The Black Neuk. At the turning out of
the black nook, the rocks of the chasm
approach; and just where the river
comes in sight of the sea, the engineer has
thrown, from rock to rock across the sullen
flood, a bridge of a single, lofty, narrow,
Gothic arch. The name of Bishop Cheyne is
connected with its erection; but, whatever
may have been the utility of the bridge, and
however great may have been the admiration
of it as a work of art, the population of the
neighbourhood must have been terribly
oppressed by the clergy. When the Reformation
came, they destroyed the magnificent
cathedral of the parish, Old Machar. And
even in the nineteenth century, the reply to
any one who said to the Don fishers or
peasantry, "Why, the bishops, at any rate,
gave you a wonderful bridge," was, "Aye,
but they oppressed us well to pay for
it." Contemporary with Bishop Cheyne,
with Bruce, and Wallace, there lived in Scotland
a Thomas the Rhymer, who never bled
for his country, who built no useful bridges
in it, who did nothing for it that I wot of
but rhyme, but who has left behind him a
name rivalling the fame of the heroes. When
the bridge was the admiration of everybody,
and when old people, whose minds brooded
over traditions of earthquakes would be
saying, "Where there has been one crack
there may be another," Thomas recorded in
rhyme the popular prophecy; and the people
exalted to the supernatural rank the man
who expressed their own wise guesses in
ever-memorable words. Thomas said, in
words of old Scotch, which I translate, for the
benefit of my countrymen, "Strong is your
wall, Bridge of Balgounie! But, with a
wife's only grandson and a mare's only foal,
down you shall fall"—

Wight is y'er wa'
Brig o' Balgounie!
But wi' a wife's ae oie
An' a mare's ae foie,
Doon ye sall fa'.

Persons who remember the earthquake of
eighteen hundred and sixteen will not wonder
that grey-headed people should have doubted
the stability of the bridge. Why, I remember
rushing in my night-clothes into the
middle of the street in the early morning,
and encountering a crowd of neighbours who
had thought of nothing but escaping from
their shaking houses! Nobody who remembers
it can ever afterwards have a particle
of belief in the solidity of anything. Their
wonder is, not that granite splits, and
houses fall, but that anything remains
upright. At Inverness, a column of granite,
erected as a monument, was twisted by
this shock. The Rhymer, I insist upon it,
recorded the popular inference from the
geological traditions of the district in his
time. As for the supernatural forms of
tradition, they are the shapes in which mankind
treasure up their records of natural wonders.
The rhyming prophecy was not merely
dressed up in harmonious Scotch, there is
wisdom and wit in it. In all the population,
there was no one more likely to be reminded
of the prophecy than the only grandson of a
grandmother. There was wisdom and kindness
in the prophecy; for the bridge was
dangerous, and the roads and river in the
vicinity were full of perils. The rhyme was a
needful warning to caution. The parapets
were low, the arch high and narrow, and it
was fearful to look over and down into the
dark depths. Not unfrequently did it happen
that the horses of reckless riders took fright,
and leaped over the parapet into the gulf
beneath. I have seen many a prudent horseman
dismount, and lead his horse along the
bridge. Two roads met at the northern side
of the bridge, the western one descending
steeply by a route which overhangs The Black
Neuk. When in the months of January and
February the road was suddenly blocked up
by snow, belated equestrians, over full of
confidence and whiskey, sometimes mistook
the turning, and, approaching too near the
precipice, slid down into The Black Neuk.
Thus geological tradition, shrewd wit, and
warning wisdom, may all be found in the
prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer.

A poet and several painters have echoed
and repeated, in the nineteenth century, the
wizard renown of the Brig o' Balgounie.
Byron includes it in his brief list of Scottish
recollections, in Don Juan.

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,
As "auld lang syne" brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear
streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's Brig's black wall,
All my boy-feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring!—floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:
I care not—'tis a glimpse of "auld lang syne."

In a note, he says—"The brig of Don, near
the auld toun of Aberdeen, with its one arch
and its black, deep salmon stream below, is
in my memory as yesterday. I still remember,
though perhaps I may misquote, the
awful proverb which made me pause to cross
it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight,
being an only son, at least by the mother's
side. The saying, as recollected by me, was
this; but I have never heard or seen it since
I was nine years of age:—

Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa,
Wi' a wife's ae son, and a mear's ae foal,
Down ye shall fa!

The proverb, as given by Lord Byron, has
passed into all the Scottish guide-books. No
doubt it is, as he gives it, very nearly what
he was told. A roguish variation of it has
been made to him, to adapt it to his own
case, and apply it to his superstitious fears, a
variation perfectly in the spirit of the original.
But the distitch he gives is not rhyme; and