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THE names given to various
localities on the banks of the Spey — that river of wondrous reels and
strathspeys—are very musical. They have a poetical charm which
captivates the imagination and suggests ideal pictures. Cairngorm,
Rothiemurchus, Rebhoan, Altdruie, Kinrara, speak of an older language,
of a haunted past, and of traditions of romance which inform all the
scenes. Kinrara sounds like one of the names which the poet Campbell
gave to his mystical creations of Highland lore. When we hear it we
think of Lochiel, and Culloden, and Glenara. I remember the first time I
came across the name. It was in the midst of the forest of Rothiemurchus,
near Aviemore, that I saw it, inscribed on a white board of the Scottish
Rights of Way Association with an arrow pointing the way to it to the
tourist across the rough Lang Pass
from Braemar. At the head of Loch-an-Eilan, farther on, I saw the magic
name again on a similar board with a similar arrow indicating its
proximity. But it seemed to me to retreat the nearer I got to it, like
the foot of the rainbow, and it was not till some time afterwards that I
was able to locate and visit it. I then found that the reality behind
the name did not belie its melodiousness. It recalled fair visions that
were quite in harmony with its musical sound.
The horizon of Kinrara is
quite different from that of Rothiemurchus, the district that lies next
to it on the north. Rothiemurchus obtains its name from the dark,
continuous forest of firs which covers the extensive plain at the foot
of the Cairngorm mountains; whereas Kinrara is covered mostly with
birches, which give a much softer aspect to the scenery. The principal
hill of the district, which rises behind Kinrara, called Tor Alvie, is
covered with birch-trees, and many fine specimens of this tree,
self-sown, occur among the woods, with pure white stems and long,
drooping branches. The woods are all natural. They climb over rocky
ground with whose rugged features their mottled stems of black
corrugated bark, below hoary with lichens and showing milk - white
smoothness of stem above, exquisitely harmonise. Here and there they
gather into thick, shady clumps or open out into sunny glades, where
shadow and sunlight play over the mossy ground and freckle the sward
with delicious wavelets. The landscapes partake of the character of
wild, disordered, natural scenes and carefully-dressed park scenery. The
situation of Kinrara House is exceptionally fine. Overshadowed by the
birch-clad hill behind and shrouded by groves of ornamental trees, it
seems to have too much seclusion, and yet the policies cover such a wide
space that they afford ample room for all the trees that crowd around.
The trim and velvety lawns gradually lose their formality and merge
imperceptibly into untutored wilderness. The view in front from the
elevated terrace is over open and widely-extended ground on to the huge
masses of mountains from the Sgôran Dubh to the dark blue hills of
Glenfeshie in the distance, comprehending a vast variety of scenery
within its bounds. Ridge after ridge seems to come down from the blue
firmament in ever-graduating shades of deeper blue; the far horizons are
full of peaks and plateaus whose vast spaces and intervals are so
crowded and foreshortened that they can only be distinguished by their
varying colours, and look like a wondrous mosaic built up against the
sky. In late autumn it is a painter’s palette; every shade of green
and red and yellow is to be seen in the foliage. The house is not
visible among the trees from the public road. It has no beauty of
architecture, being a plain square building, depending for its effect
entirely upon the loveliness of its situation.
This retired spot was
chosen by the celebrated Jane, Duchess of Gordon, as her summer
residence for many years. She was devotedly attached to it, and drew to
it, by the charm of her manner and her brilliant conversation, crowds of
the highest nobility of England and Scotland from July to November. In
London the duchess was the life and soul of courtly circles. She greatly
delighted George III. by her wit and vivacity; and his household was
charmed by her personification of the provincial peculiarities of the
natives of Scotland and Ireland. Knowing a few words of Gaelic she could
represent the nasal pronunciation and vehement gestures of a Highland
minister in the pulpit, and give examples of the Scottish dialect and
Aberdonian intonation, which always threw the royal listeners into
convulsions of laughter. Her influence at Court was used to help on
candidates for military or civil situations from the Highlands; and the
ministers of state could not resist the earnestness of her pleading when
she espoused the cause of some rural protégé from Badenoch or
Strathspey. Pitt, "that heaven— born minister," as he was
called, was often cajoled into placing her favourites in high positions
in the Treasury and Horse Guards. She was of the utmost service in
increasing the military forces of our country during the Napoleonic
wars. She fanned the ancient martial spirit of the people, and by the
powerful patronage of the Gordon family she helped to produce a host of
brave officers whose honourable deeds will long live in the annals of
the British army. Dressed in Highland bonnet and feathers with tartan
scarf and short tartan petticoats, she appeared on festive occasions in
the district, and raised recruits by offering to dance with any likely
young man to the music of the bagpipes; and at the end of the reel she
handed to her partner a guinea and a cockade, in the name of King George
and the Duke of Gordon. It was even said that she did not hesitate to
bestow a kiss as a reward to those who enlisted in this way; and thus
many scores of young men, the finest in the countryside, in spite of the
remonstrances and lamentations of their female friends, were decoyed
into the military service of their country. By devices like these was
formed the famous 92nd Regiment or Gordon Highlanders, which added fresh
glories to the national banners in every country and clime. Mrs. Grant
of Laggan wrote a song in connection with this regiment, which has
always been very popular:-
"Oh, where, tell me
where, is your Highland laddie gone?
He’s gone with streaming banners, where noble deeds are done.
And my sad heart will tremble till he comes safely home.
Oh, where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie stay?
He dwelt beneath the holly trees, beside the rapid Spey,
And many a blessing followed him the day he went away."
At the southern extremity
of Tor Alvie, a high cairn of stones was erected by the late Duke of
Gordon, the son of this famous duchess, with a tablet commemorating the
brave officers belonging to this district who fell at Waterloo—Sir
Robert MacAra of the Black Watch, and Colonel John Cameron of the 92nd
Regiment, and their valorous countrymen. On the eastern brow of the hill
is a rustic hermitage, commanding a most magnificent view of cultivated
valley and heath-clad brow, dark forests and frowning mountains. Here
there is also a pillar to the memory of the last Duke of Gordon, the
popular chief and landowner, which stands out prominently above every
other object in the centre of the vast landscape and is seen from all
directions.
The Duchess of Gordon was as much
at home among the humble cottages of the poor on her estate as among the
splendours of a Court. She was greatly beloved by all her tenantry, and
delighted in making others sharers in her own happiness. Mrs. Grant of
Laggan said of her that "she presented the least favourable aspect
of her character to the public," and that "she showed most in
her Highland home, where her warm benevolence and steady friendship were
most felt." There is a sprightly song in Fraser’s "Gaelic
Airs," which records the gaieties of the times when she was the
leading star of the bright social firmament. Correspondingly great,
therefore, was the gloom and sorrow when the news came that she had died
on 12th May 1812 ; and Mrs. Allardyce of Cromarty wrote the following
elegiac verses regarding the sad event:-
"Fair in Kinrara
blooms the rose,
And softly waves the drooping willow,
Where beauty’s faded charms repose,
And splendour rests on earth’s cold pillow;
Her smile, who sleeps in yonder bed,
Could once awake the same to pleasure,
When fashion’s airy train she led,
And formed the dance’s frolic measure.
When was called forth our
youth to arms,
Her eye inspired each martial spirit;
Her mind, too, felt the Muse’s charms,
And gave the meed to modest merit.
But now, farewell, fair northern star,
Thy beams no more shall Courts enlighten,
No more lead youth, our youth, to war,
No more the rural pastures brighten.
Long, long thy loss shall
Scotia mourn,
Her vales, which thou wert wont to gladden,
Shall look long cheerless and forlorn,
And grief the minstrel’s music sadden;
And oft amid the festive scene,
Where pleasure cheats the midnight pillow,
A sigh shall breathe for noble Jane,
Laid low beneath Kinrara’s willow."
The remains of the
Duchess of Gordon were brought north from London when she died and laid
in a spot which she had often indicated in her walks as the place where
she wished to be buried. It lies not far from the mansion house in a
spacious park on the banks of the river where it has a quick clear
current and fills its banks from side to side, murmuring a
perpetual requiem as it flows past, deepening the peace of the dead.
There is no other grave but her own in this quiet resting-place; but the
secluded spot was an ancient graveyard connected with some chapel
dedicated to St. Eda, which disappeared ages ago, and of which not a
trace now survives. Who this St. Eda was is not known, some supposing
that he was the Bishop of Farus in Ireland, but the probability rather
is that this is a dedication to St. Alden corrupted into St. Eda—the
celebrated Celtic saint of Lindisfarne, who was highly popular
throughout the Highlands, and had many churches consecrated in his name.
A handsome monument, in the shape of a truncated obelisk, formed of
granite from the neighbouring mountains, was erected on the spot by her
noble husband, and on it is commemorated, at her own request, the names
of all her children, with the exceptionally brilliant marriages which
they had made; her own name being inscribed on a plain marble slab
covering the grave. Lord Huntly planted some larches round the enclosure
which have grown into fine trees and cast down an appropriate funereal
shade on the sod; and Lady Hundy laid out a beautiful shrubbery and
extended the larch plantation, making paths through it. To the charming
scenery around Kinrara this lonely tomb gives an air of tender sadness.
Sleeping there, far from the stately mausoleum where the dust of her
illustrious kindred reposes, she has taken complete possession of the
spot, that was so dear to her in life, by her ineffaceable memory which
mingles with every object around, sighs in the wind, and syllables her
name by the airy voices of the solitude, by the waving of the trees and
the flowing of the river. One of the distinguished visitors at Kinrara
during the lifetime of the duchess was Prince Leopold, the husband of
the lamented Princess Charlotte, and subsequently King of the Belgians.
On the day of his arrival he was taken up to the top of the Tor Alvie,
and there he was surprised to meet the Marquis of Huntly, who at a
preconcerted signal summoned his clansmen from their places of
concealment among the heather and birch-trees around, who rose in their
plaided array to give the prince a right royal welcome. "Ah!"
exclaimed the prince, surprised and greatly pleased at the sight,
"we have got Roderick Dhu here"—alluding to the scene in the
Lady of the Lake where—
"The mountaineer then
whistled shrill,
And he was answered from the hill;
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended bows;
And every tuft of broom gave life
To plaided warrior armed for strife!
Watching their leader’s beck and will,
All silent there they stood, and still."
It would take several
weeks to exhaust all the varied beauties of Kinrara. Tor Alvie, the
wooded hill behind the house, affords endless walks and outlooks on the
surrounding scenery. Paths through the birch-woods leading to lovely
seclusions of Nature; large lochans and sheets of marshy water covered
with myriads of waterlilies; dark sweeping forests of fir that skirt the
bases of the mountains, and rows of pine-trees crowning an eastern
height, every one of whose spear-tops the rising sun flashes into a sort
of sudden presenting of arms to the celestial potentate along the whole
sky-line; the rapid Spey flowing between beaches of white pebbles
accumulated here and there by its waters, and under graceful trees whose
light foliage throws down flickering lights and shadows on its dimpled
surface; and here and there some rustic farmhouse, with its cultivated
fields and picturesque steadings—all these details of the landscapes,
contrasting with the trim walks, the rich gardens and the trailing vines
of the mansion house, make a paradise in the wilderness. Kinrara is now
the shooting-lodge of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and has been
occupied for a number of years by the Earl of Zetland.
The way to Kinrara from
Aviemore skirts the foot of Craigellachie, and opens up many charming
vistas of the surrounding scenery. At the foot of Craigellachie,
immediately above the village, is a little lochan, concealed in a field
of green mounds, called Loch Balladern. Its surface is covered with the
large floating leaves and red mottled spikes of Potamogeton and
with the little lemon flowers and neat round leaves of the Nuphar
pumila, the smallest of the water-lilies, found only in a few of our
lochs. The lochan is a lovely mirror for the birch-clad rocks that rise
precipitously above it, and is full of small sweet trout. Strangely
enough, during the earthquake of Ljsbon, its waters were greatly
agitated, dashing about in its little shrouded basin in a way that made
a deep impression upon those who saw it. Almost at the gates of Kinrara
is the charming Loch Alvie, of which one gets the most tantalising
glimpses from the railway in passing along. The name of this little lake
is derived from the fact that in former times it was visited by wild
swans on their southern migratory flight from the Arctic regions. It is
about a mile in length and half a mile in breadth, but has an irregular
outline, forming a large promontory at the western end, running far out
into the water, on which is picturesquely situated the church of the
parish with the manse and glebe, which are almost surrounded by the
loch. The Church of Alvie occupies a knoll on which there was a
religious cell from the time of St. Columba. It is even older than the
knoll of Adamnan at Insh, for tradition ascribes its dedication—if not
its actual foundation—to St. Drostan, the nephew of St. Columba, to
whom there are many dedications in the north and north-east of Scotland.
This famous saint founded the Monastery of Deer, as the Book of Deer,
the oldest MS. in Scotland, tells us, built a church and lived a
hermit’s life in Glenesk, Forfarshire, where he wrought some miracles
and died. Under the floor of the Church of Alvie, when renewed some time
ago, 150 skeletons without coffins were found—the remains probably of
some ancient local battle. They were re-interred in the churchyard. The
charm of the surrounding lake consists not in its magnitude or grandeur,
but in the blueness of its surface when the sun shines, reflecting the
shadows of the birch—trees around it, and the clouds lying still as
itself above it, in the purity and transparency of the little wavelets
that ripple to the shore with a placid murmur infinitely soothing to~
the tired spirit, and in the sheets of dazzlingly white water-lilies
that cover large spaces in the quiet bogs with the most refined bloom
and verdure. From its eastern end a pleasant little burn flows through
the woods, round the base of Tor Alvie, and falls into the Spey. It has
sometimes happened, when swollen by the autumn storms, that the waters
of the loch have risen so high as almost to cover the promontory on
which are situated the church and manse; and on one occasion, during the
unprecedented flood of 1829, the ministers who had been assisting at the
communion on Sunday were detained on the spot till the waters abated on
Wednesday. Near the top of the hills on the north side of the loch the
dwarf birch, Betula nana, which is one of the rarest of our
Alpine plants, and one of the most diminutive of our native trees, grows
in considerable abundance among the bogs. One of the ministers of this
parish, the Rev. William Gordon, lived to the advanced age of 101 years,
remarkable for his generous nature and noble life. When the clans fled
from Culloden, many of the fugitives came south past the manse of Alvie
in a state of destitution and applied for relief to Mr. Gordon. The Duke
of Cumberland, hearing of his beneficence and suspecting his loyalty,
summoned him to his presence at Inverness by a military guard, when Mr.
Gordon stated that he was straitened between two contrary commands. His
heavenly King’s Son commanded him to feed the hungry; his earthly king’s
son commanded him to drive them from his door. Which of these two
commands was he to obey? The duke, taken aback, replied, "By all
means obey the command of the Son of your heavenly King," and
dismissed him with several tokens of the royal approbation. In the
middle of an arable field at Dalfour, about a mile west from Loch Alvie,
there is a nearly perfect Druidical circle, forming a ring about sixty
feet in diameter, enclosing another ring of stones of smaller size, set
on end, about half that diameter. Connected with this remarkable relic,
there is in the immediate vicinity a stone pillar about eight feet high,
without any sculpture or inscription, recording some event which has
long passed into oblivion. Beyond Loch Alvie there used to be a dreary
moor, covered only with stunted heather, and incapable of being
cultivated, owing to the shallowness and stoniness of the soil. The
Duchess of Gordon planted it with Scotch firs, mingled with larch-trees,
which have thriven and greatly relieve the barrenness of the waste. The
hostelry of Lynwilg, for many years the only inn on the road past
Kingussie, is welcome as a resting—place for the weary traveller. This
whole district was once part of the ancient Barony of Dunachton, which
passed into the possession of the Laird of Mackintosh about the year
1500, through his marriage with the daughter of the baron. The new
proprietor was a man of high character and conspicuous ability, and was
much regarded by his tenants; but a conspiracy was formed against him by
a treacherous member of his own clan who wished himself to rule, and so
murdered his chief. He and his lawless band took refuge in a castle on
an island of Loch Alvie, since burnt down, but the enraged clan besieged
him there and put him to death. A few miles farther on is the romantic,
richly-wooded village of Kincraig, at the end of a spur from
Craigellachie, which gleams forth like a beautiful oasis in the
wilderness. Here a profusion of graceful, natural birches rises up among
the knolls and rocks picturesquely grouped together and hides the
fashionable villas which have recently been built upon the spot. At
Kincraig the Spey expands into a large lake called Loch Insh, which is a
mile long and half a mile broad. Nowhere does the combination of loch
and birch-wood appear so beautiful as here. The blue waters shining
through the small glistening leaves, and between the silvery colonnades
of the trees, produce the most exquisite effects, especially when the
multitudinous ripples on the surface laugh in the breeze and sparkle
like jewels. At the foot of the loch, where the Spey flows out of it,
there are two large knolls covered with fir and other trees. When the
river is in flood these knolls are completely surrounded by water, and,
converted into an island, are shut off from the mainland. This
circumstance has given origin to the name of the loch, which means the
loch of the island. On the northern mound called Ion Enonan, or Adamnan’s
Island, is situated the Church of Insh, whose ancient name proves that
the conditions which prevail at present during spates of the river have
prevailed from time immemorial. The church is the most interesting
object of antiquity in the whole district. Its foundations go back to
the days of St. Columba, who visited the Picts north of the Grampians,
and is said by St. Adamnan, his biographer, to have converted Brudeus
the King in his Court at Inverness. The dedication of this church to St.
Adamnan in 690, or thereabouts, was a consequence of this visit.
Previous to its occupancy as a place of Christian worship, the
fir-crowned knoll had a religio loci, as a site of Druidic rites.
It was the place where for ages the people had been accustomed to meet
and practise the adoration of the sun, and other acts of Nature-worship,
and the consecration of the heathen altar was continued to the Christian
Church, and the people met as of old in the same spot, with a different
religion, and the Sunday of the former dispensation became the holy day
of rest of the new. In a basin carved out of a slab of granite forming
the sill of one of the windows of the church is preserved a very ancient
square bell of cast bronze, which is one of the series of early Celtic
bells still existing in Scotland. Its shape and size are like those of
the bell of St. Fillan in the Antiquarian Museum in Edinburgh. It has an
oval-shaped handle and a moulding round its mouth, and a big iron tongue
protruding from its mouth. The basin-shaped depression in which it rests
was probably the font of the original church erected on the knoll, or
belonged, it may be, to the system of cup-marked stones peculiar to
sun-worship, which occupied the spot in pagan times. There is a
tradition connected with the bell similar to that associated with the
bell of St. Fillan, that if carried away from the locality it breaks out
into a constant cry of "Ion Enonan, Ion Enonan," which ceases
not until it is brought back to the knoll on which the church stands. In
all probability the bell is as old as the time of Adamnan, and was
blessed by him in person. The saint’s day was originally a holy day of
worship, but it became, as was generally the case, a fair, called Feil
Columcille, or St. Columba’s Market. At this fair it was the custom of
the women of the district to attend dressed in white garments ; and the
late aged minister of the church remembered an old woman showing him the
white dress in which in her young days she went to the Fair of St.
Columba, and which she carefully preserved in order to be buried in it.
No doubt this was an unconscious survival of a ceremonial usage of the
Early Church, in which candidates for baptism required to appear clothed
in a white dress; and the custom came afterwards to be associated with
the festival day of the saint, as commemorative of his Christian work.
The spot on which the Church of Insh stands, I have said, has been a
sacred spot from time immemorial, and the church itself is the only one
in Scotland in which Christian worship has been carried on continuously
from the seventh century to the present day. The present building is no
doubt the last of a series of buildings often renewed on the spot, but
the lowest part of the walls shows traces of much older structures; and
until recently, when the internal fittings were completely restored, the
galleries, seats and pulpit made of fir, warped and wizened by age, were
of very primitive forms and had been suffered to fall into a state of
considerable dilapidation.
The road on the other
side of the Spey winds along the shore of Loch Insh, and at some
distance crosses the Feshie by a steep and narrow bridge, where the
stream forms a deep dark pool far below. The view is very wild and
somewhat alarming at this spot. The parapets of the bridge have been
heightened to increase the feeling of security, but the precipitous
banks of the river, and the wide Stygian pools which they enclose,
excite the imagination and fill it with terror. An accident might easily
occur at this place ; as in point of fact one did happen to a carriage,
which was upset and life was lost. The Feshie drains one of the grandest
and most extensive of the Highland glens, and is a splendid stream with
a large volume of water. Owing to the vast quantity of detritus it has
brought down from the mountains it has formed a bar which has dammed up
the course of the Spey, causing it to expand into a lake, which is now
Loch Insh. During the flood of 1829 its waters filled the whole glen. A
shepherd’s house high up on the side of the hill, beyond the utmost
possible reach of a spate, was overwhelmed by the river, and the inmates
barely escaped with their lives in the middle of the night to the
highest ground they could reach, where they were imprisoned till the
evening of the following day. The scenery of Glen Feshie was greatly
admired by Landseer, who left as a memento of his having been in the
place a drawing of a deer above the mantelpiece on the wall of a
gamekeeper’s cottage in the glen—now shut up in order to preserve
it. Thomson of Duddingston also made several sketches of the giant firs
of the forest, and during his sojourn in the district was immensely
impressed by its sublimity. So overpowered with emotion was he on one
occasion in the forest that he exclaimed, "Lord God Almighty!"
and said to his host and companion, Sir David Brewster, that "the
sky over such a scene seemed the floor of heaven." Macculloch, in
one of his letters to Sir Walter Scott, before the authorship of the
Waverley Novels had been found out, wrote that the unknown writer should
lay the scene of his next story in Glen Feshie. Her late Majesty Queen
Victoria passed through it on the way from Braemar to Strathspey, and
has recorded in her journal the excited feelings which the memorable
journey produced.
The extensive birch-woods
of South Kinrara and Dalnavert, which add so much to the attractiveness
of the landscape, were long ago called the Davochs of the Head. They
were given in compensation for the head of the Laird of Mackintosh, who
was decapitated while paying a friendly visit to the Earl of Huntly in
1556. Sir Walter Scott refers to this incident in an article on the
"Highland Clans" which he contributed to the Quarterly
Review. He informs us that Mackintosh, in his bitter quarrel with
the Gordons, burnt their castle of Auchindoun, and thereby aroused their
implacable vengeance. The earl reduced him to such extremities by his
constant persecution that he had at last to surrender himself to his
foe. Coming to the seat of the Gordons, he found the master absent, but
yielded himself up to the countess instead, who informed him that the
earl had sworn never to forgive his crimes until he should see his head
upon the block. Thereupon the humbled chief knelt down and laid his head
upon the kitchen dresser where the oxen were cut up for the baron’s
feast No sooner did he make this humiliating allegiance than the cook,
who stood behind him with the cleaver uplifted, at a sign from the
inexorable countess, let the cleaver fall and severed Mackintosh’s
head from his body by a single stroke. Dalnavert was the last remnant of
the extensive possessions of the ancient Shaws, the earliest lords of
this district. It now belongs to the estate of The Mackintosh. About
eighty years ago the local company of volunteers used to assemble here
for drill. Both the mother and the wife of the late well-known Premier
of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald, were born in this place. The mother
went from thence after her marriage to Glasgow— where the great
statesman was born; but he returned from America for his bride to his
maternal country on the banks of the Spey. |
