ord, at once a sacred legend and a valuable
historical chronicle, of the life of Margaret the Atheling, the first of
several Queen Margarets, the woman saint and blessed patroness of
Scotland, who has bequeathed not only many benefits and foundations of
after good to her adopted country, but her name--perhaps among
Scotswomen still the most common of all Christian names.

No more moving and delightful story was ever written or invented than
the history of this saint and Queen. She was the daughter of Edward,
called the Outlaw, and of his wife a princess of Hungary, of the race
which afterwards produced St. Elizabeth: and the sister of Edgar
Atheling, the feeble but rightful heir of the Saxon line, and
consequently of the English throne. The family, however, was more
foreign than English, having been brought up at the Court of their
grandfather, the King of Hungary, one of the most pious and one of the
richest Courts in Christendom; and it was not unnatural that when
convinced of the fact that the most legitimate of aspirants had no
chance against the force of William, they should prefer to return to the
country of their education and birth. It was no doubt a somewhat forlorn
party that set out upon this journey, for to lose a throne is seldom a
misfortune accepted with equanimity, and several of the beaten and
despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however,
was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and
storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship
found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has
since borne the name of St. Margaret's Hope.

Lying here in shelter from all the winds behind the protecting
promontory, with perhaps already some humble shrine or hermit's cell
upon Inchgarvie or Inchcolm to give them promise of Christian kindness,
with the lonely rock of Edinburgh in the distance on one side, and the
soft slopes of the Fife coast rising towards the King's palace at
Dunfermline on the other, the travellers must have awaited with some
anxiety, yet probably much hope, the notice of the barbaric people who
came to the beach to stare at their weather-beaten ships, and hurried
off to carry the news inland of such unwonted visitors. It is the very
spot which is now disturbed and changed by the monstrous cobwebs of iron
which bear the weight of the Forth Bridge and make an end for ever of
the Queen's Ferry, which Margaret mus