|
Night in Edinburgh! The
traveller may have seen the sun set over the lagoons of Venice; he may
have watched the moon rise behind the Acropolis of Athens; but he has seen
nothing finer or more inspiring than is shown him by the sparkle of the
frosty stars in this grey metropolis of Scotland. From the terrace
pavement of Princes Street, that unmatched boulevard of the modern city,
and looking across the dark chasm where once surged the waters of the
North Loch, he sees the form of the Old Town rise, from Holyrood Palace
low in the eastern meadows to the castled rock high at the western end, a
dark mass all against the southern sky. Yellow lines of light mark the
modern bridges spanning the abyss below, and windows still glowing—dim
loopholes in the perilously high old houses beyond—bespeak the inhabitants
there not yet all asleep. But these are forgotten in the witchery of the
sight, when the clouds part, and the silvery starlight is shaken down upon
the ancient city; when behind the broken sky-line of roofs and gables the
clear moon comes up, and hangs, a lustrous jewel, among the pinnacles of
St. Giles’.
Nor is it only the magic of
the sight that stirs strange pulses in the blood. Standing at night in the
Roman Coliseum it seems still possible to hear majestic echoes of an older
world. But the Scotsman under the shadow of "high Dunedin" is moved, as
nowhere else, by memories of old glory and old sorrow. Here to a Scottish
heart the past comes back. Here sighed the fatal sweetness of Rizzio’s
lute. Here rang the wild clan-music of Montrose. Among these old walls,
however, something more is to be remembered than the deeds of high fame.
Ever and again, it is true, amid the gloom of half-forgotten centuries,
there is caught the glitter of some historic pageant. Out of the silence
about the cathedral one seems to catch the chime of fuming censers and the
roll of coronation litanies, with, perchance, the sonorous accents of a
Gavin Douglas, poet-bishop of Dunkeld; and one thrills again to hear the
boom of the Castle cannon as the Fourth James rides gallantly away to his
death. But behind all this a more tender interest touches the heart. What
of the real inner life of centuries bygone—the loves and sorrows, burning
once, and poignant as ours are to-day, which have passed out of sight
among the years, and been forgotten? Of some of these, indeed, Sir Walter
Scott has written the story on the dark curtain of the past with a pen of
fire. But for countless others there is not even the poor consolation of a
recorded name. Occasionally, however, amid the seething of history, or in
some half-remembered old song, a name comes up, and a glimpse all too
brief is had into some tender and mournful story. And so one sees that,
behind the glitter of a Stuart chivalry, of brave and splendid deeds
before the world, sometimes there lay a shadow, the sigh of a breaking
heart, the stain of unavailing tears.
Who knows the early history
of that Lady of Loch Leven, mother of the Regent Murray? Grimly enough she
is painted by Scott in her old age as the keeper of Queen Mary. Yet
assuredly once she was lovely and young, and had strange beatings of heart
as she listened to the whispers of her Royal lover, that all too gallant
James V. What was their parting like, when the parting came? Was there the
last touch of regretful hands, a remorseful caress from the Royal lips, a
passionate farewell? Or was there only the cruel news by alien mouths that
her place was filled by another, that she had been forsaken? No one can
tell us now.
Then what of the Lady Anne
Campbell of Argyle, at one time betrothed to Charles II? The youthful
Prince, aged twenty, had been crowned gorgeously, after the ancient manner
of the Scottish Kings, at Scone. But King only in name, with England still
under the iron rule of Cromwell, and only a faction in Scotland devoted to
his cause, his immediate fortunes were entirely in the hands of the
Scottish leader, the crafty, covenanting Marquis of Argyle. Reaching ever
higher in ambition, and dazzled by the weird vision of the race of
MacCallum More mounting the Royal throne, Argyle proposed that Charles
should marry his daughter. Needy and reckless, and eager to attach Argyle
to the Royalist cause by the golden bands of hope, the King pretended
consent. Alas for the Lady Anne! What maiden could keep still her heart
when wooed by so royal a lover? For wooing there must have been, to keep
up the pretence of betrothal, and how was the maiden to know that those
words and looks, and, it may have been, those warmer caresses, were all no
more than a diplomacy? And when the crash came, with Cromwell’s defeat of
the covenanting army at Dunbar, and the revelation that she had given up
her all and had been deceived how bitter, how cruel the discovery! The
contemporary Kirkton relates circumstantially that "so grievous was the
disappointment to the young lady, that of a gallant young gentlewoman, she
lost her spirit, and turned absolutely distracted."
`Then there is a pitiful
little song, unprinted and all but forgotten, sung to a quavering,
pathetic old tune, and relating in quaint ballad fashion something of the
story of one Jeanie Cameron, an adherent of Prince Charles Edward in the
rebellion of 1745 . It narrates
how the maiden, having fallen sick, not without a suspicion of its being
heart-sickness, and all cures of the leeches failing, was prescribed "ae
bricht blink o’ the Young Pretender." So she sate her down and wrote the
Prince "a very long letter, saying who were his friends and who were his
foes." This letter she had closed, and was just "sealing with a ring";
when, as used to happen in ballad story, "ope flew the door, and in came
her King." Poor young lady!--
She prayed to the saints and angels
to defend her,
And sank i’ the arms o’ the young Pretender.
Rare, oh, rare! bonnie Jeanie Cameron.
Nor is this pretty romance
merely an invention of the poet’s brain. One of the family by whom the
song has been preserved happened, it seems, in the latter part of last
century to be buying snuff in a shop in Edinburgh, when a beggar came in.
Nothing was said before the stranger; but the shopkeeper, as if it were an
accustomed dole, handed the beggar a groat. Afterwards, in reply to a
remark of his customer as to the delicacy of the beggar’s hand which had
received the coin, the shopkeeper revealed the fact that the recipient of
his charity was no man, but a woman, and no other than Jeanie Cameron, a
follower of the Chevalier. Her story, as far as he knew it, was sad
enough. She had followed the Prince to France, hoping, no doubt, poor
thing! to resume there something of the place she had believed herself to
hold in his affections. Alas! it was only to find herself, like so many
others, forgotten, cast off, an encumbrance to a broken man. And then,
with who can tell how heavy a heart, she made her way home, only to find
that her family had shut their door upon her, and cut her off.
And so she had wandered about ever since, forlorn and lonely,
supported by a few charitable bourgeois in the streets of Edinburgh —she
who could look back upon the day when she had loved and been loved by a
Stuart Prince.
Such are some of the
stories which find no place in history, but whose consciousness sheds a
tragic and tender interest about this grey old capital of the North. Who
will say that they are not as well worth thought as the trumpetings of
herald pursuivants and the clash of warlike arms? |
