44 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



where, in expiation of some breach of her vows, she had been built up alive. 

 Of the dress in vrhich she had been consigned to her doom, the shoes, and their 

 silk latchets, were all that remained. Discoveries of this nature lessen our regret 

 that the power and place where such atrocities could be perpetrated, have, in 

 this country at least, vanished together and for ever.* 



About four miles from Coldingham, is the celebrated foreland of St. Abb's 

 Head, consisting of two abrupt hills, separated by a deep ravine from the adjoining 

 portion of the promontory, and occupied, respectively, by the ruins of a monas- 

 tery, and a station of the preventive service. A spiral path conducts us to an 

 esplanade on the summit of the eastern hill, where the remains of St. Abb's 

 chiurch are shghtly traced on the undulating surface. Here a very few stones 

 still remain upon each other — a small enclosure hke a low turf fence — the 

 apparition of a deserted burying ground, sporting upon its withered breast a 

 ghastly nosegay of hemlocks and nettles ; the sea, in front, to which the eye 

 can discern no shore ; and a savage scene spreading as far behind, are the cliarac- 

 teristics of a place resorted to twelve hundred years ago, for the performance 

 of christian rites by the Pict, the Briton, and, perhaps, the Roman. The 

 ruins He within ten yards of a precipice, three hundred feet in depth, covered 

 over with sea-fowl, and at the bottom of which the ocean roars and boils without 

 intermission. f It might have served as an original for Shakspeare's Cliff — 



" How fearful 

 And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes below ! 

 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, 

 Shew scarce so gross as beetles." 



Fast Castle, a baronial fortress well known in history, crowns the adjoining 

 promontory, to which it gives name; and like St. Abb's church, built in 

 tottering suspense over the brink of a precipitous rock, 



" Puts toys of desperation, 

 Without more motive, into every br-iin, 

 That looks so many fathoms to the sea. 

 And hears it roar beneath." 



In 1410, Patrick Dunbar, one of the younger sons of the earl of March, 



* Coldingham occurs in history as early as a.d. 661, at which Abbe, or Ebba, sister to Osy, king of 

 Northumberland, was abbess, and entertained St. Cutiibert, prior of Melros, for several days. Eight years 

 later, Ethcldreda, queen of Egfred, king of Northumberland, became a nun of this house. In 709, it was 

 destroyed by lightning, in punishment, it is said, of the dissolute lives of its monastic inmates ; and after 

 a long interval, was re-founded by king Edgar, in 1098, and dedicated to St Cuthbert. 



f Mr. Robert Chambers, to whose popular work the .-eader is referred for the Legend of St. .\bb. 



