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Updated: June 5, 2025
Now, with all these rich stores to work on, these exceeding many flocks and herds of Northern legend and glamour, Lady Blanche should surely have been content, and not have descended into the South of England, upon a quiet country-house in Berkshire, to seize its one ewe lamb and claim that the heroine of the story which I hope to tell before I get to the end of my paper was none other than the termagant Countess Mary, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland, and the owner of Slains Castle at the beginning of last century.
Slains Castle had many gentle and pleasant memories about it, as well as its traditional horrors, and among these were many connected with the history of the old family that owned it. In one of the corridors hangs the picture of James, Lord Hay, a fair-haired, sunny-faced boy, tall and athletic, standing with a cricket-bat in his hand.
Dr Johnson observed, the situation here was the noblest he had ever seen, better than Mount Edgecumbe, reckoned the first in England; because, at Mount Edgecumbe, the sea is bounded by land on the other side, and, though there is there the grandeur of a fleet, there is also the impression of there being a dock-yard, the circumstances of which are not agreeable. At Slains is an excellent old house.
But Slains stands pre-eminent among Scotch castles on other grounds, and has an interest which the doings of the earls of Errol, its lords, could never have won for it. The Wizard of the North has thrown his spell over it, and, whether Sir Walter Scott intended it or not, Slains is accepted now as the Elangowan Castle in Guy Mannering.
Johnson observed, the situation here was the noblest he had ever seen, better than Mount Edgecumbe, reckoned the first in England; because, at Mount Edgecumbe , the sea is bounded by land on the other side, and though there is there the grandeur of a fleet, there is also the impression of there being a dock-yard, the circumstances of which are not agreeable. At Slains is an excellent old house.
The aisle of the old church of Slains contains the graves of Countess Mary and her husband, with an epitaph in Latin, of which the following is a translation: "Beneath this tombstone there are buried neither gold nor silver, nor treasures of any kind, but the bodies of the most chaste wedded pair, Mary, countess of Erroll, and Alexander Hay of Dalgaty, who lived peaceably and lovingly in matrimony for twenty-seven years.
As a tribute of grateful recollection to those who made my days at Slains a happiness to me, and in the first fresh sorrow of a deep bereavement offered me distractions the more alluring because the more associated with Nature's changeless, silent grandeur, I pen these lines, crowning them with the homely Scottish wish that wherever they are and whatever they do, "Guid speed the wark!"
Slains Castle stands alone, a giant watchman upon giant cliffs, built up only one story high, on account of the tremendous winds that prevail there in spring and autumn, and cased with the gray Aberdeen granite of the famous quarries near by.
The peasants of this wild and primitive neighborhood, though to some extent slightly infected by modernization, are yet very fair specimens of the hardy, trusty clansmen of Scottish history, and the present owners of Slains certainly give them every reason to keep up the old bonds of affectionate interest with every one and everything belonging to "the family."
The ship broke in pieces on the merciless rocks, and many a drowned sailor went down to meet the army of his fellow-victims of all times who no doubt lay sleeping in the submarine caves of Slains. Those who survived soon disappeared, full of gratitude for the timely relief offered them at the castle, but one old man remained.
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