This most interesting and beautiful glen may be approached by several routes from Helensburgh. The most usual is by the road to Luss, which approaches very close to it at one or two points, and ultimately crosses the stream. The best, however, for one who has leisure and a desire to explore it thoroughly, is by crossing the range of hills on the Gareloch, a little above Shandon, whence you descend into the upper part of the glen, not far from its sources. The ascent is pretty steep, but amply is the toil repaid as the traveller reaches the summit. Beneath him on the one hand stretches out Gareloch, like a sheet of molten silver over-topped by the purple hills. In the east can be traced the track of the Clyde, its towns, villages, and wooded hills, till Dumbarton rock hides it from view. On the left hand, the Vale of Fruin slopes away through moorland, wood, and cornfield till it reaches Lochlomond shores. For many miles through it the eye follows the windings of the stream as it gushes through the rocks, or pauses amid the meadows, or sparkles through the arms of the leafy hazels that strive to hide it as it dashes along. The descent from the brow of the hill is easy and short, and the pedestrian soon stands upon the borders of the stream. The upper part of the glen embraces a large semicircular tract of pasture meadow, hemmed in on three sides by heath-clad hills. Through the meadows flow numberless little streams, the limpid parents of the Fruin. There is a cart-road leading down one side of the glen; but for the pedestrian who is willing to encounter a little extra fatigue, which will be more than amply repaid by the scenery he must enjoy, the burnside is the best path. The whole picture is one of calm sweet beauty. Lazily the cattle rest on the marsh. or stand fetlock deep in the stream. The long meadow grasses scarce wave to the breeze; there is no sound of man’s existence breaking on the ear. The dragon-fly or the bee, humming past you in their flight, the distant whirr of the blackcock, the cry of curlew or plover, or bleat of sheep, alone wake the echoes, while the stream yields an unwearying song as it journeys towards its home—

“Glittering over the deeper pools, Glittering over the sand” rising as it hurries through the stony channel, still louder as it dashes over rocky barriers, and sinking into a quiet lullaby as it circles through the sedgy pool where the gray duck and her dusky brood hide themselves from strange eyes. One cannot help a certain mournful retrospect at the changes which time must have wrought in this glen. Like most other Highland retreats, it must have been thickly peopled in the days when the war-cry was a familiar sound, and clansmen rushed to a summons which would now lend only an echo among the gray rocks. Little stretch of imagination is necessary to conjure up clusters of lowly shielings, the straggling patches of ill-fenced corn, the curling peat smoke, and groups of half-clad, noisy children playing among the tall ferns by the burnside, where the greensward and half-effaced traces of ancient marshes now stretch down the hills. These days of Highland clansmen have rapidly passed away. The money power has now supplanted the feudal power, and the change of the face of nature has been correspondingly great. The substantial farm-steading, the active husbandman, and the cultivated field, occupy the sites of
ancient barbarism. And there are not a few farms monuments of enterprise and energy throughout the glen. The land is not very fertile, nor the exposure desirable, yet the work of reclaiming waste moor, and converting profitless bog into fields of waving grain has gone on of late years with great rapidity. Nor does it follow that all the romance and poetry of the people are extinct, because feudalism and vandalism are passing away. The rural swain still sings as passionately of love—is still as faithful to his mistress, and as bold in danger as ever henchman of belted knight was. And Glen Fruin is somewhat celebrated for the amatory effusions Cupid has inspired. We quote a specimen given in au interesting little book by Mr. Robert Blakely:—

“I’ve often seen the roses blaw—
I’ve often stray’d the flowers among—
I’ve often heard on birken shaw
The little woodlark’s heavenly song—
I’ve often mark’d in cloudless sky
The progress of the rising moon;
But never aught could yield me joy
Like roaming on the banks of Fruin.

 “’Twas here I saw a diamond bright:
Her raven hair’s the jetty craw;
Her silvery neck as pure and white
As is the bosom of sea-maw;
The living drop frae off the lip
O’ this dear saint in beauty’s noon,
An angel’s sel’ might fondly sip,
Sae sweet! the maiden o’ Glen Fruin.

“Blind fortune hence! I court thee not,
Nor ‘gainst thee shall I e’er repine—
Go deal thy favours lot by lot,
To then that kneel before thy shrine;
But night and day to Heaven I’ll pray,
until it grant me a’ my boon;
Then will I clasp. in love’s fond grasp,
As mine, the maiden o’ Glen Fruin.”

After emerging from the meadow land, a whitewashed building on the left side of the stream, surrounded by a score of riotous children, instructs the tourist that even here the schoolmaster is abroad. Doubtless many a stalwart man and ripened woman far distant now remembers, with a sigh and a tear, the joyous days spent at this early Alma Mater.

The ruins of an old chapel, some years since, stood close by the stream, and the locality is still indicated by the name of “The Chapel.” Many of the stones were built into the school-house and adjacent farm-steading occupied by Mr. Jardine. The remains of a lint mill which stood close by it, are still distinctly traceable on a rocky knowe close by the stream. Beneath them, the waters fall over a series of rocky ledges into a deep pool; there the rocks and trees surround a natural basin, sheltered from the winds on every side. Imagination records a time when the gray monks tenanting the chapel lands may have often, in this unchanging solitude, sat pondering over the vicissitudes of time, and meditating on the few and simple events of their lonely lives. And a fitting spot it is, too, for quiet reverie. The mossy sward, close by the water edge, offers a tempting seat. Shut out from all view of human existence, with the gray rocks rising around you, and beyond, above their summits, the tops of the everlasting hills, with the many voices of the waters darting first impetuously over their opposing bulwarks, in hoarse angry tone, then murmuring in the pool beneath— now again in livelier melody, dancing over the fretted edges of their slaty bed, as they unweariedly sweep past to the bosom of their great parent, with the graceful fern maintaining hardy life on almost barren crevices in the rocks, waving its leaflets to the melody, the tall foxglove, and the modest primrose looking up from its roots, its beauty unnoticed but by the eye of Heaven, and its sweets unknown, save to the wandering bee—in such a nook one could loiter and muse a summer day. What a different scene was enacted here on a bleak February morning in 1603! The hills were clad with snow, and the biting frosty wind sweeping down the glen, when the war pibroch was heard awaking its echoes, and the wild shout of armed caterans startled the deer from his lair among the heather. The Macgregors and Colquhouns met in deadly feud by the river side, and one of the most sanguinary conflicts on record between two rival clans occurred. For many years previous, the Macgregors had been a proscribed clan. Enactments had been passed against them and commissions obtained “to fersen and assege their housis and strengthis raise fyre and use all kind of force and werlyke ingyne” against them. Such commissions put into the hands of crafty and designing statesmen like Archibald, Earl of Argyll, were not likely to prove a dead letter. There is rather reason to suppose that, as Breadalbane and Argyll had grasped at and secured the lands of this clan in the counties of Perth and Argyll, and were exposed to the retaliative wrath of the oppressed, these commissions were obtained for their own particular benefit. That was not an age of parliamentary commissions, or committees of inquiry into the proceedings of men in power; and the most lawless and rapacious deeds might, under slight sanction of authority, be safely perpetrated in a country so little known as the Highlands of Scotland. How the feud with the clan Colquhoun originated does not very clearly appear from any account which has been handed down. It is asserted on the one hand, that the Colquhouns lending a helping hand to the strong were the original aggressors; and on the other, that the murder of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun in the castle of Bannachra in 1592 had been planned and accomplished by the Macgregors, in company with the Macfarlanes; and that this was the foundation of the quarrel. But neither of these statements rest on any broad basis of fact, and can only be adopted as probabilities, in absence of anything more tangible. There seems, however, to be good reason for supposing that for artful and selfish purposes, the original quarrel was fomented into such a bitter and relentless hate as clansmen only could cherish, by Archibald of Argyll. He was then King’s Lieutenant, and something more in the government of this country, and the use he made of his power was, according to good authority, to incite the Macgregors to acts of hostility against his own personal foes. If the declaration of Macgregor of Glenstrae can be believed, and there seems no good reason to doubt it, Argyll seems to have acted the part of a very Judas in his dealings with these and other clans.

The immediate cause of the conflict in Glen Fruin is not easily discoverable. It is more than probable that an outrage of some kind was meditated by the Macgregors, of which the Colquhouns had obtained timely notice, and prepared to meet them. Allister Macgregor, chief of the clan, and his brother John seem to have been accompanied by about three hundred men; and probably the number of the Colquhouns was not less. It has been reported at eight hundred; but this is certainly a mistake, for the Laird of Luss could nowhere have raised such a force. Allister’s superior military tactics were manifest in the division of his men into two bodies; one of which led by himself occupied the upper part of the glen, while the men under his brother lay concealed near its foot. The clansmen met somewhere in the vicinity of the farm now known as Strone, and for a time the struggle was keen and fierce; but the Macgregors, long accustomed to the guerilla warfare of these Highland recesses, at length triumphed, and the Colquhouns were driven back. They then fell into the ambush laid by John Macgregor, who seems to have been afterwards slain in the conflict, and were pursued with disastrous slaughter to Rossdhu, a distance of about six miles, and a fearful scene of bloodshed and plunder ensued after the fight. The farm houses and shielings in and near the glen were entered—their inmates cruelly butchered—the houses burned, and the cattle carried off. In the indictment laid against their chief, the cattle are described as six hundred kye and oxen, eight hundred sheep and goats, and fourteen score of horse. There were killed of the Colquhouns about one hundred and forty—in the battle or retreat—while till the loss of the Macgregors seems, by all accounts, not to have exceeded a few men.

Tradition asserts that the victorious Macgregors, inflamed with victory, wantonly murdered in cold blood some thirty or forty boys, students of the Collegiate Institution at Dumbarton, who had been spectators of the fight. These had been gathered together in a house near Bannachra, and were placed under a guard for protection; but, at the close of the day, when the chief of the Macgregors inquired after them he found that certain of his followers, in absence of the guard, had butchered the whole of then. There may be some exaggeration in the statement; but the subsequent criminal trial of various of the clan, and their depositions, contain allusions which clearly place beyond doubt the fact of some such circumstance having occurred.

The Macgregors returned to their native fastnesses with their booty, where they were welcomed by the plaudits of their clan; but the retributive arm of the law, weak as it then was, soon followed them thither. Sir Alexander Colquhoun appeared before King James VI., at Stirling, followed by a mournful procession of the widows of the slain men, bearing their husbands’ bloody plaids and armour. Such a spectacle was not presented in vain before the weak King. It was followed by an act of the Privy Council, advising extermination to the clan, making it even an offence punishable with death, to give any of them food or shelter. They were consequently pursued and hunted in every corner, their leaders executed, their possessions destroyed, and their children either put to death, or committed to the tender mercies of some lawless chief, and forbid to bear the name of Macgregor. We have been indebted for many of the foregoing particular, regarding the battle of Glen Fruin, to Irving’s History of Dumbartonshire.

After leaving the chapel, the stream follows a winding irregular course through the glen, till it reaches a point where it is crossed by the road to Luss. Here, and for some distance along its banks, it is densely wooded. On the right hand side a little beneath the bridge, stands on a commanding situation, the old castle of Bannachra, once possessed by the Colquhouns, and on which Sir Humphry Colquhoun was murdered by one of the Clan M‘Farlane. The castle itself is worth a visit; but, as it is rather out of the way at present, we only observe that it has been a superior building to the majority of the old keeps in the Highlands. From its situation it commands a magnificent view of Lochlomond, and the country beyond. A more modern mansion, belonging to the Buchanans of Arden, has been built beside it, which is now let to the farm tenant. Beneath the castle the river winds picturesquely along till it reaches Dumfin mill, where it falls over a rocky breastwork of considerable height. This is a favourite spot for artists in the summer season; the mill, the waterfall, and the wooded rocks form a very beautiful scene, worthy the pencil of M‘Culloch or Donald. After taking another curve, the stream runs in an almost straight line to Lochlomond, which receives its waters, after a course of eight or nine miles through varied and beautiful scenery. Alike to botanist, geologist, and naturalist, a visit to Glen Fruin cannot fail to be interesting and profitable, nor less so to the simple rambler, who, in the contemplation of nature, has his thoughts exalted to Him whose handiwork he surveys, who has clothed the earth with beauty, and everywhere teaches us to reverence and love His power, wisdom, and goodness.

The Fruin being the largest stream in the parish, is much frequented by the brethren of the rod in summer. It is a very tempting water, but rarely fulfils its promise of a basket. The trout run small in it, and from the frequency with which it is fished, are very shy. Later in the season a number of sea trout find their way into its pools, chiefly in the upper ranges; but seem to be caught only by an initiated few. It is now, along with Lochlomond and the other tributaries of the loch, under the management of an angling club; but the old fishers to the “manner born,” say that protection has not improved it. The Luss water, distant a few miles, is well reported of as a superior stream. Small dark-coloured flies with teal, drake, or land-rail wing are most suitable; bait fishing is prohibited.