Part 8
These scenes are well known, as made accessible by the railway, that has ploughed up the memories of old feuds, and the patterns of native tartans. Less visited by rapid wheels are the wilds of Glenlyon, “crooked glen of the stones,” running westward behind Ben Lawers on the north of Loch Tay. This is notable as the longest narrow pass in Scotland, and in its lower part one of the most beautiful. Its village capital, Fortingall, lies shut in among the mountains not far from Kenmore, across Drummond Hill. The high road comes round the other side of the Taymouth meadows, entering the glen by Garth, where one of our modern princes of commerce has a seat near the ruined castle, once lair of that Stuart who earned the byname of Wolf from the bloodthirsty fierceness with which he hunted the MacIvors out of their old lairs in Glenlyon; then this house won a milder fame from General Stuart of Garth, the enthusiastic historian of Highland regiments.
Near Fortingall was at home that Campbell of Glenlyon who carried out the massacre of Glencoe, for which his descendants held themselves to be accursed. According to Robert Chambers, one of them was Rob Roy’s mother. A name of wider ill-fame is connected with Fortingall, if we believe a thin legend that makes it birthplace of Pontius Pilate, son of a Roman official quartered in the camp laid out under older strongholds ascribed to chiefs of the Fingal age. So far into the Highlands seem to have been pushed the eyries
Where Rome, the Empress of the world, Of yore her eagle wings unfurled.
Another lion is the Fortingall yew, given out as three thousand years old and perhaps the oldest tree in Europe, which, declares a Perthshire historian, “must have been a goodly sapling when Nebuchadnezzar had his dwelling with the beasts of the fields”; but Dr. John Lowe shakes his head over such reputations. In his iconoclastic book on _Yew-trees_, he blasts the very existence of a supposed old yew at Fotheringay, the place of Queen Mary’s execution; but he might have guessed how that pretender crept into print, had he known that the ancient name of Fortingall was _Fothergill_, which is also found spelt _Fortirgall_.
The most authentic renown of Fortingall is as vicarage of James Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, who, in the first half of the sixteenth century, along with his brother Duncan, compiled the earliest collection of Gaelic poetry, which bears the title _Book of Lismore_, though it was made in the centre of Perthshire. Naturally the Macgregor Dean gives a good place to legends and achievements of his own race, whose proud genealogy has thus been embalmed; but he admits praises of the Clan Donachie, the Clan Dougal, and other neighbours; also preserving memories of such misty heroes as Finn and Oscar, and many poems attributed to Ossian, similar to those upon which Macpherson afterwards founded his _remaniement_. The name of the supposed author is usually prefixed to each contribution. Among the rest is the romantic legend of Fraoch and the dragon, outlined in _Highlands and Islands_. A passage from this, as translated by the Rev. T. Maclauglan, may be quoted to show how poets have always drawn on the same similes and hyperboles.
The hero lived, of matchless strength, The bravest heart in battle’s day. Lovely those lips with welcomes rich, Which women like so well to kiss; Lovely the chief whom men obeyed, Lovely those cheeks like roses red, Than raven’s hue more dark his hair, Redder than hero’s blood his cheeks; Softer than froth of streams his skin, Whiter it was than whitest snow, His hair in curling locks fell down, His eye more blue than bluest ice; Than rowans red more red his lips, Whiter than blossoms were his teeth; Tall was his spear like any mast, Sweeter his voice than sounding chord. None could better swim than Fraoch Who ever breasted running stream. Broader than any gate his shield; Joyous he swung it o’er his back; His arm and sword of equal length, In size he like a ship did look. Would it had been in warrior’s fight That Fraoch, who spared not gold, had died; ’Twas sad to perish by a Beast, ’Tis just as sad he lives not now.
Another characteristic feature of the collection is strings of homely proverbial saws such as this, going to show Scottish Sabbatarianism older than communications with Geneva--
’Tis not good to travel on Sunday, Whoever the Sabbath would keep; Not good to be of ill-famed race; Not good is a dirty woman; Not good to write without learning; Not good are grapes when sour; Not good is an earl without English; Not good is a sailor, if old; Not good is a bishop without warrant; Not good is a blemish on an elder; Not good a priest with but one eye; Not good a parson, if a beggar; Not good is a palace without play; Not good is a handmaid if she’s slow; Not good is a lord without a dwelling; ... Not good is a crown without supremacy; Not good is ploughing by night; Not good is learning without courtesy; Not good is religion without knowledge.
Among matters handled in this anthology, one which suggests the priest rather than the poet, is an unchivalrous estimate of the fair sex, here, indeed, most emphatically expressed by a rhymer taken to be the Irish Earl Gerald Fitzgerald of Desmond--
May my curse ’mongst woman rest, Although for a time I mixed with them; As for men who still are single, ’Tis best to have nought to do with women.
Another bard whose sentiments would shock suffragettes, is suspected for no other than Black Duncan himself, who would thus appear as taking a cynical view of the world he did so much to change. Some verses again are of ecclesiastically edifying tone; yet there are sly hits at monastic life, a sign of the times in which Henry VIII. took a strong view of the same subject, that, to be sure, supplies a favourite topic for mediæval poetry, and is all along very freely handled by the Muse of Lowland Scotland. The Dean himself could have been no model Churchman, for he left two sons to be legitimatised, one of whom succeeded to his clerical dignity, while the other is, in 1552, found formally renouncing his allegiance to the Macgregor chief and taking as his lord Campbell of Glenorchy, who, two generations back, had supplanted the Macgregors at the foot of Loch Tay.
Stories of the Macgregors’ doings are not wanting hereabouts, one of which looks as if it may have given a hint to Sir Walter. A Macnaughton was on ill terms with a John Macgregor, who had robbed him of his daughter and made not less bold with certain fields of his in Glenlyon, seized by way of dowry. With a band of sixty men he set out to evict the unwelcome son-in-law from land and life. Macgregor raised a similar force, which he ambushed in the glen, himself going forward to meet its invaders. His person being unknown to them, they enlisted him to serve as guide on the errand of which they made no secret. Macnaughton walking on with them in advance, they came to a deep ditch in a swamp over which the guide leaped nimbly, and showed the chief a way round; but when his men came up, their attempts to imitate that mighty leap only landed them up to the armpits in mire. To Macnaughton, for the moment left alone with the stranger, Macgregor revealed himself by taking his hand and telling him, “I am the man you seek.” Then at a signal from this Roderick Dhu of real life, up started his plaided warriors from their ambush. But the end of the encounter was peaceful. Pleased to find Macgregor so fine a fellow, with such a band of henchmen, Macnaughton opened his arms to his son-in-law, and the two parties feasted together in sign of friendly alliance. Critical reporters, by the way, would like to know how the heroes of such adventures got rid of the distinguishing tartans or other badges of clanship, which came to be made so much of in later song and story. To a mere Sassenach like Fitzjames the Macgregor devices may not have been very kenspeckle; but surely a Mohawk’s eye would have been sharper to read the totem of a Huron.
Above Fortingall, the glen contracts to a romantic pass, three miles long, which would be as famous as Killiecrankie had it made such a figure in history. But nearly all Glenlyon deserves better than to be put in guide-book small print as a backwater of travel. For a dozen miles its road runs up to Meggernie Castle, beyond which a stretch of rougher ways, on to Loch Lyon at the foot of Ben Cruachan, leads one into the very heart of the Highlands and the border of Perthshire.
Here a wall of unfamed Bens shuts off another basin of lakes that is the northward course of the West Highland railway. Across this rise the high tops of the Blackmount deer forest, still within the bounds of Lord Breadalbane’s domain, a wilderness of heather, only here and there broken by patches of forest in our use of the word, but homes of living men appear rarer than cairns of the forgotten dead. Westwards opens the way to ill-famed Glencoe. Southwards runs the Orchy to Loch Awe and Ben Cruachan, by a knot of green glens that seem to have been the original seat of the Macgregors, whose inveterate feuds with Macnabs and other neighbours paved a way for the conquering Campbells. But before speaking of the Macgregor country, let us turn back to the Lowlands to approach it up another Perthshire strath.
V
STRATHEARN
One of the most beautiful of Scottish rivers is the Earn, half Highland and half Lowland, winding through all the varieties of Perthshire scenery, past hoary monuments of Scotland’s struggles for birth as a nation, and among misty traditions of her saints and heroes. Yet guide-books, one observes, pass over the greater part of this strath as hurriedly as the express trains dashing across its lower end; and strangers seldom visit any but the upper reach, which enters into a regular tourist round. How such neglect is undeserved, I would fain show on an arm-chair saunter from the river’s unalluring mouth to its source in mountains of romantic fame, a distance of some forty miles as the crow flies; but a salmon has to make a much longer trip of it. Well is the Earn apostrophised by an admiring stranger, _Blackwood’s_ first editor, Thomas Pringle, best known by his South African pictures, or by the figure he cuts in the wicked waggery of the _Chaldee Manuscript_.
Thou, mountain stream, whose early torrent course Hath many a drear and distant region seen,
Windest thy downward way with slackened force, As with the journey thou hadst wearied been; And, all enamoured of these margins green, Delight’st to wander with a sportive tide, Seeming with refluent current still to glide Around the hazel banks that o’er thee lean. Like thee, wild stream, my wearied soul would roam (Forgetful of life’s dark and troublous hour) Through scenes where fancy frames her fairy bower, And, Love enchanted, builds his cottage home: But time and tide wait not, and I, like thee Must go where tempests rage and wrecks bestrew the sea.
The “drear and distant regions” are now more admired than the “margins green,” through which the Earn creeps into the Tay a few miles below Perth, where the great river broadens as an estuary about its reclaimed islands. The steamer trip from Perth to Dundee makes a local ploy rather than a tourist link, so few Southrons set eyes on those fat banks backed by richly wooded hills and crags. A little above the confluence stand the ruins of Elcho Castle, which Baddeley dismisses as “commonplace,” and Black finds unworthy of any epithet; but the race it nursed still stands high among Scotland’s nobles; and in or about it was a lair of Wallace’s most daring adventures. A little below, over the Fife border, lies the old seaport of Newburgh, surrounded by outlying spurs of the Ochils that give fine prospects across the Carse of Gowrie upon the opposite amphitheatre of the Sidlaws. Tourists seldom stop at Newburgh to see the adjacent Lindores Abbey and Lindores Loch, and the site of one of Wallace’s battlefields: so much the worse for the tourist. Two or three generations ago, he could not so easily have avoided Newburgh, when it was a noted station of posting and coach traffic from Perth.
To me, the flat Rhynds about the mouth of the Earn are of special interest, since they were long the home of my forbears, edged off the Hill of Moncrieff by a junior branch of the same stock, then again taking refuge across the Tay, when their dwindled possessions here had been sold to the house of Elcho. And time was when the eyes of all Scotland turned to this now obscure corner. A mile south of the Earn’s boldest crook, about the Western Rhynd peninsula, Abernethy is still visited by antiquaries for its mysterious round tower, standing over seventy feet high beside the church that has given Dr. Butler, its incumbent, material for a goodly volume. He makes no doubt that this tower was built upon their native models by Irish ecclesiastics, refugees from rude Danish invasion of their own saintly island. The only other such structure in Scotland, left unruined, is at Brechin, both of them better built than the Irish round towers on which ’prentice hands may have been tried. Sculptured stones of still greater antiquity have here escaped iconoclastic zeal, to be broken relics of Abernethy’s former state, poor and out of the way as it stands now.
The guide-books are content to dismiss Abernethy as an “ancient Pictish capital,” but it was also a famed sanctuary till the Reformation, and even later, a place of pilgrimage to the oak-tree shading the grave of nine holy maidens. For a generation this became the metropolis of the Church of Alban, while its primacy was passing from Dunkeld to St. Andrews. Later on, it made a hotbed of Protestant zeal and of the fissiparous energy that rent Scottish Presbyterianism with fresh secessions. This is a matter on which I am tempted to be garrulous, as several progenitors of mine were leaders here, both of Kirk and Dissent, among them Archibald Moncrieff, minister of Abernethy for more than half a century, through the trying times of the Covenant. The parish church contains two communion cups given by those pious ancestors, in whose memory its font was presented by the late Sir Alexander Moncrieff, his own name better known to warriors than to priests.
In _Bonnie Scotland_, I made bold to bring up my generations-back grandparent, Alexander Moncrieff, one of the four Original Seceders; and now I would still further trespass on the reader’s patience by borrowings from the _Travels_ of the Rev. James Hall of Walthamstow, who more than a century ago, halting at Abernethy, noted some amusing memories of those early Seceders. Ebenezer Erskine, ex-minister of Stirling, was the leader of the body; but Hall calls Abernethy their metropolis, and Moncrieff their patron, as being not only dissenting minister but chief laird of the parish--no very exalted rank when, according to this author, the title was given to any rent-free yeoman of the Ochils, such as one he mentions who supplemented an income of ten pounds a year by the trade of a carpenter, while the family “mansion” made a small public-house.
The dissenting minister of Abernethy was at least wealthy enough to build a new church for his adherents, which for a time served also as college of the new sect. Some score of students boarded with the farmers--at the modest rate of two shillings or so a week--attending divinity lectures of the laird, who is said, in case of need, to have ministered to their carnal as well as their spiritual wants. For further instruction they would walk into Perth to sit at the feet of Mr. Wilson, another father of Secession. In his old age Moncrieff was fain to hold classes at his own house of Culfargie. After his death in 1761, this Stoic school became peripatetic, moved first to Alloa with his younger son, William Moncrieff, then straggling about in the wake of its best qualified teachers, till the Seceders stooped their spiritual pride to share the national provision of university training, supplemented by a regular divinity college at Edinburgh. But it seems that their teaching in philosophy, apart from divinity, with Locke’s _Essay on the Human Understanding_ as text book, went on for a time longer at Abernethy, under Matthew Moncrieff, heir to Alexander’s estate and ministry. Mr. Hall tells a sly story of a callow student in those later days, who from the Established minister borrowed a Euclid, which he got through in a week: “I have read all the enunciations, which seem to be true enough and very good reading; I did not trouble myself about the _A’s_ and _B’s_.”
The poverty of the Seceders was not helped by their split into Burghers and Anti-burghers, the latter the more strict sect, who flourished rather in the north half of Scotland; then these sects again became cross-divided as “New Lichts” and “Auld Lichts,” burning dimly still in Mr. Barrie’s kailyard. Hall, himself a benighted Erastian, describes the Secession theory in general as “a mixture of Popish tenets with those of English dissenters.” He was so far right that the Seceders held, as strongly as any Hildebrand, that the State should be the servant of the Church, also that their body was the only true Church of Scotland, which clung faithfully to the Covenant, consecrated for a century as quasi-sacramental. Alexander Moncrieff, who stood doughtily by the Cæsarship of the house of Hanover, is said to have been hardly restrained from setting off for London to present the Covenant, on full cock, at the wigged head of George II.
Later on, the Covenant was quietly allowed to drop, and the Seceders relaxed their strict aloofness. Matthew Moncrieff, it seems, was of a cheerfully social disposition counteracting his hereditary fanaticism. There is a tradition that he had worn a red coat for a short time, fighting, as his father preached, for King George. He had a worldly turn for sport, and though he did not dare to shoot, he kept a couple of greyhounds, to the scandal of his congregation. The English parson reports a tale of him as well known. One Sunday, as he was riding across the Ochils to preach, a hare started up, at which he flicked with his whip, and even forgot himself so far as to gallop a little way after poor puss. For this offence he was delated by his own servant before the Presbytery, that rebuked him to contrition; then it would long be cast up against him how he had broken the Sabbath. When his name came up among the more severe, heads were gravely shaken: “He is a man that would gar anybody like him--but oh! that beast”--to which less strait-laced admirers would respond, “Hoot! he’s no’ a wrang man, for a’ the beast.” This phrase, “for a’ the beast,” Mr. Hall declares to have become proverbial in that part of the country as denoting a fly in the amber of character.
Matthew’s wife had a disintegrating effect on the body, a Miss Scott from Fife, who, if we may believe Hall’s informants, was only a Seceder skin-deep, and turned a natural bent for wit and raillery to making fun of her husband’s congregation. She did not scruple to be close friends with the parish minister, Dr. Gray, and his wife; then, while the dissenting laird still thumped his pulpit every Sabbath against the errors of Erastianism, the rival spiritual authorities lived on the best of terms through the week, as could not but go to temper sectarian bitterness, though for a time the more zealous Seceders frowned on this compromising intimacy, as Mr. Pickwick at Sergeant Buzfuz exchanging salutations with his own advocate. So, by and by, acrimonious zeal cooled down all round, dying out altogether in my own family, as “Sandemanianism” did among their neighbours the Sandemans. Some members of our line seem, indeed, to have backslidden far from ancestral austerity. A descendant of the Abernethy ministers became a London tradesman--landlord of the “Rainbow” in Fleet Street by some accounts--whose son, William Thomas Moncrieff, put on the stage _Tom and Jerry_, with other once popular plays that did not keep him from dying at the Charterhouse, a fellow-pensioner of Colonel Newcome. About the same time as John Home scandalised even the lukewarm Establishment by coming out as a playwriter, a tragedy less famous than _Douglas_ had been published by John Moncrieff, who seems not to have long survived it; and nothing else is known of him but that he was a dominie of sorts at Eton, apparently private tutor to some sprig of nobility.
Of what came to be called United Presbyterianism and is now grafted on to the United Free Church, a sturdier root first flowered in this parish, ripening through generations into the gracious and kindly nature of the author of _Rab and his Friends_. The first of a notable succession of John Browns was a herd laddie here, who, like other barefooted Scottish loons, contrived to pick up Latin and Greek almost without schooling. There is a well-known story of his leaving his sheep for a night walk of twenty-four miles into St. Andrews to buy a Greek Testament, which was given him for nothing, on his proving that he could read it. He is said to have tried the packman’s trade, but to have carried it on in too unworldly spirit for success. When he applied for ordination among the Seceders, I am sorry to say that my forefather would have barred him out on suspicion that his learning came from the devil; but this firm believer in witchcraft was overruled, and the self-taught scholar grew to be famed as Dr. John Brown of Haddington.
These are hints of what spirit was fermenting about Abernethy under the cold Georgian star, when in Scottish straths and glens plain living nourished much high or hot thinking. A coarser spirit was not wanting when, as Mr. Hall notes, the public-houses of the neighbourhood did their chief trade on Sundays, with people tramping into Abernethy to attend the Seceder meetings, and those of the Relief Church that soon set up another standard of dissent. He gives at some length an anonymous report of the “occasion” here in 1776, that is, the annual administration of the Sacrament, spread out over a week, when preaching flowed all day in a great tent, surrounded with booths and stands to supply refreshment to a crowd estimated by thousands, the whole encampment stretching out the best part of a mile. If the preacher failed in fire or unction, his hearers, as in the House of Commons, would drop off to the beer-barrels, flocking back to the tent when some popular Boanerges broached hotter eloquence. Such scenes, a survival of Covenanting conventicles, often degenerated into the scandals of Burns’s “Holy Fair”; and it is only in our time that they cease to be recalled by the “Preachings,” now abolished among the leading churches as having become too much of a worldly holiday.
Travellers of Mr. Hall’s period had no admiration for the “dreary glen of Abernethy,” nor much for the more richly planted Glenfarg into which it leads, the latter now the main pass from Fife into Perthshire. But this tourist parson duly admired the view from the Wicks of Baiglie, extolled by Scott as unmatched in Britain, yet commonly missed by railroad tourists since the leisurely day when the charms of Glenfarg inspired Ruskin, at the precocious age of seven, to verse which may be left unquoted. The Ruskin carriage, indeed, came by the new turnpike that shirks that higher ground where Scott gained life-long memories of the delight with which, as a boy of fifteen, making his first independent excursion, from the back of his pony he looked down on such an “inimitable landscape.”
This reminiscence of his touches a chord in my own heart, for it was on a boy’s pony that I, too, made wide