The Hays shall flourish, and their good grey hawk
Shall not flinch before the blast.
But when the root of the oak decays
And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast,
The grass shall grow on the Earl’s hearthstone,
And the corbies craw in the falcon’s nest.”
At Finlarig Castle, near Killin, in Perthshire, are several trees, believed to be linked with the lives of certain individuals, connected by family ties with the ruined fortress. Aubrey gives an example of this superstition, as it existed in England in the seventeenth century. He says, “I cannot omit taking notice of the great misfortune in the family of the Earl of Winchelsea, who, at Eastwell, in Kent, felled down a most curious grove of oaks near his own noble seat, and gave the first blow with his own hands. Shortly after, the countess died in her bed suddenly, and his eldest son, the Lord Maidstone, was killed at sea by a cannon bullet.” In the grounds of Dalhousie Castle, about two miles from Dalkeith, on the edge of a fine spring is the famous Edgewell Oak. Sir Walter Scott, in his “Journal,” under date May 13th, 1829, writes, “Went with the girls to dine at Dalhousie Castle, where we were very kindly received. I saw the Edgewell Tree, too fatal, says Allan Ramsay, to the family from which he was himself descended.” According to a belief in the district, a branch fell from this tree, before the death of a member of the family. The original oak fell early in last century, but a new one sprang from the old root. An editorial note to the above entry in the “Journal” gives the following information:—“The tree is still flourishing (1889), and the belief in its sympathy with the family is not yet extinct, as an old forester, on seeing a branch fall from it on a quiet still day in July, 1874, exclaimed, ‘The laird’s deed, noo!’ and, accordingly, news came soon after that Fox Maule, eleventh Earl of Dalhousie, had died.”
The external soul was sometimes associated with objects other than living trees. Dr. Charles Rogers tells us that “a pear, supposed to have been enchanted by Hugh Gifford, Lord of Yester, a notable magician in the reign of Alexander III., is preserved in the family of Brown of Colston, as heirs of Gifford’s estate.” The prosperity of the family is believed to be linked with the preservation of the pear. Even an inanimate object would serve the purpose. The glass drinking-cup, known as the “Luck of Edenhall,” is connected with the fortunes of the Musgrave family, and great care is taken to preserve it from injury. Tradition says that a company of fairies were making merry beside a spring near the mansion-house, but that, being frightened by some intruder, they vanished, leaving the cup in question, while one of them exclaimed:—
“If this cup should break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall.”