Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 28 on 20/09/2006.

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Scott in Skye

In the latest in our series, Ian Mitchell reports on Sir Walter Scott's love affair with the Isle of Skye

There have been many visits to Skye, but few have had the impact which Walter Scott’s visit to the island in 1814 did.

The wanderings of the Pretender had given Skye its romantic aura, and the visits of travellers and authors Boswell and Johnson in the 18th century had encouraged a trickle of tourists to the Misty Isle.

But Scott was an international celebrity, the first millionaire writer whose poems sold in hundreds of thousands. When his poem The Lord of the Isles came out in 1815 it put Skye on the international tourist map. Coupled with the development of steamship routes to the island, its tourist boom had begun – and the tourists had Scott’s works in their pockets.

Scott came to Skye in 1814 from Harris, on board a vessel of the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners, commanded by Robert Stevenson. Scott’s first port of call was at Dunvegan Castle. Stemming from the lesser lairds of the Borders, Scott was a dreadful snob and worshipped the aristocracy, so paying his respects to the Macleods was an obligation.

Scott saw the revival of feudal practices as a barrier against threatening democracy, and he notes approvingly the efforts of Macleod to “medievalise” his castle, “by making a portal between two advanced towers and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a drawbridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.” Yet while admiring this unauthentic addition to the castle, Scott remarks in passing that the MacCrimmon piping college was no more; the reason be.....

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By Ian Mitchell

Section : Scott's Islands

Page number : 61