THE HEART OF THE TROSSACHS
As we have heard the Trossachs signifies “bristled territory,” a
suitable name enough, and as they have been described by the master
himself, there would be little use in trying to improve upon his words,
which are as follows:
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Grey birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seem’d the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow’d sky.
Highest of all where white peaks glanced,
Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer’s eye could barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue;
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.
[Sidenote: Dorothy Wordsworth]
It must be remembered that the beautiful even road which now runs
through the heart of this fairyland was a work of great difficulty
and cost. It has been hewn out of the side of the rock, and built up
by the side of the loch in order to facilitate the constant stream of
tourists. At first there were several wild pathways leading down to
Loch Katrine through a perfect wilderness of boughs and undergrowth,
and at the end a precipitous drop over the edge of a steep crag, only
scaled by the aid of a sort of natural ladder of saplings and tendrils,
and it is thus that Scott makes Fitz-James approach the loch. In the
beginning of the nineteenth century, however, when Dorothy Wordsworth
and her brother reached the Trossachs from Loch Katrine, a great
improvement had taken place. When nearing the end of the lake, she
says, they came in sight of two huts, which had been built by Lady
Perth as a shelter for visitors. “The huts stand at a small distance
from each other, on a high and perpendicular rock, that rises from the
bed of the lake. A road, which has a very wild appearance, has been
cut through the rock; yet even here, among these bold precipices, the
feeling of excessive beautifulness overcomes every other.”
[Illustration: THE SILVER STRAND, LOCH KATRINE.
Where Scott describes the meeting between Fitz-James and Ellen of the
Isle.]
In her there was already that new appreciation of the natural
beauty which her brother was to do so much to encourage in all. Her
description of the Trossachs, after they had landed, clearly shows
this: “Above and below us, to the right and to the left, were rocks,
knolls, and hills, which, whenever anything could grow—and that was
everywhere between the rocks—were covered with trees and heather. The
trees did not in any place grow so thick as an ordinary wood, yet I
think there was never a bare space of twenty yards; it was more like a
natural forest, where the trees grow in groups or singly, not hiding
the surface of the ground, which, instead of being green and mossy, was
of the richest purple. The heather was indeed the most luxuriant I ever
saw; it was so tall that a child of ten years old struggling through
it would often have been buried head and shoulders, and the exquisite
beauty of the colour, near or at a distance, seen under the trees is
not to be conceived.”
And as it was then so it is now: a better description of the peculiar
scenery of the Trossachs could hardly be given, especially if we add
the detail that bog-myrtle and birches grow abundantly, adding to the
fragrance and poetry of the place. Winding round to the right runs
the road to the Silver Strand, now much covered by the rising of the
water owing to the precautions taken by the Glasgow Waterworks, which
gets its supply from Loch Katrine. Here Fitz-James is supposed to
have stood. Right in front is Ellen’s Isle, thickly wooded; behind it
rises the vast shoulder of Ben Venue, and away to the right stretches
westward the full length of the lake, broken by promontories,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish’d sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll’d;
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains, that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.
High on the south, huge Ben Venue
Down to the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl’d,
The fragments of an earlier world.
In the whole of a justly celebrated poem there is no passage finer than
this, and, oft quoted as it has been, it would be impossible to omit
it.
Ellen’s Isle is, of course, so named after Scott’s heroine; the
Highland name is Eilean Molach, meaning the “Shaggy Island,” and it is
quite likely that with this in his mind Scott chose the name Ellen as
the nearest English-sounding equivalent.
The Goblin’s Cave, to which Ellen and her family retreated, is on the
side of Ben Venue, and above is the Bealach Nambo, or the Pass of the
Cattle, which Scott alluded to as:
The dell upon the mountain’s crest
Yawned like a gash on warrior’s breast.
This can be reached on foot by a not too difficult walk, but most
people prefer to view it from below. The Goblin’s Cave is impossible of
exact identification, if, indeed, it had any actual prototype.
[Sidenote: Loch Katrine]
It has been suggested that the name of Loch Katrine arose from the
hordes of robbers, or caterans, who infested its shores. If this be
so, the name has been softened into something much more appropriate to
the loveliness of the scenery, which is at its best at the east end.
The Wordsworth party, indeed, coming from the other end, were at first
disappointed. As the only means of transit was by a small row-boat,
Coleridge was afraid of the cold and walked along the northern shore
from Glengyle, though not, of course, on the well-made-up road which
runs part of the way at present. Wordsworth himself slept in the bottom
of the boat, which they had procured with much difficulty, and told his
sister to awake him if anything worth seeing occurred. It was not until
they nearly reached the eastern end that she did this, though then she
confessed that what they saw was “the perfection of loveliness and
beauty.”
The lake is about eight miles long by three-quarters broad, but the
actual width varies very much, owing to the numerous indentations.
The road on the northern shore runs to Glengyle, but there stops, so
that the only means of getting right on to Loch Lomond is to take the
steamer, which awaits tourists several times daily. No doubt a road by
which cyclists could travel on their own account would be strenuously
resisted in the neighbourhood, where the chief aim and object of
the tourist’s being is supposed to be to pay for everything. On the
southern side the steepness of the precipices of Ben Venue prevents any
possibility of a road.
[Illustration: LOCH KATRINE AND ELLEN’S ISLE.]
Opposite to Ben Venue, and best seen from the lake itself, is Ben A’an,
only 1,750 feet in height. At the north-west end of Loch Katrine is
Glengyle, the hereditary burial-place of the Macgregors.
The steamer stops at Stronachlachar, about three-quarters of the way
down the lake on the south side, and here a coach meets it to convey
passengers across to Inversnaid, on Loch Lomond.
[Sidenote: “Stepping Westward”]
With Loch Katrine the scenes identified with _The Lady of the Lake_
come to an end. The road to Loch Lomond passes over a wild, rough
heath, in strong contrast to the wooded loveliness of the eastern end
of Loch Katrine, but quite as attractive to some natures, especially
when the soft grey clouds lie low and the russets and browns of the
bracken and heather replace the rich glory of its purple robe. It
was hereabouts that the Wordsworths, when returning to Lomond, were
greeted by two Highland women, who said in a friendly way: “What! you
are stepping westward”—a simple sentence which gave Wordsworth the
inspiration for the poem which he wrote long afterwards beginning with
the same words.
[Sidenote: The Real Rob Roy]
Loch Arklet lies very flat between its shores, and has no beauty except
its wildness. At one end lived for some time Rob Roy and his wife;
indeed, all this district, right up to Glen Falloch on the one side,
and down to the shoulders of Ben Lomond on the other, is associated
with the outlaw, of whom Scott made a hero. The district has also
associations with a much greater than he, for it is redolent of the
wanderings of Robert the Bruce, when he was hunted by his bitter
enemies, the men of Lorn.
It is supposed that Roderick Dhu in Scott’s poem was a shadowy form
of Rob Roy, who is more developed in the book which was published
seven years later. Both were of uncommon personal strength, both were
cattle-lifters and outlaws, both were of the great clan of Macgregor,
and there are minor resemblances.
[Illustration: BEN A’AN (Seen from Loch Katrine).]
Rob’s designation was “of Inversnaid,” and he owned Craig Royston, a
district lying east of Lomond, near the north end. He began as a man
of property and a land-holder, rough and poor as his territory was.
He went on to be a cattle-dealer on a large scale, and this turned to
something more nefarious. A distraint was levied on his property, and
he had to leave the shores of Lomond. To this fact is attributed the
wild piper’s tune of “The Lament of Rob Roy,” composed by his wife,
which has something of the mournful beauty of the country incorporated
in its weird strains:
Through the depths of Loch Lomond the steed shall career,
O’er the heights of Ben Lomond the galley shall steer,
And the rocks of Craig Royston like icicles melt,
Ere our wrongs be forgot, or our vengeance unfelt.
Rob seems to have been in some way a Robin Hood, exercising generosity
toward those poorer and weaker than himself, and he was greatly beloved
by the people in consequence. Many a ballad is connected with his name,
and he became a popular hero even before his death. He took part in
1715 Rebellion on the Jacobite side, and at the Battle of Sheriffmuir
seems to have been afflicted with the peculiar indecision that
paralyzed both sides on that memorable day. He was leading, beside his
own clan, a party of Macphersons, whose chief was too infirm to take
the field, and he retained his station on a hill, though positively
ordered by the Earl of Mar to charge. It is said that this charge might
have decided the day. This incident is embodied in the ballad on the
occasion:
Rob Roy he stood watch
On a hill for to catch
The booty for aught that I saw, mon;
For he ne’er advanced
From the place where he stanced
Till nae mair was to do there at a’, mon.
It is impossible to give even an account of all Rob’s pranks, some of
which are doubtless mythical, and others which do not greatly redound
to his credit. He had certainly that picturesque personality which has
attracted romancers in all ages, and he formed a very fitting subject
for Scott’s pen.
In the end he turned Roman Catholic, and died, as already stated, at
Balquhidder.
The road drops very steeply down to Lomond, and passes the earthworks
which mark the site of a fort built by William III. to overawe the
rebels. The fort, being on the great outlaw’s property, was an object
of peculiar hatred. Twice it was surprised and taken—once by Roy
himself and once by his nephew. It is said that at one time General,
then Captain, Wolfe was in command of it.
[Sidenote: The Highland Girl]
The little stream Arklet dances and brawls over its bed, in its descent
accompanying the road, and at length leaps into the lake by a splendid
waterfall thirty feet in height. Close by this is the palatial hotel at
Inversnaid, a brother to the one at the Trossachs. When the Wordsworths
arrived here the first time, after having with great difficulty
got across Loch Lomond in a row-boat, they found only a miserable
ferry-house, with a mud floor, and rain coming in at the roof. It was
here that Wordsworth saw the prototype of his “sweet Highland girl.”