Oor Ain Folk, Memories of Manse Life

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Royal Visitors to 'The Glen'?John Mitchell and the Queen's ' Powney'?The Queen and the Herd Laddie?John and the Duke of Edinburgh?Craig-ma-skeldie?The Loch and its Surroundings?Peat-reek?Char-fishing?The Falls of Unich ?Dr. Guthrie and Auld Jannie?A Shepherd's Biblical Criticism?An Anecdote of...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Royal Visitors to 'The Glen'?John Mitchell and the Queen's ' Powney'?The Queen and the Herd Laddie?John and the Duke of Edinburgh?Craig-ma-skeldie?The Loch and its Surroundings?Peat-reek?Char-fishing?The Falls of Unich ?Dr. Guthrie and Auld Jannie?A Shepherd's Biblical Criticism?An Anecdote of Dr. Guthrie's. We sometimes had distinguished visitors to ' our glen.' Balmoral, the royal residence, lay just over the dividing range which separated the Esk waters from the beauties of Deeside. Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen used occasionally to make a more distant excursion than usual; and in the early happy days of her married life she, with her beloved consort, Albert the Good, honoured our glen with a visit. They came across the hills to Glenesk, in fact, several times, and a beautiful granite monument has been erected in Glenmark, over a clear, cool, mountain spring, bubbling up fresh from the primeval granite, now known as 'The Queen's Well, ' beside which the royal party used to rest and have their simple luncheon. It may serve somewhat to indicate the primitive character of ' oor ain folk' in the Glen if I repeat aTHE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE GLEN 23 story of one of these visits, of which old John Mitchell was the hero. John was head keeper and deerstalker- in-chief to Lord Panmure, whose splendid shooting- lodge at Invermark is now one of the most beautiful and well-appointed of many such modern mansions in the Highlands. John was the most unconventional of men, and a splendid specimen of the typical Highlander. He was perhaps more familiar with each feature of the trackless wilderness of heather and moss, which stretched for miles around great Lochnagar, than any man living. To honest John, therefore, had been entrusted the highly honourable and onerous..