Outside Aberdour, and partly shielding the bay, is Inchcolm Island. It would need a volume to do justice to the islands of the Forth. Some we have already glanced at. "St. Colme's Inch," where, as Shakespeare tells us, the routed Norsemen were fain to crave permission of the Thane of Cawdor to bury their dead, is the most famous of them all--except perhaps the Bass. The square tower and mouldering walls of its Abbey, rising close to the narrow isthmus where the isle is almost cut in two by the sea, are still prominent objects in the view. The Monastery was founded in 1123, by King Alexander I., in gratitude for his miraculous rescue from shipwreck, and entertainment here by a hermit who followed the rule of St. Columba. It once owned rich possessions in half a dozen shires, granted in part by a Lord Alan Mortimer of Aberdour, whose body the monks flung overboard in a storm while crossing to the island, thus giving a name to the inner channel of "Mortimer's Deep." Invaders, pirates, and rebels, as well as the hand of time, have since sorely visited the island, but still portions of the old buildings stand, and are even habitable. Cramond Island, almost opposite Inchcolm, hugs the other shore, and there is a road across the sands to its little farmhouse at low tide; while in the mid-channel there are many rocky islets, some of them the chosen resorts of cormorants and other sea birds. Further down, half-way between Leith Pier and Kirkcaldy Bay, Inchkeith stretches its length for nearly a mile across the Firth. Inchkeith, also, has harboured anchorites and stood sieges; and there are many curious legends connected with its coves and caves. But its most prominent feature is now the white lighthouse perched upon its highest crest; and barely visible to the eye are the powerful batteries that sweep, on the one side, Leith Roads, and on the other side the North Channel, between the island and Pettycur Point, where also great guns are mounted for the defence of the Forth. Then a long way farther out, at the very entrance to the Firth, and visible only in clear weather and easterly wind, runs the long rock wall of the May Island. In other days the May was a great resort of pilgrims, who held it a merit to reach a place so difficult of access, and barren women especially found a blessing in drinking from the well that had refreshed St. Fillan and St. Adrian. There was a religious house here connected with the Priory of Pittenweem on the adjacent Fife coast, but the monks found it by-and-bye most convenient to reside on shore. Though the light of faith has gone out, another light--a guide to the commerce entering the Firth--has been kept burning upon the May for two centuries and a half. Now its only residents are the lighthouse-men and their families, and its only regular visitors are myriads of sea-fowl.