MELROSE ABBEY. 75 



grand in conception and yet so delicate in execution. 

 44 The slender shafts of shapely stone, by foliage 

 tracery combined, " suggested to Sir Walter Scott the 

 idea that magic art alone could have wrought stone 

 into such forms, or rather that some fairy had twined 

 ozier wands through poplars 



" Then framed a spell when the work was done, 

 And changed the willow wreath to stone." 



But everybody has the beautiful and weird scene at 

 Melrose in the " Lay of the Last Minstrel" by heart. 

 Melrose Abbey was founded by King David in 1136, 

 and it seems to have been built' in ten years by a cer- 

 tain John Murvo or Morow, who in a quaint scroll 

 claims to have " had in keping al mason- wark" of 

 numerous other churches in Scotland. It took the 

 place of an older monastic establishment, situated a 

 little farther down the river at Old Melrose, whither 

 Christianity was first transplanted to the South of 

 Scotland from lona, and where St. Cuthbert erewhile 

 led his holy life. Within its precincts lie the ashes of 

 Scottish monarchs, nobles, ancl holy dignitaries of the 

 old church. The heart of King Kobert Bruce, after 

 its singularly romantic conveyance to Spain, on its 

 way to be buried at Jerusalem, was brought back by 

 Sir Simon Lockhart, and buried at Melrose. The dead 

 Douglas who won the field of Otterburne was also 

 brought here to be interred a fact which we rather 

 regret, seeing that while we give implicit credence to 

 the Scottish ballad's account of that battle, as against 

 the English one, we can hardly reconcile this with the 

 distinct statement that " Earl Douglas was buried at 

 the braken bush," where he had given his heroic dy- 



