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.