Walks near Edinburgh 18

Walks near Edinburgh 18

The old house of the Chieslys still exists. It is a curious old

place with small projecting towers crowned with ogee roofs; but it

is almost concealed among the humbler tenements which thickly cover

that part of the estate, and is now a training school for Scottish

Episcopalian teachers. From the Chieslys, Dalry passed to Sir

Alexander Brand, who owned the neighbouring property of Brandfield

in the district of Fountainbridge. His house there has quite

disappeared, but its name is preserved in Brandfield Place, which is

built on its site. In later times Dalry belonged to the Kirkpatricks

of Allisland, and then to the Walkers, in whose possession it is now.

 

 

 

 

WALK VI.

 

 

Warriston--Caroline Park--Muirhouse--Lauriston

Castle--Cramond--Braehead--Cammo--Barnton--Craigcrook--Ravelston.

 

To-day we come to our last walk, which will take us past several

curious and interesting places. There is no more imposing and

majestic way for the traveller to approach or leave Edinburgh,

than the Queensferry Road, which is our choice to-day. The broad,

well-engineered road sweeps with an easy curve over the Dean Bridge,

passes the handsome stone houses of Buckingham Terrace, and in a

few moments more emerges into open country, without any of the

intervening hovels which generally encumber the outskirts of a

great town. We diverge from the main road at Comely Bank, and then

turn due north towards Granton. To our left hand is the property

of Craigleith, on which stands the massive pile of St. Cuthbert's

Poorhouse. It is far over-topped and outshone by its neighbour on

the opposite side of the road, Fettes College, founded in 1863 in

accordance with the will of Sir William Fettes, Lord Provost of

Edinburgh, to whom the estate of Comely Bank belonged. Bryce was

the architect, and at some future period, when the surrounding

plantations have grown up, it will look very well, but its solitary

position, at the top of an exposed ridge, gives it a bare and

comfortless appearance.

 

No old legends linger about either of these places, but about a

mile and a half to the east of us stands a house whose history is

too noticeable to overlook, though in the course of to-day's walk

we do not actually pass it. This is Warriston House, which stands

on a gentle eminence beyond the Botanical Gardens. It belonged once

to the family of Kincaid, cadets of the Kincaids of that Ilk in

Stirlingshire, and in 1600 it was the scene of a dreadful tragedy.

 

John Kincaid of Warriston was married to a beautiful woman, much

younger than himself, Jean Livingston, the daughter of the Laird

of Dunipace. Owing to some alleged ill-treatment, she conceived a

deadly hatred of her husband, which was fomented and encouraged by

her nurse. The lady was induced to tamper with a young man named

Robert Weir, a servant of her father's at Dunipace, and at last she

persuaded him to become her instrument. Early one morning, in July

1600, Weir came to Warriston, and being secretly admitted to the

laird's chamber, he fell upon him and beat him to death with his

fists. He then fled. The lady and the nurse remained at home, and

seem to have taken no steps to evade the punishment of their crime.

They were both seized, taken before the magistrates, and condemned to

death. In the interval between the sentence and the execution, Lady

Warriston, who was only twenty-one, was brought by the offices of a

pious clergyman to a state of repentance and resignation to her fate.

The case is reported in a curious old pamphlet called "Memorial of

the Conversion of Jean Livingston (Lady Warriston), with an account

of her carriage at her execution," which was reprinted by Charles

Sharpe. She stated that on Weir assaulting her husband, she went to

the hall, and waited till the deed was done. She thought she still

heard the pitiful cries uttered by her husband while struggling with

his murderer. Afterwards, by way of dissembling, she tried to weep,

but not a tear could she shed. She could only regard her approaching

death as a just punishment of her offence.

 

Her relations do not seem to have shown much grief at her fate, but

for their own sakes they made interest to obtain that her execution

should be as little public as possible. It was arranged that while

the nurse was being burnt on the Castle-hill at four in the morning,

and thus attracting the attention of any that should be about at that

early hour, the lady should be taken to the Girth Cross, at the east

end of the town, and should there be beheaded by the Maiden.

 

According to the contemporary pamphlet: "The whole way, as she went

to the place of execution, she behaved herself so cheerfully, as if

she had been going to a wedding and not to her death. When she came

to the scaffold, and was carried up upon it, she looked up to the

Maiden, with two longsome looks, for she had never seen it before.

This I may say of her, to which all that saw her will bear record,

that her only countenance moved, although she had not spoken a word.

For there appeared such majesty in her countenance and visage, such

a heavenly courage in her gesture, that many said, '_That woman is

ravished with a higher spirit than man or woman._'" She then calmly

resigned herself to her fate. A melancholy end for one so young!

It shows the horror in which her deed was held at the time, that

in the ballad of "The Laird of Warriston," the Enemy of Mankind is

introduced as appearing to her, and tempting her to this awful crime.

Four years later, her accomplice, Weir, was taken and broken on the

wheel, a punishment hardly ever before inflicted in Scotland.[61]

 

[61] Chambers's _Domestic Annals of Scotland_; Pitcairn's _Criminal

Trials_, ii. p. 445.

 

We now return to our actual walk, and soon find ourselves facing the

lodge-gates of Caroline Park, or Roystoun, as it was called before it

became the property of John, Duke of Argyle.

 

Though many years have passed since I last saw Caroline Park, how

vividly it rises before me, with its curious, steep-pitched roof, and

the carved inscription below it, telling how George, Lord Tarbat, had

erected this little cottage (_tuguriolum_) in 1685.

 

[Illustration: _Caroline Park._]

 

When you entered the door, you passed through an outer hall into

the courtyard, round which the house was built. The flagstones

which paved it were green and damp-stained; but a little path of

well-worn bricks, with a wooden roof supported on pillars (to shield

one from the weather), led straight across to the low, matted hall,

with its further door opening on the sea-view, and its framed

diagrams of yacht-flags and signals, which recalled the days of

the _Lufra_ and the _Flower o' Yarrow_. A door to the right led to

the great staircase, which was bordered by the most beautiful iron

trellis-work, hammered into flowers and arabesques, that it was

ever my good fortune to see. Up-stairs, owing to the house being

only one room thick, and being built in a complete square round

the courtyard, all the rooms opened into one another, though by an

ingenious arrangement of staircases it was possible to get to each

suite separately. Heude, a pupil of Verrio, had painted the ceilings,

and though the "Diana and Endymion" in the smaller drawing-room was

perhaps the more exquisitely lovely, it was hard to decide between

it and the "Aurora" in the larger room. What a beautiful room that

great drawing-room was, as I remember it! with its panelled walls

painted white, hung with portraits of the exiled Stuart kings, and

over the chimney-piece and above the doors landscapes in grisaille

let into the walls. There were a good many of these in the house.

They were principally foreign scenes, but there was a curious view of

Edinburgh, painted before the North Loch was drained and while the

New Town was still unthought of, which is now preserved at Dalkeith.

 

When my aunt, Lady John Scott, lived here, a curious circumstance

sometimes occurred in this room. The first time she remembered its

happening, she was sitting alone about eleven o'clock one evening.

Suddenly the window at the end of the room, close to the door opening

into the dining-room, was violently burst open, and a cannon-ball

(apparently) bounded in, falling heavily on the floor and rolling

forwards. It rebounded three times, and seemed to come as far as the

screen half-way up the room, and stop there. My aunt rang violently,

but when the servants came nothing could be seen, the window was shut

and uninjured, and everything as usual. Every effort was made to find

out what had caused this noise, but in vain; and as there were no

rooms above this part of the house, it was the more unaccountable.

I remember, in January 1879, when we, as children, were spending a

fortnight there alone with our German governess, that she heard the

same sound one evening, and was so terrified, that she would never

sit alone in that room at night again. This time the cannon-ball

seemed to roll right up to where she was sitting by the fire. The two

maid-servants who were always left in the house constantly heard it,

but got used to it, and did not mind. Nothing was ever seen, and it

could never be accounted for in any way.

 

To the east of the house, under the trees, where the first daffodils

flowered each spring, was an ancient moss-grown well, out of which,

tradition said, the "Green Ladye" rose at midnight, and rang the

alarm bell in the courtyard. Many a time have I heard that bell

toll mournfully, when every one in the house was in their beds, and

there was not a breath of wind to sway it. On the same side of the

house, but close to where the railway now runs through the park, lay

formerly a large flat stone. The story went that above two hundred

years ago, a foreign vessel came into the Forth, and drifted on

to the low rocks and sand close to Caroline Park. The crew were

stricken with the plague, and in a day or two the captain and the

men were all found dead. A very deep pit was dug on this spot, and

the crew were buried together in one large grave. The captain was

buried alone on the top of the others, about three or four feet below

the surface of the ground, and the large flat stone was laid above

them all. When Lord and Lady John Scott were living at Caroline Park,

they had a great wish to know if there was any truth in this wild

legend, so they moved the stone and dug beneath it. A few feet down

they came on the entire bones of one man, and a few feet farther

they found a great mass of bones all thrown together into one deep

grave. They put everything back carefully, as it had been before, and

replaced the stone on the top. Before leaving Caroline Park that year

to go to England, Lord John begged Mr. Howkins, the Granton engineer,

to see that during the making of the railway (then in progress)

neither grave nor stone should be touched. Unfortunately, none of his

directions were attended to, and when he returned, he found the grave

cut away, and the stone propped up against the park wall, so that of

this curious spot, nothing is left but the empty tale.

 

There are beautiful old stone gate-pillars to the sea-entrance, with

ducal coronets surmounting the carved finials; but the hammered iron

gates, which corresponded with the staircases inside the house, have

long been removed, and their places filled by common wooden doors.

They were taken away early in this century by a well-known judge, and

they now ornament the lodge of Gogar, where we saw them yesterday.

 

[Illustration: _Gateway at Caroline Park._]

 

To the west of the place lay the garden, the most enchanting tangle

of flowers, fruit-trees, and shady bowers. Everything in it seemed

to grow to greater perfection, and to bloom earlier than elsewhere,

it was so sheltered and so sunny. Peaches and apricots ripened on the

walls, and the beds were full of every old-fashioned, sweet-scented

flower. Beyond it rose the ruins of Granton Castle, over which

strayed the Persian yellow rose and the Austrian briar, and veiled

the mouldering walls with wreaths of golden petals. In the corner

next the old fig-tree, a door opened into what we used to call the

"opera-box." It had exactly its shape and form. You stepped in and

found yourself overhanging the shore,--but instead of a painted

scene, lay the wide panorama of the Forth, with the hills beyond

fading into softer and softer purple; and for music, there was the

ceaseless plash of the waves on the rocks far down below us.