Glen Finglas
Coordinates: 56°13′48″N 4°21′43″W / 56.230°N 4.362°W
Glen Finglas (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Fhionnghlais) is a glen in the Trossachs, in the Stirling council area of Scotland. It is an area of forest in Highlands of the former county of Perthshire, north of Brig o' Turk, close to Callander in Menteith. To the west is Loch Katrine.
The Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) wrote the poem "Glenfinlas; or Lord Ronald's Coronach" in 1803.
The Glenfinglas estate was acquired by the Woodland Trust Scotland in 1996 and is open to the public.
Ruskin and Millais
The leading Victorian art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) and the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (1829–1896) spent the summer of 1853 together at Glenfinlas. Millais started a painting of John Ruskin in front of a waterfall during the visit, which he finished the following year. The painting is held in the Ashmolean museum, and has been shows at several exhibitions, including "The Pre-Raphaelites" at Tate Britain in London during 2004. John Ruskin himself was especially interested in the rock formations and, although primarily an art critic, undertook his own studies of these.
Glenfinlas (poem)
“Glenfinlas; or, Lord Ronald’s Coronach” by Walter Scott, written in 1798 and first published in 1800, was, as Scott remembered it, his first original poem as opposed to translations from the German. A short narrative of 264 lines, it tells a supernatural story based on a Highland legend. Though highly appreciated by many 19th century readers and critics it is now overshadowed by his later and longer poems.
Synopsis
“Glenfinlas” opens with a lament on the passing of the Highland chieftain Lord Ronald, before moving on to the describe the visit paid to him by Moy, another chief from distant Scottish islands, who we are told has studied the occult and has the second sight. The two go on a hunting expedition, unaccompanied by any of their followers, and after three days retire to a primitive hunting lodge in the wilds of Glenfinlas. Ronald says that his sweetheart Mary is herself out hunting along with her sister Flora; he proposes that Moy should win over Flora by the playing of his harp, leaving Ronald free to court the unchaperoned Mary. Moy replies that his heart is too low-spirited for such things, that he has had a vision of the sisters’ shipwreck, and a presentiment that Ronald himself will die. Ronald mocks Moy’s gloomy thoughts and goes off to keep a tryst with Mary in a nearby dell, alone except for his hounds. Presently the hounds return without Ronald. Night falls, and at midnight a huntress appears, dressed in water-soaked green clothes and with wet hair. She begins to dry herself before the fire, and asks Moy if he has seen Ronald. She last saw him, she says, wandering with another green-clad woman. Moy is afraid to go out into the ghost-haunted darkness to look for them, but the woman tries to shame him out, and shows that she knows more of Moy than he realizes:
