Chapter VII: Legends and Literary Notabilia (2)

[32] Boswell's religious instincts come well out in his account
of the visit to Iona. Two of his descendants, Messrs. Albert and
James Boswell, devoted themselves entirely to religion, and were
well known in Ayrshire, thirty years ago, as zealous evangelists.
These two gentlemen went on a preaching campaign through the
northern islands, and did much highly appreciated philanthropic
and religious work there. They were members of the sect called
Plymouth Brethren.

APPIN.

In this chapter (as, indeed, in all the others) I am rummaging among my souvenirs for materials that are in some way noteworthy. It is utterly impossible to exhaust the romance and glamour of the Highlands. Those who go regularly North are certain to bring back, on each occasion, a host of interesting memories. "Swift as a weaver's shuttle fly our years": the chief difficulty is to jot down all that one sees and hears.

On the occasion of my second visit to Appin, I stayed in the fine new hotel built on the eminence called Druim-an-t-Sealbhain. The landlord is a man of great wit and reading, and with him I had some enjoyable hours of miscellaneous conversation. Mr. Macdonald (for that is his name) has an excellent knowledge of the Celtic dialects, has translated into Gaelic verse some of the best-known poems of Burns, Tannahill, and Byron, and is extremely clever at retailing the legendary tales that still go rumouring along the Strath of Appin. He has also a good knowledge of English literature, and told me certain details regarding Scott and Wordsworth which I was pleased to know.

It seems that Sir Walter was at one time tutor in Appin House, and was in the habit of visiting the cot of an old shepherd, a notorious _seanachie_, full of romantic lore, for the purpose of hearing, and writing down, the old man's tales. An oak tree is still pointed out, under which, it is said, Scott composed part of _The Lord of the Isles_. Appin is not very far from the castles of Dunollie and Dunstaffnage, which Sir Walter wrought skilfully into the texture of his tales.

The most interesting item mentioned by Mr. Macdonald had reference to the visit of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in the year 1803. Everyone who has read the life of the great poet of Nature knows the charming description of the district contained in one of his sister's letters. "We arrived," she says, "at Port-na-croish. It is a small village--a few huts and an indifferent inn, by the side of the loch; ordered a fowl for dinner, had a fire lighted, and went a few steps from the door up the road, and turning aside into a field, stood at the top of a low eminence, from which, looking down the loch to the sea through a long vista of hills and mountains, _we beheld one of the most delightful prospects that, even when we dream of fairer worlds than this, it is possible to conceive in our hearts_." Here follows a description so exquisite of the sea-scenery and the Morven Hills, that it deserves to be classed with the finest examples of word-painting in the English language.

The new hotel at Appin is built on the low eminence referred to in the above-cited letter. The name Druim-an-t-Sealbhain is giving way to the complimentary title of "Dorothy Wordsworth's View." From the front windows of the hotel, the same calm inland seas, grassy hills, Morven mists, grim old forts, and intricate communion of land and water, can be seen precisely as they were seen by the Wordsworths more than a century ago. The Port-na-croish inn has become a village store: it is well worthy of note, not merely for the reference in the letter, but for a fine legend, which I shall now narrate.

MACDONALD'S GRATITUDE.

The first tenant of the inn was a Macdonald of Glencoe, a man between sixty and seventy at the time of the story, the year 1755 namely. He had around him a family of stalwart sons, all imbued with intense hatred of the clan Campbell. The peculiar and fiendish malignity of the terrible massacre of Glencoe precluded all possibility of forgiveness on the part of the clan. Highland hospitality has always been a lavish and magnificent thing, and Colonel Campbell and his assassins had been treated with exceptional kindness in Glencoe. The bloody outrage, in a midnight of winter snows, was too terrible a meed of hospitality to be readily forgotten or forgiven by the Macdonalds. This old innkeeper of Port-na-croish, then, hated the Campbells with the unquenchable hate that deep wrongs, done not alone to an individual but to a tribe, engender in the Celtic soul.

One day a white-bearded wayfarer begged food and shelter in the little hostel, and in the course of conversation over the meal that was soon spread on the board for his wants, he let slip an avowal that, in his youth, as one of Campbell's men, he had taken part in the gruesome massacre of the "valley of weeping." Without more ado, the landlord slipped out and posted his sons at the door, with whispered orders to them that the stranger should be dirked to death on crossing the threshold of the inn. Returning indoors, old Macdonald, dissimulating his fell intentions, proceeded to ply the visitor with question upon question, so as to gain a detailed knowledge of all the incidents of the weird carnage. Finally he said, "Tell me, Campbell, what part of that devilish business made the strongest impression on your mind?" "I will tell you," said the old soldier, "what to me was the outstanding incident of that night. Towards the close of the massacre, a child's voice was heard piercingly on the night air--a scream it was, and seemed to come from no great distance. The captain sent me in the direction of the sound, bidding me, if the child should be a male Macdonald, to kill it forthwith; if a girl, to spare. I soon came up to the place whence the sound proceeded, and saw through the whirling snow, under the protection of a jutting cliff, a nurse with a boy of four years old, both of them wailing and shivering with cold. The child was gnawing a bone and, near by, a dog was crouching. Pity wrung my heart. I drove my bayonet through the trembling cur, and, going back to the captain, showed him the bloody steel as a proof that I had obeyed his commands."

The innkeeper, who had been all ears, said: "You, then, were that soldier?" "I was, indeed," replied the old wanderer. "_And I was that child!_" said the landlord, "and _your_ life is saved. My sons stand at the threshold of the inn, ready to fall upon you when you leave. I countermand the order for your destruction. Here you shall stay, an honoured guest, till the end of your days, as a recompense for saving my life on that awful night."

The story goes on to state that the foot-weary Campbell lived for some years a pensioner in Port-na-croish inn, and was buried at the expense of the grateful innkeeper. I do not know any story that comes nearer perfection.

NOTES ON THE TROSSACHS.

The Rev. Mr. Wilson, the cultured and genial minister of the Trossachs, has recently published a most readable little book on the district he knows so well. Perhaps no district indeed on the world's surface is so well known (even to those who have never seen it), as the Trossachs. Little did Sir Walter suspect, when he penned the stirring iambics of _The Lady of the Lake_, that he was furnishing materials to the pedagogue which would be parsed, analysed, and dissected by myriads of pupils in all the schools of the British Empire. We shall all carry with us to the grave the leading passages of that romantic lay: the stag-hunt, the duel at Coilantogle Ford, the whistle that garrisoned the glen, and the episode of the Fiery Cross. Such lines, we may say, have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. Happening to pass Strathyre station in July, 1907, I was requested by a bright-eyed little Japanese gentleman in the compartment to tell him where we were. On being informed, he (after casting an eye of pity on the deplorable stork that is supposed to decorate the drinking-fountain of the station), began to declaim, in capital English, the passage that begins--

"Benledi saw the Cross of Fire,
It glanced like lightning up Strathyre,
O'er dale and hill the summons flew,
Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew;
The tear that gathered in his eye
He left the mountain breeze to dry."

Mr. Wilson's book to which I have alluded is a collection of the impressions written down by eminent visitors to the locality, from Dorothy Wordsworth to Queen Victoria. Carlyle, who was in Perthshire in 1818, wrote the following note, which, though short, is finely characteristic of him: "The Trossachs I found really grand and impressive, Loch Katrine exquisitely so, my first taste of the beautiful in scenery. Not so, any of us, the dirty, smoky farm-hut at the entrance, with no provision in it but bad oatcakes and unacceptable whisky, or the Mrs. Stewart who somewhat royally presided over it, and dispensed these dainties, expecting to be flattered like an independency, as well as paid like an innkeeper." The foregoing note, by itself, is good value for the cost of Mr. Wilson's book (two shillings, namely), and raises regrets that the author of _Sartor_ did not travel oftener through the Land of Cakes. (The only other place in the Highlands where I have heard Carlyle spoken of, is Kyleakin in Skye, where he was the guest of Lady Ashburton, and where (as the natives say), the cocks and hens had to be removed out of ear-shot for his convenience.)

One of Mr. Wilson's stories (contributed by a lady) is apposite at the present time, when so much is being heard of women's rights. Glengyle, a district of the Trossachs, was once _entirely ruled_ by a number of women, who constituted a sort of High Court with women as Judge and Jury. "The most notorious case which they dealt with, and which probably led to their downfall through drawing the ridicule of the country upon them, was a case of horse-stealing. The accused man had been seen riding furiously away on someone else's horse, and all evidence pointed to his guilt. To the astonishment of the outsiders, the jury returned a verdict of 'not guilty,' and the Judge on summing up declared the horse was the culprit, as it had run away with the man. _She condemned the unfortunate animal to be hanged, and hanged it was, while the man got off scot free._"

LOCHFYNE-SIDE.

None of the mainland counties of Scotland can boast of such wonderful ramifications of sea and loch as the county of Argyll. The present amiable and cultured head of the Clan Campbell declaimed, with great applause, at a social gathering not long ago, a fine poem, in which the beauties of his ancestral shire were floridly--but not unjustly--elaborated. It would be difficult to over-praise the county of Argyll, with its splendid sea-board, its rugged and impressive peaks, and its unrivalled fiords and lakes. Thanks to its proximity to large centres of population, few counties are so much visited. Its fame, in our day, is likely to be more widespread than ever, owing to the graceful and entertaining writings of Mr. Neil Munro, who probably knows the details of its local history better than any man living, and who possesses the inimitable art of interesting others in his delineations of the past. I confess that I feel, personally, as much interest in the Wars of Lorn as I do in the Siege of Sphacteria, and that "Glee'd Argyll" seems fully as attractive as Cleon or Brasidas.

Of course, long before Mr. Munro, Loch Fyne had a European reputation, which it owed to its herring. The Popes of Rome used to eat these herring in mediæval times, and sent for them _viâ_ Amsterdam or Antwerp. Orthodox Catholics have always had good judgment in the matter of fish, and especially the French, who belong to a country which proudly boasts of being _the eldest daughter of the Church_. For many a generation the French came annually to Lochgilphead, and bartered their kegs of claret for barrels of salt herring. The French Revolution, among its many other effects, put a stop to this trade. War lasted for so many years between Britain and France, that, at the end of it all, the continental sailors had forgotten the way to Loch Fyne.

Argyllshire is rich in legends, for many of which no date can be given except the elastic one _long ago_ or _in byegone times_. Let me cite one or two of these:--

MACIVORS, MACVICARS, AND MACALLISTERS.

On the road to Kilmartin is a place called the Robber's Den, the locality of which may be firmly fixed in the tourist's memory by noting that it is just behind a large distillery. Here, long ago, lived one Macvicar, whose wife was a Macivor. These names are important, and so also is that of the Macallisters of Tarbert, who one day stole cattle belonging to the Macivors. Mrs. Macvicar noticed these Tarbert scoundrels driving her father's cattle through the glen, and mentioned the fact to her boy. Young Macvicar followed the robbers, and found them in a forest feeding joyously on a slain bullock belonging to his grandfather. As each Macallister finished picking a bone, he would throw it violently against a big stone, remarking at the same time, with a chuckle: "_If a Macivor were here, that's how I would treat him_." The boy, from his hiding-place in the foliage, threw a stone and struck one of the feasters. The injured man blamed one of his own clansmen, and, after much recrimination, a free fight of Macallisters was the result. During the mêlée, the boy slunk off and told his mother's family what was happening. The Macivors, in a furious and determined band, soon fell upon their disordered foes, and completely routed them and regained their cattle, _minus_ the consumed bullock. The chief of the Macallisters was slain by a woman, who took off her stocking, placed a _large stone therein_, and heaved it at his head. That same night, Mrs. Macallister, wife of the chieftain thus ignominiously laid low, gave birth, perhaps prematurely, to a son, whom the care of a discriminate midwife secreted from the vengeance of the Macivors, who were howling all round the house. This child grew up to manhood with the picture of the stone-laden stocking ever before his mind's eye. He prepared a most effective retaliation: he sent to Ireland and got over a large band of Antrim men, who were quite pleased to help him in his bloody projects. The Macivors were completely overpowered, and even the Macvicars had a taste of Irish steel. Macvicar, father of the boy who distinguished himself in the wood, was attacked in his own house. He was an athlete of great powers, and was _able to jump thirty feet either in a backward or a forward direction_. The Irishmen set fire to his house, and Macvicar--hoping, no doubt, to make a final leap for life--tried to escape by the chimney. His foes struck him on the knee with a spear: he fell into their hands, and was at once despatched.

RED HECTOR.

We hear a good deal of the Irish in the traditions of Argyllshire. The ruthless Colkitto, notorious for his own deeds and also for Milton's mention of him, brought over a contingent of men from Ireland to help Montrose in the Royalist wars. These auxiliaries swooped down on Kintyre, murdered hundreds of Campbells, and devastated with fire and sword the whole of Argyll's country. To this period belongs the story of Red Hector and the Irish colossus, Phadrig Mor.

Hector was a little, red-haired kern of the Campbell clan, who was caught by Colkitto's men skulking in the wood, and dragged with pinioned arms before the son of that bandit. Hector was about to be hanged without more ado, but as preparations were being made he cried out: "_Give me a sword and I'll fight any one of you. If I am beaten, kill me then._" The Irishmen, to whom an "illigant foight" has always been welcome, agreed to the proposal of Red Hector. They chose Phadrig Mor, a fierce giant of a man, to fight with the little fellow. The latter, to neutralise the advantages of Phadrig's stature, leapt nimbly on the sawn stump of a tree, and, in an attitude of defence, awaited the oncoming of his foe. The wee man parried most dexteriously every blow that Phadrig wished to deal, and there was much mirth and excitement among the spectators. At length, seeing a terrific blow coming his way, Hector speedily leapt off the trunk of the tree, and the Irishman's sword came fiercely down and was embedded in the timber. Now was Hector's chance: he laid about the defenceless giant to such purpose that Phadrig was soon a corpse.

MACPHAIL OF COLONSAY.

Leyden, the polyglott poet, has written a poem on an Argyllshire tradition attaching to the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. Near that dreaded tumult of waters, Macphail, a Colonsay man, was pulled out of his boat by a mermaid, and taken down to her shell-strewn chamber at the bottom of the sea. They stayed for years together, and five little, unbaptized Macphails claimed him at length as their sire. By and by he grew tired of the eternal swirling of the currents, the saltwater garden growths, and the irritating deflection of the sunlight. His mind continued to revert to Colonsay and the girl he had left behind him there. One day he got the mermaid to take him near the strand of his native island, whereupon he suddenly leapt ashore and escaped. In future years he avoided the sea as much as possible, preferring to devote his time and talents to cultivating the soil of Colonsay.

TALES FROM SPEYSIDE.

Part of my purpose in this chapter is to show to any of my readers who may have poetical talents, that abundance of material for verse, and that of the most pathetic, thrilling, and gruesome kind, is still to be found in the North country. No one since Scott has thought fit to draw much on traditions of the Highlands: and though Scott poetised a great many of these, plenty of them still remain unsung. Many fine tales are associated with the delightful district of Speyside.

TOM EUNAN!

Near the little village of Kincraig is a queer old church built on a hill called Tom Eunan, just beside the Spey. This church is declared to be the only one in Scotland in which services have been continuously held since the seventh century. The outside is antique in the extreme; inside, there have been renovations: there is a deal of varnished wainscoating that would have scared the Culdees, and instead of the uneven cobble stones of old, there is a modern floor of wood. On one of the windows of the church, there is a fine old bronze bell that exists as a relic of Culdee times. Some profane person once laid hands on this bell and carried it off to Perth; but it _would not_ ring away from Speyside. To speak figuratively, the bell was broken-hearted: from its metallic tongue, night and day, came the mournful wail, "Tom Eunan, Tom Eunan." I am happy to say that it was brought back to its beloved hillock.

Rural churches with earthen floors were not uncommon in Scotland even in the nineteenth century: in such there would be no great trouble in interring the dead. Two Speyside stories, dealing with kirks and kirkyards, are told of the Grants of Rothiemurchus.

SHAWS AND GRANTS.

For several generations the possession of Rothiemurchus was a constant subject of dispute between the Shaws and the Grants. The Shaws were the original owners, but having waxed fat and kicked against the Government on more than one occasion, word was sent from Edinburgh to one of the Grants, who was Laird of Muckerach, that he should dispossess the Shaws of the lands of Rothiemurchus, _gin he could_. Grant was by no means "blate" in availing himself of the hint, but the Shaws were tough fighters. In a final and decisive contest between the two clans, the Grants were victorious and the chief of the Shaws slain. The victorious Muckerach, now unequivocal Laird of Rothiemurchus, caused his dead rival to be buried deep down within the kirk beneath his own seat. Every Sunday _when he went to pray_ he stamped his feet triumphantly upon the place under which lay the corpse of his enemy.

Patrick Grant, surnamed Macalpine, cuts a rather picturesque figure in clan history. With a body of gaily-dressed retainers he paraded round the countryside, dispensing justice and letting the minimum of time elapse between the sentence and the execution. He was twice married, and his second wife survived him. That forlorn lady had much to endure from the first family, and notably from the wife of Macalpine's eldest son and heir. The widow took a very dramatic way of publicly showing her grievances. Once after the service in the kirk was over, she stepped up, with her fan in her hand, to the corner of the kirkyard, and, taking off her high-heeled slipper, she tapped with it on the stone laid over her husband's grave, crying out through her tears, "_Macalpine! Macalpine! rise up for ae half-hour and see me richted!_"

A diverting legend explains the _low-lying situation of Ballindalloch Castle_, a beautiful specimen of baronial architecture, standing near the junction of the Spey and the Avon. In planning the place, somewhere about 1545, the laird fully intended to secure a wide prospect, and to that end, chose a commanding site. But his views did not commend themselves to the Powers of the Air, and the masons could make no progress. Every night, when the workers had retired from building the walls, a prodigious gale came roaring from the summit of Ben Rinnes and swept stones and mortar into the bed of the Avon. The laird, sorely puzzled at this strange phenomenon, lay in watch one night, with the result that he was blown off his feet, and landed right up among the branches of a holly-tree. Having taken the conceit out of the laird in this abrupt way, the Mysterious Power, chuckling in fiendish fashion, called out "_Build on the cow-haugh_." Frightened out of his wits, the laird was only too glad to comply.

THE WISHING WELL.

Round the old Castle of Rothes clings a legend of a more pathetic kind. "Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralise my song," says Spenser, and it is with these well-worn but ever-fresh subjects that the story deals. The heiress of one of the old lairds of Rothes, being allowed to roam at will with her foster-mother, cast an eye of love on the son of the laird of Arndilly. As in ballad lore, the love seems to have been immediate, reciprocal, and unquenchable. The girl's father, hearing of the attachment, summarily forbade it, and commanded his daughter to turn her back on young Arndilly, and take a different road in future. But as journeys end in lovers meeting, the two young people, by whatever way they set out, invariably met at the _Wishing Well_. A sad severance came, however, for young Arndilly, like so many mediæval knights of song who had faithful mistresses, must needs go crusading to the Holy Land. During his absence, the lady hied daily to the Wishing Well, and many a tear she let fall therein as she thought of the lad that was so far away. But after many a month, back from Palestine came young Arndilly, and went, of course, straight to the old trysting-place, where he found his lady-love praying for his safe return. The meeting was rapturous but tragically short. A dark shape glided upon the scene, and drove a fatal dirk in the young soldier's back. The lady shrieked aloud and swooned away. For the rest of her life she was an imbecile: she never left the castle, and spent her time crooning a plaintive song and rocking a cradle. Her ghost still haunts the place, and those who have ears to hear can, at nightfall, make out, above the sough of the wind, the mournful notes of a weird lullaby, and mysterious cradle-rockings within the ruined walls. Close by the Well, at the spot of the murder, a bush sprang up, whereof the leaves resembled crosses; in autumn they turned to a bright scarlet colour, as if typical of the blood that had flowed there from its victim's wounds. Others will have it that the lady's ghost may be seen flitting about, distractedly, in the woods, on a particular night of the year--the anniversary, it is supposed, of Arndilly's murder.

OSSIAN AND MACPHERSON.

The beautiful little town of Kingussie is famous for its association with "Ossian" Macpherson, who was born near by. No man, born on Scottish earth, except perhaps, Sir Walter Scott, had ever such an influence on European literature as this Highland dominie. "His Ossian," as Professor Macmillan Brown says, "was translated into almost every European language; and its influence is apparent in Goethe's Werther, in Schiller's Robbers, and in all the Storm-and-Stress literature of Germany, in the productions and speeches of the French Revolutionists, in the romantic literary movement that preceded and followed the Revolution, and in much of the Italian, Spanish, and Danish poetry of the time. It generally affected the prose style of eighteenth century romance, and was a direct antidote to Johnsonianism in the imaginative literature. In our own century it bent the genius of Scott to the Highlands, and moulded the dramas of Byron, and the often vague imagery of Shelley; it appears in the style of Kingsley's Hereward, and directly or indirectly it is responsible for the pioneering efforts of Walt Whitman in prose poetry and for the rapid growth of poetic prose through De Quincey, Bulwer Lytton, and Ruskin. During last century it stirred Blake to misty prophecies, led writers of romance back into the less known periods of the past, and gave the new audience a delight in mysterious and almost formless legend and tale and idea."

The extraordinary vogue of Macpherson's Ossianic poems was due to literary merit of a high order, and also to the parched and dry state into which the poetry of Europe had sunk in the middle of the eighteenth century. Boileau and his rules had crushed all sap and life out of European verse, and the poet had become either a teacher of rimed ethics or a framer of dexterous satire. How refreshing Ossian must have been to the men of such a time:

"The hills were round them, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Their foreheads felt the wind and rain."

Let the modern reader go through the _Rape of the Lock_, and then take up the song of the hunter Shilric from Macpherson's "Carric-thura."

Shilric, not knowing that his love Vinvela is dead, thus communes with himself:

"I sit by the mossy mountain; on the top of the hill of winds.
One tree is rustling above me. Dark waves roll over the heath.
The lake is troubled below. The deer descend from the hill. No
hunter at a distance is seen. It is mid-day; but all is silent.
Sad are my thoughts alone. Didst thou but appear, O my love! a
wanderer on the heath! thy hair floating on the wind behind
thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes full of tears
for thy friends, whom the mist of the hill had concealed! Thee I
would comfort, my love, and bring thee to thy father's house!"

To him mourning thus, the spirit of his dead love appears:

"But is it she that there appears, like a beam of light on the
heath? bright as the moon in autumn, as the sun in a
summer-storm, comest thou, O maid, over rocks, over mountains to
me? She speaks: but how weak her voice! like the breeze in the
reeds of the lake.

"'Alone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief
for thee I fell. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb.'

"She fleets, she sails away; as mist before the wind! and wilt
thou not stay, Vinvela? Stay and behold my tears! fair thou
appearest, Vinvela! fair thou wast, when alive!

"By the mossy mountain I will sit; on the top of the hill of
winds. When mid-day is silent around, O talk with me, Vinvela!
come on the light-winged gale! on the breeze of the desert,
come! Let me hear thy voice, as thou passest, when mid-day is
silent around.'"

The readers of the eighteenth century did not stay to consider whether the foregoing was, or was not, a genuine antique: it suited their taste admirably. Rousseau had brought sentimentalism into favour; the "return to nature" was a kind of creed with the French philosophers: these facts aided greatly in causing the epidemic of Ossianism that overran Europe.

I should not like to be condemned to read nothing but Ossian for a year. The short staccato sentences, the difficulty of getting hold of anything definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is too much weeping: one is constantly saying with Tennyson, "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean." Yet, no one can dip into Macpherson without being rewarded by some phrase of an impressive or refreshing kind, _e.g._:--

"Thou art with the years that are gone; thou fadest on my soul."

"Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days?"

"Her steps were like the music of songs; she saw the youth and
loved him. He was the stolen sigh of her soul."

"Why does Ossian sing? Soon shall he lie in the narrow house,
and no bard shall raise his fame."

"When shall it be morn in the grave to bid the slumberer wake?"

"Mixed with the murmur of waters rose the voice of aged men, who
called the forms of night to aid them in the war."

"Autumn is dark on the mountains; grey mist rests on the hills."

AT THE FOOT O' BENNACHIE.

I have on several occasions, during the last year or two, visited that part of Aberdeenshire which is immediately under the glorious ridge of Bennachie. Like all lovers of ballad lore, I know by heart the poem of the little wee man who had such prowess, and who invited the poet to go with him to his green bower. After seeing magnificent examples of dancing, the poet found himself lying in the mist at the foot of Bennachie:--

"Out went the lichts, on cam' the mist,
Leddies nor mannie mair could I see;
I turned aboot, and gave a look,
I was just at the foot o' Bennachie."

The exquisite little ballad from which I quote is calculated to raise expectations of beauty which the picturesque surroundings of Bennachie are well able to satisfy. Great tracts of Aberdeenshire are flat, treeless, and painful in their monotony; in winter, great gusts sweep the cold plains, and make driving or walking a trying ordeal; the country is thinly peopled, and the impression of the visitor is that, in some districts, railway stations are more numerous than villages. Round Bennachie, however, the scenery is most pleasant and picturesque. The villages of Oyne and Insch, in which hospitality to strangers is a religion, are beautifully placed and well-foliaged all around. The region is, indeed, one of romance, and the little brook of Gadie ripples on in the radiance and glamour of pathetic song.

HARLAW.

Those who consider, like Ruskin, that the stories of the past add no inconsiderable item to the beauty of a landscape, as it appears to the eye and intelligence of modern observers, will not fail to remember the momentous issues decided at no great distance from the foot of Bennachie, in 1411. Teutonic and Celtic Scotland came to grips at Harlaw, near by:--

"The Hielandmen, wi' their lang swords,
They laid on us fu' sair;
And they drave back our merry men
Three acres' breadth and mair.

. . . . . . . . . .

Gin anybody speer at ye
For them we took awa',
Ye may tell them plain and very plain,
They're sleeping at Harlaw."

Burton, in his _History of Scotland_, declares that the check given to Donald of the Isles at Harlaw, was a greater relief to Scotland than even Bannockburn was. If the Stuart kings, hard pressed as they were by England on the south, had been threatened by a formidable Celtic sovereignty on the north, Holyrood might have been in ruins a good many centuries earlier. I am not going to shock my Highland friends by saying it was a good thing for the country that Donald, with the remnant of his plaids and claymores, had to retreat to the misty straths and islands of the west. The coalition of Celt and Teuton has taken place in an unostentatious way, to the advantage of both races: Macfadyen does not now, as in the days of Dunbar, bide "_far norrart in a neuk_;" he has come to the Lowlands long ago, and rarely goes North, except on holiday. And the language, which to the finical ears of James Fourth's poet-laureate, seemed too terrible even for the devil to tolerate, has come south, too, and has a chair all to itself in the University of Edinburgh. _Time_, says Sophocles, _is a god who performs difficult things with ease_.

Mention of Harlaw suggests a comic tale told to the credit of the Provost of Inverness. That gentleman, on being threatened with a predatory visit from Donald in 1400, took the remarkable plan of sending an ample supply of Inverness whisky into the Celtic camp. The men of Lewis and Skye tackled the liquid bounty with great glee, and soon were in a state of maudlin intoxication. The wily Provost meanwhile collected a force and attacked Donald's men, who (as they magnified the attacking host to _double its real numbers_) were easily scared and routed. At Harlaw, eleven years later, the Provost of Aberdeen, evidently a man who lacked the resource of the chief magistrate of Inverness, was killed, and 500 men with him.

LOCHABER REIVERS.

The predatory habits of the Highlanders gave great trouble to the Aberdeenshire farmers _for fully three hundred years after Harlaw_. In 1689 a dozen wild Lochaber men came right down into the heart of Aberdeenshire and lifted six score of black cattle. The fate of the marauders is thus described by the author of _Johnny Gibb_:--

"They were pursued by a body of nearly 50 horsemen, well mounted and armed, and each carrying bags of meal and other provisions, both for their own support, and to offer in ransom for the cattle, if peaceful negotiations could be carried through. On through the hills, over marshes, rocks, and heather, the spirited horsemen followed, under their leader; and guided by a herd-boy whom they encountered, they traced the robbers by Loch Ericht side into the heart of their own country. At nightfall, they came upon them at Dalunchart, encamped and busily engaged roasting a portion of the flesh of one of the cattle they had stolen. They offered, after some parley, to give each of the freebooters a bag of meal and a pair of shoes in ransom for the cattle. The Highlanders treated such an offer for cattle driven so far and with so much trouble with contempt; the herd was gathered in, and the fight began in deep earnest, the result being that the Lochaber men were all shot down, killed or wounded, except three, who escaped unhurt to tell the tale; and the cattle were, of course, recovered."

REAY AND TWICKENHAM.

Perhaps the least attractive of the Scotch counties, in respect of scenery, is Caithness. The North-going train enters it a little after Helmsdale, and from thence to Thurso the journey is of a most dreary and depressing character. He who wishes to see the romantic part of the county should quit the train at Helmsdale, and go right to John o' Groats by the shore road: thereafter he should proceed along the line of the Pentland Firth to the dainty town of Thurso and to the village of Reay, the citadel of the Mackays. The district round Reay is a delightful one, and has great historical interest.

Some good examples of the power assumed of old by the country ministers are furnished by a perusal of the life of an eighteenth century minister, the Rev. Alexander Pope, who was stationed for many years in Reay. He was a huge giant of a man, and invariably carried about with him a nail-studded cudgel that was a terror to sinners. A lout of a fellow in his parish refused to come to church and get rebuked for an infringement of the usual commandment. Mr. Pope sent three elders with ropes to pinion the adulterer, hale him to church, and fasten him to a conspicuous pew right under the pulpit. The minister cannonaded the culprit to his heart's content, beginning thus: "_Shame, shame, son of a beggar, where art thou now?_"

Another parishioner who neglected family worship on the ground that he could not make up a prayer, was severely taken to task by Mr. Pope, who gave the man a year within which to manufacture one. At the end of the twelvemonth, Mr. Pope called and requested to hear the prayer. The man glibly rattled off a long succession of phrases that did not please the minister at all. "That won't do," he said, "you must prepare over again." "And is all my long labour to go for nothing," said the man, "all my year's toil? No, no: rather than lose my labour, I'll _break the prayer up and make two graces of it_." For the rest of his life, as the story runs, he did actually employ the two parts of his mutilated prayer as Grace before and Grace after meat respectively. Could there be a finer example of natural thrift in the spiritual world?

An Inverness journalist, Mr. Carruthers, wrote a life of the great poet, Alexander Pope, in which occurs the following curious note respecting the minister of Reay, just mentioned: "The northern Alexander Pope entertained a profound admiration for his illustrious namesake of England; and it is a curious and well-ascertained fact that the simple enthusiastic clergyman, in the summer of 1732, rode on his pony all the way from Caithness to Twickenham, in order to pay the poet a visit. The latter felt his dignity a little touched by the want of the necessary pomp and circumstance with which the minister presumed to approach his domicile; but after the ice of ceremony had in some degree been broken, and their intellects had come in contact, the poet became interested, and a friendly feeling was established between them. Several interviews took place, and the poet presented his good friend and namesake, the minister of Reay, with a copy of the subscription edition of the 'Odyssey' in five volumes quarto."

A grandson of the Reay minister, a Mr. James Campbell of Edinburgh, gave a description to Mr. Carruthers of a snuff-box which the poet had presented to the Rev. Mr. Pope. A series of letters to the _Northern Ensign_, in April, 1883, brought out the information that a Wick gentleman, Mr. Duncan, had in his possession two volumes of de Vertot's _History of the Roman Republic_, bearing an inscription to the effect that they had been presented by the poet of Twickenham to his northern namesake.

It has been suggested that the poet and the minister were distant blood-relations. Mr. Campbell, alluded to above, said that "the two Popes claimed kin." In any case, the friendship of the two men, one living on the shores of the wild Pentland Firth, in sight of the Orkneys, and the other not far "from streaming London's central roar," is pleasant to think of. In 1737, Pope wrote the lines--

"Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep,"

adding, in a note, that he refers to "the farthest northern promontory of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades." Perhaps his mind reverted to the burly incumbent of Reay as he penned the note.

ROB DONN.

The little township of Reay is less famous for the Rev. Mr. Pope's incumbency than for the fact of Rob Donn, the satirical Gaelic bard, being a native of the district. The author of the _Dunciad_ is the greatest satirist in British Literature; Rob Donn is supreme among Gaelic bards for the sharpness of his tongue and his clever way of showing up his contemporaries to ridicule. He was in the habit of giving praise to people in order to make his satire more biting. Praise on his tongue was compared to oil on the edge of a razor: the cut was all the deeper. Rob, although a master of language, was unable to read or write, so that though he "lisped in numbers"--he began to compose at the age of three--he could not say, like Pope:

"Why did I _write_? What sin to me unknown
_Dipt me in ink_, my parents' or my own?"

Blackie speaks thus of him: "Rob Donn, according to all accounts, though outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters by Christian charity, or even by social politeness. The consequence has been that much of the wit and humour of his pieces, however telling for its immediate purpose, has lost half of its interest by the disappearance of the persons to whom it referred. These personal allusions also import an additional difficulty into the language which he uses, and cause his productions, however belauded, to be less known amongst Highlanders generally than those of Duncan Ban and Dugald Buchanan. Severe moralists also very properly object to the undue license and occasional coarseness of his verses."[33]

[33] Rob was at one time in the army, for every Mackay has the
fighting instinct in him. (Reay is one of the few townships in
the North that possess a drill-hall and a military instructor. It
is impossible adequately to describe the consternation in the
Mackay country at the time of our South African reverses.
Everyone was in a fury and it was felt there was urgent need for
the Mackays to straighten out matters at the seat of war. It was
at this time that the drill-hall was built in Reay. Many of the
young men went to the front as volunteers, and if the war had
lasted much longer, there would have been few Mackays left in
Sutherlandshire.)

REV. MR. MILL OF DUNROSSNESS.

Before concluding the present chapter, I should like to refer briefly to a valuable and amusing book (brought under my notice in Shetland) that furnishes details of the life of Mr. Mill, minister of Dunrossness from 1742 till 1805. Mr. Mill's special talent was his unrivalled power of exorcism: he was a strenuous foe to the devil in every shape and form, and his life was one long battle with the Prince of Darkness. The latter was constantly bringing into play all manner of gins, traps, and wiles to confound the uncompromising clergyman; but, on a calm review of the evidence, one cannot but admit that the devil was far inferior in intelligence to his opponent.

On one occasion, Satan had the effrontery to come into Dunrossness Church and take his seat at the Communion Table. Mr. Mill at once recognised his life-long adversary, and began to speak in all the deep languages, and, last of all, in Gaelic, and that beat him altogether. Satan went off like a flock of "doos" over the heads of the people, many of whom swooned. "As a permanent reminder of the hostility cherished against him by the Arch-Enemy, it was said that Mr. Mill always had the wind in his face. One day he came up to officiate at Sandwick, in the teeth, as usual, of a pretty stiff breeze. An ordinary person would naturally have expected the wind to be on his back on the return journey. But during the service the wind veered round. Mr. Mill's only comment, as he started for home, was, 'It's all he can do.' In one respect, Mr. Mill benefited by the penalty of always having the wind in his face, for on his very numerous sea-journeys he could always secure a favourable breeze _by sitting with his back to the head of the boat_."

The following additional tale from Mr. Mill's biography only brings into more striking relief the resource of the minister in all emergencies. "One day a very respectable gentleman entered the house of a tailor in Channerwick, and ordered a suit of clothes to be made out of cloth which he brought with him. The tailor's delight at having such a fine gentleman for a customer was, however, turned into perplexity and fear as he opened up the cloth and found that the colour kept constantly changing. He at once sent for the minister and laid the matter before him. He was advised to spread a sheet on the floor and cut the cloth upon it, so that none of the clippings should be scattered about the room, and the minister said that he would be present to meet the stranger when the latter called to get the clothes. The day came, and when the stranger entered the house, Mr. Mill stepped forward to meet him. A terrible controversy ensued, and the respectable-looking gentleman was swept out of the house in a cloud of blue, sulphurous flame. It is not recorded if he took the new suit with him. A clue to his identification was furnished by his accidentally striking his foot against the door-step as he departed. The result of the collision was that a mark as of a cloven hoof was imprinted on the stone."