The ill-omened dancer had
laid a chilly hand on the heart of many a wedding guest.
There were some who said it was a monkish trick, contrived for his own
ends by one of the brethren from Beauvais, but, less than six months
later, all Scotland believed that the skeleton masquer at Jedburgh had,
indeed, come to warn an unfortunate land of its approaching doom.
On a dark March night of 1286, King Alexander rode along the rough cliff
path between Burntisland and Kinghorn on a horse that stumbled in the
darkness, and in the morning, on the rocks far down below, the grey
waves lapped against the ashen dead face of a mighty king.
Not only was the fair Queen Yolande a widow. Scotland was widowed
indeed. For long years thereafter she was to be a battlefield for
fiercely contending nations, and if the ghost that danced at Jethart was
truly a portent of the death of the King of Peace, it also was a portent
of the death of many a gallant warrior and of much grievous spilling of
innocent blood in the woeful years to come.
A MAN HUNT IN 1813
It was a clear, crisp, sunny day, early in March 1813, that the laird of
Wauchope was riding into Hawick. A little snow still lay on the crest of
Cheviot and on some of the foot-hills, and a smirr of hoar-frost
silvered the turf by the roadside; but the sun was bright--strong to
overcome frost and snow--and in it the leaves that still clung to the
beech hedges shone like burnished copper.
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