Song and scenery; or, A summer ramble in Scotland

Front matter

G o

G^

SONG AND SCENERY;

Chapter I. Page

Society at Sea — A Herald of approaching Death — Paths of the Ocean — Ireland — Lough Foyle — First sight of Scottish Land and Sea^Firth of Clyde, 9

CHAPTER IL

General Features of Scottish Scenery --Compared with Switzerland — First sight of Edinburgh — Hawthornden — Roslyn — ■ William Dunbar — Abbotsford, . . . . . .20

CHAPTER IIL

Melrose — Cowdenknowes — Thomas of Erceldoune — Hawick— Teviotdale — John Leyden — Jedburgh — Kelso — Thomas Pringle — Berwick — Tweedside, 33

CHAPTER IV.

To Lindisfarne — The Island — The Ruins — The Missionaries from lona — Aidan — Finan — Conflict with Canterbury — Cuthbert — Posthumous Adventures of St. Cuthbert — Fate of Holy Island — Poetry about it, 44

Contents

CHAPTER V.

PAGE

Eskdale — Kirkconnel — Annandale— The Bruces — Ettrick— -The

Preface

A wide and interesting topic lies in the relations of man to his material abode. This volume touches only one point of it, and that in the slightest and most incidental way.

The bonds of affection between us and external nature are of our own creating, are the tenderest and most controlling over those in whom imagination has the greatest power ; and yet are most practical for all ; and, in their various degrees, represent the intellectual character of nations. The love of a people for the land of their birth and residence is the spring of some of the noblest and purest features of human nature, and is strongest in the best.

The scenery of a country always imprints itself more or less upon national character, while the character of an imaginative people arrays itself around their scenery, and clothes it like a garment. All their own most pleasing and highly valued thoughts and feelings they impute to their native land : they animate it with their own lives ;

PREFACE.

and their own noblest exploits, their heroism and their piety emblazon its localities. A reciprocity exists between a people and the land they occupy ; but that which is given varies, in relation to what is received, in proportion to the degree of intellectual activity and culture. Stupid barbarians accept little, and return less. From them earth receives no attractive colors of human adventure, or of gentle and lovely affections. An educated and imaginative people identify their land with themselves and their history, and receive from it new inspiration for enterprise and virtue.

Man and external nature, as seen in the light of imagination, are the two hemispheres of the poetical world ; and that, no matter what the actual style of the scenery may be, — the rich plains of northern Italy, the blooming farms of southern England, or the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy. It is a mistake to conceive of mountain countries as alone the abodes of song. The scenes most familiar to Shakspeare's eye, perhaps all he ever saw, are rich and fair, but of low level, nowhere more than rolling or hilly; and, although the poets of northern Italy had the Alps and Apennines in sight, it is remarkable how little they made of them. Their poetry finds its favorite themes among the cities and the plains. On the other hand, the poets of Greece, of northern England and of Scotland abound in imagery drawn from their picturesque scenery.

PREFACE.

They never tire in describing or alluding to their mountains, lakes, rivers, woods and seas, and the various atmospheric changes, the effects of sunshine and cloud among them.

It may be as benevolent an arrangement of the Creator, as it is certainly a very remarkable fact, that some of those lands which have least to give for man's material being, elicit in the highest degree the allegiance of his heart. Such I think is the case of Scotland. The Scottish muse seems to love the border region where man and nature meet, and where nature exacts the most disinterested attachment.

This love of material earth, this affectionate drapery thrown around it — notwithstanding Scotland's Puritanism — may it never be less, — I cannot think of as other than practical gratitude to the Creator, and would fondly believe that a pure enjoyment of the works of God in this world must have some tendency to prepare the spirit for the fuller enjoyment of them in a world which is holier and more beautiful. It surely added nothing to the sanctity of the most laborious saint of the middle ages that he was able to travel a whole day by the lake of Geneva without looking at it.

Princeton, September, 1873.

SONG AND SCENERY;

OR,

A Su7ii77ier Ramble iit Scotland.

CHAPTER I.

FROM NEW YORK TO THE CLYDE.

SOCIETY AT SEA — A HERALD OF APPROACHING DEATH— PATHS OF THE OCEAN — IRELAND- LOUGH FOYLE — FIRST SIGHT OF SCOTTISH LAND AND SEA — FRITH OF CLYDE.

PLEASANTER company has seldom come together than that which met in the saloon of the steamship ''Anglia^' at noon of the nth May, 1872. From various States of the Union, from Canada, from Wales, from Ireland, from Scotland and from Germany, brought together only by the pursuit of their own respective ends, they showed from the first a light-hearted gentle courtesy, and sincere purpose to make each lO A SUMMER RAMBLE IN SCO 7 'LAND.

Other happy. A Hvely Httle steamer, crowded with friends of some of the passengers, ornamented with a semi-rainbow of flags, and resonant with song, accompanied us down the bay. Before reaching Sandy Hook, she came alongside, and received some who had remained with us, wilhng to postpone their parting to the last. After we had passed that final point of land, she closed in once more, and greeted us with the hearty chorus of " Auld Langsyne." Our pilot then left us, and with a farewell from the mouth of her cannon on the part of the ''Anglia^' and three sonorous roars from her engine, responded to with three emulous screams and a yell from our lively little convoy, we parted — the latter to return to the busy haunts of men, and we to pursue our lonely way into the wilderness of waters.

Much as has been written and sung, and that very spiritedly, about "Life on the Ocean Wave," and of being ''Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," of " A wet sheet and a flowing sea," and all that, it must be admitted that the first experience of landsmen on the ocean wave is anything but poetical. The heaving breast of the mighty flood has very uncertain movements. For one accus-

NEW YORK TO THE CLYDE. jj

tomed to the steady land, to feel the footing- upon which he treads sinking and rising and rolling beneath him, overturns all his ideas. It effects, in some sense, a change in the constitution of his being — a radical revolution, which turns the world upside down.

Our company was entertainingly varied, yet harmonious. Our captain, the most conspicuous figure, strong, burly and kind, ever on the alert, ever considerate of those under his care, yet ready to unbend in jocular conversation, won the respect and grateful affection of all. Some of our number were in pursuit of health ; some of knowledge ; some on business, crossing the ocean as they would the street to negotiate a promising bargain ; some of foreign birth, long resident in America, going to revisit the scenes of their childhood ; some on their way to the diamond mines of South Africa ; some to pursue the study of art in the galleries and schools of Europe ; one young lady to complete a musical education already apparently well matured ; one gentleman, a professional singer of the Parepa Rosa Troupe, to join the prima donna in some new engagement ; and four young ladies to make the tour of Europe by them-

12 A SUMMER I^ AMBLE IN SCOTLAND.

selves — recent facilities for travel having rendered the attendance of a gentleman unnecessary to a lady's safety or comfort. An editor, a professor, and three clergymen are running off on a vacation trip ; and two young gentlemen, from the college of Gen. Lee, determined really to see the world, propose to ramble ad libitum through Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, returning home by way of San Francisco and the Pacific Railroad. All with different aims, but all, for the time being, harmonised in the one purpose of making the passage of the ocean as tolerable as they can.

With musical instruments on board, and no little musical talent, we were not lacking in the means of spending time pleasantly, and occasionally aimed at something better than killing it — the ordinary occupation of passengers at sea. For example, one or two enterprising spirits got up one evening a public entertainment for the benefit of the British Life Boat Association. It consisted of vocal and instrumental music, readings and recitations, grave, gay, tender and severe. Some of the songs were executed in really superior style ; but it docs not need high art to make people happy, when all are disposed to be pleased,

NEW YORK TO THE CLYDE. jo

and every one acts his part as well as he can, without pretending to more. The amount raised was a very respectable sum, which may be the means of saving some life endangered by the stormy deep. An entertainment so successful was confidently repeated, without the conditions of benevolence or payment ; and pleasure given and received united all in the bonds of intimacy, which would have taken months of acquaintance upon land to tie.

The next day after leaving New York being Sunday, there was divine service on board, but few were in condition to attend upon it. Next Sunday the congregation was large and reverential. If on any occasion the propriety of immediate trust in God is enforced by the circumstances of a man's life, it is when he travels over the wide waste of waters, with only half an inch of iron between him and death, and when any one of a hundred conceivable accidents might carry him instantly to the bottom of the deep. And yet that tumultuous and angry sea is not a more certain enemy of life than is many a one which we carry unawares within us. We had several services ; and all the clergymen took part in

I A A SUMMER RAMBLE IN SCOTLAND.

them, save one. The case of that one was the only shadow of sadness which fell on our community. An interesting young Irishman, who had just completed the theological course of study at Princeton, was returning to his native land, well equipped for the work of the gospel ministry. Endowed with information, both popular and recondite, much beyond the routine of the schools, his wit and keen good sense, with an easy but imobtrusive eloquence, soon made him a favorite. He and I were one day, in his state-room, in full flow of conversation. He had been entirely well since leaving America. I was getting well. We were expressing our gratification that we could now enjoy each other's society. Suddenly his face flushed an expression of astonishment and alarm. A pause of a moment, and the red stream from his lips stained the white basin. We exchanged looks. It needed no more. From that hour I never left his bedside for more than a brief time while he remained on board. The hemorrhage recurred several times. He was always cheerful, and often disposed to converse — a disposition which I endeavored to restrain. When we entered Lough Foyle, a gentleman going to Belfast undertook to accom-

NEW YORK TO THE CLYDE. jc

pany him to his father's house. After we had helped him on board the Httle steamboat and it was turning away, I saw him seated on deck. He looked up with an expression of tenderness, but smiled not ; nor intimated any farewell. I never saw him again. We corresponded while I was on the Continent. A long silence ensued. And then came a newspaper notice of his death — the history of that bright life, which seemed the promise of a more than common career, all summed up in two lines.

The paths of ocean, to the great steamships which every day traverse them, are no longer varying and uncertain. With the far-seeing eye of the magnet, and the strong arm of steam, the iron ship holds her determinate way, for thousands of miles, like a locomotive on a railroad. In the face of head winds and an adverse rolling sea, continued daily from the time we left the coast of America, the gallant ''Anglia' plowed her way steadily and straight onward, as if she had seen and had never taken her eye off the point of her destination.

One morning we awoke with a sense of relief, dressed without staggering, and deliberately at our respective convenience, ascended to the upper deck. The sky was clear, and though still early morning, the sun was up. There was only a gentle breeze, scarcely enough to ruffle the surface of the water. And yonder, on the right, are the bold headlands of Ireland. Our ship has seen aright ; and over hundreds on hundreds of miles of sea has aimed her course with precision to the true point. Onward still she sweeps, by the power of her throbbing heart of steam, within full sight of the land, the cloud-capped mountains of green Innisfail, past one headland after another between Innistrahull and Malin Head, round Innishowen, and into the broad entrance of Lough Foyle, and then more slowly by old Greencastle and Magilligan's Point, to Moville.

The magnificent beauty of Lough Foyle took most of us by surprise. On either side bounded by mountains, it extends to a width similar to that of Haverstraw Bay on the Hudson. From their base about three-fourths of the way to the top, the mountains are cultivated, and the humble but neat little farm houses are numerous, and climb up their sides nearly as far as cultivation goes.

At Moville, we part with those of our company whose destination is L-eland. A small steamer

NEW YORK ro THE CLYDE. 1 7

comes out, and takes them up to Londonderry, whence by railway they reach their respective points of aim.

Turning out of the Lough we sail near by the shore, round the Giant's Causeway, between Rathlin and the mainland ; and then from off Fair Head strike across the Northern channel to the Mull of Cantire. The Western Isles of Scotland, far in the distance, through the bright transparent atmosphere, had been in sight from early morning ; we now surrendered Ireland for them. Passing near by the wild and rugged promontory of Cantire, and the little island of Sanda, we made a straight course for Arran, having the singular rock of Ailsa on the right. And now the distant coast of Ayrshire came more and more distinctly into view, its highly cultivated lands, its green and plowed fields, surmounted in the far back-ground by the blue summits lying at the sources of the Doon and the Ayr. On the left rose the long irregular array of peaks, among which stand wildest and highest the Goat Fells of Arran. It was a delightful sail, on that clear and beautiful afternoon, up the magnificent Frith of Clyde, hour after hour through ever-varying scenery.

The sun went down behind the peaks of Arran as we entered the channel between the Island of Bute and the Cumbraes, but the long twilight of this Northern latitude deepened slowly. On either hand the lofty shores seemed gradually to draw nearer, and new mountain tops rose dimly before us. Sailing on into the depths of new scenery, we passed from the wild and picturesque into the mysterious. And as the shadows deepened, and the scenery ceased to be more than cloudy outlines and dark masses, there flashed up in the distance long vistas of lights, whose reflection danced upon the water, and above the dusky tops of the hills, far on the northern sky, still lay the pale ray of the lingering twilight. We sought expression for our happiness in song. A few voices, richly endowed and cultivated, spoke for all, and those who listened accorded with and rested in the music as the expression of their own feelings. But music and conversation gradually subsided, and one after another of the company withdrew, though some continued gazing shorewards in silence, and enjoying the beautiful and long-protracted twilight until it passed away into their dreams.

NEW YORK TO THE CLYDE. Iq

When morning dawned upon us, we were moored in the Clyde, surrounded by the wharves and residences of a busy city ; and though sorry to bring to an end the friendships formed on the voyage, and to say good-bye to the ''Anglia^' yet deeper feeHngs and purposes immediately asserted their place. We had reached a land which all were impatient to see, and which to many of us was hallowed by the sanctity of " Home."

Chapter II

GENERAL FEATURES OF SCOTTISH SCENERY- COMPARED WITH SWITZERLAND — FIRST SIGHT OF EDINBURGH — HAWTHORNDEN — ROSLYN — WILLIAM DUNBAR — ABBOTSFORD.

GOTLAND is the land of the picturesque. When I left it, now many, many years ago, only a corner of its least celebrated quarter had fallen under my observation. With that little corner I had nothing to compare. And in later times my recollections of it were cautiously toned down, from suspicion of youthful exaggeration. Ere I saw it again, chance even more than design had taken me through various countries, among others Savoy, Italy, and Switzerland, celebrated for attractions of scenery. It was with a full breadth of delight that after all, when I looked again upon my native land, I found it

THE WEST HIGHLANDS. 21

more picturesque than recollection had dared to paint it.

The further I pursued my journey the more was I impressed with the fact that the land of my birth is a beautiful land. From Inverness to Berwick-on-Tweed, its whole eastern coast is richly productive and cultivated in the highest style of science. The same culture covers the whole breadth of the island on the Forth and Clyde, and much of the Southwest. But most of the midland, and all the West Highlands are mountainous, abounding in rugged scenery and the baldest desolation.

The grandeur of the Bernese Alps, or the Alps of Upper Savoy, is overwhelming ; Scotland has nothing to compare with them. But Switzerland is not so desolate as the West Highlands of Scotland. Every place that can sustain culture is cultivated even to the verge of the everlasting snow; and in some places, where there is naturally no soil, it has been collected from among the rocks, carried up and deposited on terraces. In the Highlands of Scotland no such struggle is maintained. Belonging to a few large owners, the country is abandoned to its native wildness,

A SUMMER RAMBLE IN SCOTLAND.

as a great hunting ground. Only in the naturallyfertile glens is any culture to be discovered. One may stand upon a mountain and look, as far as the human eye can see in all directions, over that wilderness of dark, rocky, heathery mountains, with the grey mists flitting about them, intersected in every direction with deep glens, or with inlets of the sea winding away far into the land, and not behold one green field or cultivated spot. And yet when you travel through those wildernesses, you come occasionally, in the depths of the glens, upon a tasteful villa or a palace, surrounded by its pleasure grounds ; but quite as often upon the remains of earlier power and splendor, in the ruins of some ancient castle perched upon its dizzy steep.

The principal features of Switzerland are overwhelming grandeur of scenery, and the industry of the human hand in conflict with Nature, and mastery over every rood of ground that can be mastered ; of Scotland, the wildness of Nature abandoned to herself wherever science and capital cannot make their profits. In the one country, humble but successful industry amid the most sublime of scenery ; in the other, scientific culture.

THE WEST HIGHLANDS. 23

where science has scope ; elsewhere, the bleakness and wildness of desolation, with here and there a palace. The present condition of Switzerland is, I think, better than that of the Scottish West Highlands, where great landowners have expelled their tenantry to make room for game ; but the latter country has, so far, the advantage in the striking contrasts which constitute the picturesque. It was not, however, by the natural scenery of Scotland that my admiration was kindled so much as by its associations with poetry. There are other countries whose history is more interesting and of higher value, and some whose natural attractions may excel it in any one of its features ; but none, I believe, except Greece, is so completely covered with poetic coloring. England has some poets greater than Scotland can claim ; but her land is not so swathed in song and its kindred music so cherished by her peasantry. The poets of Scotland have many of them been themselves peasants, and in a singular degree have wedded their respective localities to their verses. In the Southwest, you are in the land of Burns ; in the Highlands of Ossian, for no question of authorship extinguishes the poems, and they belong to the

24 A SUMMER /GAMBLE IN SCOTLAND.

scenery ; from Perthshire eastward, and southward to the EngHsh border, you are under the wizard spell of Scott ; and so elsewhere, every locality has its presiding genius of greater or less reputation. When a traveller comes in sight of Edinburgh, from either north or south, he is reminded of its picture in ''Marmion," in which the poet gives vent also to his own enthusiasm —

"Where the huge castle holds its state, And all the steep slope down, Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, Piled deep and massy, close and high ; Mine own romantic town."

And as he draws near to its outskirts, perhaps he feels like striking up that old fashionable song,

" Within a mile of Edinburgh town,"

if he has music in his voice to match the charming tune. As he ascends from the railway station into Princes Street, the first object to arrest his attention is the Gothic monument of Sir Walter Scott ; and as he traverses that fashionable thoroughfare to the westward, he passes the monumental statue of Allan Ramsay, and a most spirited counterfeit in bronze of Professor Wilson. As he pursues his walks from day to day through the streets, and up

and down the steeps of that really romantic town, and in its old churchyard, and its castle, and its palace, he feels himself lost among the multitude of classic memories. Great as the amount of prose to which Edinburgh is related, its affinities seem nearer to poetry. The very mists which float about the summit of the Pentland Hills, Arthur's Seat, and Salisbury Crags, seem to be of the cloud-land of fancy, rather than of the material of earthly fogs.

Southward from Edinburgh, a few miles on the road to Peebles, the train stopped at a station for Hawthornden. The name was poetry, but it was familiar, as connected with the life of William Drummond. I stepped out, and inquired the way to his house. It was easily found. Many other travellers had made the same inquiry. Two hundred years have not effaced the memory of the gentle poet from the minds of his countrymen. A walk of a short distance along the public road brought me to a gate on the left hand. Upon entering and paying the fee, the porter handed me a ticket with directions. The poet's house, it seemed, was a fashionable pilgrimage, worth paying something to see. Along a fine carriage road I proceeded through a lawn, bordered and interspersed with trees, the whole rapidly inclining downward to the west, until I was soon in a glen considerably below the general level of the country, but still in well-kept pleasure grounds. At the end of che carriage road stood the house, on the brink of a lofty precipice over the Esk, which here runs in a deep ravine, both sides of which are covered with trees. Hawthornden is a charming spot for any one enamored of seclusion in the bosom of Nature, the very place for a poet like William Drummond. A more romantic combination, within small space, of all the elements of "picturesque scenery is no where to be found than is presented by the banks of the Esk," at, and in the neighborhood of Hawthornden. Everything about the place is, after the lapse of so many generations, still redolent of the poet. Here is still the seat beneath the shade where he was sitting when Ben Johnson, who had walked all the way from London to see him, arrived, and here the trees planted by his own hand are still growing.

His house was built upon the foundation, and took in a part of the old castle which in mediaeval times stood on the edge of the cliff; and beneath

ROSLYN CASTLE. 27

it are the caverns which once gave protection to the occupants of the castle in times of danger. They have been roughly hewn out by art, with openings in the face of the precipice for admission of air and light. Beneath the first, there is a second story down about half way to the bed of the river. Within later days the whole has been touched by the genius of one greater than Drummond. In the ballad of *' Rosabelle," the mysterious light portentous of evil to the house of St. Clair,

Which "glared on Roslyn's castled rock," Which " ruddied all the copsewood glen.

Was seen from Dryden's groves of oak, And seen from caverned Hawthornden."

Decending by a rustic footpath, I continued my walk through the "copsewood glen" until I reached the banks of the Esk ; then crossing the little river by a footbridge, I followed the western side in a similar way up the stream among the rocks and trees. A guide encountered me, whose services I declined, advising him to wait for a party coming on behind me, who most likely needed his help more than I desired it. The path itself led to Roslyn Castle, a stout old ruin on its isolated rock, overhanging the Esk, and connected with the country on the same side of the river only by a bridge. But its principal charm for me was what it derives from the beautiful old song and tune which bear its name, dear to me from the recollections of boyhood.

After wandering all around and in the dank and gloomy ruin, I ascended the hill, on which stands Roslyn Chapel. That little church, the only part ever erected of a great design, is one of the most exquisitely finished and adorned to be found in Europe, and still in perfect preservation. But profoundly sensible as I was of all that beauty hewn in stone, I thought more of the poetry which clothed it, and wedded it to the fortunes of the St. Clairs of Roslyn Castle, as I stood over the vault where

" Roslyn's chiefs uncofifined lie; Each Baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his iron panoply,"

and of the mysterious light which issued from it on the eve of misfortune to that illustrious family, when it

** Seemed all on fire within, around Deep sacristj and altar's pale, Shone every pillar foliage bound,

And glimmered all the dead men's mail ;

WILLI A M D UNBA R. 20

Blazed battlement and pinnet high, Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair ,

So still they blaze when fate is nigh The lordly line of high St Clair."

Leaving Roslyn Chapel I crossed to the eastern side of the Esk, and joined the railroad at Roslyn station.

By another road, a few miles farther to the east, I went on southward, whereby I had on my left the old town of Dalkeith and its palace, in early times the seat of the Earls of Morton, the scene of many a stirring event in Scottish history, and now the residence of the Duke of Buccleuch. But taking a tenderer hold of my heart than either nobility or statesmanship, not very far off in the same direction lay the birthplace of William Dunbar, four hundred years ago the greatest poet of his time in the English language. I had that morning left behind me the scene of more than one or two of his poems in the old palace of Holyrood.

While still meditating upon the great gifts and humble fortunes of him, who in more senses than one, had "fallen on evil times ;" and how in those ages when genius had to look to patronage for support, the Samsons of intellect were often degraded, seduced by necessities to *'play on to make" sport for Philistines, I discovered that with the rapidity of steam we were already desending by the course of the little river Gala. There came up the associations of poetry, but, in this instance, of popular song, in the once familiar words and music of " Braw Lads o' Gala Water." Gala, however, has other associations now, near its junction with the Tweed, not so attractive to the fancy, though more profitable to the body, in the cloth factories of Galashiels.

But by way of balance to that too material good, a short distance up the Tweed from where the Gala enters it, stands Abbotsford, that "romance in stone and lime," created by the master of modern romancers. The sight of that structure calls up a world of poetry to the mind of any one acquainted with the writings of its author — and who is not .? It was built with poetry, it was furnished with romance, itself the birthplace of the most fascinating and manly of romances, and the scene of one, the most manly of all, the tragic epic of the author's own last years.