And in the kist there is a caup,
And in the caup there is a drap;
Tak’ up the caup, drink off the drap,
And set the caup on Tintock tap.
This old world rhyme is finely moralised by Dr. John Brown in his “Jeems the Door-keeper.” We have been here when the sunset has died away upon the hill, like the “watch fires of departing angels,” and from the undergrowth about the neighbouring river blackbird and ousel sent forth their liquid pipings. The cuckoos that all day long had been calling to each other across the fields, were now with a more restful “chuck! chuck! chu, chu-chu,” flitting, like gray flakes, from coppice to coppice, preparatory to settling for the night. The blackcock’s challenge could still be heard from the lower ground, and from the hillside came the silvery “whorl-whorl-whorl” of the grouse. Such sounds can be heard far off in the stillness of the dusk.
Tinto has not much to boast of in the way of antiquities; but perhaps enough has been said to lead some of our readers to go and “do” Tinto for themselves; if so, we can only hope that they may enjoy it as much as we did. It only requires six hours in all, and the remembrance of the travel will be even pleasanter than the travel itself, for in the remembrance the little drawbacks are all forgot, and the absence of care and the blue sky, and the bright sun, &c., &c., remain.
CAIRNTABLE.
We remember reading, some years ago, in Punch, a paragraph headed “Strange Insanity,” and stating that a respectable tradesman in the City, in pursuit of a holiday, had positively thrown himself into a cab, driven off to the Eastern Counties Railway Station at Shoreditch, and had taken a ticket for Great Yarmouth. It is perhaps equally an act of “strange insanity” in this year of grace and desirable excursions for anyone to go to Muirkirk on a similar errand, for the line to Muirkirk—like that of the “Great Eastern,” as the Eastern Counties is now called—is not managed, to say the least, with the same expedition that, as a rule, pervades the Caledonian system. But if anyone wishes to see Cairntable, he must make up his mind to take a ticket for Muirkirk. Soon after leaving Glasgow the whole valley of the Clyde opens up to us, which is still beautiful in spite of its desecration by coalmasters. We can sympathise with the English cyclist who, having read the “Scottish Chiefs” before beginning his tour through Scotland, had his mind full of the beauties and traditions of the neighbourhood, but was disappointed to see the air thick with smoke, while far and near tall chimneys vomited flame and steam. And this continues more or less all the way till we reach the ore lands and blast furnaces of our Scotch pig-iron kings, the Bairds.