The Spell of Scotland Part 25

The towns are less than an hour apart by express train. They are all of Scotch history and characteristics apart in quality and in genius.

Edinburgh is still royal, and sits supreme upon its hill, its past so present one forgets it is the past. Glasgow never could have been royal; and so it never was significant until royal Scotland ceased to be, and democratic Scotland, where a man's a man for a' that, came to take the place of the old, to take it completely, utterly. So long as the world was old, was the Old World, and looked toward the East, Edinburgh would be the chief city. When the world began to be new, and to look toward the New World, Glasgow came swiftly into being, and the race is to the swift.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER.]

There is history to Glasgow, when it was a green pleasant village, and there was romance. It is but a short way, a foot-path journey if the pleasant green fields still invited, out to Bothwell Castle; splendid ruin, and, therefore, recalling Mary and Darnley and the Lennoxes, but not Bothwell. But Landside, where Mary was defeated, is a Glaswegian suburb, Kelvingrove--"let us haste"--is a prosperous residence district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, means simply and largely the harbour of Glasgow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in order that Glasgow's prosperity might flow out of the very heart of the city.

"Lord, let Glasgow flourish according to the preaching of Thy word," ran the old motto. It has been shortened of late.

The heart of the city is dreary miles of long monotonous streets, where beauty is never wasted in gra.s.s blade or architecture. George's Square may be n.o.ble, it has some good monuments, but it is veiled in commercial grime, like all the town. What could be expected of a city that would name its princ.i.p.al business street, "Sauchieburn," memorializing and defying that petty tragedy?

There is an art gallery with Whistler's "Carlyle," and a few other notable pictures (John Lavery's I looked at with joy) to redeem miles of mediocrity. (Here I should like to be original and not condemn, but there are the miles.)

There is a cathedral, that "aydifyce" of note, touched almost nothing by the spirit of "reform"; for the burghers of Glasgow, then as now, believing that their cathedral belonged to them, rose in their might and cast out the despoilers before they had done more than smash a few "idols." Therefore this shrine of St. Kentigern's is more pleasing than the reformed and restored shrine of St. Giles. The crypt is particularly impressive. And the very pillar behind which Rob Roy hid is all but labeled. Of course it is "authentic," for Scott chose it. What unrivaled literary sport had Scott in fitting history to geography!

There is a University, one of the first in the Kingdom; the city universities are gaining on the cla.s.sic Oxford and St. Andrews.

But chiefly there are miles of houses of working men, more humble than they ought to be. If Glasgow is one of the best governed cities in the world, and has the best water supply in the world--except that of St.

Paul--would that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow would scatter a little loveliness before the eyes of these patient and devoted workingmen.

But what a chorus their work raises. In shipyards what mighty work is wrought, even such tragically destined work, and manufactured beauty, as the _Lusitania_!

From Glasgow it is that the Scot has gone out to all the ends of the earth. If the "Darien scheme" of wresting commerce from England failed utterly, and Glasgow failed most of all, that undoing was the making of the town. It is not possible to down the Scot. The smallest drop of blood tells, and it never fails to be Scottish. Most romantic, most poetic, most reckless, most canny of people. The Highlander and the Lowlander that Mr. Morley found mixed in the character of Gladstone, and the explanation of his character, is the explanation of any Scot, and of Scotland.

_Ayr_

Always the West is the democratic corner of a country; or, let me say almost always, if you have data wherewith to dispute a wholesale a.s.sertion. Sparta was west of Athens, La Roch.e.l.le was west of Paris, Switzerland was west of Gesler; Norway is west of Sweden, the American West is west of the American East. And Galloway and Ayrshire are the west Lowlands of Scotland.

The West is newer always, freer, more open, more s.p.a.ce and more lure for independence. The West is never feudal, until the West moves on and the East takes its place. Here men develop, not into lords and chiefs, but into men. Wallace may come out of the West, but it is after he has come out that he leads men, in the establishment of a kingdom, but more in a wider fight for freedom; while he is in the West he adventures as a man among men, on the Waters of Irvine, in Laglyne Wood, at c.u.mnock. And a Bruce, struggling with himself, and setting himself against a Comyn, may stagger out of a Greyfriars at Dumfries, and, bewildered, exclaim, "I doubt I have slain the Comyn!" When a follower makes "siccar," and all the religious and human affronts ma.s.s to sober The Bruce, a king may come out of Galloway, out of a brawl, if a church brawl, and establish the kingdom and the royal line forever.

If a Wallace, if a Bruce, can proceed out of these Lowlands--and a Paul Jones!--a poet must come also. And a poet who is as much the essence of that west country as chieftain or king. Everything was ready to produce Burns in 1759. William Burns had come from Dunnottar, a silent, hard-working, G.o.d-fearing Covenanter, into this covenanting corner of Scotland. It was filled with men and women who had grown accustomed to worshiping G.o.d according to their independent consciences, and in the shelter of these dales and hills, sometimes harried by that covenanter-hunting fox, Claverhouse--to his defeat; finally winning the right to unconcealed worship. Seven years gone, and William Burns having built the "auld clay biggan" at Alloway, he married a Carrick maid, Agnes Broun, a maid who had much of the Celt in her. And Robert Burns was born.

It is of course only after the event that we know how fortunate were the leading circ.u.mstances, how inevitable the advent of Robert Burns. Father and mother, time and place, conspired to him. And all Scotland, all that has been Scotland since, results from him. It is Scott who reconstructed Scotland, made the historic past live. But it is Burns who is Scotland, Scotland remains of his temper; homely, human, intense, impa.s.sioned; with a dash and more of the practical and frugal necessary for the making of a nation, but worse than superfluous for the making of a Burns.

Three towns of this Scottish corner contend not for the birth but for the honours of Burns. If Dumfries is the capital of Burnsland and the place of his burial, Ayr is gateway to the land and the place of his birth; while Kilmarnock, weaver's town and most unpoetic, but productive of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the high and distinct literary honours, having published the first edition in an attic, and having loaned its name as t.i.tle for the most imposing edition, and having in its museum possession all the published Burns editions.

To follow his footsteps through Burnsland were impossible to the most ardent. For Burns was a plowman who trod many fields, and turned up many daisies, and disturbed many a wee mousie, a poet who dreamed beside many a stream, and if he spent but a brief lifetime in all, it would take a lifetime, and that active, to overtake him.

"I have no dearer aim than to make leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse on the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes."

He did this abundantly. We have followed him in many a place. But in Burnsland it were all too intimate, if not impossible. He knew all the rivers of this west country, Nith, Doon, Ayr, Afton.

"The streams he wandered near; The maids whom he loved, the songs he sung, All, all are dear."

He did not apparently know the sea, or love it, although he was born almost within sound of it; and he sings of it not at all. He knew the legends of the land. "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins," and he deliberately followed the Bruce legend, hoping it would enter into his blood and spirit, and something large and worthy would result. It did, not an epic, but the strong song of a nation, "Scots wha hae."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Ayr River_]

His land was the home of Lollards and Covenanters. Independence was in the blood. It was the land of the "fighting Kennedys," who disputed with each other, what time they were not furnishing an Abbot of Crossraguel to dispute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Walter Kennedy to have a "flytting" with the Kynge's Makar, William Dunbar. Where Burns secured his Jacobitism I do not know, but, of course, a poet is by nature a Jacobite; as he himself said, "the Muses were all Jacobite."

Burnsland is rich in other literary a.s.sociations. Johannes Scotus is reckoned to have been born also at Ayr; and there are John Galt, James Boswell, James Montgomery, Alexander Smith, Ainslie, Cunningham, and the Carlyles, and Scott in some of his most lively romances. The Book of Taliessin is written in part of this land, the Admirable Crichton was born here. It is a close-packed little port-manteau of land. There is pursuit enough for at least a summer's travel. And, without doubt, there are as many pilgrims who explore Ayrshire as Warwickshire, and much more lovingly.

The entrance is by Ayr. And this I think can be made most claimingly, most fitly, by steamer from Belfast. For one thing, it avoids entrance at Glasgow. Ayr is still a sea port of some importance; and Ireland, democratic, romantic, intimate, is a preparation for this similar country of Galloway and about; both lands are still Celtic.

Ayr looks well from the sea as one comes in, although in the day of Burns the Ratton-key was a more casual place, and harbour works to retain the traffic were not yet built. But the town sits down well into the waterside of its Doon and Ayr rivers, much like a continental town where fresh waters are precious. There is long suburban dwelling, not as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.

And Ayr looks out on the sea with a magnificent prospect from any of her neighbouring segments of coast, with ruined castles set properly, with the dark ma.s.s of romantic Arran purple across the waters, with Ailsa Rock evident, and to a far-seeing eye the blue line of Ireland whence we have come.

There is small reason for staying in Ayr, unless for a wee bit nappie in Tam o' Shanter's inn, which still boasts itself the original and only Tam and hangs a painting above the door to prove itself the starting point, this last "ca' hoose," for Alloway.

To Alloway one may go by tram! It sounds flat and unprofitable. But the gray mare Meg is gone, has followed her tail into the witches night. And if it were not the tram it would be a taxi. And what have witches and warlocks to do with electricity, in truth how can they compete with electricity?

"Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approaches Tam maun ride; That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane, That dreary hour he mounts his beast in; An' sic a night he taks the road in As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in."

To follow, in a tram, in broad daylight, oh, certainly the world has changed, and the Deil too since "the Deil had business on his hand." The occupations that are gone! It is a highway one follows to-day, suburban villas and well-kept fields line the way; no need to "skelpit on thro'

dub and mire." Tam would be quite without adventure. And to-day one wonders if even the lightning can play about this commonplace way. There is however the Race-course--some reminder of Meg!

Yet, it is possible to forget this pleasant day, and to slip back into old night as

"Before him Doon pours a' his floods; The doubling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings flash frae pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll; When, glimmering through the groaning trees, Kirk Alloway seem'd in a bleeze."

The walls of the Auld Kirk lie before us--and "Auld Nick in shape o'

beast" is sitting under "the winnock bunker i' the east." Who would deny that he also like Tammie "glower'd amazed and curious"?

"The piper loud and louder blew, The dancers quick, and quicker flew; They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark."

The ride on this tram has developed a dizziness.

"Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil; Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!"

Did we cry "weel done, cutty sark!" Then we, too, must descend and hurry on foot to the old Brig o' Doon. Not pausing long for The Monument, even to look at the wedding ring of Jean Armour, or the Bible Burns gave to Highland Mary; but on to the Auld Kirk which stands opposite.

To Burns we owe this church in more ways than one. When a certain book of "Antiquities" was being planned, Burns asked that the Auld Kirk of Alloway be included. If Burns would make it immortal? yes. So the story of Tam o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway forever to be remembered.

What would William Burns, covenanter, have thought? For I cannot but think that William looked often askance at the acts of his genius-son.

But William was safely buried within the kirk, and if the epitaph written by the son reads true, William was excellently covenanted.

"O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend.

Here lies the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father, and the gen'rous friend.

The pitying heart that felt for human woe, The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride, The friend of man, to vice alone a foe, For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.'"

The auld clay biggan still stands in Alloway, and "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon" bloom as "fresh and fair" to-day as they did a century and a half ago. It is a simpler place than the birth house on High Street in Stratford, and a simpler environment than College Wynd in Edinburgh. This is a true cotter's home, and Sat.u.r.day nights within must have been of the description.

Somehow it is less of a tourist's way of forced entry, this through the barn, than the bas.e.m.e.nt door at Abbotsford; and so one pa.s.ses through the byre and into the kitchen, where stands the bed in which Robert Burns was born. It is all beautifully homely, as lowly as a manger; and, how the world has been filled by what was once small frail life herein!

It is difficult to divide the poet's relics among so many claimant places, but here and in the museum are many mementoes of the poet. For this as well as Kirk Alloway is a national monument, or something like.

There was a century during which this was merely a clay biggan, and a public house, and that offended no one, least of all the friends of the poet. Except Keats. He came hither in 1818. The host was drunk most of the time, and garrulous. Keats complained that it affected his "sublimity." And, for once, Keats turned severe self-critic. "The flat dog made me write a flat sonnet."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNS' COTTAGE, BIRTH-PLACE OF ROBERT BURNS, AYR.]