The railway, from Glasgow or from Stirling, passes to the south of the Loch of Menteith, with its islands, to which a short divagation might be made. Here, on the “Isle of Rest,” shaded by giant chestnuts which tradition brings from Rome, are the ruins of a cloister whither the child Queen Mary was carried for refuge after the battle of Pinkie, before setting out for France with her playmate maids of honour.
Last night the Queen had four Marys,
To-night she’ll have but three;
There was Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton
And Mary Carmichael and me.
Mary Livingston was the authentic fourth of the quartette in those days, and Mary Fleming held the place of Mary Carmichael. The luckless heroine of this touching ballad was a Mary Hamilton supposed by Scott to have been one of the Queen’s attendants later on, but her identity is somewhat dubious; and one writer shows reason to believe that the story of her crime and punishment has been strangely shifted from the Russian Court of Peter the Great, where she might well exclaim—
Ah! little did my minnie think,
The night she cradled me
The lands that I should travel in,
The death that I should dee!
Beyond this lake a railway branch brings us to
