David was in the prime of life--a very handsome man, and of princely bearing, and, while thus unattended and unknown, he met with a lovely young shepherdess in a lonely part of the muir, tending her father's sheep. The name of the young woman, he found, was Maude, or Matilda, and, having inquired of her where she abode, he departed, resolving to cultivate the acquaintance he had thus accidentally formed. He frequently visited the shepherdess after this (who was entirely ignorant of his rank), in the capacity of a private gentleman, and her conversation was his delight. There was something mysterious to him in her deportment and her accomplishments: she possessed the strictest innocence and the most dignified bearing without the slightest embarrassment. Though plainly attired, "grace was in all her steps," and every action exhibited courtly propriety and ease. Though her observations were chiefly confined to her flocks, and to rural affairs, yet she would occasionally surprise the king with her remarks upon astronomy, history, geography, morals, and agriculture, which bespoke a mind informed far above the common level. Being thus engaging in her mind and manners, it was not to be wondered at that every additional visit increased the love and affection of the astonished king, whose dignity was her torture. His passion grew stronger every day.
The king was captivated with her charms. Honour, however, governed his actions, and subjected his wishes to the control of virtue: he wished to raise her to an exalted situation, not to triumph over her innocence--in short, he wished to make her his royal bride; but this seemed impossible, and he returned dejected to his Castle of Crail. He regretted that high rank should now stand in the way of his happiness, and almost wished he had not been born a king. He consulted the Lord of Douglas, his prime minister, urged the beauty, the virtue, the genius of Matilda, but all in vain; the reply was, that policy and prudence required him to seek a union with some exalted character--an alliance with the daughter of a powerful and wealthy prince; and that, were he to place a shepherdess on the throne, his nobles would be disgusted, and quit his court, and in all probability proceed by open violence to resent the supposed insult to their dignity. The king admitted that what was said was too likely to be the fact, and at the same time reprobated that pride which deemed an alliance with obscure and untitled virtue disgraceful; but he knew the prejudices of his nobility were unconquerable, and he submitted with great reluctance to his fate. His friends--and amongst others the Lairds of Cambo, Anstruther, Grangemuir, and Balcombie, the Provost of Crail, and Prior of St Rufus, the remains of whose chapel may still be seen a little eastward of Crail, near Roome Bay, and whose well (called the Prior's Well) is yet resorted to occasionally by the good people of the Nethergate--those friends, we say, tried in vain to divert the king's thoughts, and alleviate his distress. They informed him of the great antiquity of the burgh--that it was a place of note in the ninth century. They conveyed him on horseback to the Dane's Dyke, the remains of a bulwark of stones thrown up by our Danish invaders in one night, where human bones, in great quantities, are yet cast up by the plough on the farm of Kilmining; and they then passed on to the Cave of Balcombie Sands, where they told him one of his majesty's predecessors, Constantine, the Scottish king, was beheaded by the Danes, in the year 871, he having been taken prisoner in a skirmish, while the enemy were retreating. The party then visited the Castle of Balcombie, a lofty and extensive pile of building, of immense strength and remote antiquity, where, in after years, Mary of Guise was hospitably entertained, on landing, after a tempestuous passage, at Fifeness-haven, in order to be married to King James V. From hence King David proceeded to Airdrie, or Ard-rhi--a name which in the Celtic language denotes "the king's height"--then a favourite royal hunting-station on the borders of Kingsmuir; and, returning to Crail, the Runic Cross was not forgotten.[9]