THE BRIG O' TURK.THE BRIG O' TURK.
It is a walk of perhaps eight miles through a charming memory-haunted land, lovely certainly, 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 nothing 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 wonThe 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 triumph, where William and Dorothy and Coleridgeput up—"we caroused our cups of coffee, laughing like children," 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 cottage, low-browed, of field stone, and rose-entwined.
The hurried traveler with no time to spare and no comforts, 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 grayThat 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 repossess 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 muchtrodden land, which restored it to the century in which it truly belongs.
The TrossachsThe Trossachs
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 æon 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 nookHis solitary refuge took."
I can never forget the thrill I had in the old schoolroom when Mr. Kennedy first read thestory 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 refused 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 ebbing dayRoll'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 glowWithin the dark ravine below,Where twined the path in shadow hid,Round many a rocky pyramid,Shooting abruptly from the dellIts thunder-splintered pinnacle."
No shallop set out when I raised my imaginary horn and blew my imaginary salute to the lovely isle. There were no boats to hire, on this Sunday, and I was not Malcolm Græme 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 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 conclusively 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 resounding four feet of a battle charger. Alas, to-day one does neither. But—there lies Stirling rising from the water-swept plain, through thegray of a Scotch morning, entirely worthy of being "taken," and looking completely the part it has played in Scottish history.
Scotland is curiously provided with these natural forts, the Rocks of Edinburgh and Dumbarton 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 human 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 Cambuskenneth, 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 Stirling Bridge, and William Wallace with a thousand men—but Scotsmen—defeated the Earl of Surrey and the Abbot Cressingham with five thousand Englishmen.
Here, in 1298, was fought the battle of Falkirk, and Wallace was defeated. But not for long. Dead, he continued to speak.
Here, in 1313, was fought the battle of Bannockburn, forty thousand Scots against a hundred thousand English, Irish and Gascons. And The Bruce established Scotland Forever.
Here, in 1488, was fought the battle of Sauchieburn, the nobles against James III, and James flying from the field was treacherously slain.
Here, in 1715, was fought the battle of Sheriffmuir, when Mar and Albany with all theirmen 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 moments 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 aften 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 coming up from the south to relieve the castle garrison; 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 bySt. John's day"; they had then a sense of leisure—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 KingAnd 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 possible 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 theguide, 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 nane wan at a', man;But o' ae thing I'm sure,That at SheriffmuirA 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 murmurs 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 blackWith 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 Edinburgh as anything but romantic, of the troops as anything but decorative. Stirling is still used, much of it closed, and it has the bare, uninviting look of a historic place maintained by a modern up-keep.
Stirling CastleStirling Castle
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 Roderick 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 clan met the Saxon's might,I'll listen, till my fancy hearsThe 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:
"No, by the cross it may not be!I've pledged my kingly word.And like a thunder cloud he scowled,And half unsheathed his sword.Then drew the king that jewel'd glaiveWhich gore so oft had spilt,And in the haughty Douglass heartHe sheathed it to the hilt."
The Douglasses, we see, still thought themselves "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 affair, 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 possible 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.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, historic rumour has her married here, secretly to Darnley, and, in the rooms of Rizzio! And she came here once to see her princely son, hurriedly, almost stealthily, as if she felt impending fate.
That son was much here. Stirling was considered a safer place for James VI than Edinburgh, and then, of course, it was such a covenanted place. James was baptized here also, and his Royal Mother was present, but not Darnley. He refused to come, but sat carousing—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, Marybeing at Loch Leven, and the coronation sermon 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 stealing 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 instructor—and her defamer. Perhaps he was the author of the betraying Casket letter; in spite of Froude's criticism based on internal evidence, that only Shakespeare or Mary could have written it. I can almost forgive Buchanan, for at one time when James was making more noise than beseemed a pupil of Buchanan, this schoolmaster 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 herrecords, they were sent by sea, the ship foundered, 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 immortally in the memory and flash upon the inward 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 mysterious 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 oldenough with its venerable five hundred years—divided the English forces. Near by, on one of the Links, stands the tower of Cambuskenneth Abbey, a pleasant walk through fields and a ferry ride across the Forth, to this memoried 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 descend 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 WaterNone 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 LomondAnd left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene,While lanely I stray in the calm simmer gloamin'To muse on sweet Jessie the flower o' Dunblane."
DOUNE CASTLE.DOUNE CASTLE.
In the green nestle of the woods, away to the right, are the battlements of Doune—
"Oh, lang will his ladyLook frae the Castle Doune,Ere she see the Earl o' MorayCome sounding through the toun."
The Bonnie Earl was murdered at Donibristle 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 entertaining 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 Victoria—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 royalty, as one is in Scotland. It seems that theking and queen, George and Mary, were making a visit to Stirling. Consequently there were no carriages at the station—and one must be very careful how 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 streetBeneath the coursers' clattering feet,As slowly down the steep descentFair Scotland's King and nobles went."
I took refuge in a bank building, and even secured a place at the windows. For some reason 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 undiluted town?
That afternoon in the castle I understood. An elderly Scotsman—I know of no peoplewhom age so becomes, who wear it with such grace and dignity and retained power—looking with me at the memorial tablet to Queen Victoria 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 perpetrated 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 intimately, as a child reader, the "Maiden Martyr," and here was to find her monument.
There are other monuments, none so historic, so grandiose, so solemn. The friends of a gentleman who had died about mid-century record that he died "at Plean Junction." Somehow itseemed 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 before, 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 Edinburgh 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.
I
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 Edinburgh—"But remember I have not yet written a book on Glasgow." He never did. And did any one ever write "Picturesque Notes on Glasgow"?
I remember that thirty years ago when a college 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 Glaswegian what there was to be seen, and this honest Scot, pointing to the cathedral declared,"that's the only aydifyce ye'll care to look at."
I should like to be singular, to write of picturesque points in Glasgow. But how can it be done? Glasgow does not aspire to picturesqueness 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 itself. London is too varied and divided in interests; it never forgets that it is the capital of the world, and a royal capital. Glasgow never forgets 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 applicable to Glasgow. While Scottish is romantic and somewhat pretending.
Glasgow is the capital of the Whig country, of the democratic Scotland of covenanting ancestry. Glasgow is precisely what one would expect to issue out of the energy and honesty and canniness and uncompromise of that corner of the world. Historically it belongs to Wallace, the commoner-liberator. And ifBurns is the genius of this southwestern Scotland, as Scott is of the southeastern, it is precisely the difference between the regions; as Edinburgh and Glasgow differ.
The towns are less than an hour apart by express train. They are all of Scotch history and characteristics apart in quality and in genius. Edinburgh is still royal, and sits supreme upon its hill, its past so present one forgets 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 completely, 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, Kelvingrove—"letus haste"—is a prosperous residence district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, means simply and largely the harbour of Glasgow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in order that Glasgow's prosperity might flow out of the very heart of the city. "Lord, let Glasgow flourish according to the preaching of Thy word," ran the old motto. It has been shortened of late.
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER.PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER.
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 monuments, 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 "Carlyle," 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 original and not condemn, but there are the miles.)
There is a cathedral, that "aydifyce" of note, touched almost nothing by the spirit of "reform"; for the burghers of Glasgow, then as now, believing that their cathedral belonged to them, rose in their might and cast out the despoilers 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 fitting 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 working 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 scatter 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 manufactured beauty, as theLusitania!
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,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 reckless, most canny of people. The Highlander and the Lowlander that Mr. Morley found mixed in the character of Gladstone, and the explanation of his character, is the explanation of any Scot, and of Scotland.
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 assertion. Sparta was west of Athens, La Rochelle 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 Lowlands 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 develop, not into lords and chiefs, but into men. Wallace may come out of the West, but it isafter he has 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 Laglyne 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, exclaim, "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, sometimes harried by that covenanter-hunting fox, Claverhouse—to his defeat; finally winning theright 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 circumstances, 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 Scotland, 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 superfluous 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 productive of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the high and distinct literary honours, having published the first edition in an attic, and havingloaned its name as title for the most imposing edition, and having in its museum possession all the published Burns editions.
Ayr RiverAyr River
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 knewthe legends of the land. "The story of Wallace 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 Covenanters. 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 dispute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Walter 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 Jacobite."
Burnsland is rich in other literary associations. Johannes Scotus is reckoned to have been born also at Ayr; and there are John Galt, James Boswell, James Montgomery, Alexander 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-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 lovingly.
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, romantic, intimate, is a preparation for this similar 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 hundred and fifty years ago.
And Ayr looks out on the sea with a magnificent prospect from any of her neighbouring segments of coast, with ruined castles set properly, with the dark mass of romantic Arran purple across the waters, with Ailsa Rock evident, and to a far-seeing eye the blue line of Ireland whence we have come.
There is small reason for staying in Ayr, unless for a wee bit nappie in Tam o' Shanter's inn, which still boasts itself the original and only Tam and hangs a painting above the door to prove itself the starting point, this last "ca' hoose," for Alloway.
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 Tam maun ride;That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane,That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;An' sic a night he taks the road inAs 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 highway one follows to-day, suburban villas and well-kept fields line the way; no need to "skelpit on thro' dub and mire." Tam would be quite without adventure. And to-day one wonders 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 frae 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 "glower'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 carlin 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 dizziness.
"Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil;Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!"
Did we cry "weel done, cutty sark!" Thenwe, 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 "Antiquities" was being planned, Burns asked that the Auld Kirk of Alloway be included. If Burns would make it immortal? yes. So the story of Tam o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway forever to be remembered. What would William 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.
"O 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,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 Stratford, 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.