. The land of heather . gatherings in the matter of drink,the people of Skye observe their religious days withgreat seriousness and decorum. Indeed, their regardfor the Sabbath seemed to me decidedly work ceases, every one attends church, and the in-dulgence in any form of amusement is held to be asin. Nothing could have been quieter than was Portreein the early hours of the Sunday I was there; butwhen the little bells of the village churches began toring at a quarter to eleven, there was a change. Forfifteen minutes the bells kept up an incessant ding-dong, and during all this t
. The land of heather . gatherings in the matter of drink,the people of Skye observe their religious days withgreat seriousness and decorum. Indeed, their regardfor the Sabbath seemed to me decidedly work ceases, every one attends church, and the in-dulgence in any form of amusement is held to be asin. Nothing could have been quieter than was Portreein the early hours of the Sunday I was there; butwhen the little bells of the village churches began toring at a quarter to eleven, there was a change. Forfifteen minutes the bells kept up an incessant ding-dong, and during all this time the town walks werenoisy with the clack of heavy shoes moving church-ward. I joined the throng presently, and wended myway to the Free Kirk on the Square. It was a bigbarn of a building, whose lack of decoration withoutwas echoed by the plain severity of the interior. Alarge and attentive audience filled the pews. Whatmost impressed me about them at first thought wastheir decidedly peaty odor. Evidently many of the. A Rider The Crofters of Skye 201 worshippers came from the smoky cabins of thecroftersj though I would not have recognized them asbelonging to this class by their dress. They were,in fact, so well clad as to be quite transformed. Ilearned afterward that the peasants, however poor,consider an outfit of modern and presentable Sab-bath garments a necessity, and they will sacrifice agreat deal in other directions rather than do withoutthem. The Free Kirk service was entirely in Gaelic, and Iwas not much enlightened by what I heard. In frontof the pulpit sat the precentor, a tall, gray man, who,when a psalm was to be sung, stood before us and ledthe singing. He would first read a line in a chantingmonotone, and then every one would fall in and sing he would read another line, that would be sung,and so on to the end of the psalm. The music wasvery simple, and I thought it rather formless — notmuch more than a wailing up and down, with littlemelody that 1 cou
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