Poems

by William Anderson

As daily I strode through the pine-covered glade."

Byron.

According to the Guide Books, Loch Awe and its vicinity, more perhaps than any other district in the Highlands, abound with memorials of former ages. The lake is thirty miles in extent, and of the average breadth of one, although in some places it does not exceed half a mile. It is surrounded by mountains finely wooded, and like many of the Scottish lakes, its surface is studded over with small islands, beautifully tufted with trees, and some of them large enough to admit of being pastured. Upon the island of Innis-Hail are the remains of a convent; and on a rocky promontory at the eastern extremity of the lake stand the magnificent ruins of Kilchurn Castle. This structure, which still exhibits the vestiges of a castellated square tower, was built in 1440, by Sir John Campbell, (second son of Argyle,) Knight of Rhodes, and ancestor of the Breadalbane family, and in later times it became, from the extensive view it commanded of the lake, the favourite residence of the chiefs of the family. In 1745 it was garrisoned by the king's troops, in order to defend the pass into the Highlands, and secure the tranquillity of the country. Emerging from the ocean, and rising on the north-east bank of Loch Awe, soars Ben Cruachan, the largest mountain in Argyleshire. Its perpendicular height is 3,390 feet above the level of the sea, and its circumference at the base is upwards of twenty miles. On the south, the ascent is gentle nearly to the summit, where it rises abrupt, and divides into two points, each having the form of a sugar-loaf. Before the storm, "the spirit of the mountain shrieks" from Ben Cruachan, Ben Doran, and some other Highland mountains. When Burke made his tour in Scotland, he declared that Loch Awe was the most picturesque lake he had ever seen. It was in a narrow pass in the vicinity of this lake that King Robert Bruce defeated the Macdougals of Lorn, in 1308. In Loch Awe are found salmon, trout, eels, and other fresh water fish. The lake discharges itself by the river Awe into Loch Etive at Bunawe Ferry.

[Note 4], Page 87.

The Wolf.

Wolves were once the scourge of England, and are still numerous in many parts of France. The Poem is founded on an incident which occurred some years ago in Picardy—the details of which were similar, with the exception that the peasant shot his mother instead of his sweetheart, in mistake for the wolf of which he was in pursuit. The last of these ferocious animals seen in the neighbourhood of Guisne was shot by a woman named Louise Vernette, nearly fifty years ago. During a severe winter, when the whole country was covered with snow, a she-wolf, urged to desperation by hunger, had entered her cottage at an early hour of the morning, and carried off her infant, as it lay in the cradle. The mother, on returning from the labours of the field, with frantic lamentations searched the neighbourhood for her child. During her wanderings she encountered a peasant, breathless from a long and unavailing pursuit of the savage beast, which he had seen entering a wood about three leagues distant with the child in its jaws. The whole village immediately renewed the chase; the mother, arming herself with a gun, was, as might have been expected, the most indefatigable, and, penetrating into the recesses of the forest, encountered the monster, which she shot dead. No traces of the miserable infant were ever discovered.

[Note 5], Page 105.

Mount Horeb.

Mount Sinai stands about 120 miles south from Jerusalem, and nearly 260 eastward from Grand Cairo in Egypt. The mountain is of no great extent, but extremely high, and has two tops; the western of which is called Horeb, and the eastern, which is about a third higher, Sinai. There are several springs and fruit-trees on Horeb, but nothing except rainwater on the top of Sinai. The ascent of both is very steep, and can only be effected by steps, now much effaced, which the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, caused to be cut in the marble rock. At the foot of Mount Sinai, on the north, and near to the ascent of Mount Horeb, there was a monastery dedicated to Saint Catherine, but now in ruins, not far distant from which there stands a fountain of very clear water, formed like a bow or arch. A little above which is to be seen the Cave where Elijah rested when God spoke unto him, 1 Kings xix. From the top of Sinai, God proclaimed his law to the Hebrews amid devouring flames of fire, Exod. xxiv. The Rock Rephidim, which seems to have been a clift fallen off from the side of Sinai, and lies like a large loose stone in the midst of the valley, gives name to that part of the desert nearest the mountain. There are twelve openings in it, whence, on being struck by Moses, the waters gushed out for the supply of the Israelites, during the forty years they tarried in the desert, Exod. xvii.

[Note 6], Page 116.