188 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



" SO sweetly they sang," says the ballad, that " our lady came tripping down the 

 stairs," and threw herself into the arms of the gipsey troubadour, who bore her 

 off with all expedition. The triumph, however, was short : what the song had 

 won, the sword was to restore ; for the earl arriving shortly after, and hearing 

 the strange news that his lady had eloped, mounted his " coal-black steed," and 

 summoning his household, rushed forward to the rescue. The fugitives, fifteen 

 in number, were overtaken at a ford on the Doon, still called the " Gipseys' 

 steps," and, after a sharp conflict, were all sacrificed* except one, who only 

 survived to tell their disaster, in the words of the ballad. 



Colzean Castle, the chief hereditary mansion of the Ailsa family, is one of 

 the noblest of its kind in Europe, both in point of situation and in baronial 

 magnificence. So striking is its position, and so well adapted is its castel- 

 lated architecture to this great natural advantage, that it would be difficult to 

 suggest any artificial measures by which the general eflfect could be improved. 

 Its battlements, and towers, and minarets, harmonize well with the solid rock 

 which they crown, and command, in extensive perspective, all the blending 

 beauties of sea and shore. It has always been considered the noblest resi- 

 dence in the county, in which the houses are those of a numerous and powerful 

 aristocracy, whose ancestral halls are proverbially celebrated as the " Eyes of 

 the West." In the sea-view from these battlements, Ailsa Craig forms an im- 

 posing feature. 



" Hoarse round his rugged roots the ocean roars, 

 And high above the clouds his summit soars." 



This modern structure, of great solidity and sumptuously furnished, was built 

 about sixty or seventy years ago by the Earl of CassiUs. Underneath the castle, 

 the rock is hollowed into extensive caves, where, according to popular super- 

 stition, the beings of the nether world celebrate their midnight orgies. An 

 ancestor of the family who, after the revolution, still adhered to the fortunes of 

 the exiled sovereign, and thereby rendered himself obnoxious to the new govern- 

 ment, found in these subterranean wave-worn labyrinths a cool but secure 

 retreat. As a more detailed notice of Colzean, in connexion with other castel- 

 lated mansions of Scotland, is likely to appear in the course of the ensuing 



* Another version says, that they were only made prisoners at the ford, brought back to Cassilis, and, 

 along with the luckless paramour, suspended from a tree in front of the castle. Tlie frail countess, after 

 being compelled to witness the tragic scene from a window opposite, was confined for life in the castle of 

 Marybole, the staircase of which, in commemoration of the event, was ornamented with carved heads, 

 representing those of the unliappy Faa and his comrades. The earl married a second wife, by whose 

 offspring the regular family line was continued. — Chambers. Wav. Ante. Stn'.itl. 



