ashes, and fair-haired Gregor of the white hands in my embrace!
All others have apples: I have none, my sweet, lovely apple has the
back of his head to the ground.
Other men’s wives sleep soft in their homes: I stand by the bedside
wringing my hands.
Another tale of Loch Tay is told almost identically of more than one
pair of hostile Highland families, but here with a picturesque opening
and a rather lame conclusion. A Macgregor had been at feud with the head
of the Breadalbane Campbells, who held out a deceitful olive branch by
proposing a treaty of peace in his new-built castle at Taymouth.
Macgregor trustfully kept the rendezvous with an appointed number of
friends. On the hill above Balloch they found an old man kneeling before
a large grey stone, uttering prayers for the dead, in which he mixed
this sentence, “To thee, grey stone, I tell it; but when the black
bull’s head appears, Macgregor’s sword can hardly save the wearer’s
fated head. Deep the dungeon--sharp the axe--and short the shrift!”
Macgregor recognised this as a warning from one who had perhaps been
bound to secrecy and thus salved his conscience; but he was not the man
to turn back. The lord of the castle received him and his men with
feigned kindness, and they sat down to meat, each Campbell having a
Macgregor on his right hand. When a black bull’s head was borne in, a
clatter of arms being heard outside, the guest took the initiative by
holding his dagger to Campbell’s breast and clutching him by the throat.
The other Macgregors were quick to follow this example so effectively
that their false host allowed himself to be dragged out of his castle,
across the loch, and to the top of Drummond Hill, where he was fain to
subscribe an amnesty and promise of future friendship, that did not long
hold good. One would like to compare the Campbell version of such
legends.
A story of the next century may have suggested to Scott the Strathyre
wedding interrupted by a messenger of the Fiery Cross, though in this
case the incidents seem less romantic. To a party gathered at Finlarig
for the marriage of the chief’s daughter to a Menzies laird, came news
of the approach of Macdonald raiders driving home their booty. Even at
such a time Campbells were not to be kept from the throats of
Macdonalds, whose offence, according to one account, was refusing to pay
toll for passage through Breadalbane, such as explorers of our age have
found exacted by African chiefs across whose territory lay their way.
The wedding guests seized their arms, and sallied forth, bridegroom and
all, to attack the Macdonalds, who were defeated in a hot encounter,
with heavy loss on both sides, including the Macdonald chief and MacIan
of Glencoe, while nearly a score of the wedding party had to be carried
home with the coronach. Such were the scenes amid which the Breadalbane
lairds sowed the seeds of more peaceful manners.
On a wooded islet of the Dochart are the tombs of the Macnabs, older
lairds of this district. They appear to have been a branch of the
Macgregors, their name being taken to mean “Sons of the Abbot,” who in
more orthodox climes might have rather been styled “nephews.” They
showed themselves right Celts, shutting their eyes to the signs of
change, trusting to claymores rather than to charters, and apt to turn
out on the losing side, so that they went under the waves of time on the
top of which the Campbells rode triumphantly.
The last laird of Macnab figured as a well-known “character” in Scott’s
day, his outer man still familiar in Raeburn’s portrait of him. He was
huge of stature, imperious in manner, irascible, proud and impracticable
to an ultra-Highland degree. To him is attributed that vaunt of the
Macnabs having a boat of their own at the Flood, also the declaration
that there were many _Mr._ Macnabs but only one Macnab, naturally the
crown and chieftain of the human race. When an arrogant scholar boasted
in the same spirit that England had only one Master of Trinity, a
stuttering don broke the awed silence with too audible comment, “Thank
God for that!” With not less irreverence a bold pretender is said to
have answered the chieftain’s pride by signing himself _The other
Macnab_. Ill would it have fared with the Sassenach body who should thus
have bearded the Macnab to his face. In Mr. P. R. Drummond’s
_Perthshire_, there is reported this instance of his wrath being
provoked by an audacious stranger:--
It occurred after dinner, the laird being a little mellow, for as
to being drunk, oceans of liquor would have failed to produce that
effect, at least to the length of prostration. The unhappy querist
began: “Macnab, are you acquainted with Macloran of Dronascandlich,
who has lately purchased so many thousand acres in
Inverness-shire?” This was more than enough to set the laird off in
a furious tilt on his genealogical steed. “Ken wha? the
paddock-stool o’ a cratur they ca’ Dronascandlich, wha no far
bygane dawred (curse him) to offer siller, sir, for an auld ancient
estate, sir. An estate as auld as the flude, sir; an infernal deal
aulder, sir. Siller, sir, scrappit thegither by the meeserable
deevil in India, sir, not in an officer or gentlemanlike way, sir;
but (Satan burst him) makin’ cart wheels and trams, sir, and
harrows, and the like o’ that wretched handiwork. Ken him, sir? I
ken the cratur weel, and whae he comes frae, sir; and so I ken that
dumb tyke, sir, a better brute by half than a score o’ him!” The
querist interjected, “Mercy on us, Macnab, you surprise me. I
thought from the sublime sound of his name and title, he had been,
like yourself, a chief of fifteen centuries’ standing at least.”
The instant this comparison was drawn, the laird’s visage grew
ghastly with rage. His eyes caught fire and he snorted like a
mountain whirlwind.
But for the climax of this storm, worthy of Meg Dods or of Meg
Merrilies, the reader may be referred to my authority, with the hint
that it will be wasted on who cannot interpret the vernacular eloquence
then familiar at lordly dinner-tables as in kailyard “cracks.”
Many are the stories told, in print or tradition, of the Macnab’s
sayings and doings. Mr. Drummond states that the library at Taymouth
Castle contained two scrapbooks filled with them, cut out of
publications like the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ and the _Literary Gazette_.
The most often told of these stories relates to a time when the
spendthrift laird was at last falling into the toils of law, whose
minions he looked on as very sons of the devil. The Perth men of
business, it is said, showed indulgence to his shortcomings; but a bill
of his having come into the hands of some less considerate creditor at
Stirling, a clerk, accompanied by two messengers-at-arms, ventured to
his house in Breadalbane on the perilous errand of taking the Macnab
into custody. Getting wind of their design, he kept out of the way, and
left his housekeeper schooled to play a cunning part. She welcomed the
visitors, let them understand that the laird was expected home next
morning, and after hospitable entertainment, sent them to bed, the clerk
at one end of the house and the legal myrmidons at the other. When they
awoke next morning, they were horrified to see dangling from a tree
outside what seemed the body of their companion. They quickly took to
flight on hearing from the housekeeper, as matter of course, that “a bit
clerk body had been hanged, who came here to deave the laird for
siller.” The clerk, whose greatcoat and boots had been borrowed to rig
out a stuffed figure, was not less terrified by the explanation of their
absence: “The laird’s gillies have taken them awa’ to be drooned in the
pool of Crianlarich, and they’ll be back for _you_ the noo.” That set
the clerk to flight in turn; and never again, goes the story, would
anyone venture to serve a legal process on the Macnab in his own
country.
Naturally such a personage did not thrive in his quarrel with the age;
and when he died in 1816, what was left of the Macnab property passed
into the hands of his kinsman and creditor, Lord Breadalbane, to whom
the laird had stooped his pride to become a sort of humoured hanger-on.
His nephew, heir to a load of debt, was fain to emigrate to Canada with
a following of the broken clan. But all over Britain a sprinkling of
Macnabs are found more or less flourishing, who have formed an
association, two or three hundred strong, that takes on itself the pious
duty of tending those ancestral graves at Killin, the chieftains buried
in a central square, their humbler clansmen and connections lying round
about them under the shade of funereal pine-trees. Killin has also to
show a lonely stone, taken to mark the tomb of Fingal, which is said to
have given the original name, _Kilfin_.
Kinnell House, the Macnabs’ chief seat, is now a favourite residence of
Lord Breadalbane, in which are preserved some odd relics of that last
laird, his frying-pan, his kail-pot, and so on. But the glory of the
place--Auchmore, as it is also called--is its famous vine that, to the
reproach of your Dr. Johnsons, can boast itself the largest in Britain,
and still goes on growing exuberantly, though it has been decided that
no more glass room can be provided for it.
Killin well deserves its renown in the tourist world, presenting a
lovely mixture of Highland and Lowland aspects. Its two rivers make the
same contrast, the leafy pools of the Lochay to be compared to the
tranquillising influences that have prevailed in Loch Tay, while the
untamed rapids of the Dochart suggest the wild mountain spirit dashed to
foam against rocks of hard fact. But the Lochay, too, up its beautiful
glen, has cascades and other features of romance such as we look for a
little farther back in Lowland life; and if the people forget their
Gaelic and their legends, Nature still wears her garb of bracken and
heather.
A plain sign of new times is the branch railway, link in a tourist round
that a few miles from Killin falls in with the line from Callander to
Oban. Here, turning back Lowlandwards, the rocky wilds of Glen Ogle lead
us towards the softer beauties of Loch Earn, which we shall approach
from the other end. Up Glen Dochart the railway runs into the higher yet
opener reach of Strath Fillan; and here for a little it has the close
companionship of its rival, the West Highland line, struggling on to Ben
Nevis over lofty wastes of heather. At Crianlarich the two lines cross,
then they draw apart at Tyndrum, under the ridge of Ben Lui, that
cradles the infant Tay, as yet unchristened, unless by its nursery name
of Fillan Water, where it gambols down to swell Loch Dochart, at the
foot of Ben More. By its course, along the line of the Oban railway, the
Campbells must have flowed into Breadalbane from their spring at
Kilchurn Castle on Loch Awe. But beyond the head of Strath Fillan the
streams flow to the Atlantic; and here we turn back from the Argyllshire
gates of the Western Highlands.
Strath Fillan gets its name from the Irish missionary, Fillan, who
became the patron saint of central Scotland, his memory preserved by a
monastery that had much reverence in Breadalbane. He is, indeed, such a
shadowy personage that there are said to have been two saints of the
name, the other belonging to Loch Earn. St. Fillan’s pool, near
Crianlarich, was a famous Highland rendezvous, used occasionally, as we
have seen, for ducking objectionable persons; but its chief repute was
in the cure of lunacy. The unhappy sufferer, brought here by his
friends, was three times marched round a cairn from east to west--a rite
of unconscious paganism--then after being immersed in the pool, he was
tied up for the night in an adjacent chapel. If he managed to break
loose that was a hopeful sign of his wits; but the result of this rough
treatment must often have been an effectual cure for all the ills flesh
is heir to. The reputation of St. Fillan’s well held out till quite
recently; even now, perhaps, offerings may be secretly cast into it, or
hung upon the bushes around, as pins or crossed rushes are found in the
sacred wells of Cornwall. The superstition is, of course, world-wide;
and deeper in the Highlands are wells still sought for pious hydropathy.
To St. Fillan’s bell were also attributed supernatural properties: this
and his crosier, long preserved in a family of hereditary custodians
named Dewar, after wanderings as far as Canada, have come to be
treasured at the Antiquarian Museum of Edinburgh.
In history, also, this fair strath has a name. Dalry, near Tyndrum, was
the scene of one of Robert Bruce’s traditional exploits. Defeated at
Methven, after his coronation at Scone, he had to take to the
Highlands,
[Illustration: “THE LADY OF THE WOODS”]
roving in perils and hardships like those of his unhappy descendant,
Prince Charlie. At Dalry he had gathered force enough to make a stand
against Macdougal, Lord of Lorn, eager to avenge on him the kindred
blood of the Red Comyn. Overborne by numbers, the king retreated through
a narrow pass, the mouth of which he held in person till all his men
should be out of danger. Three doughty Macdougal champions, a father and
two sons, having vowed to slay or take him alive, fell upon Bruce at
once. The sons he cut down as they tried to drag him from his horse,
then the father grasping him by the cloak so close that he could not use
his sword, Bruce dashed out this man’s brains with the hilt, or with a
hammer hanging at his saddle-bow. But the dying Macdougal kept such a
grasp on the cloak that, to make good his escape, the king had to let it
go, undoing the brooch which fastened it. Thus is said to have come into
the hands of the Macdougals that Brooch of Lorn, treasured by the family
to our time--an idle trophy, indeed, that was to cost them dear. In
Bruce’s day of triumph he did not forget those bitter foes; then on
their fall rose the Argyllshire Campbells, who have so long been Lords
of Lorne.
These scenes are well known, as made accessible by the railway, that has
ploughed up the memories of old feuds, and the patterns of native
tartans. Less visited by rapid wheels are the wilds of Glenlyon,
“crooked glen of the stones,” running westward behind Ben Lawers on the
north of Loch Tay. This is notable as the longest narrow pass in
Scotland, and in its lower part one of the most beautiful. Its village
capital, Fortingall, lies shut in among the mountains not far from
Kenmore, across Drummond Hill. The high road comes round the other side
of the Taymouth meadows, entering the glen by Garth, where one of our
modern princes of commerce has a seat near the ruined castle, once lair
of that Stuart who earned the byname of Wolf from the bloodthirsty
fierceness with which he hunted the MacIvors out of their old lairs in
Glenlyon; then this house won a milder fame from General Stuart of
Garth, the enthusiastic historian of Highland regiments.
Near Fortingall was at home that Campbell of Glenlyon who carried out
the massacre of Glencoe, for which his descendants held themselves to be
accursed. According to Robert Chambers, one of them was Rob Roy’s
mother. A name of wider ill-fame is connected with Fortingall, if we
believe a thin legend that makes it birthplace of Pontius Pilate, son of
a Roman official quartered in the camp laid out under older strongholds
ascribed to chiefs of the Fingal age. So far into the Highlands seem to
have been pushed the eyries
Where Rome, the Empress of the world,
Of yore her eagle wings unfurled.
Another lion is the Fortingall yew, given out as three thousand years
old and perhaps the oldest tree in Europe, which, declares a Perthshire
historian, “must have been a goodly sapling when Nebuchadnezzar had his
dwelling with the beasts of the fields”; but Dr. John Lowe shakes his
head over such reputations. In his iconoclastic book on _Yew-trees_, he
blasts the very existence of a supposed old yew at Fotheringay, the
place of Queen Mary’s execution; but he might have guessed how that
pretender crept into print, had he known that the ancient name of
Fortingall was _Fothergill_, which is also found spelt _Fortirgall_.
The most authentic renown of Fortingall is as vicarage of James
Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, who, in the first half of the sixteenth
century, along with his brother Duncan, compiled the earliest collection
of Gaelic poetry, which bears the title _Book of Lismore_, though it was
made in the centre of Perthshire. Naturally the Macgregor Dean gives a
good place to legends and achievements of his own race, whose proud
genealogy has thus been embalmed; but he admits praises of the Clan
Donachie, the Clan Dougal, and other neighbours; also preserving
memories of such misty heroes as Finn and Oscar, and many poems
attributed to Ossian, similar to those upon which Macpherson afterwards
founded his _remaniement_. The name of the supposed author is usually
prefixed to each contribution. Among the rest is the romantic legend of
Fraoch and the dragon, outlined in _Highlands and Islands_. A passage
from this, as translated by the Rev. T. Maclauglan, may be quoted to
show how poets have always drawn on the same similes and hyperboles.
The hero lived, of matchless strength,
The bravest heart in battle’s day.
Lovely those lips with welcomes rich,
Which women like so well to kiss;
Lovely the chief whom men obeyed,
Lovely those cheeks like roses red,
Than raven’s hue more dark his hair,
Redder than hero’s blood his cheeks;
Softer than froth of streams his skin,
Whiter it was than whitest snow,
His hair in curling locks fell down,
His eye more blue than bluest ice;
Than rowans red more red his lips,
Whiter than blossoms were his teeth;
Tall was his spear like any mast,
Sweeter his voice than sounding chord.
None could better swim than Fraoch
Who ever breasted running stream.
Broader than any gate his shield;
Joyous he swung it o’er his back;
His arm and sword of equal length,
In size he like a ship did look.
Would it had been in warrior’s fight
That Fraoch, who spared not gold, had died;
’Twas sad to perish by a Beast,
’Tis just as sad he lives not now.
Another characteristic feature of the collection is strings of homely
proverbial saws such as this, going to show Scottish Sabbatarianism
older than communications with Geneva--
’Tis not good to travel on Sunday,
Whoever the Sabbath would keep;
Not good to be of ill-famed race;
Not good is a dirty woman;
Not good to write without learning;
Not good are grapes when sour;
Not good is an earl without English;
Not good is a sailor, if old;
Not good is a bishop without warrant;
Not good is a blemish on an elder;
Not good a priest with but one eye;
Not good a parson, if a beggar;
Not good is a palace without play;
Not good is a handmaid if she’s slow;
Not good is a lord without a dwelling; ...
Not good is a crown without supremacy;
Not good is ploughing by night;
Not good is learning without courtesy;
Not good is religion without knowledge.
Among matters handled in this anthology, one which suggests the priest
rather than the poet, is an unchivalrous estimate of the fair sex, here,
indeed, most emphatically expressed by a rhymer taken to be the Irish
Earl Gerald Fitzgerald of Desmond--
May my curse ’mongst woman rest,
Although for a time I mixed with them;
As for men who still are single,
’Tis best to have nought to do with women.
Another bard whose sentiments would shock suffragettes, is suspected for
no other than Black Duncan himself, who would thus appear as taking a
cynical view of the world he did so much to change. Some verses again
are of ecclesiastically edifying tone; yet there are sly hits at
monastic life, a sign of the times in which Henry VIII. took a strong
view of the same subject, that, to be sure, supplies a favourite topic
for mediæval poetry, and is all along very freely handled by the Muse of
Lowland Scotland. The Dean himself could have been no model Churchman,
for he left two sons to be legitimatised, one of whom succeeded to his
clerical dignity, while the other is, in 1552, found formally renouncing
his allegiance to the Macgregor chief and taking as his lord Campbell
of Glenorchy, who, two generations back, had supplanted the Macgregors
at the foot of Loch Tay.
Stories of the Macgregors’ doings are not wanting hereabouts, one of
which looks as if it may have given a hint to Sir Walter. A Macnaughton
was on ill terms with a John Macgregor, who had robbed him of his
daughter and made not less bold with certain fields of his in Glenlyon,
seized by way of dowry. With a band of sixty men he set out to evict the
unwelcome son-in-law from land and life. Macgregor raised a similar
force, which he ambushed in the glen, himself going forward to meet its
invaders. His person being unknown to them, they enlisted him to serve
as guide on the errand of which they made no secret. Macnaughton walking
on with them in advance, they came to a deep ditch in a swamp over which
the guide leaped nimbly, and showed the chief a way round; but when his
men came up, their attempts to imitate that mighty leap only landed them
up to the armpits in mire. To Macnaughton, for the moment left alone
with the stranger, Macgregor revealed himself by taking his hand and
telling him, “I am the man you seek.” Then at a signal from this
Roderick Dhu of real life, up started his plaided warriors from their
ambush. But the end of the encounter was peaceful. Pleased to find
Macgregor so fine a fellow, with such a band of henchmen, Macnaughton
opened his arms to his son-in-law, and the two parties feasted together
in sign of friendly alliance. Critical reporters, by the way, would like
to know how the heroes of such adventures got rid of the distinguishing
tartans or other badges of clanship, which came to be made so much of
in later song and story. To a mere Sassenach like Fitzjames the
Macgregor devices may not have been very kenspeckle; but surely a
Mohawk’s eye would have been sharper to read the totem of a Huron.
Above Fortingall, the glen contracts to a romantic pass, three miles
long, which would be as famous as Killiecrankie had it made such a
figure in history. But nearly all Glenlyon deserves better than to be
put in guide-book small print as a backwater of travel. For a dozen
miles its road runs up to Meggernie Castle, beyond which a stretch of
rougher ways, on to Loch Lyon at the foot of Ben Cruachan, leads one
into the very heart of the Highlands and the border of Perthshire.
Here a wall of unfamed Bens shuts off another basin of lakes that is the
northward course of the West Highland railway. Across this rise the high
tops of the Blackmount deer forest, still within the bounds of Lord
Breadalbane’s domain, a wilderness of heather, only here and there
broken by patches of forest in our use of the word, but homes of living
men appear rarer than cairns of the forgotten dead. Westwards opens the
way to ill-famed Glencoe. Southwards runs the Orchy to Loch Awe and Ben
Cruachan, by a knot of green glens that seem to have been the original
seat of the Macgregors, whose inveterate feuds with Macnabs and other
neighbours paved a way for the conquering Campbells. But before speaking
of the Macgregor country, let us turn back to the Lowlands to approach
it up another Perthshire strath.
V
STRATHEARN
One of the most beautiful of Scottish rivers is the Earn, half Highland
and half Lowland, winding through all the varieties of Perthshire
scenery, past hoary monuments of Scotland’s struggles for birth as a
nation, and among misty traditions of her saints and heroes. Yet
guide-books, one observes, pass over the greater part of this strath as
hurriedly as the express trains dashing across its lower end; and
strangers seldom visit any but the upper reach, which enters into a
regular tourist round. How such neglect is undeserved, I would fain show
on an arm-chair saunter from the river’s unalluring mouth to its source
in mountains of romantic fame, a distance of some forty miles as the
crow flies; but a salmon has to make a much longer trip of it. Well is
the Earn apostrophised by an admiring stranger, _Blackwood’s_ first
editor, Thomas Pringle, best known by his South African pictures, or by
the figure he cuts in the wicked waggery of the _Chaldee Manuscript_.