"'For I am sick, and capable of fears,
Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears.'"
I walked out through what used to be fields, and is now much suburban dwelling, toward Braehead.—"I am going to-morrow to a delightful place, Braehead by name, where there is ducks, cocks, bubblyjocks, 2 dogs, 2 cats and swine which is delightful"—to Ravelston—"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing sweetly, the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face."
Ravelston is still a place of delight, with its great cliffs breaking the surface of the park and a deep-lying lake with dark woodlands. I wish Marjorie might have known the ballad by Sydney Dobell; it has the magic quality she would have felt.
"Ravelston, Ravelston,
The merry path that leads
Down the golden morning hill,
And through the silver meads;
"She sang her song, she kept her kine,
She sat beneath the thorn,
When Andrew Keith of Ravelston
Rode thro' the Monday morn.
"Year after year, where Andrew came,
Comes evening down the glade,
And still there sits a moonshine ghost
Where sat the sunshine maid.
"She makes her immemorial moan,
She keeps her shadowy kine;
O Keith of Ravelston
The sorrows of thy line!"
In the late afternoon I took tram for Leith, changing of course at Pilrig, because Leith remains haughtily aloof from Edinburgh and emphasizes it through this break at the boundary. "When we came to Leith," says Boswell, "I talked perhaps with too boasting an air, how pretty the Frith of Forth looked; as indeed, after the prospect from Constantinople, of which I have been told, and that from Naples, which I have seen, I believe the view of the Frith and its environs from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh is the finest prospect in Europe, 'Aye,' replied Dr. Johnson, 'that is the state of the world. Water is the same everywhere.'"
And so, down to the pier, stopping on the way to look at a New Haven fishwife in her picturesque costume, which she has worn ever since the Danes came over. Yes, and looking for a suitable piece of earth for Queen Magdalene to kiss, "Scottis eard!" Well, if not here, there is Scottis eard worthy elsewhere.
I asked for the ferry to Burnt-is-land. The conductor of the tram looked, yes, and laughed. Burnt-island, he dared, dared to repeat. And so, I took ferry from Granton to—Burnt-island.
It is a long journey across the Firth. Far down the waters rises the bold rock of the Bass, around which I had sailed a day before, looking for a landing for some one more ponderous than solan geese or kittie wake, and not finding it; although I was told that from Canty bay—excellent Scots name—the innkeeper will row you o'er, and you may walk where James I was waiting for the boat which should carry him to safety in France, and getting instead the boat which carried him to prison in England. Still I like to remember that Henry IV declared in explanation that he "could speak very good French" himself, if that were what they were sending Scottish Jamie o'er the water for; Henry who had years of the Hundred Years' War behind him.
TANTALLON CASTLE.