This paper arises from A Light in the Dark, an ongoing project examining Walter Scott’s Lighthouse Yacht Journal (1814) and its editorial, cultural, and material afterlives. While Scott’s account of his voyage with the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses is rooted in the early nineteenth century, this paper considers how the Journal continued to inform later representations of Skye and the Western Isles, particularly across the twentieth century.
Using Dunvegan, Loch Follart, and the Minch as case studies, we explore how Scott’s Anglophone descriptions of predominantly Gaelic-speaking maritime communities were revisited, reframed, and selectively inherited in later travel writing, visual art, and heritage contexts. Lighthouses are approached as cultural contact zones, where state infrastructure, literary authority, and local knowledge intersect, and where processes of linguistic mediation become especially visible.
By placing Scott’s Journal in dialogue with later responses rather than treating it as an isolated historical artefact, the paper highlights enduring cross-currents between Gaelic, Scots, and English, and reflects on the challenges of representing local industries, traditions, folklore, and dialect from an external perspective. In doing so, it contributes to broader discussions of voice, mediation, and multilingual encounters in Scottish writing.