The Spell of Scotland Part 17

Sir William Keith, being a warrior with a warrior's eye, looked on the place, found it strategically good, and built a tower thereon. He was excommunicated by the Bishop of St. Andrew's--who did not antic.i.p.ate the Lords of the Congregation and the Covenanters. Sir William appealed to Rome. Rome ordered the ban removed. And ordered Sir William to build a church on the mainland, beyond the protestantism of the waves.

It began its war history early. In 1297 four thousand English took refuge here to escape Wallace. Nothing daunted, Wallace scaled the cliff, entered a window--the proof is there in the window--opened the gate, let in his men, and slaughtered the four thousand.

Edward III took it, and Montrose besieged it.

Then it swung back into loyal legal possession, and experienced a bit of history worth the telling. In 1652--Montrose had been dead two years--the Countess Dowager had taken into safe keeping the regalia of Scotland. The castle was besieged by those who had killed their king and would destroy the king's insignia. If the castle should fall the very symbol of the king's royalty would be melted, as Cromwell melted the regalia of England. The defense was not strong. At any moment it might be forced to surrender. But the regalia must be saved.

So the Lady Keith plotted. It was a woman's plot--always there is the woman in Jacobitism. The wife of the minister at Kinneff paid a visit to the wife of the governor of Dunnottar; Mrs. Grainger called on Mrs.

Ogilvie. She had been "shopping" in Stonehaven, and was returning to Kinneff five miles down the sea. When Mrs. Grainger left the castle she carried with her the crown of Scotland. Sitting on her horse she made her way through the besieging lines, and her maid followed with the scepter of Scotland and the sword in a bag on her back. The English besiegers showed every courtesy to the harmless woman--and to the Honours of Scotland. Mrs. Grainger carefully buried the treasure beneath the paving of Kinneff church, and not until her death did she betray their hiding place to her husband.

Meanwhile Lady Keith sent her son Sir John to France. A little boat escaping in the night carried him to the French vessel lying off sh.o.r.e, and the Lady sent forth the rumour that Sir John had carried the regalia to the King o'er the water, to Charles II at Paris. It was after the Restoration that the aureate earth at Kinneff was dug up. The women had saved the Scottish crown for the rightful lawful king.

A dark chapter runs a quarter of a century later. The castle was still loyal. In truth it was always loyal except in brief usurpations, as all this corner of Scotland was loyal and royal and Jacobite. In 1675 in "Whig's Vault" there lodged one hundred and sixty-seven Covenanters as prisoners, and they lodged badly. Many died, a few escaped, the rest were sold as slaves. Coming on s.h.i.+p to New Jersey as the property of Scott of Pitlochry, Scott and his wife died and almost all the covenanting slaves. Only a few saw the plantations of the New World, and could resume the wors.h.i.+p of their G.o.d. The story of Dunnottar is dark.

The castle looks the dark part it played.

In Dunnottar churchyard on the mainland there is a Covenanter's stone, where "Old Mortality" was working when Scott came upon him. The stone carries a simple stern legend of heroism--and almost wins one to the cause.

And yet, there is evidence that in stern Dunnottar life had its moments other than war and siege. The remnants of the castle are of great extent; bowling gallery, ballroom, state dining-room, a library, a large chapel, speak a varied existence. There is a watch tower, a keep, rising forty sheer feet above the high rock, with ascent by a winding stair, somewhat perilous after the centuries; but from the Watchman's seat what a prospect, landward and seaward! What a sense of security in the midst of peril! And on the farther corner of the giddy height, above the rock and above the waves das.h.i.+ng far below, I found growing blue bells of Scotland.

There is one corner of the castle where I fain would inhabit, the northwest corner that looks down on the sea raging cruelly upon the rocks that are the first line of defense against the onslaught of the sea, and that looks far over the North Sea; that sea which is more mysterious to me and more lovely than the Mediterranean; I have seen it a beautiful intense Italian blue, with an Italian sky above it. I have never seen it still, always surging, raging, always cruel. Yet I should be willing to look out on it for many unbroken days. And to hear the somber movement of the "Keltic" sonata played upon the rocks.

The Earl Marischal liked the view, whatever his generation. The North was in his blood, and the sea, even though he was a landsman, spoke adventure. The Earl's bedroom is almost habitable to-day. Once it was a place of luxury. The plaster still clings to the walls in places, and there is a fireplace where still one could light a fire against the chill of the North. The date above is 1645, when Charles was still king, and there was no threat of disloyalty. The tablet unites the arms of the Keiths and the Seatons, the stone divided by a pillar surmounted by two hearts joined. The Keith motto, _Veritas vincit_, underlines the Keith s.h.i.+eld; but I like better the Seaton motto--_Hazard yit forvard_.

The Earl's library opens out of this. And I doubt not it was richly stored in the days when the last Lord Marischal won here that mental habitude which made him equal in wit and wisdom to Voltaire. And no doubt here sat his mother, loyal Jacobite, steadfast Catholic, sending her two sons forth to battle for the lost cause of the Stewarts--never lost while women remember--while she looked forth on these waters and watched for the return. The story runs in the Jacobite ballad of "Lady Keith's Lament"--

"I may sit in my wee croo house, At the rock and the reel fu' dreary, I may think on the day that is gane, And sigh and sab till I grow weary....

"My father was a good lord's son, My mother was an earl's daughter, An' I'll be Lady Keith again, That day our king comes o'er the water."

CHAPTER VIII

THE CIRCLE ROUND

The iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. If Malcolm Canmore destroyed Inverness before the Twelve Hundreds, and the fat Georges destroyed Inverugie late in the Seventeen Hundreds, and all through the centuries that stretched between strong men built strongholds and stronger men took them and made mock of them, still there must have been gentleness and beauty. There were women, other than Lady Macbeth; there were young men and maidens n.o.ble or common; and I suppose the glamour of romance, the reality or the illusion of love, was invented before peace and commerce became the occupations of men.

_Peterhead_

One brief journey I made along the bleak coast up to the town of Peterhead, which looks nearest to Norroway across the foam, and has a most uncompromising aspect. Peterhead is a penal town to-day; and it is one of a string of fis.h.i.+ng villages, picturesque as fis.h.i.+ng villages are, except to the nose, "that despised poet of the senses"; and not picturesque to the people, who lack the colour of fisherfolk in Brittany. But I wished to see with mine own eyes the ruins of Inverugie.

It is one of the castles belonging to the Lords Marischal. It came to them in a curious way of forfeiture, an abbot dispossessed or some such thing, like Dunnottar, but without the appeal to Rome. And one of the stones of the castle carried the promise, and the threat--

"As lang's this stane stands on this croft The name o' Keith shall be abaft, But when this stane begins to fa'

The name o' Keith shall wear awa'."

The last Lord Marischal came hither, late, late, in the Seventeen Hundreds. He had seen a century move through strife to peace. In person he had taken part in the Rising of the Fifteen, a young man, but still hereditary Lord Marischal, and loyal to the Stewart cause. He had taken no part in the Rising of the Forty Five; he was not "out" on that dark night. But the sweeping revenge of those English times made the Keiths attaint and--the stone dropped from its croft. The Lord Marischal and his brother made the continent their refuge, Paris in particular, although the activities of the proposed restoration took their Lords.h.i.+ps to Madrid and Rome and Berlin and St. Petersburg.

The younger brother, James, was made a Field Marshal by Catherine of Russia, and that amorous termagant making love to him in the natural course of proximity, he discreetly fled, became Field Marshal for Frederick the Great, and not marrying--whatever the romance of the Swedish lady--he fell at the battle of Hochkirch in 1758, and lies buried in the _Garison Kirche_ of Berlin. A statue stands in the Hochkirch kirche, and in 1868 the King of Prussia presented a replica to Peterhead. And even so late as 1889, the Kaiser, remembering the Great King's Field Marshal, named one of the Silesian war units, the Keith regiment.

There is no statue to the Lord Marischal--_Mareschal d'Ecosse_, always he signed himself. He was the friend of the wittiest and wisest and wickedest men of his time, of David Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Frederick the Great. Neither did he marry. Dying at the age of ninety-two, he was buried in Potsdam. There is no statue to him, there or here. And Inverugie lies in low ruins.

Hither he came, when attaint was lifted, late in those tottering years.

He drove out to the castle, remembering all it had meant, the long splendid records of the Earls Marischal, and how the King, James III and VIII--Banquo saw him also--

"And yet the eighth appears, who bears a gla.s.s Which shows me many more."

James, not pretending but claiming, landed at Peterhead, lodged at Inverugie, summoned the loyal and they came. The Standard was lifted for a moment, and then fell.

Breaking into tears the old Lord Marischal realized all, an epoch closed, a Scotland no longer requiring a Marischal. He left Inverugie, even this ruin.

All this Northeast territory, no larger than a county in Dakota, bears these scars of the past.

At Elgin there are the ruins of a cathedral; ruined, not by the English but by the Wolf of Badenoch, because my Lord Bishop had given a judgment which did not please my Lord of Badenoch. And the Wolf, his fangs drawn, was compelled to stand barefooted three days before the great west gate.

At Canossa! Lands and seas and centuries divide--but there is slight difference.

A scant mile or two to the north of Elgin lies the ruined Spynie Castle of the Lord Bishop, a great place for strength, with ma.s.sive keep--and fallen. "A mighty fortress is our G.o.d." Cathedrals, castles, bishops and lords, all pa.s.s away.

_Cawdor_

As we neared one of the last of the Northern stations, we turned to each other and asked, "How far is't called to Forres?" And suddenly all was night and witch dance and omen and foretelling. For it is here in the palace that Banquo's ghost appeared and foretold all that history we have been meeting as we came northward. And next is the town of Nairn, which has become something of a city since Boswell found it "a miserable place"; it is still long and narrow, stretching to the sea with its fisherfolk cottages and bonneted women like the fisher wives of Brittany; and stretching to the Highlands at the other end, as King James said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPYNIE CASTLE.]

It was here that Wordsworth heard

"Yon solitary Highland la.s.s, Reaping and singing by herself; ...

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago....

The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more."

But one leaves the train with a curious feeling. Of course one may be a little tired. Arm chair travel and arm chair tragedy have their advantages. But--Nairn is the nearest point to the blasted heath.

"Where's the place?

Upon the heath, There to meet Macbeth."

It is not entirely necessary that one should make Nairn and walk out to The Heath. Any of these northern silent Scottish blasted heaths will serve. It is as though the witches had made their mysterious incantations anywhere, everywhere. And if Shakespeare was in Scotland in 1589--as I like to think he was--it is doubtful if he saw The Heath.

Johnson told Hannah More, so she reports, that when he and Boswell stopped for a night at a spot where the Weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth, they could not sleep the night for thinking of it. Next day they found it was not The Heath. This one is, in all faith, apocryphal.

Still, if you come hither toward evening, when

"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse"

it is fearsome enough. Such heaths demand their legend.