Andrew Lang

James VI And The Gowrie Mystery Andrew Lang

This affair is one of the haunting mysteries of the past, one of the problems that nobody has solved. The events occurred in 1600, but the interest which they excited was so keen that belief in the guilt or innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an August afternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, the strife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind 'The Iron Mask, ' the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart. In certain respects the Gowrie mystery is necessarily less attractive than that of 'the fairest and most pitiless Queen on earth.' There is no woman in the story. The world, of course, when the Ruthvens died, at once acted on the maxim, cherchez la femme. The woman in the case, men said, was the beautiful Queen, Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI. That fair and frivolous dame, 'very very woman, ' certainly did her best, by her behaviour, to encourage the belief that she was the cause of these sorrows. Even so, when the Bonny Earl Moray the tallest and most beautiful man in Scotland died like a lion dragged down by wolves, the people sang: