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diff --git a/41623-0.txt b/41623-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6619544 --- /dev/null +++ b/41623-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8856 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41623 *** + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 41623-h.htm or 41623-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41623/41623-h/41623-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41623/41623-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://archive.org/details/spellofscotland00claruoft + + + + + +THE SPELL OF SCOTLAND + + +--------------------------------------------------------+ + | | + | THE SPELL SERIES | + | | + | _Each volume with one or more colored plates and | + | many illustrations from original drawings or special | + | photographs. Octavo, decorative cover, gilt top, | + | boxed._ | + | | + | _Per volume, net $2.50; carriage paid $2.70_ | + | | + | BY ISABEL ANDERSON | + | | + | THE SPELL OF BELGIUM | + | THE SPELL OF JAPAN | + | THE SPELL OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS AND THE PHILIPPINES | + | | + | BY CAROLINE ATWATER MASON | + | THE SPELL OF ITALY | + | THE SPELL OF SOUTHERN SHORES | + | THE SPELL OF FRANCE | + | | + | BY ARCHIE BELL | + | THE SPELL OF EGYPT | + | THE SPELL OF THE HOLY LAND | + | | + | BY KEITH CLARK | + | THE SPELL OF SPAIN | + | THE SPELL OF SCOTLAND | + | | + | BY W. D. MCCRACKAN | + | THE SPELL OF TYROL | + | THE SPELL OF THE ITALIAN LAKES | + | | + | BY EDWARD NEVILLE VOSE | + | THE SPELL OF FLANDERS | + | | + | BY BURTON E. STEVENSON | + | THE SPELL OF HOLLAND | + | | + | BY JULIA DE W. ADDISON | + | THE SPELL OF ENGLAND | + | | + | BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE | + | THE SPELL OF SWITZERLAND | + | | + | THE PAGE COMPANY | + | 53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass. | + +--------------------------------------------------------+ + + +[Illustration: _The Pass of Killiecrankie_ (_See page 195_)] + + +THE SPELL OF SCOTLAND + +by + +KEITH CLARK + +Author of "The Spell of Spain," etc. + + "A Traveller may lee wi authority." (Scotch Proverb) + +[Illustration] + +Illustrated + + + + + + + +Boston +The Page Company +MDCCCCXVI + +Copyright, 1916, by +The Page Company + +All rights reserved + +First Impression, November, 1916 + +The Colonial Press +C. H. Simonds Company, Boston, U. S. A. + + + + + TO + THE LORD MARISCHAL + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + I. HAME, HAME, HAME! 1 + II. SCOTTS-LAND 24 + III. BORDER TOWNS 53 + IV. THE EMPRESS OF THE NORTH 82 + V. THE KINGDOM OF FIFE 149 + VI. TO THE NORTH 171 + VII. HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND 194 + VIII. THE CIRCLE ROUND 220 + IX. THE WESTERN ISLES 252 + X. THE LAKES 277 + XI. THE WEST COUNTRY 314 + BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 + INDEX 339 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + PAGE + THE PASS OF KILLIECRANKIE (_in full colour_) + (_See page 195_) _Frontispiece_ + MAP OF SCOTLAND 1 + JAMES VI 6 + QUEEN MARY 15 + JAMES II 25 + MELROSE ABBEY 34 + ABBOTSFORD (_in full colour_) 41 + THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD 45 + ST. MARY'S AISLE AND TOMB OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, DRYBURGH ABBEY 51 + JEDBURGH ABBEY 63 + HERMITAGE CASTLE 66 + NEWARK CASTLE 74 + INTERIOR VIEW, TIBBIE SHIEL'S INN 77 + ST. MARY'S LAKE 80 + EDINBURGH CASTLE (_in full colour_) 86 + MONS MEG 90 + GREYFRIARS' CHURCHYARD 96 + MORAY HOUSE 102 + INTERIOR OF ST. GILES 104 + JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE 106 + JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE 108 + HOLYROOD PALACE 111 + JAMES IV 115 + MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV 124 + BOTHWELL CASTLE (_in full colour_) 131 + PRINCES STREET 134 + JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE, VISCOUNT DUNDEE 142 + TANTALLON CASTLE 157 + ST. ANDREWS CASTLE 165 + DRAWING-ROOM, LINLITHGOW PALACE, WHERE QUEEN MARY WAS BORN 184 + HUNTINGTON TOWER 190 + GLAMIS CASTLE 194 + GLEN TILT 197 + INVERCAULD HOUSE 200 + BALMORAL CASTLE 205 + MARISCHAL COLLEGE 207 + DUNNOTTAR CASTLE 212 + SPYNIE CASTLE 224 + CAWDOR CASTLE (_in full colour_) 227 + BATTLEFIELD OF CULLODEN 232 + THE OLD MAN OF HOY 237 + EARL'S PALACE, KIRKWALL 240 + INVERGARRY CASTLE 248 + KILCHURN CASTLE 258 + AROS CASTLE 265 + ENTRANCE TO FINGAL'S CAVE 267 + CATHEDRAL OF IONA AND ST. MARTIN'S CROSS 273 + DUMBARTON CASTLE 282 + LOCH KATRINE 289 + THE BRIG O' TURK 294 + THE TROSSACHS (_in full colour_) 296 + STIRLING CASTLE (_in full colour_) 304 + DOUNE CASTLE 310 + PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER 317 + AYR RIVER (_in full colour_) 322 + BURNS' COTTAGE, BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBERT BURNS, AYR 328 + CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE 333 + + + + +[Illustration: SCOTLAND] + + + + +THE + +SPELL OF SCOTLAND + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HAME, HAME, HAME! + + "It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain wad I be, + And it's hame, hame, hame, to my ain countree!" + + +Time was when half a hundred ports ringing round the semi-island of +Scotland invited your boat to make harbour; you could "return" at almost +any point of entry you chose, or chance chose for you. + +To-day, if you have been gone for two hundred and fifty years, or if you +never were "of Scotia dear," except as a mere reading person with an +inclination toward romance, you can make harbour after a transatlantic +voyage at but one sea-city, and that many miles up a broad in-reaching +river. Or, you can come up the English roads by Carlisle or by +Newcastle, and cross the Border in the conquering way, which never yet +was all-conquering. There is shipping, of course, out of the half +hundred old harbours. But it is largely the shipping that goes and +comes, fishing boats and coast pliers and the pleasure boats of the +western isles. + +You cannot come back from the far corners of the earth--to which +Scotland has sent such majorities of her sons, since the old days when +she squandered them in battle on the Border or on the Continent, to the +new days when she squanders them in colonization so that half a dozen of +her counties show decline in population--but you must come to Glasgow. +The steamers are second-class compared with those which make port +farther south. They are slower. But their very lack of modern splendour +and their slow speed give time in which to reconstruct your Scotland, +out of which perhaps you have been banished since the Covenant, or the +Fifteen, or the Forty Five; or perhaps out of which you have never taken +the strain which makes you romantic and Cavalier, or Presbyterian and +canny. We who have it think that you who have it not lose something very +precious for which there is no substitute. We pity you. More clannish +than most national tribesmen, we cannot understand how you can endure +existence without a drop of Scotch. + +Always when I go to Scotland I feel myself returning "home." +Notwithstanding that it is two centuries and a bittock since my clerical +ancestor left his home, driven out no doubt by the fluctuant fortunes of +Covenanter and Cavalier, or, it may be, because he believed he carried +the only true faith in his chalice--only he did not carry a +chalice--and, either he would keep it undefiled in the New World, or he +would share it with the benighted in the New World; I know not. + +All that I know is that in spite of the fact that the Scotch in me has +not been replenished since those two centuries and odd, I still feel +that it is a search after ancestors when I go back to Scotland. And, if +a decree of banishment was passed by the unspeakable Hanoverians after +the first Rising, and lands and treasure were forfeited, still I look on +entire Scotland as my demesne. I surrender not one least portion of it. +Not any castle, ruined or restored, is alien to me. Highlander and +Lowlander are my undivisive kin. However empty may seem the moorlands +and the woodlands except of grouse and deer, there is not a square foot +of the twenty-nine thousand seven hundred eighty-five square miles but +is filled for me with a longer procession, if not all of them royal, +than moved ghostly across the vision of Macbeth. + +Nothing happens any longer in Scotland. Everything has happened. Quite +true, Scotland may some time reassert itself, demand its independence, +cease from its romantic reliance on the fact that it did furnish to +England, to the British Empire, the royal line, the Stewarts. Even Queen +Victoria, who was so little a Stewart, much more a Hanoverian and a +Puritan, was most proud of her Stewart blood, and regarded her summers +in the Highlands as the most ancestral thing in her experience. + +Scotland may at sometime dissolve the Union, which has been a union of +equality, accept the lower estate of a province, an American "state," +among the possible four of "Great Britain and Ireland," and enter on a +more vigorous provincial life, live her own life, instead of exporting +vigour to the colonies--and her exportation is almost done. She may fill +this great silence which lies over the land, and is fairly audible in +the deserted Highlands, with something of the human note instead of the +call of the plover. + +But, for us, for the traveler of to-day, and at least for another +generation, Scotland is a land where nothing happens, where everything +has happened. It has happened abundantly, multitudinously, splendidly. +No one can regret--except he is a reformer and a socialist--the absence +of the doings of to-day; they would be so realistic, so actual, so +small, so of the province and the parish. Whereas in the Golden Age, +which is the true age of Scotland, men did everything--loving and +fighting, murdering and marauding, with a splendour which makes it seem +fairly not of our kind, of another time and of another world. + +You must know your Scottish history, you must be filled with Scottish +romance, above all, you must know your poetry and ballads, if you would +rebuild and refill the country as you go. Not only over fair Melrose +lies the moonlight of romance, making the ruin more lovely and more +complete than the abbey could ever have been in its most established +days, but over the entire land there lies the silver pall of moonlight, +making, I doubt not, all things lovelier than in reality. + +We truly felt that we should have arranged for "a hundred pipers an' a' +an' a'." But we left King's Cross station in something of disguise. The +cockneys did not know that we were returning to Scotland. Our landing +was to be made as quietly, without pibroch, as when the Old Pretender +landed at Peterhead on the far northeastern corner, or when the Young +Pretender landed at Moidart on the far western rim of the islands. And +neither they nor we pretenders. + +The East Coast route is a pleasant way, and I am certain the hundred +pipers, or whoever were the merry musicmakers who led the English troops +up that way when Edward First was king, and all the Edwards who followed +him, and the Richards and the Henrys--they all measured ambition with +Scotland and failed--I am certain they made vastly more noise than this +excellently managed railway which moves across the English landscape +with due English decorum. + +We were to stop at Peterborough, and walk out to where, "on that +ensanguined block at Fotheringay," the queenliest queen of them all laid +her head and died that her son, James Sixth of Scotland, might become +First of England. We stopped at York for the minster, and because +Alexander III was here married to Margaret, daughter of Henry III; and +their daughter being married to Eric of Norway in those old days when +Scotland and Norway were kin, became mother to the Maid of Norway, +one of the most pathetic and outstanding figures in Scottish history, +simply because she died--and from her death came divisions to the +kingdom. + +[Illustration: JAMES VI.] + +We paused at Durham, where in that gorgeous tomb St. Cuthbert lies +buried after a brave and Scottish life. We only looked across the +purpling sea where already the day was fading, where the slant rays of +the sun shone on Lindisfarne, which the spirit of St. Cuthbert must +prefer to Durham. + +All unconsciously an old song came to sing itself as I looked across +that wide water-- + + "My love's in Germanie, + Send him hame, send him hame, + My love's in Germanie, + Fighting for royalty, + He's as brave as brave can be, + Send him hame, send him hame!" + +Full many a lass has looked across this sea and sung this lay--and shall +again. + +The way is filled with ghosts, long, long processions, moving up and +down the land. A boundary is always a lodestone, a lodeline. Why do men +establish it except that other men dispute it? In the old days England +called it treason for a Borderer, man or woman, to intermarry with +Scotch Borderer. The lure, you see, went far. Even so that kings and +ladies, David and Matilda, in the opposing edges of the Border, married +each other. And always there was Gretna Green. + +Agricola came this way, and the Emperor Severus. There is that +interesting, far-journeying Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the "Gil Blas of +the Middle Ages," who later became Pius II. He came to this country by +boat, but becoming afraid of the sea, returned by land, even opposite to +the way we are going. Froissart came, but reports little. Perhaps +Chaucer, but not certainly. George Fox came and called the Scots "a dark +carnal people." + +With the Act of Union the stream grows steady and full. There is Ben +Jonson, trudging along the green roadway out yonder; for on foot, and +all the way from London, he came northward to visit William Drummond of +Hawthornden. Who would not journey to such a name? But, alas, a fire +destroyed "my journey into Scotland sung with all the adventures." All +that I know of Ben is that he was impressed with Lomond--two hundred +years before Scott. + +And there trails Taylor, "water poet," hoping to rival Rare Ben, on his +"Pennyless Pilgrimage," when he actually went into Scotland without a +penny, and succeeded in getting gold to further him on his way--"Marr, +Murraye, Elgin, Bughan, and the Lord of Erskine, all of these I thank +them, gave me gold to defray my charges in my journey." + +James Howell, carries a thin portfolio as he travels the highway. But we +must remember that he wrote his "Perfect Description of the People and +Country of Scotland" in the Fleet. + +Here is Doctor Johnson, in a post chaise. Of course, Sir! "Mr. Boswell, +an active lively fellow is to conduct me round the country." And he's +still a lively conductor. Surely you can see the Doctor, in his high +boots, and his very wide brown cloth great coat with pockets which might +be carrying two volumes of his folio dictionary, and in his hand a large +oak staff. One tries to forget that years before this journey he had +said to Boswell, "Sir, the noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees +is the highroad that leads him to London." And, was there any malice in +Boswell's final record--"My illustrious friend, being now desirous to be +again in the great theater of life and animated existence"? + +The poet Gray preceded him a little, and even John Wesley moves along +the highroad seeking to save Scottish souls as well as English. A few +years afterward James Hogg comes down this way to visit his countryman, +Tammas Carlyle in London; who saw Hogg as "a little red-skinned stiff +rock of a body with quite the common air of an Ettrick shepherd." + +There is Scott, many times, from the age of five when he went to Bath, +till that last journey back from Italy--to Dryburgh! And Shadowy Jeanie +Deans comes downward, walking her "twenty-five miles and a bittock a +day," to save her sister from death. + +Disraeli comes up this way when he was young and the world was his +oyster. Stevenson passes up and down, sending his merry men up and down. +And one of the most native is William Winter--"With a quick sense of +freedom and of home, I dashed across the Border and was in Scotland." + +There is a barricade of the Cheviots stretching across between the two +countries, but the Romans built a Wall to make the division more +apparent. In the dawn of the centuries the Romans came hither, and +attempting to come to Ultima Thule, Picts and Scots--whatever they were, +at least they were brave--met the Romans on the Border, as yet +unreported in the world's history and undefined in the world's +geography, and sent them back into what is England. The Romans in single +journeys, and in certain imperial attempts, did penetrate as far as +Inverness. But they never conquered Scotland. Only Scotland of all the +world held them back. And in order to define their defeat and to place +limits to the unlimited Roman Empire, the Great Wall was built, built by +Hadrian, that men might know where civilization, that splendid thing +called Roman civilization, and barbarism did meet. Scotland was +barbarism. And I think, not in apology but in all pride, she has +remained something of this ever since. Never conquered, never subdued. + +The Wall was, in truth, a very palpable thing, stretching from the +Solway to the North Sea at the Tyne, with ample width for the constant +patrol, with lookout towers at regular and frequent intervals, with +soldiers gathered from every corner of the Empire, often the spawn of +it, and with much traffic and with even permanent villas built the +secure side of the barrier. If you meet Puck on Pook's hill, he will +tell you all about it. + +Our fast express moves swiftly northward, through the littoral of +Northumberland, as the ship bearing Sister Clare moved through the sea-- + + "And now the vessel skirts the strand + Of mountainous Northumberland; + Towns, towers, and hills successive rise, + And catch the nun's delighted eyes." + + +_Berwick_ + +The voyager enters Berwick with a curious feeling. It is because of the +voyagers who have preceded him that this town is singular among all the +towns of the Empire. It is of the Empire, it is of Britain; but battled +round about, and battled for as it has been since ambitious time began, +it is of neither England nor Scotland. "Our town of Berwick-upon-Tweed," +as the phrase still runs in the acts of Parliament, and in the royal +proclamations; not England's, not Scotland's. Our town, the King's town. + +For it is an independent borough (1551) since the men who fared before +us could not determine which should possess it, and so our very own time +records that history in an actual fact. I do not suppose the present +serious-looking, trades-minded people of the city, with their dash of +fair Danish, remember their singular situation day by day. The tumult +and the shouting have died which made "the Border" the most embattled +place in the empire, and Berwick-upon-Tweed the shuttlecock in this +international game of badminton. + +It is a dual town at the best. But what has it not witnessed, what +refuge, what pawn, has it not been, this capital of the Debatable Land, +this Key of the Border. + +The Tweed is here spanned by the Royal Border Bridge, opened in 1850, +and called "the last Act of Union." But there is another bridge, a Roman +bridge of many spans, antique looking as the Roman-Moorish-Spanish +bridge at Cordova, and as antique as 1609, an Act of Union following +swiftly on the footsteps of King James VI--who joyously paused here to +fire a salute to himself, on his way to the imperial throne. + +The walls of Berwick, dismantled in 1820 and become a promenade for +peaceful townsfolk and curious sightseers, date no farther back than +Elizabeth's time. But she had sore need of them; for this "our town," +was the refuge for her harriers on retaliatory Border raids, +particularly that most terrible Monday-to-Saturday foray of 1570, that +answer to an attempt to reassert the rights of Mary, when fifty castles +and peels and three hundred villages were laid waste in order that +Scotland might know that Elizabeth was king. + +It was her kingly father, the Eighth Henry, who ordered Hertford into +Scotland--"There to put all to fire and sword, to burn Edinburgh town, +and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked it and gotten what you +can of it, as there may remain forever a perpetual memory of the +vengeance of God lighted upon it for their falsehood and disloyalty. +Sack Holyrood House and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye +conveniently can. Sack Leith and burn it and subvert it, and all the +rest, putting man, woman and child to fire and sword without exception, +when any resistance is made against you. And this done, pass over to the +Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and +villages whereunto ye may reach conveniently, not forgetting among the +rest, so to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal's town of St. +Andrews, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand +by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, especially such +as either in friendship or blood be allied to the Cardinal. The +accomplishment of all this shall be most acceptable to the Majesty and +Honour of the King." + +Berwick has known gentler moments, even marrying and giving in marriage. +It was at this Border town that David, son of the Bruce, and Joanna, +sister of Edward III, were united in marriage. Even then did the +kingdoms seek an Act of Union. And Prince David was four, and Princess +Joanna was six. There was much feasting by day and much revelry by +night, among the nobles of the two realms, while, no doubt, the babies +nodded drowsily. + +[Illustration: QUEEN MARY.] + +At Berwick John Knox united himself in marriage with Margaret Stewart, +member of the royal house of Stewart, cousin, if at some remove, from +that Stewart queen who belonged to "the monstrous regiment of women," +and to whose charms even the Calvinist John was sensitive. One remembers +that at Berwick John was fifty, and Margaret was sixteen. + +There is not much in Berwick to hold the attention, unless one would +dine direct on salmon trout just drawn frae the Tweed. There are +memories, and modern content with what is modern. + +Perhaps the saddest eyes that ever looked on the old town were those of +Queen Mary, as she left Jedburgh, after her almost fatal illness, and +after her hurried ride to the Hermitage to see Bothwell, and just before +the fatal affair in Kirk o' Field. Even then, and even with her spirit +still unbroken, she felt the coming of the end. "I am tired of my life," +she said more than once to Le Croc, French ambassador, on this journey +as she circled about the coast and back to Edinburgh. + +She rode toward Berwick with an escort of a thousand men, and looked +down on the town from Halidon Hill, on the west, where two hundred years +before (1333) the Scots under the regent Douglass had suffered defeat by +the English. + +It was an old town then, and belonged to Elizabeth. But it looked much +as it does to-day; the gray walls, so recently built; the red roofs, +many of them sheltering Berwickians to-day; the church spires, for men +worshiped God in those days in churches, and according to the creeds +that warred as bitterly as crowns; masts in the offing, whence this last +time one might take ship to France, that pleasant smiling land so +different from this dour realm. At all these Mary must have looked +wistfully and weariedly, as the royal salute was fired for this errant +queen. She looked also, over the Border, then becoming a hard-and-fast +boundary, and down the long, long road to Fotheringay, and to peace at +last and honour, in the Abbey. + +It is well to stand upon this hill, before you go on to the West and the +Border, or on to the North and the gray metropolis, that you may +appreciate both the tragedy and the triumph that is Scotland's and was +Mary's. The North Sea is turning purple far out on the horizon, and +white sea birds are flying across beyond sound. The long level light of +the late afternoon is coming up over England. In the backward of the +Border a plaintive curlew is crying in the West, as he has cried since +the days of Mary, and æons before. + + +_Flodden_ + +You may go westward from here, by train and coach, and carriage and on +foot, to visit this country where every field has been a battlefield, +where ruined peel towers finally keep the peace, where castles are in +ruins, and a few stately modern homes proclaim the permanence of +Scottish nobility; and where there is no bird and no flower unsung by +Scottish minstrelsy, or by Scott. Scott is, of course, the poet and +prose laureate of the Border. "Marmion" is the lay, almost the +guide-book. It should be carried with you, either in memory or in +pocket. + +If the day is not too far spent, the afternoon sun too low, you can make +Norham Castle before twilight, even as Marmion made it when he opened +the first canon of Scott's poem-- + + "Day set on Norham's castle steep + And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, + And Cheviot's mountains lone; + The battled towers, the donjon keep, + The loophole grates, where captives weep, + The flanking walls that round it sweep, + In yellow luster shone." + +There is but a fragment of that castle remaining, and this, familiar to +those who study Turner in the National Gallery. A little village with +one broad street and curiously receding houses attempts to live in the +shadow of this memory. The very red-stone tower has stood there at the +top of the steep bank since the middle Eleven Hundreds. Henry II held it +as a royal castle, while his craven son John--not so craven in +battle--regarded it as the first of his fortresses. Edward I made it his +headquarters while he pretended to arbitrate the rival claims of the +Scottish succession, and to establish himself as the Lord Superior. On +the green hill of Holywell nearby he received the submission of Scotland +in 1291--the submission of Scotland! + +Ford castle is a little higher up the river, where lodged the dubious +lady with whom the king had dalliance in those slack days preceding +Flodden--the lady who had sung to him in Holyrood the challenging ballad +of "Young Lochinvar!" James was ever a Stewart, and regardful of the +ladies. + + "What checks the fiery soul of James, + Why sits the champion of dames + Inactive on his steed?" + +The Norman tower of Ford (the castle has been restored), called the +King's tower, looks down on the battlefield, and in the upper room, +called the King's room, there is a carved fireplace carrying the +historic footnote-- + + "King James ye 4th of Scotland did lye + here at Ford castle, A. D. 1513." + +Somehow one hopes that the lady was not sparring for time and Surrey, +and sending messages to the advancing Earl, but truly loved this Fourth +of the Jameses, grandfather to his inheriting granddaughter. + +Coldstream is the station for Flodden. But the village, lying a mile +away on the Scotch side of the Tweed, has memories of its own. It was +here that the most famous ford was found between the two countries, +witness and way to so many acts of disunion; from the time when Edward +I, in 1296, led his forces through it into Scotland, to the time when +Montrose, in 1640, led his forces through it into England. + + "There on this dangerous ford and deep + Where to the Tweed Leet's eddies creep + He ventured desperately." + +The river was spanned by a five-arch bridge in 1763, and it was over +this bridge that Robert Burns crossed into England. He entered +the day in his diary, May 7, 1787. "Coldstream--went over to +England--Cornhill--glorious river Tweed--clear and majestic--fine +bridge." + +It was the only time Burns ever left Scotland, ever came into England. +And here he knelt down, on the green lawn, and prayed the prayer that +closes "The Cotter's Saturday Night"-- + + "O Thou who pour'd the patriot tide + That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart, + Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride + Or nobly die, the second glorious part, + (The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art, + His friend, inspirer, guardian and reward!) + O never, never, Scotia's realm desert; + But still the patriot and the patriot bard, + In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!" + +Surely a consecration of this crossing after its centuries of unrest. + +General Monk spent the winter of 1659 in Coldstream, lodging in a house +east of the market-place, marked with its tablet. And here he raised +the first of the still famous Coldstream Guards, to bring King Charles +"o'er the water" back to the throne. Coldstream is the Gretna Green of +this end of the Border, and many a runaway couple, noble and simple, has +been married in the inn. + +Four miles south of Coldstream in a lonely part of this lonely +Border--almost the echoes are stilled, and you hear nothing but +remembered bits of Marmion as you walk the highway--lies Flodden Field. +It was the greatest of Scotch battles, not even excepting Bannockburn; +greatest because the Scotch are greatest in defeat. + +It was, or so it seemed to James, because his royal brother-in-law Henry +VIII was fighting in France, an admirable time wherein to advance into +England. James had received a ring and a glove and a message, from Anne +of Brittany, bidding him + + "Strike three strokes with Scottish brand + And march three miles on Scottish land + And bid the banners of his band + In English breezes dance." + +James was not the one to win at Flodden, notwithstanding that he had +brought a hundred thousand men to his standard. They were content to +raid the Border, and he to dally at Ford. + + "O for one hour of Wallace wight, + Or well skill'd Bruce to rule the fight, + And cry--'Saint Andrew and our right!' + Another sight had seen that morn + From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, + And Flodden had been Bannockburn!" + +The very thud of the lines carries you along, if you have elected to +walk through the countryside, green now and smiling faintly if deserted, +where it was brown and sere in September, 1513. One should be repeating +his "Marmion," as Scott thought out so many of its lines riding over +this same countryside. It is a splendid, a lingering battle picture-- + + "And first the ridge of mingled spears + Above the brightening cloud appears; + And in the smoke the pennon flew, + As in the storm the white sea mew, + Then mark'd they, dashing broad and far, + The broken billows of the war; + And plumed crests of chieftains brave, + Floating like foam upon the wave, + But nought distinct they see. + Wide ranged the battle on the plain; + Spears shook, and falchions flash'd amain, + Fell England's arrow flight like rain, + Crests rose and stooped and rose again + Wild and disorderly." + +Thousands were lost on both sides. But the flower of England was in +France, while the flower of Scotland was here; and slain--the king, +twelve earls, fifteen lords and chiefs, an archbishop, the French +ambassador, and many French captains. + +You walk back from the Field, and all the world is changed. The green +haughs, the green woodlands, seem even in the summer sun to be dun and +sere, and those burns which made merry on the outward way--can it be +that there are red shadows in their waters? It is not "Marmion" but Jean +Elliott's "Flower of the Forest" that lilts through the memory-- + + "Dule and wae was the order sent our lads to the Border, + The English for once by guile won the day; + The Flowers of the Forest that foucht aye the foremost, + The pride of our land are cauld in the clay. + + "We'll hear nae mair liltin' at the eve milkin', + Women and bairns are heartless and wae; + Sighin' and moanin' on ilka green loanin'-- + The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away." + +I know not by what alchemy the Scots are always able to win our sympathy +to their historic tragedies, or why upon such a field as Flodden, and +many another, the tragedy seems but to have just happened, the loss is +as though of yesterday. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SCOTTS-LAND + + +It is possible to enter the Middle Marches from Berwick; in truth, Kelso +lies scarcely farther from Flodden than does Berwick. But Flodden is on +English soil to-day, and memory is content to let it lie there. These +Middle Marches however are so essentially Scottish, the splendour and +the romance, the history and the tragedy, that one would fain keep them +so, and come upon them as did the kings from David I, or even the Celtic +kings before him, who sought refuge from the bleak Scottish north in +this smiling land of dales and haughs, of burns and lochs. Not at any +moment could life become monotonous even in this realm of romance, since +the Border was near, and danger and dispute so imminent, so incessant. + +Preferably then one goes from Edinburgh (even though never does one go +from that city, "mine own romantic town," but with regret; not even +finally when one leaves it and knows one will not return till next +time) to Melrose; as Scottish kings of history and story have passed +before. There was James II going to the siege of Roxburgh, and not +returning; there was James IV going to the field of Flodden and not +returning; there was James V going to hunt the deer; there was James VI +going up to London to be king; Mary Queen on that last journey to the +South Countrie; Charles I and Charles II losing and getting a crown; +Charles III--let us defy history and call the Bonnie Prince by his +title--when he went so splendidly after Prestonpans. + +[Illustration: JAMES II.] + +It is a royal progress, out of Edinburgh into the Middle Marches; past +Dalkeith where James IV rode to meet and marry Margaret of England; past +Borthwick, where Queen Mary spent that strange hot-trod honeymoon with +Bothwell--of all place of emotion this is the most difficult to realize, +and I can but think Mary's heart was broken here, and the heartbreak at +Carberry Hill was but an echo of this; past Lauder, where the nobles of +ignoble James III hung his un-noble favourite from the stone arch of the +bridge; into the level rays of a setting sun--always the setting sun +throws a more revealing light than that of noonday over this Scotland. + + +_Melrose_ + +I remember on my first visit to Melrose, of course during my first visit +to Scotland, I scheduled my going so as to arrive there in the evening +of a night when the moon would be at the full. I had seen it shine +gloriously on the front of York, splendidly on the towers of Durham. +What would it not be on fair Melrose, viewed aright? + +I hurried northward, entered Edinburgh only to convey my baggage, and +then closing my eyes resolutely to all the glory and the memory that lay +about, I went southward through the early twilight. I could see, would +see, nothing before Melrose. + +The gates of the Abbey were, of course, closed. But I did not wish to +enter there until the magic hour should strike. The country round about +was ineffably lovely in the rose light of the vanishing day. + + "Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose + And Eildon slopes to the plain." + +The Abbey was, of course, the center of thought continually, and its +red-gray walls caught the light of day and the coming shadows of night +in a curious effect which no picture can report; time has dealt +wondrously with this stone, leaving the rose for the day, the gray for +the night. + +I wandered about, stopping in the empty sloping market-place to look at +the Cross, which is as old as the Abbey; looking at the graveyard which +surrounds the Abbey, where men lie, common men unsung in Scottish +minstrelsy, except as part of the great hosts, men who heard the news +when it was swift and fresh from Bannockburn, and Flodden, and Culloden; +and where men and women still insert their mortality into this +immortality--Elizabeth Clephane who wrote the "Ninety and Nine" lies +there; and out into the country and down by the Tweed toward the Holy +Pool, the Haly Wheel, to wonder if when I came again in the middle +night, I, too, should see the white lady rise in mist from the waters, +this lady of Bemersyde who had loved a monk of Melrose not wisely but +very well, and who drowned herself in this water where the monk in +penance took daily plunges, come summer, come winter. How often this is +the Middle-Age penalty! + +Far across the shimmering green meadows and through the fragrant +orchards came the sound of bagpipes--on this my first evening in +Scotland! And whether or not you care for the pipes, there is nothing +like them in a Scottish twilight, a first Scottish twilight, to +reconstruct all the Scotland that has been. + +The multitudes and the individuals came trooping back. At a time of +famine these very fields were filled with huts, four thousand of them, +for always the monks had food, and always they could perform miracles +and obtain food; which they did. That for the early time. And for the +late, the encampment of Leslie's men in these fields before the day when +they slaughtered Montrose's scant band of royalists at Philipshaugh, and +sent that most splendid figure in late Scottish history as a fugitive to +the north, and to the scaffold. + +I knew that in the Abbey before the high altar lay the high heart of The +Bruce, which had been carried to Spain and to the Holy Land, by order of +Bruce, since death overtook him before he could make the pilgrimage. +Lord James Douglass did battle on the way against the Moslems in +southern Spain, where "a Douglass! a Douglass!" rang in battle clash +against "Allah, illah, allah," and the Douglass himself was slain. The +heart of The Bruce flung against the infidel, was recovered and sent on +to Jerusalem, and then back to Melrose. The body of Douglass was brought +back to Scotland, to St. Bride's church in Douglass, and his heart also +lies before the high altar of Melrose. "In their death they were not +divided." + +There lies also buried Michael Scot + + "Buried on St. Michael's night, + When the bell toll'd one and the moon was bright." + +On such a night as this, I hoped. And Scot is fit companion for the +twilight. This strange wizard of a strange time was born in Upper +Tweedale, which is the district of Merlin--the older wizard lies buried +in a green mound near Drummelzier. Michael traveled the world over, +Oxford, Paris, Bologna, Palermo, Toledo, and finally, perhaps because +his wizardry had sent him like a wandering Jew from place to place, back +to the Border, his home country, where he came and served the Evil One. +Dante places him in the Purgatory of those who attempt blasphemously to +tear the veil of the future. The thirteenth century was not the time in +which to increase knowledge, whether of this world or the next. Even +to-day perhaps we save a remnant of superstition, and we would not boast + + "I could say to thee + The words that cleft the Eildon hills in three." + +Very dark against the gathering dark of the night sky rose the Eildon +hills above, cleft in three by the wizardry of Scot. To that height on +the morrow I should climb, for it is there that Sir Walter Scott, a +later wizard, had carried our Washington Irving, just a century ago, and +shown him all this Borderland--which lay about me under the increasing +cover of night. + +"I can stand on the Eildon Hill and point out forty-three places famous +in war and verse," Sir Walter said to our Irving. "I have brought you, +like a pilgrim in the Pilgrim's Progress, to the top of the Delectable +Mountains, that I may show you all the goodly regions hereabouts. Yonder +is Lammermuir and Smailholm; and there you have Galashiels and +Torwoodelee and Gala Water; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and +the Braes of Yarrow; and Ettrick stream winding along like a silver +thread to throw itself into the Tweed. It may be pertinacity, but to my +eye, these gray hills and all this wild Border country have beauties +peculiar to themselves. When I have been for some time in the rich +scenery about Edinburgh, which is like an ornamented garden land, I +begin to wish myself back again among my own honest gray hills; and if I +did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die." + +On the morrow. But for to-night it was enough to remember that perfect +picture as imagination painted it in Andrew Lang's verse-- + + "Three crests against the saffron sky, + Beyond the purple plain, + The kind remembered melody + Of Tweed once more again. + + "Wan water from the Border hills, + Dear voice from the old years, + Thy distant music lulls and stills, + And moves to quiet tears. + + "Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood + Fleets through the dusky land; + Where Scott, come home to die, has stood, + My feet returning, stand. + + "A mist of memory broods and floats, + The Border waters flow; + The air is full of ballad notes + Borne out of long ago. + + "Old songs that sung themselves to me, + Sweet through a boy's day dream, + While trout below the blossom'd tree + Plashed in the golden stream. + + "Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill, + Fair and too fair you be; + You tell me that the voice is still + That should have welcomed me." + +I did not miss the voice, any of the voices. They whispered, they sang, +they crooned, they keened, about me. For this was Melrose, _mael ros_, +so the old Celtic goes, "the naked headland in the wood." And I was +seeing, was hearing, what I have come to see and hear; I, a Scot, if far +removed, if in diluted element, and Scott's from the reading days of +Auld Lang Syne. + +And should I not within the moonlight see the white lady rise from the +Haly Wheel? And should I not see the moonlight flooding the Abbey, +Melrose Abbey? Out of a remembered yesterday, out of a confident +midnight--surely there was a budding morrow in this midnight--I +remembered the lines-- + + "If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, + Go visit it by the pale moonlight; + For the gay beams of lightsome day + Gild but to flout the ruins gray. + When the broken arches are black in night, + And each shafted oriel glimmers white, + When the cold light's uncertain shower + Streams on the ruined central tower; + When buttress and buttress alternately + Seem framed of ebon and ivory; + When silver edges the imagery, + And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; + When distant Tweed is heard to rave, + And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, + Then go--but go alone the while-- + Then view St. David's ruined pile; + And, home returning, soothly swear + Was never scene so sad and fair." + +The moon did not rise that night. + +I walked about the fields, lingered about the Cross in the market, +looked expectantly at the Abbey, until two in the morning. + + "It was near the ringing of matin bell, + The night was well nigh done." + +The moon did not rise, and neither did the white lady. It was not +because there was a mist, a Scottish mist, over the heavens; they were +clear, the stars were shining, and the pole star held true, Charles' +wain--as Charles should in Bonnie Scotland--held true to the pole. But +it was a late July moon, and those Eildon hills and their circling kin +rose so high against the night sky--daytime they seemed modest +enough--that the moon in this latitude as far north as Sitka did not +circle up the sky. Neither does the sun in winter, so the guardian +explained to me next day. + +Fair Melrose is fairest, o' nights, at some later or earlier time of the +year. It was then that I resolved to return in December, on December 27, +when the festival of St. John's is celebrated with torch lights in the +ruins of the Abbey--and Michael Scot comes back to his own! But then I +reflected that the moon is not always full on the Eve of St. John's. + + "I cannot come, I must not come, + I dare not come to thee, + On the Eve of St. John's, I must walk alone, + In thy bower I may not be." + +I chose, years later, an October moon, in which to see it "aright." + +Viewed by day, Melrose is surely fair; fair enough to enchant mortal +vision. It is the loveliest ruin in the land where reform has meant +ruin, and where from Kelso to Elgin, shattered fanes of the faith +proclaim how variable is the mind of man through the generations, and +how hostile when it forsakes. + +Melrose is an old foundation. In truth the monastery was established at +old Melrose, two miles farther down the Tweed, and is so lovely, so +dramatic a corner of the Tweed, that Dorothy Woodsworth declared, "we +wished we could have brought the ruins of Melrose to this spot." She +missed the nearby murmur of the river as we do. + +This oldest harbour of Christianity was founded in the pagan world by +monks from Iona. Therefore by way of Ireland and not from Rome, blessed +by Saint Columba sixty years before Saint Augustine came to +Canterbury. It was the chief "island" between Iona and Lindisfarne. Very +haughty were these monks of the West. "Rome errs, Alexandria errs, all +the world errs; only the Scots and the Britons are in the right." There +is surely something still left of the old spirit in Scotia, particularly +in spiritual Scotia. + +[Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY.] + +Near Melrose was born that Cuthbert who is the great saint of the North, +either side the Border, and who lies in the midst of the splendour of +Durham. A shepherd, he watched his sheep on these very hills round about +us, and saw, when abiding in the fields, angels ascending and descending +on golden ladders. Entering Melrose as a novice he became prior in 664, +and later prior at Lindisfarne. When the monks were driven from the Holy +Island by the Danes they carried the body of St. Cuthbert with them for +seven years, and once it rested at Melrose-- + + "O'er northern mountain, march and moor, + From sea to sea, from shore to shore, + Seven years St. Cuthbert's corpse they bore, + They rested them in fair Melrose; + But though alive he loved it well, + Not there his relics might repose." + +When King David came to the making of Scotland, he came into the Middle +Marches, and finding them very lovely--even as you and I--this "sair +sanct to the Croon," as his Scottish royal descendant, James VI saw +him--and James would have fell liked to be a saint, but he could +accomplish neither sinner nor saint, because Darnley crossed Mary in his +veins--David determined to build him fair Abbeys. Of which, Melrose, +"St. David's ruined pile," is the fairest. He brought Cistercians from +Rievaulx in Yorkshire, to supplant the Culdees of Iona, and they builded +them a beautiful stone Melrose to supplant the wooden huts of old +Melrose. It centered a very active monastic life, where pavements were +once smooth and lawns were close-clipped, and cowled monks in long robes +served God, and their Abbot lorded it over lords, even equally with +kings. + +But it stood on the highway between Dunfermline and London, between +English and Scottish ambitions. And it fell before them. Edward I spared +it because the Abbots gave him fealty. But Edward II, less royal in +power and in taste, destroyed it. The Bruce rebuilded it again, greater +splendour rising out of complete ruin. When Richard II came to Scotland +he caused the Abbey to be pillaged and burned. And when Hertford came +for Henry VIII, after the Thirty Nine Articles had annulled respect for +buildings under the protection of Rome, the final ruin came to St. +David's church-palace. Yet, late as 1810, church service, reformed, of +course, was held in a roofed-over part of the Abbey ruin. To-day it is +under the protection of the Dukes of Buccleuch. And, we remember as we +stand here, while the beams of lightsome day gild the ruin, the mottoes +of the great family of the Border, _Luna Cornua Reparabit_, which being +interpreted is, "There'll be moonlight again." Then to light the raids, +the reiving that refilled the larder. But to-morrow for scenic effect. + +Examined in this daylight, the beauty of Melrose surely loses very +little. It is one of the most exquisite ruins in the United Kingdom, +perhaps second to Tintern, but why compare? It is of finest Gothic, out +of France, not out of England. In its general aspect it is nobly +magnificent-- + + "The darken'd roof rose high aloof + On pillars, lofty, light and small; + The keystone that locked each ribbed aisle + Was a fleur de lys or a quatre feuille, + The corbels were carved grotesque and grim; + And the pillars with clustered shafts so trim, + With base and with capital flourish'd around + Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound." + +And, as a chief detail which yields not to Tintern or any other, is the +east window over the high altar, through which the moon and sun shines +on those buried hearts-- + + "The moon on the east oriel shone + Through slender shafts of shapely stone, + By foliaged tracery combined. + Thou would'st have thought some fairy'd hand + 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand + In many a freakish knot had twined, + Then framed a spell when the work was done, + And changed the willow wreaths to stone. + The silver light, so pale and faint, + Showed many a prophet and many a saint, + Whose image on the glass was dyed, + Full in the midst his cross of red + Triumphant Michael brandish'd, + And trampled on the Apostate's pride; + The moonbeams kissed the holy pane, + And threw on the pavement a bloody stain." + + +_Abbotsford_ + +If "Scott restored Scotland," he built the "keep" which centers all the +Scott-land of the Border side. + +Two miles above Melrose, a charming walk leads to Abbotsford; redeemed +out of a swamp into at least the most memory-filled mansion of all the +land. Scott, like the monks, could not leave the silver wash of the +Tweed; and, more loving than those who dwelt at Melrose and Dryburgh, he +placed his Abbot's House where the rippling sound was within a stone's +throw. + +The Tweed is such a storied stream that as you walk along, sometimes +across sheep-cropped meadows, sometimes under the fragant rustling bough +and athwart the shifting shadows of oak, ash, and thorn--Puck of Pook's +hill must have known the Border country in its most embroidered +days--you cannot tell whether or not the deep quiet river is the noblest +you have seen, or the storied hills about are less than the Delectable +mountains. + +The name "Tweed" suggests romance--unless instead of having read your +Scott you have come to its consciousness through the homespun, alas, +to-day too often the factory-spun woolens, which are made throughout all +Scotland, but still in greatest length on Tweedside. + +Dorothy Wordsworth, winsome marrow, who loved the country even better +than William, I trow--only why remark it when he himself recognized how +his vision was quickened through her companionship?--has spoke the word +Tweed--"a name which has been sweet in my ears almost as far back as I +can remember anything." + +The river comes from high in the Cheviot hills, where East and West +Marches merge and where-- + + "Annan, Tweed, and Clyde + Rise a' out o' ae hillside." + +And down to the sea it runs, its short hundred miles of story-- + + "All through the stretch of the stream, + To the lap of Berwick Bay." + +As you walk along Tweedside, you feel its enchantment, you feel the +sorrow of the thousands who through the centuries have exiled themselves +from its banks, because of war, or because of poverty, or because of +love-- + + "Therefore I maun wander abroad, + And lay my banes far frae the Tweed." + +But now, you are returned, you are on your way to Abbotsford, there are +the Eildons, across the river you get a glimpse of the Catrail, that +sunken way that runs along the boundary for one-half its length, and may +have been a fosse, or may have been a concealed road of the Romans or +what not. Scott once leaped his horse across it, nearly lost his life, +and did lose his confidence in his horsemanship. + +[Illustration: _Abbotsford_] + + "And all through the summer morning + I felt it a joy indeed + To whisper again and again to myself, + This is the voice of the Tweed." + +It is not possible to approach Abbotsford, as it should be approached, +from the riverside, the view with which one is familiar, the view the +pictures carry. Or, it can be done if one would forego the walk, take it +in the opposite direction, and come hither by rail from Galashiels--that +noisy modern factory town, once the housing place for Melrose pilgrims, +which to-day speaks nothing of the romance of Gala water, and surely not +these factory folk "can match the lads o' Gala Water." It is a short +journey, and railway journeys are to be avoided in this land of +by-paths. But there, across the water, looking as the pictures have it, +and as Scott would have it, rises Abbotsford, turreted and towered, +engardened and exclusive. + +It stands on low level ground, for it is redeemed out of a duckpond, out +of Clarty hole. Sir Walter wished to possess the Border, or as much of +it as might be, so he made this first purchase of a hundred acres in +1811. As he wrote to James Ballantyne-- + +"I have resolved to purchase a piece of ground sufficient for a cottage +and a few fields. There are two pieces, either of which would suit me, +but both would make a very desirable property indeed, and could be had +for between 7,000 and 8,000 pounds, or either separate for about half +that sum. I have serious thoughts of one or both." + +He began with one, and fourteen years later, when the estate had +extended to a thousand acres, to the inclusion of many fields, +sheep-cropped and story-haunted, he entered in his diary-- + +"Abbotsford is all I can make it, so I am resolved on no more building, +and no purchases of land till times are more safe." + +By that time the people of the countryside called him "the Duke," he had +at least been knighted, and was, in truth, the Chief of the Border; a +royal ambition which I doubt not he cherished from those first days when +he read Percy under a platanus. + +He paid fabulous prices for romantic spots, and I think would have +bought the entire Border if the times had become safer, in those scant +seven years that were left to him. Even Scott could be mistaken, for he +bought what he believed was Huntlie Bank, where True Thomas had his love +affair with the fair ladye-- + + "True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank; + A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e; + And there he saw a ladye bright + Come riding down by the Eildon tree. + + "Her skirt was o' the grass-green silk, + Her mantle o' the velvet fyne; + At ilka tett o' her horse's mane + Hung fifty siller bells and nine." + +And now the experts tell us that it is not Huntlie Bank at all, but that +is in an entirely different direction, over toward Ercildoune and the +Rhymer's Tower. + +There is a satisfaction in this to those of us who believe in fairies +and in Scott. For fairies have no sense of place or of time. And of +course if they knew that Scott wished them to have lived at his Huntlie +Bank, they straightway would have managed to have lived there. Always, +as you go through this land of romance, or any romance land, and wise +dull folk dispute, you can console yourself that Scott also was +mistaken(?). + +The castle began with a small cottage, not this great pile of gray stone +we can see from the railway carriage across the Tweed, into which we +make our humble way through a wicket gate, a restrained walk, and a +basement doorway. "My dreams about my cottage go on," he wrote to +Joanna Baillie, as we all dream of building cottages into castles. "My +present intention is to have only two spare bedrooms," but "I cannot +relinquish my Border principles of accommodating all the cousins and +duniwastles, who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and in +the hay-loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together." + +So we content ourselves with being duniwastles, whatever that may be, +and are confident that Sir Walter if he were alive would give us the +freedom of the castle. + +In any event, if we feel somewhat robbed of any familiar intercourse, we +can remember that Ruskin called this "perhaps the most incongruous pile +that gentlemanly modernism ever designed." This may content the +over-sensitive who are prevented ever hearing the ripple of the Tweed +through the windows. + +Scott was a zealous relic hunter, and if you like relics, if you can +better conjure up persons through a sort of transubstantiation of +personality that comes by looking on what the great have possessed, +there can be few private collections more compelling than this of +Abbotsford. + +[Illustration: THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD.] + +In the library are such significant hints for reconstruction as the +blotting book wherewith Napoleon cleared his record, the crucifix on +which Queen Mary prayed, the quaigh of her great great and last +grandson, the tumbler from which Bobbie Burns drank--one of them--the +purse into which Rob Roy thrust his plunder, the pocket book of Flora +MacDonald, which held nothing I fear from the generosity of the Bonnie +Prince. + +In the armoury are Scott's own gun, Rob Roy's gun, dirk and skene dhu, +the sword of Montrose, given to that last of the great Cavaliers by his +last king, Charles I, the pistol of Claverhouse, the pistol of Napoleon, +a hunting flask of James III; and here are the keys of Loch Leven +castle, dropped in the lake by Mary Queen's boatman; and the keys of the +Edinburgh Tolbooth turned on so many brave men, yes, and fair women, in +the old dividing days, of Jacobite and Covenanter. + +The library of Scott, twenty thousand volumes, still lines the shelves, +and one takes particular interest in this place, and its little stairway +whereby ascent is made to the balcony, also book-lined, and escape +through a little doorway. When Scott first came to the cottage of +Abbotsford he wrote, furiously, in a little window embrasure with only a +curtain between him and the domestic world. Here he had not only a +library, but a study, where still stands the desk at which the +Waverleys were written, and the well-worn desk chair. + +After he had returned from Italy, whither he went in search of health +and did not find it, he felt, one day, a return of the old desire to +write, the ruling passion. He was wheeled to the desk, he took the +pen,--nothing came. He sank back and burst into tears. As Lockhart +reports it--"It was like Napoleon resigning his empire. The scepter had +departed from Judah; Scott was to write no more." + +Scott has always seemed like a contemporary. Not because of his novels; +I fear the Waverleys begin to read a little stilted to the young +generation, and there are none left to lament with Lowell that he had +read all of Scott and now he could never read him all over again for the +first time. It is rather because Scott the man is so immortal that he +seems like a man still living; or at least like one who died but +yesterday. Into the dining-room where we cannot go--and perhaps now that +we think it over it is as well--he was carried in order that out of it +he might look his last on "twilight and Tweed and Eildon hill." And +there he died, even so long ago as September, 1832. + +"It was a beautiful day," that day we seem almost to remember as we +stand here in the vivid after glow, "so warm that every window was wide +open, and so peacefully still that the sound of all others most +delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed, was distinctly +audible." + + +_Dryburgh_ + +Five days after they carried him to rest in the Abbey--rival certainly +in this instance of The Abbey of England, where is stored so much +precious personal dust. The time had become thrawn; dark skies hung over +the Cheviots and the Eildon, and over the haughs of Ettrick and Yarrow; +the silver Tweed ran leaden, and moaned in its going; there was a +keening in the wind. + +The road from Abbotsford past Melrose to Dryburgh is--perhaps--the +loveliest walk in the United Kingdom; unless it be the road from +Coventry past Kenilworth to Stratford. It was by this very way that +there passed the funeral train of Scott, the chief carriage drawn by +Scott's own horses. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims have followed +that funeral train; one goes to Holy Trinity in Stratford, to the +Invalides in Paris, but one walks to Dryburgh through the beautiful +Tweedside which is all a shrine to Sir Walter. + +The road runs away from the river to the little village of Darnick, with +its ivy-shrouded tower, across the meadows to the bridge across the +river, with the ringing of bells in the ear. For it was ordered on that +September day of 1832, by the Provost, "that the church bell shall toll +from the time the funeral procession reaches Melrose Bridge till it +passes the village of Newstead." + +I do not suppose the people of this countryside, who look at modern +pilgrims so sympathetically, so understandingly, have ever had time to +forget; the stream of pilgrims has been so uninterrupted for nearly a +century. Through the market-place of Melrose it passed, the sloping +stony square, where people of the village pass and repass on their +little village errands. And it did not stop at the Abbey. + +The day was thickening into dusk then; it is ripening into sunset glory +to-day. And the Abbey looks very lovely, and very lonely. And one +wonders if Michael Scot did not call to Walter Scott to come and join +the quiet there, and if the dust that once was the heart of Bruce did +not stir a little as the recreator of Scotland was carried by. + +To the village of Newstead you move on; with the sound of immemorial +bells falling on the ear, and pass through the little winding +street--and wonder if the early Roman name of Trimontium, triple +mountains, triple Eildon, was its first call name out of far antiquity +as Scott believed. + +Then the road ascends between hedgerows, and begins to follow the Tweed +closely--and perhaps you meet pilgrims on Leaderfoot bridge who have +come the wrong way. There is a steep climb to the heights of Bemersyde, +where on the crest all Melrose Glen lies beautifully storied before you. +And here you pause--as did those horses of Scott's, believing their +master would fain take one last look at his favourite view. + +There is no lovelier landscape in the world, or in Scotland. The blue +line of the Cheviots bars back the world, the Dunion, the Ruberslaw, the +Eildon rise, and in the great bend of the river with richly wooded braes +about is the site of Old Melrose. Small wonder he paused to take +farewell of all the country he had loved so well. + +The road leads on past Bemersyde village with woodlands on either side, +and to the east, near a little loch, stands Sandyknowe Tower. + +Near the tower lies the remnant of the village of Smailholm, where Scott +was sent out of Edinburgh when only three years old. It is in truth his +birthplace, for without the clear air of the Border he would have +followed the other Scott children; and without the romance of the Border +he might have been merely a barrister. + +Sandyknowe is brave in spite of its ruin, for it is built of the very +stone of the eternal hills, and has become part of the hills. From its +balcony, sixty feet high, a beautiful Scottish panorama may be glimpsed, +and here Scott brought Turner to make his sketch of the Border. And +here, because a kinsman agreed to save Sandyknowe Tower from the +mortality that comes even to stone if Scott would write a ballad and +make it immortal, is laid the scene of "Eve of St. John's"--with these +last haunting intangible lines-- + + "There is a nun in Dryburgh bower + Ne'er looks upon the sun; + There is a monk in Melrose tower + He speaketh a word to none." + +Then, back to the Tweed, where the river sweeps out in a great circle, +and leaves a peninsula for Dryburgh. The gray walls of the ruin lift +above the thick green of the trees; yew and oak and sycamore close in +the fane. Druid and Culdee and Roman have built shrines in this +lovely spot, but to-day pilgrimage is made chiefly because in the quiet +sheltered ruined St. Mary's aisle sleeps Sir Walter. It would make +one-half in love with death to think of being buried in so sweet a +place. + +[Illustration: ST. MARY'S AISLE AND TOMB OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, DRYBURGH +ABBEY]. + +Dryburgh is also one of St. David's foundations, in the "sacred grove of +oaks," the Darach Bruach of the worship that is older than Augustus or +Columba. These were white monks that David brought up from Alnwick where +his queen had been a Northumbrian princess, and their white cloaks must +have seemed, among these old old oaks, but the white robes of the Druids +come back again. + +It is a well-kept place, vines covering over the crumbling gray stone, +kept by the Lords of Buchan. And, perhaps too orderly, too fanciful, too +"improved"; one likes better the acknowledged ruin of Melrose, and one +would prefer that Sir Walter were there with his kin, instead of here +with his kindred. But this is a sweet place, a historic place, begun by +Hugh de Moreville, who was a slayer of Thomas à Becket, and was +Constable of Scotland. His tomb is marked by a double circle on the +floor of the Chapter House, and there is nothing of the Chapter House; +it is open to beating rain and scorching sun--fit retribution for his +most foul deed. + +It is not this remembrance you carry away, but that of St. Mary's aisle, +in + + "Dryburgh where with chiming Tweed + The lintwhites sing in chorus." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +BORDER TOWNS + + +_Kelso_ + +It is a very great little country which lies all about Melrose, with +never a bend of the river or a turn of the highway or a shoulder of the +hill, nay, scarce the shadow of any hazel bush or the piping of any wee +bird but has its history, but serves to recall what once was; and +because the countryside is so teeming seems to make yesterday one with +to-day. The distances are very short, even between the places the +well-read traveler knows; with many places that are new along the way, +each haunted with its tradition, soon to haunt the traveler, while the +people he meets would seem to have been here since the days of the +Winged Hats. + +Perhaps in order to get into the center of the ecclesiastical +country--for after this being a Borderland, and a Scott-land, it is +decidedly Abbots-land, even before Abbotsford came into being with its +new choice of old title--the traveler will take train to Kelso, or walk +there, a scant dozen miles from Melrose. + +The journey is down the Tweed, which opens ever wider between the gentle +hills that are more and more rounding as the flow goes on to the sea. +There is not such intense loneliness; here is the humanest part of the +Scottish landscape, and while even on this highway the cottages are not +frequent, and one eyes the journeymen with as close inspection as one is +eyed, still it is a friendly land. The southern burr--we deliberately +made excuse of drinking water or asking direction in order to hear +it--is softer than in the North; yet, you would not mistake it for +Northumberland. We wondered if this was the accent Scott spoke with; but +to him must have belonged all the dialect-voices. + +It was at Roxburgh Castle that King David lived when he determined to +build these abbeys of the Middle Marches, of which the chief four are +Melrose, Dryburgh, Jedburgh and Kelso, with Holyrood as their royal +keystone. + +Roxburgh was a stronghold of the Border, and therefore met the fate of +those strongholds, when one party was stronger than the other; usually +the destruction was by the English because they were farther away and +could hold the country only through making it desolate. + +Who would not desire loveliness and desire to fix it in stone, if he +lived in such a lovely spot as this where the Tweed and Teviot meet? +David had been in England. He was brother to the English queen Maude, +wife of Henry I, and had come in contact with the Norman culture. Or, as +William of Malmesbury put it, with that serene assurance of the +Englishman over the Scot, he "had been freed from the rust of Scottish +barbarity, and polished from a boy from his intercourse and familiarity +with us." Ah, welladay! if residence at the English court and Norman +culture resulted in these lovely abbeys, let us be lenient with William +of Malmesbury. Incidentally David added to the Scotland of that time +certain English counties, Northumberland and Cumberland and +Westmoreland--as well as English culture! + +David was son to Saxon Margaret, St. Margaret, and from her perhaps the +"sair sanct" inherited some of his gentleness. But also he had married +Matilda of Northumberland, wealthy and a widow, and he preferred to +remain on the highway to London rather than at Dunfermline. So he was +much at Roxburgh. + +But the castle did not remain in Scottish or English hands. It was while +curiously interested in a great Flemish gun that James II was killed by +the explosion--and the siege of Roxburgh went on more hotly, and the +castle was razed to its present low estate. + +To-day the silly sheep are cropping grass about the scant stones that +once sheltered kings and defied them; and ash trees are the sole +occupants of the once royal dwelling. To the American there is something +of passing interest in the present seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, Floors +castle across the Teviot. For the house, like many another Scottish +house, still carries direct descent. And an heiress from America, like +the heiress from Northumberland, unites her fortune with this modern +splendour--and admits Americans and others on Wednesdays! + +The town of Kelso is charming, like many Tweed towns. It lies among the +wooded hills; there is a greater note of luxury here. Scott called it +"the most beautiful if not the most romantic village in Scotland." Seen +from the bridge which arches the flood, that placid flood of Tweed, and +a five-arched bridge ambitiously and successfully like the Waterloo +bridge of London, one wonders if after all perhaps Wordsworth wrote his +Bridge sonnet here--"Earth hath not anything to show more fair." Surely +this bridge, these spires and the great tower of the Abbey, "wear the +beauty of the morning," the morning of the world. The hills, luxuriously +wooded, rise gently behind, the persistent Eildons hang over, green +meadows are about, the silver river runs--and the skies are Scottish +skies, whether blue or gray. + +The Abbey, of course, is the crown of the place, bolder in design and +standing more boldly in spite of the havoc wrought by men and time, and +Hertford and Henry VIII; calmer than Melrose, less ornamental, with its +north portal very exquisite in proportion. + +The Abbot of Kelso was in the palmy early days chief ecclesiastic of +Scotland, a spiritual lord, receiving his miter from the Pope, and +armoured with the right to excommunicate. + +There have been other kings here than David and the Abbot. The latter +days of the Stewarts are especially connected with Kelso, so near the +Border. Baby James was hurried hither and crowned in the cathedral as +the III after Roxburgh. Mary Queen lodged here for two nights before she +rode on to Berwick. Here in the ancient market-place, looking like the +square of a continental town, the Old Chevalier was proclaimed King +James VIII on an October Monday in 1715, and the day preceding the +English chaplain had preached to the troops from the text--"The right +of the first born is his." Quite differently minded from that Whig +minister farther north, who later prayed "as for this young man who has +come among us seeking an earthly crown, may it please Thee to bestow +upon him a heavenly one." + +When this Rising of the Forty Five came, and he who should have been +Charles III (according to those of us who are Scottish, and royalist, +and have been exiled because of our allegiance) attempted to secure the +throne for his father, he established his headquarters at Sunilaw just +outside Kelso; the house is in ruins, but a white rose that he planted +still bears flowers. To the citizens of Kelso who drank to him, the +Prince, keeping his head, and having something of his royal great +uncle's gift of direct speech, replied, "I believe you, gentlemen, I +believe you. I have drinking friends, but few fighting ones in Kelso." + +Scott knew Kelso from having lived here, from going to school here, and +it was in out of the Kelso library--where they will show you the very +copy--that he first read Percy's Reliques. + +"I remember well the spot ... it was beneath a huge platanus, in the +ruins of what had been intended for an old fashioned arbour in the +garden.... The summer day had sped onward so fast that notwithstanding +the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the dinner hour. The first time +I could scrape together a few shillings I bought unto myself a copy of +the beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so +frequently or with half the enthusiasm." + +Was it not a nearer contemporary to Percy, and a knight of romance, Sir +Philip Sidney, who said, "I never read the old song of Percie and +Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet"? + +For myself I have resolutely refused to identify the word, Platanus, +lest it should not be identical with the spot where I first read my +Percy. + +Scott also knew Kelso as the place of his first law practice, and of his +honeymoon. Here flowered into maturity that long lavish life, so +enriched and so enriching of the Border. + +Horatio Bonar was minister here for thirty years--I wondered if he wrote +here, "I was a wandering sheep." + +While James Thomson, who wrote "The Seasons," but also "Rule, +Britannia"--if he was a Scotsman; perhaps this was an Act of Union-- + + "Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; + Britons never will be slaves!" + +was born at a little village nearby, back in the low hills of Tweed, in +1700, seven years before the Union. + + +_Jedburgh_ + +From Kelso I took train to the Border town which even the Baedeker +admits has had "a stormy past," and where the past still lingers; nay, +not lingers, but is; there is no present in Jedburgh. It is but ten +miles to the Border; more I think that at any other point in all the +blue line of the Cheviot, is one conscious of the Border; consciousness +of antiquity and of geography hangs over Jedburgh. + +It lies, a hill town, on the banks of the Jed; "sylvan Jed" said +Thomson, "crystal Jed" said Burns; a smaller stream than the Tweed, more +tortuous, swifter, rushing through wilder scenery, tumultuous, vocative, +before Border times began--if ever there were such a time before--and +disputatious still to remind us that this is still a division in the +kingdom. + +One of the most charming walks in all Scotland--and I do not know of any +country where foot-traveler's interest is so continuous (I wrote this +before I had read the disastrous walking trip of the Pennell's)--is up +this valley of the Jed a half dozen miles, where remnants of old forest, +or its descendants, still stand, where the bracken is thick enough to +conceal an army crouching in ambush, where the hills move swiftly up +from the river, and break sharply into precipices, with crumbling peel +towers, watch towers, to guard the heights, and where outcropping red +scars against the hill mark sometimes the entrance to caves that must +have often been a refuge when Border warfare tramped down the valley. + +In Jedburgh we lodged not at the inn; although the name of Spread Eagle +much attracted us; but because every one who had come before us had +sought lodging, we, too, would "lodge," if it be but for a night. + +Mary Queen had stayed at an old house, still standing in Queenstreet, +Prince Charles at a house in Castlegate, Burns in the Canongate, the +Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, in Abbey Close, because there was no +room in the inn. I do not know if it were the Spread Eagle then, but the +assizes were being held, Jethart justice was being administered, or, +juster justice, since these were more parlous times, and parley went +before sentence. Scott as a sheriff and the other officials of the +country were filling the hostelry. But Sir Walter, then the Sheriff of +Selkirk, sheriff being a position of more "legality" than with us, and +no doubt remembering his first law case which he had pled at Jedburgh +years before, came over to Abbey Close after dinner, and according to +Dorothy Wordsworth "sate with us an hour or two, and repeated a part of +the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.'" + +Think of not knowing whether it was an hour or two hours, with Scott +repeating the "Lay," and in Jedburgh. + +We lodged in a little narrow lane, near the Queen in the Backgate, with +a small quaint garden plot behind; there would be pears in season, and +many of them, ripening against these stone walls. The pears of the +Border are famous. Our landlady was removed from Yetholm only a +generation. Yetholm is the gipsy capital of this countryside. And we +wondered whether Meg Faa, for so she ambitiously called herself, by the +royal name of Scottish Romany, was descended from Meg Merrilies. Mrs. +Faa had dark flashing eyes in a thin dark face, and they flashed like a +two-edged dagger. She was a small woman, scarce taller than a Jethart +ax as we had seen them in the museum at Kelso. I should never have dared +to ask her about anything, not even the time of day, and, in truth, like +many of the Scotch women, she had a gift of impressive silence. All the +night I had a self-conscious feeling that something was going to happen +in this town of Jed, and in the morning when I met Mrs. Faa again and +her eyes rather than her voice challenged me as to how I had slept, I +should not have dared admit that I slept with one eye open lest I become +one more of the permanent ghosts of Jed. + +[Illustration: JEDBURGH ABBEY.] + +The Abbey is, in its way, its individual way, most interesting of the +chief four of "St. David's piles." It is beautifully lodged, beside the +Jed, near the stream, and the stream more a part of its landscape; +smooth-shaven English lawns lie all about, a veritable ecclesiastical +close. It is simpler than Melrose, if the detail is not so marvelous, +and there is substantially more of it. The Norman tower stands square; +if witches still dance on it they choose their place for security. The +long walls of the nave suggest almost a restoration--almost. + +When the Abbey flourished, and when Alexander III was king, he was +wedded here (1285) to Joleta, daughter of the French Count de Dreux. +Always French and Scotch have felt a kinship, and often expressed it in +royal marriage. The gray abbey walls, then a century and a half old, +must have looked curiously down on this gay wedding throng which so +possessed the place, so dispossessed the monks, Austin friars come from +the abbey of St. Quentin at Beauvais. + +Suddenly, in the midst of the dance, the King reached out his hand to +the maiden queen--and Death, the specter, met him with skeleton fingers. +It may have been a pageant trick, it may have been a too thoughtful +monk; but the thirteenth century was rich with superstition. Six months +later Alexander fell from his horse on a stormy night on the Fife +coast--and the prophetic omen was remembered, or constructed. + +The Abbey was newly in ruin when Mary Queen rode down this way, only +twenty-one years after Hertford's hurtful raid. Court was to be held +here, the assizes of October, 1566, at this Border town. For the Border +had been over-lively and was disputing the authority of the Scottish +queen as though it had no loyalty. Bothwell had been sent down as Warden +of the Marches to quell the marauding free-booters. He had met with +Little Jock Elliott, a Jethart callant, a Border bandit, to whom we can +forgive much, because of the old ballad. + + "My castle is aye my ain, + An' herried it never shall be; + For I maun fa' ere it's taen, + An' wha daur meddle wi' me? + Wi' my kuit in the rib o' my naig, + My sword hangin' doun by my knee, + For man I am never afraid, + An' wha daur meddle wi' me? + Wha daur meddle wi' me, + Wha daur meddle wi' me? + Oh, my name is little Jock Elliott, + An' wha daur meddle wi' me? + + "I munt my gude naig wi' a will + When the fray's in the wind, an' he + Cocks his lugs as he tugs for the hill + That enters the south countrie, + Where pricking and spurring are rife, + And the bluid boils up like the sea, + But the Southrons gang doon i' the strife, + An' wha daur meddle wi' me?" + +And perhaps we can forgive the reiver, since he dealt a blow to Bothwell +that those of us who love Mary have longed to strike through the long +centuries. Bothwell took Elliott in custody, Elliott not suspecting that +a Scot could prove treacherous like a Southron, and was carrying him to +the Hermitage. Jock asked pleasantly what would be his fate at the +assize. + +"Gif ane assyises wald mak him clene, he was hertlie contentit, but he +behuvit to pas to the Quenis grace." + +This was little promise to little Jock Elliott. He fled. Bothwell +chased. Bothwell fired, wounded Jock, overtook him, and Jock managed to +give Bothwell three vicious thrusts of his skene dhu--"Wha daur meddle +wi' me!"--before Bothwell's whinger drove death into little Jock +Elliott. + +Bothwell, wounded, perhaps to death, so word went up to Edinburgh, was +carried to the Hermitage. + +Buchanan, the scandalous chronicler of the time--there were such in +Scotland, then, and always for Mary--set down that "when news thereof +was brought to Borthwick to the Queen, she flingeth away in haste like a +madwoman by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter, first +to Melrose, and then to Jedworth." + +It happened to be the crisp, lovely, truly Scottish time, October, and +Mary opened court at Jedburgh October 9, presiding at the meetings of +the Privy Council, and then rode to the Hermitage October 16. She rode +with an escort which included the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Huntley, +Mr. Secretary Lethington, and more men of less note. For six days the +girl queen (Mary was only twenty-four in this year of the birth of +James, year before the death of Darnley, the marriage with Bothwell, the +imprisonment at Loch Leven) had been mewed to state affairs, and a ride +through the brown October woods, thirty miles there and thirty miles +back again, must have lured the queen who was always keen for adventure, +whether Bothwell was the goal, or just adventure. + +[Illustration: HERMITAGE CASTLE.] + +The mist of the morning turned to thick rain by night, and the return +ride was made in increasing wet and darkness. Once, riding ahead and +alone and rapidly, the Queen strayed from the trail, was bogged in a +mire, known to-day as the Queen's Mire, and rescued with difficulty. + +Next day Mary lay sick at Jedburgh, a sickness of thirty days, nigh unto +death. News was sent to Edinburgh, and bells were rung, and prayers +offered in St. Giles. On the ninth day she lay unconscious, in this +little town of Jedburgh, apparently dead, twenty years before +Fotheringay. "Would God I had died at Jedburgh." + +She did not die. Darnley visited her one day, coming from Glasgow. +Bothwell came as soon as he could be moved, and the two made +convalescence together in this old house of Jedburgh, perhaps the +happiest house of all those where the legend of Mary persists. Even +to-day it has its charm. The windowed turret looks out on the large +fruit garden that stretches down to the Jed, very like that very little +turret of "Queen Mary's Lookout" at Roscoff where the child queen had +landed in France less than twenty years before. + +Five years later, when Mary was in an English prison, a proclamation was +read in her name at the town cross of Jedburgh, the herald was roughly +handled by the Provost who received his orders from England, and +Buccleuch and Ker of Fernihurst revenged themselves by hanging ten loyal +(?) citizens who stood with the Provost. + +Later, a century later, when at the town cross the magistrates were +drinking a health to the new sovereign, a well-known Jacobite came by. +They insisted on his joining in the toast. And he pledged--"confusion to +King William, and the restitution of our sovereign and the heir!" Bravo, +the Borderers! + + +_Selkirk_ + +The sentimental journeymen--with whom I count myself openly--may +hesitate to visit Yarrow. It lies so near the Melrose country, and is so +much a part of that, in song and story, that it would seem like leaving +out the fragrance of the region to omit Yarrow. And yet--. One has read +"Yarrow Unvisited," one of the loveliest of Wordsworth's poems. And one +has read "Yarrow Visited." And the conclusion is too easy that if the +unvisitings and visitings differ as much as the poems it surely were +better not to "turn aside to Yarrow," to accept it as + + "Enough if in our hearts we know + There's such a place as Yarrow.... + For when we're there although 'tis fair, + 'Twill be another Yarrow." + +There is peril at times in making a dream come true, in translating the +dream into reality, in lifting the mists from the horizon of +imagination. Should one hear an English skylark, an Italian nightingale? +should one see Carcassonne, should one visit Yarrow? + +Ah, welladay. I have heard, I have seen. Just at first, because no +dream can ever quite come true, not the dream of man in stone, or of +song in bird-throat, or even of nature in trees and sky and hills, there +is a disappointment. But after the reality these all slip away into the +misty half-remembered things, even Carcassonne, even Yarrow; the dream +enriched by the vision, the vision softened again into dream. + +And so, I will down into Yarrow. + +Coaches run, or did before the war, and will after the war, through the +pleasant dales of Yarrow and Moffat, dales which knew battles long ago +and old unhappy far off things, but very silent now, too silent; almost +one longs for a burst of Border warfare that the quiet may be filled +with fitting clamour. The coaches meet at Tibbie Shiel's on St. Mary's +and it is to Tibbie's that you are bound, as were so many gallant +gentlemen, especially literary gentlemen, before you. + +Selkirk is the starting point. And Selkirk is a very seemly, very +prosperous town, looking not at all like an ecclesiastic city, as it +started to be in the dear dead days of David the saint, looking very +much as a hill city in Italy will look some day when Italy becomes +entirely "redeemed" and modern, and exists for itself instead of for +the tourist. Selkirk is indifferent to tourists, as indeed is every +Scottish town; Scotland and Scotsmen are capable of existing for +themselves. Selkirk hangs against the hillside above the Ettrick, and +its show places are few; the spot where Montrose lodged the night before +the defeat at Philipshaugh, the statue of Scott when he was sheriff, +"shirra," the statue of Mungo Park near where he was given his medical +training, and the home of Andrew Lang. + +There is no trace of the "kirk o' the shielings," founded by the +religious from Iona, from which by way of Scheleschyrche came Selkirk. +Nor is there trace of Davis's pile, ruined or unruined, in this near, +modern, whirring city. It is the sound of the looms one remembers in +Selkirk, making that infinity of yards of Scotch tweed to clothe the +world. Selkirk and Galashiels and Hawick form the Glasgow of the Border. + +Always industrious, in the time of Flodden it was the "souters of +Selkirk" who marched away to the Killing-- + + "Up wi' the Souters of Selkirk + And down wi' the Earl o' Home." + +These same souters--shoemakers--were busy in the time of Prince Charles +Edward and contracted to furnish two thousand pair of shoes to his +army; but one does not inquire too closely into whether they furnished +any quota of the four thousand feet to go therein. + +It was a warm sunny day when I made my pilgrimage up the Yarrow to St. +Mary's. Although Yarrow has always sung in my ears, I think it was +rather to see one sight that I came for the first time to Scotland, to +see + + "The swan on still St. Mary's Lake + Float double, swan and shadow." + +I rather think it was for this I had journeyed across the Atlantic and +up the East coast route. Such a sentimental lure would I follow. But +then, if that seems wasteful and ridiculous excess of sentiment, let us +be canny enough, Scotch enough, to admit that one sees so many other +things, incidentally. + +The "wan waters" of the Yarrow were shimmering, glimmering, in the +morning light as I coached out of Selkirk, and by Carterhaugh. + + "I forbid ye, maidens a', + That wear gowd in your hair, + To come or gae by Carterhaugh; + For young Tamlane is there." + +These round-shouldered hills, once covered with the Wood of Caledon, and +the Forest of Ettrick, and the Forest of Yarrow, are very clear and +clean in their green lawns to-day, scarce an ancient tree or a late +descendant standing; here and there only gnarled and deformed, out of +the centuries, out of perhaps that "derke forest" of James IV. His son, +the Fifth James, thought to subdue the Border and increase his revenue +by placing thousands of sheep in this forest; and these ruining the +trees have decreased the tourists' rightful revenue. It is because of +this absence of trees that one is perhaps more conscious of the shining +ribbon of river; longer, clearer stretches may be seen in the green +plain: + + "And is this--Yarrow? This the stream + Of which my fancy cherished + So faithfully a waking dream? + An image that has perished! + O that some minstrel's harp were near + To utter notes of gladness, + And chase this silence from the air + That fills my heart with sadness!" + +About Philipshaugh, two miles from Selkirk, the trees are in something +of large estate, with oak and birch and fir and rowan, making dark +shadows in the fair morning, as the historically minded traveler would +fain have it. For it was there that Montrose met defeat, his small band +against Leslie's many men. All about there lie legends of his fight and +his flight across the Minchmoor and on to the North. + +And through here Scott loved to wander. Here he let the Minstrel begin +his Last Lay-- + + "He paused where Newark's stately Tower + Looks down from Yarrow's birchen bower." + +And it was hither the Scotch poet came with Wordsworth, as the English +poet describes it-- + + "Once more by Newark's Castle gate + Long left without a warder, + I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee + Great Minstrel of the Border." + +Nearby, and near the highways, is the deserted farm cottage, the +birthplace of Mungo Park, who traveled about the world even as you and +I, and I fancy his thought must often have returned to the Yarrow. + +The driver will point out the Trench of Wallace, a redout a thousand +feet long, on the height to the North; and here will come into the +Border memories of another defender of Scotland who seems rather to +belong to the North and West. + +Soon we reach the Kirk of Yarrow, a very austere "reformed" looking +basilica, dating back to 1640, which was a reformed date, set among +pleasant gardens and thick verdure. Scott and Wordsworth and Hogg +have worshiped here, and from its ceiling the heraldic devices of many +Borderers speak a varied history. + +[Illustration: NEWARK CASTLE.] + +Crossing the bridge we are swiftly, unbelievingly, on the Dowie Dens of +Yarrow. + + "Yestreen I dream'd a dolefu' dream; + I fear there will be sorrow! + I dream'd I pu'd the heather green, + Wi' my true love on Yarrow. + + "But in the glen strive armed men; + They've wrought me dole and sorrow; + They've slain--the comeliest knight they've slain-- + He bleeding lies on Yarrow. + + "She kiss'd his cheek, she kaim'd his hair, + She search'd his wounds all thorough; + She kiss'd them till her lips grew red, + On the dowie houms of Yarrow." + +Then we come into the country of Joseph Hogg. The farm where he was +tenant and failed, for Hogg was a shepherd and a poet, which means a +wanderer and a dreamer. And soon to the Gordon Arms, a plain rambling +cement structure, where Hogg and Scott met by appointment and took their +last walk together. + +Hogg is the spirit of all the Ettrick place. Can you not hear his +skylark--"Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless"--in that +far blue sky above Altrive, where he died--"Oh, to abide in the desert +with thee!" + +And now the driver tells us we are at the Douglass Glen, up there to the +right lies the shattered keep of the good Lord James Douglass, the +friend of Bruce. Here fell the "Douglass Tragedy," and the bridle path +from Yarrow to Tweed is still to be traced. + + "O they rade on and on they rade, + And a' by the light of the moon, + Until they came to yon wan water, + And there they lighted down." + + +_St. Mary's_ + +And soon we are at St. Mary's Loch--which we have come to see. To one +who comes from a land of lakes, from the Land of the Sky Blue Water, +there must be at first a sudden rush of disappointment. This is merely a +lake, merely a stretch of water. The hills about are all barren, rising +clear and round against the sky. They fold and infold as though they +would shield the lake bereft of trees, as though they would shut out the +world. Here and there, but very infrequent, is a cluster of trees; for +the most part it is water and sky and green heathery hills. The water +is long and narrow, a small lake as our American lakes go, three miles +by one mile; but large as it looms in romance, rich as it bulks in +poetry. + +[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW, TIBBIE SHIEL'S INN.] + +Tibbie Shiel's is, of course, our goal. One says Tibbie Shiel's, as one +says Ritz-Carlton, or the William the Conqueror at Dives. For this is +the most celebrated inn in all Scotland, and it must be placed with the +celebrated inns of the world. There is no countryside better sung than +this which lies about St. Mary's, and no inn, certainly not anywhere a +country inn, where more famous men have foregathered to be themselves. +Perhaps the place has changed since the most famous, the little famed +days, when Scott stopped here after a day's hunting, deer or Border song +and story, up Meggatdale; and those famous nights of Christopher North +and the Ettrick shepherd, nights deserving to be as famous as the +Arabian or Parisian or London. The world has found it out, and times +have changed, as a local poet complains-- + + "Sin a' the world maun gang + And picnic at St. Mary's." + +The inn, a rambling white house, stands on a strip between two waters, +added to no doubt since Tibbie first opened its doors, but the closed +beds are still there--it was curious enough to see them the very summer +that the Graham Moffatts played "Bunty" and "The Closed Bed"--and the +brasses which Tibbie polished with such housewifely care. + +For Tibbie was a maid in the household of the Ettrick shepherd's mother. +She married, she had children, she came here to live. Then her husband +died, and quite accidentally Tibbie became hostess to travelers, nearly +a hundred years ago. For fifty-four years Tibbie herself ran this inn; +she died in what is so short a time gone, as Scottish history goes, in +1878. + +During that time hosts of travelers, particularly, wandered through the +Border, came to this "wren's nest" as North called it. Hogg, of course, +was most familiar, and here he wished to have a "bit monument to his +memory in some quiet spot forninst Tibbie's dwelling." He sits there, in +free stone, somewhat heavily, a shepherd's staff in his right hand, and +in his left a scroll carrying the last line from the "Queen's +Wake"--"Hath tayen the wandering winds to sing." + +Edward Irving, walking from Kirkcaldy to Annan, was here the first year +after Tibbie opened her doors so shyly. Carlyle, walking from +Ecclefechan to Edinburgh, in his student days, caught his first glimpse +of Yarrow from here--and slept, may it be, in one of these closed beds? +Gladstone was here in the early '40's during a Midlothian campaign. Dr. +John Brown--"Rab"--came later, and even R. L. S. knew the hospitality of +Tibbie Shiel's when Tibbie was still hostess. + +It is a long list and a brave one. In this very dining-room they ate +simply and abundantly, after the day's work; in this "parlour" they +continued their talk. And surely St. Mary's Lake was the same. + +Down on the shore there stands a group of trees, not fir trees, though +these are most native here. And here we loafed the afternoon away--for +fortunately we were the only ones who "picnic at St. Mary's." There were +the gentleman and his wife whom we took for journalistic folk, they were +so worldly and so intelligent and discussed the world and the +possibilities of world-war--that was several years ago--until at the +Kirk of Yarrow the local minister, Dr. Borlund, uncovered this minister, +James Thomson, from Paisley. If all the clergy of Scotland should become +as these, austerity of reform would go and the glow of culture would +come. + +We all knew our history and our poetry of this region, but none so well +as the minister. It was he who recited from Marmion that description +which is still so accurate-- + + "By lone St. Mary's silent Lake; + Thou know'st it well--nor fen nor sedge + Pollute the clear lake's crystal edge; + Abrupt and sheer the mountains sink + At once upon the level brink; + And just a trace of silver strand + Marks where the water meets the land. + Far in the mirror, bright and blue, + Each hill's huge outline you may view; + Shaggy with heath, but lonely, bare, + Nor tree nor bush nor brake is there, + Save where of land, yon silver line + Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine. + Yet even this nakedness has power, + And aids the feelings of the hour; + Nor thicket, dell nor copse you spy, + Where living thing conceal'd might lie; + Not point, retiring, hides a dell + Where swain, or woodman lone might dwell; + There's nothing left to fancy's guess, + You see that all is loneliness; + And silence aids--though the steep hills + Send to the lake a thousand rills; + In summer time, so soft they weep. + The sound but lulls the ear asleep; + Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, + So stilly is the solitude." + +[Illustration: ST. MARY'S LAKE.] + +Across the water is the old graveyard of vanished St. Mary's kirk. And +it was the low-voiced minister's wife--a Babbie a little removed--who +knew + + "What boon to lie, as now I lie, + And see in silver at my feet + St. Mary's Lake, as if the sky + Had fallen 'tween those hills so sweet, + And this old churchyard on the hill, + That keeps the green graves of the dead, + So calm and sweet, so lone and wild still, + And but the blue sky overhead." + +We sat in the silences, the still silent afternoon, conscious of the +folk verse that goes-- + + "St. Mary's Loch lies shimmering still, + But St. Mary's kirkbell's lang dune ringing." + +Suddenly, over the far rim of the water, my eye caught something white, +and then another, and another. And I knew well that were I but nearer, +as imagination knew was unnecessary, I might see the swan on still St. +Mary's Lake, and their shadow breaking in the water. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE EMPRESS OF THE NORTH + + +I suppose the Scotsman who has been born in Edinburgh may have a +pardonable reluctance in praising the town, may hesitate in appraising +it; Stevenson did; Scott did not. And I suppose if one cannot trace his +ancestry back to Edinburgh, or nearly there, but must choose some of the +other capitals of the world as his ancestral city, one might begrudge +estate to Edinburgh. + +I have none of these hesitations, am hampered by none of these half and +half ways. Being an American, with half a dozen European capitals to +choose from if I must, and having been born in an American capital which +is among the loveliest--I think the loveliest--I dare choose Edinburgh +as my dream city. I dare fling away my other capital claims, and all +modification, ever Scotch moderation, to declare without an "I think" or +"they say," Edinburgh is the most beautiful, the most romantic, the +singular city of the world. + +Those who come out of many generations of migration grow accustomed to +choosing their quarter of the world; they have come from many countries +and through nomadic ancestors for a century, or two, or three. And +perhaps they, themselves, have migrated from one state to another, one +city to another. Every American has had these phases, has suffered the +sea change and the land. Surely then he may adopt his ancestral capital, +as correctly as he adopts his present political capital. + +It shall be Edinburgh. And while Constantinople and Rio and Yokohama may +be splendid for situation, they have always something of foreign about +them, they can never seem to touch our own proper romance, to have been +the setting for our play. Edinburgh is as lovely, and then, the chalice +of romance has been lifted for centuries on the high altar of her +situation. + +Edinburgh is a small city, as modern cities go; but I presume it has +many thousands of population, hundreds of thousands. If it were Glasgow +numbers would be important, fixative. But Edinburgh has had such a +population through the centuries that to cast its total with only that +of the souls now living within her precincts were to leave out of the +picture those shadowy and yet brilliant, ever present generations, who +seem all to jostle each other on her High street, without respect to +generations, if there is very decided respect of simple toward gentle. + +Edinburgh is, curiously, significantly, divided and scarce united, into +Old Town and New Town. And yet, the Old Town with its ancient _lands_ so +marvelously like modern tenements, and its poverty which is of no date +and therefore no responsibility of ours, is neither dead nor deserted, +and is still fully one-half the town. While New Town, looking ever up to +the old, looking across the stretch to Leith, and to the sea whence came +so much threatening in the old days, and with its memories of Hume and +Scott who are ancient, and of Stevenson, who, in spite of his immortal +youth, does begin to belong to another generation than ours--New Town +also, to a new American, is something old. It has all become Edinburgh, +two perfect halves of a whole which is not less perfect for the +imperfect uniting. + +There is no city which can be so "observed." I venture that when you +have stood on Castle Hill--on the High Street with its narrow opening +between the _lands_ framing near and far pictures--on Calton Hill--when +you have been able to "rest and be thankful" at Corstorphine Hill--when +you have climbed the Salisbury crags--when you have mounted to Arthur's +Seat and looked down as did King Arthur before there was an +Edinburgh--you will believe that not any slightest corner but fills the +eye and soul. + +There is, of course, no single object in Edinburgh to compare with +objects of traveler's interest farther south. The castle is not the +Tower, Holyrood is a memory beside Windsor, St. Giles is no Canterbury, +St. Mary's is not St. Paul's, the Royal Scottish art gallery is meager +indeed, notwithstanding certain rare riches in comparison with the +National. But still one may believe of any of these superior objects, as +T. Sandys retorted to Shovel when they had played the game of matching +the splendours of Thrums with those of London and Shovel had named Saint +Paul's, and Tommy's list of native wonders was exhausted, but never +Tommy--"it would like to be in Thrums!" All these lesser glories go to +make up the singular glory which is Edinburgh. + + +_The Castle_ + +And there is the castle. Nowhere in all the world is castle more +strategically set to guard the city and to guard the memories of the +city and the beauty. + +For the castle is Edinburgh. It stood there, stalwart in the plain, +thousands and thousands of years ago, this castle hill which invited a +castle as soon as man began to fortify himself. It has stood here a +thousand years as the bulwark of man against man. Certain it will stand +there a thousand years to come. And after--after man has destroyed and +been destroyed, or when he determines that like night and the sea there +shall be no more destruction. Castle Hill is immortal. + +[Illustration: _Edinburgh Castle_] + +Always it has been the resort of kings and princes. First it was the +keep of princesses, far back in Pictish days before Christian time, this +"Castell of the Maydens." From 987 B. C. down to 1566, when Mary was +lodged here for safe keeping in order that James might be born safe and +royal, the castle has had royalties in its keeping. It has kept them +rather badly in truth. While many kings have been born here, few +kings have died in its security; almost all Scottish kings have died +tragically, almost all Scottish kings have died young, and left their +kingdom to some small prince whose regents held him in this castle for +personal security, while they governed the realm, always to its +disaster. + +There is not one of the Stewart kings, one of the Jameses, from First to +Sixth, who did not come into the heritage of the kingdom as a baby, a +youth; even the Fourth, who rebelled against his father and won the +kingdom--and wore a chain around his body secretly for penance. And +these baby kings and stripling princes have been lodged in the castle +for safe keeping, prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme. + +History which attempts to be exact begins the castle in the seventh +century, when Edwin of Deira fortified the place and called it Edwin's +burgh. It was held by Malcolm Canmore, of whom and of his Saxon queen +Margaret, Dunfermline tells a fuller story; held against rebels and +against English, until Malcolm fell at Alnwick, and Margaret, dead at +hearing the news, was carried secretly out of the castle by her devoted +and kingly sons. + +After Edward I took the castle, for half a century it was variously +held by the English as a Border fortress. Once Bruce retook it, a +stealthy night assault, up the cliffs of the west, and The Bruce razed +it. Rebuilt by the Third Edward, it was taken from this king by a clever +ruse planned by the Douglass, Black Knight of Liddesdale. A shipload of +wine and biscuits came into harbour, and the unsuspecting castellan, +glad to get such precious food in the far north, purchased it all and +granted delivery at dawn next morning. The first cart load upset under +the portcullis, the gate could not be closed, the cry "A Douglass," was +raised, and the castle entered into Scottish keeping, never to be +"English" again until the Act of Union. + +Henry IV and Richard II attempted it, but failed. Richard III entered it +as friend. For three years it was held for Mary by Kirkcaldy, while the +city was disloyal. Charles I held it longer than he held England, and +Cromwell claimed it in person as part of the Protectorate. Prince +Charles, the Third, could not take it, contented himself with the less +castellated, more palatial joys, of Holyrood; a preference he shared +with his greatest grandmother. + +To-day perhaps its defense might be battered down, as some one has +suggested, "from the Firth by a Japanese cruiser." But it looks like a +Gibraltar, and it keeps impregnably the treasures of the past; as +necessary a defense, I take it, as of any material treasure of the +present. + +If you are a king you must wait to enter; summons must be made to the +Warder, and it must be certain you are the king; even Edward VII, most +Stewart of recent kings had to prove himself not Edward I, not English, +but "Union." If you are a commoner you know no such difficulties. + +First you linger on the broad Esplanade where a regiment in kilts is +drilling, perhaps the Black Watch, the Scots Greys. No doubt of late it +has been tramped by regiments of the "First Hundred Thousand" and later, +in training for the wars. + +As an American you linger here in longer memory. For when Charles was +king--the phrase sounds recent to one who is eternally Jacobite--this +level space was a part of Nova Scotia, and the Scotsmen who were made +nobles with estates in New Scotland were enfeoffed on this very ground. +So close were the relations between old and new, so indifferent were the +men of adventuring times toward space. + +Or, you linger here to recall when Cromwell was burned in effigy, along +with "his friend the Devil." + +You pass through the gate, where no wine casks block the descent of the +portcullis, and the castle is entered. There are three or four points of +particular interest. + +Queen Margaret's chapel, the oldest and smallest religious house in +Scotland, a tiny place indeed, where Margaret was praying when word was +brought of the death of Malcolm in battle, and she, loyal and royal +soul, died the very night while the enemies from the Highlands, like an +army of Macbeth's, surrounded the castle. The place is quite authentic, +Saxon in character with Norman touches. I know no place where a thousand +years can be so swept away, and Saxon Margaret herself seems to kneel in +the perpetual dim twilight before the chancel. + +There is Mons Meg, a monstrous gun indeed, pointing its mouth toward the +Forth, as though it were the guardian of Scotland. A very pretentious +gun, which was forged for James II, traveled to the sieges of Dumbarton +and of Norham, lifted voice in salute to Mary in France on her marriage +to the Dauphin, was captured by Cromwell and listed as "the great iron +murderer, Muckle Meg," and "split its throat" in saluting the Duke of +York in 1682, a most Jacobite act of loyalty. After the Rising of the +Forty Five this gun was taken to London, as though to take it from +Scotland were to take the defense from Jacobitism. But Sir Walter Scott, +restoring Scotland, and being in much favour with George IV, secured the +return of Mons Meg. It was as though a prince of the realm has returned. +Now, the great gun, large enough to shoot men for ammunition, looks, +silently but sinisterly, out over the North Sea. + +[Illustration: MONS MEG.] + +History comes crowding its events in memory when one enters Old +Parliament Hall. It is fitly ancestral, a noble hall with an open +timbered roof of great dignity, with a collection of armour and +equipment that particularly re-equips the past. And in this hall, under +this roof, what splendour, what crime! Most criminal, the "black dinner" +given to the Black Douglasses to their death. Unless one should resent +the dinner given by Leslie to Cromwell, when there was no black bull's +head served. + +By a secret stair, which commoners and Jacobites may use to-day, +communication was had with the Royal Lodgings, and often must Queen Mary +have gone up and down those stairs, carrying the tumult of her heart, +the perplexity of her kingdom; for Mary was both woman and sovereign. + +The Royal Lodgings contain Queen Mary's Rooms, chiefly; the other rooms +are negligible. It is a tiny bedchamber, too small to house the eager +soul of Mary, but very well spaced for the niggard soul of James. One +merely accepts historically the presence of Mary here; there is too much +intertwining of "H" and "M." No Jacobite but divorces Darnley from Mary, +even though he would not effect divorce with gunpowder. King James I, +when he returned fourteen years after to the place where he was VI, made +a pilgrimage to his own birth-room on June 19, 1617. I suppose he found +the narrow space like unto the Majesty that doth hedge a king. + +Mary must have beat her heart against these walls as an eagle beats +wings against his cage. She never loved the place. Who could love it who +must live in it? It was royally hung; she made it fit for living, with +carpets from Turkey, chairs and tables from France, gold hangings that +were truly gold for the bed, and many tapestries with which to shut out +the cold--eight pictures of the Judgment of Paris; four pictures of the +Triumph of Virtue! + +Here she kept her library, one hundred and fifty-three precious +volumes--where are they now? "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner," +wrote Randolph, English envoy, to his queen, "instructed by a learned +man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." + +And I wondered if here she wrote that Prayer which but the other day I +came upon in the bookshop of James Thin, copied into a book of a hundred +years back, in a handwriting that has something of Queen Mary's quality +in it-- + + "O Domine Deus! + Speravi in te; + O care mi Iesu! + Nunc libera me: + In dura catena, + In misera poena + Desidero te; + Languendo, gemendo, + Et genuflectendo + Adoro, imploro, + Ut liberes me!" + +Her windows looked down across the city toward Holyrood. Almost she must +have heard John Knox thunder in the pulpit of St. Giles, and thunder +against her. And, directly beneath far down she saw the Grassmarket. +Sometimes it flashed with gay tournament folk; for before and during +Mary's time all the world came to measure lances in Edinburgh. +Sometimes it swarmed with folk come to watch an execution; in the next +century it was filled in the "Killing Time," with Covenanter mob +applauding the execution of Royalists, with Royalist mob applauding the +execution of Covenanters; Mary's time was not the one "to glorify God in +the Grassmarket." + +At the top of the market, near where the West Bow leads up to the +castle, was the house of Claverhouse, who watched the killings. At the +bottom of the market was the West Port through which Bonnie Dundee rode +away. + + "To the Lords of Convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke, + Ere the king's crown go down there are crowns to be broke, + So each cavalier who loves honour and me, + Let him follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. + Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, + Come saddle my horses and call up my men, + Fling all your gates open, and let me gae free, + For 'tis up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee." + +And to-day, but especially on Saturday nights, if you care to take your +life, or your peace in hand, you can join a strange and rather awful +multitude as it swarms through the Grassmarket, more and more drunken as +midnight comes on, and not less or more drunken than the mob which +hanged Captain Porteous. + +It is a decided relief to look down and find the White Hart Inn, still +an inn, where Dorothy and William Wordsworth lodged, on Thursday night, +September 15, 1803--"It was not noisy, and tolerably cheap. Drank tea, +and walked up to the Castle." + +The Cowgate was a fashionable suburb in Mary's time. A canon of St. +Andrews wrote in 1530, "nothing is humble or lowly, everything +magnificent." On a certain golden gray afternoon I had climbed to +Arthur's Seat to see the city through the veil of mist-- + + "I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn + On Lammermuir. Harkening I heard again + In my precipitous city beaten bells + Winnow the keen sea wind." + +It was late, gathering dusk and rain, when I reached the level and +thinking to make a short cut--this was once the short cut to St. +Cuthbert's from Holyrood--I ventured into the Cowgate, and wondered at +my own temerity. Stevenson reports, "One night I went along the Cowgate +after every one was a-bed but the policeman." Well, if Scott liked to +"put a cocked hat on a story," Stevenson liked to put it on his own +adventures. The Cowgate, in dusk rain, is adventure enough. + +Across the height lies Greyfriar's. The church is negligible, the view +from there superb, the place historic. One year after Jenny Geddes +threw her stool in St. Giles and started the Reformation--doesn't it +sound like Mrs. O'Leary's cow?--the Covenant was signed (Feb. 28, 1638) +on top of a tomb still shown, hundreds pressing to the signing, some +signing with their blood. The Reformation was on, not to be stopped +until all Scotland was harried and remade. + +I like best to think that in this churchyard, on a rainy Sunday, Scott +met a charming girl, fell in love with her, took her home under his +umbrella, and, did not marry her--his own romance! + +Because no king shall ever wear the crown again, nor wave the scepter, +nor wield the sword of state, the Regalia, housed in the Crown Room, and +guarded from commoner and king by massive iron grating, is more +interesting than any other appanage of royalty in the world. The crown +which was worn by Bruce, and which sat rather uneasily on the very +unsteady head of Charles II at what time he was crowned at Scone and was +scolded, is of pure gold and much bejeweled. The scepter, made in Paris +for James V, carries a beryl, come from Egypt three thousand years ago, +or, from a Druid priest in the mist of time. The sword was a gift +from Pope Julius to James IV; in those days the Scottish sovereign was +surely the "Most Catholic Majesty." + +[Illustration: GREYFRIARS' CHURCHYARD.] + +England has no ancient regalia; hers were thrown into the melting pot by +Cromwell. The Protector--and Destructor--would fain have grasped these +"Honours," but they were spirited away, and later concealed in the +castle. Here they remained a hundred and ten years, sealed in a great +oak chest. The rumour increased that they had gone to England. And +finally Sir Walter Scott secured an order from George IV to open the +chest (Feb. 4, 1818). + +It was a tremendous moment to Scott. Could he restore the Honours as +well as the country? There they lay, crown of The Bruce, scepter of +James V, sword of Pope and King. The castle guns thundered--how Mons Meg +must have regretted her lost voice! + +And still we can hear the voice of Scott, when a commissioner playfully +lifted the crown as if to place it on the head of a young lady +near--"No, by God, no!" Never again shall this crown rest on any head. +That is assured in a codicil to the Act of Union. And--it may be that +other crowns shall in like manner gain a significance when they no +longer rest on uneasy heads. + +The view from the King's bastion is royal. Where is there its superior? +And only its rival from Calton Hill, from Arthur's Seat. The Gardens lie +below, the New Town spreads out, the city runs down to Leith, the Firth +shines and carries on its bosom the Inchkeith and the May; the hills of +Fife rampart the North; the Highlands with Ben Lomond for sentinel form +the purple West; and south are the Braid hills and the heathery +Pentlands--the guide has pointed through a gap in the castle wall to the +hills and to the cottage at Swanston. + + "City of mists and rain and blown gray spaces, + Dashed with the wild wet colour and gleam of tears, + Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the passionate faces + Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years. + Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places? + Cometh there not as a moon (where blood-rust sears + Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces) + Gilding a ghostly Queen thro' the mist of tears? + + "Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendour + Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain + Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render + Silent the gazer on glory without a stain! + Here and here, do we whisper with hearts more tender, + Tusitala wandered thro' mist and rain; + Rainbow-eyes and frail and gallant and slender, + Dreaming of pirate isles in a jeweled main. + + "Up the Canongate climbeth, cleft a-sunder + Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea, + Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder, + Nay, for the City is throned in Eternity! + Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder + Closeth an hour for the world and an æon for me, + Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder + Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea." + + +_High Street_ + +If the Baedeker with a cautious reservation, declares Princes Street +"Perhaps" the handsomest in Europe, there is no reservation in the +guide-book report of Taylor, the "Water Poet," who wrote of the High +Street in the early Sixteen Hundreds, "the fairest and goodliest streete +that ever my eyes beheld." Surely it was then the most impressive street +in the world. Who can escape a sharp impression to-day? It was then the +most curious street in the world, and it has lost none of its power to +evoke wonder. + +A causeway between the castle and Holyrood, a steep ridge lying between +the Nor' Loch (where now are the Princes' Gardens) and the Sou' Loch +(where now are the Meadows, suburban dwelling) the old height offered +the first refuge to those who would fain live under the shadow of the +castle. As the castle became more and more the center of the kingdom, +dwelling under its shadow became more and more important, if not secure. +The mightiest lords of the kingdom built themselves town houses along +the causeway. French influence was always strong, and particularly in +architecture. So these tall _lands_ rose on either side of the long +street, their high, many-storied fronts on the High Street, their many +more storied backs toward the Lochs. They were, in truth, part of the +defense of the town; from their tall stories the enemy, especially the +"auld enemy," could be espied almost as soon as from the castle. And the +closes, the wynds, those dark tortuous alleys which lead between, and +which to-day in their squalor are the most picturesque corners of all +Europe, were in themselves means of defense in the old days when cannon +were as often of leather as of iron, and guns were new and were little +more reaching than arrows, and bludgeons and skene dhus and fists were +the final effective weapon when assault was intended to the city. + +The ridge divides itself into the Lawnmarket, the High Street, and the +Canongate; St. Giles uniting the first two, and the Netherbow port, now +removed, dividing the last two. + +The Lawnmarket in the old days was near-royal, and within its houses +the great nobles lodged, and royalty was often a guest, or a secret +guest. The High Street was the business street, centering the life of +the city, its trade, its feuds--"a la maniére d'Edimborg" ran the +continental saying of fights--its religion, its executions, its burials. +The Canongate, outside the city proper and outside the Flodden wall and +within the precincts of Holyrood, therefore regarded as under the +protection of Holy Church, became the aristocratic quarters of the later +Stewarts, of the wealthy nobles of the later day. + +I suppose one may spend a lifetime in Edinburgh, with frequent days in +the Old Town, wandering the High Street, with the eye never wearying, +always discovering the new. And I suppose it would take a lifetime, born +in Old Town and of Old Town, to really know the quarter. I am not +certain I should care to spend a lifetime here; but I have never and +shall never spend sufficient of this life here. It is unsavoury of +course; it is slattern, it is squalid, danger lurks in the wynds and +drunkenness spreads itself in the closes. If the old warning cry of +"Gardey loo!" is no longer heard at ten o' the night, one still has need +of the answering "Haud yer hand!" or, your nose. Dr. Samuel Johnson, +walking this street on his first night in Edinburgh, arm in arm with +Boswell, declared, "I can smell you in the dark!" No sensitive visitor +will fail to echo him to-day. There are drains and sewers, there is +modern sanitation in old Edinburgh. But the habits of the centuries are +not easily overcome; and the Old Town still smells as though with all +the old aroma of the far years. Still, it is high, it is wind-swept--and +what of Venice, what of the Latin Quarter, what of Mile End, what of the +East Side? + +But there is still splendour and power, bequeathed as Taylor said, "from +antiquitie to posteritie," in spite of the decline and the decay. If the +palace of Mary of Lorraine on Castle Hill is fallen and the doorways are +in the Museum--Mary who was mother to Mary Queen, and contemporary +worthy to Catherine of Medici--there are still, at the end of the long +street, Moray House and Queensberry House. Moray is where Cromwell +lodged in 1648, and gave no hint of what was coming in 1649; if he had, +history might have been different; to-day Moray House is the United Free +Church Training college! Queensberry House is where lived those +Queensberry marquises of fighting and sporting renown, and where the +Marquis lived who forced through the Act of Union--"There ended an +old song"; and now it is the Refuge for the Destitute! + +[Illustration: MORAY HOUSE.] + +There is still beauty shining through the dust and the cobwebs; here a +doorway with bold insignia and exquisite carving, leading to--nowhere; +here a bit of painting, Norrie's perhaps, or a remnant of timbered +ceiling; and everywhere, now as then--more now than then, since sanitary +destruction has had its way here and there--glimpses of the city and the +moors and the mountains. + +It is invidious to compare, to choose from these closes. Each has its +history, its old habitations, its old associations, its particular +picturesqueness; Lady Stair's, Baxter's, Byer's, Old Stamp Office, White +Horse, and many more. + +Through this street what glory that was Scotland has not passed and what +degradation, what power has not been displayed and what abasement? To +see it now, filled with people and with marching troops in honour of the +visiting king, is to get back a little of ancient history, of greater +glory. It lends itself to such majesty, dull and deserted as it is for +the most part. + +When the King came to Edinburgh following on his coronation, making a +pilgrimage of his realm, he came to St. Giles, as has come every +sovereign of Scotland, from Malcolm who may have worshiped in the Culdee +church, to George in whose honour the chapel of the Thistle and the Rose +was unveiled. + + "For noo, unfaithfu' to the Lord + Auld Scotland joins the rebel horde; + Her human hymn-books on the board + She noo displays, + An' Embro Hie Kirk's been restored + In popish ways." + +On a Sunday morning I hurried to St. Giles to see the trooping of the +colours. (Later, listening to Dr. White, in a recently built reformed +church on Princes Street, I heard a sermon from the text, "You shall see +the king in all his beauty." But, no mention of King George! It was even +as it was in the old days.) + +In truth it was a brave sight to find the High Street thronged with +people, and the regiments marching down from St. Giles to Holyrood. The +king did not enter town till next day. (I saw, with some resentment, +over the door of a public house, the motto, "Will ye no come back +again?") But, somehow, so many kings gone on, the play was rather better +staged with the sovereign not there. I learned then how gorgeous the +old days must have been with their colour and glitter and flash. + +[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. GILES.] + +I suppose there was a tall _land_ where in my day stood and still stands +Hogg's hotel, just above the Tron Kirk; the _lands_ on the south side +the High burned a century ago. But, to the American gazing down on +ancient memories and present sovereignties, there was a wonderful +courtesy shown by the hotel. I had interrupted their quiet Sabbath; it +can still be quiet in Edinburgh notwithstanding that a tram car carried +me on my way hither. The dining-room of this hotel looked out on the +High, and it was breakfast time for these covenanting-looking guests +from the countryside. But I, an invader, was made welcome and given the +best seat on the balcony; a stranger and they took me in. Sometime I +shall take up residence in this Latin Quarter, and if not in Lady +Stair's Close, then in Hogg's hotel. The name sounds sweeter if you have +just come up from Ettrick. + +Nor did I miss the King. For + + "I saw pale kings, and princes too, + Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; + Who cry'd--'La Belle Dame sans merci + Hath thee in thrall!'" + +It was the Belle Dame, it was the Queen, I saw most often on the High +Street, riding to and fro from the time of the "haar" on her return +from France, till that last terrible night and the ride to Loch Leven. + +After that you may visit the John Knox house if you will, and read for +your edification its motto. "Lyfe God aboune al and yi nicht-bour as yi +Self," and buy a book or two in its book shop. I took particular +pleasure in buying a girlish picture of Mary Queen, and a book of the +poems of Robert Fergusson, neither of which would have pleasured John. + +After that you may look at the "I. K." in the pavement, and realize that +Dr. Johnson's wish for Knox has been fulfilled--"I hope in the highway." + +After that you may look on the heart stamped in the pavement near St. +Giles, where once stood the Heart of Midlothian, the Old Tolbooth. + +There is only one other memory of High Street and of Scotland that for +me equals that of Mary. It is Montrose. Up the Canongate comes the +rumbling of a tumbril, like the French Revolution. And out of the high +_lands_ there look the hundreds of Covenanting folk, triumphant for the +moment. And on the balcony of Moray House, within which the marriage of +Lady Mary Stewart to the Marquis of Lorne has just been celebrated, +there stands the wedding party, and among them the Earl of Argyle. Up +the street comes the cart. And within it clad like a bridegroom--"fyne +scarlet coat to his knee, trimmed with silver galoons, lined with +taffeta, roses in his shoon, and stockings of incarnet silk"--stands the +Marquis of Montrose, the loyalest Scotsman that ever lived. + +[Illustration: JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE.] + +After the field of Kylsyth, after the field of Philipshaugh, and the +flight to the North and the betrayal, he has been brought back to +Edinburgh, to a swift and covenanting sentence, and to death at the +Tron. + +His eyes meet proudly those of Argyle who has deserted his king and who +thinks to stand in with the Covenant and with the future. It is the eyes +of Argyle which drop. And Montrose goes on. + +His head is on the picket of the Netherbow Port. His four quarters are +sent to the four corners of the kingdom, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, +Inverness. + +But the end is not yet. The tables turn, as they turned so often in +those unstable times. It is Argyle who goes to the scaffold. Charles is +king, the Second Charles. There is an edict. The body of Montrose is dug +up out of the Boroughmoor. It is buried in Holyrood. The four quarters +are reassembled from Glasgow and Perth and Aberdeen and Inverness. A +procession fairly royal moves from Holyrood to St. Giles. At the +Netherbow it pauses. The head is taken down from the pike. The body of +Montrose is whole again. An honourable burial takes place in the +cathedral sanctuary. + +Even though when search was made at the restoring of the church and the +erection of the effigy the remains could not be found, there has been +that justification by procession and by faith, that justification of +loyalty that we remember when we remember Montrose-- + + "He either fears his fate too much, + Or his deserts are small, + That dares not put it to the touch, + To gain or lose it all." + + +_Holyrood_ + +Holyrood, ruined as it is, empty as it is, spurious as it is, still can +house the Stewarts. Nowhere else are they so completely and splendidly +Stewart. It is the royalest race which ever played at being sovereign; +in sharp contrast with the heavier, more successful Tudors; crafty +but less crafty than the Medici; amorous but more loyal than the +Bourbons. + +[Illustration: JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE.] + +Never did kings claim sovereignty through a more divine right--and only +one (whisper sometimes intimates that he was not Stewart, but +substitute; but he left a Stewart descent) failed to pay the penalty for +such assertion. It was the splendour which was Stewart while they lived, +the tragedy that was Stewart when they came to die, which makes them the +royal race. + +There were born in Holyrood not one of them, unless it be James V. But +almost all of them were married in Holyrood, held here their festive +days, and, not one of them died in Holyrood. It is their life, the vivid +intense flash of it, across those times that seem mysterious, even +legendary in remembered times north of the Border. Life was a holiday to +each of the Stewarts, and he spent it in the palace and in the pleasance +of Holyrood. + +The Abbey, with the monastery which was attached to it, begins far back +before the Stewarts. It was founded by David I, the abbey-builder. +Legend has it that he went a-hunting on a holy day, and straying from +the "noys and dyn of Bugillis," a white stag came against him. David +thought to defend himself, but a hand bearing a cross came out of the +cloud, and the stag was exorcised. David kept the cross. In dream that +night within the castle he was commanded to build an abbey where he had +been saved, and the hunting place being this scant mile and a quarter +from the castle--then a forest where now it is treeless--David placed +this convenient abbey where it has stood for six centuries, defying fire +and war and reformation, until the citizens of Edinburgh ravaged it when +the roof fell in in the middle of the eighteenth century. + +There is a curious feeling when one crosses the Girth stones at the +lower end of the Canongate. It is a century and more since this was +sanctuary. But it is impossible to step across these stones, into the +"Liberty of Holyrood," and not wonder if there may not perhaps be some +need in your own soul of sanctuary. Thousands and thousands of +men--"abbey lairds" as they were pleasantly called--have stepped across +this line before me, through the centuries. Who am I to be different, +unneedful? May I not need inviolate sanctuary? May it not be that at my +heels dogs some sinister creditor who will seize me by the skirts before +I reach the boundary beyond which there is no exacting for debt? A +marvelous thing, this ancient idea of sanctuary. It made an oasis of +safety in a savage world. Surely it was super-christian. And here, at +Holyrood, as the medieval statute declares, "qukilk privelege has +bene inviolabie observit to all maner of personis cuman wythin the +boundes ... past memorie of man." What has the modern world given +itself in place of ancient sanctuary? Justice, I suppose, and a jury +trial. + +[Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE.] + +But, once across the Girth, one becomes, not a sanctuarian, but a +Stewart. + +The situation is a little dreary, a little flat. And the palace, as a +palace, is altogether uninteresting to look on. It is not the building +of David or of the earlier Stewarts. But of that Merry Monarch who +harboured so long in France, when England was determining whether it +would be royal or republican, and Scotland was determining whether it +would be covenanted or uncovenanted. The Merry Monarch was ever an +uncovenanted person, not at all Scottish, although somewhat like the +errant James--whose errancy was of his own choosing. Charles had +acquired a French taste at the court of his cousin, Louis the Grand. So +the new Holyrood was built in French baronial style. And no monarch has +ever cared to inhabit it for any length of time. Only King Edward VII, +who would have been a happy successor to James, but Edward was very +studious in those days of 1859, when he lodged here and studied under +the direction of the Rector of the Royal High School. Still I can but +think that it was in this Stewart place that Edward developed his +Stewartship. + +There is not a stone to speak of the magnificence, of the strength, of +David. The Abbey was burned and burned again, by Edward and Richard the +Second, and entirely rebuilt when the Stewarts were beginning to be +splendid and assured. Over the west doorway, high-arched and +deep-recessed, early English in its technique, Charles I, who was +crowned here in 1633, caused the stone to be placed. + + "He shall build ane House for my name and I will stablish the + throne of his kingdom forever." + +The tablet still stands above the doorway. But Charles is lying for his +sins in a vault at St. George's chapel at Windsor far in the south, +having paid his penalty on the scaffold in Whitehall. And the House is +in ruins, "bare ruined choir," where not even "the late birds sing." +Although Mendelssohn in speaking of the impression the Abbey made on +him, does say, "I think I found there the beginnings of my Scotch +symphony." + +This "magnificent Abbey-Kirk of Halirude" was no doubt very splendid; +although in architectural beauty it cannot compare with Melrose, not +even the great east window with its rich quatrefoil tracing. But what +scenes have been staged in that historic drama, that theatrical piece, +we call the history of the Stewarts! + +Before the high altar, under that east window, when James I was kneeling +before God in prayer, there appeared the Lord of the Isles, come +repentant from burning Inverness and other rebellion, to kneel before +the king, his own sword pointed at his breast. + +Before this altar James II was married to Mary of Gueldres. James III +was married to Margaret of Denmark, who brought the Orkneys as her +dower. James IV was married to Margaret Tudor, the union of the "Thistle +and the Rose." James V was not married here, he went to France for his +frail bride, Magdalene, who lived but seven weeks in this inhospitable +land, this hospitable Holyrood. She was buried in Holyrood chapel, only +to be dug up and tossed about as common clay when the Edinburgh citizens +made football of royal skulls. + +The two sons of James VI, Henry who should have been king and who might +have united royalist and commoner had fate granted it, and Charles who +was to become king, were both christened here. James VII, brother to +Charles II, restored this Chapel Royal and prepared it for the Roman +ritual. James VIII was never here, or but as a baby. Charles III--did +the Bonnie Prince in that brief brilliant Edinburgh moment of his, ever +kneel before this then deserted altar and ask divine favour while he +reasserted the divine right of kings? + +Here--or was it secretly, in Stirling?--the Queen--one says The Queen +and all the world knows--gowned in black velvet, at five o'clock on a +July morning, was married to her young cousin, Henry Darnley. A marriage +that endured two long terrible tumultuous years. + +Here--or was it in the drawing-room?--at two o'clock on a May morning, +the Queen was married to Bothwell, by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, +not with mass as she had been wed to her boy-cousin, but with preaching +as she wed the Bishop's cousin. And "at this marriage there was neither +pleasure nor pastime used as use was wont to be used when princes were +married." So says the Diurnal Occurents of Scotland. A marriage that +endured a brief, perhaps happy, tragedy-gathering month. + +And the Queen beautiful was destroyed, by the Reformation, like an +Abbey. + +[Illustration: JAMES IV.] + +The bones of Darnley were ravaged by the citizens of Edinburgh out of +the ruins of this chapel. Or were they carried to Westminster by that +unroyal son who was so laggard in caring for the remains of his queenly +mother? I hope that Darnley does not rest beside her. For I think those +exquisite marble fingers of the effigy in Henry VII's chapel, looking I +fain believe as those of Mary looked, tapering, lovely, sinister, would +not so fold themselves in prayer without unfolding through the long +centuries. + +In the old palace the most glorious days were those when James IV was +king. As the most glorious days of Scotland were those which are almost +legendary. The palace still had the grandeur that was Norman and the +grace that was early English under David. Its front, towered and +pinnacled, suggesting more fortress security than this dull château, +opened upon a great outer court that lay between the palace and the +walls. Coming down the Canongate from the castle it must have looked +very splendid to James. And yet he did not care to remain in it long. +All the Stewarts had errant souls, and they loved to wander their +kingdom through. It presented ample opportunity for adventure; scarce a +Stewart ever left Scotland. That last Prince, who flashed across +Scotland in one last Stewart sword thrust--"My friends," he said in +Holyrood the night before Prestonpans, "I have thrown away the +scabbard"--was but treading in the steps of his royal forebears, the +royal fore-errants. + +In the days of James IV--we say it as one should say in the days of +Haroun al Raschid, and indeed Edinburgh was in those early years of the +Fifteen Hundreds the Bagdad of the world, and her days as well as her +nights were truly Arabian--the world must have looked much as it does on +the pleasant morning when we make our royal entry into Holyrood. + +The Abbey grounds, a regal area then, and still a regality, were rich +with woodland and orchard, and terraced and flowered into southern +beauty. The red crags of the Salisbury ridge rose bold above as they do +to-day, and crowning the scene the leonine form of Arthur's Seat above +the green slopes, the lion keeping guard against the invading lion of +England! I think James must often have climbed to that height to look +forth over his domain, over his city, to watch the world, as King +Arthur--whom he did not resemble--did legendary centuries before. + +It was a busy time in Edinburgh; men's hands and wits were working. In +Leith, then as now the port, then as now a separate burgh, there was +much shipping and much building of ships; King James dreamed of a navy, +and he had an admirable admiral in Sir Anthony Wood. In the castle there +was the forging of guns, the "seven sisters of Brothwick," under +direction of the king's master gunner, while Mons Meg looked on, and +perhaps saw the near terrible future when these sisters of hers should +be lost at Flodden. + +In the city there was the splendid beginning of that intellectual life +which has ever been quick in Edinburgh. It was a joyous time; witness +the account from the lord High treasurer-- + +"On the 11th of February, 1488, we find the king bestowing nine pounds +on gentil John, the English fule; on the 10th of June we have an item to +English pipers who played to the king at the castle gate, of eight +pounds eight shillings; on the thirty-first of August Patrick Johnson +and his fellows, that playit a play to the king, in Lithgow, receives +three pounds; Jacob the lutar, the king of bene, Swanky that brought +balls to the king, twa wemen that sang to his highness, Witherspoon the +foular, that told tales and brought fowls, Tom Pringill the trumpeter, +twa fithelaris that sang Grey Steill to the king, the broken-bakkit +fiddler of St. Andrew's, Quhissilgyllourie a female dancer, Willie +Mercer who lap in the stank by the king's command." + +Oh, a royal and democratic and merry time. It was Flodden that made men +old, that tragic climax to this splendour. + +"In the joyous moneth tyme of June," in the pleasant garden of the +town-house of the great Earl of Angus, looking down on the still waters +of the Nor' Loch, and across the woods and moors to the glittering blue +Firth, there sat the pale stripling, Gavin Douglass, third son of +Douglass, Archibald Bell-the-Cat, late in orders at Mony musk, but now +come up to St. Giles as prior in spite of his youth, and more absorbed +in poetry than men. + + "More pleased that in a barbarous age + He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, + Than that beneath his rule he held + The bishopric of fair Dunkeld." + +Here I would dispute Scott. After all, Dark Ages are not always as dark +as they look to those who come after. And if the "Dark Ages" of Europe +were brilliantly luminous in Moslem capitals, Bagdad and Cordova, so +"rude Scotland" was more polished under James IV than England under +Henry VII, or France under Louis XII. + +As Gavin has recorded in "The Palice of Honour," he had interview with +Venus in her proper limbo, and she had presented him with a copy of +Virgil, bidding him translate it. And so, quite boldly, before any +Englishman had ventured, and all through the winter, forgetful--except +when he wrote his prefaces of + + scharp soppis of sleit and of the snypand snaw + +he had worked over his translation, from the Latin into the Scottish, +and now it was nearly ready "to go to the printer," or more like, to be +shown to the king. In sixteen months he had completed thirteen books; +for he had added a book of Maphæus Vegius, without discrimination. + +He was certain of the passage _facilis descensus Averni_, for Gavin was +Scotch, the time was Stewart. It ran in this wise-- + + "It is richt facill and eithgate, I tell thee + For to descend, and pass on down to hell, + The black zettis of Pluto, and that dirk way + Stand evir open and patent nicht and day. + But therefore to return again on hicht + And heire above recovir this airis licht + That is difficul werk, thair labour lyis, + Full few thair bene quhom hiech above the skyis, + Thare ardent vertue has raisit and upheit + Or zit quhame equale Jupiter deifyit, + Thay quhilkie bene gendrit of goddes may thy oder attane + All the mydway is wilderness unplane + Or wilsum forest; and the laithlie flude + Cocytus, with his drery bosom unrude + Flows environ round about that place." + +But he was not quite certain that he had been splendid enough, and +daring enough, in his application of the royal lines-- + + "Hic Cæsar et omnis Iuli + Progenies, magnum caeli ventura sub axem." + +So he had sent for his friend, William Dunbar, Kynges Makar, laureate to +the sovereign. And Dunbar was never loath for a "Flyting," a scolding. +He had them on every hand, with every one, and not only those he held +with "gude maister Walter Kennedy," and published for the amusement of +the King and his Court. It was a more solemn event when the future +Bishop of Dunkeld summoned him. Though Gavin was fifteen years younger +than William, he was more serious with much study, and under the shadow +of future honours, and then, too, he was a Douglass. + +So Dunbar came, striding up the Canongate between the tall inquisitive +houses--even he found them "hampered in a honeycaim of their own +making"--a very handsome figure, this Dunbar, in his red velvet robe +richly fringed with fur, which he had yearly as his reward from the +King, and which I doubt not he preferred to the solemn Franciscan robe +he had renounced when he entered the King's service. + +James was away at Stirling. James was a poet also. Surely, on internal +evidence, it is the Fourth James and not the Fifth, who wrote those +charming, and improper poems, "The Gaberlunzieman" and "The Jolly +Beggar." + + "He took a horn frae his side, and blew baith loud and shrill, + And four and twenty belted knights came skipping o'er the hill. + + "And he took out his little knife, loot a' his duddies fa'; + And he was the brawest gentleman that was amang them a'." + + "And we'll gang nae mair a roving, + So late into the night; + And we'll gang nae mair a roving, boys, + Let the moon shine ne'er so bright." + +Dunbar, official Makar, would fain secure the criticism of young Gavin +on this joyous lament he had writ to the King in absence-- + + "We that here in Hevenis glory ... + I mean we folk in Paradyis + In Edinburgh with all merriness." + +And perhaps the young Gavin and the old Dunbar in their common +fellowship of poetry, would drink a glass of red wine in memory of +friends passed into death's dateless night--_Timor Mortis conturbat me_. + + "He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill + Slaine with his schour of mortall haill.... + In Dunfermelyne he had done rovne + With Maister Robert Henrisoun." + +And Dunbar, who was so much more human than Gavin, if older, would quote +those immortal new lines of Henryson-- + + "Robene sat on gude grene hill + Kepand a flok of fe, + Mirry Makyne said him till, + Robene, thow pity on me." + +While Gavin, so much elder than his looks, and mindful of Scottish as +well as of Trojan history, would quote from Blind Harry in the name of +Wallace-- + + "I grant, he said, part Inglismen I slew + In my quarrel, me thocht nocht halff enew. + I mowyt na war but for to win our awin (own). + To God and man the rycht full weill is knawin (known)." + +Then Dunbar would wrap his rich red robe about him--I hope he wore it on +ordinary days, or were there any when James the Fourth was king?--and +stride back, through the Canongate to Holyrood, back to the court, where +he would meet with young David Lindsay, of a different sort from young +Gavin Douglass. And they would chuckle over "Kitteis Confessioun," a +dialogue between Kitty and the curate, which Lindsay had just +written--and would not Dunbar be gracious and show it to the King? + + Quod he, "Have ye na wrangous geir?" + Quod scho, "I staw ane pek o' beir." + Quod he, "That suld restorit be, + Tharefore delyver it to me." + Quod he, "Leve ye in lecherie?" + Quod scho, "Will Leno mowit me." + Quod he, "His wyfe that sall I tell, + To mak hir acquentance with my-sell." + Quod he, "Ken ye na heresie?" + "I wait nocht quhat that is," quod scho. + Quod he, "Hard he na Inglis bukis?" + Quod scho, "My maister on thame lukis." + Quod he, "The bischop that sall knaw, + For I am sworne that for to schaw." + Quod he, "What said he of the King?" + Quod scho, "Of gude he spak naething." + Quod he; "His Grace of that sall wit, + And he sall lose his lyfe for it." + +Perhaps Warbeck was listening, Perkin Warbeck who pretended to be Duke +of York, pretended to the English crown. So Scotland harboured him, and +Holyrood was hospitable to him. James married him to Lady Jane Gordon, +and for years, until he wearied of it, maintained a protectorate over +this pinchbeck Pretender. + +I am certain that Dom Pedro de Ayala did not linger in the court to +gossip with Dunbar, or with the hangers-on. Dom Pedro had come up from +Spain on a strange ambassadorial errand, to offer to James in marriage a +Spanish princess, knowing well that there might be no Spanish princess +(Maria was betrothed to Portugal); but no doubt believing that there +ought to be, since James was slow in marrying, and surely a Spanish +princess would best mate this royalest of the Stewarts. Dom Pedro better +liked the extravagant kingly court at Holyrood than the niggardly court +at Windsor. He wrote home to Ferdinand and Isabella, "The kingdom is +very old, and very noble, and the king possessed of great virtues, and +no defects worth mentioning." No defects! Certainly not. James had the +qualities of his defects, and these were royal. James could speak--not +keep still--in eight languages, and could and did say "all his prayers." +So Dom Pedro reports to his Most Catholic Majesty. + +When he was thirty years old, this King Errant married, not the +hypothetical daughter of Spain, but the substantial youthful Margaret +Tudor, aged fourteen. The Scottish king would none of the alliance for +years; James preferred hypothetical brides and errant affairs. But +the English king saw the advantage and pressed it. He had united the +roses, red and white, of England; he would fain join the thistle to the +rose. + +[Illustration: MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV.] + +So James, in August, 1503, journeyed out to Dalkeith, whither Margaret +had come. He returned to "hys bed at Edinborg varey well countent of so +fayr a meetyng." A few days later, Margaret made her entry into +Edinburgh, James having met her, gallantly dressed in "a jacket of +crimson velvet bordered with cloth of gold." Leaving his restive +charger, "mounting on the pallefroy of the Qwene, and the said Qwene +behind hym, so rode throw the towne of Edinburgh." Their route lay +through the Grassmarket up to the Castle Hill, and down the High Street +and the Canongate, to the Abbey. Here they were received by the +Archbishop of St. Andrews. Next day they were married by the Archbishop +of Glasgow, the Archbishop of York joining in the solemn and magnificent +celebration. + +It is the most splendid moment in Edinburgh history, within the Abbey +and the palace, and within the city. The Town Cross ran with wine, the +high _lands_ were hung with banners and scarlet cloth, and morality +plays were performed before the people. In the palace there was a royal +scene. And our friend, William Dunbar, Kynges Makar, read his allegory +of "The Thrissl and the Roiss," which is still worth reading, if Chaucer +is worth reading. + +But, at night, in the royal apartment, the night before the wedding, +perhaps in the fragment of the old palace which remains, the gallant +king played to the little princess upon the virginal; and then, on +bended knee and with unbonneted head, he listened while she played and +sang to him. Out of the dark of the time it is a shining scene; and out +of the splendour of the moment it brings a note of tenderness. + +Another decade, another August, and the Boroughmoor (where now run the +links of Burntland) was covered with the white of a thousand tents, +Scotland was gathered for war, the "ruddy lion ramped in gold" floated +war-like over all, and James and all Scotland prepared to march down to +Flodden, heeding not the warning which had sounded at midnight in +ghostly voice at the Town Cross; a warning no doubt arranged by +Margaret, never a Stewart, always a Tudor. And--all Scotland was turned +into a house of mourning. + +Half a century later the history of Scotland came to a climax, and Mary +Stewart came to Holyrood; that queen who then and ever since held half +the world in thrall, like another Iseult. The covenanted world has +rejected her, as no doubt it would reject Iseult. + +Shrouded in a gray "haar" from off the North Sea, rising like a Venus +out of the mists of the sea, Mary Stewart, Dowager of France, Queen of +Scotland, Heiress of England, came unto her own. And, her own received +her, and, received her not. + +The castle hanging high in air no longer hung there. The palace lying +low on the plain was not there, on that August 19, 1561. There was +nothing but what was near at hand; Mary could not see a hundred feet +into her kingdom. In truth she arrived at port a week before the ship +was expected--and Mary also flashed through her kingdom; witness the +ride across the Marches to the Hermitage, and the ride through the North +to punish Huntley. Hers was a restless soul, a restless body. + +On her return to the kingdom she was accompanied by a great retinue, +three of her French uncles of Guise and of Lorraine, her four Maries, +and many ambassadors. It was a suspended moment in the world, the sixth +decade of the sixteenth century. And nowhere were affairs in such +delicate balance, or so like to swing out of balance as in Scotland; +where religion, sovereignty, feudalism, morality, were swaying dizzily. +So all the world sent their keenest ambassadors to observe, to foresee +if possible, to report. + +Yet Mary rode through the mists. + +"Si grand brouillard," says the Sieur de Brantome, that gossipy +chronicler, and Mary and her French courtiers and Scotch Maries, rode +through the "haar," from Leith up whatever was the Leith Walk of that +day to Holyrood. + +The palace must have rung with French chatter, of these wondering and +inquisitive and critical folk; for all the cultured world was French in +those days, and Mary and her Maries had been only five or six when they +left stormy Scotland for the pleasant smiling land of France. + +Not for long was she permitted to believe she had brought France back +with her and there was no reality in Scotland but as she made it. +Reformation pressed in upon her, even through the windows of this turret +where again she seems to listen to that prophetic and pious serenade, +Scottish protestant psalms accompanied by fiddles and sung to a French +Catholic queen. "Vile fiddles and rebecks," complains Brantome, +hesitating to call vile the mob of five hundred gathered in the Scotch +mists; but they sang "so ill and with such bad accord that there could +be nothing worse. Ah, what music, and what a lullaby for the night!" + +The rooms of Mary are still inclosed, the walls still stand about them, +and a romantic care withholds the ravages of time from those tapestries +and silken bed hangings, dark crimson damask, which Mary drew about her +on that night of her return. And here hangs a picture of Queen +Elizabeth, authentic, Tudoresque, which did not hang here when Mary +returned; but what dark shadow of Elizabeth lurked behind these +hangings! The very guard to whom you protest the picture understands--"I +think it an insult to her memory." + +It is here that Queen Mary still reigns. All the old palace was burned, +carelessly, by Cromwell's soldiers, at what time men were caring nothing +for palaces, and less for royalty. But, fate was royal, was Jacobite, +and this gray turret of the northwest corner a building of James V on a +foundation of James IV--perhaps where he had listened in the evening to +Margaret and her virginal--was saved from the wrath of the Commonwealth. +Within these very walls Mary played on the virginal, perhaps on the +rebeck, and many sought to know her stops--"you can fret me, yet you +cannot play upon me." + +Here she was loved, as she still is loved. Here she made love, the +mystery!--as always. Here she flashed those bright eyes on courtiers and +commoners and straightway these fell into bondage--the Stewarts never +drew the line of division. Here those eyes battled with John Knox as he +met her in Dialogues, as John has faithfully recorded. And here those +bright eyes filled with a storm of tears at his denunciation; but Knox +felt their power. Here she met Darnley, in the chapel married him, and +Knox called after dinner to declare that the Reformation did not +approve. Here by the very stairs of the turret Darnley led the murderers +on Rizzio, from his private apartments to hers. (I find it fit that Ker +of Fawdonside, one of the murderers, should have married later the widow +of Knox.) Mary was held here a prisoner; they would "cut her into +collops and cast her over the wall" if she summoned help. But Mary could +order that the blood stains of the fifty-six wounds of Rizzio should +remain "ane memoriall to quychen her revenge." They quicken our thought +of Mary to-day--if we accept them. From Holyrood Mary went to Kirk o' +Field on a Sunday night in February to visit Darnley who lay "full +of the small pox." He had come back from Bothwell castle on Mary's +urging; but he had gone to Bothwell to escape her revenge for Rizzio. +She returned to Holyrood--"the Queen's grace gang and with licht torches +up the Black Friar's Wynd"--where the wedding festivities of a member of +her household were in progress. And, I doubt not, devoted to Mary as I +am, that she was the merriest of the company. + +[Illustration: _Bothwell Castle_] + +Then the dark. + +Then, at two in morning, an explosion that shook all Edinburgh, that +astonished the world, that still reverberates through the world. + +Then--the dark. + +A marriage, at two in the morning, a flight to Borthwick, a meeting at +Carberry, one more night in Edinburgh, in a house as mean as that of +Kirk o' Field, a day at Holyrood, and a forced ride with ruffian nobles, +Lindsay and Ruthven on each hand, to Loch Leven, thirty miles in the +night of June 16, 1567--and Edinburgh and Holyrood and the Crown of +Scotland know her no more. + + "Helen's lips are drifting dust, + Ilion is consumed in rust." + +And Mary. And Holyrood. + +There is one more Holyrood scene descending from this. On a Saturday +evening, March 26, 1603, the son of Mary, the King of Scotland, supped +with the Queen, perhaps in that small supper room where Rizzio was +supping with a queen; and they had retired. "The palace lights were +going out, one by one." And Sir Robert Carey, three days out from +London, clattered into the courtyard, the King was roused, Sir Robert +knelt before him-- + +"Queen Elizabeth is dead, and Your Majesty is King of England!" + +James I of England, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, son of Darnley, +son of the ninth generation from Bruce, The Bruce. The "auld enemy" is +finally defeated; and to borrow again from Rosaline Masson, "the lights +of Holyrood went out, one by one." + +In the long picture gallery of this dull modern palace, nothing of which +either Mary or James ever saw, there hangs a series of portraits, one +hundred pictures of Scottish kings, painted under order of Charles II in +1680, by the Fleming, DeWitt, who agreed to furnish the pictures in two +years for one hundred and twenty pounds. They begin with Fergus I, 330 +B. C. They are the kings who passed before the prophetic vision of +Banquo. Enough to frighten Macbeth! + +One brief brilliant ghost of Stewart glory returns. In this gallery was +held the ball of Prince Charles Edward, described in "Waverley." + +And after this theatric moment, and after the Prince had defeated the +"royalists" at Falkirk, Hardy's dragoons slashed these pictures of +Scottish kings, since the Prince they could not reach. + + +_Princes Gardens_ + +There are certain public places of beauty where the beauty is so +enveloping that the place seems one's very own, seems possessed. That, I +take it, is the great democratic triumph, in that it has made beauty a +common possession and places of beauty as free to the people as is the +air. + +Chief of these is Princes Street Gardens. + +I could, in truth I have, spent there days and half-days, and twilights +that I would willingly have lengthened to midnights, since the northern +night never quite descends, but a romantic gray twilight veils +everything, and evokes more than everything. For any lengthened visit in +Edinburgh I dare not inhabit a hotel room on the Garden side, since all +my time would be spent at the window. For a shorter visit, such a room +lengthens the day, defies the closed gate of the Gardens. + +It was from such a window as this, "From a Window in Princes Street" +that Henley looked forth-- + + "Above the crags that fade and gloom + Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat; + Ridged high against the evening bloom + The Old Town rises, street on street; + With lamps bejeweled, straight ahead, + Like rampird walls the houses lean, + All spired and domed and turreted, + Sheer to the valley's darkling green; + Ranged in mysterious array, + The Castle menacing and austere, + Looms through the lingering last of day; + And in the silver dusk you hear, + Reverberated from crag and scar, + Bold bugles blowing points of war." + +Princes Street is, I believe, not a mile long, a half-mile the part +which is gardened. It is the loveliest street in the world. It seems +infinite instead of half-mile. + +Of course to the loyal American that praise is received half-way. For he +remembers Riverside Drive with the majesty of the Hudson, North Shore +Drive with the shoreless infinity of Lake Michigan, Summit Avenue with +the deep gorge of the Upper Mississippi, Quebec and its Esplanade. +But even these "handsome streets" cannot match Princes for history and +beauty in one, for the old and the new, for the Old Town and the New +Town. + +[Illustration: PRINCES STREET.] + +Princes Street, to speak briefly of its geography, is a broad +thoroughfare, with a medley of buildings on the north side, but uniform +in gray stone, where hotels and shops furnish the immediate life of the +city. There are electric cars running the full length of the street; and +it is the only street I know which is not spoiled through the presence +of these necessary carriers. + +There are cabs, and there are sight-seeing cars, from which in high +advantage, and in half a day, you can see everything in Edinburgh. +Yes, actually. I who speak to you have done it, partly for the +greed of seeing it steadily and seeing it whole, and partly for the +comment of these Scotch coach drivers and guards, who are not merely +Scottish but the essence of Scotland. I shall never forget how +an American traveler--of course they are all Americans in these +tally-hos--commenting on the driver's remark that the "Old Queen" wanted +to build a palace where Donaldson's Hospital now stands and she was +refused--"but she was the Queen!" Nevertheless, asserted Mr. Sandy +Coachman, "She was refused." Not so in the old days of Queenship. + +The entire life of Edinburgh, of Scotland, streams through this broad +straight street. + +On the opposite side lie the Gardens, stretching their way parallel with +the street, a wide, green-lawned, tree-forested purlieu, terraced and +flowered, with a "sunken garden" near the Castle-side, through which +trains are conveyed. The smoke, so much lamented, does often rest with +grace and gray loveliness in the hollows of the place, so that one does +not miss the waters of the Nor' Loch that once flowed here as moat. + +Above rises the castle in greater majesty than from any other point. +Down from the castle runs the ridge of the High Street, and the high +_lands_ with flags of washing hanging out the windows which answer the +flags red and leoninely rampant, on the buildings of Princes Street. The +crown of St. Giles and the spire of the Tronkirk hanging above all. + +To the west is St. John's, where in the graveyard Raeburn is buried; and +old St. Cuthbert's, where in the graveyard De Quincey is buried. There +are Raeburns in the Royal gallery which stands on the island dividing +the Gardens, and there are many Raeburns here and there, in private +rooms of banks and other institutions, rare Raeburns with that casual, +direct, human look he could give men and women. The galleries are worth +a visit both for their best, and for their not-best. There are statues +of famous Scotsmen on the terraces, and of course the Scott monument, +beautifully Gothic, and as sacred as a shrine. + +There are goods to be bought in the shops, pebbles and cairngorms in +jewelry and kickshaws of that ilk; rugs and plaidies, sashes and ties, +and Scott and Stevenson books bound in the Royal Stewart silk. Unhappy +the traveler who has not provided himself beforehand with a tartan. +Almost every one can if he will. And there is always the college of +heraldry to help one out. Or the audacity of choosing the tartan you +like best; an affront, I assure you, to all good Scots. For however +unlovely a Scotch tartan may be in the eyes of the world--nominations +are invidious--in the eyes of the clansman there is nothing so "right" +as his own particular tartan. He would not exchange it for a Douglass or +a Stewart. + +These tartans have exerted a very marked effect on the Scottish sense of +taste. On Princes Street you may not find such richly dressed women as +on Regent Street, but the harmony of colouring will please you better. +While no doubt this is due to the fact that for several hundred years +the Scottish taste has had the benefit of intimate association with the +French, it can also be traced to the longer centuries during which +tartans have brought an understanding of colour harmonies. Because there +has been this love of colour, there has come with it vanity. With vanity +there has come that rare ability of the women of the race to maintain a +unity, a harmony, a complete relationship between skirts and waists. +There is no country in Europe where the "act of union" at the feminine +waistline is so triumphant as in Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh. +The universal American achievement has been equaled in Europe only in +Scotland. + +There are teashops which invite you in, when the wind sweeps too +harshly, or the rain beats itself into more than a Scotch mist, or even +when the sun shines too hot. There is a garden tea place on top of a +high hotel which confronts the Castle. Even in this Far North there is +much open air dining, and more especially open air tea-ing. I am not +certain that Dr. Johnson would have much cared for this modern tea room, +where he might review the world. It seems that he drank much tea when +he was the guest of Boswell, especially when he was the guest of Mrs. +Boswell, in James Court the other side the Gardens. "Boswell has +handsome and very spacious rooms, level with the ground on one side of +the house, and the other four stories high." And Boswell says of +Johnson, "My wife had tea ready for him, which it is well known he +delights to drink at all times, particularly when sitting up late." From +this roof tea garden one can see James's Court at the top of the Mound, +although the Boswell lodgings are burned down. And one can almost see +Holyrood, where tea was introduced by James VII. + +After you have shopped and had your tea, and the past retakes +possession, you will return to the green valley of the Gardens, to +forget the clang of the tram cars, to look up at the great Castle Hill, +green until it meets the buff-coloured stone and the buff-coloured +buildings that seem to grow out of the stone, if it is a clear day; +while the ramparts seem temporarily to have blossomed with red +geraniums, if red coats are leaning over the edge. + +A clear day in Edinburgh is possible. I have spent a month of such days, +and have longed for the mists, a touch of them, that the castle might +turn to a purple wonder, and the deep blue shadows sink over it, and +the gray precipice of the High Street look higher than ever. Gray is in +truth the colour of Edinburgh, "the gray metropolis of the North." But +it is never a dreary gray, never a heavy gray like London. There the +gray is thick, charged with soot; one can rub it from his face. In +Edinburgh the gray is luminous, a shifting playing colour, with deep +shadows turning to deep blue, with rifts or thinnings of the cloud, +through which yellow and brown glimmers make their way. + +Above all, Edinburgh is never monotonous. That is perhaps its charm, a +something that every feminine city knows; Edinburgh is feminine, and +Paris, and Venice, and New Orleans. + +And there hangs the castle, sometimes in midair-- + + "Hast thou seen that lordly castle, that castle by the sea? + Golden and red above it the clouds float gorgeously." + +Sometimes standing stalwart and stern, a challenge to daring, a +challenge to history. That farther edge of the Castle Hill as it is +silhouetted against the west sky--if you walk around on Lothian Street +you can see the full face of the Rock--has invited many an adventurer, +both from within and without. + +It was down that steep hill that the sons of Margaret carried their +queen mother, when the hosts of Donalbane were besieging the place, and +a Scotch "haar" rolling in from the sea and shutting off the castle +enabled the little procession to pass safely with its precious burden, +and swiftly down to the Queen's ferry, and across to Dunfermline. + +Up the face of that Rock when The Bruce did not hold this stronghold +there stole in the night of a thirteenth century winter--it must have +been much colder, even in Edinburgh, in the thirteenth century--a picked +band of men; picked by Randolph afterward Earl of Moray, and led by +Frank, who, years before when he had been a soldier in the castle +garrison and night leave was forbidden, used to make his way down this +cliff to visit a bonnie lassie in the West Bow. Now, on a wind-swept +night, which can be very windy around that castle profile--the wind has +not abated since the thirteenth century--Frank led the remembered way. I +wonder if he remembered the lassie. But his footing was sure. Once, it +is true, the sentinel seemed to have discovered them. But it was only +the boast the sentinel makes to the night when he makes his last round. +The men huddled against the face of the Rock. Then they moved onward. +The ladders were too short to reach the rampart. Two were bound +together. The men over, the cry "A Moray!" rings in the castle. Scotland +has won it again. + +Another century, and James III is king. This least royal of the +Stewarts, jealous of his more royal brother, locked the Duke of Albany +in the castle, and felt secure. But the Duke had friends. A French +clipper came into Leith. It brought wine to Albany, and the wine cask +contained a rope. Inviting his guardians to sup with him, he plied them +with heated wine, perhaps drugged wine, then, the dagger. Albany's +servant insisted on going down the rope first. It was short, he fell the +rest of the distance. Albany hurried back for the sheets from his bed, +made his safe way down. He carried the servant man all the way to +Leith--he had just "whingered" the guard--found the boat, and safety, +and France. + +Up the Rock, in Covenanting days, stole Claverhouse, the Bonnie Dundee, +to a secret conference with the Duke of Gordon, hoping to win him away +to Stewart loyalty and the North. + +I cannot remember that any of Scott's characters went this way. He +thought it "scant footing for a cat." But Stevenson knew the way. +Perhaps not actually, but he sent more than one of his characters up +or down the Rock--St. Ives with a rope that was long enough to reach. + +[Illustration: JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE, VISCOUNT DUNDEE.] + + +_Calton Hill_ + +Perhaps the best view of Edinburgh--only perhaps, for each view differs, +and you have not seen the whole city unless you have seen it from the +various vantage points--is that from the Calton Hill. For a very good +reason. The Hill itself is negligible enough, although it is impossible +to understand Edinburgh, to understand Scotland, unless you have looked +on the architectural remnants on this Hill, and considered them +philosophically. But, as Stevenson said--"Of all places for a view, the +Calton Hill is perhaps the best; since you can see the castle, which you +lose from the castle, and Arthur's Seat, which you cannot see from +Arthur's Seat." An excellent reason, which also places the castle and +Arthur's Seat. + +Calton Hill does not tower so high over the city as these other two +points; one may still look up to Arthur's Seat, one may look across to +the castle. Yet, the city lies near. Yet, the country rolls out to the +Firth, and out to the Pentlands. Perhaps a gray-sea haze dulls the far +edge of the far Kingdom of Fife. Perhaps a blue haze hangs over the +Pentlands. Perhaps a smoke-cloud makes a nearer sky for the town itself, +this Auld Reekie. Not only perhaps, but very probably. There are clear +days in Edinburgh. They are to be treasured. There is no air more +stimulating in all the world. October sometimes slips into the other +months of the year, fills the air with wine, clears the air of filament. +But, not often, not often for the tourist from beyond seas who makes +Edinburgh in the summer. But still it is possible from Calton Hill to +catch the farthest glory of the encircling hills, and the near glory of +the ever glorious city. + +The Hill itself is a place of monuments, and a very pretentious place. +Also, very absurd. I suppose it is possible to be of two minds about the +remnant of the Parthenon which stands so conspicuously on the highest +plateau, a construction dating back to that royal time when George the +Fourth came to this northern capital, and was--alas!--received as though +he were Bonnie Prince Charlie himself; and was received--again alas!--by +Sir Walter clad in a Campbell plaid, and as loyal to the Regent, the +florid Florizel, as he had been to Prince Charles in the "Waverleys." +Because of all these loyalties this never finished monument, with its +twelve columns and architrave spread above, looks sufficiently pathetic, +and sufficiently absurd. "A very suitable monument to certain national +characteristics," said a later Scots writer, who perhaps never ceased +being a Jacobite. + +There are monuments; one to Dugald Stewart, and the visitor not +philosophical is apt to ask, Who was Dugald Stewart? There is a memorial +to Burns whose friend Willie that brewed a peck o' malt lies in the Old +Calton burying ground near by. Hume lies there, too, and Dr. John Brown, +and Stevenson's dead. + + "There on the sunny frontage of a hill, + Hard by the House of Kings, repose the dead, + My dead, the ready and the strong of word. + Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; + The sea bombards their founded towers; the night + Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers + One after one, here in this grated cell, + Where the rain erases and the dust consumes, + Fell upon lasting silence." + +There is a monument to Lord Nelson. And looking as though he belonged +there is a bronze figure of Abraham Lincoln. + +All this lies about, with casual sheep cropping the grass. + +But, there lies the city. And there lies the country. + +To the south rises Arthur's Seat, the lion. The much castellated jail, +is beneath you, another absurd elaborate building, a castle after +castle-days. Farther a-city lies Holyrood, with the ruined abbey, the +Queen Mary wing, and the scarlet patch of the sentinel moving to and fro +and guarding all this vanished greatness. Nothing more appeals than this +sentinel-watch of the ghosts of the past. + +Turn but a little and the Old Town lies before you, the castle splendid, +still the guardian, the long ridge of the High Street with its jagged +buildings that from here rise almost to the purple edge of the hilly +Pentland background, with the spire of the Tolbooth and the crown of St. +Giles breaking against the sky. And down at the foot of the vantage Hill +stretches Princes Street with the Scott monument rising athwart the haze +of city and sky. + +From the north edge of Calton there is a more empty panorama, but still +significant. Now it is bound in with tenements high and thick, but in +the golden days it was a steep hillside leading down to a jousting +ground. Tradition has it that Bothwell launched his horse down its +almost-precipice, and so entered the tilting ground, while ladies' +bright eyes rained influence and gave the prize; but most glowing were +the eyes of Mary. + +Beyond, the suburbs fill in the two miles that stretch to Leith, and to +the Firth, glittering out to the far sea. + +At night, if you have no fear of hobgoblins or of hooligans, Calton Hill +is an experience. It is a still place, the silence the greater because +the city lies so near, and looks so busy with its twinkling lights. A +gulf of gloom lies between. The night is velvet black, a drop curtain +against which is thrown the star-pricked map of the city. One can well +believe how the young Stevenson, in those romantic days when he carried +a lantern under his jacket, used to climb this hill venturesomely, and +with the dog in "Chanticler," exclaim, "I shall never forget the first +night I lapped up the stars." It is something to lap stars from the +black pool which is Edinburgh by night. + +If you have, happily, lived in a high city, Boston, Seattle, Duluth, +Denver, St. Paul, San Francisco, with water and land combined, you, too, +have lingered upon a heaven-kissed hill on such a night as this, and +Edinburgh seems native. + +Scott, of course, must have known Calton Hill, although Salisbury Crags +under Arthur's Seat, with its more feasible promenade, better appealed +to him when he was writing the "Waverleys." There is an American who has +written of the Hill, a young inland American whom the gods loved to an +early death. I remember hearing Arthur Upson talk of days and nights on +the Calton, and his sonnet catches the note-- + + "High and alone I stood on Calton Hill + Above the scene that was so dear to him + Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim. + October wooed the folded valleys till + In mist they blurred, even as our eye upfill + Under a too-sweet memory; spires did swim, + And gables, rust-red, on the gray sea's brim-- + But on these heights the air was soft and still, + Yet, not all still; an alien breeze will turn + Here, as from bournes in aromatic seas, + As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn + With incense of rich earthly reveries. + Vanish the isles: Mist, exile, searching pain, + But the brave soul is freed, is home again." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE KINGDOM OF FIFE + + +From Edinburgh as I looked out on the Forth from every vantage point, I +was conscious of the hills of Fife ever backing in the prospect. And I +kept repeating to myself the old rhyme of the witches-- + + "The Thane of Fife had a wife, + Ah, where is she now!" + +I determined to set sail and find not the wife, but the kingdom. + +It is a continuing splendour, this name--the Kingdom of Fife. Than the +thing nothing could be less royal, more democratic. For Fifeshire is +given over to farm lands and coal fields and treeless stretches, and the +fringe of Fife is made up of fishing villages "a hodden gray plaid wi' a +gowden fringe," said a King Jamie. It lies there, separate from +Scotland, although very Scottish, between the firths of the Forth and +the Tay, with the Ochil hills a barrier on the landside. The separating +firths are now connected with Scotland by great bridges, over which the +trains pass with reluctance. And the wind is always blowing in Fife, a +cold, stern, relentless, Calvinistic wind, off the North Sea. Not by +every wind of doctrine but by a disciplining Calvinistic wind is this +Kingdom swept into conformity. + +There is no end of castles and of historic memories lying like pebbles +upon the seashore of the Firth. Pick up any sea shell--I do not remember +seeing any, so combed have these beaches been from the memory of +man--and it will whisper a tale in your ear. + +But there is for me but one pilgrimage to be made in Fifeshire, to +Kirkcaldy; to the place, not of Ravenscraig Castle, nor because Adam +Smith and political economy were here born twins, nor because Carlyle +taught here for two years, nor because Edward Irving preached here; +their dwellings and schools and graves can be seen. But because Marjorie +Fleming was born here, passed to and fro, from Granton to Burntisland, +in those brief beautiful nine years that were granted to her, and to us, +and lies buried in the old kirkyard of Abbotshall. + +Perhaps you do not know Marjorie. She was the friend, the intimate +friend of Sir Walter Scott. And I can but think how large and void the +world was a century ago, in that Charles Lamb was living in London when +Marjorie was living in Kirkcaldy, and was dreaming of his "Dream +Children," when he might have known this most precious child, fit to be +the friend of Lamb as she was of Sir Walter. + +Other men who have loved her with a tenderness which can belong but to +the living child, immortally living, are Dr. John Brown who wrote the +wonder book about her fifty years ago, through which most of us have +claimed Marjorie as our own, and Mark Twain, who only a month before he +died--and joined her--wrote as tenderly and whimsically of her as he +ever wrote of any child or any maid. Among such august company we almost +hesitate to enter, but surely at this distance of time we may lay our +love beside that of the great men who found Pet Marjorie one of the most +precious human treasures the world has ever held. + +She was but a little girl, and only nine years all told, when the last +day came to her a hundred and more years ago, December 19, 1811. The +first six years she lived in Kirkcaldy, "my native town which though +dirty is clene in the country," Marjorie wrote this from Edinburgh a +little patronizingly, and Marjorie was never strong on spelling. The +next three years she lived with her aunt in the Scottish capital, where +she wrote those journals and letters which have kept her memory warm to +this day. In July of 1811 she returned to the town by the North Sea, and +in December she was gone. + +In the morning of the day on which I made my pilgrimage I went up to the +Parliament buildings in the Old Town, looked them about, saw the lawyers +pacing to and fro, as Stevenson had paced, but not for long--the +absurdity of it!--and then down the hill in the shadow of three men. + +"One November afternoon in 1810"--(the year in which the "Lady of the +Lake" was published) "three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen +escaping like school boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in +arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of +sleet." They were Lord Erskine, William Clerk--and the third we all +know; what service of romance has he not performed for us! As the snow +blattered in his face he muttered, "how it raves and drifts! On-ding o' +snaw--aye, that's the word, on-ding." And so he approached his own door, +Castle Street, No. 39. There, over the door, looking forth on the world, +is his face to-day, looking up Young Street. + +Then, as he grew restless and would awa, I followed him through Young +Street up to No. 1, North Charlotte Street. It is a substantial +building, still of dignified and fair estate; neighbourhoods are not +transformed in a Scots century as they are in America. But it carries no +tablet to tell the world that here Marjorie lived. It was here that at +the age of six she wrote her first letter to Isa Keith. It was here that +Marjorie saw "regency bonnets" and with eyes of envy; as indeed she +envied and desired with the passionate depths of her nature all lovely +and strange things. Here she read the Newgate calendar, and found it a +fascinating affair--Marjorie less than nine! And here that Isabel Keith, +her adored cousin, would not permit the little bookworm to read much of +lovers or to talk of them. Marjorie says very gravely, "a great many +authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally," but Isa was never +able quite to cure Marjorie of her interest in love. + +That evening Sir Walter carried her, through the "on-ding o' snaw," in a +shepherd's plaid, over to Castle Street. I walked through the narrow +stone-lined thoroughfare on a hot July morning--and I could feel the +cold and snow of that winter a century back, and see the strong, lame, +great man, carrying the wee wifie in the neuk of his plaid, to the warm +firelight of his castle. Marjorie and he would romp there the evening +long. She would hear him say his lessons, "Ziccoty, diccoty, dock," or +"Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven," while Marjorie "grew quite bitter in +her displeasure at his ill behaviour and stupidness." + +Then they would read ballads together; and then "he would take her on +his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in King John till he +swayed to and fro sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, +like one possessed, repeating-- + + "'For I am sick, and capable of fears, + Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears; + A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; + A woman, naturally born to fears.'" + +I walked out through what used to be fields, and is now much suburban +dwelling, toward Braehead.--"I am going to-morrow to a delightful place, +Braehead by name, where there is ducks, cocks, bubblyjocks, 2 dogs, 2 +cats and swine which is delightful"--to Ravelston--"I am at Ravelston +enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing sweetly, the calf +doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face." + +Ravelston is still a place of delight, with its great cliffs breaking +the surface of the park and a deep-lying lake with dark woodlands. I +wish Marjorie might have known the ballad by Sydney Dobell; it has the +magic quality she would have felt. + + "Ravelston, Ravelston, + The merry path that leads + Down the golden morning hill, + And through the silver meads; + + "She sang her song, she kept her kine, + She sat beneath the thorn, + When Andrew Keith of Ravelston + Rode thro' the Monday morn. + + "Year after year, where Andrew came, + Comes evening down the glade, + And still there sits a moonshine ghost + Where sat the sunshine maid. + + "She makes her immemorial moan, + She keeps her shadowy kine; + O Keith of Ravelston + The sorrows of thy line!" + +In the late afternoon I took tram for Leith, changing of course at +Pilrig, because Leith remains haughtily aloof from Edinburgh and +emphasizes it through this break at the boundary. "When we came to +Leith," says Boswell, "I talked perhaps with too boasting an air, how +pretty the Frith of Forth looked; as indeed, after the prospect from +Constantinople, of which I have been told, and that from Naples, which I +have seen, I believe the view of the Frith and its environs from the +Castle-hill of Edinburgh is the finest prospect in Europe, 'Aye,' +replied Dr. Johnson, 'that is the state of the world. Water is the same +everywhere.'" + +And so, down to the pier, stopping on the way to look at a New Haven +fishwife in her picturesque costume, which she has worn ever since the +Danes came over. Yes, and looking for a suitable piece of earth for +Queen Magdalene to kiss, "Scottis eard!" Well, if not here, there is +Scottis eard worthy elsewhere. + +I asked for the ferry to Burnt-is-land. The conductor of the tram +looked, yes, and laughed. Burnt-island, he dared, _dared_ to repeat. And +so, I took ferry from Granton to--Burnt-island. + +It is a long journey across the Firth. Far down the waters rises the +bold rock of the Bass, around which I had sailed a day before, looking +for a landing for some one more ponderous than solan geese or kittie +wake, and not finding it; although I was told that from Canty +bay--excellent Scots name--the innkeeper will row you o'er, and you may +walk where James I was waiting for the boat which should carry him to +safety in France, and getting instead the boat which carried him to +prison in England. Still I like to remember that Henry IV declared in +explanation that he "could speak very good French" himself, if that were +what they were sending Scottish Jamie o'er the water for; Henry who had +years of the Hundred Years' War behind him. + +[Illustration: TANTALLON CASTLE.] + +The rock is rent by a cavern running clean through. It's quite a +terrific place, and seven acres of benty grass must have seemed small +refuge for the Covenanters who were lodged here numerously in Killing +Time. + +On the mainshore, the Lothian, rises Tantallon Castle, where Marmion +dared to beard Angus Bell-the-Cat. It still looks pretty tremendous, and +still stands, like the Coliseum. "Ding doon Tantallon? Build a brig to +the Bass!" runs the proud proverb. + +But we are on our way across the Firth. There was a certain magic about +it on my day of pilgrimage. The north shore lay sparkling in the late +afternoon sun, blue shimmering land against a clear blue sky, the thin +rim of the continent playing here and there with opalescent colour where +man had builded village or castle, or where man had not destroyed the +ancient green. The south shore lay vague and gray, and growing darker, +against the falling afternoon, while the Lammermuirs stood up in paler +dusk in the background, and the sun blazed behind them. And all about +the Firth glittered like an inland lake, a Great Lake. I thought of how +the Roman galleys and Norse fleets had come this way, and looked and +departed. And how kings had brought their armies here, and looked, +perhaps besieged, and departed. And how time and time and time again, +French fleets had sailed in here to help their continuing ally, +Scotland. And how kings had sailed out from here to France, and how +Scots knights had sailed out from here for France, the Crusades, +anywhere that promised adventure. And here Saxon Margaret had sailed in +to be Scotland's queen. And here Scottish Mary had sailed in to be +Scotland's queen, and not to be. Far out in the offing the sun shone +golden upon the brown sails of a single fishing boat, tacking to catch a +homing wind, a ghost where once had sailed the war and merchant fleets +of nations. + +At Burntisland I did not pause to visit Rossend Castle where Mary is +supposed to have had her affair with Chastelard; certainly not. Nor at +Kinghorn, where Alexander III, within a few months after he had married +in haunted Kelso, and within a few hours perhaps after he had drunk the +blude red wine in Dunfermline, came galloping by this way, the horse +stumbled, the king fell, and + + "Quhen Alysandyr oure King was dede + That Scotland led in luve and le ... + Succoure Scotland and remede + That stands in perplexite." + + +_Kirkcaldy_ + +If Kirkcaldy was a "lang toun" in the olden days, it is longer to-day, +stretching from Linktown to Dysart, and broadening inland to Gallatown, +where they make the famous Wemyss pottery. To-day Kirkcaldy makes +linoleum and jute and engineering works, and it is the center of a +string of fishing villages, a "metropolitan borough system," hundreds of +boats fishing the North Sea with KY marked as their home port, when +their sailor men make home in any of these picturesque and smelling +villages, St. Monan, Pittenweem, Cellardyke, Crail where Mary of +Lorraine landed, Largo where Sir Andrew Wood the admiral lived, and +where Alexander Selkirk lived what time he did not live as Crusoe in +Juan Fernandez, and Anstruther-- + + "Wha wad na be in love + Wi' bonny Maggie Lauder, + A piper met her gaen to Fife + And speired what wast they ca'd her.... + I've lived in Fife + Baith maid and wife + These ten years and a quarter, + Gin ye should come to Anster Fair + Speir ye for Maggie Lauder." + +There is also some castellated splendour, Ravenscraig, and Wemyss on the +site of the castle of MacDuff, then of Fife, this Wemyss being the +ill-fated place where Mary first met Darnley. + +Abbotshall kirkyard is at the right of the railway station as the train +pulls in to Kirkcaldy. In his book of Scotch pilgrimages when William +Winter was on his way to St. Andrews, past Kirkcaldy, he wrote "gazing +as I pass at its quaint church among the graves." I suppose he did not +know what grave. + +But first I would find where she had lived. Kirkcaldy is close set +against the sea. Here on winding High Street, I found the house in which +she had lived, standing much as it did no doubt a hundred years ago, +except for a new coat of tan on the stone. From those upper windows +Marjorie looked out on the coach going away toward Edinburgh. The +ground floor is occupied by a book store, where I could buy no book +about Marjorie. Under a window you enter the archway and find yourself +in a little green-grassed court, which is all that is left of Marjorie's +garden. The house proper fronted the garden in that comfortable +excluding way which British people still prefer for their places of +habitation. It is still occupied as a dwelling, and the nursery still +looks as it did in Marjorie's day, and the drawing-room, where she wrote +that letter to Isa Keith--"I now sit down on my botom to answer all your +kind and beloved letters." The door of the nursery was open. I +remembered those last days, when lying ill, her mother asked Marjorie if +there was anything she wished. "Oh, yes, if you would just leave the +room door open a wee bit, and play 'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will +lie still and think and enjoy myself." + + "I'm wearin' awa', Jean, + Like snaw wreaths in thaw, Jean, + I'm wearin' awa', + To the Land o' the Leal." + +The kirkyard lies on the outskirts of the town. It was a beautiful place +as the Scotch sun sank behind the Fife hills and the Firth. The +organist was playing and the music drifted out through the narrow +lancet windows when I found the little white cross marked "Pet +Marjorie," and the old gray tombstone with its simple token, "M. F. +1811." + +For a hundred years then she has been lying there. But Marjorie has +become one of the immortal dream children of the world. I laid my fresh +flowers beside another's which had withered, and went my ways into the +dusk. + + +_St. Andrews_ + +Past Kirkcaldy the road leaves the sea and runs northward through +meadows between fields which have the look of centuries-old cultivation, +at peace like the fields and villages of the English Midland, to St. +Andrews. + + "St. Andrews by the Northern Sea, + A haunted town it is to me! + A little city, worn and gray, + The gray North Ocean girds it round; + And o'er the rocks, and up the bay, + The long sea-rollers surge and sound; + And still the thin and biting spray + Drives down the melancholy street, + And still endure, and still decay, + Towers that the salt winds vainly beat. + Ghost-like and shadowy they stand + Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sands. + + "St. Leonard's Chapel, long ago + We loitered idly where the tall + Fresh-budded mountain ashes blow + Within thy desecrated wall; + The tough roots rent the tombs below, + And April birds sang clamorous, + We did not dream, we could not know + How hardly Fate would deal with us! + + "O broken minster, looking forth + Beyond the bay, above the town, + O winter of the kindly North, + O college of the scarlet gown!" + +Small wonder St. Andrews is the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland, and +smaller wonder, remembering the Calvinistic wind, that here happened the +brunt of the fight between the old faith and the new. + +It is a clean and seemly town, with much historic memory and much +present day dignity, a small gray town, "the essence of all the +antiquity of Scotland in good clean condition," said Carlyle. Its +ancient sights the cathedral and the castle; its living sight the +university and the golf links. + +The town stands on a promontory, three long streets converging on the +cathedral and castle lying in ruins. The cathedral, a hundred years in +the building, and very splendid in its wealth of detail, its vastness +of space like that of York or Amiens, was dedicated in the days of The +Bruce, with the king present to endow it with a hundred marks "for the +mighty victory of the Scots at Bannockburn, by St. Andrew's, the +guardian of the realm." For three hundred years its wax tapers lighted +the old rites according to which The Bruce worshiped; he was not +covenanted. Then the torch of the reformation was applied to it, the +torch of the flaming tongue of John Knox. + +To-day there are three towers left of the five--Dr. Johnson hoped that +one which looked unstable on the day of his visit, would "fall on some +of the posterity of John Knox; and no great matter!" There are massive +walls. There is no roof between us and the sky, which, after all, does +shelter the true faith, and if one misses the chanting of the monks +echoing through these arches, under this roofless space, there is the +moan of the sea, sobbing at the foot of the crag, the sea which is of no +faith and never keeps faith. And if one misses the scarlet robes of +Cardinal Beaton as he swept through these aisles in splendid procession +with all the gorgeous trappings of his retinue, there are mosses and +wild flowers to give glows of colour--one must content himself. Those +were evil days, whatever the faith; there was not much division in +matters of conduct; there may have been in matters of morals. + +[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS CASTLE.] + +The castle stands stalwart on the rock promontory washed by the ocean, +and the ocean breaks angrily at its base like a creature robbed over +long of its prey. It is not the castle in which the Cardinal lived, but +it was built soon after, and wrecked so thoroughly, and looks so very +ancient, that one would fain believe; and the guide will tell, unless +you prevent him, that it was at these windows that the Cardinal sat at +his ease and witnessed the entertainment of the auto da fe of the +non-conformist, George Wishart, burned alive on March 28, 1542; about +the time Philip the Second was burning heretics in the Old Plaza at +Madrid, and a little before Queen Mary spouse to Philip, was burning +them in England. And it was only two months later, May 29, when workmen +were strengthening the castle at the orders of the Cardinal against this +very thing that happened, that the reformers made their way in, killed +the Cardinal, and hung him "by the tane arm and the tane foot," from the +very balcony where he had sat to enjoy Wishart's burning. A very +barbarous time. As Wishart had lain in the Bottle Dungeon months before +his burning, so Beaton lay in the dungeon in salt, seven months before +his burial. + +John Knox joined the reformers, holding the town until it was taken by +the French fleet--"defended their castle against Scotland, France, and +Ireland all three"--surrendering to Strozzi, Prior of Capua, a Knight of +Rhodes; so was the great world made small in those days by errant +knights and captains and hired mercenaries. The French captain entered, +"and spoiled the castle very rigorously," lest it should be "a +receptacle for rebels." All this in the time of the Regency of Mary of +Lorraine. + +Knox was taken and sent to the galleys for a year. Then he returned, and +was frequently in St. Andrews, preaching in the town kirk, founded, +perhaps, by the confessor of Saint Margaret, preaching here some of his +last sermons. "I saw him everie day of his doctrine go hulie and fear," +wrote James Melville, "with a furrning of martriks about his neck, a +staff in the an hand," and lifted up to the pulpit "whar he behovite to +lean at his first entrie; bot or he had done with his sermont, he was so +active and vigorus, that he lyk to ding that pulpit in blads and fly out +of it." The pulpit held. And so did the doctrine of Knox. + +The square tower of St. Regulus, a pre-Norman bit of architecture, +perhaps Culdee, stands southeast of the cathedral. Dr. Johnson was +indignant with Boswell that he missed it. This with the many other +towers of church and college make St. Andrews a towered town. + +There is an air, an atmosphere, in St. Andrews; it is an academic town, +serene, certain of itself, quiet, with wide streets and gray stone +buildings. It is full of dignity, full of repose, as a northern Oxford +combined with a northern Canterbury should be. There is a spell of +ancientry over the gray old walls, but it is unbroken ancientry; if +there is a bar sinister, the present generation has forgotten it. + +And, of course--oh, not of course, but primarily--there is golf. There +is golf everywhere in Scotland. The golf ball and not the thistle is the +symbol of Scotland to-day, and from the Tee at St. Andrews the Golf Ball +has been driven round the world. James VI, careful Scot, recognized golf +as an industry, and granted letters patent in 1618 for the manufacture +of golf balls--the old leather, feather-stuffed sphere--to James +Melville and William Berwick. + +Edinburgh is ringed about with golf courses, public and private. So is +Scotland. The Firth of Forth is continuous with them, from North +Berwick where the fleeting traveler is as certain to see golf balls as +he is to see the Bass, up to St. Andrews. The Links of Leith are the +most historic, for it was on these that Charles I was playing when news +came of the Irish rebellion--and all that it led to. And here, his son, +later James II, played against two English noblemen who had declared +they could beat him, and James, cannily--true Scot!--chose the best +player in Scotland, one Paterson an Edinburgh cobbler--and gave him the +wager, and doubled it, out of which Paterson built for himself Golfer's +_Land_ in the Canongate. The Links of the Forth are not a golf course, +although there may be some who assert that they were once an ancient +course, say, for King Arthur and his Knights. + +Sealand, shoreland, it seems, makes the ideal golf course, the soil +growing with short crisp grass that makes a springy and slippery turf, +and makes a keen game; the inlander, of course, and the American +inlander, may not understand that golf can never quite be golf, +certainly never be the true Scottish rite, unless it is played near the +sea, with the tang of the sea and of golf entering into one's +blood--and, preferably at St. Andrews. + +At St. Andrews golf is a business, a sublimated business; or better, an +education. Degrees are taken in it quite as high and requiring as +thorough a training as at the University. It is to St. Andrews that the +good golfer goes when he dies. And he aspires to go there before. + +Or, rather at St. Andrews golf is a religion. Half the stories told of +golf are, as might be expected of a game which came to its flowering in +Scotland, religious, or irreligious. And one of the best of them is told +in Stewart Dick's book on "The Forth." A Scots minister was playing and +playing rather badly, and expressing himself in words if not in strokes. +(Only those of you who have read "Sentimental Tommy" will understand +that unconsciously I have played on the word "stroke!") The minister +exclaimed bitterly as he emerged from his unholy battle with the +bunker--is Bunker Hill, perhaps a hazard in golf?--"Ah maun gie it up! +ah maun gie it up!" "What!" cried his partner alarmed, "gie up gowf?" +"Naw, naw," returned the minister, "gie up the meenistry." + +Perhaps to amend again, golf at St. Andrews is life. And in their death +they are not divided. The graveyard near the Abbey, with stones hoary +from the sixteenth century, is renowned to-day because it contains the +graves of good golfers, Allan Robertson, old Tom Morris, and young Tom +Morris, the greatest golfer since Paterson, dead at the pathetic age of +24; after that comes a man's best golfing years, that is, for his +pleasure. Young Tom's grave is marked by an elaborate monument with an +inscription that befits a king. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +TO THE NORTH + + +One leaves Edinburgh for the North--the haunted North--as in a royal +progress. The train moves out of the Waverley station, and through the +Gardens, under the very shadow of Castle Rock. + +And it moves through the scant few miles of country, richly cultivated, +suburban fairly, yet there are level wheatlands, and country cottages +and orchards; it is southern, English, these few miles down to the +Forth. + + "The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean, + We bowled along a road that curved its spine + Superbly sinuous and serpentine + Thro' silent symphonies of summer green, + Sudden the Forth came on us--sad of mien, + No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line; + A sheet of dark dull glass, without a sign + Of life or death, two beams of sand between, + Water and sky merged blank in mist together, + The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship's spars + Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze: + We felt the dim, strange years, the gray, strange weather, + The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars, + Where Lancelot rides clanking thro' the haze." + +To every one comes this sense of strange years and a strange land, even +at Queensferry, even to Henley. + +The inn, where we have all put up in imagination, with Scott, and again +with Stevenson, lies under the bridge, as though it would escape the +quick curious gaze from these iron girders so high above what Scott ever +dreamed or Davy Balfour. And then, the train creeps out over this modern +audacity, this very ugly iron spanning of the river. Fortunately we are +upon it and cannot see its practical, monstrous being, "that monster of +utility," as Lord Rosebery called it. He should know its phrase, since +it is ever present in the view from his Dalmeny Park, lying east of the +Bridge and south of the Forth. + +This is precisely where Queen Margaret was ferried to and fro a thousand +years ago. The monks who had charge of the ferry took from the toll +every fourth and every fortieth penny--a delightful bit of geometric +finance. Who could calculate and who would dispute the calculation, of +fourth and fortieth? + + +_Dunfermline_ + + "The King sits in Dunfermline toun + Drinking the blude-red wine." + +Because of such lines as these I would cross far seas, merely to have +been, if far lonely destructive centuries after, in the very place of +their being. + +For Dunfermline is surely a very kingly name for a king's town, and +"blude-red" wine is of such a difference from mere red, or blood-red +wine. What wonder that Alexander III, of whom it is written, went to his +death over at Kinghorn in such a tragic way! + +But the king who forever sits in Dunfermline is that Malcolm of the +eleventh century who brings hither something more than legend yet +something as thrilling, as "authentic" as legend. Malcolm is the son of +Duncan, in Shakespeare's play, and in history. + + "The son of Duncan + From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, + Lives in the English court; and is received + Of the most pious Edward with such grace + That the malevolence of fortune nothing + Takes from his high respect." + +Malcolm, after "the deep damnation of his taking off," fled from the red +wrath of Macbeth and into the far prophecy of Banquo, to the court of +Edward the Confessor. There perhaps he met Margaret; or perhaps not, +since she was grand-niece to the Confessor, and Malcolm was a +middle-aged man when this first royal Scottish romance occurs. When he +returned he built himself a castle here on the safe north side of the +Forth; if ever any place were safe in that eleventh century. He waited +here the coming of Margaret, and she came, the first Margaret of +England. + +It was the first year after the Conquest, and Princess Margaret with her +brother and sister were fleeing to her mother's people in Bohemia. They +were wrecked far north in the Firth of Forth--which thereby becomes part +of the legendary coast of Bohemia. She landed at St. Margaret's Hope, +the first bay to the west of North Queensferry. Malcolm saw her from his +high tower--and they were married--and they lived happily ever after, +and richly for a quarter of a century; and they live immortally now. + +Their history is certain, but it reads like a romance. It may be read, +very exquisitely set forth, in "The Tides of Spring," a one-act drama +by Arthur Upson, the young American poet whose sonnet on Calton Hill I +have just quoted; a poet who went to his death so tragically and so +beautifully in Lake Bemidji in Minnesota, a few years ago. + +The story in the play, of Malcolm and Margaret, is all apple blossoms +and spring tides; it is very lovely. Margaret has met Malcolm before, +and destiny brings her to Scotland and to the king. It is a beautiful +beginning to a long enduring love story that through all the reality of +history shows a tender devotion from this stern northern king to the +saintly queen from the Saxon South. + +They safeguarded themselves and their royal flock in Edinburgh, but they +lived in Dunfermline. Margaret knew a richer and a more religious life +than Malcolm, and she it was who laid the foundations of the kingdom, in +court and church. "Whatever she refused, he refused also; whatever +pleased her, he also loved, for the love of her," says her confessor. +English Margaret, unlike the later English Margaret of Alexander III, +did not find the North "a sad and solitary place"; and unlike the +English Margaret of James IV she was saintly, a white pearl in this wild +red time. + +Malcolm and Margaret became the father and mother of a royal brood, +four kings of Scotland, and of Queen Matilda of England--surely Banquo +saw clearly on that terrible night; his prophecy began with a royal +rush. + +But who would not live a lovely and pleasant life in this well-placed +royal burg, serene upon her hill? Rich green fields spread down to the +Forth, the red network of the bridge lifts itself into view, far to the +left sweeps the Firth out to North Berwick Law and the Bass, and +Edinburgh swims in the haze against the leonine mountain that is ever +her guard. + +The Abbey gives the town its special dignity. There is nothing left of +the church built by Queen Margaret--where she robbed the box of the +money the king had just given at mass if she found the poor requiring +more immediate help. But this ancient nave built by Margaret's son David +is so very ancient that one could well spare the accurate historic +knowledge that it is a generation too late for emotion. There are +ponderous round pillars that could have sustained all the history we +require of them, high casements, a bare triforium, altogether a Davidic +place, a simplicity, a truth about it, that we would not dispute. + +The new church was built a century ago over the old, and the ancient +nave is like an aisle in the new. Certain details, like the little +Norman doorway, once walled-up in the time of Knox, reward us with their +preserved beauty. + +The tombs of Malcolm and Margaret are without the wall. Malcolm perhaps +is there; they carried bodies far in those days of material +resurrection, and would have brought Malcolm from Northumberland. But +Margaret, canonized next century, was too precious to remain in Ultima +Thule, so Spain carried her away--and who knows where she rests? + +But within, before the high altar--or shall we say since this is a +reformed place, before the pulpit?--rests the body of The Bruce. It is +no doubt The Bruce. For Dunfermline was forgotten in rebellious times, +and the tombs were undisturbed. Even in the North transept there rest +the bones of eleven kings earlier than The Bruce. + +Yes, it is very certain The Bruce, wrapped in gold cloth in the +thirteenth century, his heart only missing and lying at Melrose. Scott +who was everywhere and investigating everything saw the tomb opened and +pronounced--King Robert Bruce. One could wish the great letters about +the modern tower looking like an electric sign, were "reformed." But +here within the quiet, to stand at the very spot where is the dust of +so mighty a man, mighty in valour, mighty in sovereignty--I find it a +more substantial emotion than I have felt in the Invalides. + +Ancientry preserves its unbroken descent outside the church. The mother +of Wallace is buried here, and the thorn he planted to mark her grave +still flourishes, to the ninth century after. + +The people who sit in Dunfermline town have not too much concern for +King Robert and King Alexander. Nor do they do much sitting, these busy +industrious Dunfermliners. They are living their own lives, and making +for themselves profit through the generosity of a later fellow citizen. + +Dunfermline is a center of great coal fields, and center of the Scotch +linen making. So the town is modern, looks modern, and the people move +briskly. If they know you are a tourist on ancient errand bent, they +look curiously. You come from so far to recapture ancient life, when you +might have so much modern life in your own country. + +They know what America means. For Andrew Carnegie is their fellow +citizen, or would be had he not become an American. Seventy years ago he +was born in a cottage toward which the Dunfermline folk look with the +attention we show the Abbey. And Carnegie has not only given a library +to Dunfermline--yes, a library--Malcolm could not read Margaret's books, +but he had them richly bound and bejeweled and kissed them in reverence +of her. But the Laird has given a technical school, and the Pittencrieff +Glen, which is a lovely pleasure ground with the scant stones of +Malcolm's palace above, and a trust of two million and a half dollars, +which the wise town corporation is busy utilizing for the advancement of +Dunfermline town. + + + + +_Loch Leven_ + + +And on to Loch Leven. I cannot think that any one can come upon this +castle without emotion. Or he should never come to Scotland. + +It is a famous fishing lake, a peculiar kind of trout are abundant, +twenty-five thousand taken from it each year; rather I have given the +round numbers, but an exact toll of the fish taken is required by law, +and for the past year it was, with Scottish accuracy, something more or +something less than twenty-five thousand. The lake is controlled +altogether by an anglers association. No boat can row on it, no +fisherman can cast his line, but by permission. + +There is a small shop in Edinburgh where tickets and tackle can be +taken, and much advice from the canny Scot who keeps the shop, and who +would make your fishing expedition a success. "I don't know what your +scruples are," he ventured, "but if ye want the Loch Leven boatmen to be +satisfied, I'd advise ye to take wi' a bit o' Scotch. A wee bit drappie +goes a long wa." + +"Just a wee deoch and doris!" + +We remembered Harry Lauder, and wondered if we could say "It's a braw +bricht moon licht nicht." Or would those redoutable boatmen ken that we +were but pretending to Scotch and even suspect our "Scotch"? + +They did not. + +The Green hotel is an excellent place to stay, kept by a Scotchman who +knows that in America every one knows every one else. We slept in +feather beds, and we inspected the collection of "stanes," one of the +best I have ever seen in Scotland, a great variety, some of them natural +boulders, some wood with iron weights--someday I must brave the rigours +of a Scotch winter and see them curl on Duddingston or on Leven. And I +should like to see Bob Dunbar of St. Paul, champion curler of America, +measure his skill against the champion of Scotland. + +And, of course, there was talk with the Scot host. "So ye're American. +Well, maybe ye ken a mon that lives in Minn'apolis. He's twa sisters +live here; and he's built a hoose for them." It happened that we did ken +of this man, who came from Kinross to Minneapolis with only his Scotch +canniness, and has built the Donaldson business into one of the great +department stores of America. + +And next day, after we had slept on feather beds, we had our fishing in +Loch Leven, with thousands of wild swan disputing our possession; a big +boat, with big oars, sweeps, one man to each oar, one a loquacious +fellow with no dialect (he might as well have been English), and the +other taciturn with a dialect thick as mud or as Lauder's. And we caught +two of the twenty-five thousand odd which were credited to that year. + +As the train came alongside Loch Leven on its way to Kinross station, +suddenly I felt Mary as I never have realized her, before or since. +There across the lake lay St. Serf's isle, and there rose the keep of +the old castle. And over that water, as plainly--more plainly, than the +fishing boats that lay at their ease--I saw her take boat on a still +evening, May 2, 1568, at half past seven o'clock from prison--to +liberty--to prison! + +I was not mistaken. She who was with me saw it, as distinctly, as +vividly. Perhaps it was that all our lives this had been to us one of +the great adventuring moments--for which we would exchange any moment of +our lives. We were idolaters always, Mariolaters. And now we know that +places are haunted, and that centuries are of no account; they will give +up their ghosts to those who would live in them. + + "Put off, put off, and row with speed, + For now is the time and the hour of need, + To oars, to oars, and trim the bark, + Nor Scotland's queen be a warder's mark; + Yon light that plays 'round the castle moat, + Is only the warder's random shot; + Put off, put off, and row with speed, + For now is the time and the hour of need. + + "Those pond'rous keys shall the kelpies keep, + And lodge in their caverns, so dark and deep, + Nor shall Loch Leven's tower and hall + Hold thee, our lovely lady, in thrall; + Or be the haunts of traitors sold, + While Scotland has hands and hearts so bold. + Then onward, steersman, row with speed, + For now is the time and the hour of need. + + "Hark! the alarum bell has rung, + The warder's voice has treason sung, + The echoes to the falconets roar, + Chime sweetly to the dashing shore; + Let tower, hall, and battlement gleam, + We steer by the light of the taper's gleam, + For Scotland and Mary on with speed, + Now, now, is the time and the hour of need!" + +Because of that experience, because of the feeling I have for Queen +Mary, I have never landed upon St. Serf's island. It has happened, quite +without my making intentional pilgrimage, that I have been in many +places where Queen Mary has been; and willingly I have made my +accidental pilgrimages of loyalty. I have stood in the turret at Roscoff +where she landed when only five, hurried from Scotland that she might +escape sinister England; in the chapel in Notre Dame where she was +married to the Dauphin; in the château at Orleans where she lived with +him much of that brief happy French life she loved so dearly; in the two +small garret chambers where she lodged in Coventry; in Hardwick Hall, +where Bess of Hardwick was her stern jailer; at Fotheringay where +nothing remains of that ensanguined block but a low heap of stones which +the grass covers; in Peterborough where she found her first resting +place; in Westminster her last final resting place; and in many and many +a haunted place of this Scottish land. + +And just before starting north I made a little journey to Linlithgow +which lies twenty miles west of Edinburgh. The palace overlooks a quiet +blue loch, a blue smiling bit of water, on which much royalty has looked +forth, and on which the eyes of Mary first looked. There, in the +unroofed palace of Linlithgow, in the "drawing-room," in December, 1542, +was born that queen who ever since has divided the world. + + "Of all the palaces so fair + Built for the royal dwelling, + In Scotland far beyond compare + Linlithgow is excelling. + And in the park in jovial June + How sweet the merry linnet's tune, + How blithe the blackbird's lay." + +It was the dower-house of Scottish queens, and hither James V brought +Mary of Lorraine after he had married her at St. Andrews. (I wondered if +there was any haunting memory of Margaret of Denmark who sat here sewing +when the nobles raged through the palace seeking the life of James III. +Or of Margaret of England as she sat here waiting for James IV to return +from Flodden.) + +[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM, LINLITHGOW PALACE, WHERE QUEEN MARY WAS +BORN.] + +Of the regency of Mary of Lorraine, when James V died and Mary was a +baby, Knox spluttered that it was "as semlye a sight (yf men had eis) +as to putt a sadill upoun the back of ane unrowly kow." Knox did not +pick his language with any nicety when he said his say of women and the +monstrous regiments of them. And to his Puritan soul there could come no +approval of the love affairs of Mary of Lorraine, such as that one sung +by the Master of Erskine, who was slain at Pinkiecleuch-- + + "I go, and wait not quhair, + I wander heir and thair, + I weip and sichis rycht sair + With panis smart; + Now must I pass away, away, + In wilderness and lanesome way, + Alace! this woeful day + We suld departe." + +And now there is neither Margaret nor Mary, neither regent nor reformer, +palace of neither Linlithgow nor Leven. How the destructions of man have +thrown palaces and doctrines open to the winds of heaven. And how +purifying this destruction. And what precious things have passed with +them, what tears of women have been shed, and how are the mouths of men +become dust. + +Loch Leven has one lovely gracious memory of Mary in the days before +everything was lost. She was lodging here, and had sent for Knox to come +from Edinburgh. + +"She travailed with him earnestly for two hours before her supper, that +he would protect the Catholic clergy from persecution." Knox slept in +the castle, but "before the sun," as he records, he was awakened by the +sound of horns and of boats putting off to the mainland. For the queen +would go a-hawking. + +Presently Knox was roused. The queen would have him join her "be-west +Kinross," to continue the conversation. + +The reformer did not rise as early as the queen--the serenity of that +righteous conscience! He rose reluctantly at her summons. His reforming +eyes, no doubt, looked with displeasure on the exquisite beauties of the +unreformed morning, the mists lying soft on the Lomonds, day just +emerging from night. + +So he joined her, and they rode together, she on her horse, he on his +hackney. + +And the morning came on, and the day was a glory. + +Mary warned Knox that a certain Bishop sought to use him, and Knox +afterward acknowledged the value of her warning. She asked him to settle +a quarrel between Argyle and his wife, her half sister, as Knox had done +before. And often no doubt she glanced at her hawk hanging in the high +Scottish sky. + +And finally she declared--"as touching our reasoning of yesternight, I +promise to do as ye required. I shall summon the offenders and ye shall +know that I shall minister justice." + +And the reformer, softened by the morning, and by Mary's eyes--"I am +assured then that ye shall please God and enjoy rest and prosperity +within your realm." + +And Knox rode off. And Mary rode hawking. + +The time was not yet come when Mary should say--"Yon man gar me greet +and grat never tear himself. I will see if I can gar him greet." + +Or, for Knox to pray--"Oh, Lord, if thy pleasure be, purge the heart of +the Queen's Majestie from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from +the bondage and the thralldom of Satan." + + +_Perth_ + +Perth may be the Fair City, but it is scarce fair among cities, and is +chiefly regarded even by itself as a point of departure, the Gate of the +Highlands. The railway platform is at least a third of a mile long, and +very bewildering to the unsuspecting visitor who thought he was merely +coming to the ancient Celtic capital. + +For, very far backward, this was the chief city of the kingdom, before +Scotland had spread down to the Forth, and down to the Border. Even so +recently (?) as the time of James the First it was held the fairest city +in the kingdom. But the assassination of that monarch must have led the +Jameses to seek a safer city in which to be fair. + +There is a touch of antiquity about the town. One is shown the house of +the Fair Maid; in truth that being the objective of the casual traveler +signs in the street point the way. It may or may not be. But we agreed +to let Scott decide these things and he, no doubt, chose this house. +Curfew Street that runs by, looking like a vennel--vennel? I am +certain--was inhabited rather by lively boys, and no fair head looked +out from the high window that would have furnished an excellent framing +for the fair face of Catherine Glover. + +The North Inch I found to be not an island in the Tay, but a meadow, +where every possible out-door activity takes place among the descendants +of Clans Chattan and Quhele--there is race-course, golf links, cricket +field, football, grazing, washing. I trust the clans are somewhat +evener now in numbers, although there were left but one Chattan to level +the Quheles. Coming from the Chattan tribe I must hope the centuries +since that strifeful day have brought reëxpansion to the Chattans. + +Farther up the Inch, onto the Whin, the eye looks across to Scone. The +foot does not cross, for there is nothing left of the old Abbey, not +even of the old palace where Charles II, last king crowned in Scotland, +suffered coronation--and was instructed in the ways of well doing +according to the Covenant. Even the stone of destiny was gone then, +brought from Dunstaffnage, and taken to Westminster. + +There is nothing, or only stones, left of the Blackfriar's Monastery in +which James, the poet-king, suffered death. Surely he was born too soon. +As last instead of first of the Jameses, what might he not have done in +the ways of intelligence and beauty, as England's king as well as +Scotland's? Very beautifully runs his picture of Lady Joanna Beaufort, +seen from a window in Windsor-- + + "The fairest and the freshest flower, + That ever I saw before that hour, + The which o' the sudden made to start + The blood of my body to my heart ... + Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly creature, + Or heavenly thing in form of nature?" + +He came back from his enforced habitation in England accompanied by Lady +Joanna as Queen, and determined "if God gives me but a dog's life, I +will make the key keep the castle and the brachen bush the cow." It was +a dog's death the gods gave. The nobles, the Grahams, would not keep the +castle. So in Blackfriars the king was "mercilessly dirked to death," +notwithstanding that Catherine Douglass--the Douglasses were with James +then--made a bar across the door with her arm where the iron had been +sinisterly removed. A dark scene, with "the fairest flower" looking on. + +So, I think it not so ill, even though time delayed over a hundred +years, that John Knox (May, 1559) should have preached such an +incendiary sermon that in three days there was nothing left of Black or +Gray friary but the broken stones. + +Nor is there anything left of Gowrie house, where James VI was almost +entrapped and almost slain--"I am murdered--treason--treason"; the jail +stands on its site. Huntington Tower still stands down the Tay; and +there also James very nearly came to his death, at the plotting of the +son of that Ruthven who killed Rizzio and forced Mary to abdicate. + +[Illustration: HUNTINGTON TOWER.] + +Kinnoul Hill overlooks the town, and furnishes a very fair view of the +Fair City. No doubt it was from this height that the Roman looked +down upon the Tay-- + + "Behold the Tiber! the vain Roman cried, + Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie's side; + But where's the Scot that would the vaunt repay, + And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?" + +It is more wonderful to-day to know that salmon weighing seventy pounds +are sometimes taken from this Tay. The river leads down through the rich +Carse of Gowrie, toward Dundee and marmalade. Thither we shall not go; +but it shall come to us. + +Ruskin spent his childhood in Perth and did not like it. But Ruskin +liked so little in the world, except--"that Scottish sheaves are more +golden than are bound in other lands, and that no harvests elsewhere +visible to human eye are so like the 'corn of heaven,' as those of +Strath Tay and Strath Earn." That is the way for to admire, for to see; +all, or nothing was Ruskin's way. + +Ruskin married in Perth, one of its fairest maids, who lived on the +slope of Kinnoul Hill; and then, unmarrying, the fair lady, looking very +fair in the painted pictures, married a painter who once was very much +about Perth. + +Perth is also the "Muirton" of "The Bonnie Brier Bush." So some have +found these environs bonny. + +In truth it is a lovely surrounding country. And have you not from +childhood, if you read "Macbeth" as early as did Justice Charles E. +Hughes, thought Birnam and Dunsinane the loveliest names in the world? +Six miles up the Tay through bonny country, stands Dunsinnan Hill; not +so lovely as our Dunsinane; once it was Dunscenanyse! But Shakespeare +always gave words their magic retouching. And once there stood here the +castle of Dunsinane where a certain Lady walked in her sleep, and then +slept. And below, you see Birnam wood-- + + "Till great Birnam wood + Do come to Dunsinane." + +To see that wood wave in the wind is fairly eerie! + +Dunkeld is less of a city, more of a memory, exquisite in its beauty, +lodged in a close fold of the Highlands. And you reach it through the +station, cis-Tay, called Birnam! + +It is a quiet peaceful place, more like a now quiet Border town. Hither +to this cathedral, the precious remains of Saint Columba were brought by +the MacAlpine. So I suppose they still rest here, that wandering dust, +that missionary zeal. Also, inharmony, here rest (?) the remains of the +Wolf of Badenoch, wicked son of Robert II, and--I am certain the pun has +been ventured before--bad enough. Gavin Douglass of the Vergilian +measure was bishop here, and Mrs. Oliphant has written stories round +about. + + "Cam ye by Athole, lad wi' the philabeg?" + +We are getting into the Highlands, we are at them, from now on nothing +but philabegs, pibrochs, pipes, tartans and heather, nothing but the +distilled essence of heather--heather ale? the secret was lost when the +Picts were conquered. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND + + +Many ways lead out of Perth, but best of these is the foot-path way, +picked up anywhere in the Highlands. By rail the road leads down to the +sea, past Glamis Castle, built in 1500, where the room is shown in which +Duncan was murdered in 1000, although Shakespeare says it was at +Inverness; and to Kirriemuir, if one would match the "Bonnie Brier Bush" +with "The Window in Thrums." Or by rail the road leads to the lakes of +the West, and to the Highlands of the North. + +For one short space I took it northward to the Pass of Killiecrankie, +almost in fear, as a regiment of English mercenaries is said to have +been a-feared in the Forty Five, three-quarters of a century after +Killiecrankie. For here in a last splendid moment, Graham of +Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, and sometime Bonnie Dundee, was killed, +the battle having gone gloriously his way, for the glorious cause of +Stewart and _mon droit_--some say by a silver bullet, the devil +having charmed the leaden bullets that were showered against his magic +life; those who say it are Whigs. + +[Illustration: GLAMIS CASTLE.] + +Always called Bonnie Dundee by those of us who care for romance. To +quote from Samuel Crothers, "And you say they are the same? I cannot +make them seem the same. To me there are two of them: Graham of +Claverhouse, whom I hate, and the Bonnie Dundee, whom I love. If it's +all the same to you, I think I shall keep them separate, and go on +loving and hating as aforetime." + +The Pass is lovely enough, on a summer morning, with the sun shining +fair on the Highlands, the blue hills misty in the distance, the trees +thick green on both sides the bending Garry, and not a living thing in +view, nothing which belongs to the Duke of Atholl who owns everything +hereabout, except the air and the beauty and the memory, which I packed +in my Pilgrim's Wallet. + +Because the Duke owns the cathedral I did not claim any memory beside +the dust of Bonnie Dundee-- + + "Fling open the Westport and let me gae free." + +And now, to a certain defeat which I suffered near the Pass of +Killiecrankie, when I "cam by Athole." I was without a philabeg. If I +had had it--it sounds so enhearteningly like usquebaugh--I think my +courage would have been great enough to do the thing I had crossed over +seas to do--to walk from Blair Athole through Glen Tilt and between the +great lift of the Cairngorms, to Braemar. I had felt that I owed it to +Scottish ancestors and to those who had lost in the Risings. + +I remembered that Queen Mary had longed to be a man. When she had come +into this North to punish Huntley, so the Scottish calendar states, "She +repenteth of nothing, but when the lords and others came in the morning +from the watch, that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie +all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and a +knapschall (helmet), a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword." Her father's +errant soul was hers. And once she ventured it, but in fear of her life, +when she fled from the wraith of Darnley, to the scandalizing of the +mongers, "Her Majestie, in mennis claithes, buttit and spurrit, departed +that samin nicht of Borthwick to Dunbar, quhairof no man knew saif my +Lord Duke and sum of his servants, wha met Her Majestie a myll off +Borthwick and conveyed her hieness to Dunbar." + +[Illustration: GLEN TILT.] + +I added another Scottish defeat. For it was excessively warm that +summer, and Scotland can be as warm and as dry as Kansas. It is thirty +miles, the mountain way. There is no inn. There is possibility--there is +danger--of losing the way. There are no wolves, I suppose, and certainly +no Wolf of Badenoch. But there were the unknown terrors. + +So we walked a certain stent into Glen Tilt, enough to know that it is +wild, gloomy, one of the strangest wildest places, Ben-y-Gloe, the +"Mountain of the Mist," rising out of the early morning mist, yet not so +mysteriously or majestically as the Mountain Going to the Sun. But no +valley in our Mountain West has ever seemed more empty. And I suppose +since Pictish time this glen has been deserted. There were deer, red +deer, that thought they were free, and who looked out of their coverts +indifferently. We had not the heart to tell them that they belonged, +body and soul, to the Duke of Atholl. After the Porteous riots, Queen +Caroline, presiding in the place of George who was absent in his +favourite Hanover, threatened "to turn Scotland into a hunting field." +The Duke of Argyle thereupon hinted that he would have to "return to +look after my hounds." Queen Caroline seems sovereign to-day. And +especially on August eleventh, the day before St. Grouse Day, there is +an ominous quiet. + +So we returned by way of Coupar Angus--meekly remembering the proverb, +"he that maun to Coupar, maun to Coupar." Here we changed cars, nearly +losing the train, because we were so engrossed in watching the loading +of the luggage, the Scotch porter cheering on his assistant, "we're twa +strong men, haud awa, let's be canny." And in the great gold sunset that +was like the glory of God upon the heavenly Highlands. + +We came to Blairgowrie, where we heard in the twilight on the hills +above the town a bird of magic such as I have never heard elsewhere. Was +it a nightingale, or a night lark? It sang like these. + +Next morning we took coach across these great hills, by way of Glenshee, +a very lovely way of going, and not to be regretted, in its dashing +splendour of a coach and six--except that it was not a thirty-mile walk. +But it is to be historically remembered, because it is the way Mar's men +came down to the Strath of Tay, and brought the Rising into the +Lowlands. We would go to meet them. + +It was a memorable day. Not even the Simplon pass taken on a June day +when the road ran between fresh coach-out-topping walls of glittering +snow can make one forget the road over the Spittal of Glenshee. There +were impossibly purple mountains, indigo-deep, deeper purple than any +hills I have ever seen, so does the ripened heather dye the distances +more deeply. There were rocky glens, great loneliness, a mansion here +and there only just on leaving Blairgowrie, Tullyveolan, of course; +scarce a cottage even on the roadside; once a flock of sheep, near the +Spittal, being worked by Scotch collies, with an uncanny, or, canny, +second sense to get the master's direction. There was lunch at the +Spittal, a one-time Hospice, like that on the Simplon. And I wondered if +the song ran of this lovely little glen set in the midst of so much +primeval world-- + + "O wharawa got ye that auld crookit penny, + For ane o' bright gowd wad ye niffer wi' me? + Richt fou are baith ends o' my green silken wallet, + And braw will your hame be in bonnie Glenshee. + + "For a' the bricht gowd in your green silken wallet + I never wad niffer my crookit bawbee." + +The road at the top of the world runs smoothly enough. But when the +Devil's elbow is reached, a tremendous and dangerous turn in the road, +every one dismounts from the coach, and the sight of an adventurous +motor car coming down the turn does not decrease one's sense of peril. + + +_Braemar_ + +And then the sight of Braemar, and a consciousness that if you are about +to spend more money at the Fife Arms or the Invercauld than any but +royalty has a right to spend--royalty not having earned it--the +adventure has been worth it. + +And to have forgotten but as the coach flashes by to read the tablet-- + + "Here Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the summer of 1881, and wrote + 'Treasure Island.'" + +this is to be home again. + +Of course our first pilgrimage was to the Invercauld Arms, where we +again set up the standard on the braes of Mar. It was here that Malcolm +Canmore instituted the Highland Gathering which persists to this day. +And here, under cover of the hunt, so did the loyal Jacobites conceal +their intention, the Rising of the Fifteen was planned--and the hunters +became the hunted. + +[Illustration: INVERCAULD HOUSE.] + +It was evening, it was the Highlands, the great circle of mountains +lay round about. And if King James VIII and III had been defeated these +two hundred years, and dead a lesser time, and our loyalty had always +been to the Prince who came rather to establish his father than himself, +the Fifteen seemed like yesterday. In this remote high corner of the +world anything is possible, even the oblivion of time. It seemed very +vital, that faraway moment, which in truth few persons to-day take into +reckoning; even history recks little of it. But very near in this +illusory twilight--was that the Fiery Cross that glimmered in the +darkness? + + "The standard on the braes o' Mar + Is up and streaming rarely; + The gathering pipe on Lochnagar + Is sounding loud and clearly. + The Highlandmen frae hill and glen, + In martial hue, wi' bonnets blue, + Wi' belted plaids and burnished blades, + Are coming late and early. + + "Wha' wadna join our noble chief, + The Drummond and Glengarry? + Macgregor, Murray, Rollo, Keith, + Panmure and gallant Harry, + Macdonald's men, Clanranald's men, + Mackenzie's men, Macgilvrary's men, + Strathallan's men, the Lowland men + Of Callander and Airlie." + +Next day we met a gentleman we forever call "The Advocate of Aberdeen." +In any event the lawyers of Aberdeen have styled themselves "Advocates" +since so addressed by King James. We did not know that when we named +him, but we preferred it to any Sandy or "Mac" he might legally carry. +Having been informed by him that our name was Lowland and we were +entitled to none of the thrills of the Highlands, we failed to mount +farther than the third stage of the Morrone Hill. The wind blew a gale +from the nor'nor'west, like those better known to us from the +sou'sou'west. It was humiliating to have the Advocate of Aberdeen +instruct us when we returned that if we had gone on we might have proved +our Highland blood. + +We did not attempt Ben MacDui, although it may be approached by the +ever-easy way of pony-back, even the queen--not Mary--having mounted it +in this fashion. We were content to master, almost master, its +pronunciation according to the pure Gaelic--Muich Dhui. And then we +learned that by more accurate and later scientific measurement, MacDui +is not the tallest mountain in the kingdom, but Ben Nevis out-tops it. + +To make our peace with an almost forfeited fate, we took a dander, that +is, we walked back toward Glen Tilt by the way we had not come. There is +a happy little falls a couple of miles from the town, Corrimulzie, +plunging down a long fall through a deep narrow gorge, but very +pleasantly. We passed white milestone after white milestone, measured in +particular Scottish accuracy--we timed ourselves to a second and found +we could measure the miles by the numbers of our breaths. The forest is +thick and bosky, not an original forest, doubtless. But I was reminded +that Taylor, on his Pennyless Pilgrimage came to Braemar three hundred +years ago, and wrote "as many fir trees growing there as would serve for +masts (from this time to the end of the worlde) for all the shippes, +caracks, hoyes, galleyes, boates, drumiers, barkes, and water-crafte, +that are now, or can be in the worlde these fourty yeeres." He lamented +the impossibility of sending them down to tide water where they might +meet their proper fate. + +Only once did we meet a carriage in which we suspected that royalty, or +at least ladies-in-waiting--if Duke's wives who are royal have such +appendages--might be sitting. + +And on to the Linn of Dee, which is truly a marvelous place. The +Advocate of Aberdeen when we had asked him why so many of his townfolk +came this way, explained with a sense of possession of the greater Dee, +"we like to see what the Dee can do." Surely it can do it. In these rock +walls it has spent centuries carving for itself fantastic ways, until +not the Dalles of the St. Croix can excel its rock-bound fantasy. Given +time, the Dee can "do" pretty much as it pleases in granite. + +The few miles we ventured beyond the Linn were enough to prove that the +way was long, the wind was cold, the minstrel was infirm and old. Had we +walked all the mountain way we should have been much in need of a +"plaidie to the angry airts." This air is very bracing. + +But we sang many Jacobite songs in memory of the Risings. "Wha'll be +King but Charlie?" and "Charlie is my Darling," and "Over the sea +Charlie is coming to me," and "Will ye no come back again." And we sang +with particular satisfaction that we were not, after all, to suffer +royal wrongs--surely there is a falling away in the far generations in +the far places, since a King's son could so adventure-- + + "Dark night cam' on, the tempest roar'd, + Loud o'er the hills and valleys, + An' where was't that your Prince lay down + Who's hame should been a palace? + He row'd him in a Highland plaid, + Which cover'd him but sparely, + An' slept beneath a bush o' broom, + Oh, wae's me for Prince Charlie." + +On these braes of Mar, and in these hills and beside these very streams, +the Prince made his adventure--yes, and simply because of that adventure +will be forever remembered by those who believe in the heroic mood. + +[Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE.] + +To leave Braemar the road leads down to Ballater, with motor cars to +take it swiftly; past the castles of Mar old and new, where betimes sits +the present Earl of Mar, not conning Risings but writing to the +magazines his idea of a free Scotland, which shall have its Home Rule +like Ireland--which was once Scotland--and which may have it at the +great peace; down through an increasingly pleasant country. Balmoral +Castle looks deserted now of its queen--and when queens desert, places +are much emptier than when kings leave. But "queen's weather" is still +possible here, even though the castle and our way are overshadowed by +Lochnagar, on which we bestow more than passing glance in memory of that +Gordon who was Lord Byron. + + "Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd; + My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; + On chieftains long perished my memory ponder'd, + As daily I strove through the pine-cover'd glade; + I sought not my home till the day's dying glory + Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star; + For fancy was cheer'd by traditional story, + Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr." + +And one glance at Lumphanan-- "This Macbeth then slew they there in the +wood of Lumphanan," so runs the old chronicle. + + +_Aberdeen_ + +There is no city in Scotland which seems to me to have more personality, +a more distinct personality, than Aberdeen. It is plainly a +self-sufficient city, and both in politics and in religion it thinks for +itself, mindless if its thinking is not that of the rest of the kingdom. + +Its provost cannot leave its borders; once he attended a battle, many +and many a year ago, nineteen miles from the city at Harlow, and sad to +say, he was killed. So now the provost remains in the city, he cannot +leave it more than President can leave Republic, or Pope the Vatican. + +[Illustration: MARISCHAL COLLEGE.] + +In religion, Aberdeen is strongly Episcopalian, where it is not +Catholic. In truth there is a band of Catholicism running across the +country, from Aberdeen to Skye, through the heart of the Highlands. As +might be expected, the Highlands never yielded to the reformatory +methods of John Knox, but remained of the faith. + +There is no city that looks so Scottish, and yet so different, as +Aberdeen. It is a dignified and an extraordinarily clean city. After a +rain its granite glitters as though it had been newly cut, and to one +accustomed to smoke-grimed American cities Aberdeen looks as though it +were built this morning, when no doubt much of this granite has a right +to the hoar of antiquity. + +Marischal College, founded by the Keiths, who were Earl Marischals, +boasts of being the greatest granite pile in the world, after the +Escorial. Having walked a day through a circumscribed portion of that +Spanish granite, I chose to limit my footsteps in Marischal college. +Only to verify the stone did I enter. And there it stood, over the +doorway of the inner entrance hall, that stone which gives me a certain +ancestral right of hauteur-- + + Thay half said. + Quhat say thay? + Lat thame say. + +Scots are astonishingly fond of mottoes. They carve them, like Orlando's +verse, if not on every tree, on every lintel and over every fireplace; +from _Nemo me impune lacessit_ of the royal thistle race, to every clan +and every cottage. + +King's College (1495) is an older foundation than Marischal (1593), and +where once they were rivals, since the Eighteen Sixties they have been +harmonized, and since Mr. Carnegie gave them his benefaction, education +is free in this University of Aberdeen. King's College, if not the next +greatest granite pile, has a stone cross, which is the typical capping +of noble edifice in Scotland; in truth it begins at Newcastle on Tyne +when one enters the English beginning of the Border. + +The cathedral of St. Machar's, first founded by the saint who was a +disciple of Columba, was refounded by the saint who was David I--of +course; what a busy saint this was--and looks the part of age, but of +strength rather than arrogance, with its low lying towers. + +There is an old town even in the new town, and the contrast is sharp. If +one gets lost, turns suddenly into this old part, it is a curious +experience. The buildings look medieval, French provincial, and the +people look strange and foreign; also they treat you, a foreigner, with +all that curiosity, and something of that disrespect which you, of +course, deserve, having interloped into their sanctuary. The Duke of +Cumberland lived here for six weeks before advancing on Culloden, and +while he did not "butcher" here to deserve his name, his soldiers left +as ugly a fame behind them as Montrose's men, what time he made bloody +assault on the city. + +And in Broad Street may be found the house in which George Gordon, Lord +Byron, lived in his school days. In Don Juan, he autobiographically +remembers-- + + "As 'Auld Lang Syne' brings Scotland one and all, + Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams + The Dee, the Don, Balgownie's Brig's black wall, + All my boy feelings, all my gentle dreams + Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall + Like Banquo's offspring;--floating past me seems + My childhood in this childishness of mine: + I care not--'tis a glimpse of 'Auld Lang Syne.'" + +Aberdeen is a sea city, lying between the mouths of the Dee and the Don. +A bridge, dating from 1320, crosses the Don, and Byron steadfastly +avoided it, lest he, a single son, might be found thereon on the single +foal of a mare, and the prophecy be filled, the brig fall down. + +One day in a small booth off Union Street I stopped to buy +strawberries--if you pick up southern England in early May and make +Inverness in late August, you can follow red strawberries and red +poppies in the wheat all the way from Land's End to John o' Groat's. +I asked the price of the berries and was told. I asked again, +and again. Finally, not ears but intuition told me. It was a +Scandinavian-Gaelic-English. I remembered that in Edinburgh I had +once asked a policeman the way, and hearing his reply I turned to my +friend--"Wouldn't you think you were in Minneapolis?" For especially +in Aberdeen you are looking to that Norway with which Scotland was so +closely linked, as with all the Scandinavian countries, in the early +centuries, till the Maid of Norway, granddaughter to Alexander III died +on her way to take the crown, and till after Margaret of Denmark brought +the Orkneys and the Hebrides to James III as her dowery. + + "To Norroway, to Norroway, + To Norroway o'er the faem; + The King's daughter of Norroway, + 'Tis thou maun bring her hame." + +And I remember the tragedy of that frustrated journey-- + + "O forty miles off Aberdeen, + 'Tis fifty fathoms deep, + And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, + Wi' the Scots lords at his feet." + +Remembering the sea, which I had not yet seen, I tried to make my way +down to the shore, but Aberdeen is a sea-port, and docks instead of +shore line its sea edge. What I was seeking was rather rocks-- + + "On the rocks by Aberdeen, + Where the whistlin' wave had been + As I wandered and at e'en + Was eerie--" + +And after a visit to the fishmarket, which is a truly marvelous +monstrous place, I set out to find the rocks, toward the south. + +There is never a place more rock-bound, more broken into fantastic +shapes, and worn daily and increasingly by the waves, than this east +coast. Neither Biarritz nor Brittany nor Nova Scotia is more broken or +more thunderous in resentment. I have not seen the Magellan straits. + +One is constantly conscious of fish on this east coast. The railroads +form the Great East Fish route. I have been coming up in the night from +London and had to hold my breath until we passed these swift fish trains +which have the right of way to the metropolitan market. A little south +of Aberdeen is the village of Findon; whence finnan haddie. + + +_Dunnottar_ + +The rocks which were my goal were those just below Stonehaven. At +Stonehaven the French had landed supplies for the Forty Five--as from +Montrose, a few miles farther down the coast, King James had sailed +after the failure of the Fifteen. Fishing vessels lay idly in the narrow +harbour, their tall masts no doubt come "frae Norroway o'er the faem," +since the trees on the east coast have not increased from that day when +Dr. Johnson found the sight of a tree here equal to that of a horse in +Venice. + +Dunnottar stands on a great crag of this coast, against which the sea +has beaten angrily since time and the coast began, against which it +moans and whines at low tide, and then, come high tide, rushes +thunderously in to see what havoc it can work once more. + +[Illustration: DUNNOTTAR CASTLE.] + +Dunnottar is impregnable. I cannot believe that sixteen inch guns--is it +seventeen, now?--would make impression on this great red crag. I know +they would; after Liege and Namur one knows that modern guns can outlaw +any impregnability of the past. But I do not believe. + +The road from Stonehaven runs for two miles over level country, and +then, suddenly, the edge breaks in a sheer cliff. + +Across a natural moat of great depth, on a cliff crag, stands the +castle. The road picks its way down perilously; only a mule path, and +that precipitous. Then it crosses the dry bed where once may have hung a +draw bridge, and, entering through a portcullis, it climbs to the +castle, through a winding, tortuous way, sometimes a climb, sometimes a +flight of steps, sometimes open to the sky but ramped sternly on either +side, sometimes through stone canyons; a place impossible to surprise. +Finally you reach the top, the sky. + +The top is three acres large. + +Far back, no doubt in Culdee times, a church stood there. Because +churches must be sanctuary they took the high places; otherwise why +should one lift prayer to God when the mad sea was continually +contradicting the faith? + +Sir William Keith, being a warrior with a warrior's eye, looked on the +place, found it strategically good, and built a tower thereon. He was +excommunicated by the Bishop of St. Andrew's--who did not anticipate the +Lords of the Congregation and the Covenanters. Sir William appealed to +Rome. Rome ordered the ban removed. And ordered Sir William to build a +church on the mainland, beyond the protestantism of the waves. + +It began its war history early. In 1297 four thousand English took +refuge here to escape Wallace. Nothing daunted, Wallace scaled the +cliff, entered a window--the proof is there in the window--opened the +gate, let in his men, and slaughtered the four thousand. + +Edward III took it, and Montrose besieged it. + +Then it swung back into loyal legal possession, and experienced a bit of +history worth the telling. In 1652--Montrose had been dead two +years--the Countess Dowager had taken into safe keeping the regalia of +Scotland. The castle was besieged by those who had killed their king and +would destroy the king's insignia. If the castle should fall the very +symbol of the king's royalty would be melted, as Cromwell melted the +regalia of England. The defense was not strong. At any moment it might +be forced to surrender. But the regalia must be saved. + +So the Lady Keith plotted. It was a woman's plot--always there is the +woman in Jacobitism. The wife of the minister at Kinneff paid a visit to +the wife of the governor of Dunnottar; Mrs. Grainger called on Mrs. +Ogilvie. She had been "shopping" in Stonehaven, and was returning to +Kinneff five miles down the sea. When Mrs. Grainger left the castle she +carried with her the crown of Scotland. Sitting on her horse she made +her way through the besieging lines, and her maid followed with the +scepter of Scotland and the sword in a bag on her back. The English +besiegers showed every courtesy to the harmless woman--and to the +Honours of Scotland. Mrs. Grainger carefully buried the treasure beneath +the paving of Kinneff church, and not until her death did she betray +their hiding place to her husband. + +Meanwhile Lady Keith sent her son Sir John to France. A little boat +escaping in the night carried him to the French vessel lying off shore, +and the Lady sent forth the rumour that Sir John had carried the regalia +to the King o'er the water, to Charles II at Paris. It was after the +Restoration that the aureate earth at Kinneff was dug up. The women had +saved the Scottish crown for the rightful lawful king. + +A dark chapter runs a quarter of a century later. The castle was still +loyal. In truth it was always loyal except in brief usurpations, as all +this corner of Scotland was loyal and royal and Jacobite. In 1675 in +"Whig's Vault" there lodged one hundred and sixty-seven Covenanters as +prisoners, and they lodged badly. Many died, a few escaped, the rest +were sold as slaves. Coming on ship to New Jersey as the property of +Scott of Pitlochry, Scott and his wife died and almost all the +covenanting slaves. Only a few saw the plantations of the New World, and +could resume the worship of their God. The story of Dunnottar is dark. +The castle looks the dark part it played. + +In Dunnottar churchyard on the mainland there is a Covenanter's stone, +where "Old Mortality" was working when Scott came upon him. The stone +carries a simple stern legend of heroism--and almost wins one to the +cause. + +And yet, there is evidence that in stern Dunnottar life had its moments +other than war and siege. The remnants of the castle are of great +extent; bowling gallery, ballroom, state dining-room, a library, a large +chapel, speak a varied existence. There is a watch tower, a keep, +rising forty sheer feet above the high rock, with ascent by a winding +stair, somewhat perilous after the centuries; but from the Watchman's +seat what a prospect, landward and seaward! What a sense of security in +the midst of peril! And on the farther corner of the giddy height, above +the rock and above the waves dashing far below, I found growing blue +bells of Scotland. + +There is one corner of the castle where I fain would inhabit, the +northwest corner that looks down on the sea raging cruelly upon the +rocks that are the first line of defense against the onslaught of the +sea, and that looks far over the North Sea; that sea which is more +mysterious to me and more lovely than the Mediterranean; I have seen it +a beautiful intense Italian blue, with an Italian sky above it. I have +never seen it still, always surging, raging, always cruel. Yet I should +be willing to look out on it for many unbroken days. And to hear the +somber movement of the "Keltic" sonata played upon the rocks. + +The Earl Marischal liked the view, whatever his generation. The North +was in his blood, and the sea, even though he was a landsman, spoke +adventure. The Earl's bedroom is almost habitable to-day. Once it was a +place of luxury. The plaster still clings to the walls in places, and +there is a fireplace where still one could light a fire against the +chill of the North. The date above is 1645, when Charles was still king, +and there was no threat of disloyalty. The tablet unites the arms of the +Keiths and the Seatons, the stone divided by a pillar surmounted by two +hearts joined. The Keith motto, _Veritas vincit_, underlines the Keith +shield; but I like better the Seaton motto--_Hazard yit forvard_. + +The Earl's library opens out of this. And I doubt not it was richly +stored in the days when the last Lord Marischal won here that mental +habitude which made him equal in wit and wisdom to Voltaire. And no +doubt here sat his mother, loyal Jacobite, steadfast Catholic, sending +her two sons forth to battle for the lost cause of the Stewarts--never +lost while women remember--while she looked forth on these waters and +watched for the return. The story runs in the Jacobite ballad of "Lady +Keith's Lament"-- + + "I may sit in my wee croo house, + At the rock and the reel fu' dreary, + I may think on the day that is gane, + And sigh and sab till I grow weary.... + + "My father was a good lord's son, + My mother was an earl's daughter, + An' I'll be Lady Keith again, + That day our king comes o'er the water." + + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CIRCLE ROUND + + +The iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road +which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak +stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand +castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of +beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their +deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. If +Malcolm Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve Hundreds, and the +fat Georges destroyed Inverugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and all +through the centuries that stretched between strong men built +strongholds and stronger men took them and made mock of them, still +there must have been gentleness and beauty. There were women, other than +Lady Macbeth; there were young men and maidens noble or common; and I +suppose the glamour of romance, the reality or the illusion of love, +was invented before peace and commerce became the occupations of men. + + +_Peterhead_ + +One brief journey I made along the bleak coast up to the town of +Peterhead, which looks nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has a +most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is a penal town to-day; and it is +one of a string of fishing villages, picturesque as fishing villages +are, except to the nose, "that despised poet of the senses"; and not +picturesque to the people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in +Brittany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes the ruins of Inverugie. + +It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords Marischal. It came to +them in a curious way of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some such +thing, like Dunnottar, but without the appeal to Rome. And one of the +stones of the castle carried the promise, and the threat-- + + "As lang's this stane stands on this croft + The name o' Keith shall be abaft, + But when this stane begins to fa' + The name o' Keith shall wear awa'." + +The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, late, in the Seventeen +Hundreds. He had seen a century move through strife to peace. In person +he had taken part in the Rising of the Fifteen, a young man, but still +hereditary Lord Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He had taken +no part in the Rising of the Forty Five; he was not "out" on that dark +night. But the sweeping revenge of those English times made the Keiths +attaint and--the stone dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal and +his brother made the continent their refuge, Paris in particular, +although the activities of the proposed restoration took their Lordships +to Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Petersburg. + +The younger brother, James, was made a Field Marshal by Catherine of +Russia, and that amorous termagant making love to him in the natural +course of proximity, he discreetly fled, became Field Marshal for +Frederick the Great, and not marrying--whatever the romance of the +Swedish lady--he fell at the battle of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies +buried in the _Garison Kirche_ of Berlin. A statue stands in the +Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of Prussia presented a replica to +Peterhead. And even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering the Great +King's Field Marshal, named one of the Silesian war units, the Keith +regiment. + +There is no statue to the Lord Marischal--_Maréschal d'Ecosse_, always +he signed himself. He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and +wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau, +and Frederick the Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the age of +ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. There is no statue to him, there +or here. And Inverugie lies in low ruins. + +Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late in those tottering years. +He drove out to the castle, remembering all it had meant, the long +splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and how the King, James III and +VIII--Banquo saw him also-- + + "And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass + Which shows me many more." + +James, not pretending but claiming, landed at Peterhead, lodged at +Inverugie, summoned the loyal and they came. The Standard was lifted for +a moment, and then fell. + +Breaking into tears the old Lord Marischal realized all, an epoch +closed, a Scotland no longer requiring a Marischal. He left Inverugie, +even this ruin. + +All this Northeast territory, no larger than a county in Dakota, bears +these scars of the past. + +At Elgin there are the ruins of a cathedral; ruined, not by the English +but by the Wolf of Badenoch, because my Lord Bishop had given a judgment +which did not please my Lord of Badenoch. And the Wolf, his fangs drawn, +was compelled to stand barefooted three days before the great west gate. + +At Canossa! Lands and seas and centuries divide--but there is slight +difference. + +A scant mile or two to the north of Elgin lies the ruined Spynie Castle +of the Lord Bishop, a great place for strength, with massive keep--and +fallen. "A mighty fortress is our God." Cathedrals, castles, bishops and +lords, all pass away. + + +_Cawdor_ + +As we neared one of the last of the Northern stations, we turned to each +other and asked, "How far is't called to Forres?" And suddenly all was +night and witch dance and omen and foretelling. For it is here in the +palace that Banquo's ghost appeared and foretold all that history we +have been meeting as we came northward. And next is the town of +Nairn, which has become something of a city since Boswell found it "a +miserable place"; it is still long and narrow, stretching to the sea +with its fisherfolk cottages and bonneted women like the fisher wives of +Brittany; and stretching to the Highlands at the other end, as King +James said. + +[Illustration: SPYNIE CASTLE.] + +It was here that Wordsworth heard + + "Yon solitary Highland lass, + Reaping and singing by herself; ... + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old unhappy far-off things, + And battles long ago.... + The music in my heart I bore + Long after it was heard no more." + +But one leaves the train with a curious feeling. Of course one may be a +little tired. Arm chair travel and arm chair tragedy have their +advantages. But--Nairn is the nearest point to the blasted heath. + + "Where's the place? + Upon the heath, + There to meet Macbeth." + +It is not entirely necessary that one should make Nairn and walk out to +The Heath. Any of these northern silent Scottish blasted heaths will +serve. It is as though the witches had made their mysterious +incantations anywhere, everywhere. And if Shakespeare was in Scotland in +1589--as I like to think he was--it is doubtful if he saw The Heath. +Johnson told Hannah More, so she reports, that when he and Boswell +stopped for a night at a spot where the Weird Sisters appeared to +Macbeth, they could not sleep the night for thinking of it. Next day +they found it was not The Heath. This one is, in all faith, apocryphal. +Still, if you come hither toward evening, when + + "Good things of day begin to droop and drowse" + +it is fearsome enough. Such heaths demand their legend. + + "The thane of Cawdor lives + A prosperous gentleman." + +Not so prosperous now as when he lived in the life. Shakespeare took +liberties with the Thane. He immortalized him into Macbeth! And Cawdor +Castle, out from Nairn a few paces on the burn of Cawdor, might have +been the very home of Macbeth. It is pleasant, flowery, lovely. But +also, it is stern and looks like a castle for tragedy. But not for +mystery. I did not hear a bird of prey, as some travelers report-- + + "The raven himself is hoarse + That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan + Under my battlements." + +[Illustration: _Cawdor Castle_] + +There are iron girded doors and secret apartments; not for Macbeth, but +for Lovat. This Lord of the Last Rising lived secretly for many months +in Cawdor while the Prince was moving restlessly to and fro in the +Islands. But the Prince was only twenty-five, and Lord Lovat was over +eighty. I like to think he was as young and keen to adventure as the +Prince. And I do not like to think of that beheading in the Tower-- + + "I must become a borrower of the night." + + +_Inverness_ + +The four chief cities of Scotland are arranged like a diamond for +excursion and for history. Always Scotland, unlike Gaul, has been +divided into four parts. Places of pilgrimage were Scone, Dundee, +Paisley, Melrose. Places for the quartering of Montrose were Glasgow, +Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling. And now four places are rivals; in trade +somewhat, but Glasgow leads in beauty, but Edinburgh, after all, is +unique in dignity, but Aberdeen is unbending; in the picturesque there +remains Inverness. + +The city deserves its honours. (William Black has painted it in "Wild +Eelin.") It has a life of its own. For when I first came to Inverness +there was a cattle fair on, and sheep from all over the kingdom, from +Shropshire and from the Cheviots, came to be judged in Inverness; and +men came with them who looked very modern and capable and worldly and +commercial. It was all like a county fair of Iowa, only more dignified, +with no touch of sideshow. And, of course, there is the Highland +gathering in September, which has become too much like the sideshow, too +much a show, to attract the groundlings, and not a gathering of the +clans. Still--if one must take Scotland in a gulp--this is a very good +chance at Highland colour and sound and remnants of valour. + +The town itself is full of pictures. It does not announce itself. There +is a close-built part, looking like a French provincial town, with +gabled houses, and down on the banks of the Ness the women spread their +clothes to dry as they do on a French river bank. There is a new +cathedral, very new, with an angel at the font we remembered William +Winter had liked, so we paid it respectful attention. There is a park +on the Ness to the west, where many islands and many bridges form a spot +of beauty. + +And there is Tomnahurich--The Hill of the Fairies--a sudden steep +hill-mound, where Inverness carries its dead--like the Indians who +carried them to Indian mounds high above the rivers of the American +West. The dark yews make it even more solemn; one wonders if the fairies +dare play in these shades. But it is a sweetly solemn place, and we +decided to care not what Invernessians lay buried here if we might sit +on its convenient park benches and look at far rolling Scotland and +think of fairies and of Thomas the Rimer, who, it seems, came hither all +the way from Ercildoune from Melrose to heap this mound for his burial! +The errant Scots! + +There remains no stone of Macbeth's Castle to which the gentle Duncan +came--"And when goes hence?" The county buildings--and a jail!--stand on +its site, a most modern pile. Malcolm razed that castle after he had +returned from England, and after Birnam wood had come to Dunsinane. It +was builded again; Inverness was a vantage point. Perhaps that one was +burned by the Lord of the Isles who afterward came to repentance and to +Holyrood. And builded again so that Huntley could defy Mary, and she +could take the castle and order it razed. And builded again so that +Cromwell could destroy it. And builded again as one of the five +fortresses whereby he sought to hold Scotland "Protected." And destroyed +at the Restoration which sought to destroy all the Protectorate had +built. But builded again so it might be destroyed by Prince Charles +Edward. No, I scarce think there is even the dust of the castle of +Macbeth left in Inverness, or incorporated into modern Fort George. The +"knock, knock, knock," which the porter heard at the gate, has battered +down a score of ominous strongholds. + +But still + + "The castle hath a pleasant seat; the air + Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself + Unto our gentle senses." + +For all the north of Scotland, away from the east winds, is pleasant and +lovely, with the mean climate that of London, and possible in winter and +summer. + +In the grounds there stands a statue of Flora Macdonald looking out to +the West, and carrying the legend-- + + "On hills that are by right his ain + He roams a lanely stranger." + +Could legend be better chosen to compress and carry all that story of +loyalty and courage and devotion? + +And so we moved out to Culloden. + +It was on a gray wind-swept afternoon that we made our pilgrimage. There +was no sense of rain. It was a hard sky. It spread leaden to the world. + +We chose to walk the six mile stretch. Not with comfort or any show of +splendour, not even with a one-horse carriage, would we approach +Culloden. + +The road leads over lonely Drumossie moor through a plantation of firs, +to a wild and naked spot--where all that was Scotland and nothing else +was burned out of the world by the withering fire of Cumberland, and the +remnant that would not save itself but fought to the last was cut to +pieces by his order. + +I do not suppose that even on a hot sweet afternoon could any one with a +drop of Scotch blood come hither and not feel in his face the rain and +sleet of that seventeenth of April day, 1746. If one comes on that day +the cairn is hung with flowers, white roses of course, for there are +still Jacobites left in the world who have given to no other king their +allegiance. "Pretender!" cried Lady Strange to one who had mis-spoken +in her presence, "Pretender and be dawmned to ye!" + +No, it was not the Pass of Thermopylæ, nor a Pickett's charge. Nor was +it even war. + +Nevertheless it was one of the brave moments in human history. If +hopeless and even meaningless, does not bravery give it meaning? The +Highlanders--they were the last Jacobites left, as the army of the +Butcher, Cumberland, George Second's fat son swept northward and stopped +for their larder to be well-filled before they went on--had had only a +biscuit, the day before! They were five thousand to the English ten +thousand. + +At eleven in the morning the Highlanders moved forward, the pipers +playing brave music, and they recked not that the English had the chosen +ground; theirs was not even a forlorn hope. Not if the Macdonalds, sulky +because they were on the left when since Bannockburn they had been on +the right, had fired a shot would the end have been different. + +[Illustration: BATTLEFIELD OF CULLODEN.] + +On the battlefield, looking at these mounds, the long trench of the +dead, one realizes that Scotland lies buried here. M'Gillivray, M'Lean, +M'Laughlin, Cameron, Mackintosh, Stuart of Appin--so many brave names. + + "The lovely lass of Inverness, + Nae joy nor pleasure can she see, + For e'en and morn she cries, alas! + And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e-- + + "Drumossie muir, Drumossie day! + A waefu' day it was to me! + For there I lost my father dear, + My father dear, and brothers three. + + "Their winding sheet the bluidy clay-- + Their graves are growing green to see; + And by them lies the dearest lad + That ever blest a woman's e'e. + + "Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord! + A bluidy man I trow thou be; + For mony a heart thou hast made sair + That ne'er did wrong to them or thee." + +The small remnant that was left, and was not butchered by Cumberland, +fled to the West. Sometimes one could wish Prince Charles had died at +Culloden! and yet one would not spare the wanderings, or Flora +Macdonald. Thousands of the men fled to America; thousands of Scots in +America to-day can say, "My great grandfather fought at Culloden." +Hundreds of Scots to-day are sent "home" from America to be educated. I +have met in the magnificent Highlands of Montana, Scotchmen, true +Highlanders, who had been sent to Edinburgh university that they might +be Scots, even though they carried "American" blood in their veins. + +When Boswell and Johnson came here in 1773, twenty-seven years after the +Forty Five, they found that many of the Highlanders were going to +America, leaving the lairds and the land. One M'Queen of Glenmorison was +about to go. + +"Dr. Johnson said he wished M'Queen laird of Glenmorison, and the laird +to go to America. M'Queen very generously answered he should be sorry +for it; for the laird could not shift for himself in America as he could +do." + +Small wonder that Prince Charles, knowing of this exodus, and believing +life still held for him its chances, its glories, away from Rome and +even if he was fifty-five, looked longingly over the sea, in 1776, +thinking that he might lead these rebellious colonists, so many of them +of his rebellious people, and reëstablish the House of Stewart in the +New World. Surely Burr, coming with Blennerhasset, thirty years after, +had something of the Stewart in him. + + +_The Orkneys_ + +Scotland is divided by a deep geologic cleft. Glenmore, the Great Glen, +runs southwesterly from Inverness to Fort William and Oban, cutting the +country into two parts. One is Scotland; the other is the West, the +Highlands and the Islands. One is known, the other unknown. One has been +prosperous, royal, noble; the other has been wild, independent, chief +and clans holding together. To-day, if the East is strangely quiet, the +West is strangely silent. + +In the East you know things have happened; remnants remain, ruined +castles testify; in the West it is as though they had not happened, +those far historic things; castles are heaps of blackened or crumbled +stone; or, if they stand, they stand like prehistoric remnants, and the +clachans are emptied; the Risings, the migrations, the evictions, the +extensions of deer forests and sheep pastures and grouse preserves, the +poverty, yes, and the wandering spirit of the people leading them ever +afar--where always they are Scottish down to the last drop, always +looking toward Home, but ever leaving it empty of their presence. + +It is a stranger land, though so lovingly familiar, than any I have ever +been in. I have been in valleys of the Rockies which were not so lonely +as glens in Scotland. When Hood wrote his sonnet on "Silence," beginning + + "There is a silence where hath been no sound," + +He went on to a correction-- + + "But in the antique palaces where man hath been." + +He missed the note of glens and valleys where man has been and is not. + +From the Great Glen, a series of lochs lying in a geologic "fault," and +connected more than a century ago by a series of locks, excursion may be +had into remote places, so very remote even if they lie but a half dozen +miles in the backward; the farther ones, to the Orkneys, to John o' +Groat's, to Skye, the island of mist and of Prince Charlie and Dr. +Johnson and Fiona McLeod, and vast numbers of places known to those who +seek beauty only. + +Three forts were built in the rebellious Seventeen Hundreds to hold this +far country. The forts rather betray history. And they form convenient +places of departure for those who would conquer the Highlands and the +Islands for themselves. + +Fort George, near Inverness, is still used as a depot for military +stores and for soldiers. Fort Augustus has been surrendered to the +Benedictines who are gradually developing here a great monastery which +in these silences should rival the monasteries of old--if that may be. +Fort William, most strategic of all, is also strategic for traveler's +descent. Thus is the iron hand that succeeded the bloody hand at +Culloden become rust. + +[Illustration: THE OLD MAN OF HOY.] + +To the men of old the Orkneys seemed at the back of beyond and a little +farther. Yet, I cannot think how it has reduced the distance to a +comprehensible length if farther ends of the world and endless waters +have been reached; distance is three parts imagination in any event. As +a man thinketh so is distance. + +The run up the coast to Scrabster, the port of Thurso, is very much on +the coast, with wild barren land on one side, and wild waste water on +the other; with here and there a resting-place for the eye or mind, like +Skibo Castle for our American Laird of Skibo, Dunrobin Castle for the +magnificent Sutherlands, and on a branch line leading out to the sea the +house of John o'Groat, perhaps the best known citizen above Land's End. + +From Scrabster the Old Man of Hoy lifts his hoary head over the seas, +and invites to Ultima Thule, if this be Ultima Thule. And I suppose that +ever since Agricola came up this way the Old Man has sent forth his +invitation. The Romans did not answer it, although Tacitus wrote about +it; and it was left for much later folk to dispute the Picts and take +the islands for themselves. + +An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scattered over the water, with +only half of them inhabited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like +Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, you will not find the isle +of heart's desire here. The scant inhabited twenty odd are not over +filled with population; these islands are not hospitable to large +numbers, not even of their own. They came to us through Margaret of +Denmark, queen to James III, and were confirmed when Anne of Denmark +came to be queen to James VI. + +The sail over the Pentland Firth may be taken on a still day when the +historic waters, as vexed as those of the Bermoothes, lie like glass. +The rage of water, of any water, is not the frequent mood; but always it +is the memorable. Blue above and blue below was the day of our going, +twenty miles past high "continental" shores, like Dunnet's head, and +between the outliers of the Orcadian group, at the end of a summer day +that never ends in this North. + +Yet I cannot think how I should ever again approach "Mainland" and the +port of Kirkwall with such indifference to everything except the +exquisite cool softness of this Northern air of mid-summer, with an +indolent interest in the land ahead, hardly quickened into active +interest which is the traveler's right, when we approached Scapa in the +twilight. + +I did remember that the Vikings were once here as kings. And when King +Haakon of Norway was returning from the defeat at Largs in the west +where his fleet suffered the blow repeated later against the Spanish +armada, one ship was sucked down into a whirlpool near Stroma. And +Haakon died here of a broken heart. All these seemed like old, far-off +things that are not unhappy. Yet there was a suggestion of fate in the +place; perhaps there always is in a Northern twilight. To approach +Kirkwall after this, will always be to remember the Hampshire, going to +its death in a water more dangerous than that of whirling Stroma, and +Lord Kitchener going with it. + +Kirkwall is a pleasant old town; or was, till war made it busy and new. +It lies inland a mile or two across the isthmus, but no doubt stretching +actively down to the south pier at Scapa during the years of the great +war, when all the British fleet hovered about. + +The town is gray, like all Scottish towns; nature does these things with +perfect taste. And, in the midst, man has builded for his worship a +church of red sandstone, the Cathedral of St. Magnus, older and in +better condition than churches of Scotland more exposed to the change of +faith; with a long dim interior that speaks the North, with massive +Norman arches; one wonders how the reformed faith can conduct itself in +this dim religious light. + +But the Earl's Palace remains a thing of beauty. Earl Patrick builded +it, the son of Robert who was half brother to Mary. If the palace had +been built in Mary's day I should, in truth, have lamented that she did +not come hither after the escape from Loch Leven, instead of going to +defeat at Langside. Mary was valiant, and the stern North was, after +all, in her blood. + +But Patrick as "jarl" came a generation later, and he taxed the islands +mercilessly to build this very beautiful palace. The roof is gone, but +the beauty remains, oriel windows, fireplaces, and towers and turrets. +No doubt when "the wind is blowing in turret and tree," Patrick's palace +can be ruined enough. But on a day when the blue sky is sufficient +vaulting, the palace is a place to dream in. + +[Illustration: EARL'S PALACE, KIRKWALL.] + +Over at Birsay, twenty miles across the Mainland--there are twenty mile +stretches in this Mainland--there is another palace, built by Robert, +himself, who was, incidentally, Abbot of Holyrood as well as Earl of the +Orkneys. The motto-stone declares-- + + "Dominus Robertus Stuartus + Filius Jacobi Quinti Rex Scotorum + Hoc Opus Instruxit." + +"Rex" said Robert, not "regis"; perhaps his Latin knew no better, but +his spirit knew this was right. The nominative agreed with Robertus, not +with Jacobi. Still, the ruler of the Orkneys was a supreme lord at this +remove from king and counselors. + +Here and there, but only here and there through the islands, lies +traveler's lure. Motor boats make the run for tourist pleasure, and many +of the "points of interest" can be seen from the waters; particularly +the "brochs," the cairn-like towers of perhaps Pictish building; and the +round tower of St. Magnus on Egilsay, which must date back very far, +perhaps to the time when Columba came hither from Ireland and converted +these people and gave them hints of Irish building. + +There are remnants of life earlier than Columba, of faith earlier, +though we know not the faith. The Circle of Bogar, old gray pillar-like +stones, set in purple heather, are comparable with Stonehenge and +Locmariaqueur. Scott found them equal; Scott who had such an admirable +way of finding in Scotland the equal of the world. In "The Pirate" he +describes these stones, indeed he describes these Orkneys in this +accurate guide book which is still "up to date." + +To the blood shed and violence of old days has succeeded the quiet +pursuit of agriculture; and instead of the boats that used to sail to +the New World, H. B. C. boats and those to the Plantations, and to +Russia for the Northwest Passage, and to the Arctic for the Pole, are +the quiet boats of the fisherfolk. Except--when war fleets ride at +anchor. + + +_The Caledonian Canal_ + +The Great Glen itself is a necessary journey, even though no side trips +be made. I must believe that every one who has ever taken it and written +account, journeyed down this waterway in a Scotch mist; which, of +course, is not a mist at all, but something finite and tangible. + +I, myself, went my ways that way. And, of course, those who had come +north the day before me, and those who came south the day after, came +through magnificent clearness, and marvels of marvels, Ben Nevis cleared +of mists to his very crest and beyond, shining splendid and majestic and +out-topping all Scotland, against the brilliant cloud-swept northern +sky! Frankly, I am always tempted to be suspicious when any one tells me +he has traveled the Great Glen and seen it all. + +The scenery on both sides is wild, desolate, mountainous, a daring of +nature. There are sheer hillsides where all is revealed; again, there +are wooded hills where the men of the Forty Five might be still lurking. + +Dochfour, Ness, Oich, Lochy, are the names of these "great lakes" that +make the chain. There is quality to their names, like Superior, Huron, +Erie, Ontario. But the Scottish chain is sixty miles long and can be +made from morning to evening, with enough of the day left to go through +Loch Linnhe and so to Oban; as one should add, through the St. Lawrence +and so to Quebec. Yet when one has passed from Inverness to Oban the +mind is as full, it has come through as much contact, nay, more, as in +the journey from Duluth to Quebec. + +There are ruined castles by the way. Urquhart, looking very picturesque, +especially if the mist is but half come down over the world and the +purple of the distances is of that deep royal purple so characteristic +of the water and mountain distances of this wild west country. Yet the +sunny distances are as much a marvel of colour in their pale blue that +has so much intensity, so much real vivacity. Purple one has learned to +associate with distance; or, since some painter has shown us the +truthful trick. But blue, this particular Scottish blue, I have never +seen elsewhere. It is woven of mists and sunlight in equal proportions. + +And so, Urquhart in its ruin, standing romantically on a fir clad +promontory, is most alluring as the boat rounds it on its early way. I +do not know anything of Urquhart. The name rather suggests the middle +name carried by a once famous actress. Somehow I half believe that in +that castle Charlotte Corday may have stabbed Marat. But then, facetious +and unromantic, I wonder at the baths in Urquhart in the old days when +skene dhus served in the place of daggers. + +There are other romantic lures in the names which seem to have dropped +so carelessly anywhere. Inverarigaig--which sounds more musical than it +looks on the page--stands at the head of the pass through which The +Prince came after that day at Culloden on his way to the West as +wanderer. Far down the stretch of water rises Mealfourvournie, a rounded +naked hill overlooking the ravine where once the church of Cilles Christ +stood; and once, full of Mackenzies, was set on fire by the Macdonalds, +and all the Mackenzies burned. The act is not singular among the clans. +McLeod of Dare gives it to the Macdonalds and McLeods. And so one comes +to believe the story of a traveler coming on a Highland cottage and +asking if there were any Christians within, got back the reply,--"no, +we're all Macdonalds." Surely Saint Columba was needed in later +centuries than the Sixth. + +The Falls of Foyers are across the lake, surrendered now to aluminum +works. And yet Burns wrote of them + + "Among the heathery hills and rugged woods + The roaring Foyers pours his moving floods." + +Christopher North wrote a better, a prose poem, which sounds somewhat +curiously in American ears. "What a world of waters now comes tumbling +into the abyss! Niagara! hast thou a fiercer roar? Listen--and you think +there are momentary pauses of thunder, filled up with goblin groans! All +the military music-bands of the army of Britain would here be dumb as +mutes--Trumpet, Cymbal and the Great Drum!" + +Fort Augustus closes the end of the loch, and here the Benedictines, +black-robed, move in somber file where once the red-coated soldiers +marched. + +Five locks raise the steamer fifty feet, into the Highlands. And while +the boat is waiting the rise, here, as at any of the locks, there is +entertainment. Fellow travelers get out to stretch their legs, and that +is amusing enough, tolerantly considered. There are tea houses at every +lock, many of them, sometimes charmingly rose-embowered like the houses +along the Thames. There are pipers who march majestically up and down, +swinging their sporrans, swaying their kilts; one is almost afraid to +give a penny. + +And I remember at one of these pausing places where the passengers +remained on the boat, that a very pleasing gentleman who looked as +George Washington may have looked on gala occasions did sing for my +entertainment and that of my fellow passengers; except one fellow +American who expressed her disapproval. Perhaps George Washington did +not dress so gaily; it was just the hat. There was a black coat, white +breeches, crimson waistcoat, blue stockings, silver buckled shoes, and +a cocked hat. And this pleasing gentleman sang to a tune that was no +tune but very cheering, about "the hat me faither wore." And he was so +doing his best, which was very good indeed, that I was forced to get +change for a sixpence--it cannot be ethical, and certainly is not fun to +throw a little silver disk when six large coppers may be thrown. And the +American female fellow passenger said, "Doesn't it seem as though he +could get something nearer a man's job?" Yet he was such a pleasant +person. And they're not common to be met on the highway. + +From Fort Augustus on there are memories of the Risings, chiefly of +Prince Charlie, in the glorious before, in the tragic aftermath. He came +hither as conqueror, that mere stripling, belted and plaided as a Royal +Stewart, and retook his kingdom. The coat skirts of Johnny Cope you can +still see in retreat to Inverness, if you look well. From Gairlochy the +way leads to Glenfinnan where he raised his Standard, and the Castle of +Lochiel, ruined because of him. And hither he came, after Culloden. At +Fort Augustus the head of Roderick Mackenzie was presented to the +Butcher as that of Prince Charles, and near Gairlochy, and near +Lochiel--"beware of the day"--is the "cage" of Cluny MacPherson where +he harboured during those days of red pursuit. And the thirty thousand +pounds are yet to be paid for betrayal. + +Loch Oich, littlest and highest, with wooded islands and heavily wooded +shores, larches and delicate silver birches, is the exquisite bit of the +way. And here stands Invergarry Castle, which saw Prince Charles when +first he came gallant from the West and Moidart, and saw him when last +he came defeated to the West. + +Laggan Avenue runs between Loch Oich and Loch Lochy, a narrow waterway +with soft fir-trees lining the way in a most formal fashion; it has a +peculiar magic when the mist has shut out the rounded hills of the +higher background. + +Banavie--to move according to the schedule--is at the top of the locks, +three miles of them, Neptune's staircase, leading down to Fort William +and to the sea. The railroad is the swifter way and breaks the journey, +and passes the ruins of Inverlochy. It is a place to which French and +Spanish merchants came in far days of the Seven Hundreds. But better, a +place where Montrose won a victory. + +[Illustration: INVERGARRY CASTLE.] + +Here took place (1645) the battle between the Marquis of Montrose and +the Marquis of Argyle, and so splendidly that Montrose and Charles +thought the kingdom was coming back to its own. Montrose had started +through the Great Glen for Inverness, but hearing that the Campbells +were massing at Inverlochy, he turned back, and gave battle. The victory +was so tremendously with the royal Montrose that he wrote a letter to +Charles, then negotiating with the parliamentarians, and Charles +believed so that he broke off the parleying-- + +"Give me leave, after I have reduced this country, and conquered from +Dan to Beersheba, to say to Your Majesty, as David's general to his +master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'" + +In five years, the two were both beheaded, one at Whitehall in London, +the other at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, the Marquis sixteen months later +than the King. "To carry honour and fidelity to the grave." + +At Inverlochy looks down the mountain of them all, Ben Nevis, taller +than Ben Muich Dhui, taller than Snowdon or Helvellyn. And from its +vantage point, the Observatory Tower, one may look over all the +territory in many directions whither one proposes to go; the routes can +be planned from this top of Scotland. As Sir Archibald Geikie mapped it +in his glorified geography-- + +"While no sound falls upon his ears, save now and then a fitful moaning +of the wind among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice below, let him +try to analyze some of the chief elements of the landscape. It is easy +to recognize the more marked heights and hollows. To the south, away +down Loch Linnhe, he can see the hills of Mull and the Paps of Jura +closing the horizon. Westward, Loch Eil seems to lie at his feet, +winding up into the lonely mountains, yet filled twice a day with the +tides of the salt sea. Far over the hills, beyond the head of the loch, +he looks across Arisaig, and can see the cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and +the dark peaks of Rum, with the Atlantic gleaming below them. Farther to +the northwest the blue range of the Coolin Hills rises along the +skyline, and then, sweeping over all the intermediate ground, through +Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clanranald country mountain rises after +mountain, ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens, and varied here +and there with the sheen of lake and tarn. Northward runs the mysterious +straight line of the Great Glen, with its chain of locks. Then to east +and south the same billowy sea of mountain tops stretches out as far as +eye can follow it--the hills and glens of Lochaber, the wide green +strath of Spean, the gray corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the +distant sweep of the moors and mountains of Brae Lyon and the Perthshire +Highlands, the spires of Glencoe, and thence again to the blue waters of +Loch Linnhe." + +This may not be "the roof of the world," but it is a very high gable. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE WESTERN ISLES + + +_Oban_ + +There is something theatrical about Oban, artificial, and therefore +among Scottish towns Oban is a contrast. It is as uncovenanted as--joy! +And it is very beautiful, "the gay and generous port of Oban," as +William Winter calls it, set in its amphitheater of high hills, and +stretching about its harbour, between confining water and hill. An +embankment holds it in, and at twilight the scimeter drawn from the +scabbard of night flashes with light, artificial, but as wonderful at +Oban as at Monte Carlo. One is content to be, at Oban. Quite certainly +Oban has centered its share of Scottish history and romance, history +from the time of the Northmen, romance from the time resurrected by +Scott and continued indigenously by William Black. But in Oban and round +about Oban, one is quite content to take that past as casually as one +takes yesterday. + +It is very interesting, very fascinating; one wakes now and then, here +and there, to keen remembrance, to a sensitiveness that so much beauty +could not be only for to-day and of to-day, that men must have come +hither to claim it or dispute possession of it in the beginning of time. +Of course the Stewarts came out of this Island West! But, either because +one has made a round circle of Scotland from out of romantic Edinburgh, +or because one has come from practical Glasgow and is about to make a +round circle of Scotland, Oban has a peculiarly satisfying and yet +undemanding beauty. + +It is set for pageantry; life is always, has been always, a procession +at Oban. If ever the history of Scotland is set forth as pageant--I do +not know that this has ever been done, but it should be--it should be +staged at Oban, on the esplanade. + +Life moves swiftly through the streets and across the waters. For it is +a place that all the world comes to, in its search for the next +beautiful place. Steamers from the Caledonian Canal and Inverness, +steamers from the Crinan Canal and Glasgow, coaches from the near +country, railroads from the east and north, bring the world to Oban. And +from Oban boats move out on the Firth of Lorne and the Sound of Mull +and through the broken waters of the Hebrides, out into the unbroken +waters of the Atlantic. People come and go, come and go. It is not that +Oban is filled with people. Very often the inns are filled and the +careless traveler may seek eagerly if not vainly for a lodging for the +night, to find his landlady a Campbell of the Campbells. + +But there is seldom a feeling of too many people in Oban. They come and +go, night and morning. They do not stay. In the evening the esplanade +may be filled and the crowd very gala; the circle of lights marking the +embankments, steamers lying at their ease after the day's work, looking, +yes, like pirates, retired pirates, rakish, with tapering spars and +brave red funnels, the soft plash of oars out on the bay and the moving +lights of the rowboats, with perhaps--no quite certainly--a piper, or +two or three, dressed in tartan, more like the red and black of the +Campbells in this historic region of Argyle, piping up bravely "The +Campbells are Coming, yoho, yoho." + +It is lively in the evening, there is always a touch of pageantry. Yet +Oban is a very good place in which to stay and make the little foot +excursions that penetrate only a few miles into the circumurban +territory. The most constrained walker may find rich foot-interest out +of Oban; nowhere do comfort and beauty and story combine in more +continuous lure. Easy and attainable is Dunolly Castle, much more +attainable than it was in the old days when the Lord of the Isles made +his permanent seat here, and defied the world and the king; more +attainable now than when Scott came this way seeking "copy" and "colour" +and declaring "nothing can be more beautifully wild than Dunolly." +To-day Dunolly is beautiful, but scarcely wildly beautiful; that is, in +comparison with other wild castles of this wild West; and very +attainable, the walk being provided with seats all the way, casual "rest +and be thankfuls," of the municipal corporation. + +But beyond Dunolly, four miles of good highway, with Loch Linnhe +breaking magnificently on the eye, and Loch Etive reaching off endlessly +into the deep purple, is Dunstaffnage, which, before Stirling, or Perth, +or Edinburgh, was capital of Scotland and the place of destiny. Very +redoutable it sits on its high crag, as picturesque a castle as there is +in the world--and we are in a land of castles picturesquely set. The +walls above the waters lift themselves in lofty height, and promise to +remain, with their great thickness presented to the consuming world. It +is still towered for strength and scope, and looks its part of royal +residence. Here was found the Stone of Destiny--after Jacob or another +had carried this Jacobite sleeping pillow hither from Palestine. Kenneth +McAlpine, somewhat sacrilegiously, carried the Stone away to Perth. And +Edward sacrilegiously carried it down to Westminster, where George V sat +on it, in 1911, or nearly on it, so as to prove his destined right. + +Bruce took the castle from the Lord of Lorne, at what time he was taking +all the castles of Scotland. And even The Bruce in his busy days of +castle-storming, must have paused in this height, at these bastions, to +look over this western world and decide that it was good and should be +added to his Scottish world. Across Loch Linnhe he could see the bens of +Morven and of Appin, and up Loch Etive, Ben Cruachan--even as you and I. +The Highlands and the Islands are still primitive, man dwindles here, +and the world becomes what it was before the Sixth Day. + +But The Bruce did not see these brass cannon from a wreck of the Armada, +The Bruce lived too far before that great day to see the coast "strewn +with the ruined dream of Spain." And he was too early for the ancient +ruined Gothic chapel of much austere beauty which stands near. + +It is from Pulpit Hill that Oban gives the best view of all the lyric +lay of this water and land world; on a clear day when the wind is from +the west, when sunshine has been drenching the world, and when the sun +is about to sink behind Ben More. Pulpit Hill is a wooded steep bluff to +the east of Oban, at its foot parklike drives and forest-embowered +cottages with their windows open to the sea, with rich roses filling the +air and flaunting fuchias filling the eye. It is an easy climb, even +after a day of Scotch-seeing in the backward of the land. + +Here one may sit and meditate on the life and character of David McCrae, +to whom the pulpit is dedicated. Or one may look over the land and +"soothly swear was never yet a scene so fair." Or, to borrow again from +that same Scottish scene painter, and another scene--"One burnished +sheet of living gold." + +The eye runs far out over the world, across the Bay of Oban, across the +Island of Kerrera, across the Island of Mull set against the late sky, +and over to Lismore which lies shining and tender against the deepening +purple background of Morven. The sun casts slant rays across the land +and across the bay, bathing the far land in tender lilac, the sea in +steely blue, while Kerrera lies in patches of dark and light, a +farmhouse sharp against a rose mist that rises in shallow places and +quickly fades, leaving all the world purple in hue. Shepherd lads and +shepherd dogs may be seen at this last moment preparing to watch the +flocks by night, and long horned shaggy cattle browse at peace in the +fading light. Flocks of birds fly over, starlings in scattered black +patches, sea swallows poising for prey, and sea gulls resting on the +wave after a weary day. Everything is at peace. + +Two longer excursions one must make from Oban; to Loch Awe, to Glencoe. +Each is possible in a day, and yet a night in Glencoe is almost +imperative if one would be played upon by its full tragic compass; and a +lifetime of summers would not exhaust Loch Awe. + +The Loch I would visit; because of its beauty; and because of Kilchurn +Castle, which is picturesque in fact as well as in picture, on its +densely wooded island with its broken outline lying against the farther +mountain; because of Ardchonnel Castle, ivy covered, and "it's a far cry +to Loch Awe"; because of Fraoch-Eilean (isle of heather) which is the +island of Ossian's Hesperides; and because, capitally because, +Innishail is the island where Philip Gilbert Hamerton established his +camp through so many summers and through a number of Scottish winters. + +[Illustration: KILCHURN CASTLE.] + +One must belong, oh, quite to "another generation," to admit any debt of +instruction or pleasure to Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I do not think that +this generation knows him, hardly as a name. But when I was young, +collegiately young, Hamerton was an authority on life and art, and a +preceptor of beauty. And, if one read "The Intellectual Life," then, of +course, one read the rest of him. And so, one came to Loch Awe before +one came to Loch Awe. + +To the lake I went quite shamelessly on train. But repenting half way, +over-awed by Ben Cruachan, as who should not be, I left the train at the +"platform" and won the memory on foot. The mountain looks as high and as +mighty as a Rocky, and the white foaming threads of falls, hundreds of +feet high, dashed down the sides in a true "Rocky" splendour; like those +on the Cut bank or the Piegan trails in Glacier Park, yet not quite so +high. I did not climb Ben Cruachan to look on the Atlantic--but I have +not made my last journey to Scotland. On foot and alone, I threaded "the +dark pass of Brandir," and felt in my blood and bone that something in +me ancestral had been there before. Perhaps we inherit where we +hero-worship. In any event, Sir William Wallace went through this defile +in 1300, and King Robert Bruce in 1310, with his faithful friend Sir +James Douglass, fighting John of Lorn (the dead are still heaped beneath +these gray cairns), and going on to take Dunstaffnage. Sir Walter Scott +came here when he sought environ for "The Highland Widow." + +On one side is the sheer cliff which guards the foot of Ben Cruachan. On +the other the rapid awesome dash of the River Awe. "You will not find a +scene more impressive than the Brandir Pass, where the black narrowing +water moves noiselessly at midnight between its barren precipices, or +ripples against them when the wind wails through its gates of war." + +In the Loch lies the island of Innishail, still green, and not less +solitary than when Hamerton entertained travelers, unaware of his +identity. It still carries old gravestones, for islands in the far days +were the only safe places, safe for the dead as for the living; war and +ravage would pass them by. Throughout this western land you will find +island graveyards, and the procession of quiet boats carrying the dead +to their rest must have been a better expression than can be had by +land. + +From here one sees Ben Cruachan to advantage, even as one saw it in 1859 +with Hamerton. + +"At this moment the picture is perfect. The sky has become an exquisite +pearly green, full of gradations. There is only one lonely cloud, and +that has come exactly where it ought. It has risen just beyond the +summit of Cruachan and pauses there like a golden disk behind a saint's +white head. But this cloud is rose-colour, with a swift gradation to +dark purple-gray. Its under edge is sharply smoothed into a clearly-cut +curve by the wind; the upper edge floats and melts away gradually in the +pale green air. The cloud is shaped rather like a dolphin with its tail +hidden behind the hill. The sunlight on all the hill, but especially +towards the summit, has turned from mere warm light to a delicate, +definite rose-colour; the shadows are more intensely azure, the sky of a +deeper green. The lake, which is perfectly calm, reflects and +reverberates all this magnificence. The islands, however, are below the +level of the sunshine, and lie dark and cold, the deep green Scotch firs +on the Black Isles telling strongly against the snows of Cruachan." + +It was even as Hamerton had told me so long ago, a trifle different in +July from what he saw it in December, but equal in magnificence, and the +outlines had not changed in a half-century. + +And so I did not hesitate to go with Hamerton to Glencoe, lovely and +lonely and most terrible glen. There is such a thing as being haunted, +the dead do cry for revenge, the evil that men do does live after them. + +It is a wide valley, yet closed in by great granite precipices, for safe +guarding against betrayal. The first section of the strath is calm +enough, human, green, habitable, with Loch Leven, a branch of Loch +Etive, sparkling in the sun. The second wide opening is terrible as +massacre, not green, very stern, and wild as Scottish nature, human or +not, can become. Even the little clachan of the Macdonalds seems not to +welcome the world except on suspicion. And that murder, that +assassination (February 14, 1692) when William was king--William who +might have been "great" except for Boyne and Glencoe--still fills the +memory. + +Hamerton painted the picture--"In the vastness of the valley, over the +dim, silver stream that flowed away into its infinite distance, brooded +a heavy cloud, stained with a crimson hue, as if the innocent blood shed +there rose from the earth even yet, to bear witness against the +assassins who gave the name of Glen Coe such power over the hearts of +men. For so long as history shall be read, and treachery hated, that +name, Glen Coe, shall thrill mankind with undiminished horror! The story +is a century old now (1859). The human race has heard it talked of for +over a hundred years. But the tale is as fresh in its fearful interest +as the latest murder in the newspapers." + +Yet, a half century still later, I have heard those who declared Glencoe +lovely and not terrible. No doubt the generation does not read history +and does not feel story. + +We did not go on to the King's House, built in the days of King William, +when roads were being driven through the Highlands in order that they +might be held to a doubtful Stewart sovereignty. For we had read how +Hamerton thought it more than enough to drink a glass here, and we +doubted not he had read of the trials of Dorothy Wordsworth, sheets that +must be dried for hours before the beds could be made, the one egg for +breakfast, and--could we have found that china cup that Dorothy forgot? +Rather, we chose to return down the lake side for another look at the +red roofs of the home of Lord Strathcona, that wizard of the nineteenth +century, who had left Scotland with only his wits and returned from +America with his millions and a title. + + +_Iona_ + +There is no pilgrimage which can be taken to any shrine excelling +pilgrimage to Iona. And all the pilgrim way is lined with memory and +paved with beauty. + +On almost every promontory stand ruined castles, not so frequent as the +watch towers on the Mediterranean heights, and therefore not so +monotonous. One knows that each of these, as of those, has had its +history, and here one ponders that history, perhaps tries to remember +it, or, tries to evoke it. Dunolly which we visited in the day's drift +from Oban stood up on the right with the city still in view. But it is +when the Firth opens into the Sound that the glory of the water-world of +the West comes on you. + +[Illustration: AROS CASTLE.] + +The Sound of Mull is, so Sir Walter has said, "the most striking water +of the Hebrides." It is very lovely in this shell-pink light of early +morning, it could not have looked lovelier when Sir Walter estimated it. +The hills begin to stand boldly forth, for the gray mists of the morning +are rising. It is to be a fine day, which here because of its +exception means a brilliant sun-stricken day, and all things clear as +geography. But, at least once, one should see things one wishes always +to keep as material for remembrance and for imagination, not in the mist +dimly, but face to face like this. Or, as the Maid of Lorn in +Ardtornish, when she was led + + "To where a turret's airy head + Slender and steep and battled round, + O'erlooked, dark Mull! thy mighty Sound. + Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar + Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore." + +On the left of Mull stands the grim Castle of Duart on its high rock, on +the right on Morven the Castle of Ardtornish, and Aros a little farther +on, and Kinlochalive at the top of the bay of the Loch--mighty were +these lords of the islands, and most mighty the Lord of the Isles. + +Perhaps--it has been suggested--Sir Walter overstated the might of the +Lord, the grandeur of the islands, the splendour of those thirteenth +century days. It depends on what light one views them in. + +Tobermory is the capital of Mull, and is a place of some resort. Like +all these little capitals it is set in the wilderness world, and what +one would like best to do instead of sailing past them is to stay with +them and go far into the backward. Perhaps traversing Mull as did McLeod +of Dare when he hunted so royally--and in such a moonstruck way; or +David Balfour when he was shipwrecked and walked through Mull; or the +Pennells when they sought to walk through and did not take pleasure in +it. It is the pilgrims who won their goal one chooses to remember--not +the defeated Pennells. And here--I am leaving Mull and Tobermory behind +me, perhaps for always. + +Suddenly one sweeps out into the Atlantic! The stretch is wide, oceanic, +although far and away there are islands, black lines thickening here and +there the horizon edge. The sea is exquisitely, deeply blue, like the +Mediterranean at its best. + +One passes Ardnamurchan point, the most westerly point of the mainland +of Great Britain, "Cape of the Great Seas"; how one loves the poetic +grandeur, the sufficing bigness of these names, and the faith, and the +limitations back of them; as though there should never be a greater +world with greater seas and mountains in the greater West. To the south +the boat passes Trehinish isles, black gems lying on the sea. + +[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO FINGAL'S CAVE.] + +Far out on the horizon lie Col and Tiree, low clouds in the line. "Col," +I heard the professorial people--from Oberlin--speak the name. "Col! So +that is Col!" they said to each other, "so that is Col off there!" +"Col," I said to myself, "so that is Col." And we all became related +through the great Doctor. + +One is bound to Staffa, incidentally, on the way to Iona, and for the +sake of Mendelssohn. Always afterward one is bound to Staffa because of +itself. If only one could have Staffa for one's self. But there are +always fellow travelers, there is no inn, no habitation here, not even a +shepherd's shieling, visible from the water. There are a few sheep, a +shepherd, and so there must be a shieling. To be marooned here--was it +here Stevenson understudied for Bill Gunn, and "cheese, toasted mostly"? + +The cave is truly wonderful, a superb cathedral nave, with dark basaltic +columns lifted in marvelous regularity, and arches lifting over with +groining the hand of God. + + "Nature herself it seemed would raise + A minster to her Maker's praise." + +The broken surfaces of the walls are in mosaic with green sea grasses +and gleaming limpets, and the floor is a shifting thing of surging +waves. The ocean thunders through the narrow gate as it has done since +the time Staffa began, and since Mendelssohn, a mighty organ surge, like +the "Overture to Fingal's Cave," and yet, more than that. To be here +alone, to be the shepherd of Staffa, and come to this cathedral, with +the might and mystery of the night about, and the winds and the sea +making symphony--life will always hold many things in possibility, which +cannot die! + +From the top of Staffa, if one flees the passengers a moment, may be +seen the islands lying about whose names are romance, Trehinish, and +Inchkenneth on Mull and Skerryvore, "the noblest of all deep sea light," +a mere speck on the far Atlantic--what vigils the man must have in the +house of light built by Stevenson's father; and on to the far north and +Skye; and to the near south and Iona. + + "Where is Duncan's body? + Carried to Colme-kill, + The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, + And guardian of their bones." + +Very definite was Shakespeare about these things. A more modern +antiquarian would have doubted, and sent us wandering from pillar to +post of royal burial places. But not the man who created what he +declared. Icolmkill--Iona--certainly. + +That such a little island could have had such a large history. It is so +small a place, yet a beautiful island withal, and with its cathedral, +now alas, "restored" and "reformed," and all its far sounding memories +of Columba. + +He came up from the South as we came down from the North, but his voyage +was across the wide seas to unknown goals; while we have the advantage +of having come after him to Iona. And yet, to Columba, valiant +adventuring saint, Iona nor any other place was unknown goal. There was +to him but one purpose in life, one goal. And he found it everywhere. + +It was a large life and simple, austere but with unlimited horizon, that +Columba lived here. It is a small exquisite life that is lived here +to-day. Or, perhaps my belief in its proportion and perfection came +because of contact with a certain two persons, man and woman, who had +taken this life to themselves. While being practical in that they sold +exquisite wares, in silver and gold and brass and bronze, each article, +large or little, carrying some Ionian insignia, still they must have a +very beautiful life, ever making things of beauty out of the historic +heritage of this island. It was a large accumulation of jeweled hints +they discovered here, in the ornamentations of the stones of Iona. They +have used them to very lovely ends. And they have lived the life of +memories and of the keen sea air. + +One may have forty minutes, or day after day in Iona. And, of course, +the reward and the intimacy is in proportion. It is a quiet fragment of +land, the little village with its white-washed cottages in prim lines, +and its simple cotters, perhaps a little more sophisticated than those +of other western islands because of their continuing contact with a +curious world; and yet these men and women and serious children live +here the year round, and in winter there is no world, and the Atlantic +thunders on the little land as though one beat of the wave would carry +all into the abyss, or smashes on the rough granite coast of Mull across +the strait. + +The western shore of the island is cruel, even on a summer day. And if +the "merry men" ran their violent ways on the shore of Mull, there are +other Merry Men just as merry, just as lurking. As McLeod of Dare saw +it-- + +"Could anything have been more beautiful than this magnificent scene ... +the wildly rushing seas, coming thunderingly on the rocks, or springing +so high in the air that the snow-white foam showed black against the +glare of the sky; the near islands gleaming with a touch of brown on +their sunward side; the Dutchman's Cap with its long brim and conical +center, and Lunga also like a cap with a shorter brim and a higher peak +in front, becoming a trifle blue. And then Col and Tiree lying like a +pale strip on the far horizon; while far away in the north the mountains +of Rum and Skye were faint and spectral in the haze of sunlight. Then +the wild coast around, with its splendid masses of granite; and its +spare grass a brown-green in the warm sun, and its bays of silver sand; +and its sea birds whiter than the clouds that came sailing over the +blue." + +On many of these western islands, and the northern, and it is said +particularly on the far northern Shetlands, there are some dark somber +faces remaining over from the Armada. The sea has never been kind; it +breaks the rocks, it breaks men. + +There are low-lying hills, the chief is Dun I, there are pasture lands, +and still there are fields of wheat and clover. Just before he died, +Columba was carried out to see the men at work in the fields. No doubt +he lifted his eyes and looked around, on his little island, and the +great sea, and the great world beyond. No doubt he wished he might live +longer and labour farther. St. Columba who carried the Gospel and his +gentle Irish gospel from the sixth century of Ireland into the far North +until it swung round and met in Durham and York the Gospel and the +culture coming up from Rome; and that neither so polished nor so +Christian. Yes, even Columba regretted leaving the world behind him, +though he was going to the other world. + +Yes, I am certain he regretted leaving the island world behind him. Did +he not sing of his longing-- + + "Delightful would it be to me to be in _Uchd Ailiun_ + On the pinnacle of a rock, + That I might often see + The face of the ocean; + That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, + Source of happiness; + That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves + Upon the rocks; + At times at work without compulsion-- + That would be delightful; + At times plucking dulse from the rocks; + At times fishing." + +Thirteen hundred years ago; and the song is undimmed, and the world has +not faded. The Port of the Coracle on the far side is still open to +boats adventuring across pleasant or perilous seas. The very rock on +which Columba landed, the traveler seeking the subtle transubstantiation +from the past may stand on. And there is the White Beach of the Monks, +where the companions of Columba paced to and fro in those days and in +this lovely land that seems too far away to be believed in. + +[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF IONA AND ST. MARTIN'S CROSS.] + +The entire island is the shrine of the Saint, and not only the cathedral +of Iona. In truth this particular church dates from six hundred years +later than Columba, six hundred years backward from us. The crosses that +stand in the cemetery of St. Oran, St. Martin's and the Maclean, the +only two left out of nearly four hundred, cannot date much farther back +than this, or than "gentle Duncan." There is a long line of graves, each +with its aged granite slab, of the kings, Norwegian and Irish and +Scottish, of those early centuries. I do not remember that I saw the one +that speaks of Duncan. But I do remember that the carvings were very +curious and often very fascinating, the "pattern" intricate and +intriguing. + +Once the cathedral was a place of magic, an unroofed broken shrine, +where the winds might wander in search of the past, and where the +moonlight might shine through as lovely a casement, tracery as +exquisite, as at fair Melrose. If the generations coming six hundred +years after us are to know of St. Columba, and not to reproach us for +our coöperation with time the vandal, these roofs, this protection, must +be afforded. Still, the gate is so close locked to-day that even Joseph +Pennell could not steal in, and so closely watched that no black lamb or +ram or other hobgoblin could affright Miss Gertrude White or cause her +to cease loving the daring McLeod of Dare. + +Yet, if one resolves as did Boswell, to leave the close inspection to +Dr. Johnson, and "to stroll among them at my ease, to take no trouble to +investigate minutely, and only receive the general impression of solemn +antiquity," one will come upon much that is of particular impression, +like the carvings about and on the capitals, with the early grace of the +later Italians; quite worth careful preserving. And here is the altar, +and I doubt not at this very spot--church shrines continue in this +steadfast Scotland--Columba knelt before the God whose worship he had +brought over the seas, and was to carry still farther over land and +seas. There may be one shrine in the Christian world more sacred. But +not more than one. Dr. Johnson is still quite right--"The man is little +to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of +Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." + +The storm did not come, although we waited three days for it. Nothing +but calm in the island of Iona, and peace on the deep of the Atlantic; +tender dawns, still high noons, twilights of soft visible gray that +lasted over to the next morning; a land of hushed winds and audible +sounds, the seas lying like glass. + +Not even on a Sunday morning when in a coracle, or some such smaller +boat than one usually cares to venture, perhaps a lug, whatever that may +be, we accompanied the clergyman to the mainland of Mull, and watched +the stern sad faces of these far away folk as they listened to a very +simple sermon of an old simple story. I remembered that at Earraid, +Robert Louis Stevenson had been interested in the religious services +held for the workmen who were cutting stone for a lighthouse building by +Thomas Stevenson. From these people religion will go very late, if at +all. Surely men and women need what Columba brought hither, now as ever. + +And because of David Balfour I walked a little way into Mull, which +still must look as he saw it, for except for the roadway it looked as +though I were the first who had ever ventured that way since time and +these rough granite heaps began. + + "Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, + Say, could that lad be I? + Merry of soul he sailed on a day + Over the sea to Skye. + + "Mull was astern, Rum on the port, + Egg on the starboard bow; + Glory of youth glowed in his soul: + Where is that glory now? + + "Give me again all that was there, + Give me the sun that shone! + Give me the eyes, give me the soul, + Give me the lad that's gone!" + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE LAKES + + +All the world goes to the Trossachs. Yet there are only two kinds of +people who should go, and they are as widely separated as the poles; +those who are content and able to take the Trossachs as a beautiful bit +of the world, like any lake or mountain country which is unsung, and +then they will not take it but merely look at it; and those who know the +Trossachs as theirs, The Trossachs, who can repeat it all from-- + + "The stag at eve had drunk his fill + Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, + And deep his midnight lair had made + In lone Glenartney's hazel shade. + +On to + + "The chain of gold the king unstrung + The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung + Then gently drew the golden band + And laid the clasp in Ellen's hand." + +Half knowledge is exasperating to those who have whole knowledge; and +half love--half love is maddening, should lead to massacre by those +whose love is all in all. + +I cannot remember when I did not know "The Lady of the Lake"--which, of +course, is the Trossachs. It is as though I knew it when I first knew +speech, lisped in numbers and the numbers came. It was the first +grown-up book I ever owned, and I own the copy yet. It is not a first +edition, this my first and only edition. I presume that in those far +away days when it was given to me, "a Christmas gift"--I always chose to +receive it from my Scottish grandmother, though she had been dead thirty +years before I came--I might have had a first edition for a song; but +the preciousness of first editions had not yet become a fetich. Since +then I have looked with respect and affection on that impress of "1810." +I have never looked on it with longing. So much better, that first +edition of mine, an ordinary sage-green cloth-bound book, with +ornamental black and gold title, such as the inartistic Eighties sent +forth; I do like to note that the year of its imprint is the year of my +possession. It has not even a gilt edge, I am pleased to state. The +paper is creamy, the ink is not always clear. And because it went +through one fire and flood, the pages have little brown ripples, magic +marginal notes. There is not a penciled margin in the whole volume. +That, in a book owned by one who always reads with a pencil in hand, is +beyond understanding! And yet it was many and many a year ago, in a +kingdom by the sea. Memory was tremendously active then, not quite the +memory of a Macaulay, but still one reading, or at least one and a half, +was sufficient to thrust the rimes of these two-edged couplets into +unsurrendering possession. Criticism was in abeyance; there is not even +a mark among the notes. I cannot be certain that I read them. Who reads +notes at the age of eight? + +I remember how my acquaintance began with "The Lady of the Lake," even +before I read it. In those days there was little literature for +children, and there was prejudice against that which was provided. There +was especial prejudice in my own household. I think my teacher in school +may have shared it. If he were an adult he would read, ostensibly to us, +but for himself, something he could tolerate. Yes, it was he; an +exception in those days, for in the public schools men seldom taught in +"the grades." + +He must have been a young man, not more than nineteen or twenty, waiting +to mature in his profession. And Scotch, as I think it now; not only +because his name was Kennedy, but because of his Highland dark eyes and +hair, and because of certain uncanny skill in mathematics--as I thought +who had not even a moiety--and because, oh, very much because, of the +splendid tussle he had--tulzie! that's the word--a very battle royal to +my small terrified fascinated vision, there on the school-room floor, +with the two Dempsey boys, who were much older than the rest of us; they +must have been as old as fourteen! One merited the punishment and was +getting it. The other, with clan loyalty, came to his rescue. And the +Highlander, white to the lips, and eyes black-and-fire, handled them +both. + +Oh, it was royal understudy to the combat at Coilantogle ford-- + + "Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu + When on the field his targe he threw." + + +_The Trossachs_ + +To write a guide to the Trossachs--that has been done and done more than +once; done with much minutiæ, with mathematics, with measurement; to-day +it is possible to follow the stag at eve, and all the rest of it, in all +its footsteps; to follow much more accurately than did even Sir Walter; +to follow vastly more accurately than did James Fitz James. + +For, in the first place, the world is not so stupendous a place as it +was in the days of Fitz James, or of Sir Walter. The Rockies and the +Andes have been sighted, if not charted, and beside them the Grampians +look low enough. Yet, fortunately, the situation can never be "beside +them." The most remembering traveler has crossed the seas and buried his +megalomanian American memories, let it be hoped, in the depths of the +Atlantic. Neither Rockies nor Andes carry so far or so rich memories. +Sir Walter has never projected an imaginary Roderick Dhu or a King +errant into any of the majesty or loveliness of those empty lakes and +mountains. I can imagine in what spirit the Pennells came to Loch Lomond +and declared that it "looked like any other lake." Dr. Johnson was quite +right, sir. "Water is the same everywhere," to those who think water is +water. + +Of course the traveler should not come upon the land by way of Lomond. +Fitz James came from Stirling. He came to subdue the Highlands. They +were seething in revolt--for no other reason than that Highlanders so +long as they were Highlanders had to seethe and revolt. And if we would +subdue the Highlands or have them subdue us, we must follow the silver +horn of the Knight of Snowdoun when he rode out of Stirling; to subdue, +yes, and to adventure. + +Yet perhaps it is better to have possessed Scotland, en tour, and to go +back to Stirling with Fitz James, as a captive, but bearing the golden +ring-- + + "Ellen, thy hand--the ring is thine, + Each guard and usher knows the sign." + +So one leaves Glasgow, the unromantic, threading through its miles of +prosperity and unbeauty, passing Dumbarton where Wallace was prisoner, +passing the river Leven, which ought to interest us, for once its "pure +stream" on his own confession laved the "youthful limbs" of Tobias +Smollett, until the open country is reached and Loch Lomond swims into +sight. + + "By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes + Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond, + There me and my true love spent mony happy days, + On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond." + +No, the Pennells might criticize "me and my true love." As for us, we +mean to be romantic and sentimental and unashamed and ungrammatical. And +spend mony days; Harry Lauder would spell and spend it, "money." + +[Illustration: DUMBARTON CASTLE.] + +The lake opens wide and free in the lowland country of Balloch. At the +left lies Glenfruin, the Glen of Wailing, where took place the terrible +clan battle between the MacGregors and Colquhouns, where the MacGregors +were victorious. But as Scott wrote, "the consequences of the battle of +Glenfruin were very calamitous to the family of MacGregor." Sixty widows +of the Colquhouns rode to Stirling each on a white palfrey, a "choir of +mourning dames." James VI, that most moral monarch, let loose his +judicious wrath, the very name of the clan was proscribed, fire and +sword pursued the MacGregors. The Highlanders are dauntless. There still +exist MacGregors and with the MacGregor spirit. And who that heard the +Glasgow choir sing the superb "MacGregors Gathering"--Thain' a +Grigalach--but will gather at the cry, "The MacGregor is come!" + + "The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the brae, + And the Clan has a name that is nameless by day; + Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach! + Gather, gather, gather. + + "If they rob us of name and pursue us with beagles, + Give their roofs to the flame, and their flesh to the eagles, + Then vengeance, vengeance, vengeance, Grigalach! + Vengeance, vengeance, vengeance. + + "Through the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career, + O'er the peak of Ben Lomond the galley shall steer, + Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach! + Gather, gather, gather." + +There are twenty-four islands marooned in this part of the lake; for +according to the old legend, one of these was a floating island and so +to chain one they chained all. The first island is Inch Murrin, at which +I looked with due respect, for it is a deer park of the present Duke of +Montrose. I know not if he is descended from The Montrose, or from +Malcolm Graeme and Fair Ellen, but let us believe it; it does not do to +smile at the claims of long descent in this persisting Scotland. The +Duke lives in Buchanan Castle, near the lake. Also he owns Ben Lomond. +Also--I read it in "More Leaves" of Queen Victoria's Journal--"Duke of +Montrose to whom half of Loch Lomond belongs." + +It was here that Dorothy Wordsworth looked and recorded, "It is an +outlandish scene; we might have believed ourselves in North America." +And so, I knew the Lomond country for my own. + +The steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond are in view at the top of the Loch, +but the ballad may well have contented itself with the sides. For I +know one traveler who wished to be loyal to the Ben, and having seen it +in 1889, and not seen it for the thick Scotch mist, returned again in +1911, and had her only day of rain in sailing across Loch Lomond. The +ballad turned into a coronach-- + + "But the broken heart kens nae second spring + Though resigned we may be while we're greetin'. + Ye'll tak the highway and I'll tak the low way." + +It is all MacGregor country, that is to say Rob Roy country. We are +bound for Inversnaid, so was he. All about Lomond he had his ways, Rob +Roy's prison, Rob Roy's cave, Rob Roy's grave, and all. And though there +are other claims hereabout, and although Robert Bruce himself preceded +Robert Roy in the cave, such is the power of the Wizard that it is the +later Robert one permits to inhabit these places. + +We remembered that Queen Victoria had preferred the roads to the +steamer. So we left the boat at Rowardennan pier. Not to walk the +pleasant ambling highways, that by some good public fortune run near the +"bonny bonny banks," and, in spite of the Duke of Montrose, make the +lake belong to us, to whom, of course, it does belong, but to walk to +the top of the Ben. + +The path, if one keeps the path, and he should, is safe, the gradation +easy; an American is like to smile at the claims of long ascent of a +mountain which is but 3192 feet from the sea to top. But let one wander +ever little from the path, attempt to make a new and direct descent, and +let one of those mists which hang so near a Scotch day actually descend +upon the top of the Ben--it is not the mildest sensation to find one's +foot poised just at the edge of a precipice. It is not well to defy +these three thousand feet because one has climbed higher heights. Ben +Lomond can do its bit. And it can furnish a panorama which the taller +Ben Nevis cannot rival, cannot equal. The Castle Rocks of Stirling and +of Edinburgh, on a clean clear day; nearer, Ben Ledi and Ben Venue, +names to thrill a far remembrance; Ben Cruachan, bringing the Mull +country from near remembrance. And farther across, pale but apparent, +the mountains of Ireland. A marvel of vision. + +At Inversnaid one is again with Dorothy Wordsworth. It was here or +hereabouts that William dropped the package of lunch in the water. So +like William! I wonder Dorothy let him carry it. It was here William saw +the Highland Girl, and wrote those lovely lines of her-- + + "Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace + Hath led me to this lonely place. + Joy have I had; and going hence + I bear away my recompense. + In spots like these it is we prize + Our memory; feel that she hath eyes.... + For I, methinks, till I grow old, + As fair before me shall behold, + As I do now, the cabin small, + The lake, the bay, the waterfall; + And thee, the spirit of them all!" + +And now one really begins to thrill. One is really going to Loch +Katrine, to the Trossachs. The road is preferable, five miles of +foot-pleasure, as against the filled coaches with perhaps "gallant +grays," and certainly fellow travelers who quote and misquote the lines. +No, it shall be on foot, up through the steep glen of Arklet water, out +on the high open moor where the Highland cattle browse, with Ben +Voirlich constantly in view, and Ben Venue coming even to meet us; with +William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Coleridge walking beside us all the +way. (Dorothy always called it "Ketterine," but then, she came hither +seven years before "The Lady" was published.) + +The old Highland fort was a perplexity to the Wordsworths. William +thought it a hospice like those he had seen in Switzerland, and even +later when told it was a fort Dorothy did not quite believe. It was +built at the time of the Fifteen to keep caterans--of which Rob Roy was +one--in subjection. And the American looks with interest because here, +in his youth--which was all he ever had in truth--General Wolfe, who +fell on the Heights of Abraham but won Quebec, commanded the fort of +this Highland height. I could but wonder how the French travelers who +throng these Scotch highways feel when they remember this victor over +Montcalm. Now that they have fought together "somewhere in France," no +doubt they feel no more keenly than an Englishman at Bannockburn. + +There is not too much lure to keep one's mind and one's feet from Loch +Katrine. There was a piper on the way, tall and kilted in the tartan of +the MacGregor. (Helen MacGregor, wife of Rob Roy, was born at Loch +Arklet, and across the hill in Glengyle Rob Roy was born, conveniently.) +The piper piped most valiantly. I should like to have set him a +"blawin'" o' the pipes with our piper on the Caledonian loch, something +like the tilt which Alan Breck had with Robinoig, son of Rob Roy. + +[Illustration: LOCH KATRINE.] + +The road drops down to Stronachlachar. Through the hill defile one +catches the gleam, and quickly "the sheet of burnished gold" rolls +before the eye. It is more splendid than when Dorothy Wordsworth +viewed it, "the whole lake appeared a solitude, neither boat, islands, +nor houses, no grandeur in the hills, nor any loveliness on the shores." +Poor Dorothy! She was hungry and tired, and did not know where she +should lay her head. Later, next day, at the farther end, she loved it, +"the perfection of loveliness and beauty." + +As for us, it was early morning, we had breakfasted, fate could not harm +us, and we knew our way. We were approaching it from the direction +opposite to Majesty, the soft gray clouded stillness, early out of the +morning world. But Scott had seen this picture also-- + + "The summer's dawn reflected hue + To purple changed Loch Katrine blue; + Mildly and soft the western breeze + Just kissed the lake, just stirr'd the trees, + And the pleased lake, like maiden coy + Trembled but dimpled not for joy; + The mountain shadows on her breast + Were neither broken nor at rest; + In bright uncertainty they lie, + Like future joys to Fancy's eye. + The water-lily to the light + Her chalice rear'd of silver bright; + The doe awoke and to the lawn + Begemm'd with dewdrops, led her fawn. + The gray mist left the mountain side, + The torrent show'd its glistening pride, + Invisible in flecked sky, + The lark sent down her revelry; + The black-bird and the speckled thrush + Good morrow gave from brake and bush; + In answer coo'd the cushat dove, + Her notes of peace, and rest, and love." + +Here we hit upon a device to possess Loch Katrine, both "going and +coming," to see the lake at dawn, simply as beauty, and then to come +upon it as came Fitz James. With a glass of milk for fast-breaking--we +had had a substantial breakfast at Inversnaid, and this glass was but +for auld lang syne, a pledge of my companion to her early memories--we +set out for "far Loch Ard or Aberfoyle." + +I think had we known how very modern is this way which curves about the +west side of Katrine we might have shunned it. Certain the stag would +have done it. He did, you remember; refusing to charge upon Ben Venue, +and thus avoiding the future site of the Water Works of the Corporation +of the City of Glasgow. Perhaps Glasgow is the best equipped +municipality in the world. Yet, what city but Glasgow would have tapped +Loch Katrine to furnish water for Glaswegians! + +Our road ran in the deep defile that lies between the two great bens, +Lomond (3192) and Venue (2393). The top of Lomond was clear in the +increasing sunlight, but mists still skirted his feet; while Venue was +mist-clad from base to summit, the thin white veils tearing every now +and then, as they swayed against the pine trees jagged tops, and lifting +and then settling again. + +And soon, we were at "far Loch Ard." It is a lovely little bit of water; +we wondered why the stag was not tempted to turn aside hither--but then, +we remembered, the stag did know, did save himself. Fishermen were out +in their boats, and altogether we decided that if the stag did not come +here we should, in the distant time when we should spend a summer in +this Highland peace. + +Ard is little, but a large-in-little, a one-act play to Lomond's big +drama. We chose our "seat," and we hoped that the owner of The Glashart +would be gracious when we sent him word of his eviction. Glashart is a +short way above the pass of Aberfoyle where, to our pleasure, the troops +of Cromwell were defeated by Graham of Duchray. + +But this time, after twelve miles of walk, come noontide and a keen +appetite, like the stag who + + "pondered refuge from his toil" + +we were content to house ourselves in the hotel at Aberfoyle. We chose +the one called "Baillie Nicol Jarvie," because this is all Rob Roy +country. In truth we felt at home with the Baillie, and with the Forth +flowing in front of the town, and the old clachan of Aberfoyle marked by +a few stones. + +In the late afternoon of this already full day we found there was a +coach leaving for Lake Menteith which would return in the late twilight, +too late for dinner, but Baillie Nicol was kind and we could have supper +on our return. So we were off to Menteith, and to an old memory, +reaching back to the daughter of James Fitz James. But at this far +distance she seemed to belong to an older day. + +Menteith is a little lake, a fragment of the abundant blue of Scotland's +waters, and it is surrounded by hills that are heather clad; only the +southern shore is wooded. Near the southern shore lies anchored the +Island of Inchmahone--isle of rest--where once stood a priory, and now +only a few arches keep the shadowy memory in their green covert. The +stones of the dead lie about, for the Isle of Rest was an island of +burial. + +Hither came Mary Queen of Scots, when she was five years old, here for +an island of refuge, since the defeat at Pinkie meant that Henry VIII +was nearer and nearer the little life that stood between him and +Scotland's throne-- + + "O ye mariners, mariners, mariners, + That sail upon the sea, + Let not my father nor mother to wit, + The death that I maun die!" + +She came with her four Maries, and together they went to France, +together they made merry and made love at the French court, and, all +unscathed, they returned fifteen years later-- + + "Yestreen the queen had four Maries, + To-night she'll hae but three; + There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beatoun, + And Marie Carmichael and me--" + +It was as though she were lost from the world, as we went back in the +dimming day; almost the only time I have ever lost her since historic +memories came to be my own personal memories. And yet, I knew I should +find her again. Mary is one of the women who do not go into exile once +they have made harbour in the affections. + +Next day, half by a hill-road and half by a foot-path, with mountains +whose names were poems evoking the one poem of the region, with the far +view, and with birches closing in the highway now and then, and now and +then opening into a near-far view of glen and stream and strath and +path, we came to--The Trossachs. + +It is a walk of perhaps eight miles through a charming memory-haunted +land, lovely certainly, lonely; there were few people to be met with, +but there was no sense of desertion. It was a day of quick clouds, +rushing across a deep blue, compact white clouds which say nothing of +rain, and very vivid air, the surfaces and the shadows being closely +defined. The birch leaves played gleefully over the path as we left the +highway, and that sweet shrewd scent of the birch leaf, as I "pu'd a +birk" now and then, completed the thrill, the ecstasy--if one may be +permitted the extravagance. + + "But ere the Brig o' Turk was won + The headmost horseman rode alone, + Alone, but with unbated zeal--" + +Here I should take up the thread of the old poem and weave it entire. +But first because I had come adventuring, even like the Gudeman o' +Ballengeich, and taking my chances as they came along, and meeting no +Highland girl and no Fair Ellen, I did seek out lodgings in one of the +cottages which cluster about the foot of Glen Finglas, typical Highland +cottages. Not the kind, I regret and do not regret, which Dorothy +Wordsworth describes with such triumph, where William and Dorothy and +Coleridge put up--"we caroused our cups of coffee, laughing like +children," over the adventure; but still a cottage, with a single bed +room. These cottages, no doubt because artists now and then inhabit them +and because all the world passes by and because they are on Montrose +property, are what the artist and the poet mean by a cottage, +low-browed, of field stone, and rose-entwined. + +[Illustration: THE BRIG O' TURK.] + +The hurried traveler with no time to spare and no comforts, lodges at +the Trossachs hotel, which aspires to look like a Lady-of-the-Lake +Abbotsford, and is, in truth, of an awesome splendour like some Del +Monte or Ponce de Leon. + +There is a parish church--I heard the bell far off in the woods--near +the hotel, but standing mid + + "the copsewood gray + That waved and wept on Loch Achray." + +It waved gently, and wept not at all that peaceful Sunday morning when +we made our way by path and strath into the dell of peace. The people +coming from the countryside repossess their own, and of course the +tourists are not in the church, or if there, with a subdued quality. The +coaches do not run, and there fell a peace over all the too well known, +too much trodden land, which restored it to the century in which it +truly belongs. + +In the late afternoon, under that matchless sky which the wind had swept +clear of even rapid clouds--we were glad we could match it by no other +Scottish sky, and only by the sky which shone down when we first came to +the Lake, that æon ago--and by the scant two miles that lie between the +Brig and the Lake, "stepping westward," we followed the far memory till +it was present. + +The road leads through the forest beautifully, peacefully. If on that +early September day no birds sang, still one missed nothing, not even +the horn of the Knight of Snowdoun. The paths twine and retwine, through +this bosky birchen wood, with heather purple, and knee deep on either +side, and through the trees swift glimpses of the storied mountains. + +Suddenly the way changes, the ground breaks, rocks heap themselves, a +gorge appears,--it is the very place! + + "Dashing down a darksome glen, + Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, + In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook + His solitary refuge took." + +I can never forget the thrill I had in the old schoolroom when Mr. +Kennedy first read the story and I knew that the stag had escaped. +I felt even more certain of it in this wild glen. Surely he must be in +there still. And so I refused to go and find him. + +[Illustration: _The Trossachs_] + +I could not discover where fell the gallant gray. I mean I was without +guide and could map my own geography out of my own more certain +knowledge. So I chose a lovely green spot--notwithstanding my +remembrance of "stumbling in the rugged dell"--encircled with oak and +birch, the shadows lying athwart it as they would write the legend. + + "Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, + That costs thy life, my gallant gray." + +And then, by a very pleasant path, instead of the tortuous ladderlike +way which James Fitz James was forced to take, I came again to The Lake, +splendid in the evening as it had been mysterious in the morning. + + "The western waves of ebbing day + Roll'd o'er the glen their level way; + Each purple peak, each flinty spire, + Was bathed in floods of living fire. + But not a setting beam could glow + Within the dark ravine below, + Where twined the path in shadow hid, + Round many a rocky pyramid, + Shooting abruptly from the dell + Its thunder-splintered pinnacle." + +No shallop set out when I raised my imaginary horn and blew my imaginary +salute to the lovely isle. There were no boats to hire, on this Sunday, +and I was not Malcolm Græme to swim the space. But there it lay, bosky +and beautiful, a green bit of peace in a blue world. Nothing could rob +me of my memory of Loch Katrine, not even the very lake itself. + + +_Stirling_ + +Stirling stands up boldly--in the midst of Scotland. + +That is the feeling I had in coming on it by train from the West. +Highlanders coming on it from the North, English coming on it from the +South, must have seen even more conclusively that Stirling rises out of +the midst of Scotland. + +I should have preferred to approach it on foot. But then, this is the +only conquering way in which to make one's descent on any corner of the +world one seeks to possess; either on one's own valiant two feet or on +the resounding four feet of a battle charger. Alas, to-day one does +neither. But--there lies Stirling rising from the water-swept plain, +through the gray of a Scotch morning, entirely worthy of being "taken," +and looking completely the part it has played in Scottish history. + +Scotland is curiously provided with these natural forts, the Rocks of +Edinburgh and Dumbarton and Stirling. They have risen out of the plain, +for the defense and the contention of man. And because Stirling lies, +between East and West, between North and South, it has looked down on +more history, seen more armies advance and retreat than--any other one +place in the world? + +Standing upon its wind-swept battlements--I can never think that the +wind dies down on the heights of Stirling--one looks upon the panorama +of Scottish history. The Lomonds lie blue and far to the east, the +Grampians gray and stalwart to the north, and on the west the peaks of +the Highlands, Ben Lomond and all the hills that rampart "The Lady of +the Lake." All around the sky were ramparts of low-lying clouds, lifting +themselves here and there at the corners of the world into splendid +impregnable bastions. Stirling looks a part of this ground plan, of this +sky battlement. + +Soldiers, from yonder heights!--and you know the rest. From this height +you who are far removed from those our wars, a mere human speck in the +twentieth century look down on seven battlefields. Did Pharaoh see more, +or as much, from Cheops? The long list runs through a thousand years and +is witness to the significance of Stirling. + +Here, in 843, was fought the battle of Cambuskenneth, and the Painted +People fell back, and Kenneth, who did not paint, made himself king of +an increasing Scotland. + +Here, in 1297, was fought the battle of Stirling Bridge, and William +Wallace with a thousand men--but Scotsmen--defeated the Earl of Surrey +and the Abbot Cressingham with five thousand Englishmen. + +Here, in 1298, was fought the battle of Falkirk, and Wallace was +defeated. But not for long. Dead, he continued to speak. + +Here, in 1313, was fought the battle of Bannockburn, forty thousand +Scots against a hundred thousand English, Irish and Gascons. And The +Bruce established Scotland Forever. + +Here, in 1488, was fought the battle of Sauchieburn, the nobles against +James III, and James flying from the field was treacherously slain. + +Here, in 1715, was fought the battle of Sheriffmuir, when Mar and Albany +with all their men marched up the hill of Muir and then marched down +again. + +Here, in 1745, Prince Charles experienced one of his great moments; how +his great moments stand forth in the pathos, yes, and the bathos, of his +swift career. + +It is a tremendous panorama. + + "Scots, wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled! + Scots, wham Bruce has aften led!" + +I listened while the guide went through with the battle, which, of +course, is the Battle of Bannockburn. How The Bruce disposed his army to +meet the English host he knew was coming up from the south to relieve +the castle garrison; how they appeared at St. Ninians suddenly, and the +ever-seeing Bruce remarked to Moray, who had been placed in charge of +that defense--"there falls a rose from your chaplet"--it is almost too +romantic not to be apocryphal; and how Moray (who was the Randolph Moray +who scaled the crags at Edinburgh that March night) countered the +English dash for the castle and won out; how in the evening of the day +as King Robert was inspecting his lines for the battle of the to-morrow, +a to-morrow which had been scheduled the year before--"unless by St. +John's day"; they had then a sense of leisure--the English knight Sir +Henry de Bohun spurred upon him to single combat; it is worth while +listening to the broad Scots of the guide as he repeats his well-conned, +his well-worn, but his immortal story-- + + "High in his stirrups stood the King + And gave his battle-ax the swing, + Right on de Boune, the whiles he passed, + Fell that stern dint--the first, the last, + Such strength upon the blow was put, + The helmet crashed like hazel nut." + +And all the battle the next day, until King Edward rides hot-trod to +Berwick, leaving half his host dead upon this pleasant green field that +lies so unremembering to the south of the castle. There is no more +splendid moment in human history, unless all battles seem to you too +barbaric to be splendid. But it made possible a nation--and, I take it, +Scotland has been necessary to the world. + +If this is too overwhelming a remembrance, there is an opposite to this, +looking across the level lands of the Carse. The view leads past the +Bridge of Allan, on to Dunblane, near which is the hill of Sheriffmuir. +You can see the two armies in the distance of time and of the plain, +creeping on each other unwittingly--and the guide, too, is glad to turn +to a later and less revered moment-- + + "Some say that we wan, + Some say that they wan, + And some say that nane wan at a', man; + But o' ae thing I'm sure, + That at Sheriffmuir + A battle there was that I saw, man; + And we ran, and they ran, + And they ran, and we ran, + And they ran and we ran awa', man." + +To-day the wind has swept all these murmurs of old wars into the +infinite forgotten. The world is as though MacAlpine and Wallace and The +Bruce and Prince Charles had not been. Or, is it? It looks that way, at +this quiet moment, in this quiet century, and in this country where +there is such quiet; a country with such a long tumult, a country with +such a strange silence. But the rest of the world would never have been +as it is but for the events that lie thick about here, but for the race +which was bred in such events. + + "And the castle stood up black + With the red sun at its back." + +There is something more dour about Stirling than Edinburgh. It is, in +the first place, too useful. One never thinks of the castle at +Edinburgh as anything but romantic, of the troops as anything but +decorative. Stirling is still used, much of it closed, and it has the +bare, uninviting look of a historic place maintained by a modern +up-keep. + +Evidently when Burns visited it he found a ruin, and was moved to +express his Jacobitism--would a poet be anything but a Jacobite?-- + + "Here Stuarts once in glory reign'd, + And laws for Scotland's weal ordain'd; + But now unroof'd their palace stands, + Their scepter's sway'd by other hands; + The injured Stuart line is gone, + A race outlandish fills their throne--" + +Soon after you enter the gate you come upon the dungeon of Roderick Dhu, +and here you get the beginnings of that long song of the Lake, which +lies to the west, when Allan Bane tunes his harp for Roderick-- + + "Fling me the picture of the fight, + When my clan met the Saxon's might, + I'll listen, till my fancy hears + The clang of swords, the crash of spears!" + +You may look into the Douglass room, where James II stabbed the Earl of +Douglass (1452). It is a dark room for a dark deed. And the guide +repeats Douglass's refusal to the king: + +[Illustration: _Stirling Castle_] + + "No, by the cross it may not be! + I've pledged my kingly word. + And like a thunder cloud he scowled, + And half unsheathed his sword. + Then drew the king that jewel'd glaive + Which gore so oft had spilt, + And in the haughty Douglass heart + He sheathed it to the hilt." + +The Douglasses, we see, still thought themselves "peer to any lord in +Scotland here," and the provocation to the Stewart, merely a second +Stewart, must have been great--"my kingly word"! and a "half sheathed" +sword! Perhaps we shall have to forgive this second James about whom we +know little but this affair, who seems as ineffective a monarch as James +the Second of two centuries later. + +It is rather with Mary, and with her father and her son, that we +associate Stirling. James V took his commoner title of "the Gudeman of +Ballengeich" from here, when he went abroad on those errantries which +all the Stewarts have dearly loved. At Stirling it seems more possible +that James V did write those poems which, yesterday in Edinburgh I felt +like attributing to James IV. North of the bridge there is a hill, Moat +Hill, called familiarly Hurley Haaky, because the Fifth James enjoyed +here the rare sport of coasting down hill on a cow's skull. The Scot +can derive coasting from "Hurley" and skull from "Haaky"--a clever +people! + +Queen Mary was brought to Stirling when a wee infant and crowned in the +old High church, September 9, 1543--and cried all the time they were +making her queen. Surely "it came with ane lass and it will pass with +ane lass." It was from Stirling that she was taken to France, and when +she returned she included Stirling in her royal progress. I cannot think +she was much here. Mary was not dour. Still, historic rumour has her +married here, secretly to Darnley, and, in the rooms of Rizzio! And she +came here once to see her princely son, hurriedly, almost stealthily, as +if she felt impending fate. + +That son was much here. Stirling was considered a safer place for James +VI than Edinburgh, and then, of course, it was such a covenanted place. +James was baptized here also, and his Royal Mother was present, but not +Darnley. He refused to come, but sat carousing--as usual--in Willie +Bell's Lodging, still standing in Broad Street, if you care to look on +it. Young James merely looked at the ceiling of the High church, and +pointing his innocent finger at it, gravely criticized, "there is a +hole." James was crowned in the High church, Mary being at Loch Leven, +and the coronation sermon was preached by Knox, who "enjoyed the +proudest triumph of his life." Then, I know, baby James had to sit +through a two or three hour sermon. For once I am sorry for him. + +From the courtyard one sees the iron bars in the palace windows placed +there to keep James from falling out--and others from stealing in? And +here in the royal apartments, King James was taught his Latin and Greek +like any other Scots boy, and by that same George Buchanan who was his +mother's instructor--and her defamer. Perhaps he was the author of the +betraying Casket letter; in spite of Froude's criticism based on +internal evidence, that only Shakespeare or Mary could have written it. +I can almost forgive Buchanan, for at one time when James was making +more noise than beseemed a pupil of Buchanan, this schoolmaster birched +him then and there, whereupon the royal tear fell, and the royal yowl +was lifted--and Lady Mar rushed in to quiet this uproarious division in +the kingdom. + +The archives of Stirling were once rich in Scottish records. But General +Monk removed them to London when he moved on that capital with the king +also in his keeping. Years and years after, when Scotland demanded back +her records, they were sent by sea, the ship foundered, and sunk--and +we have a right to accept legend as history in this land of lost +records. + +One may use Stirling Castle for lovelier ends than history or battle, +for temporal ends of beauty--which is not temporal. Else would the +prospect from these ramparts not linger immortally in the memory and +flash upon the inward eye as one of the most wonderful views in all the +world. + +From Queen Mary's Lookout there is the King's Park, with the King's +Knot, the mysterious octagonal mound; it may have looked lovelier when +Mary looked down on its flower gardens and its orchards, but this green +world is sightly. + +From the battlements above the Douglass garden there is a magnificent +survey; the rich Carse of broad alluvial land with the Links of the +Firth winding in and out among the fields, shining, and steely, +reluctant to widen out into the sea. The Ochils from the far background, +and nearer is the Abbey Craig, thickly wooded and crowned by the Wallace +monument, which while it adds nothing to the beauty of the scene, would +have made such a commanding watch tower for Wallace. Just below is the +old Bridge which--not this bridge, but it looks old enough with its +venerable five hundred years--divided the English forces. Near by, on +one of the Links, stands the tower of Cambuskenneth Abbey, a pleasant +walk through fields and a ferry ride across the Forth, to this memoried +place, which once was a great abbey among abbeys; I doubt not David +founded it. Bruce once held a parliament in it. Now it is tenanted +chiefly by the mortal remains of that Third James who took flight from +Sauchieburn, and whose ghost so haunted his nobles for years after. +Queen Margaret also lies here, she who sat stitching, stitching, +stitching, while those same nobles raged through Linlithgow and sought +their king. Cambuskenneth--the name is splendid--is but a remnant of +grandeur. But there are a few charming cottages nearby, rose-embowered, +perhaps with roses that descend from those in Mary's garden. + +Across to the north is the Bridge of Allan, come to be a celebrated +watering place-- + + "On the banks of Allan Water + None so fair as she." + +Far across to the north is Dunblane, with a restored-ruined cathedral-- + + "The sun has gone down o'er the lofty Ben Lomond + And left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene, + While lanely I stray in the calm simmer gloamin' + To muse on sweet Jessie the flower o' Dunblane." + +In the green nestle of the woods, away to the right, are the battlements +of Doune-- + + "Oh, lang will his lady + Look frae the Castle Doune, + Ere she see the Earl o' Moray + Come sounding through the toun." + +The Bonnie Earl was murdered at Donibristle Castle, on Inverkeithing Bay +across the Forth from Edinburgh, where the King sent his lordship--"oh, +woe betide ye, Huntly"--to do the deed. It was our same kingly James VI, +and I like to think that his life had its entertaining moments, even if +Anne of Denmark did have to look long and longingly down from the +battlements of Doune. + +The lookout to the north is called the Victoria--as if to link Victoria +with Mary! But the old queen was proudest of her blood from the +eternally young queen. An inscription on the wall registers the fact +that Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort visited the castle in 1842. + +And not any sovereign since until 1914. + +[Illustration: DOUNE CASTLE.] + +I had reached the city in the mid-afternoon, unconscious of royalty, +that is, of living royalty, as one is in Scotland. It seems that the +king and queen, George and Mary, were making a visit to Stirling. +Consequently there were no carriages at the station--and one must be +very careful how one walked on the royal crimson carpet. Two small boys +who scorned royalty, were impressed into service, to carry bags to the +hotel. But the press of the people was too great. The king and queen had +issued from the castle, were coming back through the town + + "The castle gates were open flung, + The quivering drawbridge rock'd and rung, + And echo'd loud the flinty street + Beneath the coursers' clattering feet, + As slowly down the steep descent + Fair Scotland's King and nobles went." + +I took refuge in a bank building, and even secured a place at the +windows. For some reason the thrifty people had not rented these +advantageous casements. The king and queen passed. I saw them +plainly--yes, plainly. And the people were curiously quiet. They did not +mutter, they were decorous, there was no repudiation, but--what's a king +or queen of diluted Stewart blood to Scotsmen of this undiluted town? + +That afternoon in the castle I understood. An elderly Scotsman--I know +of no people whom age so becomes, who wear it with such grace and +dignity and retained power--looking with me at the memorial tablet to +Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in the west lookout, explained--"It's +seventy years since royalty has been here. Not from that day to this." + +It seems that on the old day, the day of 1842, when royalty rode in +procession through the streets of Stirling, the commoners pressed too +close about. It offended the queen; she liked a little space. (I +remembered the old pun perpetrated by Lord Palmerston, when he was with +Queen Victoria at the reviewing of the troops returned from the Crimea, +and at the queen's complaining that she smelled spirits, "Pam" +explained--"Yes, esprit de corps.") So she returned not at all to +Stirling. I could wish King Edward had, the one Hanoverian who has +succeeded in being a Stewart. + +The view is almost as commanding from Ladies Rock in the old cemetery, +whither I went, because in the very old days I had known intimately, as +a child reader, the "Maiden Martyr," and here was to find her monument. + +There are other monuments, none so historic, so grandiose, so solemn. +The friends of a gentleman who had died about mid-century record that he +died "at Plean Junction." Somehow it seemed very uncertain, ambiguous, +capable of mistake, to die at a Junction out of which must run different +ways. + +And one man, buried here, was brought all the way, as the tombstone +publishes, from "St. Peter, Minnesota." It's a historic town, to its own +people. But what a curious linking with this very old town. I thought of +a man who had hurried away from Montana the winter before, because he +wanted to "smell the heather once more before I die." And he had died in +St. Paul, Minnesota, only a thousand miles on his way back to the +heather. + +Viewed from below, the castle is splendid. The road crosses the bridge, +skirts the north side of the Rock, toward the King's Knot; a view-full +walk, almost as good, almost, as Edinburgh from Princes Gardens; this +green and pastoral, that multicoloured and urban. The whole situation is +very similar, the long ridge of the town, the heaven-topping castle +hill. Stirling is the Old Town of Edinburgh minus the New Town. And so +we confess ourselves modern. Stirling is not so lovely; yet it is more +truly, more purely Scottish. Edinburgh is a city of the world. Stirling +is a town of Scotland. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE WEST COUNTRY + +_Glasgow_ + + +I cannot think why, in a book to be called deliberately "The Spell of +Scotland," there should be a chapter on Glasgow. + +I remember that in his "Picturesque Notes," to the second edition Robert +Louis Stevenson added a foot-note in rebuke to the Glaswegians who had +taken to themselves much pleasure at the reservations of Stevenson's +praise of Edinburgh--"But remember I have not yet written a book on +Glasgow." He never did. And did any one ever write "Picturesque Notes on +Glasgow"? + +I remember that thirty years ago when a college professor was making the +"grand tour"--thirty years ago seems as far back as three hundred years +when James Howell was making his "grand tour"--he asked a casually met +Glaswegian what there was to be seen, and this honest Scot, pointing to +the cathedral declared, "that's the only aydifyce ye'll care to look +at." + +I should like to be singular, to write of picturesque points in Glasgow. +But how can it be done? Glasgow does not aspire to picturesqueness or to +historicalness. Glasgow is content, more than content, in having her +commerce and her industry always "in spate." + +Glasgow is the second city of size in the United Kingdom, and the first +city in being itself. London is too varied and divided in interests; it +never forgets that it is the capital of the world, and a royal capital. +Glasgow never forgets that it is itself, very honestly and very +democratically, a city of Scots. Not of royal Stewarts, and no castle +dominates it. But a city made out of the most inveterate Scottish +characteristics. Or I think I would better say Scotch. That is a +practical adjective, and somewhat despised of culture; therefore +applicable to Glasgow. While Scottish is romantic and somewhat +pretending. + +Glasgow is the capital of the Whig country, of the democratic Scotland +of covenanting ancestry. Glasgow is precisely what one would expect to +issue out of the energy and honesty and canniness and uncompromise of +that corner of the world. Historically it belongs to Wallace, the +commoner-liberator. And if Burns is the genius of this southwestern +Scotland, as Scott is of the southeastern, it is precisely the +difference between the regions; as Edinburgh and Glasgow differ. + +The towns are less than an hour apart by express train. They are all of +Scotch history and characteristics apart in quality and in genius. +Edinburgh is still royal, and sits supreme upon its hill, its past so +present one forgets it is the past. Glasgow never could have been royal; +and so it never was significant until royal Scotland ceased to be, and +democratic Scotland, where a man's a man for a' that, came to take the +place of the old, to take it completely, utterly. So long as the world +was old, was the Old World, and looked toward the East, Edinburgh would +be the chief city. When the world began to be new, and to look toward +the New World, Glasgow came swiftly into being, and the race is to the +swift. + +[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER.] + +There is history to Glasgow, when it was a green pleasant village, and +there was romance. It is but a short way, a foot-path journey if the +pleasant green fields still invited, out to Bothwell Castle; splendid +ruin, and, therefore, recalling Mary and Darnley and the Lennoxes, but +not Bothwell. But Landside, where Mary was defeated, is a Glaswegian +suburb, Kelvingrove--"let us haste"--is a prosperous residence +district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, means simply and largely the +harbour of Glasgow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in order that +Glasgow's prosperity might flow out of the very heart of the city. +"Lord, let Glasgow flourish according to the preaching of Thy word," ran +the old motto. It has been shortened of late. + +The heart of the city is dreary miles of long monotonous streets, where +beauty is never wasted in grass blade or architecture. George's Square +may be noble, it has some good monuments, but it is veiled in commercial +grime, like all the town. What could be expected of a city that would +name its principal business street, "Sauchieburn," memorializing and +defying that petty tragedy? + +There is an art gallery with Whistler's "Carlyle," and a few other +notable pictures (John Lavery's I looked at with joy) to redeem miles of +mediocrity. (Here I should like to be original and not condemn, but +there are the miles.) + +There is a cathedral, that "aydifyce" of note, touched almost nothing by +the spirit of "reform"; for the burghers of Glasgow, then as now, +believing that their cathedral belonged to them, rose in their might and +cast out the despoilers before they had done more than smash a few +"idols." Therefore this shrine of St. Kentigern's is more pleasing than +the reformed and restored shrine of St. Giles. The crypt is particularly +impressive. And the very pillar behind which Rob Roy hid is all but +labeled. Of course it is "authentic," for Scott chose it. What unrivaled +literary sport had Scott in fitting history to geography! + +There is a University, one of the first in the Kingdom; the city +universities are gaining on the classic Oxford and St. Andrews. + +But chiefly there are miles of houses of working men, more humble than +they ought to be. If Glasgow is one of the best governed cities in the +world, and has the best water supply in the world--except that of St. +Paul--would that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow would scatter a +little loveliness before the eyes of these patient and devoted +workingmen. + +But what a chorus their work raises. In shipyards what mighty work is +wrought, even such tragically destined work, and manufactured beauty, as +the _Lusitania_! + +From Glasgow it is that the Scot has gone out to all the ends of the +earth. If the "Darien scheme" of wresting commerce from England failed +utterly, and Glasgow failed most of all, that undoing was the making of +the town. It is not possible to down the Scot. The smallest drop of +blood tells, and it never fails to be Scottish. Most romantic, most +poetic, most reckless, most canny of people. The Highlander and the +Lowlander that Mr. Morley found mixed in the character of Gladstone, and +the explanation of his character, is the explanation of any Scot, and of +Scotland. + + +_Ayr_ + +Always the West is the democratic corner of a country; or, let me say +almost always, if you have data wherewith to dispute a wholesale +assertion. Sparta was west of Athens, La Rochelle was west of Paris, +Switzerland was west of Gesler; Norway is west of Sweden, the American +West is west of the American East. And Galloway and Ayrshire are the +west Lowlands of Scotland. + +The West is newer always, freer, more open, more space and more lure for +independence. The West is never feudal, until the West moves on and the +East takes its place. Here men develop, not into lords and chiefs, but +into men. Wallace may come out of the West, but it is after he has come +out that he leads men, in the establishment of a kingdom, but more in a +wider fight for freedom; while he is in the West he adventures as a man +among men, on the Waters of Irvine, in Laglyne Wood, at Cumnock. And a +Bruce, struggling with himself, and setting himself against a Comyn, may +stagger out of a Greyfriars at Dumfries, and, bewildered, exclaim, "I +doubt I have slain the Comyn!" When a follower makes "siccar," and all +the religious and human affronts mass to sober The Bruce, a king may +come out of Galloway, out of a brawl, if a church brawl, and establish +the kingdom and the royal line forever. + +If a Wallace, if a Bruce, can proceed out of these Lowlands--and a Paul +Jones!--a poet must come also. And a poet who is as much the essence of +that west country as chieftain or king. Everything was ready to produce +Burns in 1759. William Burns had come from Dunnottar, a silent, +hard-working, God-fearing Covenanter, into this covenanting corner of +Scotland. It was filled with men and women who had grown accustomed to +worshiping God according to their independent consciences, and in the +shelter of these dales and hills, sometimes harried by that +covenanter-hunting fox, Claverhouse--to his defeat; finally winning the +right to unconcealed worship. Seven years gone, and William Burns having +built the "auld clay biggan" at Alloway, he married a Carrick maid, +Agnes Broun, a maid who had much of the Celt in her. And Robert Burns +was born. + +It is of course only after the event that we know how fortunate were the +leading circumstances, how inevitable the advent of Robert Burns. Father +and mother, time and place, conspired to him. And all Scotland, all that +has been Scotland since, results from him. It is Scott who reconstructed +Scotland, made the historic past live. But it is Burns who is Scotland, +Scotland remains of his temper; homely, human, intense, impassioned; +with a dash and more of the practical and frugal necessary for the +making of a nation, but worse than superfluous for the making of a +Burns. + +Three towns of this Scottish corner contend not for the birth but for +the honours of Burns. If Dumfries is the capital of Burnsland and the +place of his burial, Ayr is gateway to the land and the place of his +birth; while Kilmarnock, weaver's town and most unpoetic, but productive +of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the high and distinct literary +honours, having published the first edition in an attic, and having +loaned its name as title for the most imposing edition, and having in +its museum possession all the published Burns editions. + +To follow his footsteps through Burnsland were impossible to the most +ardent. For Burns was a plowman who trod many fields, and turned up many +daisies, and disturbed many a wee mousie, a poet who dreamed beside many +a stream, and if he spent but a brief lifetime in all, it would take a +lifetime, and that active, to overtake him. + +"I have no dearer aim than to make leisurely pilgrimages through +Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the +romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse on the stately towers or +venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes." + +He did this abundantly. We have followed him in many a place. But in +Burnsland it were all too intimate, if not impossible. He knew all the +rivers of this west country, Nith, Doon, Ayr, Afton. + + "The streams he wandered near; + The maids whom he loved, the songs he sung, + All, all are dear." + +He did not apparently know the sea, or love it, although he was born +almost within sound of it; and he sings of it not at all. He knew +the legends of the land. "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish +prejudice into my veins," and he deliberately followed the Bruce legend, +hoping it would enter into his blood and spirit, and something large and +worthy would result. It did, not an epic, but the strong song of a +nation, "Scots wha hae." + +[Illustration: _Ayr River_] + +His land was the home of Lollards and Covenanters. Independence was in +the blood. It was the land of the "fighting Kennedys," who disputed with +each other, what time they were not furnishing an Abbot of Crossraguel +to dispute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Walter Kennedy to have a +"flytting" with the Kynge's Makar, William Dunbar. Where Burns secured +his Jacobitism I do not know, but, of course, a poet is by nature a +Jacobite; as he himself said, "the Muses were all Jacobite." + +Burnsland is rich in other literary associations. Johannes Scotus is +reckoned to have been born also at Ayr; and there are John Galt, James +Boswell, James Montgomery, Alexander Smith, Ainslie, Cunningham, and the +Carlyles, and Scott in some of his most lively romances. The Book of +Taliessin is written in part of this land, the Admirable Crichton was +born here. It is a close-packed little port-manteau of land. There is +pursuit enough for at least a summer's travel. And, without doubt, there +are as many pilgrims who explore Ayrshire as Warwickshire, and much more +lovingly. + +The entrance is by Ayr. And this I think can be made most claimingly, +most fitly, by steamer from Belfast. For one thing, it avoids entrance +at Glasgow. Ayr is still a sea port of some importance; and Ireland, +democratic, romantic, intimate, is a preparation for this similar +country of Galloway and about; both lands are still Celtic. + +Ayr looks well from the sea as one comes in, although in the day of +Burns the Ratton-key was a more casual place, and harbour works to +retain the traffic were not yet built. But the town sits down well into +the waterside of its Doon and Ayr rivers, much like a continental town +where fresh waters are precious. There is long suburban dwelling, not as +it was a hundred and fifty years ago. + +And Ayr looks out on the sea with a magnificent prospect from any of her +neighbouring segments of coast, with ruined castles set properly, with +the dark mass of romantic Arran purple across the waters, with Ailsa +Rock evident, and to a far-seeing eye the blue line of Ireland whence +we have come. + +There is small reason for staying in Ayr, unless for a wee bit nappie in +Tam o' Shanter's inn, which still boasts itself the original and only +Tam and hangs a painting above the door to prove itself the starting +point, this last "ca' hoose," for Alloway. + +To Alloway one may go by tram! It sounds flat and unprofitable. But the +gray mare Meg is gone, has followed her tail into the witches night. And +if it were not the tram it would be a taxi. And what have witches and +warlocks to do with electricity, in truth how can they compete with +electricity? + + "Nae man can tether time or tide; + The hour approaches Tam maun ride; + That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane, + That dreary hour he mounts his beast in; + An' sic a night he taks the road in + As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in." + +To follow, in a tram, in broad daylight, oh, certainly the world has +changed, and the Deil too since "the Deil had business on his hand." The +occupations that are gone! It is a highway one follows to-day, suburban +villas and well-kept fields line the way; no need to "skelpit on thro' +dub and mire." Tam would be quite without adventure. And to-day one +wonders if even the lightning can play about this commonplace way. There +is however the Race-course--some reminder of Meg! + +Yet, it is possible to forget this pleasant day, and to slip back into +old night as + + "Before him Doon pours a' his floods; + The doubling storm roars through the woods; + The lightnings flash frae pole to pole; + Near and more near the thunders roll; + When, glimmering through the groaning trees, + Kirk Alloway seem'd in a bleeze." + +The walls of the Auld Kirk lie before us--and "Auld Nick in shape o' +beast" is sitting under "the winnock bunker i' the east." Who would deny +that he also like Tammie "glower'd amazed and curious"? + + "The piper loud and louder blew, + The dancers quick, and quicker flew; + They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, + Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, + And coost her duddies to the wark, + And linket at it in her sark." + +The ride on this tram has developed a dizziness. + + "Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil; + Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!" + +Did we cry "weel done, cutty sark!" Then we, too, must descend and +hurry on foot to the old Brig o' Doon. Not pausing long for The +Monument, even to look at the wedding ring of Jean Armour, or the Bible +Burns gave to Highland Mary; but on to the Auld Kirk which stands +opposite. + +To Burns we owe this church in more ways than one. When a certain book +of "Antiquities" was being planned, Burns asked that the Auld Kirk of +Alloway be included. If Burns would make it immortal? yes. So the story +of Tam o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway forever to be remembered. +What would William Burns, covenanter, have thought? For I cannot but +think that William looked often askance at the acts of his genius-son. +But William was safely buried within the kirk, and if the epitaph +written by the son reads true, William was excellently covenanted. + + "O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, + Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend. + Here lies the loving husband's dear remains, + The tender father, and the gen'rous friend. + The pitying heart that felt for human woe, + The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride, + The friend of man, to vice alone a foe, + For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.'" + +The auld clay biggan still stands in Alloway, and "the banks and braes +o' bonnie Doon" bloom as "fresh and fair" to-day as they did a century +and a half ago. It is a simpler place than the birth house on High +Street in Stratford, and a simpler environment than College Wynd in +Edinburgh. This is a true cotter's home, and Saturday nights within must +have been of the description. + +Somehow it is less of a tourist's way of forced entry, this through the +barn, than the basement door at Abbotsford; and so one passes through +the byre and into the kitchen, where stands the bed in which Robert +Burns was born. It is all beautifully homely, as lowly as a manger; and, +how the world has been filled by what was once small frail life herein! + +It is difficult to divide the poet's relics among so many claimant +places, but here and in the museum are many mementoes of the poet. For +this as well as Kirk Alloway is a national monument, or something like. + +There was a century during which this was merely a clay biggan, and a +public house, and that offended no one, least of all the friends of the +poet. Except Keats. He came hither in 1818. The host was drunk most of +the time, and garrulous. Keats complained that it affected his +"sublimity." And, for once, Keats turned severe self-critic. "The +flat dog made me write a flat sonnet." + +[Illustration: BURNS' COTTAGE, BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBERT BURNS, AYR.] + +It was while living at Mount Oliphant, two miles east of Ayr, when Burns +was fifteen, that he began that long, long list of lasses whom he loved +and whom he made immortal with a verse. He might have said with James +V,--and much he resembled that Gudeman o' Ballangeich--"it came wi' ane +lass and it will gae wi' ane lass." The first was Nelly Kilpatrick, +daughter of the miller of Perclewan-- + + "O, ance I lov'd a bonnie lass, + Ay, and I love her still." + +The last was Jessie Lewars, who ministered to him in those last days in +the Millhole brae in Dumfries-- + + "O wert thou in the cauld blast + On yonder lea, on yonder lea, + My plaidie to the angry airt, + I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee." + +To Kilmarnock one goes for its name. But "the streets and neuks o' +Killie" are changed since that Burns' day. It is a sprawling, thriving +factory town, a town of weavers--and a town of poets. There is something +in the whirr of wheels, to those who are within it, which establishes +rhythm in the ear, and often leads to well-measured poetry! Surely a +weaver is equal to a plowman, and I fancy that many a workingman and +working lass with lines running through the head walk this Waterloo +street, pass Tam o' Shanter's arms, and looks above the Loan Office at +the attic where that precious first edition was printed in 1786. Poems +and pawn broking--Waterloo Street is a suggestive Grub street. + +From Kilmarnock to Dumfries by train is a Burns pilgrimage, even though +it be taken without break, and in seventy-seven minutes! And +interspersed are other memories. It is entirely what Burnsland should +be, nothing set down in high tragedy, but all lyrical, with gentle +hills, whispering rivers, and meadows and woodlands all the way. + +Mauchline, where the burst of song was like that of a skylark, the very +outpouring of the man's soul; here lies the field where he turned up the +daisy and found an immortal lyric. + +Auchinleek, where Boswell and Dr. Johnson paused on their journey and +where to the hot-flung query of the Doctor, "Pray, what good did +Cromwell ever do the country?" the judicial and wrathful father of our +Boswell flung the hotter retort--"He gart kings ken they had a lith in +their necks." The Scottish tongue is the tongue of rebellions. Should +we stay in this corner of the world longer we might turn covenanting and +Cromwellian! + +Cumnock, which William Wallace made his headquarters between the battle +of Stirling bridge and that of Falkirk. + +New Cumnock, whence the Afton so sweetly falls into the Nith-- + + "Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, + Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise." + +Kirkconnel, which is said not to be the Kirkconnel where Fair Helen +lies--but like the blasted heath, will it not serve? + + "I wish I were where Helen lies, + Baith night and day on me she cries." + +And in any event "The Bairnies cuddle doon at Nicht" were "waukrife +rogues" in Kirkconnel. + +Sanquhar to Thornhill, with rounding green hills along the Nith, with +memories of Old Queensberry and Defoe and Wordsworth and Coleridge and +Allan Ramsay and Dr. John Brown, and Carlyle. Thornhill is Dalgarnock, +where fairs were held-- + + "But a' the niest week, as I petted wi' care, + I gaed to the tryste o' Dalgarnock, + And wha but my fine, fickle lover was there? + I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock, + I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock." + +Dunscore lies to the right with "Redgauntlet" memories, and a few miles +farther on is Craigenputtock. + +Ellisland a brief moment, where immortal "Tam" was written as under the +spell of a warlock. + + +_Dumfries_ + +It is a proud little city, more than a bit self-satisfied. It realizes +that its possession of the mortal remains of Burns gives it large claim +in his immortality, and the Burns monument is quite the center of the +town. + +Yet Dumfries is well satisfied from other argument. Historically, it +goes back to Bruce and Comyn, and even to a Roman beyond. But there is +nothing left of old Greyfriars where the killing of Comyn took place. +Dumfries had its moment in the Forty Five, for the Bonnie Prince was +here as he went down to the invasion of England, and his room in what is +now the Commercial Hotel may be looked into but not lodged in; Dumfries, +in spite of Covenant, has its modicum of Jacobitism. + +[Illustration: CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE.] + +It is in "Humphrey Clinker" that Smollett compels some one to say "If +I was confined to Scotland I would choose Dumfries as my place of +residence." Confined to Scotland, forsooth! + +Dumfries is larger than it was in the days of Burns, and very busy +withal, in factories and railroads. But it is still a country town, +still hints at something of dales and woods and streams, even on High +Street. The land about is true Burnsland; low, gentle hills closing in +the horizon in a golden sea of warmth and sunlight, and the Nith a +pleasant stream. It makes a great bend about Dumfries, with Maxwelltown +across the water, and still + + "Maxwellton's braes are bonny + Where early fa's the dew." + +Farther a-field there lies Sweetheart Abbey, built by the Lady +Devorgilla, widow of John Balliol, and founder of Balliol at Oxford; one +of the most beautiful ruins not only in Scotland but in the Kingdom. +Caerlaverock castle, the Ellangowan of "Guy Mannering," stands on the +Solway, which still, like love, ebbs and flows. Ecclefechan lies east. +"O, wat ye wha's in yon toun," Burns sang from here, but later it was +made a place of pilgrimage, with its immortal dust come back from London +for Scottish rest. + +And in St. Michael's Burns was laid to rest in 1796, and twenty years +later was placed in this mausoleum in the corner of the churchyard. A +sumptuous monument for so simple a man. + + "He came when poets had forgot + How rich and strange the human lot; + How warm the tints of Life; how hot + Are Love and Hate; + And what makes Truth divine, and what + Makes Manhood great. + + "A dreamer of the common dreams, + A fisher in familiar streams, + He chased the transitory gleams + That all pursue; + But on his lips the eternal themes + Again were new." + +The road leads southward, the Via Dolorosa Mary took after Langside, the +Via Victoriosa which Prince Charles took-- + + "Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', + Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', + We'll up and gie them a blaw, a blaw, + Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'. + Oh, it's ower the Border awa', awa', + It's ower the Border awa', awa', + We'll on an' we'll march tae Carlisle Ha' + Wi' its yetts and castles an' a', an' a'. + Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'." + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +ALLARDYCE, A.: Balmoral. F. (For Deeside and Dunnottar.) + +ANDERSON: Guide to the Highlands, 3 vols. + +ARMSTRONG, SIR WALTER: Raeburn. + +BARR, ROBERT: A Prince of Good Fellows. F. (James V.) + +BARRIE, JAMES: Auld Licht Idylls. F. + +-- Little Minister. F. + +BARRINGTON, MICHAEL: The Knight of the Golden Sword. F. (Claverhouse.) + +BAXTER, J. DOWLING: The Meeting of the Ways. F. (The Roman Wall.) + +BELL, J. J.: Wee Macgreegor. F. + +BLACK, WILLIAM: Wild Eelin. F. (Inverness.) + +-- MacLeod of Dare. F. Mull. + +-- Strange Adventures of a Phaëton. F. (Moffat.) + +BORLAND, ROBERT: Border Raids and Reivers. + +BUCHAN, JOHN: The Marquis of Montrose. + +CARLYLE, THOMAS: Burns, in The Hero as Man of Letters. + +-- Knox, in The Hero as Priest. + +CHAMBERS, ROBERT: Traditions of Edinburgh. + +COWAN, SAMUEL: Mary Queen of Scots, and who wrote the Casket Letters? + +CROCKETT, W. S.: Footsteps of Scott. + +-- The Scott Country. + +CROCKETT, S. R.: Raiderland. (Galloway.) + +-- The Men of the Moss Hags. F. (1679) F. + +-- The Standard Bearer of Galloway. F. + +CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN: Life and Land of Burns. + +-- Sir Michael Scot. F. + +DEBENHAM, MARY H.: An Island of the Blest. F. (Iona.) + +DICK, STEWART: The Pageant of the Forth. + +DOUGALL, CHARLES S.: The Burns Country. + +DOUGLASS, SIR GEORGE: Ed. The Book of Scottish Poetry. + +-- The New Border Tales. F. + +FLEMING, GUY: The Play Acting Woman. F. (Contemp.) + +FRAPRIE, FRANK S.: Castles and Keeps of Scotland. + +GALT, JOHN: The Ayrshire Legatees. F. + +-- Annals of the Parish. F. + +-- The Provost. F. + +-- Lawrie Todd. F. + +-- Ringan Gilhaize, or The Covenanters. F. + +GEIKIE, SIR ARCHIBALD: The Scenery of Scotland, viewed in connection +with its physical geography. + +GIBBON, JOHN MURRAY: Hearts and Faces. F. (Contemp.) + +HAMERTON, PHILIP GILBERT: A Painter's Camp. (Awe.) + +HAMILTON, LORD E.: Mary Hamilton. F. + +HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL: Our Old Home. + +HENDERSON and WATT: Scotland of To-day. + +HEWLETT, MAURICE: The Queen's Quair. F. + +HILL, G. BIRKBECK: Footsteps of Dr. Johnson. + +HUME-BROWN: Scotland in the Time of Queen Mary. + +-- Early Travellers in Scotland. + +HUME, MARTIN: Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots. + +JACKSON, H. H.: Glimpses of Three Coasts. + +JAMES, G. P. R.: Gowrie, the King's Plot. F. + +JOHNSON, SAMUEL: Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. + +JUSSERAND, J. J.: A Journey to Scotland in the year 1435. (In English +essays.) + +KIPLING, RUDYARD: Puck of Pook's Hill. F. + +-- A Centurion of the 13th. + +-- On the Great Wall. + +-- The Winged Hats. + +LANG, ANDREW: Short History of Scotland. + +-- The Mystery of Mary Stuart. + +-- St. Andrews. + +LANG, JEAN: A Land of Romance. (The Border.) + +LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK: The Wolf of Badenoch. F. + +LESLIE, AMY: Bawbee Jack. (Contemp.) + +LINDSAY, ROBERT, of Pitscottie: History of Scotland. (Sixteenth Cent.) + +LOCKHART, JOHN: Life of Scott. + +M'AULAY, ALLAN: The Safety of the Honours. F. + +MACLAREN, IAN (John Hay): Graham of Claverhouse. F. + +-- The Bonnie Brier Bush. F. + +MASON, A. E. W.: Clementina. F. (1715.) + +MASSON, DAVID: Edinburgh Sketches and Memories. + +MASSON, ROSALINE: Edinburgh. + +MONCRIEFF, A. R. HOPE: Bonnie Scotland. + +-- The Heart of Scotland (Perthshire). + +-- The Highlands and the Islands. + +MORLEY, JOHN: Burns. + +MUNRO, NEIL: John Splendid. F. (For Montrose, royalist.) + +-- The New Road. F. + +PENNELL, JOSEPH and ELIZABETH R.: Our Journey to the Hebrides. + +PERCY: Reliques. + +PORTER, JANE: Scottish Chiefs. F. (Wallace and Bruce.) + +QUEEN VICTORIA'S Highland Journals. + +SCOTT, SIR WALTER: The Abbot. F. (Mary Stuart.) + +-- The Antiquary. F. (East Fife.) + +-- Black Dwarf. F. (Lowlands and Border.) + +-- The Bride of Lammermuir. F. (East Lothian.) + +-- The Fair Maid of Perth. F. + +-- Guy Mannering. F. (Caerlaverock castle.) + +-- The Heart of Midlothian. F. (Edinburgh.) + +-- Lady of the Lake. Poetry. (Katrine and Stirling.) + +-- Lay of the Last Minstrel. Poetry. (Border.) + +-- The Legend of Montrose. F. + +-- The Lord of the Isles. Poetry. (Hebrides.) + +-- The Monastery. F. (Melrose.) + +-- Marmion. Poetry. (Flodden.) + +-- Old Mortality. F. (Covenanters.) + +-- The Pirate. F. (Orkneys.) + +-- Redgauntlet. F. (1745.) + +-- Roy Roy. F. (Trossachs Region and Glasgow.) + +-- St. Ronan's Well. F. (Tweedale.) + +-- Tales of a Grandfather. + +-- Waverley. F. (Prince Charles Edward.) + +SHORT, JOSEPHINE H.: The Charm of Scotland. + +STEVENSON, R. L.: David Balfour. F. (After 1715.) + +-- Kidnapped. F. (After 1715.) + +-- The Master of Ballantrae. F. + +-- Picturesque Notes of Edinburgh. + +-- St. Ives. F. (After 1815.) + +SHAKESPEARE: Macbeth. + +SHELLEY, MARY: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck. F. + +SMOLLETT, TOBIAS: Humphrey Clinker. F. + +STEUART, J. A.: The Red Reaper. (For Montrose, Covenanter.) + +SWINBURNE, ALGERNON S.: Bothwell, a tragedy. + +-- Chastelard, a tragedy. + +-- Mary Stuart, a tragedy. + +SUTCLIFFE, HALLIWELL: Willowdene Will. F. (1745.) + +-- The Lone Adventure. F. + +TAYLOR, BAYARD: In Picturesque Europe. + +TODD, G. EYRE: Cavalier and Covenanter. F. (Charles II.) + +UPSON, ARTHUR: The Tides of Spring. (Poetic drama.) + +WATKEYS, FREDERICK W.: Old Edinburgh. + +WESLEY, JOHN: Journal. Vol. 3. + +WARRENDER, MISS: Walks near Edinburgh. + +WHYTE-MELVILLE, G. J.: The Queen's Maries. F. + +WIGGIN, KATE DOUGLAS: Penelope in Scotland. + +WILLIAMSON, M. G.: Edinburgh. (Ancient Cities series.) + +WINTER, WILLIAM: Brown Heath and Blue Bells. + +-- In Gray Days and Gold. + +WORDSWORTH, DOROTHY: Tour in Scotland. + + + + +INDEX + + + A + + Abbottsford, 38-47 + + Aberdeen, 202, 227, 206-212 + + Aeneas Sylvius, 8 + + Agricola, 8, 237 + + Alexander III, 6, 63, 64, 158-159, 173, 210 + + Alloway Kirk, 327 + + Anne of Brittany, 21 + + Ardchonnel, 258 + + Ard, Loch, 291 + + Ardnamurchan, 266 + + Arthur's Seat, 48, 143, 146 + + Augustus, Fort, 246 + + Awe, Loch, 258-262 + + Ayala, Dom Pedro de, 124 + + + B + + Badenoch, Wolf of, 193, 197, 224 + + Balmoral Castle, 205 + + Bannockburn, 21, 27, 164, 232, 300, 301-303 + + Banquo, 132, 176 + + Bass, the, 156-157 + + Beaton, Cardinal, 164-166 + + Bemersyde, 27, 49 + + Berwick, 12-17, 24, 57 + + Birnam, 192 + + Blairgowrie, 198 + + Bonar, Horatio, 59 + + Border, the, 12, 16, 21, 29, 60, 64 + + Borlund, Dr., 79 + + Borthwick, 25, 131, 196 + + Boswell, James, 155, 167, 234, 274 + + Bothwell Castle, 131, 316 + + Bothwell, James, 15, 64, 65, 66, 67, 114, 146, 196 + + Braehead, 154 + + Braemar, 196 + + Brandir, Pass of, 259-260 + + Brantome, Sieur de, 128 + + Brown, Dr. John, 79, 151 + + Bruce, the, 14, 28, 36, 88, 97, 132, 164, 177, 178, 255, 285, 320, 332 + + Buccleuch, Duke of, 37, 68 + + Buchan, Lords of, 51 + + Buchanan, George, 66, 93, 307 + + Burns, Robert, 20, 45, 61, 145, 320-334 + (quoted), 20, 304, 325, 326, 327, 331 + + Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 205, 209 + + + C + + Calton Hill, 84, 98, 143-148 + + Cambuskenneth, abbey, 309 + battle, 300 + + Canongate, 100, 101-110, 115, 120, 125 + + Carberry, 25, 131 + + Carlyle, Thomas, 10, 78, 150, 163 + + Carnegie, Andrew, 178, 237 + + Carterhaugh, 72 + + Catrail, 40 + + Cawdor Castle, 226-227 + + Charles I, 25, 45, 88, 89, 112, 168 + + Charles II, 21, 25, 96, 111, 113, 132, 189, 215 + + Charles, Prince, 25, 45, 58, 61, 68, 71, 88, 114, 115, 133, 204-205, + 227, 230, 233, 234, 244, 247, 248, 334 + + Chastelard, 158 + + Chaucer, 8, 126 + + Cheviots, Io, 40, 47, 49 + + Cistercians, 36 + + Claverhouse (Bonnie Dundee), 45, 94, 142, 194-195 + + Clephane, Elizabeth, 27 + + Closes, the, 103 + + Col, 267 + + Coldstream, 19, 20, 21 + + Coleridge, 287 + + Columba, Saint, 34, 192, 208, 269, 271-275 + + Corriemulzie, 203 + + Cowgate, the, 95 + + Craigenputtock, 332 + + Cromwell, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 102, 214, 230 + + Cruachan, Ben, 259, 260, 261 + + Culdee, 36, 51, 213 + + Culloden, 205, 231-234, 237 + + Cuthbert, Saint, 7, 35 + + + D + + Dalkeith, 25, 125 + + Danes, 12 + + Darien scheme, 318 + + Darnick, 48 + + Darnley, 26, 67, 92, 114, 115, 130, 131, 160, 196, 306 + + David I, 24, 35, 51, 55, 63, 70, 109-110, 176 + + Deans, Jeanie, 10 + + Dee, 203, 204 + + Disraeli, 10 + + Donaldson Hospital, 135 + + Douglass, Gavin, 118-122, 193 + Lord James, 28, 76 + + Douglasses, the, 16, 29, 76, 88, 91, 305 + + Doune, 310 + + Drummelzier, 29 + + Drummond, William, 8 + + Dryburgh, 39, 47-52 + + Dumbarton Castle, 90, 299 + + Dumfries, 321, 330, 332-334 + + Dunbar, Bob, champion curler, 180 + William, 120-123, 126 + + Dunblane, 309 + + Dunfermline, 36, 55, 141, 159, 173-179 + + Dunnolly Castle, 255 + + Dunnottar Castle, 212-219, 221 + + Dunsinane, 192 + + Dunstaffnage Castle, 189, 255-257 + + + E + + Edinburgh, 14, 24, 82-148 + + Edward I, 18, 19, 36, 87, 89 + + Edward VII, 89, 111, 312 + + Eildon hills, 30, 33, 40, 49, 57 + + Elgin, 34, 224 + + Elizabeth, 13, 16, 129 + + Elliott, Jean (quoted), 23 + + Ettrick, 47, 105 + + + F + + Fair Maid, 188 + + Falkirk, 133, 300, 301 + + Fergusson, Robert, 106 + + Fife, 14, 149-170 + + Findon, 212 + + Fleming, Marjorie, 150-155, 160-162 + + Flodden, 17, 21, 22, 23, 27, 71, 117, 126 + + Ford Castle, 18, 19, 22 + + Forres, 224 + + Fotheringay, 6, 16, 67, 183 + + Fox, George, 8 + + Froissart, 8 + + + G + + Galashiels, 41, 71 + + Gala Water, 41 + + George IV, 144 + + George V, 104, 311 + + Gladstone, 79, 319 + + Glamis Castle, 194 + + Glasgow, 83, 227 + + Glencoe, 262-264 + + Glenshee, 198, 199 + + Golf, 167-170 + + Gordon, Lady Jane, 123 + + Grassmarket, 93, 94, 125 + + Great Glen, 234, 236, 242-250 + + Greyfriars, 95-96 + + + H + + Hadrian, 11 + + Halidon Hill, 16 + + Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 258 + + Henley (quoted), 134, 171 + + Henry VIII, 14, 36, 57 + + Hermitage Castle, 15, 65, 66, 127 + + Hogg, James, 9, 75, 105 + + Holyrood Palace, 14, 54, 85, 111-133, 146 + + Howell, James, 9, 314 + + Hume, 84, 145, 223 + + Huntlie Bank, 42, 43 + + Huntly, 127, 220, 229, 310 + + + I + + Innishail, 260 + + Inveraragaig, 244 + + Inversnaid, 285 + + Inverugie Castle, 221, 223 + + Iona, 34, 35, 36, 70, 264-276 + + Irving, Edward, 78, 150 + Washington, 30 + + + J + + James I, 113, 156-157, 188, 189-190 + + James II, 25, 56, 113, 304 + + James III, 25, 45, 57, 113, 142 + + James IV, 19, 21, 22, 25, 73, 87, 97, 113, 115-126, 129, 305 + + James V, 25, 73, 96, 97, 109, 113, 184, 281, 305 + + James VI, 6, 13, 25, 36, 92, 132, 167, 190, 283, 306, 307, 310 + + James II of England, VII of Scotland, 91, 113, 137, 168 + + James the Chevalier, 6, 57, 113, 201, 212, 223 + + Jedburgh, 15, 60-68 + + Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 9, 102, 138-139, 156, 164, 167, 212, 234, 274, 281 + + Jonson, Ben, 8 + + + K + + Katrine, Lake, 287-290, 298 + + Keats (quoted), 105, 328 + + Kelso, 34, 56-60 + + Ker of Fernihurst, 68 + + Kerrera, 257 + + Kilchurn Castle, 258 + + Killiecrankie, Pass of, 194-196 + + Kilmarnock, 321, 329-330 + + King Arthur, 85, 168 + + Kinghorn, 158, 173 + + Kirkcaldy, 150, 151, 159 + General, 88 + + Kirk o' Field, 15, 130-131 + + Kirkwall, 238 + + Knox, John, 14, 107, 150, 164, 166, 184, 185-187, 190, 207, 307 + + + L + + "Lady of the Lake," 278-280 + + Lamb, Charles, 150 + + _Lands_, 100, 106, 125, 136, 168 + + Lang, Andrew, 31, 71 + (quoted), 31, 162 + + Lauder, Harry, 180, 181, 282 + + Lavery, John, 317 + + Lawnmarket, 100 + + Le Croc, 16 + + Leith, 14, 116, 128, 155 + + Lethington, Mr., Secretary, 67 + + Lincoln, Abraham, 145 + + Lindisfarne, 7, 35 + + Lindsay, Sir David, 122 + + Linlithgow Palace, 184-185 + + Loch Leven, 45, 67, 106, 131 + + Lockhart (quoted), 46 + + Lomond, Ben, 285 + + Lomond, Loch, 281, 282-287 + + + M + + Macbeth, 132, 192, 216, 220, 226, 227, 229, 230 + + MacDonald, Flora, 45, 230, 233 + + MacDui, Ben, 202 + + Magdalene, Queen, 113, 156 + + Maid of Norway, 7, 210 + + Malcolm Canmore, 87, 90, 173, 177, 179, 200, 220, 229 + + Margaret of Denmark, 184, 210, 238 + Saint, 35, 87, 90, 141, 158, 172, 174-177 + Tudor, 124-126, 175, 184 + + Maries, the Four, 127, 128, 293 + + Marischal, Earl, 207, 208, 217, 220-223 + + Marmion, 17, 21, 22, 23, 157 + + Mary, Queen of Scots, 13, 15, 16, 17, 25, 36, 45, 57, 61, 64, 66, 67, + 68, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 105, 106, 114, 115, 126-131, 146, + 147, 158, 160, 181-187, 190, 196, 230, 240, 292-293, 305, 306, 308, + 316, 334 + + Masson, Rosaline (quoted), 132 + + McLeod of Dare, 270 + + Meg Merrilies, 62 + + Melrose, 5, 25, 48, 63, 113, 177, 227 + + Mendelssohn, 112, 268 + + Menteith, Lake, 292 + + Merlin, 29 + + Moffat, 70 + + Monk, General, 20 + + Mons Meg, 90-91, 97, 117 + + Montrose, Marquis of, 20, 28, 45, 71, 73, 106-108, 214, 248-249 + (quoted), 108 + + Moray House, 102, 106 + + Moreville, Hugh de, 51 + + Mull, 257, 264, 266, 268, 270 + + + N + + Nairn, 225 + + Napoleon, 44, 45, 46 + + Nelson, Lord, 145 + + Netherbow Port, 100 + + Nevis, Ben, 202, 243, 249-251 + + Norham Castle, 17, 18 + + North, Christopher, 77, 245 + Inch, Perth, 180 + + Noyes, Alfred (quoted), 98 + + + O + + Oban, 235, 252-258 + + Ossian, 258 + + + P + + Park, Mungo, 71, 74 + + Pennells, the, 61, 274, 281, 282 + + Percy's Reliques, 42, 58, 59 + + Perth, 187-192, 227 + + Peterhead, 6, 221-223 + + Philipshaugh, 28, 71, 73 + + Prestonpans, 25 + + Pulpit Hill, Oban, 257 + + + Q + + Queensberry House, 102 + + Queensferry, 172, 174 + + + R + + Raeburn, 136, 137 + + Ravelston, 154-155 + + Regalia, 96-97, 214-216 + + Richard II, 36, 88, 112 + + Rizzio, 130, 131, 190, 306 + + Rob Roy, 45, 285, 288, 318 + + Roman, 11, 40, 48, 51, 158 + + Roscoff, 68 + + Rosebery, Lord, 172 + + Rosetti (quoted), 189 + + Roxburgh, 54-55 + + Ruskin, 44, 191 + + + S + + St. Andrews, 14, 162-170 + + St. Cuthbert's Church, 95, 136 + + St. Giles Church, 67, 85, 93, 104, 118, 136, 146 + + St. John's Church, 136 + + St. Mary's Loch, 70 + + Sandyknowe, 49, 50 + + Sauchieburn (battle), 300, 302 + + Scone, 189, 227 + + Scotch plaids, 137 + + Scot, Michael, 29, 30, 34, 48 + + Scott monument, 137, 146 + + Scott, Sir Walter, 10, 17, 38, 41, 43, 44, 58, 62, 75, 82, 84, 91, 95, + 97, 142, 144, 150, 152, 172, 177, 242, 255, 260, 281 + (quoted), 18, 20, 21, 22, 26, 29, 30, 32, 37, 38, 50, 56, 74, 80, + 118, 191, 264, 267, 277, 280, 282, 283, 289, 291, 294, 295, 296, 297, + 302, 304, 305, 311 + + Sentimental Tommy, 85, 169 + + Severus, Emperor, 8 + + Shakespeare (quoted), 192, 225, 226, 230, 268 + + Sheriffmuir (battle), 300, 302 + + Skerryvore, 268 + + Skye, 268 + + Smailholm, 50 + + Smith, Adam, 150 + + Smollett, Tobias, 282, 332 + + Spynie Castle, 224 + + Staffa, 267-268 + + Stevenson, 10, 79, 82, 95, 142, 145, 147, 152, 172, 200, 267, 268, + 275, 314 + (quoted), 95, 104, 143, 145, 275 + + Stewart, Margaret, 15 + the, 87, 108-109, 112, 115, 130, 194, 253, 305 + + Stirling (battle), 300, 227 + + Stonehaven, 210 + + Strathcona, Lord, 263 + + Stronochlachar, 288 + + + T + + Tam O'Shanter Inn, 325 + + Tantallon Castle, 157 + + Tay, 188, 191, 198 + + Taylor, the water-poet, 8, 99, 102, 203 + + Teviot, 54, 56 + + Thomas of Ercildoun, 42, 43, 229 + + Thomson, James, 59 + + Tibbie Shiel, 70, 77 + + Tilt, Glen, 196, 197, 203 + + Tiree, 267 + + Tolbooth, 45, 106 + + Tomnahurich, 229 + + Town Cross, Edinburgh, 125 + + Trehinish Isles, 266, 268 + + Tronkirk, 136 + + Turner, 18, 19, 20, 27, 39 + + Twain, Mark, 151 + + Tweed, 13, 15, 43, 44, 47, 54 + + + U + + Upson, Arthur, 148, 175 + + Urquhart, 244 + + + V + + Victoria, Queen, 4, 284, 285, 310, 312 + + + W + + Wallace, William, 74, 178, 214, 260, 308, 315-319 + + Wall, the, 10, 11 + + Warbeck, Perkin, 123 + + Watson, William (quoted), 334 + + Waverleys, the, 45, 144, 148 + + Wesley, John, 9 + + West Bow, 141 + + Westminster Abbey, 16 + + Whistler, 317 + + William, Fort, 236, 248 + + Winter, William, 10, 160, 228, 252 + + Wishart, George, 164 + + Wolfe, General, 288 + + Wordsworth, Dorothy, 34, 39, 61, 62, 95, 263, 284, 289, 294-295 + William, 66, 69, 72, 73, 75, 225, 287, 331 + + + Y + + Yarrow, 47, 69, 70-72 + + Yetholm, 62 + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41623 *** |