PRINCE CHARLIE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16795, 20 July 1920, Page 7

PRINCE CHARLIE.

A JACOBITE SONG AND ITS SINGER. [G. A. Peters contributes the following in a recent' issue of the New-castle-ou-Tyne Bulletin.] I spent the early hours of a charming May morning by the rushy, shores of Loch Ard, a morning of intense brilliancy, with the sunshine' lying white on the quietly rippling waters, and piercing the wooded' was a morning to tempt one to lie in wait for the coming of the wild duck, for apparently she does not stir much from her reeds in the afternoon, having been sailing over this lonely waste long ere the ascending sun awoke the laggard from his couch, too late to enjoy the real beauties of a winsome May morning. There is no sweeter time of the year than sunny May. In field, hedge, and tree, maternity cares are undertaken by our common birds with all the worshipful affection and sincerity of the human mother. The bracken-fern rises rich and green, new fronds are unfurling amid the gray cliffs that give the hills such a fierce complexion by night. The turf is soft and luscious, the rains of winter are manifested in the grCenpess and freshness of the grass, and the shining moss of the loosely-strewn boulders bursts upon the sight with a vivid and living gleam. The voices of the birds, cuckoo, thrush, and lark, are loud and triumphant these suhny hours. I mention these favourite birds in par-

ticular because they are so fu]i throat- , ed and powerful, singing merrily from early dawn till the coming ot the soft twilight, seemingly without a pan*; human throats would grow silent and hoarse under this long ordeal of nature'praising. There is only one delightful voice missing from this country choir, the wild sweet song of the blackcap. He must breed very, sparingly in these parts, Jor one hardly ever hears his voice. The sedgy stream should form his favoured haunt, but he is not here this morning. By the shores df Loch Ard stands the quaint old habitation knowm as Jean M’Alpine’s Inn, not quite an abandoned ruin, for it can still house a pig or a horse, and the taint of our useful friends clings to the inner chambers. This was surely the hostelry Sir Walter Scott had in mind when he penned “Bob Roy,” the very house wherein the invincible Baillie Nicol Jarvie wrought such havoc among the savage Highlanders with the red-hot plough iron. Indeed, I am in the heart of the Rob Roy «ountry, a land of moor and mountain, once peopled by a fierce gentry who laughed at laws—

* For why?—because the-.good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, . That they should take, who have the power, . And they should keep who can.

Not a mil© away lies the clachan of Aberfoyle. 'ln front of the hotel, named after the celebrated Baillie, *> stands the Nicol Jarvie oak. Suspended from the trunk of the old tree, you will see a plough iron, tipped with red paint, to illustrate its*glowing point. Thus the humour of the Baillie’s attack upon the Highland outlaw's, is perpetuated to this day, and arouses a flood of pleasant recollections in the mind of the staunch admirer of the WJaverley Novels. Behind the hotel rise the luxuriant hills, laden with a wealth of oak, and mountain ash, and hazel bushes, and carpeted by the loveliest patches of primroses I ever saw. Tug Duke of Montrose’s new road to Lodi Katrine and the Trossachs stretches its winding way over the grand old hills. Down from ,the wooded heights comes an old man, his mahogany face partly concealed by a straggling board, a bundle of faggots under hit arm, carrying a knotted stick that has given the mortal blow to many a stinging adder. He treads his way through the gorse towards his dilapidated old shiel- ", mg. Housing reformers would stand aghast at these quaint worn-out dwellings with their thatched roofs and small pnson-like windows. If mortar originally held the stones together, there is . none to be seen now. Though they look -as if the first puff of wind W'ould blow them'to pieces, they stand as unalterable as the everlasting hills. Poets and painters and romancists would not, have these poor old shielings blotted out of the landscape; they seem part of wild nature / and share affinity with the soil on which they rest. There is a picturesqueness in .their extreme and lamentable poverty utterly lacking in the barrack squares and rows of the city. I question whether the tenants or these miserable huts share the zeal of housing reformers. Reared under the thatched roof of the Highlands, as their fathers were before them, they would move awkwardly if transplanted to a higher sphere; the mazy chambers of a palace like the famed Vatican, with its treasures of art, the master paintings by the brush of an Angelo or a Botticelli would fill these simple souls with a. feeling of wondrous awe.