And Lochnagar with Ida look’d o’er Troy.”
His mention of Lochnagar—“dark Lochnagar”—reminds us how peculiarly his name is connected with that Deeside mountain of which he is the laureate. Here, too, sprang the strange child-love of the precocious boy for Mary Duff, with whose beauty the beauty of the country where he came to know her was indissolubly linked in his mind. The scenes in Greece, he says, carried him back to Morven (his own “Morven of snow”), and many a dark hill in that classic land made him “think of the rocks that o’ershadow Colbeen;” whilst the very mention of “Auld Lang Syne” brings to his mind the river Dee and
“Scotland one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams.”
In Moore’s biography there are needlessly ingenious arguments to prove that it was not the Dee scenery that made Byron a poet. Of course not. Poeta nascitur non fit, to quote the old Latin saying, which puts the matter much more pithily than Moore. But scenery and early impressions determine the course of a poet’s genius as surely as the nature of the ground determines the course of the stream. How much Celtic magic there is in all Byron’s verses—the love of the wild and terrible and impressive in scenery, as in life! Byron’s poetry is before all romantic, and so is Deeside scenery. In his revolt against conventionalities, and even (it must be said) against the proprieties and decencies, we can clearly trace a true Celtic revolt against the dull, hard, prosaic facts of life. Can it be said that if Byron had passed his early years among the Lincolnshire fens or the muddy flats of Essex, “Don Juan” or “Childe Harold” would have been what they are—if, indeed, they had ever existed?
Moore under-estimated the influence of such scenes on Byron because he under-estimated the scenes themselves. “A small bleak valley, not at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet,” says he. At this the local historian, good Mr. James Brown, who, having first driven a coach till he knew every inch of a large stretch of the country, then wrote an excellent Deeside guide, waxes very wroth. “It is really to be wished that Mr. Thomas Moore would not write upon subjects which he knows nothing about. Deeside a small bleak valley! Who ever heard tell of such nonsense!” Moore, however, did after his kind. He who sang the “sweet vale of Avoca” cared little for “dark Lochnagar.” Indeed, there are some northern folk very much of Moore’s opinion. Does not the old proverb tell us that
“A mile of Don’s worth two of Dee,
Except for salmon, stone, and tree”?
But it is for those who love the stone and tree, the wild forests, the wilder hills, that Dee has its surpassing attraction. It adds a fine charm to the enthusiast’s enjoyment of such scenery to know it is not everyone who can appreciate it.
But we turn now to interest of another kind, for at Castleton of Braemar we touch successive strata of historical events. There is Craig-Koynoch, where Kenneth II., too old for hunting himself, used to watch his dogs as they chased some noble stag, whilst his ears drank in the music of horn and hound. Here, too, in the old castle of Braemar, of which but a few remains are left, Malcolm Canmore, last of Scotland’s Celtic kings, had a hunting seat in the midst of the mighty forest of which we still see the remains. There are still great herds of deer to be hunted, though the wolves and wild boars have long since vanished. Here, too, were the great possessions of the Mar family. It was to this place that John Erskine, thirty-ninth Earl of Mar, summoned the Highland clans under pretence of a great hunting party in Braemar forest, and began the rebellion of 1715. The standard was formally set up on the 6th of September, when the gilt ball which ornamented the top fell down, much to the consternation of the superstitious Celts.