“Meal, barley, butter, and cheese;
Soap, starch, blue, and peas;
Train-oil, tobacco, pipes, and teas;
And whisky and loch leeches.”
It fortunately occurred that a modest maiden lady, a very “civil-spoken” woman indeed, by name Grace Macalister, had been disappointed of two Glasgow gentlemen, who had engaged her whole house, and so the two benighted travellers from the east were accepted, at the instigation of the aforesaid Mr. Douglas, in lieu of them. Taking possession of our lodgings at once, we formed ourselves into a committee of supply, which resulted in a prompt expenditure of a sum of six shillings and threepence, the particulars of which, for the benefit of my readers, and to show how primitive we had all at once become, I beg to subjoin—namely, bread, 7d.; mutton, 2s. 4d.; butter, 6½d.; tea, 6d.; sugar, 3d.; milk, ½d.; herring, 2d. This sum, with eighteenpence added for whisky, threepence for potatoes, and one penny for a candle, represented the total commissariat expenses of two persons in Corry for five wholesome but homely meals. Our bed cost us one shilling each per night, and our attendance and washing were charged at the rate of a shilling a day, so long as we used the Hotel Macalister, but even this did not very much swell the grand total of the bill, which, at such rates, was by no means heavy at the end of our holiday ramble over Arran, especially when it is considered that the Arran season does not very greatly exceed one hundred days. Our quarters were certainly primitive enough—namely, half of a thatched cottage, or rather hut we may call it, consisting of one apartment containing two beds, four chairs, a small table, and a little cupboard. The beds were curtained by a series of blue striped cotton fragments of three different patterns of an old Scotch kind, and the walls were papered with five different kinds of paper; but the low roof was the greatest treat of all—it was covered with old numbers of the Witness newspaper, at the time when it was edited by Hugh Miller, and these had, no doubt, been left in the cottage by previous travellers. The floor was covered with fragments of canvas laid down as a carpet. Many tourists would perhaps turn up their noses at this humble cottage, but to my friend and myself it was a delightful change.
I have not space in which to particularise all the beauties of Arran, but I must say a word or two about Glen Sannox. Near the golden beach of Sannox Bay is situated the solitary churchyard of Corry, with its long grass waving rank over the graves, and its borders of fuchsias laden with brilliant blossoms. There was, we observed, on peeping over the wall, a new-made grave, that of an orphan girl who had been drowned while bathing. Passing the churchyard—there was once a church at the place, but all trace of it, save one stone built into the wall of the churchyard, has long passed away—we came upon a brawling stream, which led us up to the ruins of what had been a barytes-mill. The stones lay around in great masses, as if they had been suddenly undermined by the passing stream, and had fallen cemented as they stood. In a year or two they will be grown over with weeds, and in a century hence some persons may ingeniously speculate on the ruins, and give a learned disquisition as to what building once stood there, and its uses. My friend and I wondered what it had been, but an old man told us all about it; and, strange to say, in the course of conversation, we found this old resident reciting scraps of Ossian’s poems. He told us, too, that the bard had died in the very parish in which we were standing. He believed Ossian to have been a great priest and teacher of the people, and this was an idea that was quite new to us. We had heard before, or rather read, that the poet was by some esteemed a great warrior, and by others a necromancer—perhaps to esteem him a teacher is right enough; his poems, at any rate, were at one time as familiar in the mouths of the West Highlanders as household words.
The scenery of Arran would certainly inspire a poet. As we penetrated into Glen Sannox it became most interesting, whether we noted the brawling and bubbling brook, or the rich carpet of heath and wild flowers upon which we trod. The luxuriance of its wild flowers is remarkable, and of its rabbits equally so. As we proceed up the glen, the lofty hills with their granitic scars frown down upon us, and one with a coroneted brow looks kingly among the others, as the mist floats upon their shoulders, like a waving mantle, and with their bold and rugged precipices they seem as if they had just been suddenly shot out from the bosom of the earth. Glen Sannox is sublime indeed; its magnitude is remarkable, and it is so hemmed in with hills as to look at once, even without any details, or the aid of history, a fitting hiding-place for the gallant Bruce and his devoted followers. About three miles north from this glen we can view—and, we venture to say, not without astonishment—the falling fragments of the broken mountain; a stream of large stones that lie crowded on the declivity of the hill, till they in one long trail reach the ocean. But to enumerate a tithe even of the scenic and antiquarian beauties of the island would require—nay, it has obtained, and more than once—a volume. I could dwell upon the blue rock near Corry, and picture the overhanging cliffs of the neighbourhood mantled o’er with ivy. The visitor might enter some of the caves which have been scooped out by the sea, or wander among the rock pools of the indented shore, rich with treasures wherewith to feed the greedy eye of the naturalist, and view the ladies, with kilted coats, doing their daily lessons from Glaucus, collecting pretty shells, bottling anemones, or gathering sea-weeds wherewith to ornament their botanic albums. At last, after a long day’s work of wandering and climbing, we long for a quiet seat and a refreshing cup of tea, and by and by, when the night shuts us out from active labour, we hie us to our box bed, in order to stretch our wearied limbs in Miss Macalister’s well-lavendered sheets; and, as we are just attempting to coax the balmy goddess to close our eyes with her soft fingers, we hear the landlady in her garret reading her nightly chapter from her Gaelic Bible, with that genuine droning sound incidental to the West Highland voice.
I have more than once after nightfall passed a quiet half-hour at our cottage door inhaling the saline breath of the mighty sea. The look-out at midnight is very beautiful: the Cumbrae light looked like a monitor telling us that even at that dread hour we were watched over. On the opposite coast of Ayr a huge ironwork threw a lurid glare upon the bosom of the sea, and almost at my feet the restless waves were playing a mournful dirge on the boulder-crowded beach. I could see along the water to Holy Island, and could almost feel the silence that at that moment would render the cave of old Saint Molio a wondrous place for holding a feast of the imagination, the viands being brought forward from a far-back time, and the island again peopled with the quaint races that had passed a brief span of life upon its shores—who had been warmed by the same sun as had that day shone upon me, and whose nights had been illumined by the same moon that was now shimmering its soft radiance upon the liquid bosom of the sparkling waters.