Various

Comparative—Poetry, Romance, and History—Loch Ard and Flora McIvor—The “Clachan of Aberfoyle”—Lake of Menteith—The Trossachs and Loch Katrine—Ellen and Helen—Loch Achray—Ben Ledi—The View from Stirling Castle—Stirling Town—Bannockburn—The Ochils and the Devon Valley—Alloa—Clackmannan—Kincardine-on-Forth—Tulliallan Castle—Culross: Abbey and Burgh—The “Standard Stone”—Torryburn—Rosyth Castle—“St. Margaret’s Hope”—Dunfermline: Tower, Palace, and Abbey—The New Forth Bridge—Inch Garvie and its Castle—Inverkeithing Bay—Donibristle House—Aberdour—Inchcolm, Cramond, Inchkeith, and May Islands—The Bass Rock—Kirkcaldy Bay—Edinburgh—Leith—Seton—Aberlady—Round to North Berwick—Tantallon Castle.

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Other Scottish streams may dispute with the Forth the prize of beauty, and excel it in length of course and in wealth of commerce. There is none that can contend with it for the palm of historic interest. Nature herself has marked out its valley as the scene of the strife and of the reconciliation of races and creeds. Half the important events in Scottish annals have taken place on or near the banks of the river, and of the Firth—around Doune, and Stirling, and Edinburgh, and Dunfermline; under the shadow of the Campsie and the Ochil Hills; along the margins of the Teith and Allan, Devon and Esk; by the folds of the Forth, or by the shores of Fife and the Lothians. Its course forms no inapt emblem and epitome of the fortunes of Scotland and of the Scottish nation. Drawn from the strength of the hills, and cradled amid scenes of wild and solitary beauty, its deep, dark, winding waters flow through the “Debatable Land” of Roman and Caledonian, of Pict and Scot, of Saxon and Gael. The fords and bridges which Highlander and Lowlander, Whig and Jacobite, have crossed so often on raid or for reprisal, have become bonds of union. The fertile carse-lands wave with the richer harvests for the blood shed in the battles of national independence, and in many a feud now ended and forgotten. The Forth, that “bridled the wild Highlandman,” has become the symbol of peace and the highway of intercourse between South and North.

Poetry and Romance, as well as History, have made the Forth their favourite haunt. The genius of Scottish Romance, or of Scottish History, could nowhere find a prouder seat than Ben Lomond. At its feet are the waters of Loch Lomond, losing themselves to the north among the enclosing folds of the hills, and broadening out southwards to embrace their beautiful islands; while beyond, like a map, lie the mountains of the West, from Skye to Kintyre, touched here and there with gleams of loch and sea, and with blurs of smoke from factory stalk or steamer. From the other flank of the mountain issues the infant Forth. Ben Lomond presides over all its devious wanderings, from the source to the sea. It looks directly down upon “Rob Roy’s country;” and close at hand, and within the basin of the Forth, are Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. The towers of Stirling, and even the “reek” of Edinburgh, may be descried on a clear day. Following the broad valley of the Forth, the eye can take in the sites to which cling most closely the heroic or pathetic memories of “the days of other years;” and over the whole glorious landscape Walter Scott has thrown the glamour of his genius.

Romance works with a charm more powerful than that of History itself in attracting visitors to the head-waters of the Forth and Teith, and in enhancing the marvellous natural beauties of their lake and mountain scenery. True, few except stout pedestrians and ardent anglers follow up the Duchray Water, past ivied Duchray Castle, to the corries that seam the base of Ben Lomond. But the path from Inversnaid, that skirts Loch Chon and the more famous and more beautiful northern head-stream of the Forth that issues from it, is not so unfrequented. Further down, Loch Ard opens again, and yet again, a lovely mirror in which are reflected the changeful outlines and rich colours of its girdling hills and woods. Oak coppice, interspersed with the shining trunks of the birch and the dark green of the pines, climbs over every knoll, and clings to every crag, and even covers the little island on the lake, where Duke Robert of Albany hoped to find a refuge from his enemies. Above copse-wood and lake rise the brown slopes and grey precipices of Ben Vogrieh and of Craigmore; while the conical head and broad flanks of Ben Lomond shoulder themselves into view, and close the top of the glen.

But the enchantment of Loch Ard would not be complete did not the form of Flora McIvor yet haunt the Linn of Ledeart, in the guise of the Highland Muse, as when first she startled and threw a spell over Edward Waverley; and did not her voice—wild and plaintive as the legends of the land and the genius of its race—mingle, as of yore, with the murmur of the stream. The pass by the lake-side still seems to have the commanding figure of Helen MacGregor presiding over it, and eyeing menacingly Saxon intrusion into this refuge of a proscribed clan. The “Clachan of Aberfoyle,” now unexceptionable as a place of travellers’ entertainment, can never be disassociated from the memorable experiences of a night’s quarters at “Jeanie MacAlpine’s.” At the “Fords of Frew,” we think, more than of anything else, of Rob Roy slipping the belt-buckle in midstream, and of the moving and mysterious night interview on the neighbouring moor between Francis Osbaldistone and Di Vernon.

THE FORTH.

THE FORTH.

The “Clachan” is now all spick and span; but its surroundings are the same. The brawling waters tumble in white foam from Loch Ard, and, mixing with the Duchray, pour their deep sombre current—the Avondhu, or “Black River”—on past Gartmore to wind in labyrinthine folds through the level mosslands towards Stirling. And the natives of the Upper Forth, while they have forgotten the real history of their district, will show you, chained to the tree in front of the inn windows, the veritable “coulter” with which Bailie Nicol Jarvie did such credit to his Highland blood, and the selfsame oak-stump from which he hung suspended over the lake; nor have they wholly lost faith in the Fairy People—the Daoine Shi, or “Men of Peace”—with whom these hills and valleys have from time immemorial been favoured haunts.

From Aberfoyle, the direct road to Stirling, leaving the Forth, winds round the margin of the Lake of Menteith, overlooked by the outposts of the Grampians, and overlooking the rich beauty of a plain which rises on its southern side behind Bucklyvie and Kippen, to the lower heights and smoother outlines of the Campsie and Fintry Hills. Here, in the heart of Menteith, we are in the country of “the Graemes,” and many legends of the great House of Montrose linger about this, as about other spots in the basin of the Forth. But the Lake of Menteith has still earlier and prouder memories. The Comyns and the Stewarts—the old lords of Menteith—wielded almost regal power from their island-castle of Talla; and within bowshot is the larger isle of Inchmahone, where part of the ancient Priory still stands in the shadow of its planes and orchard trees. Mary Stuart spent part of her childhood in the “Isle of Rest”—perhaps the quietest and sweetest period of her troubled life—when it was thought wise, after the battle of Pinkie, to remove the young Queen of Scots to a place of safety.

“ELLEN’S ISLE.”

“ELLEN’S ISLE.”

The Trossachs and Loch Katrine can be reached in a couple of hours, on foot, from Aberfoyle. More even than the Upper Forth and the banks of Lochs Ard and Menteith, these scenes at the head-waters of the Teith, immortalised in “The Lady of the Lake,” are the abodes of the spirit of Highland romance and the shrines of tourist pilgrimage. Once this “fastness of the North” was the impregnable retreat of the proscribed clan of the MacGregors, whence they issued to harry the shores of Loch Lomond with fire and sword, and levy black-mail and empty byres in the Lennox. A century and a half ago it was still thought unsafe for peaceably disposed folk to approach the district, and in the memory of men still alive it had hardly acquired more than local fame for its beauty.

Walter Scott and his metrical and prose romances have changed all that. A stream of tourists flows steadily through the passes all the summer and autumn, and more fitfully at other seasons; and steamers, stage-coaches, and hotels have strangely altered the aspect of this “Scottish Lake Country.” But the “everlasting hills” look down on it unchanged. The crest of Ben Lomond still dominates the western end of Loch Katrine, girt in by hillsides, or opening into glens as stern and almost as solitary as when they echoed back the slogan of Roderick Dhu. Round the lower extremity of the lake the mountains take closer rank and more varied forms; and the broken and impending precipices, the winding and opening waters, the wooded shores and islands, fringed with grey rock or “silver strand,” seem, as when Fitz-James first set his foot here, an “enchanted land” over which Ben Venue and Ben An stand sentinels:—

THE TROSSACHS AND BEN VENUE.

On the cloven side of Ben Venue is the “Coir-nan-Uriskin”—the Goblin’s Cave or Hollow—deserted of its unearthly denizens since it has become an object of interest to the tourist. “Ellen’s Isle,” clad with wood to the water’s edge, seems to shelter in the shadow of the northern shore. Cromwell’s men, clambering up the pass, found that the women and children of the clan had sought refuge here; and one bold soldier swam out to the island to bring away a boat. Hardly had he touched ground when a woman—Helen Stuart—drew a dagger from below her apron and slew him. A minstrel’s music has slightly changed the name and wholly changed the associations, and the spot is dedicated to another Ellen and to the gentler fancies, not the rude facts, of the days of old.

From the “Silver Strand” opposite Ellen’s Isle you wind for a couple of miles through the “bristled territory” of the Trossachs before you reach Loch Achray, and “the copse-wood grey that waves and weeps” above the second of the chain of lakes. Ben An and Ben Venue hold the place of sentries to left and to right, and seem to have tumbled down into the narrow pass huge fragments from their splintered sides, to block the way against intruders into this old sanctuary of the Gael. In vain; their very efforts have but added to the wild impressiveness of the scene, and to the crowds that come to wonder and admire. It would be “to gild refinÈd gold” to describe the beauties of the Trossachs—the scene where Nature seems to have tried to produce, within the narrowest compass, the most bewildering effects by mingling her materials of rock and foliage and falling waters. Their praises have been sung in words that linger in every memory.

Toilsome indeed must the path have been to trace when the wandering James V. came hither in pursuit of game. But a fine road now threads the depths of the ravine, and skirting Loch Achray, and passing the Trossachs Hotel and Church, brings us to Brig of Turk and the opening of “lone Glenfinlas,” the haunt of Highland deer and of Highland legend. Every green nook and cranny, every glimpse of copse-wood and tumbling water, moss-grown hut and lichened rock, is a temptation to linger by the way. But Duncraggan must be passed; then Lanrick Mead, at the west end of Loch Vennachar, the meeting-place of the Clan Alpine, summoned by the “Fiery Cross;” and by-and-bye the sounding torrent of Carchonzie, where the Vennachar “breaks in silver” from its lake, and near it Coilantogle Ford, the scene of the deadly strife between James Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu. By this time the form of Ben Ledi—the “Hill of God,” the high altar of the old Druidical worship—has lifted itself up mightily upon the left, and, furthest outpost in this direction of the higher Grampians, keeps watch over the “mouldering lines” of the Roman encampment on Bochastle, the Pass of Leny, and the modern village of Callander. It looks across to Ben Voirlich and the heathy solitudes of Uam-Var, where the “noble stag” was first started upon the eventful Chase, and abroad on a prospect which may compare, for richness, variety, and extent, with that from Ben Lomond.

Not less magnificent in its own way, and far more accessible, is the view from the bridge of Callander, where the most impressive features of the scene are Ben Ledi itself, the high crag that forms the background of the village, and the deeply wooded flanks of the pass, down which foam the waters of the Leny, coming from the “Braes of Balquhidder” and Loch Lubnaig, to hold romantic tryst here with the stream from Loch Vennachar, and between them to form the Teith. But we must downward with the Teith towards Stirling, only glancing at a few of the scenes on its banks—at the wooded glen of the Keltie, embosoming the far-famed Falls of Bracklinn; at Cambusmore, where Scott began his “Lady of the Lake;” and above all at the “bannered towers of Doune,” its huge feudal walls rising above the Teith—walls saturated from dungeon to turret with memories of grim or pathetic events in the histories of the Stewarts of Menteith and Moray, and in the lives of Mary Stuart of Montrose, and of Charles Edward. Murdoch, Duke of Albany, is thought to have built Doune, and may have planted its “Dool Tree.” When Murdoch was executed, along with his sons and adherents, on the “Heading Hill” at Stirling, it was on a spot where his eyes might fall upon the strong new castle upon which he had built his hopes of safety.

At Stirling Castle it will be convenient to take our next stand, and see “the mazy Forth unravelled.” No baronial castle on the Rhine or Danube is more romantically and commandingly placed than these “towers of Snowdoun,” or surveys a fairer scene. One can imagine the time—but yesterday in the geologist’s record—when the broad valley of the river was filled with the sea, back to the roots of the Grampians, and when Stirling Rock, with its neighbour bluffs, the Abbey Craig and Craigforth, rose as islands or peninsulas over the waters, each with its slope towards the east and its front to the west. The sea has long receded, and Stirling now dominates the green and level floor of its fertile carse. Through the middle of the landscape meanders the Forth, in immense loops and folds—“a foiled circuitous wanderer”—

and using, as it would seem, every circumvolution and chance of tarrying or turning back, to avoid meeting with the Teith, the Allan, and the Bannock, at the base of Stirling Rock. From where the stream debouches from the hills into Flanders Moss, to where it meets the tide-water at Stirling Bridge, there is said to be a fall of only eighteen feet in some eighteen miles, measured “as the crow flies”—a distance increased fourfold by following the intricate gyres of the dark still waters. Below the Bridge, to which vessels are able to come up from the sea, the river still continues to double and turn as far as Alloa, in those “links o’ Forth,” each of which, according to the old rhyme, is “worth an Earldom in the North.”

Flat and tame as are the immediate banks of the river, draining through ancient mosses, now turned for the most part into rich corn-bearing land, goodly sites are close at hand in the plain, on the slopes of the enclosing hills, or in the tributary valleys—among them Cardross, and Blair-Drummond, and Keir, all famous in the annals of Scottish law, agriculture, and literature; and Airth and Airthrey Castles, which carry the mind from the doughty deeds of Sir John the Graeme to those of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Of what lies within the valley of the Teith we have seen something. But the banks of Allan Water, behind the favourite Spa of Bridge of Allan and its embosoming woods and hills, are almost as well worth exploring; for they lead, to mention but a few of their attractions, to Dunblane and its beautiful old Cathedral, to Sheriffmuir, and to the Roman Camp at Ardoch.

The tide of Scottish history long flowed towards and around Stirling Castle. The time when it was not a place of strength and of strife is lost in the mists of antiquity. Early, too, it became the seat of kings; and the Castle, and the little burgh upon the slope behind, have witnessed many a stirring sight. Scottish Parliaments were held here, or in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, whose ruined tower rises, on a “link of Forth,” opposite what is now the railway station. Sovereigns were born and baptised, were wedded and buried, held joyous jousts, and committed foul deeds of blood and shame, on Stirling Rock or under its shadow.

The buildings on the highest platform of the Rock—still a fortified and garrisoned place—surround the “Upper Square.” What is the Armoury was the Chapel, erected on the site of an older Chapel Royal, by the “Scottish Solomon,” to celebrate, with pomp till then unheard of, the baptism of Prince Henry. Opposite is the Palace of James V., its front still embossed with the remains of rich carvings and uncouth sculpture. The Parliament House, built by James III. (now put to barrack purposes), and the building within which James II. stained his name and [Pg 49][Pg 50]race with blood, by stabbing to the heart the Earl of Douglas, complete a group of buildings upon which have been indelibly impressed the character and the fate of the Sovereigns of the House of Stuart. The visitor to Stirling Castle can view Highlands and Lowlands from “Queen Mary’s Lookout;” and then, for change of sympathy and impression, inspect the pulpit and communion-table of John Knox; or, if his faith be great, the dungeon where Roderick Dhu drew his latest breath. The windy hollow between the Castle and the “Gowling Hills,” he is told, is Ballengeich, of which that hero of ballad adventure, James V., was “Gudeman.” The most distant of these braes was the “Mote” or “Heading Hill,” the old place of execution, where many a noble and guilty head has fallen—the Albany faction and the murderers of James I. among the number. Below the Castle, on the other side, are the King’s Garden and King’s Park, the scenes of the sports and diversions in the olden time, where James II. held tournaments, and James IV. delighted in his “Table Round.”

Nor are the history and aspect of the town of Stirling unworthy of its noble station. It, also, is crammed with memories and antiquities—from the square tower of the West Church, grouping so well with the buildings on the Castle, and surmounting the hall where Knox preached and the infant James VI. was crowned, down to the burial-place of the murdered James III., under the tower of Cambuskenneth and close by the winding Forth.

But the historical fame and interest of Stirling rest perhaps more upon the bloody and decisive battles fought in its neighbourhood, than upon anything else. From the Castle ramparts one can look down upon Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn, and Sauchie; and Falkirk, Kilsyth, Sheriffmuir, and other stricken fields, reaching from the ’45 back to Pictish and Roman times, are not far off. In memory of the Struggle for Independence, but especially of William Wallace, the presentment of a feudal tower, surmounted by a mural crown, rises to a height of over 200 feet on the summit of the Abbey Craig, the most commanding site, next to Stirling Rock itself, in the valley. The Bridges—the old and the new—lie midway between these two bold bluffs. But the former venerable edifice, though it could also tell its strange stories of civil broil, and, among others, of how an Archbishop was hung on its parapet three centuries ago, is by no means the structure where the “Protector of Scotland,” watching the passage of the Forth (probably from the slopes of the Abbey Craig), taught so terrible a lesson to Cressingham and the English invaders. This, by all accounts, was a wooden structure placed half a mile above the moss-grown buttresses of the present Old Bridge of Stirling.

The fame of the battle fought at Stirling Bridge in 1297, and of the other fight, so disastrous to the Scottish cause, that took place a year later at Falkirk, has been quite obscured by the Bruce’s great victory at Bannockburn. One never thinks of Stirling without remembering that near by is the field where was decided, for three centuries, and indeed for all time, the history and fortunes of Scotland. The banks of the Bannock are now peaceful enough, and the people of the village of that name, and of the neighbouring hamlet of St. Ninians, lying still nearer Stirling and the battle-ground, are occupied with nothing more warlike than the weaving of tartans. The slough in which the English chivalry sank, and were overpowered, is now drained and cultivated land. But a fragment of the “Bore Stone,” where Bruce set up his standard, is still preserved; and the “Gillies’ Hill,” behind, commemorates the opportune appearance of the camp-followers of the Scottish army, when they hoisted their blankets on their tent-poles,

putting a finish to the rout of Edward II.’s troops.

Leaving Stirling and Bannockburn and all their memories behind us, we can now embark upon the Forth, and follow its broadening stream towards the open sea. The fat carse-lands are still on either hand, rimmed in on one side by the furrowed flanks of Dunmyatt and the Ochils, and bounded on the other by the Campsie Fells, crowned, far off, by Earl’s Seat; while beyond, on a clear day such as we have bespoken for our readers, the Bens grouped around the sources of the Forth and Teith lift themselves into view, fronted effectively by the towers of Stirling and the Abbey Craig. As we face now east, now west, now north, now south, on our devious way, these objects shift place bewilderingly, and more and more the “foot-hills” of the Ochils come down to take their place and give a bolder character to the foreground scenery of the Forth.

Very beautiful, at all seasons and in all lights, is this historic range, with its wonderful variety of form and play of shadows. As tales of wild Highland foray and stieve Lowland endurance are mingled in its annals, so the pastoral and mountainous combine in this its southern aspect; and the result is harmony. From the summit of Ben Clench, the highest of the Ochils, and from other coigns of ’vantage, you can gaze down into peaceful, secluded glens, familiar only to the sheep and the curlew, or into busy valleys lined by thriving villages and factory stalks, from which arises the smoke of the bleaching, spinning, and other manufacturing industries that have long had a home in the heart of these hills. Or you can look abroad and take in at one sweeping glance the whole breadth of the country from Glasgow to Dundee—from the Lammermoors and the North Sea to Ben Nevis and the hills of Arran.

But the greatest of the glens of the Ochils is that followed by the “clear-winding Devon,” over many a rocky scaur and past many a busy mill-wheel, on its way to join the Forth at Cambus. It would take a volume to do justice to the beauties, wild and soft, of the Devon Valley, and to the associations, warlike and peaceful, that have gathered around its noted places; to attempt to describe Crook o’ Devon and Rumbling Bridge, the “Devil’s Mill” and the “Cauldron Linn,” and Dollar and Alva Glens; to collect the memories that cluster about Tillycoultry and Alva, and Menstry and Tullibody; to dwell upon the attractions of its excellent trouting streams; or to peer among the shadows that appropriately shroud the ruins of Castle Campbell—the “Castle of Gloom”—overlooking the “Burn of Sorrow,” harried in revenge against Argyll for the burning of the “Bonnie House o’ Airlie.”

Unless one has a few days to spare that cannot well be better spent than in exploring Glen Devon and the nooks of the Ochils, he can only glance at the charming wooded valley and blue inviting heights as he follows the windings of the Forth, past the flat green “inches” of Tullibody and Alloa, under the North British Railway Bridge crossing the river between these two islands, to the busy town of Alloa.

More than Alloa itself, with its fame for the brewing of ale, and signs of active shipping and manufacturing trade, the eye will be attracted by Alloa Tower and Park, now the seat of the Earl of Mar and Kellie; for here once ruled the old line of the Erskines, Earls of Mar; here Queen Mary paid repeated visits, sailing up the Forth to meet Darnley, under the conduct of Bothwell as High Admiral; and here her son, King James, spent part of his boyhood, under the eye of the Regent Mar and the strict disciplinary rod of George Buchanan.

Below Alloa the river straightens and widens, taking more and more the character of an estuary. One should not miss noting the scattered houses of the old town of Clackmannan, scrambling up the slope to its church and the ancient tower of the Bruces. Clackmannan is the place which Aytoun’s recluse thought of selecting for rural retirement, because, “though he had often heard of it, he had never heard of anybody who had been there.” It is more out of the world than ever, now that county business has flitted to Alloa. Its visage is not, however, so forlorn as that of Kincardine-on-Forth, the pier of which we now approach; for Kincardine has plainly seen better days, and has little expectation of seeing their return. It was once a busy shipbuilding and shipowning port; and close by was distilled the famous Kilbagie whisky, by which the tinkler in the “Jolly Beggars” swore. Now there is no Kilbagie, and no shipping business to speak of; and Kincardine is a “dead-and-alive” place, and more dead than alive. There are many places like it all along the shores of the Forth—places favoured by special times and special circumstances of trade, which has since drifted or been drawn elsewhere.

The massive grey ruins of Tulliallan Castle are in the woods close behind Kincardine. This also was once a stronghold of the Bruces—in fact, it is “Bruce Country” all the way along this northern shore of the Forth, until we come to the last constriction of the estuary, over which the great railway bridge is being thrown at Queensferry. The spidery red limbs of this new giant bestriding the sea begin to come in sight after passing Kincardine Ferry and rounding Longannet Point. For now, especially when the broad mudbanks of the foreshore are covered at high water, the river takes a truly spacious expansion; the salt water begins to assert dominion over the fresh, and the line of the southern bank retires to the distance of three or four miles. It is no great loss; for Grangemouth and Bo’ness are little other than ports for the shipment of coal and pig-iron. The Carron Works show like pillars of fire by night and pillars of smoke by day, hiding Falkirk and Camelon and other spots of historic note. Further east the low shore-line is backed by a monotonous ridge that shuts us out from sight of the valley of which Linlithgow, with its loch and royal palace, is the centre; and even the woods of Kinneil, and the knowledge that along this crest, starting on the shore near the old Roman station of Carriden, run the remains of “Grime’s Dyke”—the Wall of Antonine—fail to make the southern side a joy to the eye. There is metal more attractive near at hand, within the sweep of the Bay of Culross.

Culross—Koo’ross, as the name sounds familiarly to the ears of those who know it—cherishes a fond tradition that Turner the painter, who visited Sir Robert Preston at the Abbey in the beginning of the century, compared its bay with that of Naples, rather to the disadvantage of the latter. Local partiality is doubtless the father of the legend. Yet there are wonderful charms embraced by the curve of coast facing the south and the Firth, betwixt “Dunimarle and Duniquarle,” with Preston Island and its ruined buildings in the string of the arc; the grey and white walls and red roofs of the little royal burgh, following the sinuosity of the shore, or struggling up the wooded slopes; the “corniced” roads and “hanging gardens” behind; crowning the near foreground, the Norman tower of the Abbey Church, the ruins of the ancient monastery, and the stately faÇade of the mansion of Culross Abbey (the design, it is said, of Inigo Jones); and behind, the forest, moorland, and cultivated tracts, rising towards the wavy green lines, fading into blue in the distance, of the Ochils and of the Cleish and Saline Hills. With the fresh light of morning or the soft colours of evening upon the waters and upon the hills, the scene may well be deemed lovely. Circumscribed as is the space, and few and insignificant as are the remaining actors, Culross and its vicinity have been the theatre of famous events, and have reared many men prominent in the civil and religious history of the country. Here St. Serf, the Apostle of Fife, is supposed to have been born, and to have died. Here St. Thenew, daughter of “King Lot of Lothian,” landed from the rotten shallop in which she had been cast adrift at Aberlady, far down the coast, and gave birth to the more famous St. Kentigern, or Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow. From Culross downward, both shores of the Firth, and the islands in its midst, are strewn with the memorials and traditions of the early Culdee missionaries, whose humble cells later became the sites of the wealthier and more imposing religious houses of Catholic times. Besides St. Serf and St. Mungo, Fillan, Palladius, Adamnan, Adrian, Monans, and Columba himself, set their imprint upon these curving coasts and solitary islets; and Inverkeithing, Dysart, and Pittenweem; Abercorn, Inchcolm, Inchkeith, the May, and the Bass, are among the places sanctified by memories of the Early Church.

It was not till 1217 that the Monastery of Culross, of which only some fragments remain, was founded by Malcolm, Earl of Fife. At the Reformation the Abbey lands passed chiefly into the hands of the Colvilles of Culross, and this family, with the Erskines, the Cochranes, the Prestons, and the Bruces, have since successively had “the guidin’ o’t” in the burgh and the surrounding district. So far from the ecclesiastical eminence of Culross terminating with St. Serf, it has continued almost down to our own day; for the town, and the district back from it—at Carnock, and eastward along the hill-skirts to Hill of Beath and beyond—have witnessed the keenest struggles between Conformity and Schism—have been special scenes of the labours of Bishop Blackadder and Bishop Leighton the “Saintly;” of John Row, and of John Blackadder the Covenanter, who held his Conventicles under the wakeful and vengeful eye of Dalzell of Binns—him with the “vowed beard,” whose hill-top for “glowering owre” Fife is on the opposite side of the Firth; and in later times, of Boston, of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, of Gillespie, and of other founders of the “Relief Church.”

Culrossians might adopt the Bruce motto, “Fuimus,” to describe their industrial as well as their religious past. More than once the burgh has been a spot favoured by trade, as well as by history. The celebrated Sir George Bruce, of Carnock, made its fortunes, as well as his own, by coal-mining and salt-making in the days of James I. of England. Remains, in the shape of a heap of stones, uncovered at low water, are seen of the “Moat”—an “unfellowed and unmatchable work; a darke, light, pleasant, profitable hell,” as John Taylor, the “Water Poet” described it in the early years of the seventeenth century—constructed to work the minerals lying under the bed of the sea. But Culross’s prosperity did not come to an end with them. Throughout Scotland its “girdles”—iron plates for baking the oaten bread of the “Land o’ Cakes”—were also “unfellowed and unmatchable” for many a day. The first of note among the ancestors of the Earl of Rosebery was of the honest guild of the girdlesmiths of the burgh. A “Cu’ross girdle” will soon only be found in an archÆological museum; their glory is departing, their use will soon be forgotten.

A lingering look may be cast in the direction of the “Standard Stone,” at Bordie, where Duncan and Macbeth withstood the Danes; and of the Castlehill, or Dunimarle, near by, which lays claim to be the scene of the murder of Lady Macduff and her “pretty chickens” by the Usurper—a claim, however, disputed by the “Thane’s Castle,” near East Wemyss, by Rhives, and by other sites in the East of Fife. To this famous Whig shire we eventually come at Torryburn, for thus far, since leaving Stirling, we have been skirting on the left the shores of Clackmannan and of a sporadic fragment of Perthshire projected upon the Forth. In its scenic, social, and historic characteristics, however, the whole ground, from where the river begins to broaden, is “Fifish,” and, from Dunmyatt to the “East Neuk,” bears the traces, in place-names, legends, and ancient remains, of old Pictish possession, and of Norse, Saxon, and Highland incursions; of Culdee settlement and of Roman intrusion; and of all the later strife, in Kirk and State, in which Fife has “borne the gree.” Neighbours have been ready to observe that the joint effects of geographical isolation and outside pressure are quite as deeply marked in the character, habits, and ways of the inhabitants; and that, besides occupying a separate “Kingdom,” they are in many respects a “peculiar people.”

Charlestown and Limekilns, after Culross, are but upstart villages, built by the Earls of Elgin as shipping-places for the coal, lime, and ironstone upon their Broomhall Estate. Before us, a prominent object by the shore, is the stark grey keep of Rosyth Castle. And now we are fairly in “St. Margaret’s Hope,” and under the shelter of the high ground projecting from the Fife shore, which narrows, by a full half, the width of the Firth, and forms, with Inch Garvie island as a stepping-stone in mid-channel, the natural abutment whence the Forth Bridge makes its flying leap to the southern bank. From the lee of this rocky ridge Queen Mary, having rested at Rosyth, set sail for the other shore, after her escape from Loch Leven Castle. On the beach here Sir Patrick Spens may have paced when the “braid letter” was put into his hands, sending him on the luckless voyage to bring back the “Maiden of Norway,” while not far off

But most famous of the events in the annals of the “Hope”—and one of the epoch-making accidents in the history of Scotland—was the landing, in 1069, of Edgar Atheling and his sisters in this safe harbourage, after grievous tossings by storms and ill-fortune. The then royal residence of Dunfermline is four miles distant, the road leading past Pitreavie, where, six centuries later, Cromwell, descending from the Ferry Hill, so terribly mauled the Scottish army. Tradition points out a stone where the weary Saxon Princess Margaret rested, on a way which became so familiar to her. For she found favour in the sight of King Malcolm Canmore, and made many journeys, by the haven and the ferry that bear her name, to Edinburgh, and to pilgrim shrines in the south. It might almost be said that civilisation, and the English speech, and the Roman hierarchy and influence, landed on the Scottish shores with Saint Margaret; and the whole district around the “Queen’s Ferry” is redolent with memories of her to this day.

“Dunfermline Tower,” or rather the foundations of what is considered the first royal seat there, are within the grounds of Pittencrieff, on the high bank overlooking the Lyne burn. Farther up, and more adjacent to the modern town, is the Palace, built in later times, and still showing a stately front, sixty feet in height, rising above the ancient trees and overlooking the beautiful Glen. Beyond these walls, and the crypt-like chambers which served as kitchen and other offices, little of the Palace remains. The mullioned windows are pointed out of the rooms in which Charles I. and his sister Elizabeth, the “Winter Queen” of Bohemia, were born, and where Charles II. signed the “Solemn League and Covenant;” but within, as without, they only look into “empty air.”

The Palace communicated by underground passages with the Abbey, founded and dedicated to the Holy Trinity by Malcolm Canmore and Margaret in 1072, and enlarged and beautified by the munificence and piety of their successors. Beyond fragments of the walls, nearly all that remains of the monastic buildings is the Frater Hall, with the delicate Gothic tracery of its west window. But close behind is the Abbey Church, surrounded by its graves, its rookery, and the old houses of the town; and it still ranks as one of the proudest and best-preserved specimens of Anglo-Norman church architecture in Scotland. Rich and quaint are the carvings on its doorways, and dim and mysterious is the light that falls through its illuminated windows as you tread your way between the massive old pillars, and literally over the dust of kings and princes, to the spacious and lightsome New Abbey Church. This portion of the Abbey structure was rebuilt seventy years ago, and in the course of the operations the workmen came upon the tomb and remains of Robert the Bruce—recognisable, among other evidences, by the gigantic stature and by the breast-bone, from which a piece had been sawn to reach the heart that Douglas sought to carry to the Holy Land. The tomb of Malcolm and Margaret is at the east end, and without the present limits of the church; and within, besides “The Bruce,” there are buried a score of Scottish Sovereigns and princes, including David I., the builder of monasteries, and the “Sair Saunt for the Crown,” and Alexander III., whose fatal mischance near Kinghorn was the beginning of the national troubles.

One may range far before finding a group of buildings so intrinsically beautiful, so historically interesting, and so fitly set amid their surroundings. For Dunfermline has many things else, old and new, to attract the visitor—from the “Oratory Cave” of Queen Margaret, to its handsome municipal buildings and Free Library and Baths, the gifts of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. It is a “live place,” and not one existing merely on the memories of its past; for it has extensive and growing industries in coal and linen. But it will always be more the “City of Kings” than the seat of trade.

From the old Bartizan Tower of the Abbey Church, one can survey a dozen shires, and—contrast as strange as the light and shadow in the churches below—a glimpse is caught, beyond North Queensferry Point, of the limbs of the New Forth Bridge. This gigantic work represents the second undertaking adopted by the North British Railway and the supporting companies for shortening the journey to the North by throwing a bridge over the narrows at Queensferry. The first plan of a suspension bridge was abandoned, after the catastrophe that befell the structure on the Tay; and the design (by Sir John Fowler and Mr. Baker) now on the point of completion is that of a cantilever bridge, founded on three sets of piers—at the edge of the deep-water channels on the north and south sides, and on Inch Garvie island in the middle—united, over the fairways of navigation, by central girders. The whole space spanned is over a mile and a half, but fully a third of this distance is occupied by the viaduct approaches to what may be termed the bridge proper, supported at a height of 165 feet above mean sea-level upon a series of stone piers. At this elevation the line is carried across the Firth, which reaches from 30 to 35 fathoms in depth in the channels between Inch Garvie and the north and south shores. Except the supporting bases of stone, the whole central structure is of steel, wrought and fitted in the works on the southern side; and it is estimated that not less than 50,000 tons of metal have been used in the work.

From the three main piers, columned “towers of steel” rise to a height of 630 feet above high-water mark, that on Inch Garvie being wider than the two others. They are formed of tubes of ¾-inch steel, 12 feet in diameter at the base, inclining inwards and towards each other, and united by cross members, in the shape of the letter “X,” for purposes of strength; and from these the intricate bracket-work of upper and lower members, with their connecting struts and ties, stretch out over the Firth, and approach each other near enough to be united by the two 350-feet lattice girders over the fairways. The two great centre spans are each 1,700 feet in width, and the half-spans that join them to the great north and south viaduct piers are 680 feet each. All the strains are concentrated upon the bases of the cantilever piers, and the whole structure gives a remarkable impression of combined lightness and strength, as well as of colossal size. From 3,000 to 4,500 men have been employed for several years upon the Bridge, of which it may almost be said that half of the work is under water and out of sight. Its estimated cost is between two and three millions sterling, and, connected with it, new lines are being constructed, by which passengers and goods will henceforth be carried by the shortest available route from south to north, in despite of the obstacles interposed by the Forth, the Ochils, and the Tay.

Of all the objects dwarfed and changed by the Bridge, Inch Garvie and its Castle have perhaps suffered most. Built long ago to protect the upper waters against the pirates that infested the Outer Firth, it has often since played a part in schemes of national defence. “Roy of Aldivalloch” held Inch Garvie with twenty musketeers against Monk’s troops, at the time of Cromwell’s invasion; and it was afterwards manned to repel Paul Jones. Now, looking down upon it from the summit of the great pier, it seems as if a good-sized stone would crush, like a toy, the queer admixture of old and new buildings huddled upon it. From this great height, both expanses of the Firth, with their bounding shores, lie spread below like a map.

The southern shore, now become once more rich in interest and beauty, has complacently drawn nearer hand. Looking westward, and withdrawing the eyes from the fine amphitheatre of hills that enclose the upper course of the Forth, Blackness Castle—one of the four royal fortalices specially mentioned in the Treaty of Union, and the scene of many stirring events in the national annals: Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton being the others—is full in sight, upon its peninsula. Nearer are the woods of Abercorn, whose history goes back to Roman times, and earlier; closer still, the magnificent colonnaded front, the sea-terraces, the deer-parks, and the stately lime avenues of Hopetoun House, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun; and almost below, and on the hither side of Port Edgar Harbour, the ancient town of South Queensferry. The last few years have made “a mighty difference” in many ways to the little burgh, but have not materially altered the somewhat grimy features of its main street, which runs eastward, at the base of the hill, towards the Bridge, the “Hawes Brae,” and the “Hawes Inn,” where, it will be remembered, Jonathan Oldbuck and his young friend Lovel descended from the Edinburgh Diligence, and cemented acquaintance over a magnum of port, and where, also, adventures first began to overtake the hero of “Kidnapped.”

Turning eastward, this southern shore is prolonged in the wooded knolls of the Dalmeny estate, and round the projecting point, and on the very sea-marge, is the old, but now renovated, Castle of Barnbougle, once the seat of the Mowbrays. Behind it is Dalmeny House, with beautiful sward and woodland extending as far as Cramond, where Lord Rosebery keeps a boat to ferry the public across the Almond water into Midlothian.

These latter objects, as has been said, are out of sight from the Bridge, but on the northern side one sees well into the deep inlet of Inverkeithing Bay, where the old royal burgh, dating from before William the Lion’s time, lies stranded in mud. It is still proud of having witnessed the last assembly of the Culdees, and the first movement of Scottish “Voluntaryism,” and boasts also of containing the “palace” of Queen Annabella Drummond, and the birthplace of Admiral Greig, of the Russian service. For miles the domain of Donibristle follows the advancing and retiring points of the Fife shore, which, now that the outer Firth opens up, recedes away northward as well as eastward. Within the half-circle of Dalgety Bay are the ruins of old Dalgety Church, and what remains of Donibristle House. The estate belongs to the Earl of Moray, the owner of Doune and of many broad lands in the north. The mansion was accidentally burned thirty years ago; but destined for longer remembrance is its burning, not accidental, three centuries since, when took place the tragedy of “the Bonnie Earl o’ Moray.” The “Bonnie Earl”—son-in-law of the famous Regent Moray—was in 1591 slain, as he was escaping from the blazing building, by Gordon of Buckie and other retainers of Lord Huntly, with the connivance, as was suspected, of James VI. The ballad-writers have their explanation, for

An Earl and Regent Moray of an earlier stem—Randolph, the companion of the Bruce and of the Black Douglas—had his home at Aberdour, the next indentation in this singularly beautiful coast. The line had soon to give place to the Douglases, Earls of Morton, who have ruled here for some five centuries, though their old castle, overlooking the lovely bay, with its projecting bluffs and shining sands, now a favourite resort for bathers and summer visitors, has been long untenanted. The wily and unscrupulous Regent Morton came hither to amuse himself with gardening, in the intervals when, from choice or compulsion, he was not in the thick of political intrigue. Edinburgh was always in view from Aberdour, and nature and simple country pursuits could not hold him long. Through the high beech groves and hanging woods, one of the most charming of walks leads for three miles to Burntisland. But the charm is no longer what it was, for the new railway line running athwart the slope has played havoc with the trees.

Outside Aberdour, and partly shielding the bay, is Inchcolm Island. It would need a volume to do justice to the islands of the Forth. Some we have already glanced at. “St. Colme’s Inch,” where, as Shakespeare tells us, the routed Norsemen were fain to crave permission of the Thane of Cawdor to bury their dead, is the most famous of them all—except perhaps the Bass. The square tower and mouldering walls of its Abbey, rising close to the narrow isthmus where the isle is almost cut in two by the sea, are still prominent objects in the view. The Monastery was founded in 1123, by King Alexander I., in gratitude for his miraculous rescue from shipwreck, and entertainment here by a hermit who followed the rule of St. Columba. It once owned rich possessions in half a dozen shires, granted in part by a Lord Alan Mortimer of Aberdour, whose body the monks flung overboard in a storm while crossing to the island, thus giving a name to the inner channel of “Mortimer’s Deep.” Invaders, pirates, and rebels, as well as the hand of time, have since sorely visited the island, but still portions of the old buildings stand, and are even habitable.

Cramond Island, almost opposite Inchcolm, hugs the other shore, and there is a road across the sands to its little farmhouse at low tide; while in the mid-channel there are many rocky islets, some of them the chosen resorts of cormorants and other sea birds. Further down, half-way between Leith Pier and Kirkcaldy Bay, Inchkeith stretches its length for nearly a mile across the Firth. Inchkeith, also, has harboured anchorites and stood sieges; and there are many curious legends connected with its coves and caves. But its most prominent feature is now the white lighthouse perched upon its highest crest; and barely visible to the eye are the powerful batteries that sweep, on the one side, Leith Roads, and on the other side the North Channel, between the island and Pettycur Point, where also great guns are mounted for the defence of the Forth. Then a long way farther out, at the very entrance to the Firth, and visible only in clear weather and easterly wind, runs the long rock wall of the May Island. In other days the May was a great resort of pilgrims, who held it a merit to reach a place so difficult of access, and barren women especially found a blessing in drinking from the well that had refreshed St. Fillan and St. Adrian. There was a religious house here connected with the Priory of Pittenweem on the adjacent Fife coast, but the monks found it by-and-bye most convenient to reside on shore. Though the light of faith has gone out, another light—a guide to the commerce entering the Firth—has been kept burning upon the May for two centuries and a half. Now its only residents are the lighthouse-men and their families, and its only regular visitors are myriads of sea-fowl.

The Carr Rock and Fidra Island lights mark, with the May, the entrance to the Firth; and scattered along the East Lothian coast, from Fidra eastwards, are numerous little islands, “salt and bare.” But none of them have the fame or the aspect of the “Bass.” This huge mass of rock, heaved up by some convulsion of nature, like North Berwick Law and other great bluffs on shore, presents seawards its precipitous cliff, rising sheer to a height of 400 feet, while towards the land it shows a green slope descending steeply to the landing-place and the remains of its old prison castle. The crevices of the rocks are filled with the nests of the solan-goose and other sea-fowl, and the air around is alive with their cries and the sweep of their wings. But otherwise it is impossible to imagine a spot with the aspect of grim isolation more thoroughly impressed upon it. St. Baldred is said to have lived and died on the Bass Rock; but it came most conspicuously forward in history when it was made the prison of the Covenanters, charged with no other offence than that of following their consciences against the will of the King; and afterwards, when its Jacobite garrison held out for years after every other place in the kingdom had submitted to William of Orange.

But on the way from Inchcolm to the Bass, what a marvellous series of noble land and sea pieces, of famous or hallowed sites, we have passed! It were hard to say whether scenic beauty and historical associations cluster more closely upon the shores of the Firth, or upon the surrounding amphitheatre of hills. In the profile of the hills of Fife, the broad-shouldered Lomonds, with their double or triple heads, overtop all—the East Lomond looking down upon the ruins of the old royal hunting seat of Falkland, the scene of Rothesay’s cruel pangs, and the western heights upon Loch Leven and the Island Castle, whence Mary made her romantic escape. More in the foreground are Dunearn, crowded by the remains of a Pictish fort, and the steep, rugged front of the Binn of Burntisland, overhanging the town of that name. Rossend Castle—a favourite residence of the Queen of Scots, where took place the incident that cost the enamoured French poet Chastelard his life—fronts the sea at the west end of Burntisland harbour; and to the east, behind a beautiful sweep of sand and “links,” rises the cliff at which an evil fate overtook Alexander III. and Scotland.

Beyond Pettycur, and the high ground of Grange, once the home of that famous champion, Kirkcaldy of Grange, the wide curve of Kirkcaldy Bay opens up. The old burgh of Kinghorn is at one extremity, and the still more ancient town of Dysart at the other; and the middle foreground is largely occupied by the houses and shipping of the “Lang Toun.” The very names of Kirkcaldy (“Kirk of the Culdees”) and of Dysart (“Desertum”) point to the antiquity and the sanctity of the origin of places that to this day are strongly “Churchy.” The grotesque folk-tale relates that the devil was “buried in Kirkcaldy,” and that his complaint that “his taes were cauld” led the good-natured inhabitants to build house to house, until now the town, with the villages connected, stretches some four miles in a straight line. The story may have had its origin in some of the apostolic doings of St. Serf, who had for a time his “desert” in one of the caves in the red cliffs at Dysart; or else in some magic feat of the wizard Michael Scott—the friend of Dante and Boccaccio—whose weird tower of Balwearie is an uncanny neighbour of the “Lang Toun.” The ruins, close by the shore, of Seafield Tower and of Ravenscraig Castle—the latter the home of the line of “high St. Clair,” and of the “lovely Rosabelle”—are now strangely backed by floor-cloth factories.

KIRKCALDY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.