CHAPTER XXIX.
The Vernal Equinox—Beauty of Loch Leven—Astronomical Notes—How an old Woman supposed to possess the Evil Eye escaped a cruel death.
The vernal equinox has come and gone, unaccompanied this year [April 1872], as it was unheralded and unannounced, by anything like the storms that from the earliest times have been observed to be attendant on the sun’s crossing the equator. It is by no means certain, however, that these storms may not even now be a-brewing, to make themselves yet felt in all their fierceness, for we have noticed in recent years particularly that what are called the “equinoctial gales” quite as frequently follow, as accompany or precede, the exact equality of day and night. We have just had a fortnight of genuine March weather—clear, cold days, and frosty nights—the air snell and biting, to be sure, and keen of edge, as might be expected on the uplands; but in places sheltered from the east and north it is delightfully bright and sunny, the incessant song of birds, the hum of wild bees, and the gay fluttering of early butterflies, making one think of Whitsuntide rather than All Fools’ Day; the twittering of swallows and the cheery notes of the cuckoo alone are wanting to make the illusion perfect, and these, unless the weather should undergo some extraordinary and unexpected change, must certainly soon be heard, much earlier this year, we should think, than usual. We are particularly favoured in this respect along the northern shores of Loch Leven. Here, to quote Burns—
“Simmer first unfaulds her robe, and here the langest tarry;”
and as we wander afield we often apply the words of Horace to our own little spot, as from some neighbouring height we view it cozily nestling in the sunlight—
Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus ridet;
which may be rendered—