The successful claimant gained the old earldom, the marquisate becoming extinct, but it was revived in the person of his son, who married a daughter of the house of Montrose, hereditary enemy of his race. He now has reigned for a generation at Taymouth Castle, one of the noblest Scottish seats, among finely planted grounds and gardens, where, but for the mountain background, one would hardly believe oneself in the Highlands. The neat model village of Kenmore also suggests anything but a Highland clachan. Some critics, indeed, have found fault with the glories of Taymouth as out of keeping—“an artificial and drilled scene that seems to have been modelled in a toyshop and transplanted hither by a chain and a theodolite”; and the celebration of them in Burns’s verse shows his Muse for the nonce in her Sunday clothes, cut after the prevalent fashion. At least, most of the “Temples” and such-like have disappeared, with which this oasis of grandeur was once adorned, after a model shown in Kew Gardens and elsewhere by the “Capability” Browns, Chamberses, Reptons, and other “improvers” of nature in the Georgian period. More at home seem the ruins of a Priory hidden among old sycamore trees, on a small island in the lake, where the Campbells had a castle of refuge, bombarded from the shore by Montrose as he swept through the Highlands. General Monk’s soldiery were quartered on this island, and have the traditional credit of teaching the natives to smoke tobacco; but snuffing, at least, was older in the Highlands.
It is whispered that the lord of this lake does not trust himself on the water that, according to old prophecy, is to be fatal to a Breadalbane. But for undoomed strangers a tourist steamer plies on Loch Tay, “an immense plate of polished silver, its dark heathy mountains and thickets of oak serving as arabesque frame to a magnificent mirror.” Like the other Perthshire lakes, this is a deep trough set in slopes furrowed by affluents of what appears a broad river fifteen miles long. Loch Tay’s banks are well wooded and cultivated on the south side, while the north shows more truly Highland features, “a clan of Titans,” as Scott calls them, commanded by “the frowning mountains of Ben Lawers, and the still more lofty eminence of Ben Mhor, arising high above the rest, whose peaks retain a dazzling helmet of snow far into the summer season, and sometimes during the whole year.” Ben Lawers is now recognised as the chieftain of Perthshire summits, only a few hundred feet short of Ben Nevis. From the lake this is easily ascended for what Macculloch extols as the most varied and far-reaching Highland prospect.
To the south, we look down on the lake, with all its miniature ornament of woods and fields, terminating westward in the rich vale of Killin, and uniting eastward with the splendour of Strath Tay, stretching away till its ornaments almost vanish among the hills and in the fading tints of the atmosphere. Beyond the lake the successive ridges of hills lead the eye over Strathearn, which is, however, invisible, to the Ochills and the Campsie, and hence, even to Edinburgh; the details of this quarter, from Perth, being unexpectedly perfect and minute, and at the same time well indicated by the marked characters of the Lowmont hills. The place of Dunkeld and the peculiar style of its scenery are also distinctly visible; and it is equally easy to make out the bright estuary of the Tay, the long ridge of the Sidlaw, and the plain of Strathmore. Westward, we trace, without difficulty, the hills of Loch Lomond and Loch Cateran; and, in the same manner, every marked mountain, even to Oban, Cruachan and Buachaille Etive being particularly conspicuous. To the north, Glen Lyon is entirely excluded; the first objects, in this direction, being Schihallien and its accompanying mountains, leading us to the vale of the Tumel and Loch Rannoch, and even to Loch Laggan, seen as a bright narrow line: and thus, on one hand, to Glenco and Ben Nevis, and, on the other, to Ben-y-Gloe, lifting its complicated summit above the head of Ferrogon; beyond which the mountains at the head of Dee, of Marr and Cairngorm, marked with perpetual snow, were the last objects which I could satisfactorily determine. So great a range of view, with so many and such marked objects, is unexampled in any other spot in Scotland.
At the head of the lake, between the streams of the Dochart and the Lochay that unite to fill it, stands the pretty village of Killin, whose sojourners soon come upon names and relics of other clans overlaid by the intruding Campbells. Near the pier are the ruins of Finlarig Castle, for a time their chief seat, built by Black Duncan on the site of a ruder stronghold he had acquired from the Drummonds, whose name is preserved by Drummond Hill at the other end. When the Breadalbanes had moved on to Taymouth, Finlarig became their last home, in the modern mausoleum that has not yet gathered such gloomy note as the old Doom-tree on which hung many a plaided offender, while a heading-stone was provided for the shedding of gentle blood.
Black Duncan and his line did much stern work as “justiciars,” especially on their neighbours, the Macgregors, then under James VI. going down in a changed world, as the Campbells came up. Fetters and shackles made an important part of the furniture at Finlarig, which has comic as well as grim traditions of its rough-and-ready executions, like that of the reluctant Highlander urged by his wife to more alacrity in stepping up to be hanged “to pleasure the laird.” The axe is still shown at Taymouth with which a Macgregor chief was executed; more than one, indeed, coming to such an end, if all tales be true.
In one case the legend is that a Macgregor, invited to a friendly conference, was ambushed by armed men, who dragged him to the block at Kenmore, having killed his aged father on the way. But the stories make some confusion of father and son; and it seems doubtful whether this were the same victim as the “Red Macgregor” beheaded before the eyes of his wife, herself a Campbell by birth, who cursed her kindred in a celebrated Gaelic lament, with its burden of—
Ochain, ochain—sad my heart, my child!
Ochain, ochain—thy father hears not our moan!
On Lammas morn I rejoiced with my love; ere noon my heart was pressed with sorrow.