19304: A Princess of Thule

A Princess of Thule was written by William Black in 1874. His inspiration supposedly came from his visits to the Macdonald family of Tigh a Chaolais and Thule House in Bernera. Isabella Macdonald was said to be the inspiration for the heroine Sheila.

The book begins:

On a small headland of the distant island of Lewis, an old man stood looking out on a desolate waste of rain-beaten sea. It was a wild and a wet day. From out of the louring south-west, fierce gusts of wind were driving up volumes and flying rags of cloud, and sweeping onward at the same time the gathering waves that fell hissing and thundering on the shore. Far as the eye could reach, the sea and the air and the sky seemed to be one indistinguishable mass of whirling and hurrying vapour — as if beyond this point there were no more land, but only wind and water, and the confused and awful voices of their strife.