"When we left Toft, we went to our cousins at Thornycroft. At
Thornycroft was a labourer named Rathbone. One winter day, when his
wife was in her confinement, she was in great want of something
from Macclesfield, which her husband undertook to get for her when
he went to his work in the town, but he said that he must take his
little girl of ten years old with him, that she might bring it back
to her mother. The woman entreated him not to take the child, as
the snow was very deep, and she feared that she might not find her
way home again. However, the father insisted, and set off, taking
his little girl with him. The purchase was made and the child set
off to return home with it, but she--never arrived.
"When Rathbone reached home in the evening, and found that his
child had not appeared, he was in an agony of terror, and set off
at once to search for her. He traced her to Monk's Heath. People
had seen her there, and directed her back to Henbury, but she
seemed to have lost her way again. Rathbone next traced her to a
farmhouse at Peover, where the people had had the barbarity to turn
her out at night and direct her back to Henbury. Then all trace of
her was lost.
"At last Rathbone was persuaded by his friends and neighbours to
apply to a woman whom they called 'the White Witch' at Manchester,
and to her he went. She told him to look into a glass and tell her
what he saw there. He looked into the glass and said, 'I see a man
holding up his hat.' 'Well,' she said, 'then go on with your
search, and when you meet a man holding up his hat, he will tell
you where your child is.' So he returned and went again to search,
taking another man with him. At length, as they were going down a
lane, Rathbone exclaimed, 'There he is!'--'Who?' said the
companion, for he only saw a man running and holding up his hat.
That man told them that he had just found the body of a child under
a tree, and there, near a pond, frozen to death, lay Rathbone's
little girl.
"When we were at Thornycroft, Rathbone was still overwhelmed with
contrition for what he considered the sin of having consulted the
witch."
From Cheshire we went to the English Lakes. The curious old King's Arms
Inn at Lancaster, described by Dickens, was then in existence, and it
was a pleasure to sleep there, and walk in the morning upon the high
terrace in front of the church and castle. From Ambleside, we spent a
delightful day in making the round by Dungeon Ghyll and Blea Tarn, where
we drew the soft grey peaks of Langdale Pikes, framed in dark
heather-covered rocks, and in the foreground the blue tarn sleeping amid
the pastures. From Keswick I ascended Skiddaw, and had a glorious view
across the billows of mountains to the sea and the faint outlines of the
Isle of Man. Another delightful day was spent with the mother and Lea in
Borrowdale. One of the most beautiful effects I have ever seen was in
crossing to Buttermere by Borrowdale Hawse, a tremendous wild mountain
chasm, into which the setting sun was pouring floods of crimson light as
we descended, smiting into blood the waters of the little torrent which
was struggling down beside us through the rocks. We arrived at
Buttermere very late, and found not a single room unoccupied in the
village, so had to return in the dark night to Keswick.
We were much interested in Dumfries, in many ways one of the most
foreign-looking towns in Britain, where we remained several days,
making excursions to the exquisitely graceful ruins of Lincluden Abbey;
to New Abbey (glorious in colour), founded by Devorgilda to contain the
heart of John Baliol; to the Irongray Church, where Helen Walker, the
original of Jeannie Deans, is buried, and where, on a rocky knoll under
some old oaks, is a desolate Covenanter's grave; to Ellisland, the
primitive cottage-home of Burns, overlooking the purple hills and clear
rushing Nith; and to the great desolate castle of Caerlaverock near
Solway Firth. The old churchyard of Dumfries reminded us of Père la
Chaise in its forest of tombs, but was far more picturesque. Burns is
buried there, with all his family. The exaggerated worship which follows
Burns in Scotland rather sets one against him, and shows how many a
saint got into the Calendar; for there are many there whose private
lives would as little bear inspection as his. His son, formerly a clerk
in Somerset House, had long been living at Dumfries upon a pension, and
died there three years before our visit. Many are the old red sandstone
gravestones in Dumfries and its neighbourhood bearing inscriptions to
Covenanters, telling how they were "martyrs for adhering to the word of
God, Christ's kingly government in his house, and the covenanted work
of Reformation against tyrannie, perjury, and prelacie."
Amongst our Roman friends had been Mrs. Fotheringham of Fotheringham,
whom we visited at the so-called Fotheringham Castle, a comfortable
modern house, in Forfarshire. We went with her to spend a day with the
charming old Thomas Erskine,[165] author of the "Essays," and since well
known from his "Letters." With him lived his two beautiful and venerable
old sisters, Mrs. Stirling and Mrs. Paterson, and their home of
Linlathen contained many noble Italian pictures. Another excursion was
to visit Miss Stirling Graham at Duntrune, a beautiful place overlooking
the blue firth and bay of St. Andrews. Miss Graham was the authoress and
heroine of "Mystifications," intimately bound up with all the literary
associations of Edinburgh in the first half of the nineteenth century.
She was also the nearest surviving relation of Claverhouse, and Duntrune
was filled with relics of him.[166] She was a great bee-fancier and
bee-friend, and would allow the bees to settle all over her. "My dear,
where can you have lived all your life not to know about bees?" she said
to a young lady who asked her some simple questions about them. At
Fotheringham, the principal relic is a portrait of "the Flower of
Yarrow" (said by Sir Walter Scott to have been such an ugly old woman at
seventy), singing from a piece of music. The last cannibals in Scotland
lived in a glen near Fotheringham, where carters and ploughmen were
perpetually disappearing. The glen was known to be the abode of robbers,
and at last a strong force was sent against them, and they were all
killed, except one little girl of ten years old, whom it was thought a
shame to destroy. She had not been with her preservers many days before
she said, "Why do you never eat man's flesh? for if you once ate that,
you would never wish to eat anything else again." My mother made an
excursion from Fotheringham to see Panmure, where the housekeeper said
to her that her Lord[167] was "very bad, for he had not killed a single
_beast_ that year."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_August 22._--I went early by rail to Stonehaven, and walked to
Dunottar. The sea was of the softest Mediterranean blue, and the
walk along the edge of the cliffs, through the cornfields, looking
down first on the old town and then on the different little coves
with their curiously twisted and richly coloured rocks, most
delightful. The castle is hidden by the uplands at first, but
crowns the ridge of a magnificent rock, which runs far out into the
sea, with a line of battered towers. In the depths are reefs
covered with seaweed, between which the sea flows up in deep green
pools.
"A narrow ledge of rock, of which you can scarcely make out whether
it is natural or artificial, connects the castle with the mainland,
and here through an arch in the wall you look down into a second
bay, where the precipices, crested by a huge red fragment of tower,
descend direct upon the water. High up in one of the turrets lives
the keeper, a girl, who said that she was so used to climbing, that
she could go anywhere where there was the least rest for the sole
of her foot; that she did not care to have anything to hold on by,
and had never known what it was to be giddy. The 'Whigs' Vault' is
shown, in which a hundred and twenty Covenanters were chained, and,
beneath it, the awfully close stifling dungeon in which forty-eight
were confined, and many of them suffocated. The place still remains
where they were let down from the more airy vault above, and also
the hole through which their food was transmitted to them. On one
side of the dungeon is the well of brackish water which is said (as
in the prison of St. Peter) to have sprung up in one night to
quench their thirst; on the other, the hole which, in their
agonised desperation, they scratched with their hands through the
wall, and by which five-and-twenty tried to escape, but were all
dashed to pieces against the rocks or taken, except two; while, if
the dark night had only allowed them to see it, there is a little
footpath near, by which they might all have passed in safety. In
the castle also are the chamber in which the Regalia of Scotland
were concealed, and the well once supplied by pipes, the cutting of
which by Cromwell caused the surrender of the garrison."
"_August 23, Eccles Greig, Montrose._--This is a charming place
belonging to Kyrie's[168] father, and of which he is the heir. Miss
Grant drove me to-day to Denfenella, a beautiful ravine of
tremendous depth, where a lovely burn dashes over a precipice, and
then rushes away to the sea through depths of rock and fern, amid
which it makes a succession of deep shadowy pools. Endless are the
Scottish stories about this place:
"That Queen Fenella--the fairy queen--first washed her clothes in
the bright shining Morne, and then walked on the tops of the trees,
by which means she escaped.
"That Queen Fenella, having murdered her husband, fled to
Denfenella, where she flung herself over the rocks to escape
justice.
"That Queen Fenella, widow of Kenneth III., after the death of her
husband and her own escape from the Castle of Kincardine, fled to
Denfenella, where she was taken and put to death.
"That Queen Fenella loved a beautiful youth, but that her enemies
tried to force her to marry another; and that, rather than do so,
she fled from her father's castle, which is at an immense distance
from this, but, on reaching Denfenella, she felt that farther
escape was hopeless, and let herself float down the stream and be
carried away over the waterfall into the sea.
"All the stories, however, agree in one fact, that at midnight the
beautiful Fenella still always walks in the braes where she died,
and still washes her clothes in the bright shining Morne.
"We went on to the 'Came of Mathers,' a wild cove on the seashore
with a ruined castle on the farthest point of an inaccessible
precipice, beneath which the green waves rush through deep rifts of
the rock, which is worn into caves and arches. The Sheriff of these
parts was once very unpopular, and the lairds complained to King
James, who said in a joke that it would be a very good thing if the
Sheriff were boiled and cut up and made into browse. When the
lairds heard this, they beguiled the Sheriff to Gavoch, where they
had a huge caldron prepared, into which they immediately popped
him, and boiled him, and cut him up. Then, literally to carry out
the King's words, they each ate a part of him. Having done this,
they were all so dreadfully afraid of King James, that they sought
every possible means of escape, and the Laird of Arbuthnot, who had
been one of the most forward in boiling the Sheriff, built this
impregnable castle, where he lived in defiance of the King.
"Beneath the castle is a deep cleft in the rock, which seems
endless. It is said to continue in a subterranean passage to
Lauriston. The drummer of Lauriston once went up it, and tried to
work his way through, but he never was seen again; and at night, it
is said, that the drummer of Lauriston is still heard beating his
drum in the cavern beneath."
Upon leaving Eccles Greig, I joined my mother, and went with her to St.
Andrews, which I had always greatly desired that she should see. Even
more than the wonderful charm of the place at this time was that of
seeing much of the genial, witty, eccentric Provost, Sir Hugh Lyon
Playfair. He first came up to me when I was drawing--an old man in a
cloak--and invited me into his garden, whither we returned several
times. That garden was the most extraordinary place, representing all
the important facts of the history of the world, from chaos and the
creation of the sun down to the Reform Bill, "whence," said Sir Hugh,
"you may date the decline of the British Empire." On the same chart were
marked the lengths of all the principal ships, while representations of
the planets indicated their distance from the sun! No verbal
description, however, can recall the genial oddity of the garden's
owner. On Saturdays he used to open his garden to the public, and follow
in the crowd to hear their opinion of himself. He said they would often
say, "Ah! the poor Provost, he has more money than brains; he is sadly
deficient here," pointing to the forehead. Once some of the people said
to him, "We do so want to see the Provost; how _would_ it be possible to
see Sir Hugh?"--"Oh," he answered, "I think you had better go and look
in at the windows, and you will be sure to see him." So they all crowded
to the windows, but there was no one to be seen. "Oh," he said, "I'll
tell you why that is: that is because he is under the table. It is a way
Sir Hugh has. He is so dreadfully shy, that whenever he hears any one
coming, he always goes under the table directly." Presently, on going
out, they met an official, who, coming up, touched his hat and said, "If
you please, Sir Hugh, I've spoken to that policeman, as you ordered me,"
and the horrified people discovered their mistake, to Sir Hugh's intense
amusement.