'Brig of Balgounie, wight (strong) is thy wa',
Wi' a wife's ae son on a mare's ae foal,
Down shalt thou fa'.'"
How accurate was his recollection of this old bridge; a proof of the delight with which he had enjoyed this scenery. We are told that on holiday afternoons he would get down to the sea-side and find great amusement there. Here was the sea just below; and it will be seen that the whole way that he had to come from New Aberdeen was full of a spirit and an aspect to fall deep into the heart of an embryo poet. There is a new and direct way now from the city nearer to the sea, and from the new bridge of Don the view of the old bridge is very picturesque. It is one tall, gray pointed arch, with cottages about it on both sides on the high banks of the Don, and mills, with masses of trees. On the low ground below the bridge at the left-hand end stands a white house, and little fishermen's huts or sheds scattered here and there. On the other bank of the river the ground is high and knolly. Clumps of trees seem to close in upon the bridge, and behind and above them is a little group of fishermen's houses, called the huts of Balgounie. Below the bridge the river widens out into a broad expanse, and between high, broomy banks, comes down to the new bridge, and thence to the sea meadows, where the white billows are seen chasing each other at its mouth. Above the bridge the river is dark and deep, and the high banks are overhung with wood. The valley of the Don above is very picturesque with woods and rocks, and is enlivened with mills and factories.
The view from the bridge itself down into the river is striking. I suppose it must be forty or fifty feet from its center to the water, yet a man living close by told me that he once saw a sailor leap from it for a wager. The bridge is remarkably strongly built. It is said to have been built in the time of Bruce, yet it has by no means a very ancient look, and being of solid granite, is not very likely to fulfill the prophecy of its fall. Yet Mr. Chambers, in his "Picture of Scotland," says this superstition has not always been confined to children, for our late Earl of Aberdeen, who was an only son, and rode a favorite horse, which was "a mare's ae foal," always dismounted on approaching this bridge, and used to have his horse led over at a little distance after him. The people near do not now seem to partake of it. "Fall!" say they; "ay, when the rocks on which it is based fall!" It is, in fact, like a solid piece of rock itself; and is in possession of funds, left in 1605 by Sir Alexander Hay, which, though then only producing five-and-forty shillings a year, have so accumulated that they are not only amply sufficient to maintain it in repair, but have built the new brig. At each end of the bridge you see several large iron rings in the wall. These, I was told, were to secure ropes or chains to, from which to suspend scaffolding for the repair of the bridge on the outside. Every care is thus taken of it. "She is verra rich, is the auld brig," said the man before mentioned. "She has been verra useful in her time, for before the new brig was built she was the only means of getting to the north country—there was no fording the river. And the new brig has been built wi' her money, ay, every sixpence of it, gran' brig as the new on' is, with her five granite arches; and the auld brig gives £100 a year to take care of her too. But she's verra well off in the world yet, for all that; she has plenty left for herself." Thus do they talk of the auld brig as if she were a wealthy old lady. If, however, any one should pay her a visit from New Aberdeen, I would counsel him to go by the old road for its picturesque effect, but to be careful to inquire the road in Old Aberdeen down to the brig, for it is particularly obscure. He must ask, too, for "The Auld Brig o' Don," for the name of the brig of Balgounie seems known to few of the younger generation.
In New Aberdeen, the admirer of Lord Byron will also naturally seek to take a glance at the different houses in which he lived as a child with his mother. These are in Queen-street, one at nearly each end of the street; one at the house in Broad-street, then occupied by Mr. Leslie, father of the present surgeon of that name; and one in Virginia-street, not far from the docks. The visitor will not be surprised to find that these are but ordinary houses in ordinary streets in general, when he recollects that Mrs. Byron was then reduced by the matrimonial robbery of her husband to an income of £123 a year, and that her effects, that is, the furniture of her lodgings, &c., when sold, on her setting out with her boy for England, amounted only to £74, 17s., 7d. In these houses she was merely a lodger. The best situation which she occupied was in Mr. Leslie's house in Broad-street, over a shop. All these places are still well known. The schools to which Byron went in Aberdeen are also objects of interest. That in Long Acre, kept by a Mr. Bower, whom he calls Bodsy Bower, a name, he says, given him on account of his dapperness, was a common day school, where little boys and girls were sent principally to be out of the way at home. This school has long been closed. The next school to which he went, and where he continued to go till he left Aberdeen, was the grammar school. This, of course, remains, and though it has been considerably enlarged since Byron was there, that room in which he studied continues exactly as it was at that time. It is an ordinary school-room, with benches and desks cut deep with hundreds of names, and hundreds of other names printed and written over them with ink, and the walls adorned in the like style, as well as with grotesque figures, drawn with the pens of schoolboys. Amid this multitude of names, the Rev. Dr. Melville, the present master, assured me that diligent search had been made to discover that of Byron, but in vain. There are many of his old schoolfellows still living in the place, and all seem to recollect him as "a mischievous urchin." It must, however, be recollected, that Byron was little more than ten years of age when he left Aberdeen, and that was forty-seven years ago.
The place to which perhaps still more interest will attach, connected with the poet's boyhood in this part of the country, is Ballater, where his mother was advised to take him on recovering from the scarlet fever in 1796. It would appear as if Mrs. Byron, as well as her child, was so delighted with the summer residence there, as to return thither the two following summers. These are all the opportunities there could possibly be, for they left for England in the autumn of 1798, on the death of the old Lord Byron. They were the summer residences here, however, that awoke the poetic feeling in him. He was here in the midst of the most beautiful mountain scenery, and so intensely did it operate upon him, that through his whole life he looked back to his abode here as the most delicious period in his memory.
The vale of the Dee, or the Dee-side, as they call it, all the way from Aberdeen, a distance of forty miles, is fine; beautifully wooded by places, the hills, as you advance, become more and more striking. You pass the Castle of Drum, one of the oldest inhabited castles in Scotland; a seat of the Burnets, of Bishop Burnet's line, finely situated on the right hand on rising ground, and various other interesting places. But it is as you approach Ballater that the scenery becomes most striking. It becomes truly Highland. The hills get lofty, bare, gray, and freckled. They are, in fact, bare and tempest-tinted granite, having an air of majestic desolation. Some rise peaked and splintered, and their sides covered with debris, yet, as it were, bristled with black and sharp-looking pine forests. Some of the hills run along the side of the Dee, covered with these woods, exactly as the steep Black Forest Hills are in the neighborhood of Wildbad.
As you approach Ballater the valley expands. You see a breadth of green meadow, and a neat white village stretching across it, and its church lifting its spire into the clear air, while the mountains sweep round in a fine chain of peaked hills, and close it in. All up Dee-side there is well-cultivated land, but, with the exception of this meadow, on which Ballater stands, all is now hill, dark forest, and moorland; while below, on the banks of the winding and rapid Dee, birch woods present themselves in that peculiar beauty so truly belonging to the Highlands. On your right first looks out the dark height of Culbleen, mentioned by Byron in his earlier poems:
"When I see some dark hill point its crest to the sky,
I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Culbleen;"
then "Morven, streaked with snow;" and Loch na Garr lifts himself long and lofty over the lower chains that close the valley beyond Ballater.
Ballater, though a neat village now, did not exist when Byron was here. There were a few cottages for the use of visitors, near the other side of the present bridge, but those who came to drink the waters generally located themselves in farm-houses as near as they could to "the wells," which are two miles down the opposite bank of the Dee. Mrs. Byron chose her summer residence in one of the most thoroughly-secluded and out-of-the-world spots which it was possible to find, perhaps, in the whole island. It lies four miles below Ballater, on the same side of the river as the spring, that is, two miles beyond "the wells," as they call them, some chalybeate springs which issue from the hills, and which now bring many people to Ballater in summer. You proceed to them along the feet of the hills, and at the feet, also, of a dark pine wood. The river is below you; above you are these mountain forests, and the way lies sometimes through the wood. Under beeches which shade the way, there are benches set at intervals, so that a more charming walk, with the noble mountain views opposite to you, can not well be conceived. At about two miles on the road, after passing under stupendous dark cliffs that show themselves above the craggy and steep forest, you find a couple of rows of houses, and here are the waters issuing out of pipes into stone basins. Going still forward, you come out upon the wild moorlands. Above you, on the right hand, rise the desolate hills; below, on the left, wanders on the Dee, amid its birch woods; and the valley is one of those scenes of chaotic beauty, which perhaps the Highlands only show. It is a sea of heath-clad little hills, sprinkled with the light green birch-trees, and here and there a dark Scotch fir. It is a fairy land of purple beauty, such as seems to belong to old romance, and where the people of old romance might be met without wonder. And through all goes the sound of the river like a distant ocean. Those who have been in the Highlands know and recollect such scenes, so carpeted with the crimson heather, so beautified with the light-hued, fairy birch woods. Still the way leads on till you come down to the Dee, where it makes a wide and splendid sweep deep below the bank on which you are, and then you wonder where can be Bellatrich, the house you seek, for you see no house at all! In the birch wood, however, you now discern one white cottage, and that must be it. No! To that cottage I went, and out came a woman with spectacles on and her Bible open in her hand. I asked if she could tell me where Bellatrich was, and I expected her to say "Here!" but she replied, in a low, quiet voice, "I will show you, for it is not easy to find." And so on we went for another quarter of a mile, when, coming to a little hidden valley running at right angles from the river up into the moorlands, she showed me a smoke rising above the trees, and told me there I should find the house.