He was thought to have been "fey"--namely, in high spirits--recklessly
hastening to a violent death; for as he rode along the crags close above
Kinghorn, his horse suddenly stumbled, and he was thrown over its head
to the bottom of a frightful precipice, where he lay dead. The spot is
still called the King's Crag.
Truly it was the last day of Scotland's peace and prosperity. Thomas of
Ereildoune, called the Rymour, who was believed to possess second sight,
had declared that on the 16th of March the greatest wind should blow
before noon that Scotland had ever known. The morning, however, rose
fair and calm, and he was reproached for his prediction. "Noon is not
yet gone!" he answered; and ere long came a messenger to the gate, with
tidings that the King was killed. "Gone is the wind that shall blow
to the great calamity and trouble of all Scotland," said Thomas the
Rymour--a saying that needed no powers of prophecy, when the only
remaining scion of the royal line was a girl of two years old, the child
of a foreign prince, himself only eighteen years of age.
The oldest poem in the Scottish tongue that has been preserved is a
lament over the last son of St. David.
"When Alysander, our king, was dead,
That Scotland led in love and lee,
Away was sons of ale and bread,
Of wine and wax, of game and glee;
Our gold was changed into lead.
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