argyll added Islay th-century empire. ination lay nearby in a wooded proud castle brought me there, no walls standing as derisive memo irder, but a single stone set by a less chapel: a heartbreakingly eltic cross, carved eleven hundred ;o the glory of Christ. Mist was on or wrote of the outer islands in the May AL GEOGRAPHIC. In faith renewed, a replica of the Cross of St. John rises from the mist-soaked earth of lona, where ancient kings and holy men sleep their last. Like the Celtic Cross of Kildalton on nearby Islay, the stone relics of lona mark settlements of early Gaelic Christians on the heathered isles of Scotland's Inner Hebrides. 690
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