I

MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING--QUEEN AND SAINT

It is strange yet scarcely difficult to the imagination to realise the
first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the
early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going
on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive
princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the
_castrum puellarum_, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly
(but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of
the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however,
it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for
one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place
without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that
much-deceived antiquary the Laird of Monkbarns, that these fair and
forlorn ladies were the first royal inhabitants of the Castle of
Edinburgh, we may imagine that they watched from their battlements more
wistfully than fearfully, over all the wide plain, what dust might rise
or spears might gleam, or whether any galley might be visible of reiver
or rescuer from the north. A little collection of huts or rude forts
here and there would be all that broke the sweeping line of Lothian to
the east or west, and all that width of landscape would lie under the
eyes of the watchers, giving long notice of the approach of any enemies.
"Out over the Forth I look to the north," the maidens might sing,
looking across to Dunfermline, where already there was some royal state,
or towards the faint lines of mountains in the distance, over the soft
swelling heights of the Lomonds. No doubt Edinburgh, Edwinesburgh, or
whatever the antiquaries imagine it to have been, must have been sadly
dull if safe, suspended high upon the rock, nearer heaven than earth. It
is curious to hear that it was "without verdure"; but perhaps the young
ladies took no account of the trees that clothed the precipices below
them, or the greenness that edged the Nor' Loch deep at their feet, but
sighed for the gardens and luxuriance of Dunfermline, where all was
green about their windows and the winding pathways of the dell of
Pittendreich would be pleasant to wander in. This first romantic aspect
of the Castle of Edinburgh is, however, merely traditional, and the
first real and authentic appearance of the old fortress and city in
history is in the rec