Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

HISTOHV OF THE WF.STERX ISLANDS. fi5
and so interrupted had been the influence or power of
Scotland over the insular governments, that while their
conduct was such as might be expected, it may also be
justified; particularly when it is recollected that both
the prog-enitors of the Lords of the Isles, Somerlid as
well as Olave, were of Norwegian descent; and that,
while they had thus little natural connexion with the
Scottish race, they must have felt themselves controuled
by a foreign, if neighbouring, state, from which revolt
was always justifiable when successful. If the mode of
warfare was cruel, as we have been taught to believe, the
stigma will rest alike on both parties: but if we ex-
amine the history of Europe in general about the same
period, it will not be easy to discover how the race of
Somerlid could well have exceeded its neighbours in
this respect.
But we must take care here to distinguish between
the period which I have thus attempted to define, and
that which included the better-known feuds of the more
recent Clans. This appears to have been, in a still
greater degree, a state of anarchy, cruelty, and confu-
sion ; a thousand petty states alike waging* eternal war
among each other, and all of them opposing or des-
pising the insufficient power of the Crown. I will not
now attempt to relate the very little that is conjectured,
rather than known, respecting- the administration of jus-
tice, or the internal power of the government, under the
Lords of the Isles ;
but it may be safely concluded that so
extensive and scattered a territory was not thus long held
together, badly as it was probably held, without some
system of police ; without something more at least than
a joint interest in war, which, under such circumstances,
could not have been long preserved. The numerous
armies which these princes or lords brought into the field,
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