[DURA DEN; OR, SECOND THOUGHTS ARE BEST.]
I took my way, a few days ago, fishing-rod in hand, from Cupar in Fife, by Dura Den, up towards the healthy and sequestered village of Ceres. Dura Den was once romantic and secluded. Its brawling stream, which empties the waters of the upper basin into the Eden, leaped and tumbled over igneous, and penetrated its way through aqueous, formations, till it mingled into rejoicing union with the lovely Eden immediately under the old towers of Spottiswood, and the fine Gothic church of Dairsie. This deep and beautifully-winding ravine was covered from rock to rock, on each successively sunny side, by trees of various name and leaf, from the scented sloe and hawthorn, up to the hazel, the birch, and the oak. It was a perfect aviary during the spring months. A few wild deer browsed amidst recesses, and various love-smitten maids and men repaired to this retreat, to talk of many things which were only interesting to themselves. The soft projecting sandstone rocks had been water-run into caves and recesses; and in some of these report had fixed the residence, for a night at least, of the famous Balfour of Burley, after the affair of Magus Muir.[A] It is not, however, to this, but to a more recent occurrence, that I am now about to solicit your attention, after, however, premising the change which has now been wrought upon this once rural, secluded, romantic, lovely spot. At the very entrance, there stands a bone-mill, grinding, with grating activity and horrible crunch, into powder the mingled bones of man and beast. You have scarcely escaped from the horrible jarring sound of the modern ogre, than you come full plump upon a spinning-mill, with as many windows as there are days in the year. There it stands bestriding the valley like a colossus, and commanding all the collected energies of the once pure and solitary stream. Bless me! how it thunders: the very rocks seem to shake under the whirl of the tremendous machinery; whilst at every open window out flies in clouds the imprisoned dust and stour. A single door opens, and the sound maddens on your ear into a screwing torture. It shuts again. You are greatly relieved by the compressed and imprisoned horror. A little further up this once delightful den, a pillar of smoke shoots out on the eye, like an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This is an evidence that (as in the formation of this globe) fire has been called upon to assist water. Again and again, another and another hulking dirty erection fixes its hideous trail in the lovely localities, till the landscape still onwards opens upon green fields, all covered and whitened over, not with daisies, but with yarn, which has just been removed from the vitriolic vat. I had essayed here and there to fish, but had not even a nibble. A little factory urchin, who saw my mistake, immediately accosted me with—
"Ye needna fish here about, sir, for the fish are a' dead."
"What has deaded them?" said I.
"Oh! I dinna ken, except maybe it's the vitriol—they dinna tak wi' the vitriol ava."
"No wonder," thought I. "I suspect neither you nor I would tak weel with such a beverage." So I at once rolled in my line, put up my rod, and was on the eve of returning, somewhat disappointed, from my forenoon's ramble, when my attention was attracted by an old, though fresh-looking man in his "cruda viridisque senectus," who was sitting on a bench in the sunshine, betwixt the door and the window of one of those very neat and cleanly cottages, which have been erected for the convenience and accommodation of the mill-spinners, and which, from the name of the spirited proprietor, has been called "Yoolfield."
"James," said the old man—"come here, James, and tell me what's that ye waur saying to the gentleman."
"Ou, I was only telling him there waur nae trouts, except stane anes,[B] here."
In the meantime, I had approached the old man's seat, and thinking that he motioned me to be seated, I at once took my place, as if I had been an old acquaintance, by his side. It turned out that he was the grandfather of this urchin, who in a few minutes reappeared with a face of great comfort and vigorous health; "causa erat in aperto"—he had dined.
"Ye'll be a stranger hereaboots, I mak nae doubt?" said the old man.