Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654
Field | Content |
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Name: | Blaeu, Joan, 1596-1673 |
Title: | Andreae Melvini Scotiae Topographia |
Pagination: | [8v-9r] |
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Translation of text:
The sea penetrates this region pouring over level places in a long canal, and narrowed by a slightly higher edge of the land, it pours a huge amount of water more widely into itself, to give the appearance of a pool, of a peaceful marsh or lake, a reliable mooring place here for boats: hence the name Aber for it and the neighbouring region all round. Where Scotland opens in width, these three regions, Mar, Badenoch and this Aber are comprised, whatever is between the western and eastern sea. To the north next to long Mar is Buchan, which luxuriates, divided from it by the River Don; this region stretches farther than any other into the Caledonian Sea, blessed with animals and crops, and self-sufficient for life. The rivers abound in salmon, except the River Rattray which admits none. To be admired is a cave in a deep recess, a hall cut from the cliffs by the waves of the shore; drops of water dripping from the natural arch of the ridge is all quickly turned into pyramids of rocks, of ambiguous nature between stone and ice, and friable: so that it neither ever solidifies into hard strength nor breaks up like brittle ice, and if human force did not clear it immediately, it would in a short time fill the hall with such piles. Beyond this to the north are the small Boyne and Enzie, from which the River Spey divides the plains of Moray; the River Spey, rising from the high ridge of Badenoch, then makes a loch (14) from which leaps out the Lochy (15), which rolls down to the western sea. At its mouth was once a noble city, whose name was Inverlochy. The place is suited for a market (16). There was the castle of Evonia, formerly a royal palace, which is now falsely thought to be Dun Stephen, of which castle Lorne still points out the remains. Buchan closes some small regions between it and the western sea, in which there is nothing memorable. Beyond the Spey as far as the Ness Moray is believed to have had the ancient name of Varar. Between these rivers the German Ocean drives the wide (17) land and driving it urges it back to the setting sun (18), and checks it in a curving bay: in a vast gulf it restrains the fields, rejoicing in crops and herds, and the swards, lovely with fruit trees (19). It has as its principal towns Elgin on the River Lossie, and the city of Inverness on the River Ness, which is always warm and never solid with ice or sluggish with cold, but in frozen winter with the warmth of the water dissolves fragments of ice and hard bits thrown into it. Here is the city of Inverness, the River Ness and also Loch Ness, which stretches in length twice ten and twice two miles; from it comes the River Ness, at which River Ness is the city of Inverness. Here both seas, Caledonian Amphitrite and Caledonian Nereus, would come together, if a quite narrow neck of land did not obtrude for eight miles, and the remaining part would be an island, resounding with the liquid sea. What is beyond the River and Loch Ness and the narrow throat, is considered a fourfold province: Ross, longer than wide, Strathnaver from the River Naver, Sutherland next to these, and Caithness known for three promontories. Ross beyond the wide mouth of the Ness to the rising of the sun, rises to a height in raised promontories, straight from the Caledonian Sea to the Deucaledonian Sea, uncultivated and rough where it rises into mountains, where it extends widely into plains all lovely with irrigated valleys and rivers with fish and lochs with fish, of which the one that is largest farthest part of Caithness faces the Hyperborean north, in the part where neighbouring Stratnaver occurs; it gradually restricts the double shore with the Deucaledonian water of the western sea and bends towards the summer rising. This region draws out its shore narrowly into a wide front (20); in this front three promontories rise up, the highest in the west of Strathnaver, and this to Ptolemy is Orcas and Tarvedum; less high sit Vervedrum and Berubium, now Dunis Bay. At the foot of the hill is a moderate gulf, where small ships driven on the common route from Orkney keep their harbour. Possibly Gernigo Castle, now here, was once Cornavia.
The islands which crown Albion's shores in the great ocean and obey the rule of the Albion-born kings are divided into three classes in a triple grouping, that is to say the Western, the Orkney, and the Shetland. The Western group, facing the rising sun and the north in a third of the sea, are the Ebudae, Acmodae, Hebrides and Haemodae, and are called by so many varied names by ancient and modern authors: Mela, Strabo, Capella, Pliny, and great Solinus, and Ptolemy, and six hundred others born in later ages. Norwegians and Danes held them for a hundred and sixty years, from Donald III to Alexander III, when the Holy Sepulchre caused dread wars in the [Artolatrae] of Europe and Asia.
Their food, clothing and domestic arrangements are parsimonious in the antique manner. Getting meat is to them hunting and fishing. Pouring river water into the hide of a slain animal, or into the intestine, they cook the flesh by fire, or squeezing out the bood they sometimes eat it raw; in hunts they eagerly drink the juice of boiled meat and their bland drinks. But they preserve milk whey for many years for splendid parties and merry, lavish feasts. The custom of the majority is to quench their thirst with pure water. Barley and oats, which alone are produced in those regions, they grind by twisting with the turning of a stone; pouring on water they knead and tame it, and make a sweet food and healthy bread. In the morning they taste a little of it, then they are eager for hunting or their work and customary labour, until the ruddy Evening Star lights the late lamps.
They rejoice in striped clothing which is of varied colour; the colours they love especially are purple and blue. But the majority now like darker and what resembles the heather plant, lest the colourful light of their shining clothing should betray them as they lie in the heather. Not so much protected by these as clothed and wrapped up, they ward off cruel weather and the ruins of heaven beneath the divine and bare axis of the ether, and enjoy gentle sleep under a cover of snow. And a man who sleeps at home on the ground strews beneath him rock or heather, but this with the roots turned downwards and the leaves up; and so skilfully do they fashion beds in this way that in softness they vie with feathers and in healthiness far outclass them. For gradually drying excess moisture, the healing power of heather draws it out of the resting body, and restores strength to the joints and vigour to the limbs: all who are tired in the evening arise joyfully in the morning, fresh and vigorous; so does Nature feed on its own delights, as it rejoices in simplicity while strengthening itself with the hard power of uncivilised roughness. Nowhere do they care for a mattress or spread out bed-coverings, but they rather wrap themselves for the night in their own clothes, and emit long wheezes and snore on their backs, lest barbarian softness should corrupt the traditional and inborn nature of their harsh and severe mind and contaminate their roughness with licentious attractions.
In war they cover their bodies with these arms: an iron helmet and a cuirass stuffed with hooks of iron and triple-twilled, coming down to the ankles; against the enemy their weapons are arrows hooked with projecting barbs with points on each side, and lunate bows with string drawn to the horns; they hold the string to the chest, the iron with a hook to the bow; only with great force and the opening wide of the wound can this iron be pulled out when fixed in the body; they fight keenly with broad swords and axes. The trumpet is not used by them, but the bagpipe give the signal for war and calls Mars to shuddering arms. For distinguished by new force and great effort of the cheeks, his face swollen and cheeks extended, he fixed the smooth pipes in the belly of hide; when the arm-pit that rules the clear melody is in charge, he carries the right shoulder above and the left arm-pit below the instrument of the Muses and the multiple pipe with varied holes to be both treated with the fingers and moved by the mouth. When he prepares above the instrument to inflate his swelling face and flowing cheeks with Aeolian winds, when his bristly beard bristles above his hairy chin and his rough, uncombed whiteness is stiff with heavy hair, he quickly gives breath to his lip, pours kisses on the wood. He goes, he returns, and moving his arm in alternate directions he now crushes and now blows up the loose reins of the bag in measure, and in turn he repeatedly disperses and draws out the liquid breaths from the bellows, and returns and restores them. The tubes take in the winds, the pipe is moved by the winds, speaking with clear fingers and the stroke of the thumb he forms varied tunes with the multiple throat. Enlarging the beaver's blast, he produces melodious modes through the oblong necks, and soon without custom and manner causing high and low notes to resound in leaps, he repeats the notes and modes, with varied bending this way and that. Then sounding with raucous mouth he thunders fearfully through the continuously blowing pipe, the whole loch echoes, the whole bog that is struck, the wild glades and green woods, and the springs and rivers and deep shadows in the mountains, and the fauns and satyrs and mountain-dwelling Sylvani, with battle-cry and bellowing and grief-sounding wail. Now the high ridges nod, the deep caves quake, the earth gives out an infernal voice, and all around the murmur of wave-sounding stone strikes the echoing shores, and the rocks tire the heavens with wave-breaking noise, and the whole heaven bellows back in far-shuddering thunder. Music is pleasing to them, and they like to give voice to stringed instruments, whose strings, of copper or gut, they strike with very long finger-nails or with sounding bows. These they ornament with silver and gems, this is their sole ambition; those of narrow fortune display glass instead of gems. To sing the deeds of men and praise of heroes in elegant song is the custom for Bards and Elders. They speak a slightly changed Gallic language, such as is now found in Wales and in Ireland, and those who live, rustic Scotia, in your mountains. The lands which are scattered in the Deucaledonian Sea, at least three hundred, are called Western, and all use the old language of the Scots and the same ancient customs. I shall describe them in song as well as I can, although it is difficult to offer barbarian necks to poetry.
In the beginning occurs that which is first in order, Man, not Mona, once seen by many as Eubonia, and also Mevania or Maenavia, formerly Manim in the old tongue. It was settled as sacred, when not too long ago the island of Sodor and the bishop's tiara administered sacred rites for so many lands scattered in the sea. An equal distance away from it lie our Galloway and the English Cumbria, and also Ireland. In length it extends twice ten and twice two miles, in width eight. Wholely stretched out in the wavy estuary of the River Clyde is the next island, a high rock sheer all round apart from one approach, Ailsa, deserted of human cultivation, except that at fixed times in the year large number of boats fish for herring. However it has many sea-birds and Solan geese, and very many rabbits are glad in its caves. And almost equally to the winter rising it faces Carrick, <to the winter setting Ireland> (21), to the summer setting the backs of Kintyre. Twice ten miles and also twice two to the north rises Arran with rough mountains, which extends twice ten miles and also twice two in length, in width eight miles.