Once upon a time Castle Dark was a place of gentility and stirring days. You have heard it,—you know it; now it is like a deer's skull in Wood Mamore, empty, eyeless, sounding to the whistling wind, but blackened instead of bleached in the threshing rains. When the day shines and the sun coaxes the drowsy mists from the levels by the river, that noble house that was brisks up and grey-whitens, minding maybe of merry times; the softest smirr of rain—and the scowl comes to corbie-stone and gable; black, black grow the stones of old ancient Castle Dark! Little one, m' eudail, put the door to, and the sneck down.
“True for you, Paruig Dali; you know the place as if you had seen it.”
With eyes Paruig Dali has never seen it. But my friends tell me what they know, and beyond I have learned of myself. Up the river-side, many a time I pass to the place and over its low dykes, dry-stone, broken and crumbling to the heel. The moss is soft on the little roads, so narrow and so without end, winding round the land; the nettle cocks him right braggardly over the old home of bush and flower, poisoning the air. Where the lady dozed in her shady seat below the alder-tree, looking out between half-shut eyes at the proud Highlands—loch, glen, and mountain—is but a root rotten, and hacked by the woodman's whittle. A tangle of wild wood, bracken, and weed smothers the rich gardens of Castle Dark.
“It is so, it is so, Paruig Dali, blind man, prince among splendid pipers and storied men!”
And to stand on the broad clanging steps that lifted from the hunting-road to the great door—that is a thinking man's trial. To me, then, will be coming graveyard airs, yellow and vexatious, searching eager through my bones for this old man's last weakness. “Thou sturdy dog!” will they be saying, “some day, some day! Look at this strong tower!” With an ear to the gap on the side of the empty ditch, I can hear the hollowness of the house rumbling with pains, racked at cabar and corner-stone, the thought and the song gone clean away. There is no window, then, that has not a complaint of its own; no loop-hole, no vent, no grassy chimney that the blind fellow cannot hear the pipe of. Straight into the heart's core of Castle Dark looks the sun; the deep tolbooth of the old reivers and the bed-chamber of the maid are open wide to the night and to the star!
“Ochan! ochan!”
You that only ken the castle in common day or night and plain man's weather have but little notion of its wonders. It was there, and black and hollow, ere ever you were born, or Paruig Dali. To see Castle Dark one must take the Blue Barge and venture on two trips.
“The Blue Barge, just man?”
That same. The birlinn ghorm, the galley of fairy Lorn. It lies in the sunlight on the bay, or the moonlight in certain weathers, and twelve of the handsomest sit on the seats with the oars in their hands, the red shirt bulging over the kilt-belt. At the stem of the barge is the chair of the visitor. Gentle or semple, 'tis the same boat and crew, and the same cushioned chair, for all that make the jaunt to Castle Dark. My story is of two trips a man made by Barge Blue up the river to the white stairs.
He roved round the Lowlands road on a fine summer day, and out on the sands among the running salt threads of ebb tide. Among the shells, his eyes (as it might be) fell on the castle, and he had a notion to make the trip to it by a new road. Loudly he piped to sea. If loudly he piped, keen was the hearing, for yonder came the galley of fairy Lorn, the twelve red-shirts swinging merry at the oars and chanting a Skye iorram.