DUNGEONS IN THE CASTLE BELOW QUEEN MARY?S ROOM.
CHL4PTER 111.
CASTLE OF EDINBURGH-(cantinued.~~e~.)
The Legend of the White Hart-Holyrood Abbey founded-The Monks of the Castrum Puellarum-David 1,?s numerous Endowments-His
Death-Fergus, Lord of Gallaway. dies there-William the Lion-Castle Garrisoiied by the English for Twelve Years-The Castle a Royal
Residence-The War of the Scottish Succession-The Castle in the hands of Edward I.-Frank?s Escalade-The Fortress Dismantled
-Again in the hands of the English-Bullocks Stratagem for its Resapture-David?s Tower.
?THE well-known legend of the White Hart,??
says Daniel Wilson, ? most probably had its origin
in some real occurrence, magnified by the superstition
of a rude and illiterate age. More recent observations
at least suffice to show that it existed
at a much earlier date than Lord Hailes referred
it to.?
It is recorded that on Rood-day, the 14th of
September, in the harvest of 1128, the weather
being fine and beautiful, King David and his
courtiers, after mass, left the Castle by that gate
before which he was wont to dispense justice to his
people, and issued forth to the chase in the wild
country that lay around-for then over miles of the
land now covered by the new and much of the
old city, for ages into times unknown, the oak-trees
of the primeval forest of Drumsheugh had shaken
down their leaves and acorns upon the wild and
now extinct animals of the chase. And here it
may be mentioned that boars? tusks of most enormous
size were found in 1846 in the bank to the
south of the half-moon battery, together with an
iron axe, the skull and bones of a man.
On this Rood-day we are told that the king
issued from the Castle contrary to the advice of
his confessor, Alfwin, an Augustinian monk of great
sanctity and learning, who reminded him that it
was the feast of the? Exaltation of the Cross, and
should be passed in devotion, not in hunting; but
of this advice the king took no heed.
Amid the dense forest and in the ardour of the
chase he became separated from his train, in ? the
vail that lyis to the eist fra the said castell,? and
found himself at the foot of the stupendous crags,
where, ?under the shade of a leafy tree,? he was
almost immediately assailed by a white stag of
gigantic size, which had been maddened by the
pursuit, ?noys and dyn of bugillis,? and which,
