The Spell of Scotland

by Keith Clark

Life moves swiftly through the streets and across the waters. For it is a place that all the world comes to, in its search for the next beautiful place. Steamers from the Caledonian Canal and Inverness, steamers from the Crinan Canal and Glasgow, coaches from the near country, railroads from the east and north, bring the world to Oban. And from Oban boats move out on the Firth of Lorne and the Sound of Mull and through the broken waters of the Hebrides, out into the unbroken waters of the Atlantic. People come and go, come and go. It is not that Oban is filled with people. Very often the inns are filled and the careless traveler may seek eagerly if not vainly for a lodging for the night, to find his landlady a Campbell of the Campbells.

But there is seldom a feeling of too many people in Oban. They come and go, night and morning. They do not stay. In the evening the esplanade may be filled and the crowd very gala; the circle of lights marking the embankments, steamers lying at their ease after the day's work, looking, yes, like pirates, retired pirates, rakish, with tapering spars and brave red funnels, the soft plash of oars out on the bay and the moving lights of the rowboats, with perhaps—no quite certainly—a piper, or two or three, dressed in tartan, more like the red and black of the Campbells in this historic region of Argyle, piping up bravely "The Campbells are Coming, yoho, yoho."

It is lively in the evening, there is always a touch of pageantry. Yet Oban is a very good place in which to stay and make the little foot excursions that penetrate only a few miles into the circumurban territory. The most constrained walker may find rich foot-interest out of Oban; nowhere do comfort and beauty and story combine in more continuous lure. Easy and attainable is Dunolly Castle, much more attainable than it was in the old days when the Lord of the Isles made his permanent seat here, and defied the world and the king; more attainable now than when Scott came this way seeking "copy" and "colour" and declaring "nothing can be more beautifully wild than Dunolly." To-day Dunolly is beautiful, but scarcely wildly beautiful; that is, in comparison with other wild castles of this wild West; and very attainable, the walk being provided with seats all the way, casual "rest and be thankfuls," of the municipal corporation.

But beyond Dunolly, four miles of good highway, with Loch Linnhe breaking magnificently on the eye, and Loch Etive reaching off endlessly into the deep purple, is Dunstaffnage, which, before Stirling, or Perth, or Edinburgh, was capital of Scotland and the place of destiny. Very redoutable it sits on its high crag, as picturesque a castle as there is in the world—and we are in a land of castles picturesquely set. The walls above the waters lift themselves in lofty height, and promise to remain, with their great thickness presented to the consuming world. It is still towered for strength and scope, and looks its part of royal residence. Here was found the Stone of Destiny—after Jacob or another had carried this Jacobite sleeping pillow hither from Palestine. Kenneth McAlpine, somewhat sacrilegiously, carried the Stone away to Perth. And Edward sacrilegiously carried it down to Westminster, where George V sat on it, in 1911, or nearly on it, so as to prove his destined right.

Bruce took the castle from the Lord of Lorne, at what time he was taking all the castles of Scotland. And even The Bruce in his busy days of castle-storming, must have paused in this height, at these bastions, to look over this western world and decide that it was good and should be added to his Scottish world. Across Loch Linnhe he could see the bens of Morven and of Appin, and up Loch Etive, Ben Cruachan—even as you and I. The Highlands and the Islands are still primitive, man dwindles here, and the world becomes what it was before the Sixth Day.

But The Bruce did not see these brass cannon from a wreck of the Armada, The Bruce lived too far before that great day to see the coast "strewn with the ruined dream of Spain." And he was too early for the ancient ruined Gothic chapel of much austere beauty which stands near.

It is from Pulpit Hill that Oban gives the best view of all the lyric lay of this water and land world; on a clear day when the wind is from the west, when sunshine has been drenching the world, and when the sun is about to sink behind Ben More. Pulpit Hill is a wooded steep bluff to the east of Oban, at its foot parklike drives and forest-embowered cottages with their windows open to the sea, with rich roses filling the air and flaunting fuchias filling the eye. It is an easy climb, even after a day of Scotch-seeing in the backward of the land.

Here one may sit and meditate on the life and character of David McCrae, to whom the pulpit is dedicated. Or one may look over the land and "soothly swear was never yet a scene so fair." Or, to borrow again from that same Scottish scene painter, and another scene—"One burnished sheet of living gold."

The eye runs far out over the world, across the Bay of Oban, across the Island of Kerrera, across the Island of Mull set against the late sky, and over to Lismore which lies shining and tender against the deepening purple background of Morven. The sun casts slant rays across the land and across the bay, bathing the far land in tender lilac, the sea in steely blue, while Kerrera lies in patches of dark and light, a farmhouse sharp against a rose mist that rises in shallow places and quickly fades, leaving all the world purple in hue. Shepherd lads and shepherd dogs may be seen at this last moment preparing to watch the flocks by night, and long horned shaggy cattle browse at peace in the fading light. Flocks of birds fly over, starlings in scattered black patches, sea swallows poising for prey, and sea gulls resting on the wave after a weary day. Everything is at peace.