The Spell of Scotland Part 6

"She kiss'd his cheek, she kaim'd his hair, She search'd his wounds all thorough; She kiss'd them till her lips grew red, On the dowie houms of Yarrow."

Then we come into the country of Joseph Hogg. The farm where he was tenant and failed, for Hogg was a shepherd and a poet, which means a wanderer and a dreamer. And soon to the Gordon Arms, a plain rambling cement structure, where Hogg and Scott met by appointment and took their last walk together.

Hogg is the spirit of all the Ettrick place. Can you not hear his skylark--"Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and c.u.mberless"--in that far blue sky above Altrive, where he died--"Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!"

And now the driver tells us we are at the Dougla.s.s Glen, up there to the right lies the shattered keep of the good Lord James Dougla.s.s, the friend of Bruce. Here fell the "Dougla.s.s Tragedy," and the bridle path from Yarrow to Tweed is still to be traced.

"O they rade on and on they rade, And a' by the light of the moon, Until they came to yon wan water, And there they lighted down."

_St. Mary's_

And soon we are at St. Mary's Loch--which we have come to see. To one who comes from a land of lakes, from the Land of the Sky Blue Water, there must be at first a sudden rush of disappointment. This is merely a lake, merely a stretch of water. The hills about are all barren, rising clear and round against the sky. They fold and infold as though they would s.h.i.+eld the lake bereft of trees, as though they would shut out the world. Here and there, but very infrequent, is a cl.u.s.ter of trees; for the most part it is water and sky and green heathery hills. The water is long and narrow, a small lake as our American lakes go, three miles by one mile; but large as it looms in romance, rich as it bulks in poetry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR VIEW, TIBBIE s.h.i.+EL'S INN.]

Tibbie s.h.i.+el's is, of course, our goal. One says Tibbie s.h.i.+el's, as one says Ritz-Carlton, or the William the Conqueror at Dives. For this is the most celebrated inn in all Scotland, and it must be placed with the celebrated inns of the world. There is no countryside better sung than this which lies about St. Mary's, and no inn, certainly not anywhere a country inn, where more famous men have foregathered to be themselves.

Perhaps the place has changed since the most famous, the little famed days, when Scott stopped here after a day's hunting, deer or Border song and story, up Meggatdale; and those famous nights of Christopher North and the Ettrick shepherd, nights deserving to be as famous as the Arabian or Parisian or London. The world has found it out, and times have changed, as a local poet complains--

"Sin a' the world maun gang And picnic at St. Mary's."

The inn, a rambling white house, stands on a strip between two waters, added to no doubt since Tibbie first opened its doors, but the closed beds are still there--it was curious enough to see them the very summer that the Graham Moffatts played "Bunty" and "The Closed Bed"--and the bra.s.ses which Tibbie polished with such housewifely care.

For Tibbie was a maid in the household of the Ettrick shepherd's mother.

She married, she had children, she came here to live. Then her husband died, and quite accidentally Tibbie became hostess to travelers, nearly a hundred years ago. For fifty-four years Tibbie herself ran this inn; she died in what is so short a time gone, as Scottish history goes, in 1878.

During that time hosts of travelers, particularly, wandered through the Border, came to this "wren's nest" as North called it. Hogg, of course, was most familiar, and here he wished to have a "bit monument to his memory in some quiet spot forninst Tibbie's dwelling." He sits there, in free stone, somewhat heavily, a shepherd's staff in his right hand, and in his left a scroll carrying the last line from the "Queen's Wake"--"Hath tayen the wandering winds to sing."

Edward Irving, walking from Kirkcaldy to Annan, was here the first year after Tibbie opened her doors so shyly. Carlyle, walking from Ecclefechan to Edinburgh, in his student days, caught his first glimpse of Yarrow from here--and slept, may it be, in one of these closed beds?

Gladstone was here in the early '40's during a Midlothian campaign. Dr.

John Brown--"Rab"--came later, and even R. L. S. knew the hospitality of Tibbie s.h.i.+el's when Tibbie was still hostess.

It is a long list and a brave one. In this very dining-room they ate simply and abundantly, after the day's work; in this "parlour" they continued their talk. And surely St. Mary's Lake was the same.

Down on the sh.o.r.e there stands a group of trees, not fir trees, though these are most native here. And here we loafed the afternoon away--for fortunately we were the only ones who "picnic at St. Mary's." There were the gentleman and his wife whom we took for journalistic folk, they were so worldly and so intelligent and discussed the world and the possibilities of world-war--that was several years ago--until at the Kirk of Yarrow the local minister, Dr. Borlund, uncovered this minister, James Thomson, from Paisley. If all the clergy of Scotland should become as these, austerity of reform would go and the glow of culture would come.

We all knew our history and our poetry of this region, but none so well as the minister. It was he who recited from Marmion that description which is still so accurate--

"By lone St. Mary's silent Lake; Thou know'st it well--nor fen nor sedge Pollute the clear lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver strand Marks where the water meets the land.

Far in the mirror, bright and blue, Each hill's huge outline you may view; s.h.a.ggy with heath, but lonely, bare, Nor tree nor bush nor brake is there, Save where of land, yon silver line Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine.

Yet even this nakedness has power, And aids the feelings of the hour; Nor thicket, dell nor copse you spy, Where living thing conceal'd might lie; Not point, retiring, hides a dell Where swain, or woodman lone might dwell; There's nothing left to fancy's guess, You see that all is loneliness; And silence aids--though the steep hills Send to the lake a thousand rills; In summer time, so soft they weep.

The sound but lulls the ear asleep; Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, So stilly is the solitude."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARY'S LAKE.]

Across the water is the old graveyard of vanished St. Mary's kirk. And it was the low-voiced minister's wife--a Babbie a little removed--who knew

"What boon to lie, as now I lie, And see in silver at my feet St. Mary's Lake, as if the sky Had fallen 'tween those hills so sweet, And this old churchyard on the hill, That keeps the green graves of the dead, So calm and sweet, so lone and wild still, And but the blue sky overhead."

We sat in the silences, the still silent afternoon, conscious of the folk verse that goes--

"St. Mary's Loch lies s.h.i.+mmering still, But St. Mary's kirkbell's lang dune ringing."

Suddenly, over the far rim of the water, my eye caught something white, and then another, and another. And I knew well that were I but nearer, as imagination knew was unnecessary, I might see the swan on still St.

Mary's Lake, and their shadow breaking in the water.

CHAPTER IV

THE EMPRESS OF THE NORTH

I suppose the Scotsman who has been born in Edinburgh may have a pardonable reluctance in praising the town, may hesitate in appraising it; Stevenson did; Scott did not. And I suppose if one cannot trace his ancestry back to Edinburgh, or nearly there, but must choose some of the other capitals of the world as his ancestral city, one might begrudge estate to Edinburgh.

I have none of these hesitations, am hampered by none of these half and half ways. Being an American, with half a dozen European capitals to choose from if I must, and having been born in an American capital which is among the loveliest--I think the loveliest--I dare choose Edinburgh as my dream city. I dare fling away my other capital claims, and all modification, ever Scotch moderation, to declare without an "I think" or "they say," Edinburgh is the most beautiful, the most romantic, the singular city of the world.

Those who come out of many generations of migration grow accustomed to choosing their quarter of the world; they have come from many countries and through nomadic ancestors for a century, or two, or three. And perhaps they, themselves, have migrated from one state to another, one city to another. Every American has had these phases, has suffered the sea change and the land. Surely then he may adopt his ancestral capital, as correctly as he adopts his present political capital.

It shall be Edinburgh. And while Constantinople and Rio and Yokohama may be splendid for situation, they have always something of foreign about them, they can never seem to touch our own proper romance, to have been the setting for our play. Edinburgh is as lovely, and then, the chalice of romance has been lifted for centuries on the high altar of her situation.

Edinburgh is a small city, as modern cities go; but I presume it has many thousands of population, hundreds of thousands. If it were Glasgow numbers would be important, fixative. But Edinburgh has had such a population through the centuries that to cast its total with only that of the souls now living within her precincts were to leave out of the picture those shadowy and yet brilliant, ever present generations, who seem all to jostle each other on her High street, without respect to generations, if there is very decided respect of simple toward gentle.

Edinburgh is, curiously, significantly, divided and scarce united, into Old Town and New Town. And yet, the Old Town with its ancient _lands_ so marvelously like modern tenements, and its poverty which is of no date and therefore no responsibility of ours, is neither dead nor deserted, and is still fully one-half the town. While New Town, looking ever up to the old, looking across the stretch to Leith, and to the sea whence came so much threatening in the old days, and with its memories of Hume and Scott who are ancient, and of Stevenson, who, in spite of his immortal youth, does begin to belong to another generation than ours--New Town also, to a new American, is something old. It has all become Edinburgh, two perfect halves of a whole which is not less perfect for the imperfect uniting.

There is no city which can be so "observed." I venture that when you have stood on Castle Hill--on the High Street with its narrow opening between the _lands_ framing near and far pictures--on Calton Hill--when you have been able to "rest and be thankful" at Corstorphine Hill--when you have climbed the Salisbury crags--when you have mounted to Arthur's Seat and looked down as did King Arthur before there was an Edinburgh--you will believe that not any slightest corner but fills the eye and soul.

There is, of course, no single object in Edinburgh to compare with objects of traveler's interest farther south. The castle is not the Tower, Holyrood is a memory beside Windsor, St. Giles is no Canterbury, St. Mary's is not St. Paul's, the Royal Scottish art gallery is meager indeed, notwithstanding certain rare riches in comparison with the National. But still one may believe of any of these superior objects, as T. Sandys retorted to Shovel when they had played the game of matching the splendours of Thrums with those of London and Shovel had named Saint Paul's, and Tommy's list of native wonders was exhausted, but never Tommy--"it would like to be in Thrums!" All these lesser glories go to make up the singular glory which is Edinburgh.

_The Castle_

And there is the castle. Nowhere in all the world is castle more strategically set to guard the city and to guard the memories of the city and the beauty.

For the castle is Edinburgh. It stood there, stalwart in the plain, thousands and thousands of years ago, this castle hill which invited a castle as soon as man began to fortify himself. It has stood here a thousand years as the bulwark of man against man. Certain it will stand there a thousand years to come. And after--after man has destroyed and been destroyed, or when he determines that like night and the sea there shall be no more destruction. Castle Hill is immortal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Edinburgh Castle_]

Always it has been the resort of kings and princes. First it was the keep of princesses, far back in Pictish days before Christian time, this "Castell of the Maydens." From 987 B. C. down to 1566, when Mary was lodged here for safe keeping in order that James might be born safe and royal, the castle has had royalties in its keeping. It has kept them rather badly in truth. While many kings have been born here, few kings have died in its security; almost all Scottish kings have died tragically, almost all Scottish kings have died young, and left their kingdom to some small prince whose regents held him in this castle for personal security, while they governed the realm, always to its disaster.

There is not one of the Stewart kings, one of the Jameses, from First to Sixth, who did not come into the heritage of the kingdom as a baby, a youth; even the Fourth, who rebelled against his father and won the kingdom--and wore a chain around his body secretly for penance. And these baby kings and stripling princes have been lodged in the castle for safe keeping, prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme.

History which attempts to be exact begins the castle in the seventh century, when Edwin of Deira fortified the place and called it Edwin's burgh. It was held by Malcolm Canmore, of whom and of his Saxon queen Margaret, Dunfermline tells a fuller story; held against rebels and against English, until Malcolm fell at Alnwick, and Margaret, dead at hearing the news, was carried secretly out of the castle by her devoted and kingly sons.

After Edward I took the castle, for half a century it was variously held by the English as a Border fortress. Once Bruce retook it, a stealthy night a.s.sault, up the cliffs of the west, and The Bruce razed it. Rebuilt by the Third Edward, it was taken from this king by a clever ruse planned by the Dougla.s.s, Black Knight of Liddesdale. A s.h.i.+pload of wine and biscuits came into harbour, and the unsuspecting castellan, glad to get such precious food in the far north, purchased it all and granted delivery at dawn next morning. The first cart load upset under the portcullis, the gate could not be closed, the cry "A Dougla.s.s," was raised, and the castle entered into Scottish keeping, never to be "English" again until the Act of Union.

Henry IV and Richard II attempted it, but failed. Richard III entered it as friend. For three years it was held for Mary by Kirkcaldy, while the city was disloyal. Charles I held it longer than he held England, and Cromwell claimed it in person as part of the Protectorate. Prince Charles, the Third, could not take it, contented himself with the less castellated, more palatial joys, of Holyrood; a preference he shared with his greatest grandmother.