Various

The Tiber and the Tay—History and Legend—Perthshire and the Tay—The Moor of Rannoch—Blair—Pitlochrie—Killin—Kenmore—The Lyon—The “Rock of Weem”—The “Birks” of Aberfeldy—Dunkeld and Birnam—Invertuthil—The Loch of Clunie—The Isla—Strathmore—Dunsinane Hill—Scone and the Ruthvens—Perth—The Views from Moncrieffe and Kinnoull—Strathearn and the Carse of Gowrie—Dundee—The Tay Bridge, New and Old—View from the “Law”—“Men of Blood” and Men of Business.

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“Behold the Tiber!” said the conquering Roman, when from one of the many ’vantage-grounds commanding the noble stream that sweeps past Perth, the Imperial eagles first saw as fair a scene as they had yet reached in their flight. The ardent lovers of the river—meaning all who know its banks well—have ever since felt, with Scott, half flattered by the traditional compliment, half scornful of the comparison of the puny and “drumlie” Roman stream with the broad, clear, and brimming Tay—the dusty Campus Martius with the green “Inches” of Perth—the featureless and desolate Campagna with the glorious stretch of hill and plain, water and woodland, overlooked from Kinnoull Hill or the “Wicks of Baiglie.”

It is true that when this pioneer of countless hosts of Southern invaders and sightseers came hither, to admire and covet, the Tay flowed through a savage and shaggy land. There might have been a handful of the skin or wicker-work wigwams of the “dwellers in the forest” on the site of Perth, or at Forteviot or Abernethy, afterwards the capitals of the Picts, and a sprinkling of Caledonian coracles on the neighbouring waters. But if Perthshire and the Tay had a history before the coming of Agricola and the building of the lines of Roman roads and stations that converged upon their great camp, dedicated to Mars, near the meeting-place of this prince of Scottish streams with the tributary waters of the Almond and the Earn, it is utterly lost in the mists of antiquity.

History of the most stirring kind the Tay has known enough of since. Every glen and hillside is thronged with memories and legends of the days of romance, which, in Perthshire and on the banks of the Tay, came to an end only about a century ago, when some of the Jacobite lairds were still in exile for being “out” in the ’45, and had not utterly given up hope of the “lost cause.” Every old castle and little township has played its part in the strange, eventful drama of the national history; and by their record, not less than by its position, Perthshire can lay claim to be the heart, and the Tay to be the heart’s blood, of the northern kingdom.

Perthshire is the Tay, almost as truly as Egypt is the Nile. It is the case that some of the head-waters of this many-fountained stream rise in other counties—that its furthest, if not its most important, source is in the desolate Moor of Rannoch—“a world before chaos,” crudely compounded of bog and rock, where Loch Lydoch trails its black and sinuous length out of Argyllshire into Perth; that, further north, Loch Ericht, straight as a sword-blade, thrusts its sharper end miles deep into the mountains of Laggan, in Inverness-shire, hiding, as tradition tells us, the ruins of submerged fields and houses under its gleaming surface; and that the Isla draws from Forfarshire that portion of its waters which murmurs under the haunted old walls of Airlie and Glamis. True, also, a choice and lovely portion of Perthshire—many deem it the choicest and loveliest of all—drains through the Trossachs to the Forth; and that the Tay itself, after it has ceased to be a river, and has become an arm of the sea, overpasses the bounds of the “central county,” and meets the ocean between the Braes of Angus and the hills of Fife—between the clustering spires and chimneys of busy Dundee and the crumbling towers that watch over the secluded dignity of St. Andrews.

All this notwithstanding, the periphery of Perthshire may roughly be said to embrace all the wealth of beauty reflected in the Tay, and all the wealth of memories that mingles with its flowing current. And richly endowed is this prince of highland and lowland streams, both with beauty and associations.

The centre of the basin of the Tay is somewhere in Glenalmond, between the sweet woodland shades of the “burn-brae” of Lynedoch, under which “Bessie Bell and Mary Gray” rest, with their lover at their feet, and the bare and stilly place where “sleeps Ossian in the Narrow Glen,” and where murmurs along

“But one meek streamlet, only one,

The Song of Battles, and the breath

Of stormy war and violent death;”

while above, on the summits of the hills, the grey stones and cairns still keep watch, and, interpreted by tradition, point out to us the place where Fingal once held sway in the very heart of Perthshire and of the Caledonian Forest.

THE TAY.

THE TAY.

Of the ancient woods that are supposed once to have clothed the country, remains may yet, perhaps, be seen in those glorious sylvan demesnes that surround Taymouth in Breadalbane and Blair in Athole; Dupplin, and Drummond Castle, in Strathearn, and Rossie Priory in the Carse of Gowrie; Scone Palace and Dunkeld, Moncrieffe and Kinnoull, overlooking the central and lower reaches of the Tay. Traces of them may also be found in the Woods of Methven, that once gave friendly shelter to Wallace, and in those ragged and giant pines that thinly dot the hillsides in Rannoch and Glenlyon, over which Bruce was once chased by the Lord of the Isles and the English invaders.

But a new forest has grown up within a century, to shade once more the waters of the Tay. Whatever may have been the case in Macbeth’s or Shakespeare’s time, “great Birnam Wood” can no longer be seen from “high Dunsinane Hill” for the growth of trees—the “moving grove”—that has risen up between. The Bruar Water and its falls are now shaded from the sun and the northern blasts, as Burns longed to see them, by “lofty firs and fragrant birks,” as well as by their craggy cliffs; and not content with thus fulfilling the poet’s wish, the Lords of Athole, from the “Planting Duke” downward, have been nobly ambitious of clothing their once bare hills with forest to the summits. Beside the pillars of ruined Dunkeld Cathedral—almost as worthy of reverence as they—stand the two “Parent Larches,” the first trees of their kind introduced into Scotland. Planted only a century and a half ago, millions of their seed and kin have now overrun Perthshire and the Highlands, proving themselves thoroughly at home in the soil and air of the Tay.

“BIRKS” OF ABERFELDY. / ABERFELDY, FROM THE WEST.

“BIRKS” OF ABERFELDY. / ABERFELDY, FROM THE WEST.

In the bleak Moor of Rannoch—the “furthest Thule” of Perthshire and of the more northern Tay sources—there are great blank spaces where the heather itself will scarce grow. There are only grey rock and black marsh—“bogs of Styx and waters of Cocytus,” with scarce a sign of human habitation or even of animal life. But the logs of oak found embedded in the peat, and the hoary fir trunks that still keep a stubborn stand by Loch Lydoch and the banks of the Guar and the Ericht, show that even in this dreary region a great forest once waved. The “Black Wood of Rannoch” still clothes the southern side of the fine loch of the name; and here, indeed, the Scots fir is to be seen in all its pride and strength, rising above the beautiful growth of oak and birch coppice, and of heather of almost arboreal proportions. Escaping from Loch Rannoch, the Tummel roars down its rocky bed under the piny slopes and crags of Dunalastair, with a halt by the way in Loch Tummel, where, from the “Queen’s View,” looking back, a magnificent prospect is had of the lovely lake embosomed in woods and hills, dominated by the lofty shape of Schiehallion, with the lonely Black Mount and the more distant Grampians closing the background. Further down, opposite Faskally, the Garry joins it, mingling the streams of Athole with the waters of Rannoch. Before the meeting, the Garry, leaving its parent lake high up near the borders of Inverness, has tumbled in white foam through leagues of the “Struan country,” between banks thinly sprinkled with birchwood and edging great tracts of moorland. Then the Erichdie, the Bruar, and the Tilt bring down their contributions from remote mountain corries visited only by the deer-stalker, through deep wild glens, gloriously wooded at their lower extremity. Where the Tilt runs into the Garry stands Blair, the Highland seat of the ducal family of Athole.

BRIDGE OF GARRY.

BRIDGE OF GARRY.

The date when “Blair in Athole” was first occupied as a stronghold of a powerful Highland chieftain is not told in the eventful annals of the Castle. Strategic considerations, from the points of view of war and of the chase, no doubt determined the selection of the site, inside the rugged jaws of the Pass of Killiecrankie, and on a shelf commanding the routes leading across the Grampians from the basin of the Tay to the valleys of the Spey and the Dee. The choice thus made in ruder days is thoroughly pleasing in these “piping times of peace,” when the line of the Highland Railway threads its way through the narrow defile, and keeping the main valley of the Garry, skirts the miles of woodland, opening at intervals to afford peeps of the plain, massive white front of the Castle and the broad spaces of its surrounding parks. The way through Glentilt, traversed by the clans to join the Stuart standard at Blair or on the Braes of Mar, is free now only to the deer and the gillies.

Without going back to the Athole lines of the Comyns and the Stewarts, or to the joyous hunting scenes in which Queen Mary and other of the old line of Scottish Sovereigns bore a part, Blair has been a centre of historical and social interest ever since it became the chief seat of the Murrays. Montrose assembled the Royalist clans here, and set out upon the campaign which began with the defeat of the Covenanters at Tibbermore and the capture of Perth, and ended at Philiphaugh, where, in one day, the fruits of six brilliant victories were lost. Another darling of cavalier legend, Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, lies buried in the old church near by. In the year of the Revolution he had relieved Blair Castle, where the clansmen of Athole had held out for the Jacobite cause against their titular chief, and having enticed General Mackay through the Pass, he rushed down upon him with all his force from the slopes of the Hill of Urrard, utterly routing and sweeping back the enemy through the narrow gorge of the Garry, and himself falling, shot through the heart, at the moment the Sassenachs turned to run.

Notable events happened here also in the “’15” and in the “’45;” and, to come to the recent memories which are cherished with pride in Blair-Athole, Queen Victoria has paid repeated visits to the locality, and was entranced by the magnificent prospects of wood and stream, rugged mountain and fertile strath, that are unfolded from the top of the Hill of Tulloch, and from other points of view in this beautiful district. It is a kind of “holy ground” to fervid Jacobites, one or two of whom are supposed still to linger in Perthshire, if extinct elsewhere. It is also a favourite resort of the increasing host of pilgrims in search of Highland sport and scenery, who invade Athole through the Pass of Killiecrankie, and gaze, with a delight in which there is no longer any tempering of fear of consequences, upon the lofty and impending banks, pine-clad to their summits, and the wilderness of rock and boulder below, through which the Garry glooms and flashes in alternate pool and fall.

Pitlochrie is a charming place to halt at before, or after, clearing this “gateway of the Highlands.” The Tummel has now joined the Garry, and under the latter name the united streams have but a short way to go before they fall, at Ballinluig, into the stream which, from the place where it issues from Loch Tay, takes the name of the Tay. Were we to seek it still nearer to its sources, we should find ourselves in a district which, before the railway came to disturb its solitude, was as lone and wild as the lochans of the Black Mount or those corries of Ben Alder and Ben-y-Gloe whence the Tummel, the Ericht, and Tilt draw their springs. The line from Oban breaks into Perthshire and the basin of the Tay at Tyndrum, near the head of Strathfillan, not far from the scene of Bruce’s defeat at the hands of the Lord of Lorn. Following, from near the base of Ben Lui, the infant Tay—here, however, bearing the names successively of the Fillan and the Dochart—the way leads past the sites of ruined castles and chapels, by cairns yet haunted by memories of the bloody feuds of former days, and wells to which legend still assigns wonderful healing virtues. On the left are bare mountain sides stretching away northward towards the hills that enclose the head of Glen Lochay and Glen Lyon; and to the right the range of alpine heights that culminate in Ben More and impend over Loch Dochart, its old castle, and its “floating island.” St. Fillan lived and laboured in Strathfillan; Fingal is said to be buried in Glen Dochart; a hundred traditions cling to the rocks and waters here, and in Glen Ogle, and in the Glen of the Lochay, which, pouring over its pretty “linn,” joins the Dochart just before the united stream falls into the head of Loch Tay.

Where the waters meet at Killin, a rich feast is spread for the eye of the lover of Highland scenery. Killin, with its wonderful mingling of wild mountain outlines, and the gentle, infinitely varied charms of the lake and running streams and wooded shores, is a painter’s paradise.

Fifteen miles of the finest salmon-angling water in Scotland, overhung on the north by the vast bulk of Ben Lawers, and bountifully fringed by birch and other wood, separates Killin from Kenmore, at the lower end of the great Loch, whence issues, under its proper name, the Tay. The ruins on the little island near the outlet are those of the Priory erected by King Alexander I. beside the remains of his Queen, Sibylla, daughter of Henry I. of England—a quiet retreat for centuries of the company of nuns from whom the Fair at the neighbouring Kenmore takes the name of the “Holy Women’s Market.” Kenmore is as lovely in its own way as Killin; but here it is no longer wild Highland landscape, but Nature half-submissive to the embellishing hand of man. It is

“A piece of England ramparted around

With strength of Highland Ben and heather brae;”

and in the centre of the scene, set among ample lawns and magnificent walks and avenues, backed by the high, dark curtain of Drummond Hill, and looking towards the pine-clad heights opposite, stands Taymouth Castle, the princely seat of the Breadalbane family. Famous even among their sept for their politic ability and acquisitiveness, the Campbells, Lords of Glenorchy, who became Lords of Breadalbane, are said to have chosen this site, at the eastern limit of their vast possessions, with the hope of “birzing yont” into richer lands further down the Tay. To this day, the Breadalbane estates extend for a hundred miles westward of Taymouth, to the Atlantic Ocean.

Behind Drummond Hill is Glen Lyon, and a vista of its mountains—Schiehallion lording it over the minor heights—opens up at the Vale of Appin, where the Lyon falls into the Tay. A long journey this tributary makes, among savage and solitary hills, and past haunts of Ossian’s heroes and of the “Wolf of Badenoch,” before it reaches the sylvan beauties assembled round Glenlyon House and Sir Donald Currie’s Castle of Garth. But the most venerable of all the objects on the banks of the Lyon—not excluding the reputed birthplace of Pontius Pilate—is the “Old Yew of Fortingal,” perhaps “the oldest authentic specimen of vegetation in Europe.”

BIRNAM, FROM BIRNAM HILL. / DUNSINANE HILL.

BIRNAM, FROM BIRNAM HILL. / DUNSINANE HILL.

On nothing quite so venerable as this does the next outstanding eminence by the Tay—the “Rock of Weem”—look down. But Castle Menzies, for four centuries the home of the Menzies of that ilk, lies surrounded by fine woods at its base; further off is the site of the old Abbey of Dull; and beyond the Bridge of Tay—first place of assembly of the gallant “Black Watch,” or 42nd Highlanders—are the Falls of Moness and the “Birks” of Aberfeldy. Mountain ash and pine have to some extent replaced the hazels and birches about which Burns so sweetly sings; but tourists come in larger flocks every season to Urlar Burn and to the pretty village near by. Grandtully Woods, and the old Castle of the Stewarts, which has been said to resemble more closely than any other baronial seat the picture drawn by Scott of Tully-veolan, attract many admiring eyes. Balleichan recalls memories of “Sir James the Rose;” and all down Strathtay, before and after the junction with the Tummel—at Logierait and Kinnaird, Dowally and Dalguise—the enchantments of a romantic past and of superb scenery combine to induce the traveller to linger over every mile of the valley.

Dunkeld and Birnam are ahead, however, and the temptations to delay must be foregone. There is no nook of Scotland more gloriously apparelled and richly endowed. Grand forests stretch for miles around, clothing the river-banks, filling the glens, and crowning to their crests Birnam Hill, Newtyle, Craig Vinean, Craig-y-Barns, and other heights that gather round the old cathedral town. Through the centre of the scene the Tay sweeps in smooth and spacious curves and long, bright-rippled reaches. All this loveliness is concentrated around the Palace and Cathedral of Dunkeld. Opposite is Birnam, and, a little above the line of arches of the fine bridge, the “mossy Braan,” coming from Loch Freuchie and “lone Amulree,” tumbles through the romantic dell of the Rumbling Bridge and the “Hermitage,” and over its upper and lower Falls, before entering the Tay.

SCONE PALACE, PERTH.

A single gnarled and wide-branched oak represents all that remains of the original Birnam Wood. The glory of the ancient Cathedral has also departed, or undergone a change. For some fifteen hundred years, it is reckoned, there has been a Christian house on this spot; and at as early a date Dunkeld (“Dun-Caledon”) had a royal residence, probably on the site of the “dun” or fort on the “King’s Seat.” St. Columba is thought to have founded the church, and to have preached here to the natives of “Atholl, Caledon, and Angus;” and he is said to have found burial at Dunkeld. Adamnan and Crinan were among its Culdee abbots; and in the long line of its Roman Catholic bishops, whose diocese extended over the greater part of the basin of the Tay, Gawin Douglas, the poet and translator of the “Æneid,” is not the only eminent name. Very stately without and beautiful within, the edifice of the Cathedral Church must have looked in its prime, before the Lords of the Congregation sent word to “purge the kyrk of all kynd of monuments of idolatrye,” but to “tak guid heid that neither the windocks nor dooris be onywise hurt or broken”—a saving clause to which the zealous Reforming mob paid scant attention.

The main portion of the Cathedral—the nave—has long been roofless, but the tower, in which the “Cameronian Regiment” of 1689 offered their brilliant and successful resistance to the victors of Killiecrankie, and stemmed the Highland tide rushing down on the Lowlands, still stands, and the choir has been restored and is used as the parish church. Within the walls, the “Wolf of Badenoch,” Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan—that type of a savage and ruthless Highland chieftain—is buried; here also are the vaults of the Athole family, and a monument recording the deeds of the “Black Watch.” Without, the beautiful lawns, gardens, and woods of Dunkeld Palace, one of the seats of the Duke of Athole, surround the Cathedral ruins, and come down to the river’s edge. Fine villa residences are ranged along the hillside, and the town of Dunkeld offers every evidence of prosperity.

At Dunkeld, the Tay takes a long sweep eastward, until at the meeting with the Isla at Meikleour it forms a great elbow and resumes its southward flow. The Murthly estate, which belongs to the owner of Grandtully, occupies the south bank of the river along this portion of its course. From the earliest times royalty, like romance and poetry, has had the good taste to frequent these scenes. The wraiths of Neil Gow, the famous fiddler, and of the Highland caterans hanged in the “eerie hollow” of the Stare Dam, dispute with the ghost of Macbeth the honour of being the familiar spirits of Birnam Hill, once again magnificently clothed with wood. In Auchtergaven is the birthplace of Robert Nicol, the “Peasant Poet;” and here also stood the “Auld House of Nairne,” which recalls the name of Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, the laureate of Jacobite song, and which, like her ancestral home in Strathearn—the “Auld House of Gask”—gave shelter to Prince Charlie. At the Royal Castle of Kinclaven, now a neglected ruin, many a Scottish Sovereign, from the time of Malcolm Ceanmohr and Queen Margaret, had solaced themselves after the chase or battle, before it was captured and recaptured, rebuilt and demolished, in the days of Wallace and Bruce.

The northern bank of the Tay is equally rich in scenic beauty and historical associations. Between the grounds of Delvine and Meikleour, and opposite the “Bloody Inches”—believed to preserve the memory of the spot where Redner Lodbrog, the Norse viking and skald, was beaten back to his ships—the important Roman station of Tulina, now Invertuthil, is supposed to have stood. Meikleour the Marchioness of Lansdowne has inherited from her ancestors the Mercers, descendants of a warlike Provost of Perth in the fourteenth century. The village is one of the quaintest and most charming of Scottish hamlets; and the great “beech hedge,” ninety feet high, is among the many arboricultural marvels in the valley of the Tay. Hidden from sight among hills and woods, like many other lakes and famous sites of this district, is the Loch of Clunie, with its island castle, the hunting seat of kings and place of rest and retirement of bishops in the old days. The Lunan drains from it into the Isla; but to trace the Isla would be to write pages of description and history concerning Glenardle and Glenshee, Stormont and Strathmore, the slopes of the Sidlaws and the passes through the Grampians into Braemar. We should have to give some idea of the beauties collected about Bridge of Cally, Craighall, and Blairgowrie on the Ericht; to visit the “Reekie Linn,” the “Slugs of Auchrannie,” and Lintrathen on the Isla; to seek the sites, mythical or otherwise, of Agricola’s victory over Galgacus and of Macbeth’s defeat by Macduff near Dunsinane Hill; and to speak of what makes Glamis and Airlie and Inverqueich, Alyth and Meigle and Coupar, and the rest of the country lying along the borders of Perth and Angus, memorable and attractive. It would even lead us as far as Forfar and its loch and castles, and the rival little burgh of Kirriemuir—the “Thrums” of recent delightful sketches of old-world Scottish “wabster” and kirk life in Angus—and detain us to the end of the chapter.

We resume, instead, the line of the Tay below Meikleour and Kinclaven, and beyond the “Coble o’ Cargill,” replaced by the more prosaic bridge carrying the railway line from Perth to Aberdeen. This is the heart of Strathmore—the “great valley.” Ballathy, Stobhall, Muckersy, and Stanley maintain the repute of the Tay for noble prospects of hill, wood, and stream. Stobhall was the seat of the Drummond family—still a power in Perthshire—before they removed to Drummond Castle on the Earn; and near by, at the Campsie Linn, beside an ancient cell of the monks of Coupar-Angus Abbey, is the waterfall over which—teste the author of the “Fair Maid of Perth”—Conacher, the refugee from the battle on the North Inch, flung himself to hide his shame. Macbeth’s Castle, on Dunsinane Hill, and the field of Luncarty—where, nine centuries ago, the peasant ancestor of the Hays of Tweeddale, Errol, and Kinnoull is said to have turned the battle for the Scots against the Danes with his plough-yoke—might detain us. But now, close ahead, the explorer of Tayside views, fringing the right bank of the river for miles opposite the mouth of the Almond, and extending to the environs of the Royal City of Perth, the woods of Scone—

This is Scone Palace, the magnificent mansion of the Earls of Mansfield, standing almost on the site of the ancient Abbey and royal residence of Scone. Modern Scone and all its surroundings are stately and spacious, but the relics of its early grandeur have disappeared from the landscape, and almost the only memorials of the days when it was the meeting-place of parliaments and councils, the crowning-place of kings, “the Windsor of Scotland,” are the mound of the “Motehill,” the sycamore tree planted by Queen Mary, and the cross which marks the place where stood the old “City of Scone.” In its neighbourhood was fought the last battle that decided the supremacy of the Scots over the Picts and the amalgamation of the two nations in one. On the Motehill, Kenneth Macalpine proclaimed the “Macalpine Laws.” Hither, according to tradition, the “Stone of Destiny” was brought, more than a thousand years ago, from the old capital of the Dalriadic Scots in the west—from Dunstaffnage or Beregonium—and the Sovereigns of Scotland continued to be crowned on it until it was carried off to England, as the trophy of conquest, by Edward I. It forms part of the Coronation Chair at Westminster; and patriotic Scots declare that the prophecy bound up in the fateful stone is still being fulfilled, and that where it is, the Sovereigns of a Scottish house rule the land. Though the Coronation Stone was taken away, kings continued to be crowned here. Robert the Bruce was enthroned, and received the homage of his vassals, at Scone; and—to make a wide leap in history—Charles II. was crowned King of Scotland at the spot where his ancestors had been anointed and installed, before he set out on the unlucky expedition which ended at Worcester. Similar preparations were made for the coronation of the Old Pretender; but on the very eve of the event dissensions among his followers, and the approach of Argyll’s army, caused him to take flight back to the Continent, leaving his adherents to their fate—an inglorious end to “an auld sang!”

Before Kenneth Macalpine’s day, Scone was a place where councils of the Early Church met; and nearly eight centuries ago a monastery was founded there, and richly endowed by Alexander I., in gratitude for his escape from an attempt made by insurgent “men of Moray and the Mearns” to capture him at Invergowrie Castle, or “Hurley Hawkin,” where two burns meet near the Church of Liff. The Abbots and the Abbey of Scone played a prominent part in the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland; and we find the patronage and lands of the High Church of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, bestowed upon it, on account of the expenses incurred by the monks at the funeral of Robert II. and coronation of Robert III., when the prelates and nobles encamped on the fields between the Abbey and the Tay trampled down the standing corn, besides eating and drinking their victuals, and also, as the deed of gift runs, “because, at similar times of unction and coronation, through the many and frequent great gatherings of the people, the monastery has sustained great damage in their buildings, and been burdened with heavy expenses.” All cares and burdens came to an end in 1559, when the Reforming mob, having destroyed the Blackfriars’ and other religious houses in the “City of St. Johnstoun,” stormed out of Perth, and burned the Abbey of Scone. Its lands, after remaining a brief time in the hands of the unfortunate House of Gowrie, fell to the branch of the Murrays that became illustrious in law, statecraft, and literature, in the person of William, first Earl of Mansfield. The Abbey site is a clump of trees; and the “Royal City of Scone,” expelled outside the park gates, has nothing to represent it but the prosaic village of New Scone.

The Ruthvens have no longer part or lot in this district, where they once lorded it over the stout citizens of Perth, and dared to put their Sovereigns in thrall. Their old home of Ruthven, or Huntingtower Castle, is opposite Scone, and not far from the junction of the Almond with the Tay, where, if we could believe tradition, stood the original Perth—Rath-Inveralmon—until it was visited by one of the many floods that have vexed its burghers, and was removed a mile or two downward to its present site, more close to the shelter of Moncrieffe and Kinnoull Hills and the tide-water of the Tay. All around are historical scenes—among them Methven and Tibbermore, made memorable by stirring passages in the careers of Wallace, Bruce, and Montrose. But at few spots has more history been made, or contrived, than at the Castle of the Ruthvens. Four or five generations of its lords made themselves illustrious or notorious in the annals of the “troublous times” that preceded the Union of the Crowns. Above all, they were zealous, not to say unscrupulous, partisans of the Reformation. It was the third lord who rose from a sick-bed, and, clad in armour, and “haggard and terrific” in visage, took a foremost share in the murder of David Rizzio. His son, the fourth Lord Ruthven, grandfather of the “great Marquis” of Montrose, had a hand in the same bloody business, and he it was who conducted Mary to Lochleven, and extorted from her the renouncement of her right to rule.

The year after this same fourth lord had been made first Earl of Gowrie was enacted the “Raid of Ruthven.” The young King James was invited to visit Huntingtower Castle, on his way from Athole to Edinburgh, and was there detained by force by the Gowrie faction, whose professed object was to preserve him from evil counsel and wicked favourites. Here, when he wept, he was bluntly told, “Better bairns greet than bearded men.” He never forgave the affront, and as soon as he got the power in his hands the ruin of the Ruthvens was decreed. Lingering at Dundee to plot, Gowrie was captured and beheaded, and this event, in the time of the second and last earl, led to the still more mysterious and tragic episode of the “Gowrie Conspiracy,” which gave the Stuarts the desired opportunity to “root out the whole name and race.” Every reader of Scottish history remembers the strange story—how, in the autumn of 1600, the King was summoned by the Master of Ruthven, at early morning, while buckhunting at Falkland, to ride to Perth to see a “pot of gold” discovered there; how, by his own tale, he found in the turret chamber to which he was led, not a treasure but an armed man, and a portrait on the wall, covered by a curtain, which, being drawn aside, revealed the features of the slain earl; how James shrieked for help, and his attendants, bursting in from the courtyard, found him struggling in the hands of Gowrie and his brother, both of whom were instantly despatched. But the scene of this was not Ruthven Castle, but old Gowrie House, the town residence of the doomed family, which stood on the site of the present County Buildings of Perth, close by the Tay; and the episode belongs to the annals of the “good city of Sanct Johnstoun.”

Thanks to the civil and religious broils of former days, and to the spirit of modern improvement, nearly all the antiquities of Perth—the relics of days when it was the seat of the Court, the centre of trade and religious life, and the great “objective” of warlike operations and political intrigue—have disappeared from the face of the earth. Of its Castle, which stood near the north end of what is now the Skinnergate, not a trace now remains; of its ancient walls, besieged and breached so often in the wars between Scots and English, scarcely a vestige. Four monasteries, and numerous other religious houses, once existed here; and according to information that reached Erasmus, their inmates led a specially delicate and lazy life. All disappeared—monks and monasteries together—at the Reformation, and the “rascall multitude,” who had perhaps seen too much of their cowled and cloistered neighbours to cherish a deep respect for them, showed little scruple in spoiling “the monuments of idolatry,” and in making free with the meat and drink with which buttery and cellar were found well stored, and bore in triumph through the streets the great dinner-pot of the Blackfriars, thus spreading abroad the last savour of the mediÆval religious life of Perth. Blackfriars Wynd and Street indicate the position of this Dominican convent, and King James VI.’s Hospital serves to mark the site of the only Carthusian foundation that existed in Scotland. In the former, James I. was done to death, and in the latter, richly endowed by him, the murdered poet-king was buried. The dark tale—the portents and warnings vouchsafed to the victim, the midnight clash of arms and flare of torches in the Monastery gardens, while James was gaily chatting with the Queen and her ladies before retiring to rest; the heroism of Catherine Douglas, who thrust her arm through the staple of the door as a bar against the traitors; the temporary escape of the king into the vault below the floor; his discovery, the savage struggle before he was despatched, and the terrible revenge that was wreaked by the widowed Joanna—is as familiar as the Gowrie tragedy itself.

The Church of St. John is still a venerable and venerated object in Perth; although it also has suffered from the hard usage of time and the Reformers, and its roof now covers, in place of the numerous shrines and chapels of Roman Catholic days, three Presbyterian places of worship. It was in St. John’s that Knox preached his iconoclastic sermon; and many other conspicuous events in the civil and religious history of Scotland—and more particularly during the long struggle between Protestantism and Papacy, and between Episcopacy and the Covenant—were transacted within a stone-throw of its time-worn walls. Fourteen Scottish Parliaments, and a still larger number of Councils of Churchmen, are reckoned to have met in Perth previous to the Reformation. Here schism and martyrdom had begun a century and a half before Knox. Girdings and gibings at priestly ways crept even into the “Miracle Plays” annually performed on Corpus Christi Day; and the town and country around were “more infested with heresy than any other part of the nation.” Cardinal Beaton watched from the Spey Tower while example was made of heretics by hanging and drowning them “for the encouragement of others:” to such good effect that in a few years the monasteries were in ashes, and the Lords of the Congregation, assembled at Perth, had proclaimed their resolution to spend goods and lives in the cause of the “true worship of God, the public welfare of the nation, and the common liberty,” in token whereof the burghers set out on their southward march with ropes—“St. Johnston’s ribands”—about their necks. Mary Queen of Scots and her son had small reason to remember with pleasure their visits to Perth; and after the Gowrie incident King James did all in his power to humiliate the town. It was here that the Assemblies of the Kirk and Parliaments, or Conventions of Estates, alternately proclaimed and disowned the authority of the bishops; the town was the centre of fighting in the long battle between Prelacy and Presbytery. Perth loyally entertained Charles I., and thirteen brethren of the Craft of Glovers—fateful number!—danced the sword-dance before him; and soon after, these selfsame swords were girded to oppose the King at Duns. Montrose captured and pillaged the town, after defeating the Covenanting troops outside at Tibbermore; the young Charles II. lodged in the Gowrie House, and after vainly attempting to run away from the ministers and their long prayers and exhortations, signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and professed, as King of Scots, penitence for the sins and follies of himself and his House. Then came Cromwell and his Ironsides, and built a citadel on the South Inch and a pier on the Tay with the stones of the ruined convents; and Claverhouse, Mar, and Prince Charlie have helped since then to “make history” at Perth and in its neighbourhood.

For nearly a century and a half the annals have been comparatively peaceful and prosaic; even inundation and plague do not trouble the townsmen as of yore. The Tay no longer makes trysts with its tributaries to meet “at the bonny cross of St. Johnstoun.” Except in rare times of spate, it sweeps smoothly and sedately under the arches of the bridge, and past the green “Inches,” with their spreading trees and spacious walks—the fields of pastime and of strife since long before the memorable battle of the North Inch, when the blade of Hal o’ the Wynd, fighting “for his own hand,” turned the scale in favour of the champions of Clan Chattan—to meet tide-water and commerce below the town. It is the benefactor and the crowning ornament of Perth, which has considerably grown and beautified itself of recent years, not the least of its sources of wealth being the amenities and romantic associations of the ancient city, and the glorious scenery of the Tay, of which it may be described as at once the gateway and the centre.

Within short walking distance of Perth are the Hills of Kinnoull and Moncrieffe. Tay, after leaving the town, turns sharply to the left between these two grand wooded heights—each of them rising over 700 feet above the river—and pursues its way, widening as it goes, between the rich low expanse of the Carse of Gowrie and the opposing shores of Fife. It were hard to decide which of these sentinel hills commands the more magnificent prospect. Each view might challenge comparison with any scene outside of the basin of the Tay for extent and for the mingling of all the elements of beauty in Highland and Lowland scenery. Yet, close as they stand to each other and to Perth, distinctly different panoramas, in foreground and in perspective, are unfolded from the summits of the two heights. They offer companion pictures, and not merely landscapes in duplicate, of the Tay from its sources in the distant blue ranges of the Grampians to the sea.

The top of Moncrieffe—or Moredun—beside the foundations of the old Pict fort or dun, is the right station whence to survey Strathearn—a valley that rivals that of the Tay itself in the place it holds in the national history and in the affections of the lovers of scenic beauty. Directly below the steep pine-covered crest of Moredun runs the winding Earn, separating the park and woods of Moncrieffe from the pleasant watering-place of Bridge of Earn. Near the confluence with the Tay is Abernethy, its “Round Tower” coeval, perhaps, with the introduction of Christianity to this part of the Tay, and its Castle Law on which, says tradition, Nechtan and other Pictish kings held their state during the two centuries and a half when this decayed little burgh was the capital of the land. Beyond, in the same direction, are the waters of the Firth; Mugdrum Island, long and low; Newburgh, and Norman Law, the Norsemen’s look-out, rising on one side above old Ballenbriech Castle and the Fife shores, and on the other commanding the “Howe o’ Fife” and the Loch of Lindores. Beside the venerable ruins of Lindores Abbey, close to Newburgh and the Firth, are buried the murdered “heir of Scotland,” David, Duke of Rothesay, and James of Douglas—the “grey monk of Lindores”—the last of the ambitious race of the Black Douglases. In the same vicinity, in a glen or pass of the Ochils, stood another grim memorial of feudal or pre-feudal times, “Cross Macduff,” now represented only by its pedestal, where the taker of life, if he could “count kin,” within nine degrees, with the Thane of Fife, the head of Clan Macduff, could find refuge, and proffer the “blood-penny” in atonement.

Over against Moredun are the crests of the Lomonds and the green, smooth, wavy lines of the Ochils; and through Glenfarg to its foot comes the new main line of railway to the North by the Forth Bridge. Right opposite, behind Pitkeathly Wells, Kilgraston, the old kirk and “rocking stone” of Dron, and the ruins of Balmanno Castle, are the “Wicks of Baiglie,” whence Scott asserted that the Romans and he could descry the site of Perth. But the eye is carried irresistibly westward along the skirts of the hills and the broad and teeming valley below, towards the Highland mountains that surround the sources of the Earn. Near at hand are Forteviot and its Holyhill—a Scoto-Pictish capital before Perth; Dunning and other villages and hamlets lying along the hill-foots, proud to this day of the memories of the martyrs for “Crown and Covenant,” their sufferings at the hands of Montrose and Mar, and the former prosperity of their weaving crafts; and standing on rich flats by the waterside, or in picturesque glens running up into the Ochils, many a mansion and castle of the fighting and grasping Jacobite lairds of Strathearn, ill neighbours of yore to the Whiggish villagers. Over against the “Birks o’ Invermay” lies Dupplin Castle (now the seat of Lord Kinnoull), with its loch, its grand woods, and the site of its battlefield, so disastrous to the Scots; and opposite Lord Rollo’s park of Duncrub is Gask, still a home of the Oliphants, though the “Auld House” has disappeared. Further west, the Ruthven water comes down through Gleneagles and the lovely wooded “Den” of Kincardine, past the old castle and the single long street of Auchterarder, famous in ecclesiastical history. The Machany flows by Culdees and Strathallan Castles, and not far from Tullibardine, cradle of the noble House of Athole, and burying-place of the great race of Montrose. At Innerpeffray, where the old line of Roman roads and stations crossed the Earn, comes in the Pow, flowing by the ruins of Inchaffray Abbey and the woods of Balgowan and Abercairney; and further on, around Crieff, and thence upwards by Comrie and St. Fillan’s, to Loch Earn, lies one of the most glorious districts, not alone of Earnside, but of Scotland. Drummond and Monzie Castles, Ochtertyre and Dunira, Lawers and Aberuchil, are among its grandly wooded demesnes; Glenturret, Glen Lednoch, and Glen Artney contribute each their charms of crag and waterfall, bosky dell and lone hillside, and there are innumerable remains of former days in the form of standing or ruined chapel and castle, and the sites of ancient feud and battle. Little of all this can, of course, be descried from the top of Moncrieffe Hill; but Ben Chonzie, and the Braes of Doune, and the Forest of Glen Artney, and behind them the shapely head of Ben Voirlich and other mountains that mirror themselves in Loch Earn or guard Glen Ogle and Lochearnhead, are full in view.

The abrupt front of Kinnoull Hill, on the other hand, commands more directly the lower course of the Tay and its estuary, widening out between the level expanse of the Carse of Gowrie, thickly sprinkled with farms and mansions, and the opposing shores of Fife, onward to where it is closed by the smoke of Dundee and the line of the Tay Bridge. From the pathway below the tower crowning the hill, one looks down—one almost fancies he might leap down—upon the woods and sward surrounding Kinfauns Castle, the residence of the family of Gray. Visible, too, from Kinnoull, or sheltering under the folds of the “Braes o’ the Carse,” which rise from the flat champaign to the heights of the Sidlaws, are innumerable sites and scenes, equally rich in beauty and in memories of days when Gowrie was busier making history than in raising grain. Among them are St. Madoes’ Church and its sculptured Runic stones; Errol and Megginch, ancient heritages of the Hays; Kilspindie, where Wallace spent his schooldays, when he “in Gowrie dwelt, and had gude living there,” and the seat, later, of Archibald of Douglas—“Auld Graysteel;” Fingask, the home of the stout old Jacobite family of Murray Thriepland and of the “Lass o’ Gowrie” of Scottish song; Kinnaird and Rossie Priory, the earlier and later possessions of the noble House of Kinnaird, champions in these parts, for generations, of the cause of Reform.

From Rossie Hill, or from the battlements of the fine old baronial tower of Castle Huntly, a nearer view can be had of the beautiful cultivated Carse and its surroundings of firth and hills; or from near the remains of the ancient Church of Invergowrie and the boundary line of the shires of Perth and Stirling you can look across the widest part of the great tidal stream—three miles of shining water or sandbank—to another famous old ivy-clad ruin, Balmerino Abbey, on the opposite and bolder shore of Fife. But as Kinnoull commands the grandest view of the upper part of the Firth of Tay, so Balgay Hill and Dundee Law are the stations to take up for a survey of its lower reaches and its meeting with the North Sea. Round the bases of these eminences the northern coast of the estuary curves outward, leaving a comparatively narrow platform on which, for a space of three miles or more, are grouped the forest of chimneys, spires, and masts of the city and harbour of Dundee. The passage between the sea front of esplanade and docks, and Newport and the line of handsome villas surmounting the rocky bank on the other side, is reduced to less than two miles; and still bending and narrowing, as the Fife shore, in turn, approaches, as if to meet Angus and seal the mouth of the Tay, the waters of the Firth measure only a mile across from Broughty Castle to Ferryport-on-Craig, where, skirted on either hand by broad stretches of sand and “links,” they finally open, trumpet-shaped, to meet the German Ocean. Directly under the Law, from Magdalen Point to St. Fort, where begin the narrows and the busier part of Dundee, the line of arches of the [Pg 37][Pg 38]new Tay Bridge spans the Firth. The width from bank to bank is 3,440 yards—a little under two miles—including the curve which the long double file of piers makes in approaching the Dundee side. Slight as the structure looks, when first seen from the Law or the river, and compared with the wide expanse of water over which it is carried, it conveys, on more attentive view, an impression of security as well as gracefulness; it is not only a triumph of engineering skill, but a beautiful object in a striking and noble picture.

Far other are the impressions produced by the appearance, above the water level, and running for part of the way alongside its successor, of the foundations of the first Tay Bridge. This ill-fated undertaking had only been eighteen months open for traffic, when, on a wild night at the close of 1879, the whole of the central portion collapsed and fell into the raging Firth, carrying along with it a train, with its freight of seventy or eighty passengers, which was crossing at the time. Not a soul survived to tell the circumstances of the catastrophe—the most dramatic and one of the most disastrous in the annals of railway accidents in this country. But subsequent inquiry left no doubt that, in the original scheme of the structure, sufficient allowance had not been made for the tremendous pressure put upon it by the currents of air scouring through this funnel of the Firth; and that much of the work, both in the brick foundations and steel superstructure, had been “scamped” and left without proper inspection, so that the first occasion of maximum strain—a passing train, while a tempest was at its height—brought the inevitable result.

Dundonians love to survey their city and its surroundings from the “Law.” The spectacle is one they may well be proud of. Marvellous has been the change here since Dundee consisted of only four straggling streets, meeting at the central “place” of the “Market Gait,” and a congeries of narrow lanes running from these down to the harbour, consisting, as the local historian tells us, of rude jetties added to the natural haven opening between the headlands of the Chapel Craig and the Castle Rock. Even then, however—four centuries ago and more—it had an interesting history; even then the energy of its burgesses and its favourable position at the mouth of the Tay enabled it to carry on a brisk trade with the ports of Holland and the Baltic. Already its Castle, near the head of the Seagate, had suffered sieges; its Constables, the Scrymgeours, were the standard-bearers of Scotland in the national war, and the town disputed with Perth which was the more ancient and honourable. Its situation at the foot and on the slope of the fine acclivity facing the sun and the Tay, got for it from its Lowland and Highland neighbours its name of “Bonny Dundee” and the “pleasant town.” It has vastly increased its trade and importance since; but it has also increased its amenities; and even the casual eye overlooking it can see, by the handsome spires and towers rising beside the forest of masts and factory stalks that stretch along the shore, and by the open spaces—Albert Square, and the Baxter and Balgay Parks—that the town is mindful of art and air and beauty, as well as of business. The castles—the early building on the Castle Hill, and the later fortalice of the Constables at Dudhope—have disappeared to the foundations. But the fine old square tower of St. Mary’s, in the Nethergate, is still a handsome and conspicuous landmark of Dundee, spite of all the competition of its modern buildings. Although it can hardly be part of the original structure erected by David, Earl of Huntingdon—the hero of the “Talisman”—in gratitude for his escape from manifold perils while serving under Richard Coeur-de-Lion in Palestine, it is a venerable and stately object, and the Dundonians have had this their chief antiquity carefully restored.

That Dundee has not more remnants left of its early consequence is due to the march of modern improvement, and to the hard knocks it suffered in times of civil war and invasion. After Pinkie, the English troops seized upon the Castle of Broughty Craig—which, like the Tower of St. Mary’s, has been restored, and now guards the entrance to the Firth, with the pleasant backing of marine villa residences and stretches of links and sands much frequented by the good folks of the burgh—and Broughty besieged Dundee, and Dundee Broughty, for two or three years before the intruders were expelled. A hundred years later Montrose and his Irish and Highland kernes swooped suddenly down upon it from the upper valley of the Tay, and plundered and sacked the Covenanting place, the leader looking on from the “Corbie Hill,” while the followers burned, slew, and wasted in the streets below. The townsmen magnanimously forgot this when, a few years later, the “Great Marquis” was brought into it, a captive in the hands of his enemies; and “though Dundee,” says Wishart, “had suffered more by his army than any other within the kingdom, yet were they so far from insulting him, that the whole town testified very great sorrow for his woful condition.” Next year—1651—Dundee had again to endure sack and capture, at the hands of General Monk, when the garrison was put to the sword, the town burned, and, as Carlyle says, “there was once more a grim scene of flames, blood, and rage and despair transacted upon this earth.” Claverhouse is close by the town, and John Graham—that other “evil genius of the Covenant”—was Constable of Dudhope, and took his title from “Bonny Dundee.”

The “bloody Mackenzie” was another of its sons or neighbours; Camperdown House, the home of the valiant Admiral Duncan, is behind Balgay and the busy suburb of Lochee. But, if it has reared many “men of blood,” Dundee has been still more prolific in historians and poets, reformers and inventors, of whom Boece and Wedderburn, Halyburton and Carmichael, are representative names. Yet longer is the list of its merchant princes, and its munificent patrons of art and benefactors of the town, of whom the Baxter family are types. They have made of Dundee a great and busy centre of maritime commerce, and placed it first among the trading places of the kingdom in the importation and manufacture of jute; and they have not forgotten generous aid in endowing the town with public parks, museums, libraries, educational institutions, and other resources of civilisation, such as few seats of industry of its size can boast.

Dundee has spread over the green slopes and orchard grounds below the Law; but it has only increased the circumference of its fine environment of land and sea. Westward, the view extends over the fertile Carse, and range on range of the Grampians, amid which may be descried Ben Lomond and Schiehallion, and many a Highland peak besides. Behind the Law, the eye rises from the rich valley of the Dichty, flowing by Strathmartine and Claverhouse towards the sea at Monifieth Sands, to the Hill of Auchterhouse, Craig Owl, and other extensions of the Sidlaws, with glimpses of the heads of the loftier hills of Strathmore peeping over their shoulders; and, ridge behind ridge, these uplands subside as they stretch eastward, past many a storied and beautiful scene, towards Arbroath and the sea. Southward, beyond the Firth and the bridge, the rocky northern shores and hilly backbone of Fife are spread out like a map; and behind Newport and Tayport and the waste expanse of Tents Moor shimmer the waters of St. Andrew’s Bay and the Eden Estuary, and rise the grey, weather-beaten towers of St. Rule’s Cathedral and of Cardinal Beaton’s Castle, beside the green links and white sand of St. Andrews.

John Geddie.