I cannot leave those sweet singers without a passing word on the old ballad, surely of local origin: “Now Arthur’s Seat shall be my bed, The sheets shall ne’er be pressed by me. St. Anton’s Well shall be my drink Since my true love’s forsaken me! Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw An’ shake the green leaves aff the tree? O! gentle death, when wilt thou come? For o’ my life I am wearie.” Is this a woman’s voice? You cannot tell. It is supposed to commemorate the misfortunes of Lady Barbara Erskine, daughter of the Earl of Mar and wife of the second Marquis of Douglas. A rejected and malignant suitor is rumoured to have poisoned her husband’s mind against her, till he drove her from his company. Edinburgh has many records of high aristocratic, but very unconventional or otherwise remarkable, dames. Lady Rosslyn sat in the company of her friends one day when a woman whose character had been blown upon was announced. Many of her guests rose in a hurry to be gone. “Sit still, sit still,” said the old lady, “it’s na catchin’.” Dr. Johnson, on his visit to Scotland, met Margaret, Duchess of Douglas, at James’s Court. He describes her as “talking broad Scots with a paralytic voice scarcely understood by her own countrymen.” It was enviously noted that he devoted his attention to her exclusively for the whole evening. The innuendo was that Duchesses in England had not paid much attention to Samuel, and that he was inclined to make as much of a Scots specimen as he could. An accusation of snobbery was a good stick wherewith to beat the sage. The lady was a daughter of Douglas of Maines, and the widow of Archibald, Duke of Douglas, who died in 1761. A more interesting figure was the Duchess of Queensberry, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. The Act of the eleventh Parliament of James II., providing that “no Scotsman should marry an Englishwoman without the King’s license under the Great Seal, under pain of death and escheat of moveables,” was long out of date. She detested Scots manners, and did everything to render them absurd. She dressed herself as a peasant girl, to ridicule the stiff costumes of the day. The Scots made an excessive and almost exclusive use of the knife at table, whereat she screamed out as if about to faint. It is to her credit, however, that she was a friend and patron of Gay the poet, entertained him in Queensberry House, Canongate. Perhaps his praises of her beauty ought thus to suffer some discount; but Prior was as warm; and Pope’s couplet is classic: “If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling, ’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.”