:a brave prince, demanded instant restitution, and,
at the head of an army, laid siege to the Normans
in the border stronghold.
At this time,the winter snow was covering all the
vast expanse of leafless forest, and the hills-then
growing only heath and gorse-around the Castle of
Edinburgh; and there the queen, with her sons
Edmond, Edgar, and David, and her daughters
Mary and Matilda (surnamed the Good, afterwards
queen of Henry I. of England), were anxiously
waiting tidings from the king and his son Edward,
who?had pressed the siege of Alnwick with such
severity that its garrison was hourly expected to
surrender. A sore sickness was now preying on
the wasted frame of the queen, who spent her days
in prayer for the success of the Scots and the
safety of the king. and prince.
All old historians vie with each other in praise of
the virtuous Margaret. ?? When health and beauty
were hers,? says one writer, ?she devoted her
strength to serve the poor and uncultivated people
whom God had committed to her care; she fed them
with her own hand, smoothed their pillow in sickness,
and softened the barbarous and iron rule of
their feudal lords. No wonder that they regarded
her as a guardian angel among them.?
She daily fed three hundred,? says another
authority, ?waiting upon them on her bended
knees, like a housemaid, washing their feet and
kissing them, For these and other expenses she
not only parted with her own royal dresses, but
more than once she drained the treasury.?
Malcolm, a Celt, is said to have been unable to
read the missals given him by his fair-haired Saxon,
but he was wont to kiss them and press them to
his heart in token of love and respect.
In the castle she built the little oratory on the
very summit of the rock. It stands within the
.citadel, and is in perfect preservation, measuring
about twenty-six feet long by ten, and is spanned
by a finely ornamented a p e arch that springs from
massive capitals, and is covered with zig-zag mouldings.
It was dedicated to her in after years, and
liberally endowed.
?There she is said to have prophetically announced
the surprise of the fortress in 1312, by
causing to be painted on the wall a representation
of a man scaling the Castle rock, with the inscription
underneath, ? Garak-vow Franfais,? a prediction
which was conveniently found to be verified
when the Castle was re-taken from the English by
William Frank (or Francis) and Earl Randolph ;
though why the Saxon saint should prophesy in
French we are left to conjecture.?
Comzcted with the residence of Edgar Atheling?s
sister in Edinburgh Castle there is another
legend, which states that while there she commissioned
her friend St. Catharine-but which
St. Catharine it fails to specify-to bring her some
oil from Mount Sinai; and that after long and
sore travel from the rocks of Mount Horeb, the
saint with the treasured oil came in sight of the
Castle of Edinburgh, on that ridge where stood
the Church of St Mary, built by Macbeth, baron
of Liberton. There she let fall the vessel containing
the sacred oil, which was spilt; but there
sprang up in its place a fountain of wonderful
medicinal efficacy, known now as the Balm Well
of St. Catharine, where the oil-which practical
folk say is bituminous and comes from the coal
seams-may still be seen floating on the limpid
water. It figuted long in monkish legends. For ?
vges a mound near it was alleged to be the tomb of
St Catharine; and close by it James IV. erected a
beautiful little chapel dedicated to St. Margaret,
but long since demolished.
During the king?s absence at Alnwick, the queen,
by the severity of her fastings and vigils, increased
a heavy illness under which she laboured. Two
days before her death, Prince Edgar, whom some
writers call her brother, and others her son, arrived
from the Scottish camp with tidings that Malcolm
had been slain, with her son Edward.
? Then,? according to Lord Hailes, who quotes
Turgot?s Life of SL Margaret, ?? lifting up her eyes
and hands towards heaven, she said, Praise and
blessing be to Thee, Almighty God, that Thou hast
been pleased to make me endure so bitter anguish
in the hour of my departure, thereby, as I trust, to
purify me in some measure from the corruption of
my sins; and Thou, Lord Jesus Christ, who
through the will of the Father, hast enlivened
the world by Thy death, oh, deliver me ! ? While
pronouncing ? deliver me? she expired.?
This, according to the Bishop of St. Andrews,
Turgot, previously Prior of Durham, was after she
had heard mass in the present little oratory, and
been borne to the tower on the west side of the
rock ; and she died holding in her hand a famous
relic known as ?the black rood of Scotland,? which
according to St. Elred, ?was a cross an ell long,
of pure gold and wonderful workmanship, having
thereon an ivory figure of our Saviour marvellously
adorned with gold.?
This was on 16th of November, 1093, when she
was in the forty-seventh year of her age. Unless
history be false, with the majesty of a queen and
the meekness of a saint Margaret possessed a
beauty that falls but seldom to the lot of women ;
and in her time she did much to soften the
barbarism of the Scottish court. She was magnificent
in her own attire ; she increased the number
of persons in attendance on the king, and caused
him to be served at table in gold and silver plate.
She was canonised by Innocent IV. in 1251. For
several ages the apartment in which she expired
was known as ?ye blessit Margaret?s chalmer? (i.e.,
chamber). A fountain on the west side of the
fortress long bore her name; and a small guardhouse
on the western ramparts is still called the
Queen?s, or St. biargaret?s, Post.
The complete restoration of her oratory (says an
Edinburgh Courant of 1853) ?has been effected
in a very satisfactory manner, under the superintendence
of Mr. Grant. The modern western
entrance has been built up, and an .ancient one
re-opened at the north-west corner of the nave.
Here a new doorway has been built in the same
style with the rest of the building. The three
small round-headed windows have been filled with
stained glass-the light in the south side of the
apse representing St. Margaret, the two in the
side of the nave showing her husband, King
Malcolm Canmore and their son St. David, and
the light in the west gable of the nay having
a cross and the sacred monogram with this inscription
:-Hac ediczda oZim Beafce Margaretce
Regim Scofia, puce obiit M.XCIII., ingrate $atria
izqli&zfia Zapsa, Victorire Rpmz prognatre auspiciis
restitufa, A. D. MUCCCLII..?
St. Margaret had scarcely expired, when Bishop
Turgot, her children, and the whole court, were filled
with terror, on finding the fortress environed by an
army composed of fierce western Highlanders, ?clad
in the dun deer?s hide, striped breacan, and hauberks
(or lurichs) of jingling rings,? and led by
Donald Bane, or the fair-haired, the younger brother
of Malcolm III., who had fled to the Hebrides, as
the latter did to England, on the usurpation by
Macbeth.
Without opposition he had himself proclaimed
king, and ,promised to give the Hebrides and other
isles to Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, for assistance
if it were required.
He had resolved to put the orphan children of
Malcolm to death, but believing that egress from
the fortress on the steep could only be had by the
gates facing the little town, he guarded them alone.
The children thus escaped by a western postern,
and fled to England, where they found protection
with their uncle, Edgar Atheling. The two princesses
were afterwards married : Mary to Eustace,
Count of Boulogne, the great Crusader; and
Matilda to Henry of England-a union extremely
popular with the Saxon people.
By the same postern Turgot and others carefully
and reverentlyconveyed the body of the queen,
and carried it ? to Dunfermline, in the woods; and
that Heaven might have some share in protecting
remains so sacred, the legendaries record that a
miraculous mist arose frow the earth, concealing
the bishop, the royal corpse, and its awe-stricken
bearers, from the half-savage Donald and his redhaired
Islesmen, and did pot pass away until they
had crossed in safety the Passagkm Repine, or
Queen?s Ferry, nine miles distant, where Margaret
had granted land for the maintenance of a passage
boat ?-a grant still in force.
She was buried at Dunfermline, under the great
block of grey marble which still marks her grave ;
and in the sides thereof may yet be seen the
sockets of the silver lamps which, after her canonisation,
burned there until the Reformation, when the
Abbot of Dunfermline fled to the Castle of Edinburgh
with her head in a jewelled coffer, and gave
it to some Jesuits, who took it to Antwerp. From
thence it was borne to the Escurial in Spain, where
it is still preserved by the monks of St. Jerome.
Her son xdgar, a prince of talent and valour,
recovered the throne by his sword, and took up
his residence in the Castle of Edinburgh, where
he had seen his mother expire, and where he, too,
passed away, on the 8th of January, 1107. The
register of the Priory of St. Andrews, in recording
his demise, has these words :-? Moriuus in Dun-
Edin, est sepuZfus in Dunfe~ndikg.?
On his death-bed he bequeathed that part of
Cumberland which the kings of Scotland possessed
to his younger brother David. Alexander I., surnamed
the Fierce,? eldest brother of the latter,
was disposed to dispute the validity of this donation
; but perceiving that David had won over the
English barons to his interest, he acquiesced in this
partial dismemberment of the kingdom.
It is in the reign of this monarch, in the first
years of the twelfth century, that the first notices
of Edinburgh as a royal city and residence are
most distinctly found, while? in that of his successor,
David I., crowned in 1124 after being long
resident at the court of his sister Matilda, where,
according to Malmesbury, ?his manners were polished
fiom the rust of Scottish barbarity,? and
where he married Matilda daughter of Waltheof,
Earl of Northumberland, we discover the origin
of many of the most important local features still
surviving. He founded the abbey of Holyrood,
called by Fordun ?? Monastmirm Sancfre Cmcis de
Crag.? This convent, the precursor of the great
abbey, he is said to have placed at first within the
Castle, and some of the earliest gifts of its saintly
