According to the contemporary pamphlet: "The whole way, as she went
to the place of execution, she behaved herself so cheerfully, as if
she had been going to a wedding and not to her death. When she came
to the scaffold, and was carried up upon it, she looked up to the
Maiden, with two longsome looks, for she had never seen it before.
This I may say of her, to which all that saw her will bear record,
that her only countenance moved, although she had not spoken a word.
For there appeared such majesty in her countenance and visage, such
a heavenly courage in her gesture, that many said, '_That woman is
ravished with a higher spirit than man or woman._'" She then calmly
resigned herself to her fate. A melancholy end for one so young!
It shows the horror in which her deed was held at the time, that
in the ballad of "The Laird of Warriston," the Enemy of Mankind is
introduced as appearing to her, and tempting her to this awful crime.
Four years later, her accomplice, Weir, was taken and broken on the
wheel, a punishment hardly ever before inflicted in Scotland.[61]
[61] Chambers's _Domestic Annals of Scotland_; Pitcairn's _Criminal
Trials_, ii. p. 445.
We now return to our actual walk, and soon find ourselves facing the
lodge-gates of Caroline Park, or Roystoun, as it was called before it
became the property of John, Duke of Argyle.
Though many years have passed since I last saw Caroline Park, how
vividly it rises before me, with its curious, steep-pitched roof, and
the carved inscription below it, telling how George, Lord Tarbat, had
erected this little cottage (_tuguriolum_) in 1685.
[Illustration: _Caroline Park._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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