Who has not read how Robert Burns knelt down and kissed, with a poet’s fervor, the broad flagstone over the grave of Robert the Bruce? What boy has not spoken the piece, “Scots whom Bruce has often led”? In 1821 when building the new modern edifice, they opened the tomb of Robert the Bruce and found his skeleton entire. The evidence of its being his consisted mainly in the fact that the breastbone was sawn asunder, in order to reach the heart, which had been extracted. The remains were re-interred with fitting pomp below the pulpit of the new church. In 1891, to bestow more honor on Scotland’s hero, the pulpit was moved back and a monumental brass inserted in the floor to indicate the royal vault. The tomb of St. Margaret and Malcolm, which was within the ruined walls of the Lady chapel, was restored and enclosed at the command of Queen Victoria. The nave of the abbey church was of noble proportions, but of the abbey itself, only portions of the refectory, tower, and arched gateway remain. The devastating reformers of March, 1560, spared the nave, which served as a parish house of worship until the nineteenth century. Now it forms the vestibule of the new edifice.
Another interesting ruin is part of the palace of the Stuart kings, overhanging the romantic glen of Pittencrief. It is a noble wreck, showing massive flying buttresses. The last royal tenant of the palace was Charles II, who occupied it just before marching south to the battle and rout of Worcester in 1651. Within its walls also he signed the National League and Covenant.
Dunfermline has a long ecclesiastical history. The first settlers in this place, who brought news of an unseen world, other than that inhabited by those who sought the Eternal through the Druids, were the Culdees. Then followed the Celtic, Anglican, and modern forms of religion. In Dunfermline arose also the modern Dissenters, Ralph Erskine and Thomas Gillespie, who added a new variety of Presbyterianism to the many forms already existing, though the religious bodies which they founded are now one, under the name of “United Presbyterians,” whose influence, in both Scotland and America, has been so notable.
In one sense, Andrew Carnegie, “the star-spangled Scotchman,” is the most celebrated of all Dunfermline’s sons, as he is certainly her greatest benefactor. He gave to his birthplace its Free Library, its public baths, and the estate of Pittencrief Park and Glen, together with bonds yielding $100,000 a year, in trust, for the maintenance of the park, a theatre, the promotion of horticulture among the working classes, periodical exhibitions of works of art and science, and the encouragement of technical education in the district.
The visiting American feels proud that this once poor Scottish boy, without favor, rank, patrons, or special opportunities, having amassed his wealth in the United States, has used it so generously all over the world—a type of America’s mission. I have seen and met Mr. Carnegie on many occasions, at public dinners, as guest of honor, or presiding at famous celebrations, notably when the double centenary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin was celebrated by the Pennsylvania University, in Witherspoon Hall, in Philadelphia. I remember that, in bestowing upon a lady recipient of a learned degree her diploma, he nearly demolished her chignon. Nevertheless, the canny Scot seemed greater in redeeming his fault than even in doing successfully mightier things—the mark of a master of men. One of the strongest points in the career of the bonnie ironmaster has ever been his power to neutralize the possible evil effects of an error, whether that were a downright blunder or a mistake in judgment. No one is more fertile in those resources, which negative what might, with an ordinary man, become a calamity.
I last met this optimist at Cornell University, to which he had come to see and hear the grand organ in Bailey Hall, which he, through Dr. Andrew D. White, had presented to the New York State College of Agriculture. The gates of hell had already been opened beyond sea, and international insanity—the chronic disease of Europe—was covering the plains of Belgium with blood and corpses. I asked Mr. Carnegie whether he was not discouraged, since, after all these years of his working diligently for peace, war had again broken out. “Discouraged?” said he, with vehemence. “Don’t know the meaning of the word.” Long live Andrew, with his incorrigible and invincible optimism!
In this historic city my thoughts were mostly of Queen Margaret, the gentle conqueror of the Scottish people, and one of the greatest of all women born in Britain. When, after the battle of Hastings in 1066, the Saxon King Edgar fled into Scotland, with his two sisters, King Malcolm Canmore took Margaret, styled “the Beautiful,” for his wife, and was wedded at Dunfermline. Her husband, in 1093, refusing to be a vassal of the South, and indignant at his reception by Rufus at Gloucester, returned home. He then invaded England, only to be met and slain, together with his son, at Alnwick. This double blow, coming in a moment of ill health, was too much for Margaret, and she died in Edinburgh Castle. In the violence of the times, when Celt and Saxon were ever at war, her body may have been in danger of outrage. So her corpse was quietly conveyed, by way of the West Port of the then walled city, under cover of a mist, and without ceremony was removed to Dunfermline.
One sometimes wonders why the history of Ireland and of Scotland, especially in their relations to the larger island, England, are so different, notwithstanding that the same race of men so largely peopled the two countries. Yet, if we look down the long perspective of the centuries, we see how the political winds, which were so harsh to Ireland, were so tempered to Scotland.
In “the Pope’s Green Isle,” nearly all the changes that have been wrought by the English or Normans came in the wake of conquest and the sword; whereas in Scotland, the new ideas and institutions introduced by the Anglo-Normans entered slowly by infiltration. The potency of initial changes, in the one case, was that of man; in the other, of woman. It was an English queen, with her English children, who wrought gently but surely the reforms which brought Scotland in harmony with the civilization of Europe. Queen Margaret’s life was one long ministry of reconciliation of Celt and Saxon mainly in direct service of her people, through religion, in both theory and practice. She was a saint in reality as well as by canon.
In Ireland, even in the Church, there were, beside a heritage of hate, a Celtic and an Anglo-Norman party always at one another’s throats or reputations. From such legacies of bitterness Scotland was happy enough to escape because it was through a wise woman’s wit and tact that the initial changes were gently and gradually made. It is no wonder that the Scots, as well as the office of canonization, call her “Saint” Margaret.