NOVEMBER 221 



The castle was greatly dilapidated in 1745, when 

 Prince Charlie's white ensign floated over the keep; 

 it will be remembered that Waverley was taken there 

 after parting with the gifted Gilfillan. It was here also 

 that John Home, the poet, was confined with other 

 prisoners taken by the Jacobites at the battle of 

 Falkirk. Six of them, including Home, made good 

 their escape by twisting their blankets into ropes. 

 Four of them had descended in safety, when the rope 

 snapped with the fifth. The sixth, Thomas Barrow, 

 slipped to the broken end and let himself drop. He 

 broke some ribs and sprained an ankle, nevertheless his 

 comrades managed to carry him off in safety. 



Doune is a place of sorrowful memories and blighted 

 hopes, yet it has none of the sombre, inhospitable 

 aspect of so many ruins in the north. Rather does it 

 give the impression .of a baronial palace, lying fair to 

 the sun, wherein long trains of guests might be 

 received and treated with rural abundance the fine 

 red wine of Beaugency, and good brown ale ; while the 

 courtyard rang with much strumming of jongleurs and 

 jingling of spurs. Fair and far is the prospect from its 

 ramparts over the deep oak woods of Blair Drummond, 

 and beside it flows the Teith, one of the earliest salmon 

 rivers in Scotland. The fish rightly prefer this lucid 

 torrent, fed from the great lakes of Lubnaig and 

 Vennachar, to the sluggish, peaty Forth, which joins it 

 just above Stirling. The Teith, indeed, might be the 

 Abana or Pharpar of anglers, but for two wicked im- 

 pediments in the shape of cruive-dykes, one just below 



