Travel writer William Lithgow lost his ears to love and led a full life of adventure
IT’S not unusual to head off on holiday in the aftermath of a messy break-up – a dose of sun, sea and sangria certainly helps.
Lanark’s William Lithgow, however, took his post-split soul-searching to another level when he racked up 57,936km (36,000 miles) on foot in the early 17th century.
After a doomed dalliance with a local lass left him without ears – Miss Lockhart’s four brothers are said to have cut them off and then chased him out of town – William became known as Lugless Will and was definitely in need of distraction.
No stranger to the allure of travel, he had visited Orkney and Shetland and several European countries. But it was his walk from Paris to Rome in 1610 that marked the beginning of years of wonderful peregrinations, taking him to the Middle East and North Africa. He got caught up in some far-fetched escapades too.
Firstly, Nîmes, he was robbed – or he would have been, had the robbers not taken pity on poor penniless Will and offered him money. And in Rome he had to climb the city walls to avoid the Spanish Inquisition.
He toured far and wide, allegedly rescuing several women en route, helping prisoners on the run, and surviving a shipwreck. If that doesn’t all sound implausible enough, he also managed to save his belongings during said shipwreck by casting them adrift in his handy portable coffin. He made it to Constantinople and reportedly became the first European to taste coffee.
Will’s wanderings were funded by generous benefactors, including a pair of wealthy Venetians in Greece who gave him 50 gold coins, and three fellow travellers who drank too much wine and dropped dead on the way to Cairo, leaving him all their worldly goods. Following a brief spell back in Blighty, where he regaled James VI’S court, he
“Her four brothers are said to have chopped them off ”
took off for foreign climes, but the Inquisition arrested him in Malaga on suspicion of being a spy, and had him brutally tortured.
Upon release, Lugless Will swiftly returned to Scotland, where he stayed until his death in 1645.
There’s no doubt that William Lithgow would be delighted that his book – The Totall Discourse, of the Rare Adventures, and Painefull Peregrinations of Long Nineteene Years Travayles, from Scotland, to the most Famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia, and Affrica – is still being read four centuries later, and that his story continues to make us gasp and giggle.