and, as we scale the mossy dyke, they turn back among the trees. A
comfortable, contented couple these are, rearing children that will be
healthy and strong as themselves. After all, is not this the existence
that best fulfils life’s real ends? As he cares for the patient beast,
and reaps the autumn corn, a man need not be told to glorify God; and
here, under sunshine and starshine, where the fruitful earth smells
fresh with the rainfall and the dew, he cannot help enjoying Him.

The winding lines of telegraph-poles that mark the road can be seen
stretching away for miles among the hills. The sun has set now, and
night, falling earlier in the late autumn, is coming down. It is
the gloaming hour. Out of the grass-field here by the roadside the
trailing-footed kine, with patient eyes and deep udders, are turning
down the hill towards their byre. Their satisfied breathing fills the
air as they pass with the warm sweet scent of clover. The red-cheeked
farm-lass fastens the gate-hurdle to its post when the last beast
has gone, and slowly follows homewards. A comely lass she is, with
eyes like the sloe, and teeth like milk, and doubtless her sweetheart
knows she has a soft voice and a dewy lip. This is the traditional
courting-time in the country--

      ’Tween the gloaming and the mirk,
      When the kye comes hame.

Not another creature is to be seen on the upland road; only, now and
again, the lonely cry of the curlew can still be heard far off upon the
moor. The last field is passed, and the last shieling lies behind in
the valley. The air up here is full of the honey-scent of the heather.
The last belated bee, however, hummed homewards half an hour ago.

The summit of the climb at last! Look! Down there on the left, dark
and silent under the hills, lies Loch Fad, with, on the far edge
of it, a glimmer of silver, the reflection of the full-orbed moon.
Could the birth of Aphrodite be fairer, as she rose from the soft sea
of the south? Hark! too, there is the sound of lingering footfalls
on the road in front, and the murmur of a deep voice. The voice
suddenly ceases, and two figures linked together drift past in the
dusk. Just a glimpse of shy, happy eyes can be seen--a glimpse worth
remembering--and the outline of a modest face. It is the old, old
story. The lovely Pagan goddess of the far Ægæan has worshippers
yet among these simple-hearted people of the hills. Happy rustic
dreamers!--gamekeeper’s lad and gardener’s lass, maybe. Sweet is
their courting-place and courting-time, with the deep woods to listen
to their whispers, and the stars to look down in kindly sympathy.
Other lovers there are, alas! whose feet do not tread among the blue
forget-me-nots, and for whom no blackbird warbles the vesper song.

Civilisation, however, is approaching, and cultivated fields begin to
occupy the strath. A snipe, beating about in the darkness, has alarmed
the birds here; peeweets are startling the night with their untimely
cries, and their white breasts ever and anon glance by the roadside.
Was that faint sound the first bell of the steamer? There is little
time to linger. Close below, however, shine the clustered lights of
Rothesay; presently the bright fire-points of the yachts at anchor in
the bay appear; the old chapel and its graveyard of stones mouldering
within their wall is passed--a somewhat eerie place under these dark
trees by the roadside;--then, half-way among the quaint houses of the
old town, with their jutting gables, the ancient castle--grey, silent,
moated--where old King Robert III. died of grief at the news that
his son James had been taken by the English. With threatening clamour
the second bell rings up from the steamer, and, with a wild rush down
through the newer town and across the fashionable esplanade amid the
dazzling lights and fair promenaders of a seaside resort, there is only
time to reach the pier and get on board before the last bell rings and
the moorings are thrown off.

WITH A CAST OF FLIES.

“Get up, man; get up! Look at the morning! What glorious sunshine! What
mists rising on the loch!”

And, indeed, the fresh morning air through the open window, and the
flood of rich sunlight falling on the opposite wall of the room, are
enough to dispel all lingering drowsiness. Up, then, for a refreshing
plunge in the deepest pool of the river, breasting the brown depths
with the exulting strength that is born of the air of the mountain,
and casting up, with waves of the sweet murmuring waters, a high-tide
mark on the white stones that are hot already with the sunshine! Up,
for a stroll before breakfast along the warm Highland road; to hear the
cuckoo calling across the valley, and, at the door of the byre, the
sighing of the patient kine and the soft plash-plashing of the milk in
the milking-pails! Cool yet is the air of the corrie as it comes from
the waterfall, and all the mountain-side is musical with the far-off
call of the grouse. Under the rich-leaved plane-trees there is the hum
of bees at the green hanging blossoms, and from the meadows by the
river drift the bleatings of a thousand lambs. Appetite comes here
keen as a knife if one but stands a moment on the sunny doorstep, and
the morning meal is enjoyed with a whole-hearted zest that brooks no
scantiness. Indeed, if there be healing power anywhere on earth for
the wasted body or the sorrowing soul, it is to be found here among
the hills. Who can long be sick at heart with that glory of valley and
sky about him? and who frail of step with his nostrils full of the
clover-scent and his tread on the springing heather?

The newspapers have to be got at the morning train; and it is curious
to see how the jaded folk who have been travelling all night in the
close carriages from the far south open wide the windows to let in the
mountain air, and begin to revive like flowers that have just been
watered. Enviously they look at the sunburnt schoolboys, who have come
panting along the line, and whose faces compare all too well with their
own pale features.

The letters, too, have to be waited for at the village post-office.
It is universal supply-shop for the country-side as well, so other
business can be transacted while Her Majesty’s mails, a very small
parcel indeed, are being sorted out. Then--for there is nothing needing
attention in the correspondence--away for the loch side! It is too fine
a day to waste at the displenishing sale up country, though gig after
gig has passed, carrying thither farmers on the lookout for bargains.
A fair breeze has sprung up, and a cloud or two are moving across the
blue, so there is the chance of a fair day’s sport with the fly. Bring,
then, the rods, and put some provender in the basket, for there will be
no coming home for dinner if the trout be taking.

The pleasantest road to the loch will be the path along the
mountain-side, and old John M’Gregor can be requisitioned as boatman,
by the way. Yonder he is, under the flowering gean-tree, mending his
garden wicket. An easy, comfortable life the old man lives, with his
many-wrinkled, bright-eyed old wife, on their “wee bit bield and
heathery moor.” In that snug, thatched little cot they have reared a
stalwart brood--sons whose strong hands are tilling their own broad
acres in the West, and daughters in southern lands, about whose knees
are springing, sturdy as seedling oaks, the true materials for future
nations. But old John and his wife will be beholden to none of them
yet, and when his little croft has been planted for the summer and his
peats cast on the moor, when the cow has been turned out to the hill in
the morning and the calf tethered in the narrow paddock, he is always
ready to take an oar on the loch. His broad-eaved Balmoral bonnet and
his rough homespun coat are green with long years of sun and rain;
but the head and heart below them keep hale as ever. He is full of
anecdotes about the last laird and his feats with the salmon-rod, and
it takes a long day of wind on the water to tire his arm when the trout
are rising.

Quick, though! There is a cloud just now before the sun, and a fish or
two may be got while the shadow is on the loch. It was a mistake to
coil up the fly-casts in the tackle-book, for the gut will take some
wetting to straighten it out again. It is better to keep the flies
round your hat. There, push the boat off; the water is fairly alive
with leaping minnows in the shallow bays, and if the bigger fish be
only as eager there will be plenty of sport. Try a cast or two first
across the burn mouth; a good chance of something lies there, for the
trout wait in the running water to seize any food the stream may bring
down. The boat can drift broadside to the wind, so that it is possible
to fish both from bow and stern. Bring your line well up behind, and
then with a turn of the wrist use the switch of the rod to send the
cast out, fair and straight and light, before you. Take care, though;
do not begin to work the line before the last fly has touched the
surface. The day could not be better, with that ripple on the water,
the wind behind, and the sun in front. Hardly an effort is needed to
send the line out, and it is possible to put the tail-fly on the very
spot where a trout has risen. See! here is a little fellow. What a
splashing he makes as the line draws him up to the boat! The spring of
the rod itself will lift him over the gunwale. There! you have another;
a char, by his sides of gleaming silver and copper.

Whirr! Ah! here is a fellow worth catching; two pounds at least, by
the weight on the rod. How the singing of the reel as he makes off
gladdens the heart! There he leaps, for the third time; he is off with
a rush, firmly hooked, surely. “Haud up ye’re p’int!” shouts John in a
terrific whisper. “It’s awa’ below the boat! Ye’ll lose’t; an’ we’re
clean a’most--the boat’s a’ but clean!” It is an exciting moment; but
the hooks have not fouled the boat, and the fish’s freshness is spent.
Slowly he is drawn in, showing the white of his sides. Now with the
landing-net; There! he is safe on board--“A gey guid fish,” according
to the cautious critic. Then comes the inevitable story. The old man
“minds ae nicht” here at the burn mouth. There was a party of three.
It was a fine night, but dark, and they kindled a fire, when, whether
owing to the light or not, they got a great basket of “as fine trouts
as ye’ll see.”

But the sun has come out again, and, as the ripple is not very strong
on the water, there is no great chance of doing much with the fly for
some time. Something might be done with the minnow, however; so it can
be let out with a long line and trailed down the loch.

Down the loch! By the little shingly bays where the swan is preening
her plumage on the margin, while her lord floats near, admiring;
where the keen-winged little sand-martins are skimming bank and water,
and the quack of wild duck is to be heard among the reeds; past the
lonely farm, with its weather-stained roof, at the foot of its own wild
glen--a place for life to linger and grow sweet and gather memories, a
place for the growth of strong love or deep hate; and under the black
crag that rises a thousand feet sheer against the sky, making a mile of
cool darkness with its shadow amid the hot sunshine of the loch:--it
is like the fabled Voyage of Maeldune. Then there will be the return
in the evening, when the sun has set, and the clouds roof the valley
as with rust of gold; up the silent strath as the mountains grow dark,
and, under the shadow of Ben Shian, the still river, like a pale-green
thread, reflects its own clear space of tranquil sky; to the quiet
village where there will be supper by lamplight, and the recounting to
interested listeners the day’s exploits.

FROM A FIELD-GATE.

A glorious afternoon it is, the hottest of midsummer, with not a shadow
in the dazzling blue of the heavens. Who could sit at a desk, with
the white butterflies flickering in and out at the open window, the
sweet breath of the clove-pinks filling the air, and the faint gurgle
of the river coming up from the glen below? The gardener has long ago
left off weeding the lawn borders, and betaken himself to the cool
planting-house; Jug the spaniel lies panting out there, with lolling
tongue, in the shadow under the rhododendrons; and the leaves of the
aspens themselves seem tremulous with the heat. It will be pleasanter
to go up through the wood to the end of the lane, to sit under the
edge of the trees there on the trunk of silver birch that serves for a
cattle-gate, and enjoy something of the southern _dolce far niente_,
with a pocket copy of gentle Allan Ramsay to finger through.

Altogether quiet the spot is, with the wood behind, and the flowery
fields sloping away in front. Not a murmur comes here from the city,
whose smoke rises, a murky cloud, far off in the valley below. The
streets there will be stifling to-day amid the hot reekings of asphalt
pavements, the sifting particles of burning dust, and the incessant
roar of traffic. Here, above the fields, the air is sweet with the
scent of clover; the stillness is only broken by the faint pipe of a
yellowhammer sometimes in the depth of the wood; and the blue heavens
shed their peace upon the heart. Nothing but the faintest breath of air
is moving, just enough to stir gently the deep grasses of the hayfield,
and to touch cheek and lip now and again with the soft warm sigh of the
sweetbrier in the hedge. Gleaming flies, green and yellow, with gauzy
wings, float like jewels in the sunshine; a shadow for a moment touches
the page as a stray rook drifts silently overhead; and on the edge of
the great yellow daisy that flames over there like a topaz among the
corn, a blue butterfly lazily opens and shuts its wings.

This is the silent month, they say, because the birds have nested and
foregone the twitterings of their courting-time; but from the lark up
aloft, a quivering black speck in the sky, there is falling a perfect
rill of melody. What is he exulting about, the little black speck? Is
it for sheer gladsomeness in the happy sunshine, or is it because there
is a little helpless brood of callow laverocks in a nest somewhere
below among the clover? Glad little heart! sing thy song out while the
blue sky smiles above thee. Thou hast forgotten the pinching of the
winter cold, and why should thy rapturous hour be saddened by taking
thought for the dark things of the morrow. Under the hedge close by, an
occasional rustle of dry leaves and an admonitory cluck betray a brood
of chickens surreptitiously brought into existence by some lawless and
absconding hen; and on a twig a little way off, a young sparrow with
fluttering wings gapes its yellow beak for the attentions of a proud
and sprightly parent.

In the distance, from the bottom of the next meadow, comes the faint
whir of a mowing-machine. It and the reapers are out of sight; but on
the level beyond, the ryegrass lies in long white lines winnowing in
the sun. Well may that harvest be the first to be gathered, for it is
the share that falls to the faithful dumb friends of man. Meanwhile,
the farm horses left at liberty in the grass-field at hand are
evidently, like many honest souls of another genus who have worked hard
all their lives, quite at a loss what to do with their late-acquired
leisure.

On the dyke-top here, the clover, with great ball-blooms of rich pink,
is growing beside the purple-toothed vetch and the small yellow stars
of another unknown flower. In the hedge, among the heavy-scented
privet blossoms, are flowers of pink wild-rose delicate as the bloom
of a girl’s cheek, with full pouting buds red as lips that would be
kissed. White brier-roses there are, too, as large as crown pieces;
and great velvety humble-bees are busy botanising among their stamens.
The bees prefer the newly opened ones, however, whose hearts are still
a rich golden yellow. Below, among the woodland grasses, the white
dome-clusters of the dim-leaved yarrow are flowering amid a miniature
forest of green mare’s-tails and the downy stalks of hemlock. Gardeners
are only now beginning to see the beauty of the yarrow for deep
borders, as they are beginning to see the beauty of the foxglove and
the glory of the broom. Over there in the side of the wood-ditch are
springing delicate tufts of spleenwort; and already the flower-fronds
of the hard-fern are rising from the nest of their dark-spread
fellows. The graceful heart-shaped nettle leaf appears there too,
with its purple stem, beside the tall magenta-coloured flowers of the
bastard-thistle.

A pleasant retreat, indeed, is the spot; and through the tangled
wood-depth, of a moonlight night, might be expected to come the revel
court of Titania. Is not that one of her furry steeds, with velvet ears
erect and bright wide eyes, cropping the green blade in the grassy
lane path? Her sleek chorister, too, the blackbird, has forgotten
to be timid as he hops across the ruts there, waiting doubtless for
her coming. Whirr! What a rush of wings! It is a flight of starlings
disturbed from the grass-field below; for these birds bring their young
out to the fields this month in flocks of hundreds to feed. Round and
round they wheel in the air, as if delighting in their power of wing,
before finally settling on the grassy knoll a hundred yards away.

A sunny knoll that is, where the birds feed undisturbed to-day--a small
point in the landscape; yet it has a page of history to itself. On
its summit once stood a Scottish queen, surrounded by a little group
of nobles, watching, a mile to the north, the die of her fate being
cast, the arbiter of life or death. Two armies lay before her. Far off
about the little village in the bosom of yonder hill she saw two dark
masses gathered, with a battery line of guns between them. Those were
her enemies; and one of the horsemen behind them--it was only a mile
away--she knew was her own half-brother. Nearer, on the lower rising
ground, which the railway cuts through now, she saw her own troops
gathering, a larger force, but without the advantage of position.
And the queen watched and waited; it was about nine o’clock of the
morning. Presently, a cloud of smoke sprang out between the armies, and
immediately was heard the roar of cannon. The duel of the artillery
had begun. During half an hour little could be seen for the smoke,
and there was a constant explosion of ordnance. It must have been an
anxious time. Suddenly, however, the firing ceased, the smoke rolled
away, and the battlefield could be made out. The queen’s cavalry had
formed into line, had charged, and were driving the enemy’s horse
before them. Then a tear sprang to the queen’s eye as she saw her
vanguard leave the hill, cross the open ground among the furze, and,
with their gallant leader at their head, rush to storm the village.
They disappeared in the narrow lane, where the new church stands now
in the hollow of the hill, and there could only be heard faintly
their shout as they closed with their opponents, and the shot-reports
of the enemy’s hagbutters firing at them from the hedge-gardens and
the village roofs. How was the day going? See! the enemy’s wing was
wavering, was giving way. Fight on, brave fellows! brave vanguard!
press them hard. A few moments longer, and the day is yours.

But look! A horseman gallops to the other wing of the enemy, where the
Regent is riding. It stirs: it moves down upon the village. Ah, where
now is the queen’s reserve. Why does it remain inactive and aloof?
Are its rival leaders quarrelling over petty precedence, or is there
treachery in its ranks? The battle closes again about the narrow lane.
The vanguard is attacked on either flank--it is overborne--it gives
way. See! they are broken; they pour back out of the lane. Wounded,
weaponless, they are fleeing, and with a yell their foes are upon
them, cutting them down. But the reserve is moving at last; it may
bring help; it may yet retrieve the hour. Ah, cowards! it breaks and
scatters. The day is lost. Away! then, away, poor hapless queen! Ply
whip and spur for thy life. Neither here nor anywhere in all thy
fathers’ kingdom of Scotland is there safe tarrying-place for thee now.
And may Heaven help thee in the hour of need, for thou wilt find small
help in man or woman!

The starlings are feeding this afternoon on the Court Knowe, the
hillock there, undisturbed; and it is three hundred and twenty-eight
years since the stricken queen rode away through the hollow of the
hills where the green corn is growing. The suburbs of the city are
spreading even over the battlefield itself. But ever and again, upon a
summer day, there comes a pilgrim to stand a while in pitying silence
on the little knoll under the trees, and to recall something of these
“old, unhappy, far-off things,” as he reads upon the stone there the
royal monogram, and the date, May 13, 1568.

SCHOOL-DAYS.

As a means of awakening the genial after-dinner humour of most men
past middle age, no subject, perhaps, equals the memory of early
school-days. Let the topic but be started by an anecdote of some
long dead dominie, it is as if the spigot had been drawn from a
butt of old vintage, and the stream of recollection will flow forth
rich and sparkling with the mellowed light of years. Strange is the
charm of a word! For a lifetime a man has been painfully toiling up
the Alps of circumstance; it may be he has gained the object of his
desire--the glittering ice-crystal on the peak which long ago dazzled
his upward-looking eyes; and now, toying with the walnuts and the wine,
someone says “I remember:”--lo! the years are forgotten; the greybeard
is back in the sunny valley of his boyhood, wandering the field-paths
with chubby companions long since dust, and filling his heart once more
with the sweet scent of hayricks, of the hedges in hawthorn-time. It
is not for nothing that rustic children day after day, as they start
for school, hear the low of the farmyard kine coming in to the milking,
and that day after day, as they tread the long miles of moorland path,
they see the grouse whirr off to the mountain, and the trout dart away
from the sunny shallows; and it is not for nothing that they spend long
truant afternoons by ferny lanes and harebell copses in the seasons of
bird-nesting and bramble-gathering. These make the fragrant memories of
after years! And again and again, in later life, to the man jaded with
anxiety and care, the old associations come back, laden with pleasant
regrets--a breath from the clover-fields of youth.

School life in town, notwithstanding its more sophisticated
surroundings, has also its memories; for in what circumstances will
not the boyish mind create a charmed world of its own! Apart from the
actual events of class-room and play-ground, the streets and the shop
windows, and the things in them to be desired, all furnish absorbing
interests; and a half-amused envy in later years attends the memory
of the fearful joy with which, after much contriving of ways and
means, and much final screwing-up of courage to face the shopman,
the long-coveted percussion pistol, or the wonderful and still more
expensive model locomotive, was acquired and smuggled home. But school
life in the city has a certain precocity which detracts from the poetry
of its remembrance--an aroma is lacking which forms the subtlest charm
of the associations of rustic childhood. What has the city-bred man
to compare to the memory of that hot afternoon in July, when, escaped
from the irksome thrall of desk and rod, in the clear river pool at the
bottom of some deep-secluded dingle, the urchins of the rural pedagoguy
learned to swim? Such a scene remains in a man’s mind, a possession and
a “joy for ever.” Far off in some city den, gas-lit and fog-begrimed,
his eyes may grow dim, poring over ledgers that are not his own, and
his heart may grow heavy and sick with hope deferred; but at a word, a
suggestion, it will all come back; he will be standing again on that
grassy margin, the joyous voices of his comrades will be ringing in
his ears, while the sunshine once more beats warmly on his head, and
at his feet sparkle over their sandy bottom the pellucid waters of the
woodland pool.

The black art of letters is probably the least detail of the learning
acquired by school-children in the country, and it must be confessed
that the thirst for book-lore is not exactly their most conspicuous
foible. Happy, nevertheless, in “schools and schoolmasters” of Nature’s
own appointing, they grow up like the lilies, children of the earth
and sun, and none the less fit for life, perhaps, that their learning
has been got at first-hand from the facts and realities of actual
existence. Who has not envied the bright-eyed boys and red-lipped
little lasses, healthy with the breath of the woods and of the
fresh-delved earth, whom one meets, satchel on back, on sequestered
country roads? The dead tongues may be dead, indeed, to them, and
mathematics an unnamed mystery; but, with eyes and ears open, they have
learned all the lore of the fields and the hedges--have drunk deep at
those nature-fountains whence all the literatures and poetries of the
world have sprung.

Many changes have been made in school-teaching in the country of recent
years. The Government inspector is now abroad, and code and standard
compel all within their iron rule. The old ruts and byways have been
forsaken, and the coach of Learning has been made to roll, if not
yet along the coveted “royal road” of the old saw, at least along a
highway more uniformly paved than of yore. The difference in outside
appearance between the wayside school-houses of to-day and of thirty
years ago is only an indication of the changes which have taken
place within. The days are past when any incompetent would do for a
dominie; and in place of the halt and the palsied, who used to fill the
pedagogic chair, there is now the pretty school-ma’am from some Normal
seminary. A tyrant of the most petty kind, it is to be feared, the
rural schoolmaster of the old days too often was--

      Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
      The day’s disasters in his morning face;
      Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
      At all his jokes, for many a joke had he:
      Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
      Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.

Now all this is altered. No longer would it be suffered that a sour and
crabbed dominie, too crippled to walk, should, out of sheer caprice
and ill-temper, hurl his tawse at some urchin’s head, and order him to
bring them up and be thrashed; and it is to be doubted if the modern
“Board” would countenance even such a gallant device as the vicarious
birching of a boy for the delinquencies of one of the dearer sex.
Idiosyncrasies like these, no doubt, made much of the picturesqueness
of school life in the country a generation ago; and people whose
memories are of the old régime are apt to look back upon the former
state of things, faulty as it was, with a sigh. Sometimes a head is
shaken regretfully, and it is averred that with modern innovations are
being planed away all those strong, rich peculiarities of ancient rural
life which made character in the country interesting. The crabbed rule
of the ancient village pedagogue has a charm for those who have escaped
beyond reach of his tawse, the thrashings themselves of bygone days
have become mere subject for a smile. Point of view, however, makes a
considerable difference in the matter, and the unfortunate urchin of
those days, counting the strokes of an ill-tempered and unreasoning
castigation upon his nether habiliments, probably entertained a
somewhat different sentiment.

Head-shakings and misgivings notwithstanding, individuality of country
life may very well be left to take care of itself. Children remain
true to their instincts under the new régime as under the old; and
growing like the trees of the hedgerows, amid the influences of wild
and varied nature, rustic character may still be trusted to develop
a picturesqueness of its own. The real country school, after all,
does not lie within four walls, nor is it ruled by the rod of prim
school-ma’am or spectacled dominie. Nature herself, the primeval
_alma mater_ of all mankind, is the educator there. The leaves of her
primers are stored in the woodlands; her history-books are written and
explained by the seasons themselves; the lark and the rivulet are the
perpetual tutors of her “old notation”; and her terms are timed by the
bloom and flight of the snowdrop and the swallow.

A LOCH-SIDE STRATH.

Hardly more than twenty miles from the populous heart of Glasgow lies
a parish of which no notice is to be found in the guide-books. No
show-place is supposed to be there, and no tourist route runs through
it, and so, though almost within hearing of the hum of a great city,
the strip of country between mountain and loch remains all but as
primitive in its rustic simplicity as it was a hundred years ago. A
century ago, indeed, the district may have been better known than it
is to-day, if notoriety be regarded as a distinction; for every corrie
in the hillsides and every burnside hollow, where a little wooding
afforded concealment, appears then to have been the scene of illicit
distilling operations; and the raids of the excise and military in
search of “sma’ stills” were both frequent and famous. With this
exception the parish has been allowed to slumber on in happy obscurity
since the days of the old clan feuds and the cattle-liftings of its
neighbours, the wild Macgregors.

Nevertheless, unknown though it may be, and unfrequented by “the
Sassenach” as in the days of Rob Roy himself, this quiet loch-shore has
a history stirring enough, and memories of its own. Situated just on
the old Highland line, the district must frequently at all periods have
been the scene of warlike episodes. Regarding the tastes and pursuits
of its ancient inhabitants there remains small doubt. The memorial of a
peaceful enough enterprise, it is true, seems crystallised in the name
of the parish--the parish of St Ronan’s Cell, as it reads translated.
Midway, it is said, on his journey from Kilmarnock in Ayrshire to
Kilmaronaig on Loch Etive, that famous missionary priest of the early
Church thought it worth his while to tarry a space in the district
in order to teach the rude inhabitants peace. But, to judge by the
later events of history, the task would seem to have had but doubtful
results. The prevailing names, at the present hour, of the people in
the district--Galbraith, Macfarlane, M’Kean--recall the circumstances
of less orderly times. In the stalwart farmers’ sons guiding the plough
and feeding the cattle about the steadings there to-day, one sees the
lineal descendants of clansmen who once held their own on the loch-side
by the primitive _coir a glaive_--the title of the strong arm. To
keep these turbulent vassals in order, the Earls of Lennox found it
necessary to hold three castles in the neighbourhood.

Nor has the strath been without a share in the outstanding events of
history. This loch-shore it was which witnessed the failure of Argyle’s
ill-advised attempt at rebellion in 1685. Here, barring his progress,
beyond the streamlet in the clachan of the parish, the Protestant Earl,
after his long march among the western lochs, first came within sight
of the Royal troops. Here, that night, his camp-fires were left burning
to deceive his opponents; and it was on the hills behind that his
little army finally lost its way, broke up, and dispersed amid the bogs
and the darkness.

A romantic story of that most romantic of episodes, the Rebellion of
1745, also belongs to the district. The most powerful family in the
strath at that time, as, indeed, it had been for generations, was one
of the name Buchanan. This family owned two mansions and estates at
no great distance from each other, and from the larger of these they
took their familiar title, Buchanans of the Ross. Whether the head
of the house of that date had personally taken part in the Jacobite
rising, or had incurred suspicion of Jacobite sympathies, need not be
inquired into, but, upon the final overthrow of the Stuart cause in the
spring of 1746, it can be understood that he, in common with others
in his position, was willing enough to demonstrate his loyalty to the
Government of King George. The opportunity for doing so which occurred
to him, however, involved a breach of laws which above all others were
held inviolably sacred by the Highlanders--the laws of hospitality.

The tradition of the district has to be relied upon for the story. By
this tradition it would appear that among the fugitives upon whose head
a price was set, after Culloden, was the Marquis of Tullibardine, elder
brother of the Duke of Athole. Being hard pressed by the search-parties
which were everywhere scouring the country, this nobleman, it is
said, betook himself to Buchanan of the Ross, with whom he had been
upon terms of friendship, and besought temporary asylum. This favour
Buchanan granted readily enough, and apparently in all good faith;
but no sooner was the unfortunate refugee secure under his roof than
he intimated the fact to the nearest military post. The natural
consequence was an immediate visit of the soldiery and the arrest of
the fugitive.

Here the story becomes uncanny. The victim of misplaced confidence was
being dragged across the threshold, when, it is said, recovering from
surprise at the unheard-of treachery, his Highland rage and indignation
reached the blazing point, and, turning upon his host, he hurled out
the imprecation, “There’ll be Murrays on the braes of Athole when
there’s ne’er a Buchanan at the Ross!”

This was the last of the Marquis, so far as the district was concerned,
but it was by no means, in the eyes of the dwellers there, the last of
his “curse.” Strangely enough, and, whether in fulfilment of the fierce
prophecy or not, only a few decades had passed when the race at the
Ross, so far as the male line was concerned, actually died out, and, as
if to complete the result, upon two occasions since then the estates
have passed to other hands through female heirs.

In the early decades of the present century the master of the
place was an Edinburgh advocate, Mr Hector Macdonald, and under his
hospitable roof again and again was entertained no less a guest than
the author of “Waverley.” It is not difficult to understand, apart from
the congenial society of his host, Scott’s attraction to the house.
The natural beauty of the place, if nothing else, must have been a
continual delight to one so keenly alive as he was to the interest
of woodland and loch. The district around, the house itself, and the
mountains before him, besides, were teeming with memories--every glen
the home of a romance. In Ross Priory, at anyrate, he frequently
stayed, and from the local legends and colour with which his residence
supplied him he selected the materials for some of the most famous
episodes in “Rob Roy” and “The Lady of the Lake.” The use he made of
it, indeed, has invested the whole district with a new interest. All
the neighbourhood, strath and glen, glows with the reflected splendour
of his thought, a “light that never was on sea or land”; and with
the clear wind blowing fresh from mountain and loch, something seems
mingled of the wholesome mental health and vigour of the “Wizard’s”
work.

The place has changed but little since Scott last visited it, and
the wanderer by the loch’s margin may, with the atmosphere of the
past still about him, indulge in all the pleasures of reverie and
recollection undisturbed. At the present day hardly a sound is to
be heard there but the lapse of wavelets on the pebbly beach, and
the sighing of the wind through the branches of the immemorial oaks.
Occasionally, on a summer evening, when the air is still, the far-off
beat of paddles comes faintly across the lake, as the steamer threads
its passage among the islands. But for the rest of the time the call
sometimes of the peacocks on the lawn before a storm, and, at night,
the harsh cry of wild-fowl making flight for the marshes at the river’s
mouth, form the only addition to the harmony of the wind and the
waters.

A HIGHLAND REEL.

Much study, truly, becomes a weariness of the flesh. After a long day’s
seclusion over desk and books the cobwebs begin to gather about one’s
brain, and stronger and stronger grows the longing to look upon the
face of one’s fellows. There are fair faces, too, to look upon, and
bright-lipped laughter to listen to not far away; and the shriek of a
fiddle or the skirl of the pipes is all that is needed to set light
footsteps tripping on a broad barn floor. Down with pamphlet and pen,
therefore; on with a heavy coat in case of rain, and out into the
roaring night.

A heavy “carry” is tearing across the sky, but the air is fresh and
clear; and see, away below through the darkness, by the loch-side,
shining hospitable and bright, are the lights of Gartachraggan. Away,
then, by the steading, where the patient beasts are stirring in their
byres, and a breath is caught of the rich warm mash preparing for
their evening meal. Away through the whin-haughs, where the owls answer
each other with silvery hootings, and again and again overhead there
is heard the creaking wing of belated snipe beating to and fro. How
the wind sighs in the naked hedges, with a louder whisper where the
thick-leaved holly-trees are set! One is tempted to linger under the
soft shelter of the wood, where the air is rich with the fragrance of
the undergrowth, and the stillness gives a feeling of pleasant security
by contrast with the roar and sough of the storm in the tree-tops
far above. The stones of the dry-dyke here are covered close with
the clinging tendrils of a small-leaved ivy, and wild strawberry and
wild geranium in summer star with white and pink the mossy crannies.
A pleasant spot it is, therefore, at that time of year, to linger in,
to watch the red squirrel frolic on the road, and the chaffinch build
his mossy home overhead. But to-night one’s thoughts are otherwise.
It is cold, and the south wind is roaring in the wood, hustling the
withered leaves to limbo. Down the hill, therefore, at a blithesome
pace, jousting and jesting with the storm, till a glimpse of the realm
of Oberon is caught below--the foam-swept loch with its lonely islets,
seen by the fitful gleam of stars. Life comes back to the jaded heart
on such a night, as the fresh wind lifts the hair and clears the brain.
There is war in the heavens overhead, and the scream can be heard of
wild-duck entangled in the driving clouds; but in the heart there is
only laughter, born of the comradeship of “rude Boreas.” Whew! Draw in
here to the shelter till the rain-blast sweeps over. It whistles like
arrowy sleet through the branches overhead, and the great limbs roar
and struggle in the contest. The bole of the giant ash itself heaves
and groans with the effort. But the strong tree has grappled before
with the Titan, and the wrestlings of eighty winters have but given it
a deeper grip of the soil. And so the blast blows over, the air clears,
and close at hand, a ruddy blaze among the trees, are seen the gleaming
windows of the farm.

What a kindly welcome is this! No ordinary “How d’ye do?” and touch
of listless fingers, but a heartiness honest as its own broad vowels.
The good folk here live close to the soil, and continually touch the
real facts of life. Ennui and cynicism, those soul-cankers of the
dwellers in towns, have never found their way to these homesteads by
the loch-side; and sweet and whole-hearted as the breath of their own
hay-ricks are the greetings of these hospitable folk. For the frank
grasp that will ease world-cares, go to the kindly sea-captain, or
the hand that has held a plough. Years have gathered on the heads of
the farmer and his wife since first their plough-shares turned the
loch-side soil, but still they are fresh and hale, and the frost of
years that has silvered their hair has touched them no whit besides.
Meanwhile, there has grown around them a brave and comely brood--sons
stalwart as the ark-builders of old, and daughters--ah! Look not too
long upon these, good youth, or thou art undone (though that might not
be the worst thing that could happen thee). For there is choice and
difference among them; the hair of one dark as the starling’s wing,
another’s bright with russet gold; eyes blue as the summer skies, eyes
dark as the woodland wells; cheeks of fair soft peach-bloom, and cherry
lips ripe and red. Beware!

Into the parlour? No!--the kitchen is the place. A carpeted parlour
can be seen at any time, but such a kitchen only in such a spot. The
great fire blazing in the chimney roars defiance to the storm outside,
and flashes its warm light upon wall and rafter. Lamps shine bright
as silver in their sconces, and plate-racks and harness steels gleam
in the wall’s recesses. Not a speck stains the purity of the red-stone
floor, and the massy tables and chairs of honest deal are white as
driven snow. Into the kitchen, then, and ask for the goodman’s health,
and whether the ploughing has gone forward well, whether the collie
that went amissing has turned up yet, and what was done with the tramp
who threatened the ploughman’s wife.

But, listen! the neighbours are coming already, and in the lull of
the wind surely that was the sound of the pipes! How the girls’ eyes
sparkle and their colour rises! What tempting access of witchery!--wait
a little, take care, keep hold of your heart! Perhaps their sweethearts
are coming. The pipes stop at the door, there is a sound of laughter,
a moment’s pause, and then a new invasion of brave lads and comely
lasses, bringing in with them the earth-smelling wind of the night.
Fresh-voiced as the spring thrushes, it is an inspiration to look at
and listen to these sons and daughters of the hills.

First of all, for the Highlands are hospitable, something must be
eaten. The table in a trice is heaped with tempting array--everything
the produce of the farm itself, and not the less delicious for the fair
hands that have placed it there.

Then, hey, presto! the scene is changed. A space has been cleared in
the barn, and lamps hung from the rafters and on the walls light it up
in gipsy fashion, casting fantastic shadows into the far corners behind
the great heaps of warm oat-straw. A skirl of the pipes, and in a
moment partners are chosen. Then more than one secret slips out to the
curious eye; for much there is to be read in the language of a blush
and a look. The lads stand back to back, two and two, their partners
facing them, and as the music takes to the air, featly they trip it
in the merry figure-of-eight. Presently, opposite their neighbours’
partners, comes the chance for spirit and agility, and many a wild
capering step is done by the lads with arm in air and a whirl of the
tartans, while the lasses, more modest, with downcast look, hold back
their skirts daintily as they foot it with toe and heel. Faster and
faster the music gathers, faster flies the dance with its changing
step, with the threading of eights and the Highland fling, while cheeks
take flame, eyes flash wildly, and the barn floor shakes in rhythm.
More and more breathless grow lasses and lads, but no one will yield
to stop, till at last, with a wild whoop, they fling themselves all at
once upon the straw, and the music slowly runs out.

Again and again it will be renewed, with the wilder “Reel o’ Hulochan”
for a change, or some wonderful old-fashioned country dance; and only
some time in the morning, long after the old folk have gone to bed,
will the merry party break up, tired but delighted, to go home in twos
and threes along the hills.

AN ARRAN RIDE.

“Hamish will just be putting the mare in the cart to drive over the
ladies, so the need is not so great for hurrying.”

The arrangement of the crofter’s wife is hospitably meant, if somewhat
ominously expressed. Conveyance of any kind, moreover, will be most
acceptable to the two ladies of our party after their long ramble
on seashore and moorland; and the more primitive it prove, the more
fittingly will it end the memories of the day. “Meanwhile ‘the need
is not so great for hurrying,’” repeats one of the two slyly, out of
hearing of her hostess, and, pulling off her gloves, proceeds to gather
pleasure from the blazing chimneyful of peat. Leaning back in the
warm light, she stirs the white feathery ash with a dainty boot, and
discovers, to the boot’s cost and her own surprise, that the whiteness
of the peat conceals a glow of burning red. It is a peculiarity of the
Highland character, as of the Highland fuel, this fire within the grey
exterior, needing only a touch or a breath to show itself.

The light ash of the peat, they say, flies everywhere about a shieling.
But it is a cleanly thing. It leaves no tarnish, at anyrate, on
the snowy wood dresser or its high rack of shining delf. The tall
old-fashioned mahogany case-clock in the corner, an heirloom much
valued, may have absorbed more of the powder, perhaps, than conduces
to regular intestinal working; but the open iron cruizie or cresset
lamp hanging quaintly, though now unused, from the high mantelshelf, is
kept clear enough for lighting yet if need were; and maybe the hams and
“kippered” fish hanging from hooks in the blackened rafters are rather
improved in flavour by the condiment.

But look here. With true Highland hospitality, preparations for tea
have been surreptitiously advanced, and the fresh, wholesome-looking
daughter of the house and her mother lift into the middle of the
earthen floor the table ready caparisoned with cloth-of-snow,
glittering cups and knives, heaped sugar-bowl, and beaker of rich
yellow cream. A lissome flower of the moors is this crofter maid. The
oatmeal which she has been baking is not more soft and fair than
the skin of the comely lass, and, as she smiles reply in lifting the
toasted oat-farles from the flat iron “girdle” swung over the fire, it
needs no poet to notice that her eyes are bits of summer sea and her
mouth a damask bud. The toasted farles of oat-cake from her hand send
forth an ambrosial smell which, with the fragrance of the new-made tea,
is irresistible to hungry folk, and no pressing Highland exhortation is
needed to set visitors of both sexes to the attack of the viands.

Not till every one has again and again declared sheer inability to
pursue the attack further, does the announcement come that “the mare
is in the cart.” A chair, therefore, is presently carried out, and
the whole party of four mount into the rough vehicle among the straw.
Hereupon follow a hand-shaking and repetition of hospitable invitations
to return which begin to become almost embarrassing, before Hamish
starts at his horse’s head upon the moor track.

A long, memorable day it has been, amid the warm sunshine and the
bright sea-breeze, a day to do the heart good and to tire the limbs
royally--the morning draught of brave mountain air and life on the
white moorland road before the inn; the forenoon ramble, rod in hand,
on the warm gorse-path by the river; luncheon in quaint-flavoured,
wit-haunted company by the blue Kilbrannan Sound, with nothing to
interrupt but the beat of sudden outflying wings sometimes about
the warm cliff crannies overhead, and, on the beach below, the soft
caressing murmur of the secret-telling sea; the afternoon drive to the
far hill-clachan, where the turf roofs were tied down with heather
ropes, where the brown women were carrying sea-wrack to manure their
fields, and where, as a back-sound to the quaint-turned Highland
speech, was heard the thud-thud of the swinging flails; and, last of
all, the return at evening by the high moorland path, with the amethyst
fire dying out on Ben Ghoil in the east, and, in the west, the sunset
heavens aflame with saffron and rose, and the sea a living splendour of
generous wine.

Now it is night, and the air comes cooler over the moor. No air is like
Arran air at night, with its vague herb-perfumes adrift, for stirring
old memories and desires in the heart and new ambitions in the blood.
Upon its clear breath old designs, old possibilities long forgotten,
come back again to make life and hope. By it the vapours of worldly
wisdom are blown aside, the cloud-wrack care of intervening years is
lifted, and one walks again clear-hearted for a time in the April
valley of his youth. Night anywhere has charms for those who think, but
night upon the moors possesses an influence peculiarly its own. The
primeval heath, wild and undesecrated by the hand of man, lies under
“the splendid-mooned and jewelled night,” shadowy and mystic with the
silence of the ages. Abroad upon the moor at such an hour seem to brood
the imaginings of an older world, and the grey stone circles standing
gaunt yet upon the Arran wilds are hardly needed to suggest the memory
that along these wilds, once upon a time, wound processions of bearded
Druids, to practise under the starry influences rites of a faith now
long forgotten. At intervals upon the moor appear these grey menhirs
and circles. Inscrutable as the Egyptian sphinx they stand with sealed
lips, strange monuments of a buried past. For tens of centuries they
have seen the dusks gather and the stars swim overhead, but no rising
sun has wakened them from their silence, and still they keep the stony
secret of their origin, though they could not keep the ashes of the
dead committed to their charge.

Meanwhile Hamish makes way steadily, though by tortuous windings.
None but a native bred on the spot could conduct a vehicle safely by
night across these moors. Where unaccustomed eyes can make out no sign
whatever of a track, and where a single mistake would send one wheel
floundering into a peat-hag and the other spinning in the air, or
capsize the whole equipage into the miry abysses of a bog, Hamish leads
confidently on, with no worse result than the jolting of a rugged road.
The mare is a sturdy beast of the small sure-footed Arran breed, now
dying out, and she pulls away gallantly among rocks and heath-tufts
that would bring any other sort of horse to quick disaster. It takes
her master all his time to keep up with her on the rough ground, and
he has breath left for no more than an occasional “Ay, ay,” or “’Deed,
yes, sir!” in the true Arran accent. English is evidently the less
familiar language to him; his remarks to the mare, _sotto voce_, are in
Gaelic.

All last month after nightfall tufts and sheets of flame were to be
seen among the darkness of the hills; for in March they burn the
heather on the sheep-farms to let the young herbage come up, and the
conflagrations which appear then as pillars of smoke by day become
pillars of fire by night. But in April the moorland birds have begun to
build their nests, and the hills are left to them in darkness and in
peace. The only light to be seen from the cart is that in the window
of the croft far behind, which will be kept aglow by thoughtful hands
as a guide till Hamish’s return after moonset. Over the brow of the
moor, however, the shining lights of the clachan at the mountain foot
before long come into sight, and away to the right, tremulous with
silver and shadows, the sheen of the moonlight can be made out on the
sea. Rapidly now the path descends, plunging presently through lanes of
high thorn hedges where the stars are all but shut out overhead. The
rush of a river is heard, the wheels grate harshly on the gravel, there
is a sudden and vigorous splashing of hoofs, and the mare has passed
the ford. Then a half-mile of climb uphill on a good road, and Hamish
stands still with his charge at the door of the inn.

BY A WESTERN FIRTH.

“Good-bye, my dear!”

How beautiful the old lady looks as she stands in the porch
overclustered with its tangle of budding roses and honeysuckle, a
kindly smile on her lips, and her eyes shining, and her silver hair,
in the last light of afternoon! For the sun is setting now, across
the water, behind the hills of Bute, and the glory that fills the
heavens and floods the full-ebbed sea casts about her, in its departing
moments, a halo of peace serene as the hours of her life’s own
afternoon. “Good-bye, my dear!”

Sunshine and silence sleep now on the hillside strath above, where
the woods hang motionless, and the sward here and there, in the open
spaces, is lit with the golden flame of gorse in blossom; but across
that hillside once long ago raged the tide of a relentless war. Here,
blood-red in the setting sun, waved the standard of a Scottish king,
and yonder, down to the shore and to the wrecks of his ships, was
driven back the shattered strength of the invading Norseman. The
corries were filled then with the bodies of the dead, and the brown
waters were stained a dreadful purple in the burn-pools where the trout
leap now after the evening fly. That was the Scottish Salamis.

No one is in sight upon the white road, and no sound to be heard of
distant footstep or departing wheels. There is only the lingering lapse
of the quiet ripples as the sea sows its pearl-seed along the shore.
A perfect calm rests upon the waters while the light slowly leaves
them, and the red sun goes down behind the hills; only, at one place,
across the glassy surface, where the tide is stirring, run, on the
tiny wavelets, a hundred flickering tongues of fire, and, far out, the
reflection of the great yellow cloud aflame in the west shimmers like
frosted gold upon the sea.

Gently the gloaming falls. The last mellow pipe of the mavis floats
from the garden shrubbery behind, and bats begin to jerk about with
their uncertain flight under the trees, their wings making a curious
eerie creaking in the air. Only a dim green light falls through the
leaves interlaced overhead as the road leaves the bay and dips inland
through the woods.

The day’s work is over. It is the sacred hour, and, far from “the stir
and tumult of the street,” in these still aisles, carpeted soft with
fallen bud-sheaths and grass, roofed with the fretted canopy of branch
and leaf, and hung with the fringed banners of larch and birch, ascends
to heaven with the last notes of the woodland choristers the sweet
incense of a thousand flowers. Mossy dykes run into the wood-depths
here, and among the tall feathery grasses under the trees there are
places purple with a mist of wild hyacinths. A crimson shadow, too,
lies here and there, where the wood geranium throws its profusion; and
pink and white sandflowers grow in the dry ditch-sides. By the clear
mossy roadside well, and among the withered leaves in the glades, rise
the first green spires of the foxgloves; a golden haze betrays the beds
of yellow crowfoot; and in some sequestered spots pale primroses are
still starring the rivulet banks.

Amid the woods, a secluded nook, nestles a cottage--the gamekeeper’s
lodge, with its low slate roof, and sweetbrier trained upon the white
walls, yellow pansies asleep beneath its window-sills, and crimson
fuchsia and wild dog-roses blossoming in the hedge. The little
flower-garden about it is trimly kept, with its southernwood and
thyme, its clipped box edgings and gravelled path; and in the grassy
hollow under the wood behind are the rows of boxes for breeding the
young pheasants. A faint luscious smell hangs in the air of the
spot--suggestive of frying trout freshly caught in the brown burn that
gurgles close by in the darkness. The keeper, too, is sitting outside
the quiet doorway enjoying his evening pipe; and the fragrance of
the southern weed mingles with the sweet scent of the pink hawthorn
flowering over the wicket. Tread softly, though, on the grassy edge of
the road for a little way. The kennel is at hand, and the slightest
sound will set every dog baying his loudest. The rattle of a terrier’s
chain is enough, sometimes, to set the woods echoing for full ten
minutes.

The air grows less heavy as the road again approaches the shore, and
there comes up with the murmur of the shingle the faint salt smell
of the sea. Away in front the bright blaze streaming out in the
darkness strikes from the lighthouse tower at the outmost sea-edge,
receiving its signal, like the bale-fires of old, from the beacon on
the opposite coast, and flashing it on to the next point up channel.
Far out, too, on the firth a red light is moving, and the faint beat
of paddles comes across the water. It is the last river-steamer making
for the watering-place opposite. Singularly still the air is, to carry
so distinctly the throbbing of that distant pulse. Not another sound
is to be heard, and nothing astir is to be seen. Only, the moon has
risen, a clear sickle, on the edge of the dark hill above. On such a
night loveliness and mystery swim together on the air; the blushing of
the rose is the fairer for being but half seen in the dim light; the
woods above have ceased their amorous whisperings; and the sea amid the
silence is kissing the shore’s wet lips.

What white shadow comes yonder, though, moving under the high hedge
in the darkness? It might almost be one of those wraiths of which the
country-folk speak with bated breath--the awful Something seen moving
in the dusk from the house where a man has died. There is a sound
of hoofs here, however, and the spectre proves to be but the gaunt
Rozinante of some wandering gipsies--the grey and pitiful counterpart,
doubtless, of a once-gallant steed. Delicate hands may have patted the
neck worn bare now by the collar, and sweet sugar-bits may have been
offered by dainty fingers to the lips that tremble now as they crop the
dusty roadside grasses. Does memory ever come to the brain behind those
patient eyes?

See! close by in the little dell among the flowering broom twinkles
the camp-fire of the owners. Their dark figures lie about it asleep,
for the night is warm, and they are a hardy race; while at hand
stands their quaint house on wheels, overhung with baskets of all
sorts and uses. A strange, lawless life they live in the midst of
nineteenth-century civilisation, those Bedouins of the broomfields and
commons.

But here is our inn, a long-forgotten hostelrie, where one can sit at
noon in the shade by the doorway with a book, and watch the ships far
out go by upon the firth, while the cool sea glistens below, and all
day long there is the drowsy hum of bees about the yellow tassels of
the laburnums at the gable ends. A pleasant spot it is even now in the
darkness. The lilac-trees in the garden are a-bloom, and the air is
sweet with their scent. A pleasant place, where the comely hostess will
welcome the tired pedestrian, where his supper will taste the better
for the fresh night air from the open window, and where, presently,
he will fall asleep between sheets that smell of the clover-field, to
dream of the firmly-grasped tiller, the snowy cloud of sails overhead,
and the rushing of the water under the yacht’s counter of the morrow.

AN ISLAND PICNIC.

Seven o’clock, and a glorious morning! The sun is shining brightly on
the coral-clustered rowan-tree outside, and the sky already is dazzling
blue. A gentle air, too, just stirs the muslin curtain of the window
left open overnight. With it comes in the scent of honey and the hum of
bees at work in the garden below. No morning is this for laziness and a
late breakfast. The impulse to be abroad is born of the sunshine; and
a few minutes serve, after a hurried toilet, to snatch a towel, bound
down stairs, and go tramping across the heather to the well-known pool.

A magnificent day indeed it promises to be. The wreathing night-mists
have already risen from the Bens, and the loch below gleams like
melted sapphire round sylvan island and far-set promontory. Everywhere
the mountains are clad in purple, and from the moor-bloom spreading
its springy carpet underfoot rises a fragrance that fills air and
heart alike with delight. And the river pool--never was found more
delightful bathing-place. Hidden deep between overhanging banks of
heather in flower, with a clean brown ledge of rock to dive from, the
depth of dark, clear water, like amber wine, sparkles with foam-bells,
and the waterfall tosses from the rock above great showers of silver
spray. No more invigorating plunge could be had. For a moment, as he
breasts the brown depths, the bather feels something of the salmon’s
exultant pride; and a dip like that sets one off high-hearted for the
day.

Breakfast is a delight after such an appetiser; and fresh eggs and thin
oatcakes, creamy porridge, golden marmalade, and all the wealth of
Highland fare, disappear with startling despatch. There is no time to
be wasted either, for Archie was to have the boat ready at half-past
nine, and there is a Highland half-mile of road between the house and
the loch. Archie would by no means scruple about expressing his candid,
and perhaps not very complimentary, opinion if the party chanced to be
late; and there is a kind of unwritten law in the house that the old
servant is to be humoured as much as possible. So already the ladies
are concerning themselves with the making and packing of sandwiches,
the due stowage of cold provender, jellies, fruit, milk, _et cetera_,
and the apportioning to each his load. For the luncheon is to be, _bonâ
fide_, a true Robinson Crusoe affair, no servants interfering; and each
man must make himself useful.

“’Deed, and ye’re no that late, efter a’!” is Archie’s magnanimous
reply to a deprecating remark of his mistress on reaching the
loch-side. The sunshine has evidently thawed his usual crustiness.
“Aye, mem,” he replies further, “it’ll be a fine mornin’, a very fine
mornin’; the hills is quite clear.” After which deliverance he holds
the boat steady alongside the little wooden landing-place, while
provisions, kettles, and rugs are stowed away in the bow; and his grey
eyes twinkle with pleased humour under their shaggy brows when the heir
of the house whispers some bit of sly badinage in his ear. “Aye he iss
a fine lad that, a fine lad!” the old fellow will be saying to himself
when the boat has been pushed off, and he watches from the pier the
stalwart object of his remark bestirring himself to haul up the sail.

There is just enough breeze to curl the water gently; and when the
snowy sheet is hoisted the boat bends away gracefully before it,
leaving a swirling track of foam and eddies in her wake. When the
morning is so fine as this there is little fear of danger; but on these
Highland lochs one never can foretell the moment when a sudden gust may
come down from some hillside corrie; and cool nerves and a steady hand
are needed to control sheet and tiller. The man who loses his wits on
an emergency, who cannot slacken out sail or bring the boat’s head up
to wind when a squall strikes her, is no fit pilot for these waters,
and many a fair freight has gone to the bottom from such an one holding
the helm. A strong and ready hand is in charge to-day, however, and
“black care” is a thing impossible on board, as the little craft goes
bounding out upon the bosom of the loch.

And fair as a romance is the scene--the clear lake winding away among
the mountains, its surface broken only by bosky islets that float in
their own reflections--while the sunny air is full of the awe and
silence of the Bens.

The only spot in all the scene where silence reigns not is on board the
little boat herself; and a continuous ripple of merry chat and joyous
laughter floats away astern with her foam. From wild little islets
passed by the way come breaths of pinewood and of heather in bloom,
faint and delicious as the gales which drifted leeward of old from
homeward-bound spice-argosies of the East. But the bright eyes on board
are an inspiration themselves, independent of the sunshine and the
pure and scented air; and the gladness of youth has broken forth--the
contagion of happy and hopeful hearts. A sweet strain of melody floats
once and again from the bow, where the singing throats are:

      Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing!

--the Skye Boat Song, a farewell to Prince Charlie, that old-time idol
of the Highland hearts. A sad melody it is, amid its sweetness, as are
all the old Jacobite songs, with their breathing of hopes that were
never to be fulfilled; and somehow, strains like that come to the ear
with more real tenderness when sung as to-day by clear young voices
among their native mountains.

Too soon, almost, the boat’s keel grates upon the island beach--the
strip of silver shingle under the green-fringing trees. One would
fain have prolonged especially the last part of the voyage, through
the straits between the islands--straits like the miniature narrows of
fairy-land, between whose near and bosky shores the fragile shallop
of Oberon and Titania might almost be expected to appear, flying a
web of the woodland gossamers for its sail. But other attractions
enough lie within the island greenwood. There are delicate groups of
birches to be sketched by those who have brought block and colours.
In the rivulet dells some of the young ladies have been promised the
discovery of the much-sought hart’s-tongue fern. And for those who
wish to recall to fancy the place’s romance of the past, there are the
remains of a ruined monastery to explore. But the merriest party of
all, perhaps, is that retained for the preparation of luncheon; and it
is wonderful in how short a time those dainty-fingered damsels have the
tasteful display of linen and crystal and silver spread on a grassy
plot, the clumsy-handed males being retained, after the fashion of the
knights-errant of old, for the opening of baskets and boxes, and the
seeking of leaves wherewith to decorate fruit-salvers, napkins, and the
tablecloth’s centre.

A merry meal it is, too, which follows, _al fresco_--“all in the
greenwood free”--with the contortions of carvers on their knees,
the popping of corks, and continual little explosions of mysterious
laughter from the various groups perched on cloaks and rugs wherever
a seat-hold offers round the roots of some gnarled oak or ash. Never
more gallant do young men appear than when attending the wants of their
fair comrades amid such a scene; and thrice happy is he who has such an
opportunity of laying siege to the heart that he desires.

Then away again over the island they go, in parties of two and three;
and the flutter of a light dress is to be seen and the joyous ripple
of merry laughter to be heard in many a nook and dell hitherto invaded
only by the antlered and timid deer. Many a pleasant word is spoken,
and many a heart mayhap lightened of its care on such an afternoon;
for the anxieties of civilised life come not to a sylvan retreat like
this, and it is impossible to be aught but joyous-spirited when the
surroundings are all of gladness.

But hark! they have caught a piper on the mainland, and have brought
him over, and there is to be a dance on the grass. Yonder he goes,
under the edge of the trees, pouring forth a torrent of Highland
reels. A brave sound that, setting the blood on fire and making
it impossible to sit still. And merrily go the twinkling feet on
the greensward--“figures of eight,” and Reel o’ Tulloch, Highland
Schottische and Highland Fling. Wilder and faster grows the music,
as the piper catches the spirit of the scene, and faster and faster
the dancers foot it, with swirling tartans and flying skirts, till,
at a final blast of the screaming chanter, the last partners throw
themselves panting on the grass. Then a cup of tea makes a kindly
refreshment and prevents heated throats from catching cold, and the
boat has to be got ready, and the furniture of the feast stowed away.
Afterwards, as the clear young moon begins to sparkle in the sky, the
sail is set once more and the prow pointed for home. And if the wind
fails, and some rowing has to be done, the exercise is good for keeping
off the chill; and with song after song floating out across the water
under the stars, a fitting end is made of a day without regrets.

TENNIS IN THE NORTH.

A pretty sight they are, these two, this fair summer morning, among
the dewy branches of the rose-garden, all unconscious that anyone is
looking at them, Minna, the daughter of the house, her white hands wet
with flowers, is cutting fresh blossoms for the breakfast-table, and
that tall fellow, the Professor, who at home used to get up only when
the college bell was ringing, has actually risen half an hour earlier
than he need have done in order to hold the basket for her. He is not
looking at the costly little circlet of diamonds sparkling upon her
finger, but at the bright dark eyes swimming under the edge of that
delightful straw hat, where, doubtless, he is getting some fresh light
upon the Greek particles. For they are engaged, Minna and he, and he
is coming back in the autumn to carry her off and transplant her, like
some bright-petalled flower, in his dim old college city.

But there is the voice of our host greeting them from the porch below,
and the Professor comes forward eagerly to shake hands with him. Young
Rossdhu has driven down to say that some friends arrived at their house
last night, and his mother will be glad if we can go up to tennis
and luncheon there this morning. No other engagement will be broken
by this, and a day on that velvet lawn among the pine-woods will be
delightful; so the carriage has been ordered for eleven o’clock. The
day promises to be very warm here by the sea, but more air will perhaps
be moving up among the hills, and there will always be the shadow of
the old beeches to rest under. When breakfast is over, then, it will
just be time to get ready, though it is tempting to linger in the
quiet cool little room, at the white-spread table with its freshness
of flowers--the full-blowing Maréchal Niel and the languorous yellow
tea-roses set there by dainty fingers.

Outside, the sunshine is very hot already, and the last dewdrop has
long ago dried from the scarlet petals of the geraniums in the urns.
The ponies at the door, too, are impatiently whisking their tails and
twitching their ears to keep off the flies.

There could be no more enjoyable drive than that along this road
of the far North, running a mile or two first within sight of the
blue glistening sea, and then turning inland. The road itself, of
that dazzling sandy whiteness peculiar to the district, is perfectly
dry and smooth; and while from the deep grasses of the bank on each
side, and from the warren beyond, come the hot passion-breath of the
golden-flowered whin, and the soft amorous sigh of the milky-clouded
thorn, there is ever in sight the broad country, rich in old forests,
showing here and there the grey tower of some ancient castle, and
stretching away to the mountains beyond, purple under the speckless
sky. Then it turns off suddenly into the pine-woods of Rossdhu, and the
wheels roll noiseless upon the soft bed of fir needles.

Forty years ago, when old Rossdhu found that, owing to the repeal
of the Corn Laws, it would no longer be profitable to grow wheat,
like many another proprietor in the North he planted his lands with
trees. And so, while the country buys its bread with the riches of
ore and fossil stored up æons ago in Nature’s grim treasure-caverns
underground, the soil, at rest from plough and harrow, is growing
young again amid the forests, under the brown depth of mouldering leaf
and cone.

Deep quiet reigns among these warm pine-woods, a sort of enchanted
stillness amid the yellow sunshine. In the bosky hollow where the brown
butterfly is hovering, old Pan might be asleep among the fern. The
feathery grasses everywhere are in flower, as high as a man’s shoulder;
above them shimmers the great green dragon-fly, two inches long, with
his gossamer wings; and from among their clouds at places little
ladybird beetles, like pin-heads, spotted scarlet and black, fall into
the carriage in their flight. The wild strawberry, with its tiny white
blossom, is growing on the sunny banks of the road, and wild rasps
spread their tangle in the undergrowth beyond.

In the narrow meadow amidst the woods a lonely mower is at work, and
the air is sweet with the scent of new-mown hay. He lifts his cap
respectfully as the carriage passes, for the manners of the district
have not been corrupted yet by contact with rude railway navvies, nor
by the shortcomings of Board schools; and the peasant still exchanges a
recognition with his superior. Much more real kindliness might exist
between the social classes if in our schools there were a Government
grant for manners. All store nowadays seems to be set upon the three
“Rs”--reading, writing, and arithmetic--as if the whole sum of human
felicity lay in a knowledge of the “black art” of books.

The mower was singing to himself as we came up, a soft Gaelic song
that kept time to the sweep of his scythe, and Minna blushes a little
as she promises to translate it in the evening, for it is a song of
confessed love. The man is happy, surely, singing as he sees the
glistening, swathes fall by his side to ripen in the sun: and well he
may be, for has he not, like the happy birds, a nest, too, somewhere in
these woods, and a blue-eyed brood that will greet his home-coming at
nightfall.

But the manor-house stands close by now, and there, on the smooth green
lawn among the trees, the tennis nets are spread, and the courts marked
with lines on the grass. A beautiful old place it is, its grey stone
walls hot with the sunshine, and, among the thick-climbing jessamine
and fuchsia, the open windows revealing tempting depths of shadow
within. The sound of the wheels on the gravel brings out old Rossdhu
himself, the soul of hospitality, with half a dozen of his dogs barking
a welcome after their fashion, and wagging their tails. Shaggy-bearded
as some of his own peasants, the old gentleman is the pink of Highland
courtesy, and he assists “Miss Minna” to alight as if she were a
princess. “Alec,” that is his son, he explains, “is busy inside,” and
the frequent popping of corks heard there intimates his occupation.

The dark cool drawing-room is bright with the light dresses of young
girls, and musical with the murmur of happy laughter, while the air
that just stirs the creamy gossamer of the curtains brings in with
it the fragrance of the dark velvety wallflower still flowering
outside in the sunshine before the window. The lady of the house is an
invalid, and Rossdhu begs that Minna will give her just one song before
everybody goes out to the game. So Minna draws off her gloves, and the
piano is opened. And it is very pleasant to sit in the deep shadow
by the open casement, looking out upon the sunny lawn and woods, and
listening to the melody of that sweet young voice. It is a Jacobite
song she sings, “The Auld House”--some other such place as this, with
low-roofed rooms, dark-panelled and oaken-raftered, where the hopes
of gentle hearts blossomed and withered long ago with the fortunes of
their fair, ill-fated Prince. The plaintive words linger with their air
in the memory, how “the auld ladye”--

        Here sheltered Scotland’s heir,
      And clipped a lock wi’ her ain hand
        Frae his lang yellow hair.

Then, afterwards, when everybody has had enough of the ices and the
claret cup, there is the tennis. And though it is somewhat warm work
for those actually playing, there are seats under the leafy beeches and
chestnut-trees, where a quiet _tête-à-tête_ can be enjoyed, and a lazy
glance cast at the lithe, light-clad figures of the players out in the
sunshine, and the white balls that fly to and fro across the nets.

THROUGH THE PASS.

Rain is not to be heeded in the Highlands. It is the picturesque part
of the weather here. The air grows fresher and sweeter in a shower,
a richer fragrance comes out in the woods, and the true gloom and
grandeur of the mountains can only be seen when the grey rain-veils
are darkening and glittering among their glens. Even into the house
steals the reviving freshness of the rain. The scent of the wet
sweetbrier budding in the garden hedge enters at the open window; from
the larch-wood near, the grateful thrushes can be heard sending forth
more liquid trillings; and the daffodils, hung like yellow jewels along
the lawn, appear fairer and brighter amid the shower. But better than
wasting the day indoors it is to sally forth, strong-booted and roughly
clad, breathe the freshness of the cool, new air, and start, staff in
hand, for the hills themselves. It is worth while to defy the rain,
for the road lies through woods dewy and dim as Keats dreamed for his
“Endymion.” In their deep-secluded ways sometimes may be seen the timid
roedeer, and on the fragrant air be heard the amorous crooning of wild
doves.

In another month the quiet dells among these woods will be purple with
dewy hyacinths, and many a sequestered nook will be dim with the blue
forget-me-not. Already the open meads are sprinkled with patins of
buttercup-gold, and a modest spot of cream here and there, under some
mossy bank, betrays a late primrose. As yet, however, the delicate
broidery of summer has not carpeted the forest floors. Under the dark,
low-hanging branches of the spruce-firs--made a richer green by the
rain--there is only a russet wealth of withered fern, with a warm depth
of shadow such as Rembrandt loved to paint. Looking over a mossy old
bridge parapet into the ferny dingle below, one can see the feathery
grey larches powdered with sweet pink blossom, whose beauty few people
know; and lower down, by the burn, the alders putting forth silky
silver bud-tips--the “mouse’s ear,” which is the angler’s sign that
perch are to be caught. In open spaces where some forest-clearing has
been done, the few silver-barked birches left standing begin to show a
smir of green, their graceful drooping branches looking like trailing
sprays of delicate maidenhair; whilst here and there a spot is lit up
by the golden glory of the whin.

The woods at this time of the year are full of life, for the cruel
gun is silent, and many a happy home of bird and beast is hidden in
the tangled undergrowth. In the elm-tops about the lodge behind by
the river the rooks are giving each other much grandmotherly advice
as to the rearing of broods. The cock pheasant’s crow is to be heard
frequently in the covers, and sometimes, from his open feeding-ground
beside the path, a splendid bird rises suddenly with whirring wings,
and sails royally away to more secluded fastnesses. Among the
thick-leaved tangle of wild rhododendron on either hand blackbirds are
fluttering joyously about their nests. Overhead, occasionally, passes
the heavy, rushing flight of a wild pigeon. And more than once across a
gleam of sunshine on the path runs a red squirrel, like a bit of living
gold.

And while one treads on the brown, fallen needles of spruce and larch,
the subtle forest scents fill the heart with many pleasant memories.
Never are these forest scents richer than when brought out by a
shower, and it is curious how vividly some faint perfume drifting on
the air will recall the happy scenes of other days, memories that are
themselves the pensive fragrance of old age.

Through these ducal woods, and amid such pleasant sights and sounds,
some seventy years ago wandered the “Wizard of the North,” gathering
material for his work. Fairer scenes a poet could not have chosen to
gather inspiration from. Everyone may feel the eloquence of those
northern hills in front, as everyone may enjoy the fragrance of the
meadow violets: it needed a poet, however, to turn into speech the
eloquence of the hills, as it needs a bee to turn into honey the
fragrance of the flowers. Hither, therefore, fitly came Scott to his
work; and over clachan and mountain alike he has woven the golden net
of romance.

One may wander for miles through these woods and out beyond upon the
old Highland road, with its low, mossy dykes, without meeting a single
wayfarer. Only Nature herself, with gentle and sweet suggestion, speaks
to him of the past or of the future. For the touch of the fresh cool
air upon the face clears away all cobwebs of sordid thought, and
braces the faculties for new endeavour. Here, too, may be witnessed
many a matchless transformation scene. For presently the rain ceases,
the grey mist melts into the lucent blue of the sky, and wet hill and
woodland sparkle and glow in a flood of hot sunshine. Immediately
the shallow trout burn that comes down to the stepping-stones under
the edge of the wood laughs gaily and dances over its pebbles; the
mountain in front becomes a great sapphire burning gloriously under
the blue; the larks rise, true sun-worshippers, pouring forth rills
of song, libations to their God, at heaven’s own gate; and from the
twittering coppice flutter the vain chaffinches, with purple velvet
heads, gold breasts, and silver-barred wings, to show themselves.
Never do the vaunted birds of the tropics sing so joyously as the
sweet hedge-warblers of Britain; and, ages before the alchemists
came, thrush and robin and yellowhammer had found out Nature’s own
philosopher’s-stone, and sang the praises of that sunshine which, like
love and like human genius, turns all it touches into gold.

Steep as a wall in front rises the mountain barrier of the Highlands,
its wooded and inaccessible shoulder projecting far into the loch.
Only one passage is to be found through that rocky wall, and the road
to it winds perilously round a little bay, between darkening precipice
and lapping wave, before ascending the narrow and unseen defile. Daring
would the assailant be who tried that steep and narrow path with a
Highland foe above him! Scarcely more than a bridle-path, and steep as
a staircase, it winds upward between rugged mountain walls. A single
clansman, posted with gun and claymore behind one of its jutting crags,
might hold the road against a regiment. High and dark overhead against
the sky rise sombre pines and immemorial holly-trees, which from their
torn and shattered girth might be--

      Seedlings of those that heavenward sprung
      While yet the maiden moon was young

--ancient enough, at anyrate, to have looked down on many a Highland
foray. No one need marvel that the Macgregors thought themselves safe
when they had driven their spoil through the Pass of Balmaha.

And glorious as well as welcome was the sight that met these clansmen
when once actually through the defile. For away to the north, Ben
beyond Ben, far as eye could range, rose the fastnesses of their native
mountains--silver waters flashing below round islands of fern, and the
blue sky laughing above. Every glen had its memory, and every corrie
was their inheritance, and even the traveller of the present day can
know no more gorgeous spectacle than Ben Lomond after sunset burning
in amethystine fire. For more reasons than one, therefore, might these
rough old warriors rejoice when they had scaled the pass and beheld
before them this wild but lovely vista of the country they called their
home.

A HIGHLAND MORNING.

Breakfast is over--a Highland breakfast. Full justice has been done to
the pleasant porridge and warm creamy milk, the fresh herrings that
were alive in Loch Fyne a few hours ago, salmon from the splash-nets at
Eriska, fragrant coffee, excellent home-made scones, and rich butter,
tasting of the clover-field. The day is superb, and no one will spend
more of it indoors than he can help; besides, the boat will be almost
afloat now, and it will take a little time to bale her out. Bring the
lines, then, with their gaudy red and yellow flies--it may be that
a mackerel or two are to be caught in the loch; a novel of William
Black’s, “The Princess of Thule” or “MacLeod of Dare,” and a pocketful
of good cigars. It is hardly nine o’clock, yet the sun is dazzling
and hot in the doorway. There is just enough air moving to bring up
the fresh smell of the seaweed stirred by the rising tide. The white
sandy road is almost dry again after the rain which has fallen in the
night, and as the kine, after their morning milking, are turned into
the clover-field alongside, the foremost will hardly move from the gate
to allow the others to enter, but bury their muzzles at once in the
fresh, wet grass. The sea lies flashing and sparkling in the morning
sunshine, and, on the dark Kingairloch mountains opposite, here and
there the silver streak of a torrent still shows the effects of the
morning shower. A sunny quiet fills the air. The faint screaming and
splashing of gulls and sea-swallows far out over some shoal of fishes,
and the sound of the oars in the rowlocks of the distant boat, can be
distinctly heard, while the leisurely movements of the horse and cart
going down the road a quarter of a mile away are quite distinguishable.
The driver is whistling pleasantly; the tune is “Mo nighean donn
bhoidheach.” The last mists are leaving the mountain sides, and
everything promises a hot day. Even the soft white clouds far up in the
sky are every moment growing fainter, and already the thin shimmer of
heat is ascending from the dry-stone dyke beside the road. The brambles
on the other side of the dry, grassy ditch show profuse clusters
of bright red fruit, but there are no ripe berries to be seen--the
children pluck them long before they are black. The scarlet hips, too,
shine bravely on the sprays of hedgebrier, the tips of whose leaves
are just beginning to turn brown. A small blue butterfly flickers
across the road, and, rising at the dyke, is lost in a moment against
the blue of the sky; while a silent humble-bee comes by, alights on
the last empty bell of a seeded foxglove, and immediately tumbles out
again disgusted, to continue his researches farther on. Over the hedge
there, on the other side of the road, the oats seem yellow enough to
cut, and among them are still in flower a few yellow Marguerites. The
hill beyond glows purple yet with the heather, although its full bloom
is past. Here and there plants of it are flowering close to the dyke
by the roadside. It is the small sort, the kind the bees frequent, for
they can get into it--the bell heather flowers earlier, and is over now.

But here is our boat. She is already afloat, the mainsail and jib are
soon hoisted, there is just enough wind to carry her against the tide,
and Appin and Castle Stalker, the ruined stronghold of the Stewarts
of Appin, are slowly hidden by the point behind. On the right is the
green island of Lismore, low lying and fertile, with few houses visible
upon it; only the slate roof of Lady Elphinstone’s lodge flashes in the
sunlight like a crystal. And beyond and above tower the dark mountains
of Morven. To the south, in the offing, lie the islands of Easdale and
Luing, famous for their slates.

Down we drift, past the Black Isle, to the narrows of Eriska. The
tide is still running in towards Loch Creran, and the passage, which
otherwise would have been difficult among the eddies and currents,
is easily and quickly made. An immense volume of water must pour to
and fro through that narrow channel to fill the loch at every tide.
At these times the current rushes like a mill-race. We are inside
presently, and as the air is very warm, and a pleasant little bay with
a sandy beach lies close at hand on Eriska, there could be no better
opportunity for a bathe.

No sooner said than done. The boat is anchored a little way from the
beach, where through the clear green water the sandy bottom can be
seen some few fathoms below, and one after another enjoys a header
from the bow, or slips gently over the stern. Pleasant as Arcady and
utterly secluded is the spot; not even the crack of a gamekeeper’s
fowling-piece is to be heard on shore.

But what is this--that jig-jig-jigging of engines? A small steam yacht
is coming into the loch, and--gracious goodness! there are ladies on
board. To cover, all three, behind the boat, hang on by the gunwale,
and trust in Providence to keep the yacht at a respectable distance.
One has no ambition at such moments to court the suffrages even of the
most delectable society. But the danger moves past, and though the fair
ones on deck do smile at the phenomenal movements of our boat, and the
ominous absence of occupants, who is a whit the worse? They will laugh
with us, rather than at us, should we meet.

The breeze has freshened a little now, and will be enough to carry
us up the loch amongst the currents and against the outflowing tide.
Yonder goes the ferry-boat, crossing from Shian. It has a waggonette
and horses on board, and the sweeps carry it over but slowly. The long
low island there, with its few stunted bushes, is seldom visited,
and remains a favourite haunt of the graceful sea-swallows. Two
months ago every grassy ledge upon its sides would have its couple of
sea-swallow’s eggs. See yonder, just beyond the rocky point, swimming
quietly about, with watchful, intelligent eyes, there is the black head
of a seal.

As the boat gets round the end of Craigailleach, the ruin of the
ancient castle of Barcaldine, on the low neck of land across which
the road winds from Connal, comes into sight. In the days of which
Sir Walter Scott speaks in his “Lord of the Isles,” when against the
Bruce in Artornish Castle “Barcaldine’s arm was high in air,” there
was scantier cultivation around the site of that black stronghold. The
shrub ivy was not waving then from its beacon turret, and the retainers
whose thatched cottages are still scattered among the fields around
were rather caterans and pirates than peaceful crofters. Now, however,
as Mr William Freeland puts it--

      The freebooters, reiving and killing,
        No longer swoop down from their glens,
      But delve by the bothie and shieling,
        Or shepherd their flocks on the bens.

The mountains in front seem to rise higher as we approach, and to cast
a deeper silence on the narrowing water and motionless woods at their
base. Barcaldine House, as secluded and delightful a spot as any in the
Highlands, with its old-fashioned gardens and vineries, lies hidden
among these woods.

Far up on the purple hillside at the head of the loch the eye can make
out a lonely burying-place. A stone dyke guards the little enclosure
of quiet graves. The spot is visible for many a mile around, and its
presence ever in sight must have a tender and solemn effect in keeping
alive the memory of the dead. Every day, as the crofter toils in his
little field, or the shepherd takes the hill with his dogs, his eyes
will turn to it, and he will think of wife or child who lie in that
still, peaceful place, asleep under the calm sunshine and among the
heather. Only sometimes will it be hidden--when the soft, white,
trailing mists come down and weep their gentle tears upon the spot.

Directly in front, away beyond and above the other mountains, towers
Ben Cruachan, a monarch among the peers. And below, on the shore of the
loch, appears the long, low-roofed cottage, half covered a month ago
with crimson tropeolum, and half smothered among its roses, where lives
the author of the humorous and valuable “Notes from Benderloch.” Here
is our destination. Let down the mainsail, let go the jib, and we will
run ashore. It is not yet noon, and there are many hours before us to
spend in the beautiful Barcaldine woods.

TILL DEATH US PART.

“Is she better, Doctor?”

“No; worse. Can’t last through the night, I’m afraid.”

The forester’s wife pauses a moment, looking after the physician’s
carriage as it whirls out of sight in the gathering darkness along the
road; then, exclaiming sadly, “Poor, dear young lady!” she closes again
the heavy iron gates, and retires to her own happy hearthside within
the lodge.

Night has all but fallen, and though it is still only dusk upon the
open road outside, within the avenue the gloaming is already deepening
into mirk, and under the shadows of the limes it will soon be quite
dark. A quiet spring night. When the wheels of the doctor’s carriage
have retreated in the distance, no sound is to be heard amid the
shadows but the twitter of a blackbird settling itself again to roost
in its perfumed dreaming-place among the spruce branches, and the
silvery tinkle of a streamlet making its way at hand through the ferny
under-tangle of the wood. The air is rich with the fresh sweetness
of budding life--the breath of unseen primroses opening their creamy
petals upon dewy moss-banks in the darkness. Born amid the stillness,
new, vague hopes stir within the heart; everywhere seems the delicious
promise of the time of blossom and leaf that is to be; and the
motionless night itself seems conscious of the coming of desire. It is
a night to inspire a poet or a lover; every faint wood-scent, the cool
touch of the night air itself upon the cheek, bringing with it some
subtle suggestion, the more delightful that it is undefined, setting
the pulse of youth a-beating with thoughts of a glad to-morrow.

Alas for those to whom no morrow will come!

At the upper end of the long avenue a faint light is shining yet in two
windows of the many-gabled mansion-house. One of the windows is open,
and within, at a small table, leaning his head upon his hand, can be
seen the figure of a man. It is the master of the house. He has just
received the last sentence of the physician, “I can be of no further
service. The end will probably come before to-morrow”; and the words
are still in his ears, beating like a leaden pendulum against his
heart. Straight before him into the dark night he is gazing; but the
eyes that look are tearless; only the drawn line about his mouth and
the pitiful twitching of his lip bespeak the emotion that is working
within. Yet he is not altogether left to himself. The air from the open
window stirs his hair and fans his pale cheek--Nature, like a sweet and
gentle friend, would offer him the soothing of her sympathy. Probably
he is unconscious of it--drowning in the hopeless flood-tide of his
grief; but, with the gentle air stealing in from the darkness outside,
the influence of the great Reconciler, mother-heart of all mankind,
is already touching him. While his ear takes in the soft movements
of the nurse in the next room, tending all that is dearest to him on
earth, his heart, stirred unconsciously by the subtle suggestions of
the incoming night-scents, is travelling, torn with regret, through
the tender avenues of the past. And strangely fresh in every detail
reappear those scenes imprinted upon the pages of memory by the
sunshine of love.

He is in a cottager’s garden, listening, amid the hum of the hives
and the glory of old-fashioned wallflower borders, to the gossip of
the simple old soul who is showing him her little domain. There is
the quick trotting of a pony. A low phaeton drives past on the road
beneath. And he has seen and shared the smiling glance of a gentle,
lovely face--a sunny glimpse to be remembered. Again, he has been
picnicking with friends, a family party, on the shore of a Highland
loch, and has noticed with mingled admiration and resentment that while
all others have been seeking their own enjoyment, one pair of frank
and willing little hands has wrought the whole comfort of the group.
They are in the shallops, rowing home, and as, pulling at his oar, he
listens to the innocent freshness of a shy young voice singing some
Highland boat-song, he becomes conscious for the first time of a vista
before him of wondrous new and fair possibilities--of a path in life
which is not to be trodden alone. Once more. It is a secluded spot. He
has wandered in happy company, from his party. Clear as yesterday comes
back the memory of the scene. In front some tented waggons, rust-brown
with wandering years, trail down the woodland by-road. The gipsy woman
has taken his silver coin, and, with a keen, shrewd glance, has wished
the “lady and gentleman a happy bridal!” He has seized the moment, has
whispered the secret which was no secret, and has read in shining eyes
the answer of his hopes.

All that was a year ago, little more--woodland and lake and garden,
with a hundred other scenes and episodes as tender, which, crowding
back, fill his heart to bursting; and now----

He rises, closing the window, and passes into the adjoining room.

Treading softly on the thick carpet, a glance assures him that nothing
has altered in the sick-chamber since he left it with the physician.
Only amid the momentous stillness, in the subdued light by the fire,
the trim, white-aproned nurse is trying to read. A whisper to her--she
will be called if required; and, closing the door noiselessly behind
her, she leaves him to watch alone.

Alone, for the last time, with all that is dear to him, the flower that
is fading out of his life so soon! He turns to the bed. There, pale
with preternatural loveliness, her dark hair spread like a cloud upon
the pillow, lies the sunny sweetheart, the shy bride of a year ago.
A faint moan, the glistening of a tear between the closed eyelids,
betrays the grief that is haunting that strange shadowland between this
world and the next--grief for that which was not to be! He can look
no more! Sinking into a chair by the fire, he buries his face in his
hands. It is the hour of his despair.

Midnight has long passed; the fire is sinking unheeded in the grate;
and he has not moved.

“Arthur!”

In a moment he is by the bed, that thin, hot hand in his, gazing
heartbroken into the face of his wife. In those grey eyes of hers there
is no second thought. Love, for the time is short, has dropped his last
disguise, and looks forth from them with unutterable tenderness and
regret. “Arthur!” She lingers fondly upon his name, and her fingers
push the hair tenderly from his brow--“Arthur!”

But there is a sudden change. A look of terror springs to her eyes,
and she clings wildly to his arm. Is this the end? She would have
fallen back upon the pillow had not his arm been round her. With a
despairing effort, her eyes filling with tears, she articulates, “We
have--been--very--happy--my dear!” Their lips meet for the last
time--a long, long farewell. Then a second shadow passes over her face.
He lays her gently back upon the pillow. The wistful, eager look dies
away out of her eyes. It is all over. He is alone, kneeling by the bed,
his face pressed deep into his hands. A gust of wind, rising outside,
shakes the sash of the window; the crow of chanticleer is heard far off
at the stables: it is three o’clock, the coldest hour of the night.

And in the lodge at the foot of the avenue, at that hour, the young
forester’s wife, stirring softly in her sleep, presses the month-old
babe beside her closer to her heart.

A FOREST WEDDING.

Though it is not yet seven o’clock, the winter night, in this northern
parish, has quite closed in, and it is already very dark. When the sun
set, far in the south, some hours ago, its disc gleamed coppery red
through brown mist veils as of rising smoke, and the shepherd’s wife on
the moor, as she brought in her peats for the night, said she thought
there would be more snow before morning. It has not yet begun to fall,
however, when the minister, wrapped up to the ears in his heavy coat,
and his feet encased in strong, thick-soled boots, pulling on a pair
of rough worsted gloves, and calling his spaniel from her place on the
study hearth, sets out from his comfortable manse.

Presently, as he turns from the beaten highway into the snow-clad woods
of the manor, hearing the bell of the distant town steeple behind
him striking the hour, he gives an encouraging word to his dog, and
quickens his steps a little. As he passes the humble window of the
gate-lodge, he pauses a moment--there was a sound; yes, it is audible
again--a mother crooning softly over her child; and his eye glistens as
his ear catches the lullaby, old bachelor as he is. From the chimney
on the low roof, too, there steals down among the trees the savoury
fragrance of the evening meal. The father, one of the under-gamekeepers
on the estate, evidently has not come home yet, and his young wife is
waiting for him.

The sky hangs soft and very dark overhead, the tree-tops are all but
lost in it, and one can almost fancy he hears the drifting of the
coming snow. But all is silent, not a branch in the forest stirs, and
between the black tree-trunks the white sheet can be seen stretching
stainless and undisturbed on either hand into the mysterious depths of
the woods. The trees themselves, unshaken all these weeks by wind or
squirrel or woodbird, raise into the night their branches robed to the
remotest twig in the matchless lacework of the frost.

But see! Along the hollow, to the left, can be caught a glimpse of
the manor-house, its windows, most of them, aglow with light. A grey,
stately old place it is, in the midst of its woods, eloquent with the
memories of long-past centuries. Royalty has been entertained there in
bygone days, and in the woodland aisles around has echoed merrily the
laughter of many a gay party from the Court, distant only a morning’s
ride. But storm after storm has swept the land since then; that gay
Court’s palace lies a ruin now; and while the race of the humble
peasant still thrives in the manor woods, the race of the manor lord
and the race of the kings themselves of those days have passed from the
earth for ever.

There is no spot in so old a land but has its memories, sad and gay.
Somewhere in these woods, in days still farther gone, a national hero
was betrayed, and on the moorland ridge, a mile away, a king’s army
suffered defeat. But the minister passes on. His errand to-night is
neither to palace nor castle, yet it may be that the simple hearts he
is presently to unite will beat as happily under a lowly roof of thatch
as do those of the gentle owners in their mansion yonder.

By degrees, as he presses on, the path becomes rougher, the trees
deepen the darkness overhead, and hardly a former footstep has left its
trace in the undrifted snow. The solitude might almost be primeval,
so absolute is the silence in these untrodden recesses. The solitary
snapping, once, of a rime-laden branch has only testified amid the
stillness to the intensity of the frost. At last, however, the path
widens somewhat, there is a little clearing and a forsaken lodge, and
beyond, here and there in the open, gleam the scattered lights of the
village. A sequestered spot it is, bowered in summer by the whispering
woods, and in winter buried in the forest solitudes by the swathing
snow.

But there is merriment enough to-night in the little community; and
the frequent ring of laughter from the nearest cottage, as well as
the warm glow of firelight streaming from its threshold and windows,
deep-set under the thatch, tell where the festivities are going
forward. It is the cottage of the bride’s father: all the village has
assembled here to assist in the ceremony, and they are waiting now
for the minister. The laughter subsides as he lifts the latch and
enters, stamping in the doorway to shake the snow from his feet; and
all eyes are turned upon him, as the goodman of the house, a grizzled
forester of sixty winters, hastens forward with a welcome to help
him out of his coat. It is a comfortable scene, the interior of the
low-raftered kitchen, lit up rather by the warm glow of the open fire
than by the candles set on table and window-shelf. By the hearth are
gathered the older folk--the many-wrinkled granny, in comely white
mutch and kerchief; the few matrons, with smoothly-braided hair,
and little ornament, except a well-worn ring or two; and the men in
decent homespun; while farther back are grouped the more youthful
members of the party--broad-shouldered young fellows and merry-eyed
lasses, excited a little by the somewhat infectious inspiration of the
occasion. Everything in the humble apartment is as clean as housewifely
care can make it; not a speck is to be seen on the brown stones of the
floor, and above the black shining chimney-piece the brass candlesticks
glitter like gold. On the snowy dresser, below the well-filled
plate-rack, is piled in profusion the substantial fare which will do
duty later on. Meanwhile, on the white deal table in the middle of the
room is set only the well-worn family Bible.

The minister, with a kindly word, has shaken the hand of the somewhat
embarrassed bridegroom, and stands now, inquiring pleasantly after
granny’s eyesight, by the fire. There is a pause of expectancy, a
hurried messenger or two pass between the rooms, and then the bride, a
handsome young woman of twenty-two or so, is brought in by her mother
from “ben the hoose,” as the only other apartment is called. With a
look of happy pride at the object of his affection, the bridegroom
takes his place by her side at the farther end of the table, and the
minister, glancing round to see that all is ready, opens the Bible.

After a brief but earnest prayer, and the reading of a short passage of
Scripture, the good old man addresses them in a few solemn yet kindly
words. They are taking the most serious step in life; let them look to
Heaven for a blessing upon it. The future may bring them prosperity;
let them see that it does not cool their affection. It may also have
trials in store for them; let these be lightened by being shared
between them. Above all, let them remember to be open-hearted to one
another. Then he asks if they are willing to be wedded “for better or
for worse,” bids them join hands, engages in another most momentous
prayer, and finally declaring them man and wife, with the solemn
injunction, “Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder,”
ends the short ceremony.

Immediately there is a great stir, shaking of hands with the
bridegroom, and kissing of the bride; the gallant “best man,” somehow,
unwarrantably extending the salutation to the blushing bridesmaid. The
mother sheds a few quiet tears, and granny, by the fire, wakens up to
speak of her own wedding day.

But the proper papers have been signed, and the minister, followed to
the door by the overflowing thanks of the little family, and refusing
all offers of escort, leaves the homely company to its enjoyment--for
the dance will be kept up till a late hour in the morning. The night
air is bracing, after the warmth inside, and, as the sky has cleared a
little by this time, the pathway back through the woods will be better
seen by the silvery sparkle of the frosty stars.

LOCH LOMOND ICE-BOUND.

There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the
fog-laden atmosphere of Queen Street Station, Glasgow, on a winter
morning, and the frosty, bracing air of the country outside. Ever since
the train emerged from the murky gloom of the long city tunnel into the
open freedom of the frost-covered fields, the sense of exhilaration
has been increasing. Sounds of laughter from the compartments
before and behind bespeak the high spirits of the occupants; while
at every roadside station along the Clyde valley fresh parties of
pleasure-seekers, their cheeks red and eyes bright with the cold, have
added to the freight, and swelled the merriment. The ice on Loch Lomond
is “bearing,” and the clash of skates is in the air.

Slowly at last the train, crammed by this time with skaters of both
sexes and all ages, pants into the station at Balloch Pier. Before it
has stopped, the doors of the carriages swing open, and an eager crowd
swarms out upon the platform. The throng chokes the stairway down the
face of the pier, so many impatiently hasten back to the shore; there
is a scramble over a wire fence, a stampede across a well-trodden
stubble-field to the loch, and then the stream of enthusiasts disperses
in all directions to don the necessary foot-gear.

Different indeed is the scene now from what it was in summer! Then the
clear water glistened and twinkled in the sunshine, the white sail of
a boat slowly moved across the dark green of a distant island, and the
mountains beyond rose, purple and grey, into a fleckless sky; while one
of the little loch steamers at the pier blew clouds of steam noisily
from its funnel, as it took on board its gay crowd of tourists. Now no
lapse of water is to be heard upon the pebbles, not a whisper moves
among the frosted fretwork of the trees. The landscape everywhere
is draped and lifeless, the loch itself lies a level sheet of snow,
and far up yonder, above the dark narrows where the waters are still
unfrozen, Ben Lomond raises his shoulder, ermine-clad, into a darkling
heaven. The twin steamers, too, lie prisoned in the ice, crusted white,
and motionless as Lot’s wife.

If Nature herself, however, is crystallised into silence and
stillness, there is both movement and sound of another sort about. Here
at a run over the field to the ice comes a schoolboy, as eager as if
the whole day were not before him, his wooden skates clashing together
as he stumbles on the molehills. Farther off a young man and a maiden
are transacting in orthodox fashion the idyll of the ice, she seated
on what has ordinarily been a mooring post, and holding out a dainty
boot, while he, kneeling devotedly in the snow, buckles on her skate.
All along the shore, on every hillock that affords a seat, are groups
of eager enthusiasts, busy with straps and buckles; and the shrill
whirring sound of the ice tells that many of the new-comers are already
moving over it.

But the last refractory screw-nut is adjusted--Mercury has buckled on
his wings; and yonder, two miles away, lies Inch Murren. Each winter,
when the loch is frozen, the first person who crosses on foot to the
island receives a pair of deer antlers as a trophy; and often, before
the ice is very strong, the efforts of some bold skater to win the
honours are exciting enough. Since the trophy was won this year,[C]
however, thousands of pleasure-seekers have crossed the loch; venders
of hot coffee and biscuits have established themselves on the shore
of the island, under the ruined keep; and a rink of curlers has taken
possession of the little bay. Where the deer came down to drink in
summer, there mingles now the crackling roar of heavy stones hurled
along the ice, with shrieks of vulgar laughter as some conspicuous
skater comes to grief. The cries of the curlers themselves are loud
and puzzling enough. At the near end of the rink the leader, a stout,
grizzled countryman, shouts with many explanatory gestures to the
player at the far end to “Tak’ a wick aff the fore stane, and lie in
front to gaird.” The person addressed, evidently a clergyman (for on
the ice social distinctions are forgotten), sends his cheese-shaped
block of granite “birling” towards his instructor, and, as it comes
along, the cries of the players stationed on either side of the rink
with brushes to “soup her up,” and their vigorous efforts to smooth the
path before it, are exciting as well as amusing, until the stone comes
crashing in at last among the others round the mark.

    [C] 1882, I think.

The “roaring game” is perhaps more interesting to the player than to
the onlooker, but the enthusiasm it excites, and the exertion it
requires, are exactly suited to the season, and prepare its votaries to
enjoy most heartily the traditional “curler’s dinner” of corned beef
and greens.

One soon grows tired of the noise and stir around this oasis of the
ice. Indeed, the laughter and the movement seem almost sacrilege in
a place where so lately the autumn leaves dropped silently into the
clear brown water below, where the plash of a trout made stillness
felt, and the solitude was unbroken by the step of man. Away, then,
from the coffee-stands and the curling-rink, from the shouting of
the shinty-players, and the fragrance of intolerable cigarettes! The
loch is frozen all the way to Luss; last night’s wind has swept every
particle of snow from the surface; and to the little loch village, out
of sight in the bay ahead, stretch seven miles of ice, smooth as black
glass.

Easily as thought the skates curl over the keen ice. The air is clear,
cold, and bracing, with just a faint odour of the shore woods upon it;
and curve after curve on the “outside edge” adds, every moment, to the
exhilarating sense of power and the conscious poetry of motion. It
is a new and strange sensation, this flight for miles over ice whose
surface has till now known no invasion. One feels as an astronomer
must, when exploring new depths of Heaven--

      Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes,
        He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
      Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
        Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Lonely and far stretches the level realm of ice away northward to the
dark narrows of the loch, where, under the steep dark sides of the
mountains, the water is too deep to freeze. To terrible tragedy have
the black depths under foot been witness. Here it was that Sir James
Colquhoun, returning from a hunting party on one of the islands, in
his boat, deep-laden with deer, was caught by a sudden squall on the
loch and drowned, and it was long before the hidden depths gave up
their prey. For the waters that lie motionless now in their icy prison
are given to rise and rage at a moment’s warning; and many are the
fair pleasure freights they have swallowed. Across these waters, too,
in the days when might was right, and the Highlands lived by helping
themselves, have not the boats of the Red Macgregor swept down by
night from the narrows to pillage and burn? For the Rob Roy country
lies opposite among the mountains.

But away! away! this is the joyous motion of a bird, and the miles fly
under foot without effort. It is seven miles from Balloch; and the
fatigue of the distance has been trifling. A point of land, covered
with trees, runs out into the loch, and a mile beyond lies Luss.
Another turn, and a little bay is discovered, most like, in all the
world, a miniature scene from fairy-land. The glassy ice sleeps on the
crusted shore; birch and beech and hazel hang motionless around, a
delicate tracery of snow; not a squirrel moves; the silence is perfect.
The spot is under the spell of the Frost King. Not altogether, though,
for a robin flutters down with a twitter from a shaken spray, and,
proud of his scarlet breast, hops bravely out upon the ice.

At hand, however, appears the chimney of the inn, and--inspiring
sight!--there is smoke rising from it. The air of the loch is
appetising, and, as it is now almost five o’clock, something more solid
than a sandwich seems desirable. Unbuckle the skates, therefore, and,
following the windings of that narrow loch-side road among the trees,
let us awaken the hospitality of mine host. It will be dark before we
start for home; but the sky is clear, there will be a full moon, and,
under the scintillations of the frosty stars, it will be a merry party
that skims back over the ice by night to Balloch.

HALLOWMAS EVE.

“The good old customs of the country are passing away.”

No speech, perhaps, is oftener heard than this when, over the walnuts
and the wine, about Christmas time or Hallowe’en, the talk has turned
upon the subject of old-fashioned festivities. And the sentiment seldom
fails to evoke a sigh of regret, and to awake recollections of frolic
mirth enjoyed in lighter-hearted days. But while there is, without
doubt, truth in the remark, happily it is not altogether true. The
portly old gentleman who animadverts upon the subject is generally too
apt to take for granted that, because for some decades he has ceased
to share in these festal sports, the sports themselves have ceased
to be observed. If, however, the speaker were to return upon such a
night as All Hallow’s Eve to the village where perchance his youthful
years were passed, he might find that the quaint and merry customs he
laments do not altogether belong to the golden dust of long-forgotten
days. Though he himself has grown older and graver, the great heart of
the world has remained ever young; and ever still, as the traditional
occasions come round, there breaks forth amid its long-accustomed
scenes the ancient madcap carnival of mirth.

Not, indeed, quite as in bygone times is this festival of Hallowe’en
now observed. The witches no longer, as in days of yore, are believed
to hold their revels then upon the green-sward, and something of the
ancient superstition which otherwise lent awe to the eve of All Saints’
Day has been dispelled by modern education. But enough remains of
uncanny feeling to lend interest to the more mysterious proceedings of
the night; and the spirit of simple enjoyment may be trusted to keep
alive for its own sake most of the mirth-giving functions of the feast.
An institution which took its origin probably from some strange rite of
far-back pagan times, which has managed to survive countless changes of
thought, and, like a rolling snowball, to incorporate in itself traces
of the Crusades, of the mediæval church mysteries or miracle plays,
and of later witchcraft and elfin superstitions, must have a strong
hold somewhere upon human nature, and is not likely to disappear quite
at once even before the blast of the steam-engine and the roll of the
printing-press.

If one wishes to know how lads and lasses spent their Hallowe’en in
Ayrshire a hundred years ago, he has but to read the famous description
of the occasion written by the glowing peasant-pen of Burns; and
cold indeed must be his imagination if he does not catch from that
description something of the frolic spirit of the night. In these lines
he may hear the timid lasses “skirl” as their sweethearts surprise them
pulling the fateful corn-stalks; he may watch Jamie Fleck secretly
sowing his handful of hemp-seed, and waiting for the image of his
destined true-love to appear behind him in the act of harrowing it; he
may see Meg in the empty barn, winnowing her “wechts o’ naething,” and
likewise waiting for her true-love’s presentment; and he may laugh at
the mishap befalling the wanton widow as she dips her left sleeve in
the rivulet at the meeting of three lairds’ lands. But one must not
think that these time-honoured rites are all unpractised now.

Let him step into some great farm-kitchen of the Lothians, with its
red fire roaring up the chimney, its plate-racks gleaming on the walls,
and dressers, tables, and chairs clean as scrubbing can make them, and
he will find in practice bits of traditional folklore and traits of
human nature equally worthy of the poet’s pen.

The place for the moment is empty, the lamps shining from their bright
tin sconces on the walls upon unoccupied wooden settles and chairs;
for lads and lasses together have betaken themselves to pull each his
particular prophetic stock in the kailyard at hand. But presently,
with shouts of laughter, they come streaming in from the darkness;
and shrieks of merriment greet the discovery of the fortune which has
befallen individual members of the company. For, according as the
stock lighted on in the dark turns out to be straight or crooked, and
its taste sweet or bitter, so the appearance and disposition of its
possessor’s future mate will be; and according as earth has clung to
the uptorn root or not will the pockets of the future pair be well
filled or the reverse. A merry party these men and maidens make,
bringing in with them, as they enter, a breeze of the cool night air,
and a breath of the sweet, fresh-smelling earth. And from the flaming
cheeks and sparkling eyes of at least one of the laughing girls, it is
to be doubted that she has met outside with somewhat warmer and more
certain assurance of the personality of her future partner in life than
is likely to be afforded by her stock of curly kail.

Another method of divination, however, presently engrosses all
attention indoors. Three bowls are set out on the hearth--one full
of clean water, one muddy, and the remaining vessel empty. One after
another each lad and lass is blindfolded, the position of the bowls is
changed in thimble-rigging fashion, and he or she is led forward and
invited to place a hand in one. According as the dish chosen proves
dirty, clean, or empty, will the inquirer of the Fates marry a widow or
a maid, or remain a bachelor; and shrieks of merriment are occasioned
by the appropriate mishaps which befall the most confident.

Then there is the burning of nuts to be done in the great
kitchen-fire--a method of discovering whether the future wedded state
is to be one of peace or discord. And it is amusing to see the quietest
of the maids drop two nuts side by side into a red corner of the
coal, blushing at the guesses made by her merry companions, but shyly
whispering to herself, “This is Patey and this is me,” and watching
with bashful eagerness as the two take fire together. Puff! Alas for
her hopes, poor child! “Patey” has shot away from her side; and the hot
tears are woefully near her eyes as she notices that he has settled
down to burn by the nut of her neighbour. May her sorrows, sweet lass,
never have darker cause than this imaginary presage of losing a fickle
lover!

And now, by way of supper, a mighty platter of “champed” potatoes
is placed upon the table--a pile mountain high, in which are hidden
somewhere a ring, a sixpence, a thimble, and a button. The lamps are
put out, each person is armed with a spoon, and in the uncertain
light of the glowing fire the mystic procession moves round the table
in single file. Each one as he passes the platter takes a spoonful
of potatoes, and he or she who finds the ring is fated to be first
married. The sixpence is an augury of wealth, and the finding of
the thimble or the button is, according to the sex of the finder,
an indication that he or she will marry a maiden spouse or will die
single.

But, listen! There is a sudden loud knocking at the door. It heralds
the time-honoured visitation of the Guizards, a ceremony annually
renewed by each succeeding generation of village boys. In they stalk,
got up in grotesque improvisations of mumming costume, each armed with
a wooden sword, and carrying a ghostly lantern hollowed out of a giant
turnip. “Here comes in Galoshin,” as that individual himself informs
the company--being doubtless the traditional representative of some
forgotten Templar Knight; and presently he is engaged in a sanguinary
hand-to-hand encounter with another wooden-sworded champion upon the
floor. Many are the bold words that are said and the doughty deeds
that are done; and through the whole performance one may see, as Scott
remarked in a note to “Marmion,” traces of the ancient monkish plays
and the revels of the mediæval Lord of Misrule. At the end the players
are contented with a reward of apples and nuts, and a share in their
elders’ merriment.

Tubs full of water are placed on the floor, and dozens of red-cheeked
apples set swimming in them; and immediately a wild scene of revel
ensues, as all and sundry, men and maids, on their knees, seek to
snatch the floating apples with their teeth. Many an unexpected ducking
is got, and shrieks of laughter greet each mishap and each ineffectual
effort to secure a prize. Then there is a wild game of blind man’s
buff, led off by Galoshin himself, who turns out, now that his burnt
cork and whiskers have been washed off, to be one of the younger men
of the house, and the soul of all the fun. And from the sly fashion
in which he avoids other quarry, and keeps hemming one rosy little
maid into corners, compelling her to spring shrieking over settles and
chairs, it may be gathered that the knowing fellow is no more blinded
than he wishes himself to be.

And so the night goes on, a night of whole-hearted and innocent
mirth--enough to prove that the spirit of old-fashioned revelry is by
no means dead, and that, for at least one night in the year, the young
blood of Lowland and Lothian still can make as much and as joyous
merriment as ever did its progenitors a hundred years ago.

HOGMANAY.

Conspicuous among the folk-customs which, north of the Tweed, have
survived from the remotest antiquity, remains that of welcoming with
wassail and good wishes the birth of the New Year. To all appearance
a pagan custom, dating from the pre-Christian past, it probably owes
its permanence to instincts acquired amid the superstitions of the
Dark Ages. Of late years, it is true, under the influence of southern
fashion, the festival of Christmas has seemed to be superseding that
of New Year’s Eve. But, as with many other picturesque and interesting
customs of Scotland, the older observance remains yet deeply rooted in
the heart of the people, and, having already survived so many changes
of habit and creed, may be expected to outlive even this latest inroad.

There is much to be said, too, for the keeping of Hogmanay. Christmas,
indeed, is the commemoration of a great religious event, and even in
the North it appears interesting and appropriate enough as a Church
festival; while to those with whom its observance has been a national
and family custom it contains, of course, an ample significance. But
to people who have inherited the instinct with their blood, the end of
the year remains a more fitting time for recalling the deeds and the
days that are past; and the keeping of Hogmanay awakens, north of the
Border, a subtle train of early feelings and associations--the pensive
charm and sweetness of “auld lang syne.” Scarcely a dwelling is there,
cottage or hall, in the breadth of all broad Scotland, which has not,
time out of mind, on this night of the year witnessed some observance
of the ancient and pleasant festival. Alike under gilded ceilings and
roofs of thatch there is to be heard then the toasting of old memories
and the pledging of health and fortune to the house and its occupants
throughout the dawning year. About every village cross, too, as the
last moments of the year approach, the young men of the neighbourhood
have ever been wont to gather to greet the incoming day with shouts of
rejoicing and with the curious traditional custom of “first-footing.”
Even in the cities, where contact with the world tends greatly to
obliterate such folk-customs, it is curious to see the ancient festival
year after year assert itself, its observance the better assured,
probably, because it brings back to those who attend it the scenes and
memories of earlier, and, perhaps, happier days.

Ever with the same details the time-honoured proceeding may be
witnessed on the night of any 31st day of December at the Cross of the
ancient city of St Mungo.

Some time before midnight the roar of the day’s traffic has died out of
the streets. The great warehouses are closed, and their windows gaze,
like sightless eyes, into the deserted thoroughfares. To one imbued
with the spirit of the hour, it is as if the city herself were thinking
of the past; and the sudden sweep of wind that comes and dies away
seems a sigh of regret for her departed glories. Many memories cluster
about this ancient heart of Glasgow; and at such an hour, and upon
such a night, it would seem little more than natural if the historic
figures of the past should move again abroad. Strangely enough, too,
the creatures of imagination present a no less tangible presence to
the mind’s eye than the real persons of bygone days. Behind the tall,
limping figure of Sir Walter Scott, a curious visitor here, the equally
immortal Bailie picks his steps; and as the bold Rob Roy strides past
into the shadow, there is heard the tramp of Cromwell’s bodyguard
and the clatter of the Regent Moray’s cavalry. For it was out by the
Gallowgate here, and across the river by the Briggate, that the troops
of the Protestant lords marched in 1568 to the battle of Langside; and
at the head of Saltmarket the Protector Cromwell quartered himself