' The museum demonstrates the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of the

Scottish tourist industry in general'.

NIGHT has fallen on the firth and the oil rigs, festooned with lights,

sparkle like Christmas trees. The visitor to Cromarty gawps at this

collection of industrial hardware parked just offshore. But so fixed a

feature of the landscape have the rigs become that the local children do

not give them as much as a glance as they pass by on more important

business.

Round the corner, up one of the burgh's narrow streets, there is a

more charming discovery -- a local museum among the best of its kind.

The excellence of Cromarty Courthouse has been widely recognised. It was

Scottish Museum of the Year in 1991 and won a Europa Nostra award in

1992.

It is the fruit of local dedication -- they started raising money to

restore the courthouse 30 years ago. It is supported by an enlightened

local authority, Ross and Cromarty District Council, and is run by a

professional curator, David Alston.

The museum of my youth was a dead fish on a plate. The visitor was

invited to stare at inanimate objects behind glass. Fustian prose

described them. Cromarty Courthouse is as much state of the art as its

resources permit: it is animated and animating. But it is not

trivialised a la Disneyland: it imparts a great deal of information

elegantly and painlessly.

The first surprise, after you have negotiated the narrow steps, is an

animatronic figure of Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611-1660). He was a bigwig

who lived in Cromarty Tower. He was a royalist, a soldier, a scholar

and, above all, an eccentric.

He fought at Turiff against the Covenanters in 1639. He withdrew to

London, where he was knighted by Charles I. He published his Epigrams

and later, after travelling abroad, a trigonometrical work which remains

incomprehensible.

In 1649 he joined the Inverness rising when Charles reached Cromarty

on his odyssey to gain the throne as Charles II. Sir Thomas followed him

to Worcester where, in the rout of the royalists, he lost most of his

manuscripts and was imprisoned.

He published his genealogy, an invective against Scottish

presbyterianism, a scheme for a universal language, and a translation of

Rabelais said to be more robust and uninhibited than the original. This

was his last two-fingered salute to puritanism. He died abroad, having

lived in troubled times.

If you press the right button on the display, the model of Sir Thomas

will discourse on one of a number of these subjects. The head rolls, the

lips move, and a querulous but powerful voice booms round the room as

Sir Thomas reflects, for example, on the works of Rabelais.

Upstairs there is the courtroom where more models re-enact a

simplified version of an eighteenth-century trial. We seat ourselves in

the public gallery. The presiding judge, Sir John Gordon of Invergordon,

fixes us, we fancy, with a stern and beady eye. The trial begins.

A local woman is accused, with the connivance of two men, of stealing

rope from the hemp factory which, along with a brewery, was founded in

the burgh by the improving laird of Cromarty, George Ross.

They are convicted. The men have volunteered for military service and

are freed on that basis. She is sentenced to be paraded round the burgh

as a thief and then to be banished for seven years. This is a cruel

enough punishment, since vagrants have no claim on parish poor relief.

Only one of the models, that of the judge, moves: the others are

immobile and we simply hear their voices. That is because of a shortage

of money. Mr Alston shows me the innards of Sir John Gordon. His

movements are created by a machine fitted inside his body and driven by

compressed air. It had to be imported from Florida. It is a pity,

remarks Mr Alston, that some UK manufacturer does not supply the goods.

The museum demonstrates the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of the

Scottish tourist industry in general. It has charm; it is an asset in an

increasingly important sector; it is fun to visit, and leads the curious

visitor gently and lucidly into fascinating aspects of our history. In a

country which sometimes seems to live in ignorance of its own past,

where an English view of history is constantly foisted on it, that is a

valuable service in itself.

Its weakness is also representative: it is underfunded. Its grant from

the local authority is reducing. The idea is that it will be replaced by

admission money. This depends in turn on successful marketing and a

favourable economic climate (attendances last year were down on 1991).

A successful museum will sustain fragile local services (the

restaurant opposite is for sale; the coffee shop round the corner

struggles gamely; and in the region at large there has been a spate of

hotel liquidations).

The administration of Scottish tourism is, by common consent, a mess.

The Scottish Office has invited submissions so that it can review the

responsibilities of the various bodies, and a ''turf war'' has broken

out among them. Scottish Enterprise wants more of the action; the

Scottish Tourist Board wants to acquire the marketing functions of

Highlands and Islands Enterprise which, not surprisingly, resists. Then

there is the network of regional tourist boards.

The solution that may be emerging is for the enterprise bodies to take

on the task of infrastructural development and for the STB to do the

marketing, classification and control of standards. It seems a sensible

division of labour. One thing is sure: it is time we took this important

industry more seriously.