Ayrshire > Volume 2

THE MONTGOMERIES OF EGLINTON 121
and the story of the three days of the Tournament reads
like a chapter out of the history of the Middle Ages.
There rose up amid the beautiful environs of the Castle
a grand stand, brilliantly appointed, in the Grecian
style of architecture, and other two stands only less
commodious and less sumptuously decked. There was
a gorgeous canopy for the Queen of Beauty (Lady
Seymour), and all round were tents and marquees for
the Knights, and spacious pavilions lighted when the
evenings fell with chandeliers of antique fashion, and
ornamented with the arms of the participants in the
fray that took place in the lists without. Every phase
of the old time chivalry was reproduced. When the
grand procession that opened the Tournament held its
route for the scene of the combats, men in arms walked
in front, and behind them were musicians clad in silken
costumes, trumpeters, pursuivants, halberdiers, heralds,,
and esquires. The Queen of Beauty was supported by
a rich bevy of attendants, pages, esquires, and archers ;
and the Jester in cap and bells walked in the throng and
added to the realism of the reproduction. The Lord of
the Tournament, the Earl of Eglinton himself, rode
forth in a splendid suit of armour, and with him came
the Knights of the Griffin, the Dragon, the Black Lion,
the Dolphin, the Crane, the Ram, the Swan, the Golden
Lion, the White Rose, the Stag's Head, the Burn Tower,
the Red Rose, the Lion's Paw, the Knight of Gael, the
Black Knight, and the Knight of the Border. Behind
them came swordsmen and bowmen, seneschals, marshals
and chamberlains. Many were the representatives of
the old nobility who took part in that march. The
houses whose pennons were borne into the lists included
Saltoun and Kelburne, Blair and Hay, Hamilton and
Cuninghame, Buchanan and Seymour, Craven and
Waterford, Glenlyon and Cassillis, Cranstoun and
Campbell, Beresford and Johnstone, and other families
of note and of name ; and among them Prince Louis
Napoleon, destined to sit on the throne of France and to
pass from it into retirement when his time had come to