A. R. Hope Moncrieff

“ On the wide uplands hangs nature’s own tapestry of bell-heather and broom, the purple of the one and the glowing gold of the other mixed in harmonious splendour; and here and there a little tarn—the largest, Loch Derculich, a lonely heron-haunted loch, held close to the heart of the moorland—lifts its blue eye to catch the smile of heaven.
If we are to visit every part of Perthshire, we must tear ourselves away from this characteristic antechamber{51} of Highland scenery, to the sides of which open Atholl and Breadalbane. ”

“ We soon come, indeed, to a manufacturing nook, a “white country” of Perthshire, where the river, swollen by several streams uniting as the Luncarty Burn, washes the bleach-fields of that ilk and the cotton mills of Stanley. But these meads of Luncarty were once dyed red rather than white, when the Danes had almost overcome a Scottish king, till a peasant named Hay, with his two sons, held a narrow pass so well with his ploughshare that the Vikings in turn were put to flight by those rustic champions, claimed as ancestors for the House of Errol. ”

“ It is long since Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with that excellent taste which characterises her writings, expressed her opinion that the most interesting district of every country, and that which exhibits the varied beauties of natural scenery in greatest perfection, is that where the mountains sink down upon the champaign, or more level land. The most picturesque, if not the highest hills, are also to be found in the county of Perth. The rivers find their way out of the mountainous region by the wildest leaps, and through the most romantic passes connecting the Highlands with the Lowlands. ”

“ Kinnell House, the Macnabs’ chief seat, is now a favourite residence of Lord Breadalbane, in which are preserved some odd relics of that last laird, his frying-pan, his kail-pot, and so on. But the glory of the place—Auchmore, as it is also called—is its famous vine that, to the reproach of your Dr. Johnsons, can boast itself the largest in Britain, and still goes on growing exuberantly, though it has been decided that no more glass room can be provided for it.
Killin well deserves its renown in the tourist world, presenting a lovely mixture of Highland and Lowland aspects. ”

“ THE MACGREGORS
What perils do environ
The man that meddles with cold iron
—in the shape of a pen! And surely the rash adventurer lays himself open to special risks when he undertakes to touch such a thistly subject as Scottish history, not to mention theology. It seems that I have given offence to certain partisans, who find their sympathies ruffled by what had to be said in my former volumes. I am accused of want of reverence for the Sabbath—an idol that, even in the cold North, is wearing away to a stump like snow wreaths in thaw. ”

“ There was a time when Stewart or Murray looked on the plaid as badge of a savage foeman; there would be a time when the imported Highlanders grew as proud of kilt and bagpipes as if these had come down to them straight from Adam. All over the world have gone those badges of a race that gave them to its conquerors in exchange for its proudest blood. The cult of the tartan, revived in our own age by romantic literature and royal patronage, is an old story. ”

“ Through this finely broken valley of heights, meadows, and moors flow the streams of the Forth, that seem to have drained away the importance of the old heart of Scotland to Stirling and Edinburgh. In our day these abundant waters have been artificially led off to Glasgow, where Bailie Nicol Jarvie little thought how Loch Katrine would be laid on to make toddy in the Saltmarket. For centuries this half-Lowland strath has been a channel through which the civilisation of the South flowed up into the Highlands, long stemmed at the mountain gates of the Trossachs country. ”

“ But the Lochay, too, up its beautiful glen, has cascades and other features of romance such as we look for a little farther back in Lowland life; and if the people forget their Gaelic and their legends, Nature still wears her garb of bracken and heather.
A plain sign of new times is the branch railway, link in a tourist round that a few miles from Killin falls in with the line from Callander to Oban. Here, turning back Lowlandwards, the rocky wilds of Glen Ogle lead us towards the softer beauties of Loch Earn, which we shall approach from the other end. ”

“ What is as yet a mechanical mixture tends to become a chemical one, as these wandering atoms find affinities in a fresh environment; then the substance of national life should be enriched, as every generation goes on incorporating the coarse good-humour and practical temper of the plainsman, with the generous affections and mettlesome hardihood of the mountaineer. The result as yet may be best seen in London, that crucible of blood and manners, where there are Englishmen who would fain affect to be Scots, and Scots who have forgotten all but their pride in Scotland. ”

“ At Crieff, with its two railways and everything handsome about it, we get upon a regular caravan route of tourists, too few of whom stop to discover the lochs, falls, and shaggy glens that around it are strung upon the Highland line, among hills making with the Earn valley a choice epitome of Perth scenery. I have already extolled this neighbourhood in Bonnie Scotland, so now I must pass quickly over the most picturesque part of Strathearn. ”

“ Many a visitor of our day, weather permitting, gets here from coach or rail a general impression of “nothing but sunshine and fresh breezes, and bleating lambs, and clean tartans.” To go behind this fair scenery, set as if for the joy of poets and painters, we might turn up some burn into the rough background, and look through Ruskin’s eyes at nooks easily coloured by his “pathetic fallacy”; he knew the Highlands as not all filled by tourists, sportsmen, and prosperous sheep-farmers.
A Highland scene is, beyond dispute, pleasant enough in its own way ”

“ In the middle of last century a young lad whom a German tourist took as guide from Callander was able to cheer the way by eerie stories, one of a whisky smuggler accepting the invitation of an unearthly spirit to dance with her for an hour or so, as it seemed, then on reaching home he found his wife turned grey and his young children grown up. Even yet, upon the Highland line, you may find the Scottish character not all one grey shepherd’s plaid of stern theology and hard-headed shrewdness. ”

“ We can both agree that the fat Lothians and the smoky Clyde were mere excrescences, which made a narrow escape of becoming no better than English borderlands. Stirling cannot at least complain that I failed to do it due honour in Bonnie Scotland. Now once more let us mount its castled rock to look back on such a prospect of Perthshire that nowhere could one have a nobler standpoint for bidding—
Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow! ”

“ He was a living, a strenuous protest in perpetual kilt against the civilisation, the taming, the softening of mankind. He was essentially wild. His virtues were those of human nature in the rough and unreclaimed, open and unsubdued as the Moor of Rannoch. He was a true autochthon, terrigena,—a son of the soil,—as rich in local colour, as rough in the legs, and as hot at the heart, as prompt and hardy, as heathery as a gorcock. Courage, endurance, staunchness, fidelity and warmth of heart, simplicity, and downrightness were his staples ”

“ Scotland has got quite her share of practical benefit from the “sad and sorrowful Union,” and need not grudge to England the nominal advantages of size and wealth, which the latter sometimes appears to occupy as caretaker for her neighbour. So long as Scottish enterprise, thrift, and industry are allowed fair play on both sides of the Border, it seems childish to lament over lost titles and ensigns, toys of history, that only in a museum may escape being broken, and sooner or later will be swept into time’s dustbin. ”

“ Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Alban appears to have extended above Perthshire, taking in at least the headwaters of the Spey and other streams flowing north. It certainly included the basin of the Tay and the upper waters of the Forth. And as Lowland and Highland scenery are finely mingled on these rivers, so here met and blended the confluent torrents of blood and language swelling into a steady stream of national life. What may be called a Scottish kingdom first took shape on the banks of Tay, where long was fixed its chief seat. ”

“ For more than a mile a railway ran beside the road, on the same level, separated only by a hedge, as alarming to inexperienced Highland shelties as the broad bridge on which another railway crossed another road askew, so as to form a miniature Grotto of Prosilippo, where overhead might come rumbling an invisible thunderstorm as one sped through its gloomy pass. ”

“ At Gask we look over to the mouth of Strathallan, the pass between the Ochils and the foothills of the Grampians, that must often have echoed the clank of Roman arms. Across the moor of Orchill, with Wade’s military road running beside it, the Ardoch Camp is best preserved of such Roman fortresses in Britain, and one of the largest, laid out to contain an army of 25,000 men. And hereabouts, in Celtic stones and place-names, there are thick traces of still older history, overgrown by the plantations and steadings of a race enriched from regions where the Cæsars’ eagles never flew. ”

“ It is unlikely that those sons of Eve did not mix their blood with the MacHeths and other clans among which they would be in the way of exchanging vows both soft and stern. I myself feel at times stirred to a right Macgregor scowl, when I see Sassenach knaves advertising their bad whisky, tea, or what not as the “best.” When in future any black deed be associated with their name, let the sons of Alpin blame it on a taint of Moncrieff blood, and hold every true Macgregor incapable of murdering a mouse ”

“ I was apprenticed to fiction, which is a school of truth in dealing with human nature. Let my critics write books of their own, setting forth the facts as they would have them. Let them declare that Charles Edward ended his days as a worthy citizen of Rome, a model husband, a diligent student of Anglican divinity, and an office-bearer of its Diocesan Temperance Society. Let them assert that Free Church pastors have exhorted youths and maidens to skip upon the Highland hills like young rams. ”

“ While the blackmail insurance was no longer to be depended on, a banditti of broken rebels ensconced themselves above the lakeland passes in fastnesses like the crags of Ben Venue, from which they sallied forth on depredations now unchecked by any spirit of clan loyalty, or neighbourly alliances. Their reign of robbery was overthrown mainly through the exertions of Mr. Nicol Graham of Gartmore, whose descendant in our time has not always been hot on the side of law and order, while a forbear of theirs had shown the family spirit in refusing to pay tribute to Rob Roy. ”

“ When one sees how we have peacefully imbued our fellow subjects with our best blood, I for one am not too sorry that our dark record of feuds and slaughter and bigotry falls into its place in the background of a grander scene, and that instead of cherishing thistly independence as a romantic Norway or an austere Portugal, we merge our national life into the greater kingdom’s, which, by good luck or good guidance, has come to stand so high in the world for freedom, enlightenment, and solidity. ”

“ Among all the provinces in Scotland, if an intelligent stranger were asked to describe the most varied and the most beautiful, it is probable he would name the county of Perth. A native, also, of any other district of Caledonia, though his partialities might lead him to prefer his native county in the first instance, would certainly class that of Perth in the second, and thus give its inhabitants a fair right to plead, that—prejudice apart—Perthshire forms the fairest portion of the northern kingdom. ”

“ Intercourse with the world, and especially with the Norman conquerors of England, imported the feudal system with its dovetailing of power and ambition between kings who were in turn sovereign and vassal on different estates of their territories. The English tongue began to absorb that of the Gael, as the Celtic leaven seemed to be lost in the Saxon dough. But when Malcolm Canmore and his Anglicising queen did so much to bring Scotland into touch with its more civilised neighbour, they moved their chief seat no nearer the new border than Dunfermline. ”

“ The very virtues that winged a prosperous career—thrift, industry, enterprise, force of character—become suspected for vices in the interest of the common herd. It is a bad lookout for Scotsmen in that golden age of mediocrity so glibly promised by certain social reformers, who might begin by doing away with prizes and punishments in schools, if they cannot altogether level down Nature’s distinctions.
My own first experience of school life was near Crieff, where I spent a year in the family of an English clergyman, whom I dimly remember as a model for the head of the Fairchild family. ”