When Edinburgh was only a castle rising out of woods and morasses, with a cluster of wooden, thatched huts below it, all the land lying between the Castle and Arthur’s Seat was part of the unhewn forest of Drumsheugh; and there, where the red elk and the Caledonian boar roamed under primeval oaks, the pious Celtic kings of Scotland were wont to take their pleasure in the chase. David, the last of Malcolm’s five sons who reigned, rode out from the Castle one day, followed by his courtiers, to go a-hunting--this in spite of the protests of his confessor, for it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and a day rather for vigil than for sport. Good fortune could not attend the King in so rebellious a mood. He became separated from the “noys and dyn of bugillis” of the royal hunt, and suddenly found himself alone and confronted by a huge white stag, which, furious and at bay, turned and attacked him. King David defended himself with his short hunting sword, and would have fared but ill had not a miracle happened--a hand from the clouds placed a cross in his hand, before which sacred emblem the white stag fled. And that night, as the awed and wearied monarch slept in the Castle, St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, appeared to him, and told him to found yet another monastery on the scene of the miracle. So Holyrood Abbey was founded, and the canons lived in the Castle till their Abbey was ready for them, in all its beauty, in the valley close at the foot of Arthur’s Seat. But David I. of Scotland must not be remembered only as a “sair sanct for the crown,” chidden by his confessor and founding abbeys in obedience to dreams, but as “the beld[6] of all his kyn,” who by his munificence to the Church protected the land from ravage, and fostered arts and learning; who fought with England till Scotland included Durham, Northumberland, and Westmoreland; and who left Scotland peaceful and prosperous. It was in his reign that St. Giles’s assumed the dignity of a parochial Church. The little rough huts of the dwellers in the town, which would naturally have clustered near the Castle to the east--its one not precipitous side, and where was its main entrance--would now tend to straggle down towards the Church and the Abbey, and so began that long street from the Castle to Holyrood--that curious steep mediæval street down the ridge, so characteristic of Old Edinburgh to this very day. The Celtic dynasty had inherited from Saint Margaret their dutiful generosity to the Church; and in their reigns Holyrood Abbey became very rich and important, and the Augustine canons of Holyrood were permitted to build the Canongate round about, and to rule it as a separate burgh.