while the usurper, relying on the general steepness of the rock on which the castle stands, was intent only to guard the usual access, the body of the queen was conveyed through a small postern in the western wall, and down the steep declivity, to Dunfermline Abbey; while the royal children were at the same time carried off, and committed to the protection of their uncle, Edgar Atheling.

The bodies of the king and his eldest son were also ultimately interred beside the queen at Dunfermline, and various superstitious monkish legends attest the sanctity of the royal remains. According to one chronicler, the corpse of queen Margaret escaped the guards of Donald Bane by means of a miraculous mist, which rose from the earth as the bearers lifted it to proceed on their journey, and continued to envelop them till they reached Queensferry on the Forth, nine miles distant.

Another miraculous attestation to the sanctity of the queen, minutely narrated by Wynton and other monkish historians, may, perhaps, notwithstanding the palpable extravagances of its character, be accepted as a tradition of the strong attachment borne by her to her husband. On the canonization of the queen, her body was removed from the original grave to be deposited in a costly shrine before the high altar. While the monks were thus employed, they approached the tomb of her husband Malcolm with their precious burden. The body, however, so runs the legend, became on

a sudden so heavy that they were obliged to set it down. Still, as more of the fraternity were called in to aid in lifting it, the body became heavier. The spectators stood amazed, and imputed the phenomenon to the monks' unworthiness, when it was suggested that the queen desired to retain her husband's company. On this hint Malcolm's body also was removed, and then that of the queen was carried to her shrine with ease.

Such were the childish legends and lying wonders which beguiled our fathers in these old times. But though that age of darkness is happily long past, the spirit of the erring church of Rome remains unchanged. Within these few years a convent has been established at Edinburgh, dedicated to this same favourite saint Margaret, and underneath the altar of its chapel have been deposited the canonized bones of some unknown saint, brought, by papal authority, from the catacombs at Rome, and placed in their new shrine, it is said, with a pomp of ceremonial unknown in Scotland since John Knox assailed the strongholds of Romish superstition, and, according to the homely adage ascribed to him, dug down the nests that the rooks might be forced to flee away!

CHAPTER II.

THE SONS OF QUEEN MARGARET.

THE death of Malcolm and his eldest son, followed as it was almost immediately by that of queen Margaret, left the newly formed Saxon kingdom of Scotland totally destitute of a leader; and Donald Bane, at the head of the fierce Celtic tribes of Argyle, the seat of the Dalriadic kingdom of the Scots, found no difficulty in securing the succession to his brother's throne. He was immediately proclaimed king, with the full concurrence of the Norwegian monarch, Magnus Barefoot, whose favour he purchased by the concession of certain islands wrested from him by Malcolm. Had Donald Bane succeeded in his attempt to obtain possession of Edinburgh Castle while his nephews remained within its walls, he would have made a speedy end of the succession of Malcolm and Margaret, through whom our present queen Victoria traces her descent from the great Saxon Alfred. The children, however, were carried safely beyond his reach before the castle fell into his hands, and a few years afterwards, Edgar, a son

of Malcolm, avenged himself on the usurper, and ascended his father's throne. The young monarch took up his residence in his mother's favourite palace within the Castle of Edinburgh, but his reign was of brief duration. He is said to have been interred in the castle, probably within the little oratory to which we have before alluded.

The influence of the Saxon princess, and the predominating effects of her zealous domestic training, are apparent in the history of her sons, who successively occupied the throne. The island of Inch Colm, on which Alexander founded a monastery dedicated to the favourite Scottish teacher St. Colomba, is visible from the Castle of Edinburgh; with its beautiful ruins, forming an attractive and most picturesque feature in the Frith of Forth. But it is his younger brother, David 1., or St. David, as he is styled, to whom we must look as the true successor of St. Margaret. It was reserved for him to carry out the ecclesiastical changes projected by his royal mother, and to him we owe the foundation of the larger number of the great Scottish abbeys, including the celebrated abbey of the Holyrood, which became the *favourite residence, and finally the chief palace of the Scottish kings.

David I., after his accession to the throne, resided for the most part in the Castle of Edinburgh, and thereby conferred on the neighbouring town all the advantages arising from its position as a royal demesne, and the

principal seat of the court. The idea, however, which we are able to form of the chief Scottish city of the twelfth century from such authentic notices as remain to us, furnishes a sufficiently homely and primitive picture of the progress of the country in civilization. Edinburgh was then an unwalled town, occupying only the higher ridge of the hill in the immediate vicinity of the castle, where the oldest portions still stand, and would, in all probability, have borne no very favourable comparison with some of the larger English villages of our own day. In the central place stood then, as now, the venerable church of St. Giles, of the existence of which we have conclusive evidence so early as the middle of the ninth century, while the style of some of its oldest portions, demolished about the year 1760, leaves no room to doubt that it had shared in the revived taste for ecclesiastical architecture which so remarkably distinguished the reign of David 1. The castle itself partook of the rude simplicity of the age, its main feature being a massive keep, which occupied the site of the present Half-moon Battery.

Around the old parish church of St. Giles, and crowding the narrow ridge between it and the castle, the rude thatched habitations of the citizens were clustered together, courting the protection of the fortress, in addition to the natural defences of their lofty site. On the one side they were protected by the north loch, filling the valley which now extends, as a