Clough, who sets his heroes to “verify Black,” leaves his own principal scene not clearly identified, which one guesses at as somewhere on the western edge of Atholl. The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich itself lay far in the Western Highlands; but was it not in Rannoch that Philip met his first charmer? Towards this region we turn on the other side of Pitlochrie, where open the softer scenes of the Tummel, its Falls that pour over almost the central boss of Scotland, its lovely swelling into a lake, the thinning and roughening of its valley below the head of Schiehallion, as it rises to Loch Rannoch, a long sheet of water darkening under fragments of the Black Wood, and reaching up to the barren moor of Rannoch, most desolate region in Britain. This was once shaded by that great Caledonian Forest, of gloomy renown in mediæval romance, where Ariosto brings one of his heroes, following tracks of Arthur, Lancelot and Gawaine—
In those woods he might be sure
Many and strange adventures would be found,
But deeds, there wrought, were, like the place, obscure,
And, for the greater part, not bruited round.
Here meet the borders of Perth, Argyll, and Inverness; and this wilderness must often have been wet by the blood of plaided warriors if not of mailed knight-errants. In our time, I am told, a lad fishing in one of the Rannoch lochs brought up a rusty sword to confirm the local legend of a meeting between Atholl and Lochiel to discuss a boundary dispute. Each chief was to come unattended; but each, like Roderick Dhu, had a force of clansmen hidden close at hand. When they got to hot words, Atholl first gave the signal, at which—
Instant from copse and heath, arose,
Bonnets and spears and bended bows.
“These are Atholl wethers!” was their proud chief’s explanation, to which Lochiel replied by whistling up a troop of Camerons, whom he introduced as “Lochaber dogs.” But before it went beyond showing teeth the rivals drew upon that Caledonian prudence often found mingled with hot Highland blood. They agreed to settle their difference peacefully, in token whereof their claymores were hurled together, like Excalibur, into the dark waters of the mere.
In my own youth, this region still seemed a hunting-ground for adventurous experience. It is nearly half a century ago that I started out to walk through Atholl with some vague idea of roaming farther. From morn to eve I tramped on from Stanley, and got the length of Blair, some ten leagues. But a boy’s will, one knows, is the wind’s will: I found a train due at Blair, and took it home, I no longer remember why, unless that the day was hot and dusty, as it may well be on this sunny side of the Grampians, where, as a local guide-book puts it, the rain-clouds are apt to “have the bottom knocked out of them by the mountain peaks” fencing Atholl towards the Atlantic. But that fiasco of a walking tour I turned to account by writing a description, which I had the temerity to send to a London magazine. Strange to say, it found favour with the editor, perhaps because—heaven forgive me!—it was spiced by an affectation of Cockney jocularity as the point of view; and so appeared my first magazine article, which now, after many years, strikes me with shame and confusion. How many sympathetic authors might tell the same tale of callow efforts that filled them with pride to appear in print, but the day came when they would gladly have repaid tenfold that once welcome cheque, could they but cancel those pages, which at least may have the luck to blush unseen in some cobwebbed volume!
Coming back to Atholl after many days, my pen hopes to be guided in writing its name consistently. In my spelling days, it would be rather Athole and Argyle; but the ducal lords of these regions seem to have set a fashion for the double ll. Also, by the light of nature, I pronounce the first syllable long and broad, as Awtholl, whereas those of more picked speech say Ahtholl, which is easier to say than to sing. As to the spelling, Wordsworth appears to follow an older form—
Among the hills of Athol was he born.
Was he, though? The poet makes no doubt of it. “The Boy of whom I speak,” came from a “native glen” among “Garry’s hills,” where his parents, though “exceeding poor,” had a “small hereditary farm.” This son of an Atholl bonnet-laird had duly gone “equipped