122 QUEENSFERRY TO MUSSELBURGH.
station was not military merely, but was, in the language of Rome, a Minicipium
or CoZonia Romanu.
If Inveresk, in an antiquarian point of view, has its interest, so also has
Musselburgh. The old stone bridge, a little above the town, and used now
only by foot-passengers, is of great antiquity, and generally supposed to be pf
Roman construction. Like all erections of the kind and of a similar period,
it is narrow and high in the centre, the middle obviously having been defended
by a gate, after the manner of Bothwell Bridge and other structures of a like
nature elsewhere, of which some traces still remain in its side-walls. It was
across this bridge that the Scottish army passed to the battle of Pinkie in
1547, and on which several of the soldiers were then killed by the shot of the
THE OLD BRIDGE.
English warships in the bay. Two centuries later the army of Prince Charles
Stuart crossed the same bridge on its way to meet the forces of Sir John Cope
on their march westward from Dunbar, and which sustained such a disastrous
defeat at Preston, resulting iz1 the lamented death of that brave and good man,
the celebrated Colonel Gardiner. Indeed, across it all the noble and kingly
that approached Edinburgh from this quarter, for at least a thousand years,
must have passed : Mary‘s frolic steed, as it pranced gaily on, proud of the
beauteous burden it bore ; Cromwell’s thundering war-horse, as he pawed the
ground and neighed out his haughty challenge upon the air, fearless in his
great strength as the strong man that bestrode him; with the processions of
monks, the marches of armies, and the trains of kings.
