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Without going back to the Athole lines of the Comyns and the Stewarts, or to the joyous hunting scenes in which Queen Mary and other of the old line of Scottish Sovereigns bore a part, Blair has been a centre of historical and social interest ever since it became the chief seat of the Murrays. Montrose assembled the Royalist clans here, and set out upon the campaign which began with the defeat of the Covenanters at Tibbermore and the capture of Perth, and ended at Philiphaugh, where, in one day, the fruits of six brilliant victories were lost. Another darling of cavalier legend, Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, lies buried in the old church near by. In the year of the Revolution he had relieved Blair Castle, where the clansmen of Athole had held out for the Jacobite cause against their titular chief, and having enticed General Mackay through the Pass, he rushed down upon him with all his force from the slopes of the Hill of Urrard, utterly routing and sweeping back the enemy through the narrow gorge of the Garry, and himself falling, shot through the heart, at the moment the Sassenachs turned to run.
Notable events happened here also in the “’15” and in the “’45;” and, to come to the recent memories which are cherished with pride in Blair-Athole, Queen Victoria has paid repeated visits to the locality, and was entranced by the magnificent prospects of wood and stream, rugged mountain and fertile strath, that are unfolded from the top of the Hill of Tulloch, and from other points of view in this beautiful district. It is a kind of “holy ground” to fervid Jacobites, one or two of whom are supposed still to linger in Perthshire, if extinct elsewhere. It is also a favourite resort of the increasing host of pilgrims in search of Highland sport and scenery, who invade Athole through the Pass of Killiecrankie, and gaze, with a delight in which there is no longer any tempering of fear of consequences, upon the lofty and impending banks, pine-clad to their summits, and the wilderness of rock and boulder below, through which the Garry glooms and flashes in alternate pool and fall.
Pitlochrie is a charming place to halt at before, or after, clearing this “gateway of the Highlands.” The Tummel has now joined the Garry, and under the latter name the united streams have but a short way to go before they fall, at Ballinluig, into the stream which, from the place where it issues from Loch Tay, takes the name of the Tay. Were we to seek it still nearer to its sources, we should find ourselves in a district which, before the railway came to disturb its solitude, was as lone and wild as the lochans of the Black Mount or those corries of Ben Alder and Ben-y-Gloe whence the Tummel, the Ericht, and Tilt draw their springs. The line from Oban breaks into Perthshire and the basin of the Tay at Tyndrum, near the head of Strathfillan, not far from the scene of Bruce’s defeat at the hands of the Lord of Lorn. Following, from near the base of Ben Lui, the infant Tay—here, however, bearing the names successively of the Fillan and the Dochart—the way leads past the sites of ruined castles and chapels, by cairns yet haunted by memories of the bloody feuds of former days, and wells to which legend still assigns wonderful healing virtues. On the left are bare mountain sides stretching away northward towards the hills that enclose the head of Glen Lochay and Glen Lyon; and to the right the range of alpine heights that culminate in Ben More and impend over Loch Dochart, its old castle, and its “floating island.” St. Fillan lived and laboured in Strathfillan; Fingal is said to be buried in Glen Dochart; a hundred traditions cling to the rocks and waters here, and in Glen Ogle, and in the Glen of the Lochay, which, pouring over its pretty “linn,” joins the Dochart just before the united stream falls into the head of Loch Tay.
Where the waters meet at Killin, a rich feast is spread for the eye of the lover of Highland scenery. Killin, with its wonderful mingling of wild mountain outlines, and the gentle, infinitely varied charms of the lake and running streams and wooded shores, is a painter’s paradise.
Fifteen miles of the finest salmon-angling water in Scotland, overhung on the north by the vast bulk of Ben Lawers, and bountifully fringed by birch and other wood, separates Killin from Kenmore, at the lower end of the great Loch, whence issues, under its proper name, the Tay. The ruins on the little island near the outlet are those of the Priory erected by King Alexander I. beside the remains of his Queen, Sibylla, daughter of Henry I. of England—a quiet retreat for centuries of the company of nuns from whom the Fair at the neighbouring Kenmore takes the name of the “Holy Women’s Market.” Kenmore is as lovely in its own way as Killin; but here it is no longer wild Highland landscape, but Nature half-submissive to the embellishing hand of man. It is
“A piece of England ramparted around
With strength of Highland Ben and heather brae;”
and in the centre of the scene, set among ample lawns and magnificent walks and avenues, backed by the high, dark curtain of Drummond Hill, and looking towards the pine-clad heights opposite, stands Taymouth Castle, the princely seat of the Breadalbane family. Famous even among their sept for their politic ability and acquisitiveness, the Campbells, Lords of Glenorchy, who became Lords of Breadalbane, are said to have chosen this site, at the eastern limit of their vast possessions, with the hope of “birzing yont” into richer lands further down the Tay. To this day, the Breadalbane estates extend for a hundred miles westward of Taymouth, to the Atlantic Ocean.
Behind Drummond Hill is Glen Lyon, and a vista of its mountains—Schiehallion lording it over the minor heights—opens up at the Vale of Appin, where the Lyon falls into the Tay. A long journey this tributary makes, among savage and solitary hills, and past haunts of Ossian’s heroes and of the “Wolf of Badenoch,” before it reaches the sylvan beauties assembled round Glenlyon House and Sir Donald Currie’s Castle of Garth. But the most venerable of all the objects on the banks of the Lyon—not excluding the reputed birthplace of Pontius Pilate—is the “Old Yew of Fortingal,” perhaps “the oldest authentic specimen of vegetation in Europe.”
BIRNAM, FROM BIRNAM HILL. / DUNSINANE HILL.
On nothing quite so venerable as this does the next outstanding eminence by the Tay—the “Rock of Weem”—look down. But Castle Menzies, for four centuries the home of the Menzies of that ilk, lies surrounded by fine woods at its base; further off is the site of the old Abbey of Dull; and beyond the Bridge of Tay—first place of assembly of the gallant “Black Watch,” or 42nd Highlanders—are the Falls of Moness and the “Birks” of Aberfeldy. Mountain ash and pine have to some extent replaced the hazels and birches about which Burns so sweetly sings; but tourists come in larger flocks every season to Urlar Burn and to the pretty village near by. Grandtully Woods, and the old Castle of the Stewarts, which has been said to resemble more closely than any other baronial seat the picture drawn by Scott of Tully-veolan, attract many admiring eyes. Balleichan recalls memories of “Sir James the Rose;” and all down Strathtay, before and after the junction with the Tummel—at Logierait and Kinnaird, Dowally and Dalguise—the enchantments of a romantic past and of superb scenery combine to induce the traveller to linger over every mile of the valley.
Dunkeld and Birnam are ahead, however, and the temptations to delay must be foregone. There is no nook of Scotland more gloriously apparelled and richly endowed. Grand forests stretch for miles around, clothing the river-banks, filling the glens, and crowning to their crests Birnam Hill, Newtyle, Craig Vinean, Craig-y-Barns, and other heights that gather round the old cathedral town. Through the centre of the scene the Tay sweeps in smooth and spacious curves and long, bright-rippled reaches. All this loveliness is concentrated around the Palace and Cathedral of Dunkeld. Opposite is Birnam, and, a little above the line of arches of the fine bridge, the “mossy Braan,” coming from Loch Freuchie and “lone Amulree,” tumbles through the romantic dell of the Rumbling Bridge and the “Hermitage,” and over its upper and lower Falls, before entering the Tay.