The Swintons of that Ilk, by A. Campbell Swinton. 347 



of Edinburgh, and was the grandmother of Sir Walter Scott. 

 Joanna, the third, married Alexander Keith of Pavelstone. 

 Their grandson, Sir Alexander Keith, was created Knight 

 Marischal of Scotland on the occasion of the visit of George IY. 

 to Edinburgh, and died in 1833, leaving as his heiress an only- 

 daughter, who became the wife of Sir William Keith Murray, 

 of Ochtertyre, baronet. The second daughter was Sir Walter 

 Scott's "Aunt Margaret," — a lady, he tells us, "of eminent 

 virtues and no inconsiderable share of talent ;" — by whose death 

 by the hand of her maid servant in a sudden fit of insanity, 

 " the first images of horror from the scenes of real life were 

 stamped on his mind." From her lips he gathered in childhood 

 the materials for the tale entitled " My Aunt Margaret's Mirror," 

 first published in the Keepsake for 1828. She also told him, 

 he says, " the unhappy story of the Bride of Lammermoor, being 

 nearly related to the Lord President, whose daughter was the 

 heroine of that melancholy tragedy."* Sir Walter further men- 

 tions that the concealment and discoveiy of the Countess of 

 Derby in Martindale Castle, as told in Peveril of the Peak, 

 was taken from a picturesque account of a similar event 

 described to him by Margaret Swinton, by whom it was 

 witnessed in childhood. The lady who alarmed little Margaret, 

 by her mysterious appearance in a room in Swinton House, 

 which she had entered through a sliding panel, the exist- 

 ence of which was unknown to the child, was Mrs Macfar- 

 lane, the wife of a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, 

 with whom Sir John Swinton seems to have had some 

 business relations. She had sought refuge in the border man- 

 sion, after shooting dead with a pistol in her own house in 

 Edinburgh a young Englishman named Cayley, who was a 

 government commissioner on the estates forfeited in the rebellion 

 of 1715. Whether the fatal act was committed in defence of 

 her honour, or to avenge herself on the unfortunate gallant 

 for having boasted of former favours, has been matter of 



* The relationship can scarcely be said to have been near. Jean Sinclair, 

 the elder sister of Lady Swinton, and consequently Margaret Swinton' s aunt, 

 was by her marriage to John, Master of Bargeny, mother of Johanna Ham- 

 ilton, who became the wife of Sir Robert Dalrymple, President Stair's 

 grandson. 



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