The Cost

John Swanson was the Church of Scotland minister on the Island of Eigg at the time of the Disruption in 1843. Of the Protestant population of 200 souls, all joined the Free Church with the exception of three - "the servant in the Established Church Manse, the ground-officer on the estate, and his father, a pauper". The Island belonged to a Professor MacPherson, Aberdeen who subsequently refused all requests for a site on which to build a new church and manse. Denied accommodation on the Island, Swanson was forced to leave, along with his family. He made his new home at Ornsay, on the Isle of Skye.

In order to visit and preach to his congregation he procured a small vessel, the Betsy. The Betsy was to become his floating manse! It was described as - "a poor vessel of twelve tons burden, some thirty feet in length, by eleven feet in breadth, utterly unfit to contend with the storms of the Atlantic."

One man, who, on a number of occasions, sailed on the Betsy with Swanson was Hugh Miller of Cromarty. At the time Miller wrote for the Edinburgh newspaper, the Witness. Miller has left graphic descriptions of his experiences in his book - The Cruise of the Betsy (Nimmo -Edinburgh 1869).

Writing in the Witness on 19th April 1845 Miller describes a visit to the Free Church congregation in Eigg -

" The building in which the congregation meets is a low dingy cottage of turf and stone .... We found the congregation already gathered, and that the very bad morning had failed to lessen their numbers. There were a few of the male parishioners keeping watch at the door, looking wistfully out through the fog and rain for their minister; and at his approach nearly twenty more came issuing forth from the place, like carder bees from their nest of dried grass and moss, to gather round him and shake him by the hand .... Rarely have I seen human countenances so eloquently vocal with veneration and love .... The rude turf building we found full from end to end, and all asteam with a particularly wet congregation, some of whom, neither very robust nor young, had traveled in the soaking drizzle from the further extremities of the Island. And judge from the serious attention with which they listened to the discourse, they must have deemed it full value for all it cost then. I have never seen a congregation more deeply impressed, or that seemed to follow the preached more intelligently .... There was little of externals in the place as can well be imagined. An uneven earthen floor - turf walls on every side and a turf roof above; two little windows of four panes apiece, adown which the rain-drops were coursing thick and fast; a pulpit grotesquely rude, that had never employed the bred carpenter; and a few ranges of seats of undressed deal. Such were the materialisms of this lowly church of the people; and yet here, notwithstanding, was the living soul of a Christian community, understandings convinced of the truth of the Gospel, and hearts softened and impressed by its power."

John Swanson died on 14 January 1874