"Dark night cam' on, the tempest roar'd,
Loud o'er the hills and valleys,
An' where was't that your Prince lay down
Who's hame should been a palace?
He row'd him in a Highland plaid,
Which cover'd him but sparely,
An' slept beneath a bush o' broom,
Oh, wae's me for Prince Charlie."
BALMORAL CASTLE.
On these braes of Mar, and in these hills and beside these very streams, the Prince made his adventure—yes, and simply because of that adventure will be forever remembered by those who believe in the heroic mood.
To leave Braemar the road leads down to Ballater, with motor cars to take it swiftly; past the castles of Mar old and new, where betimes sits the present Earl of Mar, not conning Risings but writing to the magazines his idea of a free Scotland, which shall have its Home Rule like Ireland—which was once Scotland—and which may have it at the great peace; down through an increasingly pleasant country. Balmoral Castle looks deserted now of its queen—and when queens desert, places are much emptier than when kings leave. But "queen's weather" is still possible here, even though the castle and our way are overshadowed by Lochnagar, on which we bestow more than passing glance in memory of that Gordon who was Lord Byron.
"Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd;
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perished my memory ponder'd,
As daily I strove through the pine-cover'd glade;
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star;
For fancy was cheer'd by traditional story,
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Garr."
And one glance at Lumphanan— "This Macbeth then slew they there in the wood of Lumphanan," so runs the old chronicle.
Aberdeen
There is no city in Scotland which seems to me to have more personality, a more distinct personality, than Aberdeen. It is plainly a self-sufficient city, and both in politics and in religion it thinks for itself, mindless if its thinking is not that of the rest of the kingdom.
Its provost cannot leave its borders; once he attended a battle, many and many a year ago, nineteen miles from the city at Harlow, and sad to say, he was killed. So now the provost remains in the city, he cannot leave it more than President can leave Republic, or Pope the Vatican.