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' It is said that, when about to cross
the Frith of Forth, then called the Scottish Sea, a Highland woman, who
claimed the character of a prophetess, like Meg Merrilees in fiction,
met the cavalcade, and cried out, with a loud voice, 'My Lord the King,
if you pass this water you shall never return again alive;' but as she
was concluded to be mad or drunk, her warning was scorned. He betook
himself to the convent of the Black Friars, where Christmas was being
celebrated with great pomp and splendour. Meanwhile Robert Grahame, and
Walter, Earl of Athole, the King's own uncle, actuated, the former by
revenge on account of the resumption of some lands improperly granted
to his family, and the latter by a desire to succeed to the Crown, had
formed a plot against James's life. Several warnings, besides that of
the Highland seeress, the King received, but he heeded them not, and,
like most of the doomed, was in unnaturally high spirits, as if the
winding-sheet far up his breast had been a wedding-robe.
It is the evening of the 20th of February 1437.


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