The Queen's Maries: A Romance of Holyrood

Many a smiling plain, many a wooded slope and sequestered valley adorns the fair province of Picardy. Nor is it without reason that her Norman-looking sons and handsome daughter...

He now stood on the deck of a large galley, manned by a sturdy crew of rowers, whose efforts, however, were but little assisted by the light airs that blew off the shore. The am...

from the flower of the French Court, had she been so disposed. Nay, gossips were found to affirm that many a warlike count and stately marquis would have been happy to take any...

About the same hour at which the galley bearing Mary Stuart and her fortunes, eluded, in the increasing darkness, the vigilance of the English cruisers, an archer of the Scottis...

‘We are the boys that can wrestle and ride, Empty a saddle, and empty a can, Keeping the rights of the border side, Warden to warden, and man to man; Never another go welcome he...

‘She could whisper, and smile, and sigh, Pleading, flattering, … so can the rest; But oh! the light in her roving eye Would have wiled the babe from its mother’s breast.’

It is not always in the immediate presence of royalty that there is the most enlivening conversation, or the greatest amount of gaiety about a court. Although the Queen of Scotl...

‘For though I was rugged and wild and free, I had a heart like another man; And oh! had I known how the end would be, I would it had broke ere the play began.’

‘But had I wist, before I kist, That love had been sae hard to win, I’d have lock’d my heart in a case of gowd, An’ pinn’d it wi’ a siller pin.’

‘“To arms!” the citizens bellow--“Alack! These riders are loose in the town once more!” But a good steel jack, and a friend to my back, The Causeway I’ll keep in the teeth of a...

It was with no agreeable feelings, that Maxwell received a summons to attend the Council at Holyrood the morning after the fray. Ere he had well slept off the fatigues and dissi...

‘Oh! better for me that a blind-born child Never a line I had learn’d to trace, Than thus by a look and a laugh beguiled, To have read my doom in fair Alice’s face.

‘Oh! is my basnet a widow’s curch, Or my lance a wand of the willow tree, Or my arm a lady’s lily hand, That an English lord should lightly me?’

‘Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen, But it was na to meet wi’ Dunira’s men, Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see, For Kilmeny was pure as maiden could be.’

‘And some said this, and some said that, And our bonnie Queen, she laughed loud and free, But down on his knees the poor fool sat, Says, “Never a fool is there here but three!”’

‘Four-and-twenty nobles sit in the king’s ha’; Bonnie Glenlogie is the flower amang them a’; In cam’ Lady Jean, skipping on the floor, And she has chosen Glenlogie ’mang a’ that...

Floods of light were again streaming through the lofty halls of Holyrood. Music was pealing loud and harmonious above the ringing of wine-cups, the clatter of a banquet and the...

Mary Stuart still wore in her bosom the gold heart that had been won by Chastelâr in his victory of the day. This it was that had so elated him at the banquet; this it was that...

‘To seek hot water beneath cauld ice, I trow it is a great folie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men and me.’

‘I freighted my bark with the rich and rare, Alice of Ormskirk, all for thee, Little I reckoned of cost or care, But I launched her out on a summer sea--

The episode of idolatry and madness was fast drawing to a close. When the Queen and her household went to establish themselves in the lodging where they designed to pass the nig...

The Queen’s supper and the _couchée_ which succeeded it seemed endless. Her Majesty, though by no means in her usual spirits, eating but little, and scarcely speaking at all, wa...

‘“And grant me his life!” Lady Margaret cried; “Oh! grant but his life to me! And I’ll give ye my gold and my lands so wide, An’ ye let my love go free.

The wind was rising out at sea with fitful sullen moans; the town of St Andrews was wrapped in thick darkness, save that at long intervals a light glimmered from some lofty wind...

‘They led him forth to the silent square, In the gray of the morning sky, And they brought him a cup of red wine there, To drink, and then to die.

While the grass was growing tall and rank on Chastelâr’s grave, the beauty that had bewildered and destroyed him was unconsciously sowing dissensions and intrigues in half the c...

It was the anniversary of Twelfth-night, and the feast of the Bean was in act of celebration with great glee and splendour when the English Minister and his companion entered th...

He paused as he emerged from the palace, to let the cool air fan his brow, and to give his thoughts and energies time to collect themselves for the great effort he felt he had t...

‘I send him the rings from my white fingers; The garlands aff my hair; I send him the heart that’s in my breast; What would my love hae mair? And at the fourth kirk in fair Scot...

‘But had I kenn’d or I cam’ frae hame, How thou unkind wad’st been to me, I would have kept my Border-side, In spite of all thy peers and thee.’

‘In solitude the sparks are struck that bid the world admire, Though heart and brain must scorch the while in self-consuming fire. In solitude the sufferer smiles, defiant of hi...

‘Oh, they rade on, and farther on, And they waded through rivers above the knee, And they saw neither the sun nor the moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea.’

There is one saint in the calendar, who at least has never lacked worshippers; at whose shrine the strictest sectarians, the bitterest Reformers, have never failed to lay their...

‘We’ll hear nae mair lilting at the ewe-milking, Women and lasses are heartless and wae, Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning The flowers of the forest are all wede away.’

‘“Fear ye nae that,” quo’ the laird’s Jock, “A faint heart ne’er won a fair ladie; Work thou within, we’ll work without, And I’ll be sworn we’ll set thee free.”’

The four borderers rode up the High Street of Edinburgh in the warm afternoon sun, and their leader, fortified doubtless by the sprig of witch-elm in his head-piece, and inspiri...

‘Oh! Espérance! Hope on! The fight Is never lost while fight we may; At home the hearth is shining bright, Though yet unseen along the way: And the darkest hour of all the night...

‘There cometh a crash, and a cry of need, A puff of smoke--and no more to tell, But a dangling rein and a plunging steed, And a rider lying where he fell.

‘For though her smiles were sad and faint, And though her voice was low, She never murmured a complaint, Nor hinted at her woe, Nor harboured in her gentle breast The lightest t...

Perhaps of the four young ladies who had thus devoted themselves to the service of the Queen, Mary Carmichael was the least changed in demeanour and outward appearance at the au...

So the Maries were disposed of at last. The roses were unbound from the chaplet and set free. Two of the flowers bloomed happy and beautiful on the manly breasts in which they h...