The eye here takes in also, in this magnificent prospect, no less than twelve of Scotland's battle-fields, including one of Wallace's fierce contests, and Bannockburn, where Bruce gained the independence of Scotland in 1314.
James II. and James V. were born in Stirling; and I looked at the little narrow road which goes down behind the castle with some interest, when I was told it furnished King James V. the fictitious name, "Ballangeich," he was in the habit of assuming when he went among his subjects in disguise. Theatre-goers will remember the play of the "Gude Man of Ballangeich," and the "King of the Commons," and that he was the king who was hero in those plays, and also the "James Fitz-James" of Scott's Lady of the Lake. And, speaking of the Lady of the Lake, the beautiful view from the battlements of Stirling Castle, three hundred feet above the valley, recalled Roderic Dhu's reply to James:--
"Saxon, from yonder mountain high, I marked thee send delighted eye Far to the south and east, where lay, Extended in succession gay, Deep waving fields and pastures green, With gentle slopes and groves between; Those fertile fields, that softened vale, Were once the birthright of the Gael."
The outer gates of the castle are said to have been built by the old Romans, and were strong enough for ancient batteries, but not for modern artillery. The marks of the cannon shot fired by General Monk when he attacked the castle, directing the whole fire of his artillery at one point till he battered down a portion of the wall, and the breach through which William Wallace entered, are points of interest. So was the dark, secure, stone cell into which we peeped, where Rob Roy is said to have been confined. The outer works of the castle were erected in Queen Anne's time, and that known as the Palace, built by James V. The little room known as the Douglass Room, with its adjoining closet, is one of the "lions" of the castle, for it was here that the Earl of Douglass--the "Black Douglass"--met King James II. under promise of safe conduct; and after a fierce discussion, in which the king vainly tried to induce him to abandon a compact he had made with other chiefs, he stabbed the earl, in a fit of passion. The nobles attendant on the king, concealed in the little antechamber, rushed in and completed the murder, throwing the body from the window--which is pointed out to us--into the garden beneath.