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.