Rude devices, supposed to be the pastime of captives, are carved upon the walls of a mural chamber,--a chamber which has special significance for the reader of "Waverley," as here, it is said, Major Macdonald, the original of Fergus MacIvor, was confined. For Carlisle Castle was never more cruel than to the Jacobites of 1745. On November 18 Bonny Prince Charlie, preceded by one hundred Highland pipers, had made triumphal entrance into the surrendered city, through which he passed again, on the 21st of December, in retreat. Carlisle was speedily retaken by the English troops, and its garrison, including Jemmy Dawson of Jacobite song, sent in ignominy to London. Even so the cells of the castle were crammed with prisoners, mainly Scots, who were borne to death in batches. Pinioned in the castle courtyard, seated on black hurdles drawn by white horses, with the executioner, axe in hand, crouching behind, they were drawn, to make a Carlisle holiday, under the gloomy arch of the castle gate, through the thronged and staring street, and along the London road to Harraby Hill, where they suffered, one after another, the barbarous penalty for high treason. The ghastly heads were set up on pikes over the castle gates (yetts), as Scotch balladry well remembers. "White was the rose in his gay bonnet, As he folded me in his broached plaidie; His hand, which clasped mine i' the truth o' luve, O it was aye in battle ready. His lang, lang hair in yellow hanks Waved o'er his cheeks sae sweet and ruddy, But now they wave o'er Carlisle yetts In dripping ringlets clotting bloodie. My father's blood's in that flower tap, My brother's in that hare-bell's blossom; This white rose was steeped in my luve's blude, And I'll aye wear it in my bosom. "When I cam' first by merrie Carlisle, Was ne'er a town sae sweetly seeming; The white rose flaunted o'er the wall, The thistled banners far were streaming! When I cam' next by merrie Carlisle, O sad, sad seemed the town, and eerie! The auld, auld men came out and wept-- _O, maiden, come ye to seek ye'r dearie?_" But not all the ballads of Carlisle Castle are tragic. Blithe enough is the one that tells how the Lochmaben harper outwitted the warden, who, when the minstrel, mounted on a grey mare, rode up to the castle gate, invited him in to ply his craft. "Then aye he harped, and aye he carped, Till a' the lordlings footed the floor; But an the music was sae sweet, The groom had nae mind o' the stable door. "And aye he harped, and aye he carped, Till a' the nobles were fast asleep; Then quickly he took off his shoon, And softly down the stair did creep." So he stole into the stable and slipped a halter over the nose of a fine brown stallion belonging to the warden and tied it to the grey mare's tail. Then he turned them loose, and she who had a foal at home would not once let the brown horse bait,