Oh, waly, waly up yon bank,
An' waly, waly down yon brae,
An' waly, waly by yon burn side,
Whar I an' my love were wont to gae.
Hey nonnie, nonnie, but love is bonnie
A little while, when it is new,
But when it's auld, it waxes cauld,
An' wears awa like mornin' dew.
Oh, wherefore sud I busk my head,
An' wherefore sud I kaim my hair,
Sin' my gude Lord's forsaken me,
An' says he'll never lo'e me mair.
When we rade in, by Glasgow toun,
We were a comely sight to see,
My Lord was clad in black velvet
An' I, mysel', in cramasye.
Now Arthur's Seat shall be my bed,
Nae roof henceforth shall shelter me.
St. Anton's Well shall be my drink,
Sin' my gude Lord's forsaken me.
It's no' the frost, that freezes fell,
Nor driftin' snaw's inclemencie,
It's no' sic cauld, that gars me greet,
But my love's heart's grown cauld to me.
When I lay sick, an' very sick,
When I lay sick, an' like to die,
A gentleman o' gude account
Cam' frae the west to visit me;
But Blackwood whispered in my Lord's ear
A fause word, baith o' him an' me.
"Gae, little Page, an' tell your Lord
If he'll come doun an' dine wi' me,
I'll set him on a chair o' gowd
An' serve him on my bended knee."
"When cockle shells turn siller bells,
When wine draps red frae ilka tree,
When frost and snaw will warm us a',
Then I'll come doun an' dine wi' thee!"
If I had kent, as I ken now
That love it was sae ill to win,
I wad ne'er hae wet my cherry cheek
For ony man, or mother's son.
When my father gat word o' this,
I wat, an angry man was he.
He sent fourscore o' his Archers bauld
To bring me safe to his ain countrie.
"Fare ye well then, Jamie Douglas,
I need care as little as ye care for me.
The Earl o' Mar is my father dear,
An' I sune will see my ain countrie.
"Ye thocht that I was like yoursel',
Loving ilk ane I did see;
But here I swear, by the heavens clear,
I never lo'ed a man but thee."
Slowly, slowly rose he up
An' slowly, slowly cam' he doun,
An' when he saw her on horseback set,
He garred his drums and trumpets sound.
When I upon my horse was set,
My tenants a' were wi' me ta'en,
They sat them doun upon their knees
An' begged me to come back again.
"Oh fare ye weel, my bonnie Palace,
An' fare ye weel, my children three.
God grant your father may get mair grace,
An' lo'e ye better than he's lo'ed me!
"An' wae be to you, ye fause Blackwood,
Aye, an' an ill death may ye die,
Ye were the first, and the foremost man,
That parted my ain gude Lord and me."
As we cam' on, through Edinbreuch toun,
My gude father, he welcomed me,
He caused his minstrels loud to sound,
It was nae music at a' to me;
Nae mirth, nor music sounds in my ear,
Sin' my ain Lord's forsaken me.
"Now haud y'r tongue, my daughter dear,
An' o' your weepin' let me be;
A bill o' divorce I'll gar write for him,
An' I'll get as gude a Lord to thee."
"Oh, haud your tongue, my father dear,
An' o' your talking let me be;
I wadna gi'e a look o' my gude Lord's face
For a' the Lords in the north countrie.
"The lintie is a bonnie bird,
An' aften flies far frae its nest,
Sae a' the warld may plainly see
He's far awa' that I lo'e best."
As she was sitting at her bower window,
Lookin' afar ower hill and glen,
Wha did she see but fourscore men
That came to tak' her back again.
Out bespak' the foremost man,
(An' whaten a weel spoken man was he!)
"If the Lady o' Douglas be within
Ye'll bid her come doun and speak to me."
Then out bespak' her father dear,
I wat an angry man was he,
"Ye may gang back the gate ye cam',
For my daughter's face ye'se never see."
"Now hand your tongue, my father dear,
An' o' your folly let me be,
For I'll gae back to my gude Lord,
Sin' his love has come back to me."
She laughed like ony new-made bride,
When she bad farewell to her father's towers;
But the tear, I wat, stude in her e'e,
When she cam' in sicht o' her ain Lord's bowers.
As she rade by the Orange Gate,
Whaten a blyth sight did she see,
Her gude Lord comin' her to meet,
An' in his hand, her bairnies three.
"Oh, bring to me a pint o' wine,
That I may drink to my Ladie."
She took the cup intill her hand,
But her bonnie heart, it burst in three.
These melancholy lines were the lament of Lady Barbara Erskine,
wife of the second Marquis of Douglas. Her husband deserted her
in consequence of the base (and unfounded) scandal poured into his
ear by his chamberlain, Lowrie. This man had formerly been refused
by Lady Barbara; and, though he had since married Mariote Weir, the
heiress of Blackwood, he hated Lady Barbara for her rejection of his
suit, and tried to revenge himself as described in the ballad. Lord
Mar took his daughter home, but Lowrie's treachery being discovered,
Lady Douglas's fame was cleared. Her lord received her back, but too
late for her happiness. Though the ballad mentions three children,
only one son lived to grow up. He was the gallant young Lord Angus,
who fell at Steinkirk in his twenty-first year, at the head of his
regiment, the 26th Cameronians.
St. Anthony's Chapel, just above us, was also a hermitage, and
tradition says that, besides being founded for the guardianship
of the holy well, it was also a spot for watching vessels, the
duties on which were part of the revenue of the Abbey of Holyrood.
At night a light was hung in the tower to guide mariners in their
progress up the Forth. The whole of this part of the Queen's Park
is so beautifully and faithfully described in the account of Jeanie
Deans's midnight meeting with the outlaw Robertson, that every
other description must seem superfluous and uncalled for. In spite
of the lapse of years since _The Heart of Midlothian_ was written,
the features of the spot have little changed. Muschat's Cairn still
raises its ill-omened heap of stones close to the Jock's Lodge gate
of the Park. The unhappy woman who was murdered here in 1720 was the
wife of Nicol Muschat of Boghall, a surgeon, and a man of infamous
character. His wife's only crime was that she loved him, and that he
was tired of her. He tried various means of getting rid of her, and
both he and one of his profligate associates, Campbell of Burnbank,
made several ineffectual attempts to murder her. At last Muschat
persuaded his wife to take a solitary evening walk with him towards
Duddingston, and at this spot he cut her throat. She was found next
morning quite dead, and covered with wounds received in the struggle.
For this murder Muschat was hanged in the Grassmarket the following
January, but, to mark the horror that his crime inspired, a cairn was
raised on the spot where the bloody deed took place.
We now leave the park and pass the little roadside station of St.
Margaret's, where the Queen always gets out of the train when
she goes to Holyrood. To our right, on the slope of the hill, is
Parson's Green, a small place, hardly more than a villa. A curious
traditionary rhyme prevails among the children in this district,
which they chant incessantly, whenever a lady passes them on
horseback--
Ladybird, can't see
Twenty minutes past three.
What the origin or the sense of these words is, I have never found
any one to tell me, and it is curious that it is only on this side of
Edinburgh that they are in common use.
We are now in the hamlet of Jock's Lodge. There is a vague tradition
that the original Jock was a beggar, who built himself a hut on the
lonely path that led to the Figgate Muir; but he must have lived
very long ago, for in 1650, when Cromwell besieged Edinburgh, the
place had already got the name. "The enemy," says Nicol, "placed
their whole horse in and about Restalrig, the foot at that place
called Jockis' Lodge, and the cannon at the foot of Salisbury hill."
A toll-bar formerly stood where the road divides; that to the right
leads to Duddingston, the other road, which we follow, runs past
Piershill Barracks. On this spot there originally stood a villa,
occupied by a Colonel Piers, who commanded a troop of horse in
Edinburgh about the middle of the last century, and who gave his name
to the house. It was pulled down in 1793, and the present barracks
built in its place.
After passing them, and crossing the railway, we perceive a
gigantic tomb, standing in a field to the left, which immediately
strikes the beholder with a feeling of astonishment. Built in a
classic style that recalls the sunny skies of Italy, and enriched
with a beautifully carved marble frieze, representing the Song of
Miriam, and the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, it
seems singularly out of place in the neglected corner of a large
grass field, with weeds and nettles growing round it. It covers
the remains of the late Mr. William Miller of Craigentinnie, a
great antiquarian, and the owner of a fine library. His father,
another William Miller, was a wealthy seedsman in Edinburgh during
the last century. It was at his shop in the Canongate that Prince
Charles's army procured five hundred shovels for trenching purposes
in 1745. By his own exertions, and those of his father before him, he
accumulated a large fortune, part of which he laid out on the lands
of Craigentinnie. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and was
well known for his charity and benevolence. About 1780, when in his
ninetieth year, he married an Englishwoman who was nearly fifty. They
went to London, and then to Paris, from whence they returned with a
son and heir, the late Mr. Miller. It was often thought that he was
a suppositious child, and some people believed him to be really a
woman, from his weak voice, slight figure, and absence of beard. Be
this as it may, no one but those immediately interested in him were
allowed to touch his body after death, and, as by his own commands he
lies in a grave dug forty feet deep beneath this massive monument,
his secret lies buried with him. His large fortune was for some years
the subject of a lawsuit, but eventually it passed into the hands of
a distant relation, the late Mr. Christie Miller, M.P.
The land on either side of us once formed part of the Figgate Muir,
through which flowed the Figgate Burn, as the lower reaches of the
Braid Burn were called. It was a wild, desolate expanse, covered
with whins and heather, and bordered by a broad, sandy beach. The
Fishwives' Causeway, which ran across it, was a remnant of one of the
roads formed by Queen Mary, soon after her return from France, for
the improvement and civilization of her more barbarous kingdom. It
is said to have been made on the site of an old Roman road. It was
formerly the favourite way for the fishwives to carry their wares
into Edinburgh, and they remained faithful to it long after the
present road was made.
As we reach the sea, Portobello lies to our right. It has been called
the Brighton of Edinburgh; and, with the adjoining village of Joppa,
it presents a labyrinth of villas and lodging-houses, which in the
summer-time are generally full. The origin of the name is that the
first house built here was erected in 1742 by an old seaman, who had
served under Admiral Vernon, and who called his house Portobello
Hut, in honour of the triumph of the British flag at Portobello, in
the West Indies. By degrees more houses sprung up round this humble
cottage, and the discovery of a bed of clay by the Figgate Burn
started the manufacture of Portobello ware. This pottery, which has
not been made for many years, was almost identical with that made at
Prestonpans and Bo'ness, and resembles very rude Staffordshire. The
earthenware was coarse, and the colouring crude, but the Toby-jugs
and figures were often well modelled. Specimens can still be picked
up, but they are more often objects of curiosity than of beauty.
We shall not explore Portobello further, but turn to the left, and
follow the road that runs parallel to the railway to Leith. On one
side of us is the sea, breaking on a narrow, shingly beach; and
beyond, there is nothing to stop the eye till it reaches the distant
shores of Fife, but the rugged outline of Inchkeith, with its lines
of fortification gleaming white in the sunlight. Before we have gone
very far, we see a level crossing and a signal-box on the railway
beside us; and, taking advantage of our privileges as pedestrians,
we pass safely and unquestioned through the narrow posterns, while
it might require some persuasion to get the heavy gates unlocked and
opened for a carriage to enter them. We now find ourselves following
a straight path leading across the flat green meadows, which stretch
far away on either side, their expanse being only broken by narrow
watercourses. With the level rays of the afternoon sun glancing
over them, gilding the tips of the grass, and imparting an air of
Dutch-like prosperity and peace, it comes upon one rather as a shock
to be told that these quiet pastures are the great sewage farm of
Edinburgh, an experiment on a large scale which has turned out
successfully. We presently come to high walls, behind which stands
the old house of Craigentinnie, long the inheritance of the Nisbets,
a younger branch of the Nisbets of Dean. As we have already said, it
was bought in the last century by the father of the late Mr. William
Miller. The latter added greatly to the house, and built steep roofs
and turrets in the style of a French château, which has altered it
very much from the old Scotch house that originally stood there.
We now come to the little village of Restalrig, or Lestalric, as
it used always to be called. For centuries it was famous all over
Scotland as the burial-place of the blessed virgin St. Triduana. "She
is said," writes Dr. Laing, "to have come from Achaia in the 4th
century in company with St. Regulus, and to have died at Restalrig in
the year 510, in the reign of Eugenius III., the 8th of October being
held as her festival day. Although no precise date can be assigned
when a church or chapel was first erected and dedicated to this
saint, whose bones for many centuries were held in high veneration,
or when it first became the parish church of Leith, we can trace it
back at least to the 12th century."[48]
[48] _Collegiate Churches of Midlothian._ Bannatyne Club, 1861.
St. Triduana's name is unknown in the Roman breviary, but tradition
says that, with two companions, she devoted herself to a recluse life
at Roscoby. Her great beauty attracted the attentions of Nectan, a
Pictish chief; and she fled to Dunfallad in Athole to escape him.
His emissaries still pursued her, and as she discovered it was her
eyes which had entranced him, she plucked them out and sent them to
him transfixed on a thorn.[49] She then withdrew to Restalrig, where
she died. Henceforward she became the patron saint of those whose
eyesight was defective, and many a pilgrimage was made to her well.
She was frequently painted carrying her own eyes on a salver, or on
the point of a sword.
[49]
Sanct Tredwell als thare may be sene,
Quhilk on ane prik hes baith her ene.