"Fling me the picture of the fight,
When my clan met the Saxon's might,
I'll listen, till my fancy hears
The clang of swords, the crash of spears!"
You may look into the Douglass room, where James II stabbed the Earl of Douglass (1452). It is a dark room for a dark deed. And the guide repeats Douglass's refusal to the king:
"No, by the cross it may not be!
I've pledged my kingly word.
And like a thunder cloud he scowled,
And half unsheathed his sword.
Then drew the king that jewel'd glaive
Which gore so oft had spilt,
And in the haughty Douglass heart
He sheathed it to the hilt."
The Douglasses, we see, still thought themselves "peer to any lord in Scotland here," and the provocation to the Stewart, merely a second Stewart, must have been great—"my kingly word"! and a "half sheathed" sword! Perhaps we shall have to forgive this second James about whom we know little but this affair, who seems as ineffective a monarch as James the Second of two centuries later.
It is rather with Mary, and with her father and her son, that we associate Stirling. James V took his commoner title of "the Gudeman of Ballengeich" from here, when he went abroad on those errantries which all the Stewarts have dearly loved. At Stirling it seems more possible that James V did write those poems which, yesterday in Edinburgh I felt like attributing to James IV. North of the bridge there is a hill, Moat Hill, called familiarly Hurley Haaky, because the Fifth James enjoyed here the rare sport of coasting down hill on a cow's skull. The Scot can derive coasting from "Hurley" and skull from "Haaky"—a clever people!
Queen Mary was brought to Stirling when a wee infant and crowned in the old High church, September 9, 1543—and cried all the time they were making her queen. Surely "it came with ane lass and it will pass with ane lass." It was from Stirling that she was taken to France, and when she returned she included Stirling in her royal progress. I cannot think she was much here. Mary was not dour. Still, historic rumour has her married here, secretly to Darnley, and, in the rooms of Rizzio! And she came here once to see her princely son, hurriedly, almost stealthily, as if she felt impending fate.
That son was much here. Stirling was considered a safer place for James VI than Edinburgh, and then, of course, it was such a covenanted place. James was baptized here also, and his Royal Mother was present, but not Darnley. He refused to come, but sat carousing—as usual—in Willie Bell's Lodging, still standing in Broad Street, if you care to look on it. Young James merely looked at the ceiling of the High church, and pointing his innocent finger at it, gravely criticized, "there is a hole." James was crowned in the High church, Mary being at Loch Leven, and the coronation sermon was preached by Knox, who "enjoyed the proudest triumph of his life." Then, I know, baby James had to sit through a two or three hour sermon. For once I am sorry for him.
From the courtyard one sees the iron bars in the palace windows placed there to keep James from falling out—and others from stealing in? And here in the royal apartments, King James was taught his Latin and Greek like any other Scots boy, and by that same George Buchanan who was his mother's instructor—and her defamer. Perhaps he was the author of the betraying Casket letter; in spite of Froude's criticism based on internal evidence, that only Shakespeare or Mary could have written it. I can almost forgive Buchanan, for at one time when James was making more noise than beseemed a pupil of Buchanan, this schoolmaster birched him then and there, whereupon the royal tear fell, and the royal yowl was lifted—and Lady Mar rushed in to quiet this uproarious division in the kingdom.
The archives of Stirling were once rich in Scottish records. But General Monk removed them to London when he moved on that capital with the king also in his keeping. Years and years after, when Scotland demanded back her records, they were sent by sea, the ship foundered, and sunk—and we have a right to accept legend as history in this land of lost records.