W. E. G.
Ithaca, New York.
CONTENTS
| I. | The Spell of the Invisible | [1] |
| II. | The Outpost Isles | [7] |
| III. | Glasgow: the Industrial Metropolis | [17] |
| IV. | Edinburgh the Picturesque | [27] |
| V. | Melrose Abbey and Sir Walter Scott | [38] |
| VI. | Rambles along the Border | [50] |
| VII. | The Lay of the Land: Dunfermline | [65] |
| VIII. | Dundee: the Gift of God | [76] |
| IX. | The Glamour of Macbeth | [88] |
| X. | Stirling: Castle, Town, and Towers | [97] |
| XI. | Oban and Glencoe—Chapters in History | [108] |
| XII. | Scotland’s Island World—Iona and Staffa | [119] |
| XIII. | The Caledonian Canal—Scottish Sports | [131] |
| XIV. | Inverness: the Capital of the Highlands | [143] |
| XV. | “Bonnie Prince Charlie” | [156] |
| XVI. | The Old Highlands and their Inhabitants | [164] |
| XVII. | Heather and Highland Costume | [177] |
| XVIII. | The Northeast Coast—Aberdeen and Elgin | [191] |
| XIX. | The Orkneys and the Shetlands | [202] |
| XX. | Loch Lomond and the Trossachs | [213] |
| XXI. | Robert Burns and his Teachers | [223] |
| XXII. | Kirk, School, and Freedom | [234] |
| XXIII. | John Knox: Scotland’s Mightiest Son | [247] |
| XXIV. | Invergowrie: In Scottish Homes | [259] |
| XXV. | America’s Debt to Scotland | [270] |
| Chronological Framework of Scotland’s History | [279] | |
| Index | [287] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| St. Martin’s Cross at Iona[Frontispiece] | |
| Edinburgh City and Castle | [28] |
| Dryburgh Abbey | [44] |
| Abbotsford | [62] |
| The Monastery, Dunfermline Abbey | [70] |
| The Valley of the Tay | [84] |
| A Typical Scottish Street: High Street, Dumfries | [94] |
| Stirling Castle, from the King’s Knot | [100] |
| The Kings’ Graves, Iona | [128] |
| The Cairn at Culloden | [148] |
| The Scotch Brigade Memorial | [174] |
| Interior of Cottage, Northeast Coast | [194] |
| The Harbor of Kirkwall, Orkney Islands | [202] |
| The Trossachs and Loch Achray | [216] |
| The Tam o’ Shanter Inn, Ayr | [226] |
| The Edinburgh Conference of Missions | [268] |
BONNIE SCOTLAND
CHAPTER I
THE SPELL OF THE INVISIBLE
As with so many of my countrymen, the dream floated before the vision dawned. The American who for the first time opens his eyes in Europe is like the newborn babe, whose sight is not yet focused. He sees double. There is continually before him the Old World of his fancy and the Europe of reality. War begins, as in heaven, between the angels—of memory and of hope. The front and the rear of his brain are in conflict. While the glamour of that initial glimpse, that never-recurring moment of first surprise, is before him, he perforce compares and contrasts the ideal and the reality, even to his bewilderment and confusion. Only gradually do the two beholdings coalesce. Yet even during the dissolving pictures of imagination and optical demonstration, that which is present and tangible wins a glory from what is past and unseen.
From childhood there was always a Scotland which, like Wordsworth’s “light that never was, on sea or land,” lay in my mind as “the consecration and the poet’s dream,” of purple heather, crimson-tipped daisies, fair lasses, and brave lads. It rose out of such rainbow tints of imagination and out of such mists of fancy as were wont to gather, after reading the poets and romancers who have made Scotland a magnet to travellers the world over. This far-off region, of kilts and claymores, first sprang out of the stories of friends and companions. Our schoolmates, whether born on the moor or sprung from Scottish parents in America, inherited the love of their fond forebears and kinsmen, who sincerely believed that, of all lands on this globe, Bonnie Scotland was the fairest.