The Spell of Scotland Part 14

They did not.

The Green hotel is an excellent place to stay, kept by a Scotchman who knows that in America every one knows every one else. We slept in feather beds, and we inspected the collection of "stanes," one of the best I have ever seen in Scotland, a great variety, some of them natural boulders, some wood with iron weights--someday I must brave the rigours of a Scotch winter and see them curl on Duddingston or on Leven. And I should like to see Bob Dunbar of St. Paul, champion curler of America, measure his skill against the champion of Scotland.

And, of course, there was talk with the Scot host. "So ye're American.

Well, maybe ye ken a mon that lives in Minn'apolis. He's twa sisters live here; and he's built a hoose for them." It happened that we did ken of this man, who came from Kinross to Minneapolis with only his Scotch canniness, and has built the Donaldson business into one of the great department stores of America.

And next day, after we had slept on feather beds, we had our fis.h.i.+ng in Loch Leven, with thousands of wild swan disputing our possession; a big boat, with big oars, sweeps, one man to each oar, one a loquacious fellow with no dialect (he might as well have been English), and the other taciturn with a dialect thick as mud or as Lauder's. And we caught two of the twenty-five thousand odd which were credited to that year.

As the train came alongside Loch Leven on its way to Kinross station, suddenly I felt Mary as I never have realized her, before or since.

There across the lake lay St. Serf's isle, and there rose the keep of the old castle. And over that water, as plainly--more plainly, than the fis.h.i.+ng boats that lay at their ease--I saw her take boat on a still evening, May 2, 1568, at half past seven o'clock from prison--to liberty--to prison!

I was not mistaken. She who was with me saw it, as distinctly, as vividly. Perhaps it was that all our lives this had been to us one of the great adventuring moments--for which we would exchange any moment of our lives. We were idolaters always, Mariolaters. And now we know that places are haunted, and that centuries are of no account; they will give up their ghosts to those who would live in them.

"Put off, put off, and row with speed, For now is the time and the hour of need, To oars, to oars, and trim the bark, Nor Scotland's queen be a warder's mark; Yon light that plays 'round the castle moat, Is only the warder's random shot; Put off, put off, and row with speed, For now is the time and the hour of need.

"Those pond'rous keys shall the kelpies keep, And lodge in their caverns, so dark and deep, Nor shall Loch Leven's tower and hall Hold thee, our lovely lady, in thrall; Or be the haunts of traitors sold, While Scotland has hands and hearts so bold.

Then onward, steersman, row with speed, For now is the time and the hour of need.

"Hark! the alarum bell has rung, The warder's voice has treason sung, The echoes to the falconets roar, Chime sweetly to the das.h.i.+ng sh.o.r.e; Let tower, hall, and battlement gleam, We steer by the light of the taper's gleam, For Scotland and Mary on with speed, Now, now, is the time and the hour of need!"

Because of that experience, because of the feeling I have for Queen Mary, I have never landed upon St. Serf's island. It has happened, quite without my making intentional pilgrimage, that I have been in many places where Queen Mary has been; and willingly I have made my accidental pilgrimages of loyalty. I have stood in the turret at Roscoff where she landed when only five, hurried from Scotland that she might escape sinister England; in the chapel in Notre Dame where she was married to the Dauphin; in the chateau at Orleans where she lived with him much of that brief happy French life she loved so dearly; in the two small garret chambers where she lodged in Coventry; in Hardwick Hall, where Bess of Hardwick was her stern jailer; at Fotheringay where nothing remains of that ensanguined block but a low heap of stones which the gra.s.s covers; in Peterborough where she found her first resting place; in Westminster her last final resting place; and in many and many a haunted place of this Scottish land.

And just before starting north I made a little journey to Linlithgow which lies twenty miles west of Edinburgh. The palace overlooks a quiet blue loch, a blue smiling bit of water, on which much royalty has looked forth, and on which the eyes of Mary first looked. There, in the unroofed palace of Linlithgow, in the "drawing-room," in December, 1542, was born that queen who ever since has divided the world.

"Of all the palaces so fair Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland far beyond compare Linlithgow is excelling.

And in the park in jovial June How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay."

It was the dower-house of Scottish queens, and hither James V brought Mary of Lorraine after he had married her at St. Andrews. (I wondered if there was any haunting memory of Margaret of Denmark who sat here sewing when the n.o.bles raged through the palace seeking the life of James III.

Or of Margaret of England as she sat here waiting for James IV to return from Flodden.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWING-ROOM, LINLITHGOW PALACE, WHERE QUEEN MARY WAS BORN.]

Of the regency of Mary of Lorraine, when James V died and Mary was a baby, Knox spluttered that it was "as semlye a sight (yf men had eis) as to putt a sadill upoun the back of ane unrowly kow." Knox did not pick his language with any nicety when he said his say of women and the monstrous regiments of them. And to his Puritan soul there could come no approval of the love affairs of Mary of Lorraine, such as that one sung by the Master of Erskine, who was slain at Pinkiecleuch--

"I go, and wait not quhair, I wander heir and thair, I weip and sichis rycht sair With panis smart; Now must I pa.s.s away, away, In wilderness and lanesome way, Alace! this woeful day We suld departe."

And now there is neither Margaret nor Mary, neither regent nor reformer, palace of neither Linlithgow nor Leven. How the destructions of man have thrown palaces and doctrines open to the winds of heaven. And how purifying this destruction. And what precious things have pa.s.sed with them, what tears of women have been shed, and how are the mouths of men become dust.

Loch Leven has one lovely gracious memory of Mary in the days before everything was lost. She was lodging here, and had sent for Knox to come from Edinburgh.

"She travailed with him earnestly for two hours before her supper, that he would protect the Catholic clergy from persecution." Knox slept in the castle, but "before the sun," as he records, he was awakened by the sound of horns and of boats putting off to the mainland. For the queen would go a-hawking.

Presently Knox was roused. The queen would have him join her "be-west Kinross," to continue the conversation.

The reformer did not rise as early as the queen--the serenity of that righteous conscience! He rose reluctantly at her summons. His reforming eyes, no doubt, looked with displeasure on the exquisite beauties of the unreformed morning, the mists lying soft on the Lomonds, day just emerging from night.

So he joined her, and they rode together, she on her horse, he on his hackney.

And the morning came on, and the day was a glory.

Mary warned Knox that a certain Bishop sought to use him, and Knox afterward acknowledged the value of her warning. She asked him to settle a quarrel between Argyle and his wife, her half sister, as Knox had done before. And often no doubt she glanced at her hawk hanging in the high Scottish sky.

And finally she declared--"as touching our reasoning of yesternight, I promise to do as ye required. I shall summon the offenders and ye shall know that I shall minister justice."

And the reformer, softened by the morning, and by Mary's eyes--"I am a.s.sured then that ye shall please G.o.d and enjoy rest and prosperity within your realm."

And Knox rode off. And Mary rode hawking.

The time was not yet come when Mary should say--"Yon man gar me greet and grat never tear himself. I will see if I can gar him greet."

Or, for Knox to pray--"Oh, Lord, if thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majestie from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and the thralldom of Satan."

_Perth_

Perth may be the Fair City, but it is scarce fair among cities, and is chiefly regarded even by itself as a point of departure, the Gate of the Highlands. The railway platform is at least a third of a mile long, and very bewildering to the unsuspecting visitor who thought he was merely coming to the ancient Celtic capital.

For, very far backward, this was the chief city of the kingdom, before Scotland had spread down to the Forth, and down to the Border. Even so recently (?) as the time of James the First it was held the fairest city in the kingdom. But the a.s.sa.s.sination of that monarch must have led the Jameses to seek a safer city in which to be fair.

There is a touch of antiquity about the town. One is shown the house of the Fair Maid; in truth that being the objective of the casual traveler signs in the street point the way. It may or may not be. But we agreed to let Scott decide these things and he, no doubt, chose this house.

Curfew Street that runs by, looking like a vennel--vennel? I am certain--was inhabited rather by lively boys, and no fair head looked out from the high window that would have furnished an excellent framing for the fair face of Catherine Glover.

The North Inch I found to be not an island in the Tay, but a meadow, where every possible out-door activity takes place among the descendants of Clans Chattan and Quhele--there is race-course, golf links, cricket field, football, grazing, was.h.i.+ng. I trust the clans are somewhat evener now in numbers, although there were left but one Chattan to level the Quheles. Coming from the Chattan tribe I must hope the centuries since that strifeful day have brought reexpansion to the Chattans.

Farther up the Inch, onto the Whin, the eye looks across to Scone. The foot does not cross, for there is nothing left of the old Abbey, not even of the old palace where Charles II, last king crowned in Scotland, suffered coronation--and was instructed in the ways of well doing according to the Covenant. Even the stone of destiny was gone then, brought from Dunstaffnage, and taken to Westminster.

There is nothing, or only stones, left of the Blackfriar's Monastery in which James, the poet-king, suffered death. Surely he was born too soon.

As last instead of first of the Jameses, what might he not have done in the ways of intelligence and beauty, as England's king as well as Scotland's? Very beautifully runs his picture of Lady Joanna Beaufort, seen from a window in Windsor--

"The fairest and the freshest flower, That ever I saw before that hour, The which o' the sudden made to start The blood of my body to my heart ...

Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly creature, Or heavenly thing in form of nature?"

He came back from his enforced habitation in England accompanied by Lady Joanna as Queen, and determined "if G.o.d gives me but a dog's life, I will make the key keep the castle and the brachen bush the cow." It was a dog's death the G.o.ds gave. The n.o.bles, the Grahams, would not keep the castle. So in Blackfriars the king was "mercilessly dirked to death,"

notwithstanding that Catherine Dougla.s.s--the Dougla.s.ses were with James then--made a bar across the door with her arm where the iron had been sinisterly removed. A dark scene, with "the fairest flower" looking on.

So, I think it not so ill, even though time delayed over a hundred years, that John Knox (May, 1559) should have preached such an incendiary sermon that in three days there was nothing left of Black or Gray friary but the broken stones.

Nor is there anything left of Gowrie house, where James VI was almost entrapped and almost slain--"I am murdered--treason--treason"; the jail stands on its site. Huntington Tower still stands down the Tay; and there also James very nearly came to his death, at the plotting of the son of that Ruthven who killed Rizzio and forced Mary to abdicate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNTINGTON TOWER.]

Kinnoul Hill overlooks the town, and furnishes a very fair view of the Fair City. No doubt it was from this height that the Roman looked down upon the Tay--

"Behold the Tiber! the vain Roman cried, Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie's side; But where's the Scot that would the vaunt repay, And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?"

It is more wonderful to-day to know that salmon weighing seventy pounds are sometimes taken from this Tay. The river leads down through the rich Ca.r.s.e of Gowrie, toward Dundee and marmalade. Thither we shall not go; but it shall come to us.

Ruskin spent his childhood in Perth and did not like it. But Ruskin liked so little in the world, except--"that Scottish sheaves are more golden than are bound in other lands, and that no harvests elsewhere visible to human eye are so like the 'corn of heaven,' as those of Strath Tay and Strath Earn." That is the way for to admire, for to see; all, or nothing was Ruskin's way.