“Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl’t;
Whyles glitter’d in the nightly rays,
Wi’ bickerin’, dancin’ dazzle;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,
Unseen that nicht.”
Many such might be discovered hidden even in the bare bleak moorlands, bordering upon Clydesdale, where the Ayr has its source. Their brown undulations, nowhere taking any boldness of form, and only in certain lights any beauty of colouring, rise on one hand to the crown of Cairntable, and on the other to Priesthill and its neighbour heights. Stern and moving dramas have been enacted on these bleak hillsides. Priesthill was the home of the “Christian carrier,” John Brown, shot beside his own door by Claverhouse’s dragoons; and on Airds Moss, the heathery ridge between Ayr and Lugar’s mossy fountains, fell Richard Cameron, the “Lion of the Covenant.” If desolate, the district is no longer lonely, for coalpits smoke at the taproots of the Ayr beside the reservoirs that supply water to the mills and factories of Catrine; and Muirkirk—the “Muirkirk of Kyle”—is a considerable village, with iron and chemical works.