The legends which hang like the mist round every rock and ruin have a weird fascination, but I must stop repeating them, or there will be room for nothing else. I cannot help noting, however, that there is a Deeside version of nearly every ancient myth. Thus one story tells how a Macdonald was suckled by a wolf quite after the fashion of Romulus. Another is of a giant injured by an individual calling himself Mysel, so that when the stupid monster was asked who hurt him, he could only say “Mysel” (myself). This is almost exactly the tale of the giant in the “Odyssey.” But more curious than all is a reproduction of the famous apple legend, with Malcolm Canmore for Geisler and one called Hardy for William Tell. The resemblance is exact even down to the two additional arrows; but I can scarcely go so far as the old Deeside lady, who affirmed that since Malcolm Canmore flourished about the time of the Norman Conquest, and William Tell was contemporary with Robert Bruce, the Swiss legend was borrowed from the Scotch!
ABERGELDIE CASTLE.
It is difficult to get away from a neighbourhood like Ballater, where there is so much worth seeing. The Muich here, running from the south, falls into the Dee. About five miles up is the Linn of Muich—linns and waterfalls are the peculiar glory of Deeside, I need scarcely say. A great mass of water finds here but one narrow outlet, over which it foams and struggles, and then falls fifty feet with a great splash into a deep pool. The heights of the precipice are clothed with old fir-trees, which also stick out of the crevasses of the rocks. The Muich rises away up at the foot of Lochnagar in Loch Muich, which means, they say, the Lake of Sorrow—so gloomy and sombre is that far-off recess in the hill. To the west of Lochnagar are the Loch and Glen of Callater—wild enough, too; and beyond is the Breakneck Waterfall, which is positively the last fall I shall mention. A stream makes a bold dart over a precipice. It seems like a thread of silver in the sunlight. Down it falls, with a thundering sound on the rock, scattering its spray around in a perpetual shower. A British admiral, some few years ago, slipped over a precipice near here. His hammer (he was specimen hunting) stuck in a crack, and there he held on for two awful days, and still more awful nights. The whole neighbourhood hunted for him, and at last, the black speck being seen on the cliff, he was rescued. Not a man of the rescuers would accept a farthing for what he had done. The Highlander has his faults, but there is always something of the gentleman about him.
BALLATER.
Nearly due north of Ballater is Morven—the Morven of Byron, and (perhaps) of Ossian, though there are other places and districts in Scotland bearing the name. Morven is the centre of Highland song and legend. But if it is enchanted, it is also uncertain, ground, and must here be left untraced. We are still forty-three miles from Aberdeen; so we glide through Aboyne and Glentanner, leaving the beautiful castle of the one, and the equally, though differently, beautiful valley of the other, unvisited. Then in many a devious turn we wind round the northern boundary of the parish of Birse. “As auld as the hills o’ Birse,” says a local proverb, which shows that even in this land of hills the district is considered hilly. Here are some of their names: Torquhandallachy, Lamawhillis, Carmaferg, Lamahip, Duchery, Craigmahandle, Gannoch, Creaganducy. Grand words those, if you can give them their proper sound. Otherwise leave them “unhonoured and unsung,” and unpronounced. The local chronicler is much perplexed by another somewhat inelegant Aberdeenshire witticism—“Gang to Birse and bottle skate.” With absolute logical correctness he proves that in that inland and hilly parish there are no skate; and that, if there were, to bottle them would be contrary to the principles and practice of any recorded system of fish-curing. We shall not discuss with him this dark saying.
On the other side of the Dee is Lunphanan parish, in the “wood” of which Macbeth—according to Wyntoun, though not according to Shakespeare—met his death. His “cairn” is still to be seen on a bare hill in this district, though another tradition tells us that his dust mingles with the dust of “gracious Duncan” in the sacred soil of Iona. The Dee, now leaving its native county, flows for a few miles through the Mearns or Kincardineshire. It returns to Aberdeenshire in the parish of Drumoak, forming for the remaining fourteen miles of its course the boundary between the two counties.
ABERDEEN.