ABOUT three miles south of the river
Clyde at Glasgow, and at a short distance from the ancient village of
Cathcart, on a steep bank which rises over the Cart, are the ruins of
Cathcart Castle, a massy square tower, which must at one period have
possessed great value as a place of strength and security. The date of its
erection and the name of its builder are alike lost in a dark antiquity.
In the days of Wallace and Bruce it was in the possession of an Alan de
Cathcart, who did good service in the cause of Scottish independence.
Barbour, in his national, heroic, and historic poem, The Bruce,
names Sir Alan de Cathcart as having told to him a most marvellous exploit
of that rashly-daring hero, Edward Bruce, brother to King Robert.
At dawn of day, on a morning so
misty that nothing could be seen beyond the distance of a bowshot, Edward
Bruce, leaving his infantry drawn up in a secure position, sallied forth
with fifty horsemen to reconnoitre. About mid-day the mist suddenly
cleared away, and showed an English host, under St. John, fifteen hundred
strong, close at hand. As retreat would probably have been fatal, Edward
Bruce, with his usual fearless courage, led his small party, of whom Sir
Alan de Cathcart was one, with a shout, swiftly to the charge, bearing
down many of their foes. Again they repeated their attack on the puzzled
and dismayed English, who supposed them to be merely an advanced party of
a much larger force. The English, between surprise, doubt, and the loss
they had suffered in these two charges, fell into disarray, which Edward
Bruce and the Scots perceiving, were thus encouraged to charge a third
time, upon which the foe, who saw them coming on, turned and fled in every
direction. Barbour, at the close of his story, exclaims:
"Lo! ofttimes those put to the smart
Are perforce made to pluck up heart;
So that unlikely things are done,
And to a right good ending won."
About the middle of the sixteenth
century, the barony and castle of Catheart passed out of the bands of the
family by sale; but, in 1801, were re-purchased by the late Earl of
Cathcart, a lineal descendant of the old Scottish worthy—
"Who struggled for freedom with
Bruce."
The castle seems to be one of those
stubborn fragments of the past which appear destined to bid an enduring
defiance alike to the war of the elements and of time. Its walls are not
less than ten feet in solid thickness; but it is now roofless and
charnberless, with the exception of a vault, wherein darkness is rendered
visible by the light which enters at a narrow loophole. Here, probably, in
the good old
times, when the
law of the land was the caprice of a lordling, the unhappy vassals who
happened to displease their feudal superior were kept secure until it
might be found convenient to dispose of them otherwise. The place has a
damp, charnel-house smell, and the crumbling tower is in some parts
thickly mantled with ivy, the haunt of the starling and sparrow, while the
swift builds its nest and the wallflower waves in golden flowers in the
loopholes and window places.
