CHAPTER XIX.

Dalkeith-Palace, Church, School, and Lord Melville -Epitaph on Margaret Scott-Story of Margaret Dickson.

DALKEITH, next to Edinburgh and Leith, is the most considerable town in Mid-Lothian. The principal street is broad and spacious, containing a great number of elegant houses. One of the greatest markets in Scotland for oat-meal, is held here every Monday; and on Thursday there is one chiefly for grain. Here is situated the seat of the Duke of Buccleugh; it is a large, but not very elegant modern structure, and is surrounded by a beautiful and extensive park. The interior is fitted up in a style of the utmost splendour, containing many fine pictures, a conservatory of birds, and other objects well worthy the attention of strangers.

The town contains no buildings of any importance except the church, which was originally the chapel of the castle, nearly five hundred years ago. It is a Gothic building of very ordinary workmanship. The east end contains the burying vault of the Buccleugh family. Here lies buried Mary Scott, (known in popular song by the appellation of The Flower of Yarrow.) It is said she was a woman of great beauty, with skin so

transparent that the blood could be seen circulating through her veins.

The High-school in Dalkeith has long been famed for its superior teachers. The present incumbent, Mr. Steel, is a profound scholar, and a gentleman in every sense of the word. This school has had the honour of educating some men of great distinction in the political as well as the literary world-in particular, the late Lord Melville. It is still remembered to the honour of that great man, that he kept up, throughout the whole course of his splendid career, a familiar acquaintance or correspondence with all his early schoolfellows, however inferior to himself in point of rank and fortune, if otherwise meritorious.

The parish contains about 5000 inhabitants, a gaol, and seven places of worship. The inhabitants are a set of intelligent, social and comfortable living bodies, great sticklers about religion and politics, much given to whiggery, but always abounding in hospitality, charity, and brotherly love. This being my native place, I speak from experience. From my earliest recollections, they were ever opposed to the union of the two countries, and until of late they cherished a most genuine dislike to Englishmen. It was customary for a troop of English horse dragoons to lie quartered in this town. Frequent quarrels took place between them and the towns-folk. In several instances the whole town, men and women, rose and drove the soldiers away to seek refuge in another city; and so famous had they become in these rencounters, that to threaten to give a person a niveful (handful) of Dalkeith meal, was understood as a most effectual knock-down argument.

I remember to have seen, in my school-boy rambles through the church-yard, the following epitaph:

On

Margaret Scott,

Who died 9th February, 1738, aged 125 years.
Stop, passenger, until my life you've read,
The living may get knowledge by the dead:
Five times five years I liv'd a virgin life,
Ten times five years I was a virtuous wife,
Ten times five years I liv'd a widow chaste,
Now tired of this mortal world I rest.

I from my cradle to my grave have seen
Eight mighty kings of Scotland, and a queen;
Four times five years the common wealth I saw,
Ten times the subjects rose against the law;
Twice did I see old prelacy pull'd down,
And twice the cloak was humbled by the gown.
An end of Steuart's race I saw no more;

I saw my country* sold for English ore,—
Such desolations in my time have been,

I have an end of all perfection seen.

In my late visit to my native place I looked among the tombstones for this, but it could not be found-time and change no doubt has been its ruin. The epitaph is still preserved, however, in a collection of about one thousand sepulchral curiosities, taken from monuments and gravestones-printed in 1823.

Musselburgh is the next town of note in Mid-Lothian. It derives its name from a large bank of muscles on the sea shore in its neighbourhood. Here the Romans built a fort and a town in the twelfth century. This harbour was the most important that was held by these

* Scotland, refering to the Union.

invaders on the south side of the Forth, and was the termination of one of their roads, the traces of which are still to be seen.

In the year 1728 a sermon was preached in the old church at Musselburgh, upon an occasion so memorable that it cannot fail to interest the majority of readers. A woman by the name of Margaret Dickson, the wife of a mariner who had been at sea above a twelve-month, having a child in the mean time, she, to hide her shame, took its life. For this crime she was tried, condemned, and duly (as was thought) executed in Edinburgh.— When the dreadful ceremony was over, poor Maggy's friends put her body into a chest, and drove it away. On the road for Musselburgh, about two miles from town, they stopped at a tavern where they remained about half an hour at dinner. On coming out of the house, how much were they surprised to see their friend sitting up in the chest, having been restored to life, it was supposed, by the motion of the cart. They took her home that night to Musselburgh, where she soon entirely recovered. As she had suffered the penalty of the law, no one dared to molest her. On the succeeding Sunday, she was able to attend public worship, when the minister delivered a discourse applicable to her case. After some time her husband returned, when they were again married, she having been dead in law. She ever after went by the title of half-hangit Maggie. This is a simple tale of truth.

CHAPTER XX.

A Parting Scene-the Grave of my Mother-the World of Spirits.

On a late visit to my native village, after an original absence of forty years, when the day of separation again drew near, I accepted an invitation to a farewell dinner. It was on the last day of the year 1833. The company was select, consisting of twenty-five. The majority of them had been my school-fellows fifty years ago. The exit of the old, and commencement of the new year, is a time of high festivity all over Scotland. It begins on the last, and continues for the five or six first days of the new year. They are called, by way of distinction, the daft days. By-the-by, it is a curious trait in the character of the Romish church; when we look back through the mists of fourteen centuries, we will find that most of those days now called crazy (daft) were originally introduced by the priests under the name of holy days. Hence, every idle or rejoicing day is termed holy, though they are the most wicked days of all the year. The 4th of July is called a holy day, and yet perhaps one million of people get drunk that day, that never get drunk till it comes round again. In all the popish countries, near the tenth of their time is