Corstorphine—The Cat-Stane—Gogar—Hatton—Saughton Hall—Dalry.
Our walk to-day takes us in an entirely different direction, and to fields as yet unexplored. With our faces to the setting sun, we leave Edinburgh by the great west road, which for the first few miles is so cramped and hemmed in by modern houses that all recollections of the past are effaced. By degrees, as we pass Murrayfield, the villas grow fewer, the gardens and parks which lie on the hill slopes to our right get larger, but there is a sadly short interval of green fields and hedgerows, before we enter the rapidly growing village of Corstorphine, which threatens soon to lose its identity, and become a mere suburb of Edinburgh. How changed since the day when
On Ravelston cliffs, and on Clermiston Lee Died away the wild war-notes of bonnie Dundee.
Clermiston Lee still rises steep and bare behind the village, but the old castle of the Foresters, which then stood below it, has vanished; only a few stones remaining to show where it once was. Gone, too, is their town house in Forester's Wynd,—gone is their very name! The proud and ancient title of Lord Forester of Corstorphine has passed by inheritance to an English earl, and is merged in the higher honours of Verulam. The tombs alone of the old knights remain in the beautiful church, which, altered and mutilated as it is, still bears traces of its past glory.
The first Forester who possessed Corstorphine was Sir Adam. He was a gallant knight, who fought by the side of the Douglas at Homildon Hill, and fell a captive into Hotspur's hands. He was ransomed, but three years later (1405) he died at Corstorphine, full of years and honours. His son, Sir John, was Great Chamberlain of Scotland, and Master of the Household to James I. In his time the church was built (1444), and erected into a collegiate foundation, with a provost, four prebendaries, and two singing boys. It has been conjectured that one of the first provosts was the "Gentill Rowll," whom Dunbar, in his beautiful "Lament of the Makaris," bemoans as one of those whom Death "has tane out of this countrie."
He has tane Rowll of Abirdeen And gentill Rowll of Corstorphyne; Twa bettir fallowis did no man sie, Timor mortis conturbat me.
His name is embalmed with those of other poets of his day, Chaucer, Wyntoun, Blind Harry, Barbour; but it is doubtful if a line of his writings has come down to us.[52] When we enter the old church where he officiated, we shall be sadly disappointed. The requirements of a Presbyterian place of worship have altered it so much from its original form, that we must shut our eyes, and throw our minds back into former days, before we can picture it, or even understand it at all. What is now the porch was then the chancel, but the altar-tombs have been spared, with their recumbent effigies.
"Two of the altar-tombs," to quote Wilson's vivid description, "occupy arched recesses in the chancel, one of them being the monument of Sir John Forester, the founder of the collegiate church, and his lady, apparently a St. Clair of Orkney, judging from the arms impaled with the Foresters' on one of the sculptured shields. The knight and lady are in armour and dress of the fifteenth century, and the latter clasps her breviary in her hands. In the other monument, supposed to represent the son of the founder and his wife, the lady's hands are meekly crossed over her breast. The supposed Crusader lies apart on his altar-tomb in the south transept, with his dog at his feet. He is traditionally affirmed to be Bernard, Lord of Aubigny, who died at the castle of Corstorphine, while on an embassy to the court of James IV. in 1508; but the monument is of older date, and the shield bears the Foresters' own heraldic hunting horns stringed."[53] One shield impaled with Forester bears the fesse cheque of Stuart,—perhaps for Marion Stewart, Lady Dalswinton, wife of the second Sir John Forester.