Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

338
MAYBOLE.
the blue or clouded summit of Benlomond. The
same prospect, in much of its extent and most of its
elements, is seen from a thousand vantage-grounds
of this arousing and inspiriting land of beauty ; but
nowhere are its scope so unbroken, its groupings so
superb, and its effect upon the mind so exquisitely
thrilling. Should any one wonder that Burns grew
up on the threshhold of this home of romance, and for
many years might have daily gazed on its gorgeous
visions, and yet has not made an allusion to it in
his writings, he must remember that the bard, though
possessing a keen and delighted eye for the beauties of
nature, was the painter rather of manners than of land-
scape, — -the type in poetry not of Salvator Rosa, but
of Hogarth and the limners of Holland. The river
Doon, over 4| miles in a straight line, but over 7 or
8 along its numerous graceful curvatures, forms the
boundary-line on the north-east. But over i of a
mile above its embouchure it forsakes its ancient
bed, and places a small portion of the parish, a
piece of haugh-ground, on its left bank. Along
nearly all its connexion with Maybole, it has a
deeply-furrowed, dell-like path, profusely and beau-
tifully covered with copsewood and trees. Girvan-
water forms the boundary for a short distance on the
south- east ; and is there a mirthful fine-clad stream.
Rannoch-burn, running 2J miles westward along
an entwisting glen to the sea, traces part of the
southern boundary. The interior running waters,
owing to the configuration of the surface, are ne-
cessarily mere rills : the largest gathers a consider-
able volume in five or six sources on Brown Carrick
hill, and runs in an easterly course of 4 miles to the
Doon near Auchendrum. Of four or five tiny loch-
lets, all lying in the south-east, the only noticeable
one is Heart-loch, whose outline is exactly desig-
nated by its name, and whose appearance in a wood-
ed hollow, with vegetation coming freely up on the
outer surface of its waters, is softly beautiful. Per-
ennial springs of excellent water are numerous,
especially on the site and in the vicinity of the town;
and one of them, called the Well-trees' Spout,
emits a stream powerful enough to drive a mill
wheel, or between 160 and 170 imperial gallons per
minute. Of various mineral springs, formerly of
medicinal repute, but all now neglected, the most
remarkable is St. Helen's well, 2\ miles north of
the town on the high road to Ayr, — anciently asso-
ciated with Popish superstition, and reputed to have
the power on Slay-day of healing or invigorating
sick or delicate infants. The geological structure of
the coast is interesting for its correspondence with the
strata of Arran. Nearly 1,000 acres in the parish are
planted, about 3,000 are moorland and hill and mea-
dow pasture, and between 16,000 and 17,000 are in
tillage. Considerable attention, though by no means
so much as in any Cunningham parish, is paid to the
dairy. Towers or castles, the ancient residences
of brawling feudal chiefs, were numerous, amount-
ing in all to at least 15 Dunure castle is perched
on the brink of a projecting rock, 3 miles south-
west of the Heads of Ayr, rises high above the
waves, bears evident marks of high antiquity,
was formerly surrounded by a ditch and a wall,
and presents to the mind a sort of rude and gloomy
grandeur Grenand, or Greenan castle, half-way
between the mouth of the Doon and the Heads of
Ayr, is a tall, gaunt, lanthorn-looking pile, rising
nakedly upon the margin of the sea, on a stripe of
level beach, flanked by a bold bank ; and, as seen
with the Clyde for its back-ground, it has a haggard
aspect, strikingly suggestive of the misery of feudal
times. — The castles of Newark, Dunduff, and Kil-
kenzie, like the two just named, are quite superan-
nuated, yet not strictly ruinous ; but, all the others
— the castles of Auchendrane, Smithstown, Beoch,
Craigskean, Garryhorne, Doonside, Dalduff, Glen-
ayas, Sauchrie, and Brochlock, are much dilapi-
dated, or have left but a few vestiges Numerous
camps occur, so small and of such rude construction,
as evidently to have been thrown up by small invad-
ing bodies of those Irish who subdued the Roman-
ized British tribes. Tumuli, the burying-places of
a field of carnage, are frequent. The whole parish,
as we shall more fully see in our notice of the town,
was, in common with districts around it, fiercely
tyrannized over in ancient times by the Kennedies ;
and exhibits not a few memorials of having been the
constant scene of murders, melees, feuds, and crimes
of atrocity perpetrated by these despots and their
underlings. So vast was the Kennedies' power, and
so keen their feudal partisanship, that an old ballad
says : —
" 'Twixt Wigton and the town of Air,
And laigh doon, by the Cruvea o' Cree
You shall not get a lodging there
Except ye eourt a Kennedy."
Culroy, a clean, rural, little village, stands 3} miles
north of the town on the low road to Ayr. Dunure,
the only other village, is small and unprosperous ; yet
has the character of a sea-port. Its harbour, immedi-
ately north of Dunure-castle, is situated on the west
side of a small bay, and on a projecting point of
land, 7 miles south of the town of Ayr. Round the
point of land, the water is from 4 to 20 fathoms
deep, with a level, clean, sandy bottom, and good
anchorage. From this deep water, a passage is cut
150 feet wide at bottom, through the rock, to a
square basin which comprehends from 700 to 1,000
feet of quay. The whole of the basin is completely
sheltered by high ground, and screened by lines of
buildings forming a square. The access from the
sea is easy and safe in almost any wind ; and the
egress is so facile, that a vessel, as soon as she gets
out of the mouth of the harbour, can at any time
and at once work to sea. The depth of water in the
passage and the basin is 12 feet at ordinary spring
tides ; but it is capable of being artificially increased
to nearly 30 feet. Yet good, and seemingly very
valuable as Dunure harbour is— especially on a coast
so inhospitable to shipping as that of Ayrshire — it
has hitherto, since its construction in 1811, been of
small practical use, and has even been allowed to
crumble toward ruin. An occasional sloop freighted
with lime or bone-dust, and a few fishing-boats, are
the only craft which grace it with their presence, or
which the inhabitants of the circumjacent country
require for their Lilliputian commerce. The parish,
besides having some cross-roads, is traversed by
three leading lines of road diverging from the town
and converging at Ayr, — the coast road wending se-
micircularly down Rancoch-glen, and along the coast,
— the high road leading nearly in a straight line, but
over very uneven ground, to Ayr, — and the low road
running eastward of the former, and used as the
thoroughfare of the Glasgow and Port-Patrick mail.
Population, in 1801, 3,162; in 1831, 6,287. Houses
798. Assessed property, in 1815, £19,716.
Maybole is in the presbytery of Ayr, and synod of
Glasgow and Ayr. Patron, the Crown. Stipend
£314 6s. 7d. ; glebe £30. Unappropriated teinds
£70 7s. 2d. The parish-church was built in 1808,
and altered and improved in 1830. Sittings 1,192.
A preaching-station in connexion with the Establish-
ment, and accommodated generally in abarn and occa-
sionally in a school-house, was in 1836, commenced
in the district beyond Brown Carrick bill, by the
parish schoolmaster, a licentiate of the Established
church. Another preaching-station was occasionally
maintained by the parish-minister in the village of