622. Coir-nan-Uriskin. Scott has the following note here: "This is
a very steep and most romantic hollow in the mountain of Benvenue,
overhanging the southeastern extremity of Loch Katrine. It is surrounded
with stupendous rocks, and overshadowed with birch-trees, mingled with
oaks, the spontaneous production of the mountain, even where its cliffs
appear denuded of soil. A dale in so wild a situation, and amid a
people whose genius bordered on the romantic, did not remain without
appropriate deities. The name literally implies the Corri, or Den, of
the Wild or Shaggy Men. Perhaps this, as conjectured by Mr. Alexander
Campbell (Journey from Edinburgh, 1802, p. 109), may have originally
only implied its being the haunt of a ferocious banditti. But tradition
has ascribed to the Urisk, who gives name to the cavern, a figure
between a goat and a man; in short, however much the classical reader
may be startled, precisely that of the Grecian Satyr. The Urisk seems
not to have inherited, with the form, the petulance of the silvan deity
of the classics; his occupation, on the contrary, resembled those of
Milton's Lubbar Fiend, or of the Scottish Brownie, though he differed
from both in name and appearance. 'The Urisks,' says Dr. Graham, 'were a
sort of lubberly supernaturals, who, like the Brownies, could be gained
over by kind attention to perform the drudgery of the farm, and it
was believed that many families in the Highlands had one of the order
attached to it. They were supposed to be dispersed over the Highlands,
each in his own wild recess, but the solemn stated meetings of the order
were regularly held in this Cave of Benvenue. This current superstition,
no doubt, alludes to some circumstance in the ancient history of this
country' (Scenery on the Southern Confines of Perthshire, p. 19, 1806).
It must be owned that the Coir, or Den, does not, in its present state,
meet our ideas of a subterraneous grotto or cave, being only a small and
narrow cavity, among huge fragments of rocks rudely piled together. But
such a scene is liable to convulsions of nature which a Lowlander cannot
estimate, and which may have choked up what was originally a cavern. At
least the name and tradition warrant the author of a fictitious tale to
assert its having been such at the remote period in which this scene is
laid."