THE CASTLE OF ROHALLION.
"Hast them seen that lordly castle,
That castle by the sea?
Golden and red above it,
The clouds float gorgeously;
And fain it would stoop downward,
To the mirrored wave below,
And fain it would soar upward,
In the evening's crimson glow."--LONGFELLOW.
The baronial fortalice in which our story has opened stands, as we
have stated, upon a cliff, at least one hundred and fifty feet in
height above the ocean, or where the estuary of the Clyde widens
thereunto, on the Carrick shore; but since 1798 it has undergone many
alterations, not perhaps for the better.
In that year it consisted of the old Scottish Keep, built in the
reign of James I. by Sir Ranulph Crawford, of Rohallion, his
ambassador, first to Henry VI. of England, and afterwards to Charles
VII. of France, for which services he was created Keeper of the Royal
Palace of Carrick. Adjoining this grim tower, with its grated
windows, machicolated ramparts, and corner tourelles, was the more
modern mansion built in the time of James VI., by Hugh, third Lord
Rohallion, who slew the gipsy king in single combat at the Cairns of
Blackhinney. It had crowstepped gables, dormer windows, gabletted
and carved with dates, crests, and quaint monograms, and many a huge
chimney, conical turret, and creaking vane, added to its picturesque
appearance. To this was added a wing in the time of Queen Anne,
somewhat unsightly in its details, yet the general aspect of the
whole edifice was bold and pleasing, chastened or toned down as it
was by time and the elements.
On one side it overlooked the Firth, then opening to a stormy sea,
with the ruins of Turnberry in the distance--the crumbling walls
wherein the conqueror of the proud Plantagenet first saw the light,
and learned "to shake his Carrick spear." On the other, its windows
opened to the most fertile portion of the bailiewick--wooded heights
that looked on the banks and braes of the Doon, where the scenery
wakened a flood of historical or legendary memories; where every
broomy knowe and grassy hill, every coppice and rushy glen, grey
lichened rock and stony corrie, were consecrated by some old song or
stirring tale of love or local war--the fierce old feudal wars of the
Kennedies, the Crawfords, and the grim iron Barons of Auchindrane;
and, more than all, it was the birthplace, the home of Robert Bruce
and of Robert Burns--the one the warrior, and the other the bard of
the people. From the windows of Rohallion could be seen the very
uplands, where, but a few years before, the latter had ploughed and
sown, and where, as he tells us in his filial love of his native
soil, when he saw
"The rough burr-thistle spreading wide,
Among the bearded bear;
I turned the weeding-hook aside,
And spared the emblem dear!"
The scenery from whence he drew his inspiration looked down on the
old tower of Rohallion, which contained on its first floor the
stone-paved hall, that had witnessed many a bridal feast and
Christmas festival, held in the rough old joyous times, when Scotland
was true to herself, and ere sour Judaical Sabbatarianism came upon
her, to make religion a curse and a cloak for the deepest hypocrisy;
and ere her preachers sought "to merit heaven, by making earth a
hell."
It presented the unusual feature (in a baronial edifice) of a groined
roof, having at least six elaborately carved Gothic bosses, where the
ribs that sprang from beautiful corbels placed between the windows
intersected each other. On the frieze of the high-arched fireplace
was a shield _gules_, with a fess _ermine_, the old arms of the
Crawfords, Lords of Crawford, in Clydesdale (a family ancient as the
days of William the Lyon), from whom the peers of Rohallion--whose
patent was signed by James IV. on the night before Flodden--took
their bearings and motto, _Endure Furth!_ Though, certainly, it was
but little they were ever disposed to endure with patience, if
displeased with either king or commoner.
Stags' skulls, antlers, a few old barred helmets, dinted corslets,
rusty swords and pikes, decorated this great stone apartment. Its
furniture was massive and ancient, but seldom used now, so there the
busy spiders spun their webs all undisturbed, across the grated
windows, and the moss grew in winter on the carved jambs of the great
fireplace, within which, according to tradition, for ages before
these days of unbelief, the little red brownie of Rohallion was wont
to come o' nights when all were abed, and warm himself by the
smouldering _grieshoch_.
Lady Rohallion preferred the more modern rooms of Queen Anne's reign,
where the buhl and marqueterie furniture was more to her taste.
There, the double drawing-room with its yellow damask curtains,
high-backed chairs and couches, its old bandy-legged tabourettes,
slender gueridon work-tables; its old-fashioned piano, with perhaps
"H.R.H. the Duke of York's Grand March" on the music-frame; its
Delft-lined fireplace and basket-grate set on a square block of
stone, a spinning-wheel on one side, and cosy elbow-chair, brilliant
with brass nails, on the other, was the beau-ideal of comfort,
especially on a tempestuous night, such as the last we have
described; nor was it destitute of splendour, for its lofty panelled
walls exhibited some fine pictures. There were some gems by Greuze,
of golden-haired boys and fair full-bosomed women in brilliant
colours; one or two ruddily-tinted saints by Murillo; one or two dark
Titians, and darker Vandykes representing Italian nobles of
cut-throat aspect, in gilt armour, with trunk breeches and high
ruffs. Then there were also some of the Scottish school; the Lord
Rohallion (who opposed the surrender of Charles I. to the English) by
Jameson; his son, a vehement opposer of the Union, attired in a huge
wig and collarless red coat, by Aikman; and the father of the present
lord, by Allan Ramsay, son of the poet.
This Lord in 1708 left his country in disgust, swearing that "she was
only fit for the Presbyterian slaves who sold her;" and for several
years he solaced himself at the head of a Muscovite regiment against
the Turks on the banks of the Danube--as the Scots whigs had it,
"learning to eat raw horse and forget God's kirk, among barbarians in
red breeks."
Near the castle, and forming indeed a portion of it, was a platform,
facing the little sandy bay, where the fishing boats were beached,
and thereon were mounted twelve iron twenty-four pounders, part of
the spoil of _La Bonne Citoyenne_, a French privateer, which was cast
away on the Parian Craig; and there, as the old lord and
representative peer (whose wife is awaiting him) still retained his
military instincts, being a retired general officer, he had all the
able-bodied men of his tenantry drilled to the use of sponge and
rammer as artillerymen, for rumours of invasion were rife; gunboats
were being built at Boulogne, and those who then looked across the
Straits of Dover, could see the white tents of the Armée
d'Angleterre, under the Irish soldier of fortune, Kilmaine, covering
all the hostile shore of France. So all Britain was bristling with
bayonets; from Cape Wrath to the Land's End in Cornwall, every man
who could handle a musket was a volunteer, if not otherwise enrolled
in the line, militia, or Fencibles.
On this battery the flag was hoisted and a salute loyally and
joyously fired every 4th of June, in honour of His Majesty George
III., by the Rohallion volunteers; and there with loud hurrahs they
drank confusion to France and to his enemies, Tom Paine, the Pope,
and the Devil, and very frequently in the best French brandy, which
somehow found its way quite as often as our good Farintosh or
Campbelton whisky, duty free, into the sea coves beneath the castle
rock.
These twelve twenty-four pounders protected the approach to the bay
on one side, and to the gate of the castle on the other--the haunted
gate of Rohallion, as it was named, from the circumstance that there
the old village dominie, Symon Skaill, when going home one morning
(night he affirmed it to be) in midsummer, after topering with Mr.
John Girvan, saw a very startling sight. Clearly defined in the calm
still twilight of the morning, there stood by the gate the tall and
handsome figure of John, Master of Rohallion, who was known to be
then serving with the Foot Guards under Cornwallis, in America. He
wore his scarlet regimentals, his brigadier wig, his long straight
sword, and little three-cocked hat; but his face was pale, distorted
by agony, and blood was flowing from a wound in his left temple.
Ere the affrighted dominie could speak, the figure--the
_wraith_--melted into the twilight, and not a trace of it remained by
the arched gate, where the birds were twittering about in the early
morning. A note was made of this singular vision, and it was found
that at that hour, the Master of Rohallion had been shot through the
head, when leading on his company of the Guards at the attack on Long
Island.
Such, in 1798, was the old Scottish mansion of Rohallion, the
residence of Reynold, sixth Lord of that ilk, which, by the events of
the last night's storm, has become the starting-place, or, as the
quartermaster might phrase it, the _point d'appui_, of our story.