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Updated: August 2, 2024
They determined, however, to abandon the enterprise, as the king's army was reinforced by the Dutch auxiliaries, and they themselves were not only reduced to a small number, but likewise destitute of money, arms, ammunition, forage, and provision; for the duke of Argyle had taken possession of Burntisland, and transported a detachment to Fife, so as to cut off Mar's communication with that fertile country.
We had a large stock, much of it very beautiful, for the Scotch ladies at that time were very proud of their napery, but they no longer sent it to Holland to be bleached, as had once been the custom. We grew flax, and our maids spun it. The coarser yarn was woven in Burntisland, and bleached upon the links; the finer was sent to Dunfermline, where there was a manufactory of table-linen.
In 1563 came the affair of Chatelard, a French minor poet, a Huguenot apparently, who, whether in mere fatuity or to discredit Mary, hid himself under her bed at Holyrood, and again at Burntisland. Mary had listened to his rhymes, had danced with him, and smiled on him, but Chatelard went too far.
Samuel Greig was a distant relation of the Charters family. His father, an officer in the British navy, had been sent by our government, at the request of the Empress Catharine, to organize the Russian navy. Mr. Greig came to the Firth of Forth on board a Russian frigate, and was received by the Fairfaxes at Burntisland with Scotch hospitality, as a cousin.
We were amused at the time, and afterwards made jellies and creams for little supper parties, then in fashion, though, as far as economy went, we might as well have bought them. On returning to Burntisland, I played on the piano as diligently as ever, and painted several hours every day. At this time, however, a Mr. Craw came to live with us as tutor to my youngest brother, Henry.
Nor is her simple account of her early days without interest, when, as a lonely child, she wandered by the seashore, and on the links of Burntisland, collecting shells and flowers; or spent the clear, cold nights at her window, watching the starlit heavens, whose mysteries she was destined one day to penetrate in all their profound and sublime laws, making clear to others that knowledge which she herself had acquired, at the cost of so hard a struggle.
We have seen that James, whenever he felt that the tide of hostile opinion in the country was becoming too strong for him, sought to turn it by some popular act. The General Assembly held in Burntisland in May 1601 witnessed one of those periodic fits of apparent yielding, on the King's part, to the will of the nation.
I remember the sound from a distance fell gently on my sleeping ear, swelled softly, and died away in distance again, a passing breeze of sweet sound. It was very pleasing; some thought it too sad. My grandfather was intimate with the Boswells of Balmuto, a bleak place a few miles to the north of Burntisland.
There was much sympathy and kindness shown on these occasions; friends always paid a visit of condolence to the afflicted, dressed in black. The gude wives in Burntisland thought it respectable to provide dead-clothes for themselves and the "gude man," that they might have a decent funeral.
Ellen had sat with her feet in a pool and watched the dances over her shoulder. "Mummie," she had said, "we belong to a nation which keeps all its lightness in its feet," and Mrs. Melville had made a sharp remark like the ping of a mosquito about the Irish. Sometimes they would walk along a lane by the beach to Burntisland.
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