The cottage bore a signboard inscribed, "Christian Jack—a callender[*] by the hour or piece," an announcement which caused some speculation among our English friends; and ignorant alike of its origin and meaning, or what is more probable, affecting to be so, Berkeley laughed immoderately at the word, simply because it was not English.
[*] Literally a mangle, from calandre, the French. The term has been common all over Scotland for centuries. In Paris there is a street named Rue de la Calandre.
"Christian Jack—Presbyterian John, I should suggest," said he, as we cantered along the bridle-path, in Indian file, Cora at our head, with a firm little hand on her reins, her blue veil and her skirt, and two long black ringlets, floating behind her.
Lady Louisa followed close, her jet hair gathered up in thick and elaborate rolls by the artful fingers of her French soubrette; her larger and more voluptuous figure displayed to the utmost advantage by her tight riding-habit; and now, in a few minutes, the old ruin, with all its gaping windows, loomed in sight.
It was not an object of much interest, save to Cora and myself, for it had been the scene of many a picnic and visit in childhood, and had been long the seat of a branch of the Calderwoods now extinct and passed away.
Some strange and quaint legends were connected with it; and Willie Pitblado, old Kirsty at the Loanend, and Cora's nurse, had told us tales of the old lairds of Piteadie, and their "clenched hand," which was carved above the gate, that made us feel far from comfortable in the gloomy winter nights, when the vanes creaked overhead, and when the wind that howled down the wooded glen shook the cawing rooks in their nests and made the windows of old Calderwood House rattle in their sockets.
The little castle of Piteadie stands on the face of a sloping bank to the westward of Kirkaldy, and a little to the north of Grange, the old barony of the last champion of Mary Queen of Scots; and no doubt it is founded on the basement of a more ancient structure, for in 1530, during the reign of James V., John Wallanche, Laird of Piteadie, was slain near it, in a feudal quarrel, by Sir John Thomson and John Melville of the House of Raith.
The present edifice belongs to the next century, and is a high, narrow, and turreted pile. The windows are small, and have all been thickly grated, and access is given to the various stories by a narrow circular stair.
Within a pediment, half covered with moss, above the arched gateway in the eastern wall, is a mouldered escutcheon of the Calderwoods, bearing a saltire, with three mullets in chief; and a helmet surmounted by a clenched hand—the initials "W.C." and the date 1686.
Pit is a common prefix to Fifeshire localities. By some antiquarians it is thought to mean Pict; by others a grave.