Part 17

Leaving the rambling suburbs of Paisley, you pass into a rough and undulating country with masses of gray crag interspersed with whinny knolls, where, in the evenings, the linnet sings; with narrow sandy roads wandering through it hither and thither, passing now a clump of gloomy firs, now a house where some wealthy townsman resides, now a pleasant corn-field. A pretty bit of country enough, with larks singing above it from dawn to sunset, and where, in the gloaming, the wanderer not unfrequently can mark the limping hare. A little further on are the ruins of Stanley Castle. This castle, in the days of the poet, before the wildness of the country had been tamed by the plough, must have lent a singular charm to the landscape. It stands at the base of the hills which rise above it with belt of wood, rocky chasm, white streak of waterfall--higher up into heath and silence, silence deep as the heaven that overhangs it; where nothing moves save the vast cloud-shadows, where nothing is heard save the cry of the moorland bird. Tannahill was familiar with the castle in its every aspect--when sunset burned on the walls, when the moon steeped it in silver and silence, and when it rose up before him shadowy and vast through the marshy mists. He had his loom to attend during the day, and he knew the place best in its evening aspect. Twilight, with its quietude and stillness, seemed to have peculiar charms for his sensitive nature, and many of his happiest lines are descriptive of its phenomena. But the glory is in a great measure departed from Stanley Tower; the place has been turned into a reservoir by the Water Company, and the ruin is frequently surrounded by water. This intrusion of water has spoiled the scene. The tower is hoary and broken, the lake looks a thing of yesterday, and there are traces of quite recent masonry about. The lake's shallow extent, its glitter and brightness, are impertinences. Only during times of severe frost, when its surface is iced over, when the sun is sinking in the purple vapours like a globe of red-hot iron--when the skaters are skimming about like swallows, and the curlers are boisterous--for the game has been long and severe--and the decisive stone is roaring up the rink--only in such circumstances does the landscape regain some kind of keeping and homogeneousness. There is no season like winter for improving a country; he tones it down to one colour; he breathes over its waters, and in the course of a single night they become gleaming floors, on which youth may disport itself. He powders his black forest-boughs with the pearlin's of his frosts; and the fissures which spring tries in vain to hide with her flowers, and autumn with fallen leaves, he fills up at once with a snow-wreath. But we must be getting forward, up that winding road, progress marked by gray crag, tuft of heather, bunch of mountain violets, the country beneath stretching out farther and farther. Lo! a strip of emerald steals down the gray of the hill, and there, by the way-side, is an ample well, with the "netted sunbeam" dancing in it. Those who know Tannahill's "Gloomy Winter's noo awa" must admire its curious felicity of touch and colour. Turn round, you are in the very scene of the song. [Sidenote: Gleniffer.] In front is "Gleniffer's dewy dell," to the east "Glenkelloch's sunny brae," afar the woods of Newton, over which at this moment laverocks fan the "snaw-white cluds;" below, the "burnie" leaps in sparkle and foam over many a rocky shelf, till its course is lost in that gorge of gloomy firs, and you can only hear the music of its joy. Which is the fairer--the landscape before your eyes, or the landscape sleeping in the light of song? You cannot tell, for they are at once different and the same. The touch of the poet was loving and true. His genius was like the light of early spring, clear from speck or stain of vapour, but with tremulousness and uncertainty in it; happy, but with grief lying quite close to its happiness; smiling, although the tears are hardly dry upon the cheeks that in a moment may be wet again.

[Sidenote: Tannahill.]

But who is Tannahill? the southern reader asks with some wonder; and in reply it may be said that Burns, like every great poet, had many imitators and successors, and that of these successors in the north country Hogg and Tannahill are the most important. Hogg was a shepherd in The Forest, and he possessed out of sight the larger nature, the greater intellectual force; while as master of the weird and the supernatural there is no Scottish poet to be put beside him. The soul of Ariel seems to inhabit him at times. He utters a strange music like the sighing of the night-wind; a sound that seems to live remote from human habitations. In openness to spiritual beauty, Burns, compared with him, was an ordinary ploughman. Like Thomas the Rhymer, he lay down to sleep on a green bank on a summer's day, and the Queen of Fancy visited his slumber; and never afterwards could he forget her beauty, and her voice, and the liquid jingling of her bridle bells. Tannahill was a weaver, who wrote songs, became crazed, and committed suicide before he reached middle life. His was a weak, tremulous nature. He was wretched by reason of over-sensitiveness. "He lived retired as noon-tide dew." He wanted Hogg's strength, self-assertion, humour, and rough sagacity; nor had he a touch of his weird strain. From Burns, again, he was as different as a man could possibly be. Tannahill knew nothing of the tremendous life-battle fought on wet Mossgiel farm, in fashionable Edinburgh, in provincial Dumfries. He knew nothing of the Love, Scorn, Despair,--those wild beasts that roamed the tropics of Burns's heart. But limited as was his genius, it was in its quality perhaps more exquisite than theirs. He was only a song-writer--both Burns and Hogg were more than that--and some of his songs are as nearly as possible perfect. He knew nothing of the mystery of life. If the fierce hand of Passion had been laid upon his harp, it would have broken at once its fragile strings. He looked upon nature with a pensive yet a loving eye. Gladness flowed upon him from the bright face of spring, despondency from the snow-flake and the sweeping winter winds. His amatory songs have no fire in them. While Burns would have held Annie in his "straining grasp," Tannahill, with a glow upon his cheek, would have pointed out to the unappreciating fair the "plantin' tree-taps tinged wi' gowd," or silently watched the "midges dance aboon the burn." Then, by the aid of that love of nature, how clearly he sees, and how exquisitely he paints what he sees--

"Feathery breckans fringe the rocks; 'Neath the brae the burnie jouks."

"Towering o'er the Newton wuds, Laverocks fan the snaw-white cluds."

Neither Keats nor Tennyson, nor any of their numerous followers surpassed this unlettered weaver in felicity of colour and touch. Any one wishing to prove the truth of Tannahill's verse, could not do better than bring out his song-book here, and read and ramble, and ramble and read again.

[Sidenote: Elderslie.]

But why go farther to-day? The Peesweep Inn, where the rambler baits, is yet afar on the heath; Kilbarchan, queerest of villages, is basking its straggling length on the hill-side in the sun, peopled by botanical and bird-nesting weavers, its cross adorned by the statue of Habbie Simpson, "with his pipes across the wrong shoulder." Westward is Elderslie, where Wallace was born, and there, too, till within the last few years, stood the oak amongst whose branches, as tradition tells, the hero, when hard pressed by the Southrons, found shelter with all his men. From afar came many a pilgrim to behold the sylvan giant. Before its fall it was sorely mutilated by time and tourists. Of its timber were many snuff-boxes made. Surviving the tempests of centuries, it continued to flourish green atop, although its heart was hollow as a ruined tower. At last a gale, which heaped our coasts with shipwreck, struck it down with many of its meaner brethren. "To this complexion must we come at last." At our feet lies Paisley with its poets. Seven miles off, Glasgow peers, with church-spire and factory stalk, through a smoky cloud; the country between gray with distance, and specked here and there with the vapours of the trains. How silent the vast expanse! not a sound reaches the ear on the height. Gleniffer Braes are clear in summer light, beautiful as when the poet walked across them. Enough, their beauty and his memory. One is in no mood to look even at the unsightly place beside the canal which was sought when to the poor disordered brain the world was black, and fellow-men ravening wolves. Here he walked happy in his genius; not a man to wonder at and bow the knee to, but one fairly to appreciate and acknowledge. For the twitter of the wren is music as well as the lark's lyrical up-burst; the sigh of the reed shaken by the wind as well as the roaring of a league of pines.

_HOME._

When of an autumn evening the train brought me into Edinburgh, the scales of familiarity having to some little extent fallen from my eyes, I thought I had never before seen it so beautiful. Its brilliancy was dazzling and fairy-like. It was like a city of Chinese lanterns. It was illuminated as if for a great victory, or the marriage of a king. Princes Street blazed with street lamps and gay shop-windows. The Old Town was a maze of twinkling lights. The Mound lifted up its starry coil. The North Bridge leaping the chasm, held lamps high in air. There were lights on the Calton Hill, lights on the crest of the Castle. The city was in a full blossom of lights--to wither by midnight, to be all dead ere dawn. And then to an ear accustomed to silence there arose on every side the potent hum of moving multitudes, more august in itself, infinitely more suggestive to the imagination than the noise of the Atlantic on the Skye shores. The sound with which I had been for some time familiar was the voice of many billows; the sound which was in my ears was the noise of men.

And in driving home, too, I was conscious of a curious oppugnancy between the Skye life which I had for same time been leading, and the old Edinburgh life which had been dropped for a little, and which had now to be resumed. The two experiences met like sheets of metal, but they were still separate sheets--I could not solder them together and make them one. I knew that a very few days would do that for me; but it was odd to attempt by mental effort to unite the experiences and to discover how futile was all such effort. Coming back to Edinburgh was like taking up abode in a house to which one had been for a while a stranger, in which one knew all the rooms and all the articles of furniture in the rooms, but with whose knowledge there was mingled a feeling of strangeness. I had changed my clothes of habit, and for the moment I did not feel so much at ease in the strange Edinburgh, as the familiar Skye, suit.

[Sidenote: Ossianic translations.]

It was fated, however, that the two modes of life should, in my consciousness, melt into each other imperceptibly. When I reached home I found that my friend the Rev. Mr Macpherson of Inverary had sent me a packet of Ossianic translations. These translations, breathing the very soul of the wilderness I had lately left, I next day perused in my Edinburgh surroundings, and through their agency the two experiences coalesced. Something of Edinburgh melted into my remembrance of Skye--something of Skye was projected into actual Edinburgh. Thus is life enriched by ideal contrast and interchange. With certain of these translations I conclude my task. To me they were productive of much pleasure. And should the shadows in my book have impressed the reader to any extent, as the realities impressed me--if I have in any way kindled the feeling of Skye in his imagination as it lives in mine--these fragments of austere music will not be ungrateful.

EXTRACT FROM CARRICK-THURA.

Night fell on wave-beat Rotha, The hill-shelter'd bay received the ships; A rock rose by the skirt of the ocean, A wood waved over the boom of the waves; Above was the circle of Lodin, And the huge stones of many a power; Below was a narrow plain And tree and grass beside the sea. A tree torn by the wind when high From the skirt of the cairns to the plain. Beyond was the blue travel of streams; A gentle breeze came from the stilly sea, A flame rose from a hoary oak; The feast of the chiefs was spread on the heath; Grieved was the soul of the king of shields, For the chief of dark Carrick of the braves.

The moon arose slow and faint; Deep slumber fell round the heads of the braves, Their helmets gleam'd around; The fire was dying on the hill. Sleep fell not on the eyelids of the king; He arose in the sound of his arms To view the wave-beat Carrick. The fire lower'd in the far distance, The moon was in the east red and slow. A blast came down from the cairn; On its wings was the semblance of a man, Orm Lodin, ghastly on the sea. He came to his own dwelling-place, His black spear useless in his hand, His red eye as the fire of the skies, His voice as the torrent of the mountains.

Far distant in the murky gloom. Fingal raised his spear in the night, His challenge was heard on the plain-- "Son of the night, from my side, Take the wind--away; Why shouldst come to my presence, feeble one, Thy form as powerless as thy arms? Do I dread thy dark-brown shape, Spirit of the circles of Lodin? Weak is thy shield and thy form of subtle cloud, Thy dull-edged sword as fire in the great waves, A blast parts them asunder, And thou [thyself] art straightway dispersed From my presence, dark son of the skies. Call thy blast--away!" "Wouldst thou drive me from my own circle?" Said the hollow voice of eeriest sound. "To me bends the host of the braves; I look from my wood on the people, And they fall as ashes before my sight; From my breath comes the blast of death; I come forth on high on the wind; The storms are pouring aloft Around my brow, cold, gloomy, and dark. Calm is my dwelling in the clouds, Pleasant the great fields of my repose." "Dwell in thy plains," Said the mighty king, his hand on his sword; "Else remember the son of Cumal in the field; Feeble is thy phantom, great is my strength. Have I moved my step from the mountain To thy halls on the peaceful plain? Has my powerful spear met In the skyey robe the voice Of the dark spirit of the circle of Lodin? Why raise thy brow in gloom? Why brandishest thy spear on high? Little I fear thy threats, feeble one, I fled not from hosts on the field, Why should flee from the seed of the winds The mighty hero, Morven's king? Flee he will not, well he knows The weakness of thy arm in battle." "Flee to thy land," replied the Form, "Flee on the black wind--away! The blast is in the hollow of my hand-- Mine are the course and wrestling of the storm, The king of Soroch is my son, He bends on the hill to my shade, His battle is at Carrick of the hundred braves, And safe he shall win the victory-- "Flee to thy own land, son of Cumal, Else feel to thy sorrow my rage." High he lifted his dark spear, Fiercely he bent his lofty head. Against him Fingal advanced amain, [a-fire,] His bright-blue sword in hand, Son of Loon--the swartest cheek'd. The light of the steel passed through the Spirit, The gloomy and feeble spirit of death. Shapeless he fell, yonder [opposite] On the wind of the black cairns, as smoke Which a young one breaks, rod in hand, At the hearth of smoke and struggle, The Form of Lodin shriek'd in the hill, Gathering himself in the wind, Innis-Torc heard the sound, The waves with terror stay their courses: Up rose the braves of Cumal's son. Each hand grasp'd a spear on the hill, "Where is he?" they cried with frowning rage, Each armour sounding on its lord.

EXTRACTS FROM FINGAL.

Cuchullin sat by the wall of Tura, In the shade of the tree of sounding leaf; His spear leant against the cave-pierced rock, His great shield by his side on the grass. The thoughts of the chief were on Cairber. A hero he had slain in battle fierce, When the watcher of the ocean came, The swift son of Fili with the bounding step. "Arise, Cuchullin, arise, I see a gallant fleet from the north, Swift bestir thee, chief of the banquet, Great is Swaran, numerous is his host!" "Moran, answered the dauntless blue-eyed, Weak and trembling wert thou aye; In thy fear the foe is numerous; Son of Fili is Fingal, High champion of the dark-mottled hills." "I saw their leader," answer'd Moran; "Like to a rock was the chief, His spear as a fir on the rocky mountain, His shield as the rising moon: He sat on a rock on the shore As the mist yonder on the hill." "Many," I said, "chief of the strangers, Are the champions that rise with thee, Strong warriors, of hardiest stroke, And keenest brand in the play of men. But more numerous and valiant are the braves That surround the windy Tura." Answer'd the brave, as a wave on a rock, "Who in this land is like me? Thy heroes could not stand in my presence; But low they should fall beneath my hand. Who is he would meet my sword? Save Fingal, king of stormy Selma. Once on a day we grasp'd each other On Melmor, and fierce was our strife. The wood fell in the unyielding fight, The streams turn'd aside, and trembled the cairn. Three days the strife was renew'd, Warriors bravest in battle trembled. On the fourth, said Fingal the king-- 'The ocean chief fell in the glen.' He fell not, was my answer." Let Cuchullin yield to the chief, Who is stronger than the mountain storm. I, said the dauntless blue-eyed, Yield I shall not to living man. Cuchullin shall, resolute as he, be Great in battle, or stainless in death. Son of Fili, seize my spear, Strike the joyless and gloomy shield of Sema; Thou shalt see it high on the wall of spears; No omen of peace was its sound. Swift, son of Fili, strike the shield of Sema, Summon my heroes from forest and copse. Swift he struck the spotted [bossy] shield, Each copse and forest answer'd. Pauseless, the alarm sped through the grove; The deer and the roe started on the heath: Curtha leap'd from the sounding rock: Connal of the doughtiest spear bestirr'd himself Favi left the hind in the chase: Crugeal return'd to festive Jura. Ronan, hark to the shield of the battles, Cuchullin's land signal, Cluthair, Calmar, hither come from the ocean: With thy arms hither come, O Luthair. Son of Finn, thou strong warrior, arise; Cairber [come] from the voiced Cromlec; Bend thy knee, free-hearted Fichi. Cormag [come] from streamy Lena. Coilte, stretch thy splendid side, [limbs] Swift, travelling from Mora, Thy side, whiter than the foam, spread On the storm-vex'd sea. Then might be seen the heroes of high deeds Descending each from his own winding glen, Each soul burning with remembrance Of the battles of the time gone by of old: Their eyes kindling and searching fiercely round For the dark foe of Innisfail. Each mighty hand on the hilt of each brand Blazing, lightning flashing [_lit._, streaming bright, like the sun] from their armour. As pours a stream from a wild glen Descend the braves from the sides of the mountains, Each chief in the mail of his illustrious sire. His stern, dark-visaged warriors behind, As the gatherings of the waters of the mountains [i.e., rain-clouds] Around the lightning of the sky. At every step was heard the sound of arms And the bark of hounds, high gambling Songs were humm'd in every mouth, Each dauntless hero eager for the strife. Cromlec shook on the face of the mountains, As they march'd athwart the heath: They stood on the inclines of the hills, As the hoary mist of autumn That closes round the sloping mountain, And binds its forehead to the sky.

FINGAL, Lib. i., line 1-100.