Russell, the
famed editor of the "Scotsman." This humourist is gradually "winning his
way to the mythical." All fishing stories are attached to him; his
eloquence is said (in the language of the historian of the Buccaneers) to
have been "florid"; he is reported to have thrown his fly-book into Loch
Leven on an unlucky day, saying, "You brutes, take your choice," and a
rock, which he once hooked and held on to, is named after him, on the
Tweed. In addition to the humane and varied conversation of the boatmen,
there is always the pure pleasure of simply gazing at the hillsides and
at the islands. They are as much associated with the memory of Mary
Stuart as Hermitage or even Holyrood. On that island was her prison;
here the rude Morton tried to bully her into signing away her rights;
hence she may often have watched the shore at night for the lighting of a
beacon, a sign that a rescue was at hand.
The hills, at least, are much as she may have seen them, and the square
towers and crumbling walls on the island met her eyes when they were all
too strong. The "quay" is no longer "rude," as when "The Abbot" was
written, and is crowded with the green boats of the Loch Leven Company.
But you still land on her island under "the huge old tree" which Scott
saw, which the unhappy Mary may herself have seen.
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