Even on the map, its long row of Gaelic place-
names bear testimony to an old and settled race. Of these little
towns, posted along the shore as close as sedges, each with its bit
of harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public building, its
flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has
its legend, quaint or tragic: Dunfermline, in whose royal towers
the king may be still observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood-
red wine; somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith;
Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by
Donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled"; Burntisland where,
when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a
table carried between tidemarks, and publicly prayed against the
rover at the pitch of his voice and his broad lowland dialect;
Kinghorn, where Alexander "brak's neckbane" and left Scotland to
the English wars; Kirkcaldy, where the witches once prevailed
extremely and sank tall ships and honest mariners in the North Sea;
Dysart, famous - well famous at least to me for the Dutch ships
that lay in its harbour, painted like toys and with pots of flowers
and cages of song-birds in the cabin windows, and for one
particular Dutch skipper who would sit all day in slippers on the
break of the poop, smoking a long German pipe; Wemyss (pronounce
Weems) with its bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier Johnstone,
on his flight from Culloden, passed a night of superstitious
terrors; Leven, a bald, quite modern place, sacred to summer
visitors, whence there has gone but yesterday the tall figure and
the white locks of the last Englishman in Delhi, my uncle Dr.
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