522 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



government of the Hebrides. John Carswell, the well- 

 known translator of Knox's Liturgy into Gaelic, was ap- 

 pointed first Superintendent of the Isles, a title which 

 permitted the exercise of episcopal functions, without a 

 recognition of episcopal consecration. When Episcopacy 

 of a more decided nature was introduced in 1572, the 

 Islesmen found their superintendents transformed into 

 tulchan-bishops. But to them, these nominal changes 

 had little or no significance. Before the Reformation, the 

 religion of the Long I slanders, so far as can be ascertained, 

 was a strange conglomeration of Christian beliefs and 

 heathen rites. The Christianity of the Celts, and of the 

 semi-Christianised Norsemen, was superimposed upon the 

 purely pagan creed of the worshippers of Odin and Thor ; 

 and gradually, the two became so mixed as to be indistin- 

 guishable, the one from the other. Christian saints were 

 substituted for heathen deities ; Christian ceremonies were 

 mingled with pagan rites ; Christian credence in the super- 

 natural was intertwined with the beliefs in witchcraft, 

 spells, and sorcery, which swayed the lives of the Vikings. 

 The Roman Catholic clergy, following the example of the 

 Celtic missionaries to the Norsemen, employed this hybrid 

 creed as an agency in promoting morality ; and there is 

 evidence to show that it was used with success. When 

 Romanism was abolished in Scotland, the spiritual needs 

 of the remote islands were apparently suffered to fall into 

 total neglect. The restraints of religious exercises being 

 removed, the morality of the islanders suffered accordingly. 

 Hence arose the irreligious and immoral condition of Lewis 

 at the end of the sixteenth century, described, but in 

 exaggerated language, by the Acts of James VI., when 

 the raid of the Fife Adventurers was in course of prepara- 

 tion. That the darkest period of religion and morality in 

 Lewis was the second half of the sixteenth century, the 

 events already recorded in these pages serve to show. 

 King James VI. sought to transform the face of Lewis, 

 not by the reformation, but by the extirpation, of the 

 natives, with the results which we know. But it was surely 



