BALLOCHMYLE(p. [334]).
Through a cold moorish country the Ayr wanders to Sorn, a place not easy to reach even now, when communication has improved so much since the times when a Scottish king testily declared that if he wanted to give “the devil a job” he would send him on a journey in winter to Sorn. Here the face of the valley changes. It runs betwixt high and wooded banks, often rising precipitously in great red cliffs, patched with lichen and fern, and with birch and oak coppice growing in their crannies, below which the strong dark current rushes tumultuously over its shoals or eddies, and sleeps in its deep “wiels,” or curves majestically round the green margins of level “holms” or haughs. Wiel and holm, crag and hanging wood, continue indeed to be characteristics of the valley landscapes from this point almost to the sea; and, for its short length of course, few streams, either of the Lowlands or Highlands, or none, can compete with “winding Ayr” in the rich beauty and romantic interest of its scenery.
THE AYR AT BARSKIMMING(p. [334]).
These features are blended in wonderful and picturesque variety where, at the junction of the Cleuch burn, Sorn Castle looks down from its rock upon the Ayr, with the parish church and the village in close proximity. Here we come upon the footsteps of Peden the Covenanter, who was born in this parish, and had his “cave” in the dell. Memories of Burns, however, thrust those of the fierce withstander of the “Godless” into the background even in his native parish. Catrine House, beautifully placed among its woods on the left bank, is lower down; and there the poet, as guest of Professor Dugald Stewart and his father, first “dinnered with a lord”—had his first glimpse into that polite and lettered society which, as many think, did as much harm as good to the man and his genius. Catrine village, a model home of industry ever since David Dale planted his spinning factories here more than a century ago, is on the opposite side of the river; and adjoining it, and skirting the stream, are the “braes of Ballochmyle,” whose picturesque beauties are worthy of their singer. And Ballochmyle, the seat in Burns’s time and our own of the Alexanders, brings us to the environs of Mauchline, which, next to Ayr and Alloway and Dumfries, may boast of being the locality most closely associated with the poet and his muse. Mossgiel, where he farmed the stiff and thankless soil of the “ridge of Kyle,” is three miles behind the town, on high ground forming the watershed between the Cessnock and the Ayr. There, as Wordsworth sings, the pilgrim may find “the very field where Burns ploughed up the daisy,” and look far and wide over the undulating plain furrowed by many a tuneful stream to where, “descried above sea-clouds, the peaks of Arran rise.” On the road leading down to the clean and thriving little town below, Burns foregathered with Fun and her glum companions on their way to Mauchline “Holy Fair.” In the kirkyard one may find the graves of “Daddy Auld” and of “Nance Tinnock.” Close by, on the site of the ancient priory that had Melrose as its mother house, Burns wrote some of his best known lyrics; while opposite still stands the change-house of “Poosie Nancy,” whose fame has been made immortal by the “Jolly Beggars.” Jean Armour was the daughter of a local mason; and other “Mauchline Belles,” besides his “Bonnie Jean,” attracted his fickle fancy, and spurred his Muse to song. The best and the worst memories of Robert Burns cling about Mauchline.
A mile from the town—a mile also below the railway viaduct that bestrides the river—Ayr is joined by Lugar, and the united streams flow in dark swirls under the picturesque arches of Barskimming Bridge and along the margin of the pretty holm in which Burns is said to have composed his “Man was Made to Mourn.” The stretch of three or four miles from this point down to Failford is perhaps the most beautiful and romantic on the Ayr. The current alternately hurries and pauses in its winding course, now between lofty crags of old red sandstone or steep banks clad with hawthorn and bramble, now through umbrageous woods of oak and beech coming down to the water’s edge, or past the skirts of flat green haughs.
Barskimming House, a square red mansion of last century, occupies a noble and commanding position on a rock overlooking some of the deepest pools of Ayr. Beside it, the river is spanned, high above its darkling eddies, by an elegant balustrated bridge grey with age and green with mosses. A mile below, the river path drawn athwart the stoop brae-sides plunges by a tunnel through a great barrier of red rock that rises sheer from the right bank, and openings in the cliff face give glimpses of the rushing stream, and of the trees climbing the crags opposite to where they are crowned by a mimic porticoed temple.