24 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
horsis under the Castle wall, in the barrace,” the Scottish knight’s horse having failed
him in the first onset, they encountered on foot, continuing the contest for a full hour, till
the Dutchman being struck to the ground, the King cast his hat over the Castle wall a8 a
signal to stay the combat, while the heralds and trumpeters proclaimed Sir Patrick the
victor.
A royal experiment, of a more subtle nature, may be worth recording, as a sample of
the manners of the age. The King caused a dumb woman to be transported to the neighbouring
island of Inchkeith, and there being properly lodged and provisioned, two infants
were entrusted to her care, in order to discover by the language they should adopt, what
was the original human tongue. The result seems to have been very satisfactory, as, after
allowing them a suficient time,
it was found that ‘‘ they spak very
guid Ebrew I ”
But it is not alone by knightly
feats of arms, and the rude chivalry
of the Middle Ages, that
the court of James IV. is distinguished.
The Scottish capital,
during his reign, was the residence
of men high in every department
of learning and the arts.
Gawin Douglas, afterwards
Bishop of Dunkeld, the wellknown
author of “ The Palice of
Honour,” and the translator of
Virgil’s Bneid into Scottish
verse, was at this time Provost
of St Giles’s,’ and dedicated his
poem to the
“ Maist gracious Prince ouir Souerain Jamea the Feird,
Supreme honour renoun of cheualrie.”
Dunbar, “ the greatest poet that Scotland has produced,” ’ was in close and familiar
attendance on the court, and with him Kennedy, “ his kindly foe,” and Sir John Ross, and
“ Gentill Roull of Corstorphine,” as well as others afterwards enumerated by Dunbar, in his
“ Lament for the Makaris.” Many characteristic and very graphic allusions to the manners
of the age have been preserved in the poems that still exist, by them affording a curious
insight into the Scottish city and capital of the James’s. Indeed, the local and temporary
allusions that occur in their most serious pieces, are often quaint and amusing, in the highest
degree, as in Kennedy’s “ Passioun of Grist :”-
“ In the Tolbuth then Pilot enterit in,
Callit on Chrid, and sperit gif He wea King I ”
Keith’a Bishops, 8v0, 1824;~. 468. ’ Ellis’ Specimens, Svo, 1845, vol. i. p. 304.
VIGNETTE-North-e118t pillar, St Qiles’s choir.
