The Hill of Storms

In my Irish and Scottish Romanticism class, we've discussed the effect of MacPherson's "Fragments of Ancient Poetry" on the world's view of Scotland. These "fragments" show Scotland to be the wild, empty, romantic country of hills and sea and wind that draws us foreigners to it. But is that really Scotland, or did MacPherson's purportedly gathered fragments cause people to project that image onto the land? That's the question the professor put to us.

A few weeks later, this professor asked me, "Have you found the romantic Scotland you came to see?" I answered with no hesitation.

Really, when the wind blows as it does here, and you're walking on a hill completely vulnerable to it, with the wild waves crashing below you, and the land rolling green in front of you, how can you help feeling you're in the land of Ossian, of Fingal... of the North Wind?

"It is night; and I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard in the mountain. The torrent shrieks down the rock. No hut receives me from the rain; forlorn on the hill of winds."

-Kavod-