The Spell of Scotland Part 7

To-day perhaps its defense might be battered down, as some one has suggested, "from the Firth by a j.a.panese cruiser." But it looks like a Gibraltar, and it keeps impregnably the treasures of the past; as necessary a defense, I take it, as of any material treasure of the present.

If you are a king you must wait to enter; summons must be made to the Warder, and it must be certain you are the king; even Edward VII, most Stewart of recent kings had to prove himself not Edward I, not English, but "Union." If you are a commoner you know no such difficulties.

First you linger on the broad Esplanade where a regiment in kilts is drilling, perhaps the Black Watch, the Scots Greys. No doubt of late it has been tramped by regiments of the "First Hundred Thousand" and later, in training for the wars.

As an American you linger here in longer memory. For when Charles was king--the phrase sounds recent to one who is eternally Jacobite--this level s.p.a.ce was a part of Nova Scotia, and the Scotsmen who were made n.o.bles with estates in New Scotland were enfeoffed on this very ground.

So close were the relations between old and new, so indifferent were the men of adventuring times toward s.p.a.ce.

Or, you linger here to recall when Cromwell was burned in effigy, along with "his friend the Devil."

You pa.s.s through the gate, where no wine casks block the descent of the portcullis, and the castle is entered. There are three or four points of particular interest.

Queen Margaret's chapel, the oldest and smallest religious house in Scotland, a tiny place indeed, where Margaret was praying when word was brought of the death of Malcolm in battle, 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 character with Norman touches. I know no place where a thousand years can be so swept away, and Saxon Margaret herself seems to kneel in the perpetual dim twilight before the chancel.

There is Mons Meg, a monstrous gun indeed, pointing its mouth toward the Forth, as though it were the guardian of Scotland. A very pretentious gun, which was forged for James II, traveled to the sieges of Dumbarton and of Norham, lifted voice in salute to Mary in France on her marriage to the Dauphin, 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 from Jacobitism. But Sir Walter Scott, restoring Scotland, and being in much favour with George IV, secured the return of Mons Meg. It was as though a prince of the realm has returned.

Now, the great gun, large enough to shoot men for ammunition, looks, silently but sinisterly, out over the North Sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONS MEG.]

History comes crowding its events in memory when one enters Old Parliament Hall. It is fitly ancestral, a n.o.ble hall with an open timbered roof of great dignity, with 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 "black dinner"

given to the Black Dougla.s.ses to their death. Unless one should resent the dinner given by Leslie to Cromwell, when there was no black bull's head served.

By a secret stair, which commoners and Jacobites may use to-day, communication was had with the Royal Lodgings, and often must Queen Mary have gone up and down those stairs, carrying the tumult of her heart, the perplexity of her kingdom; for Mary was both woman and sovereign.

The Royal Lodgings contain Queen Mary's Rooms, chiefly; the other rooms are negligible. It is a tiny bedchamber, too small to house the eager soul of Mary, but very well s.p.a.ced for the n.i.g.g.ard soul of James. One 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 James I, when he returned fourteen years after to the place where he was VI, made a pilgrimage to his own birth-room on June 19, 1617. I suppose he found the narrow s.p.a.ce like unto the Majesty that doth hedge a king.

Mary must have beat her heart against these walls as an eagle beats wings against his cage. She never loved the place. Who could love it who must live 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 gold for the bed, and many tapestries with which to shut out the cold--eight pictures of the Judgment of Paris; four pictures of the Triumph of Virtue!

Here she kept her library, one hundred and fifty-three precious volumes--where are they now? "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner,"

wrote Randolph, English envoy, to his queen, "instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie."

And I wondered if here she wrote that Prayer which but the other day I came upon in the bookshop of James Thin, copied into a book of a hundred years back, in a handwriting that has something of Queen Mary's quality in it--

"O Domine Deus!

Speravi in te; O care mi Iesu!

Nunc libera me: In dura catena, In misera poena Desidero te; Languendo, gemendo, Et genuflectendo Adoro, imploro, Ut liberes me!"

Her windows looked down across the city toward Holyrood. Almost she must have heard John Knox thunder in the pulpit of St. Giles, and thunder against her. And, directly beneath far down she saw the Gra.s.smarket.

Sometimes 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 was filled in the "Killing Time," with Covenanter mob applauding the execution of Royalists, with Royalist mob applauding the execution of Covenanters; Mary's time was not the one "to glorify G.o.d in the Gra.s.smarket."

At the top of the market, near where the West Bow leads up to the castle, was the house of Claverhouse, who watched the killings. At the bottom of the market was the West Port through which Bonnie Dundee rode away.

"To the Lords of Convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke, Ere the king's crown go down there are crowns to be broke, So each cavalier who loves honour and me, Let him follow the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee.

Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle my horses and call up my men, Fling all your gates open, and let me gae free, For 'tis up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee."

And to-day, but especially on Sat.u.r.day nights, if you care to take your life, or your peace in hand, you can join a strange and rather awful mult.i.tude as it swarms through the Gra.s.smarket, more and more drunken as midnight comes on, and not less or more drunken than the mob which hanged Captain Porteous.

It is a decided relief to look down and find the White Hart Inn, still an inn, where Dorothy and William Wordsworth lodged, on Thursday night, September 15, 1803--"It was not noisy, and tolerably cheap. Drank tea, and walked up to the Castle."

The Cowgate was a fas.h.i.+onable suburb in Mary's time. A canon of St.

Andrews wrote in 1530, "nothing is humble or lowly, everything magnificent." On a certain golden gray afternoon I had climbed to Arthur's Seat to see the city through the veil of mist--

"I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Harkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind."

It was late, gathering dusk and rain, when I reached the level and thinking to make a short cut--this was once the short cut to St.

Cuthbert's from Holyrood--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 policeman." Well, if Scott liked to "put a c.o.c.ked hat on a story," Stevenson liked to put it on his own adventures. The Cowgate, in dusk rain, is adventure enough.

Across the height lies Greyfriar's. The church is negligible, the view from there superb, the place historic. One year after Jenny Geddes threw her stool 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 shown, hundreds pressing to the signing, some signing with their blood. The Reformation was on, not to be stopped until all Scotland was harried and remade.

I like best to think that in this churchyard, on a rainy Sunday, Scott met a charming girl, fell in love with her, took her home under his umbrella, and, did not marry her--his own romance!

Because no king shall ever wear the crown again, nor wave the scepter, nor wield the sword of state, the Regalia, housed in the Crown Room, and guarded from commoner and king by ma.s.sive iron grating, is more interesting than any other appanage of 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 for James V, carries a beryl, come from Egypt three thousand years ago, or, from a Druid priest in the mist of time. The sword was a gift from Pope Julius to James IV; in those days the Scottish sovereign was surely the "Most Catholic Majesty."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREYFRIARS' CHURCHYARD.]

England has no ancient regalia; hers were thrown into the melting pot by Cromwell. The Protector--and Destructor--would fain have grasped these "Honours," 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. The rumour increased that they had gone to England. And finally Sir Walter Scott secured an order from George IV to open the chest (Feb. 4, 1818).

It was a tremendous moment to Scott. Could he restore the Honours as well as the country? There they lay, crown of The Bruce, scepter of James V, sword of Pope and King. The castle guns thundered--how Mons Meg must have regretted her lost voice!

And still we can hear the voice of Scott, when a commissioner playfully lifted the crown as if to place it on the head of a young lady near--"No, by G.o.d, no!" Never again shall this crown rest on any head.

That is a.s.sured in a codicil to the Act of Union. And--it may be that other crowns shall in like manner gain a significance when they no longer rest on uneasy heads.

The view from the King's bastion is royal. Where is there its superior?

And only its rival from Calton Hill, from Arthur's Seat. The Gardens lie below, the New Town spreads out, the city runs down to Leith, the Firth s.h.i.+nes and carries on its bosom the Inchkeith and the May; the hills of Fife rampart the North; the Highlands with Ben Lomond for sentinel form the purple West; and south are the Braid hills and the heathery Pentlands--the guide has pointed through a gap in the castle wall to the hills and to the cottage at Swanston.

"City of mists and rain and blown gray s.p.a.ces, Dashed with the wild wet colour and gleam of tears, Dreaming in Holyrood halls of the pa.s.sionate faces Lifted to one Queen's face that has conquered the years.

Are not the halls of thy memory haunted places?

Cometh there not as a moon (where blood-rust sears Floors a-flutter of old with silks and laces) Gilding a ghostly Queen thro' the mist of tears?

"Proudly here, with a loftier pinnacled splendour Throned in his northern Athens, what spells remain Still on the marble lips of the Wizard, and render Silent the gazer on glory without a stain!

Here and here, do we whisper with hearts more tender, Tusitala wandered thro' mist and rain; Rainbow-eyes and frail and gallant and slender, Dreaming of pirate isles in a jeweled main.

"Up the Canongate climbeth, cleft a-sunder Raggedly here, with a glimpse of the distant sea, Flashed through a crumbling alley, a glimpse of wonder, Nay, for the City is throned in Eternity!

Hark! from the soaring castle a cannon's thunder Closeth an hour for the world and an aeon for me, Gazing at last from the martial heights whereunder Deathless memories roll to an ageless sea."

_High Street_

If the Baedeker with a cautious reservation, declares Princes Street "Perhaps" the handsomest in Europe, there is no reservation in the guide-book report of Taylor, the "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 impressive street in the world. Who can escape a sharp impression to-day? It was then the most curious street in the world, and it has lost none of its power to evoke wonder.

A causeway between the castle and Holyrood, a steep ridge lying between the Nor' Loch (where now are the Princes' Gardens) and the Sou' Loch (where now are the Meadows, suburban dwelling) the old height offered the first refuge to those who would fain live under the shadow of the castle. As the castle became more and more the center of the kingdom, dwelling under its shadow became more and more important, if not secure.

The mightiest lords 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 as from the castle. And the closes, the wynds, those dark tortuous alleys which lead between, and which to-day in their squalor are the most picturesque corners of all Europe, were in themselves means of defense in the old days when cannon were as often of leather as of iron, and guns were new and were little more reaching than arrows, and bludgeons and skene dhus and fists were the final effective weapon when a.s.sault was intended to the city.

The ridge divides itself into the Lawnmarket, the High Street, and the Canongate; St. Giles uniting the first two, and the Netherbow port, now removed, dividing the last two.

The Lawnmarket in the old days was near-royal, and within its houses the great n.o.bles lodged, and royalty was often a guest, or a secret guest. The High Street was the business street, centering the life of the city, its trade, its feuds--"a la maniere d'Edimborg" ran the continental saying of fights--its religion, its executions, its burials.

The Canongate, outside the city proper and outside the Flodden wall and within the precincts of Holyrood, therefore regarded as under the protection of Holy Church, became the aristocratic quarters of the later Stewarts, of the wealthy n.o.bles of the later day.