[Illustration: BRIG O’ TURK AND BEN VENUE.
In the great stag hunt, with which Scott’s poem opens, it was at this point that “the headmost horseman rode alone.”]
We are now right in the Trossachs proper, and find the huge, palatial hotel which goes by that name facing little Loch Achray.
Having arrived at the junction of the roads—that is, the two principal approaches already noted—it is necessary to run over the ground from Aberfoyle before continuing the part through the Trossachs common to both routes.
Aberfoyle itself is full of associations, but they are nearly all connected with _Rob Roy_. It stands as a meeting-place of Highlands and Lowlands, and as such has seen many storms. The earlier part of the Forth, here known as the Laggan, runs past the town, and the old saying “Forth bridles the wild Highlandman” is full of significance. Of this district says Mr. Cunninghame Graham: “Nearly every hill and strath has had its battles between the Grahames and the Macgregors. Highlander and Lowlander fought in the lonely glens or on the stony hills, or drank together in the aqua-vitæ houses in the times of their precarious peace.”
Far the most interesting scene laid at Aberfoyle, in all the realism of fiction, is that in _Rob Roy_, when Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and young Osbaldistone arrived, wearied out, seeking shelter at the primitive Clachan, and were refused because “three Hieland shentlemens” wanted the place to themselves. The landlady said her house was taken up “wi’ them wadna like to be intruded on wi’ strangers,” an objection for which there was probably strong underlying reason!
The row that subsequently took place when the stout little Bailie defended himself with the red-hot coulter of a plough is too well known to need quotation. Suffice it to say, in evidence of the truth of the story, that a coulter, traditionally said to be the very weapon, hangs on a tree outside the hotel, which bears his name, to this very day.
[Illustration: IN THE HEART OF THE TROSSACHS.]
The pass which leads by Lochs Ard and Chon north-westward to Stronachlachar has been much used at all times, and has seen desperate forays, but none perhaps more desperate than that described in _Rob Roy_ when the Bailie and Osbaldistone, unwillingly setting forth up it with an escort of soldiery, were attacked from the heights above by the redoubtable Helen Macgregor and her men, and very narrowly escaped death. Scott thus describes the pass: