and followed the road to the boathouse, where an English motor party
had just paused. Word had to be sent to the village for boatmen and
I fell into conversation with the Englishman who was waiting like
ourselves. He had come to Loch Leven on quite a different mission from
ours--old castles and legends were so commonplace to him that he hardly
seemed to understand why anyone should trouble himself about them. He
had come to fish and assured us that Loch Leven trout were surpassed
in excellence only by those in an Irish lake where he had fished the
week before. He was sending his car away and expected to pass the
night in pursuing the gentle art of Ike Walton. We were told that more
people came to the lake to fish than to visit the castle. The fishing
rights are owned by a local club and are jealously guarded. The minimum
license fee for trout, of seven shillings sixpence, with an additional
charge per hour, makes the sport a somewhat expensive luxury.
But our boatmen had come and we put off for the castle. The lake
averages very shallow, and it was necessary to go considerably out of
the direct route, even in the light row-boat, to avoid the shoals. The
bottom in many places was covered with a rank sedge, which our boatman
declared fatal to fishing. It had gotten in the lake a few years
ago--had come from America in some mysterious manner--and nothing could
be done to check its rapid spread. While he bewailed the ravages of
this interloper--from the land of the interlopers--our boat grated on
the pebbly shore of the island. The castle, rude and ruinous indeed,
is quite small and the only part intact is the low, square tower of
the keep. In this is Queen Mary's chamber, and one may look down from
the window from which she made her escape; the water then came up to
the wall, though it is now several yards away. One need not rehearse
the story of the queen's imprisonment at Loch Leven by the ambitious
Douglas and her romantic escape through connivance with her captor's
son, George Douglas, who succumbed to her charms as did nearly every
one who came into her company. And who can wonder that the actual
presence of the fair queen--whose name still enchants us after three
hundred years--should prove so irresistible to those who met her face
to face? Is it strange that one whose memory can cast such a glamour
over the cheerless old pile that has brought us hither, should have so
strongly influenced her associates?
But after all, the view from the castle tower would be worth the
journey thither. All about the placid water lies gleaming like a mirror
beneath the threatening sky; here we see a flock of water-fowl, so tame
that they scarcely heed the fishing-boats; there a pair of stately
swans, many of which are on the lake; off yonder is the old town with
its spire sharp against the horizon; and near at hand, the encircling
hills and the low green meadows, a delightful setting for the flashing
gem of the lake--all combine to make a scene that would be inspiring
even if the name of Mary Stuart had never been associated with Loch
Leven. As we drift away from the island, the words of a minor poet come
to us, strangely sweet and appropriate:
"No warden's fire shall e'er again
Illume Loch Leven's bosom fair;
No clarion shrill of armed men
The breeze across the lake shall bear;
But while remains a stone of thine
It shall be linked to royal fame--
For here the Rose of Stuart's line
Hath left the fragrance of her name!"
The Loch Leven anglers have made two or three well-appointed hotels
possible in Kinross, and Green's, where we stopped for tea, seemed
ideal for its quiet retirement and old-fashioned comfort.
St. Andrews, by the sea, has a combination of attractions, of which the
famous golf links will occur to many people on first thought. There is
no town in Scotland more popular as a seaside resort and the numerous
hotels are crowded in season. But the real merits of St. Andrews are
the ones least known to the world at large--its antiquity, the ruins of
its once stately cathedral, its grim though much shattered castle, and
its university, the oldest in Scotland--one and all, if better known,
would bring many tourists who do not care for golf links and resort
hotels.
Hither we came from Kinross by the way of Cupar, of which we know
nothing save the old Scotch saw of a headstrong man, "He that will to
Cupar maun to Cupar," but why anyone should be so determined to go to
Cupar is not clear. It is a mean-looking town with cobblestone pavement
so rough that it tried every rivet in our car, and nothing could be
drearier than the rows of gray slate-roofed houses standing dejectedly
in the rain.
We were early risers, according to their reckoning at the Marine Hotel,
and went for a walk over the golf links after breakfast. I was once a
devotee of the royal game and was able to appreciate why the links by
the sea are counted the finest in the world. Stretching along a sandy
beach over which the tide advances and recedes incessantly, the links
have unlimited sweep over the lawnlike lowlands, with just enough
obstacles, mostly natural, to make a game of highest skill possible.
The lowering sky of the preceding day had cleared and the keen wind
swept in over the northern sea. We would have been glad to linger, if
possible, but there was much to see in the old town which, in the words
of Thomas Carlyle, "has the essence of all the antiquity in Scotland
in good clean condition."
Directly on the ocean stands the scanty but still imposing ruin of the
cathedral, which in its prime was one of the most magnificent churches
in the Kingdom. Its burnished roof once shone far out at sea and a
wilderness of turrets and pinnacles rose round the central tower,
long since vanished. The church was for some centuries the center of
ecclesiastical life in Scotland. Its dedication took place in 1318,
"as a trophy and memorial of Bannockburn," in the august presence of
King Robert the Bruce. And yet it was only two hundred and forty years
later that fanaticism sounded the doom of the splendid church; when the
Presbyterian Council gave orders that the "monuments of idolatry" be
pulled down. John Knox writes in his journal that the work went forward
"with expedition," and for many years the marvelous Gothic pile served
the people of St. Andrews as a quarry.
The original outlines of the cathedral are clearly indicated on the
smoothly mown greensward and give an adequate idea of its vast extent.
The square tower of St. Regulus' Chapel is the only portion intact,
and this we ascend by the dark, time-worn stairs inside. From the top
there is a fine view of the town, a broad sweep of glittering sea and
a far-reaching prospect to the landward. The town lies immediately
beneath, spread out like a map, and from every direction the white
country roads wander in to join the maze of crooked streets. Only a
hundred yards away, on the very verge of the sea, is the castle, and
we go thither when we descend. And we are rather glad to descend, for
the wind blows so strongly that the tower trembles despite all its
solidity--and one cannot help thinking of the Campanile at Venice.
It seems rather incongruous that the massive, martial-looking castle
should originally have been the palace of the Bishop of St. Andrews,
but it was in an age when the church and the military went hand in
hand. It was not strange, perhaps, in Scotland, where the greater
part of the murderous wars among the people sprang out of religious
disputes, that the home of a church dignitary should be a stronghold,
and the traditions of St. Andrews Castle tell more of violence and
bloodshed than the annals of many a secular fortress.
It is a strange comment on the ferocity of the old-time churchmen that
one of the most fiendish relics of "man's inhumanity to man" is to be
found in this martial bishop's palace. Like all gruesome things, it is
the center of interest, and the rheumatic old custodian had learned the
attraction of the horrible for average human nature, for he greeted us
with "Ye'll be wantin' to see the bottle dungeon first." He led us
into the dark shadows of the "sea tower," as John Knox designated it,
and placing a lighted candle on a staff, dropped it into a circular
opening four or five feet in diameter. Looking down, we could see a
bottle-shaped cavity hewn out of the solid rock, and extending below
the level of the sea. Into this the captives were lowered, and with no
light and little air were left to a dreadful death, their moans drowned
by the thunder of the waves overhead. Or perhaps a more merciful fate
might be meted to some of them--even though it were death at the
stake--for we know that George Wishart, whom Cardinal Beaton burned
before the castle, had first been imprisoned in the dungeon. One
almost breathes a sigh of relief to know that shortly afterwards the
Presbyterians stormed the fortress and slew the inhuman cardinal, whose
body was thrown into the dungeon after having been exposed from the
castle walls. John Knox was one of the party that slew Beaton, and he
wrote a gloating account of the incident.
But enough of these horrors, which the old custodian drones over in
broad Scotch dialect. Let us go out upon the pleasant greensward of the
courtyard, where there is little to remind us of the terrible deeds
that have transpired within the gloomy walls. The seaward walls have
nearly disappeared, for the stone was used in work on the harbor by a
generation that little dreamed of the value posterity would set on such
historic monuments.
Following the coast road from St. Andrews to Kirkcaldy, we were seldom
out of sight of the sea, and passed through several little fishertowns
centuries old and quite looking their years. Largo is the birthplace of
Alexander Selkirk, whose experiences on a desert island gave DeFoe the
idea of "Robinson Crusoe." The house where he was born still stands and
a stone figure of Crusoe is set just in front in a niche in the wall.
In all of these coast towns an old-world quiet seemed to reign save in
the "long town" of Kirkcaldy, through whose dirty streets, thronged
with filthy children, we carefully picked our way. Here we turned
inland, passing a succession of towns whose rubbish-covered streets
were full of drunken miners--it was Saturday afternoon--who stumbled
unconcernedly in front of the car; and not a few drunken women joined
in the yells which often greeted us. The road was very bumpy and it
is a far from pleasant or interesting route until the neighborhood of
Dunfermline is reached.
Dunfermline should be a household word in America, for here is the
modest slate-roofed cottage where our great dispenser of free libraries
was born and which he purchased some years ago. He is a sort of fairy
godfather to Dunfermline and has showered on the town more wealth
than the canny burghers know what to do with. We had a letter of
introduction to one of the linen manufacturers--linen-making is the
great industry of Dunfermline--and he insisted upon showing us about
the town. He pointed out some of the benefactions of Mr. Carnegie,
who, besides the regulation free library, gave a large sum toward the
restoration of the abbey church and to establish a public park. Still
more, he has set aside a sum of no less than half a million sterling,
the income from which is to be spent under the direction of a board
of trustees in promoting "the higher welfare, physical, intellectual
and moral, of the inhabitants." So great are his benefactions that
Dunfermline has been afforded the opportunity of becoming a model town
in every respect, though the experiment is still in its infancy.
The abbey church is one of the most interesting in Scotland and is
the shrine of all patriotic Scots, for here is buried King Robert the
Bruce, whose name is cut in huge letters in the balustrade surrounding
the tower. The nave of the church has been restored and is now used as
a place of worship, and there remains enough of the ruined monastery to
give the needed touch of the picturesque.
On leaving the town we were somewhat at a loss for the road, and asked
a respectable-looking gray-whiskered gentleman if he could direct us
to Alloa.
"Oh," said he, "there are twa roads to Alloa--do you wish the upper or
the lower road?"
We expressed our indifference; we only wanted the best.
"I'm no saying which is the best," he said cautiously.
"But which would you take yourself?" we insisted.
"Since you must be sae particular, I'd say that I should tak the lower
road."
"Let it be the lower road, then,"--but he held up his hand at the first
click of the starting lever.
"Since you have decided to tak the lower road, I might say that I live
a few miles out on this, and seeing there's an empty seat, perhaps
ye'll be willing to give me a ride." It was now clear why he had been
so non-communicative. He did not wish to unduly influence us for his
own advantage; but after it was all decided on our own motion, he felt
free to avail himself of the opportunity to be relieved of a tiresome
walk. A few miles out he pointed to a neat residence--his home--and our
canny Scotsman left us.
The next day we were in Edinburgh, after passing the night at Stirling.
It had rained fitfully during our tour in Fife and a gray mantle still
hung over "Auld Reekie,"--though perhaps the name is less appropriate
than when Scott first used it. The Fifeshire roads averaged bad--rough
and stony and often quite slippery from the rain. We were glad to
pass the day in our comfortable rooms at the North British watching
the rain-soaked city from our windows. But it was no better on the
following day and we were soon on the North Berwick road in the same
discouraging drizzle. Nothing could be more depressing under such
conditions than the succession of wretched suburban towns through which
we passed for some distance out of Edinburgh. The streets, despite the
rain, were full of dirty children and bedraggled women, and we were
glad to come into the open road along the sea. It is a road that must
afford magnificent views in fine weather, but for us it wended along
a wind-swept, chocolate-colored ocean that was quickly lost in the
driving rain. There are numerous seaside resorts between Portobello and
North Berwick, though the latter is the more popular and is supplied
with palatial hotels.
It was just beyond here that we caught sight of the object of our
pilgrimage along the Firth--the old Douglas castle of Tantallon, which,
mirrored in Scott's heroic lines, excited and dazzled our youthful
imagination. It stands drearily on a bleak headland and was half
hidden in the gray gusts of rain when
"Close before us showed
His towers, Tantallon vast."
But its vastness has diminished since the day of which Scott wrote, for
much of the castle has disappeared and the sea wall which ran along
the edge of the rock has crumbled away. Still, the first impression
one gets of the shapeless ruin as he crosses the waterless moat and
rings the bell for admission is one of majesty, despite the decay riot
everywhere. We waited long, almost despairing of gaining entrance, when
the keeper appeared at the gate. He was not expecting visitors on such
a stormy day and had been drowsing over old papers in his little booth
inside.
[Illustration: TANTALLON CASTLE AND BASS ROCK.]
There is not much to remind one of the fiery parting between Douglas
and Marmion so vividly described by Scott. But a mere shell of the
castle remains; the draw-bridge of the ringing lines is gone, and the
inner walls from which the retainers might have watched the fierce
encounter have long since crumbled away. The courtyard where the
doughty warriors engaged in their altercation is covered with grasses
and starred with wild flowers. About all that remains as it was in the
day of Douglas is the dungeon hewn from the solid rock beneath the
walls. We wandered about the roofless, dripping ruins as the old keeper
told us the story of the castle and pointed out the spots that have
been identified with the song of Scott. Here stood the battlements from
which the disconsolate Clare contemplated the desolate ocean--here was
the chapel where Wilton was armed by old Archibald--
But the rain has ceased and blue rifts are coming in the sky. As we
look oceanward, a mountainlike bulk rises dimly out of the dull waters.
"Bass Rock," says our guide, "and a peety it is that the sea is too
rough for the boots today." A weird island it is, less than a mile in
circumference, rising to the stupendous height of four hundred feet,
though it little looks it from Tantallon--our guess was less than a
quarter as great. In old days the rock was quite inaccessible; it was
early fortified and in later times was made a prison. Here was confined
a group of the persecuted Covenanters, who lay in the damp, dark
dungeons, "envying the freedom of the birds"--the gulls and wild geese
that wheel almost in clouds about the rock. Dreadful times these--but
to appreciate the real horror of such a fate one would have to stand on
Bass Rock when the storm walks abroad and the wild German Ocean wraps
the rock in the white mist of the angry waves. The rock serves little
purpose now save as a site for a lighthouse, built a few years ago, and
as a resort for curious tourists, who can visit it when the weather
allows landing to be made.
Turning southward through the Lammermuir Hills, we find at the little
village of East Linton a surprise in the Black Lion, another of those
homelike and wonderfully comfortable Scotch inns which offer genuine
cheer to the wayfarer. Here a fire dances in the grate and our luncheon
is one that the more pretentious hotels do not equal. We resume our
flight under leaden skies through the low gray mists that sweep the
hilltops. Haddington is famed for its abbey church, very old and vast
in bulk. Jane Welsh Carlyle is buried in its choir--for she chose to
lie beside her father in her long sleep.
The moorland road to Melrose is finely engineered, following the hills
in long sweeping lines with few steep grades or sharp curves. In places
it is marked by rows of posts so that it may be followed when covered
by the snows. Melrose Abbey, familiar from former visits, claims only
a passing glance, as we hasten on to its old-time rival at Jedburgh,
which is now somewhat off the beaten path and few know of the real
interest of the town or the extent and magnificence of its abbey ruin,
whose massive tower and high walls, pierced by three tiers of graceful
windows, dominate any distant view of the place.
We brought the car up sharply on the steep hillside in front of the
abbey and an old woman in a nearby cottage called to us to "gang right
in--ye'll find the keeper in the gardens." And we did--surprised him at
work with his flowers--a hale old man of seventy with bushy hair and
beard, silver white, and a hearty Scotch accent that wins you at once.
He dropped his garden tools and came forward with a quick, elastic
step, greeting us as if we had been expected friends. When he espied
the lady member of our party, he began to cut roses until he had made
up quite a bouquet, which he gallantly presented her. Then he began a
panegyric on Jedburgh and the abbey, assuring us that a stay of several
days would be necessary to get even an idea of the ruins and the
historic spots of the vicinity. His face visibly fell when we told him
we must be off in an hour.
"Ah," said he, "sic haste, sic haste to get back to England! Ye should
bide longer in old Scotia and learn her history and her people. I grant
ye England is a great nation, but the Scotch is the greater of the two."
Then his enthusiasm got the better of him, and forgetting the abbey he
began to point out the beauties of the valley of the Jed, over which we
had a far-reaching view, and to recite snatches of the poetry of Burns
appropriate to the scene. I had thought that I knew a little of the
beauty and spirit of Burns, but it all seemed to take on new meaning
from the lips of the quaint old Scotsman. It was worth a journey to
Jedburgh, and a long one, to hear him recite it. Then he began to point
out the things of interest about the abbey, and so many they seemed
to him that he had difficulty in choosing which he should enlarge
upon during our short stay. He showed us the Norman doorway, the most
elaborate in the Kingdom, so remarkable that the Marquis of Lothian,
the owner of the abbey, has caused an exact duplicate to be made in the
wall near by to preserve the wonderful detail nearly obliterated in the
original. He led us among the great pillars, still intact, springing up
into the mighty arches of the nave, and pointed out the gracefulness
of the numerous windows with slender stone mullions. There are many
notable tombs, among them one with a marble effigy of the late Marquis
of Lothian, a really superb work of art, by George Frederick Watts. Nor
did he forget the odd gravestones in the churchyard with epitaphs in
quaint and halting verse, telling of the virtues of the long-forgotten
dead, of one of whom it was declared:
"Here Lyes a Christian Bold and True,
An antipode to Babel's Creu,
A Friend to Truth, to Vice a Terrour;
A Lamp of Zeal opposing Errour.
Who fought the Battels of the Lamb,
Of Victory now Bears the Palm."
And there is another stone with a threat as grim as that of the Bard of
Avon, for the epitaph expresses the wish that
"Whoever Removes this
Stone
Or causes it to be
Removed
May he die the last of
All his Friends."
The stone lies flat, above the grave, and our guide declared,
"I had an unco hard time to get a photo of it for my book, for I did na
fancy moving it, to be sure."
"Your book? And have you written a book?" He was off in a moment and
with almost boyish enthusiasm brought forth a neat volume, "Poetry and
Prose of Walter Laidlaw, F. S. A.," and we found on later perusal that
it has not a little of true poetic fire, of which an example or two
may not be amiss. It is not strange that one so full of patriotism and
admiration for his native Scotland should deprecate the tendency of her
people to emigrate to foreign lands, and he expostulates as follows:
"What ails the folk? they've a' gane gyte!
They rush across the sea,
In hope to gather gear galore,
'Way in some far countree.
"But let them gang where'er they may,
There's no' a spot on earth
Like ancient Caledonia yet,
The land that ga'e them birth.
"They ha'e nae grand auld Abbeys there,
Or battered castles hoary,
Or heather hills, or gow'ny glens,
That teem wi' sang and story.
"Nae doot they've bigger rivers there,
An' broad an' shinin' lakes;
I wadna leave oor classic streams
Or burnies, for their sake.
"The lonely cot, the bracken brae,
The bonnie milk-white thorn;
The bent frae where the lav'rock springs
To hail the dawn o' morn.
"The thrashy syke, the broomy knowe,
The gnarled auld aik tree,
Gi'e joys that riches canna buy
In lands ayont the sea."
But not all of his fellow-countrymen feel so about it, and numbers of
them all over the world are "gathering gear" year after year with
proverbial thriftiness, though they seldom lose their love for old
Caledonia, or forget--to quote Mr. Laidlaw again:
"the thatched cot with ivy clad,
The hame o' boyhood's happy days.
"Content were we with but-and-ben
A divot shiel, a broom-thatched byre;
We got our eldin frae the glen,
In winter kept a roosin' fire.
"There my kind mother sang sae cheery
While she was spinnin' on the wheel;
The winter nights we ne'er did weary,
We liked her sangs and cracks sae weel.
"When faither us'd oor shoon to mend,
Auld Border tales he wad relate;
Or read ben in the other end
The grave 'Night Thoughts' or 'Fourfold State.'"
Besides the poems, the book contains several addresses and essays which
show the bent of Mr. Laidlaw's mind, among them, "Robert Burns," "Dr.
John Leyden," and "The Songs of Scotland."
Besides his literary achievements, we learned that Mr. Laidlaw is a
Fellow of the Scotch Antiquarian Society and a recognized authority on
the antiquities of Jedburgh and vicinity. We left him with regret,
and hope that some day our wanderings may enable us to renew his
acquaintance.
We followed the Teviot road to Kelso, a few miles away, where the
substantial and comfortable appearance of the Cross Keys induced us
to stop for the night--after an investigation by which we assured
ourselves that conditions within accorded with outward appearances, a
practice to which we had become more and more partial.