III. THE BANKS OF TAY 67

was, I passed my days much as the thistles and tansy did, only with perpetual watching of all the ways of running water,-a singular awe developing itself in me, both of the pools of Tay, where the water changed from brown to blue-black, and of the precipices of Kinnoull; partly out of my own mind, and partly because the servants always became serious when we went up Kinnoull way, especially if I wanted to stay and look at the little crystal spring of Bower’s Well.

75. “But you say you were not afraid of anything?”¹ writes a friend, anxious for the unassailable veracity of these memoirs. Well, I said, not of ghosts, thunder, or beasts,-meaning to specify the commonest terrors of mere childhood. Every day, as I grew wiser, taught me a reasonable fear; else I had not above described myself as the most reasonable person of my acquaintance.² And by the swirls of smooth blackness, broken by no fleck of foam, where Tay gathered herself like Medusa,* I never passed without awe, even in those thoughtless days; neither do I in the least mean that I could walk among tombstones in the night (neither, for that matter, in the day), as if they were only paving stones set upright. Far the contrary; but it is important to the reader’s confidence in writings which have seemed inordinately impressional and emotional, that he should know I was never subject to-I should perhaps rather say, sorrowfully, never capable of-any manner of illusion or false imagination, nor in the least liable to have my nerves shaken by surprise. When I was about five years old, having been on amicable terms for a while with a black Newfoundland, then on probation for watch dog at Herne Hill, after one of our long summer journeys my first thought on getting home was to go to see Lion. My mother trusted me to go to the stable with

* I always think of Tay as a goddess river, as Greta a nymph one.

¹ [See above, § 51 (p. 45).]

² [See above, § 63 (p. 56), and compare § 49 (p. 44).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]