A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
Perth is a very ancient town; but within these few years it has been increased to a great degree, so that it may be called a new town. Its bridge over the Tay, and its two Inches, ornament it wonderfully. The Inches are large flat grass fields, one at the south entrance of Perth, the other at the north; and the roads and walks in them are through avenues of trees. There is a view of the town of Perth coming from the south, where the Romans halted to admire, and cried out with one voice,—"Ecce Tiberim!" I think they paid a very bad compliment to the Tay, as there can be no comparison between it and the sluggish Tiber. Nothing can be finer than the two views after passing north of the range of mountains called the Oichill hills. The first of these views is the richest part of Strath Earn, and the junction of the River Earn with the Tay; taking in the Brig of Earn, the wooded hill of Moncrief, and the noble plantations of Dupplin, Lord Kinnoull's, for its northern boundary. After climbing the hill of Moncrief, and two miles north of the Brig of Earn, then comes the charming prospect that delighted the marching Romans; and which, on taking a short turn round a hill, at once opens to the sight. To the right hand is the broad sweeping Tay, coming from the north, and winding round the base of the Kinnoull Crags, flowing majestically to the east, and towards the rich Carse of Gowrie and Dundee. In front, is the town of Perth, its noble bridge, the South Inch, the spires, and other edifices in the town; the waving corn, in part of the fertile district of Strathmore, with the grand chain of Grampion mountains, in the back-ground; all conspiring to make this a prodigiously striking view. One of the days I passed by this beautiful spot was a Monday, the day after the sacrament; I perceived a multitude not far from the road's side, with a wooden stand raised in the midst of the throng; some of the congregation were standing, others sitting, forming altogether an amazing concourse of men, women, and children. It was a field-preaching day. It is impossible for all to hear the sermon:—but, good souls, if they are only within the holy sough (or sound), that perfectly satisfies them. As often as the sacrament is administered, there is preaching all day on the Thursday preceding, as well as on the Sunday and the Monday after, attended by hundreds flocking from every quarter, and from a very great distance. In the small towns, as well as in large ones, this practice too is kept up; and on the sacrament Sunday, one minister is preaching in the church, and another in the adjacent field; the congregation continually going from one to the other. In the country, in the Highlands, the proprietors of the land in each parish pay the stipend of the minister, build the kirk, and the manse (the parsonage), and keep them in repair; they also pay the stipend of the master, or masters, of the public schools, and generally there are two schools in a parish; one English, the other Galic. At these schools the children of the poor are taught to write and read, for one shilling a quarter. At Gask, nine miles from Perth, I saw more than forty boys and girls in one school.
The fashion of large farms, instead of small ones, has unhappily of late years made its way into Scotland, as well as England, to the great detriment of both countries. The rich farmer goes to the landlord, when the small farmer's lease is nearly expired, and says, "I should be glad to add such a farm to the one, or more, that I have; I can afford to give you more rent for it than such an one can; and besides, my opulence will secure to you your rent, without delay, danger, or drawback." This tempts the proprietor, and thus farms accumulate: and in every respect, the inconveniences resulting from it, are equal in Scotland to those in England. No poultry, no pork, &c. are raised, as formerly, for market; all is consumed in the great farmer's own family, which increases the price of those articles prodigiously, besides many others. The late worthy possessor of Gask, would on no account destroy the small farms on his estate. Many of his tenants rented at the rate of three and four pounds a year. He never turned a widow off his estate; and if she could not keep on the farm her husband held, some cot or other, with a very pretty piece of ground, was given her. His worthy son, the present Gask, continues the same benevolent plan his father long practised; and in 1796, when he brought home his new married lady, he gave a dinner to his tenants, consisting of more than three hundred.
The views from Gask are very pleasing;—to the south, the bold Crag Rossie, one of the Oichills, raises its head; and the river Earn, in the vale just below Gask-house, is meandering from west to east; over which is a simple bridge, in sight of Gask, leading to the small town of Duning. To the north of the house, about two miles, is a beautiful view of the Grampions, from east to west, as far as the eye can reach: the town of Crieff, at a distance, is also plainly distinguished by its white houses at the bases of the small hills, standing like beautiful lodges, in front of the pile of mountains, so grandly and so beautifully thrown together around Loch Earn. The white walls of Drummond Castle also, to the south of Crieff, surrounded by woods and crags; crowned by the brown and rich yellow sides of Top Turloch, form a fine feature in the distant landscape.
The drive from the Brig of Earn to Dupplin, is beautiful; with a great variety of ground, and the continued woods of Dupplin, on the right hand; and on the left, the Earn river sweetly winding through the Strath, with the high green range of Oichill Hills, bounding the scene to the south. The trees, as I drew nearer to Dupplin, delighted me; ash, beach, lime, oak, in short, every kind of tree, extremely large, and in abundance; with a mixture of birch, mountain ash, maple, and alder; affording a variety of tints that added infinite beauty to the whole scene.
To the south of Earn, seen from the Dupplin road, is a part of the rich verdant Strath, ornamented by Freeland, Lord Ruthven's; Rossie, and Invermay, Mr. Belche's. A few miles from the Brig of Earn, towards the junction of the river Earn with the Tay, is Abernethy, the old town of the Picts; now a very poor place; though there are still remains of some of its ancient steeples.
The ground around Perth, I was told, lets from two to three, and five pounds a Scotch acre, which is about one-fourth more than an English acre. Butter is about ten-pence a pound, twenty-two ounces. Not only butter, but eggs, and poultry of all sorts, are greatly increased in price since the small farms have decreased in number.
As no coal-pits have been worked north of the Eckles, or Oichill Hills, that necessary article is brought by water to Perth; the Tay being navigable for considerable vessels as high as that town: and as many, if not more, of the Newcastle coals are burnt there, than of Scotch coals; because they are procured full as cheap, if not more so, than the coals from Fife and Stirling-shires.
The labourer, at Perth, gets commonly fifteen-pence a day; in harvest, sixteen-pence, with meat and drink.
Masons' wages, twenty-pence a day; their labourers, fourteen-pence.
In the year 1796, I was pleased to find potatoes were so cheap in Scotland. At Cambleton, in Kintire, they sold forty-four pounds for sixpence; and at Crieff, when cheapest, 360 pounds for four shillings.
In the worst street in Perth, part of the old Castle of Gowrie is still remaining; some military men were quartered in it when I was there; notwithstanding, there are very fine barracks erected at the west end of the town. In the Castle of Gowrie, James the First of England was confined by the nobles of that name; from whom he was rescued by the wonderful courage of a very few friends who had come to Perth with him, and regained his palace in Fifeshire.
Near Perth are a great number of extensive fine bleaching grounds. The chief manufactures of the town are cottons, and the printing them; also great quantities of men's shoes and boots are made at Perth, and sent to the London market.
The following is the legend of the name of Kinnoull Hill.—Formerly the old town of Perth was situated near the junction of the river Almond with the Tay; and it was washed away by a violent flood. The king's infant son, in his cradle, was hurried down the rushing Tay, in sight of the unhappy father who, distracted, ran along the bank; and when he came to a spot about half a mile above the present town, he made an exclamation in Galic, something like Aicha! from which the east bank took the name of Kincarrica. The king still followed his floating darling; and when he came opposite to the high hill, and the dangerous sweep of the river, below the site of new Perth, his frantic grief and fright made him howl. From that, says the legend, came the name of the Hill of Kinnoull.
From Perth I crossed the Tay, and proceeded to the new bridge of Isla, then scarcely finished; it is very near the junction of the river Isla with the Tay. The old ruin of the Castle of Kinclaven, is on the edge of the west bank of the Tay, just below the junction of the two rivers. From off the walls of that ruin, I eat, in July 1785, some of the finest apricots I ever eat in my life. The ferry of Kinclaven, immediately at the junction of the rivers, before the bridge of Isla was built, was the only means of getting to Mieklour, without going round by Coupar in Angus, and Blair Gowrie.
Scone, where the Kings of Scotland were wont to be crowned, was the first place of note I passed after leaving Perth. About seven miles from Perth, on the west side of Tay, is Stanley; where are large cotton works, which have injured the beauty of the place, but have made it more profitable to the owner. A mile above Stanley, on the same side of the river, is Taymount, once a lovely spot, and the habitation of superlative virtue (though a thatched dwelling), hanging over the noble Lin of Campsie, a very fine fall of the Tay. Under this humble roof lived my best friend, with his excellent mother. At his death it returned to his brother; and is become a neglected, wretched, shaven farm.
Somewhat above Taymount, on the opposite bank of the Tay, the ancient walls of Stubhall rise; belonging to Lord Perth.—The house is in the very old style of building, but the situation of it is very romantic and beautiful.
From Stubhall I proceeded to Mieklour house; it is more like a beautiful English place than any I saw in Scotland. The Tay is there full and deep, and glides on as tamely as any English river.
The woods are extensive; and the hills within sight are not very high. From the front of the mansion is seen, at a distance, Dunsinane Hill (rising from Strathmore), at the top of which Macbeth had a castle; and at the base of it is Dunsinane house, surrounded by wood; though, I believe, Birnam Wood never took root there. From Mieklour house, I perceived a large gap in Dunsinane Hill; and the legend tells, that in his flight, Macduff leaped it; and the prints of his horse's feet, on the rock, are still to be seen.
By the assistance of the most excellent owner of Mieklour, I was enabled to see Loch Clunie, which is only a small lake; but its banks, and its surrounding mountains of Stormount (in fact, part of the Grampions) render Loch Clunie a place worth seeing. In it is an island, covered with wood; out of which rises a large old castle-like building, belonging to Lord Ayrly. On this island was born the admirable Crichton; but not a trace of his family is left. Between Loch Clunie and Blair Gowrie, is Marlie, near a small lake, lying low; so does Ard Blair.
Blair Gowrie is a small town upon the west precipitate bank of the river Airdle, and lies at the beginning of another wild pass through the Grampions, by Glen Shee and Glen Beg, to Bramar. A mile from Blair Gowrie, from Lerinty Burn, is a zig-zag road, to climb a lofty hill; and again it zig-zags round wonderful precipices, down to the Cally Bridge; and from thence the traveller scarcely ever loses sight of some fine water or other, till through many a glen he reaches the Castle of Bramar, and Invercauld, on the banks of the Dee; which lovely place I had no opportunity of seeing, as I went the other Highland road to Fort George, by Blair of Atholl.
At Blair Gowrie, the river Airdle sounds to be, or is called Airoch. About a quarter of a mile above the bridge, which is at the bottom of the town, is a very picturesque salmon leap, called the Keith of Blair Gowrie. The great rock stones in the river, at the Keith, above and below it, are of a very singular nature; of beautiful pebbles, in sockets (perhaps of clay), and so hardened therein that they seem one body, as they resisted every effort I could make to break off a bit. The plants, all about the Keith, appeared in the highest luxuriant vigour; but being ignorant of botany, I in that instance lost much pleasure. A few miles above the Keith, on the brink of the same river, is a very singular, sequestered, romantic spot. The house is situated on the edge of a promontory of a huge solid rock, hanging over the river, quite out of the perpendicular line. The rocks touching the river on each side of it, from the chasms and other irregularities in them, occasion the water to dash furiously round them. All the rocks are covered with trees of every sort; some straight as pines, others feathering and branching from the top to the bottom of them; and the opposite bank is a counter part of that on which Craig Hall is built. The rock, and the wall of the house, seem of a piece; and the eye, from the windows, sees nothing but the precipice, that would turn the head giddy were it not for the stems and branches of trees sprouting from every chink of the jagged rocks. There is a zig-zag path, however, cut by the side of the house, with much art and labour, down the rocks to the margin of the rolling river: this path leads to a scene of rock, wood, and water, not to be described.—I fancied myself at the end of the world, and at the gate of Paradise! This old secluded habitation belongs to the ancient house of Rattry; which, in the iron age of Scotland, possessed a great extent of territory in that part of Perthshire.
It is said an Earl of Atholl, called Black Jock of Atholl (it was before the Murrays enjoyed that title), married a daughter of the house of Rattry; and her father giving her less of his property than Jock expected, he, without ceremony, came down from Atholl with a band of ruffians, suddenly intruded upon his father-in-law, as he and his household were at prayers, and murdered him and all his family, except one son, who fled. Jock made no scruple of helping himself to the chief of Rattry's possessions; and the times were such, that no retribution could be obtained, nor punishment inflicted on the potent murderer. How the estate of Craig Hall returned to the family of Rattry, the legend does not say.
Another instance of the arbitrary state in which Scotland was held in old times, both in public and private affairs, is the melancholy fate of the wife of an Erskine, a lord of session, whose title was Lord Grange. It was suspected that the lady, by some means or other, had got at the knowledge of some state papers of infinite consequence; and as poor women are set down, in the minds of all arbitrary men, to be incapable of keeping a secret, Erskine and his son were determined to secure the one contained in the papers in question, by putting it out of the lady's power to divulge any thing she knew of the matter. To accomplish their design, the husband and son privately conveyed her to the island of St. Kilda, there put her on shore, and left her to shift for herself; and sailed back again, without a living being having missed them, or suspected what they had executed: nor could the lady's place of concealment be discovered by her friends, although they made every effort in their power to find out whither they had conveyed her, but to no purpose; nor could the unnatural husband and son be punished for their crime. The island of St. Kilda afforded no implements for writing, and the lady's history would never have been known, had she not worked it on her muslin apron with her hair. Her family, by some means or other, after her death (which happened at St. Kilda, near thirty years after her banishment) got possession of this curious piece of work, and preserved it with great care, as a memorial of her sufferings, and of the tyranny of the times in which she lived.
The inhabitants of the island of St. Kilda, to this day, are no better than savages; they are few in number, and live upon stinking fish, and rotten eggs, laid by birds in the hollows of the rocks. They will touch neither eggs nor fish until they are in a state of putrefaction. They are little known to the rest of the world, and very seldom visited; and lucky for them that this is the case, or the race of Kildaites would soon be extinct by frequent hemorrhages; for it is confidently affirmed, that the instant a stranger touches the shore, the noses of all the natives begin to bleed throughout the island.
The isle of St. Kilda lies about fifteen miles west from the northern point of North Uist, the most westerly of the Western Islands. If St. Kilda be such at present, as it is described to be, what must it have been when poor Lady Grange was turned adrift upon it? Her husband probably carried her to the last rock that could be found to the west; and concluding that that rock was desolate, put her thereon, that she might perish for want of food.
From Mieklour we one morning set out to visit the fine fall of Isla, called the Reeky Lin. We passed through Blair Gowrie, the small town of Rattry, and proceeded to Ailyth, amongst the wildest of the Stormount hills. Torrents of rain fell during our drive thither, so that the burn, which comes from the forest of Ailyth, and runs through the town, was rushing down its precipitate bed with the utmost violence, joined by many streams from every quarter. The town of Ailyth lies upon the declivity of a steep hill; and the streets are so narrow, and sloping, and were rendered so slippery with the wet, that I thought it impossible for the horses to draw the chaise up. After leaving the town of Ailyth, the road became worse and worse; in some parts very steep, with loose ground; in others, boggy, narrow, and rough, beyond belief. At length, however, we arrived on the banks of the Isla, very near the fall. A gude wife was our guide, who first conducted us to the top of the great cataract, and then to the bottom of it, down a long, dangerous, and slippery bank; and then from one huge stone to another, we arrived at the pool into which the river falls. Imagine yourself upon prodigious masses of slippery rock, severed from the mountain, damming up, in some degree, the vast body of water in front, precipitating itself from an immense height over jagged heaps of rock upon rock, in every possible form, with a violence that sends out its spray to a very great distance; and falling into a pool, of which no one knows the depth: and then on the right, goes dashing against tower beside tower of rocks, rising majestically to the sky, with sprigs of mountain ash, birch, and oak, thinly and carelessly scattered over them. To the left, is a curved recess of rocks equally high with the opposite towers; in which, either by cliffs, or ravages made by the force of the dashing water, caves in numbers, deep and black, appear, to affright the timorous, or the guilty wight. To attempt to get at these caves is almost certain destruction; but what dares not he do, whom guilt has rendered desperate? The legend of the place (and almost every place of curiosity, either in Scotland, or elsewhere, has its legend), says, that an owner, in former times, of Craig upon Isla, having killed a man, fled to the Reeky Lin, and hid himself in one of the caves above described; but conscience would not let him rest there, though he was sure man could not disturb him. He declared, that in the dead of night he saw the de'il in the shape of a black dog, run up the towers of rock just facing the caves; which so terrified him that he quitted his hiding place, preferring the just punishment of his crime, by the hands of man, to the nightly horrors of the devil in the shape of a black dog!
Certainly the Reeky Lin is the finest fall I saw in Scotland, except the Fall of Fyres near Loch Ness. The Reeky Lin has very little wood about it, which is undoubtedly a great absence of beauty; but the majestic towering form of the rocks renders the scene both sublime and picturesque. From the high fall down the river for above a mile, are many more considerable falls, between rocks of vast height on each side. To the east of Isla, in Angusshire, in a very romantic situation under lofty mountains, stands Ayrly castle, to which I am sorry I did not go. Indeed, all that district in Strathmore, from Coupar in Angus, as far as I could see towards Glammis, appeared to be rich in wood, and watered by numerous fine rivers. We quitted the charming fall of Isla with much reluctance, to change our wet clothes, and to take the very acceptable repast provided for us by our kind friend at Mieklour, which we eat in the chaise;—nought to be seen or heard except the thundering noise of the Lin, and the wide waste around us of barren russet mountains, with many boggy glens between them; and two solitary huts made of turf; which altogether rendered the scene uncommonly wild. But that could not allay our appetites: which, when we had satisfied, we returned by a road less dangerous but equally rough; happy to re-enter the hospitable walls of Mieklour house, after a long and fatiguing dripping day.