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One of the chief
peculiarities of the Celtic nations is their fondness for local
traditions. Every ruined Keep or dismantled Tower throughout the Highlands
has some marvellous tale or romantic incident connected with it, which is
lovingly preserved and handed down from generation to generation with
undoubting faith and pious care, worthy sometimes of a better cause. The
poetical cast of the Celtic mind throws around the most ordinary events a
halo of romance which renders attractive many localities that would be
otherwise uninteresting; and even the shrewdly practical Lowland mind,
when brought under the influence of the spell, cannot entirely resist the
glamour of the times ‘that are gone, or remain indifferent to the tales of
love and war, which are sanctified by their removal for several centuries.
Yet it needs not that the
Lowlander should fly to the fastnesses of the Highland chieftains to feed
upon romance, since there is an inexhaustible fund of interest to be found
in the Castles within his own territories. Traditions, less mendacious but
quite as romantic as the northern stories, are in existence with reference
to all the Castles of note in the Lowlands, and require but the collector
to rescue them from oblivion in this possibly too practical age. A
romantic tale is not less interesting though its date be not that of a
far-distant past; and it should be some recommendation if the story be a
veritable fact, rather than a notion "all carved from the carver’s brain."
It is with the purpose of gathering up some of the traditions still
preserved in local narratives of some of the historic Castles in all parts
of Scotland that this work is written, being sure that these are not
without interest to every lover of our country.
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