Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 6

STIRLING
Stirling is, however, a railway centre, the joint line
used by both the Caledonian and North British com-
panies between Larbert Junction and Perth passing
through it, and lines belonging to the latter company
also branching off to the eastward through Fife, and
westward along the valley of the Forth. It is by rail 7
miles W of Alloa, 10 KW of Falkirk, 13 "W by S of
Dollar, 24 W by S of Kinross, 29 NE of Glasgow, 30
ENE of Balloch on Loch Lomond, 33 SW of Perth, 36
WNW of Edinburgh, and 84 ESE of Oban. The town
owes its origin to the well-known castle of Stirling,
which holds such a prominent position in Scottish
history. The castle occupies the summit of an isolated
hill of intrusive basalt, which, springing abruptly from
the valley of the Forth, presents a precipitous front to
the NW, and slopes from this eastward. It has been
often compared to the Acropolis at Athens, and bears a
considerable resemblance to the long ridge of the old
town of Edinburgh, extending from the Castle to Holy-
rood, but the ridge at Stirling is much shorter. The
more modern districts of the town and the suburbs
extend over the flatter ground around the base. The
higher parts of the rock — particularly along the Back
Walk, and still more in the Castle gardens NW of
the Douglas Room and SW of the Palace — command
very fine views. 'Who,' says Dr Macculloch, 'does
not know Stirling's noble rock, rising, the monarch
of the landscape, its majestic and picturesque towers,
its splendid plain, its amphitheatre of mountain, and
the windings of its marvellous river ; and who that
has once seen the sun descending here in all the blaze
of its beauty beyond the purple hills of the west can
ever forget the plain of Stirling, the endless charm
of this wonderful scene, the wealth, the splendour,
the variety, the majesty of all which here lies between
earth and heaven.' The foreground is everywhere a
rich alluvial plain, fertile, highly cultivated, and well
wooded, with here and there an abrupt protruded hil-
lock, starting abruptly from the flat, and relieving it
from tameness. To the N and NE are the woods
about Bridge of Allan and Dunblane, and the hill-
screened vale of Allan Water, then the picturesque
wood-crowned cliffs of Abbey Craig, and the soft pas-
toral slopes of the Oehils. To the E and SE are the
fertile carses of Stirling and Falkirk, with the Forth
winding her silvery course to the sea, and beyond, the
distant hills of Fife and the Lothians ; while to the
SW is the termination of the Lennox Hills. To the
W and NW are the flat valleys of the upper Forth and
Teith with winding rivers and wooded policies, and
shut in by the Campsie Fells, the Monteith Hills,
the Braes of Doune, and behind and beyond, sweeping
round from W to N, are a great semicircle of distant
peaks, the most conspicuous of which are Ben Lomond
(3192 feet), Ben Venue (2393), Ben A'an (1851), Ben
Ledi (2875), Ben Voirlich (3224), and Uamh Mhor
(Uam Var ; 2179). ' Eastward from the castle ram-
parts, ' says Alexander Smith, ' stretches a great plain
bounded on either side by mountains, and before you
the vast fertility dies into distance flat as the ocean
when winds are asleep. It is through this plain that
the Forth has drawn her glittering coils — a silvery
entanglement of loops and links — a watery labyrinth —
which Macneil has sung in no ignoble numbers, and
which every summer the whole world flocks to see.
Turn round, look in the opposite direction, and the
aspect of the country has entirely changed. It undulates
like a rolling sea. Heights swell up into the blackness
of pines, and then sink away into valleys of fertile
green. At 'your feet the Bridge of Allan sleeps in azure
smoke — the most fashionable of all the Scottish spas,
wherein, by hundreds of invalids, the last new novel is
being diligently perused. Beyond are the classic woods
of Keir ; and ten miles further, what see you ? A
multitude of blue mountains climbing the heavens !
The heart leaps up to greet them — the ramparts of the
land of romance, from the mouths of whose glens broke
of old the foray of the freebooter ; and with a chief in
front with banner and pibroch in the wind, the terror
382
STIRLING
of the Highland war. Stirling, like a huge brooch,
clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.'
History. — When the first fort or village was formed
at Stirling must remain doubtful, for though the
isolated position of the rock, and its nearness to what
must always have been the principal ford along the
lower part of the Forth, point it out as the natural key
of the Highlands and an important strength, it is ex-
tremely difficult to say whether it was so occupied prior
to and during the Roman times or not. Situated near
the skirts of the great Caledonian Forest, and in the
midst of a flat that must at that time have been, to a
considerable extent, a marsh, we might expect to find
it one of the strongholds of the Damnonii who inhabited
the district, but Ptolemy places their chief town Alauna
— not to be confounded with Alauna of the Gadeni — to
the NW on the point at the junction of the Allan and
the Forth. The Roman road from Camelon northward
passed to the W of the Castle rock, and seems to have
crossed the river close to this at a ford called the
Drip ; but whether the Romans had a camp on the
high ground cannot be ascertained, though during the
period when they held the district N of Antoninus' Wall
they certainly seem to have had an outpost here. At
least Sir Robert Sibbald, writing in the end of the 17th
or the beginning of the 18th century, says that there
was at that time on a stone on the brow of the hill over-
looking Ballengeich Road, opposite the old gate of the
Castle, an inscription 'In excu. agit. leg. II.,' which has
been extended into In excubias agitantes legionis
secundw, the suggested rendering being 'for the daily
and nightly watch of the second legion. ' The inscrip-
tion was obliterated by the close of the 18th century,
but a large boulder with a defaced inscription is still
pointed out as ' the Roman Stone. ' It is now marked
by an iron rod. What the history of the place may
have been from the 5th to the 10th century it is hardly
possible to conjecture — probably that of any border
fortress lying between two peoples who were often at
war, and it is to this period that the modern name —
the first part of which is said to be a word meaning
strife, is supposed to be due ; and hence also a name
used by some of the chroniclers Mons Doloruin. Another
name, used subsequently and referred to by Sir David
Lindsay in his Complaint of the Papingo (1539), was
Snawdon or Snowdoun, which Charmers has derived
from the British Snuadun, ' the fortified hill on the
river. ' According to Boece, followed by Buchanan, the
Northumbrian princes, Osbrecht and Ella, in the 9th
century subdued the whole country as far as Stirling,
where they built a strong fort and also a bridge across
the river, but the story is undoubtedly fabulous, for
these princes were in reality rival claimants of the
throne of Northumbria, and were, in 867, both slain
in a battle against the Danes at York, the danger of
the realm from the sea-rovers having compelled them
to unite their forces. There certainly was war between
Alban and Northumbria a century later, about 971 or
975, when, however, the attack was made from the
Scottish side by Kenneth III., whom we find also, as a
means of protection, fortifying the fords of the Forth,
which was the boundary of his kingdom to the S, but
no specific mention is made of Stirling.
By the 12th century, when the place finally emerges
from its historic obscurity, it must have made con-
siderable progress. Alexander I. died in the castle
in 1124 ; David I., in a grant to the church of the
Holy Trinity at Dunfermline between 1124 and 1127,
speaks of his burgh of Stirling ; in 1175 the castle
must have been one of the five most important strengths
in Scotland, for it was one of those selected to be held
by English garrisons till the conditions under which
Henry II. had released William the Lyon should he
fulfilled ; and William himself, after holding his last
parliament here in 1214, and getting his son accepted as
their future king by the bishops, earls, and barons, died
in the Castle ' full of goodly days and at a good old age,
fully armed with thorough devoutness, a clear shrift,
true charity, the viaticum of Christ's body, and the rest