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Rosaline Masson
Edinburgh
Painted by John Fulleylove; described by Rosaline Masson
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066217310
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I EDINBURGH CASTLE: ITS LEGENDS AND ROMANCES
CHAPTER II HOLYROOD, THE PALACE AND THE ABBEY
CHAPTER III THE CHURCH OF ST. GILES
CHAPTER IV STORIES OF THE CLOSES, THE WYNDS, AND THE LANDS
CHAPTER V SOME NOTABLE INHABITANTS, AND THEIR DWELLINGS
CHAPTER VI SOME FAMOUS VISITORS, AND THEIR COMMENTS
CHAPTER VII THE BUILDING OF THE NEW TOWN: A STAMPEDE FOR FRESH AIR
CHAPTER VIII THE EDINBURGH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS CIRCLE
CHAPTER IX SOCIAL EDINBURGH OF YESTERDAY
CHAPTER X THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
CHAPTER XI EDINBURGH TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
PART I
THE OLD TOWN
CHAPTER I
EDINBURGH CASTLE: ITS LEGENDS AND ROMANCES
There, watching high the least alarms,
Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar;
Like some bold veteran, gray in arms,
And marked with many a scamy scar;
The ponderous wall and massy bar,
Grim rising o’er the rugged rock,
Have oft withstood assailing war,
And oft repelled the invader’s shock.
Burns.
THE great line of east coast lying between the two headlands of Norfolk and Aberdeenshire is nowhere broken by another so bold and graceful indentation as that of the Firth of Forth. The Forth has its birth among hills that look down on Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond; flows thence in a pretty tortuous course towards the east, forming a boundary-line between the countries of the Gael and the Sassenach; is replenished by the Teith from the Trossachs and by the Allan from Strathmore; meanders at the foot of Stirling Castle, and seems never to weary of weaving its silver windings into that green expanse of country where most the Scottish imagination loves to linger; until at last, when there is poured into it the Devon from the Ochils, its channel widens to the sea somewhat suddenly. But even here the diverging banks, once so near, show an occasional friendly inclination to meet; and at one point there is only a mile of blue water and white waves between them, and then the view widens and the shores part irrevocably, the one stretching away to the extreme “east neuk” of Fife, and looking
To Norroway, to Norroway,
To Norroway ower the faem!
and the other rolling with softer curves to the South and England, while the great German Ocean ebbs and flows between.
The point where the banks of the Forth are but a mile apart is now spanned by that triumph of engineering, the Forth Bridge—the largest bridge in the world; but in olden days there was here a famous crossing, and the names of the villages on the opposite banks, North Queensferry and South Queensferry, still carry the mind back to the days when Malcolm Canmore’s stately Saxon Queen, Saint Margaret of Scotland, was ferried across here on her way between the palace of Dunfermline and the Castle of Edinburgh. Edinburgh was not then, nor for centuries after, the Capital of Scotland, but merely a useful stronghold near the Borders—a great rock rising abruptly among woods and lochs and hills, on which, from before the earliest legends of history, a fortress had stood—an impregnable castle, built so long ago that none knows its origin, nor even the origin of its name. Stow’s Chronicle, indeed, dates the foundation of the “Castell of Maydens” 989 B.C., which is a sensational date to mention lightly to the inquiring tourist from the newer world. It is supposed that the name “Castell of Maydens” was gained because, in legendary days, certain Pictish princesses were kept there for safety; and certainly, from those hazy times right on till the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, when she was sent to the Castle for security before the birth of King James, Edinburgh Castle has always been a useful place of safety to which to send royalties and rebels.
The earliest authentic romance of Edinburgh Castle is that of Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret; and the oldest building extant in Edinburgh is Queen Margaret’s chapel in the Castle.
The well-known story of Queen Margaret, the grand-niece of Edward the Confessor, is that she and her brother Edgar Atheling and her sister Christian all fled from England and William the Conqueror, and were wrecked in the Firth of Forth. The King of Scotland, Malcolm Canmore, was the son of that Duncan whom Macbeth put out of the way—in Scottish history as well as in Shakespeare’s play—and he had fled from the usurper, and had spent his years of exile at the Saxon Court of Edward the Confessor.
The son of Duncan
From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth Lives in the English court; and is received Of the most pious Edward with such grace That the malevolence of fortune nothing Takes from his high respect.
Little wonder that he received the Saxon exiled royal family hospitably. He was a widower, and much older than the Princess Margaret, and a warrior-prince; and he married her at Dunfermline. It all reads like an old-fashioned fairy story—the Queen, lovely and pious, washing the feet of the poor, founding abbeys and endowing the Church, and filling the Scottish Court with luxury of gold plate and rich raiment, and the pomp of royal guards: the King, brave, warlike, and unlearned, kissing his wife’s missals he was unable to read, and sending for his goldsmith to bind one of them in vellum incased in gold and set with jewels, and then hurrying off to the wars with England, and bringing back English captives to serve as slaves in Scottish homes. The fairy story ends as