1813-36.] EARLY YEARS. 3 



Roman Catholics " by the laird coming round with a man 

 having a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted 

 more attention than his teaching, for the new religion 

 went long afterwards — perhaps it does so still — by the 

 name of the religion of the yellow stick." The same 

 story is told of perhaps a dozen other places in the High- 

 lands ; the " yellow stick " seems to have done duty 

 on a considerable scale. 



There were traditions of Ulva life that must have been 

 very congenial to the temperament of David Livingstone. 

 In the " Statistical Account" of the parish to which it 

 belongs * we read of an old custom among the inhabitants, 

 to remove with their flocks in the beginning of each summer 

 to the upland pastures, and bivouac there till they were 

 obliged to descend in the month of August. The open- 

 air life, the free intercourse of families, the roaming frolics 

 of the young men, the songs and merriment of young 

 and old. seem to have made this a singularly happy 

 time. The writer of the account (Mr. Clark of Ulva) 

 says that he had frequently listened with delight to 

 the tales of pastoral life led by the people on these 

 occasions ; it was indeed a relic of Arcadia. There were 

 tragic traditions, too, of Ulva ; notably that of Kirsty's 

 Rock, an awful place where the islanders are said to have 

 administered Lynch law to a woman who had unwittingly 

 killed a girl she meant only to frighten, for the alleged 

 crime — denied by the girl — of stealing a cheese. The 

 poor woman was broken-hearted when she saw what she 

 had done ; but the neighbours, filled with horror, and 

 deaf to her remonstrances, placed her in a sack, which 

 they laid upon a rock covered by the sea at high water, 

 where the rising tide slowly terminated her existence. 

 Livingstone quotes Macaulay's remark on the extreme 

 savagery of the Highlanders of those days, like the Cape 



1 Kilninian and Kilmore. See New Statistical Account of Scotland, Argyll- 

 shire, p. 345. 



