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 DISTRICBCOIA^^IA ! 
 
 O F O 9 — 14S5 
 
THE SPELL OF SCOTLAND 
 
THE SPELL SERIES 
 
 99 
 
 Each volume with one or more colored plates 
 and many illustrations from original drawings 
 or special photographs. Octavo, decorative 
 cover, gilt top, boxed. Per volume, $3.75 
 
 By Isabel Anderson 
 
 THE SPELL OF BELGIUM 
 THE SPELL OF JAPAN 
 THE SPELL OF THE HAWAIIAN 
 ISLANDS AND THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 By Caroline Atwater Mason 
 THE SPELL OF ITALY 
 THE SPELL OF SOUTHERN SHORES 
 THE SPELL OF FRANCE 
 
 By Archie Bell 
 
 THE SPELL OF CHINA 
 THE SPELL OF EGYPT 
 THE SPELL OF THE HOLY LAND 
 
 By Keith Clark 
 
 THE SPELL OF SPAIN 
 THE SPELL OF SCOTLAND 
 
 By W. D. McCrackan 
 
 THE SPELL OF TYROL 
 
 THE SPELL OF THE ITALIAN LAKES 
 
 By Edward Neville Vose 
 
 THE SPELL OF FLANDERS 
 
 By Burton E. Stevenson 
 
 THE SPELL OF HOLLAND 
 
 By Julia DeW. Addison 
 
 THE SPELL OF ENGLAND 
 
 By Nathan Haskell Dole 
 
 THE SPELL OF SWITZERLAND 
 
 By Andr6 Hallays (Translated by Frank 
 Roy Fraprie) 
 THE SPELL OF ALSACE 
 THE SPELL OF THE HEART OF 
 FRANCE 
 
 9 9 
 
 THE PAGE COMPANY 
 
 53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass. 
 
4 
 
 Spell ^ Scotland 
 
 Kdlh Clark 
 
 Auth 
 
 " yi Traveller mav lee wl authority. " {Scotch Prcoei ' 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 ROvSTON 
 
 THE PAGE COMPANY 
 
 r v,'OL-A. ', ic._r\o 
 
MOUNT PLEASANT BRANCW 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 The Page Company 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 /<?5 / 
 
 First Impression, November, 1916 
 Second Impression, July, 1921 
 
 
456165 
 
 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 fiB 
 
 TO 
 
 THE LORD MARISCHAL 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAQK 
 
 I. Hame, Hame, Hame! 1 
 
 II. Scotts-Land 24 
 
 III. Border Towns 53 
 
 IV. The Empress of the North 82 
 
 V. The Kingdom of Fife 149 
 
 VI. To the North ' . 171 
 
 VII. Highland and Lowland 194 
 
 VIII. The Circle Round 220 
 
 IX. The Western Isles 252 
 
 X. The Lakes 277 
 
 XI. The West Country 314 
 
 Bibliography 335 
 
 Index 339 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FAQB 
 
 The Pass op Killiecrankie {in full colour) (See page 
 
 195) Frontispiece 
 
 MAP OF SCOTLAND . . • 1 
 
 James VI 6 
 
 Queen Mary 15 
 
 James II 25 
 
 Melrose Abbey 34 
 
 Abbotsford (in full colour) 41 
 
 The Study, Abbotsford 45 
 
 St. Mary's Aisle and Tomb of Sir Walter Scott, 
 
 Dryburgh Abbey 51 
 
 Jedburgh Abbey 63 
 
 Hermitage Castle 66 
 
 Newark Castle 74 
 
 Interior View, Tibbie Shiel's Inn .... 77 
 
 St. Mary's Lake 80 
 
 Edinburgh Castle (in full colour) 86 
 
 MoNS Meg 90 
 
 Greyfriars' Churchyard 96 
 
 Moray House 102 
 
 Interior of St. Giles 104 
 
 John Knox's House 106 
 
 James Graham, Marquis of Montrose . , . 108 
 
 HoLYROOD Palace Ill 
 
 James IV 115 
 
 Margaret Tudor, Queen of James IV . . . 124 
 
 Bothwell Castle (in full colour) 131 
 
 Princes Street 134 
 
 John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee . 142 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 Tantallon Castle 157 
 
 St. Andrews Castle 165 
 
 Drawinoroom, Linlithgow Palace, where Queen 
 
 Mary was Born 184 
 
 Huntington Tower 190 
 
 Glamis Castle 194 
 
 Glen Tilt 197 
 
 Invercauld House 200 
 
 Balmoral Castle 205 
 
 Marischal College 207 
 
 DUNNOTTAR CaSTLB 212 
 
 Spynie Castle 224 
 
 Cawdor Castle (in full colour) 227 
 
 Battlefield of Culloden ...... 232 
 
 The Old Man op Hoy 237 
 
 Earl's Palace, Kirkwall 240 
 
 Invergarry Castle 248 
 
 Kilchurn Castle 258 
 
 Aros Castle 265 
 
 Entrance to Fingal's Cave 267 
 
 Cathedral of loNA and St. Martin's Cross . . . 273 
 
 Dumbarton Castle 282 
 
 Loch Katrine 289 
 
 The Brig o' Turk . . . . . . . .294 
 
 The Trossachs (in full colour) 296 
 
 Stirling Castle (in full colour) 304 
 
 DouNE Castle 310 
 
 Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, by Whistler . , 317 
 
 Ayr River (in full colour) 322 
 
 Burns' Cottage, Birth-place of Robert Burns, Ayr 328 
 Caeblaverock Castle 333 
 
THE 
 
 SPELL OF SCOTLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HAME, HAME, HAME ! 
 
 "It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain wad I be, 
 And it's hame, hame, hame, to my ain countree !" 
 
 ^IME was when half a hundred ports ring- 
 ing round the semi-island of Scotland in- 
 vited your boat to make harbour; you 
 could "return" at almost any point of entry 
 you chose, or chance chose for you. 
 
 To-day, if you have been gone for two hundred 
 and fifty years, or if you never were * * of Scotia 
 dear," except as a mere reading person with an 
 inclination toward romance, you can make har- 
 bour after a transatlantic voyage at but one sea- 
 city, and that many miles up a broad in-reach- 
 
 1 
 
The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ing river. Or, you can come up tlie English 
 roads by Carlisle or by Newcastle, and cross 
 the Border in the conquering way, which never 
 yet was all-conquering. There is shipping, of 
 course, out of the half hundred old harbours. 
 But it is largely the shipping that goes and 
 comes, fishing boats and coast pliers and the 
 pleasure boats of the western isles. 
 
 You cannot come back from the far corners 
 of the earth — to which Scotland has sent such 
 majorities of her sons, since the old days when 
 she squandered them in battle on the Border or 
 on the Continent, to the new days when she 
 squanders them in colonization so that half a 
 dozen of her counties show decline in popula- 
 tion — but you must come to Glasgow. The 
 steamers are second-class compared with those 
 which make port farther south. They are 
 slower. But their very lack of modern splen- 
 dour and their slow speed give time in which to 
 reconstruct your Scotland, out of which perhaps 
 you have been banished since the Covenant, or 
 the Fifteen, or the Forty Five; or perhaps out 
 of which you have never taken the strain which 
 makes you romantic and Cavalier, or Presby- 
 terian and canny. We who have it think that 
 you who have it not lose something very precious 
 for which there is no substitute. We pity you. 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 
 
 More clannish than most national tribesmen, we 
 cannot understand how you can endure exist- 
 ence without a drop of Scotch. 
 
 Always when I go to Scotland I feel myself 
 returning "home." Notwithstanding that it is 
 two centuries and a bittock since my clerical an- 
 cestor left his home, driven out no doubt by 
 the fluctuant fortunes of Covenanter and Cav- 
 alier, or, it may be, because he believed he car- 
 ried the only true faith in his chalice — only he 
 did not carry a chalice — and, either he would 
 keep it undefiled in the New World, or he would 
 share it with the benighted in the New World; 
 I know not. 
 
 All that I know is that in spite of the fact that 
 the Scotch in me has not been replenished since 
 those two centuries and odd, I still feel that it 
 is a search after ancestors when I go back to 
 Scotland. And, if a decree of banishment was 
 passed by the unspeakable Hanoverians after 
 the first Rising, and lands and treasure were for- 
 feited, still I look on entire Scotland as my 
 demesne. I surrender not one least portion of 
 it. Not any castle, ruined or restored, is alien 
 to me. Highlander and Lowlander are my un- 
 divisive kin. However empty may seem the 
 moorlands and the woodlands except of grouse 
 and deer, there is not a square foot of the 
 
The Spell of Scotland 
 
 twenty-nine thousand seven hundred eighty- 
 five square miles but is filled for me with a 
 longer procession, if not all of them royal, than 
 moved ghostly across the vision of Macbeth. 
 
 Nothing happens any longer in Scotland. 
 Everything has happened. Quite true, Scot- 
 land may some time reassert itself, demand its 
 independence, cease from its romantic reliance 
 on the fact that it did furnish to England, to the 
 British Empire, the royal line, the Stewarts. 
 Even Queen Victoria, who was so little a Stew- 
 art, much more a Hanoverian and a Puritan, 
 was most proud of her Stewart blood, and re- 
 garded her summers in the Highlands as the 
 most ancestral thing in her experience. 
 
 Scotland may at sometime dissolve the Union, 
 which has been a union of equality, accept the 
 lower estate of a province, an American 
 ''state," among the possible four of ''Great 
 Britain and Ireland," and enter on a more vig- 
 orous provincial life, live her own life, instead 
 of exporting vigour to the colonies — and her ex- 
 portation is almost done. She may fill this 
 great silence which lies over the land, and is 
 fairly audible in the deserted Highlands, with 
 something of the human note instead of the call 
 of the plover. 
 
 But, for us, for the traveler of to-day, and 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 
 
 at least for another generation, Scotland is a 
 land where nothing happens, where everything 
 has happened. It has happened abundantly, 
 multitudinously, splendidly. No one can re- 
 gret — except he is a reformer and a socialist — 
 the absence of the doings of to-day ; they would 
 be so realistic, so actual, so small, so of the 
 province and the parish. Whereas in the 
 Golden Age, which is the true age of Scotland, 
 men did everything — loving and fighting, mur- 
 dering and marauding, with a splendour which 
 makes it seem fairly not of our kind, of another 
 time and of another world. 
 
 You must know your Scottish history, you 
 must be filled with Scottish romance, above all, 
 you must know your poetry and ballads, if you 
 would rebuild and refill the country as you go. 
 Not only over fair Melrose lies the moonlight 
 of romance, making the ruin more lovely and 
 more complete than the abbey could ever have 
 been in its most established days, but over the 
 entire land there lies the silver pall of moon- 
 light, making, I doubt not, all things lovelier 
 than in reality. 
 
 We truly felt that we should have arranged 
 for ^'a hundred pipers an' a' an' a'." But we 
 left King's Cross station in something of dis- 
 guise. The cockneys did not know that we were 
 
The Spell of Scotland 
 
 returning to Scotland. Our landing was to be 
 made as quietly, without pibroch, as when the 
 Old Pretender landed at Peterhead on the far 
 northeastern corner, or when the Young Pre- 
 tender landed at Moidart on the far western 
 rim of the islands. And neither they nor we 
 pretenders. 
 
 The East Coast route is a pleasant way, and 
 I am certain the hundred pipers, or whoever 
 were the merry musicmakers who led the Eng- 
 lish troops up that way when Edward First was 
 king, and all the Edwards who followed him, 
 and the Richards and the Henrys — they all 
 measured ambition with Scotland and failed — 
 I am certain they made vastly more noise than 
 this excellently managed railway which moves 
 across the English landscape with due English 
 decorum. 
 
 We were to stop at Peterborough, and walk 
 out to where, "on that ensanguined block at 
 Fotheringay,'^ the queenliest queen of them all 
 laid her head and died that her son, James 
 Sixth of Scotland, might become First of Eng- 
 land. We stopped at York for the minster, 
 and because Alexander III was here married to 
 Margaret, daughter of Henry HI; and their 
 daughter being married to Eric of Norway in 
 those old days when Scotland and Norway were 
 
JAMES VT. 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 
 
 kin, became mother to the Maid of Norway, one 
 of the most pathetic and outstanding figures in 
 Scottish history, simply because she died — and 
 from her death came divisions to the kingdom. 
 
 We paused at Durham, where in that gorgeous 
 tomb St. Cuthbert Hes buried after a brave and 
 Scottish life. We only looked across the pur- 
 pling sea where already the day was fading, 
 where the slant rays of the sun shone on Lin- 
 disfarne, which the spirit of St. Cuthbert must 
 prefer to Durham. 
 
 All unconsciously an old song came to sing 
 itself as I looked across that wide water — 
 
 "My love's in Germanie, 
 Send him hame, send him hame, 
 My love's in Germanie, 
 Fighting for royalty, 
 He's as brave as brave can be. 
 Send him hame, send him hame !" 
 
 Full many a lass has looked across this sea 
 and sung this lay — and shall again. 
 
 The way is filled with ghosts, long, long pro- 
 cessions, moving up and down the land. A 
 boundary is always a lodestone, a lodeline. 
 Why do men establish it except that other men 
 dispute it? In the old days England called it 
 treason for a Borderer, man or woman, to in- 
 termarry with Scotch Borderer. The lure, you 
 
8 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 see, went far. Even so that kings and ladies, 
 David and Matilda, in the opposing edges of the 
 Border, married each other. And always there 
 was Gretna Green. 
 
 Agricola came this way, and the Emperor 
 Severus. There is that interesting, far-jour- 
 neying ^neas Sylvius Piccolomini, the "Gil 
 Bias of the Middle Ages," who later became 
 Pius II. He came to this country by boat, but 
 becoming afraid of the sea, returned by land, 
 even opposite to the way we are going. Frois- 
 sart came, but reports little. Perhaps Chaucer, 
 but not certainly. George Fox came and called 
 the Scots "a dark carnal people." 
 
 With the Act of Union the stream grows 
 steady and full. There is Ben Jonson, trudg- 
 ing along the green roadway out yonder; for 
 on foot, and all the way from London, he came 
 northward to visit William Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden. Who would not journey to such a 
 name? But, alas, a fire destroyed ''my journey 
 into Scotland sung with all the adventures." 
 All that I know of Ben is that he was impressed 
 with Lomond — ^two hundred years before Scott. 
 
 And there trails Taylor, ''water poet," hop- 
 ing to rival Rare Ben, on his "Pennyless Pil- 
 grimage," when he actually went into Scotland 
 without a penny, and succeeded in getting gold 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 
 
 to further liim on his way — "Marr, Murraye, 
 Elgin, Bughan, and the Lord of Erskine, all of 
 these I thank them, gave me gold to defray my 
 charges in my journey. ' ' 
 
 James Howell, carries a thin portfolio as he 
 travels the highway. But we must remember 
 that he wrote his "Perfect Description of the 
 People and Country of Scotland" in the Fleet. 
 
 Here is Doctor Johnson, in a post chaise. 
 Of course. Sir! ''Mr. Boswell, an active lively 
 fellow is to conduct me round the country." 
 And he's still a lively conductor. Surely you 
 can see the Doctor, in his high boots, and his 
 very wide brown cloth great coat with pockets 
 which might be carrying two volumes of his 
 folio dictionary, and in his hand a large oak 
 staff. One tries to forget that years before 
 this journey he had said to Boswell, ''Sir, the 
 noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees 
 is the highroad that leads him to London." 
 And, was there any malice in Boswell 's final 
 record — "My illustrious friend, being now de- 
 sirous to be again in the great theater of life 
 and animated existence"? 
 
 The poet Gray preceded him a little, and even 
 John Wesley moves along the highroad seeking 
 to save Scottish souls as well as English. A 
 few years afterward James Hogg comes down 
 
10 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 this way to visit his countryman, Tammas Car- 
 lyle in London; who saw Hogg as "a little red- 
 skinned stiff rock of a body with quite the com- 
 mon air of an Ettrick shepherd." 
 
 There is Scott, many times, from the age of 
 five when he went to Bath, till that last journey 
 back from Italy — to Dryburgh ! And Shadowy 
 Jeanie Deans comes downward, walking her 
 ''twenty-five miles and a bittock a day," to save 
 her sister from death. 
 
 Disraeli comes up this way when he was 
 young and the world was his oyster. Steven- 
 son passes up and down, sending his merry men 
 up and down. And one of the most native is 
 William Winter — "With a quick sense of free- 
 dom and of home, I dashed across the Border 
 and was in Scotland." 
 
 There is a barricade of the Cheviots stretch- 
 ing across between the two countries, but the 
 Romans built a Wall to make the division more 
 apparent. In the dawn of the centuries the 
 Romans came hither, and attempting to come 
 to Ultima Thule, Picts and Scots — whatever 
 they were, at least they were brave — met the 
 Romans on the Border, as yet unreported in the 
 world's history and undefined in the world's 
 geography, and sent them back into what is 
 England. The Romans in single journeys, and 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 11 
 
 in certain imperial attempts, did penetrate as 
 far as Inverness. But they never conquered 
 Scotland. Only Scotland of all the world held 
 them back. And in order to define their defeat 
 and to place limits to the unlimited Eoman Em- 
 pire, the Great Wall was built, built by Hadrian, 
 that men might know where civilization, that 
 splendid thing called Eoman civilization, and 
 barbarism did meet. Scotland was barbarism. 
 And I think, not in apology but in all pride, she 
 has remained something of this ever since. 
 Never conquered, never subdued. 
 
 The Wall was, in truth, a very palpable thing, 
 stretching from the Solway to the North Sea 
 at the Tyne, with ample width for the constant 
 patrol, with lookout towers at regular and fre- 
 quent intervals, with soldiers gathered from 
 every corner of the Empire, often the spawn 
 of it, and with much traffic and with even perma- 
 nent villas built the secure side of the barrier. 
 If you meet Puck on Pook's hill, he will tell you 
 all about it. 
 
 Our fast express moves swiftly northward, 
 through the littoral of Northumberland, as the 
 ship bearing Sister Clare moved through the 
 sea — 
 
 "And now the vessel skirts the strand 
 Of mountainous Northumberland; 
 
12 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Towns, towers, and hills successive rise, 
 And catch the nun's delighted eyes." 
 
 Berwick 
 
 The voyager enters Berwick with a curious 
 feeling. It is because of the voyagers who have 
 preceded him that this town is singular among 
 all the towns of the Empire. It is of the Em- 
 pire, it is of Britain; but battled round about, 
 and battled for as it has been since ambitious 
 time began, it is of neither England nor Scot- 
 land. "Our town of Berwick-upon-Tweed," as 
 the phrase still runs in the acts of Parlia- 
 ment, and in the royal proclamations ; not Eng- 
 land's, not Scotland's. Our town, the King's 
 town. 
 
 For it is an independent borough (1551) since 
 the men who fared before us could not determine 
 which should possess it, and so our very own 
 time records that history in an actual fact. I 
 do not suppose the present serious-looking, 
 trades-minded people of the city, with their dash 
 of fair Danish, remember their singular situa- 
 tion day by day. The tumult and the shouting 
 have died which made ''the Border" the most 
 embattled place in the empire, and Berwick- 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 13 
 
 upon-Tvveed the shuttlecock in this international 
 game of badminton. 
 
 It is a dual town at the best. But what has it 
 not witnessed, what refuge, what pawn, has it 
 not been, this capital of the Debatable Land, 
 this Key of the Border. 
 
 The Tweed is here spanned by the Royal 
 Border Bridge, opened in 1850, and called ' * the 
 last Act of Union." But there is another 
 bridge, a Roman bridge of many spans, antique 
 looking as the Roman-Moorish-Spanish bridge 
 at Cordova, and as antique as 1609, an Act of 
 Union following swiftly on the footsteps of 
 King James VI — who joyously paused here to 
 fire a salute to himself, on his way to the im- 
 perial throne. 
 
 The walls of Berwick, dismantled in 1820 and 
 become a promenade for peaceful townsfolk and 
 curious sightseers, date no farther back than 
 Elizabeth's time. But she had sore need of 
 them; for this *'our town," was the refuge for 
 her harriers on retaliatory Border raids, par- 
 ticularly that most terrible Monday-to-Satur- 
 day foray of 1570, that answer to an attempt to 
 reassert the rights of Mary, when fifty castles 
 and peels and three hundred villages were laid 
 waste in order that Scotland might know that 
 Elizabeth was king. 
 
14 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 It was ber kingly father, the Eighth Henry, 
 who ordered Hertford into Scotland — ''There 
 to put all to fire and sword, to bum Edinburgh 
 town, and to raze and deface it, when you have 
 sacked it and gotten what you can of it, as there 
 may remain forever a perpetual memory of the 
 vengeance of God lighted upon it for their false- 
 hood and disloyalty. Sack Holyrood House and 
 as many towns and villages about Edinburgh 
 as ye conveniently can. Sack Leith and burn 
 it and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man, 
 woman and child to fire and sword without ex- 
 ception, when any resistance is made against 
 you. And this done, pass over to the Fife land, 
 and extend like extremities and destructions in 
 all towns and villages whereunto ye may reach 
 conveniently, not forgetting among the rest, so 
 to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal's 
 town of St. Andrews, as the upper stone may be 
 the nether, and not one stick stand by another, 
 sparing no creature alive within the same, es- 
 pecially such as either in friendship or blood be 
 allied to the Cardinal. The accomplishment of 
 all this shall be most acceptable to the Majesty 
 and Honour of the King." 
 
 Berwick has known gentler moments, even 
 marrying and giving in marriage. It was at 
 this Border town that David, son of the Bruce, 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 15 
 
 and Joanna, sister of Edward III, were united 
 in marriage. Even then did the kingdoms seek 
 an Act of Union. And Prince David was four, 
 and Princess Joanna was six. There was much 
 feasting by day and much revelry by night, 
 among the nobles of the two realms, while, no 
 doubt, the babies nodded drowsily. 
 
 At Berwick John Knox united himself in mar- 
 riage with Margaret Stewart, member of the 
 royal house of Stewart, cousin, if at some re- 
 move, from that Stewart queen who belonged 
 to ' ' the monstrous regiment of women, ' ' and to 
 whose charms even the Calvinist John was sen- 
 sitive. One remembers that at Berwick John 
 was fifty, and Margaret was sixteen. 
 
 There is not much in Berwick to hold the at- 
 tention, unless one would dine direct on salmon 
 trout just drawn frae the Tweed. There are 
 memories, and modern content with what is 
 modern. 
 
 Perhaps the saddest eyes that ever looked 
 on the old town were those of Queen Mary, as 
 she left Jedburgh, after her almost fatal illness, 
 and after her hurried ride to the Hermitage to 
 see Bothwell, and just before the fatal affair in 
 Kirk o' Field. Even then, and even with her 
 spirit still unbroken, she felt the coming of the 
 end. "I am tired of my life," she said more 
 
16 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 than once to Le Croc, French ambassador, on 
 this journey as she circled about the coast and 
 back to Edinburgh. 
 
 She rode toward Berwick with an escort of 
 a thousand men, and looked down on the town 
 from Halidon Hill, on the west, where two hun- 
 dred years before (1333) the Scots under the 
 regent Douglass had suffered defeat by the Eng- 
 lish. 
 
 It was an old town then, and belonged to 
 Elizabeth. But it looked much as it does to- 
 day; the gray walls, so recently built; the red 
 roofs, many of them sheltering Berwickians to- 
 day ; the church spires, for men worshiped God 
 in those days in churches, and according to the 
 creeds that warred as bitterly as crowns ; masts 
 in the offing, whence this last time one might 
 take ship to France, that pleasant smiling land 
 so different from this dour realm. At all these 
 Mary must have looked wistfully and weariedly, 
 as the royal salute was fired for this errant 
 queen. She looked also, over the Border, then 
 becoming a hard-and-fast boundary, and down 
 the long, long road to Fotheringay, and to peace 
 at last and honour, in the Abbey. 
 
 It is well to stand upon this hill, before you 
 go on to the West and the Border, or on to the 
 North and the gray metropolis, that you may 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 17 
 
 appreciate both the tragedy and the triumph 
 that is Scotland's and was Mary's. The North 
 Sea is turning purple far out on the horizon, 
 and white sea birds are flying across beyond 
 sound. The long level light of the late after- 
 noon is coming up over England. In the back- 
 ward of the Border a plaintive curlew is crying 
 in the West, as he has cried since the days of 
 Mary, and aeons before. 
 
 Flodden 
 
 You may go westward from here, by train 
 and coach, and carriage and on foot, to visit this 
 country where every field has been a battlefield, 
 where ruined peel towers finally keep the peace, 
 where castles are in ruins, and a few stately 
 modern homes proclaim the permanence of Scot- 
 tish nobility; and where there is no bird and 
 no flower unsung by Scottish minstrelsy, or 
 by Scott. Scott is, of course, the poet and 
 prose laureate of the Border. *'Marmion" is 
 the lay, almost the guide-book. It should 
 be carried with you, either in memory or in 
 pocket. 
 
 If the day is not too far spent, the afternoon 
 sun too low, you can make Norham Castle before 
 
18 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 twilight, even as Marmion made it when he 
 opened the first canon of Scott's poem — 
 
 "Day set on Norham's castle steep 
 And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 
 
 And Cheviot's mountains lone; 
 The battled towers, the donjon keep, 
 The loophole grates, where captives weep. 
 The flanking walls that round it sweep, 
 
 In yellow luster shone." 
 
 There is but a fragment of that castle remain- 
 ing, and this, familiar to those who study 
 Turner in the National Gallery. A little village 
 with one broad street and curiously receding 
 houses attempts to live in the shadow of this 
 memory. The very red-stone tower has stood 
 there at the top of the steep bank since the mid- 
 dle Eleven Hundreds. Henry II held it as a 
 royal castle, while his craven son John — not so 
 craven in battle — regarded it as the first of his 
 fortresses. Edward I made it his headquar- 
 ters while he pretended to arbitrate the rival 
 claims of the Scottish succession, and to es- 
 tablish himself as the Lord Superior. On the 
 green hill of Holywell nearby he received the 
 submission of Scotland in 1291 — the submis- 
 sion of Scotland ! 
 
 Ford castle is a little higher up the river, 
 where lodged the dubious lady with whom the 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 19 
 
 king had dalliance in those slack days preceding 
 Flodden — the lady who had sung to him in 
 Holyrood the challenging ballad of ''Young 
 Lochinvar!" James was ever a Stewart, and 
 regardful of the ladies. 
 
 "What checks the fiery soul of James, 
 Why sits the champion of dames 
 Inactive on his steed?" 
 
 The Norman tower of Ford (the castle has 
 been restored), called the King's tower, looks 
 down on the battlefield, and in the upper room, 
 called the King's room, there is a carved fire- 
 place carrying the historic footnote — 
 
 "King James ye 4th of Scotland did lye 
 here at Ford castle, A. D. 1513." 
 
 Somehow one hopes that the lady was not 
 sparring for time and Surrey, and sending mes- 
 sages to the advancing Earl, but truly loved 
 this Fourth of the Jameses, grandfather to his 
 inheriting granddaughter. 
 
 Coldstream is the station for Flodden. But 
 the village, lying a mile away on the Scotch side 
 of the Tweed, has memories of its own. It was 
 here that the most famous ford was found be- 
 tween the two countries, witness and way to so 
 many acts of disunion; from the time when 
 Edward I, in 1296, led his forces through it into 
 
20 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Scotland, to the time when Montrose, in 1640, 
 led his forces through it into England. 
 
 "There on this dangerous ford and deep 
 Where to the Tweed Leet's eddies creep 
 He ventured desperately." 
 
 The river was spanned by a five-arch bridge 
 in 1763, and it was over this bridge that Robert 
 Burns crossed into England. He entered the 
 day in his diary, May 7, 1787. ' ' Coldstream — 
 went over to England — Cornhill — glorious river 
 Tweed — clear and majestic — fine bridge." 
 
 It was the only time Burns ever left Scotland, 
 ever came into England. And here he knelt 
 down, on the green lawn, and prayed the prayer 
 that closes ''The Cotter's Saturday Night" — 
 
 "0 Thou who pour'd the patriot tide 
 That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart, 
 Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride 
 Or nobly die, the second glorious part, 
 (The patriot's God, peculiarly Thou art, 
 His friend, inspirer, guardian and reward!) 
 O never, never, Scotia's realm desert; 
 But still the patriot and the patriot bard, 
 In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!" 
 
 Surely a consecration of this crossing after 
 its centuries of unrest. 
 
 General Monk spent the winter of 1659 in 
 Coldstream, lodging in a house east of the mar- 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 21 
 
 ket-place, marked with its tablet. And here he 
 raised the first of the still famous Coldstream 
 Guards, to bring King Charles ''o'er the water" 
 back to the throne. Coldstream is the Gretna 
 Green of this end of the Border, and many a 
 runaway couple, noble and simple, has been 
 married in the inn. 
 
 Four miles south of Coldstream in a lonely 
 part of this lonely Border — almost the echoes 
 are stilled, and you hear nothing but remem- 
 bered bits of Marmion as you walk the high- 
 way — lies Flodden Field. It was the greatest 
 of Scotch battles, not even excepting Bannock- 
 burn; greatest because the Scotch are greatest 
 in defeat. 
 
 It was, or so it seemed to James, because his 
 royal brother-in-law Henry VIII was fighting 
 in France, an admirable time wherein to ad- 
 vance into England. James had received a ring 
 and a glove and a message, from Anne of Brit- 
 tany, bidding him 
 
 "Strike three strokes with Scottish brand 
 And march three miles on Scottish land 
 And bid the banners of his band 
 In English breezes dance." 
 
 James was not the one to win at Flodden, 
 notwithstanding that he had brought a hundred 
 
22 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 thousand men to his standard. They were con- 
 tent to raid the Border, and he to dally at Ford. 
 
 "0 for one hour of Wallace wight, 
 Or well skill'd Bruce to rule the fight, 
 And cry — 'Saint Andrew and our right!' 
 Another sight had seen that mom 
 From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn, 
 And Flodden had been Bannoekburn !" 
 
 The very thud of the lines carries you along, 
 if you have elected to walk through the country- 
 side, green now and smiling faintly if deserted, 
 where it was brown and sere in September, 
 1513. One should be repeating his ' ' Marmion, ' ' 
 as Scott thought out so many of its lines riding 
 over this same countryside. It is a splendid, 
 a lingering battle picture — 
 
 "And first the ridge of mingled spears 
 Above the brightening cloud appears; 
 And in the smoke the pennon flew, 
 As in the storm the white sea mew, 
 Then mark'd they, dashing broad and far. 
 The broken billows of the war; 
 And plumed crests of chieftains brave, 
 Floating like foam upon the wave. 
 But nought distinct they see. 
 Wide ranged the battle on the plain; 
 Spears shook, and falchions flash'd amain, 
 Fell England's arrow flight like rain. 
 Crests rose and stooped and rose again 
 Wild and disorderly." 
 
Hame, Hame, Hame! 23 
 
 Thousands were lost on both sides. But the 
 flower of England was in France, while the 
 flower of Scotland was here; and slain — the 
 king, twelve earls, fifteen lords and chiefs, an 
 archbishop, the French ambassador, and many 
 French captains. 
 
 You walk back from the Field, and all the 
 world is changed. The green haughs, the green 
 woodlands, seem even in the summer sun to be 
 dun and sere, and those burns which made merry 
 on the outward way — can it be that there are 
 red shadows in their waters? It is not V'Mar- 
 mion" but Jean Elliott's *' Flower of the For- 
 est" that lilts through the memory — 
 
 "Dule and wae was the order sent our lads to the Border, 
 The English for once by guile won the day ; 
 The Flowers of the Forest that foucht aye the foremost, 
 The pride of our land are cauld in the clay. 
 
 "We'll hear nae mair liltin' at the eve milkin', 
 Women and bairns are heartless and wae; 
 Sighin' and moanin' on ilka green loanin' — 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away." 
 
 I know not by what alchemy the Scots are 
 always able to win our sympathy to their his- 
 toric tragedies, or why upon such a field as 
 Flodden, and many another, the tragedy seems 
 but to have just happened, the loss is as though 
 of yesterday. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SCOTTS-LAND 
 
 'T is possible to enter the Middle Marches 
 from Berwick ; in truth, Kelso lies scarcely 
 farther from Flodden than does Berwick. 
 But Flodden is on English soil to-day, and 
 memory is content to let it lie there. These 
 Middle Marches however are so essentially 
 Scottish, the splendour and the romance, the 
 history and the tragedy, that one would fain 
 keep them so, and come upon them as did the 
 kings from David I, or even the Celtic kings 
 before him, who sought refuge from the bleak 
 Scottish north in this smiling land of dales and 
 haughs, of burns and lochs. Not at any mo- 
 ment could life become monotonous even in this 
 realm of romance, since the Border was near, 
 and danger and dispute so imminent, so inces- 
 sant. 
 
 Preferably then one goes from Edinburgh 
 (even though never does one go from that city, 
 "mine own romantic town," but with regret; 
 not even finally when one leaves it and knows 
 
 24 
 
JAMES II. 
 
Scotts-Land 25 
 
 one will not return till next time) to Melrose; 
 as Scottish kings of history and story have 
 passed before. There was James II going to 
 the siege of Eoxburgh, and not returning ; there 
 was James IV going to the field of Flodden and 
 not returning ; there was James V going to hunt 
 the deer ; there was James VI going up to Lon- 
 don to be king; Mary Queen on that last jour- 
 ney to the South Countrie; Charles I and 
 Charles II losing and getting a crown ; Charles 
 in — ^let us defy history and call the Bonnie 
 Prince by his title — ^when he went so spleijdidly 
 after Prestonpans. 
 
 It is a royal progress, out of Edinburgh into 
 the Middle Marches; past Dalkeith where 
 James IV rode to meet and marry Margaret of 
 England; past Borthwick, where Queen Mary 
 spent that strange hot-trod honeymoon with 
 Bothwell — of all place of emotion this is the 
 most difficult to realize, and I can but think 
 Mary's heart was broken here, and the heart- 
 break at Carberry Hill was but an echo of this ; 
 past Lauder, where the nobles of ignoble James 
 III hung his un-noble favourite from the stone 
 arch of the bridge ; into the level rays of a set- 
 ting sun — always the setting sun throws a more 
 revealing light than that of noonday over this 
 Scotland. 
 
26 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Melrose 
 
 I remember on my first visit to Melrose, of 
 course during my first visit to Scotland, I sched- 
 uled my going so as to arrive there in the eve- 
 ning of a night when the moon would be at the 
 full. I had seen it shine gloriously on the front 
 of York, splendidly on the towers of Durham. 
 What would it not be on fair Melrose, viewed 
 aright ? 
 
 I hurried northward, entered Edinburgh only 
 to convey my baggage, and then closing my eyes 
 resolutely to all the glory and the memory that 
 lay about, I went southward through the early 
 twilight. I could see, would see, nothing before 
 Melrose. 
 
 The gates of the Abbey were, of course, 
 closed. But I did not wish to enter there until 
 the magic hour should strike. The country 
 round about was ineffably lovely in the rose 
 light of the vanishing day. 
 
 "Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose 
 And Eildon slopes to the plain." 
 
 The Abbey was, of course, the center of 
 thought continually, and its red-gray walls 
 
Scotts-Land 27 
 
 caught the light of day and the coming shadows 
 of night in a curious effect which no picture can 
 report; time has dealt wondrously with this 
 stone, leaving the rose for the day, the gray for 
 the night. 
 
 I wandered about, stopping in the empty slop- 
 ing market-place to look at the Cross, which is 
 as old as the Abbey; looking at the graveyard 
 which surrounds the Abbey, where men lie, com- 
 mon men unsung in Scottish minstrelsy, except 
 as part of the great hosts, men who heard the 
 news when it was swift and fresh from Ban- 
 nockburn, and Flodden, and CuUoden; and 
 where men and women still insert their mortal- 
 ity into this immortality — Elizabeth Clephane 
 who wrote the ''Ninety and Nine" lies there; 
 and out into the country and down by the Tweed 
 toward the Holy Pool, the Haly Wheel, to won- 
 der if when I came again in the middle night, I, 
 too, should see the white lady rise in mist from 
 the waters, this lady of Bemersyde who had 
 loved a monk of Melrose not wisely but very 
 well, and who drowned herself in this water 
 where the monk in penance took daily plunges, 
 come summer, come winter. How often this is 
 the Middle-Age penalty! 
 
 Far across the shimmering green meadows 
 and through the fragrant orchards came the 
 
28 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 sound of bagpipes — on this my first evening in 
 Scotland ! And whether or not you care for the 
 pipes, there is nothing like them in a Scottish 
 twilight, a first Scottish twilight, to reconstruct 
 all the Scotland that has been. 
 
 The multitudes and the individuals came 
 trooping back. At a time of famine these very 
 fields were filled with huts, four thousand of 
 them, for always the monks had food, and al- 
 ways they could perform miracles and obtain 
 food ; which they did. That for the early time. 
 And for the late, the encampment of Leslie's 
 men in these fields before the day when they 
 slaughtered Montrose's scant band of royalists 
 at Philipshaugh, and sent that most splendid 
 figure in late Scottish history as a fugitive to 
 the north, and to the scaffold. 
 
 I knew that in the Abbey before the high altar 
 lay the high heart of The Bruce, which had 
 been carried to Spain and to the Holy Land, 
 by order of Bruce, since death overtook him be- 
 fore he could make the pilgrimage. Lord 
 James Douglass did battle on the way against 
 the Moslems in southern Spain, where *'a Doug- 
 lass! a Douglass!" rang in battle clash against 
 *' Allah, illah, allah," and the Douglass himself 
 was slain. The heart of The Bruce flung 
 against the infidel, was recovered and sent on 
 
Scotts-Land 29 
 
 to Jerusalem, and then back to Melrose. The 
 body of Douglass was brought back to Scotland, 
 to St. Bride 's church in Douglass, and his heart 
 also lies before the high altar of Melrose. ' ' In 
 their death they were not divided." 
 There lies also buried Michael Scot 
 
 "Buried on St. Michael's night, 
 When the bell toll'd one and the moon was bright." 
 
 On such a night as this, I hoped. And Scot 
 is fit companion for the twilight. This strange 
 wizard of a strange time was born in Upper 
 Tweedale, which is the district of Merliii — the 
 older wizard lies buried in a green mound near 
 Drummelzier. Michael traveled the world over, 
 Oxford, Paris, Bologna, Palermo, Toledo, and 
 finally, perhaps because his wizardry had sent 
 him like a wandering Jew from place to place, 
 back to the Border, his home country, where he 
 came and served the Evil One. Dante places 
 him in the Purgatory of those who attempt blas- 
 phemously to tear the veil of the future. The 
 thirteenth century was not the time in which 
 to increase knowledge, whether of this world 
 or the next. Even to-day perhaps we save a 
 remnant of superstition, and we would not 
 boast 
 
 "I could say to thee 
 The words that cleft the Eildon hills in three." 
 
30 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Very dark against the gathering dark of the 
 night sky rose the Eildon hills above, cleft in 
 three by the wizardry of Scot. To that height 
 on the morrow I should climb, for it is there 
 that Sir Walter Scott, a later wizard, had car- 
 ried our Washington Irving, just a century ago, 
 and shown him all this Borderland — which lay 
 about me under the increasing cover of night. 
 
 *'I can stand on the Eildon Hill and point out 
 forty-three places famous in war and verse," 
 Sir Walter said to our Irving. ' * I have brought 
 you, like a pilgrim in the Pilgrim's Progress, 
 to the top of the Delectable Mountains, that I 
 may show you all the goodly regions hereabouts. 
 Yonder is Lammermuir and Smailholm; and 
 there you have Galashiels and Torwoodelee and 
 Gala Water; and in that direction you see 
 Teviotdale and the Braes of Yarrow; and Et- 
 trick stream winding along like a silver thread 
 to throw itself into the Tweed. It may be per- 
 tinacity, but to my eye, these gray hills and all 
 this wild Border country have beauties peculiar 
 to themselves. When I have been for some time 
 in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is 
 like an ornamented garden land, I begin to wish 
 myself back again among my own honest gray 
 hills; and if I did not see the heather at least 
 once a year, I think I should die." 
 
Scotts-Land 31 
 
 On the morrow. But for to-night it was 
 enough to remember that perfect picture as 
 imagination painted it in Andrew Lang's 
 verse — 
 
 "Three crests against the saffron sky, 
 Beyond the purple plain, 
 The kind remembered melody 
 Of Tweed once more again. 
 
 "Wan water from the Border hills, 
 Dear voice from the old years, 
 Thy distant music lulls and stills, 
 And moves to quiet tears. , 
 
 "Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood 
 
 Fleets through the dusky land; 
 Where Scott, come home to die, has stood, 
 My feet returning, stand. 
 
 "A mist of memory broods and floats, 
 The Border waters flow; 
 The air is full of ballad notes 
 Borne out of long ago, 
 
 "Old songs that sung themselves to me, 
 Sweet through a boy's day dream, 
 While trout below the blossom'd tree 
 Plashed in the golden stream. 
 
 "Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill, 
 Fair and too fair you be; 
 You tell me that the voice is still 
 That should have welcomed me." 
 
32 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 I did not miss the voice, any of the voices. 
 They whispered, they sang, they crooned, they 
 keened, about me. For this was Melrose, mael 
 ros, so the old Celtic goes, ''the naked head- 
 land in the wood." And I was seeing, was 
 hearing, what I have come to see and hear; I, 
 a Scot, if far removed, if in diluted element, 
 and Scott 's from the reading days of Auld Lang 
 Syne. 
 
 And should I not within the moonlight see 
 the white lady rise from the Haly Wheel ? And 
 should I not see the moonlight flooding the Ab- 
 bey, Melrose Abbey? Out of a remembered 
 yesterday, out of a confident midnight — surely 
 there was a budding morrow in this midnight — 
 I remembered the lines — 
 
 "If thou would'st view fair Melrose arigbt, 
 Go visit it by the pale moonlight ; 
 For the gay beams of lightsome day 
 Gild but to flout the ruins gray. 
 When the broken arches are black in night, 
 And each shafted oriel glimmers white, 
 When the cold light's uncertain shower 
 Streams on the ruined central tower; 
 When buttress and buttress alternately 
 Seem^ framed of ebon and ivory; 
 When silver edges the imagery, 
 And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; 
 When distant Tweed is heard to rave, 
 And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave. 
 
Scotts-Land 33 
 
 Then go — but go alone the while — 
 Then view St. David's ruined pile; 
 And, home retuniing, soothly swear 
 Was never scene so sad and fair." 
 
 The moon did not rise tliat night. 
 
 I walked about the fields, lingered about the 
 Cross in the market, looked expectantly at the 
 Abbey, until two in the morning. 
 
 "It was near the ringing of matin bell, 
 The night was well nigh done." 
 
 The moon did not rise, and neither did the 
 white lady. It was not because there was a 
 mist, a Scottish mist, over the heavens; they 
 were clear, the stars were shining, and the pole 
 star held true, Charles' wain — as Charles should 
 in Bonnie Scotland — held true to the pole. But 
 it was a late July moon, and those Eildon hills 
 and their circling kin rose so high against the 
 night sky — daytime they seemed modest enough 
 — that the moon in this latitude as far north as 
 Sitka did not circle up the sky. Neither does 
 the sun in winter, so the guardian explained to 
 me next day. 
 
 Fair Melrose is fairest, o' nights, at some 
 later or earlier time of the year. It was then 
 that I resolved to return in December, on De- 
 cember 27, when the festival of St. John's is 
 celebrated with torch lights in the ruins of the 
 
34 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Abbey — and Michael Scot comes back to his 
 own ! But then I reflected that the moon is not 
 always full on the Eve of St. John's. 
 
 "I cannot come, I must not come, 
 
 I dare not come to thee, 
 On the Eve of. St. John's, I must walk alone, 
 In thy bower I may not be." 
 
 I chose, years later, an October moon, in 
 which to see it ' ' aright. ' ' 
 
 Viewed by day, Melrose is surely fair; fair 
 enough to enchant mortal vision. It is the love- 
 liest ruin in the land where reform has meant 
 ruin, and where from Kelso to Elgin, shattered 
 fanes of the faith proclaim how variable is the 
 mind of man through the generations, and how 
 hostile when it forsakes. 
 
 Melrose is an old foundation. In truth the 
 monastery was established at old Melrose, two 
 miles farther down the Tweed, and is so lovely, 
 so dramatic a corner of the Tweed, that Doro- 
 thy Woodsworth declared, **we wished we could 
 have brought the ruins of Melrose to this spot. ' ' 
 She missed the nearby murmur of the river as 
 we do. 
 
 This oldest harbour of Christianity was 
 founded in the pagan world by monks from 
 lona. Therefore by way of Ireland and not 
 from Rome, blessed by Saint Columba sixty 
 
Scotts-Land 35 
 
 years before Saint Augustine came to Canter- 
 bury. It was the chief ''island" between lona 
 and Lindisfarne. Very haughty were these 
 monks of the West. *'Eome errs, Alexandria 
 errs, all the world errs ; only the Scots and the 
 Britons are in the right." There is surely 
 something still left of the old spirit in Scotia, 
 particularly in spiritual Scotia. 
 
 Near Melrose was born that Cuthbert who 
 is the great saint of the North, either side the 
 Border, and who lies in the midst of the splen- 
 dour of Durham. A shepherd, he watched his 
 sheep on these very hills round about us, and 
 saw, when abiding in the fields, angels ascend- 
 ing and descending on golden ladders. Enter- 
 ing Melrose as a novice he became prior in 664, 
 and later prior at Lindisfarne. When the 
 monks were driven from the Holy Island by the 
 Danes they carried the body of St. Cuthbert 
 with them for seven years, and once it rested 
 at Melrose — 
 
 "O'er northern mountain, march and moor, 
 From sea to sea, from shore to ^hore, 
 Seven years St, Cuthbert's corpse they bore, 
 They rested them in fair Melrose; 
 But though alive he loved it well, 
 Not there his relics might repose." 
 
 When King David came to the making of 
 
36 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Scotland, he came into the Middle Marches, and 
 finding them very lovely — even as you and I — 
 this "sair sanct to the Croon," as his Scottish 
 royal descendant, James VI saw him — and 
 James would have fell liked to be a saint, but 
 he could accomplish neither sinner nor saint, 
 because Darnley crossed Mary in his veins — 
 David determined to build him fair Abbeys. 
 Of which, Melrose, "St. David's ruined pile," 
 is the fairest. He brought Cistercians from 
 Rievaulx in Yorkshire, to supplant the Culdees 
 of lona, and they builded them a beautiful stone 
 Melrose to supplant the wooden huts of old 
 Melrose. It centered a very active monastic 
 life, where pavements were once smooth and 
 lawns were close-clipped, and cowled monks in 
 long robes served God, and their Abbot lorded 
 it over lords, even equally with kings. 
 
 But it stood on the highway between Dunferm- 
 line and London, between English and Scottish 
 ambitions. And it fell before them. Edward I 
 spared it because the Abbots gave him fealty. 
 But Edward II, less royal in power and in taste, 
 destroyed it. The Bruce rebuilded it again, 
 greater splendour rising out of complete ruin. 
 When Richard II came to Scotland he caused 
 the Abbey to be pillaged and burned. And when 
 Hertford came for Henry VIII, after the Thirty 
 
Scotts-Land 37 
 
 Nine Articles had annulled respect for build- 
 ings under the protection of Eome, the final 
 ruin came to St. David's church-palace. Yet, 
 late as 1810, church service, reformed, of 
 course, was held in a roofed-over part of the 
 Abbey ruin. To-day it is under the protection 
 of the Dukes of Buccleuch. And, we remember 
 as we stand here, while the beams of lightsome 
 day gild the ruin, the mottoes of the great fam- 
 ily of the Border, Luna Cornua Reparahit, 
 which being interpreted is, ** There '11 be moon- 
 light again. ' ' Then to light the raids, the, reiv- 
 ing that refilled the larder. But to-morrow for 
 scenic effect. 
 
 Examined in this daylight, the beauty of Mel- 
 rose surely loses very little. It is one of the 
 most exquisite ruins in the United Kingdom, 
 perhaps second to Tintern, but why compare? 
 It is of finest Gothic, out of France, not out of 
 England. In its general aspect it is nobly 
 magnificent — 
 
 "The darken'd roof rose high aloof 
 On pillars, lofty, light and small; 
 The keystone that locked each ribbed aisle 
 Was a fleur de lys or a quatre feuille, 
 The corbels were carved grotesque and grim; 
 And the pillars with clustered shafts so trim, 
 With base and with capital flourish'd around 
 Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound." 
 
38 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 I 
 
 And, as a chief detail which yields not to 
 Tintern or any other, is the east window over 
 the high altar, through which the moon and sun 
 shines on those buried hearts — 
 
 "The moon on the east oriel shone 
 Through slender shafts of shapely stone, 
 
 By foliaged tracery combined. 
 Thou would'st have thought some fairy'd hand 
 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand 
 
 In many a freakish knot had twined, 
 Then framed a spell when the work was done. 
 And changed the willow wreaths to stone. 
 The silver light, so pale and faint, 
 Showed many a prophet and many a saint, 
 
 Whose image on the glass was dyed, 
 Full in the midst his cross of red 
 Triumphant Michael brandish'd, 
 
 And trampled on the Apostate's pride; 
 The moonbeams kissed the holy pane, 
 And threw on the pavement a bloody stain." 
 
 Ahhotsford 
 
 If *' Scott restored Scotland," he built the 
 **keep" which centers all the Scott-land of the 
 Border side. 
 
 Two miles above Melrose, a charming walk 
 leads to Abbotsford; redeemed out of a swamp 
 into at least the most memory-filled mansion 
 of all the land. Scott, like the monks, could 
 
Scotts-Land 39 
 
 not leave the silver wash of the Tweed; and, 
 more loving than those who dwelt at Melrose 
 and Dryburgh, he placed his Abbot's House 
 where the rippling sound was within a stone's 
 throw. 
 
 The Tweed is such a storied stream that as 
 you walk along, sometimes across sheep-cropped 
 meadows, sometimes under the fragant rus- 
 tling bough and athwart the shifting shadows 
 of oak, ash, and thorn — Puck of Pook's hill 
 must have known the Border country in its most 
 embroidered days — you cannot tell whether or 
 not the deep quiet river is the noblest you have 
 seen, or the storied hills about are less than 
 the Delectable mountains. 
 
 The name "Tweed" suggests romance — un- 
 less instead of having read your Scott you have 
 come to its consciousness through the home- 
 spun, alas, to-day too often the factory-spun 
 woolens, which are made throughout all Scot- 
 land, but still in greatest length on Tweed- 
 side. 
 
 Dorothy Wordsworth, winsome marrow, who 
 loved the country even better than William, I 
 trow — only why remark it when he himself 
 recognized how his vision was quickened 
 through her companionship? — ^has spoke the 
 word Tweed — * ' a name which has been sweet in 
 
40 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 my ears almost as far back as I can remember 
 anything. ' ' 
 
 The river comes from high in the Cheviot 
 hills, where East and West Marches merge and 
 where — 
 
 "Annan, Tweed, and Clyde 
 Rise a' out o' ae hillside." 
 
 And down to the sea it runs, its short hun- 
 dred miles of story — 
 
 "All through the stretch of the stream. 
 To the lap of Berwick Bay." 
 
 As you walk along Tweedside, you feel its en- 
 chantment, you feel the sorrow of the thousands 
 who through the centuries have exiled them- 
 selves from its banks, because of war, or be- 
 cause of poverty, or because of love — 
 
 "Therefore I maun wander abroad, 
 And lay my banes far frae the Tweed." 
 
 But now, you are returned, you are on your 
 way to Abbotsford, there are the Eildons, 
 across the river you get a glimpse of the Cat- 
 rail, that sunken way that runs along the bound- 
 ary for one-half its length, and may have 
 been a fosse, or may have been a concealed road 
 of the Romans or what not. Scott once leaped 
 his horse across it, nearly lost his life, and did 
 lose his confidence in his horsemanship. 
 
Scotts-Land 41 
 
 "And all through the summer morning 
 I felt it a joy indeed 
 To whisper again and again to myself, 
 This is the voice of the Tweed." 
 
 It is not possible to approach Abbotsford, as 
 it should be approached, from the riverside, the 
 view with which one is familiar, the view the 
 pictures carry. Or, it can be done if one would 
 forego the walk, take it in the opposite direction, 
 and come hither by rail from Galashiels — that 
 noisy modern factory town, once the housing 
 place for Melrose pilgrims, which to-day speaks 
 nothing of the romance of Gala water, and 
 surely not these factory folk "can match the 
 lads o' Gala Water." It is a short journey, 
 and railway journeys are to be avoided in this 
 land of by-paths. But there, across the water, 
 looking as the pictures have it, and as Scott 
 would have it, rises Abbotsford, turreted and 
 towered, engardened and exclusive. 
 
 It stands on low level ground, for it is re- 
 deemed out of a duckpond, out of Clarty hole. 
 Sir "Walter wished to possess the Border, or 
 as much of it as might be, so he made this first 
 purchase of a hundred acres in 1811. As he 
 wrote to James Ballantyne — 
 
 '*I have resolved to purchase a piece of 
 ground sufficient for a cottage and a few fields. 
 
42 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 There are two pieces, either of which would suit 
 me, but both would make a very desirable prop- 
 erty indeed, and could be had for between 
 7,000 and 8,000 pounds, or either separate for 
 about half that sum. I have serious thoughts 
 of one or both." 
 
 He began with one, and fourteen years later, 
 when the estate had extended to a thousand 
 acres, to the inclusion of many fields, sheep- 
 cropped and story-haunted, he entered in his 
 diary — 
 
 ''Abbotsford is all I can make it, so I am re- 
 solved on no more building, and no purchases 
 of land till times are more safe. ' ' 
 
 By that time the people of the countryside 
 called him **the Duke," he had at least been 
 knighted, and was, in truth, the Chief of the 
 Border ; a royal ambition which I doubt not he 
 cherished from those first days when he read 
 Percy under a platanus. 
 
 He paid fabulous prices for romantic spots, 
 and I think would have bought the entire 
 Border if the times had become safer, in those 
 scant seven years that were left to him. 
 Even Scott could be mistaken, for he bought 
 what he believed was Huntlie Bank, where 
 True Thomas had his love affair with the fair 
 ladye — 
 
Scotts-Land 43 
 
 "True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank; 
 
 A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e; 
 And there he saw a ladye bright 
 
 Come riding down by the Eildon tree. 
 
 "Her skirt was o' the grass-green silk, 
 Her mantle o' the velvet fyne; 
 At ilka tett o' her horse's mane 
 Hung fifty siller bells and nine." 
 
 And now the experts tell us that it is not 
 Huntlie Bank at all, but that is in an entirely 
 different direction, over toward Ercildoune and 
 the Rhymer's Tower. 
 
 There is a satisfaction in this to those of us 
 who believe in fairies and in Scott. For fairies 
 have no sense of place or of time. And of 
 course if they knew that Scott wished them to 
 have lived at his Huntlie Bank, they straight- 
 way would have managed to have lived there. 
 Always, as you go through this land of romance, 
 or any romance land, and wise dull folk dispute, 
 you can console yourself that Scott also was 
 mistaken(?). 
 
 The castle began with a small cottage, not 
 this great pile of gray stone we can see from 
 the railway carriage across the Tweed, into 
 which we make our humble way through a 
 wicket gate, a restrained walk, and a basement 
 doorway. *'My dreams about my cottage go 
 
44 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 on," he wrote to Joanna Baillie, as we all dream 
 of building cottages into castles. "My pres- 
 ent intention is to have only two spare bed- 
 rooms," but '*I cannot relinquish my Border 
 principles of accommodating all the cousins and 
 duniwastles, who will rather sleep on chairs, 
 and on the floor, and in the hay-loft, than be ab- 
 sent when folks are gathered together." 
 
 So we content ourselves with being duni- 
 wastles, whatever that may be, and are confident 
 that Sir Walter if he were alive would give us 
 the freedom of the castle. 
 
 In any event, if we feel somewhat robbed of 
 any familiar intercourse, we can remember that 
 Ruskin called this '^ perhaps the most incongru- 
 ous pile that gentlemanly modernism ever de- 
 signed." This may content the over-sensitive 
 who are prevented ever hearing the ripple of 
 the Tweed through the windows. 
 
 Scott was a zealous relic hunter, and if you 
 like relics, if you can better conjure up persons 
 through a sort of transubstantiation of person- 
 ality that comes by looking on what the great 
 have possessed, there can be few private collec- 
 tions more compelling than this of Abbotsford. 
 
 In the library are such significant hints for 
 reconstruction as the blotting book wherewith 
 Napoleon cleared his record, the crucifix on 
 
Scotts-Land 45 
 
 which Queen Mary prayed, the quaigh of her 
 great great and last grandson, the tumbler from 
 which Bobbie Burns drank — one of them — the 
 purse into which Rob Roy thrust his plunder, 
 the pocket book of Flora MacDonald, which held 
 nothing I fear from the generosity of the Bon- 
 nie Prince. 
 
 In the armoury are Scott's own gun, Rob 
 Roy's gun, dirk and skene dhu, the sword of 
 Montrose, given to that last of the great Cava- 
 liers by his last king, Charles I, the pistol of 
 Claverhouse, the pistol of Napoleon, a hunting 
 flask of James III; and here are the keys of 
 Locli Leven castle, dropped in the lake by Mary 
 Queen's boatman; and the keys of the Edin- 
 burgh Tolbooth turned on so many brave men, 
 yes, and fair women, in the old dividing days, 
 of Jacobite and Covenanter. 
 
 The library of Scott, twenty thousand vol- 
 umes, still lines the shelves, and one takes par- 
 ticular interest in this place, and its little stair- 
 way whereby ascent is made to the balcony, also 
 book-lined, and escape through a little doorway. 
 When Scott first came to the cottage of Ab- 
 botsford he wrote, furiously, in a little window 
 embrasure with only a curtain between him and 
 the domestic world. Here he had not only a 
 library, but a study, where still stands the desk 
 
46 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 at which the Waverleys were written, and the 
 well-worn desk chair. 
 
 After he had returned from Italy, whither he 
 went in search of health and did not find it, he 
 felt, one day, a return of the old desire to 
 write, the ruling passion. He was wheeled to 
 the desk, he took the pen, — nothing came. He 
 sank back and burst into tears. As Lockhart 
 reports it — * ' It was like Napoleon resigning his 
 empire. The scepter had departed from Judah ; 
 Scott was to write no more." 
 
 Scott has always seemed like a contemporary. 
 Not because of his novels ; I fear the Waverleys 
 begin to read a little stilted to the young genera- 
 tion, and there are none left to lament with 
 Lowell that he had read all of Scott and now he 
 could never read him all over again for the first 
 time. It is rather because Scott the man is so 
 immortal that he seems like a man still living; 
 or at least like one who died but yesterday. 
 Into the dining-room where we cannot go — and 
 perhaps now that we think it over it is as well — 
 he was carried in order that out of it he might 
 look his last on ** twilight and Tweed and Eildon 
 hill." And there he died, even so long ago as 
 September, 1832. 
 
 ''It was a beautiful day," that day we seem 
 almost to remember as we stand here in the 
 
Scotts-Land 47 
 
 vivid after glow, "so warm that every window 
 was wide open, and so peacefully still that the 
 sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the 
 gentle ripple of the Tweed, was distinctly 
 audible. ' * 
 
 BryhurgU 
 
 Five days after they carried him to rest in 
 the Abbey — rival certainly in this instance of 
 The Abbey of England, where is stored so much 
 precious personal dust. The time had become 
 thrawn ; dark skies hung over the Cheviots and 
 the Eildon, and over the haughs of Ettrick and 
 Yarrow; the silver Tweed ran leaden, and 
 moaned in its going; there was a keening in 
 the wind. 
 
 The road from Abbotsford past Melrose to 
 Dryburgh is — ^perhaps — the loveliest walk in 
 the United Kingdom ; unless it be the road from 
 Coventry past Kenilworth to Stratford. It was 
 by this very way that there passed the funeral 
 train of Scott, the chief carriage drawn by 
 Scott's own horses. Thousands and thousands 
 of pilgrims have followed that funeral train; 
 one goes to Holy Trinity in Stratford, to the 
 Invalides in Paris, but one walks to Dryburgh 
 
48 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 througli the beautiful Tweedside which is all 
 a shrine to Sir Walter. 
 
 The road runs away from the river to the 
 little village of Darnick, with its ivy-shrouded 
 tower, across the meadows to the bridge across 
 the river, with the ringing of bells in the ear. 
 For it was ordered on that September day of 
 1832, by the Provost, * ' that the church bell shall 
 toll from the time the funeral procession 
 reaches Melrose Bridge till it passes the village 
 of Newstead." 
 
 I do not suppose the people of this country- 
 side, who look at modern pilgrims so sympa- 
 thetically, so understandingly, have ever had 
 time to forget; the stream of pilgrims has 
 been so uninterrupted for nearly a century. 
 Through the market-place of Melrose it passed, 
 the sloping stony square, where people of the 
 village pass and repass on their little village 
 errands. And it did not stop at the Abbey. 
 
 The day was thickening into dusk then; it 
 is ripening into sunset glory to-day. And the 
 Abbey looks very lovely, and very lonely. And 
 one wonders if Michael Scot did not call to 
 Walter Scott to come and join the quiet there, 
 and if the dust that once was the heart of Bruce 
 did not stir a little as the recreator of Scotland 
 was carried by. 
 
Scotts-Land 49 
 
 To the village of Newstead you move on ; with 
 the sound of immemorial bells falling on the 
 ear, and pass through the little winding street 
 — and wonder if the early Eoman name of 
 Trimontium, triple mountains, triple Eildon, 
 was its first call name out of far antiquity as 
 Scott believed. 
 
 Then the road ascends between hedgerows, 
 and begins to follow the Tweed closely — and 
 perhaps you meet pilgrims on Leaderfoot 
 bridge who have come the wrong way. There 
 is a steep climb to the heights of Bemersyde, 
 where on the crest all Melrose Glen lies beauti- 
 fully storied before you. And here you pause 
 — as did those horses of Scott's, believing their 
 master would fain take one last look at his fa- 
 vourite view. 
 
 There is no lovelier landscape in the world, 
 or in Scotland. The blue line of the Cheviots 
 bars back the world, the Dunion, the Euberslaw, 
 the Eildon rise, and in the great bend of the 
 river with richly wooded braes about is the site 
 of Old Melrose. Small wonder he paused to 
 take farewell of all the country he had loved 
 so well. 
 
 The road leads on past Bemersyde village 
 with woodlands on either side, and to the east, 
 near a little loch, stands Sandyknowe Tower. 
 
50 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Near the tower lies the remnant of the vil- 
 lage of Smailholm, where Scott was sent out of 
 Edinburgh when only three years old. It is in 
 truth his birthplace, for without the clear air 
 of the Border he would have followed the other 
 Scott children ; and without the romance of the 
 Border he might have been merely a barrister. 
 
 Sandyknowe is brave in spite of its ruin, for 
 it is built of the very stone of the eternal hills, 
 and has become part of the hills. From its bal- 
 cony, sixty feet high, a beautiful Scottish pan- 
 orama may be glimpsed, and here Scott brought 
 Turner to make his sketch of the Border. And 
 here, because a kinsman agreed to save Sandy- 
 knowe Tower from the mortality that comes 
 even to stone if Scott would write a ballad and 
 make it immortal, is laid the scene of *'Eve of 
 St. John's" — with these last haunting intangible 
 lines — 
 
 "There is a nun in Dryburgh bower 
 Ne'er looks upon the sun ; 
 There is a monk in Melrose tower 
 He speaketh a word to none." 
 
 Then, back to the Tweed, where the river 
 sweeps out in a great circle, and leaves a penin- 
 sula for Dryburgh. The gray walls of the ruin 
 lift above the thick green of the trees ; yew and 
 oak and sycamore close in the fane. 
 
Scotts-Land 51 
 
 Druid and Culdee and Roman have built 
 shrines in this lovely spot, but to-day pilgrim- 
 age is made chiefly because in the quiet shel- 
 tered ruined St. Mary's aisle sleeps Sir Walter. 
 It would make one-half in love with death to 
 think of being buried in so sweet a place. 
 
 Dry burgh is also one of St. David's founda- 
 tions, in the ''sacred grove of oaks," the Darach 
 Bruach of the worship that is older than Augus- 
 tus or Columba. These were white monks that 
 David brought up from Alnwick where his 
 queen had been a Northumbrian princess, and 
 their white cloaks must have seemed, among 
 these old old oaks, but the white robes of the 
 Druids come back again. 
 
 It is a well-kept place, vines covering over the 
 crumbling gray stone, kept by the Lords of 
 Buchan. And, perhaps too orderly, too fanci- 
 ful, too ''improved"; one likes better the ac- 
 knowledged ruin of Melrose, and one would 
 prefer that Sir Walter were there with his kin, 
 instead of here with his kindred. But this is a 
 sweet place, a historic place, begun by Hugh de 
 Moreville, who was a slayer of Thomas a Becket, 
 and was Constable of Scotland. His tomb is 
 marked by a double circle on the floor of the 
 Chapter House, and there is nothing of the 
 Chapter House; it is open to beating rain and 
 
52 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 scorching sun — fit retribution for his most foul 
 deed. 
 
 It is not this remembrance you carry away, 
 but that of St. Mary's aisle, in 
 
 "Dryburgh where with, chiming Tweed 
 The lintwhites sing in chorus." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BOEDER TOWNS 
 
 Kelso 
 
 [•T is a very great little country which lies 
 all about Melrose, with never a bend of 
 the river or a turn of the highway or 
 a shoulder of the hill, nay, scarce the shadow 
 of any hazel bush or the piping of any wee bird 
 but has its history, but serves to recall what 
 once was; and because the countryside is so 
 teeming seems to make yesterday one with to- 
 day. The distances are very short, even be- 
 tween the places the well-read traveler knows; 
 with many places that are new along the way, 
 each haunted with its tradition, soon to haunt 
 the traveler, while the people he meets would 
 seem to have been here since the days of the 
 Winged Hats. 
 
 Perhaps in order to get into the center of 
 the ecclesiastical country — for after this being 
 a Borderland, and a Scott-land, it is decidedly 
 Abbots-land, even before Abbotsford came into 
 
 53 
 
54 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 being with its new choice of old title — the trav- 
 eler will take train to Kelso, or walk there, a 
 scant dozen miles from Melrose. 
 
 The journey is down the Tweed, which opens 
 ever wider between the gentle hills that are 
 more and more rounding as the flow goes on to 
 the sea. There is not such intense loneliness; 
 here is the humanest part of the Scottish land- 
 scape, and while even on this highway the cot- 
 tages are not frequent, and one eyes the jour- 
 neymen with as close inspection as one is eyed, 
 still it is a friendly land. The southern burr — 
 we deliberately made excuse of drinking water 
 or asking direction in order to hear it — is softer 
 than in the North; yet, you would not mistake 
 it for Northumberland. We wondered if this 
 was the accent Scott spoke with ; but to him must 
 have belonged all the dialect-voices. 
 
 It was at Eoxburgh Castle that King David 
 lived when he determined to build these abbeys 
 of the Middle Marches, of which the chief four 
 are Melrose, Dryburgh, Jedburgh and Kelso, 
 with Holyrood as their royal keystone. 
 
 Roxburgh was a stronghold of the Border, 
 and therefore met the fate of those strongholds, 
 when one party was stronger than the other; 
 usually the destruction was by the English be- 
 cause they were farther away and could hold 
 
Border Towns 55 
 
 the country only through making it desolate. 
 
 Who would not desire lovehness and desire 
 to fix it in stone, if he lived in such a lovely 
 spot as this where the Tweed and Teviot meet? 
 David had been in England. He was brother 
 to the English queen Maude, wife of Henry I, 
 and had come in contact with the Norman cul- 
 ture. Or, as William of Malmesbury put it, 
 with that serene assurance of the Englishman 
 over the Scot, he **had been freed from the rust 
 of Scottish barbarity, and polished from a boy 
 from his intercourse and familiarity with us. ' ' 
 Ah, welladay ! if residence at the English court 
 and Norman culture resulted in these lovely ab- 
 beys, let us be lenient with William of Malmes- 
 bury. Incidentally David added to the Scot- 
 land of that time certain English counties, 
 Northumberland and Cumberland and West- 
 moreland — as well as English culture 1 
 
 David was son to Saxon Margaret, St. Mar- 
 garet, and from her perhaps the ''sair sanct" 
 inherited some of his gentleness. But also he 
 had married Matilda of Northumberland, 
 wealthy and a widow, and he preferred to re- 
 main on the highway to London rather than at 
 Dunfermline. So he was much at Eoxburgh. 
 
 But the castle did not remain in Scottish or 
 English hands. It was while curiously inter- 
 
56 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ested in a great Flemish gun that James II was 
 killed by the explosion — and the siege of Rox- 
 burgh went on more hotly, and the castle was 
 razed to its present low estate. 
 
 To-day the silly sheep are cropping grass 
 about the scant stones that once sheltered kings 
 and defied them; and ash trees are the sole oc- 
 cupants of the once royal dwelling. To the 
 American there is something of passing inter- 
 est in the present seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, 
 Floors castle across the Teviot. For the house, 
 like many another Scottish house, still carries 
 direct descent. And an heiress from America, 
 like the heiress from Northumberland, unites 
 her fortune with this modern splendour — and 
 admits Americans and others on Wednesdays! 
 
 The town of Kelso is charming, like many 
 Tweed towns. It lies among the wooded hills ; 
 there is a greater note of luxury here. Scott 
 called it "the most beautiful if not the most 
 romantic village in Scotland." Seen from the 
 bridge which arches the flood, that placid flood 
 of Tweed, and a five-arched bridge ambitiously 
 and successfully like the Waterloo bridge of 
 London, one wonders if after all perhaps 
 Wordsworth wrote his Bridge sonnet here — 
 "Earth hath not anything to show more fair." 
 Surely this bridge, these spires and the great 
 
Border Towns 57 
 
 tower of the Abbey, ''wear the beauty of the 
 morning," the morning of the world. The 
 hills, luxuriously wooded, rise gently behind, 
 the persistent Eildons hang over, green mead- 
 ows are about, the silver river runs — and the 
 skies are Scottish skies, whether blue or gray. 
 
 The Abbey, of course, is the crown of the 
 place, bolder in design and standing more boldly 
 in spite of the havoc wrought by men and time, 
 and Hertford and Henry VIII; calmer than 
 Melrose, less ornamental, with its north portal 
 very exquisite in proportion. 
 
 The Abbot of Kelso was in the palmy early 
 days chief ecclesiastic of Scotland, a spiritual 
 lord, receiving his miter from the Pope, and 
 armoured with the right to excommunicate. 
 
 There have been other kings here than David 
 and the Abbot. The latter days of the Stew- 
 arts are especially connected with Kelso, so near 
 the Border. Baby James was hurried hither 
 and crowned in the cathedral as the III after 
 Roxburgh. Mary Queen lodged here for two 
 nights before she rode o-n to Berwick. Here in 
 the ancient market-place, looking like the square 
 of a continental town, the Old Chevalier was 
 proclaimed King James VIII on an October 
 Monday in 1715, and the day preceding the Eng- 
 lish chaplain had preached to the troops from 
 
58 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the text — ''The right of the first born is his." 
 Quite differently minded from that Whig min- 
 ister farther north, who later prayed "as for 
 this young man who has come among us seeking 
 an earthly crown, may it please Thee to bestow 
 upon him a heavenly one. ' ' 
 
 When this Eising of the Forty Five came, 
 and he who should have been Charles III (ac- 
 cording to those of us who are Scottish, and 
 royalist, and have been exiled because of our 
 allegiance) attempted to secure the throne for 
 his father, he established his headquarters at 
 Sunilaw just outside Kelso; the house is in 
 ruins, but a white rose that he planted still 
 bears flowers. To the citizens of Kelso who 
 drank to him, the Prince, keeping his head, and 
 having something of his royal great uncle's 
 gift of direct speech, replied, *'I believe you, 
 gentlemen, I believe you. I have drinking 
 friends, but few fighting ones in Kelso." 
 
 Scott knew Kelso from having lived here, 
 from going to school here, and it was in out of 
 the Kelso library — where they will show you 
 the very copy — that he first read Percy's 
 Reliques. 
 
 **I remember well the spot ... it was be- 
 neath a huge platanus, in the ruins of what 
 had been intended for an old fashioned arbour 
 
Border Towns 59 
 
 in the garden. . . . The summer day had sped 
 onward so fast that notwithstanding the sharp 
 appetite of thirteen, I forgot the dinner hour. 
 The first time I could scrape together a few 
 shillings I bought unto myself a copy of the 
 beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read 
 a book half so frequently or with half the en- 
 thusiasm." 
 
 Was it not a nearer contemporary to Percy, 
 and a knight of romance, Sir Philip Sidney, who 
 said, *'I never read the old song of Percie and 
 Douglas that I found not my heart moved more 
 than with a trumpet ' ' 1 
 
 For myself I have resolutely refused to iden- 
 tify the word, Platanus, lest it should not be 
 identical with the spot where I first read my 
 Percy. 
 
 Scott also knew Kelso as the place of his first 
 law practice, and of his honeymoon. Here 
 flowered into maturity that long lavish life, so 
 enriched and so enriching of the Border. 
 
 Horatio Bonar was minister here for thirty 
 years — I wondered if he wrote here, *'I was a 
 wandering sheep." 
 
 While James Thomson, who wrote ''The 
 Seasons," but also "Rule, Britannia" — ^if he 
 was a Scotsman; perhaps this was an Act of 
 Union — 
 
60 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 "Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; 
 Britons never will be slaves !" 
 
 was born at a little village nearby, back in the 
 low hills of Tweed, in 1700, seven years before 
 the Union. 
 
 Jedburgh 
 
 From Kelso I took train to the Border town 
 which even the Baedeker admits has had "a 
 stormy past," and where the past still lingers; 
 nay, not lingers, but is ; there is no present in 
 Jedburgh. It is but ten miles to the Border; 
 more I think that at any other point in all the 
 blue line of the Cheviot, is one conscious of the 
 Border ; consciousness of antiquity and of geog- 
 raphy hangs over Jedburgh. 
 
 It lies, a hill town, on the banks of the Jed; 
 ** sylvan Jed" said Thomson, ''crystal Jed" 
 said Burns; a smaller stream than the Tweed, 
 more tortuous, swifter, rushing through wilder 
 scenery, tumultuous, vocative, before Border 
 times began — if ever there were such a time 
 before — and disputatious still to remind us that 
 this is still a division in the kingdom. 
 
 One of the most charming walks in all Scot- 
 land — and I do not know of any country where 
 
Border Towns 61 
 
 foot-traveler's interest is so continuous (I 
 wrote this before I had read the disastrous 
 walking trip of the Pennell's) — is up this valley 
 of the Jed a half dozen miles, where remnants of 
 old forest, or its descendants, still stand, where 
 the bracken is thick enough to conceal an army 
 crouching in ambush, where the hills move 
 swiftly up from the river, and break sharply 
 into precipices, with crumbling peel towers, 
 watch towers, to guard the heights, and where 
 outcropping red scars against the hill mark 
 sometimes the entrance to caves that must have 
 often been a refuge when Border warfare 
 tramped down the valley. 
 
 In Jedburgh we lodged not at the inn; al- 
 though the name of Spread Eagle much at- 
 tracted us ; but because every one who had come 
 before us had sought lodging, we, too, would 
 *' lodge," if it be but for a night. 
 
 Mary Queen had stayed at an old house, still 
 standing in Queenstreet, Prince Charles at a 
 house in Castlegate, Burns in the Canongate, 
 the Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, in 
 Abbey Close, because there was no room in 
 the inn. I do not know if it were the Spread 
 Eagle then, but the assizes were being held, 
 Jethart justice was being administered, or, 
 juster justice, since these were more parlous 
 
62 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 times, and parley went before sentence. Scott as 
 a sheriff and the other officials of the country 
 were filling the hostelry. But Sir Walter, then 
 the Sheriff of Selkirk, sheriff being a position 
 of more ''legality" than with us, and no doubt 
 remembering his first law case which he had 
 pled at Jedburgh years before, came over to 
 Abbey Close after dinner, and according to 
 Dorothy Wordsworth ' ' sate with us an hour or 
 two, and repeated a part of the 'Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel.' " 
 
 Think of not knowing whether it was an hour 
 or two hours, with Scott repeating the "Lay," 
 and in Jedburgh. 
 
 We lodged in a little narrow lane, near the 
 Queen in the Backgate, with a small quaint gar- 
 den plot behind; there would be pears in sea- 
 son, and many of them, ripening against these 
 stone walls. The pears of the Border are 
 famous. Our landlady was removed from 
 Yetholm only a generation. Yetholm is the 
 gipsy capital of this countryside. And we won- 
 dered whether Meg Faa, for so she ambitiously 
 called herself, by the royal name of Scottish 
 Romany, was descended from Meg Merrilies. 
 Mrs. Faa had dark flashing eyes in a thin dark 
 face, and they flashed like a two-edged dagger. 
 She was a small woman, scarce taller than a 
 
Border Towns 63 
 
 Jethart ax as we had seen them in the museum 
 at Kelso. I should never have dared to ask 
 her about anything, not even the time of day, 
 and, in truth, like many of the Scotch women, 
 she had a gift of impressive silence. All the 
 night I had a self-conscious feeling that some- 
 thing was going to happen in this town of Jed, 
 and in the morning when I met Mrs. Faa again 
 and her eyes rather than her voice challenged 
 me as to how I had slept, I should not have 
 dared admit that I slept with one eye open 
 lest I become one more of the permanent ghosts 
 of Jed. 
 
 The Abbey is, in its way, its individual way, 
 most interesting of the chief four of *'St. 
 David's piles." It is beautifully lodged, be- 
 side the Jed, near the stream, and the stream 
 more a part of its landscape; smooth-shaven 
 English lawns lie all about, a veritable ec- 
 clesiastical close. It is simpler than Melrose, 
 if the detail is not so marvelous, and there is 
 substantially more of it. The Norman tower 
 stands square ; if witches still dance on it they 
 choose their place for security. The long 
 walls of the nave suggest almost a restoration — 
 almost. 
 
 When the Abbey flourished, and when Alex- 
 ander III was king, he was wedded here (1285) 
 
64 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 to Joleta, daughter of the French Count de 
 Dreux. Always French and Scotch have felt 
 a kinship, and often expressed it in royal mar- 
 riage. The gray abbey walls, then a century 
 and a half old, must have looked curiously down 
 on this gay wedding throng which so possessed 
 the place, so dispossessed the monks, Austin 
 friars come from the abbey of St. Quentin at 
 Beauvais. 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of the dance, the King 
 reached out his hand to the maiden queen — 
 and Death, the specter, met him with skeleton 
 fingers. It may have been a pageant trick, it 
 may have been a too thoughtful monk; but the 
 thirteenth century was rich with superstition. 
 Six months later Alexander fell from his horse 
 on a stormy night on the Fife coast — and 
 the prophetic omen was remembered, or con- 
 structed. 
 
 The Abbey was newly in ruin when Mary 
 Queen rode down this way, only twenty-one 
 years after Hertford's hurtful raid. Court was 
 to be held here, the assizes of October, 1566, at 
 this Border town. For the Border had been 
 over-lively and was disputing the authority of 
 the Scottish queen as though it had no loyalty. 
 Bothwell had been sent down as Warden of the 
 Marches to quell the marauding free-booters. 
 
Border Towns 65 
 
 He had met with Little Jock Elliott, a Jethart 
 callant, a Border bandit, to whom we can for- 
 give much, because of the old ballad. 
 
 **My castle is aye my ain, 
 
 An' berried it never shall be; 
 For I maun fa' ere it's taen, 
 
 An' wha daur meddle wi' me"? 
 Wi' my knit in the rib o' my naig, 
 
 My sword hangin' doun by my knee, 
 For man I am never afraid, 
 An' wha daur meddle wi' me? 
 Wha daur meddle wi' me, 
 Wha daur meddle wi' me? 
 Oh, my name is little Jock Elliott, 
 An' wha daur meddle wi' me? 
 
 "I munt my gude naig wi' a will ' 
 
 When the fray's in the wind, an' he 
 Cocks his lugs as he tugs for the hill 
 
 That enters the south countrie. 
 Where pricking and spurring are rife, 
 
 And the bluid boils up like the sea. 
 But the Southrons gang doon i' the strife. 
 
 An' wha daur meddle wi' me?" 
 
 And perhaps we can forgive the reiver, since 
 he dealt a blow to Bothwell that those of us who 
 love Mary have longed to strike through the 
 long centuries. Bothwell took Elliott in cus- 
 tody, Elliott not suspecting that a Scot could 
 prove treacherous like a Southron, and was 
 carrying him to the Hermitage. Jock asked 
 
66 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 pleasantly what would be liis fate at the as- 
 size. 
 
 ' ' Gif ane assyises wald mak him clene, he was 
 hertlie contentit, but he behuvit to pas to the 
 Quenis grace." 
 
 This was little promise to little Jock Elliott. 
 He fled. Bothwell chased. Bothwell fired, 
 wounded Jock, overtook him, and Jock managed 
 to give Bothwell three vicious thrusts of his 
 skene dhu — '^Wha daur meddle wi' me!" — be- 
 fore Bothwell 's whinger drove death into little 
 Jock Elliott. 
 
 Bothwell, wounded, perhaps to death, so word 
 went up to Edinburgh, was carried to the 
 Hermitage. 
 
 Buchanan, the scandalous chronicler of the 
 time — there were such in Scotland, then, and 
 always for Mary — set down that ''when news 
 thereof was brought to Borthwick to the Queen, 
 she flingeth away in haste like a madwoman by 
 great journeys in post, in the sharp time of win- 
 ter, first to Melrose, and then to Jedworth. ' ' 
 
 It happened to be the crisp, lovely, truly Scot- 
 tish time, October, and Mary opened court at 
 Jedburgh October 9, presiding at the meetings 
 of the Privy Council, and then rode to the Her- 
 mitage October 16. She rode with an escort 
 which included the Earl of Moray, the Earl of 
 
Border Towns 67 
 
 Huntley, Mr. Secretary Lethington, and more 
 men of less note. For six days the girl queen 
 (Mary was only twenty-four in this year of the 
 birth of James, year before the death of Darn- 
 ley, the marriage with Bothwell, the imprison- 
 ment at Loch Leven) had been mewed to state 
 affairs, and a ride through the brown October 
 woods, thirty miles there and thirty miles back 
 again, must have lured the queen who was al- 
 ways keen for adventure, whether Bothwell was 
 the goal, or just adventure. 
 
 The mist of the morning turned to thick rain 
 by night, and the return ride was made in in- 
 creasing wet and darkness. Once, riding ahead 
 and alone and rapidly, the Queen strayed from 
 the trail, was bogged in a mire, known to-day as 
 the Queen's Mire, and rescued with difficulty. 
 
 Next day Mary lay sick at Jedburgh, a sick- 
 ness of thirty days, nigh unto death. News was 
 sent to Edinburgh, and bells were rung, and 
 prayers offered in St. Giles. On the ninth day 
 she lay unconscious, in this little town of Jed- 
 burgh, apparently dead, twenty years before 
 Fotheringay. ''Would God I had died at Jed- 
 burgh. ' ' 
 
 She did not die. Darnley visited her one day, 
 coming from Glasgow. Bothwell came as soon 
 as he could be moved, and the two made 
 
68 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 convalescence together in this old house of 
 Jedburgh, jDerhaps the happiest house of all 
 those where the legend of Mary persists. Even 
 to-day it has its charm. The windowed turret 
 looks out on the large fruit garden that stretches 
 down to the Jed, very like that very little tur- 
 ret of ''Queen Mary's Lookout" at Roscoff 
 where the child queen had landed in France less 
 than twenty years before. 
 
 Five years later, when Mary was in an Eng- 
 lish prison, a proclamation was read in her 
 name at the town cross of Jedburgh, the herald 
 was roughly handled by the Provost who re- 
 ceived his orders from England, and Buccleuch 
 and Ker of Fernihurst revenged themselves by 
 hanging ten loyal (!) citizens who stood with 
 the Provost. 
 
 Later, a century later, when at the town cross 
 the magistrates were drinking a health to the 
 new sovereign, a well-known Jacobite came by. 
 They insisted on his joining in the toast. And 
 he pledged — ''confusion to King William, and 
 the restitution of our sovereign and the heir!" 
 Bravo, the Borderers! 
 
Border Towns 69 
 
 Selkirk 
 
 The sentimental journeymen — with whom I 
 count myself openly — may hesitate to visit Yar- 
 row. It lies so near the Melrose country, and is 
 so much a part of that, in song and story, that 
 it would seem like leaving out the fragrance of 
 the region to omit Yarrow. And yet — . One 
 has read ''Yarrow Unvisited," one of the love- 
 liest of Wordsworth's poems. And one has 
 read ''Yarrow Visited." And the conclusion 
 is too easy that if the unvisitings and visitings 
 differ as much as the poems it surely were bet- 
 ter not to "turn aside to Yarrow," to accept 
 it as 
 
 "Enough if in our hearts we know 
 There's such a place as Yarrow. . . . 
 For when we're there although 'tis fair, 
 'Twill be another Yarrow." 
 
 There is peril at times in making a dream 
 come true, in translating the dream into reality, 
 in lifting the mists from the horizon of imagina- 
 tion. Should one hear an English skylark, an 
 Italian nightingale ? should one see Carcassonne, 
 should one visit Yarrow? 
 
 Ah, welladay. I have heard, I have seen. 
 
70 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Just at first, because no dream can ever quite 
 come true, not the dream of man in stone, or 
 of song in bird-throat, or even of nature in 
 trees and sky and hills, there is a disappoint- 
 ment. But after the reality these all slip away 
 into the misty half-remembered things, even 
 Carcassonne, even Yarrow ; the dream enriched 
 by the vision, the vision softened again into 
 dream. 
 
 And so, I will down into Yarrow. 
 
 Coaches run, or did before the war, and will 
 after the war, through the pleasant dales of 
 Yarrow and Moffat, dales which knew battles 
 long ago and old unhappy far off things, but 
 very silent now, too silent ; almost one longs for 
 a burst of Border warfare that the quiet may 
 be filled with fitting clamour. The coaches meet 
 at Tibbie Shiel's on St. Mary's and it is to 
 Tibbie's that you are bound, as were so many 
 gallant gentlemen, especially literary gentle- 
 men, before you. 
 
 Selkirk is the starting point. And Selkirk is 
 a very seemly, very prosperous town, looking 
 not at all like an ecclesiastic city, as it started 
 to be in the dear dead days of David the saint, 
 looking very much as a hill city in Italy will 
 look some day when Italy becomes entirely ** re- 
 deemed" and modern, and exists for itself in- 
 
Border Towns 71 
 
 stead of for the tourist. Selkirk is indifferent 
 to tourists, as indeed is every Scottish town; 
 Scotland and Scotsmen are capable of existing 
 for themselves. Selkirk hangs against the hill- 
 side above the Ettrick, and its show places are 
 few; the spot where Montrose lodged the night 
 before thQ defeat at Philipshaugh, the statue of 
 Scott when he was sheriff, ''shirra," the statue 
 of Mungo Park near where he was given his 
 medical training, and the home of Andrew 
 Lang. 
 
 There is no trace of the ''kirk o' the shiel- 
 ings, ' ' founded by the religious from lona, from 
 which by way of Scheleschyrche came Selkirk. 
 Nor is there trace of Davis's pile, ruined or un- 
 ruined, in this near, modern, whirring city. It 
 is the sound of the looms one remembers in Sel- 
 kirk, making that infinity of yards of Scotch 
 tweed to clothe the world. Selkirk and Gala- 
 shiels and Hawick form the Glasgow of the 
 Border. 
 
 Always industrious, in the time of Flodden 
 it was the ''souters of Selkirk" who marched 
 away to the Killing — 
 
 "Up wi' the Souters of Selkirk 
 And down wi' the Earl o' Home." 
 
 These same souters — shoemakers — were busy 
 in the time of Prince Charles Edward and con- 
 
72 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 traded to furnish two thousand pair of shoes 
 to his army ; but one does not inquire too closely 
 into whether they furnished any quota of the 
 four thousand feet to go therein. 
 
 It was a warm sunny day when I made my 
 pilgrimage up the Yarrow to St. Mary's. Al- 
 though Yarrow has always sung in my ears, I 
 think it was rather to see one sight that I came 
 for the first time to Scotland, to see 
 
 "The swan on still St. Mary's Lake 
 Float double, swan and shadow." 
 
 I rather think it was for this I had journeyed 
 across the Atlantic and up the East coast route. 
 Such a sentimental lure would I follow. But 
 then, if that seems wasteful and ridiculous ex- 
 cess of sentiment, let us be canny enough, Scotch 
 enough, to admit that one sees so many other 
 things, incidentally. 
 
 The "wan waters" of the Yarrow were shim- 
 mering, glimmering, in the morning light as I 
 coached out of Selkirk, and by Carterhaugh. 
 
 "I forbid ye, maidens a', 
 
 That wear gowd in your hair, 
 
 To come or gae by Carterhaugh ; 
 
 For young Tamlane is there." 
 
 These round-shouldered hills, once covered 
 with the Wood of Caledon, and the Forest of 
 
Border Towns 73 
 
 Ettrick, and the Forest of Yarrow, are very 
 clear and clean in their green lawns to-day, 
 scarce an ancient tree or a late descendant 
 standing; here and there only gnarled and de- 
 formed, out of the centuries, out of perhaps 
 that "derke forest" of James IV. His son, the 
 Fifth James, thought to subdue the Border and 
 increase his revenue by placing thousands of 
 sheep in this forest ; and these ruining the trees 
 have decreased the tourists' rightful revenue. 
 It is because of this absence of trees that one 
 is perhaps more conscious of the shining ribbon 
 of river; longer, clearer stretches may be seen 
 in the green plain : 
 
 "And is this — Yarrow'? This the stream 
 
 Of which my fancy cherished 
 So faithfully a waking dream? 
 
 An image that has perished ! 
 that some minstrel's harp were near 
 
 To utter notes of gladness, 
 And chase this silence from the air 
 
 That fills my heart with sadness!" 
 
 About Philipshaugh, two miles from Selkirk, 
 the trees are in something of large estate, with 
 oak and birch and fir and rowan, making dark 
 shadows in the fair morning, as the historically 
 minded traveler would fain have it. For it was 
 there that Montrose met defeat, his small band 
 against Leslie's many men. All about there lie 
 
74 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 legends of his fight and his flight across the 
 Minchmoor and on to the North. 
 
 And through here Scott loved to wander. 
 Here he let the Minstrel begin his Last Lay — 
 
 "He paused where Newark's stately Tower 
 Looks down from Yarrow's birchen bower." 
 
 And it was hither the Scotch poet came with 
 Wordsworth, as the English poet describes it — 
 
 "Once more by Newark's Castle gate 
 Long left without a warder, 
 I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee 
 Great Minstrel of the Border." 
 
 Nearby, and near the highways, is the de- 
 serted farm cottage, the birthplace of Mungo 
 Park, who traveled about the world even as you 
 and I, and I fancy his thought must often have 
 returned to the Yarrow. 
 
 The driver will point out the Trench of Wal- 
 lace, a redout a thousand feet long, on the 
 height to the North ; and here will come into the 
 Border memories of another defender of Scot- 
 land who seems rather to belong to the North 
 and West. 
 
 Soon we reach the Kirk of Yarrow, a very 
 austere *' reformed" looking basilica, dating 
 back to 1640, which was a reformed date, set 
 among pleasant gardens and thick verdure. 
 
Border Towns 75 
 
 Scott and Wordsworth and Hogg have wor- 
 shiped here, and from its ceiling the heraldic 
 devices of many Borderers speak a varied 
 history. 
 
 Crossing the bridge we are swiftly, unbe- 
 lievingly, on the Dowie Dens of Yarrow. 
 
 "Yestreen I dream'd a dolefu' dream; 
 I fear there will be sorrow ! 
 I dream'd I pu'd the heather green, 
 Wi' my true love on Yarrow. 
 
 "But in the glen strive armed men; 
 
 They've wrought me dole and sorrow; ^ 
 
 They've slain — the eomeliest knight they've slain — 
 He bleeding lies on Yarrow. 
 
 "She kiss'd his cheek, she kaim'd his hair, 
 She search'd his wounds all thorough; 
 She kiss'd them till her lips grew red, 
 On the dowie houms of Yarrow." 
 
 Then we come into the country of Joseph 
 Hogg. The farm where he was tenant and 
 failed, for Hogg was a shepherd and a poet, 
 which means a wanderer and a dreamer. And 
 soon to the Gordon Arms, a plain rambling ce- 
 ment structure, where Hogg and Scott met by 
 appointment and took their last walk together. 
 
 Hogg is the spirit of all the Ettrick place. 
 Can you not hear his skylark — "Bird of the 
 wilderness, blithesome and cumberless" — in 
 
76 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 that far blue sky above Altrive, where he died 
 — * ' Oh, to abide in the desert with thee ! ' * 
 
 And now the driver tells us we are at the 
 Douglass Glen, up there to the right lies the 
 shattered keep of the good Lord James Doug- 
 lass, the friend of Bruce. Here fell the 
 ''Douglass Tragedy," and the bridle path from 
 Yarrow to Tweed is still to be traced. 
 
 "0 they rade on and on they rade, 
 And a* by the light of the moon, 
 Until they came to yon wan water, 
 And there they lighted down." 
 
 St. Mary's 
 
 And soon we are at St. Mary's Loch — which 
 we have come to see. To one who comes from 
 a land of lakes, from the Land of the Sky Blue 
 Water, there must be at first a sudden rush of 
 disappointment. This is merely a lake, merely 
 a stretch of water. The hills about are all 
 barren, rising clear and round against the sky. 
 They fold and infold as though they would 
 shield the lake bereft of trees, as though they 
 would shut out the world. Here and there, but 
 very infrequent, is a cluster of trees; for the 
 most part it is water and sky and green heathery 
 
INTERIOR VIEW, TIBBIE SHIEL S INN. 
 
Border Towns 77 
 
 hills. The water is long and narrow, a small 
 lake as our American lakes go, three miles by 
 one mile ; but large as it looms in romance, rich 
 as it bulks in poetry. 
 
 Tibbie Shiel's is, of course, our goal. One 
 says Tibbie Shiel's, as one says Ritz-Carlton, 
 or the William the Conqueror at Dives. For 
 this is the most celebrated inn in all Scotland, 
 and it must be placed with the celebrated inns 
 of the world. There is no countryside better 
 sung than this which lies about St. Mary's, and 
 no inn, certainly not anywhere a country inn, 
 where more famous men have foregathered to 
 be themselves. Perhaps the place has changed 
 since the most famous, the little famed days, 
 when Scott stopped here after a day's hunting, 
 deer or Border song and story, up Meggatdale ; 
 and those famous nights of Christopher North 
 and the Ettrick shepherd, nights deserving to 
 be as famous as the Arabian or Parisian or 
 London. The world has found it out, and times 
 have changed, as a local poet complains — 
 
 "Sin a' the world maun gang 
 And picnic at St. Mary's." 
 
 The inn, a rambling white house, stands on 
 a strip between two waters, added to no doubt 
 since Tibbie first opened its doors, but the 
 
78 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 closed beds are still there — ^it was curious 
 enough to see them the very summer that the 
 Graham Moffatts played ''Bunty" and ''The 
 Closed Bed" — and the brasses which Tibbie 
 polished with such housewifely care. 
 
 For Tibbie was a maid in the household of 
 the Ettrick shepherd's mother. She married, 
 she had children, she came here to live. Then 
 her husband died, and quite accidentally Tibbie 
 became hostess to travelers, nearly a hundred 
 years ago. For fifty-four years Tibbie herself 
 ran this inn ; she died in what is so short a time 
 gone, as Scottish history goes, in 1878. 
 
 During that time hosts of travelers, particu- 
 larly, wandered through the Border, came to 
 this ** wren's nest" as North called it. Hogg, 
 of course, was most familiar, and here he wished 
 to have a ''bit monument to his memory in some 
 quiet spot forninst Tibbie's dwelling." He sits 
 there, in free stone, somewhat heavily, a shep- 
 herd's staff in his right hand, and in his left 
 a scroll carrying the last line from the "Queen's 
 Wake" — "Hath tayen the wandering winds to 
 sing. ' ' 
 
 Edward Irving, walking from Kirkcaldy to 
 Annan, was here the first year after Tibbie 
 opened her doors so shyly. Carlyle, walking 
 from Ecclefechan to Edinburgh, in his student 
 
Border Towns 79 
 
 days, caught his first glimpse of Yarrow from 
 here — and slept, may it be, in one of these closed 
 beds? Gladstone was here in the early '40 's 
 during a Midlothian campaign. Dr. John 
 Brown — ''Rab" — came later, and even R. L. S. 
 knew the hospitality of Tibbie Shiel's when 
 Tibbie was still hostess. 
 
 It is a long list and a brave one. In this very 
 dining-room they ate simply and abundantly, 
 after the day's work; in this ** parlour" they 
 continued their talk. And surely St. Mary's 
 Lake was the same. 
 
 Down on the shore there stands a group of 
 trees, not fir trees, though these are most native 
 here. And here we loafed the afternoon away 
 — for fortunately we were the only ones who 
 ** picnic at St. Mary's." There were the gen- 
 tleman and his wife whom we took for journal- 
 istic folk, they were so worldly and so intelli- 
 gent and discussed the world and the possibili- 
 ties of world-war — that was several years 
 ago — until at the Kirk of Yarrow the local min- 
 ister, Dr. Borlund, uncovered this minister, 
 James Thomson, from Paisley. If all the 
 clergy of Scotland should become as these, aus- 
 terity of reform would go and the glow of cul- 
 ture would come. 
 
 We all knew our history and our poetry of 
 
80 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 this region, but none so well as the minister. 
 It was he who recited from Marmion that de- 
 scription which is still so accurate — 
 
 "By lone St. Mary's silent Lake; 
 Thou know'st it well — nor fen nor sedge 
 Pollute the clear lake's crystal edge; 
 Abrupt and sheer the mountains sink 
 At once upon the level brink; 
 And just a trace of silver strand 
 Marks where the water meets the land. 
 Far in the mirror, bright and blue, 
 Each hill's huge outline you may view; 
 Shaggy with heath, but lonely, bare. 
 Nor tree nor bush nor brake is there, 
 Save where of land, yon silver line 
 Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine. 
 Tet even this nakedness has power. 
 And aids the feelings of the hour; 
 Nor thicket, dell nor copse you spy, 
 Where living thing eonceal'd might lie; 
 Not point, retiring, hides a dell 
 Where swain, or woodman lone might dwell; 
 There's nothing left to fancy's guess, 
 You see that all is loneliness; 
 And silence aids — though the steep hills 
 Send to the lake a thousand rills; 
 In summer time, so soft they weep. 
 The sound but lulls the ear asleep; 
 Your horse's hoof -tread sounds too rude, 
 So stilly is the solitude." 
 
 Across the water is the old graveyard of van- 
 ished St. Mary's kirk. And it was the low- 
 
Border Towns 81 
 
 voiced minister's wife — a Babbie a little re- 
 moved — who knew 
 
 "What boon to lie, as now I lie, 
 
 And see in silver at my feet 
 St. Mary's Lake, as if the sky 
 Had fallen 'tween those hills so sweet, 
 And this old churchyard on the hill, 
 
 That keeps the green graves of the dead, 
 So calm and sweet, so lone and wild still, 
 
 And but the blue sky overhead." 
 
 We sat in the silences, the still silent after- 
 noon, conscious of the folk verse that goes — 
 
 "St. Mary's Loch lies shimmering still, 
 But St. Mary's kirkbell's lang dune ringing." 
 
 Suddenly, over the far rim of the water, my 
 eye caught something white, and then another, 
 and another. And I knew well that were I but 
 nearer, as imagination knew was unnecessary, 
 I might see the swan on still St. Mary's Lake, 
 and their shadow breaking in the water. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EMPRESS OF THE NORTH 
 
 SUPPOSE the Scotsman who has been 
 born in Edinburgh may have a pardon- 
 able reluctance in praising the town, may 
 hesitate in appraising it ; Stevenson did ; Scott 
 did not. And I suppose if one cannot trace his 
 ancestry back to Edinburgh, or nearly there, 
 but must choose some of the other capitals of 
 the world as his ancestral city, one might be- 
 grudge estate to Edinburgh. 
 
 I have none of these hesitations, am ham- 
 pered by none of these half and half ways. Be- 
 ing an American, with half a dozen European 
 capitals to choose from if I must, and having 
 been born in an American capital which is 
 among the loveliest — I think the loveliest — ^I 
 dare choose Edinburgh as my dream city. I 
 dare fling away my other capital claims, and 
 all modification, ever Scotch moderation, to de- 
 clare without an *'I think" or "they say," Ed- 
 inburgh is the most beautiful, the most roman- 
 tic, the singular city of the world. 
 
 82 
 
The Empress of the North 83 
 
 Those wlio come out of many generations of 
 migration grow accustomed to choosing their 
 quarter of the world ; they have come from many 
 countries and through nomadic ancestors for 
 a century, or two, or three. And perhaps they, 
 themselves, have migrated from one state to 
 another, one city to another. Every American 
 has had these phases, has suffered the sea 
 change and the land. Surely then he may adopt 
 his ancestral capital, as correctly as he adopts 
 his present political capital. 
 
 It shall be Edinburgh. And while Constan- 
 tinople and Rio and Yokohama may be splelidid 
 for situation, they have always something of 
 foreign about them, they can never seem to 
 touch our own proper romance, to have been 
 the setting for our play. Edinburgh is as 
 lovely, and then, the chalice of romance has been 
 lifted for centuries on the high altar of her 
 situation. 
 
 Edinburgh is a small city, as modern cities 
 go; but I presume it has many thousands of 
 population, hundreds of thousands. If it were 
 Glasgow numbers would be important, fixative. 
 But Edinburgh has had such a population 
 through the centuries that to cast its total with 
 only that of the souls now living within her 
 precincts were to leave out of the picture those 
 
84 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 shadowy and yet brilliant, ever present genera- 
 tions, who seem all to jostle each other on her 
 High street, without respect to generations, if 
 there is very decided respect of simple toward 
 gentle. 
 
 Edinburgh is, curiously, significantly, di- 
 vided and scarce united, into Old Town and 
 New Town. And yet, the Old Town with its 
 ancient lands so marvelously like modern tene- 
 ments, and its poverty which is of no date and 
 therefore no responsibility of ours, is neither 
 dead nor deserted, and is still fully one-half 
 the town. While New Town, looking ever up 
 to the old, looking across the stretch to Leith, 
 and to the sea whence came so much threaten- 
 ing in the old days, and with its memories of 
 Hume and Scott who are ancient, and of Steven- 
 son, who, in spite of his immortal youth, does 
 begin to belong to another generation than ours 
 — New Town also, to a new American, is some- 
 thing old. It has all become Edinburgh, two 
 perfect halves of a whole which is not less per- 
 fect for the imperfect uniting. 
 
 There is no city which can be so ' ' observed. ' ' 
 I venture that when you have stood on Castle 
 Hill — on the High Street with its narrow open- 
 ing between the lands framing near and far 
 pictures — on Calton Hill — when you have been 
 
The Empress of the North 85 
 
 able to ''rest and be thankful" at Corstorpliine 
 Hill — when you have climbed the Salisbury 
 crags — when you have mounted to Arthur's 
 Seat and looked down as did King Arthur be- 
 fore there was an Edinburgh — you will believe 
 that not any slightest corner but fills the eye 
 and soul. 
 
 There is, of course, no single object in Edin- 
 burgh to compare with objects of traveler's in- 
 terest farther south. The castle is not the 
 Tower, Holyrood is a memory beside Windsor, 
 St. Giles is no Canterbury, St. Mary's is not St. 
 Paul's, the Royal Scottish art gallery is meager 
 indeed, notwithstanding certain rare riches in 
 comparison with the National. But still one 
 may believe of any of these superior objects, as 
 T. Sandys retorted to Shovel when they had 
 played the game of matching the splendours of 
 Thrums with those of London and Shovel had 
 named Saint Paul's, and Tommy's list of na- 
 tive wonders was exhausted, but never Tommy 
 — **it would like to be in Thrums!" All these 
 lesser glories go to make up the singular glory 
 which is Edinburgh. 
 
86 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 The Castle 
 
 And there is the castle. Nowhere in all the 
 world is castle more strategically set to guard 
 the city and to guard the memories of the city 
 and the beauty. 
 
 For the castle is Edinburgh. It stood there, 
 stalwart in the plain, thousands and thousands 
 of years ago, this castle hill which invited a 
 castle as soon as man began to fortify himself. 
 It has stood here a thousand years as the bul- 
 wark of man against man. Certain it will stand 
 there a thousand years to come. And after — 
 after man has destroyed and been destroyed, or 
 when he determines that like night and the sea 
 there shall be no more destruction. Castle Hill 
 is immortal. 
 
 Always it has been the resort of kings and 
 princes. First it was the keep of princesses, 
 far back in Pictish days before Christian time, 
 this "Castell of the Maydens." From 987 b. c. 
 down to 1566, when Mary was lodged here for 
 safe keeping in order that James might be born 
 safe and royal, the castle has had royalties in 
 its keeping. It has kept them rather badly in 
 truth. While many kings have been born here. 
 
The Empress of the North 87 
 
 few kings have died in its security; almost all 
 Scottish kings have died tragically, almost all 
 Scottish kings have died young, and left their 
 kingdom to some small prince whose regents 
 held him in this castle for personal security, 
 while they governed the realm, always to its 
 disaster. 
 
 There is not one of the Stewart kings, one of 
 the Jameses, from First to Sixth, who did not 
 come into the heritage of the kingdom as a baby, 
 a youth; even the Fourth, who rebelled against 
 his father and won the kingdom — and wore a 
 chain around his body secretly for penance. 
 And these baby kings and stripling princes 
 have been lodged in the castle for safe keeping, 
 prologues to the swelling act of the imperial 
 theme. 
 
 History which attempts to be exact begins 
 the castle in the seventh century, when Edwin 
 of Deira fortified the place and called it Ed- 
 win's burgh. It was held by Malcolm Can- 
 more, of whom and of his Saxon queen Mar- 
 garet, Dunfermline tells a fuller story; held 
 against rebels and against English, until Mal- 
 colm fell at Alnwick, and Margaret, dead at 
 hearing the news, was carried secretly out of 
 the castle by her devoted and kingly sons. 
 
 After Edward I took the castle, for half a 
 
The Spell of Scotland 
 
 century it was variously held by the English 
 as a Border fortress. Once Bruce retook it, a 
 stealthy night assault, up the cliffs of the west, 
 and The Bruce razed it. Rebuilt by tha Third 
 Edward, it was taken from this king by a clever 
 ruse planned by the Douglass, Black Knight of 
 Liddesdale. A shipload of wine and biscuits 
 came into harbour, and the unsuspecting castel- 
 lan, glad to get such precious food in the far 
 north, purchased it all and granted delivery 
 at dawn next morning. The first cart load up- 
 set under the portcullis, the gate could not 
 be closed, the cry ''A Douglass," was raised, 
 and the castle entered into Scottish keeping, 
 never to be ''English" again until the Act of 
 Union. 
 
 Henry IV and Richard II attempted it, but 
 failed. Richard III entered it as friend. For 
 three years it was held for Mary by Kirkcaldy, 
 while the city was disloyal. Charles I held it 
 longer than he held England, and Cromwell 
 claimed it in person as part of the Protectorate. 
 Prince Charles, the Third, could not take it, 
 contented himself with the less castellated, more 
 palatial joys, of Holyrood; a preference he 
 shared with his greatest grandmother. 
 
 To-day perhaps its defense might be bat- 
 tered down, as some one has suggested, ''from 
 
The Empress of the North 89 
 
 the Firth by a Japanese cruiser. ' ' But it looks 
 like a Gibraltar, and it keeps impregnably the 
 treasures of the past; as necessary a defense, 
 I take it, as of any material treasure of the 
 present. 
 
 If you are a king you must wait to enter ; sum- 
 mons must be made to the Warder, and it must 
 be certain you are the king; even Edward VII, 
 most Stewart of recent kings had to prove him- 
 self not Edward I, not English, but ''Union." 
 If you are a commoner you know no such diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 First you linger on the broad Esplanade 
 where a regiment in kilts is drilling, perhaps 
 the Black Watch, the Scots Greys. No doubt 
 of late it has been tramped by regiments of the 
 "First Hundred Thousand" and later, in train- 
 ing for the wars. 
 
 As an American you linger here in longer 
 memory. For when Charles was king — the 
 phrase sounds recent to one who is eternally 
 Jacobite — this level space was a part of Nova 
 Scotia, and the Scotsmen who were made nobles 
 with estates in New Scotland were enfeoffed on 
 this very ground. So close were the relations 
 between old and new, so indifferent were the 
 men of adventuring times toward space. 
 
 Or, you linger here to recall when Cromwell 
 
90 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 was burned in effigy, along with ' ' Ms friend the 
 Devil." 
 
 You pass through the gate, where no wine 
 casks block the descent of the portcullis, and 
 the castle is entered. There are three or four 
 points of particular interest. 
 
 Queen Margaret's chapel, the oldest and 
 smallest religious house in Scotland, a tiny place 
 indeed, where Margaret was praying when word 
 was brought of the death of Malcolm in battle, 
 and she, loyal and royal soul, died the very 
 night while the enemies from the Highlands, 
 like an army of Macbeth 's, surrounded the 
 castle. The place is quite authentic, Saxon in 
 character with Norman touches. I know no 
 place where a thousand years can be so swept 
 away, and Saxon Margaret herself seems to 
 kneel in the perpetual dim twilight before the 
 chancel. 
 
 There is Mons Meg, a monstrous gun indeed, 
 pointing its mouth toward the Forth, as though 
 it were the guardian of Scotland. A very pre- 
 tentious gun, which was forged for James II, 
 traveled to the sieges of Dumbarton and of Nor- 
 ham, lifted voice in salute to Mary in France on 
 her marriage to the Dauphin, was captured by 
 Cromwell and listed as ''the great iron mur- 
 derer, Muckle Meg," and ''split its throat" in 
 
The Empress of the North 91 
 
 saluting the Duke of York in 1682, a most 
 Jacobite act of loyalty. After the Rising of 
 the Forty Five this gun was taken to London, 
 as though to take it from Scotland were to take 
 the defense from Jacobitism. But Sir Walter 
 Scott, restoring Scotland, and being in much 
 favour with George IV, secured the return of 
 Mons Meg. It was as though a prince of the 
 realm has returned. Now, the great gun, large 
 enough to shoot men for ammunition, looks, 
 silently but sinisterly, out over the North Sea. 
 
 History comes crowding its events in memory 
 when one enters Old Parliament Hall. It is 
 fitly ancestral, a noble hall with an open tim- 
 bered roof of great dignity, with a collection 
 of armour and equipment that particularly re- 
 equips the past. And in this hall, under this 
 roof, what splendour, what crime ! Most crim- 
 inal, the *' black dinner" given to the Black 
 Douglasses to their death. Unless one should 
 resent the dinner given by Leslie to Crom- 
 well, when there was no black bull's head 
 served. 
 
 By a secret stair, which commoners and Ja- 
 cobites may use to-day, communication was had 
 with the Royal Lodgings, and often must Queen 
 Mary have gone up and down those stairs, 
 carrying the tumult of her heart, the perplexity 
 
92 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 of her kingdom ; for Mary was both woman and 
 sovereign. 
 
 The Royal Lodgings contain Queen Mary's 
 Rooms, chiefly; the other rooms are negligible. 
 It is a tiny bedchamber, too small to house the 
 eager soul of Mary, but very well spaced for 
 the niggard soul of James. One merely ac- 
 cepts historically the presence of Mary here; 
 there is too much intertwining of ^'H" and 
 ''M." No Jacobite but divorces Darnley from 
 Mary, even though he would not effect divorce 
 with gunpowder. King James I, when he re- 
 turned fourteen years after to the place where 
 he was VI, made a pilgrimage to his own birth- 
 room on June 19, 1617. I suppose he found the 
 narrow space like unto the Majesty that doth 
 hedge a king. 
 
 Mary must have beat her heart against these 
 walls as an eagle beats wings against his cage. 
 She never loved the place. Who could love it 
 who must live in it? It was royally hung; 
 she made it fit for living, with carpets from 
 Turkey, chairs and tables from France, gold 
 hangings that were truly gold for the bed, and 
 many tapestries with which to shut out the 
 cold — eight pictures of the Judgment of Paris ; 
 four pictures of the Triumph of Virtue ! 
 
 Here she kept her library, one hundred and 
 
The Empress of the North 93 
 
 fifty-three precious volumes — where are they 
 now? "The Queen readeth daily after her din- 
 ner," wrote Randolph, English envoy, to his 
 queen, "instructed by a learned man, Mr. 
 George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." 
 
 And I wondered if here she wrote that 
 Prayer which but the other day I came upon in 
 the bookshop of James Thin, copied into a book 
 of a hundred years back, in a handwriting that 
 has something of Queen Mary's quality in it — 
 
 "0 Domine Deus ! 
 
 Speravi in te; '' 
 
 care mi lesu ! 
 
 Nunc libera me: 
 
 In dura catena, 
 
 In misera poena 
 
 Desidero te; 
 
 Langnendo, gemendo, 
 
 Et genuflectendo 
 
 Adoro, imploro, 
 
 Ut liberes me!" 
 
 Her windows looked down across the city 
 toward Holyrood. Almost she must have heard 
 John Knox thunder in the pulpit of St. Giles, 
 and thunder against her. And, directly be- 
 neath far down she saw the Grassmarket. 
 Sometimes it flashed with gay tournament folk ; 
 for before and during Mary's time all the world 
 came to measure lances in Edinburgh. Some- 
 
94 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 times it swarmed with folk come to watch an 
 execution ; in the next century it was filled in the 
 ''Killing Time," with Covenanter mob applaud- 
 ing the execution of Eoyalists, with Royalist 
 mob applauding the execution of Covenanters; 
 Mary's time was not the one "to glorify God in 
 the Grassmarket. " 
 
 At the top of the market, near where the West 
 Bow leads up to the castle, was the house of 
 Claverhouse, who watched the killings. At the 
 bottom of the market was the West Port 
 through which Bonnie Dundee rode away. 
 
 "To the Lords of Convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke, 
 Ere the king's crown go down there are crowns to be broke, 
 So each cavalier who loves honour and me. 
 Let him follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee. 
 Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, 
 Come saddle my horses and call up my men, 
 Fling all your gates open, and let me gae free, 
 For 'tis up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee." 
 
 And to-day, but especially on Saturday 
 nights, if you care to take your life, or your 
 peace in hand, you can join a strange and rather 
 awful multitude as it swarms through the Grass- 
 market, more and more drunken as midnight 
 comes on, and not less or more drunken than 
 the mob which hanged Captain Porteous. 
 
 It is a decided relief to look down and find 
 
The Empress of the North 95 
 
 the White Hart Inn, still an inn, where Doro- 
 thy and William Wordsworth lodged, on Thurs- 
 day night, September 15, 1803 — ''It was not 
 noisy, and tolerably cheap. Drank tea, and 
 walked up to the Castle. ' ' 
 
 The Cowgate was a fashionable suburb in 
 Mary's time. A canon of St. Andrews wrote 
 in 1530, * ' nothing is humble or lowly, everything 
 magnificent. ' ' On a certain golden gray after- 
 noon I had climbed to Arthur's Seat to see the 
 city through the veil of mist — 
 
 "I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn 
 On Lammermuir. Harkening I heard again 
 In my precipitous city beaten bells 
 Winnow the keen sea wind." 
 
 It was late, gathering dusk and rain, when 
 I reached the level and thinking to make a short 
 cut — this was once the short cut to St. Cuth- 
 bert's from Holyrood — I ventured into the Cow- 
 gate, and wondered at my own temerity. Ste- 
 venson reports, "One night I went along the 
 Cowgate after every one was a-bed but the po- 
 liceman." Well, if Scott liked to *'put a 
 cocked hat on a story," Stevenson liked to put 
 it on his own adventures. The Cowgate, in 
 dusk rain, is adventure enough. 
 
 Across the height lies Greyfriar's. The 
 church is negligible, the view from there superb, 
 
96 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the place historic. One year after Jenny Ged- 
 des threw her stool in St. Giles and started 
 the Reformation — doesn't it sound like Mrs. 
 O'Leary's cow? — the Covenant was signed 
 (Feb. 28, 1638) on top of a tomb still shown, 
 hundreds pressing to the signing, some signing 
 with their blood. The Reformation was on, not 
 to be stopped until all Scotland was harried and 
 remade. 
 
 I like best to think that in this churchyard, 
 on a rainy Sunday, Scott met a charming girl, 
 fell in love with her, took her home under his 
 umbrella, and, did not marry her — his own ro- 
 mance ! 
 
 Because no king shall ever wear the crown 
 again, nor wave the scepter, nor wield the sword 
 of state, the Regalia, housed in the Crown 
 Room, and guarded from commoner and king 
 by massive iron grating, is more interesting 
 than any other appanage of royalty in the 
 world. The crown which was worn by Bruce, 
 and which sat rather uneasily on the very un- 
 steady head of Charles II at what time he was 
 crowned at Scone and was scolded, is of pure 
 gold and much bejeweled. The scepter, made in 
 Paris for James V, carries a beryl, come from 
 Egypt three thousand years ago, or, from a 
 Druid priest in the mist of time. The sword 
 
The Empress of the North 97 
 
 was a gift from Pope Julius to James IV; in 
 those days the Scottish sovereign was surely 
 the ''Most Catholic Majesty." 
 
 England has no ancient regalia; hers were 
 thrown into the melting pot by Cromwell. The 
 Protector — and Destructor — would fain have 
 grasped these "Honours," but they were spir- 
 ited away, and later concealed in the castle. 
 Here they remained a hundred and ten years, 
 sealed in a great oak chest. The rumour in- 
 creased that they had gone to England. And 
 finally Sir Walter Scott secured an order from 
 George IV to open the chest (Feb. 4, 1818). 
 
 It was a tremendous moment to Scott. Could 
 he restore the Honours as well as the country? 
 There they lay, crown of The Bruce, scepter of 
 James V, sword of Pope and King. The castle 
 guns thundered — how Mons Meg must have 
 regretted her lost voice! 
 
 And still we can hear the voice of Scott, when 
 a commissioner playfully lifted the crown as if 
 to place it on the head of a young lady near — 
 **No, by God, no!" Never again shall this 
 crown rest on any head. That is assured in a 
 codicil to the Act of Union. And — it may be 
 that other crowns shall in like manner gain a 
 significance when they no longer rest on un- 
 easy heads. 
 
98 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 The view from the King's bastion is royal. 
 Where is there its superior ? And only its rival 
 from Calton Hill, from Arthur's Seat. The 
 Gardens lie below, the New Town spreads out, 
 the city runs down to Leith, the Firth shines 
 and carries on its bosom the Inchkeith and the 
 May; the hills of Fife rampart the North; the 
 Highlands with Ben Lomond for sentinel form 
 the purple West ; and south are the Braid hills 
 and the heathery Pentlands — the guide has 
 pointed through a gap in the castle wall to the 
 hills and to the cottage at Swanston. 
 
 "City of mists and rain and blown gray spaces, 
 
 Dashed with the wild wet colour and gleam of tears, 
 Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the passionate faces 
 
 Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years. 
 Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places 9 
 
 Cometh there not as a moon (where blood-rust sears 
 Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces) 
 
 Gilding a ghostly Queen thro' the mist of tears'? 
 
 "Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendour 
 
 Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain 
 Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render 
 
 Silent the gazer on glory without a stain ! 
 Here and here, do we whisper with hearts more tender, 
 
 Tusitala wandered thro' mist and rain; 
 Rainbow-eyes and frail and gallant and slender, 
 
 Dreaming of pirate isles in a jeweled main. 
 
 "Up the Canongate elimbeth, cleft a-sunder 
 
 Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea, 
 
The Empress of the North 99 
 
 Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder, 
 
 Nay, for the City is throned in Eternity ! 
 Hark ! from the soaring castle a cannon's, thunder 
 
 Closeth an hour for the world and an aeon for me, 
 Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder 
 
 Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea." 
 
 High Street 
 
 If the Baedeker with a cautious reservation, 
 declares Princes Street "Perhaps" the hand- 
 somest in Europe, there is no reservation in the 
 guide-book report of Taylor, the "Water Poet," 
 who wrote of the High Street in the early Six-, 
 teen Hundreds, "the fairest and goodliest 
 streete that ever my eyes beheld." Surely it 
 was then the most impressive street in the 
 world. "Who can escape a sharp impression 
 to-day? It was then the most curious street 
 in the world, and it has lost none of its power 
 to evoke wonder. 
 
 A causeway between the castle and Holyrood, 
 a steep ridge lying between the Nor' Loch 
 (where now are the Princes' Gardens) and the 
 Sou' Loch (where now are the Meadows, sub- 
 urban dwelling) the old height offered the first 
 refuge to those who would fain live under the 
 shadow of the castle. As the castle became 
 
100 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 more and more the center of the kingdom, dwell- 
 ing under its shadow became more and more im- 
 portant, if not secure. The mightiest lords of 
 the kingdom built themselves town houses along 
 the causeway. French influence was always 
 strong, and particularly in architecture. So 
 these tall lands rose on either side of the long 
 street, their high, many-storied fronts on the 
 High Street, their many more storied backs to- 
 ward the Lochs. They were, in truth, part of 
 the defense of the town; from their tall stories 
 the enemy, especially the *'auld enemy," could 
 be espied almost as soon as from the castle. 
 And the closes, the wynds, those dark tortuous 
 alleys which lead between, and which to-day in 
 their squalor are the most picturesque corners 
 of all Europe, were in themselves means of de- 
 fense in the old days when cannon were as often 
 of leather as of iron, and guns were new and 
 were little more reaching than arrows, and 
 bludgeons and skene dhus and fists were the 
 final effective weapon when assault was in- 
 tended to the city. 
 
 The ridge divides itself into the Lawnmarket, 
 the High Street, and the Canongate; St. Giles 
 uniting the first two, and the Netherbow port, 
 now removed, dividing the last two. 
 
 The Lawnmarket in the old days was near- 
 
The Empress of the North 101 
 
 roj^al, and within its houses the great nobles 
 lodged, and royalty was often a guest, or a 
 secret guest. The High Street was the busi- 
 ness street, centering the life of the city, its 
 trade, its feuds — "a la maniere d'Edimborg" 
 ran the continental saying of fights — its re- 
 ligion, its executions, its burials. The Canon- 
 gate, outside the city proper and outside the 
 Flodden wall and within the precincts of Holy- 
 rood, therefore regarded as under the protec- 
 tion of Holy Church, became the aristocratic 
 quarters of the later Stewarts, of the wealthy 
 nobles of the later day. 
 
 I suppose one may spend a lifetime in Edin- 
 burgh, with frequent days in the Old Town, wan- 
 dering the High Street, with the eye never 
 wearying, always discovering the new. And I 
 suppose it would take a lifetime, born in Old 
 Town and of Old Town, to really know the quar- 
 ter. I am not certain I should care to spend a 
 lifetime here ; but I have never and shall never 
 spend sufficient of this life here. It is un- 
 savoury of course; it is slattern, it is squalid, 
 danger lurks in the wynds and drunkenness 
 spreads itself in the closes. If the old warning 
 cry of ' * Gardey loo ! " is no longer heard at ten 
 o ' the night, one still has need of the answering 
 "Haud yer hand!" or, your nose. Dr. Samuel 
 
102 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Johnson, walking this street on his first night 
 in Edinburgh, arm in arm with Boswell, de- 
 clared, '*I can smell you in the dark!" No 
 sensitive visitor will fail to echo him to-day. 
 There are drains and sewers, there is modern 
 sanitation in old Edinburgh. But the habits 
 of the centuries are not easily overcome; and 
 the Old Town still smells as though with all the 
 old aroma of the far years. Still, it is high, it 
 is wind-swept — and what of Venice, what of the 
 Latin Quarter, what of Mile End, what of the 
 East Side? 
 
 But there is still splendour and power, be- 
 queathed as Taylor said, ''from antiquitie to 
 posteritie," in spite of the decline and the de- 
 cay. If the palace of Mary of Lorraine on 
 Castle Hill is fallen and the doorways are in 
 the Museum — Mary who was mother to Mary 
 Queen, and contemporary worthy to Catherine 
 of Medici — there are still, at the end of the long 
 street, Moray House and Queensberry House. 
 Moray is where Cromwell lodged in 1648, and 
 gave no hint of what was coming in 1649 ; if he 
 had, history might have been different; to-day 
 Moray House is the United Free Church Train- 
 ing college ! Queensberry House is where lived 
 those Queensberry marquises of fighting and 
 sporting renown, and where the Marquis lived 
 
The Empress of the North 103 
 
 who forced through the Act of Union — "There 
 ended an old song"; and now it is the Eefuge 
 for the Destitute ! 
 
 There is still beauty shining through the dust 
 and the cobwebs ; here a doorway with bold in- 
 signia and exquisite carving, leading to — no- 
 where; here a bit of painting, Norrie's perhaps, 
 or a remnant of timbered ceiling; and every- 
 where, now as then — ^more now than then, since 
 sanitary destruction has had its way here and 
 there — glimpses of the city and the moors and 
 the mountains. 
 
 It is invidious to compare, to choose from 
 these closes. Each has its history, its old habi- 
 tations, its old associations, its particular pic- 
 turesqueness ; Lady Stair's, Baxter's, Byer's, 
 Old Stamp Office, White Horse, and many 
 more. 
 
 Through this street what glory that was Scot- 
 land has not passed and what degradation, 
 what power has not been displayed and what 
 abasement? To see it now, filled with people 
 and with marching troops in honour of the vis- 
 iting king, is to get back a little of ancient his- 
 tory, of greater glory. It lends itself to such 
 majesty, dull and deserted as it is for the most 
 part. 
 
 When the King came to Edinburgh following 
 
104 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 on liis coronation, making a pilgrimage of his 
 realm, lie came to St. Giles, as has come every 
 sovereign of Scotland, from Malcolm who may 
 have worshiped in the Cnldee church, to 
 George in whose honour the chapel of the 
 Thistle and the Eose was unveiled. 
 
 "For noo, unfaithfu' to the Lord 
 Auld Scotland joins the rebel horde; 
 Her human hymn-books on the board 
 
 She noo displays, 
 An' Embro Hie Kirk's been restored 
 
 In popish ways." 
 
 On a Sunday morning I hurried to St. Giles 
 to see the trooping of the colours. (Later, lis- 
 tening to Dr. White, in a recently built reformed 
 church on Princes Street, I heard a sermon from 
 the text, **You shall see the king in all his 
 beauty." But, no mention of King George! 
 It was even as it was in the old days.) 
 
 In truth it was a brave sight to find the High 
 Street thronged with people, and the regiments 
 marching down from St. Giles to Holyrood. 
 The king did not enter town till next day. (I 
 saw, with some resentment, over the door of a 
 public house, the motto, **Will ye no come back 
 again?") But, somehow, so many kings gone 
 on, the play was rather better staged with the 
 sovereign not there. I learned then how gor- 
 
The Empress of the North 105 
 
 geous the old days, must have been with their 
 colour and glitter and flash. 
 
 I suppose there was a tall land where in my 
 day stood and still stands Hogg's hotel, just 
 above the Tron Kirk; the lands on the south 
 side the High burned a century ago. But, to 
 the American gazing down on ancient memories 
 and present sovereignties, there was a wonder- 
 ful courtesy shown by the hotel. I had inter- 
 rupted their quiet Sabbath ; it can still be quiet 
 in Edinburgh notwithstanding that a tram car 
 carried me on my way hither. The dining- 
 room of this hotel looked out on the High, and 
 it was breakfast time for these covenanting- 
 looking guests from the countryside. But I, 
 an invader, was made welcome and given the 
 best seat on the balcony; a stranger and they 
 took me in. Sometime I shall take up residence 
 in this Latin Quarter, and if not in Lady Stair's 
 Close, then in Hogg's hotel. The name sounds 
 sweeter if you have just come up from Ettrick. 
 
 Nor did I miss the King. For 
 
 "I saw pale kings, and princes too, 
 
 Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
 Who cry'd — 'La Belle Dame sans merei 
 Hath thee in thrall !' " 
 
 It was the Belle Dame, it was the Queen, I 
 saw most often on the High Street, riding to 
 
106 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 and fro from the time of the "haar" on her re- 
 turn from France, till that last terrible night 
 and the ride to Loch Leven. 
 
 After that you may visit the John Knox 
 house if you will, and read for your edification 
 its motto. *'Lyfe God aboune al and yi nicht- 
 bour as yi Self," and buy a book or two in its 
 book shop. I took particular pleasure in buy- 
 ing a girlish picture of Mary Queen, and a book 
 of the poems of Robert Fergusson, neither of 
 which would have pleasured John. 
 
 After that you may look at the * ' I. K. " in the 
 pavement, and realize that Dr. Johnson's wish 
 for Knox has been fulfilled — '*! hope in the 
 highway. ' ' 
 
 After that you may look on the heart stamped 
 in the pavement near St. Giles, where once 
 stood the Heart of Midlothian, the Old Tol- 
 booth. 
 
 There is only one other memory of High 
 Street and of Scotland that for me equals that 
 of Mary. It is Montrose. Up the Canongate 
 comes the rumbling of a tumbril, like the 
 French Revolution. And out of the high lands 
 there look the hundreds of Covenanting folk, 
 triumphant for the moment. And on the bal- 
 cony of Moray House, within which the mar- 
 riage of Lady Mary Stewart to the Marquis of 
 
The Empress of the North 107 
 
 Lome has just been celebrated, there stands 
 the wedding party, and among them the Earl 
 of Argyle. Up the street comes the cart. And 
 within it clad like a bridegroom — ''fyne scarlet 
 coat to his knee, trimmed with silver galoons, 
 lined with taffeta, roses in his shoon, and stock- 
 ings of incarnet silk" — stands the Marquis of 
 Montrose, the loyalest Scotsman that ever 
 lived. 
 
 After the field of Kylsyth, after the field of 
 Philipshaugh, and the flight to the North and 
 the betrayal, he has been brought back to Ed- 
 inburgh, to a swift and covenanting sentence, 
 and to death at the Tron. 
 
 His eyes meet proudly those of Argyle who 
 has deserted his king and who thinks to stand 
 in with the Covenant and with the future. It 
 is the eyes of Argyle which drop. And Mon- 
 trose goes on. 
 
 His head is on the picket of the Netherbow 
 Port. His four quarters are sent to the four 
 corners of the kingdom, Glasgow, Perth, Aber- 
 deen, Inverness. 
 
 But the end is not yet. The tables turn, as 
 they turned so often in those unstable times. 
 It is Argyle who goes to the scaffold. Charles 
 is king, the Second Charles. There is an edict. 
 The body of Montrose is dug up out of the 
 
108 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 Boroughmoor. It is buried in Holyrood. The 
 four quarters are reassembled from Glasgow 
 and Perth and Aberdeen and Inverness. A 
 procession fairly royal moves from Holyrood 
 to St. Giles. At the Netherbow it pauses. The 
 head is taken down from the pike. The body 
 of Montrose is whole again. An honourable 
 burial takes place in the cathedral sanctuary. 
 
 Even though when search was made at the 
 restoring of the church and the erection of the 
 effigy the remains could not be found, there has 
 been that justification by procession and by 
 faith, that justification of loyalty that we re- 
 member when we remember Montrose — 
 
 "He either fears his fate too much, 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 That dares not put it to the touch, 
 To ffain or lose it all." 
 
 Holyrood 
 
 Holyrood, ruined as it is, empty as it is, spuri- 
 ous as it is, still can house the Stewarts. No- 
 where else are they so completely and splendidly 
 Stewart. It is the royalest race which ever 
 played at being sovereign; in sharp contrast 
 with the heavier, more successful Tudors; 
 
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 ^HS 
 
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 JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 
 
The Empress of the North 109 
 
 crafty but less crafty than the Medici; amor- 
 ous but more loyal than the Bourbons. 
 
 Never did kings claim sovereignty through a 
 more divine right — and only one (whisper some- 
 times intimates that he was not Stewart, but 
 substitute ; but he left a Stewart descent) failed 
 to pay the penalty for such assertion. It was 
 the splendour which was Stewart while they 
 lived, the tragedy that was Stewart when they 
 came to die, which makes them the royal race. 
 
 There were born in Holyrood not one of them, 
 unless it be James V. But almost all of them 
 were married in Holyrood, held here their fes- 
 tive days, and, not one of them died in Holy- 
 rood. It is their life, the vivid intense flash of 
 it, across those times that seem mysterious, 
 even legendary in remembered times north of 
 the Border. Life was a holiday to each of the 
 Stewarts, and he spent it in the palace and in 
 the pleasance of Holyrood. 
 
 The Abbey, with the monastery which was 
 attached to it, begins far back before the Stew- 
 arts. It was founded by David I, the abbey- 
 builder. Legend has it that he went a-hunting 
 on a holy day, and straying from the **noys and 
 dyn of Bugillis," a white stag came against 
 him. David thought to defend himself, but a 
 hand bearing a cross came out of the cloud, and 
 
110 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the stag was exorcised. David kept the cross. 
 In dream that night within the castle he was 
 commanded to build an abbey where he had been 
 saved, and the hunting place being this scant 
 mile and a quarter from the castle — then a for- 
 est where now it is treeless — David placed this 
 convenient abbey where it has stood for six cen- 
 turies, defying fire and war and reformation, 
 until the citizens of Edinburgh ravaged it when 
 the roof fell in in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 There is a curious feeling when one crosses 
 the Girth stones at the lower end of the Canon- 
 gate. It is a century and more since this was 
 sanctuary. But it is impossible to step across 
 these stones, into the ''Liberty of Holyrood," 
 and not wonder if there may not perhaps be 
 some need in your own soul of sanctuary. 
 Thousands and thousands of men — "abbey 
 lairds" as they were pleasantly called — have 
 stepped across this line before me, through the 
 centuries. Who am I to be different, unneed- 
 ful? May I not need inviolate sanctuary? 
 May it not be that at my heels dogs some sin- 
 ister creditor who will seize me by the skirts 
 before I reach the boundary beyond which there 
 is no exacting for debt? A marvelous thing, 
 this ancient idea of sanctuary. It made an oasis 
 
The Empress of the North 111 
 
 of safety in a savage world. Surely it was 
 super-cliristian. And liere, at Holyrood, as the 
 medieval statute declares, ''qukilk privelege has 
 bene inviolable observit to all maner of per- 
 sonis cuman wythin the boundes . . . past 
 memorie of man. ' ' What has the modern world 
 given itself in place of ancient sanctuary ? Jus- 
 tice, I suppose, and a jury trial. 
 
 But, once across the Girth, one becomes, not 
 a sanctuarian, but a Stewart. 
 
 The situation is a little dreary, a little flat. 
 And the palace, as a palace, is altogether un- 
 interesting to look on. It is not the building 
 of David or of the earlier Stewarts. But of 
 that Merry Monarch who harboured so long in 
 France, when England was determining whether 
 it would be royal or republican, and Scotland 
 was determining whether it would be cove- 
 nanted or uncovenanted. The Merry Monarch 
 was ever an uncovenanted person, not at all 
 Scottish, although somewhat like the errant 
 James — whose errancy was of his o^vn choos- 
 ing. Charles had acquired a French taste at 
 the court of his cousin, Louis the Grand. So 
 the new Holyrood was built in French baronial 
 style. And no monarch has ever cared to in- 
 habit it for any length of time. Only King Ed- 
 ward VII, who would have been a happy sue- 
 
112 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 cessor to James, but Edward was very studious 
 in those days of 1859, when he lodged here and 
 studied under the direction of the Eector of 
 the Royal High School. Still I can but think 
 that it was in this Stewart place that Edward 
 developed his Stewartship. 
 
 There is not a stone to speak of the magnifi- 
 cence, of the strength, of David. The Abbey 
 was burned and burned again, by Edward and 
 Richard the Second, and entirely rebuilt when 
 the Stewarts were beginning to be splendid and 
 assured. Over the west doorway, high-arched 
 and deep-recessed, early English in its tech- 
 nique, Charles I, who was crowned here in 1633, 
 caused the stone to be placed. 
 
 "He shall build ane House for my name and I will stablish 
 the throne of his kingdom forever." 
 
 The tablet still stands above the doorway. 
 But Charles is lying for his sins in a vault at 
 St. George's chapel at Windsor far in the south, 
 having paid his penalty on the scaffold in 
 Whitehall. And the House is in ruins, ''bare 
 ruined choir," where not even "the late birds 
 sing." Although Mendelssohn in speaking of 
 the impression the Abbey made on him, does 
 say, ''I think I found there the beginnings of 
 my Scotch symphony." 
 
 This "magnificent Abbey-Kirk of Halirude" 
 
The Empress of the North 113 
 
 was no doubt very splendid; although in archi- 
 tectural beauty it cannot compare with Melrose, 
 not even the great east window with its rich 
 quatrefoil tracing. But what scenes have been 
 staged in that historic drama, that theatrical 
 piece, we call the history of the Stewarts! 
 
 Before the high altar, under that east win- 
 dow, when James I was kneeling before God in 
 prayer, there appeared the Lord of the Isles, 
 come repentant from burning Inverness and 
 other rebellion, to kneel before the king, his 
 own sword pointed at his breast. 
 
 Before this altar James II was married to 
 Mary of Gueldres. James III was married to 
 Margaret of Denmark, who brought the Ork- 
 neys as her dower. James IV was married to 
 Margaret Tudor, the union of the ' ' Thistle and 
 the Eose." James V was not married here, he 
 went to France for his frail bride, Magdalene, 
 who lived but seven weeks in this inhospitable 
 land, this hospitable Holyrood. She was buried 
 in Holyrood chapel, only to be dug up and tossed 
 about as common clay when the Edinburgh citi- 
 zens made football of royal skulls. 
 
 The two sons of James VI, Henry who should 
 have been king and who might have united 
 royalist and commoner had fate granted it. 
 and Charles who was to become king, were 
 
114 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 both christened here. James VII, brother to 
 Charles II, restored this Chapel Royal and pre- 
 pared it for the Eoman ritual. James VIII was 
 never here, or but as a baby. Charles III — did 
 the Bonnie Prince in that brief brilliant Edin- 
 burgh moment of his, ever kneel before this 
 then deserted altar and ask divine favour while 
 he reasserted the divine right of kings'? 
 
 Here — or was it secretly, in Stirling? — the 
 Queen — one says The Queen and all the world 
 knows — gowned in black velvet, at five o'clock 
 on a July morning, was married to her young 
 cousin, Henry Darnley. A marriage that en- 
 dured two long terrible tumultuous years. 
 
 Here — or was it in the drawing-room f — at 
 two o'clock on a May morning, the Queen was 
 married to Bothwell, by Adam Bothwell, Bishop 
 of Orkney, not with mass as she had been wed 
 to her boy-cousin, but with preaching as she 
 wed the Bishop's cousin. And **at this mar- 
 riage there was neither pleasure nor pastime 
 used as use was wont to be used when princes 
 were married." So says the Diurnal Occur- 
 ents of Scotland. A marriage that endured a 
 brief, perhaps happy, tragedy-gathering month. 
 
 And the Queen beautiful was destroyed, by 
 the Reformation, like an Abbey. 
 
 The bones of Darnley were ravaged by the 
 
JAMES IV, 
 
The Empress of the North 115 
 
 citizens of Edinburgh out of the ruins of this 
 chapel. Or were they carried to Westminster 
 by that unroyal son who was so laggard in car- 
 ing for the remains of his queenly mother? I 
 hope that Darnley does not rest beside her. 
 For I think those exquisite marble fingers of 
 the effigy in Henry VII 's chapel, looking I fain 
 believe as those of Mary looked, tapering, 
 lovely, sinister, would not so fold themselves in 
 prayer without unfolding through the long cen- 
 turies. 
 
 In the old palace the most glorious days were 
 those when James IV was king. As the most 
 glorious days of Scotland were those which are 
 almost legendary. The palace still had the 
 grandeur that was Norman and the grace that 
 was early English under David. Its front, 
 towered and pinnacled, suggesting more for- 
 tress security than this dull chateau, opened 
 upon a great outer court that lay between the 
 palace and the walls. Coming down the Canon- 
 gate from the castle it must have looked very 
 splendid to James. And yet he did not care to 
 remain in it long. All the Stewarts had errant 
 souls, and they loved to wander their kingdom 
 through. It presented ample opportunity for 
 adventure; scarce a Stewart ever left Scot- 
 land. That last Prince, who flashed across Scot- 
 
116 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 land in one last Stewart sword thrust — ''My 
 friends," he said in Holyrood the night before 
 Prestonpans, ''I have thrown away the scab- 
 bard" — was but treading in the steps of his 
 royal forebears, the royal fore-errants. 
 
 In the days of James IV — ^we say it as one 
 should say in the days of Haroun al Raschid, 
 and indeed Edinburgh was in those early years 
 of the Fifteen Hundreds the Bagdad of the 
 world, and her days as well as her nights were 
 truly Arabian — the world must have looked 
 much as it does on the pleasant morning when 
 we make our royal entry into Holyrood. 
 
 The Abbey grounds, a regal area then, and 
 still a regality, were rich with woodland and 
 orchard, and terraced and flowered into south- 
 ern beauty. The red crags of the Salisbury 
 ridge rose bold above as they do to-day, and 
 crowning the scene the leonine form of Arthur's 
 Seat above the green slopes, the lion keeping 
 guard against the invading lion of England! 
 I think James must often have climbed to that 
 height to look forth over his domain, over his 
 city, to watch the world, as King Arthur — 
 whom he did not resemble — did legendary cen- 
 turies before. 
 
 It was a busy time in Edinburgh; men's 
 hands and wits were working. In Leith, then 
 
The Empress of the North 117 
 
 as now the port, then as now a separate burgh, 
 there was much shipping and much building of 
 ships ; King James dreamed of a navy, and he 
 had an admirable admiral in Sir Anthony- 
 Wood. In the castle there was the forging of 
 guns, the "seven sisters of Brothwick," under 
 direction of the king's master gunner, while 
 Mons Meg looked on, and perhaps saw the near 
 terrible future when these sisters of hers should 
 be lost at Flodden. 
 
 In the city there was the splendid beginning 
 of that intellectual life which has ever been 
 quick in Edinburgh. It was a joyous time ; wit- 
 ness the account from the lord High treasurer — 
 
 ''On the 11th of February, 1488, we find the 
 king bestowing nine pounds on gentil John, the 
 English fule; on the 10th of June we have an 
 item to English pipers who played to the king 
 at the castle gate, of eight pounds eight shil- 
 lings; on the thirty-first of August Patrick 
 Johnson and his fellows, that playit a play to 
 the king, in Lithgow, receives three pounds; 
 Jacob the lutar, the king of bene. Swanky that 
 brought balls to the king, twa wemen that sang 
 to his highness, Witherspoon the foular, that 
 told tales and brought fowls, Tom Pringill the 
 trumpeter, twa fithelaris that sang Grey Steill 
 to the king, the broken-bakkit fiddler of St. 
 
118 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Andrew's, Quhissilgyllourie a female dancer, 
 Willie Mercer who lap in the stank by the king's 
 command. ' ' 
 
 Oh, a royal and democratic and merry time. 
 It was Flodden that made men old, that tragic 
 climax to this splendour. 
 
 **In the joyous moneth tyme of June," in the 
 pleasant garden of the town-house of the great 
 Earl of Angus, looking down on the still waters 
 of the Nor' Loch, and across the woods and 
 moors to the glittering blue Firth, there sat the 
 pale stripling, Gavin Douglass, third son of 
 Douglass, Archibald Bell-the-Cat, late in orders 
 at Mony musk, but now come up to St. Giles 
 as prior in spite of his youth, and more ab- 
 sorbed in poetry than men. 
 
 "More pleased that in a barbarous age 
 He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, 
 Than that beneath his rule he held 
 The bishopric of fair Dunkeld." 
 
 Here I would dispute Scott. After all, Dark 
 Ages are not always as dark as they look to 
 those who come after. And if the ''Dark 
 Ages" of Europe were brilliantly luminous in 
 Moslem capitals, Bagdad and Cordova, so 
 *'rude Scotland" was more polished under 
 James IV than England under Henry VII, or 
 France under Louis XII. 
 
The Empress of the North 119 
 
 As Gavin lias recorded in "The Palice of 
 Honour," he had interview with Venus in her 
 proper Umbo, and she had presented him with 
 a copy of Virgil, bidding him translate it. 
 And so, quite boldly, before any Englishman 
 had ventured, and all through the winter, for- 
 getful — except when he wrote his prefaces of 
 
 scharp soppis of sleit and of the snypand snaw 
 
 he had worked over his translation, from the 
 Latin into the Scottish, and now it was nearly 
 ready ''to go to the printer," or more like, to be 
 shown to the king. In sixteen months he had 
 completed thirteen books; for he had added a 
 book of MaphaBus Vegius, without discrimination. 
 He was certain of the passage facilis descen- 
 sus Averni, for Gavin was Scotch, the time was 
 Stewart. It ran in this wise — 
 
 "It is richt facill and eithgate, I tell thee 
 For to descend, and pass on down to hell, 
 The black zettis of Pluto, and that dirk way 
 Stand evir open and patent nieht and day. 
 But therefore to return again on hicht 
 And heire above recovir this airis licht 
 That is difficul werk, thair labour lyis, 
 Full few thair bene quhom hiech above the skyis, 
 Thare ardent vertue has raisit and upheit 
 Or zit quhame equale Jupiter deifyit, 
 Thay quhilkie bene gendrit of goddes may thy oder attane 
 All the mydway is wilderness unplane 
 
120 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Or wilsum forest; and the laitblie flude 
 Coeytus, with his drery bosom unrude 
 Flows environ round about that place." 
 
 But he was not quite certain that he had been 
 splendid enough, and daring enough, in his ap- 
 plication of the royal lines — 
 
 "Hie Caesar et omnis luU 
 Progenies, magnum caeli ventura sub axem." 
 
 So he had sent for his friend, William Dun- 
 bar, Kynges Makar, laureate to the sovereign. 
 And Dunbar was never loath for a ''Flyting," 
 a scolding. He had them on every hand, with 
 every one, and not only those he held with 
 '*gude maister Walter Kennedy,*' and pub- 
 lished for the amusement of the King and his 
 Court. It was a more solemn event when the 
 future Bishop of Dunkeld summoned him. 
 Though Gavin was fifteen years younger than 
 William, he was more serious with much study, 
 and under the shadow of future honours, and 
 then, too, he was a Douglass. 
 
 So Dunbar came, striding up the Canongate 
 between the tall inquisitive houses — even he 
 found them ''hampered in a honeycaim of their 
 own making" — a very handsome figure, this 
 Dunbar, in his red velvet robe richly fringed 
 with fur, which he had yearly as his reward 
 
The Empress of the North 121 
 
 from the King, and which I doubt not he pre- 
 ferred to the solemn Franciscan robe he had 
 renounced when he entered the King's service. 
 James was away at Stirling. James was a 
 poet also. Surely, on internal evidence, it is 
 the Fourth James and not the Fifth, who wrote 
 those charming, and improper poems, ''The 
 Gaberlunzieman" and ''The Jolly Beggar." 
 
 "He took a horn frae his side, and blew baith loud and 
 shrill, 
 And four and twenty belted knights came skipping o'er the 
 hill. 
 
 "And he took out his little knife, loot a' his daddies fa' ; 
 And he was the brawest gentleman that was amang them 
 a'." 
 
 "And we'll gang nae mair a roving, 
 So late into the night; 
 And we'll gang nae mair a roving, boys, 
 Let the moon shine ne'er so bright." 
 
 Dunbar, official Makar, would fain secure the 
 criticism of young Gavin on this joyous lament 
 he had writ to the King in absence — 
 
 "We that here in Hevenis glory ... 
 I mean we folk in Paradyis 
 In Edinburgh with all merriness." 
 
 And perhaps the young Gavin and the old 
 Dunbar in their common fellowship of poetry, 
 would drink a glass of red wine in memory of 
 
122 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 friends passed into death's dateless night — 
 Timor Mortis conturhat me. 
 
 "He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill 
 Slaine with his sehour of mortall haill. . . . 
 In Dunfermelyne he had done roAme 
 With Maister Robert Henrisoun." 
 
 And Dunbar, who was so much more human 
 than Gavin, if older, would quote those immor- 
 tal new lines of Henryson — 
 
 "Robene sat on gude grene hill 
 Kepand a flok of fe, 
 Mirry Makyne said him till, 
 Robene, thow pity on me." 
 
 While Gavin, so much elder than his looks, 
 and mindful of Scottish as well as of Trojan 
 history, would quote from Blind Harry in the 
 name of Wallace — 
 
 "I grant, he said, part Inglismen I slew 
 In my quarrel, me thoeht noeht halff enew. 
 I mowyt na war but for to win our awin (own). 
 To God and man the ryeht full weill is knawin (known)." 
 
 Then Dunbar would wrap his rich red robe 
 about him — I hope he wore it on ordinary days, 
 or were there any when James the Fourth was 
 king! — and stride back, through the Canongate 
 to Holyrood, back to the court, where he would 
 meet with young David Lindsay, of a different 
 
The Empress of the North 123 
 
 sort from young Gavin Douglass. And they 
 would chuckle over **Kitteis Confessioun," a 
 dialogue between Kitty and the curate, which 
 Lindsay had just written — and would not Dun- 
 bar be gracious and show it to the King? 
 
 Quod he, "Have ye na wrangous geirf 
 Quod seho, "I staw ane pek o' beir." 
 Quod he, "That suld restorit be, 
 Tharefore delyver it to me." 
 Quod he, "Leve ye in lecherie f 
 Quod scho, "Will Leno mowit me." 
 Quod he, "His wyf e that sail I tell. 
 To mak hir aequentance with my-sell." 
 Quod he, "Ken ye na heresie?" 
 "I wait noeht quhat that is," quod seho. 
 Quod he, "Hard he na Inglis bukis'?" 
 Quod seho, "My maister on thame lukis." 
 Quod he, "The bischop that sail knaw. 
 For I am swome that for to sehaw." 
 Quod he, "What said he of the King?" 
 Quod scho, "Of gude he spak naething." 
 Quod he, "His Grace of that sail wit. 
 And he sail lose his lyfe for it." 
 
 Perhaps Warbeck was listening, Perkin War- 
 beck who pretended to be Duke of York, pre- 
 tended to the English crown. So Scotland har- 
 boured him, and Holyrood was hospitable to 
 him. James married him to Lady Jane Gor- 
 don, and for years, until he wearied of it, main- 
 tained a protectorate over this pinchbeck Pre- 
 tender. 
 
124 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 I am certain that Dom Pedro de Ayala did 
 not linger in the court to gossip with Dunbar, 
 or with the hangers-on. Dom Pedro had come 
 up from Spain on a strange ambassadorial er- 
 rand, to offer to James in marriage a Spanish 
 princess, knowing well that there might be no 
 Spanish princess (Maria was betrothed to 
 Portugal) ; but no doubt believing that there 
 ought to be, since James was slow in marrying, 
 and surely a Spanish princess would best mate 
 this royalest of the Stewarts. Dom Pedro bet- 
 ter liked the extravagant kingly court at Holy- 
 rood than the niggardly court at Windsor. He 
 wrote home to Ferdinand and Isabella, ''The 
 kingdom is very old, and very noble, and the 
 king possessed of great virtues, and no defects 
 worth mentioning," No defects! Certainly 
 not. James had the qualities of his defects, 
 and these were royal. James could speak — not 
 keep still — in eight languages, and could and 
 did say ''all his prayers." So Dom Pedro re- 
 ports to his Most Catholic Majesty. 
 
 When he was thirty years old, this King Er- 
 rant married, not the hypothetical daughter of 
 Spain, but the substantial youthful Margaret 
 Tudor, aged fourteen. The Scottish king would 
 none of the alliance for years ; James preferred 
 hypothetical brides and errant affairs. But the 
 
MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV. 
 
The Empress of the North 125 
 
 English king saw the advantage and pressed it. 
 He had united the roses, red and white, of Eng- 
 land; he would fain join the thistle to the 
 rose. 
 
 So James, in August, 1503, journeyed out to 
 Dalkeith, whither Margaret had come. He re- 
 turned to ''hys bed at Edinborg varey well 
 countent of so fayr a meetyng.'* A few days 
 later, Margaret made her entry into Edinburgh, 
 James having met her, gallantly dressed in "a 
 jacket of crimson velvet bordered with cloth of 
 gold. ' ' Leaving his restive charger, ' ' mounting 
 on the pallefroy of the Qwene, and the said 
 Qwene behind hym, so rode throw the towne 
 of Edinburgh." Their route lay through the 
 Grassmarket up to the Castle Hill, and down 
 the High Street and the Canongate, to the Ab- 
 bey. Here they were received by the Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews. Next day they were 
 married by the Archbishop of Glasgow, the 
 Archbishop of York joining in the solemn and 
 magnificent celebration. 
 
 It is the most splendid moment in Edinburgh 
 history, within the Abbey and the palace, and 
 within the city. The Town Cross ran with 
 wine, the high lands were hung with banners 
 and scarlet cloth, and morality plays were per- 
 formed before the people. In the palace there 
 
126 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 was a royal scene. And our friend, William 
 Dunbar, Kynges Makar, read his allegory of 
 "The Thrissl and the Roiss," which is still 
 worth reading, if Chaucer is worth reading. 
 
 But, at night, in the royal apartment, the 
 night before the wedding, perhaps in the frag- 
 ment of the old palace which remains, the gallant 
 king played to the little princess upon the vir- 
 ginal; and then, on bended knee and with un- 
 bonneted head, he listened while she played and 
 sang to him. Out of the dark of the time it is 
 a shining scene; and out of the splendour of 
 the moment it brings a note of tenderness. 
 
 Another decade, another August, and the 
 Boroughmoor (where now run the links of 
 Burntland) was covered with the white of a 
 thousand tents, Scotland was gathered for war, 
 the ''ruddy lion ramped in gold" floated war- 
 like over all, and James and all Scotland pre- 
 pared to march down to Flodden, heeding not 
 the warning which had sounded at midnight in 
 ghostly voice at the Town Cross ; a warning no 
 doubt arranged by Margaret, never a Stewart, 
 always a Tudor. And — all Scotland was turned 
 into a house of mourning. 
 
 Half a century later the history of Scotland 
 came to a climax, and Mary Stewart came to 
 Holyrood; that queen who then and ever since 
 
The Empress of the North 127 
 
 held half the world in thrall, like another Iseult. 
 The covenanted world has rejected her, as no 
 doubt it would reject Iseult. 
 
 Shrouded in a gray *'haar" from off the 
 North Sea, rising like a Venus out of the mists 
 of the sea, Mary Stewart, Dowager of France, 
 Queen of Scotland, Heiress of England, came 
 unto her own. And, her own received her, and, 
 received her not. 
 
 The castle hanging high in air no longer hung 
 there. The palace lying low on the plain was 
 not there, on that August 19, 1561. There was 
 nothing but what was near at hand; Mary could 
 not see a hundred feet into her kingdom. In 
 truth she arrived at port a week before the ship 
 was expected — and Mary also flashed through 
 her kingdom; witness the ride across the 
 Marches to the Hermitage, and the ride 
 through the North to punish Huntley. Hers 
 was a restless soul, a restless body. 
 
 On her return to the kingdom she was accom- 
 panied by a great retinue, three of her French 
 uncles of Guise and of Lorraine, her four 
 Maries, and many ambassadors. It was a sus- 
 pended moment in the world, the sixth decade 
 of the sixteenth century. And nowhere were 
 affairs in such delicate balance, or so like to 
 swing out of balance as in Scotland ; where re- 
 
128 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ligion, sovereignty, feudalism, morality, were 
 swaying dizzily. So all the world sent their 
 keenest ambassadors to observe, to foresee if 
 possible, to report. 
 
 Yet Mary rode through the mists. 
 
 "Si grand brouillard," says the Sieur de 
 Brantome, that gossipy chronicler, and Mary 
 and her French courtiers and Scotch Maries, 
 rode through the "haar," from Leith up what- 
 ever was the Leith Walk of that day to Holy- 
 rood. 
 
 The palace must have rung with French chat- 
 ter, of these wondering and inquisitive and crit- 
 ical folk ; for all the cultured world was French 
 in those days, and Mary and her Maries had 
 been only five or six when they left stormy 
 Scotland for the pleasant smiling land of 
 France. 
 
 Not for long was she permitted to believe she 
 had brought France back with her and there 
 was no reality in Scotland but as she made it. 
 Reformation pressed in upon her, even through 
 the windows of this turret where again she 
 seems to listen to that prophetic and pious 
 serenade, Scottish protestant psalms accom- 
 panied by fiddles and sung to a French Catho- 
 lic queen. **Vile fiddles and rebecks,'* com- 
 plains Brantome, hesitating to call vile the mob 
 
The Empress of the North 129 
 
 of five hundred gathered in the Scotch mists; 
 but they sang **so ill and with such bad accord 
 that there could be nothing worse. Ah, what 
 music, and what a lullaby for the night!" 
 
 The rooms of Mary are still inclosed, the 
 walls still stand about them, and a romantic 
 care withholds the ravages of time from those 
 tapestries and silken bed hangings, dark crim- 
 son damask, which Mary drew about her on that 
 night of her return. And here hangs a picture 
 of Queen Elizabeth, authentic, Tudoresque, 
 which did not hang here when Mary returned; 
 but what dark shadow of Elizabeth lurkfed be- 
 hind these hangings ! The very guard to whom 
 you protest the picture understands — '*I think 
 it an insult to her memory." 
 
 It is here that Queen Mary still reigns. All 
 the old palace was burned, carelessly, by Crom- 
 well's soldiers, at what time men were caring 
 nothing for palaces, and less for royalty. But, 
 fate was royal, was Jacobite, and this gray 
 turret of the northwest corner a building of 
 James V on a foundation of James IV — ^per- 
 haps where he had listened in the evening to 
 Margaret and her virginal — was saved from the 
 wrath of the Commonwealth. Within these 
 very walls Mary played on the virginal, per- 
 haps on the rebeck, and many sought to know 
 
130 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 her stops — ''you can fret me, yet you cannot 
 play upon me." 
 
 Here she was loved, as she still is loved. 
 Here she made love, the mystery! — as always. 
 Here she flashed those bright eyes on courtiers 
 and commoners and straightway these fell into 
 bondage — the Stewarts never drew the line of 
 division. Here those eyes battled with John 
 Knox as he met her in Dialogues, as John has 
 faithfully recorded. And here those bright 
 eyes filled with a storm of tears at his denun- 
 ciation; but Knox felt their power. Here she 
 met Darnley, in the chapel married him, and 
 Knox called after dinner to declare that the 
 Eeformation did not approve. Here by the 
 very stairs of the turret Darnley led the mur- 
 derers on Eizzio, from his private apartments 
 to hers. (I find it fit that Ker of Fawdonside, 
 one of the murderers, should have married later 
 the widow of Knox.) Mary was held here a 
 prisoner; they would ''cut her into collops and 
 cast her over the wall" if she summoned help. 
 But Mary could order that the blood stains of 
 the fifty-six wounds of Rizzio should remain 
 "ane memoriall to quychen her revenge." 
 They quicken our thought of Mary to-day — if 
 we accept them. From Holyrood Mary went 
 to Kirk o' Field on a Sunday night in Febru- 
 
The Empress of the North 131 
 
 ary, to visit Darnley who lay ''full of the small 
 pox." He had come back from Bothwell castle 
 on Mary's urging; but he had gone to Bothwell 
 to escape her revenge for Rizzio. She re- 
 turned to Holyrood — "the Queen's grace gang 
 and with licht torches up the Black Friar's 
 Wynd" — where the wedding festivities of a 
 member of her household were in progress. 
 And, I doubt not, devoted to Mary as I am, that 
 she was the merriest of the company. 
 
 Then the dark. 
 
 Then, at two in morning, an explosion that 
 shook all Edinburgh, that astonished the world, 
 that still reverberates through the world. 
 
 Then — the dark. 
 
 A marriage, at two in the morning, a flight 
 to Borthwick, a meeting at Carberry, one more 
 night in Edinburgh, in a house as mean as that 
 of Kirk o' Field, a day at Holyrood, and a 
 forced ride with ruffian nobles, Lindsay and 
 Ruthven on each hand, to Loch Leven, thirty 
 miles in the night of June 16, 1567 — and Edin- 
 burgh and Holyrood and the Crown of Scotland 
 know her no more. 
 
 "Helen's lips are drifting dust, 
 Ilion is consumed in rust." 
 
 And Mary. And Holyrood. 
 
 There is one more Holyrood scene descend- 
 
132 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ing from this. On a Saturday evening, March 
 26, 1603, the son of Mary, the King of Scotland, 
 supped with the Queen, perhaps in that small 
 supper room where Rizzio was supping with a 
 queen; and they had retired. "The palace 
 lights were going out, one by one." And Sir 
 Robert Carey, three days out from London, 
 clattered into the courtyard, the King was 
 roused. Sir Robert knelt before him — 
 
 ''Queen Elizabeth is dead, and Your Majesty 
 is King of England ! ' ' 
 
 James I of England, James VI of Scotland, 
 son of Mary, son of Darnley, son of the ninth 
 generation from Bruce, The Bruce. The "auld 
 enemy" is finally defeated; and to borrow again 
 from Rosaline Masson, ' ' the lights of Holyrood 
 went out, one by one." 
 
 In the long picture gallery of this dull mod- 
 ern palace, nothing of which either Mary or 
 James ever saw, there hangs a series of por- 
 traits, one hundred pictures of Scottish kings, 
 painted under order of Charles II in 1680, by 
 the Fleming, DeWitt, who agreed to furnish the 
 pictures in two years for one hundred and 
 twenty pounds. They begin with Fergus I, 
 330 B. c. They are the kings who passed before 
 the prophetic vision of Banquo. Enough to 
 frighten Macbeth! 
 
The Empress of the North 133 
 
 One brief brilliant ghost of Stewart glory re- 
 turns. In this gallery was held the ball of 
 Prince Charles Edward, described in "Waver- 
 ley." 
 
 And after this theatric moment, and after the 
 Prince had defeated the ''royalists" at Fal- 
 kirk, Hardy's dragoons slashed these pictures 
 of Scottish kings, since the Prince they could 
 not reach. 
 
 Princes Gardens 
 
 There are certain public places of beauty 
 where the beauty is so enveloping that the place 
 seems one's very own, seems possessed. That, 
 I take it, is the great democratic triumph, in 
 that it has made beauty a common possession 
 and places of beauty as free to the people as is 
 the air. 
 
 Chief of these is Princes Street Gardens. 
 
 I could, in truth I have, spent there days and 
 half-days, and twilights that I would willingly 
 have lengthened to midnights, since the north- 
 ern night never quite descends, but a romantic 
 gray twilight veils everything, and evokes more 
 than everything. For any lengthened visit in 
 Edinburgh I dare not inhabit a hotel room on 
 
134 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the Garden side, since all my time would be 
 spent at the window. For a shorter visit, such 
 a room lengthens the day, defies the closed gate 
 of the Gardens. 
 
 It was from such a window as this, ''From a 
 Window in Princes Street" that Henley looked 
 forth — 
 
 "Above the crags that fade and gloom 
 Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat ; 
 Ridged high against the evening bloom 
 The Old Town rises, street on street; 
 With lamps bejeweled, straight ahead, 
 Like rampird walls the houses lean, 
 All spired and domed and turreted, 
 Sheer to the valley's darkling green ; 
 Ranged in mysterious array, 
 The Castle menacing and austere, 
 Looms through the lingering last of day ; 
 And in the silver dusk you hear, 
 Reverberated from crag and sear, 
 Bold bugles blowing points of war." 
 
 Princes Street is, I believe, not a mile long, 
 a half-mile the part which is gardened. It is 
 the loveliest street in the world. It seems in- 
 finite instead of half-mile. 
 
 Of course to the loyal American that praise 
 is received half-way. For he remembers River- 
 side Drive with the majesty of the Hudson, 
 North Shore Drive with the shoreless infinity 
 of Lake Michigan, Summit Avenue with the 
 
The Empress of the North 135 
 
 deep gorge of the Upper Mississippi, Quebec 
 and its Esplanade. But even these "handsome 
 streets" cannot match Princes for history and 
 beauty in one, for the old and the new, for the 
 Old Town and the New Town. 
 
 Princes Street, to speak briefly of its geogra- 
 phy, is a broad thoroughfare, with a medley 
 of buildings on the north side, but uniform in 
 gray stone, where hotels and shops furnish the 
 immediate life of the city. There are electric 
 cars running the full length of the street; and 
 it is the only street I know which is not spoiled 
 through the presence of these necessary car- 
 riers. 
 
 There are cabs, and there are sight-seeing 
 cars, from which in high advantage, and in half 
 a day, you can see everything in Edinburgh. 
 Yes, actually. I who speak to you have done 
 it, partly for the greed of seeing it steadily and 
 seeing it whole, and partly for the comment of 
 these Scotch coach drivers and guards, who are 
 not merely Scottish but the essence of Scotland. 
 I shall never forget how an American traveler — 
 of course they are all Americans in these tally- 
 hos — commenting on the driver's remark that 
 the ' ' Old Queen" wanted to build a palace where 
 Donaldson's Hospital now stands and she was 
 refused — * * but she was the Queen ! ' ' Neverthe- 
 
136 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 less, asserted Mr. Sandy Coachman, ''She was 
 refused." Not so in the old days of Queen- 
 ship. 
 
 The entire life of Edinburgh, of Scotland, 
 streams through this broad straight street. 
 
 On the opposite side lie the Gardens, stretch- 
 ing their way parallel with the street, a wide, 
 green-lawned, tree-forested purlieu, terraced 
 and flowered, with a "sunken garden" near the 
 Castle-side, through which trains are conveyed. 
 The smoke, so much lamented, does often rest 
 with grace and gray loveliness in the hollows 
 of the place, so that one does not miss the waters 
 of the Nor' Loch that once flowed here as moat. 
 
 Above rises the castle in greater majesty 
 than from any other point. Down from the 
 castle runs the ridge of the High Street, and 
 the high lands with flags of washing hanging 
 out the windows which answer the flags red and 
 leoninely rampant, on the buildings of Princes 
 Street. The crown of St. Giles and the spire 
 of the Tronkirk hanging above all. 
 
 To the west is St. John's, where in the grave- 
 yard Eaeburn is buried; and old St. Cuthbert's, 
 where in the graveyard De Quincey is buried. 
 There are Raeburns in the Royal gallery which 
 stands on the island dividing the Gardens, and 
 there are many Raeburns here and there, in 
 
The Empress of the North 137 
 
 private rooms of banks and other institutions, 
 rare Raeburns with that casual, direct, human 
 look he could give men and women. The gal- 
 leries are worth a visit both for their best, and 
 for their not-best. There are statues of famous 
 Scotsmen on the terraces, and of course the 
 Scott monument, beautifully Gothic, and as 
 sacred as a shrine. 
 
 There are goods to be bought in the shops, 
 pebbles and cairngorms in jewelry and kick- 
 shaws of that ilk ; rugs and plaidies, sashes and 
 ties, and Scott and Stevenson books bound in 
 the Royal Stewart silk. Unhappy the traveler 
 who has not provided himself beforehand with 
 a tartan. Almost every one can if he will. And 
 there is always the college of heraldry to help 
 one out. Or the audacity of choosing the tar- 
 tan you like best; an affront, I assure you, to 
 all good Scots. For however unlovely a Scotch 
 tartan may be in the eyes of the world — nomina- 
 tions are invidious — in the eyes of the clans- 
 man there is nothing so ''right" as his own 
 particular tartan. He would not exchange it 
 for a Douglass or a Stewart. 
 
 These tartans have exerted a very marked 
 effect on the Scottish sense of taste. On 
 Princes Street you may not find such richly 
 dressed women as on Regent Street, but the 
 
138 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 harmony of colouring will please you better. 
 While no doubt this is due to the fact that for 
 several hundred years the Scottish taste has 
 had the benefit of intimate association with the 
 French, it can also be traced to the longer cen- 
 turies during which tartans have brought an 
 understanding of colour harmonies. Because 
 there has been this love of colour, there has 
 come with it vanity. With vanity there has 
 come that rare ability of the women of the race 
 to maintain a unity, a harmony, a complete re- 
 lationship between skirts and waists. There is 
 no country in Europe where the ''act of union" 
 at the feminine waistline is so triumphant as 
 in Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh. The 
 universal American achievement has been 
 equaled in Europe only in Scotland. 
 
 There are teashops which invite you in, when 
 the wind sweeps too harshly, or the rain beats 
 itself into more than a Scotch mist, or even 
 when the sun shines too hot. There is a gar- 
 den tea place on top of a high hotel which con- 
 fronts the Castle. Even in this Far North 
 there is much open air dining, and more espe- 
 cially open air tea-ing. I am not certain that 
 Dr. Johnson would have much cared for this 
 modern tea room, where he might review the 
 world. It seems that he drank much tea when 
 
The Empress of the North 139 
 
 he was the guest of Boswell, especially when he 
 was the guest of Mrs. Boswell, in James Court 
 the other side the Gardens. *' Boswell has 
 handsome and very spacious rooms, level with 
 the ground on one side of the house, and the 
 other four stories high." And Boswell says 
 of Johnson, "My wife had tea ready for him, 
 which it is well known he delights to drink at 
 all times, particularly when sitting up late." 
 From this roof tea garden one can see James's 
 Court at the top of the Mound, although the 
 Boswell lodgings are burned down. And one 
 can almost see Holyrood, where tea was intro- 
 duced by James VII. 
 
 After you have shopped and had your tea, 
 and the past retakes possession, you will return 
 to the green valley of the Gardens, to forget the 
 clang of the tram cars, to look up at the great 
 Castle Hill, green until it meets the buff-col- 
 oured stone and the buff-coloured buildings that 
 seem to grow out of the stone, if it is a clear 
 day; while the ramparts seem temporarily to 
 have blossomed with red geraniums, if red coats 
 are leaning over the edge. 
 
 A clear day in Edinburgh is possible. I have 
 spent a month of such days, and have longed 
 for the mists, a touch of them, that the castle 
 might turn to a purple wonder, and the deep 
 
140 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 blue shadows sink over it, and the gray precipice 
 of the High Street look higher than ever. Gray 
 is in truth the colour of Edinburgh, "the gray 
 metropolis of the North." But it is never a 
 dreary gray, never a heavy gray like London. 
 There the gray is thick, charged with soot; 
 one can rub it from his face. In Edinburgh 
 the gray is luminous, a shifting playing colour, 
 with deep shadows turning to deep blue, with 
 rifts or thinnings of the cloud, through which 
 yellow and brown glimmers make their way. 
 
 Above all, Edinburgh is never monotonous. 
 That is perhaps its charm, a something that 
 every feminine city knows ; Edinburgh is femi- 
 nine, and Paris, and Venice, and New Orleans. 
 
 And there hangs the castle, sometimes in 
 midair — 
 
 "Hast thou seen that lordly castle, that castle by the sea ? 
 Golden and red above it the clouds float gorgeously." 
 
 Sometimes standing stalwart and stern, a 
 challenge to daring, a challenge to history. 
 That farther edge of the Castle Hill as it is 
 silhouetted against the west sky — if you walk 
 around on Lothian Street you can see the full 
 face of the Rock — ^has invited many an adven- 
 turer, both from within and without. 
 
 It was down that steep hill that the sons of 
 
The Empress of the North 141 
 
 Margaret carried their queen mother, when 
 the hosts of Donalbane were besieging the place, 
 and a Scotch "haar" rolling in from the sea 
 and shutting off the castle enabled the little 
 procession to pass safely with its precious bur- 
 den, and swiftly down to the Queen's ferry, and 
 across to Dunfermline. 
 
 Up the face of that Rock when The Bruce did 
 not hold this stronghold there stole in the night 
 of a thirteenth century winter — it must have 
 been much colder, even in Edinburgh, in the 
 thirteenth century — a picked band of men; 
 picked by Randolph afterward Earl of Moray, 
 and led by Frank, who, years before when he 
 had been a soldier in the castle garrison and 
 night leave was forbidden, used to make his 
 way down this cliff to visit a bonnie lassie in 
 the West Bow. Now, on a wind-swept night, 
 which can be very windy around that castle 
 profile — the wind has not abated since the thir- 
 teenth century — Frank led the remembered 
 way. I wonder if he remembered the lassie. 
 But his footing was sure. Once, it is true, the 
 sentinel seemed to have discovered them. But 
 it was only the boast the sentinel makes to the 
 night when he makes his last round. The men 
 huddled against the face of the Eock. Then 
 they moved onward. The ladders were too 
 
142 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 short to reach the rampart. Two were bound 
 together. The men over, the cry '*A Moray!" 
 rings in the castle. Scotland has won it again. 
 
 Another century, and James III is king. 
 This least royal of the Stewarts, jealous of his 
 more royal brother, locked the Duke of Albany 
 in the castle, and felt secure. But the Duke 
 had friends. A French clipper came into Leith. 
 It brought wine to Albany, and the wine cask 
 contained a rope. Inviting his guardians to 
 sup with him, he plied them with heated wine, 
 perhaps drugged wine, then, the dagger. Al- 
 bany 's servant insisted on going down the rope 
 first. It was short, he fell the rest of the dis- 
 tance. Albany hurried back for the sheets from 
 his bed, made his safe way down. He carried 
 the servant man all the way to Leith — he had 
 just **whingered" the guard — found the boat, 
 and safety, and France. 
 
 Up the Eock, in Covenanting days, stole 
 Claverhouse, the Bonnie Dundee, to a secret 
 conference with the Duke of Gordon, hoping 
 to win him away to Stewart loyalty and the 
 North. 
 
 I cannot remember that any of Scott's char- 
 acters went this way. He thought it '* scant 
 footing for a cat." But Stevenson knew the 
 way. Perhaps not actually, but he sent more 
 
JOHN GRAHAM OF CLAVERHOUSE, VISCOUNT DUNDEE. 
 
The Empress of the North 143 
 
 than one of his characters up or down the Rock 
 — St. Ives with a rope that was long enough to 
 reach. 
 
 Calton Hill 
 
 Perhaps the best view of Edinburgh — only 
 perhaps, for each view differs, and you have 
 not seen the whole city unless you have seen it 
 from the various vantage points — is that from 
 the Calton Hill. For a very good reason. The 
 Hill itself is negligible enough, although it is 
 impossible to understand Edinburgh, to under- 
 stand Scotland, unless you have looked on the 
 architectural remnants on this Hill, and con- 
 sidered them philosophically. But, as Steven- 
 son said — ' ' Of all places for a view, the Calton 
 Hill is perhaps the best; since you can see the 
 castle, which you lose from the castle, and Ar- 
 thur's Seat, which you cannot see from Ar- 
 thur's Seat." An excellent reason, which also 
 places the castle and Arthur's Seat. 
 
 Calton Hill does not tower so high over the 
 city as these other two points; one may still 
 look up to Arthur's Seat, one may look across 
 to the castle. Yet, the city lies near. Yet, the 
 country rolls out to the Firth, and out to the 
 Pentlands. Perhaps a gray-sea haze dulls the 
 
144 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 far edge of the far Kingdom of Fife. Perhaps 
 a blue haze hangs over the Pentlands. Per- 
 haps a smoke-cloud makes a nearer sky for the 
 town itself, this Auld Reekie. Not only per- 
 haps, but very probably. There are clear days 
 in Edinburgh. They are to be treasured. 
 There is no air more stimulating in all the 
 world. October sometimes slips into the other 
 months of the year, fills the air with wine, clears 
 the air of filament. But, not often, not often 
 for the tourist from beyond seas who makes 
 Edinburgh in the summer. But still it is pos- 
 sible from Calton Hill to catch the farthest 
 glory of the encircling hills, and the near glory 
 of the ever glorious city. 
 
 The Hill itself is a place of monuments, and 
 a very pretentious place. Also, very absurd. 
 I suppose it is possible to be of two minds about 
 the remnant of the Parthenon which stands so 
 conspicuously on the highest plateau, a con- 
 struction dating back to that royal time when 
 George the Fourth came to this northern cap- 
 ital, and was — alas! — received as though he 
 were Bonnie Prince Charlie himself; and was 
 received — again alas I — by Sir Walter clad in a 
 Campbell plaid, and as loyal to the Regent, 
 the florid Florizel, as he had been to Prince 
 Charles in the '^Waverleys." Because of all 
 
The Empress of the North 145 
 
 these loyalties this never finished monument, 
 with its twelve columns and architrave spread 
 above, looks sufficiently pathetic, and sufficiently 
 absurd. "A very suitable monument to certain 
 national characteristics," said a later Scots 
 writer, who perhaps never ceased being a 
 Jacobite. 
 
 There are monuments; one to Dugald Stew- 
 art, and the visitor not philosophical is apt to 
 ask, Who was Dugald Stewart? There is a 
 memorial to Burns whose friend Willie that 
 brewed a peck o' malt lies in the Old Calton 
 burying ground near by. Hume lies there, 
 too, and Dr. John Brown, and Stevenson's 
 dead. 
 
 "There on the sunny frontage of a hill, 
 Hard by the House of Kmgs, repose the dead, 
 My dead, the ready and the strong of word. 
 Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; 
 The sea bombards their founded towers; the night 
 Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers 
 One after one, here in this grated cell, 
 Where the rain erases and the dust consumes, 
 Fell upon lasting silence." 
 
 There is a monument to Lord Nelson. And 
 looking as though he belonged there is a bronze 
 figure of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 All this lies about, with casual sheep crop- 
 ping the grass. 
 
146 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 But, there lies the city. And there lies the 
 country. 
 
 To the south rises Arthur's Seat, the lion. 
 The much castellated jail, is beneath you, an- 
 other absurd elaborate building, a castle after 
 castle-days. Farther a-city lies Holyrood, with 
 the ruined abbey, the Queen Mary wing, and 
 the scarlet patch of the sentinel moving to and 
 fro and guarding all this vanished greatness. 
 Nothing more appeals than this sentinel-watch 
 of the ghosts of the past. 
 
 Turn but a little and the Old Town lies before 
 you, the castle splendid, still the guardian, the 
 long ridge of the High Street with its jagged 
 buildings that from here rise almost to the 
 purple edge of the hilly Pentland background, 
 with the spire of the Tolbooth and the crown of 
 St. Giles breaking against the sky. And down 
 at the foot of the vantage Hill stretches Princes 
 Street with the Scott monument rising athwart 
 the haze of city and sky. 
 
 From the north edge of Calton there is a more 
 empty panorama, but still significant. Now it 
 is bound in with tenements high and thick, but in 
 the golden days it was a steep hillside leading 
 down to a jousting ground. Tradition has it 
 that Bothwell launched his horse down its al- 
 most-precipice, and so entered the tilting 
 
The Empress of the North 147 
 
 ground, while ladies' bright eyes rained influ- 
 ence and gave the prize ; but most glowing were 
 the eyes of Mary. 
 
 Beyond, the suburbs fill in the two miles that 
 stretch to Leith, and to the Firth, glittering 
 out to the far sea. 
 
 At night, if you have no fear of hobgoblins 
 or of hooligans, Calton Hill is an experience. 
 It is a still place, the silence the greater because 
 the city lies so near, and looks so busy with its 
 twinkling lights. A gulf of gloom lies between. 
 The night is velvet black, a drop curtain against 
 which is thrown the star-pricked map of the 
 city. One can well believe how the young 
 Stevenson, in those romantic days when he 
 carried a lantern under his jacket, used to 
 climb this hill venturesomely, and with the dog 
 in ''Chanticler," exclaim, '*I shall never for- 
 get the first night I lapped up the stars." It 
 is something to lap stars from the black pool 
 which is Edinburgh by night. 
 
 If you have, happily, lived in a high city, 
 Boston, Seattle, Duluth, Denver, St. Paul, San 
 Francisco, with water and land combined, you, 
 too, have lingered upon a heaven-kissed hill on 
 such a night as this, and Edinburgh seems na- 
 tive. 
 
 Scott, of course, must have known Calton 
 
148 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 Hill, although Salisbury Crags under Arthur's 
 Seat, with its more feasible promenade, better 
 appealed to him when he was writing the 
 ''Waverleys." There is an American who has 
 written of the Hill, a young inland American 
 whom the gods loved to an early death. I re- 
 member hearing Arthur Upson talk of days and 
 nights on the Calton, and his sonnet catches 
 the note — 
 
 "High and alone I stood on Calton Hill 
 
 Above the scene that was so dear to him 
 Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim. 
 October wooed the folded valleys till 
 In mist they blurred, even as our eye upfill 
 
 Under a too-sweet memory; spires did swim, 
 And gables, rust-red, on the gray sea's brim — 
 But on these heights the air was soft and still, 
 Yet, not all still; an alien breeze will turn 
 
 Here, as from bournes in aromatic seas, 
 As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn 
 
 With incense of rich earthly reveries. 
 Vanish the isles: Mist, exile, searching pain. 
 But the brave soul is freed, is home again." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF FIFE 
 
 ?ROM Edinburgh as I looked out on the 
 Forth from every vantage point, I was 
 conscious of the hills of Fife ever back- 
 ing in the prospect. And I kept repeating to 
 myself the old rhyme of the witches — 
 
 "The Thane of Fife had a wife, 
 Ah, where is she now!" 
 
 I determined to set sail and find not the wife, 
 but the kingdom. 
 
 It is a continuing splendour, this name — the 
 Kingdom of Fife. Than the thing nothing 
 could be less royal, more democratic. For 
 Fifeshire is given over to farm lands and coal 
 fields and treeless stretches, and the fringe of 
 Fife is made up of fishing villages '*a hodden 
 gray plaid wi' a gowden fringe," said a King 
 Jamie. It lies there, separate from Scotland, 
 although very Scottish, between the firths of the 
 Forth and the Tay, with the Ochil hills a barrier 
 on the landside. The separating firths are now 
 
 149 
 
150 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 connected with Scotland by great bridges, over 
 which the trains pass with reluctancet And 
 the wind is always blowing in Fife, a cold, stern, 
 relentless, Calvinistic wind, otf the North Sea. 
 Not by every wind of doctrine but by a disciplin- 
 ing Calvinistic wind is this Kingdom swept into 
 conformity. 
 
 There is no end of castles and of historic 
 memories lying like pebbles upon the seashore 
 of the Firth. Pick up any sea shell — I do not 
 remember seeing any, so combed have these 
 beaches been from the memory of man — and it 
 will whisper a tale in your ear. 
 
 But there is for me but one pilgrimage to be 
 made in Fifeshire, to Kirkcaldy; to the place, 
 not of Ravenscraig Castle, nor because Adam 
 Smith and political economy were here born 
 twins, nor because Carlyle taught here for two 
 years, nor because Edward Irving preached 
 here; their dwellings and schools and graves 
 can be seen. But because Marjorie Fleming 
 was born here, passed to and fro, from Granton 
 to Burntisland, in those brief beautiful nine 
 years that were granted to her, and to us, and 
 lies buried in the old kirkyard of Abbotshall. 
 
 Perhaps you do not know Marjorie. She 
 was the friend, the intimate friend of Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott. And I can but think how large and 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 151 
 
 void the world was a century ago, in that 
 Charles Lamb was living in London when Mar- 
 jorie was living in Kirkcaldy, and was dream- 
 ing of his "Dream Children,'' when he might 
 have known this most precious child, fit to be 
 the friend of Lamb as she was of Sir Walter. 
 
 Other men who have loved her with a tender- 
 ness which can belong but to the living child, 
 immortally living, are Dr. John Brown who 
 wrote the wonder book about her fifty years 
 ago, through which most of us have claimed 
 Marjorie as our own, and Mark Twain, who 
 only a month before he died — and joined her — 
 wrote as tenderly and whimsically of her as he 
 ever wrote of any child or any maid. Among 
 such august company we almost hesitate to en- 
 ter, but surely at this distance of time we may 
 lay our love beside that of the great men who 
 found Pet Marjorie one of the most precious 
 human treasures the world has ever held. 
 
 She was but a little girl, and only nine years 
 all told, when the last day came to her a hun- 
 dred and more years ago, December 19, 1811. 
 The first six years she lived in Kirkcaldy, **my 
 native town which though dirty is clene in the 
 country," Marjorie wrote this from Edinburgh 
 a little patronizingly, and Marjorie was never 
 strong on spelling. The next three years she 
 
152 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 lived with her aunt in the Scottish capital, where 
 she wrote those journals and letters which have 
 kept her memory warm to this day. In July 
 of 1811 she returned to the town by the North 
 Sea, and in December she was gone. 
 
 In the morning of the day on which I made 
 my pilgrimage I went up to the Parliament 
 buildings in the Old Town, looked them about, 
 saw the lawyers pacing to and fro, as Steven- 
 son had paced, but not for long — the absurdity 
 of it ! — and then down the hill in the shadow of 
 three men. 
 
 **One November afternoon in 1810" — (the 
 year in which the ''Lady of the Lake" was pub- 
 lished) ''three men, evidently lawyers, might 
 have been seen escaping like school boys from 
 the Parliament House, and speeding arm in 
 arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the 
 teeth of a surly blast of sleet." They were 
 Lord Erskine, William Clerk — and the third we- 
 all know; what service of romance has he not 
 performed for us! As the snow blattered in 
 his face he muttered, ' ' how it raves and drifts ! 
 On-ding o' snaw — aye, that's the word, on- 
 ding." And so he approached his own door. 
 Castle Street, No. 39. There, over the door, 
 looking forth on the world, is his face to-day, 
 looking up Young Street, 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 153 
 
 Then, as he grew restless and would awa, I 
 followed him through Young Street up to No. 1, 
 North Charlotte Street. It is a substantial 
 building, still of dignified and fair estate; 
 neighbourhoods are not transformed in a Scots 
 century as they are in America. But it carries 
 no tablet to tell the world that here Marjorie 
 lived. It was here that at the age of six she 
 wrote her first letter to Isa Keith. It was 
 here that Marjorie saw "regency bonnets" and 
 with eyes of envy ; as indeed she envied and de- 
 sired with the passionate depths of her nature 
 all lovely and strange things. Here she read 
 the Newgate calendar, and found it a fascinat- 
 ing affair — Marjorie less than nine ! And here 
 that Isabel Keith, her adored cousin, would not 
 permit the little bookworm to read much of 
 lovers or to talk of them. Marjorie says very 
 gravely, * ' a great many authors have expressed 
 themselves too sentimentally," but Isa was 
 never able quite to cure Marjorie of her inter- 
 est in love. 
 
 That evening Sir Walter carried her, through 
 the "on-ding o^ snaw," in a shepherd's plaid, 
 over to Castle Street. I walked through the 
 narrow stone-lined thoroughfare on a hot July 
 morning — and I could feel the cold and snow of 
 that winter a century back, and see the strong. 
 
154 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 lame, great man, carrying the wee wifie in the 
 neuk of his plaid, to the warm firelight of his 
 castle. Marjorie and he would romp there the 
 evening long. She would hear him say his 
 lessons, ''Ziccoty, diccoty, dock," or ''Wonery, 
 twoery, tickery, seven," while Marjorie ''grew 
 quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill be- 
 haviour and stupidness." 
 
 Then they would read ballads together; and 
 then ''he would take her on his knee, and make 
 her repeat Constance's speeches in King John 
 till he swayed to and fro sobbing his fill. 
 Fancy the gifted little creature, like one pos- 
 sessed, repeating — 
 
 " 'For I am sick, and capable of fears, 
 
 Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears ; 
 A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; 
 A woman, naturally born to fears.' " 
 
 I walked out through what used to be fields, 
 and is now much suburban dwelling, toward 
 Braehead. — "I am going to-morrow to a de- 
 lightful place, Braehead by name, where there 
 is ducks, cocks, bubbly jocks, 2 dogs, 2 cats and 
 swine which is delightful" — to Eavelston — "I 
 am at Eavelston enjoying nature's fresh air. 
 The birds are singing sweetly, the calf doth 
 frisk and nature shows her glorious face." 
 
 Eavelston is still a place of delight, with its 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 155 
 
 great cliffs breaking the surface of the park and 
 a deep-lying lake with dark woodlands. I wish 
 Marjorie might have known the ballad by Syd- 
 ney Dobell ; it has the magic quality she would 
 have felt. 
 
 ''Ravelston, Ravelston, 
 
 The merry path that leads 
 Down the golden morning hill, 
 And through the silver meads; 
 
 "She sang her song, she kept her kine, 
 She sat beneath the thorn, 
 When Andrew Keith of Ravelston 
 Rode thro' the Monday mom. 
 
 "Year after year, where Andrew came, 
 Comes evening down the glade, 
 And still there sits a moonshine ghost 
 Where sat the sunshine maid. 
 
 "She makes her immemorial moan. 
 She keeps her shadowy kine; 
 O Keith of Ravelston 
 The sorrows of thy line!" 
 
 In the late afternoon I took tram for Leith, 
 changing of course at Pilrig, because Leith re- 
 mains haughtily aloof from Edinburgh and em- 
 phasizes it through this break at the boundary. 
 ''When we came to Leith," says Boswell, "I 
 talked perhaps with too boasting an air, how 
 pretty the Frith of Forth looked; as indeed, 
 
156 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 after the prospect from Constantinople, of 
 which I have been told, and that from Naples, 
 which I have seen, I believe the view of the Frith 
 and its environs from the Castle-hill of Edin- 
 burgh is the finest prospect in Europe, 'Aye,' 
 replied Dr. Johnson, 'that is the state of the 
 world. Water is the same everywhere.' " 
 
 And so, down to the pier, stopping on the 
 way to look at a New Haven fishwife in her 
 picturesque costume, which she has worn ever 
 since the Danes came over. Yes, and looking 
 for a suitable piece of earth for Queen Magda- 
 lene to kiss, ''Scottis eard!" Well, if not here, 
 there is Scottis eard worthy elsewhere. 
 
 I asked for the ferry to Burnt-is-land. The 
 conductor of the tram looked, yes, and laughed. 
 Burnt-island, he dared, dared to repeat. And 
 so, I took ferry from Granton to — Burnt-island. 
 
 It is a long journey across the Firth. Far 
 down the waters rises the bold rock of the 
 Bass, around which I had sailed a day before, 
 looking for a landing for some one more pon- 
 derous than solan geese or kittie wake, and not 
 finding it ; although I was told that from Canty 
 bay — excellent Scots name — the innkeeper will 
 row you o'er, and you may walk where James I 
 was waiting for the boat which should carry 
 him to safety in France, and getting instead the 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 157 
 
 boat which carried him to prison in England. 
 Still I like to remember that Henry IV declared 
 in explanation that he '^ could speak very good 
 French" himself, if that were what they were 
 sending Scottish Jamie o'er the water for; 
 Henry who had years of the Hundred Years' 
 War behind him. 
 
 The rock is rent by a cavern running clean 
 through. It's quite a terrific place, and seven 
 acres of benty grass must have seemed small 
 refuge for the Covenanters who were lodged 
 here numerously in Killing Time. 
 
 On the mainshore, the Lothian, rises Tan- 
 tallon Castle, where Marmion dared to beard 
 Angus Bell-the-Cat. It still looks pretty tre- 
 mendous, and still stands, like the Coliseum. 
 ''Ding doon Tantallon? Build a brig to the 
 Bass!" runs the proud proverb. 
 
 But we are on our way across the Firth. 
 There was a certain magic about it on my day 
 of pilgrimage. The north shore lay sparkling 
 in the late afternoon sun, blue shimmering land 
 against a clear blue sky, the thin rim of the 
 continent playing here and there with opales- 
 cent colour where man had builded village or 
 castle, or where man had not destroyed the 
 ancient green. The south shore lay vague and 
 gray, and growing darker, against the falling 
 
158 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 afternoon, while the Lammermuirs stood up in 
 paler dusk in the background, and the sun 
 blazed behind them. And all about the Firth 
 glittered like an inland lake, a Great Lake. I 
 thought of how the Roman galleys and Norse 
 fleets had come this way, and looked and de- 
 parted. And how kings had brought their 
 armies here, and looked, perhaps besieged, and 
 departed. And how time and time and time 
 again, French fleets had sailed in here to help 
 their continuing ally, Scotland. And how kings 
 had sailed out from here to France, and how 
 Scots knights had sailed out from here for 
 France, the Crusades, anywhere that promised 
 adventure. And here Saxon Margaret had 
 sailed in to be Scotland's queen. And here 
 Scottish Mary had sailed in to be Scotland's 
 queen, and not to be. Far out in the offing the 
 sun shone golden upon the brown sails of a 
 single fishing boat, tacking to catch a homing 
 wind, a ghost where once had sailed the war 
 and merchant fleets of nations. 
 
 At Burntisland I did not pause to visit Ros- 
 send Castle where Mary is supposed to have 
 had her affair with Chastelard; certainly not. 
 Nor at Kinghorn, where Alexander III, within 
 a few months after he had married in haunted 
 Kelso, and within a few hours perhaps after he 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 159 
 
 had drunk the blude red wine in Dunfermline, 
 came galloping by this way, the horse stumbled, 
 the king fell, and 
 
 "Quhen AlysandjT oure King was dede 
 That Scotland led in luve and le . . . 
 Sueeoure Scotland and remede 
 That stands in perplexite." 
 
 Kirkcaldy 
 
 If Kirkcaldy was a '*lang tonn*' in the olden 
 days, it is longer to-day, stretching from Link- 
 town to Dysart, and broadening inland to Gal- 
 latown, where they make the famous Wemyss 
 pottery. To-day Kirkcaldy makes linoleum and 
 jute and engineering works, and it is the center 
 of a string of fishing villages, a ** metropolitan 
 borough system," hundreds of boats fishing the 
 North Sea with KY marked as their home port, 
 when their sailor men make home in any of 
 these picturesque and smelling villages, St. 
 Monan, Pittenweem, Cellardyke, Crail where 
 Mary of Lorraine landed, Largo where Sir An- 
 drew Wood the admiral lived, and where Alex- 
 ander Selkirk lived what time he did not live 
 as Crusoe in Juan Fernandez, and Anstru- 
 ther — 
 
160 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 "Wha wad na be in love 
 Wi' bonny Maggie Lauder, 
 A piper met her gaen to Fife 
 And speired what wast they ca'd her. . . . 
 I've lived in Fife 
 Baith maid and wife 
 These ten years and a quarter, 
 Gin ye should come to Anster Fair 
 Speir ye for Maggie Lauder." 
 
 There is also some castellated splendour, 
 Eavenscraig, and Wemyss on the site of the 
 castle of MacDuff, then of Fife, this Wemyss 
 being the ill-fated place where Mary first met 
 Darnley. 
 
 Abbotshall kirkyard is at the right of the rail- 
 way station as the train pulls in to Kirkcaldy, 
 In his book of Scotch pilgrimages when William 
 Winter was on his way to St. Andrews, past 
 Kirkcaldy, he wrote "gazing as I pass at its 
 quaint church among the graves." I suppose 
 he did not know what grave. 
 
 But first I would find where she had lived. 
 Kirkcaldy is close set against the sea. Here 
 on winding High Street, I found the house in 
 which she had lived, standing much as it did 
 no doubt a hundred years ago, except for a new 
 coat of tan on the stone. From those upper 
 windows Marjorie looked out on the coach go- 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 161 
 
 ing away toward Edinburgh. The ground floor 
 is occupied by a book store, where I could buy 
 no book about Marjorie. Under a window you 
 enter the archway and find yourself in a little 
 green-grassed court, which is all that is left of 
 Marjorie 's garden. The house proper fronted 
 the garden in that comfortable excluding way 
 which British people still prefer for their places 
 of habitation. It is still occupied as a dwelling, 
 and the nursery still looks as it did in Mar- 
 jorie 's day, and the drawing-room, where she 
 wrote that letter to Isa Keith — *'I iiow sit 
 down on my botom to answer all your kind and 
 beloved letters. ' ' The door of the nursery was 
 open. I remembered those last days, when ly- 
 ing ill, her mother asked Marjorie if there was 
 anything she wished. '*0h, yes, if you would 
 just leave the room door open a wee bit, and 
 play 'The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie still 
 and think and enjoy myself." 
 
 "I'm wearin' awa', Jean, 
 Like snaw wreaths in thaw, Jean, 
 I'm wearin' awa', 
 To the Land o' the Leal." 
 
 The kirkyard lies on the outskirts of the town. 
 It was a beautiful place as the Scotch sun sank 
 behind the Fife hills and the Firth. The or- 
 
162 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 ganist was playing and the music drifted out 
 through the narrow lancet windows when I 
 found the little white cross marked '*Pet Mar- 
 jorie,'* and the old gray tombstone with its 
 simple token, '^M. F. 1811. '» 
 
 For a hundred years then she has been lying 
 there. But Marjorie has become one of the im- 
 mortal dream children of the world. I laid my 
 fresh flowers beside another's which had with- 
 ered, and went my ways into the dusk. 
 
 St. Andrews 
 
 Past Kirkcaldy the road leaves the sea and 
 runs northward through meadows between 
 fields which have the look of centuries-old cul- 
 tivation, at peace like the fields and villages of 
 the English Midland, to St. Andrews. 
 
 "St. Andrews by the Northern Sea, 
 
 A haunted town it is to me! 
 A little city, worn and gray. 
 
 The gray North Ocean girds it roun J; 
 And o'er the rocks, and up the bay. 
 The long sea-rollers surge and sound; 
 And still the thin and biting spray 
 
 Drives down the melancholy street, 
 And still endure, and still decay, 
 
 Towers that the salt winds vainly beat. 
 Ghost-like and shadowy they stand 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 163 
 
 Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sands. 
 "St. Leonard's Chapel, long ago 
 
 We loitered idly where the tall 
 Fresh-budded mountain ashes blow 
 
 Within thy desecrated wall; 
 The tough roots rent the tombs below, 
 
 And April birds sang clamorous, 
 We did not dream, we could not know 
 
 How hardly Fate would deal with us! 
 
 "0 broken minster, looking forth 
 Beyond the bay, above the town, 
 winter of the kindly North, 
 college of the scarlet gown!" 
 
 r 
 
 Small wonder St. Andrews is the ecclesiasti- 
 cal capital of Scotland, and smaller wonder, re- 
 membering the Calvinistic wind, that here hap- 
 pened the brunt of the fight between the old 
 faith and the new. 
 
 It is a clean and seemly town, with much 
 historic memory and much present day dignity, 
 a small gray town, *'the essence of all the an- 
 tiquity of Scotland in good clean condition," 
 said Carlyle. Its ancient sights the cathedral 
 and the castle; its living sight the university 
 and the golf links. 
 
 The town stands on a promontory, three long 
 streets converging on the cathedral and castle 
 lying in ruins. The cathedral, a hundred years 
 in the building, and very splendid in its wealth 
 
164 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 of detail, its vastness of space like that of York 
 or Amiens, was dedicated in the days of The 
 Bruce, with the king present to endow it with 
 a hundred marks "for the mighty victory of the 
 Scots at Bannockburn, by St. Andrew's, the 
 guardian of the realm." For three hundred 
 years its wax tapers lighted the old rites ac- 
 cording to which The Bruce worshiped ; he was 
 not covenanted. Then the torch of the refor- 
 mation was applied to it, the torch of the flam- 
 ing tongue of John Knox. 
 
 To-day there are three towers left of the five 
 — Dr. Johnson hoped that one which looked un- 
 stable on the day of his visit, would *'fall on 
 some of the posterity of John Knox; and no 
 great matter!" There are massive walls. 
 There is no roof between us and the sky, which, 
 after all, does shelter the true faith, and if one 
 misses the chanting of the monks echoing 
 through these arches, under this roofless space, 
 there is the moan of the sea, sobbing at the foot 
 of the crag, the sea which is of no faith and 
 never keeps faith. And if one misses the scar- 
 let robes of Cardinal Beaton as he swept 
 through these aisles in splendid procession with 
 all the gorgeous trappings of his retinue, there 
 are mosses and wild flowers to give glows of 
 colour — one must content himself. Those were 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 165 
 
 evil days, whatever the faith; there was not 
 much division in matters of conduct ; there may 
 have been in matters of morals. 
 
 The castle stands stalwart on the rock prom- 
 ontory washed by the ocean, and the ocean 
 breaks angrily at its base like a creature robbed 
 over long of its prey. It is not the castle in 
 which the Cardinal lived, but it was built soon 
 after, and wrecked so thoroughly, and looks so 
 very ancient, that one would fain believe; and 
 the guide will tell, unless you prevent him, that 
 it was at these windows that the Cardinal sat 
 at his ease and witnessed the entertainment of 
 the auto da fe of the non-conformist, George 
 Wishart, burned alive on March 28, 1542 ; about 
 the time Philip the Second was burning here- 
 tics in the Old Plaza at Madrid, and a little be- 
 fore Queen Mary spouse to Philip, was burn- 
 ing them in England. And it was only two 
 months later. May 29, when workmen were 
 strengthening the castle at the orders of the 
 Cardinal against this very thing that happened, 
 that the reformers made their way in, killed the 
 Cardinal, and hung him ''by the tane arm and 
 the tane foot," from the very balcony where 
 he had sat to enjoy Wishart 's burning. A very 
 barbarous time. As Wishart had lain in the 
 Bottle Dungeon months before his burning, so 
 
166 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 Beaton lay in the dungeon in salt, seven months 
 before his burial. 
 
 John Knox joined the reformers, holding the 
 town until it was taken by the French fleet — 
 "defended their castle against Scotland, 
 France, and Ireland all three" — surrendering 
 to Strozzi, Prior of Capua, a Knight of 
 Ehodes ; so was the great world made small in 
 those days by errant knights and captains and 
 hired mercenaries. The French captain en- 
 tered, "and spoiled the castle very rigorously," 
 lest it should be " a receptacle for rebels. ' * All 
 this in the time of the Regency of Mary of 
 Lorraine. 
 
 Knox was taken and sent to the galleys for 
 a year. Then he returned, and was frequently 
 in St. Andrews, preaching in the town kirk, 
 founded, perhaps, by the confessor of Saint 
 Margaret, preaching here some of his last ser- 
 mons. "I saw him everie day of his doctrine 
 go hulie and fear," wrote James Melville, "with 
 a furrning of martriks about his neck, a staff 
 in the an hand," and lifted up to the pulpit 
 "whar he behovite to lean at his first entrie; 
 bot or he had done with his sermont, he was so 
 active and vigorus, that he lyk to ding that 
 pulpit in blads and fly out of it." The pulpit 
 held. And so did the doctrine of Knox. 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 167 
 
 The square tower of St. Regulus, a pre-Nor- 
 man bit of architecture, perhaps Culdee, stands 
 southeast of the cathedral. Dr. Johnson was 
 indignant with Boswell that he missed it. This 
 with the many other towers of church and col- 
 lege make St. Andrews a towered town. 
 
 There is an air, an atmosphere, in St. An- 
 drews; it is an academic town, serene, certain 
 of itself, quiet, with wide streets and gray stone 
 buildings. It is full of dignity, full of repose, 
 as a northern Oxford combined with a northern 
 Canterbury should be. There is a spell of an- 
 cientry over the gray old walls, but it is un- 
 broken ancientry; if there is a bar sinister, the 
 present generation has forgotten it. 
 
 And, of course — oh, not of course, but pri- 
 marily — there is golf. There is golf every- 
 where in Scotland. The golf ball and not the 
 thistle is the symbol of Scotland to-day, and 
 from the Tee at St. Andrews the Golf Ball has 
 been driven round the world. James VI, care- 
 ful Scot, recognized golf as an industry, and 
 granted letters patent in 1618 for the manufac- 
 ture of golf balls — the old leather, feather- 
 stuffed sphere — to James Melville and William 
 Berwick. 
 
 Edinburgh is ringed about with golf courses, 
 public and private. So is Scotland. The 
 
168 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Firth of Forth is continuous with them, from 
 North Berwick where the fleeting traveler is as 
 certain to see golf balls as he is to see the Bass, 
 up to St. Andrews. The Links of Leith are the 
 most historic, for it was on these that Charles 
 I was playing when news came of the Irish re- 
 bellion — and all that it led to. And here, his 
 son, later James II, played against two Eng- 
 lish noblemen who had declared they could beat 
 him, and James, cannily — true Scot ! — chose the 
 best player in Scotland, one Paterson an Edin- 
 burgh cobbler — and gave him the wager, and 
 doubled it, out of which Paterson built for him- 
 self Golfer's Land in the Canongate. The 
 Links of the Forth are not a golf course, al- 
 though there may be some who assert that they 
 were once an ancient course, say, for King 
 Arthur and his Knights. 
 
 Sealand, shoreland, it seems, makes the ideal 
 golf course, the soil growing with short crisp 
 grass that makes a springy and slippery turf, 
 and makes a keen game ; the inlander, of course, 
 and the American inlander, may not under- 
 stand that golf can never quite be golf, cer- 
 tainly never be the true Scottish rite, unless it 
 is played near the sea, with the tang of the sea 
 and of golf entering into one 's blood — and, pref- 
 erably at St. Andrews. 
 
The Kingdom of Fife 169 
 
 At St. Andrews golf is a business, a subli- 
 mated business; or better, an education. De- 
 grees are taken in it quite as higli and requir- 
 ing as thorough a training as at the University. 
 It is to St. Andrews that the good golfer goes 
 when he dies. And he aspires to go there be- 
 fore. 
 
 Or, rather at St. Andrews golf is a religion. 
 Half the stories told of golf are, as might be 
 expected of a game which came to its flowering 
 in Scotland, religious, or irreligious. And one 
 of the best of them is told in Stewart Dick's 
 book on ^'The Forth." A Scots minister was 
 playing and playing rather badly, and express- 
 ing himself in words if not in strokes. (Only 
 those of you who have read ''Sentimental 
 Tommy" will understand that unconsciously I 
 have played on the word ' ' stroke ! ") The min- 
 ister exclaimed bitterly as he emerged from his 
 unholy battle with the bunker — is Bunker Hill, 
 perhaps a hazard in golf? — ''Ah maun gie it 
 up! ah maun gie it up!" "What!" cried his 
 partner alarmed, "gie up gowf?" "Naw, 
 naw," returned the minister, "gie up the meen- 
 istry. ' * 
 
 Perhaps to amend again, golf at St. Andrews 
 is life. And in their death they are not di- 
 vided. The graveyard near the Abbey, with 
 
170 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 stones hoary from the sixteenth century, is 
 renowned to-day because it contains the graves 
 of good golfers, Allan Robertson, old Tom Mor- 
 ris, and young Tom Morris, the greatest golfer 
 since Paterson, dead at the pathetic age of 24; 
 after that comes a man's best golfing years, 
 that is, for his pleasure. Young Tom's grave 
 is marked by an elaborate monument with an 
 inscription that befits a king. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 TO THE NORTH 
 
 NE leaves Edinburgh for the North — the 
 haunted North — as in a royal progress. 
 The train moves out of the Waverley sta- 
 tion, and through the Gardens, under the very 
 shadow of Castle Eock. 
 
 And it moves through the scant few miies of 
 country, richly cultivated, suburban fairly, yet 
 there are level wheatlands, and country cot- 
 tages and orchards; it is southern, English, 
 these few miles down to the Forth. 
 
 "The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean, 
 We bowled along a road that curved its spine 
 Superbly sinuous and serpentine 
 Thro' silent symphonies of summer green, 
 Sudden the Forth came on us — sad of mien, 
 No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line; 
 A sheet of dark dull glass, without a sign 
 Of life or death, two beams of sand between. 
 Water and sky merged blank in mist together. 
 The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship's spars 
 Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze : 
 We felt the dim, strange years, the gray, strange weather, 
 The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars. 
 Where Lancelot rides clanking thro' the haze." 
 
 171 
 
172 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 To every one comes this sense of strange 
 years and a strange land, even at Queensferry, 
 even to Henley. 
 
 The inn, where we have all put up in imag- 
 ination, with Scott, and again with Stevenson, 
 lies under the bridge, as though it would escape 
 the quick curious gaze from these iron girders 
 so high above what Scott ever dreamed or 
 Davy Balfour. And then, the train creeps out 
 over this modern audacity, this very ugly iron 
 spanning of the river. Fortunately we are 
 upon it and cannot see its practical, monstrous 
 being, ''that monster of utility," as Lord Rose- 
 bery called it. He should know its phrase, 
 since it is ever present in the view from his 
 Dalmeny Park, lying east of the Bridge and 
 south of the Forth. 
 
 This is precisely where Queen Margaret was 
 ferried to and fro a thousand years ago. The 
 monks who had charge of the ferry took from 
 the toll every fourth and every fortieth penny 
 — a delightful bit of geometric finance. Who 
 could calculate and who would dispute the cal- 
 culation, of fourth and fortieth! 
 
To the North 17: 
 
 Dunfermline 
 
 *The King sits in Dunfermline toun 
 Drinking the blude-red wine." 
 
 Because of such lines as these I would cross 
 far seas, merely to have been, if far lonely de- 
 structive centuries after, in the very place of 
 their being. 
 
 For Dunfermline is surely a very kingly 
 name for a king's town, and ''blude-red" wine 
 is of such a difference from mere red, or blood- 
 red wine. What wonder that Alexander III, 
 of whom it is written, went to his death over 
 at Kinghorn in such a tragic way ! 
 
 But the king who forever sits in Dunfermline 
 is that Malcolm of the eleventh century who 
 brings hither something more than legend yet 
 something as thrilling, as ''authentic" as leg- 
 end. Malcolm is the son of Duncan, in Shake- 
 speare's play, and in history. 
 
 "The son of Duncan 
 From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, 
 Lives in the English court; and is received 
 Of the most pious Edward with such grace 
 That the malevolence of fortune nothing 
 Takes from his high respect." 
 
174 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Malcolm, after "the deep damnation of his 
 taking off," fled from the red wrath of Mac- 
 beth and into the far prophecy of Banquo, to 
 the court of Edward the Confessor. There 
 perhaps he met Margaret ; or perhaps not, since 
 she was grand-niece to the Confessor, and Mal- 
 colm was a middle-aged man when this first 
 royal Scottish romance occurs. When he re- 
 turned he built himself a castle here on the safe 
 north side of the Forth ; if ever any place were 
 safe in that eleventh century. He waited here 
 the coming of Margaret, and she came, the first 
 Margaret of England. 
 
 It was the first year after the Conquest, and 
 Princess Margaret with her brother and sister 
 were fleeing to her mother's people in Bo- 
 hemia. They were wrecked far north in the 
 Firth of Forth — which thereby becomes part of 
 the legendary coast of Bohemia. She landed 
 at St. Margaret's Hope, the first bay to the 
 west of North Queensferry. Malcolm saw her 
 from his high tower — and they were married 
 — and they lived happily ever after, and richly 
 for a quarter of a century; and they live im- 
 mortally now. 
 
 Their history is certain, but it reads like a 
 romance. It may be read, very exquisitely set 
 forth, in "The Tides of Spring," a one-act 
 
To the North 175 
 
 drama by Arthur Upson, the young American 
 poet whose sonnet on Calton Hill I have just 
 quoted; a poet who went to his death so trag- 
 ically and so beautifully in Lake Bemidji in 
 Minnesota, a few years ago. 
 
 The story in the play, of Malcolm and Mar- 
 garet, is all apple blossoms and spring tides; 
 it is very lovely. Margaret has met Malcolm 
 before, and destiny brings her to Scotland and 
 to the king. It is a beautiful beginning to a 
 long enduring love story that through all the 
 reality of history shows a tender devotion from 
 this stern northern king to the saintly queen 
 from the Saxon South. 
 
 They safeguarded themselves and their royal 
 flock in Edinburgh, but they lived in Dunferm- 
 line. Margaret knew a richer and a more re- 
 ligious life than Malcolm, and she it was who 
 laid the foundations of the kingdom, in court 
 and church. ''Whatever she refused, he re- 
 fused also ; whatever pleased her, he also loved, 
 for the love of her," says her confessor. 
 English Margaret, unlike the later English 
 Margaret of Alexander III, did not find the 
 North '*a sad and solitary place"; and unlike 
 the English Margaret of James IV she was 
 saintly, a white pearl in this wild red time. 
 
 Malcolm and Margaret became the father 
 
176 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 and mother of a royal brood, four kings of Scot- 
 land, and of Queen Matilda of England — surely 
 Banquo saw clearly on that terrible night; his 
 prophecy began with a royal rush. 
 
 But who would not live a lovely and pleasant 
 life in this well-placed royal burg, serene upon 
 her hill? Rich green fields spread down to the 
 Forth, the red network of the bridge lifts itself 
 into view, far to the left sweeps the Firth out 
 to North Berwick Law and the Bass, and Edin- 
 burgh swims in the haze against the leonine 
 mountain that is ever her guard. 
 
 The Abbey gives the town its special dignity. 
 There is nothing left of the church built by 
 Queen Margaret — where she robbed the box of 
 the money the king had just given at mass if 
 she found the poor requiring more immediate 
 help. But this ancient nave built by Mar- 
 garet's son David is so very ancient that one 
 could well spare the accurate historic knowl- 
 edge that it is a generation too late for emo- 
 tion. There are ponderous round pillars that 
 could have sustained all the history we require 
 of them, high casements, a bare triforium, al- 
 together a Davidic place, a simplicity, a truth 
 about it, that we would not dispute. 
 
 The new church was built a century ago over 
 the old, and the ancient nave is like an aisle in 
 
To the North 177 
 
 the new. Certain details, like the little Nor- 
 man doorway, once walled-up in the time of 
 Knox, reward us with their preserved beauty. 
 
 The tombs of Malcolm and Margaret are 
 without the wall. Malcolm perhaps is there; 
 they carried bodies far in those days of mate- 
 rial resurrection, and would have brought Mal- 
 colm from Northumberland. But Margaret, 
 canonized next century, was too precious to re- 
 main in Ultima Thule, so Spain carried her 
 away — and who knows where she rests? 
 
 But within, before the high altar — or shall 
 we say since this is a reformed place, before 
 the pulpit? — rests the body of The Bruce. It 
 is no doubt The Bruce. For Dunfermline was 
 forgotten in rebellious times, and the tombs 
 were undisturbed. Even in the North transept 
 there rest the bones of eleven kings earlier than 
 The Bruce. 
 
 Yes, it is very certain The Bruce, wrapped in 
 gold cloth in the thirteenth century, his heart 
 only missing and lying at Melrose. Scott who 
 was everywhere and investigating everything 
 saw the tomb opened and pronounced — King 
 Eobert Bruce. One could wish the great let- 
 ters about the modern tower looking like an 
 electric sign, were *' reformed." But here 
 within the quiet, to stand at the very spot where 
 
178 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 is the dust of so mighty a mau, mighty in 
 valour, mighty in sovereignty — I find it a more 
 substantial emotion than I have felt in the In- 
 valides. 
 
 Ancientry preserves its unbroken descent 
 outside the church. The mother of Wallace is 
 buried here, and the thorn he planted to mark 
 her grave still flourishes, to the ninth century 
 after. 
 
 The people who sit in Dunfermline town have 
 not too much concern for King Robert and 
 King Alexander. Nor do they do much sit- 
 ting, these busy industrious Dunfermliners. 
 They are living their own lives, and making 
 for themselves profit through the generosity of 
 a later fellow citizen. 
 
 Dunfermline is a center of great coal fields, 
 and center of the Scotch linen making. So the 
 town is modern, looks modern, and the people 
 move briskly. If they know you are a tourist 
 on ancient errand bent, they look curiously. 
 You come from so far to recapture ancient life, 
 when you might have so much modern life in 
 your own country. 
 
 They know what America means. For An- 
 drew Carnegie is their fellow citizen, or would 
 be had he not become an American. Seventy 
 years ago he was born in a cottage toward 
 
To the North 179 
 
 which the Dunfermline folk look with the at- 
 tention we show the Abbey. And Carnegie has 
 not only given a library to Dunfermline — yes, 
 a library — Malcolm could not read Margaret's 
 books, but he had them richly bound and be- 
 jeweled and kissed them in reverence of her. 
 But the Laird has given a technical school, and 
 the Pittencrieff Glen, which is a lovely pleasure 
 ground with the scant stones of Malcolm's pal- 
 ace above, and a trust of two million and a 
 half dollars, which the wise town corporation 
 is busy utilizing for the advancement of Dun- 
 fermline town. 
 
 Loch Leven 
 
 And on to Loch Leven. I cannot think that 
 any one can come upon this castle without emo- 
 tion. Or he should never come to Scotland. 
 
 It is a famous fishing lake, a peculiar kind 
 of trout are abundant, twenty-five thousand 
 taken from it each year; rather I have given 
 the round numbers, but an exact toll of the fish 
 taken is required by law, and for the past year 
 it was, with Scottish accuracy, something more 
 or something less than twenty-five thousand. 
 The lake is controlled altogether by an anglers 
 
180 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 association. No boat can row on it, no fisher- 
 man can cast his line, but by permission. 
 
 There is a small shop in Edinburgh where 
 tickets and tackle can be taken, and much ad- 
 vice from the canny Scot who keeps the shop, 
 and who would make your fishing expedition a 
 success. *'I don't know what your scruples 
 are," he ventured, ''but if ye want the Loch 
 Leven boatmen to be satisfied, I'd advise ye to 
 take wi' a bit o' Scotch. A wee bit drappie 
 goes a long wa." 
 
 ** Just a wee deoch and doris!" 
 
 We remembered Harry Lauder, and won- 
 dered if we could say "It's a braw bricht moon 
 licht nicht." Or would those redoutable boat- 
 men ken that we were but pretending to Scotch 
 and even suspect our "Scotch"? 
 
 They did not. 
 
 The Green hotel is an excellent place to stay, 
 kept by a Scotchman who knows that in Amer- 
 ica every one knows every one else. We slept 
 in feather beds, and we inspected the collection 
 of "stanes," one of the best I have ever seen in 
 Scotland, a great variety, some of them natural 
 boulders, some wood with iron weights — some- 
 day I must brave the rigours of a Scotch win- 
 ter and see them curl on Duddingston or on 
 Leven, And I should like to see Bob Dunbar 
 
To the North 181 
 
 of St. Paul, champion curler of America, meas- 
 ure his skill against the champion of Scotland. 
 
 And, of course, there was talk with the Scot 
 host. ''So ye 're American. Well, maybe ye 
 ken a mon that lives in Minn'apolis. He's twa 
 sisters live here; and he's built a hoose for 
 them." It happened that we did ken of this 
 man, who came from Kinross to Minneapolis 
 with only his Scotch canniness, and has built 
 the Donaldson business into one of the great 
 department stores of America. 
 
 And next day, after we had slept on feather 
 beds, we had our fishing in Loch Leven, with 
 thousands of wild swan disputing our posses- 
 sion ; a big boat, with big oars, sweeps, one man 
 to each oar, one a loquacious fellow with no 
 dialect (he might as well have been English), 
 and the other taciturn with a dialect thick as 
 mud or as Lauder's. And we caught two of 
 the twenty-five thousand odd which were cred- 
 ited to that year. 
 
 As the train came alongside Loch Leven on 
 its way to Kinross station, suddenly I felt Mary 
 as I never have realized her, before or since. 
 There across the lake lay St. Serf's isle, and 
 there rose the keep of the old castle. And over 
 that water, as plainly — more plainly, than the 
 fishing boats that lay at their ease — I saw her 
 
182 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 take boat on a still evening, May 2, 1568, at 
 half past seven o'clock from prison — to Uberty 
 — to prison! 
 
 I was not mistaken. She who was with me 
 saw it, as distinctly, as vividly. Perhaps it 
 was that all our lives this had been to us one 
 of the great adventuring moments — for which 
 we would exchange any moment of our lives. 
 We were idolaters always, Mariolaters. And 
 now we know that places are haunted, and that 
 centuries are of no account; they will give up 
 their ghosts to those who would live in them. 
 
 "Put off, put off, and row with speed, 
 For now is the time and the hour of need, ' 
 To oars, to oars, and trim the bark, 
 Nor Scotland's queen be a warder's mark; 
 Yon light that plays 'round the castle moat, 
 Is only the warder's random shot; 
 Put off, put off, and row with speed, 
 For now is the time and the hour of need. 
 
 "Those pond'rous keys shall the kelpies keep. 
 And lodge in their caverns, so dark and deep, 
 Nor shall Loch Leven's tower and hall 
 Hold thee, our lovely lady, in thrall; 
 Or be the haunts of traitors sold. 
 While Scotland has hands and hearts so bold. 
 Then onward, steersman, row with speed. 
 For now is the time and the hour of need. 
 
 "Hark! the alarum bell has rung. 
 The warder's voice has treason sung. 
 
To the North 183 
 
 The echoes to the falconets roar, 
 Chime sweetly to the dashing shore; 
 Let tower, hall, and battlement gleam, 
 We steer by the light of the taper's gleam, 
 For Scotland and Maiy on with speed, 
 Now, now, is the time and the hour of need !" 
 
 Because of that experience, because of the 
 feeling I have for Queen Mary, I have never 
 landed upon St. Serf's island. It has hap- 
 pened, quite without my making intentional 
 pilgrimage, that I have been in many places 
 where Queen Mary has been; and willingly I 
 have made my accidental pilgrimages of loy- 
 alty. I have stood in the turret at Eoscoff 
 where she landed when only five, hurried from 
 Scotland that she might escape sinister Eng- 
 land; in the chapel in Notre Dame where she 
 was married to the Dauphin; in the chateau at 
 Orleans where she lived with him much of that 
 brief happy French life she loved so dearly; 
 in the two small garret chambers where she 
 lodged in Coventry; in Hardwick Hall, where 
 Bess of Hardwick was her stern jailer ; at Foth- 
 eringay where nothing remains of that ensan- 
 guined block but a low heap of stones which 
 the grass covers; in Peterborough where she 
 found her first resting place; in Westminster 
 her last final resting place; and in many and 
 many a haunted place of this Scottish land. 
 
184 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 And just before starting north I made a little 
 journey to Linlithgow which lies twenty miles 
 west of Edinburgh. The palace overlooks a 
 quiet blue loch, a blue smiling bit of water, on 
 which much royalty has looked forth, and on 
 which the eyes of Mary first looked. There, in 
 the unroofed palace of Linlithgow, in the 
 *' drawing-room, " in December, 1542, was born 
 that queen who ever since has divided the 
 world. 
 
 "Of all the palaces so fair 
 Built for the royal dwelling, 
 In Scotland far beyond compare 
 
 Linlithgow is excelling. 
 And in the park in jovial June 
 How sweet the merry linnet's tune, 
 How blithe the blackbird's lay." 
 
 It was the dower-house of Scottish queens, 
 and hither James V brought Mary of Lorraine 
 after he had married her at St. Andrews. (I 
 wondered if there was any haunting memory of 
 Margaret of Denmark who sat here sewing 
 when the nobles raged through the palace seek- 
 ing the life of James III. Or of Margaret of 
 England as she sat here waiting for James IV 
 to return from Flodden.) 
 
 Of the regency of Mary of Lorraine, when 
 James V died and Mary was a baby, Knox 
 spluttered that it was ''as semlye a sight (yf 
 
DRAWING-ROOM, LINLITHGOW PALACE, WHERE QUEEN 
 MARY WAS BORN. 
 
To the North 185 
 
 men had eis) as to putt a sadill upoun the back 
 of ane unrowly kow." Knox did not pick his 
 language with any nicety when he said his say 
 of women and the monstrous regiments of them. 
 And to his Puritan soul there could come no 
 approval of the love affairs of Mary of Lor- 
 raine, such as that one sung by the Master of 
 Erskine, who was slain at Pinkiecleuch — 
 
 "I go, and wait not qubair, 
 I wander heir and thair, 
 I weip and sichis rycht sair 
 
 With panis smart ; 
 Now must I pass away, away, ^ 
 
 In wilderness and lanesome way, 
 Alace ! this woeful day 
 
 We suld departe." 
 
 And now there is neither Margaret nor 
 Mary, neither regent nor reformer, palace of 
 neither Linlithgow nor Leven. How the de- 
 structions of man have thrown palaces and doc- 
 trines open to the winds of heaven. And how 
 purifying this destruction. And what precious 
 things have passed with them, what tears of 
 women have been shed, and how are the mouths 
 of men become dust. 
 
 Loch Leven has one lovely gracious memory 
 of Mary in the days before everything was 
 lost. She was lodging here, and had sent for 
 Knox to come 'from Edinburgh. 
 
186 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ''She travailed with him earnestly for two 
 hours before her supper, that he would protect 
 the Catholic clergy from persecution." Knox 
 slept in the castle, but ''before the sun," as he 
 records, he was awakened by the sound of horns 
 and of boats putting off to the mainland. For 
 the queen would go a-hawking. 
 
 Presently Knox was roused. The queen 
 would have him join her "be-west Kinross," to 
 continue the conversation. 
 
 The reformer did not rise as early as the 
 queen — the serenity of that righteous con- 
 science! He rose reluctantly at her summons. 
 His reforming eyes, no doubt, looked with dis- 
 pleasure on the exquisite beauties of the unre- 
 formed morning, the mists lying soft on the 
 Lomonds, day just emerging from night. 
 
 So he joined her, and they rode together, she 
 on her horse, he on his hackney. 
 
 And the morning came on, and the day was 
 a glory. 
 
 Mary warned Knox that a certain Bishop 
 sought to use him, and Knox afterward ac- 
 knowledged the value of her warning. She 
 asked him to settle a quarrel between Argyle 
 and his wife, her half sister, as Knox had done 
 before. And often no doubt she glanced at her 
 hawk hanging in the high Scottish sky. 
 
To the North 187 
 
 And finally she declared — "as touching our 
 reasoning of yesternight, I promise to do as ye 
 required. I shall summon the offenders and 
 ye shall know that I shall minister justice.'* 
 
 And the reformer, softened by the morning, 
 and by Mary's eyes — **I am assured then that 
 ye shall please God and enjoy rest and pros- 
 perity within your realm." 
 
 And Knox rode off. And Mary rode hawk- 
 ing. 
 
 The time was not yet come when Mary should 
 say — '*Yon man gar me greet and grat never 
 tear himself. I will see if I can gar him 
 greet." 
 
 Or, for Knox to pray — ''Oh, Lord, if thy 
 pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's 
 Majestic from the venom of idolatry, and de- 
 liver her from the bondage and the thralldom 
 of Satan." 
 
 Perth 
 
 Perth may be the Fair City, but it is scarce 
 fair among cities, and is chiefly regarded even 
 by itself as a point of departure, the Gate of 
 the Highlands. The railway platform is at 
 least a third of a mile long, and very bewilder- 
 ing to the unsuspecting visitor who thought 
 
188 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 he was merely coming to the ancient Celtic 
 capital. 
 
 For, very far backward, this was the chief 
 city of the kingdom, before Scotland had spread 
 down to the Forth, and down to the Border. 
 Even so recently (?) as the time of James the 
 First it was held the fairest city in the king- 
 dom. But the assassination of that monarch 
 must have led the Jameses to seek a safer city 
 in which to be fair. 
 
 There is a touch of antiquity about the town. 
 One is shown the house of the Fair Maid; in 
 truth that being the objective of the casual 
 traveler signs in the street point the way. It 
 may or may not be. But we agreed to let Scott 
 decide these things and he, no doubt, chose this 
 house. Curfew Street that runs by, looking 
 like a vennel — vennel? I am certain — was in- 
 habited rather by lively boys, and no fair head 
 looked out from the high window that would 
 have furnished an excellent framing for the fair 
 face of Catherine Glover. 
 
 The North Inch I found to be not an island 
 in the Tay, but a meadow, where every possible 
 out-door activity takes place among the de- 
 scendants of Clans Chattan and Quhele — there 
 is race-course, golf links, cricket field, football, 
 grazing, washing. I trust the clans are some- 
 
To the North 189 
 
 what evener now in numbers, although there 
 were left but one Chattan to level the Quheles. 
 Coming from the Chatian tribe I must hope the 
 centuries since that strifeful day have brought 
 reexpansion to the Chattans. 
 
 Farther up the Inch, onto the Whin, the eye 
 looks across to Scone. The foot does not cross, 
 for there is nothing left of the old Abbey, not 
 even of the old palace where Charles II, last 
 king crowned in Scotland, suffered coronation 
 — and was instructed in the ways of well doing 
 according to the Covenant. Even the stone of 
 destiny was gone then, brought from Duhstaff- 
 nage, and taken to Westminster. 
 
 There is nothing, or only stones, left of the 
 Blackfriar's Monastery in which James, the 
 poet-king, suffered death. Surely he was born 
 too soon. As last instead of first of the 
 Jameses, what might he not have done in the 
 ways of intelligence and beauty, as England's 
 king as well as Scotland's! Very beautifully 
 runs his picture of Lady Joanna Beaufort, seen 
 from a window in Windsor — 
 
 "The fairest and the freshest flower, 
 That ever I saw before that hour, 
 The which o' the sudden made to start 
 The blood of my body to my heart . . . 
 Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly creature, 
 Or heavenly thing in form of nature"?" 
 
190 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 He came back from his enforced habitation 
 in England accompanied by Lady Joanna as 
 Queen, and determined *4f God gives me but 
 a dog's life, I will make the key keep the castle 
 and the brachen bush the cow." It was a dog's 
 death the gods gave. The nobles, the Grahams, 
 would not keep the castle. So in Blackfriars 
 the king was ''mercilessly dirked to death," 
 notwithstanding that Catherine Douglass — the 
 Douglasses were with James then — made a bar 
 across the door with her arm where the iron 
 had been sinisterly removed. A dark scene, 
 with **the fairest flower" looking on. 
 
 So, I think it not so ill, even though time 
 delayed over a hundred years, that John Knox 
 (May, 1559) should have preached such an in- 
 cendiary sermon that in three days there was 
 nothing left of Black or Gray friary but the 
 broken stones. 
 
 Nor is there anything left of Gowrie house, 
 where James VI was almost entrapped and 
 almost slain — *'I am murdered — treason — 
 treason"; the jail stands on its site. Hunting- 
 ton Tower still stands down the Tay ; and there 
 also James very nearly came to his death, at 
 the plotting of the son of that Kuthven who 
 killed Rizzio and forced Mary to abdicate. 
 
 Kinnoul Hill overlooks the town, and fur- 
 nishes a very fair view of the Fair City. No 
 
To the North 191 
 
 doubt it was from this height that the Eoman 
 looked down upon the Tay — 
 
 "Behold the Tiber! the vain Roman cried, 
 Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie's side; 
 But where's the Sect that would the vaunt repay, 
 And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?" 
 
 It is more wonderful to-day to know that sal- 
 mon weighing seventy pounds are sometimes 
 taken from this Tay. The river leads down 
 through the rich Carse of Gowrie, toward Dun- 
 dee and marmalade. Thither we shall not go; 
 but it shall come to us. 
 
 Ruskin spent his childhood in Perth and did 
 not like it. But Ruskin liked so little in the 
 world, except — **that Scottish sheaves are more 
 golden than are bound in other lands, and that 
 no harvests elsewhere visible to human eye are 
 so like the 'corn of heaven,' as those of Strath 
 Tay and Strath Earn." That is the way for 
 to admire, for to see; all, or nothing was Rus- 
 kin 's way. 
 
 Ruskin married in Perth, one of its fair- 
 est maids, who lived on the slope of Kinnoul 
 Hill; and then, unmarrying, the fair lady, 
 looking very fair in the painted pictures, mar- 
 ried a painter who once was very much about 
 Perth. 
 
 Perth is also the '^Muirton" of ''The Bonnie 
 
192 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Brier Bush." So some have found these en- 
 virons bonny. 
 
 In truth it is a lovely surrounding country. 
 And have you not from childhood, if you read 
 ** Macbeth" as early as did Justice Charles E. 
 Hughes, thought Birnam and Dunsinane the 
 loveliest names in the world? Six miles up the 
 Tay through bonny country, stands Dunsinnan 
 Hill; not so lovely as our Dunsinane; once it 
 was Dunscenanyse ! But Shakespeare always 
 gave words their magic retouching. And once 
 there stood here the castle of Dunsinane where 
 a certain Lady walked in her sleep, and then 
 slept. And below, you see Birnam wood — 
 
 "Till great Birnam wood 
 Do come to Dunsinane." 
 
 To see that wood wave in the wind is fairly 
 eerie ! 
 
 Dunkeld is less of a city, more of a memory, 
 exquisite in its beauty, lodged in a close fold 
 of the Highlands. And you reach it through 
 the station, cis-Tay, called Birnam! 
 
 It is a quiet peaceful place, more like a now 
 quiet Border town. Hither to this cathedral, 
 the precious remains of Saint Columba were 
 brought by the MacAlpine. So I suppose they 
 still rest here, that wandering dust, that mis- 
 
To the North 193 
 
 sionary zeal. Also, inharmony, here rest (?) 
 the remains of the Wolf of Badenoch, wicked 
 son of Robert II, and — I am certain the pun has 
 been ventured before — bad enough. Gavin 
 Douglass of the Vergilian measure was bishop 
 here, and Mrs. Oliphant has written stories 
 round about. 
 
 "Cam ye by Athole, lad wi' the philabegf 
 
 We are getting into the Highlands, we are at 
 them, from now on nothing but philabegs, pi- 
 brochs, pipes, tartans and heather, nothing but 
 the distilled essence of heather — heather ale? 
 the secret was lost when the Picts were con- 
 quered. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND 
 
 ;ANY ways lead out of Perth, but best of 
 these is the foot-path way, picked up 
 anywhere in the Highlands. By rail the 
 road leads down to the sea, past Glamis Castle, 
 built in 1500, where the room is shown in which 
 Duncan was murdered in 1000, although Shake- 
 speare says it was at Inverness ; and to Kirrie- 
 muir, if one would match the ''Bonnie Brier 
 Bush" with ''The Window in Thrums." Or 
 by rail the road leads to the lakes of the West, 
 and to the Highlands of the North. 
 
 For one short space I took it northward to 
 the Pass of Killiecrankie, almost in fear, as a 
 regiment of English mercenaries is said to have 
 been a-feared in the Forty Five, three-quarters 
 of a century after Killiecrankie. For here in 
 a last splendid moment, Graham of Claver- 
 house. Viscount of Dundee, and sometime Bon- 
 nie Dundee, was killed, the battle having gone 
 gloriously his way, for the glorious cause of 
 Stewart and mon droit — some say by a silver 
 
 194 
 
Highland and Lowland 195 
 
 bullet, the devil having charmed the leaden bul- 
 lets that were showered against his magic life ; 
 those who say it are Whigs. 
 
 Always called Bonnie Dundee by those of us 
 who care for romance. To quote from Samuel 
 Crothers, **And you say they are the same? I 
 cannot make them seem the same. To me there 
 are two of them: Graham of Claverhouse, 
 whom I hate, and the Bonnie Dundee, whom I 
 love. If it 's all the same to you, I think I shall 
 keep them separate, and go on loving and hat- 
 ing as aforetime." 
 
 The Pass is lovely enough, on a suinmer 
 morning, with the sun shining fair on the High- 
 lands, the blue hills misty in the distance, the 
 trees thick green on both sides the bending 
 Garry, and not a living thing in view, nothing 
 which belongs to the Duke of Atholl who owns 
 everything hereabout, except the air and the 
 beauty and the memory, which I packed in my 
 Pilgrim's Wallet. 
 
 Because the Duke owns the cathedral I did 
 not claim any memory beside the dust of Bon- 
 nie Dundee — 
 
 "Fling open the Westport and let me gae free." 
 
 And now, to a certain defeat which I suffered 
 near the Pass of Killiecrankie, when I ''cam by 
 
196 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Athole." I was without a philabeg. If I had 
 had it — it sounds so enhearteningly like usque- 
 baugh — I think my courage would have been 
 great enough to do the thing I had crossed over 
 seas to do — to walk from Blair Athole through 
 Glen Tilt and between the great lift of the 
 Cairngorms, to Braemar. I had felt that I 
 owed it to Scottish ancestors and to those who 
 had lost in the Risings. 
 
 I remembered that Queen Mary had longed 
 to be a man. When she had come into this 
 North to punish Huntley, so the Scottish cal- 
 endar states, ''She repenteth of nothing, but 
 when the lords and others came in the morning 
 from the watch, that she was not a man to know 
 what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or 
 to walk upon the causeway with a jack and a 
 knapschall (helmet), a Glasgow buckler, and a 
 broadsword." Her father's errant soul was 
 hers. And once she ventured it, but in fear of 
 her life, when she fled from the wraith of Dam- 
 ley, to the scandalizing of the mongers, ''Her 
 Majestic, in mennis claithes, buttit and spurrit, 
 departed that samin nicht of Borthwick to Dun- 
 bar, quhairof no man knew saif my Lord Duke 
 and sum of his servants, wha met Her Majestic 
 a myll off Borthwick and conveyed her hieness 
 to Dunbar." 
 
Highland and Lowland 197 
 
 I added another Scottish defeat. For it was 
 excessively warm that summer, and Scotland 
 can be as warm and as dry as Kansas. It is 
 thirty miles, the mountain way. There is no 
 inn. There is possibility — there is danger — of 
 losing the way. There are no wolves, I sup- 
 pose, and certainly no Wolf of Badenoch. But 
 there were the unknown terrors. 
 
 So we walked a certain stent into Glen Tilt, 
 enough to know that it is wild, gloomy, one of 
 the strangest wildest places, Ben-y-Gloe, the 
 '^Mountain of the Mist," rising out of the early 
 morning mist, yet not so mysteriously or ma- 
 jestically as the Mountain Going to the Sun. 
 But no valley in our Mountain West has ever 
 seemed more empty. And I suppose since Pict- 
 ish time this glen has been deserted. There 
 were deer, red deer, that thought they were free, 
 and who looked out of their coverts indiffer- 
 ently. We had not the heart to tell them that 
 they belonged, body and soul, to the Duke of 
 Atholl. After the Porteous riots. Queen Car- 
 oline, presiding in the place of George who was 
 absent in his favourite Hanover, threatened "to 
 turn Scotland into a hunting field." The Duke 
 of Argyle thereupon hinted that he would have 
 to '* return to look after my hounds." Queen 
 Caroline seems sovereign to-day. And espe- 
 
198 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 cially on August eleventh, the day before St. 
 Grouse Day, there is an ominous quiet. 
 
 So we returned by way of Coupar Angus — 
 meekly remembering the proverb, *'he that 
 maun to Coupar, maun to Coupar." Here we 
 changed cars, nearly losing the train, because 
 we were so engrossed in watching the loading 
 of the luggage, the Scotch porter cheering on 
 his assistant, ''we're twa strong men, hand awa, 
 let's be canny." And in the great gold sunset 
 that was like the glory of God upon the heav- 
 enly Highlands. 
 
 We came to Blairgowrie, where we heard in 
 the twilight on the hills above the town a bird 
 of magic such as I have never heard elsewhere. 
 Was it a nightingale, or a night lark? It sang 
 like these. 
 
 Next morning we took coach across these 
 great hills, by way of Glenshee, a very lovely 
 way of going, and not to be regretted, in its 
 dashing splendour of a coach and six — except 
 that it was not a thirty-mile walk. But it is to 
 be historically remembered, because it is the 
 way Mar's men came down to the Strath of 
 Tay, and brought the Eising into the Lowlands. 
 We would go to meet them. 
 
 It was a memorable day. Not even the 
 Simplon pass taken on a June day when the 
 
Highland and Lowland 199 
 
 road ran between fresh coach-out-topping walls 
 of glittering snow can make one forget the road 
 over the Spittal of Glenshee. There were im- 
 possibly purple mountains, indigo-deep, deeper 
 purple than any hills I have ever seen, so does 
 the ripened heather dye the distances more 
 deeply. There were rocky glens, great loneli- 
 ness, a mansion here and there only just on 
 leaving Blairgowrie, Tullyveolan, of course; 
 scarce a cottage even on the roadside; once a 
 flock of sheep, near the Spittal, being worked 
 by Scotch collies, with an uncanny, or, canny, 
 second sense to get the master's direction. 
 There was lunch at the Spittal, a one-time Hos- 
 pice, like that on the Simplon. And I won- 
 dered if the song ran of this lovely little glen 
 set in the midst of so much primeval world — 
 
 "0 wharawa got ye that auld crookit penny, 
 For ane o' bright gowd wad ye niffer wi' me'? 
 Richt f ou are baith ends o' my green silken wallet, 
 And braw will your hame be in bonnie Glenshee. 
 
 "For a' the bricht gowd in your green silken wallet 
 I never wad niffer my crookit bawbee." 
 
 The road at the top of the world runs 
 smoothly enough. But when the Devil's elbow 
 is reached, a tremendous and dangerous turn 
 in the road, every one dismounts from the 
 coach, and the sight of an adventurous motor 
 
200 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 car coming dowu the turn does not decrease 
 one's sense of peril. 
 
 Braemar 
 
 And then the sight of Braemar, and a con- 
 sciousness that if you are about to spend more 
 money at the Fife Arms or the Invercauld than 
 any but royalty has a right to spend — royalty 
 not having earned it — the adventure has been 
 worth it. 
 
 And to have forgotten but as the coach 
 flashes by to read the tablet — 
 
 "Here Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the summer of 
 1881, and wrote 'Treasure Island.'" 
 
 this is to be home again. 
 
 Of course our first pilgrimage was to the 
 Invercauld Arms, where we again set up the 
 standard on the braes of Mar. It was here that 
 Malcolm Canmore instituted the Highland 
 Gathering which persists to this day. And 
 here, under cover of the hunt, so did the loyal 
 Jacobites conceal their intention, the Rising of 
 the Fifteen was planned — and the hunters be- 
 came the hunted. 
 
 It was evening, it was the Highlands, the 
 
Highland and Lowland 201 
 
 great circle of mountains lay round about. 
 And if King James VIII and III had been de- 
 feated these two hundred years, and dead a 
 lesser time, and our loyalty had always been 
 to the Prince who came rather to establish his 
 father than himself, the Fifteen seemed like 
 yesterday. In this remote high corner of the 
 world anything is possible, even the oblivion of 
 time. It seemed very vital, that faraway mo- 
 ment, which in truth few persons to-day take 
 into reckoning; even history recks little of it. 
 But very near in this illusory twilight — was 
 that the Fiery Cross that glimmered in the 
 darkness ? 
 
 "The standard on the braes o' Mar 
 
 Is up and streaming rarely ; 
 The gathering pipe on Lochnagar 
 
 Is sounding loud and clearly. 
 The Highlandmen frae hill and glen, 
 In martial hue, wi' bonnets blue, 
 Wi' belted plaids and burnished blades, 
 
 Are coming late and early. 
 
 "Wha' wadna join our noble chief, 
 
 The Drummond and Glengarry? 
 Maegregor, Murray, Rollo, Keith, 
 
 Panmure and gallant Harry, 
 Maedonald's men, Clanranald's men, 
 Mackenzie's men, Macgilvrary's men, 
 Strathallan's men, the Lowland men 
 
 Of Callander and Airlie." 
 
202 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Next day we met a gentleman we forever call 
 *'The Advocate of Aberdeen." In any event 
 the lawyers of Aberdeen have styled themselves 
 *' Advocates" since so addressed by King 
 James. We did not know that when we named 
 him, but we preferred it to any Sandy or 
 **Mac" he might legally carry. Having been 
 informed by him that our name was Lowland 
 and we were entitled to none of the thrills of 
 the Highlands, we failed to mount farther than 
 the third stage of the Morrone Hill. The wind 
 blew a gale from the nor 'nor 'west, like those 
 better known to us from the sou 'sou 'west. It 
 was humiliating to have the Advocate of Aber- 
 deen instruct us when we returned that if we 
 had gone on we might have proved our High- 
 land blood. 
 
 We did not attempt Ben MacDui, although 
 it may be approached by the ever-easy way of 
 pony-back, even the queen — not Mary — having 
 mounted it in this fashion. We were content to 
 master, almost master, its pronunciation ac- 
 cording to the pure Gaelic — Muich Dhui. And 
 then we learned that by more accurate and later 
 scientific measurement, MacDui is not the tall- 
 est mountain in the kingdom, but Ben Nevis 
 out-tops it. 
 
 To make our peace with an almost forfeited 
 
Highland and Lowland 203 
 
 fate, we took a dander, that is, we walked back 
 toward Glen Tilt by the way we had not come. 
 There is a happy little falls a couple of miles 
 from the town, Corrimulzie, plunging down a 
 long fall through a deep narrow gorge, but very 
 pleasantly. We passed white milestone after 
 white milestone, measured in particular Scot- 
 tish accuracy — ^we timed ourselves to a second 
 and found we could measure the miles by the 
 numbers of our breaths. The forest is thick 
 and bosky, not an original forest, doubtless. 
 But I was reminded that Taylor, on his Pejmy- 
 less Pilgrimage came to Braemar three hundred 
 years ago, and wrote ''as many fir trees grow- 
 ing there as would serve for masts (from this 
 time to the end of the worlde) for all the 
 shippes, caracks, hoyes, galleyes, boates, drum- 
 iers, barkes, and water-crafte, that are now, or 
 can be in the worlde these fourty yeeres." He 
 lamented the impossibility of sending them 
 down to tide water where they might meet their 
 proper fate. 
 
 Only once did we meet a carriage in which 
 we suspected that royalty, or at least ladies-in- 
 waiting — if Duke's wives who are royal have 
 such appendages — might be sitting. 
 
 And on to the Linn of Dee, which is truly a 
 marvelous place. The Advocate of Aberdeen 
 
204 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 when we had asked him why so many of his 
 townf oik came this way, explained with a sense 
 of possession of the greater Dee, ''we like to 
 see what the Dee can do." Surely it can do it. 
 In these rock walls it has spent centuries carv- 
 ing for itself fantastic ways, until not the 
 Dalles of the St. Croix can excel its rock-bound 
 fantasy. Given time, the Dee can ''do" pretty 
 much as it pleases in granite. 
 
 The few miles we ventured beyond the Linn 
 were enough to prove that the way was long, 
 the wind was cold, the minstrel was infirm and 
 old. Had we walked all the mountain way we 
 should have been much in need of a "plaidie to 
 the angry airts." This air is very bracing. 
 
 But we sang many Jacobite songs in memory 
 of the Eisings. "Wha'U be King but Char- 
 lie?" and "Charlie is my Darling," and "Over 
 the sea Charlie is coming to me," and "Will ye 
 no come back again." And we sang with par- 
 ticular satisfaction that we were not, after all, 
 to suffer royal wrongs — surely there is a fall- 
 ing away in the far generations in the far 
 places, since a King's son could so adventure — 
 
 "Dark night cam' on, the tempest roar'd, 
 
 Loud o'er the hills and valleys, 
 An' where was't that your Prince lay down 
 Who's hame should been a palace? 
 
Highland and Lowland 205 
 
 He row'd him in a Highland plaid, 
 
 Which cover'd him but sparely, 
 An' slept beneath a bush o' broom, 
 
 Oh, wae's me for Prince Charlie." 
 
 On these braes of Mar, and in these hills and 
 beside these very streams, the Prince made his 
 adventure — yes, and simply because of that ad- 
 venture will be forever remembered by those 
 who believe in the heroic mood. 
 
 To leave Braemar the road leads down to Bal- 
 later, with motor cars to take it swiftly; past 
 the castles of Mar old and new, where betimes 
 sits the present Earl of Mar, not conning Ris- 
 ings but writing to the magazines his idea of a 
 free Scotland, which shall have its Home Rule 
 like Ireland — which was once Scotland — and 
 which may have it at the great peace; down 
 through an increasingly pleasant country. Bal- 
 moral Castle looks deserted now of its queen — 
 and when queens desert, places are much emp- 
 tier than when kings leave. But "queen's 
 weather" is still possible here, even though the 
 castle and our way are overshadowed by Loch- 
 nagar, on which we bestow more than passing 
 glance in memory of that Gordon who was Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 "Ah ! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd; 
 My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; 
 
206 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 On chieftains long perished my memory ponder'd, 
 As daily I strove through the pine-cover'd glade j 
 
 I sought not my home till the day's dying glory 
 Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star ; 
 
 For fancy was cheei''d by traditional story, 
 
 Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr." 
 
 And one glance at Lumphanan — ''This 
 Macbeth then slew they there in the wood of 
 Lumphanan," so runs the old chronicle. 
 
 Aberdeen 
 
 There is no city in Scotland which seems to 
 me to have more personality, a more distinct 
 personality, than Aberdeen. It is plainly a 
 self-sufficient city, and both in politics and in 
 religion it thinks for itself, mindless if its 
 thinking is not that of the rest of the king- 
 dom. 
 
 Its provost cannot leave its borders ; once he 
 attended a battle, many and many a year ago, 
 nineteen miles from the city at Harlow, and 
 sad to say, he was killed. So now the provost 
 remains in the city, he cannot leave it more 
 than President can leave Eepublic, or Pope the 
 Vatican. 
 
 In religion, Aberdeen is strongly Episcopa- 
 lian, where it is not Catholic. In truth there 
 
Highland and Lowland ^07 
 
 is a band of Catholicism running across the 
 country, from Aberdeen to Skye, through the 
 heart of the Highlands. As might be expected, 
 the Highlands never yielded to the reformatory 
 methods of John Knox, but remained of the 
 faith. 
 
 There is no city that looks so Scottish, and 
 yet so different, as Aberdeen. It is a dignified 
 and an extraordinarily clean city. After a rain 
 its granite glitters as though it had been newly 
 cut, and to one accustomed to smoke-grimed 
 American cities Aberdeen looks as though it 
 were built this morning, when no doubt much 
 of this granite has a right to the hoar of an- 
 tiquity. 
 
 Marischal College, founded by the Keiths, 
 who were Earl Marischals, boasts of being the 
 greatest granite pile in the world, after the 
 Escorial. Having walked a day through a cir- 
 cumscribed portion of that Spanish granite, I 
 chose to limit my footsteps in Marischal col- 
 lege. Only to verify the stone did I enter. 
 And there it stood, over the doorway of the 
 inner entrance hall, that stone which gives me 
 a certain ancestral right of hauteur — 
 
 Thay half said. 
 Quhat say thay? 
 Lat thame say. 
 
208 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Scots are astonishingly fond of mottoes. 
 They carve them, like Orlando's verse, if not 
 on every tree, on every lintel and over every 
 fireplace; from Nemo me impune lacessit of 
 the royal thistle race, to every clan and every 
 cottage. 
 
 King's College (1495) is an older founda- 
 tion than Marischal (1593), and where once 
 they were rivals, since the Eighteen Sixties 
 they have been harmonized, and since Mr. Car- 
 negie gave them his benefaction, education is 
 free in this University of Aberdeen. King's 
 College, if not the next greatest granite pile, 
 has a stone cross, which is the typical capping 
 of noble edifice in Scotland; in truth it begins 
 at Newcastle on Tjme when one enters the Eng- 
 lish beginning of the Border. 
 
 The cathedral of St. Machar's, first founded 
 by the saint who was a disciple of Columba, 
 was refounded by the saint who was David I — 
 of course; what a busy saint this was — 
 and looks the part of age, but of strength 
 rather than arrogance, with its low lying 
 towers. 
 
 There is an old town even in the new town, 
 and the contrast is sharp. If one gets lost, 
 turns suddenly into this old part, it is a curi- 
 ous experience. The buildings look medieval. 
 
Highland and Lowland 209 
 
 French provincial, and the people look strange 
 and foreign; also they treat you, a foreigner, 
 with all that curiosity, and something of that 
 disrespect which you, of course, deserve, hav- 
 ing interloped into their sanctuary. The Duke 
 of Cumberland lived here for six weeks before 
 advancing on Culloden, and while he did not 
 '' butcher'' here to deserve his name, his sol- 
 diers left as ugly a fame behind them as Mont- 
 rose's men, what time he made bloody assault 
 on the city. 
 
 And in Broad Street may be found the house 
 in which George Gordon, Lord Byron, lived in 
 his school days. In Don Juan, he autobio- 
 graphically remembers — 
 
 "As 'Auld Lang Sjnie' brings Scotland one and all, 
 
 Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear 
 streams 
 The Dee, the Don, Balgownie's Brig's black wall, 
 All my boy feelings, all my gentle dreams 
 
 Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall 
 Like Banquo's offspring; — floating past me seems 
 My childhood in this childishness of mine: 
 
 I care not — 'tis a glimpse of *Auld Lang Syne.' " 
 
 Aberdeen is a sea city, lying between the 
 mouths of the Dee and the Don. A bridge, 
 dating from 1320, crosses the Don, and Byron 
 steadfastly avoided it, lest he, a single son, 
 might be found thereon on the single foal of 
 
210 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 a mare, and the prophecy be filled, the brig fall 
 down. 
 
 One day in a small booth off Union Street I 
 stopped to buy strawberries — if you pick up 
 southern England in early May and make In- 
 verness in late August, you can follow red 
 strawberries and red poppies in the wheat all 
 the way from Land's End to John o' Groat's. 
 I asked the price of the berries and was told. 
 I asked again, and again. Finally, not ears 
 but intuition told me. It was a Scandinavian- 
 Gaelic-English. I remembered that in Edin- 
 burgh I had once asked a policeman the way, and 
 hearing his reply I turned to my friend — 
 *' Wouldn't you think you were in Minneapo- 
 lis?" For especially in Aberdeen you are 
 looking to that Norway with which Scotland 
 was so closely linked, as with all the Scandina- 
 vian countries, in the early centuries, till the 
 Maid of Norway, granddaughter to Alexander 
 III died on her way to take the crown, and till 
 after Margaret of Denmark brought the Ork- 
 neys and the Hebrides to James III as her 
 dowery. 
 
 "To Norroway, to Norroway, 
 To Norroway o'er the faem; 
 The King's daughter of Norroway, 
 'Tis thou maun bring her hame." 
 
Highland and Lowland 211 
 
 And I remember the tragedy of that frus- 
 trated journey — 
 
 "0 forty miles off Aberdeen, 
 'Tis fifty fathoms deep, 
 And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, 
 Wi' the Scots lords at his feet." 
 
 Remembering the sea, which I had not yet 
 seen, I tried to make my way down to the shore, 
 but Aberdeen is a sea-port, and docks instead 
 of shore line its sea edge. What I was seeking 
 was rather rocks — 
 
 ^*0n the rocks by Aberdeen, '' 
 
 Where the whistlin' wave had been 
 As I wandered and at e'en 
 Was eerie — " 
 
 And after a visit to the fishmarket, which is 
 a truly marvelous monstrous place, I set out 
 to find the rocks, toward the south. 
 
 There is never a place more rock-bound, 
 more broken into fantastic shapes, and worn 
 daily and increasingly by the waves, than this 
 east coast. Neither Biarritz nor Brittany nor 
 Nova Scotia is more broken or more thunder- 
 ous in resentment. I have not seen the Magel- 
 lan straits. 
 
 One is constantly conscious of fish on this 
 east coast. The railroads form the Great East 
 
212 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Fish route. I have been coming up in the night 
 from London and had to hold my breath until 
 we passed these swift fish trains which have 
 the right of way to the metropolitan market. 
 A little south of Aberdeen is the village of Fin- 
 don; whence finnan haddie. 
 
 Durmottar 
 
 The rocks which were my goal were those 
 just below Stonehaven. At Stonehaven the 
 French had landed supplies for the Forty Five 
 — as from Montrose, a few miles farther down 
 the coast, King James had sailed after the fail- 
 ure of the Fifteen. Fishing vessels lay idly 
 in the narrow harbour, their tall masts no doubt 
 come *'frae Norroway o'er the faem," since 
 the trees on the east coast have not increased 
 from that day when Dr. Johnson found the 
 sight of a tree here equal to that of a horse in 
 Venice. 
 
 Dunnottar stands on a great crag of this 
 coast, against which the sea has beaten angrily 
 since time and the coast began, against which 
 it moans and whines at low tide, and then, come 
 high tide, rushes thunderously in to see what 
 havoc it can work once more. 
 
Highland and Lowland 213 
 
 Dunnottar is impregnable. I cannot believe 
 that sixteen inch guns — is it seventeen, now? — 
 would make impression on this great red crag. 
 I know they would; after Liege and Namur 
 one knows that modern guns can outlaw any 
 impregnability of the past. But I do not be- 
 lieve. 
 
 The road from Stonehaven runs for two miles 
 over level country, and then, suddenly, the edge 
 breaks in a sheer cliff. 
 
 Across a natural moat of great depth, on a 
 clitf crag, stands the castle. The road picks 
 its way down perilously ; only a mule path, and 
 that precipitous. Then it crosses the dry bed 
 where once may have hung a draw bridge, and, 
 entering through a portcullis, it climbs to the 
 castle, through a winding, tortuous way, some- 
 times a climb, sometimes a flight of steps, some- 
 times open to the sky but ramped sternly on 
 either side, sometimes through stone canyons; 
 a place impossible to surprise. Finally you 
 reach the top, the sky. 
 
 The top is three acres large. 
 
 Far back, no doubt in Culdee times, a church 
 stood there. Because churches must be sanc- 
 tuary they took the high places ; otherwise why 
 should one lift prayer to God when the mad 
 sea was continually contradicting the faith? 
 
214 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Sir William Keith, being a warrior with a 
 warrior's eye, looked on the place, found it 
 strategically good, and built a tower thereon. 
 He was excommunicated by the Bishop of St. 
 Andrew's — who did not anticipate the Lords 
 of the Congregation and the Covenanters. Sir 
 William appealed to Rome. Rome ordered the 
 ban removed. And ordered Sir William to 
 build a church on the mainland, beyond the 
 protestantism of the waves. 
 
 It began its war history early. In 1297 four 
 thousand English took refuge here to escape 
 Wallace. Nothing daunted, Wallace scaled the 
 cliff, entered a window — the proof is there in 
 the window — opened the gate, let in his men, 
 and slaughtered the four thousand. 
 
 Edward III took it, and Montrose besieged 
 it. 
 
 Then it swung back into loyal legal posses- 
 sion, and experienced a bit of history worth 
 the telling. In 1652 — Montrose had been dead 
 two years — the Countess Dowager had taken 
 into safe keeping the regalia of Scotland.. The 
 castle was besieged by those who had killed 
 their king and would destroy the king's in- 
 signia. If the castle should fall the very sym- 
 bol of the king's royalty would be melted, as 
 Cromwell melted the regalia of England. The 
 
Highland and Lowland 215 
 
 defense was not strong. At any moment it 
 might be forced to surrender. But the regalia 
 must be saved. 
 
 So the Lady Keith plotted. It was a wom- 
 an's plot — always there is the woman in Jaco- 
 bitism. The wife of the minister at Kinneff 
 paid a visit to the wife of the governor of 
 Dunnottar ; Mrs. Grainger called on Mrs. Ogil- 
 vie. She had been ''shopping" in Stonehaven, 
 and was returning to Kinneff five miles down 
 the sea. When Mrs. Grainger left the castle 
 she carried with her the crown of Scotland. Sit- 
 ting on her horse she made her way through 
 the besieging lines, and her maid followed with 
 the scepter of Scotland and the sword in a bag 
 on her back. The English besiegers showed 
 every courtesy to the harmless woman — and to 
 the Honours of Scotland. Mrs. Grainger care- 
 fully buried the treasure beneath the paving 
 of Kinnetf church, and not until her death did 
 she betray their hiding place to her hus- 
 band. 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Keith sent her son Sir John 
 to France. A little boat escaping in the night 
 carried him to the French vessel lying off shore, 
 and the Lady sent forth the rumour that Sir 
 John had carried the regalia to the King o'er 
 the water, to Charles II at Paris. It was after 
 
216 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the Restoration that the aureate earth at Kin- 
 neff was dug up. The women had saved the 
 Scottish crown for the rightful lawful king. 
 
 A dark chapter runs a quarter of a century 
 later. The castle was still loyal. In truth it 
 was always loyal except in brief usurpations, as 
 all this corner of Scotland was loyal and royal 
 and Jacobite. In 1675 in ''Whig's Vault" 
 there lodged one hundred and sixty-seven Cove- 
 nanters as prisoners, and they lodged badly. 
 Many died, a few escaped, the rest were sold 
 as slaves. Coming on ship to New Jersey as 
 the property of Scott of Pitlochry, Scott and 
 his wife died and almost all the covenanting 
 slaves. Only a few saw the plantations of the 
 New World, and could resume the worship of 
 their God. The story of Dunnottar is dark. 
 The castle looks the dark part it played. 
 
 In Dunnottar churchyard on the mainland 
 there is a Covenanter's stone, where "Old Mor- 
 tality" was working when Scott came upon 
 him. The stone carries a simple stern legend 
 of heroism — and almost wins one to the cause. 
 
 And yet, there is evidence that in stern Dun- 
 nottar life had its moments other than war and 
 siege. The remnants of the castle are of great 
 extent; bowling gallery, ballroom, state dining- 
 room, a library, a large chapel, speak a varied 
 
Highland and Lowland 217 
 
 existence. There is a watch tower, a keep, ris- 
 ing forty sheer feet above the high rock, with 
 ascent by a winding stair, somewhat perilous 
 after the centuries; but from the Watchman's 
 seat what a prospect, landward and seaward! 
 What a sense of security in the midst of peril ! 
 And on the farther corner of the giddy height, 
 above the rock and above the waves dashing 
 far below, I found growing blue bells of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 There is one corner of the castle where I 
 fain wbuld inhabit, the northwest corner that 
 looks down on the sea raging cruelly upon the 
 rocks that are the first line of defense against 
 the onslaught of the sea, and that looks far 
 over the North Sea; that sea which is more 
 mysterious to me and more lovely than the 
 Mediterranean; I have seen it a beautiful in- 
 tense Italian blue, with an Italian sky above it. 
 I have never seen it still, always surging, raging, 
 always cruel. Yet I should be willing to look out 
 on it for many unbroken days. And to hear the 
 somber movement of the ''Keltic" sonata 
 played upon the rocks. 
 
 The Earl Marischal liked the view, whatever 
 his generation. The North was in his blood, 
 and the sea, even though he was a landsman, 
 spoke adventure. The Earl's bedroom is al- 
 
218 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 most habitable to-day. Once it was a place of 
 luxury. The plaster still clings to the walls 
 in places, and there is a fireplace where still 
 one could light a fire against the chill of the 
 North. The date above is 1645, when Charles 
 was still king, and there was no threat of dis- 
 loyalty. The tablet unites the arms of the 
 Keiths and the Seatons, the stone divided by a 
 pillar surmounted by two hearts joined. The 
 Keith motto, Veritas vincit, underlines the 
 Keith shield ; but I like better the Seaton motto 
 — Hazard yit forvard. 
 
 The Earl's library opens out of this. And 
 I doubt not it was richly stored in the days 
 when the last Lord Marischal won here that 
 mental habitude which made him equal in wit 
 and wisdom to Voltaire. And no doubt here 
 sat his mother, loyal Jacobite, steadfast Cath- 
 olic, sending her two sons forth to battle for the 
 lost cause of the Stewarts — never lost while 
 women remember — while she looked forth on 
 these waters and watched for the return. The 
 story runs in the Jacobite ballad of **Lady 
 Keith's Lament" — 
 
 "I may sit in my wee croo house, 
 
 At the rock and the reel fu' dreary, 
 I may think on the day that is gane, 
 And sigh and sab till I grow weary. . . , 
 
Highland and Lowland 219 
 
 "My father was a good lord's son, 
 My mother was an earl's daughter, 
 An' I'll be Lady Keith again, 
 
 That day our king comes o'er the water." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CIRCLE ROUND 
 
 [E iron road from Aberdeen to Inver- 
 ness must follow somewhat the road 
 which gallant Mary took on her way to 
 punish Huntley. There is a bleak stern look 
 about this country as a whole, but here and 
 there stand castles, or lie low the ruins of cas- 
 tles, in many a chosen place of beauty; for 
 harsh as were these lords, and devastating as 
 were their deeds, life must have had its mo- 
 ments of wonder and of delight. If Malcolm 
 Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve 
 Hundreds, and the fat Georges destroyed In- 
 verugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and 
 all through the centuries that stretched between 
 strong men built strongholds and stronger men 
 took them and made mock of them, still there 
 must have been gentleness and beauty. There 
 were women, other than Lady Macbeth; there 
 were young men and maidens noble or com- 
 mon; and I suppose the glamour of romance, 
 
 220 
 
The Circle Round 221 
 
 the reality or the illusion of love, was invented 
 before peace and commerce became the occupa- 
 tions of men. 
 
 Peterhead 
 
 One brief journey I made along the bleak 
 coast up to the town of Peterhead, which looks 
 nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has 
 a most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is 
 a penal town to-day; and it is one of a string 
 of fishing villages, picturesque as fishiug vil- 
 lages are, except to the nose, "that despised 
 poet of the senses"; and not picturesque to the 
 people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in Brit- 
 tany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes 
 the ruins of Inverugie. 
 
 It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords 
 Marischal. It came to them in a curious way 
 of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some 
 such thing, like Dunnottar, but without the 
 appeal to Rome. And one of the stones 
 of the castle carried the promise, and the 
 threat — 
 
 "As lang's this stane stands on this croft 
 The name o' Keith shall be abaft, 
 But when this stane begins to fa' 
 The name o' Keith shall wear awa'." 
 
222 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, 
 late, in the Seventeen Hundreds. He had seen 
 a century move through strife to peace. In 
 person he had taken part in the Eising of the 
 Fifteen, a young man, but still hereditary Lord 
 Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He 
 had taken no part in the Rising of the Forty 
 Five; he was not "out" on that dark night. 
 But the sweeping revenge of those English 
 times made the Keiths attaint and — the stone 
 dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal 
 and his brother made the continent their refuge, 
 Paris in particular, although the activities of the 
 proposed restoration took their Lordships to 
 Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 The younger brother, James, was made a 
 Field Marshal by Catherine of Russia, and 
 that amorous termagant making love to him in 
 the natural course of proximity, he discreetly 
 fled, became Field Marshal for Frederick the 
 Great, and not marrying — whatever the ro- 
 mance of the Swedish lady — he fell at the battle 
 of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies buried in the 
 Garison Kirche of Berlin. A statue stands in 
 the Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of 
 Prussia presented a replica to Peterhead. And 
 even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering 
 
The Circle Round 223 
 
 the Great King's Field Marshal, named one of 
 the Silesian war units, the Keith regiment. 
 
 There is no statue to the Lord Marischal — 
 Mareschal d'Ecosse, always he signed himself. 
 He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and 
 wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and 
 Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Frederick the 
 Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the 
 age of ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. 
 There is no statue to him, there or here. And 
 Inverugie lies in low ruins. 
 
 Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late 
 in those tottering years. He drove out to the 
 castle, remembering all it had meant, the long 
 splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and 
 how the King, James III and VIII — Banquo 
 saw him also — 
 
 "And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass 
 Which shows me many more." 
 
 James, not pretending but claiming, landed 
 at Peterhead, lodged at Inverugie, summoned 
 the loyal and they came. The Standard was 
 lifted for a moment, and then fell. 
 
 Breaking into tears the old Lord Marischal 
 realized all, an epoch closed, a Scotland no 
 longer requiring a Marischal. He left Inver- 
 ugie, even this ruin. 
 
224 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 All this Northeast territory, no larger than 
 a county in Dakota, bears these scars of the 
 past. 
 
 At Elgin there are the ruins of a cathedral; 
 ruined, not by the English but by the Wolf of 
 Badenoch, because my Lord Bishop had given 
 a judgment which did not please my Lord of 
 Badenoch. And the Wolf, his fangs drawn, 
 was compelled to stand barefooted three days 
 before the great west gate. 
 
 At Canossal Lands and seas and centuries 
 divide — but there is slight difference. 
 
 A scant mile or two to the north of Elgin lies 
 the ruined Spynie Castle of the Lord Bishop, a 
 great place for strength, with massive keep — 
 and fallen. *'A mighty fortress is our God," 
 Cathedrals, castles, bishops and lords, all pass 
 away. 
 
 Cawdor 
 
 As we neared one of the last of the North- 
 ern stations, we turned to each other and asked, 
 ''How far is 't called to Forres?" And sud- 
 denly all was night and witch dance and omen 
 and foretelling. For it is here in the palace that 
 Banquo's ghost appeared and foretold all that 
 history we have been meeting as we came north- 
 
The Circle Round 225 
 
 ward. And next is the town of Nairn, which 
 has become something of a city since Boswell 
 found it ''a miserable place"; it is still long 
 and narrow, stretching to the sea with its fisher- 
 folk cottages and bonneted women like the 
 fisher wives of Brittany; and stretching to the 
 Highlands at the other end, as King James 
 said. 
 It was here that Wordsworth heard 
 
 "Yon solitary Highland lass, 
 Reaping and singing by herself; ... 
 Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
 For old unhappy far-off things, 
 And battles long ago. . . . 
 The music in my heart I bore 
 Long after it was heard no more." 
 
 But one leaves the train with a curious feel- 
 ing. Of course one may be a little tired. Arm 
 chair travel and arm chair tragedy have their 
 advantages. But — Nairn is the nearest point to 
 the blasted heath. 
 
 "Where's the place? 
 Upon the heath. 
 There to meet Macbeth." 
 
 It is not entirely necessary that one should 
 make Nairn and walk out to The Heath. Any 
 of these northern silent Scottish blasted heaths 
 will serve. It is as though the witches had made 
 
226 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 their mysterious incantations anywhere, every- 
 where. And if Shakespeare was in Scotland 
 in 1589 — as I like to think he was — it is doubt- 
 ful if he saw The Heath. Johnson told Han- 
 nah More, so she reports, that when he and 
 Boswell stopped for a night at a spot where 
 the Weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth, they 
 could not sleep the night for thinking of it. 
 Next day they found it was not The Heath. 
 This one is, in all faith, apocryphal. Still, if 
 you come hither toward evening, when 
 
 "Good things of day begin to droop and drowse" 
 
 it is fearsome enough. Such heaths demand 
 their legend. 
 
 "The thane of Cawdor lives 
 A prosperous gentleman." 
 
 Not so prosperous now as when he lived in 
 the life. Shakespeare took liberties with the 
 Thane. He immortalized him into Macbeth! 
 And Cawdor Castle, out from Nairn a few 
 paces on the burn of Cawdor, might have been 
 the very home of Macbeth. It is pleasant, flow- 
 ery, lovely. But also, it is stern and looks like 
 a castle for tragedy. But not for mystery. I 
 did not hear a bird of prey, as some travelers 
 report — 
 
The Circle Round 227 
 
 "Tbe raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements," 
 
 There are iron girded doors and secret apart- 
 ments; not for Macbeth, but for Lovat. This 
 Lord of the Last Eising lived secretly for many 
 months in Cawdor while the Prince was moving 
 restlessly to and fro in the Islands. But the 
 Prince was only twenty-five, and Lord Lovat 
 was over eighty. I like to think he was as 
 young and keen to adventure as the Prince. 
 And I do not like to think of that beheading in 
 the Tower — 
 
 "I must become a borrower of the night." 
 
 Inverness 
 
 The four chief cities of Scotland are ar- 
 ranged like a diamond for excursion and for 
 history. Always Scotland, unlike Gaul, has 
 been divided into four parts. Places of pil- 
 grimage were Scone, Dundee, Paisley, Melrose. 
 Places for the quartering of Montrose were 
 Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling. And now 
 four places are rivals; in trade somewhat, but 
 Glasgow leads in beauty, but Edinburgh, after 
 all, is unique in dignity, but Aberdeen is un- 
 
228 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 bending; in the picturesque there remains In- 
 verness. 
 
 The city deserves its honours. (William 
 Black has painted it in ''Wild Eelin.") It has 
 a life of its own. For when I first came to 
 Inverness there was a cattle fair on, and sheep 
 from all over the kingdom, from Shropshire 
 and from the Cheviots, came to be judged in 
 Inverness ; and men came with them who looked 
 very modern and capable and worldly and com- 
 mercial. It was all like a county fair of Iowa, 
 only more dignified, with no touch of sideshow. 
 And, of course, there is the Highland gather- 
 ing in September, which has become too much 
 like the sideshow, too much a show, to attract 
 the groundlings, and not a gathering of the 
 clans. Still — if one must take Scotland in a 
 gulp — this is a very good chance at Highland 
 colour and sound and remnants of valour. 
 
 The town itself is full of pictures. It does 
 not announce itself. There is a close-built part, 
 looking like a French provincial town, with 
 gabled houses, and down on the banks of the 
 Ness the women spread their clothes to dry as 
 they do on a French river bank. There is a 
 new cathedral, very new, with an angel at the 
 font we remembered William Winter had liked, 
 so we paid it respectful attention. There is a 
 
The Circle Round 229 
 
 park on the Ness to the west, where many 
 islands and many bridges form a spot of beauty. 
 
 And there is Tomnahurich — The Hill of the 
 Fairies — a sudden steep hill-mound, where In- 
 verness carries its dead — like the Indians who 
 carried them to Indian mounds high above the 
 rivers of the American West. The dark yews 
 make it even more solemn; one wonders if the 
 fairies dare play in these shades. But it is a 
 sweetly solemn place, and we decided to care 
 not what Invemessians lay buried here if we 
 might sit on its convenient park benches and 
 look at far rolling Scotland and think of fairies 
 and of Thomas the Rimer, who, it seems, 
 came hither all the way from Ercildoune from 
 Melrose to heap this mound for his burial ! The 
 errant Scots! 
 
 There remains no stone of Macbeth 's Castle 
 to which the gentle Duncan came — *'And when 
 goes hence?" The county buildings — and a 
 jail! — stand on its site, a most modern pile. 
 Malcolm razed that castle after he had returned 
 from England, and after Birnam wood had 
 come to Dunsinane. It was builded again; In- 
 verness was a vantage point. Perhaps that one 
 was burned by the Lord of the Isles who after- 
 ward came to repentance and to Holyrood. 
 And builded again so that Huntley could defy 
 
230 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Mary, and she could take the castle and order 
 it razed. And builded again so that Cromwell 
 could destroy it. And builded again as one of 
 the five fortresses whereby he sought to hold 
 Scotland *' Protected." And destroyed at the 
 Restoration which sought to destroy all the 
 Protectorate had built. But builded again so 
 it might be destroyed by Prince Charles Ed- 
 ward. No, I scarce think there is even the dust 
 of the castle of Macbeth left in Inverness, or 
 incorporated into modern Fort George. The 
 ''knock, knock, knock," which the porter heard 
 at the gate, has battered down a score of omi- 
 nous strongholds. 
 But still 
 
 "The eastle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses." 
 
 For all the north of Scotland, away from the 
 east winds, is pleasant and lovely, with the mean 
 climate that of London, and possible in winter 
 and summer. 
 
 In the grounds there stands a statue of Flora 
 Macdonald looking out to the West, and carry- 
 ing the legend — 
 
 "On hills that are by right his ain 
 He roams a lanely stranger." 
 
The Circle Round 231 
 
 Could legend be better chosen to compress 
 and carry all that story of loyalty and courage 
 and devotion? 
 
 And so we moved out to Culloden. 
 
 It was on a gray wind-swept afternoon that 
 we made our pilgrimage. There was no sense 
 of rain. It was a hard sky. It spread leaden 
 to the world. 
 
 We chose to walk the six mile stretch. Not 
 with comfort or any show of splendour, not 
 even with a one-horse carriage, would we ap- 
 proach Culloden. 
 
 The road leads over lonely Drumossie moor 
 through a plantation of firs, to a wild and naked 
 spot — where all that was Scotland and nothing 
 else was burned out of the world by the wither- 
 ing fire of Cumberland, and the remnant that 
 would not save itself but fought to the last was 
 cut to pieces by his order. 
 
 I do not suppose that even on a hot sweet 
 afternoon could any one with a drop of Scotch 
 blood come hither and not feel in his face the 
 rain and sleet of that seventeenth of April day, 
 1746. If one comes on that day the cairn is 
 hung with flowers, white roses of course, for 
 there are still Jacobites left in the world who 
 have given to no other king their allegiance. 
 "Pretender!" cried Lady Strange to one who 
 
232 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 had mis-spoken in lier presence, "Pretender 
 and be dawnined to ye ! " 
 
 No, it was not the Pass of Thermopylae, 
 nor a Pickett's charge. Nor was it even 
 war. 
 
 Nevertheless it was one of the brave moments 
 in human history. If hopeless and even mean- 
 ingless, does not bravery give it meaning? 
 The Highlanders — they were the last Jacobites 
 left, as the army of the Butcher, Cumberland, 
 George Second's fat son swept northward and 
 stopped for their larder to be well-filled before 
 they went on — had had only a biscuit, the day 
 before ! They were five thousand to the English 
 ten thousand. 
 
 At eleven in the morning the Highlanders 
 moved forward, the pipers playing brave music, 
 and they recked not that the English had the 
 chosen ground; theirs was not even a forlorn 
 hope. Not if the Macdonalds, sulky because 
 they were on the left when since Bannockburn 
 they had been on the right, had fired a shot 
 would the end have been different. 
 
 On the battlefield, looking at these mounds, 
 the long trench of the dead, one realizes that 
 Scotland lies buried here. M 'Gillivray, M 'Lean, 
 M'Laughlin, Cameron, Mackintosh, Stuart of 
 Appin — so many brave names. 
 
The Circle Round 233 
 
 "The lovely lass of Inverness, 
 
 Nae joy nor pleasure can she see, 
 For e'en and morn she cries, alas ! 
 And ay the saut tear blin's her e'e-r: 
 
 "Drumossie muir, Drumossie day! 
 A waefu' day it was to me! 
 For there I lost my father dear, 
 My father dear, and brothers three. 
 
 **Their winding sheet the bluidy clay — 
 Their graves are growing green to see; 
 And by them lies the dearest lad 
 That ever blest a woman's e'e. 
 
 "Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord! ^ 
 
 A bluidy man I trow thou be; 
 For mony a heart thou hast made sair 
 That ne'er did wrong to them or thee." 
 
 The small remnant that was left, and was not 
 butchered by Cumberland, fled to the West. 
 Sometimes one could wish Prince Charles had 
 died at Culloden! and yet one would not spare 
 the wanderings, or Flora Macdonald. Thou- 
 sands of the men fled to America; thousands 
 of Scots in America to-day can say, ''My great 
 grandfather fought at Culloden." Hundreds 
 of Scots to-day are sent ''home" from America 
 to be educated. I have met in the magnificent 
 Highlands of Montana, Scotchmen, true High- 
 landers, who had been sent to Edinburgh uni- 
 versity that they might be Scots, even though 
 
234 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 they carried "Anierican" blood in their veins. 
 
 When Boswell and Johnson came here in 
 1773, twenty-seven years after the Forty Five, 
 they found that many of the Highlanders were 
 going to America, leaving the lairds and the 
 land. One M 'Queen of Glenmorison was about 
 to go. 
 
 ''Dr. Johnson said he wished M 'Queen laird 
 of Glenmorison, and the laird to go to Amer- 
 ica. M 'Queen very generously answered he 
 should be sorry for it; for the laird could not 
 shift for himself in America as he could do. ' ' 
 
 Small wonder that Prince Charles, knowing 
 of this exodus, and believing life still held for 
 him its chances, its glories, away from Eome 
 and even if he was fifty-five, looked longingly 
 over the sea, in 1776, thinking that he might 
 lead these rebellious colonists, so many of them 
 of his rebellious people, and reestablish the 
 House of Stewart in the New World. Surely 
 Burr, coming with Blennerhasset, thirty years 
 after, had something of the Stewart in him. 
 
 The Orkneys 
 
 Scotland is divided by a deep geologic cleft. 
 Glenmore, the Great Glen, runs southwesterly 
 
The Circle Round 235 
 
 from Inverness to Fort William and Oban, cut- 
 ting the country into two parts. One is Scot- 
 land ; the other is the West, the Highlands and 
 the Islands. One is known, the other unknown. 
 One has been prosperous, royal, noble; the 
 other has been wild, independent, chief and 
 clans holding together. To-day, if the East is 
 strangely quiet, the West is strangely silent. 
 
 In the East you know things have happened ; 
 remnants remain, ruined castles testify; in the 
 West it is as though they had not happened, 
 those far historic things; castles are heaps of 
 blackened or crumbled stone ; or, if they stand, 
 they stand like prehistoric remnants, and the 
 clachans are emptied; the Eisings, the migra- 
 tions, the evictions, the extensions of deer for- 
 ests and sheep pastures and grouse preserves, 
 the poverty, yes, and the wandering spirit of 
 the people leading them ever afar — where al- 
 ways they are Scottish down to the last drop, 
 always looking toward Home, but ever leaving 
 it empty of their presence. 
 
 It is a stranger land, though so lovingly fa- 
 miliar, than any I have ever been in. I have 
 been in valleys of the Rockies which were not 
 so lonely as glens in Scotland. When Hood 
 wrote his sonnet on ''Silence," beginning 
 "There is a silence where hath been no sound," 
 
236 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 He went on to a correction — 
 "But in the antique palaces where man hath been." 
 
 He missed the note of glens and valleys 
 where man has been and is not. 
 
 From the Great Glen, a series of lochs lying 
 in a geologic "fault," and connected more than 
 a century ago by a series of locks, excursion 
 may be had into remote places, so very remote 
 even if they lie but a half dozen miles in the 
 backward; the farther ones, to the Orkneys, to 
 John o' Groat's, to Skye, the island of mist and 
 of Prince Charlie and Dr. Johnson and Fiona 
 McLeod, and vast numbers of places known to 
 those who seek beauty only. 
 
 Three forts were built in the rebellious Sev- 
 enteen Hundreds to hold this far country. The 
 forts rather betray history. And they form 
 convenient places of departure for those who 
 would conquer the Highlands and the Islands 
 for themselves. 
 
 Fort George, near Inverness, is still used as 
 a depot for military stores and for soldiers. 
 Fort Augustus has been surrendered to the 
 Benedictines who are gradually developing 
 here a great monastery which in these silences 
 should rival the monasteries of old — if that may 
 be. Fort William, most strategic of all, is also 
 
The Circle Round 237 
 
 strategic for traveler's descent. Thus is tlie 
 iron hand that succeeded the bloody hand at 
 Culloden become rust. 
 
 To the men of old the Orkneys seemed at the 
 back of beyond and a little farther. Yet, I 
 cannot think how it has reduced the distance 
 to a comprehensible length if farther ends of 
 the world and endless waters have been 
 reached; distance is three parts imagina- 
 tion in any event. As a man thinketh so is dis- 
 tance. 
 
 The run up the coast to Scrabster, the port of 
 Thurso, is very much on the coast, with wild 
 barren land on one side, and wild waste water 
 on the other ; with here and there a resting-place 
 for the eye or mind, like Skibo Castle for our 
 American Laird of Skibo, Dunrobin Castle for 
 the magnificent Sutherlands, and on a branch 
 line leading out to the sea the house of John 
 o 'Groat, perhaps the best known citizen above 
 Land's End. 
 
 From Scrabster the -Old Man of Hoy lifts his 
 hoary head over the seas, and invites to Ultima 
 Thule, if this be Ultima Thule. And I suppose 
 that ever since Agricola came up this way the 
 Old Man has sent forth his invitation. The Ro- 
 mans did not answer it, although Tacitus wrote 
 about it ; and it was left for much later folk to 
 
238 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 dispute the Picts and take the islands for them- 
 selves. 
 
 An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scat- 
 tered over the water, with only half of them in- 
 habited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like 
 Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, 
 you will not find the isle of heart's desire here. 
 The scant inhabited twenty odd are not over 
 filled with population ; these islands are not hos- 
 pitable to large numbers, not even of their own. 
 They came to us through Margaret of Denmark, 
 queen to James III, and were confirmed when 
 Anne of Denmark came to be queen to James 
 VI. 
 
 The sail over the Pentland Firth may be 
 taken on a still day when the historic waters, as 
 vexed as those of the Bermoothes, lie like glass. 
 The rage of water, of any water, is not the fre- 
 quent mood; but always it is the memorable. 
 Blue above and blue below was the day of our 
 going, twenty miles past high /'continental" 
 shores, like Dunnet 's head, and between the out- 
 liers of the Orcadian group, at the end of a sum- 
 mer day that never ends in this North. 
 
 Yet I cannot think how I should ever again 
 approach '* Mainland" and the port of Kirkwall 
 with such indifference to everything except the 
 exquisite cool softness of this Northern air of 
 
The Circle Round 239 
 
 mid-summer, with an indolent interest in the 
 land ahead, hardly quickened into active inter- 
 est which is the traveler's right, when we ap- 
 proached Scapa in the twilight. 
 
 I did remember that the Vikings were once 
 here as kings. And when King Haakon of Nor- 
 way was returning from the defeat at Largs in 
 the west where his fleet suffered the blow re- 
 peated later against the Spanish armada, one 
 ship was sucked down into a whirlpool near 
 Stroma. And Haakon died here of a broken 
 heart. All these seemed like old, far-off things 
 that are not unhappy. Yet there was a sug- 
 gestion of fate in the place; perhaps there al- 
 ways is in a Northern twilight. To approach 
 Kirkwall after this, will always be to remember 
 the Hampshire, going to its death in a water 
 more dangerous than that of whirling Stroma, 
 and Lord Kitchener going with it. 
 
 Kirkwall is a pleasant old town; or was, till 
 war made it busy and new. It lies inland a 
 mile or two across the isthmus, but no doubt 
 stretching actively down to the south pier at 
 Scapa. during the years of the great war, when 
 all the British fleet hovered about. 
 
 The town is gray, like all Scottish towns ; na- 
 ture does these things with perfect taste. And, 
 in the midst, man has builded for his worship 
 
240 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 a church of red sandstone, the Cathedral of St. 
 Magnus, older and in better condition than 
 churches of Scotland more exposed to the 
 change of faith; with a long dim interior that 
 speaks the North, with massive Norman arches ; 
 one wonders how the reformed faith can con- 
 duct itself in this dim religious light. 
 
 But the Earl's Palace remains a thing of 
 beauty. Earl Patrick builded it, the son of 
 Eobert who was half brother to Mary. If the 
 palace had been built in Mary's day I should, 
 in truth, have lamented that she did not come 
 hither after the escape from Loch Leven, in- 
 stead of going to defeat at Langside. Mary 
 was valiant, and the stern North was, after all, 
 in her blood. 
 
 But Patrick as *'jarl" came a generation 
 later, and he taxed the islands mercilessly to 
 build this very beautiful palace. The roof is 
 gone, but the beauty remains, oriel windows, 
 fireplaces, and towers and turrets. No doubt 
 when "the wind is blowing in turret and tree," 
 Patrick 's palace can be ruined enough. But on 
 a day when the blue sky is sufficient vaulting, 
 the palace is a place to dream in. 
 
 Over at Birsay, twenty miles across the Main- 
 land — there are twenty mile stretches in this 
 Mainland — there is another palace, built by 
 
The Circle Round 241 
 
 Robert, himself, who was, incidentally. Abbot 
 of Holyrood as well as Earl of the Orkneys. 
 The motto-stone declares — 
 
 "Dominus Robertus Stuartus 
 Filius Jacobi Quinti Rex Scotorum 
 Hoc Opus Instruxit." 
 
 ''Rex" said Robert, not ''regis"; perhaps his 
 Latin knew no better, but his spirit knew this 
 was right. The nominative agreed with Rob- 
 ertus, not with Jacobi. Still, the ruler of the 
 Orkneys was a supreme lord at this remove 
 from king and counselors. 
 
 Here and there, but only here and there 
 through the islands, lies traveler's lure. Motor 
 boats make the run for tourist pleasure, and 
 many of the "points of interest" can be seen 
 from the waters; particularly the "brochs," the 
 cairn-like towers of perhaps Pictish building; 
 and the round tower of St. Magnus on Egilsay, 
 which must date back very far, perhaps to the 
 time when Columba came hither from Ireland 
 and converted these people and gave them hints 
 of Irish building. 
 
 There are remnants of life earlier than Co- 
 lumba, of faith earlier, though we know not the 
 faith. The Circle of Bogar, old gray pillar- 
 like stones, set in purple heather, are compa- 
 rable with Stonehenge and Locmariaqueur. 
 
242 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 Scott found them equal ; Scott who had such an 
 admirable way of finding in Scotland the equal 
 of the world. In *'The Pirate" he describes 
 these stones, indeed he describes these Orkneys 
 in this accurate guide book which is still "up 
 to date." 
 
 To the blood shed and violence of old days 
 has succeeded the quiet pursuit of agriculture; 
 and instead of the boats that used to sail to the 
 New World, H. B. C. boats and those to the 
 Plantations, and to Eussia for the Northwest 
 Passage, and to the Arctic for the Pole, are the 
 quiet boats of the fisherfolk. Except — ^when 
 war fleets ride at anchor. 
 
 The Caledonian Canal 
 
 The Great Glen itself is a necessary journey, 
 even though no side trips be made. I must be- 
 lieve that every one who has ever taken it and 
 written account, journeyed down this water- 
 way in a Scotch mist ; which, of course, is not a 
 mist at all, but something finite and tangi- 
 ble. 
 
 I, myself, went my ways that way. And, of 
 course, those who had come north the day be- 
 fore me, and those who came south the day 
 
The Circle Round 243 
 
 ■ 
 
 after, came through magnificent clearness, and 
 marvels of marvels, Ben Nevis cleared of mists 
 to his very crest and beyond, shining splendid 
 and majestic and out-topping all Scotland, 
 against the brilliant cloud-swept northern sky! 
 Frankly, I am always tempted to be suspicious 
 when any one tells me he has traveled the Great 
 Glen and seen it all. 
 
 The scenery on both sides is wild, desolate, 
 mountainous, a daring of nature. There are 
 sheer hillsides where all is revealed; again, 
 there are wooded hills where the men of the 
 Forty Five might be still lurking. 
 
 Dochfour, Ness, Oich, Lochy, are the names 
 of these ''great lakes" that make the chain. 
 There is quality to their names, like Superior, 
 Huron, Erie, Ontario. But the Scottish chain 
 is sixty miles long and can be made from morn- 
 ing to evening, with enough of the day left to 
 go through Loch Linnhe and so to Oban; as 
 one should add, through the St. Lawrence and 
 so to Quebec. Yet when one has passed from 
 Inverness to Oban the mind is as full, it has 
 come through as much contact, nay, more, as in 
 the journey from Duluth to Quebec. 
 
 There are ruined castles by the way. Urqu- 
 hart, looking very picturesque, especially if the 
 mist is but half come down over the world and 
 
244 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 the purple of the distances is of that deep royal 
 purple so characteristic of the water and moun- 
 tain distances of this wild west country. Yet 
 the sunny distances are as much a marvel of 
 colour in their pale blue that has so much in- 
 tensity, so much real vivacity. Purple one has 
 learned to associate with distance; or, since 
 some painter has shown us the truthful trick. 
 But blue, this particular Scottish blue, I have 
 never seen elsewhere. It is woven of mists and 
 sunlight in equal proportions. 
 
 And so, Urquhart in its ruin, standing ro- 
 mantically on a fir clad promontory, is most al- 
 luring as the boat rounds it on its early way. 
 I do not know anything of Urquhart. The name 
 rather suggests the middle name carried by a 
 once famous actress. Somehow I half believe 
 that in that castle Charlotte Cor day may have 
 stabbed Marat. But then, facetious and unro- 
 mantic, I wonder at the baths in Urquhart in 
 the old days when skene dhus served in the 
 place of daggers. 
 
 There are other romantic lures in the names 
 which seem to have dropped so carelessly any- 
 where. Inverarigaig — which sounds more mu- 
 sical than it looks on the page — stands at the 
 head of the pass through which The Prince 
 came after that day at Culloden on his way to 
 
The Circle Round 245 
 
 the West as wanderer. Far down the stretch 
 of water rises Mealfourvournie, a rounded 
 naked hill overlooking the ravine where once 
 the church of Cilles Christ stood ; and once, full 
 of Mackenzies, was set on fire by the Macdon- 
 alds, and all the Mackenzies burned. The act 
 is not singular among the clans. McLeod of 
 Dare gives it to the Macdonalds and McLeods. 
 And so one conies to believe the story of a trav- 
 eler coming on a Highland cottage and asking 
 if there were any Christians within, got 
 back the reply, — *'no, we're all Macdonalds." 
 Surely Saint Columba was needed in later cen- 
 turies than the Sixth. 
 
 The Falls of Foyers are across the lake, sur- 
 rendered now to aluminum works. And yet 
 Burns wrote of them 
 
 "Among the heathery hills and rugged woods 
 The roaring Foyers pours his moving floods." 
 
 Christopher North wrote a better, a prose 
 poem, which sounds somewhat curiously in 
 American ears. ''What a world of waters now 
 comes tumbling into the abyss! Niagara! hast 
 thou a fiercer roar? Listen — and you think 
 there are momentary pauses of thunder, filled 
 up with goblin groans ! All the military music- 
 bands of the army of Britain would here be 
 
246 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 dumb as mutes — Trumpet, Cymbal and the 
 Great Drum I" 
 
 Fort Augustus closes the end of the loch, and 
 here the Benedictines, black-robed, move in 
 somber file where once the red-coated soldiers 
 marched. 
 
 Five locks raise the steamer fifty feet, into 
 the Highlands. And while the boat is waiting 
 the rise, here, as at any of the locks, there is 
 entertainment. Fellow travelers get out to 
 stretch their legs, and that is amusing enough, 
 tolerantly considered. There are tea houses at 
 every lock, many of them, sometimes charm- 
 ingly rose-embowered like the houses along the 
 Thames. There are pipers who march majesti- 
 cally up and down, swinging their sporrans, 
 swaying their kilts ; one is almost afraid to give 
 a penny. 
 
 And I remember at one of these pausing 
 places where the passengers remained on the 
 boat, that a very pleasing gentleman who looked 
 as George Washington may have looked on gala 
 occasions did sing for my entertainment and 
 that of my fellow passengers; except one fel- 
 low American who expressed her disapproval. 
 Perhaps George Washington did not dress so 
 gaily; it was just the hat. There was a black 
 coat, white breeches, crimson waistcoat, blue 
 
The Circle Round 247 
 
 stockings, silver buckled shoes, and a cocked 
 hat. And this pleasing gentleman sang to a 
 tune that was no tune but very cheering, about 
 **the hat me faither wore." And he was so 
 doing his best, which was very good indeed, that 
 I was forced to get change for a sixpence — it 
 cannot be ethical, and certainly is not fun to 
 throw a little silver disk when six large coppers 
 may be thrown. And the American female fel- 
 low passenger said, '* Doesn't it seem as though 
 he could get something nearer a man's jobT' 
 Yet he was such a pleasant person. And 
 they're not common to be met on the highway. 
 From Fort Augustus on there are memories 
 of the Risings, chiefly of Prince Charlie, in the 
 glorious before, in the tragic aftermath. He 
 came hither as conqueror, that mere stripling, 
 belted and plaided as a Royal Stewart, and re- 
 took his kingdom. The coat skirts of Johnny 
 Cope you can still see in retreat to Inverness, 
 if you look well. From Gairlochy the way leads 
 to Glenfinnan where he raised his Standard, 
 and the Castle of Lochiel, ruined because of 
 him. And hither he came, after Culloden. At 
 Fort Augustus the head of Roderick Mackenzie 
 was presented to the Butcher as that of Prince 
 Charles, and near Gairlochy, and near Lochiel 
 — '* beware of the day" — is the "cage" of Cluny 
 
248 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 MacPherson where he harboured during those 
 days of red pursuit. And the thirty thousand 
 pounds are yet to be paid for betrayal. 
 
 Loch Oich, littlest and highest, with wooded 
 islands and heavily wooded shores, larches and 
 delicate silver birches, is the exquisite bit of 
 the way. And here stands Invergarry Castle, 
 which saw Prince Charles when first he came 
 gallant from the West and Moidart, and saw 
 him when last he came defeated to the West. 
 
 Laggan Avenue runs between Loch Oich and 
 Loch Lochy, a narrow waterway with soft fir- 
 trees lining the way in a most formal fashion; 
 it has a peculiar magic when the mist has shut 
 out the rounded hills of the higher background. 
 
 Banavie — to move according to the schedule 
 — is at the top of the locks, three miles of them, 
 Neptune's staircase, leading down to Fort Wil- 
 liam and to the sea. The railroad is the swifter 
 way and breaks the journey, and passes the 
 ruins of Inverlochy. It is a place to which 
 French and Spanish merchants came in far days 
 of the Seven Hundreds. But better, a place 
 where Montrose won a victory. 
 
 Here took place (1645) the battle between the 
 Marquis of Montrose and the Marquis of Ar- 
 gyle, and so splendidly that Montrose and 
 Charles thought the kingdom was coming back 
 
The Circle Round 249 
 
 to its own. Montrose had started through the 
 Great Glen for Inverness, but hearing that the 
 Campbells were massing at Inverlochy, he 
 turned back, and gave battle. The victory was 
 so tremendously with the royal Montrose that 
 he wrote a letter to Charles, then negotiating 
 with the parliamentarians, and Charles believed 
 so that he broke off the parleying — 
 
 ''Give me leave, after I have reduced this 
 country, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, 
 to say to Your Majesty, as David's general to 
 his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this coun- 
 try be called by my name.' " 
 
 In five years, the two were both beheaded, 
 one at Whitehall in London, the other at the 
 Tolbooth in Edinburgh, the Marquis sixteen 
 months later than the King. ' ' To carry honour 
 and fidelity to the grave." 
 
 At Inverlochy looks down the mountain of 
 them all, Ben Nevis, taller than Ben Muich 
 Dhui, taller than Snowdon or Helvellyn. And 
 from its vantage point, the Observatory Tower, 
 one may look over all the territory in many di- 
 rections whither one proposes to go ; the routes 
 can be planned from this top of Scotland. As 
 Sir Archibald Geikie mapped it in his glorified 
 geography — 
 
 "While no sound falls upon his ears, save 
 
250 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 now and then a fitful moaning of the wind 
 among the snow-rifts of the dark precipice be- 
 low, let him try to analyze some of the chief ele- 
 ments of the landscape. It is easy to recognize 
 the more marked heights and hollows. To the 
 south, away down Loch Linnhe, he can see the 
 hills of Mull and the Paps of Jura closing the 
 horizon. Westward, Loch Eil seems to lie at 
 his feet, winding up into the lonely mountains, 
 yet filled twice a day with the tides of the salt 
 sea. Far over the hills, beyond the head of the 
 loch, he looks across Arisaig, and can see the 
 cliffs of the Isle of Eigg and the dark peaks of 
 Rum, with the Atlantic gleaming below them. 
 Farther to the northwest the blue range of the 
 Coolin Hills rises along the skyline, and then, 
 sweeping over all the intermediate ground, 
 through Arisaig and Knoydart and the Clan- 
 ranald country mountain rises after mountain, 
 ridge beyond ridge, cut through by dark glens, 
 and varied here and there with the sheen of 
 lake and tarn. Northward runs the mysterious 
 straight line of the Great Glen, with its chain 
 of locks. Then to east and south the same bil- 
 lowy sea of mountain tops stretches out as far 
 as eye can follow it — the hills and glens of 
 Lochaber, the wide green strath of Spean, the 
 gray corries of Glen Treig and Glen Nevis, the 
 
The Circle Round 251 
 
 distant sweep of the moors and mountains of 
 Brae Lyon and the Perthshire Highlands, the 
 spires of Glencoe, and thence again to the blue 
 waters of Loch Linnhe." 
 
 This may not be ' ' the roof of the world, ' ' but 
 it is a very high gable. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE WESTERN ISLES 
 
 Oban 
 
 [•HERE is something theatrical about 
 Oban, artificial, and therefore among 
 Scottish towns Oban is a contrast It is 
 as uncovenanted as — joy ! And it is very beau- 
 tiful, "the gay and generous port of Oban," as 
 William Winter calls it, set in its amphitheater 
 of high hills, and stretching about its harbour, 
 between confining water and hill. An embank- 
 ment holds it in, and at twilight the scimeter 
 drawn from the scabbard of night flashes with 
 light, artificial, but as wonderful at Oban as at 
 Monte Carlo. One is content to be, at Oban. 
 Quite certainly Oban has centered its share of 
 Scottish history and romance, history from the 
 time of the Northmen, romance from the time 
 resurrected by Scott and continued indige- 
 nously by William Black. But in Oban and 
 round about Oban, one is quite content to take 
 that past as casually as one takes yesterday. 
 
 252 
 
The Western Isles 253 
 
 It is very interesting, very fascinating; one 
 wakes now and then, here and there, to keen re- 
 membrance, to a sensitiveness that so much 
 beauty could not be only for to-day and of 
 to-day, that men must have come hither to claim 
 it or dispute possession of it in the beginning 
 of time. Of course the Stewarts came out of 
 this Island West! But, either because one has 
 made a round circle of Scotland from out of 
 romantic Edinburgh, or because one has come 
 from practical Glasgow and is about to make 
 a round circle of Scotland, Oban has a pecul- 
 iarly satisfying and yet undemanding beauty. 
 
 It is set for pageantry; life is always, has 
 been always, a procession at Oban. If ever the 
 history of Scotland is set forth as pageant — I 
 do not know that this has ever been done, but it 
 should be — it should be staged at Oban, on the 
 esplanade. 
 
 Life moves swiftly through the streets and 
 across the waters. For it is a place that all 
 the world comes to, in its search for the next 
 beautiful place. Steamers from the Caledonian 
 Canal and Inverness, steamers from the Crinan 
 Canal and Glasgow, coaches from the near coun- 
 try, railroads from the east and north, bring 
 the world to Oban. And from Oban boats move 
 out on the Firth of Lome and the Sound of 
 
254 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Mull and tlirough the broken waters of the 
 Hebrides, out into the unbroken waters of the 
 Atlantic. People come and go, come and go. 
 It is not that Oban is filled with people. Very 
 often the inns are filled and the careless trav- 
 eler may seek eagerly if not vainly for a lodg- 
 ing for the night, to find his landlady a Camp- 
 bell of the Campbells. 
 
 But there is seldom a feeling of too many peo- 
 ple in Oban. They come and go, night and 
 morning. They do not stay. In the evening 
 the esplanade may be filled and the crowd very 
 gala; the circle of lights marking the embank- 
 ments, steamers lying at their ease after the 
 day's work, looking, yes, like pirates, retired 
 pirates, rakish, with tapering spars and brave 
 red funnels, the soft plash of oars out on the 
 bay and the moving lights of the rowboats, with 
 perhaps — no quite certainly — a piper, or two or 
 three, dressed in tartan, more like the red and 
 black of the Campbells in this historic region 
 of Argyle, piping up bravely "The Campbells 
 are Coming, yoho, yoho." 
 
 It is lively in the evening, there is always a 
 touch of pageantry. Yet Oban is a very good 
 place in which to stay and make the little foot 
 excursions that penetrate only a few miles into 
 the circumurban territory. The most con- 
 
The Western Isles 255 
 
 strained walker may find rich foot-interest out 
 of Oban; nowhere do comfort and beauty and 
 story combine in more continuous lure. Easy 
 and attainable is Dunolly Castle, much more at- 
 tainable than it was in the old days when the 
 Lord of the Isles made his permanent seat here, 
 and defied the world and the king ; more attain- 
 able now than when Scott came this way seek- 
 ing ''copy" and "colour" and declaring ''noth- 
 ing can be more beautifully wild than Dunolly. ' ' 
 To-day Dunolly is beautiful, but scarcely 
 wildly beautiful; that is, in comparison with 
 other wild castles of this wild West; and very 
 attainable, the walk being provided with seats. 
 all the way, casual "rest and be thankfuls," of 
 the municipal corporation. 
 
 But beyond Dunolly, four miles of good high- 
 way, with Loch Linnhe breaking magnificently 
 on the eye, and Loch Etive reaching off end- 
 lessly into the deep purple, is Dunstaffnage, 
 which, before Stirling, or Perth, or Edinburgh, 
 was capital of Scotland and the place of des- 
 tiny. Very redoutable it sits on its high crag, 
 as picturesque a castle as there is in the world 
 — and we are in a land of castles picturesquely 
 set. The walls above the waters lift themselves 
 in lofty height, and promise to remain, with 
 their great thickness presented to the consum- 
 
256 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ing world. It is still towered for strength and 
 scope, and looks its part of royal residence. 
 Here was found the Stone of Destiny — after 
 Jacob or another had carried this Jacobite 
 sleeping pillow hither from Palestine. Ken- 
 neth McAlpine, somewhat sacrilegiously, car- 
 ried the Stone away to Perth. And Edward 
 sacrilegiously carried it down to Westminster, 
 where George V sat on it, in 1911, or nearly on 
 it, so as to prove his destined right. 
 
 Bruce took the castle from the Lord of Lome, 
 at what time he was taking all the castles of 
 Scotland. And even The Bruce in his busy 
 days of castle-storming, must have paused in 
 this height, at these bastions, to look over this 
 western world and decide that it was good and 
 should be added to his Scottish world. Across 
 Loch Linnhe he could see the bens of Morven 
 and of Appin, and up Loch Etive, Ben Crua- 
 chan — even as you and I. The Highlands and 
 the Islands are still primitive, man dwindles 
 here, and the world becomes what it was before 
 the Sixth Day. 
 
 But The Bruce did not see these brass can- 
 non from a wreck of the Armada, The Bruce 
 lived too far before that great day to see the 
 coast ' ' strewn with the ruined dream of Spain. ' ' 
 And he was too early for the ancient ruined 
 
The Western Isles 257 
 
 Gothic chapel of much austere beauty which 
 stands near. 
 
 It is from Pulpit Hill that Oban gives the best 
 view of all the lyric lay of this water and land 
 world ; on a clear day when the wind is from the 
 west, when sunshine has been drenching the 
 world, and when the sun is about to sink behind 
 Ben More. Pulpit Hill is a wooded steep bluff 
 to the east of Oban, at its foot parklike drives 
 and forest-embowered cottages with their win- 
 dows open to the sea, with rich roses filling the 
 air and flaunting fuchias filling the eye. It is 
 an easy climb, even after a day of Scotdh-see- 
 ing in the backward of the land. 
 
 Here one may sit and meditate on the life 
 and character of David McCrae, to whom the 
 pulpit is dedicated. Or one may look over the 
 land and "soothly swear was never yet a scene 
 so fair.'* Or, to borrow again from that same 
 Scottish scene painter, and another scene — 
 * ' One burnished sheet of living gold. ' ' 
 
 The eye runs far out over the world, across 
 the Bay of Oban, across the Island of Kerrera, 
 across the Island of Mull set against the late 
 sky, and over to Lismore which lies shining and 
 tender against the deepening purple back- 
 ground of Morven. The sun casts slant rays 
 across the land and across the bay, bathing the 
 
258 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 far land in tender lilac, the sea in steely blue, 
 while Kerrera lies in patches of dark and light, 
 a farmhouse sharp against a rose mist that rises 
 in shallow places and quickly fades, leaving all 
 the world purple in hue. Shepherd lads and 
 shepherd dogs may be seen at this last moment 
 preparing to watch the flocks by night, and 
 long horned shaggy cattle browse at peace in 
 the fading light. Flocks of birds fly over, star- 
 lings in scattered black patches, sea swallows 
 poising for prey, and sea gulls resting on the 
 wave after a weary day. Everything is at 
 peace. 
 
 Two longer excursions one must make from 
 Oban; to Loch Awe, to Glencoe. Each is pos- 
 sible in a day, and yet a night in Glencoe is 
 almost imperative if one would be played upon 
 by its full tragic compass; and a lifetime of 
 summers would not exhaust Loch Awe. 
 
 The Loch I would visit; because of its 
 beauty; and because of Kilchurn Castle, which 
 is picturesque in fact as well as in picture, on 
 its densely wooded island with its broken out- 
 line lying against the farther mountain; be- 
 cause of Ardchonnel Castle, ivy covered, and 
 '4t's a far cry to Loch Awe"; because of 
 Fraoch-Eilean (isle of heather) which is the 
 island of Ossian's Ilesperides; and because. 
 
The Western Isles 259 
 
 capitally because, Innishail is the island where 
 Philip Gilbert Hamerton established his camp 
 through many summers and through a num- 
 ber of Scottish winters. 
 
 One must belong, oh, quite to "another gen- 
 eration," to admit any debt of instruction or 
 pleasure to Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I do not 
 think that this generation knows him, hardly as 
 a name. But when I was young, collegiately 
 young, Hamerton was an authority on life and 
 art, and a preceptor of beauty. And, if one 
 read ''The Intellectual Life," then, of course, 
 one read the rest of him. And so, one caine to 
 Loch Awe before one came to Loch Awe. 
 
 To the lake I went quite shamelessly on train. 
 But repenting half way, over-awed by Ben 
 Cruachan, as who should not be, I left the train 
 at the "platform" and won the memory on foot. 
 The mountain looks as high and as mighty as a 
 Eocky, and the white foaming threads of falls, 
 hundreds of feet high, dashed down the sides 
 in a true "Eocky" splendour; like those on 
 the Cut bank or the Piegan trails in Glacier 
 Park, yet not quite so high. I did not climb 
 Ben Cruachan to look on the Atlantic — but I 
 have not made my last journey to Scotland. On 
 foot and alone, I threaded "the dark pass of 
 Brandir," and felt in my blood and bone that 
 
260 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 something in me ancestral had been there be- 
 fore. Perhaps we inherit where ^e hero-wor- 
 ship. In any event, Sir William Wallace went 
 through this defile in 1300, and King Robert 
 Bruce in 1310, with his faithful friend Sir 
 James Douglass, fighting John of Lorn (the 
 dead are still heaped beneath these gray 
 cairns), and going on to take Dunstaffnage. 
 Sir Walter Scott came here when he sought en- 
 viron for * ' The Highland Widow. ' ' 
 
 On one side is the sheer cliff which guards 
 the foot of Ben Cruachan. On the other the 
 rapid awesome dash of the River Awe. *'You 
 will not find a scene more impressive than the 
 Brandir Pass, where the black narrowing water 
 moves noiselessly at midnight between its bar- 
 ren precipices, or ripples against them when the 
 wind wails through its gates of war. ' ' 
 
 In the Loch lies the island of Innishail, still 
 green, and not less solitary than when Hamer- 
 ton entertained travelers, unaware of his 
 identity. It still carries old gravestones, for 
 islands in the far days were the only safe 
 places, safe for the dead as for the living; war 
 and ravage would pass them by. Throughout 
 this western land you will find island grave- 
 yards, and the procession of quiet boats car- 
 rying the dead to their rest must have been 
 
The Western Isles 261 
 
 a better expression than can be had by land. 
 
 From here one sees Ben Cruachan to ad- 
 vantage, even as one saw it in 1859 with Hamer- 
 ton. 
 
 **At this moment the picture is perfect. The 
 sky has become an exquisite pearly green, full 
 of gradations. There is only one lonely cloud, 
 and that has come exactly where it ought. It 
 has risen just beyond the summit of Cruachan 
 and pauses there like a golden disk behind a 
 saint's white head. But this cloud is rose- 
 colour, with a swift gradation to dark purple- 
 gray. Its under edge is sharply smoothed into 
 a clearly-cut curve by the wind ; the upper edge 
 floats and melts away gradually in the pale 
 green air. The cloud is shaped rather like a 
 dolphin with its tail hidden behind the hill. 
 The sunlight on all the hill, but especially to- 
 wards the summit, has turned from mere warm 
 light to a delicate, definite rose-colour; the 
 shadows are more intensely azure, the sky of a 
 deeper green. The lake, which is perfectly 
 calm, reflects and reverberates all this magnifi- 
 cence. The islands, however, are below the 
 level of the sunshine, and lie dark and cold, the 
 deep green Scotch firs on the Black Isles tell- 
 ing strongly against the snows of Cruachan. ' ' 
 
 It was even as Hamerton had told me so long 
 
262 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 ago, a trifle different in July from what lie saw 
 it in December, but equal in magnificence, and 
 the outlines had not changed in a half -century. 
 
 And so I did not hesitate to go with Hamer- 
 ton to Glencoe, lovely and lonely and most ter- 
 rible glen. There is such a thing as being 
 haunted, the dead do cry for revenge, the evil 
 that men do does live after them. 
 
 It is a wide valley, yet closed in by great 
 granite precipices, for safe guarding against be- 
 trayal. The first section of the strath is calm 
 enough, human, green, habitable, with Loch 
 Leven, a branch of Loch Etive, sparkling in the 
 sun. The second wide opening is terrible as 
 massacre, not green, very stern, and wild as 
 Scottish nature, human or not, can become. 
 Even the little clachan of the Macdonalds seems 
 not to welcome the world except on suspicion. 
 And that murder, that assassination (February 
 14, 1692) when William was king — William 
 who might have been ''great'* except for Boyne 
 and Glencoe — still fills the memory. 
 
 Hamerton painted the picture — ''In the vast- 
 ness of the valley, over the dim, silver stream 
 that flowed away into its infinite distance, 
 brooded a heavy cloud, stained with a crimson 
 hue, as if the innocent blood shed there rose 
 from the earth even yet, to bear witness against 
 
The Western Isles 263 
 
 the assassins who gave the name of Glen Coe 
 such power over the hearts of men. For so 
 long as history shall be read, and treachery 
 hated, that name. Glen Coe, shall thrill man- 
 kind with undiminished horror ! The story is a 
 century old now (1859). The human race has 
 heard it talked of for over a hundred years. 
 But the tale is as fresh in its fearful interest 
 as the latest murder in the newspapers." 
 
 Yet, a half century still later, I have heard 
 those who declared Glencoe lovely and not ter- 
 rible. No doubt the generation does not read 
 history and does not feel story. 
 
 We did not go on to the King's House, built 
 in the days of King William, when roads were 
 being driven through the Highlands in order 
 that they might be held to a doubtful Stewart 
 sovereignty. For we had read how Hamerton 
 thought it more than enough to drink a glass 
 here, and we doubted not he had read of the 
 trials of Dorothy Wordsworth, sheets that must 
 be dried for hours before the beds could be 
 made, the one egg for breakfast, and — could we 
 have found that china cup that Dorothy for- 
 got? Rather, we chose to return down the lake 
 side for another look at the red roofs of the 
 home of Lord Strathcona, that wizard of the 
 nineteenth century, who had left Scotland with 
 
264 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 only his wits and returned from America with 
 his millions and a title. 
 
 lona 
 
 There is no pilgrimage which can be taken to 
 any shrine excelling pilgrimage to lona. And 
 all the pilgrim way is lined with memory and 
 paved with beauty. 
 
 On almost every promontory stand ruined 
 castles, not so frequent as the watch towers on 
 the Mediterranean heights, and therefore not so 
 monotonous. One knows that each of these, as 
 of those, has had its history, and here one pon- 
 ders that history, perhaps tries to remember it, 
 or, tries to evoke it. Dunolly which we visited 
 in the day's drift from Oban stood up on the 
 right with the city still in view. But it is when 
 the Firth opens into the Sound that the glory 
 of the water-world of the West comes on you. 
 
 The Sound of Mull is, so Sir Walter has said, 
 "the most striking water of the Hebrides." It 
 is very lovely in this shell-pink light of early 
 morning, it could not have looked lovelier when 
 Sir Walter estimated it. The hills begin to 
 stand boldly forth, for the gray mists of the 
 morning are rising. It is to be a fine day, 
 
The Western Isles 265 
 
 which here because of its exception means a 
 brilliant sun-stricken day, and all things clear 
 as geography. But, at least once, one should 
 see things one wishes always to keep as mate- 
 rial for remembrance and for imagination, not 
 in the mist dimly, but face to face like this. Or, 
 as the Maid of Lorn in Ardtornish, when she 
 was led 
 
 "To where a turret's airy head 
 Slender and steep and battled round, 
 O'erlooked, dark Mull ! thy mighty Sound. 
 Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar 
 Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore." - 
 
 On the left of Mull stands the grim Castle of 
 Duart on its high rock, on the right on Morven 
 the Castle of Ardtornish, and Aros a little 
 farther on, and Kinlochalive at the top of the 
 bay of the Loch — mighty were these lords of 
 the islands, and most mighty the Lord of the 
 Isles. 
 
 Perhaps — it has been suggested — Sir Walter 
 overstated the might of the Lord, the grandeur 
 of the islands, the splendour of those thirteenth 
 century days. It depends on what light one 
 views them in. 
 
 Tobermory is the capital of Mull, and is a 
 place of some resort. Like all these little capi- 
 tals it is set in the wilderness world, and what 
 
266 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 one would like best to do instead of sailing past 
 them is to stay with them and go far into the 
 backward. Perhaps traversing Mull as did 
 McLeod of Dare when he hunted so royally — 
 and in such a moonstruck way; or David Bal- 
 four when he was shipwrecked and walked 
 through Mull ; or the Pennells when they sought 
 to walk through and did not take pleasure in it. 
 It is the pilgrims who won their goal one 
 chooses to remember — not the defeated Pen- 
 nells. And here — I am leaving Mull and To- 
 bermory behind me, perhaps for always. 
 
 Suddenly one sweeps out into the Atlantic! 
 The stretch is wide, oceanic, although far and 
 away there are islands., black lines thickening 
 here and there the horizon edge. The sea is ex- 
 quisitely, deeply blue, like the Mediterranean 
 at its best. 
 
 One passes Ardnamurchan point, the most 
 westerly point of the mainland of Great Britain, 
 *'Cape of the Great Seas"; how one loves the 
 poetic grandeur, the sufficing bigness of these 
 names, and the faith, and the limitations back 
 of them; as though there should never be a 
 greater world with greater seas and mountains 
 in the greater West. To the south the boat 
 passes Trehinish isles, black gems lying on the 
 sea. 
 
ENTRANCE TO FINGAL S CAVE. 
 
The Western Isles 267 
 
 Far out on the horizon lie Col and Tiree, low 
 clouds in the line. '*Col," I heard the profes- 
 sorial people — from Oberlin — speak the name. 
 ' ' Col ! So that is Col ! ' ' they said to each other, 
 *'so that is Col off there!" ''Col," I said to 
 myself, "so that is Col." And we all became 
 related through the great Doctor. 
 
 One is bound to Staffa, incidentally, on the 
 way to lona, and for the sake of Mendelssohn. 
 Always afterward one is bound to Staffa be- 
 cause of itself. If only one could have Staffa 
 for one's self. But there are always fellow 
 travelers, there is no inn, no habitation here, 
 not even a shepherd's shieling, visible from 
 the water. There are a few sheep, a shep- 
 herd, and so there must be a shieling. To be 
 marooned here — ^was it here Stevenson under- 
 studied for Bill Gunn, and ''cheese, toasted 
 mostly"? 
 
 The cave is truly wonderful, a superb cathe- 
 dral nave, with dark basaltic columns lifted in 
 marvelous regularity, and arches lifting over 
 with groining the hand of God. 
 
 "Nature herself it seemed would raise 
 A minster to her Maker's praise." 
 
 The broken surfaces of the walls are in mo- 
 saic with green sea grasses and gleaming 
 
268 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 limpets, and the floor is a shifting thing of surg- 
 ing waves. The ocean thunders through the 
 narrow gate as it has done since the time Staffa 
 began, and since Mendelssohn, a mighty organ 
 surge, like the ''Overture to Fingal's Cave," 
 and yet, more than that. To be here alone, to 
 be the shepherd of Staffa, and come to this 
 cathedral, with the might and mystery of the 
 night about, and the winds and the sea making 
 symphony — ^life will always hold many things 
 in possibility, which cannot die! 
 
 From the top of Staffa, if one flees the pas- 
 sengers a moment, may be seen the islands lying 
 about whose names are romance, Trehinish, and 
 Inchkenneth on Mull and Skerry vore, ''the 
 noblest of all deep sea light," a mere speck on 
 the far Atlantic — what vigils the man must have 
 in the house of light built by Stevenson's father; 
 and on to the far north and Skye; and to the 
 near south and lona. 
 
 "Where is Duncan's bocly? 
 Carried to Colme-kill, 
 The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, 
 And guardian of their bones." 
 
 Very definite was Shakespeare about these 
 things. A more modern antiquarian would 
 have doubted, and sent us wandering from pil- 
 lar to post of royal burial places. But not the 
 
The Western Isles 269 
 
 man who created what he declared. Icolmkill 
 — lona — certainly. 
 
 That such a little island could have had such 
 a large history. It is so small a place, yet a 
 beautiful island withal, and with its cathedral, 
 now alas, "restored" and "reformed," and all 
 its far sounding memories of Columba. 
 
 He came up from the South as we came down 
 from the North, but his voyage was across the 
 wide seas to unknown goals ; while we have the 
 advantage of having come after him to lona. 
 And yet, to Columba, valiant adventuring saint, 
 lona nor any other place was unknown goal. 
 There was to him but one purpose in life, one 
 goal. And he found it everywhere. 
 
 It was a large life and simple, austere but 
 with unlimited horizon, that Columba lived here. 
 It is a small exquisite life that is lived here 
 to-day. Or, perhaps my belief in its proportion 
 and perfection came because of contact with a 
 certain two persons, man and woman, who had 
 taken this life to themselves. While being 
 practical in that they sold exquisite wares, in 
 silver and gold and brass and bronze, each 
 article, large or little, carrying some Ionian in- 
 signia, still they must have a very beautiful life, 
 ever making things of beauty out of the historic 
 heritage of this island. It was a large accumu- 
 
270 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 lation of jeweled hints they discovered here, in 
 the ornamentations of the stones of lona. 
 They have used them to very lovely ends. 
 And they have lived the life of memories and 
 of the keen sea air. 
 
 One may have forty minutes, or day after day 
 in lona. And, of course, the reward and the 
 intimacy is in proportion. It is a quiet frag- 
 ment of land, the little village with its white- 
 washed cottages in prim lines, and its simple 
 cotters, perhaps a little more sophisticated than 
 those of other western islands because of their 
 continuing contact with a curious world; and 
 yet these men and women and serious children 
 live here the year round, and in winter there is 
 no world, and the Atlantic thunders on the lit- 
 tle land as though one beat of the wave would 
 carry all into the abyss, or smashes on the 
 rough granite coast of Mull across the strait. 
 
 The western shore of the island is cruel, even 
 on a summer day. And if the ''merry men" 
 ran their violent ways on the shore of Mull, 
 there are other Merry Men just as merry, just 
 as lurking. As McLeod of Dare saw it — 
 
 "Could anything have been more beautiful 
 than this magnificent scene . . . the wildly 
 rushing seas, coming thunderingly on the rocks, 
 or springing so high in the air that the snow- 
 
The Western Isles 271 
 
 white foam showed black against the glare of 
 the sky ; the near islands gleaming with a touch 
 of brown on their sunward side ; the Dutchman's 
 Cap with its long brim and conical center, and 
 Lunga also like a cap with a shorter brim and 
 a higher peak in front, becoming a trifle blue. 
 And then Col and Tiree lying like a pale strip 
 on the far horizon ; while far away in the north 
 the mountains of Rum and Skye were faint and 
 spectral in the haze of sunlight. Then the wild 
 coast around, with its splendid masses of gran- 
 ite; and its spare grass a brown-green in the 
 warm sun, and its bays of silver sand; and its 
 sea birds whiter than the clouds that came sail- 
 ing over the blue. ' ' 
 
 On many of these western islands, and the 
 northern, and it is said particularly on the far 
 northern Shetlands, there are some dark somber 
 faces remaining over from the Armada. The 
 sea has never been kind ; it breaks the rocks, it 
 breaks men. 
 
 There are low-lying hills, the chief is Dun I, 
 there are pasture lands, and still there are fields 
 of wheat and clover. Just before he died, Co- 
 lumba was carried out to see the men at work 
 in the fields. No doubt he lifted his eyes and 
 looked around, on his little island, and the great 
 sea, and the great world beyond. No doubt he 
 
272 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 wished he might live longer and labour farther. 
 St. Columba who carried the Gospel and his 
 gentle Irish gospel from the sixth century of 
 Ireland into the far North until it swung round 
 and met in Durham and York the Gospel and 
 the culture coming up from Eome; and that 
 neither so polished nor so Christian. Yes, even 
 Columba regretted leaving the world behind 
 him, though he was going to the other 
 world. 
 
 Yes, I am certain he regretted leaving the 
 island world behind him. Did he not sing of 
 his longing — 
 
 "Delightful would it be to me to be in TJchd Ailiun 
 
 On the pinnacle of a rock, 
 That I might often see 
 
 The face of the ocean; 
 That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, 
 
 Source of happiness; 
 That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves 
 
 Upon the rocks; 
 At times at work without compulsion — 
 That would be delightful; 
 At times plucking dulse from the rocks; 
 
 At times fishing." 
 
 Thirteen hundred years ago ; and the song is 
 undimmed, and the world has not faded. The 
 Port of the Coracle on the far side is still open 
 to boats adventuring across pleasant or perilous 
 
The Western Isles 273 
 
 seas. The very rock on which Columba landed, 
 the traveler seeking the subtle transubstantia- 
 tion from the past may stand on. And there is 
 the White Beach of the Monks, where the com- 
 panions of Columba paced to and fro in those 
 days and in this lovely land that seems too far 
 away to be believed in. 
 
 The entire island is the shrine of the Saint, 
 and not only the cathedral of lona. In truth 
 this particular church dates from six hundred 
 years later than Columba, six hundred years 
 backward from us. The crosses that stand in 
 the cemetery of St. Oran, St. Martin's a^nd the 
 Maclean, the only two left out of nearly four 
 hundred, cannot date much farther back than 
 this, or than '* gentle Duncan." There is a long 
 line of graves, each with its aged granite slab, 
 of the kings, Norwegian and Irish and Scottish, 
 of those early centuries. I do not remember 
 that I saw the one that speaks of Duncan. But 
 I do remember that the carvings were very curi- 
 ous and often very fascinating, the ''pattern" 
 intricate and intriguing. 
 
 Once the cathedral was a place of magic, an 
 unroofed broken shrine, where the winds might 
 wander in search of the past, and where the 
 moonlight might shine through as lovely a case- 
 ment, tracery as exquisite, as at fair Melrose. 
 
274 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 If the generations coming six hundred years 
 after us are to know of St. Columba, and not to 
 reproach us for our cooperation with time the 
 vandal, these roofs, this protection, must be af- 
 forded. Still, the gate is so close locked to-day 
 that even Joseph Pennell could not steal in, and 
 so closely watched that no black lamb or ram 
 or other hobgoblin could affright Miss Gertrude 
 White or cause her to cease loving the daring 
 McLeod of Dare. 
 
 Yet, if one resolves as did Boswell, to leave 
 the close inspection to Dr. Johnson, and '*to 
 stroll among them at my ease, to take no trouble 
 to investigate minutely, and only receive the 
 general impression of solemn antiquity," one 
 will come upon much that is of particular im- 
 pression, like the carvings about and on the 
 capitals, with the early grace of the later Ital- 
 ians ; quite worth careful preserving. And here 
 is the altar, and I doubt not at this very spot — 
 church shrines continue in this steadfast Scot- 
 land — Columba knelt before the God whose wor- 
 ship he had brought over the seas, and was to 
 carry still farther over land and seas. There 
 may be one shrine in the Christian world more 
 sacred. But not more than one. Dr. Johnson 
 is still quite right — "The man is little to be 
 envied whose patriotism would not gain force 
 
The Western Isles 275 
 
 upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety 
 would not grow warmer among the ruins of 
 lona. ' ' 
 
 The storm did not come, although we waited 
 three days for it. Nothing but calm in the 
 island of lona, and peace on the deep of the At- 
 lantic; tender dawns, still high noons, twilights 
 of soft visible gray that lasted over to the next 
 morning; a land of hushed winds and audible 
 sounds, the seas lying like glass. 
 
 Not even on a Sunday morning when in a cor- 
 acle, or some such smaller boat than one usually 
 cares to venture, perhaps a lug, whatever that 
 may be, we accompanied the clergyman to the 
 mainland of Mull, and watched the stern sad 
 faces of these far away folk as they listened to 
 a very simple sermon of an old simple story. I 
 remembered that at Earraid, Eobert Louis 
 Stevenson had been interested in the religious 
 services held for the workmen who were Cutting 
 stone for a lighthouse building by Thomas 
 Stevenson. From these people religion will go 
 very late, if at all. Surely men and women need 
 what Columba brought hither, now as ever. 
 
 And because of David Balfour I walked a 
 little way into Mull, which still must look as he 
 saw it, for except for the roadway it looked as 
 though I were the first who had ever ventured 
 
276 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 that way since time and these rough granite 
 heaps began. 
 
 "Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, 
 Say, could that lad be I? 
 Merry of soul he sailed on a day 
 Over the sea to Skye. 
 
 "Mull was astern, Rum on the port, 
 Egg on the starboard bow; 
 Glory of youth glowed in his soul : 
 Where is that glory now? 
 
 "Give me again all that was there, 
 Give me the sun that shone ! 
 Give me the eyes, give me the soul, 
 Give me the lad that's gone !" 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE LAKES 
 
 JLL the world goes to the Trossachs. Yet 
 there are only two kinds of people who 
 should go, and they are as widely sepa- 
 rated as the poles; those who are content and 
 able to take the Trossachs as a beautiful bit of 
 the world, like any lake or mountain country 
 which is unsung, and then they will not take it 
 but merely look at it; and those who know the 
 Trossachs as theirs, The Trossachs, who can 
 repeat it all from — 
 
 "The stag at eve had drunk his fill 
 Wliere danced the moon on Monan's rill, 
 And deep his midnight lair had made 
 In lone Glenartney's hazel shade. 
 
 On to 
 
 "The chain of gold the king unstrung 
 The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung 
 Then gently drew the golden band 
 And laid the clasp in Ellen's hand." 
 
 Half knowledge is exasperating to those who 
 have whole knowledge; and half love — half 
 
 277 
 
278 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 love is maddening, should lead to massacre by 
 those whose love is all in all. 
 
 I cannot remember when I did not know ''The 
 Lady of the Lake" — which, of course, is the 
 Trossachs. It is as though I knew it when I 
 first knew speech, lisped in numbers and the 
 numbers came. It was the first grown-up book 
 I ever owned, and I own the copy yet. It is not 
 a first edition, this my first and only edition. 
 I presume that in those far away days when it 
 was given to me, '*a Christmas gift" — ^I always 
 chose to receive it from my Scottish grand- 
 mother, though she had been dead thirty years 
 before I came — I might have had a first edition 
 for a song ; but the preciousness of first editions 
 had not yet become a fetich. Since then I have 
 looked with respect and affection on that im- 
 press of ' ' 1810. ' ' I have never looked on it with 
 longing. So much better, that first edition of 
 mine, an ordinary sage-green cloth-bound book, 
 with ornamental black and gold title, such as 
 the inartistic Eighties sent forth; I do like to 
 note that the year of its imprint is the year of 
 my possession. It has not even a gilt edge, I 
 am pleased to state. The paper is creamy, the 
 ink is not always clear. And because it went 
 through one fire and flood, the pages have little 
 brown ripples, magic marginal notes. There is 
 
The Lakes 279 
 
 not a penciled margin in the whole volume. 
 That, in a book owned by one who always reads 
 with a pencil in hand, is beyond understanding ! 
 And yet it was many and many a year ago, in 
 a kingdom by the sea. Memory was tremen- 
 dously active then, not quite the memory of a 
 Macaulay, but still one reading, or at least one 
 and a half, was sufficient to thrust the rimes 
 of these two-edged couplets into unsurrender- 
 ing possession. Criticism was in abeyance; 
 there is not even a mark among the notes. I 
 cannot be certain that I read them. Who reads 
 notes at the age of eight! 
 
 I remember how my acquaintance began with 
 ''The Lady of the Lake," even before I read it. 
 In those days there was little literature for 
 children, and there was prejudice against that 
 which was provided. There was especial prej- 
 udice in my own household. I think my teacher 
 in school may have shared it. If he were an 
 adult he would read, ostensibly to us, but for 
 himself, something he could tolerate. Yes, it 
 was he; an exception in those days, for in the 
 public schools men seldom taught in "the 
 grades." 
 
 He must have been a young man, not more 
 than nineteen or twenty, waiting to mature in 
 his profession. And Scotch, as I think it now; 
 
280 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 not only because his name was Kennedy, but 
 because of his Highland dark eyes and hair, and 
 because of certain uncanny skill in mathematics 
 — as I thought who had not even a moiety — 
 and because, oh, very much because, of the 
 splendid tussle he had — tulzie ! that 's the word 
 — a very battle royal to my small terrified fasci- 
 nated vision, there on the school-room floor, 
 with the two Dempsey boys, who were much 
 older than the rest of us ; they must have been 
 as old as fourteen! One merited the punish- 
 ment and was getting it. The other, with clan 
 loyalty, came to his rescue. And the High- 
 lander, white to the lips, and eyes black-and- 
 fire, handled them both. 
 
 Oh, it was royal understudy to the combat at 
 Coilantogle ford — 
 
 "111 fared it then with Roderick Dhu 
 When on the field his targe he threw." 
 
 The Trossachs 
 
 To write a guide to the Trossachs — that has 
 been done and done more than once ; done with 
 much minutiae, with mathematics, with measure- 
 ment ; to-day it is possible to follow the stag at 
 eve, and all the rest of it, in all its footsteps; 
 
The Lakes 281 
 
 to follow much more accurately than did even 
 Sir Walter; to follow vastly more accurately 
 than did James Fitz James. 
 
 For, in the first place, the world is not so 
 stupendous a place as it was in the days of 
 Fitz James, or of Sir Walter. The Rockies and 
 the Andes have been sighted, if not charted, and 
 beside them the Grampians look low enough. 
 Yet, fortunately, the situation can never be ** be- 
 side them." The most remembering traveler 
 has crossed the seas and buried his megalo- 
 manian American memories, let it be hoped, in 
 the depths of the Atlantic. Neither Rockies 
 nor Andes carry so far or so rich memories. 
 Sir Walter has never projected an imaginary 
 Roderick Dhu or a King errant into any of the 
 majesty or loveliness of those empty lakes and 
 mountains. I can imagine in what spirit the 
 Pennells came to Loch Lomond and declared 
 that it ** looked like any other lake." Dr. John- 
 son was quite right, sir. *^ Water is the same 
 everywhere, ' ' to those who think water is water. 
 
 Of course the traveler should not come upon 
 the land by way of Lomond. Fitz James came 
 from Stirling. He came to subdue the High- 
 lands. They were seething in revolt — for no 
 other reason than that Highlanders so long as 
 they were Highlanders had to seethe and revolt. 
 
282 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 And if we would subdue the Highlands or have 
 
 them subdue us, we must follow the si ver horn 
 
 of the Knight of Snowdoun when he rode out 
 
 of Stirling ; to subdue, yes, and to adventure. 
 
 Yet perhaps it is better to have possessed 
 
 Scotland, en tour, and to go back to Stirling with 
 
 Fitz James, as a captive, but bearing the golden 
 
 ring — 
 
 "Ellen, thy hand — the ring is thine, 
 Each guard and usher knows the sign." 
 
 So one leaves Glasgow, the unromantic, 
 threading through its miles of prosperity and 
 unbeauty, passing Dumbarton where Wallace 
 was prisoner, passing the river Leven, which 
 ought to interest us, for once its ''pure stream" 
 on his own confession laved the ''youthful 
 limbs" of Tobias Smollett, until the open coun- 
 try is reached and Loch Lomond swims into 
 sight. 
 
 "By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes 
 Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond, 
 There me and my true love spent mony happy days, 
 On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond." 
 
 No, the Pennells might criticize "me and my 
 true love." As for us, we mean to be romantic 
 and sentimental and unashamed and ungram- 
 matical. And spend mony days ; Harry Lauder 
 would spell and spend it, "money." 
 
The Lakes 283 
 
 The lake opens wide and free in the lowland 
 country of Balloch. At the left lies Glenfruin, 
 the Glen of Wailing, where took place the ter- 
 rible clan battle between the MacGregors and 
 Colquhouns, where the MacGregors were vic- 
 torious. But as Scott wrote, *'the consequences 
 of the battle of Glenfruin were very calamitous 
 to the family of MacGregor.'' Sixty widows 
 of the Colquhouns rode to Stirling each on a 
 white palfrey, a "choir of mourning dames." 
 James VI, that most moral monarch, let loose 
 his judicious wrath, the very name of the clan 
 was proscribed, fire and sword pursued the 
 MacGregors. The Highlanders are dauntless. 
 There still exist MacGregors and with the Mac- 
 Gregor spirit. And who that heard the Glas- 
 gow choir sing the superb ''MacGregors Gath- 
 ering" — Thain' a Grigalach — but will gather at 
 the cry, ''The MacGregor is come!" 
 
 "The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the brae, 
 And the Clan has a name that is nameless by day; 
 Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach ! 
 Gather, gather, gather. 
 
 "If they rob us of name and pursue us with beagles, 
 Give their roofs to the flame, and their flesh to the eagles, 
 Then vengeance, vengeance, vengeance, Grigalach ! 
 Vengeance, vengeance, vengeance. 
 
284 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 "Through the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career, 
 O'er the peak of Ben Lomond the galley shall steer, 
 Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach ! 
 Gather, gather, gather." 
 
 There are twenty-four islands marooned in 
 this part of the lake; for according to the old 
 legend, one of these was a floating island and 
 so to chain one they chained all. The first 
 island is Inch Murrin, at which I looked with 
 due respect, for it is a deer park of the present 
 Duke of Montrose. I know not if he is de- 
 scended from The Montrose, or from Malcolm 
 Graeme and Fair Ellen, but let us believe it ; it 
 does not do to smile at the claims of long de- 
 scent in this persisting Scotland. The Duke 
 lives in Buchanan Castle, near the lake. Also 
 he owns Ben Lomond. Also — I read it in 
 "More Leaves" of Queen Victoria's Journal — 
 **Duke of Montrose to whom half of Loch 
 Lomond belongs." 
 
 It was here that Dorothy Wordsworth looked 
 and recorded, ''It is an outlandish scene; we 
 might have believed ourselves in North Amer- 
 ica." And so, I knew the Lomond country for 
 my own. 
 
 The steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond are in 
 view at the top of the Loch, but the ballad may 
 well have contented itself with the sides. For 
 
The Lakes 285 
 
 I know one traveler who wished to be loyal to 
 the Ben, and having seen it in 1889, and not seen 
 it for the thick Scotch mist, returned again in 
 1911, and had her only day of rain in sailing 
 across Loch Lomond. The ballad turned into 
 a coronach — 
 
 "But the broken heart kens nae second spring 
 Though resigned we may be while we're greetin'. 
 Ye'll tak the highway and I'll tak the low way." 
 
 It is all MacGregor country, that is to say Rob 
 Roy country. We are bound for Inversnaid, so 
 was he. All about Lomond he had his ways, 
 Rob Roy's prison, Rob Roy's cave, Rob Roy's 
 grave, and all. And though there are other 
 claims hereabout, and although Robert Bruce 
 himself preceded Robert Roy in the cave, such 
 is the power of the Wizard that it is the later 
 Robert one permits to inhabit these places. 
 
 We remembered that Queen Victoria had pre- 
 ferred the roads to the steamer. So we left the 
 boat at Rowardennan pier. Not to walk the 
 pleasant ambling highways, that by some good 
 public fortune run near the ''bonny bonny 
 banks," and, in spite of the Duke of Montrose, 
 make the lake belong to us, to whom, of course, 
 it does belong, but to walk to the top of the 
 Ben. 
 
 The path, if one keeps the path, and he 
 
286 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 should, is safe, the gradation easy; an Ameri- 
 can is like to smile at the claims of long ascent 
 of a mountain which is but 3192 feet from the 
 sea to top. But let one wander ever little from 
 the path, attempt to make a new and direct de- 
 scent, and let one of those mists which hang so 
 near a Scotch day actually descend upon the 
 top of the Ben — it is not the mildest sensation 
 to find one's foot poised just at the edge of a 
 precipice. It is not well to defy these three 
 thousand feet because one has climbed higher 
 heights. Ben Lomond can do its bit. And it 
 can furnish a panorama which the taller Ben 
 Nevis cannot rival, cannot equal. The Castle 
 Rocks of Stirling and of Edinburgh, on a clean 
 clear day; nearer, Ben Ledi and Ben Venue, 
 names to thrill a far remembrance; Ben Crua- 
 chan, bringing the Mull country from near re- 
 membrance. And farther across, pale but ap- 
 parent, the mountains of Ireland. A marvel of 
 vision. 
 
 At Inversnaid one is again with Dorothy 
 Wordsworth. It was here or hereabouts that 
 William dropped the package of lunch in the 
 water. So like William ! I wonder Dorothy let 
 him carry it. It was here William saw the 
 Highland Girl, and wrote those lovely lines of 
 her — 
 
The Lakes 287 
 
 "Now thanks to Heaven ! that of its grace 
 Hath led me to this lonely place. 
 Joy have I had ; and going hence 
 I bear away my recompense. 
 In spots like these it is we prize 
 Our memory; feel that she hath eyes. . . . 
 For I, methinks, till I grow old, 
 As fair before me shall behold, 
 As I do now, the cabin small. 
 The lake, the bay, the waterfall; 
 And thee, the spirit of them all!" 
 
 And now one really begins to thrill. One is 
 really going to Locli Katrine, to the Trossachs. 
 The road is preferable, five miles of foot-pleas- 
 ure, as against the filled coaches with perhaps 
 ''gallant grays," and certainly fellow travelers 
 who quote and misquote the lines. No, it shall 
 be on foot, up through the steep glen of Arklet 
 water, out on the high open moor where the 
 Highland cattle browse, with Ben Voirlich con- 
 stantly in view, and Ben Venue coming even to 
 meet us; with William and Dorothy Words- 
 worth and Coleridge walking beside us all the 
 way. (Dorothy always called it "Ketterine," 
 but then, she came hither seven years before 
 ''The Lady" was published.) 
 
 The old Highland fort was a perplexity to 
 the Wordsworths. William thought it a hos- 
 pice like those he had seen in Switzerland, and 
 even later when told it was a fort Dorothy did 
 
288 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 not quite believe. It was built at the time of 
 the Fifteen to keep caterans — of which Rob Eoy 
 was one — in subjection. And the American 
 looks with interest because here, in his youth — 
 which was all he ever had in truth — General 
 Wolfe, who fell on the Heights of Abraham but 
 won Quebec, commanded the fort of this High- 
 land height. I could but wonder how the 
 French travelers who throng these Scotch high- 
 ways feel when they remember this victor over 
 Montcalm. Now that they have fought to- 
 gether ''somewhere in France," no doubt they 
 feel no more keenly than an Englishman at 
 Bannockburn. 
 
 There is not too much lure to keep one's mind 
 and one's feet from Loch Katrine. There was 
 a piper on the way, tall and kilted in the tartan 
 of the MacGregor. (Helen MacGregor, wife 
 of Rob Roy, was born at Loch Arklet, and across 
 the hill in Glengyle Rob Roy was born, con- 
 veniently.) The piper piped most valiantly. 
 I should like to have set him a ''blawin' " o' the 
 pipes with our piper on the Caledonian loch, 
 something like the tilt which Alan Breck had 
 with Robinoig, son of Rob Roy. 
 
 The road drops down to Stronachlachar. 
 Through the hill defile one catches the gleam, 
 and quickly ''the sheet of burnished gold" rolls 
 
The Lakes 289 
 
 before the eye. It is more splendid than when 
 Dorothy Wordsworth viewed it, ' * tlie whole lake 
 appeared a solitude, neither boat, islands, nor 
 houses, no grandeur in the hills, nor any loveli- 
 ness on the shores." Poor Dorothy! She 
 was hungry and tired, and did not know where 
 she should lay her head. Later, next day, at 
 the farther end, she loved it, *'the perfection 
 of loveliness and beauty." 
 
 As for us, it was early morning, we had 
 breakfasted, fate could not harm us, and we 
 knew our way. We were approaching it from 
 the direction opposite to Majesty, the soft gray 
 clouded stillness, early out of the morning 
 world. But Scott had seen this picture also — 
 
 "The summer's dawn reflected hue 
 To purple changed Loch Katrine blue; 
 Mildly and soft the western breeze 
 Just kissed the lake, just stirr'd the trees, 
 And the pleased lake, like maiden coy 
 Trembled but dimpled not for joy; 
 The mountain shadows on her breast 
 Were neither broken nor at rest; 
 In bright imeertainty they lie, 
 Like future joys to Fancy's eye. 
 The water-lily to the light 
 Her chalice rear'd of silver bright; 
 The doe awoke and to the lawn 
 Begemm'd with dewdrops, led her fawn. 
 The gray mist left the mountain side, 
 The torrent show'd its glistening pride. 
 
290 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Invisible in flecked sky, 
 
 The lark sent down her revelry; 
 
 The black-bird and the speckled thrush 
 
 Good morrow gave from brake and bushj 
 
 In answer coo'd the cushat dove, 
 
 Her notes of peace, and rest, and love." 
 
 Here we hit upon a device to possess Loch 
 Katrine, both ''going and coming," to see the 
 lake at dawn, simply as beauty, and then to come 
 upon it as came Fitz James. With a glass of 
 milk for fast-breaking — we had had a substan- 
 tial breakfast at Inversnaid, and this glass was 
 but for auld lang syne, a pledge of my compan- 
 ion to her early memories — we set out for ' ' far 
 Loch Ard or Aberf oyle. ' ' 
 
 I think had we known how very modem is 
 this way which curves about the west side of 
 Katrine we might have shunned it. Certain the 
 stag would have done it. He did, you remem- 
 ber; refusing to charge upon Ben Venue, and 
 thus avoiding the future site of the Water 
 Works of the Corporation of the City of Glas- 
 gow. , Perhaps Glasgow is the best equipped 
 municipality in the world. Yet, what city but 
 Glasgow would have tapped Loch Katrine to 
 furnish water for Glaswegians ! 
 
 Our road ran in the deep defile that lies be- 
 tween the two great bens, Lomond (3192) and 
 Venue (2393). The top of Lomond was clear 
 
The Lakes 291 
 
 in the increasing sunlight, but mists still skirted 
 his feet; while Venue was mist-clad from base 
 to summit, the thin white veils tearing every 
 now and then, as they swayed against the pine 
 trees jagged tops, and lifting and then settling 
 again. 
 
 And soon, we were at ''far Loch Ard," It is 
 a lovely little bit of water; we wondered why 
 the stag was not tempted to turn aside hither 
 — but then, we remembered, the stag did know, 
 did save himself. Fishermen were out in their 
 boats, and altogether we decided that if the stag 
 did not come here we should, in the distant time 
 when we should spend a summer in this High- 
 land peace. 
 
 Ard is little, but a large-in-little, a one-act 
 play to Lomond's big drama. We chose our 
 *'seat," and we hoped that the owner of The 
 Glashart would be gracious when we sent him 
 word of his eviction. Glashart is a short way 
 above the pass of Aberf oyle where, to our pleas- 
 ure, the troops of Cromwell were defeated by 
 Graham of Duchray. 
 
 But this time, after twelve miles of walk, 
 come noontide and a keen appetite, like the stag 
 who 
 
 "pondered refuge from his toil" 
 
 we were content to house ourselves in the hotel 
 
292 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 at Aberfoyle. We chose the one called "Baillie 
 Nicol Jarvie," because this is all Eob Eoy 
 country. In truth we felt at home with the 
 Baillie, and with the Forth flowing in front of 
 the town, and the old clachan of Aberfoyle 
 marked by a few stones. 
 
 In the late afternoon of this already full day 
 we found there was a coach leaving for Lake 
 Menteith which would return in the late twi- 
 light, too late for dinner, but Baillie Nicol was 
 kind and we could have supper on our return. 
 So we were off to Menteith, and to an old 
 memory, reaching back to the daughter of 
 James Fitz James. But at this far distance 
 she seemed to belong to an older day. 
 
 Menteith is a little lake, a fragment of the 
 abundant blue of Scotland's waters, and it is 
 surrounded by hills that are heather clad ; only 
 the southern shore is wooded. Near the south- 
 ern shore lies anchored the Island of Inchma- 
 hone — isle of rest — where once stood a priory, 
 and now only a few arches keep the shadowy 
 memory in their green covert. The stones of 
 the dead lie about, for the Isle of Rest was an 
 island of burial. 
 
 Hither came Mary Queen of Scots, when she 
 was five years old, here for an island of refuge, 
 since the defeat at Pinkie meant that Henry 
 
The Lakes 293 
 
 VIII was nearer and nearer the little life that 
 stood between him and Scotland's throne — 
 
 "0 ye mariners, mariners, mariners, 
 That sail upon the sea, 
 Let not my father nor mother to wit, 
 The death that I maun die!" 
 
 She came with her four Maries, and together 
 they went to France, together they made merry 
 and made love at the French court, and, all un- 
 scathed, they returned fifteen years later — 
 
 "Yestreen the queen had four Maries, 
 
 To-night she'll hae but three; ^ 
 
 There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beatoun, 
 And Marie Carmiehael and me — " 
 
 It was as though she were lost from the world, 
 as we went back in the dimming day; almost 
 the only time I have ever lost her since historic 
 memories came to be my own personal mem- 
 ories. And yet, I knew I should find her again. 
 Mary is one of the women who do not go into 
 exile once they have made harbour in the affec- 
 tions. 
 
 Next day, half by a hill-road and half by a 
 foot-path, with mountains whose names were 
 poems evoking the one poem of the region, with 
 the far view, and with birches closing in the 
 highway now and then, and now and then open- 
 ing into a near-far view of glen and stream and 
 
294 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 strath and path, we came to — The Trossachs. 
 It is a walk of perhaps eight miles through a 
 charming memory-haunted land, lovely cer- 
 tainly, lonely; there were few people to be met 
 with, but there was no sense of desertion. It 
 was a day of quick clouds, rushing across a 
 deep blue, compact white clouds which say noth- 
 ing of rain, and very vivid air, the surfaces and 
 the shadows being closely defined. The birch 
 leaves played gleefully over the path as we left 
 the highway, and that sweet shrewd scent of the 
 birch leaf, as I '*pu'd a birk" now and then, 
 completed the thrill, the ecstasy — if one may be 
 permitted the extravagance. 
 
 "But ere the Brig o' Turk was won 
 The headmost horseman rode alone, 
 Alone, but with unbated zeal — " 
 
 Here I should take up the thread of the old 
 poem and weave it entire. But first because I 
 had come adventuring, even like the Gudeman 
 o' Ballengeich, and taking my chances as they 
 came along, and meeting no Highland girl and 
 no Fair Ellen, I did seek out lodgings in one 
 of the cottages which cluster about the foot of 
 Glen Finglas, typical Highland cottages. Not 
 the kind, I regret and do not regret, which 
 Dorothy Wordsworth describes with such tri- 
 umph, where William and Dorothy and Cole- 
 
The Lakes 295 
 
 ridge put up — ''we caroused our cups of coffee, 
 laughing like cliildren, ' ' over the adventure ; but 
 still a cottage, with a single bed room. These 
 cottages, no doubt because artists now and then 
 inhabit them and because all the world passes 
 by and because they are on Montrose property, 
 are what the artist and the poet mean by a cot- 
 tage, low-browed, of field stone, and rose-en- 
 twined. 
 
 The hurried traveler with no time to spare 
 and no comfor.ts, lodges at the Trossachs hotel, 
 which aspires to look like a Lady-of-the-Lake 
 Abbotsford, and is, in truth, of an awesome 
 splendour like some Del Monte or Ponce de 
 Leon. 
 
 There is a parish church — I heard the bell far 
 off in the woods — near the hotel, but standing 
 mid 
 
 "the copsewood gray 
 That waved and wept on Loch Achray," 
 
 It waved gently, and wept not at all that 
 peaceful Sunday morning when we made our 
 way by path and strath into the dell of peace. 
 The people coming from the countryside repos- 
 sess their own, and of course the tourists are 
 not in the church, or if there, with a subdued 
 quality. The coaches do not run, and there fell 
 a peace over all the too well known, too much 
 
296 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 trodden land, which restored it to the century 
 in which it truly belongs. 
 
 In the late afternoon, under that matchless 
 sky which the wind had swept clear of even 
 rapid clouds — we were glad we could match it 
 by no other Scottish sky, and only by the sky 
 which shone down when we first came to the 
 Lake, that aeon ago — and by the scant two 
 miles that lie between the Brig and the Lake, 
 ''stepping westward," we followed the far 
 memory till it was present. 
 
 The road leads through the forest beautifully, 
 peacefully. If on that early September day no 
 birds sang, still one missed nothing, not even 
 the horn of the Knight of Snowdoun. The 
 paths twine and retwine, through this bosky 
 birchen wood, with heather purple, and knee 
 deep on either side, and through the trees swift 
 glimpses of the storied mountains. 
 
 Suddenly the way changes, the ground 
 breaks, rocks heap themselves, a gorge appears, 
 — it is the very place ! 
 
 "Dashing down a darksome glen, 
 Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, 
 In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook 
 His solitary refuge took." 
 
 I can never forget the thrill I had in the old 
 schoolroom when Mr. Kennedy first read the 
 
The Lakes 297 
 
 story and I knew that the stag had escaped. I 
 felt even more certain of it in this wild glen. 
 Surely he must be in there still. And so I re- 
 fused to go and find him. 
 
 I could not discover where fell the gallant 
 gray. I mean I was without guide and could 
 map my own geography out of my own more 
 certain knowledge. So I chose a lovely green 
 spot — notwithstanding my remembrance of 
 *' stumbling in the rugged dell" — encircled with 
 oak and birch, the shadows lying athwart it as 
 they would write the legend. 
 
 "Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, 
 That costs thy life, my gallant gray." 
 
 And then, by a very pleasant path, instead 
 of the tortuous ladderlike way which James 
 Fitz James was forced to take, I came again to 
 The Lake, splendid in the evening as it had 
 been mysterious in the morning. 
 
 "The western waves of ebhing day 
 RoU'd o'er the glen their level way; 
 Each purple peak, each flinty spire, 
 Was bathed in floods of living fire. 
 But not a setting beam could glow 
 Within the dark ravine below, 
 Where twined the path in shadow hid. 
 Round many a rocky pyramid. 
 Shooting abruptly from the dell 
 Its thunder-splintered pinnacle." 
 
298 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 No shallop set out when I raised my imagi- 
 nary horn and blew my imaginary salute to the 
 lovely isle. There were no boats to hire, on 
 this Sunday, and I was not Malcolm Graeme 
 to swim the space. But there it lay, bosky and 
 beautiful, a green bit of peace in a blue world. 
 Nothing could rob me of my memory of Loch 
 Katrine, not even the very lake itself. 
 
 Stirling 
 
 Stirling stands up boldly — in the midst of 
 Scotland. 
 
 That is the feeling I had in coming on it by 
 train from the West. Highlanders coming on 
 it from the North, English coming on it from 
 the South, must have seen even more conclu- 
 sively that Stirling rises out of the midst of 
 Scotland. 
 
 I should have preferred to approach it on 
 foot. But then, this is the only conquering way 
 in which to make one's descent on any corner 
 of the world one seeks to possess; either on 
 one's own valiant two feet or on the resound- 
 ing four feet of a battle charger. Alas, to-day 
 one does neither. But — there lies Stirling ris- 
 ing from the water-swept plain, through the 
 
The Lakes 299 
 
 gray of a Scotch morning, entirely worthy of 
 being *Haken," and looking completely the part 
 it has played in Scottish history. 
 
 Scotland is curiously provided with these nat- 
 ural forts, the Rocks of Edinburgh and Dum- 
 barton and Stirling. They have risen out of 
 the plain, for the defense and the contention of 
 man. And because Stirling lies, between East 
 and West, between North and South, it has 
 looked down on more history, seen more armies 
 advance and retreat than — any other one place 
 in the world? 
 
 Standing upon its wind-swept battlements — 
 I can never think that the wind dies down on 
 the heights of Stirling — one looks upon the 
 panorama of Scottish history. The Lomonds 
 lie blue and far to the east, the Grampians gray 
 and stalwart to the north, and on the west the 
 peaks of the Highlands, Ben Lomond and all the 
 hills that rampart *'The Lady of the Lake." 
 All around the sky were ramparts of low-lying 
 clouds, lifting themselves here and there at the 
 corners of the world into splendid impregnable 
 bastions. Stirling looks a part of this ground 
 plan, of this sky battlement. 
 
 Soldiers, from yonder heights! — and you 
 know the rest. From this height you who are 
 far removed from those our wars, a mere hu- 
 
300 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 man speck in the twentieth century look down 
 on seven battlefields. Did Pharaoh see more, 
 or as much, from Cheops'? The long list runs 
 through a thousand years and is witness to the 
 significance of Stirling. 
 
 Here, in 843, was fought the battle of Cam- 
 buskenneth, and the Painted People fell back, 
 and Kenneth, who did not paint, made himself 
 king of an increasing Scotland. 
 
 Here, in 1297, was fought the battle of Stir- 
 ling Bridge, and William Wallace with a thou- 
 sand men — but Scotsmen — defeated the Earl of 
 Surrey and the Abbot Cressingham with five 
 thousand Englishmen. 
 
 Here, in 1298, was fought the battle of Fal- 
 kirk, and Wallace was defeated. But not for 
 long. Dead, he continued to speak. 
 
 Here, in 1313, was fought the battle of Ban- 
 nockburn, forty thousand Scots against a hun- 
 dred thousand English, Irish and Gascons. 
 And The Bruce established Scotland Forever. 
 
 Here, in 1488, was fought the battle of Sau- 
 chieburn, the nobles against James III, and 
 James flying from the field was treacherously 
 slain. 
 
 Here, in 1715, was fought the battle of Sher- 
 iffmuir, when Mar and Albany with all their 
 
The Lakes 301 
 
 men marched up the hill of Muir and then 
 marched down again. 
 
 Here, in 1745, Prince Charles experienced 
 one of his great moments; how his great mo- 
 ments stand forth in the pathos, yes, and the 
 bathos, of his swift career. 
 
 It is a tremendous panorama. 
 
 "Scots, wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled! 
 Scots, wham Bruce has af ten led !" 
 
 I listened while the guide went through with 
 the battle, which, of course, is the Battle of 
 Bannockburn. How The Bruce disposed his 
 army to meet the English host he knew was com- 
 ing up from the south to relieve the castle garri- 
 son ; how they appeared at St. Ninians suddenly, 
 and the ever-seeing Bruce remarked to Moray, 
 who had been placed in charge of that defense 
 — "there falls a rose from your chaplet" — it 
 is almost too romantic not to be apocryphal; 
 and how Moray (who was the Randolph Moray 
 who scaled the crags at Edinburgh that March 
 night) countered the English dash for the castle 
 and won out ; how in the evening of the day as 
 King Robert was inspecting his lines for the 
 battle of the to-morrow, a to-morrow which had 
 been scheduled the year before — ** unless by 
 
302 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 St. John's day"; they had then a sense of lei- 
 sure — the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun 
 spurred upon him to single combat ; it is worth 
 while listening to the broad Scots of the guide 
 as he repeats his well-conned, his well-worn, but 
 his immortal story — 
 
 "High in his stirrups stood the King 
 And gave his battle-ax the swing, 
 Right on de Boune, the whiles he passed, 
 Fell that stern dint — the first, the last, 
 Such strength upon the blow was put, 
 The helmet crashed like hazel nut." 
 
 And all the battle the next day, until King 
 Edward rides hot-trod to Berwick, leaving half 
 his host dead upon this pleasant green field 
 that lies so unremembering to the south of the 
 castle. There is no more splendid moment in 
 human history, unless all battles seem to you 
 too barbaric to be splendid. But it made possi- 
 ble a nation — and, I take it, Scotland has been 
 necessary to the world. 
 
 If this is too overwhelming a remembrance, 
 there is an opposite to this, looking across the 
 level lands of the Carse. The view leads past 
 the Bridge of Allan, on to Dunblane, near which 
 is the hill of Sheriffmuir. You can see the two 
 armies in the distance of time and of the plain, 
 creeping on each other unwittingly — and the 
 
The Lakes 303 
 
 guide, too, is glad to turn to a later and less 
 revered moment — 
 
 "Some say that we wan, 
 
 Some say that they wan, 
 And some say that nana wan at a', man; 
 
 But o' ae thing I'm sure. 
 
 That at Sheriffmuir 
 A battle there was that I saw, man; 
 
 And we ran, and they ran, 
 
 And they ran, and we ran. 
 And they ran and we ran awa', man." 
 
 To-day the wind has swept all these mur- 
 murs of old wars into the infinite forgotten. 
 The world is as though MacAlpine and Wallace 
 and The Bruce and Prince Charles had not 
 been. Or, is it? It looks that way, at this 
 quiet moment, in this quiet century, and in this 
 country where there is such quiet; a country 
 with such a long tumult, a country with such 
 a strange silence. But the rest of the world 
 would never have been as it is but for the events 
 that lie thick about here, but for the race which 
 was bred in such events. 
 
 "And the castle stood up black 
 With the red sun at its back." 
 
 There is something more dour about Stirling 
 than Edinburgh. It is, in the first place, too 
 useful. One never thinks of the castle at Edin- 
 
304 The SpeU of Scotland 
 
 burgh as anything but romantic, of the troops 
 as anything but decorative. Stirling is still 
 used, much of it closed, and it has the bare, un- 
 inviting look of a historic place maintained by 
 a modern up-keep. 
 
 Evidently when Burns visited it he found a 
 ruin, and was moved to express his Jacobitism 
 — would a poet be anything but a Jacobite ? — 
 
 "Here Stuarts once in glory reign'd, 
 And laws for Scotland's weal ordain'd; 
 But now unroof d their palace stands, 
 Their scepter's sway'd by other hands; 
 The injured Stuart line is gone, 
 A race outlandish fills their throne — " 
 
 Soon after you enter the gate you come upon 
 the dungeon of Eoderick Dhu, and here you get 
 the beginnings of that long song of the Lake, 
 which lies to the west, when Allan Bane tunes 
 his harp for Roderick — 
 
 "Fling me the picture of the fight, 
 When my elan met the Saxon's might, 
 I'll listen, till my fancy hears 
 The clang of swords, the crash of spears!" 
 
 You may look into the Douglass room, where 
 James II stabbed the Earl of Douglass (1452). 
 It is a dark room for a dark deed. And the 
 guide repeats Douglass 's refusal to the king : 
 
The Lakes 305 
 
 "No, by the cross it may not be ! 
 
 I've pledged my kingly word, 
 iind like a thunder cloud he scowled, 
 
 And half unsheathed his sword. 
 Then drew the king that jewel'd glaive 
 
 Which gore so oft had spilt. 
 And in the haughty Douglass heart 
 
 He sheathed it to the hilt." 
 
 The Douglasses, we see, still thought them- 
 selves ''peer to any lord in Scotland here," 
 and the provocation to the Stewart, merely a 
 second Stewart, must have been great — "my 
 kingly word"! and a ''half sheathed" sword! 
 Perhaps we shall have to forgive this Second 
 James about whom we know little but this af- 
 fair, who seems as ineffective a monarch as 
 James the Second of two centuries later. 
 
 It is rather with Mary, and with her father 
 and her son, that we associate Stirling. James 
 V took his commoner title of ' ' the Gudeman of 
 Ballengeich" from here, when he went abroad 
 on those errantries which all the Stewarts have 
 dearly loved. At Stirling it seems more possi- 
 ble that James V did write those poems which, 
 yesterday in Edinburgh I felt like attributing 
 to James IV. North of the bridge there is a 
 hill, Moat Hill, called familiarly Hurley Haaky, 
 because the Fifth James enjoyed here the rare 
 sport of coasting down hill on a cow's skull. 
 
306 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 The Scot can derive coasting from *' Hurley" 
 and skull from * ' Haaky ' ' — a clever people ! 
 
 Queen Mary was brought to Stirling when a 
 wee infant and crowned in the old High church, 
 September 9, 1543 — and cried all the time they 
 were making her queen. Surely *'it came with 
 ane lass and it will pass with ane lass." It 
 was from Stirling that she was taken to France, 
 and when she returned she included Stirling in 
 her royal progress. I cannot think she was 
 much here. Mary was not dour. Still, his- 
 toric rumour has her married here, secretly 
 to Darnley, and, in the rooms of Rizzio! And 
 she came here once to see her princely son, hur- 
 riedly, almost stealthily, as if she felt impend- 
 ing fate. 
 
 That son was much here. Stirling was con- 
 sidered a safer place for James VI than Edin- 
 burgh, and then, of course, it was such a cove- 
 nanted place. James was baptized here also, 
 and his Koyal Mother was present, but not 
 Darnley. He refused to come, but sat carous- 
 ing — as usual — in Willie Bell's Lodging, still 
 standing in Broad Street, if you care to look on 
 it. Young James merely looked at the ceiling 
 of the High church, and pointing his innocent 
 finger at it, gravely criticized, ''there is a hole." 
 James was crowned in the High church, Mary 
 
The Lakes 307 
 
 being at Loch Leven, and the coronation ser- 
 mon was preached by Knox, who ''enjoyed the 
 proudest triumph of his life." Then, I know, 
 baby James had to sit through a two or three 
 hour sermon. For once I am sorry for him. 
 
 From the courtyard one sees the iron bars 
 in the palace windows placed there to keep 
 James from falling out — and others from steal- 
 ing in? And here in the royal apartments, 
 King James was taught his Latin and Greek 
 like any other Scots boy, and by that same 
 George Buchanan who was his mother's instruc- 
 tor — and her defamer. Perhaps he was the au- 
 thor of the betraying Casket letter; in spite of 
 Fronde's criticism based on internal evidence, 
 that only Shakespeare or Mary could have writ- 
 ten it. I can almost forgive Buchanan, for at 
 one time when James was making more noise 
 than beseemed a pupil of Buchanan, this school- 
 master birched him then and there, whereupon 
 the royal tear fell, and the royal yowl was 
 lifted — and Lady Mar rushed in to quiet this 
 uproarious division in the kingdom. 
 
 The archives of Stirling were once rich in 
 Scottish records. But General Monk removed 
 them to London when he moved on that capital 
 with the king also in his keeping. Years and 
 years after, when Scotland demanded back her 
 
308 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 records, they were sent by sea, the ship foun- 
 dered, and sunk — and we have a right to accept 
 legend as history in this land of lost records. 
 
 One may use Stirling Castle for lovelier ends 
 than history or battle, for temporal ends of 
 beauty — which is not temporal. Else would 
 the prospect from these ramparts not linger im- 
 mortally in the memory and flash upon the in- 
 ward eye as one of the most wonderful views 
 in all the world. 
 
 From Queen Mary's Lookout there is the 
 King's Park, with the King's Knot, the mys- 
 terious octagonal mound; it may have looked 
 lovelier when Mary looked down on its flower 
 gardens and its orchards, but this green world 
 is sightly. 
 
 From the battlements above the Douglass 
 garden there is a magnificent survey; the rich 
 Carse of broad alluvial land with the Links of 
 the Firth winding in and out among the fields, 
 shining, and steely, reluctant to widen out into 
 the sea. The Ochils from the far background, 
 and nearer is the Abbey Craig, thickly wooded 
 and crowned by the Wallace monument, which 
 while it adds nothing to the beauty of the scene, 
 would have made such a commanding watch 
 tower for Wallace. Just below is the old 
 Bridge which — not this bridge, but it looks old 
 
The Lakes 309 
 
 enough with its venerable five hundred years — 
 divided the English forces. Near by, on one 
 of the Links, stands the tower of Cambus- 
 kenneth Abbey, a pleasant walk through fields 
 and a ferry ride across the Forth, to this mem- 
 oried place, which once was a great abbey 
 among abbeys; I doubt not David founded it. 
 Bruce once held a parliament in it. Now it is 
 tenanted chiefly by the mortal remains of that 
 Third James who took flight from Sauchieburn, 
 and whose ghost so haunted his nobles for years 
 after. Queen Margaret also lies here, she who 
 sat stitching, stitching, stitching, while those 
 same nobles raged through Linlithgow and 
 sought their king. Cambuskenneth — the name 
 is splendid — is but a remnant of grandeur. 
 But there are a few charming cottages nearby, 
 rose-embowered, perhaps with roses that de- 
 scend from those in Mary's garden. 
 
 Across to the north is the Bridge of Allan, 
 come to be a celebrated watering place — 
 
 "On the banks of Allan Water 
 None so fair as she." 
 
 Far across to the north is Dunblane, with a 
 restored-ruined cathedral — 
 
 "The sun has gone down o'er the lofty Ben Lomond 
 And left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene, 
 
310 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 While lanely I stray in the calm simmer gloamin' 
 To muse on sweet Jessie the flower o' Dunblane." 
 
 In tlie green nestle of the woods, away to the 
 right, are the battlements of Doune — 
 
 "Oh, lang will his lady 
 
 Look frae the Castle Doiine, 
 Ere she see the Earl o' Moray 
 Come sounding through the toun." 
 
 The Bonnie Earl was murdered at Doni- 
 bristle Castle, on Inverkeithing Bay across the 
 Forth from Edinburgh, where the King sent 
 his lordship — "oh, woe betide ye, Huntly" — 
 to do the deed. It was our same kingly James 
 VI, and I like to think that his life had its en- 
 tertaining moments, even if Anne of Denmark 
 did have to look long and longingly down from 
 the battlements of Doune. 
 
 The lookout to the north is called the Vic- 
 toria — as if to link Victoria with Mary! But 
 the old queen was proudest of her blood from 
 the eternally young queen. An inscription on 
 the wall registers the fact that Queen Victoria 
 and the Prince Consort visited the castle in 
 1842. 
 
 And not any sovereign since until 1914. 
 
 I had reached the city in the mid-afternoon, 
 unconscious of royalty, that is, of living roy- 
 alty, as one is in Scotland. It seems that the 
 
The Lakes 311 
 
 king and queen, George and Mary, were mak- 
 ing a visit to Stirling. Consequently there 
 were no carriages at the station — and one must 
 be very careful bow one walked on the royal 
 crimson carpet. Two small boys who scorned 
 royalty, were impressed into service, to carry 
 bags to the hotel. But the press of the people 
 was too great. The king and queen had issued 
 from the castle, were coming back through the 
 town 
 
 "The castle gates were open flung, 
 The quivering drawbridge rock'd and rung/' 
 And echo'd loud the flinty street 
 Beneath the coursers' clattering feet, 
 As slowly down the steep descent 
 Fair Scotland's King and nobles went." 
 
 I took refuge in a bank building, and even se- 
 cured a place at the windows. For some rea- 
 son the thrifty people had not rented these 
 advantageous casements. The king and queen 
 passed. I saw them plainly — yes, plainly. 
 And the people were curiously quiet. They did 
 not mutter, they were decorous, there was no 
 repudiation, but — what's a king or queen of 
 diluted Stewart blood to Scotsmen of this un- 
 diluted town? 
 
 That afternoon in the castle I understood. 
 An elderly Scotsman — I know of no people 
 
312 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 whom age so becomes, who wear it with such 
 grace and dignity and retained power — looking 
 with me at the memorial tablet to Queen Vic- 
 toria and Prince Albert, in the west lookout, 
 explained — "It's seventy years since royalty 
 has been here. Not from that day to this." 
 
 It seems that on the old day, the day of 1842, 
 when royalty rode in procession through the 
 streets of Stirling, the commoners pressed too 
 close about. It offended the queen; she liked 
 a little space. (I remembered the old pun per- 
 petrated by Lord Palmerston, when he was 
 with Queen Victoria at the reviewing of the 
 troops returned from the Crimea, and at the 
 queen's complaining that she smelled spirits, 
 *^Pam" explained — "Yes, esprit de corps.") 
 So she returned not at all to Stirling. I could 
 wish King Edward had, the one Hanoverian 
 who has succeeded in being a Stewart. 
 
 The view is almost as commanding from 
 Ladies Rock in the old cemetery, whither I went, 
 because in the very old days I had known in- 
 timately, as a child reader, the "Maiden Mar- 
 tyr," and here was to find her monument. 
 
 There are other monuments, none so historic, 
 so grandiose, so solemn. The friends of a gen- 
 tleman who had died about mid-century record 
 that he died ' * at Plean Junction. ' ' Somehow it 
 
The Lakes 313 
 
 seemed very uncertain, ambiguous, capable of 
 mistake, to die at a Junction out of which must 
 run different ways. 
 
 And one man, buried here, was brought all 
 the way, as the tombstone publishes, from "St. 
 Peter, Minnesota. '^ It's a historic town, to its 
 own people. But what a curious linking with 
 this very old town. I thought of a man who 
 had hurried away from Montana the winter be- 
 fore, because he wanted to ''smell the heather 
 once more before I die." And he had died in 
 St. Paul, Minnesota, only a thousand miles on 
 his way back to the heather. 
 
 Viewed from below, the castle is splendid.- 
 The road crosses the bridge, skirts the north 
 side of the Rock, toward the King's Knot; a 
 view-full walk, almost as good, almost, as Edin- 
 burgh from Princes Gardens; this green and 
 pastoral, that multicoloured and urban. The 
 whole situation is very similar, the long ridge 
 of the town, the heaven-topping castle hill. 
 Stirling is the Old Town of Edinburgh minus 
 the New Town. And so we confess ourselves 
 modern. Stirling is not so lovely; yet it is 
 more truly, more purely Scottish. Edinburgh 
 is a city of the world. Stirling is a town of 
 Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE WEST COUNTRY 
 
 Glasgow 
 
 CANNOT think why, in a book to be called 
 deliberately ''The Spell of Scotland," 
 there should be a chapter on Glasgow. 
 
 I remember that in his ''Picturesque Notes," 
 to the second edition Robert Louis Stevenson 
 added a foot-note in rebuke to the Glaswegians 
 who had taken to themselves much pleasure at 
 the reservations of Stevenson's praise of Edin- 
 burgh — "But remember I have not yet written 
 a book on Glasgow." He never did. And did 
 any one ever write "Picturesque Notes on Glas- 
 gow"? 
 
 I remember that thirty years ago when a col- 
 lege professor was making the "grand tour" — 
 thirty years ago seems as far back as three 
 hundred years when James Howell was making 
 his "grand tour" — ^he asked a casually met Glas- 
 wegian what there was to be seen, and this hon- 
 est Scot, pointing to the cathedral declared, 
 
 314 
 
The West Country 315 
 
 ''that's the only aydifyce ye '11 care to look at." 
 I should like to be singular, to write of pic- 
 turesque points in Glasgow. But how can it be 
 done ? Glasgow does not aspire to picturesque- 
 ness or to historicalness. Glasgow is content, 
 more than content, in having her commerce and 
 her industry always '*in spate." 
 
 Glasgow is the second city of size in the 
 United Kingdom, and the first city in being it- 
 self. London is too varied and divided in inter- 
 ests ; it never forgets that it is the capital of the 
 world, and a royal capital. Glasgow never for- 
 gets that it is itself, very honestly and very 
 democratically, a city of Scots. Not of royal 
 Stewarts, and no castle dominates it. But a 
 city made out of the most inveterate Scottish 
 characteristics. Or I think I would better say 
 Scotch. That is a practical adjective, and 
 somewhat despised of culture; therefore appli- 
 cable to Glasgow. While Scottish is romantic 
 and somewhat pretending. 
 
 Glasgow is the capital of the Whig country, 
 of the democratic Scotland of covenanting an- 
 cestry. Glasgow is precisely what one would 
 expect to issue out of the energy and hon- 
 esty and canniness and uncompromise of that 
 corner of the world. Historically it belongs 
 to Wallace, the commoner-liberator. And if 
 
316 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 Burns is the genius of this southwestern Scot- 
 land, as Scott is of the southeastern, it is pre- 
 cisely the difference between the regions; as 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow differ. 
 
 The towns are less than an hour apart by 
 express train. They are aU of Scotch history 
 and characteristics apart in quality and in 
 genius. Edinburgh is still royal, and sits su- 
 preme upon its hill, its past so present one for- 
 gets it is the past. Glasgow never could have 
 been royal ; and so it never was significant until 
 royal Scotland ceased to be, and democratic 
 Scotland, where a man's a man for a' that, 
 came to take the place of the old, to take it com- 
 pletely, utterly. So long as the world was old, 
 was the Old World, and looked toward the East, 
 Edinburgh would be the chief city. When the 
 world began to be new, and to look toward the 
 New World, Glasgow came swiftly into being, 
 and the race is to the swift. 
 
 There is history to Glasgow, when it was a 
 green pleasant village, and there was romance. 
 It is but a short way, a foot-path journey if 
 the pleasant green fields still invited, out to 
 Bothwell Castle; splendid ruin, and, therefore, 
 recalling Mary and Darnley and the Lennoxes, 
 but not Bothwell. But Landside, where Mary 
 was defeated, is a Glaswegian suburb, Kelvin- 
 
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE^ BY WHISTLER. 
 
The West Country 317 
 
 grove — ''let us haste" — is a prosperous resi- 
 dence district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, 
 means simply and largely the harbour of Glas- 
 gow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in 
 order that Glasgow's prosperity might flow out 
 of the very heart of the city. **Lord, let Glas- 
 gow flourish according to the preaching of Thy 
 word," ran the old motto. It has been short- 
 ened of late. 
 
 The heart of the city is dreary miles of long 
 monotonous streets, where beauty is never 
 wasted in grass blade or architecture. George's 
 Square may be noble, it has some good monu- 
 ments, but it is veiled in commercial grime, like 
 all the town. What could be expected of a city 
 that would name its principal business street, 
 * ' Sauchieburn, " memorializing and defying 
 that petty tragedy? 
 
 There is an art gallery with Whistler's "Car- 
 lyle," and a few other notable pictures (John 
 Lavery's I looked at with joy) to redeem miles 
 of mediocrity. (Here I should like to be orig- 
 inal and not condemn, but there are the miles.) 
 
 There is a cathedral, that ''aydifyce" of note, 
 touched almost nothing by the spirit of "re- 
 form"; for the burghers of Glasgow, then as 
 now, believing that their cathedral belonged to 
 them, rose in their might and cast out the de- 
 
318 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 spoilers before they had done more than smash 
 a few ''idols." Therefore this shrine of St. 
 Kentigern's is more pleasing than the reformed 
 and restored shrine of St. Giles. The crypt 
 is particularly impressive. And the very pillar 
 behind which Rob Roy hid is all but labeled. 
 Of course it is "authentic," for Scott chose it. 
 What unrivaled literary sport had Scott in fit- 
 ting history to geography ! 
 
 There is a University, one of the first in the 
 Kingdom; the city universities are gaining on 
 the classic Oxford and St. Andrews. 
 
 But chiefly there are miles of houses of work- 
 ing men, more humble than they ought to be. 
 If Glasgow is one of the best governed cities in 
 the world, and has the best water supply in the 
 world — except that of St. Paul — would that the 
 Corporation of the City of Glasgow would scat- 
 ter a little loveliness before the eyes of these 
 patient and devoted workingmen. 
 
 But what a chorus their work raises. In 
 shipyards what mighty work is wrought, even 
 such tragically destined work, and manufac- 
 tured beauty, as the Lusitania! 
 
 From Glasgow it is that the Scot has gone 
 out to all the ends of the earth. If the ' ' Darien 
 scheme" of wresting commerce from England 
 failed utterly, and Glasgow failed most of all, 
 
The West Country 319 
 
 that undoing was the making of the town. It 
 is not possible to down the Scot. The smallest 
 drop of blood tells, and it never fails to be 
 Scottish. Most romantic, most poetic, most 
 recMess, most canny of people. The High- 
 lander and the Lowlander that Mr. Morley 
 found mixed in the character of Gladstone, and 
 the explanation of his character, is the explana- 
 tion of any Scot, and of Scotland. 
 
 Ayr 
 
 Always the West is the democratic corner of 
 a country ; or, let me say almost always, if you 
 have data wherewith to dispute a wholesale as- 
 sertion. Sparta was west of Athens, La Ro- 
 chelle was west of Paris, Switzerland was west 
 of Gesler; Norway is west of Sweden, the 
 American West is west of the American East. 
 And Galloway and Ayrshire are the west Low- 
 lands of Scotland. 
 
 The West is newer always, freer, more open, 
 more space and more lure for independence. 
 The West is never feudal, until the West moves 
 on and the East takes its place. Here men de- 
 velop, not into lords and chiefs, but into men. 
 Wallace may come out of the West, but it is 
 
320 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 after he lias come out that he leads men, in the 
 establishment of a kingdom, but more in a wider 
 fight for freedom; while he is in the West he 
 adventures as a man among men, on the Waters 
 of Irvine, in Lagiyne Wood, at Cumnock. And 
 a Bruce, struggling with himself, and setting 
 himself against a Comyn, may stagger out of a 
 Greyfriars at Dumfries, and, bewildered, ex- 
 claim, '*I doubt I have slain the Comyn!" 
 When a follower makes **siccar," and all the 
 religious and human affronts mass to sober 
 The Bruce, a king may come out of Galloway, 
 out of a brawl, if a church brawl, and establish 
 the kingdom and the royal line forever. 
 
 If a Wallace, if a Bruce, can proceed out of 
 these Lowlands — and a Paul Jones! — a poet 
 must come also. And a poet who is as much 
 the essence of that west country as chieftain 
 or king. Everything was ready to produce 
 Burns in 1759. William Burns had come from 
 Dunnottar, a silent, hard-working. God-fearing 
 Covenanter, into this covenanting corner of 
 Scotland. It was filled with men and women 
 who had grown accustomed to worshiping God 
 according to their independent consciences, and 
 in the shelter of these dales and hills, some- 
 times harried by that covenanter-hunting fox, 
 Claverhouse — to his defeat ; finally winning the 
 
The West Country 321 
 
 right to unconcealed worship. Seven years 
 gone, and William Burns having built the 
 "auld clay biggan" at Alloway, he married a 
 Carrick maid, Agnes Broun, a maid who had 
 much of the Celt in her. And Robert Burns 
 was born. 
 
 It is of course only after the event that we 
 know how fortunate were the leading circum- 
 stances, how inevitable the advent of Robert 
 Burns. Father and mother, time and place, 
 conspired to him. And all Scotland, all that 
 has been Scotland since, results from him. It 
 is Scott who reconstructed Scotland, made the 
 historic past live. But it is Burns who is Scot- 
 land, Scotland remains of his temper; homely, 
 human, intense, impassioned; with a dash and 
 more of the practical and frugal necessary for 
 the making of a nation, but worse than super- 
 fluous for the making of a Burns. 
 
 Three towns of this Scottish corner contend 
 not for the birth but for the honours of Burns. 
 If Dumfries is the capital of Burnsland and the 
 place of his burial, Ayr is gateway to the land 
 and the place of his birth; while Kilmarnock, 
 weaver's town and most unpoetic, but produc- 
 tive of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the 
 high and distinct literary honours, having pub- 
 lished the first edition in an attic, and having 
 
322 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 loaned its name as title for the most imposing 
 edition, and having in its museum possession 
 all the published Burns editions. 
 
 To follow his footsteps through Burnsland 
 were impossible to the most ardent. For Burns 
 was a plowman who trod many fields, and 
 turned up many daisies, and disturbed many a 
 wee mousie, a poet who dreamed beside many a 
 stream, and if he spent but a brief lifetime in 
 all, it would take a lifetime, and that active, to 
 overtake him. 
 
 "I have no dearer aim than to make leisurely 
 pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the 
 fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic 
 banks of her rivers, and to muse on the stately 
 towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured 
 abodes of her heroes." 
 
 He did this abundantly. We have followed 
 him in many a place. But in Burnsland it were 
 all too intimate, if not impossible. He knew 
 all the rivers of this west country, Nith, Doon, 
 Ayr, Afton. 
 
 "The streams he wandered near; 
 The maids whom he loved, the songs he sung, 
 All, all are dear." 
 
 He did not apparently know the sea, or love 
 it, although he was born almost within sound 
 of it; and he sings of it not at all. He knew 
 
The West Country 323 
 
 the legends of the land. "The story of Wal- 
 lace poured a Scottish prejudice into my 
 veins," and he deliberately followed the Bruce 
 legend, hoping it would enter into his blood and 
 spirit, and something large and worthy would 
 result. It did, not an epic, but the strong song 
 of a nation, "Scots wha hae." 
 
 His land was the home of Lollards and Cove- 
 nanters. Independence was in the blood. It 
 was the land of the "fighting Kennedys," who 
 disputed with each other, what time they were 
 not furnishing an Abbot of Crossraguel to dis- 
 pute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Wal- 
 ter Kennedy to have a "flytting" with the 
 Kynge's Makar, William Dunbar. Where 
 Burns secured his Jacobitism I do not know, 
 but, of course, a poet is by nature a Jacobite; 
 as he himself said, "the Muses were all Jaco- 
 bite." 
 
 Burnsland is rich in other literary associa- 
 tions. Johannes Scotus is reckoned to have 
 been born also at Ayr; and there are John 
 Gait, James Boswell, James Montgomery, Alex- 
 ander Smith, Ainslie, Cunningham, and the 
 Carlyles, and Scott in some of his most lively 
 romances. The Book of Taliessin is written 
 in part of this land, the Admirable Crichton 
 was born here. It is a close-packed little port- 
 
324 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 manteau of land. There is pursuit enough for 
 at least a summer's travel. And, without 
 doubt, there are as many pilgrims who explore 
 Ayrshire as Warwickshire, and much more lov- 
 ingly. 
 
 The entrance is by Ayr. And this I think 
 can be made most claimingly, most fitly, by 
 steamer from Belfast. For one thing, it avoids 
 entrance at Glasgow. Ayr is still a sea port of 
 some importance; and Ireland, democratic, ro- 
 mantic, intimate, is a preparation for this simi- 
 lar country of Galloway and about; both lands 
 are still Celtic. 
 
 Ayr looks well from the sea as one comes 
 in, although in the day of Burns the Ratton- 
 key was a more casual place, and harbour works 
 to retain the traffic were not yet built. But the 
 town sits down well into the waterside of its 
 Doon and Ayr rivers, much like a continental 
 town where fresh waters are precious. There 
 is long suburban dwelling, not as it was a hun- 
 dred and fifty years ago. 
 
 And Ayr looks out on the sea with a mag- 
 nificent prospect from any of her neighbouring 
 segments of coast, with ruined castles set prop- 
 erly, with the dark mass of romantic Arran 
 purple across the waters, with Ailsa Rock evi- 
 
The West Country 325 
 
 dent, aud to a far-seeing eye the blue line of 
 Ireland whence we have come. 
 
 There is small reason for staying in Ayr, un- 
 less for a wee bit nappie in Tarn o' Shanter's 
 inn, which still boasts itself the original and 
 only Tarn and hangs a painting above the door 
 to prove itself the starting point, this last *'ca' 
 hoose," for Alio way. 
 
 To Alloway one may go by tram ! It sounds 
 flat and unprofitable. But the gray mare Meg 
 is gone, has followed her tail into the witches 
 night. And if it were not the tram it would 
 be a taxi. And what have witches and warlocks 
 to do with electricity, in truth how can they 
 compete with electricity? 
 
 "Nae man can tether time or tide; 
 The hour approaches Tarn maun ride; 
 That hour, o' night's bhick arch the keystane, 
 That dreary hour he mounts his beast in ; 
 An' sic a night he taks the road in 
 As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in." 
 
 To follow, in a tram, in broad daylight, oh, 
 certainly the world has changed, and the Deil 
 too since *'the Deil had business on his hand." 
 The occupations that are gone! It is a high- 
 way one follows to-day, suburban villas and 
 well-kept fields line the way; no need to **skel- 
 
326 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 pit on thro' dub and mire." Tarn would be 
 quite without adventure. And to-day one won- 
 ders if even the lightning can play about this 
 commonplace way. There is however the Race- 
 course — some reminder of Meg! 
 
 Yet, it is possible to forget this pleasant day, 
 and to slip back into old night as 
 
 "Before him Doon pours a' his floods; 
 The doubling storm roars through the woods; 
 The lightnings flash f rae pole to pole ; 
 Near and more near the thunders roll ; 
 When, glimmering through the groaning trees. 
 Kirk Alloway seem'd in a bleeze." 
 
 The walls of the Auld Kirk lie before us — 
 and *'Auld Nick in shape o' beast" is sitting 
 under ' ' the winnock bunker i ' the east. ' ' Who 
 would deny that he also like Tammie "glow- 
 er 'd amazed and curious ' ' ? 
 
 "The piper loud and louder blew, 
 The dancers quick, and quicker flew; 
 They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit. 
 Till ilka earlin swat and reekit, 
 And coost her duddies to the wark. 
 And linket at it in her sark." 
 
 The ride on this tram has developed a dizzi- 
 ness. 
 
 "Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil; 
 Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil !" 
 
 Did we cry **weel done, cutty sark!" Then 
 
The West Country 327 
 
 we, too, must descend and hurry on foot to the 
 old Brig o' Doon. Not pausing long for The 
 Monument, even to look at the wedding ring 
 of Jean Armour, or the Bible Burns gave to 
 Highland Mary ; but on to the Auld Kirk which 
 stands opposite. 
 
 To Burns we owe this church in more ways 
 than one. When a certain book of ''Antiqui- 
 ties" was being planned, Burns asked that the 
 Auld Kirk of Alloway be included. If Burns 
 would make it immortal? yes. So the story of 
 Tarn o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway 
 forever to be remembered. What would Wil- 
 liam Burns, covenanter, have thought? For I 
 cannot but think that William looked often 
 askance at the acts of his genius-son. But 
 William was safely buried within the kirk, and 
 if the epitaph written by the son reads true, 
 William was excellently covenanted. 
 
 "0 ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, 
 
 Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend. 
 Here lies the loving husband's dear remains, 
 
 The tender father, and the gen'rous friend. 
 The pitying heart that felt for human woe, 
 
 The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride, 
 The friend of man, to vice alone a foe, 
 
 For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.' " 
 
 The auld clay biggan still stands in Alloway, 
 
32^ The Spell of Scotland 
 
 and *'the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon" 
 bloom as "fresh and fair" to-day as they did 
 a century and a half ago. It is a simpler place 
 than the birth house on High Street in Strat- 
 ford, and a simpler environment than College 
 Wynd in Edinburgh. This is a true cotter's 
 home, and Saturday nights within must have 
 been of the description. 
 
 Somehow it is less of a tourist's way of 
 forced entry, this through the barn, than the 
 basement door at Abbotsf ord ; and so one passes 
 through the byre and into the kitchen, where 
 stands the bed in which Eobert Burns was born. 
 It is all beautifully homely, as lowly as a man- 
 ger ; and, how the world has been filled by what 
 was once small frail life herein ! 
 
 It is difficult to divide the poet's relics among 
 so many claimant places, but here and in the 
 museum are many mementoes of the poet. For 
 this as well as Kirk Alloway is a national monu- 
 ment, or something like. 
 
 There was a century during which this was 
 merely a clay biggan, and a public house, and 
 that offended no one, least of all the friends of 
 the poet. Except Keats. He came hither in 
 1818. The host was drunk most of the time, 
 and garrulous. Keats complained that it af- 
 fected his ''sublimity." And, for once, Keats 
 
m 
 o 
 « 
 
 Em 
 O 
 
The West Country 329 
 
 turned severe self-critic. ''The flat dog made 
 me write a flat sonnet." 
 
 It was while living at Mount Oliphant, two 
 miles east of Ayr, when Burns was fifteen, that 
 he began that long, long list of lasses whom he 
 loved and whom he made immortal with a verse. 
 He might have said with James V, — and much 
 he resembled that Gudeman o ' Ballangeich — * ' it 
 came wi* ane lass and it will gae wi' ane lass." 
 The first was Nelly Kilpatrick, daughter of the 
 miller of Perclewan — 
 
 "0, ance I lov'd a bonnie lass, ^ 
 
 Ay, and I love her still." 
 
 The last was Jessie Lewars, who ministered 
 to him in those last days in the Millhole brae in 
 Dumfries — 
 
 "0 wert thou in the cauld blast 
 On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
 My plaidie to the angry airt, 
 
 I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee." ' 
 
 To Kilmarnock one goes for its name. But 
 **the streets and neuks o' Killie" are changed 
 since that Burns' day. It is a sprawling, thriv- 
 ing factory town, a town of weavers — and a 
 town of poets. There is something in the whirr 
 of wheels, to those who are within it, which es- 
 tablishes rhythm in the ear, and often leads 
 
330 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 to well-measured poetry! Surely a weaver is 
 equal to a plowman, and I fancy that many a 
 workingman and working lass with lines run- 
 ning through the head walk this Waterloo 
 street, pass Tarn o' Shanter's arms, and looks 
 above the Loan Office at the attic where that 
 precious first edition was printed in 1786. 
 Poems and pawn broking — Waterloo Street is 
 a suggestive Grub street. 
 
 From Kilmarnock to Dumfries by train is a 
 Burns pilgrimage, even though it be taken with- 
 out break, and in seventy-seven minutes ! And 
 interspersed are other memories. It is entirely 
 what Burnsland should be, nothing set down in 
 high tragedy, but all lyrical, with gentle hills, 
 whispering rivers, and meadows and woodlands 
 all the way. 
 
 Mauchline, where the burst of song was like 
 that of a skylark, the very outpouring of the 
 man's soul; here lies the field where he turned 
 up the daisy and found an immortal lyric. 
 
 Auchinleek, where Boswell and Dr. Johnson 
 paused on their journey and where to the hot- 
 flung query of the Doctor, ''Pray, what good 
 did Cromwell ever do the country?" the judicial 
 and wrathful father of our Boswell flung the 
 hotter retort — ''He gart kings ken they had a 
 lith in their necks." The Scottish tongue is 
 
The West Country 331 
 
 the tongue of rebellions. Should we stay in this 
 corner of the world longer we might turn cove- 
 nanting and Cromwellian ! 
 
 Cumnock, which William Wallace made his 
 headquarters between the battle of Stirling 
 bridge and that of Falkirk. 
 
 New Cumnock, whence the Afton so sweetly 
 falls into the Nith — 
 
 "Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes, 
 Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise." 
 
 Kirkconnel, which is said not to be the Kirk- 
 connel where Fair Helen lies — but like the 
 blasted heath, will it not serve 1 
 
 "I wish I were where Helen lies, 
 Baith night and day on me she cries." 
 
 And in any event "The Bairnies cuddle doon 
 at Nicht" were "waukrife rogues" in Kirk- 
 connel. 
 
 Sanquhar to Thornhill, with rounding green 
 hills along the Nith, with memories of Old 
 Queensberry and Defoe and Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge and Allan Eamsay and Dr. John 
 Brown, and Carlyle. Thornhill is Dalgarnock, 
 where fairs were held — 
 
 "But a' the niest week, as I petted wi' care, 
 
 I gaed to the tryste o' Dalgarnock, 
 And wha but my fine, fickle lover was there? 
 
332 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock, 
 I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock." 
 
 Dunscore lies to the right with ^'Eedgaunt- 
 let" memories, and a few miles farther on is 
 Craigenputtoek. 
 
 Ellisland a brief moment, where immortal 
 **Tam" was written as under the spell of a war- 
 lock. 
 
 Dumfries 
 
 It is a proud little city, more than a bit self- 
 satisfied. It realizes that its possession of the 
 mortal remains of Burns gives it large claim 
 in his immortality, and the Burns monument 
 is quite the center of the town. 
 
 Yet Dumtries is well satisfied from other ar- 
 gument. Historically, it goes back to Bruce 
 and Comyn, and even to a Roman beyond. But 
 there is nothing left of old Greyfriars where 
 the killing of Comyn took place. Dumfries had 
 its moment in the Forty Five, for the Bonnie 
 Prince was here as he went down to the inva- 
 sion of England, and his room in what is now 
 the Commercial Hotel may be looked into but 
 not lodged in; Dumfries, in spite of Covenant, 
 has its modicum of Jacobitism. 
 
 It is in ''Humphrey Clinker" that Smollett 
 
The West Country 333 
 
 compels some one to say ''If I was confined to 
 Scotland I would choose Dumfries as my place 
 of residence." Confined to Scotland, forsooth! 
 Dumfries is larger than it was in the days of 
 Burns, and very busy withal, in factories and 
 railroads. But it is still a country town, still 
 hints at something of dales and woods and 
 streams, even on High Street. The land about 
 is true Burnsland; low, gentle hills closing in 
 the horizon in a golden sea of warmth and sun- 
 light, and the Nith a pleasant stream. It makes 
 a great bend about Dumfries, with Maxwell- 
 town across the water, and still 
 
 "Maxwellton's braes are bonny 
 Where early fa's the dew." 
 
 Farther a-field there lies Sweetheart Abbey, 
 built by the Lady Devorgilla, widow of John 
 Balliol, and founder of Balliol at Oxford; one 
 of the most beautiful ruins not only in Scot- 
 land but in the Kingdom. Caerlaverock castle, 
 the Ellangowan of ''Guy Mannering," stands 
 on the Solway, which still, like love, ebbs and 
 flows. Ecclef echan lies east. ' ' 0, wat ye wha 's 
 in yon toun," Burns sang from here, but later 
 it was made a place of pilgrimage, with its im- 
 mortal dust come back from London for Scot- 
 tish rest. 
 
334 The Spell of Scotland 
 
 And in St. Michael's Burns was laid to rest 
 in 1796, and twenty years later was placed in 
 tliis mausoleum in the corner of the church- 
 yard. A sumptuous monument for so simple a 
 man. 
 
 "He came when poets had forgot 
 How rich and strange the human lot ; 
 How warm the tints of Life ; how hot 
 
 Are Love and Hate; 
 And what makes Truth divine, and what 
 Makes Manhood great. 
 
 "A dreamer of the common dreams, 
 A fisher in familiar streams, 
 He chased the transitory gleams 
 
 That all pursue; 
 But on his lips the eternal themes 
 Again were new." 
 
 The road leads southward, the Via Dolorosa 
 Mary took after Langside, the Via Victoriosa 
 which Prince Charles took — 
 
 "Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', 
 Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'. 
 We'll up and gie them a blaw, a blaw, 
 Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'. 
 Oh, it's ower the Border awa', awa', 
 It's ower the Border awa', awa'. 
 We'll on an' we'll march tae Carlisle Ha' 
 Wi' its yetts and castles an' a', an' a'. 
 Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'." 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Abbottsford, 38-47 
 
 Aberdeen, 202, 227, 206-212 
 
 Aeneas Sylvius, 8 
 
 Agricola, 8, 237 
 
 Alexander III, 6, 63, 64, 158- 
 
 159, 173, 210 
 Alloway Kirk, 327 
 Anne of Brittany, 21 
 Ardchonnel, 258 
 Ard, Loch, 291 
 Ardnamurchan, 266 
 Arthur's Seat, 48, 143, 146 
 Augustus, Fort* 246 
 Awe, Loch, 258-262 
 Ayala, Dom Pedro de, 124 
 
 B 
 
 Badenoch, Wolf of, 193, 197, 
 
 224 
 Balmoral Castle, 205 
 Bannockburn, 21, 27, 164, 232, 
 
 300, 301-303 
 Banquo, 132, 176 
 Bass, the, 156-157 
 Beaton, Cardinal, 164-166 
 Bemersyde, 27, 49 
 Berwick, 12-17, 24, 67 
 Birnam, 192 
 Blairgowrie, 198 
 
 Bonar, Horatio, 59 
 
 Border, the, 12, 16, 21, 29, 
 
 60,64 
 Borlund, Dr., 79 
 Borthwick, 25, 131, 196 
 Boswell, James, 155, 167, 234, 
 
 274 
 Bothwell Castle, 131, 316 
 Bothwell, James, 15, 64, 65, 
 
 66, 67, 114, 146, 196 
 Braehead, 154 
 Braemar, 196 
 Brandir, Pass of, 259-260 
 Brantome, Sieur de, 128 
 Brown, Dr. John, 79, 161 
 Bruce, the, 14, 28, 36, 88, 
 
 97, 132, 164, 177, 178, 
 
 255, 285, 320, 332 
 Buccleuch, Duke of, 37, 68 
 Buchan, Lords of, 51 
 Buchanan, George, 66, 93, 307 
 Burns, Robert, 20, 45, 61, 
 
 145, 320-334 
 (quoted), 20, 304, 325, 326, 
 
 327, 331 
 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 
 
 205, 209 
 
 C 
 
 Calton HiU, 84, 98, 143-148 
 Cambuskenneth, abbey, 309 
 battle, 300 
 
 339 
 
340 
 
 Index 
 
 Canongate, 100, 101-110, 115, 
 
 120, 125 
 Carberry, 25, 131 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 10, 78, 150, 
 
 163 
 Carnegie, Andrew, 178, 237 
 Carterhaugh, 72 
 Catrail, 40 
 
 Cawdor Castle, 226-227 
 Charles I, 25, 45, 88, 89, 112, 
 
 168 
 Charles II, 21, 25, 96, 111, 113, 
 
 132, 189, 215 
 Charles, Prince, 25, 45, 58, 61, 
 68, 71, 88, 114, 115, 133, 
 204-205, 227, 230, 233, 
 234, 244, 247, 248, 334 
 Chastelard, 158 
 Chaucer, 8, 126 
 Cheviots, lo, 40, 47, 49 
 Cistercians, 36 
 Claverhouse (Bonnie Dundee), 
 
 45, 94, 142, 194-195 
 Clephane, Elizabeth, 27 
 Closes, the, 103 
 Col, 267 
 
 Coldstream, 19, 20, 21 
 Coleridge, 287 
 Columba, Saint, 34, 192, 208, 
 
 269, 271-275 
 Corriemulzie, 203 
 Cowgate, the, 95 
 Craigenputtock, 332 
 CromweU, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 
 
 102, 214, 230 
 Cruachan, Ben, 259, 260, 261 
 Culdee, 36, 51, 213 
 Culloden, 205, 231-234, 237 
 Cuthbert, Saint, 7, 35 
 
 D 
 
 Dalkeith, 25, 125 
 
 Danes, 12 
 
 Darien scheme, 318 
 
 Darnick, 48 
 
 Darnley, 26, 67, 92, 114, 115, 
 
 130, 131, 160, 196, 306 
 David I, 24, 35, 51, 55, 63, 70, 
 
 109-110, 176 
 Deans, Jeanie, 10 
 Dee, 203, 204 
 Disraeli, 10 
 
 Donaldson Hospital, 135 
 Douglass, Gavin, 118-122, 193 
 
 Lord James, 28, 76 
 Douglasses, the, 16, 29, 76, 
 
 88, 91, 305 
 Doune, 310 
 Drummelzier, 29 
 Drummond, William, 8 
 Dryburgh, 39, 47-52 
 Dumbarton Castle, 90, 299 
 Dumfries, 321, 330, 332-334 
 Dunbar, Bob, champion curler, 
 
 180 
 Wilham, 120-123, 126 
 Dunblane, 309 
 DunfermHne, 36, 55, 141, 159, 
 
 173-179 
 Dunnolly Castle, 255 
 Dunnottar Castle, 212-219, 221 
 Dunsinane, 192 
 Dunstaffnage Castle, 189, 255- 
 
 257 
 
 E 
 
 Edinburgh, 14, 24, 82-148 
 
Index 
 
 341 
 
 Edward I, IS, 19, 36, 87, 89 
 
 Gordon, Lady Jane, 123 
 
 Edward VII, 89, 111, 312 
 
 Grassmarket, 93, 94, 125 
 
 Eildon hiUs, 30, 33, 40, 
 
 49,57 
 
 Great Glen, 234, 236, 242-250 
 
 Elgin, 34, 224 
 
 
 Greyfriars, 95-96 
 
 Elizabeth, 13, 16, 129 
 
 
 
 Elliott, Jean (quoted), 
 
 23 
 
 
 Ettrick, 47, 105 
 
 
 H 
 
 Hadrian, 11 
 
 F 
 
 
 Halidon HiU, 16 
 
 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 258 
 
 Fair Maid, 188 
 
 
 Henley (quoted), 134, 171 
 
 Falkirk, 133, 300, 301 
 
 
 Henry VIII, 14, 36, 57 
 
 Fergusson, Robert, 106 
 
 
 Hermitage Castle, 15, 65, 66, 
 
 Fife, 14, 149-170 
 
 
 127 
 
 Findon, 212 
 
 
 Hogg, James, 9, 75, 105 
 
 Fleming, Marjorie, 150-155, 
 
 Holy rood Palace, 14,-54, 85, 
 
 160-162 
 
 
 111-133, 146 
 
 Flodden, 17, 21, 22, 23, 
 
 27, 71, 
 
 Howell, James, 9, 314 
 
 117, 126 
 
 
 Hume, 84, 145, 223 
 
 Ford Castle, 18, 19, 22 
 
 
 Huntlie Bank, 42, 43 
 
 Forres, 224 
 
 
 Huntly, 127, 220, 229, 310 
 
 Fotheringay, 6, 16, 67, 
 
 183 
 
 
 Fox, George, 8 
 
 
 
 Froissart, 8 
 
 
 I 
 
 Innishail, 260 
 
 G 
 
 
 Inveraragaig, 244 
 Inversnaid, 285 
 
 Galashiels, 41, 71 
 Gala Water, 41 
 
 
 Inverugie Castle, 221, 223 
 lona, 34, 35, 36, 70, 264-276 
 
 George IV, 144 
 
 
 Irving, Edward, 78, 150 
 
 George V, 104, 311 
 
 
 Washington, 30 
 
 Gladstone, 79, 319 
 
 
 
 Glamis Castle, 194 
 
 
 J 
 
 Glasgow, 83, 227 
 
 
 Glencoe, 262-264 
 
 
 
 Glenshee, 198, 199 
 
 
 James I, 113, 156-157, 188, 
 
 Golf, 167-170 
 
 
 189-190 
 
342 
 
 Index 
 
 James II, 25, 56, 113, 304 
 James III, 25, 45, 57, 113, 142 
 James IV, 19, 21, 22, 25, 73, 
 
 87, 97, 113, 115-126, 129, 
 
 305 
 James V, 25, 73, 96, 97, 109, 
 
 113, 184, 281, 305 
 James VI, 6, 13, 25, 36, 92, 
 
 132, 167, 190, 283, 306, 
 
 307, 310 
 James II of England, VII of 
 
 Scotland, 91, 113, 137, 168 
 James the Chevalier, 6, 57, 113, 
 
 201, 212, 223 
 Jedburgh, 15, 60-68 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 9, 102, 
 
 138-139, 156, 164, 167, 
 
 212, 234, 274, 281 
 Jonson, Ben, 8 
 
 E 
 
 Katrine, Lake, 287-290, 298 
 Keats (quoted), 105, 328 
 Kelso, 34, 56-60 
 Ker of Fernihurst, 68 
 Kerrera, 257 
 Kilchurn Castle, 258 
 Killiecrankie, Pass of, 194-196 
 ffilmarnock, 321, 329-330 
 King Arthur, 85, 168 
 Kinghorn, 158, 173 
 Kirkcaldy, 150, 151, 159 
 
 General, 88 
 Kirk o' Field, 15, 130-131 
 KirkwaU, 238 
 
 Knox, John, 14, 107, 150, 164, 
 166, 184, 185-187, 190, 
 207, 307 
 
 "Lady of the Lake," 278-280 
 Lamb, Charles, 150 
 Lands, 100, 106, 125, 136, 168 
 Lang, Andrew, 31, 71 
 (quoted), 31, 162 
 Lauder, Harry, 180, 181, 282 
 Lavery, John, 317 
 Lawnmarket, 100 
 Le Croc, 16 
 
 Leith, 14, 116, 128, 155 
 Lethington, Mr., Secretary, 67 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 145 
 Lindisfarne, 7, 35 
 Lindsay, Sir David, 122 
 Linlithgow Palace, 184-185 
 Loch Leven, 45, 67, 106, 131 
 Lockhart (quoted), 46 
 Lomond, Ben, 285 
 Lomond, Loch, 281, 282-287 
 
 M 
 
 Macbeth, 132, 192, 216, 220, 
 
 226, 227, 229, 230 
 MacDonald, Flora, 45, 230, 
 
 233 
 MacDui, Ben, 202 
 Magdalene, Queen, 113, 156 
 
Index 
 
 343 
 
 Maid of Norway, 7, 210 
 
 Malcolm Canmore, 87, 90, 173, 
 177, 179, 200, 220, 229 
 
 Margaret of Denmark, 184, 
 210, 238 
 Saint, 35, 87, 90, 141, 158, 
 
 172, 174-177 
 Tudor, 124-126, 175, 184 
 
 Maries, the Four, 127, 128, 293 
 
 Marischal, Earl, 207, 208, 217, 
 220-223 
 
 Marmion, 17, 21, 22, 23, 157 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 13, 15, 
 16, 17, 25, 36, 45, 57, 61, 
 64, 66, 67, 68, 86, 88, 90, 
 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 105, 
 106, 114, 115, 126-131, 
 146, 147, 158, 160, 181- 
 187, 190, 196, 230, 240, 
 292-293, 305, 306, 308, 
 316, 334 
 
 Masson, Rosaline (quoted), 132 
 
 McLeodofDare,270 
 
 Meg Merrilies, 62 
 
 Melrose, 5, 25, 48, 63, 113, 177, 
 227 
 
 Mendelssohn, 112,268 
 
 Menteith, Lake, 292 
 
 Merlin, 29 
 
 Moffat, 70 
 
 Monk, General, 20 
 
 Mons Meg, 90-91, 97, 117 
 
 Montrose, Marquis of, 20, 28, 
 45, 71, 73, 106-108, 214, 
 248-249 
 (quoted), 108 
 
 Moray House, 102, 106 
 
 Moreville, Hugh de, 51 
 
 Mull, 257, 264, 266, 268, 270 
 
 N 
 
 Nairn, 225 
 Napoleon, 44, 45, 46 
 Nelson, Lord, 145 
 Netherbow Port, 100 
 Nevis, Ben, 202, 243, 249-251 
 Norham Castle, 17, 18 
 North, Christopher, 77, 245 
 
 Inch, Perth, 180 
 Noyes, Alfred (quoted), 98 
 
 O 
 
 Oban, 235, 252-258 
 Ossian, 258 
 
 Park, Mungo, 71, 74 
 PenneUs, the, 61, 274, 281, 282 
 Percy's Reliques, 42, 58, 59 
 Perth, 187-192, 227 
 Peterhead, 6, 221-223 
 Philipshaugh, 28, 71, 73 
 Prestonpans, 25 
 Pulpit HiU, Oban, 257 
 
 Queensberry House, 102 
 Queensferry, 172, 174 
 
 R 
 
 Raeburn, 136, 137 
 Ravelston, 154-155 
 
344 
 
 Index 
 
 Regalia, 96-97, 214-216 
 Richard II, 36, 88, 112 
 Rizzio, 130, 131, 190, 306 
 Rob Roy, 45, 285, 288, 318 
 Roman, 11, 40, 48, 51, 158 
 Roscoff, 68 
 Rosebery, Lord, 172 
 Rosetti (quoted), 189 
 Roxburgh, 54-55 
 Ruskin, 44, 191 
 
 S 
 
 St. Andrews, 14, 162-170 
 
 St. Cuthbert's Church, 95, 136 
 
 St. Giles Church, 67, 85, 93, 
 104, 118, 136, 146 
 
 St. John's Church, 136 
 
 St. Mary's Loch, 70 
 
 Sandy knowe, 49, 60 
 
 Sauchieburn (battle), 300, 302 
 
 Scone, 189, 227 
 
 Scotch plaids, 137 
 
 Scot, Michael, 29, 30, 34, 48 
 
 Scott monument, 137, 146 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 10, 17, 38, 
 41, 43, 44, 58, 62, 75, 82, 
 84, 91, 95, 97, 142, 144, 
 150, 152, 172, 177, 242, 
 255, 260, 281 
 (quoted), 18, 20, 21, 22, 
 26, 29, 30, 32, 37, 38, 50, 
 56, 74, 80, 118, 191, 264, 
 267, 277, 280, 282, 283, 
 289, 291, 294, 295, 296, 
 297, 302, 304, 305, 311 
 
 Sentimental Tommy, 85, 169 
 
 Severus, Emperor, 8 
 Shakespeare (quoted), 192, 225, 
 
 226, 230, 268 
 Sheriffmuir (battle), 300, 302 
 Skerryvore, 268 
 Skye, 268 
 Smailholm, 50 
 Smith, Adam, 150 
 Smollett, Tobias, 282, 332 
 Spynie Castle, 224 
 Staffa, 267-268 
 Stevenson, 10, 79, 82, 95, 142, 
 
 145, 147, 152, 172, 200, 
 
 267, 268, 275, 314 
 (quoted), 95, 104, 143, 145, 
 
 275 
 Stewart, Margaret, 15 
 
 the, 87, 108-109, 112, 115, 
 
 130, 194, 253, 305 
 Stirling (battle), 300, 227 
 Stonehaven, 210 
 Strathcona, Lord, 263 
 Stronochlachar, 288 
 
 Tam O'Shanter Inn, 325 
 Tantallon Castle, 157 
 Tay, 188, 191, 198 
 Taylor, the water-poet, 8, 99, 
 
 102, 203 
 Teviot, 54, 56 
 Thomas of Ercildoun, 42, 43, 
 
 229 
 Thomson, James, 59 
 Tibbie Shiel, 70, 77 
 Tilt, Glen, 196, 197, 203 
 
Index 
 
 345 
 
 Tiree, 267 
 
 
 Wall, the, 10, 11 
 
 
 Tolbooth, 45, 106 
 
 
 Warbeck, Perkin, 123 
 
 
 Tomnahurich, 229 
 
 
 Watson, William (quoted) 
 
 334 
 
 Town Cross, Edinburgh, 125 
 
 Waverleys, the, 45, 144, 148 
 
 Trehinish Isles, 266, 268 
 
 
 Wesley, John, 9 
 
 
 Tronkirk, 136 
 
 
 West Bow, 141 
 
 
 Turner, 18, 19, 20, 27, 39 
 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 16 
 
 
 Twain, Mark, 151 
 
 
 Whistler, 317 
 
 
 Tweed, 13, 15, 43, 44, 47, 
 
 54 
 
 William, Fort, 236, 248 
 
 
 
 
 Winter, William, 10, 160, 
 
 228, 
 
 
 
 252 
 
 
 U 
 
 
 Wishart, George, 164 
 Wolfe, General, 288 
 
 
 Upson, Arthur, 148, 175 
 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 34 
 
 , 39, 
 
 Urquhart, 244 
 
 
 61, 62, 95, 263, 284, 
 294-295 
 
 289, 
 
 
 
 William, 56, 69, 72, 73 
 
 75, 
 
 V 
 
 
 225, 287, 331 ' 
 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 4, 284, 
 
 285, 
 
 
 - 
 
 310, 312 
 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 Y 
 
 
 Wallace, William, 74, 178 
 
 214, 
 
 Yarrow, 47, 69, 70-72 
 
 
 260, 308, 315-319 
 
 
 Yethohn, 62 
 
 
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