University of Virginia Library

St Mungo, or Kentigern, is said to have been born here, and to have been left by his mother to the tutelage of St Serf, or Servanus, who lived in a hermitage on the shore of the Forth, noar Culross; and who, there dying, was buried. From this circumstance he was adopted as the guardian saint of the neigh-bourhood; and, down to the close of the fifteenth century, the people showed their veneration for his memory by an annual festival.

A chapel on the beach, at the east end of Culross, was dedicated to St Kentigern, but has long since disappeared.

Culross—or, as it is pronounced, Cooross—rose many centuries ago to be a considerable seat of population and mart of trade, from its vicinity to the handsome monastery erected by Malcolm, Thane of Fife, in 1217, and which was devoted to the Virgin and St Serf. Its monks were of the Cistercian Order; and the ruins yet extant indicate how considerable were its dimensions.

At a remote era Culross possessed a good deal of shipping, and carried on no inconsiderable maritime commerce, especially in the export trade of salt and coal. From James VI., and from Charles II., were also obtained grants which gave the town the exclusive right of manufacturing girdles—thin circular plates of iron, used in Scotland for the baking of oatmeal or other cakes. For long this continued to be a source of revenue; but the peculiar privilege has long been virtually annulled, and nothing remains of the prosperity of the burgh but a profitless memory. A place more decayed or forlorn-looking cannot well be imagined.

Naval power very early showed itself to be an important matter to the sovereigns of Scotland—probably from what the country had been occasionally doomed to suffer from the maritime superiority of the Danes and Norwegians; and William the Lion made the building of ships an object of royal attention and patronage. We learn from the Chronicon Manniæ (p. 39) that the fleet which Alexander II. led against Angus of Argyll, and in whose command he died, was a large one; and it is stated by Matthew Paris, (p. 668—odit. Wats.,) that the ship which conveyed Hugh de Chastillon, Earl of St Paul, and his vassals to the Holy Land, along with Louis IX. of France, in 1249, was built at Inverness.

By the time of Alexander III. the mereantile wealth of the country had greatly increased; and Lombard merchants made proposals for settling in the kingdom. It is curious to learn that the spots which they fixed on were the hill above Queens-ferry, and one of the islands at Cramond. At this period, says Mr Tytler, (History, vol. ii. 292,)—“Voyages had become more distant; the various countries which were visited more numerous; the risks of loss by piracy, tempest, or arrestment in foreign ports, more frequent; and it is a remarkable circumstance that the king, in consequence of this, became alarmed, and published an edict, by which he forbade the exportation of any merchandise from his dominions.” This shortsighted policy, as we learn from the ancient historian Fordun, (à Goodall, vol. ii. p. 135,) created a great sensation in foreign countries, and occasioned an immediate resort of vessels from abroad into the Scottish harbours, to take up the commerce we had abandoned.

In the text, the line, if strictly adhering to historical propriety, should rather have joined the name of Wood to that of Barton, as a distinguished early Scottish navigator—Sir Patric Spens, the “skeely skipper” of what Coleridge rightly calls “the grand old ballad” which bears his name, being probably less of the true than of the poetical and “ancient marinere” school. Although not alluded to by any of our old chroniclers, it is generally believed that the cause of his mission to Norway related to Margaret the daughter of King Eric, and grandchild of Alexander III. From the king, however, being mentioned as “sitting in Dunfermline toun,” while it was not till after his death that Sir David Wemyss, and Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie—the famous wizard of Scottish tradition, and of the Lay of the Last Minstrel—were really sent there, it has been feasibly suggested by Sir Walter Scott (Border Minstrelsy, vol. i.) that perhaps the unfortunate expedition of Sir Patric Spens was previous to that solemn embassy, and might be suggested by a natural desire of the king to see his grandchild and heir. According to Mr Buchan's edition of the story, (Ancient Ballads, 1828,) the errand of Spens was not to bring the Maiden of Norway to Scotland at all, but to convey thither her mother, the daughter of Alexander III. The remote antiquity of the ballad is undoubted, but this would carry it back even beyond the era of the generally received version.

Sir Andrew Wood, the celebrated Scottish admiral, who, in the roign of James IV., defeated the English fleet under Stephen Bull, was a native of Largo, in Fifeshire, and for his gallantry was invested by the king with the barony of his birthplace. It is rather a curious coincidence that, in 1676, Alexander Selkirk—the Robinson Crusoe of De Foe's inimitable narrative—should also have been born there. After an absence of several years, during which Selkirk endured the solitude of Juan Fernandez, he returned to Largo, bringing with him his gun, his sea-chest, and cocoa-nut cup—all of which are yet to be seen. After remaining nine months at home, he again took to sea, and, like Falconer, was never more heard of. The cottage in which he was born is still in the possession of his family, as are his chest and cup. The gun is now the property of Mr Lumsdaine of Lathallan.

The church of the ancient Abbey stood on its north side, and the tower in the midst is still to be seen. The portion of the church which remains has been fitted up, and is now used as a place of parochial worship. The burial-vault of the Bruces is in the north aisle, and contains several very interesting monuments; among them is that of Sir George and his lady, around whom, on a low settle, are ranged their seven children, in a kneeling posture. The whole group is sculptured in marble, and is of great beauty—the costume of the time being distinctly and faithfully preserved. By letters patent, 8th July 1604, Edward Bruce, the Commendator of the Abbey of Kynloss, in Morayshire, at the time of the Reformation, and afterwards a Lord of Session, was created Baron Bruce of Kinloss by James VI. His son, Thomas, received the higher title of Earl of Elgin from Charles I., 19th June 1633.—Vide Keith's Scottish Bishops, (Russel's edit'.,) p. 418-19.

From the side of the aisle, containing the tombs of the Bruces, there projects a piece of unornamented mason-work, which some years ago was found to hold the embalmed heart of Edward, second Lord Kinloss—a young and gallant noble, who was a prominent figure at the English court of James VI., and who fell near Bergen-op-Zoom in a sanguinary duel with his quondam friend, Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset. His heart was brought home in a silver case, and was there deposited amid the bones of his ancestors. The circumstances of this romantic and fatal rencontre are detailed with great precision by Mr Robert Chambers in his Life of James the Sixth; and forms one of the most striking and melancholy episodes of family history.