The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

CANTO VI.] THE LAST MINSTREL. 203
Blazed battlement and pinnet high,
Blazed every rose-carved buttress fairSo still they blaze, when fate is nigh
The lordly line of high St. Clair.
There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold
Lie buried within that proud chapelle;
Each one the holy vault doth holdBut the sea holds lovely Rosabelle!
And each St. Clair was buried there,
With candle, with book, and with knell;.
But the sea-caves rung, and the wild winds
sung,l
The dirge of lovely Rosabelle.
fought. When my good-father was buried, his (i. e. Sir William's) corpse seemed to be entire at the opening of the cave;
but when they came to touch his body, it fell into dust. He
was laying in his armour, with a red velvet cap on his head,
on a flat stone; nothing was spoiled except a piece of the
white furring that went round the cap, and answered to the
hinder part of the head. All his predecessors were buried
after the same manner, in their armour: late Rosline, my
good-father, was the first that was buried in a coffin, against
the sentiments of King James the Seventh, who was then in
Scotland, and several other persons well versed in antiquity,
to whom my mother would not hearken, thinking it beggarly
to be buried after that manner. The great expenses she was
at in burying her husband, occasioned the sumptuary acts
which were made in the following parliament."
1 [First Edit.-" But the Kelpie rung and the Mermaids
sung."]