Peter Costello
Summer outings (No.4 in a six-part series)
My first visit to Iona was a memorable event in my life. After a long dreary drive across the central valley of Mull, we came down to the little port from where visitors took the ferry to the island. It was now a sunny afternoon. The sea bed of the channel was of gleaming white sand, which caught and reflected the brilliant light.
The boat crossed over as if it were actually floating in air the water was so clear. It was like moving from the realm of the mundane to a mystical plane, from the secular to the spiritual. All quite unforgettable, and an ideal entry to a place of ancient renown.
We were following that summer in a leisurely way the route of James Boswell and Dr Johnson in 1774. Since about the age of 12, James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel John, LL.D, first published in 1785 has been one of my favourite books.
It is the sort of book you can pick up and find passages to both amuse and inform one. Both men on this trip were sympathetic to the cause of the exiled Stuarts, but in a way, of course, that did not imperil their liberty, but which was strongly anti-Whig. Both were Anglicans, Johnson of a fairly high kind, and Boswell of a wonderfully wandering manner, well aware of his all too human weaknesses..
The book was, for me as a writer and literary historian, an introduction to the rich literature of the 18th Century. It still is, but now I can enjoy the two men in something like a true perspective.
Their visit to Iona, then called Icolmkill, for a time brought both men into some kind of contact, albeit briefly, with the deepest roots of Christianity in Britain. For the modern reader it can work the same effect…
From Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
When we had landed upon the sacred place, which, as long as I can remember, I had thought on with veneration, Dr Johnson and I cordially embraced.
We had long talked of visiting Icolmkill; and, from the lateness of the season, were at times very doubtful whether we should be able to effect our purpose.
To have seen it, even alone, would have given me great satisfaction; but the venerable scene was rendered much more pleasing by the company of my great and pious friend, who was no less affected by it than I was; and who has described the impressions it should make on the mind, with such strength of thought, and energy of language, that I shall quote his words, as conveying my own sensations much more forcibly than I am capable of doing:
“We are now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible.
“Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery or virtue.
“That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!”
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We were accommodated this night in a large barn, the island affording no lodging that we should have liked so well. Some good hay was strewed at one end of it, to form a bed for us, upon which we lay with our clothes on; and we were furnished with blankets from the village.
Each of us had a portmanteau for a pillow. When I awaked in the morning, and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the Chief of the M’Leans, the great English moralist, and myself, lying thus extended in such a situation.
Wednesday, October 20
…Early in the morning we surveyed the remains of antiquity at this place…as I knew that many persons had already examined them, and as I saw Dr Johnson inspecting and measuring several of the ruins of which he has since given so full an account, my mind was quiescent; and I resolved; to stroll among them at my ease, to take no trouble to investigate minutely, and only receive the general impression of solemn antiquity, and the particular ideas of such objects as should of themselves strike my attention.
We walked from the monastery of nuns to the great church or cathedral, as they call it, along an old broken causewaythe convent of monks, the great church, Oran’s chapel, and four other chapels, are still to be discerned. But I must own that Icolmkill did not answer my expectations; for they were high, from what I had read of it, and still more from what I had heard and thought of it, from my earliest years.
Dr Johnson said it came up to his expectations because he had taken his impression from an account of it subjoined to Sacheverel’s History of the Isle of Man, where it is said, there is not much to be seen here.
We were both disappointed, when we were shewn what are called the monuments of the kings of Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark, and of a king of France.
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I left him and Sir Allan to breakfast in our barn, and stole back again to the cathedral, to indulge in solitude and devout meditation.
They are industrious, and make their own woollen and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer”
While contemplating the venerable ruins, I reflected with much satisfaction, that the solemn scenes of piety never lose their sanctity and influence, though the cares and follies of life may prevent us from visiting them, or may even make us fancy that their effects are only ‘as yesterday, when it is past’, and never again to be perceived. I hoped, that, ever after having been in this holy place, I should maintain an exemplary conduct.
One has a strange propensity to fix upon some point of time from whence a better course of life may begin.
Icolmkill is a fertile island. The inhabitants export some cattle and grain; and I was told, they import nothing but iron and salt. They are industrious, and make their own woollen and linen cloth; and they brew a good deal of beer, which we did not find in any of the other islands.
From Dr Johnson’s narrative A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (1775)
In the morning we rose and surveyed the place. The churches of the two convents are both standing, though unroofed.
They were built of unhewn stone, but solid, and not inelegant. I brought away rude measures of the buildings, such as I cannot much trust myself, inaccurately taken, and obscurely noted.
Mr. Pennant’s delineations, which are doubtless exact, have made my unskilful description less necessary.
The episcopal church consists of two parts, separated by the belfry, and built at different times. The original church had, like others, the altar at one end, and tower at the other; but as it grew too small, another building of equal dimension was added, and the tower then was necessarily in the middle.
That these edifices are of different ages seems evident. The arch of the first church is Roman, being part of a circle; that of the additional building is pointed, and therefore Gothick or Saracenical; the tower is firm, and wants only to be floored and covered.
Of the chambers or cells belonging to the monks, there are some walls remaining, but nothing approaching to a complete apartment.
The bottom of the church is so incumbered with mud and rubbish, that we could make no discoveries of curious inscriptions, and what there are have been already published…
The chapel of the nunnery is now used by the inhabitants as a kind of general cow-house, and the bottom is consequently too miry for examination. Some of the stones which covered the later abbesses have inscriptions, which might yet be read, if the chapel were cleansed.
Roof
The roof of this, as of all the other buildings, is totally destroyed, not only because timber quickly decays when it is neglected, but because in an island utterly destitute of wood, it was wanted for use, and was consequently the first plunder of needy rapacity.
The chancel of the nuns’ chapel is covered with an arch of stone, to which time has done no injury; and a small apartment communicating with the choir, on the north side, like the chapter-house in cathedrals, roofed with stone in the same manner, is likewise entire.
In one of the churches was a marble altar, which the superstition of the inhabitants has destroyed. Their opinion was, that a fragment of this stone was a defence against shipwrecks, fire and miscarriages. In one corner of the church the bason for holy water is yet unbroken.
The cemetery of the nunnery was, till very lately, regarded with such reverence, that only women were buried in it. These reliques of veneration always produce some mournful pleasure. I could have forgiven a great injury more easily than the violation of this imaginary sanctity…
The village near the churches is said to contain 70 families, which, at five in a family, is more than 100 inhabitants to a mile”
It is observed, that ecclesiastical colleges are always in the most pleasant and fruitful places. While the world allowed the monks their choice, it is surely no dishonour that they chose well.
This island is remarkably fruitful. The village near the churches is said to contain 70 families, which, at five in a family, is more than 100 inhabitants to a mile. There are perhaps other villages; yet both corn and cattle are annually exported.
But the fruitfulness of Iona is now its whole prosperity…the island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education, nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read…
We now left those illustrious ruins, by which Mr Boswell was much affected, nor would I willingly be thought to have looked upon them without some emotion. Perhaps, in the revolutions of the world, Iona may be sometime again the instructress of the Western Regions.