Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/168

144 beneath. It is now roofed as a ballroom and a shelter for the trippers.

The precincts are enclosed within a high wall pierced by the principal gateway, which one approaches along an impressive avenue of solemn-looking holly. The ancient mill-lade skirts the wall here. The nave never was built. The choir and two transepts of the chapel still stand. When old St. Giles' in Elgin was pulled down (1826) its pulpit was secured for the chapel here.

The centuries have rung their changes on this haven of spiritual peace. Through the rough medieval ages the lay brothers ploughed and planted in the vale, while the monks plied their pious round of book and bell, of plain song and mass. The storm of the Reformation passed harmlessly by. The last of the monks lived here in peace till 1586. The Presbyterian Church was for generations too poor to do much for rural districts like this, so that not till the beginning of the eighteenth century was the Evangel again heard in the valley. Once more (1843) was there a moving of the waters, when almost the entire flock came out, and the tiny Chapel of Ease was handed over to the Church of Chalmers. Lastly came the Marquis of Bute, with his devotion to the beautiful past of the Old Faith, and swept from the sacred walls the kindly mantle of green within which the centuries had enfolded them. If anywhere in Scotland the imagination could plant the ideal retreat of Milton's Il Penseroso, surely it would be here,—

But the contrast of to-day had little that was ecstatic in it for me as I wheeled away from the hallowed precincts on a summer