Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

Greek proverb.

4

"The fiery youth, with desperate charge,
Made for a space an opening large."

    —Marmion.

5

Rothesay Castle is first mentioned in history in connexion with its siege by Husbac the Norwegian, and Olave king of Man, in 1228. Among other means of defence, it is said that the Scots poured down boiling pitch and lead on the heads of their enemies; but it was, however, at length taken, after the Norwegians had lost three hundred men. In 1263, it was retaken by the Scots after the decisive battle of Largs.

6

This bid was the scene of a conflict between the men of Bute and the troops of Lisle, the English governor, in which that general was slain, and his severed head, presented to the Lord High Steward, was suspended from the battlements of the castle.

7

In 1398, Robert the Third constituted his eldest son Duke of Rothesay, a title still held by every male heir-apparent to the British crown. It was the first introduction of the ducal dignity—originally a Norman one—into Scotland.

8

The walls forming the choir of the very ancient church dedicated to the Holy Virgin are still nearly entire, and stand close to the present parish church of Rothesay. Within a traceried niche, on one side, is the recumbent figure of a knight in complete armour, apparently of the kind in use about the time of Robert the Second or Third. His feet are upon a lion couchant, and his head upon a faithful watch-dog, with a collar, in beautiful preservation, encircling its neck. The coat-of-arms denotes the person represented to have been of royal lineage. Popular tradition individualizes him as the "Stout Stewart of Bonkill" of Blind Harry the minstrel, who fell with Sir John the Grahame at the battle of Falkirk—although that hero was buried near the field of action, as his tombstone there in the old churchyard still records.

Sir John Stewart of Bonkill was uncle and tutor to the then Lord High Steward, at that time a minor.

A female figure and child recumbent, also elaborately sculptured in black marble, adorn the opposite niche, and under them, in alto-relievo, are several figures in religious habits. Another effigies of a knight, but much defaced, lies on the ground-floor of the choir—the whole of which was cleaned out and put in order by the present Marquis of Bute in 1827.

9

On the 4th of April 1406, this unfortunate prince, overwhelmed with grief for the death of his eldest son, David, Duke of Rothesay and Earl of Carrick, who miserably perished of hunger in Falkland Castle; and the capture, during a time of truce, of his younger son, Prince James, by the English—died in the Castle of Rothesay of a broken heart. The closet, fourteen feet by eight, in which he breathed his last, is still pointed out, in the south-east corner of the castle.

10

In the court of the castle is a remarkable thorn-tree, which for centuries had waved above the chapel now in ruins; and which, at the distance of a yard from the ground, measures six feet three inches in circumference. In 1839, it fell from its own weight, and now lies prostrate, with half its roots uncovered, but still vigorous in growth.

11

The palace constructed, in the early ages of the world, by the giant-king Sheddad, as a rival to the heavenly paradise, and supposed still to exist, though invisible to mortal eyes, in the recesses of the Desert—See Lane's Thousand and One Nights, vol, ii. p. 342.

12

The Persian princes imagine these children to be collected from all parts of the United Kingdom, for the purpose of this procession!

13

The Khan never gives dates; but on investigation we find that this must have been on the 11th of June 1841; as among the list of visitors on that day occur the names of Kurreen Khan, Mohabet Khan, and, singularly enough, the Parsee poet, Manackjee Cursetjee, who will be well remembered as a lion of the London drawing-rooms during that season.

14

The polite dialect of Hindustani, which differs considerably from that in use among the lower orders. The phrase is derived from Oorda, the court, or camp, of the sovereign—whence our word horde.

15

"One hundred and fifty-three of the students," he adds, "were fixed upon for commissions, who were to be sent out to India;" but the Khan must have been strangely misinformed here, as the number actually selected was only thirty-one.

16

This must have been the Trafalgar of 120 guns, which was launched June 21, 1841; but the Khan is mistaken in supposing that the Queen personally performed the ceremony of christening the ship, since that duty devolved on Lady Bridport, the niece of Nelson, who used on the occasion a bottle of wine which had been on board the Victory when Nelson fell.

17

This must be a slip of the pen for Selim, or perhaps for Soliman Ibn Selim, (Soliman the Magnificent.)

18

"At this epoch," adds the Khan in a note, "reigned the great Harūn-al-Rashid, the khalif and supreme head of Islam; and Charles the Great was Emperor of the Franks."

19

The Mirza even went so far as to write during his stay in England a treatise, entitled "Vindication of the Liberties of the Asiatic Women," which was translated by Captain Richardson, and published first in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1801, and again as an Appendix to the Mirza's Travels. It is a very curious pamphlet, and well worth perusal.

20

Great efforts have of late been made, among the more enlightened Hindus, to get rid of this prejudice. Baboo Motee Loll Seal, a wealthy native of Calcutta, offered 20,000 rupees, a year or two since, to the first Hindu who would marry a widow, and we believe the prize has been since claimed:—and in the Asiatic Journal (vol. xxxviii. p. 370,) we find the announcement of the establishment, in 1842, of a "Hindu widow re-marrying club" at Calcutta!

21

A river which, rising on the eastern side of the ridge of the Caucasus, falls, after a rapid and impetuous course, into the Caspian, near Anápa.

22

A mountaineer of the tribe of Kabárda.

23

A Kazák girl.

24

Village of Kazáks.

25

Kinjál, a large dagger, the favourite weapon of the mountain tribes of the Caucasus, among which the Tchetchénetzes are distinguished for bravery.