Climbing the Birran

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 26 November 1927, Page 9

Climbing the Birran

A Scottish Reminiscence The Birran? it is the name of a rugged peak overlooking Loch Earn, in Perthshire, Scotland Climbing it?” You need the “heather step,” You will be over your head In bracken. You will have burns to cross, and ragged, jagged scours to clamber up. Dr. Johnson one said of the gooseberry that doubtless the Almighty could have made a better berry, out that doubtless the Almighty never did. And 1 would say to vou who read these lines that doubtless vou could imagine a bonnier village than St. Fillans. that nestles at the foot of the Birran. but that in sober fact a prettier spot never existed. Dr. John Brown, whose collected works are entitled “Horae Subsecivae,” and who was dead before this writer was born, is known to the world as the immortal author of “Rab and His Friends.’’ (If you do not know it. sell your shirt and buy it, for it is the best story of a dog ever penned.) But to me, he is jhe author of a sentence in which he declares that although he had travelled the globe, he had no scenery in his memory to compare with that immediately surrounding the village of St. Fillans on Loch Earn. MOOR—HE ATHER—MOOR. Red-brown as the sunset; broom, yellow as burnished gold ; water-lilies, pure as the peak of a snow-capped mountain at dawn—these you will see from St. Fillans on Loch Earn, and never forget the sight. They call it the Aberuchil range, that “rugged rampart confronting the stars, and girding the southern shore of the loch. It is no easy climb. iVe rowed across the loch on a sunny day in June, the trout-rings alone marring the mirrored surface. It was hot. The mountain-burns, singing their quiet tune, trickled down narrow beds as we beached the boat.

BRACKEN BRACKEN. AND BRACKEN impeded progress for long before we emerged into the open to clamber over the bare black rocks. The gully of a dead stream was crossed, in which lay the carcase of a deer. Then up and along the shoulder of the spur we scrambled, and and up until the topmost rock beckoned our approach. Two hours —or was it three? —and the cooler breezes from the uplands of' the distant, snow-capped highlands cooled our heated brows and whispered that the goal was all but attained. One more effort, and we were therer-on top. standing and looking over some the grandest country in the world. Westward, THE BRAES O’ BALQUHIDDER, and beyond that. Benmore; northward, the mountains surrounding Loch Tay (yes. a distant glimpse of Ben Lawers, too); eastward—ah, eastward!—the Stratheor Valley, buried in young corn and wheat, glowing in the deep-red sun like the bloom on a youthful cheek; anu southward, Ben Vorlich. Ben Ledi, the Ochils .... and the glorious country where “above the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying.” Yes. R.L.S., my heart remembers how I