well worth consideration ; but, interesting as it is, it
need not detain us long here.
In the ? Myrvyian, or Cambrian Archa?ology,? a
work replete with ancient lore, mention is made of
Caer-Eiddyn, or the fort of Edin, wherein dwelt
a famous chief, Mynydoc, leader of the Celtic
Britons in the fatal battle with the Saxons under
Ida, the flame-bearer, at Catraeth, in Lothian, where
the flower of the Ottadeni fell, in 510; and this is
believed to be the burgh subsequently said to be
named after Edwin.
In the list of those who went to the battle of
Catraeth there is record of 300 warriors arrayed in
fine armour, three loricated bands (Le., plated for
defence), with their commanders, wearing torques
of gold, ?three adventurous knights,? with 300 of
equal quality, rushing forth from the summits of
the mighty Caer-Eiddyn, to join their brother
chiefs of the Ottadeni and Gadeni.
In the ?British Triads? both Caer-Eiddyn
(which some have supposed to be Carriden), and
also DinasEiddyn, the city of Eiddyn, are repeatedly
named. But whether this be the city of
Edinburgh it is exceedingly difficult to say; for,
after all, the alleged Saxon denominative from
Edwin is merely conjectural, and unauthenticated
by remote hcts.
From Sharon Turner?s ?Vindication of Ancient
British Poem%,? we learn that Aneurin, whose work
contains 920 lines, was taken prisoner at the battle
of Catraeth,* and was afterwards treacherously slain
by one named Eiddyn; another account says! he
died an exile among the Silures in 570, and that the
battle was lost because the Ottadeni ?had drunk
of their mead too profusely.?
The memory of Nynydac Eiddyn is preserved
a beautiful Welsh poem entitled The Drinking
Iorn,?by Owain, Prince of Powis.
i full of energy.
The poem
?? When the mighty bards of yore
Awoke the tales of ancient lore,
What tide resplendent to behold,
Flashed the bright mead in vase of Gold !
The royal minstrel proudly sung
Of Cambria?s chiefs when time was young;
How, with the drink of heroes flushed,
Brave Catraeth?s lord to battle rushed,
The lion leader of the strong,
And marshal of Galwyiada?s throng ;
The sun that rose o?er Itun?s bay
Ne?er closed on such disastrous day ;
There fell Mynydoc, mighty lord,
Beneath stem Osway?s baneful sword ;
Yet shall thy praise, thy deathless pame,
Be woke on harps of bardic fame,
Sung by the Cymri?s tuneful tmb,
Aneurin of celestial strain.?
DanielWilson,one of the ablest writers on Scottish
ntiquities, says that he thinks it useless ?to follow
le fanciful disquisitions of zealous anticuarians
Zspecting the origin and etymology of Edinburgh ;
: has successively been derived, both in origin and
1 name, from Saxon, Pict, and Gael, and in each
ase With sufficient ingenuity to leave the subject
lore involved than at first? But while on this
ubject, it should be borne in mind that the unirtunate
destruction of the national records by the
waders, Edward I. and Oliver Cromwell, leaves
ie Scottish historian dependent for much of his
iaterial on tradition, oi information that can only
e obtained with infinite labour; though it may
o doubt be taken for granted that even if these
rchives had been preserved in their entirety they
ould scarcely have thrown much, if any, light upon
le que& vexata of the origin of the name of
;dinburgh.
CHAPTER 11.
THE CASTLE OF EDINBURGH.
Of its Origin and remoter History-The Legends concaning it-Ebranke-St. Monena-Defeat of the Saxons by King Bridei--King Ed&-
Ring Grime-The Story of Grime and Benha of Badlieu-The Starting-point of authentic Edinburgh History-SL Mugarct-Her Piety
and vlliaMe Disoosition-Her Chaoel--Ha Dath-Rcstontion of her Oiatary-Her BurLCDonnld Bauc-Khg a v i d L-l?hc Royal
Gardens, afterwp;ds the North Lock
AFTER the departure of the Romans the jnhabitants
of fiorthern Britain bore the designation of Picti,
or Picts; and historians are now agreed that these
were not a new race, but only the ancient Caledonians
under a new name.
The most remote date assigned for the origin
*The famous Cutrail, or Pictsmrk-ditch, is a u wto have had
somc amnection with this battle df cluaeth. (Gdb Cambrrasir. 11.)
of the Castle of Edinburgh is that astounding
announcement made in Stods ?Summarie of
Englyshe Chronicles,? in which he tells us that
?Ebranke, the sonne of Mempricius, was made
ruler of Britayne ; he had, as testifieth Policronica,
Ganfride, and others, twenty-one wyves, of whom
he receyved twenty sonnes and thirty daughters,
which he sent into Italye, there to be maryed to
the blood of the Trojans. In Albanye (now called
Scotland) he edified the Castell of Alclude, which
is Dumbreyton j he made the Castell of Maydens,
now called Edinburgh; he also made the Castell
.of Banburgh, in the twenty-third year of his reign.?
All these events occurred, according to Stow, in
the year 989 beJore Christ ; and the information is
quite as veracious as much else that has been
written concerning the remote history of Scotland.
From sources that can scarcely be doabted, a
? fortress of some kind upon the rock would seem to
have been occupied by the Picts, from whom it
was captured in 452 by the Saxons of Northumbria
under Octa and Ebusa; and from that time
down to the reign of Malcolm 11. its history
exhibits but a constant struggle for its possession
between them and the Picts, each being victorious
in turn; and Edwin, one of these Northumbrian
invaders, is said to have rebuilt it in 626. Terri-
* tories seemed so easily overrun in those times, that
the latter, with the Scots, in the year 638, under
the reign of Valentinian I., penetrated as far as
London, but were repulsed by Theodosius, father
of the Emperor of the same name. This is the
Edwin whose pagan high-priest Coifi was converted
to Christianity by Paulinus, in 627, and who, according
to Bede, destroyed the heathen temples
and altars. A curious and very old tradition still
exists in Midlothian, that the stones used in the
construction of the castle were taken from a quarry
near Craigmillar, the Craig-moiZard of antiquity.
Camden says, ?The Britons called it CasfeZ
Mynedh Agnedh-the maidens? or virgins? castlebecause
certain young maidens of the royal blood
were kept there in old times.? The source of this
Oft-repeated story has probably been the assertion
of Conchubhranus, that an Irish saint, or recluse,
named Monena, late in the fifth century founded
seven churches in Scotland, on the heights of
Dun Edin, Dumbarton, and elsewhere. This may
have been the St. Monena of Sliabh-Cuillin, who
died in 5r8. The site of her edifice is supposed
to be that now occupied by the present chapel
of St. Margaret-the most ancient piece of masonry
in the Scottish capital; and it is a curious
circumstance, with special reference to the fable
of the Pictish princesses, that close by it (as recorded
in the CaZedonian Mercury of 26th September,
1853), when some excavations were made,
a number of human bones, apparently aZZ of
females, were found, together with the remains of
several coffins.
? Castmm PuelZarum,? says Chalmers, ?? was the
learned and diplomatic name of the place, as
appears from existing charters and documents
Edinburgh, its vulgar appellation f while Buchanan
asserts that its ancient names of the Dolorous
Valley and Maiden Castle were borrowed from .
ancient French romances, ? devised within the
space of three hundred years ? from his time.
The Castle was the nucleus, so to speak, around
which the city grew, a fact that explains the triple
towers in the arms of the latter-three great
towers connected by a curtain wall-being the
form it presented prior to the erection of the
Half-Moon Battery, in Queen Mary?s time.
Edwin, the most powerful of the petty kings of
Northumberland, largely extended the Saxon conquests
in the Scottish border counties; and his
possessions reached ultimately from the waters of
Abios to those of Bodoria-i.e., from Humber to
Forth ; but Egfrid, one of his successors, lost these
territories, together with his liie, in battle with the
Pictish King Bridei, or Brude, who totally defeated
him at Dun-nechtan, with temble slaughter. This
was a fatal blow to the Northumbrian monarchy,
which never regained its previous ascendency, and
was henceforth confined to the country south of
Tweed. Lodonia (a Teutonic name signifying
marshes or borders) became finally a part of the
Pichsh dominiops, Dunedin being its stronghold, and
both the Dalriadic Scots and Strathclyde Britons
were thus freed from the inroads of the Saxons.
This battle was fought in the year 685, the
epoch of the bishopric of Lindisfasne, and as the
Church of St. Giles was a chaplainry of that
ancient see, we may infer that some kind of townof
huts, doubtless-had begun to cluster round the
church, which was a wooden edifice of a primitive
kind, for as the world was expected to end in the
year 1000, sacred edifices of stone were generally
deemed unnecessary. From the time of the
Saxon expulsion to the days of Malcolm 11.-a
period of nearly four hundred years-everything
connected with the castle and town of Edinburgh
is steeped in obscurity or dim tradition.
According to a curious old tradition, preserved
in the statistical account of the parish of Tweedmuir,
the wife of Grime, the usurper, had her
residence in the Castle while he was absent
fighting against the invading Danes. He is said
to have granted, by charter, his hunting seat of
Polmood, in that parish, to one of his attendants
named Hunter, whose race were to possess it while
wood grew and water ran. But, as Hogg says
in his ?Winter Evening Tales,? ?There is one
remarkable circumstance connected with the place
that has rendered it unfamous of late years, and
seems to justify an ancient prediction that the
hunters of Polmood were mer foprospr..?
