t y "^ 
 
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 V ...w* '<?A 
 
 SPRIGS 
 
 op 
 
 EATHER 
 
 
 
 AYFLy 
 
 WITH 
 
 OLD 
 
 F\! E N D S

 
 SPRIGS OF HEATHER; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE RAMBLES OF ' MAY-FLY ' WITH 
 OLD FRIENDS. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN ANDERSON, D.D., 
 
 MINISTER OF KlNNOl'I.!., 
 
 AUTHOR or "THE PLEASURES OF HOME," AND " A I.F.GF.ND OF GLENCOE, 
 &c., &c 
 
 " A poor thing, but mine own." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 EDINBURGH : JOHN MENZIES & CO. 
 PERTH: JOHN CHRISTIE. 
 
 1884.
 
 A '/ 
 
 PRINTED BY HENDERSON, ROHERTSON, AND HUNTER, 
 'CONSTITUTIONAL" OFFICE, PERTH.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 THIS little volume I beg leave to dedicate to the Members 
 of the "PERTH ROYAL GOLFING CLUB," of which I have the 
 honour to be the Chaplain, and in which I have long enjoyed 
 much pleasure among a set of genial men, who are keen 
 sportsmen, and rare good fellows.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 PREFACE, . 
 SPRIG I. THE BRAAN, 
 II. THE MAY, 
 
 ,, III. THE EARN, 2 7 
 
 IV. LAGGAN LONG AGO, 44 
 
 V. AMONG THE HILLS, 54 
 
 ,, VI. LAGGAN REVISITED, 6 4 
 
 VII. OBAN : ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS, 7 
 
 VIII. THE CONA, 
 
 IX. THE FARG; OR, EARLY DAYS, 97 
 
 X. THE MEETING OF THE WATERS, . 104 
 
 XI. AFTER THE RAIN, U 4 
 
 XII. GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE, . 123 
 XIII. THE TAY, . J 4 
 
 I/ENVOI, . l62
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT has been my endeavour to make this volume some- 
 thing more than a mere tacklesJiop in type, wherein 
 Thornton and Phin are the " Genii loci," and the Muses 
 of the natural world are rarely consulted. My sketches 
 are descriptive, historical, autobiographical, piscatorial, 
 and lyrical and thus I have sought to drape the sub- 
 ject of Angling in a literary garb. How I have suc- 
 ceeded in my aim it remains with the reading public to 
 determine. But one thing at least is certain that, if 
 I have failed to entertain others, I myself have received 
 a varied entertainment at the bounteous banquet of 
 nature, where the trees and the flowers, the clouds of 
 the sky and the songsters of the grove, the lochs and 
 the streams, have been the ministering spirits. As all 
 my rambles have led me into the moorlands, my first 
 title is associated with the "sprigs of heather" which 
 there beautify the solitude each sketch denoting a 
 "sprig" and, as I wrote for many years in the Field
 
 Vlii PREFACE. 
 
 under the nom dt plume of " Mayfly," I am induced 
 to retain that word in my second title. Many know me 
 by that name " for better or worse." 
 
 Charmed with the forms of Nature, let me sing 
 What simple joys from simple sources spring. 
 Ope but the ear, what strains of music roll ! 
 Ope but the eye, what visions bless the soul ! 
 Look where you will, what matchless pictures shine, 
 Their colours borrowed from the hand divine 
 Where the white lilies on the lakelet float, 
 Each flower, to fancy's eye, a fairy boat, 
 Where the shy trout, beneath the alders cool, 
 Lurks in the crystal caverns of the pool 
 Or, in the gloaming, wandering through the grove, 
 We hear the cascade's song in glory far above. 
 
 No dearth of pleasure e'er can starve the mind, 
 Disposed to seek what well-tuned souls may find 
 The bliss that blooms in every wayside flower, 
 Breathes in the breeze, and sparkles in the shower, 
 Floats in the cloud, and laughs in every beam, 
 Sings in the wood, and murmurs in the stream. 
 At every door the hand of God hath strown 
 '' Manna," that rich and poor can call their own !
 
 SPRIGS OF HEATHER; 
 
 OR 
 
 The Rambles of May -fly with Old Friends. 
 
 SPRIG L THE BRAAN. 
 
 THE friend in question, let the reader know, was neither 
 a bright merry girl, nor a jolly young fellow, both good 
 in their way, but a brown mountain stream, well known 
 to tourists and anglers as the Highland Braan. And why 
 not an improving companion ? Have we not a high 
 authority for the fact that there are " books in running 
 brooks ? " Aye, and better books than many that talk 
 in large type. The streams have a word for "the hear- 
 ing ear," and have been preaching a gospel of their own 
 kind ever since their soft liquid tongues made sweetest 
 music through moor and woodland. We invite the reader, 
 especially if Waltonian, to go with us for a ramble among 
 the broomy braes that are made bright and cheery by 
 the waters of the Braan. This picturesque stream flows 
 from Loch Freuchie, a lonely sheet of water nestling 
 among the heath-clad hills of Western Perthshire. After 
 a brawling course of about fourteen miles, it loses itself 
 in the " lordly Tay," opposite the hoary Cathedral of 
 Dunkeld, near to the somewhat classic hamlet of Inver. 
 Here lived and died the famous Neil Gow, of fiddling 
 
 A
 
 2 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 and fuddling reputation. Wending his way home one fine 
 evening from a social gathering, where the artistic hand 
 of Neil had " put life and metal in the heels " of the lads 
 and lassies, he was accosted by a friend, who remarked 
 sympathetically, "Ye hae a lang gaet to gae the nicht," 
 to which the jolly old fellow replied, " It's no' the length 
 but the breadth that bothers me." Comment on the 
 fiddler's condition is quite unnecessary. John, Duke of 
 Athole, had a great liking for the company of this musi- 
 cal worthy, and meeting him one day about the hour of 
 noon, nearly as tightly screwed as his own fiddle, said 
 with much seriousness, " Man, Neil, I'm sorry to see a 
 clever fellow like you in such a state at this early time 
 of the day. If ye will drink, can you not wait till after 
 dinner ?" " Weel," said the toper, " if I were just as sure 
 of my drink after dinner as your Grace is, I would be 
 glad enough to wait." A little way above Inver we come 
 to the well-known scene of the Hermitage, where, by the 
 help of mirrors, the Braan was seen tumbling, as it were 
 upon the tourist's head, as he stood within the walls of 
 a pretty, fantastic, little summer-house, beautifully placed 
 amid fern-clad boulders and pendant birches. This ro- 
 mantic cot was blown up by gunpowder during the period 
 of the raid upon the Dunkeld pontage. The perpetrator 
 of this act of Vandalism remains undetected ; but, who- 
 ever he was, or is, we wish him no better fate than to be 
 sunk up to his neck in the Braan for twenty-four hours. 
 About a mile above what was the Hermitage, we are 
 brought to a scene of mingled grandeur and beauty 
 the Rumbling Bridge where " the voice of many 
 waters " booms upon the ear, and reminds us of one of 
 Millais' well-known and most successful renderings of 
 Nature's handiwork. Here, as the river begins to sober 
 down and gather itself into dark-brown, dimpling-pools,
 
 THE BRAAN. 3. 
 
 we put up our tackle, and see what luck awaits us on 
 this balmy day. Our first cast was with the " red hackle " 
 and the " Francis," but for some reason known to them- 
 selves the trouts seemed to differ in opinion. In vain did 
 we try long-casting to be out of sight, and short-casting 
 to be ready to strike. To no purpose did we try the 
 rushing waters at the throat of the pool, and the shadowy 
 stretch well under the tree-clad bank. Fruitlessly did 
 we resort to the dodge of sinking the flies, and allowing 
 them to float gently down like dead insects ; or bringing 
 them to the surface and causing the dropper to bob, bob, 
 fly-like, on the foam-flecked surface of the stream. Not 
 a fin broke the water, not a tail flashed in the sunlight, and 
 twenty minutes of this work showed that " something 
 was wrong." " Off with the old love and on with the 
 new " in the shape of a Derbyshire bumble and a black 
 midge ! Happy thought ! Trouts, like men, need a little 
 coaxing, and in an instant two speckled beauties dash 
 briskly at the cunning deception, and one of them is 
 gasping on the dewy turf. He is a big one, too, but 
 perhaps only a stray alderman eager for his feed. No, 
 the black midge beguiles another, and the bumble goes 
 in as quickly for a third, each proving that he is " the 
 right fly in the right place." With " pleasure oft re- 
 newed," we pursue our sport from pool to pool, by bank 
 and brae, by rock and scaur, and when we reel up near 
 the hamlet of Trochery, we find that about four dozen 
 have found their way into the first creel of the season. 
 
 THE BUMBLE. 
 
 " 'Tis passing strange ! " not a fish will rise, 
 As the hooks o'er the stream are hurried, 
 
 And although I am sure they are deadly flies. 
 The trouts seem in slumber buried.
 
 4 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 " Why," quoth the angler, quite in a fix, 
 
 " 'Tis enough to keep one humble ; 
 But I'll try you with one of my knowing tricks, 
 
 And see how you relish the ' Bumble.' " 
 
 Scarce had the charmer left the book, 
 
 When a fish on its barb did quiver ; 
 For I've always found it a killing hook 
 
 A regular fail-me-never. 
 
 Then here's to the " Bumble," the best of flies 
 
 That e'er was afloat on a burn, 
 And whenever the trouts are " dour " to rise 
 
 I think he will serve your turn. 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 In the Book of Life, like the angler's book, 
 
 There is and be sure you mind it 
 For every man the suitable hook, 
 
 If he has but the wit to find it. 
 
 " Cauld winter " is now forgotten as a bitter thing of 
 the past, and we feel as if we had renewed our youth, and 
 " taken a new lease " of the old, pleasant life. We doubt 
 not that some are taking a quiet laugh at our schoolboy- 
 like enjoyment of a homely and unpretending pastime. 
 But let them laugh so long as we feel the benefits of a 
 recreation, healthy alike for mind and body. An alder- 
 man over his steaming turtle, a jaded blackleg on the 
 turf, that "green cloth" of his infernal majesty, where 
 souls are staked and honour is lost, what are these to 
 the natural and well-toned spirits of the man who loves 
 to tread the springy sod by the brawling stream, whose 
 eyes are gladdened by the fresh dewy flowers, whose 
 ears are delighted by the melodious voices of the wood- 
 lands, and who, after a day's invigorating sport, walks 
 quietly to his evening quarters, feeling that he has done
 
 THE BRAAN. 5 
 
 "something to earn a night's repose." Meantime we 
 stretch out for a little on the mossy sward, where the 
 wood anemone is just putting forth its first starry flowers, 
 while the primrose peeps here and there from behind a 
 sheltering stone, or beside the root of an old decayed tree, 
 and let our thoughts drift back into the far-receding 
 vistas of memory. Feelings of a not unpleasing melan- 
 choly begin to steal upon us. How deeply and touch- 
 ingly true is that fine saying of dear old Wordsworth, 
 that there are times and moods 
 
 " When pleasant thoughts . 
 Bring sad thoughts to the mind." 
 
 No contradiction there. Here were we, after a pleasant 
 day's sport, growing unconsciously sad over that fragile 
 anemone which our hand had carelessly plucked. At 
 first it served to recall pleasant hours in the dim-descried 
 past, hours of youth and irrepressible gaiety, hours 
 still gilded by the reflection of sunsets long since sunk 
 beneath the horizon. But by degrees shadows of more 
 sombre aspect mingled with these rose-coloured visions, 
 and we thought of those who had trodden with us over 
 the elastic turf, cast their flies upon the same sparkling 
 waters, and startled the cuckoo and the cushat with their 
 merry laugh. Now they are things of the buried past, 
 those once blythe and bright and hearty companions 
 gone, like those bubbles that break at our feet faded, 
 like those fleecy vapours that a moment ago were float- 
 ing in coloured beauty over our head. Aye, the " pleasant 
 thoughts " have wandered forth and returned, bringing 
 the " sad thoughts " along with them and we recline, 
 heedless now of the dreamy murmur that rises gently 
 from the Braan, and long 
 
 " For the touch of a vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still."
 
 6 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 But we awake from our dream of other days, and take to 
 the road that lies before us ; for we are far from our des- 
 tination, and the shadows of the evening begin to close 
 around us. 
 
 Where the Braan makes a sweep beneath the wooded 
 braes of Drumore the eye is arrested by a relic of the 
 far-away past. It is an ivy-clad fragment of the ancient 
 Castle of Trochery, one of the hunting seats of Alexander 
 the Third. He is said to have been a man of ability 
 and judgment, both of which were much needed in those 
 turbulent times. His reign was a stormy one, caused 
 by the invasion of the Norsemen, and the well-known 
 contentions of his own rude and unlettered nobility. His 
 death was sudden and melancholy. Shortly after his 
 second marriage his horse fell with him from one of the 
 precipitous sea-cliffs on the coast road near Kinghorn, 
 in Fife, and the rider was killed on the spot, leaving a 
 tangled web for the hands of his successor. The Braan 
 at that time flowed in a different channel, being on the 
 south-east side of the stronghold, instead of the 
 north-west where it now runs, and thus forming a 
 natural barrier between the King and his restless subjects 
 of the Lowlands, who sometimes threatened him with a 
 hostile visit. Here we curiously meet with that strangely 
 ubiquitous wizard, Thomas the Rymer, who appears 
 everywhere, and who, in one of his prescient moments, 
 is reputed to have predicted the sad fate of the 
 monarch. No doubt, like all our Scottish kings, Alex- 
 ander was a mighty hunter, and very likely he shot 
 game on the heathery mountains of Drumore. If he 
 looked up now, how he would be astonished by a sight 
 of our breechloaders, so much more facile and destruc- 
 tive than the clumsy weapons of those rude days. I 
 wonder if his kingship ever condescended to take a cast
 
 THE BRAAN. 7 
 
 in the stream that engirdled his abode, and with what 
 kind of lure would he beguile the finny tribes ? The red- 
 hackle, the black midge, the doctor, and the bumble 
 were not then in all probability in vogue, and we suspect 
 that the royal angler would be reduced to the ignomin- 
 ious dodge of "the early worm." Imagination cannot 
 help peopling this historic spot with gentle dames and 
 gallant knights, with gay courtiers and deep-throated 
 wassailers ; but now there is the silence of desolation all 
 around, and no sounds are heard save the bleating of 
 the sheep, the rustling of the wind-shaken ivy, and the 
 hoarse murmurs of the Braan as he wanders on his erratic 
 course. A stiff but pleasant walk of half a dozen miles 
 brings us to our welcome resting-place, the snug hostel- 
 rie of " lone Amulree," and from its hospitable threshold 
 we see Loch Freuchie gleaming in the last rays of the 
 setting-sun, and long for the morrow, when we shall try 
 our luck among the lovely trout that tenant its quiet 
 bays. What a precious little lake this once was. We 
 remember of creeling, during two consecutive days, 
 about 22 dozen of its speckled beauties. But now, 
 " Tempora mutantur" for that fresh-water shark, the 
 pike, found his way somehow or other into this angler's 
 paradise, and six or eight trout now make a fair catch 
 the size, however, being increased fourfold. Here for 
 the present we pause amid the hush of the pleasant 
 vernal night, and hope with the opening day to go 
 forth to " fresh fields and pastures new." 
 
 Turning over the somewhat faded leaves of an old 
 angling diary, we open up faint glimpses into the days 
 and doings of the past. On a certain day of "Auld 
 Langsyne " the trouts seem to have been more than 
 commonly " dour," and must, therefore, answer for the 
 following lines in simple verse :
 
 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 IT comes, sweet morning of the year, 
 
 To waken sleeping things 
 It comes, to quicken and to cheer, 
 
 With healing on its wings. 
 I see it in the freshening grass, 
 
 I feel it in the breeze : 
 It glows among the clouds that pass ; 
 
 It whispers in the trees. 
 
 A secret but a mighty power 
 
 Thrills Nature's every vein, 
 And there springeth here and there a flower 
 
 In the glade, and on the plain. 
 Again the pensive snowdrops 
 
 Their gentle tidings bring, 
 And lay on Nature's altar 
 
 The first offerings of the Spring. 
 
 The crocus lifts its golden cup 
 
 Above the dewy sod, 
 As if it offered incense 
 
 All-glowing to its God. 
 The brook has burst its fetters, 
 
 And is warbling o'er the plain, 
 As if it sang the ecstasies 
 
 Of liberty again. 
 
 The lark its soul is pouring out 
 
 Beside the gates of morn, 
 And the blackbird carols merrily 
 
 From yonder aged thorn. 
 There's a stir on every meadow, 
 
 From every grove a voice, 
 And in Nature's blessed accents 
 
 They bid the heart rejoice.
 
 THE BRAAN. 9 
 
 Nor is it in the air alone, 
 
 Nor on the teeming earth, 
 Glad change is felt for in the breast 
 
 We hail a kindred birth. 
 Like fountains opened by the sun, 
 
 Old feelings gush anew, 
 And the heart grows fresh and young again, 
 
 Like a plant that drinks the dew. 
 
 Yet alas ! there is a springtime 
 
 That never more returns, 
 When the cheek with ardour kindles, 
 
 And the eye with rapture burns 
 "When the freshness of a morning dream 
 
 Is felt in all its power, 
 Giving melody to every stream, 
 
 And beauty to each flower. 
 
 We may not be as we have been, 
 
 !N\)r feel as we have felt ; 
 For many an Idol lies in dust, 
 
 Where once we fondly knelt. 
 But shattered shrines and withered leaves 
 
 Can holy lessons bring, 
 And tell the heart that wisely grieves 
 
 To wait for Heaven's own Spring. 
 
 As it is scarcely time to go to roost, we feel the inclina- 
 tion to ventilate a grievance of the legitimate angler. 
 Last year we drew attention to it in the Field, and 
 venture to reproduce it in these pages, in the hope of 
 pouring upon the nuisance an additional torrent of pub- 
 licity. The Braan is by no means a first-rate trouting 
 stream hardly second-rate but it is at least compara- 
 tively sequestered, and you are not utterly baulked of 
 your day's sport by a perfect outpouring of those who
 
 IO SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 * 
 
 call themselves competitory anglers. At the opening of 
 last season we found the year's work and worry begin- 
 ning to tell, and by means of rail and mail-gig pro- 
 mised ourselves a quiet day among the hills that stretch 
 away in their barren grandeur towards Braemar. But 
 alas ! " man proposes," and a quiet day we had with a 
 vengeance. Selecting a fine stretch of an oft-tried stream, 
 the little rod was soon rigged, and we prepared for work, 
 when, lo! what may that figure be, splashing round the 
 bend that hides the next stretch from view ? It is too 
 large for a stalking heron, and too small for a mad bull 
 what creature of earth can it be ? The murder is soon 
 out. In reply to our anxious inquiries, a lazy Celt, tend- 
 ing some cattle about as shaggy as himself, informs us, 
 with a grin, " That's ihefus/im' club, and there would be 
 anither the day after the morn." So here we are, stranded 
 between the Scylla of to-day and the Charybdis of to- 
 morrow, and no wonder we were flogging the despoiled 
 and desecrated waters to no purpose. In short, we were 
 among a lot of unsportsmanlike Waltonians, with leg- 
 gings, gramashes, and hob-nailed shoes, armed with 
 wriggling worms, foetid maggots, and other piscatorial 
 abominations. In vain did we turn the corner of this 
 headland, and then make a detour round the edge of that 
 wood, seeking, like the wanderer " in dry places," a spot 
 of rest, but finding none. The members of the fushiri 
 club Avere all-pervading. Like the plague of flies, their 
 name was legion, and we soon were glad to beat a re- 
 treat, finding that we were not " the right man in the 
 right place." What these locusts are pleased to call a 
 day's fishing is a stretch from one midnight until nearly 
 the next ! All is fish that comes in their way, pigmies 
 no bigger than a finger-joint being put into the creel ; 
 for everything weighs. What stream could stand this
 
 THE BRAAN. II 
 
 abuse ? The other day we read a flaming account of one 
 of these piscatorial raids, in which one degenerate Wal- 
 ton was proud to carry off the first prize with about 400 
 trout, weighing about thirty pounds ! That is, about thir- 
 teen to the pound, or one ounce a-piece. He was wal- 
 loping a small stream with a cast of seven flies a thing 
 resembling the tail of a small boy's kite and greatly 
 exulted in a feat deserving no better name than sprat- 
 murder. Verily, once more " the slaughter of the inno- 
 cents ! " Were we proprietors of rapid, broken Highland 
 waters, we would insist on the combatants angling with 
 fly alone for the period of six or eight hours, and return- 
 ing to the stream everything under 7 inches. These 
 regulations would ensure something like a trial of skill. 
 These two rules are laid down by the Earl of Breadal- 
 bane, in whose magnificent stretches of the Tay above 
 Aberfeldy we have more than once had the privilege of 
 fishing. And there, with black midge and other flies, 
 we have often taken trout over 2 Ibs. 
 
 And thus ended our quiet day among the hills; re- 
 turning home in a state of utter discomfiture, and sadly 
 saying to ourselves, " He must be a clever fellow who, 
 in these railway times, can find a secluded spot even in 
 the far north." Here, however, we have at least some- 
 thing like a fisherman's solitude, and we shall now turn 
 in to dream of summer rambles with our old friends.
 
 12 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG II. THE MAY. 
 
 MANY a pleasant, and I hope not unprofitable, hour have 
 I passed beside the flowery meadows and the birch-clad 
 braes of our Scottish streams. Angling is something 
 more than angling, for it leads to a communion often 
 more improving than the communion of crowded rooms 
 and bustling cities. God's commonest blessings are also 
 his best ; and the heathery hill-side, the dimpling pools 
 of the burn " wandering at its own sweet will," together 
 with the health to enjoy them, are things to be remem- 
 bered with the deepest gratitude. We are told of Words- 
 worth's hill-bred boy, that Nature was his teacher, that 
 "the tall cliff haunted him like a passion," and for 
 me there has always been an irresistible magic in the 
 " babbling brook " or fretted burn, whispering over its 
 pebbles, gliding through its " emerald meads " and sing- 
 ing its slumberous song, as it steals half-hidden under 
 the pensile branches of the " lang yellow broom." A 
 day spent with Nature is a day spent with God. 
 
 The friend of this summer ramble is a very old one 
 much older than even the Braan for the first ten years 
 of my happy childhood were passed beside the wander- 
 ing Earn, the brawling Farg, and the rock-hemmed 
 reaches of the winding May. There I was led by my 
 honoured and indulgent father to gather the wood-ane- 
 mone and " the pale primrose," and to learn the art of 
 casting the alluring fly. Now, getting old, I seem to 
 renew my youth when holding converse with these old 
 friends ; and when I forget them, or fail to enjoy their
 
 THE MAY. 13 
 
 company, strength must have decayed, and the bright 
 pictures of memory faded away. 
 
 Now, my dear reader, confess it frankly at once, not- 
 withstanding the great poetical authority against us, 
 there is not only something, but much " in a name." Per- 
 haps you chose your wife all the more quickly on account 
 of her pretty name, not Girzy but Alice. I have no doubt 
 in my own mind that you decided on giving an extra 
 thousand for that lovely property of yours on account of 
 its sweetly- sounding name. Think how much prettier it is 
 to see " Sunnymead " at the top of your letters than 
 " Docken Den ! " And you never fail to give that gentle 
 little rosebud on your knee an additional kiss when she 
 looks up and answers with a smile to the bright name of 
 " Lucy." All true, whatever you may say ; and, therefore, 
 I tell you that there is something musical and suggestive 
 to me of flowers, and sunshine, and bees, and birds in the 
 lovely word that heads my rambling remarks the 
 " May " and brings before me, in one magic instant, 
 visions of pleasant days that whisper from the past, and, 
 I hope fervently visions of happy hours in the advan- 
 cing future. It was in the May that the trouts of my boy- 
 hood sported in the summer sun like fairy things ; those 
 trouts that looked so big then, and grew bigger, I suspect, 
 upon every fresh occasion when we " slew the slain." I 
 recollect an old gentleman, loving and racy as Izaak 
 Walton himself, whose pounder his greatest victory 
 waxed into two pounds and a half before death wound 
 up the good man's reel. Well, as to our acquaintance (for 
 is he not to many of us far more real than some of those 
 ungenial beings with whom we exchange words every 
 day, and yet never come nearer ?), Izaak did not more 
 idolise his Dove than I quietly rejoice in my flowery and 
 winding May. Flowing from the heathery bosom of the
 
 14 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Ochils, the May pursues a very devious course through 
 pastoral sheep-dotted uplands for about seven miles ; 
 and after a race of other three among " bosky dells " and 
 old grey crags, where the whin scents the air with its 
 blossom, not, I think with Goldsmith, " unprofitably 
 gay," for whatever gives pleasure to reflection blossoms 
 not in vain, and the harebell hangs over the swirling 
 pool, then it quietly drops into the River Earn, its mur- 
 murs at length hushed and its vagrancies brought to a 
 close. In its progress this romantic stream intersects a 
 number of picturesque properties among others Inver- 
 may, rendered classic by the bard in his song of the 
 " Birks of Invermay," almost as famous as the " Birks of 
 Aberfeldy," where the rocks ascend like " lofty wa's." 
 For the last mile it loses its voice and its sparkle, just 
 as we often witness a vivacious youth settling down into 
 a sober, but neither sad nor unlovely, old age. 
 
 Having been enabled, through the kindness of one of 
 the proprietors, to fish his waters, I started on a balmy 
 morning for my first ramble of the year along the banks 
 of the May. Birds were singing, primroses were laugh- 
 ing in the sun, and I had no doubt that the trouts would 
 also " show " in their own fashion. Having walked 
 leisurely up to a spot which rejoices in the euphonious 
 name of Craigendivits, where the stream is rent and tor- 
 tured in the inaccessible labyrinths of an awful gorge, 
 I got out my hackles, red and black, and set to work. My 
 first dozen casts were rewarded by half as many trout ; 
 and if I had not had some little experience of trout 
 habits, I should have said, chuckling, " it never rains but 
 it pours," and expected the "rise" to continue in the 
 same exuberant fashion. But my little friends soon got 
 shy, and for half an hour not one would raise a fin. By 
 and by one of those climatic influences, felt by them, but
 
 THE MAY. 15 
 
 hidden to tts, came over the face of nature, and again 
 the hackles were drawing blood. This sort of see-saw 
 went on from time to time, until it became inwardly 
 apparent that the hour of lunch had struck. Vulgar 
 appetite being appeased, let us light up the " bird's eye," 
 and, as the incense floats in the air, give way to reverie. 
 But that rookery over against us will not admit of any 
 such dreaminess ; and all things being early this season, 
 I declare they are at it already among the fledgling 
 rooks ? How queer is association ! I never went there 
 to think of Dickens, and yet the first caw, caw, of these 
 black innocents has called up a vision of the fat boy, Joe, 
 and rook pie that the young gourmand loved but too well. 
 Mr Winkle, too, affecting the sportsman, although in 
 mortal dread of a gun with its " charge," which he rather 
 thinks ought to be " mixed," the bland Pickwick, with 
 his benevolent eccentricities, and the jolly squire in the 
 country, all heart and soul and fun all come up before 
 me, and carry me away from the banks of the sylvan 
 May. But holloa ! there was a glorious splash in that 
 pool, under the alders, and once more the real business 
 of the day demands attention. So at it again ; and 
 the frothing pool, the rushing stream, and the swirl be- 
 hind the grey stone, each contributed its share to the 
 creel, that was beginning to look respectable. I feel cer- 
 tain that where the water wheels darkly under that brae 
 a patriarchal trout must lie one who, like a robber-chief 
 of old, has made it his stronghold, and who will only 
 vacate it for a successor when black-gnat, bumble, or 
 spider has cut short his aquatic experiences. If I can 
 only pitch my tail-fly over his old nose, he will snap ; 
 but that sort of wary dodger will not quit his haunt to 
 pursue it, leaving that to the inexperienced of the tribe. 
 Well, there it goes, and here he comes, with a spring
 
 16 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 that takes everything down stream full six yards ! But 
 he has swallowed his last fly, and I have him out on the 
 turf before he has time to try some of his ancient tricks ; 
 and time too, for the fly falls from his mouth, broken at 
 the barb. He is a " head-centre " no doubt, yellow as 
 gold between the spottings, and over a pound. My 
 substitute for the red hackle, so lost, was a yellow body 
 with a teal drake wing, and right well did he fill his place. 
 He proved the killer of the day, and I gave him a high 
 place in my book for the future. But angling, like all 
 other sublunary affairs, must have its crosses, and only 
 look at that half-pounder bobbing and somersaulting 
 from that branch, like Blondin over the foaming mysteries 
 of Niagara ! Shall I try main force ? Shall I wade, 
 with that old rheumatism not yet laid ? While I ponder, 
 he acts, and cuts the connection. 
 
 This episode leads me to say that the May, like 
 many other flowery things, tries one's patience. Some 
 of its best pools are under the alders ; some of its finest 
 streams are overshadowed by the willow, where the burn 
 is seen dimly " stealing under the lang yellow broom." 
 " Why not wade," says one, " up middle stream where no 
 trees molest ?" " My dear friend, why not dive ? This 
 is one of my pleasure days, and I have got a railway 
 carriage to sit in before getting home." " But you might 
 carry wading stockings," &c., persists my mentor, or 
 rather tormenter, for why not let a man be happy in his 
 own quiet way ? " Well, I do wade, when so disposed ; 
 but I repeat this is one of my pleasure days, and, 
 like Caesar, when he went somewhere in Gaul, I travel 
 to-day as much as possible free of the impedimenta. I 
 know, my conceited friend, that you took that prize last 
 week, encumbered with half the stock of an angler's shop 
 boots a stone weight, wading stockings inside, besides
 
 THE MAY. 17 
 
 'gramashes' half an inch thick, a landing net, a water- 
 proof strapped to your basket, and that basket of capacious 
 size for the purpose of containing lunch, flask, hook- 
 book, and a pair of dry boots and fresh stockings ! Was 
 the play, let me mildly ask, worth so huge a candle ?" 
 
 " But why don't you get bait," cries out Smellfungus, 
 " brandlings with a fine fresh flavour from the ' midden/ 
 or, better still, maggots from a carcase ? You could 
 then lift your fish in the midst of a forest." " My dear 
 dirty adviser, don't let me hurt your feelings in the very 
 least, but I fish for amusement, and have no desire to 
 transplant reminiscences either of the dunghill or of the 
 tanyard into the precincts of the May, which is sacred to 
 sweeter and holier things." 
 
 The legitimate lure, in our brawling Scotch streams, 
 for the denizens of the flood, is the effigies of the deni- 
 zens of the air, that still purer stream that floats past 
 over our heads. But I must pull up, or I shall have all 
 the " bottom fishers " of the land upon rny top. Yet I 
 cannot help regarding worm and maggot among the 
 trouts as I regard the " gin " and the " trap " among the 
 " footed game " a device for the " pot," but not the true 
 lure of the true sportsman. Be it noted that I speak of 
 those rapid streams, all foaming pool and rushing shal- 
 low, where there is no excuse whatever for anything save 
 the fly. But let us " reel up," for the day wanes, a,pd, 
 like all pleasant things, this one must have its sunset. 
 At the bridge of Ardargie a romantic gem that might 
 tempt one into a breach of the Tenth Command let us 
 turn out the contents of the old battered creel, and see 
 what we have. Three dozen and four lovely speckled 
 trouts, a few of them nearly J lb., two of them nearly 
 double that size, and all in as good condition as the June 
 trout of 1867. And now, wearing down the water-side 
 
 B
 
 1 8 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 towards the station, we pass through the picturesque 
 grounds and under the stately trees of Invermay, paus- 
 ing dreamily for a few minutes by the fall of the Hum- 
 mel-Bummel, where the water booms and hisses and boils, 
 and wondering what patriarchs of the stream have long 
 defied the angler in that seething cauldron. Bait might 
 be so dropped as to beguile the wary seniors of the 
 tribe ; but, in the name of all that is poetical, would it 
 not be a monstrous shame to drop worm or maggot in 
 that haunted sylvan paradise of Nature, where the leaves 
 seem whispering some weird secret to the spirit of the 
 May? 
 
 In travelling by rail to my pretty, flowery friend, I 
 pass an old ivy-covered house, in the suburbs of Perth, 
 invested for me with a deep interest. There I spent 
 the first seven years of my married life, before there 
 was one cloud on my summer sky. The storm must 
 break sooner or later ; but we must not forget our 
 seasons of blue, sunny calm. That old house is draped 
 by two plants of ivy, one taken long ago from Southey's 
 residence, Greta Hall ; the other from the rose-covered 
 cottage of Wordsworth, on the grassy slopes of Ridalmere. 
 Like the hearts of those two great poets, these plants 
 have entwined, till blended in one wealthy mass of 
 verdure, seeming to grow denser and greener with the 
 flight of years watered with dews from the fountains 
 of immortality. 
 
 THE TWIN PLANTS. 
 
 Two ivy plants grow kindly on my wall 
 One from the leafy nest by Ridalmere; 
 
 The other drank the dews of Greta Hall, 
 
 Where Derwent spreads his mirror, calm and clear.
 
 THE MAY. 19 
 
 And, like the souls of their two bards entwining, 
 Entwine these sister-plants through shade and sun, 
 
 Till, o'er my porch in glossy verdure shining, 
 
 Sprung from two stems, they seem to spring from one. 
 
 Southey and Wordsworth who in thought may sever ? 
 
 In fame and love they bloom in brotherhood for ever. 
 
 And now let me say, at the close of a day whose 
 value can only be felt by the man who has wandered 
 through it, if the weary spa-hunter, who goes about carry- 
 ing his miserable stomach in his miserable face, would 
 only exchange his foetid waters for the sparkling waves 
 of the crystal stream or the nut-brown burn, and take 
 the rod in his hand in place of the invalid's campstool, 
 he would find that he had found at length the fountains 
 of health. Dyspepsia would drown itself in the foaming 
 pool, and the vagrant would come home to eat, like me, a 
 jolly supper, fearless of nightmare, and thereafter enjoy 
 
 The slumber purchased by an active day, 
 When dreams are banished, and the busy soul 
 Rests with its mate, the body, and renews 
 Its strength and freshness in the realms of night. 
 
 Connected with the subject of angling there are, per- 
 haps, no two more repeatable things than those which de- 
 rive their parentage from Johnson and Byron. The 
 former defines, as all the world knows, angling to be " a 
 stick and a string, a fool at one end and a worm at the 
 other " ; while the latter splenetically writes 
 
 " And angling, too, that solitary vice, 
 Whatever Isaac Walton sings or says, 
 The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet 
 Should have a hook, and a small fish to pull it." 
 
 Both undoubtedly mighty men in their way ; but the 
 one great in his prejudice, the other in his bitterness and 
 bile. The Doctor refutes himself out of his own mouth ;
 
 20 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 for he says that we should never " pass over any ground 
 that has been distinguished by wisdom, bravery, or 
 virtue," in an unmoved and indifferent spirit. Now, the 
 rod often leads its votary through classic scenes which 
 remind him of the brave, the wise, and the good ; and, 
 therefore, the pursuit of the angler, according to the 
 surly moralist himself, is not without its worth and its 
 meaning. The recreation of the angler is also of a salutary 
 character, imparting health both to body and mind, and, 
 therefore, cannot partake of the nature of a " vice." In- 
 deed, if a thing be judged by its wholesome results, it 
 must partake of the character of a virtue. Our friend, 
 Don Juan, would have been all the better for an ac- 
 quaintance with rod and stream. Perhaps they would 
 have restored him to that state of fresh and simple feel- 
 ing which he enjoyed when he sang of Loch-na-gar and 
 the natural beauties of his much-loved Highland home. 
 Think of the mental results of angling days, and then 
 confess that they have not been unwise or unfruitful. 
 The rod, in truth, has acted like a magic wand in certain 
 hands, and has proved not seldom a suggestive and even 
 a creative power. It was while fishing in the Tweed, 
 amid scenes rendered immortal by the pen and resi- 
 dence of Scott, that the late Andrew Thomson, of cele- 
 brated debating power, sketched the outlines of one of 
 his most notable and telling speeches. The subject was 
 " Continue or discontinue the preaching of Gaelic " in a 
 parish upon the banks of that very stream, the Braan, 
 beside which we have lately been rambling and musing. 
 The opposition argued " Discontinue, for this parish is 
 just in the mouth of the Highlands." To which Thomson 
 promptly and wittily replied, "And where would my 
 friend expect to find a Highland tongue, if not in a 
 Highland month ? " This went far to settle the question
 
 THE MAY. 21 
 
 in a way that would have given delight to the soul of 
 Professor Blackie. Sir Humphrey Davy, in gathering 
 materials practically for his Salmonia and The Last Days 
 of a Philosopher, conceived some of those brilliant scien- 
 tific inventions by which the world has been astonished 
 and benefited, human life preserved, and society enriched. 
 We have lost our much-valued copy of the last-men- 
 tioned work, rare in every respect, and sorry are we for 
 the loss ; for the little volume contains beauty, feeling, 
 and wisdom of the highest order. How many thousands 
 of readers, too, have been entranced by the great Chris- 
 topher North " in his fishing jacket !" One never tires 
 of following that prince of anglers in his rambles by loch 
 and stream. With what thrilling tales and gorgeous 
 word-painting do The Recreations abound ! We reviewed 
 these in Fraser's. He had a passion for sport and nature. 
 The angler meets with his poetic spirit in many a High- 
 land glen, and beside the glorious Loch Awe especially, 
 under the sombre shadows of the double-coned Ben 
 Cruachan, he is vividly reminded of some of the noblest 
 and most subtle delineations of romantic scenery by 
 which our Scottish literature has been enriched by a 
 bright-souled and large-hearted man. One of our last 
 meetings with this son of genius took place on the banks 
 of Loch Lomond, our queen of lakes. We rambled by 
 its varied shores, where shifting scenes of beauty met us 
 at every turning, like the changes of a panorama. We 
 supped at the hotel of Tarbet, which commands a noble 
 view of the towering Ben casting his broad shadow over 
 his picturesque islands. Christopher wandered from 
 theme to theme, now in graphic and again in touching 
 language, till "the wee short hour ayont the twall" 
 warned us to retire. Parting for the night, he said, " I 
 have been rather flat to-night, but on another occasion I
 
 22 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 hope to prove a more entertaining companion." Retreat- 
 ing thoughtfully to our roost, we could not help thinking, 
 " If that be his flat mood, what on earth will his brisk 
 one be like 1 " And who, of any natural taste and feel- 
 ing, does not rejoice and render thanks for the gentle 
 teachings which old Isaac received from the flowery 
 meads and the whispering streams, stealing, like dream- 
 children, under the bending willows ? His quaint heart- 
 breathing words act like a balmy emollient, or a sooth- 
 ing strain of low-toned music to the weary world-worn 
 soul. Many dreary commentaries on the Book of Grace 
 might be lost to the world, and the world no poorer. 
 But not for money would we lose those simple and deli- 
 cious commentaries on some of the lovely pages of the 
 Book of Nature, for which the old angler is so deeply 
 venerated and so dearly loved. 
 
 In our own humble fashion we, too, have been often 
 indebted -to the kindly, reviving influences of the natural 
 world, which proves a gentle nurse to all man's better 
 feelings. When perplexing problems are distracting the 
 brain, and we fail to see clearly amid the shadows of 
 vague thoughts, that flit phantom-like before the eye of 
 the mind, we have felt more than once the benefits of 
 wandering among sylvan retreats, and listening to the 
 whisperings of the voices of creation. Somehow we have 
 then found a light poured upon dark matters, mental 
 pain assuaged as if by the touch of a healing hand, 
 and ere an hour passed away a capacity growing within 
 us, by which we were enabled to look at many things in 
 a more hopeful spirit, and to perceive the field of our life 
 glowing with tints of brighter and holier beauty. Such 
 is the mood in which Tennyson says 
 
 " A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, 
 A softer sapphire melts along the sea."
 
 THE MAY. 23 
 
 There are times when it is good to follow the example 
 of him who, in old world times, was wont " to meditate 
 in the fields at even " ; for surely it is salutary to be with 
 the things of a creation, which is full of that Divine 
 Being who bestowed upon us all our powers and faculties, 
 and added the means of providing these with a simple 
 and suitable education. Under the spell of such teach- 
 ing many a wanderer in solitary places has felt as he 
 never felt before what the Lake Poet meant when he 
 traced these pregnant words 
 
 " To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 Before closing this ramble, I cannot dispense with say- 
 ing that one charm appears to have vanished from the 
 flowery banks and braes of the May. Where is my 
 pretty old friend, the kingfisher ? Long ago I was wont 
 to count three pairs of the lovely piscator. Then they 
 dwindled to two pairs thereafter to one and now the 
 lovely genius loci is nowhere to be seen. Of course the 
 keeper's gun loudly tells of its murderous folly ; and the 
 poor kingfisher is now relegated to the glass case of a 
 city museum. But never will he look in any glass case 
 of any museum as he looked, when, amid the greenery 
 of the grand conservatory of Nature, he went glancing 
 by in the sunbeam, like a winged emerald, every feather 
 instinct with life and loveliness. There are two special 
 sins for which the sons of Britain must be called to 
 account. Brown, Jones, and Robinson feel bound to 
 scratch their classic and euphonious names upon the first 
 " stock or stone " that arrests their vagrant feet and 
 Hamish and Donald, the keepers of M'Dunder and 
 M'Hoolachan, are constrained, by some singular element 
 of destruction, to exterminate every rare bird that flits
 
 24 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 across their prowling path. Against this most abomin- 
 able practice we indignantly protest in the names of our 
 noble eagles, ravens, and falcons, which in a few years 
 more are doomed to be as extinct as the dodo of Bourbon 
 and Mauritius, or the mighty New Zealand Moa. Poor 
 little kingfisher, as I shoulder my creel, have I seen the 
 last of thee by the leafy " May " ? 
 
 There are other modes of killing, and a common one 
 is " killing with kindness." It is very pleasant to have 
 in one's private room a song-bird warbling sweetly, yet 
 plaintively, from its cage ; but does not the bird feel it 
 to be a gilded prison ? If it could speak in our language 
 would it not say, " Your tender mercies are cruel ? you 
 give me food and water and shelter, but what about the 
 free sky, the green forests, and the scented blossoms of 
 the woodlands ? They are everything to a born gipsy 
 like me." So thought and felt I as, passing a cottage on 
 my way home, I saw a little boy tending a bullfinch in 
 a pretty cage a pretty boy and a pretty bird yet a 
 keeper and a captive. 
 
 THE BOY AND THE CAPTIVE BIRD. 
 
 OH ! give it liberty ! 
 
 Canst thou not tell 
 The blessings of the free? 
 
 No ! for the captive's cheerless cell 
 Hath never closed on thee. 
 
 Who pray for health ? 
 They who have felt 
 
 Disease's weary bed. 
 Who pine for wealth ? 
 They who have knelt, 
 
 And vainly begg'd for bread.
 
 THE MAY. 25 
 
 Then give it liberty! 
 
 Blue sky and balmy breeze, 
 And shelter of the greenwood tree 
 
 Oh ! how it droops for these! 
 
 True ! thou hast made its home 
 
 Of gaily-gilded bars ; 
 But what are these to heaven's free dome, 
 
 With all its twinkling stars ? 
 
 Think ye the captive's brain 
 
 Could grow to slavery cold, 
 Though every limb might wear a chain 
 
 Of brightly burnished gold ? 
 
 Then give it liberty ! 
 
 For thee 'tis well 
 Thy glad young life is free. 
 
 Pray that the solitary cell 
 May never close on thee ! 
 
 FLOWERS. 
 
 THE flowers are children of the soil, 
 
 Arrayed by Nature's hand, 
 They " spin not," neither do they " toil," 
 
 Yet what a lovely band ! 
 
 The gems they wear are drops of dew, 
 Fresh from the fount of heaven, 
 
 While beams of light and skies of blue 
 To them bright hues have given. 
 
 A more than regal glory paints 
 
 These nurslings of the sod, 
 And, holy as our holiest saints, 
 
 They preach to man of God.
 
 26 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Of Him, who is the God of Love, 
 These wordless preachers tell, 
 
 And say, " The hand that rules above, 
 On earth ' does all things well.' " 
 
 THE FIRST PRIMROSE. 
 
 FAMILIAR flower ! once more I greet 
 
 Thy beauty in this shady place, 
 Where whispering leaves and waters meet, 
 
 And lend to solitude a grace. 
 
 Thou bringest back the happy hours, 
 
 When, children, through the meadows roaming, 
 We wove in chains the dewy flowers, 
 
 Till gently fell the summer gloaming. 
 
 Thou speakest of the faded Past. 
 
 Where mingled common joys and sorrows, 
 Of days that were too bright to last, 
 
 Of cloudy nights and glad to-morrows. 
 
 Thou tellest of a heavenly Power, 
 
 A God of Wisdom and of Love, 
 Who watches o'er the simplest flower, 
 
 And lights the golden stars above. 
 
 Tis thine to whisper humble trust 
 
 To hearts whose blooming hopes have perished 
 For they, like thee, though doomed to dust, 
 
 By the same kindly Hand are cherished. 
 
 So not alone to bloom and fade 
 
 The primrose to the Spring was given, 
 
 But, like some altar in the glade, 
 To waft the soul from earth to heaven.
 
 THE EARN. 2/ 
 
 SPRIG III. THE EARN. 
 
 IN one sense, I was born on the banks of the Earn ; for 
 there, soul-taught by its grassy holms and rippling waters, 
 thought began to stir within my infant breast. The true 
 place of a man's birth is the spot where the light of in- 
 telligence begins to dawn. My worthy and much-loved 
 father was minister of the parish of Dunbarncy, where 
 a good friend of mine, Mr Kirkwood, now tends the flock ; 
 but as, I suppose, the then rickety manse was not to be 
 trusted with such an important advent, I first saw the 
 light in Newburgh, a flourishing town in Fife, from 
 which circumstance I claim compassion of my readers if 
 they happen to find anything " Fifish " in these remin- 
 iscences. 
 
 My father always, in his mind, designed me for the 
 Church ; but for some time it seemed doubtful if such a 
 special nugget was destined to enrich the treasury of the 
 dear Auld Kirk, against which at present so many rash 
 and bigoted hands are raised; but they will find that the 
 weapons, which they wield with such transparent folly, 
 will never "prosper." It seemed that I was not to 
 become a stone in the venerable fabric ; for, if water 
 could have drowned, I gave the Earn a very fair chance 
 of putting an end to my boyish existence, being always 
 either on its banks trying the worm, or amid its waves 
 seeing how far I could swim, or diving in its depths and 
 groping for pearls. I hav^ at the present moment a rare 
 beauty fished up by myself, and set in a chaste surrounding 
 of gold and blue enamel. My parents although possess-
 
 28 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 ing only one hopeful dropt by degrees their anxiety 
 about the young vagrant ; for at the age of seven or eight, 
 I could swim like an otter, or a water-ousel. Connected 
 with this aquatic accomplishment, I may be allowed to 
 mention one incident. Trespassing on a certain day on 
 the grounds of Sir David Moncreifife a kind friend of 
 our family a surly keeper came down upon one or 
 two little fellows and myself, like anotlier Sennacherib, 
 and made his approach cracking his dog-whip with 
 cruel anticipation. My poor little co-mates shivered 
 with dread, and their small souls sank into the toes 
 of their shoes. I told them to go off to the right as 
 fast as they could streak, which they did with a will, 
 while I, like a lightning-conductor, drew the fire of 
 wrath from them by walking leisurely to the left. On 
 came our. tormentor cracking his whip, and grinning 
 with the first forestalment of a flogging satisfaction. I 
 quietly let my fine leather-legginged gentleman advance 
 until he was close to the river, on the brink of which 
 I now stood. He concluded I was done but "the 
 Rubicon " can't stop a Caesar. Putting the thumb of 
 my left hand to my nose, and the thumb of my right 
 hand to the little finger of the left, I took to the stream, 
 jacket, breeks, and all, and the keeper stood upon the 
 bank, a miserable specimen of discomfiture and degra- 
 dation. Arrived at the opposite bank I shouted, " A 
 bonnie keeper that canna follow up his game !" He 
 went with his "pitiful story" to the bluff Sir David, who 
 told him that he was a " muff," and the minister's laddie 
 a " trump." Another escapade well-nigh deprived the 
 "-Auld Kirk" of a small" buttress." A good, generous 
 lady lost her venerable mother, and in the churchyard 
 of Dunbarney raised a tombstone to her memory. The 
 erection assumed the graceful form of an urn, topped
 
 THE EARN. 2p 
 
 by a torch of fine white sandstone. An expert swim- 
 mer, I was a " blind gunner," and was always far from 
 hitting the mark. One day, however, a little imp chal- 
 lenged me to try a cast at the top of the urn, and I 
 recklessly agreed. My first throw cut the torch clean off, 
 and we took to our heels. My worthy and justly-incensed 
 father reckoned the parish disgraced, and offered a reward 
 of .5 for the finding and exposure of the sacrilegious 
 culprit. Silence ! Day after day went past. No one 
 came. One afternoon, however, when the much-loved 
 pastor was brooding in his study, and thinking, no doubt, 
 of the iniquities of the world in general, and his parish 
 in particular, the door opens, and young hopeful enters. 
 " Well, boy, what do you want I'm busy go away and 
 play." " But, father, I want $, for I can tell wha broke 
 the tombstone." " Ah ! my boy, that's good come, who 
 
 was it ? and here is " My hand was on the handle of 
 
 the door, and the study table was between us. Grammar, 
 somehow, was forgotten, and I shouted out " leather, it 
 
 was me, give me " Over went the study table, bang 
 
 went the door, and I was invisible for the next two 
 days. My kind-hearted mother kept me under lock and 
 key. My father forgot his wrath, but the affair got 
 wind, and I need hardly tell my indulgent readers, that, 
 when the old lady who erected the tombstone died and 
 required one for herself, your humble servant was not 
 remembered in her will. The broken torch was fixed on 
 with cement, and may, in token of my veracity, be seen 
 to this day. 
 
 The sons of the manse have earned the name of pro- 
 verbial " Pickles," and the writer of these lines, I greatly 
 fear, was closely allied to that family. My " schooling " 
 began under the kindly care of good old Tom Scott, 
 who died not long ago, the minister of Shapinshay, in
 
 30 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 the far-off misty Shctlands. It was no fault of his that 
 his boy failed to become a star, but, like the geese of 
 Lady Macfarlane, I suspect I was rather fonder of my 
 " play " than of my educational " meat." However, in 
 one way I made my " mark " ; for, if I had not a pair of 
 handsome black eyes once a quarter, some other fellow 
 was certain to wear the sable livery. These things I 
 can afford to write, keeping nothing back, being now a 
 grey-haired man, much sobered and subdued by the 
 stern realities of life, and gazing with a placid sadness 
 down the sombre far-stretching vista of more than half 
 a century. 
 
 Connected with the manse, in which so many happy 
 days were spent, there is a reminiscence of the cele- 
 brated Dr Chalmers, which ought not to be omitted. 
 He was residing at Kilgraston, and came to preach 
 for my father one Sunday. Well do I recollect the 
 occasion, for my memory goes far back into the vivid 
 past. I think I see the large-headed and equally large- 
 hearted divine as he stood gazing from the pulpit with 
 his dreamy grey eyes ; and I think that I yet hear the 
 rolling thunder of the " old man eloquent." After din- 
 ner he and my father began to talk about botanical 
 subjects, when the latter spoke of a plant which grew 
 on the glebe by the margin of the Earn. " Impossible ! " 
 exclaimed the Doctor, " quite impossible, for it is a salt- 
 water flower, and requires to breathe the sea air." "If 
 it were not the Sabbath," said my father, " I would in 
 five minutes convince you by ocular demonstration." 
 " The Sabbath ! " cried out the Doctor, " study God's 
 works on God's day send that laddie to fetch it this 
 very instant." Away I trotted with the speed of an- 
 other Ariel, and was back in no time with a specimen of 
 the contested plant. The worthy divine of course at
 
 THE EARN. 31 
 
 once gave in, and bestowed on me his blessing, together 
 with a shining half-crown piece ; but as I was at that 
 time much in love with Jamie Deas's black and white 
 rock, I rather suspect that the coin made the deepest im- 
 pression of the two. The Doctor stayed over the night, and 
 returned to Kilgraston next day. However, in the after- 
 noon, down came a boy with a note, saying, " Look on 
 the toilette-table of the room in which I slept, and send 
 back the little copy of Butler's Sermons which I left 
 there. It has long been my vade mecum, and I would 
 not lose it for the world." The volume was found open, 
 and there was the Doctor's subject of the previous day. 
 He was in the habit of preaching Butler's ideas, but set 
 in his own peculiar and impressive style. 
 
 One other reminiscence, and I turn my back for a sea- 
 son on the dear old manse. My father had a younger 
 brother, bred, like himself, to the Church a man of 
 striking appearance and amazing talent. He had stood 
 at the head of the College of St Andrews, the Principal 
 of which, the well-known Dr Hill, wrote to my uncle's 
 father a letter, yet in possession of the family, in which 
 he confidently predicts the speedy fame of Alexander 
 Anderson. But, alas ! the hand of death \vas upon him 
 at an early age. He came to Dunbarney, seeking 
 health, but found a grave. On the evening before he 
 died the sun was setting in summer glory behind the 
 rocky crest of Moredun Hill, and the dying youth re- 
 quested to be lifted up, so that he might see the orb of 
 day go down once more. Propped on his pillow, he 
 watched with wistful intent the declining king of heaven, 
 and, as his last ray sank slowly behind the hill-top, the 
 sun of a human life set quietly for ever. This touching 
 scene I have endeavoured to pourtray in my earliest 
 publication, The Pleasures of Home, and will be par-
 
 32 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 doned, I hope, for giving it a place in this rambling 
 sketch. 
 
 THE LAST SUNSET. 
 
 " OH ! raise my head/' said the dying youth, 
 
 " That setting sun I fain would see ; 
 For a voice is whispering the words of truth 
 ' That setting sun is the last for thee.' " 
 
 They raised him up as the orb of day 
 Was sinking behind the pine-clad hill, 
 
 And his breath with the light ebbed fast away, 
 Till all was silent and dark and chill. 
 
 The moon looked in through the lattice-pane 
 It streamed on the pallid brow of the dead, 
 
 And it silvered the tears that fell, like rain, 
 O'er a blossom of earth, untimely shed. 
 
 But clear your eyes of their bitter dew, 
 
 Let not a drop their light bedim ; 
 For what was a setting sun to you, 
 
 Was a sunrise of life and love to him. 
 
 My first trouts were caught in a small burn that plays 
 itself, like a gay, thoughtless child, through the beauti- 
 ful park of Kilgraston. That domain can boast of a 
 notable family among others, Sir Francis Grant, the 
 late distinguished President of the Royal Academy, and 
 Sir Hope, the famous "Sabrcur" of Indian warfare. 
 The " brush " ran strongly in the family, and the late 
 John Grant, Esq., besides many other sketches, executed 
 a most characteristic one of his gamekeeper, Davie Luke, 
 as grizzled an old fellow as ever handled a ferret, or 
 carried a game-bag. The present proprietor is also a 
 cultivator of the fine arts, and I heartily wish that " the
 
 THE EARN. 33 
 
 old stock " was back again, to live on ground where it 
 flourished so well, and was so much loved and honoured 
 in the bosoms of the people. 
 
 When I grew a little bigger I took to the Farg, and, 
 advancing apace, at length aspired to cope with the 
 " finny tribes " of the beautiful River Earn that washes 
 the glebe of the bonnie parish of Dunbarney. There 
 my first " whitling " was secured, to me, at that time, a 
 monster of consideration, and up that stream, winding 
 its way through holm and meadow, like a silver snake, 
 I now invite my readers to ramble with me, and take a 
 " cast " as we wander onward. The noble demesne of 
 Dupplin is the first place of note, and in " The Minister's 
 Pool," and other famous salmon "lies," thanks to the 
 kindness and courtesy of the present Earl, I have 
 " brought to grass " the most lordly of all our river fishes. 
 By the water-side, a very little, somehow or other, sets 
 the brain a- working, and here, stretched at ease, after a 
 day's good sport, the following fanciful lines took to 
 themselves " a local habitation and a name " : 
 
 THE FOAM-BELL; A RIVERSIDE RHYME. 
 
 A BRIGHT foam-bell on the waters rose, 
 
 On the ripples it danced away, 
 And from time to time a brief repose 
 It found in some fairy bay. 
 
 Then around and around on the eddies it spun, 
 
 Then it shot on the shooting tide, 
 And, lit by the rays of a glorious sun, 
 
 It gleamed and it laughed in pride ; 
 When lo ! in a golden flash it sank ! 
 
 But the sun shone bright as ever, 
 And still as of old, from bank to bank, 
 
 Swept on that rippling river. 
 
 C
 
 34 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 'Tis thus, methought, with the great and gay 
 
 A gleam ! and their glory's gone ; 
 Bright and brief was their earthly day 
 
 Pleasure and pomp for an hour had they ; 
 But over the spot where they passed away 
 The sun still sheds his warmest ray, 
 
 While the river of Time rolls on ! 
 
 Onward we wend our leisurely way, and soon find 
 ourselves beside the tree-dotted lawn that slopes gently 
 upwards to the " House of Cask." There is a modern 
 house now of handsome dimensions, but it is to the 
 "Auld House" that all our associations go back, and 
 nestle there in the dim fairy-land of reverie. 
 
 And now, my friendly reader, I am about to wax more 
 prosy and more egotistical. A certain Mr Stuart went 
 "out " on a most uncertain venture the luckless '45. I 
 have the honour to be descended from this more valor- 
 ous than prudent old soldier, who allowed enthusiasm 
 to run away with discretion, and paid for it dearly. I 
 am not going to drag the reader through the mazes of 
 the old sad story that ended at " bloody Culloden." My 
 purpose is with the " Auld House " of Gask. When 
 their lords were away on their adventurous campaign, 
 several of their ladies took refuge with the hospitable 
 Oliphants. The dismal tale of Culloden found its way 
 to them, like all bad tidings, with woeful celerity, and in 
 down-heartedness they awaited the sequel. By and by 
 some " broken men " came hurrying to the house, bear- 
 ing proudly along with them the rescued " colours," red 
 with more than one drop of their patriotic blood. But 
 the sleuth-hounds of Cumberland were on their track 
 the " Auld House " was in no state to stand a siege 
 and where to hide the battle-rent colours became the 
 anxious question. " Give them to me," said Mrs Stuart,
 
 THE EARN. 35 
 
 with a spirit worthy of " Duncraggan's Dame," and with 
 ready resource she hid them down the shaft of the moss- 
 grown pump, where they remained secure. The pursuers 
 came, the house was ransacked from floor to roof-tree, 
 the men were roughly handled and the ladies in- 
 sulted ; but the precious relic of olden fights was never 
 found. What became of it I cannot remember. Mean- 
 while, what about the fugitive Prince, and seven com- 
 rades in arms who stuck to him through good report 
 and through bad report ? Stuart was of the number, 
 and they wandered from moor to mountain, hiding in 
 cold damp caves, and never, for safety, remaining long 
 in one place. I have seen two of these dismal dens, 
 one near the Fall of Foyers, the other on the bleak side 
 of giant Ben Alder and wretched lodgings they must 
 have been for a Royal guest. Long after those vagrant 
 days Stuart was wont to tell how he often made 
 " crowdie " oatmeal, cold water, and a little salt in 
 tlie heel of an old shoe for the half-starved Prince, and 
 how he lulled him to sleep, like David with the gloomy 
 Saul, by playing on an old Jew's harp, which was then a 
 commonly-used instrument among the Scotch. We all 
 know to the honour of the devoted Celts how the 
 bribe of 30,000 could not sap the fidelity of even one 
 bare-legged Highland gillie, and, after running the 
 gauntlet, through innumerable perils by land and sea, 
 Stuart was one of the staunch seven who saw the French 
 lugger carry away the ill-fated Prince from these hostile 
 shores, amid whose bleak sea-beaten rocks the sun of 
 the gallant Stuarts set for ever. A strange magic still 
 hangs around the story of " Bonnie Prince Charlie." 
 His was once a " name to conjure with," and has still 
 the power to stir the heart that loves the heather and 
 beats beneath the tartan. Although our justly-respected
 
 36 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Queen has no more loyal subject than the author of 
 these reminiscences, I at once confess to the spell of 
 the Stuart name, the very mention of which sends a 
 tingling through my veins. I cannot explain it. I 
 simply state a fact. 
 
 I know that Stuart secretly fostered the conviction 
 that he was a twig, at least, of the Royal Oak, but 
 for myself I am quite satisfied with my descent from 
 the first man, who has left us a legacy which may well 
 serve to keep a rational person humble. Mr Stuart 
 got down to the Lowlands, when the war-tempest blew 
 past, but never lived " to enjoy his ain again." 
 
 And now, it may reasonably be asked, " How and 
 why did this romantic story never find its way into 
 print till so late in the day ? " Easily answered. The 
 late Dr Stuart minister then of Newburgh, and an 
 honour to the " Auld Kirk " drew up .such a statement 
 as I have now given to the public, and sent it to his 
 friend, John Home, author of Douglas, who was at that 
 time publishing his History of the Rebellion of 1745. 
 However, the statement reached the historian too late, 
 as his history was finished, and given to the world ; 
 but he confessed himself satisfied with the veracity of 
 the narrative, and promised to insert it in his second 
 edition. Death stepped in, Home laid down the pen, 
 and the tale of old days now sees the light for the 
 first time, from the pen of one who is proud to claim 
 as a near relation the late learned and eloquent Dr 
 Stuart. 
 
 The chief associations of Gask are with the names of 
 two ladies, whose poetic effusions have long delighted 
 the world. The Baroness Nairne, one of the "Auld 
 House," and Caroline Oliphant, her niece, who was also 
 born there. All readers are familiar with the poems of
 
 THE EARN. 37 
 
 the former; and the verses of the latter, less widely 
 known, are characterised by a winning simplicity and a 
 child-like purity. Delicate in frame as in spirit, over 
 Caroline there hung the presentiment of that early grave 
 to which she was doomed. Hence a touching melan- 
 choly pervades all her poems, and the shadows of the 
 coming night cast over all her effusions a sad and 
 " tender grace." I cannot resist enriching this ramble 
 with two of these exquisite productions, unsurpassed in 
 their earnest wording and gentle pathos. 
 
 OH, NEVER! NO, NEVER. 
 
 OH, never ! no, never ! 
 
 Thou'lt meet me again ; 
 Thy spirit for ever 
 
 Has burst from its chain : 
 The links thou hast broken 
 
 Are all that remain, 
 For never, oh ! never, 
 
 Thou'lt meet me again. 
 
 Like the sound of the viol, 
 
 That dies on the blast ; 
 Like the shade on the dial, 
 
 Thy spirit has passed. 
 The breezes blow round me, 
 
 But give back no strain ; 
 The shade on the dial 
 
 Returns not again. 
 
 Where roses enshrine thee, 
 In light trellis'd shade, 
 
 Still hoping to find thee, 
 How oft have I strayed !
 
 38 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Thy desolate dwelling 
 I traverse in vain, 
 
 The stillness has whispered, 
 Thou'lt ne'er come again. 
 
 I still haste to meet thee, 
 
 When footsteps I hear ; 
 And start, when to greet me 
 
 Thou dost not appear : 
 Then afresh o'er my spirit 
 
 Steals mem'ry of pain 
 For never, oh ! never, 
 
 Thou'lt meet me again. 
 
 HOME IN HEAVEN. 
 
 A WIND-BOUND exile far from home, 
 While standing near th' unfathomed main, 
 My eyes the far horizon roam, 
 To see the land I long to gain. 
 Though dim with mists and faintly blue, 
 The hills of bliss e'en now I view; 
 Oh ! when will heaven's soft breezes come. 
 And waft the weary exile home ? 
 
 Let those who know no lovelier shore 
 Their shells and sea-weed idly heap, 
 Then mourn to see their paltry store 
 Dispersed and sinking in the deep. 
 My storehouse lies beyond the wave, 
 My treasure fears no wat'ry grave. 
 And oh ! I wish fair winds would come, 
 And waft me o'er to that blest home. 
 
 Already some I held most dear, 
 Have safe arrived on yonder strand ; 
 Their barks afar like specks appear, 
 The exiles now have gained the land.
 
 THE EARN. 39 
 
 Their parting signals wave no more, 
 
 No signs of woe float from that shore ! 
 
 And soon the skiff for me will come, 
 
 And Heaven's own breath will waft me home. 
 
 Few things can be more melancholy than the decad- 
 ence of youth ; but some allow themselves to grow old 
 too soon, while others have the faculty of keeping age at 
 arm's length as long as possible. The recipe for doing 
 this is to keep up the sports of your younger years. 
 Don't permit yourself to believe that you are growing 
 old ; wield the rod and the gun as long as possible, and 
 never suppose yourself incapable of out-of-door exertion. 
 We are not old, nor yet very young something between 
 the two and nothing gives us more pleasure than the 
 whirr of the grouse, or, above all, the flash of the trout, 
 as he dares the deceptive fly, and tries the skill of the 
 hand that casts it gently on loch or stream. Let us tell 
 our readers of a pleasant passage lately on Highland 
 waters, and let us induce some of them to visit one of 
 the loveliest places of a lovely country. After a winter 
 that seemed interminable, we were glad to find ourselves, 
 rod, and creel, by the side of Loch Earn, and comfortably 
 installed in the well-known hotel kept by Mr and Mrs 
 Davie, where the fare is excellent, the charges moderate, 
 and the attention of the "staff" all that angler can 
 desire. There are some good boatmen ready " from 
 early morn till dewy eve," and one of them persuaded us 
 to fish through the night, when sensible people have as- 
 sumed their nightcaps. Among others there is " The 
 Admiral," who, like all " ancient mariners," has no ob- 
 jection to a drop of mountain dew ; John M'Gregor, a 
 steady old oar, who takes no " whusky ;" and M'Ewen, a 
 strong young fellow, who does all in moderation. \Ve
 
 40 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 were often afloat, and generally successful. The loch 
 requires a good capful of wind, the waters being spring- 
 fed, and as clear as crystal. The trout are not as a rule 
 large, but very numerous, and game to the backbone. 
 For a time we used the " Loch Leven " size of hooks, but 
 were not successful, and began to think that our " right 
 hand had lost its cunning." Suddenly it flashed upon 
 us that the extreme purity of the water accounted for 
 the fact ; and, on putting on gossamer tackle rigged with 
 midge flies, we killed hand over hand, and returned to 
 our quarters with a basket of nearly five dozen, weigh- 
 ing twelve pounds, after little more than four hours' 
 fishing. One angler on the same day, after nine hours' 
 work, brought to creel twenty-one pounds of pretty trout. 
 Let those who either can't or won't fish fly, try the 
 phantom, or better still, the natural minnow, and they 
 may chance to light upon a ferox, or even a salmon. 
 That salmon are there cannot be doubted, for we were 
 pestered with smolt fry, sometimes a pair at once, which 
 we returned to the waters to grow to the legal years of 
 discretion ; but the loch is not a salmon reservoir like 
 Loch Tay, and the old boatmen assured me that they had 
 seldom seen "clean fish " killed, all being spent, and there- 
 fore the time employed in trying for them being time 
 thrown away. Let the angler use fine tackle for trout, and 
 he will have no reason to regret his moderate desires. 
 Why is this loch, with such a beautiful river flowing out 
 of it, not a sea-trout and salmon loch ? Facts are facts. 
 It is notorious that, for their own reasons, the sea-trout 
 seldom ascend the Earn, but on reaching the mouth of 
 the Ruchil, which joins the Earn at Comrie, head up that 
 brawling stream in vast numbers ; and as we said 
 already, the salmon makes not the loch a favourite 
 haunt. We believe the reasons for this reserve to be
 
 THE EARN. 41 
 
 these : Loch Earn is the crater of an extinct volcano 
 of extreme depth, with a stony bottom and little feeding, 
 and, above all, has not, like Loch Tay, a fine spawning 
 stream rushing in at the head. But it is a delightful 
 loch for trouting, the fish being lively, and sometimes 
 reaching a pound ; and those who have once made proof 
 of the merits of Mr Davie's Hotel will have no difficulty 
 in finding their way back to that most pleasant retreat. 
 The journey from Perth to St Fillans at the foot of 
 the loch, is very agreeable, and the scenes through 
 which the way lies varied and beautiful ; from the " Fair 
 City" to CriefT by train ; then from Crieff by coaches, 
 very roomy and comfortable, with fine teams of grey 
 and brown horses that do their work well. On the way 
 several lovely seats are passed Ochtertyre, so famous 
 in the verse of Burns ; Lawers, the abode of the well- 
 known Col. Williamson, whose stock is worth inspect- 
 ing ; Dunira, mentioned in the exquisite ballad of 
 " Bonnie Kilmeny " ; and other residences of equal 
 attraction. Near the roadside rises the conical hill of 
 St Fillans, on the top of which sainted eminence there 
 is a well, whose waters the saint has endowed with the 
 power of working miraculous cures ; but, beyond helping 
 to cure our thirst by means of a horn of grog, we found 
 no virtue in these far-famed waters. Here we are at 
 home once more ; but although, according to the song 
 which Grisi sang so well, there be " no place like home," 
 we long for another cast on the beautiful loch that 
 washes the base of the lofty Ben Voirlich. One day, 
 Loch Earn being too stormy, we made our way up the 
 steep hillside to Loch Boltachan, which lies buried 
 deeply among the mountains, and, after little more than 
 two hours' fishing from the shore, secured twenty trout 
 not one of them under a quarter of a pound, and a
 
 42 SPRIGS OF. HEATHER. 
 
 pair of them fully a pound each. A larger size of fly 
 may be used on this loch. To those who are not 
 disciples of quaint old Isaak Walton this country offers 
 many delightful walks. About the best leads upwards 
 through the oak copse to the Muckle Stane of Glentar- 
 chin certainly a giant, in shape somewhat resembling 
 the Sphinx, standing out on the bleak heath in lonely 
 grandeur, and surpassing in magnitude the famous Bull 
 Stone on Loch Lomond side. 
 
 Loch Boltachan is a lone sheet of water, like " dark 
 Loch Skene," sung by Sir Walter. The silence becomes 
 oppressive, broken only by the bleating of a sheep, the 
 hum of the heather-bee, and the splash of the " leaping 
 trout that sends through the tarn a lonely cheer." 
 
 SOLITUDE ; A MOORLAND RHYME. 
 
 DEEP in the mountain solitude, 
 
 Where shadow, mist, and silence brood, 
 
 The tinkling of a far-off rill 
 
 The stillness seems to make more still. 
 
 'Tis like a whisper in the air, 
 
 That comes and goes we know not where ; 
 
 And then we listen oft in vain 
 
 To catch that phantom-voice again. 
 
 The summer sigh, that wafts yon cloud, 
 
 A white-winged, fairy ship of heaven, 
 
 Amid the tender hush of even, 
 
 Would seem to make a sound as loud ! 
 
 The bleating of a wandering ewe 
 In some wild hill-recess, 
 Or shrill note of the grey curlew, 
 Are sounds the soul will bless ; 
 For solitude thus deep asleep 
 Becomes oppressive when so deep.
 
 THE EARN. 43 
 
 And then, as we too catch the gloom 
 That settles sadly on the scene, 
 The lost glide from the silent tomb, 
 And speak of loves that once have been. 
 Familiar faces round us rise 
 The loved and lost of other days 
 On us they bend those mournful eyes, 
 That once were lit with sunnier rays. 
 We see the flowers, we hear the streams 
 By which we wandered side by side. 
 Then back those ghostly shadows glide 
 Into the sleep that knows no dreams. 
 And peopled thus in musing mood, 
 It is no longer solitude 
 In which I stand, 
 
 But cinctured by a well-known band, 
 Raised from the Past by Memory's mystic wand.
 
 44 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG IV. LAGGAN LONG AGO. 
 
 ON a pleasant summer afternoon, many years ago, 
 three of us found ourselves by the birch-fringed and 
 heath-clad shores of this lovely loch. My friends were 
 two as cheerful fellows as ever cast a fly, or made the 
 hours go lightly by with song, story, and jest. The one 
 was the late Mr Brown, of the Field, the other a young 
 preacher of decided professional powers. We travelled 
 to Dalwhinnie by rail, and then posted across country 
 fifteen miles. After a night's rest in the quiet little inn, 
 where all was unpretending comfort, we took to the 
 water to try our luck with the brown trout and the 
 ferox, for which Laggan is rather famous. Brown was an 
 accomplished artist, no less than a knowing angler, and 
 after three miles of good fishing, we landed, under his 
 guidance, to see something which hitherto he had kept 
 profoundly secret. Laggan has many attractions, but 
 perhaps the greatest lay, not in the loch, neither on the 
 mountain, but inside the old house of Ardverikie. It 
 boasted of no architectural grandeur, but there are or 
 rather were, the place having been most unfortunately 
 burned to the ground the original sketches of five of 
 Landseer's famous pictures, executed upon the walls in 
 coloured crayons, and life-size. Among these I may 
 mention " The Challenge," " The Stag at Bay," " The 
 Children of the Mist," "The Sanctuary," and "The 
 Dying Stag." These sketches were truly wonderful, 
 possessing at once softness of execution along with a 
 bold free energy, which must have been seen to be at all
 
 LAGGAN LONG AGO. 45 
 
 realised. About the middle of the lake are two beautiful 
 islets, one bearing aloft upon its crags the scanty 
 remains of the castle of " Fergus, the first of our kings," 
 while the other exhibits the ruins of the house where 
 the monarch is said to have kept his staghounds. Thei 
 first-mentioned islet is called Eilan-na-Righ, or tha 
 King's Island ; the second is called Eilan-na-Conn, or 
 the Dog's Island. Upon the first our Queen planted a 
 silver-fir, which is thriving well, and is seen at a great 
 distance above the ruins. 
 
 But this loch still has attractions for the angler. 
 It is well stocked with the common fario, running, in 
 the best places, two to the pound ; and upon every 
 favourable day the angler may have a run or two with 
 the ferox, the great lake trout, which attains the weight 
 of thirty pounds, although such a specimen is seldom 
 taken. Along with my pleasant companion, Mr B. 
 one who was not merely an adept at the slaughtering of 
 fish, but also thoroughly up to their history and habits 
 I fished Loch Laggan for seven days, and had reason 
 to be satisfied, killing as we did between us about 140 Ibs. 
 weight of trout, our two largest being respectively 12% 
 and 6J Ibs. Let me detail the capture of both, as they 
 afforded very fine runs. On the third day of our arrival 
 we were trolling with artificial minnow opposite Aber- 
 arder bay, and I was in the act of saying that the ferox 
 must be a myth in these parts, when, to punish my 
 infidelity, my large Brown's Phantom was eagerly 
 seized. On raising my rod, however, the line came too 
 easily towards me, and I was reeling up to see that no 
 damage had been done to my tackle, when the minnow 
 was again boldly seized by the pursuing fish, within ten 
 yards of the boat, and away he went at racing speed, 
 cutting my fingers with the rough hair line. In an
 
 46 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 instant he had out from seventy to eighty yards, and 
 his burst was not yet over ; but the boatmen, up to 
 their work, were giving him chase with all speed. Soon 
 we began to overhaul him, and I recovered line ; but 
 again and again I was compelled to let him run. We 
 all pronounced him first-class from his energy and 
 pluck. To wind up both story and fish, he led us a 
 mile, and was then gaffed neatly by my friend, when he 
 turned out to be 6i Ibs., but foul-hooked by the outside 
 of the gill cover, and had thus all his powers at full 
 liberty. He resembled a beautiful grilse, and was 
 perfect in shape, colour, and condition. Having " wet 
 our whistles," we were soon at it again, when my friend, 
 whose fly-rod was in requisition, cried out that some- 
 thing heavy had suddenly, but quietly, "come on." 
 Having reeled up all the other rods, Mr B. cautiously 
 put a little strain upon his slender trouting tackle, 
 when up started a monster ferox, springing three feet 
 above the water. This he did six or seven times, and 
 but for my friend's skilful handling, must have broken 
 tackle. On we went in a very exciting manner, and 
 still the game was doubtful. " Get him to swim past 
 the boat," said James, a powerful, handsome young 
 Highlander, "and I'll do my part." This accordingly 
 was managed with some judicious finesse, when James, 
 guided by the back dorsal fin, got the gaff quietly under 
 the fish, and, striking him dexterously through the 
 belly, brought him into the boat. A more lovely ferox 
 I never saw \2.\ Ibs. good short, thick, clear-skinned. 
 and spotted like a picture. Next day came my luck, 
 and also my disappointment. Twice did I raise another 
 monster, casting, and hooked him at the second rise. 
 A repetition of the previous episode took place, with the 
 exception of the leaping. Instead of that we had
 
 LAGGAN LONG AGO. 47 
 
 " sulking," and in one of his deepest sulks he found 
 time to bite my gut with his file-like teeth, after a 
 twenty-minutes' fight. All, however, was not gone. 
 On the top-bob, the only remaining hook, up from the 
 " vasty deeps," came a young pound and a half ferox, 
 which was creeled for want of his tricky grandfather, 
 who gave us the slip. Our average take during seven 
 days was 20 Ibs., our lowest being 1 3 Ibs., and our highest 
 45 ibs. Ferox fly, green body, gold spangle, with teal 
 wing, and red hackle ; common trout fly, red, with same 
 dressing. I am very fond of loch fishing. Changes of 
 the wind don't bother, for the boat can meet them all. 
 There is some lack, many may think, of the poetry of 
 stream fishing. But, while you miss the sparkling 
 stream 'and the swirling foamy pool, in their places you 
 have the pebbly bay and the ferny burn-mouth, the 
 rocky headland and the lovely islet, around whose grey 
 boulders the waves chafe pleasantly. We had the 
 coarsest weather imaginable ; but it is superfluous to 
 say that, while our days were spent amid mountain 
 rain, our evenings settled dow r n amid mountain dew. 
 
 The weather becoming too bright for angling during 
 the day, I bethought me of a white moth fly, dressed 
 for me by a gallant old sportsman, the late Colonel 
 Campbell, of Perth, who had fought with tougher foes 
 than Highland feroxes, having faced the French on 
 most of the Peninsular battlefields, shedding his blood 
 more than once upon those classic spots which no true 
 Briton can hear mentioned without a flushing of the 
 cheek and a quickening of the pulse. No sooner had I 
 cast the moth on the wave, where the soft summer dusk 
 was falling, than I felt I had to deal with much larger 
 trout than those enticed by the common fly during the 
 burning day. On the following evening I repeated the
 
 48 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 experiment, and came in late with a dozen yellows, some 
 of them up to a pound. 
 
 If the weather be too stormy to fish the loch, let the 
 boat drift over the sand-bar into the mouth of the 
 Pattaig, and there float quietly under the alders. The 
 green-fly, always good, along with the worm-fly, will 
 here do " yeoman's service ;" being taken for the green 
 grub and the caterpillar, which are blown from the 
 over-hanging trees. Very large fish are secured here, 
 and thus a day, otherwise unproductive, has not been 
 lost. 
 
 I was once induced to cross the hills and conduct 
 Sunday service in a modest kirk among the glens ; 
 not quite fair-play, however, let me say, to a hard- 
 worked fellow out for a holiday. I know that my 
 much-esteemed friend, Millais, when away from his 
 important labours in the great city, and rusticating in 
 the country with rod and gun, would not be induced 
 to paint a portrait of even His Holiness the Pope's 
 nose ; and decidely right, for man was made to rest as 
 well as to labour in due season. Well, I officiated, but 
 found that human nature was much the same here as 
 in the parish of Kinnoull ; for the Sunday cougJi was 
 loud and long. I am not, like most of my clerical 
 brothers, easily put about by church noises, and am not 
 much distressed even by the squalling of a restless brat 
 whom a fond mamma should have relegated to the 
 nursery, or the snore of a ploughman, heavy with brose 
 and butter-milk, and fit only for the bothy. Sabbatical 
 coughing is a bad habit ; for it matters not whether 
 the day be warm or chilling there it goes ! But, if it 
 cannot be suppressed, then let the performance be kept 
 for the house and not for the kirk.
 
 LAGGAN LONG AGO. 49 
 
 THE SUNDAY COUGH ; OR, THE RIGHTS OF 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 COUGH ! Cough ! Cough ! 
 
 Oh ! but the weather is cold. 
 Cough ! Cough ! Cough ! 
 
 Tis the right of the young and the old. 
 Cough ! Cough ! Cough ! 
 
 And now the weather is warm ; 
 In vain may the parson plead or scold, 
 
 For a Sunday cough has a wondrous charm. 
 
 Cough ! from the battered old man 
 
 (A most unearthly note) 
 To Tommy, who seems to try if he can 
 
 Make similar fun with his throat. 
 Cough ! from the elder's pew, 
 
 Guttural, steady, and deep ; 
 The beadle would try the luxury, too, 
 
 If he were not so fast asleep. 
 
 What though the sermon prove 
 
 The very best of the year, 
 A thing that the dullest fool might love 
 
 With his heart and his soul to hear ! 
 When the passage, so powerfully written, 
 
 Is thrilling so touchingly off, 
 Some reckless throat, by the frensy smitten, 
 
 Goes Cough ! Cough ! Cough ! 
 
 What though a friend's devotion 
 
 Is ruffled, or something worse, 
 Till I sadly fear, in the mind's commotion, 
 
 His prayer is changed to a curse ! 
 Who can stifle a cough ? 
 
 Have we not paid for our sitting ? 
 And our neighbours are very well off 
 
 If we ape not the Yankee in spitting 
 
 D
 
 50 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 You say 'tis a custom vile 
 
 Which a gentleman might suppress ; 
 But live we not in Liberty's Isle, 
 
 With the freedom of Church and Press 
 To speak and to write as we may 1 
 
 Our Cousins are scarce better off 
 They may spit every hour of the day, 
 
 And we have our Sunday Cough ! 
 
 Weather warm or cold 
 
 Weather freezing or warm 
 In vain has the druggist's pill been rolled, 
 In vain is the parson's weekly scold ; 
 For a Sunday cough to the young and the old 
 
 Has a most peculiar charm ! 
 
 An old College friend of my father's "a stickit 
 stibbler" told the coughers, one day, in the church of 
 Newburgh, that they stood more in need of the doctor 
 than of the divine. He was a character, in truth. I 
 heard him treat the " Pharisee " thus : " I pay tithes 
 of all I possess." " No thanks to you, my holy friend ; 
 the law would have seen to that." " I fast twice a 
 week." " Don't believe it ; but if you did, I'll lay all 
 I have, that you had a ' blow out' the next five days ! " 
 
 This worthy divine, like many of his class, was given 
 to be prolix. Once, when delivering a trial sermon 
 before Principal Hill, his preface drew itself out to 
 something like a quarter of an hour. " Very good," 
 said the kind Principal, " but come to the body of your 
 discourse." " Exactly, sir," said the cool probationer, 
 "but give me just ten minutes more to lay down my 
 heads ! " The worthy Doctor, tired of the exordium, 
 feared the body, and dispensed with the tail. 
 
 Being a " little, round, oily man," my friend disliked 
 tall men ; and once rather snubbed a clerical son of
 
 LAGGAN LONG AGO. $r 
 
 Anak, who called him a " small shaver." " All right," 
 said he, " all right, Mr W tt ; but I have always seen 
 that the upper storey of tall houses, called the attic, 
 is very ill furnished ! " This queer creature full of 
 anecdote told me a story that would have delighted 
 the heart of Dean Ramsay. A certain barrister, in high 
 practice, went down to the country on the Saturdays 
 to pass the time of leisure with his aged mother. 
 Family-worship was then in vogue, and the barrister 
 played the part of fireside divine. " Robert," said his 
 mother, one night after devotions, " I'm really much 
 distressed with you." "Why, my dear mother, should 
 this be the case ? tell me how I offend." " Well, Robert, 
 I'll tell ye. I notice that your prayers are every 
 night growing shorter ; and I saw in yesterday's paper 
 
 that the learned counsel, Robert , addressed their 
 
 Lordships of the Court of Session in an able speech of 
 three-quarters of an hour, but last night your offering 
 to the Lord of Hosts was barely three minutes ! " " Ah ! 
 but, mither, the Lord up there is no sae dull in the up- 
 tak as the Lords doon here ! " 
 
 This poor preacher was the best of creatures, yet 
 sometimes could lose his temper. One day he was 
 rather pressed by one who had secured " the loaves 
 and fishes," which would neither toast in his oven, nor 
 come into his net. " Let me tell you, sir," said he, 
 " you may bless a kind Providence, for you have not 
 one particle of talent or common sense." " Oh, man," 
 replied his good-natured friend, " how could you expect 
 onything of the kind, when you consider that I am my 
 faither's thirteenth bairn ? " Poor, worthy, luckless soul, 
 " Requiescat in pace" 
 
 But there are other preachers than those of our 
 Divinity Halls, and they receive their license direct
 
 52 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 from the Creator. Voices of Nature's own training 
 are ever sounding the praises of One who " has never 
 left Himself without a witness." And never have I felt 
 more impressed in spirit than, when wandering home in 
 the hush of a summer even, I listen with all my soul to 
 
 THE VOICES OF CREATION. 
 
 "The Lord reigncth ; let the earth be glad." 
 
 I LOVE the woods, the ever-whispering woods ; 
 
 There summer rears a leafy colonnade, 
 Where sweetly-pensive meditation broods, 
 
 With nought the dim seclusion to invade, 
 Save a lost sunbeam wandering 'mid the trees, 
 Or the leaf dancing to the piping breeze. 
 
 I love the flowers, the brightly-blooming flowers, 
 For they restore to me the sunny past, 
 
 When varied pleasure winged the flying hours, 
 Too pure to happen twice, too sweet to last ; 
 
 How many hopes are scattered on the gale, 
 
 While a bleak stem repeats the common tale ! 
 
 I love the streams, the softly-gliding streams, 
 For they can sing to rest the fretted mind ; 
 
 And if they speak of fountains, bright as dreams, 
 Left on the path of travel far behind, 
 
 They tell the soul of that mysterious deep, 
 
 Where Life's chafed waters rest yet never sleep. 
 
 I love the stars, the clearly-shining stars, 
 
 Priests of the night and Prophets of the morn ; 
 
 Now pouring balm upon affliction's scars, 
 Now speaking of a glory to be born, 
 
 Like faith, that sanctifies our mortal night, 
 
 By pointing to a dawn of never-setting light.
 
 LAGGAN LONG AGO. 53 
 
 Yes ! scenes of nature ! beauty is your dower, 
 And eloquence beyond all human speech ; 
 
 Your language blends a sweetness and a power 
 Each heart to soften, and each mind to teach ; 
 
 Your tones persuasive breathe of Eden still, 
 
 Of peace and love, of mercy and good-will. 
 
 O Nature ! Nature ! one brief hour with thee. 
 
 At golden eve, or under dewy morn, 
 Might shame the Scoffer's heartless sophistry, 
 
 And light with faith the Atheist's brow of scorn. 
 Though man hath fallen, his earthly home is fair, 
 And every running rill proclaims that God is there. 
 
 His tender mercies o'er His works are spread ; 
 
 With his benignant smile the sunbeam glows ; 
 Flowers at our feet, and stars above our head, 
 
 Each wave that wanders, and each breeze that blows, 
 Cry to the labouring soul, the spirit sad, 
 God reigns supreme ; let all the earth be glad ! 
 
 Faint heart, be strong ! this earth is not thy goal ; 
 
 A future, bright and lasting, smiles for thee ; 
 These scenes are fair, but fairer wait the soul ; 
 
 Eye hath not seen thy glories yet to be ; 
 Man's home is Heaven that kingdom of the blest ; 
 The wicked come not there the weary are at rest !
 
 54 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG V. AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 AMONG the hills ! What is there among the things 
 which concern man so powerful and magical as words ? 
 Steam is not a more marvellous chariot than a simple 
 sound. Electricity wafts not intelligence more swiftly 
 than the breath of a word. Pronounce the three words 
 which head this paper, and the mind is away beyond 
 my control, far in the bosom of the heathery wilderness, 
 where city smoke and commercial din must ever be 
 strangers ; where the eagle wheels and the curlew 
 screams ; where the dun deer shakes the dews of morn 
 from his shaggy sides ; where the river brawls over his 
 rocky channel, and the lake spreads her gleaming bosom 
 to the sun ; and where, amidst the stillness of nature, 
 deep but not dread as the stillness of death, Echo is 
 from time to time awakened from his cavern, as the 
 stone is dislodged from the mountain side, or some 
 " leaping fish," flashing up among the ripples, " sends 
 through the tarn a lonely cheer." 
 
 Well, once more have I been among the hills, and, as 
 usual, the sight of the heather brought up the past from 
 the depth of bygone days, with its lonely rambles by 
 the mountain stream or the moorland lake. Bowling 
 along from the handsome Perth Station, upon the High- 
 land Railway, a drive of about sixty miles brings you to 
 Dalwhinnie, situated at the watershed of the counties of 
 Perth and Inverness, and right over against the gloomy 
 gorge of the magnificent Loch Ericht, deepest of 
 Highland lakes, over which the mighty Ben Alder
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 55 
 
 hangs his cavernous precipices (in a dismal den of 
 which poor Prince Charlie found shelter), and in whose 
 limpid waters the lively fario and the predatory ferox 
 maintain their abodes. Ben Alder is a northern giant 
 of 4000 feet. He forms part of an extensive deer 
 forest, stretching between Lochs Laggan and Ericht ; 
 and often in the stillness of " dewy morn " or pensive 
 even, as my boat was skimming over the surface of the 
 sombre lake, have I seen the form of some noble stag 
 mirrored in the waters as he drank, or a whole regiment 
 of his antlered kindred for one moment motionless 
 against the sky line, and the next, with a haughty toss 
 of their branching crests, gone like the mist of their 
 native hills. 
 
 A party of us recently fished this splendid stretch of 
 water for three days, but did not find it in its usual 
 trim. This was owing to two reasons. First of all, we 
 were too early by a month, Loch Ericht, lying 1400 
 feet above the sea-level, and being, therefore, a late lake, 
 as one might discover from the snow clothing the 
 summit and sides of Ben Alder on the loth of June ; 
 and, secondly, we encountered most tempestuous 
 weather for the first two days, and of course the fish on 
 such occasions take to the depths for the sake of quiet. 
 The storm having gone down on the third day, we 
 expected a good take, as the trouts would be getting 
 hungry after their fast ; but the angler has to contend 
 with many obstacles ; and although a fine steady breeze 
 was rippling the surface of the lake, the sky that bent 
 overhead was of a clear cold frosty blue, with far too 
 many " wool-packs " floating silently onward. How- 
 ever, we killed upwards of forty pounds of excellent trout, 
 a couple of them being young feroxes of about two pounds 
 each one captured in trolling with a small trout on
 
 56 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 spinning tackle, the other having been captured by a 
 small professor fly. A month later, and our take 
 would have been double at least. 
 
 Seldom are the gloomy glories of Loch Ericht seen 
 by any eyes save those of the lonely angler or wander- 
 ing shepherd. The common tourist passes along the 
 beaten track, and catches only a distant glimpse of the 
 opening of this grand picture gallery of nature, with its 
 sides now tinted by the verdant fern, and now shaggy 
 with the feathery birch, while the clouds throw the 
 shifting charms of light and shade over heath and 
 precipice, and the snows of Ben Alder gleam coldly on 
 high. There is one view of this Highland monarch, 
 with his savage peaks and ice-crusted corries, that 
 almost rivals many of the Swiss Alpine grandeurs ; for 
 the eye cannot embrace objects beyond a certain size, 
 and Mount Blanc, when seen for the first time from a 
 distance, seems not a fifth part of his mighty stature. 
 Maculloch compared Loch Ericht to a " huge cesspool !" 
 The old vagabond's mind must have been in a wretched 
 condition that morning. His breakfast had not been 
 like that to which Mr and Mrs Macdonald now treat 
 their guests, or the foul words had been unwritten. 
 
 Those, however, who desire to obtain the creme de 
 la creme of this fine loch must put themselves to the 
 trouble of seeking its southern extremity. There it 
 empties itself, by a seven-mile stream, into Loch Ran- 
 noch, after a brawling course of pool, and rapid, from 
 each of which excellent sport may be had. This end of 
 the loch is paved with fine golden sand, where the trout 
 assume, as usual, the colour of their feeding-beds ; and 
 there I have filled my creel with the most beautiful 
 specimens of the common loch trout, averaging three- 
 quarters of a pound each. Here the sportsman must
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 57 
 
 prepare for "roughing it" in a rude "bothy," and he 
 will find, as I did, that liveliness is not an attribute of 
 the trout alone. If to this privilege you add the nasal 
 abilities of a companion whose skin is " caviare " to the 
 nocturnal " multitude," you will not readily forget the* 
 far end of Loch Ericht. The loch being eighteen miles 
 long, it is a whole day's work to reach the southern 
 extremity ; and if, as in our case, a roaring blast 
 obstinately meets you as you slowly battle your way 
 down the stormy waters, blackened by the weird 
 shadows of the solemn mountains that, gallery-like, close 
 in upon you with scarcely a break, you will be glad to 
 encounter anything at the friendly bothy. Such was 
 the conflict through which our weary boatmen wafted us 
 at no distant date ; but the sport that awaited us amply 
 made up, even to them, for stiff sinews and aching backs. 
 Three of us kept ourselves, four boatmen, a keeper 
 with wife and nine children, a domestic servant, and a 
 policeman on the look-out for rinderpest cattle stealing 
 across the marches, for a week in the most curdy and 
 salmon-coloured trout it is possible to conceive. Be- 
 sides, we kippered no end of fine specimens, and talked 
 over them at home about the plagues and the pleasures 
 of the lonely Loch Ericht. It is a curious thing how 
 interesting and suggestive a creature even a common flea 
 may become, when, like a freebooter, he carries on his 
 depredations amid the sublimities of nature. Emblem 
 of restlessness ! I will not forget thee soon, and 
 heartily wish thee fresh subjects for thy midnight 
 practice. 
 
 What pleasant sensations does the true angler which 
 definition includes the love of nature carry home with 
 him from a scene like this, and lay up forever in the 
 cabinet of memory ! Ah ! my very good friend, Mr
 
 58 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Millionaire, with your easy carriage and that uneasy 
 toe, there are other treasures than those that figure upon 
 your idolised ledger, which you thumb more lovingly 
 than your Bible. Among the treasures of humanity 
 in a healthy condition are a good digestion and a pair 
 of sinewy limbs, a love of nature in all her aspects, and 
 the sunny or pensive memories of other days. I know, 
 Mr Proseman, that you see more beauty in a web of 
 dowlas than in a patch of blue sky, sleeping like a 
 peaceful islet among the wavy clouds. We are all 
 aware that you never contemplate a running stream 
 apart from the vision of a mill driven by water-power, 
 and only look upon a lake with a view to bring the 
 Drainage Act to bear upon its barren surface, where no 
 corn waves its autumnal gold, and no forests nod their 
 leafy branches where the only life is the lively trout 
 flashing up in the sunlight, and where the vagrant 
 cloud beholds its image in the grand mirror of nature. 
 And we heard you say last week that you could beat 
 the whole fraternity of crazy anglers by sending Jenny 
 to the fishmonger's with half a sovereign in her basket. 
 Of course ; and why not tell her to bring Ben Alder 
 back with her in the same basket, and the balmy 
 breath of summer days spent among the heather, and 
 the brown cheek that is tinted by hard exercise in the 
 mountain air, and the keen appetite which would 
 enable you, sir, to eat your dinner without any fear of 
 a sleepless night, like the last, when you dreamed that 
 you had swollen into the portentous size of a first-class 
 steam-engine, and was too full of steam. Some men 
 have no past with its hallowed memories, no future 
 with its glimpses of glory and joy, only a sordid present, 
 almost too heavy to be borne. Thank heaven I am 
 not of such, and go homewards with the grandeur of
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 59 
 
 Loch Ericht deep-mirrored in my soul glorious 
 picture ! never more to fade till the rod is too heavy 
 for the hand, and recollection dies ! 
 
 Loch Ericht can rise in wrath, and once, crossing it, 
 I was quietly taking off my heavy waterproof and 
 strong boots, preparing for the worst, when we were 
 dashed upon the shore. When the weather is wild, I 
 would advise the angler to try Loch Coultree, if he can 
 get permission from the proprietor, Cluny Macpherson, 
 a courteous Highland chieftain. His son is now 
 commander in the Perth Barracks near my own abode 
 one of the heroes of Coomassie, where he fought 
 under my old acquaintance, the gallant Sir John 
 M'Leod, whose cool intrepidity led very considerably 
 to the triumph of the bloody day whereon that most 
 bloody place was taken. Owing to " stress of weather," 
 Mr Steel of Blackpark, his son, and myself fished Loch 
 Coultree for three consecutive days, and creeled, upon 
 the average, [twenty pounds of pretty fair-sized trouts. 
 The loch is beautiful, and is mentioned in the sport- 
 ing book of Mr Lyall, now, like the streams and lochs, 
 one of my old friends. 
 
 One day, before the inn door of Dalwhinnie, I 
 " forgathered " with a battered soldier, with a wooden 
 leg. My heart warmed to the " red rag," which I would 
 have worn, but for circumstances. I gave him a " drink," 
 and led him back to the past. He was stumping on 
 to Fort George, and was a war-relic of the deadly 
 Crimea. 
 
 I asked him if he was one of those w r ho came under 
 the gentle tendence of Florence Nightingale? His 
 bronzed cheek became a shade paler the tear welled 
 up in his eye, then rolled over the brown furrow of his 
 face and, in a broken voice, he exclaimed, " Oh ! sir,
 
 60 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 she is an angel!" I was touchingly answered. His 
 simple words sank into my heart, and, like his own hot 
 manly tear, my thoughts and feelings overflowed in 
 
 A "WOUNDED SOLDIER" TO FLORENCE 
 NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 AMID the dismal silence 
 
 Of this ghastly house of pain, 
 What voice is falling softly 
 
 As a shower of summer rain ? 
 
 Above this couch, where agony 
 
 The human form doth mar, 
 What angel-visage haunteth me, 
 
 Like a pure and holy star ? 
 
 Oh ! is it but a dream of night, 
 
 That mocketh eye and ear? 
 Or can I trust my fading sight 
 
 Is a gentle woman near? 
 
 Yes ! thou art Florence Nightingale ; 
 
 I know and bless thee now, 
 Thy cheek with weariness is pale, 
 
 But mercy lights thy brow. 
 
 Thou hast left a home of happiness ; 
 
 Thou hast crossed the raging wave 
 To shed a blessing o'er distress 
 
 To rob the greedy grave ! 
 
 For the kindness of that tender hand, 
 
 And the pity of that eye, 
 Who fears to suffer for his land ? 
 
 Who sorrows thus to die ?
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 6 1 
 
 This deadly shore is shining 
 
 With deeds of deathless fame ; 
 But the fairest bays are twining 
 
 Around a woman's name ! 
 
 Man ! thou art strong in danger, 
 
 To DUTY faithful still ; 
 But thy nature is a stranger 
 
 To the might of woman's will 
 
 To her wealth of self-devotion, 
 
 To her love of sacrifice 
 Greenest isle in trouble's ocean ! 
 
 Brighest star on sorrow's skies ! 
 
 Beneath the CROSS beside the TOMB, 
 
 Was woman's olden place ; 
 And still there beameth on our gloom 
 
 A comfort from her face. 
 
 O lady ! if the crown of heaven 
 
 Be won by earnest prayer, 
 A thousand times, from morn till even 
 
 Thy crown is purchased there. 
 
 'Tis all we have sad wrecks of strife, 
 
 Strewn thick in war's wild vale ; 
 God bless thee ! Angel of our life ! 
 
 Sweet Florence Nightingale. 
 
 Not far from the Crimean period another woman's 
 name was and is associated with our kilted heroes. 
 The espisode of Jessie Brown will never be forgotten 
 while female heroism can still draw forth " the soldier's 
 tear." Moved, like all others, by the occasion to which 
 I allude, I could not help striking a note on my feeble 
 harp. My humble lines were not altogether lost ; for
 
 62 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 they got some notoriety by being sung in the streets 
 with nasal energy, and were spouted at Panoramas by 
 fluent gentlemen, who dropped their /is like hot 
 potatoes. Let me revive old days by reproducing 
 
 JESSIE BROWN; OR, THE SLOGAN OF 
 LUCKNOW. 
 
 " DINNA ye hear it ? " the maiden cried, 
 
 As she sprang from the gory ground, 
 Where the dead and the dying, side by side, 
 
 The warrior's bed had found. 
 " Dinna ye hear it ? the gathering cry ! 
 
 That speaks of my Highland home 
 Beneath the clouds of a distant sky 
 
 We are saved ! for the Clansmen come." 
 
 A hush, like death, on the soldiers fell, 
 
 And their forms were still as stone ; 
 But they only heard the foeman's yell, 
 
 Or a comrade's parting groan. 
 But still through the gloom the maiden strained 
 
 The glance of her kindling eye, 
 And she cried, while the iron tempest rained, 
 
 " We are saved ! we are saved ! they are nigh ! " 
 
 As the trees of the forest bend and break 
 
 'Neath the hurricane's angry tread, 
 The ranks of the foemen reel and quake, 
 
 And the earth is piled with dead ! 
 For a flashing sickle that never failed, 
 
 The claymore, sweeps around ; 
 And the hopes of our British hearts are hailed 
 
 By the slogan's martial sound.
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 63 
 
 Oh ! dear is home to the exile's eye, 
 
 And sleep to the weary frame ; 
 But dearer far that gathering cry 
 
 O'er the surges of battle came ; 
 And the eye of God, in that wild hour, 
 
 Saw many a temple there ; 
 For many a babe, like a folded flower, 
 
 Was hushed by the lips of prayer !
 
 64 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG VI. LAGGAN REVISITED. 
 
 WORDSWORTH wrote "Yarrow Revisited," one of his 
 most charming short poems, and why should not I, 
 in humble prosaic imitation, scribble a few lines con- 
 cerning my renewed acquaintance with Loch Laggan ? 
 Truly it is worth many a visit, and all who see it once 
 will nourish a desire to see it again. It is the joint pro- 
 perty of Sir John Ramsdean on the south side of the 
 lake, and of the chieftain, Cluny Macpherson, on the 
 north side. Cluny is well known and much beloved all 
 through his Highland regions, and a hale, strong man, 
 verging on his 84th year, may be seen daily walking 
 about in his Celtic garb on his princely estate. Sir 
 John acquired, by purchase, about ten years ago, the 
 deer forest of Ben Alder, with its noble stock of from 
 IO,OOO to 12,000 stags, hinds, and does. He has built 
 a spacious lodge one of the largest in the Highlands 
 on the site of the old house of Ardverike, which 
 was destroyed by fire, thus depriving the art-world 
 of those wondrous life-size frescoes with which the 
 master-hand of Landseer had adorned the walls of the 
 old rooms in which he was entertained, an honoured 
 guest, by Her Gracious Majesty. Above the mantel- 
 piece of the little upper parlour, in which I have spent 
 many a pleasant day, the great artist painted, in his 
 best style, a splendid old blackcock, proud of mien, and 
 glorious in plumage as any Highland chief in his "war- 
 paint " ; but a Goth of an innkeeper not our present 
 kind landlord, who is both a sportsman and a man of
 
 LAGGAN REVISITED. 65 
 
 taste had the room papered, with a vulgar pattern, we 
 need hardly say, and the grand, stately bird no longer 
 tells of the master-hand that gave it life and beauty. 
 Once, when I was sitting by the fire, a fine-looking 
 gentleman left the coach to have another look at his 
 old favourite, and when he gazed upon the blank, I do 
 not say that his eyes dropt tears, but I know that his 
 tongue dropt something else. 
 
 It has been my good fortune to spend a couple of 
 weeks on the bosom and by the side of this most lovely 
 loch, with a set of as pleasant fellows as ever cast a 
 line or creeled a ferox. We had a first-rate time of it, 
 with rods by day, and fireworks and balloons in the 
 evening, thanks to Herr Goetz, who has a splendid 
 knack of making the hours go swimmingly past. He 
 provided also rifle and target for those who possessed 
 the sporting qualifications. How is it that, as a rule, 
 all anglers are jolly, good, open-hearted fellows ? But 
 such is the case. You will never find a blase man- 
 about-town character who cares for fishing among the 
 quiet lochs and retiring streams. He cannot carry his 
 club-house along with him, and Nature and he have 
 little or nothing in common. He fears to trust himself 
 alone beside the silent lake, where solitude reigns, or 
 up the heathy banks, " where the burnie steals under 
 the lang yellow broom." His only rod is the billiard- 
 cue; and he prefers the cigar-scented room to the 
 crisp mountain air, that wafts colour to the cheek, 
 vigour to the limb, and health to the heart that loves 
 to dwell with Nature in all her varied moods. Our 
 sport was good, considering the chill breezes that blew 
 over the vast stretch of frozen snow, still lying deep on 
 every mountain-side, and in every deep corrie, where 
 summer, I fear, will not be able, with her hot suns, to 
 
 E
 
 66 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 put it to flight. All were successful. In ten days our 
 party of two killed about forty-five dozen, and the men ol 
 the other party proved equally deadly among the speckled 
 tribe. Some fine specimens of the ferox were landed, 
 from five to eight pounds in weight. My young com- 
 panion killed his first, in a quarter of an hour, on a small 
 trouting rod. It was a rare piscatorial feat, for the fish 
 was in high condition, and scaled over seven pounds. 
 
 We were induced to make two excursions on foot, and 
 were rewarded nobly for our pedestrian toil. One 
 was to the upper fall of the Pattaig, and the other to 
 Loch Cor-Arder. The fall is splendidly enshrined 
 among hoary, heath-fringed rocks, and. takes a grand 
 leap of 50 or 60 feet. In full flood it must be tremen- 
 dous. Sir John Ramsdean has made a walk to it at 
 great expense, which embraces a circuit of about eight 
 miles among scenery of blended loveliness and grandeur. 
 Sir John is a benefactor to this part of the country 
 for he has planted millions of pines, which, in time, 
 will beautify the landscape and mollify the climate. 
 But the other scene, Cor-Arder, how shall I describe it ? 
 The thing is impossible and, my dear reader, you must 
 go and see it. Although we had a stiff walk of two and 
 a half hours going, and two returning, I would not have 
 missed seeing it for a great deal. It will dwell for ever 
 in my memory. I think that nothing in Scotland can 
 approach it, with the exception of Corriskin, in Skye. 
 And it has one feature peculiar to itself. A huge 
 pyramidal rock rises to the height of over a thousand 
 feet, and, like a greater hanging tower of Pisa, beetles 
 horribly over the gloomy styx-like lake black as ink, 
 and silent as the valley of death. The late Gordon Gum- 
 ming, to the horror of those present, scaled the back of this 
 fearful peak, and stood on the summit ! To add, by
 
 LAGGAN REVISITED. 67 
 
 contrast, to the awful blackness that pervades the scene, 
 the wild ravines are chokeful of frozen snow, which 
 descends in some places almost to the still waters of the 
 loch. In one hour and a half we took out of it ten dozen 
 of small pretty trout. Far up among the cliffs, where 
 build the black, grey, and golden eagles, you see an 
 " eyelet," through which you can view the blue heavens 
 beyond. It is an oriel window of God's own making 
 in the grand temple of Nature, where the everlasting 
 hills are the pillars, the fretted roof the cloud-draped 
 firmament, and the organ the pealing thunder, the 
 rushing blast, and the blending murmur of the rocky 
 stream that seems to be fleeing in terror from a home 
 so weird and wild. Reader, go and see it, and you will 
 carry in your soul, all the days of your life, a picture 
 which the hand of God alone can produce. 
 
 r 
 
 LINES ON VISITING LOCH COR-ARDER, IN 
 CORRIE-ARDER. 
 
 LONE Corrie-Arder, with thy lake of gloom, 
 I stand with reverence 'neath thy silent sky : 
 Thine only flower the scanty heather-bloom, 
 Thy sounds the blast and eagle's savage cry, 
 When, roused by traveller's intrusive tread, 
 He leaves his eyrie 'mong the crags on high, 
 And sails aloft on sable pinions spread, 
 Till lost amid the mist-wreath floating by. 
 
 Far have I wandered many scenes have seen, 
 Where Nature shows herself in varied form ; 
 Now basking under summer skies serene, 
 Now darkening 'mid the winter's hurtling storm ; 
 But never have my roaming footsteps been 
 Where Grandeur robes herself in sterner guise :
 
 68 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Thy black rocks beetling o'er thy blacker wa.ve, 
 And casting shadows dismal as the grave, 
 Save when a sun-glint from the troubled skies 
 Smiles coldly o'er thy waters fades and dies. 
 
 God thrones Himself in temples piled of stone, 
 
 That never echoed to the hammer's sound ; 
 
 And man, the pilgrim, musing there alone, 
 
 Feels in his soul he stands on holy ground ; 
 
 And seems to see again the awful place, 
 
 Where God was seen in fire and heard in thunder, 
 
 And, like another Moses, veils his face, 
 
 His heart subdued with fear and awe-struck wonder, 
 
 And, while a spell enchains him to that spot, 
 
 Exclaims, "The Lord is here, although I knew it not." 
 
 Wild scene, farewell ! I may not tread thee more, 
 But oft I'll see thee in my morning dream, 
 And think I hear thy blast's terrific roar 
 'Mong the black cliffs where icy snow-wreaths gleam. 
 And oft in Memory's mild and moonlight hour 
 Fancy will build again that awful peak, 
 Where peals the thunder in sonorous power, 
 And lightnings cleave the gloom with fiery streak ; 
 While through the phantom-landscape of my dream 
 Ripples the music of thy one lone stream. 
 
 ABERARDER BAY. 
 
 FAREWELL, Aberarder, thou fairy-like bay, 
 
 There the trouts in the sunshine so temptingly play, 
 
 Where the bright yellow pounders flash up through the 
 
 wave, 
 And play with the fly till they play with the grave. 
 
 Many hours on thy bosom I've pleasantly passed, 
 And I hope that this season will not be my last ;
 
 LAGGAN REVISITED. 69 
 
 For I long once again on thy waters to float, 
 With Ewen, the skilful, to manage the boat. 
 
 Thy green sunny meadows, enamelled with flowers 
 The children of sunbeams and soft-dropping showers 
 And the clear, merry brook, singing down to the shore, 
 I hope I shall see them and hear thee once more. 
 
 And farewell kindly Spirits, with whom I have spent 
 Many days in the sun and the wind and the rain, 
 To the hours of an angler light wings you have lent 
 So a health to you all till I meet you again. 
 
 I'll think of the " Pot "* with its savoury fare, 
 Of which we partook as we lay on the heather, 
 With an appetite keen as the crisp mountain air, 
 While our souls and our voices were mingling together. 
 
 Then, soft as the west wind that sighs from the hill, 
 The " weed " sent its incense aloft to the sky, 
 And, lapped in a dream-land all lovely and still, 
 The trouts got a respite from rod, reel, and fly. 
 
 This composite article I conclude by saying, that 
 while the body is duly taken care of in the friendly 
 little inn of Loch Laggan, the soul is also feasted on 
 the beauties of Nature that are ever fresh and ever 
 fair, and which never pall upon the mental appetite. 
 In the exquisite words of Wordsworth, may I not 
 end 
 
 " Fair scenes for Childhood's opening bloom, 
 
 For sportive Youth to stray in ; 
 For Manhood to enjoy its strength, 
 And Age to wear away in." 
 
 * One of our party, a fine singer, and endowed with the spirit of a second 
 Soyer, brought a box of comestibles, together with a huge Pot, out of which 
 he brought as many dainties as ever were drawn from a conjuror's hat.
 
 70 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG VII. OBAN : ITS LOCHS AND 
 STREAMS. 
 
 THE earliest impressions are also the most lasting 
 
 " Time but the impression deeper makes, 
 As streams their channels deeper wear." 
 
 Well said, thou king of Scottish Bards a spirit that 
 could skim over the shallows of fancy and dive into the 
 unfathomable depths of feeling now rollicking in the 
 very boyhood of rhyme, and anon melting the soul 
 with melody of the deepest and most tender pathos. 
 What a gulf between " Willie brew'd a peck o' maut," 
 and " Mary in Heaven," or " Man was made to 
 Mourn " ! In the early dews of morning the footprints 
 are plainly traced. When the shadows of evening 
 lengthen, things begin to look dim, and give gentle 
 warning of the falling night. I ask my fellow-ramblers 
 to go back with me to "life's morning march, when the 
 bosom was young." 
 
 Forty odd years ago I found myself, on a fine sum- 
 mer afternoon, standing upon the pier at Oban, a dusty, 
 weary, footsore boy of sixteen. I had tramped every 
 inch of the way from the banks of the " lordly Tay " to 
 the fairy-like bay, that seems to enjoy a perpetual calm, 
 and is only lulled into a slumberous repose by the 
 music of the billows that race gaily down the Sound 
 of Mull, and break dreamily on the rocky shores of the 
 green-carpeted Kerrara. Then Oban was nothing more 
 than a little fishing hamlet by the sea, with a few 
 coasting vessels of small tonnage, and the echoes of its
 
 OBAN:. ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. Jl 
 
 heath-clad hills now and then awakened by the rushing 
 steam of some boat from the Clyde or the " Isles." 
 It boasted at that time of one moderately-sized inn < 
 now its bay is cinctured by more than a score of 
 palatial hotels, and sits enthroned among its cliffs, the 
 crowned Cybele of the western seas. The waters of its 
 quiet roadstead are now ploughed by the keels of 
 countless vessels, steamers of first-class build, and 
 gallant yachts, whose white sails, or red, black, and 
 yellow funnels, make a pleasant picture, and whose 
 twinkling lights in the stillness of the sombre evening 
 seem like a swarm of fire-flies, dancing in the radiance 
 of their own golden light. Since those far-away days I 
 have seen the sunsets of Alpine Switzerland and the 
 blue Mediterranean, but the sunsets of Oban are not to 
 be surpassed. From the lofty " Sylvan Villa," from 
 which I now write these lines, it is glorious to witness 
 the " dim, discrowned king of day " going down to his 
 ocean-bed behind the dark purple mountains of the 
 sea-girt Mull. Such a sight, reminds one of the sun- 
 sets of the East, where the resplendent lamp of the 
 sky takes his leave of the world, not by a slow decad- 
 ence, but rapid in his descent, when all at once is night. 
 Let the great " Wizard of the North," whose unrivalled 
 genius cast a halo around all that it touched, describe 
 the wondrous scene 
 
 " Like battle-targe, with slaughter red, 
 He rushes to his burning bed 
 Dyes the wild wave with bloody light, 
 Then sinks at once, and all is night." 
 
 On my first visit to " The White Bay," I was young 
 and ardent, with a copy of The Lord of the Isles in my 
 pocket, and small knapsack on my back, all my worldly 
 wealth a light purse and a lighter heart, and seeing
 
 ?2 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 everything through the magic light that is shed over 
 all by robust health and sanguine spirits. My first 
 excursion was to lona and Staffa, and the guinea fare 
 poked a sad hole in my scanty store of British coin. 
 The silver sand of the Isle of Graves, runic crosses 
 standing out in delicate relief against the foreground of 
 the blue sleeping sea, together with the fane of St 
 Columba, who gave to the benighted west " the benefits 
 of knowledge and the blessings of religion," engraved 
 pictures on the tablet of memory never to be effaced, 
 save by the hand of the universal destroyer. Then 
 came the wondrous Staffa, where Nature, from time 
 immemorial, has ' loved " to raise a minster to her 
 Maker's praise," pealing with the ancient melodies of 
 breeze and billow. Clambering to the summit of that 
 basaltic dome a feat not easily or safely achieved in 
 those days what was my boyish delight to find a 
 briar-rose, bedecked with shell-tinted blossoms, scatter- 
 ing their mild fragrance over the billows that chafed 
 and foamed far beneath. Stretched on the scanty 
 herbage, wet with the soft dews of the ocean, I let my 
 untutored fancy wander, and effloresce in the following 
 crude verses. When I carried them home to the dear 
 old manse by the expansive Tay, my father was proud 
 of the boyish effusion. Somehow I was not, and pro- 
 posed destruction, but it was kept perforce, and en- 
 shrined in the pages of a new album. I well recollect 
 my fond parent saying, as he wrote down the stanzas 
 with his large powerful hand, " Keep a thing for 
 seven years, Jack, and you may find a use for it." I 
 have kept it for nearer forty-seven, and now set the 
 bird free from the prison of the book, and can only hope 
 that it may, as the adage predicts, be found to have 
 its use :
 
 OBAN: ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 73 
 
 TO A BRIAR ROSE ON STAFF A. 
 
 FLOWER of the ocean ! thy desolate dwelling 
 
 Wooed me to wander the summer-hushed deep. 
 Phantoms of fancy, its mystery telling, 
 
 Come like a stirring wind over my sleep. 
 Nursling of Solitude ! here I have found thee, 
 Smiling through drops of the morn that have crowned thee, 
 With the gold of the sunbeam all hanging around thee 
 A garment of glory for Nature's own child. 
 
 Lonely enchanter ! fair visions of childhood, 
 
 Awake to thy spell from the long-vanished hours, 
 
 When I wandered at eve through the glades of the wild-wood. 
 All beaded with dew and all braided with flowers. 
 
 Phantom-like shapes from the dim past are gliding 
 
 Whispering voices around me are chiding, 
 
 Saying, " Thy pleasures no more are abiding 
 
 Than the wind-scattered blossoms that lately have 
 smiled." 
 
 Haply some lone bee in sunshiny weather 
 
 May float to thy bosom o'er yonder blue main, 
 Then dream of its own mossy cell in the heather, 
 
 And give its light wings to the breezes again. 
 So the cold heart, long abandoned to pleasure, 
 Warbles the notes of some love-stirring measure, 
 Then hastens away from the poor, rifled treasure, 
 Like a blossom all reft by the wind and the rain. 
 
 Farewell, dear blossoms, soon tossed on the breezes 
 
 Every mad billow will glory in one 
 Spring will renew them whenever she pleases, 
 
 Yet never, oh ! never, the same that are gone : 
 But long when the dew-drop has ceased to weep o'er thee 
 Long when the sunbeam has ceased to adore thee, 
 My heart to thine own rocky isle will restore thee, 
 
 And bid thee bloom over the waters again !
 
 74 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 A couple of years thereafter I again made a visit to 
 the famous twin-isles of the Hebridean deep. With 
 eager haste I rushed to the top of Staffa, but my poor 
 heart-cherished rose no longer waved its blossoms in 
 the softly sighing summer breeze. Of course, like a 
 thousand other lovely things, sacred to the true soul, 
 it had fallen a victim to the vulgar, grubbing paws of 
 some tasteless tourist. Plague on the sacrilegious 
 robber of Nature's gems ! Were I to see him, I would 
 find him, I doubt not, some "fingering-elf" one who 
 would not scruple to "peep and botanise upon his 
 mother's grave." It was said by some one that, " if 
 you found the North Pole, you would also find a Scotch- 
 man astride upon the top of it." And if so, I'll go 
 bail he was busily employed in carving his name upon 
 its timbers with the point of a rusty nail, or the edge 
 of a blunt penknife. The problematic Scot, I am 
 sorry to say, is only one of a class the Bill Thom- 
 sons and Job Jonsons of the touring world who 
 seem to think they are giving " tongues to trees " and 
 " sermons to stones " when they succeed in the noble 
 ambition of scratching upon them their world-renowned 
 initials. 
 
 The sublime and the ridiculous are closely allied, and 
 this truth may excuse the appended anecdote. A 
 friend of mine told me that two years ago the public 
 were " doing " lona after their wont. The " Cicerone " 
 was droning through the usual routine " Ladies and 
 gentlemen, this is the cell where the holy St Columba 
 gave the elements of religion to these once savage 
 regions," when the voice of a highly-educated denizen 
 of Cockaigne was heard to exclaim to his less-trained 
 brother-tourist, "Jim ! You must know that was the 
 cove who discovered America." After such a piece of
 
 OBAN: ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 75 
 
 information, who could fail to " feel his piety grow 
 warmer amid the ruins of lona ? " 
 
 And now, steaming away from "the place of 
 skulls " and the " minster " of " the melancholy main," 
 does it not raise your spirits out of the tender gloom 
 that has unconsciously enwrapped them, to watch those 
 buoyant sea-birds sporting joyously on the wing ? Were 
 I a disciple of the Pythagorean doctrine of the trans- 
 migration of souls, I would that this spirit, when 
 liberated from the clay tenement in which it has long 
 sinned and sorrowed, might be allowed to take up its 
 residence in the bosom of the sea-bird ; for was there 
 ever a child of Nature so free, so fearless, and so happy 
 at home alike on land and sea, on the bursting billow 
 "and '"the sleeping calm, on the surge-beaten "stack" 
 and the beetling precipice ! Pardon me for endeavour- 
 ing to arrest a picture of this lovely creature, as it floats 
 on the breeze and rides on the wave : 
 
 THE SEA-BIRD. 
 
 SEA-BIRD ! rocking lightly on ocean's green wave, 
 To thee but a cradle, to thousands a grave ! 
 How restless thy pillow ! how gentle thy sleep ! 
 Pure child of the elements pride of the deep. 
 
 No pearl of the sea-cave so white as thy plume ; 
 Thine eye gleameth brightly as star from the gloom ; 
 On the breeze, like a foam-flake, from ocean you spring, 
 With the beam on your breast, and the dew on your wing. 
 
 Thy nest was the grey cliff that frowns on the deep ; 
 The winds and waves warring first woke thee from sleep ; 
 What being so happy, so fearless, so free 
 As thine, winged rider of tempest and sea ?
 
 ?6 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 The billow that rends the proud vessel in twain, 
 To thee is a courser with far-floating main ; 
 The blast that o'erwhelms the pale pilot with fear, 
 Is the wild-ringing music thou lovest to hear. 
 
 No dream can be calmer than thee in thy rest, 
 With thy shadow, so star-like, in ocean's blue breast ; 
 No fancy is fleeter than thee in thy pride, 
 When the steeds of the tempest invite thee to ride. 
 
 Then away on thy courser, thou child of the storm ! 
 The beauty of freedom illumeth thy form ; 
 Then down, like a meteor that gleams on the deep, 
 Thou art mirrored an image of silence and sleep ! 
 
 But now let us on with rod and reel, and look up 
 once more one or two of our old water-side friends. I 
 think to-day we shall visit the lovely Loch Nell, and 
 the silver link of stream that weds it to the stately Loch 
 Feochan ; for, as the Irishman said, " the breeze is from 
 the say" and the sea-trout will respond to the soft call 
 of the gentle west wind. When the wind is either 
 from east, or north, you may as well go a-trouting in 
 the Dead Sea. Let philosophers tell why. I only state 
 an angler's fact. Bowling along behind my obliging 
 friend Macgregor's fleet Celtic pony, a scene is passed 
 that brings a smile into my eye. There, once on a day, 
 a harum-scarum chum of mine determined on " feather- 
 ing his nest," and, apropos to that end, set up a 
 " poultry farm," thinking that the yachtsmen of Oban, 
 with their crew of lady-friends, and the hotels, with 
 their large crop of hungry tourists, offered a fine field 
 for the disposal of the barn-yard beauties. He was 
 not far wrong, but here, as everywhere else, you must 
 have " the right man in the right place " ; and here was
 
 OBAN: ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 77 
 
 the wrong man without the slightest vestige of a 
 doubt, as his dollars soon had as many wings as his 
 feathered nurslings. The thing proved " a sell " in the 
 way he neither expected nor desired. A mutual friend 
 made inquiries of me concerning our bird-farmer, and 
 I told him that the volatile fellow had at length 
 betaken himself to a respectable occupation. "A 
 poultry farm ! " said he, in amazement, " what may that 
 mean ? " (I thought, being a son of Mars, he had 
 practised sufficiently long at the " goose-step " to be 
 able to solve the point for himself.) "Why," said I, 
 " in such hands as those of our friend's the thing simply 
 means ' ducks and drakes ' ! " 
 
 But here we are, after a pleasant four-mile drive, and 
 now, ere we reach the loch, let us have a " try " at that 
 brown, frothy pool, over which " the queen of the 
 meadow " dangles her straw-coloured hair. Down goes 
 the fly, and up comes the trout, like a wedge of silver, 
 and a fresh-run two-pounder, after a spurt of five 
 minutes, has exchanged the water for the land, and 
 begins the creel of the day. Another and another, 
 more or less weighty, enrich the " take," and, coming to 
 our boat, we enter the loch, which the courtesy of 
 Mr Murray Allan has made, like himself, an old friend. 
 " Cutting in and out " by short and varying " drifts," we 
 find that the trouts are anything but " dour " to-day. 
 Opposite the " Serpent Mound," my young companion, 
 whose cast consisted of a large fly for the sea-trout, and 
 two smaller ones for the "yellows," gets on a fine 
 specimen of the former on his most tiny lure ; but, 
 being a deft hand at the rod, has him in the landing-net 
 in about ten minutes, and, by all that's lucky, finds him 
 over three pounds, and a very picture as to beauty and 
 condition. We go ashore to interview the " Serpent
 
 78 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Mound," other specimens of which are to be found in 
 the Highlands and islands. Why are these mystic 
 mounds cast in the form of a serpent? Because, I 
 think, these, being relics of the Druid age, possess a 
 religious meaning, and employ a symbol which implies 
 wisdom and its sacred rites. What strange visions does 
 this old-world relic call up before the mind. Here 
 stood the altar, with its blazing faggots. There 
 towered the Druid priest, with his bare arm, and his 
 sacrificial knife ; and near him was the victim of a 
 horrid creed, awaiting the blow, in the calm spirit of a 
 Fatalism that saw nothing wrong in offering " the fruit 
 of the body for the sin of the soul." Urns and bones 
 are sometimes found in these " Serpent Mounds " ; but, 
 as I profess not the lore of a Jonathan Oldbuck, I leave 
 conjuring up the past with the rod of the antiquary, and 
 proceed to conjure up another sea-trout with the rod of 
 M'Kinlay. The tackle of this hard-working and skilful 
 worthy does its duty well, and by the time we land 
 again for something more substantial and palpable than 
 visions of the byegone time, our creel is getting heavy, 
 and we are waxing hungry. We enjoy our well-earned 
 "tiffin" opposite the Heron's Isle, and, lighting our 
 fragrant weed, lie among the sprigs of "the bonnie 
 blooming heather," watching with a listlessness resem- 
 bling his own, a noble specimen of one of Nature's most 
 picturesque birds. What is the creature doing, as he, 
 too, enjoys a weed, suitable to his own peculiar taste. 
 Knee-deep he stands among the aquatic plants, hanging 
 his long, lank-necked head, as if he were deep in a haze 
 of dreamland. Did you ever see anything so weary- 
 like and dreamy ? He is like a bird in a picture. And, 
 when he rises from his waterside reverie, and sails lazily 
 away to his island-home did you ever hear any sound
 
 OBAN : ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 79 
 
 so eerie as that wailing cry ? What a picture he would 
 make, standing beside, these white water-lilies, rising 
 and falling on the ripples a flowery circlet of fairy 
 boats. There the green-robed fairies themselves might 
 steal forth in the mystic moonlight, and float in the 
 boats of these dancing cups. 
 
 THE HERON. 
 
 LONELY, unsocial bird ! 
 
 Brooding by mountain stream, 
 Seldom thy note is heard 
 
 Dreamer ! thy dream ? 
 
 Now thou art floating by, 
 
 Mute as thy shadow, 
 Traversing silently 
 
 Yonder green meadow. 
 
 Now thou art resting thee 
 
 Where the waves war 
 Playfully, pleasantly, 
 
 Round the red scaur. 
 
 Then with a boding cry, 
 
 Dreamily, drearily, 
 There thou art lagging nigh, 
 
 Lazily, wearily. 
 
 Coming or going, 
 
 Unmusical bird ! 
 The better I love thee 
 
 The less thou art heard. 
 
 Thou art robed with a mystery, 
 
 Graced with a spell 
 Deeper than melody 
 
 Dreamer ! farewelH
 
 8O SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Reader, you have heard of the " Twa Dogs " of 
 Robbie Burns. Let me tell you what I overheard 
 concerning " Twa Kirks " : 
 
 Scene. A public-house on Loch Nellach a year before the 
 Church, with suicidal hand, abolished patronage, a sop 
 thrown to the Cerberus of Dissent useless, as the event 
 proved for it was our endowment, not patronage, that 
 was the object of envy. Donald, the keeper, and Angus, 
 a crofter, enjoying a juicy crack over the " mountain dew." 
 " Was ye at the kirk yesterday, Donald 1 " 
 
 " That I was, Angus, and it wad hae dune ye muckle good 
 to ha'e been there too, and a' for naething. Mr M'Whittie 
 ga'e us a most improving discourse. He's the billie ! No 
 
 "Man, Donald, I'm wae to hear ye. His sermons ha'e 
 nae mair sap than a dried peat, or a reisted haddy. He's 
 joost fit to be the timmer minister o' a timmer kirk. I 
 wonder ye can thole sic slavery as that o' the Established 
 Kirk. The pawtron's a good man, I'll no deny, but pawtron- 
 age is a waur yoke than the bondage o' Egypt." 
 
 " Deed, Angus, if ye could only see't, it's yersel that's 
 in the hoose o' bondage. We ha'e ae maister ye ha'e half- 
 a-dizzen, or mair. Ye're joost under the thoomb o' Peter 
 M'Spleuchan, the postmaster ; Deacon M'Fuddle, the grocer ; 
 Wullie Macgirther, the saddler ; Tammie Brush, the painter ; 
 and Sandy Lingan, the cobbler. I ca' that the hoose o' 
 bondage wi' a vengeance ! And, man, yer Free Kirk, as 
 ye misca' 't, ay minds me o' this public." 
 
 " For shame, Donald ; dinna treat solemn maitters in that 
 gaet. A public ! Wheesht ! wheesht ! " 
 
 "Ay, Angus, man ye ha'e naething mair to do than pit 
 up a lairge sign ower the door of your Free Kirk, and write 
 upon it in muckle letters PAY HERE ! It's a dear religion 
 yours, Angus, as yer pouch kens the day. Yer Kirk's only 
 fit for the rich man. Free ! Free ! onything but that. But I'll
 
 OBAN : ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 8 1 
 
 tell ye, oor Kirk's the rale free article, for we can pit up a 
 sign too, and paint upon it the doonricht truth, ' Without 
 money, and without price ! ' "We're the puir man's Kirk, and 
 ye ken that brawly." 
 
 " Weel, Donald, ye're maybe richt and ye're maybe wrang, 
 but we'll droon a' differences in anither gill. Lucky, 
 bring " 
 
 "Man, Angus, I wonder at a man like you, sensible in 
 other things. Drumwasle's but a silly, feckless body. His 
 discoorses are jist like tailors' thimmles, ye never get at the 
 bottom o' them. Maybe ye'll ca' that deep I say it's drumlie. 
 Whatever, to do the body justice, I believe they are his ain, 
 for I ken nae ither that would like to faither sic wakely 
 weans." 
 
 " Wheesht ! Think shame o' yersel, Donald ; it's no' richt, 
 or canny to speak ill o' yer neebor." 
 
 "I'm no speaking ill o' my neebor, Angus, I'm speaking 
 the truth, and, if I can read my Bible, the truth canna be 
 ca'ed ill. But, losh keep's ! Angus, I maun awa, for I ha'e to go 
 to Loch Scammadale the morn wi' Doctor Mayfly, a friend of 
 Mr Hill's, the shooting tenant, and a raal fine man and a 
 good sportsman ! The Doctor's no like your man, the 
 Reverend Amos Drumwasle, that disna ken a ' red hackle ' 
 frae a ' blue doctor ' Na ! there's nae nonsense aboot him, 
 naether in the poopit nor oot o' it. He's the sort ! Yer 
 health, Angus, and mair judgment. We had, the ither day, 
 man, a grand grilse and four sea-trout, wi' mair substance in 
 them than Drumwasle's sermons as ye ca' them I ca' them 
 twaddle like a ' public ' that has nae entertainment either for 
 man or beast." (A noise heard seeking for sticks and plaids 
 where they could not be found, simply because they were 
 not there.) 
 
 Apart from its fishing merits, the angler should pay a 
 visit to Loch Scammadale, nestling among the hills, 
 like a shy beauty. The glen, by which it is approached
 
 82 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 from the Melfort Road, near Kilinver, is one of the 
 loveliest to be seen in a country overflowing with 
 loveliness. It is not like the other glens of this part of 
 Scotland, but reminds one of the Border dales. No 
 black crags, with shaggy points, but beautiful undulating 
 hills, draped in grass of the most vivid emerald, resting 
 their feet upon meadows of equally bright green turf, 
 and a sparkling little stream, the Euchre, dancing along, 
 like a thing of life, and binding together the whole 
 exquisite scene with its silver links. On the soft 
 herbage, looking as if clipped and rolled by some huge 
 cutting-machine, the sheep stand out like white billiard 
 balls upon the green table ; and their mild, plaintive 
 bleating, mingling with the voices of the rills, beside 
 which they wander and feed, contributes to the soft 
 magic of a fairy landscape. 
 
 By the time we reached Sylvan Villa, and weighed 
 our " take," we found we had over sixteen pounds of 
 fine sea-trout, and about four dozen of their yellow com- 
 panions. One of the yellows scaled nearly two pounds. 
 Loch Nell is a very pleasing sheet of water, two miles 
 long, birch and heather fringed, with a stream running 
 in at the head, near to which a feathered fisher was 
 brooding, and another stream at the lower end, by 
 which it empties itself into an arm of the sea, Loch 
 Feochan. Its scenery is on a small scale of beauty, 
 but, in the distance, the towering double-coned Ben 
 Cruachan casts over it a shade of grandeur that arrests 
 the eye and impresses the soul. 
 
 On the next day I went on to the pleasant Cuilfail, 
 " The Sheltered Hollow," by the Alpine Melfort Pass, 
 where I always find a peaceful retreat under the genial 
 roof-tree of my jolly landlord, M'Fadyen, and his 
 kindly spouse ; and where I am sure of delightful
 
 OBAN : ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 83 
 
 " cameraderie," if Hamilton & Co. be there in their 
 shooting and fishing jackets. As " like draws to like," 
 M'Fadyen sends me, as a rule, to the Parson's Loch 
 a beautiful sheet of water where, at the top, a stream, 
 fed by moss-springs and lakelets, bounds into the loch 
 by a cascade of twenty feet, and leaps Out of it at the foot 
 by another over thirty, and meanders, a " trotting burnie," 
 to the salt sea waves. Robert or young Angus is ready 
 for me, with a will, and away we go for a cast by the 
 side of the reeds, where the best brown trouts are known 
 to lie. Reader, fear not to be worried by the oft-told 
 story and the thrice-slain victims of the hooks, four 
 dozen, but let us back to the excellent fare which 
 Mrs M'Fadyen has got ready for us, and which is dis- 
 pensed by rosy cherubs of girls, and not by hobble-de- 
 hoys in dingy neck-ties and rusty black, bearing a close 
 and suspicious resemblance to my friends of the genus 
 " guinea-pig," who are more successful in emptying than 
 in filling a kirk, when the minister, puir chield, is off on 
 a holiday, and is told, when he comes back, minus ^5 
 for an hour's preaching, that he would have been wiser 
 to have shut the door than to have burdened the 
 " poopit " with a man whose " papers " were as yellow 
 as his ill-ironed choker. We might speak of the many 
 lochs and streams about Oban, the Orchy, the Awe, 
 the Euchre, and the Feochan ; the bleak " Black 
 Lochs," the grand String, the lonely Trelaig, the 
 expansive Avich, et hoc genus omne, but these have 
 not as yet ripened into " Old Friends," and we take 
 some time to form a close companionship, and choose 
 to link ourselves to the tried and the trusted. 
 
 You may reach Oban either by sea or land both 
 routes splendid. From Glasgow by the finest river 
 steamer afloat, the Cohimba, thereafter by the Linnet
 
 84 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 through the Crinan Canal. Tourists are often 
 astonished to find that, instead of travelling in a wide 
 ditch, they are wandering along something composed of 
 lakelet and stream rocks crowned by fir and birch, and 
 festooned with heather, foxglove, and honeysuckle. 
 The Canal contains numbers of good yellow trout, and 
 at the Gilp end sea-trout obtain access by a small burn. 
 The sail, after leaving the Canal, is very fine, among the 
 Craignish isles, with Jura, Scarba, Shuna, and others 
 towering in the distance up Kerrara Sound, and into 
 the " White Bay." 
 
 The land route is equally picturesque. From Cal- 
 lander the drive is splendidly panoramic past Lubnaig, 
 " The Loch of the bend," and into Strathyre, past which 
 the fiery cross " glanced like lightning." There are 
 still some fiery things there. A pedestrian once stumped 
 the Pass, and found himself at the little Highland 
 village. Fond of our " mountain dew," he halted at 
 the first house, or " public." So refreshing was the dew 
 that he stayed all night. Next day, shouldering his 
 knapsack, he started, but found another " public " about 
 the middle of the " clachan," and turned in out of pure 
 innocence, just to compare notes. " Struck ile " again, 
 and, out of deep gratitude for the mercies, put up for 
 the night. Once more, next morning, made off, much 
 delighted but behold ! at the extreme end another 
 "ministering angel," whose wings consisted of a flaming 
 " sign " swinging in the breeze. Turned in to test the 
 entertainment. Beat the two last experiments hollow, 
 and again he set up his tent. Curiosity prevailed, and 
 he inquired the name of this barley-corn oasis. " Sir, 
 it is called 'Strathyre.'" "Stuff! its proper name is 
 Nineveh, a city of three days' journey ! " Lovely Loch- 
 earnhead, the Dochart and Loch, the silent Glen Lochy,
 
 OBAN: ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 85 
 
 the magnificent island-gemmed Loch Awe, the tre- 
 mendous Brander Pass, the shores of Loch Etive, and 
 then Oban, the Queen of the Hebridean seas. 
 
 No scene can be grander 
 Than the dark Pass of Brander, 
 Who loves not to wander 
 
 Beside its Black lake ? 
 It is full of large fish 
 I've caught many a dish 
 And I heartily wish 
 
 I were back for a " take." 
 
 But there goes a grilse in the air ! yonder a sea 
 trout falls back upon the diamond wavelets with a 
 most enticing splash, and we long to try a cast by the 
 side of those weeds, where the " big uns " lie, and where 
 the skilful angler is rewarded to his heart's content. 
 
 And now, before "going to roost," we shall take a 
 stroll down the side of the burn, 
 
 Where the green water-cress, with glossy leaves, 
 Muffles the foot-fall of each fairy wave. 
 
 Somehow the waterside often leads to the pensive, 
 and, although the day passed heartily, and the trouts 
 took greedily, our souls have drifted back to the sombre 
 Past, and we gaze dreamily down the far-stretching 
 vistas of Time, 
 
 Where bygone wrecks in dimness are described, 
 Floating, in fragments loose, on Memory's ebbing tide. 
 
 There is an old grim lion in the bay of Oban, to which 
 most visitors pay their respects the Enterprise, one of the 
 search-vessels of the " Franklin Expedition." Think of 
 the horrid wastes of ice through which it has shouldered 
 its daring way. For me it possesses peculiar attrac- 
 tions. An old companion Harry Goodsir shipped
 
 86, SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 with Sir John Franklin as surgeon, and, of course, 
 has found his lone bed " 'mid wastes that slumber in 
 eternal snow," Last time I saw him he dined with 
 me in my apartments in St Andrews. We had the 
 " Doch-an-dorruis," and I accompanied him four miles 
 on his homeward route, and then parted to meet no 
 more on earth. He was an able surgeon and a true 
 man. Gazing some years ago on the Enterprise, I 
 conjured up the grave in the desert of the sea, and 
 touched by the beautiful reflection, suggested by the 
 burial of another, wrote 
 
 THE EXPLORER'S GRAVE. 
 
 "He was deposited in his frozen tomb, on which the wild flowers will 
 never grow, and over which his relations can never mourn." FRANKLIN 
 EXPEDITION. 
 
 HE lies beneath the snow 
 
 Where the flowers will never blow, 
 
 Nor friends shed their woe 
 
 O'er his grave ; 
 But he died in holy cause, 
 That long shall win applause, 
 
 From the hearts of the true and the brave. 
 
 The breezes, as they pass, 
 
 Will never stir the grass 
 
 O'er his head ; 
 
 But the snow-flakes, as they fall, 
 Will cast a frozen pall 
 
 On his bed. 
 
 No monumental bust, 
 Long true to sorrow's trust, 
 Shall breathe of hero-dust 
 Laid below ;
 
 OBAN: ITS LOCHS AND STREAMS. 8/ 
 
 But the hungry wolf will howl, 
 And the savage bear will prowl 
 
 Round his solitary cell in the snow. 
 
 Yet his name shall never die, 
 Though cold his relics lie 
 All alone beneath the sky 
 
 Of the pole ; 
 For his tale will be told 
 To the young by the old, 
 
 And thus kept alive in the soul. 
 
 When the deeds of our kind 
 Send a thrill through the mind, 
 
 And flash o'er the gloom of the past, 
 "We shall still have a tear 
 For that unforgotten bier 
 
 'Mid the wastes of the ice and the blast. 
 
 Let him sleep ! let him sleep ! 
 For his slumber is deep, 
 
 And the toils of Life's voyage are o'er ; 
 Though he found not the Lost, 
 They may meet on that coast, 
 
 Where the tempest is heard nevermore.
 
 88 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG VIII. THE CONA. 
 
 IT had been my youthful ambition for a year or two to 
 walk across the " Cruagh," the broadest, longest, and 
 bleakest of all the Scotch moors. No other way of 
 doing it, for even a Highland shelty could not manage 
 the thing among the black bogs and moss-clad boulders 
 of that dreary region. Started on a fine day in June, 
 with a chum of mine rather given to dandyism, my 
 suit a rough and serviceable rig-out of tweeds with 
 strong brogues, his commencing with tile and frock- 
 coat, continuing in a shawl-pattern waistcoat, and 
 tapering off in white-cords and a pair of rather light 
 boots. What a preparation for the wilds of Rannoch ! 
 Found ourselves at Kinloch-Rannoch after a "heel 
 and toe" of fully thirty miles. Dressy friend, fond of 
 creature-comforts, turned up his nose at the then modest 
 inn, and vowed that we should find better quarters at 
 the other end of the loch. Twelve good miles before us, 
 moon rising, and vague suspicions on my part that 
 I was lending myself to a foolish and foppish whim. 
 But what cared I then for an additional dozen of miles 
 so off we went, lighted on our way by the silvery 
 moonshine. Got to the end of the lovely lake 
 discovered a small dog-kennel of a place, with the 
 thatch-roof, a sanded parlour, a box-bed, and therein, 
 snugly-ensconced, a pair of drovers performing a nasal 
 duet with laudable energy, if not with pleasing melody. 
 Sumptuous repast at " the wee short hour" of oat cakes, 
 which seemed to have been toasted on the hearth-stone,
 
 THE CON A. 89 
 
 judging from the quantity of gritty sand which had got 
 engrained among the meal, some very questionable, 
 high-smelling butter, and a noggin of " whisky," which 
 bowed not to the authorities of the land. Would that 
 I could crow-quill my spruce friend, grinding the 
 composite cake between his dainty teeth, and gasping 
 over a diluted draught of the harsh poteen, which was 
 consumed out of a chipped tumbler and a footless glass. 
 Nothing for it but a plaid for sheets, for a bed a floor 
 neither so clean nor so soft as the " bonnie blooming 
 heather," and a pillow extemporised out of an old legless 
 stool. But we slept the sleep of youth, and next morn- 
 ing, leaving the " twa drovers " to settle matters about 
 stots, stirks, and " queys," over the mutchkin stoup, we 
 took to the perils and pleasures of the great, grim, 
 Sorbonian peatland that stretched before us from the 
 upper end of Rannoch to the giant shepherds ofGlencoe 
 and Glen Etive, which cast their mighty shadows ever the 
 "King's House," nestling at their regal feet. 
 
 A walk never to be forgotten said by the natives, 
 to be twenty-two miles, but in this instance they 
 might have tacked on the proverbial " bittock," and in 
 my opinion a good bittock too. Stopping to take a 
 cast in the Gawr, Lochs Eaigh and Lydoch, the day 
 wore past too soon and there being neither keeper's 
 lodge nor shepherd's sheiling to put us right, we soon 
 discovered that we had missed the way, if way it may 
 be called where way is none. What a waste wilderness ! 
 Stones and bogs, varied by bogs and stones like the 
 fare in Australia, "mutton and damper, damper and 
 mutton." To-day there rises a continual lament about 
 the killing civilisation by which the fairy bay of Oban 
 is cockneyfied. Granted frankly but it will be long 
 before the same coronach is cried over the dead and
 
 QO SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 buried characteristics of the Moor of Rannoch. There, 
 as on a throne, Desolation reigns, and will reign on with 
 nothing to depose the weird queen of the desert. Night 
 came with her cloudy drapery, and my well-got-up 
 friend and I saw nothing for it but to wrap the toga of 
 " Caledonia stern and wild " around us, and make the 
 best of the heather rather to be preferred, however, in 
 a mild night, to the sanded floor and the "musical 
 drovers." We had nothing by this time to eat, as 
 little to drink, and we sighed for the " flesh-pots " and 
 balmy dew of the invisible " King's House." A brief 
 snooze, like " Kathleen Mavourneen's," "between sleeping 
 and waking," and the moon drifted over the hill, like a 
 fairy ship of heaven. Glorious scene and glorious 
 revealer ! What is her serene majesty glinting on, but 
 the lonely hospice, three miles beneath our heathy 
 roost ! Up and at it again ! Into bogs and out of 
 bogs shins barked upon boulders, whose primeval age 
 is not accepted as an apology across the brawling 
 stream that nearly carried us off our feet and, after a 
 half-hour's storm of the inn door, it opened, to display a 
 " ministering angel " in the shape of a brown toozie- 
 tapped, red-legged lassie, and we floated into a haven of 
 repose. My friend's white pants had become, thanks to 
 bog-land, like the legs of a swan, but they were soon 
 exchanged for clean sheets and fleecy blankets, and in 
 " the land of nod " he was soon dreaming that he was 
 once more " cutting it fat " on the lady-crowded 
 promenade of his native city. 
 
 Next day down the glen of Scotland, in more respects 
 than one overhauled Horatio M'Culloch in after years, 
 taking one of his masterly views of the great pass 
 from a point near the Queen's seat, as it is now called. 
 Many's the joke and frolic I have had with the deft
 
 THE CONA. 91 
 
 artist, who " mixed his colours with brains," and why 
 not also a little of the "dew" to put spirit into the 
 judicious mixture? While casting a red hackle and 
 black spider on the rushing Cona, I thought of the 
 Ossianic ghosts of other days, and of the ghosts of the 
 noble dwellers of the glen who were foully entrapped in 
 the bloody wiles of the blackest of all spiders that ever 
 wove the webb of a base and cruel diplomacy the 
 "head of that dark villain-plot," if not "the manly 
 hand " a plot which leaves an indelible stain upon a 
 name we must admit otherwise great. As this sketch 
 is neither a history, nor even an itinerary, but an angling 
 ramble, I must refer the reader, first to Macaulay, and 
 thereafter, at a vast distance, to my own Legend of 
 Glencoe, which the famous author allowed me to 
 dedicate to himself, although I told him that I could 
 not adopt his views. I had almost made a slip of the 
 pen, and had all but written down, like some others, 
 " my immortal work." However, I find it only truthful 
 to style it " my mortal production " ; for like the brave 
 M'Donald, it has died a bodily death, and if there be 
 one man who desires to know where this Legend is 
 to be found, I must refer him to a notable firm, Trunk- 
 man's & Co., the mausoleum of more than one work 
 over which the poor author toiled and hoped. 
 
 Not far from the beautifully situated mansion of 
 Invercoe, the property of my kind friend Mrs M'Donald, 
 the descendant of the murdered chief, a stately cross is 
 raised, marking the bloody spot where the atrocious 
 massacre began. It is in the style of the famous 
 crosses of lona, the upper portion of red granite, the 
 lower of grey granite, resting upon a rugged rock-work. 
 I was honoured by a request to write an inscription for 
 this cross, which I did in verse but, forgetting the
 
 92 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 hard nature of the stone, it was found too long, and a 
 plainer and shorter legend has been wisely adopted. 
 However, it may not be out of place to present the 
 reader with a copy of my lines : 
 
 HERE Cona pours its wandering wave 
 
 Round many an unforgotten grave, 
 
 And this dumb stone records the place 
 
 Where perished an old Celtic race, 
 
 Slaughtered at midnight's mirkest hour 
 
 By regal wrath and ruthless power. 
 
 It tells a tale of infamy 
 
 "Which death itself will not let die, 
 
 When men shall speak, with bated breath, 
 
 Of deeds of darkness and of death, 
 
 The darkest deed of all they know 
 
 Shall be thy massacre, Glencoe ! 
 
 And still above thy lonely tombs 
 
 Shall fall the patriot's tear, 
 
 To valour and to freedom dear, 
 
 While thistle waves and heather blooms. 
 
 No fitter dirge those dead can know 
 Than Cona, wailing through Glencoe 
 A plaintive coronach that thrills 
 The bosoms of those rugged hills, 
 That hang their heads in silent gloom, 
 Like mourners bending o'er a tomb, 
 Their tears a hundred trickling rills, 
 Pouring eternal woe. 
 
 The night beam slept on the cottage wall 
 A hundred homes lay hushed in sleep 
 Oh ! never more that beam shall fall, 
 On slumber there so calm and deep ; 
 The morn arose from heaven's bright gate 
 Those hundred homes are desolate !
 
 THE CONA. 93 
 
 Few scenes of earth might suit so well 
 The deeds that wring the soul to tell, 
 Nature in sackcloth sitteth there, 
 Sad, solitary, bleak, and bare, 
 As if she mourned the havoc done 
 By man, her fairest, noblest son 
 And still the plaintive dirge is sung 
 By Cona's everlasting tongue. 
 
 CAVE. 
 
 Now guard ye well this moorland stone, 
 Or very soon you'll see thereon 
 The classic name of some rude clown, 
 Called William Jones or Peter Brown ; 
 A scratching, scribbling, meddling elf, 
 Of manners void, though rich in pelf. 
 
 Yesterday I passed once more through the stupendous 
 glen, and as I gazed upon rock and stream, soaring 
 peak and battlemented precipice, the Three Sisters and 
 the Cave of Ossian, memory brought before me the 
 dear old companion of the bleak moor, and I mourned 
 in my soul to think that we can ramble no more by 
 loch and river. A year ago he passed away from the 
 scenes of nature, which he loved so well, and his demise 
 tells me that I too have left behind me another mile- 
 stone of the varied and precarious journey of life. 
 
 I have seen Glencoe in storm and calm, in mist and 
 sunshine, sheeted with the snowdrift, and bathed in 
 the mystic beams of the soft summer moonlight, when 
 the weird shadows of the great cliffs cast themselves in 
 the deepest solemnity over the brawling stream and the 
 dark lake, through which it passes onward to the arms 
 of the sleeping Leven. This is the aspect under which 
 the. glen makes the profoundest impression upon the
 
 94 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 mind, and if the tourist be not too fond of the warm 
 luxury of his inn, I would strongly advise him to see the 
 pass in its nocturnal garb. All readers are acquainted 
 with the picturesque lines of Scott concerning the 
 Abbey of Melrose 
 
 " If you would see fair Melrose aright, 
 Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 
 
 And they also know that the gifted bard never saw 
 what he painted so graphically, steeped in the vivid hues 
 of his wondrous imagination. I have seen Melrose 
 more than once under the mellow light of the harvest 
 moon, the rich tracery of its sculptured windows 
 brought into marvellous relief by the soft influences of 
 the queen of night. Glencoe I have also trodden with 
 the wavering moonbeams for my guides and for his 
 own sake, I counsel the traveller to go and do likewise. 
 He will hang up in the dim and holy cloisters of 
 memory a picture far beyond the hand of man. 
 
 A pleasing reminiscence lingers around this notable 
 locality ; for here I met in bygone days a man who has 
 left the world his debtor, John Keble, the well-known 
 author of The Christian Year, He and his amiable 
 wife were on their marriage tour, the little humble inn 
 of those days containing few rooms, and my bed- 
 chamber being among the best of them. The landlord 
 appealed to me in behalf of his distinguished guests, 
 and I, of course, was only too glad to give up my 
 apartment to one from whose thoughts I have derived 
 both pleasure and profit. His mortal year has long 
 since closed, but his Christian Year will know no end, 
 so long as there are hands to print and heads to peruse 
 the reflections of sainted genius. The work by which 
 he is most widely known has been and will be a fellow-
 
 THE COXA. 95 
 
 labourer with the Pilgrims Progress of Bunyan, and 
 TIte Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. The 
 good it has done, the hearts it has soothed, and the 
 souls it has blest, can never be reckoned up. It is a 
 veritable harp, whose many strings are ever resounding 
 with the sacred melodies of heaven. Man gleans his 
 pleasures from many sources, but his sweetest solace 
 and his deepest consolation are still to be gathered by the 
 brook of Kedron and the slopes of Olivet, among the 
 rocks of Calvary and beside the shores of Galilee and 
 if it be possible to impart to these spots of holy ground 
 an additional attraction, that attraction is due to the 
 apostolic fervour of the man who has given to the world 
 The Christian Year. " Being dead, he yet speaketh." 
 
 THE BLESSED DEAD. 
 
 "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright ; for the end of that 
 man is peace. " 
 
 WEEP not for the dead who have died in the Lord, 
 
 Their sins and their sorrows are o'er ; 
 They are safe in a land by no mortal explored, 
 And are now by the throne of the Lamb they adored, 
 
 Giving glory to him evermore. 
 
 Repine not for those who have died in the Faith ; 
 
 Would you bring them to trial again ? 
 To the sorrows of life, to the terrors of death, 
 To a curse that has power to pollute and to scathe, 
 
 To a body of weakness and pain ? 
 
 Rejoice for the dead who have died in the Lord, 
 
 No warfare can trouble them "now ; 
 The combat is o'er, and the conqueror's sword 
 Is laid at the feet of the Prince they adored, 
 
 And His coronet gleams on their brow.
 
 96 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Let us live like the dead who have died in the Faith, 
 
 And we shall rejoin them above, 
 In a land ever free from " the shadow of death," 
 Where the curse may not breathe with its poisoning breath ,- 
 
 A region of life and of love. 
 
 Through the tumult and trouble of earth he has passed, 
 
 But the woes of probation must cease, 
 Of the foes he encountered cold Death was the last, 
 But, falling asleep in his bleak icy blast, 
 
 The " end " of that mortal was " peace."
 
 THE FARG. 97 
 
 SPRIG IX. THE FARG; OR, EARLY DAYS. 
 
 "A BRAW mornin' for a flee, Maister John," says a 
 well-known voice at my elbow, as I am sitting on a 
 moss-grown stone, and putting on a cast that's sure to 
 do the trick. How audibly I hear that voice at the 
 present moment speaking out of the far-off past, and 
 how vividly does the characteristic figure of other days 
 rise before me as I write old velveteen coat, older 
 whity-brown hat, festooned with casts, nether man 
 encased in leather leggings, and a primitive spliced rod, 
 with still more primitive reel and its brown hair line. 
 But it was the rod of a conjuror, and old John Robertson 
 was the man to spin a yarn, put a dram out of sight, 
 and fill a creel where others were at fault and blaming 
 everything and everyone, with the solitary exception of 
 the real defaulter the man at the but-end ! 
 
 "Yes, John," as you say, "its a braw morning but 
 before beginning, let's have a crack and 
 
 THE MORNING PIPE. 
 
 THE morning pipe I relish best, 
 And it is far the surest test 
 
 About the previous night ; 
 For, if too much to pleasure given, 
 I'm certain as there is a heaven 
 
 Tobacco will be no delight. 
 But spend the night, as wisdom should, 
 Abstemious both in drink and food, 
 
 x\nd I will bet a crown 
 
 G
 
 9$ SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Your morning pipe will pleasant be 
 After a mellow cup of tea 
 
 To wash the breakfast down. 
 Then shall the thoughts in channels due 
 With steady flow their course pursue, 
 
 And work a pleasure be ; 
 For never does the task succeed 
 So well as with the fragrant weed, 
 
 And a cheering cup of tea. 
 
 'Tis coffee, said the poet, Pope, 
 That makes the politician cope 
 
 With questions most abstruse ; 
 But I will back the honey-dew 
 To quicken mind in me, or you, 
 
 And teach its highest use. 
 When temper is about to rise, 
 Just let me solemnly advise 
 
 A mild and soothing weed 
 And angry words will be supprest, 
 And ire will die within the breast, 
 
 And a better mood succeed. 
 
 When Jove a shindy had with Juno, 
 He hid within a cloud, as you know, 
 
 Till calmer weather, 
 So, when about to disagree, 
 The safest thing for you and me 
 
 Is " blow a cloud " together. 
 No man, 'tis said, with all his might, 
 Can "add a cubit to his height "- 
 
 A truth I'll not gainsay 
 But any man his joy may double 
 With briar-root, or hubble-bubble, 
 
 Or an honest "yard of clay." 
 
 Burn-fishing, though humble sport, is held by many
 
 THE FARO. 99 
 
 to be the poetry of angling. If sport consist in the 
 quiet enjoyment of the " art," and not in the weight of 
 the creel, then the springy, flowery side of the mountain 
 stream is the scene of much unpretending, but fresh and 
 healthy, delight. Away from the din and clust of the 
 city, with the fleecy sky overhead, the green leaves 
 around with their whispering melody, and the ear 
 lulled by " the pleasant noise of waters," I have spent 
 many a day as free from care as a mortal's hours may be, 
 and have reaped a wholesome delight not to be found 
 under the fretted roofs of the saloon, or to be purchased 
 in the resorts of the " madding crowd." Many who 
 look with admiration on the " crack shot" are apt to 
 treat with contempt the humble burn trout-fisher, and 
 deny him a place among " sportsmen." But only let 
 them "try their hand," and they will find, to their 
 confusion, that to become an expert burn-fisher is no 
 easy matter. Nothing can be more ridiculous to a 
 " deacon of the craft" than to witness a bungler whipping 
 the water with bloodless fly hour after hour, then jerk- 
 ing his one long-desired victim up into the branch of a 
 tree, where he leaves his cast, or a piece of his coat-tail, 
 while the spotted beauty has fallen back into his watery 
 haunts. " Catch him burn-grubbing again ! " Poor 
 weary, bedraggled soul ! he hasn't even begun what he 
 threatened loftily to leave off. Like Mrs Glass' hare, 
 a trout must be caught before cooked, and it is not 
 every city prig who has the art to trap him. 
 
 Then of how many beautiful verses has the burn-side 
 been the parent. The song of the " trottin' burnie " 
 has called into being many other sweet and gentle 
 songs. I confess that this teacher of Nature must 
 stand sponsor for more than one of my little poetic 
 offspring. Like most young fellows, I once believed
 
 IOO SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 myself to be hopelessly in love with a dark-haired 
 coquette, who took her fun off me, as girls will. In the 
 phrase of the bookbinder, I was " bound in calf," and 
 relieved my petted feelings in a burn-side song, in which 
 I strove to depict 
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 
 
 THERE'S a glory in summer, a beauty in spring, 
 And the laverock the hymn of the morning will sing ; 
 But the magic of Nature is lost upon me, 
 For the raven-haired Flora has pride in her e'e. 
 
 I'm restless by day, and I'm sleepless by night 
 The stream has no music, the sunbeam no light ; 
 I'm weary of life as a mortal can be, 
 For the raven-haired Flora has pride in her e'e. 
 
 I roam through the meadows at gloaming alone, 
 Musing sadly of pleasures all withered and gone ; 
 Death, often I think, would be welcome to me, 
 Since the raven-haired Flora has pride in her e'e. 
 
 But now, what a change has come over my dream ! 
 Each flower has a grace, and a music each stream ; 
 All Nature is glory and beauty to me, 
 For my raven-haired lassie has love in her e'e. 
 
 Poor, dear Tom Hood, as all his readers know, has 
 a pretty, touching poem, in which he simply wishes 
 that he were once more a boy. There are some hard 
 things about the period of boyhood, the early school 
 hours, the Latin rudiments, and, at the head of all, that 
 " bete noir " of childhood, the Shorter Catechism too 
 long by half for the young intellect, and rather too deep, 
 but, even with these drawbacks, at this moment I am 
 inclined to say with Hood, " I would I were a boy ! "
 
 THE FARO. 101 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I LOVE the notes of our native airs, 
 
 And the words of our olden lays, 
 But dearer still, amid toils and cares, 
 
 Are the scenes of my youthful days. 
 
 I love to sit where the hazels nod 
 O'er the course of the rippling rill ; 
 
 Or, laid at length on the mossy sod, 
 To dream I am youthful still. 
 
 I love to wander at eventide 
 
 'Mid the dells of the wilding rose, 
 
 For it wafts my soul to the sunnier side 
 Of a gulf that may never close. 
 
 O world ! beloved by the great and gay, 
 With your pleasure and pomp and power, 
 
 You cannot give to my heart to-day 
 So much as that simple flower. 
 
 The things that have been no more we'll meet, 
 As we roam on our earthly ways ; 
 
 But I thank thee, God, for thoughts so sweet 
 As the thoughts of mine early days. 
 
 Like odours breathed from a spice-isle past, 
 
 They follow us o'er the wave, 
 And sweeten the days that are drifting fast 
 
 To the haven beyond the grave, 
 
 In my boyhood, as I said elsewhere, began my 
 piscatory rambles by the Farg, a lovely little stream, 
 which meanders and leaps through a picturesque glen 
 of the same name, dear alike to the angler and the 
 botanist. There winds the celebrated road with the gap 
 called " The Wicks of Baiglie," from which Sir Walter, 
 in his Fair Maid of Perth, describes the magnificent
 
 102 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 landscape that includes a distant vision of the " Fair 
 City." How the days come back when the " couthie " 
 old Mrs M'Ewen kept the cosic " Bein Inn, " and 
 made the hungry angler supremely comfortable ! The 
 glen stretches upwards for about four miles, ending a 
 little below the beautiful residence of General Bruce of 
 Glen Denglie, lately the commander of our forces in 
 Scotland, one of my most valued friends, and about 
 the best read man I had ever the good fortune to 
 know. I wish that I had kept up my " classics " as he 
 has, being able to throw off with masterly ease graceful 
 verses both in Greek and Latin. But I must now be 
 content to " reel off" a few simple stanzas in homely 
 English, and commit my passing thoughts and fancies 
 to the keeping of plain prose. 
 
 Every one of reflection has felt, when by stream and 
 meadow and woodland, that the invisible hand of Nature 
 played upon his heart, like the soft fingers of the west 
 wind over the strings of the ^EoYian harp. The streams 
 seemed to murmur for you, the birds to sing, the 
 flowers to bloom, and the green leaves to rustle ! Scott, 
 as usual, sings, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, more 
 truthfully than any one else about this mystic entwining 
 of mortal mood and Natures' sympathies 
 
 " Call it not vain 
 They do not err 
 
 Who say that, when the poet dies, 
 Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, 
 And celebrates his obsequies." 
 
 Well, reader, have you not felt this mystic power, and 
 owned how hard a thing it would be to die when the 
 birds of spring, or the blossoms of summer were on the 
 hope-breathing tree ? Such was the feeling I seek here 
 to embody
 
 THE FARG. 1 03 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 I WOULD not like to die in spring, 
 
 When buds are on the tree ; 
 When birds begin to prune the wing, 
 
 And flowers to paint the lea. 
 
 In summer-time I would not die, 
 
 When blossoms open fair, 
 When sunbeams wander through the sky, 
 
 And odours through the air. 
 
 When autumn leaves are falling fast, 
 
 Or wintry tempests rave, 
 'Tis then I'd wish to breathe my last 
 
 And find some peaceful grave. 
 
 That valley thro' whose starless gloom 
 
 The soul escapes to rest, 
 Immortal victor of the tomb, 
 
 Companion of the blest.
 
 IO4 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG X. THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. 
 
 ALL nature is gregarious. There is no such thing as 
 complete unity or solitary isolation. If it is written 
 that " man was not made to live alone," the same may 
 be said of everything connected with his place of abode. 
 Nature is inimical to loneliness. The marriage-tie is 
 recognised throughout all her departments. The leaves 
 on the branch nestle and whisper together. The flowers 
 of the field gather in clusters and mingle the odours 
 of their fragrant breath. Birds and beasts love to 
 amalgamate in flocks and herds. Old maids summon 
 together their genial chatty cronies, and " without help 
 of man," dispose of life and character over the "cups 
 that cheer but not inebriate." Even the miser cannot 
 dispense with the company of his money-bags, and hears 
 in the chink of the goldfinches imprisoned therein a 
 music that touches the very strings of his sordid soul. 
 The man is not without his religion ; for he worships 
 an idol. 
 
 Why, then, should the streams be an exception to 
 this law of Nature ? And what can be more beautiful 
 than two of these nurslings of Nature, after devious 
 windings through glen and meadow, among fern and 
 broom, under cliff and alder, at last mingling their waters, 
 and, like a couple of fond united hearts, flowing on in 
 a single tide to the sleep of the great river, or the greater 
 sea ? All creation has been ransacked for similes con- 
 cerning that mysterious enigma, Man, but none of them 
 offers such a graphic and touching representation of
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. IO5 
 
 human life and death as the course of a stream and " the 
 meeting of the waters." 
 
 My meeting of the waters is, I am sure, nested in as 
 soft a scene of beauty as that of Tom Moore's in the 
 " sweet vale of Avoca." It lies in the lovely valley of 
 the Ericht at the Bridge of Cally, where the streams of 
 the Ardle and Blackwater blend their sparkling waves, 
 and flow on as the Ericht, until that river merges in the 
 Islay, which in its turn loses its name in the Tay, and 
 are all in time lost in the great ocean, where they " are 
 mingled in peace," like the lives of mortal pilgrims in the 
 sea of death. Leaving Blairgowrie (famed for its anglers 
 old Crockhart at the head), " the Montpellier of the 
 North," as some one calls it, you pass the romantically 
 situated mansion of Craighall, throned on its stupen- 
 dous grey cliffs, and after six miles of picturesque 
 scenery, find yourself at the snug inn of Cally Bridge 
 where peace and comfort await the traveller, and where 
 long presided a first-rate specimen of the classic Meg 
 Dodds. Like other celebrities, she has passed away, 
 and another Tibbie Shiels reigns in her stead. If you 
 turn to your left hand, after crossing the moss-grown 
 brig, where the waters chafe pleasantly among the grey 
 boulders, you are led up the strath of the Ardle, with 
 its emerald meadows and handsome residences, which 
 occupy fine situations either in the grassy holms, or 
 on the sloping hill-sides. After a pleasant journey of 
 about seven miles you reach Kirkmichael, with its 
 modest kirk, its quaint meal-mill, its humble public, and, 
 of course, a specimen of the labours of the all-pervading 
 and expensive " school board," which has swallowed up 
 the good old "parochial system," and spends more 
 money without imparting a more suitable education. 
 Here lived three worthies now no more. One of them,
 
 106 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Peter G , was a poet, and penned a long and loud 
 
 poem concerning the Deluge. I was called upon to 
 read the same, and having done so, asked the elder 
 brother why the younger did not publish. " Oh !" 
 responded my friend, "we're a quiet family, and dinna 
 want brither Peter to mak a noise in the world ! " As I 
 am under no such family tremors, I am now scribbling for 
 the public, and I really don't expect that I shall be 
 much accused of vending literary dynamite. The 
 slumbers of the neighbourhood will not be very seriously 
 disturbed by the " noise " of my Rambles. 
 
 This clachan is endeared to me as the residence of 
 a cheery college companion. Jamie Drummond and I 
 were fast friends in the venerable city of St Andrews, 
 the university of which has now, I regret to say, a 
 rival in Dundee, that opposite emporium of jute and 
 whale blubber. Jamie, like myself, was a sore thorn in 
 the sides of the old Professors, who, " good, easy men," 
 did not keep up the best order in their various classes. It 
 was " take it or want," so far as we were concerned. 
 They were men of learning, but quiet-going souls. The 
 blame lay with us, who were led to the waters of Heli- 
 con and the slopes of Parnassus, but would neither 
 drink the waters of the one nor gather the flowers of 
 the other. I remember, one cold morning, Jamie 
 
 coming in to the class-room of Professor G half an 
 
 hour late. " What's the meaning of this, sir ?" exclaimed 
 the irate lecturer. " I I slipt in, Doctor," said the 
 sluggard in his Celtic brogue. " Then, sir, the next 
 best thing you can do is to slip out now." My turn 
 came a few days thereafter. " Well, sir, where were 
 you hiding your genius yesterday ?" " Please, sir, I was 
 indisposed." "Why, man, that's no pleasure to me 
 but you become your indisposition extremely well
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. IO/ 
 
 your face is a diploma of rustic health." But the best 
 settler was dealt in the mathematical class-room, 
 where the absent teacher used to smear his chin with 
 what he called calk, till he resembled a harlequin. 
 He was setting down the figures of a problem on the 
 blackboard, when a shallow goose impudently remarked, 
 imitating the pronunciation of the learned and kind 
 Professor, " There's a ceepher wanting, sir." " Is there ? 
 
 I think not ; for, Mr L , there never can be a ceepher 
 
 wanting in this class when you are here" We cheered 
 to the echo, and I need not say who looked the fool. 
 Of this worthy Professor a story was wont to be told, 
 which I must here set down. A certain Miss Dorothy, 
 took a fancy for the helpless old bachelor, and thought 
 that he must be very lonely and " ill looked after." 
 So she waylaid him daily, and, being something of 
 kin, he could not be uncivil. Gossips over their cups 
 shook their heads, and vowed that " the designing 
 hussy" would prove too much for the simple-souled 
 mathematician. All wrong. One day the fair one 
 caught him up and walked him on to the Eden Sands. 
 He would say nothing tender, so it lay with her. 
 " What do you think," Professor, " the folk are saying 
 aboot us ? " " Dinna ken," quoth Q.E.D., who was deep 
 in a problem. " They're saying we're gaun to be married." 
 "Ah! but Miss Dorothy," catching his chin according 
 to wont, " we'll gi'e them a fine cheat ! " 
 
 Musing, one soft summer eve beside the sacred 
 ground of the clachan, "where the rude forefathers of 
 the hamlet sleep," I " forgathered " with the miller, and 
 entered upon the customary " crack." " Can you tell 
 me," said I, " what became of my old class-fellow. 
 Jamie Drummond? I think he went abroad." A pen- 
 sive shade stole over the old man's face, and looking
 
 108 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 wistfully at me, he gently replied " Come, and I'll 
 show you where he found his rest after a lang, sair ill- 
 ness." He opened the gate of the primitive church- 
 yard, and, leading the way, paused in silent reverence 
 beside the grassy hillock that marks the last, long sleep. 
 "There he lies, puir laddie, beside his faither and 
 mither, and muckle was he missed, for he aye had the 
 kind word to say to us a'." Something that was not a 
 drop of dew fell and sparkled upon the^ turf of the 
 " lowly bed," and we turned in silence from the grave of 
 the companion of other days. His requiem is fitly 
 sung by the stream, in which he " paidled " as a bairn 
 and fished as a boy, noisy, bright, and frolicsome as its 
 own sunny ripples. 
 
 If you follow up the Ardle you come to another 
 " meeting of the waters," where the Brerachan and the 
 Fernate mingle their merry voices, and lose their re- 
 spective names flowing on as the Ardle. Many a good 
 creel is taken from both, and in a long stretch of dead 
 water, when the breeze blows briskly, you will pick up 
 some fine large trout that will afford good play, and 
 send you back to the village inn with a very respectable 
 " take." If, again, going back to the Brig of Cally, you 
 hold to the right, the road will lead you up the " Black 
 Water " to the " Spittal of Glenshee," where fair fishing 
 and good accommodation may be had. In days gone 
 by often did I turn to the right hand on the Shee, and 
 find my way to the romantic little loch of Drumore 
 then the property of my genial friend, the late Major 
 Thomas. We had rare sport, the trouts running from 
 one pound up to four. Shy in the noonday sun, they 
 come up vigorously in the misty dawn and dusky 
 gloaming, and a creel of these finely-shaped and 
 beautifully-spotted fish is something to look at. I
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. 109 
 
 have also, by the kindly granted permission of Colonel 
 M'Donald, frequently spent the day on Loch Bainie, 
 where the trout are numerous, and of a very sharp and 
 wicked character. At first I was a good while in 
 getting up to the rapid practice of these lovely little 
 fish, but got my hand in at last, and made an example 
 of dozens of the sportive tribe. 
 
 Good taste and feeling for these are twin-sisters 
 have spared the ancient moss-grown Brig of Cally that 
 spanned the Ardle generations before the modern one was 
 built and this is something in an age that only sees in a 
 venerable ruin or hoary fragment spared by time some- 
 thing to be pulled down by sacrilegious man. What a 
 lucky thing it is that the Colosseum is not in the vicinity 
 of one of our plethoric manufacturing cities ! It would 
 soon be replaced by a jute-palace or a cotton emporium, 
 or perhaps a chemical manure depot. No longer would 
 it be 
 
 " Before me I see the gladiator lie," 
 but 
 
 Before me I see the cotton-spinner lie, 
 
 Wrapt in a coverlet of softest down ; 
 His dreams of usury and interest high 
 
 A princely shooting and a house in town, 
 A home-bound vessel on the weltering sea, 
 Laden with jute, or flax, or rich bohea, 
 A " water-power " in every sparkling rill, 
 And, where a temple stood, a brick-built thundering mill ! 
 
 Of old Perth scarcely a relic survives and the reader 
 of The Fair Maid gazes aghast in sorrowful amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 With what pensive pleasure do I look back to my 
 peaceful days and golden evenings by the " meeting of 
 the waters." Byron, we all know, calls angling a
 
 IIO SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 " solitary vice," and I have no doubt that, if the trouts 
 could speak in his own language, they would give him a 
 vote of thanks. But there is more in angling than 
 mere fish-hooking. Many lasting impressions for good 
 are carried away from the broomy braes of the dimpling 
 stream. There are " sermons in stones, books in the 
 running brooks," and, at the risk of being accused of 
 vanity, I take upon me to say, that I have brought 
 home to the people, among whom my duty lies, some- 
 thing more than a basket of fish. Heartily do I thank 
 the streams that run among the hills and valleys ; for 
 they are all 
 
 HEAVENLY TEACHERS. 
 
 NATURE is like an open page, 
 
 For man's instruction given ; 
 There greenest youth and ripest age 
 
 May read the words of heaven. 
 
 Spring tells of seed-time and of toil, 
 Bright summer breathes of bloom, 
 
 Brown autumn triumphs o'er her spoil, 
 And winter paints the tomb. 
 
 The suns that set, the clouds that pass, 
 
 The russet leaves that fall, 
 The daisies twinkling o'er the grass, 
 
 Are teachers one and all. 
 
 " Glad tidings " ring from every grove 
 
 And stream that warbles wild ; 
 For these are God's, and " God is love," 
 
 And man his favoured child.
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. Ill 
 
 'Tis not in vain the snowdrop breaks 
 
 The frozen wintry clod, 
 That "still small voice" a "Gospel" speaks 
 
 It comes a Priest from God. 
 
 Whispering to the icy wind, 
 
 That o'er its blossom sweeps, 
 " I come obedient to a mind, 
 
 That slumbers not, nor sleeps." 
 
 Sweet flower ! thy pale and pensive bloom 
 
 To every soul is dear, 
 A resurrection from the tomb 
 
 First promise of the year. 
 
 Passing those low-roofed cottages nestling beneath the 
 shade of the pensile birches, is it not pleasant to hear 
 the ringing shout and the merry laugh of those 
 sun-browned children, sporting as gaily as the light 
 breezes or the dancing sunbeams ? As a set off to his 
 angling heresy, that blast man of the world, Byron, 
 wrote how he loved " the voice of children, and their 
 earliest words." This we heartily endorse ; for there is 
 something so pure, spontaneous, and genuine in all the 
 ways and feelings of 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 THE merry voice of childhood ! 
 
 The music of the hearth 
 No music falls so sweetly 
 
 Amid the cares of earth. 
 From happy heart it ringeth, 
 
 And it thrilleth through the heart 
 A melody of Nature, 
 
 Beyond the power of Art.
 
 112 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 The cherub-face of childhood ! 
 
 There's nothing half so fair, 
 Beaming brightly from its halo 
 
 Of golden, glancing hair ; 
 
 With the rose upon its cheek, 
 
 And the laughter in its eye, 
 Melting softly as a sunbeam 
 
 Along the summer sky. 
 
 The holy heart of childhood ! 
 
 Still ignorant of guile 
 The source of many a ready tear, 
 
 And many a ready smile. 
 
 If Paradise hath left a flower 
 
 To cheer this earthly wild, 
 It blooms amid the sunny thoughts 
 
 Of a little artless child. 
 
 And now, as I indulge in a farewell ramble by the 
 rushing Ericht, my solitude becomes peopled, and I am 
 no more alone, voices from the far-away past whisper 
 like faint sweet echoes, and kindly faces smile wistfully 
 out upon me from the mists of the bygone time. One 
 above all haunts my footsteps and keeps me company 
 a gentle and true-hearted spirit, with whom I often 
 wandered by meadow, grove, and stream, in the days of 
 other years. Slowly, as I muse on my homeward way, 
 the phantom voices die, and the phantom faces fade and 
 vanish, and I look forward in calmness and hope to the 
 period when lives, now doomed to flow apart, may once 
 more and for ever " be mingled in peace," like " the meet- 
 ing of the waters " no sin to pollute, no sorrow to 
 disturb, no death to separate.
 
 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. 113 
 
 THE PAST. 
 
 WHEN the long farewell is spoken, 
 
 And the light of life has fled, 
 How blest the simplest token, 
 
 That recalls the sleeping dead, 
 That gilds the dear departed 
 
 With the olden smile they wore 
 The true-souled, the gentle-hearted, 
 
 Who gladden home no more. 
 
 When I walk the dewy meadows 
 
 Some common flower will cast 
 On my path the gliding shadows 
 
 Of those who long have passed, 
 Passed away from home's bright number, 
 
 From the earth and all its joys, 
 To the bed of dreamless slumber, 
 
 To the crowd without a voice. 
 
 When, beside the glowing ember, 
 
 I muse at close of day, 
 By that light I well remember 
 
 The faces passed away. 
 Then memory loves to greet me 
 
 With some familiar tone, 
 And, though shadows only meet me, 
 
 I feel not all alone. 
 
 And thus I love to wander 
 
 Among the dewy flowers, 
 Or to sit and gently ponder 
 
 Through memory's vesper hours. 
 O Wisdom ! cold thy warning 
 
 To me 'tis not in vain 
 To fancy back life's morning, 
 
 And to live it o'er again. 
 
 II
 
 114 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG XI. AFTER THE RAIN. 
 
 WAS there ever a more tantalising season for the angler 
 than that which is fast drawing to a close? Skies like 
 brass and streams like crystal ! How it fared with the 
 trout in many places I cannot imagine ; but, unless they 
 could pack like the children of the Emerald Isle, where 
 people, pigs, hens, and ducks amalgamate in one happy 
 family, they must have had a tight time of it. The little 
 May nearly vanished not a pool-head or pebbly rapid 
 singing a summer song to the wild flowers that in vain 
 hung their thirsty lips over their mossy braes ; and 
 how the speckled race stowed themselves away it 
 is impossible to conceive. But they did manage 
 somehow in their confined lodgings, and with the first 
 rush of the brown water after the long-wished-for rain, 
 there they were, as usual, up to anything, from the 
 worm to the more artistic red hackle. I longed, 
 however, for " fresh fields and pastures new," and started 
 for a pretty nook nestling among the mountains of the 
 glorious Firth of Clyde. As it does nothing by halves, 
 the West can do its share of raining, and never at night 
 can you say what sort of morning is likely to succeed. 
 However, this watery tendency has its charms for the 
 angler, and if he is baulked of his sail in one of the 
 countless steamers that plough this inland deep, he can 
 shoulder his rod and creel, and make sure that the sea 
 trout will be " running " up the rivers to the lochs far 
 away among the heathery hills. There are not many of 
 these streams ; but what are of them are good, and
 
 AFTER THE RAIN. 115 
 
 during August and the beginning of September many a 
 shoal of sea-trout draws the angler forth to a trial of 
 his skill. 
 
 In such weather, and among such scenery, have I 
 spent the last fortnight, very much to my satisfaction ; 
 and if my creels have not been heavy, neither have my 
 spirits. As shooting is not merely the killing of game, 
 but a pleasant combination of air and exercise, springy 
 heather, and the constant excitement of beating up your 
 unseen game, whether winged or four-footed, so angling 
 is not the mere killing of so many fish in so many 
 hours. Whosoever happens to be the victim of such an 
 idea, let him adhere to deep-sea fishing, where a lubberly 
 cod, or a skate like a paving stone, will, let us hope, 
 reward his merits. It is one of the true pleasures of fly 
 fishing that it almost necessarily carries the angler into 
 the bosom of picturesque scenery ; for the Highland loch 
 and the rushing stream speak of the heath and the 
 craggy shore, the forest crowning the cliffs, and the 
 green banks inlaid with the sweet simple flowers that 
 love to shed their incense, and to display their colours 
 in the presence of solitude. A day passed amid such 
 speaking and improving influences is not lost, although 
 the creel at nightfall may not be plethoric. Can the 
 dabbler in worms or maggots say the same after having 
 been nailed for a whole sloppy day to the side of a 
 swamp or milldam, where only a duck or a snail could 
 be supposed to be thoroughly at home ? 
 
 But these reflections call to recollection a "regular 
 sell " with which I was " tarred and feathered " a week 
 ago. In a book on angling I found that Loch Greenan, 
 a small loch in the island of Bute, contained many " fine 
 trout of considerable size." Here was a happy chance ! 
 By the help of one of the numerous Clyde steamers, and
 
 Il6 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 for the sum of sixpence, I found myself beneath the 
 shadows of that pile, which is ever associated with the 
 name of the hapless Duke of Rothesay. A tramp of a 
 couple of miles brought me to my piscatorial paradise, 
 rejoicing, as most anglers do, to cast my flies upon the 
 ripples of untried waters. But what was my vexation 
 when I gazed upon spots of sluggish water, most 
 completely embraced by a broad and dense cincture of 
 reeds and water lilies ! My wonted admiration for the 
 Nuphar lutea and the NympJicea alba vanished in a 
 moment, and all botanical fervour died within me. Oh, 
 for firm banks and craggy points, from which one could 
 cast a fly thirty paces, and call up the trouts from the 
 " vasty deeps ! " But there was no good standing on 
 the swampy shore " lamenting," like a second edition of 
 the Chief of Ullin. So, to come to the veriest prose, I 
 hailed the miller and his man, who were standing at a 
 sluice gate hard by, with their faces on the broad grin. 
 " Any trout here, can you tell me ? " " Ou ay, a guid 
 wheen trout, but they're gey kittle to catch." " Are they 
 large ? " " Aye, four or five or five and a half pund." I 
 doubt the miller's knowledge of the odd half pound had 
 been gleaned by help of the net. While we were talking, 
 a large trout, as if to confirm the statement of his friend, 
 the miller, flashed up among the water lilies in a catch- 
 me-if-you-can sort of manner. Twice did I cast over 
 him, and twice did he answer the challenge of the small 
 red spider, but never closed with its barb. In short, it 
 was no go ; and, although I had succeeded in hooking 
 him, how could I have killed him, surrounded as he was 
 by a thick network of aquatic plants ? Once or twice 
 thereafter I was deceived into a belief that I was raising 
 trout, and that hope might still linger ; but these illusions 
 I discovered to be the result of the invasions of braize,
 
 AFTER THE RAIN. 1 1/ 
 
 with which worthless fish Loch Greenan is thickly 
 peopled. Let the angler, then, beware of this well- 
 guarded lakelet ; but if he can obtain permission to use 
 his gun, let him rejoice, for I flusJied, in my round of 
 its swampy margin, at least thirty or forty snipe. 
 
 For this travel in vain I was amply indemnified a few 
 days after, when I turned my steps towards the Echaig 
 a fine stream of four miles' run from the romantic 
 Loch Eck to the head of the Holy Loch, where it gleans 
 a liberal tribute of grilse and sea-trout. Loch Eck 
 itself contains good lake trout, besides the powan, or 
 fresh-water herring, and the goldie, a small and delicate 
 fish, which emits, in its last struggles, as many vivid colours 
 as the dying dolphin. I was rather late for the great 
 run of the sea-trout up the Echaig, which generally takes 
 place in the month of August ; but stragglers were still 
 about, and I never failed to enrich my creel with several 
 fine specimens of the Salmo trutfa, ranging from 
 about one pound to two pounds. I never ate more 
 delicious fish than these proved ; beautifully pink in 
 colour, and rich in flavour. They were as fat as any 
 trout ever captured by me, more so than our own Tay 
 or Earn sea-trout, which is easily accounted for by 
 keeping in mind that they were just fresh from the sea, 
 and had no time to run themselves lean. The Echaig 
 presents to the eye of the fly fisher a succession of pools 
 and streams which are most inviting. It is not easy to 
 conceive a better distribution of water for the practice 
 of the " gentle art." Such deep, swirling pools ; such 
 brown sparkling rapids ; such gravelly stretches ; 
 while the eye for the picturesque is charmed at every 
 angle of the stream by fresh changes of rock and hill, 
 and meadow and woodland, as the skilful hand of 
 Nature rules the captivating panorama. If residing by
 
 n8 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 the sea-side, tell your cook to boil your trout in salt- 
 water, and it appears on the table curved like a bow, 
 and a very picture of pink, creamy curd. 
 
 By the assistance of the many steamers of the Clyde, 
 the angler can reach a variety of streams, all more or 
 less famous for sea-trout. The Ardine, which falls into 
 a little bay opposite Rothesay ; the Ruel, somewhat 
 farther onward along the Kyles of Bute ; the Finnart, 
 which ends its rapid race in the waters of Loch Long at 
 Ardentinny ; my friend, the Echaig, and others all 
 will well reward the man who can use his limbs and 
 does not mind a few odd miles for the sake of a good 
 day's sport. There is also at the head of Loch Fyne 
 a first-rate stream, more than commonly rich in the 
 salmo family. These are not open to the public, but 
 the fly fisher will find, as I did, that the urbanity of the 
 anglers, who have the control of these waters, is some- 
 thing like a freemasonry, and is often the means of pro- 
 curing a stray cast in fertile places. My last day in 
 the Echaig was far from successful ; glaring sun, 
 cloudless sky, absence of breeze, and small water, all 
 combining to defeat my efforts. I tackled two sea- 
 trout, but lost both of them, on account, I think, of the 
 small hooks with which I was compelled to operate ; 
 but I succeeded in securing about a dozen of the yellow 
 natives. Coming down the stream I had the luck to 
 see a piscatorial sight, worth the remembrance, in a 
 still, deep pool behind a crag, a legion of sea-trout 
 moving to and fro like shadows in the sunny depths, 
 almost as numerous as herrings sailing in a shoal. If 
 that in one pool, what a population throughout the river ! 
 Sometimes in my rambles my eyes were gladdened by 
 a different spectacle, a fine specimen of the Osmunda 
 regalis, or royal fern, generally crowning some craggy,
 
 AFTER THE RAIN. lip 
 
 mossy knoll under the shade of the copse wood, and 
 shaking his beautiful plumes like the undoubted 
 chieftain of the scene. On a lovely day I was con- 
 strained to turn my back upon this magic region upon 
 the rugged giants of Arran, and the rich woods of 
 Ardgowan upon the grand mountains of the Holy 
 Loch, and the fantastic summits of Loch Long and 
 upon the sea stretching forth her beneficent arms to 
 feed the people of remote solitudes. 
 
 If the sunsets of Oban be gorgeous for rich oriental 
 colour, what shall I say about the soft, clear, yet 
 dreamy moonlights of Innellan ? Seated in a large bow 
 window, overhanging the dancing, sparkling wavelets, 
 never did I feel anything more subduing than the 
 magic hour " of the soft summer gloaming," when the day 
 melted by imperceptible degrees into the night, " in 
 sober livery clad." Then over the opposite woodlands 
 of " Ardgowan " stole the moon, " fair regent of the sky," 
 casting across the gently-heaving deep a path of 
 silvery radiance, which seemed fit to be trodden only by 
 the feet of white-robed angels. That scene will ever live 
 in the shadowy landscape of my memory, and the 
 ripples of the softly-breathing Clyde will murmur in 
 seraph melody through the twilight of my dreams. 
 
 Strange how the calm, sleeping moonlight awakens 
 thoughts, feelings, and memories all more or less tinged 
 with the sober hues of a pleasing melancholy ! As I 
 gaze upon that path of silvery splendour, it seems to 
 me as if spirit feet were called upon to tread it, and to 
 join those who have gone before us to the better land, 
 " where the sun shall no more go down, nor the moon 
 withdraw her light."
 
 120 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 NIGHT ! floating to thy cloudy throne, 
 
 Most beautiful art thou, 
 With the melting star of eve alone 
 
 Soft beaming on thy brow. 
 I never see that holy star, 
 
 But I think the eye of God, 
 With the light of love from worlds afar, 
 
 Looks down on man's abode. 
 
 Oh ! give to hearts that never bled 
 
 The golden beams of dawn, 
 With smiles upon the mountain-head, 
 
 And gleams upon the lawn ; 
 But to hearts that weep, when others sleep, 
 
 The friends who dwell afar, 
 Oh ! call the night from heaven's blue deep, 
 
 With her holy vesper star. 
 
 Night peoples the lone captive's cell 
 
 With faces fond and dear, 
 And sings the lays he loved so well 
 
 In happier days to hear. 
 Night thrills the weary exile's breast 
 
 With the voices of his home, 
 And the murmuring streams he loved the best, 
 
 Far over the ocean's foam. 
 
 Night can restore to aged eyes 
 
 The golden morn of youth, 
 When earth was bathed in Heaven's own dyes, 
 
 When life was love and truth.
 
 AFTER THE RAIN. 121 
 
 And oh ! how dear to hearts that weep 
 
 O'er time's unsparing war, 
 Night rising soft from heaven's blue deep, 
 
 With her holy vesper star. 
 
 The prayer, that shuns the blaze of day, 
 
 Comes with the star of eve, 
 And gently steals the load away 
 
 From bosoms prone to grieve ; 
 As song-birds, 'mid the glare of noon, 
 
 Sit silent in the light, 
 And pour their being forth in tune, 
 
 With the falling dews of night. 
 
 Oh ! like a weary, weary child, 
 
 That sobs itself to rest, 
 Full many a spirit lays its head 
 
 On night's maternal breast ; 
 For oh ! how dear to hearts that weep 
 
 O'er time's unsparing war, 
 Night rising soft from heaven's blue deep, 
 
 With her holy vesper star. 
 
 WE'LL MEET AGAIN. 
 
 WE'LL meet again upon that farther shore 
 Where breaks no billow, where no tempests roar, 
 Lulled by the pleasant voice of that bright main 
 With skies of blue for ever arching o'er, 
 We'll meet again. 
 
 They are not lost they've only gone before, 
 Grief lies behind, and Home laments no more 
 
 Her broken chain. 
 There, where new fields invite us to explore, 
 
 We'll meet again.
 
 122 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 The vessel nears those green and sunny lands ! 
 Hark to the voices ! lo ! the waving hands 
 
 That bid us come. 
 
 They waft a welcome to their long-lost friends, 
 They call us to the place where trial ends, 
 And we poor wanderers find at last a home. 
 There, where there is no words for grief, or pain, 
 We've met ! we've met ! to part no more again.
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 123 
 
 SPRIG XII. GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND 
 ANNANDALE. 
 
 BOWLING along from " Edina, Scotia's darling seat," 
 behind four bay thoroughbreds. Say what you like 
 about the undeniable comforts of the " train," but the 
 " tally-ho " was the real thing for a sporting man, and 
 I often see its well-appointed " team " racing through 
 my dreams not, be it observed, a grisly nightmare, 
 but a fast-flying vision of sleek-coated " steeds of fire." 
 Away past " Habbie's Howe," scene of that most 
 graceful of all pastorals, The Gentle Shepherd, the blithe, 
 winsome child of the Theocritus of Scotland. Onward 
 by " Cleikum Inn," savoury with the pleasing memory 
 of " Meg Dodds " and her steaming " cockie-leekie." By 
 the electric touch of a little " palm oil " we coax the 
 driver to lend us the "ribbons," and another mile per 
 hour is added to our speed. A lurch ! caused by one of 
 the leaders setting his foot upon a rolling stone, and 
 three plethoric elderly gentlemen, with ditto stout ladies 
 to match, are very nearly brought to grief, " I say, 
 driver," roars out a red-faced specimen of the aldermanic 
 type, " if you don't instantly take the reins from that 
 reckless boy, I'll report you at headquarters." The 
 "ribbons" were ruefully ^resigned, the purple-nosed 
 "Mister Weller" resumed the direction, and the foam- 
 flecked steeds glad of a change of Phaetons brought 
 us more soberly to our journey's end, without one 
 broken neck. Writing on board of the lona, cleaving 
 the billows at the rate of twenty knots an hour, I think
 
 124 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 that I am again "tooling" the nags down the beautiful 
 pastoral "Vale of Dalvene," till I find myself at the 
 hospitable roomy Manse of " Closeburn," now tenanted 
 by a brother of long-lost college friends ; and a shade 
 of tender melancholy steals over my spirit, as I recall 
 the days, " to memory dear," when, a vagrant dreamy 
 boy, I wandered along the heath-clad slopes of Queens- 
 berry Hill, or cast my flies on the waters of the 
 "winding Nith," the Caple, the Cample, and the 
 picturesque Creehope. This world-known stream 
 bounds, foams, and rushes through the awful, ghastly 
 gorge, where Scott conceals the fanatic Burley, and 
 represents him in his gloomy den, first fighting with the 
 devil, and thereafter seeking to fight with Morton, 
 because he would not aid the " Covenant." Oh ! how 
 the days of my boyhood flow back upon me, a grey- 
 haired man, and bring back the clustering locks and 
 rosy cheeks of other times. But, thanks to a kind 
 Providence, I am still possessed of robust health, and 
 the power of feeling the blessing of Nature in her 
 various moods. The mellow notes of the blackbird, the 
 more intricate trills of the mavis, and the ecstatic 
 raptures of the laverock, singing at the sun-gates of the 
 east, have still the same old charms for me ; and, if I 
 am, like all others of my kind, getting old in years, I 
 am yet young in spirit, and far from showing the " white 
 feather," although the " frosty pow " of Burns has taken 
 the place of the auburn curls. With what pensive 
 pleasure do I look back to the delightful days spent by 
 the Nith ! Sir Charles Stuart Menteith was more than 
 kind to me, sending his keeper to guide my boat on 
 the lake, over which the shadow of " Wallace's Tower " 
 hangs, and where huge pike were wont to harbour 
 beneath the white lilies and the spiky sedges. Well do
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 12$ 
 
 I remember " Wallace Hall," where boys were flogged 
 and fledged under the rod of old Doctor Mundell, and 
 thereafter under the tuition of the accomplished Dr 
 Ramage. Well do I remember the genial, rubicund 
 countenance of the pastor, Dr Bennet, who was " bon- 
 homie" itself, and whose father was one of the finest 
 oriental scholars of his day. Well do I remember 
 reading on the panes of the windows of the bedroom, 
 specially kept for Burns on his excise-rounds, verses 
 which had all his genius, but which were cut out from 
 their place by the baronet, and only exposed to friends, 
 on account of that fierce satire and reckless indelicacy 
 which too often disfigured the poetry of this erring child 
 of genius. Well do I remember the clear, cold well, in 
 which, after a night of frolic, he w r as wont to cool his 
 feverish lips and throbbing head, as he went his rounds 
 on his stout-barrelled cob. 
 
 Without the slightest spark of clerical prudery, I 
 own that the first long poem which dwelt in my infant 
 memory was Tarn d S banter, a composition of mingled 
 mirth, satire, beauty, and sublimity altogether without 
 a rival, and I remember that a horrified clerical com- 
 patriot of my father seriously warned him about the 
 upbringing of his only child. That prophetic gentle- 
 man, I happen to know, was very successful in empty- 
 ing a church, and I am proud to say that the admirer of 
 Robbie Burns has, somehow or other, " by hook or by 
 crook," filled three " creels" 
 
 And this reminds me of a good anecdote concerning 
 the late Alexander Russel, of the Scotsman, and a Free 
 Kirk pastor. Editor whipping the Devon, where I 
 often fished when my friend, Wattle Grieve, the hos- 
 pitable, lived at the " Castle." Up comes a dapper son 
 of the church, and accosts the angler in wading-
 
 126 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 stockings and weather-battered wide-awake. " I be- 
 lieve, sir, that I have the honour of addressing the 
 great Mr Russel, of the Scottish Times." Returns the 
 piscator " I don't know about the ' honour,' as you 
 call it ; however, I'm Sandy Russel, of the Scotsman, 
 at your service. But don't you do something in this 
 line?" "Oh! no'," grimly responds the annoyed 
 divine, ' I have more solemn things to attend to / 
 fish for souls" "Well then," quoth the very-ready 
 angler, greatest journalist of his day, "You are 
 hardly an expert hand at the trade ; for I looked into 
 your 'creel' last Sabbath, and tJiere were very few in 
 it!" Exit the disgusted parson, not quite so politely 
 as he entered, and the chuckling joker resumed his 
 sport, and filled his creeL 
 
 One day, riding near the aforesaid well, a companion 
 asked Burns what he thought was the best verse he 
 ever wrote, when, rising in his stirrups, he exclaimed 
 
 " I ha'e been blithe wi' comrades dear, 
 
 I ha'e been merry drinking, 
 I ha'e been joyful gathering gear, 
 
 I ha'e been happy thinking ; 
 But a' the pleasures e'er I saw, 
 
 Though doubled three times fairly, 
 That blessed hour was worth them a', 
 
 Amang the rigs o' barley ! " 
 
 A vision rises up before me of a very different well 
 on the shores of the Solway " The Brow Well." 
 There, having quaffed a morning quaigh of the spark- 
 ling crystal water, according to wont, sits a worn, wasted 
 man, gazing wistfully across the fast-flowing waves 
 towards the majestic mountains of Skiddaw and Glara- 
 mara. That wayside dreamer is the dying Bard of
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 12? 
 
 Nithsdale, whose sands of life are fast running down, 
 while his once robust vigour is ebbing rapidly away, 
 like the racing salt billows, upon which he looks wearily 
 for the last time. The cool, clear " Brow Well " is 
 there as of yore, but the prilgrim-poet has passed into 
 the land of seraph-song and " living water." Once, 
 when a boy, passing along a street of the fair city of 
 Dumfries, not unlike the more beautiful city of the 
 North which bears the same well-known name, I ex- 
 pressed a wish to my kind friend, the late Dr Bennet, 
 that I might be able to see " bonnie Jean," the widow 
 of Burns, who was then nearing her ninetieth year. 
 "There she is!" cried out the good Doctor, and, look- 
 ing up to an open window, beside which she was sitting, 
 there indeed was the aged dame, with her placid face, 
 full dark eyes, in which the sun of existence was 
 setting, and her wealth of hair as white as the snow- 
 drift. Perhaps the reader may have heard how she 
 once said to a prying tourist, who paid her an ill-timed 
 visit, and asked for a relic of the bard, " Weel, then, 
 ye maun tak' mysel", for 'deed, sir, I'm thinking that 
 I'm the only relic noo left." He may also know that, 
 when Scotland, in a frenzy of remorse for the lost man 
 whom her magnates once used so cruelly, proposed to 
 raise a noble monument to her famous poetic son, the 
 widow exclaimed " Puir Robbie, ye asked them for 
 bread, and they gi'e ye a stane! " 
 
 Not far from the " Brow Well " we come to a 
 scene of surpassing interest Caerlaverock Castle the 
 Ellangowan of that most perfect, we think, of all novels 
 Guy Mannering. Those two greatest of Scotland's 
 literary sons, Burns and Scott the one supreme in 
 song, the other in fiction once met when Burns was 
 starring it in Edinburgh. Scott, then a boy, was
 
 128 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 struck with the conversation and appearance of the 
 man, who, 
 
 "In glory and in joy, followed his plough 
 Upon the mountain side." 
 
 " I have since then," he leaves on record, " seen the most 
 remarkable men of my day, but I never saw such an 
 eye in a human head it literally gloived" A question 
 arose concerning a ballad, and no one could tell what 
 it exactly was, or to whom belonging. Trembling with 
 modesty, little Walter Scott said : " I know it, and it 
 was written by " I forget the author's name and 
 repeated the first verse. Burns looked at him earnestly 
 and exclaimed " Mair will be heard about that laddie 
 yet." But here, by the double-moated Caerlaverock, 
 which stood the cannon of Cromwell, we conjure up the 
 spectres of Dick Hatteraick, Dominie Sampson, 
 Lawyers Pleydell and Glossin, Dandie Dinmont, and 
 that Gipsy Queen of all time, the weird Meg Merrilees. 
 And, by all that is uncanny, here comes a real, pure 
 Gitana, with step as lithe as the panther, and hair like 
 wing of the raven by tempest wet, and at her heels a 
 boy of the Egyptian blood, glossy of curl, brown of 
 cheek, sparkling of eye, fleet of foot as the " dun deer," 
 and singing like the laverock overhead 
 
 " Winnowing blithe with dewy wings 
 In morning's rosy eye. 
 
 THE GIPSY BOY. 
 
 BLITHELY sings the gipsy boy ; 
 
 Care nor sorrow knoweth he. 
 Blessings on thy brow of joy, 
 
 And thy dark eye full of glee !
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 129 
 
 Bleak the blast, and murky midnight 
 Soon shall fold the world in shade, 
 
 Sheltering hedge, or ferny hillside, 
 There thy lonely couch is made ! 
 
 Heaven protect thee, houseless being ! 
 
 Father, mother, hast thou none 
 None on earth to bid thee welcome ? 
 
 None to claim thee for a son 1 
 
 Sister, brother, is there no one 
 
 With a heart that beats for thine ? 
 Stars of heaven ! on such a lone one 
 
 Seldom, seldom do ye shine. 
 
 Hark ! again his song is ringing 
 
 On the night-breeze, clear and shrill ; 
 
 Tis my faith that richer mortals 
 Bear a heavier load of ill 
 
 Heaven dispenseth wealth of pleasure 
 
 To the humblest of our kind ; 
 One is poor with golden treasure, 
 
 One is rich with peace of mind. 
 
 'Mid the blast an Arm upholds thee, 
 
 In the dark an Eye surveys ; 
 Brightly, kindly, still before thee, 
 
 Burns a lamp in all thy ways. 
 
 He who feeds the wand'ring raven, 
 
 Robes the lily of the field, 
 His compassion is thy haven, 
 
 His omnipotence thy shield. 
 
 Dews and rains at night may wet thee ; 
 
 Churlish man may prove unkind ; 
 Providence will ne'er forget thee, 
 
 Tempering to thy strength the wind.
 
 130 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Take an alms 'tis freely given, 
 
 Which is donor, who can tell 1 
 Tis perchance the voice of heaven 
 
 Pleads, lone boy ! in thee so well. 
 
 Mortals, in the days departed, 
 
 Angels unawares have fed ; 
 Nor in vain upon the waters 
 
 Cast their charitable bread. 
 
 Holy Writ proclaims it better 
 
 To bestow than to receive. 
 Homeless boy ! I'm twice thy debtor, 
 
 For I both accept and give. 
 
 There goes a lugger out there, rounding " Warrock- 
 head," and firing a salute. Can it be Dirk and a 
 ghostly crew once more ploughing the waters that 
 closed over the old daring bark ? Is that the wanderer, 
 " Brown," pleading for the venerable ruin, which 
 something within tells him is not a new acquaintance ? 
 And is that lay, which the swarthy gipsy woman is 
 singing, the mystic rhymes of Meg when she chants that 
 
 " Bertram's might and Bertram's right 
 Shall meet on Ellangowan's height." 
 
 Musing to-day beside that regal ruin, the days of 
 other years come up before me, when I was rich in a 
 dear companion, who will no longer ramble by my side, 
 bearing half of my cares, and enhancing all my pleasures. 
 It was then that I passed so many delightful hours by 
 the banks of the Annan, which, on a smaller scale, 
 reminds me so much of my own native Tay. The 
 proprietors of Dumfriesshire are proverbial for their 
 hospitality, and total absence of that stand-offishness, 
 for which many magnates of the land are more remark-
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 131 
 
 able than agreeable. I enjoyed the angling-right of 
 about eight miles of the Annan, beginning at the quaint 
 old town, which is redolent of the memories of Red- 
 gauntlet, and that most eccentric of eloquent preachers, 
 Edward Irvine, whose house is still pointed out in a 
 narrow street. He had been assistant to Dr Chalmers, 
 and once, when in London, took the great divine to see 
 the poet of The Ancient Mariner, Coleridge. Chalmers 
 liked not his talk, denouncing it as too dreamy, upon 
 which Irvine exclaimed " You Scotsmen wish to 
 grasp an idea, just as a butcher handles a fat ox ; while, 
 for my part, I love to see an idea looming through the 
 mist!" "That may be," replied the Doctor, "but 
 Coleridge's conversation, as you call it I call it rhapsody 
 would have been pronounced ' buff by my douce 
 uncle Tammie." 
 
 The Annan is good for salmon and first-rate for her ling 
 the wJiitling of the Tay and glorious sport have I 
 had among them. By the friendly permission of the 
 Diroms, and the Hurrays of Murraythwaite, I could 
 fish the Annan as far up as the stately pile of Hocldam 
 Castle, with its massive oaken doors, and its grand old 
 tower, which commands a prospect of varied beauty 
 and magnificence. Many a day, too, have I spent on 
 the pleasant banks of the Kirtle, rendered sadly classic 
 by the ballad concerning the murder of " Fair Helen 
 of Kirkconnel Lee," and more grimly by Bonshaw, the 
 " Peelhouse " of Irvine, styled the " bloody Bonshaw," of 
 reiving times. Many a well-remembered hour have I 
 spent amid the grassy holms of that stream, as it 
 meanders through the beautiful park of " Mossknowe," 
 the seat of the noble family of the ancient Graemes. 
 The stately old Colonel is now laid low, but is still 
 represented by more than one branch of that goodly
 
 132 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 tree, which has flourished in the breath of many centuries, 
 There, also, is the grey tower of Stapleton, embedded 
 picturesquely amid the sumptuous rooms of a modern 
 mansion, wherein I often enjoyed the friendship of 
 Mr Critchly and his most agreeable lady, when, upon 
 several occasions, I was residing with my warm-hearted 
 namesake, John Anderson, in the hospitable manse of 
 Dornoch. Visions of those lightsome days rise out of 
 the mists of the Past, and enwrap the spirit in a soft 
 pleasing melancholy. 
 
 THE PAST. 
 
 WHEN the moonlight of Memory steals o'er the scene, 
 
 The phantoms of pleasure gone by 
 Flit past, and recall the old things that have been, 
 When the cheek had a bloom, and the eye was as keen 
 
 As the falcon's that sweeps o'er the sky. 
 
 And yet, though the Past must a sadness impart, 
 
 Of its teachings no man should complain. 
 The sources of thought are of use to the heart, 
 And I feel, through the tear recollection will start, 
 There are days we should live o'er again. 
 
 Thought hovers still about these twin dales, where 
 much of my thoughtless, but happy boyhood was spent. 
 A lovely glimpse of Nithsdale comes before my vision, 
 and I see once more the ducal glories of Drumlanrig. 
 The stately pile speaks of the classic taste of Inigo 
 Jones represented in the metropolis by Heriot's 
 Hospital sits enthroned among groves and gardens 
 of surpassing beauty, and listens, like a queen, to the 
 " lay " of that old minstrel, the wandering Nith. This
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 133 
 
 noble Castle has for its occupant a noble man in the 
 highest sense of the words one who sees in his neigh- 
 bour his second self, and who is always alive to the 
 reasonable claims of a brother a liberal in reality, for 
 he has the manly candour to own that it is possible for 
 him to be wrong, while another may be right ! Could 
 I meet liberalism of this character, I would take it 
 gladly to my bosom, and vow to " love, honour, and 
 obey." 
 
 Many a time I have roamed through the gardens, 
 fished in the streams, and seen long ago, in my early 
 boyhood, the ponds wherein the late Mr Shaw carried 
 on his experiments concerning the salmon tribe. At 
 this date I am compelled to confess that we have made 
 little or no advances on the discoveries of that sensible 
 and acute experimentalist We trace the parr to the 
 smolt the smolt to the grilse the grilse to the salmon 
 and there, I suspect, we pause. The vague trash 
 talked and printed about the lordly fish is hardly endur- 
 able. Why, look at the fish-ponds of the Old French 
 Chateaux, and you are brought to the confession that 
 pisciculture was known better in bygone days than in 
 these modern times. The French knew how to raise 
 trout they read us a rebuke concerning oysters and, 
 if we had not Waterloo to fall back upon, we should be 
 wofully beaten. We are killing the infant lobster, 
 partan, and oyster, and the impatient appetite of the 
 gastronomic Briton is dooming to death " the goose that 
 lays the golden egg." Johnny Crapeaud is able to give 
 us a lesson or two. 
 
 But why am I prosing about shell-fish in these classic 
 regions, where the ghosts of the Covenanters hover 
 around us, and their^ fiery spirits are abroad on the 
 gale ! The murmurs of the Nith and kindred streams
 
 134 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 seem to perpetuate those olden strains, that swell in 
 stern melody from moorland and moss-hag, 
 
 " Where Cameron's sword and his Bible are seen, 
 Engraved on the stone where the heather grows green." 
 
 And I seem to hear the hoarse voices of the waves of 
 the Solway, drowning the accents of praise which float 
 to the throne of God from the pale lips of the girl, 
 chained to the stake by the savage laird of Lagg, and 
 resolved on giving up her young life rather than 
 renounce her dear-loved creed ! Dreaming of these 
 bloody episodes in controversial times, we are wafted 
 away to the lonely Kirk of Irongrey, where the moss- 
 grown tombstones breathe of " Old Mortality." Again 
 we behold the quaint figure, with the ancient white 
 pony, deepening the moss-grown letters on the stones 
 beneath which lies the dust of those who " never feared 
 the face of man." The " rude forefathers of the hamlet " 
 are there ; and, if sincerity of purpose, and staunch ad- 
 herence to a heartfelt cause merit remembrance, the 
 graves of the moorland are noble as the tombs of kings. 
 
 No good is unmingled with evil, and in religious 
 struggles more especially the passions of the human 
 heart play their part ; but it must be admitted of the 
 sons of the Covenant that, if they had their opinions, 
 they had also the courage of their opinions, and dignified 
 their cause by the devotion which they brought to its 
 support. They may, as at Philiphaugh and elsewhere, 
 have betrayed the passions of humanity, but let us 
 bear in mind, these passions had reckless provocation, 
 and, in the death of many a humble Covenanter we 
 may discern another spirit, like that of the Prophet 
 Elijah, soaring upward to heaven in a chariot of flame. 
 
 We have much reason to be thankful that those days of
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 135 
 
 intolerance have passed away, like some hideous night- 
 mare, and that we can now enjoy the calm of our 
 Sabbaths and the wisdom of our Bibles " with none to 
 hurt, or make us afraid." It was not always so. A 
 vision of a dark age comes over me, like a lightning- 
 charged cloud, and I see an oppressed man wrestling with 
 foes without and doubts and fears within. No earnest 
 struggle is ever in vain. The throes of that spiritual 
 agony proved the birth of the Reformation. 
 
 CHAINED TO THE WALL. 
 
 [In the Monastery of Erfurth, Luther discovered a copy of the Bible 
 fastened to a wall of the library by an iron chain. He read till his own 
 soul was free, and determined that the Word should be free also. ] 
 
 CHAINED to the wall ! the blessed Page 
 
 Was long in slumber bound ; 
 It had a voice for every age, 
 
 Yet gave no sound. 
 
 Within it glowed a living light 
 
 Sent forth for all- 
 Yet round it closed the deepest night 
 
 Chained to the wall ! 
 
 It had a power to touch the heart, 
 
 A ray to light the mind 
 Yet long it burned, a lamp apart, 
 
 In gloom confined. 
 
 Thou hast a cure for every ill, 
 
 A balm for every pain 
 But what is thy most loving will, 
 
 Bound by that chain !
 
 136 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 But now a hand a human hand 
 
 Has rescued Thee ; 
 Cast to the dust that iron band, 
 
 And thou art free ! 
 
 Free to proclaim the words that light 
 
 The wanderer's way 
 Bright stars upon the brow of night, 
 
 They speak of Day. 
 
 Yes ! long wert thou a prisoner 
 
 In dark captivity 
 But now, like heaven's own blessed air, 
 
 Thy wing is free : 
 
 Free as the wind to waft that sound 
 
 Which comforts all- 
 Souls once, like thee, in prison bound 
 
 By Satan's thrall : 
 
 Free to console the saddest heart, 
 
 That throbs with grief, 
 And to the sinner's sorest smart 
 
 To bring relief. 
 
 Fountain of Life ! thy living waves 
 
 Can never fail ; 
 For great is Truth the Truth that saves- 
 
 And shall prevail. 
 
 No time shall stop thee on thy course, 
 Till suns have ceased to roll, 
 
 And thou hast raised beyond the curse 
 Each ransomed soul. 
 
 Luther! the world will long confess 
 
 Its debt to thee, 
 And long the fearless hand will bless 
 
 That set the Bible free.
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND ANNANDALE. 137 
 
 A more pleasing vision steals upon me, and I see the 
 romantic Esk (water) leaving the misty moorlands of 
 Ettrick Pen, and seeking its way to the Solway, up 
 whose far-stretching estuary the " white horse " races 
 at headlong speed, and warns the loiterer to quit the 
 sands that are bare one moment and buried the next 
 under the briny surges. Memories of Redgauntlet rush 
 over the mind like the rising tide, and we see the gallant 
 black charger of the stalwart Herries, the " Jumping 
 Jenny " of Nanty Ewart, hear the jolly riddle of the 
 vagrant blind Willie, and fancy that the evening psalm 
 of the hypocritical Truepenny, after he had " sanded 
 the sugar" and "watered the whisky," is mingling its 
 quavering notes with the wanderer's more pleasing 
 strain. Again we behold the battlements of Branks- 
 holm rising on the ferny hill-side, and The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel unrivalled of all weird border songs 
 peoples the solitude with the knights and dames of other 
 days. Visions of Border raids take possession of the 
 imagination, and many a wild moss-trooper rides past, 
 driving his "booty" a rude soul who held with the 
 famous Rob Roy that 
 
 " They should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 One of the Deloraine type, who 
 
 " Little recked of tide or time, 
 Moonless midnight, or matin prime." 
 
 The Esk runs a glorious race over heathery moors, and 
 through bold rocky gorges, until its fretted waters sleep 
 for a season among the grassy holms of the far-famed 
 " Cannobie lea," where we fancy we can once more 
 witness the " riding and racing " of the olden time, when
 
 138 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 the "fair bride of Netherby" was danced away on the 
 mettled steed of "the young Lochinvar." Here there 
 are splendid stretches of water, where salmon and sea^ 
 trout invite the angler to try his skill, and in the snug 
 hostelrie of the district, shaded by its noble beeches, a 
 good dinner may be had, prepared by the buxom Meg 
 Dodds of the place, and served up by the handsome, 
 dark-eyed Mary, whose lively talk and winning smiles 
 add greatly to the fare, and cause us to vow in our 
 hearts that there is " nothing like angling," and that 
 " Cannobie lea" has not in modern days lost its attrac- 
 tions. But a saddened memory steals over the scene, 
 with the softly-falling night, for no longer do I see the 
 talented minister and his lovely wife, one of those old 
 and valued friends who imparted a grace and a pleasure 
 to life, who sleep beneath the mossy turf of " the silent 
 city of the dead," and, loitering pensively beside their 
 place of rest, once more the " pleasant thoughts " of the 
 morning have ended by bringing the " sad thoughts to 
 the mind." 
 
 A closing glimpse of Annandale steals upon me through 
 the gloaming of memory. I saw once long ago, I see 
 now, that fine silvery link of the river chain that enfolds 
 in its gleam the emerald meadows and massive pile of 
 Hoddam, carrying back the mind to the fourteenth 
 century, when the family of the regal Bruce was a power 
 in the land. Like the solid structure of more modern days 
 Bruce was a man " who stood four-square to every wind 
 that blew." My reminiscence, however, is with smaller 
 men. Two sporting youths, with full barrels but empty 
 brains, meet a herd laddie, and see in \wm fair game for 
 their chaff. " Well, boy, what is your name ! " " Willie 
 Laidlaw, yer honours." " Of course you belong to a 
 Sabbath School ?" " Oo aye. gentlemen." ' Well, then,
 
 GLIMPSES OF NITHSDALE AND AXNANDALE. 139 
 
 my man, can your wisdom tell us the way to heaven ? " 
 " Ay, your honour, just up that brae and past that tower." 
 ' Faith," says one of them, who had the only spark of 
 sense belonging to the pair, " that laddie means some- 
 thing, so let us see." Up they go reach the summit of 
 the hill, and find an old man sitting under the walls of 
 the tower. " I say, my man, what is the name of this 
 tower ? or has it a name ? " " Ay, gentlemen, that's the 
 tower of Repentance'' " By Jove," exclaims the owner of 
 the modicum of sense, " that boy has scored one, and no 
 mistake." 
 
 I need not repeat the ghastly tale that led to the 
 erection of the tower. A sinner's hands, drenched in 
 blood, led to the act whose every stone breathed of his 
 repentance. 
 
 And now, standing on this storied spot, with the 
 crimson sunset glorifying the blue slopes of Glaramara 
 on the one side of the Solway and the purple peak of 
 Criffel glowing on the other, with the white steeds of 
 the rushing tide racing to their goal, and the dimpling 
 waves of the Esk, hastening to meet and mingle with 
 them, thou beauteous vale of the Annan ! I bid thee 
 good night.
 
 140 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 SPRIG XIII. THE TAY. 
 
 MY majestic native river ! for by its shores first dawned 
 that light, which, like all sublunary things, is now 
 westering towards its setting. 
 
 Reader, were you ever at " Cross Macduff," standing 
 in a " glack " which slopes gently downward to the 
 broad waters of the noble estuary that washes, on the 
 north side, the fertile expanse of the " Carse of Gowrie," 
 well known in Scottish song ? The " Wizard of the 
 North," prince of fictionists, paid a visit to this place 
 which his genius has made classic, and gazing, with 
 his deep grey eye, over the magnificent landscape that 
 basks in regal beauty beneath, exclaimed 
 
 " Yon is the Tay, rolled down from Highland hills, 
 That rests his waves, after so rude a race, 
 In the fair plains of Gowrie." 
 
 Leaning on the rough stone once crowned by a cross, 
 which was demolished by the lawless rabble that 
 followed Knox to St Andrews, bent on the same un- 
 hallowed work which they began in Perth the gifted 
 bard breaks forth 
 
 " Deem it not a fragment, 
 
 Detached by tempest from the neighbouring hill : 
 It was the pedestal on which of yore a Cross was reared, 
 Carved o'er with words that foiled philologists 
 And the events it did commemorate 
 Were dark, remote, and indistinguishable 
 As were the mystic characters it bore." 
 
 At one time that Cross formed a sanctuary to which, 
 like a " City of Refuge," the manslayer could retreat,
 
 THE TAY. 141 
 
 and, if within the ninth degree of kin to the reigning 
 Thane, obtained pardon and absolution, after paying a 
 tribute to the ruling power. Were it not for the inter- 
 vening whin-clad hill, the visitor might see, to the east, 
 the " Peel-house " wherein resided for centuries the 
 scions of one of Scotland's most powerful and memor- 
 able families, the gifted and gallant Balfours. Sir 
 James was Secretary to Charles the Second, and wrote 
 the famous Annals by which he is still remembered 
 as an author. One of his brothers founded the " Sur- 
 geons' Hall " in Edinburgh ; a second rode over to 
 the Palace of Falkland, at the head of three hundred 
 belted kinsmen, to pay fealty to King Jamie, that mix- 
 ture of frolic and ferocity, who wrote facetious verse, 
 and did to death, as I hold, the noble and accomplished 
 Earl of Cowrie and his young, blooming brother, jealous 
 of the varied learning and just popularity of the great 
 Provost of Perth. Anything but a blessing on the souls 
 of those pig-headed Bailies who pulled down the grand 
 old " Cowrie House," uprooted the " Monk's Tower," 
 and demolished the spacious gardens, where once 
 gallant knights paid courtesy to lovely dames of " high 
 degree " ; and then crowned their Vandalism by erect- 
 ing on the site of these that specimen of supreme ugli- 
 ness, the " County Prison." A large building is lately 
 finished on the site of the gardens, prosaically called 
 " The New Public Hall," painfully suggestive of another 
 kind of "public." Why did not the present reigning 
 city magnates christen it "The Cowrie Hall," thus 
 doing something to perpetuate a sacred historic memory, 
 and to atone, however slightly, for the Gothism of the 
 Town Councillors of other days ? Doubtless among 
 those defunct " burghal bodies " were some belonging to 
 the family of the "Bob Jonsons" men who "made
 
 142 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 their mark " in their own way of destructive vulgarity. 
 A third, of the " house of Denmiln," the residence of the 
 Balfours, perished at " Cross Macduff " under the sword 
 of a Crichton of Rankeillor, who pleaded and secured 
 "right of sanctuary"; a fourth, a son of the Church, 
 sleeps quietly by the waves of the holy Lindores ; and 
 the last of the race rode forth one misty morning on a 
 black steed, and never more returned. 
 
 DENMILN; OR, THE LAST OF THE BALFOURS. 
 
 IN sorrow and in silence 
 
 I gaze on yonder pile, 
 Around whose mouldering battlements 
 
 The beams of evening smile ; 
 For smile they ne'er so brightly, 
 
 They never can restore 
 The lustre of a noble home 
 
 Renowned in days of yore. 
 
 Denmiln ! upon thy battlements 
 
 The bearded thistle waves ; 
 Thy halls with moss are carpeted, 
 
 Thy sons are in their graves ; 
 For one lies low on Flodden field, 
 
 And one, on yonder hill, 
 Poured out his life in sternest strife 
 
 With the dark-browed Makgill. 
 
 And one, Lindores ! is sleeping 
 
 On thy green sequestered side, 
 Calm contrast to his living day 
 
 Of chivalry and pride, 
 When three hundred gallant kinsmen, 
 
 To Falkland's royal seat, 
 He led to kneel, in tested steel, 
 
 At the Scottish Monarch's feet.
 
 THE TAY. 143 
 
 And one has left his memory 
 
 Amid the pillared stone, 
 Where Science, robed in mercy, 
 
 Sits meekly on her throne, 
 Dispensing life to languor, 
 
 And pleasantness to pain, 
 And lighting up the pallid cheek 
 
 With Hope's bright smiles again. 
 
 Or amid the sunny gardens 
 
 That bloom along the steep, 
 Between Dun-Eden's ancient towers 
 
 And the never-resting deep, 
 When the odour-laden breezes 
 
 O'er the blossoms lightly skim, 
 Some heart, alive to beauty, 
 
 May gently muse of him.* 
 
 The mind that loveth olden days 
 
 Will long delight to dwell, 
 Sir James ! upon the storied page 
 
 Of thy quaint chronicle, 
 Where, like a place of burial, 
 
 Amid the past we tread, 
 And gather sober wisdom 
 From the legends of the dead. 
 
 Last of a fated family ! 
 
 No marble marks thy grave. 
 Say ! dost thou sleep on field of war ? 
 
 Or 'neath the moaning wave 1 
 Or did'st thou slowly, sadly fall, 
 
 By want's remorseless tooth, 
 Far from the sheltering walls of home, 
 
 The genial scenes of youth ? 
 The old Botanic Gardens were due to him.
 
 144 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Perchance the base assassin's steel 
 
 Laid low a loyal line ; 
 Perchance his bones gleam drearily 
 
 From some long-abandoned mine ; 
 But no kindred eye beheld him 
 
 From that morning, chill and grey, 
 When, mounted on his sable steed, 
 
 He slowly rode away. 
 
 Yet, beside the peasant's hearth, 
 
 When the nights were long and cold, 
 And the blaze was bickering merrily, 
 
 I have often heard it told, 
 How, amid the wars of Flanders, 
 
 There rode a knightly form 
 On a steed as black as midnight, 
 
 And headlong as the storm ! 
 
 His story and his lineage 
 
 Confided he to none ; 
 His sword was ever flashing first 
 
 Where fearless deeds were done. 
 No dangers ere could daunt him, 
 
 No praises e'er could cheer ; 
 He seemed to battle hard with Fate 
 
 For the favour of a bier ! 
 
 One evening, when the sunset 
 
 Fell gloomily and red 
 On a cumbered field of carnage, 
 
 Piled high with gory dead, 
 The stranger and his sable steed 
 
 Lay rigid on the heath ; 
 And whether crime or care were his 
 
 The secret slept in death !
 
 THE TAY. 145 
 
 I must be indulged with one reminiscence of the dear 
 old manse, wherein I spent so many of those joyous 
 days, which are now bright things of the past. We 
 had an old man-servant Tom Clow who took that 
 interest in the family, which now belongs, I am sorry 
 to say, to the olden times. If you rejoiced, so did he 
 if you wept, he was ready to do the same. In point 
 of fact, he identified himself with " the family." If he 
 had got his dismissal for some scrape, I feel assured he 
 would have answered in the words of the Old Joe, 
 " Deed, doctor, if ye dinna ken when ye have a gude 
 servant, at ony rate I ken when I have a gude maister." 
 But he was a " fixture." Tammas was fond of telling 
 stories, but, like many, perhaps myself, was not the 
 right man in the right place. I see him yet when, like 
 " Jamie, he delved in the yaird," leaning on his spade, 
 and saying, " Weel, Doctor," or " Weel, John, I'll tell ye 
 a regular farce man, it's laughable." The story 
 " drew its slow length along," the point was carefully 
 missed out, and, as it would have been a social sin 
 not to have laughed at all, we laughed at the oracle of 
 the manse, if not witJi him. Once, however, he hit the 
 nail on the head by sheer force of simplicity. I was 
 licensed ! All Fife in a tremble of expectation ! Nature 
 held her breath ! Driven to Abdie by Tammas strange 
 enough where my father in the auld kirk, and I in the 
 new, preached our first sermons came home and, I 
 suppose, naturally refreshed. Tarnmas, with curry- 
 comb in one hand and brush in the other, and dun 
 Donald, the Norwegian, getting a dressing for the night, 
 My fatherrather inclined to what is called " dignity," 
 but as worthy a man as ever did justice to a good 
 dinner, a rare bottle of old port, or preached a sermon up 
 to either standing by. Myself round the corner, well 
 
 K
 
 146 SPRIGS OF HEATHER, 
 
 knowing that something was sure to follow. "Well, 
 Thomas, been a fine day. Pony looking well. Good 
 audience ? Excuse a parent's anxiety, but, Thomas, 
 how did my son do ?" Thomas looks warily east and 
 west, to see that no one was within hearing of a fact 
 which might possibly endanger the equilibrium of the 
 globe, and then, drawing near to my expectant parent, 
 " Weel, doctor, John's an orator ! " Father explodes 
 a dram called for to reward the discoverer of a new 
 comet in the theological firmament. I draw the veil of 
 Timanthes over the feelings of the new-fledged orator. 
 
 I once played Old Tom " a plisky." He was wont 
 to drive me to St Andrews, where I was a student, 
 stopping at a little village, Osnaburgh, beyond Cupar, 
 and leaving me to walk the remainder of the way. As 
 we went, being well known on the road, I cried out to 
 the toll-keepers, " Pay coming back." But " a regular 
 farce " was in store. Gave Tom an extra toothful. 
 Bade him good-bye, with, I confess, a tear in my eye, 
 when I thought that he was returning to the old manse, 
 and I leaving it behind, for studies well, the least 
 said about them the better. " The clachan's yill had 
 made him canty," nay, it " sae reamed in Tammie's 
 noddle " that, once off, " he caredna tolls a bodle." On 
 he drove, like another John Gilpin only Gilpin was on 
 a horse, and Tarn behind one. Toll-men stood aghast 
 turnpike gates flew open, as if" The wild Huntsman " 
 himself was riding the gale. Cupar reached, " sweetie- 
 stands " bowled over like nine-pins, bulbous Bailies 
 reeling to the wall, old women with fruit-barrows, and 
 young women with children, flee for shelter to the 
 pavement. " Away ! away ! and still away ! " and the 
 modern Tarn bade fair to outrival the ancient one of 
 Kirk Alloway. In fact, he was the very " Mazeppa "
 
 THE TAY. 147 
 
 of the manse and Donald and he " away ! away ! " 
 " On, on, they dash, torrents less rapid and less rash ! " 
 
 It was a long ride, but next day my worthy father 
 had a longer bill, and my allowance was stopped, Jehu's 
 having been extra. 
 
 And now, farewell, old happy home, with the fields 
 on which my boyhood sported with the walnut tree 
 once hanging its now vanished branches over the low- 
 ceiled dining-room window, with the cherry-trees, also 
 gone, on which I shot field-fares for a pie, as good as 
 that of the twenty-four blackbirds I bid ye all a warm, 
 heart-felt farewell ! 
 
 But now let us " take the wings of the morning" and 
 be off to the head-sources of the Tay, which, a mighty 
 giant beneath the shadow of " Cross Macduff," plays 
 and prattles far away among the blooming heather in 
 all the happy beauty of merry childhood. The infancy 
 of the Tay emphatically "the water" is to be found 
 among the moss-hags of the " Black Mount." By and 
 by his boyhood disports itself among the pebbles of 
 the Dochart, under the shadow of the pyramidal Ben 
 More, and his manhood is attained when he rushes 
 forth from the waters of Loch Tay, like a giant refreshed 
 with copious draughts of "mountain-dew." Many a 
 glorious day have I spent on the bosom of this 
 splendid Loch, enhanced by the genial company of 
 many valued friends, all brethren of the rod and reel. 
 Last April, at Killin, I enjoyed excellent sport among 
 excellent "old friends," my largest fish being thirty- 
 seven pounds, and my smallest fully eighteen pounds. 
 The monster was killed by bright Gracie Stuart (she can 
 drive a pair of posters with any whip at Killin), sister of 
 Mrs Stuart, the kind landlady of the hotel, where one 
 always feels so much " at home." The girl-angler was
 
 148 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 fishing our boat, awaiting our arrival, and brought the 
 mighty fish to book in twenty minutes ! whereas I have 
 seen many a nervous, excitable man who would have 
 taken over an hour, perhaps two. and lost him after all. 
 This, I was told, was the largest salmon killed in Loch 
 Tay since, three years ago, I polished off a thirty-five- 
 pounder in about the same time. This was done when 
 I was at Kenmore, where, in the delightful hotel, Miss 
 Jessie Munro and her attentive sisters make you forget 
 that you are under a roof which is not your own. 
 
 One day, when fishing near Bolfracks, and in the act 
 of landing a pound-trout, I heard a voice behind 
 " Have ye a line for the watter ?" Looking back, I saw 
 a stalwart Celt, and said " Of course, and a very good 
 line it is how could I be here without one ?" " Put 
 have ye a line for fushing ?" " Most certainly, and if 
 you wish to have a look at it you will see that it is half- 
 hair, half-silk, although I prefer hair entirely." You 
 know Sidney Smith's joke about getting the same into 
 Scotch brains. I saw the " danger-signal " rising on 
 the high cheek-bone and in the keen grey eye, so 
 handed the questioner the Earl's courteous note or 
 " line." In one instant the atmosphere changed, and an 
 honest horny fist was grasped in mine. The appreci- 
 ative reader knows already how the affair ended was 
 it a " tram " ? and the grant of the man was thereafter 
 more unlimited than that of the master. An angler 
 accosted me "You are fishing with too small flies." 
 " Indeed," said I, " let us compare creels." His had 
 one, large, it is true, mine had nine one over two and 
 a half pounds taken with the "black spider." The 
 size of the river does not, as many think erroneously, 
 regulate the size of the fly the species of the trout does 
 that. The " yellow," whether in little May or " lordly
 
 THE TAY. 149 
 
 Tay," takes the same lure, as a rule, not, perhaps, with- 
 out exceptions, but still the rule. 
 
 But I must not spin a yarn as long as the Tay. All 
 the reaches of this magnificent river have I fished with 
 more or less success, and now find myself beside the 
 " Linn of Campsie," where the wretched " Conacher " 
 put an end to his burden of existence ; and thereafter I 
 stand by the North Inch of Perth, where the sons of 
 Torquil so devotedly perished to hide the cowardice of 
 the man whom they could neither inspire nor save. 
 
 The sight of this splendid plain brings before me 
 Sir Walter Scott, in my opinion the greatest poet of 
 description and action. Our Poet Laureate is a spirit 
 robed in the beauty of graceful and delicate poetry, but 
 the fire of action glows not through his verse. In the 
 Idylls of the King, beautiful for word-painting, his 
 doughty knights fight like wooden men iipon pasteboard 
 steeds. There is no life, fire, or energy, either in man or 
 horse. But Scott ! all is fire and stir and action. 
 Take his "Battle of the Clans" on the North Inch 
 his Flodden Field, in Mannion his Bannockburn, in 
 TJie Lord of the Isles the lists of Ivanhoe\.\\Q duel of 
 Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James in The Lady of the Lake, 
 most easy and graceful and graphic of all descriptive 
 poems or the fight detailed to the dying Roderick in 
 his cell in Stirling Castle and oh ! what a reel, and a 
 rush, and a tempest of action, wherein you see the iuar- 
 Jwrse with his " neck clothed in thunder," hear " the 
 shouting of the captains," and behold, with a shudder, 
 the " garments rolled in blood." A friend, with more 
 love than wisdom, asked me why I have not written 
 about Loch Leven and the streams and lakes around 
 Callander ? " Save us from our friends ! " Write about 
 Loch Leven ! where the ill-fated and, I believe, innocent
 
 150 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 Mary Stuart rises up before us in all the calmness of 
 regal majesty, and in all the perfection of female beauty. 
 Write about the " Trossachs ! " where the band of the 
 gallant Roderick start, like martial phantoms, from the 
 heather, and the fiery cross is carried, on flying feet, 
 from glen to glen and from sheiling to sheiling, till " the 
 heather is all ablaze." No ! were a pigmy, like myself, 
 to make the vain and rash attempt, well might it be 
 said that fools rush in where Scott was wont to tread ! 
 And now let us close with 
 
 A DAY AMONG THE WHITLINGS. 
 
 There is something imposing about " salmon fishing." 
 The fish himself is the monarch of the stream, the rod 
 and tackle with which he is " brought to grass " are 
 large and strong, the " run " is exciting, and often 
 exhaustive to the angler as well as his prey ; and to the 
 man who has been pleased with his " creel " of burn- 
 trout, exulting over a one and a half pounder, the slayer 
 of salmon seems like another Jack the Giant Killer. 
 But, as there are amid the works of Nature quiet walks 
 fully as pleasing and lasting in their pleasure as the bold 
 mountain's brow or the headlong cataract, so there are 
 humble sports with " rod and line " quite as fascinating 
 as the capture of the lordly salmon. Among these T am 
 acquainted with few more enjoyable than sea-trout or 
 whitling fishing ; and I venture to say from experience, 
 that, although these fish are small compared with the 
 Salar, to make a " good basket " will tax the patience of 
 the angler and his delicacy of angling almost as much 
 as the slaughter of the other. On the banks of the Tay 
 and Earn the whitling is generally taken from half a 
 pound to one pound ; for his size he gives excellent
 
 THE TAY. I$I 
 
 sport, and of all fish none are more likely to give the 
 angler the slip. If only flesh-hooked it is two to one 
 against your bringing him to creel ; for no sooner does 
 he feel the barb than he commences a series of violent 
 somersaults which often end provokingly in his escape. 
 In fishing for the whitling I have never, upon the whole, 
 found a more effective lure than a small size of" Brown's 
 Phantom Minnow " ; but when the river is densely 
 stocked with small fry, and the whitling gorged with 
 these to repletion, it will be found advantageous to offer 
 him a variety of food, and tempt him with a moderate- 
 sized grilse fly. 
 
 On a fine breezy March morning, the tide being 
 turned (an essential condition in whitling fishing here), 
 I started for a day's sport from Perth Harbour. Going 
 down the Willowgate the narrowest branch of the 
 Tay, which is split into two streams by a pretty island 
 I put on a couple of minnows and began operations. 
 One was a " Phantom," the other an imitation of the 
 trout-parr in moulded tin ; and the result left me no 
 reason to be dissatisfied with either. Scarcely were the 
 lines fairly in working order, swinging smoothly from 
 side to side of the stream as the boatmen guided his 
 craft, than whirr went the right-hand reel another 
 "phantom" had met with something substantial. It 
 was not a whitling, which shows itself at once ; and, pull- 
 ing to shore, after some patient handling, I got into the 
 landing-net an uncouth and hungry-looking kelt salmon, 
 which was soon once more in his native element. On 
 again, and speedily another whirr, this time on the left 
 with the tin trout. The fish were evidently in a taking 
 mood ; and this was no kelt and no whitling either, but 
 a sea-trout of pluck and size. He fought well, and had 
 nearly given me the slip, through awkward application
 
 152 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 of the landing-net ; but, a little care, and he lay 
 before me in the boat, a well-made trout of good two 
 pounds. Down stream again, with the lines working 
 better and better with the slack tide, and in about 
 twenty minutes, where the two streams of the Tay 
 meet, making fine feeding-ground, both rods bent their 
 points to the water, and two silvery little fellows spouted 
 into the air whitlings beyond doubt ; but we got only 
 one of them, and that with some difficulty, the other 
 having torn himself from the trident of the minnow, 
 leaving behind him a memento in the shape of a piece 
 of his gill-cover. As I slid down stream I got into still 
 better water alongside the parks of Kinfauns Castle. 
 Here the taking qualities of both lures were proved 
 again and again, and it was difficult to decide which was 
 the more effective. After bringing a few more whitlings 
 to book, I got two very exciting " runs " in succession 
 with two sea-trout of goodly size. Both of them, after 
 exhausting their powers in mid stream, I " beached " a 
 safe practice when the fish are large and wild. One 
 reached nearly three pounds, but was not in good 
 condition. The other was a perfect specimen of his 
 class, short, thick, firm, and beautifully marked, and turned 
 the scale at two pounds easily. 
 
 I had now nearly enough of it, and resolved to " reel 
 up," after a few turns almost under the shadow of the 
 stronghold of Wallace, the noble grey ruins of Elcho 
 Castle. I had no time to indulge in dreams of the past, 
 or to think about the great patriot swimming the Tay 
 in his coat-of-mail, with his sword in his teeth ; for the 
 whirr of the reel called me to the present, and warned 
 me that action, not musing, was the thing wanted. I 
 had a pleasant bit of sport before me ; it was no whitling 
 that took out line so nimbly, and it was no kelt either
 
 THE TAY. 153 
 
 this time ; for the fish took up stream with fresh energy, 
 and ended one of his bursts by springing three feet into 
 the air ; things, both of them, not often done by kelts, 
 these invalids naturally taking the easiest modes of 
 procedure, and going down stream tug-tugging and 
 jerk-jerking as they go. I saw at once that I had a 
 " clean fish " to deal with an uncommon thing at that 
 place and season ; for the salmon that here escape the 
 net are all travelling posting upwards to their well- 
 known habitats and seldom pause to consider the 
 angler's lure. I had a " clean fish " and slender tackle ; 
 but with plenty of line it is a matter of care and patience 
 after all, and, in a quarter of an hour, I was rewarded 
 with a beautiful fresh-run salmon of about seven pounds, 
 with the " sea-lice " upon him no better certificate of 
 character being required, as these creatures cannot live 
 more than forty hours or so in fresh water. After this 
 capture, I gladly reeled up, and found that both lures 
 had done their work well, and left us in some doubt as 
 to which was the superior. However, from after-trials 
 in the same water, I give the preference to the " Phan- 
 tom " minnow. 
 
 After the nets were off on these tidal waters I once 
 had the good luck to kill a thirty-pound salmon, and 
 again one of twenty pounds, on the waters of Inchyra, 
 belonging to my brother clergyman, Mr Fleming both 
 fish fresh run from the sea. 
 
 The pretty old manse, from which these lines are 
 written, with its picturesque larch, its ancient ivy-clad 
 elm, its stately ash, and its flowering chestnuts, calls up 
 before my mind the figure of the witty minister, whose 
 place I now do my endeavour to fill: He was a man of 
 quaint humour, and played the violin like another Neil 
 Gow. His stories were innumerable, and I cannot resist
 
 154 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 setting down one out of many. One day he had a 
 native of the " Green Isle" putting in coals, and told the 
 servant lassie to bring a dram to Pat. The manse 
 Hebe, being matter-of-fact by nature, brought the 
 " dew " in a long-stalked dram-glass, terminating in a 
 very wee Scotch thistle. Pat eyed it with comic rueful- 
 ness of visage, tossed off the contents, and holding up 
 the measure said, " a purty glass, your Riverince how 
 do they make thim things ? " " Oh," replied the Pastor, 
 " I believe they blow them." " Och, blow them, do 
 they ? Thin, by the powers, your Riverince, the man 
 that blew this one must have been mighty short in the 
 wind ! " A large measure was sent for. 
 
 Not long after coming to my charge in the " fair city," 
 I dined here with some joyous spirits, among others one 
 of my own elders, a sturdy Highlander, of very pro- 
 nounced Celtic brogue. " Why," said I, " Mr Stuart, did 
 ye not take the son of the late minister to fill his 
 father's shoes ? " " Weel, Maister Shon, he was a prood 
 crayter, and what do you think he said aboot his 
 faither's elders ? He ca'ad us a parcel o' blokeheads ! 
 Noo, Maister Shon, ye ken, he micJit Jide tJwcJit it, put he 
 shuldna ha'e said it !" The old banker little knew that 
 he was giving vent to a piece of Aristotelian philosophy 
 which was largely adopted by "William, the Silent," 
 of bloody Glencoe memory. If men would only learn 
 when to be silent, the blunders of the world would be 
 more easily counted. 
 
 My worthy friend had a great distrust of the medical 
 fraternity. He said that " he was ready when his time 
 cam but objeckit to have his pody turned into a drug- 
 shop. He didna deny but the doctors were goot fellows 
 but they had aye some pad stuff which they wantit ye 
 to tak." How this character would have chuckled over
 
 THE TAY. 155 
 
 the following anecdote, lately told to me by a friend. 
 A douce auld carle was ill, but, like my elder, objected 
 to what he called " doctor's stuff." His family at length 
 got him to see " the man of healing," who mildly said, 
 " you are afraid of the doctors, they tell me what ails 
 you at them ? " " Weel, then," quoth the invalid, " to tell 
 ye the plain truth, doctor, I ha'e a strong wish to dee a 
 naatural death " ! Let me, however, assure my readers, 
 in strict confidence, that those two " hoary fathers " were 
 by no means social atheists. They had a creed of their 
 own, consisting of Jive articles, " Scotch parritch, haggis, 
 sheep's head and kail, and whusky toddy ; " and they 
 nourished the belief that these, properly consumed, 
 would enable a man to dispense with the whole 
 " Pharmacopoeia." Quietly speaking, there may be worse 
 creeds. But my creed is one of a more enlarged 
 description. I endorse the above, but I add to it my 
 deep respect for the Medical Profession ; and the locality 
 in which I reside entitles me to confide in its members. 
 Perth has always been known for medical men of 
 true science, kindness, devotedness, and great conversa- 
 tional powers. Doctors of the healing art see much, 
 and have furnished to the world many of its deepest 
 thinkers and best talkers. Never can I forget the late 
 Dr Malcom large of frame and large of heart, the 
 friend as well as the physician of my family who 
 administered something more than drugs, of which he 
 was sparing, and whose manly, open, cheery face, when 
 he entered a sickroom, was better than the best prescrip- 
 tion. Stern and severe when occasion called, he could 
 be tender as the gentlest woman, and, when he passed 
 away before the " three score and ten," many of us felt 
 that we had lost a skilful adviser, a fast friend, and an 
 instructive companion. The older part of the com-
 
 156 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 munity will heartily endorse my words. A useful life 
 never dies, and leaves the world its everlasting debtor. 
 Good lives are the best wealth of nations. 
 
 But now, having " paid out " quite enough line, I 
 must " reel up," and simply " hook it." Yet, ere I say 
 good-night, let me advise the visitor to the " Fair City " 
 to ascend the pine-clad eminence of Kinnoul, where a 
 noble prospect rewards his brief ascent. 
 
 Lo ! the " Fair City," where a fearless man 
 The cause of truth and purity began 
 Knox, the rude instrument of ruder days, 
 Unavved by censure and unbought by praise. 
 Here rise thy Gothic glories, proud Kinfauns, 
 Amid umbrageous elms and swelling lawns. 
 There Elcho frowns as grimly as of yore, 
 When mail-clad Wallace swam from shore to shore. 
 And yonder looms the lonely spectral tower,* 
 Round which the clouds of grey tradition lower ; 
 While, 'mid the vale, with Earn's wanderings bright, 
 The camp-crowned Moredun rears his piny height. 
 There Scone, half buried 'mid the ancient trees, 
 That speak of regal crowns to every breeze ; 
 And near the walls that yew,t so sadly green, 
 Planted and trained by Scotia's luckless Queen. 
 There hoary Huntingtower,* like some grey shade, 
 Telling of wassail wild and ruthless raid. 
 Lo ! green Dunsinnan rises o'er the plain, 
 For Shakespeare famous and the murderous Thane, 
 And yonder Birnam stands as then it stood, 
 When onward marched the dark portentous " wood." 
 A glorious vision of the rolling Tay, 
 Leaving his mists and mountains far away 
 Like a bold chieftain, gathering from the hills 
 His mingling myriads of resounding rills, 
 Till, one loud voice towards the ocean hurled, 
 He speaks with half the waters of a world. 
 
 * Abernethy has a round tower similar to those of Brechin and Ireland. 
 t Planted by Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 I The " Raid of Ruthven."
 
 THE TAY. 157 
 
 And now, as the gloaming is drawing its curtains, and 
 I have tied up in a bouquet my last sprig of heather, I 
 cannot help falling into a reverie ; for there is some- 
 thing sad about the last of anything the last pressure of 
 the /land at parting the last word from lips that are 
 soon to be silent the last wave of the white handker- 
 chief, as the emigrant vessel spreads her snowy plumage 
 to the breeze or even the last line of a book that has 
 been a pleasant companion, at least to the author. 
 Drifting slowly home in the deepening twilight, I think 
 of all that the wandering Tay has seen since he left his 
 moist heathy bed amid 
 
 "The far-off mosses of his Highland home." 
 
 He has seen much, had he only a tongue to tell the 
 varied story. And I muse about a stream of more 
 solemn importance like himself, far-travelled, deep in 
 experience, and upon whose sea-ward current we are all 
 floating to the cloud-hidden and mysterious end. 
 
 THE STREAM OF LIFE. 
 
 " The thing that has been, it is that which shall be : and that which is 
 clone is that which shall be done : and there is no new thing under the sun." 
 
 STREAM ! thou hast travelled far, 
 Tell me what thou hast seen 
 
 'Mid trouble and toil and war 
 Many a day thou hast been. 
 
 " Yes ! I have wandered long ; 
 
 Yes ! I have wandered far. 
 Ever about me throng 
 
 Trouble and toil and war.
 
 158 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 " Strange is the gift I bear 
 On to the greedy sea. 
 
 Misery, mirth, and care 
 Travel along with me. 
 
 " Tears, like a bitter rain, 
 
 Melt in my passing wave. 
 Mine is the crimson stain, 
 
 Caught from the blood of the brave. 
 
 " Over the wrecks of state 
 
 Often my tide hath rolled, 
 Or wafted a gorgeous freight 
 
 Of the glittering idol gold. 
 
 " I have listened to burning vows, 
 Broken as soon as breathed. 
 
 I have witnessed glorious brows 
 Pallid when newly wreathed. 
 
 " I have seen the love of morn 
 
 Turn to noon-day hate. 
 I have heard the lips of scorn 
 
 Flatter the wealthy great. 
 
 " I have known the rites of Faith 
 Flourish and fade and change. 
 
 Nothing of life or death 
 Reckon I new or strange. 
 
 " Trouble and toil and care, 
 Battle and guile and pain 
 
 All that my waters bear, 
 Was, and shall be again.
 
 THE TAV. 159 
 
 " Fruit and blossom and bud, 
 
 Spoils of many a tree, 
 Hurry along my flood, 
 
 Down to a shoreless sea. 
 
 " Life is my ancient name 
 
 Death is my ocean-goal 
 Changing, yet ever the same, 
 
 On through the world I roll." 
 
 As we live where neither " look back " nor " stand still" 
 but "forward!" is the word of command, why should 
 I not bring my Rambles to a close with a short sermon 
 in verse ? 
 
 LOT'S WIFE; OR, LOOK NOT BEHIND. 
 
 " Look not behind !" the Angel cried 
 
 " Salvation lies before. 
 Betake thee to the mountain-side, 
 
 And speed thy way to Zoar. 
 'Ere night, from heaven a fiery rain 
 Will scourge the Cities of the Plain." 
 
 And lo ! while yet the Angel spake, 
 
 From that black sky of doom, 
 Like the darting of a wrathful snake, 
 
 The lightning cleft the gloom, 
 And smote those Cities of the Plain, 
 Where Satan held his guilty reign. 
 
 Meanwhile along the mountain side 
 
 Lot flees with anxious mind, 
 And still he hears the voice that cried, 
 
 " Speed on ! look not behind." 
 And now he sees the walls of Zoar, 
 And feels that safety lies before.
 
 I6O SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 But, deaf to warning, weak of mind, 
 
 And unimpressed of soul, 
 Lot's wayward partner looks behind, 
 
 Where the fiery billows roll, 
 Till, caught amid the hurtling storm, 
 She stands, a lone and lifeless form ! 
 
 Mortal ! beware, whoe'er thou art, 
 
 And whatsoe'er thy state. 
 Resolve to act the righteous part, 
 
 And shun the sinner's fate. 
 To Zion boldly bend thy face 
 " Look not behind," but run the race. 
 
 Youth ! bright with hope, and fresh with health, 
 Cast not thine eyes " behind " 
 
 Far in the distance gleams the wealth 
 Which all who seek will find. 
 
 Thy day is in its dawning yet 
 
 Work ! ere in night that day shall set. 
 
 Manhood ! in ripeness of thy powers, 
 
 The prize lies not "behind." 
 'Tis thine to crown the coming hours 
 
 With conquests of the mind. 
 " Fight the good fight " with all thy might, 
 And victor stand ere falls the night. 
 
 Old age ! thy sun is almost set, 
 
 The day is near its close : 
 Yet look not back press fonvard yet, 
 
 And win well-earned repose. 
 One step or two, and thine shall be 
 " Honour and Immortality."
 
 THE TAY. l6l 
 
 Sinner! cast not thine eyes behind, 
 
 Unless, perchance, it be 
 Food for repentance there to find, 
 
 And deep humility. 
 The Past, with sins of crimson dye. 
 Lifts an accusing voice on high. . 
 
 And even thou, man of holy mind, 
 
 Cast not a backward glance. 
 Heaven lies before, and not behiwi, 
 
 And calls thee to advance. 
 Then run the race till won the prize 
 That gleams for thee in Paradise. 
 
 Mourner ! that weepest o'er the bier 
 
 Where thy lost treasure lies, 
 Gaze forward through the. blinding tear 
 
 That dims thine aching eyes. 
 The Lost shall meet thee in that land 
 Where God shall " wipe " with His own hand 
 The tears of all who onward press, 
 And seek the home where no distress 
 Between the soul and bliss shall stand. 
 There every pilgrim finds a Zoar, 
 Where Toil is done, and Grief is o'er, 
 And breaks no billow on that peaceful shore.
 
 162 SPRIGS OF HEATHER. 
 
 L'ENVOI. 
 
 THE value of a thing depends on the pleasure it imparts. 
 To one man it appears of little or no value ; for it gives 
 him little or no pleasure ; while to another man it is of 
 much worth, because it pleases him much. In the pauses 
 of an uneventful life I have enjoyed a quiet happiness 
 in looking over the days of the past and putting these 
 sketches together, and, if a few brother anglers have 
 drank even a moderate draught of pleasure from this 
 little wayside fountain, to which I have led them, I shall 
 feel that I have not done so in vain 
 
 " Something attempted, something done, 
 Has earned a night's repose." 
 
 My humble effort to amuse the leisure hours of others has 
 been a source of simple amusement to myself, and I would 
 advise all, especially the young beginners of life, to set 
 a definite purpose before them, however trivial. It is 
 good for every one to have 
 
 AN AIM IN LIFE. 
 
 THERE'S nothing like an aim in life 
 
 It bears a holy meaning. 
 The man who has it, from each hour 
 
 Some happiness is gleaning. 
 
 The man, who has it not, is like 
 
 A road to nowhere tending 
 He travels here, he travels there, 
 
 And failure is his ending.
 
 L'ENVOI. 163 
 
 Youth ! entering on the path of life, 
 
 Some purpose set before thee. 
 You must have toil you may have strife 
 
 But angels hover o'er thee. 
 
 And soon or late to glory's goal 
 
 These guardian friends will guide thee. 
 
 They love to watch an earnest soul. 
 And ever are beside thee. 
 
 They fan, with holy wings, the fiame 
 
 Which ardent aims have given, 
 And stamp upon the soul a name, 
 
 That wakens joy in heaven. 
 
 The man alone deserves that name. 
 
 Who feels in Life a meaning, 
 And who, from every manly aim, 
 
 A recompense is gleaning. 
 
 On earth he reaps a pleasure pure, 
 
 The joys of sense transcending. 
 And in the future shall secure 
 
 A pleasure without ending. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Date Due 
 
 <TEO IN U.S.A. CAT. NO 24 161