Her garden, its brook, and dark pine tree, and the stone table under it, were all dear to his memory, and the chamber in which he
‘Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
The moon in splendour couched among the leaves
Of a tall ash that near our cottage stood.’
She lived to above fourscore; unmarried, and loving her young inmates as her children, and beloved by them as a mother.
‘Childless, yet by the strangers to her blood
Honoured with little less than filial love.’Wordsworth’s Life, vol. i. 39.
[196] Note 14.—‘The woman said it had been a palace.’—Page 196.
A mistake. The old mansion here described was the building formerly used as a prison-house of the Regality of Athole in which the Dukes, and formerly the Earls, of Athole confined their criminals during the ages when they, in common with all the other Scottish Barons, exercised the right of heritable jurisdiction. This right was abolished after the ’45, and then this, like all other baronial prison-houses, fell into disuse and decay. Nearly entire seventy years ago, it has now wholly disappeared, having been used up, no doubt, as material for the neighbouring buildings. There was, however, at Logierait, a Royal Castle, from which the place itself and the large adjacent parish take their name—Lag-an-raith, the hollow of the Castle,—while the neighbouring small hamlet and railway station on the other side of the Tummel are called Balla-na-luig—the town of the hollow. The Castle stood on a high knoll overlooking the church and inn of Logierait, commanding a view of the junction of the Tummel and the Tay immediately underneath, and of the whole of southern Athole, as far as Dunkeld. This knoll is now crowned by a high Celtic cross, memorial of the late Duke of Athole.
Immediately around it are seen lying here and there blocks of solid masonry, the sole remnants of the Castle in which Robert II. is said to have dwelt during his visits to Athole. Traces of the Castle moat are still discernible.
[229] Note 15.—‘Rob Roy’s grave was there.’—Page 229.
Regarding this Wordsworth says, ‘I have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of Rob Roy; if so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparent good authority, namely, that of a well-educated lady who lived at the head of the lake, within a mile or less of the point indicated as containing the remains of one so famous in that neighbourhood.’
The real burial-place of Rob Roy is the Kirkton of Balquhidder, at the lower end of Loch Voil. The grave is covered by a rude grey slab, on which a long claymore is roughly engraved. The Guide-book informs us that the arms on his tombstone are a Scotch pine, the badge of Clan Gregor, crossed by a sword, and supporting a crown, this last to denote the relationship claimed by the Gregarach with the royal Stuarts. When I last saw the tombstone, as far as I remember, I observed nothing but the outline of the long sword.