Martin Martin

One of the earliest and most informative books about the Western Isles of Scotland was published in 1703. Its author was Martin Martin, a scholar and native of Skye, whose background remains something of a mystery. It seems he was born sometime between 1655 and 1660 near Duntulm in Skye. He studied medicine at Leiden, Germany, in 1708, where records claim that he had been born in 1669. But this would have made him just twelve years old when in 1681, according to Scottish records, he graduated from Edinburgh University!

Martin returned to Skye as tutor, firstly to the young Macdonald of Sleat, and later to the future Macleod of Dunvegan. This gave him an opportunity to embark upon travels throughout the Hebrides in 1696 (even to remote St Kilda, the following year).

It was still a time of turmoil in northern Britain (with for example, the massacre of Glencoe having taken place only four years earlier). It is remarkable that he considered it worthwhile to record the life, conditions and environment of the islanders, who were then as remote from the ‘civilised world’ as anyone from more distant lands.

Martin might be considered one of the first ‘tourists’ to the Hebrides – in his own words: ‘never described till now by any Man that was a Native of the Country, or had travelled them’. As a Gaelic speaker, Martin stands apart, even to this day, as having been able to converse freely with the islanders and learn directly from them. ‘In the course of my Travells . . . any thing that was remarkable fell under my Observations . . . Our Isles afford a Greater variety of Natural as well as Moral Observations, than I expected; of both these I have amassed a considerable number’. The ‘Large cargoe of natural curiosities’ he was said to have accumulated included ‘Skins of fowls, Minerals, Coral, Talk, Nitre, Ambergriece, Shells, etc’.