13% ROSLIN, HAWTHORNDEN,
flowers and creepers. Never, I have heard him say, was he prouder of his
handiwork thah when he had completed the fashioning of a rustic archway,
now overgrown with hoary ivy, by way of ornament to the entrance from the
Edinburgh road.’
At Lasswade, long afterwards, De Quincey spent his later years in a small
house which used to be called, as it may still be called, De Quincey’s Cottage.’
D A L KE I T H.
The market-town of Dalkeith lies between the two rivers, now very near
their meeting-point. It derived its name from its position : ‘ daZ= wall, and
caatha = confined,’ say the scholars. The town consists mainly of one street
running from east to west, now full of new houses and shops, but with here
and there an old roof or house-front still to be seen. Diverging from the
High Street are narrow alleys or ‘closes,’ and in many of these the old houses
remain untouched. Towards its eastern end, the High Street widens into a
market-place. Here, on your left, stand the remains of the ancient church of
St Nicholas, with the modem church tacked on to i t Directly opposite is
the old jail, a two-stoned stone building with barred windows, the groundfloor
of which was used as a weigh-house on market days until both its
functions were superseded by the newer police-station and market-hall.
Facing us, at the eastern extremity of the town, are the gates of Dalkeith
Palace, the seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch.
Of the ancient Castle, built on a high ground, with a drawbridge in front
and a ravine at the back, nothing now remains, except perhaps a bit of the
outworks down on the banks of the North Esk, at the back of the present
Palace. The earliest mention of it dates from the 12th century, when it
belonged to the Grahams. Two hundred years after, by the marriage of a
Marjory Graham, it went into the hands of the Douglases, afterwards Earls of
Morton. Here Froissart stayed full fifteen days while he was in Scotland.
Here the little Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England, rested
with her retinue on her way to be married at Edinburgh to King James IV.,
who himself met her at Newbattle and accompanied her to Dalkeith PaIace
with great ceremony.
The Regent Morton, to whom it descended, repaired and strengthened
the Castle, and earned for it the name of Lion’s Den.’ In the following reign
it was a favourite resort of the King. When the news of his mother‘s
death at Fotheringay arrived at Edinburgh, King James, in much vexation,
went without supper to bed, ‘and on the morrow, by seven o’clock, went tu
