Menteith Quotes

“So of the Flanders Moss. It, too, in mist seems to roll on for miles; its heathy surface turns to long waves that paly against the foot of the low range of hills, and beat upon Craigforth as if it were an island in the sea. Through wreathes of steam, the sullen Forth winds in and out between the peat hags, and when a slant of wind leaves it clear for an instant it looks mysterious and dark, as might a stream of quicksilver running down from a mine. When a fish leaps, the sound re-echoes like a bell, as it falls back into the water, and rings spread out till they are lost beneath the banks.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, A Hatchment

“Right at the summit of the pass it lies, nothing above it but the sky. On every side the billowing heather-clad hills engirdle it about. Flat stones encircle it, and on its surface water spiders walk. Red persicaria, with its wax-like stalks and ragged leaves, grows by its edge. Below it stretches out a vast brown moss, honeycombed here and there with black peat hags., and a dark lake spreads out, ringed on one side by moss, and on the other set like a jewel in a pine wood, with a white stretch of silver sand. On it are islands with great sycamores and chestnuts, stag-headed but still vigorous, and round their shores the bulrushes keep watch like sentinels. Mists rise from the moss and lake and creep about the corries of the hills, blending the woods and rocks into steamy chaos, vast and unfathomable, through which a little burn unseen, but musical, runs tinkling through the stones. So at the little bealach the well lies open to the sky, too high for the lake mists to touch it, as it looks up at the stars.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham

“The shapes I seemed to see - or saw, for if a man sees visions with the interior sight he sees them, fo himself at least, as surely as if he saw them with the outward eye - loomed lofty and gigantic, and peopled once again Menteith with riders, as it was peopled in the past. The shadowy and ill-starred earls, their armour always a decade out of fashion, and now and then surmounted by a Highland bonnet set with an eagle's feather, giving them the air half of the Saxon half of the Kelt, their horses lank and ill-groomed, their followers talking in shrill Gaelic seemed to defile along the road. Their blood was redder than the King's, their purses lighter than an empty bean-pod after harvest, and still they had an air of pride, but all looked "fey", as if misfortune had set its seal upon their race.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, Faith