is field labour; but there are alfo weavers, taylors, carpenters, mafons, &c.; on the whole they are fober and industrious; and there are very few poor on the parish. There are two great fairs, and three leffer for country meetings, at Callander; and much business is tranfacted at the two former by English drovers. Neither the horses nor the horned cattle in Callander are of the true highland breed; yet the former are hardy and fure-footed; and the latter feed up well, and are fit for the dairy. About five and twenty or thirty years ago, the sheep and farming bufiness was first introduced into the highlands; when this district was among the earliest to embrace the speculation*: and a pròfitable one it has proved indeed; at least to the land-owners and substantial taxmen.-It has already been noticed how prejudicial this mode of farming is to population; and yet, happily, it feems to have had little effect in this way in these parts; for, according to the returns made in 1755, the number of fouls in the parish of Callander amounted to 1750; and by the Statistical Account in 1790, it was 2100; fo that it appears the number had increased 350 fince the former period.

The fish found in the lakes and rivers here, are falmon, trouts, greylings, pikes, jacks, eels; to these may be added that species of muscles in which pearls are found; but this latter fish seems exhausted, from the great eagerness which the people on the banks of the Teath discovered to become rich by means of the pearl fibery.

Although this district can hardly be deemed highland, yet the language spoken by the generality of the people is a bad dialect of the ancient Celtic or Gaelic, greatly corrupted, and vulgar in

*See Note [E], at the end of the volume.

point of pronunciation. The dialect of the Scoto-Saxon, or language of the lowlands, is fpoken much in the fame vulgar and drawling accent. The customs, however, of this part of the country are altogether highland. For example: on the first day of May (old style), which is Beltin-day*, the boys of the neighbouring hamlets meet, and retire to some sequestered spot amid the hills, where they cut a circular trench out of the green. turf, in the centre of which a table is formed, round which they fit and eat a repaft dreffed in the following manner for the occafion: Milk and eggs being made into the confiftence of a custard, an oatmeal cake is kneaded very thick, and toasted by being fet up against a stone at the embers: this is called a bonnachchloich, or ftone-cake. As to each perfon prefent a portion of this cake is to be distributed, it is cut into the requifite number of pieces. One bit of it is then bedaubed with charcoal, and thewhole put into a bonnet. Each lad draws out a bit; and he to whose lot the black falls, is faid to be devoted to Beal-teine, Beltin, or Baal's-fire, as a facrifice. Instead of actual immolation, however, the victim is made to fkip three times through the glowing embers, and here the ceremony ends. Another custom, alfo the relick of ancient fuperftition, is ftill obferved, though, like the former, it is falling rapidly into neglect. On the 1st of November, All-Saints even, fires, ufually made of ferns, are kindled on knolls within fight of each other, and the boys interested in each fire fet ftones on end amid the ashes, which

* The Palilia, or feast of Pales, goddess of shepherds, was observed by the Romans on the 11th of the Kalends of May, with great folemnity. Among other ceremonies they concluded with dancing over the fires they had made in the fields, of fuch stubble as they could gather for the purpose, This feftival is called fometimes Parilia a pariendo, from orifons made for the fecundity of their flocks and herds. See Ovid. Fast. v. 721,.

&c.

are collected carefully into a circular form, one stone for each of the party concerned; and if it should happen that any stone is moved out of its place before next morning, the perfon reprefented by fuch ftone, is fuppofed to be fey, i. e. unfortunate, devoted, and doomed to die within a year from that day. But through most other parts of the north and weft of Scotland the festival of All-Saints, or Hallowe'en is ftill kept with much fantastic ceremony and festivity; for a characteristic description of which, fee Burns's admirable poem intitled Halloween, fubjoined to which are notes that explain many of the strange customs not altogether exploded even to this day.

As we proceed on our journey from Callander weftward, we fee on the right the family manfion of the Buchanans of Leney; the present representative is Hamilton of Bardowie. The charter of this family is as old as the year 1247, having been obtained in the 23d year of Alexander II.'s reign*. It appears from the remains of an old castle † at the manse of Callander, (on which the date above the principal door is 1596) once the refidence of the Livingstons of Linlithgow, now the property of the family of Perth, that near the foot of these mountains was confidered a favourable retirement in former times, as on any fudden emergency the hills might be reforted to; and, amid the faftneffes of the Grampians the enemy be fet at defiance. On approaching the Pafs of Leney, the traveller must be ftruck with the appearance of the vast wooded amphitheatre rifing in folemn grandeur before him.

See Buchanan of Achmor's Hiftory of the furname Buchanan, p. 96, 97.

In 1737 this caftle, then completely in ruins, was taken down to build a mill and

a dam head dike. The prefent manfe was also in part built of what remained about twenty years fince. Stat. Acc. Parish Callander.

On

On paffing through the small village of Kilmahoog, which is pleasantly fituated along the river Teath, we foon enter the wood of Lainy, and reach the Pafs to the north-west Highlands. At prefent, the wood being cut down, as we approach, the bending precipices are feen in full mafs, gloomy and folemn. But, before the wood was ftripped of its honours, the traveller, long ere he arrived at the Pass, heard, but faw not the whole volume of the river as it rushed through the huge fragments of rock that here form the bulwark of this narrow entrance into the Grampians; and on his arrival, he caught a glimpse of its foaming fury as it burft forth: while, turning to his right, he found himself immediately under a vaft precipice, on the hanging cliffs of which trees hid from his fight the vast height to which it towered; and, before him, he perceived at its base, only a few feet cut out of the folid rock, impending over a roaring cataract, critical in the extreme, by which he was to gain access into the faftneffes, where, till towards the middle of the present century, a people remained, "untouched by the Roman or Saxon invafions on the fouth, and by thofe of the Danes on the eaft and weft fkirts of their country; the unmixed remains of that Celtic empire which once ftretched from the pillars of Hercules to Archangel *."

Having gained entrance, we foon reach the western extremity of the wood; on clearing which, to one who never has been before in the Highlands, a new scene of magnificence prefents itfelf. A glen, wild, fterile, bleak, fhut out from all but the inhabitants of the neighbouring mountains, which here appear almoft inacceffible, ftrikes the ftranger with awe; and he thanks * Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain.

Heaven that his lot was not caft on fo cheerless a spot *. In this folitude, though in its afpect comfortless in the extreme, fuch is the grandeur which nature, in rude magnificence, displays, that the bold features of the furrounding mountains cannot fail to rivet the eye of the traveller, and raife in his mind correfponding emotions of the fublime. In the middle ground a wooded knoll, finely formed, round which, on the left hand, the Teath, near its fource, takes its first sweep, and hurries through a small meadow, forms an interefting feature. The ruins of a mill are in the fore-ground. On the right, a flope, fudden in its ascent, but miferably destitute of every thing like verdure, ftretches forward into the prospect, which is bounded by a mountain, not altogether inelegant in point of shape. On the left, the north-west fhoulder of Benledi, rifing in an almoft perpendicular direction, huge, rugged, and fteep, marked by the mountain ftreams of many ages, frowns over us in gloomy filence. The effect is impreffive; and the more fo, as it is fudden and unexpected. But, as we proceed, on gaining the knoll already noticed, the blue expanfe of Loch Lubnaig is seen spread out before us. The hill of Ardchulery, which rifes in dignified elevation, verdant to the top, and prettily wooded along its base, terminates the view. Beneath the brow of this hill a folitary and but small manfion,. on a plat of rifing ground, clofe on the margin of the Lake, formerly the hunting feat of our Abyffinian traveller BRUCE of KINNAIRD, is feen pleasantly sheltered amid trees, behind which a glen winds up the steeps, and is hid from the fight by the rifing sweep of the ridge that stretches above on the left, with

*On this spot, however, it was the fate of the author of these pages firft to draw breath; and a more barren waste is fcarcely to be met with in the whole western district of Perthshire. The name of the farm is Tombea, Birch-hill.

*

an