03.04. Liverpool - Ayre in Scotland

Chapter 4 Arrival at Liverpool.

-- The Sabbath -- English Scenery -- Gretna Green -- "Maxwellton" -- Ayr -- The Birthplace of Robert Burns -- "Bonnie Doon." On Sunday morning, at 11 o’clock, of July 13, I found myself whirling along the streets of Liverpool from the steamer, bound for a distant hotel. It was delightful to see the houses standing steady after watching the swaying masts and pitching prow of the vessel so long. It was refreshing to see people walk straight, and not in zigzag courses and sudden fetchings up, and equally sudden bearings off to leeward. The streets were filled with people going to church, and the most delightful sight was frequently seen of the family group wending their way to the house of God. As my cabman drove rapidly along toward my distant hotel, suddenly, as we came near a church, a policeman signaled the driver, and made him walk his horse noiselessly by. I thought of New Orleans, where, between parrots and organs, brass-bands, fire-men’s processions, and rattling cars, the minister at times cannot possibly be heard. One preacher in our city was much annoyed by a rooster that crowed vociferously and pertinaciously near his pulpit window just after he would take his text and begin his sermon. The preacher earnestly entreated the lady owner to have the chanticleer removed, or silenced in some way. Her reply was that a man was a poor preacher who could not preach louder than a rooster could crow. O New Orleans! Thou Babel of multifarious noises on the Sabbath-day, draw near with a few of thy sister cities, and sit at the feet of Liverpool, and take the first lesson in reverences -- viz., silence when the Gospel is being proclaimed. This English custom looks like a ray of the millennial dawn. In the afternoon, hearing the sound of music in the large stone square in front of the hotel, and learning that it was a detachment of the Salvation Army, I went over and found about twenty holding service, with a considerable crowd about them. The men were in full uniform, the women were arrayed in quiet-looking Quaker bonnets and dresses. The instruments of music were those of a regular brass band. The collection was taken up in a tambourine. I shall always have a higher regard for the latter-named instrument from this time: in a sense it is redeemed. After several stirring hymns, and three or four burning exhortations delivered by the men, the detachment moved off to another part of the city. As they departed, with the flag flying and the band playing a sweet and soul stirring hymn, I noticed as the strains died away in the distance that the faces of the dispersing men around me showed thoughtfulness and seriousness. In the evening I walked over to attend service in a Wesleyan chapel in a neighboring street.

I listened here to a plain-looking preacher preach a plain sermon to a plain-looking congregation in a plain-looking church. The minister in the midst of his sermon indulged in antiquated and indifferent witticisms; the people responded at once with a half-suppressed laugh. I could not muster up even a smile, but thought of the time when Wesley used to hold forth the word of God among these people, and when, instead of laughing, they wept and were cut to the heart. One-fifth of the congregation remained to the Lord’s Supper, and after this some twenty or thirty of the membership took the small church organ and held an evangelistic meeting where five streets came together. This, I understand, they do every evening of the week. The hour here for evening service in the churches is half-past six. At this time the sun is several hours high. Returning to the hotel from these double services I was attracted by the sound of singing above the rush of a great throng and roar of wheels on the street. On investigation I discovered that it proceeded from a blind man and his family, accompanied by his accordion, and assisted by his friends stationed in the crowd. The voices were all remarkably fine. He would sing from the place where he sat, and his friends would respond from a distance of ten yards. The airs were all gospel hymns and melodies. The name of Jesus was prominent throughout. The effect was most gracious. Hundreds stood for an hour and listened. As I turned away I said in my heart: "Notwithstanding, every way Christ is preached, and I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."

I left Liverpool on Monday. No travel for me on the Lord’s Day, except upon the high seas.

I was glad to leave. A man whose celebrity consists in his having amassed great wealth fails to interest me, a city whose fame is in its massive brick structures and swollen commercial size exerts no charm over me. But the literary man and the historic city bind me to them with hooks of steel. I feel their drawing and holding power. So I was glad to leave the endless stone streets and countless acres of brick houses of Liverpool. The scenery that greeted my pleased eye as the train sped up the western coast of England was just what I had expected. There were the meadows starred with daisies, cowslips, and butter-cups; there were the well-cultivated fields, the neatly trimmed hedges, the distant town or hamlet, with the church belfry or spire just appearing above the encircling trees. I saw several old churches with graveyards by their side, situated as just mentioned, that would have perfectly met the description in Gray’s "Elegy in a Country Church-yard." I noticed that few of the fields were more than four acres in size. As we ran up through Cumberland and Westmoreland toward Scotland the fields became larger, the grain in a large measure disappeared, and the hills were covered with flocks. The Solway River is a small stream to divide two peoples as widely different as the Scotch and English, and yet it is there for all that. The rivers in Caledonia, as is known, are small; we would hardly dignify them by such appellations in America. But though inferior in size, they lack nothing in beauty. The favorite poet of Scotland has written in rapturous terms of the Nith, the Doon, and the Ayr. I have seen them, and after seeing them I felt in my heart that he had not used a single extravagant term.

Gretna Green, just across the border, engrossed me for awhile. It looked quiet and innocent enough with its hamlet-like collection of houses. But what exciting scenes, what pale faces and beating hearts, what tearing of hair and fallings into swoons, what rushing of carriages and galloping of horses like mad, what wonderful episodes, it has seen. O, Gretna Green, how much joy and misery you have brought upon this world. And O, Gretna Green, just a word -- did you get your last name on account of the character of the people that came within your gates to be married? About twenty-five miles northwest of the border there is a little town called Maxwellton. It is now properly a suburb of Dumfries. I learned its name as I passed while admiring the graceful and beautiful sloping hills in that direction. At the same time a Scottish gentleman sitting near me informed me that braes in Scotch meant hills. Like a flash I put the two together, and saw that I was looking on the place where Annie Laurie lived, or, nearer still, that the site of the song was before -- "Maxwellton braes are bonnie." The next day, in another part of Scotland, I was told by a Scotch laborer that daisies are called gowan. So here was additional light thrown on the same sweet song -- "Like the dew on the gowan lying." From Dumfries to Ayr, which is fifty miles northwest, the whole land is filled with tokens and memories of Robert Burns. He reigns in the west as Scott does in the east of Scotland. In Dumfries he spent the last few years of his life and here he died. In the town of Ayr, or rather near it, he was born, and spent the first twenty years of his life. In Mauchline, midway between the two, he was married, and at Kilmarnock, near by, he published his first book of poems, that won him immediate fame.

I became so interested through various things told me of his private life that I detected from the straight line of my route, and ran down to Ayr. This town is on the western coast of Scotland, in a direct line with the Island of Arran. It looks out in its quaintness upon the Frith of Clyde, while the river Ayr rushes foaming through its center, and plunges with its swift current into the sea. At nine o’clock in the evening I arrived; at half-past nine I was eating my dinner by a large window that looked toward the Frith of Clyde, and noticed that the daylight was still brightly shining. This peculiarity of the Northern day has struck me ever since I have been in high latitudes.

There is almost no end to the day. I said to the waiter at my side, "What time does it get dark here?" "About half-past ten," he replied. Then he continued, "Nearly everybody goes to bed here at eight o’clock, and it is lonesome. The town looks like it is dead, sir."

I remembered as he spoke that a lady in New Orleans had lately asked me if there was not a place on the globe where the sun rose and set at the same moment. Verily, I thought, I am coming to the place! And if things go on after this fashion as I travel farther North, I may yet take the last beam of the setting sun and the first ray of the rising orb and tie them in a bow-knot over the hour of midnight.

Next morning as I was leaving the hotel on my sight-seeing excursion I saw my first Scotchman in his knee-pants. I could not but ruminate, as I looked at the sturdy calves of the man, of the part that pants play in the civilization of the world -- or, to put it more correctly, how civilization affects the length of the pants. There are some savages that hide themselves behind a little paint. Others, occupying a higher grade, have a waist appendage, or apron of cloth or leather.

Then as we near the nineteenth century the pants unroll and drop to the knee. Today the curtain is down to the foot-lights. The tendency of civilization is to lengthen the pantaloons.

Taking a cab I drove first to the birth-place of Robert Burns, about two miles east of the town. On my way I saw my first turf roof. At once I thought, what a capital idea for everybody. Let all who love the beautiful have a turf roof, and cultivate flowers all over the top of the house.

Think of it, all ye who never did and never will sleep upon a bed of roses, think of sleeping under a bed of roses. I was also struck with the solidity and safety of the roof. In a little while after we reached the boyhood home of the poet. Most of my readers are familiar with the low stone cottage, about twenty-five feet long and twelve or fourteen high. It also possesses the turf roof, and at the time of the poet’s birth had but two apartments. I stood in the room where the child of genius was born. It is about ten feet square, the walls being of rough stone, the floor paved with like material, in pieces of irregular size, picked up doubtless in the fields; and the chimney, with a wide flaring mouth projecting far into the room, like the mud chimney of the Negro cabin. In the corner of the room, in a niche six feet long, five feet high, and four feet deep, answering for a bed, Robert Burns first saw the light. Everything showed the poverty of the family.

How little did the mother think that day, as she heard the first cry of her babe, that the time would come that the poor, dimly-lighted room would become the cynosure of millions of eyes, and that thirty thousand persons annually would visit it, and stand meditating upon its rough stone floor, because of the child born to her on that morning. A number of interesting relics are shown in the building -- the poet’s table, candlestick, and several old letters. In the monument erected near by I was shown a Bible he had given "Highland Mary." His first love was "Highland Mary," but he married "Bonnie Jean." So the world wags, "Few men wed their Highland Marys." In the poet’s case death intervened, as is touchingly shown in his poem, "To Mary in Heaven."

Near by on the banks of the Doon is the Auld Alloway Kirk, where Tam O’ Shanter saw the witches dancing amid the tombstones. I visited the ruined church and crumbling tombstones. A garrulous old Scotchman showed me around the graveyard, and with a harsh, cracked voice, and full of Scotch brogue, repeated copious passages to me from Tam O’ Shanter, until I was glad to escape. I walked alone down the road where Tam fled for his life, and stood on the old bridge where the witches caught hold of his horse’s tail. But I thought little of O’Shanter. My meditations and admiration were taken up by the "Bonnie Doon" which the old stone bridge spans; by the lovely landscape around, and by thoughts of him whose pen, like a magician’s wand, has glorified this land, and centered the eyes of the reading world upon it.

"Ye banks and braes o’ Bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom so fresh and fair?"

It is as true now as then. The Bonnie Doon is a stream twenty yards in width, beautifully clear, with banks covered with grass to the water’s edge and overhung with trees. It flows with most charming windings through scenery equal to the best in England. The meadows, fields, hedges, avenues of trees, hamlets, and old churches are all here, and strung together by the silver ribbon of the Bonnie Doon. I could not resist it, but climbed over a hedge and jumped down a steep place, and from the banks of the river gathered a handful of daisies, buttercups, and bluebells to bear away as a memento of the stream. The visitor is reminded that from Ayr Edward Bruce made his disastrous campaign into Ireland. He is also shown the place where Wallace set fire to the barns in which the English soldiers lay in a drunken sleep, this being done in retaliation for a massacre they had recently perpetrated upon a noble band of Scotch nobility. "The Twa Brigs of Ayr," with other interesting points, are also shown the tourist. As I sped away northward at noon on the train, and noticed a party of men in knee-breeches playing golf in the fields, and as I marked growing on the banks the beautiful red and purple heather, I knew that I was in Scotland. Walter Scott used to get heart-sick for a sight of the heather in his protracted absences from the land he loved so well. I thought of him the instant my eyes rested upon the modest shrub.

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