INTRODUCTION. 



WHEN Lord Hailes compiled his annals of Scotland, he 

 commenced with the accession of Malcolm III., declaring 

 that previous to that period, historical facts were so 

 involved in obscurity and intermingled with fable, as to 

 render the process of elucidation and disentanglement a 

 hopeless task. If this be true of Scotland, it is doubly 

 true of that outlying portion of the country called the 

 Western Isles or the Hebrides, and particularly true of 

 the outer section of the group, known as the Long 

 Island. The material at the disposal of the historian of 

 the Outer Hebrides is of the most meagre description, 

 so far as it concerns early events. When the history 

 of Scotland emerged from the region of imagination 

 and was placed upon a basis of solid fact, the Western 

 Isles still remained a comparatively unknown land to 

 the honest investigator, and in a large degree, those 

 islands so remain even at the present day. 



Who and what were the earliest inhabitants of the 

 Hebrides? It is hardly necessary to say that in the 

 present state of our knowledge, a conclusive answer 

 to this question cannot be given. Were we able to 

 state definitely to what race the primitive inhabitants of 

 the Highlands of Scotland belonged ; what language 

 they spoke; what their manners and customs were; we 

 should probably have little difficulty in assigning a similar 

 race, a similar language, and similar manners and customs 

 to the pre-historic Hebrides. For satisfactory proofs, 

 however, of Highland, as of Hebridean origins, we grope 

 in the dark; history furnishes us with none. Those who 

 have laboured with so much learning, assiduity, and in 



