The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

LOCH ACHRAY

Behind these five figures we could fancy a white-haired minstrel, harp in hand; a hermit monk, in frock and hood, barefooted, with grizzled hair and matted beard, naked arms and legs seamed with scars, and a wild and savage face that spoke of nothing but despair; three young men in kilt skirts and Highland plaids, every movement showing the agile strength of their youthful limbs, passing from one to another a cross of fire,—Malise, Angus, and Norman, the messengers who summoned the clans to battle; and back of all, filling up the picture, Highlanders of high and low degree, men, women, and children, all fired with intense loyalty to the Clan-Alpine. The whole picture seemed to project itself upon a background of mountains and valleys, lakes, rivers and waterfalls, fantastic rocks and weather-beaten crags, grey birches and warrior oaks, ferns and wild flowers, all

So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.

Scott was always fond of brilliant hues, but here he fairly revels in colour:—

The western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o'er the glen their level way:
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
*****
All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen,
The brier rose fell in streamers green
And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
Waved in the west wind's summer sighs.
*****
Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child,
Here eglantine embalmed the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there:
The primrose pale and violet flower
Found in each clift a narrow bower.

The best way to read 'The Lady of the Lake' is to see the Trossachs; the best way to see the Trossachs is to read 'The Lady of the Lake.' There is a peculiar affinity between the poem and the country that makes each indispensable to the other. Those who read the poem without some knowledge of the scenery are likely to have an inadequate conception of its real significance, or possibly to feel that the poet has painted in colours too vivid and that his enthusiasm is not perhaps fully justified by the facts. Those who see the Trossachs without reading the poem are apt to say, as one man did say to me, 'Yes, this is beautiful, but after all I have seen just such roads in New Hampshire.' He might have added, 'The Rocky Mountains are much higher and more sublime, and the Italian lakes reflect a sky of more brilliant blue and are bordered by foliage infinitely more gorgeous in its colourings,'—all of which is true. But when you come to read the poem with a mental vision of the Trossachs before you and to see the Trossachs with the exquisite descriptions of the poem fully in mind, each acquires a new charm which alone it did not possess.

Before the poem was written the Trossachs were scarcely known and Loch Katrine was no more than any other Highland lake. Now these regions are visited yearly by thousands of tourists and to those who know the poem, every turn in the road seems to suggest some favourite stanza. To us the tour was one of unfailing delight and productive of mental visions that will never fade. The Brig o' Turk is to me not merely an old stone bridge over a placid rivulet; but, rushing over it at full speed, eagerly spurring his fine grey horse to further effort, I see the figure of a gallant hunter clad in a close-fitting suit of green, his eyes intently fixed on the road ahead, where a splendid stag, now nearly exhausted, is straining his last ounce of energy in a final effort to distance the pursuing hounds. To me the low ground on the edge of Loch Vennachar, known as Lanrick Mead, appears like a military camp, with great crowds of giant clansmen, in Highland kilts and plaids of many colours, their spears and battle-axes glistening in the sun. The aged oak, bending over the water's edge on Ellen's Isle, is not merely an old dead tree, but it brings the vision of Ellen Douglas putting forth in her frail shallop to answer (as she supposes) the bugle call of her noble father from the Silver Strand.

This is the secret charm of the Trossachs. The tourist who goes through, as many do, with whole-hearted devotion to the time-table and guide-book, and whose mind is fixed upon the absolute necessity of 'making' all the points in his itinerary, does not see these scenes any more than do the horses who draw the lumbering coaches. The more leisurely traveller who can follow the course of the poem, viewing each scene as Scott has so charmingly described it, finds exhilaration and delight in every step of the way.