Towns > Helensburgh > 1875 - Battrum's guide and directory to Helensburgh and neighbourhood

34 HELENSBURGH GUIDE.
ground, later in the year, the orchis family ; and from the
alder and birch-grown banks of the little streams flowing
across the path, the wild rose, hawthorn, and sloe, breathe
a sweet perfume on the summer air. At certain seasons,
the old pasture here is a favourite morning resort of mush-
room collectors, amateur and professional ; these eatables
being found in considerable quantities near the old farm-
house. A mushroom party, in early summer morn, has
certain pleasant accompaniments of fresh and fragrant nature
and woodland melodies no other can furnish. Here, on the
right hand in a romantic little hazel dell, are the sources
of the Glennan Burn — now considerably diminished in volume
from what it used to be, by surface drainage and other causes
unknown to us. In this dell, the sides of which are somewhat
precipitous and difficult of descent sheltered from the winds,
and, fringed in the yellow broom, and almost isolated by the
bounding stream, is a beautiful patch of smooth greensword
known as the Fairies' Ring — always green and always shel-
tered from the storm — a little gem in a fair setting.
Had you here wandered a century since, under the calm
light of a glorious summer moon, bathing in its silver
radiance the whole landscape, and had courage to examine
its mysteries, what vision might have been enjoyed of the
secrets of the fairy folk, and what wondrous music of fairy-
land you might have heard ! Alas ! we have been born too
late to enjoy these pleasures of a past and believing age : we
can only envy those who have shared them. In this spot
the good folk in our great-grandmothers' days enjoyed many
a night of revel, and held high carnival on Beltane and
Hallowe'en. Belated shepherds and benighted travellers
have often listened to their weird-like music, stealing in
measured unearthly strains down the glen; and more than