TO THE PENTLAND HILLS
On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes downward from the city,
here to the sea, there to the fat farms of Haddington, there to the
mineral fields of Linlithgow. On the south alone, it keeps rising, until
it not only out-tops the Castle, but looks down on Arthur's Seat. The
character of the neighbourhood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity
of hedges; by many stone walls of varying height; by a fair amount of
timber, some of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern
profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little river, Esk or
Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its glen; and from
almost every point, by a peep of the sea or the hills. There is no lack
of variety, and yet most of the elements are common to all parts; and
the southern district is alone distinguished by considerable summits and
a wide view.
From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army encamped before Flodden,
the road descends a long hill, at the bottom of which, and just as it is
preparing to mount up on the other side, it passes a toll-bar and issues
at once into the open country. Even as I write these words, they are
becoming antiquated in the progress of events, and the chisels are
tinkling on a new row of houses. The builders have at length adventured
beyond the toll which held them in respect so long, and proceed to
career in these fresh pastures like a herd of colts turned loose. As
Lord Beaconsfield proposed to hang an architect by way of stimulation, a
man, looking on these doomed meads, imagines a similar example to deter
the builders; for it seems as if it must come to an open fight at last
to preserve a corner of green country unbedevilled. And here,
appropriately enough, there stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet,
with two bodies hanged in chains. I used to be shown, when a child, a
flat stone in the roadway to which the gibbet had been fixed. People of
a willing fancy were persuaded, and sought to persuade others, that this
stone was never dry. And no wonder, they would add, for the two men had
only stolen fourpence between them.
For about two miles the road climbs upwards, a long hot walk in summer
time. You reach the summit at a place where four ways meet, beside the
toll of Fairmilehead. The spot is breezy and agreeable both in name and
aspect. The hills are close by across a valley: Kirk Yetton, with its
long, upright scars visible as far as Fife, and Allermuir the tallest on
this side: with wood and tilled field running high up on their borders,
and haunches all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and
variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off
the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland
plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its
mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands,
the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream together in the same field
by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their wheelings, the
sea-birds skim the tree-tops and fish among the furrows of the plough.
These little craft of air are at home in all the world, so long as they
cruise in their own element; and like sailors, ask but food and water
from the shores they coast.
Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge, now a dairy-farm, but
once a distillery of whisky. It chanced, some time in the past century,
that the distiller was on terms of good-fellowship with the visiting
officer of excise. The latter was of an easy, friendly disposition, and
a master of convivial arts. Now and again, he had to walk out of
Edinburgh to measure the distiller's stock; and although it was
agreeable to find his business lead him in a friend's direction, it was
unfortunate that the friend should be a loser by his visits.
Accordingly, when he got about the level of Fairmilehead, the gauger
would take his flute, without which he never travelled, from his pocket,
fit it together, and set manfully to playing, as if for his own
delectation and inspired by the beauty of the scene. His favourite air,
it seems, was "Over the Hills and Far Away." At the first note, the
distiller pricked his ears. A flute at Fairmilehead? and playing, "Over
the Hills and Far Away"? This must be his friendly enemy, the gauger.
Instantly, horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels of whisky were got
upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill End, and buried in the mossy
glen behind Kirk Yetton. In the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl
was put to the fire, and the whitest napery prepared for the back
parlour. A little after, the gauger, having had his fill of music for
the moment, came strolling down with the most innocent air imaginable,
and found the good people at Bow Bridge taken entirely unawares by his
arrival, but none the less glad to see him. The distiller's liquor and
the gauger's flute would combine to speed the moments of digestion; and
when both were somewhat mellow, they would wind up the evening with
"Over the Hills and Far Away," to an accompaniment of knowing glances.
And at least there is a smuggling story, with original and half-idyllic
features.
A little farther, the road to the right passes an upright stone in a
field. The country people call it General Kay's monument. According to
them, an officer of that name had perished there in battle at some
indistinct period before the beginning of history. The date is
reassuring; for I think cautious writers are silent on the General's
exploits. But the stone is connected with one of those remarkable
tenures of land which linger on into the modern world from Feudalism.
Whenever the reigning sovereign passes by, a certain landed proprietor
is held bound to climb on to the top, trumpet in hand, and sound a
flourish according to the measure of his knowledge in that art. Happily
for a respectable family, crowned heads have no great business in the
Pentland Hills. But the story lends a character of comicality to the
stone; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to himself.
The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by, at the back-gate of
Comiston, a belated carter beheld a lady in white, "with the most
beautiful, clear shoes upon her feet," who looked upon him in a very
ghastly manner, and then vanished; and just in front is the Hunters'
Tryst, once a roadside inn, and not so long ago haunted by the devil in
person. Satan led the inhabitants a pitiful existence. He shook the four
corners of the building with lamentable outcries, beat at the doors and
windows, over-threw crockery in the dead hours of the morning, and
danced unholy dances on the roof. Every kind of spiritual disinfectant
was put in requisition; chosen ministers were summoned out of Edinburgh
and prayed by the hour; pious neighbours sat up all night making a noise
of psalmody; but Satan minded them no more than the wind about the
hill-tops; and it was only after years of persecution, that he left the
Hunters' Tryst in peace to occupy himself with the remainder of mankind.
What with General Kay, and the white lady, and this singular visitation,
the neighbourhood offers great facilities to the makers of sun-myths;
and without exactly casting in one's lot with that disenchanting school
of writers, one cannot help hearing a good deal of the winter wind in
the last story. "That nicht," says Burns, in one of his happiest
moments,--
"That nicht a child might understand
The deil had business on his hand."
And if people sit up all night in lone places on the hills, with Bibles
and tremulous psalms, they will be apt to hear some of the most
fiendish noises in the world: the wind will beat on doors and dance upon
roofs for them, and make the hills howl around their cottage with a
clamour like the Judgment Day.
The road goes down through another valley, and then finally begins to
scale the main slope of the Pentlands. A bouquet of old trees stands
round a white farmhouse; and from a neighbouring dell, you can see smoke
rising and leaves ruffling in the breeze. Straight above, the hills
climb a thousand feet into the air. The neighbourhood, about the time of
lambs, is clamorous with the bleating of flocks; and you will be
awakened, in the grey of early summer mornings, by the barking of a dog
or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. This, with the hamlet
lying behind unseen, is Swanston.
The place in the dell is immediately connected with the city. Long ago,
this sheltered field was purchased by the Edinburgh magistrates for the
sake of the springs that rise or gather there. After they had built
their water-house and laid their pipes, it occurred to them that the
place was suitable for junketing. Once entertained, with jovial
magistrates and public funds, the idea led speedily to accomplishment;
and Edinburgh could soon boast of a municipal Pleasure House. The dell
was turned into a garden; and on the knoll that shelters it from the
plain and the sea winds, they built a cottage looking to the hills. They
brought crockets and gargoyles from old St. Giles's, which they were
then restoring, and disposed them on the gables and over the door and
about the garden; and the quarry which had supplied them with building
material, they draped with clematis and carpeted with beds of roses. So
much for the pleasure of the eye; for creature comfort, they made a
capacious cellar in the hillside and fitted it with bins of the hewn
stone. In process of time, the trees grew higher and gave shade to the
cottage, and the evergreens sprang up and turned the dell into a
thicket. There, purple magistrates relaxed themselves from the pursuit
of municipal ambition; cocked hats paraded soberly about the garden and
in and out among the hollies; authoritative canes drew ciphering upon
the path; and at night, from high up on the hills, a shepherd saw
lighted windows through the foliage and heard the voice of city
dignitaries raised in song.
The farm is older. It was first a grange of Whitekirk Abbey, tilled and
inhabited by rosy friars. Thence, after the Reformation, it passed into
the hands of a true-blue Protestant family. During the Covenanting
troubles, when a night conventicle was held upon the Pentlands, the farm
doors stood hospitably open till the morning; the dresser was laden with
cheese and bannocks, milk and brandy; and the worshipers kept lipping
down from the hill between two exercises, as couples visit the
supper-room between two dances of a modern ball. In the Forty-Five, some
foraging Highlanders from Prince Charlie's army fell upon Swanston in
the dawn. The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little
child; him they awakened by plucking the blankets from his bed, and he
remembered, when he was an old man, their truculent looks and uncouth
speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy, and with this they
made their brose in high delight. "It was braw brose," said one of them.
At last they made off, laden like camels with their booty; and Swanston
Farm has lain out of the way of history from that time forward. I do not
know what may be yet in store for it. On dark days, when the mist runs
low upon the hill, the house has a gloomy air as if suitable for private
tragedy. But in hot July, you can fancy nothing more perfect than the
garden, laid out in alleys and arbours and bright, old-fashioned
flower-plots, and ending in a miniature ravine, all trellis-work and
moss and tinkling waterfall, and housed from the sun under fathoms of
broad foliage.
The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable of hamlets, and
consists of a few cottages on a green beside a burn. Some of them (a
strange thing in Scotland) are models of internal neatness; the beds
adorned with patchwork, the shelves arrayed with willow-pattern plates,
the floors and tables bright with scrubbing or pipeclay, and the very
kettle polished like silver. It is the sign of a contented old age in
country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street
sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage
interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife
folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the
wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the
world. The city might be a thousand miles away: and yet it was close by
that Mr. Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh which has been
engraved for this collection:[2] and you have only to look at the cut,
to see how near it is at hand. But hills and hill people are not easily
sophisticated; and if you walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as
like as not the shepherd may set his dogs upon you. But keep an unmoved
countenance; they look formidable at the charge, but their hearts are in
the right place; and they will only bark and sprawl about you on the
grass, unmindful of their master's excitations.
Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the range; thence, the
Pentlands trend off to south and west. From the summit you look over a
great expanse of champaign sloping to the sea and behold a large variety
of distant hills. There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the
Lammermoors, and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more
or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field
of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that
side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or
Applecross. To turn to the other, is like a piece of travel. Far out in
the lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear
days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises
darkly in the midst; and close by, Arthur's Seat makes a bold figure in
the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking
villages, and white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the
land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines; little ships
are tacking in the Firth; the shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as
a parish, travels before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and
standing corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across the landscape.
So you sit, like Jupiter on Olympus, and look down from afar upon men's
life. The city is as silent as a city of the dead: from all its humming
thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill.
The sea surf, the cries of ploughmen, the streams and the mill-wheels,
the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert through the plain;
from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in defiance;
and yet from this Olympian station, except for the whispering rumour of
a train, the world has fallen into a dead silence and the business of
town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the
bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to
interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the
whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses
pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city,
ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight
highways, tell visibly of man's active and comfortable ways; and you may
be never so laggard and never so unimpressionable, but there is
something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the
vein for cheerful labour.
Immediately below is Fairmilehead, a spot of roof and a smoking chimney,
where two roads, no thicker than packthread, intersect beside a hanging
wood. If you are fanciful, you will be reminded of the gauger in the
story. And the thought of this old exciseman, who once lipped and
fingered on his pipe and uttered clear notes from it in the mountain
air, and the words of the song he affected, carry your mind "Over the
hills and far away" to distant countries; and you have a vision of
Edinburgh not, as you see her, in the midst of a little neighbourhood,
but as a boss upon the round world with all Europe and the deep sea for
her surroundings. For every place is a centre to the earth, whence
highways radiate or ships set sail for foreign ports; the limit of a
parish is not more imaginary than the frontier of an empire; and as a
man sitting at home in his cabinet and swiftly writing books, so a city
sends abroad an influence and a portrait of herself. There is no
Edinburgh emigrant, far or near, from China to Peru, but he or she
carries some lively pictures of the mind, some sunset behind the Castle
cliffs, some snow scene, some maze of city lamps, indelible in the
memory and delightful to study in the intervals of toil. For any such,
if this book fall in their way, here are a few more home pictures. It
would be pleasant if they should recognise a house where they had dwelt,
or a walk that they had taken.
[2] Reference to an etching in original edition.
END OF VOL. I.