THE GLEN OF GLENCOE

Evening Star, Issue 19775, 27 January 1928, Page 3

THE GLEN OF GLENCOE

HANDS OF THE SPOILER PROPOSED CONCRETE ROAD MACDONALDS IN ARMS. This time the MacDonalds have had warning, and are up in arms to defend themselves against another in their Glen of Glencoe (says a writer in a Canadian paper). The rugged beauty of the road running through their Glen of Weeping is to be scarred and the scenes of its tragic history to be wiped out. With the venom of efficiency bureaucracy has singled it out for desecration. It has been brought by the British Ministry of Transport within the scope of an improvement that is to incur spending half a million pounds sterling to resurvey and build that thirty miles of roadway between Tyndrum and Baliachulish that includes the short sector of the Pass of Glencoe. “The hearts' of Scottish Highlanders harden as impious hands improve their roadways out of all scenic and spiritual likeness to satisfy the speed of motorists. It is not only those who have tramped rough ways amid the solitude of the Highland glens and by their leading burns who will lind sympathy for the outraged feelings of a people who hold consecrated the wild grandeurs and ancient associations of their native valleys and moors. The hopelessness of dissent from marauding improvements lags in the hearts of all who deplore extinguishing much that is beautiful, much that is devoutly esteemed. HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS. “Those solitary roads in Highland Scotland serve a purpose never meant to exceed the requirements of the hardy people who so sparsely inhabit their regions. Each mile that is only another to be covered to the southern tourist is hallowed in its sacred and its tender recognition for the Highland Scot. Bureaucracy bids him smother his feelings. It will give him a new road, a road he will not know, one that will mar every vestige of the old road’s scenic and historic associations. His road is tortuous, they say; it is the road he travels, he murmurs. They will put him on the arterial highway from Glasgow to Inverness, to neither of which he cares to go. “The new road will bear the twenty-ton truck that the Scot Has never seen on his old road. The sheep ho shepherds from the motors that now make twenty miles up and over, the pass he will have to take up the mountain sides to escape the motorists careering by at fifty miles the hour. His road is crooked, dipping down to the Coe, scaling the steeps; but the new road will be as straight, as characteristic, and as solid as are the merciless lengths of highways concretely running through whole States in America. HERITAGE OF THE MACDONALDS. “The Highlanders are rebelling. They do not mind having their roads improved, but shun new roads surveyed to trespass upon everything they* hold holy and grand. Young Strathoona. whose grandfather purchased the heritage of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, descendants of the massacred in 1692, is dismayed at the intention to destroy the glen for the sake of running a gigantic and expensive speedway through it. “ Mr Ramsay MacDonald, the Labor leader, surely no vain preserver of ancient futilities, confesses the true Highlander s horror of desecration, and pleads: ‘ I have been in the glen at all seasons, both on foot and in a car, in all weather end practically at every hour of the night and day, so that I know every inch of the district. The proposed road will destroy the spirit of the place. It will cut through and completely transform the bottom l of the valley, which at present is so much in keeping with the traditions of the place. “‘At present a sense of remoteness is there; after it is changed that will go. Now the landscape holds in its keeping the deeds that have made its name for ever famous; changed as it will be by the new road, these will have vanished for ever. Convenience and utilitarianism have already sacrificed far ioa am eh of the sniritual treasures of'this

country- Has not (he time come for those who care for those things to demand that a halt shall be made in the process of desecration ?’ ” A SECOND “GLENCOE MASSACRE.” The writer of the article adds: “We may not have wild glens swept by the Coe of Ossian himself, hut what beauty we do have we should preserve in the roads we lay out. If we ho wise we will see that our roads are not without character; and nothing designed by man is quite so expressionless, so devoid of emotion, as ir the modern concrete highway. Wo should he cautioned by tins second massacre in the Glen of Glencoe. “ Our sympathy goes out to the MacDonalds: but we fear their ideals, the cherished surroundings, and the noble grandeurs of their wild estate will be butchered by the bureaucrats. Their mountainous retreat again will ring with shrieks, the noises of heavy motor traffic; and the pure mr ot their moorland soli hides will be laden with gaseous odors. The peace of the Glen o Weeping will be violated and its atmosphere vitiated ”