the real happenings on that tragic wedding-night. The majority inclined
to think that the bride herself, crazed by grief at the loss of her
lover, tried to kill her husband rather than be his wife in anything
save legal formality. Others swore that the assailant was none other
than the discarded lover, and that Lord Rutherfurd, having left Baldoon
for dead, had escaped by the chimney where the unfortunate bride was
crouching. But in those days there was bound to be yet another factor
brought into the tale. Witches were held responsible for many a crime in
Scotland in the seventeenth century, and of course Lord Stair's "auld
witch wife" was adjudged guilty of the whole tragedy. In a sense,
doubtless, so she was, but the description given by the credulous of
how, on her marriage night, Janet Dalrymple was "harled" through the
house by evil spirits in such a way as to cause her death shortly
afterwards, is slightly at variance with the actual facts. Yet others
there were who said that she who had sworn solemnly by all that was holy
to keep her plighted troth with Andrew Rutherfurd, had obviously handed
herself over, body and soul, to Satan when the troth was broken, and
that he who would have slain David Dunbar was the Evil One himself.
"He threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed,
Into the chimney did so his rival maul,
His bruised bones ne'er were cured but by the fall."
The "fall" referred to by this scurrilous lampoon, written by Sir
William Hamilton, a bitter enemy of Lord Stair, was the accident by
which Dunbar of Baldoon met his death. While riding from Leith to
Holyrood on March 27, 1682, his horse fell with him. His injuries proved
fatal, and he died next day, and was buried in Holyrood Chapel.
Of the other actors in the tragedy there is little to tell. That great
and able lawyer, Viscount Stair, has left behind him permanent record of
the ability that brought him his title. For fifty years his wife and he
lived together, and history tells us that "they were tenderly attached
to the last." A witty, brilliant, worldly woman, she had the power of
keeping the love of her husband fresh and living to the very end. She it
was who is reported by a local historian, whose standard possibly may
not have been of the very highest, to have made "one of the best puns
extant." "Bluidy Clavers" was Sheriff of Wigtown in her day, and in her
presence he dared to inveigh against one who was still the idol of
Presbyterian Whigs, John Knox.
"Why are you so severe on the character of John Knox?" asked the Lady
Stair. "You are both reformers: he gained his point by clavers; you
attempt to gain yours by knocks."
When the lady died, in the year 1692, she left an order regarding the
disposal of her body which entirely confirmed the popular belief that,
early in life, she had bargained with the Evil One for the worldly
success of herself and her descendants, and had paid her soul as price.
She asked that her body might not be buried underground, but that the
coffin containing her should be stood upright in the family vault of
Kirkliston. While she remained so placed, she said, the Dalrymples
should flourish. But woe betide the line when that coffin should be
moved and laid on common earth as those of common people. Her orders
were carried out. Does she, a dismal sentry, keep guard there still? And
what sort of a Purgatory has her poor soul had to pass through to atone
for the cruel murder of the child she bore?