48 J. D. Marswatu on the Statistics and 
In 790, the monastery established by St. Columba was ravaged and destroyed by 
the Danes; and in 973 by a second visitation of these freebooters, who put the abbot 
of the island to death. 
Tts vicinity to Ireland rendering it an object of importance to an invading enemy, 
it became a scene of contention between the inhabitants of the opposite coasts of Scot- 
land and Ireland. The memory of a dreadful massacre perpetrated by the Campbells, 
a Highland clan, is still preserved, and a place called Sloc-na-Calleach, perpetuates a 
tradition of the destruction, by precipitation over the rocks, of all the women in ad- 
vanced life, then resident on the island. Doctor Hamilton remarks, ‘that the re- 
membrance of this horrid deed remains so strongly impressed on the minds of the 
present inhabitants, that no person of the name of Campbell is allowed to settle on the 
island.” ‘This feeling, however, seems now to have subsided; for during my visit to 
Raghery in the summer of 1834, no such enmity to the name of Campbell was mani- 
fested. 
During the civil wars which devastated Scotland after the appointment of Baliol to 
the throne of that kingdom, Robert Bruce was driven out and obliged to seek shelter 
in the isle of Raghery, in a fortress whose ruined walls still retain the name of the illus- 
trious fugitive. His enemies, however, pursued him even to this remote spot, and forced 
him to embark in a little skiff and seek refuge on the ocean. ‘The ruins of Bruce’s 
Castle are situated on a bold headland at the extreme eastern part of the island, im- 
mediately fronting Scotland. Although apparently very lofty, the height of the rock on 
which the castle stood, is marked, according to the late survey, between seventy and 
eighty feet only above the level of the sea. 
It rises perpendicularly from the water’s edge; and about forty or fifty feet from 
the eastern extremity, a deep chasm traverses the ground, insulating, as it were, the 
huge mass on which the outer part of the fortress has been situated. On this, the 
ruins now standing, consist only of part of a wall fronting the west, entirely destitute 
of all ornament and style of architecture. About eighty or one hundred feet on the 
western side of the chasm, the remains of another part of the building are still visible, 
from which we may fairly infer, that the castle had originally been of very consider- 
able extent. In the face of the rock fronting the south, and immediately under the 
wall, there is the appearance of a small cave, in which, it is said by some, that Bruce 
concealed himself, the castle not having been built at the time of his residence there. 
Considerable difference of opinion has, however, been manifested concerning the 
exact date of the erection of this building. Its antiquity is dated at least five hundred 
years back; and it is supposed to be considerably older, as the time which Bruce 
spent on the island was not sufficient to erect it. One of the strongest proofs 
alleged of its antiquity, is, that the lime with which it is built has been burned with 
sea-coal, the cinders of which are still visible, and bear so strong a resemblance to the 
cinder of the Ballycastle coal, as makes it extremely probable that at some period so 
