The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham Quotes

“Right at the summit of the pass it lies, nothing above it but the sky. On every side the billowing heather-clad hills engirdle it about. Flat stones encircle it, and on its surface water spiders walk. Red persicaria, with its wax-like stalks and ragged leaves, grows by its edge. Below it stretches out a vast brown moss, honeycombed here and there with black peat hags., and a dark lake spreads out, ringed on one side by moss, and on the other set like a jewel in a pine wood, with a white stretch of silver sand. On it are islands with great sycamores and chestnuts, stag-headed but still vigorous, and round their shores the bulrushes keep watch like sentinels. Mists rise from the moss and lake and creep about the corries of the hills, blending the woods and rocks into steamy chaos, vast and unfathomable, through which a little burn unseen, but musical, runs tinkling through the stones. So at the little bealach the well lies open to the sky, too high for the lake mists to touch it, as it looks up at the stars.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham

“Ye ken, man laird, while I just dive richt to the bottom o a linn, and set doon there; ye'd think it was the inside o the Fairy Hill. Trooties, ye ken, and saumon, and they awfu pike, a comin round ye, and they bits o water weeds, waggin aboot like lairch trees in the blast. I mind ae time I stoppit doon nigh aboot half an hour. Maybe no just sae much, ye ken, but time gaes awfu quick when ye're at the bottom o a linn.”
― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham