344 ARTHUR SEAT— HISTORY AND NOMENCLATURE 



Coles has pointed out in his "Notes," contributed to the 

 "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland" 

 for 1895-6, there is no documentary evidence of its foundation 

 or dedication, and its supposed connection with the Precep- 

 tory of St. Anthony at Leith, belonging to the Knights 

 Hospitallers, rests on mere conjecture. To the realm of 

 imagination or speculation must also be relegated George 

 Chalmers's statement that in the Hermitage " a succession 

 of anchorites rested their weary age, lived remote from a 

 guilty world," and Grose's assumption that the situation was 

 chosen "with an intention of attracting the notice of seamen 

 coming up the Firth, who in cases of danger might be 

 induced to make vows to its tutelar saint." In the first 

 pictorial view of it, that contained in a Cottonian MS. of 

 1544, the Chapel is represented as having a gable-roofed 

 tower at the western end. It also portrays a portion of the 

 enclosing wall, which Mr Coles has shown, on the evidence of 

 remains still in situ, must have embraced a considerable space 

 of adjoining ground, including the supposed site of the original 

 Hermitage. The ruin has suffered considerable change and 

 dilapidation since it was first described by Maitland in 1750; 

 but it retains sufficient traces of its architectural form and 

 style to make it capable of restoration. One cannot advance 

 far beyond Sir Walter Scott's description: — "The history 

 of the Hermitage has not been handed down to us. The 

 Chapel has been a plain but handsome Gothic building. A 

 high rock rises behind the cell, from the foot of which gushes 

 a pure and plentiful fountain, dedicated, of course, to St. 

 Anthony, the genius loci.'" 



Sir Walter himself, however, is the true genius loci of 

 Arthur Seat. The Hill, but especially the path by the 

 " Eadical Road," was his "favourite morning and evening 

 resort." Here he laid some of the most magically romantic 

 of the scenes in the "Heart of Midlothian." Reuben Butler 

 "saw the morning arise," on the day after the Porteous 

 Riots, from a coign of vantage on the Crags. Jeanie Deans 

 lived in the herd's cottage in the valley below, and kept 

 tryst with Geordie Robertson at " Muschat's Cairn" — the 

 scene of a peculiarly cowardly and brutal wife murder, 

 near the north-eastern entrance to the Park — until Madge 



