Birnam
Birnam,
in Perthshire, lies a mile south of Dunkeld, on the left bank
of the Tay. Birnam is where Sir John Everett Millais, the
painter, made his summer residence. The village lies at the
foot of Birnam Hill (1324 ft.), once covered with a royal
forest that has been partly replaced by plantations. The oak
and sycamore in front of old Birnam House, the famed twin
trees of Birnam, are believed to be very ancient, and to be
the remnant of the wood of Birnam which Shakespeare immortalized
in Macbeth. The Pass of Birnam, where the river narrows, was
the path usually taken by the Highlanders in their forays.
In the vicinity are the castles of Murthly, one a modern mansion
in the Elizabethan style, erected about 1838 from designs
by James Gillespie Graham (1777-1855), and the other the old
castle, still occupied, which was occasionally used as a hunting-lodge
by the Scottish kings.
At
Little Dunkeld, almost opposite to Dunkeld, the Bran joins
the Tay, after a run of II m. from its source in Loch Freuchie.
It is celebrated for its falls about 2 m. from the mouth.
The upper fall is known as the Rumbling Bridge from the fact
that the stream pours with a rumbling noise through a deep
narrow gorge in which a huge fallen rock has become wedged,
forming a rude bridge or arch. Inver, near the mouth of the
Bran, was the birthplace of the two famous fiddlers, Niel
Gow (1727-1807) and his son Nathaniel (1766-1831).
