Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and PoetsOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Edinburgh (Scotland) -- History
Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a
portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in
the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the
noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to
the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has
shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.
Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of
Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,
the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that
maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."
"I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I
could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the
space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me
so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.
Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go
hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a
furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude
godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey
to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant
lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first
entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and
vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out
of it."
Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of
Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to the Castle of Edinburgh,
which he said would run like a sand-glass--a prediction supposed to be
fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and
its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken
and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more,
occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe
to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special
prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God
assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and
impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the
chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring
spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his
body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the
Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the
steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the
unseen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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