The timber edifice on such an eminence as the Peel Bog—probably, as the sagacious Lord Hailes imagines, the true character of the edifices possessed by Macbeth—would no more fill up the true architectural wants of the drama, than a marble Grecian temple, or a Canadian settler's log-house.
Crimes briefly told without details have no interest, unless they can be put in the shape of statistics—some people will be inclined to deny that the exception is the reverse of the rule. We are not writing history, and if we were, the historical details which go no further than that A stabbed B, and C poisoned D, and E mutilated F, are not such as we are inclined to believe our readers would thank us for. It is very clear that the death of Duncan, if we had no more than authentic annals to deal with—if it had been a question merely of history, and not in some measure incidentally connected with the highest rank of human intellectual effort—would have formed a very meagre object of comment. The society of antiquaries might have endured a paper on it—for such endurance is the martyrdom they have chosen—but no other person would. In looking, then, down through Scottish history from the accession of Macbeth's successor, we find little that can be noticed with any applicability to our particular purpose, until we reach the time when the records provide us with some of the details.
Yet there is one very early tragic incident, which appears to us to have considerable interest, as one of the first striking instances where the fierce spirit of clan animosity—the burning desire to avenge the wrongs of the chief—was exhibited by the Highlanders. It occurred about the year 1242. A tournament was held on the English Border, at which two young knights, Patrick Earl of Athole, and Walter de Bysset, a cadet of the family who were lords of the great northern districts, subsequently the patrimony of Lord Lovat, encountered each other. Bysset was unhorsed. Not long afterwards, the building in which the Earl of Athole lived, in Haddington, was burned to the ground, and he, with several of his followers, died in the flames. By some accounts the Earl was previously murdered, and the house was burned to conceal the deed. Let us here have recourse to the distinct and considerate account of the incident in our favourite poet:—
"Whether it was of recklessness,
Or it of forethought felony was,
Into the Inns, lang ere day,
Quhare that the Earl of Athole lay
A fell fire him to coals brynt,
Thus suddenly was that Earl tynt.
And with him mony ma
There houses and men were brunt alswa."
Some Highland gillies from Bysset's country had been seen in the neighbourhood, and suspicion immediately fell upon the head of that house. He tried to prove an alibi—that he was, at the time of the tragedy, in Forfar, some eighty miles distant from Haddington, doing the honours of hospitality to the Queen. As our historical poet says:
"But this Sir William at Forfar
That night was late at the supper
With the Queen, and her to chamber led,
And in his own chamber yhed till his bed,"
like a good old country gentleman. But an alibi went for little in a Highland feud.
"To purge him for this the Queen
Profered her to swear bodily,
But that assythed not the party,
That was stout and of great might,
They said—Wherever he was that night
Bathe his armouries and his men
Intil Haddington were seen then,
When this earl was brynt with fire:
They said the Byssets in their ire
Of auld feud and great discord
That was between them and that lord,
Did that in forethought felony."
It was still the age of ordeals. The hot ploughshares were, perhaps, obsolete, but single combat was in full practice; and even jury trial was considered a species of ordeal rather than a deliberate judgment upon evidence. The accused party in the one case appealed to the chances of war—or, taking the reference in its more solemn aspect, he left his cause to be vindicated by the God of battles: in the other, he threw himself upon the suffrages of his peers. Both ordeals were considered about equally reasonable and fair; and if the man who preferred the ordeal of battle were a gigantic warrior, unconquered, and terrible in the lists, he was, to the true believer in ordeals, not more formidable than the feeblest of his contemporaries, for a just Deity might wither his uplifted arm; and if he retained the physical superiority he had previously indicated, it was because the All-seeing Eye knew of the justice of his cause. Now Bysset, who seems to have been somewhat of a sceptic in ordeals, had no objection to trust the issue to single combat, and challenged whomsoever would dare to stand forth against him. But he would not submit to an assize or jury, for he said the whole country had prejudged him. His opponents had, somehow or other, greater faith in the ordeal of an assize than that of battle, and would not accept his challenge. In the meantime, to show his sincerity, he requested the northern clergy to curse and excommunicate the perpetrators of the deed.
"Sir William Bysset gert for thi,
His chaplain in his chapel,
Denounce cursed with book and bell,
All they that had part
Of that brynnin, or any art.
The Bishop of Aberdeen alswa,
He gart cursed denounce all tha
That either by art or part, or swike,
Gart burn this time that Earl Patricke,
In all the kirks halely
Of Aberdeen's diocesy.
Sir William Bysset this process
Gart be done."