Loud weeps the Abbess, and bestows

Kind blessings many a one: Weeping and wailing loud arose,

Round patient Clare, the clamorous woes

Of every simple nun.

His eyes the gentle Eustace dried,

And scarce rude Blount the sight could bide.
Then took the squire her rein,

And gently led away her steed,
And, by each courteous word and deed,

To cheer her strove in vain.

XXXIII

But scant three miles the band had rode,
When o'er a height they pass'd,
And, sudden, close before them show'd
His towers, Tantallon vast;
Broad, massive, high, and stretching far,
And held impregnable in war.

On a projecting rock they rose,

And round three sides the ocean flows,
The fourth did battled walls enclose,

And double mound and fosse.1

1 During the regency (subsequent to the death of James V.) the dowager queen regent, Mary of Guise, became desirous of putting a French garrison into Tantallon, as she had into Dunbar and Inchkeith, in order the better to bridle the lords and barons who inclined to the reformed faith, and to secure by citadels the sea-coast of the Frith of Forth. For this purpose, the regent, to use the phrase of the time, "dealed with " the (then) Earl of Angus for his consent to the proposed measure. He occupied himself, while she was speaking, in feeding

By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong,
Through studded gates, an entrance long,
To the main court they cross.
It was a wide and stately square:
Around were lodgings, fit and fair,
And towers of various form,
Which on the court projected far,
And broke its lines quadrangular.
Here was square keep, there turret high,
Or pinnacle that sought the sky,
Whence oft the Warder could descry

The gathering ocean-storm.

Here did they rest.

XXXIV.

The princely care

Of Douglas, why should I declare,

Or say they met reception fair?

Or why the tidings say,
Which, varying, to Tantallon came,
By hurrying posts, or fleeter fame,

With every varying day?

And, first, they heard King James had won

a falcon which sat upon his wrist, and only replied by addressing the bird, but leaving the queen to make the application, "The devil is in this greedy gled-she will never be fou." But when the queen, without appearing to notice this hint, continued to press her obnoxious request, Angus replied, in the true spirit of a feudal noble, "Yes, madam, the castle is yours; God forbid else. But by the might of God, madam !” such was his usual oath. "I must be your captain and keeper for you, and I will keep it as well as any you can place there."

- Sir Walter Scott's Provincial Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 167.