FOREWORD
Waterfalls – is a curated artist response to our natural environment.
BACKGROUND
Artists have always sought inspiration from the natural environment, and perhaps never more so than during the Romantic era. Against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution when ‘unspoiled’ nature was deemed under threat, and when humanity seemed small and insignificant against the raging rivers, waterfalls and violent storms, the pastoral, sublime, and picturesque came to the fore.
‘The space the magnitude of mountains and waterfalls. I live in the eye, and my imagination, surpassed, is at rest. I shall learn poetry here’.
So writes Keats on his walking tour of Scotland. Taking a grand tour of Scotland and visiting the spectacular waterfalls, became a national obsession with Turner, Walter Scott, Byron and Burns all leading the vanguard.
So writes Robert Burns in 1787; –
‘After breakfast we made a party to go and see Cauldron Linn, a remarkable cascade in the Devon basin, and after spending one of the most pleasant days I have ever had in my life, I returned to Stirling in the evening’
Burns went on to write numerous poems inspired by waterfalls, as did Byron and Millais and numerous others including; Wordsworth; Louis Stevenson and Mendelssohn, who all wrote about them. Consequently the great British public, visited them in droves.
Since those heady Victorian days the paths leading to well over 1000 waterfalls, have become overgrown, and many falls have all but disappeared from our maps.
Now against the backdrop of climate change and a global pandemic, there has never been a more urgent need to reconnect with nature.
Waterfalls now invites contemporary, post-pastoral and ecologically aware and authors, artist, and poets to connect with nature in much the same way as their romantic counterparts did.
Be it in the form of a simple diary entry, a social comment, poem, or haiku, author’s work including that of; Kathleen Jamie; Jen Hadfield; Anthony Vahni Capildeo; Cal Flyn; John Glenday; Malachy Tallack; Amanda Thomson; Elspeth Wilson; Ceitidh Campbell and Marjorie Lofti, will be exhibited at the Scottish Poetry Library, accompanied by specially created images by Oscar van Heek to form a unique exhibition. The work will form the basis for a major publication which will contain text from both the contemporary and the romantic authors, poets and artists.
We aim to encourage audiences to visit the various locations and experience the chosen waterfalls first hand through a specially created app ‘Walks and Waterfalls’. The app provides geolocation mapping and allows users to visit and discover hidden waterfalls, as well as read corresponding artists responses, and even be encouraged to engage with their own responses on line, and so experience a unique and immersive journey of discovery and inspiration.
Oscar van Heek has been nominated for the SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS 2019, and has work selected for the 2021 and 2022 RSA, the 2023 RCA and recently exhibited at SONICA GLASGOW 2022
I am here tae tell ye I never lie
at peace I am aye
caller watter jining watter
pirl an ongang
alang ma a bed of clabber
I obtemper ainly gravity
an here I come
a rinnal amang bracken, I slocken
deer drouth, I run
eident atween hazels and thrangs o rashes
until the meenit oh the meenit
I jist
skail, I just
skail ower
the skelf o stane
an I am ane
blythe spangle
i the sunshine ane
siller flash
ablow the mune and then it’s
ower sae
I splash
an haud on doon through the laigh kintra I cannae help masel
it’s back tae ma
hurl and gush but
see thon memory thon
sweet memory I cairry it
richt wi me tae the sea
In this scooped out place, this hollow in the hill, the world contracts. A tattered white ribbon arrives, fizzing as it falls. The amber plunge pool, a battered drum, drowns out all other noise. Around it, the narrow bowl of soft stone, quarried by water, has been witnessed and signed, initials engraved with knives and fingernails. The rock is carved and carved again, peeling, flaking, crumbling. Notches become pockets become smooth craters. Names are etched and then erased. The burn, continuing, carries what it can. It is an amnesia, a ruthless erosion. Only the sound and what is most solid will remain.
Though the farmer took it for a scar
cutting a zigzag through his land
and little better than an open drain, still
it would bring that heady reek of gorse
and primroses in their proper time,
a stonechat or two challenging the air
and the burn itself, of course, muttering
as it worked, because it understood
there are some wounds only a river can heal;
so busy enough before that final graceful
plunge back down towards the beginnings
of things; though when I say beginnings
there was only the roofless cottage,
rocks then sand, and over our shoulders
the North Sea, filling with light.
Wreaths of cloud wrap themselves around trees, strangling or snuggling them so tightly that we can only see them as a suggestion. A question mark in a hushed landscape, as water rushes, hushes, downwards. We could fall asleep here, on the blanket of snow that has transformed a car park into a grotto, the lullaby of Blackspout crashing into our ears.
But we walk. We learn to eke out the colour from the landscape, which at first appears monochrome. Feathery green lichen coats branches, a plant we think is dogwood shows its deep red stems. Ruddy bracken frames our view of the frothing water, crashing down with such power it almost scares us. The snow makes light of a gloomy day. Green undergrowth and russet leaves peek out in patches, wondering when winter arrived.
Above the cascade, smaller falls pour into pools, like they are practicing for the main race. A nursery for the water before it can fly.
When we cannot see it, we can still hear it. When we can no longer hear it, our ears ring with the silence. Like a parent, there is presence in its absence.
We wonder when a droplet in the candyfloss mist ceases to be the waterfall itself, ask ourselves when does it become separate, when might it become part of the whole again. Is there a moment where you know what you’re a part of and what you’re leaving? We wonder.
At midday it’s still cold in the dell. It’s shady here, protected from the breeze. It feels like another climate. The mill pond is a sheet of ice, which gives off a matte gleam. Dry leaves lie in drifts against fallen trunks, dusted in frost like powdered sugar, veins picked out in silver. Above: a silver gelatin sky. Clouds passing overhead as negatives, the dark criss-crossing of branches without their foliage.
At the falls, the water streams over the rocks, churning to a froth, white as milk. The fairies of the Fairy Glen were said to work here, purifying the stream for use by the houses downstream. Villagers would leave small offerings to them.
There are spots where you might imagine a fairy reclining in comfort: boulders cushioned with soft mosses, shallow pools in which one might bathe.
It’s a peaceful walk, along a winding path. In winter it’s quiet. Only a few shrill birds break the silence. Our feet land softly in the leaflitter, which is springy and wet. A hibernal colour scheme of tan, dun, pine—but here and there, there are bright spots: firm round fungi protruding from a tree in shades of tangerine and papaya. Rhododendron clambering over the low ground, spreading its plasticky green leaves.
Ivy tumbles down the sides of the valley, and at the foot of the hill the path is packed earth, wrinkled by roots, which press up through the dirt. They are thick, muscled, sinuous. Here and there they are scarred where generations of lovers have etched their initials into smooth bark—letters that have stretched and warped with the passage of time, as the trees have grown, filled out.
As do we, of course. The last time I was here I must have been seventeen. The broad strokes of me were drawn by then, but how they have bent and changed. To come here is to pass myself on the path, walking in a different direction.
In a letter written in 1787, Robert Burns described a visit to the Cauldron Linn:
After breakfast we made a party to go and see Cauldron Linn, a remarkable cascade in the Devon about fives miles from Harviestoun; and after spending one of the most pleasant days I ever had in my life, I returned to Stirling in the evening.
The falls that once used to be on everyone’s itinerary, are no longer marked on any maps, and they are awkward to reach because the paths are overgrown. The best approach is from Muckhart Mill, but they can also be tackled from the footpaths along the spectacular Devon Valley Railway.
At the Linn of Dee the river narrows to a little over a meter in width. The channel is cut in schistose rocks and below the present falls there is a series of round pools. Downstream is a small dyke that probably marks the site of the original fall. It is possible when the water is low to step across the stream safely however it was here that young Byron caught his lame foot and was saved from a fatal fall by a companion.
In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the Linn of Dee. Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life. As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall some heather caught his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling downward, when the attendant luckily got hold of him, and was but just in time to save him from being killed.
Lord Byron his letters and journals by Thomas Moore
The ornamental granite bridge at the Linn of Dee was opened by Queen Victoria in I857
In the late summer of 1787, Robert Burns set out on a tour of the Scottish Highlands. He had been invited to stay at Blair Castle, by the fourth Duke of Atholl; his lordship advised the poet to be sure to make the detour to view a local beauty spot, the necklace of falls known as Bruar Water.
Burns loved the falls, and declared later that these two or three days were the happiest of his life. He found Atholl picturesque and beautiful but was however critical of the lack of trees and shrubs. In true Burns style he wrote a poem to the Duke of Atholl, begging him to re-vegetate the treeless hillsides.
His poem with its jaunty characterisation of a highland stream provides a splendid memorial of his visit:
Would then, my noble master please
To grant my highest wishes,
He’ll shade my banks wi’ tow’ring trees
And bonie spreading bushes.
Delighted doubly then, my lord
You’ll wander on my banks,
And listen monie a grateful bird
Return you tuneful thanks.
Excerpt of Burn’s poem ‘The humble Petition of Briar Water’
The duke took note and the larch woods for which his estates became famous were created by Duke of Atholl, who became as known as the ‘planting duke’.
A ancient stone in the grounds of Urrard House marks, if local tradition is to be believed, the spot where Dundee received his mortal wound at the Battle of Killiecrankie. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), the Victorian poet who almost completely lost his reason in middle life, was taken to Urrard House for a period of rest and recuperation.
Near Urrard House is the beautiful Fall of Urrard. The fall was frequently visited by the Victorians, but has since received very little notice in guide books since Black’s Guide of 1861. It is not marked on any map, and it is a very good example of the way in which scenes which delighted the Victorians, are neglected. Today the fall is marred somewhat by a hydroelectric scheme at the side of the falls.
At the principal fall, the water plunges over a rock lip into a basin, the main stream falling ten meters sheer. This is Rob Roy country and the basin is dubbed Rob Roy’s Bathtub. A smaller hollow, etched by a lesser arm of the stream in the wall of the basin is called Rob Roy’s Soap Dish although it is unlikely that the famous raider and cattle thief used that commodity when in these parts.
Many writers of whom Dorothy Wordsworth is perhaps the most famous, have celebrated the falls at Glen Falloch. She gives a memorable account of her walk to the falls with her brother, William, and Coleridge:
We sat down and heard, as if from the heart of the earth, the sound of torrents ascending out of the long hollow glen. To the eye all was motionless, a perfect stillness. The noise of waters did not appear to come from any particular quarter; it was everywhere, almost, one might say, as if ‘exhaled’ through the whole surface of the green earth. Glen Falloch, Coleridge has since told me, signifies the hidden vale; but William says that if we were to name it from our recollections of that time we should call it the Vale of Awful Sound.
Nowadays the falls are a notable wild swimming spot though not without danger particularly when the falls are in spate.
The Spectacle E’e (eye) waterfalls – so named as a result of an incident involving a local man who fell in love with the miller’s daughter. The miller disapproved of the union and ended their relationship. As revenge the lad placed an eyeglass in the mill’s thatch, causing it to catch fire and the mill to be burned to the ground.
The Spectacle E’e is the most imposing fall in the basin of the Avon, it is approached from the village of Sandford, past Tweedie Mill. The Kype Water falls into the Avon at the edge of the carboniferous lavas that make up the hill country beyond Strathaven and forms a series of picturesque falls culminating in a fall of fifteen meters.
The principal feature of interest beside the falls on the river Braan below Rumbling Bridge, is the Summer House called Ossian’s Hall.
Opposite the entrance is a picture of Ossian playing upon his harp and singing songs of other times. The sides and ceiling of this inner apartment are lined with mirrors that reflect the waterfall under a variety of aspects. Many famous visitors have commented on this feature, most with praise but Wordsworth was more critical;
The mirrors afford various reflections of the whitened volume of water, as it pours down the cataract; like smoke, like flame, like boiling oil. This is a conceit of which the contriver was probably very proud, but, I must confess, that I could not help considering it with sentiments other than those of admiration.
There are wonderful woodland walks along the banks, with sycamore, oak and beech but the chief glory of this wood is a Douglas Fir which is reputed to be the tallest tree in Britain.
