The Little Loch was the rushiest and reediest little rascal that ever rustled, and he was on the very edge of the Moor. That he had fish we all persisted in believing, in spite of all the successless angling of all kinds that from time immemorial had assailed his sullen depths;—but what a place for pow-heads! One continued bank of them—while yet they were but eyes in the spawn—encircled it instead of water-lilies; and at "the season of the year," by throwing in a few stones, you awoke a croaking that would have silenced a rookery. In the early part of the century a pike had been seen basking in the shallows, by eye-measurement about ten feet long—but fortunately he had never been hooked, or the consequences would have been fatal. We have seen the Little Loch alive with wild-ducks; but it was almost impossible by position to get a shot at them—and quite impossible, if you did, to get hold of the slain. Fro himself—the best dog that ever dived—was baffled by the multiplicity of impediments and obstructions—and at last refused to take the water—sat down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Imagination loved the Little Loch, and so did Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both with rod and gun—the weight of bag and basket has wakened us out of dreams of murder that never were realised—yet once, and once only, in it we caught an eel, which we skinned, and wore the shrivel for many a day round our ankle—nor is it a vain superstition—to preserve it from sprains. We are willing the Little Loch should be drained; but you would have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to have no bottom. A party of us—six—ascertained that fact, by heaving into it a stone which six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degenerate age could not have lifted from its moss-bed—and though we watched for an hour, not a bubble rose to the surface. It used sometimes to boil like a pot on breathless days, for events happening in foreign countries disturbed the spring, and the torments it suffered thousands of fathoms below, were manifested above in turbulence that would have drowned a school-boy's skiff.
The White Loch—so called from the silver sand of its shores—had likewise its rushy and reedy bogs; but access to every part of the main body was unimpeded, and you waded into it, gradually deeper and deeper, with such a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits and then to the chin, you could keep touching the sand with your big-toe, till you floated away off at the nail, out of your depth, without for a little while discovering that it was incumbent on you, for sake of your personal safety, to take to regular swimming—and then how buoyant was the milk-warm water, without a wave but of your own creating, as the ripples went circling away before your breast or your breath! It was absolutely too clear—for without knitting your brows you could not see it on bright airless days—and wondered what had become of it—when all at once, as if it had been that very moment created out of nothing, there it was! endued with some novel beauty—for of all the lochs we ever knew—and to be so simple too—the White Loch had surely the greatest variety of expression,—but all within the cheerful—for sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for ever wore a smile. Swans—but that was but once—our own eyes had seen on it—and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear—nor did they look afraid—sailing in the centre of the loch—nor did we see them fly away—for we lay still on the hill-side till in the twilight we should not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love in some foreign land.
The Black Loch was a strange misnomer for one so fair—for black we never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe. But then he was deep; and knowing that, the natives had named him, in no unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them—and though that is not a bad dive, we have brought them up, one in our mouth and one in each hand, the tenants of course dead—nor can we now conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a pre-eminence in beauty over the other three—a tongue of land that half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped on its very point, and in among the water—and a cliff on which, though it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a great height. There were some ruins too—tradition said of some church or chapel—that had been ruins long before the establishment of the Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been dropped there most probably from the moon.
But the best beloved, if not the most beautiful, of them all was the Brother Loch. It mattered not what was his disposition or genius, every one of us boys, however different might be our other tastes, preferred it far beyond the rest, and for once that we visited any of them we visited it twenty times, nor ever once left it with disappointed hopes of enjoyment. It was the nearest, and therefore most within our power, so that we could gallop to it on shank's naigie, well on in the afternoon, and enjoy what seemed a long day of delight, swift as flew the hours, before evening prayers. Yet was it remote enough to make us always feel that our race thither was not for every day—and we seldom returned home without an adventure. It was the largest too by far of the Four—and indeed its area would have held the waters of all the rest. Then there was a charm to our heart as well as our imagination in its name—for tradition assigned it on account of three brothers that perished in its waters—and the same name for the same reason belongs to many another loch—and to one pool on almost every river. But above all it was the Loch for angling, and we long kept to perch. What schools! Not that they were of a very large size—though pretty well—but hundreds all nearly the same size gladdened our hearts as they lay, at the close of our sport, in separate heaps on the greensward shore, more beautiful out of all sight than your silver or golden fishes in a glass-vase, where one appears to be twenty, and the delusive voracity is all for a single crumb. No bait so killing as cowshairn-mauks, fresh from their native bed, scooped out with the thumb. He must have been a dear friend to whom in a scarcity, by the water-side, when the corks were dipping, we would have given a mauk. No pike. Therefore the trout were allowed to gain their natural size—and that seemed to be about five pounds—adolescents not unfrequent swam two or three—and you seldom or never saw the smaller fry. But few were the days "good for the Brother Loch." Perch rarely failed you, for by perseverance you were sure to fall in with one circumnatatory school or other, and to do murderous work among them with the mauk, from the schoolmaster himself inclusive down to the little booby of the lowest form. Not so with Trout. We have angled ten hours a-day for half a-week (during the vacance), without ever getting a single rise, nor could even that be called bad sport, for we lived in momentary expectation, mingled with fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to move a fin, than oh! me miserable! to hook a huge hero with shoulders like a hog—play him till he comes floating side up close to the shore, and then to feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin gamboling in the air, while he wallops away back into his native element, and sinks utterly and for evermore into the dark profound. Life loses at such a moment all that makes life desirable—yet strange! the wretch lives on—and has not the heart to drown himself, as he wrings his hands and curses his lot and the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling, gusty, almost tempestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." No glare or glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a black-blue undulating swell, at times turbulent—with now and then a breaking wave,—that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing their backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in the red heckle among your very feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then the fly was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you could do nothing with the worm. Oh! that we had then known the science of the spinning minnow! But we were then but an apprentice—who are now Emeritus Grand Master. Yet at this distance of time—half a century and more—it is impious to repine. Gut was not always to be got; and on such days a three-haired snood did the business—for they were bold as lions, and rashly rushed on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted body with star-y-pointed tail maddened them with desire—no dallying with the gay deceiver—they licked him in—they gorged him—and while satiating their passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong horse ploughing up-hill. How he sets his brisket to it—and snooves along—as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding share. So snooved along the Monarch of the Mere—or the heir-apparent—or heir-presumptive—or some other branch of the royal family—while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod enclosing some new segment of the sky.
But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle alway," thinks the wise boy—"off to some other game we altogether flew." Never were there such hills for hare and hounds. There couched many a pussy—and there Bob Howie's famous Tickler—the Grew of all Grews—first stained his flews in the blood of the Fur. But there is no coursing between April and October—and during the intervening months we used to have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after the leverets. We all belonged to the High School indeed, and here was its playground. Cricket we had then never heard of; but there was ample room and verge enough for football. Our prime delight, however, was the chase. We were all in perpetual training, and in such wind that there were no bellows to mend after a flight of miles. We circled the Lochs. Plashing through the marishes we strained winding up the hill-sides, till on the cairn called a beacon that crowned the loftiest summit of the range, we stood and waved defiance to our pursuers scattered wide and far below, for 'twas a Deer Hunt. Then we became cavaliers. We caught the long-maned and long-tailed colts, and mounting bare-backed, with rush helmets and segg sabres charged the nowte till the stirks were scattered, and the lowing lord of herds himself taken captive, as he stood pawing in a nook with his nose to the ground and eyes of fire. That was the riding-school in which we learned to witch the world with noble horsemanship. We thus got confirmed in that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, which we carried with us into the saddle when we were required to handle the bridle instead of the mane. 'Tis right to hold on by the knees, but equally so to hold on by the calves of the legs and the heels. The modern system of turning out the toes, and sticking out the legs as if they were cork or timber, is at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every charge. On pony-back we used to make the soles of our feet smack together below the belly, for quadruped and biped were both unshod, and hoof needed no iron on that stoneless sward. But the biggest fun of all was to "grup the auld mare," and ride her sextuple, the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the shortest on the rump with his face to the tail, and holding on by that fundamental feature by which the urchin tooled her along as by a tiller. How the silly foal whinnied, as with light-gathered steps he accompanied in circles his populous parent, and seemed almost to doubt her identity, till one by one we slipped off over her hurdies, and let him take a suck! But what comet is yon in the sky—"with fear of change perplexing mallards?" A Flying Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a tuft like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden entrance of the Sun into his sign. Up goes Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a messenger to the Celestial. He obeys, and stooping his head, descends with many diverse divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The feather kite quails and is cowed by him of paper, and there is a scampering of cattle on a hundred hills.
The Brother Loch saw annually another sight, when on the Green-Brae was pitched a Tent—a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself all the sunshine. There lords and ladies, and knights and squires, celebrated Old May-day, and half the parish flocked to the Festival. The Earl of Eglintoun, and Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, and old Sir John of Polloc, and Pollock of that Ilk, and other heads of illustrious houses, with their wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not disdain them of low degree, but kept open table in the moor; and would you believe it, high-born youths and maidens ministered at the board to cottage lads and lasses, whose sunburnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe of that courtesy—yet whenever they looked up there was happiness in their eyes. The young ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the feast, they took bows and arrows in their lily hands, and shot at a target in a style that would have gladdened the heart of Maid Marian—nay, of Robin himself;—and one surpassing bright—the Star of Ayr—she held a hawk on her wrist—a tercel gentle—after the fashion of the olden time; and ever as she moved her arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. And her brother—gay and gallant as Sir Tristrem—he blew his tasseled bugle—so sweet, so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased to breathe, the far-off repeated echoes, faint and dim, you thought died away in heaven like an angel's voice.
Was it not a Paragon of a Parish? But we have not told you one half of its charms. There was a charm in every nook—and Youth was the master of the spell. Small magicians were we in size, but we were great in might. We had but to open our eyes in the morning, and at one look all nature was beautiful. We have said nothing about the Burns. The chief was the Yearn—endearingly called the Humbie, from a farm near the Manse, and belonging to the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, the Brother Loch. But it whimpled with such an infantine voice from the lucid bay, which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while it was scarcely even a rill, and you had to seek for it among the heather. In doing so, ten to one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest—but not till your next step would have crushed them all—or perhaps—but he had no nest there—a snipe. There it is—betrayed by a line of livelier verdure. Ere long it sparkled within banks of its own and "braes of green bracken," and as you footed along, shoals of minnows, and perhaps a small trout or two, brastled away to the other side of the shallow, and hid themselves in the shadows. 'Tis a pretty rill now—nor any longer mute; and you hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence on its course, and has formed itself into its first pool—a waterfall, three feet high, with its own tiny rocks, and a single birk—no, it is a rowan—too young yet to bear berries—else might a child pluck the highest cluster. Imperceptibly, insensibly, it grows just like life. The Burn is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy he is—dancing and singing—nor heeding which way he goes along the wild, any more than that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl seems to heed, who drops you a curtsy, and on being asked by you, with your hand on her hair, where she is going, answers wi' a soft Scottish accent—ah! how sweet—"Owre the hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No—a fauld. For this is the Washing-Pool. Look around you, and you never saw such perfectly white sheep. They are Cheviots; for the black-faces are on the higher hills to the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of flax—and "lint is in the bell"—the steeping whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but poor people must spin—and as this is not the season, we will think of nothing that can pollute his limpid waters. Symptoms of husbandry! Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy-beds, and a small field with alternate rigs of oats and barley. Yes, that is a house—"an auld clay bigging,"—in such Robin Burns was born—in such was rocked the cradle of Pollok. We think we hear two separate liquid voices—and we are right—for from the flats beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, comes another yet wilder burnie, and they meet in one at the head of what you would probably call a meadow, but which we call a holm. There seems to be more arable land hereabouts than a stranger could have any idea of; but it is a long time since the ploughshare traced those almost obliterated furrows on the hill-side; and such cultivation is now wisely confined, you observe, to the lower lands. We fear the Yearn—for that is his name now—heretofore he was anonymous—is about to get flat. But we must not grudge him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by the murmur of millions of humble-bees—we speak within bounds—on their honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we spoke of "lint being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream how sweetly do the seasons all slide into one another! After sleep comes play, and see and hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling over rocks, nor will rest in any one linn, but impatient of each beautiful prison in which one would think he might lie a willing thrall, hurries on as if he were racing against time, nor casts a look at the human dwellings now more frequent near his sides. But he will be stopped by-and-by, whether he will or no; for there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a mill. But the wheel is at rest—the sluice on the lade is down—with the lade he has nothing more to do than to fill it; and with undiminished volume he wends round the miller's garden—you see Dusty Jacket is a florist—and now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any rocks. 'Tis but some hundred yards across from bank to brae—and as you angle along on either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating high overhead; for though, the braes are steep, they are all intersected with sheep-walks, and ever and anon among the broom and the brackens are little platforms of close-nibbled greensward, yet not bare—and nowhere else is the pasturage more succulent—nor do the young creatures not care to taste the primroses, though were they to live entirely upon them, they could not keep down the profusion—so thickly studded in places are the constellations—among sprinklings of single stars. Here the hill-blackbird builds—and here you know why Scotland is called the lintie's land. What bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. But here there are no larks—a little further down and you will hear one ascending or descending over almost every field of grass or of the tender braird. Down the dell before you, flitting from stone to stone, on short flight seeks the water-pyet—seemingly a witless creature with its bonnie white breast—to wile you away from the crevice, even within the waterfall, that holds its young—or with a cock of her tail she dips and disappears. There is grace in the glancing sandpiper—nor, though somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inelegant—either belle or beau—an outlandish bird that makes himself at home wherever he goes, and, vain as he looks, is contented if but one admire him in a solitary place—though it is true that we have seen them in half-dozens on the midden in front of the cottage door. The blue slip of sky overhead has been gradually widening, and the dell is done. Is that snow? A bleachfield. Lasses can bleach their own linen on the green near the pool, "atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so sweetly sung, in his truly Scottish pastoral "The Gentle Shepherd." But even they could not well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, else dingy would be their smocks and their wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in a bleachfield, and in none more than in Bell's-Meadows. But where is the Burn? They have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! nothing but stones! Gather up your flies, and away down to yonder grove. There he is like one risen from the dead; and how joyful his resurrection! All the way from this down to the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable, and the burn has become a stream. You wade now through longer grass—sometimes even up to the knees; and half-forgetting pastoral life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" Whitewashed houses—but still thatched—look down on you from among trees, that shelter them in front; while behind is an encampment of stacks, and on each side a line of offices, so that they are snug in every wind that blows. The Auld Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for though the turn was perilous sharp, time had so coloured it that in a sunny shower we have mistaken it for a rainbow. That's Humbie House, God bless it! and though we cannot here with our bodily sense see the Manse, with our spiritual eye we can see it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to stuff our pockets. The Cart!—ay, the river Cart—not that on which pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even sylvan now; and though still sweet its murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, and the firth the sea;—but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the vision that showed us the solitary region dearest to our imagination and our hearts, and opening them on completion of the charm that works within the spirit when no daylight is there, rejoice to find ourselves again sole-sitting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch.
Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish—pray give us one of yours, that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as Holy Writ—false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? Perception, memory, imagination, are all moods—states of mind. But mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and the same; for they are so essentially blended, that we defy you to show what is biblical—what apocryphal—and what pure romance. How we transpose and dislocate while we limn in aerial colours! Where tree never grew we drop it down centuries old—or we tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, and steep what was once his shadow in sunshine—hills sink at a touch, or at a beck mountains rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the spirit of the place remains the same; for in that spirit has imagination all along been working, and boon nature smiles on her son as he imitates her creations—but "hers are heavenly, his an empty dream."
Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter—and in Scotland he has no superior—will perhaps accompany you to what once was the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed Wark—the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we know not what wretch—the White Loch larched—and the Black Loch of a ghastly blue, cruelly cultivated all close round the brim. From his moor
"The parting genius is with sighing sent;"