High on the edge of the crumbling cliff here, like the grey eyrie of
some keen-winged falcon, hangs the ruined keep of Cadzow. Bowered and
all but hidden by the leafy luxuriance of “the oak and the ash and the
bonnie ivy-tree,” with the Evan roaring down its rocky bed far below at
the foot of the sheer precipice, there is enough left of this ancestral
home of the Hamiltons to give some idea of its ancient strength.
Perched where it was unassailable on one side save by foes who had the
gift of wings; on the other hand, the deep moss-grown moat and the
massive remains of thick walls tell how secure a refuge it gave to its
possessors. Secluded, too, in the depths of the old Caledonian forest,
the fastness had endless facilities for secret communication and for
safe hiding in case of necessity, and the deeds of its owners need have
been subject to the curiosity of prying eye. Who can tell what captives
have languished in the dungeons into which now, at places through the
broken arch, the sunshine makes its way? Birds have built their nests,
and twitter joyously about their callow young, where once only the
sighs of the prisoner were heard and the iron clank of his chain. Alas!
he had not the linnet’s wing to fly out and speed away along these
sunny woodland paths.
But not vindictive above their peers were the chiefs of the ancient
race that held these baronies. Rather has the gleam of romance come
here to lighten the records of their gloomy age. For it was within
these walls, tradition says, that Queen Mary found an asylum upon
the night following that of her escape from Loch Leven Castle--a
tradition the more likely to be true since the Hamilton Palace of that
day was but a rude square tower. And it is easy to imagine how in
that sweet May morning, the second of her new-born liberty and of her
fresh-reviving hopes, the eyes of the fair unfortunate Queen may have
filled with tears of happiness as she gazed from this casement forth
upon the green waving forests and the silver Evan in its gorge below,
and heard in the courtyard and the woods behind the tramp of horses and
the ring of arms. Alas! whatever her frailties, she suffered sorely
for them. There are few perhaps whose errors lie so much at the door
of circumstance. From the Rout of Solway, which heralded her birth, to
the last sad scene at Fotheringay, her life was a walk of tears; and
the student of her reign is tempted to think that had she been a less
lovable woman she might have been a more successful queen. That was the
last gleam of sunshine in her life, the eleven days between Loch Leven
and Langside. Short was the respite, but it must have been sweet, and
doubtless these Hamiltons made chivalrous hosts. They fought for her
gallantly at anyrate, if in vain, for they were the foremost to rush
against her enemies’ spears in the steep narrow lane at Langside.
And at last she rode away from this place, surrounded by a brave little
troop of nobles, their armour glancing in the sun as they caracoled off
along these grassy forest glades. Then amid the restored quiet, only
the whisper of the woods about them and the murmur of the river far
below, the women waited here, listening. Presently, sudden and ominous,
they heard a sound in the distance--cannonading near Glasgow, ten miles
away. The Queen had been intercepted on her journey to Dunbarton.
There was not much of the sound, and it died feebly.
Hours afterwards, anxious waiting hours, down these forest avenues,
slowly, with drooping crest and broken spear, came riding the lord of
the castle, haggard, and almost alone. For of the gallant gentlemen who
had followed him to Langside many had fallen upon the field, and the
rest were scattered and fleeing for their lives.
What sorrowings then for those who would never return must there have
been within these walls--what aching hearts for those who had escaped!
The smoke of the houses in Clydesdale, fired by the victorious army of
the Regent, could almost be seen from here; and day after day news came
of friends taken and friends in flight, until it was whispered that
the Queen herself was a prisoner in the hands of the English Warden. A
weary and anxious time it must have been; but the danger passed, and
the hour of reprisal came.
Through these woods, according to the tradition preserved by Sir
Walter Scott, on a January afternoon less than two years after the
battle of Langside, a hunting-party was returning to the castle. Amid
the fast-falling shadows of the winter day they were bringing home
their quarry--the wild bull whose race still roams these glades; and
the guests and huntsmen were making merry over the success of their
sport. There was the jingle, too, of hawk-bells, and the bark of
hounds in leash. But their lord rode in front, silent, with clenched
hand and clouded brow. He had not forgotten the misfortune that had
befallen his house, and news of a fresh insult had but lately quickened
his anger over it. The estate of one of his kinsmen, Hamilton of
Bothwellhaugh, had been confiscated to a favourite of the Regent, and
the new possessor, it was said, had used his power with such severity,
in turning out Bothwellhaugh’s wife and new-born infant on a freezing
night, that the poor lady had become furiously mad. Brooding darkly and
bitterly on these evils, the chief was drawing near the castle, when
there was suddenly heard approaching the heavy gallop of a horse, and
in another moment Bothwellhaugh sprang to the earth before him. His
face was wild and pale, and his steed, bespattered with foam and blood,
drooped its head in exhaustion. Vengeance swift and dire had fallen
upon the Regent, and, twenty miles away, in Linlithgow Palace, the
birthplace of the sister he had dethroned, he lay dying. It is for a
higher Judge than man to say whether his death was that of a martyr or
of a miscreant; but at the time there were not wanting those who held
that Bothwellhaugh satisfied with one blow his own private feud and the
wrath of heaven over the distresses of the Queen. The brass matchlock,
curiously enough a rude sort of rifle, with which the deed was done,
lies yet in the palace of the Hamiltons.
Three hundred years ago and more it all happened, and the moss grows
dark and velvety now on the ruined bridge over which once rang the
hoofs of Queen Mary’s steed; but the grey and broken walls, silent amid
the warm summer sunshine, recall these memories of the past. There
could be no sweeter spot to linger near. Foamy branches of hawthorn
in spring fill the air here with their fragrance; and in the woodland
aisles lie fair beds of speedwell, blue as miniature lakes. Under the
dry, crumbling banks, too, among tufts of delicate fern, are to be seen
the misty, purple-flowering nettle and the soft green shoots of brier.
Overhead, in summer luxuriance, spread the broad, palm-like fronds of
the chestnut; close by, the soft greenery of the beech lets the tinted
sunshine through; and amid them rises the dark and sombre pine. But,
venerable above all, on these rolling forest lands, the shattered
girth of many an ancient oak still witnesses to an age that may have
seen the rites of the Druids. Monarchs of the primeval wilds, these
gigantic trees, garlanded now with the green leaf of another year, need
acres each for the spread of their mighty roots; while as withies in
comparison appear the cedars of a century.
And down these forest avenues, the home of his sires from immemorial
time, where his hoof sinks deep in the primeval sward, and there is
no rival to answer his hoarse bellow of defiance, comes the lordly
Caledonian bull. Never yet has the race been tamed, and the cream-white
hide and black muzzle, horn, and hoof bespeak the strain of its ancient
blood. There is a popular belief, indeed, that when the white cattle
become extinct the house of Hamilton will pass away. Here, then, in the
forgotten solitude, where seldom along the grassy woodland ways comes
the foot of the human wanderer, the mountain bull keeps guard with his
herd over the scene of that old and sorrowful story.