(_John Mackay Wilson_), 276

WILSON'S
TALES OF THE BORDERS,
AND OF SCOTLAND.

THE GUIDWIFE OF COLDINGHAM;
OR,
THE SURPRISE OF FAST CASTLE.

Near where St. Abb stretches, in massive strength, into the sea, still
terrible, even in ruins, may be seen the remains of Fast Castle, one
of the most interesting in its history--as it is the most fearfully
romantic in its situation--of all the mouldering strongholds which are
still to be traced among the Borders, like monuments of war, crumbling
into nothingness beneath the silent but destroying touch of time. After
the death of the bluff Harry the Eighth of England, who had long kept
many of the corruptible amongst the Scottish nobility and gentry in his
pay, the ambitious Somerset, succeeding to the office of guardian of the
young king, speedily, under the name of Protector, acquired an authority
nothing inferior to the power of an absolute monarch. He had not long
held the reins of government when he rendered it evident, that it was a
part of his ambition to subdue Scotland, or the better portion of it,
into a mere province of England.

The then governor of Scotland, Hamilton, Earl of Arran, (for Queen Mary
was but a child,) was not ignorant of the designs of Somerset, and every
preparation was made to repel him on his crossing the Borders. It was
drawing towards evening on the first of September, 1547, when the
Protector, at the head of an army of eighteen thousand men, arrived
at Berwick; and nearly at the same instant, while the gloaming yet lay
light and thin upon the sea, a fleet, consisting of thirty-four vessels
of war, thirty transports, and a galley, were observed sailing round
Emmanuel's head--the most eastern point of Holy Island. On the moment
that the fleet was perceived, St. Abb's lighted up its fires, throwing a
long line of light along the darkening sea, from the black shore to the
far horizon: and scarce had the first flame of its alarm-fire waved in
the wind, till the Dow Hill repeated the fiery signal; and, in a few
minutes, Domilaw, Dumprender, and Arthur's Seat, exhibited tops of fire
as the night fell down on them, bearing the tidings, as if lightnings
flying on different courses revealed them, through Berwickshire and the
Lothians, and enabling Roxburghshire and Fife to read the tale; while
Binning's Craig, repeating the telegraphic fire, startled the burghers
of Linlithgow on the one hand, and on the other aroused the men of
La