KINGS OF THE ISLES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3334, 16 August 1926, Page 7

KINGS OF THE ISLES.

(By J. ’Wentworth Day.)

Pot ton island, the largest privately owned island off the eastern coast of England, which covers 1,024 acres, and was withdrawn at £77(50 at the auction at Southend recently, reminds one that George V, king of England has a great many subjects who share with him the overlordship of the isles which lie about our coast.

England is ringed with the domains of petty potentates. Islands have a strange fascination for those who can afford to buy them—most people can if they only realised it. Sometimes you may reign over your isle from a castle on the spot—as at Brownsea, that delectable domain in Poole Harbour, which to-day awaits a millionaire with a sense of romance—or you can simply pick up a few acres of rock and heather in a Scottish sea-loch for as few pounds as acres and build there tho house that suits you. Mr T. A. Dorrien-Smith is, of course king of the Scillies, which he rules with a benevolent hand from Fresco Abbey where palms grow outdoors.

Further north Mr Coles Harman, a City man, recently became lord of “the Kingdom of Heaven,” as Lundy was called when that fine old “squarson,” the Rev. H. G. Heaven, was lord of the manor, squire and parson in one. Ho in truth, was a king, for he successfully fought to keep his isle free from tho jurisdiction of the Devon magistracy. He lived in a granite house with a roof of copper. Further up tho Welsh coast, where the puffins breed and the peregrine lives, one comes to Skoraer, and Grassholm,the famous bird isles where Lord Kensington ruled until recently from his grim fortress of St. Donat’s Castle. Most magnificent of all the west coast kings is Lord St. Levan, who lives in almost regal state in his-castle high up on the rock of St. Michael’s Mount.

For sheer romance, however, no heritage of peer or commoner on all our coasts can equal that of the Waters family who for generations have owned inishmurray, a lone, lost isle off the coast of Donegal, where the clan system still survives and the pagan past lives again. Inishmurray has queer rites and queer beliefs. No man of her will dare jeer at “the alter of cursing,” for upon it a clansman can call down on you the wrath of dark gods. Then, too, there is the “Church of Fire,” whose alter, they will tell you, will kindle into flame any wood placed upon it. And those who dwell upon the island—there are about eighty of them—pay no rates and taxes. The Lords Barrymore have been seated—a pleasant word—on Fata Islands for generations, while other island kings of long standing are the Earl of Dunraven, on Garrynish; the Knight of Kerry, on Valentia Island; Lord Charlcmont. on Coney Island in Lough Neagh; and the Barings on La mb ay, a mere speck in the Atlantic inhabited by a school, a coastguard station, and millions of rabbits. It is in the Hebrides that one comes into the country of the true island kings—the lairds and chiefs, some of whom, even to-day, could, if they would raise their own armies to fight for the king. Greatest of them is MacCailean Mhor chief of Clan Campbell,; Duke of Argyll in the peerage, but a king in the Hebridean eyes. He is the greatest cheiftain which the isles and the Western Highlands have known, since the Lord of the Isles ruled in those narrow seas.