Warriston—Caroline Park—Muirhouse—Lauriston Castle—Cramond— Braehead—Cammo—Barnton—Craigcrook—Ravelston.
To-day we come to our last walk, which will take us past several curious and interesting places. There is no more imposing and majestic way for the traveller to approach or leave Edinburgh, than the Queensferry Road, which is our choice to-day. The broad, well-engineered road sweeps with an easy curve over the Dean Bridge, passes the handsome stone houses of Buckingham Terrace, and in a few moments more emerges into open country, without any of the intervening hovels which generally encumber the outskirts of a great town. We diverge from the main road at Comely Bank, and then turn due north towards Granton. To our left hand is the property of Craigleith, on which stands the massive pile of St. Cuthbert's Poorhouse. It is far over-topped and outshone by its neighbour on the opposite side of the road, Fettes College, founded in 1863 in accordance with the will of Sir William Fettes, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, to whom the estate of Comely Bank belonged. Bryce was the architect, and at some future period, when the surrounding plantations have grown up, it will look very well, but its solitary position, at the top of an exposed ridge, gives it a bare and comfortless appearance.
No old legends linger about either of these places, but about a mile and a half to the east of us stands a house whose history is too noticeable to overlook, though in the course of to-day's walk we do not actually pass it. This is Warriston House, which stands on a gentle eminence beyond the Botanical Gardens. It belonged once to the family of Kincaid, cadets of the Kincaids of that Ilk in Stirlingshire, and in 1600 it was the scene of a dreadful tragedy.
John Kincaid of Warriston was married to a beautiful woman, much younger than himself, Jean Livingston, the daughter of the Laird of Dunipace. Owing to some alleged ill-treatment, she conceived a deadly hatred of her husband, which was fomented and encouraged by her nurse. The lady was induced to tamper with a young man named Robert Weir, a servant of her father's at Dunipace, and at last she persuaded him to become her instrument. Early one morning, in July 1600, Weir came to Warriston, and being secretly admitted to the laird's chamber, he fell upon him and beat him to death with his fists. He then fled. The lady and the nurse remained at home, and seem to have taken no steps to evade the punishment of their crime. They were both seized, taken before the magistrates, and condemned to death. In the interval between the sentence and the execution, Lady Warriston, who was only twenty-one, was brought by the offices of a pious clergyman to a state of repentance and resignation to her fate. The case is reported in a curious old pamphlet called "Memorial of the Conversion of Jean Livingston (Lady Warriston), with an account of her carriage at her execution," which was reprinted by Charles Sharpe. She stated that on Weir assaulting her husband, she went to the hall, and waited till the deed was done. She thought she still heard the pitiful cries uttered by her husband while struggling with his murderer. Afterwards, by way of dissembling, she tried to weep, but not a tear could she shed. She could only regard her approaching death as a just punishment of her offence.
Her relations do not seem to have shown much grief at her fate, but for their own sakes they made interest to obtain that her execution should be as little public as possible. It was arranged that while the nurse was being burnt on the Castle-hill at four in the morning, and thus attracting the attention of any that should be about at that early hour, the lady should be taken to the Girth Cross, at the east end of the town, and should there be beheaded by the Maiden.
According to the contemporary pamphlet: "The whole way, as she went to the place of execution, she behaved herself so cheerfully, as if she had been going to a wedding and not to her death. When she came to the scaffold, and was carried up upon it, she looked up to the Maiden, with two longsome looks, for she had never seen it before. This I may say of her, to which all that saw her will bear record, that her only countenance moved, although she had not spoken a word. For there appeared such majesty in her countenance and visage, such a heavenly courage in her gesture, that many said, 'That woman is ravished with a higher spirit than man or woman.'" She then calmly resigned herself to her fate. A melancholy end for one so young! It shows the horror in which her deed was held at the time, that in the ballad of "The Laird of Warriston," the Enemy of Mankind is introduced as appearing to her, and tempting her to this awful crime. Four years later, her accomplice, Weir, was taken and broken on the wheel, a punishment hardly ever before inflicted in Scotland.[61]
We now return to our actual walk, and soon find ourselves facing the lodge-gates of Caroline Park, or Roystoun, as it was called before it became the property of John, Duke of Argyle.
Though many years have passed since I last saw Caroline Park, how vividly it rises before me, with its curious, steep-pitched roof, and the carved inscription below it, telling how George, Lord Tarbat, had erected this little cottage (tuguriolum) in 1685.