History which attempts to be exact begins the castle in the seventh century, when Edwin of Deira fortified the place and called it Edwin's burgh. It was held by Malcolm Canmore, of whom and of his Saxon queen Margaret, Dunfermline tells a fuller story; held against rebels and against English, until Malcolm fell at Alnwick, and Margaret, dead at hearing the news, was carried secretly out of the castle by her devoted and kingly sons.
After Edward I took the castle, for half a century it was variously held by the English as a Border fortress. Once Bruce retook it, a stealthy night assault, up the cliffs of the west, and The Bruce razed it. Rebuilt by the Third Edward, it was taken from this king by a clever ruse planned by the Douglass, Black Knight of Liddesdale. A shipload of wine and biscuits came into harbour, and the unsuspecting castellan, glad to get such precious food in the far north, purchased it all and granted delivery at dawn next morning. The first cart load upset under the portcullis, the gate could not be closed, the cry "A Douglass," was raised, and the castle entered into Scottish keeping, never to be "English" again until the Act of Union.
Henry IV and Richard II attempted it, but failed. Richard III entered it as friend. For three years it was held for Mary by Kirkcaldy, while the city was disloyal. Charles I held it longer than he held England, and Cromwell claimed it in person as part of the Protectorate. Prince Charles, the Third, could not take it, contented himself with the less castellated, more palatial joys, of Holyrood; a preference he shared with his greatest grandmother.
To-day perhaps its defense might be battered down, as some one has suggested, "from the Firth by a Japanese cruiser." But it looks like a Gibraltar, and it keeps impregnably the treasures of the past; as necessary a defense, I take it, as of any material treasure of the present.
If you are a king you must wait to enter; summons must be made to the Warder, and it must be certain you are the king; even Edward VII, most Stewart of recent kings had to prove himself not Edward I, not English, but "Union." If you are a commoner you know no such difficulties.
First you linger on the broad Esplanade where a regiment in kilts is drilling, perhaps the Black Watch, the Scots Greys. No doubt of late it has been tramped by regiments of the "First Hundred Thousand" and later, in training for the wars.
As an American you linger here in longer memory. For when Charles was king—the phrase sounds recent to one who is eternally Jacobite—this level space was a part of Nova Scotia, and the Scotsmen who were made nobles with estates in New Scotland were enfeoffed on this very ground. So close were the relations between old and new, so indifferent were the men of adventuring times toward space.
Or, you linger here to recall when Cromwell was burned in effigy, along with "his friend the Devil."
MONS MEG.