A PLEASANT tour from Haddington is
by East Linton and Whitekirk, then round by the coast, Tantallon and the
Bass, to North Berwick. After East Linton you keep on the left bank of the
Tyne. At Tyninghame you note the charming cottages almost buried in
flowers. East Lothian is far before most of Scotland in the neatness of
its peasant homes. Elsewhere you come on choice bits that prove the
Cottagers of
Glenburnie no false picture, but not in this
pleasant countryside. After Tyninghame the highway runs through a fine
stretch of woodland. Of old this was bare moor, but the sixth Earl of
Haddington, at the beginning of last century, set to work to plant on a
great scale. As one master schemed and directed everything was done with
method. Great avenues of trees led to a glade, and thick holly hedges rose
in double walks or avenues, now alone and again interspersed with other
trees. The late Queen was here in 1878 and confessed it reminded her of
Windsor and Windsor Forest. Her Majesty was happy in her visit. Three
years afterwards, on the 14th October 1881, a storm of almost inexplicable
violence burst on the forest, destroying some 30,000 trees and marring the
symmetry of the whole. It is still pleasant, but if the best of it be seen
from the highway, it is not to be compared with many an English sylvan
scene. You are no sooner out of the wood than you climb a little hill into
Whitekirk, the church whereof, with its square tower and antique porch,
has come down from distant days less injured than is usual in the north.
It has a notable record. Its first legend is that of St Baldred of the
Bass. In the eighth century he flourished—one might irreverently say
vegetated—on the Bass, where he stuck close as limpet to rock—was hermit
there, in fact, for ever so long. Finally he died in the odour of
sanctity, whereupon the three parishes we have just traversed -
Prestonkirk, Tyninghame and Whitekirk—contended for his remains. Things
looked serious, for relics were then held valuable assets, but the
spiritual guides urging their flock to take rather to their devotions than
their fists, surprising results ensued. Three St Baldreds were found next
morning instead of one, so like that there was literally not a hair to
choose between them. The parishes had one a-piece.
The church was dedicated to the
Virgin Mary, and Our Lady of Whitekirk was a person of great repute in
mediaeval Scotland. When Edward III. invaded in
1356 some sailors
from the fleet wandered up here, and one of them impiously plucked a ring
from Our Lady’s finger. Down crashed a crucifix on his skull and stretched
him lifeless on the floor. The tars stripped the church, nevertheless, but
the ship that bore away the spoils was presently lost on the sands of
Tynemouth. Some eighty years afterwards Æneas Silvius made his famous
visit to Scotland. In a pilgrimage to Whitekirk in the depth of winter,
with more piety than prudence, be trod barefoot ten miles of frozen
ground. Long afterwards, when as Pope Pius II. he ruled the Church, many a
gouty twinge in his poor feet hindered him from forgetting that far-off
shrine by the Northern Sea. This Pope was a Piccolomini. The family which
gave two Popes to the Church had, and still has, its seat in Siena. Our
pilgrim enriched the cathedral of his native town in one way and another.
You see in the library a fresco by Pintoricchio, representing James I.,
the King of Scots, receiving the future Pope on his aforesaid visit, and
the background is a landscape. If it be East Lothian it is highly
idealized, for the vine and the myrtle are not plants indigenous to that
soil. There is an imposing-looking barn just
behind the church—some sort of monkish grange, no doubt. There it is
ridiculously averred Queen Mary spent two nights. Queen Mary was a good
deal about those parts. She probably hunted or hawked over every mile of
them, but why she should have put up at a barn, when she had a choice of
Hailes and Dunbar within easy reach, it were hard to say. In the
churchyard there is this odd epitaph on a youth of nineteen who died in
1805: "We can say this without fear or dread that he was one that feared
God and an ornament to society." In epitaphs most of all a little learning
is a dangerous thing. The sign-post here is misleading. It indicates a way
to North Berwick which is hilly and comparatively uninteresting, though
the shorter as far as space goes. Better to go right opposite for that
will take you pleasantly round the coast, which you join just where the
old castle of Tantallon stands on its cliff facing the Bass Rock.
Tantallon to-day is a show place.
They charge for admission and it is carefully kept up. I have no doubt the
money is used for needful repair and watching, but Tantallon, like a
hundred other places, was more enjoyable when you went about it as you
liked and there were few visitors and no hindrances. But then North
Berwick and the places about it had not "arrived" in so tremendous a
fashion. Tantallon is the limit of the ordinary tourist stream. There is a
continual coming and going of traps of all sorts, not only between it and
North Berwick but right on to Edinburgh. Tantallon has all the interest a
ruin can have. Its situation is delightful, its history exciting. Genius
has touched it with magic wand. It stands on a great cliff over the Firth,
there opening into the North Sea, and right opposite is the great Rock, a
couple of miles out, you learn, though it appears quite close. The outer
walls of Tantallon are so entire that you would hardly call it a ruin.
"Three sides of wall like rock and one side of rock like wall" is Hugh
Miller’s admirable description. It is a mere shell, but even were it
otherwise ruins look best from the outside. There is a dovecot near at
hand. The "ducat" is a marked feature of the Lothian landscape. They do
not build them now. I think all I ever saw look considerably over a
century old. Perhaps wood pigeons are so plentiful that they do not repay
the trouble. Tantallon is bound up with the fate of one family though it
be no longer theirs. In history and romance it must always be the property
of the Douglas. With good eyes and good will you can still trace the
bloody heart above the gateway. You remember how the good Sir James set
off to carry the heart of the Bruce to the Holy Sepulchre, how be died on
"a blood-red field of Spain," and how his master’s heart and his own body
were brought back to Scotland for burial. Hence the sign in the shield.
This poor shell was once deemed of fabulous strength.
"Ding doun Tantallon,—
Mak’ a brig to the Bass,"
was old Scots for impossible. Its
origin is unknown, but probably the great siege it sustained in autumn of
1528, against
James V., aided by a park of the most powerful artillery of the day,
including "Thrawnmouth’d Meg and her Marrow," gave it reputation. Here
grim old "Bell the Cat" had his lair, so that it was "deemed invulnerable
in war." Two names in literature are connected with this old fortress.
Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, "who in a barren age gave rude Scotland
Virgil’s page," was born here in 1474. He prefixes his translation of each
book with a wonderful prologue, quite Chaucerian, marked by delightful
appreciation of natural scenery. He drew those pictures with the Lothian
fields before his eyes or his mind. One graphic line of his,
"Gousty schaddois of eild and grisly deed,"
would, as Hugh Miller says, have marked him poet though
he had never written another word. And not less is Tantallon bound up with
the name of Scott You know from Marmion how Lady Clare paraded the
garden and the battlements. That famous poem is in the mind, or the mouth,
or the pocket at least of all who pass by, and there is no need for
quotation. The modern author does not always magnify his office. Scott
thought literature scarce part of the real business of life. The
ingenious R. L S. has expressed the same opinion. Both have placed the
writer far below the warrior and the builder. It would have been
interesting to know what old-time Gawin thought about it. Old "Bell the
Cat" at least bad no doubts:
"Thanks to St Bothan, son of mine
Save Gawin ne’er could pen a line!"
Is Tantallon haunted? A place with such memories ought
to be, but the only story is one a century old and altogether comic. A
rascally shipwrecked sailor, a Scots David Pew, in fact, took up his abode
with some comrades and robbed right and left, but always during the night
time. Noises heard at dark in the old ruins were naturally set down to the
devil. Only when the old salt’s scarred and grim visage, surmounted by a
Kilmarnock night-cap, was seen, the very embodiment of the actual, was the
truth divined. The castle was stormed for the last time and the band
routed and dispersed.
And now, brig or no brig, we must get us over to the
Bass. It stands 420 feet above the water, one huge mass of homogeneous
trap, as Hugh Miller tells us. You are taken over from Canty Bay, a small
hollow in the cliff which is, and always has been, the port for the Bass.
You will choose a reasonably calm day for your pleasure excursion. There
is but one landing-place. The Bass is all precipice except one side, and
this slopes down from the top. Near the bottom it narrows. A fortification
is built across, and below this is the small platform on which you land.
You peer into the prisons of the martyrs and climb up to the little ruined
chapel which goes by the name of St Baldred’s cell, and so on to the top.
You note the heavy red-coloured flowers, the tree-mallow, and there are
the sheep and the thousands and thousands of sea-birds with their hoarse
call. One little change recent time has brought. A lighthouse has been
built, and after many years the Bass has again a resident population. Some
effects of wind and weather on Tantallon and the Bass are very striking,
as at sunset, when the shadow of the great rock stretches for leagues over
the sea; or, again in still moonlight, when Tantallon seems a fairy
castle; or yet again in a great storm, when the ocean rollers dash spray
and foam far up those rocky sides and make the mass shake and echo till it
reels on its base.
Here is R. L. S. with an admirable impression. "It was
an unco place by night, unco by day; and there were unco sounds; of the
calling of the solans, and the plash of the sea, and the rock echoes that
hung continually in our ears. It was chiefly so in moderate weather. When
the waves were anyway great they roared about the rock like thunder and
the drums of armies, dreadful, but merry to hear, and it was in the calm
days when a man could daunt himself with listening; so many still, hollow
noises haunted and reverberated in the porches of the rock." There is a
bore or cavern right through the Bass, which at low tide it is possible to
traverse. The opening is half blocked up by a rock. It is 100 feet in
height to start with, but it narrows down presently, and in the middle is
a dark pool. As it twists you do not see right through. It is dark, damp
and dismal. It goes right under the ruin of the old chapel, and through
and back again is somewhat under a quarter of a mile.
The Bass, like Tantallon, has a romantic history. First
comes St Baldred, to whom the little chapel may be said to belong, though
it is centuries after his time. The story we have told shows his
reputation for sanctity. He wrought miracles in his life as well as at his
death. Thus a rock which inconveniently stood between the Bass and the
shore floated at his command to an out-of-the-way cliff and was henceforth
known as St Baldred’s Cockle Boat, and there is St Baldred’s Well, and St
Baldred’s Cradle, and St Baldred’s Statue and what not. Later, the place
was held by the ancient family of Lauder of the Bass. One of them fought
in the Scots Wars of Independence, and they had touch with the Rock for
about five centuries. Their arms were a solan goose with the legend,
Sub umbra alarum tuarum, which strikes you as exceeding irreverent,
but meant no more perhaps than that they derived considerable profit from
the birds. The island was a prison and fortress. A sure holdfast! Even if
you broke your cell, how to get away from the rock? The first prisoner
mentioned is Walter Stuart, son of the Duke of Albany, regent during the
captivity of James I. He and his father and one of his brothers were
beheaded, and their heads shown to their mother, then a prisoner at
Tantallon. The old lady controlled her feeling. "They died worthily," she
said," if what was laid to their charge was true." But the prisoners of
the Bass were those confined on it fifteen years or so before the
Revolution for their adherence to the national faith—the covenanting
divines, in other words. "Feden the Prophet" was sent here in June 1763
and remained for four years, "envying with reverence the birds their
freedom." Most grievous the prison to him of all men, for he had roamed
far and wide over the wild hill districts of the south, and though be
complained that he had got no rest in his life it is not like it was such
rest he desired. How admirably the stem, gaunt figure is touched off in
Catriosa: "There was never the wale of him sinsyne, and it’s a
question wi’ mony if there ever was his like afore. He was wild’s a
peat-hag, fearsome to look at, fearsome to hear, his face like the day of
judgment. The voice of him was like a solan’s and dinnle’d in folks’ lugs,
and the words of him like coals of fire." And again: "Peden wi’ his lang
chafts (Jaws) and lunten (glowing) een, and maud (plaid) happed about his
kist, and the hand of him held out wi’ the black nails upon the
finger-nebs-—for he had nae care of the body." Another of the prisoners
was Thomas Hogg of Kilturn. He had incurred the special enmity of
Archbishop Sharp, who ordered that if there was a place in the Bass worse
than another it should be his. The cavern "arched overhead, dank and
dripping, with an opening towards the sea, which dashes within a few feet
below" was his gruesome lot. This was the donjon keep of the old fortress,
and a very prison of prisons. James Fraser of Brea is another name. In his
Memoirs he has left a somewhat minute account of the place and his
life. He notes the cherry trees, "of the fruit of which I several times
tasted." He tells that the sheep are fat and good, and asserts that a
garrison of twenty or twenty-four soldiers could hold it against millions
of men. Another martyr, John Blackadder, was most worthy of that name,
since he died in confinement. His tomb and its inscription are still to be
seen in North Berwick kirkyard. You do not wonder men died, rather that
they could there exist. The rooms were full of smoke, they had sometimes
to thrust their heads out of the window to get a breath of air. They were
often short of victuals, for in wild weather no boat dare touch the place.
All was damp and unwholesome. It was horribly cold during most of the
year. Two lighter touches relieve the picture: "they were obliged to drink
the twopenny ale of the governor’s brewing, scarcely worth the halfpenny
the pint," and there is, or was, a huge mass of debris made up of "the
decapitated stalks and bowls of tobacco pipes of antique forms and massive
proportions." Every smoker will understand what a consolation tobacco was
to the small garrison chained to the rock.
With the Revolution of 1688 the history of the Bass
draws near a close. It held out some time under Sir Charles Maitland, the
depute governor, but surrendered in 1690. Then it was used to confine
Jacobite prisoners— four young officers, in fact, taken at Borrodale.
These ingeniously managed to turn the tables on their gaolers, whom they
packed speedily ashore. By what their enemies called piracy, and
themselves legitimate warfare on passing vessels they managed to support
themselves very well and annoy the Government very greatly. They
capitulated in April 1694, on favourable terms, for by repetition of
well-known tricks they persuaded the enemy they were great in numbers and
well supplied. Then the old fortress was dismantled, and in 1706 it was
granted to Sir Hugh Dalrymple, President of the Court of Session, and it
is still held by the descendants of that astute lawyer.
One cannot leave the Bass without saying some words
about its constant inhabitant, the Solan Goose. At one time it was thought
that only here and at Ailsa Craig were these birds to be found. This is
long exploded, but the Bass is one of their few strongholds.
Old Hector Boece has many wonderful things to say of
them. They bring so much timber to the island for their nests that they
satisfy the keeper for fuel. He ungratefully robs them of their prey, for
they have a nice taste in the way of fish, and appropriates their young.
For themselves, their fat is made into "an oile verie profitable for the
gout and manie other diseases in the haunches and groins of mankind."
Hector avers that common people are much mistaken in believing that these
geese grow upon trees, "hanging by their nebs, as apples and other fruits
do by their stalks," the fact being that when trees fall into the sea they
become gradually worm-eaten. Now if you look at the worms very closely you
see they have hands and feet, and finally "plumes and wings." In the end
they fly away— Solan Geese! The witty author of Hudibras must have
heard of these theories.
"As barnacles turn solan geese
In the islands of the Orcades."
It is difficult to believe that Solan Goose was ever
looked upon as a delicacy, but Ray, the botanist, was in these parts in
August 1661, and he tells us that the young are esteemed a choice
dish in Scotland and a very profitable source of income to the owner of
the Bass. As he ate of them at Dunbar he ought to know. But there is still
better authority, since an act of the Scots Privy Council in 1583,
ratified by an Act of the Scots Parliament of 1592, declared them to be
"apt for nutriment of the subjects of this realm." Also the minister of
North Berwick, who is officially vicar of the Bass, is entitled to twelve
Solan Geese per annum, which gives him a month to digest each bird. It is
averred a one-time innkeeper of Canty Bay used to supply them when a
beefsteak was ordered, and that the guests only found out when told. That
innkeeper had a very pretty wit, but this cuisine pour tire was a
dangerous experiment. You easily believe the story, for as you swallow
your Solan Goose you hesitate as to whether you are eating fish, flesh or
fowl, or a combination of two, or all of them. I have never heard that the
Solan Goose is served up at the various palatial hotels which abound on
the near coast. The Bass has other marvels: "that herb very pleasant and
delicious for salad" which is of no good anywhere else; that stone which
has the property of changing salt water into fresh; that still delicious
mutton, surely the best gjgot du pre salé
