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Our walk to-day takes us in an entirely different direction, and to fields as yet unexplored. With our faces to the setting sun, we leave Edinburgh by the great west road, which for the first few miles is so cramped and hemmed in by modern houses that all recollections of the past are effaced. By degrees, as we pass Murrayfield, the villas grow fewer, the gardens and parks which lie on the hill slopes to our right get larger, but there is a sadly short interval of green fields and hedgerows, before we enter the rapidly growing village of Corstorphine, which threatens soon to lose its identity, and become a mere suburb of Edinburgh. How changed since the day when

Clermiston Lee still rises steep and bare behind the village, but the old castle of the Foresters, which then stood below it, has vanished; only a few stones remaining to show where it once was. Gone, too, is their town house in Forester's Wynd,—gone is their very name! The proud and ancient title of Lord Forester of Corstorphine has passed by inheritance to an English earl, and is merged in the higher honours of Verulam. The tombs alone of the old knights remain in the beautiful church, which, altered and mutilated as it is, still bears traces of its past glory.

The first Forester who possessed Corstorphine was Sir Adam. He was a gallant knight, who fought by the side of the Douglas at Homildon Hill, and fell a captive into Hotspur's hands. He was ransomed, but three years later (1405) he died at Corstorphine, full of years and honours. His son, Sir John, was Great Chamberlain of Scotland, and Master of the Household to James I. In his time the church was built (1444), and erected into a collegiate foundation, with a provost, four prebendaries, and two singing boys. It has been conjectured that one of the first provosts was the "Gentill Rowll," whom Dunbar, in his beautiful "Lament of the Makaris," bemoans as one of those whom Death "has tane out of this countrie."

His name is embalmed with those of other poets of his day, Chaucer, Wyntoun, Blind Harry, Barbour; but it is doubtful if a line of his writings has come down to us.[52] When we enter the old church where he officiated, we shall be sadly disappointed. The requirements of a Presbyterian place of worship have altered it so much from its original form, that we must shut our eyes, and throw our minds back into former days, before we can picture it, or even understand it at all. What is now the porch was then the chancel, but the altar-tombs have been spared, with their recumbent effigies.

"Two of the altar-tombs," to quote Wilson's vivid description, "occupy arched recesses in the chancel, one of them being the monument of Sir John Forester, the founder of the collegiate church, and his lady, apparently a St. Clair of Orkney, judging from the arms impaled with the Foresters' on one of the sculptured shields. The knight and lady are in armour and dress of the fifteenth century, and the latter clasps her breviary in her hands. In the other monument, supposed to represent the son of the founder and his wife, the lady's hands are meekly crossed over her breast. The supposed Crusader lies apart on his altar-tomb in the south transept, with his dog at his feet. He is traditionally affirmed to be Bernard, Lord of Aubigny, who died at the castle of Corstorphine, while on an embassy to the court of James IV. in 1508; but the monument is of older date, and the shield bears the Foresters' own heraldic hunting horns stringed."[53] One shield impaled with Forester bears the fesse cheque of Stuart,—perhaps for Marion Stewart, Lady Dalswinton, wife of the second Sir John Forester.

The church is built in the form of a cross, and part of the roof is still covered with the old grey flagstones. A small square belfry tower at the west end is surmounted by a short octagonal spire, with richly ornamented string mouldings. In the pre-Reformation days, the provostry of Corstorphine was a lucrative and much sought after office. In the beginning of the sixteenth century it was held by the Robert Cairncross who bears an unenviable reputation in Buchanan's history, by the manner in which he obtained the Abbey of Holyrood, without subjecting himself to the law against simony. Having ascertained that the abbot was at the point of death, he wagered a considerable sum with the king that he would not be offered the first vacant benefice, and lost his bet by being appointed Abbot of Holyrood.

Putting on one side such wild legends as derive the name of Corstorphine from Croix d'or fin, the golden cross presented to the church by some mythical French noble, it seems far more probable that the village was called after the "Cross of Torphin;" though of that there are now no traces left. Probably it was erected by the same Torphin who gave his name to one of the outlying spurs of Pentland, which is still called Torphin Hill, and stands in Colinton parish. Tradition says he was an archdeacon of Lothian, but his name carries one back to the early Saxon invaders of the land. In old days a loch stretched over what now is fertile plain; and the Water of Leith, which ran out of it, was deep enough for the Lords Forrester to bring their provisions up from Edinburgh by boat to their castle of Corstorphine, which stood close to the north-west corner of the loch.

At this castle a terrible crime was committed in August 1679. George, the first Lord Forester, had no son, and, to prevent the extinction of the family name, he resigned his honours into Charles II.'s hands, and obtained a fresh patent in favour of his daughter Jean and her husband, James Baillie of Torwoodhead, who accordingly succeeded as second Lord Forester. This nobleman's first wife had died childless, it is said, heart-broken at the neglect and indignities she suffered at his hands. He was a second time a widower,—having married a daughter of the old Cavalier general, Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Forth and Brentford, by whom he had five children, all of whom bore their mother's name of Ruthven,—when popular rumour accused him of carrying on an intrigue with the beautiful Christian Nimmo,[54] the wife of a merchant in Edinburgh. She was a great deal younger than himself, and a niece of his first wife's. This near relationship greatly increased the scandal, which was aggravated by Lord Forester having always professed to be a religious man, and a rigid Presbyterian. Mrs. Nimmo, besides being a very beautiful woman, was of a violent and impulsive nature. She was believed always to carry a sword under her petticoats,[55] and so was not a person to be treated lightly, especially by those who reflected what blood ran in her veins,—a Mrs. Bedford, who had murdered her husband a few years before, being her cousin-german. She was also related to the unhappy Lady Warriston, who suffered death for the same crime in 1600. Lord Forester's passion for her appears to have cooled; and, shutting his eyes to possible consequences, he permitted himself in one of his carouses to speak more than lightly of her. This came to her ears, and, seized with fury, she went at once to his castle at Corstorphine. He was absent when she arrived, drinking at a tavern in the village. She sent for him, and met him in the garden, close to the old dovecot, where a violent altercation took place between them. In the midst of it, she snatched the sword from his side, ran him through the body, and killed him.

"The inhabitants of the village," writes Charles Sharpe, "still relate some circumstances of the murder, not recorded by Fountainhall. Mrs. Nimmo, attended by her maid, had gone from Edinburgh to the castle of Corstorphine." After the murder, "she took refuge in a garret of the castle, but was discovered by one of her slippers, which dropped through a crevice in the floor. It need hardly be added that, till lately, the inhabitants of the village were greatly annoyed, of a moonlight night, by the appearance of a woman clothed in white, with a bloody sword in her hand, wandering and waiting near the pigeon-house." She was seized and brought before the sheriff in Edinburgh. She confessed her crime, but pleaded that Lord Forester, being ferocious and intoxicated with drink, had drawn his sword; that, to save herself, she had snatched it from him, and that in the struggle he had fallen upon it, and so killed himself. In spite of this defence, sentence of death was passed upon her, which she contrived to have postponed for two months, under a false pretext of her condition. During this interval she escaped one evening from the Tolbooth, disguised as a man, but she was recaptured next day at Fala Mill, and beheaded at the Market Cross on the 12th November 1679. At her execution she appeared dressed in deep mourning, with a long veil, which, before laying her head on the block, she took off, and replaced with a white taffeta hood. She met her fate with great courage.[56] It was said at the time that, in spite of his professed Presbyterianism, a dispensation from the Pope to marry Mrs. Nimmo was found among Lord Forester's papers, and that his delay in using it had caused her fury.

By the terms of the patent, the barony and lands of Corstorphine passed to Lord Forester's nephew, William Baillie, his mother having been Lilias, youngest daughter of the first baron. He became third Lord Forester, and in his line the title has since remained.

The fertile pastures that surround Corstorphine provided our forefathers with that favourite delicacy, known as Corstorphine cream. It was a variety of the old Scottish dish called "Hattit Kit," and much resembled it.[57]

About a quarter of a mile to the west of Corstorphine, the high road divides in two,—the branch to the right making its way by Linlithgow to the north; the other leading straight on, and reaching Glasgow eventually. Though it is out of the direction of this walk, and we shall have to retrace our steps to this point, we would pray our kind companions to go with us as far along the first-named road as the bridge which crosses the Almond near Kirkliston, and joins the counties of West and Midlothian. It is not more than a mile and a half off, and, just before reaching it, we turn aside, along a rough cart track leading into a field. This field lies in the angle between the Almond and the impetuous little Gogar Burn, which we have crossed without noticing; and about the centre, on slightly rising ground, stands the object of our search—the end of our pilgrimage. To you it is but a rude, shapeless block of stone, too stunted and lumpy to have any appearance of dignity, and not more venerable or ancient-looking than any other time-worn, moss-grown fragment. But to us who know, it is eloquent with a thousand voices! This is the Cat-Stane, the most northerly monument of that intruding race by which Pict and Gael alike were driven back to their native hills. Beneath this massive stone has slept for centuries the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa. "In oc tumulo jacit Vetta f. Victi." So its mutilated inscription was read years ago by the learned Edward Lhwyd,—and so does its latest interpreter, Sir James Simpson, read it also.

The Venerable Bede, in describing the invasion of England by the German tribes in the time of Vortigern, states that their "leaders were two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, who were the sons of Victgils, whose father was Vetta, whose father was Victa, whose father was Woden." So the genealogy runs, and in this all the old chroniclers are agreed; and here undoubtedly lies a Vetta, the son of Victa, neither of them common names among the Saxons. We may ask ourselves what brought the Saxon chief so far from his native shores, and to a land where his race did not take root? But we have the authority of Nennius for saying that the Saxons occupied for a short period various regions beyond the Mare Frisicum (the Firth of Forth), and Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that, two generations before the invasion of Hengist and Horsa, a Saxon host was leagued with the other races of Scotland, the Picts, Scots, and Attacots, against their common enemy, the Romans, and fought with a Roman army under Theodosius. The battle probably took place near this spot, for it must have been fought somewhere between the two Roman walls, and this place is included in that tract of country. The vulgar name of the monument, the Cat-Stane, points to this hypothesis, the name being clearly derived from the British Cad, the Scoto-Irish Cath, the Welsh Cat, all meaning "battle."[58] When Mr. Lhwyd visited the spot in 1688, the sculptured stone was surrounded by large stones laid lengthways, this one only being set on end.

Beside this venerable monument, how modern appears everything else that we have looked at! What changes it has seen! And yet here it stands, little altered by the centuries that have passed over it. One deed of violence it was a witness of, which we must not forget to mention. On this very spot, in April 1567, Queen Mary was seized, on her way from Stirling to Edinburgh, by a troop consisting of eight hundred spears, commanded by Lord Bothwell. They surrounded her attendants, and, taking possession by force of the Queen's person, hurried her off on the fatal journey to Dunbar.

Returning now to the point where we left the Glasgow road, we pursue it for a mile, and then see on our right some beautiful hammered-iron gates. These are the lost gates of Caroline Park, whose forsaken gate pillars we shall see to-morrow. They now defend the entrance to Gogar House, a curious old mansion with winding stairs, which stands in a sheltered position near the Gogar Burn. It was once a much more important place. It possessed two villages, Nether Gogar and Gogar Stone. One has disappeared, the other dwindled down to a few houses. It had a church whose priest was one of the prebendaries of Corstorphine. Only a small portion is still extant, and that is used as a burial ground. In the 14th century Gogar was given by King Robert Bruce to his faithful companion, Sir Alexander Seton. He was one of those who signed the famous letter to the Pope in 1330, asserting the independence of their country, and vowing that, so long as a hundred of them remained alive, they would never submit to the king of England.[59] After him Gogar belonged to many different families, including the Logans of Restalrig, and the Erskines, a younger branch of Mar. At the end of the last century it was bought by the Ramsays of Barnton.

We now turn to the left and pass Millburn Tower and Gogar Station, and then, crossing the Union Canal, we finally emerge on the other great west road that leaves Edinburgh and runs past Dalmahoy to Midcalder. Dalmahoy, and even Riccarton (of which we see the woods to the west of us), are too far out of the range of our walks to explore; but, though Hatton is even farther off, we must make a passing allusion to that curious old place. It is almost the only house left in this part of Scotland which preserves untouched the characteristics of the time when it was built, the latter half of the 17th century. Part of the house is the original tower of the Lauders of Haltoun,[60] and dates from the 14th century, but it was completely altered and remodelled, when Charles Maitland, afterwards fourth Earl of Lauderdale (who married the heiress) built the present house. It stands back in a flagged court, closed by iron gates. On the garden side the ground falls rapidly away, so that a terraced wall bounds the courtyard on this side, and is supported at the corners by curious old-fashioned pavilions with steep roofs, and doors opening into the garden below. Everywhere may be seen the coronets and crossed L's of the Lauderdales, who made this one of their principal seats, till it was sold in 1792 by the eighth earl. He was my great-grandfather; and a curious story is handed down of his father's residence at Hatton. That Lord Lauderdale kept a pack of harriers with which he was very fond of hunting. Time after time these hounds put up a very large hare in the park, which, after a good run, invariably succeeded in eluding them, and always disappeared near a cottage, inhabited by a solitary old woman, popularly believed to be a witch. His huntsman told him that hare would never be caught, as he was sure it was the witch herself, but Lord Lauderdale would not believe him. At last, one day, just as the hare was making off as usual, the leading hound got near enough, and seized it by the leg; but, not having sufficient hold, the hare got away and disappeared in the cottage. Lord Lauderdale, who was close up, jumped off his horse and went into the cottage, where he found no hare, but only the old woman sitting by the fire, groaning and rubbing her leg. She had been quite well that morning, but made some excuse to Lord Lauderdale about having hurt herself. He knew better, and so did every one else.

When Lord Lauderdale sold Hatton, it was bought by the Davidsons of Muirhouse, who cut down the beautiful lime avenue of great length, which formerly led up to the house. In their turn, they sold it to the present Lord Morton, then Lord Aberdour, in 1872.

After this digression, we return to our walk, and continue our way towards Edinburgh. It is a flat, uninteresting, highly cultivated country through which we are passing. Away to our right, but quite out of sight, is the deep valley of the Water of Leith, which runs past Currie and Colinton. Near it stands the curious old house of Baberton, where Charles X. resided for a short time, when, after the Revolution of 1830, he found a refuge in Scotland. Just before reaching Saughton, we cross the Water of Leith, which is permanently spoilt and discoloured by the mills farther up. The beautiful old bridge lies a hundred yards to the left, and to reach Saughton Hall we have to cross it. It has three arches supported by massive piers, and on a square panel is the date 1670, when it was probably repaired. It is of great age.

Saughton Hall is the old seat of the Bairds of Saughton, now represented by Sir James Gardiner Baird, whose grandfather let it, early in this century, to the proprietors of a private lunatic asylum. To fit it for their use, it has been so added to, and the place so altered, that little of its original form remains.

We next pass the little village of Gorgie, with its tan works, and find ourselves in the outskirts of Edinburgh. The suburb by which we enter the town is called Dalry, a name of Celtic origin, from dal, a vale, and righ, the king. The earliest mention of this property is in the time of Robert I., who granted a charter of the lands of Dalry to William Bisset. The Bissets were a powerful and important family in those days. In the 16th century, Dalry became the property of the Chiesly family, wealthy burgesses of Edinburgh.

On Easter Sunday, March 31, 1689, the Lord President, Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, was shot dead by John Chiesly of Dalry. The motives for this dreadful deed were those of private ill-feeling. Chiesly, who was on bad terms with his wife, swore to be revenged on the Lord President for assigning to her a small aliment (only £93 a year) out of his estates. He was a man of violent and ungovernable passions. Six months before the murder, he told Sir James Stewart in London that he was "determined to go to Scotland before Candlemas, and kill the President." "The very imagination of such a thing," said Sir James, "is a sin before God." "Leave God and me alone," was the fierce answer; "we have many things to reckon betwixt us, and we will reckon this too!" The Lord President was warned of these threats, but took no notice. Chiesly dogged him home from church that Easter Sunday, and shot him in the back as he went into his own house, in the Old Bank Close. Lady Lockhart was confined to her bed with illness, but, on hearing the pistol-shot, she sprang up and rushed forward in her night-dress, just in time to see her husband carried in, and laid on two chairs, where he instantly expired. Chiesly, being caught red-handed, was sentenced to death next day by the Lord Provost. He was dragged on a hurdle to the Cross, where his right hand was struck off while still alive. Then he was hanged in chains at the Gallowlee, and his right hand was nailed on the West Port. It was said that his relations and servants came at dead of night and carried off his body, and buried it near his house of Dalry, which for long after was alleged to be haunted. It is a curious fact "that on repairing the garden-wall at a later period," says Wilson, "an old stone seat, which stood in a recess of the wall, had to be removed, and underneath was found a skeleton entire, except the bones of the right hand—without doubt the remains of the assassin, that had secretly been brought hither from the Gallowlee."

His daughter Rachel married the Honourable James Erskine, Lord Grange, and was the unhappy Lady Grange, whose story is well known. After twenty years of quarrels and unhappiness, her husband had her secretly conveyed to the Hebrides, where, first in one island, then in another, she lingered out in captivity and solitude the remaining seventeen years of her most wretched life. Lord Grange was involved in Jacobite plots, and it is believed that his wife's threat of betraying him to the Government was what finally decided him in shutting her up where she could not hurt him.

The old house of the Chieslys still exists. It is a curious old place with small projecting towers crowned with ogee roofs; but it is almost concealed among the humbler tenements which thickly cover that part of the estate, and is now a training school for Scottish Episcopalian teachers. From the Chieslys, Dalry passed to Sir Alexander Brand, who owned the neighbouring property of Brandfield in the district of Fountainbridge. His house there has quite disappeared, but its name is preserved in Brandfield Place, which is built on its site. In later times Dalry belonged to the Kirkpatricks of Allisland, and then to the Walkers, in whose possession it is now.

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