Walks near Edinburgh 14

Walks near Edinburgh 14

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.