HIGHLAND HUT, ITS FURNITURE AND INMATES—HIGHLAND AMUSEMENT AND
DINNER—“ROB ROY,” AND SCENERY OF THE “LADY OF THE LAKE.”
The cottage-inn at the head of Loch Katrine, was tenanted by a woman who
might have been a horse-guardsman in petticoats, and who kept her smiles
for other cattle than the Sassenach. We bought her whiskey and milk,
praised her butter, and were civil to the little Highlandman at her
breast; but neither mother nor child were to be mollified. The rocks
were bare around, we were too tired for a pull in the boat, and three
mortal hours lay between us and the nearest event in our history. I
first penetrated, in the absence of our Hecate, to the inner room of the
shieling. On the wall hung a broadsword, two guns, a trophy or two of
deers’ horns, and a Sunday suit of plaid, philibeg and short red coat,
surmounted by a gallant bonnet and feather. Four cribs, like the berths
in a ship, occupied the farther side of the chamber, each large enough
to contain two persons; a snow-white table stood between the windows; a
sixpenny glass, with an eagle’s feather stuck in the frame, hung at such
a height that, “though tall of my hands,” I could just see my nose; and
just under the ceiling on the left was a broad and capacious shelf, on
which reposed apparently the old clothes of a century—a sort of place
where the gude-wife would have hidden Prince Charlie, or might rummage
for her grandmother’s baby-linen.
The heavy steps of the dame came over the threshold, and I began to
doubt, from the look in her eyes, whether I should get a blow of her
hairy arm or a “persuader” from the butt of a gun for my intrusion.
“What are ye wantin’ here?” she _speered_ at me, with a Helen
M’Gregor-to-Baillie-Nicol-Jarvie-sort of an expression.
“I was looking for a potato to roast, my good woman.”
“Is that a’? Ye’ll find it ayont, then!” and pointing to a bag in the
corner, she stood while I subtracted the largest, and then followed me
to the general kitchen and receiving-room, where I buried my
_improvista_ dinner in the remains of the peat fire, and congratulated
myself on my ready apology.
What to do while the potato was roasting! My English friend had already
cleaned his gun for amusement, and I had looked on. We had stoned the
pony till he had got beyond us in the morass, (small thanks to us, if
the dame knew it.) We had tried to make a chicken swim ashore from the
boat, we had fired away all my friend’s percussion caps, and there was
nothing for it but to converse _ à rigueur_. We lay on our backs till
the dame brought us the hot potato on a shovel, with oat-cake and
butter, and, with this Highland dinner, the last hour came decently to
its death.
An Englishman, with his wife and lady’s maid, came over the hills with a
boat’s crew; and a lassie, who was not very pretty, but who lived on the
lake and had found the means to get “Captain Rob” and his men pretty
well under her thumb. We were all embarked, the lassie in the
stern-sheets with the captain; and ourselves, though we “paid the Scot,”
of no more consideration than our portmanteaus. I was amused, for it was
the first instance I had seen in any country (my own not excepted) of
thorough emancipation from the distinction of superiors. Luckily the
girl was bent on showing the captain to advantage, and by ingenious
prompting and catechism she induced him to do what probably was his
custom when he could not better amuse himself—point out the localities
as the boat sped on, and quote the Lady of the Lake with an accent which
made it a piece of good fortune to have “crammed” the poem before hand.
The shores of the lake are flat and uninteresting at the head, but,
toward the scene of Scott’s romance, they rise into bold precipices, and
gradually become worthy of their celebrity. The Trosachs are a cluster
of small, green mountains, strewn, or rather piled, with shrubs and
mossy verdure, and from a distance you would think only a bird, or
Ranald of the Mist, could penetrate their labyrinthine recesses. Captain
Rob showed us successively the Braes of Balquidder, Rob Roy’s birth and
burial place, Benledi, and the crag from which hung, by the well woven
skirts of braidcloth, the worthy baillie of Glasgow; and, beneath a
precipice of remarkable wildness, the half intoxicated steersman raised
his arm, and began to repeat, in the most unmitigated gutterals:—
“High _o’er_ the south huge Ben_ven_ue
Down _to_ the lake _his_ masses threw,
Crags, knowls, _and_ mounds _con_fusedly hurl’d
The frag_ments_ of an earlier _wurruld_!” etc.
I have underlined it according to the captain’s judicious emphasis, and
in the last word have endeavored to spell after his remarkable
pronunciation. Probably to a Frenchman, however, it would have seemed
all very fine—for Captain Rob (I must do him justice, though he broke
the strap of my portmanteau) was as good-looking a ruffian as you would
sketch on a summer’s tour.
Some of the loveliest water I have ever seen in my life (and I am rather
an amateur of that element—to look at,) lies deep down at the bases of
these divine Trosachs. The usual approaches from lake to mountain (beach
or sloping shore,) are here dispensed with; and, straight up from the
deep water, rise the green precipices and bold and ragged rocks,
over-shadowing the glassy mirror below with teints like a cool corner in
a landscape of Ruysdael’s. It is something—(indeed on a second thought,
exceedingly) like—Lake George; only that the islands in this extremity
of Loch Katrine lie closer together, and permit the sun no entrance
except by a ray almost perpendicular. A painter will easily understand
the effect of this—the loss of all that _makes a surface_ to the water,
and the consequent far depth to the eye, as if the boat in which you
shot over it brought with it its own water and sent its ripple through
the transparent air. I write _currente calamo_, and have no time to
clear up my meaning, but it will be evident to all lovers of nature.
Captain Rob put up his helm for a little fairy green island, lying like
a lapfull of green moss on the water, and, rounding a point, we ran
suddenly into a cove sheltered by a tree, and in a moment the boat
grated on the pebbles of a natural beach perhaps ten feet in length. A
flight of winding steps, made roughly of roots and stones, ascended from
the water’s edge.
“Gentlemen and ladies!” said the captain, with a hiccup, “this is
Ellen’s Isle. This is the gnarled oak,” (catching at a branch of the
tree as the boat swung astern,) “and —— you’ll please to go up _them_
steps, and I’ll tell ye the rest in Ellen’s bower.”
The Highland lassie sprang on shore, and we followed up the steep
ascent, arriving breathless at last at the door of a fanciful bower,
built by Lord Willoughby D’Eresby, the owner of the island, exactly
after the description in the Lady of the Lake. The chairs were made of
crooked branches of trees and covered with deer-skins, the tables were
laden with armor and every variety of weapon, and the rough beams of the
building were hung with antlers and other spoils of the chase.
“Here’s where she lived!” said the captain, with the gravity of a
cicerone at the Forum, “and _noo_, if ye’ll come out, I’ll _show_ you
the echo!”
We followed to the highest point of the island, and the Highlandman gave
a scream that showed considerable practice, but I thought he would have
burst his throat in the effort. The awful echo went round, “as mentioned
in the bill of performance,” every separate mountain screaming back the
discord till you would have thought the Trosachs a crew of mocking
giants. It was a wonderful echo, but, like most wonders, I could have
been content to have had less for my money.
There was a “small silver beach” on the mainland opposite, and above it
a high mass of mountain.
“There,” said the captain, “gentlemen and ladies, is where Fitz-James
_blow’d_ his bugle, and waited for the ‘light shallop’ of Ellen Douglas;
and here, where you landed and came up _them_ steps, is where she
brought him to the bower, and the very tree’s still there—as you see’d
me tak’ hold of it—and over the hill, yonder, is where the gallant gray
giv’ out, and breathed _his_ last, and (will you turn round, if you
please, them that likes) yonder’s where Fitz-James met Red Murdoch that
killed Blanche of Devon, and right across this water _swum_ young Greme
that disdained the regular boat, and I s’pose on that lower step set the
old Harper and Ellen many a time a-watching for Douglas—and now, if
you’d like to hear the echo once more—”
“Heaven forbid!” was the universal cry; and, in fear of our ears, we put
the bower between us and Captain Rob’s lungs, and followed the Highland
girl back to the boat.
From Ellen’s Isle to the head of the small creek, so beautifully
described in the Lady of the Lake, the scenery has the same air of
lavish and graceful vegetation, and the same features of mingled
boldness and beauty. It is a spot altogether that one is sure to live
much in with memory. I see it as clearly now as then.
The whiskey had circulated pretty freely among the crew, and all were
more or less intoxicated. Captain Rob’s first feat on his legs was to
drop my friend’s gun case and break it to pieces, for which he instantly
got a cuff between the eyes from the boxing dandy, that would have done
the business for a softer head. The Scot was a powerful fellow, and I
anticipated a row; but the tremendous power of the blow and the skill
with which it was planted, quite subdued him. He rose from the grass as
white as a sheet, but quietly shouldered the portmanteau with which he
had fallen, and trudged on with sobered steps to the inn.
We took a post-chaise immediately for Callender, and it was not till we
were five miles from the foot of the lake that I lost my apprehensions
of an apparition of the Highlander from the darkening woods. We arrived
at Callender at nine, and the next morning at sunrise were on our way to
breakfast at Stirling.