Seven orbs within a spacious round they close,
One stirs the fire, and one the bellows blows;
The hissing steel is in the smithy drown'd,
The grot with beaten anvils groans around.
By turns their arms advance in equal time;
By turns their hands descend, and hammers chime.
They turn the glowing mass with crooked tongs,
The fiery work proceeds with rustic songs.
Virgil, Æneid viii.

For many days salvoes (i.e., discharges of heavy ordnance fired in concert by sound of trumpet) were sent against Thrave without success, and yells of triumph and derision, when the balls of iron and whinstone rebounded from the massive walls—the triple yells of the Galwegians, the same terrible war-cry which their forefathers raised amid the heart of the Saxon host at the Battle of the Standard, were borne upward on the wind to the king's battery at the Carlinwark.

"This devil of a tower is invulnerable!" said Romanno, casting down his truncheon in anger; "it is a veritable maiden castle—strong in virtue and unassailable."

"Virtue, said ye?" growled the old chancellor, under his barred aventayle; "ah, but our court-rakes aver that even the most virtuous woman has always one weak point, if we can only find it out."

"Out upon thy white beard, chancellor!" said the young king, laughing; "what mean you to say?"

"That, like a fair court lady, this castle of Thrave may have a weak point too."

"But, unless we attempt an escalade, the capture of the place is impossible by battering," said the general of the ordnance.

"Impossible!" reiterated the young king, his face and eyes glowing together, while the red spot on his cheek assumed a deeper hue.

"Pardon me, your highness," said Sir John Romanno; "but I humbly think so."

"Think; but you said impossible."

"Under favour, yes."

"There is no such word in a soldier's vocabulary," replied the spirited monarch; "and while our hearts beat under our breastplates there is hope."

"But the idea of an escalade," said Gray, "with the Dee to cross, and a wall to mount, exposed to a fire of cannon and arqubuses À croc, with long bows and arblasts to boot, and thereafter mauls, lances, and two-handed swords in the mÊlÉe, is not to be thought of—at least until, by dint of cannon, we effect a breach."

"A breach!" exclaimed Sir John Romanno; "by my forefathers' bones ye are little likely to see that, sirs, when the shot of our heaviest culverins, even those of the Lion, our chief bombarde, rebound like silken balls from the stone rampart, and our cannoniers seem no better than court-ladies at palm play."

A loud and somewhat hoarse but hearty laugh close by made all turn towards the offender. They perceived a man of vast and herculean proportions, with a shock head of black hair, which the absence of his scarlet hood (as it hung down his back) displayed in all its shaggy amplitude, a swarthy visage, with lurid black eyes, and a long beard. He wore a doublet of black bull's hide, a rough kilt dyed with heather, and he leaned upon the shaft of a ponderous iron mace, which, with a long buck-horn-hilted dagger and fur pouch or sporran, formed his only appurtenance.

"Art thou the knave who laughed?" asked Romanno, furiously, with his hand on his sword.

"And in this presence!" added the chancellor, whose wrath was also kindled.

"Dioual! I did laugh," replied the man, in a strong and guttural Galloway accent; "is it a crime to laugh at the folly or bewilderment of others?"

"Thou base varlet!" began Romanno, in a towering passion, clenching his gauntleted hand, when Sir Patrick Gray interposed, saying, "By my faith, it is my friend, the strong smith of Thrave, who saved me from the white sleuth-bratch. Come hither, carle, and remember that you stand in the presence of the king."

Malise MacKim was too much of a primitive Celt to be abashed even before a king, though he had frequently quailed under the eye of Douglas, and the tongue of his own wife, Meg, who was proverbial in Galloway as a fierce virago; so he came boldly forward and stood erect, with an inquiring expression of eye, as if waiting to be addressed.

"Whence is it that your king's perplexity excites your laughter?" asked James, gravely.

"Speak quickly, carle," added the chancellor, pointing ominously to a branch of one of the thorn trees under which they stood.

"Threats will not force me to speak; but I answer the king, not you, my lord," replied the unabashed Galwegian.

"We are not used to be laughed at, sirrah," said James; "therefore, if you do not give us a fair reason for your untimely merriment, by the holy rood! I shall begin to threaten too."

"I am Malise MacKim, surnamed the Brawny, and I am the father of seven sons, each a head taller than myself——"

"Thou art a lucky dog, would I were the same," said the king; "but is this a reason for laughter?"

"What the devil is all this to us, fellow?" asked Romanno.

"This much; they are all smiths, and can each wield a fore hammer forty pounds in weight, as if it were a kettle-drum stick. Ochoin! Mhuire as truadh! Ochoin! There was a time when we never thought to swing our hammers in the service of mortal man, save Douglas. But vengeance is sweeter than bread in famine; so, if your grace will give us but iron enough, I will be content to forfeit my head, or to hang by the neck from that thorn tree, if, within the space of seven summer days, my seven brave bairns and I fail to fashion you a bombarde which, at the first discharge, will pierce yonder wall like a gossamer web, so aid us Heaven and St. Cudbrecht?"

"This is a brave offer," said the general of the ordnance, mockingly; "and what weight may the balls of this proposed cannon be?"

"Each one shall be the weight of a Carsphairn cow," replied the smith slowly, as if reflecting while answering; "and if each fails to shake Thrave to its ground-stane, the king's grace may hang me, as I have said, on that thorn branch, as a false and boasting limmer."

"You speak us fairly, good fellow," said the king, who seemed pleased and amused by the burly smith's bluntness and perfect confidence. "We are not in a position to reject such loyal offers. Fashion this great gun for me, and if it does the service you promise, by my father's soul! you shall have a fair slice of yonder fertile land between the Urr and Dee."

As he spoke, James drew off his gauntlet, and presented his hand to the gigantic smith, who knelt and kissed it respectfully, but with the clownish air of one alike unused to kneeling and to courtesy.

On MacKim requiring material, each of the principal burghers of Kirkcudbright contributed a gaud or bar of iron, in their anxiety to serve the king, and to have the death of Sir Thomas MacLellan more fully avenged. As a reward for this contribution, King James made the town a royal burgh, and in memory of it, his gallant grandson, on the 26th of February, 1509, granted the old castle of the MacLellans as a free gift to the corporation.

At a place named the Buchancroft, a rude but extensive forge was soon erected, and there, stripped to their leathern girdles, the brawny MacKim and his seven sturdy sons, like Vulcan and the Cyclops, plied and swung their ponderous hammers on great resounding anvils, while welding the vast hoops and forming the long bars that were to compose the great cannon which was to demolish the famous stronghold of Thrave.

Seven days and seven nights these muscular smiths worked almost without cessation, and the lurid glow of their great forge was nightly seen from the doomed fortress to redden the sky above, the waters of the Dee below, and the tented camp of the besieging army; and only a few years ago, when the new road was made past Carlinwark, a vast mound of cinders and ashes, which formed the dÉbris of their work, was discovered and cleared away.

Meanwhile, a band of artificers, with hammer and chisel, were fashioning the balls, which were quarried on the summit of the Binnan hill; these when finished were permitted to roll thundering to its base; and it is remarkable that the great stone-shot for this gun, which yet remain in the castle of Edinburgh, are of Galloway granite from the same eminence.

At last the vast bombarde or cannon was complete in all its bars, hoops, and rivets; it weighed six tons and a half, exclusive of the carriage, and measured two feet diameter in the bore.

During its formation, Sir Patrick Gray endured an mount of mental torture and anxiety which temporary inaction rendered greater.

Would Achanna dare to put in execution the terrible order of the ferocious earl? Would her sister, unrelenting as she was, permit it? He feared that the deed might be done when the castle surrendered, and his feverish and active imagination pictured the gentle, timid, and delicate Murielle writhing in the grasp of an assassin.

But if some dark deed had not been already done, why did Achanna place his drawn sword across the mouth of the page, who was about to speak of Murielle, during the parley at the portcullis.

Had knighthood and common humanity fallen so low among those outlaws, that her life would be no longer safe in her sister's household; or were the last words of the dying earl a falsehood, merely meant to sting and embitter the soul of one whom he hated with a tiger's hatred?

Gray afflicted himself with thoughts and surmises such as these, and while the siege was pressed by the king and his troops, his days and nights were passed in misery.

On viewing the great piece of ordnance, James II. promised again that if it proved more successful than the Lion and his other culverins, he would nobly reward the artificer, who, with his seven sons and the royal cannoniers, dragged Meg—for so MacKim named the gun, after his own wife, whose voice, he affirmed, "her roar would resemble"—to the summit of an eminence which, unto this day, is named from that circumstance Knockcannon. Royal heralds with their glittering tabards, and pursuivants with their silver collars of SS, marched in front, while trumpets were blown and kettle-drums beaten; pipers blew, and minstrels played upon their harps; the king's jester swung his bladder and cracked his jokes; and thus, amid music, merriment, and acclamations, the mighty cannon was dragged up the slope and brought into position.

It was then loaded with an old Scottish peck of powder and one of its granite balls, and thereafter was levelled at the fortress of the rebellious Douglases.

"Now—now," exclaimed Malise MacKim, in grim triumph, as he wiped the beads of perspiration from his swarthy brow; "unless my lady of Douglas can fly through the air like an eagle, or swim down the Dee like a grilse, she and the false brood who slew my kinsman and stole his daughter shall exchange their steel gloves for steel fetters!"

All in the king's host were eager to observe the effect produced by this mighty engine of destruction, the first discharge of which, when Sir John Romanno applied the match, seemed to split the welkin, and the recoil of the wheels tore deep ruts in the turf, while many averred that they could trace the course of the ball like a great globe of stone in the air, through which it hummed and whistled.

Be that as it might, when the smoke was blown aside, a great breach or opening (now called the cannon-hole) was visible in the face of the keep, where the side of one of the windows was partly torn away. The masonry was seen to fall in a crumbling mass into the barbican, and the shout of consternation which arose from the garrison was borne on the morning wind to the king's camp, and far beyond it.

The cannoniers now cast aside their helmets, cuirasses, and cuisses, that they might work with greater facility at the laborious task of reloading this great gun, which was discharged several times with equal success; and Sir Patrick Gray watched with agony the result of every shot; for the deep, hoarse boom of each explosion that seemed to rend the hills and sky found an echo in his heart. They seemed like the knell of her he loved.

The warlike James II. was in ecstasy with the success of this new piece of ordnance, and summoning the fabricator to his tent, he then, in presence of the chancellor, the constable, and the principal nobles, granted to him and his heirs for ever, the forfeited estate of Mollance, which lies between the rivers Urr and Dee.

Mollance was locally pronounced Mowans, hence the name of the great gun which he fashioned, and which is now in the castle of Edinburgh—Mowan's Meg; though unsupported assertion has assigned her origin to the town of Mons, in Flanders—an origin of which there is not a vestige of documentary proof.

Hastening from the king's tent, Sir Patrick Gray arrived at Knockcannon in time to see another mass of masonry beaten down; and this time the feeble shout from Thrave was drowned in the tumultuous cheer that rang along the slopes, which were covered by the camp of the royal army.

"Cor Jesu, in agonia factum, miserere morientum!" prayed the voice of one beside him.

He turned, and saw his old friend the abbot, who had just left his secluded abbey of Tongland and arrived in the camp.

"Ha, father abbot," said Sir John Romanno, while six of the sturdiest cannoniers, bare armed and all begrimed by perspiration, smoke, and gunpowder, swung another granite ball into Meg's capacious muzzle; "how are you? By the mass! if he you wot of were in Thrave, this would make him shake his horns and cry peccavi."

"He—who?" asked the abbot, in a tone of displeasure.

"Thy old friend—Mahoun—the fiend himself."

"Shame on thee, Sir John."

"I am but a plain soldier, good abbot," replied Romanno, who was in excellent humour with himself and every one else; "each man to his trade: thou to thy massbook and missal—I to my lintstock and quoin."

"A truce—a truce!" cried a hundred voices, as a white flag was displayed at the summit of Thrave, where a man waved it to and fro, though the Douglas banner was not yet drawn down. Then came the faint and distant sound of trumpets craving a parley.

The abbot immediately offered himself as a mediator; and, on obtaining the permission of the king, who was now weary of this protracted and destructive siege, and was anxious to return to his beautiful Fleming at Stirling, he left the camp for Thrave, accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray, whose anxiety for the safety of Murielle was now irrepressible.