Dance Balmoral Strathspey 373

Away ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses,
In you let the minions of luxury rove!
Restore me the rock where the snowflake reposes,
If still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Stern Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,
Round their wild summits though elements war;
Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth flowing fountains
I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar!
– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), “Lachin Y Gair” from Hours of Idleness

In the shadow of Lochnagar, at the foot of Craig Gowan, in Aberdeenshire, is Balmoral Castle, the private Scottish residence of the Royal Family.

Here was the cradle, rocked by the maternal hand of Queen Victoria, of the new-born British enthusiasm for Scottish culture and customs. The Scots were quite naturally already rather fanatic about their life-style, but even though the seed had been planted by Sir Walter Scott and the State Visit of George IV in 1822, the English needed Victoria’s sentimental approval before they could see anything the least romantic about those “northerners”.

Originally known as Bouchemorale (majestic dwelling), the estate was purchased in 1852 by the Prince Consort for about thirty-two thousand pounds sterling. The old Gordon castle had been acquired by the Farquharsons of Inverary in 1662 and they in turn sold it to the Earl of Fife in 1798.

Prince Albert engaged the Aberdeen architect, William Smith, to rebuild the castle into that gleaming silver granite Scottish Neo-Baronial-Victorian pile rising from the dark pines on the banks of the River Dee.

The present residence is capable of housing well over one hundred persons and, ever since Queen Victoria became the lady bountiful of the castle, it has been the scene of great social activity during the “Balmoral season”, when the Royal Family is in residence. Here Victoria invited the directors of the Empire and the crowned, and uncrowned, heads of Europe. The Empress Eugenie visited here after Napoleon III had been toppled from the French throne. Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later Emperor of Germany, proposed to the Princess Royal at Balmoral in 1855. Even the ill-fated Tsar Nicholas II of Russia paid a short visit to Balmoral with the Tsarina, Victoria’s grand-daughter, in September, 1896. The Tsar was Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Scots Greys and upon his arrival he was escorted to the castle by the regiment.

The ballroom of Balmoral has been the scene of many an assembly and it is here that the annual “Ghillies’ Ball” is held.