The Spell of Scotland

appraising it; Stevenson did; Scott did not. And I suppose if one cannot trace his ancestry back to Edinburgh, or nearly th

g been born in an American capital which is among the loveliest-I think the loveliest-I dare choose Edinburgh as my dream city. I dare fling away my other capital claims, an

ic ancestors for a century, or two, or three. And perhaps they, themselves, have migrated from one state to another, one city to another. Every American has had

thing of foreign about them, they can never seem to touch our own proper romance, to have been the setting for our play.

nburgh has had such a population through the centuries that to cast its total with only that of the souls now living within her precincts were to leave out of the picture those shadowy a

dead nor deserted, and is still fully one-half the town. While New Town, looking ever up to the old, looking across the stretch to Leith, and to the sea whence came so much threatening in the old days, and with its memories of Hume and Scott who are ancient, and o

near and far pictures-on Calton Hill-when you have been able to "rest and be thankful" at Corstorphine Hill-when you have climbed the Salisbury crags-when you have

cottish art gallery is meager indeed, notwithstanding certain rare riches in comparison with the National. But still one may believe of any of these superior objects, as T. Sandys retorted to Shovel when they had played the game of matching the spl

urgh

Ca

s castle more strategically set to guard the city a

an began to fortify himself. It has stood here a thousand years as the bulwark of man against man. Certain it will stand there a thousand years to come. And a

eeping in order that James might be born safe and royal, the castle has had royalties in its keeping. It has kept them rather badly in truth. While many kings have been born here, few kings have died in its security; almost all Scott

, a youth; even the Fourth, who rebelled against his father and won the kingdom-and wore a chain around his body secretly for penance. And

It was held by Malcolm Canmore, of whom and of his Saxon queen Margaret, Dunfermline tells a fuller story; held against rebels and against Engli

taken from this king by a clever ruse planned by the Douglass, Black Knight of Liddesdale. A shipload of wine and biscuits came into harbour, and the unsuspecting castellan, glad to get such precious food in the far north, purchased it all and g

was disloyal. Charles I held it longer than he held England, and Cromwell claimed it in person as part of the Protectorate. Prince Charles, the Third,

by a Japanese cruiser." But it looks like a Gibraltar, and it keeps impregnably the treasure

certain you are the king; even Edward VII, most Stewart of recent kings had to prove himsel

perhaps the Black Watch, the Scots Greys. No doubt of late it has been tramped

te-this level space was a part of Nova Scotia, and the Scotsmen who were made nobles with estates in New Scotland were enfeoffed o

n Cromwell was burned in effigy,

S M

e descent of the portcullis, and the castle is entered.

, and she, loyal and royal soul, died the very night while the enemies from the Highlands, like an army of Macbeth's, surrounded the castle. The place is quite authentic, Saxon in c

n, was captured by Cromwell and listed as "the great iron murderer, Muckle Meg," and "split its throat" in saluting the Duke of York in 1682, a most Jacobite act of loyalty. After the Rising of the Forty Five this gun was taken to London, as though to take it from Scotland were to take the defense f

th a collection of armour and equipment that particularly re-equips the past. And in this hall, under this roof, what splendour, what crime! Most criminal, the "bla

the Royal Lodgings, and often must Queen Mary have gone up and down those stairs, carrying t

merely accepts historically the presence of Mary here; there is too much intertwining of "H" and "M." No Jacobite but divorces Darnley from Mary, even though he would not effect divorce with gunpowder. King Jam

ve in it? It was royally hung; she made it fit for living, with carpets from Turkey, chairs and tables from France, gold hangings that were truly go

hey now? "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner," wrote Randolph, English envoy,

e upon in the bookshop of James Thin, copied into a book of a hundred year

mine

avi

e mi

liber

ra ca

sera

dero

ndo, g

nufle

, imp

beres

metimes it flashed with gay tournament folk; for before and during Mary's time all the world came to measure lances in Edinburgh. Sometimes it swarmed with folk come to watch an execution; in the next century it w

e, was the house of Claverhouse, who watched the killings. At the botto

Convention, 'twas

n go down there are

ier who loves

the bonnet of

my cup, come

y horses and

gates open, and

h the bonnets o

you can join a strange and rather awful multitude as it swarms through the Grassmarket, more and more

here Dorothy and William Wordsworth lodged, on Thursday night, September 15, 180

1530, "nothing is humble or lowly, everything magnificent." On a certain golden gra

alling and th

r. Harkening

pitous city

he keen

I ventured into the Cowgate, and wondered at my own temerity. Stevenson reports, "One night I went along the Cowgate after every one was a-bed but the polic

l in St. Giles and started the Reformation-doesn't it sound like Mrs. O'Leary's cow?-the Covenant was signed (Feb. 28, 1638) on top of a tomb still show

ARS' CH

y, Scott met a charming girl, fell in love with her, took her

f royalty in the world. The crown which was worn by Bruce, and which sat rather uneasily on the very unsteady head of Charles II at what time he was crowned at Scone and was scolded, is of pure gold and much bejeweled. The scepter, made in Paris

nours," but they were spirited away, and later concealed in the castle. Here they remained a hundred and ten years, sealed in a great oak chest.

country? There they lay, crown of The Bruce, scepter of James V, sword of Pope an

young lady near-"No, by God, no!" Never again shall this crown rest on any head. That is assured in a codicil to the Act o

the city runs down to Leith, the Firth shines and carries on its bosom the Inchkeith and the May; the hills of Fife rampart the North; the Highlands with Ben Lomond for sentinel

and rain and bl

ild wet colour an

rood halls of th

n's face that has

ls of thy memor

as a moon (wher

r of old with s

y Queen thro' th

ith a loftier pi

orthern Athens,

ble lips of the

er on glory wi

we whisper with

dered thro'

d frail and gal

rate isles in

ate climbeth,

ith a glimpse of

crumbling alley, a

City is thron

oaring castle a

for the world an

rom the martial

ries roll to a

h S

"Water Poet," who wrote of the High Street in the early Sixteen Hundreds, "the fairest and goodliest streete that ever my eyes beheld." Surely it was then the most impre

of the kingdom built themselves town houses along the causeway. French influence was always strong, and particularly in architecture. So these tall lands rose on either side of the long street, their high, many-storied fronts on the High Street, their many more storied backs toward the Lochs. They were, in truth, part of the defense of the town; from their tall stories the enemy, especially the "auld enemy," could be espied almost as soon a

eet, and the Canongate; St. Giles uniting the first two, a

fe of the city, its trade, its feuds-"a la maniére d'Edimborg" ran the continental saying of fights-its religion, its executions, its burials. The Canongate, outside the city proper and outside the Flo

is unsavoury of course; it is slattern, it is squalid, danger lurks in the wynds and drunkenness spreads itself in the closes. If the old warning cry of "Gardey loo!" is no longer heard at ten o' the night, one still has need of the answering "Haud yer hand!" or, your nose. Dr. Samuel Johnson, walking this street on his first night in Edinburgh, arm in arm with Boswell, declared, "I can smell you

Y HO

ontemporary worthy to Catherine of Medici-there are still, at the end of the long street, Moray House and Queensberry House. Moray is where Cromwell lodged in 1648, and gave no hint of what was coming in 1649; if he had, history might have been different; to-day Moray Hous

ing to-nowhere; here a bit of painting, Norrie's perhaps, or a remnant of timbered ceiling; and everywhere, now as then-more

, its old habitations, its old associations, its particular picturesqueness;

what abasement? To see it now, filled with people and with marching troops in honour of the visiting king, is to get back

came to St. Giles, as has come every sovereign of Scotland, from Malcolm who may have worshiped in

unfaithfu'

d joins the

ymn-books o

oo di

ie Kirk's b

pish

R OF ST

White, in a recently built reformed church on Princes Street, I heard a sermon from the text, "You shall

own till next day. (I saw, with some resentment, over the door of a public house, the motto, "Will ye no come back again?") But, somehow, so many kings gone on,

by the hotel. I had interrupted their quiet Sabbath; it can still be quiet in Edinburgh notwithstanding that a tram car carried me on my way hither. The dining-room of this hotel looked out on the High, and it was breakfast time for these covenanting-looking guests from the countrysid

miss the

kings, and

, death-pale

La Belle Da

ee in t

Street, riding to and fro from the time of the "haar" on her return

NOX'S

al and yi nicht-bour as yi Self," and buy a book or two in its book shop. I took particular pleasure in buying a gir

vement, and realize that Dr. Johnson's wish for

in the pavement near St. Giles, where once st

g folk, triumphant for the moment. And on the balcony of Moray House, within which the marriage of Lady Mary Stewart to the Marquis of Lorne has just been celebrated, there stands the wedding party, and among them the Earl of Argyle. Up the street come

flight to the North and the betrayal, he has been brought back to Edi

g and who thinks to stand in with the Covenant and with the fu

His four quarters are sent to the four corners of

dy of Montrose is dug up out of the Boroughmoor. It is buried in Holyrood. The four quarters are reassembled from Glasgow and Perth and Aberdeen and Inverness. A procession fairly royal moves

M, MARQUIS

effigy the remains could not be found, there has been that justification by procession

fears his f

eserts a

not put it

or lose

ly

ompletely and splendidly Stewart. It is the royalest race which ever played at being sovereign; in sharp contrast with

tewart, but substitute; but he left a Stewart descent) failed to pay the penalty for such assertion. It was the splendour

and, not one of them died in Holyrood. It is their life, the vivid intense flash of it, across those times that seem mysterious, even legendary in

thought to defend himself, but a hand bearing a cross came out of the cloud, and the stag was exorcised. David kept the cross. In dream that night within the castle he was commanded to build an abbey where he had been saved, and the hunting place being this scant mile and a q

ere pleasantly called-have stepped across this line before me, through the centuries. Who am I to be different, unneedful? May I not need inviolate sanctuary? May it not be that at my heels dogs some sinister creditor who will seize me by the skirts before I reach the boundary beyond which there is no exacting for debt? A marvelous thing, this ancient idea of sanctu

OOD P

th, one becomes, not a s

uld be covenanted or uncovenanted. The Merry Monarch was ever an uncovenanted person, not at all Scottish, although somewhat like the errant James-whose errancy was of his own choosing. Charles had acquired a French taste at the court of his cousin, Louis the Grand. So the new Holyrood was built in French baronial style. And no monarch has ever ca

Richard the Second, and entirely rebuilt when the Stewarts were beginning to be splendid and assured. Over the west doorway, high

y name and I will stablish the

aving paid his penalty on the scaffold in Whitehall. And the House is in ruins, "bare ruined choir," where not even "the late birds sing." Al

cannot compare with Melrose, not even the great east window with its rich quatrefoil tracing. But what s

in prayer, there appeared the Lord of the Isles, come repentant from burning Inverne

t Tudor, the union of the "Thistle and the Rose." James V was not married here, he went to France for his frail bride, Magdalene, who lived but seven weeks in this inhospitabl

istened here. James VII, brother to Charles II, restored this Chapel Royal and prepared it for the Roman ritual. James VIII was never here, or but as a baby. Charles III-did th

knows-gowned in black velvet, at five o'clock on a July morning, was married to her y

had been wed to her boy-cousin, but with preaching as she wed the Bishop's cousin. And "at this marriage there was neither pleasure nor pastime used as use was

was destroyed, by the Re

rd in caring for the remains of his queenly mother? I hope that Darnley does not rest beside her. For I think those exquisite marble fingers of the effigy in Henry VII'

ES

n this dull chateau, opened upon a great outer court that lay between the palace and the walls. Coming down the Canongate from the castle it must have looked very splendid to James. And yet he did not care to remain in it long. All the Stewarts had errant souls, and they loved to wander their kingdom through. It presented

hose early years of the Fifteen Hundreds the Bagdad of the world, and her days as well as her nights were truly Ara

ose bold above as they do to-day, and crowning the scene the leonine form of Arthur's Seat above the green slopes, the lion keeping guard against the invading lion of England! I think

ng of ships; King James dreamed of a navy, and he had an admirable admiral in Sir Anthony Wood. In the castle there was the forging of guns, the "seven sisters of Brothw

ctual life which has ever been quick in Edinburgh. It was a

first of August Patrick Johnson and his fellows, that playit a play to the king, in Lithgow, receives three pounds; Jacob the lutar, the king of bene, Swanky that brought balls to the king, twa wemen that sang to his highness, Witherspoon the foular

ime. It was Flodden that made men old,

Nor' Loch, and across the woods and moors to the glittering blue Firth, there sat the pale stripling, Gavin Douglass, third son of Douglass, Archi

d that in a

Scotland Vi

eneath his

ric of fai

ter. And if the "Dark Ages" of Europe were brilliantly luminous in Moslem capitals, Bagdad and Cordova, s

she had presented him with a copy of Virgil, bidding him translate it. And so, quite boldly, before

f sleit and of

ready "to go to the printer," or more like, to be shown to the king. In sixteen months he ha

scensus Averni, for Gavin was Scotch, th

cill and eithga

d, and pass o

is of Pluto, a

en and patent

e to return

ve recovir th

cul werk, tha

ene quhom hiech

vertue has ra

e equale Jup

gendrit of goddes

ay is wilder

est; and the

h his drery

n round abou

been splendid enough, and daring enough

ar et om

num caeli vent

one, and not only those he held with "gude maister Walter Kennedy," and published for the amusement of the King and his Court. It was a more solemn event when the future Bishop of Du

own making"-a very handsome figure, this Dunbar, in his red velvet robe richly fringed with fur, which he had yearly as his reward

evidence, it is the Fourth James and not the Fifth, who wrote those cha

his side, and blew

elted knights came sk

s little knife, loo

est gentleman that

gang nae ma

into t

g nae mair a

shine ne'er

the criticism of young Gavin on this joyou

re in Heven

e folk i

h with all

lowship of poetry, would drink a glass of red wine in memory of fr

d Harry and

s schour of mo

lyne he had

er Robert

an than Gavin, if older, would quote

t on gude

a flo

yne said

thow pit

ndful of Scottish as well as of Trojan history, w

said, part In

me thocht noc

but for to win

rycht full weill

h the Canongate to Holyrood, back to the court, where he would meet with young David Lindsay, of a different sort from young Gavin Douglass. And they would chuc

ve ye na wra

I staw ane p

That suld

delyver

Leve ye in

"Will Len

s wyfe that

cquentance w

"Ken ye n

quhat that i

ard he na I

y maister on

e bischop th

orne that f

at said he o

Of gude he s

s Grace of t

lose his l

h crown. So Scotland harboured him, and Holyrood was hospitable to him. James married him to Lady Jane

DOR, QUEEN

no doubt believing that there ought to be, since James was slow in marrying, and surely a Spanish princess would best mate this royalest of the Stewarts. Dom Pedro better liked the extravagant kingly court at Holyrood than the niggardly court at Windsor. He wrote home to Ferdinand and Isabella, "The kingdom is very old,

, aged fourteen. The Scottish king would none of the alliance for years; James preferred hypothetical brides and errant affairs. But the En

d in "a jacket of crimson velvet bordered with cloth of gold." Leaving his restive charger, "mounting on the pallefroy of the Qwene, and the said Qwene behind hym, so rode throw the towne of Edinburgh." Their route lay through the Grassmarket up to the Cas

lands were hung with banners and scarlet cloth, and morality plays were performed before the people. In the palace there was a royal scene. And ou

t king played to the little princess upon the virginal; and then, on bended knee and with unbonneted head, he listened while she played

the "ruddy lion ramped in gold" floated war-like over all, and James and all Scotland prepared to march down to Flodden, heeding not the warning which had sounded at mi

o Holyrood; that queen who then and ever since held half the world in thrall, like ano

e mists of the sea, Mary Stewart, Dowager of France, Queen of Scotland, Heiress

ear at hand; Mary could not see a hundred feet into her kingdom. In truth she arrived at port a week before the ship was expected-and Mary also flashed through

suspended moment in the world, the sixth decade of the sixteenth century. And nowhere were affairs in such delicate balance, or so like to swing out of balance as in Scot

ode throug

r, and Mary and her French courtiers and Scotch Maries, rode through the

cal folk; for all the cultured world was French in those days, and Mary and her Maries had

where again she seems to listen to that prophetic and pious serenade, Scottish protestant psalms accompanied by fiddles and sung to a French Catholic queen. "Vile fiddles and rebecks," complains Brantome, he

k crimson damask, which Mary drew about her on that night of her return. And here hangs a picture of Queen Elizabeth, authentic, Tudoresque, which did not hang here when Ma

oyal, was Jacobite, and this gray turret of the northwest corner a building of James V on a foundation of James IV-perhaps where he had listened in the evening to Margaret and her virginal-was sa

hat the Reformation did not approve. Here by the very stairs of the turret Darnley led the murderers on Rizzio, from his private apartments to hers. (I find it fit that Ker of Fawdonside, one of the murderers, should have married later the widow of Knox.) Mary was held here a prisoner; they would "cut her into collops and cast her over the wall" if she summoned help. But Mary could order that the blood stains of the fifty-six wounds of Rizzio should remain "ane memoriall to quychen her revenge." They quicken our thought of

the

ell C

hook all Edinburgh, that astonished the worl

-the

ean as that of Kirk o' Field, a day at Holyrood, and a forced ride with ruffian nobles, Lindsay and Ruthven on each hand, to

ips are dr

consumed

y. And

th the Queen, perhaps in that small supper room where Rizzio was supping with a queen; and they had retired. "The palace lights were going out

ead, and Your Majesty

ninth generation from Bruce, The Bruce. The "auld enemy" is finally defeated; and

ctures of Scottish kings, painted under order of Charles II in 1680, by the Fleming, DeWitt, who agreed to furnish the pictures in two years for one hund

turns. In this gallery was held the ball of P

ed the "royalists" at Falkirk, Hardy's dragoons slashed these p

es Ga

ms one's very own, seems possessed. That, I take it, is the great democratic triumph, in that

e is Princes

e descends, but a romantic gray twilight veils everything, and evokes more than everything. For any lengthened visit in Edinburgh I dare not inhabit a hotel roo

ES ST

is, "From a Window in Princes S

rags that fa

are knee of

against the

rises, stre

ejeweled, st

d walls the

and domed a

valley's da

mysterio

menacing

the lingerin

silver du

ed from cr

blowing po

ile the part which is gardened. It is the loveliest str

Drive with the shoreless infinity of Lake Michigan, Summit Avenue with the deep gorge of the Upper Mississippi, Quebec and its Esplanade. But

uniform in gray stone, where hotels and shops furnish the immediate life of the city. There are electric cars running the full

e, and partly for the comment of these Scotch coach drivers and guards, who are not merely Scottish but the essence of Scotland. I shall never forget how an American traveler-of course they are all Americans in these tally-hos-commenting on the

, of Scotland, streams throu

nd flowered, with a "sunken garden" near the Castle-side, through which trains are conveyed. The smoke, so much lamented, does often rest wi

h Street, and the high lands with flags of washing hanging out the windows which answer the flags red and leoninely

dividing the Gardens, and there are many Raeburns here and there, in private rooms of banks and other institutions, rare Raeburns with that casual, direct, human look he could give men and women. The gal

provided himself beforehand with a tartan. Almost every one can if he will. And there is always the college of heraldry to help one out. Or the audacity of choosing the tartan you like best; an affront, I assure you, to all good Scots

d the benefit of intimate association with the French, it can also be traced to the longer centuries during which tartans have brought an understanding of colour harmonies. Because there has been this love of colour, there has come with it vanity. With vanity there has come that rare ability of the women of t

Johnson would have much cared for this modern tea room, where he might review the world. It seems that he drank much tea when he was the guest of Boswell, especially when he was the guest of Mrs. Boswell, in James Court the other side the Gardens. "Boswell has handsome and very spacious rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and the other four s

the tram cars, to look up at the great Castle Hill, green until it meets the buff-coloured stone and the buff-coloured buildings that seem to grow ou

ice of the High Street look higher than ever. Gray is in truth the colour of Edinburgh, "the gray metropolis of the North." But it is never a dreary gray, never a heavy gray like London. There the gray is thick, charged with so

its charm, a something that every feminine city knows; Edi

the castle, some

t lordly castle, th

ove it the clouds

dge of the Castle Hill as it is silhouetted against the west sky-if you walk around on Lothian Stree

besieging the place, and a Scotch "haar" rolling in from the sea and shutting off the castle enabled the little p

nd night leave was forbidden, used to make his way down this cliff to visit a bonnie lassie in the West Bow. Now, on a wind-swept night, which can be very windy around that castle profile-the wind has not abated since the thirteenth century-Frank led the remembered way. I wonder if he remembered the lassie. But his footing was sure. Once, it is true, t

CLAVERHOUSE,

ught wine to Albany, and the wine cask contained a rope. Inviting his guardians to sup with him, he plied them with heated wine, perhaps drugged wine, then, the dagger. Albany's servant insisted on going down the rope first. It was s

onnie Dundee, to a secret conference with the Duke of Gord

ng for a cat." But Stevenson knew the way. Perhaps not actually, but he sent more than one

ton

negligible enough, although it is impossible to understand Edinburgh, to understand Scotland, unless you have looked on the architectural remnants on this Hill, and considered them philosophically. But, as Stevenson said-"Of all places fo

e. Perhaps a blue haze hangs over the Pentlands. Perhaps a smoke-cloud makes a nearer sky for the town itself, this Auld Reekie. Not only perhaps, but very probably. There are clear days in Edinburgh. They are to be treasured. There is no air more stimulating in all the world. October sometimes slips into the

th came to this northern capital, and was-alas!-received as though he were Bonnie Prince Charlie himself; and was received-again alas!-by Sir Walter clad in a Campbell plaid, and as loyal to the Regent, the florid Florizel, as he had been to Prince Charles in the "Waverleys." Because of a

Dugald Stewart? There is a memorial to Burns whose friend Willie that brewed a peck o' malt lies in t

sunny fronta

use of Kings,

eady and the s

e salt-encruste

their founded t

th their strong la

, here in thi

erases and th

lasting

d looking as though he belonged there

, with casual sheep

he city. And ther

after castle-days. Farther a-city lies Holyrood, with the ruined abbey, the Queen Mary wing, and the scarlet patch of the sentinel

ngs that from here rise almost to the purple edge of the hilly Pentland background, with the spire of the Tolbooth and the crown of St. Giles breakin

he golden days it was a steep hillside leading down to a jousting ground. Tradition has it that Bothwell launched his horse down its almost-pre

iles that stretch to Leith, and to th

om lies between. The night is velvet black, a drop curtain against which is thrown the star-pricked map of the city. One can well believe how the young Stevenson, in those romantic days when he carried a lantern under his jac

t. Paul, San Francisco, with water and land combined, you, too, have lingered

appealed to him when he was writing the "Waverleys." There is an American who has written of the Hill, a young inland American whom th

one I stood

ne that was s

reams of it m

d the folded

lurred, even a

eet memory; sp

t-red, on the g

ghts the air was

ill; an alien b

bournes in a

ines a new-freed

of rich ear

s: Mist, exile,

soul is freed,