Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

LOMOND
of wonder. Of the floating island various accounts
have been given, one of them being that it was con-
structed of large square beams of oak firmly mortised
into one another by a Keith Macindoil, a contemporary
of Finmacoul or Fingal, and this looks somewhat like a
tradition pointing to the former existence of a crannoge
in the lake. ' As for the floating island," says Camden,
' I shall not call the truth of it in question, for what
could hinder a body from swimming that is dry and
hollow like a pinnace, and very light ? And so Pliny
teUs us that certain green lands covered with rushes,
float up and down on the lake of Vundimon. But I leave
it to the neighbours who know the nature of this place
to be judges, whether this old distich of our Neckham
be true —
" Ditatur fluviis Albania, saxea ligna
Dat Lomund multa, frigiditate potens." '
of which Defoe has given the paraphrase—
' With Rivers Scotland is enrich'd,
And Lomond there a Lake,
So cold of Nature is, that Sticks
It quickly Stones doth make.'
The whole country round is rich in historical associa-
tions of various kinds. During Haco's great expedition
to the "W (1263), his son-in-law, Magnus King of Man,
sailed up Loch Long with a squadron of 60 ships, and
on arriving at Arrochar, his men dragged some of the
galleys across the narrow neck there — only If mile
across — and launched them on Loch Lomond, ' where
their sea-boats must have created as much astonishment
among the agriculturists of the Lennox as if they had
fallen from the clouds.' No doubt the pillage amply
rewarded them for their exertions, as the ground was
fresh, and not likely to be guarded ' against maurauders
coming from so unlikely a direction.' In 1306, after
the Battle of Dalree, Robert Bruce is said to have taken
refuge in what is now Rob Roy's Cave, and at this time
also to have planted many of the yew trees on Eilan Vow,
while subsequently he is accredited with having caused
many trees of the same kind to be planted on Inch-
lonaig, to provide a supply of bows for his soldiers. A
few still survive, but the others were accidentally burned
down many years ago. Clairinch gave the Buchanans
their slogan. InchcaQloch — the island of women or of
nuns — had a nunnery, and this was followed on the
same site by the parish church, which, in its turn, has
been abandoned, and a new church built on the main-
land at Buchanan ; and to the churchyard, as the bury-
ing-ground of the Macgregors, reference is made in the
Lady of the Lake, the Fiery Cross being made from
yew grown here. To the WNW of the church is the
Pass of Balmaha, another of Scott's localities in the
same poem, while farther up the scenery figures in his
novel of Eoh Roy. The whole of the district about Inver-
snaid is all Rob Roy's country. On the opposite side,
to the S, is the district that belonged to the Colquhouns ;
and Glen Fruin — the glen of wailing — was in 1603 the
scene of the great battle between the Macgregors and
the Colquhouns, in which the latter were almost entirely
destroyed, a matter that led to the proscription of the
Macgregors.
It was on Inchlonaig that the chief of the Colquhouns
and Rob Roy made their agreement about the black-
mail which Colquhoun paid.
In the rebellion of 1715 the Macgi-egors took up arms
in the Jacobite cause, and threatened the country to
the S. In October they seized the whole of the boats
on the loch, and took them to Rowardennan, so that
they might be able to make forays anywhere along the
shore, but no enemy could reach them except by pass-
ing round the loch. The western Hanoverians were,
however, not to be outdone, and accordingly some 500
men assembled from Paisley and other towns in the "W,
and having been joined by 100 men, 'well-hearted and
well-armed,' from a man-of-war lying in the Clyde, they
dragged armed boats up the Leven to the loch, and
advanced to the attack both by land and by water.
LOMOND
The further proceedings are thus described in a con-
temporary account of the expedition. 'When the
pinnaces and boats, being once got in within the
mouth of the loch, had spread their sails, and tlie men
on shore had ranged themselves in order, marching
along the side of the loch, for scouring the coast, they
made altogether so very fine an appearance as had never
been seen in that place before, and might have gratified
even a curious person. The men on the shore marched
with the greatest order and alacrity — the pinnaces on
the water discharging their patteraroes, and the men
their small arms, made so very dreadful a noise through
the multiplied rebounding echoes of the vast mountains
on both sides the loch, that perhaps there was never
a more lively resemblance of thunder.' Having thus
given sufficient warning of their approach, it is hardly
to be wondered that when they reached Rowardennan
they found no one, and though the ' Paisley men and
their friends mounted the rocky bank of the lake, and
forming as well as they could, beat their drums for an
hour in noisy challenge,' there was no answer, and they
went home, asserting that they had so frightened the
Macgregors as to cause them to flee in panic to the
camp at Strath FUlans. They accomplished the object
of the expedition, however, for having, more by good
fortune than good management, discovered the boats
that had been carried off, by destroying some and
taking away the rest they effectually prevented any
renewal of the raids. Besides the Macgregors and the-
Colquhouns the other clans on the shores were the
Grsemes and the Macfarlanes, the former being still
represented by the Duke of Montrose, while the posses-
sions of the latter have passed to the Colquhouns. One
of the last survivors of the Macfarlanes took up his
residence in a vault of their old ruined castle on Eilan
Vow, and gave Wordsworth a subject for his poem of The
£)-(n/)»i(;'s&6'M in 1814, and again for the sonnet called The
Brownie, written on his subsequent visit in 1831. Glen-
finlas was a royal hunting forest. To the S is Bonhill
associated with Smollett ; and to the E is Killearn where
George Buchanan was born, and where there is now a
monument to his-memory ; while Gartness House on the
Endrick is associated with Napier's calculations about
logarithms. Inchmurrin, on which are the ruins of
Lennox Castle, is used as a deer park by the Duke of
Montrose, and Inchlonaig is also a deer park belonging
to the Luss estate. It was while Sir James Colquhoun
of Luss was returning from shooting on this island that
he was drowned along with two gamekeepers on 18 Dec.
1873. Inchtavannach — the island of the monks' house
— is so named, from being the site of a mouastery. On
the S end of Inchmurrin are the ruins of Lennox Castle.
It was at Inversnaid that Wordsworth, during his tour
in 1803, saw the Highland Girl whose beauty he made
famous in his poem of that name. Of history in late
years the loch has none except that ever-increasing
swarms of tourists resort to it every year. During the
severe winter of 1880-81 the S end of the loch was frozen
over from Balloch up to Luss, and on 22 Jan. 1881 it
was calculated that some 15,000 skaters were on the ice.
The Prince Consort visited the loch in 1847 and the
Queen on 4 Sept. 1869. In More Leaves from the Journal
of a Life in tlie Highlands (1884), Her Majesty's impres-
sions are thus recorded : ' We steamed southward [from
Inversnaid, where she had gone on board the steamer],
and for the first half nothing could be finer or more truly
Alpine, reminding me much of the Lake of Lucerne,
only it is longer, Loch Lomond being twenty -two miles
long. We kejrt close to the E shore, passing under Ben
Lomond, with its variously called shoirlders — Cruachan,
Craig a Bochan, and Ptarmigan — to Rowardennan pier,
where there is a pretty little house, rented from the
Duke of Montrose (to whom half Loch Lomond belongs)
by a Mr Mair — a lovely spot from whence you can
ascend Ben Lomond, which is 3192 feet high, and well
wooded part of the way, with cornfields below. After
you pass this, where there are fine mountains on either
side, though on the W shore not so high, the lake widens
out, but the shores become much flatter and tamer (in-
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