The poems of Ossian mirror, not the Lowland life and scenery, but that of the north and west. This is proof of the age-long differences that once divided Scotland. Archibald Geikie, geologist and prose poet, who has been familiar with the scenery of the western Highlands from boyhood, believes that, laying Macpherson aside altogether, there is in the poems of Ossian “a true poetry of local form and color, which could only have been created in the Highlands, but which must be of old date, for it alludes to characteristics that have long since passed away.... If poetry was to take birth in these regions and to deal largely with outer nature, as well as with human feeling and action, it must have been essentially Ossianic—sad, weird, and solemn.”
Geikie says, again, that in “the well-known contrast in style and treatment between the northern and southern ballads, our national poetry seems to me to lead us back to the fundamental distinctions between the physical features of the border country and those of more southern and civilized parts of England.... The varied scenery of that wild borderland forms the background of the scenery in the poems, and according to their themes, we find ourselves among rough moss-hags, or in fertile dale, on bare moorland, or sheltered clowe, by forest side or river ford, amid the tender green of birken shaws, or the sad russet of dowie dens.... In the southern ballad, on the other hand, the local coloring is absent, or at least is so feeble that it could not have had the dominant influence which is exercised upon the imagination of the Northern minstrels.... To my mind this tame, featureless character is suggestive of the sluggish streams and pleasing but unimpressive landscape amid which the southern minstrels sang.”
CHAPTER XX
LOCH LOMOND AND THE TROSSACHS
The Scotch lakes form the one element of repose in a landscape which, in almost every other feature, suggests the most terrific activities of nature. Excelling all in size, beauty, and romantic interest is Loch Lomond, in Rob Roy’s country. It is the pride of the Scottish inland waters, as Cayuga is the gem in the chain of finger lakes in central New York.
On our first visit neither railway nor other tourist-bringing facilities, except steamboats, existed. Nor had the necessity of making the lochs of Scotland the drinking-glasses of towns near by yet arisen in so large a measure as to threaten to blot out some of the strands and beaches famous in song and story.
Exquisite are the islands—about thirty in number and lying chiefly in the southern part—that dot the surface, such as Inch Cailliach, the Isle of Women, or Place of the Nuns; Inch Tarranach, or Monk’s Isle; Inch Fad, or Long Island; Inch Cruin, or Round Island. One of the largest of these is a nobleman’s deer park. Inch Loanig, or Yew Isle, where Robert the Bruce planted yew trees for his bowmen, and where the wood of the fiery cross was grown, and others that have associated with their names ancient romance or modern utility, possess a double charm. Geologically, the loch is the remnant of an (amputated) arm of the sea, and usually but a few feet above the level of the great deep.
One of the dales near Loch Lomond, at whose entrance are the ruins of an old castle, is Glen Fruin, the Glen of Sorrow. Here a terrible battle was fought between the Macgregors and the partisans of the Laird of Luss, the head of the family of Colquhon, in which the Macgregors were victorious and the Colquhons almost annihilated. There is also a Holy Pool of St. Fillan known, where incantations used to be made to secure the influence of the saint for the recovery of insane persons.
It seems a literary outrage not to read, as a preparation, Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” before going through the Trossachs, or riding over the ridge from Loch Lomond to Loch Katrine. This romantic defile, whose Gaelic name means the “Bristled Country,” in allusion to its shaggy physical features, is very narrow and beautifully wooded. Properly speaking, the Trossachs extend from Loch Achray to Loch Katrine. They are continued thence, by a strip on the northeastern shore to a point above the now submerged Silver Strand, opposite to Ellen’s Isle, a distance of less than three miles.
A stage-coach was waiting for us at Inversnaid, and we were so fortunate as to get a seat in front on the top near the driver, who was very intelligent, and showed us among other places the woods in which Roderick Dhu’s men are supposed to have retired for their coronach, or wailing over the loss of their great leader. On one side are the steep green slopes of Ben Venue to the southwest, while on the northeast are the precipitous crags of Ben A’an. Wood, water, rock, and hill make a harmonious blending of lovely scenery. It was Sir Walter, the “Wizard of the North,” who made this ravine the Mecca of tourists. In his day there was no easy entrance or exit. The only access to the lake was by means of a ladder, formed out of the branches of trees and roots.
Scott’s lines tell that