In Lord Lindsay's very interesting _Lives of the Lindsays_, vol. i. p.
347., after the description of the very curious "viridarium or garden" of
Sir David Lindsay at Edzell, and of the various sculptures and ornaments
with which its wall is decorated, the author says: "To show how insecure
was enjoyment in that dawn of refinement, the centre of every star along
the wall forms an embrasure for the extrusion, if needed, of arrow,
harquebuss, or pistol."
Some years before the book was published, I had visited this very
interesting spot, and examined these sculptures, and other ornaments,
amongst which the _pierced stars_ puzzled me much: however, after a
lengthened and very careful investigation, finding that, being at too great
a height from the ground, and, moreover, that as the holes in the centre of
the stars do not pass through the wall, but merely into small cavities in
it, they could not have been used as embrasures, or have served for warlike
purposes; and that, as there were no channels or pipes that could have
{232} conducted water to them, they could not have been connected with
fountains or water-works; I came to the conclusion that the planner of the
garden, or at least of its walls, must have been an ardent lover of birds,
and that these holes were for providing access for his beloved feathered
friends (they would only admit the passage of _small_ birds) to the secure
resting-places which the hollow stones afforded; for whose use other niches
and recesses seem also to have been planned (though some of the latter were
probably intended to hold bee-hives) with a philornithic indifference for
the security of the fruit tempting their attacks from all sides, but quite
in character with the portrait of Sir David, as depicted by his noble
biographer.