When we look into the name “Dundee,” we find that some derive it from the Latin “Donum Dei” (the “gift of God”). Evidently those who designed the town arms accepted this etymology, for above the two griffins holding a shield is the motto “Dei Donum.” Yet beneath their intertwined and forked tails is the more cautious motto, perhaps meant to be regulative,—for “sweet are the uses of adversity,” in learning as in life,—“prudentia et candore.” While prudence bids us look forward, candor requires honesty as to the past. So the diligent scholarship and editorial energy of modern days delete the claims of local pride, as belated, and declare them “extravagant,” while asserting that so favorable a situation for defence as has Dundee antedates even the Roman occupation.

Others, not willing to abandon the legend savoring of divinity, find the name in the Celtic “Dun Dha,” the “Hill of God.” The probabilities are, however, that Mars will carry off the honors, and that the modern form is from the Gaelic name “Dun Tow,” that is, the “fort on the Tay”; of which the Latin “Tao Dunum” is only a transliteration. All Britain was spotted with forts or duns, and the same word is in the second syllable of “London.”

The name “Dundee” first occurs in writing in a deed of gift, dated about A.D. 1200, by David, the younger brother of William the Lion, making the place a royal burg. Later it received charters from Robert the Bruce and the Scottish kings. Charles I finally granted the city its great charter.

In the war of independence, when the Scots took up arms against England, Dundee was prominent. William Wallace, educated here, slew the son of the English constable in 1291, for which deed he was outlawed. The castle, which stood until some time after the Commonwealth, but of which there is to-day hardly a trace, was repeatedly besieged and captured. In Dundee’s coat of arms are two “wyverns,” griffins, or “dragons,” with wings addorsed and with barbed tails, the latter “nowed” or knotted together—which things serve as an allegory. In the local conversation and allusions and in the modern newspaper cartoons and caricatures, the “wyverns” stand for municipal affairs and local politics.

Such a well-situated port, on Scotland’s largest river, Tay, must needs be the perennial prize of contending factions and leaders. But when, after having assimilated the culture of Rome, the new struggle, which was inevitable to human progress, the Reformation, began, and the Scots thought out their own philosophy of the universe, Dundee was called “the Scottish Geneva,” because so active in spreading the new doctrines. Here, especially, Scotland’s champion, George Wishart, student and schoolmaster (1513–46), one of the earliest reformers, introduced the study of Greek and preached the Reformation doctrines. Compelled to flee to England, he went also to Switzerland. In Cambridge, he was a student in 1538. It is not known that he ever “took orders,” any more than did the apostle Paul. He travelled from town to town, making everywhere a great impression by his stirring appeals.

Instead of bearing the fiery cross of the clans as of old, Wishart held up the cross of his Master.

Patriotism and economics, as well as religion, were factors in the clash of ideas. Cardinal Beaton stood for ecclesiastical dependence on France, Wishart for independence. Beaton headed soldiers to make Wishart prisoner. Young John Knox attached himself to the person of the bold reformer and carried a two-handed sword before Wishart for his defence. After preaching a powerful sermon at Haddington, the evangelist was made a prisoner by the Earl of Bothwell and carried to St. Andrew’s. There, at the age of thirty-three, by the cardinal’s order, Wishart was burned at the stake in front of the castle, then the residence of the bishop. While the fire was kindling, Wishart uttered the prophecy that, within a few days his judge and murderer would lose his life. After such proceedings in the name of God, it seems hardly wonderful that the mob, which had been stirred by Wishart’s preaching, should have destroyed both the cathedral and the episcopal mansion.

Was Wishart in the plot to assassinate the cardinal, as hostile critics suggest? Over his ashes a tremendous controversy has arisen, and this is one of the unsettled questions in Scottish history. There was another George Wishart, bailie of Dundee, who was in the plot. Certainly the preacher’s name is great in Scotland’s history.

One of the relics of bygone days, which the Dundeeans keep in repair, is a section of the old battlemented city wall crossing one of the important streets. This for a time was the pulpit of the great reformer. With mine host of the Temperance Hotel, Bailie Mather, who took me, as other antiquarians, poets, and scholars did also, through the old alleys and streets, where the vestiges of historic architecture still remain from the past, I mounted this old citadel of freedom.

On the whole, the Reformation in Dundee was peacefully carried out, but in 1645, during the Civil War, the city was sacked and most of its houses went down in war fires. In 1651, General Monk, sent by Cromwell, captured Dundee, and probably one sixth of the garrison were put to the sword. Sixty vessels were loaded with plunder to be sent away, but “the sailors being apparently as drunk as the soldiery” the vessels were lost within sight of the city. “Ill got, soon lost,” said Monk’s chaplain. Governor Lumsden, in heroic defence, made his last stand in the old tower, which still remains scarred and pitted with bullet marks.

Dundee rose to wealth during our Civil War, when jute took the place of cotton. Being a place of commerce rather than of art, literature, or romance, and touching the national history only at long intervals, few tourists see or stay long in “Jute-opolis.” Nevertheless, from many visits and long dwelling in the city and suburbs, Dundee is a place dearly loved by us three; for here, in health and in sickness, in the homes of the hospitable people and as leader of the worship of thousands, in the great Ward Chapel, where he often faced over a thousand interested hearers, the writer learned to know the mind of the Scottish people more intimately than in any other city. Nor could he, in any other better way, know the heart of Scotland, except possibly in some of those exalted moments, when surveying unique scenery, it seemed as if he were in the very penetralia of the land’s beauty; or, when delving in books, he saw unroll clearly the long panorama of her inspiring history.

Among the treasures, visible in the muniment room of the Town House, are original despatches from Edward I and Edward II; the original charter, dated 1327, and given the city by Robert the Bruce; a Papal order from Leo X, and a letter from Mary Queen of Scots, concerning extramural burials. Then the “yardis, glk sumtyme was occupyit by ye Gray Cordelier Freres” (Franciscan Friars, who wore the gray habit and girdle of St. Francis of Assisi) as an orchard, were granted to the town as a burying-place by Queen Mary in 1564. The Nine Crafts having wisely decided not to meet in taverns and alehouses, made this former place of fruit their meeting-place; hence the name “Howff,” or haunt. My rhyming friend Lee, in his verses on the “Waukrife Wyverns” (wakeful griffins), has written the feelings and experiences of his American friend, who often wandered and mused among the graven stones, as well as his own:—

It is not historical to call or think of Claverhouse himself as the original of “Bonnie Dundee.” The city is greater than the man, for Sir Walter Scott borrowed the hint for his refrain from an old song which refers solely to the town. Like the phrases “William the Silent,” “Mad Anthony Wayne,” and other names which catch the popular ear, the whole literary line of suggestion is posthumous and anachronistic. Once having heard a good story, “the public” is like a child who wants the first fairy tale to be told over and over again, in exactly the same phrase. To do otherwise offends vanity and savors of that very dreadful “higher criticism” which is so terrible to tradition-mongers.

Wonderful improvements have taken place in the city of Dundee since I first saw it, in the early nineties, when the place was full of things unsavory and unsightly. But these have been cleared away, along with some old edifices that had historic associations, such as the castle, the mint, and the convents. All of these measures of abolition have greatly improved the public health and the appearance of the city.

Some old-time Dundee politics were amazingly similar to the style sufficiently fashionable in America—some time back. The local poet in his “Wakeful Griffins” (the “Waukrife Wyverns”) pictures the reality as the two of them, with their knotted tails, “hung ower the wa’” and discussed municipal affairs:—

When, further, in applying the city’s motto of prudence and candor, one of the tailed mentors proposed special chastisement of a notable public sinner, the poet cried “Hurrah”:—

Then the tower bell boomed the hour of twelve.

Seeing Dundee often and in the year before the Great War, we noted its broad thoroughfares adorned with flowers, and so full of activity and happy bustle by day and brilliantly lighted by electricity at night, we made favorable comparison with the best streets of Scotland’s two larger cities. Since Queen Victoria’s charter, bestowed in 1889, Dundee’s chief magistrate has been designated as the “Lord Provost.”

One of the commonest expressions in Scotland for the meadow alongside of a river is “the carse.” There are plenty of these carses in the valley of the Tay, and at Dundee “the carse” is that one, of course, which is near the city.

“The Carse of Gowrie” is somewhat over twenty miles long. Four miles from the city post-office, over the carse, is the village of Invergowrie, where we enter Perthshire. Here, in a stately home, we spent many days. We cross a burn, which runs across the turnpike road, and enter a village called Milnefield Feus, the water making the dividing-line between the counties. At Invergowrie we see “the Gows of Gowrie,” the Paddock Stane, and the quarries of Kingoodie, with the old Dargie church, surrounded by an ancient graveyard near the shores of the Tay River. Between the kirkyard and the railway are the “Gows” or large boulders, famous in the prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer:—

Another famous rock is the Deil’s Stone, concerning which there is a legend illustrating the activity of His Satanic Majesty. The village of Invergowrie was originally named the Mylnefield Feus—a relic of Scottish feudalism.

I noticed many odd features, common to most old Scottish towns, especially those with markets, during my numerous rambles in the valley of the Tay. Each had of old for its equipment, suiting the needs of the times, the cross, with the “jougs” attached, and the “tron,” or weighing-machine used for securing honest weight of oatmeal and other produce brought to the market for sale. The canny Scot, like other human beings, has that proverbial “touch of nature,” which scale and measures serve partly to correct. There was also a penfold for impounding stray animals. A joug, as one might guess, from the Latin “jugum,” was an instrument for the punishment of those who were already stiff-necked offenders. It is probably the original of our slang word “jug,” meaning a prison. An iron collar enclosing the neck of the criminal, which was fastened to a wall, tree, or cross, by an iron chain, was the chief feature and implement. This piece of public jewelry went out of use, some time after the Reformation. Often the old town crosses, when broken, dilapidated, or removed, are rebuilt as public ornaments or memorials of the past.

Even dragons had their lairs in Scotland, where the behavior of these monsters seems to have been the same as that noticed in their kind all over the world. Their appetites, for example, showed a similar eagerness for plump maidens. The Japanese and Korean stories of these creatures, which are conceived of as cosmic forces—an encyclopædia of all the powers of offence and destruction with which nature has furnished animals—intimate that their digestion was much improved by a diet of lovely girls. Now at Kinnoul Hill, not far from Dundee, in the face of the precipice, is a small cave popularly called “The Dragon’s Hole.” Here in early times—dragons always lived in ancient times only—dwelt a scaly monster, who kept the country in continual terror, because neither fish nor cattle, nor old women, nor indigestible males, but only tender virgins suited his alimentary canal. It was when they were young and pretty that the damsels were particularly desirable and digestible. Dragging them off to his den, the monster enjoyed his meals with the leisure of a gentleman. Yet, however pure and spiritually minded, the young women themselves could not break the spell of the destroyer. Only holy monks had such desirable power. One shaveling monk made a specialty of prayer and charms, and after a terrible conflict slew the dragon—much to the relief of parents who had charming daughters.

In another place I saw an artificial ruin, constructed about a century ago, but now so completely overgrown with ivy that ages seemed to have passed over it, so that one might imagine that romance must linger in its stones. When first seeing this hoary pile, I was tempted to unfold the pinions of fancy and imagination for a long flight; when, suddenly, I remembered the poem by Eugene Field. He tells us, in his mellifluous verse, how when in Amsterdam of the Netherlands, he saw an imposing piece of furniture which fired his imagination. It was a bedstead, of remarkably feudalistic and baronial suggestion. Field pictured to himself the ancient castle in which that bedstead, “seat of rapture, seat of pain,” had stood. He saw in perspective of fancy the richly robed lords and ladies, that had sought repose upon it. The dreams that they dreamed, in the days of falconry and cavalcades, of tournaments and cloth of gold, must have been as brilliant as his own. Yet, before paying the purchase price, the western poet glanced at the back of the headboard and read the words, “Made in Grand Rapids, Michigan.” “One touch of nature,” etc.