The Spell of Scotland

nt, I was conscious of the hills of Fife ever backing in the pros

of Fife h

re is s

ail and find not the

gray plaid wi' a gowden fringe," said a King Jamie. It lies there, separate from Scotland, although very Scottish, between the firths of the Forth and the Tay, with the Ochil hills a barrier on the landside. The separating firths are now connected with Scotland by g

shore of the Firth. Pick up any sea shell-I do not remember seeing any, so combed h

wins, nor because Carlyle taught here for two years, nor because Edward Irving preached here; their dwellings and schools and graves can be seen. But because Marjorie Fleming was b

oid the world was a century ago, in that Charles Lamb was living in London when Marjorie was living in Kirkcaldy, and was dreaming

have claimed Marjorie as our own, and Mark Twain, who only a month before he died-and joined her-wrote as tenderly and whimsically of her as he ever wrote of any child or any maid. Among such august comp

which though dirty is clene in the country," Marjorie wrote this from Edinburgh a little patronizingly, and Marjorie was never strong on spelling. The next three years she lived with her aunt in t

s in the Old Town, looked them about, saw the lawyers pacing to and fro, as Stevenson had pa

k Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet." They were Lord Erskine, William Clerk-and the third we all know; what service of romance has he not performed for us! As the snow blattered in his face he muttere

ved. It was here that at the age of six she wrote her first letter to Isa Keith. It was here that Marjorie saw "regency bonnets" and with eyes of envy; as indeed she envied and desired with the passionate depths of her nature all lovely and strange things. Here she read the Newgate calendar, and found it a fascinating af

the cold and snow of that winter a century back, and see the strong, lame, great man, carrying the wee wifie in the neuk of his plaid, to the warm firelight of his castle. Marjorie and he would romp there t

and make her repeat Constance's speeches in King John till he swayed to and fro

ick, and cap

ongs, and therefo

andless, subj

turally bor

ul place, Braehead by name, where there is ducks, cocks, bubblyjocks, 2 dogs, 2 cats and swine which is delightful"-to Ravelston-"I

of the park and a deep-lying lake with dark woodlands. I wish Marjorie might hav

ton, Ra

y path t

golden mo

gh the si

r song, she

beneath

w Keith of

' the Mon

year, where

ning down

ere sits a m

the suns

her immem

her shad

h of R

ows of t

s Boswell, "I talked perhaps with too boasting an air, how pretty the Frith of Forth looked; as indeed, after the prospect from Constantinople, of which I have been told, and that from Naples, which I have seen

me, which she has worn ever since the Danes came over. Yes, and looking for a suitable piece of earth

tram looked, yes, and laughed. Burnt-island, he dared, dared

was told that from Canty bay-excellent Scots name-the innkeeper will row you o'er, and you may walk where James I was waiting for the boat which should carry him to safety in France, and getting instead the boat which carried him to prison in E

LLON

fic place, and seven acres of benty grass must have seemed small refug

d Angus Bell-the-Cat. It still looks pretty tremendous, and still stands, like the

Lammermuirs stood up in paler dusk in the background, and the sun blazed behind them. And all about the Firth glittered like an inland lake, a Great Lake. I thought of how the Roman galleys and Norse fleets had come this way, and looked and departed. And how kings had brought their armies here, and looked, perhaps besieged, and departed. And how time and time and time again, French fleets had sailed in here to help their continuing ally, Scotland. And how kings ha

not. Nor at Kinghorn, where Alexander III, within a few months after he had married in haunted Kelso, and within a few hours p

andyr oure

d led in luv

Scotland

ds in per

kca

ing works, and it is the center of a string of fishing villages, a "metropolitan borough system," hundreds of boats fishing the North Sea with KY marked as their home port, when their sailor men make home in any of these picturesque and sm

d na be

y Maggie

et her ga

hat wast they

ived i

maid a

years and

ld come to

for Maggi

myss on the site of the castle of MacDuff, then of Fife, this

s book of Scotch pilgrimages when William Winter was on his way to St. Andrews, past Kirkcaldy, he w

book about Marjorie. Under a window you enter the archway and find yourself in a little green-grassed court, which is all that is left of Marjorie's garden. The house proper fronted the garden in that comfortable excluding way which British people still prefer for their places of habitation. It is still occupied as a dwelling, and the nursery still looks as it did in Marjorie's day, and the drawing-ro

rin' awa

wreaths in

earin

and o' t

ills and the Firth. The organist was playing and the music drifted out through the narrow lancet windows when I f

me one of the immortal dream children of the world. I laid my fresh flow

An

s between fields which have the look of centuries-old cultivation, at pe

s by the No

town it

city, wor

th Ocean gir

e rocks, an

-rollers sur

he thin and

the melanc

ndure, and

he salt winds

and shadowy

d in the we

rd's Chape

d idly whe

ed mountai

y desecra

ots rent the

birds sang

dream, we c

Fate would

minster, l

bay, abov

of the ki

of the sca

, and smaller wonder, remembering the Calvinistic wind, that here

ay town, "the essence of all the antiquity of Scotland in good clean condition," said Carlyle. It

ike that of York or Amiens, was dedicated in the days of The Bruce, with the king present to endow it with a hundred marks "for the mighty victory of the Scots at Bannockburn, by St. Andrew's, the guardian of the realm."

faith, and if one misses the chanting of the monks echoing through these arches, under this roofless space, there is the moan of the sea, sobbing at the foot of the crag, the sea which is of no faith and never keeps faith. And if one misses the scarlet robes of Cardinal Beaton as he swept through th

DREWS

t the Cardinal sat at his ease and witnessed the entertainment of the auto da fe of the non-conformist, George Wishart, burned alive on March 28, 1542; about the time Philip the Second was burning heretics in the Old Plaza at Madrid, and a little before Queen Mary spouse to Philip, was burning them in England. And it was only two months later, May 29, when workmen were strengthening the castle at t

endering to Strozzi, Prior of Capua, a Knight of Rhodes; so was the great world made small in those days by errant knights and captains and hired mercenaries. The F

his last sermons. "I saw him everie day of his doctrine go hulie and fear," wrote James Melville, "with a furrning of martriks about his neck, a staff in the an hand," and lifted up to the pulpit "whar he beho

ds southeast of the cathedral. Dr. Johnson was indignant with Boswell that he missed it

ne buildings. It is full of dignity, full of repose, as a northern Oxford combined with a northern Canterbury should be. There is a spel

f Scotland to-day, and from the Tee at St. Andrews the Golf Ball has been driven round the world. James VI, careful Scot, recognized golf as an indust

r it was on these that Charles I was playing when news came of the Irish rebellion-and all that it led to. And here, his son, later James II, played against two English noblemen who had declared they could beat him, and James, cannily-true Scot!-chose the best player in Scotland, one Paterson

es a keen game; the inlander, of course, and the American inlander, may not understand that golf can never quite be golf, certainly never be the t

are taken in it quite as high and requiring as thorough a training as at the University. It

" A Scots minister was playing and playing rather badly, and expressing himself in words if not in strokes. (Only those of you who have read "Sentimental Tommy" will understand that unconsciously I have played on the word "stroke!") The minister exclaim

enowned to-day because it contains the graves of good golfers, Allan Robertson, old Tom Morris, and young Tom Morris, the greatest golfer since Paterson, dead at the pathetic