Eighteenth Century Waifs

It was probably Solomon, who, in Ecclesiastes, cap. 12, v. 12, said, ‘Of making many books there is no end.’ But, if this book had to have been written by him, he might, probably, have modified his opinion.

I have read some books in my life-time, re the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and therefore was not taken aback when I was advised by a learned friend, whom I consulted as to the subject of a new book, to try the ‘Musgrave Tracts,’ in the British Museum. I thanked him, and wrote for them, when I was politely asked, ‘Did I want them all?’ ‘Of course,’ was my reply; when I was told, with the courtesy that particularly distinguishes the establishment, that I had better come into an inner room, and have them down shelf by shelf.

The books came in a continuous stream, until I asked if there were any more. ‘Oh, yes,’ was the reply; and, when I had finished my job, I found I had gone through more than 1760 volumes. Add to this over 200 other books and newspapers used for reference, &c., and that will represent some amount of the labour employed in writing a book.

I have strung together a series of chapters of different phases of social life and biography of the last century, none of which have (as far as I am concerned) appeared in any magazine, but which have all been specially written for this book. And this I have done so that the book may be taken up at any time, and laid down again at the end of an article; and perhaps the best reason for my publishing this book is, that it gives the reader a brief resumé of each subject treated, taken from sources, thoroughly original, which are usually inaccessible to the general public, and known but to few students.

They are diverse, to suit all tastes; and if this, my venture, is successful, I may bashfully hint that my store is not yet exhausted.

A FORGOTTEN FANATIC.1

One of the most curious phases of religious mania is that where the patient is under the impression that he is divinely inspired, and has a special mission to his fellow-men, which he is impelled to fulfil at all costs and under all circumstances.

From the earliest ages of Christianity pseudo-Christoi, or false Christs, existed. Simon Magus, Dositheus, and the famous Barcochab were among the first of them, and they were followed by Moses, in Crete, in the fifth century; Julian, in Palestine, circa A.D. 530; and Serenus, in Spain, circa A.D. 714. There were, in the twelfth century, some seven or eight in France, Spain, and Persia; and, coming to more modern times, there was Sabbatai Zewi, a native of Aleppo, or Smyrna, who proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, in Jerusalem, circa 1666. The list of religious fanatics is a long one. Mahomet, Munzer, John of Leyden, Brothers, Matthews, Joanna Southcott, ‘Courtenay,’ or Thomas, and Joe Smith are among them, and are well-known; but there are hundreds of others whose work has not been on so grand a scale, or whose influence has not been of the national importance of the above; and it is of one of these forgotten fanatics that I now treat.

Well out in the Atlantic Ocean, far west, indeed, even of the Western Isles, stands the lonely island of St. Kilda, or Hirta, as it used to be called, from h-Iar-tir, the Gaelic for West land, or West country. Its rocky sides are inaccessible, except at one landing-place, at a bay on the south-east, and it is the home and breeding-place of millions of sea-birds, whose flesh and eggs form the main supply of food for the inhabitants, and whose feathers, together with a few sheep and cattle, and what little barley can be grown, or butter can be made, pay the trifling rent required, and help to provide the bare necessaries of civilized existence.

The inhabitants are not healthy, so many dying, as young children, of a disease locally known as the ‘eight day sickness,’ a disease which generally attacks them on the eighth or ninth day after birth, and mostly proves fatal in the course of a day or two. From this and other causes, including falls from cliffs, the population has remained nearly stationary, as is evidenced by the fact that for the last hundred years the inhabitants have averaged under a hundred. Indeed, at one time, in 1724, small-pox attacked the islanders, being imported by one of them on his return from a visit to Harris, and all the adults died except four, who were left to take care of twenty-six orphans, all that were left of twenty-four families.

Lying out of the ordinary track of boats, even of yachts, it is, even now, seldom visited, and in the last century no one except the steward of Macleod (whose family have been the possessors of St. Kilda for hundreds of years), who made an annual pilgrimage to collect the rent, ever came near the place. Its loneliness was proverbial, so much so that it was an article of faith that the arrival of strangers brought with them a kind of influenza called boat-cough, which was sometimes fatal. This singular disease does not seem to be confined to St. Kilda, for Bates, in ‘The Naturalist on the River Amazon,’ mentions certain tribes near Ega who are gradually becoming extinct from a slow fever and cold, which attacks them after they have been visited by civilised people. And in the ‘Cruise of H.M.S. Galatea,’ in 1867-68, it says, ‘Tristran d’Acunha is a remarkably healthy island; but it is a singular fact that any vessel touching there from St. Helena invariably brings with it a disease resembling influenza.’

This belief is amusingly illustrated in Boswell’s ‘Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.’ ‘This evening he (Dr. Johnson) disputed the truth of what is said as to the people of St. Kilda catching cold whenever strangers come. “How can there,” said he, “be a physical effect without a physical cause?” He added, laughing, “The arrival of a ship full of strangers would kill them; for, if one stranger gives them one cold, two strangers must give them two colds, and so on in proportion.” I wondered to hear him ridicule this, as he had praised McAulay for putting it in his book,2 saying that it was manly in him to tell a fact, however strange, if he himself believed it. They said it was annually proved by Macleod’s steward, on whose arrival all the inhabitants caught cold. He jocularly remarked, “The steward always comes to demand something from them, and so they fall a-coughing. I suppose the people in Skye all take a cold when – ” (naming a certain person) “comes.” They said he only came in summer. Johnson– “That is out of tenderness to you. Bad weather and he at the same time would be too much.”’

The first printed account of this poor lonely island is, probably, in a little book by Donald Monro, High Dean of the Isles,3 1594. He there says, ‘The inhabitants therof ar simple poor people, scarce learnit in aney religion, but McCloyd of Herray,4 his stewart, or he quhom he deputs in sic office, sailes anes in the zeir ther at midsummer, with some chaplaine to baptize bairns ther, and if they want5 a chaplaine, they baptize their bairns themselfes.’

At the end of the seventeenth century, when Roderick, the religious impostor, or fanatic, lived, things spiritual were somewhat improved, although they only had the annual clerical visit. There were three chapels on the island, to serve a population of one hundred and eighty. One was called Christ’s Chapel, hardly discernible from one of their dwellings, being built and thatched in a similar manner; but it contained one of their chief treasures, a brass crucifix, which lay upon an altar therein. They paid no adoration or worship to this, but it was their most precious possession, being used, as are the gospels elsewhere, for the purpose of solemn asseveration, and it was also made use of at marriages and the healing of strife.

The people observed as Holy-days Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, St. Columba’s Day, and All Saints. They ceased all work at midnight on Saturday, and kept the Sabbath, in this respect, very strictly, only resuming their ordinary avocations on Monday morning. They believed in the Trinity, and in a future state of happiness and misery, and that God ordains all things. They took great care with their churchyard, which they fenced round with stone, so that no cattle should desecrate God’s Acre, and they had a peculiar belief in the embodiment of spirits, and fancied that they could, at will, incorporate themselves with the rocks, hills, etc.

Of the three chapels, one only seems to have been used, and this, not being large enough to accommodate the islanders, the whole of the inhabitants would assemble, on every Sunday morning, in the churchyard, and there devoutly say the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. This form of worship was simple enough; but it seems to have been of recent introduction —i. e., about the beginning of the seventeenth century; when, somehow or other, there was a man upon the island who passed for a Roman Catholic priest, but who was so ignorant that he did not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Decalogue correctly; and, consequently, he taught the poor people an incorrect version, but to him they owed the crucifix, and the observance of the Holy-days before mentioned, and with this teacher they were content until the year 1641, when one Coll McDonald, or Ketoch, fled from Ireland, and, with a few men, landed at St. Kilda, where he lived in amity with the inhabitants for nearly a year. He rebuked the so-called priest for his ignorance, and he taught the poor simple folk the correct version of the text of their very primitive worship – in fine, he was considered so far superior to the priest, that the natives would fain have deposed the latter; but this McDonald would not suffer.

Martin Martin,6 writing in 1698, describes the happy condition of the islanders at that date. ‘The Inhabitants of St. Kilda are much happier than the generality of Mankind, as being almost the only People in the World who feel the sweetness of true Liberty: What the Condition of the People in the Golden Age is feign’d by the Poets to be, that theirs really is; I mean, in Innocency and Simplicity, Purity, Mutual Love, and Cordial Friendship, free from solicitous Cares and anxious Covetousness; from Envy, Deceit, and Dissimulation; from Ambition and Pride, and the Consequences that attend them. They are altogether ignorant of the Vices of Foreigners, and governed by the Dictates of Reason and Christianity, as it was first delivered to them by those Heroick Souls whose Zeal moved them to undergo danger and trouble, to plant Religion here in one of the remotest Corners of the World.’

This Eden, however, was doomed to have its Serpent, and these simple folk were fated to be led into error by a man who seems to have been physically above the average of the islanders, for he is described as ‘a Comely, well-proportioned fellow, Red-hair’d, and exceeding all the Inhabitants of St. Kilda in Strength, Climbing, &c.’ Naturally he was illiterate, for the means of culture were altogether lacking in that lonely isle; but he was above his fellows, inasmuch as he was a poet, and, moreover, he claimed to have the gift of ‘second sight,’ a pretension which would naturally cause him to be looked up to by these Gaelic islanders. These qualifications which Roderick (for such was his name) claimed, naturally pointed to his becoming a leader of some sort; and he seems to have entered upon his vocation early in life, for, when we first hear of him in his public capacity, he was but eighteen years of age.

We have read how strictly the islands kept the Sabbath, and Roderick seems to have been the first to break through their customs – by going fishing on that day. As, according to all moral ethics, something dreadful will surely overtake the Sabbath breaker, it is comforting to know that Roderick formed no exception to the rule. One Sunday he committed the heinous and, hitherto, unknown sin of fishing – and, on his return, he declared that, as he was coming home, a ‘Man, dressed in a Cloak and Hat,’ suddenly appeared in the road before him. Needless to say, this apparition frightened him, and he fell upon his face before the supernatural being, but the Man desired him not to be afraid, for he was John the Baptist, who had come specially from Heaven, the bearer of good tidings to the inhabitants of St. Kilda, and with a divine commission to instruct Roderick in religious matters, which instruction he was to impart to his neighbours for their spiritual welfare.

Roderick diffidently objected to thus being made a medium, and alleged his incapacity to receive such revelations and act upon them; but the pseudo-saint cheered him, and bade him be of good courage, declaring that he would immediately make him fit for his predestined purpose, and, according to the poor fanatic’s account, gave him the following instructions:

It was to be of primary importance, and as a visible sign of their belief, that his followers should observe Friday as a strict fast – so strict, indeed, that not a particle of food of any description must pass their lips on that day, nor might they even indulge in a pinch of snuff – a small luxury which they dearly loved. He next promulgated the comforting assurance that many of the deceased islanders were Saints in Heaven, and there interceded for those living; that everyone had his own particular advocate, and, on the anniversary of the day peculiar to each Saint, his protégé on earth was to make a feast to his neighbours of the very best of his substance, such as mutton, fowls, &c., Roderick, of course, to be the chief and honoured guest on the occasion.

A sheep was to be sacrificed on the threshold of each house by every family (presumably only once a year), and this was to be done in a specially cruel manner, for no knife was to touch it, but its throat was to be hacked with the crooked spades they used in husbandry, whose edges were about half-an-inch thick. This was to be done at night, but no one might partake of the mutton that night under penalty of similarly slaughtering a sheep the next day for every person that had eaten of it. It is difficult to see what was his object in these ordinances – except to make sure of good living at the expense of his poor dupes, who, if they turned refractory, and disobeyed his injunctions, were threatened with the most awful Judgment to come.

That he was keen enough in his own interests is exemplified in one of his promulgations. He picked out a bush upon a rising ground, which he christened ‘John the Baptist’s Bush,’ for there, he declared, the Saint had appeared to him; and this he ordered should be holy ground, which must never be defiled by the tread of sheep or cattle. He also built a wall – certainly not a high one – round it: and should, by chance, any unhappy sheep, in the lightsomeness of its heart, or succumbing to the temptation of the herbage, overleap this wall, and dare to browse upon the sacred soil, it was staightway to be slain – and Roderick and its owner were to eat its carcase. But, as the Saint evidently foresaw that some stiff-necked, and not properly-converted proselyte, might object to this disposition of his personal property and might refuse to have the sheep slaughtered, he commanded that such a recusant should be Anathema, cast out, and excluded from all fellowship, until such time as he saw the error of his ways, recanted, and expiated his sin by permitting the sacrifice.

For discipline must be maintained in a religious body, as well as in a purely secular society; and Roderick had no intention of having his authority disputed. For minor offences he had a cheerful penance. No matter what was the weather, the sinner must strip, and forthwith walk or jump into the water, there to stand until the divinely-inspired one chose to release him, and, if more than one were thus punished at the same time, they were to beguile the moments, and somewhat increase their penance, by pouring cold water upon each other’s heads.

He was for no half-measures. This new Divine revelation must thoroughly supersede and root out the old superstitions; so he forbade the use of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments – the whole formulary of the islanders’ simple faith – and substituted forms of his own. His prayers are described as rhapsodical productions, in which, in spite of the abolition of the old form of worship, he introduced the names of God, our Saviour, and the immaculate Virgin, together with words unintelligible either to himself or his hearers, but which he declared to have received direct from the Baptist, and delivered to his hearers, as in duty bound.

He kept up his connection with St. John, and used to assert that every night, when the people were assembled, he heard a voice, saying, ‘Come you out, and then he lost all control over himself, and was constrained to go. Then would the Baptist meet him, and instruct him in what he was to say to the people. St. John evidently expected his disciple to exercise all his intelligence, for he would only say his message once, and never could be got to repeat it. On one occasion, Roderick could not understand it, or hardly remember a sentence; so he naturally inquired of the Saint how he was to behave. He got no comfort, however, only a brusque, ‘Go, you have it,’ with which he was fain to be content, and, wonderful to relate, on his return to his flock, he remembered every word he had been told, and could retail it fluently – but, as a rule, his discourses were discursive, and apt to send his auditors to sleep.

Naturally the women flocked to him, and he took them specially (some said too specially) under his protection. To them he revealed that, if they followed him faithfully, eternal bliss should be their portion, and that they should go to heaven in glorious state, riding upon milk-white steeds. For them he exercised his poetic talents (for he composed long, rhapsodical rhymes, which he called psalms, and which were sung by his flock), and he taught them a devout hymn, called the ‘Virgin Mary’s,’ which he declared she had sent specially to them, and that it was of such wonderful efficacy, that whoever could repeat it by heart would not die in child-bearing; but, of course, so valuable a gift could not be imparted gratis, so every scholar was mulcted in a sheep before she was instructed in the potent hymn.

Yet, as with many another, a woman was the primary cause of his downfall. It was his behaviour to a woman that first opened the eyes of his deluded followers, and showed them that their idol was fallible, and that his feet were ‘part of iron, and part of clay.’ The wife of Macleod’s representative found favour in his sight; but, being a virtuous woman, she told her husband of the Prophet’s wicked advances; and these two laid a little trap, into which the unsuspecting, but naughty, Roderick walked.

It was very simple: the husband hid himself until he judged proper to appear – confronted the guilty man – spoke burning words of reproof to him – thoroughly disorganised him, and brought him very low – made him beg his pardon, and promise he would never so sin again. But although a hollow peace was patched up between them, and the injured husband even gave the greatest sign of friendship possible, according to their notions (i. e., taking Roderick’s place as sponsor at the baptism of one of his own children), yet the story leaked out. The Prophet’s father plainly and openly told him he was a deceiver, and would come to a bad end; and the thinking portion of the community began to have serious doubts of the Divine origin of his mission.

These doubts were further confirmed by one or two little facts which led the people to somewhat distrust his infallibility, especially in one case in which his cousin-german Lewis was concerned. This man had an ewe which had brought forth three lambs at one time, and these wicked sheep actually browsed upon the sacred bush! Of course we know the Baptist had decreed their slaughter, and Lewis was promptly reminded of the fact – but he did not see it in that light. His heart was hard, and his sheep were dear to him. He argued that, from his point of view, it was unreasonable to kill so many animals, and inflict such serious damage to their proprietor, for so trivial a fault – and, besides, he would not. Of course there was nothing to be done with such an hardened sinner but to carry out the law, and excommunicate him; which was accordingly done – with the usual result. The poor simple folk, in their faith, looked for a speedy and awful judgment to fall upon Lewis and his sheep.

And then they bethought them that, if it were their own case, they might as well treat the matter as Lewis had done – seeing he was none the worse, and four sheep to the good; and so his authority over them gradually grew laxer and laxer: and, when the steward paid his annual visit in 1697, they denounced Roderick as an impostor, and expressed contrition for their own back-slidings.

The chaplain who accompanied the steward, and who was sent over from Harris by Macleod, purposely to look into this matter, made the Prophet publicly proclaim himself an impostor, compelled him to commence with his own hands the destruction of the enclosure round the sacred bush, and scatter the stones broadcast – and, finally, the steward, whose word was absolute law to these poor people, took him away, never to return. The poor credulous dupes, on being reproved for so easily complying to this impostor, with one voice answered that what they did was unaccountable; but, seeing one of their own number and stamp in all respects endued, as they fancied, with a powerful faculty of preaching so fluently and frequently, and pretending to converse with John the Baptist, they were induced to believe in his mission from Heaven, and therefore complied with his commands without dispute.

Of his ultimate fate nothing is known, the last record of him being that, after having been taken to Harris, he was brought before the awful Macleod, to be judged, ‘who, being informed of this Fellow’s Impostures, did forbid him from that time forward to Preach any more on pain of Death. This was a great mortification, as well as disappointment, to the Impostor, who was possessed with a fancy that Mack-Leod would hear him preach, and expected no less than to persuade him to become one of his Proselytes, as he has since confessed.’ He was sent to Skye, where he made public recantation of his errors, and confessed in several churches that it was the Devil, and not St. John, with whom he conversed – and, arguing from that fact, he probably was docile, and lived the remainder of his life in Skye – a harmless lunatic.

In October, 1885, public attention was particularly directed to St. Kilda, and the story cannot be better told than by reproducing some contemporary newspaper paragraphs.

Morning Post, October 9, 1885. – ‘A letter has been received by Principal Rainy, Edinburgh, and has been forwarded to the Home Secretary from St. Kilda. The letter was found on the shore of Harris, having been floated from St. Kilda in a little boat made of a piece of plank. The letter was written by the clergyman of St. Kilda, by direction of the islanders, asking that the Government should be informed that their corn, barley, and potatoes were destroyed by a great storm, in the hope that Government would send a supply of corn-seed, barley, and potatoes, as the crop was quite useless.’

Ibid, October 21, 1885. – ‘The steamer from Glasgow, carrying supplies to the starving people of St. Kilda, reached the island on Monday, and safely landed the stores. The islanders were in good health, but their crops have been swept away, and, but for the supplies sent by the steamer, they would have been in very perilous straits for food. Intelligence of the distress of St. Kilda was first made known by bottles thrown into the sea.’

Times, April 8, 1886. – ‘A Parliamentary paper has been issued containing a report of Mr. Malcolm McNeill, inspecting officer of the Board of Supervision, on the alleged destitution in the island of St. Kilda, in October, 1885, with supplementary reports by Lieutenant Osborne, R.N., commanding officer, and by the medical officer of H.M.S. Jackal. The report shows that, news from St. Kilda having reached Harris by means of letters enclosed in a small boat a yard long, found on the shore, to the effect that the corn, barley, and potatoes of the inhabitants had been destroyed by a great storm that had passed over the island early in September, and that, in consequence, the crofters of St. Kilda were suffering great privations, a steamer, the Hebridean, was despatched from Glasgow to the island with stores on the 13th of October, and, by arrangement with the Admiralty, H.M.S. Jackal, conveying Mr. McNeill, left Rothesay Bay for St. Kilda on Wednesday, October 21, 1885. Mr. McNeill reported that, so far from being destitute, the inhabitants of the island were amply, indeed luxuriously, supplied with food, and in possession of sums of money said to average not less than £20 a family. Dr. Acheson, of H.M.S. Jackal, reported that the inhabitants of St. Kilda were well-clad and well-fed, being much better off in these respects than the peasants in many other parts of Great Britain.’