deed. Some have derived it from Coire, a hollow,
stoir, wet steps, and eitherjonn, white, orfein, ?the
Fingalians.? (?Old Stat. Account?) The name
might thus signify, ? the hollow with the white
steps ;a or, the ? Glen of Fingalian steps.? And
by some it has been asserted that the original name
was Curia StorpAinorum, from a cohort of Roman
soldiers called the Storphini having been stationed
here. But George Chalmers, with much more
probability than any, deduces the name from the
? Cross of Torphin. ?
?Torphin?s Cross, from whence its name is
derived,? says Wilson in his 6? Remhiscences,?
?doubtless stood there in some old century to
mark the last resting-place of a rough son of Thor.?
plain, is 474 feet in height above the level of the
sea Its sloping sides are covered with rich arable
land, and wooded to the summit with thick and
beautiful coppice.. After a gentle ascent of about
half a mile, an elevated spot is reached, called
? Rest and be Thankful,? from whence a series of
magnificent views can be had of the city and the
surrounding scenery, extending from the undulating
slopes of the Pentlands on the south, to the Forth
with all its isles, Fife with all its hills, woods, and
sea-coast towns, and eastward away to the cone
of North Berwick and the cliffs of the Bass. But
always most beautiful here are the fine effects of
evening and sunset-
?? When the curtain of twilight o?ershadows the shore,
And deepens the tints on the blue Lammermoor,
The hues on Corstorphine have paled in their fire,
But sunset still lingers in gold on its spire,
When the Rosebery forests are hooded in grey,
And night, like his heir, treads impatient on day.?
Amid the great concern and grief caused by the
murder of ?the bonnie Earl of Moray,? by the
Huntly faction, in 1591, we read that the King,
111
James VI., at the crisis, would not restrain his pra
pensity for field sports, and was hunting on the
north side of Corstorphine Hill on a day in
February, when Lord Spynie, hearing that Captain
John Gordon (brother of the Laird of Gicht) who
had been severely wounded in the brawl at Donnibristle,
had been brought to Leith, together with
Moray?s dead body, having a warrant to place him
in Edinburgh Castle, was anticipated by the Lord
Ochiltree..
The latter, at the head of forty men-at-arms,
went in search of James VI., whom he found at
? Corstorphine Craigs, where his majesty was
taking a drink.? Ochiltree dismounted at the
base of the hill, approached the king respectfully
form, and the captain was beheadit and his man
hanged. The captain condemned the fact, protesting
that he was brought ignorantly upon it?
(Calderwood, &c)
In 1632 and 1650 respectively the Parliament
House and Heriot?s Hospital were built from a
quarry at Corstorphine.
Past the latter, on the 27th of August, 1650, the
Scottish army, under Leslie, marched to baffle
Cromwell a second time in his attempt to tu15 the
Scottish position and enter Edinburgh. An encounter
took place near Gogar, on ground still called
the Flashes, from the explosion of firearms in the
twilight probably, ?I and after a distant cannonade,
the English, finding that they could not dislodge
the Scots, drew off? towards Braid.
Corstorphine must at one time have had a kind
of market cross, as in 1764 it is announced in the
Edinburgh Advertiser of 14th February, that there
are for sale, three tenements ?near the Cross of
Corstorphine ; one, a house of three storeys, with
fourteen fire-rooms, and stables ; ? the other twD
are stated to have ?fixed bedsteads on the floor,?
?
