The Personal Life of David Livingstone

Excerpt

Ulva--The Livingstones--Traditions of Ulva life--The "baughting-time"--"Kirsty's Rock"--Removal of Livingstone's grandfather to Blantyre--Highland blood--Neil Livingstone--His marriage to Agnes Hunter--Her grandfather and father--Monument to Neil and Agnes Livingstone in Hamilton Cemetery--David Livingstone, born 19th March, 1813--Boyhood--At home--In school--David goes into Blantyre Mill--First Earnings--Night-school--His habits of reading--Natural-history expeditions--Great spiritual change in his twentieth year--Dick's Philosophy of a Future State--He resolves to be a missionary--Influence of occupation at Blantyre--Sympathy with the people--Thomas Burk and David Hogg--Practical character of his religion.

The family of David Livingstone sprang, as he has himself recorded, from the island of Ulva, on the west coast of Mull, in Argyllshire. Ulva, "the island of wolves," is of the same group as Staffa, and, like it, remarkable for its basaltic columns, which, according to MacCulloch, are more deserving of admiration than those of the Giant's Causeway, and have missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of Staffa. The island belonged for many generations to the Macquaires, a name distinguished in our home annals, as well as in those of Australia. The Celtic name of the Livingstones was M'Leay, which, according to Dr. Livingstone's own idea, means "son of the gray-headed," but according to another derivation, "son of the physician." It has been surmised that the name may have been given to some son of the famous Beatoun, who held the post of physician to the Lord of the Isles. Probably Dr. Livingstone never heard of this derivation; if he had, he would have shown it some favor, for he had a singularly high opinion of the physician's office.

The Saxon name of the family was originally spelt Livingstone, but the Doctor's father had shortened it by the omission of the final "e." David wrote it for many years in the abbreviated form, but about 1857, at his father's request, he restored the original spelling . The significance of the original form of the name was not without its influence on him. He used to refer with great pleasure to a note from an old friend and fellow-student, the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh, acknowledging a copy of his book in 1857: "Meanwhile, may your name be propitious; in all your long and weary journeys may the Living half of your title outweigh the other; till after long and blessed labors, the white stone is given you in the happy land."

Livingstone has told us most that is known of his forefathers; how his great-grandfather fell at Culloden, fighting for the old line of kings; how his grandfather could go back for six generations of his family before him, giving the particulars of each; and how the only tradition he himself felt proud of was that of the old man who had never heard of any person in the family being guilty of dishonesty, and who charged his children never to introduce the vice. He used also to tell his children, when spurring them to diligence at school, that neither had he ever heard of a Livingstone who was a donkey. He has also recorded a tradition that the people of the island were converted from being 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 afterward--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 Highlands; 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 neighbors, 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 Caffres, as he says; and the tradition of Kirsty's Rock would seem to confirm it....