* * * * *
Stung by such thoughts, o’er bank and brae
Like fire from flint he glanced away.
The railway crosses the stream about this point, and continues up the west side of the loch, while the road keeps on the right, or eastern, side. The rail passes Laggan Farm, said to be the birthplace of Rob’s Amazonian wife, Helen, who takes a part only second to himself in the reader’s imagination. Passing along, therefore, on either side we come, soon after the head of the loch, to bonny little Strathyre, lying amid its great hills, which are flushed as if with fire when the setting sun catches the sweep of the heather in season.
Only a few miles beyond Strathyre is Balquhidder, lying on the road to Loch Voil. The loch lies in a very beautiful situation at the foot of the range known as the Braes of Balquhidder, culminating in Ben A’an and Ben More. It is on the property of Mr. Carnegie, whose house, Stronvar, is at the east side. In the adventurous journey made by the Wordsworths in the beginning of the nineteenth century, they actually walked over the mountains to Balquhidder from Loch Katrine by a wild, rough track, and at the foot of the hills waded through the river. Dorothy thus describes the scenery: “The mountains all round are very high; the vale pastoral and unenclosed, not many dwellings and but a few trees; the mountains in general smooth near the bottom. They are in large unbroken masses, combining with the vale to give an impression of bold simplicity.”
LOCH LUBNAIG.
It was at the end of this loch that Angus handed the Fiery Cross to the Bridegroom.
There were a few reapers in the fields, and it was from this fact that Wordsworth was inspired to write his poem The Solitary Reaper. The brother and sister visited the graves at Balquhidder before passing on to Callander.