ON rolled the mighty melody, as though IN THE CHOIR. A sea of sound and sweetness; here and there A glory crept along the vaulted roof, The sunshine stole it from the windows where Below knelt youth and beauty in their pride, And then the heavy oaken door swung back: Wan in the face, and weary in her mien, And like a blot upon a robe, she stood And youth and beauty drew themselves apart, Still, where the pictured Twelve Apostles stood ISABELLA FYVIE. SAINT MARGARET OF SCOTLAND. As one looks back into the dim beginnings of earliest benefactors of Scotland were of native origin. Scotland's history, the first great character that Celtic Ireland gave us the first, Saxon England the rises out of the darkness is that of Saint Columba, second; the one the great Celtic, the other the Abbot of Iona at the end of the sixth century. The great Saxon saint of the Scottish people. The one next, at an interval of more than four hundred years, stands at the head of the purely Celtic period of our is Margaret, Queen of Scotland, towards the close of history, the other at the head of the mixed Scotothe eleventh. In the long dark blank between them Saxon epoch, which she herself inaugurated. Each there are names of kings and dates of battles, but has in Scotland a local habitation hallowed by their hardly a vestige of what can be called personal memory. Iona is scarcely more identified with history. Some characters there probably were, Columba than Dunfermline with Queen Margaret. missionary priests, or chiefs of conflicting tribes, The western island has not more royal memories, who did things worthy to have been had in remem- and can scarcely contain more royal dust than the brance, but "they had no poet and they died." romantically-seated eastern town. There stand the Columba and Margaret might likewise have been lost ruins of that palace of Scottish kings, in which to posterity-certainly the image of both would long James VI. lived often with his Danish queen before ere now have waxed faint and vague-had it been he ascended the throne of England; and there is entrusted only to tradition. But they were fortunate still shown the chamber window which let in the each in "having a poet"—that is, a biographer, who first light of this world on the eyes of Charles, their could both appreciate their virtues and record them. ill-fated son. There stands still unimpaired, after Columba has been handed down by Adamnan, a suc-eight hundred years, the sombre Norman nave which cessor of his own in the Abbey of Iona, who wrote for three centuries continued to be the burial-place his life some sixty or seventy years after his death; of our Scottish kings, with the choir, twice ruined Margaret, by Turgot, her own confessor, who shortly and twice rebuilt, under which still rest the bones of after her death wrote in readable Latin some small Robert Bruce. But far older than the palace, older, part of what he had seen and known of his queen too, than the abbey church, are still seen in the glen and friend. These books are not, of course, such hard by, on a knoll almost hidden among dense biographies as those written now-a-days, neither so trees, crumbling moss-grown walls, now scarce the strictly accurate, nor so sharp in outline, nor so rich height of a man, which are all that remains of the in detail. They leave untold many things we would Dun or Fort of Malcolm Caenmore. This knoll, on like to know, and tell some that have lost meaning which the fort stood, overhanging precipitously a for us. Still they are full of interest. They are deeply-grooved burn, which underneath it crooks remarkable examples of the tone of thinking and into an elbow, seems to have given from its situafeeling in the day when they were written. They tion the name to the town, the Dun or Fort over the are by far the earliest genuine biographies which Linn, or the Fort on the Crooked Linn. Scotland possesses. They may almost be said to tower was the chief abode of Malcolm Caenmore, the furnish the first authentic facts of Scottish history. contemporary of William the Conqueror. Therein Instead, therefore, of grumbling with them for what he received the Saxon Princess Margaret and her they are not, we may well be thankful for what family when they fled from England before the wrath they are. of the Conqueror, and that was the home in which they lived together when she had become his queen. It is a noteworthy fact that neither of these two VIII-38 That No other event was more momentous to Scotland than that coming of Margaret to Dunfermline. It marks the beginning of a new era. For by her own life, and through her descendants who followed in her steps, she changed the whole future destiny of the land which adopted her. The story you are told on the spot, and history confirms it, is, that once when Malcolm "of the big head" was living in that tower, it was told him that a strange ship had just cast anchor in a bay of the Forth, about three miles off. The king straightway sent messengers down to the Forth to find out whence the ship came and whom it had on board. They brought back word that the ship was larger and better equipped than common ships, but nothing | more. The king then sent other messengers more numerous and of higher rank than the first. These were kindly received by the strangers, were struck by the tallness of the men and the fair complexion and the beauty of the women, and returned to the king reporting that they were none other than the Saxon Royal line of England, Edgar Atheling and his sisters Margaret and Christina, with their mother Agatha. With them were Gospatrick and other Northumbrian nobles, who, disgusted with the Norman tyranny, had resolved to share the fate of the old Royal family. They had sailed for the Continent, intending to take refuge in Hungary, the native land of Agatha; but a great wind had arisen and driven them from their course, and they had been fain to seek shelter in the Forth. The king hearing this, hastened to the shore. He was touched with compassion for the exiles, as well he might be, for he had himself been an exile, and had received much kindness from Edward the Confessor, uncle of Edgar and Margaret. He could converse with them, too, more freely than his nobles, for he had learnt the Saxon tongue during his sojourn in England. The king conducted them all to his tower, and entertained them there with much kindness. Scotland became the home of the exiled princes. In due time Malcolm won Margaret for his bride. The dark Celtic king with the large head wed the high-souled Saxon princess with the flaxen hair, said to be the most beautiful woman of all her time; but it was something more than beauty of face and form that endeared her to the hearts of her new people. The local names of the neighbourhood are witnesses to the impression she made on them. Ever since her time the bay on the north side of the Forth in which her ship cast anchor has been called Margaret's Hope. A large grey stone on the north side of the road between Margaret's Hope and Dunfermline is still called St. Margaret's Scat, and tradition tells how Margaret, wearied with journeying on foot from the Forth to Malcolm's tower in the glen, sat down on it to rest. The ferry from the Dunfermline to the Lothian side of the Forth after her time lost its old Celtic name, and was called from her the Queen's Ferry. No wonder she should have left such traces of herself; for no name of equal beauty or of deeper interest appears on the whole roll of Scotland's worthies. She opens the line of Scottish queens, as a direct descendant of hers, of as deep interest but far other character, closes it-Mary Stuart. To appreciate aright the character of Margaret and the nature of her work, they must be looked at against the contrasted background of Scotland as it was in that eleventh century. When, in 1057, Malcolm Caenmore had the crown of Albany placed on his head by the Thane of Fife at Scone, the land he was called to rule was not one compact kingdom, but a number of different tribes as yet unamalgamated, and even hostile to each other. Nay, even his own Celtic people were divided between the descendants of the gracious Duncan and the faction of Macbeth. In Celtic Albany, or the land north of the Forth and Clyde, the Scottish line of kings had for nearly two centuries superseded the Pictish, but probably the two peoples were not yet fully united. The eastern and northern seaboard, as well as all the islands, wer occupied by a sea-borne population from Denmark or Scandinavia. To the south of the Forth, though Lothian, with its Saxon people, had been ceded t the Scots in the middle of the tenth century, and the Welsh kingdom of Strath Clyde had been absorbed early in the eleventh, yet that whole southern region || lay still unfused, almost unappropriated. Add to || this, during all Malcolm's time, the continual migra tion northward of ousted Saxons, noble and serf, flying first from the disorders that preceded the fail of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, then from the terrible oppression of the Conqueror. Lastly, numbers of discontended Norman adventurers were seeking in the land of Malcolm larger domains than had been | granted them by their Norman master. Here were elements of discord enough-Pict, Scot, Briton, Scandinavian, Saxon, Norman, Fleming-a very seething cauldron of conflicting elements, a very Babel (1 strange tongues. The throne of Malcolm, called to rule over these, and to reduce them to some sort of unity, must have been no easy seat. He was the last of the old and purely Celtic order, and the introducer of the new or Scoto-Saxon. For though the Celtic language was still spoken from Tweed to the Moray Firth, and was still the language of the court, though a prince of the Scottish line was still placeì, with the old Celtic forms, at his coronation on the 'stone of destiny" at Scone, yet ancient Alban was on the eve of being nearly de-Celticised-t end of the Celtic supremacy was at hand. Th Gael in the land of their fathers were to be para- į mount no more. 66 He who, whether intentionally or not, was the author of this revolution, the Malcolm of Shake spear's drama, the son of the gracious Duncan, was prince of purely Celtic extraction. How he fled t England and returned in time to avenge his father'death, and to wrest his kingdom from the murderer. need not be told now, for Shakespear has told it But a closer examination of the old chroniclers m‹difies in some important respects the incidents of the great drama. Fordun and the register of St. Azdrew's Priory make Elgin, not Inverness, the secr " Good Words, Aug. 1, 1807.1 SAINT MARGARET OF SCOTLAND. of Duncan's murder. They say that he was attacked "All his time was great plenty, Many more variations from Shakespear's version of the story might be pointed out. Wyntoun tells us that when Malcolm, with Macduff, had reached Birnam, he there heard of Macbeth's superstitious belief about the moving wood, and resolved to avail himself of it; that ever since that wood has been called "the flitting wood;" that Macbeth did not stay to fight at Dunsinane, but fled over the Mounth (the Grampians) and across the Dee to Lumphanan wood, in Aberdeenshire; that there he was overtaken and slain, and his head conveyed to Malcolm, who was two miles off, at Kincardine O'Niel. But though crowned king, Malcolm was not at ease. Even the Celtic people were divided some favouring the house of Malcolm, some that of Macbeth. To this early part of Malcolm's reign probably belongs an anecdote given by more than one chronicler, which shows the king's disposition in a favourable light. Having heard on good authority that one of his nobles, in whom he most confided, had plotted against his life, he summoned his vassals to "keep tryst," with their hounds, on a certain day at an appointed place, to take with him their pastime in the woods. In the midst of the forest was a knoll, surrounded with thick trees and covered with wild flowers. On this knoll the king took his station, and having dismissed the several nobles with their hounds each to his appointed post in the wood, he stayed there himself, and bade the accused man stay with him. As soon as they were alone, the king took the traitor aside to a yet more retired spot, and, drawing his sword, said, "I know all your treachery. We are now alone, and on equal terms. You have sought my life. Draw now, and take it At this the knight was so smitten if you can." with contrition, that he knelt down and begged the king's forgiveness, and at once received it. There is another characteristic story told of the king later in his life. His daughter Matilda, afterwards queen of Henry I., was educated in the nunnery of Wilton, of which her aunt Christina, sister of Margaret, It seems that Matilda had on some was abbess. occasions been seen wearing a veil, or something that looked like one. Anselm was doubtful whether after this he could celebrate the marriage. But Matilda, when questioned, told him that she had worn a veil in public at her aunt's command, with no intention of becoming a nun, but to protect herself against the After Malcolm had secured himself on the throne, going on in it. The one side of it arose, as we have But to effect an ecclesiastical and religious revolu- * One party have set themselves to find in these Culdees nothing but the purest life and doctrine, combined with the simplicity of Presbyterian discipline. Nay, some would even seem to antedate the disruption by a thousand years, and to find them Non-Intrusionists aud Free Churchmen in the ninth century. High Churchmen, on the 1 But whatever may be the truth about their ecclesiastical constitution, it cannot be doubted that a deep decay had by Margaret's time overtaken the Culdee brotherhoods. This, however, was but a small sample of what had been witnessed on a much larger scale throughout the monasticism of the whole western Church. Again and again since its first institution had the monasticism of all Latin Christendom sunk into worldly indifference or something worse; and again and again had it been quickened into new fervour by the zeal of some ardent spirit: now Benedict of Nursia, now a Benedict of Aniane, again a Berno, founder of the Clunians. Throughout its whole history it was ever repeating the same ebb and flow. First, fervour, self-abnegation, poverty, asceticism; then, honour, wealth, sumptuous living, indolence, profligacy. The most that is alleged against the Culdees in the eleventh century, even by their enemies, does not nearly equal the charges made from age to age by Church historians against the monks of most other parts of other hand, make them out to be good Episcopalians, perfect in their order and apostolic succession, wanting only somewhat in strictness of discipline. From views such as these it is refreshing to turn to the "Book on the Culdees," recently published by Dr. Reeves, the great Celtic antiquary. He there condenses into a short space all the evidence that is extent, giving the original documents. Every one, therefore, has now before him the grounds at least on which alone a true judgment can be formed. One thing is still wanted: that Dr. Reeves or some one else well versed in church history and ecclesiastical usage, not only in these islands, but throughout Christendom, should, as it were, sum up the evidence, and, comparing what it tells of the Culdees with what is known of contemporary churchmen in other countries, give, in the light of likeness and of contrast, the complete result. The first fact which Dr. Reeves makes plain is, that the Culdees had nothing to do with St. Columba and his Iona Church. The name is found not in Scotland only, but in Ireland also, and even in England, at York, and in Wales, at Bardsey; in fact, wherever the native Church retained any of its original elements unsubdued by Romanising influence. The name, it seems, means "Gillies," or Servants of God. To Columba or his immediate followers, the name is never applied either by Adamnan or Bede, or indeed by any writer till modern times. It belongs to a set of churchmen of the tenth and eleventh, not of the seventh, century. The earliest Scottish record of the name occurs in Jocelyn's "Life of Kentigern," a work of the twelfth century. Let us dismiss, then, the groundless belief that the Culdees were Columbites or followers of Columba, as we read of Benedictines or followers of the rule of Benedict. No doubt Culdees were found in the tenth and eleventh centuries in churches and monasteries which had been founded by Columba and his immediate followers. But though they filled the places of the Columbites, they led another manner of life, and were of another spirit. The Columbite Church, indeed, acknowledged no homage to the Pope; and its Presbyter Abbot was the superior of the Bishop. But its rule was strictly monastic, celibate, and ascetic. Columba would not allow a woman even to land on his isle of Hy. He and his followers were fervent missionaries, undergoing all hardships to preach the Gospel to heathens. They loved knowledge, too, possessed all the learning of their age, were unwearied in multiplying copies of books, and in teaching others. But this light was trampled out both in Iona and in the other monasteries that sprung from her by the devastating Norsemen of the ninth century. And when the calamity was overpast, and the -clergy, towards the close of the ninth and in the tenth century, gathered once again to the ruined churches and Europe. In the middle of the eighth century Bede gives a picture of the corruption, both in discipline and morals, of the Saxon monks and clergy, which stands in dark contrast with what he tells of the primitive purity which then distinguished the Columbite missionaries. But in the eleventh century monasticism throughout Europe and in England had been quickened by a fresh revival; and Margaret was come of a race, and had lived under influences, which had made her keenly alive to the new fervour. She was the granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, and the niece of Edward the Confessor. Her father Edward, driven an exile to Hungary, had married Agatha, the daughter of the Emperor; Henry II. and the exiles at the court of St. Stephen had seen the work of that great evangeliser of pagan Hungary. And after Margaret came to Scotland, Turgot, a Durham monk, was her confessor, Lanfranc, the great Norman archbishop, her friend and adviser; and strange it is to find the learned prelate waging the same war against the vices of the Saxon clergy monasteries, they practised no more the old austerity. This at least, besides the natural tendency of monasticism || to degenerate, may perhaps account for the state of the Culdees in the days of Margaret. For ages they had ceased to be celibates; they had little learning, and no missionary zeal; but they still lived a conventual life, yet with few rules, and these but loosely observed. | Married men were as eligible to be Culdees as single; and though they could not take with them their wives and children into their conventual residences, yet, it would! seem, they returned to their families as soon as their period of service was over. The result was, that the priesthood became a hereditary caste; and the wealthier priests left the church lands to their sons, and very often these were not priests at all, but laymen. Sometimes even the abbot was not in holy orders; but the abbacy became a mere secular dignity. Several well-known Celtic names, as McNab, McPherson, bear witness to their secularization. When those wealthy secularists had yet the lion's share of the church property, they left the prior and a few irregu lar monks, who still kept up a sort of conventual life, to perform the church services; for the whole church system of the Culdees, it must be remembered, was, however lax, still monastic, not parochial. In the eleventh century there were no parishes in Scotland, and no dioceses. The Culdee priests lived in humble cottages, grouped together, probably, so as to form, as it were, colleges. And although there may have been a few convents here and there which still maintained the older and stricter system of Columba, and though there certainly were solitary hermits of severe life scattered over the country, yet the general religious instruction of the people depended in the main on the Culdees. The system itself was in its last decrepitude, and the greater part of the church lands were absorbed by laymen. It was on this secularized portion of the old institution that the new abbeys, with their regular canons, were founded, when, in the twelfth century, the stricter system of Rome was introduced into Scotland by Margaret. These enjoyed the church estates now recovered from their secular owners. Beside them, for a time, existed the Culdee prior, with his twelve secular priests, as in the kirkheugh at St. Andrews; but bit by bit they dwindled, and were short of their rights and lands, till at last they wholly disappeared. Such at least was their history at St. Andrews, which seems to have been their chief seat in Scotland. It is not without a pathetic feeling that we trace the gradual ousting and final absorption by the new clergy of these Culdees, who were "Albyn's earlier priests of God. " in England, as Margaret had to carry on against those of the Celtic clergy in Scotland. The marriage of Malcolm with Margaret was celebrated at Dunfermline, probably in 1070, that would be in less than two years after Margaret's first arrival in Scotland. It was the Culdee Bishop of St. Andrews, the second Fothad, who performed that ceremony, or, as Wyntoun has it, "devoutly made that sacrament." As a memorial of their marriage, Malcolm and Margaret soon afterwards founded in Dunfermline a church, which they dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The sombre nave, with its massy Norman pillars, still seen there, was probably first built by them, even if it was enlarged by their sons. This is made the more likely by its striking architectural likeness to the Cathedral of Durham, founded by Malcolm, just three months before his death. Margaret founded at Dunfermline a monastery also, which she filled with Benedictine monks brought from her friend Lanfranc's Cathedral of Canterbury. Besides these two foundations, she, out of reverence for St. Columba, rebuilt the monastery of Iona, which had long lain waste since its devastation by the Norsemen. I am not sure that any other churches or large benefactions to the Church are attributed to her. It was not by heaping riches on the clergy that she won her saintship, nor could any of her descendants say of her as the first James of Scotland did of her son David, that she was "a sair sanct for the Croun.” At the outset Turgot tells her daughter Matilda, King Henry's Queen, that he writes the biography in order that she who could hardly remember her mother's countenance might have before her a true image of her character. "Far be it," he says, "from my hoary head to flatter in describing such virtues as hers. I shall state nothing but what is simply true, and I shall omit much which I know to be true, lest it be not believed." What follows is consistent, I think, with this solemn asseveration. If it seem too much of an unrelieved panegyric, still there is nothing in it but what seems natural in that age, or in any age, when writing of one who is gone, and for whom the writer had the profoundest admiration. The whole has a truthful air about it. There is not one miracle-an unusual feature in a mediæval life-nothing that is not quite within the bounds of historic credibility. Turgot then tells us that Margaret was come from high and virtuous ancestry on both sides. From her childhood she was of a sober cast of thought, and early began to love God before all things. She employed, while still young, much of her time in divine readings, and took great delight in these. She was by nature quick to apprehend, faithful to retain, and eloquent to express what she had read. Day and night she meditated in the law of the Lord, and like another Mary, sat listening at His feet. Such she was before she came to Scotland. Turgot hints that her marriage with Malcolm was brought about by the will of her family, more than by her own, or rather, he says, by the ordinance of God. Her heart was in heaven,-she desired the kingdom of God and not the kingdoms of this world. Compelled, however, by her station to move in the world, she was not of it. She was faithful in all that became a queen. By her good advice to her husband, the laws were executed with righteousness, religion was revived, the people's welfare promoted. And now to turn to the biography which Turgot, her chaplain, has left of his Queen and friend. One cannot but feel surprise, that the most recent historian of Scotland should have failed to recognise the truthfulness and beauty of that narrative. It is thus he speaks of it: "The life gives us scarcely anything to bring before us St. Margaret in her fashion as she lived. One cannot help still more regretting that there is so little to be found realising the nature of her husband." Even when giving The church which as we have seen she built in some of the details preserved by Turgot, he intro- Dunfermline, Turgot tells us, was, according to the duces them with such phrases as these: "It is custom of the time, an offering for the salvation of likely enough that," "It is not much worth doubting her own and her husband's soul, and for the welfare the assertion that." On the other hand, the late Dr. of her children, both in this world and in that to Joseph Robertson-in whose lamented death Scottish come. This church she enriched with many vessels history has lost one of its profoundest investigators, of pure gold and silver for the service of the altar. and all historical inquirers the wisest and most gene- In it she placed a rood with an image of the rous counsellor has thus written: "There is no Saviour of pure silver and gold, interlaced with nobler picture in the Northern annals than that of precious stones. Her chamber was a very workSt. Margaret illustrious by birth and majestic in her shop of church furniture. This part of the biobeauty-as she appears in the artless pages of her graphy reads like a description of some ritualistic chaplain, Turgot. The representative of Alfred and English lady's boudoir at the present hour. But eight the niece of the Confessor, she showed in womanly centuries make some difference in the wisdom or folly type the wisdom and magnanimity of the one, and of these things. There were seen copes for chomore than all the meek virtues of the other." But risters, chasubles, stoles, altar coverings, and all it is time now to lay before the reader some portion of its contents, leaving any one at all acquainted with mediæval biographers to judge whether the estimate of Mr. Hill Burton or of the late Dr. Joseph Robertson is the truer one. I shall give as far as possible the words of the original, only condensing them. other priestly garments and church adornments. Her household was in all things well ordered. The noble ladies who attended her were employed in working at these sacred vestments. They were sober and serious in their lives, after the example of their mistress. Men were not allowed to enter where they sat at work, unless the queen brought them. |