Gordon Stables
"Annie o' the Banks o' Dee"
Chapter One.
At Bilberry Hall.
“It may not be, it cannot be
That such a gem was meant for me;
But oh! if it had been my lot,
A palace, not a Highland cot,
That bonnie, simple gem had thrown
Bright lustre o’er a jewelled crown;
For oh! the sweetest lass to me
Is Annie—Annie o’ the Banks o’ Dee?”
Old Song.
Far up the romantic Dee, and almost hidden by the dark waving green of spruce trees and firs, stands the old mansion-house of Bilberry Hall.
Better, perhaps, had it still been called a castle, as undoubtedly it had been in the brave days of old. The many-gabled, turreted building had formerly belonged to a family of Gordons, who had been deprived of house and lands in the far north of Culloden, after the brutal soldiery of the Bloody Duke had laid waste the wild and extensive country of Badenoch, burning every cottage and house, murdering every man, and more than murdering every woman and child, and “giving their flesh to the eagles,” as the old song hath it.
But quiet indeed was Bilberry Hall now, quiet even to solemnity, especially after sunset, when the moon sailed up from the woods of the west, when only the low moan of the wind through the forest trees could be heard, mingling with the eternal murmur of the broad winding river, or now and then the plaintive cry of a night bird, or the mournful hooting of the great brown owl.