[11] Including the works of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, etc. Her library catalogue shows also a goodly list of "Latyn Buikis," and classics. In a letter to Cecil, dated St. Andrews, 7th April 1562, Randolph incidentally states that Queen Mary then read daily after dinner "somewhat of Livy" with George Buchanan.
[12] See these stories in Mr. Dasent's Norse Tales, and in Mr. Campbell's collection of the Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
[13] Among the people of the district of Barvas, most of them small farmers or crofters, a metal vessel or pot was a thing almost unknown twelve or fourteen years ago. Their houses have neither windows nor chimneys, neither tables nor chairs; and the cattle and poultry live under the same roof with their human possessors. If a Chinaman or Japanese landed at Barvas, and went no further, what a picture might he paint, on his return home, of the state of civilisation in the British Islands.
[14] One of these Lives—that of St. Columba by Adamnan—has been annotated by Dr. Reeves with such amazing lore that it really looks as if the Editor had acquired his wondrous knowledge of ancient Iona and Scotland by some such "uncanny" aids as an archæological "deputation of spirits."
[15] This alludes to the portion of a mutilated volume for the year 1605, which came into Mr. Laing's hands, and was given by him to the Deputy Clerk Register. But singular enough, as Mr. Laing has since informed me, the identical MS. of Sir George Mackenzie, above noticed, was brought to him for sale as probably a curious volume; it having by some accident been a second time sold for waste paper! Having no difficulty in recognising the volume, he of course secured it, and, agreeably to the expressed intention of the Editor of the work in 1821, the MS. has been deposited in the Advocates' Library, where, it is to be hoped, it may now remain in safety.
ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.[16]
Among the islands scattered along the Firth of Forth, one of the most interesting is the ancient Aemonia, Emona, St. Columba's Isle, or St. Colme's Inch—the modern Inchcolm. The island is not large, being little more than half-a-mile in length, and about a hundred and fifty yards across at its broadest part. At either extremity it is elevated and rocky; while in its intermediate portion it is more level, though still very rough and irregular, and at one point—a little to the east of the old monastic buildings—it becomes so flat and narrow that at high tides the waters of the Forth meet over it. Inchcolm lies nearly six miles north-west from the harbour of Granton, or is about eight or nine miles distant from Edinburgh; and of the many beautiful spots in the vicinity of the Scottish metropolis, there is perhaps none which surpasses this little island in the charming and picturesque character of the views that are obtained in various directions from it.
Though small in its geographical dimensions, Inchcolm is rich in historical and archæological associations. In proof of this remark, I might adduce various facts to show that it has been at one time a favoured seat of learning, as when, upwards of four hundred years ago, the Scottish historian, Walter Bower, the Abbot of its Monastery, wrote there his contributions to the ancient history of Scotland;[17] and at other times the seat of war, as when it was pillaged at different periods by the English, during the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.[18] For ages it was the site of a monastic institution and the habitation of numerous monks;[19] and at the beginning of the present century it was temporarily degraded to the site of a military fort, and the habitation of a corps of artillery.[20] During the plagues and epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it formed sometimes a lazaretto for the suspected and diseased;[21] and during the reign of James I. it was used as a state-prison for the daughter of the Earl of Ross and the mother of the Lord of the Isles[22]—"a mannish, implacable woman," as Drummond of Hawthornden ungallantly terms her;[23] while fifty years later, when Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was "decernit ane heretique, scismatike, symoniak, and declarit cursit, and condamnit to perpetuall presoun," he was, for this last purpose, "first transportit to St. Colmes Insche."[24] Punishments more dark and dire than mere transportation to, and imprisonment upon Inchcolm, have perhaps taken place within the bounds of the island, if we do not altogether misinterpret the history of "a human skeleton standing upright," found several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic walls.[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St. Columba,—and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his own alleged dwelling-place,[26]—devoid in its history of the usual amount of old monkish miracles and legends. The Scotichronicon contains long and elaborate details of several of them. When, in 1412, the Earl of Douglas thrice essayed to sail out to sea, and was thrice driven back by adverse gales, he at last made a pilgrimage to the holy isle of Aemonia, presented an offering to Columba, and forthwith the Saint sped him with fair winds to Flanders and home again.[27] When, towards the winter of 1421, a boat was sent on a Sunday (die Dominica) to bring off to the monastery from the mainland some house provisions and barrels of beer brewed at Bernhill (in barellis cerevisiam apud Bernhill brasiatam), and the crew, exhilarated with liquor (alacres et potosi), hoisted, on their return, a sail, and upset the barge, Sir Peter the Canon,—who, with five others, was thrown into the water,—fervently and unceasingly invoked the aid of Columba, and the Saint appeared in person to him, and kept Sir Peter afloat for an hour and a half by the help of a truss of tow (adminiculo cujusdam stupæ), till the boat of Portevin picked up him and two others.[28] When, in 1385, the crew of an English vessel (quidam filii Belial) sacrilegiously robbed the island, and tried to burn the church, St. Columba, in answer to the earnest prayers of those who, on the neighbouring shore, saw the danger of the sacred edifice, suddenly shifted round the wind and quenched the flames, while the chief of the incendiaries was, within a few hours afterwards, struck with madness, and forty of his comrades drowned.[29] When, in 1335, an English fleet ravaged the shores of the Forth, and one of their largest ships was carrying off from Inchcolm an image of Columba[30] and a store of ecclesiastical plunder, there sprung up such a furious tempest around the vessel immediately after she set sail, that she drifted helplessly and hopelessly towards the neighbouring island of Inchkeith, and was threatened with destruction on the rocks there till the crew implored pardon of Columba, vowed to him restitution of their spoils, and a suitable offering of gold and silver, and then they instantly and unexpectedly were lodged safe in port (et statim in tranquillo portu insperate ducebantur).[31] When, in 1336, some English pirates robbed the church at Dollar—which had been some time previously repaired and richly decorated by an Abbot of Aemonia—and while they were, with their sacrilegious booty, sailing triumphantly, and with music on board, down the Forth, under a favouring and gentle west wind, in the twinkling of an eye (non solum subito sed in ictu oculi), and exactly opposite the abbey of Inchcolm, the ship sank to the bottom like a stone. Hence, adds the writer of this miracle in the Scotichronicon,—and no doubt that writer was the Abbot Walter Bower,—in consequence of these marked retaliating propensities of St. Columba, his vengeance against all who trespassed against him became proverbial in England; and instead of calling him, as his name seems to have been usually pronounced at the time, St. Cāllum or St. Colām, he was commonly known among them as St. Quhalme ("et ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos vulgariter Sanct Quhalme nuncupatur"[32]).
But without dwelling on these and other well-known facts and fictions in the history of Inchcolm, let me state,—for the statement has, as we shall afterwards see, some bearing upon the more immediate object of this notice,—that this island is one of the few spots in the vicinity of Edinburgh that has been rendered classical by the pen of Shakspeare. In the second scene of the opening act of the tragedy of Macbeth, the Thane of Ross comes as a hurried messenger from the field of battle to King Duncan, and reports that Duncan's own rebellious subjects and the invading Scandinavians had both been so completely defeated by his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, that the Norwegians craved for peace:—