So one leaves Glasgow, the unromantic, threading through its miles of prosperity and unbeauty, passing Dumbarton where Wallace was prisoner, passing the river Leven, which ought to interest us, for once its "pure stream" on his own confession laved the "youthful limbs" of Tobias Smollett, until the open country is reached and Loch Lomond swims into sight.
"By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
There me and my true love spent mony happy days,
On the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond."
No, the Pennells might criticize "me and my true love." As for us, we mean to be romantic and sentimental and unashamed and ungrammatical. And spend mony days; Harry Lauder would spell and spend it, "money."
The lake opens wide and free in the lowland country of Balloch. At the left lies Glenfruin, the Glen of Wailing, where took place the terrible clan battle between the MacGregors and Colquhouns, where the MacGregors were victorious. But as Scott wrote, "the consequences of the battle of Glenfruin were very calamitous to the family of MacGregor." Sixty widows of the Colquhouns rode to Stirling each on a white palfrey, a "choir of mourning dames." James VI, that most moral monarch, let loose his judicious wrath, the very name of the clan was proscribed, fire and sword pursued the MacGregors. The Highlanders are dauntless. There still exist MacGregors and with the MacGregor spirit. And who that heard the Glasgow choir sing the superb "MacGregors Gathering"—Thain' a Grigalach—but will gather at the cry, "The MacGregor is come!"
"The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the brae,
And the Clan has a name that is nameless by day;
Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!
Gather, gather, gather.
"If they rob us of name and pursue us with beagles,
Give their roofs to the flame, and their flesh to the eagles,
Then vengeance, vengeance, vengeance, Grigalach!
Vengeance, vengeance, vengeance.
"Through the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career,
O'er the peak of Ben Lomond the galley shall steer,
Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!
Gather, gather, gather."
There are twenty-four islands marooned in this part of the lake; for according to the old legend, one of these was a floating island and so to chain one they chained all. The first island is Inch Murrin, at which I looked with due respect, for it is a deer park of the present Duke of Montrose. I know not if he is descended from The Montrose, or from Malcolm Graeme and Fair Ellen, but let us believe it; it does not do to smile at the claims of long descent in this persisting Scotland. The Duke lives in Buchanan Castle, near the lake. Also he owns Ben Lomond. Also—I read it in "More Leaves" of Queen Victoria's Journal—"Duke of Montrose to whom half of Loch Lomond belongs."
It was here that Dorothy Wordsworth looked and recorded, "It is an outlandish scene; we might have believed ourselves in North America." And so, I knew the Lomond country for my own.
The steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond are in view at the top of the Loch, but the ballad may well have contented itself with the sides. For I know one traveler who wished to be loyal to the Ben, and having seen it in 1889, and not seen it for the thick Scotch mist, returned again in 1911, and had her only day of rain in sailing across Loch Lomond. The ballad turned into a coronach—
"But the broken heart kens nae second spring
Though resigned we may be while we're greetin'.
Ye'll tak the highway and I'll tak the low way."