|
 RAVELLERS
to Ireland by Stranraer and Larne begin to collect their minor movables
when the express rattles over the lofty viaduct at Glenluce. Near this
point the line leaves the moorland through which it runs almost
continuously for forty miles westward of Castle Douglas, and enters upon
a flat cultivated tract. Glimpses of the sea, which at no distant
geological period covered this plain, may be had on either hand; Loch
Ryan forming the northern, as Luce Bay the southern, horizon.
At the narrowest part of
the isthmus between these seas a liberal space has been devoted to
landscape gardening on a heroic scale. On the right of the railway,
three or four miles east of Stranraer, the traveller may view the ample
demesne, or (to use the native phrase) the "policies" of Castle Kennedy;
and, if he is master of his own time, will do well to devote a morning
to closer inspection thereof.
If there is a prevailing
blemish in British park scenery, it is a tendency to sameness. That has
been avoided at Castle Kennedy by a peculiar treatment of natural
features, in themselves the reverse of imposing, such as I have not seen
attempted on a similar scale elsewhere. Here, on the isthmus between two
seas, lie two ample sheets of fresh water, the Black and the White Lochs
of Inch ; and the inner isthmus between these lakes has been wrought
into a strange complexity of terraces and grassy slopes. The ruins of
Castle Kennedy, a good example of the domestic architecture of the
seventeenth century, destroyed by fire in 1715, stand on a green plateau
at one end of this isthmus. At the other end, best part of a mile
distant, is the modern mansion of Lochinch, residence of the Earl of
Stair, a spacious specimen of that style which was developed under
French influence in the sixteenth century ; when country houses, ceasing
to be purely defensive, assumed more hospitable features.
How comes it that two
such great castles stand fronting each other within the same demesne?
Was it not said by those of olden time, and have not our fathers
declared unto us, that
"'Twixt Wigtown and the
town of Ayr,
Portpatrick and the Cruives o' Cree,
Nae man need think for to bide there
Except he ride wi' Kennedy."
Ah! but time brings
strange revenges. About ten miles east of Castle Kennedy, on a bleak and
boggy moorland, are the ruins of Carscreuch; a mansion whereof Symson,
the seventeenth century chronicler of this district, drily observes that
it "might have been more pleasant if it had been in a more pleasant
place." This most ineligible residence, shortly after Symson described
it, passed by marriage into possession of Sir James Dalrymple, first
Viscount Stair. Some three hundred years previously, the Kennedy clan
had violently despoiled the Dalrymples of their modest possessions in
Ayrshire, accomplishing that purpose not without much arson and
bloodshed. The turn of the Dalrymples came when the seventh Earl of
Cassilis, chief of the Kennedys, floundered into innumerable scrapes in
covenanting times. Generation after generation, the Dalrymples were
serviceable lawyers. Acre by acre, farm by farm, the wide lands of
Kennedy in Wigtownshire passed to that family which owns them at this
day.
This first Viscount
Stair, President of the Court of Session, had a daughter Janet, out of
whose troubled fortunes Scott created Lucy Ashton, the Bride of
Lammermoor. The father of the seventh Earl of Cassilis, who, as
aforesaid, was forced to part with his territory to his hereditary
enemy, also figures in Scottish romance, for his first wife's elopement
furnished a theme for the well-known ballad of Johnnie Faa.
"The gypsies cam' to our
lord's yett,
And O but they sang sweetly;
They sang sae sweet and sae very complete
That down came the fair lady.
And she cam' tripping doun
the stair,
And a' her maids before her;
As sune as they saw her weel-faured face,
They cuist their glamour o'er her.
'O come wi' me,' says
Johnnie Faa,
'O come wi' me, my dearie;
For I vow and I swear by the hilt o' my sword
That your lord shall nae mair come near ye.'
'Gae tak' frae me this gay
mantle,
And bring to me a plaidie;
For if kith and kin and a' had sworn,
I'll follow the gypsy laddie.
'Yestreen I lay in a wedl-made
bed,
Wi' my gude lord beside me;
This night I'll he in a tenant's barn,
Whatever shall betide me!'"
[It is only fair to the
memory of this countess, who was Lady Jean Hamilton, daughter of the
first Earl of Haddington, that the legend of her elopement is amply
disproved by the fact that she lived with her husband for 21 years, and
that he spoke of her with much affection in letters written after her
death. W. E. Aytoun carefully examined the character of this ballad,
which he regarded as "by far the most mysterious of Scottish
traditionary tales," and failed to reconcile it with any real incident.
In publishing it in his Ballads of Scotland, he suggested that it "was a
malignant fiction, possibly trumped up to annoy Bishop Burnet (who
married Lady Cassilis's daughter) who had many enemies."]
It was John second Earl
of Stair, better known as Field-Marshal Stair, who, in the interval
between his military and diplomatic achievements, planned the terraces
and pleasure grounds of Castle Kennedy, and embellished his lands with
much planting. The work lasted from 1730 to 1740 under direction of one
Thomas M`A11a, from whose copious correspondence with his employer a
couple of extracts may be permitted, were it only as an example of
eighteenth century orthography.
Castle Kennedy January yr
29th 1737.
I reciued your lordship's
leter which glues me great incuredgement to be kerfull and Diligent
about what of your lordsbeps business I am Intrusted with, the
principall work nou in hand is that great walk alongs the Canall. Your
lordshep in the leter I got told me ther uas six troup horses to stand
at this pies In the Stabell to asist me in Carin on the work they bing
mothereth [moderate] wrought uold ben mor the beter than uors [worse]
and the work uold aduanced much quiker but ther is non of them Corn her
as yet, they bing so long Delied [delayed] and the Riding Exerces
shortly coming on I fer I will be littl the beter of them. I haue ben
Remouing the tris out of the gret land belo the bellvadair It will teak
a good deall of work but I sic by what Is don of It that it will beutifi
that pleace mor then what I could conceue from the belluadair
[belvedere] the bason apers lik a great glas . .. I humbly thank your
lordshep for the gret Incuregen leter I got It was very Inlivening and
reuiuing to me.
The "troup horses"
referred to belonged to the Scots Greys, of which famous regiment the
Field-Marshal was Colonel, and had a squadron thereof permanently
quartered in Wigtownsllire. Five years later, honest M`Alla was in
difficulties, not for want of horses but of that which "makes the mare
to go."
Jan' y` 5th 1738.
... I an nou diging the
ground to Inlarge the planting at baluadair [Belvidere] as your lordship
ordered. I am also Remouing that strip of planters on the uest sid of
the flourin sherub wildernes the Alterations that uas med the last year
and this on both sids of the flouring sherub wildernes, and the perter
[parterre] beutifais that sid to perfection from Mount Malbarou to Mount
Elmer; ther can be no finer prospect then it is nou . . . I haue planted
a lin of uery good bich [beech] at the foot of the bre [brae]. I was
obledged to fors Earth to plant in them, for ther is no Earth in that
bre ; it is a lous dry runin sand. Ther is no tri uill grow on the fac
of that bre, it bing so lous dray sand, without any mixter of Earth. . .
. Your lordshep desirs me to giue som money to the masons hir, but I
ashour your lordshep I haue not on peny to my self. Your lordshep
ordered Mr. Roos to giue me tuenty pound of my by gon uages, but he uold
not giue me on farthen. I am uery sor straitened for som money I am deu
to som pipell hir causes me nou to aplay to your lordshep for rellif. I
thank God I haue your lordshep to aply to; I sie hou it uold be with me
uer it otheruays."
Yon sibi sed posteris.
Upon no human undertaking does the decree sic vos non vobis attend so
inevitably as upon tree planting. Scarcely had the Marshal's oaks cast
their foliage a hundred times before a ruthless edict of the seventh
Earl, known and dreaded by country folk as Hobblin' Jock, owing to a
limp in his gait, laid every stick of them low, and the pleasure grounds
went back to wilderness. The eighth Earl of Stair, succeeding in 1840,
found a plan of the grounds in a gardener's cottage, and set to work to
restore them. They were maintained and greatly beautified by his
successors, especially by the tenth Earl, who died in 1903 at the age of
84. It is to his assiduous care that the present generation owes the
fine collection of exotic conifers, broad-leaved trees and flowering
shrubs. The landscape now only lacks what is held in store for
generations unborn—the grace of aged timber—to fulfil the ideal of a
lordly chace.
A great part of the
isthmus between the lakes is devoted to a pinetum. Favoured by the mild
western air, the Californian Pinus insignis (or radiata, Sargent) forms
great domes of velvety bottle green, and the feathery Monterey cypress
(C. macrocarpa) grows as freely beside it as both do on the Pacific
sea-board near San Francisco. Unluckily the gales which sweep across the
broad lake on the west have wrought sore destruction among some of the
firs. The Blue Avenue, for instance, as Sir Joseph Hooker named a double
line of A&ies nobilis on the slope facing the new castle, has been sadly
knocked about, and the severe thinning practised in order to produce
what are termed specimens has had the opposite result in many cases.
Pines and firs are creatures of company, only displaying their special
character of lofty, straight growth when they are disciplined as a
forest. Yet there are growths of great beauty in the more sheltered
places. The Himalayan Cupressus torulosa, [Dr. Augustine Henry
pronounces this specimen to be Dacridiztm Franklinii,] tolerant only of
British climate in the mildest districts, attracts attention from every
arboriculturist. A double avenue of Auracarias shows how much these
archaic trees gain by company of their own kind; or, rather, how much
they lose by being isolated. Self-sown seedlings spring up freely-under
these monkey-puzzles; other conifers which propagate themselves very
readily, where ground game does not come, are Abies 7wbilis and Webbiana.
But after all, our
concern is more with the garden and flowering things than with forest
trees. Miss Wilson has planted her easel where the two are inextricably
blended, a bank of azaleas backed by some aged evergreen oaks, which, by
a lucky chance, escaped the doom prepared for the rest of the woodland
by Hobblin' Jock. The water in the foreground is M`Alla's "bason lik a
great glas."
The most remarkable
feature, however, at Castle Kennedy is the vast number of choice
rhododendrons, including many that are not usually reckoned hardy. There
are hundreds of R. arboreun, cinnamomeum and campanulatum, chie~y white
and pale-tinted, with which the glorious scarlet of R. barbatum and
Thomson contrasts with almost startling effect. Rose and carmine are
supplied by other varieties of R. arboreum and by its hybrids, while R.
niveum supplies a note of deep mauve, with which, later in the season,
one's eye is apt to be surfeited when the common R. ponticuin is in
bloom. To see this matchless display in perfection, the first week in
May is generally the best time. But go there when you will, there is
always plenty to delight anybody, whether he be curious in rare and
beautiful vegetation, or whether he be content to stroll over sunlit
lawns and through shady alleys, with the shining lakes on either hand,
peopled with hundreds of wild-fowl. The sward is kept to the texture of
an Axminster carpet, with what amount of patient labour may be guessed
from the fact that upwards of seventy acres are constantly shaven by
mowing machines. It might seem unkind to dwell on these delights if they
were only those of a private pleasure ground; but thousands of visitors
avail themselves every year of the considerate decree which opens the
gates of this paradise to the public on two days a week.
In the private
flower-garden are some objects of much interest to botanists and
gardeners. The quaint and beautiful bottle-brush shrub, Gallisternan,
often erroneously confounded with Metrosideros and usually grown in
greenhouses, flourishes on the terrace near the house with no other
protection than a low wall and a mat cast over it in winter. It flowers
freely and ripens seed every year. Near to it are such choice things as
Rhaphioleptis japonica, Clianthus puniceus and Eugenia (myrtus)
apiculata. In a shrubbery hard by, some of the more notable plants are
various species of Pittosporantn, the Nepalese laburnum (Piptanthus),
Acacia dealbata twenty feet high, [Since thin was written this plant has
succumbed to the frost of 24th April, 1908, which, taking effect upon
the vigorous growth induced by preceding heat, killed it to the ground
level.] and Eucalyptus globules thirty feet The last named tree, which
stands in a much exposed position, was blown down and killed to the root
in the great storm of December, 1894, but has thrown up a new stem.
Taking it all round,
Castle Kennedy must be reckoned one of the most remarkable of the larger
gardens of Scotland. |
