The Lecturer.

Otago Witness, Issue 1581, 4 March 1882, Page 14

The Lecturer.

BALQUHIDDER IN THE HIGHLANDS-

BALQUHIDDER, ROB ROY, &o. Sketch occasioned by a Reoext Visit.!

This paper was prepared as a stop-gap, in place of an address about Perthshire, byiDr Stuart. I have thought it best to send it to the Press without material alteration. Hence I retain the form of (colloquial) address to the Gaelic Society of Dunedin :—

1 must begin with answering the question, everywhere meeting me. How do you like this Colony ?— lmmensely. I do not know whether to be most wonderstricken or most delighted. I am especially struck, so that I can hardly be lieve my oyes, by the maturity and complete ness of things here, in town and country. But I am more deeply impressed by the conditions affecting the permanent prosperity of a com munity. Yours is truly " a good land, " in the sense in which that description was applied ( to Palestine of old. The Bible text in which the phrase occurs is .a singularly appropriate de- \ scription of the Middle Island. You have the vast advantage of having had a very high class of original settlers here. The public institutions have at the foundation of them a,large amount of generous wisdom. A Scotchman of the bid school sees .with delight 'here realised fpr the first time in history, John Knox's idea jof national education. The face of, nature here abouts ,is enchantingly beautiful and picturesque. Your New Edinburgh is no unworthy name-daughter of the old Scottish Dunedin.; If only the people of the land be good, and this be in a real sense a holy land, it is well fitted to be a happy tynd — ,a new land of song. In this " basket of silver" a Gaelic society is an " apple of gpld." It not only encourages to the study of Celtic language and literature, it provides for, a craving of the heart for sympathetic flow and reflow of natural affection among kindred Celts— whether Lowland Scots or Highland, whether Gaelic-speaking or not. On a mountain between Lochal^h ' and Lochcarron,, I have seen |a monument, set up , by ,some young, men where they parted from a jfrierid going away to India, with (this inscription,:—",^^ la, 'chi 's nach fhmc* '("the day of seeing and of not seeing.") "In sight and ,o t ut of sight" was the' promise of their faithful affection. And " out of sight, "if the (affection' be faithful, it has most of delight in occasions. . for exercise. Thug Jeanie Deans, i'n, London',' thinks that she will wear her plaid, because the Duke, of Argyll's heart, when .he'sees ,'it, will V^warm to, the tartan.". ''You 'are right there," says ".his Lordship's Grace';" _ "my , heart will be gold in death before it cease to I1I 1 warm to tho'tartani" * Here' at the Antipodes. ,a,man must be 'ihvinoib'ly'.c'old and hard ifjjbis heart do not wa.rm and melt when he finds himself among his own kindred, as if lie fiad be, en at home again, in the old "land of b,ens ; an.d glens ,and heroes" (tir nam heaiin y 's hari 'gleanri, 's nan gaisgeach).. ' , , \ j., I had known Balquhidder , when I w,as a \jjery young boy, not; far from 30 years' ago'; ftnq having .occasion to , revisit it in 1876, at ( a tpie when I had much need of " the healing powers ,of nature "in her, solitudes,, l found that! had ,not sought a lecture to, be delivered ( to fl.oo' Celts in New Zealand. ' ' j . Balquhidder, in 'the northern' part of jthe i basin of the Forth, lies,west by north oo f' Stirr r ling, about 30 miles away., ' ( Though thus near ,the border qf the' Lowlands, it 'is at this ,hour a] quiet Highland parish.' , Callander, it's" next' neighbour to the south and east ? , no longer answers to that description.' .In my boyhood there it w,as a quiet Highland ,'village : everyb'oijly, spoke' Gaelic, and we (boys)all wore the ,Kilt., But now it is 'a noisy, .fashionable little Lowland town. The Gaelic is no longer language of the place. The kilt is seen only oii'imitation or artificial Celts — from London or elsewhere. All seems changed. When I' recenlly 1 sat down 'in the 1 cKurcn there, I did not recognise the faces. of the congregation in" which I was born and bred so great has bjeen the change within one portion of one sHort life. ' But Balquhidder,' beginning within some' six miles of Callander village, was unchanged from what' I had found it long ago. Some .circumstances were changed for the better : the land seemed better cultivated, and the houses more neat and comfortable, with corresponding improvements of the Clachan or Kirkton, includingaveryprettynew church, withhandsomenew school premises, and the old church made into an ornamental ruin, really prettier than the new one. But in substance the place was unchanged. Of course there was no change on the' everlasting hills around. The Gaelic language was, as of old, in use, with the simple and cordial, though slightly ceremonious, Highland manner.' The very individuals seemed unchanged. The minister at the manse was the same fine and true gentleman who had shown us so much kindness nearly a generation before. At Auchtoo < Beg Donald ' ' blue-eye") M'Laren was recognised by me half a mile away, just the same man, apparently of the same age as when in that past' age he had nourished as ploughman to Peter Stuartj at Auchtoomore. There, too; was his brother Duncan (" brownhead "), sauntering, as of old, on the way to his sister's, the minister's widow, farmeress of Bearinoch Aonglais ("Angus' blessing"). All over there was the sweet pervading sense of quiet. It was not the quiet in view of Lord Cockburn when he said, "As quiet as the grave,— or Peebles." It was the quiet, not of death, but of life ; like that of their own balvaig ("dumb stream"), slowly and silently gliding through the valley. The very sounds were somehow all but silont. The voices of men, like the bleating of lambs by the wayside, or the more distant wail of the curlew, did not disturb, but intensified the sense of soothing stillness so sweet to a dweller in cities who had need "of repose. ' Even the railway train, embodiment and symbol of noise resistless, seemed to be not noisy as it skirted round by King's House from Strathire to Lochearn-' head. Men called it " the innocent. " It went almost as slowly as Balvaig, and sometimes it did not go at all, but quietly stopped for a talk with some farmer,, or gamekeeper, or shepherd by the way. Any noise it made became a harmonious part of that eloquent stillness— a stillness like that musical effect promised by an enterprising advertiser in Salmagundi— " tho indescribable silence that follows a fall

t In every placo where Dr M'Gicgor delivered this address he wai urged to give it for publication. We have groat pleasure in sending it over the land through the Otago Witness.

* On my way to tho lecture-room in Dunedin, I hoard one gentleman say to two others, Tha breanan aige codhiubh—"H.o has a plaid whatever." "Whatever " (witness, " a princess of Thule ") i 8 a great word in Lewis; and a crreater word there is "moreover" (powerfully pronounced mirrofit). Hence the following vision in the experience^ ono who sailed from Styorneway to Skye along with an excursion party of Lewis! people (who had eyes deep and blue as the sea, and copious Gaelic). Falling half asleep on a hot day, ho saw tho steamer swarming with " whatever 3," like multitudinous beus, and here and there a mighty' " niiriofer." about no lart;e «.a blackcock. • The name whimsical person naked some {ihephords at Anchnnebcuu whu.jiovit is Uuo that in that region thoiuidgea are hii jd wiJi dogs ai d nailed as a "winter- wart.' TLt-y only luu&Ltd, tIU-4»g iie was aot serious

of snow." It is said in the district that no armed foe of Albion has ever succeeded ; in entering the Highlands through the Leny Pass. The last and sorest material foe of our Home Country— noise, with its distracting tear and wear— appears not to have entered Balquhidder, excepting like Bottom, the stage lipn, who would v roar you as gently as a sucking dove." You can perceive that I was prepared^to take things on their sunny side. At the Clachan we had the great good fortune to fjnd the minister of the parish, the Rev. Alexander MacGregor, now deceased. He received our party with true Highland .hospitality, a,nd laid himself out for the day to be our guijde, philosopher and friend. In especial he ledi us over the churchyard, with its precincts. in phe kirkton, giving a running antiquarian commentary, the fruit of a life's labour of loving study, on the various things he showed us. For instance, near the eastern door of the now ruinous old church, he stood with us at the foot of a lair, or burying-plot, over which there extended, between us and the door, three hori- . zontal tombstones, and there and then he gsve us a full, true, and particular account of the family to which that lair belonged, namely, the family of Rob* Roy MacGregor, whose own tombstone is the central one of the three, having carved on it a broadsword, the clanemblem of the fir-tree, and the proud cjan motto, As riogbaill mo 'dhream Ard-ChoilU— "My tribe is royal, Ard-choil" — a motto pepu'liarly appropriate in Rob's case, because jhis, father had been the ■ proprietor of Ard-;chpil. Again, a MacLaren tombstone inscription occasioned an account of that famous clan .battle between the MacLarens andtheLenjes,, which was the great central event in the civil .history of Balquhidder, before the MjacQregors were installed there on jan equal footing with the MacLarens. Apd, again, on the same little platform on which now stand the new and old churches and the churchyard, there has stood every edifice^for public t worship ever erected in BalquhidHer proper. Close to the churchyard,, though pot within the precincts, there is even the conical mound which is known to have .been the.cen.tre of Druidical worship for the district,, which is appropriately bounded, on the south by Benl.edi ("Hill of .God")— a sacred , name .whose origin goes ,back to pre-Christian times. , Thus, as he went .on speaking, we went on gaining, hot' only many interesting detailsqfjinformatjon, but ,a sort of panoramic view of the whole civil and religious history of Balquhidder from the,.viewEoint of the churchyard and.Olachan, whicK, istprically as well <as : topographically, has' always been 'the head and heart of the-disbrict. Of the things ,thu's set forth by him I swiftlytook elliptical notesj which I read to him foefore we parted, and which he kindly corrected and supplemented to, completeness on the spot, afterwards sending me a<M.S. account ,of a leveling .event which he had^prepared'jfor publication some ' years before, with, free pcr 7 mission ,'tot ,make whatever „u se, .of jthe whole I should think , proper. I qught to mention, that in .addition ,to, what , can. be learned from, .books, and, through reasonable, diyinatipn of, t the .significance pf ; monuments like th.9se,in,the,]Sjrkton ? ',Mr MaoGregqr, near, ithe beginning .of ihis n^uiistry, -had receivedfthe then living jtraoition of,, the- people; frohvjits latest living depository,, an,' aged woman of Ithe clan, Gregpr, ,ih Rusgacha,n, of .^t'rathire. And ,now therefore, I,,havirig>receiyed; the tradition from liim, and .Being, ,I. suppose, its .only,depository now alive, feel 'entitled, to; address you^ not with .the flattering humilities of a; de-. scriptive tourist, but f with the' authority of a qualified scunachie who ha.s ,b'ropght his, p|ory ,to yqu frpm tthe source^, thrp,ugh;,a yoyagfc of f f .se'mi-circumj- plus-a-b, it-of,- demi-semi - circumnavigation of , the,' earth. :$.,,„ :,.[■■ „ -Further, Mrs Findlater, of the FreeiChirch manse , of , Lochearnhead, <in Balquhidder improper, sent me a pretty sketchof tne.old chv rch with its precincts, done byiher own skilled hand. ■For she knew that; I had written out my nptes of the visit to Balquhidder into a sort of gossiping lecture or article, such aa one may pre- j ,pare for, the home circle after a journey which .fias interested him. Further still, al}out some antiquarian questions that ihad -risen in the churchyard, I afterwards had the benefit of conversations with Mr Joseph Anderson', of the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh, !the greatest living master of .really scientific, Scot- j tish archaeology, and whose recent Rhind lectures have almost made a new, era in real study of Scoto-Celtic antiquities. iTo these things I now refer, partly > in . order to apologise beforehand, for a certain fossipy quality of this communication, which as survived from the original cast ; and partly also in order that you may be assured I, do not speak without book. Literally, indeed, I do | in a sense speak without book. My .book, the original paper, was lost on my way from old Dunedin to new Edinburgh. It was carefully placed by me, along with other keimelia, in a box. which, I suppose, is somewhere ; but where precisely, or whether "in earth or ocean's cave," perhaps no creature knows. Still, even the circumstance of my having written it, and the circumstances which occasioned the writing, have made the whole matter clear and distinct , in a memory re markably tenacious of some things. ,

This introductory part of my lecture -I will close with some notes on the literary history of the district. It has a life of . literary production at this hour. After going west from Callander through the Pass of Leny, and turning northward alongside of gracefully majestic Benledi, you come upon the foot of Loch Lubnaig, deep, and calm. The farm steading of Anie is on your right. The farmer, Robert •MacLaren, is a living son of song. He not only sings and beautifully plays on the violin what others have composed, but writes and publishes original verse. His publications are in English. .But a genuine Gaelic poet is found ,at the furthest extremity of' Balquhidder improper,' in Elenbeich on the north side of Lochearn, in the person of another MacLaren, farmer. Let me now speak of those who live only in their works. ' You have perhaps heard the song of " Allandu"; or, " Row weel, my boatie, row iweel." It seems to me perfept as a sample of true song— melodious eloquence, "music wedded to imnlortal verso." Well, in a singularly fresh-living book about Perthshire, recently published by Mr Drummond, of Perth city, it is stated that, while the music of " Allandu" is by the famous R. A. Smith, of Kilmarnock, or Paisley (?), the words are by one Campbell, of whom it is known that he resided somewhere on the sido of Loch Lubnaig. ' After passing I Orme, on the east side of the loch, you reach, about the middle of it, Ardchullery, at an angle (Lubnaig means " Bend-cr"), whore the 1 loch bends to the west and north. Opposite Ardchullery Benledi sends out into the west side of the loch the tremendous promontory of • Craig-na-Cohilig, whose rugged grandeur impresses the beholder with an awe that represses his natural feeling of delight in the sublime. Ardchullory was at one time the summer retreat of the famous traveller James Bruce, of Kinnaird ; and from that he would sometimes cross the loch to Oraig-na-cohilig for tho pur-

* " Rob " in iiot fv ilimimiHvn, liJre " BoV' ncr i> ccdloquiuli-m, like "Robin"; but dimply tho Gaelic form of " Robot ( "

} Part of '.he litlo of <\n unp'.iUiphod poem v)i the 1 voyage of | the Je&aie Koac^iir. in, 1881. "

pose of undisturbed prosecution in its wild solitude of studies connected with his worldrenowned travels in Egypt and Abyssinia towards the sources of the Nile. But Bruce was an exotic ; and Campbell may have been. Let us look for flowers of literature native to the district. . , ' > - I have not the heart to pass without a word my old acquaintance >Alasduir a- Bhaile (" Alexander of the city " or " town "—perhaps he had at some time been in Glasgow or Edinburgh). When I was a young boy he was an aged man, venerable in character as well as in years. I see him now, with his.'fine white head and spacious tartan waistcoat and radiant spherical silver buttons, coming down like a gracious and spacious Michaelmas moon to kirk or market in Callander from his hamlet of Kilmahog (" fane of . St. Hogg.") This is beside the Balquhidder branch of the Teith, almost at the mouth of Leny Pass, where, rushing through and from the wildly beautiful pass, the stream is known, not 1 'as Balvaig ("dumb stream"), but as Garyald ("rough water"). And this geography brings me 'round to my literary history, lit is re'ekoned that perhaps the best Gaelic prose inprintis that of the Teachdairc Gaidhcalach (" Gaelic Messenger"), edited' by the elder Dr Norman Macleod, of Campsie, and afterwards of Glasgow. In that periodical (or was it in its' successor, Cuairtek' Now, Gleann, " Circular of the Glens"?) there are communications '-from a correspondent who signs himself *' An gai&heal liath ri tadbh a gharbh-uiU " (" Tho ■ hoary Celt beside the rough water"). ' At_ first reading I did not know, nor think of inquiring,' « who might be this writer ; but I afterwards, with pleasure, came to know that 'it ''was my old, acquaintance Alasdair a Bhaile, ' ' •(( > r • Let us now go back a' hundred years, to a 'native of this district, who once conversed in Edinburgh with David Hume—^a profoundlybelieving'Christian with-- the' greatest of sceptics. About a mile west of Callander, on the left hand of your way to Leny Pass, there is \the little churchyard of,' Juittla -^Leny, a burying-plaqe , of ,the Buchanans, in a lonely angle formed by the, junction of two streams, whose united waters there form the Teithj •so that Balqubidder- isj mi the r !" Men- . teith" district of Perthshire ; far one o,f the two streams, which below ; Loch Lubnaig is our Garvald, above Loch Lubnaig is the, Balvaig of 'Balquhidder. ' ! In that' Little Leny there lies the dust of Dugald Buchanan 1 , the 1 sublimest of .Gaelic poets ■ after Ossian', and fafthe greatest ■n\aster,of spiritual spng in Gaelic.,, laid ,in that burying-place of Buchanans,- and having spent his life s prime as' ii ftoyent and powerful evangelist' 'in' Balquhidder, was born and bred in, Laggan, a farm 'at the head of Loch Lubnaig, on the west or Benledi >'side of Balvaig, opposite the .village of- iStrath'ire, in Balquhidder proper.* ■ ' ' >>•)[*.'")■." ! i The anecdote of his conversation -with Hume 'bears that the sceptic challenged! him. to I,produce from .the Bible a ' passage' Jas> sublime aa Shakespeare?s about " the cloudi-capt towers," Sec, and that Dugald produced 'from theJßook of. Revelation that, about 'the grdati> white throne. 'n The anecdote > shows .at ldast' that in his lifetime he had come to be ihighlyjesteemed i or literary qualification's^ ' Hisiautbbiography, -written /iriuexcellent. Gaelic,i>gives'ia'iideeply •moving « laccount ■ iof "his learlyi . soul 1 1 exercise about spiritual things in,' the 'manner' of /John Bunyan's '" Grace Abounding.' to the r Chief of Sinners." But on the s natural; human t life of thetim&.it sheds little orino* "light.; arid in relation to spiritual life his hymns, or spiritual isongSjfewdnmumber, are iwhat.has preserved his name ,as truly venerable >and"great.t Of the deep, enduring impression' they have made on.'kindred Celts liam"able< to'.give^ifrom the life, 1 an interesting illustration. The great Dr Duff, hrhisilifetime canonised by Christendom Sis " the prince of missionaries,? in his old age came home from his glorious career . in India, and 'for some'years was a professor in the New College of Edinburgh. At the students'dinnertable there' one day, when I showed him acopy of Buchanan's poems in Gaelic, he said that he still remembered passages of f" The Day of Judgment" — instancing the famous apostrophe to Pilate — from having heard it cantilated in his' boyhood at' Pitlochrie. And this leads to a closing note on cantilation aa a feature of Celtic home culture. . i • • ,- . • Cantilation — melodious eloquence — appears to be the appropriate form, if not the, essence, of true minstrelsy or song. , ■ It is fitted to reach the very springs of the life, and hold abidingplace of influence there. More than 30 years ago, one Sabbath afternoon, on a > sunny slope ot Auchfoomore, beyond Strathire, some' three miilesto.the north of Buchanan's native. Lagfari, I. listened to a cantilation^halfyspeaking, alf -crying, in . a rich, kind womanly voice, by Mary Stuart, sister-in-law of the farmer, and cousin of the Rev. Mr Stuart, now minister of the Free Church in Killin. The , mere hearing made on my mind an impression that always remained uneffaced. After the friction of life had obliterated all the details, I still remembered, .wistfully, the pathetic beauty of the whole, which in form was an address, by a child in heaven, to his bereaved parents on earth, for their consolation by the .view of his happiness. Often had I wished to hear it again, or at least to see it in print. And deep was my pleasure when, last winter at Home, I found it printed full-length among the spiritual songs of the gallant Peter Grant, ef Grantown, in Strathspey. His songs are sweeter > than Buchanan's ; but not nearly equal .to, them in respect of the highest lyric quality-rime, fervid Pindaric sublimity. , , ■• > [When this lecture was first delivered, Dr Stuart, of Dunedin, recalled to mind that he had heard his mother cantilate that hymn of Peter Grant's. Some time after I happened to refer to it in connection with the baptism- of an infant in Christchurch. The infant, quite well on that Sabbath day, was buried ion the following Tuesday ; and its mother,, who had heard me speak, was, I afterwards found, from, (3rantown, in Strathspey, and,, l think, a cousin of Mr P. Grant's children !] , - . ' *• A suitable monument to Buchanan has beeiPerected in Kannbch, and steps are being taken to presckvo his cottage there from decay. An attempt made sonio yeara ago to provide a similar monument in Strathire proved 'abortivd through some mismanagement, i ■ . \ His autobiography with the hymns, or the hymns by themselves (or an English translation by tho Itev. Mr Sinclair, of Kinmore), can easily be got at a small price. Publishers, M'Lauchlan and Stewart. Edinburgh. ' ' ' :

Old Abram'a wisest remark : 'Ef de descendants of de rooster what crowed at Pater was ter muke a noise ebery time a li is told dar .would be sich.a noise in de world dat , yer, couldn't heah de hens cacklo.' They tried to kill a book agent at Omaha ilonfc month. He was robbed, thrown into the rivor, knocked off the cars, tossed from a high bridge into tha nver again, and in two hours he was around with an illustrated Bible, trying to get a subscription from the, head of the attacking party. How he got it.— The latest jokO) about King Kalakauft, of tho Sandwich Islands, is he cannot help being a good Christian. , The reason in that hw ancoslwfl ato ho, much miaasipnary in their ihuo <ih:»t Ifc worirsd 'into' Iheir system, and was l»«iuiju!!;W io .vtpir dedcontlaufca. TWnHionasu'H -vW. .••-■> nr»i-«u ju'm, siCoOE &)\, aot v/astcd. |i wewd up^eai\