GLEN ROSA, ARRAN
Bute, of course, sinks to a mere Isle of Wight when compared with the grandeurs and loveliness of Arran, lying to the south. This island indeed has scenery which some declare unsurpassed in Britain, notably on the flanks of its Goatfell summit. Yet while Glen Rosa, Glen Sannox, and Loch Ranza have often been famed by painters, it seems the case that poets, novelists, and other artists in words make not much copy out of the charms of Arran. One feels inclined to suspect authors of Sybarite tastes, since a weak point of Arran as tourist ground is, or has been, a want of accommodation under the shadow of a ducal house that looked askance on building. The only two townlets on the island, Brodick and Lamlash, count their population in hundreds; and their hotels are hard put to it to accommodate the strangers who have often had to be content with a shake-down in the room used as an English chapel, or with shelter in one of the few bathing machines; I have heard of a whole boatful of excursionists lodged in a hay-field. Holiday quarters in this paradise are engaged for a year ahead, and Piccadilly prices may have to be paid as rent of a hovel. Thus hitherto Arran has been preserved as a haunt of real nature-lovers, and within two or three hours’ sail of Glasgow one could find an almost pristine solitude of purple heather and solemn crags all unprofaned by watering-place gaiety or luxury. The sourest Radical of sound taste might here exclaim, “God bless the Duke!”—not of Argyll—yet one wonders what a late duke’s creditors thought of such a demesne being kept clear from vulgar considerations of profit.
I am not going to try my hand at word-pictures of these glorious landscapes, for “how can a man can what he canna can?” as I once heard a Highland lad sagaciously express himself in our foreign tongue. One had better not invite one’s readers even to land on Arran, lest there might be a difficulty in getting them off again; but if they do, let them not omit the ascent of Goatfell, no perilous adventure, for a view hardly surpassed in Scotland, as shown in Black’s Where shall we go? a work over which the present author has some rights of plagiarism.
The summit is composed of mighty rocks, ensconced among which one may shelter from the searching wind and gaze in comfort at the wild picture around and below—Glen Rosa at our feet, with its sharp precipices beyond rising into the pinnacled heights of A Chir and Cir Vohr; the saddle into Glen Sannox (the glen itself is invisible from here), and the equally sharp and even loftier ridges beyond that glen; the nearer range of Goatfell itself extending round a nameless glen below us, and terminating in a sharp peak that overhangs the village of Corrie; and beyond the limits of the island itself and the broad belt of sea which allows the eye to range unchecked, a glorious bewilderment of heights and hollows innumerable, with here the smoke of a manufacturing town, and there the familiar shape of some mainland mountain-giant, the view extending on a clear day, it is said, from Ben Nevis to the Isle of Man.
Arran owes its unsophisticated state also in part to lying a little off the highway of travel. Strong-stomached voyagers may round the Mull of Cantyre, to be tossed upon Atlantic waves, and thus get a chance of seeing Ailsa Craig, “Paddy’s Milestone,” whose cliffs are in some respects finer than the much-visited Staffa. The gentle tourist takes an easier and straighter line to Oban. His boat threads the beautiful Kyles of Bute, then stands across to Tarbert, on the Isthmus of Cantyre, from the farther side of which goes the steamer to Islay. Up Loch Fyne is reached Ardrishaig, terminus of the big ark whose Oban-bound passengers are transferred to a smaller craft for the Crinan Canal cut, that brings them over to the island-studded and cliff-cornered sounds of the west coast. Well then for the land-lubber that he fares forward on one of Messrs. MacBrayne’s stout craft! To play the Viking here without experience were a perilous task, so thick-set are these waters with rocks and shallows, so tormented by sudden shifty squalls, so distracted by currents, eddies, and rushing tideways. But the steamer pants masterfully through the Dorus Mor, keeps clear of the Maelstrom of Corryvreckan, whose roar may be heard leagues off in calm weather, and steers safe along the islands of the Firth of Lorne, past the great slate quarries on Easdale, round the bridged island of Seil, and inside the dark heights of Kerrera, by a narrow sound to reach its port at Oban, whose once mighty strongholds are overshadowed by such an eruption of smart hotels and villas.
Here we come into touch with the Caledonian Railway, which is the shortest way to this “Charing Cross of the Highlands.” Having entered the mountains beyond Stirling Castle and Dunblane, passing near the Trossachs and under the Braes of Balquhidder, the line turns westward to wind through the mountains of southern Perthshire, and reaches Argyll by some of Scotland’s grandest scenes, finding a way between the head of Loch Awe and the mighty Ben Cruachan, after a glimpse, at Dalmally, into the strath of Glenorchy, oasis-like after terrific Glen Ogle and dreary Glen Lochy. The railway holds on through the stern Pass of Brander, scene of the Highland Widow, where cairns still record the crushing of the Macdougalls of Lorne by Robert Bruce. Then we gain Oban by Loch Etive, whose upper part runs into one of the grandest of Highland glens, and its waters rush out with the tide in Ossian’s Falls of Lora, through the narrow throat now bridged by a branch to Ballachulish.
On one side, this line takes in tributaries of tourist traffic from Loch Earn and Loch Tay, and roads through the grand Breadalbane Highlands marked by their name as heart of ancient Albin. On the other side, by coaches and steamboats, Ben Cruachan is reached from Inveraray or from the head of Loch Long. Campbell seems the dominant name now in this country, but once it was the land of the Macgregors, whose hearts still turn to fair Glenorchy, whence they were driven landless and nameless. This ancient clan stood as model for Scott’s Vich-Alpines, a name which they in fact claim as descended from Gregor, son of King Alpin. Not every one reads Scott nowadays; few read his introductions and miscellaneous essays; and perhaps nobody, without special interest in the subject, will go through Miss Murray Macgregor’s elaborate history of her name; so there will be many of my readers to whom may not come amiss a short digression on the peculiar fortunes of a clan distinguished by ferocity among warlike neighbours in a ruthless age. It was not the Saxon that to them “came with iron hand,” but men of their own blood and speech, who “from our fathers rent the land” about which the moon could be significantly known as “Macgregor’s Lantern,” as also indeed “Macfarlane’s Lantern,” and the lamp of other Highlandmen bent on business that would not well bear brighter light.
From very early times the Macgregors passed for Ishmaelites, every hand against them, their fastnesses again and again threatened by commissions of fire and sword as soon as troubled Scottish kings could attempt to settle the quarrels of the Highland border. Their most resounding offence was the slaughter of the Colquhouns at Glenfruin by Loch Lomond, a little before James VI. posted off to his softer throne in London. This was a fair fight, made flagrant in tradition by the murder of the Dumbarton schoolboys who had come out to see the battle, as in our day lads might go some way to a football match. It is stated that the Macgregor chief bid these non-combatants take refuge in a church, either to keep them out of the way of shots, or to have under his hand a troop of hostages from among the principal families in Scotland; and that it was his foster-brother or some of his followers who stabbed the unfortunate youths, to the chief’s indignation. Another legend tells of a barn in which the poor boys were burned to death. One tradition points out two murderers, who henceforth lived as outlaws from the clan. Miss Murray Macgregor naturally defends her kinsmen from the charge of an atrocity so heavily weighing on their own conscience that for long no Macgregor would cross after nightfall the stream in that “Glen of Sorrow,” believed to be haunted by the ghosts of the victims. It is in print, though I cannot find any authority of weight, that up to the middle of the eighteenth century the Dumbarton schoolboys annually went through a ceremony of funeral rites on what was taken for the anniversary of the massacre, their dux being laid on a bier and with Gaelic chants carried to an open grave as effigy of those luckless predecessors.
The story of the scholars may have been exaggerated. But when eleven score widows of the slain Colquhouns, dressed in black on white palfreys, each bearing her husband’s bloody shirt on a spear, came before James demanding vengeance, this object-lesson deeply moved the pacific king. The very name of Macgregor was proscribed on pain of death. The clan was handed over to the Campbells for execution; and when its chief surrendered to Argyll on promise of escaping with exile, this condition was kept to the letter by sending him over the English border and at once bringing him back to be hanged at Edinburgh. Throughout the century, acts of proscription against the Macgregors were repeatedly renewed, most of them having to disguise themselves as Campbells, Drummonds, Murrays, or other neighbour names, while one branch, settled in Aberdeenshire, took that of Gregory, and some wandered north as far as Ross. The bulk of their lands passed to the Campbells. But still a tough stock of them held fast near their old seats, not to be rooted out by all the power of the crown or of the Campbells, as we know from Rob Roy’s exploits, who, “ower bad for blessing, and ower good for banning,” hardly played the hero in the political strife of his day, but did a good deal of doughty fighting for his own hand.