Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/506



It appears that Sir Walter Scott's memory was not quite accurate on these points. John Borthwick, Esq., in a note to the publisher (June 14, 1843) says that Colmslie belonged to Mr. Innes of Stow, while Hillslap forms part of the estate of Crookston. He adds—'In proof that the tower of Hillslap, which I have taken measures to preserve from injury, was chiefly in his head, as the tower of Glendearg, when writing the Monastery, I may mention that, on one of the occasions when I had the honour of being a visitor at Abbotsford, the stables then being full, I sent a pony to be put up at our tenant's at Hillslap:—"Well," said Sir Walter, "if you do that, you must trust for its not being lifted before to-morrow, to the protection of Halbert Glendinning against Christie of the Clinthill." At page 58, vol. iii, first edition, the "winding stair" which the monk ascended is described. The winding stone stair is still to be seen in Hillslap, but not in either of the other two towers.' It is, however, probable, from the Goat's-Head crest on Colmslie, that that tower also had been of old a possession of the Borthwicks.

As gallantry of all times and nations has the same mode of thinking and acting, so it often expresses itself by the same symbols. In the civil war 1745-6, a party of Highlanders, under a chieftain of rank, came to Rose Castle, the seat of the Bishop of Carlisle, but then occupied by the family of Squire Dacre of Cumberland. They demanded quarters, which of course were not to be refused to armed men of a strange attire and unknown language. But the domestic represented to the captain of the mountaineers, that the lady of the mansion had been just delivered of a daughter, and expressed her hope, that, under these circumstances, his party would give as little trouble as possible. 'God forbid,' said the gallant chief, 'that I or mine should be the means of adding to a lady's inconvenience at such a time. May I request to see the infant?' The child was brought, and the Highlander, taking his cockade out of his bonnet, and pinning it on the child's breast, 'That will be a token,' he said, fc to any of our people who may come hither, that Donald McDonald of Kinloch-Moidart has taken the family of Rose Castle under his protection.' The lady who received in infancy this gage of Highland protection is now [1830] Mary, Lady Clerk of Pennycuik; and on the 10th of June st ill w ears the cockade which was pinned on her breast, with a white rose as a kindred decoration.

This superstition continues to prevail, though one would suppose it must now' be antiquated. It is only a year or two since an itinerant puppet showman, who, disdaining to acknowledge the profession of Gines de Passamonté, called himself an artist from Vauxhall, brought a complaint of a singular nature before the author, as Sheriff of Selkirkshire. The singular dexterity with which the showman had exhibited the machinery of his little stage, had, upon a Selkirk fair-day, excited the eager curiosity of some mechanics of Galashiels. These men, from no worse motive that could be discovered than a thirst after knowledge beyond their sphere, committed a burglary upon the barn in which the puppets had been consigned to repose, and carried them off in the nook of their plaids, when returning from Selkirk to their own village.