is
said to have occurred during one of the carousals of the Earl of
Crawford, otherwise styled "Earl Beardie" or the "Tiger Earl"--there
was many years ago a grand "meet" at Glamis, as the result of which
many a noble deer lay dead upon the hill, and many a grizzly boar dyed
with his heart's blood the rivers of the plain. As the day drew to its
close, "the wearied huntsmen, with their fair attendants, returned,
'midst the sounds of martial music and the low whispered roundelays of
the ladies, victorious to the castle." In the old baronial dining hall
was spread a sumptuous and savoury feast, at which "venison and
reeking game, rich smoked ham and savoury roe, flanked by the wild
boar's head, and viands and pasties without name, blent profusely on
the hospitable board, while jewelled and capacious goblets, filled
with ruby wine, were lavishly handed round to the admiring guests."

At the completion of the banquet, the minstrel strung his ancient
harp, and soon the company tripped lightly on the oaken floor, till
the rafters rang with the merry sounds of their midnight revelry. For
three days and nights the hunt and the feast continued, and as, at
last, the revelries drew to a close, still four dark chieftains
remained in the inner chamber of the castle, "and sang, and drank, and
shouted, right merrilie. The day broke, yet louder rang the wassail
roar; the goblets were over and over again replenished, and the
terrible oaths and ribald songs continued, and the dice rattled, and
the revelry became louder still, till the many walls of the old castle
shook and reverberated with the awful sounds of debauchery, blasphemy,
and crime."

"At length their wild, ungovernable frenzy reached its climax. They
had drunk until their eyes had grown dim, and their hands could
scarcely hold the hellish dice, when, driven by expiring fury, with
fiendish glee, they defiantly gnashed their teeth and cursed the God
of heaven! Then, with returning strength, and exhausting its last and
fitful energies in still louder imprecations and more fearful yells,
they deliberately and with unanimous voice consigned their guilty
souls to the nethermost hell! Fatal words! In a bright, broad sheet of
lurid and sulphurous flame the Prince of Darkness appeared in their
midst, and struck--not the shaft of death, but the vitality of eternal
life--and there to this day in that dreaded room they sit, transfixed
in all their hideous expression of ghastly terror an