AND THE VALE OF THE ESK. 129
they were named after the rustic lovers in the poem, or whether Allan Ramsay
chose the names from their association with the place, we are unable to
discover.
- Further on, past the ruins of Brunstane Castle, lies Penicuik village, With
Penicuik House and its famous Ossian Hall, painted by Runciman In the
Valleyfield grounds we come upon a monument, the only relic of a phase
in Penicuik history long since passed away. Here in 1810 the Vdleyfield
mills on the banks of the Esk were turned into a dCpBt for six thousand
prisoners of war, and the peaceful little cottages around into temporary
barracks. For four years the redcoats were quartered here ; and, when the
war was over and the mills were set to work again, this monument was raised
over the grave of more than three hundred prisoners of war who had died in
these four years. ‘ Grata quies patriae, sed et omnis terra sepulchrum ’ was
the inscription suggested by Sir Walter Scott, added to which is the
magnanimous explanation :-‘ Certain inhabitants of this parish, desiring to
remember that all men are brethren, caused this monument to be erected.’
And so the poor Frenchmen passed away without seeing again la be& France.
Probably they thought Penicuik a tn3e place !
In the neighbouring parish of Glencorse we come to
‘ Auchendinny’s hazel shade,
And haunted Woodhouselee.’
This is an old ruined castle, possessing an authentic legend and ghost.
To this castle the lady of Bothwelhaugh fled to escape the anger of the Regent
Murray, her husband‘s implacable foe; but she was followed by the Regent’s
messengers, who set the castle on fire, and turned out the lady, with her newborn
child in her arms, to wander through the November night. When
morning came she was found distracted with fear and calling for revenge, and
Bothwelhaugh never rested till the Regent was assassinated at Linlithgow.
So the story runs. The phantom lady and child haunt Woodhouselee to this
day ; and, since some of its stones were used to build the newer Woodhouselee
among the Pentlands,’_the seat of the Tytler family, the apparition has kindly
divided its attention between the two places.
ROSLIN.
W e now approAch the most beautiful part of the Vale. The ‘ rocky glen,’
through which the Esk flows, is a mass of luxuriant foliage, so that, from the
R
130 ROSLIN, HAWTHORNDEN,
~.
heights on either side, one gazes upon a world of moving tree-tops in the
ravine below. ~
A little way back, on the Ieft bank, lies the single-streeted village of
Roslin. Between the village and the Esk, on a grassy height called the
College Hill, stands the Chapel ; and some hundred yards below, on a rocky
promontory, formed by a bend in the river, are the ruins of the Castle,
accessible only by a stone bridge of great height which spans a natural ravine
between the promontory and the College Hill. From this position the Castle
derived its name-XmZianRe, the promontory of the waterfall. The Esk
forms a cascade as it bends sharply round the promontory, and it is still at
this point called ‘the Lynn.’
The St. Clairs, or Sinclairs, of Roslin, or Rosslyn, trace their descent from
a ‘Seemly St. Clair,’ a Norman knight of fair deportment, who ‘ came in’ with
the Conqueror, and whom Malcolm Canmore diplomatically allured over the
border by big grants of Scottish land. Roslin, amongst other places, was given
to the family, and the Castle probably dates from the beginning of the fourteenth
century. In
1622, when it had begun to fall away, a newer house was built over its vaults;
and this was inhabited about eighty years ago by a good old Scottish Laird,
the last heir-male and lineal descendant of the ‘ Seemly St. Clair.’ It is still
let in summer to families wanting rustic accommodation ; and for one season
at least it was tenanted in this fashion by the late Mr. Robert Chambers of
Edinbu?gh. . The ‘ground about the hoary old ruins is now bright with the
fruit and flowers of a market-garden. But in the middle of the fifteenth century
the Castle was the seat of the good and scholarly William St. Clair, ‘ Prince of
the Orkneys and Duke of Oldenburgh,’ the founher of Roslin Chapel. He
was a very great personage indeed, with a town mansion at the foot of Blackfriars
Wynd in Old Edinburgh, and a great retinue of lords and gentlemen.
Sevenv-five gentlewomen attended upon his lady, who, when she rode from
Edinburgh to Roslin, was accompanied by a guard of two hundred horse, and
also, if it was after nightfall, by eighty bearing torches. On one occasion - part of the Castle was set on fire by the carelessness of one of this lady’s
handmaidens. The women fled in fear j and the Prince, who was upon the
College Hill at the time, no doubt superintending the building of his pet
Chapel, on hearing of the fire, ‘was sorry for nothing but the loss of his
charters and other writings.’ These, which were kept in the dungeon-head,
his chaplain cleverly saved, throwing them out-four boxfuls of them-and
following himself on a bell-rope tied to a beam. The good Prince rewarded
From that time it was the chief residence of the St. Clairs.
