Common rumour would have it that Lord John Scott, whose good qualities included a fine voice and a love for Scotch songs, to which his wife contributed at least one exquisite ballad, sang this squib to her Majesty. An improvement on the story, which is at least strictly in keeping with the Prince's character, added, that when another song was suggested, and the "Flowers of the Forest" mentioned, Prince Albert, unacquainted with the song in question, and misled by a word in the title, exclaimed kindly, "No, no; let the poor man alone, he has had enough of this sort of thing."
From Dalkeith the Queen and the Prince started for the Highlands, on a bright, clear, cold, frosty morning. They crossed the Forth and landed at Queen's Ferry, which bore its name from another queen when she was going on a very different errand; for there it is said the fugitive Margaret, the sister of the Atheling, after she had been wrecked in Scotland Water, landed and took her way on foot to Dunfermline to ask grace of Malcolm Cean Mohr, who made her his wife. Queen Victoria only saw Dunfermline and the abbey which holds the dust of King Robert the Bruce from a distance, as she journeyed by Kinross and Loch Leven, getting a nearer glimpse of Queen Mary's island prison, to Perthshire.
At Dupplin the 42nd Highlanders, in their kilts, were stationed appropriately. Perth, with its fair "Inches" lying on the brimming Tay, in the shadow of the wooded hills of Kinnoul and Moncrieff, delighted the royal strangers, and reminded Prince Albert of Basle.
The old Palace of Scone, under the guardianship of Lord Mansfield, was the restingplace for the night. Next day the Queen saw the mound where the early kings of Scotland were crowned. A sort of ancient royal visitors' book was brought out from Perth to her Majesty, and the Queen and the Prince were requested to write their names in it. The last names written were those of James VI. and Charles I. Her Majesty and Prince Albert gave their mottoes as well as their names. Beneath her signature she wrote, "Dieu et mon Droit;" beneath his he wrote, "Treu und Fest."
From Scone the party proceeded to Dunkeld, passing through Birnam Pass, the first of the three "Gates," into the Highlands, where the prophecy against Macbeth was fulfilled, and entered what is emphatically "the Country" by the lowest spur of the mighty Grampians.
The romantic, richly-wooded beauty of Dunkeld was increased by a picturesque camp of Athole Highlanders, to the number of a thousand men, with their piper in attendance. They had been called out for her Majesty's benefit by the late Duke of Athole, then Lord Glenlyon, who was suffering from temporary blindness, so that he had to be led about by Lady Glenlyon, his wife. At Dunkeld the Queen lunched, and walked down the ranks of Highland soldiers. The piper played, and a reel and the ancient sword-dance, over crossed swords—the nimble dancer avoiding all contact with the naked blades—were danced. The whole scene—royal guests, noble men and women, stalwart clansmen in their waving dusky tartans—must have been very animated and striking in the lovely autumn setting of the mountains when the ling was red, the rowan berries hung like clusters of coral over the brown burns, and a field of oats here and there came out like a patch of gold among the heather. To put the finishing-touch to the picture, the grey tower of Gawin Douglas's Cathedral, still and solemn, kept watch over the tomb of the Wolf of Badenoch.
But Dunkeld was not the Queen's destination. She was going still farther into the Highlands. She left the mountains of Craig-y-barns and Craig-vinean behind her, and travelled on by Aberfeldy to Taymouth, the noble seat of the Marquis of Breadalbane. Lord Glenlyon's Highlanders gave place to Lord Breadalbane's, the Murrays, in their particular set of tartan with their juniper badge, to the Campbells and the Menzies, in their dark green and red and white kilts, with the tufts of bog myrtle and ash in their bonnets. The pipers were multiplied, and a company of the 92nd Highlanders replaced the 42nd, in kilts like their neighbours. "The firing of the guns," wrote the Queen, "the cheering of the great crowd, the picturesqueness of the dresses, the beauty of the surrounding country with its rich background of wooded hills, altogether formed one of the finest scenes imaginable. It seemed as if a great chieftain in olden feudal times was receiving his sovereign. It was princely and romantic."
Such a "sovereign" of such a "chief" is the crowned lady, every inch a queen, represented in Durham's bust reproduced in the illustration.
Lord Breadalbane was giving his Queen a royal welcome. Lady Breadalbane, a childless wife, had been one of the beautiful Haddington Baillies, descendants of Grizel Baillie; she was suffering from wasting sickness, and her beauty, still remarkable, was "as that of the dead." Some of the flower of the Scotch nobility were assembled in the house to meet the Queen and the Prince—members of the families of Buccleugh, Sutherland, Abercorn, Roxburgh, Kinnoul, Lauderdale &c. &c. The Gothic dining-room was dined in for the first time; the Queen was the earliest occupant of her suite of rooms. After dinner, the gardens were illuminated, the hills were crowned with bonfires, and Highlanders danced reels to the sound of the pipes by torchlight in front of the house. "It had a wild and very gay effect."
The whole life, with its environment, was like a revelation of new possibilities to the young English Queen who had never been out of England before. It was at the most propitious moment that she made her first acquaintance with the Scotch Highlands which she has learned to love so well; she enjoyed everything with the keen sense of novelty and the buoyance of unquenched spirits. Looking back upon it all, long afterwards, she wrote with simple pathos, "Albert and I were then only twenty-three, young and happy."