Poetry > Lady of the lake

Canto V.
THE COMBAT.
237
And thou, 0 sad and fatal mound I1
That oft has heard the death-axe sound,
As on the noblest of the land
Fell the stem headsman’s bloody hand,—
The dungeon, block, and nameless tomb
Prepare—for Douglas seeks his doom !
—But hark! what blithe and jolly peal
Makes the Franciscan steeple reel?
1 [An eminence on the north-east of the Castle, where state
criminals were executed. Stirling was often polluted with noble
blood. It is thus apostrophized by J. Johnston:—
“Discordia tristis
Heu quoties procerum sanguine tinxit humum!
Hoc uno infelix, et felix ce era; nusquam
Laetior aut coeli frons geniusve soli ”
The fate of William, eighth Earl of Douglas, whom James II.
stabbed in Stirling Castle with his own hand, and while under
his royal safe-conduct, is familiar to all who read Scottish his¬
tory. Murdack Duke of Albany, Duncan Earl of Lennox, his
father-in-law, and his two sons, Walter and Alexander Stuart,
were executed at Stirling, in 1425. They were beheaded upon
an eminence without the castle walls, but making part of the
same hill, from whence they could behold their strong castle of
Donne, and their extensive possessions. This “ heading hill,”
as it was sometimes termed, bears commonly the less terrible
name of Hurly-hacket, from its having been the scene of a
courtly amusement alluded to by Sir David Lindsay, who says
of the pastimes in which the young king was engaged,
” Some harled him to the Hurly-hacket
which consisted in sliding, in some sort of chair, it may be sup¬
posed, from top to bottom of a smooth bank. The boys of Edin¬
burgh, about twenty years ago, used to play at hurly-hacket, or.
the Cal ton-hill, using for their seat a horse’s skull.