Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

BROCHIiL CASTLE. 361
reagon to care for the green fields he might leave behind.
Where these terminate, the land slopes down to the
sea ; intricate, irregular, and interspersed with rocks, trees,
and farm-houses ; the seat of that singular structure,
Brochel Castle. This is, indeed, the garden of Rasay;
and if the ancient seat of this ancient family is neither
very convenient nor very capacious, it is by much the most
remarkable in the whole catalogue of Highland castles.
The wide bright sea, the distant mountains of the main-
land, and the long bold cliffs of Rasay, with the castle
towering over the scene, rocky precipices rising out of
the sea, trees feathering down to the very water's edge,
and little bays crowded by the masts, sails, nets, and
boats of the village, form landscapes not often equalled in
singularity, or exceeded in beauty. This singular build-
ing, the effect of which is so new and so striking, stands
on the summit of an insulated rock, which rises itself
like a tower above the green slope on which it stands;
and the structure is so contrived, that the walls and the
rock form one continuous precipice ;
the outline and dis-
position of the whole being in themselves highly pic-
turesque. It is easy to imagine the strength of a place
that could scarcely be assailed or rained; and the only
access to it is by single footsteps cut in the steep turfy
slope, which, on one side, leads to the entrance. Except-
ing the roof, this building is perfectly entire, and might
be restored to a habitable state, at a moderate expense.
While it would have been impossible to have ruined
Brochel Castle, it would not have been easy to have
attacked it by fire, or rather by smoke ;
a mode of assault
usual in former times, and recorded in a well-known
ballad, where the prisoner remonstrates with those who
have taken out the stone which " lets in the reek to me."
In speaking of the Highland defences formerly,
I took notice of the general want of fianks ; and the