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The old county of Dumbartonshire has now been divided up into to new the administrative districts of East Dunbartonshire and West Dunbartonshire
“For beautiful and varied scenery, this county is scarcely surpassed in Scotland,” says Fullarton, and few will care to disagree with him, for an area which includes more than a fair share of Loch Lomond and Loch Long, the great mass of Ben Vorlich, and the castle hill of Dumbarton need fear no challenge.
The whole of western shore of Loch Lomond lies in our county, and it includes in the vicinity of Luss perhaps its most charming reach. So much that is somewhat extravagant has been written about his most beautiful of British lakes, that no attempt shall be made at one of those word-pictures which most writers seem to find irresistible. Perhaps the most attractive effort is to be found in the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth, who at any rate discovered the real secret of Loch Lomond’s charm – the islands: [August 25, 1903] “What I had heard of Loch Lomond, or any other place in Great Britain, had given me no idea of anything like what we beheld: it was an outlandish scene – we might have believed ourselves in North America. The islands were of every possible variety of shape and surface – hilly and level, large and small, bare, rocky, pastoral, or covered with wood. Immediately under my eyes lay one large flat island, bare and green, so flat and low that it scarcely appeared to rise above the water, with straggling peat-stacks and a single hut upon one of its out-shooting promontories. Another, its next neighbour, and still nearer to us, was covered with heath and coppice-wood, the surface undulating, with flat or sloping banks towards the water, and hollow places, cradle-like valleys, behind. These two islands, with Inch-ta-Vanach, were intermingled with the water, I might say interbedded and interveined with it, in a manner that was exquisitely pleasing. There were bays innumerable, straits or passages like calm rivers, land-locked lakes, and, to the main water, stormy promontories.”
From points innumerable on the Dumbartonshire side, glorious vistas are obtainable of the lake with its rampart of mountains, crowned by the noble Ben Lomond, on the opposite shore. But the mountainous mass between Lomond and Loch Long has further charms of its own as it sweets down to the edges of the attractive Gareloch, where the villas of wealthy Glasgovians lie in thick as flowers in a field.
The beauties of Loch Long have no doubt received full justice in the description of Argyllshire, and it need only be added that the beauties of the great hills that rise precipitously from its eastern fringe are a worthy complement to the scene. This north-south range is intersected by parallel transverse valleys, remote and secluded. Glen Luss and Glen Douglas are of the true Highland order, rich in all those elements of colour and outline which make its scenery so appealing.
Glen Fruin has a melancholy interest as the scene of a terrible incident in 1603 in the internecine feud between the MacGregors and the Colquhouns. As Sir Walter Scott says in his Introduction to Rob Roy: “The parties met in the valley of Glenfruin, which signifies the Glen of Sorrow. . . . The clan charged with great fury on the front of the enemy, while John MacGregor, with a strong party, made an unexpected attack on the flank. If the MacGregors lost, as is averred, only two men slain in the action, they had slight provocation for an indiscriminate massacre. It is said that their fury extended itself to a party of students for clerical orders, who had imprudently come to see the battle. It is constantly averred by the tradition of the country, and a stone where the deed was done is called Leck-a-Mhinisteir, the Minister or Clerk’s Flag Stone. The MacGregors impute this cruel action to the ferocity of a single man of their tribe, renowned for size and strength, called Dugald, liar mhor, or the great mouse-coloured man. He was MacGregors foster-brother, and the chief committed the youths to his charge, with directions to keep them safely till the affray was over. Whether fearful of their escape, or incensed by some sarcasms which they threw on his tribe, or whether out of mere thirst of blood, this savage, while the other MacGregors were engaged in the pursuit, poniarded his helpless and defenceless prisoners.”
But such a deed called for vengeance dire. “This battle of Glenfruin, and the severity which the victors exercised in the pursuit, was reported to King James VI in a manner the most unfavourable to the clan Gregor. That James might fully understand the extent of the slaughter, the widows of the slain, to the number of eleven score, in deep mourning, riding upon white palfreys, and each bearing her husband’s bloody shirt on a spear, appeared at Stirling.” And the result was that military and other measures were taken which ended in the virtual extinction of the clan!
Helensburgh, at the mouth of the Gare Loch, has a somewhat curious and interesting history as a “model” town. It came into existence as the result of the exertions of Sir James Colquhoun, the resemblance to many American communities. For its first provost it had the famous Henry Bell, whose Comet represented the first application of steam to navigation.
Old Pennant’s description of Dumbarton Castle, which he visited in 1769, deserves quotation both for its picturesqueness and its applicability to its condition to-day: “The castle is seated a little south of the town on a two-headed rock of a stupendous height, rising in a strange manner out of the sands, and totally detached from everything else; is bounded on one side by th Clyde, on the other by the Leven. On one of the summits are the remains of an old lighthouse, which some suppose to have been Roman pharos; on the other, the powder magazine: in the hollow between is a large well of water fourteen feet deep. The sides of the rocks are immense precipices, and often hang over, except on the side where the governor’s house stands, which is defended by walls and a few cannon, and garrisoned by a few invalids. It seems to have been often used as a state prison: the Regent Morton was secured there previous to his trial. From its natural strength, it was in former times deemed impregnable; so that the desperate but successful scalado of it in 1571 may vie with the greatest attempts of that kind. . . .
The Britons in very early times made this rock a fortress; for it was usual with them after the departure of the Romans to retreat to the tops of craggy, inaccessible mountains, to forests, and to rocks on the shores of the sea: but Boethius makes the Scots possessed of it some ages prior to that, and pretends that it resisted all the efforts of Agricola, who laid siege to it. It may certainly claim a right to great antiquity, for Bede declares it to have been the best fortified city the Britons had during his days. Its ancient name was Alcluid, or Arcluid, or the place of the Cluid. But in aftertimes it acquired the name of Dun Britton, being the last place in these parts held by the Britons against the usurping Saxons. In 756, reduced by famine, it was surrendered to Edbert, King of Northumberland.
Apart from its castle, Dumbarton has little to recall its great antiquity and the part it has played in recorded history. Records and tradition alone can show that it was an important naval station, Theodosia, in Roman times, and for a long period the capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde. But the very name, however, the town is one of the great shipbuilding centres on the Clyde, and its citizens, conscious of its importance, have endeavoured to make it worthy of its role in the social and economic life of Scotland.
The last century and half has, alas, played havoc with the charms of the Leven Valley. If Pennant were with us to-day, he could hardly write that “the vale between the end of the lake and Dumbarton is unspeakably beautiful, very fertile, and finely watered by the great and rapid river Leven, the discharge of the lake, which, after a short course, drops into the Firth of Clyde below Dumbarton; there is scarcely a spot but what is decorated with bleacheries, plantations, and villas. Nothing can equal the contrast in this day’s journey, between the black barren dreary glens of the morning ride, and the soft scenes of the evening, islands worthy of the retreat of Armida, and which Rinaldo himself would have quitted with a sigh.
Another great lover of this district was the novelist, Tobias Smollett, who was born in the “Old House2 of Dalquhurn, near Renton. Who has not heard of this famous outburst: “I have seen the Lago di Gardi, Albano di Vici, Bolsena, and Geneva, and I prefer Lochlomond to them all". . . . This country is justly styled Arcadia of Scotland.
Smollett’s is by no means the only great name with which this part of the county is associated. On a little eminence called Castlehill, close to Dumbarton, stood the castle in which King Robert Bruce closed his exciting and victorious career, while Wallace himself is said to have frequently taken refuge on the rock of Dumbarton and to have been brought there in captivity prior to his transfer to London.
The point where the Leven leaves Loch Lomond at Balloch is a beautiful spot with lovely views of the lake. Hard by is Balloch Castle, one of the ancient seats of the great local family of Lennox, though as an antiquity it has been modernised out of existence. It lies under the rampart of that curious hill and fine view-point, “Mount Misery.” How this came to be so named is somewhat of a mystery. According to one account, which deserves respectful consideration, it was the scene of Argyll’s wanderings after his defeat in 1685 at Gartocharn hard by. His rising was timed to synchronise with that of Monmouth in the south. The Earl took the filed at the head of his clan, but after crossing the Leven at Balloch and finding his path barred by the royal forces his heart failed him and his troops melted away. Perhaps it was on the summit of “Mount Misery” that he saw the scaffold as a grim inevitability of the near future. Almost the same day he was captured in an attempt to cross the Clyde.
To the south of this region a stretch of country, intersected by the charming Glen Finnich, leads to the summit of the Kilpatrick Hills, which keep watch and ward over the Clyde and its myriad activities. Here, between wind and water, Past and Present are inextricably intertwined, the former represented by relics of the Roman Wall, and ancient places such as Old Kilpatrick, one of the many spots which claim the honour of being the birthplace of St Patrick. But in this case there is evidence of the greatest weight to support the claim. For did not the Saint flee Ireland to escape the temptations of the Evil One? Did not Old Nick in his baffled fury hurl a rock at him and miss him? And id not that fearsome missile fall on the shore of the river and become the rock of Dumbarton?
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