Scotland's Mountains Before the Mountaineers E-Book

Ian R Mitchell

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 432

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Winner of the Outdoor Writers Guild Award for Excellence In this new book on pre-mountaineering ascents and near ascents in the Highlands, we have at last a work which does justice to those who lived and worked, travelled and fought in the Highlands before Walter Scott. PROF. BRUCE LENMAN Marvelous account of mountaineering's prehistory... as colourful as it is thought provoking - THE SCOTSMAN This work tells the story of explorations and ascents in the Scottish Highlands in the days before mountaineering became a popular sport - when Jacobites, bandits, poachers and illicit distillers traditionally used the mountains as sanctuary.

Leseprobe

IAN R MITCHELL taught for over twenty years at Clydebank College, mainly German history, on which he has published academic articles as well as a standard textbook on Bismarck.Scotland’s Mountains Before the Mountaineerslinks his historical training with his interests as a mountaineer. Originally published in 1998, the book won the Outdoor Writers’ Guild Award for Excellence that year and has been in print ever since. This revised and reset edition brings to the book the further research Ian has carried out on the theme over the past decade or more.

Ian has been a lifelong hillwalker, beginning in the Cairngorms in the mid 1960s. He is familiar with the Scottish hills as a walker, bothier and climber, and has completed his Munros twice. He has also visited the mountains of Iceland, Norway, the Pyrenees, Morocco and the Austrian Alps. His first two mountain books were co-written with Dave Brown.Mountain Days and Bothy Nightswas an instant bestseller and is established as a classic of ’60s mountain sub-culture, whileA View from the Ridgewon critical acclaim, and the prestigious Boardman-Tasker Prize in 1991.

His most recent work is a biography of the Scottish Himalayan mountaineer Alexander Kellas, entitledPrelude to Everestco-authored with George Rodway.

By the Same Author:

Mountain Days & Bothy Nights(Luath Press, 1988) (with D Brown)

A View from the Ridge(The Ernest Press, 1991. Re-issued by Luath Press, 2007) (with D Brown)

On the Trail of Queen Victoria in the Highlands(Luath Press, 2000)

Walking Through Scotland’s History(NMS publishing, 2001. Re-issued by Luath Press 2007)

Mountain Outlaw(Luath Press, 2003)

This City Now; Glasgow and its working class past(Luath Press 2005)

Clydeside; Red, Orange and Green(Luath Press 2009)

Aberdeen Beyond the Granite(Luath Press 2010)

Prelude to Everest; Alexander Kellas, Himalayan Mountaineer(Luath Press 2011) with George Rodway

Scotland’s Mountains before the Mountaineers

IAN R MITCHELL

LuathPress Limited

EDINBURGH

www.luath.co.uk

First Published 1998

Reprinted 1999

Reprinted 2004

This edition 2013

eBook 2013

ISBN (print): 978-1-908373-29-8

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-44-1

Maps © Jim Lewis

© Ian R Mitchell

Contents

Abbreviations

Note to the 2013 Edition

Acknowledgements and Dedication

Introduction

Foreword

CHAPTER 1 Summitteers in the Central Highlands

Timothy Pont and Ben Lawers

The Owl of Strone and the Mad Mountaineer

Bandits and Baillies

The Glenorchy Bard

The Jacobite Cleansers… and the Tourists

Scientific Studies

Exploits of a Bagger

John Leyden’s Gaelic Lesson

Painting the Mental Picture

Tickers and Timers

Looking at the Glen of Weeping

CHAPTER 2 The Cairngorms before the Climbers

Cartographers, Miners, Tinkers…

After the Tinkers, A Taylor

A Slaughterhouse Tour

Jacobites and Hanoverians

Ministers and their Munros

Romantic Deeside

The Naturalist

Access Problems

CHAPTER 3 West Highland Wanderers

The First Munroist

Peregrinations of Pont

Spaniards… and a Dutchman or Two

The Prince on the Peaks

Pacification and After

OS Men on Hill and Glen

Into the Great Wilderness

The Turn of the Natives

An Early Ascent of Beinn Eighe

Tourists Discover the Wild West

Three Men on the Mountains

CHAPTER 4 Island Itinerants

Early Voyagers

The Squire from Flint

Ethnic Cleansing

Mull of the Cool High Bens

‘Queen of them all’; Surveys and Setbacks

The Fabulous Forbes

Repeats, Drunkards and the Cuillin Crofter

The Sheriff

CHAPTER 5 The Highland Legacy

Chronology

Bibliography

Abbreviations

OCCASIONAL ABBREVIATIONS are explained in location in the text. For the reader’s convenience, the more frequent abbreviations are:

CCJCairngorm Club Journal

DNBDictionary of National Biography

FASTIFasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae

NLS National Library of Scotland (with ms. no.)

NSA (Second)Statistical Account of Scotland

OSAStatistical Account of Scotland(Original)

SGMScottish Geographical Magazine

SMCJScottish Mountaineering Club Journal

SRWS Scottish Rights of Way Society

TGSITransactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness

WHFPWest Highland Free Press

Op. Cit. Quote from a different page of the immediately preceding text referred to

Loc. Cit. Quote from the same page of the immediately preceeding text referred to

Note to the 2013 Edition

I AM PLEASED TO have been able to work on a revised and reset edition ofScotland’s Mountains before the Mountaineers. This new edition has allowed the correction of the (gratifyingly few) mistakes readers have pointed out in the original book, as well as the expansion of the evidence and argument at certain points in the narrative. The main change however is that the new materials I have discovered since 1998 have now been removed from the cumbersome form of Appendices, and integrated into the main text. However, I have added a new Appendix, in the form of an article I wrote forThe Angry Corriein 2005 on the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001, the lessons of which need constant repeating, ‘lest we forget’.

Ian R. Mitchell

March 2013

Acknowledgements and Dedication

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the following for their invaluable help; all improved the book, none are responsible in any way for a single error or omission. Iseabail Macleod subjected the entire manuscriptto a thorough critique, as did Peter Drummond. Bruce Lenman readthe draft and gave me his weightyimprimaturby agreeing to provide a Foreword. Rennie MacOwan read the section on the Cairngorms and made useful suggestions. Jeffrey Stone made valuable comments on Pont, while Wayne Debeugny aided my researches into Roy and Colby. Robert Ralph facilitated my inquiries into MacGillivray, by making available his unpublished typescripts of some of the naturalist’s Journals held in the library of Aberdeen University. At a time when the manuscript division was closed, the staff at the National Library of Scotland allowed me exceptional access to the unpublishedJournalsof James Robertson. Ronald Black brought my attention to the poem Oran na Comhachaig. And as always, Seonag Mairi helped a Saxon with Celtic Gestalt.

I would, however, like to dedicate the work to the staff of the Mitchell Library, in Glasgow. At a time of re-organisation and financial stringency, they helped me with every request and inquiry, with an unfailing courtesy and professionalism, the epitome of excellence in public service. Without the Mitchell, people like myself whoare not based in academic institutions, could not do our research and write our books. Would that this Public Reference Library, unique in Europe in the range of its collection, were adequately resourced financially, instead of suffering cutbacks in provision.

Some of the material in the book was originally published in the West Highland Free Press.

Introduction

MOUNTAINEERING HAS PRODUCED a body of literature unrivalled by other sports. One need only check the shelves of any bookshop and compare the space allotted to mountaineering as opposed to, for example, fishing, yachting, cycling or other activities – most of whose productions are of a technical nature – to confirm the point. Mountaineering is unique not only in the volume, but also in the quality and range of its literary productions, which gain their superiority from their concern, not solely with the techniques, but with the general culture of the activity – the social histories, the intellectualbiographies, the human relations which mountaineering is uniquely able to treat in literary form.

In Scotland, ‘for a wee country’, we are well supplied with mountaineering works of literary quality. James Bryce’s Memories of Travel, though published in 1921, deals with the vanished world of Victorian and Edwardian times. Seton Gordon’s books, especially his Highways and Bywaysin the West Highlands (1935) and its companion on the Central Highlands (1948) are fine studies on mountain culture. Then there is Alastair Borthwick’s classic of 1930s sub-culture, Always a Little Further, and of course a work which has achieved scriptural status internationally, W.H. Murray’sMountaineering in Scotland (1947). J.H.B. Bell’s A Progress in Mountaineering (1950) could be added to the list, as well as Hamish Brown’s Hamish’s Mountain Walk (1980). There is the fine biography of the Anglo-Scot, Norman Collie, by Christine Mill (1987), as well as I.D.S. Thomson’sJock Nimlin(1995). We have a delightful and scholarly ‘biography’ of our highest mountain,Ben Nevisby Ken Crocket (1986), and from the same imprint came the excellent, though mistitled anthologyA Century of Scottish Mountaineering(1988) with its anthology of hill-climbing pioneers – the Naismiths, Raeburns and others – even though these pioneers were too closely identified therein as of necessity members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club (SMC). Other aspects of our culture have received attention both of scholarly and literary quality, for example in P. Drummond’s Scottish Hill and Mountain Names (1991). This catalogue is of course selective and subjective, but it does give an idea of the enviable literary mountain culture of Scotland.

However, there is a serious gap in all this literary work, and that is in the pre-history of Scottish mountaineering: explorations, ascents, travels, social relations in the mountains, before mountaineering became an organised sport from the middle of the last century. There are more works on the opening up of Africa by Scots explorers than about the opening up of the Scottish Highlands, by Scots and others. An activity becomes a sport when it gains its own techniques, its ownmores– or rules, its own specialised equipment,and its own institutions and publications, i.e. when it becomes separated off from the ordinary business of living. A trawlerman is not a sports fisherman, neither is a chamois hunter a mountaineer. Mountaineering began to coalesce into a sport around the middle of the last century, with the formation of the Alpine Club in London in 1857, and the publication of the Alpine Journal in 1863. This was paralleled by the emergence of guides, of both the human and the printed variety, and the manufacture of equipment designed for the activity, such as the Alpenstock and later ice-axe, and emergence of specialised techniques, such as belaying. The process was uneven, originating in the countries contiguous with the Alpine chain. In Scotland it took another few decades to come to fruition, with the formation of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, and its rival Cairngorm Club in the 1880s, and the appearance of their attendantJournals, and was encouraged by the appearance of improved maps, and guides, like A.P. Abraham’s Rock Climbing in Skye(1908). One marvels and wonders at the exploits of the pioneers, so much so that it is easy to feel that they discovered – indeed invented – the mountains. But what of the pre-history of the mountains, their experiences before the mountaineers proper came along? For, before the mountaineers proper (whose fundamental aim, avowed and putting all other motives into the shade, was to climb mountains as an activity justified in itself), were the mountaineersimproper, with which this account will deal. The process will be described in detail in what follows, but broadly speaking there were several stages before the quantum leap to mountaineer took place.

As with mountain areas elsewhere, the Scottish Highlands were originally viewed by outsiders as threatening, both in terms of the terrain and the inhabitants. Mountains were seen as ugly and sterile, and likely to be inhabited by bandits and even monsters and devils. In Landscape and Memory Simon Schama shows that this mountainphobia was a general aspect of European Christian civilisation till fairly modern times. For the medieval mind of Dante, Purgatory was a mountain, a place of gloom, pain and ugliness. In England, the 17th century poet Andrew Marvell hated the mountains:

That do with your hook-shoulder’d height

The Earth deform and Heaven fright.

As late as 1702, a Professor of Physics at Zurich University collected a list of dragons inhabiting the Swiss Alps! Indeed, Christian theology had to find a reason why God had created such abominations, why Eden had decayed into ‘vast heaps of indigested stones’, in the words of one authority. Often mountains were seen as results of the Flood, a punishment for man’s wickedness. We are fortunate to have a splendid example of such an attitude from 16th-century Scotland, in the form of lines from David Lyndsay’sAne Dialog Betuix Experience and ane Courteour:

The Erth, quhilk was so fair formit

Wes, be that curious Flude, deformit;

Quhare unquhyle were the plesand planes

Wer holkit glennis, and hie montanes:

(Works1879, Vol II p.269)

And an additional drawback of the Scottish mountains to the Lowlander, was the alien nature of its inhabitants and their culture. John of Fordun spoke for most when, after mentioning the domestic, decent, devout character of the Lowland Scots, he commented on the Scottish Highlands in 1380, (original in Latin), as follows:

The highlanders and people of the islands, on the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine and ease loving… comely in person yet unsightly in dress, hostile (to the Lowlanders) owing to diversity of speech… and exceedingly cruel. (Quoted in Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, ed. W.F. Skene (1872 ed.) p.36).)

Fordun substituted hyperbole and horror for geographical knowledge, showing that for the civilised Lowlander at that time, the Scottish Highlands were outwith his mental and physical horizons, when he stated further,

For lofty mountains stretch through the midst of it, from end to end, as do the tall Alps through Europe…Impassable as they are on horseback, save in a very few places…both on account of the snow always lying on them, except in summer time, and by reason of the boulders torn off the beetling crags… (Quoted in Skene, Loc. Cit., p.38)

Though travellers for curiosity and pleasure were not totally unknown, most people had to have a very good reason for visiting the area. And aside from the few traders and fishermen, the Scottish mountains were visited before pacification in the mid-18th century by other people for vocational reasons: cartographers, military men, astronomers, geologists and so forth. Then they were visited, in the Romantic period of the later 18th and early 19th century, for the uplifting effects of the scenery; the view was the thing, and for the Ossianic and Fingalian romance associated with the bens and glens. Later – in the high Victorian era when robust manliness was in vogue – the invigorating effects of pedestrianism were seen as bringing one nearer to God, or to self-knowledge. Finally, the dialectical transformation was made in the later Victorian period to an early form of the ‘because it is there’ philosophy. Indeed, the wheel had come full circle, and for many the mountains became a solace, an escape, from the threatening world of Victorian industrialism, its problems, its ugliness, its inhabitants. Clearly, all these stages overlapped, often in the same individual; but there is afundamentaldifference between the person who went on the mountain primarily to make a map, or look at the stars, and who also enjoyed his stroll, and the person who – even if making incidental glancing nods towards the idea of utility in some sense – basically is on the mountain because he is on the mountain. A revolution in ‘ways of seeing’ the mountains had taken place, in the mental maps people had of them.

This change in perception may have been summed up by the mid-Victorian author and art critic, John Ruskin, when he said that ‘mountains are the beginning and end of all natural beauty’. But Ruskin was not responsible for this change in perception, as is often stated; he merely summed up a process of shifting focus which had been occurring for the best part of a century in the eyes of travellers to mountain areas, including the Scottish Highlands. This ‘revolution in seeing’ is partly what this work is about, though it does not exhaust its intention.

We are victims here of the ‘Columbus discovered America’ syndrome. People forget the Indians, and they forget the Highlanders. This is possibly understandable due to the attitude of today’s Gael towards the mountains. It is no exaggeration to say that those of a Highland background are conspicuous by their absence from the Scottish hills; the vast majority of our climbers and walkers are either English or foreign, and the Scots contingent is made up almost entirely of Lowlanders. In theGaidhealtachditself things are no better. Today the ignorance of the vast majority of Highlanders about what lies beyond the Highland roads is staggering; only a few shepherds and gamekeepers are the exception. But with modern techniques of their job, their knowledge of the hills is of necessity less than that of their forebears; few actually live in the mountains now, and the Argocat has replaced Shanks’s Pony in their work. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that this impression has been transferred back in time, and the assumption made that the Gael of yesterday had little interest in the mountains which surrounded him.

And unlike in Ireland, myth does not come much to the Gael’s aid. Various Irish holy men are reputed to have scaled the peaks of the Emerald Isle, sometimes on their knees, including St Brendan – taking time off from discovering America – who gave his name to Mount Brandon. But none of the Scottish Celtic saints appear to have ascended the peaks. Ronald Black assures me (personal communication 17.12.97) that Beinn Chaluim is named after Saint Columba, but there is no tale of his having ascended it.

Beinn Mhanach, the Monk’s hill near Beinn Chaluim is probably named after a Celtic monastic settlement, and it seems thatBeinn Eunaichgets its name from Saint Adamnan, Columba’s biographer. But there is still little reasonable justification for claiming that the Celtic saints climbed any but fairly minor eminences, such as the 600 ft high Dunfillan near Comrie, where Saint Fillan went to pray. TheLife of St. Cuthbertrecords the following interesting case, however,

He began to dwell in different parts of the country, and coming to a town called Dul forsook the world and became a solitary. No more than a mile from the town is a high and steep mountain called by the inhabitants Doilweme, and on its summit he began to lead a solitary life.

Cuthbert’s quiet life of prayer and meditation is interrupted when the daughter of a local Pictish chief accuses him of violating her, so the good saint has the earth open and swallow her up. Weem Hill (1,683 ft.)maybe a candidate for the mountain in question. Assiduous personal searching has discovered no saint at a higher eminence. Sacred mountains were generally a product of Counter-ReformationCatholic penitential culture, and hence we would not expect many in presbyterian Scotland. (Simon Schama,Landscape and Memory, 1995, p.436–42.)

There is a rumour that a Fingalian warrior guarded a spring on the summit of Cruachan, and another that the ancient Picts may have ascended Schiehallion, if indeed that mountain was – as has been claimed – of some crucial significance to the Caledonians. But the general assumption is that outsiders discovered the Scottish mountains, rather than the native inhabitants.

There are almost no accounts of the epoch of pre-mountaineering history in Scotland. One of the few I am aware of is the article by D.B. Horn, ‘The Origins of Mountaineering in Scotland’, printed in the limited circulation Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal (SMCJ) in May 1966, Vol. XXVIII. Horn’s essay in itself is to a large extent the recirculation of materials already brought together in the series ‘Rise and Progress of Mountaineering in Scotland’ in the SMCJ Vol III. (1894), Nos. 15–18, to which he adds further information of his own. It is disappointing that a project begun so promisingly by the SMC a century ago should have, in its hands, advanced little further, especially as the editor of the Journal appended to Horn’s 1966 work a rider on the need ‘to outline the role of the Scottish mountains in the Gaidhealtachd’ (p.173).

Horn’s work, to which I will frequently return, does a very useful job in collecting gleanings – in the limits of an article he could do no more – from early travellers’ tales of explorations and ascents in the Scottish Highlands. Others had often looked at these accounts, but mainly from a literary or social point of view, neglecting the mountaineering angle. We will follow the spoor of many of these travellers later. But when it comes to the activities of the native Highlander, Horn is rather patronising, suggesting that perhaps ‘our simple minded forefathers regarded habitual wandering over the high hills as one of the clearest symptoms of a disordered mind’ (p.157), and dismissing the idea of ascents by the Gael before the period of the travellers or tourists.

I conclude therefore that down to the early eighteenth century the actual summits of most of the Scottish mountains were almost as unknown to the majority of Highlanders as they are in the main to their twentieth century descendants. (p.158)

A more popular and accessible account of some of the early mountain explorations was given in Campbell Steven’s The Story of Scotland’s Hills (1975) – though this has been for many years out of print. Steven acknowledged his debt to Horn, making ‘particular grateful mention’ of his article. Steven fleshes out many of Horn’s references, often giving extracts from early journals of travel, and adds some accounts from his own investigations, being a little more willing to accept the possibility of early ascents by Highlanders: ‘Is it really too far fetched to think that even in those days hills could be climbed simply for the sake of enjoyment?’ (p.65).

Steven’s work is a pioneering one, but he himself admits its flaws, saying, ‘No doubt it is presumptuous to call this the story of Scotland’s hills…’ (p.11). The work is possibly overambitious, attempting to tell the story of the mountains from the earliest days until after World War II, and dealing with skiing, meteorology, mineralogy and a few more things besides. This of necessity makes it a trifle journalistic, sources are not always located, claims not always properly investigated, and his chapters on the pre-history of mountaineering do not venture far into uncharted territory, mainly adding details and colour to Horn’s article. I will attempt to delve into the pre-history of Scottish mountaineering in a more thorough, comprehensive and scholarly – yet still accessible – way than Horn or Steven were able, or wished to – while recognising their achievements.

I will try and demonstrate that there were several fairly conclusive ascents of Scottish mountains before the early 18th century, many by Gaels, and that the pre-history of Scottish mountaineering should have as its scope roughly the years 1550 to 1850, not 1700 to 1850. These ascents I will deal with in the Magical Mystery Tour of the text proper, but there are also the ones that got away, and I would like to devote the rest of this introduction to treating of the circumstantial evidence that the Highlanders did know their hills, and that the proverb Anail a’ Ghaidheal, air a’ mhullach – the breathing space of the Gael is on the summit – may not be simple hyperbole.

Today the population centres in the Highlands are mainly the coastline and the arterial glens, leaving much of the mountainous area as uninhabited wilderness. This is not an eternal fact of geography, but a social fact, resulting from an historical process. Starting a quarter of a millennium ago, and proceeding with fits and starts, the Highlander abandoned the area we now know as wilderness, and the population moved out, partly by choice, seeking a better life. More importantly, as conditions were imposed which made traditional life intolerable, the inhabitants left through encouraged or forced migration. Before that, many wilderness areas were either inhabited and cultivated, or even when they were not, were used as areas of passage for men in time of war or animals in times of peace, or were used for hunting when the fruits of the earth were more clan patrimony than the privatised property of the landowner, or for transhumance, when cattle were driven to the airidhean or sheep to the summer pastures.

This incontrovertible fact of social history is buttressed by the truth that, from Pont’s early journeys in the 1580s which we shall look at, to those of the Ordnance Survey a quarter of a millennium later, the map-makers found the places in the mountains named. With few exceptions, virtually every place name on the OS maps was given to the cartographers by local people. And not just townships, lochs and the names of mountain peaks, but passes, knolls, cliffs and an astonishing variety of other physical features. Pick up any of the original six inch to the mile OS Maps, or in absentia even a 1:25,000 OS Leisure Map, and look at the detail of the colours, the physical features, even the quality of the pasturage, mentioned on the mountains, and it is beyond belief that the Gaels before the clearance period were unfamiliar with their hills. (There is a notable exception to all this. The Cuillin of Skye had a poverty of nomenclature which reflected the poverty of the soil and the hills’ difficulty of access. I shall return to this in the main text.)

Let us take one mountain at random as an example of familiarity, that of Mullach Coire Mhic Fhearchair in Wester Ross, one of the remotest in Scotland. The Gaels had a multitude of colours for describing hills. Mullach has a Corrie Ghuirm, blue, and one Odhar, dun-coloured, possibly named after the vegetation. There is also one described as Fhraoich, heathery, and one whose lack of vegetation gives it the name nanClach, of the stones. High between the Mul-lach and its neighbour, Beinn Tarsuinn (the hill going the other way, at right angles) is the Bealach Odhar, the dun-coloured pass. Not a gap, or notch – for which there are other Gaelic names – but a pass, used for access to the country behind Mullach. The outlier to the south of the Mullach is Meall Garbh, the rough hill – how known unless traversed? The hill itself takes its name from its main corrie, Coire Mhic Fhearchair, the corrie of Farquar’s son, presumeably the same man who has an eponymous corrie on Beinn Eighe not far away. Farquar MacIntaggart was awarded the Earldom of Ross in the 13th century for his exploits against the Norsemen. Farquar’s son, William, was rewarded with lordship of Skye in 1266, and was almost certainly the person after whom the mountain was named, at a time when Gaelic nomenclaturewould have been replacing Norse influences. (‘The Clan Period’, Jean Munro, in The Ross and Cromarty Book,1966, p.128–9) Now, Farquar’s son may not have climbed the Mullach, though he must have been associated with some deeds upon it. The nomenclatural evidence shows every part of this fine, remote hill was known to the local inhabitants. Faced with the cartographic evidence, only the wilful can deny that the Highlander knew his hills.

It might be argued that the Gael might have had reason to visit corries and passes – economic reasons – but no reason to ascend actual summits. I would dispute this. Summits could be of use not only as lookout points in time of war, but also as vantage points for hunting, or searching for lost livestock. There is a Suidheachan Finnon the aforementioned Beinn Tarsuinn; we may doubt whether Fingal himself actually sat there, but somebody did, somebody identified the mound in the hollow at that great height as a mythical resting place of the warrior. The seat lies not all that far below 3,000 ft, and from it, it is an easy stroll to the summit, in case Fingal had wanted a better view. (J.H. Dixon, Gairloch,1886, p.4.) Drummond’s Scottish Hill and Mountain Names takes the reader through the fascinating story of the usage of colour, of the human anatomy, of the various animals’ names and other ways the Gael had of identifying his local peaks, and rather than plagiarise, I wouldrecommend that the reader consult this work, to corroborate the idea that the Highlander wasintimatelyfamiliar with his or her hills.

Drummond also lists many hills which were given character names. Now, many of these related to Fingalian legends, or to witches and devils, and therefore cannot be taken as representing real mountain ascents. But there is a prima facie case for arguing that some of the mountains named after people were so-named because those bearing that name actually climbed them, though the person and the incident may be lost in the mists of time. Those for which we have some more than hypothetical evidence will be featured in the main body of this work, but there are others. Carn an Fhidhleir lies south of the main Cairngorm massif; did a fiddler play a tune on its summit? Sgurr Dhonuill stands near Ballachulish; is Donald an unsung and forgotten pioneer of Scottish mountaineering? Who was the stonemason who gave Beinn a’ Chlachair, far from any quarry, its name, and what Petrie gave neighbouring Creag Pitridh its title? We do not know, and possibly never will, but it is surely an arrogant attitude which assumes that the Gael did not love his hills enough to find his breathing space on the actual summit. Why else name a mountain, Hill of Delight, Beinn Eibheinn, or Carn a’ Choire Boidheach, Hill of the Beautiful Corrie? And occasionally, oral tradition confirms this hypothesis. In this book you will meet the Gaelic mountaineers Cailean Gorach, Fionnladh Dubh and Donnachadh Ban – who definitely ascended the tops centuries ago.

This work then, will try to assess the available evidence as to early explorations and ascents in the Highlands, putting them in their social and historical contexts and attempting to redress the balance a little in favour of the native Highlander, who had carried out much activity before his homeland was discovered by the Sassunnaich (English and Lowland Scots), many of whom even in the period of early tourism relied heavily on often unnamed Gaels as guides. From being the master in his lands, he had become a servant, and our journey from the middle of the 16th century to the high Victorian period will of necessity reflect these changes in Highland society in the period before the mountaineers.

After some thought, I adopted a geographical format for the book, dividing the Highlands into four manageable areas: Central Highlands, Cairngorms, West Highlands and Islands. This does pose problems of organisation, and occasionally I breach my boundaries. But the alternative method of a biographical-chronological approach posed greater problems, of dealing with the history of attempts/ascents on a particular mountain in several disconnected sequences. Though it means we meet some of our travellers in different geographical locations, the format adopted keeps the focus where it should be: on the mountains themselves.

This book has been some years in the formulation and conception, three years in the researching and a full year in the writing. I am conscious that in many ways it is a preliminary work, and hope to open up a dialogue with my readers to correct any errors or omissions the book may contain, in order to progress towards a more complete knowledge of its subject matter. After all, I have located possible first ascents of (roughly) a mere one-third of the Scottish peaks over 3,000 ft. Further investigation, particularly of estate papers, may reveal more, though my own in the Forfeit Estate Papers, ed. A.H. Millar (1906), uncovered none. My feeling is that many other peaks not mentioned here had their summits trodden before the frenzied rounds of bagging by Hugh Munro and Archibald Robertson in the last two decades of the 19th century. However, despite its exploratory nature, I am confident that the reader will find the journey through the pre-history of Scottish mountaineering in the pages which follow, interesting, informative and instructive.

In all quotations and sources I have retained the original orthography; it should be remembered that English – still less Gaelic and Scots – spelling was not standardised in much of our period.

Ian R Mitchell

November 1998

Foreword

THIS USEFUL BOOK RIGHTLY acknowledges that it picks up a story which began tentatively to be told in the pages of the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal as early as 1894. That tentative beginning was only carried further over 70 years later by David Baye Horne, Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh. It is to Horn’s 1966 article in the SMCJ on ‘The Origins of Mountaineering in Scotland’ that modern historians have hitherto turned when they needed information on early ascents of Scottish mountains. Inevitably, when concentrating on recorded ascents, the historian is pushed at first towards the conclusion that the Gael seldom if ever climbed the mountains of the Gaidhealtachd, and that knowledge of the Highland peaks and ridges is disproportionately a product of Victorian athletic tourism and late 19th and 20th-century mountaineering for its own sake.

The detailed Gaelic nomenclature of nearly all Highland hills and mountain masses alone gives the lie to this assumption (with the infertile Cuillin of Skye being the exception which proves the rule). In this new book on ‘pre-mountaineering’ ascents and near-ascents in the Highlands, we have at last a work which does justice to those who lived and worked, travelled and fought, in the Highlands before Walter Scott. His writings had already made the Borders a tourist area, when his poetry did the same service for the Trossachs and BenLomond. Inevitably, even a sophisticated trawl of written sources can reveal only the tip of an iceberg. Nevertheless, this is an important new revision of a fascinating topic.

Professor Bruce P. Lenman

Professor of History, University of St Andrews

December 1997

CHAPTER 1

Summitteers in the Central Highlands

THIS EXTENSIVE AREA, lying to the east of the Great Glen and to the south of the Cairngorms, borders the Central Lowlands for a great distance along the Highland fault line. Hector Boece in the early sixteenth century described ‘the montanis of Grenybane, quilkiswere sum time the gret marchis betwixt Scottis and Pichtis’ (History and Chronicles of Scotland, tr.John Bellenden, (1877), p.xxx), the mountains containing ‘mony matricks, bevers, quhitredis and toddis’ (p.xxxiii), (martens, beavers, stoats and foxes,irm), all hunted for their skins. But his information on the area is vague, based on hearsay and invention, a situation which was to change when a young Scot undertook the most impressive peregrination in the Highlands since those of the Celtic saints a thousand years before. The whole of the Central Highlands was fairly intensively travelled and sketched by the cartographer Timothy Pont in the late 16th century.

Timothy Pont and Ben Lawers

Of Pont’s life little is known; more indeed is known of his father, who was a leading figure in the Scottish Reformation, helping draw up the Kirk’s Book of Discipline. Pont was born in the early 1560s, and graduated from St Andrews University in 1583. He was minister in Dunnet, Caithness, for a decade or so till about 1610/11, and died possibly four years afterwards. Apart from the fact that he subscribed to the Plantation of Ulster with Scots Protestants, buying 2,000 acres of land for 400 pounds Scots, we know little more of him. (Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, Vol 7 p.119.) The recently established Project Pont, based on the Map Library of the National Library of Scotland, may help to shed more light on Pont. Even the motivations for his cartographic journeys, which probably occupied him in field work from 1583 till 1596, are shrouded in mystery, and his maps were never published in his lifetime. A grant of one hundred pounds (English) from Charles I ensured that Pont’s work eventually found outlet in Blaeu’s epoch-making Atlas of 1654, published in Amsterdam. Robert Gordon of Straloch, who was involved with the work, wrote in his dedication of the Scottish maps to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit, that:

He (Pont) travelled on foot through the whole of the Kingdom, as no-one before him had done; he visited all the islands, occupied for the most part by inhabitants hostile and uncivilised, and with a language different from our own; being often stripped as he told me, by fierce robbers, and suffering not seldom, all the hardships of dangerous journeys, nevertheless at no time was he overcome by the difficulties or disheartened. (Qu. inThe Pont Manuscript Maps of Scotland, Jeffrey C. Stone, 1988, p.30)

Pont’s sketches of the Central Highlands, published in The Pont Manuscript Maps of Scotland, show that Pont knew many of the mountains in this area. Not only did he know, but he drew outline sketches of Bin Lawers, Struik-chron and Bin Voirlye, Kraich (by which name he knew Schiehallion), and Bin Nevesh, amongst many others. Pont could not speak Gaelic, so he clearly did not name any mountains, though he must have had a Gaelic guide/interpreter. From the outlines, one can speculate on Pont’s position when he drew the hills. Lawers, Schiehallion and Stuic a’ Chroin would appear to be sketched from a series of low positions, but the drawing of Nevis, it is tempting to argue, must have been from a high point on the Mamore ridge, rather than from Glen Nevis itself. Pont’s sketch shows the summit plateau, the lower Carn Dearg summit, and between them possibly the Allt Coire Eoghain glen. Sgurr a’ Mhaim might be a useful place to check on the perspective. However, we do not even know whether Pont’s sketches were drawn from a single point, or were composites, so it is difficult to speculate on which, if any, mountains he might or might not have ascended. The absence of documentary evidence also compounds the problem, in relation to possible ascents by Pont, except in one very clear-cut case.

In 2001 I contributed a chapter on ‘Timothy Pont and Scotland’s Mountains’ to a book on Pont entitled The Nation Survey’d (ed. I.C. Cunningham). The following extract is based upon my chapter in The Nation Survey’d. It argues that there is conclusive evidence that Pont, or someone, climbed Ben Lawers in the 1590s.

My theory that Pont was working in a group of surveyors is partly based on a comparison I carried out between his maps and the entries in Macfarlane’sGeographical Collectionsregarding Lawers. The reader not prepared to accept my summary version below is directed to the extended argument inThe Nation Survey’d.

There are three entries in Macfarlane on Ben Lawers, which suggest something systematic. Between the three surveys, completed by, let us call them, suspects A, B and C, the writers have almost circumnavigated the mountain, giving the distances between corries, and they have measured the lengths of many of the burns which flow from the high ground, as well as having recorded one of Scotland’s first mountain ascents.

This is given in what I call the Macfarlane suspect B account (p.563–4), entitledCoryes and Sheels in Glenlyon. This writer knows that ‘myl. Above the place of Lawers is Lochnagatt’‚ (Lochan nan Cat) (p.564), that it then becomes ‘most difficill for hie and steep rocks’ (loc.cit.), and that ‘upon the north of Bilnlawer is Cory-Cloich, with a small round loch on the top of Lawer’ (loc.cit.). I had no hope of finding this, imagining it to be a rain catchment or snow melt, but on 12 May 2000 sitting on the summit of Lawers, I noted a small round ‘loch’, about four or five feet in diameter, approximately 100 feet below the summit, confirming beyond all reasonable doubt the ascent of Lawers by Macfarlane suspect B. Suspect B is familiar with features on both the north and the south of the mountain, which is consistent with being on the summit ridge, and being able to see them. B also, crucially, knows that ‘the burn of Lawers cums out of L. nagat…’ (p.564), a point we shall return to when discussing Pont’s actual map itself.

This map (Pont 18a) shows the summits and corries of Lawers from the south side of Loch Tay, possibly from between Ardeonaig and Ardtalnaig, and gives us three summits; Lawers itself – and Meall Garbh and Meall Greigh to the east, in my opinion. (Pont names none of these subsidiary peaks, and uses Lawers as a generic term for the whole range, though he was aware of which eminence was the actual summit.)

Is Macfarlane suspect B – the one who went to the summit – Pont? I think not. Macfarlane suspect B measured the distance from Lawers clachan to Lochan nan Cat by the burn, ascended the high steep rocks around Lochan nan Cat and attained the summit, possibly having a drink in his wee loch. Macfarlane suspect B could not fail to notice that the Lawers burn flows out of Lochan nan Cat, but Pont did not see this. In Pont’s Map 18a, the Lawers burn ends before the loch, and out of it, at the wrong point flows the Allt an Tuim Bhric (not named in Pont), which joins the Lawers burn before ‘the place of Lawers’, after having flowed uphill over the shoulder of Lawers!

This is an inexplicable error to make if Pont went as high as L.Catt. on his map. But if Pont was given the information about the existence of Lochan nan Cat, he could, from the lochside, mark the wrong burn as flowing out of it, since he could not see the loch or the outflow (Ardlawers is the highest inhabited point on Pont’s Map 18a; we can assume Pont went there. Lochan nan Cat is not visible from Ardlawers from my own personal observation). Ben Lawers, First Ascent: ‘Party of Mr Pont’ would probably be an acceptable formulation. This is, without doubt, the first recorded ascent of a Highland peak by a Lowlander.

The Owl of Strone and the Mad Mountaineer

Despite his achievements, it has to be emphasised that much of Pont’s knowledge came from local people, here as elsewhere. And we are fortunate to have an extant example of the minutely detailed knowledge of his environment – including that of the mountains – possessed by the Gael, in the form of the poemOran na Comhachaig,The Owl of Strone, which deals with Lochaber and its contiguous areas. I am using an edition of the poem from a coursebook for students at Edinburgh University Celtic Department, kindly given me by Ronald Black, and translated by Angus Mackenzie of Inverness.Domnhall mac Fhionnlaigh nan Dan, Donald, son of Findlay, of the Lays, was a poet and deer hunter, active in the Lochaber area, whose life roughly spanned the period 1530 to 1600, and a very different man from the scholarly Pont. He was obviously involved in some shady deeds in his youth for, as he says,

Bu lionmhor cogadh’s creachadh

Bha ’n Loch Abar anns an uair sin.

(There was much warfare and raiding in Lochaber at that time.)

(Coursebook, p.3)

His poem celebrates the joys of the chase, and complains about the encroachment of debilitating old age, ‘wrinkle-faced and shaggy, blear-eyed and dismal…’ which keeps him from the hunt. The topographical detail of the poem is extraordinary, showing a knowledge of the territory from Glen Nevis through to Loch Treig andeastwards to Loch Ericht, as well as the lands southwards to Glen Lyon. Possibly a Glencoe MacDonald, Donald was one day taken in Campbell lands by Black Duncan, laird of Glenorchy, but saved his life by the feat of shooting a stag through the eye with his arrow. His impressed captors freed him instantly.

The poem centres round Creag Uanach near Loch Treig, but mentions several mountains by name.Beinn Nimneisis Ben Nevis,Beinn Allairis Ben Alder, ‘the most eminent of bens’, andLap-Bheinnis Beinn na Lap near Corrour. The context of the poem shows that he has been onSron na Garbh-bheinne, the northern ridge of Stob Coire Sgriodain, a Munro above Loch Trieg, and is familiar with the rivers and slopes of all these hills. There is even a suggestion that he knows that the sea is visible from the summit of Nevis or its neighbour, Carn Dearg. (Op.cit. p.18.) His detailed descriptions of the area show not only his intense knowledge of, but also his intense love of, the landscape, which he describes in glowing terms.

Creag mo chridh-sa Creag Uanach…

A’ chreag aighearach urail eunach.

(Joy of my heart, Creag Uanach… A refreshing, joyful, bird-filled crag.)

(Coursebook, p.4)

The writer is also familiar with the high ground, describingCoire Ratha, high on the Grey Corries, and several high passes between the mountains, such theMam Banbetween Carn Dearg and Sgor Ghaibhre. Most significant of these passes is possibly theBealach nan Sgurrwhich lies between Sgor Gaibhre and Sgor Choinnich between Lochs Ossian and Ericht. This pass lies at a height of almost 2,700 ft, and from it the ascent of both aforementioned peaks is easy. In the section of the poem bidding farewell to the hills,Soraidh leis nam Beanntan, he takes leave of ‘both sides of the Bealach an Sgurr’ (da thaobh Bealach nan Sgurrp.7), indicating he knew the area intimately. In fact, I would think that the first ascents of Carn Dearg and Sgor Gaibhre, as well as of Stob Coire Sgriodain, should go tomac Fhonnlaidgh, as well as possibly Beinn na Lap, Ben Alder and even Ben Nevis/Carn Dearg.

I paid homage to the poet by climbing Creag Uanach in 2005, a translation of the poem in my hand. From the summit I was able to compare the poem with what I could see, and found that mountains mentioned with the rider ‘I see’ (chi mi) were all visible, while those which were mentioned without it, were not. Domnhall wrote this poem long after he had left the sanctuary of the Loch Treig area where he had gone around 1560, and was composing the song from his visual memory, which proved astonishingly accurate.

I sit on the fairy knoll and look towards Loch Treig

From Creag Uanach the sunny high ground of the deer

I see distant Coire Rath, the Cruach and Beinn Bhreac

I see Strath Ossian of the Warriors, and the sun shining on Meall nan Leac

I see Ben Nevis above, and Carn Dearg below

Past another little corrie is distant moor and the sea

Splendid is Coire Dearg where we loved to hunt

Corry of heathery knolls and the great stags

I see the summit of Bidean nan Dos on the near side of Sgurra Lith

I see Sgurr Choinnich of the slender stags

I see the wide strath of the cattle and the Corry of Maim Ban

I love today all that I can see

I see Garbh-Bheinn of the red stags and Lap Bheinn of the hillocks

And Leitir Dubh where I often spilt the deers’ blood

Farewell from me to Ben Alder, the most eminent of bens

And also to Loch Erricht, where I loved to be

I shall drink my fill from Loch Treig and that will lift my spirits

Farewell to Coire nan Cloich and to the Usige Labhar

And to Bac nan Craobh and both sides of the Bealach nan Sgurr

and the Eadar-Bhealach where the Lowland tongue was unheard

I shall now take my leave of you

The most miserable farewell I shall ever take

No more shall I carry a bow under my arm

And not till the world’s end will I release the hounds

If our hunter did not climb any of these peaks, it was not because he was unable to, or thought them not worthwhile. However, I suspect that the author of Oran na Comhachaig stood often on the summits of the hills he mentions. There is a striking similarity between this poem and the works two centuries later of Duncan MacIntyre, in the expression of the love of, and intimacy with, the hills experienced by the Gael. Indeed, the later Glenorchy Bard may well have known the work of macFhionnlaigh, though it is certain that Lowland Scots did not, nor did they know the territory described in the poem.

Despite Pont’s explorations of theCentral Highlands, and their proximity to the Lowlands, the area did not really become known to outsiders much earlier than the remoter lands to the north and west; or at least not until pacification in the later 18th century, after which the Central Highlands began to experience an influx of tourists. The reason lies in the paradox, explained to the naive Englishman, Francis Osbaldistone, by Baillie Nicol Jarvie in Walter Scott’s novel,Rob Roy, set in the early 18th century, though written a century later. The Central Highlands, explained the wily Baillie, especially on their borderlands, were actually more turbulent, lawless and threatening than the lands further afield. From their territories in this area, the wild Highlanders had the opportunity, not only of plundering each other in clan warfare, but also of raiding the richer agricultural lands of the Lowlands, increachan, where gear, cattle and even women were carried off. The burghers and peasants of the Lowlands, who had long since divested their military obligations to semi-professional armies, were largely helpless before this threat, though the Highlanders earned their neighbours’ undying enmity from an early date. In his poem The Sevin Deidly Synnis written in the early 1500s, William Dunbar gives vent to the widespread anti-Highlander feeling of that time. Dunbar has the Seven Sins led in pageant by Highlanders ‘schouting the correnoch’ and ‘clattering’ inErsche, that is, Irish. (Highlanders were then regarded more as an Irish overflow than Scottish.) Finally they meet their deserved fate:

The Devill sa devit wes with thair yell

That in the depest pot of hell

He smorit thame with smuke.

(Poemsed. J. Kinsley, 1964, p.53)

This fear and hatred of the Highlander continued to dominate the Lowland borderlands long afterwards. In the fertile country south of Loch Lomond, a full moon was known asMacFarlan’s Lantern, since it usually heralded a raid by that wild tribe. Further to the east the Macgregors levied the notorious black mail, a tax upon Lowland farmers not to raid their property, coupled with a pledge to recover stolen cattle (often taken by accomplices). Even after the 1715 Rebellion, with the establishment of strategic forts and the initiation of the building of military roads in the Highlands, a traveller visiting the Great Glen could write:

…all that mountainous, barren and frightful country which lies to the south is called Loquabre. It is indeed a frightful country full of hideous desert mountains and unpassable, except to the Highlanders who possess the precipices. Here, in spite of the most vigorous pursuit, the Highland robbers, such as the famous Rob Roy…find retreats as none could pretend to follow them, nor could he ever be taken. (Daniel Defoe,A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724–6,1971 edn. p.672)

And subsequent to the 45 Rebellion, the sons of Rob Roy were still engaging in depredations, including abduction and forcible marriage on Loch Lomondside. The hanging of one of the pair doubtless encouraged timid tourists to think that it might now be safe to travel. A little further to the east, in Perthshire, things quietened down earlier, but there too the turbulence of the clansmen and the ineffectiveness of the writ of law, had not exactly encouraged tourist-friendly circumstances to prevail, and outsiders to visit. Therefore it is possibly not surprising that the earliest recorded mountaineer in the Central Highlands was a native – of Glen Lyon in Perthshire – rather than an outsider. And possibly fitting too that he was a bandit himself. As well as looking at his mountaineering, we will consider some incidents from the life of Cailean Gorach, since they give a perfect picture of a particular epoch in the story of the mountains before the mountaineers.