I'd make a rum laird, an odd eigg

Isle of Rùm, taken
last summer from Maillag

I crave a title.  What kind of title, you may ask?  Mayor of Seattle?  King of Siam?  Emperor of China?

No.  No, the title that's captured my fancy is "Laird of Muck."

Last summer, after completing my West Highlands hike in Scotland, I took the train from Fort William to the little coastal port of Maillag, just for a day's visit.  From Maillag, I looked across the water to a number of islands making up a portion of the Inner Hebrides -- to the giant Isle of Skye, but also to the smaller islands of Rùm and Eigg (it occurred to me, as it must have occurred to many others, that these isles were the fixings for a delicious eiggnog).  The islands looked somewhat bleak, but tantalizing.  I only wished I had time to take one of the small ferries across the straits -- an exploration saved for perhaps a later date.

What I didn't see, however -- because it was obscured behind the misty shores of Eigg -- was the Isle of Muck.

I knew nothing of Muck, or of its owner, the Laird of Muck, until I opened this month's issue of National Geographic Traveler.  There I found a nicely illustrated article by an adventuresome  young Kansan, a writer who took the time to explore the Inner Hebrides -- even as I would love to do -- but who also seems to have had the connections (or the chutzpah) to spend a day hanging out with the Laird himself -- a fellow named Lawrence MacEwan, a proprietor who raises sheep on his small island. (His wife manages a group of vacation cottages; his daughter runs the lairdom's only hotel.)  The island is a family venture, as you can see, one handed down from laird to laird, from time immemorial. (Which in this case, means since 1896.)

Muck is just about the largest sized dominion over which I could competently reign.  Two and a half square miles.  Population, 30.  Major (and only) town, Port Mòr.  As laird, I would daily manage my herd of sheep, trying to stay one mental step ahead of them.  Grass for grazing grows well on the Isle of Muck; no shortage of rain, you know.  There'd be lots of squishing around in the muck, ha ha ha!

But my estate -- my lairdom -- would consist of more than sheep and hotels and muck.  I would also rule over a resident seal population, and be on at least speaking terms with porpoises in the surrounding waters.  In short, this island has virtually everything that a laird could ask for. Including privacy and lots of silence.  Except when the occasional writer dropped in to see what it was all about.

As my friends, of course, you my readers would always be welcome to visit.  How to address me?  Well might you ask. According to Wikipedia, a "Laird" occupies a spot between an Esquire and a Baron.  As an American lawyer, I'm supposedly already an Esquire (or at least an Esq.), so becoming a laird would be one step up the social heirarchy.  Many of my countrymen would argue that, as an attorney, my esteem in the public eye is so low to begin with that -- while a lairdom might be just one step upward -- it would be a hell of a long step upward.  But to return to the question of address:  I would become "The Much Honoured Rainier96."    (Don't forget that "u" in "Honoured.")  My eldest son -- the heir apparent (primogeniture, you know -- look it up) -- would add "Yr." ("the younger") to the end of his name. Until that fateful day, of course, when he himself became the laird.  

Sure, it'll be wet.  It's the Hebrides, after all.  But I'm from Seattle, right?  Better a wet laird than a wet esquire.  And as Dean Monro commented so perceptively about the island in 1549:

Be ane haffe myle of sea to this ile, lyes ane ile of twa myle lang, callit in Erische Ellannaneche, that is the Swynes ile, and very fertill and fruitful of cornes and grassing for all store, and verey guid for fishing, inhabit and manurit, a good falcon nest in it. It perteynis to the Bishope of the iles, with ane guid heighland haven in it, the entrey quherof is at the west cheik.

Amen to that, I say.  I now plan to become Laird of Muck in my own right, and in the historically correct manner -- by conquest.  I'm off to the nearest ship's chandler to outfit my vessel.  As soon as I secure a vessel.