14 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



In one of the defiles of the Trosachs, two or three of the natives having met 

 a band of Cromwell's soldiers on their way to plunder them, shot one of the 

 party dead, whose grave marks the scene of blood, and gives name to the pass, 

 To revenge the death of their comrade, the soldiers resolved to attack an island 

 in the lake, on which the wives and children of the natives had taken refuge. 

 This, however, they could not effect without a boat ; but one of the most daring 

 of the party undertook to swim to the island and bring off the boat for his 

 companions. With this resolution he plunged into the lake, and, after an 

 apparently successful enterprise, was on the point of seizing hold of the rock 

 to secure his landing, when a heroine, named Helen Stuart, opposed the attempt, 

 and cut off his head with a sword. The party who witnessed the performance 

 of this tragedy on the body of their comrade, felt little disposed to repeat the 

 experiment, and cautiously withdrew.* 



The rocks of the Trosachs jut forward in successive promontories into the 

 lake, and thus occasion a similar number of narrow inlets. A terminal portion 

 of one of these headlands, detached from the adjacent shore and covered with 

 wood, will be recognised as the isle of the poem 



" Where Ellen's hand had taught to twine 

 The ivy and Idaean vine, 

 The clematis, the favoured flower 

 Which boasts the name of Virgin-bower; 

 And every hardy plant could bear 

 Loch- Katrine's keen and searching air." 



The defile of Beal-an-Duine, where Fitz-James's steed sank exhausted 

 under him, is in the heart of the gorge. This is the subject chosen 

 by the painter for the accompanying illustration, and, poetically, is the spot 

 where 



" . . . . The good steed, his labours o'er, 

 Stretched his sliff limbs to rise no more" 



and Fitz-James breaks forth into the following apostrophe : 



" I little thought, when first thy rein 

 I slacked upon the banks of Seine, 

 That Highland eagle e'er should feed 

 On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed! 

 Woe worth the chase woe worth the day 

 That costs thy life, my gallant grey!" 



See the " Local Statistics," " Guide to the Lakes," and the works already quoted. 



