of foray is the flooding of the rivers. In those days bridges were
few throughout the Border, and thus a heavy downfall of rain might
completely sever all communication between the two sides of a dale. To
plunge into these swollen torrents was sometimes the only escape from
pursuit, and required fully as much courage and nerve as to stay and
face the approaching foe. In the famous ride to Carlisle for the rescue
of Kinmont Willie, the party found when they came to the Eden that
'The water was great and meikle of spate.'
But they dashed into it, losing neither man nor horse, but encountering
still worse weather on the English side--
'The wind began fu' loud to blaw;
But 'twas wind and weet and fire and sleet
When they came beneath the castle wa'.'
On their return with their rescued comrade to the river, they saw that
it 'flowed frae bank to brim,' but nothing daunted, they plunged into
the flood and safely swam across. Their pursuers, however, gave up the
chase at sight of the rushing torrent:
'All sore astonish'd stood Lord Scroope
He stood as still as rock of stane;
He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,
When through the water they had gane.
"He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wadna hae ridden that wan water
For a' the gowd in Christentie."'
But even in the midst of the rough warfare of these olden days, there
was often a thread of tender affection and romance woven by the
ballad-singers into their tales. The vale of the river Yarrow has been
more specially consecrated by these tragic songs, and the 'dowie howms
o' Yarrow' have come to be identified with all that is most pathetic
in the minstrelsy of the Border. From the time of the early ballads
a succession of minor poets had sung of this vale, until the pathos
of its history was fully revealed to the whole world by Scott and
Wordsworth.
It may be readily granted that the fascination of Yarrow has mainly
sprung from the recollection of the human incidents which have been
transacted there, and which have been enshrined in so much touching
verse. But these tragic associations will not, I think, of themselves
wholly account for this fascination, nor for the sad tone of the
poetry. There seems to me to be a source of peculiarly impressive power
in the scenery of the valley itself, and that to this source not a
little of the glamour of Yarrow is to be attributed. Nowhere throughout
the whole range of the uplands are their characteristic aspects more
perfectly displayed. Down the centre of the dale runs the strip of
level green haugh, through which the stream meanders from side to side
across banks of shingle, with a murmuring cadence that is borne down on
the wind like a low plaintive wail. On either hand, the smooth green
slopes rise into the rounded summits of the fells, mottled here with
sheets of bracken and there with folds of heather. The declivities are
indented by little side-valleys, each leading a clear rivulet between
grassy banks to the main stream. Nowhere do any rugged features mar
the gentle undulations of the ground. The outer world seems to lie far
beyond the high hills that enclose and shelter the quiet valley. There
is a deep silence over the scene, broken now and then by the melancholy
scream of the curlew or the mournful note of the plover. The mind,
amid such surroundings, easily glides from the present into reverie
amidst the past. The ruined peel seems to whisper tales of 'old unhappy
far-off things and battles long ago.' The greener grass around some
mouldering stones points to hamlets long since forsaken and forgotten.
The scattered birks and alders recall the 'fair forest' that once
clothed the valley with 'many a seemly tree,' and when in these tracts,
now sacred only to sheep, there were
'Hart and hynd, and dae and rae,
And of a' wild beasts great plentie.'
There is a natural expectation in the mind that scenery which has made
for itself so notable a place in the history of English poetry should
present, when first seen, some special charm of attractive beauty. And
doubtless many have shared the disappointment so well expressed by
Wordsworth and by Washington Irving, who nevertheless had the advantage
of being shown over the Border country by its great minstrel himself.
But with the instinct of a true poet, Wordsworth soon recovered from
his first surprise, and divined the inner spirit of the landscape.
Nowhere has that spirit been more felicitously expressed than in his
second poem on Yarrow. Contrasting his first anticipation with what he
found to be the reality, he addressed the vale:
'Thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation:
Meek loveliness is round thee spread,
A softness still and holy;
The grace of forest charms decayed
And pastoral melancholy.'
On the influence of the upland scenery of southern Scotland upon the
genius of Scott I must not enter. He spent his boyhood within sight of
these hills, he made them his chief home throughout life, and when,
shattered in health and fortunes, he returned from Italy, it was among
these hills, and in hearing of the murmur of the Tweed, that he wished
to die. No one can read the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' or 'Marmion,'
without coming under the spell of the Border scenery. Among the
descriptive sketches of landscape in the Waverley Novels, none are more
lovingly and graphically painted than those where Scott drew from the
vivid recollections of his journeys among the dales and moors of the
Southern Uplands.
III. For the purposes of our present inquiry, I would class together
as HIGHLANDS all the higher, more rugged, and mountainous ground,
which differs on the whole from the uplands, not only in its greater
elevation, but in the more irregular rocky forms of its surface,
the narrower crests of its ridges, and the more peaked shapes of
its summits. The geological structure of these tracts of country is
generally so complicated that it gives rise to much greater variety of
outline than is to be found in either of the other types of scenery.
Each kind of rock yields to the weather in its own characteristic way,
and as the rainfall is heavier and the slopes are steeper there than
elsewhere, the influence of the weather upon the topography is more
especially prominent.
In the northern parts of Wales where a group of ancient volcanic rocks
has been laid bare by the stupendous denudation of the surface, a
small tract of truly highland scenery has been carved out in Cader
Idris, Arenig, Snowdon, and the surrounding heights in Caernarvonshire
and Merionethshire. Another isolated area of volcanic hills forms
the picturesque district of the Lakes. But it is in Scotland that
this type is displayed on the largest scale and in the most varied
diversity. The Scottish Highlands are built up of the most ancient
rocks of the British Islands, and possess a geological structure of
extraordinary complexity. They include a vast variety of materials
which, rising to the highest elevations in the country, and exposed to
the severest climate, have impressed their individual characters upon
the landscapes. Thus, in the north-west, where the simplest grouping
of rocks is to be seen, masses of horizontal dark-red sandstone have
been carved into the huge pyramids that form so singular a feature
in the scenery of Ross and Sutherland (p. 71). In the central and
south-western counties, gleaming white cones show where the quartzites
rise to the surface. In the eastern Grampians, high craggy moors,
encircled with stupendous corries and precipices, mark the sites of
the bosses of granite. Among the Western Isles, dark splintered crests
and pinnacles point out the position of the gabbros. Perhaps the most
rugged ground is to be seen among the mica-schists, which combine a
wonderful array of pointed peak and notched ridge, with tumultuous
masses of craggy declivity.
In the eastern Grampians, the mountains include broad tracts of
undulating moorland, which, though lying along the summits of the
chain, are level enough to be capable of conversion into racecourses.
These hills are separated from the sea by a tract of lowland, and lie
thus entirely inland. On the west side of the Highlands, however,
the ground between the straths and glens mounts upward into narrow
ridges, not infrequently sharpened into knife-edged crests, while the
whole aspect of the landscape is rugged, rocky, and bare. Land and sea
appear there to be inextricably intermingled. Islands, peninsulas, and
promontories are penetrated or surrounded by sounds and sea-lochs, in
such a curious way that even in what might be thought to be the very
heart of the country, the tides of the Atlantic are found to ebb and
flow into remote and solitary glens. The mountains plunge abruptly into
the salt water, and for the most part only along the valley-bottoms are
little strips of level land to be seen.
As a consequence of this intricate interlacing of land and sea, the
warm, damp breezes from the Atlantic furnish abundance of mist, cloud,
and rain to the western Highlands. Thus to the wildness of rugged
mountains and stormy firths, there is added a marvellous range of
atmospheric effect. Nowhere in Britain can such an union be beheld of
picturesque mountain-form and of clear and vivid colour. Nowhere is the
grandeur of a winter storm more impressive than when a south-westerly
gale drives the breakers against the headlands, howls up the glens, and
fills every gully with a foaming torrent.
The scenery of the western Highlands of Scotland was first brought
prominently before the world by the publication in the year 1760 of
what purported to be _Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the
Highlands_. The success of this volume encouraged the translator, James
Macpherson, to prepare a much larger collection which he combined
into an epic poem and published in 1762, under the name of _Fingall_.
A second epic, _Temora_, appeared during the following year. Keen
discussion arose as to the authenticity of these poems. They were by
one group of writers upheld as a priceless contribution to literature,
recovered by the skill and labour of one man from the lips of the
peasantry, and from faded manuscripts that handed down the traditions
of a long vanished past. By another class of disputants they were
branded as impudent forgeries palmed off upon the credulity of the
world by Macpherson himself.
Into this unhappy and still unsettled controversy I have no intention
of entering. For my present purpose it is not necessary to decide
whether the so-called poems of Ossian were genuine ancient Celtic
productions or were entirely fabricated after the middle of last
century, though I think we may safely steer a middle course between the
extreme views that have been put forward on either side. Few persons
now believe that Macpherson's _Epics_ ever existed as such among the
Highlanders. But, on the other hand, it is generally admitted that he
really did find a number of Ossianic fragments and that he strung these
together no doubt with copious connecting material of his own. How
much was genuine and old, and how much spurious and modern, has never
yet been satisfactorily determined. But in estimating the influence
of Macpherson's _Ossian_ on literature, we have no need to consider
the age of the poems. None of these were known to the world at large
until 1760, and we have therefore only to concern ourselves with their
history from that year onwards.
Those who have engaged in the controversy have almost wholly entered
it from the literary or antiquarian side. I prefer to approach it from
the side of the scenery and topography of the West Highlands, and
to inquire how far the Ossianic landscape was a true representation
of nature, whether there was anything in it new to our literature,
and whether it exerted any lasting effect on the attitude of society
towards the type of scenery which it depicted.
Macpherson had previously published some English verse of little merit
and which attracted no notice. But the appearance of his Ossianic
translations at once made him famous. The _Poems of Ossian_ not only
became popular in this country, but were translated into the more
important languages of the Continent.
In studying the landscape of Macpherson's _Ossian_ we soon learn that
it belongs unmistakably to Western Argyleshire. Its union of mountain,
glen, and sea removes it at once from the interior to the coast. Even
if it had been more or less inaccurately drawn, its prominence and
consistency all through the poems would have been remarkable in the
productions of a lad of four-and-twenty, who had spent his youth in the
inland region of Badenoch, where the scenery is of another kind. But
when we discover that the endless allusions to topographical features
are faithful delineations, which give the very spirit and essence
of the scenery, we feel sure that whether they were written in the
eighteenth century or in the third, they display a poetic genius of no
mean order.
The grandeur and gloom of the Highland mountains, the spectral mists
that sweep round the crags, the roar of the torrents, the gleam of
sunlight on moor and lake, the wail of the breeze among the cairns
of the dead, the unspeakable sadness that seems to brood over the
landscape whether the sky be clear or clouded--these features of West
Highland scenery were first revealed by Macpherson to the modern
world. This revelation quickened the change of feeling, already begun,
in regard to the prevailing horror of mountain scenery. It brought
before men's eyes some of the fascination of the mountain-world, more
especially in regard to the atmospheric effects that play so large
a part in its landscape. It showed the titanic forces of storm and
tempest in full activity. And yet there ran through all the poems a
vein of infinite melancholy. The pathos of life manifested itself
everywhere, now in the tenderness of unavailing devotion, now in the
courage of hopeless despair.
_Ossian_ fascinated some of the greatest men of the time. These Celtic
poems, in the words of Matthew Arnold, passed 'like a flood of lava
through Europe.' In the deliberate judgement of this acute critic,
they revealed 'the very soul of the Celtic genius, and have the proud
distinction of having brought this soul of the Celtic genius into
contact with the genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched
all our poetry by it.'[44] There can at least be no doubt that they
gave a new and powerful impulse to the appreciation of the wilder
aspects of nature, and did much to prepare the way for that love of
mountain-scenery which has been one of the characteristic developments
of the nineteenth century. It is not that in Ossian Highland landscape
was deliberately described, but it formed a continually visible and
changing background. The prevalent character of the whole range of
scenery in the region, and the general impression made by it on the
eye and mind, were so vividly conveyed that no one familiar with the
country can fail to recognise how faithfully the innermost soul of the
West Highlands is rendered.
Never before or since have the endless changes of sky and atmosphere
been more powerfully portrayed. In the tempestuous climate of the west
of Scotland these changes succeed each other with a rapidity and energy
such as the dweller on the southern lowlands can hardly realise. They
are faithfully, if somewhat monotonously, reflected in _Ossian_. All
through the poems the air seems ever astir around us. Sometimes it is
only a gently-breathing zephyr which
'Chases round and round
The hoary beard of thistle old,
Dark-moving over grassy mounds.'[45]
We mark the graves of dead heroes by
'Their long grass waving in the wind,'
and we move onwards 'in the robe of the misty glen' past
'Branches and brown tufts of grass
Which tremble and whistle in the breeze.'
But when the full Atlantic gale sweeps over the land, and the
rain-clouds rush in swift procession across the half-hidden hills, the
moaning and shrieking of the storm come like sounds from another world.
We seem to hear the tread, and almost to see the forms, of the ghosts
of the Ossianic heroes,
'Chasing spectre-boars of mist
On wings of great winds on the cairn.
When bursts the cloud in Cona of the glens,
A thousand spirits wildly shriek
On the waste wind that sweeps around the cairn.'
Nor is the turmoil of the tempest on the sea less vividly depicted. We
are shown the
'Waves surging onward in mist,
When their crests are seen in foam
Over smoke and haze widespread.'
In the midst of the gloom we descry a shore-stack against which the
ocean
'Dashes the force of billows cold;
White spray is high around its throat,
And cairns resound on the heathery steep.'
With these pictures of tumult on land and sea, there come glimpses of
those cherished interludes of bright sunshine, when the western hills
and firths are seen at their loveliest. But whether radiant or gloomy
the landscape is in unison with the human emotion described--
'Pleasing the tale of the time which has gone;
Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mild,
On the brake and knoll of roes,
When slowly rises the sun
On the silent flank of hoary Bens--
The loch, unruffled, far away,
Calm and blue on the floor of the glens.'[46]
As a final sample of the Ossianic landscape, with its kaleidoscopic play
of atmospheric effect, answering to the changes of human feeling, let
me cite some lines from _Fingal_:--
'Morna, most lovely among women,
Why by thyself in the circle of stones,
In hollow of the rock on the hill alone?
Rivers are sounding around thee;
The aged tree is moaning in the wind;
Turmoil is on yonder loch;
Clouds darken round the tops of Cairns [mountains];
Thyself art like snow on the hill--
Thy waving hair like mist of Cromla,
Curling upward on the Ben,
'Neath gleaming of the sun from the west;
Thy soft bosom like the white rock
On bank of Brano of white streams.'[47]
Though Macpherson roused the interest of the world in the rugged
scenery and boisterous climates of the west, it was some time before
any other writer followed his lead among the highlands of this country.
It is singular to reflect that though the mountain-world, more than
any other part of the land, appeals to the imagination, by revealing
all that is most impressive in form and colour, and all that is most
vigorous in the elemental warfare of nature, it was the last part of
the terrestrial surface to meet with due appreciation. Little more than
a century has passed since men began to visit the Scottish Highlands
for the pleasure of admiring their scenery. Previous to the suppression
of the Jacobite rising, that mountainous region was regarded as the
abode of a half-savage race, into whose wilds few lowlanders would
venture without the most urgent reasons. Even after military roads
had been made across it, the accommodation for travellers was still
generally of the most wretched kind. Those who had occasion to traverse
it gave such an account of their experiences as one would hardly now
expect to receive from the heart of Africa.[48] The poet Gray during
his visit to Scotland in the year 1765, made a brief excursion into the
Perthshire Highlands, and, in spite of the discomforts of travel at
that time, came away with a vivid impression of the grandeur and beauty
of the scenery. But the only record that remains of this impression is
to be found in a few sentences in his letters.[49]
Eight years after Gray's visit, Samuel Johnson in 1773 made his more
adventurous journey to the Hebrides. When we consider what were the
discomforts, and sometimes the actual dangers which he had to undergo,
we cannot but admire the quiet courage with which he endured them,
and the reticence with which he refers to them in his narrative. But
Johnson could see no charm in the Highland mountains. In his poem on
London he had asked many years before:
'For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land,
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?'
Yet when at last he set foot in Scotland, he showed no disposition to
prefer its rocks to his haunts in London. Travelling through some of
the finest scenery in Western Inverness-shire, this is the language he
uses regarding it: 'The hills exhibit very little variety; being almost
wholly covered with dark heath, and even that seems to be checked in
its growth. What is not heath is nakedness, a little diversified by
now and then a stream rushing down the steep. An eye accustomed to
flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this
wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter
incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care and
disinherited of her favours, left in its original elemental state, or
quickened only by one sullen power of useless vegetation.'[50]
While such was the attitude of the man of letters in this country,
influences were at work on the Continent which powerfully affected
the relations of literature to the whole realm of outer nature, and
more especially to mountain-scenery. Rousseau's descriptions, followed
by the more detailed and scientific narrative of De Saussure, drew
the attention of society to the fascinations of Switzerland and the
Alps. But these influences had hardly had time to exert much sway in
their application to the scenery of our own country when the genius of
Scott suddenly brought the features of the Scottish Highlands into the
most popular literature of his day. In his youth the future poet and
novelist had paid some visits to the glens and lakes of Perthshire,
where he found many a primitive custom still remaining, which has
since vanished before roads, railways, and tourists. In the year 1810
his _Lady of the Lake_ appeared. Thenceforward the stream of summer
visitors set in, which has poured in an ever-increasing flood into
the Highlands of Scotland. The general interest thus awakened in the
glens and mountains of the north was still further intensified by the
advent of the _Lord of the Isles_, and of _Waverley_, _Rob Roy_, and
the other novels that depict scenes in the Highlands. Certainly no man
ever did so much as Walter Scott to make the natural features of his
native country familiar to the whole world. The literary charm which
he threw over the hills and glens of Perthshire kindled a wide-spread
enthusiasm for the more rugged aspects of nature, and gave a powerful
stimulus to the slowly-growing appreciation of the beauty and grandeur
of mountain-scenery.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that Scott's highland landscapes,
though more prominent and detailed than those in his descriptions of
the lowlands and uplands, were also more laboured and less spontaneous.
His pictures are no doubt faithful and graphic, and each of them
leaves on the mind a clear impression of the scene depicted. But their
effect is produced rather by a multiplicity of touches than by a few
masterstrokes of poetic insight and graphic delineation. Moreover they
are all in one tone of colour, and lack that changeful diversity so
characteristic of mountains. They are chiefly fine-weather portraits,
as if the poet loved only summer sunshine among the hills, and had
either never seen or cared not to portray their gloom, cloud, and
storm. We are bound of course to remember that, after all, he was
only an occasional visitor to the Highlands. He had not been born
among them, and never lived long enough in their solitudes to become
intimately versed in all their alternations of mood under changes of
sky and season. He writes of them as an admiring and even enthusiastic
spectator, but not as one into whose very soul the power of the
mountains had entered. He never warms among them into that fervent glow
of affectionate appreciation which kindles within him in sight of the
landscapes of his native Border.