Rob Roy — Complete
Page 60
Note G.--Mons Meg.
Mons Meg was a large old-fashioned piece of ordnance, a great favouritewith the Scottish common people; she was fabricated at Mons, in Flanders,in the reign of James IV. or V. of Scotland. This gun figures frequentlyin the public accounts of the time, where we find charges for grease, togrease Meg's mouth withal (to increase, as every schoolboy knows, theloudness of the report), ribands to deck her carriage, and pipes to playbefore her when she was brought from the Castle to accompany the Scottisharmy on any distant expedition. After the Union, there was much popularapprehension that the Regalia of Scotland, and the subordinate Palladium,Mons Meg, would be carried to England to complete the odious surrender ofnational independence. The Regalia, sequestered from the sight of thepublic, were generally supposed to have been abstracted in this manner.As for Mons Meg, she remained in the Castle of Edinburgh, till, by orderof the Board of Ordnance, she was actually removed to Woolwich about1757. The Regalia, by his Majesty's special command, have been broughtforth from their place of concealment in 1818, and exposed to the view ofthe people, by whom they must be looked upon with deep associations; and,in this very winter of 1828-9, Mons Meg has been restored to the country,where that, which in every other place or situation was a mere mass ofrusty iron, becomes once more a curious monument of antiquity.