SIR IAN HAMILTON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 290, 11 May 1914, Page 3

SIR IAN HAMILTON.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —"'lis lie, 'tis lie, 'tis Bothwcll •Haugh!" The forthcoming visit of the above titled scion of the House of Hamilton to Taranaki might recall the once famous tragic event in the past history of the iiamiltons of Bothwcll Ilaiigh, dating hack almost to the ehivaliic age of Scotland, and celebrated in poetry by Sir Walter Scott. The estate of "Woodheuslie," the abode of the Hamilton family, having been bestowed by the then Regent of Scotland, Lord Murray, on a certain Sir James Bellers- ! den, that merciless minion on taking possession of the mansion, turned out the wife of Bothwell Haugh, with her newly-born child, naked into the wilds on a cold and wintry night, she consequently becoming hopelessly mad before morning. Such was the fury of her husband t'hat he determined to he revenged on Murray himself. Stationing himself in a balcony overlooking a street in tlie town of Linlithgow, through which the Regent, at the head of his troop, was riding, Hamilton shot him i fatally, he dying before night. Hamilton tben effected his escape, and, though hotly pursued, succeeded', after a most desperate ride, in reaching his own lines 1 , or the camp of his elan, the members of which, according to Scott, hailed or welcomed him with the cry—- | "'This he, 'tis Bothwcll Haugh."

The "brass arquebus, or carbine, with which Murray was shot, is still in the possession of the TTnmiltons, of Hamilton Place, and the ruins of the building from which the wife was so inhumanely expelled, still exist on the banks of the EsU river, while popularly the white and wailing ghost of the lady and her child still haunt the vicinity. "Remember injured Pothwcll Haugh." (Notes to Sir W. Scott's poems.)—l am. etc. C.W.W. May' 9, 1914.